Ah, to resign myself to a fate worse than death.

To deny myself the possibilities of a normal life. To risk incurring the looks of horror and pity from those around me. To insist, against all odds, that I have been set apart from the rigidity of this world. To do what few would do to gain myself a seemingly perpetual freedom. To sacrifice everything that I’ve lived and hoped for sp as to live and hope for something so much better.

Well, you would be forgiven if you thought I was finally planning to enter the seminary. But the truth is, the desire to rejoin a community I’d long forsaken has been reawakened within me.

I plan to take the first steps to becoming a full-fledged Trekkie.

I had no idea what I was expecting when I got my parents to drive me down to the CSC Tennesohn Clubhouse off Lavender Street on Sunday afternoon. All I knew was that WWW had organised another Star Trek CCG tournament, and this time we were getting players outside of our usual gang of 6. But things really threw me off when, just when I was getting out of the car, a Starfleet captain walks out of the Clubhouse (fully dressed in Officer Duty Uniform) leading about 4 to 5 kids to presumably the nearest eating place.

Holy Shit. I was entering a local Trekkie gathering.

Things weren’t so bad at first. Aloysius caught sight of me as I was passing the Club’s bowling alley and I met up with WWW and kakita. All well and good. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was just imagining the Captain. Maybe my mind has finally snapped and my delusions have never looked more realistic.

Ah, if only that were true.

When we actually started making our way towards the inside of the Clubhouse, I began to notice all the posters blu-tacked to the walls. “CSC Hobbies Day - Star Trek Exhibition Level 2″ they read. Yeesh. I was entering a Trekkie zone. I believed I had experienced some of these people on the MINDEF forums years ago, those who only watched Voyager and Enterprise religiously and believed that was all it needed to classify themselves as Trekkies. Those who thought Janeway was the best Starfleet captain ever and that Seven of Nine and T’Pol are the sexiest female characters in Starfleet history.

Well, the last point is true, anyway.

And for a while, it really seemed so. We had people all dressed up as Starfleet captains (as indicated by the number of pips they had) - thus crossing the first rule in my book: Never powerplay. All but one had the stature and the look of someone who could presumably command a starship. Even worse, they hardly acted appropriately for what they were dressed as. “Captain James”, the next time you want to dance around the room, get a Dabo girl costume.

And yet, it was the enthusiasm of one guy, Jonathan aka “Garak”, that made me feel proud to be a Trekkie. It was seeing the same enthusiasm in him that I had, so many years ago, still so fresh and so apparent. It was hard not to feel a fan-connection with him.

So coming back to the title… does this indicate an end to my dying social life? I should think so. But who knows, yeah?