It’s been a whirlwind of busy-ness here in L.A. After the Club Fantasy party and the corset tea I’ve been able to do several photoshoots, go back to Theshold for another party on Saturday, see some friends and even get in a little shopping. Just taking it easy today and trying to re-group before the next weekend. I’ll be checking out Threshold’s My Kinky Valentine this Saturday and probably shooting at least once more before I head back to Denver (I hear it’s really cold!) next week.

I just wanted to mention that I’ll once again be at the Club Fantasy party on Friday, February 4th, in N. Hollywood, California. I used to co-sponsor this event when I lived in L.A. and it was one of the few parties where I almost always felt comfortable and at home. I miss it terribly now that I’m away so it’s always a delight to visit again. I’ve already heard from several friends who’ll be there, so I’m looking forward to a good turnout and a fun evening. There’s always play going on in the front rooms, and almost always some good bondage, and nice people to visit with in the break room. If you’re in the area I hope you’ll stop by if you haven’t been there before and say hi. And if you’re new to going out and dressing, this event is always a very safe place to go, as it’s friendly and inviting and low stress. You can even dress there if you’d prefer, or just come in guy mode. And of course, you don’t have to be transgendered to attend. Friends and admirers are welcome too. Hope to see you there!

I had several fun photoshoots during my recent visit to L.A., including a few with my friend Chainguy. Here are a few preview images of things that will be showing up on the site in the future (sometimes it takes a while, since I’ve been shooting so much lately!) There are also a couple shots of two cute new girls on the site – my friends Nina being handgagged and Kaitlynn in a frame from some HD video that we shot. I had a great time shooting with both of them and hope we’ll have a chance to do it again on a future visit. Enjoy!

It turned out that Skid Row wasn’t so bad after all. I met Heather down at a friend’s loft, which turned out to be a super-cool place with a white leather sofa and we got some really nice pictures. It was weird that down below on the street there were probably two hundred people on the nearby sidewalks camping out in tents and boxes and sleeping bags. They estimate about 8000 to 10,000 homeless people in the area. Not to get into a political rant but I always wonder what’s so offensive about public housing in this country. We just have that cruel “You’re on your own, suckah!” mentality here. Wish we were more like the Scandanavian countries but it ain’t never gonna happen. But not to get into that, the shoot was lots of fun and afterwards we went up to the roof and enjoyed the fabulous view of the downtown L.A. skyline which was right there before our eyes. It was really a memorable moment all lit up like that.

I’ve got the Club Fantasy party tomorrow night and probably three more shoots over the weekend and then it’s back to Denver on Tuesday. It’s probably getting to be time to leave but it’ll be hard saying goodbye to friends again. I’ll have to come back again maybe in the spring.

I’ve been having a really nice time here visiting in L.A. and did another fun shoot with Chainguy and a couple friends yesterday lounging out by a friend’s swimming pool. I’ll try to post a few preview shots when I get back to my desktop computer in Denver next week.

I also got to go back to The Oxwood Inn for Club Shine last Saturday, and it was really nice to see so many familiar faces. We got boxed in with parking though so had to stay much longer past when it was fun anymore. As I’ve written before I have the kind of personality where I get overly stimulated very easily, so after an hour and a half at a club I’ve usually had enough. When I have to stay till closing time it can get pretty miserable.

This evening I’m off to shoot some pictures of another CD girl, Heather Cross, whom I’ve known for years. It looks like we have access to an office in downtown L.A. to shoot in, and I just looked it up on Mapquest and apparently it’s right in the heart of Skid Row, also known as The Nickel. Yikes – wish me luck! This sure ain’t Colorado anymore…

Well, things are going busy busy while I’m here in L.A. I just had a fun shoot today with my friend Chainguy and a friend of his, A., who’s one of the main photographer for Bizarre Video. He helped us shoot a couple videos today that I’m really looking forward to seeing. They were shot with this incredibly expensive video camera so the quality should be very nice. If you check out the Bizarre Video site you’ll see lots of cocksucking and down and dirty sex. Let’s just say that we didn’t go there – not that there’s anything wrong with that ;-) Anyway, going to try to take it easy tomorrow and recover a little, and do some laundry, before the next one.

Just a quick note that I’ll be visiting Los Angeles this Friday, Oct. 22nd, and am planning to go to the Femme Fatale FemDom Party that evening at Threshold (they have a calendar link over on the left side on their homepage.) I’m really looking forward to being back there again and seeing some good friends. Then of course I’ll also be at the Club Fantasy Party on Friday, Nov. 5th, also at the Threshold clubhouse – wouldn’t miss that for anything! Now that I’ve been gone from L.A. for about seven months I miss that party every time it rolls around. I hope I won’t get teary eyed when it wraps up. If you’re in the area and plan to attend, do say hi! Hope to see you there!

A photographer named Tom Baker used Photoshop to do this set of pictures of Los Angeles streets without cars. Very cool. I can’t believe I’m saying it, but geez, I miss L.A. Sure hope I can visit again later in the fall.

I was in the grocery store today and was wandering around and realized I was hearing Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” on the muzak – not some watered down version but the real thing with Ozzy, and fairly loud. “Happiness I cannot feel and love to me is so unreal.” Interesting.

I was reading an email where someone asked what have you accomplished in the last decade and how many more decades do you expect to have ahead of you? The latter is a particularly sobering question. I just talked to my Dad on the phone for his birthday, and although he’s doing okay, he’s old and I know that eventually I’ll get that inevitable phone call one of these days. For myself there are probably three, maybe four, decades left at best, though if I keep hiking and staying in shape I might be able to drag it out a bit longer. Of course, I won’t be modeling forever but do hope to keep taking bondage pictures of other girls for years to come. And as for what I’ve accomplished, probably the best thing I’ve done in my life so far is to start Trannies In Trouble back in 2003. I haven’t figured things out by any stretch, but it’s certainly the most successful thing I’ve done up to now and I’m very grateful for it and for the fans and customers who enjoy my pictures and videos.

For most of my life I’ve felt as if I’ve just been drifting along often lost and unsure, and I definitely still have those moments, but things have been more focused this decade than they ever were before. One thing that I’m still ambivalent about, though, is Los Angeles. I moved here in 2001 and may not have ever started my website if I hadn’t come here, so it was probably the right move. But on the other hand, L.A. can be such a grind to live in. It’s congested and dirty and there are so many people who are frustrated and angry and just getting by, so it can be a very tense and unpleasant place. Of course, if you were making a six figure income things could be a lot more comfortable, but at this point that ain’t me. I’ve been making contacts and spending more time in Denver this past year, though, and I suspect that I might be spending a lot more time there in the not too distant future. When I was there this summer, just the ease of driving and finding a parking space, having an apartment with some space to turn around in, and having smog-free skies with big puffy clouds was just wonderful, and I found a surprisingly active scene and some really nice clubs and a couple new models to shoot with in a relatively short time. After that I found myself asking what am I doing putting up with Southern California’s grind.

So all in all, the 00’s (what do they call this decade?) have been pretty good for me. I’ve had my lonely times and moments of doubt but compared to earlier decades this one has been pretty good. And I’m hopeful about the next one and where it will lead. We shall see.

My friend Kim and I went to LACMA today to see the Salvador Dali exhibit, which is just about to close, and it was awesome. I’ve always liked his stuff and it was great to see many familiar paintings in real life. I was amazed at how small so many of them were. I expected them to be these huge murals but not so. Even his most famous painting, The Persistence of Memory is pretty tiny, about 12 inches across.

I also had one of those, “Oh, I get it!” moments reading the description of one of my favorites, “The Metamorphosis of Narcissus.” I remember seeing this painting in art books when I was a kid and I never realized that it’s a human figure on the left – Narcissus – gazing at himself in the reflecting pool. I always thought it was two human hands and that the one on the left was just a little blurry or something – Duh! Oh well, it only took me 35 years to get it. And hey, gazing at one’s reflection is something that we crossdressers do a lot of too – maybe that’s why I like it so much.

Just a reminder that for this Sunday’s Rope Bondage Workshop in N. Hollywood we’ll have my friend Miss Susan giving a demo on doing bondage with furniture, specifically showing ways to secure the bindee off to an inanimate object. I’ll be there enjoying it in the audience for a nice change. Hope you can make it Sunday from 4 to 6 PM.

Rope Bondage Workshop Monthly Calendar

Address and link for map

Well, I’m back in town and had a great visit in Atlanta. Just a reminder that tomorrow, Friday night, is the Club Fantasy party in North Hollywood, CA. Hope to see you there!

It was nice and cool yesterday, so I took the day off and did another one of my super long hikes through the city. I’d been thinking it would be fun to walk the full length of Sunset Boulevard, which is about twenty miles long, in one long day. I got up before dawn and took the subway down to Union Station, which is downtown and near where Sunset begins. Parts of downtown can be pretty depressing – noisy and dirty – and it doesn’t get much better going through Hollywood.

About ten miles in one of my little toes started to hurt really bad so I had to stop and make some adjustments with some bandaids that I’d brought along. I was limping for a while and afraid that I was going to have to call it off, but eventually I got back in the groove. On the Westside, going through Beverly Hills parts of the street didn’t have sidewalks (I guess they gotta keep the riff raff, like me, out) so I had to take some parallel streets to get through.

Finally, late in the afternoon, I had only a few more miles to go and the exhaustion really hit me. I was feeling pretty dopey walking along but I just kept telling myself to keep moving my feet. I knew if I stopped, I’d get really sore and that would be it. Finally I saw the Ocean off in the distance and it was beautiful. It was about five o’clock when I plopped down on the sand where Sunset ends and took off my shoes. It was really great to just sit there and be hypnotized by the surf and the gulls and run the sand through my toes. I hung out for about two hours and nearly nodded off on the bus ride back home.