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| Me visiting the Fleshlight Booth and Kelly Shibari (picture courtesy of Betty Blac) |
I initially wasn't going to go. Budgetarily, it was going to be a challenge to attend the inaugural
BBW Fan Fest, even though it was going on about 10 miles from my home here in the Las Vegas Valley.
But being unemployed for over a year now with no prospects on the horizon, and with my bank account hovering around double/low triple digits, it was not necessarily the fiscally prudent thing to do.
(Sidebar: If you go back and look at the date of my last post on here, it was about 24 hours before I found out I was being dismissed from work due to budgetary reasons. I had a year to stay in my position. So really, while I've been unemployed for a 13 months, I've been searching for two years. And that is why I have not been on this blog in so long. That might be changing. Stay tuned.)
However, since I am still a night owl, since I don't have to get up for work bright and early anymore, I happened to be on the site, and found a reasonably priced ticket for an all day, all access pass. After crunching some numbers really quickly, I decided that the opportunity may never come along again, and I'd better jump. So I took the plunge.
I'd never been to the Tuscany Suites, even though I used to work only a couple of miles from the resort. I park, walk in the door and am completely and utterly lost. I walked around the casion floor for a while, and finally happen upon an escalator with a sign pointing towards the meeting rooms.
As I get on the escalator, I notice a guy getting on right before me. I happened to catch his face in profile. It's adult film producer/director/legend Rodney Moore. There is no mistaking that it is him.
My innate shyness takes over. Actually, it's really more like my capacity to not disturb people I don't know, although I do get over that a little bit as the day progresses.
I've chatted with
Kelly Shibari on Twitter for a couple of years now, and have always found her to be thoughtful, thought provoking and considerate, and have been dying to meet her in person.
Well, okay, then. I will be there.
I'm sitting outside the tradeshow making notes on a couch about seeing Rodney Moore when a guy walks by. Rodney had just walked out of the convention rooms and was heading back down the escalator. The guy whips his head around and says, "It's Rodney Moore. Wow." He turns to the woman walking with him and continues, "Oh, my God. It's Rodney Moore. I'm starstruck."
Ditto, my man. Ditto.
I present my ticket, get my wrist band, and enter the tradeshow. My ticket was for VIP Access on Friday, and I was determined to take advantage of that access. (Yes, I got there around 11am. I am dork.)
Claudia Marie and her husband (the band T.P. Trash) had just begun a set on the stage located at the front of the room/exhibition hall. At 11am, the ballroom was fairly empty, and people were still setting up their booths. So it was a bit of a rough start. But I had no problem looking at Claudia Marie singing, so it was all good.
(It was a rough start for me as well, as I discovered that my camera was not ready to cooperate, as I had to run out to a store to get a memory card. In the end, I didn't wind up taking too many pictures anyway, so it was a moot point.)
To head over to the stage, I had to walk past
Julia Sands, who was looking lovely in a 1960's sort of mod paisley dress. She was there with
All BBW Cams promoting that site. I had a blast talking to her off and on throughout the day. She was a true sweetheart.
After wandering around some more, watching people from the Tuscany and Fan Fest work hard, and watching some of the performers setting up their booths, I made my way back to the front and found Kelly Shibari signing some promotional pictures for her
brand new Fleshlight. She is the first BBW model to have a Fleshlight, so this is quite a big deal.
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| See? Autographed Promo Picture. Although my copy got folded up by accident. |
She was in the middle of a conversation, so I hung around the fringes, waiting for the right time to interrupt. Overcoming my shyness was a big deal, but I broke the ice, and when she figured out who I was, I was greeted with a big, big hug.
Kelly was feeling a bit under the weather, but she spent way more time than she probably needed or wanted to talking with me. I also, somehow, got pressganged into helping out around the Fleshlight booth. I helped Melvin (the Fleshlight rep) with hanging up the banners for the booth and also helped Kelly with putting together and placing out some of the DVDs that she had for sale.
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| One of the banners I helped hang on the booth. |
I joke about being pressganged, because I readily volunteered. What can I say? I'm a sucker for a smart, beautiful woman who seems so down to earth and grounded. Now I can also add award winning to this, since she won an award at BBW Fan Fest 2012 for "Fetish Site of the Year" for
PaddedKINK.com. I also got a free polo shirt for providing my assistance.
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| Kelly playing with herself. She encouraged everyone to come play with her pussy while at the booth. |
Here's where my lack of picture taking comes back to bite me, because I was able to finally meet someone else I've been chatting with on Twitter for a while,
Jessika Vegas. I also got to meet
Amazon Amanda, who had a wicked sense of humor and took great pleasure in ribbing me. I gave as good as she did, though. I could've talked with her for hours. I also got educated on some of the most interesting lubricant I'd ever tried by
Betty Blac.
Granted, I had to call it a day early, and there wasn't much of a crowd. I did also stop by the White Party that was held on Friday evening for a little while, and it looked like a good crowd had started to show up by that point.
It was the first year for this convention, and I hope that it did well enough to come back another year. I've been to AEE twice here in Vegas, although it has been a number of years. I had a lot more fun at this event than I did either time I went to AEE.
Some of it may have been the fact that I was at this convention during a lot of the setup, so I was able to wander freely without bumping in to other people. It could have been that because I was there so early, I was able to engage some starts more easily than others and actually talk to them instead of trying to simply grab a picture and an autograph.
Would I say that I am BFF's with any of the models I met on Friday? Of course not. And I didn't really get many pictures. But the actual memories of the day and the encounters and conversations I had will linger with me forever. That makes a big difference for me.
