God save me, I am going to have to turn women down sometimes.

I thought that the way dating would go would be that I would just be honest until women ran away, and if some day one didn't run away I'd marry her.

I was on dates Friday night and an all day date Sunday (met her at her church Sunday morning). My Friday night date just texted me letting me know that she hasn't heard enough from me (one text and one email) since then. Sunday night I talked to another woman who sounds really fascinating on Fetlife and set up a date this coming Friday, and got a new contact from eHarmony and OKCupid. I also found that A. in Louisiana has started a new relationship there, which is probably best for both of us, though she's really a really good prospect by Mousie standards.

These things seem to come in bursts, with pauses in between when there's almost nothing.

Chair-based Backrub Tips

Here's some tips on giving a good backrub to someone in a chair, which is probably the most common way do do it. We're going to call the person getting the backrub the patient, because we need to call them something and it's denotationally accurate even if the masseuse/masseur is not a doctor. Have the patient sit in an armless chair, reversed, with their arms resting on top of the chairback and their chin on their arms. As far as possible, you want to allow the muscles you're working on to relax; relieve them of their job of supporting whatever body part they support. This chair position allows a pretty decent amount of relaxation in the shoulders and lower back, usually the worst problem areas. The middle back will be somewhat tensed with keeping it straight, but without a table you can't have everything. Never fight the muscle: never try to push it out of place when it's tensed to provide actual support. That hurts and does nothing for them. If the patient wears a bra, it's best if they remove that while leaving the shirt on, or failing that it's good if they just unsnap the back - tight straps really get in the way.

Start off with what they expect; kneading their shoulders with your hands. Don't keep that up too long, though, because your hands will wear out quickly. Move to working the large back muscles on both sides of the spine with your knuckles or the heels of your hands. It's the same sort of thing you started out naturally doing with your thumbs, but now you can use your body weight by leaning in rather than just hand strength. If you're small, you'll want to do a lot of your work from standing up, if you're big, you'll mostly want to sit behind them. Without oil, when you are working deep use very short strokes and frequent repositioning.

Work your way down on both sides of the spine; use your knuckles especially near the shoulders and on problem spots, and the heels of your hands after you get down past the ribcage. Feel where the thick muscle is and where is ribs or thin muscle over organs; go very lightly except on thick muscle. When you get down to the pelvis, if their clothing allows it (belts get in the way), work out to both sides then back in again. Work up and down several times. Work the rhomboids between the shoulder blades.

The muscles stretching from the shoulders to the neck and the neck itself usually really need work but are a problem from a sitting position. The best solution I've found is to have the patient lean back against you with their head on one of your shoulders and use the hand strength you've been saving, and just knead the muscles. If you can have the patient lie on their back, on a bed or on the floor, it will work much better; have them do so, then use your knuckles or the edge of your hands to work the upper shoulders. Rub the muscles in the neck much more lightly, they're comparatively small. The sides of your thumbs are good for that if they're leaning against you, or the sides of your fingers if they're lying down.

After your hands are pretty much tired of deep work, try an effleurage stroke. With them in the chair leaning on the chairback again, or flipped on their face on a bed, put your hands together flat against their back at the base of the spine. If their clothing will permit, stroke with a flat hand and moderate pressure up to the neck, bringing your fingertips with light pressure to the base of the skull, then out over the tops of their shoulders, back in toward the base of the neck, hands back together, and back down to the base of the spine. At the base of the spine, stroke out to both sides of the pelvis, then back in to where you started, and repeat. The trick with this stroke is smoothly modifying the pressure depending on where you are and where they're sore. Rook, for example, is very sensitive on her lower back, so the pressure must be very light there, but most people like moderate pressure there. Too much pressure on the neck is bad, but a lot between the shoulder blades (on the rhomboids) is usually good.

There's something that may be some kind of special natural talent that some people have and some don't, but it's always seemed to me that everybody could do this if they would focus their mind and get their heart into it. That is feeling what would feel good to the person you're working on. After I get started and into it, I can kind of sense what kind of pressure (heavy, light, broad, pointed) is needed in which place. Open your mind and imagine what would feel good, and then try what you imagined.

What is wrong with my immune system this year?

What is wrong with my immune system this year? Two really bad colds and now a stomach virus. Yuck.

Flexible and inflexible kink

It seems to me that kink tends to run in clusters. People are into pain, not so much a certain kind of pain; they're usually a bit flexible about how the pain is created. Or people are into dominating, but how they want to dominate, they can be kind of flexible about.

I think that's because the kink is connecting to some sort of emotional need, even though most people don't seem to know what the need it is. Other things connect to the same need. People have favorite methods, but they can be flexible about the method as long as it connects to the right need.

An example of the flexibility I have in mind is that I was never particularly interested in pain. Then I started meeting women who were, who were deeply enthusiastic about the sensation just because it was an extreme sensation, and I am certainly into that. I suppose I'm still not into pain as pain, but I am pretty enthusiastic about making someone shudder ecstatically with a growl and an arm twist or a violet wand. That same thought, though, would be sickening and repellent with a woman who wasn't clear about enjoying it.

Or from the other side, I was never interested in receiving pain. It doesn't do anything for me in itself. But I can easily imagine tying it into my submissive need to show/prove my desire for her, say by a game where I stuck needles through my own skin for touches from my lover.

Then there's other stuff where I'm not flexible. I have very hard limits on verbal humiliation; only very specific kinds are OK. A lot of kinds that I've heard don't connect with my "lift my partner up" emotional need, so it feels to me like the emotional abuse that it is on the surface. Or orgasm denial; that's basically my nightmare made real. Both of those things are liked by many other people when they're playing submissive, but they don't serve my emotional needs.

Not as much of a hard sell as I thought.

Um, apparently the abstinent Christian kinky switch thing is not quite the problem I thought. My eHarmony and OKCupid and FetLife profiles all mention it up front, and I spent basically all day yesterday in various forms of Internet communication with six different women who had contacted me. The most exciting one by a lot at this point in our knowledge of each other is in Louisiana, quite far away, though. (If you read this, A., Hi!)

And someone else contacted me as I was typing this. This is very weird for me. Not what I thought would happen. Am I overselling myself? I'm trying to be honest but my profiles don't list all my flaws, like my struggles with laziness and depression.

Wicked Faire

I'm just back from Wicked Faire. I felt like I was at home at last. It was pretty awesome. I tried a violet wand on my arm and attended a couple of seminars on basic rope bondage, as well as some Western martial arts seminars, music, etc.

The Pretty Librarian said she'd like to go along after I'd reserved a room, so I gave her the bed and took the floor (I insisted). I brought my massage table, but just as I was getting people lined up to use it Saturday night she got a really bad migraine and sent me a text message that ended "hlp?" Aww, poor thing. So I spent about 10:00pm to 12:45 in our darkened room finding her gatorade and cold compresses and holding her hand and telling her what I'd seen that day so far and after she started feeling somewhat better giving her shoulder, neck and light scalp massage. I was kneeling by the head of the massage table to work on her shoulders while she made appreciative noises, and it was quite dark but not so dark that I couldn't see her dark-painted lips against her pale skin, just a foot or two from mine. It wouldn't have been the time to try something if I was going to, her still being in pain from the headache, but keeping my thoughts in line there was DIFFICULT. Hadn't been planning on all the handholding in the dark etc. I did kiss her goodnight on top of the head when she was feeling better and snuggled back into bed but that's within my boundaries anyway. She sighed happily. Big things in the life of an abstinent sexblogger.

I don't actually have much of a foot fetish.

I don't actually have much of a foot fetish. I thought I did because I'm so attracted to footjobs. But it's not actually that I have a lot of inherent interest in feet; it's that I have a much easier time imagining a woman touching me with her feet than the rest of her. I also have a thing for women who are wearing gloves for the same reason; I can more easily imagine a gloved than ungloved handjob.

This hangup I have that women don't want sex with me is one that is not matched by what women actually say. I know a couple of attractive women locally that have said they would be enthusiastic if I just weren't abstinent. I wonder if I will ever really get over the hangup other than with the woman I marry?