The Renaissance Faire
An Example Of What Random People Have Asked Me To Do
This story involves my pre-dreadlocks hair and wearing all black. I’m not sure why I felt the need to point that out ahead of time, but I doubt it’s much of a spoiler, considering I was a goth for a while and have had long hair since I was in high school. In this case, I took my long hair and predilection for black clothing to the local Renaissance Faire with my friend James. If you don’t know what a Renaissance Faire is, it’s an excuse for a lot of theater, gamer, and similar kinds of geeks to get together, dress up in costumes of dubious historical accuracy, sell things no one would buy in the real world, get extremely drunk, mangle Shakespearean dialog, shoot bows, participate in mock combat and jousts, and hook up in inadvisable ways. There were other, non-geek people involved in there somewhere, but they were just a distraction. Renaissance Faires can be a lot of fun, especially if you know the people running the various attractions, like I did. At the very least, you got more free alcohol.
That year, I took my friend James. James had been active in the Society for Creative Anachronism, arguably one of the more historically accurate medieval recreation groups, but he’d never been to a Renaissance Faire. We spent the day wandering around, meeting people, eating fatty foods and getting mildly drunk. I told him various stories I’d heard, so James was primed to handle most Renaissance Faire things. He responded pretty well when Zach, an absurdly handsome gentleman I knew who had once dressed up as an eerily believable satyr and was at that Faire working as a barker, yelled out “Mr. Karl! You have awesome hair!” at me from thirty feet away as a way of saying hello. We chatted with Zach a bit, until we were shifted aside by a couple of young ladies in corsets, always a risk when socializing with Zach. This was years before Pirates of the Caribbean, but if Zach never dressed up as Jack Sparrow, I’d be shocked — he was exactly that sort of handsome. In any case, once we’d been displaced, we moved on to see the rest of the Faire.
James needed to visit the privy, which in other venues would be called the Porta-Potties, leaving me on my own for a bit. While I was waiting, a woman in her late thirties or early forties approached me and started chatting. I was honestly pretty used to random people starting conversations with me at events, so I wasn’t especially surprised. I could also tell that she was working herself up to some specific topic of conversation, and I figured that being friendly cost me nothing and made her happy.
After a bit of small talk, she got to the point: her best friend, standing over to the side a bit, apparently really wanted to talk to me, and she wanted to know if I minded. I didn’t, so the two women changed places. The second woman was also in her late thirties or early forties, nice enough, and as I learned relatively quickly, was newly divorced. I didn’t ask for details, of course. I also found out that she really liked tall men in black, which certainly described me — I was wearing a black doublet I’d made, with red satin lining, black leather trousers and boots, and a vague collection of more or less appropriate black leather pouches and whatnot to complete the look, like a large dagger which, while not black, was still a substantial blade and topped off the look of dark, mysterious, and dangerous nobleman I’d been trying for with the whole costume. I was in my early twenties, and such things were important.
I must have succeeded on some level, because the next thing I found out was that the second woman really wanted to kiss me, and wanted to know if it was okay. This being the Ren Faire, which in many ways could be seen as Vegas with much bad Middle English, and my having been single for a few years, plus the influence of the mild drunkenness I mentioned, I said yes. The kiss went on for some time, was significantly more than just friendly, was quite enthusiastic, and required the woman to stand on her toes, which I doubt she minded. I also imagine that it was at least in part due to the fact that her mouth tasted strongly of beer. The woman finished, stepped back, smiled and thanked me, and walked off with her friend, apparently pleased with the experience.
I turned back towards where James had gone to discover that he’d already returned, and was standing about fifteen feet away with his mouth actually hanging open. This would be the only time I’ve actually seen the open-mouthed stunned shock response, regardless of how often that particular trope is used in popular media. Most of the people I know are either used to strange things, or at the very least, are used to strange things happening around me. Quite often, the people I knew were the source of the strange things happening around me, but at least they weren’t boring.
Fortunately, James was a resilient person, and was able to recover from the surprise. This was good, because he was the one driving, and shock is not a good state to drive in.
