I saw this picture on someone’s blog the other evening. (Sorry, I forget whose exactly.) But oh my Gawd, these are sexy!

I love checking out the Bruce Eric Kaplan comic in the L.A. weekly every Friday. Actually I enjoy the whole paper way more than I should. It’s really not that great but the comics are awesome.

It looks like one of my favorite holidays, National Honesty Day, is close approaching. No, to be honest it’s not a favorite holiday but still a pretty cool concept. I’m sometimes struck by all those hundreds of white lies that we all tell through the course of the day, such as “How are you?” “Oh, I’m fine,” when I’d really like to cry or scream real loud.

Then there’s all the sexual lies and withholding that come with being a transvestite and a bondage fetishist. The crappy thing about being sexually different is that it teaches you to lie from such an early age and it becomes such second nature. I find even now that most everyone in my life knows that I’m a TV, I’ll still keep things secret that I don’t even have to anymore. It just comes so easily.

Or those times when someone asks a perfectly innocuous question, like I’ll be at a club and someone asks, “How long have you been coming here.” And for some unknown reason I’ll have this impulse that saying the truth, (say, two years), is somehow dangerous, and without even knowing why I’ll find myself myself saying, “Oh, about eight month.” Why did I even do that? It doesn’t even matter, but I lie and don’t know why I’m doing it.

So honesty is sometimes on my mind, though I fall short all the time. But maybe April 30th will be a good day to practice. Self help guy Brad Blanton, who wrote the Radical Honesty books, makes the nice point that in the short run honesty often does make things worse – more difficult and complicated – but in the long run it makes things easier. It allows you to deal with reality and the “way things are.” A tough philosophy to pull off.

Last night’s bondage demo turned out to be really cool and the traffic wasn’t so bad after all. It was held at a place in Orange County called the Palatial Mansion and the lovely Emma Hui gave a great talk and demonstration on her love of rope bondage. Delilah made it too so we got to tie each other up and later tour the place, which was new to both of us. Emma was really skilled and a lot of fun, and there was some talk that the OCLA they might do a monthly bondage class. A fun evening.

It looks like it’s off to Orange County tonight. There’s a group called the Orange Coast Leather Assembly that’s doing some kind of rope bondage demo / class tonight, so I figure I better go and see if I can pick up some pointers. I’ve never been to this group before, mainly because of the traffic. Crawling down the 5 at this hour will probably be pretty bad. We shall see.

Since the Lodge in N. Hollywood (which hosts the weekend “Club Girl Talk” nights) is closing soon, my good friend Kim and I went out Saturday. I’ve always had really mixed feelings about the place. I’ve met some really great friends there (including Kim) and have had some pretty good times. But I’ve also had many dreadful evenings too – feeling lonely and out of touch, getting felt up and creepily hit on, and damaging my ears to the overly-loud music on the dance floor. I really can’t stand clubs but have been out so many times. And once the TG crowd finds a new Saturday night place I’ll likely be there too, and most likely will still be asking, “Why?”

I’ve been so busy lately, but finally have the chance to post some pictures from the webcam chat the other night. I started out with some fairly elaborate self bondage, which was interrupted by my good friend Domina Delilah. As the night went on I later had the chance to turn the tables on her. Her treatment must have brought out the aggressive bitch in me, as I roughly handled her and tied her up extra tight. She even commented on it later.

I’ve got most the day off, so tonight I’m going to be on the webcam having some bondage fun. Later a good friend should be stopping by to up the ante. I’ll be on Wednesday, April 12th, at 6:00 PM Pacific and I’ll put up some links on my site just before I get going. I’d better go shave.

Trannies In Trouble

Another thing about meeting people, I’ve often found that if they live nearby and it’s possible to do it AND they seem to be someone you might like to know better, it’s usually best to meet soon after you start emailing each other. Otherwise it’s so easy to fall into the habit of carrying on an email relationship that can go on for years and years. I always find that the longer I wait to meet someone it always seems to be harder to get together. And I know I’m not very good at keeping up with email.

Recently I had the experience of talking to someone through email and within a week we were down at the Pico Blvd. Baskin Robbins enjoying a nice Jamoca / Coffee refreshment. It was really nice. And we weren’t meeting to jump in the sack or anything, but just to see if we had anything at all in common in terms of our personalities and our crossdressing and/or bondage interests. If we don’t, that’s cool and if we do, that’s fabulous. As some character said in one of those Muppet movies, “People’s peoples.”

I’ve met a fair amount of people through the internet and my absolute favorite place for meeting people in real life is Baskin Robbins. I’ve gone there in both boy mode and casual girl mode (no six inch heels), and it always works great. Everyone likes ice cream and if you’re watching your weight you can get the soy / low fat stuff, which is really good. There’s no pressure at all and none of the attitude that you often get in bars. If it’s not going well you can easily cut it short, and if you get stood up you still get: Ice Cream!

My friend Kim and I recently went to the bizarre Scientology anti-psychiatry museum that recently opened in Hollywood on Sunset Blvd. It’s quite an experience and the building and displays are pretty impressive. Obviously there’s plenty of room to criticize psychiatry, but they seem to get a bit carried away. I’d say the most effective parts of the museum are the displays on abuses in mental hospitals and the horrors of lobotomies and other bizarre treatments from the past. Their criticism of psychiatric drugs makes some good points too. Hell, I’m on Prozac myself and want to get off it eventually.

But the odd thing about the museum is how absolute their total condemnation is. They blame so much on psychiatry: genocide, the Holocaust, racism, violence in schools, apparently even 9/11. It’s as though everything about psychiatry is evil – Everything! Like they’re saying it has done absolutely no good for anyone in the world – Ever! Which just seems to be taking things a bit far, and is a clumsy way for anyone to make an argument. There’s so little in the world that’s that black and white. A little more subtlety actually would have made a much stronger case. As it stands I just walked out thinking, what’s going on with this? What’s the motivation here?

One pretty cool thing, from my own twisted perspective, is all the great medical restraints on display. They have some great gear that I’d love to own: straightjackets, leather straps and manacles, and this awesome blue leather mummy bag. The thing has a hood and laces up the front and even has straps that can be used to lash it to the wall so that the person inside is forced to stand upright completely sealed up inside it. It would cost a small fortune at a bdsm shop.

I think the next time I have out of town visitors I’ll have to take them here and then in the afternoon perhaps pay a visit to the even more bizarre Museum of Jurassic Technology (totally cool and without the creepiness factor of Scientology), for a nice day of complete L.A. weirdness.

I was out in boy mode getting my annual eye check-up and a guy in the waiting room started up a conversation and asked that question again, “Are you a musician?” It’s the hair, earrings and tight low-rise jeans. I wish I’d just said, “Oh, no, transvestite…” I’m going to have to try to get into the habit of using that, it would be very freeing.

Last night Kim and I went out to the Lodge. Word is that they’ve lost their lease and will be closing this summer.

It was an odd night. There seemed to be a lot of people I’d never seen before (not that I really go that much), and the vibe felt different. At one point we went over to the dance floor and the sound system wasn’t working, it was just jukebox music, so people were just standing around talking like at a cocktail party. Later things picked up a little. One very funny guy insisted on sitting on my lap and taking some pictures and an interesting guy from the techie end of the movie business told me about his interest in one night stands with trannies, and about keeping it secret from his regular straight life (married with kids). He wasn’t gross or anything, just matter of fact since I was asking him a lot of questions. He didn’t hit on me, which was nice (he knew I was a bondage freak but shared none of those interests). We just had an interesting talk, which can be rare in clubs.