October 10
 
 

I think that the true test of how good a time someone has at a particular event can be measured not by how many friends or enemies you've made, how many rumors you're the center of, or how many guys you sing Rush songs to in an elevator, but by how big the piece of toilet paper you find stuck between your asscheeks in the shower the next morning.  Someone in their right mind is not going to leave tp for future discovery, and as such, I have to believe that the 10 hours of drinking I'd done leading up to the tp catastrophe is to blame.

JournalCon was a kick in the ass, to be sure.  Almost none of you were as I expected you to be.  The whole experience was incredibly surreal and fun and if it's your lighter I have in my pocket, I wholly apologize.  Send me your address & why I decided I needed it and I'll mail it back to you.  What I find funniest about what people have written about the reading I did, or me in general is the general consensus that I got up to read ripping drunk.  Obviously, I don't have a daily interaction with you on a face to face level and so, you'd not know what my normal stage of forthcomingness with the words "fucking" and "cocksucker" is.  You'd not know that my stories are long and lumbering and I frequently crack myself up.  If you've been reading me for a while, you'd know that I am, without a doubt, the biggest ADD freak to ever tell a story about medical waste dumping and that the wine I'd been drinking probably, if anything,  made me a little more sedate.  That having been said, thank you all for plying me with booze.  Thank you for talking to me on the phone and giving me free shit.  Thank you for being surprising and cool and interesting and fun.  Thank you, Amy for the book.  And for the fucking hilarious monkey pictures.  Thank you for picking up little bits of stupid American slang, Caoihme, no no!  Thank you for singing backup.
Thank you for not smothering me after hour 8 of my Bryan Ferry/Roxy Music singalong.

I think that people were all a little bit blown away by the coming together.  By the introduction of the person behind the words.  We were all so much more, so much huger than anyone could convey in our journals.  Our lives and what we've chosen to reveal or not to reveal.  I met some of you, and want to be your friends forever.  I want JournalCon every weekend.  I want the little heartbreaks and laughs and tears.  I want the storming off, the absolute feeling of being underwater with people who are not quite friends, but who'd save your life without question.  Everyone (and I'm guessing here, speaking for myself, but seemed to be the general agreement)  had an amazing time. Obviously, some bonds became stronger than others, some new and fresh, some tested.  How very cool this was.  How human.  How perfect.  Well worth the 10 hour drive.
 

In any case, I have NO photographs of the event.  My camera, brought along especially to take unflattering photographs of each and every one of you was thoughtfully left in the glove box of my car along with my labelmaker, which would have provided hours of high hilarity (as labelmakers do. Sure they do.  Shut up.  Labels are fun.)   I never bothered to go after it because I couldn't even imagine where they might have been storing it.  I kept convincing myself that they were driving it around at night (Me: "Wait..what the fuck...? Was that Mister T?  Aw, shit man!"  Funny, I never had that particular worry when I drove the Volvo, I never once thought that the valets might be out joyriding in it or trying to pick up chicks.  "Hey, hey, there little lady! Wanna do it in the trucky part?  Who's your daddy?!" )
 
 

JournalCon was very much like a family reunion, one I'd love to attend every year.  Next time, I think I'll consider not reading an entry containing the words "Spontaneous Abortion Table of Doom".  I mean it. Next time, I'm all about being serious and somber.

Okay, and as a final comment:  I keep hearing how I might have been more hilarous if I hadn't been staggering drunk and able to keep my place on the page for the reading.  I defy any one of you to stand before a room full of people, using a computer which is not yours, and try and read something full of html tags in a 10 point font--TEN POINTS--and not lose your place.  Geez.
 
 

the other day/home/email/tomorrow
 
 

It said it never should have been this way
now wedonít wanna go back to the way we were
the way we were