My latest news: After living in LA for over 10 years, I've downsized the form factor of my life to a storage unit and three pieces of luggage. I'll be floating around from country to country, furnished apartment to furnished apartment for the next 2-3 years while I work on writing projects and grow my consulting business. I might move to a city like Prague or Budapest in the longer term, but for now, the best part is not having or needing a plan and being open to any new experience, wherever in the world that might be. Finding a new long-term (hopefully permanent) relationship is also a priority for me, so I'd happily drop anchor or change course for the right person.

The LA Bondage Ball - A blow-by-blow [Note: this was copied from an earlier MySpace blog]

What better subject for my very first MySpace blog entry than my very first trip to the Hollywood Bondage Ball? The evening began when I picked up J, my date, at about 8pm. We grabbed dinner at a local Thai place, then had a few classes of cabernet while we spent the next hour or so getting ready. For me, that process involved taking a shower, putting on my all-black outfit (basically I looked like a bald Johnny Cash), and then spending the next 40 minutes sipping wine on my bed while convincing J that her ridiculously hot latex outfit didn't make her 5 or 6 molecules of fat even the tiniest bit noticeable. Helping a girl like J *put on* an outfit like this definitely ran counter to my instincts, kinda like jumping out of a plane or breathing underwater. Eventually, with all the will power I could muster, we were dressed, in a cab, and on time for an 11pm arrival.

Not surprisingly, the first thing you notice at Bondage Ball are the costumes. For women, they ran the gamut from stunningly hot to outright strange. On the 'hot' end of the spectrum, I guess these fetishy formals are a little like senior prom. Just as every high school girl looks adorable in her first evening gown, most kinky 20-, 30-, and 40-something women look pretty damn hot in a high-rise/low-cut latex dress. On the 'strange' side... what's with the clown thing? Is there a clown fetish that has some obscure connection to bondage, and I just didn't get the memo? Or maybe they just went to the wrong ball, and they were looking around and wondering, "What's with all the perverts in latex?"

For the guys, we fit into three categories: standard, lame, and tranny. To me, it felt a lot like going to a black-tie event. "Geez," I joked to J while we were getting dressed, "I hope no one else is wearing black pants, black shoes, and a black shirt." In the 'lame' category, well, there were people who just wore normal bar-hopping-in-Hollywood outfits. Come on, guys. Why even pay for the tickets if you're not going to make an effort? I'm sure it wasn't so they could pay 10 bucks for cocktails in 8-ounce Dixie cups. Although my vodka-tonics were mostly vodka and ice, so I can't complain.

There was also, of course, a Jesus. No fetish ball would be complete without one, and this one looked great. He had the robe, the long brown hair, the beard, and he was one of those guys who looked just like Jesus anyway, which is always a plus. Imagine my horror when I saw him wearing [gasp]... flip-flops. Yeah. Flip-flops. Come on, dude, how much would a pair of Birkenstocks have cost you? You're a disgrace to the uniform!

Inside the main room, there was a huge stage, a bar, and a few little tents and 'play stations' scattered up and down both side walls. My biggest complaint in this department was that there wasn't really enough bondage at the Bondage Ball. I wanted to see elaborate rope work, interesting and unusual cuffs and collars, crazy gags, new positions and configurations I'd never thought of... Unfortunately, most of it was pretty basic. I guess the organizers were catering more to people who see bondage as an enticing taboo or an edgy lifestyle statement rather than the real aficionados.

We saw two stage performances while we were there. The first, involving cage and actors 'dressed' in body-paint costumes, might easily have been titled, "D/s: An Interpretive Dance." The body paint was cool, but I'm about as big a fan of interpretive dance as I am of a-cappella, so I can't say this performance added a ton to the event for me. Next up was a circus thing, complete with smoke machines, lasers, and suspended hoops and swings. It was like Cirque du Soleil only slower, less intense, and with a lot more thinly disguised nudity. I didn't quite see the relevance to the theme of the event, but both groups clearly worked their asses off and had loads of fun, so hats (and latex hoods) off to 'em.

J's collar, which as I told her several times just *made* the outfit, is this suede thing with a longish chain attached to the ring at the front--almost a leash but not quite. The first time we had our picture taken by one of the roving photographers, as I mentally said "Hi Mom!" and kissed my career in politics goodbye, I was very thankful for that chain. Like the other fetishy events I've been to, this was definitely not the kind of party where you leave your date unattended for, say, more than three seconds. Luckily, aside from a couple photos and one offer by a fat middle-aged German to put J in this chair he designed with built-in wrist and ankle shackles (which was actually pretty cool), she made it through the night unmolested by horny perverts. Well, almost... While dancing to some kind of electronic music between stage performances, there *may* have been a brazen sex act performed on my date by yours truly. Technically, it didn't meet Bill Clinton's legal standard for 'sexual relations' though, and J certainly didn't mind. And hey, it was all in the spirit of the event.

"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."  --T.S. Elliot