The secret is that while I’m sitting here at work right now I’m wearing a pair of silk panties in hot pink, trimmed with black lace. My cock hard at the thought of what’s under my usual work outfit.

The panties (and a few additional pairs) arrived in a package this morning at the office. And the second the package landed on my desk, I started planning for when I could slip away to the bathroom and climb into a pair.

What hot about this for me isn’t really the idea of cross dressing, or even forced feminization. I do like to wear a dress or skirt occasionally, but more as a kind of gender fuck than anything else. I like the contrast between my hairy beary self, and some sort of feminine piece of clothing. But as for going full on drag queen? Way too much work. I can’t get together the makeup, the wig, keeping things “nice”. Shaving gives me razor bumps, and so on. I’ve done full drag a couple of times and it was just nerve wracking.

The panties also don’t make me feel “less of a man”. I don’t associate women’s things with some sort of inferiority (although I do associate sitting down to pee with submissiveness. Hmmm). What they do do is give me a secret. A secret that I wouldn’t want others to find out about. And that’s where the humiliation comes in.

That sense of being vulnerable – that it could happen that everyone could find out some truth about me, that I could be exposed: that’s what lies at the hart of humiliation’s thrill. Humiliation scenes enact that fear of exposure: I’ll write “slut” on you so that everyone will know what a slut you really are.

The things we expose in humiliation play are rarely our deepest truths. Those inadequacies would be far too caustic for us to entrust to someone else. Instead we set up something else, some other secret to stand in their place. So when the dirty truth is revealed, when the worst that could happen happens, we can be bothsafe and in danger all at once.

Humiliation is liberating for me because I can be free to drop my usual garrulous chatty mask and fumble and blush. When we are made humble, brought low, we no longer have to live up to what we perceive to be everyone else’s ideas of us.

Once I got the panties on I of course had to tell The Princess. I sent her a text and immediately she told me she wanted to see. “Too bad your office has a glass door”. That’s my girl. I took the hint and slunk back to the bathroom to take a picture with my cell phone. “They look sexy!” is what she wrote back “You’re going to have to model all of them for me”

There’s something so retrograde about this scenario: the businessman in women’s frillies under his suit. I think that’s part of the appeal for me: it’s so cornball. Sometimes you’ve got to go with the classics.

And if you’re coming over from tumblr, I’m guessing that you have some sort of bear-ish affiliation or interest. Most of the people who follow me on there seem to be bears. So let me tell you a bit of how I see myself:

I’m now fifty years old, and for the last twenty of those years the primary identity I’ve subscribed to has been that of “bear”. This started from the first time that I heard the term being used in the gay community, which was late 1980′s San Francisco. In a gay bookstore on Castro Street (fuck, there used to be three different ones there) I ran across an issue of a half sized sex zine called Bear and picked it up because the guy on the cover looked like Richard Locke, one of my favorite porn stars. Once I got it home, I saw a few things: not only gay porn that showed guys that I thought were hot (and actually kind of resembled), but also the fact there was a local scene where these guys congregated. It was while before I worked up the courage to go to Bear’s old offices on 16th and Valencia. I don’t know what I thought or hoped that I would find there, but I seem to remember buying a t-shirt or something. A couple of years later an official bear store opened up south of Market, and I picked up the shirt that wore to the 1993 march on Washington. Supposedly there was a gathering of bears there, but I didn’t find it, just picking up on the intrigued looks from some of my fellow attendees.

In the intervening years I’ve seen the bear community grow and splinter, bear magazines come and go, the arrival of huge “bear runs”: gatherings of guys that can range up to a thousand. As always, once there is are enough people clustered around a group to constitute an Inside, I myself trying to find the edge. When I moved back to New York in ’96, there were two organized bear clubs running, one started by a friend. I got involved with both and then drifted away. I went to the two monthly bear sex parties that were running at that time as well, meeting up with a number of men who remain my best New York pals today. I haven’t taken part in an organized bear centered activity for years, but almost all of the queer guys that I play with or know socially would be classed as some variety of bear, whether or not they identify that way.

So yeah, in the absence of other sorts of identification you’d have to call me a bear. I’m a hairy, chunky guy with a beard. Who is mostly known as gay by the majority of his social circle. Or at least was, until the last couple of years, before he started growing his hair out and attending BDSM events where straights and queers mingled, and returning to the bisexuality that characterized his earlier years and watching that bisexuality mutate into something he’s been calling “pan” for lack of any better monicker.

And now, I’m some sort of happy, monstrous hybrid – a guy who lusts after other guys with guts and tats and beards, a guy who prides himself on his cock sucking skills for both bio and strap-on (there’s a real difference in technique), a bear who’s sitting in his office at work with a pair of frilly pink panties on under his work clothes, just because he knew it would amuse his friend, the head of a lesbian leather family. A guy who finds himself increasing playing with transmen and wonders just what shade of “Daddy” he is from day to day. A guy who beats on and gets beat by straight identified men and blows the occasional drag queen.

When I’m around gay guys, I still feel most confortable in bear contexts. But it’s a big world, and I’ve come to find that there are a lot of other places I can be comfortable in as well.

These days, it’s more often the straight people who have learned to call me a bear; it’s still kind of a novelty for them. But for me it’s an identity I wear lightly. It clarifies some things and obscures others and it’s just not expansive enough to touch on my essence.

But these days, I’m turned on more and more by submission.

I should say that this is with specific people and in specific contexts. The Princess and I have a great thing going right now where our age-play is getting mixed up in our switching so that one time I’m the trailer-trash sinister guy who locks girls up in his shed out back, and other times she’s the spoiled girl who bosses daddy around and makes him do embarrassing things. We’ve done a couple of periods of time where I’ve simply been wearing her collar and at her disposal.

Of course I’ve always been submissive to Stan, but we’ve never done an extended exploration of that dynamic. And he’s got a genuine slave these days, so there probably won’t be many chances to try it out. He tends to be more of a purist in these matters than I am.

I’ve also been exploring hypnosis with someone I’m going to call Circe here. It’s interesting because she was probably 90% sub when we met, but now that she’s doing hypno stuff she does it more and more as a Dom. We’ve been exploring scenarios where I’m her pet, her plaything, my mind and will being molded to her liking. I’m amazed at how well it works, and how hot it is. When I’m around her I find myself dropping into a submissive attitude that “just feels right”, unable to tell how much of it is just me and how much is her conditioning.

And lately I’ve been coming back around to fantasies that involve The Princess and chastity. A couple of weekends ago she locked my cock up in a metal device as part of a punishment for letting her down in a scene. I wore it for most of the day until it started slipping off, much to my annoyance. And now I find myself checking out sites that sell other kinds of devices, hopefully ones that I can wear for longer periods. I don’t know what it is about the combination of submission and chastity that is setting me off these days, except that in the midst of it I feel her power all the more clearly.

Power. That’s an interesting one because I’m suspicious of all power manipulations and usually my sexuality has revolved around sensation, BDSM has been about my body exploring its extremes of pleasure and pain, not about power. I’m wondering now if its the fact that I’m confronting the extent of the power that I do have out in the mundane world that makes me more eager to give up that power through submissiveness in my sexual life. It’s a simplistic equation perhaps, but I’ve come to know that my animal brain isn’t as sophisticated as I’d like it to be.

I don’t think I’m going to end up as a full bore submissive, mostly because I have too much fun scrambling things up. But I like the idea of wearing that identity a bit more fully for now.

On the upside I got lots of ideas for rope bondage today.  On the down side I don’t really have anyone to tie up right now.  At one point I was thinking of calling up The Princess to get her to come over and get tied, and then even perhaps Paul Bunyan, but inertia won out, and my rope stayed in its bag.
Speaking of PB, New Years Day was the third anniversary from when I’d first laid eyes, and hands, on her at the annual enhanced year end party.  She didn’t make it this time it all being out of town, but there were still adventures to be had; I wrapped The Husband in my leather straight jacket, laced his favorite hood on to him and sucked his cock while he was blissfully encased. Later on he asked me to top him this weekend.  My time is quickly filling up on this trip, which means that I have to confront one of my major problems:  how do I separate the sex I can have from the sex I want to have?  Opportunity is there, for sure. But how much of it is right for me? One thing I know is that I feel distant from my rough top self.  Every time the confusion dies down I’m feeling the desire to fuck someone hard and direct, to issue orders and damn the consequence. To command.  And then there are skills I want to work on and then there are things I can do.  I bought a new singletail this summer – I’ve barely broken it in.  I walk around the apartment and see every one of my paddles and get a little wistful thinking of the things I want to do with them.

To top it off, I’ve been approached about some heavy play by a very attractive guy who wants to do some very edgy things, things that are undeniably hot, but also things that require quite a bit more intimacy than he and I currently have.  It’s something to work towards, but I have to ask myself: do I have the real time to fairly commit to it?  Not an easy decision.  And damn, There are plenty people who would kill to have these kind of problems. So I feel like a piker kvetching about it.

But deep play is deep play:  If it’s going to mean something it requires commitment.  I used to think that meant an ongoing commitment of time, but it really means a level of emotional and dare I say spiritual availability that I think I may have to finally admit is not an unlimited quantity for me.  I can be someone’s evil Uncle for an evening, beating their ass or paddling their cunt, or I can be the pig in a sling, or the frustrated dupe.  But can I be that for lots of people a few times a week?  I’m a (however belated) child of the Sixties; it galls me to think that I might not have an infinite capacity for pleasure.

Started up a tumblr account. There’s a link to it in the box to the right of this page. It’s mostly a place to repost all the stuff that I’ve picked up by right clicking on line over the years. There’s some pictures that I’ve had on various computers and pdas for the I don’t know how long. I may even put up some drawings, should I get motivated enough.

In addition I’ve decided to get a bit more active here in the coming year. For about a year I felt unable to post in part because other versions of this blog were becoming a little to Personal/public in that weird way that blogs can. I’d made the final break with someone who was following me very carefully online, and while I wasn’t writing about them any more, and in fact had removed any reference to them from my blog, partly at their request, I still felt the weight of their attention. I feel like that’s finally lifted now, and that I can start to let a few more people know about what I’m doing here. Thus the link to tumblr and from there back to here.

The Princess was there, along with SecretFreak and her boy, The Heiress, and the person who had initiated the evening: The Deviate. That made it me and five cis women, which is a situation I could never have anticipated in a million years. There was still a lot of cock to go around, since I had asked for some strap on action. The Heiress arrived in hot latino boy drag, and once she showed what she was packing, I got on my knees and started sucking away. I have pretty good strap-on head technique, I’ve been told, and given how eagerly my face was getting fucked, I think my reputation is secure.

Later The Princess tied on her cock and after D and TH had made her cum loudly, I got to go after her second orgasm of the night. I had just been kicking and paddling Aiden, SecretFreak’s boi, who was wearing a collar with a lovely bell on it that jingled with every impact. Later on, there was the major challenge of trying to get both A and The Heiress impaled on the N-joy 11 that the Princess had brought: that’s 11 inches of heavy surgical steel, double ended. Along with the weight and the girth and everything else was the complication that both of them wanted to be tied up and tied together. I’m happy that my own shaky rope skills were not required, since the Heiress and the Princess are very accomplished with rope. So: hot women tying themselves up in my living room.

Both A nd I got to that weird place of being so incredibly turned on that we couldn’t cum. I tried any number of things: biting the Deviate’s smooth inner thighs while she frigged herself, hanging in the sling with SF’s fingers deep in my ass and A’s mouth doing an incredible number on my cock, getting trampled by the Heiress once she had switched into femme mode and put on a pair of chunky platforms, riding my glass dildo while working my dick with the replacement silicon sleeve, smoking my special pipe, the one with the chain that I can connect to the ring on the Princess’ clit hood piercing. None of it worked, in part because it all worked too well: every part of me felt so good, that I couldn’t get onto the track of simple sensation that leads me to shooting.

It was only hours later, guests safely seen into their car and on their way back home, with the Princess in bed next to me that I was able to jerk off and shoot, ironically by replaying the night’s events in my mind.

The Cineaste was there as well, looking cool and hot all at once. I realized that it’s been almost a year since I was in a hotel room with a bunch of other men all dressed in suits, as per her request, sliding my cock in and out of her talented mouth, loving the need in her eyes, until I shot all over her tits. I’ll never forget her smile as she wrapped her hand around the dick of next guy in line, intent on making the most of the collection of guys she had gathered. The scene took me back to when I used to suck off businessmen myself in a porn theater that used to be on 55th Street in Manhattan. I got to replay those memories later in the weekend when I coerced Sam, The Cineaste’s husband into fucking my mouth as a way of possibly getting into The Princess’s pants. Both she and I knew that it would never happen, but Sam was a little boozed up and not hard to convince, and she likes to watch guys go at it, and I was hungry for dick, especially supposedly straight dick, so the scenario worked out for all of us.

Pleasure Salon was also having Secret Dirty Santa or something, so I brought a gift and got one as well: an unfinished wooden paddle that’s more like an oar. Hurts like fuck, as I found out when The Princess used it on me a couple of times, and got me a lot of weird looks as I made my way home with it.

I always appreciate this nuts and bolts kind of talk, especially at a time when I’m trying to figure out just what exactly I’m doing with this blog.