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.

(Leather) Vacation in Palm Springs • December 24, 2011–January 3, 2012

(This post covers the small title piece of end-of-2011 vacation in Palm Springs.  The lengthy report for the rest of the trip is located on my Sounds Kinky-er blog.)

As Northwest LeatherSIR, I did take the title vest with me, wearing it out to the local leather bars, the Barracks and the Tool Shed. There was very little leather title presence during the time we were there (no events going on, of course).  I did run into former Mr. Palm Springs Leather 2009 John Kunz (whom I met last summer) and last year’s Southern California LeatherSIR 2011 Todd.  Stuff Todd told me reinforced that GLPW is honoring and supporting this year’s Northwest titleholders very well.

Contest Speech

Here is the rough text of my contest speech.  I don’t have a recording or notes, so I’ve rewritten it from memory:

(enter stage with an iPhone in hand)

You know, these things have really allowed us to re-invent cruising.

It used to be that we would go to the bar, hang out in a dark corner, and peer at guys across the room, hoping one of them would want to talk to us.  Then came the Internet, and we could stay at home in our pajamas and peer at pictures of guys online, hoping one of them would want to talk to us.  Now, though, we can go back to the bar, hang out in a dark corner, and peer peer at pictures of guys online…

Well, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Still, for all the advances these things have given us, sometimes we run into problems.  A few months ago, Grindr deleted my profile text for being too naughty or something.  So I’ve done an end-run on them and now I list my hanky colors in my profile instead.

Flagging a hanky has always been an invitation to conversation, and I get more responses than I expected:

• “Does anyone still use the hanky code” — well, obviously I do!
• “What do all those colors mean?” — I send them to Google to learn more
• “I know red and gray, but what is peach?  Or mustard?” — these are the guys I can educate a little
• And then I get “I flag red, too!  Mine’s on the left.” — and well, you know how things go from there

In other words, sometimes the oldest, tried-and-true cruising methods are still ones which can work just fine today.

Photo © 2011 Malixe Photo, used by permission.

Dream Journal: November 25, 2011

I actually had a dream this weekend regarding the International LeatherSIR contest:

I dreamt that the contestants, their producers, and the contest staff were gathered together to draw numbers for contestant placement — who would go first, second, etc.  Weird thing #1: we were on the patio at the Cuff (in Seattle), not in San Francisco.

The regional producers drew the numbers rather than the contestants.  Weird thing #2: drawing for the Northwest Region were Mike Daggs and Jeff Henness (neither of who have been involved with LeatherSIR, other than when Mike’s other half Kelley was Community Bootblack). 

Mike drew #1, and Jeff drew #25, which in the dream was the last placement, despite there being 16 regions and thus there would be 32 numbers drawn.  (And that leaves out the Community Bootblacks completely.) 

I chose to take #25, leaving #1 for Northwest Leatherboy Danny, saying “No way in Hell do I want to go first!”

There is statistical truth to my dream preference.  When there is a large field of contestants, there is a judging bias that favors those who compete later in the order — this can be seen in competitions ranging from International Mr. Leather to Olympic figure skating.  (Taking IML as an example, they winnow 50+ contestants down to the Top 20 for the final portion of the contest.  The first half of the contestants are typically about a quarter of the final 20.)  Part of this is that no matter how good an early contestant is, the judges feel restrained from giving too high of marks, because they have to leave open the possibility that later contestants will be even better.  Another factor is just weariness: there is a tendency to relax the tightness of scoring as each contestant blurs into the next.

I don’t have any data about whether the scoring bias continues in an upward trend (does being last or near last in a long field give even more of a boost?) or if there’s a bell curve trend (do those in the middle half of the group get the benefit, with those near the end losing out like those near the beginning do?).

Photos from the Contest

I’m finally able to post some pics from the contest.  These photos are © 2011 Malixe Photo, used by permission.  (Thanks, Charlie, and thanks for taking great pics!)  Separate posts will have pics from the Speech and Fantasy portions of the contest.

Friday Meet & Greet The vest is a custom one from X-Rated Leather in Copenhagen, which I won as 1st Runner-Up for Mr. Outgames Leather in 2009.	Introduction of Contestants I opted for a very informal look for this, since it was both a non-judged segment and I had to change immediately for the Fantasy portion.
Jockstrap Asked on stage about my ass tats, I said they are based on the superhero Lightning Lad.  All my tats come from the Legion of Super-Heroes.	Jockstrap (rearview) You may notice a design similarity between the ass tats and the Outgames vest.  The vest has the lightning motif repeated large on the back.
Final Winners Ruin, Danny, and myself.  The color combination — red, white, and blue — was completely coincidental.

---

Updated on February 24, 2015:

Pussied-out the naughty bits on a pic to try and keep Google from blocking the blog.

Spanksgiving

This Thursday, Thanksgiving evening, is the latest rendition of the “Spanksgiving” fundraiser.

Started in 2004 by Northwest LeatherSIR 2005 Michael Congdon (who later won the International title), the event was later brought back by Northwest LeatherSIR 2010 Hugh (who also later won International) and continued by Northwest LeatherSIR 2011 Darian.  Although the Northwest LeatherSIR, Leatherboy, and Community Bootblack titles are no longer sponsored by Generic Leather Productions of Washington, Northwest Leatherboy Danny and I volunteered to continue the tradition this year.

Spanksgiving will run from 9 pm to midnight at the Cuff Complex (1533 13th Ave. in Seattle).  Ryan and Danelle will be there to mete out spankings and flogging — pay for eating too much turkey, boy!

In addition to buying swats for yourself, you can buy them for your friends as well.  What’s that?  Your so-called friends bought you a spanking and you don’t want to submit?  Tell you what: donate an equal amount and we’ll let you off the hook.  (evil grin)

We will also be offering tickets for a prize raffle, with a number of great items available, including a women’s leather jacket, a paddle, cards featuring kinky gingerbread men, and even a fabulous pie (donated by Northwest LeatherMOM, my own mother).  Yes, it’s true: on Thanksgiving, you can’t get away from food!

Proceeds from Spanksgiving will go to support the 2013 Leather Leadership Conference, which will be held in Seattle.

---

Updated on December 1, 2011:

Spanksgiving 2011 raised roughly $450 for the 2013 Leather Leadership Conference.

HARD 3 (Vancouver, BC) • November 4–5, 2011

Vancouver Men in Leather had their third “HARD” party in early November.  According to guys from Vancouver, the event is half dance party and half dungeon, held at Five Sixty (560 Seymour).  I have not been able to attend the previous two because they were on Sundays, which would mean taking Monday off from work.  (For the Canadians, they were on the Sundays of three-day weekends, so not an issue for them.)

Cliff and I were in Vancouver for New Year’s Eve and had been at Five Sixty then.  That night, it was packed to the gills, including a 45 minute wait at coast check.  (And the line just got longer as midnight approached.)  Yeah: got there at 10:30, had time for one drink before midnight (with a 20+ minute wait in that line).  And then there would be the same wait to pick a coat up later.  But since this wasn’t a mixed event and wasn’t on a Saturday or a holiday, we knew that wouldn’t be the case.

Five Sixty has three levels.  The main level is a large dance floor and a stage.  Upstairs from that is a lounge area overlooking the dance floor.  Downstairs is a long, narrow space with a partition down the middle — bathrooms on one side, bar and lounge alcoves on the other, plus coat check at the far end.  For HARD, the lounge alcoves became the dungeon space, with a fuck bench and dark corner in one, a sling in the second, and a couple crosses in the third.

We got a room at the Ramada less than two blocks away (good deal at $70, too), which was convenient.  One of the members of Seattle Men in Leather had won free passes but couldn’t attend, so we got to take a couple of the tickets.  (Thanks, Paka!)  The event was scheduled to start at 8:00, but I had been told no one shows up until 10:00, so we planned to leave the hotel after 9:30.

Until Cliff decided to go on Wednesday, I had been planning to ride all the way.  The weather promised to be dry, buy pretty cold.  It would be my last long distance ride chance of the year, to be sure.  Since he was going, though, I just rode to his place in Stanwood (about an hour’s ride north of Seattle; an hour and a half when you’re talking 4 pm Friday traffic, of course).  As expected, cold ride, but standable.  (If I had ridden all the way myself, I would have stopped in Mt. Vernon anyway to warm up.)  We took his truck the rest of the way, an uneventful ride.

It turned out that our preconceptions of the event were a bit off.  As described above, there were only 3 or 4 play spaces — which would be enough, of course, if anyone actually played.  Neither of us have gone to enough “leather dance parties”, or we could have predicted that the attendance — which had a leather/fetish dress code, allegedly no street clothes allowed, although I didn’t see any enforcement of that, but neither did I see flagrant violations — would be primarily hunky muscleboys in the one harness they own (yes, I know I’m looking down my nose at the type), plus a decent dose of the regular PumpJack/VML leather crowd.  (Several of our Vancouver friends attended — Mitch and Brian, Darryl and Josh, Jacques, Ian — although several did not.)

In the end, the playspaces were pretty underutilized.  in the 10:00-11:00 hour, there was some bondage and violet wand use, and one assplay session later (the bottom was inexperienced, so not full-on fisting), but most of the play beyond that was nipples and dick sucking.  In retrospect, that’s perhaps not surprising.  Combine Friday night (when guys often aren’t horned up yet), plus a crowd leaning toward S&M (stand-and-model), and the eternal case of “What will it do to my reputation to have sex play where my buddies might see?” — hon, it will create your reputation, if you do it right! — and it’s no surprise that most play is furtive cocksucking.

We didn&rasuo;t realize that there was an after-party scheduled for Steamworks, or we might have gone.  Heck, almost certainly would have bugged out of HARD around midnight and gone to get some harder play in.

As Northwest LeatherSIR, British Columbia is no longer in my “region” (it is part of the Western Canada region), so although I wore my title vest, I wasn’t there in any official capacity.  I likely would have gone up even without the title, but that certainly gave the added incentive.  I’m not sure how many guys saw the vest or identified the title, though, since no one commented on it.  Vancouver has struggled to have any leather title consistency for the past decade and more, so I’m not sure how much cognizance most of the locals (stand-and-model or otherwise) have of leather titles, whether it was just a fancy patch to them.

Still, I’ll keep my eye out for HARD 4.  The difference between Friday and Sunday might change the makeup of things, and might change the desire to play (last chance for the weekend, you know).  Warmer weather in the spring and summer might make it better, too.  (As would me knowing what to expect, of course.)

---

Added poster on November 22, 2011