The Exotic Erotic Ball – Day 1 [Part 2] NSFW

Now with 50% less superfluous metaphor and simile!

In our last episode:

Yet again my fears are shot down in a blaze of awesomeness and candor as we all frankly talk and laugh about our strange stories and backgrounds. We’re only a few minutes into the convo before the car arrives.

The driver gets out, and for a moment I think it’s one of my high school classmates¹. He talks as fast and as recklessly as he drives, but we get to our hotel with a quickness.

Our lodging is the America’s Best Value Inn Suites, located in South Market. A misnomer, as the hotel staff is largely foreign and since our room comes with a complimentary copy of the Bhagavad Gita instead of a Gideon Bible. Refreshing, I thought, but different.

Nick and I get to the room to find a luxurious suite with only one king-sized bed. There’s that awkward split-second eye contact between two heterosexual men over the same bed, and we decide to ask for a different room. It isn’t until later that we found out Halcyon and Ashley ended up with the double-bed room and a simple swap would have sufficed.

15:30 – At the hotel

After a few short hours, our lift to the Ball is on his way. We ready our panel outfits and pack our bags. I feel that squeamish excited nervousness particular to being a vanilla performer at a strawberry affair. We head down the elevator to meet Halcyon, Ashley and the driver waiting in the lobby.

It’s a five minute ride to the Naval base on Treasure Island where the event is being held. We’re walked to the production office to find that Emily isn’t there, so we plop down on the steps outside and wait.

I strike up a conversation with the security guard standing outside the office, because he looks intimidating and bored. He’s about my height, with a shaved head and a butt chin cleft so deep I can’t help but wonder if anything is supposed to come out of it.

We talk about fitness a bit, and I’m surprised to find out he used to be my weight². He gives me some workout and diet tips and, in spite of his gruff demeanor, we part as friendly acquaintances.

After a short wait, Emily shows up and walks us around the compound. The hangar we’ll be calling our second home for the next two days is still being modified for the expo. Electricians are running wires and setting up booths, while most of the vendors are already settled in and smarmy.

Emily has some talent wristbands, along with video credentials so we can get access behind the stage barriers and into the green room. I’m pretty sure this is to be my first and last time holding valid credentials, so I start plotting mischief.

Nick, ever the videographer, has decided to film the minutia of our being shown around, so the tour is slow going.

She shows us Pricasso, the painter from Australia who uses his penis instead of a brush. His paintings are strikingly well made, and features portraits of a naked Sarah Palin with a used vibrator at her side as well as an oddly conservative McCain/Obama piece.

We see the main rigging exhibit, ringed with large paintings of women in various states of restraint. The master rigger seems to be perpetually standing back, as if admiring an art installation at the Louvre. This is a man who has found his passion.

The Snake Babe is already lounging in her bed with her huge yellow beast, charging cash bucks for photo ops. Her plastic smile is scrubbed and shiny, but she allows me to take a photo after she sees my pass.

Our last stop is the theater where our videos will be showing: a dark hole with “Theater” printed on a banner above the entrance next to the Burlesque stage where our panel is to be held.

It’s a small room, with a screen and dim lighting appropriate for screenings, and seems to be able to fit about 150 people standing comfortably. Nick and I share a glance that says “In an event with beautiful naked women, do we really think people are going to want to stop, go into this out-of-the-way dark room and watch our videos?”

16:45 – Clear for takeoff

We all part ways and agree to meet back in the green room in time for the panel scheduled around 19:30, Nick with his camcorder, me with my Nikon and Halcyon with his girlfriend. It becomes obvious to Nick and I that we might have our priorities out of whack.

I’m a newborn discovering daylight. I’m in a world with crazy Burlesque acts I’ve never been able to see before, strange exotic vendors, The Asian Diva Girls Go-Go dancing on stage… and oh my god these guys are creepy.

It turns out the Expo on the first day isn’t a candle to the angry sun that is the main Ball. There are only a few hundred people milling about and in a space as big as this people cling like the last Cheerios in a bowl of milk. The empty industrial floor is eerie; a hardened military veteran being stepped on by a creepy crowd.

Scarier still are the attendees themselves. I made no gilded assumptions on who might frequent these types of events, but I hadn’t quite expected some of the characters milling about. These people were different breeds of the same species; stereotypes with the same Myspace interests.

They were all there: the executives hitting on the girls working the booths, drunk enough to believe they have a chance and disheveled enough to make other predators keep their distance. Sober Nondescript Americans wearing nondescript WalMart clothing, ogling every pair of cheeks or tits gracing their field of vision. Awkward lanky indoor kids all grown up, stretched out and beat down by life drooling and staring at the wonder of walking pretty flesh.

Windbreakers. Why do the sociopaths favor windbreakers for these kinds of events? Is it ritualistic garb for visiting the world outside of the cubicle? Perhaps some malformed concept of mating plumage… Christ they always look like they bought them in 1983. Those diagonal stitched stripes must mean something… It must be rank, I’m SURE of it!

³I grab a short man by the jacket with both fists and interrogate him on his rank in the army of the Twelve Monkeys from his new position two inches above the ground. He is shaking in his shaded perscription aviators and insisting he doesn’t know what the hell I’m talking about.

Security pulls me off and to the side, asking what the hell that was all about. I tell them my theory and they start laughing and let me off with a warning. One of them asks where I got the “Evil” patch for my vest, and I tell him. Turns out his nickname back home is “Evil B.” I don’t ask why, but I do my best “Whiteboy smoothe” handshake with him and scuttle off to the green room.

George, the announcer for the Burlesque stage, doesn’t know when exactly we are going to go on. Apparently the projector they ordered hasn’t arrived yet and we might have to cancel today’s panel. “But since you’re around, lets get some background on you guys so I can announce you.”

“Uuuhhh… erm… well…”

As quickly and simply as I can, I tell him what we do and why we’re even known in the first place. A blonde bombshell in a pink modified hoop dress comes into the changing room I was shuffled into and listens intently to my verbal drive over the speedbumps of my insecurity. I notice her face about 7 inches from mine and take a look at just who this nice smelling person diddling my personal bubble is.

Scarlett Johansson?

For once my social skittishness saves my ass as I nonchalantly say “Hello!” and snap back to bringing civilization to the heathens⁴. After a few minutes, George and the main stage MC leave me in the dressing room of the gorgeous woman I had nervously just ignored politely.

She asks me for more details on what I do and such, seemingly interested in just who the hell I was. I catch the slightest traces of a European accent, and though I couldn’t place it, it was enough to know that while she looked strikingly similar, it was thankfully not Johansson.

I take my leave after a few short minutes to not mess up first impressions and get down to seeing the underbelly of the Ball.

CONTINUE to part 3 [NSFW]!

¹: Kurt Durgraff [not his real name]: a weasley, nasal-voiced brat who liked to take apart electronics and watch a ridiculous amount of porn, regardless of whether he had company or not. I heard a rumor once that he had sex with a sophomore member of our robotics team on the hood of his Volvo, but given he was a creep and she was waaaay out of his league I was disinclined to believe it.

²: It turns out being poor is the best thing that has happened to me, weight-wise. I’ve gone from 275-ish to 240 in the past 3 months.

³: This paragraph and the one after was added for comedic Hunter S. Thompson effect, although I did meet the security guard who said he was known as “Evil B.” He was just standing in front of the Burlesque stage at the time.

⁴: Haar haar. Sarcasm tastes like pennies.

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