Nine Worlds Geekfest: Queer High Tea and Safe Spaces

It's a fair drive down from Manchester to Heathrow; if you started Titanic as you set off you might just make it down before the credits, but anything shorter and you're pretty much doomed. You could watch to the entire conclusion of a season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in that time, or the entire plot of a season of Sailor Moon. You could listen to Radio 4 the whole way down, but you thereby risk overfeeding the gluttonous brain.

By the time I got down there, I think my brain had gone into that slump. The three-and-a-half-hour drive in the searing heat of a British summer hadn't helped, nor concluding the journey with a dive into the demonic influence of the dread sigil odegra. More importantly, though (trembling little newcomer, remember), I honestly had no idea what to expect. That paralysing uncertainty of the goat stuck between the two fruit-bushes magnifies when there's twenty bushes, and some of them have bananas and some of them have grapes and some of them have sushi, and all of them smell delicious.

Fortunately, there were others who knew exactly what to do to people in such situations: newly-arrived, too hot and flustered, filled with talkative energy but lacking brain from the stress of the road. Pretty much every one of the small conference spaces which would later host Tracks now hosted hospitalitea of one kind or another, ferociously advertising themselves to the newcomers, with an entertaining (and occasionally completely awesome) muscial backdrop from the aptly-named Friendship room.

But we weren't headed to Canterlot - not yet, anyway. We were headed to the Queer High Tea. And wow, was it packed.

I met writer, Queer Track organiser and general magnifico* Tori Truslow on a desperate sprint to refill a tea-urn, lest some poor frazzled queer find themselves briefly uncaffeinated, and settled down to my lunch in an atmosphere charged with geekery and good cheer. I met a few people for the first time, including poet and panelist Hel Gurney, and bumped into old friend, the wonderful James Webster, who would later do the best Spider Jerusalem impression I've seen to date, and his other fraction Dana.

Here, for the first time, with recent talk of "safe spaces" echoing around the cavernous expanse of my oversized skull, I began to understand that concept, personally and viscerally, for the first time. I've never really gone into a new environment before and been quite so relaxed quite so quickly. Part of that, I'm sure, was falling into a familiar (and much-missed) pseudo-academic paradigm, discussing lectures and taking notes, one pair of attentive eyes and perked ears among many. I'm sure, though, that more of it was the widespread air of friendliness, the giddy community atmosphere, and the (appallingly un-English) way in which people just up and spoke to whomever was in the queue next to them. I know this isn't what "safe space" literally means, but it was a space that felt safe, and that - however liminal it might be, however giddy and transient - is not to be sneezed at. It doesn't need to last forever - just long enough to leave an impression.

Reading about 9W after the fact, "safe" seems to be one of people's favourite adjectives for the weekend. At least at the end of the upper floor corridor was a room designated "Quiet Space", and though it seemed to go unspoken in words, there was a distinct aura of love and tolerance. I didn't just speak to people who I'd normally have let pass because I felt safe, but because I felt that they would have felt safe too. I know that's no guarantee, and as the broad-shouldered white male speaking here, I don't have the most reason to feel unsafe in most environments - but it never once failed. Mad props to the person in the rat suit; thanks to the girl with the knitted Dalek; regards to the two guys with whom I talked information security and the coming Paranoia superstate (protip: never happen); same to all the queers of Bifrost.

I'm not sure how much of it was effort going into creating a safe environment, and how much was just simply convincing everyone to make it one - but I'll admit, here and now, after the fact, that it's a thin line between that and just holding a Con with a thousand awesome people.

In truth, I'm honestly not sure how you'd tell the difference.

*"General Magnifico" is now a title.