Chapter 1- Character Creation

There are infinite numbers between one and two, and none of them are two. The same goes for the time between 3:05 and 3:15 in a high school classroom. That infinity doubles when you are on the cusp of going into the greatest weekend of your life, ConCon ‘94. I can’t be blamed for not paying attention to Mrs. Reagan. She was nattering on about a play I had read years before. I was not supposed to be in this class. I started the year in Advanced Placement. I had a high C, not too bad for never studying and doing about half the homework. Forces allied against me and cast me down two levels to the regular English class.
“So why doesn’t Shakespeare have the murders committed on stage? Aric?” she queried. I vaguely heard my name, but I was intent on my current, more important project. I scrawled away, trying to bring to life my reason for being, The Elf Girl. My artistic skills weren’t the best. I wasn’t McFarlane, but I wasn’t Liefeld either. I could draw hands and feet. I’d memorized every curve of her face and body from the time we first saw each other. In fairness, I saw her. I was in her line of sight. We haven’t talked yet. I didn’t know her name or what school she went to. I didn’t know her eye color. I knew I loved her, and I knew she had a rotten scoundrel of a boyfriend, Snake.

Before fandom was mainstream… there was ConCon ’94
A shy Gulf Coast kid, one weekend, and all the chances to screw it up.

“Aric, my patience is running thin. Are you listening?” Mrs. Reagan crouched in front of me, forcing eye contact.
Mrs. Reagan was not unpleasant. She wasn’t pleasant either. She was a tolerable teacher that had the weariness of someone too long in the classroom. A childhood accident severed a ligament in her hand, so her middle finger always stretched out, flipping off the class. I always found it funny. The words tolerance and fair-minded rarely came up in her description.
I resumed my drawing. “What is this?” she said, stabbing her middle finger on my paper. She grabbed my picture. My pencil, still making contact streaked across my maiden’s face. I was furious.
“You sure do ask a lot for someone entrusted with the most hallowed responsibility of imparting knowledge to your students. You’d think as long as you’ve been here, you’d have learned something,” I said. As the words left my mouth, I knew I had gone too far. I typically kept my keen wit sheathed lest it cause undue injury. I was pushed to this point. I had been demoted to remedial English. Banished to this dumbed-down curriculum I have already completed, taught by a better teacher, mind you. Now my artistic expression was torn asunder. She deserved the jab. I could hear the collective breath of the other students being held, waiting for the imminent explosion.
“No wonder you made a seventy on your last exam,” she said, detached and calculated. It was the product of years of dealing with jackasses like me. I don’t know why she was so upset over a C, it was passing. The minimum is still enough to move on. You know what they call the guy last in med school? Doctor.
The bright side of being closer to retirement, she could afford to give as much as she got. She had to be feeling froggy, cause she jumped. She sliced into me with surgical precision. “Drawing little fantasy girls with pointed ears. You’re a young adult, for God’s sake. Start acting like a man and not a boy.” The other students let out whoops of “oh” and “told you”. When a teacher engaged with a student in a Tete-a-tete, decorum was relaxed. Student jeers added to the humiliation. Normally, at this point, I’d drop it and take the loss. Not today. She crossed a line by taking my drawing. Defiant I stared deep into her eyes.
“She’s an Elf,” I declared.
“Excuse me?”
“An Elf, not a fantasy girl with pointed ears,” I said through gritted teeth. The atmosphere in the room changed. The class was prepared for a nuke from Mrs. Reagan. They would be disappointed. Mrs. Reagan relented. She broke eye contact and moved to the board.
“My mistake. An Elf. With your permission, I’d like to continue with class. You’ve wasted enough of our time already,” she said, and without missing a beat, returned to droning on about Lady Macbeth and the invisible hand of female persuasion. Her middle finger grazed the chalkboard as she reiterated her prior points.
Mitzy Collins (yes, that is her real name) kicked my foot. I looked over at her. She wore the same Coke sweater that was cool a decade ago. No one gave her crap about it. We all knew she was poor as dirt. She was also mean as hell. When she bullied me, it didn’t bother me. She bullied everyone. It would be insulting if she ignored me.
“You sure that’s an Elf?” she said. “Looks like a fairy. You like fairies, don’t you?” she continued the assault. “Go back to the smart kid class. No one likes you there either, but we won’t have to listen to your bullshit all day.” She was not quiet. Most of the class heard and chuckled. Before she could outline exactly why she thought I liked fairies and the particulars of the hatred these dimwits held towards me, the bell mercifully rang. I got up and packed my backpack as fast as possible. I put my head down and rushed to the door. Mrs. Reagan wasn’t going to allow a swift retreat.
“Remember, the last act of Macbeth. Read it over the weekend,” Mrs. Reagan intoned. Over the groan of students, she calmly said, “Aric, please stay here for a moment.” I wished with all my heart she would scold me quickly and let me go. I had business to attend. I would take all the detentions in the world next week. Tonight was too important for this nonsense. “I am sorry if my class bores you, Mr. Jacobs,” she said. She sounded sincere. Then the hammer dropped. She lowered her voice, nearly inaudible.
“I know all about your little stunt you pulled in the gifted class. I might be the “regular” English teacher, but I won’t put up with your garbage. I’ve seen boys like you come through here before. There’ll be others after you. Smart, smart-assed, and above all, lazy. If you spent half your time studying, you could be valedictorian. Wasted talent. You’re on the road to Loserville,” she admonished. Loserville. It might motivate me if this were 1950 not 1994.
“Production,” I said. “That’s why the violence happens offstage. Easier to say someone is dead than to show their guts spilled on the ground. The 1600s didn’t have Savini or Winston. Too bad for them. As you can see, I don’t need to study for your class. I will pass and get out of here. You’ll be here forever, waiting for the next me to try and tear down. Have a nice weekend.” She was stunned by my attack. I was stunned by my attack. I’m usually more passive-aggressive. Damn Jolt Cola I drank at lunch might have amped me up a bit. I took the opportunity to leg it and reached the hallway before the inevitable detention fell on my neck.

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I was hit by the familiar and never pleasant smell of the hallway. It was a weird mix of books, deodorant, body odor, and a twinge of something more ephemeral. Perhaps it was the asbestos ceiling tiles. The hallway was still crowded as kids caused blockades, rushing to the narrow exit, or milling about chatting with friends. I was tapped on the shoulder by my unfortunately named and unfortunately goofy looking best friend, Noah Chance.
Noah was tall and lanky. He had stringy long blond hair that was always greasy, even after a shower. His acne would be comical if it weren’t so gross. But he was a good dude. He took a lot of shit based on his name alone. No Chance, the obvious. Last Chance, a bit cleverer. Sometimes, Fat Chance, which made no sense. Noah was 6’1” and barely had any fat, or muscle if we were putting a fine point on it. He was a flesh-covered zit skeleton. “How was your first week in dummy class?” he laughed over the noise.
“I can’t take it,” I complained. “We are reading Macbeth. Mac freaking Beth. I did a paper on allusions in historical Shakespeare plays in eighth grade. It’s exhausting.”
“Shouldn’t have pulled that crap in our class,” he chided. Noah knew I was hilarious. I think deep down, Mr. Porter thought it was funny too. He had to demote me from Advanced Placement. Politics.
“Stunt. It was a perfectly viable paper,” as I was speaking, a jock, Darryl Sims, pushed into me. The beatings will continue…
“Out of the way, fairies,” he bellowed as he elbowed me. We pause and look down. My dad told me to push back, and even if I got whooped, the boys would respect me for standing up for myself. Two black eyes later, I realized that was dumb advice. I also noticed my dad never pushed back when his boss made jabs at him. I learned it from watching you… Lemurs, or some kind of tiny monkey, with tiny monkey minds, knew how this worked. Don’t show weakness, and if you are weak, be meek. Put your head down and hope they go away. We were lucky. Daryl wanted to get to his locker. He was a lineman or something. I didn’t know the positions for football. He acted as a meat wall with his meat wall friends to stop the opposing muscle men pushing forward. All I knew was he was big, mean, and presumably dumb. How he was in all advanced classes I couldn’t say. He wore his letter jacket in spite of the heat. It was about eighty outside but one cool day triggered the heating in the school so we all suffered in the warm afternoons. We moved over, and no escalation occurred.
Unhappy with that, Daryl knocked my copy of Dark Force Rising to the ground. I had already removed the cover to avoid trouble. Reading was nerdy enough. Star Wars books encouraged attack. I learned that lesson the old-fashioned way. Since the incident with The Two Towers, I had removed all the covers of my paperbacks. Only through more than a cursory inspection would the depth of my nerdiness be exposed. The Tolkien book caused my sexuality to be questioned for years. I loved The Lord of the Rings. We read The Hobbit in sixth grade. When I learned there was a sequel trilogy, I was stoked. I remember staying up all night, terrified of the Black Riders the hobbits met on the road to Bree. My mom bought me a set of paperbacks with all four books.
The problem was the cover art. The Hobbit was Ok. Bilbo just looked like John Candy in a cheap Halloween costume. The Two Towers was the worst. The cover had a realistic painting of a Fabio-looking Legolas lovingly looking at Grizzly Adams Gimli. Darly hadn’t noticed the book title, not that it would mean anything. It did say Star Wars which translated to ‘punch me’ in meat wall speak. Being used to these interruptions, we resumed as if we had never stopped.
“It was a bold Freudian interpretation,” I explained to Noah.
“You did a book review on See Spot Run, the Dick and Jane book.”
“Exactly. What was Spot running from? Himself? Existential dread? Perhaps Spot was commenting on the absurdity and ultimately unknowingness of life, like those guys waiting for Godot,” I smiled. It was funny. Everyone knew it. Sure, they didn’t laugh too much. It wasn’t ha ha funny. More of a wry commentary. I was good at wry.
“Out of the way, fairy,” another jock, Bubba Soles, said, pushing past us. Other than the haircut and color, Bubba had bleached blonde hair in a butt cut, the two could be twins. We lived on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. There was a per capita of ‘Bubba’ for every thirty residents. It took me longer than I would ever like to admit to figure out that ‘bubba’ was a degradation of ‘brother,’ like how a kid would say it when learning to speak. Bubba lived up to the stereotype. He was muscle and bone and enough gray matter to lurch his body around.
“He already said that,” Noah explained. Bubba shoved Noah into the locker. Nothing fancy from Bubba. He stuck to classic bullying maneuvers.
“Did he say that?” Bubba smiled.
“Actually…” Noah snarked. I pulled him away before it registered with the Neanderthals. Noah bravely flipped them off behind their backs. “You still make a joke about it. This could ruin your life. Just for a cheap laugh. It was cheap. Something about Dick and Jane and repressed sexual urges. That would be funny.” That would have been funnier.
“You’re wrong. It wasn’t for a laugh. I just didn’t want to do a paper. I almost beat Dragon’s Lair on the Sega CD. Who had time to read a stupid book?” I corrected.
“Did you at least beat it? Also, did you finish the game?” Noah cackled at his own wit.
“Who cares. As long as we have this weekend, nothing else matters,” I told him.
“That means you didn’t beat it,” he replied.
“I got close. You’re right. The only thing that matters is the next few days.”
We survived school year after year. Endured bullying. Listened to morons talk about football. We stood apart from the cool kids and cute girls. In school, there was a pecking order. We weren’t rated to even peck. The damn band nerds and theater kids shunned us. We were non-entities at best, targets for ridicule at worst. There was one weekend a year when that didn’t happen. Where we were one-eyed men, in the kingdom of the blind. Seen and heard. Respected even. ConCon, the local sci-fi and comic convention. This was the year I would speak to The Elf Girl. This is the year Mark Hamill would show, I hoped. He wouldn’t.
It was much too small a convention for a top-tier actor, yet rumors persisted year after year. We were lucky to get Tom Baker once, and for some reason, Bronson Pinchot. All I cared about was gaming and rescuing The Elf Girl from the vile Snake. Make out with her. Maybe touch a boob. As if he was reading my mind, Noah piped up, batting his eyes like Betty Boop, “Maybe you’ll talk to your dream girl.”
“I will. I have to. I think she’s a senior; she won’t be there next year.”
“You don’t even know her name,” Noah laughed. “Now you know her grade?”
“I think she is. Anyway, she’ll go off to State or something,” I explained.
“State? She seems more like an Ole Miss girl to me.”
“Shut your filthy mouth,” I said. Elf Girl would never. Noah could tell he got under my skin, so, like any good friend, he kept going.
“Oh yeah, Ole Miss, sorority, date the Sigma Chi president. If you can make up her life, I can too. What makes you think she won’t go to JD or just drive down for the Con?” Noah asked.
“Because she’s too good for this place. She will get out as fast as possible,” I replied.
JD stood for Jefferson Davis Junior College, or thirteenth grade, as we called it. Aside from the awful naming convention, it wasn’t where you wanted to end up. I was well on track for thirteenth grade. I wouldn’t let that ruin my weekend.
“What’s the big deal? If she goes somewhere else, you can get in somewhere good still. You can follow her.”
“I don’t want to leave here. It’s where I keep all my stuff,” I lied. I did want to leave, but my current grades had other plans for me. I was tired of all the teachers telling me how smart I was and how much talent I was wasting. School was a burden. I wanted to hang with my buds and play games. Work and money and responsibility didn’t factor in. I’d figure it out, I hoped.
“If that helps you cope with laziness. Oh, I didn’t say earlier, my parents got a room,” Noah smiled triumphantly. “After all these years, we get to sample the carnal delights of ConCon nights.” Nights at the Con were like a mom-and-pop video store, not Blockbuster—the dusty ones run by either a weird kid or an even weirder old man. Not the front of the store, either; it was the rooms in the back, usually with a curtain separating, or one of those stupid beaded curtains you’d see in Three’s a Company. Behind them, XXX movies. I’d never seen one. My pornography was limited to stolen Playboys from my dad. The Days Inn next to the Colosseum was exactly like going behind that curtain.
Adults only. Alcohol, loud music, and sex. Scoring a hotel at our age was a treasure as big as the Matrix of Leadership, right out of Optimus Prime’s chest. Seventeen-year-olds were never allowed to rent a room on their own. I had no idea how I could convince my parents to let me stay in a hotel all weekend. I couldn’t go past Tegarden Road after dark.
“Will your parents be cool with us staying at the hotel?” Noah asked. We were so in sync, to the outside observer, we shared a mind.
“Hell no. You think I’m going to let a minor detail get in the way, then you’re crazy,” I assured. Noah looked pleased. My stomach dropped. I hated lying to my parents. I hated breaking their rules, mostly because I was terrified of being caught. Most of my life was dictated by fear. Fear of bullies, fear of rejection, fear of failing, fear of getting caught. Luckily, I had little aspiration beyond hanging with my buds and making out with The Elf Girl.
On our way to my Mustang, we saw Blair chatting with Kristen and Jill. Blair was the coolest dude. Not in school, or town, or the continental US. Simply the coolest dude. He had sex. With several girls. Played guitar in a garage band, honor roll student, he was all things to all men, men being me and Noah. And he was our friend, our friend. The two nerdiest guys in school, and he was our bud. We played D&D, board games, all kinds of stuff, and he gave us advice on girls, cars, and school. Things changed when girls happened around eighth grade. Blair was natural and cool with them. We weren’t. He stayed separate from us at school after that.

Kristen and Jill, I always thought of them like that, were a single entity that embodied spacetime in two separate incidents. It reminded me of The Patty Duke Show—they walked alike, talked alike—you could lose your mind. Except they weren’t related. They dressed in interchangeable skirts and conservative tops. I hated how everyone in the school dressed like everyone else in their circle. It was so uncreative. The girls’ modest dress and demure presentation was a ploy to make adults think they were flawless and guiltless. Among the students, who knew the truth, Jill had a reputation. And where Jill was, Kristen followed. They knew they weren’t in the highest echelon of cool; they were close.
We also knew our place. We didn’t advertise our friendship with Blair. Neither Noah nor I wanted to damage his reputation, lest it ruin our friendship or, worse, destroy any ambient cool radiation we absorbed just being around him. We stood silently and watched the master work. Kristen swayed noticeably left and right as she talked, her arms wrapped around her binder and eyes locked on Blair’s baby blues. Blair, Noah, and I were wearing jackets despite the heat. It was mid-October, chilly in the morning, hot as hell in the afternoon. It was easier to wear your jacket despite the heat than look like an asshole with it tied around your waist. The girls had their sweaters tied around their necks. That was ok if you were a girl, or a preppy guy.
“There’s going to be a killer party tomorrow night,” I overheard Kristen say to Blair. “Dan and Steve are throwing it. Steve’s parents are in the Virgin Islands. They have a house on the bayou. Out in the middle of nowhere. No cops, no adults.” I would’ve killed for any girl to look at me like they looked at him, like the breadsticks at Olive Garden. I didn’t know much about girls, I could admit that, but it was a given; girls liked Olive Garden. It was one of the nicest places you could take someone around here; we didn’t have a Chili’s. We only got a Taco Bell eight years ago.
“Sounds great,” Blair said. “Now if only I had something to do tonight.” The way he paused right before “tonight” and the implication he put on the single word was masterful.
“We could get some coffee,” Kristen suggested. Jill stomped her foot.
“We are going to see I Love Trouble tonight, remember?” she pouted. The way she said “remember” was just as filled with implications, but on the opposite side of the spectrum.
“If you girls have plans,” Blair said, giving a gracious out. Kristen shot daggers from her eyes towards Jill.
“What?” Jill said, oblivious to her cock block.
“Blair, you could come with us?” Kristen suggested.
“I Love Trouble, huh. Nic Nolte and Julia Roberts. Directed by Charles Shyer, who also directed Irreconcilable Differences.” All four of us stared at Blair. Noah and I were in awe of his film knowledge. The girls looked at him like he had just pulled a rat out of his pocket. “I mean, Siskel and Ebert were on the TV, and I overheard it. I guess we could do that.”
“I’m sure something will come up after the movie,” Kristen said, in a single entendre so obvious that Jill caught it.
“What are you freaks staring at?” Jill asked us.
“Waiting to give Blair his homework,” I said.
The girls sashayed away, aware of our gaze. We watched until they left the building. I found the three of us alone in the parking lot.
“Julia freaking Roberts,” I said, rounding on Blair. “Oh, I love Nic Nolte. He was great in Point Break.”
“That’s Gary Busey. I would have said Down and Out in Beverly Hills,” Blair corrected. I was furious. More now that he was right about Busey. How embarrassing.
“You know it’s ConCon weekend.”
“I think we all know I’m not going to make it,” Blair said, behind a shit-eating grin.
“This happens every year,” Noah intoned. He sounded resigned. “You bail at the last minute. It’s your MO. You do it because you are embarrassed by us.” Now he’s done it, spoken the truth aloud. Things aren’t really real until some jerk says what everyone knows. Now we must act like it’s not true and hope we can keep that lie up for the rest of our lives.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Blair imitated Balki badly. It suddenly hit me; Blair was the only person I knew who got Bronson Pinchot’s autograph that year.
“Two years ago, sick grandma. Last year, strapped for cash. When Undiscovered Country was re-released, vertigo. Rocky Horror, initialitis, which doesn’t exist,” Noah rattled off. “Should I continue, or is my point made?” Blair placed a hand on each of our shoulders and led us towards our cars. This is the part where he uses that 18 in charisma to smooth things over.
“Dudes, you know I’m down. I love Trek. I love Asimov, D&D, and Beastmaster. You know you’re my best friends. Y’all have everything a guy could want and more,” he said, as we continued over the hot asphalt. “Except for one thing. Two things. And Kristen Johnson’s got it in spades.” He smiled at us like the Joker. “Tell Dr. Zaius I said ‘hi.’”
“There’s only two beds in the hotel room anyway,” Noah rationalized. He and I walked to my Mustang. I wished it was a cool Mustang, a classic muscle car. Mine was an ’84, a box on wheels. As uncool as me. And like me, it had a bad flywheel. We called it the ’Stang, but that didn’t do anything but highlight what a POS it was. Wheels are wheels. I cranked the engine, listening to the familiar knock. POS. Thankfully, I had a decent stereo, and Dinosaur Jr’s Whatever’s Cool with Me blared from the speakers. I didn’t have a CD player in the dashboard. The ’Stang had a tape deck. I did have this conversion thing shaped like a cassette, with a wire that ran to the portable CD player I sat on my leg. I was an expert at keeping it still when I made a tight turn.
I nearly jumped out of my skin when Blair jump-scared me, knocking on the window. I rolled it down. “Jesus Christ,” I said, turning down the stereo. “Did you forget to ask me to pick up the Werewolf Players Guide?”
“No. Yes. I do need it, but I thought I heard someone mention a hotel room.” His voice raised weirdly at the end of the sentence.
“Noah’s folks got it for us,” I explained. I have never seen anyone smile so wide in my life. I don’t want to make another Batman reference, but he looked like Nicholson.
“Julia Roberts has sucked since Mystic Pizza.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Pretty Woman, Pelican Brief, Hook, for God’s sake,” Noah replied. Noah had a weird thing about Julia Roberts. I thought she was pretty. She wasn’t in many movies that were in my wheelhouse. Noah would get defensive if you made the slightest criticism of her. I’ll never forget the look on Noah’s face when Blair said Erin, Noah’s mom, looked like Julia Roberts. I couldn’t tell if he was going to cry or punch Blair, or both.
“I think he’s saying he’s in for tonight,” I explained. The quicker we got off the Julia Roberts kick, the better.
“I understood. But he didn’t have to make a snarky comment about Julia. She’s done some amazing work. She’s America’s Sweetheart,” Noah said.
“Buckle up. I’m done with this conversation,” I said, cranking the stereo. The cast was in place. Now the only obstacle was my parents. I’ve watched enough TV to muddle my way through the next bit. While we were talking, I decided on the old “staying at a friend's house” routine. It was reliable and close to the truth. I will be with Noah, and his parents know where we are staying. Should be a cakewalk.

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