The Dark Side of Fandom
By Mani
Let’s take a moment and talk about fandom. In particular, let us focus on anime fandom. I’ve had my fair share of rants in regards to what goes on at anime conventions, the type of people you’ll run into, and things of that nature. A lot of that was done in fun, simply making light of an institution that I myself am a part of. There is a time, however, to be serious about some things. There is a dark subculture to fandom, and I was unfortunately given the opportunity to witness this some years ago. For various reasons, all of which will be detailed here, I was unable to share what I had experienced, at least not fully. It’s strange when and where inspiration will hit you, but I simply caught sight of something today that made me sit back and think, reminding me of what I had witnessed some years ago.
This year’s particular convention was to be different from that of years past for several reasons. For one, this was the first year in quite some time that Neil would not be able to make the festivities. Because of this, this meant that I would be rooming with a slightly different crew this year. Friday proved to be fairly normal as far as the convention experience went, with nothing really standing out too much in the grand scheme of things. It wasn’t until Saturday night that things started to get interesting.
As I’m often prone to do at AWA on Saturday nights, I’d taken the opportunity to wander about the convention center, trying to find something to do. In the past I had often met the most interesting people around this time. With my room mates being on the slightly antisocial side of the spectrum, they were already in bed by this point. I tend to be a night owl over the course of the weekend, which was a direct contrast to those guys. I had already stopped by to check out the rave (which sucked), so I was anxious to find something else going on. I’m not exactly sure where I picked up the tidbit, but a few of the random guys I was talking to mentioned that they had heard about a party taking place somewhere on the seventh floor of the hotel. Not having anything else to do, the five of us decide to pop on upstairs and see if we can find out what was going on.
Upon arrival to the seventh floor, we really don’t come across any sort of indication of a party taking place. We decide to split up and check the different hallways, hoping that we can find something to do. Maybe it’s because this isn’t exactly something that I get to do every weekend, but I have a hard time going to sleep on Saturday nights at AWA; I always need to try and find something to do those late nights because hell, I can be antisocial on my own time. We wander the halls for a bit, but we come across nothing. Dejected, most of the members of our impromptu horde return to the rave downstairs, while I decide to stick around for a bit and wander some more. Surely there had to be something going on.
That was when I saw one of the room doors open and I see a petite and very topless blonde-haired girl walk out with a couple of friends, smile, and walk into another room across the hall. Don’t get me wrong, she was certainly frazzled over the fact that a total stranger had just seen her topless, but not nearly as much as I would have expected. My mouth dropped for two reasons; the first and most obvious, of course, was the fact that a petite and very topless blonde-haired girl had just walked by me in the hallway. The second, however, was a bit more profound than that.
I recognized her.
At last year’s AWA, me and several of my friends had gotten quite drunk and decided to check out the rave on that Saturday night. There was a young lady there with several of her friends dancing away, and it just so happened that I recognized her from a photo. At the time, Neil was friends with another young lady that frequented AWA, and at one point she had sent him a somewhat suggestive picture with her and a few of her friends. I had caught a glimpse of the picture at one point, and promptly noticed that this was one of the girls that she had been posing with. With that knowledge, we proceed to make idle conversation with her, mentioning the mutual friend. She’s still dancing around, and being the friendly and somewhat flirtatious person that I am, I dance with her for a bit. TC happens to be there at the time as well, along with his trusty video camera, and captures the whole thing. While that action was innocent enough (hell, I didn’t even touch her), there did end up being a huge backlash over it. Heather and I were just really getting started with our relationship, and at the time she wasn’t too keen on me drinking with the boys. She got much better about the concept years down the line, but there was definitely a rift caused by the whole ordeal. I told her about the entire incident later so that there would be no other backlashes. ‘Nipple-Girl’ (as the young lady had been dubbed by the lot of us due to a wardrobe malfunction that saw her exposing part of her breast to the world) was just someone that I had danced with that night, and nothing else.
And here she was walking down the hall, showing more than just a mere nipple.
I casually ask one of the guys if there was a room party going on, and he invites me inside. It looks like I had finally found something interesting on this Saturday evening.
I step inside of the room, which already has about a good eight or so people in there already. Amongst this lot is a guest that has been a part of AWA since its inception, but whom I’ll decline to name here. I will say this though- he’s a pretty famous artist in convention circles, and is in fact the guy responsible for an anime-representation of myself currently hanging on my room wall. There are actually a few people in there that I recognized, friends that I had met some years ago, but hadn’t seen in quite some time. And of course there’s Nipple Girl on the bed, making out with another topless (but not quite as attractive) heavy-set young lady that I had actually run into on the elevator earlier that weekend. I had no clue that the next time I saw her that she’d be in this little predicament. The two young ladies making out on the bed served as a backdrop to the festivities on the inside, as the host (a heavyset gentleman that was claiming to be a police officer somewhere) was serving drinks, and I was spending time catching up with a few of my friends. On occasion new people would wander in; at one point, this incredibly drunk guy comes in, probably no older than 19. Where this guy had gotten alcohol was beyond me, but he could barely stand, much less formulate a coherent sentence. And when he tried to hop on the bed and join in on the girl/girl make-out session, there were several cries to beat him down and toss him into the hallway. Being the diplomat that I am, I offer to play bouncer and escort him out. It was a little strange I have to admit; as fate would have it, I had actually read an interview with Michael Clarke Duncan a few days beforehand, who apparently was a bouncer before he got into acting. In it, he described the best way to deal with drunken and belligerent individuals; the key was not to try and intimidate them (which nine times out of ten would cause a fight), but to keep your voice low, like you’re talking to a friend. That keeps the drunk in question from flying off of the handle, and he’s more apt to listen to what you have to say. I was pretty shocked when I tried it, and with a bit of effort, managed to get him out of the room with little incident. I get a bit of applause for my efforts and some congratulations from all around. Shortly thereafter, the horde decides to move the party downstairs, as apparently there was a courtyard at the hotel that had become a bit of a hangout spot at this late hour. The young ladies put their tops back on, and Jen (previously known as ‘Nipple Girl’) smiles and says “Thank you for being such a gentleman”, and goes to give me a quick peck.
I turn and take it on the cheek. Some controversies can be avoided ahead of time.
Now, what was that all about, you may be asking yourself? That, my friends, is just back-story, leading up to this. This is where it starts to get strange.
A group of us from the upstairs party arrive to the courtyard, which is teeming with all sorts of nocturnal souls. It made me somewhat better, knowing that I wasn’t the only insomniac wandering around the convention center that weekend. Nonetheless, there was quite the motley crew assembled there that evening. This was definitely an older crowd compared to what I had been used to seeing at AWA. A few teens-to-early-twenties, true, but they were definitely the minority. Some were in costumes that seemed to be more fetish than anime-inspired, and there was a cross-dressed fellow there as well that I ended up having a pretty deep conversation with at one point during the course of the evening. I go to sit down, and to my surprise, Jen insists that I sit near her. I do so, and to err on the side of caution, I proceed to name drop Heather a few times during the course of the conversation. Jen actually looks shocked the first time I mentioned her, apologizing and stating that she doesn’t want to mess with people involved in a relationship. I thought it was rather odd for her to get so apologetic all of a sudden, because from what I had gathered from an earlier conversation, she was strictly into women. I doubted seriously that she was trying to hop my frame. I can be a little dense at times though, I admit, so who really knows?
At several points during that late evening, Jen would randomly pull her shirt down and flash everyone. This was of course met with applause, and the attention of several of the younger guys present that night. At one point, Jen requests a cigarette from the group, and announces that she would make out with whoever brought her one first. I have never seen so many cigarettes come out of pockets in my life. To her credit, she did make good on her promise; she made out with the young man, tongue and all. Admitting the skankiness of it all, I casually sat back, smirked, and wondered if anyone was going to believe everything that I had witnessed that night. Surely things couldn’t get much stranger than this. Leading off with a line like that, however, I’m sure that you have all realized by now that yes, things got much stranger.
At one point during a random flashing, a young man comes up to Jen and offers her money to make out with him. I had heard Jen joke earlier that evening about how much money she had made off of fanboys at last year’s convention, and she seemed like she was poised to do the same this year. She agreed, and the guy forks over the money. And they proceed to make out for about a minute or so. Jen actually grabbed his hand and slapped it on her left breast at one point, and anime-con stereotypes aside, you could tell that this poor kid had no idea what he was doing. I quietly shake my head in disbelief, and a few minutes later a guy comes over and offers money to fondle her. I barely have time to blink before the guy attaches himself to that infamous left breast, squeezing and licking at it like a man well-aware that the clock was running. Never mind the fact that he was neglecting the right breast (which Jen managed to find a stray gentleman’s hand and slap it on there). This goes on for a little while, and I’m starting to get a little creeped out by the whole display. We’ll not get into the fact that fanboys were pretty much swapping saliva on her mammaries, as it seemed like every time one finished, there was another that wanted to try. Just about everyone that approached her, however, did cast a wary glance at me from time to time. Part of me wanted to just head on out of there and go to bed, but there was a part of me that didn’t want to leave her down here by herself. Most of her friends had gone their separate ways, which left me as the only guy in the area looking out for her best interests. I had to stick it out, if nothing else to make sure she made it back to her room alright. My faith in humanity as a whole was fading fast at that point; I had suddenly become her surrogate bodyguard, and I wanted to do everything in my power to make sure no harm came to her.
Some time later, an older gentleman makes his way down to the area, and begins speaking with Jen. She spoke fondly to the man, which showed me that she knew him. I sat firm at that point, as there were several things about this man that bothered me. First off, Jen was young, maybe 18, 19 at most. This slightly intoxicated man, on the other hand, looked like he could have been pushing 40 easily. And I’m not one to judge a book by its cover, but man, that bastard just looked creepy. I’m paying attention to their conversation, and it seems that he’s stored something up in her room upstairs; apparently he’s about to try and head home, and wanted to snag whatever was up there. Jen gets up out of her chair to escort the man upstairs, and I think that this would probably be the point where I sneak off and try and track down a few of my friends. However, to my shock, I feel her touch my arm. “Could you come with me?” she asked. I quickly make a mental tally of the situation. It doesn’t even take me a second to come to my decision. “Absolutely,” I answered, standing up with her.
I can tell right off of the bat that Father Time (as she had introduced this strange man as) wasn’t too keen on my presence. In fact, he tried to pull the “Well, GOODNIGHT” routine on me at several points. Jen, however, would have none of that. “He’s not going anywhere,” she simply stated. Every time that Father Time tried to get rid of me, it just made me that much adamant about staying. I just got the impression that she just didn’t feel comfortable being around this man by her self, and each of Father Time’s attempts to get rid of me just put me that much further into the bodyguard mentality.
We eventually arrive at the room upstairs, and of course Father Time tries to dismiss me again. “Sorry,” I stated flatly. “Jen wants me to stay.” A few minutes later she emerges from the room carrying a cooler of some sort, and turns it over to Father Time. He wants her to walk with him to his car, and as to be expected, Jen asked me to tag along. I was all too happy to do so.
On the way to the parking deck, Jen pleads with Father Time to not try and drive that night, as he was quite obviously still smitten from an indeterminate amount of alcohol in his system. He relents finally, stating that he’ll just sleep in his car until he’s a bit more sober. You’re a shining bastion of humanity, Father Time. I can only pray that security arrests you for stealing young lady’s panties, or some other sick, twisted reason. We arrive at the top level of the parking deck, and Jen asks if I can give them a moment. She asks me to stay close, but she wanted to talk to him for a moment. I take a few steps back and turn around, but I stay close. I didn’t trust this guy in the least, and I really didn’t care if he knew it. I hear them talking with low voices near his car, and after a while, I cast a quick glance over my shoulder to see her kissing this guy old enough to be her father goodnight. And not just a simple kiss, mind you. This was full-fledged, tongue-in-mouth kissing. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t right at all.
A few minutes later she comes back over, and we start heading out of the parking garage. We make some idle chitchat about the whole thing, but in turn, she thanked me for sticking around. “I really don’t trust that guy,” she told me. “I’m glad that you were around, just in case.” I wish that I could have said the same, unfortunately. I was glad that I was there to look out for her when apparently no one else could, but at the same time, I felt tainted by what I had just witnessed. The whole night just made me start to question how a person views their own self worth, especially in light of everything I had seen that night. What did Jen accomplish from all of this? Was this for her own confidence? And if that was the case, how could one’s self love be so low that she would want to put herself in that situation? Fatigue overtook me when I did go to bed that night, but there have been other nights where I’ve sat up and asked myself those questions, trying to figure out that poor girl’s thought process.
Ever since that AWA, I’ve made it a point to try and find Jen, if nothing else to see that she’s still alive. There was just this air of tragedy about that girl, as if she were destined to die young and empty. I haven’t seen her since, but I did catch a glimpse of Father Time coming off of the elevator at last year’s convention. There was honestly a moment where I wanted to rush through the crowd, grab him by the throat and throw him back into the elevator so that I could have a few words with him. I thought better of it, but that didn’t stop me from staring a hole into him.
Why hasn’t this story been told until now? Well, it’s not like I haven’t tried to. The next morning I started telling my room mates, but thanks to a drunken friend of mine coming to the room and banging on the door while they were asleep, they seemed more content to bitch at me that listen to what I had to say. Heather was the next logical choice, but she seemed less-than-enthused to hear about things after I mentioned the lesbian party. Besides, I didn’t know how she’d react, especially since it involved the very same girl from last year’s near-incident. TC and Galen where my next choices, but I gave it some thought- both were closely involved with the whole tape incident from before, and I was a bit hesitant to give them something else to possibly hold over my head. That left Neil, and even he didn’t get most of the story until a few months ago. This was just one of those situations that’s just difficult to articulate, and just seems so strange, you have to wonder yourself if it really happened, or was it all just a dream.
Earlier today, I saw a man that looked eerily like Father Time, walking with a young lady about half his age. It could have been a father and a daughter; I’m not so totally jaded as to not believe that. But all the same, it just made me think back to this. Maybe now I can start to make sense of all of this, if there is any to be made at all.