By Jules Prosser
We went undercover. We didn’t know why or how, but we were on a quest for “the truth”. Carol got a fancy secret recorder from Media Loan, and I didn’t even have to ask her to do that, even though I considered it. I needed her—she was good at this shit, and knew what was up. Carol never fails.
Since we were incognito, we had to have fake identities. I suggested porn star names because I’m fucking boring. Carol had a better idea. We both have bags with different names Sharpied on them. “Carol” is on hers, obviously, and “Alexis” is on mine. She suggested we use them. She’s so smart.
Carol was a standard hot Bo Peep, pink and pretty, with her cascading red hair and garter belt. I dressed up as a maenad, AKA a slutwife of Dionysus, AKA a crazy creature who incites drunken orgies. It was a recycled Halloween costume, but fuck it. I looked okay in my ill-fitting red dress and janky papier-mâchéd horns. My companion lent me her black scarf to protect me from a very-probable nipslip. Carol is the greatest.
We got there kind of late because we missed a few buses. The weather was terrible and the con was in the CRC. There were as many nerds as there were raindrops. All the wonderful campus dining options were kawaii-fied: The “Wandering Eggroll”. Who made that decision? Is that okay to do? I was too sketched out to sniff around.
There was a “Maid Cafe” in Sem II C. The line was out the fucking door when we arrived, but it was emptier later on and we took a gander. We were told that customers were “given a (cute) maid” to serve them American snacks and tell them about panels and shit. I was like, “Carol, they can’t just give someone a maid, can they? Is that OK?”
Maybe I was taking it too personally. Perhaps it was just a way to capitalize on horny weeaboo dudes, though, which I approve of. Did the maids get paid, though? I had so many questions. But we were broke and could not gain access. On our way out, I laughed my ass off because the Maid Cafe took place in my lecture room.
The CRC was wild; lots of bright colors and silly sounds. Carol and I went to the bathroom to freshen up and activate the voice recorder. The business really started then—we were on the JOB. We couldn’t fuck around under any circumstances. We walked into the gym and it was NUTS. There was so much cute shit to buy. We were roped in. We looked at fan art, picking out our anime boyfriends. I don’t know about Carol—she was so serene and collected—but at that moment, my defenses were destroyed. I bought pins, and fucking fan art: the Crystal Gems from Steven Universe drawn as the Powerpuff Girls for my girlfriend because we love that show.
I turned around and saw this oldass guy who made me feel uncomfortable a few years back. “Eeeek! Turn around, Carol!” I was scared. I later saw two of my supervisors, who are probably reading this now. Otherwise, our disguises were effective, and we soon felt comfortable. Our second protective measure was to tell people we came up from Salem, Oregon. It raised a lot of eyebrows. At one point, we sneakily asked a Greener to point us in the direction of Sem II B, where some panels were taking place. “You came up all that way for this?” they asked. You bet!
When we got to Sem II B, my pal was there—let’s call him Cat Ears—with his friend Teal Hair, cute as hell and killing time. Carol and I went into a demo on making cool shit with plastic and blowdryers, then a panel on “filking” (which is apparently a musical genre tied to sci-fi and fantasy fandom). We left, though, because we “had to find Alexis’s water bottle.” I really did have to find it, though. We didn’t lie. “That’s my lecture room,” Carol giggled.
Our friends were waiting. We hightailed outside and smoked behind the library. Teal Hair and I nerded out over our love for Kohh, a Japanese rapper with a blue haired bowlcut and a Mona Lisa throat tattoo. She blasted that shit off her phone and it was one of the finest moments of the night.
The four of us then went to the CAB. Teal Hair said she could maybe get us all into the Greenery because her kinda-homey was working the front. Carol and I waited for the OK, and decided we wanted to piss in Cheerios. Like, go to the Greenery and sneak some Cheerios into the bathroom. For journalism.
It was our most brilliant idea yet, but it didn’t happen. “I have Cheerios at my house,” Carol offered, but we both knew, deep down, that it wasn’t right. If we couldn’t piss in Cheerios at Chibi Chibi Con, we couldn’t do it anywhere else.
But don’t worry—Carol and I spent a hot 40 seconds in a cosplay conga line afterward. That was pretty magical.
Three things I uncovered: if you want to be surrounded by sweaty sexual tension, go to an anime convention; Carol is the best; and I am a nerd. I bought a fucking Sailor Moon lanyard at Spencers the other day. I clearly belong at Chibi Chibi Con.
