This Was a Real Nice Hypnolounge

Last week was the enormous Fetish Fair Fleamarket near Providence, Rhode Island, one of the biggest gathering of kinksters on the planet. This year it nearly didn’t happen, with the entire governing board of the parent organization NELA resigning just weeks before the event, but it rose from the ashes of that consent-report-handling scandal thanks to some people working their ass off, and I’m sure glad it did.

For hypnokinksters in particular, it had a bunch of neat classes by @theleeallure​ and @hypnoobiwan​, and the Hypnosis Lounge on Sunday, organized by me and @khatsha​. Hypno people are a cheap date - all we really needed was a bunch of chairs in a large room, but we also had a bunch of wonderful swirling lights, supplied by @tell-a-hypnostory, snacks, and a hypno tent by @digitalswitchgamine​ (based on @khatsha​’s brilliant insight that “hypnosis people are often claustrophiles”).

Over the six hours, according to the count of our greeters, 150 people visited!! That’s the size of NEEHU, holy crap! Besides promotion at the classes, I credit @orchid-girl​’s amazing poster and flyer, which we placed everywhere we could. And of course the coming hypnowave in BDSM.
My favourite part about the lounge is how kinksters walk right in all day, hoping to learn about hypnosis and maybe have a hypnotic experience. We had some wonderful hypnotist volunteers, very keen and very slutty, and that includes me. I tranced 6 or 7 people, which was nothing compared to @tell-a-hypnostory, @ragezdasta​, @hypnoobiwan​ and @digitalswitchgamine, who were absolute machines. In the end I think almost everyone went away satisfied - and more than one with their hypnofetish mutant gene newly activated! Many lovely and hot experiences with people, including making someone feel like they were breathing the atmosphere of Venus. I think my favourite moment though was when I hypnotized someone who was interested in switching, and then hooked her up with @khatsha for her first experience on the topping side. She did great, and besides the voyeuristic thrill, I got warm fuzzies seeing her imitate the very lengthy, careful negotiation I did with her.

Not everything went perfect - for one thing, the projector we had showing a spiral movie on the wall (specifically HX: 01) switched to showing my wedding video. I had to interrupt a scene real quick for that! And next year we clearly need more space, and more hours - a hypnolounge should not have the noise level of a high school cafeteria, or be so packed there’s a danger of floating arms smacking people nearby. We also need more stuff for people hanging around to do. Maybe we’ll have the hypno viewmaster set up next year for gif ratings. Finally, we didn’t do that well with connecting volunteer bottoms with aspiring hypnotists, which surprised me. Something else to figure out.

I love the flea, with the wild outfits in latex and leather (this year I didn’t dress up as Kylo Ren) and the feeling of absolute freedom and acceptance, but the lounge experience was unmissable. We are grateful to everyone who came, and especially to our amazing volunteers, including @undersleeper​ and @yoshibound​ and @sageturtle. After six hours we all lay around as exhausted and happy as the villagers after the clambake in the song from Carousel I’m referencing in the title (only @diaryofasnowflake​ got that). Although the actual song that was playing was Closing Time by Semisonic - no thanks to @digitalswitchgamine​ there.

And then we hopped in cars and drove back to Boston for another 3 hours of hypno fun at the reboot of the NEHG Study Group. That part was insane but I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

I Support Furries

and if you’re a hypnofetishist, you should too. It’s objectively no more ridiculous and inexplicable than getting turned on by a swinging pocketwatch. With a different roll of the dice, all of us could have easily been furries too.

One of my best friends is a furry, and only found the courage to tell me after I told him about my hypnosis thing, after three years of working in the same tiny office together.

One of my favourite people I met at Charmed is a furry, and told me there’s a universe of hypnosis interest and innovation in that community that most of us have no idea about. The two of us will be collaborating on a project.

If your argument for stigmatizing people is “actions by specific furries are terrible,” or “furry culture is gross and busted in certain ways”, think about what you’re saying. Hypnofetishists are responsible for terrible things, and our culture is gross and busted in certain ways. (there was also an excellent post I can’t find about how furries support and respect visual artists in a way that almost no one else in our culture does - here’s an equivalent New York Magazine article) I know that some people are bothered by furries wearing their outfits in public, but like lots of other public expressions of sexuality and identity this hopefully can be navigated with mutual respect and tolerance - it’s not clear to me why it would fall into a different category than say age play, nudity, or the sometimes intense consensual-nonconsent scenes that can be seen around hypnocons.

I support furries and I want them to feel welcome in the hypnokink community.