To Face Unafraid the Plans that We Made

I just put @khatsha​ to bed after our first christmas dinner together and my heart is very full. (just as my stomach is full with bad delivery Chinese food) Just now she said, “that was pretty crazy right? Getting married without ever having lived together?” And I said “Yeah!” We both took an enormous risk, her even more than me in her move across the Atlantic, to be together.

And yet I never felt serious doubt. And I don’t think she did either. And today, my day off in Boston, played out just how I hoped and imagined such days: the hours of intimate conversation, the cuddling, the partnership in making plans (”later on, we’ll conspire / as we dream by the fire”), the making fun of mullets in the Band Aid video, and the hot spontaneous hypnosis and D/s scenes.

In the meadow we can build a snowman
And pretend that he is Parson Brown
He’ll say are you married, we’ll say no man
But you can do the job when you’re in town

I hate the censored version of Winter Wonderland - what, are we afraid the little kids are going to have sex after they play marriage? - and am shocked and dismayed that Annie Lennox chose to sing it. Like why is changing it to “a circus clown” less threatening? And what child refers to other children as “kiddies” - a word exclusively used by grownups that hate children?

But I also actively like the original verse, the ambiguous time distortion of it: playing wedding in the meadow, and then one day looking around and noticing you’re married for real. That’s a little what this feels like, like a game of “let’s pretend” that just keeps going, with the best possible playmate.

Because we get to make it up. Marriage gets very very serious at times, and sometimes I get vertigo realizing what the stakes are, but it’s overwhelmed by the freedom of building something together like we want. Because the plans that we made don’t end at living together: they are also about building our adult lives, and even more specifically Boston hypnosis community, and so many good things are already happening in both departments.

This is already too long of a late night Kwak-fuelled ramble. But I’m just so pleased and grateful. Merry early christmas to all christmas celebrators, and I love you @khatsha​.

Coffee Cream

“My cock is coated with a sweet, delicious substance - it tastes a lot like coffee cream - that replenishes itself as you lick it, especially around the tip, and makes you want to lap it up more and more.

The coating also contains a drug. The more you consume, the more this drug will make you heavy and sleepy, with warm relaxed muscles. Ready for bedtime and ready to sleep for real.”

For a while she had her usual enthusiastic head-bobbing up and down on my cock. Then she slowed down, became very deliberate. But still regular. After a while she propped herself up on her elbow.

Her head sunk down until it reached the bed.

I snapped.

“Wide awake, energized and caffeinated. How are you?”

“…Good! Fuzzy.”

“Are you actually ready for bed, and is it ok with you if I put you to sleep tonight that way?”

“Yes!”

“Ok, then the coffee cream is back…” *snap*

And then I used her blowjob compulsion trigger.

This time when her head drifted onto the pillow, face getting nice and relaxed, I helped her out. I wrapped my hand in her hair and fucked her mouth, knowing that each time I went into her mouth her half-asleep mind would taste the drug and each time she would be pushed closer to sleep.

Even as her head lay on the pillow, her mouth had some muscle tone at first, letting me feel the friction. Then her mouth went slack.

I pulled all the way out. “That’s ok. It’s sleepy time, ready to let go completely and go to sleep for the night, only waking up in the morning or if there’s something you need to attend to during the night.”
Her breathing became slow and regular. And I stroked her hair and nestled in beside her, to begin to drift away myself.

Withdrawing from Organizing the Hypnosis Lounge at FFF

khatsha and I were the organizers of the hypnosis lounge at the Fetish Fair Fleamarket 50.  Based on very disturbing accounts of the NELA board’s handling of a presenter accused of consent violations and his accusers, we don’t believe that the organization has the credibility at this point to effectively protect attendees or deal with consent issues that may arise. Therefore we just sent an email saying that we will not volunteer at or attend the Flea.

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Update: The entire board has now resigned, and a transitional board consisting of veterans including my favourite erotica writer Cecilia Tan is now in charge. This is great news. We'll see what happens, but if they are interested in having a hypnosis lounge at this year's Flea, katsha and I are very willing to run it.

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Another update: We have heard from the new organizers and we will be running a hypnosis lounge at the Flea! Hope you come to visit, even if you're only a little bit curious.

Just Before Leaving Work

Just before leaving work, I sent these texts to khatsha.

MESSAGE TO KHATSHA’S

I came home to find my wife writhing around on the bed in frilly black lingerie, whimpering with desire.

And so I fucked her. And then she made me dinner.

Clarifications:

1. Dennis is the name of her giant heavy duvet that occupies most of the bed even when she’s not burritoed inside it
2. Desirous is definitely a word
3. I got a foot cramp while fucking that almost cancelled the whole thing
4. It was her turn to cook while I washed the dishes, but the avocados for her meal turned out to be bad, so instead I ended up making tuna melts
5. Having a sexy hypnotized wife in my home is just as wonderful as I thought it would be.

ERICKSON WAS A MASTER

Minutes after I reblogged @ellaenchanting's great critical roundup about NLP on Tumblr, a stranger started messaging me on there:

So many thoughts are running through my mind! Like that was quite the plot twist at the end! But also his initial messages really reminded me of something…

Message to My Fellow Men: Be Afraid

There’s a certain type of dude who, when there’s a lot of conversation about consent and consent violations, gets really really pretend scared. “I’m so scared!” they say “In the current climate, if I open a door for a woman, she could accuse me of harassment! I’m afraid to say anything! I’m deprived of oxygen, for political correctness has truly boxed me in!”

Here’s my message to them and to all of us men: you should be afraid.

Why did Louis CK, Weinstein, Spacey, Tambor, Rattner, Toback, and all the others soon to be named do all those sexual assaults? Because they were not afraid. They judged that their power, fame, wealth and sheer old-white-manhood, would protect them.

And they were totally right!

For YEARS there were no consequences. They kept making movies and tv shows, and kept assaulting people!

And now the checks are all coming. Brave women and men have told their stories in numbers powerful enough to finally convince all but the biggest assholes. These famous careers are getting blown apart in front of our eyes, hopefully permanently (although white manhood has historically carried with it an astonishing amount of second chances)

And let’s hope the message filters down into everybody’s day to day lives. This shit is not going to stand any more.

Although crippling social anxiety is a bad thing, fear and wariness are your friend when it comes to not assaulting people.

Most importantly it should motivate you to learn. Learn about women’s experience of assault and how it doesn’t necessarily look like how you expect (for example, many people freeze up). Learn explicit consent and get fucking good at it. Learn how explicit consent isn’t enough: learn about structures of power and how they can let you mask even to yourself how little someone is free to say no. Learn to err on the side of not assaulting.

And know, deep down, if you prey on people, eventually your house will fall down.

And because of these serial predators, and how it’s never just one victim, young women and other vulnerable groups are talking amongst themselves and getting less and less tolerant of behaviour that has that flavour - the assault-adjacent, mild creeping and sexism that used to be considered the cost of admission if you are a woman. The bar is moving for what constitutes a fuckup, in a way that is no long controlled by older white men.

And if you fuck up, in a way that is not clearly a one time thing, you will get shitcanned. You will get kicked out of the community and have no access to kink. And this will happen to me if I get sloppy and inattentive about consent or start treating people like things, and it will happen to you. This is how it should work.

Have fun in the kink community, and be afraid.

That Thing You Were About To Do (An Erotic Hypnosis Scene)

"SLEEP. That's right, nice and deep, all the way down, just like that. Relax and open your mind to receive new programming.

Have you ever walked into a room with the intention of doing something, and then you can't remember what it was? That feeling like having a word right on the tip of your tongue, except instead of a word it's something you were just about to do, but you were interrupted right before you could do it?

Just for the next little while, just until you leave this room, whenever I say the words, 'What was it?' you're going to have that same feeling - that searching, frustrated feeling, like there was something you were about to do, something you wanted to do, something you decided to do, but you can't quite remember what it was. And the more time passes, the more frustrating that feeling gets. Until I suggest the thing that you were about to do, and you'll have that wonderful, beautiful feeling of relief flooding your body and your mind as you realize, that's it, that's the thing I was about to do, that I wanted to do, that I decided to do, I just forgot. And you will rush to do that thing you were about to do just before you were interrupted.

And that will happen each and every time I say the words 'What was it?'

Let that sink in fully as you rise up, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Hi."

"Hi."

She looked up at him, both sitting cross-legged on the bed.

"How do you feel?"

"...Good. Fuzzy."

"I guess I brought you up pretty fast. But you feel nice and energized now, ready to do stuff."

"Yeah."

"Which is good because you were just about to do something before I so rudely dropped you. What was it?"

Her eyes widened, and she frowned.

"I was? Yes... there was something..."

Her eyes flitted around the room, and she squirmed on the bed.

"I'm sure there was something you wanted to do right before. You can't remember?"

"No... but... what..."

"I know, you were going to make out with me."

Her brow cleared, and a big smile crossed her face.

"Yes!!"

And she leaned in and started making out with him.

"Mmmm, yes, but there was something else you were going to do. Mmm. What was it?"

"There was?"

She leaned back and looked troubled.

"You were going to sing me I'm A Little Teapot, with all the gestures!"

"That's it! That's what I was going to do!"

She sang the song, complete with all the gestures.

"I remember now," she said, "I wanted to sing it to you because I thought maybe Canadians didn't hear that song growing up."

"Well you did a very lovely version. Thank you for teaching me that. But there was something else. What was it?"

"There was? There was."

"You were going to kneel down and kiss my feet."

"I was?"

"That's what you were about to do."

"I told you that?"

"Well no, but I could tell that's what you wanted to do."

"It doesn't seem like something I would do, but I do feel this urge to kneel down and kiss your feet!"

"Don't you remember? It's what you were about to do, what you wanted to do, what you already decided to do. I say just go with your gut."

And then she did. She knelt down on the bed and kissed his feet. Tentatively at first, and then with relish.

"Now doesn't that feel better? You shouldn't fight your instincts. Come on back up here."

And they lay on the bed and made out.

"Oh, I just saw something cross your mind that you wanted to do, but you got distracted. What was it? You wanted to fondle my crotch!"

And she did.

"What a relief! Doesn't it feel great to remember what it is you were about to do, and not be stuck in that frustrating state, trying to figure it out?"

"Mmmhmmm. But you're doing something. You're making me want to do something and then forget it. Right?"

"Nope, that's not it at all. But I think you're too fractionated to understand, even if I was going to tell you. Speaking of which, there was something hypnosis-wise you were about to do, wasn't there? What was it?"

This time she whined a little.

"You were about to fall into a deep hypnotic trance!"

Her eyes slammed shut, and she lay there peacefully.

"And WAKE UP."

She blinked and looked around.

"So forgetful today! Good thing I'm here to help. Hey, remember that conversation we had earlier? About how you fantasize about handing over the keys to your mind, and letting someone else drive for a while, just giving up all control?"

"Yeah?"

"Just now you told me you were about to do something about that. What was it?"

He let it build until she was rolling back and forth and pulling on her hair. "Mmph! Why can't I! Ugggh..."

"You were about to hand me the keys to your mind! That is, give me complete control over your body and mind. You were going to mime it."

She had relaxed, but there was still a little frown. "Mime it?"

"Yes, pretend to put the keys into my hand. I thought that seemed a bit silly, but that's what you were about to do!"

And she did.

Neuropsychoactive Sandwich Communication

@Minutiae wrote a piece called More rape sandwich which excellently draws a consent metaphor out of a Subway sandwich artist who sneaks onions into your sandwich, which you’re allergic to, after you specifically asked them not to.

But people in the erotic hypnosis community know that there’s an innocent explanation for what happened: in fact what you didn’t understand is that the sandwich artist was trained in NSC (Neuropsychoactive Sandwich Communication). For them, slipping in a few onions is simply part of how they express themselves. They can’t turn it off.

Plus, were they hiding it? Anyone with the slightest knowledge of NSC could have spotted those onions in there. Really, the important thing is to get those people weak enough to be allergic trained in self defence, in detecting and neutralizing onions, so they can easily raise their “onion shields” whenever they walk into a Subway.

Besides, if the sandwich artist had really been using NSC, you would never have detected those onions.

Wait, the sandwich artist only did that to four people with onion allergies? That Subway must have served 17,000 people last week! I haven’t heard a peep out of them. Are we going to let just four people - or 0.002% - turn this into a witchhunt?

Anyway, what’s with the big outcry? Give me a break. You know how many people and corporations try to give you onions every day? Ever since we first learned to make primitive sandwiches? What, you’re going to ban mustard and mayonnaise and lettuce too? Why should we jump all over someone simply for doing what those large, shitty, corporations, and sleazy, manipulative people do all the time, that is, not listening to your wishes or respecting your agency and forcing something down your throat that makes you feel bad?

Consent Spin-the-Bottle

I did this at a party recently and I thought it was genius, so I want to share it around. It’s like regular spin-the-bottle, where you go around the circle and spin a bottle in the center, except:

• When the bottle points to you, you have to offer three options of things you are willing to do with/for the spinner, for them to choose one
• At least one has to be nonsexual and vanilla (e.g. sing a Disney song, make up a secret handshake together)

A nice touch was letting people know they can definitely reuse options other people proposed, so there’s not too much pressure to be creative.

I bet there’s still things that can go wrong with this consent-wise, but it is SO much better thought out than regular spin the bottle, or truth or dare or whatever. What’s particularly smart is that if you don’t want to do anything sexy or flirtatious with the person the bottle points to, the other option is usually fun and funny, so it’s a good cover. You can be like, “I so would like to take you up on your offer of a makeout sesh, but I’m simply too attracted by the possibility of a Top Gun-style high five!”

The other important part is that it starts sexy things happening at the party, and breaks the ice between people, as well as letting people communicate their interests. It worked great at this party - the options got a lot racier than kissing pretty quick!

Beginners Can't Ask the Right Consent Questions

No matter how much you've thought and read about consent and negotiation, there's still a lot of intuition involved in asking the right questions to a new partner. The right question at the right time is critical, but it takes experience, or rather experiences, of many different people, to do this well.

I always wrap up my negotiation with something like, "Is there anything else we should talk about?" or "Is there anything else I should know?" But people often don't know themelves what might be a problem for them. I also don't think consent checklists are a solution, for various reasons.

Without the scenes and people I've been involved with, observed, and read about, I probably wouldn't know these things about people that are needed to ask good questions:

• Some people don't like to be hugged, or any touching whatsoever.
• Some people have a fear of drowning that makes water imagery a bad idea.
• Some people have a fear of heights that makes floating imagery a bad idea.
• Also some people don't like elevators because of claustrophia. And at least one person out there has a phobia of escalators.
• Some people want hypnosis without D/s - any dominating or controlling language bothers them.
• Some people are ok with sneaky hypnosis and playful triggers in private, but are bothered if it happens in front of other people (which usually adds at least a little humiliation).
• Some people are ok with triggers that third parties can use, while some people are not.
• Some people have physical problems, eg in their neck, shoulders, or knees, that make certain common hypnotic devices, like hand floating, difficult to sustain or start.
• Some people have struggles with their memory, or with people calling them dumb, that makes amnesia or intelligence play unpleasant.
• Some people have nerve issues so that language about tingling bothers them.
• Some people get floppy when they go into trance, and could potentially fall or give you their weight in a dangerous way.
• People mean different things when they agree to a sexual hypnosis scene: some people want only induced pleasure and arousal; some people are into imagery of having sex with you; and some people are into sexual touch as well. You have to ask.
• Some people are significantly altered in their judgment after even one trance, and shouldn't ever negotiate after that.
• You can't tell someone's correct pronouns from the way they look, or their name.
• Some transgender people are bothered by references to their genitals if they experience them as not matching their gender.
• Many people have been sexually assaulted, and this can make for obstacles that need to be carefully navigated, including ones they don't know about.
• Many people have a complicated relationship with their own orgasms, including partners pressuring them to have them or have them faster, and language that presupposes they will have an orgasm at a certain time can create anxiety. (related blog entry: Don't Pressure People to Have Hypnotic Orgasms)
• Some people have non-intuitive limitations in their polyamorous relationships that need to be respected.

I bet a lot of the things on this list seem obvious to you. That's because of your experience! I guarantee for each of these there's someone out there who didn't know, and screwed it up. Often, me.

My point is not that you shouldn't ever start doing hypnosis, or that I've learned everything that I need to know. In fact my point is:

We're all beginners. In a few years this list of mine will be twice as long, and whenever we play with a new partner, or even an old partner, we are beginners: there's so much to learn about how to navigate consent with that person. Respect human variation, and get ready to be surprised.
and also:

It's ok to not ask the right questions. The most important consent skill is recovery from mishaps, and learning from them. I think that for well-intentioned, well-educated kinksters, things tend to only really go bad because of two inner self images.

First, "Dom Draper": the idea of dominant as suave, smooth, and omniscient, knowing exactly where your for-real limits are so you can be pushed right up to them, making every scene flow in a perfectly controlled way - just like in porn!

Second, the "Safe Player": the one who is so invested in their image to themselves, and maybe the community, as being safe and consent aware that they can't admit that they just fucked up.

Unlike mistakes from simple ignorance, these can actually get worse with years in the scene - and besides making you more dangerous, in fact prevent you from learning from experience. I want to take those harmful self-images in me out back and bury them.

What's important is to stay engaged with your partner, and be aware that screwups are always a possibility. And that's ok. You just have to:

• Notice something went wrong (or listen when they tell you that)
• Ask them about it
• Apologize if appropriate
• Remember it for next time

Recovery, not perfection, and getting better all the time.

Glasses Are Hot

Warning: male gaze objectification comin’ up.

I would love to have the superpower of seeing anyone’s late night porn search keywords. Is there any time when we’re more honest about what we really desire?

For me, 99% of the time “hypno” would be in there, but “glasses” is also a keyword I have searched. Glasses are really hot.

What’s relevant to my fetish?

1. They’re stylish.
2. They suit her face and personality.
3. She needs them.

Oh yes, 3: there’s plenty of glasses porn out there, but it actually bums me out if I see that the lens aren’t refractive! (even more so if the same pair is being used by models in different videos!) I demand myopia! Or, failing that, presbyopia! Is it that the hint of helplessness is cute?

This is all just an excuse for me to perv, so let it begin! In vaguely chronological order!

Jeanine Melnitz
Goddamn this 80s lady has pizazz. I just know she goes dancing, and has a great dating life totally separate from her work, as well as lots of buddies in the 80s NYC avant garde art scene.

Jet Girl
Soulful and badass! She needs another movie.

Lisa Loeb
Yeah a lot of us there in the 90s were activated by this video.

Scully
*Gulp*
Let’s keep moving.

Tina Fey
Super obvious but essential. Her looks are very nice, but her big, hard joke-brain is the sexiest thing. I’ve read her book 28 times at least - literally no one cares more about making the perfect joke than she does.

10 years later, subtly different glasses, still rocking it hard.

Hope Davis as Joyce Brabner (American Splendor)
Pretty much my sexual ideal. Achingly smart and passionate. I can watch their first date scenes over and over.

Felicia Day
Ok, yes, but I feel manipulated. Stiiiiill does it.

Zooey Deschanel
Ugh, I hate me. You can probably tell exactly my age from this crush.

Edna Mode
Passionate! Daring in her style choices! These are some sexy pixels. She has some stories to tell from the 70s.

Daniel from Stargate
I’m straight but I’m not narrow.

A lot of these glasses are 90s-style thin wire frames, I’m noticing. Is this nostalgia, or is the wave of revival coming, such that they are starting to look good again for real?

Daniel from Stargate
As a teenager I literally took this picture to my barber.

It was still the 90s!

Mr. Peabody
Oh, hello.

---

Here’s an irony: 10 years ago I had laser eye surgery. Primarily for cosmetic reasons. And I don’t regret it!

And yet! You will be sexier to me if you wear glasses. Taking them off for sex makes you look even more naked, and possibly vulnerable. But leaving them on is even better.

I think all explanations of fetishes are a lie. Usually it’s just there. But I’m sure my glasses fetish has something to do with me projecting combined qualities of braininess and stylishness. Women with a rich specific inner life - who I could talk about books with - but who have also put a few XP into aesthetics and their feminine mystique.

My new wife is all those things, and she wears huge, super stylish glasses, like a fashion designer or a famous writer. They’re so vivid that when she takes them off it’s almost like her eyes go with them, like a cartoon character. So basically she makes me ridiculously happy, and horny all the time. 

6 Hours

For six hours of the day you’re not with me.

And you should be with me! This ring on my finger says so.

For six hours there’s not that brilliant, hilarious, caring, responsive presence of yours reaching out through my phone, tempting me all day at work. That mind that I first fell for: sexting on the top of a mountain in Italy, chuckling and getting hard. Instead, it’s silent.

No one said it would get so much more nagging, aching after the big date. These six hours.

Shit got real, but I’m not frightened of it. It’s more exciting than anything I’ve known before. I want this so much.

It hurts every day, but the anticipation is so sweet. Every domestic thought fills me with longing: coming home to you, bustling in the kitchen, going to bed, planning and scheming our life together, having the most intimate trance. Games and rituals and private jokes. Helping you blossom into your new life and seeing it unfold in the most delightful and unexpected ways.

It can’t really be that sweet all the time can it? Won’t I get used to it? Won’t little things start to intrude, to make it more of a mixture, more like the lumpiness of real life, with its highs and lows?

But I believe in a satellite-laser-blast of happiness, that we will be bathed in it, even if it doesn’t stay as pure and simple for long. I believe it’s coming. We are due it.

Less than eight weeks. I should savour this time - the solitude, the flexibility, even the longing. It will be over soon enough.

But goddamn. Six hours.

@khatsha

6 Hours

For six hours of the day you’re not with me.

And you should be with me! This ring on my finger says so.

For six hours there’s not that brilliant, hilarious, caring, responsive presence of yours reaching out through my phone, tempting me all day at work. That mind that I first fell for through the phone: sexting on the top of a mountain in Italy, me chuckling and getting hard. Instead, it’s silent.

No one said it would get so much more nagging, aching after the big date. These six hours.

Shit got real, but I’m not frightened of it. It’s more exciting than anything I’ve known before. I want this so much.

It hurts every day, but the anticipation is so sweet. Every domestic thought fills me with longing: coming home to you, bustling in the kitchen, going to bed, planning and scheming our life together, having the most intimate trance. Games and rituals and private jokes. Helping you blossom into your new life and seeing it unfold in the most delightful and unexpected ways.

It can’t really be that sweet all the time can it? Won’t I get used to it? Won’t little things start to intrude, to make it more of a mixture, more like the lumpiness of real life, with its highs and lows?

But I believe in a satellite-laser-blast of happiness, that we will be bathed in it, even if it doesn’t stay as pure and simple for long. I believe it’s coming. We are due it.

Less than eight weeks. I should savour this time - the solitude, the flexibility, even the longing. It will be over soon enough.

But goddamn. Six hours.

Tips for Going to Hypnocons for People Who Are Almost Exactly Like Me

I have been to 4 NEEHUs, 1 Entranced, 1 Charmed, a Deepmind Darkwood, 3 Fetish Fleamarkets, 2 London Hypnosis workshops, and a number of one-off hypno things in Europe. (I bet my colleagues at work would be surprised to hear this!). Most of them I went to unpartnered, all as a shy introvert.

I’m not good at going to hypnocons. But I’m better than I was. So here are my tips, customized for me and people like me. So not stuff that I hope came naturally to me, like “be polite and don’t treat people like objects”, and also not stuff that is literally impossible for me, like “don’t compare yourself to other people.” But maybe you need to be told a whole different set of things. Also, I don’t necessarily have great insight into what I’m doing right, or what I’m doing wrong. But I hope these help anyway!

Emotional and physiological chaos is normal. FOMO, envy, social anxiety, jealousy, disappointment, having to see exes, having to see people who creeped on you. If you think everyone else is having a perfect time and you’re the only one in distress, you are very wrong. Also, they will lie about it, by omission, in their blog posts afterwards (I do!) so for god’s sake don’t compare yourself to that. Physiologically, I’ve caught a cold for so many of these cons, and sleep deprivation, travel stress, sugar crashes and other things will give your body a nonsexy pounding. And folks with disabilities or chronic illnesses have even more to deal with. There’s no way to avoid some chaos, so just know that you can make wonderful memories in the midst of chaos! ALL IS NOT LOST. And take it easy on people, eh?

There’s a role for the new person. The hypno community is incredibly cliquey. It’s a natural consequence of hypno being a very rare kink, and one that requires a huge amount of trust. It takes years to build that trust. So be patient with yourself. If you do any pickup play with new people at all on your first con - and you’re not a young woman - you’re doing very well. But if you’re positive, genuinely interested in people, and obviously eager to learn, people will be extremely kind.

Learning to ask while not being gross is everything. There are many, many great guides to this online, as well as cautionary tales about what not to do, so all I’ll say here is look at it all as practice; be as bold as you are respectful; amazing things can happen just by asking in the right place at the right time; and as the great wristbands at Charmed said, “Ask first. Respect the answer.”

The greatness of your con is decided long before you hit the registration desk. The upside to my pitiful addiction to hypnotumblr is that I could put faces to tumblr names at the con. “Ah yes! I have enjoyed your pornography! And your curation of animated gif pornography!”  This time was very aware that most people - flying in from everywhere from Vancouver Island to Manchester, England - are beginning and maintaining their relationships online between cons. At the moment the thing is Skype, Dischord and Snapchat groups, in addition to tumblr and fetlife. You don’t actually have to do any of that, but it helps – see, cliquyness, trust. And preparation in general: I half-assed Charmed and NEEHU this year, since I only decided to go to each at the last minute, and as a result they were a little flat (except for the presence of @khatsha at Charmed!) Actually read the schedule, make plans with people you know, check out other people’s wishlists and make plans with them, give yourself missions or sidequests.

Think about how to help other people have a great con. It’s a great way to take your mind off yourself and how you’re doing, and to be visible in the best possible way. If people are bored, have something for them to participate in. If something needs to get done, be the one to do it. I know two people who brought their cars just to ferry people around at two different cons, and made tons of friends, including sexy friends. Teaching or demoing for a class is best of course, but if not, volunteer, bring treats, join in activities. Get involved in every way you can.

Figure out who’s sleeping with who. For “sleeping with” substitute hypnotizing, playing with, or living with in a polycule in a creaky old mansion. And also, who used to be sleeping with who, who wants to be sleeping with who, who wishes they were still sleeping with who (don’t go around creepily asking these things of course). Otherwise much public behaviour will be baffling.

Figure out who’s assaulted or creeped on who. For the same reason.

Make your interests specific and public. I learned this from @khatsha, who asked for, and got, two incredibly intricate gender-bending interrogation scenes at her second ever hypnocon. She also wants to be hypnotized to be a raccoon, and I have no doubt, some day that will happen. (Maybe I’ll do it on our anniversary) At Entranced Dreamelf carried around an adorable decorated printout of her wishlist, and I believe she checked off every one. And one of those things was copied off my published wishlist, and I got to do it with her! It’s paradoxical, but being specific can be much more attractive than just wanting “any type of hypnosis with anyone”. As long as you’re unattached to any outcome, and sharing your fantasies rather imposing them, only good things can result.

Ask people what classes to go to. Some classes are way better than others, and it connects you with folks at least twice, once when you ask and once when you tell them how great it was.

Take a break before you absolutely have to. No class is unmissable, and recharging is often the most important thing you could be doing.

You don’t have to bring it style-wise, but it pays off if you do. A nice thing about hypno cons is that you can totally wear jeans and a t-shirt and it’s never a big deal. But ever since I got turned away at a Dublin kink club for not having a dungeon outfit, I’ve been determined to level up. I’ve been slowly collecting party clothes that are progress towards my vision of Hypnowave. (the coming overwhelming trendiness of erotic hypnosis, in music, fashion, art and pop culture, that we will ride until it spectacularly burns out and becomes a dated joke even faster than Vaporwave) Not only did I get a lot of compliments at Entranced, but everyone wanted to grope my shiny fuzzy blazer. If you are saying, I can’t find or afford party clothes, that blazer was $80 on Amazon. Last argument: I’ve noticed that on average the women are making more of an effort. If you have ambitions to trance with women who are in pretty corsets and great boots, shouldn’t you rise to the occasion?

Reject control, embrace chance and happenstance. Think of it as an improvisation, and say yes as often as you safely can. Many of the best memories will come from totally spontaneous group occurrences, often nothing to do with hypnosis. I remember being on an elevator at Charmed that was very full and someone started groaning sexually about how very full it was, and other people took it up, until we all orgasmed together as the doors opened on the con floor. A real “you had to be there“ moment I see as I type this, but I was there! On the flipside, plans fall through, unforeseen stuff comes up. Nothing is a sure thing.

Listen to emotions like curiousity, enthusiasm, affection, and lust.

Ignore emotions like lust for status, or desire for approval or acceptance.

Take a buffer day or three if you possibly can. See: above point about emotional and physiological chaos. I had to go back to work the day after Entranced, and it was horrible.

Stay in the game. Don’t bail. You might find yourself deep in your head, and ready to throw a pity party for yourself lasting till the end of the con. But things can turn around so fast! And even if they don’t, there will still be many beautiful little moments, of friendship and humour and sexiness and “this could only happen at a hypno con”. You can be ready for these moments if you keep your eyes open and your head up.

PS As I drafted this, two people have beat me to the punch with excellent advice sparked by Entranced 2017, and I highly recommend reading those too! Dommestic and dommesticpet

Highlights from My Entranced

I had such a great time at Entranced. I volunteered, made new friends, saw amazing classes, and soaked up the weird good vibes. I feel like I’m getting better and better at this, solo con going - even though my wife @khatsha will accompany me henceforth, and I plan to stop trying and merely coast on her charisma. But so many kudos to the organizers, who created such a happy, creative, inclusive, consent-aware, and sexy as hell weekend. And by the way, pretty much every time I talked to them they seemed good humoured and actually enjoying themselves, which is quite the feat for something so well run.

I had a few excellent scenes that I might write about with permission, but for now here are other major highlights, somewhat randomly arranged.

• Getting stranded in Logan airport for 4 hours on thursday night - a lowlight, missing out on night 1 of the con and being uncomfortable - except for one thing, which is that I was stranded with @digitalswitchgamine​. And there were rocking chairs.
• The Hamilton induction of @sex-obsessed-lesbian​
• Empowered hypnobottom presenters with an equal voice in classes
• Hypnobottom presenters getting increasingly flustered as classes went on and they got more turned on and fractionated
• A very silly human muppetphone in the musical inductions class
• @LeeAllure and @hypno-sandwich‘s always mind-blowing edgeplay class, which I also saw last NEEHU and will go to again every single time I can
• Chill breakfasts in the restaurant, including one where I learned about the secret floating north american gay hypno con (Roo, if you’re reading this, get in touch! You are cool!)
• Being exposed to bits of hot scenes near my scenes in the play rooms: two on one, four on one, forced to kneel, cuddling together with a hypnoegg, and so on
• People getting their nerd on, wonderfully, at @mrs-prism​‘s karaoke. Plenty of Hamilton and Weird Al Yankovic
• Intending to practice @spiralturquoise​’s instant inductions, what turned into instead a post 1 am impromptu class on how to catch floppers with Dreamelf, in which I put myself in the way of her flopping head and got my lip smashed to shreds against my teeth. But we kept going and this somehow turned into quite the spectator event. The next day, I used this skill!
• Cracking jokes at the back of the Consensual Nonconsent class with @LeeAllure (Lee telling the story of how she makes partners like things they didn’t like before, such as vegetables, and now one is always making her stuffed peppers, which she doesn’t like. Me: “The dark side of CNC!” Someone else: “That’s Culinary Non Consent?”)
• Wearing my shiny fuzzy jacket for the first time Saturday night, and lots of women needing to fondle it
• So many great conversations and hangouts in the consuite, which was kept stocked with abundant and delicious food at all times, including full lunches and dinners. This was a triumph, making a note here, huge success
• Hypnotic hysterical literature. Holy fucking shit. This is one of the hottest things I’ve ever experienced, including most of my own orgasms. When I realized this was sexy hypno people reading porn precision-crafted by our best writers to get them off, even without the post-hypnotic suggestions… This is worth more to me than all of Marvel Phase 3, dinner with Joss Whedon, and drinks and karaoke with Lin-Manuel. I’m being super sincere
• Glorious introvert half hours in my hotel room tinkering with my app, the Hypno ViewMaster™, before going out for hours more of intense socialization with hypno peeps. This is a huge bonus of Entranced and Charmed
• SCREAMS of happiness at the announcement of the new, female Doctor conveyed by someone on their phone at the end of a class. This might have happened at any nerdy con, but it particularly highlighted for me the feminine, and feminist, strength of Entranced
• By some insanity agreeing to set up chairs at 8 am on Saturday *and* Sunday (If you sat, you probably sat in one of my chairs half the time!), but having lovely conversations both days with Welselran about 50 Shades Darker and John Carpenter movies.
• Talking to the sweet, normal-looking suburban married couple for whom tuesday and thursday are Nova Pro 100 nights. One of my missions (I had missions! That helped!) was to learn about live-in hypno D/s relationships and how they work, and got some beautiful examples

I am enjoying decompressing, reading all the reports, and gloating, but I miss you all! Can’t wait to get to know you better!

 

 Bye hot friends!

I'm Marrying Khatsha: Thoughts While Watching the Inflight Entertainment System

Her Love Boils Bathwater
- Title of Japanese film in the seatback entertainment system

I'm flying back from Switzerland, after proposing to @khatsha (with a broadsword). Although I won't watch this Japanese film, because xXx: The Return of Xander Cage is there, the title grabs me. It makes me think of khatsha - ok, everything does at this point, but it makes me think about her passion, and how irresistible that is.

She came to see me on the train in Italy in August, 2015, and we had a mindblowing few days of sex and hypnosis. But I started to fall for her when I read her writing about it. I always fall for writers - people who can make me feel their powerful, specific emotions, and draw me into their world. khatsha is a writer. She has that thing. And also has the kind of wild, poetic flow that I envy. She has a talent for surrender: to the flow of words, to her unconscious, to her senses, to trance, to new pleasures, to passion. To me.

From that writing to her most recent, how could I not be seduced by those words? And by how I'm magic for her? This is not a metaphor: I'm magic, as close to literally as you can get without breaking the laws of physics. Because of post-hypnotic suggestions I can snap my fingers, or say a word, and something really, truly happens to her. And no one does compliments like an enthralled hypnotic pleasure slave.

But it's not just about her passion for me, it's her passion for her ideals; for hypnosis; for community; for open source software. What she loves, she loves so hard, and the same with what she despises. Some of it is for comedic exaggeration, but only a little. Being around her, colours are brighter, contrasts are deeper.

“At the end of the day, it comes down to the same question I've been asking my wife every Friday night for the last 20 years: Do you want some of this??”
- Samuel L. Jackson as Augustus Gibbons in xXx: The Return of Xander Cage

I know this level of excitement won't last. These feelings are partly about the joy of finding someone with such compatible interests and fetishes, the hunger from forced separation, the spice of different cultural backgrounds, the thrill of travelling all over Europe together, and, last but not least, hypnoamory, the tendency of people to fall in love with their hypnotists and vice versa. There's something tremendously naive about what we're planning to do.

But I feel lucky that we're both in our 30s and have a tiny bit of life under our belts. Enough to know that there's more to this. Even when we're sexually spent (well me anyway) there's so much to talk about. Everything from design to politics to fictional tropes to deep learning to french translations of Poe. I remember looking at her across fancy high tea in London in March 2016 and realizing, I want to keep this conversation going, pretty much for the rest of my life. That’s when I told her I wanted to do what it takes so we can be together.

I have high hopes for our sex life, and the touching weekly ritual of Samuel L. Jackson and his unseen wife are an inspiration. Khatsha is bodacious and a super pervert, and with hypnosis in the mix the weird stuff is just endless. But it's the conversation that makes me most confident.

"We are officially living together." "The experiment begins."
- Sheldon and Amy in The Big Bang Theory, Season 10 ep 4.

I've never lived with a girlfriend before. Now I'm having khatsha move thousands of kilometres to make a home with me in a Jamaica Plain apartment. The most consecutive nights we've slept in the same bed is about 14. There's going to be so much stuff to figure out, from what sides of the bed we sleep on to how the sink gets cleaned.

Hopefully living together goes way, way better than it does for Sheldon and Amy. I'm a much better roommate, and unlike Sheldon, I like sex! But I have my Sheldonish side, being used to having things in my living space just so (including the messes), so there will be a lot to get over.

But as we've been telling each other for a while now: there will be happiness, and there will be freakouts. All we can hope and plan for is that we'll freak out at alternating times, which still leaves at least one person to do the reassuring.

"I live for this shit."
- Xander Cage in xXx: The Return of Xander Cage

Nearly all the time I'm cautious and prudent in my decisions, not to mention physically and socially timid. Then once in a while I get a voice in my head that scares the shit out of me because it tells me it's time to do something big (also because it sounds like Riddick). When I switched colleges to move thousands of miles from my home town, when I walked into my first kink event, when I decided to move to Italy for two years in my mid 30s, when I proposed to khatsha. All sparked by something saying, you need to bust out into a bigger, more exciting world. My life would be so narrow without these decisions!

Khatsha, also a nervous computer scientist, has that thing too, except it's much more consistent and warrior-like. Since we saw Mad Max she is often heard to say, "What a lovely day!!" (we’ve had some discussion of spraying our mouths with silver paint just before our wedding ceremony) That's something I really love about her.

I've spent so much of my life, maybe more than most people, immersed in fictional stories. Sometimes they seemed very important, but other times they were undeniably a kind of in-flight entertainment system for my life, just getting me through the ride with as little discomfort as possible.

But when the real inflight entertainment shuts off as the plane lands in Boston, I'm still in the story. It's real. Two nerdy hypnofetishists moving to America together for love, fortune, kink, adventure, and community.

I'm marrying khatsha, sooner than I will finish this box of Raisin Bran. And things will never be the same.

When Boston Standup Comics Met Kink Culture

Content warning: Sexual assault.

This has nothing to do with current events, it's just a memory that's come back to me over and over for years and I want to get it down.

For a little while there was a great sexy storytelling series in Cambridge, at the Middle East, where amateurs and professional storytellers alike would get up one after another and tell stories about their sex lives without notes. Unfortunately the organizer and MC turned out to be a shitbag and so it ended, but that's another story for someone else to tell.

I tried to make it every time because it was so entertaining. The audience and performers were a mixture of the generally open minded curious, kinksters, and "sex positive" folks (which groups obviously have a lot of overlap). One month there were two standup comedians on the bill, and what happened was very interesting to me.

The first was a woman, and you could tell she was a standup because unlike everyone else, she took the mic out of the stand, with a confident gesture. She was the kind of comic who starts her set with a flurry of self deprecating jokes about her appearance and how hard it is for her to find a boyfriend. With the freedom of a bit more time than a typical showcase, she settled into a story about going to a parking garage late at night. Through all the jokes and self deprecation, we gradually realized that this was a story about her being stalked to her car by a man who wanted to sexually assault her. In fact she only got away by luck and quick thinking. Later she was used by the police in a sting to catch this repeat offender!

She didn't get nearly as many laughs as she expected. Maybe because the premise of the jokes was what a dumb idiot she was: she shouldn't have been there alone, she should have been suspicious of him earlier, she should have reacted differently to what he did. We just wanted to know if she was ok, which wasn't really compatible with laughing.

The next standup who came up was a young asian-american dude, with an ironic t-shirt and nerd-chic eyeglasses. Like the other standup, he easily gained rapport with the crowd from the start, and got us all laughing. He then got into his extended story, about meeting an beautiful woman at a club, and then to his shock and amazement, getting to take her home. They made out, but didn't have sex. However she asked to sleep in his bed with him and he said yes.

In the morning, he learned that she was getting up early to catch a flight, and in fact his apartment was near the airport. She had probably had another motive in going home with him.

I've gone to dozens of standup showcases and theatre shows, and I can tell when a comic is winding up for the finishing, knockout punchline. And this guy had that posture and facial expression.

"I have to say that I got a little mad! My pride was offended! That she decided that I was such a nice and unthreatening guy that she could spend the night in my bed, and I wasn't going to try to RAPE her!"

Dead silence.

Crickets.

There might even have been a couple of boos.

The MC relieved the flustered comic, and said, smiling, "I knew that wouldn't necessarily go over with this crowd, but I just wanted to see what would happen!" (did I mention he turned out to be a garbage human?)

Standups develop jokes that get reliable reactions from a variety of audiences. What this told me is that most audiences were laughing their heads off, or at least chuckling steadily, at a young woman not taking enough safety precautions in a dark parking garage. At a nerdy guy offended by the assumption that he wasn't masculine enough to rape.

So what I learned is that for all our disagreements, I and my kinkster friends live in a bubble of consent culture. We say that no one should be blamed for their assault, and that sex should stop at the exact point where any of the participants wants it to stop, regardless of sharing a bed, but most of the world doesn't think like we do. Most of Boston doesn't think like we do. And I'm very, very grateful to live in that bubble, and for all the hard work of the people who've built it.

Because the alternative is just not that fucking funny.

My Love Doesn’t Say

My love doesn’t say, “I feel good”. She says, “I feel deliciously coherent all of a sudden.”

My love doesn’t say, “I liked that song you sent me”. She says, “I swear it took my soul, teared it into pieces and then gave it back. I’m still in the process of verifying if it stole any of the pieces for good. Also that logo. I ovulated and died at the same time. My poor poor heart.”

My love doesn’t say, “I’m just hanging around this afternoon”. She says, “I managed to put myself into a truly lugubrious mood by inadvertently listening to Saint Saens’ dance macabre while looking at Picpus Cemetery pictures.”

My love doesn’t say, “Those picture of you were sexy”. She says, “I ovulated so many times, that I could get pregnant with a record amount of babies.”

My love doesn’t say, “I really shouldn’t be so turned on by the idea of chastity”. She says, “My pussy is the organic equivalent of a handless watch. It’s somewhat pretty, but its smartness level is not through the roof.”

My love doesn’t say, “I don’t feel bratty”. She says, “I’m feeling so dissless right now.”

My love sometimes says things are “mucopalpable.” I’m not sure what that means.

My love doesn’t say, “The way Dan Harmon writes is hot”. She says, “That guy is the elemental of toxicity.”

When I tell my love that you can’t just start using your own meanings for words, like “toxic” to mean alluring, dangerous, and addictive, she says “Vectorial semantics means they’ll figure it out, as long as we don’t change all the words at the same time.”

And that is why she’s my love.

Also

  

dat ass.

@khatsha

You're So Fucked

Nothing makes me feel more instantly powerful, and turned on, than a delayed-reaction text like this, from a sub I have put under hypnotic orgasm control.

This morning, I gave @khatsha​ the post-hypnotic suggestion that she can’t touch her clit, directly or indirectly. An invisible forcefield stops her hand or tool.

She does, however, feel a craving for the sensation of being filled, and fucked. And her dildo is allowed.

9 hours later I get the texts above.

“GOOD GIRL” Rules You

This is based our real relationship, but shades it much creepier, leaving out the real-life negotiations, safeguards, checkins etc. I asked and got permission from khatsha to post it (her exact words being “The world needs this piece of all-combusting writing.”) But this is a warning that it’s dark.

---

GOOD GIRL. It feels good when I say that, doesn’t it, @khatsha​? I made it feel good, by hypnotizing you.

I mean, as a submissive, my submissive, you wouldn’t ever have hated hearing that from me. It’s probably always been a deep part of your kink. But I also installed it in you, with a post-hypnotic suggestion, and associated it with pleasure. Unlike all the other trigger phrases I can say that send pleasure crashing through your body, I shaped this one for a purpose. Do you remember when I gave you that post-hypnotic suggestion, that GOOD GIRL will give you pleasure of a specific kind - an endorphin dump in your mind, not just your pussy. It feels like a job well done, like my approval, like pure satisfaction. All the warm fuzzies, in your chest and between your legs.

It seems so sweet and caring, doesn’t it, saying GOOD GIRL? Imagining sitting at my feet, me stroking your hair and praising you for being such a GOOD GIRL.

But do you know, this is how I rule you?

At first I had just one pleasure trigger that I used both to reward you, and also whenever the fuck I wanted. Anytime I felt like making you shiver and gasp. But then I decided that I would split them off, and withhold GOOD GIRL for very specific occasions. That is, when you did something I wanted. Whether it’s suck me off, bring me a piece of cake, finish a writing I assign you, or respond to my sleep trigger. I know you like to obey anyway. But do you know that I’m building a very specific neural link between obeying me and getting my reward?

Over time, obeying me feels more and more natural and automatic, and your body learns to expect that reward. To ache in anticipation, each second until I give it to you. In fact this is me exploiting your dopamine system. Can you feel how controlled this makes you? Do you see that, despite all your intelligence and rich emotional life, during those long seconds you are reduced to a salivating dog?

You know, I learned how to do this to you from a book called Reaching the Animal Mind by  Karen Pryor, which is all about clicker training for dogs and other pets. It sounds so nice, training pets without any kind of punishment or even correction. Just a steady flow of treats when the criteria set by the trainer are met. But I wonder, is this the most degrading thing of all for a proud animal, to be so perfectly dominated by a human master? So completely controlled by its desire for treats?

There are so many other principles from this book I aim to use on you, my love, with names like targetting, tag points, and cuing. I copied down this passage:

The cue thus becomes reinforcing in itself. Any time you give a well-learned cue, you are actually reinforcing whatever else the individual you are cuing happens to be doing at the time.

Maybe my favourite is behavioural shaping: set a new standard, and then only reward behaviour that reaches that standard. In that way complex chains of actions, with very precise requirements, can be trained. You will still be getting plenty of GOOD GIRL - I get off on those shivers and blushes after all - but eventually you will be working harder for it, following my protocols more perfectly. You’ll also be encouraged to think of new ways to please me. New tricks that might earn GOOD GIRL.

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to break a habit, something that’s become automatic. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to resist checking a notification on your phone, or staying away from a favourite mobile game with its irresistable DINGs of victory. Mobile app makers have the same psychological and animal training knowledge - they know about the dopamine system, about stimulus-reward pathways. It doesn’t even take that many trials, to cement that link. And once made, it’s very hard to break. Just the energy you use to resist the urge to give in and get that reward, can tire you out enough that you’ll give in anyway.

If you think you’re a slave to your phone, how much more of a slave might you become to me, who can make your pussy throb just by telling it to PULSE NOW?

Did you know that this sets in motion a secondary reward system? As you learn what earns GOOD GIRL, and in general how to please me, your body starts to release its own mini reward every time you follow my instructions or do something for me. You’re self-training with absolutely no input from me!

Of course that feeling is only a faint echo of GOOD GIRL. And you know how it makes the anticipation, and the explosion of satisfaction from GOOD GIRL that much more powerful, when you next hear it from my text message or my voice. There’s nothing like the real thing.

By the way, I know you’re feeling it each time you read GOOD GIRL in this text, and that’s perfectly fine. I bet you’re so horny by the time you finish that you need to get off. I’m picturing you right now, rubbing yourself and whispering over and over, “I’m a good girl. I’m a good girl.” How much stronger than usual will that orgasm be? But what’s making me smile right now is knowing that you have been blocking yourself from fully experiencing the pleasure of these GOOD GIRLs, since you know you haven’t earned them.

But you will soon. What wouldn’t you do, on my command, to earn your next GOOD GIRL?

Hypnosis is Back on Fetlife and Down with Cynicism

Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us.
- Stephen Colbert

Hypnosis is no longer banned on Fetlife. All our groups that abruptly vanished the night of January 16th, such as Erotic Hypnosis with its 16,000 members and 326 pages of topics, are being restored.

This is such amazing news!

And we’re better off than ever, because search for “hypnosis” is not blocked. The thing that happened to my beloved @khatsha​ won’t happen again: searching for her kink on a fetish website and thinking, oh my god, I’m too sick and twisted even for these people (you’re not!).

The erotic hypnosis community doesn’t need Fetlife - and this was a scary wakeup call to just how complacently we’d become in letting one commercial website stitch us together - but on Fetlife we grew and flourished, organized yearly events that spanned the continent and onto other continents, and now, at least for a time, we will continue to grow on that platform. Besides being a nicely designed social network that at least tries to create a safer and less gross atmosphere (despite many failures), Fetlife connects us hypnopervs with the larger kink world, bringing in new people who get intrigued by the connection with other BDSM staples like power exchange, bondage, and roleplay, like the dozens of people who walked into the hypnolounge during the three days of the New England Fetish Flea Market.

Even more important, connection to mainstream BDSM gives us the explicit consent framework that has been critical for the development of the idea of ethical hypnosis play. Without it, it would have been so hard to get to the concepts of thorough negotiation, opposing consent violation, and empowering people who are bottoming to stop and redirect scenes. What else would we have as a model? Mind control porn, stage hypnosis, and the psychology profession, all of which are severely busted in their consent models.

The groups could all vanish overnight again tomorrow, and it wouldn’t change the fact that something good happened. Surviving as a political person means celebrating every single victory, and I intend to celebrate the heck out of this one!

I’m an anxious person who hates to feel out of control (see also: mc fetishist), and so I’m vulnerable to the temptation of cynicism. In fact I am ashamed to think that I fell victim to its sticky indulgence this time. I can remember myself saying to people this would be the end of us on Fetlife, that we wouldn’t find a replacement home for a long time, that there would be more rounds of erasure of our community, which would be less algorithmic and more personal and vicious (in the first round just groups with “hypnosis” in the title or description were nuked, leaving “hypno”, “mind control”, etc).

I was wrong. And the move to despair made me quite useless - I did almost nothing to support my beliefs, because I was so afraid of being disappointed and feeling even more helpless. Meanwhile mephki was organizing the effort to start a new forum, SusanWright of the National Coalition For Sexual Freedom was fighting for us behind and in front of the scenes, and many other people were contributing essays and activism.

Most frustratingly, I was going against years of my own resolutions. In searching for the quotation at the top by Stephen Colbert about cynicism in my notes, I realized that I have been copying similar quotations about it for *12 years*. I must reread them on a regular basis, whenever I feel that temptation.

No one knows what’s going to happen. But victories are going to happen, real ones. Show up, and you can be there for them.

In the end we shall have had enough of cynicism, skepticism and humbug, and we shall want to live - more musically. How will this come about, and what will we discover?
- Vincent Van Gogh

(who knew Van Gogh was an Ericksonian!)

Scenes From My Day As A Sith Lord

I spent Sunday at the New England Fetish Fleamarket dressed up as Kylo Ren (minus mask and lightsaber), both because at the Flea you can be whatever the fuck you want, and because I considered it the most erotically compelling outfit I own - to the types of women I want to erotically compel.

Right from the start it was very fun reaching out with my black leather gloves to hypnotically force choke the shit out of @onlyseventhoughts and MaraFae - @zanythoughts signature move that I totally stole, and then got to practice alongside the master (“Always two there are”)

But putting on those gloves and robes, and striding like you are forced to do in those robes (or you will trip)… did something to me.

…

Looking out the hotel room window at the snowy parking lot, fists on hips: “SOON I WILL RULE THE FLEA, ALL YOU PEONS IN YOUR UTILITY KILTS!”

…

“Hey, what do you think, leggings or not?”
“I DON’T CARE.”

…

People on the elevator down to breakfast: “Hey, you’re Kylo Ren!” “I call Kylo Ren the whiniest sith.” “Yeah he’s no Darth Vader.”
Under my breath: “I WILL DESTROY THEM.”

…

“You’re pretty cute you know.”
“WHAT?”
“You’re like an adorable fluffy bunnny.”
“I BELIEVE THE WORDS YOU ARE LOOKING FOR ARE POWERFUL, DANGEROUS DARK LORD.”
“No, soooo cute.”
“WHERE DID I PUT MY CHOKING GLOVES.”

…

A funny moment out of character, while volunteering as a greeter at the hypnolounge (I thought my “Ask me about Hypnosis!” badge went well with the costume).
New person: “I’m interested in hypnosis, but I just can’t see myself getting involved with satanism.”
Me: “Huh?”
Her: “Yeah, all the dark rituals and stuff.”
Me: “…wait, is this about the robes?”
The first person she met, lurking in the hallway, was wearing hooded robes, so she assumed we were up to some rituals!

…

But the most eerily accurate thing I heard come out of my mouth was at breakfast.
Struggling with the little milk carton, @zanythoughts taking it and saying “here, let me.”
“I CAN OPEN MY MILK!!”