While it seems like this past month has been comprised entirely of hellish amounts of work-related stress, truth is I have found quite a bit of time to get out and goof off.  It seems like summers pass me by while I stay cooped up indoors, chained to one desk or another, so this time around I’ve been doing what I can to get out of the house every chance I get, soak up some sun, bask in the perfect weather of the Pacific Northwest.

Naturally, something had to give, with “something” being this blog as of late.  I’ve been out drinking cold adult beverages with my friends, taking in the occasional baseball game or rock show as time allows.  I did find time to hang out with Kerri Anne and Long Story Longer at the Portland Farmer’s Market the other morning, where we ate fresh berries and did our best to avoid all stalkers.

And on Sunday, I even made it out to the beach, where we found clear blue skies, bright sun, and absolutely no waves to speak of.  At least the scenery was pretty, though I would have preferred being able to surf.

Yeah, I know I check in like this now and then to get out of writing anything new on my blog, but you know what?  I think I’ll write another post, purely out of spite.  SPITE, I tell you.  Okay, I was just kidding about the spite — the heat is making me a little crazy.  Eh.

It all seems so unlikely is what I think as we make our way north, so improbable that I should be in this car, with these people, driving through the New Mexican desert.  I can remember back when meeting people on the Internet was frowned upon as a bad idea, they were certainly never people you’d want to become friends with in real life, much less take a road trip with.  Yet here we are, fitting together so well that when someone (I don’t recall who) made the first sandworm reference, the rest of us jumped in without missing a beat, asking if we’d packed any thumpers, complimenting the fit of each other’s stillsuits, knowing our ways as if born to them: like some variation on the Kwisatz Haderach, we were from many places all here at once.

* * *

TequilaCon itself is even more unlikely, a time and a place where people from all over descend, a flash mob gone terribly right.  And I forgot that it always goes right, and I don’t know why I don’t remember this when I first walk into the courtyard, remembering when I’d called the venue months ago and the woman on the other end of the line assured me that the Pink Adobe would be incredibly busy on Saturdays in April but they were still the place to go if we were going to have a large group of people.  At first glance it looked like it would be big enough, and we were the only ones there, and I started to let myself breathe a little, but anyway we mentioned to our waitress that there would probably be thirty of us altogether, and as everyone knows by now she shrugged and said, “well, let me get your drinks, and then we can set up the big room upstairs, the one with its own private balcony and a shower, just in case.”  Improbable, but there it was.  It always works out right.

People started arriving right on cue, and I always wonder about what the venue thinks about these events.  Where did they all come from, and then where do they all go? The New Mexicans were too laid back to check IDs or else they might have wondered about how this first batch alone represented New York and Atlanta and California and Florida.  Good Lord, do you think they’ll be coming back?

It’s a smaller group this year, which is fine, because if there’s one thing I always kick myself over after TequilaCon it’s the people I wish I had spent more time talking with, and this year I intended to make up for it in spades.  The Black Dragons were strong and the air was scarce, but I remember the first part, meeting Rachel and Robin and Sarah in short order.  Karl and I go way back at this point, and Diana and I were finally formally introduced, and Poppy knew how this all worked already and signed up for the first tattoo.  I ducked out onto the patio to enjoy one of my fake cigarettes, and by God I need to learn how to just graciously accept a compliment one of these days because Dawg dropped one of the best ones on me I’ve had in a while.

Things get a little fuzzy as we move on, but I remember waving at Colleen and Brenton from the balcony, and I was headed down the stairs to see if anyone was lost when Ren and Marty walked in, and I found myself telling my blog’s origin story to Wayne a little later.  I think this is probably when Sir dropped in, and I was relieved because less than a day before it seemed he wasn’t going to make it, but everything works out right, however unlikely.  I was so accepting of the improbability of the whole night that while it gave me a moment’s pause when Dustin walked in, I moved to the acceptance stage right away and got in place to distract Jenny, as smoothly as if we’d been practicing the whole thing for weeks.

We even had an honest-to-God Canadian this year, and finally Scott showed up and I wandered over because I felt I should say “Hello,”  and I clammed up because I thought how am I ever going to match wits with this guy? and I probably would have just stood around dumbfounded but thankfully he’d brought Susan along, who was gracious enough for the both of us, and I think I might even have gotten invited over for Texas barbecue before the night was over.

I don’t think I’d believe any of it happened if I hadn’t been there myself.

But I was, and it was a riot.

If you’re looking to gear up in Santa Fe, I can’t recommend the place above strongly enough.  Just sayin’.

See you on the morrow.

I fully believe we are entering a new era of personal responsibility, and as such I am personally holding Matt fully responsible for the aimlessly frantic and disconnected state that serves me as a hangover on Friday morning.  I should have known he had nothing but mischief in mind when he innocuously twittered something along the lines of “got my tickets to Portland”, leading me to email him something along the lines of “good god man, do you realize that there are something like 5,000 different types of beer in this city?  we’re really going to have to get to work if we’re going get to them all.  I’ll start clearing my calendar.”

Thursdays are as good a night for a lesser bender as any other day of the week, because who has to work that hard on a Friday anyway?  So we went from bar to bar, sampling hand-crafted ales and cask-aged porters and chipotle-infused drinks that seemed so wrong and so right, and although I didn’t keep track of how many pints we downed altogether, with an average alcohol contents of 7.5% I think it was the equivalent of 17 High Life Tallboys or around 200 kilometers if you converted to metric.  Though we tried for enough terminal gravity to start diverting eastbound flights back ’round to the north, an experimental IPA stripped us of our super powers and started the room spinning.  So we called a time-out, with an agreement to pick up where we left off on Saturday night, the details of which are chronicled elsewhere.

He flew back to the midwest this morning but the damage has been done, because I have any number of tantalizing and terrible ideas in my head now that involve biking over several mountain ranges.  I guess I’d better hurry up and buy a tent.

It all started as I waited on the corner in front of the restaraunt, bearing the bad news that Chris and Kerrianne wouldn’t be able to join us after all, but then Brandon arrived bearing even more unwelcome news, that his regimen of performance-enhancing drugs and Franzia had allowed his beard to surpass mine in both scope and ferocity, and I started to think for the first time that I might have to hire a personal coach if I expected to last in this year’s beard-off.

The other diners trembled a bit when we took our seats at the bar, watching in awe as we consumed plate after plate of raw fish with our bare hands, because they knew that this was only the warm up, and the caveman’s natural prey is the cougar, and they could only imagine the carnage that would be unleashed once we headed out into the city to begin the hunt.

“Do you feel like another drink?” I asked, “because I know where we can meet some pretty girls,” and Brandon was game, and so we met up with Sibyl at the Red Star, where the duck ball sliders taste better than they sound, and after a story or two there we thought some cocktails might be in order, and after a short walk –

– we were poring over the menu at the Vault.  It was time for another round, and we were feeling a little adventurous.  “I think you need to order the ‘Pussy Wagon’ next,” Sibyl said.

“I will, but I think in all fairness you need to get the ‘Agent Orange’.”  And just as our waitress came around Jenny walked in, work finally over, and I don’t even remember what she ordered but I’m sure it was just as exotic.  We talked about bloggers (naturally), and about going to Santa Fe (of course), and might even have exchanged text messages with a few friends who couldn’t quite make it (scheduling conflicts!).  And our waitress came around with more martinis, and I wondered aloud if I shouldn’t slow down a bit.  “I haven’t eaten –”

“– anything all day.”  I checked my watch.  “She said she was going to make it tonight, right?”

“She did yesterday.  I sent her a text earlier but haven’t heard back from her yet.”

“Babies.  Babies make you late for dinner.”  And we almost gave up hope, but Asia walked in right as we were finishing the last bit of the best mac and cheese I’ve ever had in my time on this Earth, and we immediately tried to ply her with a glass of wine, which she declined to drink but instead came up with some stuff for the next internet craze.  I’m not even sure how the conversation went to the places it did but someone mentioned goatse, and then we walked to the bar where we’d witnessed it for the first time, and doubled back to the basement pub where we’d stolen all the chopsticks, and cleansed our palates with a game of pinball or six.

If storytellers had any power at all I’d keep writing and writing in circles, bending time and space to my will so that all my friends are in the same place at the same time, and it’s time for cocktails and no one has to worry about getting up in the morning to go to work or catch a flight or shave off their hard-earned beard.  I suppose even that might get old after a while, but until then I think I could keep with it for days and days.

Dear Vahid X. Huitzilopochtli,

We have received and reviewed a copy of your expense report for your recent TequilaCon planning trip.  While the accommodation, air travel, and dinner allocations all look above board, we have noticed certain irregularities in your submitted list of expenses.  The guidelines for travel compensation allow some leeway; however, as your expenses appear to be more than a little unusual for a business trip, you will need to provide some sort of justification for certain items before this office can approve them as a business expense and provide appropriate compensation.  These items are listed as follows:

* Architectural Cruise

“Every bridge tower is different? I had no idea.”

“Isn’t that the Oprah Winfrey building, the tall one by the water?”

“Like she owns it, or she lives there?”

“She’s the only one who lives there, the whole thing is hers.  Just her and Dr Phil.”

“I think the Trump Tower looks like a big penis.”

* Souvenir Photo Prints

“Hey, our picture is still up on the monitor.  Is it okay if I take a picture of it?”

“Uh, it’s not allowed to take pictures of the monitor.”

“I know, but I already bought the prints.  It’s not like I’m ripping you off.”

“Well…if I let you do it, then other people would think it was okay to do it.  I’d have total anarchy in here.”

“What if we took a picture of ourselves standing in front of the monitor pointing at ourselves in front of the Hancock Tower.  Is that okay?”

“Um.  The elevator is that way.”

* Martinis, Imported Beer — not consumed with meal

“See that huge line?  That’s the wait to get in the elevator to take you back downstairs.  So I hope you weren’t planning on doing a dine and dash.  We’d have to run around the restaurant until the line cleared out.”

“That sounds like a great idea for a sitcom episode.”

“We could base an entire series on that idea.  Every week the characters would try to dine and dash from increasingly ridiculous situations.”

“That line is still pretty long.  We’d better order another round.”

* Custom T-shirt

“Oh, there she is.  There’s my lady.  She’s going on my shirt.”

“What are you going to get on the back?”

“What you need to ask yourself is, what would a maverick write on their T-shirt?”

“Moose… be-yooo-ti-ful… “

“Something mavericky.”

* Tips — ‘Puppet Bike’

“You guys! Ohmygosh, ohmygosh, it’s PUPPET BIKE!!”

“Puppet Bike?! Wow!”

“Oh, I think I’m in love with Puppet Bike.  This is definitely worth a dollar.”

“Don’t put it in the box, give it to the puppet.”

“Here you go, one-eyed cat.  High five, little buddy!”

* Admission — Adler Planetarium

“I can’t believe we walked this far just to visit the Terror-arium.”

“It’s for science!  Also I want to see how my tax dollars are being spent.”

“I just read that poster and it says we’re all going to die.  The sun is going to expand until it consumes the earth.”

“Don’t worry about that, it’s called the Rapture.  We’ll be just fine.  Well, I will be, I know the right people.”

“Science is thirty times cooler if you wear 3-D glasses.”

“I’m putting my 3-D glasses up against the 3-D viewer.  I’ve got 6-D.”

“Okay, I think we can all fit in the photo booth.  You sit on the floor this time.”

“OH MY GOD, THERE IT IS!  The three million dollar projector!  Get a picture!”

As you know, we take our duties in regard to Tequila Oversight very seriously, in order to assure the citizenry of the blogosphere that their TequilaTax dollars are spent appropriately.  Please re-submit your expense report with apporpriate documentation attached as soon as possible.  You will not be recompensed for your expenses until such time.

Sincerely,

L. Jimador
Don Julio & Associates
TequilaCon GAO

It all started with some unfortunate/fortunate news for Dave – unfortunate in that he was called on to go to Portland at the last possible minute, but fortunate that in if you’re going to be spending a few unplanned days away from home, it might as well be with friends.  So we talked about meeting up for Indian food, and it turned out Tracy was able to join us, and Fortune really must have been smiling on us all that day because even the venerable Lewis and Blair deigned that they could be seen with YOU PEOPLE for a few hours, provided it was in an out of the way place.

But delicious and otherworldly food is only the beginning of any meet-up, and so after we’d taken up the biggest table in the restaurant for an hour or so our next stop was for some world-class gelato, and then Tracy rocked the house as the opening act for the Boiler Room‘s karaoke, and later Dave and I learned that while some things are just like riding a bicycle (cf. RIDING A BICYCLE), old time arcade faves like Donkey Kong and Frogger are not among them.  We fared much better at pinball.

And really, that ought to be enough for one weekend, but then just yesterday I went to Saturday Market to meet with Adena and Stacey and Jen.  From there we decided that it’s never too early in the day to enjoy a good pint of beer, and so retired to a dark corner of Old Town and whispered our schemes, because it won’t be too long before yet another blogger comes to town, and I won’t mention her name because she knows who she is.

Really, you all just ought to move to Portland.  You know you want to.

I knew Dave and Dustin, obviously, and Sizzle was a fellow TequilaCon alum, but everyone else was new to me and so I got a chance to meet Matt and Scott and Nicole and Patty and Tracy and Chris, and The Fella and Bryan who were great fun even if I can’t link to them. Kristin arrived and brought glittery tattoos, and we all set about looking for clean, dry hairless patches of skin and documenting the process with dozens of photos. Hilarity ensued.

The next day found me back on the road, having recognized that state in myself where I’m close to going mad if I don’t get to breathe in great big lungfulls of sea air, and so I wound up in Cannon Beach where I finally got a chance to see Mad William‘s gallery. We had a few beers and some oysters at the local tavern, and spent some time chatting about Oregon coastal life and San Diego and art and of course favorite blog reads, and all the people we were lucky to know through blogging. Oh, and I brought my new charges along with me, and they were remarkably well behaved, not quacking once during our lunch.

It was a fantastic weekend all around. And I slept like a baby that night and am only just now updating my blog, which is why you’re getting a weekend update on a Tuesday morning.

Lisa was the first to arrive, and I got a chance to sit down and talk with a woman who radiated such courage and gratitude in equal parts that she gave me hope for the future, and I think all my tomorrows will be a little brighter for having had the chance to meet her. She and Dude helped us to defend our claimed couches, and it wasn’t too long before the next blogger came up the stairs. I was probably a little intimidated, but black belts are so good at their art that she was able to disarm me using only her dazzling smile and engaging wit. (Mr BBM deserves a lot of credit, too, for being such a good sport, because the Internets can be a little intimidating when they all show up in person).

I figured that with TequilaCon underway it was time to start offering to give people tattoos, and Christine one-upped me by flashing her real tattoo, but ultimately I gave one to both her and Jan. People started arriving in droves about then, and I suddenly realized that any hopes I’d had of being felt up by Karl were probably going to go unrealized because he already had people lined up for just that. My spirits were lifted, though, when I ran into my favorite cupcake and when I asked her if she was ready for a tattoo, she showed me exactly where I could give it to her, and she decided to pay it forward by giving Becky one in the same place. I picked up a cool piece of swag from Avitable, and later he told me that if it didn’t work out for me I could name my first child Adam.

People were arriving faster than I could greet them at this point, and it looked like pandemonium, and I asked around to see if anyone knew who was responsible for all this. Dustin told me he knew exactly who, so I tapped on my glass as he stood up on a chair and told everyone that Jenny was the reason we were all here. I think this really struck a chord with Dave, because then he pulled Jenny aside and told her to take a look at what she’d done, but she only kicked up her feet in defiance. I didn’t think she was taking taking this too seriously, so I stole one of her curls and then challenged her to game of pinball. This didn’t work out so well, because it turns out she’s pretty good at pinball when she doesn’t have a scarf over her eyes, and I suffered an epic defeat, and the worst part was when she racked up the last ten million points with one hand while she chatted with Shari. (Asia, if you’re not worried yet, you should be.) I figured I couldn’t do much worse so I tried my hand at Ms Pac-Man, but Dee-Dee demonstrated how lacking my skills were in that department, and then after all this abuse I think Sir must have taken pity on me because he told me I could go ahead and call him whatever I wanted, and then Farnsworth became my new best friend by buying me a vodka.

I think this is the part where The Collective arrived (minus one, but three out of four is still pretty good), and they brought their A-game and their exclamation marks, and I probably went a little fanboy on them, especially when they wanted to start doing shots right away. Kat! was every bit as bad-assed as I thought she’d be, because I didn’t see anyone else get a hat-trick at Buck Hunter that night, Jennie! showed me the secret to playing MASH so that you always wound up with Jake Gyllenhaal (and then I let her down right away by not remembering who did that space cowboy song), and Abigail! let the DJ know that he was working for us, and not the other way around.

Things start to get blurry about this point, but I do remember that I finally found out what a Delmer looks like, and I shared a few words with Dawg while he watched over us, and I’d heard Shiny’s voice before but this was the first chance I’d had to shake his hand, and Dan, I may just have to drive down to this Chucklehut of yours because I didn’t get nearly as much time in to talk to you as I did last year. I probably got a little sentimental on Shelli when she asked for one of my buttons, and although I never actually heard Britt say ‘woo hoo! fuck yeah!’ her dance moves spoke volumes more. Avitable called me over then because Poppy needed a tattoo, and she probably had the sweetest smile of the night and she told me she loved her mermaid, but she was probably just being kind because the room was spinning so fast at that point I’m sure I must have put it on crooked.

This is about the point where the living embodiment of tequila appeared in a flash of light, and called for someone to bring him the head of Brandon, and it was all pretty scary so Sandra showed us all that it was probably best to bow to Tequila Man’s wishes. Sarah got a hold of Brandon’s head, and she took him to places I can’t talk about here, and come to think of it Heather probably got a little fresh with him, too, and it was all getting a little crazy so I ducked away for a minute to exchange text messages with my partner in crime, and I’m sure I told her that I wished she was here because I really did.

Things started to wrap up after we had the last call for fake mustaches, and there were hugs aplenty and hand shakes as people started to leave, and I don’t remember much about this part of the evening but I know that Jill was the last to leave, and then we were left with one last Tequila Duty to perform so the four of us visited the photo booth, and then we were well and truly done for the night.

Good old North Bowl.  You had no idea, did you?  But I think we all left you better than when we found you.

And I didn’t know then that I’d get a guest post from Brandon some day about TequilaCon, which I present to you now. Thanks, Brandon. For everything.

*****

it’s so nice to wake up every morning alone, physically-emotionally spent and not have to tell you i love you because i would and that’s how tethers snap, loosing the pink balloons from their moorings, floating off into the spinning sky, reflection of dots like a constellation, pegasus, perhaps, dreaming of leather bearing stable girls and running free through the halls of their elementary days.

the moon is out there somewhere, hidden behind the roof of the bar, the clouds and light pole milkshakes transmitting my electronic mail. on friday i made nice with the kennedy school receptionist, and added a wet bar to the ample closet in classroom number 6, a recessed room, overlooking the warm waters that can only avoid the tips of my toes for so long.

i love those moments when you are lost and in a panic, you pull out your phone and start punching the numbers too quickly, only to hear the other person say, ‘turn around.’ and then jenny did something even more pleasing to my heart, she let me lead her down taylor, past the naughty marble parts of the standard insurance building, and to an old watering hole with the loosest slots in town named after my favorite water lily/sitting position.

the lotus was soon full of friends old and new, a bartendress who mistakingly confessed to the fire a few years back that nearly kept this moment from ever coming to pass, we have the best bartendresses at tequilacon, and it always rains, and i always come away with a new umbrella. and the story of the lotus fire was related so well that you could nearly smell the charred letters, smoke which turned out to be jenny‘s telegraph struggling to translate jill‘s text message into morse code and back into latin. i struggled similarly with my own phone, but for altogether different reasons, weighing the cruelty of sending kat a photo of a three-olive sere-dry martini, served in a stemless glass for the safety of everyone involved. i would later switch to the less-powerful version of the northern comfort, only to tremble in the universal shudder of three women with their own conflicting memories of its potency. i watered it down with rc cola, accordingly.

this was the morning yawn and stretch, still, pre-quila con, and no sooner did i experience the jess reach-around, that a new phone was in my hand, and it was time to relieve myself in conversation with sarah, and involuntarily, the guy standing in the stall next to me. i graciously left all our poker winnings to the honest barmaid, all of us come out winners.

we joined the happenings at mother’s, taking the last table standing before dee dee could make off to wisconsin with the restaurant’s doors. they appeased us with biscuits and macaroni and plied us with wine and food too pretty to eat. there was some dessert i don’t recall, but since by this time i was already well into my first hair of the dog, my lapses can be forgiven, and in any case i needed to pack these guests into my car and drive them to the kennedy school. i know what you’re thinking, and you can save your judgment, because i packed a year’s supply of DUI strips, and the color on mine hardly changed a lick.

in the lobby, a healthy cohort of pre-quila con feted the arrival of their queen, and my memory and me, we don’t get on so well, but let’s see, there was karl and hilly and adena and stacey and sizzle. and my heart sank when i saw dustin, everybody’s favorite curly-haired sibling, because he is everybody’s favorite. he cursed the whole weekend, no coincidence and people thought it was ‘sweet’ and ‘precious’ and ‘you’re the best donteverchange.’ but oh how he changed.

fortunately, dave was there to sop up any excess affection that dustin would have dragged off like so much toilet paper on his bootheels, because the badges and buttons and posters and spot-on imitation of the month grew ovaries in me where none before existed, and elevated him to tequilacon executive committee status, where none before existed. i believe his official title is president in chief, whereas jenny is chief executive president and i am the designated driver and food taster. i don’t eat meat, jenny is sesame free and dave cannot even manage an appetite unless he is allowed to stab the prey in the gullet with other people watching. blood lust, they call it.

next year’s badges, apparently, will be blue-tooth enabled, with a usb port, digital camera, patriot identification device, Google Earth, the first ten chapters of Dune, alcohol content strip, their own currency based debit system and serve as the hotel room key. we’re going to call it the ‘iPhone.’

the buttons doubled as accupuncture, unfortunately, but fortunately, the lanyards doubled as tourniquets.

this of course, was all too late to help sibyl, who had previously donated 40% of her internal organs by body weight before pre-quila con, and even though she was plenty congratulated, and i’m sure the hearts broken were in excess of the kidneys she gave, vahid and i both know the real reason for the blood letting was to make more room for all the jameson’s stashed in my closet/bar. is it a coincidence that the bottle was empty almost as soon as she arrived? i think so. but in spite of the rapidly decreasing liquor stores, people soon found more reason for cheerfulness because there was a lot more liquor, too. we weren’t even forced to open the emergency vermouth.

i somehow managed to lose jenny and dee dee to downtown, and even vahid and sibyl were willing to part my ways, and i can still barely forgive myself for not flattening asia‘s tires, and then there’s jill, too, and thank god for old elementary school hotel/bar conversions that still allow you to sleep fully clothed with all the lights on, this no blue law state, but Oregon territory, still encompassing the whole of Washington in the minds of many. and thank god for parking lot epiphanies and barely noticeable rain that can’t quite do much more than slow down the embers on your menthol lights, giving you just enough time to say what’s on your mind and be heard. that’s all.

in the morning, no big surprise, my head is full of hurt, and i take jill to the veritable quandary, my euphemisms only half used up on Day one. portland is a town of edible, delible eggs, and spicy, handmade bloody mary mixes and memories still too close to recall. and shoe shopping. and powells. and powells technical books. and powells world famous 2 hour free parking, complete with 4 spots, each with its own 1980s model sedan taking up 1 and a half.

neil is, disappointingly, a great guy, and not surprisingly has incredible taste in women. sofia is charming and lovely and shares my affection for winter caps and brasseries and she completed our search for a curly haired sister, so that jenny wouldn’t feel outnumbered by me and dustin, or even just dustin alone when he’s demonstrating the ‘show curl.’ i will feel mightily disappointed if they do not return with fond and pleasant memories of the oregon coast, but if they did not enjoy themselves, they are oscar and emmy and bloggy worthy, surely, because they both know how to smile and laugh and make other people in their presence do the same. that’s what you should know about the two of them.

i panicked a bit slaving over PB&J sandwiches, having laid out all 30 lunch sacks, filled them with chocolate, tequila, sudoku and DUI strips, all along the ironing board/registration table, and cried on the telegraph with jenny, mostly dots, but a few dashes in between, until she said ‘half sandwiches’ and repeated ‘half sandwiches’ when i kept saying ‘WHAT DO YOU MEAN?’ what she meant was half sandwiches, and it suddenly made me realize that the reason i called her was to confess that i hadn’t counted the bread slices correctly in the grocery store, and there wasn’t enough sandwich material for all of these people who flew in from all over the world, and even those who didn’t fly in from london, were they to change their minds at the last minute. so everyone had a half peanut butter (smooth jif) and jelly (squeezable welch’s grape) sandwich, except dustin, who had 7, and colleen, whose SCD called for a fresh almonds/baby carrot/tilamook cheese medley. brenton hands down won for best hair of the night, and that was with me trying, as i mentioned to both shoo shoo and kimberly, who both arrived an hour before official registration began, and i was happy, because i got a gift bag with my favorite team in the whole world written write there onto the front, and i drank the liquor post haste and then sucked on one of those DUI strips just to monitor my progress and not go ‘overboard’ (that’s one finger quotations, for those of you at home checking my grammar).

i cried again when my stack of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches fell down, only ten high, onto dave‘s lanyards/name badges, and thank god today’s lamination is water resistant, not like the old kind which basically reacted with water by exploding because it was potassium based. so not only were the badges ‘cool,’ but they were also ‘clean’ and ‘jelly scented.’ i’m so sorry.

vahid must have known this and reacted in anger by lifting me into the air, and jenny wanted to do the same to vahid, but first i had to loosen him up a bit from gravity’s hold, and that, my friends is why there are photos of jenny picking up vahid with relative ease while i appear to be using him as a pillow fort. just in time for mad william to get very mad at showing up in the most talked about shoes of the evening and robert to want to knife us with his mighty pen and chad to compare this all to a scene from 300 and lewis and blair to question if we were in fact teachers, what with this being a school for kennedys.

i tried to leave when everyone started licking each other’s tats, if only to step outside and ask the sky to please stop spinning already i’m trying to organize a blog meetup thank you.

with all the new faces, it was nice to see shari, and nicer still to see other people see shari for the first time and not quite so nice to hear them fawn all over her, hanging on her every word like so many collectible buttons hanging from so many jelly-stained lanyards, hoping that vahid might ask someone else to pick him up while we all point to shari because she has better abs than i momentarily, since ’07 is when i work on my triceps, and my ab routine doesn’t start til ’11.

like at every tequilacon, there was a lot of cleavage and rhetorical questions, like, ‘can i touch those?’ and ‘are you serious?’

michelle did like the most awesome thing by carting a group of people over to voodoo donuts, and dan and sass and i chatted about mutual blog reads, like tequila mockingbird and patricia and romy and greg, aplenty. there was hearts in the air.

dan was awfully cool, and i feel like i could have chatted with him for a long time, only now the DUI strip in my mouth was starting to turn pink, and that’s saying something being as how Asia dipped them into pure tequila and they didn’t do so much as look moist. i feel like i really accomplished something and i was apparenty very funny because i started offering everyone a ride home and they just laughed and laughed and laughed and then they walked away very quietly shaking their heads from side to side. i think i made an impression!

and then i get very sleepy at this point of the story, and i remember now that tequilacon is nothing that really exists, but is a figment like we all are to each other, fully weaned of truth and principality, able to sustain our days on little more than hidden messages and pretense and a vestigial ability to talk to each other using only our thoughts and our fingertips.

i think, of course, the beauty of this all is that it’s so brief, a wisp of a time, really, with no danger of ruts and healthy obsession, and then, sorry, train gone. but i know that i don’t use an umbrella, but it did rain, though so lightly as for me to cry no fair, please try harder, and i did come away with a new umbrella, and a woman’s scarf that i am hesitant to wash. and i know that on march 10, 2007, i went without anything but the very lightest, most pleasant sleep and i left my recessed room in ebullient spirit and walked around in a most welcome haze, in search of my breakfast club, the onus on me to come up with bridal shower conversation, my own duck induced priapisms, and an antidote to jenny’s hollow tears, so that next year’s conferees don’t all wind up lifeless and damp, spent like Vegas.

i also believe the children are our future.