Choose Otakon. Choose Baltimore City. Choose wrong turns, cops who don’t know how to get there, and desperate calls on the cell phone at all hours of the night. Choose Em, waiting at Penn Station while you and your best friend become progressively more lost. Choose the Towson Diner at four in the morning. Choose stumbling home at dawn, Em in tow, and desperately trying to get five hours sleep before the con. Choose leaving your bags in a car that won’t be there in the morning. Choose cosplay, sweltering heat, and redirected traffic. Choose registration fees and Cowboy Bebop con badges. Choose three days of the most exhausting, overpriced concentration of Nihon you’ve ever seen in your life. Choose Sanrio. Choose open-mike karoake, and the repeated massacre of Cruel Angel’s Thesis. Choose dark, air-conditioned video rooms. Choose Legend of Basara. Choose 30+ minutes in a snaking, unmoving line to watch MAT3K. Choose sitting in front of the most annoying, easily-amused laugher on the face of the earth, and the one guy in the whole room who doesn’t get “42.” Choose shuffling out to the car at 11pm, trying not to aggravate the patch of heat rash you’ve managed to acquire on your thighs. Choose dinner past midnight. Choose Walmart. Choose passing out on Ben’s futon, grateful for every puff his slowly dying air-conditioner sends out. Choose waking up far too soon just so you can start it all over again. Choose gloating fathers, foot-dragging teenagers, and wishing you could fall back into that futon. Choose traffic jams and snitty blondes. Choose the Gong Show. Choose Hikaru Midorikawa. Choose missing him because the lines to get his autograph were so long they closed almost before his allotted time started, and walking away beaming because it means people love Midorikawa!! Choose an episode and a half of Boys Be…. Choose trolling the dealer’s room and the artist’s gallery because you just can’t find Video Room 6. Choose buying a volume of Utena manga in Japanese because Mikage-sama is on the back cover. Choose conversing with a guy who wants you to buy chain mail. Choose taking his email address, because dammit, you really want a chain mail bracelet. Choose Burger King. Choose to super-size that fucker. Choose the Anime Music Video Overflow showing. Choose photos of Alessandro’s ass. Choose watching him dance and thinking he is the queerest, most awesome thing you’ve seen in far too long. Choose giving up on those two volumes of Kizuna because you’re just too damn tired to go back the last day. Choose getting hit up for money by a stranger on the way to the car, because he hasn’t realized that three cunts with con badges after dark will be significantly broker than he is. Choose not to point out that you can see the roll of money he’s already talked other people out of. Choose falling into your own bed in the wee hours, happier to see the black iron frame than you could hope to express. Choose Sunday in bed. Choose Toys-R-Us, Borders, and Taco Bell. Choose hot food and a cold drink that isn’t watered down. Choose tapping away at your keyboard, still far too tired in far too many ways, trying to record the experience while you can still remember it well. Choose otaku-ism. Choose Otakon.

………..why in hell would I want to do that?!?!