February 29, 2004
Debauchery \De*bauch"er*y\, n.
1. Corruption of fidelity; seduction from virtue, duty, or allegiance.
2. Excessive indulgence of the appetites; especially, excessive indulgence of lust; intemperance; sensuality; habitual lewdness.
Okay, so I didn’t attend an orgy or anything but… ‘excessive indulgence of the appetites, especially lust’… ummm, yeah.
Thursday… I’m at work and I was thinking, “what could I take that would show just how much this show means to me. I didn’t want to do anything stupid, I just wanted them to know that I have gratitude. A thought of some kind of Thank You came to mind and seemed appropriate. So that’s what I planned to do. Create a card.
I pulled a screen grab off of 314, it’s from the ending scene when they put the flag up and the flag is in color with the crowd in the background and its in black and white. I put that picture on the front with the QAF logo and Thank You in red ink underneath the picture. Underneath that, I put all the actor’s names in rainbow cascading colors…RandyPeterScottGaleHalBobbyMichelleTheaSharonJackHarris.
On the inside, also in rainbow colored inks, I included a quote that I had received in an email from a young man. A while back, he and I were emailing each other, talking about the show, why it was important to us, what got us started watching it, etc. When I opened this particular email and read why it was important to him, I teared up immediately and thought, you know, THIS is why it is important to everyone, as a society, and I wrote him back immediately and told him I was going to write to Cow/Lip and share his email with them.
I never got around to writing that email to Cow/Lip so I thought this would be a good chance to have his message out there for them and it also fit beautifully with what I really wanted to say to them but figured I couldn’t or wouldn’t be able to get it out if I got all blabbery and giddy…This is the quote from that email that I put on the inside of the card:
“Day in and day out I’d heard fag jokes, etc and that made me stay firmly planted in the closet.
But seeing those characters, even though they’re fictional, living happy and productive lives and the fact that they were gay made it seem almost normal.
As silly as it might sound, seeing shows like QAF made me feel that it was okay to be gay.”
Then underneath that, I wrote “Thank you Randy, Scott and Peter for having the courage to make things “okay”.
So this is the front of the Thank You card…
Day in and day out I’d heard fag jokes, etc and that made me stay firmly planted in the closet.
But seeing those characters, even though they’re fictional, living happy and productive lives and the fact that they were gay made it seem almost normal.
As silly as it might sound, seeing shows like QAF made me feel that it was okay to be gay.
- Chris, age 21
Thank you, Randy, Scott and Peter for having the courage to make things “okay”.
I had hooked up with a list-sib that I would be meeting at the signing. Neither one of us could sleep so we were up until 4:30am on IM… I wonder if we had not been fueling each other, if each one would have been fine. I don’t know. But we were excited.
Saturday morning… Four hours later, I’m up and ready to hit the road. Now I travel for my job, so going out of town, un-work related, on a weekend and leaving my daughter behind is just unacceptable Mom behavior but I also wasn’t comfortable taking her to the signing either. Last year the line wait was over 4 hours and that would be undo punishment for a 9 year old. Husband/Daddy said “No way” as far as making the trip. So… enter Grandma. LOL… As luck would have it, this weekend was also my mother’s birthday and Dallas is the halfway point from where we live from each other… so daughter gets to go with me on my trip, and Grandma gets to spend her birthday with us. That’s all a great thing. Couldn’t have been better. My mom decides to bring my niece so the cousins that are the exact same age get to be together as well. All I had to do (as a stern direct order by my daughter) was find a hotel with an indoor swimming pool, which I did.
By 10:25 Saturday morning, my daughter and I are on the highway heading north. It’s cloudy and misting rain and I’m thinking, “damn, last year in Detroit, it was sleeting ice and rain” must be a bad karma about weather and QAF signings. At least the ones I’ve attended. Interesting thing on the drive… playing music, my daughter’s singing. And wow, she can sing!! And sing well. She was keeping up with Evanescence and Avril Lavigne. I didn’t know and was amazed. Proud Mom moment… sorry.
After singing for a while, she crashes. Always does when riding in a car. So that leaves me and my thoughts and as usual, the muses kick in. Why oh why do they insist on talking to me while I’m driving? This is same exact way how Condom Chronicles was written. The same scene over and over in my head and I had no way to write it down. After 2 ½ hours, I couldn’t take it and we needed gas anyway, so I pull into a gas station, start the gas pump going and grab my notebook, frantic to get it all written down so it will leave my head. It worked because after that, they left me alone. Anyway…
We get to the hotel, check in and just about 30 minutes later, my mom and my niece show up. Really good timing. We have about 2 hours before my friend was to show up so we took the girls swimming. Of course, I’m still keyed up and getting antsy again. I’m blabbering non-stop to my mom and she’s rolling her eyes at me. It’s funny because she knows what I think about Gale and for some reason she thought he was going to be there. I told her no, that it was Randy, Scott and Peter and that I had met Scott and Peter last year along with Gale so Randy was the purpose of this visit. She asked if he was the blond, I said yes. She then said, “At least your taste has improved. He was the cute one, I sat and watched that episode with you (I had shown her 122 and 201 one night last year) and was looking at that Brian guy and couldn’t for the life of me see what you were seeing…” I almost died. Couldn’t see it? Gale? Not cute? Whaaa?
Oh well… I tried to explain that it was both of them, but that just got me another eye roll. How old do you have to be before your mom’s eye rolls stop making you feel like a child? Does it ever happen? Just curious… LOL
So it’s almost time to meet my friend and her husband (at least he came – wait ‘til I tell mine! Hmpf!) We pull the kids out of the pool and get ready for dinner. We have no idea where we’re going since we don’t know Dallas, but we’ll figure out. In addition to the angst of meeting Randy the next day, I have the additional angst of meeting my friend. It’s really strange meeting internet friends. I have yet to have a bad experience or be disappointed, but it still has this initial apprehension to it.
So we go down stairs and there they are. Strange. Felt like I’ve known her forever. Whew! One less thing to worry about.
We drive over to Border’s to buy the DVD set so we don’t have to worry about that in the morning. Both of us already have a set, but we want VIP so we buy another one. We’ll just return it afterwards. LOL. That’s what I did last year. You’d think they would figure that out… but anyway. We go, we buy. Cute guy behind the counter says he paid his boss to make sure he was off the next day, so he wouldn’t have to deal with all the chaos. I told him that there would be lots of women there and he was nuts to miss out. He retorted with the fact that none of the women would be interested in him with the “stars” in the house. Okay, true enough… but… So I said, “Yeah, but, you know…” And he said, “Oh right. Duh.” Yeah, dude. Duh! Of course, I’m old enough to be his mother so I don’t count. But yeah, he was cute.
We go outside to try to decide where to eat. We have no clue. I run back inside to cute guy to ask his advice. He’s straining and straining to think of what is in the area. Do you live around here? I ask. Yes, he does, but he doesn’t know where any restaurants are. None, at all! So then I ask him if he dates much. He looked at me. Yes! So I told him he needed to start taking his dates to restaurants other then McDonalds. Probably so, he agrees. Poor guy.
Poor us. We don’t know where to go and there’s not one person in the entire store that can tell us anything. Frustrating. We’re in Dallas, a city full of a million restaurants and we end up at The Outback. Sad. Just sad.
I call them to get directions and put our names on the wait list. I end up having words with the manager on the phone. Not mean or bad words and I don’t really recall how it happened, but we’re jokingly smarting off to each other. Strange, but I’m cracking up and laughing with this man on the phone for who knows what reason.
We get to the restaurant and we walk in the door, there are lots of people waiting. I walk up to say we’re there and the manager guy comes over and says you must be ____ before I can open my mouth. So do I look like someone that was probably smarting off to him on the phone a few minutes before or what? Weird. He tells them we’re here and says to give them a few minutes. More than a few minutes go by and since we’ve already “shared” so much and been snarky to each other, I tell him we’re withering away to nothing, he pops off back and takes us to our table. He comes by a few minutes later and plops a big ole Bloomin Onion on our table and says it’s on the house because we looked like we were starving. LOL So now I not only “look” like someone who’s a smart ass, but now I “look” like I’m starving. He’s in trouble!!
Everything else about the dinner went well except they put ‘cheese’ on my daughter’s hamburger so we had to send it back. Now I have no earthly idea where she gets this from, I swear, but my daughter is very animated. She throws her hands up, lays her forehead on the table and starts shaking her head. “I’m gonna die of starvation,” she says. By the time her burger gets brought out, she has eaten half my steak, one bite at a time.
By the end of dinner, my friend and I have realized that we have spent the entire time talking B/J. Ooops. And this was my mother’s birthday dinner. Big ooops. Guilt. Guilt. We couldn’t help it. Neither one of us posts much on the boards. And neither one of us has local buddies that we watch and talk about the show with, so this was really exciting, to face to face, talk with someone. A real live conversation. We were on overload.
We pay the bill and go back to the hotel. Grandma and the girls go the room; me and my friend and her husband go to the bar. Well, you can imagine how that 3-way conversation went. Two ways… hers and mine, with a detour through Brian’s loft. I admire him though. He stuck it out for 2 hours before he bailed.
We should be going to bed, but we’re too keyed up… too excited… but we finally make ourselves. I have another sudden urge to write and I think it’s only 12:30, I can write for 2 hours and then go to bed. But of course, I get to the room and everyone’s asleep, so I’m stuck in the dark with no way to write and the muses are screaming at me. So I try to go to sleep, but the same scene is playing over and over in my head. Justin is telling the story and setting up the scene, Brian is telling me to get up and write it down that it’s good. Of course, I can’t so I tell him to go away. He gets kind of pissy with me, which he always does, but he eventually shuts up. Justin, on the other hand keeps talking, but that’s okay, he’ll just keep going until I write it down, and if that means in the morning, that’s fine by him. At least that means that I won’t forget it.
Four hours later… yes, I only sleep four hours a night normally… I’m up awake, get dressed, grab my notebook and head out. The store opens at 9:00 and we have to be there at nine to get our VIP passess. We had agreed to meet downstairs at 7:45, but it’s only 6:30… I drive over to Krispy Kreme, buy the girls some doughnuts, okay, I may have 1 or 2 myself, and a very large coffee. It is blue cold out, rainy, and very yucky. I cruise by Borders just to see if anyone is standing in line. I was at the Detroit signing last year, and the crowd was huge, so I was worried. But at 6:45, there is no one there so I’m relieved. I go back to the hotel, drop off the doughnuts and head to the lobby to drink my coffee and write down all the stuff that Justin had been telling me to write all night long. You guys now know this story to be The Honeymooners… remember Chapter 15, The Pool? Yeah, that one… LOL
My friend calls me at 7:15… she couldn’t sleep either and is up early, she joins me. I put the writing away, but I did get that scene down plus the ending conversation so I’m pleased. The ending had plagued me for weeks but there in Dallas, bam, I found it. And Brian was right; it was good. So that makes me very giddy.
We go ahead and head over to Borders. It’s 7:30…we get there and there were just a few people in line and it’s still sprinkling and cold out so we sit in the car. Feeling stupid. Laughing at ourselves. What the hell are we doing? Are we nuts? I think we’re nuts. We kept looking at each other and cracking up.
A few more people show up but it’s still not enough motivation for us to get out of the car. At 8:45, we give in. We get in line by the front door, under an awning. It’s pouring down rain so hard that the splashes from the rain hitting the ground is soaking my jeans from the knees down. Great! We meet one person that we know from the internet in line.
They open the doors at exactly 9:00 sharp and we file in. We get our VIP passes, number 14 and 15 and head back to the hotel then sit in the car until 10:00, talking more about the show and laughing at ourselves. And pondering the great question… why has this show sucked us in so much.
We finally decide to go inside to get gussied up to meet the boys later. Mom and the girls go swimming again. I shower, get ready, and work on another chapter while I’m alone. Lunchtime rolls around and we need to eat, however, me… I couldn’t eat right now if my like depended on it. I’m supposed to meet my friend outside Borders at 12:45 to be ready to get in line at 1:00. But because it is my mom’s birthday and I haven’t really spent a lot of time with my daughter, we go find a restaurant so I can join them for lunch. Of course, we pick one with slow service so when 12:55 rolls around, I leave the restaurant after only having enough time to take two bites.
I get to Border’s and my friend is waiting outside with three other people. I walk up and she says, “there she is” and I’m like “what?”. Some people from the internet, that wanted to meet me. Kind of weird that people know you that way. So you’re Danny… just felt strange. And felt even stranger when they mentioned my stories. Hmmm. Just a weird feeling that I wasn’t expecting.
So we get in line, meet a bunch of other people from the internet that we know but don’t know. LOL We’re talking and having fun, swapping stories and talking about “the” scenes that made us cry, made us mad or that were just absolute heaven – to die for - scenes. In a way, this trip would have been fun just for that alone.
When we get inside we find that we are not lining up by number but by groups of 100. So even though we had numbers 14 and 15, we were probably about 50 or 60 in line. Oh well. Doesn’t matter, we’ll still be in the first group. They roamed the crowd with “Mocktinis” to raise money for charity and glow sticks. They had the Season 4 promos playing continuously on the TV monitors hanging from the ceiling, but you couldn’t hear them because they had a Queer as Folk soundtrack blasting out of the speakers. I think I’ve officially turned the corner on the appeal of loud music. After about 30 minutes, I had a pounding headache and just wanted them to turn it down. Could I have turned into my mother when I wasn’t looking? Scary thought for an old 80’s metal head. Yikes!
The guys arrived right at 2:00 which I guess was technically late because they had a “thing” to do before the signing could start. I found out later that their plane had been delayed due to the weather. Makes sense… DFW is notorious for that. But when they walked in, everyone cheered. Maybe it’s my height or Randy’s height, but the only one I could see across the store was Peter and I think I wasn’t the only one because it was Peter’s name that was yelled out as they hurried along. He turned around and waved and a bunch of people waved back at him. He had a big smile on his face.
Peter disappeared behind the big black curtain so I’m assuming that Randy and Scott went with him…LOL…
They came out around 2:30 and everyone cheered. I’m guessing somewhere between 250-500 people were there. I’m a terrible judge of quantity though.
It appears that all the rules that Border’s handed out…only signing the S3 DVD set, no pictures up close and no posed pictures was pretty much tossed out the window…They were signing anything you put in front of them and they were stopping to pose for pictures if you wanted. They seemed to be having a good time and were willing to do just whatever. Not one of them appeared to have an issue with being there.
Okay I’m working my way up the line, I was kind of a mess but I was maintaining. I had the nervous knocking knee jitters, but I had lost my goofiness so that was a plus. The biggest fear I had was that I would forget to say what I wanted to say to them because that's what I had done last year. So I was trying to concentrate on saying everything. I was playing my dialogue over and over in my head… and well... it didn't do any good. I got distracted… I’ll explain.
I had the thank you cards, the S3 DVD set, the S2 DVD set (for Randy to sign since Peter and Scott had signed it last year) and the script in my hands. I had been taking pictures but right before it was my turn, I put it away. I knew I couldn't say stuff to them if I was wrestling with the camera.
There was a guy in line of front of us that we had talked to the whole time we were in line. He was gay, probably mid 40's, very nice-looking. He was alone and said he was there to get their autographs for his friend who had to work. We talked a lot about feeling silly about being there and then chatted a little bit about the show, the finale, and some spoilers from the new season.
So the guy goes ahead and is talking with Peter, as he move towards Randy, security pushes me towards Peter. He was still talking to the guy and said "Wow, I'm so happy for you."
Randy looked up and said "What?" Then he started talking to the guy.
Peter looked right at me and sighed a big sigh and put his hand on his chest.
So I asked Peter "What?" just like Randy did. (distraction number 1, caused by Peter)…
Peter said, "he and his partner are going to San Francisco on Thursday to get married."
I was like "oh that's great" and I turned to the guy and kind of punched his arm and said, "Uh, I've been talking with you for the last 2 hours and you never said a word." He just kind of laughed and said "sorry". (That's the political forum I'm involved in, so damn, you know, I would have loved to have talked to that guy about it... but noooo, he didn't say anything and I spent the two hours oooogling over the boys in the show… geesh!! At least I kept him laughing - I can be quite funny... LOL)
So I turned back to Peter and he said "Hi", and stuck out his hand. I shook his hand and said "Hi Peter." Now my friend is in line with me and she’s in front of me. So while I’m talking to Peter, she’s with Randy. She’s a major Randy fan and she was freaking out… however I didn’t know this until later… I was talking with Peter… LOL
I grabbed my Thank You card first because I knew I had to get that out of the way first. So I gave it to him and he looked at the front and said "ohhh-oh" (two syllables). I told him that I had made them because I wanted them to know that I was truly thankful for all they had done and that I didn't know if I'd be able to articulate at the moment of seeing them so the card would express what I felt and that the inside contained a quote from a young gay man that truly touched my heart and I wanted to share it with them.
Peter read it and teared up! Then he put his hand on his chest again and said, "damn, I don't want to cry".
I told him, "no you can't cry because then I will too, I cried the first time I read it."
Then he said "thank you so much"
I said, "no really, thank you guys. It's so important."
He said "yes it is, I'm glad you know that."
So then he asked my name and I said "oh yeah," and told him. He signed my DVDs, put my card in his bag down by his feet. While he was doing this, I turned to my friend who was totally freaked. I put my arm around her and she said she couldn’t talk to him. I distinctly remember telling her she already did and Randy smiled at me. But I don’t remember anything else, because there was Randy. I think I may have pushed her to Scott… LOL… and I move to Randy.
Randy had kind of been half listening and watching me and Peter with my card while he was talking with my friend, probably because of Peter’s reaction, I don’t know. She had a t-shirt for him to sign, but I don’t really know what was going on with them. I grab the second card and handed it to him. I told him the same thing about why I made it and about the quote inside and told him where it came from and all that.
He said, "Wow, that is so thoughtful, I really appreciate that, is it okay if I open it later when it's not so..." and his voice trailed off and he gestured with his hand around in a circle.
I said "oh yes absolutely".
And he kind of leaned up in his chair and stuck in his back pocket. He said, "thank you again".
He reached for my DVD and then said, "Oh," (like he just remembered) and stuck out his hand.
I kind of chuckled and took his hand and said, "Hi Randy," and told him my name. I think he may have forgotten because the weird transition between me going from Peter to him and my friend going from him to Scott… you know, the hug and the comment. It may have distracted him from his routine.
He signed the S3 DVD set. Then I remembered the S2 set in my hand and put it down on the table and asked if he could sign that one too.
Peter heard that and looked over and said "Uh." Like in a 'pouty, no fair' way. (distraction number 2, also courtesy of Peter)
I said to him "oh no, you signed it last year."
He said "oh, okay, just checking."
Randy laughed.
So I blame Peter for the rest of this going downhill, he distracted me twice and I was doing so well with Randy. I forgot what I was doing, thanked Randy again and moved on to Scott. I have no idea where my friend is now.
This is where I get upset at myself... I'm totally off kilter now and not thinking clearly....
Scott stood up and took my hand. He said "hi."
I said "hi Scott" and I proceeded to tell him about the card.
He opened it and read it and said "oh wow, this is great."
I said, "yeah, that's what I thought when he emailed that to me during our conversation."
He put the card on the table and stood it up against his water bottle.
I told him my name and he started to sign my DVD set... then I remembered... the script. I panic... forget all about Scott and move back to Randy.
I said (interrupting him with the person behind me in line, which happened to be someone else that I knew, thank goodness… LOL) "Randy, Randy, I almost forgot the most important thing."
He said, "what's that?"
I laid the script down in front of him and leaned over the table just a little bit so I could talk quieter. (I didn't crowd his space, though, for some reason I was very conscious of not doing that, I don't know why) I told him, "this is a great scene and I would love if you would sign that scene for me, I'm so excited about how it's going to be done." (my quote is edited for spoilers here)
His eyes got big as saucers and he looked down at it. He thumbed through the pages, (there were 5), and said, "oh my god, how did you get this?"
I smiled, and said "Randy, you know I can't tell you that."
He said "oh my god" again.
So I added, "it's a secret, I haven't shared and it won't leave my hands, I promise. Will you sign it please? It's not the whole script, I only brought the one scene, because it's going to be so great." (I was babbling...)
He turned to Scott who was watching the whole thing since I had practically left him in the dust. (I feel so bad about that now - I did the same damn thing last year... errrgggg!!)
Randy asked Scott, "could I get in trouble for signing this?"
Scott said, "what am I, a lawyer?" He laughed, I laughed. He looked at me and shrugged his shoulders and shook his head (like Ted!!).
Randy looked up at me and picked up his pen, "you can't tell me how you got it?"
I shook my head, of course I'm still smiling. I think I raised my eyebrows.
Randy said "I don't know if I should sign it."
Peter wondered what was going on because the line wasn't moving so he said "sign what?"
Randy said, "she's got a script."
Peter said, "so, sign it".
Randy said "but it's from _ _ _".
Peter said "What? How'd she get that?" and he looked up at me.
I shrugged again with a grin.
Randy said, "I don't know, she won't tell me."
Peter smiled at me and said, "eh, sign it, no big deal".
Randy was certainly perplexed and in shock and looked up at me again, so I finally say "it's just for me Randy, I won't sell it, it won't leave my hands, I promise." As if he knows me well enough to trust me… LOL
He signs it and hands it back to me. I take it and thank him like 5 times.
He said "your very welcome."
I walk off and get all the way out of there and start stuffing all my stuff back in my bag and realize that I left my S2 DVD set with Randy, I never picked it back up after he signed it...so even though I had moved on to Scott, I had still left it laying there. See? Peter's fault... I was totally distracted about having to explain to him that he signed it last year and commenting on the guy getting married. Those comments weren't part of my learned dialogue that I had played in my mind for the day...LOL....
So I head back to the table telling security that I left my DVDs up there, they let me go. When I approach the table, Randy is already on his feet, holding it up and yelling out, "where'd she go?"
Then he sees me and says, "you forgot these."
I said, "yeah, I know. The script thing kind of got me frazzled."
He said, "yeah, me too" and smiled.
So I said, "Thanks again, Randy. Bye".
I practically ran away from the table and caught Scott out of the corner of my eye, half waving to me with his fingers as I went...he's so funny...but I feel bad cause I'm thinking he's thinking, she totally dissed me not once but twice... and if you add last year (not that he remembers) but that's really three times, that I personally dissed Scott Lowell... I really suck... (poor guy, that's like poor Ted - I really hate myself)
At least last year he got an unscripted compliment from me… he’s so gorgeous and I wasn’t expecting that so I blurted it out, “my god, you’re gorgeous”… LOL. He laughed and said, “thank you, I think”… so that conversation was the distracter last year and I blew all my other witty lines that I had prepared.
So did I tell Peter how wonderful I thought he did with the mushroom trip scene... NO
Did I ask him if they were really going to cut Harry out of the scene... NO
Did I tell Randy that I was so glad that they were addressing the bashing and that I just KNEW he was going to kick some major acting butt in these episodes... NO
Did I tell Scott that I loved him last season and that he did great... NO
Did I ask Scott if they were finally going to quit picking on Ted... NO
Did I ask Scott if Ted was really going to sing and if yes, if it was really him... NO
I was feeling weird about Randy and the script so I emailed the friend that I interrupted with Randy to clarify the conversation for me and asked her what she thought about his demeanor towards it...I was afraid he was upset because of what he wrote on it... she said something along the lines of no, he was fine...he was just shocked that you had it, he wasn't upset or mad or anything. So Whew!
So on my DVD's... Peter wrote my name across the top, I guess so the rest wouldn't have to... then he signed “XOX - Peter Paige” by his picture.
Randy signed “Best, Randy Harrison” by his.
Scott, just like last year, signed “Peace, Scott Lowell” by his.
On the script, Randy wrote... in capital letters...
YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE THIS... (the three dots were small circles)
BUT ... (three circles again) then signed his name.
I guess in a way, he wanted it marked as not something that should be in circulation so I couldn't sell it or something... but yet still felt okay to sign it... but I started feeling weird about it almost immediately... I went outside just to calm down... and my friend was like, don't worry, he wouldn't have signed if he really didn't want to... which is true, but I still felt weird.
My mom showed up the girls from their shopping trip just before 4:00 so I took them inside and pointed the three guys out to them...my mom said, "yep, he's much better looking than that other guy you drool over" (meaning Gale - she doesn't think Gale is handsome at all...LOL)
And we left... that's it...
--Danny
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