Atlanta Bound!

Monday September 13, 2010 4:54pm

I just left the Atlanta, Georgia area a few hours ago after spending the last 4 days there. I'm coming away feeling pretty good about the visit....overall.

Of course to end up feeling "pretty good" is due to the VERY (unbelievably, excruciatingly sometimes) up/down, love/hate world I so often refer to.

Whats NOT to love about going to a cool big city like Atlanta, teaching a class on "Bondage for Sex", having the event people supply a gorgeous woman for my class, actually getting ALONG with her, making extra money giving PAID lessons to a hot Atlanta, Domme and....and....ok, I guess that's it. But "pretty good" so far right? No, REALLY good so far!!

Ok, so now for the balance part. :(

Before you tell me so...I KNOW I'm overreacting ok? It really wasn't an overwhelmingly bad thing that happened but "pretty bad" it certainly is. And to a very touchy me....well...well, I'll just tell you.

I met Ruby (ruby75 on Fetlife) as soon as I got to the 1763 Dungeon in Atlanta. Turns out she is an early bird too. We are both there 30 minutes ahead of when we needed to be. Good sign. Another good sign: Loooooong legs, red heels, lil black dress, shapely bod and blond. Not that I'm particularly drawn to blonds per sey (per say?)(who cares) but THAT was a "very good" start.

We talked, we prepared, we flirted, we put the class on. Which went very well! MAN it was fun rolling around on the floor with that girl in simulated sexual situations!

So it's after now and we are starting a suspension scene that we both hope will be worthy of pictures. And we even asked the dungeon owner if we could take pictures. She made a special exception for us.

I talked to Ruby about the new plastic wrap suspensions I've been doing that looked like a spiders web. Her eyes lit up at that prospect so we made a plan.

I ran out to my truck to get my rolls of plastic wrap for the suspension. I opened up the plastic bin FULL of plastic wrap and...it wasn't. Full that is. It wasn't empty...but it didn't have nearly as much as I'd thought or hoped. One roll of the good clear stuff from the big name hardware store. Two partials of ____ ____ green. Not enough. Three big rolls of blue! Enough! Yay!

Oh wait. Slow down a little. WHY is that blue the only stuff left? Cause it's my favorite to use? NOOOOOOO! It's a roll I got help cutting up. It was too wide a roll to use on the new types of suspensions I'd been doing. The first time I tried to cut a wide roll by myself I made a mess of it. Turns out...if you don't cut it right it doesn't come off the roll right. I had to throw my first attempt away.

Th second attempt I had a knowledgeable friend help. When we were done cutting it - in perfectly clear visioned hindsight - I remember him with a knit brow as to whether it would pull off any better than what I threw away.

But at that moment, it was something. Way better than nothing. Gotta make this happen for Ruby. And me too of course. You never know when a "printable" pic is going to be captured. So ya gotta prepare.

So there we are setting up for the "plastic web" suspension. I've done 5 or 6 of them now and am feeling pretty confident about things.

Mistake #2 Mistake #1 was the wrap itself remember? Feeling confident is ALWAYS a problem.

There is a really cool frame at the 1763 Dungeon ( http://www.1763.net/ ). It's a four poster and perfect for a 3-D plastic web. So I get started setting up an overhead point. Then I bring in Ruby and measure the distance from her to the ring in order to set up the torso support loop. I have her hold her arm out to the proper height and start wrapping around that arm and through the suspension ring above.

Did you know I was the first to start using suspension rings. Ya. I probably already told you. I don't know why it's so important to me that everyone know that. Oh well. Digressing again.

So I wrap and wrap through the ring, around her arm...over n over again till I think it has enough wraps so that when she leans her torso back on it, that it has enough strength to support her upper body.

I have her pull her arm out, I open up the loop, start to have her back into it....and its too high. Wayyyy to high. "Stand on a chair maybe," she asks? "Hmmmm...",I say "...no, better not chance it."

I just got the ladder again and lowered the ring. Ok! All good.

One problem. Or is that three? The roll is over half used and it's the best roll. The other two were not pulling off as well.

Or is that five problems now? Ohhhh ho ho...nooooo... We are JUST getting started folks!

So her torso is leaning back on the big loop, practically the whole dungeon has stopped to watch...and I'm thinking fast on how to save this suspension.

Yep. Problem six. You are starting to get the feel of this story now right?

I figure - not very well - that I can support this lightweight lovely lass with less support than I usually would....cause...cause...cause she is light! And passionate! And she really wants this to happen! Ya, that's the ticket!

Number 12. Ok I skipped a few. But already I should have just stopped. But noooo...oooo.... Gawd, I can't stop using old cliches' and SNL skit lines.

I have her lift her left leg to the right height and start a big loop under it and to the upper side post. Back n forth, back n forth. "Feel comfy?" I ask her. "No prob" she replies. I start to add a few more wraps for more support and the roll starts sticking. See.... what happens when you cut a roll of wrap, is that it gets hot on the edges and melts a bit. So one spot sticks while I continue to unroll it and then the wrap breaks. I unstick the sticky spot, then start again. It sticks again, breaks again, ect....ect...ect...

Uh oh.

Now I'm one third of the way through the suspension and have one third of my only GOOD roll left. I didn't need a calculator to know this wasn't going to come out right.

Gotta try to make one of the other rolls work.

Not fooling anyone watching now either. They all KNOW I'm having trouble. I'm sweating like mad now but very determined.

Need to find a way to lift the other leg now.

See the big trick to the plastic web suspensions is proper set up. You make big loops that the model rests COMFORTABLY in. You can't LIFT someone with it for gosh sakes!

But of course I'm going to try. Now we're into this suspension over a half hour. Time is getting short. Any time someone is standing around in partial suspension the clock is ticking. And now it's ticking loudly.

So I decide to hold her leg up with my knee and run the big loop while on one leg myself while wrapping it above to the torso support that she is already laying back on.

I'm not going to count anymore. I'm in the red...big time.

But it seems to be working!! Yes! She is off the ground and says she feels just fine! Cool!

I move forward and start the wraps for "looks" and entwine her arms one by one and I miss the fact that because I connected the second leg to the torso support, said support starts to roll up. "Roll up" is that thing that happens with plastic wrap when it decides that it doesn't want to stay where you put it. So the 12 inch comfy loop turns into a cutting 2 inch strip under her back. That's like 3 or 4 wraps of 6mm hemp - only worse - for a full torso weight. Like my Hungarian police buddy said (If you ever ready my Budapest story on my yahoo group), "Note Gud!" (That's not a "typo", I'm expressing his accent)

During my wraps to make it look cool, I bent back the left leg - the first one holding weight - and did a cool toe point with it. Which I didn't notice till later cause the knee loop to "roll up" too. I notice that when she caught my attention to tell me her leg is numb. I also noticed at the same moment that her face was a bit pale. Kinda noticed. That hindsight thing again, ya know?

Now my shirt is drenched with sweat. I can barely keep the stinging hair gel from burning my eyes. and I'm movin fast! STILL gonna save this one! I'm THE baddass Lew Rubens!! PAHHH!!!! What an idiot!! In hindsight of course.

So rather than fix her leg, I ask her to hold on while I get better support set up to help her weight better, then I'll fix the leg.

It's over an hour now. I've stopped several times now to fix my fucking shitty rolls of fucked up plastic wrap!! And I've even taken out my knife, trying to trim edges to make these fucking rolls work right!! All the while trying to appear calm, collected and "Lewish" Phew!! Blah!! I stink!!

I give up on those rolls, open a suitcase and pull out my one partial roll of black plastic wrap that is soooooo thin of a wrap that it has almost no strength and try to do wraps that hold her whole body weight up. Those wraps are doing the "roll up" thing with every turn.

Then Ruby goes "uh-oh, I'm gonna be sick". I immediately grab her, lift her weight, grab my scissors out of my back pocket and tell her "hold on baby, I'm cutting you down."

I'm ripping through that plastic wrap as fast as I can. Another problem comes up. I'm trying to cut through so fast that my scissors bend over the thick parts of the wrap rather than cut through. They could have broken just then!! Idiot!! But they didn't. I fumbled through the rest of the cutting of the wraps as her knees buckled a bit and - we both half stumbling - got her to the bathroom. Two other women came in to help. So I went outside the bathroom and waited for her to come out. Doing my best to keep my composure while I really wanted to thrash myself to within and inch of my life...then maybe past.

So after a very long five minutes of excruciating torture of her being in there because of me and also the additional torture of people trying to console the idiot that I am, she came out....apologizing all the way for her fucking up.

Gawd. Ouch.

Ruby is fine now. Took me a while to take the blame from her. In fact I had to compromise with her and let her take a little blame or she just wasn't going to feel good about it. What a great girl. We both happily agreed to let the fucked up plastic wrap rolls take the biggest share of the blame.

Yeah, that works. Who supplied the wrap?

Since then I've finally gotten myself alone and given myself that thorough thrashing. I think I'll live through it...although just a little more emotionally crippled than ever.

Just another self flagellating teaching story for my classes in hopes of helping them be safer. The list created for the good of others grows every year. My multitude of scars are internal and I smile a lot. So others don't need to actually feel empathetic pain from my lessons...they only need to learn from them.

That's my eternal payment for being so stupid as to take the trust that others have in me and abuse the shit out of it just cause I wanna be cool.

It's a price I can live with. So far.

Lew B. Rubens

Special Thanks For My Amazing New Rope!!

September 4, 2010 10am

I can really be a spacehead sometimes! Luckily friends help me. We all say we get by with a little help from our friends? I say I CANNOT get by without mine.

So, in that vein, I have unforgivably forgotten to mention the guy who made my new rope.

My wonderful, lovely, beautiful, soft, terrific new rope was made by a very cool Oregon guy named Stuart who has become one of the best rope makers I know.

Check out his site:

http://www.renaissancerope.com/

This rope has a perfect consistency that few ropes do.

Tell him Lew sent you!!

Catch up!

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