the adventure

So yes, as I mentioned, I went to an "Ageplay Adventure" party a few weeks ago. It's a regular event held here in San Francisco, but this was the first and last one that I would see in my stint here before heading back to London, so I thought it'd be a great idea to go and check it out.

And, ultimately, it kind of was and kind of wasn't.

The event itself was great. I really liked the space (a sort of club-lite type space with a "dungeon" downstairs, that in this instance was primarily used as a space for photo ops rather than any real hard play; at least, as far as I could tell), I really enjoyed chatting with a lot of the people there (which, after some initial shyness, I found really easy to do) and there were some well-chosen food, games and toys to help bring out the littles in a lot of us (including some peanut butter & jelly sandwiches which, as a Brit, I had actually never tried before, yet somehow I still fell victim to their comfort-food charms).

The problem, though, is that this is still not an easy kink for Kitty and I to discuss, sometimes, and throwing her into the middle of a big ageplay event was perhaps not the greatest of ideas.

Really though, we didn't have much of a choice, it seemed. Even though she is still uncomfortable with ageplay and ABDL stuff on the whole, Kitty appreciated that this would be my one and only chance (for the forseeable future at least) to go to a big ageplay event populated by open-minded San Franciscan kinksters: a place where I could really explore my kink in a kind of space that I had never really encountered before (my own ageplay picnic that I threw a few months ago was an entirely different kind of beast). She felt that to ask me to pass up this opportunity for the sake of her comfort would seem really unfair to me, and so felt that she had to push through, go out of her comfort zone and give it a try anyway.

I, on the other hand, didn't want to come off as forcing her to go to something that she didn't want to go to, especially if she was doing it solely for my benefit. I tried to argue that, seriously, we could just not go, but in the tense atmosphere in which we were discussing this I think I wasn't able to prevent it from seeming like a disgruntled and adolescent-sounding "fine, if you don't want to go, I guess we shouldn't go then."

So yeah, horrible relationship stalemate argument thing. She didn't feel comfortable going but felt that I would ultimately hold it against her if we didn't go, I didn't want to force her into something she'd feel uncomfortable going to, but still really wanted to go myself. I tried telling myself that I would in fact be fine not going, but Kitty was right, I was probably just fooling myself by saying that, and would inevitably, immaturely bring up the fact that she "didn't let me go" in some hypothetical puerile future argument.

So in the end, we went, trying as much as possible to forget the drama that almost led to us not going. And like I said, I had a really great time. Kitty, on the other hand, felt really out of place. I would periodically check in on her and make sure everything was ok and ask if she wanted to leave - as per an agreement we had reached just before turning up - and she admitted that she wasn't exactly in the best place but was fine to stay if that's what I wanted. It was a little awkward, yes, but I knew that if I had said "well let's just go then," it would probably start a tiff.

This is, of course, one of the main reasons I have waited a little while before writing this. I thought it best to lay off writing or talking some more about AB stuff immediately after an event from which neither of us came away completely happy. The other reason is that I've been at Burning Man, which took up a couple of weeks of my time, so yeah, I feel that that was a fair excuse to not do some writing for a bit. I thought it best not to drag my laptop out into the middle of the desert.

So yeah, other observations/experiences from the event:

• I was positively surprised by the female-heavy turnout. I actually always feel more comfortable in female-dominated spaces. Even so, the men that were there were, on the whole, not the fetishist creeps that I feared, but were actually really fun to talk to. There was one major exception though: one guy who honestly talked in nothing but those horrible, clichéd lines one often uses to begin harassment-conversations on Diaperspace. Seriously, he was all "so, do you wear diapers all the time? What kind of diapers do you like to wear?" I didn't realise people actually talked like that in real life. I didn't realise it was feasible to start a real conversation that way. The worst part? He kept failing the Turing Test and when I posed him a question or try to turn the conversation a certain way he would just revert to one of his set questions like I hadn't asked him anything. Truly bizarre. Still, he was an amusing exception, not the rule, thankfully.
• I got talking with the event's hosts, which included veritable celeb of the ABDL world Penny Barber. We chatted somewhat about the event and about the scene in the UK. I must admit, after talking to Penny it sounded like there was some kind of huge scene in the UK that I am just missing out on. I'll clearly have to talk to some people when I get back, particularly the guy behind Care4Baby, apparently. Penny also had a changing table set up as part of the event and I even got changed by her after I had wet my diaper (after checking with Kitty that getting changed like that would be ok, of course). I must admit, this was the realisation of a long-time fantasy of mine. So yeah, once again, thanks, Penny!
• This kind of relates to what Charlie said, and what I was discussing some more in a previous post, but I actually felt really at home and really comfortable amongst the people there, even though many of the people there were people who had been at the previous event that had made me feel so uncomfortable I didn't even join in properly. I guess a combination of factors helped me feel more comfortable: the greater number of people made me feel less like I was intruding on a small, intimate group and more like I was at a club of like-minded people, and could step out of my relative anonymity and into talking to people whenever I felt like it. It also helped that, at this event, there were a lot more people around my age. The previous event had seemed to skew a bit older, making me feel a tad left out, but this time I felt fine.

So yeah, all in all, I had a lot of fun and would love to go to something like that again, if I'm being honest.

However, it did expose some issues that Kitty & I clearly have around this kink of mine, and we'll have to discuss those further (and have been discussing them since this event happened). I don't want to make her feel uncomfortable, but she doesn't want to feel like she's not allowing me to experience this kink of mine. It is a bit of a dilemma. Still, that's a post for another time, I think.

Plus, I imagine I'll come back and write some more about this event when I look back at this post and realise all the things that I forgot to write about this time.

and in other news

I'm going to an "Ageplay Adventure" this weekend. Wish me luck! I'm sure I'll report back afterwards with the good, the bad and the naughty.

feeling lost - making space

I keep finding myself in instances where, although I like what a particular community does/is about, I cannot find myself feeling like a part of that community at all.

I remember an instance when I was in my first year at university; I was full of the joy that comes with a new locale and an apparent new lease on life, and one of the ways my excitement was showing itself was in my manic joining of every single university society ('soc'), group or team that I could possibly join. Almost none of these ventures of mine really went anywhere: I sucked at the sports teams I tried out for (which, frankly, were some of the geekiest sports ever anyway, including fencing and "Ultimate") and quickly got bored of PhilosophySoc et al.

One group I joined was the RPGSoc, that is, the role-playing games society. My tenure with them did not last long at all. Despite having spent many a geeky Saturday in my teenage years playing Dungeons & Dragons and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG with my schoolmates, for some reason I felt so incredibly out of place amongst the members of the RPGSoc that I actually, bizarrely, had a minor freak-out during my second meeting with them and ran out on them in the middle of a session.

The truth is, I just felt really out of place there. Sometimes I will encounter something that I enjoy immensely that I would still rather do with my friends and other people who casually enjoy it. Sometimes 'legitimate communities' turn me off.

It's like I said to someone who once asked me whether I was going to go and see The Mighty Boosh live: I love The Mighty Boosh, but I would absolutely hate to be in a room full of Mighty Boosh fans (since I'm not a teenage girl, I'm sure you can imagine why).

The point of all of these anecdotes? Sometimes I feel like I just don't belong in certain 'kink' or ABDL communities, no matter how much I'm into the particular kinks involved. Sometimes I feel like Bitchy Jones going to femdom clubs and wondering why on Earth a place supposedly dedicated to meeting my desires doesn't meet them in any way at all. I feel more out of place and alone than when I thought I didn't really have a community.

What brought all of this on? A recent munch I attended. Now, I know ageplay munches can go well. Hell, I've hosted one. Still, most of the time, when it comes to ageplay get-togethers, I (and Kitty too) really do end up feeling like we don't belong.

Kitty's solution to all of this is, of course, deceptively simple: make your own community. Kitty is somewhat an adept at this. Disappointed with most kink/sex communities and club nights, she got involved in making one of her own (which has now turned into something of a cult international sensation, thanks, in a very large and real way to her own efforts).

Now, I'm not sure what's going to happen with my own munch. The second one didn't quite go to plan and now I'm (temporarily) a few thousand miles away from where I'd like to be hosting one. Still, I'd love to continue with them when I get back. I'd love to continue with this Kitty-inspired experiment in seeing if I can create a community of people that I do get on with better, people with whom I have more than just my kink in common. It should be interesting.

mess

**warning - scat**

Kitty, being a relative newbie and naif to the whole ageplay thing, will sometimes ask me questions about the ABDL community that make me realise what an odd set of things I've normalised.

Kitty, coming across an article on stuffing oatmeal into one's diaper in order to simulate having messed oneself, asked me why people into diapers don't just mess themselves.

I initially answered that, weird as it may seem, a lot of people in the ABDL scene, despite its seeming focus on nappies/diapers, are actually about as poo-phobic and weirded-out by scat-play as 'normal' people. Still, Kitty looked at me and just asked me "Why?"

Indeed. Why? Kitty is very pragmatic when it comes to kink, you know, and is pretty much open to people doing anything as long as they do it safely and sensibly. Plus, as she said in a recent podcast interview (in which both of us talked about ageplay a little bit), one sees a bit of poo anyway when one engages in anal play, so really, sometimes one has to be a grown up about it and just deal with it. Don't get too squicked by poo.

So yeah, long story short, after thinking about what she'd said for a little while, the other day, I decided to have my first real experience of messing my Bambinos. I won't go into the gory details, that's not what this post is about. What it is about is realising that I can feel free to play around with my ageplay boundaries and even get a bit gross and disgusting sometimes (in a controlled and safe environment, of course) and realising that that's ok.

One big advantage to the oatmeal, however, is that you can get the 'just messed' feeling whenever you want, not just when you actually have to go.

Another big advantage though: if your early messing experiments do go a little wrong and end up creating a small mess outside of your diaper, I'm sure you'll feel a lot better cleaning up oatmeal.

Ok, that's singularly the most squick-tastic post I'll write for a while, what's next...?

Pride/picnic

A lot has happened in the last few weeks.

London Pride 2010 was this past Saturday. Kitty, her San Franciscan flair for silliness and playfully sexy theatricality on full display, went as "Faggette the clown," showing a bit of clown pride. I went in full little gear: corduroy dungarees, bib, teddy bear, et al. I believe the "back story" was that I was some kid who'd come to the circus, only to then be abducted by the wicked Faggette (a nice tie-in to our 'kids at the circus' outing at the Bizarre Ball*).

This was actually my first time out in little kid gear during the day and I had a great time. Kitty and I got lots of comments on our outfits and they were pretty much all positive. We actually really couldn't have picked a better place to be wearing some spectacularly odd clothing, the partying Priders were all very up and positive about, well, everything, really.

Also, I must admit that it was nice to see that several people asked to take my/our photo or have their photo with me/us. I was especially pleased as, in all honesty, I tend to get a little petty and petulant when I'm out with a girl, we're both in costume, and people ask to take a picture of only them, sometimes specifically asking for me to not be in the shot. However, we were both equally popular. We were also both amused when we discovered that the first people to take photos of us actually had no idea that there was a Pride parade & event going on; I guess they just thought that we'd just stepped out that way that day.

Which, funnily enough, is pretty much exactly what we did the next day!

Yes, in a spectacular spate of bad planning, I'd arranged for a ageplay/ABDL picnic-munch to take place in the middle of the day, the very day after Pride London. I obviously didn't seem to realise that my target audience would have all been out getting plastered the night before. Long story short: no-one came.

Still, the incredible bright side of all this was that Kitty and I got to have a nice picnic in the park in the sunshine, just the two of us, both kitted out as little kids on a 'teddy bear's picnic'. I must admit to having been slightly more embarrassed to be out and about in that get-up on a day where there wasn't the excuse of a big, gay carnival to partially excuse my outfit. Still, I clearly wasn't embarrassed enough to not take some cameraphone photos and post them to Twitter & Facebook. I also uploaded some photos from Pride to facebook, including one bearing the caption "Me, showing some little/AB pride." So yeah, I guess I am now a little bit more 'out' than I may have been previously, although frankly, I imagine many will just think I simply enjoy going out of doors in odd-looking outfits and perhaps won't think to Google what an "AB" is. Still, thanks to previous shenanigans of mine, coupled with Kitty's own utter lack of discretion, I imagine I have few friends left who don't have some vague inkling about my ageplaying side, actually.

Ok, a brief interlude for one dark moment though. I got really, very pissed-off indeed (although in classic British style, I, perhaps quite unfortunately, didn't show it) during the train ride back from Pride (so yeah, due to bad planing, we've gone back one day in the narrative here. Pay attention!). I was still clad in my little gear: dungarees with turned-up trouser legs, bib, and I appeared to have gained a balloon, when a woman not three feet away from me, apparently forgetting that we were on a mostly quiet train and not a rowdy nightclub, where she might have gotten away with making a catty comment about me from three feet away as it would've been drowned out by the general din, very loudly asked, while looking me up and down, "what the fuck is he wearing?"

Now, I wouldn't have even minded as much had she asked me, looking me in the eye, "what the fuck are you wearing?" but no, I got a "he," her eyes instead roving down over me, as if I couldn't hear her or she didn't care if I did. She at least had the sense to look a bit remorseful and shocked at her own - very loud - outburst when I looked her in the eye (again, we were standing near the doors of a London Underground train, only about a metre apart, with no people directly between us), with a questioning look, clearly betraying the adult intelligence that she no doubt thought I didn't have. I politely explained that I was coming back from a parade and a party and that my partner and I were dressed according to what we felt would be appropriate/acceptable for the gig (ashamedly, I didn't mention specifically that it was Gay Pride. For all my supposed pride, I still didn't want to introduce that into the conversation, fearing that that may provoke some bigotry).

She got off the train a couple of stops later and I went down to sit next to Kitty, who, wrapped up in removing her clown face, had actually missed this exchange. Still, I must admit to having been a bit thrown by the whole experience. There's something uniquely insulting about being talked about as if you're deaf, dumb, or just plain not there while you are mere feet away from the person doing so and even looking right at them. I don't feel I'm doing a good job of explaining it here, but I genuinely felt insulted and dehumanised. That stayed with me for the rest of the afternoon.

This was all pretty much forgotten by Sunday night though.

Sunday, after our picnic, Kitty and I retired to my place in Essex. The previous day (I think) Kitty had expressed an interest in doing some more play with her as a little girl, including seeing what it was like on the receiving end of being nappied (the fact that there's a whole ritual around nappying really excites and engages both of us, it seems). We got her into some Bambinos and did a bit of a photoshoot, which was actually all a bit of a misfire, as we didn't have the correct nappy size for her (she is quite a bit bigger around the hips and waist than I), so we ended up trying to jankily tape some nappies down. It was all a bit of a mess. Some correct-sized nappies have since been ordered.

We did manage to get her into some Depends, though. I honestly thought that Depends would not be anywhere near as appealing as the created-with-the-AB-kink-in-mind Bambinos. However, I was surprised to find that they hugged her behind rather well, and I must admit that, seeing her standing in front of me, pigtails in her hair and stuffed toy in hand, wearing absolutely nothing apart from a big, soft, white nappy absolutely gave me the most raging horn, which we were only too glad to act upon.

What surprises me though is that I honestly didn't expect to be able to throw myself so easily into the daddy role and engage in some daddy/little girl play like that. I'm glad to have found some play that we both enjoy, but I still find it strange that I'm increasingly becoming at ease - more than that: enjoying - being the adult caretaker in ageplay/adult baby play. It's certainly interesting, and Kitty and I are still talking through what this means to us and the future of our play with this kink (Kitty is equally, perhaps more, freaked out by the ease with which she slips into the 'baby' role, something she never had thought would appeal to her) but I guess we'll find out what becomes of our discussions of that in the future.

So yeah, phew, a nice, ageplay-themed weekend. And, it seems, one of many to come.

*Oh, and on the subject of the Bizarre Ball, I would just like to say that the photos of Kitty and I in our little kid/adult baby-style outfits were not featured in the Ball photo round-up printed in the latest issue. However, someone in an 'adult baby' outfit that basically amounted to lots of nubile flesh and nearly-completely-visible tits did get featured, twice. More accurate portrayal of the fetish loses out to a blonde-girl-with-her-tits-out, 'sexy' appropriation of it. Grrr. (Ok, minor pissing rant over).

goal

(Fun fact: you can read a different account of the following at PurrVersatility, my girlfriend Kitty's blog)

As you may know if you're following the current World Cup to any degree, there was a US/England match a few nights ago. Since Kitty and I are in fact from the US and England respectively, we thought it'd be cute to make a little wager on the outcome of the game, with some sort of sexy reward for whoever's national team ended up triumphant. Kitty suggested that the winner would take the submissive role in a scene of their choice (I'm not that good at finding ways to bring my occasional dom side out, so really, this little wager was exactly what Kitty needed to prise it out of me in a fun way). Kitty chose an incestuous disciplinary scene between father and daughter (she's no stranger to taboo play, that one) and I - as you may have gathered considering the blog's main focus - chose an ageplay scene.

Now, I promise that I would have been a gent and opted for us to do both scenes regardless of the result of the game. However, we'll never know if that's just a lie or not, as the game actually ended in a 1-1 draw, meaning that, in a sense, we had both won.

Due to time and energy constraints, I got to go first, with Kitty's fantasy-fulfilment happening the following night. I won't really tell you much about her scene just now, as that's not really what this blog is about, but again, feel free to read her take on things over at her blog.

Now, as for my night, I must admit I got incredibly nervous. There's something about doing a sort of play-regression scene whereupon I become a little kid and Kitty becomes my caregiver (or anything else, really. When I first did a big of AB regression-play around her, she was in cat headspace, actually) that gets me all worried. I guess I still worry, on some level, that while she's more or less accepting of the fetish items of my kink, Kitty may still balk when confronted directly with 'little me'. Luckily, my panicky whimpering does a great job of drawing out Kitty's sincerely comforting side, and she really did do a great job of helping me through it.

So yes, to the actual scene. Basically, there was diapering, first and foremost. And for the first time, I didn't just put on a diaper/nappy in front of Kitty, but we actually talked through how to put one on, and how to do all the little ritual bits (the lotion, the powder, etc), which turned the whole thing into a very sweet little lesson-cum-bonding-experience for the both of us (with added cock-groping, which both of us found quite pleasant, really).

Once the key artefacts were assembled (tippee cup, cuddly toys, book to read for my bedtime story, dummy/pacifier), I took out my contact lenses.

Now, usually at this point I'd shove on my glasses. Even though I wear contacts, I still keep my glasses about as a sort of liminal eyewear: great for making sure I don't bump into the furniture on that walk from the bathroom where I keep my lens solution to my bed. However, I had in fact broken the damn things a few days ago, rendering them unwearable (don't worry, it was just the arms that broke, and some glue has fixed them by the time of writing).

Now, in terms of the scene this presented a problem. We were planning on doing a simple 'bedtime' scene where Kitty would diaper me, dress me in my sleeper, read me a story and tuck me in and then we'd genuinely go to sleep. If I took my contacts out inbetween the story and the tucking in, that'd be a pretty severe breaking of character.

So yes, our solution was for me to take them off my lenses beforehand, leaving me partially debilitated, as I really am quite short-sighted. The great part of all this though was that it really did add to the scene, actually. Without full vision I really couldn't do a lot of things for myself and really did need some caring assistance from Kitty. Plus, I genuinely wouldn't be able to read the story myself and would rely solely on Kitty's voice and a hazy interpretation of the illustrations. We'd been thinking of a way to manufacture this sort of dynamic in a scene - our best idea up to this point was to have Kitty reading me something in a foreign language, so that I genuinely wouldn't quite understand it and would learn it gradually as we went along, but that really would only simulate a very young age indeed - but as it turns out, my clumsiness with my glasses had actually allowed us to stumble upon a much better idea.

So yeah, there I am, in Kitty's bedroom in nothing but a bambino nappy, fumbling my way back to the bed and my fleece footed sleeper. I start to put in on myself put then, when I get to the zip, Kitty reaches forward and offers to help zip me up and snap, right then and there I enter little headspace. Suddenly I'm just a little kid who needs zipping up and Kitty is my loving caregiver. It's a wonderful feeling.

Kitty even made a little game of doing up the zip that honestly sounds inane now that I think of ways to try and describe it in adult terms, but aroused lots of giggles from 'little me'.

So yeah, I ended up tucked in bed, in Kitty's arms and being read a story (The Boy Who Cried Fabulous, for the curious among you), with a cuddly toy in one hand, a tippee cup in the other and a dummy in my mouth. We played the usual games that one plays with little kids when reading them a story: asking them to find things in the illustrations, etc, and it was all made so much more authentic by the fact that, with the visual ones at least, I really did struggle a little and felt genuinely quite proud when I did manage to locate something.

After the story (and Kitty is a really wonderful narrator, by the way) came bedtime proper.

One thing I haven't mentioned so far is that, beforehand I had asked Kitty what I should call her when we were in the scene. We'd only really tried an ageplay scene like this once before (as Kitty commented the next morning, she often forgets that I'm only just feeling my way around this kink, learning what I like and don't like too) and during that I'd called her 'Daddy'. Now, Kitty's queer as anything and I'd called her 'Daddy' before in other contexts, but she admitted later, both to me in person and on her blog, to being perplexed by this. To me, it had seemed the natural choice seeing as how she was taking on a sort of queer parental role and, frankly, it might prove just a tad too weird and Freudian were I to start calling her my 'Mummy', even in a scene that would lend itself to that. But what surprised me the most about the whole experience was this: it really didn't feel weird at all. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I didn't find it a strange thing to say (whilst in that headspace) and she seemed to react really very well to it, so that was a positive.

Anyway, the next morning, I wake up and I'm regular me again, just now in a diaper and footed sleeper (although frankly, adult-me wears that too, occasionally). Kitty and I talked about what we took away from the scene: what we thought worked and what didn't. Again, we're still new at actually trying all this out, and she herself is really still quite new when it comes to ageplay at all, but luckily we're finding that the more we communicate about it, the more we're likely to make future experiences that'll appeal to both of us.

So yeah, I feel I've bored you enough now. Once again, for more on what happened the next night, feel free to check out Kitty's blog. And if you're curious about whether we'll continue to make bets like this in the future, just remember that the next England and US fixtures are set for the 18th and the 23rd, so stay tuned!

Me, I'm hoping for some sort of puppyplay scene next time, methinks...

picnic in the park

Ok, so, ageplay munch this last Sunday. How did that go? Well, it went fine. My girlfriend and I, the organisers of the bloody thing, turned up late, so that was a big hiccup, but luckily it all seemed to go a bit more smoothly after that. Basically there were just under a dozen of us and we all sat down to eat lunch/nibbles on a big picnic blanket in a park in London where we enjoyed some weather that thankfully managed to stay reasonably nice for the time that we were there (although it did threaten).

And yes, there was lots and lots of talking about what it is the community really needs. One of my girlfriend's hats is that of a party/event organiser, so basically she was able to launch in with a whole host of questions about what people would want out of a friendly, ABDL space that we could come to on a regular basis, and people largely seemed eager to offer suggestions. So yeah, it seems I may have inadvertently volunteered to help set-up and run a regular ABDL event. I'll let you know how that develops, I guess.

Some people at the meet were more quiet but others were very much happy for a chance to rant about a clearly dear topic and others still have already emailed me, eager about the proposed next one, so that makes me feel fairly confident that this must have gone well.

I swear the next one there will be more time for fun, games and kites (seriously, someone brought a kite, I am quite chuffed at that fact) and the whole thing will feel somewhat less like an impromptu event meeting with humus and crudités.

Still, like I said, it went well. People are looking forward to the next one.

And yeah, the onus is on me to arrange the next one, so I guess I'd better jump in the deep end and actually learn how to navigate the waters of the online kink/ABDL communities. Let's see how I do, shall we?