The Best Worst Best Time: Charmed 2019

It's not much of an exaggeration to say that everyone I know who went to Charmed 2019 had a total emotional meltdown at some point right before, during, or immediately after. Besides the sensory and social overload, and ambitious hopes and expectations vs reality, our kink explicitly involves playing with emotions and extreme headspaces. And all of it mixed with sex. This stuff is no joke!

Anyway, I was no exception, and I often had to consult my own con advice (especially point 1). There were some rough hours, but at the same time this is what I live for. Being there with khatsha, and BEHIVE compatriots, and friends and play partners in the larger community, led to some of those peak experiences I'll always look back on.

Here are some of my highlights, not in any particular order:

• Ariadne giggling in glee as she described various evil tactics in her Mind Breaking class
• khatsha and Ellie Copter's rowdy Progressive Muscle Reclamation class, maybe the most fun powerpoint I've ever been to
• khatsha's most excellent short skirt and other top notch outfits
• Watching @QueenVictoriaa getting her 70th hairpull induction (from 70 different people!) - after agonizing if she should stop at 69, which is of course the sexier number.
• Ellie Copter and Ragez's wonderful hypnosis show, keeping the cumulative chaos of a good stage show but adding consent, and community injokes. I won't soon forget Ragez's very real fear as he was chased across the room by CalamityBrain as an aggressive chicken.
• Being part of a BEHIVE swarm out of Boston, even in the airport. At the convention there were at least 19 regular BEHIVE munchgoers! Including a number of people who were new to congoing and would not have come if not for discovering the community through our events. The idea that we are giving people courage to step into the bigger hypnokink world is the best feeling, and thinking about what we will be adding to it is even better.
• Teaching my Resistance Play class, and later being busted on stealing a pencil-based resistance induction - by the guy who wrote it on Tumblr and just happened to be in the audience, @FatallyConceited! Great to hang out with you, and I will credit you next time!
• Quick connections with people as part of my Human Dominoes project, and then seeing the results gradually crystals throughout the con, as one trance triggered another trance. In my class, I was extremely pleased to see 7 person chain reactions in the audience whenever I dropped khatsha, and then in a domino meetup on Sunday morning it got up to 14 people!
• Attending the valuable POC roundtable by Yoshi, SnapMeDown and AlianneCimorene, and learning that the community has actually made progress. One statement by a young man, a black hypnofetishist nervously reaching out to the IRL community for the first time and finding there were others like him, almost had me in tears.
• Very fun room parties, with a lot of creativity and sexiness, including a showstoppingly violent wrestling/switchfight
• Getting to meet the lovely Bay Area people, and hearing about their successes in building up their local scene and changing the flavour of hypno community, just like we are trying to do in the northeast
• Having our flights delayed for 48 hours due to snow, which just led to more fun parties and slothful together time
• Finally getting to do a little tourism, including going to the Museum of Visionary Art, a favourite of John Waters and well worth the visit. Don't miss that there are actually two major buildings, plus a sculpture garden - we almost did and ran out of time to see all the wonders in the second building.

Thank you to all the organizers and volunteers. Amidst community and personal turmoil, there was so much joy and pleasure. One of the best weekends of my life (or rather 5 days!), that I was incredibly grateful when it was done.