Glibertarians.com 2019 Archive

Author: Creosote Achilles

  • Bight Me: An Essay About Rope Bondage (Part 1)

    Part 1 – The Shibari Scene

    The kink scene has changed a great deal since I first became involved in the 1990s.  And it had changed dramatically from the early 60s and 70s.  The straight kink scene was largely inspired by the gay leather scene.  And public play was almost entirely focused on controlled, sexualized violence that ranged from spanking, flogging, whipping, caning to various types of rough body play.  Bondage usually involved leather or metal cuffs, hoods, restraints or all sorts of creative furniture inspired by medieval dungeons.  Rope, to the extent it was used for fetish purposes, was western style.  Think Betty Page and Nell Fenwick from Dudley Do Right. Using cheap nylon rope to tie someone up immobile on the floor or to furniture.  That all changed about ten or fifteen years ago, give or take.

    Old school.

    Shibari began to gain popularity in the west coast kink scene(s) about that time and has exploded in popularity since.  The last 3-5 years have seen it grow to the point that there is now a dozen or so kink conventions focused purely on learning more about shibari.  Almost no one bothers to do “western” style rope any longer.  Generally, western is looked down upon.  And while there are practitioners here in the US that have been doing shibari far longer than a decade, they were mostly isolated up until the popularity boom.

    For those of us that don’t speak Japanese, shibari means ‘tie decoratively’.  It’s another way of describing the same techniques also referred to as kinbaku which means ‘bind tightly’.  Either word is accurate as far as it goes.  And there are many folks in the US who use the words interchangeably.  Others will happily get into a slap fight over which is the/correct/ word to use to describe a style of Japanese rope bondage.  These people are morons and are basically kink weeaboos and so should at the least be safely ignored, if not gagged and tied western style with poly rope. But I digress.

    The shirt says “Han Shot First”

    There is a natural human tendency to take things that are foreign, see them as exotic, and elevate them with meaning that isn’t there in the home culture from which they are derived. Especially with Japan.  In action/adventure media it is the superlative nature of a katana or the profundity assumed to come from Buddhism, or the way the Chinese perceive any well-known American brand as having cache’.  People find depth and significance in the practices of other cultures.  We appreciate that which is different and can value it because of that.  I think it is rooted in the fundamental decency of people and part of why humans are pretty damn good at exchange and trade.

    In the kink scene, it should come as no surprise, that impulse doesn’t change.  There are numerous people in the west who see shibari as a profound Japanese art form that happens to be both art and sado-masochistic.  In part it is a way of expressing the idea that our own culture can be too uptight about sex and pleasure, particularly around things which are seen as deviant.  A way to say, ‘I’m not a pervert!  This whole culture finds deep meaning in these things my home culture finds disgusting or strange’.  I think it can also derive from a desire to make sacred the things we do that matter to us.  And a desire to go from being an outcast to mainstream, or even a desire to be better than the mainstream.

    The idea that shibari is on the same shelf with the Japanese Tea Ceremony is bullshit of the rankest odor.  While the roots of it go back to hojojutsu, or Samurai techniques for binding enemies, and there are lineages and styles like various martial arts, the former is more inspiration and the latter is a phenomenon of western interest making it possible for nawashi (lit: string maker, fig: rope masters) to make a living teaching people how to do shibari.  The truth is; modern shibari was born in underground Japanese sex clubs and pornography in the post-war era.  So it’s a bit like if Seka or John Holmes had ‘schools’ for dick sucking or blowing massive wads.  I imagine Japanese resident Glibs can confirm that shibari is as out of the mainstream as those vending machines that dispense worn school-girl panties.

    I don’t hold shibari in much reverence in that regard, despite putting in 10-12 hours a week doing rope.  I do think it is a metric shitload of fun though and I can understand the popularity of it in the kink scene.  There are three reasons for why it has grown so astronomically popular. First, it looks pretty damn amazing, particularly suspensions. (shibari has essentially two modes.  Tying on the ground and suspensions which means using uplines to shift the CoG such that most of the weight is dependent on the uplines for support).  Second, it is performative.  It started in small, underground sex clubs as a way to titillate and arouse and even in the most intimate types of rope, there’s a performative aspect that is fun to watch.  Even people who aren’t necessarily kinky will sometimes enjoy watching it.  Third is a consequence of the second.  Because it is performative, it draws attention at public kink events.  And women especially seem to be drawn to it.  It looks graceful when both the top/rigger and the rope bottom are experienced and in-sync.  Because women want to experience it, men want to learn how to do it.  Because it will get them laid

    Unlike many, maybe even most other kink activities, shibari takes a great deal of practice to get good at.  I’ll discuss more in part two about that.  It’s also an extremely high-risk activity, possibly the riskiest thing that people regularly do in kink.  The risk particularly comes in with suspensions.  Every time someone goes up in the air there is a potential for nerve damage, both sensation and functional nerve damage.  There is a lower likelihood of it happening on the ground, but it is still present.  Joint injuries and broken bones can happen from a botched suspension.  There are even a few deaths from up-lines being tangled and strangling someone or someone being dropped on their head.  The danger only adds to the allure.

    It’s a skill that takes practice from both sides, and it has that in common with dancing. I could take anyone reading this and teach them how to use a paddle or flogger to have a good scene in about 15 minutes.  The mechanics are easy to grasp, and not much harder to master.  Shibari, especially to be at a level to do a suspension, requires hours and hours of regular practice on a consistent basis.  One has to learn anatomy and physics on a practical level.   Drilling over and over on specific ways of tying the rope so that to minimize risk and improve sustainability for the rope bottom.  Learning to be able to plan as you go, and how to adjust to circumstances on the fly without worrying about the basics because it is rote.  For the sort of person who gets satisfaction from doing something that requires both the mind and the body to function in concert, it is deeply rewarding.

    That need for instruction, practice, and the performative aspects of rope have combined with its popularity to spawn a global, if niche industry of performers and instructors.  The make their living going around the country teaching others, attending conventions, and performing.  There are a those that have full-time jobs making rope to sell to those involved in the scene.  A single hank of 9 meters of jute can be anywhere from $5-$40 dollars.  And a full kit for suspensions is usually 10-12 lengths of rope.  I think this also ties into how natural free markets are, and how ingrained peaceful trade is to people, how natural it is.  It isn’t a cheap hobby from a time or expeA partial suspensionnse perspective.

    That high level of dedication is behind some of the snobbery, the attempting to infuse profound meaning into what is bondage using rope. Those involved tend to have strong preferences about things and sometimes generalize those preferences to be ‘the proper Japanese way’.  For example, the type of rope used.  Jute is the most commonly used type of rope for shibari.  It’s a natural fiber so it tends to grip itself and has good tensile strength.  Hemp is less commonly used as it tends to get too soft with repeated use.  And almost every experienced rope enthusiast turns their nose up and any kind of synthetic material.  And if you want to see the Platonic ideal of being catty get a couple of rope tops with similar styles together to critique the rope of others.  It can be amusing and exasperating.  But it helps remind me that no matter how deviant, kinksters are still people and have many of the same tendencies as any other group of folks who are highly invested in a hobby.  It’s just our hobby tends to have lots of fucking involved.

    It may not be art, but shibari does allow for personal expression.  The way I tie is illustrative of my personality and my relationship with the person I’m tying.  While some riggers simply ape the style of whoever taught them, the better ones go on to develop their own style and aesthetic all their own. They pour their heart and mind and body into it.  It creates intense moments of connection between the rope top and bottom via shared, strenuous experience.  I can understand how that encourages people to try to make something transcendental out of what started as a sexual side show performance.

    Up next I’ll discuss some basics of risk mitigation and learning to tie.  With the background out of the way, the follow-up article will deal more with the basic mechanics.  It is not a how-to.  But rather a description of what it takes to be able to do some of the things from the photos included in this.

     

    [EDITOR’S NOTE: Spudalicious going Irish has been moved to Friday, when he will be available to rebut any and all slanders against him.]

  • Rich Dead Uncle I Didn’t Know I Had

    In my younger years, before the lottery was a thing, the only way to really win large sums of unearned money was from a dead relative.  As most of us liked our relatives, we did not want them to die.  Or at least, that was my experience.  Now that I’m a bit older my brother has a few cousins and such that when they pass I’m not flying home for the funeral if you get my drift.  Anyway, I used to use the formula, a rich dead uncle I didn’t know I had providing an inheritance.  Life is stranger than fiction, so it is little surprise to me last year that I found myself in almost that exact situation.

    My wife’s dad was Chinese.  His parents were part of the Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist government and apparently were in the diplomacy game going back several generations at least.  The family, in general, has a colorful history.  Allegedly, the grandparents were around when Anastasia screamed in pain, to steal from the Stones.  As there is jewelry that’s been spread around amongst the cousins, supposedly traded by some Russian Princesses for Chinese Visas to escape the whole March Revolution thing.  The wife’s ring has been authenticated as being made by the jeweler who worked primarily for the Russian royal/noble families.

    There’s also the family tale that after WWII when the family was escaping the ancestral homelands and the Chi-Com’s, my wife’s grandmother almost had to smother my wife’s dad to death.  The family was hiding in a ditch, and dad-in-law who was an infant drew in a breath and was about to start crying so his mother had to cover his mouth and keep him from doing so, because if the family were found, they’d have at best been executed on the spot, at worst been put in some sort of camp.  Tough decision for a mother to have to make, but I guess you can always make another kid.

    After they escaped, part of the family stayed in Taiwan, and part of it spread out into Hong Kong, Canada, the US, and South Africa.  There’s a cousin who dated minor European nobility and then simply disappeared one day like 30-35 years ago and has never been heard from since.  There’s speculation that he was some sort of espionage agent, that he was kidnapped for ransom and then killed because the nobility wouldn’t pay up, or that he got sick of the Euro-trash bullshit and faked his death while financing it with money he scammed.  He’s sort of a family DB Cooper figure.

    It’s a different cousin that this is about though.  My wife didn’t even remember he existed.  He was an ‘Uncle’ that visited once when she and her brother were young, and then went back to his residence in Hong Kong and Vancouver, BC, Canada.  Basically, everyone forgot about him because he didn’t stay in contact.

    Turns out this was because he was a no-shit hearing voices psychotic who despite that had made enormous amounts of money.  He died intestate last year and we were notified because my wife, her brother, and two cousins of theirs are the only living relatives of his and thus they were in line to receive the money.  Like an 8 figures estate worth of money.  However, they were warned that they might not get all of it.  As my wife put it originally, “This could be anywhere from a nice dinner out to quit our jobs.” I was more bemused than greedy.  It’s a true windfall.

    Of course, even free money comes with strings and we found out what those strings were.  A woman named Vivian* was the strings and hoooo-boy was there some strings.

    Auntie Viv, as I began to sarcastically refer to her, was a piece of work.  Good old Uncle Kevin** [Sidebar: my wife’s father’s generation of kids all hated the commies so much that most of them who moved to America quit speaking Mandarin and named all their kids Anglo names for their first name.  My wife despite being fully half Chinese knows less than I do.  And most of them won’t travel to China because they may still be on lists somewhere and wouldn’t be able to come home] had gotten himself a younger lady.  She had moved in with him, and become his common-law wife.  Or so she claimed when it turned out Uncle Kev was dead.  It was a bit more complicated than that and thus ensued a year’s worth of haggling.

    See, when Uncle Kev passed away like Elvis (on the toilet) the health care agency guys he had hired to come in on a regular basis had found him.  They were there daily to make sure he took his meds and help him deal with a physical health issue he had as well.  The same 3 guys had worked for him for several years and they’d never so much as seen Auntie Viv.

    Because she had moved out several years before, which according to Canuckistani law meant she was no longer his common-law wife for purposes of divvying up the loot and taking his stuff.  So she tried to insist that she’d been living there just in a different part of the house from where the health workers had been.

    Our law-talking dude then discovered that when she filed her taxes, she’d listed a different address altogether.  So for her to pursue it in court, would mean admitting to tax fraud multiple times.

    So her story was then, well, Uncle Kev would sometimes not take his meds and would get violent.  Not directly toward her, but in general and so she left because she didn’t feel safe.  The other residence was her place to run to when Uncle Kev was hearing the voices telling him to do crazy shit and him destroying things to keep from obeying them.  She even cited a police report to explain it.

    Only, when the lawyer dug further, turned out, there was a previous police report where she’d gotten violent with Uncle Kev when she found out he had gotten himself fixed and thus all her attempts at not taking birth control to secure him a child were for naught.  See, Uncle Kev was crazy, but he knew it, and didn’t want to make a little psycho Kev with a woman he suspected may have had motives besides how gooshy he made her loins.  He’d ridden that rodeo before apparently.

    Eventually, she claimed that what she wanted was to establish a mental health charity with the money and that’s why she was fighting for.  And also to keep the house which she could use to run the charity out of it.

    So we made her a proposal; 1/3rd of the estate to her, 1/3rd to the charity, and 1/3rd to us.  She balked at first until her lawyer said, “Look, lady, this is the best offer and if you go to court you’re getting jack shit besides maybe a jail term for the tax fraud. They are being generous so you’re lucky none of them were close to him.  Take the fucking deal.”

    And that is how a Rich Dead Uncle*** I Didn’t Know I Had helped my wife and me pay off our house and set us up to retire much earlier than planned.

     

    *Not her real name

    **Not his either

    ***Not really an Uncle as described was more of a cousin who was old enough he seemed more like an uncle.

  • Hillbilly B’Day: Or Pop Imparts Wisdom

    Growing up in the foothills of North Carolina, I spent a good deal of time with my maternal grandparents.  Like many rural southern families the week revolved around church and the extended family having Sunday dinner together.  (For those that don’t know, dinner is lunch, and supper is dinner, and breakfast is any time you damn well feel like it.)  My grandparents were, to say the least, colorful characters.  They loved basketball, family, and God and I’m not sure in what order you would put that.  Known to me as Granny and Pop, I adored them.  They spoiled their grandchildren within their means, but mostly it was with food and indulgence.  Pop had a horse a friend stabled and he taught me to ride.  He, allegedly, was something of a star point guard in high school, but showboating in front of a scout and the outbreak of WWII left him unable to attend college.  He was a known by everyone in town and half the people in the county, and when he died 20 years ago, we were at the funeral home nearly 6 hours shaking hands with all the people who came to pay their respects.  By the time I knew him he was a mostly respectable pillar of the church.  But he had some wild moments in his past and one of those stayed with him.

    Behind his house was a large section of undeveloped woodland.  Though at the back of their property was a little dirt road not much more than a trail.  And the cool, inviting, mysterious woods always beckoned to us youngsters.  We were allowed down the road, but there was a path that broke off to the east that we weren’t allowed down.  All we knew was that The Camp was down there.  And while my Pop was a king of indulgence, he had a stern side, and it was clear that violating that rule would earn us a hidin’.  It was important and as the oldest and most adventurous of our passel of kids, I didn’t lead to any peremptory explorations, so the rule stayed inviolate.

    On my 16th birthday, however, Pop told me to come take a walk with him in the woods, which weren’t unusual.  We often did this.  But this walk was different.  We veered off toward The Camp.  I had gained enough wisdom to realize this was a momentous occasion, so I simply followed his lead.  By this time, he had a walking stick that he used for support, though he was grinnin’ his Cheshire cat grin, clearly looking forward to what was to come.

    We got to The Camp and one might think it was a bit disappointing.  A fire-pit, a bit of a clearing near the fast-flowing creek, and a couple of shed type buildings somewhat rudely constructed.  Until I saw the Still.  And then much became clear.  The Camp was where Pop and all his friends had their rig for making ‘shine.  After the war, he’d actually run ‘shine and was part of that whole culture, but by this time in the late 80’s he’d settled down and only made small batches for his friends and a few select others.  The other three or four guys I’d seen him around with were there.  Overalls and trucker hats were still de rigueur for these gents.  I was allowed to wander around a bit before Pop started teaching me a few things.

    Now, this is imparted wisdom from my grandfather and is still, sadly, illegal to do.  So fortunately the statute of limitations is over and even if they weren’t, it’s a bit hard to put a dead man in prison, though ‘the got damn revenuers’ would likely try anyway.  Good luck to them if they do.  You may have notice where I get some of my, shall we say lack of respect, for the law from.  I am merely carrying on the family tradition in that regard.

     

    Preparing the Wash

    He taught me that making delicious white lightning is an exercise in patience, as much art as science, and that it took, like many of the best things, time to do it right.  Distilling is in some ways easier than brewing beer, and in other wars more difficult.  Making the wash, at least the way Pop did it, was pretty bullet proof.  Really, you just wanted to use the yeast to make as much alcohol as possible.  Now, cause Pop believed that all moonshine was made from corn, you were also trying to get some of the unique fusels that can bring in the mix, but that happens naturally.  Before you can get to fermenting though, you have to prep things.  You needed your ingredients; corn, sugar, yeast, and water.

    As I said, only corn will do, and Pop was a little cavalier about what kind of corn, as he got it from the feed store.  He often went for a medium corn meal.  I imagine had it been available he’d have used something like https://www.bobsredmill.com/shop/gluten-free/gluten-free-medium-cornmeal.html instead. I don’t know if this is optimal, I just know that’s what he did, and it worked for him.  Anyway, once he had the cornmeal he’d pour in some hot water with the cornmeal and sugar and let that soak for a good day or two.  It didn’t have to stay hot, simply needed to be hot to dissolve the sugar.  Then let it soak.

    Next you’d put the yeast in some warm water. He told me he liked to keep it in that below 90 degree range as that was the right temperature for the type yeast he liked to wake up.  Yeast varies, of course, and some like higher or lower temperatures so I reckon that is going to depend.  Either way, he’d mix things in and add the yeast-water to the corn/sugar mix.  Then add even more warm water that had been heated over an open fire, then wrap things in old horse blankets and let it sit.  And since this is here the fermentation was happening, it would bubble and fart up a storm.  Like an old lady with a delicate stomach that had a spicy Mexican dish three meals running.

    I imagine, had the home brewing craze been on grandpas radar he’d have loved those,  fancy buckets with spigots on the bottom and airlocks on the top.  But he’d jury-rigged some old trash can with a hole in the lid, a tube through the hole, and the other end of the hose beneath some water in a different, smaller bucket.  And he’d let that go on for four or five days until it had stopped bubbling the water.

     

    Cookin’

    So that lesson done, it was the next week after dinner that we went out to learn to actually cook a batch of shine.  Now, a modern moonshiner would probably enjoy one of those fancy bags to put the corn in at the beginning, the ones with the fine mesh that lets water through just fine.  I suppose one would be able to simply lift the spent grains up and out and only really have to filter the dead yeast.  But Pop and his friends were dealing with a different eras techniques.  He had  multiple filters set up and would use gravity to drain it through.  We spent quite a bit of time pouring wash through cheesecloth of different grades until Pop was satisfied it was filtered well enough.

    Once that was done, we poured it into the copper pot still he had that sat on top of an out door propane burner.  He claimed they use to use wood-fueled fires, but I can’t imagine that shit.  Anyway, here’s a picture of a copper pot still for making distilled water that’s similar in design if not size to the one my Pop used.

    It’s actual distillation stage where the patience and artistry comes in. That liquid sitting in that pot is a mix of water, various alcohols and fusels.  Now, all those things have different boiling points.  Methanol burns off first.  You do not want to drink methanol. It’ll give you headaches and tastes like shit in low doses.  In higher doses it can cause blindness or even death.  Bad stuff that Methanol.  Interesting thing is though, the treatment for methanol poisoning?  Ethyl alcohol.  Apparently the receptors that grab methanol prefer our good friend ethyl and will let those molecules go in exchange.  Anyway, methanol starts evaporating around 150 degrees. So now is the time where you get busier than a one legged man in an ass-kicking contest.

    Once the pot was up to that temp, based on the gauge we had, Pop would start diverting water from the crick into the tun.  This cools the copper down and encourages the evaporated liquid to condense and run down the coils and out of the tun.  Pop would turn the heat back what he reckoned was a good piece; wanting it hot enough to continue heating the wash, but at a slower rate.  As about the time the pot hits 165 degrees, the methanol would have condensed and starts flowing out.  Some math comes in and there’s a formula for calculating exactly how much methanol will be produced per gallon of wash.  And it’s somewhere between .6 and .8 ounces per gallon.  Anyway, Pop was the type who tended to free-hand things and didn’t want to poison no one.  So he just figured for every gallon in the pot, he’d take 2x as many ounces from the beginning and dispose of it.   Usually it got just tossed in the ground.

    So once he was done with the Methanol, there’d be a tapering off and the temp would climb to the 175-180 degree mark.  That’s where the Ethanol is being produced and begins to flow. The heat would be turned down to the minimum at this point and the water should be flowing strong and cold over the condenser coils.   Again, if Pop were running a formal operation here, he might have gotten this down to a more detailed amount, but he’d collect a quarter of the expected run or so and set that aside, usually based on testing with his finger in the drip and getting a taste.  Those were the heads and they were higher proof, and didn’t taste as good.

    But now..now we’re into the Heart of the run and it should be the good stuff.  Sweet and cool right out of the tap and small little taste of heaven.  The pot would be sitting in that 176-178 degree range and the ethyl produced is about 10% of the total amount of the wash. (So a 5 gallon wash would make about a gallon run, with a quart of heads, two quarts of heart, and a quart of tails.)  This is what you want to keep.  And while a half a gallon doesn’t sound like much, that’s 130 proof sweet corn liquor and will go a ways.  Especially as grandpa ran much larger batches and he’d do several runs from spring into the summer.  More on what can be done with this later.

    As the temp hit 180 or so, the proof fell off, and again more fusels are included and he was into the tails of the run.  Usually this’d be about the same amount as the heads and would be combined with it.  If you ever had turpentine tasting moonshine, it’s usually some cheap asshole mixing his heads and tails into his heart run, or simply selling that outright. As you might imagine, Pop, being a man who took pride in his law breaking, had no truck with such foolishness.

     

    Afterwards

    The heads and tails would be poured into the next batch of wash to up the alcohol content and extend out the hearts.  Of course, with his experience at it, he could tell by dabbing his finger where things needed to change, as I mentioned.  And he showed me how that would work.  Again, it’s part of the art of it doing it this way. He’d also take the heart run and divide it up.  Some of it he’d mix with apple cider and put cinnamon sticks in.  Others spring or summer fruit and a bit of juice or water and put up to let it age.

    Once the pot had cooled, often he’d simply dump the leftover wash in there.  The heads and tails would get mixed into the next batch as I mentioned.  And the spent grains would be used by Granny to make some outstanding cornbread.  Fresh blackberry preserves on some moonshine spent grain cornbread that had just come out of the oven in a iron skillet was a consistent treat growing up.  And while both of them are gone now and have been for sometime, any time I find some moonshine and some cornbread, it is a chance to connect with them, and that wonderful spring twenty odd years ago.