Admittedly, the title is stolen from one
of my favorite Dropkick Murphy's songs and is about Christmas, but Con season
is sort of like Christmas for the socially awkward. It is a time to gather
together with your Con family and share far too little time with them. But the
frantic-ness of the weekend seems to push you to create memories that last a
life time with people who know you, love you, and accept you for all of your
nerdy idiosyncrasies. I talked about the importance of the family we
choose and their validity in an earlier post. And I can attest, my Con
family are definitely part of my tribe.
Before I get into the post itself, I want to invite any of you
reading to come join the festivities. MisCon takes place this weekend (May 24 - 27)
at Ruby's Inn. I know it is short notice if you weren't already planning to
attend. Even if you are only able to attend for a single day, it is well worth
the time and money to do so.
I was inspired to write as I saw a post of
the MisCon Facebook page. The poster
was quite excited as this will be his first MisCon and several folk,
myself included, talked about their first experience at this amazing
convention.. It wasn't really the best format for me to talk about my own
experiences, not only at my first convention but how much it has affected me. I
suppose a sort of tribute to my Con home and the people that make it possible.
These people are not only my friends and family, they are hardworking and
dedicated to making MisCon an experience for everyone.
It has been so long, I don't completely
remember how old I was when I went to my first convention. I know I was over
18, as I was living on my own, and I was under 21 and unable to drink at the
room parties. Honestly, that was ok for me, I was never much of a drinker.
There was a group of us that had been playing a great card game called
Highlander. I was the City Representative for the game and, by reaching out to
some other nearby Reps, arranged for a Tri-Cities tournament at MisCon. We had
agreed on the location as Missoula was the easiest spot to get to for the folks
coming from Idaho and was mentioned by folks in Billings and Moscow, ID.
A very good friend figured out the
logistics and put together a hotel room for the group of us. We weren't able to
secure a room at the convention, but it would work just fine. We figured out
what it would cost for everyone (gas, hotel room, convention entrance, food) and
split it up between the group of us that would be going. We all arranged our
time off for the weekend and set about putting together our decks and
playtesting them to be ready for the competition.
Back then, I didn't realize just how shy I
was. I knew I was socially awkward, but I never really felt shy. I had sort of
developed a cover for it and had convinced myself that I was this very outgoing
gent that was friendly and enjoyed the company of others. MisCon sort of
destroyed the veil I had created. After getting our room situated at the other
hotel, we went over to the DoubleTree and got registered for the convention. As
I recall, the registration area was very close to the gaming room and my first
feelings of anxiety hit when I walked into that room. It seemed gigantic to me,
filled with tables. Around the tables sat gamers of every age and size, mostly
males, enthralled by the game they were playing. Board games, card games, RPGs
of all sorts and kinds were all around. The noise of excited chattering,
intense scene descriptions, incoherent babbling, and frantic laughing made the
air in there thick and I felt like I couldn't breathe. Someone,
thankfully, gave my coat a tug and we busied ourselves with finding a little
corner of our own.
Throughout that weekend, I just sat at our
table. I had volunteered to stay put and watch the cards and bags while the
others ran off to check out other games, various panels, and, most importantly,
to get food for our little cadre of gamers. I busied myself with fiddling with
my various decks and thinking of new strategies for the decks I saw in action
by my competitors.
The very last night, around midnight, I
finally was able to break away from the table. We had packed all of the cards
away and would be leaving in the morning. I didn't have my tether to
the table and I wasn't ready to go back to the hotel. I took my first
pensive steps away from the table and farther into the gaming room. By this
time, the wall of sound was a mere murmur and there were only a couple of
tables with games going. I saw a group of people sitting down at a larger table
and recognized one of them as Andy Mocko. He was a fellow DeMolay and was
someone, beyond my own group, that I knew. He invited me to take a seat and
told me they were just going to start a game. It was a card game called
Vampire: the Eternal Struggle. I don’t remember actually playing the game, just
eating the Pez that we used as blood points and laughing. I was actually having
fun. I had so much fun in those few hours around that table that when we
stopped by to wrap things up the next morning that I registered to come the
following year.
I wasn't able to make it the
next year, but the seed was planted.
When I moved to Missoula, MisCon became a
bigger deal to me. At first, I came because I would get roped in to helping
with the Registration table. For some reason, many people really don’t like
working that area. It can be loud and the people can be a bit cranky. But I
liked it. It gave me a table to be tethered too and a focus to my activity
there. Add to this my uncanny ability to get people to laugh even when they are
upset and it turned out that having me there worked out for all involved. When
I wasn’t working the table, I would often run game demonstrations, with my
husband, for Amanda at Muse
Comics. Volunteering in one capacity or another has become the thing that I
do at the conventions.
As MisCon has grown, it has evolved. I
remember, when I first started to attend, feeling very alone at the convention.
Being the only gay geek that I knew, I hoped there might be others like me at
the convention. I didn’t find any the first couple years that I went. I did find
quite a few people that seemed very homophobic but that doesn’t really stop me
too much. If anything, people acting that way only makes me act gayer. I
suppose it is an infantile response, but it is how I challenge people like
that. And it worked. As time went on, the people that gave me problems stopped
and started inviting me to hang out. Some of the folks that were the biggest
haters have since become my best friends. In time, I did find other geeks like
myself and have been happy to watch MisCon become a place where geeks of every
orientation and persuasion are embraced and made to feel welcome. MisCon now
hosts its own Drag Show as part of the festivities and it warms my heart to see
this kind of acceptance in the community that I love.
I have had a chance to visit other
conventions like RadCon in Tri-Cities, WA; SpoCon in Spokane, WA, and NorWestCon in Seattle, WA. Each of them are great
conventions in their own right, but none of them are quite like MisCon. Even
though my social anxiety still triggers when I am at MisCon, it usually only
lasts for the first day or comes and goes throughout. It is not quite as
debilitating as it was in those first few years I started to attend. The
greatest part is that I have so many friends and family members at the Con that
can help me work through it that I can generally have a very enjoyable weekend.
Having a
chance to volunteer year after year for MisCon has allowed me to also meet the
Inner Circle; those crazy and dedicated folks that make this all work. I had no
idea how much work goes into making a given convention a success. It really
does take all year to put a successful convention together. Add to that, it may
take a couple years to court a guest and get the logistics for getting them
there. Throughout the weekend, many of them sacrifice time gaming or attending
panels to make sure that everyone has an enjoyable time. For all of their hard
work, I would like to thank the ConCom and the Security Team. These folks are
truly amazing.
