Jiminy Crickets. Have I really not blogged all weekend?

And what a weekend it's been.

Softball on Saturday. We played a double header, but with a surfeit of players, I sat on the bench for the second game. We played the Vikings. They were the team to beat for us last year. It seems that there's some animosity from the Vikings directed towards the Ballbreakers. One of my temamates heard one of the Vike's comment that "I can't believe we're losing to these old guys." Word of that spread quickly. But beat them we did, 13-3. I had three at bats. We're talkin' two ribbies, once I made it across home plate, and once I was out at first. My hitting is really coming together. I just wish my fielding was there.

I don't have much confidence in my fielding skills. So much of softball is psychology. For example, while we warming up, I had a game of catch with my coach. I was bobbling and dropping left and right. I could not get it together. And, every time I threw the ball to him, it was too low, barely reaching him. Then, I switched partners. To Alabam', as luck would have it. Alabam' has a really strong arm. He really throws the ball hard. I did fine. Only twice that I recall did I not manage to catch the ball.

In our second game against the Vikings, there was that old ballbreakers drama. For the first two innings, it was zip-zip. Then, one of our guys got a home run. Then in the next inning, they got three runners past home. Then we were dogs for an inning, nobody scoring, and then we tied it up. The tie meant an extra inning as we hadn't hit time yet. Alas, no one scored, so it was a tie. Which means that we're still undefeated, although we didn't quite win four out of four either.

Then came Saturday night. My appointment with whippingboy. It was sublime. My boots look great. I think the scene went pretty well. At least whippingboy reported that she had a good time. My perception was that my aim was pretty wild, but other than one that whippingboy felt caught her pretty high, she said she didn't notice. After we went through the final ten count that ended the action portion of the evening, I wrapped whippingpoint in a blanket (gotta look into how much a piece of large cowhide costs!) and she watched, smiling, as I took some Pecard to my whips and rebraided the ropes that I had used.

I really like the restraint method that I used. In the past, I've tried to get all kinds of complicated with roping the bottom's legs to my St. Andrew's Cross. This time, thinking purely of aesthetics, I just wound two longer pieces of rope around whippingboy's thighs, and she had her wrists restrained in front of her, embracing the cross. It provided enough movement, but not too much. And the simplicity worked well.

We were both famished, so I took us to Florent for a late late late dinner. Amazing how the meat packing district is now the province of drunken heterosexuals. Not a homo in sight.

Alas, I was busy on Friday night, and pooped after softball on Saturday, so I missed TESFest on both days. Today was my presentation. Even though it meant I only got five hours of sleep, I got up, said goodbye and godspeed to kit, and headed for the full day of TESFest.

Very glad I did. Jack McGeorge did a great presentation on Dominant-submissive, Master-slave relationships. Is there anything that man doesn't know? The presentation was excellent. I took copious notes.

Next came my presentation on the uses of ritual in S/M. I was a wee bit disheartened by the turnout. Jack's room was just about SRO. I had eight or nine people. But, as I went on at 12:30, and it was a full day of back-to-back workshops, and as Master of Mirage was doing a presentation on long whips downstairs at the same time, I decided that most folks were either communing with the whip (can't blame them there) or out having lunch.

But it was a good workshop, if I do say so myself. The most interesting moment for me came in the Q&A following my presentation. One guy described how he tried to gently introduce elements of S/M into a vanilla relationship. Lighting candles and incense and the like. His girlfriend was not into it at all. She insisted that sex should be spontaneous. Huh. Something clicked. I ventured to opine that in a way, that's what differentiates S/M from vanilla: all S/M is in some way ritualistic. There are roles, to some degree it's always planned before hand, it's contrived in some way, and (criteria I discussed at length), at some level it's absurd.

Could 'Ritualistic Sex' be a better term for what we're all doing?

After my presentation, I caught Fetish Diva Midori doing a presentation on Percussion Play. Can you say 'Amazing?' I had never seen Midori present before. Oh. My. God. She is fantastic. Not only was the presentation informative, but it was soooooo hot. Just great. I wanna beat some man. Soon. Preferably now.

Finally, there was a presentation on the building blocks of a Master/slave relationship. It was really good. Interestingly, I would say that the pansexual world does a better job at maintaining Master/slave relationships than do gay men. I mean, evvvvr'ybody has a slave. Really. Masters and Mistresses and slaves were all over the place. Most of the room for Jack's presentation and for the building blocks presentation was filled with folks in Master/slave relationships.

Wonder why that is? Mebbe it's just that gay men don't find relationships as natural (gross overgeneralization, I realize) as heterosexuals and lesbians do, regardless of what form that relationship takes.

Not that I think that's a bad thing.

After TESfest wound down, my plan was to get home quickly and take a nap. However, I was waylaid by running into Unfortunate One on Christopher Street. I was kinda hungry. He was kinda hungry. We went to Hudson Corner and took care of that.

Now I'm home. I've blogged. I'm going to nap. I'm thinking of nothing save nap time. Perhaps, if I wake up and it's not too too late, I'll venture back across the river and stop in at the Spiegel.

Perhaps not. Tomorrow, Edge and I are meeting up. We're gonna hang, I'm gonna help him donate a St. Andrew's Cross of his to Leather Pride Night, and then we're gonna discuss some improvements to the humble Singletails. Among other things, Edge seems to be quite the accomplished web page designer.

Anyway. I'm off to fall into the arms of Morpheus.

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