This Is Not a Love Song

Image: classic image of the Washington monument at night.

Sunday morning started out much better than the day before as Naomi and I had been invited to breakfast with Joe and Gay Haldeman. We ended up having a rather leisurely brunch talking about life, the universe, and everything. Everything that everyone says about how nice and welcoming Gay and Joe are is one hundred percent true.

I, thankfully, had no panels at all on Sunday. I’d love to say that meant no one mispronunced my name, but alas. A couple of the people on concom just never got it right, despite the fact that I spent a lot of time making sure I put names to faces and knew at least one fact about them, ie, Kathy the former postal lawyer; Zen Lizard (one of the many Sams) who, shockingly, is a fan of lizards; Kim who loves animals and volunteered at the zoo; Roger, the IT guy; and Kimbery, who is easy since he’s a man named Kimberly, but also he was Naomi’s liason and so we heard his entire lifestory on the 30 minute drive from the airport (highlight reel includes, but it not limited to, his extensive time in the foreign service, being a Mormon, and a member of MENSA.)

I think all of them called me Lid-ah.

Ah well.

Knowing that we’d be starting our adventures after the con ended, I wandered over to the metro station--which is directly across from the hotel--and purchased a three day pass for myself and Naomi. That would cover Sunday night, all day Monday, and our trip to the airport on Tuesday.

I wandered back to the con hotel in time to see Scott Edelman in his fish head rushing off to do a reading. I probably should have followed him, since I did want to hear him read, but I figured (wrongly) that the program guide would direct me to where I needed to go when I was feeling ready. But, no! Not only was Scott’s reading not in the program, I could not figure out what room he was in until I overheard someone saying that their reading was around the corner and down the hall near the Green Room. I managed to walk right in during Scott’s Q&A. I’d missed the reading! Curses!

I stayed in the room to listen to the next person (who, unlike Scott, was listed in the program,) Morgan Hazelwood. Morgan was the delightful moderator of our Romance in SF panel and it was fun to hear her read her work.

From there, I sat in the back to listen to the last half hour of “Religion in SF” which Naomi was on with our mutual friend Walter Hunt.

The funny thing about Capclave is that while it is much larger than Diversicon, on occasion, it felt much smaller. Naomi and I discussed this later and we decided that possibly this sense came from the fact that in addition to a three track (four or five if you count the two rooms devoted to author’s readings) there was a gaming room and a dealer’s room. This ended up spreading out the hundred plus members quite a bit. I counted. There were fifteen people listening to a six person panel. So, the energy of the convention was always sort of low.

I have now, of course, been struck with fear that John and I have over-programmed Gaylaxicon. I guess we’ll see how it plays out!

After the religion panel, Naomi had another panel in the same room, which was “Genre Fiction versus Lit Fic.” Despite having even fewer people in the audience, the panel was lively. I think because we all get kind of worked up about mainstream literature and who gets to cross over to it and who doesn’t. (Or we get worked up because we never want to and we have FEELINGS about lit fic.) It was a good mix of panelists, too--some from the “I don’t even like the term speculative fic because it’s too fancy” camp to the PhD and MFA student. It was a great way to end the con, as far as I was concerned.

Afterwards, Naomi did some last minute hanging out with folks and I headed upstairs to prep for adventure, by which I mean snoozling.

At some point around 3 pm, we headed to DC.

I have been desperately trying to replenish my stationary stock and so we got a hot tip from a native that we should check out Jenni Bick in Dupont Circle. The red line, which our hotel is on, goes direct to Dupont Circle and add to that Naomi had a restaurant she wanted to revisit from a previous trip to DC, City Lights of China, that was nearby. So off we went.

I am a huge fan of public transportation. I find the DC metro system to be fantastic in this regard. Plus, their day passes include buses. Rockford/our hotel is, during rush hour, about a half hour from DC. I don’t know why, but that time goes faster on trains.

Jenni Bick was, alas, a bust. Americans do not understand stationary any more. (We did? In the 1970s and even into the 80s you could find huge pads of stationary at all sorts of stores.) Nowadays, we seem to that think ten sheets and ten envelopes for $30 is a great deal. Y’all, ten sheets is two letters--or, on a good day, ONE. I want a packet of 30 super-thin sheets with weird cartoon people on it for $10 to $20, what is wrong with you all???

Sigh.

It was a delightfully pretty shop and I am proud of myself for not buying all the postcards they had in the window.

From there, we stopped at a great comic book shop called Fantom Comics. This was possibly the first comicbook shop I have ever been to where all the graphic novels were organized by subject, like “action/adventure,” “horror,” “romance,” etc., and MANGA WAS MIXED IN. There was no separate manga section! It was kind of nice, actually? It felt weirdly less stigmatizing. I didn’t buy anything, but I took a lot of pictures of titles I want to look up.

Their unisex bathroom had the best art!


Image: bathroom art at Fantom

We ended up taking a bus to where Naomi’s restaurant was--only to discover it was now only a takeout window. Alas! Luckily, it was on a strip of a ton of restaurants and we were able to find a lovely ramen place just up the street.

Then, because we wanted to see some of the monuments lit up at night, we hopped another bus for a quick jaunt and then wandered towards the Lincoln memorial. What was striking was, in fact, the number of National Guard everwhere. I knew they’d be there thanks to the news, etc., but yet somehow I forgot? Someone at the con said that the Guard tend to hang out in large clots at the subway stations and wander the Smithsonian Mall area, and that did, in fact, seem to be true. Naomi was curious and so asked some of the Guard that we ran into where they were originally from and they were all from West Virginia. (Which kind of explained HOW WHITE they all were. Like, the reason we started asking was because they were noticeably missing PoCs.)

Anyway, the walk around the monuments was a bit of a hike.

There was a sign I pointed out to Naomi which read “The Mall is big! Think about renting a bike!” Because, yes. I forgot how much walking a person ends up doing in DC. My feet were a bit sore at the end of the day. Hopefully, I’ll be up for all we have planned for tomorrow which, at the moment, includes checking out the fish market, the Black History museum (Smithsonian) and/or maybe the Postal Museum. I intentionally did not plan a lot for us because frankly, even though both Naomi and I have been to DC and the Smithsonian Mall before… there’s just no way to ever see it all I suspect, unless you live here.

Okay! Off for more adventure!