Just a quick note that the next Club Fantasy TG Bondage Party / Social is this Friday, September 21st in North Hollywood, CA.

There’s also a new schedule for the monthly Rope Bondage Workshop online at the Threshold website. This Sunday from 4 to 6 PM we’ll do some decorative bondage. Also in N. Hollywood, CA.

Come check out the next Syren! party Saturday night in West Hollywood, with fabulous TV Fetish Model Nicci Tristan! It should be a fun one. I’ll be there for sure, bringing some rope. Hope to see you there!

Yesterday I went to the bimonthly “Insight” presentation at the Lair de Sade in North Hollywood and saw a great presentation by Patrick on “The Art And Functionality Of The Western Diamond Hitch Knot,” which sounds way more esoteric than it really is. Patrick gave an excellent demo, showing some useful and simple ways to do that rope harness with the diamond-shaped pattern that you so often see. I don’t get over to the Lair de Sade too often but it’s a really nice dungeon and everyone was really nice. The Insight afternoons are held twice a month and are open to non-members with an email invite. They’re only ten dollars and they give excellent presentations and also have a few vendors of kinky things on hand. It’s a great way to get out and meet people and learn new things. I also ran into John from Taboo Leather, whom I always enjoy chatting with. A thoroughly pleasant and fun afternoon.

So along the same lines as the last post, I do like to try to be open about my life and not hide things if possible – not always an easy chore when you’re a bondage-loving transvestite with a fetish website. I’ve been really lucky this summer in that I’ve been able to share a lot more of what I’m really up to in life with my parents, especially with my mother, and it’s taken a big load off my shoulders.

My mother and I always had a decent relationship but there was some distance because, although she knew I was a crossdresser and knew I ran some sort of website that had something to do with crossdressing, she didn’t know the full story and I always felt like I was shading the truth and hiding things from her whenever we talked on the phone. Not that I have any desire to tell her the juicy details of what I do, but I still felt a weight from always being overly cautious with her. I find it’s just a pain in the ass to live that way. In many ways she was the person I feared the most in the world, not a great way to have a decent relationship with one’s mother. And both of my parents are getting older and both have health problems so they’re not going to be here forever.

So anyway, I was able to have a good talk with her a while ago and, damn, she knows the full story now. I even told her about the rope bondage class that I teach. It wasn’t as dramatic as it sounds since, yeah, she already knew about 65% of the story, but I’m straight with her now and that’s a nice feeling. Again, I’m not going to tell her what I do when I go out to that party in the Valley or meet up with so and so, but it’s good and very freeing just to be known for who you really are, especially if who you are is a little on the weird side.

My Dad on the other hand, has always been such a free spirit and so open minded that I literally could talk to him about ANYTHING, which is also pretty weird. He’s known about my “lifestyle” and work for quite a while and has always been incredibly supportive. I think he imagines that my life is actually way wilder and crazier than it really is, which is kind of funny. Many Saturday nights I’m just at home like everyone else.

Anyway, I’m really lucky to have such great parents. I know that for many other tvs and tgs out there that being this open about one’s secrets isn’t even in the realm of possibility. Although I have to admit, at one time I thought the same thing about my own mother, that it would kill her if she knew about my life. So far her heart’s still ticking away.

I’ve talked here before about how I’ve been taking prozac and other anti-depressants for years and how it’s really helped me with my tendency towards depression. Sometimes when someone would ask me why I was depressed it just seemed like the answer was, “Because that’s what I do.” When I’m upset or otherwise unhappy I tend to get depressed. That’s where the pressure and negativity show up.

I started taking the pills back in the nineties but within the last year or so I’ve wondered what life would be like without them. I’m way better off in all respects and much stronger than I was back then, so with my doctor’s supervision I’ve been weaning off them and am now just on a tiny amount each week and will probably be off the drugs completely in a month or two. It’s generally been going pretty well, though I have my occasional bad days still. In fact, even when I was taking prozac I would have many days where I was still depressed, which is something I need to remember. Because now that I’m heading off them, whenever I have a bad day emotionally I make myself kind of crazy thinking, “Is this because I’m no longer on the Good Stuff?” I’ve got a huge talent for self torment when I’m in that mood.

It’s funny, I’ve had friends make different comments. Some have said, if you’re feeling good and the drugs work, why go off them? It’s not like it’s bad to take them, which I agree. I’m very thankful that the medication is available. Others have said, just go cold turkey and be done with it! My main desire is that I just want to see how life is without them. Plus they do have some minor side-effects like dampening my libido, and I’d rather be un-dampened if possible. And it’s just been a really really long time that I’ve been taking this stuff. I wonder about the long-term effects. Of course, if in six months I find that I just don’t function that well without anti-depressants, I think I would be open to reconsidering it if I felt I needed to. There’s obviously still stigma attached to mental illness, which is one reason I try not to hide my experiences. With my website I have a tiny bit of exposure on the internet (in a very specific niche) and I hope that maybe by being open about my own struggles with depression that it might help someone else to get help if they need it. It really sucks to be miserable and isolated.