(it was a bumper sticker, remember?)
I worked for DEC. I never touched VAX/VMS at the time. If you could fog a mirror & knew anything about Ultrix (BSD), you were employed doing Ultrix related work & were given what ever you needed to do your job.
You should visit vmssoftware.com to see when the x86 VMS port is released. I’ll bet they’ll have a hobbyist license for it.