I don't think the show lasted even a full season on TV.  It really was that bad.  The most it had going for it was Judson Scott in skin tight blue jeans running around taking off his shirt so that his character, The Phoenix, could "draw his energy from the sun."  Uh huh.  Right.  I was just coming out at that time and even I knew cheesy beefcake when I saw it - which was as often as I could get in front of a TV when the show was on!  

That little convention was a real hoot.  Sometimes the smaller ones like that make up for in spirit what they lack in everything else.  That year's little event was just such an event.  The costume contest (or Masquerade as it's called) was a high point of the weekend.  I got done up in full kit greasepaint and had at it.

Of course I couldn't put on my greasepaint as well as Willy did.  But then, Willy had to do his own face every performance and he was a pro.  I was but a mere amateur at this and it showed.

However, it was also a lot of fun!

I made quite the splash in my uniform and camouflage face paint.  Even if I did walk the wrong way off the stage.

I also learned a great deal about greasepaint.  The biggest point is that it is a true pain to remove.  That stuff is like glue and will stick deep inside your skin.  I was glad that I was at a hotel where I didn't have to pay for the entire roll of toilet tissue I used in their lobby bathroom to wipe off that gunk.  Even then I was still scrubbing greasepaint out of my pores for a week afterwards!
 

This is a shot of me in the hotel lobby rest room at PhoenixCon just before I began scrapping away all that greasepaint gunk.  

Not only did that stuff stick deep in my pores it also got into the fabric of the uniform as well.  That was a real pain to clean out.  But then, no one ever said that fashion was easy!

This shot is a real trip.  This is one of the things I really like about these events.  For most of the folks who attend them there is no wrong way to do it.  These two likely lads are a case in point.  It was very obvious that these two kids had made up their own costume, had gotten mom to help out, and were just there having a good time.  And more power to them!

I thought these two munchkins were fantastic.  Great creativity and great originality and great chutzpah as well.  They were fun to watch as they had fun at the Con.

He is what it was all about.  Mr. Phoenix himself, Judson Scott.  Here I demonstrated my skills as a dedicated amateur photographer by coming up with a nicely blurred shot of the man as he was signing his autograph.  I'm not sure it was for me as it could have been for some other adoring fan.

Aside from his notable appearance in the Phoenix, the good Mr. Scott has done a lot of other work over the years.  He has been a long time daytime soap opera star.  He's also made a string of B movies and was even in "The Wrath of Khan" where he played the character Joachim.  I believe that Joachim was supposed to be Khan's son or something like that.  In any event I thought that he was sexy as hell there too.  Being paired with Ricardo Montablan didn't hurt the eyes either!

In the years that followed PhoenixCon I kept on going to other conventions in addition to my yearly pilgrimage to Boston to attend Boskone.  Mainly I hit up the more notable Cons in my area.  I made it up to Philadelphia for PhilCon for several years as well as over to Baltimore for BaltiCon.  I even made it across the mighty Potomac on New Year's Day to catch the remainder of EveCon.  All of this was a lot of fun and I got a chance to hang with a really good gang of friends.

Standing with me are Cutter, Strider and Jerry.  I can't remember the name of the lad off to the left but I do remember he did a real nice Geisha girl in full kimono.  Cutter lives in in New Hampshire, Strider livedsn Boston, and Jerry is still in the DC area.  I met Jerry playing social volleyball with DC Sports.  The rest of met at Cons.  Such was the state of affairs that Cutter & Strider's driving down to Maryland for a weekend's event was no big deal.  These guys were a lot of fun to hang with and we really enjoyed exploring our sexuality in the supportive world provided by the Cons.

It was at one of the Maryland Cons that the organizers held a "prom dance" each year.  This particular year we decided to all dress up for it.  It helped that there was a tux rental place across the street.

I was playing with Strider at the time so we decided to wear matching outfits and chose a cummerbund to match my beret.

Actually, I never left.  I did, however, get better at it.  I also discovered something aside from greasepaint.  

AcquaColor was the stuff I found.  It is a water based stage makeup line of products.  It covers about as well as greasepaint but it comes off a whole lot easier.  You can actually wash it off with just plain ol' soap and water.  

This stuff was a major improvement in my Space Marine days.  I made good use of it too.

I think this particular shot was from a Boskone but I'm not sure of it.  If you look carefully though you'll see that my pants no longer match the same shade of red as my shirt.  Close but not exact.

This is because I decided that the skin tight pants just were too much to try and wear even but once a year.  So, I made a new pair.  I went out and got new patterns and went to work.   What I did not realize was that I was using a "European" pattern for the pants.  European patterns do not include and allowance for the seams.  You are supposed to do that yourself.  I didn't know this, so I didn't.  That meant that the already snug pants became exceptionally tight ones.  Too tight in fact.  I eventually had to put an expansion strip in each leg to be able to even pull the things on!

The years passed and I kept updating my outfit.  My hair was getting rather long at the time too.  I think I had it in what today would be called a mullet but back then was known as a "soccer cut" after so many international soccer players adopted it.  In any event I liked the length.  

I now also had a full set up of black ALICE gear and had pretty well developed things.  I liked the touch of the old Oakley sunglasses.  Those things really looked cool and futuristic.

Doing the camo on my arms really helped complete the look.
 
 

That's my boyfriend at the time, Aaron, there on my left.  He had tagged along to this particular convention and came up with his little costume on the spur of the moment.

If you've a nice enough body you really can get away with just about anything.  His "outfit" is proof enough of that.

Aaron did a lot of aerobics and had hit the weights pretty well and it showed.

He decided to call himself "The Lambda Warrior" so as to fit in with the military/ post apocalyptic them Cutter and I had running in our outfits.  What they hell, it was fun so it worked.

I also liked the reactions I got from this particular camouflage paint job.  The facial stuff, the red and black coloring, the Longhair, the beret and the whites of my eyes standing out from the red of my face really made a striking impression on folks.

At one convention a guy rounded the corner and came upon me unexpectedly.  He was set back a pace and said I looked like "Hot screaming death!"  Not bad.  My predatory smiling probably didn't help ease his fears one bit.  Too bad!

This also shows to better effect the results of the camouflage face paint.

That little bright spot on my right ear is a sterling silver lambda ear cuff.  I had yet to get my ears pierced so this was about it as far as I was concerned.  All in all I was flaggin' pretty bluntly.

Hanging with the rest of the guys was pretty cool as well.  Occasionally we would hear some mutterings from someone about the presence of gays at the convention.  Me and the guys would then all get up and surround the ill mannered bigot in unison and ask him to expound upon his views.  That was an empowering thing for all of us and an educational thing for those ill mannered few.

One of the other things we did at these conventions was party.  During the evenings it became the standard sport of all the convention attendees to wander from floor to floor searching out the rooms with the best parties.  "Best party" meant either free booze or good sex.  A really great party had plenty of both.  It was a lot of fun to get blotto'd at these events because you could always crawl back to your room and sleep it off.  Also, if you overdid it as I did once, the hotels all came with really spiffy and clean porcelain gods at which you could worship.

Here on the left you can see the aftermath of one such night's party crawling.  I think this one is from a con out in the Baltimore suburbs.  The place it was in was only two stories tall so that made the crawling much easier.  And safer too!  A good thing that, for as you can see in this shot, crawling was about all I was able to do at this point!
 

By now you should recognize Cutter and Jerry.  This picture was taken fairly early in the evening and before the party in our room got its start.  

In short order just about everyone here had some sort of thing painted on their foreheads as it suddenly became all the rage that night in our room.

I, of course, did not partake of such juvenile foolery.  No, not me.  Instead, I already had my whole face painted!  

That white boy with the surprised look on his face in the back row is Terry.  He was a pretty cool guy.  He was in the Army at the time and had a really mature attitude about it all.  While that attitude was mature I think it also gave his CO's absolute fits.  It really didn't help things that he was smarter by half than most of them.

Later that evening, after the party had wound down, after I - even in my drunken stupor - had managed to scrape off my camo, and after we had pulled the mattresses off of the box springs so that more of us had something to sleep on (I think we had something approaching sixteen folks in that two bed size hotel room) I decided that it was time to crawl into bed.