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!

We've Been Here Forever. We're Not Going Anywhere.

Explicit erotic hypnosis pornography has been widely circulated for at least 142 years.

The year after he bought his first film camera, 1897, Georges Méliès directed a pornographic hypnosis film called Le Magnétiseur. (Yes, cinematic hypnosmut is older than A Trip to the Moon. By five years) That film is lost, but the next year Alice Guy, the first female film director, made the raunchy Chez le Magnétiseur, which you can watch.

One of the most well known stag films that has survived is called The Hypnotist, originating some time in the 1930s and featuring a POC woman hypnotizing and then fucking a woman and a man.

Hypnosis fetishism has been reported in medical journals since at least 1957.

To jump back, in 1784 Benjamin Franklin and other notables investigated mesmerism, and made a secret report for the king's eyes only about their concerns that hypnosis was Too Sexy. (Thanks to @GleefulAbandon for this story)

 

One of the most famous hard core porn movies of all time, Behind the Green Door (1972), prominently features a sexualized hypnosis scene kicking off the action (but first, mimes!)

Among the authors of erotic hypnosis smut: Leonard Cohen, recipient of the Order of Canada, in his 1963 novel The Favourite Game.

One mind control fetish story site, mcstories, has been run continuously for 26 years, apparently by the same person, and as of right now contains 14393 stories.

On the BDSM social networking site FetLife, as of November 2022 almost 20,000 people have added "erotic hypnosis" as a fetish.

Kink negative forces from both the left and the right (but most especially SESTA/FOSTA, and cowardly credit card companies under pressure from religious anti-porn crusaders) are trying very hard right now to scrub hypnosis fetishism from existence. A small flavour of things that are genuinely happening right now: AI being applied on a major pornographic websites to instantly detect and remove videos where someone is completely clothed, but dangling a crystal pendant! And just this week, "hypnosis" and related words have been censored as a search term on FetLife, and many are worried that all groups and posts with those terms in their names will be removed, as they were in 2017 after the search term was similarly banned.

But erotic hypnosis and mind control fetishism is not going anywhere. It is common, has been around since Mesmer (and probably a lot longer), is enjoyed by a wide spectrum of people, and can be practiced ethically and in a risk-aware manner, as much as any sexual or kinky practice, not to mention the fantasy side of it, which can be dark and disturbing but no more than the content of widely streamed entertainments - and is in fact fantasy. 

And someday the tide of censorship and stigma has to turn. And we can think about what each of us can do towards making that happen more quickly. Take comfort from these words of the poet Leonard Cohen: "Hey! My pants!"

Plain Brown Wrapper Book Review: The Secrets of Hypnotizing Women

 

(barely visible: tiny hearts in her eyes)

Magicians have survived by generating notoriously sturdy constitutions, ignoring the shambling, tawdry elements that surround them, and focusing on the tiniest, most glorious achievements. The process is a lifetime of continually panning for gold. 

- Jim Steinmeyer, Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear

I've run out of erotic hypnosis books. There's the ones I've already reviewed. Then there's Sleepingirl's The Brainwashing Book and Kinky NLP, Chewtoy's Erotic Hypnosis Scripts and Lee Allure and DJ Pynchon's The Amnesia Book, all of which I heartily recommend you read (but haven't figured out how to review since they're all by friends!) After that the pickings get slim - very slim indeed.

Why books though? Although there have been disturbingly accelerated attempts to scrub us from every major website and app, including the porn ones, there's tons of information about erotic hypnosis to read online, not to mention lots of terrific online classes, and now, even better, in-person classes - not to mention peer learning and hands-on experimentation.

But for me there's something about having a paper volume in my hands, concrete evidence that eroticized hypnosis exists and has for a very long time (at least back to Mesmer! As another book coming out someday soon will show!). And so I've accidentally tipped over into being a collector. The embarrassing fantasy is that even if the purge of the internet were to be completed, and all the private hard drives wiped, at least somewhere there's a bookshelf of forbidden material to show we existed - and to reseed the hypno perv community of the future.

So what's left? Mostly what I would call "plain brown wrapper books": sleazy paperbacks sold out of the back of male-targeted magazines, often shipped in brown paper wrappers like pornography. These go back at least as far as 1929, as this discussion of a Popular Mechanics ad mentions. The ads are often pretty sexy to us fetishists, heavily implying that you will gain some kind of nonconsensual influence over women, but they also paint a picture of real sad tragic dudes that they were hoping to sell to: “Don’t be unpopular, lonesome, or unhappy a minute longer. Now you can make your life what you want it to be — now you can win admiration, success and big money — through the strange power of hypnotism." I picture Red Dwarf's Arnold Rimmer, or Adventure Time's Ice King.

Even though hypnosis is real, these books probably delivered on their advertising copy about as much as X-Ray Specs or Sea Monkeys did, but I'm still fascinated, and now that I have my hands on a few, plan to read them and extract any valuable content. (and continue onto the modern, $1 e-book equivalent too)

The one was found by my pal sleepyhead, and has an odd pedigree, being apparently a new edition of a 1950 book by Ormond McGill that was sold out of the back of magazines, with 1999 revisions by Shelley Stockwell. I'd like to get my hands on the original, but it's easy to guess that the changes are mostly awkwardly inserted new paragraphs either about Stockwell's own experiences, or dubious neuroscience (at one point describing endorphins, dopamine and serotonin as "opiates"). 1950 is still strong with this one, e.g. "You're going to awaken in a few seconds full of vim, vitality and pep."  My copy was mailed by the hypnosis society Stockwell runs, apparently from a box in someone's damp basement.

The Secrets of Hypnotizing Women (1999) - Ormond McGill and Shelley Stockwell

Tone: Dated, sexist pickup manual, with some incongruous 90s-style pop neuroscience

Valuable for:

• Unintentional humour. The whole premise of the book, that there are special secrets to hypnotizing women, is goofy, playing out in statements like "Being mesmerized, especially by a charming man, is basic to [women's] nature" and "Women love authority and also to be gently soothed." One chapter notes that women have smaller brains than men and implies this makes them more suggestible, and also that women are all about feeling while men are about thinking ("Ask her what she thinks and you'll usually draw a blank stare"). Sometimes I wondered if the original author had ever met a woman, as when a female orgasm is described thus "She breaks into a warm sweat and then relaxes", or when it says "If she is suffering from PMS, why not hand her a banana and hypnotize her, then suggest that her brain now manufactures more serotonin?" (don't do this)

Then there is some pretty wild hypnosis advice, like that you need to learn to stare for five minutes without blinking, and that you should practice your commanding hypnotic tone on a chair, saying: "You WILL do as I tell you! It's no use, you MUST do as I say!" Here's the book's description of "a non-verbal technique called NLP": "To do this, look into her eyes; look down at her lips, look back into her eyes and smile." Another induction begins with the instructions to lift your arms above your head and stiffen your fingers, which I believe is also the way hypnosis is done by Bugs Bunny.

• Some stale, but valid hypnosis advice and language. There's a basic FAQ, some standard convincers, ok examples of patter in scripts, and an Elman variation. All just hasty sketches. There's a nice scene in one chapter in the form of an "experiment in thought transference" (unfortunately framed as a sneaky way to get women to trance with you). There are some nice phrases some of their subjects used to describe trance: "feeling passive", "placid and mellow", "filled with light or surprised by new perception". There was an interesting induction involving pressing on the fingernails, and I liked the advice to "Make your words delicious so that she wraps her mental lips around them." Another induction is based on eye fixation where you induce trance in yourself, timing it by your own eyes getting tired. However for each good point there's either something silly, or just one of those moldy old ideas that have held us back for years, like that there's a hierarchy of difficulty for suggestions, or some people are "good subjects" and some aren't.
  

• Nothing interesting about sex, that's for sure! Many readers, like me, must have turned to the Sex and Hypnosis section first, only to find hilariously weak-sauce advice like "Do it as she likes it done" and "Warm the pan before you throw the meat on". (how often do I buy a sleazy hypnosis book and find all kinds of filler in the form of tedious advice and observations about everything but hypnosis?) Then there's "taoist" and "tantric" sex advice that's too brief and ridiculous to even be  offensive. The only hypnosis is in the form of general affirmations to give your partner in trance, like "sex is a natural, normal, healthy, friendly, fun, playful and satisfying expression between lovers". It's wild to me that not only is there not a scrap of kinkiness, there's also not even the concept of turning your partner on via hypnosis, or making touch feel better, or making a fantasy more vivid. Those things seem so easy and obvious!

Douche-o-meter (1-5): 4
The first impression is cringe-inducing, a rape joke as a blurb on the inside: "The only trouble is that when the women wake up and find Ormond is not Richard Gere - wow is he in trouble!" It's at least lightly icky throughout, always assuming a straight male reader who wants to influence "delectable damsels". In one section it suggests winning her over by curing her substance abuse problem, or helping her "desire only slimming foods".

The authors make the familiar claim that the subconscious will protect the subject from any harm, so by definition no harm can be done to them in hypnosis. But then they keep going, further than most, to say the subconscious mind is actually better at reacting to threats than the conscious mind, "which often falls victim to to indiscreet reasoning, flattery and the desire for thrills"! Then comes the all-too-revealing warning that "the hypnotist is in far more danger from the sleeping girl than is the girl from the hypnotist", cautioning the aspiring hypnotist of the "unprincipled woman" who will attempt to "compromise you". Hmmm.

In more subtle toxicity, there's explicit endorsement of the patriarchal mode, advocating hypnotists wear high status clothes and "Assume the manner of a physician attending a patient: one of earnest concern and slightly impersonal" Aha, that right there is what we're up against. There's a sad overselling of the first author as a rock star, "The most famous hypnotist on the planet today, the venerable Dean of American Hypnosis", with multiple pictures of McGill hypnotizing forgotten TV hosts and movie stars. The sales tactics continue with a full 20 pages of ads in the back for the second author's tapes and books, including "Hypnosis: How to Put a Smile on Your Face, and Money in Your Pocket" and "Denial is Not a River in Egypt" (though I did enjoy her anecdote about learning hypnosis was real via an encounter with Pat Collins, the Hip Hypnotist!)

If you're wondering why it's not a 5 out of 5 - the bar for scuzziness in hypnosis books is high.

Hypnotic language example: "It is as though a heavy and dark cloth was being draped over and about your body."

The bottom line: Skip it except for history and laughs, or to see how some of the concepts and vibes that still circulate are seriously moldy oldies

The Hypnotist Who Didn't Believe in Hypnosis (An Excursion)

It was 2017, and the call went out to a bunch of us erotic hypnosis friends to check out a stage hypnosis show in Salem.

Khatsha was only a couple of weeks off the plane from Switzerland to live with me for good, and I loved showing them off. We had Thai food at a long table, with lots of laughs, then went to the little theatre nearby. We were there to see one of the most ubiquitous hypnotists in New England, popular at high school lock-ins and union fundraisers among many other appearances a year. For many people in our area he would be their first, maybe only, experience with hypnosis.

We sat in a big block a few rows back, with the scattering of other people in front of us, about 30 in the whole place. We were full of anticipation and nervous snickering. Many of us, including me, had never been to a stage hypnosis show - in my case because I fetishize it too much. Until recently it would have been like going to see a strip show, that people around me were mysteriously treating like it was Oklahoma. I needed the bravery of being in a group.

He came out in a suit and a powerful vibe of let's-get-through-this show business. In a Tony Soprano accent, he asked the audience, "Who's been hypnotized before?"

There was a lot of giggling from our area as we all put up our hands. He squinted out at us: "Was it at one of my shows?" We shook our heads. "Someone else's show?" Nope. Then, making a joke, "So do you people all sit around and hypnotize each other?" We looked at each other and cracked up!

He called for volunteers, and two from our group went up, along with eight other volunteers, all sitting in a line on the stage. He did the steepled-forefinger convincer. He sent down a bunch of people, including one of ours who's great at being hypnotized. If that's your first experience with hypnosis, I bet that experience of being rejected could mess it for you for life.

He was smooth and confident (and he had a DJ!), but not very engaged. He did an super rushed countdown induction, and attempted to make people's shoes stick to the floor. It didn't work for our remaining friend, let's call her Acher, but he kept her up there.

I whispered to khatsha that we could be giving him more targetted heckling than he's ever had before: "You call that an Ericksonian double bind?? My grandma does a better Cerbone Butterfly!" There was definitely a lot of whispering in our area, but, in our defense, it was super awkward. Sure we goof around with hypnosis all the time, not to mention use it for sex, but oddly I feel the community has a lot of reverence underneath that - a respect for the mystery. This felt cheapening.

The act was full of cheesy jokes and well-worn hypnosis routines that were mostly based on humiliation. At one point he suggested the people onstage would smell that he'd made a huge stinky fart. People got bumped from the stage whenever he judged they weren't responding well enough. The exception was when he suggested to Acher that her shoes would feel like they were on the wrong foot, and then asked her, "Now how do they feel??" She shrugged, "They're comfy. They're Docs."

Still he would not send her off! Maybe because she's femme and glamorous. But it was getting painful. It was down to two college freshman-age women and her, and eventually one of us did a rescue, walking right up to the stage with open arms and welcoming Acher off. He smoothed over the moment like it was his idea.

He made it to his big finale, with the remaining two uninhibitedly lipsyncing to Ke$ha. Maybe they were really hypnotized after all. I'm sure it wasn't even close to his worst show - just one with some puzzling reactions from the peanut gallery.

He left the young women with the suggestion that a) as soon as they left the theatre, they'd forget everything that happened during the show, and b) if they ever attended one of his shows again, they'd want to volunteer. This is pretty fucked up, consent-wise, and we wished we could tell them that, and that hypnosis doesn't have to be this thing. Can be more wonderful, more creative, more collaborative, and a lot less problematic.

Still we were in high spirits as we poured out onto the street, and then into the Honey Dew donuts, picking apart what we'd seen, each bit of NLP and social influence. It was good to be all together.

Acher said she had been looking forward to the induction, she wanted to go with it, but it was so quick and uncommitted. Someone said, "You know, the funny thing is I'm not sure he believes in hypnosis himself." And that stuck with me.

What a sad thing! Developing a hypnosis act and hustling every day to book gigs, making it work in the least respected tiers of entertainment. And thinking all he had to sell was a lump of lead covered in shiny gold paint. I wished I could tell him there was gold, precious gold, in there all along.

Thank to friends who were there helped me fill in details, self identify if you would like!

My Erotic Hypnosis Book Reviews

I've written a few of these over the years, and this is the spot where I pull them all together now and in the future.

Mastering Erotic Hypnosis - James Gordon and Rebecca Doll

My Voice Will Go With You: The Teaching Tales of Milton H. Erickson - Edited and with Commentary by Sidney Rosen

Richard Bandler's Guide to Trance-formation - Richard Bandler

Monsters and Magical Sticks: There is no such thing as hypnosis? - Stephen Heller and Terry Steele

The Complete Idiots Guide to Hypnosis - Roberta Temes

The Easy Way to Stop Smoking - Allen Carr

Hypnotic Realities - Milton Erickson

Mind Play - Mark Wiseman

Look Into My Eyes - Peter Masters

Hypnotize Your Lover - Wendy Friesen

The Secrets of Hypnotizing Women - Ormond McGill and Shelley Stockwell

Hope you enjoy, and that you'll share your thoughts on these and other books with me too!

Don't Delay Pleasure

I keep coming back to this thought during quarantine, which is damn, I'm glad I did all those orgies! Do you know, that my birthday in February turned out to be basically four days of group sex? So much fun that people other than me are looking back fondly on it as the last hurrah (for now)? I tell you that not just to brag, but because it's starting to seem like a dream.

Man did we throw some great just-because hypnotic play parties too. Tons of people, with themed refreshments, and propositions, and lingerie, and cuddle piles. With public hypnosis scenes so hot the room goes quiet to watch, with cries of orgasm or pain coming from two bedrooms at once, with 2 AM group trances. And just as sweet, pancakes and sleepy chitchat on a Sunday, hanging out deep into the afternoon with the overnight guests. Hard to believe it now that it's been 75 days since anyone but me and khatsha has crossed our welcome mat.

And yet before every single party, after five hours of cleaning and preparation, with 20 minutes to go, khatsha and I would always turn to each other and go, "I hate this. This was a bad idea. Is it too late to cancel??"

Lots of types of pleasure are a major pain in the butt to make happen. And even the ones that aren't, I still have a tendency to hesitate and second guess, like I'm going to save this till later, like maybe till I earn it. I'm the type to throw away half a bag of grapes because I let them go soft, saving them, rationing them, for what?

Then I'm thinking about the dorky, anxious, exuberant, creative, bitchy, caring world of erotic hypnosis conventions. I've been going to at least three per year, for years, and expected that to continue indefinitely. Who knows what's going to happen there? But I'm sure glad for every single one I bought plane tickets to, booked hotel rooms, and braved the social anxiety gauntlet to show up.
A lot of this I had to struggle with, maybe from my upbringing that says to beware of self-indulgence and frivolousness. "Don't delay pleasure" isn't a message everyone needs to hear - for example John Belushi had that nailed - but I do.

Because these things are not worthless. They are the very serious substance of a life. Sadness and suffering, they take care of themselves. So do easy, homey pleasures (like most of the ones available right now). But the pleasures that take some effort and risk, I'm so grateful for every single one I went for. Those memories are unbearably precious - they are the sacks of coal that I stored up, that are keeping me warm in the current winter. And will too on through the deeper, harsher winter of old age. ("Yo, hey, Gen Z fella! Did I ever tell you about the six-on-one hypnotic pleasure overload scene we had in '19 or so??" "Only about a hundred times...") I hope there will be many more epic memories of kink and sex to stack alongside those, but right now I'm so glad I didn't put those off, or talk myself out of them.

The more urgent reason not to delay pleasure is that you can't count on things sticking around until you've worked up to it. They can disappear without warning. Often you don't know when your last chance was - I sure would have liked one more pint at the Galway before this all started. Or one more cheesy multiplex film at AMC Boston Commons, and go for the $9 popcorn. And of course where this applies most of all is to the people in our life. And our own health and capabilities.

No matter what choices I made in the past, the COVID 19 pandemic lies across all those alternate branching realities like a thick black Sharpie line. I'm glad for everything I didn't put off before we crossed into that darkness. And most of all for those pleasure-based decisions, all those times I chose something spectacular and scary over something easy and safe, that led me to meet and marry khatsha, so that now I'm quarantined with her in JP.

I'm in an incredibly lucky place in this crisis, and I want to be as useful as I can to others. I'm not just about the hedonism. But also, this is my resolution, as the lockdown eases and even before it eases: absent a good reason, if there's a person in my life I enjoy, or a treat I've been saving for a rainy day, or something great I want to set in motion, don't ration it out! Don't delay! I'll leave it to my mum's favourite quote from Jane Austen written more than 200 years ago, which inspired this: "Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!"

PS: This is not to be used against me in the future by any persons who might be in orgasm denial. You know that delay is for a reason.

Polyamory is Like a Jar of Natural Peanut Butter

A lot of people don't like to buy natural peanut butter. They think that it's too much because it has a layer of oil on the top - they think it's too messy. And the bottom too grainy. They'd prefer something with palm oil, maybe some icing sugar. Premixed.

They don't know how good natural peanut butter can be. All it takes is time, and care.

I start with the kind that's just roasted peanuts and salt, and store it upside down or on its side overnight, in the pantry. Many people make the mistake of refrigerating it at this point. But natural peanut butter doesn't work that way: it will only result in an impassable layer of congealed fat.

The next day, when the oil has migrated from the top a little, I open up the jar and stir it. I do this in the sink, with a knife rather than a spoon. I have paper towels nearby in case it spills into the threads or down the side during stirring. Which happens a lot. But the best things sometimes take a little cleanup.

Then I put it in the fridge. By the next day it has a smooth and consistent texture, that will last almost to the bottom of the jar, and as long as you store it in the fridge, it will never separate again.

And that's how you deal with a jar of natural peanut butter!

...

Polyamory? I don't really have a take on that, why do you ask?

Oh, the title! Man, I can see how that's misleading. I should really change it - I just wanted to tell you about the peanut butter.


In case it's not clear, this is a parody of a certain type of prolific FetLife essayist who loves a simile - if it put you in mind of one, that's probably who it is... or rather one of several I was thinking of. Also I sincerely wanted to share my peanut butter technique!

Class notes for: Once more with Feelings

 These are notes from the first time I presented this class, on January 18, 2020, at Charmed in Annapolis.

o   Content warnings, splash damage warning

o   I won’t be doing emotions from roleplay, and pure emotion

o   Suggestions, but not for me to do with khatsha today

o   Emotions are one of the easier things: they are naturally contagious, and naturally sticky. Also makes them hazardous to play with.

o   More about the what than the how. Only two tricks I know:

o   Visualization (imagining a time when you really felt it)

o   Dialing up intensity (you can always imagine one notch more)

Sheet 1 (least edgy)

·      Fear

o   Less edgy because somewhat understood in BDSM

o    Still needs tons of negotiation and aftercare

o   DEMO: Goggles

·      Submissiveness

o   DEMO: Subspace 10

·      Euphoria

o   Why I like the idea of control with non-sexual pleasure

o   DEMO: Face-slapping induces euphoria

o   Satisfaction of a job well done

·      Never use to modify emotions in a relationship

o   Bubblegum anecdote

·      Gratitude

·      Awe and surprise

o   Magic anecdote

o   Plot twist

o   Startle

·      Cosiness

o   Cosiness bondage story

o   Bedgasm

o   Hygge (Hoo-guh)

·      Calmness/emotionlessness

o   In combination with roleplay, layers of scene (“You are kidnapped, you should feel scared, but you are calm instead”). Making the calm feel natural or artificial.

·      Disgust

o   Special warning

o   DEMO: Slugs

Sheet 2 (edgier)

·      What you consider edgy emotions to play with differs a lot

·      Safer way to do edgy emotions: harmless memory, then magnify that

·      Sadness

o   Story about it going wrong

o   Nostalgia as a safer alternative? (“Come tastes like the best day of summer”)

·      Anger

o   What about defiance instead?

o   DEMO: Angry kissing

·      Cuteness

o   Anecdote of why it’s dangerous

·      Love

o   This seems very fucking edgy

·      Jealousy

o   I don’t know man

Sheet  3 (Weird)

·      Oddly satisfying

·      Enhancing emotions is easy

·      Alien emotions

o   DEMO: An alien emotions by telepathic link with k’s alien friend Jim.

Sheet 4 group brainstorm & storytelling

Class notes for Hypnotic Adversarial Memories: A Serious Reality Fuck

These are notes from the first time I presented this class, on January 17, 2020, at Charmed in Annapolis. You can also read about hypnotic adversarial memories in the form of a scene log on Fetlife or my blog.

Class description

Presenting a new technique, inspired by recent innovations in AI, that can obliterate the distinction between imagined experiences and reality, dilate or expand time, insert or erase memories, and leave your partner thoroughly and pleasantly fucked up. Divney will discuss the principles, take his partner through the different stages, demonstrate specialized aftercare, and interview her about the subjective impact.

Outline

·      Content warnings and recapitulated negotiation

o   Groping

o   Memory play

o   Derealization/dissociation

·      Introduction to the neural network concept

o   Generative adversarial networks. Ian Goodfellow 2014

o   “The coolest idea in machine learning in the last 20 years” Yann LeCun

o   Generator and discriminator. Generate synthetic images and identifying them.

o   Deepfake. Aging captain america, monet to van gogh transfer, zebras to horses. Synthesizing brand new faces.

·      Other inspiration

o   False memories. How they’re distorted with every access

o   Memory for repeated events

o   Déjà vu

o   Hypnotic time loops

·      Warnings about HAM

o   Negotiate sense of unreality. Very informed consent

o   Shitload of time to come back to reality

§  Looking out the window

§  Either or questions

§  Counting together and tapping

§  Being with them and breathing

·      Components of HAM

o   The first time I tried it. “I think that was much stronger than you intended it to be”

o   The loop

§  Things they perceive

§  Things they do

o   Alternating real and unreal

o   Making them as similar as possible, both during and as memories

o   Erasing or creating memories

o   Producing timelessness and unreality

·      HAM tips

o   Use the same exact language every time

o   Slow enough to notice details

o   Partner must trust you to get them back to base reality – no teasing

o   Multi-person loop

o   Get playful with it (not strict alternation)

o   Gradually shifting the loop, so that it ends in a different place but seems like it was always there

o   Might strengthen ability to make false memories

·      DEMO: the loop (all in trance)

o   Open eyes and look at the laptop

o   Hand back glasses to put on

o   Look to the exit sign

o   Tap forehead to say “Well, interestingly”

o   Snap fingers to drop back into trance

o   Repeat, alternating actually doing it and imagining doing it (sometimes mixing it up), 12 times

o   Grabbed breast twice, once while awake and once asleep

·      Extensive aftercare and questions