I started explaining to M-i-L and FJ that the biggest lesson I had learnt over the weekend was not to have a first kiss whilst in character and they started laughing. I had actually forgotten that I reffed their first kiss… or at least I was a ref that weekend. I still maintain watching him carry her in his arms out of the rain was one of my best moments reffing… even with LB scuttling along next to them making sure her skirt covered her modesty.
In anycase, I’m not sure I’ve ever formally dated, dates happen after you’ve gotten into a relationship with somebody as far as my past experience goes anyway. I think the notable exception was The Confused Highwayman and that wasn’t really a good date… he was mostly slightly high having smoked a lot of weed beforehand and sending a rose 6000 miles years later doesn’t really improve upon that initial date.
As ever, I digress, back to my point;
The LARP was one that explored meta-themes, it took place on multiple levels. This is not conducive for yours truly deciding that when the girl in front of me, who I am out-of-characer, in actual real life interested in, says ‘oh I do real kissing’ instead of theatrical kisses, that I’d just go with that… Absolutely should have stuck to my usual cheek kisses and theatrical kisses.
Normally I don’t have a problem telling the difference between real feelings and those of my characters. Normally. But add in that this LARP I have a persona (an in-LARP LARP character) and a character and I found myself kissing this incredibly beautiful woman for the first time and I could feel my sense of what was character and what was real completely disintegrating. That is distinctly a new experience and I had to go offgame briefly. I then spent much of the LARP being asked to give her sex-advice, which was mostly fine and quite amusing… although I suspect that the urge to call her “Princess” if I do end up in bed with her may overwhelm me. She has a sense of humour, I’m sure it will be fine!
I don’t honestly know if I will do real kisses in a LARP in the future, I think it’s fine if it’s someone I know I have no interest in but wouldn’t mind kissing (there was a very pretty boy who also did real kisses and I said that was ok but in the end didn’t kiss him). I think I could also do it with M-i-L or The Jellicle because we have very established relationships but when you’re anticipating a first date and nothing is nicely defined, the emotional confusion of it all is just too much.
I think it says a lot that I broke off from kissing her and immediately declared myself offgame to need to apologise to The Fae Ref who I have poked before now for having over the top boundaries with women he’s interested in. I’ve been in long term relationships with people I’ve LARPed with for over a decade, I think I’d forgotten how to go about new emotions with people I’m relatively new to LARPing with. I dunno, something about hubris or Pride Coming before a Fall.
The date itself was actually pretty good. We had brunch and walked around a park. Coming straight out of the meta-LARP into that added a sense of unreality? surreality? certainly a dreamlike quality to it. In anycase, dating someone new is very exciting, especially coming out of the Pandemic. And now I’ve just remembered what my sister’s nickname on this blog is, which I think has just saved the woman I dated from ever being called Princess in bed. What I was about to type was that The Princess took one look at her and accurately described her as being a combination of multiple women I’ve been into before, guess I can’t help but be drawn to Pre-Raphaelite ideals, I blame my A-Levels.
I suppose having good boundaries and managing bleed in LARP we all talk about ideals but there are always going to be exceptions and points where we fall short, as long as we’re emotionally healthy about it then you can ref a romance blossoming in the rain of the early twentieth century as a Russian spy holds the skirts of an archaelogy professor and twelve years later be telling a funny story about your girlfriend of over a decade whilst musing about the first date you had with a woman who spent the weekend in gorgeous medeival dress requesting her bard tell her a story or help her with anticipating her wedding night.
