MY FIRST CONVENTION EXPERIENCE

(Featuring a Comedy of Errors!)

by JoAnn Baca

Beauty and the Beast fandom was something I stumbled upon in the mid-1990s. It happened because the agency I worked for finally got the World Wide Web for the new computers given to the staff and nobody quite knew what to do with it. We got training in WordPerfect for document creation, and then were told to poke around and figure out how to use the computer’s internet connection. Presented with this blank slate, I wondered what to look up. On a whim, I typed in “Beauty and the Beast” and eventually found BBTV and the online fandom community.

On BBTV at that time there was a lot of conversation about a fandom convention in Minneapolis (the 1997 Reflections con), which made me wonder a lot about what kind of weirdness I’d stumbled into. I mean, I was a fan of the TV series, sure, a BIG fan…but I wasn’t the type of person who would go to a convention…was I?

I thought a lot about the in-person conventions as I got to know the online community better, and realized that since the 1998 convention was being held in Virginia Beach, just a few hours’ drive from where I lived at the time, my travel costs would be minimal if I wanted to take a chance on going. If I found out it was too weird for comfort, well…I could just hop back in my car and drive home.

On BBTV I found some fans who needed another roomie so they could attend their second con, and I made plans to join these online pals who were “con veterans” but mostly strangers. So far, so good!

I drove down to Virginia Beach and apparently got there very early, because despite being told that fans would be milling around in the lobby, there was just one there. She (I came to find out) was a bit of an outlier in the fandom, and since I was waiting for my roomies who had booked the room, I had to stay in the lobby… while she tried to sell me a “4th season” novel she’d written, asked for funds so she could attend a multi-fandom convention later in the year where she planned to “advertise” B&B fandom… It was quite an odd situation for my first in-person meeting of a B&B fan! But eventually other fans trickled in and I found a couple of my roomies, and lucked out – turns out I had some amazing, talented women to room with, for that con and for years to come!

Fast forward to dinnertime. Since I had a car, I offered to drive some of the large group of fans headed out to dinner. Unfortunately, my car battery was dead! Off everyone else went to find food, while I sat in the lobby for a couple of hours, until somebody from AAA showed up and towed my car to a gas station for a new battery! So I didn’t have dinner that night, but did sneak a bit of peanut butter from a roomie’s stash!

The next day, when the con started, I got to raise my hand when the emcee asked if it was anyone’s first con. [That was the only acknowledgement for con virgins at that point! It wasn’t until several years later that the concept of making a special deal out of our con virgins was developed.] I wandered into the dealers’ room with my roomies and was in heaven for hours! But when it came time to get autographs from Jay Acovone and others from the show’s staff, I just stared at them from the doorway. I watched other fans line up and chat with them, but had no courage to do the same. Still, just looking on from the doorway seemed magical enough to me! 

One of the best moments of my first con was getting to meet fanfic writers. I was gobsmacked to meet Teri P. – who turned out to be just a normal human woman, not some fanfic goddess floating on clouds wearing a sparkly crown! Another highlight for me was seeing my fanfic in the conzine. It was such a thrill to know my name was “in print” along with so many writers whose work I admired so much.

That night, a bunch of fans went to dinner at a hotel near the con hotel and I went along with them. Near the end of the dinner, I excused myself to make a quick phone call from a pay phone in the hall (I had no cell phone back then). When I returned to the table, there was nobody left from the group I’d eaten with! Someone had sat my purse on a chair, possibly the person clearing the table. Worst of all, I had paid no attention while walking to that hotel, so had no clue how to get back to the con hotel! [I finally figured it out…phew.]

The con hotel was beachside, and I saw someone dressed as Vincent having photos taken on the beach (the con’s title was Beauty at the Beach). It was magical! How remarkable to find out it was a woman – Lisa G. – who had crafted the makeup and dressed so convincingly as Vincent!

One memory which will never leave me was the hotel fire alarm going off. My roomies and I had bought a TON of zines – literally several xerox boxes full – and we stayed in the room as the alarm was going off, wondering how to save our zines! We considered carefully dropping them out the window, wondering if the boxes would survive the several-story fall. One of my con roomies coined the phrase “OP” (for Obsessive Pathetic) to describe us, and she really had us described perfectly!

Fast forward to leaving the con hotel. I had my suitcase plus my and another roomie’s boxes of zines to take home (to ship hers later). So when the gas station called to say my car battery had finally been replaced and they’d pick me up, I assumed they’d be picking me up with my car and I’d drop the driver off back at the station when I paid my bill. But…nope! The gas station guy arrived in a teeny sportscar! When he looked at all I had to transport, he gulped hard! I have no memory of HOW he managed to load that tiny car up with all that stuff, only that he DID manage! We actually had an audience, because nobody could believe how much had to be transported in such a small vehicle. I swear he bent time and space to do it, but I’ll just call it a convention miracle!

When I got home, I told my hubby that it was a sometimes weird, sometimes crazy, sometimes lonely, sometimes funny, but ultimately great weekend. It turned out to be the first of an unbroken string of annual B&B conventions that I’ve been able to attend, and most of my roomies are the same as the ones I shared my first convention with. They may be held in different places with different activities, but every convention is still a mix of crazy and funny and weird but mostly wonderful experiences. I wouldn’t trade them for the world!