A Renaissance Faire is a temporary festival, lasting anywhere from one day to eight weeks, where the participants pretend they are living anywhere between the years of 1450 and 1675. Types of things you are likely to find at a Renaissance Faire are:
- Men in tights
- Women with swords
- Men in lace
- Women in bodices
- Hippies
- Horses
- Horse offal
- Overpriced food
- Bad acting
- Bad singing
- Bad English accents
- Leather mug salesmen
- Leather clothing salesmen
- Leather boot salesmen
- Leather rose salesmen
- Leather food salesmen
- Leather puppet salesmen
- Leather restraint salesmen
- A horrible, indefinable, acrid smell
- Sarcasm
After Hours
During the day, the participants entertain, wear strange clothes, and sell various useless gew-gaws. However, after the gates close and the last 20th-century people (known affectionately as "Patrons") leave "the realm", a strange thing happens. It can be summed up in one word:
Debauchery.
Apparently, those who work at these Faires (the preferred spelling) become so sexually charged from either the wearing of tights or constrictive bodices that they go wild when those articles come off. On any given night one can find groups of them drinking, partaking in illicit herbs, dancing to strange rhythms, and climbing all over each other in various stages of undress.
And you would think that the taboos that society has imposed regarding same-sex coupling would keep everything fairly resonable. Not so. If you walk into a room (or, more likely, into a tent or van), you are just as likely to see a man and a woman getting all sweaty together as you are to see two men. Or two women. Or two women and a man. Or four women, three men, one man dressed as a woman, and a large device of some sort. Or a man and a sheep (one of which will probably be wearing a kilt).
At first, this Researcher was taken aback by these things. But now my intellectual curiosity has been... aroused. I think this interesting sub-culture deserves further inquiry.
If you need me I'll be in my tent.
