What's he on about now?

In case the articles, essays and opinions throughtout this site just weren't enough for you, here's my online diary (a.k.a. 'blog'). It's as close as you'll come to the inside of my head, so don't say I didn't warn you
(and remember, you can always e-mail me if you love or loathe anything you're about to read)...


   Thursday, June 22, 2006

   I SUFFER FOR MY ART

Brendan and Dale here are two of the people I met last weekend at the gay science fiction convention. I went in on Saturday afternoon to attend some panels and find people to interview for my fab article. I was already behind the deadline but you can't write about fans without actually going to their gathering, I insisted. Still, the pressure was on -- I had to talk about sci-fi all day long with all sorts of different people!

Fortunately, this trauma was eased by the late-night charity event in which Brendan and a beautiful straight boy named Nick were among the volunteers feeding people cheesecake for donations to Casey House. Handsome Dale was a writer in Ottawa and we instantly bonded over friendly shop talk before a gentle debate over which one of us Brendan was flirting with more. "Oh please," I said, "He's a 21-year-old from San Francisco -- he's flirting with everybody!" And I was right, though I soon changed my tune by the time Brendan was sitting in my lap and challenging Dale to a Goldschlager shot contest -- Canada vs. the USA!

Do you understand the punishment I had to endure here? I mean, I had planned to leave hours before but, next thing I knew, I had to referee a drinking match with our country's honour at stake! One of the perks of age is that a tendency for indirectness is eventually burned away. I put my arm around Brendan and said, "Dale has a room down the hall -- let's go." The terms of an international alcoholic sports event preclude any further breach of confidentiality, I'm afraid, but I can tell you that Canada won.

I spent the next day with the two of them -- torturous, I know -- and the big geek convention turned out to be as magical and fantastic as it pretended to be. Brendan, meanwhile, revealed the perfect 'newbie' viewpoint for my article so we had an in-depth interview that evening after Dale had caught his train home. He was adorable, articulate and thoughtful. As my friend James likes to say, I fell right in love!

So, in the end, I'm left with a weekend that fired on all cylinders, two lovely new e-mail correspondents, and an article that I couldn't be happier with. It was a difficult road to walk but I've got my feet up on the desk in perfect gloating!

Labels: Canada, fab, friends, oh l'amour