Goes Somer * Goesomer * Gossamer

Smart Chicks was awesome. ZaKia needed gas and I had to stop at home to feed the Bunny, which meant I barely made it in time for the panel to begin . . . the panel lacking in chairs (Sarah: “We can sit on the table! I’m in a short skirt! The audience would love it!”) The authors were great and Sarah was the most entertaining thing ever—who else would think it a fine idea to play ‘Marry, Shag, Throw off a Cliff’ with the other authors’ characters, then encourage the twelve year olds to play along as Holly Black holds her head in her hands? Awesome.

Lightning round was enlightening—Sarah already shared it on her webpage, but her response to “most embarrassing moment” was: “this week?” and then something to the effect of: “You know how you want to go swimming but don’t have your swimsuit and then you think, hey, black underwear, swimsuit, no one can tell the difference. Except then a lady comes over and tells you, everyone’s staring from inside, and then a security guard comes over and says, ‘young lady, you can swim here anytime’.”

When asked about other hobbies aside from writing, Holly Black first claimed she didn’t have one (Sarah’s was fencing. Space fencing. Poorly) but Sarah pointed out Holly made dolls. Holly replied she didn’t make the dolls, she only replaced their eyes.

On a personal note, I felt like the creepy adult lurker all evening. I would have been less ‘the creepy adult’ if I had friends who were willing and able to join me, and the only ones I actually have were in the awful position of being stuck in the hospital, with one of the pair having a tumor removed. From his brain. Which put a bit of a damper on the evening. And the month, really.

[Edit Aside--I meant to emphasize how pathetic I am for not getting out and making more friends in the area, and that the ones I did have who'd have thought it fun had much more important concerns. I'm worried it didn't com across that way--that is what I meant, though. . .oh well].
 

I think I was the only person there who didn’t attend with a friend or her parents. Parents who carpooled her and her classmates to their local library in the family mini van. Probably a Toyota.

Hell, am I ever pathetic.

So the panel broke for 10 to start the signing portion of the evening. I waited my turn amid some girls—so many younger than me—who’d not read Sarah’s books and were all, “She is awesome!” and the one who did read Sarah said, “That’s why I read her books”. I wanted to cheer, because, yes. It’s so true and I wished my friends had come because they’d have loved Sarah, too.

But back to the signing line. I had no idea what I’d say once I got up front. None. I figured I’d just get everything signed and slip out unnoticed. Because I had nothing to say. You’d think I’d have learned by now that if ever I intend to go unnoticed, I am all fail. I should also have learned from my experience at Comic-Con that once I’m put in front of geeky persons I admire, verbal vomit spews forth from me in an embarrassing, Technicolor fount.

It started while I was waiting in the line. The nice folks from the bookstore who’d organized the event came round to expedite the process by putting post-it notes in our books with our names spelled correctly. When the nice young man asked me my name, I said, “Buffy” because, well, it was the sort of event with the sort of people who’d call me that and I wasn’t really thinking. And once you’ve said your name is Buffy, you can’t be all, “Wait, no, I didn’t mean it! I’m [insert legal name here], put [insert legal name here] on my little post-it!” because then you’re either the weirdo who doesn’t know her own name or some fangirl desperate for people—famous people, even—to call you ‘Buffy’.

So that meant Sarah would be signing my book ‘to Buffy’ and I. . .it wasn’t exactly awkward. It’s the fact that’s a loaded name when you’re around geeks. As effex discovered at Comic-Con, to her endless amusement, if one shouts “Buffy!” in a crowd of geeks everyone looks. Which is fine. But it is a nick name, not my given name. A derivative nickname, to be sure. And one that has spontaneously generated four times in my life—the most recent of which was when my Arizona friends in the Ev[i]l Writers who’d called me by my legal first name finally broke down and admitted they kept wanting to call me Buffy ever since they saw my email with my full name. I was all, oh, thank god, it has been so weird to be called [insert legal name here] by you guys, you have no idea.


So, you see, I am a Buffy for all intents and purposes, srsly. It’s not something I have to tell nerds and geeks to call me. I was Buffy in fifth grade, no thanks to Mr. Fritz who thought my last name was fantastic. It died when I moved from elementary to middle school. I was then Buffy in high school (technically Buffy #3—I have two ‘older’ sisters) since our Chinese, Gung Fu master English teacher, Mr. Tsang, was a HUGE fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and he liked playing with words. My sisters and I also dominated the top grade earners for his classes and the Twin and I were asked to be presidents of the Asian Awareness Club. In short, we were favorite students and we were dubbed ‘Buffys’ out of affection. The names caught on like wildfire amid the student body, moreso for the Twin than me, but still.

I moved on to college where I thought I could get all srs and grown-up and mature, and then my roommate heard my stand partner from high school call me “Buffy” and I was all, er, yeah, that’s what they called me. And she called me Buffy from then on. I found people could very, very easily identify me as ‘Buffy’ but not so much as [insert legal name here] so I didn't fight it and introduced myself as such. It was official: I was Buffy and there wasn’t really any going back. To hit home on this point—in my capstone course before graduation, I’d once again felt like being more ‘mature’ and like a real, live grown-up and announced myself as [insert legal name here] during introductions to my classmates. This backfired, as effex’s old roommate was sitting next to me at the time and was all, ‘No you’re not, you’re Buffy’ and I was all, ‘for the love of all things holy, I’m twenty-two now with half a master’s degree—I already look like a twelve-year old, I want to at least have a grown-up name’. In spite of my attempt at rebranding, the only person in the class who made a concerted effort to call me [insert legal name here] was our professor, and even he slipped now and again. To Everyone else I was Buffy and only occasionally [insert legal name here] in formal class situations.

I then moved out to California. The only person from my past who came with me was my twin. The Twin calls me Janie or Jane. No one else calls me Janie, not my parents or our other sister or anyone, and the same is true for her—I call her a nickname which only I use; no one else does. (At least no one else did call me Jane/Janie—her husband calls me Jane now and again. The first time he did, I didn’t know who he was speaking to; he was looking at me, but that wasn’t my name. . .and then I realized. The twin gave him the skunk eye of ‘what the hell?!’ and he doesn’t do it much anymore, only when referring to me as “Auntie Jane,” which is totes appropriate, since. . .okay, so I’m Jane for my twin and my niece).

Out in San Diego I joined a writer’s group, where upon I was [insert legal name here] until I submitted a piece called, “Nora’s Letters to Noone”. It was an epistolary piece in first person. One of the guys critiquing was dumb enough to think that because I’d written in first person I was Nora. To which I had to lay the smack down because I was the author, NOT Nora. I pointed out how I might have drawn from my experiences of loneliness to create her, but I was NOT Nora, with her neurosis and fear and watchful, stargazing eyes, but I did share her wonder and longing and love for cats, and yes, sometimes I felt lonely too. To emphasize my point, I held up the story and highlighted my full name printed legibly in the corner of the page.

He then kept calling me Buffy, the rest of the group took hold of the appellation and that was that.

I already mentioned the Ev[i]l writers, which is the most recent regeneration, so I hope I’ve demonstrated it’s not a vanity thing—I’m freaking Buffy among certain circles, it’s weird to be [insert legal name here] in geeky friend circles, as I’m Jane or Janie with the Twin.

So, back to our regularly scheduled story.

I’m standing in line, anxious because I now have a post-it with Buffy on it for Sarah to sign. My fannish verbal vomit is impossible to keep down. Thus, I present my book to be signed.

nepenthe: “Hello.”

Sarah: “A Buffy!”

nepenthe: “Yes, a real one.” Can. Not. Lie. So. Embarrassed. “Well, technically it’s derived from [insert legal name here], but you see, I had this Chinese Gung Fu master for an English teacher in high school, Eddie Tsang, who was a big fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

Sarah: *wide eyes of OMG STORY* “Your English teacher was a Kung Fu master?”

nepenthe: “Yeah, I sucked at the Gung Fu when we practiced, though. I was much better at English. One of only ten masters in the United States, last I heard and in Iowa, of all places. Hell of a story how he ended up here.”

Sarah: “Ooo, tell me!”

And here, you must understand that Eddie set aside two whole days—the last two days of a graduating class’s high school tenure—to give this story justice.

nepenthe: *Deep breath to get this out as fast as possible* Eddie was born at the start of the Communist Revolution—his father was a Nationalist and when the Reds won, his father was to be killed. They had to bribe his way out of the country with the family’s excessive wealth of diamonds. His father went on to become a chef in Jamaica. Now, Eddie’s father had three wives: first wife, second wife, third wife, and ten brothers (no way to know if he had sisters, because old-school Chinese don’t mention daughters if they have any). Eddie was the youngest son from first wife—” I now realize I had to hurry this up, seriously, because the line is MOVING, “they were all sent to a concentration camp, Eddie and some brothers escape, sneak food and water to family inside risking their lives every time—these two brothers will escape China by swimming to Taiwan under machine gun fire from the banks—” and here is where I have to move on to Holly. I haven’t even gotten to the point of Eddie learning Gung Fu under the same masters as Bruce Lee, in the same class, (“He lazy student!”) under a false identity, or of how they’d break in to the local theater to watch propaganda movies from the rafters, or how his beautiful mother who was once providence-renowned for her astounding, steady calligraphy had withered in the camp, and when she was finally released, she tremorred and shook and her calligraphy was indecipherable, or how Eddie was all but kicked out of school or how he learned English because he wanted to play basketball, but ended up liking English better and got out of China through one of the only means of doing so: an exchange program in Kansas—a youth basketball camp—and how he was able to keep out by teaching English and Gung Fu in the states, or how he met his wife when he returned to China to be at his mother’s deathbed and had two weeks to negotiate with his bride’s father for her hand in marriage and has now been happily married for—what’s now forty years. And on and on, there is so much more to this story.

Sarah: *taken aback* “We’re moving on? And I’ll never know how it ends!”

nepenthe: “It ends in Iowa, with a Gung Fu master who will never eat potatoes again.”

I am a total dork.

Next up was Holly.

nepenthe: “Your makeup looks good—no one would ever suspect you put it on in the taxi.”

Holly: “Thanks?”

nepenthe: “Anywho, I don’t have any books since I already made you sign them at Comic-Con.”

Holly: *blinks at me and I start to fear she may remember that incident. And now I sound like a stalker*

nepenthe: However, I have a friend who would have come, but her partner is in the hospital because he had a tumor removed from his brain the other night and, maybe, could you write a nice message in her book and wish him a speedy recovery?”

Holly: “OH, GOD, NO PRESSURE OR ANYTHING.”

Sarah: *is signing someone else’s book but is still looking at me all, ‘who the hell is this person?’*

nepenthe: k, thnx, bye. *totally embarrassed, takes books and awkwardly runs away, then sees the massive table of cookies* COOKIES?! I’ve had nothing to eat all day!!!! Omm nom nom, surgery-chocolate manna, *snarfle*. . .wait. Handsome young book-seller man, please tell me Holly and Sarah cannot still see me. Aw, hell, YOU can see me. I’m going to the parking garage to finish this now. *Accidentally drops cookie which bursts into bits of beautifully ruined confectionery while trying to balance cookie on top of signed books and not smoosh signed poster*

Handsome young book-seller man: Here’s another, but I’m not sure you should have any more sugar.

So that’s how I made a total ass of myself. Again. I think I could have only come across as more of a dork if I’d mentioned I, you know, wrote stuff.

*facepalm*

I suppose it’s not all that bad in retrospect, but. Yeah. I felt embarrassed and a little silly for being a loner adult in amid all the kids. With horrible hair (it was AWFUL, I’d had no time to make it look nice before leaving).

In summary: the panel was awesome, I’m a dork, my friend is out of the hospital and recovering.

I should now go and get some real work done.

 

EDIT: Now with photographic evidence!!!