Jay Wiseman Bondage Presentation, Weds. June 6th, N. Hollywood

An update on the Jay Wiseman presentation sponsored by Threshold: The topic is “Bondage You Can Actually Use,” and it’s going to be from 7 to 9 PM on Wednesday, June 6th, in North Hollywood, CA. Hope to see you there!

(And here’s an easy-to-read page on the L.A. Doms and Subs site (LADs), with all the information on the Jay Wiseman presentations.)

Hollywoodland Studios (Entrance in rear – plenty of free parking)
11300 Hartland St.
(off Tujunga, 1 block north of Vanowen)
North Hollywood, CA 91605

Map: http://tinyurl.com/fnwd7

Excellent Bondage Workshop this Evening

Well, I’d have to say that the Monthly Bondage Workshop this evening went really well. It was a small turnout because of the holiday weekend, six people total, but I was feeling very relaxed and in the zone and the ropes seemed to just fall into place. There was a nice couple there who said they were new to rope bondage, and I seemed to be able to show them quite a few techniques to get them started. It makes the butterflies in the stomach all worth it when everything comes together. Now what to do next month?

No, You’re Simply Not Allowed

A guy from the Middle East just wrote me a nice email complimenting me on a few of my pictures that he really liked, and he also wrote to say that where he lives most adult sites, including Trannies In Trouble, are blocked and can’t be accessed. This is nothing new, of course, but still the idea of a government deciding that their citizens simply will not be allowed to see or read certain material just blows my mind. The United States obviously has no shortage on messed up behavior and social problems, and is now generally despised throughout the world thanks to our current president, but still we’ve got it so good over here.

Even if our government went on an all out war against pornography, I can’t imagine that things could become as repressive as they are in some parts of the world. And I hope I’m not just being hopelessly naive. Of course, I’d prefer not to end up in the court system for shooting bondage pictures that don’t even show sex or nudity, but I’d also like to think that if it came to that, that I’d have the balls to see it through to the end, whatever that would be. Of course, there’s no way to know unless it happened, and hopefully I’ll never have to find out.

Jay Wiseman on Rope Bondage, Weds. June 6th, N. Hollywood

I heard just minutes ago that well-known BDSM author and speaker Jay Wiseman is going to be doing a presentation on rope bondage on Wednesday, June 6th, in North Hollywood, CA. It’s being sponsored by Threshold and will be held at the usual place, Hollywoodland Studios. Jay is the author of the very popular Erotic Bondage Handbook

I’ll post an update when I hear the specific times and more details and so on. I’ll be there for sure!

Hollywoodland Studios (Entrance in rear – plenty of free parking)
11300 Hartland St.
(off Tujunga, 1 block north of Vanowen)
North Hollywood, CA 91605

Special Syren! Party on June 2nd.

Irv and Wayne at Syren! have a special fetish / trans / glam party going on in a couple weeks. Here’s the word direct from Irv:

Our 1st Annual Fetish Ball will be held on June 2, 2007. It is going
to be a Big Event — I am spreading the word among my Goth/Fetish
friends. Also, we will have a Best Fetish Outfit contest and will be
awarding prizes to three lucky people. All contestants will be judged
by a panel of three people involved in the fetish scene. I encourage
all of you to dress in your best fetish apparel that night.

Syren! Fetish Ball Flyer

Syren! on MySpace

Good Party Last Night

It was a good night yesterday at the Club Fantasy party. We had one of our biggest turnouts yet, about 30 people, with quite a few regulars and lots of new faces too.

I got to play with a friend of mine who put me into some bondage and sent me off into orbit. Sometimes when you play bondage games it can be fun, sometimes it can be work – especially if you’re the one doing the tying – and every now and then you can have a scene that hits you deep in that special place and sends you sailing.

The physical – A lot of times I’ll feel a little awkward in my own skin, a slight feeling of unease, as though I’m walking on a floor that hasn’t been finished and there are high patches and low patches that threaten to trip me up. I’ve never felt particularly graceful and was never very good at sports.

But sometimes when you’re doing bondage, which obviously involves a lot of touch – that physical intimacy can really focus my awareness and feel so much more real to me than the usual mundane activities of the day. I tend to live in my head a lot, but that physical touch can be so grounding. My mind quiets down and the rest of the world fades away and there’s just that moment. My eyes are closed, I feel that touch, and that’s it.

In other words it was a good scene.

Club Fantasy, Friday Night, May 18th

This month’s Club Fantasy party in North Hollywood, CA, is coming up fast – this Friday, the 18th. This month, our friend the lovely Lady Jeri Ann is once again going to be there early, around 7 PM, to help out with hair and makeup for anyone who would like some assistance. There will be some makeup on hand, but of course bring your own if you have it. Last month a small group of us got together before the party and it was really enjoyable.

As usual, the times and info. are here on the Club Fantasy page at Ts in Trouble. See you Friday!

Domestic Tension Exhibit

I saw this on the evening news – an Iraqi American artist who has created an interactive art exhibit in Chicago where he will live in a small gallery for 45 days, and with a webcam allow visitors to his website to control a paintball gun aimed at him, even allowing them to fire it. It’s a great concept, meant to convey the anxiety of living in a war zone, and apparently the site has been so busy that the server can barely keep up.

From my obsessive point of view it makes me wonder about new and diabolical ways to interact with people on a webcam, especially in a bondage or self-bondage scene. (Speaking of which, I’ve been setting up a new Flash based webcam that I’ll probably try out in the next week or so. I haven’t chatted online in months but have been getting the bug again lately. So I’ll post an update when I get it ready.)

Okay, but back to the Iraqi guy. Here’s some links:

Article from CBS2 Chicago

His Crude Oils site, with links to the exhibit

Flatfile Gallery, where he’s holed up for the project.

Gettin’ used to IE7

Okay, another geeky browser post:

I very reluctantly upgraded to Internet Explorer 7 last week in order to see firsthand this display problem I was having on the Ts in Trouble Video page, which only occurred in that particular browser. I fully intended to uninstall the upgrade and switch back to IE6 after I fixed my problem, but, golly, I have to admit I’m actually kind of liking IE7, in spite of myself.

I didn’t want to like it. I was fully prepared to hate it. Indeed, it’s a completely under-whelming upgrade, still very buggy, and adding features that Firefox has had all along since 2004. It’s nothing special at all, and yet I do like how it handles tabbed browsing, and, you know, I think I’m going to keep it. Maybe I’m just easily satisfied. Go figure.

Of course, I should just use Firefox exclusively, which I recommend all the time to anyone who’ll listen, but I don’t take my own advice often enough. I’m used to Internet Explorer, and a bit lazy, and I just keep using it anyway. I guess that’s my dirty little secret for tonight. I just can’t break the habit. And Internet Explorer works really well with Roboform, which I use ALL the time – and is like the greatest software ever invented, in my inexpert opinion – “Still logging in manually? Let the Robot do it!” (Okay, Roboform works in Firefox too, so who am I kidding?)

And now Microsoft’s already talking about IE8, and working on fixing all the bugs in IE7 and making it support CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) Standards better. But we have to wait eighteen months till that one comes out.

Time and Age

I was talking to a local model recently who told me about a photographer friend of hers who just recently died from an aneurysm. I didn’t know the guy well but had seen him at a studio maybe two months ago. He wasn’t all that old, I would guess 50s or early 60s. It doesn’t last forever.

I just had a birthday myself, just turned 44. I’ve always been kind of funny in that I sort of like getting older. I remember when I turned 40 just feeling a big relief, as if all those bad years were behind me now. When I was younger, in my 20s and 30s, I was just depressed so much of the time that life usually seemed not really worth the trouble. Like I’ve said before, I’m way happier now than I’ve ever been. It’s not all sunbeams and unicorns, especially in this neighborhood where I live, but it’s a heck of a lot better than it used to be.

I figure that once I get too old to look decent in bondage pictures, I’ll just shoot pictures of other younger t-girls, and enjoy bondage just playing privately or at parties. I might even enjoy that arrangement more than what I do now, because sometimes getting ready for a shoot and worrying about how I look and whether I’m sweating and all can sometimes kill some of the fun. When I’m shooting other girls there’s less of that pressure and I can focus more on the bondage and the lighting and so on. And sometimes when I can tell that a girl’s really getting into being tied up, it can be a lot of fun. That’s when I want to surprise them by putting duct tape over their eyes or locking them in a small trunk (okay, I don’t own a small trunk but it would be neat if I did.) That moment of surprise when you’re tied up and something unexpected happens that makes you realize that, wait, you Really Are Helpless can be such a great moment.

That charge – Probably the best moment of that kind I’ve had, and I wasn’t even tied up at the time, was this one evening when I was sixteen and I was coming home late from working at a Chinese restaurant where I worked as a busboy (I wanted to be the waitress, but alas). I know I’ve written about his before, but it was raining hard outside and this guy stopped and offered me a ride home. For some reason I said yes, and then once I was in his car I got this nervous feeling. As we got closer to the nearby 7-11 store, I said, “You can just let me out here,” but he just let out this strange little laugh and kept driving. I remember I had this moment of adrenaline wash over me, that sick-in-the-stomach feeling, where your insides sort of turn over. I sat there thinking, “Uh, what’s going on?” And then after a moment he drove a little farther, pulled over, and I got out and thanked him for the lift.

I wasn’t sure afterward if he had been trying to scare me, or hadn’t heard what I said, or what exactly had just happened, but in my imagination I had this fantasy of being taken back to his home against my will, being forced to dress up like a girl, and being bound and gagged and locked away in his basement to become his “special” girlfriend. At that moment, when he laughed, it was like the possibility of this fantasy actually becoming real was right there in front of me. Of course, it wasn’t, and it would be nearly impossible to make that fantasy come true and to still maintain that “good” charge of excitement and fear – the reality would quickly turn into a nightmare, and very possibly end up being fatal, and whereas role-playing can be fun, you still always know that it’s just role-playing. It would be a lot easier I sometimes think to just be turned on by tits and vaginas.

Wow, this turned out to be way longer than I intended. Sleepy time.

Email Issues

I’ve moved the Trannies In Trouble site to a new larger server, which is a good thing, but it’s kind of made a mess of my email accounts. So anyone who’s been trying to write me is probably having their emails bounce back. I’ll be working on this today to resolve it, and if you need to, feel free to leave me a comment and I can write you from one of my other email addresses.

Update: Looks like everything’s back to normal…Whew!