Exploring the woman within…

As I’ve gone through my thirties, I have really been more open to exploring my inner self.  When I was in my twenties, I was more concerned about what “other people” might think.  Now that I’m in my thirties, I have come to realize that said “other people” are too busy dealing with their own insecurities, and therefore aren’t paying close attention to me.  With that realization, there’s a certain level of “fuck it, let’s do it” that comes to mind, because, after all, you only live once.  I also love the freedom that we have as children to do and explore whatever we want in the name of child’s play, and it makes me sad the way society then pushes us into conformity with certain gender norms as we get older.  It raises our inhibitions, and makes us less willing to go outside those norms.

I generally go through life as a cisgendered male.  I have the male anatomy, I dress in men’s clothing, etc.  However, when I was growing up, I remember thinking how much more interesting the “girl” toys that were advertised on Saturday morning were than the “boy” toys.  I also secretly envied the far more exciting and fun outfits that women got to wear.  I loved the clothes, and I loved the shoes.  After all, men’s clothing is pretty formulaic, and the shoes aren’t that exciting, either.  Not much in the way of excitement there.  When I was around 12 years old, I secretly tried on some female clothing, and it actually felt pretty good.  However, at that age, I kept that side well hidden, because, you know, middle school and all.  Then I unconsciously put it away for quite some time.

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Somehow, when I teach people how to tie rope, I always end up hogtied in the end…

It’s funny how things work out sometimes.  I taught my friend BroadSpectrum how to do a two-column tie, and she caught on really quickly.  The way I usually do it is to demonstrate the tie on the hands of the person learning, by tying their hands in front.  Then I get them to tie my hands in front (so that I can observe), and then we have a little fun with it.  And in this case, I got my arms tied from behind, I got my feet tied, and then, in explaining that the two-column tie can be used on any two things, got put in a hogtie.

This is also when I learned something about BroadSpectrum: she has a seriously evil streak.  That led to a scene where I was blindfolded, ballgagged, and then spanked and tickled.  I’m not saying that I didn’t enjoy it, but I was definitely surprised at how quickly she got into her zone as a top.  She considers herself something of a switch, but I think she’s got more top in her than bottom.  She also played with sound to an extent, making snapping noises with some leather belts near my head before administering a few whacks to my clothed backside.  Plus all sorts of tickling.  Needless to say, we had fun.

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For every kinkster’s bookshelf?

I was recently at IKEA and saw this:

IKEA's SKRIBENT bookend

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Dear FetLife users: ditch that ridiculous warning, already.

If you’ve been on FetLife for more than about ten minutes, you’ve probably seen a warning in various places on people’s profile pages.  It usually reads something like this:

WARNING to any institution or person using this site or any of its associated sites: You do not have my permission to use any of my pictures, information from my profile or discussions, or anything I post in any of the forums or groups on this website in any form or forum both current or future without prior written consent.  You do not have my permission to copy, save, print, or repost our pictures, discussions, or information without prior written consent.  If you have done or do any of the above, it will be considered a violation of my privacy and personal property and will be subject to all legal remedies.

To give you an idea about how pervasive this “warning” is, in order to look for a copy of the text, I went down my FetLife feed and opened up the profiles of my five most recent friend additions.  Four out the five had some variation of it on their profiles.  If you are one of those people that has this “warning” on your profile, my advice to you is to get rid of it.

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Mutual wax play is so much fun…

A few weeks ago, I got together with my friend TerrificTeez, and we did two scenes together, both involving wax play.

But first, I taught TerrificTeez how to tie rope for bondage.  I have tied TerrificTeez up in the past, but it was always in an arms-behind position, so she couldn’t see what I was doing.  My goal was to teach her the classic two-column tie.  I prefer the double rope method with lark’s head (second one down on the linked page) myself, and so this is the style that I taught.  There are certainly other ways to do a two-column tie, such as this minor variation, and other variations that diverge a bit more, but the double-rope style with the lark’s head has always worked well for me, so I was happy to share it.  First thing I did was to tie TerrificTeez’s wrists in front to demonstrate, while she watched.  I had to remember to tie slowly and explain what I was doing as I was doing it, and to stop for any questions as I was going.  Normally, I just make small talk about whatever while I’m getting a person properly restrained, or being properly restrained myself.  After that, I let her out, and she tried it on me, again with arms in front.  She learned quickly, only making one rookie mistake, where she wrapped the rope around my wrists too tightly early on.  And I will admit – I made the same mistakes early on as well.

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A quick Sunday project makes the double roller more my style…

The double roller is now really “mine”.  Take a look:

The double roller, with a refinished handle

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A previously unknown dominant side?

Last weekend was an amusing time.  I was at a friend’s house with fellow kinksters and scene newcomers TerrificTeez and BroadSpectrum, and along with other activities, we played in the basement for a little while.  However, interestingly enough, that wasn’t how it started out.

Since this was both TerrficTeez and BroadSpectrum’s first time visiting this particular friend’s house, I showed them the basement, which has served as a dungeon on a few occasions (something about a basement space makes it seem uniquely suited for kink).  I initially took BroadSpectrum down to show her the space, best described as a fairly ordinary basement with a couch, a coffee table, and a decent amount of open space with area rugs, and then show her how some of my various implements worked and felt.  I don’t think I’ve had or seen this much laughter in a scene in a long time (or ever).

The first thing that I demonstrated to BroadSpectrum was the rope.  My usual go-to for rope is a soft, manmade-fiber clothesline that I bought for a fairly low price at Home Depot.  It came in a pack of 200 feet, and I cut it into 50 feet in order to be suitable for my needs.  Also needing to take a picture to use as a profile pic, after some discussion about how to do some tying for that, we agreed to tie BroadSpectrum’s wrists in front around a floor-to-ceiling pole.

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You know that the scene must have been intense if I needed a recovery period afterward…

I’ve done enough scenes by now to know how I’m going to respond to things.  I know that I don’t like having the bottoms of my feet played with (too sensitive).  I know that I don’t like being struck on the backside too many times in a row because it becomes too intense too quickly.  Same goes for other stinging impact play.  Hit the same place too many times, and I’ll end up calling a “yellow” on that in relatively short order.  Moving all around and giving each target a time to rebound before the next strike is okay, but not the same spot multiple times.  I know that I really like thuddy impact play, since it’s felt on a much deeper level.  And I have an idea about positions that I shouldn’t get myself into.

But when it comes to aftercare, I can usually get right up from a scene and be good to go.  Untie me and I need minimal assistance.  Maybe I’ll admire the rope marks for a few minutes, but otherwise, I’m good to go, though I admit that BDSM is somewhat physically draining for me (though I sleep quite well afterwards).  My needing an actual aftercare period to come back down and recover is highly unusual.  But a scene that I recently did with a friend was one of those scenes.

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How do I store my rope?

It’s funny how things work out sometimes.  I recently found out that a friend of mine, whom I previously thought was completely vanilla, is actually as kinky as I am, if not kinkier.  Pretty neat.  That led to a discussion as we were driving down the road about what things we have done before and were into, and it turns out that they have a small collection of stuff that they use for BDSM.  However, my friend had never been on FetLife before or knew much about the public scene.  They knew of the existence of The Crucible, but other than that, I knew far more about the public scene than they did.

One thing that we discussed was how we keep our rope.  Turns out that my friend keeps their rope the way that I used to do when I had just started out in BDSM: grab one end in one hand, and wrap it between hand and elbow until you’ve got about a foot or so on each end, change directions, and then tie it off.  The downside to this, especially with kinkier rope (as in rope that tends to kink up a bit), is that it’s easy for things to get tangled when it’s time to take it all apart.  Nothing like having to sit there and untangle rope at the beginning of a scene.  I’d dare say that no one likes to start a scene annoyed about tangled rope, after all, but it was the only way I knew.  I stopped using this method when I was at a play party at someone’s house a few months ago and learned a better way to keep my rope when it’s not in use.

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Bad pain in a scene is never good…

A play session that I had yesterday at a friend’s house should be a lesson as to what not to do when playing with rope.  Short of it is that I had a bit of bad pain in the middle of a scene, and it was my own stupid fault.

When this particular friend and I play, we switch, and we service-top for each other.  In those scenes, the top plays with the bottom per the bottom’s desires, and checks in to make sure that they are good to go and are otherwise enjoying it.  The first scene, where I was the top, went very well, with simple ropework and a lot of playing.

My scene, on the other hand, didn’t go too well.  I like a lot of bondage, and I was thinking about how I wanted to be tied this time.  Usually, this comes naturally, but I was a bit stumped on what I wanted to do this time.  What I ended up deciding on was a frogtie and arms behind my back.  For this, we used my 15′ lengths of rope, and tied everything using a double-rope style.  I usually tie my own legs, since I kind of enjoy tying myself up (as much as I can, at least).  Then my friend tied my wrists together behind my back.  After that, we added a blindfold and a gag, I rolled over onto my back, and then it was off to the races.

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