Got to meet the author Peter David today. I’ve been a fan of his work for many years now, even before I knew I was (he was the man who made The Incredible Hulk my favorite comic, but I didn’t know that until much later). A very humble, sincere and incredibly funny man. It was a pleasure to get to thank him for the entertainment he has provided for me.

Had a wonderful time dancing last night. I was very dissapointed in the music on Friday, but last night made up for it in spades. In fact, I’m damn convinced the DJ was trying to kill me, because he kept playing music that would not allow me to leave the dance floor. I think I danced for two solid hours. My Goth Gear(tm) was completely soaked with sweat afterwards. Won’t be wearing THAT again tonight. Lee Lee was hit on by this COMPLETELY hot red head named Lu Lu (what are the odds of THAT happening) while we were out there. I must admit to being quite jealous. The lovely woman who I met and flirted with on Friday night (she has a very tasty neck..yum) was obsessed with a man dressed as Blade last night and had no eyes for me. Boo Hoo. Ah well, I had a kick ass time dancing anyway.

I finally broke down and spent money on things I shouldn’t have today, but I think that two days worth of resisting is pretty impressive. I scored about 90 dollars worth of Vampire : The Dark Ages role playing game books for 43 bucks. This dealer was selling a ton of things for 50% off. It was just too good of a deal to pass up.

Next year, however, I’m going to go insane. I WILL be here again next year, and I’m starting the Dragon Con savings fund next fucking week. There is just no way I’m going to be caught here without money to blow again. I saw some of the most amazing clothes and toys and and and…there was even a button with one of my favorite sayings of all time on it (Fuck Me Like You Hate Me). I’m thinking of buying that one later tonight.

Saw a really awesome movie last night called “Freedom Downtime.” It’s a documentary by the people at 2600 Magazine about Kevin Mitnick, one of the worlds most notorious hackers (and how he was totally fucked over by the government). The quality of the film wasn’t that great, but the style was very reminiscent of Michael Moore’s work and it was a real pleasure to watch.

Oh! And tonight I’m going to go to the “Buffy Horror Picture Show.” 🙂 Karaoke style watching of the musical episode of “Buffy The Vampire Slayer.”

Tomorrow we leave, and it’s going to be very hectic. Not only will check out be insane, but I think the money situation between all of us will be was well. I think that Brooks is expecting everyone to contribute equally between the two rooms, and that wasn’t what I was led to believe when I told Karen and Lee Lee about how much the rooms would cost. There were 2 people less than originally planned, so it could be a significant amount more. I’m not looking forward to tomorrow morning or the subsequent drive home AT ALL.

Note to all of my friends reading this who I haven’t talked to since Wednesday (you all know who you are). I miss you terribly, more than I thought I would, and I look forward to catching up to you on Monday.

Things are still going at a million miles an hour here at Dragon Con. To the point where I’m actually a bit worn out and glad for a quiet minute to pause and take a break. I haven’t done as much as far as going to events today, more just walking around and looking at things and people. I have managed to not spend any money down in the dealer rooms, which is a pretty big deal if you ask me. I’m surrounded by stuff that is cool as hell and that I want but that I am resisting the urge to buy because I really can’t justify the expenditure.

Next year, however, is going to be a different story. I’m starting a Dragon Con trust fund the minute I get home.

Ok, so I’m going to try and recover from the horrible ordeal of losing everything I wrote last night and give a general impression of what I’ve seen here so far.

Which, for some reason, is suddenly striking me as something very hard to do.

I’m not sure what exactly it is, but I’m feeling kind of down and stressed at the moment. There has been some small amounts of tension between those of us who came to the con together. I guess it’s the cramming of individuals into a small space that none of them can claim as their own. Feelings have been hurt, snide comments have been made, and I feel like I’m stuck in the middle of all of it. It’s hard to be so in tune with my friends sometimes. I catch their feelings when the person who is causing them doesn’t, and it makes me want to try and correct the situation when I honestly don’t see how to.

That was a very odd rant to go off on in the middle of this convention, wasn’t it? I don’t want to give the wrong impression, however. I’m having a wonderful time, I’ve met some really cool (and quite sexy) individuals (some of whom I am hanging out with again tonight) and basically been having a lot of fucking fun.

That’s it. I’m gonna go get my vampire on and stalk some goth chicks.

I just wrote a REALLY long update to my journal about everything going on here at Dragon Con, and it got LOST.

FUCK

Basic summary – things are cool as hell. I’ve taken a lot of cool pictures, including some awesome faerie wings for Faeriegrrrl. I’m really pissed I’ve lost what I wrote, but I don’t want to do it again right now.

As promised, below is the picture I took while I was journaling in the bar in Seattle :

You can see the rest of the Seattle pictures in my new and improved Photo Gallery! Click Here!

Ever gotten one of those emails that goes through a whole list of questions in order for you to get to know people? One of the questions that are often asked in those things is “What do you fear most?”

I usually respond with something fairly predictable. I fear something happening to my son, or I fear being burned or buried alive. I was thinking about it this morning, and I realized that my biggest fear had nothing to do with those things.

My biggest fear is being abandoned. Cast aside. Written off as being unimportant.

The funny thing is that this hardly ever happens, but I’m constantly worrying about it. I become paranoid when I see someone enter one of my social groups that may be similar to me.

I’m not sure what the point of me wanting to write this was. I think that, at one point, I had a clear cut essay in mind and it’s just fallen apart on me. Oh well.

I wasn’t cast in Titus Andronicus. I got an email from David yesterday that thanked me for participating in the audition. He also said that I must realize how difficult the casting process had been. He never flat out said that I wasn’t cast, but I read the message pretty clearly. I’m very disappointed, but I’m not sure in what. Myself? Was my audition not everything it could have been. That’s certainly a possibility. Thing is, I only read 4 lines. Of a minor part. I was basically filler for a reading with two other characters. There was another scene with the character I read that had more in it. Yeah, I know, I sound like I’m whining about things, and maybe I am. I just wish I had been given a chance to read for SOMETHING. I’m honestly not sure I would have cast myself in one of the major roles. I saw a lot of chemistry in the auditions, and no small amount of talent. It still would have been nice to know I had been able to show what I could do.

But I feel like it was already decided that I could not do what was expected of the show.

I could be wrong. It’s just how I feel. My intense insecurities shouldn’t be much of a surprise for those of you who read my journal on a regular basis.

I did decide to get right back on the horse, though. I’m auditioning for “A Streetcar Named Desire” next week with the Eight O’Clock theater at the Largo Cultural Center. The director is Scottie Michaels, who I have worked with twice (almost 3 times) in the past. It won’t be a paying gig, but at least I’ll be on stage again. IF I get cast, that is.

Four hundred and twenty-one dollars later, I realize why it is that I don’t play solitaire in Los Vegas.

It’s been a very bumpy flight so far. We are about an hour out of Tampa, by my guess, and the seat belt light has been on for at least half of the time. It seems as though most of us aren’t paying much heed to that fact, but a few moments ago I noticed that the man next to me (who has been sleeping for much of the flight) seemed to be praying. Not really sure if that is what he was doing, but it gave me pause for a moment.

We all think that “those things” happen to “somebody else.” But right now, as the plane is shaking fairly violently, I’m wondering if it’s my turn to be somebody else.

I’m not scared by the notion. In fact, I’m facing it with a sort of morbid curiosity. Like the times when I’ve contemplated suicide. I wonder what the consequences would be. What would people say? What would they do? Would they be sad? Angry? Would my family sue the airlines? Would Lu kick Karen out of my house? Would they find this laptop and pull all of my writings over the last few days off of it? Have I made my after death wishes known to the right people (as I still do not have a will).

All of these things just crossed my mind. Not an altogether pleasant experience.

Notice, however, I do not say that I joined my co-passenger in prayer. Even when I have flashes of worrying about my existence, I do not turn to the Lord. I just see it being hypocritical. I don’t believe in him. Why the hell would he accept me if I waited until the last minute to say hello anyway??

Hrm…Interesting thing to write if this did turn into a fiery ball o’ airplane.

I snapped a picture of the sleeping guy. He’s funny. I also took some pictures of clouds. Because that’s what you do when you’re flying. You take pictures of clouds.

The batteries in this little lap top are pretty impressive. I’ve been using the machine quite liberally since I left Seattle this morning, and I still apparently have 30% of the power left in them. I need to get one of my own. While I could never code on a regular basis on one of these machines, the ability to write with it is very appealing indeed. I hate to write free hand because I cramp very easily. I think it’s the arthritis that runs in my family. I can’t use a pen or pencil for long periods at all. But I can type for hours on end, and I think perhaps that if I had a lap top I could occasionally hook into my network at home to transfer data from I’d be in really good shape. I’m going to have to look into getting one.

Heh. And I actually said that I thought I was written out for the weekend, didn’t I?

I’ve decided to star recording my times in Eastern Standard Time again. At this point, I have no idea what time zone I am in at all, and I’m not going to bother trying to guess.

I actually believe that I may have succeeded in drinking too much coffee this weekend. I’m having yet another cup right now. I think I’ve had all of two bottles of water, 3 sodas, and nothing else but coffee since Thursday afternoon.

Ate like total crap this whole weekend. Not really extraordinary amounts of food, except for today. I had two breakfast sandwiches at the airport, and then a large Quizno’s sub during my layover in Denver. I also ate the snack box that they just passed out on the plane. What is it about those snack boxes?? Why are they so appealing? I mean, it’s cheap assed bread with processed cheese and meat, some kind of candy item and Fritos. Yet we treasure them as if they were a can of expensive caviar. They are eaten without hesitation or doubt by just about everyone on the plane, including myself.

I don’t know if it was the long stretches of inactivity, or simply being in a new environment, but I have written a ton this weekend. Most of it you see here on my live journal, but I’ve also finished another erotica story. I need to refine it and get it out to my editors and critics before I submit it to the general public, but not only am I going to send it to Literotica, I’m also going to send it to Gallery magazine. They pay like $300 for good stories to print in their periodical. So, if I get published in there, not only will I be a professional actor (hey, pay is pay…so what if it was only 36 bucks) I’ll be a professional smut peddler.

I like that.

I called Karen while I was at the airport, and she told me that she heard from Dani this weekend while I was gone. Apparently, Dani got a chance to see the Washing Well Wenches site and she loved it. I’m so relieved. I was really afraid that Dani would be disappointed in my work, and as this is one of my first independent paying gigs I was really anxious about it. While on the plane I finished the Ask Mr. Wetums logic, and now I just need to do the graphics for it. The site is coming together nicely, and I figure about another week or two of solid work will have it running at 100%. That should segue nicely into the Kicks on 7th Project, and then when Eve and I get that done we should start rolling in full force on the Mortgage Application that Brooks, Karen and I are going to work on. Somewhere in all of that I need to find time to get the Neon Samurai web site up and running. Of course, until I get my artwork from Hailey, I can’t really start moving on that. It’s a good excuse, and I’m sticking with it anyway!

Mmmm…one more cup of coffee. Yay!

Ok, I actually think I may be written out for the weekend. This may change before I land in Tampa (got about an hour and a half to go in that regards) but I think I’m going to spend the rest of the flight seeing how much money I can lose in Vegas style solitaire.

Spending time with Uncle Mike always makes me think about my father, for some very obvious reasons (the most glaring of them being that the two are almost frighteningly similar in appearance). It seems as though Uncle Mike always wants to know about the relationship I had with my father. What he meant to me, and how we got along.

The truth of the matter is that I never really had much of a relationship with him.

My Dad and Mom split when I was six. I have three clear memories of time I spent with my father before he left. The first is of him coming into the bathroom after a drinking binge while I was in the tub and having a good vomit fest. The second is when we went to Washington State for Uncle Mike’s first wedding. The third is him standing in the driveway of our house and screaming “I’ll see you and your fucking kids in court” at the top of his lungs.

So I was one of his “fucking kids.”

After a few years went by and the court thing was done with, I started spending summers with my Dad. I always felt like an interloper when I visited Mississippi. I was the city boy going out to the country. This is where my hatred of trailer trash rednecks comes from. Whenever I was in Mississippi, I felt like an unwanted intruder, and I was made to feel that way be people who, even at that young age, I knew were beneath me. They knew it too. They didn’t know how to handle me. I was too smart and too insightful for a boy who hadn’t even hit puberty yet. I knew them. I could see through all of their bullshit and lies. For that, they hated me. I think my father resented it a bit, too. I would go there, expecting to be with my father, and instead I was with this drunken man who didn’t want to deal with any of the responsibilities that life had for him. He let his wife deal with all of those. He wanted to go to work every day, come home at night to a good meal, get drunk and fall asleep after shagging his young wife. He didn’t want to entertain a bookworm. I do not doubt for a moment that he loved me, but he did not understand me by any means or stretch of the imagination.

Eventually, I stopped going there for the summers. I don’t know who made that decision. I am certain it wasn’t my mother. She may have felt hatred for my dad at that point, but she always insisted that he was my father, and that he deserved my respect and my love. She would not have tried to drive a wedge between us. Maybe I decided I didn’t want to go there any more, or maybe Dad told Mom that he couldn’t afford to have me up. I’m not sure. All I know is that one summer I did not go to see Dad, and I didn’t see him again until after I had graduated from high school and moved to the University of Alabama.

He wasn’t really a father to me at that point, either. When he first saw me, he didn’t even recognize me, and after he invited me into his house he sat a bottle down between us and we proceeded to spend the next few days drunk off of our asses. I suppose he figured that, since he was a drunk, his son would be as well. I have to admit that, at the time, I thought the events were pretty cool, but it was far from what I needed then. If he had been there for me as a father and not as a drinking buddy, I might have been able to tell him the troubles I was having at Alabama. I might have gotten encouragement from him to stick it out, and deal with the bad decision I had made instead of running away from it. Instead, I had a place to run to. Even if he was on the boat I could go over to Mississippi and spend the weekend with Pam and the girls. Maybe try and hook up with their cousin Missy. Anything other than deal with the fact that I was failing every class that I was registered for.

After I left Alabama, we kind of lost contact, and we didn’t really start talking again until after Pam had left him and he realized that he finally had to stop drinking. At the age of 22, I finally got a father.

Six years later he was dead.

Six years. That’s all I got of my Dad. And in that time, we probably spent a total of about 3 months together, if that. We talked on the phone quite often, but the actual physical presence of my Father was not there. I never spent a Christmas or Thanksgiving with him. He never got to see any of my performances. He didn’t come to my graduation. He didn’t come to my wedding. He wasn’t there when my son was born, or when I went through my divorce. In fact, most of our contact during the time when he came back into my life was focused around my two younger sisters. I don’t think there was ever a time when we were together just because we wanted to be together.

So when Uncle Mike asks me about my Dad, I’m not really sure what to tell him. I miss him terribly. I miss the man he became before he died, anyway. I miss his laugh and his good sense of humor. I miss the comforting fact that in his entire life he never changed his hair style, and that he wore the same Old Spice cologne every day. I miss talking to him about history and politics, and how this simple farmer turned mechanic could stun you with his intelligence if he felt like doing so. What I miss most of all is him telling me he was proud of me. He did that a lot, and when he said it not only did I know it came from a place of respect, it came from knowing the mistakes he had made in his life and how I did not follow in his footsteps.

I was honored on Saturday when Uncle Mike told me that I act a lot like him. That we had the same laugh, and that he got the same glint in his eye that I do when there is mischief working behind the scenes. I find it comforting to know that part of him lives on in me, and I hope that carries through to my son as well.