Everyone Deserves to be Looked At With Desire

When I was a teenager, I had really bad acne, big square glasses, and braces for longer than seems possible looking back on it. I was very thin, weak, and uncoordinated, which made every gym class an ordeal. I often went to school with hair in a crazy shape, due to taking baths at night and going to bed with wet hair, and I wouldn't even try to tame it. There was overall a feeling like if I tried to do things to improve my appearance, it would only make it worse. With the added embarassment of looking like I was trying.

(by the way, this essay is going to be real specific to where I’m coming from demographics-wise - cis women and others have such different journeys with feeling desirable, that I have some notion of but could never speak to)

So that was going on, and then at a certain age it was like a switch flipped and I was flooded with lust and longing, every day. I would jerk off once or twice a day, and get lost in vivid sexual daydreams, sometimes making a strategically-placed backpack necessary to make a hallway trip.

But I never did anything to try to make sex or romance happen in real life. I was incredibly shy and awkward, and I mostly hung out with either my family, a small circle of nerdy male friends, or myself. If anyone ever had a sexual or romantic thought about me, I never knew it. I didn't feel blue about it, I just set the question aside and went back to my book, ninja movie marathon or programming project.

That went on for a while.

Looking back on me at 20, I think I was objectively kind of beautiful. Lithe, good cheekbones, geekily enthusiastic, non-threatening. If I'd only known how to do my hair, dress, schmooze a bit, and where to meet people, things could have been popping off. I had a lot of the ingredients, but had no idea how to work them. Plus I mostly stayed in, or went to art house theaters, rock concerts, and used bookstores and talked to no one.

Then when I was 22 on a internship, something amazing happened. A beautiful 28 year old woman I met in a science fiction book club, and, in a mad burst of energy, pursued, wanted me back. She said she was attracted to my mind, and to the way I looked. And she proved it, by having sex with me!

This did two things right away:

1. It nourished me, it gave me a deep watering, down to my roots, that I never knew I needed. Previously, I didn't consciously think I'd stay a virgin forever, but I had no concept how it was going to happen, for me. I was going into fourth year undergrad without a whisper of it. Then all of a sudden I felt like my own life would be a story worth telling. A story that would have passion and adventure. And naked breasts.
2. For the first time in my life, I had feedback about what someone found attractive in me. I could ask questions like, when did you first decide you wanted to fuck me? What was good and bad for you in that first date? The first email? Pillow talk was an absolute revelation. Feminine desire suddenly became so real to me, not just a legend. I learned that attraction isn't announced in big flashing letters like it is by professional actors in movies. Sometimes it looks more like shyness, caution, acting weird. Without lots of examples, you can't develop the skill of recognizing it. Or in my case, even believing I could be the target of it.

This affair only lasted a couple of months, and of course I became a clingy disaster - no doubt making this person vow to never fuck a virgin again. Sad mix CDs were made. But it changed everything.

I'm writing about this here because I think of it when I see the daily posts, on Fetlife and elsewhere, about (predominantly) straight cis men's hapless and hopeless attempts at hitting on people. The behaviour of these dudes nags at my mind because I almost get it: If NOTHING EVER WORKS, why not try everything? Why not send a dick pic, putting it all on the table so to speak, and get rejected now rather than later? It's a form of despair, and of learned helplessness. These men might never get a chance to see what's sexy and desirable in themselves, how such small adjustments in their style and communication, and understanding of the world, could make what's fuckable about them shine out.

I came back to campus after that internship with the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack playing in my head, and a swagger in my step. It. was. on.

It was not on.

What actually happened then was that I had a dry spell so long, I might have found my virginity again. But for the first time I was willing to make a fool of myself, I was trying. I went to people and books for advice, some of it very bad (e.g. Neil Strauss), but all giving me confidence, however misplaced, to get out there and talk to people.

There were some extremely awkward years in there. Sometimes it seemed like trying, like admitting I wanted something, had been a mistake. There was a lot of simping, a lot of try-hard first messages, a lot of realizing what I thought was going to be a date was clearly not. I hope I wasn’t a creeper, but I was at least visibly thirsty, and all over the place. But I kept working on myself, holding onto that glowing thread of hope, that someone had found me attractive and had been interested in sucking my dick.

I didn’t have my first actual relationship, with regular sex, until my late 20s. Honestly the world of women was spared my early 20s self as a boyfriend. I still have plenty to learn about relationships today, but back then I really had a lot to learn. Like a lot of straight cis nerdy dudes, I thought I was sweet and decent, but actually I was kind of a self-centered ape, not to mention not having any grasp of women’s experience (just for starters) being different from mine. And there was a whole world of boyfriend skills I had no idea of.

But by the end of it I had learned some, and then the next person who was willing to fuck me changed the game again, and the next one again, each time making it easier to believe that I was desirable - and giving me more feedback about what was hot about me. I think a lot of straight guys are starved for compliments, and don't even realize it. I was! It was a wonderful gift that my first few partners were not just willing to bone me, but be openly lustful towards me. I wish I was the type of person who could just organically charged myself up with self confidence, but it really took people telling me they found me sexy. And being specific!

Over time I got to know, whose type am I? (and in real life, rather than media, who's my type?) When is the right time for a first kiss? How to show interest in a non pressury way? All that takes a lot of feedback. Most importantly, things like when is there really a vibe - what's interest rather than polite friendliness? You can't learn that without positive examples, not just a string of failures.

That's the basic story. I learned to talk to people I was into, and found some of them were into me. Not worrying about if I was attractive enough freed me, got me out of my own head so that I could actually see and enjoy the person across from me. My desire became appreciation, not desperation. Which in turn made me more attractive.

Then 10 years ago, almost as a post-script, kink happened.

Unexpectedly my dark, weird, complicated fantasies of mind control and hypnosis, previously a shameful secret, made me really attractive to a really specific crowd. And I learned the skill of hypnotizing - easy to be motivated when that’s my fetish - and it turns out people enjoy that. The amount of interest I got, and sex I've had, broke any meter I might have had for myself. I don't know what to make of this exactly, except that it gave me another piece of the puzzle: learning how to share your desires, in a way that is appealing and respectful, is key. And again it's hard to learn how without some success, not just bloopers. Glad I figured it out somewhat before kink, so I don't feel like people would only be interested in me for the ride I can give - I have some game in the vanilla world.

Anyway there are plenty of people, sinking into self pity and self loathing, that I wish I could gift this to: the experience of being looked at with desire. And for it to happen more than once, because once, you can write off as a fluke (and you get clingy). Lots of weird ideas and bad advice get burned away in an instant. And that in turn makes you sexier, since it really is so much about the vibe, and so little about the looks.

But all I’m saying is that I wish this for people - no one has the right to demand it. I grew up with a guy in my hometown, intellectually brilliant but with weird ideas about how he was owed attention from women. How society should ensure men get sex. He cancelled his eHarmony account after two weeks and demanded his money back, on the basis that no one contacted him first. Following his blog entries over the decades, he’s travelling a very dark and lonely path, one that eventually came to be known as “incel”. (Though he wouldn’t call himself that, because that would be too much like joining a group…) This can be such a spiral, and I wish I could help people who are feeling that hopelessness, because we only get one life to lead. The number one piece of advice I would give is to learn to see women or whoever catches your desire as people with their own stuff going on, and to get truly interested in them, as in this advice about asking questions on dates.

I’m glad I kept trying, kept pushing through the awkwardness, and eventually found myself in a place where I have figured out a bit what’s sexy about me, and have plenty of affection and compliments in my life. If kept feeling undesirable, I might have made the mistake of committing to a long term relationship with someone who showed interest but wasn’t right for me, even someone toxic. Instead, I got to have a lot of experiences, and find love a bit later in life with someone I specifically and emphatically chose, and keep choosing (6 years married!).

I’m sure feeling attractive will still be a problem at times, as I slide into some level of New-Balance-wearing middle age frump. But I know I’ll never have less game than I had back in my 20s, and that I have been looked at with desire. And that feels great.

Beguiled 2023: Cut to the Feeling

Beguiled 2023 was actually my third erotic hypnosis convention since the pandemic started to ease up, but the first one for which I've wanted to do a writeup (though I did discuss an unfortunate incident with silicone lube). The other two (Beguiled 2022 and Charmed 2023) I was basically white knuckling it: just trying to exist, without getting totally overwhelmed by the fact of other people, and ideally without getting sick. khatsha and I had spent a long time fairly locked down, so we were jumpy as hell. And not irrationally: each time, including this one, there was a positive test, and it touched my circle of acquaintances. I guess that's just going to be a fact of life.

But we didn't catch it, and none of those cons were super spreaders, and for that I'm so grateful to the leadership for maintaining the mask mandate in public areas, when almost everyone else has dropped it. This is especially important for making it more possible for people with health risks, including many of my friends. Visa and MasterCard think hypnosis is dangerous, but this community actually cares a lot about safety.

Anyway this was the first con that started to feel like old times, and like Kimmy Schmidt, it was a rush of joy to realize "It's all still here!" 

Not just the classes and hotel room rendezvous's with comet partners but the sleepy breakfasts in the hotel lobby with random tables of hypnokinksters, enscenic's banana bread and cookies, and all the happiness, gossip and emotional chaos. As Warren Zevon sang, back in the high life again!

We flew into O'Hare on Thursday night, and everything went smoothly, with that buzz of excitement as we said our first hellos and tucked in early. Friday I had a hot scene in the morning, and later two killer classes: Ella Enchanting and Inquisition's very creative Hypno-to-Go! Improv techniques for inductions and triggers without props or prompts! class, which included a "warm rising bread dough" suggestion, and the hilarious yet educational combo of Sexobsessedlesbian and Bunbunlittleone, doing Getting In Touch With Kinesthetic Hypnosis where an audience member had the audacity to say, "is the Jessica Rabbit/Roger Rabbit thing you two have going on deliberate?" 

I was part of a five-on-one cotopping scene, which was a beautiful thing not only for how dazed and fucked up we got the object of all the attention, but also for the chance to bond with my fellow hypnotists and observe their amazing technique. This was a new Boston friend in the bottom role, BTW, less than a year into the hypnosis, who, in a dazzling display of confidence, stepped off the plane at their first con with a  plan to recruit a bunch of tops they hadn't yet met for this scene. And it happened by Friday afternoon!

Then in the evening khatsha and I dressed up and I surprised khatsha with a special wedding anniversary trip to the place they always asked to be taken since they landed in the US, and I had always refused: Olive Garden. Just to see them light up was one of the highlights of the whole trip. It was also my first time, and I'll just say, it was truly a slice of the American experience.

Back at the hotel, we took a tour of the dungeon and various evening activities, including hearing some great karaoke by a pro singer we met at lunch. Then khatsha and I went back to our hotel room for some nasty, hypnotic, marital sex.

I felt so connected to my spouse, and so reconnected with the community and who I am as a sexual and kinky person. I wrote in my diary, "One of the best days of my life."

Saturday the toilet overflowed at 6:30 am, cutting into already precarious sleep plans, but even the surging tides of toilet water could not dampen the day! But I was already needing to ease up a bit. I had a very quiet middle of the day, including eating a sad hotel lobby sandwich by myself for lunch, though on either end were very good times with old and new play partners. 

Then khatsha and I had mediterranean food and did our usual Saturday night spruce up, before heading down to the Garden of Living art, which I've written about before but remains one of the most bizarre, fucked up, heartwarming things I've seen under harsh hotel conference room lights: stations of people in latex, frilly dresses, or nearly nothing, typically in a trance state, with signs next to them saying what they'd like to have done to them, or their hypnotic triggers for the event.

We met up with more friends and went to the awkward but fun "masquerade dance" - a kind of a prom for a lot of people who maybe didn't go to prom. There were shufflers and there were people who had serious swing training, and nothing in between (I was a shuffler, though I did have cool Tron glasses). Then some of us played some consent spin the bottle in a hotel room and got a relatively early night.

Sunday morning had a cozy hypnokinkster breakfast and a lovely impromptu scene with a new person to make up for one that was canceled due to the bastard Covid (though it was a false alarm). We went to a super goofy but great Tex Mex place as a group after, the type of place with delicious food but where the waiters literally play pranks. Both me and khatsha ordered jalapeño strawberry mock margaritas. 

We hit another class, Cheating at Hypnosis for Fun and Profit, by Sexobsessedlesbian. The good: being cited by name from the front of the class. The bad: what I was cited for "lazy hypnosis", e.g. suggesting someone feels super fractionated rather than doing all the work to fractionate them. Later in Ella Enchanting's fantastic unconference class about developing scenes inspired by porn, I also got a nod to explain how you can cheat to induce the emotion of a scenario rather than painstakingly simulating the circumstances (what a friend has since referred to as a Jepsen approach, after Carly Rae Jepsen's song "Cut to the Feeling"). Is this what my reputation is becoming?? 

We were able to catch these last couple of classes because there was a storm that made chaos in everyone's Sunday afternoon flights, and for a minute it sure looked like khatsha and I would be flying from Schaumburg, IL to Boston the next day via Minneapolis and Nashville! (the final schedule, through Atlanta, sucked but not quite so hard) The bright side was that we had another night at the hotel, so we could hang out. We swam, and I gave khatsha a new permanent posthypnotic trigger, always an exciting time even though their brain is full of them. And we joined an expedition led by Hypnobunny to a Japanese restaurant where a robot serves your drinks and sushi whizzes out on a tiny table-side train! Echoes of another epic hypnokinkster outing at Charmed 2022 to a Hibachi restaurant.

A last memory is randomly looking into the hotel pool and seeing a couple of mermaids swimming. Presumably, human con attendees. But just one of many moments of being in an utterly mundane setting, and getting to see something strange and magic. 

I was lucky enough to be returning to a city where there's tons of people intrigued with erotic hypnosis, and where my life is rich in love, sex, and other good things. Still I sure missed that concentrated high of a convention, with all the rockiness that comes with it (this writeup is far from the full story - they never are). And now each one is unbearably precious, each time I get to climb up to that peak, so far above the everyday, of excitement and togetherness.

I wanna cut through the clouds, break the ceiling
I wanna dance on the roof, you and me alone
I wanna cut to the feeling

 

Plain Brown Wrapper Book Review: Hypnotism Revealed

 

I picked this one to review next because it appeared in a classic 1971 hypno porn film called She Did What He Wanted. I freeze framed it and found the book! In this film a young man reads this book and through some experimentation discovers he can nonconsensually hypnotize several young women to fuck him. Everyone, honestly including the guy, is kind of charming and hot in an unselfconscious 70s way.

 

 

Why did they pick this book? Maybe because it's the ubiquitous trash mail order hypnosis book. Its history is not a history of a hypnotist, but rather of a salesman. As you can read on the webpage of the Wilshire Book Company, he's a mail order entrepreneur, who started at the age of 16 advertising in the back of Popular Science and Popular Mechanics (that name again), first selling how to play chess books published by other people.

His first venture into publishing was a book called Hypnotism Revealed, which he wrote himself. "There's no money in having someone else publish your book," Powers explains. "I was a budding entrepreneur, so instead of getting a small percentage as a royalty from another publisher, I decided I might as well publish the book and sell it myself."

 

This makes me once again reflect on how hypnosis is real, but you'd never think so, based on how scam-adjacent it so often is. He wrote this when he was 26 years old, and judging by the contents, this book is mostly either plagiarized or pulled out of his ass. It's a large type 113 pages, with several chapters towards the end consisting literally of random press clippings about the usefulness of hypnosis, reproduced in full.

Powers sold it continuously through the mail new without changing a single word I'm sure, until at least 1977, almost 30 years, charging $1 almost the whole time.

I did not succeed in finding a full original ad for this book in Popular Mechanics, though I found this fragment with the same typeface:

 

And in the search discovered the oldest one yet, from 1913 - that's at least how long this grift has been running!

And the pitch is so familiar, with a clear lineage to the ads in backs of comics I read in the 80s. But I digress! What about the actual book?

Hypnotism Revealed (1949, but 1975 edition) - Melvin Powers

Tone: Stiffly authoritative, like an insecure substitute teacher working out of the textbook

Valuable for: 

• Some pretty fucking sexy 1940s high femme hypno modelling shots

• As you can see some pretty grabby convincers, including one that is hard to fake where you wave ammonia under their nose after telling them it's french perfume, and another where you stab them in the palm with a hypodermic needle.
  
  
  
  
• Not the worst basic eye fixation script ("the fascination method"), though I was amused that it later appears to suggest self-hypnosis via staring at a point on the ceiling while somehow also reading the script.
  
  
  
  
  
• Another reminder of just how old some and hacky some of our hack concepts are, e.g. the depth scale, "all hypnosis is self-hypnosis", a lot of patter such as "drifting and dreaming" (I'm still going to say that one, I'm the hack, it's me)
  
• Surprisingly decent advice for dealing with difficult cases ("refractory subjects") recommending that you "pattern in to the personality of the individual", focus on the pretalk, use fractionation, try rapid inductions, and try a kind of overload where they lie down and both a metronome and a hypnotic LP is played (only $5, send check or money order) On the other hand, uniquely among the books I've found, suggests "when all methods have failed" sodium pentothol injections! 
  

Douche-o-meter (1-5): 3

This thing is scammy and shoddy, but not as gross as the ones that seem to be about the author's ego. Besides the record, tries to sell you "the Powers hypnodisc spiral" ($1), "the Powers crystal ball" (50 cents), and a "sleep-o-matic" tape recorder that can replay the same snippet of self-suggestions at intervals all night. He encourages you to practice hypnotherapy after about 15 pages of large type insructions, everything from smoking, to alcoholism, to "menstrual irregularities", to speedrunning Freudian analysis. Despite where I heard about it and the photos, a minimal amount of sexism and implied predation, though like a lot of these midcentury books it's easy to imagine the beta-est male in the Mad Men office studying it intently.

Hypnotic language example: "Imagine that every beat of the metronome is saying, 'sleep'"

The bottom line: Spend that $1 on 10 lemon drops instead!

Though this should become a meme format:

 

 

Not Too Slick (a Cautionary Tale from Beguiled 2022)

This happened at our last hypnocon, Beguiled 2022 in Chicago, and let it be a lesson. khatsha and I were negotiating a big Saturday night scene in our hotel room. Because of airline rules against liquids, that day we had to buy an overpriced bottle of lube at the CVS machine in the hotel lobby, and we wouldn't be able to fly back with it. So I proposed a scene that would use it all up.

I hypnotized khatsha, made them strip, and led them blankly to the shower stall, to stand right under the showerhead. I gave them the suggestion that the more lube fell on their body, the more horny and obedient they would become, and the more pleasure they would feel from touch. It was going great, with me lavishly draining the bottle down onto their chest and tits, and smearing it everywhere, while they stared ahead.

Then khatsha called "RED!"

I woke them up and asked what the matter was.

They said, "I. Can't. Move." "What?" "The floor is completely slippery."

I looked down and the lube was puddled all around their feet in every direction. One of us managed to turn on the shower, at which point we remembered that it was SILICONE lube. It would not wash away.

Next realization: the puddle had spread out as far as my feet next to khatsha in the shower stall. I started to back out, one inch at a time, conscious at each moment that I could fall and crack my head. I said, "You stay right there!" "I'm not going anywhere!"

Finally I made it out of the stall, and grabbed all the towels I could find. I laid them down and made kind of a bridge across the shower tiles, which let khatsha escape, both of us wiping off our feet as best we could. We laid down on the bed together, and cracked up.

Somehow we regrouped and had a nice fuck, and some hypnosis too. But the night wasn't over. I then spent the next hour wiping up every trace of lube from the shower floor, using up every container of soap and shampoo, otherwise there was a nonzero chance of killing whoever took a shower next.

Two PhDs and several Master's degrees between us - that was not our smartest moment. Learn ye from our mistakes! Don't try to be so slick!