A Field Guide to Awkward Silences (19 page)

•   •   •

But I was newly single and primed to participate in speed-dating. The odds seemed good, even if the goods were bound to be a bit odd.

I arrived at the hotel and felt immediately at home, dodging R2 units and Darth Mauls, grinning at the pairs of Chewbaccas and Han Solos trying to avoid other pairs, like girls wearing the same dress at prom.

We weren’t the only ones in town for love. “I met Ron Paul,” a guy told me at the hotel bar. “I
touched
him. Do you understand? It CHANGED my life.” (What did I tell you? Everyone’s weird about something.)

In another room was the International Yo-Yo Championship. It was impressive. A kid was showcasing his extreme moves in one glove, Michael Jackson–style.

Jedi milled about the lobby. Clearly this was the place to be.

I felt naked without my Jabba suit and, chagrined, wound up buying another one. This, I rationalized, was a long-term investment.

The suit consisted of two parts: an inflatable body and a giant headpiece that fell lightly on my shoulders. You could see out
through the nostrils, which were made of mesh. It looked like something the Elephant Man would sport on a fun, casual afternoon out.

Seeing through it was not the easiest thing in the world, but it was worth it. People kept coming up and asking to take pictures with me, even though it deflated slowly until it hung loosely on my frame, as though Jabba had just had horribly botched liposuction. My Jabba Suit was to Actual Jabba as Drew Carey Now is to The Drew Carey We Remember and Love.

Since we were in Orlando, I joined dozens of other fans in the line for the “Star Tours” ride at Disney World and waited dutifully for my turn flying down the Death Star trench and over the Endor jungle. It was dark inside my suit and hard to see, but I bumbled along, panting into the one hundred percent nylon, grunting disapprovingly when people stepped on my tail. The atmosphere was close and sweaty and smelled like a beer I had spilled on the suit earlier.

By the time I made it onto the ride, I had had enough. I was hot. It was hard to see what was going on. I untied the chin strap and took off the head.

“Whoa,” said a voice behind me. “Way to RUIN the illusion.” I glanced back. A gray-haired man was glowering at me.

“You know what,” I wanted to whisper, “there is also NO SANTA.” But I refrained.

I should have realized.

In most walks of life, when you pulled off the giant face-obscuring sack to reveal that you were not a large slug but a young woman, it was a net positive. Here, it was a disgrace. This weekend, we were living inside out.

•   •   •

The next day we filed into the speed-dating lounge. The event was hosted by a fat Anakin Skywalker who went by Giganakin. There
was also an Obi-Wan Kenobi look-alike DJ and someone called the Scout Trooper of Love who was supposed to facilitate everyone’s interactions. He spent most of his time handing out pens.

Someone created a minor disturbance by showing up in a
Star Trek
uniform. “One of the guys asked me to kick him out,” Giganakin admitted. To be fair, someone showing up at a
Star Wars
convention dressed as Captain Kirk is like someone showing up at a Marine barbecue dressed as Osama bin Laden’s Vengeful Ghost, except that there are international laws that restrain the Marines in such cases.

The dates lasted three minutes each. We were to share no names, no locations. No personally identifying information. We talked
Star Wars
—favorites of the movies, objections to the prequels—complimented each other on our costumes, admitted we’d never been speed-dating before. We compared numbers of conventions. Then the bell rang. We shook hands meaningfully and the men moved on.

The first guy was scruffy-looking, wearing a T-shirt whose meaning I could not immediately discern. Since we were all identified only by number, to me, he will forever remain thirty-four. He seemed squinty. He had several prior conventions to his credit. He was followed in rapid succession by someone labeled forty-two (“You should explain that you’re the answer to everything!” I suggested. “You know, forty-two!
Hitchhiker’s Guide
?”), a plump guy with a tattoo that permanently affiliated him with Boba Fett’s clan, and a fairly normal-seeming fellow in a humorous T-shirt. I thought that we’d hit it off. Just outside the speed-dating room I heard him exclaiming to some friends, “That was
awful.
”

Only one guy was flat-out off-putting. He wasn’t bad-looking in an Aryan sort of way, but things quickly became so awkward that I
wondered whether he might be doing it on purpose, responding to all my questions in monosyllables and bedewing me with spittle.

Darth Vader appeared briefly and declined to participate, although he did volunteer to stay as “eye candy.” In any other context, a man standing in the back of a speed-dating event and breathing heavily would have been politely asked to leave. But we were elated. “I want to speed date Darth!” someone shouted. “His last love did not fare so well,” DJ Mad Kid Jedi reminded us, sounding crisp and Obi-Wan-like. “I want to date the DJ!” someone else yelled.

The women were attractive. Most were in their twenties, like me, although the participants ranged in age from eighteen to fifty-four. About the men, I can say only that no more than two were openly carrying lightsabers, and that in general they looked less like Wampa ice monsters than I had initially expected.

It turns out that my lack of short-term memory and speed-dating did not combine particularly well. All the numbers began blurring together. Was forty-four the one who said that his favorite parts of
Star Wars
were “the aliens and the explosions” and refused to say anything else? Or was that sixteen?

I got messages from two of the guys I’d put myself down for. One suggested we meet up later in the evening. The other simply provided his contact information.

I ran into a third on the floor of the convention shopping area. He was wearing an ensemble that made him look like a Rastafarian Jedi—a character I assumed I’d missed because I blinked during the eight seconds he was on-screen. He had seemed kind, but sad. He’d said he was going on the speed-dating adventure because his seven-year-old son appeared to think it was time.

When we ran into each other we didn’t really have anything to say. “You do look different with the hair,” I managed.

“Yeah,” he said.

It wasn’t quite “I love you—I know” territory.

“I think
Star Wars
is a love story as much as anything,” I said to Gigankin after the event was over. From a certain point of view, the series is all about how people are motivated and changed and sometimes twisted by the things they love. For better or for worse. There’s Han and Leia. C-3PO and R2-D2. Anakin and Padme. There’s familial love—Darth Vader for his kids. Love leads you to the dark side and brings you right back again.

Gigankin seemed to agree. He’d been telling me about how two couples had already made commitments at the Star Wars Commitment Chapel downstairs. Somehow this depressed me. I had been down there earlier; another Obi-Wan impersonator stood under a white awning festooned with lights, cramming as many
Star Wars
references as he possibly could into these “commitment” vows. It was like the Elvis chapel, but without the legally binding effect or pelvic thrusting. (“Remember, in relationships, size matters not,” Obi-Wan had said. “Fear not, I sense much love in you.”)

I had no such luck. But these weren’t the droids I was looking for, anyway.

•   •   •

As it turned out, I’d have gotten more action if I’d stayed inside Jabba.

I learned this for a fact in 2012.

The
Star Wars
Celebration fell right before the Republican National Convention, which I was hoping to cover anyway, so I figured I’d hit Florida a weekend early and get in some good wholesome time with the bounty hunters, assassins, and menacing cloaked figures before wading into the sea of bow ties.

I remembered my Jabba suit this time.

I went to hear Carrie Fisher speak and then wandered into the
dance party. The lighting was bad, by which I mean that it was so bright you could actually see the people you were talking to.

I found myself on the outskirts of the dance talking to “Hank” and “Gregor,” who had met in the line for Carrie Fisher. They seemed pleasant enough. Hank was bearded and looked nervous. Gregor was young and earnest, if a little on the squinty, spitty side.

“There’s going to be an afterparty,” he said.

“Oh?” I asked.

“Yeah.” Gregor nodded. “I’ve got a VIP ticket.”

“A VIP ticket to the Sith afterparty with Jake Lloyd?” I asked. This was an exciting prospect. Jake Lloyd had portrayed Young Anakin in the first prequel. In interviews he complained that
Star Wars
had ruined his life. The idea of an afterparty with him was intriguing. It seemed like it would be a horrible experience.

“Whoa,” Hank said.

“You should come with me!” Gregor said. “I can get us all in.”

As we walked from the convention center to the hotel where the afterparty was, we learned more about Gregor. He was, he said, a pundit. His uncle was coming to pick him up at eleven, before he turned back into a pumpkin.

He stopped conversing when his phone rang.

“Hey,” Gregor drawled into the phone. “Yeah, I made these cool friends, Hank and Alex. I’m going to stay with one of them. You don’t need to pick me up.”

“Excuse me?” Hank said.

“What?” I said.

“No, buddy,” Hank said. “You need to, um, you need to call him back and say that’s not the case, you didn’t actually ask us, like, it really would definitely not be cool for you to stay with us.”

“Yeah,” I said, “me neither. My roommates are pretty big
sticklers about that.” My roommates consisted of my suitcase, a change of clothes, and several hardcover books by P. G. Wodehouse, but that seemed like unnecessary information to volunteer.

“Oh,” Gregor said. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” we said.

“But,” Gregor said.

This exchange went on for much longer than this kind of exchange usually goes on when people pick up on social cues.

We reached the line outside the afterparty. Inside, beats throbbed and dancers dressed like Twi’leks
*
twirled around poles. The line curled around the block in the muggy Florida air. We were behind several Sexy Dark Jedi and Regular Dark Jedi and Sexy People Who Lacked a Jedi Affiliation. I climbed into my Jabba suit.

The closer we got to the front of the line, the shakier Gregor’s story became.

“I can’t believe you have a ticket to this thing,” Hank said.

Gregor pulled out a stiff, laminated red postcard and brandished it proudly.

“That’s a ticket?” I asked. It didn’t look like a ticket. It looked like a red postcard advertising the event.

Gregor smiled and pointed. “Ian McDiarmid signed it,” he said.

“But—” Hank said.

“I’ll just show it to the guy at the door,” Gregor said. “It’s my trump card. He’ll understand.”

“Will he, though?” Hank asked.

“He’ll take it and in exchange, he’ll let us in.”

“Unless he’s a big
Star Wars
collector,” Hank said, “I don’t see how this will happen. He will just say, ‘What is this? This is not a
ticket. This is a piece of paper with the autograph of someone I have never heard of on it. Why are you giving me this?’ And then he will not let us in.”

Gregor shook his head. “He’ll understand,” he said. “Just watch.”

We stood in the line some more. If
Star Wars
fans excel at anything, it is standing in lines. Gregor glanced nervously at his watch. It was eleven thirty. “My uncle is coming at midnight to pick me up,” he reiterated.

“That’s a whole half hour,” I said, reassuringly.

He cheered up a little. “That’s enough time for, like, six orgasms.”

Hank had been growing increasingly nervous the longer this interaction went on. Now he said, “I have to go to the bathroom,” and vanished into the night. As it turns out, he was never to return. Later he sent me an apologetic e-mail. (“After being perfectly fine in the Carrie Fisher line, Gregor kept getting stranger by the minute and I’d had enough. I was going to let him use my badge on Sunday, on the condition he mailed it back to me, but he turned and became untrustworthy. I am very sorry I left you there in his company with no explanation until now.”)

We arrived at the front of the line with a couple of minutes to spare and Gregor sallied forth, brandishing his postcard with Ian McDiarmid’s signature in shiny silver ink. The bouncer took it with a quizzical nod and walked away into the VIP area.

I gazed agog at Gregor through the mesh of my Jabba suit. Had he actually done this? Had all his spittle-spewing bravado paid off? Were we going to get to interact with the embittered Jake Lloyd after all?

The bouncer returned. “I don’t know what this is,” he said. “Are you Ian McDiarmid?”

“No,” Gregor said. The clock struck midnight. He handed me the postcard and made a sudden dive toward me.

It turned out that, in Gregor’s mind, this had been a romantic evening.

I don’t know if someone has ever attempted to kiss you through the mesh of a Jabba the Hutt suit, but it is definitely a unique experience. Let’s just say it’s impossible to make any headway. For better results, you could try to tongue-kiss a fully dressed beekeeper. Depending on how soon the other party notices this, it can give you a lot of time to marvel at his tenacity. “Huh?” you think. “I’m alarmed, but at the same time, I’m kind of impressed. Is impressed the word? Maybe it’s the word. Should I move? Or just stand here until it’s over?”

Several more security personnel appeared. “Sir,” they said, “please stop. Please leave.”

Outside, a white car with a tired-looking white-haired man in it pulled up. It was Gregor’s uncle. Gregor climbed in, still protesting faintly, leaving me with the Ian McDiarmid autograph.

“You okay?” the bouncer asked.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “Hey, at least I got a free Ian McDiarmid autograph out of it this time.” (Usually, when a guy does something like this, you get nothing! Or blamed.) I handed him my ten dollars and oozed into the regular afterparty.