Seeing that I mentioned it on the ASIM list, here's the story in more detail:

"This should be a better world," a friend of mine said. "A more honest one, where sex isn't shameful or degrading. I wish this was the kind of world where say, 'Wow, I'd like to touch your breasts,' and people would understand that it's not a way of reducing you to a set of nipples and ignoring the rest of you, but rather a way of saying that I may not yet know your mind, but your body is beautiful."

We were standing in the hallway of ConFusion, about nine of us, and we all nodded. Then another friend spoke up.

"You can touch my boobs," she said to all of us in the hallway. "It's no big deal."

Now, you have to understand the way she said that, because it's the key to the whole project. The spirit of everything was formed within those nine words - and if she'd said them shyly, as though having her breasts touched by people was something to be endured or afraid of, the Open-Source Boob Project would have died aborning. But she didn't. Her words were loud and clearly audible to anyone who walked by, an offer made to friends and acquaintances alike.

Yet it wasn't a come-on, either. There wasn't that undertow of desperation of come on, touch me, I need you to validate my self-esteem and maybe we'll hook up later tonight. There was no promise of anything but a simple grope.

We all reached out in the hallway, hands and fingers extended, to get a handful. And lo, we touched her breasts - taking turns to put our hands on the creamy tops exposed through the sheer top she wore, cupping our palms to touch the clothed swell underneath, exploring thoroughly but briefly lest we cross the line from 'touching" to "unwanted heavy petting." They were awesome breasts, worthy of being touched.

And life seemed so much simpler.

(EDIT: For a more fact-checked version of events, and an explanation of the button issue, click here to see a clarification of events - because frankly, a lot of people are confused on the later button issue, et cetera.)

In this moment, all of the societal restrictions had fallen away, and we discovered an eBay-like need: We liked to express adoration of her body, and she liked the compliment of being desired. It wasn't a one-way flow; it was a stream of compliments being passed back and forth as we explored that small zone of her body, a My God, these are beautiful breasts you have, along with the backstream compliment of Thank you, you're worthy of touching them.

It could have been a base lechery. But instead, it was sexual desire made simple. We knew we couldn't go further, but being allowed inside this area of restricted access with nothing more than a question was somehow amazing.

We stood there afterwards, a little shocked. Then someone else spoke up in the same tone of voice:

"You can touch mine, too."

And my God! We all reached out like zombies trying to break through a door to get to those breasts. And it wasn't getting any worse! We weren't degenerating into an orgy, but rather exploring the amazement of how beautiful this body was and how wonderful it was to have access to them. Nobody was trying to pull off a bra or suck on a nipple; we'd been given access to a very special place that only lovers usually touched, and why would you be so crude as to try to push the boundaries of that?

And every girl in that hallway was then asked the question: "May I touch your breasts?" They considered, and said yes. And we all did.

And my Lord, I'd had experience in breasts in my time, but having so many compared right next to each other was beautiful. One of the reasons I love sex is because every body is so different, and the differences in size, and skin tone, and nipple sensitivity, and bras - bras were a big deal in how a boob felt - were highlighted. It wasn't like the breasts blurred together; they were all each beautiful in their own way, framed in the canvas of a shirt or a tank top or a dress. With each set we explored, we appreciated the last ones even more.

We went back to some of the first open-sourcers, eager for comparison. "Can I touch them again?" "Sure!" And the feel-ups continued.

I felt the terrors of high school washing away from me. It could be this easy. Just ask!

And then the real magic happened. Because a beautiful girl in an incredibly skimpy blue Princess outfit strode down the hallway, obviously putting her assets on display (the thin strips of her clothing had to be taped to her body to stay on), and we stopped her.

"Excuse me," the first, very brave girl asked. "You're very beautiful. I'd like to touch your breasts. Would you mind if I did?"

We held our breath. We didn't want to offend. This could go wrong, collapsing and turning us into cruel lechers who'd make her feel uncomfortable and shamed of who she was....

She thought for a heartbeat, sizing us up. But there must have been something honest and trustworthy in our eyes that promised that we wouldn't get out of hand... Because after a moment, she smiled and said, "Sure!"

The first girl touched respectfully. And reported that they were glorious. Then we all asked in turn, and she nodded happily and put them out, and lo, even with strangers and not acquaintances, the magic of the Boob Project continued. It wasn't that she was a piece of meat to be felt up, but rather that a living person that we did not know had voluntarily lowered the barriers that separate us and allowed us in... And we were so grateful that we were showering her in pure adoration.

It was exciting, of course. I won't deny it was sexual. But it was a miraculous sexuality that didn't feel dirty, but clean.

Emboldened, we started asking other people. And lo, in the rarified atmosphere of the con, few were offended and many agreed. And they also felt that strange charge. We went around the con, asking those who we thought might be amenable - you didn't just ask anyone, but rather the ones who'd dressed to impress - and generally, people responded. They understood how this worked instinctively, and it worked.

By the end of the evening, women were coming up to us. "My breasts," they asked shyly, having heard about the project. "Are they... are they good enough to be touched?" And lo, we showed them how beautiful their bodies were without turning it into something tawdry.

We talked about this. It was an Open-Source Project, making breasts available to select folks. (Like any good project, you need access control, because there are loutish men and women who just Don't Get It.) And we wanted a signal to let people know that they were okay with being asked politely, so we turned it into a project:

The Open-Source Boob Project.

At Penguicon, we had buttons to give away. There were two small buttons, one for each camp: A green button that said, "YES, you may" and a red button that said "NO, you may not." And anyone who had those buttons on, whether you knew them or not, was someone you could approach and ask:

"Excuse me, but may I touch your breasts?"

And if you weren't a total lout - the women retained their right to say no, of course - they would push their chests out, and you would be allowed into the sanctity of it. That exchange of happiness where one person are told with gropes and touches that they are desirable and the other is someone who's allowed to desire.

For a moment, everything that was awkward about high school would fade away and you could just say what was on your mind. It was as though parts of me were being healed whenever I did it, and I touched at least fifteen sets of boobs at Penguicon. It never got old, surprisingly.

Some women didn't want to. That was fine. We never demanded anything of anyone. And if you didn't want to put yours up for the Project but you wanted to touch, well, that was fine, too. It was simply for folks who felt like being open.

It was a raging success at Penguicon.... And there haven't been any hookups that I know of thanks to the Open-Source Boob Project. It is, as I said, a very special thing. (Though I wouldn't rule it out if two single people exchanged a moment.) And we'll probably do it at other cons, because it's strangely wholesome and sexual at the same time.

I've left off the names, because frankly, people should reveal for themselves whether they're Open-Sourcers or not. Not everyone wants to go public with it, and what happens at the con stays at the con. But trust me. If you are, and I meet you, I will ask. And you'll understand the beauty and simplicity of the Open-Source Boob Project for yourself.

Touch the magic, my friends. Touch the magic.

(NOTE: I should add that my memory of details is fuzzy at best under the best of circumstances, particularly when I drank a lot of very good Scotch later that night. I wouldn't trust any specifics here, and others have already informed me that the Princess happened first and then the other touching occurred. But the spirit of the Open-Source gestation is very much correct here.)

(EDIT: Since many seem to have been confused on the topic, I'll clarify three points:

(First: The program's an opt-in program, which is to say that if you're not wearing a button, we'll never ask. Certainly the first wave of con-asking was something with the severe potential for harm, which is why we decided on the need for buttons. The need for a red button was debated, and we decided to have it just in case... But if even if you never wear any button at all, you won't be asked. At all. It's not as though we'd be gang-pressing people into servitude.

(Second: When I say, "Like any good project, you need access control, because there are loutish men and women who just Don't Get It," I am not referring to the women who don't want to be involved, who are perfectly cool, but rather the guys/gals who see a green button and assume that it means that the woman has to let herself be touched because she's got the green on. [As I said, the answer "no" is something that can be given and should be respected - it's not like a button should force you to give up your right to a body.] Or decide to spend a good five minutes in a mouth-breathing grope. Those kinds of idiots are the folks who we're worried about, and if I could change any one sentence it would be that one, because I never meant to imply there was anything wrong with someone who didn't want to be involved. There isn't.

(Third: I should add that the most of the men were open-sourced, too. The question of what that means is up to you.

(Apologies for those. Anything else? Blast away.)

Grappa may be the only salvation of humanity. That's just an observation that makes some odd sense after watching Apollo 13 for the tenth time. I mean, I started out wanting to be an astronaut, when I was about nine. A pre-pubescent insight into Australia's space programme led me away from this by the time I entered high school, so I wanted to become an astronomer. Ah, but what was it, deep in my soul, that I always wanted? What was the siren call that plagued my bones? I wanted to go into space.

Yeah, right, you Gen-Xers who raise an eyebrow. Talk to me of Richard Bransome. Talk to me of all the wonderful research that's being done. Tell me it will happen. Cheap space flight. Only a billion bucks a hit. And can I pass the medical?

They promised me, they promised me, they promised me, when I was young. Hey, Harriman, when did you sell the moon, and who to? All the writers who said that it would happen, real soon now. Not yet.

If there is one thing for which Richard Nixon should be tied to a slow spit in hell for, it's what he did to the space programme. That long-nosed, narrow-minded criminal couldn't stand the fact that NASA, set up by Kennedy, had done what Kennedy wanted. Kennedy said, the moon in ten years. NASA got there. Oh, the cosmic bile that created in the pit of Nixon's petty gut. But he was king, so he cut the funding. He cut the missions. We could have been on the moon thirty years ago, we could have been half-way to the stars, but we stumbled over the fuckwit policy hurdles of a grubby Republican.

Lesley Fish wrote a song, Hope Irae, about the lunar landing. The chorus goes:
"The Eagle has landed
Tell your children when
Time won't drag us down to dust again."

There was so much hope when that happened. What price hope? What price the stars?

My sadness is that I will never ride that rocket, never walk on any but the Earth.

But maybe you can.

Blast and bedevilment, it's Ditmar time again, and the hoary old arguments are coming out. Apparently, it is an offense against nature to lobby people to nominate you, or to nominate stuff that you, and they like. So my little pony, sorry, magazine, shouldn't get its members together to nominate a whole bunch of artwork and stories that we've published over the last year. This despite the fact that other groups will do this.

Note that I do not say vote for a work when it's on the ballot. That's a whole different question, with a whole different group of responders. Anyone who's involved in fandom, or who is known to a few fans, can nominate works for a Ditmar. Only those who are members of this or last year's Natcon can vote for the final ballot.

Okay, for instance: Sean Williams' The Changeling is eligible, and I'm going to tell everybody I can that it should be nominated, because I think it's one of the best things he's written. In fact, I'm going to try to organise for it to be on the ballot. I also think that Dirk Flinthart's story "This is not my story" deserves a place on the ballot, and, again, I'll tell everybody I can to nominate it. Because I'm a member of the ASIM collective, I'll suggest to them that Dirk should get a guernsey. Now, for some people, this is a foul crime, offensive to the purity of the turf. I says it's what groups do, and have been doing as long as the Ditmars have been in existence, and I've been around to watch about thirty of the award ceremonies.

There are those who believe that we should sit on remote mountaintops and never discuss the works that surround us, never say that you'll like something if you read it, or that this is a piece of crap. I'm a reviewer, and I do it for a living. Lots of people do it as conversation. So what? Discussion as to the worth of a story or a piece of artwork is normal, and will influence what you nominate.

Note that I do not say organise bloc voting for the final ballot. Yeah, I know it's been done, but that goes too far. You get five (or seven) choices in the Ditmar ballot, culled out of all the nominations. Far too frequently, good stories just do not get on the ballot, because too few people nominate them. Sometimes it's just because they have been published in some inaccessible journal, sometimes it's timing; people have short memories. They lose their one chance to gain recognition, for what it's worth, because they're only eligible for a single year. I have a story in my collection Son et Lumiere called "Shark in a Foggy Sea." It's a pretty good story, got an honourable mention in a year's best, that sort of thing. Wasn't nominated for anything, possibly because it was published in Nemonymous 3. Ever heard of that journal? No, I didn't think so. It was republished in Son et Lumiere, and got a few good reviews. Can't be nominated, because it's a reprint, even though this is its first Australian publication. I should have got a few people together, the year that it was published, to nominate it, because I think the story deserved it.

We at ASIM have done the noble thing over the years and gone our own separate ways in nominations. I'm damned sure that hasn't been the case for other groups. Consequently, even though we've published a lot of short stories, we don't figure much on the ballot. Ah, the fruits of nobility: holding one's virtuous head high while the people who write and illustrate our magazine don't get the recognition they deserve.

My predictions for the ballot? Well, they'd have to do with fictional planets.

Later

And I'm back. The Ditmar nominations are open, at last, for 30 days at least. I feel a little confused about the rules, but such is often the case with the Ditmars. My major area of confusion is what, exactly, is eligible. It says that anything published in the year preceding the Natcon is eligible, but that might mean that things that were eligible for nomination at last year's convention are eligible again. It seems to mean that anything published this year is ineligible, even if there was more than a year between Natcons. I might just nominate things and let the committee sort it out.

There's the familiar problem with self-published works, as well. Last year, there was a heated debate about whether they were professional or fan, and that really doesn't seem to have been resolved. I'd like it to be clear, because Son et Lumiere, the collection, is eligible this year for one category or the other. In some ways, I'd prefer it to be eligible in the fan category, because it's up against Dreaming Again and a couple of other biggies in the pro category. But that, in turn, raises the question of what category the stories within it can be nominated. Are they fan or pro?

It's the familiar old confusion.

Later.

I wish this blog was as expert as those I see when I look at others. Right now, it's bare and bleak. Time will improve it, I hope (although that goes against experience; time rarely improves things. Wine, perhaps, although too much time will destroy any vintage. Cheese, up to a point. The lies our lives are made of? Questionable. The whole "age shall not wither nor custom stale" thing really does not work.)

I've just returned from tutoring one of the little casualties of our education system. Nice kid, but has been fucked around by both his life to date and the school he's at. I dare not tell him that the relief teacher he had for a term was either lazy or incompetent or both, since she has returned absolutely none of his work to him for an entire term, so I have no examples of extended writing to work with. The kid's okay, but can't express his ideas, because he's never been properly trained to write. He lacks confidence and stumbles over his expression, always attempting to achieve perfection, instead of just getting the bloody thing down and getting perfection later.

I stayed a little late, and, consequently, missed the tree lopper who was going to do something about our feral garden. It's a jungle out there, with giant powton trees (you know; those sweet trees with big leaves and lovely flowers that grow to thirty-metre monsters in six months), zamia palms encrusted with wisteria, bottle brush that threaten the power lines. Tarzan would love it, but I ain't no Tarzan. Back later.

I sincerely hope this works. The last time I tried to post a comment, it came out in Hindi. Okay, this seems to be staying in English.