Sci-Fi Con

It felt hot in line waiting, cramped and confined. My clothes felt tight and damp. I tugged at my collar desperate to breathe deep and relaxed but instead only quick and shallow.

This was my first time.

I pulled on the hem of my shirt, somehow racked and twisted despite my hours of preening. It felt ill fitting despite having looked so perfect in the mirror this morning. My skin was tight inside and the soft cotton dragged across my shoulders like sack cloth thick with ashes.

I wanted to tear it off, fling it to one side, and run away. I wanted to get back to being straight and normal and hanging around in bars shouting, shoving, and messing around with friends. I hated this sneaking around, finding excuses for not hanging out with them.

I wanted to tell them about my other self, but I was afraid of what they'd think.

It's not that they wouldn't support me or encourage me, only that they would see me differently - I would not be the man I used to be. The man they had grown up with. The man they had come to rely on for stability. The man they had all turned to when deep in debt, struggling with booze, or caught cheating and torn apart from children.

I  did not have the courage to let them see me this way and shatter any illusions they had of me.

A flash and pop of light close by - a blogger taking photos.

I turn not wanting to be caught on film and exposed on some website.

A guy behind me jostles me, his shrill voice excited and impatient, gabbing with his buddy. The two of them deep in drag and makeup.

I hoped no one would recognise me; I hoped I could go unnoticed. I hoped I could get through this without too great a fuss and get back to the guys.

Baby steps: this first for maybe half an hour - an hour tops, then another time maybe for a couple of hours, then maybe saying hello and getting some phone numbers even. And then maybe at some point a fully fledged member of the community not afraid to wear his colours with pride... Maybe...

But this first. This... This carnival of gay abandonment, of glitter, and gold lame, spandex, latex, wigs,  prosthetics, and eye shadow. This fiesta of light, of smells and sounds, fog pierced by lasers, klaxons, horns, whoops, cheers, laughter. The sound of pounding feet, running, charging like the bulls in Pamplona, the bulls that nearly gored me, the mad creatures not nearly as frightening as now, penned in, miles of steel railings zigzagging me back and forth, closer to the arena and the thousands and thousands of... of... freaks.

Freaks. That's what I had thought. That's what I had kept telling myself. That's how I avoided the issue, shut away, carefully deleting my browser history, openly denouncing and mocking any others of my ilk. And all the while my gut full of shame, thick with bile and poison, like Judas, the traitor, in a bar, drunk, a kiss on the lips of some limp student, with my forehead, and his nose and his pride shattered, and all the while the others around me laughing and chortling and pushing more drinks at me and me drowning deeper in misery and confusion.

Snapped from my thoughts, I feel a gentle prod in the back. My first instinct is to cock my fist and ask questions later, but then I notice a gap in front of me has opened up where the line has moved forward. Only a few metres, but then I'm holding things up and their enthusiasm overwhelms me. I feel the urge to vault the railing, run, and hide in a ditch somewhere, but the line behind me is swelling up, rising, agitated, frenetic, boiling over. I begin to lose my grip on the railing caught up in the surge  of smiles and cheer, and then am plucked from the bank - the flood of fans dragging me towards the inevitable, tearing off the shroud of my former life, the mask of my lies and deceit.

It's catching, encouraging, enlightening. I stifle a giggle, furrow my brow, and curse myself, but another escapes - I can't help it. The two behind me like little children eager, and my legs, my thick tree-trunk legs, my bulging worked out calves and quads reduced to quivering pins of childish abandonment struggling to keep up with the beat of my heart as it takes in the thrill. The sound of space busting through the noise and my head now fluttering with joy so great and all about whipped up in to frenzy rushing towards the turnstiles and booths.

Where to go, where to go first, I hear their minds chatter. Who to see first, which autographs to collect first, which collectibles to buy first.

And me caught in the middle of it, caught up in it completely - I laugh.

This is my renaissance. This is me fighting to get out - not pushed, not squeezed out, but clawing my way out in to the light, kicking and screaming, lest I die inside. Baby come in to the light. Baby make yourself be known.

Baby you're free...