The past week or so
The dungeon's looking pretty spiffy after a few coats of paint in the main area, plus Miss Vylette doing some magic stuff with window coverings. A whole bunch of volunteers helped out with the painting. I learned that I really suck a LOT at doing detailed work with paintbrushes and lack couth and dexterity and an attention span and all the things you need for not getting paint in places it isn't supposed to go.
I went tubing in Boulder Creek. That was fun, but way too short, so I'm hoping to go again next week. I was glad I invested the whopping $10 in water shoes last year after I saw several pairs of Birks and flip flops whooshing down the creek way ahead of their previous owners. I was a bit surprised how many people were sitting on the banks openly smoking pot. This whole I-got-my-medical-marijuana-license-because-I claimed-stress-or-a-hangnail-as-a-medical-issue thing is messing with my 1980s-informed mindset where you had to smoke pot in private and talk about it on the phone in code. I cannot smoke the stuff that's out these days. I don't like trying to socialize (or go over little rapids in a puffy ring of rubber) while in a coma. It's just not fun. It all smells great, but I'm having to learn that it is not for me anymore. I am officially old.
Madame Butterfly of www.butterflyrope.com came out a few days before Thunder in the Mountains. She was staying with a mutual friend and agreed to come out and give us (Pavlovia) a rope lesson. I told her what I really wanted to get better at was suspension bondage, and she agreed to teach us that, but wanted to make sure everyone on staff that showed up (Vylette, Inanna, Tulsi, me and Pavlovian emeritus Arcadya) could do a decent one-column tie. Once she established that we had that basic competence and got over her horror of our crappy rope (not bamboo, not jute, not hemp, not silk) and decided that we could go ahead and practice with it since that's what we'd be using anyway and that it was probably functional despite being so craptacular (she was more tactful than that), she took us through a takatekote (helpful review for me, new for the others) and used that as the basis for a different suspension for each practice bottom we had. She's a lot of fun and got so adorably giggly when I showed her my rubber whip, Stretch, and some of my knives. She did a rope dress with conductive rope on one of the practice bottoms and ran some violet wand current through it, which made the bottom squirm a whole lot. J bought me two 30' lengths of the conductive rope as a birthday gift. We're going to have to be careful with it bc it can't be washed without destroying the conductive elements.
The next dungeon investment I need to make will be some locking caribbeners and a trapeze or other forged suspension ring. Buying fancy rope is a very low budget priority because we wash ours after just about every use where they go under arms, between legs or just get sweaty, and natural fibers would fatigue too quickly to be economical for our professional use. If I learned how to get my own raw hemp by the spool and treat it, it'd be more affordable, but it'd never be as delicious to the touch as Madame Butterfly's silk or bamboo rope.
I worked the dungeon build crew again and donated a few pieces of dungeon furniture for the women's dungeon (not because I don't want icky gross boys touching my furniture, but because I know how women play with women and they're not going to be careless with someone else's property and if something does start to go wrong, chances are good they'll attempt a repair on the spot). It's pretty hard work, doing the dungeon build from 8-4:30 on Friday and then showing up at 8am on Sunday to take it all apart again, but it's surprisingly fun. My little Black & Decker cordless screwdriver wasn't that helpful on the build part, but was good on the takedown. This year, the cross components all got numbered after they were put together and were then ziptied together after dismantling, which should make the massive monkeyfuck of a jigsaw puzzle involved with putting together a big pile of painted lumber into 20 crosses go much more smoothly next year. I bet it'll take at least an hour off the build time.
At the play party on Friday, my friend Ivory Mistress Jae had organized a Roman procession, complete with costumes (she and one of the centurions made mine by hand, which was good because I would've been too busy otherwise to participate). We had centurions (I avoided them in case they had Legionnaire's Disease), one or two senators, three goddesses and several slaves. The centurions led the way and were supposed to be yelling out "Make way! Make way!" but I think they went all shy. The hotel staff will probably never recover from sight of a bunch of people in gladiator skirts, togas, laurels and burlap sack tunics promenading through the lobby and down the halls. I chose Tittyana as my goddess name, but decided the next day that I was actually more like Socrates in drag. One of the slaves was in charge of grapes and learned to move very quickly if she didn't want her fingers bitten.
I had to leave the Roman entertainment before it was over because I was someone's birthday present. We did a scene where I showed up with my sewing kit (needles, sutures, staplers, etc) and was supposed to just plain scare the hell out of her until she safeworded. She was a lot tougher than her Master expected, though, and didn't end up safewording no matter how scary something was that I was threatening to do to her. He'd brought some lettered beads that spelled out his name, and I used needles to pin them in an arc across her chest. She was a trouper and was very proud of herself for taking all that. I don't think she'd done needle play before.
The mutual friend of Madame Butterfly and I who set up the whole private rope class for us also agreed to be one of the demo bottoms for Midori's Predicament Bondage class on Saturday. The friend, C, is primarily a spanko and seems to just tolerate most other types of BDSM that people want to do to her, and she hadn't had any experience with clamps or clips on sensitive body parts. Miss Vylette offered to practice with her a week before the class and did some studying up on predicament bondage before their practice sessions, which was an excellent learning experience for her. We'd briefly covered a little bit of predicament bondage during some of the formal training sessions, but she went a lot further with her private research and practice sessions with C. By the time Midori's class rolled around, C was a bit less anxious about it and Miss Vylette was on board with being C's official aftercare person. The class was fantastic, I learned a lot, C did extremely well, and I was very proud of both Vylette and C.
I also went to a class on bondage for escape artists on Saturday. John Pendal (www.IML2003.com) was the presenter for that one and I'd taken a class ("So You Want to be a Presenter") with him last year that was really good. I've been wanting to improve my rope skills and in the past few months, escape artists have left me utterly humiliated several times, so I've been motivated to step up and save my ego some trauma. I need to get brave and contact the most recent person who got out of my ties in under two minutes and see if I can do better. I also took his class on pain management on Sunday and that was damned interesting. He's such a good presenter. He's also willing to send notes via email for his classes, which is immensely helpful.
On Saturday night, I helped Christine (loveslave, who owns the Sanctuary) with a skit for the talent show. She came up with all the material and had 3X5 cards made up for me so we could rehearse a couple of hours before the talent show. I was the straight man, pretending to be facilitating a 12-step group called Pain Sluts Anonymous, and she was there needing support. We got third place, which was a huge surprise to me since I sort of assumed we were there as mostly filler. She worked in a plug for Pavlovia, which was thoughtful, but I've never done a talent show before so ... I dunno. I went in with no expectations and was very happily surprised to get called back up on stage. Cross won 2nd place with an extremely well-done Tim Minchin piece, and a guy with an incredible voice got 1st place. I thought he was lip-synching at first, and when I realized that was all his voice, I was floored. He sang "When I Ruled the World" and it was jaw-droppingly beautiful.
Miss Vylette and C had thought up a plastic wrap suspension scene that they wanted to do in the dome (huge metal playgroundy piece of equipment) and asked me to help. I agreed and we'd set a time to meet in the dungeon. I ended up being 15 minutes late, which was really frustrating for all of us, but we got going pretty quickly once I got there. C was in a climbing harness already and we loosened that a bit so we could wrap her torso, then snugged the harness back up. I secured the harness to the overhead suspension point and then we started working on using the wrap for the body support with the intention that it would eventually be holding all C's body weight instead of the harness. We ran into a technical snag on head support just about the same time Madame Butterfly happened to wander by, so we asked her if she could come in and help us, which she did (perfect timing - neither Vylette or I had done a plastic wrap suspension before and we were a bit stuck on how to get the wrap to support C's head when it kept slipping off her hair). Tulsi was nearby, so I checked with Vylette and C to see if we could invite Tulsi in, and they were cool with it, so Tulsi came in and helped clamber around the frame, attaching cling film to higher points to provide vertical support.
By the time we'd gone through a couple of spools of wrap and couldn't think of anything else to tie off to, C looked like she was in a green and white web. We all started smacking strands to make the web vibrate and giving her spanks and swinging the center of the web to make her swing. We were all high on endorphins and got a case of group giggles that just wouldn't quit. Again, I had to leave the scene before it was completely done (my ride was there and it was close to 1am), but I'm told the rest of it went very well and they got C down without any difficulty.
I was there at 8:15 the next morning to take apart the dungeon. We were done around 11 and I was hoping to go to an 11:30 class, but needed a nap worse. I missed out on a full day of classes and only got to the one at 4pm, which was the John Pendal class on pain management. I'm glad I got to go to that one, but I wish I could've gone to either of the Tony Buff/Derek DaSilva classes or Midori's class on interrogation. I also wanted to go to Nina Hartley's classes, just because she's Nina Fucking Hartley (I nearly hyperventilated when she walked nearby in the dungeon on Friday), but I was comatose. She was gracious enough to offer to pose for a pic with me on Sunday at the end of the event. She put her head on my right boob. It makes me sad that I'll have to wash it someday. No rush.
Sunday night, I volunteered at the Sanctuary's Thunder After Party, ferrying visitors from the club to the hotel. I'd had time for a very brief nap at home and only did two trips, and was pretty wiped out. A group of about 8 or 9 of us were the last holdouts at the end of the night and Christine had one more person that needed a ride back to the hotel, but she drove them herself and just told me to lock up whenever we were ready to go. I got to do a long, slow, sexy, comfortable scene with a girl in my lap for an hour or two and I think we all finally left around 4am.
I picked up one of the presenters at the hotel on Monday and gave her a tour of the freshly-painted dungeon. She's been looking for a space to do an event and ended up deciding mine doesn't have enough available open floor space for a large group of moving people, but we had a nice lunch afterwards with a couple of other friends and then I drove her to the airport and came up with some other ideas for venues. THEN I got to go home and sleep like the dead, which I ended up being too tired to do for several hours. Agh!
So that's been what's going on for the past 10 days, ish, minus an emo report on poly drama that I'd rather just not think about, but still sucked. I'm focusing on all the happy stuff instead, or trying to.
I went tubing in Boulder Creek. That was fun, but way too short, so I'm hoping to go again next week. I was glad I invested the whopping $10 in water shoes last year after I saw several pairs of Birks and flip flops whooshing down the creek way ahead of their previous owners. I was a bit surprised how many people were sitting on the banks openly smoking pot. This whole I-got-my-medical-marijuana-license-because-I claimed-stress-or-a-hangnail-as-a-medical-issue thing is messing with my 1980s-informed mindset where you had to smoke pot in private and talk about it on the phone in code. I cannot smoke the stuff that's out these days. I don't like trying to socialize (or go over little rapids in a puffy ring of rubber) while in a coma. It's just not fun. It all smells great, but I'm having to learn that it is not for me anymore. I am officially old.
Madame Butterfly of www.butterflyrope.com came out a few days before Thunder in the Mountains. She was staying with a mutual friend and agreed to come out and give us (Pavlovia) a rope lesson. I told her what I really wanted to get better at was suspension bondage, and she agreed to teach us that, but wanted to make sure everyone on staff that showed up (Vylette, Inanna, Tulsi, me and Pavlovian emeritus Arcadya) could do a decent one-column tie. Once she established that we had that basic competence and got over her horror of our crappy rope (not bamboo, not jute, not hemp, not silk) and decided that we could go ahead and practice with it since that's what we'd be using anyway and that it was probably functional despite being so craptacular (she was more tactful than that), she took us through a takatekote (helpful review for me, new for the others) and used that as the basis for a different suspension for each practice bottom we had. She's a lot of fun and got so adorably giggly when I showed her my rubber whip, Stretch, and some of my knives. She did a rope dress with conductive rope on one of the practice bottoms and ran some violet wand current through it, which made the bottom squirm a whole lot. J bought me two 30' lengths of the conductive rope as a birthday gift. We're going to have to be careful with it bc it can't be washed without destroying the conductive elements.
The next dungeon investment I need to make will be some locking caribbeners and a trapeze or other forged suspension ring. Buying fancy rope is a very low budget priority because we wash ours after just about every use where they go under arms, between legs or just get sweaty, and natural fibers would fatigue too quickly to be economical for our professional use. If I learned how to get my own raw hemp by the spool and treat it, it'd be more affordable, but it'd never be as delicious to the touch as Madame Butterfly's silk or bamboo rope.
I worked the dungeon build crew again and donated a few pieces of dungeon furniture for the women's dungeon (not because I don't want icky gross boys touching my furniture, but because I know how women play with women and they're not going to be careless with someone else's property and if something does start to go wrong, chances are good they'll attempt a repair on the spot). It's pretty hard work, doing the dungeon build from 8-4:30 on Friday and then showing up at 8am on Sunday to take it all apart again, but it's surprisingly fun. My little Black & Decker cordless screwdriver wasn't that helpful on the build part, but was good on the takedown. This year, the cross components all got numbered after they were put together and were then ziptied together after dismantling, which should make the massive monkeyfuck of a jigsaw puzzle involved with putting together a big pile of painted lumber into 20 crosses go much more smoothly next year. I bet it'll take at least an hour off the build time.
At the play party on Friday, my friend Ivory Mistress Jae had organized a Roman procession, complete with costumes (she and one of the centurions made mine by hand, which was good because I would've been too busy otherwise to participate). We had centurions (I avoided them in case they had Legionnaire's Disease), one or two senators, three goddesses and several slaves. The centurions led the way and were supposed to be yelling out "Make way! Make way!" but I think they went all shy. The hotel staff will probably never recover from sight of a bunch of people in gladiator skirts, togas, laurels and burlap sack tunics promenading through the lobby and down the halls. I chose Tittyana as my goddess name, but decided the next day that I was actually more like Socrates in drag. One of the slaves was in charge of grapes and learned to move very quickly if she didn't want her fingers bitten.
I had to leave the Roman entertainment before it was over because I was someone's birthday present. We did a scene where I showed up with my sewing kit (needles, sutures, staplers, etc) and was supposed to just plain scare the hell out of her until she safeworded. She was a lot tougher than her Master expected, though, and didn't end up safewording no matter how scary something was that I was threatening to do to her. He'd brought some lettered beads that spelled out his name, and I used needles to pin them in an arc across her chest. She was a trouper and was very proud of herself for taking all that. I don't think she'd done needle play before.
The mutual friend of Madame Butterfly and I who set up the whole private rope class for us also agreed to be one of the demo bottoms for Midori's Predicament Bondage class on Saturday. The friend, C, is primarily a spanko and seems to just tolerate most other types of BDSM that people want to do to her, and she hadn't had any experience with clamps or clips on sensitive body parts. Miss Vylette offered to practice with her a week before the class and did some studying up on predicament bondage before their practice sessions, which was an excellent learning experience for her. We'd briefly covered a little bit of predicament bondage during some of the formal training sessions, but she went a lot further with her private research and practice sessions with C. By the time Midori's class rolled around, C was a bit less anxious about it and Miss Vylette was on board with being C's official aftercare person. The class was fantastic, I learned a lot, C did extremely well, and I was very proud of both Vylette and C.
I also went to a class on bondage for escape artists on Saturday. John Pendal (www.IML2003.com) was the presenter for that one and I'd taken a class ("So You Want to be a Presenter") with him last year that was really good. I've been wanting to improve my rope skills and in the past few months, escape artists have left me utterly humiliated several times, so I've been motivated to step up and save my ego some trauma. I need to get brave and contact the most recent person who got out of my ties in under two minutes and see if I can do better. I also took his class on pain management on Sunday and that was damned interesting. He's such a good presenter. He's also willing to send notes via email for his classes, which is immensely helpful.
On Saturday night, I helped Christine (loveslave, who owns the Sanctuary) with a skit for the talent show. She came up with all the material and had 3X5 cards made up for me so we could rehearse a couple of hours before the talent show. I was the straight man, pretending to be facilitating a 12-step group called Pain Sluts Anonymous, and she was there needing support. We got third place, which was a huge surprise to me since I sort of assumed we were there as mostly filler. She worked in a plug for Pavlovia, which was thoughtful, but I've never done a talent show before so ... I dunno. I went in with no expectations and was very happily surprised to get called back up on stage. Cross won 2nd place with an extremely well-done Tim Minchin piece, and a guy with an incredible voice got 1st place. I thought he was lip-synching at first, and when I realized that was all his voice, I was floored. He sang "When I Ruled the World" and it was jaw-droppingly beautiful.
Miss Vylette and C had thought up a plastic wrap suspension scene that they wanted to do in the dome (huge metal playgroundy piece of equipment) and asked me to help. I agreed and we'd set a time to meet in the dungeon. I ended up being 15 minutes late, which was really frustrating for all of us, but we got going pretty quickly once I got there. C was in a climbing harness already and we loosened that a bit so we could wrap her torso, then snugged the harness back up. I secured the harness to the overhead suspension point and then we started working on using the wrap for the body support with the intention that it would eventually be holding all C's body weight instead of the harness. We ran into a technical snag on head support just about the same time Madame Butterfly happened to wander by, so we asked her if she could come in and help us, which she did (perfect timing - neither Vylette or I had done a plastic wrap suspension before and we were a bit stuck on how to get the wrap to support C's head when it kept slipping off her hair). Tulsi was nearby, so I checked with Vylette and C to see if we could invite Tulsi in, and they were cool with it, so Tulsi came in and helped clamber around the frame, attaching cling film to higher points to provide vertical support.
By the time we'd gone through a couple of spools of wrap and couldn't think of anything else to tie off to, C looked like she was in a green and white web. We all started smacking strands to make the web vibrate and giving her spanks and swinging the center of the web to make her swing. We were all high on endorphins and got a case of group giggles that just wouldn't quit. Again, I had to leave the scene before it was completely done (my ride was there and it was close to 1am), but I'm told the rest of it went very well and they got C down without any difficulty.
I was there at 8:15 the next morning to take apart the dungeon. We were done around 11 and I was hoping to go to an 11:30 class, but needed a nap worse. I missed out on a full day of classes and only got to the one at 4pm, which was the John Pendal class on pain management. I'm glad I got to go to that one, but I wish I could've gone to either of the Tony Buff/Derek DaSilva classes or Midori's class on interrogation. I also wanted to go to Nina Hartley's classes, just because she's Nina Fucking Hartley (I nearly hyperventilated when she walked nearby in the dungeon on Friday), but I was comatose. She was gracious enough to offer to pose for a pic with me on Sunday at the end of the event. She put her head on my right boob. It makes me sad that I'll have to wash it someday. No rush.
Sunday night, I volunteered at the Sanctuary's Thunder After Party, ferrying visitors from the club to the hotel. I'd had time for a very brief nap at home and only did two trips, and was pretty wiped out. A group of about 8 or 9 of us were the last holdouts at the end of the night and Christine had one more person that needed a ride back to the hotel, but she drove them herself and just told me to lock up whenever we were ready to go. I got to do a long, slow, sexy, comfortable scene with a girl in my lap for an hour or two and I think we all finally left around 4am.
I picked up one of the presenters at the hotel on Monday and gave her a tour of the freshly-painted dungeon. She's been looking for a space to do an event and ended up deciding mine doesn't have enough available open floor space for a large group of moving people, but we had a nice lunch afterwards with a couple of other friends and then I drove her to the airport and came up with some other ideas for venues. THEN I got to go home and sleep like the dead, which I ended up being too tired to do for several hours. Agh!
So that's been what's going on for the past 10 days, ish, minus an emo report on poly drama that I'd rather just not think about, but still sucked. I'm focusing on all the happy stuff instead, or trying to.