This picture has been making the rounds of the Facebook since we all came home from War last weekend:
Pennsic is pretty much the ultimate in romanticized excess, and some people get very caught up in it, particularly at night. Let’s see if I can paint a picture for you:
Step 1: Imagine yourself on vacation. Not a visiting-people vacation, a foreign-locale-nobody-knows-you’re-here vacation.
Step 2: Now remove all traces of your normal identity. Clothes you would never wear in normal life. A different home, one made of canvas. Different hairstyles. A different name. Different friendships. A different accent perhaps, a different personal history.
Step 3: Now wander around at night through woods only lit by the occasional row of tiki torches, past a bog covered with mist, all with the sounds of drumbeats, dancing, and laughter in the distance.
Okay, so Step 3 is kind of hard to try at home. If you are also carrying a mug and/or hip flask filled with something you have to be 21 to purchase, then you’re getting the idea.
There’s a saying among SCA folk. Let me see if I can capture the sheer romantic poetry of it…
If you can’t get laid at the Pennsic War…you can’t get laid.
I mean, seriously. There is a lot of drinking going on, some truly debaucherous parties, backrubs are handed out freely, and everyone is on vacation. Your average Pennsic evening could range anywhere from singing songs by the campfire and toasting marshmallows to naked bellydancers and moans of ecstasy emitting from the next Port-o-John.
It’s basically Medieval Spring Break (woo!).
With its population at around 11,000 people, Pennsic is a crowd you can easily lose yourself in. And some even manage to pull off the “What happens at Pennsic stays at Pennsic” thing. But it’s also something else.
Pennsic is, at its core, just another small town.
It has restaurants, shops, and small entertainment venues. It has greenspaces and neighborhoods. You can cover the entire area on foot, but it’s going to take you a while.
And, like every small town I’ve ever known, it also has GOSSIP.
Our camp is a mix of marrieds, families, and singles. Some of the singles are of the sort to go out to the parties, find people to make out with, and come home saying things like, “He was NOT CUTE. But he was SUCH a good KISSER! I need to find him again…” And I have no problem with that sort of thing…it’s just the sort of thing I grew out of long before I started going to Pennsic. (For the record, after a handful of gentleman callers stopping by throughout the week, it was this guy that she wound up with on the last night of War. Note to all gentleman callers out there: a woman’s “type” goes right out the window when confronted with a Very Good Kisser. True story.) These people don’t really get gossiped about, because everyone already KNOWS who they’re hooking up with. We just do lovingly mocking impressions of her the next day.
I, on the other hand, have never hooked up at Pennsic. Okay, full disclosure: I have, once or twice, engaged in some hot-and-heavy hand-holding. I know…SCANDALOUS. I don’t hook up because it’s impossible to bring someone home without everyone knowing about it. It’s impossible to spend the night in someone else’s tent without your walk of shame being duly noted. It’s impossible (for me, at least) to have any romantic fun without making recognizable noises and those
tent walls aren’t as thick as they seem. I just don’t want people all up in my bidness. Other people can put their bidness out there for everyone to see, and I’m fine with that. Live and let live, and at Pennsic, anything and everything goes as long as it happens between consenting adults. I just happen to always hang out with my Clanmates, and go to bed alone.
And yet, according to this year’s in-camp gossip mill, I have apparently slept with at least 3 men (2 of whom are married) and one woman in our group.
Perhaps it’s due to my personality – my natural way of relating to people and putting them at ease is to joke and flirt, and innuendoes fly like that weird floatie stuff in a snowglobe everywhere you go at Pennsic. Ever since my first War, I have gotten more than my fair share of backrubs and doting from various men in camp, and it’s expected that some people will be jealous of that. Jealous and/or bored people have nothing better to do than to make shit up to keep themselves entertained. But I refuse to apologize for being attractive and fun to be around. Healthy self-esteem is not something one should be ashamed of.
So for next year, I have made a resolution: I will not rest until the rumor mill links me to, at the very least, a sex tape, a ball gag, and a very confused hamster.
Ya gotta give the people what they want.
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