NEEHU6: Friday Daytime

This post is mostly about classes, thoughts, discussions, and concepts ran through.  If you want the hot stuff, you’ll see it in Friday night.  However, if thoughts, ideas, and discussions about kink are within your interest in this moment, continue for more of this post.

So this morning was a fairly normal morning.  We each got up, MentalConfetti, Katrina, and I, and we each got down to breakfast in the hotel cafeteria area in our own time.  I caught MentalConfetti in the last 15 minutes before she headed off to The Society to handle morning kitchen duties, and sat back for breakfast with DrHeadCrash, Fleur_, and panavatar, with Katrina eventually joining us.  Katrina agreed without hesitation to drive me to The Society, since Confetti and I came in the same car.  Btw, I like me a hotel that has a free continental breakfast that includes French toast and sausage patties and links… mmm…

Anyway, after a brief adventure of seeing how the GPS got us to The Society, I promised to show Katrina the more direct route next time (it’s approximately 0.7 miles and maybe 1 minute longer, so GPS no likey).  We got in at about 10am, just as the first classes were starting… and there was a line to the registration desk at the front (going up the hallway inside, not outside) about… hmm, at least 20 people long, I’d assume.  It wasn’t long at all before Mephki was running up and down the line telling us “Classes are starting!  Go ahead and go to classes, you can register later,” the part she didn’t include is that she recognized basically everyone in the line, and some of the people in the line were presenters for 10am classes, but meh.  The schedule had a ton of good classes, including the first classes of the morning, but I wasn’t in a “sit still in a class” mood, and apparently neither was Katrina, so we got our badge stuff and all the info we needed, along with a schedule for Friday.

I wandered around a bit, seeing if things were needed basically anywhere but the kitchen… sorry babe, but you know I’m not a fit for food-prep duties (sorry: not sorry)… didn’t stay still for super long, I don’t think, most everything was handled by some person or peoples… though part of the time was spent checking on some stuff that had happened with chairs at The Society: they had to rent in a few dozen because a few dozen of Society’s own chairs had seemed to go unaccounted for anywhere, blah.  I know I hung around the front, chit chatted with sleepingirl her triad sis, cckitten, for a bit, it’d actually been a long time since we’d really gotten to chat about how our lives are going – barely get past “How you?” “Good, busy, you?” kinda stuff over the last year or so, actually – so that was both enjoyable and refreshing... also I was quite amused in seeing the shifts in relationship dynamics that had happened over time among their triad, or more specifically, between the two of them.  There’d be more to see over the next couple days when DaSade, the “last to appear but definitely not least” part of the triad, as he unfortunately still had to be at work until that evening.  In my wanderings, I also observed the Blanket Fort being built little by little, fairly strongly handled by a few, especially Katrina.  I know there was help involved, but I never spent long enough around its construction to take note of who was always there.  Sometime around 11ish, MentalConfetti let me know she’d be “passing out” in back for a time, and to check in on her a little before noon so she could be up in time to do lunch kitchen duties.  I had gotten multiple comments later that “Oh yea, she was OUT, didn’t react at all to us being around her and talking.”  Well yes, she is good at that, she has a superpower, if she needs to zonk herself out, within a minute she can just be gone almost regardless of where.  She did it herself, folks!

And that hour went quickly.  Woke Confetti, hugged, teased her a touch, and spanked her ass once as she headed to do kitchen stuff.  Aaaand Mephki let me know she wanted to do announcements at noon, alright, time to get peoples’ attention as they were in the middle of going from one class to another… it was a 15 minute break time in the schedule, intentionally for announcements instead of an actual break, apparently (ya know: the schedule can say “Announcements anticipated in main space” or the like…).  There were thanks to people helping out, thanks to making things happen… I think it was at this point that MentalConfetti awarded Mephki one of the two aprons Confetti herself had worked hard on decorating.  It was a white apron with dark purple dots and writing in a spiral pattern, from outside going inward, something along the lines of “Obey your kitchen mistress, you want to do the dishes, you will safe word at cross contamination” or something to that extent, and very well-printed by MentalConfetti entirely by hand, she has a definite gift for art.

An Aside, Also Show Gratitude to Your Kitchen Mistress

If you’re curious, the second apron was awarded privately to LadyRissa, the woman that is, basically every single weekend evening, in charge of The Society’s kitchen, and entrusts that kitchen to NEEHU every year (even after a couple of… starting years of a very messy kitchen… collectively sorry ‘bout those years…).  Mainly given privately because she’d arrive after play parties started and when it was no longer time for NEEHU to be in charge of events at the venue, so it’d be overstepping bounds and fairly selfish to do more mid-space announcements after she had arrived. (Psst: if you go to The Society and see LadyRissa, tell her “thank you,” as she’s awesome and deserves thanks for all the help she always puts forward in making that kitchen basically her own, but people often mistakenly assume she knows people are grateful and thus she doesn’t often get told thanks…)

"Kinky Human Tricks" Demonstrations

Another class period goes by where I sat back near or in the Blanket Fort, then got lunch, chit chatted with a few folks, and headed off to the class Wiseguy, Lex, and I were co-presenting: Kinky Human Tricks.  It was a fairly decent-sized crowd, and we all had a bit of fun with it, though I did learn something about myself: when the class is almost entirely demos, I either need to have ideas scripted out OR I need to do the class on my own where I know the direction they’re going (or possibly both), as I was antsy for the majority of it, and felt put “on-the-spot” when it was my turn to demo stuff, even though I knew it was coming and had ideas in mind.  I’m still learning what my presenting style is, but I know it is far from improvisational in nature.

Still, it was a fun class, there were demonstrations of building arousal, where Wiseguy had a sonic screwdriver that made vibrations however the subject wanted them (which translated in the subject’s mind as a hand massage he desperately needed, apparently), Lex teased daja and another woman and made them very much want his attention and voice, and I cheated in bringing up MentalConfetti to demo making her “feel” various things to whatever strength I wanted, along with pointing out our comedic story in the beginning, where “horny” originally translated in her mind as “growing illusory horns on her body” before she was sure of wanting sexual things with me… in front of the class, though, now years into our relationship, she most definitely got horny thoughts and feelings going, and yes, I teased her about it briefly before patting her butt back to her audience seat and thanked her.  There was puppetry of various kinds demonstrated, and I showed some hypnobondage, where I tied a demo bottom up with physically restricting cloud, and pointed out that it doesn’t have to be logical, as long as it’s something the demo bottom is okay with…. No doing bondage using snakes if you don’t know that’s okay (plenty of people would have a hard limit against snakes, remember that).  Personal afterthought: imagine binding someone with cloud, then tying that cloud, like rope, over / in front of the eyes… then get into things getting “foggy”…  hmm… Anyway, there were a few more brief demos, and I felt things were getting a bit on the quiet side, so I found a crumpled up piece of paper, got MentalConfetti’s attention, said “kitty mind” and threw the paper toward the center-front of the room, to which she bolted after it like a kitty after a paper making crinkly noises.  A bit of back and forth there, getting her back to human mind a couple of times, then I was requested to demonstrate a “how-to” rather than just a result (heh, oops).  Thank you to daja for being that demo bottom to demonstrate a how-to on that one.  I had gotten a few thanks for showing something newer to them personally and more on the light-hearted and kinky side, i.e. pet play, for the rest of the weekend, actually.  The demo ended with Wiseguy showing his 5-point-palm-exploding-orgasm technique.  Want to know more about that?  Come out to a showing of Kinky Human Tricks and find out! (Psst: I use it myself on Confetti, it’s fuuuun!  And yes, Wiseguy, I’m fairly auditory, too, so I get my auditory kicks out of it!)

Unfortunately, Katrina couldn’t be there if MentalConfetti was going to be there, it was a whole “go and I’ll get kitchen stuff done” kinda thing, but I’m glad that Confetti was able to make it.  Next time, Katrina!

Ethics Roundtable Discussions, Ideas, Concepts...

So after another brief break, there was the Ethics Roundtable, and a lot of good conversation came out of it.  I honestly walked in expecting a bit of “Well yes, we need ethics.  Ethics are obvious ethics.  Ethics ethics ethical ethics ethics” kinda talk… but it was actual discussion, actual civil disagreement, and civil conversation around those disagreements, where we brought points to each other that others may not have thought of, yet.

Example 1: How consent “should be” the ethic, and how to model that, and how fully doable that is.  How those of us who take presenter roles may be “equal” to those not in presentation roles, but being in presenter roles at all puts us in authoritative positions to newbies who hadn’t met us before then, as we’re still experienced people that can teach they who have not seen or heard any of these concepts yet.  Imagine this: yes, when teaching, demoing, or presenting concepts, you always either say you discussed consent ahead of time, that you have agreements in place already, or you talk through negotiation then and there, woot.  When not “in the spotlight” to teach something, you go to play with someone you already have agreements with, and people who don’t know that think you’re modelling behavior of “I don’t need consent,” when in actuality, it’s that you have long standing agreements and the like, and a quick “Shall we?” “Yes” is often more than you need with that partner.  So someone sees this, and assumes that asking consent isn’t needed: that’s one of the concerns.  How do you fix that?  Asking consent and the like every single time in explicit and detailed manner is boring to someone you already fully know what’s up with.  Counterpoint: Let’s say you take the most boring route imaginable and do a whole negotiation, everyone in the scene is happy things are going to be happening… and someone walks in in the middle and doesn’t realize any negotiation took place… do they now think you’re modelling a lack of consent behavior model?  How does the original thought of “getting explicit, negotiated consent for everything in checklist format while at public events” get around the issue that people who’re there at the end may not have been there in the beginning?  We can’t watch for every moment of a public scene while still enjoying our scene, because the outside people are observers, not actually part of the scene, and sorry, but as long as it’s not inconveniencing or harming anyone, the people IN the scene have priority over the general observers.

Further discussions, such as how we can’t enforce mandatory classes, but we can make classes that get ethical things across sound appealing.  Consent classes never get people who need to learn more about consent, but classes about making things hot from the role of a subject, or how to play with a resisting bottom as a top?  Those can draw people in and include elements fundamentally about how consent matters, who it matters to (psst: EVERYONE), and can include grayer areas (i.e. seduced consent, persuasion, consensual non-consent).  Classes that aren’t specifically advertised as “THIS IS A CONSENT CLASS” won’t be a circle-jerk about consent, but rather a class that gets new information across to people who may not have thought about advanced and grayer directions of consent yet, and get the bottoms who DO SAY “But they are Dom(me), so what they say goes” to consider how them discussing what THEY want can make things better for everyone, including the Dom(me) involved.  How to negotiate, why a bottom should be active in negotiation (apparently my girl had a very interesting discussion in the Subject Roundtable Discussion about this one).  All of this, with the reminder that we, when it comes to hypnosis, mind control fantasies, brainwashing fantasies, etc., a lot of our fetish stems from lacking consent or violating consent.  I actually wrote a little about this in a previous blog post of mine on Tumblr here.

There was a LOT more discussion than this, and it was all quite interesting, bouncing ideas off each other, and very worthwhile to go to, honestly.  I don’t think a single person left that discussion feeling bad about any part of the discussion, or feeling like they were entirely unheard… some definitely got thoughts made aloud a lot more than others, but big shock, some people are more willing to speak out than others.  There were also spin off conversations that came out of it after the discussion was officially over, and one continued onto FetLife, as well, though I’ll admit to not being in a state of mind most days after work to read through tons of comments and replies, sorry.

I can harp on things about that for forever, so I’m going to choose not to for the moment.  Very good discussions all around, though.

And it was around that time that I headed back to the hotel with a couple of folks, got some delivery sushi (not the best I’ve ever had, but quite good still!), and made my way back to The Society.

And we’ll cut it there for now.

NEXT TIME!  Friday night play party!  Hot, showy public scene with MentalConfetti and I co-topping a red-headed trancey kitty!  Teasing an entirely different woman that’s a shy bimbo kitty!  Orgasms for everyone including a different kitty!  Further remembering as I write this that I seem to have a type for curvy kitty-girls!  And more! (okay, not a ton more than that, still saving up me spoons for Saturday, but thar be sexy NSFW content, yesh)