Monday 29 March 2010

Things you don’t want to hear (when you’re tied up)

Some of these are probably half-remembered from things I've read over the years. Some of them might even be original ones I invented. In any event, I have actually used all these lines in play at one time or another...

1. I’ve thought up a really good new safeword for you. Let’s see if you can guess what it is…
2. Just in case I have a funny turn, remember my heart medication is in the bathroom cabinet.
3. If you hear the front door opening, don’t worry, it will be Mummy and Daddy coming home.
4. Okay, I just need to check the next chapter of the manual so I don’t make the same mistakes as last time.
5. You remember when I told you I’m a psychopath and the hospital is still looking for me? And you thought I was joking...?

BTW if you are reading this blog, it would be cool if you left a comment - I do like to know I'm not alone in my perverse interests and deviant sense of humour...

Have fun
F

Tuesday 23 March 2010

Flash fiction - The Fetish Commission

I posted an earlier version of this on my bondage.com profile a few years back, but I'm sorting through old files at the moment and it came to light again and got dusted down... and no, I haven't used the bondage.com account for a couple of years. I do have more or less current profiles on Informed Consent and Fetlife, if you're interested.

The commission was exciting, though challenging. The wealthy art collector wanted him to undertake a series of oil paintings with fetish elements, all based on well-known works of art.
Degas’ ‘Dancer Adjusting Her Shoe’ was simple; he used a lap-dancing club as the setting for the piece. Though it was just as well the collector was picking up the tab.
Klimt’s ‘Woman Friends’ simply required the addition of some leather, rope and a riding crop.
Brueghal’s ‘Hunters in the Snow’ was an excuse for a skiing holiday. The twist was what the hunters were hunting…
Renoir’s ‘La Grenouillre’ was technically difficult. Suspension bondage off a tree branch is not that easy if the branch overhangs a river and you’re in a small rowing boat.
De Lempicka’s ‘Andromeda’ was straightforward; the original anyway depicted a nude woman in chains. More chains, more explicit pose, and it was done.
It was the last one in the series that caused the real problem – ‘Number 22, 1949’ by Jackson Pollock.

Saturday 20 March 2010

While looking for something else...

I found an old file in my notes. You may or may not know that in rock-climbing, if you find a new and previously unclimbed way up a bit of rock, you're entitled to name the route. The names typically do tell you something about the nature of the climb but also the humour of the climber, and they're often designed to be attention-getting. All the following are listed in one of the best-known Peak District climbing guides, 'On Peak Rock':

Bent Crack HD
Britt's Cleavage E2
Brutality E1
Charm E3
Cream Team Special E5
Dangerous Crocodile Snogging E7
Debauchery E1
Decadence E4
Easy Action E1
Emma's Dilemma HS
Emotional Rescue E5
Fear of Flying E1
Future Primitive E5
Indecent Exposure E6
Kink E5
Neptune's Tool E5
No Pain, No Gain E5
Obscenity VS
Oedipus! Ring Your Mother E4
Private Gripped E6
Prostration HVS
Pussy Galore E3
Queersville HVS
Reticent Mass Murderer E5
Rippemoff E3
Sodom HVS
Stranger than Friction E3
Stuffed Badger E5
Trampled Underfoot E4
Twisted Smile HVS
Unprintable E1
Vibrator E2

Thus for example:
'We were going to go to queersville but as it turned out we tried pussy galore instead...'
'We had a go at Britt's cleavage - you really have to grope around for things to hold onto...'
'We spent the day doing dangerous crocodile snogging - the worst part was getting started, the further you go, the easier it gets...'

The difficulty codes listed next to each climb stand for Hard Difficult, Hard Severe, Hard Very Severe, Extreme 1, Extreme 2, etc... I confess I haven't climbed properly for ages, so I couldn't even do Debauchery without getting back in practice. I'm just stuck with Obscenity, I guess. Or Sodom, Queersville or Twisted Smile...

Also thinks - if you want to make your local area more interesting, start creating climbing-type names for roads and places, and persuade your friends to use them. Oh, so you do that already, do you? I might have guessed.

Thursday 18 March 2010

New story out, another accepted

The people at Xcite don't hang about. The story I mentioned last week is now out - 'The Incubus Candle', in the Spirit Lovers ebook anthology edited by Miranda Forbes. Five great stories in the collection as a whole.
As always if you connect to Xcite via the link on the right of this page (and then buy stuff!) it helps my income flow very marginally.
Meanwhile, I spent most of Tuesday evening and yesterday writing another story and the folks at Xcite have set what may be a world record for turnaround. I emailed it to them in the early hours, so they'd have seen it about 9 this morning and the acceptance was back with me by midday.
The just-accepted story is a departure for me in that it's a lesbian one. Hopefully it shows my lesbian and female bi friends that I've been paying attention and do pick up on little details of technique, emotion and vocabulary!

Monday 15 March 2010

On not feeling beautiful

This post comes about because I met a random person.
In the early hours of Sunday morning someone I know was assaulted and ended up as an emergency hospital admission. He's now ok - bruised and swollen, but ok - and discharged. This post isn't about him, however. It's about the woman in the next cubicle.
She was waiting for psychiatric assessment/admission. We got to talking. Her story was essentially this. She's a single mother with a professional job, and she's bought into the whole commercial/advertising beauty thing of how unless you're perfect in every physical way, you're worthless as a person.
As a man of a certain age, with a lot of grey hair and crows' nests, never mind feet, marching around the corners of my eyes, I basically don't care too much about the whole beauty/makeup/cosmetics thing. But throughout yesterday and today I couldn't help but notice how much advertising in women's mags, TV and every other form of media is trying to make a fast buck out of women's insecurities. And in the process people can get hurt. They can be made insecure and psychologically damaged. Which is what happened to this woman.
No doubt there's a longer backstory there but I see no reason to doubt what she said about herself, the effects of the social and commercial pressures on her, and the insecurities brought about by relentless media barrage of how, unless you're perfect in every way, your life is somehow worthless - and, of course, your salvation will lie in buying that new mascara/lipstick/hair dye or whatever.
So as a tribute to an anonymous woman with a psychiatric problem, what I want to say is: beauty isn't about physical appearance, it's about how you feel inside. Beauty is about feeling secure in yourself. If you can connect with that security, you look beautiful to others irrespective of physical looks and makeup. Don't believe the commercial hype, and realise that if you're still standing after everything the world throws at you, you're a beautiful person no matter what.
Now that's a story that seems to be worth writing. It may be an erotic story, it may not. But I think it's something worth running with. And if I do write it, and it gets published, I'll have to acknowledge that it's down to a random meeting with someone who was, at the time, in a very dark place. And if she ever gets to read it, I'd hope she'd like it.

Friday 12 March 2010

New stuff

Two pieces out soonish. A short story about an incubus, in an e-publication anthology from e-Xcite that will be out soon - no, I don't know exactly when 'soon' is, I've only just seen the proofs. And a short piece in the next Erotic Review, which should be out in the next couple of weeks.
Links on the right hand side of this page - and with Xcite, you're doing me a favour if you link through from here cos it's an affiliate link.
I'll post again with more details when things are actually out in print, or with the appropriate electrons appropriately arranged so they can come down wires to you.

Wednesday 10 March 2010

Gaffer Tape

Shaft of sunlight through curtains. It travels across the room, connects with eyelids, burns like menthol vapour rub.
Suddenly awake. Ceiling strange and unfamiliar. It takes half a minute to work out the lampshade, one of those big paper globes, is now in loose fern-like fronds.
I make an assessment of the other evidence. Bedsheet ripped. Smell of perfume on the pillow. Something pricks my thigh; a single drop earring, punky stainless steel dagger shape. Not one I’ve seen before. Put one foot on the floor, gently, in case the carpet has a sea-swell. Something crinkles under my toes. Condom, used, now wrinkled. At least one of us had some vestige of common sense.
Try to reconstruct last night. Memory failure. However, the tinnitus is evidence: I was somewhere loud. I can imagine, but dread, what my Facebook wall will tell me about the night. Still, it’s a best-case scenario: no female body in the flat that requires an ambulance, police, official explanations.
Two wine glasses, one on the table and the other on its side on the floor. I put them in the sink. Make coffee.
Flashes of memory. Friends, pub, vodka. Then somewhere lit by strobe flashes, figure in silhouette. Closeup of a delicate ear, wearing that earring. That’s all.
Chest feeling constricted, sharp pain like hairs being pulled. Heart attack? No, but how the hell have I missed the fact there’s a big cross of gaffer tape, navel to the top of the sternum and nipple to nipple?
A bath relaxes me, doesn’t soak it off. Quick history lesson: while beloved of light and sound engineers, the stuff was actually developed in World War II as waterproof adhesive sealant strip for ammunition boxes. There’s no way it’s going to release chest hairs. I can’t get a razor to the hair either. I do it the hard way. It brings tears to my eyes.
Another memory, a voice purring in my ear: “I think men’s bodies look much better when they’re shaved.” I check my legs, between my legs, feel relief at finding no unexplained hairless patches.
Lurk on Facebook, picking up context from friends’ comments. She’d worn a green dress, had long dark hair in a razor cut, had been on a girls’ night out with friends. I find out which club we were in. More flashbacks: her stiletto heel catching in the lampshade. A mole on her left shoulderblade. Still can’t remember a name, picture a face, recall detail of what happened during the acrobatics.
I speculate there’s a law of nature that says when really good sex happens, it happens in such a way that you can’t remember a thing about it. It’s frustrating. How come I’ve never heard about this before now? Is there some sexual conspiracy of silence? Something bad happens, I can remember every sodding detail. Is there a biological equation or psychological formula I missed that explains this?
Monday, another damn week. Present my face at work, open plan office, pulling together yet another company restructuring plan. Mid-morning, Kimberly comes in from some meeting. Her desk is opposite mine. She’s someone I’ve always fancied, good body, sharp sense of humour. It’s not something I’ve done anything about, because workplace relationships can get messy in a petty jealousy and backstabbing sort of a way. I look up and see she’s had a haircut, a sharp new razored style in her raven hair.
“Good weekend?”
“Mmm? Don’t remember much of it,” she tells me offhandedly. “A bunch of us went out for drinks. One thing led to another. You?”
“Same thing, pretty much.”
I pick up a box file to reshelve it and the damn thing falls apart in my hands.
“Kim, have you got any Sellotape on your desk?”
“No. But try this.” She rummages in her handbag, produces a reel of gaffer tape. Reaches out to pass it to me.
I look at her quizzically.
“What?” she asks.

Sunday 7 March 2010

I write for Xcite...

One of my stories is just out in the e-Xcite (electronic publications) book 'Red Hot Reads 2' - as you might expect from the story title, A Question of Control, it has a power-exchange theme. Look in the ebooks part of their site and you'll see it there as a downloadable PDF.
Another story will be out in a paranormal collection sometime soon.
If you use the link on the right of this page you'll be doing me a favour as I'm now signed up to their affiliate programme.
I'll sort out banners and stuff sometime soon...

Saturday 6 March 2010

Miss Adventure

This is 300 words or so I first wrote a couple of years ago. At various points I looked at it and thought it would be good to add more, make it a more rounded story. But I think it would be tiresome if the basic conceit was overextended...

***

She was lying on the floor of the cage, hands roughly tied behind her back. She had no idea how she'd come to be in this position, and wondered if it would become clear in a page or two. Probably not, she decided. Porn always tends to cut straight to the sex and the pain, not lingering on preliminaries.

On the other side of the room, her torturer (at least, she assumed that would be his role) was parenthetically assembling his tools. Squinting through the curled bars of her cage – were they supposed to look like question marks? – she could make out commas, together with one fat semi-colon; and he was laying out a series of exclamation marks, as though they were different weights and grades of flogger!

After several sentences in which he ignored her, concentrating solely on the tools of his trade, he turned. She felt exposed, not by virtue of being tied and caged, but because, as she came to realise under the gaze of description, her skirt had ridden up as she twisted on the floor, exposing her thighs.

'Well now, Miss Adventure,' the man said, 'I think it's time to begin.'

So she had a name. Not, of course, that it was useful to her at that moment. It was merely a convenient proper noun. And he was wrong about it being time to begin. Her captivity, her vulnerability, his ability to do whatever he wanted to her, had begun four paragraphs earlier.

As he approached the cage she gasped involuntarily. In his right hand he held a short but wicked-looking en-dash - and she remembered reading, in a previous story, how badly those damn things could tear into text – leaving it flayed – almost as if dissected –disarticulated – abstracting her from any semblance of sense or sensibility.

She tried to protest, but the gag in her mouth reduced speech to an ellipsis of full stops…

It's about time...

...I set up my own blog instead of, or as well as, having my stuff used on other people's. So this is it. Don't expect updates every five minutes. I'll put things on here as and when I have something amusing, interesting or useful to say. Equally, as and when when stories are published, I'll put a note on here about where and how to find them.
Enjoy!