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.

Pete - Memoir essay

Speak, friend, and enter

Where the Nerds Are, after hours in Indy; three bars my friends and I visited down in Indianapolis give me three different perspectives, glimpses of the world as I experience it day to day.

The city street flooded with high lights bringing out the deep browns of the Midwest; older brick from a century ago lines the district preserved for modern merriment. Indianapolis echoed Chicago out there on the plains, and trains gathered here from all over the East and Midwest, loading grains and people outbound for 150 years. In the vicinity of the Union Station, cast in brown brick and gray asphalt, were three bars in particular.

…

"You should go to 'Ice,' she said. Her dark hands on her hips, arms contrasting with her bright yellow blouse. "I'll probably be there after I get off here, in about an hour." A wink. She leaned in towards me just a bit, and I’d already decided. For the group.

So on our first night in town we meandered down the streets to the foyer of Ice. Out of the humid night and stepping into the elevator, we pressed "up". Wallets came out, our IDs ready.

As we ascended, images of blue and black stumbled into my mind's eye, the cool motif splashed on the walls along with thrumming trance beats, girls very made up and poser guys not interested in us at all, visiting gamers descending on their city, their club, as they noted us through sunglasses at 10pm.

The elevator doors parted... darkness there, and nothing more. Not a soul in the place.

An almost confrontational quiet. The utter lack of sound in this clearly social space was eerie; the place abandoned but somehow meticulously maintained. My first impression was surreal, the cool air hanging all around us, the stillness really seeping in. Tentative, we stepped out of the elevator, Chris held back and kept the parted doors open, thinking tactically.

We might need a way out of this place, fast.

"They're closed," Hemp said after a pause into a silence that seemed to engulf his words. Rational ,grounded Hemp. We were not in a tomb. There had not been a war during our elevator ride up. This was not a dream. Well, probably not, anyway.

I took a few steps into the vacant opulence, our very own unexpected haunted mansion, an open mausoleum just stepped into. Too quick to ignore, my apprehension spun up into curiosity. I walked on the hardwood floor, further into the darkness of the club, pools of streetlamp light barely soaking in from long windows, nearby spaces a deep dark.

Off to our right through an ornate open archway, low couches of light blue with graceful lamps of white adorned a VIP room I'd likely never see in real life. I took a few steps towards it, and strained with my senses to -feel- the place, preternatural now in it's elemental state; no people. No clanking glassware, no petty buzzed hubbub, no hustling waitstaff. No scents of cigarettes or posturing. Just the pure essence of the place, except for any other living soul.

Ice of some dormant glacier, awake in the future, but not now.

The moments hung as I explored with my eyes, then I was aware of the twinge in my stomach, all of us raised in the suburbs to be good boys and not trespass, it was inevitable that someone would voice what we all felt, somewhere inside. We'd had our glimpse into this place, seeing it as very few ever have, now it was time.

"Let's go," Chris said from the open doors back to the real world. And we did.

We weren't mean to linger too long, to see Ice in that state for more than a few moments, I think. We rode down, and spilled back out into the humid Midwestern night. GenCon started tomorrow.

...

"Have a Nice Day! Bar" was the world we live in, most of the time.

When you walked in, you felt the music in your chest uninvited. I've never had a problem with popular dance music, but the beat was like a strange, smiling girl who comes right up against you, so that she can feel your heartbeat. Like her or not, want her or not.

Lip gloss, jeans and heels. Tramp stamps and circulating shotgirls. Gelled hair with sunglasses positioned just right, guys holding a forced casual stance. The decor was Hooters-esque, laminated light wood and cement flooring, style sacrificed for form and function. The dance floor was raised higher than almost anything in the club, and most eyes are there.

It's common to see one or just a few people moving to the beat up there. If no one watched, no one would be dancing, but everyone watched. The skill varied, but mostly it's those few who really know how to move, that craved your attention, showing off. Some peacocking and mating ritual analogs as well were seen, all to the backdrop of very loud music.

My friends come to the table I've scouted, and they all have identical drinks- plastic fishbowls with some kind of alcoholic Kool-Aid. One of these would be enough for all of us, and they each have their own.

We’d hidden our convention badges, and we're not immediately obvious as gaming nerds... but we are not with these people, here. The only real communication here is visual, the candy coating of all that's supposed to be fun and sexy in life. And just by looking at us, you see we’re not from around here.

The place oozes sex and expensive t-shirts and effort, a kind of desperation ground out with the bare hips to answer every beat. Looking good, being seen, and coming off hip are central. We're tolerated, but we're not like these people, not accepted. I suppose it would be possible to get lost here, to have fun and just let go, but there seems to be so much of a disconnect between who I am and what this place was trying to be, that there's no point; no real return on my investment.

A few more songs play, and we leave, four almost-full fishbowls on our crappy table, just off the dance floor. On the way out we passed some amazingly attractive people, and for a moment we rethought our exit. We're outside; "Did you see her?" "Why did we leave?" “Could we get back in?”

But in a moment we're detached, and fine, and heading elsewhere.

...

Union Station itself speaks in a pure, aged Midwestern voice, history in the lines and texture of its façade; brown and tan bricks in Romanesque Revival. Long ago, many, many people passed daily through the cavernous spaces on their way to Kansas City, Little Rock, and Pennsylvania. Compared to its past, the building was all but silent now; an empty cathedral from the time of cattle pulls, linesmen, and pocket watches.

Around the west side an innocuous stairway led down, a simple small sign marked the destination: "Universal Imports Unlimited".

Descending, we came to a darkened stairwell ending at a formidable door with an eye-slit. With a rap against thick timber, someone behind the door threw back a slide with a loud clack, opening a tiny eye-level aperture.

"Yea?"

" 'Are you my guardian angel?' " I asked. There's an unexplainable catch in my throat, for a heartbeat.

A pause, then another loud clack as the slide is closed again. A click as a deadbolt was turned, and the door swings inward. Light spilled into the stairwell for a moment as we're ushered in. Just as quickly, the solid door was closed and bolted behind us, and we're in the Safe House.

A former speakeasy and current hideout for would-be spies, the Safe House rests in the bowels of Union Station, tucked away from the history and bustle of Indianapolis, but still a part of it. Indirect and dim lighting created more shadows than light, throwing relief onto exposed brick, the look that seemed to be the DNA of downtown Indy.

Off to the side of the entryway, there's a blackjack table and roulette wheel set up, all seats are filled.

I recognized some players from missions I've run during the day, and as I looked around the darkened space with a low ceiling, I traded familiar nods with more. I made my way to the old style dark wooden bar. I note the music, something forgettable but appropriate to the people here.

We're all gamers, all graduates of Guardian 6 and their friends. No locals, no posturing, or $300 jeans. Just we nerds, in a place of our own, tucked away from the real world. A safe house, indeed. You needed a pass phrase to get in, someone's playing a game of some sort all the time, and you felt that ready camaraderie with strangers who are a bit different than everyone else, just like you. We’re all still wearing our convention badges, at 1030 pm.

We sit, and plan how tomorrow our agency will beat the others with wit and guile.

...

To me, these three places seemed to represent how I see the world.

Ice was the hint of the foundations of things; how you perceive the world when you dream about it, or when you're back-of-house at a theater. You’re privy to the place in a state most don’t see; its actual working level, as opposed to what almost everyone usually sees.

It's revealing there, but lonely. This view was the lens I see the world through when I am depressed, or at my most analytical. Ghosts of line and shape, the people who aren't really there, though they may be moving all around me. It's just form, feature and function without soul. My trips to this world are almost always short. Looking under the hood of a car is often interesting, but rarely helps you get from place to place.

At Have a Nice Day, I saw the world as it is on MTV, as the media and the malls show it to me. The packaged, gelled-slick version that screams, ”Look at me! Approve of me! Desire me!”

Here it's all about flavor, sugar, and salt; Sensuality and instant gratification are key. Class divisions are thrown into sharp relief here; the nerds of GenCon who were unable to blend in with the popular kids stand out, and form awkward gaggles here. Their clothes were different; body language and speech marked them apart from the gathered tribe.

The Safe House is exactly that, a secure haven for like-souls, strangers in a strange land. It’s a protected space where you needed a codephrase to enter, and a rite of passage to be accepted. Class means very little here, as it’s a gathering of friends, family, almost. This might not be how the world actually is, or how it is portrayed in the stories of our success, but it is the world we’re most comfortable in, the one where we belong. The vernacular is native, and easy. “Critical hits” and “LARPS” and the clear superiority of the d20 system are items for ready discussion and debate.

I am at home in all of these places, and comfortable, depending on my state of mind. Sometimes I get a glimpse of Ice, I move through Have a Nice Day to just operate in the world, and in my mind, my heart, I gather with friends in a Safe House.

Memoir???

Ok, so I looked at all those memoir links and I think I might understand what a memoir is but I'm still not really sure. So I write an opening paragraph to what I think is memoir about GenCon. So here it is, let me know if I'm on the right track here or if I totally missed the ball.

Society has its social norms: what to say, how to act, what to wear, etc. As a general rule people follow these norms to blend in with their social environment. So what is up with the patrons of GenCon? They neither know what to say, how to act, or what to wear to fit into everyday society. At first I just thought that they simply did not realize that norms existed and people just in, at looked however random they wanted to, but after I passed my fifth patron who was obese, had a greasy ponytail, and was wearing jeans and a black t-shirt with some phrase like “I pwn n00bs”, I realized that this is not just some random not understanding of social norms, but must be intentional.

Like a blog entry, but with proper grammar

The memoir essay is its own unique form; not a book, and not a narrative of something that happened, exactly. Hemp described it as a sort of "blog entry, but with proper grammar". WordNet at Princeton ( as told by Google's excellent "define" feature ) defines memoir:

"an account of the author's personal experiences"

There's a lot of room there. Maybe we can tighten it up a bit with some good references. The aptly-named site WritingMemoir.com has a page listing eleven sample memoirs. A briefer explanation for those with little time and no need of inspiration can go to Pen Central Online for a brief summary of what a memoir essay is. Lastly, the first place many people jump is Wikipedia, with their entry.

As I write this post, I've decided that my own memoir remembering GenCon 2k7 will be about the different places we socialized in after hours. So no copying. : )

1st Topic

We just got back from GenCon; write a memoir of the blessed event. Due monday the 27th.

Three pages, you lazy bastards.


( submitted by Hemp )