Frolicon, part 2 (of 3, it's looking like)
I meant to go to bed half an hour ago--which, for me, means reading for at least an hour, more often two, before I finally bother turning off the lights. But, as I lay there dosing myself with Thompson's dispatches from the last days of our last losing war, the words started bubbling up into my consciousness like it was a cracked hull. So, hell with it, I decided to grab the keyboard and start bailing them onto here.
Addendum: This motherfucker REALLY won't leave me alone. Almost six in the morning, and I go back _again_.
Programming on Friday started at 11 in the morning, so I set my alarm for 10:30. When it went off, I promptly slapped the snooze button a few times, then finally gave up--and reset it to get me up somewhere after noon. I got myself clean and vaguely human-feeling, and limped off downstairs to get some breakfast from the lunch buffet. It wasn't nearly as bad as I've come to expect from hotel buffets, though the seafood stew was a bit much as part of the first meal of the day, and, thankfully, I got done in time to catch up with Lady G. and C., and not miss Viola Johnson's panel.
For the vanilla among you and those who just don't know, Mama Vi is the elder stateswoman of BDSM, denmother to submissives everywhere, and one of the most mesmerising speakers it's ever been my pleasure to hear. The panel, with her, her Mistress, and one Lady Catherine, was on edge play--that is, things that push you past your mental comfort zone, whether it's in terms of pain or of, in Vi's words, "baggage you've unpacked" but still holds power over you. Hell of a rush, if it doesn't fuck you up because that baggage is still packed and ripe to burst all over the place.
The whole affair was fascinating--a very open panel, where we heard the experiences and perspectives of almost everyone there. Still, though, I think everyone's sharpest memory will be Vi scaring the shit out of someone with a revolver. OK, it was C. He'd just described an experience with Russian roulette, in younger and more foolish times. He was the sixth player; he knew that the bullet had his name on it. And he went through with it anyway. He sat among us with an unholed head only because of a gaffed cartridge, sans primer. But no one had told him, of course.
"Why did you do it?", Vi asked. "What did you feel?" And she drew the gun. She repeated it again and again as she pointed it at him, cocked the hammer, pressed it into his chest right over his heart...drawing from him, in much plainer words than this damned fustian of mine, the essence of edge play; that instinctual fear sending us out of our controlled little normal selves, into an older, much more powerful state. And the rush on coming to the end, surviving, "more powerful than any orgasm" as C. said. And she uncocked the revolver and put it away. It was unloaded, we knew; some of us had seen it up close on the table before the thing started. And, we found later, it was far more securely gaffed than C.'s round, with a non-firing barrel. Thus the chest aim, so he couldn't see the blockage. But for that moment, Vi Johnson had the entire room on the edge of our seats, waiting to hear the report of powder, to see blood. That's what I call power. And yet she wears a collar. The point of this whole D/s business isn't the strong ruling over the weak; you can get that just going to work. It's the willingness to put your real and understood power in the service of someone you trust.
...that was a hell of a tangent, wasn't it? On a lighter note, Friday was also the day of a "roving costume contest". This is to say, some of the imaginatively or simply minimally costumed people in evidence throughout the con wore stickers, with the name of their design and a number to vote for, in Solo Male, Solo Female, or Group categories, and we were given ballots to cast a vote for each. The last was decided for me some time that night; a couple of the girls I had poorly flattered the night before cornered me and insisted that, for my behaviour, I simply _had_ to vote for their harem/bellydance theme. I'm much too susceptible to guilt, and, more importantly, never could resist a forceful woman. ...I do wonder what they'd have done if I refused. But I'm not a SmartAss Masochist, no matter what that denies me. Yes, go ahead and imagine me putting the back of my right hand on my forehead and posing as if a swoon is imminent.
The Solo Female category had my vote locked in much earlier. An early favourite, a woman wearing a kimono over a bikini made of Fruit Roll-Ups, their vivid red matching the unnatural but beautiful colour of her hair. She'd actually managed to spark a competition; whoever first got fifteen of the gold-coin pins we'd been given to trade, the more outrageous favour in exchange the better, got to eat it. The groups competing kept splitting, so I have no idea who finally was allowed...at any rate, she was very sweet to me and indeed everyone, and she'd bitten me, so she got my vote.
I didn't end up putting in a vote for the men; the one who most caught my eye wasn't competing, but was just someone I'd seem about. His name was Scott, decidedly goth and cross-dressed, face of an androgyne angel and sadly straight. I kept mistaking him for actually female until I recognised him. Most notably, though, he had not the annoying single character, but a significant passage of Chinese tattooed on his back; on asking him, I found that it was a careful and accurate translation of Frank Herbert's Litany Against Fear. Someday I hope to reach such heights of inspired geekery...if it weren't for the girl by his side, I'd have likely fallen in love, impossible or no.
I mentioned the buttons. "Pirate's Booty", they were called, all entendres intended. I only got one offer for mine...Out on the pool terrace where, paradoxically, we all came both to get fresh air and to smoke, a pretty girl I didn't know from Adam's off ox asked what she could do for it, and my goddamned mind picked that moment to freeze up. And I noticed I didn't have it with me. I ran back to my room to get it, trying to think of an answer the whole way. The elevators were a traffic jam for the entire event, so it was some time before I was able to get the damned thing and return. She was gone. And she'd shown her tongue stud, right before I left, in a way that seemed to say she had things in mind already...
Yes, I'm as femme as you can get without going Scott's route on clothing, but I'm still male. So I ended up being a bit gloomy for the next couple hours, through a workshop on single-tail whips...which, despite Mama Vi presenting, I left early, as I wasn't about to endanger everyone else with my clumsiness, and the line to feel one from the other end rapidly built to absurd lengths. On my way out, I ran into Lady D (no Period of Abbreviation, that's her chosen moniker) who at least used to live in my hometown. "Why are you looking like that?", she asked. "You're at Get Laid Con." I moped a bit about the fact that I hadn't yet, and she laughed, and said that I had the weekend ahead of me.
My luck had already started to turn, though I didn't know it yet. Somewhere over the course of the day--I can remember which room it was outside, but not when--Lady G. had said, "You're a good sub. Sorry you're not mine." I took it for a random compliment. However, after I left the hypnotism show early (it was rather standard, but my early exit was simply because my bum's patience was exhausted--as at any new con, everything started on a rather eccentric idea of time) she and C. caught up with me outside, smoking. They said, solemnly, that they'd taken a decision...and, after long enough that I worried for no good reason, they said that it was to take me into service for the night, if I was willing.
...OK, you're all on my list, do you need me to answer that one? ...I'm embarrassed to say that there was a moment of staring at a door before the "open it" response popped back into my mind. Too much time had passed. Didn't help that previous Ma'am wasn't too big on the door thing. Still, I got to know her flogger much better than the previous brief introduction, and encountered his braided cat. Yes, both in both their hands, first outside and clothed, then in the playroom with my shirt off, leaning against the cross. And, here, there was nothing particularly daring about beating a boy outside; at any time there were several people out there using something that went thwack.
I managed to end the latter session a bit abruptly by nearly fainting. My style of masochism tends to be more "tripping" than anything else, so I didn't realise for too long that the St. Andrew's cross intersected my neck in just the wrong place, and I was leaning on my carotids. I have to give both of them a great deal of credit, as they noticed before I did, and immediately got me off the thing and sitting down to recover. For actual technique, though, I must praise Lady G. rather above her partner; several times throughout the con, I heard C. plotting on how to load up his toy to hit harder. He isn't small, or weak, and he swung hard enough that his mascara ran with sweat and he carried his whole body past me. And still, adding heavy shit to his instruments would have at best even chances of making him hit has hard as her. Yes, I have a rather catty satisfaction in this--I'm much more biased towards women in my submission than in simple attraction.
Again, I have to give both credit, though, that they did realise this, and Lady G. had far more to do with me, both in play and in asking me to serve. Between the short time we had and a setting without a lot that anyone had to do, the latter didn't amount to much, but I still remember lighting her cigarettes and tying her boots as fondly as I do the impact of leather against my back.
Unfortunately, when I say a short time, I mean less than even the one night intended. Something they took earlier finally decided to start working, and they let me go rather than go on with impaired judgement. Nice, yes, but still just within the lines of "not being stupid". Lady G. went beyond this, though; she tried her damnedest to find someone I might like being handed off to. Murphy being in attendance even here, we didn't find an interested woman, but got tips from several directions that there was one wearing a fedora who might be looking. We looked for her for a while, still no luck, and then Lady G. had to catch up with C...but I'll always be grateful for the effort.
If these people, a couple years younger than me, smart, nice, and willing to learn, are the future of our scene, then a lot of the doomsaying I've heard at leather cons really is just the gritching of old farts. And, yes, I do hold an idle hope that if, God forbid, the Lady and C. go separate ways, she and M. can work out some sort of joint ownership... Yes, there's that initial again. Next time, all will be explained, it'll be her story, but for now hold on to your hats, or else the question mark hanging over your head.
Anyway, I went lurching off down the hall, still stuck with the unintentional Greg House impression, until I hit the stairs to the lower level. No sign of the girl with the hat, so about-face and back to the elevators. A drink, I knew where to find. Hopefully it wouldn't taste like Robitussin the way the Teenage Wasteland punch did. Eh, I sound a lot less positive now that I felt; it'd been a good night so far anyway. Not too much to notice the irony of spotting a woman leading two men by chains on the way, though. Up went the eyebrows, and out came a little sigh, and, quietly, "Looks like you've got your hands full." No reaction, I hope she didn't hear.
Addendum: This motherfucker REALLY won't leave me alone. Almost six in the morning, and I go back _again_.
Programming on Friday started at 11 in the morning, so I set my alarm for 10:30. When it went off, I promptly slapped the snooze button a few times, then finally gave up--and reset it to get me up somewhere after noon. I got myself clean and vaguely human-feeling, and limped off downstairs to get some breakfast from the lunch buffet. It wasn't nearly as bad as I've come to expect from hotel buffets, though the seafood stew was a bit much as part of the first meal of the day, and, thankfully, I got done in time to catch up with Lady G. and C., and not miss Viola Johnson's panel.
For the vanilla among you and those who just don't know, Mama Vi is the elder stateswoman of BDSM, denmother to submissives everywhere, and one of the most mesmerising speakers it's ever been my pleasure to hear. The panel, with her, her Mistress, and one Lady Catherine, was on edge play--that is, things that push you past your mental comfort zone, whether it's in terms of pain or of, in Vi's words, "baggage you've unpacked" but still holds power over you. Hell of a rush, if it doesn't fuck you up because that baggage is still packed and ripe to burst all over the place.
The whole affair was fascinating--a very open panel, where we heard the experiences and perspectives of almost everyone there. Still, though, I think everyone's sharpest memory will be Vi scaring the shit out of someone with a revolver. OK, it was C. He'd just described an experience with Russian roulette, in younger and more foolish times. He was the sixth player; he knew that the bullet had his name on it. And he went through with it anyway. He sat among us with an unholed head only because of a gaffed cartridge, sans primer. But no one had told him, of course.
"Why did you do it?", Vi asked. "What did you feel?" And she drew the gun. She repeated it again and again as she pointed it at him, cocked the hammer, pressed it into his chest right over his heart...drawing from him, in much plainer words than this damned fustian of mine, the essence of edge play; that instinctual fear sending us out of our controlled little normal selves, into an older, much more powerful state. And the rush on coming to the end, surviving, "more powerful than any orgasm" as C. said. And she uncocked the revolver and put it away. It was unloaded, we knew; some of us had seen it up close on the table before the thing started. And, we found later, it was far more securely gaffed than C.'s round, with a non-firing barrel. Thus the chest aim, so he couldn't see the blockage. But for that moment, Vi Johnson had the entire room on the edge of our seats, waiting to hear the report of powder, to see blood. That's what I call power. And yet she wears a collar. The point of this whole D/s business isn't the strong ruling over the weak; you can get that just going to work. It's the willingness to put your real and understood power in the service of someone you trust.
...that was a hell of a tangent, wasn't it? On a lighter note, Friday was also the day of a "roving costume contest". This is to say, some of the imaginatively or simply minimally costumed people in evidence throughout the con wore stickers, with the name of their design and a number to vote for, in Solo Male, Solo Female, or Group categories, and we were given ballots to cast a vote for each. The last was decided for me some time that night; a couple of the girls I had poorly flattered the night before cornered me and insisted that, for my behaviour, I simply _had_ to vote for their harem/bellydance theme. I'm much too susceptible to guilt, and, more importantly, never could resist a forceful woman. ...I do wonder what they'd have done if I refused. But I'm not a SmartAss Masochist, no matter what that denies me. Yes, go ahead and imagine me putting the back of my right hand on my forehead and posing as if a swoon is imminent.
The Solo Female category had my vote locked in much earlier. An early favourite, a woman wearing a kimono over a bikini made of Fruit Roll-Ups, their vivid red matching the unnatural but beautiful colour of her hair. She'd actually managed to spark a competition; whoever first got fifteen of the gold-coin pins we'd been given to trade, the more outrageous favour in exchange the better, got to eat it. The groups competing kept splitting, so I have no idea who finally was allowed...at any rate, she was very sweet to me and indeed everyone, and she'd bitten me, so she got my vote.
I didn't end up putting in a vote for the men; the one who most caught my eye wasn't competing, but was just someone I'd seem about. His name was Scott, decidedly goth and cross-dressed, face of an androgyne angel and sadly straight. I kept mistaking him for actually female until I recognised him. Most notably, though, he had not the annoying single character, but a significant passage of Chinese tattooed on his back; on asking him, I found that it was a careful and accurate translation of Frank Herbert's Litany Against Fear. Someday I hope to reach such heights of inspired geekery...if it weren't for the girl by his side, I'd have likely fallen in love, impossible or no.
I mentioned the buttons. "Pirate's Booty", they were called, all entendres intended. I only got one offer for mine...Out on the pool terrace where, paradoxically, we all came both to get fresh air and to smoke, a pretty girl I didn't know from Adam's off ox asked what she could do for it, and my goddamned mind picked that moment to freeze up. And I noticed I didn't have it with me. I ran back to my room to get it, trying to think of an answer the whole way. The elevators were a traffic jam for the entire event, so it was some time before I was able to get the damned thing and return. She was gone. And she'd shown her tongue stud, right before I left, in a way that seemed to say she had things in mind already...
Yes, I'm as femme as you can get without going Scott's route on clothing, but I'm still male. So I ended up being a bit gloomy for the next couple hours, through a workshop on single-tail whips...which, despite Mama Vi presenting, I left early, as I wasn't about to endanger everyone else with my clumsiness, and the line to feel one from the other end rapidly built to absurd lengths. On my way out, I ran into Lady D (no Period of Abbreviation, that's her chosen moniker) who at least used to live in my hometown. "Why are you looking like that?", she asked. "You're at Get Laid Con." I moped a bit about the fact that I hadn't yet, and she laughed, and said that I had the weekend ahead of me.
My luck had already started to turn, though I didn't know it yet. Somewhere over the course of the day--I can remember which room it was outside, but not when--Lady G. had said, "You're a good sub. Sorry you're not mine." I took it for a random compliment. However, after I left the hypnotism show early (it was rather standard, but my early exit was simply because my bum's patience was exhausted--as at any new con, everything started on a rather eccentric idea of time) she and C. caught up with me outside, smoking. They said, solemnly, that they'd taken a decision...and, after long enough that I worried for no good reason, they said that it was to take me into service for the night, if I was willing.
...OK, you're all on my list, do you need me to answer that one? ...I'm embarrassed to say that there was a moment of staring at a door before the "open it" response popped back into my mind. Too much time had passed. Didn't help that previous Ma'am wasn't too big on the door thing. Still, I got to know her flogger much better than the previous brief introduction, and encountered his braided cat. Yes, both in both their hands, first outside and clothed, then in the playroom with my shirt off, leaning against the cross. And, here, there was nothing particularly daring about beating a boy outside; at any time there were several people out there using something that went thwack.
I managed to end the latter session a bit abruptly by nearly fainting. My style of masochism tends to be more "tripping" than anything else, so I didn't realise for too long that the St. Andrew's cross intersected my neck in just the wrong place, and I was leaning on my carotids. I have to give both of them a great deal of credit, as they noticed before I did, and immediately got me off the thing and sitting down to recover. For actual technique, though, I must praise Lady G. rather above her partner; several times throughout the con, I heard C. plotting on how to load up his toy to hit harder. He isn't small, or weak, and he swung hard enough that his mascara ran with sweat and he carried his whole body past me. And still, adding heavy shit to his instruments would have at best even chances of making him hit has hard as her. Yes, I have a rather catty satisfaction in this--I'm much more biased towards women in my submission than in simple attraction.
Again, I have to give both credit, though, that they did realise this, and Lady G. had far more to do with me, both in play and in asking me to serve. Between the short time we had and a setting without a lot that anyone had to do, the latter didn't amount to much, but I still remember lighting her cigarettes and tying her boots as fondly as I do the impact of leather against my back.
Unfortunately, when I say a short time, I mean less than even the one night intended. Something they took earlier finally decided to start working, and they let me go rather than go on with impaired judgement. Nice, yes, but still just within the lines of "not being stupid". Lady G. went beyond this, though; she tried her damnedest to find someone I might like being handed off to. Murphy being in attendance even here, we didn't find an interested woman, but got tips from several directions that there was one wearing a fedora who might be looking. We looked for her for a while, still no luck, and then Lady G. had to catch up with C...but I'll always be grateful for the effort.
If these people, a couple years younger than me, smart, nice, and willing to learn, are the future of our scene, then a lot of the doomsaying I've heard at leather cons really is just the gritching of old farts. And, yes, I do hold an idle hope that if, God forbid, the Lady and C. go separate ways, she and M. can work out some sort of joint ownership... Yes, there's that initial again. Next time, all will be explained, it'll be her story, but for now hold on to your hats, or else the question mark hanging over your head.
Anyway, I went lurching off down the hall, still stuck with the unintentional Greg House impression, until I hit the stairs to the lower level. No sign of the girl with the hat, so about-face and back to the elevators. A drink, I knew where to find. Hopefully it wouldn't taste like Robitussin the way the Teenage Wasteland punch did. Eh, I sound a lot less positive now that I felt; it'd been a good night so far anyway. Not too much to notice the irony of spotting a woman leading two men by chains on the way, though. Up went the eyebrows, and out came a little sigh, and, quietly, "Looks like you've got your hands full." No reaction, I hope she didn't hear.