Auctorial Harangue and Preface:
I do not feel that science fiction conventions have gotten their proper due among erotic stories, considering the number of interesting people that they attract. The "Trinity Trilogy" seems one-note, and presents a view of fandom and conventions that is quite at variance with my experience. "Philly," I think by Michael K. Smith, is good and accurate as far as it goes, but one could wish for more. "Memoirs of a Life in the Future," by someone calling himself (I would bet on he) Dinosaurian was great, but only the first of the five parts seems to be on ASSTR, and I am not sure any of it is on Google now.
It has been too long since I wrote regularly (I hope somebody agrees) so here is my attempt to ease the situation. Persons mentioned once are real, and presumably won't mind being described doing what they normally do. Some others have names or details changed. Settings are accurate, but events are chronologically conflated. (I likes dem big words.)
DALLIANCE IN TARRYTOWN
George Evans had taken the Friday off for Lunacon, but he did not get up much later that morning than usual. He got onto the highway maybe fifteen minutes or a half-hour later than he would have started work on a normal day.
George had breakfast before he left, but he went through Maryland, then Delaware, then the New Jersey Turnpike, and it came to mind that he was liable to forget about lunch once he got to doing things at the convention. So he pulled into the Childs' Restaurant in downtown Newark about eleven in the morning, ate, then took another hour to get to Tarrytown. This was a few years after the unions forced conventions out of New York City.
He had been asked, sort of, by Perdita Boardman about coming up early to help move supplies into the consuite, so when he parked and walked in he got right into lugging. They needed him less than they thought, so he sat around a while after. About the time that he could have checked into his hotel room, convention registration was going to open, so he went there instead.
Not so much to register - that took seconds - but to work there a while. A lot of people seem to think that is a dull job, but he never had. Part of it may be that he spent a couple of years in an unemployment office, signing people up for checks, and while the motions are much the same, the job is incredibly different. You don't have to deal with stupid or hostile people, or only rarely, and you don't have frauds to deal with.
What you do get are people who are happy to be in a line that moves fast and a lot of smiling faces, with the female ones particularly nice. And of course for the time you are there you get to talk, five seconds each, to people you recognize.
It was better this year because the head of registration had not been trained in Boston, so registration opened when people wanted to register, not when the clock said it was supposed to. George had never understood NESFA.
They started at quarter to two, and around three o'clock Mike and Judy Goldberg were in front of him, with Jackie Spriggs, all just in from Baltimore. George had marginally known Mike a bunch of years before through the mail, his wife for about five since they moved into the area.
Five years ago was also when the Baltimore club got restarted, some months before George moved from New York to Washington, sort of moved back since he had been brought up in Baltimore and Baltimore was only fifteen minutes further than half the Washington club meetings.
As you could probably guess from the name, Mike and Judy Goldberg were Jewish. Jackie Spriggs was black, rather tall for a woman, and very cute and cheerful. She had been coming to Baltimore club meetings for a year now, or a little less than that since she had found out about it at last year's Balticon.
George had therefore met Jackie perhaps two dozen times since, between the monthly business meetings (which were mostly social after the first half-hour) and the social meetings (which often had a lot of decisions made at them). He talked to her probably at all of the gatherings, but couldn't say he paid much attention to her. She was interesting to talk to and fresh meat, so to speak, for conversation.
Since she just came in ar Balticon, she had not considered going to Disclave eight weeks later, which was also six weeks after her first Baltimore club meeting, where she first learned of the comvention. Worldcon that year was at the other end of the country, and for some reason now forgotten she could not get to the Philadelphia regional in November.
Boston was too far even for George as a usual thing, let alone somebody new to things, do this Lunacon was her first out-of-town convention. Jackie was staying with the Goldbergs here, but she was very happy to see someone else she knew, and she gave Gworge a very bright smile when she spotted him behind the table.
He worked at registration until almost five, getting three hours there to add to the hour of moving consuite supplies, then got his luggage and checked in. He went into the dealers' room, not to buy anything - he may have, he didn't remember for sure - but to look around and talk to people. The Gonzalez brothers almost always have something interesting which he has to debate with himself whether he can afford, Charles Miller is good to gossip with, and the Hendersons often wanted to check his memory on a book or author somebody asked about.
Ned Brooks had come up with the people from the Atlanta worldcon bid, and he had a table, and George probably spent half an hour behind his table talking about strange books, of which Ned has very many.
George left him a little after six (the room stayed open until eight) and ran into the Goldbergs and Jackie Spriggs in the lobby. Mike and Judy had not been up to Lunacon lately, and of course Jackie hadn't been at all. They asked if there was a place to eat nearby and worth recommending.
"Yes," he said, and led them down the road and under a bridge, maybe a quarter-mile to a diner not visible from the hotel. They introduced Jackie there to their saying about conventions: you can travel a thousand miles, but end up eating dinner with people you see every week or two.
And so they did. They took their time over dinner, and did not get back to the hotel until close to eight. Jackie and the Goldbergs went off to the program, and George got talking to people.
Close to ten he went off to his room to change. Now, he was not involved with the Atlanta worldcon bid, but he knew people on it, between those who moved there from places he had lived, those who lived for a while around Baltimore or Washington, and just meeting, especially working with, some of them at conventions from Arizona to England.
He was somewhat known for working as a bartender (beer and soda usually) at Disclave, and he was asked about doing it at the bid party. He agreed, but wanted to give them more than they asked for.
He changed into black pants with a sharp crease, a pale blue pocketless shirt with ruffles down the front and at the cuffs, and a black clip-on bow tie. He slicked back my hair, used a little magician's wax to bring his beard to a point, and showed up for his 10 to midnight shift looking every inch a caterer's bartender.
He even put a tip-jar out, though the money went to (and was marked for) the worldcon bid. Got a fair amount too.
