Anyone seen one of these posters for sale around town? Drop me a note and tell me where, please, because I want one...




Also: Are you in Dublin, Ireland and looking for polyamory resources? A reader of mine there has started a meetup, which I think is very bold and cool of him. Go here and read all about it.

A few more remarks about the NYE party…

It’s odd how one gets used to things. We had sixty-five people at the party, and several folks remarked on how it seemed so markedly less insane than the last one. I felt a difference myself. Fewer than twenty people can noticeably tip the balance, it seems. I am the one who’s really the head-count police – Max has a higher tolerance for crowds than I do. But I told him we could invite, say, five more people next time, for a total of seventy, and see how that felt. Always trying to find the sweet spot.

Still, even with our friend Chris and his lovely sweetheart D there to help us, it was pretty much an all-day thing getting the house and the food and such ready, and then Puck and I spent some time getting our girly on. Max had to snap a picture of us primping.

One of the toys at the party : my fucking machine. It was made for me my by the secondary partner I had before I started dating Monk. His name is Mike, and he’s a metal artist, and I love his work. So this is not just any fucking machine. This, my friends, is a one-of-a-kind piece of sexual art.

I brought my lovely fucking machine home from my dungeon for the party, because a certain cute girl had expressed a wish to try it out. And then we put her in the little cage in the dungeon so she couldn’t change her mind, heh.

Here’s a photo taken right after the fact, when Puck decided to climb up on the cage and congratulate that brave cute girl on her voyage. Yes, photos exist of the event in progress, but there are some not-publishable faces in those pictures. But do note the tiny blue Pocket-Rocket vibrator on the white towel there. Cute.

And I just love how the machine is poised behind Puck, as if to say, “Hey, there’s another girl! I can go again, really!” We tried to get a boy to do it, too, but they all got shy.

Max also did some holiday decorations on Puck – bells, held on by needles. He kept taking Puck by the arms and shaking her to make her jingle. It was charming, even when Puck’s eyes started to cross a bit.

People kept kidding me that I wasn’t drunk enough, which is just so odd, given that we are not a heavy-drinking group. Two of the people teasing me about this are NA/AA people, for heaven’s sake! Sometimes I think I make a good story about something on the blog, and it sort of takes on a life of it’s own in real time, even among people who know me. Behold the power of publishing. I did enjoy some very lovely champagne, though.

And now I think I’m getting settled into 2008. It looks to be an interesting year…

So, a lovely time was had by all on New Years Eve at my house. Perhaps some more pictures tomorrow, but we have to have the traditional NYE “naked people in a cage” photo, so here it is…

Amusing note: I have no idea whose shoe that is. It does not belong to any of the ladies in the picture, though. We have a silly number of cages in the house for two people who don't have a particular fetish for them. (That number would be three, for the record.) I don't think I've ever actually used one of our cages in a scene. But Max uses them some - and they do get lots of play at parties. (Especially when we put a fucking machine next to one of them... But, sorry, that's not my story to tell.)

It was about 5am by time everyone cleared out, and Puck and Max and I fell into bed, drunk slightly with wine and mostly with exhaustion. It was rather late in the day when we woke up again, as you may well imagine. We spent some of the first day of 2008 socializing with our overnight guests, and then we went and saw Sweeney Todd. Yes, I’d already seen it with Monk, but as he often remarks, that’s part of being poly: seeing all the good movies at least twice.

Also: thank you to the friend who sent us some very lovely red wine. It was much enjoyed, and we did put some aside for a more private occasion.

Now I have to finish a column and get back to my holiday-neglected life.

No Comment

So, you may have noticed that the comment box has gone away. I made a vague remark a few days ago suggesting it was a technical issue, but in fact, I took the comments box off myself, because I was the one having issues.

This blog has evolved a lot since I started writing it. It’s gone from being a little add-on to my professional site to taking on a life of it’s own. A big life, too. Writing this blog is almost like having another partner – it’s a whole separate relationship that needs care and attention. And truthfully, the relationship it reminds me of is the one Seymour had with his blood-sucking plant in Little Shop Of Horrors. Like Seymour’s plant, this blog has connected me with awesome people and made a lot of really amazing things happen for me. I would never choose to un-do all that. But some days, I feel like the constant cry of “Feed me!” is making me a little anemic.

Of course, as long as I have this blog, that voice is going to be in my head. One of my rules for life is that I don’t take myself too seriously - but I take what I do very seriously. If I’m going to blog – and I am, this is not a farewell speech – then I am going to blog well.

However, I have become aware, lately, that my writing here has gotten really…careful. Almost defensive. When I considered it, I realized that it was due to my thinking too much about what people were going to post in the comments. When I first started blogging, I loved getting comments. At some point, that changed. Naturally it’s always been nice to have people say how much they liked this or that. I’m human, I like praise. But getting strokes can’t be the entire goal of the blog. Monk told me how Pete Townsend once remarked that people always talk about how musicians influence their listeners, but that the reverse was also true: fan feedback influences musicians. That’s true for me as well, and I feel it’s been detrimental to my writing here. When I took the comments off ten days ago, it was an experiment to see how I felt. And what I felt was an immediate sense of being freed from a constraint. Thus, I will not be having comments here anymore.

Even as I write this, I’m feeling the urge to bring up and pro-actively address all the various protests and arguments that I think you, the reader, might make. Defensive. But as with everything in my life – and in yours too – my choice to remove comments is influenced by a number of factors, both large and small. Some of my reasons I have shared with you here, but there are others I’m not going into, either because they are too complex or too personal. Without the comments box hanging over my head, I feel freer to write what I want, without lengthy justification.

I suppose it’s possible the silence will get to me after a while and I’ll put them back up, but not any time in the foreseeable future. You can, of course, email me with your comments, and I will probably post and publicly respond to selected ones.

To all the people who said pleasant and/or thought-provoking things here, I thank you. Your input was appropriate, and it was appreciated. But I’m going to take it alone now.