In the hospitality suite again for dinner: had a lot of experiences.

The cutest (gay) guy at the con turned up again, as did Oberon Zell, who I hadn’t seen around much but I’m glad he’s still around. Amusingly enough, he and I have the exact same pentacle ring. He got it from going to an event, I got mine...online. So, yeah. I got free ice cream.

On the awkward side, I ran into Zoe again, who apparently was actually working in hospitality, though this was the one time I saw her up there. She made a comment about the kid-leash I was holding because I was watching Sylvia’s kid. Then the third time, I went to the lost and found because I lost a knitting needle and reported it (they found one, which was sadly not mine) and she was in there apparently reporting a lost purse. Looks like she found it the next day, though.

Guy A did not show up and was never seen again by me (whew), but I did hear later that he went to the orgy party and was getting up to shit there. I’m not sure what shit exactly. Monica had a run-in with him at some point but was vague on details and didn’t seem that bothered, other than “yeah, another creepy guy” sort of thing.

I also ended up talking to three sisters who had also run into creeper dudes at the dance ritual and all of them got fed up and left. There was Guy A, there was Guy B, and a third one in a red shirt and brown pants that I guess missed me. One of the ladies went to the BDSM party and said that Guy B was, indeed, poking her in the butt with his penis at that and she was unthrilled. And I guess someone actually checked to see that he had a badge because he seemed to be wandering in without one (come to think of it, I never did see his, but people were taking their badges off to dance because that got cumbersome). One of the sisters said that in addition to all of them and me, she heard something like four other similar stories from women at that ritual.

After that, Monica, Sylvia and cub, and I went down to hear Angus McMahan’s “Pagan Humor 12: All the best bits from a dozen years!” However, everyone ended up leaving early. Sylvia and kid crept out, I think Monica was bored when she started gaming on her phone.

I stuck with it longer. I was amused that he said he was having himself filmed despite the con’s “no film or photo” policy because what are they going to do, kick him out? I liked his cracks about when you screw up in ritual, such as “leading a spiral dance into the Vortex of Doom.” He did some stuff about his family as a kid I was less into. He also (and here’s how you can tell the routines were old) did this whole story about going to Harbin Hot Springs and how he didn’t like it, but the place has burned down for good now so that just came off weird. Plus he had to update his jokes about how “the place has burned down three times...well, four now.” But when he was about to launch into the joys of having a colonoscopy, I had to walk out before my gag reflex kicked in. (I later told this to Sylvia and she was all, “I would have been into that.”)

Then one of the sisters from earlier found me hiding out bored in the hallway. She told me that she knew the drummer in that ritual and told him later all about it and that they needed to watch out more.

It never occurred to me to report any of these guys to anybody, y’all. But later that night I was by the info booth and saw Guy B again hanging around a bunch of ladies and decided to just stay by the booth until he left. Then I noticed that they had a harassment policy paper there and that we should be reporting this shit. Well, too late now, I guess. Con’s about over, and it’s the last one, and every woman ends up doing that calculus of “Is this only going to make things worse for me if I speak up, fight back, and say something?” We all know that 99% of the time the answer to that is “Hell yes, it does,” so we don’t. I probably wouldn’t have had consequences on reporting Guy B, but with Guy A being staff, I might have had some pause there.

I instead filled out the feedback form (as Angus the pagan comedian pointed out, what is the point of doing this?) and when they asked what were the two worst things about the con, I said (a) the Zinfandel room was too small and crowded, and (b) too many creepers at that ritual. I then said on the back that essentially I didn’t think they were bad enough to report--Guy A didn’t quite get that touchy on me and Guy B stopped both times when I asked him to stop. Of course, why the fuck did I let him do that either time, right? The harassment policy even said “ask them to stop first,” as I recall, so that more or less happened. But...maybe I should have reported it after all. Oh well. I feel a little complicit because I didn’t run the fuck away like I should have. This is why “give him a chaaaance!” is so insidious and awful. “Give him a chaaaance!” makes you doubt your instincts and gets you into trouble when you go against them because you’re being pressured into doing so.

For the final class that night, I went to Big Money Magic by Clifford Low. I should have gone to the anti-Trump ritual with Monica, that sounds like it was more fun. Once again, it turned out to be Yet Another Class On Conjure, with the guy bragging that he managed to snag himself a million dollar mysterious inheritance from a relative he didn’t know that nobody knew was rich, through the use of doing stuff like feeding iron shavings to a giant lodestone. There were a lot of instructions as to the care and feeding of one’s giant lodestone. Yes, I made a legit pet rock joke that he agreed with. And stuff about getting talismans made that were during Jupiter’s best transits, which is fairly rare.

I’m not saying it was bad, per se, just very complicated, like all these conjure classes are. They want to have a lot of props. I presume all the conjure workers make their money off selling all of the various salts/candles/oils/poppets, etc. etc. etc. This guy certainly had a lot of info, but he’d do stuff like just rattle off a long list of herbs that nobody could possibly write down in time or remember. People started asking, “Is this stuff on your website?” repeatedly and he’d be all “I’ll put this video on there, there’s one from last year” and one person was all, “I just looked at your website and there’s nothing there.” I will note that the website he pimped in class was his name, which indeed, has nothing there but his photo and bio. I have linked to his actual website that seems to have some actual content on it instead, albeit still not the content we were all hoping for.

Today’s ribbons (again, mostly free tables and walking by at the right time):
* Yoga Party (I didn’t go to this class, but extras were on the free table...)
* Meet Me In The Woods
* Elderflower Women’s Spirit Festival
* Happy 45th Anniversary Covenant of the Goddess
* “One-Eyed, One-Horned, Flying...”
* “I”m A Unique Mythical-Ass Effing Unicorn.”

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