Iron Fist

I realize it’s been almost three weeks now since TequilaCon came and went and I still haven’t posted a recap; I can only attribute that to the venue being in my own timezone this year, and only a few hours drive away.  Normally I spend a few hours sitting in an airport, flying home, and then recovering from jet lag, during which most of my post writes itself in the back of my mind, and a few days later I will find myself wide awake in the middle of the night and throw myself at the keyboard, churning out a post.  Clearly that hasn’t happened this year, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t have a great time.

Far from it!  I had a blast as usual, arriving early with Jenny (who graciously put up with me while I suffered through the usual anxiety I have until everyone arrives and the party is going swingingly), Dave (who I run into in all sorts of places but never in Eastern Washington, and he’s never let me forget it), Dustin (who brought me up to date on all the sci-fi I should be reading), and Sarah (who I met for the first time at last year’s event so I guess we’ve come full circle – neat, huh?).   We shortly found Brandon (who was the one who got me into this madness in the first place, and then went on to graciously retire), and it was just like old times.

I’ve made the rounds with bloggers in this part of the land before, so I’d met quite a few of the attendees: I’ve had drinks with Kerri and Hans, and with Sizzle and Mr Darcy; Brandon and Death? were familiar faces, too; Angella can’t seem to stay away from Portland, and because of that I’d had a chance to meet Jen;  Shari and I have shared many a beer before, and Sir let me drag him all over the PacNW once.  All the familiar faces made me happy.

But!  Half the fun in these meet-ups is getting to meet people you’ve long admired from afar, and the stars aligned just right (thanks to Houston’s Problem) and I got to meet Beth, who won the award this year longest distance traveled to join the party and has long been high up on my list of bloggers I want to meet.

And! Vancouver itself seems to have its share of awesome bloggers, like Hillary who brought us all fake mustaches, and Abby and Laura who brought their A-game, and Dayna even flew in all the way from New Zealand just to make everyone’s night.

So yeah, I had a lot of fun with a lot of great people, and to make the evening a slam dunk we ended it with poutine, because how can you go wrong with that?

I really don’t think you can.

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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.

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I know I said this last year, but holy crap my head hurts and I think we had another colossally successful TequilaCon.  Photos will be up later once I get home and have time to process them.  It was great to meet all of you!

Next year, someone cut me off after drink nineteen.  Ugh.

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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.

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Oh, North Bowl. You had no idea, did you? No idea at all what was about to happen when we walked up your stairs with arms full of swag to survey TequilaCon’s latest home. No idea when the tweet went out to put the world on notice that aught-eight’s event had begun.

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.

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