I Can Feel the Memory in My Dragonbone (Project #1: Memoirs)

Topic: Tang: "Write a memoir about your experience at Gen Con."

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There comes a day when a man must accept the fact that his true peers are morbidly obese, dragon t-shirt wearing, female-fearing freakos. That statement may seem harsh to you; however, you would be wrong. I say this with certainty, because, well, you haven’t met my peers.

My initial impression of these people is horribly prejudiced by my friends. Unlike those persons I described a moment ago, my friends can be freakos without appearing freaky. We all cultivated nerdy interests ranging from live action vampire conflicts settled by paper-scissors-rock to attempting to paint realistic miniatures of futuristic robot orc cyber mages. Between us we make two marines, a law student, a physics teacher, and an English instructor. While certainly not cool, I dare say that we maintain some semblance of normalcy in the land of LARP. That being said, at Gen Con, we are the coolest people alive. Our status is akin to being the cousin of a Kennedy; we aren’t quite JFK, but we might have played touch football on his lawn.

Gen Con is a convention of all things geeky. The event was originally held in Geneva, hence the name. Over time it shifted to Milwaukee and now to Indianapolis. I never attended any of the years in Milwaukee, although they are discussed with the mythic quality often reserved for dead war heroes or your favorite defunct restaurant. After years amongst the breweries, Gen Con moved to Indianapolis. Veterans of both areas often tell me that Indianapolis welcomes gamers like the Middle-earth conquering heroes that we are while Milwaukee grimaced at the arrival of more people discussing THAC0 the same way fashion models discussed bulimia. For my part, I think Milwaukee could have its up side: a town with a per capita restaurant fish fry rate of 12 fish fries per 100 residents must have something to offer.

Having attended Gen Con last year, I feel more prepared to take advantage of my proportional coolness advantage. I will pick up women, wow fellow gamers with my mad role-paying skill, and impress published authors with my singular wit. Let me be clear, none of this will actually happen.

These failures will occur despite my many preexisting advantages. For example, by sleeping with more than one woman in the past, I am vastly more experienced than 84% of Gen Con’s attendees, including the lesbians. Likewise, my status as marginally overweight makes me more fit (in cases of fatties) or healthier (in cases of the human wafers) than 90% of the convention.

However, I must face facts. Rejection scares me more than a chemical attack on my home town. At least with the chemical attack, I will die when the mustard gas collapses my lungs.

Furthermore, my sense of economics tells me that attracting female gamers should be easy. After all, the supply of palatable males reaches an immeasurably small level at Gen Con. However, economics fails to account for three factors: first, I do not understand economics; second, I am a coward; and third, the quality of women at Gen Con mirrors that of the male population.

Gaming girls can be surprisingly attractive, particularly if one likes girls of the gothic or Asian bent. While not my forte, equal parts paleness and dark makeup can often combine to make a pretty little combo.

Every once and a while a really attractive women will appear. Most of the time she is hired by one of the gaming companies to attract young males to the company’s booth. This sort is easy to find in that she is often dressed as though she was an elf lingerie model. Unlike their non-gaming counter parts, young males at Gen Con will not actually engage this kind of woman. They will simply approach her, take a photograph, and later brag to their friends about how hot this woman was. Sadly, the Gen Con Gods stamped out these hired guns in the interest of creating a family environment. I disagree with this decision for a simple reason: breasts and families are not mutually exclusive.

Yet at other times, a beautiful woman will appear and look as if she wandered into the area by accident. She will talk, dress, and walk like an attractive woman, but possess some distinguishing feature like a deck of Magic cards or Celtic necklace. I try to meet these women, but meeting would require talking and talking to them would violate my previously discussed rule of cowardice.

Honestly, I think that the percentages of women at Gen Con fall inside three groups: Group 1, 48% of the women are unattractive; Group 2, 48% are somewhat attractive or attractive; and Group 3, 4% are hot. 4% is certainly less impressive than the number of beautiful women at Tri Delta, but not too shabby when you consider the asexual nature of Advanced Dungeon and Dragons.

Avowing not to associate with Group 1 and ducking Group 3 as if SARS infected its members, I focused on Group 2. My initial plan was to rent a car, ram into a Group Twosie, and then woo her during the ensuing court battle. However, showing unexpected foresight, the Hoosier State will not rent cars to people under 26. So instead, I decided to try my luck with talking to a Twosie.

Operation Twosie Tot started off smashingly. During one of the writing seminars, I eyed a Starbuck doppelganger. Starbuck doppelgangers are particularly interesting in that much of the story of Battlestar Galactica (the show which created the Starbuck character) revolves on humans and their human- looking robot impersonators.

She sat about four rows in front of me and appeared about as interested as me in the panel discussion of “racist tendencies of WASP fantasy authors towards the peoples of the mountain.” I formed a foolproof plan: after the seminar ended, I would approach and ask about her writing. And so I waited. After the race conscious author dressed an ant-eater finished his spiel, I looked up for Starbuck and only saw the back of her head as she bolted from the room. How stupid of me, she is clearly a mind reader.

In the next seminar, I saw Starbuck once more. This time, she would not escape. After wrapping my head in dead electric eels to block her telepathy, I sat directly behind her to prevent her from fleeing the room again. As the self-published author described what sounded like the “Dragon Bone Trilogy,” I tuned out while still checking to ensure that Starbuck was within the reach of a witty one-liner. Then right as the “dragonbone” turned out to be an apocalypse stopping artifact, Starbuck rose to leave. I am going to have to tie her down next time; I should have gone to a rodeo.

My other grand attempts to nab a woman occurred at the Gen Con dance. First, think back to my earlier description of Gen Con attendees and now imagine them at a night club of their own design. If you are imagining the opening dance club scene from Blade, then you are exactly right. I kept waiting for Wesley Snipes to burst in with the I.R.S. chasing after him.

Feeling out of place or awkward, my friends I decided to become the Stair People. We repeatedly walked up and down the stairs while Jedis and French maids gyrated. At some point, Pete and I designed the an entire culture around the Stair People; they feel great pain. In fact, it will be our next writing topic: Sarcozy’s love handles and their effect on the Stair People. Against all luck, we found a few women at the top of the stairs. They too appeared to be joining the nation of Stairmasters. I eyed them and saw one, dressed in a white dress, return the look. I decided that the White Queen would be available in perpetuity and thus continued to joke with my friends and drink warm beer. As I walked down the stairs, I found a French maid who peaked my interest as she bobbed rhythmically and strained her neck at the nearby men. Instead of asking her to dance, I decided to continue on my circular path around the dance; clearly, she wasn’t going any where.

A few minutes later, I returned to my Stair People roots with two beers in hand to look for my White Queen, but she was gone. The White Queen had left during the time I spent wandering amongst her subjects. I would joke that the development leaves an extra beer for me, but I always intended to drink both. Buying two at a time simply saved money.

I left the Land of the Stairs to go locate the French maid who I assumed was eager to serve me, but she too had left. Realizing my newfound difficulty, I looked for a new target: two attractive young girls wearing dresses and standing by themselves. They seemed like the perfect women for me: pretty, but strange enough to be at Gen Con. Better yet, they appeared socially awkward. Admittedly, when I approached them, I failed to notice the large older man wearing a Mordor-rock necklace who stood next to them. Remembering myself, I made sure to pat him on the back and ignore his grimace. I babbled some unmemorable comment about the two young women, but only remembered their response,” We’re here with our Dad.” At that point, I fled to the safety of the stairs and waited for the company of my male cohorts. When faced with troubles, people should play to their strengths: in my case, flight.

Periodically, I re-learn something about myself. At Gen Con, I re-learned the somehow reassuring fact that I belong there. Instead of separating myself from those who have memorized the evolutionary adaptations of the tusken raider, I should admit to the world that I could (and should) correct their plaster molds of the raider’s central nervous system.

By attending Gen Con, one exposes himself to the risk that the world will know the truth about his hidden interests. By enjoying the interests of my peers and sharing in their failures, I expose myself to the risk that I will know the real truth: the truth is that my friends and I are not all that different from the other Gen Con attendees. Perhaps we can assimilate with the rest of the population a bit better, but after all, if you prick us, do we not bleed lead-free, specially-formatted, silicone-based orc paint.