Archive for the ‘Things’ Category
As is typical for the holiday season, my workplace decorates its facility. They put up a Christmas tree, they hung some garlands around the place, and they put this next to the entrance:
My, what a year it’s been. Since last we spoke, I bought and furnished a townhouse in the Maryland suburbs of Washington DC. It has four levels, which means plenty of space for my girlfriend and me. We each have our own bedrooms, with my bed in the master suite, and her bed in the finished basement. That meant that the spare bedroom was upstairs, and thus, my dungeon is in an upstairs bedroom. In my last post a year ago, I remarked, “After all, I could have a dungeon in an upstairs bedroom, but it wouldn’t be the same.” Funny how things work out, as the play space ended up going upstairs. But I think that an upstairs dungeon will work out pretty well, because the room has lots of other desirable features.
Here’s the room as it stands now, with Jennifer modeling:
Lately, I’ve been looking for a house, in order to get more room to move around, and finally own a place rather than renting. Build some equity and make a living space that is all my own. And one of the things that I have grown to dislike about my current place – a one-bedroom apartment – is that I have no place for play. Basically, there’s the living room, which is right next to the vestibule, i.e. where the neighbors can hear you moan, and there’s the bedroom, which I don’t like having to straighten back up right before bed. And no place to keep proper dungeon furniture.
Having lived in the same one-bedroom apartment for nearly a decade at this point, I am ready to move on and up. I’m looking for a bigger house, preferably with an upstairs, a downstairs, and a basement. Thus I would have my sleeping space, a place for vanilla entertaining, and a dungeon that I can fit out with proper dungeon furniture. That way, I can have my kinky friends over the house for private play parties, plus have a place to go with the girlfriend for kinky time.
I was recently at a Spencer’s store with a friend who is also in the scene, and we looked at the section in the back that sells more adult-oriented items. For those not familiar, Spencer’s is a mall store that sells mostly joke gifts and such, and generally, the further back in the store you go, the less “family-friendly” the store gets, with “PG-rated” stuff in front, going through “PG-13” to “R” to “NC-17” as you get to the back where the sex toys are. For the most part, if you’re over 30, you are probably too mature for Spencer’s. I’m still surprised that there’s a mall store that sells actual sex toys in the first place, even if they are basically junk, but there you go, I suppose.
However, the phrase, “there’s a sucker born every minute” definitely applies here. Check this out:
Sometimes, you never know what you’re going to find when you go thrift store shopping. I remember when I first found that large tiki spoon at a thrift store in Silver Spring. Now, I found some more “silverware” at a thrift store in Calverton. Check these out:
It’s funny how things work out sometimes. I recently found out that a friend of mine, whom I previously thought was completely vanilla, is actually as kinky as I am, if not kinkier. Pretty neat. That led to a discussion as we were driving down the road about what things we have done before and were into, and it turns out that they have a small collection of stuff that they use for BDSM. However, my friend had never been on FetLife before or knew much about the public scene. They knew of the existence of The Crucible, but other than that, I knew far more about the public scene than they did.
One thing that we discussed was how we keep our rope. Turns out that my friend keeps their rope the way that I used to do when I had just started out in BDSM: grab one end in one hand, and wrap it between hand and elbow until you’ve got about a foot or so on each end, change directions, and then tie it off. The downside to this, especially with kinkier rope (as in rope that tends to kink up a bit), is that it’s easy for things to get tangled when it’s time to take it all apart. Nothing like having to sit there and untangle rope at the beginning of a scene. I’d dare say that no one likes to start a scene annoyed about tangled rope, after all, but it was the only way I knew. I stopped using this method when I was at a play party at someone’s house a few months ago and learned a better way to keep my rope when it’s not in use.
So last weekend, I took my giant tiki spoon out for a spin. The testing occurred at a play party at Grove Lane Studios in Frederick, Maryland. That facility is quite awesome, with lounge spaces, a dedicated aftercare room, a balcony space, several private rooms, and a large main dungeon. It is definitely a good place to have a party, and I had a great time. I mainly stayed in the balcony space, and then later hit one of the private rooms.
It was in one of the private rooms where my friend and I tested the tiki spoon. Since this was primarily a test of the spoon, I did this with minimal restraints, no gag, and no blindfold. After all, the idea was to see just what it could do, and for that, I needed to be able to communicate what I was feeling, and see how things were going. Going into this test, considering that the spoon is not a particularly heavy object, I expected for it to sting regardless of how it was used. This turned out not to be the case, about which I was pleasantly surprised. Turned out that it is a delightfully versatile instrument of torture, depending on how you choose to use it.
