Wicked Lake House party

After coming back from Houston I barely had time to unpack before we were off again on Saturday for Westhampton, MA for the Wicked Lake House party.

Puck came over in the early afternoon and we had some Chinese food delivered (including an excellent Peking duck) and went over our agreements for the party. This led to a little mini relationship check-in that was very positive. I also made peanut noodles to bring to the party while we talked.

We packed our bags and walked over the Shake Shack to meet Piper and get some food and drinks for the drive. I got vanilla frozen custard with chocolate truffle cookie dough mixed in, which was deliriously good. We walked over to a nearby park and Jet picked us up in the Dykemobile, a Ford Explorer like the one I used to drive in my previous life.

We had a little difficulty finding the house in the dark and snow, but we finally made it there and found the party in full swing. I met a girl named Katie right off the bat, and was surprised to discover that I’d already met one of the party hosts, Curtis, at my first public play party almost a year ago ("Slumber party" - May 17, 2011). He's a little too shy to have his picture here, but it's easy to describe him. Just think Edward Norton in American History X and you're about 90 percent there.

Katie is a grad student at Yale and she made these cute earrings that displayed symbols for quarks. One had a “T” for top and the other had a “B” for bottom (she identifies as a switch and her primary interest is in rope play). Of course when I pointed out Katie’s earrings to Puck, the award-winning astronomy student loved them.

Katie had brought a flogger she made herself to the party. It was unusual because its tails were made of deep red satin, stitched into segmented tubes and filled with rice, so it was quite heavy. I tried it out on D (previously referred to as Dee), but I was kind of afraid to let loose and have the pillows burst, which would have made a mess of rice everywhere. So she got off easy >: )

The same couldn’t be said about another girl who did a scene in the living room while I watched from the couch. She was topped by a very large, muscular guy using a variety of floggers, paddles and even bundles of rope. I’ve seen Piper take a lot of punishment, but this girl probably surpassed her in this instance (not that it’s a competition or anything, of course).

Other than flogging D, I didn't participate in anything other than conversation. Many people were playing with D's collection of stun guns, violet wands and other electric shock toys, but that is definitely a hard limit for me - I hate electric shock! I even have this tiny static discharge toy that I got from the Japanese bookstore that I use when I take my coat off at home. It lights up with a smiley face to discharge electricity when you touch it to metal.

In the wee hours while Puck was having sexy times with Kiernan downstairs, I scoped out the sleeping arrangements upstairs. There was one bedroom with two single beds and a smaller cot. Piper and Jet were sharing one of the beds and Katie was in the other one, so I asked her to move to the cot so that Puck and I could share the single bed. It was tight to be sure, but we somehow managed a fairly restful sleep from 4:30 am to about 11 am.

The next morning we had a communal breakfast preparation with some people making bacon and sausage and I heated up my leftover noodles in a skillet. Just like the last party, I had a dream; this time about Puck, Piper and me being in a gang and finding an abandoned Lamborghini. We were constantly trying to keep one step ahead of a rival gang of vicious thugs who were trying to steal the car from us. I also enjoyed the view of the frozen lake from the screened-in porch for as long as I could stand the cold being outside.

At the dining table, I noticed the girl who had bottomed in the living room the night before sitting by herself. I thought she had really pretty eyes, so I slid over to introduce myself. Amazingly, we had so much in common that we talked non-stop until it was time to leave. She's from Houston and went to Bellaire High School for a time, just down the street from my old house. Her house was very close to Ben's house inside the Loop. She's been through a house fire too. She misses the food we grew up with, but unlike me, she misses the weather too. Her name is Stella and she's attending school at Amherst College, studying wildlife biology. It was really cool making such a random connection with someone like that. I invited her to come to the Steampunk World's Fair coming up in May, but whatever happens, I hope we'll get to see her again soon.

Jet and Piper took us to the bus station in Springfield, where we boarded separate buses: me back to New York, and Puck to visit other friends and her sister in Massachusetts. They came back Monday night and stayed over a couple of nights. Last night we went out to a French restaurant called Marseilles and had a nice dinner to celebrate my raise and annual bonus, which I received on Tuesday. The bonus wasn't as large as last year's but still quite sizable by most people's standards.

Puck had a French onion soup and duck confit, while I had bouillabaisse and rack of lamb. The lamb was the best dish, and we had a delicious French Malbec red wine to go with everything. We also had a walnut cake with baked pears and a maple pecan ice cream. We toasted to happiness and love, and our love of New York where two people like us can be openly affectionate in the middle of a crowded restaurant without anyone batting an eyelash.

Polys in the wild

It's been quite an eventful 48 hours with Polina, and following on the heels of our Great Adventure Shindig a week ago, we definitely have made the most of our dwindling time together. In four days she leaves for a week-long family vacation overseas, and then goes directly to college for band camp. That means we probably won't see each other again until Sept. 12, when she's taking me to her sister's wedding. But we've had some very good talks recently and I think we understand what's needed if we want this relationship to weather our extended periods of separation while she's at school.

Friday I brought Yoshi into the Honda dealer to have the engine problem looked at, and it turned out to be a major repair of almost $2,000 requiring a multi-day stay, so I drove a CR-V loaner all weekend. Saturday night I had dinner with my family, and we completed our Kill Bill series by watching the second movie. I think that's all the Tarantino I'm going to get out of them, but that's okay - I'm not a big fan of any of his other movies besides Pulp Fiction, which they've already seen.

Sunday morning Penny called me and we chatted for a while until Ryan showed up at her place for a visit - he came to the first part of our Great Adventure Shindig at my apartment ("Great Adventure Shindig" - Aug. 5, 2009). I packed for an overnight stay and joined them around 5 p.m. to hang out while Penny tended to laundry and helped her mom and grandmother work on a scrapbook for her sister's upcoming wedding.

Ryan, as you might recall, is a polyamorous guy who is dating a monogamous woman named Beth. We decided the best way to help him was to invite Beth to Monday's Poly Cocktail Hour so she could see for herself poly people in their natural environment, so to speak. After dinner with Penny's family, we three went upstairs so that Ryan could give us an improptu lesson in shibari (warning: link contains nudity). He performed this lovely tortoise shell tie on Penny (who of course kept her pajamas on):



He also demonstrated an ankle tie on me and performed some light S&M on both of us using a plastic rod from the window mini-blinds in Penny's parents' room. I know this sounds very kinky and probably weird to some people, but it was really just innocent play, and involved a lot of instructional talking about etiquette, role-playing and boundaries. Plus, we couldn't really do anything too loud or involved since Penny's parents and grandmother were downstairs working on the scrapbook. They even called for her once while she had her wrists tied to her ankles and we had to quickly untie her so she could go downstairs.

After we put the ropes away we sat up and watched an episode of HBO's True Blood on DVD before Ryan had to go home. Penny and I got ready for bed and watched six more episodes in bed together on her laptop until about 5:30 a.m. before we finally stopped to go to sleep. Then her mom woke us at 8:30 a.m. to ask about something, but we went back to sleep until about 11:30 a.m. before we finally got up.

We spent a good portion of Monday afternoon looking at her family photo albums and cleaning up her room, which has been just this side of a disaster area for as long as I've known her. We hung up all her clothes, sorted out rubbish from recyclables, got everything off the floor and vacuumed. Now her room will be more presentable for any guests who need to use it while she's away at college:



Ryan came over after work and we followed him into the city to pick up Beth from her studio right at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. We had a bite to eat at an organic grocery store and proceeded to Poly Cocktail Hour at China 1 Restaurant. We met several first-time attendees early on, plus our friends Barbara and Joe, Simon, Lyndell, Bill, Diana, Rob ("Karaoke virgin no more!" - July 27, 2009), plus many other familiar faces. Far from feeling threatened and insecure, Beth seemed to have a very good time hanging out with us:



The event was quite successful this month, and they soon had to open a second room to accommodate the crowd. Polina and I spent the latter part of the evening participating in some group cuddling and giving/receiving massages with various people:



Ryan and Beth left around 11 p.m. while Polina and I stayed until about midnight, saying hi to the owner Alan when he showed up late. We said goodbye to everybody and drove to Ryan and Beth's apartment in East Rutherford for a quick visit and to see some of their collection of erotic and BDSM toys. We got home around 1:30 a.m. and had some tea while I showed Penny some of my shoebox photos from my former life that were rescued from the fire of 2005 before going to bed.

After breakfast the next morning we finished the last two episodes of True Blood and we got a text from Ryan, saying that Beth had a great time with us the night before, and that "progress was being made" in resolving their relationship issues. It's encouraging to believe that their relationship will be stronger now that Beth has seen what poly people are really like, instead of what she thinks we're like.

I drove Penny back to Staten Island to pick up the things I'd left in her house from the night before and then drove her to her doctor's appointment. Then I went to the White Castle near her house and bought a baker's dozen of hamburgers and jalapeno cheeseburgers to eat on the way home. Once home, I went to pick up Yoshi and now I've got to get ready for tomorrow's trip to the city where I have two job interviews and plan to visit Simon to work on his marketing stuff.

Manhattan LoveFest IV

Tonight I went to Manhattan LoveFest IV - Summer of Love, a charity fundraiser benefiting the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, dedicated to causes for consenting adults who engage in alternative sexual and relationship expressions, and Fractured Atlas, a non-profit organization that provides services and support to artists and arts organizations.

On the way to the event, I stopped by to visit Polina at work - she works at Ciao Bow Wow in the Financial District as a dog sitter. One of the dogs, a boxer named Odysseus, took a liking to my fishnet hose and put a few rips in it, which I guess made my outfit a little more punk-y. He must have found the pattern irresistible.

I made my way to the Happy Endings Lounge and met my friend Lyndell at the door where she was a volunteer greeter. I talked with her for a while and then got a free chair massage from a tall, handsome black masseuse named Chaka. I haven't had a massage in such a long while - it felt wonderful. The next booth over had a Sybian machine (which costs around $1,400) that people were taking turns trying out. I also saw Rob there, whom I met a couple weeks ago at Poly Cocktail Hour and again last week at the Adventure Quest play.

The first program I attended was given by Steven Speliotis, who did a demonstration of Shibari, a form of erotic Japanese bondage. He demonstrated on a young woman named Alexandra, who is a aerial performance artist and teaches pole dancing classes. Using braided nylon ropes, they showed how to make intricate knots that stimulate erogenous zones on the body by applying and releasing tension, and controlling blood flow to different parts of the body, making them more sensitive to touch.

Then they demonstrated how to use a vibrator on the ropes, which transmit the vibrations to multiple parts of the body simultaneously. The audience was encouraged to participate by holding wrist knots extending Alexandra's arms, and applying the vibrator. After the program I chatted with him and Alexandra and her partner Michael before moving on to the next program upstairs.

The next presentation was by my friend Morpheus, who did an introductory course on BDSM. Using a volunteer from the audience, he demonstrated his expertise with various toys, such as a leather whip (which made an impressive "crack"), flogging with a martinet, and a violet wand, a device that generates static electricity which can be applied through the wand or through the fingers, tongue or lips. But he also talked about BDSM etiquette and the need for proper communication to make the experience a pleasureable and consensual transfer of energy from one person to another.

For the third hour, I listened in on Diana Adams' talk about Polyamory 101, a subject I obviously have plenty of expertise in already. Alexandra, who is poly, chimed in on the topic, but I didn't see Rob there. I saw my friend Kerry (she's Diana's girlfriend) and we listened together for a while, then went off to chat privately for a bit. Kerry is coming to our Great Adventure Shindig next week, so we discussed plans for that. After Diana's talk was done, I talked a bit more with Lyndell, then left to go home.