Fet-life is a weird thing. I mean, don’t get me wrong it’s a fantastic resource and a massive boon to my social life. But after last night’s London Munch I decided I really should get around to updating my Fetish list.
Except it’s not as simple as that.
Take rope, for example. A quick glance of the available options offers up:
“Rope”
“Rope Bondage”
“Rope Bondage & Suspension”
“Kinbaku”
“Shibari”
“Rope Rope Rope Rope Rope”
But worse than that, for each one there are multiple options for how ‘into’ something you are and whether you want to give, receive, wear, watch others wear…
I knew I was doomed when I saw:
[USER] is into Benedict Cumberbatch (receiving)
So any attempt at comprehensively representing even one kink is borderline impossible. So I can go through a list and try to cover most of the bases, but it’s a bit like wikipedia or TV Tropes in that once you start, it’s really difficult to draw the line.
I’ve mentioned before that I’m a bit of a sexual Magpie, so looking at the infinitely fractal list of things people have suggested is a dangerous way of losing all grip on time, sexuality and the very fabric of existence itself.
Charlie Forrest is into Rope (everything to do with)
Charlie Forrest is curious about everything (everything to do with)
The Big Bad Book of Spanking Positions is available now.
First up I will just say that I’m a long-term fan of Peter Birch and that his books almost certainly had a terribly corrupting influence upon me as a young lad… What I’m saying is: blame him for everything!
Well, where to begin. To start with let’s go for the book’s weaker aspects. The plot is minimal, in fact one might be tempted to think that this isn’t really a piece of erotica at all. There are words, certainly, but these are minimal, they seem to correspond to the images on the pages, but there’s no clear sense of narrative.
On the plus side, the pictures themselves are rather lovely. In fact, whilst we’re on the subject I want to bring up something I don’t usually talk about, the sheer physicality and production values of the book itself. It’s a hefty A4 size, and manages to be the only book on my shelf bigger than Midori’s ‘The Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage‘, which is impressive. This is a book that’s just daring you to use the adjective “coffee table”. Internally it’s mostly pictures or rather ‘plates’. You see all the images are presented as fuzzy edged ovals that evoke the feel of a Penguin children’s picture book. That said most of the images in this book are most definitely not suitable for children and overall there’s an enthralling mixture of the innocent and straightforward with the most definitely adult and playful.
On the downside I’ll first up say that it is a little short. This is a particular drawback when set against the book’s hefty price tag. There’s also a notable absence of variety in terms of sex and body type of the models. And as we’re talking about the production values it’s also let down a little by paper that just feels a bit too fragile for a coffee table book. These gripes aside, this is a rather esoteric book and I think it’s a case of if you ‘get’ it then it will doubtless have a well-earned place on your bookshelf. One for the discerning spanko… and Christmas is just around the corner.
I had fun last night. No, not that sort, something far better. I went to one of the live shows of Welcome to Nightvale (if you’re not familiar with it then, frankly, you should stop reading this right now and go and get caught up, it should only take about 24 hours!)
Don’t believe me, here’s a very blurry photo of the event:
On the way in we had to shuffle single file through the doors and present our tickets. It was only as we passed through the doors that two thoughts occurred to me:
“Hmm, I wonder if they’re going to do bag searches?”
And,
“Oh fuck I hope they’re not doing bag searches!”
A quick mental inventory revealed that yesterday, or indeed on most days of the week, my normal bag, the one I take to the office and that sits under my perfectly normal desk, will contain (amongst other things):
"Turns out it was my blowjob not yours on my top."
"What the fuck?!?"
"Blood! Blood, not blowjobs. Fucking autocorrect."
"I don't even know how those two things got confused."
"Me neither, see you in traumatising."
"I worry about you sometimes."
Over the past year my phone seems to have developed a rather macabre sense of humour. It’s a bit like the squiggly blue lines in Microsoft Word. Not the vulgar red of a spelling error, or snooty green of grammatical fail. But rather a suggestion that perhaps instead of “industrial cone crusher” you meant to write “industrial bone crusher”.
But niggling at the back of my mind is the thought of my phone turning around one day and screaming :
“You! I learned it from watching you.”
So to assess the damage here are the words my phone has learnt from me:
#69dlw
#anyexcuse
#crapreadingmaterial
[the hashtags go on for a while… highlights include]
I have a confession to make, I am in recovery from a behavioural disorder. One perhaps even worse than my decade of almost vegetarianism and the scurvy incident. The truth is I was once, no, not even once, I was repeatedly… a Morris dancer (I shan’t recount my exploits here but I will just mention that I once took part in a successful sixteen man vandals, including a full Litchfield hay). So when presented with the prospect of reading Morris dancing erotica (no, wait, that sentence doesn’t scan) how could I possibly refuse?
Spring in My Step is a pretty vanilla piece by my usual standards. It’s also surprisingly short at a little over a hundred pages (yes I read in paperback mostly, don’t judge me). But what it loses in length it makes up for in cheery ease of reading. There’s a good hearty pace to the story that treads the line between dragging on too long and making you feel like you were cheated. You also get a fair amount of banging for your buck. There are a good number of sex scenes for the length and these are well handled although tending slightly towards the shorter side. Good fun but not earth shattering; sexy whilst managing to avoid getting too mechanical.
Perhaps more impressively is the amount of plot going on. Yes it does come down to girl meets boy, girl suspects boy’s a bit of a twat, but mix in a documentary film maker, inter-Morris side politicking and it’s actually pretty busy. I enjoyed it, although I do wonder whether my pre-existing familiarity with ‘squires’ ‘border’ ‘hays’ and ‘baldrics’ made it an easier read than for someone who’s soul hasn’t been tainted by English folk traditions.
There are other criticisms too, lots of the characters are relatively functional and the main conflict in the piece hinges on the narrator caring a little bit too much about the politics of Morris dancing, but at this point I’m really scraping the barrel.
Spring in My Step is worth reading if nothing else than for the novelty of having read it. And if someone you care about suffers from the affliction of Morris dancing, well, I can’t say this will help, but it will certainly make for an interesting Christmas Present.
Words can have a powerful effect on people, we all know this, but it’s sometimes surprising how indifferent we are about how we use them. Sometimes the way we phrase something can have almost as much meaning as the words themselves.
For example. It’s not possible, in life to achieve absolutely anything. Somethings just aren’t possible (no matter how hard you try, that jet-ski just won’t work on lava, I’m sorry!). But the way we would naturally construct that sentence in English is, “You can’t do anything.” Which, depending on your emphasis can be cripplingly critical. But this isn’t just limited to what we say about other people.
In gaelic you wouldn’t say “I am sad,” you would say, “I have a sadness on me.” In Italian you are never hungry, you only, “have hunger.”
It’s an interesting rabbit hole to peer down and it’s sometimes worth taking a moment to be mindful of how you express things.
A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of doing some rope practice with somebody. We did a hip harness and ended up doing a close to the ground and rather brief suspension from it. It turned out that this was their first time being suspended and afterwards I thanked them for letting me be a part of their first suspension. Not, “thank you for letting me tie you up.”
I don’t mean this in a condescending ‘look I have given you the gift of agency, aren’t I nice’ kind of way. I think it’s just as important to be mindful of this on the other side too. For example, when I talk to people about my first spanking, there is absolutely no doubt in my head that it was my experience, one that was fascinating and transformative and one that I was very happy to share with the other person. But it was mine Dammit!
Except of course it wasn’t. Because life is never that simple, and words usually aren’t enough. Which is all the more reason to use them carefully.
My arms ache, my palms and fingers are raw, I’m kind of sweaty and have just spotted some interesting bruises on one arm. Yes, that’s right, I’ve been roping again… (and in case you were wondering I re-checked the spelling of that last sentence about eighteen times).
Rather than try to shoe-horn a link to erotica and writing into this I just thought I’d brain fart some thoughts on what I like about rope.
I think a large part of it is the people. The rope scene (or at least that of it that I’ve been exposed to) seems to be characterised by happy people. I mean, when people are doing rope, an awful lot of the time the most noticeable things going on are smiles, and laughter. There’s a very real sense of playfulness about things. Not that I’m suggesting these things are in any way lacking in other kink circles it just seems to be… more with rope folks. Like somebody’s been playing with the graphic equalizer on the stereo. The song is the same, but right now there’s an awful lot of treble filled with squawks of glee.
One of the things I’m really coming to love about the kink world is its endless ability to present me with situations that I never thought I’d encounter.
Unfortunately as previously discussed, I’m not always the best at recognising situations and, when I do, can often be pretty poor about articulating my desires. Whilst my immediate answer is often “Umm…” When, with the benefit of a few hours (or days) thought the answer is far more likely to be a definite “Holy fuck yes that sounds like fun!”
This particular incident took some real processing because I had to disentangle how much of this was me and how much was stuff that I’ve read.
For many years I was something of an armchair kinkster. An odd by-product of that is that sometimes I’ll be incredibly turned on by the idea of something not because of some unspecified deep-seated longing, but because I read about it in a book by a quite good writer and, well, quite frankly there are people out there who could make tooth extraction sexy [that last bit was a lie, this is impossible and please please nobody ever try to eroticise this, I don’t think I could handle it]. I make no secret of the powerful influence Penny Birch had on my as an adolescent and pony play is something of a recurring theme, leading to the following thought process.
That sounds like fun.
Wait, does it really or is it just because I’ve read about it?
What do you mean?
Has reading this stuff… changed me?
But it still sounds like fun yeah? So what’s the difference?
As Part of her blog tour for the release of Undone, Kristina Lloyd answered a few questions about, well, everything.
When did you first start writing fiction?
In school, like most people. I wrote stories for class and plays for my friends to perform in. All the plays were about people watching TV and then, woah, shit gets weird! I didn’t start writing creatively, and independent of prompts from others, until I was in my early twenties. And of course, I wrote some fairly awful stuff because I knew nothing and was trying too hard.
When did you first start writing erotic fiction?
Several years after the fairly awful stuff! Combining sex and writing, two things I’m very keen on, suddenly seemed like a great idea. I sold the first piece I sent out and had shorts and two novels published over the following few years. Then I quit writing erotica for a while and returned to the genre when my novels were re-issued.
When writing “Undone” what made you choose the diary format? What were the advantages and disadvantages?
Lana, my protagonist and the diary writer, says she needs to write a journal to help keep her head together and to create a record events that might prove useful if the police call her in for questioning.
However, why I chose to give Lana a diary narrative is a whole different issue, and not one I can delve into without spoiling the story. Sorry! Lana’s diary isn’t a regular detailing of the day’s events. She’s writing in flashback at the start and is taking several days to record earlier events. The diary format allowed me to splice very recent events with earlier events so there are hints of what lies ahead while the story is being told via the diary. The tricky bit was trying to keep track of what was happening when. I effectively had two timelines: the actual order of events; and what’s currently happening in Lana’s life as she writes.
I used a less overt, journal-style format in my third book, Split. Narrative and structure can inform stories in some very interesting ways.
What advice would you give to a novice author?
Never forget your reader. Learn your craft and use all the tricks you can to draw people into the amazing world you want to share.
Tea or Coffee?
Tea, please. Green, loose leaf.
Biscuit or Cake?
Biscuit if I must! I don’t have much of a sweet tooth so the biscuit that’s closest to a savoury item. Is a salty cracker a biscuit?
Handcuffs or rope?
I can’t have both? As objects, handcuffs. As hot, kinky stuff that makes me melt over and over, and is also very versatile, rope.
Kristina Lloyd writes erotic fiction about sexually submissive women who like it on the dark, dirty and dangerous side. Her novels are published by Black Lace and her short stories have appeared in dozens of anthologies, including several ‘best of’ collection, in both the UK and US. She lives in Brighton, England.
About Undone
When Lana Greenwood attends a glamorous house party she finds herself tempted into a ménage à trois. But the morning after brings more than just regrets over fulfilling a fantasy one night stand. One of the men she’s spent the night with is discovered dead in the swimming pool. Accident, suicide or murder, no one is sure and Lana doesn’t know where to turn. Can she trust Sol, the other man, an ex-New Yorker with a dirty smile and a deep desire to continue their kinky game?
As part of the build-up to the release of Kristina Lloyd’s new book Undone, Friday saw a plethora of blogs taking part in a virtual cocktail party. I was supposed to be there too but (partly due to tech issues… and partly due to a weekend that’s left me very bruised and stiff) instead am arriving fashionably late… three days fashionably late… because I’m that fashionable!
My cocktail of choice is an old student concoction, the P-ness. A half pint of Guinness combined with a shot fo Pernod. it’s sort of a cocktail the way that pepper-spray is sort of a foodstuff.
I’ll be writing at greater length about Kristina’s book in the near future. I’m just past the halfway point of my review copy and… oh you’ll just have to wait until the eleventh…
SPEAKING OF WHICH:
On the 11th of September, the release day of the book no less, Kristina will be popping over here as part of her promotional blog tour (Yaay!)
In the meantime I’ll leave you with a P-Ness inspired extract from The Woes of Nelly:
Late that night we’re curled up in bed, nose to nose, Cristina wrapped around the bump, her knees on my thighs, forehead resting on my chin.
“What’s it like?” I say.
“What?”
“Fucking, with a man?”
She laughs.
“You know just as well as I do.”
“I know it’s just… It’s been a while and… I don’t know.”
“Do you want me to get the strap on out?” She says.
I thump her in the shoulder.
“No, not like this. I just want to know… what it feels like for you?”
“It feels… sometimes it feels like, like I’m taking the whole world into me, you know?” she says, “like I’m not just fucking a guy, it’s like I’m making love to the whole universe. Like I’m touching something so big that it’s, it’s impossible and I can’t…” she trails off while making a grasping gesture with her hand.
“What about today?” I say.
“Today I felt like a gardener, like I was a farmer growing vines. I nurture and I shelter it and it grows, all because of me. It’s different, more gentle.”
“Do you like it gentler?”
“I like you because you’re gentle,” she says and lifts her head a little to kiss my chin.
I laugh and stroke her hair, closing my eyes. I push away that tiny part of my brain that whispers horrible things, that whispers Like? Only like?
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