(no subject)

[rivka]

txanne just finished visiting us for a couple of days.

I think that Anne is probably the person I've known the longest without ever actually meeting. Until she got out of misia's car Wednesday evening, I didn't even know what she looked like. But we've been friends since neither one of us had Ph.D.s, since before Michael and I started dating, since back when I couldn't walk without crutches.

We met in alt.callahans. I don't miss a.c, but I have to concede that I met some awesome people there. Hanging out with Anne reminded me of something I hadn't thought of in years. An extremely tedious and hostile political flamewar had broken out, and she and I (and saoba, and a few other people, as I recall) decided that we wanted to end it. So we did our level best.


Anne wrote:
> Rivka wrote:
>> Rivka looks around, wondering where the promised musical diversion is. She
>> spots Bill Gawne in a dark corner with BarbaraFox... apparently involved
>> in heavy negotiations over the playlist. Or something.



>> Rivka casts about in vain for a Really Good Diversion. A truly terrible
>> pun, the kind that sends people screaming into the night... that would
>> work. Rivka can't usually think of puns, though.

>> "Hmmmm... Maybe if I took off all my clothes..."

> The door to the Place opens wide...wide enough for a caravan of camels to
> come in...bearing loads of silks and spices from the far-off East. The
> camel-drivers (who resemble, oddly enough, Omar Sharif) leap off their
> patient beasts, unroll priceless Persian carpets to cover the sawdust, and
> set up their instruments. (*Musical* instruments. Harumph.) The leader
> bows elegantly to Rivka, saying, "Milady, we have heard that you know how
> to belly-dance. May we convince you to replace your current raiment with a
> selection of our wares, so that we may admire your...talents?" He waves
> his hand in the direction of a dazzling array of garments, and waits for
> her answer...

Rivka is momentarily taken aback. This is hardly the diversion she had in
mind. And yet... she straightens her shoulders, lifts her chin, and says
grandly, "I regret that I have but one sense of modesty to give for my
newsgroup." With a graceful obeisance (always tricky in jeans and combat
boots, but Rivka is Accomplished), she accepts a bundle of gauzy clothing
from the caravan leader and ducks behind a nearby camel to change.

She emerges a moment later, transformed from an everyday graduate student
into a Creature of Sensuous Beauty... garbed in layers of floating cloth
in shades of green, blue, and deepest violet that reveal as much as they
hide... bracelets of beads and tiny bells adorning her wrists and
ankles...a single perfect iris set between her breasts.

Incense wafts from glowing braziers set at the edges of the richly
carpeted dancing area, its scent subtly intoxicating, soothing to the
temper and yet strangely stimulating to the senses. An exotic Arabian
melody winds through the bar, drawing the listeners into its spell. Rivka
begins to dance, fluid, undulating, graceful, abandoned...

Other GoodWenches find themselves drifting towards the heap of bright,
elaborate dancing clothes, curiously impelled to join the dance...

Worked, too. As I recall. (Damn, do I ever feel old and creaky right now.)

Comments

[lizzibabe.livejournal.com]

I always regret missing my chance to be Goodwench

[glinda-w.livejournal.com]

Y'know, the only requirement for GoodWench status is that you want to be (or feel like you are) a GoodWench.

--g, with a seldom-worn, honest-to-Ghod actual GoodWench jacket in her coat closet

[lizzibabe.livejournal.com]

Well...it was the jacket I really wanted...[gryn]

[glinda-w.livejournal.com]

Worked, too. As I recall.

Yep. :)

(Damn, do I ever feel old and creaky right now.)

Oh ghods, yes. *wry*

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Hah! I'd forgotten all about that. I thought it would be you dancing in your bottle-green velvet frock coat. (And I think my writing has suffered in the meantime.)

(I also think that rather than giving your children strep, I got Colin's cold. Its ferocity has been aided, I fear, by three flights in six hours.)

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Good things happened there, and I'll always be happy for knowing people I met there. There's something about The Place that we create wherever we are, and it's good.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

*laugh* I remember that! A most excellent strategy, resulting in a most excellent time.

I don't miss a.c either, but the friends I made there are kind of like my Favorite High School Classmates Of The Internet - we stalk each other around from one form of social media to another, and they remain at the heart of my life.

Although, by now, I've met rather a lot of them/you.

Hm. I know where my Goodwench jacket is. I wonder if it fits...

[ex-serenejo.livejournal.com]

Awwwwwwww.

[cyan-blue.livejournal.com]

:)

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

I briefly popped in and out of a.c. a few times.

The car park wasn't really big enough for my steam-powered land-battleship.

[suzilem.livejournal.com]

good memories :-)