Monday, June 16, 2003

My cable internet connection has been on the fritz. Here are a few days worth of blogs. I seem to be able to receive but not send email. (Sort of like being gagged or muzzled .)

Here goes...

Leather Pride Night...

...was a blast. What a great time. I worked the flea market, which was a cakewalk. The volunteers that were working with me were really really great. A lot of the merchandise was decent. (There was a single bungee cord, like the type you use to secure luggage to a car roof rack... C'mon, I'm not gonna ask for money for something like that.)

It's so much fun working side by side with most everyone I know from the world of Leather here in NYC. Several folks commended me on my thing last night at the contest. But here's the best part. There were these three wonderful bullwhips up for auction. When I first saw them today, I had a pang of sadness. I couldn't imagine giving up any of my whips, and I imagined that the circumstances involved a death. The whips were of very good quality, and had obviously been well cared for. Someone loved those whips. I set my sites on a four foot bullwhip with a two foot fall. It's a little light in terms of weight, but is supple and throws nicely. It was item number 91 in the auction. I informed my fellow flea market coordinator that when it came up, I would be gone. I bid, and I managed to walk away with it for $95.

Perhaps you're asking yourself, "Why in the name of God do you need another whip?" Y'see, it's like this. I've got two snake whips that are not quite 'there' in terms of my accuracy with them, a few signal whips which are shorter and which I usually use when I do scenes at home, and my new eight foot bullwhip with a two foot fall. That is a wonderful whip, but it is way too long to use inside. Using a bullwhip improves my accuracy tremendously. So I want to move into long whips. But eight feet might not have been the place to start, as I can never practice with it. The new whip is a four foot long bullwhip with a two foot fall. And that should be perfect for use in my apartment.

And, the man I whipped at the Chicago Hellfire Clubhouse during IML weekend will be glad to hear of this acquisition. When I whipped him, I didn't leave a mark on him. He commented that he usually doesn't mark for anything less than five feet. Let's hope that a six footer will do the trick. I want another bite of that apple.

Here's the really cool part. As I was heading towards the door, the guy that had donated the three whips to the auction introduced himself. He apparently has a huge collection, and had decided that another whipmaker was better suited to him (this one is made by Bernie of Tasmania, who also made my eight foot bullwhip and my amazing blue signal whip. Bernie works great for me.

Here's another great part. I got to be a presenter at Leather Pride Night. I think I need to own the fact that I'm a ham. I loved being a presenter. And I got to present the third bullwhip.

I also got a few cockrings, some leather straps, and a now out-of-print book by Brushcreek media, a sort of photo essay on Inferno. Hopefully, this will be a help in explaining to vaniller friends what the heck I'm doing in Michigan the first two weeks of September. I should leave it in my softball gear bag. The guys on my softball team have taken to referring to it as Fist Fest. Now, there is fisting that goes on, and I'm not opposed to fisting (quite the reverse), but I find that fisting bottoms are not too hard to come by. But the men at Inferno are lpen to a lot of things that men one is likely to meet on the internet or in a bar are hesiant to undergo. A picture is worth a thousand words, and the book is full of pictures.

And finally, truly one of the best parts of the evening was hearing Diabolique give his acceptance speech upon receiving the Barry Douglas community service award. It was eloquent and beautiful. I need to bug hm for a copy. Perhaps he would allow me to publish it here.

Anyway. I'm bone tired. My tit is oozing. Time to fall into the arms of Morpheus.




Another thing I got from Leather Pride Night: the perfect cock ring. I have at least a half dozen. All of them seem to have some flaw or other. (I was going to say ‘shortcoming,’ but even though I’m honest about the size of my cock always—standard six—saying ‘shortcoming’ when talking about my penis… well, I’m a guy and I just can’t do that.)

Anyway, on the flea market table, towards the end of the night, I scooped up a few things that hadn’t been taken, gave five bucks for them, and didn’t think about them until I got home. In this little grab bag was a cockring. When I got it on, I realized immediately that it was not just any cockring, it’s the perfect cockring. It’s a simple metal ring, and it stays on, and only feels tight when I get hard.

Thank you, Leather Pride Night.




Complicated

S/M is so simple. You get approached or you approach on the internet. You ask about interests and fantasies. If the energy is good, you meet up to do a scene. Then you do aftercare. It’s fun. It’s powerful. It’s beautiful. You go out through the door you walked in.

Regular sex is not simple. Regular sex is complicated. It’s complicated because it goes with dating.

You might remember Alabam’. From my softball team. Hot southern man.

We went home together after meeting up at Ty’s several weeks ago. When back to his place. After interminable talking (because I was nervous), we had sex. It was good. We agreed to get together again. For a date.

Then it got complicated. We agreed to go out on Saturday night a few weeks ago. It was during a period when the telemarketing calls were coming fast and furious so I had my answering machine turned off. I arrived at Alabam’s apartment. The doorman got no answer. Walking the dog. I sat in my car. I got a latte. I sat in my car some more. I called his cell phone. He said he had called and left a message at my apartment letting me know that an Ex having problems had shown up. He asked for a raincheck.

So tonight was our raincheck. Again, I went into Top mode and planned out a great evening for us. And, I packed some rope and a few other things into my toybag. He doesn’t have much experience with S/M but he’s interested, so maybe we could try some simple, unthreatening bondage.

I’m getting ready to leave the house and the phone rings. It’s Alabam’. He’s out on the Island. (That would be the Long one.) A buddy was having problems with his outboard motor. He’d call when they got closer to the city. So I headed across the river. I found parking easy for once. I’m getting out of this car and I’m immediately playing eye hockey with this way hot guy. He stops. Introduced himself. Asks what I’m up to. Tells me he’s a photographer. I said I’m meeting up with a friend for dinner. He gives me his card. I walked over to Barnes & Noble on 6th Avenue and bought a book I had heard discussed on NPR. Coming back towards 8th Avenue, I ran into Roman Cool’s boy. We chatted a bit, comparing notes on contests. I looked at my watch. It was now 8:45. Alabam’ and I were supposed to get together at Seven. I called Alabam’ and left a message. “Hey Cowboy. What’s up?” I went to dinner at Sazerac. Got in my car. At this point it’s eleven. I called the guy I met on the street. Got voicemail. Left a message.

Now what’s up with Alabam’? Does he not want round two? Does he want round two but doesn’t want it in the context of a date? Is he just witless? Does he have a complicated life? When on our first date he said he had left a message at home, he couldn’t have because my machine wasn’t on. Did he forget about our date? Should I have called last night or whenever to make sure we’re still on?

And what’s up with Man on the Street? My read is that I could have gone up to his apartment right then and we could have gotten it on. But considered sex was not on the agenda.

See? Regular sex is just soooooo complicated.

It’s been a long time since I had a date. Perhaps I have forgotten some key elements of how it works.




Special Guy called me. Just calling to see how I’m doing. That kind of thing.

A few weeks ago, I walked into Factory Café (before The Great Change, when Factory Café became a greek diner in every aspect, except they don’t sell chee-burger chee-burger no Coke Pepsi). Special Guy was having coffee with some… some… man. We chatted briefly, and I got the impression that Special Guy was in the middle of a conversation, so I set up in the window. UnFortunate happened to come in, found me, and we were talking, and when I turned around, Special Guy was gone.

At the time, I felt sort of “Gosh, I guess it’s over.” But now Special Guy is calling, just to check in. And say hi. Now, it is over. He introduced me to a friend of his as ‘a guy I dated.’

Just last night I was thinking about him. Naturally. I saw a guy whose skin at the nape of his neck folded similar to Special Guy’s. Special Guy hated that, but he saw a bug, and I saw a feature.

That’s an interesting point to ponder. Bugs and features. There’s an idiosyncratic thing. Those departures from commonly accepted (or more correctly, Madison Avenue’s) ideas of male pulchritude. For example, my teeth are gapped in the front. I grew up thinking this was a bug. In fact, I had a surgical procedure when I was about eleven, removing a bit of muscle between my two front teeth, in the hopes that as my wisdom teeth came in, my two front teeth would move together. But when I got out on the scene and circulating among gay men, I found that no, that’s not a bug, that’s a feature. Me and Lauren Hutton.

Beer gut? That’s a feature, not a bug.
Full beard? Feature. Definitely.
Sloping forehead? Feature.
Smooth chiseled chest? That would be a bug. I like a pelt.
Ditto for washboard abs. I do Drop-Off for my laundry. That’s not a feature, that’s a bug.
Great haircut? Also a bug.
Vascularity? That’s a feature.
Foreskin? For me that’s a bug.
Big nose? That is sucha feature.
Bright white teeth? That’s not a feature. That’s a bug. That’s weird.
Cigar breath? Feature! Feature feature feature feature Feature!
Dewey youth? Bug. I yawn from behind fanned fingers.

So I guess I’ve made my point. One man’s bugs are another man’s features.


So back to Special Guy. That ultimate repository of Features.

He’s soon to move to San Francisco. I wonder if he’d fist me before he left? Special Guy is a big guy. But he has these small, delicate hands. And they fold up to just about nothing. Puno seems to have lost interest in me. Seltzer phenomenon. I’d kinda like to earn that merit badge. And Special Guy would certainly be my first choice to take me there. However, I think that he’s is well aware of the fact that I’m still pretty sweet on him, and he’s moved on, and doesn’t want to get into anything messy as he’s off on this new chapter in his life.

I’ve actually developed a vague concern regarding basanos. He keeps coming out with these right-on-the-mark (though brief) revelations in email. My aspiration—if basanos in person is as impressive as basanos on the internet—is to own him, not to have him as a boyfriend. Blurring those lines will mean that neither will happen.

In david stein’s great book Carried Away, the Master and slave couple devise an interesting approach to the problem. Sometime Matt (the slave) is ‘boy,’ the submissive and deferential companion of Terry (the Master); sometimes Matt is slave: owned, collared, without rights or privileges, answering only ‘Yes, Sir’ or ‘No, Sir,’ carrying out orders; and sometimes Matt is mutt, dogslave, and he is mute, on the floor, obeying the most basic commands such as ‘stay’ and ‘come.’ They set as a goal that they will be able to move seamlessly between the three modes of being together.

I think the danger here would be that Matt and Terry come to have mutt around less and less, and then Master/slave less and less, and eventually Matt the boy becomes Matt the lover. Dominance and submission take a great deal of psychic energy. And they run against the grain of how the world tells us that two people should be in a relationship. (Lately, although I think it could be argued that Ward and June Cleaver were in a Master/slave relationship.)

I read somewhere recently that a couple found it more difficult to plan time for scenes that last for hours—or days—after they were living together than when they were living separately. So true. “I want you to be on your knees at my door on Saturday at 11 a.m. You’ll be in my custody until Sunday at 8 p.m., so clear your calendar,” as opposed to “Good morning. We’d better get ready if we’re gonna make the noon train to get out to the DIA Center.”

I think it would come down to scheduling, and it would best be written out. A minimum weekly requirement of time spent in absolute Master/slave space. Say twenty-four hours. It can be more, but it can’t be less. And if that doesn’t happen before the trip to DIA, then that means that someone is going to be collared, mute, not sitting on furniture, and wearing a tight rope harness for the trip to the DIA.



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