Archive for the twisted monk Category

How to Find the Perfect Play Partner

Posted in community, cool people, Rope Bondage, sex education, twisted monk, writing on March 23, 2011 by admin

It’s funny, when I’m looking over my Google Reader. I’ve got a strange mishmash of feeds…Twisted Monk and Mistress Matisse and Ten and Mollena, of course, but then it veers into Lifehacker and Mnmlist and Hardcore Zen. Then we take another only slight turn to the right into productivity and entrepreneurial blogs like Seth Godin and Chris Brogan, and from there into pure porn…Bend Me Over and Elspeth Demina and Some Dirty Secrets and the like.

And you’d think that I’d get blogging material from the kinky people. Or from some zen philosophy. Or maybe inspiration from the images (“Hell, I can do that, and I know the guy that did that, and wouldn’t Mauikink toys make a good replication of that…”).

But no. Looking through them today, seeking blogging inspiration, it was sales giant Seth Godin who gave me my first inspiration, and the wholesome money-thrifty blog Simple Dollar that gave me the second.

Let me digress for a bit. One of the most common and most heartbreaking question I get is “How do I get to be a hot rope top, with everybody wanting me to tie them up?” Sometimes they will point at someone who they want to emulate, or (in confidence) at someone who they want to play with. “How can I get her to play with me?” is what they’re really asking.

Usually they’re talking about some hot bi babe that I’ve just done a scene with, and I tell them, quite honestly, that the way to play with the hot bi babes is to stop caring that they’re hot bi babes. At that point, they’re everywhere, and more than happy to play…but you don’t really care. Call it the Unicorn Paradox.

But the Simple Dollar put it far better than I ever did, and did it simply:

It’s not about having the right partner. It’s about being the right partner.

Every second you are trying to figure out how to make yourself more attractive to…whoever it is you want to play with…you are wasting your time. Why? Because the motivation is coming from outside of yourself. That makes it inauthentic, and people can usually smell somebody who’s faking it from across the dungeon. And even if you succeed, you are succeeding under false premises. You are not being you, you’re being someone you think they’ll like. Eventually, you will come back out, or, more likely, you’ll discover they aren’t all that after all.

Instead, you need to simply make yourself the most attractive person to yourself. What needs to happen to make you feel good about yourself? Is it weight? Is it clothes? Is it intellect? Be honest. Ask yourself what it is, then ask yourself why. And every time you answer with “…because then the guys will like me…” chuck that one out. Look for the ones that have “…because then I feel good…” or some variation thereof in it. I do my exercise regimen quite publicly via twitter, or even at the GRUE, and it’s not because I want Raven Lightholme to be impressed with my guns. Are you kidding? I’m forty-fucking-two years old, and I’m never going to look like Shaun T. Never. But I like how my body moves when I’m in shape, the way it feels to walk down the street, the added stamina it gives me when I’m slamming into her fine…ahem. You get the idea. I do it because when I do it I feel more like me.

So. You got the thing, or things, that make you feel more like you? The things that are going to make you into the right partner for whoever your partner is? Great! The next step is easy, too.

Fucking do something about it.

And that’s where Seth Godin enters the picture. He closed a recent blog post with a phrase that I wish I could tattoo on my forearm. It is the one phrase that I would send back to my elementary school self, over-intellectual and under-athletic and nerdy and waiting miserably to be selected last for kickball. Yeah, I was that kid. And I wish I could have a time tunnel to go back and whisper Seth’s words in his ear:

No one is going to pick you. Pick yourself.

Nobody’s asked you to teach? Well, first develop the skills (both in teaching and in your subject, the two are not the same) and then just go to classes and help out people who might be having trouble. I know people who have started podcasts just for the hell of it. Who have stepped up to help out people they don’t even know. Who have created their own publishing companies simply because they feel there are voices that need to be heard. Who have created their own events just because it was getting too complicated to go to other people’s.

Well, ok, the last one was me, and it didn’t exactly work out as planned. But that’s ok, it worked out better. And I’m pretty sure that if you pick yourself, rather than waiting around for somebody to tell you what to do, it will work out better than you can imagine, as well.

I’m not even going to address any “Yeah, but…” arguments. Sorry. Whatever you’re facing, I doubt it’s worse than what Hideaki Akaiwa faced and triumphed over. Sorry, folks, but he has removed any excuse from the table for quite a while.

So yeah, I cheated. How to find the perfect play partner? Become the perfect play partner.

And then play with yourself.

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Must-See Video: The Twisted Monk YouTube Channel

Posted in cool people, Rope Bondage, twisted monk on February 23, 2011 by admin

File under: Awesome People Passionate About What They Do.

My dear friend, mentor, and inspiration, Twisted Monk, has his own YouTube Channel! It’s not got the racier stuff, due to the TOS of the prudes at YouTube (unless, I guess, you’re Rihanna) but judging from the first video, it’s going to be a must-subscribe for anyone serious about rope:

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Rope: the Path from GRR to MMM

Posted in cool people, play, Rope Bondage, sex education, twisted monk on October 29, 2010 by admin

“We must learn to position ourselves effortlessly within each moment, rather than stumbling through time. We can either escape from the moment or stay with it as it unfolds and do something good with it.”

- C.M. Forni, The Civility Solution

Last night was rough.

Last night was great.

I’m not sure whether the latter really would have been possible had we not had the former.

I’m going to try to explain without going into too much TMI, because this is not designed to be a post about Me and My Problems. It’s supposed to be a post about staying in the moment, and focus, and moving through rather than around things. So try and stay with me here, ok?

Change is a stressful thing for humans, whether you thrive on that stress or not. And even though this move to Pittsburgh is not quite unexpected, it adds stresses to my relationship with my best friend and lover Naiia, who has lived with me for most of a year now. Like many relationships where people are very close and care very much for each other, we got into one of Those Fights.

You know the ones I’m talking about. The kind where you start out talking, go into arguing, and then suddenly you’re both sitting there not quite sure what you’re arguing about, or at least where you’re going with it, but the air is full of tension and anger. Even knowing that the anger is just a flip side of the love you share, even knowing that the points you made are pointless, even knowing that you’ve actually communicated with each other and understand each other – you still have that heart-pounding grrrr feeling. There is this urge to be right.

One of the tools I learned (the hard way) through many such “discussions” is the “What do you need to hear from me?” question. That’s not saying “I’ll say it if you’ll just shut up!” It’s checking in, because often – more often than you think – what they need to hear is something that’s easy to say, and it’s often not what you think. You think, in an argument, they want to hear “I’m wrong, I was an idiot, you were totally right in every way” and you’ll be damned if you’re going to give them that. Instead, you ask that question, and you find out “I need to hear that you still love me.” What? Huh? Yes, of course! That’s easy to say!

Last night, after we’d gone round the various points a few times, I finally asked that question in a way that Naiia was able to answer. I need to know that this hasn’t spoiled the entire evening. Because we had been planning on playing last night, trying to get some quality kink time in before I start the process of moving this weekend.

It wasn’t an easy task. I talk and teach a lot about energy, about “feeling” your way through a scene, and let me tell you, the way we felt in that moment there was not “good” energy between us. Could I have made her cry, could she have made me cum, could we have left marks? Sure, going through the motions. But just forcing that kind of play would have been very counter-productive.

Instead, she took a short walk. I read a little. Then, when she returned, I pulled out some of our favorite rope (4-strand Bavarian Blonde from Twisted Monk via Lee Harrington & Sheryn B) and we decided to just play on the new AIS Events frame. Not “Play” in the dungeon sense; “play” with a little-p. It was the same as if we were ten years old and I’d said “Hey, wanna go swing on the swingset? I’ll push you!“

We didn’t try to force our way out of the grr moment into some jarring shift to intimacy. Instead, we gently let the grr fade out, and then just as gently invited the intimacy and hotness in by just putting the parts in motion. We set ourselves in a place where we were doing the familiar – putting on a drum-tie harness, going into an inversion, taking some pictures – and bit by bit it led us away from the grr and into some quite wonderful mmm.

And that’s my point, I think. The utility of staying in the moment, letting the argument and the feelings it brought up burn themselves out, and then letting the simple “let’s play with rope” moment build into quite a hot scene. It’s one of the things I teach in my ShadowPlay class: when you don’t know what to do, don’t do anything. The right action presents itself, if you just are quiet enough to hear it.


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Michigan Bestiary Entry #2: from Vague

Posted in cool people, GRUE, Rope Bondage, ropecast, twisted monk on June 15, 2010 by admin

Not to be outdone by Ropeboi’s entry, Vague Defined has come up with his own artistic patter…giving him ready entry to the final Twisted Monk/Ropecast Giveaway at the upcoming Detroit GRUE. Remember that all attendees of the GRUE are also given an entry – so you could win $50 of rope just by showing up!

Ladies and gentlemen, tops and bottoms, masters and slaves, sadists and masochists, step right up, step right up to where nothing is what it seems!

It’s worse.

Right behind this door lies of a cornucopia of carnality, a plethora of perversion, the most psychologically malformed, maligned, misshapen monsters Michigan has to offer.

Isn’t that worth a measly five dollars?*

Come see the woman whose hair grew so long we braided it into a 12 gauge, 3-strand rope and hogtied her with it! Come see the legendary Ropunzel!

No groaning at my puns sir, save your groans and your cries of mercy for Ultimate Domme, who uses rope to tie her victims down! “Why,” you ask? Because even gravity safewords when she is topping!

Come on in, step right up, step right up, see the Twue Submissive! He had his hands and feet replaced with carabiners to make rope scenes easier, and would have had his head replaced with a suspensions ring if the surgeon hadn’t sobered up!

Step right up, for just five dollars see the Human Tripod, it’s not what you think ma’am, the Hall of Genital Abormalities is three tents down! No, these are the legendary siamese triplets, they suspend their bottoms from their three conjoined heads. It’s something you’ll never see again on this good Earth my friends!

So step right up, come on in, for a mere portrait of Abe Lincoln you can see these and more wonders of fabled Michigan. If you dare...

While I don’t have the rights to any of the images, this entry can’t help but evoke the work of Jeffrey Scott, aka 1019. Especially this, this, and this…and if that model looks familiar, perhaps you saw her also when Lochai rigged her for Occupied (look for image 30).

Send in your entries for the Michigan Bestiary by June 27th for your own chance to win!

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More CREAM

Posted in art, cool people, event, photography, Rope Bondage, ropecast, twisted monk on May 21, 2010 by admin

First, a couple of pictures courtesy of Percival, RiggerJay, and BendyYogaGirl:

Getting the theme? Of course the songs and bands of the same name would come to mind.

In fact, that was NovemberLuvr‘s entry:

We were going to submit an interpretation of Cream’s “Sunshine Of Your Love” for the current ropecast gift cert lottery. But darnit, the song is pretty much apt on its own.
Could Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, and Jack Bruce been rope tops ?

Reading the lyrics we thought it was appropriate for the intro music to a wonderful suspension/flogging scene.

You can find the lyrics here :-) http://www.eric-clapton.co.uk/ecla/lyrics/sunshine-of-your-love.html

And before your brain (like mine) goes into endless Clapton riffs, here’s a neat little rope erotica vignette from Vague:

Cream.

A sweet, wet, desperate color wrapped tight around skin and muscle.  Another silent plea.

She had told him, “If you want to come, you’ll have to give me cream.”

Bit of a nonsequitur, he thought.

A plastic container with a pull off top and dietary information just raised a smile.  “Wrong kind.”

Cream eggs, a CD of 1960′s blues-rock, whipped cream, ice cream, cream magazine, white stuffed scraped off of a package of cookies, cream cheese, cold cream, cream of tomato soup.  All met with a smile and a shake of the head.

Meals were a bit strange that week.

And now this, tight loops pulled together and tied off around his arms and legs, hobbling mincing steps until he stood before.  The small crease appeared in her forehead as she looked him up and down.  “Cream colored rope?”

He managed a short shrug, shoulders rising until the rope dug into his chest.  “Only other thing I could think of.”

Her head rocked back and forth.  “The knots need to be tighter, it’ll fall off.  And this will cut off your circulation…”  Fingers started prying and pulling, twisting and dragging loops around his body, rearranging his limbs to suit the rope.

“Was I right?”  He swallowed hard.

A snort and a laugh.  “Actually, when I said that I was just trying to be a bitch and give you a Catch-22.  You know, if you want to come, give me cream, but you can’t because you can’t come…  I thought there’d be begging and pleading and bargaining and I’d do horrible things to you, and so on.  Then you took it literally, and I thought I’d see where you went with it.  And you disemboweled cookies for me.  It was cute.”

He laughed back.  “Ah.”  Whatever he was going to say was cut off as she dragged a loop of rope  through his mouth, tying it behind his head.

“Stop talking while you’re ahead.  So no, ‘cream colored rope’ wasn’t the answer I was expecting, but it’ll do.”

Listen to the latest Ropecast to hear Ganymancer’s erotic entry to the CREAM contest…and send in yours!

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ToroGRUE sont fait!

Posted in cool people, event, GRUE, Rope Bondage, ropecast, twisted monk on May 4, 2010 by admin

(apologies to any truly fluent French speakers out there, I never really got the whole tenses thing).

The Control Enthusiast & Graydancer in the Kitchen Makin' Mancakes!

Ok, so there was actually a lot more at the ToroGRUE than pancakes. However, I think this will be forever one of my favorite pictures from the event. Many more to come, by the way; Ganymancer and CreativeSir were official GRUE photogs and they were snapping away throughout. A gallery will be forthcoming…

The Control Enthusiast managed to pull off what is probably the epitome of how the GRUE is designed to work. It was smooth, we had over 20 class sessions, people were involved, and many came out of it with new insights, relationships, and questions that will ripple far beyond the event.

I was especially interested in seeing how the GRUE continued into the Sunday time – yes, we ate pancakes, but then we fulfilled the promise of a “Grappling session”, an in-depth discussion on the philosophies of service, and a cigar play round table (well, round, anyway, as we were all out back smokin’ cubans provided by PBTees). Add to this a couple of impromptu vaginal fisting technique and spanking technique mini-sessions, and you have a whole mini-GRUE following the whole day saturday.

I also have to mention how blown away I was by the skills and presentation ability of Lotus Lily. She dove right into the GRUE with a presentation on partial suspension, and as I watched her rig I was amazed and humbled – her hands move with a sureness and speed that reminds me of Lqqkout. She also stepped up to the plate as my demo bottom (literally!) for “Rope & Impact Play” and later taught a very comprehensive self-suspension class. When I found out later that she was doing all this after working a full night shift, I was astounded. She’s good. If you’re looking for a rope presenter, she has my recommendation.

Of course things like the class list, the fishbowl questions, and more will be coming. But meanwhile, if all this sounds good to you, check out the Boston GRUE coming up in June. Too short notice?  TNG Pittsburgh just announced that they’ll be hosting the first Pittsburgh GRUE in April of 2011!

One more thing…

Yes, we did give away the Twisted Monk/Ropecast $50 Gift Certificate – and to find out who won, you’ll have to listen to the Ropecast (coming out later tonight). However, if you’re anxious to get in on the next round of competition, the theme has been selected – by “Ooh Spicy”, another great new friend from the GRUE.

Since the next giveaway will be done in Boston, when I asked what the theme should be, he piped up immediately with:

Cream.

Yep. That’s the theme. Send in your entries (written, audio, or pics – pics are ALWAYS appreciated) to graydancer@gmail.com.

And yes, we will also be doing a Ropecast on the best way to clean your rope…

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Back From Beyond Leather & Into Car Bondage!!

Posted in cool people, event, photography, Rope Bondage, ropecast, twisted monk on April 28, 2010 by admin

It’s been a busy couple of weeks, and there’s no slowing down. At Beyond Leather I taught what is probably the worst-delivered class of my life. I mean, when the subject is Military Style Bondage, and you forget to wear combat boots, it’s pretty much over. My apologies to those who sat through it, and my thanks to Eboni, who was my willing demo bottom and only giggled a little when I chastised her for forgetting her Air Force “Form 314″ (it was supposed to be a form 341. Oops.).

Yes, it was certainly an event full of things that didn’t go as planned. I didn’t plan on being mortified and embarrassed at Hardy Haberman’s keynote speech, where he said things that I disagree with and that offended and hurt some people very dear to me. More on that later. You can also brace yourself for a rant about the abso-fucking-lutely amazing performance Lqqkout did with Eboni – an example of things not going as planned and them not only dealing with it but turning it into the hottest and most amazing rope performance I’ve ever seen. Seriously. Bar none.

As I said, more on that later. Meanwhile, let’s get on to sexy tied up naked chicks! That’s right, there’s still a few days left to get in your entries for the Twisted Monk/Ropecast Giveaway. Email your entries, phone them in (608-432-5668) or do whatever strikes your fancy…even non-rope people like Thunderroad (who gave me my “Fuck Rope!” t-shirt) are getting in on the act, with help from a little Funsized critter. Also, impromptu car bondage (exactly what Evinxiamor was hoping for) courtesy of FluffyRayne and Mornington Crescent…

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