Am I Scary Enough?

With LeatherSIR defined as a “players” title, one of the questions that bothered me some earlier in the title year was whether my kinks and play activities measure up, whether they are “enough” for the title and to carry me through to an International win.

The title of this post came from a discussion about some local play parties where some people who are on the invite list never come to the party.  When asked why, their response was that they aren’t “scary” enough to come to those parties.  While we knew they wouldn’t be on the invite list if they weren’t sufficiently advanced players to be appropriate, it raised a couple interesting thoughts about our own perceptions of both our kinks and our perceived skills with those kinks.

There is always someone who plays with stuff that is too “edge” for you, and there is always someone who plays harder or “better” at the same things you do.  If you limit what you allow yourself to do because you think other people will judge you and consider you to be inferior — because what you do isn’t as extreme as what they do — then you will never get the chance to play at all.  This is a really hard hump for people to climb over.

(This wasn’t about my fisting parties, but as I think of it, there are guys who have been on the invite list for a while who always say to keep them on the list but never actually make it to a party.  I’ll bet some are simply intimidated by the thought of a group party where there are guys who are “better” than they are — deeper, wider, just more experienced — so they don’t come and don’t get to play with a variety of great guys in a great, supportive environment.)

In the 90s and early 00s, when I was simply trying to figure out what I liked, I sampled a lot of kinks, and bought a lot of equipment (including contest auction baskets; you don’t think I bought multiple huge nasty paddles, do you?).  I’ve got probably a dozen floggers, a couple spreader and bondage bars, a wide selection of cuffs, sounds, an electric butt plug, pounds and pounds of dildos, a humbler, collars, whips, a myriad of paddles and rods… you name it, I likely have it, including some rather interesting, quirky items.  A lot of it, though, I never use.  In fact, some of it has never been used at all, by me or on me.

A large piece of this lack of use, of course, is finding the right partner for certain equipment.  You don’t spring a paddle with sharp-edged grooves cut into it on just anyone, after all.

More than that, though, as I have matured, I have also narrowed my focus.  Before, I was into (nearly) everything, or said I was because I didn’t know any better, but now I have found a few things that I really do like/am good at, a few things I like enough/am good enough at, a whole bunch of things that only lightly interest me, and a few things which definitely don’t interest me.

The peculiar side-effect of that is that stuff that I do enough to know I really like and get good at also starts to seem mainstream.  One friend a few years ago said “What I do is normal.  What he does is edgeplay.”  Another, at a recent fisting workshop, whispered “Is fisting really considered edgy?  It’s always seemed normal to me.”

Which cycles back to the original question: Am I “scary” enough?  For my title year, rather than trying to be into everything (a Sir of all trades), I decided to focus on two things: fisting and foodplay (and to a lesser extent, flogging — FFF!).  The first being something to center around, the second something to explore.  Most especially, this helps me have a kink center to bring things back to for my interview questions, my speech, and even to touch on in my stage fantasy.

Is fisting “scary” enough?  The lack of need for fancy equipment and the basic truth that it’s just a (huge!) step up from fucking make fisting seem simple to some people.  I often forget about my own journey, which took a couple years to complete the first leg of the “journey” (taking a fist), and then many more to repeat it at will.  I see that I am still building my skills, as both top and bottom, with no end in sight — I can see the vast distances I have traveled and that the road goes ever on, and that is a good thing!  While I do it often, fisting is a huge mystery to many guys, and to many others, it is an occasional event at best (so many never get truly good at it, having to always relearn atrophied skills).  So yes, fisting is “scary” enough.

How about foodplay?  This is a huge blank space on the map for most people, marked by “Here there be (hungry) dragons”.  Most guys don’t even have a solid concept of what could be involved with foodplay, beyond two obvious images: a cucumber or other vegetable as a dildo, and licking whipped cream or honey off someone’s chest.  (Or maybe that scene from 9-1/2 Weeks.  And for some people, much of foodplay actively turns them off.)  Like with fisting, foodplay really needs no elaborate equipment; just go to the kitchen and use what you find.  Super-cheap kinky play, that confuses people.  (How can Mr. S make money from this?  Is it valid if they can’t?)  Just from the curiosity factor — break out a Klondike bar for your scene and people will pay attention — yes, foodplay is “scary” enough.

Does flogging qualify?  Almost no one would question this one, although when marked up against guys who use singletails, it starts to seem like the baby brother of “real” whipping.  But that depends on what your goals are and how you implement things.  I sometimes do just standard flogging, but I like to get up close and use my hands to beat on a guy (usually in concert with pop music rhythms, to abuse the brain as well as the body).  I like to scratch (if I have any fingernails after trimming them for fisting), I like to bite, I like to spit.  Even if I don’t raise welts and break the skin, I leave my mark.

In the end, this all second guessing the competition judges, and there are a bunch of them.  Do they feel that fisting is “out there” enough, or has it become too mainstream?  Do they think just flogging is passé, that whipping is where it’s at?  Do they think foodplay is just dumb, not even worth considering in comparison to e-stim and suspension bondage and fireplay?  Or maybe, hopefully, they don’t really care what you do — “Your kink is your kink” — so long as you do something!

---

Updated on August 1, 2012:

Touch-up edits and added links.

Camp Columbia (Richland, WA) • July 6–8

My friends Jan and Walt have a small compound (house, enclosed yard, bunkhouse) in Richland which they open up for fisting parties (dubbed “Camp Columbia”) a couple weekends each summer, inviting guys in from Seattle, Moses Lake, Spokane, Moscow, and other places around the Pacific Northwest (especially the Eastern Washington side).

This was my second trip over there, both times on the scooter.  As usual on these ride, I wore my title vest much like bike club colors.  It is about a 3.5 hour ride (about 200 miles), 4 hours with a food break in Ellensburg.  I cut out of work as early as I could, fed the cat and grabbed my bag, and was off.  Most of the trip was in daylight, dusk coming on just around Vantage (30 minutes past Ellensburg).  South of Vantage, at Mattawa on the Columbia River and just at twilight, about 14 million bugs decided to suicide on the front of the bike, and all over my helmet and my front (shirt, gloves, and title vest).  I had to stop at the next rest area to wash off the helmet face shield enough to see well.  If Ruin had an “ick” reaction to a bit of Crisco on my vest a few months ago, I can only imagine her reaction to a splatter of bug bits!

Since the last time I was at their place, Jan and Walt acquired the house next door, doubling the size of the compound and giving more sleeping space for guests (and a small shed for an extra, private sling space).  They are talking about how they could turn it into an actual clothing-optional resort, a là Palm Springs.  I think that would be very cool.  (Or hot, since it is summer!)

Cliff and Ken and Paul had also ridden over from Western Washington, which was a surprise since Cliff had said he wasn’t coming a couple days before; I think the temptation of a good motorcycle ride helped.  I played a couple times on Friday night before bed.  The next day, several of the guys from Eastern Washington headed home.  Since July 4th was mid-week this year, Camp Columbia actually spanned both weekends, and they had been there since at least the holiday.  This (and the split week in general) reduced the number of people, but I still got to play a few times, including with hottie Nick in the afternoon.

I had a difficult time bottoming this weekend, needing far more effort to take hands than usual.  It’s not the temperature (since I dealt with that in Palm Springs in June), so it was either just the long ride making my ass weary, or so much play in San Francisco the weekend before setting things off.  I had some difficulty earlier in the week, too, so I actually lean toward the latter, and I’ve had the problem once before, where for whatever reason, it’s like a switch was toggled in my ass, resetting my ability to relax properly back to where I was 3 or 4 years ago.  As with that time, my brain knew what to do but my body was rejecting it.  And as with the previous instance, I simply kept at it and things smoothed back to my regular state by the next weekend.  (I should remember to ask other fisting friends if they have encountered this effect.)

Sunday morning, with temperatures that day expected to crest 100, Cliff and Paul headed out about 9:30 on the route to Vantage I had come down on, and I took the alternate Yakima route around 10:00, and we met up for lunch in Ellensburg.  They then headed to Leavenworth and Stevens Pass (better end point for where they each live, north of Seattle), while I took Snoqualmie Pass.  I had a fine ride back, but they got caught in traffic down the pass (probably worse because of the semi-holiday weekend) and it took an extra 90 minutes or so.

View Larger Map

---

Updated on August 1, 2012:

Touch-up edits and added links and map.

Northern Exposure 3.0 (Anchorage) • June 14–18

GUSH!

I guess I need to say more that that, huh?  Okay: I had a great time at Northern Exposure, exceeding my expectations!

Northwest region for International LeatherSIR has a huge territory to cover — Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska — and much of it very sparsely populated.  There isn’t much that you could call a gay leather scene out of the Seattle-to-Portland corridor (no leather bars in Missoula, Montana, sorry to say), so it is difficult to really cover the region as a leather titleholder.  There are a couple small fisting weekends in Eastern Washington, though.  And a pansexual leather conference in Alaska.

I knew vaguely of Northern Exposure in Anchorage because of arrangements made for last year’s Northwest Community Bootblack Dylan to travel up to the event.  So when the call for presenters went out, I sent in five proposals: Play Party Etiquette, How to Throw a Play Party, Online Cruising, Engaging a Club and Its Board, and Fisting.  (Yes, all over the map.  Not knowing just what they were looking for — more sex or more organizational — I wanted to provide a variety of options for them to choose from.

It took a long, long time to get things settled.  I had communication that they wanted me to come, but it wasn’t until after all the other presenters’ bios and classes were posted online that we got my stuff settled.  (As the head organizer, Sarha’s time was stolen for the first part of the year getting ready to compete at IMsL.)  I don’t know if this was my lack of experience in being a traveling presenter (this was only my second such; I previously did a rubber workshop for KCLU (now defunct) in Kansas City) or added uncertainly on how to handle a gay presenter at a pan event, but it was frustrating.  Eventually all got dealt with, of course, and I had enough miles on Alaska Airlines to cover the ticket (which would be pretty expensive otherwise, even from Seattle).

Thursday

I flew in on Thursday, getting in about noon.  About the time I got to the Seattle airport, it occurred to me that this was one of the few trips I have taken in recent years to somewhere new, somewhere I haven’t been as an adult.  The last trip like that would have been to Madison in October 2010, and before that were overseas trips to New Zealand, Amsterdam/Copenhagen/Berlin, and Ireland.  Alaska is one of only a handful of states I had never visited before (with Hawai’i, Alabama, West Virginia, Delaware, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine), and there aren’t many metro areas in North America I haven’t been to at least once.

I met one of the other presenters at the airport — Dr. Clockwork, who sells violet wands.  While someone from Northern Exposure was supposed to meet us, no one was there.  I had rented a car, so I went off to get it and left my contact info with Doc in case he felt stranded.  I headed to downtown, but stopped off at Alaska Leather (a motorcycle leathers shop) and ate at Angeline’s Philippine Cuisine.

In town, I scoped out where the gay bars are — Mad Myrna’s, The Raven, and Kodiak — and then headed for the downtown tourist area.  That part of town is loaded with tourist shops, each of them having 80% the same stuff as all the others, of course.  I bought the requisite Alaska t-shirt (with a moose on it), a pair of bed shorts (red with mooses on them), and a necklace with a bear paw (not a moose!) carved on some Alaska mineral that looks like hematite.

I then headed out to the west end of town, to Earthquake Park.  Alaska suffered a major earthquake in 1964 which destroyed a couple major ports and severely damaged the Alaskan economy — and launched a tsumani which was seen in San Francisco and actually caused major damage in Crescent City, Oregon.  Earthquake Park overlooks part of the landscape which collapsed, dropping a bluff a couple hundred feet.

At The Raven, there was a “potlatch” — a small potluck in this case — and the welcome meet and greet for the weekend, with the introduction of most of the presenters.  The amount of food wasn’t quite enough for me, so I went next door to a hamburger place.  Later on, I was definitely fading, so I got directions to where the presenters were being housed, some cabins on Beech Lake, about 30 minutes north of Anchorage, and I head out there ahead of people.

When I got there and got into the first cabin, I was dismayed: bare except for a couple cots and an unlit wood stove.  Fortunately, I found the main cabin, which had futons, heat, a bathroom, and a kitchen.  I found a couple blankets and snuggled under them, working on blog posts, and was just about to doze off when others arrived, including some of the Northern Exposure crew with bedding.  Suddenly things were much more tolerable!  about half of use stayed in the main cabin, and others got fires started and stayed in the smaller ones.

Friday

On Friday, I took a couple of the workshops, including Dr.  Clockwork’s on “Violet Wands: Basics & Beyond” and Big Bad Jim’s on “How to Beat the Crap Out of Someone”.  The latter of these gave me a few ideas to use during flogging and bondage scenes regarding hitting someone with body parts other than hands and feet.

I also did my first workshop, on “Play Parties: How to Go and How to Throw”.  I first did a version of this a year and a half ago for Tribal Instinct in Seattle, toning it up a little for this.  The first half of it is influenced by the book to teenagers called Prom and Party Etiquette, by Cindy Post Senning (daughter of Emily Post), twisting its content to kink party ends: what should you do and not do at a play party, should you bring a date, should you bring a (hostess) gift, can you see the guest list, etc.  The second half is about putting together your own play party — why you should do one, what you can manage, what you need to provide, who to invite, how to manage an invite list, how to deal with problems.

I didn’t stick around for the play party that night, going out to Mad Myrna’s instead.  I got to the bar to order and heard “Jim Drew, what are you doing here?!”  The bartender was former Seattle Empress Miss MeMe (albeit in boy mode for work).  Never assume you can go anywhere incognito.  I also met up with a guy I had been chatting with on Scruff.  After a couple drinks at Mad Myrna’s, we went to the Raven and made out a while there.  Unfortunately, neither of us had somewhere we could go to fuck (etc.), so we had to leave it at that.

Saturday

On Saturday, I took three workshops.  One was Snook’s “Bill of Rights for Bottoms”, which was a work-in-progress workshop, as much group discussion about the concepts as anything.  Second was Rule of Three’s “Depersonalization and Dehumanization”, which discussed things such as bondage and masking to focus on only part of a bottom (like tits or cock), and also about using a bottom as an object, such as a table or an ashtray.  Third was slave Elizabeth (and Master Todd)’s “Slave’s Guide to Screwing Up with Grace”, which was mostly about how their relationship works, including managing/balancing the BDSM side of things with professional life and children.  Slave Elizabeth also gave a great phrase to take with me, regarding when people treat their relationship protocol as the one everyone should follow: “Your protocol is your protocol.  Your protocol is your gift.”  (My addition: “Please keep it.  Regifting is tacky.”)

I did my second presentation (we were each scheduled for three, one per day), “Cruising Online: Getting Some Ass without Being One”.  This was heavily centered around gay male online cruising, but with looks into things like FetLife and OK Cupid, including the OK Cupid Enemies Tumblr blog, which showed that het cruising can be just as full as asses as gay cruising is (as witnessed by Douchebags of Grindr).  The workshop went through details of what goes into a good online profile, including photos, title, text, and keeping things fresh.  There was also some good discussion about concerns for het women (stalking, etc.) and people in smaller communities (where the description alone in a profile can be enough to identify someone, even without pictures).  But probably the best part of the session was walking through bad examples I had found online — no pics, no profile text, iPhones implanted in faces, and so on.  (You could probably do an entire hour giggle session just with bad profiles!)

I slept in the car instead of taking the last workshop session, very tired.  It was warm and humid, though, so I only dozed.

Rather than head out to the gay bars early tonight, I stayed for the evening play party and engaged in four flogging scenes.  Two of them were with women — Marie and Monique — both of whom were newer to things (I think it was Marie’s first flogging and Monique’s second one).  I also played with one of the few other gay men at the event, former Mr. Alaska Leather (and former Seattle resident, so we already knew each other a bit) Kurt Hillyer.  WIth Kurt, both because he is experienced with flogging and because we didn’t have either gender or orientation issues to get in the middle of things, I was able to work him over harder, and we did the scene in the round, without bracing, just him standing upright in the middle of the space as I worked him up one side and down the next.  The fourth scene was the standout for me, though, as Monique had set me up with a straight (presumably) bear of a guy named Will who wanted to really be laid into.  As with Kurt, I was really able to open up on Will, not just with the flogger but with a paddle and with my hands, including fist beating on his back and even spitting on his heated skin.

I eventually had to stop playing — had to cut short the fourth scene, with Monique — because of my wrist (which has been bothering me since March), before it started hurting too bad.  Monique gave me a great gray bandana with “ALASKA” and bear and moose printed on it, and I traded her my fairly standard gray bandana in return.

I went out to Mad Myrna’s again for a beer and met up with a Facebook friend David, who knows people I do in the Seattle Imperial Court.

Sunday

On Sunday, everyone at the cabins got a late start, waking up just a little bit before the car to take those of us who didn’t have our own in to Anchorage.  Since my workshop wasn’t until the afternoon, I hung out rather than rushing.

I made the second workshop, Snook’s on “Piercing for Bondage & Control”.  She used hooks in her girl’s chest and thighs and strung them under the table.  She used some needles in the arm with a ribbon lacing, and then used needles through the fingertips and toe tips… and then made the girl remove the needle piercings while tied down.  While it was a fascinating workshop, it also confirmed for me that needles aren’t something I want to pursue, either as top or bottom; the blood and pain issues don’t bother me, but there’s just nothing in it that flips a switch for me and makes me want to try it.  Which is fine: Not My Kink.

My third workshop was after lunch, titled “60 Minutes of Buttsex”.  Actually, the workshops were 90 minutes, so I edited that to “60 Minutes of Buttsex + 30 Minutes of Fisting”.  This was a formalization of the “100 Miles of Buttsex” car workshop I did with Ruin, Ryan, and Jean in March.  While my other two workshops had small attendance, maybe a half-dozen people each, I probably had 20 people here, which kind of surprised me.  I shouldn’t have been: anal sex has some taboos attached (making it that much more attractive) and is something a lot of pan folks have tried to a limited degree (and maybe not with great success), but generally not nearly as much as a gay guy has — we specialize in it, after all.  There were bits of great discussion during the workshop, especially from Cat, a lesbian from the Bay Area, who was able to help fill in some of the holes (intentional pun) I had regarding female bits.

After that, I sat in on Lady Pact’s “Erotic Wax Play” session, but I was so tired, I kept dozing off.  Eventually FoxFinder (Sarha’s husband/dom) nudged me and had me go lie down in the presenters’ room, where I dozed and got a little sleep.

When we arrived that morning, FoxFinder had told myself and Master Todd that we wouldn’t be staying at the cabins that evening, that we would need to go back out and retrieve our stuff, that other housing would be done that evening.  Due to my workshop right after lunch, we opted to go out between the workshops and dinner, when there was a long enough break.  When we (and slave Elizabeth) got out there, Otter (who was kind of our cabin Den Mom) was dealing with the people who were renting the cabins next.  Apparently not only were we not staying that night, we were supposed to be fully out before they got there at 5:00.  Oops.  We hastily cleared things out, trying to keep further friction at a minimum.

(The incoming people run a weekly camp for “special needs” kids.  Obviously, one thing that really helps “special needs” kids is consistency, the ability to do the same things the same way every time.  Perhaps less obviously, one thing that really helps people who work with “special needs” kids is also consistency.  The woman was pissy less because our stuff was still there than because it was disrupting her consistency and thus her ability to provide such to the kids.  I sympathize, but she came across as though some of the “special needs” had rubbed off onto her.)

Returning into Anchorage, we had a lengthy discussion about relationship protocols, how things differ between gay and straight kink worlds, leather contests, and in particular about hats and covers.  Finding that we were on the same page about the subject, they asked me to do a Covering Ceremony for Master Todd, which I was surprised yet honored to oblige for.  (I won’t go into details — it was just the three of us and the Alaska countryside, short, and less formal than ceremonies you will find written out [such as in John Weal’s controversial book], but the value in such is what those involved take away from it.)

Dinner was a multi-course affair back at the event site, everything home made, including bread, cream of mushroom soup, salad, salmon, bear meatloaf, and dessert.  In between the courses, the Last Frontier Drag Kings performed.  (And Sarha fluttered around, changing outfits every few minutes.)  They also brought each of the presenters on stage for a special thanks, and for me, that included an on-stage pinning by Kurt with a The Last Frontier Men’s Club (the local leather/bear club) pin — down on his knees, fishing in my fly to find the right place for the pin — and a few seconds that I spent licking all over FoxFinder’s fist (that’s what happens when you ask me to explain International Mr. Saliva, what can I say?).

Most of the presenters who had been at the cabin went out to the FoxDen near Wasilla for the night.  I decided I wanted to stay in town and hit the bars again, maybe get myself some man-on-man action.  (And ensure having a room, bed, and bathroom to myself.)  Online hotel sites had godawful expensive rates, but remembering the name of a motel near the bars, I got a decent enough rate to stay in the city.  The bars were pretty dead, but I did connect with a guy online for some suitable play.

Monday

On Monday, I packed out of the motel and headed to Gwennie’s Old Alaska Restaurant for the Survivor’s Brunch.  The info I had was off by an hour, though, so the rest of the crew wasn’t there.  I was about to leave to kill time at Starbucks when Kurt arrived, also way early, so we went off and had coffee together.

When we got back, a few of the crew and presenters were there, and more trickled in over the next 30 minutes or so.  Food portions were huge, and I couldn’t finish mine.  As things would down, I handed out zip ties (zipper pulls on leather things, akin to a bolo tie) to several of the people there whom I had a really great time with over the weekend. 

(These zip ties are something I remember from my early days in the San Francisco leather community — you sometimes still see versions of them now without a zipper pull, with one of the cords in a fancy knot around the other — and I re-created them for my booth the last time I vended at IML.  They are a great subtle way of showing your leather to others as well as keeping a little with you even when not wearing hides.  And they can also serve as a handy collar, cuffs, or tie for CBT or other needs; I have even used one as temporary back lacing in a pair of chaps!)

FoxFinder pulled me aside at one point for a special thanks and palmed me a genuine bear claw.  Very cool.

After the brunch — including some picture taking with the Edmonton Away Team on the reindeer sculptures out front — I drove down the Seward Highway along the Turnagain Arm to Girdwood (about an hour south of Anchorage).  I took some photos and videos of the incredible scenery, had a fireweed & honey ice cream cone, and headed back to the airport for my return flight to Seattle.

Aftermath

GUSH!  (Oh, I said that already.)

I had a lot more fun at Northern Exposure than I expected to.  The largest part of that, of course, was being the sole gay presenter at an otherwise (kinky) straight event.  You never know how you will be received — embraced, accepted as just another presenter, or kind of danced around.  It was pretty much the second of those for me, which is really what you want: treat my like a person first, then deal with the gay angle only if you need to.

Despite some of the communication issues I had going into the event, it really ran exceptionally well.  (I have always believed that most events will: set things up to succeed, start the boulder rolling, and it will make it to the bottom of the hill, in part because others want it to succeed and will help.)  While I’m sure there were adventures and small panics behind the scenes — certainly with the music for one of the Drag Kings on Sunday — the only thing of significance that I noted which needs to be improved was having a large printout of the schedule.  They only had a small printout taped to a white board at first, and then we started writing in big letters what the next workshops were, but a 24x36 or so pre-printed one would be a good thing to have for next year.

I loved loved loved getting to know Master Todd and slave Elizabeth, getting great insight into a model for how a master/slave relationship can actually work, especially with Elizabeth being more of an equal partner in the relationship in many areas than the fantasy nature of such relationships would have you believe (and that much more real as a result).  I wish them the best if they choose to run for one of the regional M/s titles, as they said they may.

Almost my entire life has been on the West Coast, in view of mountains — real mountains, with craggy tops and snow, not the big rolling hills they call mountains back East (grin).  You learn to tell your location and directions by where they are, and to navigate by them.  From where I am sitting now, I can see the Cascades, four distances away (nearby Seattle, Mercer Island in Lake Washington, the Issaquah highlands beyond that, and then the mountains).  They are real, but they are a ways away — 60 to 90 minutes drive.  In Alaska, though, the mountains are IN YOUR FACE!  They are only two distances away, almost close enough to touch, looking 15 minutes drive away, maybe.  It was really amazing.

There’s an old joke that the Alaska state bird is the mosquito, and they were certainly out a Earthquake Park and at Beech Lake where the cabins were.  For whatever reason, though, I only came away with one scratchy bite.  I sure brushed enough of them away.

Northern Exposure was just days before summer solstice.  Alaska is the “Land of the Midnight Sun”, and while I knew what this meant academically, you just aren’t prepared for it until you experience it.  On Friday night, I got back to the cabin at 2:30 am, and it looked like the sun had just set.  (Fortunately, I didn’t have trouble sleeping with the odd light levels.)

I did not get to see the Northern Lights.  I don’t know if they are even visible from Anchorage at that time of year, but that’s something to look for on a future trip.  There was a cool art installation at the Anchorage airport emulating the Northern Lights on the ceiling of one of the corridors, though.  That rivaled “Flying Fish” (the stream of fish embedded in the floor of Concourse C at SeaTac airport) and “Desert Wildlife” (the half-sunk desert animals at the Las Vegas airport) for cool airport art.

I got several compliments on my speaking style and presentation for my workshops.  The biggest part of that, I’m sure, is that I’ve taught dance workshops for a decade.  But I think a chunk of the credit has to go to my father, who was a Methodist minister.  Even though I didn’t like having to sit through sermons (and often read a book in the back pew instead of paying attention), a lot of how he did what he did must have rubbed off.

I also got kudos from people for doing my presentations from a gay viewpoint.  While I did go through them and make sure that pronouns and focus weren’t completely male oriented, I didn’t try to “straighten” things up any more than I had to, presenting things as “This is the way I do it or I think it should go” and trusting that those attending the workshops were adults, able to adapt what I was presenting into their own reference frame.  (This was especially true with the Buttsex & Fisting workshop, where a couple times I had to come back around to the fact that I don’t know the details of female anatomy, so I could only generalize about things like vaginal fisting.)

At one point during the weekend, I thought “Wow, this sort of event would be great aimed just at gay guys — workshops on all sort of subjects and play parties at night.”  A few minutes later, I thought “That would never work.”  What I meant by that is that on multiple levels, gay leathermen wouldn’t be interested.  First, there’s simply the matter of number of attendees — take a leather bar with 100 guys in it, and frankly only 20% (if that) are actually players of a sufficient level to be interested in the concept, and only half of those might attend any way; the rest of your leather bar patrons are interested in leather as a fashion accessory or leathersex as a condiment rather than the main dish (and that’s fine!).  Second, gay leathermen like to think we already know everything, or at least that we can figure out whatever we need to know — we don’t want a 90-minute workshop on wax play, covering beginning steps, safety, more advanced topics, and some demo; we want 5 minutes of basics, 5 minutes of safety, 5 minutes of next stages, and then 75 minutes of hands-on demo/guided play, with the belief that we can figure out what things to try or avoid.  (We’re rebels, you know!)  Third, half of the workshops (some of mine included) were less about play and more about making relationships work and managing your leather lifestyle and such; gay leathermen again generally are not interested in that stuff (at least on the surface, and there are exceptions) — we want the sex, damn it!

If they invite me back again next year, will I go?  I would sure like to — do more exploring of the geography, and I have several other workshops I could do which would go over better for that crowd, now that I know them better.  But I would also heartily recommend that other gay leathermen (and women) apply to be presenters — to get the experience of both the weekend and of Alaska, and to bring their own spin on things to the event — and if it were a choice between me and someone else with good stuff to present, I would definitely tell Northern Exposure to go for the other gay leather presenter, to “expose” themselves further!

See pics from the trip.

Leather Spirituality

During my contest interview, Luna asked for my views on Leather Spirituality (or maybe it was Leather and Spirituality; I’m going to treat those as the same thing, although they may not be).  I gave a somewhat rambling answer, circling around the question before landing on it.  (I’m not sure this post will do any better a job.)

Religion can be a sensitive subject in the gay and kink community, or at least practicing religion or even respect for it can be.  Declaring your disdain for it, or how you have overcome it, those are commonplace.

Some people reading this are thinking I made a jump from spirituality right into organized religion and are starting a mental protest.  And that’s true, so far as it goes, and it’s why my original answer had rambled.

I’m a PK, a Preacher’s Kid.  My father was a Presbyterian minister, who then shifted to become a Methodist minister about the time I was 10 or 11, I think.  (I don’t know the details, beyond that the small town church he served was jointly shared by both denominations and I think at least a third as well.)  To me, separating religion and spirituality doesn’t register.

I gave up on organized religion years ago.  I respect it.  I respect those who embrace it.  I value the Bible, I accept the validity (if not the explicit truth) of the Christ myth, etc., but I don’t have a need for the “organized” part of it, for the creation of community resulting from having someone else do to the formal job of worshipping for you.  If I need to feel the presence of God, I just look out at nature.

I don’t seek religious or spiritual experiences through sex play, either.  I don’t look to transcend earthly reality or to find metaphysical enlightenment via intense experiences in the playroom any more than I look for them on the dance floor during a really hot line dance or taking the curves on a fast-moving two-wheeled vehicle.

(Maybe it’s my analytical, Virgo nature as well.  I seek understanding, not that which cannot be understood.)

All this said, despite not looking for spirituality in my sex play, I have had extreme experiences during sex which others might attribute to the godhead.  On the basest level, this has included sensations of floating, being physically disconnected from the events, and “going to my happy place” (complete mentally separated from what is going on).  Fisting is especially prone to these feelings, with its extreme sensations and deep connection with the play partner.  The sensory deprivation from a hood can also provoke these sorts of sensations.  Mild drug use like poppers and pot can also be contributory factors.

On several occasions, I have seen balls of energy and even neon lightning flash around the play space.  I routinely speak in tongues during a scene and afterwards may have quiver reactions similar to seizures (or aftershocks).  I have experienced at least one genuine out-of-body experience, seeing the entire scene from several feet above.  And one time I saw elder gods and screamed in terror.  (Note: elder gods don’t respect safewords.)

FistFest (Palm Springs, CA) • June 7–10

There are two major weekend-long non-leather kink events taking place in Palm Springs each year: Wet ’n Hot and FistFest.

Wet ’n Hot is primarily for watersports (piss) play.  I got into watersports play in the late 1990s, and went to the second or third Wet ’n Hot event in 2000, when it was primarily occurring at Cathedral City Boys Club.  My interest in the event waned over time as attendance dropped and non-watersports “pig play” became much more prominent at it.  (I also found it increasingly difficult to incorporate watersports play into play scenes, especially after the Puget Sound Pissers Society [PSPS] folded.  In large part, this is because while everyone has to piss at some point, it’s only at a group party where there’s always someone who has to piss now.  You can rarely make piss play the centerpoint of an extended play session with one other person, needing to make it a small portion of a larger scene instead.)  A couple years ago, I revisited Wet ’n Hot and found that attendance and energy and piss content had picked up, but my own interests had shifted more to fisting.  So after attending the 2011 event and spending more effort angling for fisting scenes than piss scenes, I decided to move on/over to FistFest.

I had heard of FistFest before, but I had some trepidation.  Was I good enough to fist with the “big dogs”?  Let’s see: I play an average of at least weekly, I both top and bottom, I’ve been to fisting play parties in several other cities, I host regular parties in Seattle with 20+ guys at each one, I’m making regular advancement in my skills in entry time and depth and width, I have been experimenting with lube formulas…  Fuck yes, I’m good enough!

Bill U. from Seattle (who has managed the local fisting parties in years gone by) invited me to room share with him, and advised me to come Thursday and leave Sunday (vs. my original plan, to arrive Friday and leave Monday).  He arranged to borrow an additional sling stand from a buddy in Palm Springs, so that we would have two available; I just needed to bring a sling and hanging stuff.

Thursday was marred slightly by heavy traffic going east.  (I flew into LAX.  It’s right now about $50 more to fly into Ontario [halfway to Palm Springs] than the Los Angeles airports, and about $70 more than that to fly direct to Palm Springs, so if you also have to rent a car in Palm Springs, $120 more vs. a couple hours driving and gas in each direction can be a hard sell.)  I was expecting to arrive about 4 pm, but it was closer to 5:30 when I finally got there.

Not that such stopped me from playing that night.  After a couple trips to the store for play supplies and some food — breakfast, especially — I prepped for play, and played four times that night.  (I remember Bill from Philadelphia and Ton from Palm Springs, but other names escape me.)

The title vest was on display in my room all weekend, hanging from the sling frame and visible from the window, and I was wearing it on Friday and Saturday nights.  I also met last year’s California Leatherboy, Mike, at the event, although we didn’t get a chance to play.

On Friday afternoon, Bill U. and I took off to take the Aerial Tramway up Mt. San Jacinto.  Cliff and I tried to do this in December, but found a 2+ hours wait and no cell signal at the base.  Now on the edge of summer, we got on the first tram after about 10 minutes wait.  Up top, we took some photos and Bill had some lunch, and then we walked down to the valley floor on the other side to hike around there for a short bit before catching the tram down.  I got some video of the tram ride down, which takes about 10 minutes with the tram rotating full around 2.5 times.  It’s actually a pretty cool ride, and the entire trip was worth the $23 or so that it cost.

(Back at the host resort, we missed a fisting workshop and a door prize raffle, and the chance at afternoon play.  Oh well, I’m sure I’ll get plenty of hand-to-ass exposure during the weekend!)

Friday night, more play (of course): Carl and Sparky (I’ve played with Carl before, at HellHole in San Francisco), Richard (who was told by Ton to keep an eye out for me; love those pig-to-pig recommendations!), and a couple others I am forgetting.

Saturday afternoon, I played for a couple hours with Brad.  Great guy and he made me actually shoot three or four times in the session; assgasms are one thing, but ejaculation is a bit rarer.  We could have kept playing a while longer, but he had dinner plans with buddies.  (We later realized why we each looked a little familiar to one another: I had played with his other half when I was in San Francisco in April.  We briefly met twice that afternoon, once in the playroom and once in the kitchen, but didn’t play that day.  He’s setting up a four-some for the three of us and another guy when I’m in San Francisco again the weekend before July 4th.)

I went out to catch the room lottery for next year (since there’s more demand than rooms at the host resort, they do a lottery, which is a bit fairer and rewards those who attend one year with a chance at a room the next), run by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.  Ran into my past Palm Springs play buddy John, in Sister face; he seemed to think I knew he was a Sister, but I don’t recall it (doesn’t matter, though).  They also had a ticket raffle, with prizes ranging from lube and gift cards to a portable sling.  I bought $20 of tickets and really recouped my money with a Square Peg toy (the Worm) donated by Gear leather and fetish shop and a gift certificate for a stay in the Master Suite at the Canyon Club (made even better by the certificate being able to be used on weekends rather than just weekdays, as is often the case, although not on event weekends).  Hmm, need to wrangle another trip to Palm Springs in the next year, and not during an event or holiday…

Saturday night led off playing with Marty, whom I had met the night before but now found him on the resort lawn with two guys slobbering over his “larger than average manhood” (it was a good 9 inches… a very good 9 inches!).  After I had a go at swallowing his cock, we packed up from there back to the sling in my room where he fucked me a bit and then fisted me.  Yummy!  Following that, Brad and I tag-teamed Gwynn.  I then got to play with Ken, a leather buddy I’ve known and been hot after for 15 years or more, but never got the chance to play with until tonight.  I hope it won’t be another 15 years, because Ken set a new depth record for me!  The night closed with one last session with Gwynn.  Again, I think there’s another name in the mix that I’m forgetting.

I cruised around some later Sunday morning before I had to drive back to Los Angeles, this time to Burbank airport, but not much was going on.  No further fisting, anyway.  The trip back was on Delta, with a plane change in Salt Lake City.  And what do you know, but just like two weeks before with the trip to New Orleans, there was a plane issue and an added delay.  They almost cancelled the flight, but got us on another plane instead, and we fortunately made it back to Seattle in time for me to not have to cab it home this time.

When travelling, I try to not hit the same restaurant twice (Starbucks and other coffee shops excepted).  For a fisting party (or full weekend), I eat light.  Thursday night was tacos at El Pollo Loco, Friday night was a pulled pork sandwich at Big Mama’s Soul Food, and Saturday was a quesadilla and a taco at Santana’s.

Bill has a room reservation set for next year’s event, apparently on the third floor where there’s a balcony with room for several slings outside.  I’m looking forward to it already!

Fundraising Through Better Fisting #3a and 3b

When planning the third of my title-year Chez Poing fisting parties, I had three dates potentially available (the first three Saturdays of May), so I queried the dozen or so guys who are my “regulars”, attending almost every party to find out their availability.  None of the dates were available for everyone, of course.  But feeling horny (or masochistic), I decided to do two parties in May, on the 1st and 3rd Saturdays.

First Party

The first Saturday was May 5, Cinco de Mayo (or as I referred to it, “Cinco de Mano”!).  It was also the date of the “supermoon”, the oversized moon which became full just about the time it was at its closest point to Earth.  Seemed to be an appropriate date for the party!
We had great weather that weekend.  Attendance, however, was low, only 18.  But looking back at my records, last year’s May party was also low (only 14 guys), so maybe there’s just something about May — it’s getting warmer and staying light later, so guys are feeling the need to get out and about.  At least one cancel came from a couple guys who worked too hard on a house project and ran out of energy for playing.
Not that I’m complaining, of course.  The guys who attended had a great time, and that’s all that is really important.

Second Party

The second party was on May 19.  Clean up for the party was way easier since I had just done it all two weeks before.  Weather wasn’t nearly as nice, but that didn’t stop guys from attending, as we had 25 attendees, making this one of the best attended parties yet.
I’m going to definitely target nice weather at a time of year when people are really looking forward to such as a major attendance anti-driver.  Come the next party, in August, when another sunny warm day isn’t as special, that influence will be reduced and guys will simply be horny and wanting to play.

The two parties raised another $140 (after expenses) for my travel fund.  Next party will be Saturday, August 25, for my birthday.

West Coast Rubber 2012 • February 24–26

This is the 8th year for West Coast Rubber.  I attended the inaugural one in 2005 in Palm Springs, on the weekend Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.  (With the 100+ degree heat making us sweat profusely, draining into rubber shirts and shorts and releasing ounces, even cups of liquid at a time, there were now-tasteless jokes about “breaching the levee”.)  I attended again in 2006, but after that, they moved it to Los Angeles, a city that doesn’t hold any attraction for me as a destination place, so I didn’t keep going.  I decided to go again in 2010, to reconnect with my rubber roots, and I had an okay time, although there was still no attraction for me to go to L.A.  (Read about that trip here.)  Now, though, they have moved it back to Palm Springs, and to February, where temps will top out at only about 82 degrees (“Heaven” for those of us from colder climates, in other words!).  I’m totally there!

My Rubber Roots

I first got into rubber in 1997 or so, after dating a guy who had some (but never wore it while we were dating).  I bought a rubber shirt from Mr. S at IML that year, and acquired a whole crapload of rubber attire and gear over the next several years.

In 1998 (I think), I competed for San Francisco Leather Daddy’s Boy, but wore rubber for the contest, and was later advised that that may have had an effect on me not winning.  In November 1999, though, I competed for Mr. International Rubber (2nd runner-up).  I then became a charter member of Rubber Men of San Francisco Bay (and designed the logos they used for years), and had them sponsor me to compete for International again in 2000 (2nd runner-up again, with a larger contestant field).

After moving to Seattle, I continued to attend (but not compete) for MIR for several years, including one year that I was suffering from Hep B the entire time, not aware of why I was sick until I got home.  I also started attending Rubbout in Vancouver (before I moved to Seattle, in fact, and it was he return drive to Seattle that convinced me to move from California), and have only missed one year of it since then.

Leather titles and a live-in relationship (with a live-in teenager) put a damper on my rubber time, but it has never been far from my heart, and I’m trying to recapture some of it these days.  This year is partially a good time for this, because while Northwest LeatherSIR is technically a “leather” title, it is a play title and embraces the play activities which work well/better/best/only in rubber as much as those which are best in leather (or in nothing at all).

Thursday

For this trip, I decided to take my portable sling.  My friend Bill recommended a rolling long bag for such (almost a golf club bag), and I found one from Coleman at the local Ross store.  Unfortunately, the bag itself is heavy enough that I couldn’t take the new frame, only the old one, and even then, the cross pieces, sling, and tie downs (a recommendation from my friend Matt, rather than chains) had to go in my carry-on to keep the bag just under 50 lbs.  But it is indeed much easier to transport.  And since the sling poles only fill the bottom compartment, I could put my nasty heavy carry-on in the top compartment to make transporting it also easier.

D. came over on Thursday night and helped me paw through my rubber, to figure out what I would take.  As usual, I took more than I ended up actually wearing, but really that was only a pair of shorts and a couple shirts more than needed, so not too bad.  Still, with the sling pieces as well as plenty of rubber, that carry-on was heavy.

D. also got the chance to try on some of my rubber.  Poof: instant rubber boy!  He took right to the latex and the Nasty Pig stuff (nice to have non-leather options for him), and I also took the opportunity to put him in the new neoprene hood and cuffs, use the rubber floggers on him, and so forth.

Friday

The trip to the airport and the flight were uneventful, except for the hard, hard landing in Long Beach.  I did discover another thing I don’t recommend people do: don’t watch episodes of Pan Am (featuring the glories of 1960s air travel) while flying on modern aircraft.

West Coast Rubber had all of Camp Palm Springs reserved (about 40 rooms).  This was the first time I’ve stayed there.  It was fine — a bit “dumpy”, but not out of the range of either what is acceptable or where I’ve stayed on previous trips.  The pillows were not comfortable, though, and the DVD player in my room wouldn’t play any of the DVDs they had for check out.  (Probably needs cleaning badly.)

I went down to Gear and bought a neoprene swimsuit/jock with the ass cut out.  Matthew was working that day (the same hunky hair guy I mentioned with the previous Palm Springs trip).

Friday night was a Meet & Greet and then a play party.  While there was a good crowd for the former, most guys didn’t hang around or didn’t play much.  Had a little fun, but only a little (just rub, wank, and suck).

Saturday

I tried to go to Sherman’s Deli for breakfast, but much of downtown Palm Springs was shut down for a parade.  Not sure if it was for Modernism Week or something else (someone said Black History Month, which is in February, so maybe).  Once I got to Sherman’s, there was a line out the door, so I went north to Rick’s Restaurant instead.  Also with a line out the door, but I was by myself, so I got immediate seating at the counter.  (I remember as a kid, I always wanted to sit at the counter at diners, but we never got to but maybe once or twice.  It still always feel like a cross between exotic and trucker.)  Catfish and eggs was the special that enticed me.  Online later, I got hit on by two guys who saw me (and my red hanky) during breakfast.

On Saturday, we had a BBQ and pool party.  Nice and relaxing, and rubber boys do like being in the pool in their rubber.  (Leather boys in their leather, not so much.)

At 5 pm, we had a rubber dinner in gear at Trio, with about 35 of us at four tables.  They had to move the reservation up from 6 pm because the restaurant was sold out later, due to Modernism Week, I think.  I gave a ride to some of the Vancouver boys, but getting them in their gear, shined up, and out the door was like herding cats.  Slicked up cats.  We were almost the last to arrive as a result.  While we were waiting, though, Paul from Vancouver took a couple nice pics of me in my rubber, which will be my cruise site profile pic for the next few months.

On the way back to my car, we chanced upon a gallery storefront featuring work by the artist SHAG.  It only took me a moment to connect the name and art style to an artist Cliff had told me about who does a lot of retro-styled modern tiki work.  We had to go in.  The gallery owner (I assume) got a kick out of having rubber guys in the store and after I took this pic of Reid (Mr. West Coast Rubber), he took one of the four of us with the big wall tiki.

After dinner, there was supposed to be the Mr. West Coast Rubber contest and then a play party, but apparently there were no contestants.  For a weekend like this, while unfortunate, that isn’t fatal.  Most of the guys attending are happy to have a contest, but we aren’t coming just for one.  So the contest got replaced by a bar crawl.

This was fine with me.  I had received an invite on Manhunt to a cocktail party where I would told some of the Desert Fetish Authority guys would be.  I asked him about dress code for it, but never heard back, so I went in rubber chaps, neoprene harness, and title vest.

While some of the DFA guys were likely in attendance, it was not a leathermen’s cocktail party.  Other than a couple guys in leather pants with their casual attire shirts, I was the only one in leather (rubber, etc.), and doubly so the only one with no shirt and his ass hanging out.  Social faux pas?  Perhaps.  But I remembered one of the things I was told two decades ago in San Francisco: “While some people may look askance at you for attending the opera in your leather pants, vests, and tux shirt, remember that what you’re wearing probably cost as much as what they’re wearing.”  So given the choice between turning tail or just acting like I belonged there, I chose the latter.

There were of course several leather guys there.  Eric, whom I played with on the last trip, was happy to see me, and he introduced me to a few other people.  I got the chance to explain some hanky code basics to a couple guys, including the idea that you can flag whatever hanky or stripe on your chaps or what not that you like, even if you aren’t into fisting or piss or whichever activity the color “means”, but what you can’t do (better not do) is either be unaware of the message you are sending with what you are displaying or be offended when someone makes the obvious assumption.

Ken and Bob (?), the owners of Gear were there, and Matthew was tending bar.  Curtis, one of the hosts and the guy who invited me, is an old acquaintance from square dancing in the Bay Area in the 1990s; we hadn’t even seen each other for 15 years until a chance meeting at Chaps Inn on my last trip.  Randy, another square dance friend from the Bay Area, was also there, as was John, who recognized me from my days at Adobe Systems in the 90s.  (I guess my looks haven’t changed a whole lot.)  There were also a couple transplants from Montréal, one a former titleholder and the other one of the founders of Club Bolo whom I knew just barely through IAGLCWDC channels.

After leaving the party, I headed to the Barracks in Cathedral City, expecting to meet up with the rubber boys, but it was pretty empty.  I did chat with Red, one of the security guys, who said that they get some undercover cops in on Sundays, looking for ways and reasons to shut the bar down.  (Never mind the large amount of slosh-over income that restaurants and such in the area get from it, it has gays having a good time, and that must be stopped!  “Watchdog has spoken!”)

Over at the Tool Shed, I found the rubber boys just hadn’t made it past there.  And since it was hopping there, no wonder!  After a couple beers, I headed back to the resort, running into Alex and Flip from Seattle.  Flip had a piece of art in the Erotic Art Expo that was being displayed at the Tool Shed.

I also got to see my buddy John, who has become a regular play buddy each time I come to town.

Sunday

Sunday morning, after playing until 3:30 am, I dragged my ass out of bed and down to Lulu California Bistro for brunch with the rubber guys, about 16 of us I think.  Lulu is huge inside and looks like it turns into a nightclub at night.  The menu is vast, and the food was pretty good (and abundant, 1/4 of my croissant sandwich came back to the resort with me to join some leftover catfish from the day before; they would be dinner later on).

After brunch, had an hour’s phone call with my co-chair for the upcoming Emerald City Hoedown, talking schedule details and the like.  Another pool party was on Sunday afternoon, smaller.  I ended up with a small sunburn, which made it hard to get up from a later nap.  Hied myself out to the Barracks, though.  Again ran into last year’s California LeatherSIR, Todd.  Also swapped some kisses and fondles with Mark, Kevin, and Daniel; the latter had been at the cocktail party the night before.  And with another Mark and Dino.  I also fielded a phone call about eventual ownership of the Northwest title sashes (GLPW owns them, but they aren’t the title producers any more, so what to do with them now?).

I stopped back at the Tool Shed and met up with Mark and Dino again, and then back to the resort where I had a play session with a hot guy named Rick.

The weather dropped more than 10 degrees Sunday night and a huge wind storm came through — very loud and cold.

Monday

Today I got to Sherman’s for breakfast.

Packing up, I passed a partial bottle of Bushmill’s whiskey on to one of the guys who drove out from Los Angeles, and passed some beer and unopened Crisco sticks on to other guys still around who might use them.  I knew I didn’t have weight to spare in my sling bag to take stuff, nor could I take them in the carry-on.

Sporting pins on my vest for events I’ve been to and this my second trip to Palm Springs with the title, I wanted to get a Palm Springs pin.  Q Trading Post had none (but I picked up a bear paw pin there), but I found some generic Palm Springs pins at Rite-Aid; better than nothing.  (I’ve debated snagging the PSLOD pin from my Mr. Northwest Cub vest, the one John gave me last summer; I may still do that as well.)

The wind had definitely heralded a change in the weather, with rain squalls all the way to Long Beach.  I had looked at options for renting a motorcycle or scooter for this trip; I would love to do the ride to Palm Springs on one, but they are prohibitively expensive.  (Obviously, I would not have brought the sling in that case!)  Sure glad I wasn’t on one coming back in the rain.

I do like flying in and out of Long Beach airport.  While they are expanding the airport now, it is still pretty darn small, so the walk from rental car return to ticket counter to gate is the equivalent of about a block.  I was struck at the airport that I always want to add letters to their abbreviation, though: LGB?  No, LGBTQ!

Fundraising Through Better Fisting #2

The second of my title-year Chez Poing fisting parties has now come and gone.  (I’m not going to go into all the background and logistics on the subject again.  The earlier post has all that.)

• Invites went out to 92 guys.  Positive RSVPs came back for 34 (just under the 35-person cap), plus 9 “maybe/if I can” responses (of which I only expected a couple to show; that’s how those go).  25 guys showed, which is a little lower than I expected (I was aiming for 28, just above the largest party to date).  Out of town guests included Dariusz from Vancouver (who comes to almost every party) and Julio from Chicago.
• This was the second anniversary of the Chez Poing parties, although only the 8th one because I had to cancel May 2010 when my grandmother broke her hip.
• We had unseasonably warm weather for February, a run of 5 or 6 days that were sunny with highs in the low to mid 50s.
• Guys were great about bringing snacks and beverages.  I don’t think I’ll need to buy any beverages or chips for the May party.  (Robert was especially generous.  I asked him to pick up salsa, cookies, soda, and ice; he brought salsa, hummus, chips, cookies, soda, beer, and ice.  Lesson: this is what happens when you send a horny guy to the store on an empty stomach!)
• After expenses, another $168 from the Fist Kitty for my title travel fund.
• Special thanks to Cliff for trimming the ivy on my stairs and other exterior work; Cliff, Robert, and Rick for setup; Cliff and Rick for Sunday teardown (and joining me for dim sum); and Cliff and Bill for the loan of additional slings.

Next party will probably be Saturday, May 12.

Future fisting adventures:

• I plan to attend Fist Fest in Palm Springs in June.
• I have submitted proposals to be a presenter at Northern Exposure in Anchorage this summer.  Included are ones for sessions on Anal Fisting, Play Party Etiquette, and Hosting Play Parties.
• I’m looking into how to take the party on the road to Portland, probably with a couple afternoon workshops added on.
• I have access to a cabin at Lake Cushman (2.5 hours from Seattle) and hope to do a weekend–long party out there later this year.

Mid-Atlantic Leather 2012 • January 13–16, 2012

This was my 13th annual trip to Washington DC for Mid-Atlantic Leather weekend (URL).  It’s really Mr. Marcus’ (URL) fault: in early 1999, he asked if he had seen me at MAL that year, and when I said no, he told me I should go.  So I did.

I often tell people that they should go to IML or Folsom twice — the second time so they can realize that they enjoyed it more the first time.  That’s because the scope of those events are so huge, they can overwhelm you the first time, but a second time gives you the chance to evaluate what parts of the hugeness and spectacle work for you and what don’t.  In comparison, Mid-Atlantic Leather is to International Mr. Leather (URL) as Up Your Alley/Dore Alley (URL) is to Folsom Street Fair (URL) — still plenty big enough to bring in the critical mass to have a great, memorable weekend, but not so large as to be lost in the mass.  (So you should go at least three times.)

I don’t always buy the MAL weekend package — the REACTION dance in particular is a waste for me, and that’s a fair chunk of the price — but this year as a titleholder, I needed to be at the contest and at Leather Cocktails, so I sprung for it.

You can read more about my past MAL experiences here (URL).

Planes, Trains, and Automo… Hotel Rooms

One of the downsides to traveling from the West Coast to the East for events is the time lost in air travel.  Unless you can wrangle a direct flight, you loose the entire day  leave at 9 am, arrive at 7 pm.  (Coming back, of course, you get it all back [except for two tablespoons (URL)].)  So I was on the Delta (URL) red-eye Thursday night, into Minneapolis (MSP) and then to Baltimore (BWI).

Fortunately, I’ve learned some tricks for flying a red-eye:

• My usual bed time is after midnight anyway, so I’m heading toward sleep mode when I get to the airport.  No coffee in the evening to make sure I’m not kept awake.
• Get a window seat, to have something to lean against.
• Get a travel blindfold and earplugs.
• Take a travel bottle of alcohol (2–3 oz, in your toiletry bag in your carry-on) and imbibe around boarding.  This will help knock you out.  (For a long flight, going overseas, use NyQuil.  I don’t recommend that for an in-country night flight, though, especially one with a plane switch; you’ll be too groggy to function well.)
• For the trips to DC, I have a leather trench coat which I take for that event and otherwise only use a couple days a year.  It makes for a nice blanket.

The flight to MSP was uneventful.  I slept most of the three hours.  I did notice that our flight was the only thing going out of SEA after midnight, meaning that everyone in the airport other than staff was either on an overnight layover or on our flight.  Pretty damn deserted.

The woman in the aisle seat of my row, Laura, was heavily pregnant with twins, but still a couple months out from birth.

The flight from MSP to BWI was underpopulated, so we could spread out some.  I got a Caribou Coffee (URL) French Toast muffin (yummy) during the layover, but no coffee, and then slept the two hours to BWI, until ugly turbulence near Baltimore woke me up (some of the worst I’ve been in).  Laura was again in the same row, but across the aisle.  (And coming back to Seattle on Monday, Laura was again on both flights, two rows back on the first leg.)

Breakfast at BWI was coffee and a horrible piece of cheese pizza.  I caught the shuttle to the MARC train (URL), and then literally walked onto the train as soon as I got to the platform.  (Nice, since otherwise I would have to wait an hour for the next one.)  Then schlepped the bags a few blocks from Union Station (URL) to the Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill (URL).  (The new MAL hotel is much more convenient for train travelers than the Washington Plaza (URL) was.)

My roommate for the weekend was Ed, who lives in Maryland about an hour’s drive away.  We met (and played) a couple years ago.  He’s also a fister, so he brought his sling, arriving at the hotel about 90 minutes after me.  After I did some shopping, I laid down for a nap.  Probably 10 minutes later, in came Ed with a play buddy.  I told them to have fun, popped in my earplugs, and rolled over.  About 90 minutes later when I got up, Ed was playing with a different guy, and I never noticed him come in!

Shopping

One of the great aspects of MAL is that it is large enough to support a valid vendors market.  While not as huge as IML’s by any means, it still has maybe 30 vendors, including the likes of Mr. S (URL), LeatherMasters (URL), Ft. Troff (URL), CJ’s Leather (URL), Rubio (URL), NastyPig (URL), Tribal Son (URL), and many other stores and manufacturers of note.  Pretty much anything you want, you can get there.

The exception is porn.  When MAL was at the Plaza, DickWadd (URL) would always have a big table, blaring out their bareback porn vids on several screens at high volume.  This always irritated me a bit — not just because of the bareback nature, but the audio level was jarring and they tended to cause traffic jams.  I know IML has made a point of restricting some of the porn displays, especially the bareback producers, and I assume MAL has done similar.  They may have restricted all video porn, given that not only is DickWadd no longer present, none of the other companies have booths there either.  (Manhunt (URL) had a table, but they aren’t primarily video porn and had no screen displays anyway.)

As I’ve noted before, after 20+ years in leather, there’s little in the way of major items I don’t have that I want to buy.  This generally saves my wallet in the vendors mart.  Last year, my major purchase was a rubber apron.  This year, I bought a belt from The Bonding Company (URL), a butt plug and some nipple suction toys from Ft. Troff, some inhalants, a pin and a leather flag motorcycle license plate frame, and so on.

The most prominent purchase I made this year was a pair of neoprene wrist cuffs from Mr. S, to use with a boy I’ve been playing with who is vegan (and thus isn’t a fan of leather cuffs).  As a side-effect, the rubbery nature of these means they will slip less when in use; you’ve probably seen how tugging on leather cuffs will slide part of the cuff out and loosen things or pinch the skin, but these don’t do that as much.  I also investigated a neoprene hood for him, with removable eye and mouth guards, but they only had medium size.  (So I ordered a large one a couple days ago.)

Manhunt was giving away scarves with their logo in them.  That’s a good awareness of the time and place of the event — temps hovered just below freezing all weekend.  I will now store that scarf with the trench coat and be using it at MAL every year for some time to come.  They were also giving away peppermint lip balm (“chapsticks”, but that’s a trademarked name), also a great idea in a dry winter climate.  Good marketing, Manhunt!

Cocktails and Contests

Mid-Atlantic Leather grew out of an event called “Leather Cocktails” (URL) started by the Centaurs MC some thirty years ago, and that still forms the centerpiece of the MAL weekend.  Today, Leather Cocktails is a semi-formal event — get into the dress(ier) leathers, leave the slut attire in the room — and arguably the premier fancy leather event of the year.

The event is what it says it is, a big leather cocktail party, with a hosted bar and fancy appetizers (brie and cranberry pastry, multiple types of hamburger sliders, risotto with bay scallops prepared at the table, and so on; sufficient options to make for a light dinner).  This year, they either had really good dessert options or way too little of them prepared, because I never saw but one person with a plate of them, plus the empty dessert table.

I initially debated whether to treat Leather Cocktails as a sash event (URL) — I haven’t been to it in a few years, and my previous titles didn’t have sashes anyway, so I didn’t have a touchpoint for the trend.  I initially just wore the title vest, plus a leather shirt and my leather-accessorized Mac Leo kilt (URL), with tall boots.  Half an hour later, seeing the trend, I fetched the sash.

As an aside, I was pleased to see broad acceptance of kilts on the scene at MAL — and in DC in January, to boot, since they can be equated to “shorts weather” attire.  The kilt fad has faded in Seattle — not gone away but down to a normal level, no longer a “fad” (unless it’s set to bounce back this year!) — but I remember when it was at its height in Seattle but almost unknown in other parts of the country.  I wore mine to the bar at IML — in 2004 or so? — and you’d swear I was in drag, the number of guys who took a sudden interest in the ceiling.  This year at MAL, I didn’t detect any of that attitude.

The contest was held on Sunday afternoon (and that’s definitely a sash event).  This year, there were nine contestants — not a record, I think, but on the larger end from my memory of attending the contest in years past.

One of the unique items with MAL’s contest is that the contestants are asked a non-pop question: they get the question the day before (so they have a day to work on it) and craft it into a speech.  I can’t speak for the judges, of course, but as an audience member (and with a low tolerance for avoidance and bullshit), I was surprised that a couple of the contestants didn’t really answer their questions, one clearly dodged his, and one wandered all over the place for a couple minutes before finally answering his right at the end, almost as an afterthought.  While it’s valuable to tie in your personal leather themes and all that, remember that the audience expects you to answer the question, and if you don’t, you are letting them down.  (And the judges are partially paying attention to how the audience reacts to you.)  This isn’t just a matter of public speaking skills, it’s about keeping your goal in sight and actually getting there.

(Hell, you’d swear they were in a multi-candidate presidential debate: “How would you address the immigrant problem?”  “Immigrants aren’t nearly the problem that public funding for abortions are and this is how I would address that…”  Really, WTF?)

I spoke to one of the judges the next day, and he confirmed that the first and second place contestants were very clear in his scoring, and presumably for most of the judges, but third place wasn’t clear.  From the audience side, crowd reactions were clear matches for first and second, and probably for third (but I knew Matt a little personally, having met him at Folsom in September (URL), so his placement seemed reasonably clear to me but might not have been so to others).  This wasn’t just about stage-entering applause and such, though — in general, those three had good stage presence, character, and speaking ability in their question/speeches (including carry-through of question to answer, mentioned above).

Not strongly noted at the event, this was back-to-back wins for Pittsburgh, Matt Bronson following Doug (NAME) (who was a runner-up at IML).

Here is The Leather Journal’s coverage (URL) of this year’s event.

One thing that I found frustrating during the weekend was the low presence of other ILSb-family titleholders at the event, either last year’s or this year’s.  I met last year’s SIR and boy from Northeast, and last year’s boy and Bootblack from Mid-Atlantic.  Last year’s Northeast bootblack and this year’s Illinois Bootblack were also in the Parade of Titleholders, although I didn’t get to meet them directly.  International LeatherSIR Alan Penrod was also at the event, although I only saw him briefly, as was ILS 2006 (CHECK) Michael Congdon and apparently ILS 2010 Hugh, although I never saw him.  (I know he was supposed to be there and I’ve seen Facebook evidence, but we never ran into one another.  Hugh gave me a hard time at my contest this year about him seeing me once and only once at MAL 2011 — with the implication that I was busy playing the rest of the time — so I guess we’re even now).

I don’t have a handle on which feeder contests have occurred so far this year — Great Lakes, Northwest, Western Canada, others? — and I haven’t been seeing details on results or upcoming event dates.  As with the lack of ILSb family titleholders at Folsom last September, I would like to have the chance to meet some of my competitors (and the boys and bootblacks) ahead of the competition in July, but it doesn’t look like that will happen (unless I maybe get to CLAW (URL), but my April is going to be such a nasty mess that I don’t know if I can swing that).

Take Off Your Damned Hat

One thing that dismayed me during the contest was the number of guys in the audience wearing hats (oh, excuse me: “covers”) who apparently never learned that you take your hat off when the American flag is brought in and the National Anthem is played.  (Technically, military personnel in uniform are supposed to salute instead of removing the hat.  Few did that, likely because few have actually been in the military.)

Just in case you’ve got a question on this, here is the pertinent section from the government pamphlet Our Flag (page 11 of this PDF):

Title 36, Chapter 1—PATRIOTIC CUSTOMS

§301. National anthem; Star-Spangled Banner, conduct during playing

During rendition of the national anthem when the flag is displayed, all present except those in uniform should stand at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart.  Men not in uniform should remove their headdress with their right hand and hold it at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart.  Persons in uniform should render the military salute at the first note of the anthem and retain this position until the last note.  When the flag is not displayed, those present should face toward the music and act in the same manner they would if the flag were displayed there.

Take off the damned hat, or salute.  Show some respect.

(Boy, if this bit isn’t contest interview bait, I don’t know what is!)

Sex

Of course I’m going to save this subject for last.  How else an I’m going to get you to read the rest if I don’t use it as foreplay?  (grin)

In a nugget, this was the best MAL to date for me in terms of sex.  The last few years, I’ve gone to the FFA fisting parties (URL) more than once each weekend, technically keeping it as a reserve option if things weren’t looking good for play, but falling back to it regularly.  (Not that I’m saying that is a bad thing.  I love the FFA parties, and I missed seeing and playing with some of the guys I’ve met there the last few years.)

Part of having more and better sex this year is due to Ed having a sling in the room, although I actually only made use of it twice (and it’s not like you need a sling for fisting).   Possibly MAL was just sexier this year; I know The Leather Journal proclaimed this year better than last, the first year they were at the Hyatt.  I’m sure a bigger component of it is the title, though: not that I had more and better sex this year because I have the title, but because having the title encourages me to put myself out there a little differently, a little stronger.

Best Sex Coincidence: playing during the Miss America pageant, during the talent competition, and getting out of the sling just as Miss Wisconsin was announced.  (I’m mildly surprised emcee Frank Nowicki made no parallel of that to past MAL Alvin York during the contest.  Maybe Alvin wasn’t at MAL this year and the comparison would have been lost…)

Best Place to Have Sex at MAL: apparently my hotel bathroom after 2 am, given that I had sex there all three nights (after Ed went to bed).  You can manage quite a decent amount of kinky play in those small spaces, and the closed lid of the toilet makes a rather effective replacement for a sling.

Best Noisemaker: that would be me.  I’ve long joked that I need to record the audio from one of my play sessions, chop it up, and make a demo tape to send to Hollywood to get a job doing cartoon sound effects.  Thanks to Andrew videotaping a session, I now have a sample that could be used for just that.  (You think I’m kidding, don’t you? (URL))

That all said then, special thanks for a great time to Allan, Andrew, Bud, Dave, Jonathan (and his rubber catsuit), Mark (one less fisting cherry in the world now), Michael (now when can I get to Münich?  Maybe August 2013…), Randy (not Roger!), Spike, and Steve (I promise you a good fucking next year!).

And of course everyone else I met, chatted with, made out with, fruitlessly cruised, and so on during the weekend.  Congrats to Matt Bronson, the new Mr. Mid-Atlantic Leather, and way to put the pressure on your sash wife for IMsL!  Steve Ranger, keep up the good work as president of the Centaurs.  Tom McCoy, Dave Rhodes, Michael Congdon, Roger Klorese, all the sexy rubber boys in the cold weather, Dean Ogren, Tom Savage, Boy Tyler, the list goes on…

Truly had a great time this year!

Fundraising Through Better Fisting

For my title year, I’ve decided to focus primarily on two fetish activities: fisting and foodplay.  Foodplay because there is so little focus on it that I can make it my own and have an impact as a result, and fisting because I’m already elbow-deep in the activity.  So something to polish and something to stretch; you decide which is which.

I have been “into” fisting (depending on how you define “into” it) for over a decade.  I could run down the details — yes, I call tell you name, location, and date of my first time — but suffice to say that I have played very regularly for the last few years.  And for the past two years, I have been hosting regular fisting play parties.

Fisting Parties

Part of what came out of my last relationship — in addition to us simply getting off on playing with others as well as each other ("good, giving, and game” — thanks Dan Savage!) — was play parties.  And after attending several together — including a small fisting party, a local monthly suck-n-fuck party, and a naturist potluck/orgy gathering — we hosted a holiday party for the naturist group at my house and decided we’d like to do a fisting party.

That first one was in January 2010, and we had about a dozen guys with two slings, a fuck bench, and a futon for play spaces.  I drew heavily on experiences with various other parties I had attended, large and small — the various locals ones I mentioned before, fisting and otherwise, plus FFA at MAL, MAFIA at IML, and Wet n’Hot.  Since then, I have done seven additional parties (plus another Olympians one), refining everything from the invite list to housecleaning to playspace layout.  I also did a Tribal Instinct education session for Seattle Men in Leather on “Play Parties: How to Go and How to Throw”.

Who Gets to Come, and Who Gets to Cum?

The fisting parties — dubbed “Chez Poing” by one of the attendees — average over 20 guys over the course of the evening, with the average attendance having inched up over time, dipping a little in the colder months.  (August 2011 was the most heavily attended, with 27 guys on the 27th.)

My invite list is collected primarily from people I or my ex have played with, so we know that they are suitable players and aren’t freaks, or at least are only good freaks.  (Yes, he and I are still on good terms, and he co-hosts the parties most of the time, helping with set up and being a play instigator.)  I also encourage regular attendees to bring guests along if they wish, but to let me know their name ahead of time.  Finally, I post that there will be a party on the Northwest Leather Calendar and on my online profiles, requesting people email me for an invite; if a guy will then send a name and facepic (“So I know who I’m opening the door to”; if they will put themselves out there enough and show me who they are, they are probably okay), I typically send them an invite.

The one thing I don’t do is to put out a “blind” invite — “Here’s my address, denizens of CraigsList, come one and all, and especially you tweakers!”  No, no, no!

The invite list is currently a bit over 90 people, and “Yes, I’ll attend” responses come in at 30–40% of that.  I cap the reservations at 35 guys (the limit I think the space can handle), asking people to (a) commit early and (b) if they have to cancel, cancel early so I can open up a slot for someone else.  Of the positive RSVPs, I expect around 75% to show; some cancel, and some just don;t show.

I also maintain a spreadsheet of replies and attendance over the last 5 parties (a year and a quarter).  Guys who attended regularly get recorded, but more importantly, guys who RSVP and then don’t show or who never RSVP also get recorded.  Get enough strikes against you for not showing and you get removed from the invite list (since you apparently don’t really want to attend).  It’s fine to cancel, even the afternoon of the party, but if you don’t show at all, then I’m left wondering if you’re dead in a ditch somewhere!).  Never showing up to a party at all, even if you do RSVP each time that you can’t attend, will eventually get you bumped of as well.  I also have a section for invitees from out of town — guys from Vancouver and Portland, but also as fa away as Houston — whom I know probably can’t make it, but whom I’m happy to invite on the off chance they will be in town; these guys don’t need to RSVP to stay on the invite list.  (And you know, if a fisting buddy from out of town was coming in, I would likely put together a party just for him if he wanted me to.)

(After reading all that: why yes, I am a Virgo, thanks!  But you know, it works!  I’m able to maintain a good handle on who to expect and have had no significant problems to date, beyond removing a couple people from the invite list who didn’t seem to be a good fit.)

I don’t actively try to keep a balance of top and bottoms.  That proved very difficult the one time I tried, and frankly, many of the guys are are least somewhat versatile.  The goal being the journey, we’ll all find some way to entertain ourselves even if there isn’t exact parity.

One last thing of note: as I say in more detail below, the selfish goal of these parties is for me to get some good fisting time in.  Attendees are encouraged to ask the host to play!

Pay to Play

When it came to being Northwest LeatherSIR, one of the fundraisers I was supposed to do was to benefit our titleholders travel fund, to ensure that I/we have the funds to travel both to the International contest in July and within our title region.  That sort of fundraising can be challenging, because while people and businesses are often willing to pony up donations to benefit a charity, “gas and hotel money to attend a contest in Portland or a bar night in Boise” doesn’t come as easily.

I have never wanted the play parties to become something that I tried to make money off of — they are intended primarily to grow and strengthen the local fisting community.  (Okay, even that is the secondary goal — the primary one is for me to be a huge fist piggie a few times a year!)  But putting the parties together does have a significant time impact (4-6 hours setup, usually with two of us) and costs $50–100 in supplies (snacks, beverages, lube, towels, gloves, etc., some of which carries forward for a future party or two.  No one has to worry about needing lube or supplies at my parties!).

After the first few parties, something I added was the Fist Kitty, a jar for donations, and a couple parties later, I added a maneki neko next to it (that’s one of the Japanese “lucky cat” figures, the sort with one arm raised up in a fist).  I then added the thumb of a black latex glove to the cat’s paw, making it a safer-sex Fist Kitty.  This one is animated, in fact: a battery keeps the arm moving.

More than recouping my costs, though, I know that strengthening a community happens when the community members are invested in the community.  I ask people to bring some snacks or beverages to share, or to donate to the Fist Kitty.  This allows people to feel some small piece of “ownership” of the party — even if they only brought a bag of chips, they are still contributing rather than just attending.  It earns them the right to feel that they belong at the event, and if they need to, to give me feedback about things.

During my title year, the Fist Kitty donations beyond the absolute costs are going directly to my title travel fund, and I’m letting people know that in the invites.  The last party raised $115 for the Fist Kitty travel fund, which puts me on track for perhaps $500 through the year — which should be enough to get me to Anchorage in June or to an event in Boise or other places.

Next Party

The next party is Saturday, February 4.  Want to come?  Send your name, pic, and a request to redhanky@soundskinky.com.  The party is intended for fisters with at least some experience.  You don’t have to have years of experience under your belt, but you should at least know enough of what you’re doing as top or bottom to not need a lot of hand holding (well, other than an ass holding the hand!).  In particular, you should come expecting and prepared to play; while you might end up socializing or watching instead, the goal is the journey and that involves play.

If you need mentoring — and even experienced, advanced players can have something to learn — there will be guys glad to help you with that, top or bottom. Now and then, we do have attendees lose their top or bottom cherry at a party (in August, one guy did both!), so even novices have a place here.