Notes from the Con – Day Three

(To start at Day One, go here.)
(For Day Two, go here.)

Saturday Morning/Afternoon

Second day at ye vendor’s table. From our place we can turn around and look at the hotel pool below where a Water Aerobics workshop is in session. Speaking as an unabashed sexist, it’s fun to occasionally turn around and watch.

In the afternoon, my lovely wife heads for the convention coffeehouse where she’ll be reading one of the four short stories she’s selling under the title, Zaftly, My Love. The stories are romance fiction (or, as she puts it, “girly stuff”), and the work she’s picked is a short piece that originally appeared in the print mag Dimensions. While she’s there, I hold the vendor’s table by myself. It’s pretty quiet: I’m just not as magnetic as my wife. I while away the time perusing a Tek Jansen comic book. The story reading, I later hear, went well.

We have a better afternoon at our table. Because she’s brought her beads and jewelry-making paraphernalia, my wife is able to make bracelets and anklets to order – and she’s kept fairly busy. A few attendees from yesterday’s FA Workshop also show up to buy a newsletter, having realized who I was midway into the workshop. “This is for all the pleasure you’ve provided over the years” is a regular refrain, and every time I hear it, a small part of me wants to say, “Well, I hope you’re gonna read the newsletter today!”

I later chat with a fat FA who turns out to be a fellow blogger: he gives me his URL (which I've added to the blogroll), and I promise to take a look when I get home. Here at the hotel, connection to the Internet comes with a price – and since we’re here on the cheap, I’ve already gone close to three days w/o any web surfing. Hard to believe, actually . . .

Saturday Night

We attend the Awards Banquet and Dinner Dance. The awards are handed out to NAAFA volunteers who’ve distinguished themselves over the past year. During flusher days, the association had an office, paid office help and a salaried spokesperson, but these days, all the work is done by volunteers. By now, we recognized all the identified volunteers from the last two days in the hotel.

After last night’s seventies kitsch-a-thon, tonight’s event is for dressing to the nines. See a lotta gorgeous fat women in gorgeous ensembles tonight. I’ve heard it said more than once (usually at events like these) that you can tell a lot about a fat woman’s self-confidence level by how much of her upper arms she allows you to see. Looks like there are plenty of confident women in the room.

Finally get my spouse on the dance floor for two slow ones tonight: in these small moments, all the shit and stressors and struggles that we’ve face over the last year abate. One of the long-standing components of the size acceptance movement has been dances, and, though some more activist members look down on ‘em, the experience remains a powerful one. Wasn’t it Emma Goldman who once stated that she didn’t want to be part of any revolution that wouldn’t allow you to dance? Holding my wife in my arms, I can’t help but agree.

That said, I more than half wish the dee-jay had a more varied musical array – I’m hearing songs tonight that I also heard on Friday. At least we escape before he gets to “Baby Got Back.”

The rest of the night is none of yer bizness, thank you.