Essie: “Mermaiding has allowed me to reach a wider audience and encourage conservation through imagination.” Credit: SARAH TEVELDAL/FLASHPOOL PRODUCTIONS
Essie: “Mermaiding has allowed me to reach a wider audience and encourage conservation through imagination.”
Essie: “Mermaiding has allowed me to reach a wider audience and encourage conservation through imagination.” SARAH TEVELDAL/FLASHPOOL PRODUCTIONS

I entered the pool area of the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Seattle Airport just in time to see a man dressed as Gomez Addams bend down on one knee and propose to a woman with rippling red hair and a green mermaid dress.

When she happily accepted, giddy applause burst from the other hotel guests gathered around the pool. That’s when I noticed that they all had tails instead of legs.

“I would kill for her! I would die for her! Either way, what bliss!” bellowed Gomez, and around him a pod of mermaids splashed down from the poolside into the chlorinated water, undulating in celebration.

I was at the DoubleTree for Norwescon, a science-fiction and fantasy convention, and I’d just stumbled upon a daylong gathering for mermaids of the Pacific Northwest.

Matt Baume covered geek culture, queer news, and city infrastructure, and would leap at the flimsiest of excuses to write about furries. A writer, podcaster, and videomaker, he resides on Capitol Hill...