ToriCon 2003: Fastrada's Memories

thursday night, shortly after arriving at the hotel, we all headed to union station for dinner. on the way, aimee tried unsuccessfully to grope the mutant bunny statue, but unfortunately found that it was not anatomically correct.

at union station, i ate really good falafel and discussed people who charge money for various sex acts. um... no one i know personally, of course. ;)

back at the hotel, keith began his marathon of folding origami stars. (the bag next to him is completely filled with tiny paper stars, and he kept this up for the majority of the weekend in preparation for an upcoming show.) later in the weekend, he would attempt to teach me how, but i failed miserably. he also gave me one of his origami globes because i thought it was really cool. it’s currently residing at aimee’s until the next time i drive to stl, because i didn’t want it to get crushed in my bag. anyway, keith tried all weekend but still was unable to reach origami...

later that night, we played some of keith’s ’80s-lyrics game, in which i easily defeated most other players. we then started a round of “killer bunnies,” a card game in which bunnies go “splort” if one does not feed them or cannot defend them against weapons such as green jello with evil pineapple chunks. the game went on well into the night and eventually i begged off and joined the conversation already in progress with jb, john and others whom i don't remember at the moment.

friday, we had breakfasty things at denny’s, where my eggs were horrifyingly oily. keith creatively defaced the placemat, which had an ad for flavor shots (in the mouth!). later that day, we headed out to the loop for some shopping. it was quite hot and disgusting out, but hyoun fortified himself well with his phallic energy drink.

i was unsuccessful in finding fun hair things to wear to the con banquet, which had been my mission. however, i did find a great cheap pair of black glitter boots for koren. we had dinner at blueberry hill, the same place we ate before the stl tori show last winter. they fucked up both my veggie burger and koren’s, but we sort of solved the problem by trading. i salivated over the purple alanis morissette poster that they had hanging on the wall, and i could not stop laughing at the very loud patron with quite possibly the worst toupee i’ve ever seen.

back at the hotel, much frivolity ensued over koren’s bowl of safe-sex salad on the table. that would be the bowl filled with glow-in-the-dark condoms (they did glow, but just a little. lisa and i checked!), the rather disturbing two-tone yellow and black condoms (one quote that didn’t make it into the quotebook was nick’s assertion that “i don’t want my wang looking like a bumblebee” or something to that effect), loads of reality female condoms, seedless watermelon and fresh mango flavored lube (yeah, i really hate when my lube has seeds in it!) and dental dams, which i’ve actually never seen in person before. Here, jb and nick demonstrate some alternative uses for dental dams.

i have absolutely no idea what's going on in this picture.

most of the congoers headed up to the pool at some point that evening. i declined the invitation on account of not owning a suit, and instead chilled out in the suite with roekbarnet and flipped through rmta photo albums and such.

that night, lisa persuaded the security staff at the hotel to keep the pool open into the wee hours of the morning. robert and jb stayed behind with me and we worked on the playlist for the following night’s dance. as it turned out, my lack of a swimsuit would not have been an issue, as nearly everyone went skinny dipping. i was actually quite shocked that certain people took their clothes off in public.

our saturday activity was the city museum. i’ve tried repeatedly to describe this place to joe and a couple of co-workers, and have failed miserably other than explaining that “it’s like this giant habitrail for people.” here is a not-very-good shot of the monstrocity, this big outdoor climbing thing with catwalks and metal walkways and landings and crawling holes and slides. it doesn’t nearly show the scale of the whole thing.

this is near the entry of the museum. lots of shimmery strips of fabric stuck to the ceiling.

jason and keith crawl through one of the... erm, crawly things...

there was an art-making area as well. i bought a gold-painted calla lily and decorated it with purple and silver glitter. jb added to the wall of fish that people were allowed to paint on.

aimee, keith and john direct jb and myself to the way up into the monstrocity.

unfortunately, my sandals conspired against me and severely limited my climbing activities. (well, i had no idea what the city museum was and had only packed sandals and big stompy boots, neither of which were suited to climbing!) plus, i was wearing a skirt and i’m sure i gave a couple of people some interesting views when i went down the bigass slides. ;) after not very long at all on the monstrocity, i started having a fear-of-heights freakout and really needed to get off that thing asap. in the gift shop, i bought a purple sparkly stretchy beaded ring and a matching bracelet for dirt cheap.

we left the museum, i crashed in the room for a while, and soon it was time to get ready for the banquet! this year, we had a buffet in the hotel. we had really good bruschetta, a pasta bar, and chocolate fondue for dessert, which i described as “sex on a plate.”

sexxxy goth chicks:
koren, me and aimee

me and jb

john and robert

keith in his muumuu, which, he assures us, was worn in the “traditional” fashion although i did not check

the many faces of hyoun

after several brief round trips between his home in columbia and the hotel in stl, cag finally came to stay on saturday night. i cannot believe how big gwendolyn has gotten. the last time i saw here she was just a few months old. she loves the camera and was quite fascinated by all the sparkly things i had hanging off me.

realjason and lisa

gwendolyn again, this time with nick. i just couldn’t stop taking pix of this kid. :)

the traditional group photo

after dinner, we went back to the suite, where aimee became a hot-damn-and-tequila pirate. actually, comparatively speaking, there wasn’t a lot of drinking at this con. i got mildly tipsy after the dance and that really was about it.

and then, on to the dancing! robert did an absolutely fucking amazing job of dj-ing, once again. of course, i could be biased because he and i have practically the same cd collection. at any rate, i barely ever got off the floor all night, which prolly has something to do with the fact that i still can’t use my right leg properly. here’s christopher dancing with gwendolyn

after a couple of songs, the music stopped. i was standing at my table drinking some water, when i looked up and, to my shock, saw aimee on one knee in front of otherjason, and realjason on one knee in front of lisa. i think i was the first one to notice, so i immediately started snapping photos, of course.

and they both said yes. :) this actually was very sweet. and yes, aimee and realjason are still married. this is just making it official that the four of them are going to live together and have, like, a serious poly relationship.

it wouldn’t be a con without the masochism tango, this time performed by aimee and koren:

after the dance, we went back to the suite, drank, played “i never,” and had what might possibly be the most unique rainn fundraiser ever. the details of which i am not at liberty to discuss, but it was quite entertaining. (and no, it was not an orgy!!) here’s christopher tallying up the money raised...

a bunch of people wandered off upstairs for round 2 of skinny dipping. i had decided that the hot tub sounded like a good idea after abusing my body by gyrating on the dance floor for three hours, so i decided fuck it and went in in my underwear. (which did actually match, so it could prolly pass for a bikini.) apparently, this made quite the impression on aimee! ;) i went back downstairs after people started taking their clothes off again.

people eventually started wandering off to bed. i didn’t go to bed until about 6 in the morning. the next morning, the alarm went off, and i thought, “gosh, it seems llike i just went to bed!” that’s because i had — keith had set the alarm for 7 for some insane reason. grrr! argh!!

the next morning was the con auction. this time, because we had not met our attendance quota, we were making up some of the food cost by having an actual brunch during the auction. wow! real food, with nutritional value, on sunday morning of the con? that never happens! usually breakfast is whatever snack foods are left, along with something sugary and caffeinated! i picked up an rem live bootleg and the issue of “spin” with the pic of tori where she looks like she’s fucking a tree. as per usual, jess totaled up the bids.

the ac was cranked in the banquet room where we had the auction, so i actually went outside in the heat for a while to warm up. then, we all hung out in the suite some more, heaped on the king-sized bed, and made christopher blush. this year, i actually got to stay for dinner because i had a late flight. we ate at the hotel restaurant, where my dinner was extremely mediocre. came back to the suite, hung out some more, and said my goodbyes at around 6:30. overall, this was a good con. it was a relaxing con. it was a low-key con. it was the first con that i did not ever go off by myself to escape the crowds and yet i had no issues with people-quota at all. koren did an amazing job of organizing it, the hotel staff were, on the whole, friendly and helpful, and afaik there were no major hotel-related disasters. if this does indeed turn out to be the last one, i think we went out on a positive note.