We're here! We're here! (Doesn't anybody wanna give a cheer?)

Quick post from Yaoi-Con-- having an AMAZING time!  (All my pictures are crap-- it's inside, no natural light!  Sorry!)

I am here with my favorite peeps-- my daughter, my bestest bestie ever, and really really happy people who like yaoi and m/m romance and who enjoy talking shop and saying, "OMG, they're SUCH a cute couple!" and, in general, it's an AWESOME sort of place to be!

A really quick story, and then I have to run downstairs for breakfast--

We were all having discussions about our shuttle ride from LAX to Long Beach.  Mary's shuttle driver was bringing his niece in from Pakistan with his earnings because he wanted her to have a better life.  Nessa's shuttle was full of irritated conservatives in shorts and sandals, who were convinced that moving Long Beach twenty minutes from LAX was a leftist liberal plot.

My guy?

My guy was sort of awesome.  He was Latino, a father, a lifetime resident of the LA area, and one of the nicest guys on the planet.  But he asked me why I was in town, and we started talking, and he admitted, candidly and with delicacy, that he didn't understand what happened to gay people to turn them that way.

I asked him--still smiling, because, did I mention he's a sweet guy?-- when his first crush was.  Did he remember who it was on?  How old was he?  I said I remembered my first crush.  I was nine, he was the local day camp guitar teacher, his name was Gary, and he thought I was smart because I knew the song title of every song he knew, just from the first few words.  He laughed, and I said, "It's exactly the same way for gays and lesbians, except--"

"Really?  Their first crush is on the same sex?"

"Yeah.  Just as natural as ours was on the opposite sex, except for a lot of them, they're told they don't know it's a real crush because they can't be gay."

"So, do they know what causes it?  Is it something that happens to them or--"

"There's a chromosomal marker--it's something they're born with, like you have brown eyes and I have curly hair.  God made them that way."

He was flabbergasted.  "Really?  Really?  Why don't people know that?  You know what we need?  People need to know that!  That's important. We need education!"

I love that guy.  I really do.