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Life was fairly boring for a long while. Then I read a Darkover book by Marion Zimmer Bradley which had an invitation on the last page to join the Friends of Darkover. I scrawled off a quick note [I was never much of a letter writer] to join. I began corresponding with some fellow Darkover fans.

One, Judy Gerjuoy, asked me if I was going to Philcon? I immediately wrote back, wondering politely, "what's a philcon?". After enjoying her roll on the floor, Judy wrote back explaining what a Philcon was [and the basic concept of cons]. She then invited me to attend my first science fiction convention, Philcon 77, in Philadelphia.

I irritated my parents by leaving to attend Philcon77. My favorite aunt, Aunt Emma, was visiting to see all of us, and especially me, on whom she doted. Ah, well. Choices, choices. That was my first taste of SF fandom, and, after that, I was addicted. I wanted more. More, I tell you! More!

I joined Arthur Hlavaty's newly forming Golden APA .... I fucking devoured the weirdnesses in the Illuminatus! trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, and became a fairly regular contributor to Golden APA. I like weird. Hell, I am weird. Warning to others: If you want your life to be normal, do not -- repeat, DO NOT --worship the Goddess of Chaos.

I'm not normal. Shit, I never claimed to be normal ... whatever that is. Anybody want to to try a definition? I didn't think so.

Fuck, my life hasn't ever been close to "normal" since I got my first tattoo in 1979; the tattoo is a variation of the yin-yang called the Sacred Chao [Hail Eris! All Hail Discordia!], showing the balance of Chaos and Order, tattooed on my right bicep ... with flames around it, no less. Normal? Who wants normal? It's boring.

I came out of the closet -- shattered the door, really [I'm gay and proud: I'm here; I'm queer; get used to it.] -- to my parents in 1980. I have a copy of the letter I wrote ... somewhere, which I modeled after the letter in Laura Z. Hobson's book, Consenting Adult. Plagerize from the best when you can. I mean, fuck, it worked in her book .... After a nervous ten days, I called Mom only to hear her say, "Of course nothing has changed. We still love you and only want you to have whatever will make you happy." After three hours of blubbering, not saying much beyond some random monosyllables muttered by each of us in turn, and crying a lot, we hung up. I went to bed.

The next convention, I came out to my friends there. One response was, "Oh, I've known that ever since I met you. I was wondering when you were going to tell us."

Aside from one serious relationship with Robert David Allen, a [then] teacher in the Philadelphia School District which lasted eighteen months and divided neatly into three six-month phases: six months of the "lovey-dovey, kissee-kissee, hold hands until you make others nauseous" phase; six months of "argue at the top of your lungs in department stores because he wants to spend several hundred dollars we don't have and can't afford" phase; six months of the "oh Lady and Lord [I'm also an eclectic wiccan and Ceremonial Magus], how the fuck did I get into this and even more relevant, how the fuck can I get out of this" phase. At the end of which I packed up a Ryder truck, and our mutual friend John [I can't drive a stick shift] hauled all my possessions off to where I started: Johnstown, PA.

I've been free of romantic entanglements since then. I'm not sure whether to be grateful or not. Thinking of the first six months, well, we were fairly nauseating. Thinking of the last six months, I can't believe I didn't murder him. I am extremely intelligent; I could have gotten away with it. [Yes, I do know that most of the people who said that are in a jail cell right now. But I don't need to brag about things like that ... and, as your friend, I know enough not to burden you with this knowledge. I have not written a book about the murder of a lover ....]

That more or less brings me to where this Journal begins: how I vanished so thoroughly for so long ... and what happened to bring me out of my comfortable little hole in the Universe that I crawled into and pulled in after me.

Peace and muscles.

Ox Stolidus
[formerly Rick Brown]
oxjock@gmail.com

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