GULF WARS XXII [Day 2]

I look up and watch it unravel.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to sew bias into a quilted sleeve? Do you have any idea what I’m talking about? For the sake of argument, let’s say what I’m doing is very trying. I have to somehow get the needle of a sewing machine on the inside of a cuff made of material designed to absorb being clubbed half to death by men with large sticks. I’ve been procrastinating on this task for hours, and it’s the last before I finish. And halfway through it I didn’t see the bobbin spooled out and I have to go back to the middle (not the beginning, thank god) and start over. I sit down on the couch and pin the homemade bias tape at the oblique and unusual angle the task requires. I load a new bobbin into the machine, wedge the thick material under the presser foot, and proceed.

I look up and watch it unravel.

This time the bobbin thread fucking broke. I throw open three hatches to get to it, pry it out again and see the frayed end. What the hell?

The sewing machine is brand new and I pray it’s not broken. I snapped a heavy duty industrial needle doing this on Wednesday and was terrified I’d put a burr on the--no, if I keep thinking about that I’ll drive myself crazy. Short drive, right? The new machine is a beast. That’s what Joan calls it. The Beast. It’s becoming clear I’ve yet to completely tame it. The machine Tanaka gave me, a vintage 1926 Singer industrial, was appraised as beyond repair by Joan, and my father sent me to the Pocono Sew & Vac in Pennsylvania with Joan and Nan while he and mom were doing some kind of relief work in Western New York for the week. Pocono is amazingly exciting if you’re into this sort of thing. Dad told me to price industrial machines. The 4 layers of denim, 4 layers of batting and whatever else are too much for mom’s sewing machine to take. It turns out industrial or commercial machines have parts made of unattainium, and if you don’t Know-A-Guy, it’s not practical. But he had some heavy duty professional machines. I was enamored with one in particular. Just above average, great cost, on sale, spanking new. The Guy Who Knows Everything, Paul, saw me making love to it on the swatch provided and had an epiphany. He presented to me the exact same model placed there used on consignment for $200 less. It includes a walking foot that is this thing that costs $70 or more (and sews stuff), a bunch of other accessories and all the tape marks rubbed off.

I called dad to report in. I told him what I’d found.

“If I buy you the sewing machine, will there be a gambeson when I get home?”

Now I have a machine gun. Ho, ho, ho.

The Janome 1600P does one thing and one thing only. It hate-fucks fabric. It does not make button holes. It does not zigzag stitch. Fuck your little flowers and hearts. The 1600P is a fabric rivet gun. I call it the .50 Cal. It has a leg lever to lift the presser foot, a button that cuts the thread for you with a loud ‘ka-chunk,’ and a backtacking lever that responds immediately unlike an electronic button. There are no other features. It has a throat about a foot long and came with its own table. You could sew balsa wood together with this. I wanted my first period tent to be made by me. If I ever get my hands on some sunforger canvas...

The thread breaks again. Goddammit.

Add to this my fatigue, leading me to keep leaving my pincushion in front of the TV, sometimes getting up, sticking a pin in it and sitting down again without actually retrieving it, and you get 1 (one) upset Cleric. Mom asks if it’s time for me to put it down for a little while.

I can’t. I’m so close. I’ve heard, and dad is convinced, that gambesons are the moneymaker among the circles I run in. He’s dead set on having me go to the rapidly-approaching Pennsic with at least one. I feverishly dig the bobbin-holding-witchamafucker out of the jamming .50 and demand out loud why it’s doing this to me.

And as it often does, in its anguish, my mind retreats into the past.

---

GULF WARS XXII

Day 2: Unleash the Priest

My first night I sleep on the floor of Murdaigean’s tent. Ceanag has not yet arrived and we’ve only set up one tent, which is fine. It rains the first night. I brought a standard blue camping sleeping bag. Murdaigean was on a rope bed. This is an awesome rope bed, and when I come to visit them at their apartment, that’s what I sleep on. It’s fine though, I can sleep anywhere when I’m this exhausted and safe. So it rains, as I mentioned. I love the drumming noise on the roof, it helps me sleep. Then I roll over and my sleeping bag immediately absorbs a puddle, which is in turn absorbed by my sock. O-kay. Remove sock, discard, sleep in fetal position. We’re good. So long as it doesn’t get worse.

That was like a vaccine. Like introducing dead measles cells to your body so it can be ready when live ones arrive. One puddle is a warning. Gulf Wars weather, and Pennsic weather for that matter can go either way, read my horror stories in previous entries. This reminded me to be on my toes even when asleep. This would be the very worst I would deal with all trip.

Woke up to breakfast. I don’t remember what it was. Something cooked over the fire by Murdaigean. I don’t remember. I was ready to see the world.

The night before the French Laurel lady, who’s keeping her anonymity until she says otherwise, noticed I kept tugging on the chest of my cassock to keep it off my neck. She gave me some tips on how to keep that from happening. On kind of a whim though I tried wearing the frilly shirt under it. It solved the whole problem and put the touch of contrast that rounded out the outfit. Which is good because I was about to meet the awesome bastards of the Stellar Kingdom of Ansteorra.

I didn’t know what that was. I wasn’t even clear on what kingdoms were. People kept telling me I was from different places. The East Kingdom, Atlantia, Rusted Woodlands, all of these were supposed to be relevant. Oh, and Murdaigean and Ceanag are originally from Meridies, and Trimaris is important somehow--urgh. I’m figuring it out now. I’ll explain kingdoms at some point but suffice it to say, Ansteorra basically equals Oklahoma and most of Texas. Ansteorra has that big gate I showed you, and they wear yellow hoods with stars because, North Star state and so on. Big important group.

So I went trotting by this camp and suddenly five or six guys ran out to meet me. They were all wearing these hoods and carrying the various armaments of SCA heavy combat.

“Father, father!” They called out. “Father, we’re going to go fight! Will you bless us?”

This blew my mind. I had no idea how to actually do that. But I was in a place where the last thing on my mind was backing down. So I stalled a little bit by getting each of them to swear up and down they would kick lots of ass so I wouldn’t get in trouble with the Big Man for giving them the vouch. And then I realized blessing someone is a simple affair, and as they bowed their heads I blessed each of them in turn, in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, amen. They were so happy. They told me to come back at some point to join them in drinking. This was my first invitation to do so in the SCA. I hoped I’d be able to find my way back, I had no idea where I was in the first place.

And so I loped my way around until I found the Merchant’s Row. I had homework to do. These people almost obliterated me as soon as I arrived. I think I had $100 to throw away. The Diocese Collection had just come into being, so I was only there to spend my money on patterns and MAYBE some fabric, but these are insidious bastards. The first was the red capelet. I didn’t have my mozzetta or my pellegrina at the time, the red shoulder cape a Cardinal’s gotta have. $18. Red leather shoes. Ohh my god sexy. One place was selling a stole. It was like they knew I’d be there. This is where I fucked up. Most of these were $250. They were selling one for $25. I found this much later, by which point I only had $22. I would find out later I should have haggled ‘em, because if it’s that low they want it to go away. By the time I heard this I had $10. But I’m getting ahead of myself. They sold felt hats that would pass for a galero, the red wide-brimmed hat which I still can’t get my hands on. But I was here with a purpose. I found a place that sold medieval sewing patterns. I’d heard that gambesons were the moneymaker in the SCA, so I bought two packs, and one with a shitload of capes and hoods and stuff because I love those. I buy most of my patterns for eight bucks, so I nearly dropped dead when the total for these three came out to $60. Ugh, whatever, I needed them. And yes, I’ve been told since they can be found for much less online, leave me alone.

I continued shopping. That’s what I did most of my day. I think I had a conversation with each merchant and learned something. One taught me about crowns. There’s all kinds of meaning to a crown. How many points it has, if they’re topped with pearls, I still don’t have it all down. I decided then and there that if I ever ended up with that kind of honor I’d adapt it into a bishop’s miter just to upset the status quo. I met people who’d had day jobs and decided they were sick of it, took stock of their available talents and settled on sewing “and now here we are!” I was fascinated with the expertise and devotion of these people. These were the people I wanted to be like. But the most impressive was the lesson I learned at Raymond’s Quiet Press.

Now I know I avoid naming names. But I’m going to go out on a limb here because Raymond’s Quiet Press deserves your business and I was out of money. Make it happen. I was looking at brooches because what if I bought that capelet, one of these would be perfect. The proprietor showed me one, that keen bastard, it had a red diamond on it, like the card suit. “Skopa” is an Italian card game. He almost nailed me.

“Would you be Raymond?” I asked. He was.

I looked at his hands. I would say 8 of his 10 fingertips were bandaged up. Fingertips. The man work with jewelery.

I looked up at him and asked “you literally work your fingers to the bone, don’t you?”

He nodded. “Oh, yes.”

I smiled. “Doesn’t stop you, does it?”

“Oh, no. Never. No.”

This is what it means to love your work. It was one of those lessons that stuck with me. It was like I gained a level or something.

I went back to the Green Dragon. It was still light out so it wasn’t open yet but the French Laruel was making trips in and out carrying water or something, and I got her attention. Hey, I did the homework! She put her stuff down and sat down at a table. “Okay, let’s see it!” She looked at the gambesons, approved, gave me some tips, pulled out the third envelope and laughed. She said these were all from her time period. I like that. “My” time period. It was the first time I’d heard it used that way, and I’ve been thinking on those terms ever since. I’d completed my first Quest. LOL.

I must have been to the Longhall the night before. I’d spent the last several weeks hearing about it from Ceanag. “You gotta come to Gulf Wars! We have a Longhall! We have a Longhall!” What the fuck is a long haul and why should I care, woman?! She must have shown me a picture on Facebook or something. This whole event had blown me away as it was, I was expecting it to be held at a park, within line-of-sight to a parking lot full of cars and a basketball court. And just like everything else, the Longhall brutally raped my expectations. That was a stupid fucking thing to say. That’s just how awesome the Longhall is.

I’d been there the night before. I should have included that. Let’s back up a little bit. Everyone was there. The Longhall is The Place To Go if you’re Early Period. A Viking longhall is a wooden structure that is much longer than it is wide. Down the middle of the stone floor is a stone trench, where the fire goes. The raised roof leads to a window. The cold air comes in and goes into the trench and feeds the fire, and rises with the smoke to exit through the window. That’s what’s supposed to happen. In practice the fire requires a lot of attention. It was tended to by a very sassy young woman who’s been doing Gulf Wars since she was in the larval stage, and was an expert at keeping the fire going. Or at least flogging Murdaigean into doing it. She ordered him around and worked him like a dog. But that’s what you do at the apprentice stage of anything. And at one point she turned and looked down at where I was sitting.

“We gotta do somethin’ about that garb. The Catholic Cardinal thing? Creepin’ me out.”

Triumph.

The sides of the longhall are...goddammit how do I put this. They’re like benches but they’re wide enough you can lie back all the way if you want to. People sit here and shoot the breeze long into the night. Some people sleep in here. At the back is a shelf, like an altar, with art hanging from it and a place to set your drink, which you will invariably have. Behind this is a pit where they keep the pig. Yeah. The pig. This year it was Tasty III. Presumably next year it will be Tasty IV.

I’d been to Renaissance Faires before, so I was no stranger to live singing as entertainment, I sang as loud as the rest of the crowd, I clapped at the right part of the song, I had songs I’d memorized. But the singers aren’t paid here. SCA has Bards and people who sing because that’s what their people would have sang. And then there’s “filking.” Um, I’ll explain later. At the Longhall, completely at random, someone will start singing, or belting out a poem or tale of some historic significance to their Clan. It is the unspoken courtesy to shut up while this is happening, something people at Renn Faire still haven’t learned. The most common one, the one I kept hearing, was the story of Boudica. I have no idea who she was, but one particular Bard would do this epic about once a night. With passion she did it, the kind that only works if everyone else is into it which they were. They knew when to shout and when to cheer. I sure didn’t, but I did have the good sense not to interrupt. From what I can tell Boudica had some terrible shit happen to her by some bad people but they didn’t kill her, and they should have because Boudica rose up and pwnt them hardcore in the face for it. This was the more traditional fare.

Less traditional was the filking. Filking is the practice of taking a modern song and changing the words to something more SCA-appropriate. This can either mean it is reflexively about the SCA itself, or one of its members (there’s a song about our king here in the East Kingdom based on that Prince Ali song from Aladdin), or adapted to some theme of history. I say less traditional but not least, because no matter how much some people hate filking (I’m on the fence), apparently it has happened that people can cite historical precedence for this practice. And citing historical precedence for anything in the SCA is the universal “Get Left Alone Free” card.

Least traditional was the occasional modern song that would break out, but even these were quite appropriately geeky, for example Jonathan Coulton’s “First of May.”

This is where I started to really get to know my hosts. Since this is a written blog, I can’t do my impression of a Southern Scadian for you, and I wish I could, because it is the biggest cognitive dissonance I’ve ever experienced in my adult life. These people know all about their chosen crafts and place in their period of choice, and have mastered various arts of combat, and they can educate you in all these things in a thick Southern drawl. Seriously ask me in person sometime. I got my first real taste of it in some of the light hazing that was still happening while the Vikings and Celts vetted out this intruding priest. I was introduced to a huge dude. Really huge. The word “big” is in his actual name. Mike pointed me out. “This is Skopa.”

“Skopa?” he demanded. “SKO-pa?” Like he was blown away by this. Trying it over and over in his mouth. “Hwat, with a kay?” I laughed. Yes, with a K.

I’m still standing around and I notice him looking down.

“Hay Skopa!” He bellows. “What you doin’ fer shoes, man?”

I looked down. “Yeah, okay, make fun of my shoes,” I said miserably. They’d busted me, they weren’t “period” shoes a priest would wear. Partially because I’m not sure what that would be. But I got him all wrong.

“I ain’t makin fun o’ya I’m just askin’!”

I laughed again and admitted they were Shaolin monk shoes.

I knew I’d been accepted when I tried to exit the longhall to go find Murdaigean. I heard it again. “Hay Skopa!! Where you goin’ man?!”

I’m going to stop doing this now because I keep trying to spell the Southern accent and it’s really not doing it justice, and I’m afraid the big dude, who still knows me, is going to think I’m making fun of him and tie me around a tree in a bright red bowknot. So let’s talk about Day 2 like I’m supposed to be doing.

So like I said, those events basically happened on Day 1. Back on Day 2, Murdaigean is making good a threat he made before we left.

Murdaigean brought a bunch of extra Early Period clothes. “We gotta Celt you up,” he said. This would be his way, his attempt, to make me more palatable to Early Period Life (EPL).

And the damndest thing happened. I disappeared completely.

It was the odd combination of blending and not blending that made me surprisingly unremarkable. Until recently, my hair had been very, very long. As long as I could make it. Ponytail length. But not long before the event, I’d cut it all off. I find I do this whenever I leave a woman. They typically fawn over my long hair, which I cut in times of trouble as a way of excising them emotionally. So my hair was a very modern style. And my clothes were very consistent with my surroundings, but not remarkable. I was overlooked as something of a tourist. This is what people have told me. Most didn’t recognize me at all. It was strangely empowering.

This is where the safety meetings started. People visit each other’s tents in groups, small pow-wows that break off from the Longhall or the campfire to warm up and commune. There were several of these. At one of them I was talking to a woman from Crawhere who talked to me about sewing. When I was taught to sew, I was taught to do it right. Measure. Trim your seam allowances. Press your seams. Respect straight of grain. She told me that this was not common. That several people just put the pattern piece “wherever” on the fabric, and that people didn’t press or trim their seams. That knocked me out. I would never just put the pattern piece “wherever” on the fabric.

Joan would FIND me.

I met really old Scadains. One of them, a respected veteran, of whom Murdaigean is a clone, I swear, told me the story of the Skrealings. The native Canadians, who drove the Vikings out of Canada with beehives sealed in clay hurled into their camp. That story might have been on the third day.

And I met really young Scadians.

One in particular was highly respected, which you can be or not be at any age in the SCA, and at one point during the night he drifted by me and asked offhandedly if I wanted to visit his tent. I readily accepted, I thought he meant me and “the others.” But no, just me. I believe I was being tested at some intermediate level now. I learned he brewed his own beer and mead. That he was part of a kingdom that wasn’t really present here, technically had no presence at Gulf Wars. His kit was respectable, a wood bed, good-size tent. He was 22 and had been doing Gulf Wars all his life. I was 29, going to be 30 in two weeks but there was no mistaking that here, he was the teacher and I was the student, right up until he said to me,

“We gotta do something about your garb.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You got a good thing going with that Cardinal thing...but it’s gotta go.”

I smiled and shook my head. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

His face split into a grin. “Well that’s even better!”

I don’t remember when I finally went to bed that night, I remember it was late. Again on the floor of Murdaigean’s tent, just like I like it. An interesting thing had happened that day. My persona had chosen me. Triumphantly. And when I took it off, it was like I took off a part of me. And yet there were people who accepted me for me anyway.

I don’t believe in destiny or fate or karma or playing the lottery. I don’t believe this was all some cosmic directive. I just knew one thing. I liked wearing Red.

---

The bobbin had the other end of the thread sticking out and looped around the edge. Apparently this was catching on the cartridge so bad it was jamming the bobbin and snapping the thread. I pat my sewing machine and sigh. “Okay. Work with me.”

It’s a mess of stray threads, but it’s solid. I sit down and cut the stray threads off, half paying attention to Restaurant: Impossible. Finally it’s in order and I try it on. The sleeves are a little tight. Bigger next time. But I’ve made my first gambeson. The quick-release frog buttons will knock ‘em the fuck out. But all in good time. A blog is a thing you have to maintain and it’s been a few days. I’ve been neglecting it because I found out I got a few facts wrong, and I had work to do, but if you want it to work you have to actually update it. To freshen it though, I include a passage about the day’s sewing. I start writing about how my thread keeps snapping--

--whoa, hang on, did I just start write a blog that’s about itself? I think I just blew my own mind.

Tomorrow we plan for Pennsic, and I probably deliver my final word to my future traveling partner about a departure time. Then I start seeing about finishing my miter. Right now though I’m going to start on Day 3 of the Gulf Wars story so it doesn’t take as long as Day 2 did because believe me it only gets weirder from there.

Photos by Az Parris