I have always considered my brother to be the funniest person I had ever met. Most people have a particular style of humor that works for them. They have their go to jokes or tones. Some people are sarcastic. Some goofy. Some people have witty one liners, while others can capture an audience with a funny story. My brother has it all. He flows effortlessly from style to style. One minute he can be on his hands and knees making my nieces and nephews roll on the floor laughing with slapstick and body humor the next he can be making terrible puns that make everyone in the room grown except his wife who nearly dies laughing at every one. He can hold the attention of everyone in the room with any story he chooses to tell. In short he is my comedic inspiration. He is the comic I want to be.

The other day though I found out though that he thought I was the funny one in our family. I couldn’t have been happier in that moment.

It’s time I lift a tremendous weight off my chest by sharing one of my deep dark secrets: I LOVE giving massages. Whew, what a relief to finally say that one out loud ;-).

In all seriousness though, I do love giving massages. My senior year in college I met another kinky student who enjoyed talking about this lifestyle. We would often find ourselves walking all around campus together discussing our kinks and relationships. It didn’t take us long to discover that she was dominant and that I was submissive. What took us a little longer was discovering that we both were interested in massage. She asked me if I could choose any sex toy to own that I didn’t already have, what would it be, and I told her a massage table. Her eyes lit up. She then announced that she used to charge students for massages on campus, and as part of her business she had purchased a massage table that she kept in her dorm room.

From that moment on, I was her masseur. She would call me any time I wasn’t in class, and I would come over to provide a massage. Occasionally we would play in other ways. She had a flogger that she liked to use, and we enjoyed other forms of body worship beyond massages, but more often than not, she would call me over, I would give her a massage for about an hour to an hour and a half, and then I would leave. We did this for months where I would massage her several times a week, sometimes every day. She helped show me how she liked it, and I would do research to improve my technique. The relationship ended a little before we graduated, but it was one of the highlights of my senior year.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about massages. I would like to figure out a way to take classes, so I can learn how to perform different massages. It would be a type of investment in myself to make me a better submissive. I also need to buy a massage table. I’m sure that will happen soon enough.

I've been a fan of anal play for a long time. It can either feel amazing or it can hurt, and I enjoy both feelings. Of all the kinks I enjoy, it was probably the one that took me the longest to stop being embarrassed of. I was never concerned with gender or sexuality stereotypes relating to anal play. I never felt that enjoying anal play made me less manly or gay, and I never felt that being less manly or gay would be a problem. I'm in general a very confident man, and I currently identify as fluctuating between heteroflexible and bisexual though my attraction for other men usually only manifests with relation to kink. Still there was something about anal play that bothered me even though I enjoyed it, and I never quite figured it out.

My first femdom relationship was in high school. The femdom part of the relationship began after we had been together about a year, and it mostly took the form of spanking, chastity play, obedience, and body worship. I took me an additional 18 months to admit my interest in anal play.

My first experience with a strap-on was shocking. I had been engaging in anal play by myself for years, so I didn't expect a strap-on to feel that different, but it was night and day. Suddenly I didn't have control of the pace, the depth, or the number of thrusts I received. I felt invaded. I thought I would be able to remain relaxed, but my body resisted. It was a feeling unlike any other.

A bit of practice helped. After a few more times, I relaxed and was able to enjoy it a lot. Out of all the things I've experienced within kink though, it remains the thing that makes me feel most submissive, and I enjoy that feeling. I enjoy the feeling of giving up access to my body-- surrendering myself in an intimate way.

Unfortunately that first femdom relationship I was in ended soon after we first tried a strap-on, and none of my other kinky partners have been interested in anal play. I haven't gotten to experience strap-on play nearly enough in my life and the solo play isn't doing it for me anymore now that I know what I'm missing.

Everyone has hidden talents. We all have those activities or subjects that we excel at that most people don’t know about. I have two. My first secret talent is chess. My whole family played chess. My dad taught each of my siblings and me to play when we were about four years old. We all joined the kindergarten chess team and would spend one or two weekends per month playing at tournaments with other kindergartners. My three siblings all quit playing after that first year, but I kept going. I played competitively all the way through middle school. When I eventually quit, my chess coach lamented that it was because I got interested in “girls and stuff,” and while it was true that I was certainly very interested in girls I never quite figured out what the “and stuff” part referred to.

From the moment I started playing, chess came naturally to me. I could beat my siblings and my parents from the start. I won the state championship and placed nationally as a kindergartner and then every year after that until I quit. It was in many ways one of the defining characteristics of my childhood. I was the captain of my team – a team that stuck together for nine years, even though we all played for different reasons. Half the team played because their parents made them. Everyone else seemed to play for the trophies (Scholastic chess tournaments go a little crazy with their trophies. Up until I hit my growth spurt in 5th grade, nearly every trophy I won was as tall as I was.). I wasn’t motivated to play chess for the same reasons as my teammates. My parents never made me play, and I never kept my trophies for more than a week or two after a tournament. I played purely for love of the game. In chess both sides start with the same number of pieces. There is no luck involved; it doesn’t matter how tall you are or how much money you make. You win simply by out thinking your opponent. You win by understanding what your opponent is thinking – what they are feeling – and then thinking it through one step further.

I started teaching chess when I was eleven. I started off with neighborhood kids, but quickly progressed to teaching at the local high schools. Eventually I began offering chess lessons to kids with autism. For kids with autism, chess is a phenomenal game. The rules are simple, but the calculations are complex. It doesn’t demand social skills, but it can help someone practice them (simply by being part of a team, shaking hands after a game, interacting with other kids, etc.). I had a particular interest in the kids with Asperger’s Syndrome. Their parents were always so grateful that I would teach them. It was usually very hard to get these kids to be social, so any time they could play a game with another kid, it was a dream come true for the parents. I never had any problems connecting with the autistic kids. I always felt like I understood how they were feeling when we spoke, even if emotional expression were a challenge for them.

My dad, who is far and away the smartest man I’ve ever met, has Asperger’s. He has a phenomenal mind for classic subjects such as science, math, history, and language, but he has tremendous difficulty socially. He has no tolerance for any deviation from his daily routine. He has trouble reading other people’s expression, and understanding how they feel. He says things to people that reduce them nearly to the point of tears, and yet often has no idea that what he said was even offensive. He has trouble expressing his own feelings as well. He doesn’t hug or cry or tell us he loves us, even though it’s clear that he does. My siblings all have a strained relationship with him for these reasons, but he and I have remained close. I could hear him say I love you even when the words wouldn’t come out. I heard it every time he made eye contact or listened intently to me during a conversation. I saw it on his face as he watched my soccer games (He is scared of the sun, so he would come to my summer soccer games wearing a jacket, gloves, and a hat while holding a big umbrella over his head to shield himself. Despite his fears, he never missed a game.). In many ways he expressed his emotions more genuinely than anyone else I’ve known.

He has said and done hurtful things to my family members, and of his four children, three of them only speak to him on holidays, but he and I talk every week (my brother and sisters don’t even know we talk). I can forgive him for everything he has done because I empathize with him and can see things from his perspective. I can feel what he is feeling even if he can’t communicate it. I think that is my second hidden talent.