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Shibari in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Posted in art, cool people, photography, play, proporn, Rope Bondage, writing on December 9, 2010 by Gray

I suppose I should start out by explaining to those of you here hoping for a rope-and-steampunk post that this is not it. The title rather refers to a rather overquoted but nonetheless pivotal essay by Walter Benjamin called “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”

It’s a fascinating article in its own way, if you are one of those who likes wanking off in discussions about what is or is not art. I’ve found that the newer you are to this theory, the more eager you are to discuss it; having been through decades of such things, I usually just roll my eyes a little and fall back on Chief Justice Potter Stewart’s 1964 definition in Jacobellis vs. Ohio: “I’ll know it when I see it.”

However, I recently allowed myself to become embroiled in just such a discussion on FetLife, and while it wasn’t pleasant, it did give some food for thought. Among other things, it was amusing that I found myself defending the idea that kinbaku is an art form, requiring years of practice to do it well – much like playing a musical instrument. The OP (Original Poster) got quite frustrated by the fact that his post had not been about the whole art-vs-not-art debate at all; his original post had been about a person online who, looking for guidance, had wanted to know if there were tutorials online.

I was one of the first respondents in that thread, and had pointed out the tutorials at BeKnotty and Twisted Monk and of course Jack Elfrink’s stuff. I also noted, as a responsible citizen journalist of the rope world, that “there is a school of thought that one cannot learn shibari online.”

To my mind, that is different than saying “one cannot learn shibari online.” Because frankly, I don’t necessarily believe that some people can learn it one-on-one, either. I’ve tried with a few people who have studied and taught in that way, and found it frustrating.

More to the point, it doesn’t fucking matter.

Forget What You Think

Getting away from the “what is art” argument and to the original point: that person looking for tutorials wanted something. For the sake of argument, let’s say that he saw a picture like this online:

The Fabulous Ms. Berlin & Derrick Pierce

…and he wanted to put his submissive in a similar situation.

Why did he want to do that? Was it because he wanted to get into the wildly lucrative world of bondage porn?* Was it because he was a passionate photographer, and wanted to exactly re-create this amazingly composed photo?**

Perhaps. I don’t think so, though. I think it’s more likely that he didn’t want to duplicate the picture at all. He wanted the results. He wanted to make his sub feel the way Ms. Berlin feels in the picture. Or he wanted to feel the way Derrick feels in the picture. And that’s where the whole “mechanical reproduction” thing comes into play.

See, I did that tie. I took that picture, because this was a shoot that I was directing. So I know exactly what was happening on that set, on that day, in that place. And let me tell you, the orgasmic bliss that Ms. Berlin is conveying in that pic is far more a tribute to her acting ability than any skill on my (or even Derrick’s) part.

Probably more of what was going on in her head was along the lines of:

“Who the fuck is this no-talent rigger/director thinks he can tie me in this RIDICULOUS suspension? Jeez this is killing my lumbar vertebrae. Going to have to do some hot tub relaxing today. Wonder if Cherry’s up for coffee after the shoot? At least I have a good PA here to help out. Oh, here comes Derrick’s cock. He’s such a great guy, too bad he’s gotta work with this midwest hack too…”

That’s not to say that I know that was her inner monologue-Berlin and I are friends, but this was the first time we met and I was a hack, as this was my very first professional bondage shoot.

But I doubt that the FetLife poster was hoping to have his submissive thinking those kinds of thoughts when he reproduced the tie. No, he didn’t want his sub to feel the way the people in the picture felt.

He wanted his sub to feel the way he thought the people in the picture felt.

And that’s the crux of it. The proper response to that FetLife poster should not have been me listing the tutorials; those are just ways of duplicating the images. Nor was the proper response to say “You can’t do that; it’s art, and reserved for the Worthy.” It certainly wasn’t helpful to say, “Oh, that? Anybody can do that. It’s no big deal.”

What ends up happening, time and again, is that he takes either track – saves up the money, goes to Japan and studies, or just decides to “reverse engineer” the ties using things online, and gets to the point where she and he are in exactly the same position…and suddenly they realize: this doesn’t feel the way I thought it would.

Nouns Don’t Matter

To my mind, the most important question to ask, whether you’re an experienced rigger or a novice knotter, is not “What do you want to do?” but rather “How do you want to feel?” That determines the tools you use, the frame of mind, the setting, the technique – everything else. What is the tone of the rope bondage? I personally believe that with that as your goal, it doesn’t matter if you’re doing a one-column tie or a takate-reallyfuckinghawtakote with a side of hashirodokai sauce.

Most of the time when I do rope for enjoyment (as opposed to for performance, education, or photography, in which case fun is by-product rather than the objective) I don’t have a big idea of a complicated tie. I tend to go in and start working with the rope and the body and the way it changes over time, and at the end, if you want to call it smut or art or craft, it really doesn’t matter to me. What matters to me are the adjectives, not the nouns. Was it good? Was it fun? Was it beautiful?

We can re-create images in 3-d and record the steps on hi-def video and break them down into loop A over bight B around Nipple C. But as far as I know, there’s no way to accurately recreate the feelings involved – even between the same two people with the same rope.

I love that ephemerality. I love that “unique and special snowflake”-ness of it. And that’s why I’ll see you in the dungeon.

*Quit laughing, Ten

** Quit laughing, SmutCraft/Monkeyfetish/MMayhem

3 Comments »

For the Unconference Skeptics…

Posted in community, cool people, event, GRUE, NeatEvent on December 8, 2010 by Gray

I just finished reading Harrison Owen’s book “Open Space Technology” in preparation for a facilitator’s training conference I’m going to in a week (want to help me get there? Donations happily accepted!). It’s a fun and easy read, and if you’ve been to a GrUE, you’ll find yourself nodding over and over again, saying “Yep, that’s what it was like.” Even occasionally laughing; one of my favorite lines was Owen’s admission that “It seemed like a good idea at the time, and besides the gin had run out.”

But even after nineteen successful GrUE’s in three years and two countries – yes, that’s right, nineteen – I still hear the same things from people. “Such-and-so is skeptical of the Unconference Model.” “Unless you have a list of presenters, no one will come.” “I’m really turned off by the idea of no organization.”

I can understand that. It was driven home to me quite well by a friend who was describing an event he’s trying to organize. “You’d like it, Gray!” he exclaimed. “We’re going to run it kind of like a GrUE, where there’s nothing really planned, and everybody just gets to do what they want!”

My gut reaction (not what I said to him) was to recoil in horror. That sounded like an awful idea for a conference. This was followed by a terrifying thought: OMG – is that what people hear me saying when I talk about a GrUE?

Perhaps it is. So I’m a little more careful now, and describe it more as:

A GrUE uses Open Space Technology principles (developed in 1985 and used in over 60,000 different events) to enable participants to self-organize a conference filled only with the issues and activities they care deeply about. It creates a unique event filled with passion and responsibility and unexpected connections within the group.

I dunno. I still like the other descriptions, such as “It’s like everybody brings their own book, and we get together and create a library” or even better, “It’s like Burning Man crossed with TED Talks for kinky people*” or something to that effect.

Proof of Concept

However, if the nineteen GrUEs (and the first gathering of The Usual Suspects, which you’ll hear about in a pending podcast) isn’t enough to convince people that this system can work, well, there’s other concrete evidence. Harrison Own talks about some of the clients he’s worked with, including the very first Open Space he facilitated, for 75 DuPont engineers determining the fate of Dacron. He talks about the 250 Boeing employees who used the process to quickly and efficiently address an airplane door redesign that was implemented worldwide. But most impressive to me was the story of the AT&T Olympic Pavilion in Atlanta:

Six months before the 1996 Olympic games in Atlanta 1996, AT&T was invited to move its pavilion from the edge of the Olympic village to the center. That was the good news. The bad news was that the AT&T design team had just completed 10 months of hard work on the first version, and now there was a need to redesign it at a new place to serve 75,000 customers a day instead of 5,000, and to finish the design in half the time.

It was clearly understood that there was no way to do it by the linear process it done before. The 23 members of the design team were a dispirited group when they assembled to meet the challenge. One of the group member’s commented: ” we are about to turn a disaster into a catastrophe.” Two days later, the atmosphere was rather different. A totally new design had been created; everybody agreed that it was much better than the first design. As they planned, they ordered materials for delivery. Perhaps most important, everybody was still talking to each other, and some of them even described it as a ‘fun’ undertaking.

Using Open Space Technology made all the difference.

–source: Self Organization in Social Systems

So, if it was good enough for Ma Bell to put it in charge of a $200,000,000.00 one-chance investment with an impossible deadline and succeed…well, if that’s not enough proof of concept, then you’re never going to be convinced.

And that’s ok. We’ll continue to have them without you, and you can just come join us when you’re ready.

We miss you.

Nah. That Open Space Woo-woo Shit Never Works.

*Thanks to Naiia for reminding me & Caritas Joy for coming up with the analogy in the first place!

The Kinky Mormon Pause, pt. 2

Posted in cool people, play, Rope Bondage, writing on December 7, 2010 by Gray

“What about the bottom?” DoNotGoGently asked me shortly after she read my post about The Mormon Pause. I’ll wait while you click the link and catch up on the reading…

OK, back? As you can see, she’s absolutely right. I didn’t mention a thing about the bottom’s point of view. Sure, it’s all well and good for the top to sit there and wait for the next thing to happen, to “allow” the space to open and present the right action, but what about the Bottom? Are they supposed to just sit there and do nothing.

Well, yes. And no.

In my opinion, the first part is a yes. They are supposed to “just sit there.” Or lay there, or writhe there, or dance there or hop there or dangle there…you know what I mean. However, they are far from doing “nothing.” In fact, I would argue that their task is far harder than the Top’s.

I view the “Kinky Mormon Pause” for Bottom’s as being Present. No, I’m not trying to go all “slashcappy” here, I capitalized that P because it does need differentiation. I have a friend who earned a Master’s of Fine Arts with a final dissertation on the ability to be “Present”, so it’s a pretty big deal. It involves being able to let go of anticipation. It means being able to open up to whatever comes next, to give up any semblance of control and simply accept whatever happens.

Yep, this is the Girl that was Terrified of Needle Play

This does not look like a sack of meat. Not reacting to a stimulus or emotion is another form of control, after all. Being present means letting yourself feel and express your reaction to whatever happens next, and then letting it go, ready for the next thing. In some that is a peaceful glazed look. In others that is a scream and a frenetic thrashing against the ropes. In some it’s a wave of orgasm, in others it’s a desperate, hopeless torrent of tears.

In every case, when it comes from that Present place, I find it amazingly beautiful. I am in awe of the bottoms I know who can go there, whether I’m playing with them or not.

It’s hard not to let the mind go wild. In fact, it’s so hard that it’s a common technique used by tops. “Just stand there and run the rope through your fingers speculatively,” I teach, “let the bottom’s mind do the work. Odds are, whatever they’re imagining is probably much worse than what you’re actually planning.*” It’s a time-honored technique in interrogation. “Go and get me three hamsters, a spool of copper wire, and a jar of peanut butter!” barks the interrogator to the subordinate, and then just looks at the prisoner with a semi-pitying smile, letting the implications sink in. After a moment: “And don’t forget the Coleman stove!”

If the prisoner/bottom is able to be “Present”, this technique won’t work. And that’s ok; it provides an entirely different canvas of the body and mind for the Top to work with, arguably a higher level of connection and sensation.

How do you cultivate this? Good question. The obvious answer is “zen meditation” but then people start getting all “cultural appropriation”-this and “woo-woo” that. Plus, having been a zen practitioner for over two decades, I can’t pretend I’m not biased towards it. I suspect that letting yourself fall into music might be a technique, or listening to a painting. Or dancing about architecture. Whatever the technique, I know it takes practice, because even after the aforementioned two decades, I only occasionally manage it.

But oh, how I long for it. That ineffable moment. And on someone else? It is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

Ropecraft

Posted in art, cool people, event, maui kink, play, Rope Bondage on December 6, 2010 by Gray

“The study of magic is not a science, it is not an art, and it is not religion. Magic is a craft. When we do magic, we do not wish and we do not pray. We rely upon our will and our knowledge and our skill to make a specific change in the world…”
–Lev Grossman, The Magicians

My friend Lochai recently posted a stimulating question on the Shibaricon mailing list. It was, like many great questions, short and to the point:

Why rope?

I think my answer lies in an example I use a lot when I teach. If I come towards a person with a flogger, they know pretty much what’s going to happen. If I come towards a person with some fine leather bondage shackles, they know where they’re going to go. If I pull out some hand-blown fluted fire-cups, it’s pretty obvious what’s going to happen next.

If I walk towards someone with a coiled piece of hemp, they have no clue. Except that it will involve rope. Probably.

Here. I’ll set a timer, and come up with ten things I could do with that coil of rope:

Cover it with a condom and fuck them.

Knot the ends and give them a very sharp and painful whipping.

Re-coil it into a soft, thuddy flogger.

Tie a crotch rope hooked into their hair and make them give me head while rubbing out orgasm after orgasm.

Hogtie them and enjoy their escape attempts.

Use the rope to highlight a part of their anatomy (ass, breasts, cock & balls, whatever) and lavish attention on it.

Introduce them to some Enforced Yoga Poses.

String the knotted line across the room and force them to straddle it, walking along the line reciting humiliating phrases in Russian.

Gag & blindfold them.

Tie their hands together.

OK, that took me longer than expected – one minute and 15 seconds. Try it yourself; feel free to share your results in the comments. Admittedly, some might say that the last one (or two) shouldn’t count, that they’re too basic. That’s a subject for another post.

My point is that rope is nothing but potential until I exercise my skill and desire upon it-and at that point, the range of options available is greater than any other tool I’ve seen. It’s Schroedinger’s Rope, if you will: it’s everything until you make it something. It is unknowable:

The Unknowable is that which lies in the cracks between the known and the irrelevant…the Unknowable lives in a pack of cards after it has been fairly shuffled but before it has been dealt, when all the possibilities are open, and which each possibility matters.
–Stephen Brust & Emma Bull, Freedom and Necessity

That rope will do nothing without the rigger’s will. Their intent.

That intention may be nothing more than to replicate the knots on some picture they saw.

Or it may be with the intention of creating a passionate experience filled with ephemeral beauty for an audience of two.

I know which I prefer. And that is why rope, Lochai.

That is my ropecraft.

4 Comments »

The Rope Guy

Posted in community, cool people, play, Rope Bondage, sex education on November 30, 2010 by Gray

There is a particular role in almost every community known as “The Rope Guy”* Usually it’s the person you go to when you want to get tied up/suspended/decorated/figure out how to tie down the mattress to the van. It’s not a pejorative by any means. But like any label, it can sometimes be the end of a conversation, rather than the beginning of one.

That’s not just for the people of the community. More insidiously, it’s within the heads of the Rope Guys themselves.

This came to me as I was reading a book that my former metamour Steve Eley pushed at me, called “The Passionate Programmer.”

A Remarkably Good Book

Not, as I’d hoped, a book about erotic mind control. Not even a book about technosexuals such as TruckerSpike, OohSpicy, or Nellodee. Nor am I about to give up the highly lucrative and secure life of a Ninja Sex Poodle for the flighty and hedonistic lifestyle of a programmer.

This is a book about “Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development.” They could have stopped after the first four words. In fact, I’m only on page 34 and I have to stop and write about the sentence at the top of the page. Author Chad Fowler is talking about “Choosing Your Market” and developing your skillset accordingly, and he brings up the subject of specialization.

“Too many of us seem to believe that specializing in something simply means you don’t know about other things. I could, for example, call my mother a Windows specialist, because she has never used Linux or OS X. Or I could say that my relatives out in the countryside in Arkansas are country music specialists, because they’ve never heard anything else.”

A while back I was getting a little burned out on rope. Rope Rope Rope, everywhere I went, and it was the time I began broadening out my class list to go beyond rope tutorials. I was looking for something, some area of kink that would intrigue me and satisfy me in the way rope bondage does – sexually, artistically, geekily, emotionally, and more.

I thought maybe needles (nope). Singletail (nope). Wrestling (fun, but nope). Fireplay (nope). I developed a level of competency, and in some cases even skill, in each of these and more, but it was frustrating. You know what ended up becoming the thing I became passionate about?

Cigars. Motherfucking cigars. Classes from Whip Master Bob, Sarah Sloane, Jim & Jereth, Daddy Wendell, fascinated me. Explorations of cigar play with Rita Seagrave, Ava Amnesia, Mollena Williams and especially the service of Naiia all fulfilled and satisfied me on a level I would have never expected. I picked up cigars at all just for a prank, for a part of a mindfuck. But now there’s a whole world of cigars, cigar play, cigar history, cigar protocol waiting for me to explore, and it’s grand.

Sometimes you are the Rope Guy because you committed to memory every page of Bondage for Sex and have music from the Knotty Boys videos on your iPod and have the kanji for every tie you’ve done from Master K’s “Beauty of Kinbaku” tattooed on your arm. That’s fine; it’s an accomplishment, and a tribute to your passion and dedication. I’m guilty of it myself (except the tattoo part).

But if that’s the extent of your kink… it might be time to pick up a single tail. Or learn some fire play. It’s not that you have to like the new skill, or that you have to have more than a cursory idea of what’s involved. But having that cursory idea can’t help but broaden (and improve) your skillset in human interaction, and that’s (in my humble opinion) the single most important skill for anyone interested in kink.

On the other hand, if you know the Rope Guy(s) in your community, don’t assume they are a one trick pony.** Ask them what else they might want to do, or introduce them to what you enjoy. Above all, don’t assume that every conversation/interaction has to be about rope. Don’t assume that’s the only class they can teach.

People are more than the gear in their bag or the shape of their flesh. I would encourage you to explore that “more-ness”. I believe it can’t help but make the world of kink a far richer place.

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

-Robert A. Heinlein

* Note that “Guy” in this case is gender-neutral, as reflected in the use of pronouns throughout.
**Hell, they might actually BE a pony!

7 Comments »

The Most Controversial Post EVER!!

Posted in community, cool people, play, Rope Bondage, sex education on November 21, 2010 by Gray

Note: this post has been edited from its original content. I made two errors, in saying that Mistress Matisse had said that the choking techniques required “years” of training, and second in incorrectly using the word “alarmist.” Both have been edited, and I apologize for the sloppy fact-checking.

Of all the various tropes and myriad ways of the English language, there’s one that I mistrust and dislike more than any other.

Hyperbole.

It’s probably a deep seated resentment going back to parental contradictions in my youth, the cross-currents of “You could do anything!” combined with “You’ll never amount to anything!” that played havoc with my developing character. There is no burden greater for a youth, I’m convinced, than to be told one has “great potential.” What do you do with that?

I later came to dislike it in that giant miasma of ideas and words and feelings that we label as “communication” in relationships. It took years, but I began to notice a pattern, or at least an indicator: any time the conversation included the words “never” or “always” then the exchange of information was effectively over. It was sort of a weird version of Godwin’s Law; there was no answer to that, because at that point it wasn’t true. “You never do this,” and “I always do that” are demonstrably unprovable because they include the future in them, and the future is unknowable.

Part of my dislike of hyperbole is that it is so clumsy. It’s lazy language, really, saying “I don’t have the time to actually examine this idea, to go into fine detail, so I’m going to just lump it all together into one big Club of Assumption and use it to bludgeon you into my way of thinking.”

It’s so easy to avoid, too. All you have to do is put some conditionals to it: “It seems to me that…” or maybe “A lot of the time...” or “There is a tendency to…” But those dilute the Power of the Hyperbolic Word; they require some reflection, some more discussion, and let’s face it, it’s more dramatic to speak in broad, sweeping strokes.

It’s also less effective. A former lover once used hyperbole in a deliberately hurtful way to zero in on one of my biggest insecurities. Even as I write this, years later, I can easily call up the sense memory of her laying naked underneath me, saying this one particular sentence that began with “You’ll never…” and proceeded to pierce my psyche in a way that would have made a Marine sniper proud.

Even when she admitted, years later, that she’d done it simply to drive me away – that the substance of what she said had not been as important as the effect – the substance still sticks, and still needs to be worked through. To use a metaphor, she trimmed my nails with a sledgehammer.

I also mock hyperbole. I’ve used what I call the “Fox News Strategy” to turn Madison, WI into the Bondage Capital of the World. That is, I’ve said that phrase over and over again online, in podcasts, and in person until even Google admits that it is true. And therefore it must be, right? Like many titles in the kink community, it is only given what power we choose to give it; a Master given that status by the submission of her slave, a Presenter given that title by his name in a program booklet.

“A powerful enough metaphor creates its own truth,” wrote Matthew Stover in the novel I was reading this morning, and I have experienced that. It’s why I fear hyperbole as well. My ex-lover’s words echoing in my skull; how much has that internalized their message, even when they weren’t intended? How many children have been warped by their parents offhand “Why do you ALWAYS…” or “Why can’t you EVER…“? How many relationships have been damaged by the realization that submission and dominance do not also convey the gifts of infinite endurance and infallibility?

Which is why I shook my head as I read my friend Mistress Matisse’s recent column in the Stranger, where she talked about her impressions of Lee Harrington’s recent breath play class. I followed her argument clearly, because she’s a fantastically smart person and a great writer. But at one point she dismisses one of the most powerful arguments of breath play proponents using hyperbole. And at that point, I felt her argument became weakened, and it felt a shame, because it didn’t need to be.

“Eppur si muove…”

It’s one of my favorite phrases, mainly because it’s the embodiment of my life. I’ve been told I would never make it through the Marines, that my kids would be failures because they’re mixed-race, that I’d never go to college, that I’d never be a dancer, and many other things that I’ve then gone ahead and done. If Goethe’s not your style, insert Han Solo’s “Never tell me the odds!” quote. Or Twain’s “Lies, damn lies, and statistics,” if you’d rather. Whatever it is, one of the risks you run when you hinge your argument on hyperbole is that it is a very big and very fragile balloon which poppeth easily under the needle of fact.

In the breath play controversy, for example, there is the simple fact that choke holds have been used in martial arts for decades, perhaps centuries, with no documented or provable ill effects. There have been studies, there have been tests, and yet this continues to be taught.

People against breath play often point out that there is a vast difference between the average kinkster and “Master martial artists” who are competing at a high level and under close supervision with medical personnel immediately at hand. Which is, in fact, a true statement: there is a big difference between those things.

The problem is, it’s not relevant to the argument. It’s like saying “You shouldn’t ride your bicycle, because motorcycle accidents are very common.” If you compare the average kinkster with the average jujitsu class, you would see a much closer fit; more to the point, choke holds are far from a “Master” level of skill.

I have to guard myself now from going into territory that I am not qualified to speak on, so let me simply relate my own experience. In Marine boot camp, during your second phase of training, there is a short “close combat” course. During that course you are taught things like how to sneak up and knife someone so that they die instantly; how to bayonet and butt-stroke with your weapon; how to break someone’s neck with the infamous “one-second kill.”

They also took perhaps 45 minutes to teach us how to choke each other out using a blood choke. That is, two instructors running approximately 40 recruits through an assembly-line educational process. “Do this. Now do this. When you feel them slump, let go.” Then they had us do it to each other, some twice.

Now, I can’t speak for the USMC. It seems to me that if there was a high fatality rate – say, any tenth of a percent – of recruits who had problems with that, they would have stopped the practice. And maybe they have, though we jarheads are proud of our “over two centuries of tradition unimpeded by progress.”

But what I can say, unequivocally, is that there was no “master-level” training going on here. There was less than an hour of instruction and hands-on practice. It was simple body mechanics.

The other arguments for breath play are much more clearly stated by people much more qualified than me in various forums on FetLife and other places. I’ve read them, as thoroughly as I’ve read Jay Wiseman’s arguments against it. He’s very persuasive, until the other experts – and yes, they are experts, in law and in medicine – ask him direct questions.

At that point, in my opinion, rather than enter into discussion, things fall into hyperbole. Often ad hominem attacks, too, but that’s another thing. But there are claims of “never” and “always” and “high-level” this and “closely supervised” that. Every real-world example has factors other than breath play – chronic heart condition, the use of mind- and body-altering substances – that mitigate the reasoning that breath play was to blame.

More to the point, there has also been at least one documented case where a woman apparently bled to death through fisting; yet I do not see people clamoring to put a stop to this practice at events.

I wish people could have a calm, rational discussion, free of hyperbole, about this subject. But it doesn’t seem to be possible, or at least hasn’t happened yet. Maybe someday.

Meanwhile, this is not a post about breath play. This is a post about hyperbole. I’m against it. It is the most destructive force in the English language.

I’m 100% sure of it.

9 Comments »

Cad-egorizing Naiia

Posted in cool people, family, GRUE, play, Rope Bondage on November 17, 2010 by Gray

“Labels, and Why I Hate Them” was one of the classes Vesper suggested at the recent Madison Satyricon GrUE, and it seemed to coincide well with my own proposed class: “WHATCHAMACALLIT: Finding Different Words for What It Is We Do.” The discussion itself was very enjoyable, and probably could have gone on far longer than originally intended. One insight that came from it was the realization that for some people, words have relational meaning, whereas for others, they have meaning in terms of identity.

DJ, a fantastic rope top from St. Louis, used the example of the word “Master.” To him, it is possible to be a Master without necessarily having a slave; it is a state of being, integral to the idea of self for many people. Others such as T-One (another great rope top from St. Louis, what’s up with that?) feels that Master is a statement of relationship, such as husband or father; you have to have the complement in order to have the identity.

Someone said, exasperated, “Do we really need more words?” to which I have to say, well, yes. When DJ uses the word “Master” he was talking about something different than when T-One used the word. They were using the same word to talk about two different things. That means there needs to be more words – whether in terms of labels, or at the very least in terms of further conversation.

Recently I’ve found that there are also causal changes to the meanings of words – not just nouns, but verbs. Naiia has told me of the many, many people – nice, well-meaning people – who have been asking her if she’s “all right.” They’re referring to my move to Pittsburgh, and what they perceive as abandoning a relationship, leaving Naiia completely to her own devices there in the Bondage Capital of the World. “After all, you moved there for him,” several people have said, “it must be hard.”

To which Naiia and I both say,

Huh? sound clip Scooby Doo sound clips

See, we were there. We were there for the two years of long-distance friendship that developed some distinct benefits, including great sex, D/s dynamics, and the fits of giggles we’d go into any time we tried being all “soft & gentle.” We were there as she grew more and more disenchanted with her home in D.C., both due to former relationships and due to her job.

We were there when I heard of a job opportunity in Madison, and told her about it. Like any good friend, I offered to let her stay with me until she found her own place.

That job didn’t work out, and the economy being what it is, she ended up staying with me longer than expected, and that “friends with benefits” situation made it even more pleasant. We even tried some 24/7 D/s, and she was a lovely and attentive girl, but I was not able to comfortably settle into that dynamic.

But I love my Naiia, and it showed. And I guess it makes sense that people would automatically assume several things, because they seemed logical:

Gray and Naiia are lovers.

True.

Naiia and Gray obviously enjoy a D/s dynamic.

Oh, yeah, there was that time that she –

That’s why she moved out here.

Huh? Um, no, see above –

The two of them are a couple.

Well, depends on how you define it – we’re not BF/GF, more BFF w/Benefits, if you must -

Gray is leaving? She’s going to be abandoned!

What?!? No!! Remember the two years before that, when she was in D.C. and I was in…

…at which point I just shake my head and realize that it’s probably hopeless to try and change popular perception.

Then I shake my head again, and realize I have to try.

Why?

Well, it comes back to that situation of identity that we were talking about at the beginning of this blog post. An important part of my identity is not abandoning responsibilities. The obvious example is my children, but there are others that verge on the ridiculous – situations where I should have stopped long before I did, refusing to follow W.C. Fields’ advice: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use making a damn fool of yourself about it.”

More often than not I’d prefer to have the label Damn Fool than the label Cad. And since I take D/s relationships very seriously – if Naiia had moved up to Madison in order to be my girl, I would indeed be having second thoughts about “leaving” her there, even with the excellent support network of friends that she’s made over the past year.

But I also have trouble with this word “leaving“. Most of our relationship was spent apart, communicating through email, text, and chat, and the occasional event where she was my “native guide” and a superb demo bottom. The fact that she also was a fellatrix extraordinaire was, well, I confess, an added bonus, especially when doing interviews for John Baku’s podcast, but the point is: distance didn’t keep our relationship from developing; why on earth would I let it stop now? That would make no sense at all, and while I’ve been known to do some stupid things, that is not one of them.

So the reality for Naiia and I (and for DoNotGoGently, the reason I did move to Pittsburgh) is that our relationship is just as wonderful and enjoyable as it has been – but with some distance which is, admittedly, inconvenient. We do what we used to do – bitch about our jobs, snark about politics, send each other dirty pictures found on the web. When we are together, such as at the Truly Bound 2 event or the Madison S’GrUE, there is laughter, there is watching Dexter, eating lasagna and taco bell and oh, yes, much violent fucking, beating, spanking, biting, and the oral sex and occasional leather boot to the head.

But what’s the word for that?

That’s our reality; it’s what actually exists, but how do you explain that? Naiia and I tend not to really care, to be honest; we call ourselves “best friends”, we call ourselves “lovers”, we used to call ourselves “roommates”, but really, we are what we are to each other, and ca suffit. It’s hard for people that see us together, though, because they see a situation and want to put a label connected with all sorts of other expectations and connotations onto it. She’s kneeling at his feet. She must be his slave. All sorts of assumptions about future plans, living conditions, other relationships are made along with that, regardless of their accuracy.

As if that’s not enough, DoNotGoGently has to deal with it from the other end, where people try to go from labels to understanding the relationship. I heard the frustration in her voice as she’d tried to explain where I was this past weekend.

Gray’s at a GrUE? Why aren’t you there?

Well, he’s at this one with Naiia.

Oh, so you’re doing that whole mono/poly thing. How’s that working?

Actually, no, as part of “coming out day” he came out as not poly or mono, so that -

But…then what is Naiia, to him?

Well, they’re lovers, and best friends, and -

Oh, so he just gets to have whatever relationship he wants and you just deal with it?

At this point a certain look of pity tends to come over the face of whoever is trying to understand, because obviously a monogamous person wants to be with a monogamous person, whereas a poly person (or, in this case, not-monogamous-or-polyamorous) can just be with anyone. Right?

(sigh). But that’s another blog post.

Reality Trumps Perception

I think the point of this one comes back to Mark Twain’s comment: The map is not the territory. I can show you a map with labels and the places and events I’ve shared with Naiia, and even come up with some labels that might give you an idea of what parts of our relationship are like. The truth is, though, I will never be a good enough writer to convey exactly what it was like staring into her eyes while DJPet’s GrUE mix played in the dance hall where the GrUE play party was held. Maybe if you combined a violet wand, a netti pot, and the first time you saw the Matrix into one experience you’d come close, but even that’s inadequate. Maybe the time your best friend and you both aced a hard exam you’d been studying for plus the time she first did that thing you fantasized about but were afraid to ask for plus the taste of cinnamon hot chocolate on a crisp fall sunday morning as you triumphantly finish the NYT crossword.

Yeah. That’s close. But still not there. The fact is, even the thousand words that this picture is worth (plus the 1500 I’ve spent blathering on the subject) aren’t adequate. And if I’m having this much trouble explaining it in broad terms, no wonder it becomes more difficult to explain it in exact terms to those who need to know, such as my girlfriend DoNotGoGently?

Accepting the Is-ness of Us

A while back, while I was mentoring a group of LGBTQ teens in a theater group, I heard the group questioning a young man. “Are you gay? Straight? Bi?”

He looked at them with a calm, almost amused expression. “I’m John.”That said it all (and yes, I changed the name to protect the not-so-innocent, though he’s been an adult for a while now).

I think that has to be the answer, really. It’s got to just come down to the subject and the verb, with no predicate to muddy the issue. When asked the question What are we? we have to either be prepared to get into a long conversation about boundaries, sacred spaces, intimacy, trust, communication, and blowjobs, or else simply give the easiest answer.

We are.

C’est tout.

3 Comments »

A Smorgasbord of Smut for Your Senses

Posted in art, cool people, music, NeatEvent, photography, Rope Bondage, sex education on November 10, 2010 by Gray

Not a lot of high-falutin’ philosophy this time around, but rather, a selection of music, video, and image to delight your kinky senses. Step right up, gentlemen make way for the ladies*, all for the cost of a click (or a donation, as you’ll see there on your right) you too can revel in the sexy sexy world of the web…

First off, my own humble offering at the In the Flesh Reading Series in NYC, where I read an excerpt from the story “Click” (which was part of the NYC Sex Blogger Calendar fundraising drive). Much thanks to Rachel Kramer Bussel for the opportunity:

In this next alcove, we have the much-awaited Flower & Snake 3, featuring the bondage stylings of the amazing Arisue Go:

Note: I’m tempted to note that this video seems fine on YouTube while a video of Ms. Behavin’ tying Foxy Veronica was banned for inappropriate content and violation of TOS. But that would distract from the smut, etc. we have to share!

What’s that you say? You’d rather just listen to things? I understand, friend, I understand quite well. Like you, I have become jaded in the dungeon sounds of music, over-engimaed and NINsaturated. And much as we’d like to, we can’t all have events like the upcoming S’GrUE (last day to register, btw) and have the dungeon music custom-mixed by masters of the art like DJ Pet.

Luckily, I recently was researching another article and came across some pretty damn awesome music for the dungeon. Even better, I can let you download a track FREE via IODA PromoNet. This is just one of many, many cool tracks I found on the Death Race soundtrack by Paul Haslinger:

Paul Haslinger
“Death Race Main Titles” (mp3)
from “Death Race Soundtrack”
(Back Lot Music)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
Buy at Amazon MP3
More On This Album

Lastly, I’d like to direct your attention to a couple of examples of “Doin’ It Right.” See, that’s one of the questions that I get asked during my teaching and presenting and traveling. “Look at this; am I doing it right?”

I’ll tell you right now, when I’m asked that, I don’t look at the rope first. Or the tools, or anything except the expression on the bottom’s face. In this first example, in spite of the many torturous devices and sensory deprivation used, the Bottom (name withheld to protect their high-paying Republican Lobbyist job) is obviously enjoying…um…himheritself, so yes, my roommate is “doing it right” on the AIS Kink Labs frame:

Or, for another example, which you’ll see more of in tomorrow’s post, the expression on Naiia’s face as we do some Imperial Style Fear Play at Truly Bound II:

With that, I leave you to your day, may the sights, sites, sounds and (ow) sounds fill it with joyous sexy naughty knotty thoughts…

* Note: this obviously only applies
to those who identify
with those heteronormative stereotypes.
So lay off, Vesper!

6 Comments »

Graydancer’s Guide for the Female Rigger

Posted in cool people, play, proporn, Rope Bondage, ropecast, sex education on November 8, 2010 by Gray

Recently there has been some interest in the concept of female riggers. I applaud this interest; I confess to taking some pride in encouraging and promoting several of them myself. The common question seems to be “What is different about the experience for women rigging than for men?” It is indeed a very good question, for the challenges a female rigger faces in the dungeon are vast and often completely incomprehensible to most male riggers.

In all humility, therefore, as a Citizen Journalist of the rope community, I present the Guide for the Female Rigger, in easy, step-by-step instructions. In the interest of balance, I am of course assuming a female rigger and a male bottom.

1. Approach the play space in your hottest dom finery, $400 corset, 5″ stilettoes and rope bag in hand. You’re feeling good; you’re at the top of your game.

2. Inform security that no, you are not being a good little sub and carrying your Master’s bag. Emphasize this by handing your bag to your bottom, who seems embarassed but amused. He’ll pay for that.

3. Inform the door monitor of the dungeon space that no, you are not looking forward to finding out what your top’s toybag has in store for you. Emphasize this by taking the toybag from your bottom. Take some small pleasure in the fact that he’s starting to look worried.

4. Locate a suitable hard point, preferably right in the center of the play space, since it’s commonly known that to be a real rigger you must also be an attention whore. Send your bottom to get some water for “aftercare”, since the wuss probably will need it.

5. Step under the frame to begin to rig your ring.

6. Bend down to unstrap your stilettoes and removed the spikes from the foam mat so thoughtfully put there by the dungeon. Use electrical tape to patch over the holes; bonus points if the tape is the same color as all of the other patched-over holes.

7. As you resume your rigging, inform the helpful top at the St. Andrew’s Cross next to you that no, you are not going to let your Dom take care of “that kind of stuff.” Take some pleasure in the fact that he seems to be bowing his head in deference to you, even though he’s actually staring at your boobies.

8. As soon as your bottom returns with the water, growl at him to get naked .

9. Ignore the rude comments the top on the other side of the frame is making, apparently appalled by the site of a penis in the dungeon. Note that he has a completely naked woman bent over spanking bench, a woman blessedly free from the constraints of pubic grooming standards. Try not to roll your eyes. Breathe deeply.

10. Remove corset. Breathe deeply for real.

11. Interrupt the Dungeon Monitor who is quizzing your bottom about the weight rating on your ring and carabiners. Try not to rip out the volunteer’s throat as he says “Oh, well, you were stripping for him, I figured he was gonna string you up.”

12. Pull out the scratchiest coconut rope you have in your bag. Growl at your bottom: “crotch rope first.” Enjoy the whimper.

13. After putting on the crotch rope, agree with your bottom that now would probably be a good time to go pee.

14. Inform the top who has approached from across the room that no, he can not use the frame after your top is done suspending you. Refuse to elaborate.

15. When your bottom returns, use the simple leverage and pulley techniques of standard physics to finish suspending him, enjoying the fact that there are extra bits hanging out here and there to add to that symphony of groans, grunts, gasps, and other g-words that haven’t been thought of yet.

16. As you tighten the last hitch to a melodious whimper, enjoy the glazed look of endorphins in his eye as he spins in a Calderesque mobile of cock and masculine submission.

17. Fifteen seconds later, inform that top from across the room that no, you do not want to hear about his “better way” for doing suspensions. Try very hard not to reach for your eye-gouging stiletto heels as he grudgingly mutters “not bad” and goes back to his face-up row-of-single-column-ties suspension on the girl 1/4 his size.

18. Fifteen seconds later, try not to hold a grudge as your bottom informs you that his shoulder hurts, he might need to come out.

19. Plus, he has to pee again.

20. Inform the Top with the flogger, the Top from across the room, and the DM that no, in fact, you do NOT want their help in getting your bottom down and yes, you have “safety shears.” Resist the urge to pull the rescue hook from your garter in spite of your conviction that it’s the perfect diameter for some circumcision play with these guys.

21. As your bottom curls up under the fuzzy blanket, begin to coil the ropes, taking some satisfaction in the feat of sensuality and engineering you’ve accomplished.

22. Inform the top who has just shown up with his rope bunny that yes, you had a great suspension, and he can have the frame as soon as you’re done cleaning up.

23. Try to be patient and maintain your calm as he comments on what a good slave you must be, to coil your master’s ropes so neatly.

24. Actually, hell with that. Kill the fucker. His rope bunny is cute, and would look better in your ropes, anyway.

Miss Behavin' rigs Evinxiamor at the Inferno. Catch her again this thursday, Nov. 11, in the Bondage Capital of the World!

11 Comments »

Sex & Pancakes

Posted in community, cool people, ropecast, writing on November 4, 2010 by Gray

A short time ago an old friend, lover, and fellow writer suggested I take a spin as a guest blogger on a Foodie blog. She liked this piece; unfortunately, the editor didn’t, and so the piece was rejected. However, that means I get to post it here; please feel free to share as you like.

Everything I needed to know about sex I learned from making pancakes.

Seriously. Want better sex? Learn to make better pancakes.

The Secret Sexual Lessons of Pancakes

Pancakes are my totem food. Like any totem (or, if you prefer, like the Hogwart’s Sorting Hat) I didn’t so much choose it as much as have it permeate my life in various ways, teaching me lessons whether I wanted to learn them or not. But like all good teachers, pancakes reveal truths not by doctrine but rather through examples. Pancakes have taught me much about sex, believe it or not, and not only because they’re both hot and sticky.

1. Directions do not trump experience.

“As God is my witness, I shall never make pancakes again!” The memory is hazy, but very Tara-esque: my mother in the kitchen, making pancakes for the first time. She’d read the directions carefully, measured well and mixed thoroughly, but the box of Bisquick was unclear on the exact time to flip each cake. At the same time, it did say quite specifically: each pancake should only be flipped once. As a result, her pancakes were either batter-filled or black-charred. The poor woman was literally in tears.

Years later, she taught me to make my own pancakes – including the secret of flipping them when the bubbles on the topside were popped to ensure a perfect golden-brown circle of yumminess. However, she couldn’t teach my eight-year old dexterity how to flip a pancake in a smooth, easy motion. Things fell apart, the center did not hold, mere anarchy was loosed upon the griddle, and it was my turn to stand there in frustrated tears as I ruined pancake after pancake.

When teaching sexuality workshops, I am quick to point out: you can talk and read and follow every step that someone else lays out before you to the letter. But there is never a substitute for actually doing something – at some point, you have to dive right in. Prepare all you want, but in sex or pancakes, until you’ve done it, you don’t really know how.

2. There is always more.

A friend of mine once wrote that kinky sex is much like owning a lousy car; most of your problems can usually be solved by more rope or more lube. A scarcity mentality is not helpful when making love, nor when making pancakes. My eight-year old self had to make three batches of pancakes before I mastered the art of the flip, but that’s ok – that’s why pancakes are made in bulk. It’s not because one isn’t enough – it’s because if you want more, you can make more.

Pancakes are a great example of the philosophy of abundance. Raising my four daughters on a single income meant a lot of hungry mouths, and pancakes were the one thing that I was always sure I could make enough of to satisfy their ravenous appetites. If there was time, I could use Grandma’s Recipe and make them from scratch, but if it was a cold wintry school day the “just add water” Krusteaz mix was devoured with as much, if not more, eagerness. We were not wealthy; we ran out of a lot of things in those times. But we always seemed to have enough pancakes.

Many times I hear from people who are nervous about what they consider “failures” in the bedroom, especially if they are trying to expand their sexual horizons. There is this strange idea in our culture that if you aren’t good at sex instinctively, there’s nothing to be done. I’m not sure why that is, because love is like pancakes, you can always make more. You don’t have to get it right the first time, or the thirty-seventh – it’s a renewable resource. As long as you have the raw ingredients, all you have to do is mix it up.

3. Learn the basics, then learn the art.

Shortly after leaving the USMC, with “no job skills valid outside of Croatia” according to the jobs counselor, that pancake-flipping skill helped me clothe, shelter, and feed my four daughters. I worked as a line cook at Denny’s for a year and a half, a great job for an adrenaline junkie. In the twenty years since then I have yet to match the sense of accomplishment I felt when I got fifteen breakfast orders filled simultaneously and perfectly. The griddle was large, hot, and a perfect canvas as I shot batter onto it in even rows of polka-dot pancake patterns. Every pancake perfectly measured, a spatula in each hand turning four cakes at a time, every one perfect and golden. That was when I moved beyond the mere act of pancakes and into the art. When I was in charge of that griddle, there was nothing in the world but me, my tools, and the pancakes we created together.

Strictly speaking, sex is not complicated. Tab A, slot B, rinse, repeat. Just about anyone can do it. But through practice and attention, you can learn to do it well. It can go beyond the basic activity of procreative practice to the touching of souls, the revelations of vulnerability and intimacy. It just takes attention and focus to what you and your partner are doing and feeling. And practice, practice, practice.

4. Try something new.

Over the years, I’ve tried many varieties of pancakes. Some were the common and obvious varieties – bananas, M&M’s, blueberries, chocolate chips. Peanut butter on pancakes, nutella on pancakes, orange juice and applesauce in the batter instead of milk and eggs for a Vegan lover of mine. Tiny bits of fresh-cooked bacon, drizzled with pure Canadian maple syrup that soaked right into the cake (a sure sign of perfection). Some have been delicious experiences, shared with others. Some have been not-so-delicious, such as the time I won a “Waffle Awful” contest by taking a bite covered in oil, mustard, and hot salsa.

The point is, the only way I learned which varieties I liked was by trying them. Sexuality can be the same way – there are so many ways to express that part of yourself and your relationship, but you’ll never really know unless you try. You don’t have to try more than a bite to be pretty sure – but if you steadfastly refuse that bite, you might be cheating yourself out of a whole world of delight.

5. Go with what you like.

There’s also nothing wrong with going back to the basics. There are some in the kinky community who use the term “vanilla” – that is, non-kinky sex – as a pejorative term, implying that it is boring, dull, and somehow less. My friend and teacher Midori is quick to point out that vanilla is a flavor, and a quite expensive and valuable one, at that – something to be cherished and enjoyed. Me, I reflect on the sunday morning brunch after one of the first kinky “unconferences” I organized here in Madison. I was going to make my World-Famous Cheap-Ass pancakes – that is, just add water, with maple-colored fructose corn syrup in a generic bottle.

My good friend W, though, is a foodie, and a good one. He had fine-ground spelt flour, organic free-range eggs, milk from an ebony cow with hooves of gold, the works. We both worked over the stove, batch after batch of pancakes for all the people at the event who were sharing their food and their sexual philosophies with each other.

Guess whose pancakes were more popular?

Neither. People ate them both, equally eagerly, mixing the maple syrup with the not-so-maple and happily conversing about naughty subjects in gustatory bliss.

The final lesson learned was one of two things, I think. It’s either

In sex or pancakes, it doesn’t matter how you do it, just that you do it how you like.

or, perhaps something simpler:

With sex or pancakes, syrup makes it yummy.

Graydancer’s Ropetastic Unconference Extravaganza (aka GRUE) began in Madison in 2007 and has had eighteen events in the U.S. and Canada since then. It will be returning to Madison in mid-November, complete with the traditional sunday pancakes made by a man in a kilt. Find out more at http://www.GRUE.me .