The Philadelphia Fountain Pen Show began yesterday. It is held annually in a Sheraton Hotel I would otherwise have no reason to visit, because the hotel is in a god-knows-where district of Center City Philadelphia, north of Arch Street. The lobby is vast and empty, and large escalators chug indifferently from the lobby upwards. If I didn’t know the fountain pen show was this weekend, I would have dithered around a while in the lobby and then gone somewhere else.

Instead, I drifted up in the escalator to the third floor, checked in at the table, received my free tote bag (because I bought a weekend pass), and promptly spent four times my whole budget for the weekend on a perfectly respectable fountain pen, at about the fourth table I visited.

That was ridiculous. I literally just bought an expensive recliner and paid for a new furnace, but you, and I, and everyone I know, all knew that was going to happen, even though I promised myself that the first day I would just mosey around.

It’s a Pelikan pen, a Souveran M815 Special Edition Black Metal Stripe, with a fine point, and it called to me from the hundreds of other Pelikan pens laid out in special pen trays on the table of the vendor. Pelikan is a German company and makes light, efficient, pretty pens that work consistently. The booth where I bought it is a South Carolina distributor, and they were discounting it nicely from the manufacturer’s suggested retail price plus knocking off another $20 because I looked doubtful. And neither the owners nor I were surprised that a nice lady in Old Navy jeans carrying an LL Bean tote bag was buying an expensive pen.

It’s a special crowd. I was talking to another vendor later on and I said I had already bought something. A woman nearby said “Oh, yeah? Can I see?” I pulled it out of the special leather case I carry, and she said, “Oh, the 815!” admiringly.

At the table for the local pen club, a man about my age tried to encourage me to join. I said I already got the regular email, but I didn’t come to the meetings. “You should come, or we’ll think you’re antisocial,” he said heartily.

“I am antisocial,” I said amiably, but he didn’t hear me and started talking to someone else. The club meets in bars, and I don’t drink, which isn’t a problem, but also I have tried going to local meetings of various clubs catering to my enthusiasms, and those meetings have never failed to make me feel both impatient and lonely. The odds are good the group would be as male as a model train club, too, and just as single-minded. Also everyone there would know everyone else.

Fountain pen shows are full of affable, rumpled people. Yes, it used to be a male crowd, but it’s become closer to half and half in the last few years, because Freud is out of fashion and because women have more control over their own money. That means there are a lot more vendors selling stickers than there used to be, and a whole lot more sparkling inks.

Overall it’s a friendly crowd. When I was considering the pen I had actually planned to buy, a man standing next to me said, “Oh, I have that one,” and pulled it out of his case for me to try. He hovered, slightly panic-stricken, saying, “Use a light hand,” while I did, but that was okay. I understand.

People often ask me if they can use my pen, and I generally say no, because they don’t know how to hold it and sometimes, if you drop a pen, it lands on its point (which destroys it) or lands on its side and cracks (which also destroys it). Also because people are not prepared for getting ink all over their hands.

I’m not obsessive, seriously. I gave away all the pens I didn’t like last year, either because they felt funny, didn’t write the way I liked, or were just unattractive.

Well, yes, all right, fine, I am obsessive. When I make lists of the things I would take with me to a single room in a senior citizen home, the pens are always at the top of the list. I have been using fountain pens since I was twelve, when they sold cheap ones in the school bookstore.

I’m going back to the show today. The plan is to buy a bunch of stickers (for me), and some cheap fountain pens (for my grandchild). And tomorrow I’m meeting my adult kid there for one final pass. I do not intend to buy any more pens for myself. That’s the plan.

Lucky for me it’s only once a year.

Of course, this year I’m also going to the Baltimore Pen Show in March, and considering going to the DC one in the summer.

Secretly, the fountain pens are not my actual obsession. It’s what they represent. I’m sitting at my desk right now. I have my five currently inked pens in a small ceramic tray my adult kid gave me for the purpose, and the forty or so others I own are in a small acrylic case on a side table. The case has drawers, and the pens are lined up neatly in each drawer, their cylindrical bodies glittering faintly, their clips and bands neatly arranged, and every time I look at that case I see the pleasure of writing. Of a thin line, in cursive or in italic print, scrolling gently into the atmosphere like wisps of fog, filling the room, spilling through the cracks in the door, rising up the wooden stairs, floating through the glass of the closed windows into the world outside.