Posted to my Fetlife Blog two hours ago. Finally, I've (sort of) caught up.
----------------
This is not going to be a well written post, because most of it will be a repost of a comment I just made on Youtube. Take this one as a warning. There is a user there calling himself "Sargon of Akkad" who would have you think that he is a man of reason, a skeptic and a "liberal" (in the British sense) who is opposed to Hate and bigotry of all sorts. But having followed him for a while, I am left with real doubts that this is so, and no doubts that many of us would do well to stay far away from the community that has built up around him.
In the comments for a video with the title "what do far left activists want"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqN76kaTLxU
Oliver Young writes
"When are you going to get around to debunking those white nationalists and the claim that hitler was not evil?"
My response follows. I think it will tell you a little something about the Sargon of Akkad experience:
"My prediction: Sargon will never get around to doing that, because he doesn't want to.
Have you ever been in one of his live streams? I don't think there were as many Nazis on Kristallnacht as there are in one of those chats. Speaking as a Jew who was stuck in Klan country at one point at his life, the Ku Klux Klan was far more pleasant to talk with than those people in Chat and Sargon, the moderator, seemed OK with that. It got genuinely toxic yesterday in the way you'd expect - random, bigoted accusations and calls for us all to be killed. People who think like that subscribe to Sargon in large numbers, and he doesn't want to see his subscriber base shrink, I guess. He just can't seem to figure out that this is exactly what is happening, because the people who the neo-Nazis will drive off far outnumber the neo-Nazis.
The crowning moment of absurdity came as somebody, having claimed (based on no evidence) that 90% of the Nazis in chat weren't real Nazis, but were just trying to be "Edgy" (I think his name was "ron"). As I said something like "How charming. Well, instead of being bothered with that, I think I'll go out and enjoy the nice day we're having in Chicago and leave the edgelords to entertain each other", ron went on the attack, bitterly complaining about how mean I was being. To the poor Nazis. By saying "eh, this is boring, I'm going to go out and enjoy the 70 degrees and sunshine.", I guess I provoked ron (lower case lettering of his name being his) into responding to that mildly toned reply by telling me to calm down and stop being so harsh, before diving in with some personal abuse of his own. I mentioned an old synagogue of mine being firebombed and the police refusing to do anything about that domestic terrorist incident, the fact that violent anti-Semitism was very much a thing in the US, making the "joke" of pretending to be a neo-Nazi as one posts anti-Semitic remarks about as funny as telling rape jokes to a rape survivor. ron's response was to smugly ask why the edgelords should care, and to call me a "snowflake" for daring to suggest that I, a mere Jew, had as much of a right to be treated like a human being as anybody else, while doubling down on his insane position that I had horribly mistreated the poor Nazis by saying that I was going to go out for some fresh air. Which I soon did. Where, one might ask, was G-d to save the would-be Gestapo members from the horror of realizing that a Jew had gone off to sit in a park. I'd have mentioned that I was bringing some reading material, some iced mint tea, and a small picnic basket and that, worst of all, there would be lots of pretty girls in that park, but the nightmares I was inflicting on the poor, poor Nazis who would have to think about the nice day I would soon be having were bad enough already, I was sure. This is where I roll my eyes, as if I shouldn't have done so much sooner.
This was not an isolated incident. It was one that I've found typical of the crowd Karl Benjamin has chosen to build up around him, while pretending to be against racism. But one might note that he's also openly against speaking out against racism, referring to any attempt on the part of a member of a marginalized group to get any sort of support when abused as being an exercise in "identity politics." In Karl's world, it's OK to be a Jew or member of some other abused group, just as long as one politely chooses to stay invisible, hiding underground. Which would only make marginalized people even more marginalized and I think that's the idea.
If Sargon was the nice guy he sometimes pretends to be, he'd care enough about the hostile environment that the edgelords / Nazis were creating for people who had, themselves, been victims of hate crimes in the past to eject said Nazis from the chat, but he's not. He's a troll, himself, one who can be heard elsewhere talking about how trolling (the deliberate and cowardly inflicting of abuse from behind the safe anonymity of a computer screen) used to be "an art form." He is what he is, another edgelord, just one who is more subtle than most. He'll sound very reasonable in his videos for a while, which is why he can still count non-trolls and non-bigots among his subscribers, but eventually, one has to have the sense to judge him by the company he keeps and see that Anita Sarkeesian wasn't completely wrong when she called him a "garbage human being."
That should tell you what to expect from him in the future: a lot of disingenuousness and not much else. Debunk the alt-right? Not going to happen. He wouldn't do that to his friends."
Short form: Stay far away from Karl Benjamin / Sargon of Akkad and probably his whole "skeptic community" as well. Not that I think that there's anything wrong with skepticism (far from it), but what you'll get from these people won't be skepticism. What it will be is trolling of anybody who is even remotely progressive. In their struggle against the SJWs, these people have become just another kind of SJW, at least as bad as the people they set out to oppose, if not far worse. Shielding those arguing in support of the commission of genocide and the practice of racial abuse and harassment, not just from criticism, but from so much as the horror of seeing others get up and walk away from them? Even Antifa has never been this crazy. At least not yet.
The craziness might stay well hidden (for a while), but it's there.
One happy thought: If a fake man of reason like Sargon / Benjamin can make over $50,000 per year just by posting videos, how well could a real man of reason do on that same site? Maybe I've found a route out of destitution?
Note to any caretakers reading this: No, I did not "out" or "doxx" Karl Benjamin. His real name is a matter of public record. Kindly refrain from taking any actions which would in no way be warranted by the terms of service, and would leave you on record as having fought to censor a Jew after he reported the treatment he received by the apologist for a group of neo-Nazis, during a racial incident. As usual, I'll be crossposting this to Blogger, so if you delete my account in response to a meritless complaint, as you did to a number of people I know, and then try to lie about the contents of the post, neither you nor the company will end up looking very good.
Kindly rethink the habits you've developed, that force your own users to view you with so little trust that they have to post warnings like this in their posts.
Friday, August 25, 2017
The Solar Eclipse of August 21 - oh * groan * / Repost from Fetlife
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Selected Works is closing, today / Repost from Fetlife
(Posted to my Fetlife blog two months ago)
------------------------
I'm about to shower and head over to shop at said bookstore for what will be the last chance I'll ever have to do so. Chicago, quite seriously, is running out of bookstores, the used bookstores dying even more quickly than the rest. Bookworks went out of business a few months ago.
There are the real reasons this is happening (namely, a local job market that treats the sort of people who would buy books poorly while rolling out the red carpet for every frat boy who passes, and soaring rents fueled by real estate speculation), but since we're all expected to believe that the "free market" can do no wrong, those reasons won't be discussed. No, instead we'll go on listening to people blather on about how bad paper books are for the enviroment, as if wood pulp were a non-renewable resource, about how books are "technologically obsolete" (as if the comfort of the reader had no impact on his ability to focus on his reading) and the few of us who will still dare to have so much as an ounce of common sense on the matter can go on wondering just how much more relevant "Fahrenheit 451" is going to become.
I mean, seriously, the stupidity heard on this subject boggles the mind. We're supposed to believe that books - BOOKS - are no longer needed, because the Internet and electronic media will do it all, as if we hadn't all experienced data loss incidents by now. Looking at the real books (not e-books) sitting on my shelves, I can see that if the publishers that produced them go out of business, I'll be sad, but ... wait for it ....
I'll still be able to read those books.
I'm not going to lose them because somebody hacked my computer, or I got malware, or somebody at Amazon decided that he personally disapproved of a title on my shelf and decided to recall all copies (even the ones already sold). Even if printing technologies change, I'm not going to be find myself unable to read or retrieve a book I own just because the technology needed to read it is no longer available, being withheld from public use by some corporate dweeb long overdue for a well-deserved swirly because "ha ha, neener neener, fuck you, he'll do what he wants." Paper and ink are durable, dependable and easily accessible, and electronic media are none of these.
Again, let's cut the (excrement). Who, reading this, has not had the experience of seeing online writing vanish because a mob of people chose to whine about it? Censorship happens in the electronic media every day. A paperless world would gradually become a more Orwellian world, because while paper and ink will go on being what they are, unresponsive the fashions of the moment, the electronic record can all too easily be deleted or tampered with. Just as in 1984, those thoughts, those historical memories that no longer suited the needs of those in power could be made to go away only with greater ease, because this could be done with the push of a relatively few buttons.
But having said that, I know that I'll get some contrarian in here arguing with me about this, as if Fetlife itself hadn't deleted a large chunk of its own site just a few months ago. "Yeah, but why would somebody do that." "Irrelevant, because somebody did it. This is a fact." "You're still not answering my question." "Oh, but I did, I just didn't do so on your terms." Without apology, I'm just going to delete those comments. But, by existing, however briefly, they might help make my point.
Why do so many people love the idea of the demise of the traditional book so much? Because the Internet is mostly trash, posted by people who aren't worth listening to, who don't really know anything about anything, and real books, written by real writers and scholars, have always been out there, making the fools on the Internet look as bad as they are, just by being there and being more worthy of being read than the contents of almost any website one will ever find. If the books go away, so does the hated, better competition, as we find outselves in a stunted, empty headed world populated by the likes of Pewdie Pie and Buzzfeed, in which maybe people might remember names like Einstein, Aristotle or Shakespeare, but as for who these men were or what they said, one opinion will be as good as any other, because the facts will have been lost along with the paper, the texts having been rewritten or fabricated to suit the popular whims of the moment.
I'll be bringing $60. It's what I can afford, today, in order to save a few pieces of civilization as it fades away, piece by piece. Maybe I'll have rice and beans toward the end of the month because of this extravagance (wouldn't be the first time), but chicken will still be there to be purchased, next month. The books won't be, so I'll set priorities and hope at least a few other people will do likewise. If it sounds like I'm saying that I don't respect the opinions of the sort of people who say that books are something that the world can do without, please do not misunderstand me. I'm not merely failing to respect their opinions, I'm deliberately choosing to not respect them, as people. I'm really, really tired of watching civilization circle the drain because G-d forbid that we should ever hurt anybody's feelings by saying that one point of view is more reasonable or responsible than another.
For G-d's sake - when the world one encounters starts looking like a mish-mash of the plots to a variety of 20th century dystopian science fiction stories because bad ideas never get challenged in anything more than a gutlessly toothless manner, maybe, just maybe we've been taking the exaggerated sensitivity and tolerance thing a little too far, in a strange way. Over on Youtube, just a few weeks ago, I had the pleasure (?) of dealing with a neo-Nazi in one of the chats who, on learning that I was Jewish (and not entirely European) started giving me death threats. When I asked the mods if they felt that this was appropriate, I was told that I should be more accepting of his point of view (namely, that I should be killed), because that was part of his belief system. Not long after that, I was put on time out, but the Nazi was left free to rant, by a mod who just couldn't (or wouldn't) understand why I found this objectionable.
There is sensitivity to be found, it's just reserved for the craziest, vilest and most stupid people around, while it is denied to those with reasonable concerns. Perhaps a better term for this would be "moral cowardice"? But ignorance can make this all seem far more palatable. Is your mod blissfully unaware of what happened the last time the Nazis had power, because she is unaware of anything that happened before Barack Obama was sworn into office for the second time? Then she might not see the issue. Ignorance is a dangerous thing. I shouldn't have to say that, but I do - ignorance is a dangerous thing. That stopped being a platitude when it creased to be widely believed. The disappearance of the written word moves us closer to a dangerous and depleted future in which ignorance will be a given.
If somebody can't see what's wrong with that, I don't know what to say to him. $60? I think I'll bring $80, even if Wikipedia is going to make the universities (and libraries and bookstores) obsolete in the eyes of some.
------------
I soon got a comment from a lady in California:
"I love the ability to turn actual paper pages, dog ear specific references, highlight paragraphs, and pencil comments in margins. The local reknown indy used book store in my city closed a few years ago, and I still miss it. Is there something wrong with me in the fact that my word reference book is an actual 20-pound (reduced print) OED and not dictionary.com? I understand what you are saying, and I am in total agreement."
to which I replied:
"'Is there something wrong with me in the fact that my word reference book is an actual 20-pound (reduced print) OED and not dictionary.com?'
------------------------
I'm about to shower and head over to shop at said bookstore for what will be the last chance I'll ever have to do so. Chicago, quite seriously, is running out of bookstores, the used bookstores dying even more quickly than the rest. Bookworks went out of business a few months ago.
There are the real reasons this is happening (namely, a local job market that treats the sort of people who would buy books poorly while rolling out the red carpet for every frat boy who passes, and soaring rents fueled by real estate speculation), but since we're all expected to believe that the "free market" can do no wrong, those reasons won't be discussed. No, instead we'll go on listening to people blather on about how bad paper books are for the enviroment, as if wood pulp were a non-renewable resource, about how books are "technologically obsolete" (as if the comfort of the reader had no impact on his ability to focus on his reading) and the few of us who will still dare to have so much as an ounce of common sense on the matter can go on wondering just how much more relevant "Fahrenheit 451" is going to become.
I mean, seriously, the stupidity heard on this subject boggles the mind. We're supposed to believe that books - BOOKS - are no longer needed, because the Internet and electronic media will do it all, as if we hadn't all experienced data loss incidents by now. Looking at the real books (not e-books) sitting on my shelves, I can see that if the publishers that produced them go out of business, I'll be sad, but ... wait for it ....
I'll still be able to read those books.
I'm not going to lose them because somebody hacked my computer, or I got malware, or somebody at Amazon decided that he personally disapproved of a title on my shelf and decided to recall all copies (even the ones already sold). Even if printing technologies change, I'm not going to be find myself unable to read or retrieve a book I own just because the technology needed to read it is no longer available, being withheld from public use by some corporate dweeb long overdue for a well-deserved swirly because "ha ha, neener neener, fuck you, he'll do what he wants." Paper and ink are durable, dependable and easily accessible, and electronic media are none of these.
Again, let's cut the (excrement). Who, reading this, has not had the experience of seeing online writing vanish because a mob of people chose to whine about it? Censorship happens in the electronic media every day. A paperless world would gradually become a more Orwellian world, because while paper and ink will go on being what they are, unresponsive the fashions of the moment, the electronic record can all too easily be deleted or tampered with. Just as in 1984, those thoughts, those historical memories that no longer suited the needs of those in power could be made to go away only with greater ease, because this could be done with the push of a relatively few buttons.
But having said that, I know that I'll get some contrarian in here arguing with me about this, as if Fetlife itself hadn't deleted a large chunk of its own site just a few months ago. "Yeah, but why would somebody do that." "Irrelevant, because somebody did it. This is a fact." "You're still not answering my question." "Oh, but I did, I just didn't do so on your terms." Without apology, I'm just going to delete those comments. But, by existing, however briefly, they might help make my point.
Why do so many people love the idea of the demise of the traditional book so much? Because the Internet is mostly trash, posted by people who aren't worth listening to, who don't really know anything about anything, and real books, written by real writers and scholars, have always been out there, making the fools on the Internet look as bad as they are, just by being there and being more worthy of being read than the contents of almost any website one will ever find. If the books go away, so does the hated, better competition, as we find outselves in a stunted, empty headed world populated by the likes of Pewdie Pie and Buzzfeed, in which maybe people might remember names like Einstein, Aristotle or Shakespeare, but as for who these men were or what they said, one opinion will be as good as any other, because the facts will have been lost along with the paper, the texts having been rewritten or fabricated to suit the popular whims of the moment.
I'll be bringing $60. It's what I can afford, today, in order to save a few pieces of civilization as it fades away, piece by piece. Maybe I'll have rice and beans toward the end of the month because of this extravagance (wouldn't be the first time), but chicken will still be there to be purchased, next month. The books won't be, so I'll set priorities and hope at least a few other people will do likewise. If it sounds like I'm saying that I don't respect the opinions of the sort of people who say that books are something that the world can do without, please do not misunderstand me. I'm not merely failing to respect their opinions, I'm deliberately choosing to not respect them, as people. I'm really, really tired of watching civilization circle the drain because G-d forbid that we should ever hurt anybody's feelings by saying that one point of view is more reasonable or responsible than another.
For G-d's sake - when the world one encounters starts looking like a mish-mash of the plots to a variety of 20th century dystopian science fiction stories because bad ideas never get challenged in anything more than a gutlessly toothless manner, maybe, just maybe we've been taking the exaggerated sensitivity and tolerance thing a little too far, in a strange way. Over on Youtube, just a few weeks ago, I had the pleasure (?) of dealing with a neo-Nazi in one of the chats who, on learning that I was Jewish (and not entirely European) started giving me death threats. When I asked the mods if they felt that this was appropriate, I was told that I should be more accepting of his point of view (namely, that I should be killed), because that was part of his belief system. Not long after that, I was put on time out, but the Nazi was left free to rant, by a mod who just couldn't (or wouldn't) understand why I found this objectionable.
There is sensitivity to be found, it's just reserved for the craziest, vilest and most stupid people around, while it is denied to those with reasonable concerns. Perhaps a better term for this would be "moral cowardice"? But ignorance can make this all seem far more palatable. Is your mod blissfully unaware of what happened the last time the Nazis had power, because she is unaware of anything that happened before Barack Obama was sworn into office for the second time? Then she might not see the issue. Ignorance is a dangerous thing. I shouldn't have to say that, but I do - ignorance is a dangerous thing. That stopped being a platitude when it creased to be widely believed. The disappearance of the written word moves us closer to a dangerous and depleted future in which ignorance will be a given.
If somebody can't see what's wrong with that, I don't know what to say to him. $60? I think I'll bring $80, even if Wikipedia is going to make the universities (and libraries and bookstores) obsolete in the eyes of some.
------------
I soon got a comment from a lady in California:
"I love the ability to turn actual paper pages, dog ear specific references, highlight paragraphs, and pencil comments in margins. The local reknown indy used book store in my city closed a few years ago, and I still miss it. Is there something wrong with me in the fact that my word reference book is an actual 20-pound (reduced print) OED and not dictionary.com? I understand what you are saying, and I am in total agreement."
to which I replied:
"'Is there something wrong with me in the fact that my word reference book is an actual 20-pound (reduced print) OED and not dictionary.com?'
How do I create a new event? / Repost from Fetlife
(Originally posted on my Fetlife blog four months ago)
----------------------
Every once in a while, Fetlife will fail to provide a link to the page used for creating new events, leaving users with the question "how does one do that." Until I deactivate (which might not be too far in the future), the answer is that you to this page
https://fetlife.com/events/new
where you will be invited to "pimp your event." Please spare yourself frustration in the future by saving that link, now. Please spare yourself even more frustration by not even bothering to write to Support about this because, believe me, they're not going to help. Ever. They're just going to do what they feel like doing, especially if it doesn't make sense.
Which, I suppose, is one of the reasons why I'll probably be deactivating well before the end of the month. Please pass this url around, and help other people avoid a lot of aggravation, as well.
A friend replied four months ago:
"If you need help...I pimp events all the time."
and two hours ago, I replied:
"@Colette Thanks. I think I'll take you up on that, soon."
Yes, I'm falling behind on my correspondence.
----------------------
Every once in a while, Fetlife will fail to provide a link to the page used for creating new events, leaving users with the question "how does one do that." Until I deactivate (which might not be too far in the future), the answer is that you to this page
https://fetlife.com/events/new
where you will be invited to "pimp your event." Please spare yourself frustration in the future by saving that link, now. Please spare yourself even more frustration by not even bothering to write to Support about this because, believe me, they're not going to help. Ever. They're just going to do what they feel like doing, especially if it doesn't make sense.
Which, I suppose, is one of the reasons why I'll probably be deactivating well before the end of the month. Please pass this url around, and help other people avoid a lot of aggravation, as well.
A friend replied four months ago:
"If you need help...I pimp events all the time."
and two hours ago, I replied:
"@Colette Thanks. I think I'll take you up on that, soon."
Yes, I'm falling behind on my correspondence.
Fetlife is killing more of my fetishes, one by one / Repost from Fetlife
A repost of a post on my Fetlife blog from five months ago
--------------------------
Check this out: if you go to my profile and look at the fetishes, you'll find that I'm curious about Bolivian Cuisine
https://fetlife.com/fetishes/1074035
and into Afghan Cuisine
https://fetlife.com/fetishes/1070622
but if you clicked on either link, you'd find the system listing 0 people interested in either, with a notice that the fetishes would be deleted in 48 hours if nobody added them. The Burgundian Cuisine and related fetishes have already been deleted, and since Fetlife has removed the option to add new fetishes, I can't fix that.
The excuse for the deletion of fetishes, so far, has been that the company has been doing what it has had to do in ordet to make the credit card companies happy, but unless one wants to seriously argue that Mastercard would have an issue with me making Coq au Vin for somebody I'm dating, that excuse isn't going to stand up to scrutiny this time. Basically, we have somebody on the staff sneaking around while nobody is watching and gaming his own company's system, getting the system to fail to register the fact that somebody has expressed an interest in a fetish, in order to get the system to purge said fetish. Why would the employee do such an absurd thing?
Because John Baku, owner of Fetlife (and Dom) is a control freak, that's why. In a discussion in the Fetlife Suggestion Box group which I'm having trouble finding at the moment, Baku himself expressed unhappiness over the fact that the membership was using the fetish list feature in ways he had not envisaged, creating fetishes that John didn't feel were pervy enough (like Burgundian Cookery). Baku suggested that the freedom to create new fetishes be limited so that such inadequated perverted fetishes could not be shared with others. As I recall, this suggestion met with no support, which is probably why I'm having trouble finding it. The peerless leader didn't like the idea of his failure to find support remaining in the record, I suspect.
But a control freak is going to remain a control freak, so instead of doing his own thing (by keeping us from being free to do our own thing) openly and running into more condemnation, John Baku is going to have His will have done sneakily, a fetish vanishing here, a fetish vanishing there while we're not looking. I am going to have to say that I'm really annoyed, really angry about this. That long fetish list you see on my profile wasn't just set up to blow somebody's mind through its sheer length, it's an integral part of my profile, in which I help visitors (and those who would write to and get to know me) to get a clearer idea of whom I am, what I'm interested in and what I'd like to explore. While the whole idea seems alien to John Baku, whose soullessly self-indulgent sexuality seems to go straight to naked boobies with no lead up, for me those interests aren't a diversion from my "real" fetishes, they are real fetishes, ones that absolutely belong on that list because for me, they're part of the mating dance. Cooking dinner for somebody who fascinates me, exploring a museum with her, talking about the books we've read, the research she has done, collaborating on a theater piece or a work of interactive art - these, for me, are part of what leads up to (and what will follow) physical affection and sex, being both part of the foreplay and the afterplay, in addition to being things done just because they're worth doing.
I am not into Pick Up culture. Sex, for me, is not something that exists in a vacuum or that I want to rush into without developing a deep personal relationship with the right woman, first, and whether John wants to understand this or not, the sharing of interests is part of how one develops real relationships. Is my list of fetishes long? Good. Having a wide range of interests is a good thing, something that makes me easier to get to know. But John Baku, on this site on which he has the balls to talk about his support for personal freedom, only wants to seem to tolerate those exercises of personal freedom which involve getting somebody's penis or vagina wet with a minimum of fuss, preferably while upsetting conservative people as much as possible.
While I'm not a conservative, myself, my life does not center around a desire to outrage the sensibilities of such people. If I and my next girlfriend want to go out and ... I don't know, decide to get root beer floats during one of our dates, the impression that these sneaky, underhanded fetish deletions leaves me with is that Baku et al. would have a huge problem with that choice, because a Christian preacher would not. What I don't see is how any of this becomes John Baku's business, and why intrusiveness from Baku and his staff is any less objectionable than the nosiness of that hypothetical preacher. If anything, I think it's worse. A relationship with no vanilla moments, something that is nothing more than an endless game of "can you top this" as I and my partner try to see how shocking we can be, is going to be an empty (and probably stomach turning) affair, with no real connection happening.
I discovered this, today, as I finally got back through my update page on Fetlife (in spite of the infinite scroll feature) in an attempt to recover my writing from the groups, only to discover that almost all of it had been purged during Baku's content deletions. A lot of my work, none of which had anything to do with blood or "vampirism", went to waste, deleted without warning, and now I am left with the impression that I'm going to lose more of my work. Those fetishes took time to create, they've been serving a useful purpose, but John and company are going to do what they feel like doing, even if they have to sneak around like little cowards in order to do it.
Sorry that the quality of writing has been so poor in this post, but I'm so angry that I can hardly think straight. I'm not a sub, and if I was a sub, I wouldn't be John Baku's sub, but I guess consent means nothing to the guy, does it? All that matters to him is getting his own way, and if we get fucked over in the process, to him, that's not just OK, that's how he gets narcissistic supply replenished - and that's why so many of us are spending less and less time on this site. There is no way for me to keep the time that went into creating those fetishes from going to waste, if (as seems likely) the staff goes on playing this game, but I can at least refrain from setting myself up for further losses of this nature.
As for posting real writing to this site - not going to happen. Some of you know me "in the real world" (offline), and I'll be happy to tell you where I'll be reading, but given the destructive behavior of the staff and the horrible attitudes of the owner, I think that one can see why I would not consider Fetlife as a platform for anything of substance, any more. This is a long overdue (and thoroughly justified) vote of no confidence, not just in this site, but in this industry. As I pointed out in the Fetlife Announcement group (before I was banned from it) even the most lightly attended open mikes I've ever seen offered audiences far larger than those almost any blogger will enjoy, with far fewer restrictions. After somebody in-group claimed to know more about Chicago than I did on the basis he visited my city once during the last century, and insisted that one couldn't read rape fiction at any literary event in our city, I mentioned one at which I read, in which one of the writers not only read a piece of rape fiction, but in fact, one told from the point of view of the demonically possessed knife used to disembowel the victim. Nobody had an issue with that. There was squirming, because the writing was both excellent and (obviously) dark, but no protest from anybody, including the organizers.
At the end of the reading, the author didn't lose his writing to an arbitrary content deletion, because it was sitting there, on paper, in his hands. That's where our effort belongs, I think - in tangible form, not at the mercy of some admin who can wipe it out for any reason or no reason at all, and will do so just to establish his own personal power. I'm not going to write to Support about this. I've tried that in the past, and I've seen how helpful they are not willing to be. I'm just going to grit my teeth and walk on. What else is there to do? These guys are scum and they're proud of it.
--------
After I published this post, I added a few comments:
"Deleting and re-adding the fetishes I mentioned seems to have worked, but take a look at my fetish list. I don't have time to check them all. I definitely don't have the time to keep checking them all, in order to keep an eye on what the staff is doing, while I'm not watching.
I shouldn't have to make the time for that. We should be able to trust the people in Support to behave honorably, and as I've seen, we can't."
"Oh, here's another one they targeted: Atmospheric Chemistry
https://fetlife.com/fetishes/1071131
a perfectly legitimate science I'd like to know more about. I have it listed as something I'm curious about, and once again, on going to that page, I saw the system lie to me and say that nobody had expressed an interest in the fetish. Adding that if this didn't change soon, that the fetish would be deleted.
These guys are such incredible (anal sphincters)."
"Once again, deleting and re-adding got me to reappear, but I can't sit here all night doing this to save my fetishes and I shouldn't have to. I should be able to trust the staff to refrain from playing games.
Atmospheric Physics
https://fetlife.com/fetishes/995919
was not so affected, at this time. The credit card company will allow us to study charge distributions within clouds, but not their chemical compositions, then? :)
Can anybody take the official party line regarding content and fetish deletions seriously at this point?"
"Comet Chenistry
https://fetlife.com/fetishes/1084967
I'll try the delete and re-add option. So far, Fetlife doesn't seem to like Cooking or Chemistry. Has anybody broken the news to John that most universities have departments of Chemistry? That it's a perfectly respectable subject?
How much crazier is this going to get?
"Combinatorial Algebraic Geometry
https://fetlife.com/fetishes/1083580"
"Comorian Cookery. Same game. MC doesn't want us to put vanilla into our food, Mr. Baku? Really?
https://fetlife.com/fetishes/1073998
Bearded dude, you have issues."
--------------------------
Check this out: if you go to my profile and look at the fetishes, you'll find that I'm curious about Bolivian Cuisine
https://fetlife.com/fetishes/1074035
and into Afghan Cuisine
https://fetlife.com/fetishes/1070622
but if you clicked on either link, you'd find the system listing 0 people interested in either, with a notice that the fetishes would be deleted in 48 hours if nobody added them. The Burgundian Cuisine and related fetishes have already been deleted, and since Fetlife has removed the option to add new fetishes, I can't fix that.
The excuse for the deletion of fetishes, so far, has been that the company has been doing what it has had to do in ordet to make the credit card companies happy, but unless one wants to seriously argue that Mastercard would have an issue with me making Coq au Vin for somebody I'm dating, that excuse isn't going to stand up to scrutiny this time. Basically, we have somebody on the staff sneaking around while nobody is watching and gaming his own company's system, getting the system to fail to register the fact that somebody has expressed an interest in a fetish, in order to get the system to purge said fetish. Why would the employee do such an absurd thing?
Because John Baku, owner of Fetlife (and Dom) is a control freak, that's why. In a discussion in the Fetlife Suggestion Box group which I'm having trouble finding at the moment, Baku himself expressed unhappiness over the fact that the membership was using the fetish list feature in ways he had not envisaged, creating fetishes that John didn't feel were pervy enough (like Burgundian Cookery). Baku suggested that the freedom to create new fetishes be limited so that such inadequated perverted fetishes could not be shared with others. As I recall, this suggestion met with no support, which is probably why I'm having trouble finding it. The peerless leader didn't like the idea of his failure to find support remaining in the record, I suspect.
But a control freak is going to remain a control freak, so instead of doing his own thing (by keeping us from being free to do our own thing) openly and running into more condemnation, John Baku is going to have His will have done sneakily, a fetish vanishing here, a fetish vanishing there while we're not looking. I am going to have to say that I'm really annoyed, really angry about this. That long fetish list you see on my profile wasn't just set up to blow somebody's mind through its sheer length, it's an integral part of my profile, in which I help visitors (and those who would write to and get to know me) to get a clearer idea of whom I am, what I'm interested in and what I'd like to explore. While the whole idea seems alien to John Baku, whose soullessly self-indulgent sexuality seems to go straight to naked boobies with no lead up, for me those interests aren't a diversion from my "real" fetishes, they are real fetishes, ones that absolutely belong on that list because for me, they're part of the mating dance. Cooking dinner for somebody who fascinates me, exploring a museum with her, talking about the books we've read, the research she has done, collaborating on a theater piece or a work of interactive art - these, for me, are part of what leads up to (and what will follow) physical affection and sex, being both part of the foreplay and the afterplay, in addition to being things done just because they're worth doing.
I am not into Pick Up culture. Sex, for me, is not something that exists in a vacuum or that I want to rush into without developing a deep personal relationship with the right woman, first, and whether John wants to understand this or not, the sharing of interests is part of how one develops real relationships. Is my list of fetishes long? Good. Having a wide range of interests is a good thing, something that makes me easier to get to know. But John Baku, on this site on which he has the balls to talk about his support for personal freedom, only wants to seem to tolerate those exercises of personal freedom which involve getting somebody's penis or vagina wet with a minimum of fuss, preferably while upsetting conservative people as much as possible.
While I'm not a conservative, myself, my life does not center around a desire to outrage the sensibilities of such people. If I and my next girlfriend want to go out and ... I don't know, decide to get root beer floats during one of our dates, the impression that these sneaky, underhanded fetish deletions leaves me with is that Baku et al. would have a huge problem with that choice, because a Christian preacher would not. What I don't see is how any of this becomes John Baku's business, and why intrusiveness from Baku and his staff is any less objectionable than the nosiness of that hypothetical preacher. If anything, I think it's worse. A relationship with no vanilla moments, something that is nothing more than an endless game of "can you top this" as I and my partner try to see how shocking we can be, is going to be an empty (and probably stomach turning) affair, with no real connection happening.
I discovered this, today, as I finally got back through my update page on Fetlife (in spite of the infinite scroll feature) in an attempt to recover my writing from the groups, only to discover that almost all of it had been purged during Baku's content deletions. A lot of my work, none of which had anything to do with blood or "vampirism", went to waste, deleted without warning, and now I am left with the impression that I'm going to lose more of my work. Those fetishes took time to create, they've been serving a useful purpose, but John and company are going to do what they feel like doing, even if they have to sneak around like little cowards in order to do it.
Sorry that the quality of writing has been so poor in this post, but I'm so angry that I can hardly think straight. I'm not a sub, and if I was a sub, I wouldn't be John Baku's sub, but I guess consent means nothing to the guy, does it? All that matters to him is getting his own way, and if we get fucked over in the process, to him, that's not just OK, that's how he gets narcissistic supply replenished - and that's why so many of us are spending less and less time on this site. There is no way for me to keep the time that went into creating those fetishes from going to waste, if (as seems likely) the staff goes on playing this game, but I can at least refrain from setting myself up for further losses of this nature.
As for posting real writing to this site - not going to happen. Some of you know me "in the real world" (offline), and I'll be happy to tell you where I'll be reading, but given the destructive behavior of the staff and the horrible attitudes of the owner, I think that one can see why I would not consider Fetlife as a platform for anything of substance, any more. This is a long overdue (and thoroughly justified) vote of no confidence, not just in this site, but in this industry. As I pointed out in the Fetlife Announcement group (before I was banned from it) even the most lightly attended open mikes I've ever seen offered audiences far larger than those almost any blogger will enjoy, with far fewer restrictions. After somebody in-group claimed to know more about Chicago than I did on the basis he visited my city once during the last century, and insisted that one couldn't read rape fiction at any literary event in our city, I mentioned one at which I read, in which one of the writers not only read a piece of rape fiction, but in fact, one told from the point of view of the demonically possessed knife used to disembowel the victim. Nobody had an issue with that. There was squirming, because the writing was both excellent and (obviously) dark, but no protest from anybody, including the organizers.
At the end of the reading, the author didn't lose his writing to an arbitrary content deletion, because it was sitting there, on paper, in his hands. That's where our effort belongs, I think - in tangible form, not at the mercy of some admin who can wipe it out for any reason or no reason at all, and will do so just to establish his own personal power. I'm not going to write to Support about this. I've tried that in the past, and I've seen how helpful they are not willing to be. I'm just going to grit my teeth and walk on. What else is there to do? These guys are scum and they're proud of it.
--------
After I published this post, I added a few comments:
"Deleting and re-adding the fetishes I mentioned seems to have worked, but take a look at my fetish list. I don't have time to check them all. I definitely don't have the time to keep checking them all, in order to keep an eye on what the staff is doing, while I'm not watching.
I shouldn't have to make the time for that. We should be able to trust the people in Support to behave honorably, and as I've seen, we can't."
"Oh, here's another one they targeted: Atmospheric Chemistry
https://fetlife.com/fetishes/1071131
a perfectly legitimate science I'd like to know more about. I have it listed as something I'm curious about, and once again, on going to that page, I saw the system lie to me and say that nobody had expressed an interest in the fetish. Adding that if this didn't change soon, that the fetish would be deleted.
These guys are such incredible (anal sphincters)."
"Once again, deleting and re-adding got me to reappear, but I can't sit here all night doing this to save my fetishes and I shouldn't have to. I should be able to trust the staff to refrain from playing games.
Atmospheric Physics
https://fetlife.com/fetishes/995919
was not so affected, at this time. The credit card company will allow us to study charge distributions within clouds, but not their chemical compositions, then? :)
Can anybody take the official party line regarding content and fetish deletions seriously at this point?"
"Comet Chenistry
https://fetlife.com/fetishes/1084967
I'll try the delete and re-add option. So far, Fetlife doesn't seem to like Cooking or Chemistry. Has anybody broken the news to John that most universities have departments of Chemistry? That it's a perfectly respectable subject?
How much crazier is this going to get?
"Combinatorial Algebraic Geometry
https://fetlife.com/fetishes/1083580"
"Comorian Cookery. Same game. MC doesn't want us to put vanilla into our food, Mr. Baku? Really?
https://fetlife.com/fetishes/1073998
Bearded dude, you have issues."
"Miso Soup - because fermented soybeans are such a scandal?
https://fetlife.com/fetishes/1075176 "
After I raised a fuss (and maybe other people did), the fetishes started sticking and we got back the freedom to create new fetishes, so there is (once again) a Burgundian Cuisine fetish on Fetlife. But I remain banned from the official company group, where the content deletions were being discussed (and defended by a few fanboys who didn't like seeing me debunk their feeble rationalizations of the company's actions) to this day.
That's the problem with Fetlife: the site is crazy, not in the sense of wildness and amusing whimsy, but in the sense of providing the user with one pointless headache after another.
https://fetlife.com/fetishes/1075176 "
After I raised a fuss (and maybe other people did), the fetishes started sticking and we got back the freedom to create new fetishes, so there is (once again) a Burgundian Cuisine fetish on Fetlife. But I remain banned from the official company group, where the content deletions were being discussed (and defended by a few fanboys who didn't like seeing me debunk their feeble rationalizations of the company's actions) to this day.
That's the problem with Fetlife: the site is crazy, not in the sense of wildness and amusing whimsy, but in the sense of providing the user with one pointless headache after another.
Pass the eye shadow / Repost from Fetlife
Another Fet blog post of mine from eight months ago. I must have been busy just after New Years'
-----------------
Usually, when I say something it makes sense. but sometimes I got back and look and ... well ... let's look at this masterpiece of mine, posted under the title "Pardon my skepticism?" three months ago. There will be a semi-happy observation coming up at the end of all of this ugliness, something for a guy to think about at a time when MGTOW-inspired cynicism about feminine motives is so in fashion.
"Women AND men? How much money could there be in cam modeling for men, and wouldn't the men have to reach some sort of impossible physical standard to make any money at all, at this?
Even now, how difficult is it, really, for a woman to find men who will let her see them naked? Why would a woman pay for that which she can get for free?"
A few people responded, and they seemed very nice - and perhaps very tactful. Now that I think about it, I'm wondering what I was thinking about when I wrote that first post in that thread. My whole line of argument was based on at least one faulty premise that I should have known was faulty, because life had thrown the truth in my face. Like, repeatedly. When I finished the coursework for my PhD in Mathematics, I got to make a discovery, just not the kind one usually publishes in the sort of magazines I read. :)
I came back to Chicago, deciding to work on my thesis at home for a number of reasons, including those of health. I'm Jewish, and our college town turned out to be in the middle of Klan country. Surprise! Our synagogue got bombed and the police refused to investigate. I decided that I could use a breather, and remembered (perhaps conveniently) that I had debts to pay off (like my student loans from undergrad). I went looking for a real job, and found that I wasn't allowed to have one. Long story - there was the issue of "overqualification" because I already had my masters, I was stuck in the "no experience, no job" cycle, and then there was the fact that a lot of the people I was meeting in HR seemed to be under the influence of some kind of controlled sustance or another. In at least one case, a few of us were fairly sure that the substance was Cocaine. Job seeking can be a nasty experience.
Especially when one doesn't have a phone because one's father has decided that it is a luxury that one doesn't need, forcing one to put his telephone number on one's resumes and job applications, and he then turns the answering machine off at his place because he does what he wants, meaning that when the employers finally call, they can't leave messages. I probably should mention that my father was a child beating narcissist. I got bigger, but he didn't stop being a narcissist. He just replaced his love of physical brutality with extortion, manipulation and sabotage of various sorts.
I got some more coursework, this time in Electrical Engineering, but my job search continued to go nowhere, because now I was one of the long term unemployed. I scraped together as much of a living as I could out of tutoring, work as a prep cook, substitute teaching - every lousy little temp job I could find and had a halfway decent chance of surviving. I continued looking for work, in what free time I had.
One day, I got home to my shabby little apartment building, and found that I was being approached by somebody who seemed to understand my personal financial crisis more than she should have and she had a deal for me, a job I could get from her with only a minimal amount of relevant work experience, if you want to call it that. A lot of people who've been to grad school probably already know what I'm referring to, having had this sort of meeting, themselves.
If I had said "yes", I would have been an escort for a wealthy (but not extremely well educated) female client, who wanted to purchase somebody who was capable of being discreet. The client got her money through inheritance, not through her own work. In the upper class settings in which she would mingle, she ended up feeling that she was on the receiving end of snobbery. While definitely not unattractive, physically, she was short and of stocky build, pretty but not in a conventional way. This left her with a type of boyfriend she wanted, but couldn't get through conventional means, because this type of boy would almost never ask her out - tall, thin and a professor (or something like one). But that which would not come her way of its own accord, could always be purchased.
"Escort" in this case is just a polite way of saying "prostitute", albeit a prostitute with a very limited client list and a broader range of services provides (not just intercourse, but companionship and the maintenance of an illusion). This woman had already solicited (and received) services from one of my classmates, I'm not sure how consensually (we'll get to that). She was ready to trade up. At the risk of sounding immodest, I was both taller and more attractive than her previous purchase, and better educated. She liked the idea of this trade. I was rather scandalized by it, myself, perhaps more so than I would be today, because as far as I was concerned, I was not that kind of boy. I turned her down. This shouldn't have been such a big deal for her, because grad students often will do the kind of work she wanted, and I'm sure she could have found somebody better looking than me, but her response to my declining of her offer was in no way a ladylike one. Or normal.
I moved without leaving a forwarding address, for a number of reasons which we can go into later, and she had somebody track me down. Hired a private investigator to find my unpublished address, which he did, leaving her knocking at my front door, which seemed rather indiscreet to me, at the time. It's hard for me to be 100% sure of what happened after that, but I can make a good guess, because the heiress was willing to help clue me in. She tried to blackmail me into providing her for free, with that which I had been unwilling to sell her, reminding me that what to her was loose change, to the right people in the university would be a large enough bribe to get me expelled, and sure enough, I was being called in for a series of hearings over what were clearly trumped up charges. Nobody said no to her in her mental world, but that's not a world into which I wished to move, even temporarily, until my time to be replaced came.
The story gets strange and unpleasant after that, in a way that takes us off the point, so I'll cut it short. The good news was that one of my brothers soon finished law school, he knew people, and the whole thing got dealt with, without any laws being broken by our side. She didn't do any prison time, even though what she did (at the least) was stalking, but I did get an order of protection out against her. There was that. I haven't been bothered by her, since. I don't know if she has tried to buy any more engineers, lately, or mathematicians, though I suppose we're probably more available now, than ever, thanks to outsourcing. Who knows?
People have done and endured a lot worse than live the life of a kept man or woman, over the last few years, just to stay alive. If that's the route one chooses to go, I will say that there is something to be said for that choice. It seems to be a more pleasant and certainly more easily survivable one than that faced by the usually less educated streetwalkers. "So, you're saying that if one wants to be a hooker, one should study hard and stay in school, Books?", somebody will ask. Yes, it's a fine, uplifting message, isn't it? I'd like to give you a better one, but given the realities of the world in which we live, I'm not sure it's always there to be found.
People get killed doing some of the low paid, risky work we do to stay on the "straight and narrow", so even if the PTA wouldn't approve, I'm not sure that's a bad message to walk away with. I will say one thing for that choice, and it's one that sometimes makes me wonder if I made the right choice - if I had said "yes", I would have been out from under the thumb of that narcissistic father of mine a lot sooner. and avoided a lot of unpleasantness, some of which could have cut my life very short. I'm left with the strange thought that maybe I turned my nose up at an easy route out of the troubles my father's actions were causing me, because my father would not have approved. But given that my father was deliberately sabotaging my career at that point, just for the lulz, why did I want his approval? Why would I care about what the bastard would have thought?
How many sexual partners do most of us have these days, anyway? Would having one more have really been such a big deal, even if it was somebody terrible? I honestly don't know, and I wonder about the choice I made. I suppose, given the stalking, she did seem very unstable, and one shouldn't stick one's dick into crazy, but my other alternatives weren't clearly any better. I'll get into that, later.
When I started to argue as if only men purchased sex, I was being ridiculous and now I wonder why. I know better than to argue such a point, because I know it's not true. I even know why it's not true, and that's a realization that can take me to something a lot less messed up that which I had just started to describe.
The basic truth of sex work is this: while the usual assumption is that the client pays for sex, that's not exactly true, most of the time. Really, anybody who wants to have sex can get it almost instantly. Some people (mostly men) will loudly deny the truth of this, but think about it. If one of those sexually frustrated 18-35 year old "nice guys" one keeps running into in the clubs went up to somebody's 70 year old widowed grandmother and made himself available to her, do you think she'd say no? Not likely. Make her a 90 year old, and that gets even less likely. The reality is that he can get sex, he just can't get the sex he wants.
No, what the client pays for isn't the sex, it's the fantasy. The client pays in order to be with somebody who usually say no, hitting the sheets with somebody outside of his or her own "weight class", as I heard somebody put it. In this, I could find one happy thought that came out of a degrading (and not unprecedented) experience. A lot of men drive themselves into craziness and despair, asking themselves what women want, and falling prey to illusions through which they fail to see.
Consider the case of the well known, hyper-buff Gulf War veteran who was written about, I believe by the "Honest Courtesan" (of whom I do not think highly). He tried to sell his body in a Nevada brothel and gave up, after finding only one buyer. The Honest Courtesan, in true ultra-right fashion, offered this anecdote as proof that there was no such thing as a gigolo (raising the question of why the word even existed) and that the market value of male sexuality was nil. Bloggers in the manosphere, more than a few of whom seem to be emotional masochists, clung to this conclusion in joyful despair, saying that the incident showed that no man could ever hope to catch a woman's eye, and that AWALT "'all women are like that"), valuing men only for their money.
This is nonsense.
While what i was getting out of my well-heeled stalker certainly wasn't love, it did have the virtue of beating the life out of a depressing theory for me, to such an extent that the theory can't get to me much, at all. She was spending money that she wasn't going to recover doing this, and as she had nothing but inheritance income, she could make no profit by impressing anybody. An argument that she was operating out of mercenary, financial motives would be an insane one. For the matter, given that I've spent my life stuck below the poverty line, if, as the MGTOWS say, there were no NAWALTS, then how would I have ever lost my virginity? It is absurd.
So many despairing single men, seeing that article, will take one look at the guy (I think he was a navy seal), and say "look at how the guy is built, we could never measure up to that guy, physically." They're right, of course. They couldn't, and neither could I. "So if no women are lusting after that guy", they'll ask, "what chance is there for the rest of us."
Well, strange as this might sound (and really is), geting stalked can be seen as a source of hope, because who is going to try to steal that which is of no value to her? Reality check, and people who've seen me at local events will vouch for this - while I'm about 6'3", I only weigh about 180 pounds at this point, judging by the looseness of some of my old clothes this morning. Nobody would consider me buff. I'm in decent condition, but I'm not physically perfect. I don't need to be, and neither do men, in general.
What one needs to do is work on all aspects of oneself, not just the physical. Our would-be nevada man-whore might have been built like a Greek god, but he was also a lunkhead working in tacky environment. Sex on terms like that is a male fantasy, not a female one. Women want more than that, and if we listen to them, listen to the ones who do know how to behave like civilized people, we'll find ourselves presented with a questions like "when and how did we forget that we wanted more than that, too" and "how did our expectations ever get so low."
No, we don't need to spend forever, pounding away at our muscles, just to be noticed (perhaps even be noticed a little too much). We need just to live our own best, fullest lives and stop worrying about the fears that certain people will encourage in us. As for the crazies I keep meeting, sure, a little fear in those cases might be a good idea, but we can talk about that, later. Going to places you genuinely want to be, doing things you want to do instead of chaining yourself to a weight machine hurting yourself, and getting more in return - does that sound so bad?
The world is a nasty place, but not as nasty or as hopeless as some people might get one to believe.
-----------------
Usually, when I say something it makes sense. but sometimes I got back and look and ... well ... let's look at this masterpiece of mine, posted under the title "Pardon my skepticism?" three months ago. There will be a semi-happy observation coming up at the end of all of this ugliness, something for a guy to think about at a time when MGTOW-inspired cynicism about feminine motives is so in fashion.
"Women AND men? How much money could there be in cam modeling for men, and wouldn't the men have to reach some sort of impossible physical standard to make any money at all, at this?
Even now, how difficult is it, really, for a woman to find men who will let her see them naked? Why would a woman pay for that which she can get for free?"
A few people responded, and they seemed very nice - and perhaps very tactful. Now that I think about it, I'm wondering what I was thinking about when I wrote that first post in that thread. My whole line of argument was based on at least one faulty premise that I should have known was faulty, because life had thrown the truth in my face. Like, repeatedly. When I finished the coursework for my PhD in Mathematics, I got to make a discovery, just not the kind one usually publishes in the sort of magazines I read. :)
I came back to Chicago, deciding to work on my thesis at home for a number of reasons, including those of health. I'm Jewish, and our college town turned out to be in the middle of Klan country. Surprise! Our synagogue got bombed and the police refused to investigate. I decided that I could use a breather, and remembered (perhaps conveniently) that I had debts to pay off (like my student loans from undergrad). I went looking for a real job, and found that I wasn't allowed to have one. Long story - there was the issue of "overqualification" because I already had my masters, I was stuck in the "no experience, no job" cycle, and then there was the fact that a lot of the people I was meeting in HR seemed to be under the influence of some kind of controlled sustance or another. In at least one case, a few of us were fairly sure that the substance was Cocaine. Job seeking can be a nasty experience.
Especially when one doesn't have a phone because one's father has decided that it is a luxury that one doesn't need, forcing one to put his telephone number on one's resumes and job applications, and he then turns the answering machine off at his place because he does what he wants, meaning that when the employers finally call, they can't leave messages. I probably should mention that my father was a child beating narcissist. I got bigger, but he didn't stop being a narcissist. He just replaced his love of physical brutality with extortion, manipulation and sabotage of various sorts.
I got some more coursework, this time in Electrical Engineering, but my job search continued to go nowhere, because now I was one of the long term unemployed. I scraped together as much of a living as I could out of tutoring, work as a prep cook, substitute teaching - every lousy little temp job I could find and had a halfway decent chance of surviving. I continued looking for work, in what free time I had.
One day, I got home to my shabby little apartment building, and found that I was being approached by somebody who seemed to understand my personal financial crisis more than she should have and she had a deal for me, a job I could get from her with only a minimal amount of relevant work experience, if you want to call it that. A lot of people who've been to grad school probably already know what I'm referring to, having had this sort of meeting, themselves.
If I had said "yes", I would have been an escort for a wealthy (but not extremely well educated) female client, who wanted to purchase somebody who was capable of being discreet. The client got her money through inheritance, not through her own work. In the upper class settings in which she would mingle, she ended up feeling that she was on the receiving end of snobbery. While definitely not unattractive, physically, she was short and of stocky build, pretty but not in a conventional way. This left her with a type of boyfriend she wanted, but couldn't get through conventional means, because this type of boy would almost never ask her out - tall, thin and a professor (or something like one). But that which would not come her way of its own accord, could always be purchased.
"Escort" in this case is just a polite way of saying "prostitute", albeit a prostitute with a very limited client list and a broader range of services provides (not just intercourse, but companionship and the maintenance of an illusion). This woman had already solicited (and received) services from one of my classmates, I'm not sure how consensually (we'll get to that). She was ready to trade up. At the risk of sounding immodest, I was both taller and more attractive than her previous purchase, and better educated. She liked the idea of this trade. I was rather scandalized by it, myself, perhaps more so than I would be today, because as far as I was concerned, I was not that kind of boy. I turned her down. This shouldn't have been such a big deal for her, because grad students often will do the kind of work she wanted, and I'm sure she could have found somebody better looking than me, but her response to my declining of her offer was in no way a ladylike one. Or normal.
I moved without leaving a forwarding address, for a number of reasons which we can go into later, and she had somebody track me down. Hired a private investigator to find my unpublished address, which he did, leaving her knocking at my front door, which seemed rather indiscreet to me, at the time. It's hard for me to be 100% sure of what happened after that, but I can make a good guess, because the heiress was willing to help clue me in. She tried to blackmail me into providing her for free, with that which I had been unwilling to sell her, reminding me that what to her was loose change, to the right people in the university would be a large enough bribe to get me expelled, and sure enough, I was being called in for a series of hearings over what were clearly trumped up charges. Nobody said no to her in her mental world, but that's not a world into which I wished to move, even temporarily, until my time to be replaced came.
The story gets strange and unpleasant after that, in a way that takes us off the point, so I'll cut it short. The good news was that one of my brothers soon finished law school, he knew people, and the whole thing got dealt with, without any laws being broken by our side. She didn't do any prison time, even though what she did (at the least) was stalking, but I did get an order of protection out against her. There was that. I haven't been bothered by her, since. I don't know if she has tried to buy any more engineers, lately, or mathematicians, though I suppose we're probably more available now, than ever, thanks to outsourcing. Who knows?
People have done and endured a lot worse than live the life of a kept man or woman, over the last few years, just to stay alive. If that's the route one chooses to go, I will say that there is something to be said for that choice. It seems to be a more pleasant and certainly more easily survivable one than that faced by the usually less educated streetwalkers. "So, you're saying that if one wants to be a hooker, one should study hard and stay in school, Books?", somebody will ask. Yes, it's a fine, uplifting message, isn't it? I'd like to give you a better one, but given the realities of the world in which we live, I'm not sure it's always there to be found.
People get killed doing some of the low paid, risky work we do to stay on the "straight and narrow", so even if the PTA wouldn't approve, I'm not sure that's a bad message to walk away with. I will say one thing for that choice, and it's one that sometimes makes me wonder if I made the right choice - if I had said "yes", I would have been out from under the thumb of that narcissistic father of mine a lot sooner. and avoided a lot of unpleasantness, some of which could have cut my life very short. I'm left with the strange thought that maybe I turned my nose up at an easy route out of the troubles my father's actions were causing me, because my father would not have approved. But given that my father was deliberately sabotaging my career at that point, just for the lulz, why did I want his approval? Why would I care about what the bastard would have thought?
How many sexual partners do most of us have these days, anyway? Would having one more have really been such a big deal, even if it was somebody terrible? I honestly don't know, and I wonder about the choice I made. I suppose, given the stalking, she did seem very unstable, and one shouldn't stick one's dick into crazy, but my other alternatives weren't clearly any better. I'll get into that, later.
When I started to argue as if only men purchased sex, I was being ridiculous and now I wonder why. I know better than to argue such a point, because I know it's not true. I even know why it's not true, and that's a realization that can take me to something a lot less messed up that which I had just started to describe.
The basic truth of sex work is this: while the usual assumption is that the client pays for sex, that's not exactly true, most of the time. Really, anybody who wants to have sex can get it almost instantly. Some people (mostly men) will loudly deny the truth of this, but think about it. If one of those sexually frustrated 18-35 year old "nice guys" one keeps running into in the clubs went up to somebody's 70 year old widowed grandmother and made himself available to her, do you think she'd say no? Not likely. Make her a 90 year old, and that gets even less likely. The reality is that he can get sex, he just can't get the sex he wants.
No, what the client pays for isn't the sex, it's the fantasy. The client pays in order to be with somebody who usually say no, hitting the sheets with somebody outside of his or her own "weight class", as I heard somebody put it. In this, I could find one happy thought that came out of a degrading (and not unprecedented) experience. A lot of men drive themselves into craziness and despair, asking themselves what women want, and falling prey to illusions through which they fail to see.
Consider the case of the well known, hyper-buff Gulf War veteran who was written about, I believe by the "Honest Courtesan" (of whom I do not think highly). He tried to sell his body in a Nevada brothel and gave up, after finding only one buyer. The Honest Courtesan, in true ultra-right fashion, offered this anecdote as proof that there was no such thing as a gigolo (raising the question of why the word even existed) and that the market value of male sexuality was nil. Bloggers in the manosphere, more than a few of whom seem to be emotional masochists, clung to this conclusion in joyful despair, saying that the incident showed that no man could ever hope to catch a woman's eye, and that AWALT "'all women are like that"), valuing men only for their money.
This is nonsense.
While what i was getting out of my well-heeled stalker certainly wasn't love, it did have the virtue of beating the life out of a depressing theory for me, to such an extent that the theory can't get to me much, at all. She was spending money that she wasn't going to recover doing this, and as she had nothing but inheritance income, she could make no profit by impressing anybody. An argument that she was operating out of mercenary, financial motives would be an insane one. For the matter, given that I've spent my life stuck below the poverty line, if, as the MGTOWS say, there were no NAWALTS, then how would I have ever lost my virginity? It is absurd.
So many despairing single men, seeing that article, will take one look at the guy (I think he was a navy seal), and say "look at how the guy is built, we could never measure up to that guy, physically." They're right, of course. They couldn't, and neither could I. "So if no women are lusting after that guy", they'll ask, "what chance is there for the rest of us."
Well, strange as this might sound (and really is), geting stalked can be seen as a source of hope, because who is going to try to steal that which is of no value to her? Reality check, and people who've seen me at local events will vouch for this - while I'm about 6'3", I only weigh about 180 pounds at this point, judging by the looseness of some of my old clothes this morning. Nobody would consider me buff. I'm in decent condition, but I'm not physically perfect. I don't need to be, and neither do men, in general.
What one needs to do is work on all aspects of oneself, not just the physical. Our would-be nevada man-whore might have been built like a Greek god, but he was also a lunkhead working in tacky environment. Sex on terms like that is a male fantasy, not a female one. Women want more than that, and if we listen to them, listen to the ones who do know how to behave like civilized people, we'll find ourselves presented with a questions like "when and how did we forget that we wanted more than that, too" and "how did our expectations ever get so low."
No, we don't need to spend forever, pounding away at our muscles, just to be noticed (perhaps even be noticed a little too much). We need just to live our own best, fullest lives and stop worrying about the fears that certain people will encourage in us. As for the crazies I keep meeting, sure, a little fear in those cases might be a good idea, but we can talk about that, later. Going to places you genuinely want to be, doing things you want to do instead of chaining yourself to a weight machine hurting yourself, and getting more in return - does that sound so bad?
The world is a nasty place, but not as nasty or as hopeless as some people might get one to believe.
Where have you been? / Repost from my Fetlife blog
Oh, now we're getting into fresher material ... this was from just eight months ago!
----------------------------
I've been very slow in getting back to people for a while. A little explanation might be in order.
For my entire life, I've had an ongoing problem with insomnia. There are a few reasons for this, one of which is an unwelcome quirk. Perhaps you are familiar with an experiment in which people were isolated from the outside world, denied knowledge of whether or not the sun was out, not allowed access to clocks, and then had their sleep patterns observed. I recall that the researchers found their subjects would, on the average, end up living on a 25 hour cycle. Their internal clocks were a little out of step with the rotation of the planet.
Mine is a lot out of step, my natural cycle usually being over 30 hours. This, at times, has had its advantages. It was great for doing all-nighters on class projects and staying up partying all night, but when I want to sleep, it can be a nuisance. Under the best of circumstances, I can end up sleep deprived, and bad circumstances can be made even worse.
A while ago, like a number of people, I ran into what seems to be one the latest big things on Fet: some of the people with whom I was socializing left me stranded in the suburbs late at night, forcing me to walk back to the city. By the time I reached the El (part of our public transit system), the sun was rising and I was ready to collapse. Getting my sleep schedule back on track has been a struggle, made worse by the aforementioned quirk. In order to move my schedule in the usual way - getting to sleep and waking a little earlier each day - I'd have to make my days unusually short, and given my natural rhythms, that's far more difficult for me than for most people. I'll lay in bed and just not sleep. Sleeping pills don't help, except for one - Ambien. From which I get psychedelic effects (and odd effects on my behavior), just like Mom did when she tried that drug. Maybe it's an idiosyncratic reaction. Maybe, like Primaquine, Ambien is just not a good thing to give to the Sephardim? I don't know.
The only thing that I've found will work is staying up later and later, until I've rotated my schedule so much that once again, I'm getting up when I want to, in the early morning. But along the way, I'm sleeping during the day, and as I can't hang drapes in my apartment, what I'm getting is low grade sleep in a brightly lit apartment. The next day comes, I've slept, but slept poorly, so despite my tendency to stay awake longer, I end up not being able to stay awake long enough, and progress does not get made.
Right now, I'm using iced coffee to help with that, which is not something an insomniac likes to do, but better alternatives are hard to find. When my schedule is back in sync with the world, I'll be doing the following.
1. I'll cut back on the caffeine.
2. I'll get as much exercise at the start of the day as I can.
3. I'm going to work on getting a better class of friends.
I mean, seriously - leaving somebody to walk home from the suburbs? There's no defending that. That just sucks. I'd name names, because it's called for and the warning could probably help somebody else, but if I did that, the caretakers would take action against my account, as at least a few people I know will tell you from personal experience. So, sorry, but I can't tell you who did this or go into much more detail about the incident. All I can say is "good luck, and hope you don't run into these people, even though you probably will, and do what you can to avoid the whole issue."
In my case, that means that since I don't have a car and can't afford cab fare, I just won't go to events in suburbs that don't have train service that will be available when an event ends. I have to assume the worst and build that assumption into my plans. Is something awesome happening in Mokena or Elk Grove Village? I don't care. I won't risk taking a trip, when the return trip is this iffy. I can't have my life getting disrupted like this. While paranoia is not usually a good thing to develop, on Fet it seems necessary for survival, which does raise a lot of uncomfortable questions about a lot of my fetishes. Let's be serious - if merely taking travel directions or accepting a ride from people requires a leap of faith that I no longer dare take, what just happened to the idea of letting one of them set me on fire? It begins to look more than a little crazy, doesn't it?
Which brings us to another takeaway I'm getting from all of this - I'm not going to so open to playing with strangers, as I was in the past. I'm generally going to insist on getting to know a top as a friend and building a real relationship of trust, before I do any more bottoming in the future. As for topping, I have much study to do before I do any of that, myself. Also, sauce for the goose - the woman or women with whom I play will have reason for caution, as well. If a woman expects me to earn her trust before we play, I completely understand and respect that.
----------------------------
I've been very slow in getting back to people for a while. A little explanation might be in order.
For my entire life, I've had an ongoing problem with insomnia. There are a few reasons for this, one of which is an unwelcome quirk. Perhaps you are familiar with an experiment in which people were isolated from the outside world, denied knowledge of whether or not the sun was out, not allowed access to clocks, and then had their sleep patterns observed. I recall that the researchers found their subjects would, on the average, end up living on a 25 hour cycle. Their internal clocks were a little out of step with the rotation of the planet.
Mine is a lot out of step, my natural cycle usually being over 30 hours. This, at times, has had its advantages. It was great for doing all-nighters on class projects and staying up partying all night, but when I want to sleep, it can be a nuisance. Under the best of circumstances, I can end up sleep deprived, and bad circumstances can be made even worse.
A while ago, like a number of people, I ran into what seems to be one the latest big things on Fet: some of the people with whom I was socializing left me stranded in the suburbs late at night, forcing me to walk back to the city. By the time I reached the El (part of our public transit system), the sun was rising and I was ready to collapse. Getting my sleep schedule back on track has been a struggle, made worse by the aforementioned quirk. In order to move my schedule in the usual way - getting to sleep and waking a little earlier each day - I'd have to make my days unusually short, and given my natural rhythms, that's far more difficult for me than for most people. I'll lay in bed and just not sleep. Sleeping pills don't help, except for one - Ambien. From which I get psychedelic effects (and odd effects on my behavior), just like Mom did when she tried that drug. Maybe it's an idiosyncratic reaction. Maybe, like Primaquine, Ambien is just not a good thing to give to the Sephardim? I don't know.
The only thing that I've found will work is staying up later and later, until I've rotated my schedule so much that once again, I'm getting up when I want to, in the early morning. But along the way, I'm sleeping during the day, and as I can't hang drapes in my apartment, what I'm getting is low grade sleep in a brightly lit apartment. The next day comes, I've slept, but slept poorly, so despite my tendency to stay awake longer, I end up not being able to stay awake long enough, and progress does not get made.
Right now, I'm using iced coffee to help with that, which is not something an insomniac likes to do, but better alternatives are hard to find. When my schedule is back in sync with the world, I'll be doing the following.
1. I'll cut back on the caffeine.
2. I'll get as much exercise at the start of the day as I can.
3. I'm going to work on getting a better class of friends.
I mean, seriously - leaving somebody to walk home from the suburbs? There's no defending that. That just sucks. I'd name names, because it's called for and the warning could probably help somebody else, but if I did that, the caretakers would take action against my account, as at least a few people I know will tell you from personal experience. So, sorry, but I can't tell you who did this or go into much more detail about the incident. All I can say is "good luck, and hope you don't run into these people, even though you probably will, and do what you can to avoid the whole issue."
In my case, that means that since I don't have a car and can't afford cab fare, I just won't go to events in suburbs that don't have train service that will be available when an event ends. I have to assume the worst and build that assumption into my plans. Is something awesome happening in Mokena or Elk Grove Village? I don't care. I won't risk taking a trip, when the return trip is this iffy. I can't have my life getting disrupted like this. While paranoia is not usually a good thing to develop, on Fet it seems necessary for survival, which does raise a lot of uncomfortable questions about a lot of my fetishes. Let's be serious - if merely taking travel directions or accepting a ride from people requires a leap of faith that I no longer dare take, what just happened to the idea of letting one of them set me on fire? It begins to look more than a little crazy, doesn't it?
Which brings us to another takeaway I'm getting from all of this - I'm not going to so open to playing with strangers, as I was in the past. I'm generally going to insist on getting to know a top as a friend and building a real relationship of trust, before I do any more bottoming in the future. As for topping, I have much study to do before I do any of that, myself. Also, sauce for the goose - the woman or women with whom I play will have reason for caution, as well. If a woman expects me to earn her trust before we play, I completely understand and respect that.
My test results are in :) / Repost from Fetlife
Another post from my Fetlife blog, from about a year ago.
-------------------
I'm not sure how seriously any of this should be taken, because usually I wasn't sure exactly which button to push, but here goes. It's 3:47 am, so I'll talk about what (if anything) it all means and how it relates to my reality, later, maybe.
== Results from bdsmtest.org ==
86% Submissive
84% Vanilla
44% Switch
34% Primal (Prey)
33% Girl/Boy
31% Slave
24% Experimentalist
23% Rope bunny
21% Dominant
18% Exhibitionist
14% Pet
14% Voyeur
12% Ageplayer
12% Brat
11% Daddy/Mommy
10% Non-monogamist
8% Master/Mistress
8% Primal (Hunter)
7% Masochist
5% Rigger
4% Degradee
4% Owner
2% Brat tamer
1% Degrader
1% Sadist
https://bdsmtest.org/result.php?id=2618242
-------------------
I'm not sure how seriously any of this should be taken, because usually I wasn't sure exactly which button to push, but here goes. It's 3:47 am, so I'll talk about what (if anything) it all means and how it relates to my reality, later, maybe.
== Results from bdsmtest.org ==
86% Submissive
84% Vanilla
44% Switch
34% Primal (Prey)
33% Girl/Boy
31% Slave
24% Experimentalist
23% Rope bunny
21% Dominant
18% Exhibitionist
14% Pet
14% Voyeur
12% Ageplayer
12% Brat
11% Daddy/Mommy
10% Non-monogamist
8% Master/Mistress
8% Primal (Hunter)
7% Masochist
5% Rigger
4% Degradee
4% Owner
2% Brat tamer
1% Degrader
1% Sadist
https://bdsmtest.org/result.php?id=2618242
I think we lost somebody nice / Repost from Fetlife
Another repost from about a year ago. When exactly did it go up? We might never know because shhhh ... it's a secret. Fet doesn't let us see the dates on our own posts. I kid you not.
----------------
I hope not, but I noticed that Cinna_B deactivated. I hope that's only temporary.
I only got to interact with her briefly, but she was a thoughtful, helpful delight and I felt lucky to have met her. She is the reason I'm still on Fetlife (and I'll say more about that, later). I hope she'll be back.
I fell out of touch with her, not because I didn't enjoy her company (alas, from a distance), but because I got tied up with drama and bullshit, some of it online and some of it offline. The latter just has to be dealt with, but I'm learning how to avoid the former.
One should never allow oneself to be distracted from that which and those who matter, but that which doesn't. When I find myself dropping out of contact with people who quickly started becoming good friends just because I'm dealing with some crazy person who started ranting about who knows what, that's exactly what I'm doing - getting my priorities wrong.
I'd hate to think that I missed out on the chance to make a friend, that way.
----------------
I hope not, but I noticed that Cinna_B deactivated. I hope that's only temporary.
I only got to interact with her briefly, but she was a thoughtful, helpful delight and I felt lucky to have met her. She is the reason I'm still on Fetlife (and I'll say more about that, later). I hope she'll be back.
I fell out of touch with her, not because I didn't enjoy her company (alas, from a distance), but because I got tied up with drama and bullshit, some of it online and some of it offline. The latter just has to be dealt with, but I'm learning how to avoid the former.
One should never allow oneself to be distracted from that which and those who matter, but that which doesn't. When I find myself dropping out of contact with people who quickly started becoming good friends just because I'm dealing with some crazy person who started ranting about who knows what, that's exactly what I'm doing - getting my priorities wrong.
I'd hate to think that I missed out on the chance to make a friend, that way.
Why I can't be at the January Play Party / Repost from Fetlife
This is a repost of something I posted on Fetlife about a year ago:
------------------
Really, what I'm about to describe is just such typical Chicago crap and a good illustration of one reason why it is that I don't just want to move out of Chicago, but in fact out of the Midwest - this petty passive aggression that my fellow locals love so well, that getting almost anything done around here is almost impossible.
I was going to go to the January 30 Play Party, which is announced on this page. One might think that this would not be a problem, sure nothing that would result in an experience that merited a blog post. I want to go, the organizer is happy to have me there, and it's a quick commute. We're in the same city, a few miles apart, and I wouldn't even have to use the bus to do this, probably. We're both near the El. Even if every street in the city were barricaded (and I don't know why that would happen), I could still make the trip in a little over half an hour, so how difficult could this be?
Plenty, when people at the club are having fun being a pain in the ass. I don't have a credit card, but as I said to the organizer, money is money. Right? Isn't it? In order to go to the play party, I have to purchase a $15 trial membership. I can't do that by credit card, but how about if I just bring the club owners the $15 in cash. $15 is $15, right? This made sense to the organizer, who gave me the email address for the club owners. As per his suggestion, I "reached out" to these fun loving individuals. And waited. And waited. No response.
I wrote back to the organizer, and told him what happened, pointed out that we were running out of time, and asked him what I should do at this point. He gave me two more email addresses to try, which I did, and after I did that, they wrote back, using (as I soon noticed) the first email address I used, one which they had (as far as I can tell) not bothered to check, even though a monthly event was coming up. In response to my suggestion that I just take the freaking El and bring them some petty cash, they wrote this.
"Thanks for your email! We are glad you'd like to give GD2 a try.
There are a couple of options for paying without using a credit card. Please note that regardless of the method of payment, each week your application and payment need to be received by Thursday in order for your membership to be active in time for the weekend.
The two options are:
1.Submit your application and payment via U.S. mail to:
(Address deleted)
If you choose to go this route, please let us know via email when you've mailed the application so that we know when to check the PO Box to expedite the process.
2.Purchase a gift card or a prepaid debit card and use it to pay online.
We appreciate the offer to bring cash over in person, and while we accept applications and advance payment at the club, it isn't an option for this weekend. GD2 is open only on weekends, so it wouldn't meet this week's deadline.
As far as our location, GD2 is located at (location deleted). The actual address is provided to members and to non-members who RSVP to specific events.
If you have any other questions please do not hesitate to ask.
Our best,
Wilson and Jerith
Directors
Galleria Domain 2 NFP"
They didn't bother to send me this until two hours ago. It is now 1:17 am, and Thursday has just begun. For this plan of theirs to work, the Post Office has to get mail from my neighborhood to their neighborhood in the space of a few hours. That's never going to happen in real life, and they know it. As I said in the closing of my most recent message to the organizer of this Play Party that seems likely to give me a stroke, at this point,
"I found that there was no effort on their part to work with me at all. What I got was the proverbial bum's rush. I'm going to have to skip the event, not because I don't want to go, but because the people you have handling the ticketing didn't feel like being cooperative. How hard would it have been for them to say 'be at this location at such and such a time, and bring your cash'?
They just weren't willing to do that."
because, I guess, it's much more fun for them to say "ha ha, neener neener, fuck you, we get to screw with your weekend plans, and that makes us important." It's non-cooperation for the sake of non-cooperation, and as I said, it's such typical Chicago bullcrap. Chicagoans, by and large, are assholes, and I say this as a native. These two guys, obviously, had no desire to be exceptions.
This is a very big part of why I want to move. When tasks this trivial become this impossible because my neighbors love being this difficult, I have to ask in exactly what sense am I free? Free to do what? Apparently, not free to go to a fucking party, in this case.
I could list other cases (many other cases) in which I got to watch Chicagoan douchebaggery shred my plans, not the least of which would be the way in which my grad school education was rendered worthless in the local job market because the "nice" Midwesterners working in the front office decided that they didn't feel personally fulfilled by the thought of filing my resume in business after business, but forget it. I want to get out the door for a very quick, very late (and probably not very good) dinner before I feel the need to shove my fist through the monitor.
I'm pretty sure that would void the warranty on the monitor, and it wouldn't be too good for my hand, either.
-----------------
Contact information has been deleted because I'm not here to out anybody. Did you notice that Wilson and Jerith's last names are absent.
Over on Fet, after I posted this, a very brief discussion followed. A very nice lady wrote
"I have had similar frustrations.. It really sucks you missed your party but next time just go get a prepaid credit card from the gas station. You could've called to activate it in two seconds and then just have a credit card you cut in half when you're done."
and I replied
"Useful information. Thank you. Having a mild care of cerebral palsy (I probably should mention that in my personal introduction), I never learned how to drive, so anything that happens at a gas station is something that I know nothing about, but there are a few within easy walking distance of my apartment.
------------------
Really, what I'm about to describe is just such typical Chicago crap and a good illustration of one reason why it is that I don't just want to move out of Chicago, but in fact out of the Midwest - this petty passive aggression that my fellow locals love so well, that getting almost anything done around here is almost impossible.
I was going to go to the January 30 Play Party, which is announced on this page. One might think that this would not be a problem, sure nothing that would result in an experience that merited a blog post. I want to go, the organizer is happy to have me there, and it's a quick commute. We're in the same city, a few miles apart, and I wouldn't even have to use the bus to do this, probably. We're both near the El. Even if every street in the city were barricaded (and I don't know why that would happen), I could still make the trip in a little over half an hour, so how difficult could this be?
Plenty, when people at the club are having fun being a pain in the ass. I don't have a credit card, but as I said to the organizer, money is money. Right? Isn't it? In order to go to the play party, I have to purchase a $15 trial membership. I can't do that by credit card, but how about if I just bring the club owners the $15 in cash. $15 is $15, right? This made sense to the organizer, who gave me the email address for the club owners. As per his suggestion, I "reached out" to these fun loving individuals. And waited. And waited. No response.
I wrote back to the organizer, and told him what happened, pointed out that we were running out of time, and asked him what I should do at this point. He gave me two more email addresses to try, which I did, and after I did that, they wrote back, using (as I soon noticed) the first email address I used, one which they had (as far as I can tell) not bothered to check, even though a monthly event was coming up. In response to my suggestion that I just take the freaking El and bring them some petty cash, they wrote this.
"Thanks for your email! We are glad you'd like to give GD2 a try.
There are a couple of options for paying without using a credit card. Please note that regardless of the method of payment, each week your application and payment need to be received by Thursday in order for your membership to be active in time for the weekend.
The two options are:
1.Submit your application and payment via U.S. mail to:
(Address deleted)
If you choose to go this route, please let us know via email when you've mailed the application so that we know when to check the PO Box to expedite the process.
2.Purchase a gift card or a prepaid debit card and use it to pay online.
We appreciate the offer to bring cash over in person, and while we accept applications and advance payment at the club, it isn't an option for this weekend. GD2 is open only on weekends, so it wouldn't meet this week's deadline.
As far as our location, GD2 is located at (location deleted). The actual address is provided to members and to non-members who RSVP to specific events.
If you have any other questions please do not hesitate to ask.
Our best,
Wilson and Jerith
Directors
Galleria Domain 2 NFP"
They didn't bother to send me this until two hours ago. It is now 1:17 am, and Thursday has just begun. For this plan of theirs to work, the Post Office has to get mail from my neighborhood to their neighborhood in the space of a few hours. That's never going to happen in real life, and they know it. As I said in the closing of my most recent message to the organizer of this Play Party that seems likely to give me a stroke, at this point,
"I found that there was no effort on their part to work with me at all. What I got was the proverbial bum's rush. I'm going to have to skip the event, not because I don't want to go, but because the people you have handling the ticketing didn't feel like being cooperative. How hard would it have been for them to say 'be at this location at such and such a time, and bring your cash'?
They just weren't willing to do that."
because, I guess, it's much more fun for them to say "ha ha, neener neener, fuck you, we get to screw with your weekend plans, and that makes us important." It's non-cooperation for the sake of non-cooperation, and as I said, it's such typical Chicago bullcrap. Chicagoans, by and large, are assholes, and I say this as a native. These two guys, obviously, had no desire to be exceptions.
This is a very big part of why I want to move. When tasks this trivial become this impossible because my neighbors love being this difficult, I have to ask in exactly what sense am I free? Free to do what? Apparently, not free to go to a fucking party, in this case.
I could list other cases (many other cases) in which I got to watch Chicagoan douchebaggery shred my plans, not the least of which would be the way in which my grad school education was rendered worthless in the local job market because the "nice" Midwesterners working in the front office decided that they didn't feel personally fulfilled by the thought of filing my resume in business after business, but forget it. I want to get out the door for a very quick, very late (and probably not very good) dinner before I feel the need to shove my fist through the monitor.
I'm pretty sure that would void the warranty on the monitor, and it wouldn't be too good for my hand, either.
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Contact information has been deleted because I'm not here to out anybody. Did you notice that Wilson and Jerith's last names are absent.
Over on Fet, after I posted this, a very brief discussion followed. A very nice lady wrote
"I have had similar frustrations.. It really sucks you missed your party but next time just go get a prepaid credit card from the gas station. You could've called to activate it in two seconds and then just have a credit card you cut in half when you're done."
and I replied
"Useful information. Thank you. Having a mild care of cerebral palsy (I probably should mention that in my personal introduction), I never learned how to drive, so anything that happens at a gas station is something that I know nothing about, but there are a few within easy walking distance of my apartment.
I probably won't be trying to go to another play party at GD2, for two reasons:
1. I ran into a lot of rudeness from GD2's fan club, so that seems to be a bad place to hang out, and
2. Far more pleasantly (and importantly), I went to some kink events held at other locations, and had a great time with some really nice and interesting people. No hoop jumping, and I had some new experiences, and it was wonderful. At one of these events, I met my current girlfriend and to me, that, of course, is the most important news of all.
So, washing my hands of GD2 isn't leaving a void in my kinky life.
But I'll keep what you told in mind, the next time I need a credit card. Experience tells me that will be soon."
I could probably add "because having seen what the word 'kinky' means, I'm not sure that I qualify", but these points stand and I got a useful piece of information from this.
1. I ran into a lot of rudeness from GD2's fan club, so that seems to be a bad place to hang out, and
2. Far more pleasantly (and importantly), I went to some kink events held at other locations, and had a great time with some really nice and interesting people. No hoop jumping, and I had some new experiences, and it was wonderful. At one of these events, I met my current girlfriend and to me, that, of course, is the most important news of all.
So, washing my hands of GD2 isn't leaving a void in my kinky life.
But I'll keep what you told in mind, the next time I need a credit card. Experience tells me that will be soon."
I could probably add "because having seen what the word 'kinky' means, I'm not sure that I qualify", but these points stand and I got a useful piece of information from this.
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'I understand what you are saying, and I am in total agreement.'
Thanks. I got a few more days of shopping in, because the lady who used to run Bookworks (also closed) was mistaken - Selected Works did not close down until yesterday. I was their last customer, ever and they gave me the store lei as a token of appreciation. The deals were amazing - 80% off - so I bought as much as I had the money and space for (pending the purchase of new bookshelves) and fleshed out the history section of my personal library.
I tried to get people over, but I just didn't have time to get word around. There were a lot of good books left on those shelves, headed to the Hyde park / Kenwood community book fair. The good news is that the University of Chicago (which is mostly a grad school) is down there, so a lot of those books will find good homes in which they will be read and appreciated. But I am distressed to think about what will happen to the ones that go unsold. Off to the landfill, I imagine. But maybe I imagine incorrectly. I hope so, because otherwise, what a waste.
Meanwhile, the number of clothing and furniture stores in this city seems to rise by the day. How often does one need to buy a new couch? People confuse me."
A month later, I heard from a member of our local community who I've met a few times:
"I did not know it closed. My current favorite used book stores are Ravenswood on Montrose and Afterwords on Illinois by State."
Always good to know about new stores. I'll have to remember to thank her. Yes, yes, I'm catching up. Maybe if I would have wasted less time trying to reason with the clowns on Youtube, I would have caught up a lot sooner. There's a problem - I'm active on so many different sites, that I don't have time to keep up with them all.