my night with geoff rickly

Firstly, I flew to New York City this morning. Crazy, right? Remember when I posted a few weeks ago about doing something crazy? If you follow my Twitter then you might have seen it. Yupp, that’s when I booked the flight and the room and everything. I bused down to Toronto last night so I could fly out from there this morning.

I promised Geoff the biggest of hugs when I was at the airport and he was excited like MY GOD I love that we chat now. I love that we DM about memes and are able to casually chat like friends. This actually started because all of this, I mentioned that I was coming all the way from Canada for the event and he was thrilled and has just kept DMing me since.

Secondly, the hostel I’m staying at was being fumigated earlier today, so I had to leave early for the event (One More Day on Earth Together, hosted by Kelly Xio and featuring Geoff as one of the guest readers). I sat outside for over an hour before other people started to show up, and multiple people thought I was working at the event because I was standing right at the door. Even some of the readers were like “I’m reading” and waited for me to wave them in, so whatever, I waved them in. They were probably expected!

Once we got into the event I sat myself right down in the corner of the front row, basically right in front of the microphones. Geoff came in shortly afterwards with his partner and then disappeared backstage, but when he came out again briefly, he saw me and fucking recognized me and made a beeline straight for me. He was actually fucking excited to see me and I was like “I believe I promised you a hug” and then we hugged. And then he sat right down beside me and we chatted for a bit before he got up to say hi to another one of his friends and disappear backstage again. He didn’t approach any other fans—he came straight for me, hugged me and chatted with me like we’re buddies, before having an even more brief chat with one of his actual friends. To the rest of that room, we probably looked like longtime pals.

The event itself was incredible. The host, Kelly, was awesome, and all the readers were absolutely hilarious. Geoff was incredible - of course he was - and the passage he read from his book was fantastic and I am now much more excited for the book. One of the things we chatted about before the event began was the fact that he’s got like 4,000 books that are being printed and he has no idea where they’re gonna store all like 30 or so boxes of them, so I joked that he should ship some of them (wink wink like mine) early.

During the intermission I DMed him again telling him not to let me leave without getting a picture with him. He responded from backstage that of course he would let us take a picture afterwards.

After the event ended, everyone was ushered outside as the venue was hosting another event immediately afterwards. I followed Geoff and his partner out and once outside gave him another big hug, gushing about how incredible that was. Then he was like “you wanted a picture, right?” and we took two selfies, one that was just smiles and a little blurry, and then the fun one that I’m probably gonna post like everywhere for the rest of my life. I asked him about the passage he read and recalled that he mentioned on the Ion Podcast that his partner had once said to him when he mentioned the character (aka book-Geoff) “you? That’s not the character, you literally did that” and asked if the passage he read was one of those moments. He laughed and mentioned that it was all fiction but there were some very real things in there, very heavily inspired by his own experiences, and Liza (his partner) was just like “it all felt very real to me.”

More people came by to talk to him. I learned from a conversation he had with the actual friend from earlier that he apparently goes to Jersey every week to visit with Tucker and Steve. Some more fans came around for some brief chats and some pictures, and one asked him to sign their notebook. I also had a notebook on me - it’s where I wrote out my transit instructions and whatnot - so I asked him to sign mine too. He wrote me a note and it’s beautiful and I will treasure it for all time. Someone also asked someone else in a T-shirt how they weren’t cold and I was just like “see, to me this weather is warm” and Geoff goes “yeah, he’s from Canada!” like imagine Geoff Rickly bragging about you to people on the streets of New York City.

I hung around because like, if I travelled all this way to see Geoff, I’m gonna get as much Geoff time as I could, but I also let him have his conversations with some other people too, so I turned to Kelly to tell her it was an incredible event. She then began asking people around her where they were from and when I said Canada, she was like “oh my god Geoff was talking about that” like excuse me? GEOFF WAS TALKING ABOUT ME TO PEOPLE????? She also gave me a massive discount on the tote bags for the event because I’d travelled so far, knocking the price down from $20 to literally $5. I also started talking with some other fans who were hanging around, including about Mikey Way the canonical porn watcher (I was wearing the tramp stamp MCR shirt), and I think I made a friend from Chicago. Fucking wild.

Afterwards, when the person from Chicago was talking to Geoff, we were talking about the book and its title, and he was explaining the concept of the title (and how it comes from internet forums where drug users would refer to themselves as “someone who isn’t me” or “swim” to prevent incriminating themselves, in addition to the deeper meaning of seeing yourself as someone different than the rest of the world sees you). I mentioned that my friends and I had joked about the book being Geoff’s self-insert fanfiction and the man laughs and goes “if only I had put more kink and sex in it, then it would be the perfect fanfiction.” EX-FUCKING-SCUSE ME???

(drop the secret AO3 account now Mr. Rickly, we are waiting)

After a little longer, Liza butts in to say that she wants to steal him to go eat, so Geoff pulls me into yet another hug and wishes me a safe trip home tomorrow. Like, oh my god, that fucking sweetheart.

And now I’m at the hostel slurping on a slurpee from the 7-Eleven next door and still thinking about what an incredible fucking experience this whole thing was. It was a very spontaneous decision when I booked everything a few weeks ago but OH MY GOD am I ever glad that I came. Geoff is my new best friend and I will never be the same person ever again.