I’m off to Vegas until Friday, so while I jet away, enjoy a new podcast. This one is letters from readers with questions about polyamory.

First letter: when to disclose to a potential new partner that you are poly, if they don’t know already.

And then: dealing with weirdness from your partner’s other partners. (AKA “metamours”.)

It’s a lot of unbridled snark with (hopefully) some nuggets of wisdom. And all admittedly somewhat fueled by alcoholic beverages. I am wincing slightly as I listen to myself tipsily hold forth on these, so I think that means I must make a ban on drinking + podcasting in the future.

But I will not be podcasting in Vegas! Bye!

EDIT: The formatting is coming out weird on the podcast page, not sure why. But it downloads okay, just click on the little icon.

Pictures: I put a couple of snapshots from Folsom on my Flickr feed… Just some street shots, but not terribly work-safe. If you’re interested in getting a broader sense of what Folsom Street Fair is like, go watch the five-minute documentary from Peter Acworth, the owner of Kink.com. Watch closely, you never know who you might see in the background. (Not me, though.)

Speaking of Kink.com, you might be seeing me very much in the foreground of some of their photos in months to come. I’ve never modeled for them, or for any BDSM porn site. Until lately, I have just not seen any real reason why I should. I don’t want a big career as a fetish model. If I want pictures of myself playing, I can arrange that on my own. Why give up control of the images?

But Kink.com is becoming sort of a cultural institution for pervy people, and it might be time to try the experience of working with them on for size. Lord knows they have some fancy sets and some specialized toys that would be fun to use.

Why now? Well, one reason is the person who asked me. Kink.com is a huge operation and over the years, I have watched them hire a lot of people I know to run the various sites. One of those folks is a guy named Lochai.

Now, Lochai and I do not know each other well even now, but for a while we just barely knew each other at all. We said hi to each other at kink events, but it was a very slight social acquaintance.

Then, some years ago, he did something that utterly charmed me. I will not give too many specifics, but the story goes something like this. I was at a kink conference, in a class with a bunch of people, including Lochai. The instructor of this class started saying some very biased and factually untrue things about polyamory. It wasn’t a class about poly, he was just taking advantage of an opportunity to say that poly, basically, didn’t work. Could never work.

Naturally I was quite annoyed by this. But for various reasons, I felt it would be unwise of me to speak up. Because of the situation, it might have caused a problem for someone else if I had said what I thought, which was, “You’re a pompous twit and you don’t know anything about poly, so shut up about it. Not that I think you know jack about the supposed topic, anyway.”

So I was sitting there, biting my tongue, when a hand was raised in the class, and someone began, with perfect civility, to punch holes in all the poly-doesn't-work statements the pompous twit had been making. Lochai.

The pompous twit huffed and puffed. Lochai smiled and continued to politely deflate him. Pompous twit stopped talking about poly. And I went up to Lochai after the class and whispered in his ear, “You are so fabulous. Thank you.” Anyone who steps forward and, without ever saying anything ugly, takes the piss out of someone who richly deserves it is a cool guy in my book.

We’ve been friendlier ever since then. I ran into Lochai this year at Folsom. I got a nice hug from him, and he said, “Hey, I’m looking for models the new site I’m doing, EverythingButt.com, and I need dominant women. You should come do a shoot for me.”

So you know, I just might.

A new podcast! First there’s a lot of silly banter about needles and being naked in bed, and then Monk reads a letter about how to do fast, easy rope bondage during a resistance play scene, and I make some comments about securing a bottom who is larger than you.
After that, I both scold and encourage a reader who is exploring BDSM, but who wants me to do their kinky thinking for them. About 16 minutes.