Kate and the Magic Nachos
After I filed the last dispatch, I returned to the Hyatt lobby and found my lovely but frazzled kitten. She had been searching for her Little Black Dress and discoverd she had left it at home. With our friend Ann as a helpful fashion advisor, we headed for the Crown Center Mall to remedy this.
While the two of them shopped, I received a call from Augur, asking about the status of my assignment, which saved me from becoming trapped in a "Does my body make me look fat?” situation in the store. Kitten managed to get out of there after spending only a hundred dollars. I breathed a sigh of relief and we de-escalated down two levels to Fritz’s Railroad Restaurant, a diner where little trains delivered our hamburgers.
By the time we returned to the Westin Hotel conference venue, Bill Patterson, one of the Centennial organizers, was reading an excerpt from his new biography of Heinlein. While he took questions from the audience, my attention wandered around the hall. There were fifty early-birds there of various ages. One of them asked a question about Heinlein's intention to include a scene (in 1938) in which his hero ended up in bed between two lovelies. I muttered that that "sounded like an average weekend at my house."
Evidently, I muttered it loud enough to be overheard by a young man named Jay, who was blogging at the next table. He rushed up to me after the last question, breathless, to tell me about his new relationship with a young married woman and her husband. Since he was excited by the thought of discussing this with folks who would understand, I referred him to Practical Polygamy, which I had published in Urbanagora the previous winter. He and his suitemate, Alan, sat down with us at our table.
Then, I was startled by the heterodyning of a geek-girl approaching terminal excitement. I had heard that sound before, in stores that sold rare anime or had large fuzzy 20-sided dice you could hang from your rear-view mirror. This time, the source was pointing to my shirt and vibrating, demanding the attention of her escort, a middle-aged man wearing a black t-shirt sporting a slogan about Ayn Rand. He looked like a retired professional wrestler charged with defending the honor of a Mensa temptress.
She was stunning—raven hair to her waist and an hourglass figure that showed us that the timer had just been set. A tiny maple-leaf flag was near the top of her blouse. She pushed her oversized glasses back from where they had wiggled when she saw my shirt and told me that she wanted to steal it. (Not the first time I had ever heard that, but the frequency of the remark, sadly, has diminished over the last two decades.) I explained to her (by now I had learned that her name was Kate) that it was a limited edition created by my wife, Cheron, in tribute of Spider Robinson's Callahan's Crosstime Saloon and that Spider and Jeanne would be arriving about 10pm.
I have to say that I was intrigued by this time, so I invited the unlikely duo to sit at the table and visit for a while, since the speaker (as well as the rest of the hall) had wandered off. We passed around introductions, at which point Alan asked all of us what we did.
Fortunately, I didn't have a mouthful of soda when Kate informed us that she was a WebWhoreTM and that she had had to change her badge name to her professional name in case any photos were taken of her during the conference. The fellow with her was not a bodyguard, but a Denver native named Charlie she had met in the hallway. She had spent the last three months having orgasms on the Internet (while geeks watched at the rate of $6/minute) to raise the money to come to the conference. Therein lay a story, of course.
Once upon a time, she was going to be a nun. She had spent quite a bit of time with the members of a convent and was approaching the point where she would take her initial vows. In her spare time, Kate had been reading science-fiction in a friend’s library. On the top shelf, only reachable with a chair, was a copy of Stranger in a Strange Land. After reading nearly everything else, she climbed to the top and snatched it—devouring it with relish.
Her world changed after she completed it. She then sat down, read the Bible cover to cover and told her mentor, Sister Mary Margaret, that she had discovered that "other women liked both men and women—Christianity was, perhaps, not the road for her." The wise nun explained that they had been waiting for Kate’s crisis of faith (which all potential initiates experienced) and that she should explore the world and her identity, returning when ready to take her vows.
While she finished the story, three other newcomers arrived—Colin, a sociology graduate student from New Orleans with many visible piercings, and Jason and Alexa, a lovely young couple from the San Francisco Bay area. Kate mentioned she had a bottle of 12-year old Scotch purchased at the Duty-Free, but needed a room to drink it in. There was no shortage of volunteers—she picked Jay and Alan—so we headed off to their room in the other hotel.
I remarked that she looked like a geekess pied-piper as she led our group on the ten-minute journey through the glassed-in walkway to the Hyatt. There were nine of us, now. We arrived at their room, uncorked the Scotch, and passed it around. Kitten mentioned that we didn’t have to physically drink to share water or scotch—a reference to the bonding ceremony in Stranger in a Strange Land.
Kate showed us her website. Someone asked why there were no shows scheduled for her and she said, "Because I'm on vacation, silly." We all agreed that “Yes, indeed, those were some lovely breasts she had there in her photos.”
Now it was story time. As the bottle made its rounds, we all contributed. Kate was from Montreal, so we spent time discussing the nuances of language. Several of us had spent time in Europe, so people switched back and forth among French, English, German, and the patois spoken in Quebec. We discussed Canadian and American politics and dismissed them as beneath our notice.
Then we began telling work stories. By now, Kate and I owned one corner of the room and were both talking non-stop. It wasn't really a competition, even though it sounded like tall-tales night at Callahan’s. The quality of the stories became better and better as the room became more and more lubricated. I told the story about painting the police cars orange. Kate described posing profitably for necrophilia-fetishists wearing only a sheet and a toe-tag. Jason talked about living in a commune dedicated to making sure that women had non-stop orgasms—now that was a showstopper.
About 11:15, Kate realized she hadn't eaten since breakfast. Fortunately, room service was still available, so she rang for nachos. While they were on the way, she exited fluidly, returning ten minutes later in an exquisite blue dress intended for the gala on Saturday night. It was form-fitting and scoop-necked, displaying her charms. She flowed into the chair in the corner and she and I resumed captivating the room.
The nachos arrived—a huge metal plate covered with tri-colored chips topped with a delicious smelling mixture of meat, cheese, and salsa. Looking over at Kate, I became a bit protective and said, "It would be a tragedy to get the nachos all over that dress—it would certainly ruin it. You should get a towel." She smiled over at me and said, "I've got something a hell of a lot better than a towel—skin!”
She slid the dress over her head and we found it had been the only piece of clothing she had been wearing. She placed the plate on her lap, tucked a cloth napkin under her chin, and said, "Dig in!"
And so, gentle readers, this is how I ended the first night of the Con—eating nachos from a plate on the lap of a beautiful young Internet sex worker. Oh, and they were great nachos, too.
Best.........conference...........EVER.
l
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