laja2.org

The motto of the weekend was: "Nothing is true. Everything is permitted."

We announced it among ourselves ahead of time. We were going to an anime convention -- one of those great affairs where fans dress up and wreck havoc inside a hotel for a weekend -- but the truth of the matter was that we were looking for something entirely abstract: the world beyond limits.

I don't know exactly from where that quote originates; it has been ascribed to Nietzsche, to William Blake, to Aleister Crowley, Peter Carroll, Robert Anton Wilson, Timothy Leary, myself, Hassan bin Sabbah, Omar Khayaam. It is a counter-culture proverb that has been passed through visionary discontents for generations.

We spent the night before the convention doing "re-'con'-assaince." This is to say, we bought two handles of Skyy Vodka, a bottle of blackberry brandy, a jug of Admiral Nelson's spiced rum, around 50 multicolored 'shooters', bottles of Southern Comfort and Crown Royal, and a jug of Merlot Arbor Mist. Do not worry, dear reader. Between the six of us, no drop went to waste. After the convention, it would take approximately forty-eight hours to digest that much liquor.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here. When the trip began, there were only five of us. We resolved to only refer to each other by our fake names; this would allow us to create new identities, lower our inhibitions and act free of the restraints that we typically placed on ourselves day-to-day. It was there I took the name Lord Andrew J. Andrews II. Alongside me were Wolfgang von Slayer, Zora and K. We were to meet up with my faithful companion from Catholic School, Ulysses, at the convention.

We left the Appalachian Mountains at 7 AM on Friday morning. However, we did not immediately go to the convention. After a three hour drive through a blizzard, we stopped off at Lakeforest Mall to see the optometrist. Wolfgang, who was already half-deaf and half-mad, had also been half-blind for two weeks, as his eye glasses were broken on one side and his contacts were loss in he mail. He went in to take an eye-exam; meanwhile K. and Zora went book shopping and I went to the bar and started pounding down Kamikazes. I was feeling pretty good at this point. Eventually, Wolfgang got his eyes and we headed off. Somewhere, the con had already begun. I was not there, but I already had my swerve on.

Ulysses called me up on his Bluetooth. "Where you all at, man?" He asked.
"We are currently leaving the optometrist." I said with grave efficiency. "We will rendezvous in half an hour."
"I can't hear you --" He said. "Bad reception, no signal."
"End transmission." I said, and snapped the phone shut with authority.

We took the train to D.C. We followed the throng of giggling, costumed fans with weird hair, oversized props and nerdy slouches to the hotel. It was obvious that we were in the right place.

"Where are you at, man?" Ulysses called me again.
"We are approaching the hotel. Rendezvous in the lobby at this very moment!" I yelled in the voice I learned in military school long ago. With a sudden brisk Soviet accident, I barked: "End transmission."

The fans looked at us approvingly. I flashed a smile. It's entirely possible they were actually gawking at my bright red shirt, red pants, long black trenchcoat, the tow chain around my neck and the leash that connected it to my wrist, but I was convinced they took the outfit for granted; they were merely amused by the strange way I spoke.

We met up with Ulysses in the lobby and checked into our room. It was huge, with one single bed, a large table, a set of dresser drawers, a nice armchair and even a balcony. We were impressed. K. and Zora went to register for the convention itself; me, Wolfgang, and Ulysses continued to scope out the room. We unloaded the liquor, distributed the cups and began to knock back a few of the shooters. Then we killed the first bottle of vodka. I handed out packs of cheap cigarettes to three. We left the room, broke into the janitor's closet and raided about ten extra ashtrays. We positioned them around the hallway. Then we began to smoke.

"Hey," a pink-haired girl asked, poking her head out of her room. "We can smoke out here?"

"Yeah." I nodded. "It's a smoking floor, right?" She blinked. Then she came out to smoke. Our first act at the convention was to authorize smoking in the hallway -- this rule remained in effect all weekend. It was actually very pleasant to stand outside the hotel room and smoke with all our floormates. All sorts of convention staff and hotel security would see us doing this later on in the weekend, but by then it was der norm; nobody said anything to us, nobody questioned us. We said it was okay to smoke in the hallway, and that was that. And to our credit, not one of us ever decided it was a good idea to put our cigarettes out in the carpet.

Meanwhile, on other floors, there were costumed hellions defacing the walls with magic markers. They, too, were breaking all the rules, but they lacked our refinement.

Wolfgang and I registered for the convention under our fake names. We claimed we came from the Bohemian Grove. Ulysses had already registered himself, but he kept us company in the hour long line anyway. Actually, this is not entirely true. He flitted between us and three other parties he was associated with who were all standing at different points in the reg line.

At one point, Ulysses's eyes lit up. He looked at me and said: "Hey, let's call J. and demand he meet us here." J. was a good, albeit slightly estranged friend of ours from Catholic school. Like everyone who went to that school, it seemed, he took after me, in dress, posture, mannerisms. That's not exactly true; rather, we all took after each other in that place, one unique personality with variations in temperament. The unified anime nerd theory.
"J." Ulysses touched his Bluetooth. The phone began to ring.

He handed his headset to me. "Hello?" I boomed, feeling that authoritarian sense flooding into me again as I handled the wireless headset. I felt like a Starfleet captain. "J.?" I asked. "This is Lord Andrew J. Andrews II. I demand you come to Katsucon immediately. Call back when you arrive. We will direct you from there." I smiled. "End transmission."

As we went through the line, a girl approached. She was was wearing a leash, too, attached to a female friend whose face I never bothered to examine. Before I could open my mouth to use whatever clever pick-up line I had in store ('Nice leash!'), she grabbed my own chain and tried to pull me away. I had been in that line for over an hour, however. I would not budge. A strange sadness passed through her eyes -- as if she saw a missed opportunity floating away. She had cat's eye contacts and fake fangs. Those are the only details about her I remember.

We were registered. We had badges. J. was on his way. We had lost K. and Zora. They spent most of the convention passed out or doing their own thing. They were staying in our room, but we saw them entirely infrequently. Occasionally, they drank with us, and once Zora did make-up for all the boys while K. took pictures. She did an excellent job.

What did we do next? Ulysses, true to his proud Hispanic heritage (his words, not mine!), suggested we go out to the Chipotle and dine on some fine burritos and drink Corona. J. met us there; he was carrying a Dasani water bottle filled with Smirnoff vodka. We all drank more Corona and made a toast to a world without limits and, as per my custom, the end of the ordinary world.

This is where my memory becomes a little fuzzy. I presume we went back to the room and drank more. Why were we drinking so much? To dissolve even the possibility of inhibitions. They were nothing more than restraints. The convention was a collection of extraordinary sights and people. To honor them properly, we needed enough alcohol to make us as strange as the things we were seeing. I recall downing a large quantity of vodka, thrusting my finger into the air and shouting, "Cogito ergo... crunk!"

We were not the only ones who shared this mindset. It turned out that our neighbors were the seediest sort of persons: fucked up 18 year-olds. When we first encountered them, they announced to us that they planned on drinking heavily. We cheered them on. "We're already ahead of ya, kids." Someone said. Was it me? Was it Ulysses, Wolfgang, J.? Which of us was the 'bad influence'?

A significant amount of time passed. J. ordered three pizzas and a two-liter bottle of Coca-Cola from the nearby Domino's Pizza. He paid for it with credit card. I decided J. was too drunk to drive home, so he would have to stay with us for the weekend. The pizza came an hour and a half later. They got the order wrong, so they only delivered one pizza. They promised us they would bring the rest by for free, so we shrugged and wandered around for awhile.

Eventually, the convention-hosted 'rave' started up. You could hear the terrible resonance from the too-loud speakers from several floors above; you could see the parade of nerds with synthetic neon dreadlocks, day-glo furry boots and every variety of glowsticks in their hands heading towards the awful sounds. We danced for around twenty minutes before an omnipresent lethargia began to kick in. Most of the fans were just hovering in the corners of the room, stationary and boring. There was barely a vibe in the room. The kids just weren't feeling it, I wasn't feeling it. While my friends' danced, I slipped through the crowd and ducked out an exit.

I found K. outside the door in a slight panic. The pizza man had come to the room with the rest of our order, but he was demanding cash. I found the pizza man and yelled at him. I was definitively drunk at that point, but I was justified in my anger. How could one restaurant fuck up so many times? I called his manager and yelled at him, too. The manager explained how busy they all were, so I told him I didn't want excuses, I wanted an apology for 'fucking our order up.' At this point, he apologized ten times. I took the free pizza back to the room.

On the way, the neighbors explained to me that they had been guzzling down cough syrup since I had last talked to them, and they were getting 'pretty wrecked.' I shook my head, went inside and set the pizzas down. I didn't approve of those kids, not by a long shot, but who was I to judge them? If getting retarded fucked-up made them happy, then I guess I had no choice but to be cool with that, provided they left me alone. I drank quite a bit more, then I went back to the dance. The pizza that had been such a headache, such a 'big deal', went uneaten. By the time I would see it next, it was cold, hardened and ugly.

The rest of the night was a blur of pulsing bass, blurring chemical lights, strobes and trailing LEDS. K., Zora, J. and I all slept in the bed that night. At some point, J. got off and Wolfgang climbed on. That was the only night most of us slept. The next morning, all of the men awoke to find themselves covered in bite marks. I woke up to find myself with my hair in pigtails; I was wearing a red chamois overtop a fishnet shirt and stockings. Everyone tells me I looked quite pretty. I have no idea where the chamois came from.

Saturday morning, I wore eyeliner, lipstick, a black Utilikilt, fishnet stockings, a black dress shirt and a beautiful red silk tie decorated with playing cards. I woke early and traversed the convention. Some pink-haired woman woman in the Artist Alley was lamenting that some brutish child had stolen one of her hand-made messenger bags. I promised to find the thief and bring his head to her in a burlap sack. I never saw the bag, but the incident resonates strongly with me, even in hindsight. I always thought the community of con-kids was a close-knit one, bonded by love and trust. I've since learned better, but at the time it seemed a terrible disgrace to steal a craftsman's labor of love.

I went back to the room and emptied half a bottle of wine into my gullet. Everyone was still asleep; Wolfgang had taken his hearing aids out, so there was no hope of waking him. I went to stand in line for the merchant's hall. While standing in line, I amused myself by beginning to write this account in my pocket Moleskine journal. These conventions were important to me; the aesthetic of freaks united was heartwarming, a unique and special star of hope radiating through my otherwise ordinary world. I had met so many of the most important people in my life in these places, had so many firsts. My first drink, my first cigarette, my first kiss, my first girlfriend, my first real community, all came from the convention circuit. I desperately wanted to find a way to convey why it was that anime cons were so infused with meaning to me, but I was far too drunk.

I heard kids talking about energy drinks about thirty-feet behind me. "Did you say No Fear?!" I turned and yelled at them. I knew I was probably being too loud, boisterous, aggressive, but that was the norm here. Everything else was so loud that the only way to communicate was to shout.

"Yes!" A girl in a schoolgirl outfit said.

"I love No Fear brand energy drink." I exclaimed. "Where do you purchase them around here?"

"Um, you can have one of mine, if you want." The girl said. She handed me a drink; I gave her and all of her friends hugs. This is the camaraderie I spoke of.

There was a lot of crazy shit in the merchant's room. I was particularly amused by a stand that sold Cthulu hats, knapsacks, plush animals and fanny packs. There was a lot of weird things and weird people. I loved it.

I came back to the room and found Wolfgang had gone mad with gorilla tape. Cups were taped to the walls and dresser. The men were wearing Gorilla Tape epaulets. Wolfgang had taped a miniature Cthulu plush animal to the shoulder of his cloak. It was pure madness. When I examined the photos of the event at a later date, it appeared that our room was being invaded by 'flying cups.' Ever since then, it has been a convention tradition to Gorilla tape cups to the wall; the 'flying cup' has followed us wherever we go.

We went out to the hall to smoke cigarette. Then we went inside the room to smoke cigarettes. Then we sat out on our balcony to pose for Myspace pictures and watch the snow fall. Then we went back out in the hall for more cigarettes. Nothing was happening; we were smoking away the time while we waited for our energy lives to rise. There would be chaos, but it was not yet time.

I broke from the group and walked around the hotel again. You will notice I do this quite frequently. The truth is, I'm a loner by nature, but more importantly, I wanted to see everything and everyone who walked through the building so that I might find the heart of that social organism, so that I could know every face and facet of the event, so that I could better understand the chaotic spirit that hung in the air.

During my travels I encountered the cat-eyed girl again. Once more, she tugged at my leash. "Didn't I attack you yesterday?" She asked.

"Yes." I responded. She told me her name -- I forgot it immediately, as she must have mine. I invited her outside for a cigarette.

"I would love a cigarette." She said glumly. "But my friends would kill me if I smoke."

"Oh." I dropped the subject.

"Will you be at the rave tonight?" She asked with a flirtatious smile in her eyes.

"Of course." I grinned, penetrating her with eye contact. Then, the crowd around us swelled like a curtain closing, and when it was dispersed, she was gone. Cat's eyes and vampire teeth, a freak on a leash. I cannot remember anything more about this person. This strange nostalgia pangs me inexpressibly -- a chance meeting deprived of its potential by the whims of space and time. Everything was true and nothing was permitted, but the future in which I would ever know this person was flatly denied. This is typical in this world, and matters little in any grand scheme. One's path intersects with some for a lifetime and others for an instant. The meetings of an instant rarely have more meaning than being a glimpse of the possible.

I encountered Wolfgang again at this point. We were faced with a dilemma: In order to attend the masquerade, we would have to wait in a massive line for three hours, just to get terrible seats in the back. We decided this would be completely unsatisfactory -- Wolfgang would be completely out his element. He would have been completely unable to hear anything or even read the lips of the performers. J. and Ulysses were in line already, but there were seven or eight hundred people in front of them. (Or, as 4chan would have us put it, over 9000.)

After an hour or so of ruminating these circumstances, we decided to work some magick. We found someone in charge of special operations and Wolfgang explained his disability to them. We told them it would be a reasonable accommodation if we could sit somewhere close to the speakers and close enough to the stage that he could read the performer's lips.

Bingo. We were told to meet the guy a half an hour later so we could be seated. We went out for burritos and Corona and came back forty-five minutes later, food still in hand. The volunteer opened up the cattle gates and parted the crowd for us so we could get to our seats at the front and center. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, they had to treat us like Moses.

While the plebeians were filing into the auditorium slowly and painfully, we were seated up with press. Convention photographers and journalists were to our right and left as we happily ate our burritos. We, too, were Very Important People. As we waited, we had entertainment -- a cute girl wearing a short skirt, fishnets and a low-cut top who claimed her job was to "stand around and look cute for the photographers." At one point, she apologized for interrupting our view of the stage. "We don't mind." Wolfgang said. She blushed.

At intermission, there was a type of raffle in which Operations drew out badge numbers and awarded prizes. After a round of drawings, Colette, the convention chairperson, announced that our man J. won a special prize. We wondered what he had won; we hoped it was something amazing. He had earned it.

After the show was over, Wolfgang and I stepped out on the terrace for cigarettes. J. and Ulysses were already outside.

"Hey, man." I smiled. "What did you win?"
"What did you win?" Wolfgang echoed.

"I won my car's gone." J. mourned. "My mother flipped out, drove down to the Branch Avenue Metro station and took my car. She's insane. Like, literally insane. My phone apparently died and she couldn't get ahold of me, so she called the hotel until she got the con chair on the line. Apparently calling me out in the middle of the ceremony was the only way they could get me to call my mother."

"Wow." I blinked. "That's pretty crazy." He was 23 years old. When was he going to get out from his mother's thumb? It was rare to see the real world of families, jobs and responsibilities intrude on the convention utopia, but it had happened. "What do you want to do?" I asked.

"I need a drink." J. sighed. "Car's gone, they're going to give me a ride back home tomorrow. Nothing else to do, right?"

On the way back, we saw five security guards going to our neighbors' room. We laughed -- we figured those kids would get busted eventually. To mourn their fate, and the fate of J.'s car, we polished off the wine and toasted again to the end of the world. When the hallway cleared out, we suddenly found ourselves having a pretty kicking room party, with several cosplay girls, a professional photographer, a few Katsucon staff members, a random Japanese guy who barely spoke English, and two Gothic Lolita models we were acquainted with. The liquor was injured in the event, but continued to flow strongly.

We moved out to the hallway for a cigarette and struck up conversations with several of the people out there. Nobody knew what had happened to our neighbors, but the general consensus was that they had it coming. They were too young, too belligerent, and too focused on getting themselves tore up to know what kind of spectacle they were making of themselves. The legends said those kids were smoking weed, drinking Everclear, downing cough syrup, popping caffeine pills and God knows what else. Nobody quite knew what to make of them -- we were all partying too, but we were keeping our wits sharp. We did as we willed, but we harmed none. They, meanwhile, were harming themselves and frustrating us, but more importantly, they were the type who would make the whole convention look bad. People like them were the reasons there exist "dry cons" in some areas -- nobody wants to deal with the liability of stupid minors queued up for ambulance rides.

Interesting anecdote about that hallway. There was what appeared to be a beautiful woman sitting next to a potted plant. My crew took an immediate interest in her. I had to pull J. to the side to explain to her that, judging by the slight curvature of her upper arm, 'she' was actually a man. They were so engrossed in her that they didn't notice that she was, in fact, talking about her hormone therapy. Total facepalm there. At Otakon that year, she made herself famous by flashing her enhanced breasts at the line for the 4chan panel and became forever immortalized on the con circuit and Internet as "Line Trap."

On the elevator ride down, a random girl said we were "awesome" and gave the four of us hugs.
"I'm 14." She said. We all blinked.
"I'm 18." I lied.
"17." Ulysses lied.
"19." J. lied.
Deaf Wolfgang had barely heard or understood this exchange. "I'm 25." He said honestly.
The girl smiled at him and asked, "So are you going to the rave tonight?"

J. ordered more pizzas. Domino's remembered us from the day before and gave us several free two-liters of soda. This saved our lives; we were almost out of mixers. I had been exclusively mixing my Vodka with No Fear energy drink to create a powerful concoction I dubbed "The Fearless Lizard," but energy drinks were too expensive to restock.

We encountered one of our neighbors outside on the terrace. "What happened?" I asked him. "We saw security in your room."

"Well," The boy smirked. He still reeked of alcohol. "My friend was fucked up and told his girlfriend he didn't love her, that he was using her for sex and that he was going down to the convention to get a new girlfriend that very minute. Then he left. So she crawled into the bathtub, ate a bunch of tranquilizers and some Tylenol PM and sliced her wrists open. Then she called everyone she knew to announce her suicide. Before I even knew what was going on, the police were on their way."

"Oh, my." I blinked. Right next to us, as we had been eating, drinking and making merry, some dejected Ophelia's life had been slipping away. How melodramatic was that? And we missed it, only feet away through the bathroom walls. "Well, everything's okay now, right?" I asked. I almost managed to feel concerned. "She didn't actually die?"

"Oh, no." The guy said. "She's actually just an overdramatic bitch."

"Okay." I shrugged. Since nobody died, Ophelia's attempted suicide wasn't real. It was just one more stage show decorating the pattern of events that layered the tapestry of the weekend's narrative. It was either artful or disturbing. What else could I do? I returned to the room and drank to the spectacle.

We were pretty loaded. We staggered down to the rave and tore the dance floor up. Or rather, we tore ourselves up. Wolfgang blew his elbow and Ulysses blew his knee. My feet were blistered and bleeding. Security saw the two trying to construct a sling for Wolfgang's arm out of Gorilla tape in the corner. They brought us to Medical, where they tied his arm up in a real sling and did some paperwork. Security offered me a tasty and refreshing Pepsi-Cola while I waited for Wolfgang to be released. Meanwhile, I overheard convention staff discussing an incident in which two boys who matched the description of our neighbors were huffing amyl nitrate in the rave.

At about 4 AM, I went back to the rave. On my way in, the cat-girl passed by with some dull-looking emo boy in kitten-ears and a tail trailing behind her. She looked at me sadly, whispered, "I didn't see you." The she disappeared.

There was more dancing.

I went outside the rave to see our neighbors "walking the line" while being observed by two gruff looking police officers. Their story ended with that field sobriety test; whatever trouble they got themselves into from that point on was none of my interest. I staggered away from the convention as it wound down. I was tired but not sleepy. I came back to the room and ran a warm bath. I shed my sweaty fishnets and kilt. It felt good to be alive. I took a bottle of alcohol in with me and took a three hour bath, drinking, smoking, and relaxing in epicurean delight. Somewhere downstairs, the insomniacs were still wandering, in search of one last blip of fun to end their night with. Once upon a time, I had been one of those creatures. I had ridden an escalator with total strangers for two hours; we called ourselves "The Cult of the Escalade." We were surely going to move up in the world.

The next day's hangover was a mutual apocalypse.

The crew needed to be scraped off the floor before we began the process of picking every crumb from the carpet, peeling every decoration from the wall, removing each and every scrap of the weekend from the room. Before we closed the room door for the last time, I announced: "This room is dead to me." And it was. It was immaculate; it was as if we were never there. The space was returned to conventional reality. We checked out of the hotel and separated from J. and Ulysses, then I returned to the mountains.

When I arrived back in Appalachia, I looked into a mirror and realized I looked younger than I had in years. My face had shaped itself to resemble a cartoon character. The pure weirdness had revitalized me. There was something special about that time and place; the world of the convention was some strange other reality, some consensual illusion of total weirdness and freedom. Reflection on those matters is useless; only each pure experience can bring that strange state over me again.

Because there is a God in this world, the next Monday was President's Day, so I had no class. This was a beautiful thing, because I spent the next 48 hours in bed battling fatigue, flu and a strange delirium. My dorm room would morph into the hotel room I had spent so much time in; when I would slip in and out of consciousness, I would have strange, babbling conversations with people from the convention who were no longer there. As the rappers might say, we had done it big that year.

In retrospective, I would prefer others did not act the way I had that con. In recent years, there have been too many disasters as the result of the strange drinking and partying culture that has always been a part of the convention circuit. One year I had an interesting time talking to a guy at a room party; the next year I find he lifted one of my friend's wallet and went on to stab someone at another convention. There have been incidents of people vandalizing, well, everything, lighting signs on fire, running screaming through hallways of people sleeping, God knows how many hospitalizations, suicide attempts, overdoses, all sorts of terrible things in the seedy underbelly of the subculture. I am not a part of those things, but as I compose this account, they strike very close to home. The difference between my people and those people is as slim as the difference between my room and the room next door. We behaved with excess but respect, but the example we set may be merely one of excess. The party's been great so far, but I worry that one day, it, too, might end.

- laja2

Video from the weekend featuring the crew: