this chapter is dedicated to vancouver's multilingual sophia books, adiverse and exciting store filled with the best of the strange and excitingpop culture worlds of many lands. sophia was around the corner frommy hotel when i went to van to give a talk at simon fraser university,and the sophia folks emailed me in advance to ask me to drop in andsign their stock while i was in the neighborhood. when i got there, i dis-covered a treasure-trove of never-before-seen works in a dizzying arrayof languages, from graphic novels to thick academic treatises, presidedover by good-natured (even slapstick) staff who so palpably enjoyed theirjobs that it spread to every customer who stepped through the door.
sophia books: 450 west hastings st., vancouver, bc canada v6b1l1+1 604 684 0484there was a time when my favorite thing in the world was putting ona cape and hanging out in hotels, pretending to be an invisible vampirewhom everyone stared at.
it's complicated, and not nearly as weird as it sounds. the live actionrole playing scene combines the best aspects of d&d with drama clubwith going to sci-fi cons.
i understand that this might not make it sound as appealing to you asit was to me when i was 14.
the best games were the ones at the scout camps out of town: a hun-dred teenagers, boys and girls, fighting the friday night traffic, swap-ping stories, playing handheld games, showing off for hours. then de-barking to stand in the grass before a group of older men and women inbad-ass, home-made armor, dented and scarred, like armor must havebeen in the old days, not like it's portrayed in the movies, but like asoldier's uniform after a month in the bush.
these people were nominally paid to run the games, but you didn't getthe job unless you were the kind of person who'd do it for free. they'd238have already divided us into teams based on the questionnaires we'dfilled in beforehand, and we'd get our team assignments then, like beingcalled up for baseball sides.
then you'd get your briefing packages. these were like the briefingsthe spies get in the movies: here's your identity, here's your mission,here's the secrets you know about the group.
from there, it was time for dinner: roaring fires, meat popping onspits, tofu sizzling on skillets (it's northern california, a vegetarian op-tion is not optional), and a style of eating and drinking that can only bedescribed as quaffing.
already, the keen kids would be getting into character. my first game,i was a wizard. i had a bag of beanbags that represented spells — when ithrew one, i would shout the name of the spell i was casting — fireball,magic missile, cone of light — and the player or "monster" i threw it atwould keel over if i connected. or not — sometimes we had to call in aref to mediate, but for the most part, we were all pretty good about play-ing fair. no one liked a dice lawyer.
by bedtime, we were all in character. at 14, i wasn't super-sure what awizard was supposed to sound like, but i could take my cues from themovies and novels. i spoke in slow, measured tones, keeping my facecomposed in a suitably mystical expression, and thinking mysticalthoughts.
the mission was complicated, retrieving a sacred relic that had beenstolen by an ogre who was bent on subjugating the people of the land tohis will. it didn't really matter a whole lot. what mattered was that i hada private mission, to capture a certain kind of imp to serve as my famili-ar, and that i had a secret nemesis, another player on the team who hadtaken part in a raid that killed my family when i was a boy, a player whodidn't know that i'd come back, bent on revenge. somewhere, of course,there was another player with a similar grudge against me, so that evenas i was enjoying the camaraderie of the team, i'd always have to keep aneye open for a knife in the back, poison in the food.
for the next two days, we played it out. there were parts of the week-end that were like hide-and-seek, some that were like wilderness surviv-al exercises, some that were like solving crossword puzzles. the game-masters had done a great job. and you really got to be friends with theother people on the mission. darryl was the target of my first murder,and i put my back into it, even though he was my pal. nice guy. shamei'd have to kill him.
239i fireballed him as he was seeking out treasure after we wiped out aband of orcs, playing rock-papers-scissors with each orc to determinewho would prevail in combat. this is a lot more exciting than it sounds.
it was like summer camp for drama geeks. we talked until late at nightin tents, looked at the stars, jumped in the river when we got hot,slapped away mosquitos. became best friends, or lifelong enemies.
i don't know why charles's parents sent him larping. he wasn't thekind of kid who really enjoyed that kind of thing. he was more thepulling-wings-off-flies type. oh, maybe not. but he just was not into be-ing in costume in the woods. he spent the whole time mooching around,sneering at everyone and everything, trying to convince us all that weweren't having the good time we all felt like we were having. you've nodoubt found that kind of person before, the kind of person who is com-pelled to ensure that everyone else has a rotten time.
the other thing about charles was that he couldn't get the hang ofsimulated combat. once you start running around the woods and play-ing these elaborate, semi-military games, it's easy to get totally adrenal-ized to the point where you're ready to tear out someone's throat. this isnot a good state to be in when you're carrying a prop sword, club, pikeor other utensil. this is why no one is ever allowed to hit anyone, underany circumstances, in these games. instead, when you get close enoughto someone to fight, you play a quick couple rounds of rock-paper-scis-sors, with modifiers based on your experience, armaments, and condi-tion. the referees mediate disputes. it's quite civilized, and a little weird.
you go running after someone through the woods, catch up with him,bare your teeth, and sit down to play a little roshambo. but it works —and it keeps everything safe and fun.
charles couldn't really get the hang of this. i think he was perfectlycapable of understanding that the rule was no contact, but he was simul-taneously capable of deciding that the rule didn't matter, and that hewasn't going to abide by it. the refs called him on it a bunch of timesover the weekend, and he kept on promising to stick by it, and kept ongoing back. he was one of the bigger kids there already, and he wasfond of "accidentally" tackling you at the end of a chase. not fun whenyou get tackled into the rocky forest floor.
i had just mightily smote darryl in a little clearing where he'd beentreasure-hunting, and we were having a little laugh over my extremesneakiness. he was going to go monstering — killed players couldswitch to playing monsters, which meant that the longer the game wore240on, the more monsters there were coming after you, meaning that every-one got to keep on playing and the game's battles just got more and moreepic.
that was when charles came out of the woods behind me and tackledme, throwing me to the ground so hard that i couldn't breathe for a mo-ment. "gotcha!" he yelled. i only knew him slightly before this, and i'dnever thought much of him, but now i was ready for murder. i climbedslowly to my feet and looked at him, his chest heaving, grinning. "you'reso dead," he said. "i totally got you."i smiled and something felt wrong and sore in my face. i touched myupper lip. it was bloody. my nose was bleeding and my lip was split, cuton a root i'd face-planted into when he tackled me.
i wiped the blood on my pants-leg and smiled. i made like i thoughtthat it was all in fun. i laughed a little. i moved towards him.
charles wasn't fooled. he was already backing away, trying to fade in-to the woods. darryl moved to flank him. i took the other flank.
abruptly, he turned and ran. darryl's foot hooked his ankle and senthim sprawling. we rushed him, just in time to hear a ref's whistle.
the ref hadn't seen charles foul me, but he'd seen charles's play thatweekend. he sent charles back to the camp entrance and told him hewas out of the game. charles complained mightily, but to our satisfac-tion, the ref wasn't having any of it. once charles had gone, he gave usboth a lecture, too, telling us that our retaliation was no more justifiedthan charles's attack.
it was ok. that night, once the games had ended, we all got hotshowers in the scout dorms. darryl and i stole charles's clothes and tow-el. we tied them in knots and dropped them in the urinal. a lot of theboys were happy to contribute to the effort of soaking them. charles hadbeen very enthusiastic about his tackles.
i wish i could have watched him when he got out of his shower anddiscovered his clothes. it's a hard decision: do you run naked across thecamp, or pick apart the tight, piss-soaked knots in your clothes and thenput them on?
he chose nudity. i probably would have chosen the same. we lined upalong the route from the showers to the shed where the packs werestored and applauded him. i was at the front of the line, leading theapplause.
241the scout camp weekends only came three or four times a year,which left darryl and me — and lots of other larpers — with a seriouslarp deficiency in our lives.
luckily, there were the wretched daylight games in the city hotels.
wretched daylight is another larp, rival vampire clans and vampirehunters, and it's got its own quirky rules. players get cards to help themresolve combat skirmishes, so each skirmish involves playing a littlehand of a strategic card game. vampires can become invisible by cloak-ing themselves, crossing their arms over their chests, and all the otherplayers have to pretend they don't see them, continuing on with theirconversations about their plans and so on. the true test of a good playeris whether you're honest enough to go on spilling your secrets in front ofan "invisible" rival without acting as though he was in the room.
there were a couple of big wretched daylight games every month.
the organizers of the games had a good relationship with the city's ho-tels and they let it be known that they'd take ten unbooked rooms on fri-day night and fill them with players who'd run around the hotel, playinglow-key wretched daylight in the corridors, around the pool, and so on,eating at the hotel restaurant and paying for the hotel wifi. they'd closethe booking on friday afternoon, email us, and we'd go straight fromschool to whichever hotel it was, bringing our knapsacks, sleeping six oreight to a room for the weekend, living on junk-food, playing until threeam. it was good, safe fun that our parents could get behind.
the organizers were a well-known literacy charity that ran kids' writ-ing workshops, drama workshops and so on. they had been running thegames for ten years without incident. everything was strictly booze- anddrug-free, to keep the organizers from getting busted on some kind ofcorruption of minors rap. we'd draw between ten and a hundred play-ers, depending on the weekend, and for the cost of a couple movies, youcould have two and a half days' worth of solid fun.
one day, though, they lucked into a block of rooms at the monaco, ahotel in the tenderloin that catered to arty older tourists, the kind ofplace where every room came with a goldfish bowl, where the lobby wasfull of beautiful old people in fine clothes, showing off their plastic sur-gery results.
normally, the mundanes — our word for non-players — just ignoredus, figuring that we were skylarking kids. but that weekend therehappened to be an editor for an italian travel magazine staying, and hetook an interest in things. he cornered me as i skulked in the lobby,242hoping to spot the clan-master of my rivals and swoop in on him anddraw his blood. i was standing against the wall with my arms foldedover my chest, being invisible, when he came up to me and asked me, inaccented english, what me and my friends were doing in the hotel thatweekend?
i tried to brush him off, but he wouldn't be put off. so i figured i'd justmake something up and he'd go away.
i didn't imagine that he'd print it. i really didn't imagine that it wouldget picked up by the american press.
"we're here because our prince has died, and so we've had to come insearch of a new ruler.""a prince?""yes," i said, getting into it. "we're the old people. we came to amer-ica in the 16th century and have had our own royal family in the wildsof pennsylvania ever since. we live simply in the woods. we don't usemodern technology. but the prince was the last of the line and he diedlast week. some terrible wasting disease took him. the young men of myclan have left to find the descendants of his great-uncle, who went awayto join the modern people in the time of my grandfather. he is said tohave multiplied, and we will find the last of his bloodline and bringthem back to their rightful home."i read a lot of fantasy novels. this kind of thing came easily to me.
"we found a woman who knew of these descendants. she told us onewas staying in this hotel, and we've come to find him. but we've beentracked here by a rival clan who would keep us from bringing home ourprince, to keep us weak and easy to dominate. thus it is vital we keep toourselves. we do not talk to the new people when we can help it. talk-ing to you now causes me great discomfort."he was watching me shrewdly. i had uncrossed my arms, whichmeant that i was now "visible" to rival vampires, one of whom had beenslowly sneaking up on us. at the last moment, i turned and saw her,arms spread, hissing at us, vamping it up in high style.
i threw my arms wide and hissed back at her, then pelted through thelobby, hopping over a leather sofa and deking around a potted plant,making her chase me. i'd scouted an escape route down through thestairwell to the basement health-club and i took it, shaking her off.
243i didn't see him again that weekend, but i did relate the story to someof my fellow larpers, who embroidered the tale and found lots of op-portunities to tell it over the weekend.
the italian magazine had a staffer who'd done her master's degree onamish anti-technology communities in rural pennsylvania, and shethought we sounded awfully interesting. based on the notes and tapedinterviews of her boss from his trip to san francisco, she wrote afascinating, heart-wrenching article about these weird, juvenile cultistswho were crisscrossing america in search of their "prince." hell, peoplewill print anything these days.
but the thing was, stories like that get picked up and republished. firstit was italian bloggers, then a few american bloggers. people across thecountry reported "sightings" of the old people, though whether theywere making it up, or whether others were playing the same game, ididn't know.
it worked its way up the media food-chain all the way to the new yorktimes, who, unfortunately, have an unhealthy appetite for fact-checking.
the reporter they put on the story eventually tracked it down to themonaco hotel, who put them in touch with the larp organizers, wholaughingly spilled the whole story.
well, at that point, larping got a lot less cool. we became known asthe nation's foremost hoaxers, as weird, pathological liars. the press whowe'd inadvertently tricked into covering the story of the old people werenow interested in redeeming themselves by reporting on how unbeliev-ably weird we larpers were, and that was when charles let everyone inschool know that darryl and i were the biggest larping weenies in thecity.
that was not a good season. some of the gang didn't mind, but we did.
the teasing was merciless. charles led it. i'd find plastic fangs in my bag,and kids i passed in the hall would go "bleh, bleh" like a cartoon vam-pire, or they'd talk with fake transylvanian accents when i was around.
we switched to arging pretty soon afterwards. it was more fun insome ways, and it was a lot less weird. every now and again, though, imissed my cape and those weekends in the hotel.
the opposite of esprit d'escalier is the way that life's embarrassmentscome back to haunt us even after they're long past. i could rememberevery stupid thing i'd ever said or done, recall them with picture-perfect244clarity. any time i was feeling low, i'd naturally start to remember othertimes i felt that way, a hit-parade of humiliations coming one after an-other to my mind.
as i tried to concentrate on masha and my impending doom, the oldpeople incident kept coming back to haunt me. there'd been a similar,sick, sinking doomed feeling then, as more and more press outletspicked up the story, as the likelihood of someone figuring out that it hadbeen me who'd sprung the story on the stupid italian editor in the de-signer jeans with crooked seams, the starched collarless shirt, and theoversized metal-rimmed glasses.
there's an alternative to dwelling on your mistakes. you can learnfrom them.
it's a good theory, anyway. maybe the reason your subconsciousdredges up all these miserable ghosts is that they need to get closure be-fore they can rest peacefully in humiliation afterlife. my subconsciouskept visiting me with ghosts in the hopes that i would do something tolet them rest in peace.
all the way home, i turned over this memory and the thought of whati would do about "masha," in case she was playing me. i needed someinsurance.
and by the time i reached my house — to be swept up into melan-choly hugs from mom and dad — i had it.
the trick was to time this so that it happened fast enough that the dhscouldn't prepare for it, but with a long enough lead time that the xnetwould have time to turn out in force.
the trick was to stage this so that there were too many present to ar-rest us all, but to put it somewhere that the press could see it and thegrownups, so the dhs wouldn't just gas us again.
the trick was to come up with something with the media friendlinessof the levitation of the pentagon. the trick was to to stage something thatwe could rally around, like 3,000 berkeley students refusing to let one oftheir number be taken away in a police van.
the trick was to put the press there, ready to say what the police did,the way they had in 1968 in chicago.
it was going to be some trick.
245i cut out of school an hour early the next day, using my customarytechniques for getting out, not caring if it would trigger some kind ofnew dhs checker that would result in my parents getting a note.
one way or another, my parents' last problem after tomorrow wouldbe whether i was in trouble at school.
i met ange at her place. she'd had to cut out of school even earlier, butshe'd just made a big deal out of her cramps and pretended she was go-ing to keel over and they sent her home.
we started to spread the word on xnet. we sent it in email to trustedfriends, and immed it to our buddy lists. we roamed the decks andtowns of clockwork plunder and told our team-mates. giving everyoneenough information to get them to show up but not so much as to tip ourhand to the dhs was tricky, but i thought i had just the right balance:
>
vampmob tomorrow>
if you're a goth, dress to impress. if you're not a goth, find a goth andborrow some clothes. think vampire.
>
the game starts at 8:00am sharp. sharp. be there and ready to be di-vided into teams. the game lasts 30 minutes, so you'll have plenty oftime to get to school afterward.
>
location will be revealed tomorrow. email your public key [email protected] and check your messages at 7amfor the update. if that's too early for you, stay up all night. that's whatwe're going to do.
>
this is the most fun you will have all year, guaranteed.
>
believe.
>
m1k3ythen i sent a short message to masha.
>
246tomorrow>
m1k3ya minute later, she emailed back:
>
i thought so. vampmob, huh? you work fast. wear a red hat. travellight.
what do you bring along when you go fugitive? i'd carried enoughheavy packs around enough scout camps to know that every ounce youadd cuts into your shoulders with all the crushing force of gravity withevery step you take — it's not just one ounce, it's one ounce that youcarry for a million steps. it's a ton.
"right," ange said. "smart. and you never take more than three days'
worth of clothes, either. you can rinse stuff out in the sink. better to havea spot on your t-shirt than a suitcase that's too big and heavy to stash un-der a plane-seat."she'd pulled out a ballistic nylon courier bag that went across herchest, between her breasts — something that made me get a little sweaty— and slung diagonally across her back. it was roomy inside, and she'dset it down on the bed. now she was piling clothes next to it.
"i figure that three t-shirts, a pair of pants, a pair of shorts, threechanges of underwear, three pairs of socks and a sweater will do it."she dumped out her gym bag and picked out her toiletries. "i'll have toremember to stick my toothbrush in tomorrow morning before i headdown to civic center."watching her pack was impressive. she was ruthless about it all. itwas also freaky — it made me realize that the next day, i was going to goaway. maybe for a long time. maybe forever.
"do i bring my xbox?" she asked. "i've got a ton of stuff on the hard-drive, notes and sketches and email. i wouldn't want it to fall into thewrong hands.""it's all encrypted," i said. "that's standard with paranoidxbox. butleave the xbox behind, there'll be plenty of them in la. just create a pir-ate party account and email an image of your hard-drive to yourself. i'mgoing to do the same when i get home."247she did so, and queued up the email. it was going to take a couplehours for all the data to squeeze through her neighbor's wifi networkand wing its way to sweden.
then she closed the flap on the bag and tightened the compressionstraps. she had something the size of a soccer-ball slung over her backnow, and i stared admiringly at it. she could walk down the street withthat under her shoulder and no one would look twice — she looked likeshe was on her way to school.
"one more thing," she said, and went to her bedside table and took outthe condoms. she took the strips of rubbers out of the box and openedthe bag and stuck them inside, then gave me a slap on the ass.
"now what?" i said.
"now we go to your place and do your stuff. it's time i met your par-ents, no?"she left the bag amid the piles of clothes and junk all over the floor.
she was ready to turn her back on all of it, walk away, just to be with me.
just to support the cause. it made me feel brave, too.
mom was already home when i got there. she had her laptop open onthe kitchen table and was answering email while talking into a headsetconnected to it, helping some poor yorkshireman and his family accli-mate to living in louisiana.
i came through the door and ange followed, grinning like mad, butholding my hand so tight i could feel the bones grinding together. ididn't know what she was so worried about. it wasn't like she was goingto end up spending a lot of time hanging around with my parents afterthis, even if it went badly.
mom hung up on the yorkshireman when we got in.
"hello, marcus," she said, giving me a kiss on the cheek. "and who isthis?""mom, meet ange. ange, this is my mom, lillian." mom stood up andgave ange a hug.
"it's very good to meet you, darling," she said, looking her over fromtop to bottom. ange looked pretty acceptable, i think. she dressed well,and low-key, and you could tell how smart she was just by looking ather.
248"a pleasure to meet you, mrs yallow," she said. she sounded very con-fident and self-assured. much better than i had when i'd met her mom.
"it's lillian, love," she said. she was taking in every detail. "are youstaying for dinner?""i'd love that," she said.
"do you eat meat?" mom's pretty acclimated to living in california.
"i eat anything that doesn't eat me first," she said.
"she's a hot-sauce junkie," i said. "you could serve her old tires andshe'd eat 'em if she could smother them in salsa."ange socked me gently in the shoulder.
"i was going to order thai," mom said. "i'll add a couple of their five-chili dishes to the order."ange thanked her politely and mom bustled around the kitchen, get-ting us glasses of juice and a plate of biscuits and asking three times if wewanted any tea. i squirmed a little.
"thanks, mom," i said. "we're going to go upstairs for a while."mom's eyes narrowed for a second, then she smiled again. "of course,"she said. "your father will be home in an hour, we'll eat then."i had my vampire stuff all stashed in the back of my closet. i let angesort through it while i went through my clothes. i was only going as faras la. they had stores there, all the clothing i could need. i just neededto get together three or four favorite tees and a favorite pair of jeans, atube of deodorant, a roll of dental floss.
"money!" i said.
"yeah," she said. "i was going to clean out my bank account on theway home at an atm. i've got maybe five hundred saved up.""really?""what am i going to spend it on?" she said. "ever since the xnet, ihaven't had to even pay any service charges.""i think i've got three hundred or so.""well, there you go. grab it on the way to civic center in themorning."i had a big book-bag i used when i was hauling lots of gear aroundtown. it was less conspicuous than my camping pack. ange wentthrough my piles mercilessly and culled them down to her favorites.
once it was packed and under my bed, we both sat down.
249"we're going to have to get up really early tomorrow," she said.
"yeah, big day."the plan was to get messages out with a bunch of fake vampmob loc-ations tomorrow, sending people out to secluded spots within a fewminutes' walk of civic center. we'd cut out a spray-paint stencil that justsaid vampmob civic center -> -> that i we would spray-paint atthose spots around 5am. that would keep the dhs from locking downthe civic center before we got there. i had the mailbot ready to send outthe messages at 7am — i'd just leave my xbox running when i went out.
"how long… " she trailed off.
"that's what i've been wondering, too," i said. "it could be a long time,i suppose. but who knows? with barbara's article coming out —" i'dqueued an email to her for the next morning, too — "and all, maybe we'llbe heroes in two weeks.""maybe," she said and sighed.
i put my arm around her. her shoulders were shaking.
"i'm terrified," i said. "i think that it would be crazy not to be terrified.""yeah," she said. "yeah."mom called us to dinner. dad shook ange's hand. he looked un-shaved and worried, the way he had since we'd gone to see barbara, buton meeting ange, a little of the old dad came back. she kissed him onthe cheek and he insisted that she call him drew.
dinner was actually really good. the ice broke when ange took outher hot-sauce mister and treated her plate, and explained about scovilleunits. dad tried a forkful of her food and went reeling into the kitchen todrink a gallon of milk. believe it or not, mom still tried it after that andgave every impression of loving it. mom, it turned out, was an undis-covered spicy food prodigy, a natural.
before she left, ange pressed the hot-sauce mister on mom. "i have aspare at home," she said. i'd watched her pack it in her backpack. "youseem like the kind of woman who should have one of these."