Young Athletes On Ice

Golden Eyes, May 09 Ink and markers

Last weekend, was the Anime Weekend Atlanta convention with my friends' Laura and her husband Zach on Saturday. Laura has been mentioning the convention for weeks; it’s one of the biggest anime conventions in Atlanta she says. It was already planned in her agenda that we were going to see the largest Yaoi forum. If you haven’t heard Yaoi is an acronym for Young Athletes On Ice. What does that have to do with Anime? Apparently, Laura has been raving about her manga interest, and she asked me benignly if I would sit in the forum with her, forewarning me there would be crazy fans. Zach and I had no idea what we were up against.

Our night at the convention ended with a big surprise. What’s so popular about Yaoi? Laura, Zach, and I stood in a tremendous line as we waited for the doors to open into the Yaoi forum. There stood a girl not far in a colorful maid costume with a paddle in her left hand that had embedded “I love Yaoi.” I was becoming skeptical why there would be a paddle involved with Young Athletes on Ice? A lady with a walkie-talkie addressing head counts for door tickets came up to me and asked if I had any understanding what line I was in. I responded quizzically, “I think I‘m sure? I know what this line leads to.”

“Good, you’re in the right line.” She walks off.

I turned to Laura with a questionable look of, did that just happen? Laura’s noncommittal gesture of the conversation just seconds ago says not a word. I sensed something flatulent, like a faint stench of comprised mischief looming in the air, especially around Laura.
The line started to vanish behind the double doors of two women patrolling the entrance, advising everyone to show their identification cards before entering beyond. Why did we need to have identification cards? Laura, Zach, and I waited at least thirty minutes and more before we could enter and I didn’t see anything to indicate we needed to have our Identifications. There were three groups of chairs inside: left, middle, and right. We sat in the left row of chairs; I sat on the outside of the row, next to the middle group. On the right corner end of the room was a large projection screen. I began to notice more people with engraved paddles that read I love Yaoi. Some of them were dressed in costumes. One in particular, was a pale Caucasian male dressed in all black leather gloves, shorts, a vest, and an English patrol hat. He went to the front of the row of chairs making an outlandish display of vulgar dance. Women and men cheered and screamed for the guy in leather as he paraded around the middle row of seats in his ridiculous outfit, clapping and spanking himself with the paddle that read, “I love Yaoi.” Then he stops in front again. He makes a gesture to the audience for one of the men or women to spank him the first time, the one whose lucky to break the paddle on the first try wins a prize he says. Unfortunately, the force of flesh against leather and wood smacking together didn’t produce enough force for the young male to break the paddle on the leather guys’ ass. I looked over to Laura and she’s grinning from cheek to cheek. “What has she got me into?”

Afterwards, a normal female introduces herself as she comes up to center and announces the Yaoi event. She gives a cheerful speech, and addresses audience to the projection screen to watch a fifteen-minute segment of Yaoi presentation. I won’t explain what I saw on the projection screen, but it was definitely not for the innocent eyes.

Yaoi is a popular Japanese term for female oriented fictional media that focus on homoerotic or homo-romantic male relationships. The acronym for Yaoi is… there is no such thing as Young Athletes On Ice! Don’t say I didn’t warn you.