Return of “Craigslist bots”

Posting on the Craigslist personals sections is kind of like sticking your hand into your refrigerator vegetable drawer, blindfolded.  You might pull out something wonderful, or you might grab the cucumber you left in there two months ago and forgot about.  Eewww.  (And I’m just talking posting and the replies you get, not what actually shows up at your door!)

The most notorious are the Craigslist bots, automated replies that get past the CAPTCHA mechanism to send you curiously phrased replies which are just tantalizing enough to maybe be real.  I’ve posted about this before once, and again.

Here is the latest variation I’ve received, within 15 minutes of each other (I’ve zapped the address domain names so spiders hopefully won’t pick them up):

From: Vance Hale

Well let's get this show going! I reckon I should give you my stats, I'm 6'1in, 180; brown/green. I'm looking for normal to small dicks. Later, man

And then this one:

From: Cory Ford

God, some of the posts are hilarious. Yours was great, tho. So I suppose I should give my stats, like 6'1", 177 brown/blue. Any age difference is no object for me. Meshing well is about all that does. Chk U L8r.

How to spot a bot?  Well, a couple of the old methods aren’t present here: a woman’s name attached to a post going to a guy, or directing you to a site to verify that you are real.

The telltale here, of course, was the similar structure: greeting, I should give my stats, stats for someone desirably tall and desirably slender, note about what I want, closing.  In particular, though, no reference to what my post was about, no racial information, and nothing that my post requested is present (like a pic).

You’ll note that the “Cory Ford” email address carries a woman’s name, though, and the “Vance Hale” one may as well (“willa”), but the email address is going to be hidden in favor of just the reply name in most modern programs.  I can’t for the life of my figure out who would program bots to be smart enough to attach a male name on an m4m post but still use a female email address.  (But that’s how spammers and virus writers get caught: they do something stupid, leave some clue.)

Grindr Censors User Text, Blames Apple

A week ago, I signed into Grindr and got an alert saying that my photo or profile text had been forcibly deleted because it didn’t conform to their Terms of Service.  According to the page they linked to, my crime was apparently in having (sexually) suggestive text.

This e-mail was sent to help@grindr.com:

I recently had my Grindr profile’s text zapped.  So far as I can tell, this was because something in the text was deemed “suggestive”.  Not explicit or offensive or in violation of copyright.  (Of course, since I don’t have a copy of the text that was there before, I can only go by my memory of how “suggestive” it may have been.)

We’ve become used to restrictions on imagery with social networking sites (gay and otherwise) — many won’t allow any naughty images in the publicly available pics (and especially not pics which depict actual sex), and some even require an identifiable face — so the similar restrictions you have had in place there do not bother me.

But now you’re limiting text?  Really?  And not even explicit text, but “suggestive” text?  Double really?

I never like to tie things to malice or stupidity where there may be a rational reason.  Is this something that was dictated by Apple or RIM in order to get in/stay in their app stores?  Did you get purchased by Disney?  Are you trying to back away from the market that made you popular for some reason?  (Because let’s be honest: Grindr’s #1 use is chatting up prior to hooking up.  Please don’t try to deny it.)

Limiting what people can say (or write) edges into the realm of censorship.  And even though it may technically be your right to limit what we can do through your system, if this over-the-top limitation of content is your own choice and not something forced on you (er, “insisted upon”) by external partners, I can’t help but think it’s going to bite you.  (Actually, it’s apt to bite you even if this is capitulation to external requirements.)

Here’s hoping you’ll be willing to reply to this in some understandable form, whether that’s a personal reply or a press release or a web page which addresses the issue in a generalized manner (and hopefully has guidelines for what is and is not “suggestive”).

(A URL to your existing Terms of Service isn’t going to do it, especially since it doesn’t have the same text as the app put out notifying me of the zapped text.)

Looking forward to hearing from you.

— Jim
Seattle, WA

I was finally able to dig around in their website Terms and Forums to find this:

Apple places limits on what can be displayed in a public profile.  This includes not only your picture, but also text.  Even masked text is not allowed.  This means all public profiles have to be G rated.  (link)

“Masked text” would refer to things like “f*ck” and “po**ers”.

So they are trying to pass the buck to Apple.  But when Apple did their booting of boobie apps a year ago, here what they said:

We have decided to remove any overtly sexual content from the App Store (link)

Here are the full Grindr profile guidelines, which specify:

• No sexually explicit or overly suggestive text.

In others words, no, Apple doesn’t say it has to be G rated, just that it cannot be “overtly sexual”.  Notice what has happened in part: they dropped the “T”, turning “overtly” (openly) into “overly” (excessively); by definition, suggestive text cannot be “overtly” sexual.

More to the point, though, they don’t (presumably won’t) define how much becomes “excessive”.  But by use of the term “G rated” (which Apple apparently does not require), potentially anything (sexually) suggestive becomes “overly” suggestive.

We shall see, though.  I’ve entered new profile text, referencing hanky colors instead of any spelled-out activity (previously, I said something about “put me on my knees”), so the suggestiveness should be more vague; you need specialized external knowledge to decipher things.

Wouldn’t that be a kick in the pants, if gay social networking apps running scared caused a resurgence of the hanky code, only in textual form rather than actual cloth-in-a-pocket?

(Hmm, “kick in the pants”.  That would be dark blue with white boot print pattern, right?  Teal blue with boot print for “kick in the balls”?)

(And yes, I know there are Apple haters out there who are going to try to lay the blame right back at Apple’s feet.  Your belief is already noted; only comments with some substance beyond that tired tirade will be retained.)

More fun with “Craiglist bots”

See this post for more on these sex-post phishers.

For some reason, I got several apparent Craigslist bot responses on Friday to a post I made on Wednesday.

The “I’m so excited I can’t type” Reply

This one came from “Nga Abdullai”:

in nice shape and average good looking would like to give u massage dwviwsncq

And this from “Syble Rendina”:

hella excited to do this never done this before, kinda nervous as well kilgjl

I guess the intent is “You are so hot that I’m jerking off here just thinking about— oh fuck, I just came all over the keyboard.”

In addition to the note in the previous post about replies mentioning things I never talked about in my ad, these studiously avoid referencing anything I did mention.

The “Don’t Scam Me, Bro” Reply

From “Cory Raden”:

What's happening?  Im a real fella seeking something hot...my stat is 22 years old, 5'10, versatile and fresh.  I just got conned by a doode on here so I am trying to determine if you're real or not.  But yeah this is my buddy's email so I got to get trucking but if you wanna, I am currently on my profile site so let's swap phone #s and photos on there to be reliable.  This way we can verify to each other that we are both genuine. Don't even respond back if can't even put any time, I ain't trynna to get scammed again.  P-e-a-c-e!

It was followed by a URL, a pic of a guy playing field hockey (me.jpg), and a pic of a guy’s crotch in tighty whiteys with a hard-on (mine.jpg).

And an hour and a half later, from “Mariela Barocio”:

What's going good?  Im a real guy wanting something incredible...my stat is 22 years old, 6'1, versatile and fresh.  I just got conned by a doode on-line so I am trying to see if you're real or not.  Anyhows this is my pal's email so I gotta get bouncing but if you are serious, I am presently on my profile site so let's exchange phone #s and pix on there to be trustworthy.  This way we can show to each other that we are both legit.  Don't even respond back if can't even put any effort, I ain't trying to get scammed again.  Cya!

And it was followed by a (different) URL, a pic of a guy playing field hockey (me.jpg), and a pic of a guy’s crotch in tighty whiteys with a hard-on (mine.jpg).

I swear, it’s Attack of the Mad Libs or something.

The “Married and Down Low” Reply

This one came from “Catrice Strickland”:

hey, straight guy here curious of this, wife just went out of town and i am wanting to try... n

Gee, guy, if you want to stay married, maybe you shouldn’t use your wife’s e-mail address for cruising.  She might find out.

(You’ll note that other bot posts came from Syble and Mariela, also women’s names, and the only Nga I’ve ever met was also female.  Suggestion to the bot programmers: use only male names on replies to Men Seeking Men ads.)

All five of these had Hotmail return addresses, and all with the full name that was listed as the owner plus one or two random trailing characters.  So there’s another bot spot technique.

Trip Report: West Coast Rubber 2010

Before the Trip

West Coast Rubber takes place in Southern California each year on Labor Day weekend.  This is year 6; the first one was the same time as Hurricane Katrina’s after effects were being felt in New Orleans.  The event was originally held in Palm Springs, but has been in Los Angeles the last couple years.  I attended the first 2 or 3 years, but I haven’t been to it since it moved to Los Angeles, in large part because L.A. didn’t hold a lot of attraction to me as a place to go for the weekend.


This year, lots of events that I might want to or need to attend piled up on me for Labor Day weekend: West Coast Rubber in Los Angeles; the Rain Country Dance Association Member’s Retreat (where I’ve been the last couple years) on the Olympic Peninsula; the Northwest LeatherSIR, Leatherboy, and Community Bootblack contest in Seattle; and a possible final VisQueens performance for Anchorage coronation.  (I don’t think the last of those came off.)  I chose WCR.

Travel: Friday

I ended up flying on Virgin America, as it was the cheapest option with decent flight times (10:30 am going down on Friday, 12:00 noon coming back on Monday).  The airline still gives off a lounge/night club vibe, with the white plastic and subdued purple lighting, but it’s ultimately not appreciably different from anything else running down the coast.  I did note that their boarding cards are only about 60% as long as most airlines; I wonder what that actually translates into as a cost savings for printing over the course of a year.  (Probably a whole lot more than you’d imagine.)

There is no host hotel for the weekend, although they recommend the Silver Lake Comfort Inn as it is fairly central to the event locations (Syren, the bars, etc.)  $130 a night for a 2-star hotel, though?  *choke*  So I priced around and found “America’s fastest growing hotel chain”, America’s Best Value Inn, with a motel about a mile from the Comfort Inn at $70 a night.  Much more doable!  (Although maybe I should have poked around on Hotwire and such to see if I could find something more upscale for that price, even if not as close in.)

On light rail to the airport, I got checked for ticket compliance.  This happened on my last trip (Palm Springs in July), too, but had not before that.  After a minute, I realized: light rail has been open for just about a year.  They always said there would be spot checks, but they probably didn’t do any for the first year, to encourage ridership to get used to the train.  And they may only be checking on airport-bound trips, rather than commute direction (since I didn’t get checked on those in July when I was riding the train to work).

Going to Los Angeles, a car is a must.  I found a great deal through Ace Rent A Car, located at the Sheraton near the airport: a Smart Car for about $12.50 a day, $50 total for the weekend, or about half of what it would cost for a cheapest rental from my usual choice, Alamo.  Unfortunately, I had forgotten how much easier it can be to deal with the big guys than these third-tier providers.  Long story short: I don’t recommend Ace — the price was great, other parts not so much.  (Read more here.)

The Events: Friday

After getting to the motel, I drove to a local store to get some groceries — the room had a fridge — and then had a couple tacos at Burrito King.  After a nap, I went to another Mexican place for enchiladas to round out my dinner.

Friday night was the Meet & Greet and Rubber Fashion Show, at the showroom net door to Syren/Stockroom in Silver Lake.  It was a comfortable cocktails venue with a fruit-and-cookies snack buffet and a hosted bar (at least for those with the weekend pass).  A couple photographers were documenting things, so once again I got pics taken with booze in my hand.  Sigh.

(Decent liquor selection at the bar, but the only beer option was Bud Light.  WTF?  And the red wine was okay, but the white wine was described by the bartender as “nun’s piss”; indeed, that intake of breath you do just before a sip said his description wasn't that far off.  Urk.)

The fashion show feature various gear from Syren, including rubber aprons (I need one of those!), dog and rabbit hoods, body harnesses, see-through latex, wrestling singlets, straight jackets, and dildos.  By being a closed event, they were able to have some nudity involved, and at one point, even some on-stage dildo play.

They also announced the new Mr. West Coast Rubber.  Rather than a full contest, they took applications ahead of time and the previous titleholders chose based on those applications, apparently.  It’s as valid a way as any, I suppose, but it took most of the drama and interest out of there being a titleholder; turned the title part of things into an apparent afterthought.  Doing the decision ahead and behind the scenes is fine, but who else was competing?  Can’t you even introduce them?

The winner is Reid from Vancouver, who always sports some great rubber gear when I’m up there.  He’ll do a great job, and might bring in a 4th Canadian Mr. International Rubber title.

After the show, I cam back to the motel for a fuck date with a hot Latin guy who drove up from Irvine (45 minutes away) just for a crack at my ass.  (Something like that makes you feel special, that you’re intriguing enough to take a good long ride to have a good long ride.)  I think I served him well.  Afterward, I went out to the Eagle for the Cub Scout event, and then to Slammer.

Slammer is a decent size sex club, with a main space that is mostly stalls and an elevated group blowjob area.  Several of the stalls are equipped with slings.  There are also two semi-outdoor cruise areas.  Slammer was pretty underattended that night, but I did finally get a hand up my ass at about 3:30 am.

The Events: Saturday

I woke up at 11:30 and went to a nearby diner (Alexander’s Brite Spot) for breakfast.  Piddled around for the early afternoon, trying to set up a play session, but no luck.

Afternoon event was a “slime pit” at the Eagle, from 4:00-6:00.  I got there at 4:15 and was the first rubber guy to show up.  The slime pit — actually a vinyl sheet on top of rubber padding, with lube on top, used as a rubber wrestling pit — didn’t get set up until 5:00.  Six of us ended up wrestling and sliding all over the place.

Somewhere at the Eagle (I think), we found a chair leg or a post or some such wrapped with kitted or crotched yarn, like a weird cozy.  I’ve since found the term “yarnbombing”, which apparently covers this — basically a form of anti-graffiti or a “random act of kindness”.  Why you would do this to a chair at a leather bar, and in plain brown yarn, is beyond me.

Took a nap of sorts — didn’t sleep well — and then out to dinner at Pizza Buona.  Don’t know if it was the sun, the beer, or the wrestling, but I was plastered all through dinner.  Didn’t bode well for the evening.  I had clam linguine in red sauce; yummy, but a huge portion, so I got the rest to go, intending to maybe heat it up for lunch on Sunday in the room’s microwave.  (Never got around to it, alas.)

The evening “Gear Up” dungeon party was at a playspace in North Hollywood called Threshhold.  Typically a het/pan space, it gets rented out for gay sessions as well.  Some “gay event in het sex space” events don’t work very well (I’m thinking especially of the Center for Sex Positive Culture in Seattle, originally known as the Wet Spot), because they are set up mostly to make kinky straight and bi women comfortable, which doesn’t tend to be what kinky gay men want — we don’t want comfort, we want edgy and dark and loud and somewhat anonymous, even with the hint of danger.  Threshhold was one of the better jobs of converting such a space for gay kinky use, with bondage areas and porn in the main area and low lighting throughout the rest of the space; barring the geisha and boudoir themes of some of the room, the space was reasonably conducive.  (One major omission, though: no slings.  Doubly odd because one guy I chatted with on Recon goes there for gay bondage parties and says there are usually a couple slings then.  I can only guess that the people responsible for setting things up for Gear Up aren’t fisters and/or didn’t have any portable slings available.)

Play at Gear Up, for me, was sparse.  Some guys were getting into some bondage and maybe some mummification (not my scene), but beyond that, it seemed to be mostly prowling and dick sucking.  Not that such is bad, if there’s enough of it and it’s good.  (There was some, and some good, just not enough.)  At about midnight, I was prepping to leave — was going to go to Slammer again — but I got convinced to stay, to get into some mutual fisting.

We decided to use the medical room, which had a table with stirrups (although ones that just extended out, not up; silly pregnant women!) and was better (and better lit, although still dim) than other options.  I got into his ass without much difficulty, and then passed him on to David (with big hands, a little too big for his comfort at that point), and then to Peter (with tiny hands, who probably could have double-fisted him if we hadn’t been at it a while already).  We then got me on the table, and he was able to get into me easily (which is always nice).  We played for a bit, but my clean-out eventually gave out (as I thought it was going to; churn churn went the tummy).

I used J-Lube with him because he was in latex, but I was in neoprene and industrial boots, so we used Crisco with me.  This was apparently his first time using Crisco for fisting.

The Events: Sunday

My search for a brunch spot for Sunday was fruitless.  A web search showed a handful of nearby possibilities.  The nearest was a coffee place where “breakfast” was four bagel options.  I aimed for one near downtown, but could not get to it; the street I was on turned one way and took me back across the freeway, to where I would have been six blocks away before I could try to find my way back, so I gave up on that one.  Another option turned out to be a restaurant supply place, and another was closed.  I ended up at Starbucks.  Sigh.

Sunday afternoon was a pool party at a house in the Altadena hills, a beautiful private location with a great view of the valley.  It was attended about half by WCR attendees and half by other guests or people who had bought just the single ticket for that event.

My left shoulder was hurting.  At first I thought it was from holding my own legs up during play the night before, but later I decided I probably strained it a little with the slime pit wrestling.

Unfortunately, after about an hour at the pool party, I made the mistake of accepting a couple hits of pot and I quickly ended up pretty toasted, to the point that I pretty much just quietly sat off to the side the rest of the afternoon.  Didn’t engage with anyone, didn’t go swimming, didn’t even walk around much (and thus stayed out of the sun).  My senses of time and speed were so fucked up, I didn’t trust myself to even walk around much, and If I sat down somewhere I could recline, I was sure I would fall asleep.  (I’m told now that I probably should have walked around more.  I’ll remember than next time.)  Pretty much wrecked my afternoon as a result.  Party was scheduled to run until 5:00 (I think), and I left about 4:45; just picked up my bag and left without saying goodbye to anyone.

That’s the third time I’ve been too blitzed like this to trust myself this summer.  First time, I was hitting it off with a guy at the bar, we had a couple hits with his friends, and some time later I found that he wasn’t there any more and I didn’t remember why (but I can guess) or when he left.  When I tried to go home, I couldn’t even get the scooter to start (probably a good thing), so I went to the sex club for a few hours (and didn’t do much there) until enough had worn off that I could ride home.  Second time, I got toasted with someone else and had some fantastic sex as a result, but then had to ride back to my hotel.  I wasn’t too bad, but being in a new neighborhood in a less familiar city, I couldn’t track well where I was on my route and had to stop twice to check the phone map; I was only going about 2 miles, but absolutely could not tell where I was or how far I had gone.

I’ve done this a couple times in the past at other parties, too, taking more than I probably should.  This is not a feeling I like, very out of control.  Intellectually and after the fact, I apparently am adequately in control, but my brain is racing so much that I feel that I’m not.  Obviously, I have to learn balance much better with this and limit myself to only one or two hits unless I’m at my final destination of the evening.  (If I’m where I’m going to sleep, fuck it, just keep me from falling down the stairs.)

(I’m such a lightweight.  That comes with never smoking anything until in my late 30s, I guess.)

Back at the hotel, I tried to nap, but no good, so I got online for some cruising.  Invited a guy over who was a bit of an SM top.  Some dick sucking and marking up my ass with the tail of my rubber belt (hurts more than a leather one!), and then zoom zoom, he had his hand up my ass.  Ah, very nice.  I appreciate going into some good SM subspace now and then.

Last formal event of the weekend was the group dinner at Casita del Campo, a Mexican restaurant in Silver Lake.  11 or 12 of us were there in gear.  It was an enjoyable time, but I was still somewhat toasted from the afternoon pot, so I was fairly quiet.  At the end, we said our goodbyes.

I had originally wanted to go play some more, maybe go back to Slammer, but with the pot slowly wearing off, my shoulder hurting, and no afternoon nap, I headed back to the hotel.  Invited a guy over for some dick sucking, but ended up sending him away after a bit; I just wasn’t into it, and I went to bed shortly after.

Travel: Monday

Breakfast at Starbucks again.  Sigh.  I really prefer to mix it up.  Maybe should have hit the Mexican place I ate at on Friday night instead, in retrospect, since they serve breakfast.

Returned the car.  Didn’t have nearly as long of a wait, but see this page for the aftermath on the rental return.

Talked to Cliff at the airport, since he had been house sitting while I was gone.  He offered to pick me up at the airport, and suggested we later go to a friend’s Labor Day Party.  After we got back to the house, we did some removing of branches off one of my cedars (in light rain), preparatory to taking it down completely the next weekend.

The party was a bit of a bust, with low attendance (due to the rain and too much partying by people over the weekend) and a lot of the people smoked (and frankly, we weren’t all that interested in the conversations), so we left after an hour or so.

Back at the house, we watched Hairspray (the movie version of the musical version of the movie version; that is, the one with John Travolta).  I haven’t seen the stage musical, but a couple notable songs were missing from this and John Travolta in a fat suit doesn’t make a pretty woman (or much of a woman at all), so I came away thinking that the original Divine movie is likely the best of the three.

My First Kiss

Conor Friedersdorf on The Daily Dish prompted readers to send the story of their first kiss.  SO I decided to write this up for the blog (and to send to him).

Frankly, my first kiss story isn’t interesting.  It’s the third kiss where you get the goods.

First Kiss: I was a freshman in high school, and there was some sort of Christmas party or dance.  An older girl — sophomore, I think, maybe named Dori? — brought over a sprig of mistletoe and kissed me.

Second Kiss: At our high school, Senior Prom was paid for by the Junior class, so all the seniors had to do was attend.  Which means you kind of have to, or you look weird.  Which means you have to get a date, and dress up nice, and take her out for dinner.  (sigh)  On the girl’s end, that means there’s an expectation of a kiss of some sort in the mix.  My date was my younger sister’s best friend, Amy.

Sense where this is going?

Third Kiss: His name was Lin.

Just short of turning 22, during the summer between first and second years of grad school at the University of Oregon, I finally decided I was gay.  (More on that tale someday.)  That fall, I found that there was a gay men’s discussion group at a community center just a block or so from my apartment, which I learned about from the campus newspaper, so I attended a couple sessions there.  I have no idea what was discussed, how “out” I felt at the time, or any of that.  (I do recall that the next spring, I went to some potlucks and to a gay campout with some of the guys from there, though, so I must have kept going regularly.)

I met a guy there named Lin, originally from Wyoming.  I don’t know how old he was — late 20s, maybe 30, I think today looking 21 years into the past, but for all I know, maybe just 23 or so, but definitely older than me and more experienced.  He was, I think, about 5'9" tall, with a beard and curly hair and a bear-type body.

Memory is weak after all these years — was that the first discussion group I attended, or after several weeks?  No idea.  I’m pretty sure it was the Wednesday of Thanksgiving weekend, and I was making cinammon rolls from scratch, to take to my parents’ house in Kennewick the next morning (a six-hour drive?  Maybe they were for breakfast on Friday?).  Lin came back to my apartment with me while I attended to the rolls, punching down the batter the first time, which had risen during the discussion group.

I have no idea today just how we met at the discussion group, or what I had told him about myself and my then lack of experience, but while the rolls rose a second time, I had my first roll on the carpet.  Fifteen minutes of rolling around on trashy rust-colored shag carpet later, wildly exploring each other’s faces, we came up for air, and I remember his quote exactly:

“Are you sure you’ve never done this before?”

Guess I was a natural.

All we acquainted ourselves with that first night was tongue.  Other gay things came easily (ahem) as well, but not until the next week, after I got back from Thanksgiving.  Getting your first tiny taste of sexuality and then having to spend the weekend with your parents a couple hundred miles away is not recommended for frustration minimization, believe me!

What is a “Craigslist bot”?

There are two types of Craigslist bots:

Posting bots are used to post ads to Craigslist.  In theory, this is a legitimate action, allowing people to compose personal or business ads offline — perhaps several similar ads for different items — and post them with a single button click.  In practice, though, these bots are usually a form of spam, producing ads (especially personal ads) aimed to get people to reply and be directed to a website or simply have their e-mail address harvested for spam mailings.  By some estimates, as many as half the woman-seeking-man personal ads are bot posts.

Here’s a site with recommendations on how to spot these bots.

Reply bots are more clever, replying to your posts to get you to reply back, again either to harvest your e-mail address or direct you to another site which will do God knows what.  They have apparently broken the CAPTCHA security measures to access the ability to send you e-mail.

Some of the advice in that post above is helpful for spotting reply bots.  Here’s the most recent exchange I had with a reply bot, and how I could have (but didn’t) spot that it was a fake.  He replied to my post, and included a pic of a shirtless reasonably cute guy who is even wearing “gay” underwear (2(x)ist brand), saying:

i would love to meet a nice guy for a fwb situation as well. i am free today to meet. how are you? what is your name?

• You can’t judge just by fractured grammar and capitalization.  I know plenty of real people who write no better than this, especially in online cruising scenarios.  It’s like their brain isn’t what’s engaged when they are e-mailing you.
• My post said nothing about “FWB” (Friends With Benefits, aka Fuck Buddy).  It was a straight-up (ahem) kink sex post.
• His post was sent at 1:44 am on Monday.  The odds of real guys being up and posting (and not strung out on something) goes down as the hour gets later, and reduces further after midnight on Sunday.
• Although his ostensible name is “Darren”, his return address was junk: tamikapateljtvq@yahoo.com
• The name of his pic file was also junk: fxKeDPlKwD0pTnkDLiPc9wxx.jpg

After I replied back that I was interested, but that I wanted to know what he was after regarding an FWB situation, given the kink sex nature of my ad, the bot replied (with two more pics, these with reasonable names like me13.jpg):

cool :) lets do this then yea?
let me know when ur free
just do me a favor and sign up on my profile
gaysingles
its a service i use to make sure the guys i meet are safe bc ive kinda had somebad experiences in the past
just make sure you say youre over 25 and it should be free
when ur done feel free to give me a call/txt (cells on my profile)
talk to u soon

“gaysingles” was a linked URL: http://www.safelydating.net/dl77, which redirects through at least three sites to resolve to http://tracking.singlesnet.com/redirect/5974?affiliate=127328.  singlesnet.com is owned by Match.com (along with almost 37,000 other domain names).

Needless to say, once you’ve received multiple times the same boilerplate “screening” text directing you to some site you’ve never heard anyone mention before, you know it’s a bot.  But you can tell a lot earlier, if you know what to look for.

Curiously, my final reply of “You’re kidding, right?” got no further response.  Guess they got the address they wanted, and now I’ll get Viagra ads.

---

Updated on November 1, 2010

Posted a follow-up with several new bot replies.

God Save Me from Muscle Tops!

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What is an “Open Relationship”?

Seattle has been called the “Land of Open Relationships”, which is to say that in many couples here, the partners are non-monogamous (to some degree), free to create secondary amorous relationships of various lengths and intensities.

(Or to put it crassly, they are free to sleep around.)

I’m referring primarily to gay male relationships here, but it extends to sex-positive straight couples in the area as well.  (And maybe well beyond that.)

In part, this may be attributable to Seattle’s (and Washington’s) rankings in terms of percentage of the population that is gay and the like.  (See this page.)  Some of its is also attributable to the high profile of the Center for Sex-Positive Culture, which embraces a broad swath of forms of sexuality.  And to sex-positive columns like “Control Tower” (by Mistress Matisse) and “Savage Love” (by Dan Savage) which run in The Stranger (with the latter column also being syndicated nationally), both of which have abundantly discussed the concept of polyamory and GGG (Good, Giving, and Game).

You could say that the idea of the Open Relationship is in the water around here.  (And we’ve got a lot of water around here!)

What is an Open Relationship?

In its simplest form, an “Open Relationship” is recognition within a couple that some form of sex outside the bounds of their relationship is acceptable; in particular, it is not “cheating”, since cheating requires such sex to be unacceptable.  This can have a broad range of possibilities, such as:

• Just Don’t Tell Me: one partner turns a blind eye to the other’s extra-relationship activities, knowing that stuff occurs but not knowing the details of it (or not wanting to know).
• When the Cat’s Away: when one partner is out of town, that partner (or both) is allowed to play with others.
• Kink Exploration: a non-kink partner allows the kinky one to explore activities and grow in sexual areas that don’t work for the entire couple.
• Three-Ways: a couple invites a third person to join them in sex on occasion.
• Triads: a couple adds a third person to the relationship on an ongoing basis.
• Secondary Partners: one or both partners develop secondary ongoing sexual relationships, often with the explicit knowledge of the primary partner.  “This is my husband, and this is my boyfriend.”  (This one is sometimes very hard for people to wrap their heads around due to our society’s inability to separate sex from love.)
• And then there are couples who merrily go their own way and fuck in whatever way attracts them at the moment.  (“See you in the morning, sweetie!”)

How does an Open Relationship work?

Cribbing some from Wikipedia and adding my own thoughts, there are some things which need to be established in the relationship before an Open Relationship can be viable:

• Fidelity vs. Monogamy: realize that there is a difference between the two concepts and embrace the idea that something can be “just sex”.
• Trust: both members of the couple have to believe that the other is going to be true to the relationship and not damage or jeaopordize it (which includes that neither one is looking to break out of the relationship nor will do so if the opportunity arises).
• Communication and Negotiation: open relationships don’t just happen, they should be created consciously (well, “Just Don’t Tell Me” ones tend to be created sub-consciously).  Rules and boundaries need to be set, need to be explicit (ideally), and need to be adhered to.
• Non-possessiveness: jealousy about sex had with others cannot be allowed to intrude on the relationship.

Is all this really possible?  Hard to say.  Do you know anyone in an Open Relationship?  More to the point, do you know anyone who you know is in an Open Relationship?  (Do you actually know the relationship setup of the people you know?)  Odds are very strong that you do know people in one form of an Open Relationship or another, but relatively few broadcast the details.  (One study estimated 1/3 to 2/3 of gay couples are non-monogamous, although that includes both Open Relationships and “cheaters”.)

Of course, there’s also the question of whether Open Relationships actually work?  Many gay male relationships — and especially ones which don’t have the legal ties of marriage involved — break apart over time.  (This is a version of “Half of all marriages end in divorce,” which probably isn’t completely true.)  Sometimes Open Relationship issues are involved in the demise of a relationship, sometimes not.  (I have had two long-term relationship end which were Open to varying degrees.  One ending had nothing to do with the Open nature of things, while in the other, he found someone else and broke things off with me.)  Do Open Relationships work?  Probably no better or worse than any other relationship type, but they do manage to remove the big stumbling block of “I want to fuck that guy” causing relationship problems.  (What would qualify as “success” here, anyway?  Does it “work” only if the relationship stays Open and the couple stays together until someone dies?)

Rules for an Open Relationship

Years ago, I got these Rules For An Open Relationship (specifically for an Open Relationship where the couple plays individually with others) from a gay comic book artist I know:

• Safer Sex Every Time: rather than just a pronouncement about protected vs. unprotected sex, this really means “Don’t bring anything unexpected back into the primary relationship, and don’t spread anything that is already there to unexpecting third parties.”
• No Mutual Friends: this is a version of the straight world’s “Don’t sleep with your boyfriend’s best friend.”  No matter how hot he is.
• No One More Than Three Times: because that starts to be a relationship, not “just sex”.  Unless you are wanting to go fully into the realm of polyamory and have discussed it and agreed to it.

I continue to think that those are good relationship rules, but I would add one more (from my own experience):

• Don’t Bring It Home: if your relationship allows play while the partner is out of town, do it at the third party’s place, or a hotel, or a sex club.  “Don’t fuck in our bed while I’m not here.”

And a corollary for those who participate in group sex and anonymous sex:

• The “Friends” and “Three Times” Rules Don’t Always Apply: if your relationship includes three-ways or going to sex clubs or group sex “play parties”, especially regularly held ones, it can be hard to avoid (or even keep track of!) those rules, so it is probably best to suspend them for such an event.  But only consciously suspend them, of course, and only within boundaries.  In particular, play party sex buddies need to stay as sex buddies within and only within the play party context.

(It’s worth noting as well that all relationships are fluid, changing over time.  What is Open this year should not necessarily be Open next year, as the couple’s needs change.  An Open Relationship which stops being Open does not indicate problems, just evolution.)

Will these rules and guidelines and proper communication ensure that your Open Relationship is successful and lasts for year and years?  Who can say?  Mine did not, but then again, the rules got broken: a play party sex buddy became a friend, and then became a non-play party sex buddy, and then became a “more than three times” sex partner, and then became the new boyfriend, and all this with communication of the situation only coming at the end.  (Ain’t that the way it always goes?)  On the other side, though, because we had an explicit Open Relationship, emotionally charged issues about “cheating” never arose in the final communication, just more analytic/process issues about “broken rules”, which means that the friendships involved have largely managed to survive the demise of the relationship, and that has to be considered a good thing.

What is the “Hanky Code”?

So you’re out at the local gay bar and you see a hunky number you’d like to cruise.  Then he turns around to talk to someone or order a drink, and you get a view of his yummy ass.  But what’s that in his pocket?  A colored bandana?  Didn’t you hear that those mean something, that different colors mean different things?

Quick, get out your gay phone (iPhone) and Google it.  Choose this link.  Or this one.  Or this one.  Maybe check them all out.

What the --?  There are dozens of colors listed.  How are you supposed to remember all this stuff?  And man, if you read the various lists closely, they don’t even all agree!

First, Some History

The Hanky Code is a list of bandana colors and associated (gay) sex activities.

In the 1970s and before, the gay community (and especially the gay leather community) used many non-verbal signals to help indicate sexuality and sexual activity preferences.  At the time, engaging in homosexual activity at all could get you arrested; engaging in kink activities would just make that worse, so these non-verbal signals were invaluable.  Non-verbal signals includes styles of dress — Levis, leather jackets, etc. — and accessories such as keys attached to belt loops, rings attached to jacket epaulets, and bandanas stuck in back pockets.  All completely innocent items, unless you knew to look for them and how to decode them.

(This, of course, is the root of the concept of “gaydar”, detecting other gay men amongst the mass of presumed straight humanity.  All the little signals that we read — sometimes subconsciously — which add up to “He’s gay.”)

Even gay bars and bathhouses “signaled”, via their names.  Straights might not think anything of a given name, but names with sexual double entendres — Hole, Slot, Ambush, End-Up — were as good as a neon sign if you knew what you were looking for.

Top or Bottom

The first thing you need to know is which side means what.  That’s easy: left is top and right is bottom.  Anything on the left signifies top, and anything on the bottom signifies bottom.  Hanky, keys, wallet chain, arm band, knot on a bandana tied around the neck, etc.

Okay, it’s not quite that easy: when this sort of codification first came into being, the definitions were regional rather than global.  The West Coast (California, especially) used Left=Top, but either/both the East Coast and Europe (I’ve never had it confirmed which) used the reverse, Left=Bottom.  Needless to say, this could cause confusion for tourists and business travelers.  By the time the 1990s rolled around, though, California-style had largely won out, although people still knew that there was or had been a difference.

(In terms of heraldry — coats of arms and such — things on the left are dubbed “sinister” and things on the right are dubbed “dexter”.  “Sinister”=Top has always seemed like the right rule to me.)

And for those who are thinking ahead, yes, putting something in the middle can be read to mean “Versatile”.  (Which itself means “Bottom” to some guys, of course.  Off or On, Top or Bottom, Gay or Straight: they can’t conceive of anything outside of binary existence.  Bisexual is right out.)  Of course, you have to be careful with that location.  It’s a nicely symmetric place for handcuffs, but hanging your keys from the the belt loop in the back of your pants makes them hard to reach.

Color Matching

In the case of hankies (bandanas), there are a whole slew of colors out there, for whatever uses cowboys and construction workers and mechanics (whew, is it getting hot in here?) might use them for.  That and knowing that our ability to accessorize is what separates man from animals means that there has to be a use for each color.

It’s easy to reverse engineer the creation of much of the hanky code.  Navy blue is probably the most common bandana color, so it goes with the most common activity: fucking.  Since sucking dick is so tightly coupled with fucking, make it light blue (“fucking lite”).  Red obviously goes to fisting, yellow to piss play, and brown to scat play.  (Yes, Virginia, there are people into that.)  Black and gray are another heavy/light pairing, and get connected to S&M and bondage, respectively.

(As another possible derivation of Red=Fisting, red flags are supposed to be attached to loads hanging out the back of your truck.  I’m sure we can make some connection path to that.)

After the colors that you actually occasionally see in bandanas, and the big ticket leathersex activities that go with them, though, what about all the other bandana colors?  And what about all the other colors of the rainbow, whether they ever actually show up as bandana colors?  (Well, of course they do, or can, exist: go to the fabric store, get a yard of fabric, and break out the sewing machine, boy!)

Why Are There Multiple Lists?  Which One is Right?

It is doubtful that the different lists were both created independently.  Way too many secondary items match up the same on each list for true independence.  More likely, someone created an initial list, and then either (a) different people fleshed out items they saw as missing, or (b) someone tried to replicate the list from memory and got some things wrong, or [most likely, to me] (c) someone decided to “fix” the list, either to match his own preferences or to just make his own variant.

(Ask country line dancers about how line dances that date from pre-Internet days mutated as they propagated, due to either poor memory or “fixing” the dances, resulting in regional differences that are sometimes minor and sometimes vast.  It’s like a giant game of “grapevine”.)

(I was once told that the differences are likely due to geographic separation between East and West Coasts.  To be sure, there has historically tended to be a lot more north/south movement and interaction between leathermen than there has been east/west, at least until the expansion of cheap air fare in the 1990s made that more viable, so I can buy this as an explanation.  This also ties in with the geographic left/right dichotomy mentioned above.)

Decades down the line, of course, what was once intended as fun (or even as funny) now sometimes gets seen as a Holy Artifact of Old Guard Leather, as though Marlon Brando himself whispered it in the ear of Larry Townsend from behind a curtain and Mr. Marcus then transcribed it onto gold plates.  (Oh, I’ll burn for that one!)  And thus guys today encounter the Hanky Code and they think they are supposed to obey it, and to do that, they are required to memorize this super long list of color/fetish combinations.

This is bullshit.  No one expects you to memorize the entire list, nor do you need to.

(Of course, it is an understandable belief in its way.  PINs, passwords, pledges of allegiance, Boy Scout oaths, etc.: our society is heavy on memorization.  And for those of us who are founts of useless trivia, something like the Hanky Code is very doable.  If I can manage to remember the sci-fi codenames, real names, home planets, super powers, and origin stories of 50-odd members of the Legion of Super-Heroes and the order they joined over the course of 50 years of stories and 5 continuities, then pfft, 40 color/fetish combos is a breeze!  Any geek would agree.)

So what we get today is guys new(er) to leather encountering the Hanky Code and freaking out at the long list, convinced that they are being judged as a Real Leatherman on whether they can rattle off the meaning of a coral-colored teddy bear in a silver lamé jumper in the left pocket.  And thus they reject the entire concept out of hand.

(That would be a titleholder or pornstar who wants to cuddle and suck on your toes.  Just for the record, you understand.)

Is the Hanky Code of Any Use?

That depends on what you think the hanky code is or should be or could be used for.

Does it assure you of getting laid?  Fuck no.  (Or is that “No fuck”?)

Does it provide a means of non-verbal communication, an invitation to cruise, converse, and pick-up?  Fuck yes!

Don’t be distracted by the (fun) junk content of the long Hanky Code lists.  No one expects you to be able the tell the difference between Peach and Apricot (bears vs. chubbies) or Dark Yellow and Gold (heavy piss vs. three-ways) in bar light.  Hell, no one expects you to ever even see some of those colors for hankies in the real world.  (Although I know where you can buy most of them, if you’re really interested.)

(Let me stress here again: all the myriad colors and their fetish pairings are intended to be fun!  Peach is for bears because bears are fuzzy!  Mosquito netting is for outdoor sex because of the bugs!  Mustard is for “more than 8 inches” because mustard goes on foot-long hot dogs!  And so on!)

What you do need to remember are the Big 10 colors: Black, Grey, White, Red, Orange, Yellow, (dark) Green, (light) Blue, (dark) Blue, and Brown.  (That is: S&M, Bondage, JO, Fisting, Anything, Piss, Daddy/Boy, Sucking, Fucking, and Scat.)  Oh, and remember anything you like and want to flag, such as Piercing (purple) or Puppy Play (bone print).

(Orange is one of the major differences between the lists.  One list has it as Anything Top/Anything Bottom depending on the side, while the other has it as Anything/Nothing Now (Just Cruising).  I prefer the former, since it echoes everything else in the list better; it gives a pig play bottom something to flag without being needing a dozen bandana stuffed in the same pocket.  And of course, I’m simply confused about “Just Cruising”.  What the fuck is that?  Cruising is what we’re all doing when flagging.  If you don’t want anything, don’t flag anything!)

Does the Hanky Code Get Used?

The Big 10 are just about the only colors you will likely ever see being flagged, and thus the only ones you really need to be able to identify.  Yes, I have seen brown flagged: once at IML and once at MAL.  Not my scene.  I’ve also seen Purple flagged a couple times.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen most of the other lesser colors, or if I did, I didn’t recognize them for what they were.  In the local bar, the only colors I see with regularity are Red, Yellow, Dark Green, and Black (but that’s hard to notice in leather pants), and sometimes Gray.  Yellow seems to have become far less common in the past decade.

So back to the question: does anybody actually use the hanky code?  Well, I do.  If I’m going out to the bar — or generally any time on the weekends, anywhere around town — I have a hanky in my pocket.  (Usually a red one.)  Will it get me a “sudden date”?  Probably not, but on the off chance that someone will see it and approach me, it’s a whole lot better than not having it there!

If you go to any leather bar — and definitely if you go to a big leather event like IML or MAL or Folsom Street Fair — you will see people flagging, and you can be sure they are doing it quite intentionally.

If you are just out and about somewhere other than a gay neighborhood and you see someone with a colored hanky in his pocket, well, odds are against it, but he could be flagging (like I do).  Does he set off your gaydar?  Does he have the bearing of a leatherman?  As noted before, a hanky in the pocket isn’t an invitation to fuck so much as an invitation to talk about fucking.  So go talk (or at least make eye contact) if he turns your crank!  Worst case, he’s a clueless straight contractor.

So, Should You Flag a Hanky?

You know, that’s ultimately up to you.

I know several guys who are completely disdainful of flagging, apparently under the idea that some people — straight people! — flag unknowingly.  As best I can tell, rather than get their hopes up that some random person they see might be a fetish match for them but actually isn’t, they prefer to toss out the entire concept.  Cutting their losses, it seems.

Others can’t decide what they should flag.  Does yellow send too strong a message, will it ruin my reputation?  (Might make it, actually.)  Does light blue send too weak of a message?  (Depends on how much you like cocksucking.)  Can you get away with two hankies in the pocket?  (I say yes, but three is pushing it.)  Three in one and two on the other side.  (Mmm, no.)  Should I wear red in both pockets since I’m versatile?  (Hmm, I’ve never tried it.  Give it a shot.)  Do I just wear orange to cover all the bases?  (To swap around the line Tony DeBlase is famously credited with, only if you’re into kangaroo shit.)  Faced with too many choices, some guys freeze and opt for nothing rather than risk going too far or not far enough.

Myself, I know from direct experience that flagging sometimes does work.  (I was on my way to a fisting party in Berlin, to a bar I had never been to before.  Someone else on his way there noticed my hanky and helped me find the place.  We also played later.)

I’m also cognizant of the historical nature and value of flagging, and I consciously choose to propagate this behavior both to show my honoring of our past and to promote those older rituals which actually still work in today’s world.

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Updated on April 6, 2010

You can even get a Hanky Code app for your iPhone!

I forgot to include links to various hanky code listings.  Fixed that.  It was remarkably hard to find one which featured orange in the top/bottom way that I think it should be.  And I found that Wikipedia’s entry has some oddities of its own, like attaching Rust to Pony Play rather than to Western Fetish like I think it should be.

There has been something of a renaissance of additions to the hanky code in recent years, such as:

• Lightning Bolt Print (Electrical Play)
• Bone Print (Puppy Play) — (with the color of the background signifying fist pup, piss pup, etc.)
• Mint Green (Leathergirl)

Updated on February 11, 2011

A recent Facebook exchange with my friend Lorelei brought up the discussion of what a plaid hankie she once saw might mean.  I suggested three options:

• Dyke Top / Dyke Bottom
• Scotsman / Looking for a Kilt
• Lumberjack / His Tree

(This last echoes off of the Rust hanky definition being “Cowboy / His Horse”, which is presumably Western Fetish/Cowboy Gear.  “Lumberjack / His Tree” would mean Outdoorsman Fetish — hiking, camping, etc.  Although now that it’s been proposed, someone will twist “Lumberjack” into shorthand for “Axe Play”.  Sigh.

Updated on September 8, 2011

Corrected a bunch of typos, added links, and revised/clarified some of the text, including adding the paragraph on gay bar names.

Three more colors which vary between lists:

• White: JO (masturbation) or Not Looking, depending on the list you look at.  As mentioned above with the variances with Orange, why would you flag anything to signal you aren’t looking?
• Rust: Cowboy/His Horse (which I read as Cowboy Fetish) on older lists, Animal Play on others.  Presumably meaning Furries/Animal Role Play rather than Zoophilia.  This may be a repurposing of an underused color to be something more common today, or it may be a total misconstruing of what “His Horse” would have meant in the 1970s.
• Lime: Pays for Dinner/Dines off Tricks on older lists, Foodplay on newer ones.  Again, likely an example of repurposing an underused color to be something more common today.

And a mystery one from a recent Facebook thread: what should Steel Blue be used for?  One person suggested sailors.  I suggested some narrow slice of police (state troopers?), since it is close to Medium Blue.

New Zealand 2010: Hobbiton, Bay of Plenty, and Rotorua (Tuesday, February 16)

This is just the sex parts of my New Zealand trip report.  For the rest of the report from this day, click here.

I’ve been trying to set things up via online connections, but I had to actually block one chap I was chatting with.  He’s 24 years old and apparently so desperate for a connection that he started messaging me multiple times.  When I broke things off, telling him he was too clingy, he messaged me 5 times in 30 minutes to say how much he wasn’t.  Indeed.  (Relating this story to someone a couple nights later, he was able to tell me the guy’s screenname from the description.  Guess the kid does this a bit.)

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Updated on March 15, 2010

New Zealand 2010: Auckland (Saturday, February 13)

This is just the sex parts of my New Zealand trip report.  For the rest of the report from this day, click here.

Met up with a couple at Urge I had chatted with online, but they have a kid and thus couldn’t host.  At Lateshift, there were initially more guys than on Friday, but fewer of interest to me.  I played with a couple guys and eventually got off (ended up in the barber chair again), but Friday was definitely better.

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Updated on March 10, 2010

New Zealand 2010: Sydney to Auckland, and Auckland (Friday, February 12)

This is just the sex parts of my New Zealand trip report.  For the rest of the report from this day, click here.

I was pleased to find that New Zealand threading on plumbing matches U threading; I had brought my shot nozzle just in case and was able to use it, which makes clean out a lot easier!

After going to the leather/bear bar Urge, I went to a club called Lateshift.

Lateshift is a sex club, with one of the best mazes I’ve ever encountered.  I kept finding new alleys and rooms all night!  I sucked and got fucked by a guy in rugby gear with a really thick cock.  Sucked another guy, then got into an assplay session with Roy, who I had chatted with earlier at Urge.  And then, when I was winding down, I sat in a barber chair in one room and started to beat off.  Very quickly, a hot guy came in.  He sucked my dick, ate my ass, made me suck his dick, and then fucked me in a couple different positions.  Very hot time.  After that, he wanted to sit with me in the TV lounge and cuddle a while, but I had to tell him no, that I had to go (because it was still 3 hours later for me, internally, and thus after 5 am to me); this hurt his feelings a bit, alas.

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Updated on March 8, 2010

Added links.

Updated on June 2, 2010

Mid-Atlantic Leather 2010

This past weekend was my 11th consecutive trip to Washington DC for Mid-Atlantic Leather weekend, aka MAL.

My first trip was in January 2000.  The previous year, Mr. Marcus had asked me if I was going to attend again, thinking that I had (or must have) attended in the past.  I had not, although I had attended International Mr. Leather (IML) in Chicago a couple times, LeatherFest in San Diego, and I guess I was becoming enough of a known quantity in the San Francisco area that he thought attending MAL was a logical thing for me to do.

In November 1999, I competed at Mr. International Rubber (MIR) in Chicago.  Years down the line now, I can’t say whether I planned to attend MAL ahead of that event (in case I won; I ended up as 2nd runner-up), or if I decided to attend MAL after having been to MIR.  I think Mr. Marcus’ comment came before I attended MIR, but I can’t be sure.

Anyway, think I have been every year since then.  I’ve attended the WaterBuddies watersports parties three times and the FFA/CAC handball parties twice.  I’ve been a vendor twice.  I’ve represented Seattle Men in Leather in the Parade of Colors two or three times.  I’ve been on stage as a titleholder twice, as Seattle Leather Daddy 2004 and International Mr. Saliva 2006.  I’ve been there as the spouse of a titleholder twice when Rusty was Washington State Mr. Leather 2005 and American Leatherman 2006.  I’ve sometimes had (paid for) a weekend package and sometimes not.

I guess that what brings me back each year is that the event is pretty much just the right size.  Local and most regional leather weekends tend to be centered just around the contest, maybe with a play party and a meal involved.  That’s plenty of reason to attend if you are also local or in the region, but it’s not going to pull people in from around the country.  In particular, such events typically can’t sustain a vendors market, or a wide span of play parties, or dedicated dances or other events.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have IML, which is just fucking huge.  Massive contest, a myriad of play parties and dance parties and such, and a vendors market like no other.  But there’s arguably just too much: too many options, too many people, even too many vendors (in terms of truly shopping for what you want/need; you can barely manage to find your way back to a given individual vendor).

Mid-Atlantic Leather hits in the middle of these extremes: big enough to be a draw, but not so big that it overwhelms.  Big enough to support a vendors market, but not so big that you can’t find the vendor or item you want.  Big enough to have accessory events to choose from, but only a few.  Big enough that lots of people deem MAL to be an event worth attending, but not so big that you feel like you can’t manage to run into all your friends.

A few other things worth noting:

• While MAL isn’t “too big”, it has been too big for its location at the Washington Plaza for several years.  There is a very limited amount of space for the vendors, such that each year we see almost exactly the same ones, in almost exactly the same layout; for people who attend each year, this ends up limiting the amount of time we spend in the vendor market (and thus how much money we spend), and by extension, how much time we spend in the host hotel at all.  (This year, I didn’t even enter the room where Mr. S was.  Too crowded and I knew I wasn’t likely to buy anything there.)
• They have also been too big for the lobby for a while, although less so than with the vendors space.  There used to be some couches and such in the front lobby — they were used as a puppy play area a couple times — but the couches have been absent in recent years to accommodate more men.
• MAL will be moving to a new hotel next year (the Hyatt Regency on New Jersey; I’ve stayed there for other events twice).  Apparently this one is large enough that they won’t (initially) have to require purchasing a weekend pass to have a room at the host hotel.

Will I attend again next year?  I expect so.  I did find this year that I spent less time at the hotel, and thus felt much more on the “fringe” than in years past.  Part of this is that I went to the FFA parties all three nights (like last year), which meant that I had to head there earlier in the evening.  While I enjoy going to the FFA parties, I don’t want those to be the reason I go — it becomes expensive to travel across the country for a fisting party.  (It’s always a trade-off: do I cruise the packed lobby for hours, perhaps fruitlessly, or do I bug out to an off-site event where I know I’ll get laid but won't see and be seen?  And how does the party price with free beverages balance against the overpriced lobby bar beers?)

I also stayed further from the host hotel this time than last year (although I’ve stayed slightly further away than this a couple times before) and was just generally disconnected from the hotel scene as a result.  I need to remedy that next year, or I may stop enjoying the weekend as much and will stop attending.

With luck, I’ll get my boyfriend to go next year.  I won’t even need the FFA parties, then, because he’s great about seducing guys into three-ways and play parties and such.   (evil grin)

Some notes about other DC stuff:

• The Lambda Rising gay bookstore chain is closing down this year, and they were having a 60% (and more) off sale on all their stock.  I bought a handful of leather flag pins for 25 cents each, and a raft of what they termed “demo” CDs from the 1990s magazine New Country (which included a CD with each issue; I had a subscription for a year) for like a dime apiece.
• Twice during the weekend, I saw people reading from a Kindle.  Up until now, I have largely dismissed the Kindle as a gadget fad, as a device that doesn’t do enough well enough to warrant purchasing one.  (And having worked on the first generation of eBook readers a decade ago, I know whereof I speak.)  I may have to reconsider that stance now that I’ve seen them in the wild; if people are actually using them, maybe they will last.  (I still think that the current designs are bland, though.)
• DCA (Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport) remains one of my favorite airport designs.  Ticketing occurs on an upstairs level, then you descend to a lower level where there are shops and restaurants and the security gates.  The layout allows those checking in to overlook the lower level and to look out through large windows to the gates and runways.  The entire airport seems more intimate, and passengers checking in feel that they have more information by being able to see where they are going (how long lines are, what planes are at the gate, etc.)

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Updated on May 25, 2010

Now that the iPad has been released, I frankly can’t see the Kindle surviving any longer unless it can retool into a generalist device.  There was a time when people had a device geared for this feature and one for that feature and one for the other features (remember the old Dilbert strips with the belt full of gadgets?), but the cell phone with text message capability killed the pager, and the smartphone killed the generic cell phone.  The Kindle could beat (live in parallel with) the netbook because it could do things the netbook could not and be used at times the netbook could not, but the iPad lives in the Kindle’s space and does more; the Kindle’s only advantages become the non-lit display and massive battery life, which aren’t enough in the long run.

What is a “Bear”?

Along the same lines as my “What is a ‘Twink’?” post from 15 months ago, the question of “What is a ‘Bear’?” came up via the comic Blur the Lines on January 19.

A bear is (select at least two):

• Large Bodied (could be either Heavyset or Muscled)
• Hairy
• Bearded

And thus:

• Big hairy guy, clean shaven?  Bear
• Beard and fur, but slim?  Bear
• Bodybuilder with a beard?  Bear
• Fat guy without either much hair or beard?  Not Bear

Cub (young bear), Otter (thin bear), Wolf (medium bear, or loner bear, or agressive), Pocket Bear (short bear), Kuma (Asian bear) — all variations on a theme.  If you want to slice and dice the labelling, go for it.

As for “Behr”: when the Bear Code was put together 20+ years ago, this meant “Bear with a moustache but not a beard”. Another sometimes useful variation on the theme.

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You can see that the Natural Bears Classification System does indeed have an “h” for “the BEHR factor”, for moustaches.

Unaddressed in that is the question of what we call someone who sure looks like a Bear, but who is adamant about not being one.  (I vote for “Traitor”.)

My Bear Code: B3h f t dc k+ s+ e+ q  (“B3h” indicates a B3 beard with a standout moustache.)

Europe 2009: Aftermath

This is just the sex parts of my European trip report.  For the rest of the report from this day, click here.

I had some nasty constipation after returning home, almost nothing passing through.  No pain or cramps, just minimal movements, despite ample food going in.  I finally realized that I’ve suffered from this before.  It’s the lack of intestinal florae, washed away from the repeated fisting cleanout regimen.  I need to get some live-culture yogurt in me to restore things.  (Yup, that seems to have helped; started improving just a couple hours after a dish of yogurt.)

In Berlin, I bought a 2010/2011 (two year) large format flip calendar, with the imagery on each page being some good, strong BDSM pics.  (That is, pics that look like real BDSM scenes, not stuff staged for porn videos.)  At €10 a pop, a good deal.  So I bought two, the second to be donated to be a fundraiser item: a large format German BDSM calendar should easily be auctionable for more than $15.

Out & About, a gay guide webzine from Denmark, has an article about the Mr. Leather OutGames contest (among its other coverage of the OutGames), including this pic of the five contestants.  (Photo by Claus og Tonny Bønløkke Hertz.)

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Updated on February 5, 2010

The calendar sold for $20 at GLPW’s Spanksgiving event on Thanksgiving night.  Frankly, it should have gone for almost double that; we need to find a way to boost attendance (and participation) at those events.

Updated on May 19, 2010

Europe 2009: Berlin (Sunday, August 2)

This is just the sex parts of my European trip report.  For the rest of the report from this day, click here.

Since there was another party I wanted to go to that night, I headed back to Schöneberg.  On the way, I passed by the gay sunbathing areas of Tiergarten.  Apparently nude sunbathing is permitted!  I also met a cute Italian boy, Kurt — no, he wasn’t naked at the time — dressed in A&F gear with his collar turned up.

Kurt gave me a heavy cruise in Tiergarten, so I sat down on a bench and got him to approach.  Cute, but in his A&F attire, I figured him for a bit of a twinkie.  (He says A&F is pretty much only worn by gay boys in Germany.  I told him that’s true in the States, too, even if those wearing it don’t quite realize it!)  I offered to invite him back to the hotel, but said he might be scared.  To the contrary, he said it was the red stripes on my shorts that he was attracted by.  And on that note, I had one of the best fisiting experiences of the trip, one that we had to cut short because he was meeting a friend at a local bar.  I would have happily skipped the party that night to play a few hours more with Kurt.

I took the U-Bann out to Prenzlauer Berg, to the bar Stahlrohr 2.0.  (2.0 because it had moved a few years back.)  Several of the guys from the Kellerloch party were there again.

The Stahlrohr party was, of course, a fisting party.  Walking from the U-Bann, I met and talked with Matthieu (I’m doing my best guess for the spelling of some of these guys’ names, you realize), who spotted my black and red leather wristband.  Joachen, who had invited me to Kellerloch, fisted me, although I don’t think he got all the way in.  My ass was getting tender!  I was making lots of animal noises, though, and a bunch of guys stuck their heads around the corner to see who this new guy was whose voice they didn’t recognize.  I then talked for a while with Sebastien, and Marcel and I had a rematch of the previous night, well, of the part with my hand up his ass.

One pleasant surprise I’ve had this trip is the simple willingness of Europeans to engage in safer sex behaviors.  In the States, you find way too many guys who not only like to bareback, they will only do so.  You find ones (often enough to not be rare!) who will call things off if you want a condom to be used (whether as top or bottom), and occasionally ones who will actually be angry with you for wanting safer sex.  (And this almost never has to do with latex allergies.)  Seemingly not so with the Europeans; only a couple even tried any barebacking (including one in a dark room in Amsterdam whom I pushed away, disgusted; he might not have been European, in retrospect), and not a one made a peep at pausing to put on a rubber.

Actually, though, I didn’t do a whole lot of pursuit of fucking, and much of that was in fisting party contexts, so maybe this is the mark of fisters more than general Europeans.  While many prefer to play without gloves (and I could go into the pros and cons of that), it was always a negotiated part of each play session, and none I played with would say no to using gloves or having the top use them.  As I think of it in the States, at the big parties I have been to in Seattle, DC, and Chicago, I do think that this is more a standard behavior of fisters worldwide, perhaps.  But I’ll still think positively of the Europeans in this light, regardless.

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Updated on February 23, 2010

Updated on May 18, 2010

Europe 2009: Berlin (Saturday, August 1)

This is just the sex parts of my European trip report.  For the rest of the report from this day, click here.

I cruised around the Schöneberg neighborhood, visiting the leather shops and such: Connection, RoB, Mr. B, and a couple others.  I bought some t-shirt gifts — a Mr. B shirt that glows in the dark for my boyfriend, a brown and gold Berlin shirt for Rusty (who is house/cat-sitting while I’m away), and two for me, a red Berlin shirt with the bears with entangled tongues and a black Kinky Tulip shirt.  I met a couple guys (Mario and Stefan) from Bavaria outside Mr. B, along with their friend Donovan.

(Just because I name check someone in the blog, doesn’t mean I had sex with them.  Might have wanted to, though…)

That evening, I went to a private party called Kellerloch, although I didn’t know that was the name of it at the time — an online buddy invited me without specifying the name of the party.  A couple people online had asked if I was going to Kellerloch, but I had told them no, because I didn’t know at the time.

Kellerloch (“cellar hole”, per Babelfish) is, yes, another fisting party, held at the south end of Schöneberg in a basement.  There were probably 20 guys there.  I got fisted by Klaus, and then returned the favor.  Then by Marcel from the Netherlands, and again returned the favor, getting each of may hands in about 4" past the wrist, the deepest I’ve ever fisted someone.  And then fisted Marco from Zurich, to a similar depth, and then he fisted me on all fours.  And one point, he sat on my lower back (shades of Brüno!) and fisted me from above.

Back at the hotel, I thought I should cum, since I really hadn’t done that for a couple days.  Got out the sling, put in the Fist Pack video, lubed up the inflatable dildo and pumped it larger than I have before and went at myself.  But to no avail.  I pissed like crazy, splattering myself good, but couldn’t manage to cum.  Too worked up and worked over!

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Updated on March 1, 2010.

Updated on March 2, 2010.

This article claims that “cellar door” is one of the most beautiful phrases in the English language.  Can we make a parallel claim that “kellerloch” is one of the kinkiest in the German language?

Europe 2009: Copenhagen to Berlin (Friday, July 31)

This is just the sex parts of my European trip report.  For the rest of the report from this day, click here.

At the Men’s Shop — “adult novelties”, if you will — I used my certificate from the contest for a video (Fist Pack 20).  I had to spend another 25 DKK — $5 — above the certificate price, but no problem.  (Having since watched chunks of the video, I recommend most any other edition in the FP series.  The first scene goes for like 20 minutes before getting to any digital insertions, which was kind of the purpose of getting the video.  I haven’t watched all the scenes yet, though, so others may be quite a bit better.)

I went back to the hotel for some e-mail (free WiFi) and blog time.  Finally made contact with Ole from X-Rated Leather, then traveled to his shop for measurements.  What sort of a custom piece to get, though.  I want a piece that is special and notable — why have it otherwise? — but it also needs to be mainstream enough that I actually can and will wear it.  (As stated, why have it otherwise?  I have a couple pieces like that, actually, that I can only wear once per city per year, and sometimes not even that often.)  Obviously, he prefers to do a couple actual fittings for his custom pieces, which would not be possible (Denmark being a bit far to go for a fitting).

The idea I had was to get a custom-made vest, with lightning bolts across the back which exactly match the pattern of my lightning bolt tattoos, but with color — yellow bolts with a bright blue “shadow”, to echo Lightning Lad’s costume iconography that they are drawn from.  Per Ole, the vest will be lined inside with leather (rather than having one side raw as is usual in the States, which tends to leave suede crumblies on your shirt, and sometimes even dye stains), with a pair of zippered pockets on the inside.  He’ll also put some yellow and blue piping on the front to echo the colors on the back.  I will send him the computer files from the tattoos so that he can use the exact shape to match.

Is this a €500 (US$750) value?  Probably not, technically, but if you think of the prize as intended to be “a custom piece of leather clothing, value up to” the amount.  And given the physical distance between his shop and my home, I’m satisfied with the result; I think it’s an adequate solution, given time and location and desired uses.

The master’s cap arrived by post this afternoon from the Anco, before I had to leave.  Thankfully!

The hotel in Berlin is quite a trip.  This is a leather-themed hotel/bed & breakfast, with semi-themed rooms supplied with kink play equipment.  (The most well known of these is the Black Tulip in Amsterdam, an obvious antecedent in the name department; Seattle once had the Gypsy Arms, too.)  The hallway was lined with a dog cage, mannequins with straight jackets, a display case with assorted electric gear, and so on.  The room had a sling, a vertical bondage rack, and an adjustable fuck bench, plus a selection of medical furniture.  (And a closet, TV with DVD player, and sink, and a single bed that was originally a medical bed of some sort.)

After a quick nap, I went out to Mutschmanns, then to Scheune (as I had been directed; the crowd shifts from one to the other around 2:00 am).  There I met Pieter (from Berlin) and Graeme (from Los Angeles), and we all eventually went to New Action (where the crowd shifts to after 4:00 am).  Pieter was dealing with a friend of his who was suffering from lung cancer who had essentially moved in with him for the duration.

Graeme was a good piss boy and drained me a couple times.

Pieter gave me a piece of candy, which I later realized was probably Ecstasy, although if it was, I don’t know what effect it had on me, if any.  We also shared a cigarette laced with hash (I think), but again, no effect that I really can identify.  We ended up back at my hotel room, but he left soon after.  He tried to lay a trip on me about not being interested in him and just wanting him as a handy dick or fist, but he was feeling depressed about his buddy with cancer and that was more of the issue, I’m sure.   And maybe some drug effects as well.

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Updated on February 26, 2010

Updated on May 17, 2010