Monday, September 26, 2011

M/M Hypno Singles Mayhem

So, here's another post I've wanted to write for a while.

Over the summer, I decided to try out some male-for-male hypnosis singles sites. Specifically, I set up an account on hypnotising.org and the IRC chatroom #gayhypnosis to see if I could find a good hypnotist to put me under online. I figured, I wasn't finding any good hypnotists on Fetlife, maybe they would be easier to find on a hypnosis-only site.

...um...

Hypnotists were easy to find, yes. Good hypnotists? Not so easy.

The following vignettes are not in chronological order, but rather in the order that it feels natural in which to tell them. I'd also like to preface this by saying that I realize that I still didn't get anywhere near the level of crap that so many people get just for presenting as female on Fetlife or other sites.


Older Dude in #gayhypnosis

This guy invited me to a private chat. Wanting the same treatment that I would give any of my subjects, I grilled him on what he would like to do with me in a first session. The answer was something along the lines of, "Oh, just put you under and feel things out."

Then I asked what he would like to do after that. Answer: "Fly out to [hometown deleted] and buy a collar for you," followed by a lengthy, way-too-detailed description of how special this collar would be.

...I responded that I was definitely not looking for what he was looking for.

I changed my hometown from [actual hometown] to "Variable" immediately afterward. He private messaged me again the next time I was in the room, wondering (not unkindly) why I was there, when I had already found "what [I] was looking for" and found it not to my liking.

Do I really need to explain where this guy went wrong?


Couldn't Be Sexy If He Tried

Another guy private-messaged me in hypnotising.org's own chatroom, asking to hypnotize me. He asked me what I liked, and I pointed him toward my hypnotising.org profile, which explicitly outlines everything that I like, as well as my hard limits.

His response? "Oh, I've done all of those things."

My inner response: "...suuuuuuuurrrrrrre you have."
My chatroom response: "Ooh, can you tell me about some scenes you've done, then?"

His response to that: "Oh, I don't kiss and tell."

So, OK, this guy's already making my Bullshit Detector go off. But I decide to give him the benefit of the doubt - I mean, I've done everything on my list as a hypnotist, right? And not everyone is comfortable disclosing their scene details.

Well, then he starts bragging about all the cool things he likes to do...one of which was "dumb jock" suggestions, which are right at the top of my hard limits. In fact, by this point my profile explicitly opened with "IF YOU WANT A JOCK, LOOK ELSEWHERE." So I pointed out that he seemed to be confusing my want-list with my limit-list.

As he continued to talk in circles and not give me any specifics whatsoever, I told him, "give me something to fantasize about!" He responded, "I don't work with fantasy, I only work with reality." (Yay for missing the point?)

At this point I've given up on salvaging anything from this guy, so I give up trying to be coy and tell him that he is not making himself remotely appealing, on any level.

Spiral: come on, give me SOMETHING to get me interested!
Not-Sexy-Guy: lol, i'm interested in you.

...yeah, you and a bunch of other horny hypnotists on this site, I'll need a little more than that.

Denouement: The next day, he invited me to watch him put another guy under on cam in a private chatroom. Or, rather, he was inviting me to put another guy under on cam - there was a massive miscommunication (which says something about his communication skills) that led to him thinking I was going to be the hypnotist, when in fact I figured I might as well check out his hypnotism skills and see if he was at least any good.

After the miscommunication was cleared up, he proceeded to put under the other room-goer with a hands-stuck induction. The hypnotee did not have a microphone; he was only able to communicate by typing - and this guy did a hands-stuck induction. Hands-stuck is my default, but I'm perceptive enough to know when it is a terrible idea - and by then, I'd learned to be disturbed by any hypnotist who would deprive his hypnotee of a means to communicate.

Not-Sexy Hypnotist proceeded to be utterly baffled and lost when this induction didn't work. So, not only did he use a poor method, he didn't have any backup plan when it failed.

Sigh.


Mr. Douche 'Tist

Here's the main event. There were some other mishaps, but these three were the most notable, and this one was by far the experience that left the biggest impression.

The first day I was on the site, I threw out messages to a bunch of hypnotists who seemed vaguely interesting. Not that I had a lot to go on; most of the profiles on this site only had a sentence or two. So I messaged people who at least had decent grammar and professed some kind of nerdiness.

I soon got a reply from a guy that I will refer to exclusively as Mr. Douche 'Tist. We chatted a bit on YIM, did some half-decent negotiation, and got on Skype for the trancing.

The first hypnosis session was, frankly, awesome. He had me freezing and posing in all sorts of positions, stripping in fun ways, feeling REALLY subby with a "good boy" trigger, and generally having a blast. His induction technique was also fantastic - I was legitimately impressed.

That said, there was one red flag that came up in this: up front, during negotiation, I stated that I didn't want any amnesia. He agreed to that. However, he proceeded to be surprised that I was fully aware and conscious every time I froze. Silly me, I just figured he defined "amnesia" differently, and I shouldn't be concerned.

(I think I'm right that he just defined it differently, but I still consider that a red flag.)

I proceeded to float in subspace for an hour after the session, which was reeeeeeaalllly nice.

My second session with him...hoo boy.

He messaged me, asking if I wanted to do another trance. I was up for it at the time, and asked what he wanted to do that night. He replied, vaguely, that he just wanted to do some freezing scenes. I was like, cool, sounds perfect to me right now.

Well, he used and reinforced the triggers from the last session. I should mention that I was starting to be impressed with my own ability to freeze in place - every time he used the freeze trigger, I was stock-still and it was awesome.

And then...

...well, first, while I was frozen, he suggested that I would unfreeze as a puppy. Won't lie, this is something I've wanted to do for ages, so I didn't mind - except that I had told him that I had to be quiet (someone else in the house was sleeping), so barking loudly was right out. So, I became a puppy for a minute or two, but I couldn't really get into it and I was very quiet. After he brought me back out, I explained that my headspace was messed up by the noise issue. He proceeded to look bored, freeze me in the middle, and leave me to awkwardly continue after being unfrozen.

Again: I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with that. Freezing someone mid-conversation is par for the course. But it sent up another red flag that he would do this while I was explaining a problem, and I was irritated that he didn't seem interested at all in my issue.

So, he froze me again, and this time he suggested that when I unfroze, I'd be a cave man.

...that took me completely off guard. It was a hard limit I didn't even know I had, because I hadn't even given this fetish any thought. So, when I unfroze, the suggestion flat-out didn't work, and I told him that that kind of play just wasn't my thing.

OK. Here's where it takes a turn for the fucked-up.

Mr. Douche 'Tist (this is where he earns the title) then put me back under, and gave me a series of new triggers and suggestions. One of those suggestions was that he would be able to change my opinions on things. I outright rejected that one when he asked if I understood and accepted it. He woke me up, said it was fine that some things weren't working, then put me back under and, after a very lengthy deepening, he suggested that I would wake up with no free will.

Ordinarily, that would be really hot to me. But this guy had already surprised me with an unnegotiated kind of fetish play, then tried to give me a suggestion to change my opinions, and now he wanted me to be mindless - one right after the other, without so much as a pause to talk to me. This was not a good sequence of events for ensuring my trust.

Keep in mind - I was still in a really floaty, subby headspace this whole time. I was having trouble stringing together any kind of coherent protest - and he didn't give me the time or prompting to allow me to.

So I woke up, supposed to be lacking in free will (by the way, he didn't give me a chance to "accept" this suggestion), and I told him (still floaty, still rambly) that there were still some things I wouldn't do, even though I felt really submissive and obedient.

His response: "Sorry, [pseudonym I was using], you're not working out as a volunteer." *signs off*

WHAT.

THE.

FUCK.

No aftercare. Didn't even wake me up out of the subby headspace he had just built. Didn't ask me to elaborate on anything that had gone wrong, or why it had gone wrong.

Since I like to believe the best in people, I tried to see it from his perspective: he probably thought I was a faker, and that there was no point in doing anything if I were lying about being hypnotized.

Still: throwing in suggestions without negotiating them is pretty awful to me. I know there are hypno-subs out there who love it (including, from my chatting, most of the subs on hypnotising.org), but I stated up front that I wanted to negotiate things thoroughly before doing them. Furthermore, I find it outrageous that he didn't give me time or prompting to communicate any problems with him after I had resisted three suggestions in a short period of time. I know that in that situation, I would have asked my subject if there was a persistent problem, and if they would even want to continue. But no, this guy steamrolled ahead past my resistance, and decided that I wasn't worth aftercare if I wasn't going to fulfill his whims.

Yeah, this wasn't exactly a worst-case scenario. Maybe I'm disproportionately pissed off. But the more I think about it, the more this guy is a model for how not to scene with people, and the more justified I feel in saying that he was a selfish douchebag.

What I Learned from Mr. Douche 'Tist: I learned a lot about communication. I like to think I already knew how important it was to check in regularly and ask how everything was going, but this really hammered it into me by putting me on the receiving end of half-assed care. This guy showed only token concern for my desires or needs, only caring about his own desires when push came to shove.


Conclusion:

Not all of my experiences on hypnotising.org and in #gayhypnosis have been bad ones. I've chatted to some really cool hypnofetishists - mostly hypnotees - and had good conversations. I even met some ethical hypnotists and assorted good people. I even chatted to some hypnotists who seemed really awesome, and who took the time to get to know me; even if it turned out that we weren't compatible, I was much more warmed by those experiences than the hot session with Mr. Douche 'Tist. But the sheer, overwhelming selfishness and douchebaggery that I witnessed pissed me off because it was more common.

Maybe these two sites are so filled with this behavior because moderation is non-existent. Or maybe I'm finding out the hard way what it's like to be hit on by people made confident and self-assured by male privilege. Maybe all the predators on the site made these awkward and way-too-forward flirting methods look viable, because at least they bothered to come after token attempts to get to know a person. It baffled me, because I just couldn't imagine some of these approaches (like the first two vignettes) being appealing to anybody. The real kicker, Mr. Douche 'Tist actually has a really good reputation around thereabouts - it seems not being a predator makes him look good in comparison, and he probably doesn't often run into subjects as high-maintenance as myself. (That's not an excuse for him, by the way - if your sub needs care, they should get it. Period.)

Argh.

This has been Frustrated, Snarky, Pissed-Off Spiral. In the next post, I hope to bring back Sexy, Fun-Loving, Happy Spiral.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Puppets, Dolls, and Robots

I thought it would be useful to make a post about this, since (in my time on hypno-fetish singles sites) this has been the single most common point of confusion among other hypno-fetishists.

(I also figure, if I post every time I feel like posting, it'll keep me in gear to make sure I don't have any other half-a-year-between-session-and-post situations.)

Of note, ASFR is the hypnosis stuff that I most enjoy as a subject/submissive. Being frozen, being called a puppet, being a robot: I like. If I'm hypnotizing somebody else, I still love it, but I also enjoy blank mind, limp body, and sensation/pleasure suggestions just as much.

So, here are my thoughts on the Big Three sub-fetishes of ASFR:

On "Puppet":

I LOVE the word "puppet." However, I don't find puppets particularly sexy. When I use the word in my fetish play, I'm not thinking about what a puppet is. I'm thinking about what the word "puppet" implies: a being completely under the control of somebody else. This can relate to hypnotized-to-be-a-marionette scenarios (like this one and around 4:09 in this video); however, while I enjoy those (ESPECIALLY being on the receiving end), they're not a very big Thing for me. And speaking of the receiving end, if I'm going to be a marionette, it has to be a human marionette, I don't really want to be hypnotized to feel like I'm made of wood or whatever.

(One of the reasons they're not a big Thing for me, it should be noted, is that it's difficult as hell to make them work in a satisfactory way. Either the hypnotist has to painstakingly describe every single movement of the "strings," or the subject has to be able to see every movement of the hypnotist's hands, or only two body parts can be moved at once, ARGH, it's more trouble than it's worth.)

So, to sum: it's the word, and its accompanying metaphorical concept, that I find sexy as hell.


On Dolls:

OK, doll fetish is a little different. I do occasionally go nuts for "doll" clothes (one of my Fet friends has a Raggedy Anne outfit; I'm a big fan, even though she uses it for age play instead of doll play) and doll makeup.

However, like "puppet," I primarily enjoy "doll" as a metaphorical concept. In this case, it implies not only a being under control, but a being that exists to be played with. "Puppet" implies this, too, I suppose, but I tend to use "doll" in a more playful sense.

This word also has some personal significance to me, because in my early days of hypno-playing, I found that the word resonated with many of my hypnosis play partners in an unexpected way. I started using it at first because I personally thought that "doll" described freezing-and-posing better than "mannequin" (which is more commonly used on hypno-porn sites) - I mean, most mannequins I see aren't very poseable, so "life-sized doll" always seemed like a better description when explaining the concept to a play partner.

I found, to my surprise, that this description seemed to awaken a new turn-on in several of my partners. Obviously, this is not the case with everybody, but it happened often enough that the word gained a strong positive association for me.

"Doll play," as a fetish, often has a distinct objectification element. I'm REALLY not sure if that's part of my own doll kink. When I use the word (and when it gets a positive reaction), my mind turns to the idea of a doll who actively enjoys being played with and posed. I like to see a subject's reactions to being posed. And I always give my hypnotee the choice of being able to speak or mute when they're frozen - I often enjoy having a conversation while posing somebody. But the idea of reducing a thinking, conscious person to a thoughtless object IS appealing to me, if only on a fantasy level (or on a "happening to me" level - my submissive fantasies tend to be less inhibited than my dominant fantasies). And I also enjoy frozen expressions and blank stares indicating mindlessness, which seems inherently dehumanizing. My doll scenes tend to emphasize being frozen more as a kind of bondage than as a dehumanizing experience...but that word, "doll," and its objectification implications, remains.

Long and short on objectification: I could probably come up with an awesome objectification scene if I were playing with somebody into that kink, but I can discard it in a heartbeat and have never pursued it actively.


On Robots:

I know exactly where I stand on robot kink, which is awesome!

I enjoy robot play purely on a superficial level. Stiff, monotone, holding still unless obeying a command, not reacting to outside stimulus, speaking only when spoken to - these superficial aspects are all incredibly sexy to me. I often get the same thrill out of non-robot scenes - like blank mind scenes.

I'm also interested in trying a "mad scientist turns the captive and bound victim into a robo" role play. It seems like it would be a more fun "mad scientist" scenario than a straight brainwashing or a mind control ray.

But I'm not really turned on by robots. I'm turned on by people (or myself) acting like robots as a result of hypnotic suggestion. I also have strict preferences: I like monotone voices, I HATE stilted voices. Perky robots just aren't my thing.

Metaphorically, "robot" also makes a good metaphor for someone under control, but I prefer to keep it separate since I enjoy the specific role play.

As for other robot trappings: I like clockwork/wind-up toy suggestions, although they're sometimes awkward to make work (much easier than marionette scenes, though). I would love to do a remote control scene, but it either involves doing some very complicated things with a Bluetooth headset or describing what button the hypnotist is pressing and what it does each and every time - so it's a bit too much work considering I like vocal commands just fine. I'm not into full robot costumes, but a silver one-piece bathing suit would be hot for robot scenes. If I'm the subject, being nude would be preferable to any kind of outfit.

Perhaps notably, the robot trapping I most enjoy is some kind of object - a collar, a headband, a helmet, a ring - that stops the subject's thoughts and turns them into a biological robot (see: the infamous "Ring Around Gilligan" MC scenes).


...so, I think that's all I have to say about my ASFR kinks, unless I feel like editing this post sometime. I don't know what kind of feedback I can get on this - maybe from my previous play partners who have their own perspectives on how these kinks play out - but anyone who wants to start a conversation with me about this will likely make me happy, because I'm really interested in teasing out the intellectual aspects that this kink holds for me (since it's all tied up in words and concepts as much as types of play).

Later, all!

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Of Robots and Jedi - Also, Bro Music

NOTICE: In the long time between when this session happened and now, Georgie has begun living as a male and using masculine pronouns 24/7. However, he doesn't mind acknowledging his past gender identity (which was "genderqueer/neutral/apathetic" at the time of this session), and he said that I should use feminine pronouns for this post because that's what he was fine with at the time.

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So, I have been putting off this post for ages. Around half a year, to be exact. Some of the details may be a touch fuzzy by now. Also...this post may be a touch on the boastful side, which is another reason I have put it off a little. :) Simply put, this is about a truly amazing session with Georgie (our last one-on-one session).

(I will attempt to keep rolling out new posts until I'm caught up with all my recent awesome times. Maybe the promise will stick this time. XD)

Georgie was not really into the whole robot fetish that I like. I rarely get to do any robot play anyway, so I wasn't very fussed about that. Then, she sent me a Fetlife message offering to do robot play...on the condition that her robot persona be named either Rei or Eva.

I don't like Neon Genesis Evangelion, but a reference that geeky was WAY too tempting to pass up.

She was also interested in trying out some forms of amnesia, and, once I suggested it, Jedi Mind Tricks.

So, I mentioned in passing in this post that Georgie's feelings about a mindless trance gave me some ideas for future play. Well, I'm rather proud of how I took this input and used it to modify my robot fetish play to suit her tastes.

After trancing and deepening Georgie, I gave her the suggestion to become a robot - suggesting that she would feel trapped inside her own body, feeling her body obeying and staying in a stiff posture without any ability to control it. I suggested that all of the trappings of a robot - the mechanical movements, the monotone voice, holding still when not following orders, the total obedience - would be a kind of discipline or protocol that she would feel compelled to follow. (I don't know if I've mentioned it much, but Georgie LOVES protocol - Eve is the one usually providing it.) All of this was meant to move away from the usual "mindless and mechanical" part of robot roleplay, and replace it with something more similar to what Georgie prefers - compelled obedience, protocol, etc.

And the Evangelion reference I chose was "Eva-00" (AKA Rei's Eva), to double up on her request. :P

So I played around with Eva-00. I had her kneeling, stripping, posing - spanked her to no reaction (which I found sexy, at least) - that kind of thing. :) I also gave her a phrase to say when I pressed her belly button - "I am a stupid cunt," to go along with her verbal humiliation kink.

She liked it! I'm kind of proud of the fact that I crafted the scene in such a way that she got something out of it despite not being into the main fetish we built the scene around.

Next, we tried working with amnesia a little. I took her feedback from way back to our first scene together - the exact language she used to describe forgetting her name. I deepened her trance, and had her chant "No thoughts, only obedience" over and over for the duration of the trance. It quickly became the barest whisper under her breath, but as she kept it up, I suggested that she would focus on the chant, and all of the other memories of the trance would be like smoke that she couldn't grasp until she was allowed to do so. While she was chanting, I ordered her to all fours, and suggested that my control was so total that her body would feel whatever I told it to feel - to demonstrate, I suggested that she would feel a hard spank when I grabbed the back of her neck. I did just that, and she shuddered beneath my hand and gasped at the sharp imaginary impact on her bottom.

Before waking her up, I also set up the Jedi Mind Trick - thinking that I would test her amnesia ability by including the "forget that it was suggested" part of the Trick.

So, I brought her out of trance, and she was happily frustrated to be unable to remember the trance. I eventually triggered her to remember again, and she was quite pleased with both the mantra and the mental spank. Then, it was time for a lot of random Mind Tricks: making her forget her name (or replacing it with the word "Whore"), turning her back into a robot, getting her out of her shirt and bra, and - the highlight - making her arms, then her legs, go limp.

Spiral: *Mind Trick gesture* Your arms are limp.
Georgie: ...my arms are limp...
Spiral: *lifts her arm and lets it drop*
Georgie: This is...kinda hot...! I like the helplessness of it...
Spiral: Mm, good! *Mind Trick gesture* Your legs are limp, too.
Georgie: My legs are limp, too.
Spiral: *shoves Georgie down to the bed and positions her arms and legs*

So, in short, awesome session. :) We were going to a slosh later in the evening, and I set up the Mind Trick to be active during it so that I could give her spontaneous suggestions.

(Added aside: the amnesia on the Mind Trick didn't work out, to our mutual disappointment, but it was still awesome.)

That slosh was...notable. The slosh organizer had not been informed that it was the same night as a music event - about a half-dozen people getting up and singing two songs apiece on acoustic guitar or ukelele. For some reason, this attracted a MASSIVE AUDIENCE (the restaurant was filled wall-to-wall); judging by the fashion choices of the audience, and the inexplicably huge audience for a bunch of random people singing, my guess is that it was a frat/sorority event of some sort. Anyway, the restaurant didn't expect any kind of major turn-out, so there was only one server for this entire packed place - and we, at the slosh, couldn't have a decent conversation for the first hour plus of the event (I actually got shushed by someone when I tried to talk over the music).

So, uh, suckage. When Georgie showed up and was exposed to the awful bro music of the performers, she turned to me and lamented that she wasn't better at amnesia.

I used the Mind Trick to demonstrate some simple hypnotic phenomena to interested slosh-goers - bound Georgie's hands in various places, mostly.

The highlight of the night was toward the end. Georgie was wearing a corset, and a local Domme who is most excellent with corsets offered to retie it for her. Said Domme was disappointed about not being able to give Georgie any "orders" this time around, so instead, I gave Georgie the suggestion that she would have an orgasm as soon as her corset was fully retied.

...that could have been better thought out. There was no clear signal that the corset tying was "finished," so there were a few false starts. Still, Georgie was breathing hard in arousal at each false start, and once the corset was finished, she exclaimed,

"I don't know if that was an orgasm, but it felt FUCKING GOOD!"

I think that's a pretty good result. :)