A Chat With Your Con Chair
Words by Joel Polowin © 1997
TTTO A Chat with Your Mother by Lou & Peter Berryman

There's the half-wit hotel management And all their front-desk flunkies Who cannot read a contract Or ignore it if they do Can't understand the spirit of compulsive volunteering It's from them I would expect to hear The N-word, not from you We sit down to have a chat It's N-word this and N-word that We need volunteers to work and organize and go-fer And I don't want to hear you use the N-word with your con chair. There's the folks in con security, The Klingon/Dorsai crossbreeds With their rampant paranoia And their fascist leanings too Banning any kind of weapon And each weapon simulation It's from them I would expect to hear The N-word, not from you There's the mundane folks with whom we share The hotel function spaces The herds of middle managers, A wedding group or two Not to mention the convention Of the Southern Baptist bishops It's from them I would expect to hear The N-word -- and lots of other words! -- not from you There's the BDSM players With their bags of strange equipment The clamps and chains and leather And the chocolate-flavoured glue If it's painfully erotic And by mutual consent -- It's from them I would expect to hear The yes-word, and from you...