Sign of the Apocalypse

LMAO now I've seen it all! Double Scorpio's Autumnal Bottom collection presents:
Pumpkin Spice Latte poppers!

Cheeky Grocery Shopping

Other than the Whole Foods in the Center At Halsted in Chicago, I don't recall ever having been in a grocery store in rubber! Who's thinking about food when you're rubbered up? LOL

Something I wouldn't mind trying sometime, perhaps Mook, SemFolego and I should try it out sometime.

Aggravation and Depression

I have been in a pretty bad funk for the past few months. Many things are swirling around in my world that are a) hard to make sense of; and b) really testing my appreciation of humanity.

1) First of all is the responsibilities on my shoulders. For almost five years now, I have been devoting an day every month to sharing my rubber bondage toys and gear with basically anyone who would show up. I've set up many smaller events, and devoted hundreds of hours a year to pulling off some pretty kick-ass kink parties. 

Admittedly, I'm not an expert at effective community growth. I usually just put my head down, refuse to accept any help, and bust out an event out of sheer energy expenditure (while all the time never being able to say no), but hell, I have been doing it by myself for so long, it seemed like the best path of least resistance to share my rubber passion and hopefully find some other true pervs in the meantime. One of the main reasons I do this is to get laid!

It has been a long, hard, exhausting slog. I've been beating the drum for well over a decade and a half now (the Rubbout years, yes, are included in that, as is the PTSD), and I don't feel that I'm getting the commitment and growth that I figured would have developed by now. Rubbout is kind of an anomaly as it's not purely and entirely rubber focused, and also a once-a-year event. The Vancouver Rubbermen is something that I wanted to incubate on my own....by a rubberman, for rubbermen, with presence and availability year-round. 

The rubbermen have not showed up. Sure there are lots of guys interested/curious, but the true rubber perverts that I crave to make connections with have not appeared. I know for a fact there are some pretty involved rubbermen in the region, but for one reason or another, they have decided not to support a community or special unique event going on in their back yard. There have been lots of organizers and producers involved that do a very, very good job, but they aren't passionate about rubber and they have been only minimally supportive of the rubber events over the past few years.

That's fine; I have sloughed off all of these frustrations for years, but they have come to a head this summer. 

As you know, I usually take the summer off to work on and enjoy Mr. P and my 'summer home' at the gay campground east of the city. I found this summer to be exceptionally busy and I spent a lot of time hosting and entertaining as this was our joy that we wanted to share with our friends, now that most of the large projects and DIY stuff has been completed. This ended up being a bit of an issue - I was overextending myself and have since discovered this summer that we had too many guests, and next year this will not re-occur. I really didn't have as free and enjoyable a summer there as I wanted, because I was always hosting, cooking, cleaning up after people, etc. etc., so this was pretty regrettable for me.....though I had lots of happy satisfied guests over the past five months.

Mr. P and I have decided that our guest list will be radically shorter next year, and we only truly want to enjoy it with our closest friends and not just acquaintances that we want to fuck(!). With Mr. P not working since he lost his leg to cancer five years ago, the money equation has been very stressful for me too; the decent income I make leaves nothing disposable because I am carrying the entire household. More and more chips away at this every year to now we're at the point that we fall a little further behind each month - it has been causing a lot of friction between Mr. P and I, and I am committed to getting him back to work this fall. I haven't been able to take any trips, do anything for myself, or set time aside for myself for years. I'm fucking tired of it. These are issues that we are working on, and partly the reason why I'm deciding to allocate more time for my own development and helping Mr. P re-enter the workforce.

For these reasons, I was really looking forward to eschewing the rubber meets this summer and also the reason why I started asking the guys that show up to the meets to start coughing up some money, particularly after my vac-cube blew up at one of the Meet + Plays. I have been giving my money, my time and my materials into this endeavour and frankly was getting a little tired of it. It was only through the miracle of having a few very special men in my life - Mook, SemFolego, Satyr, and a few others - that I had the feeling that the rubber events were growing and reaching some sort of critical mass. 

We decided to host a rubber weekend at the gay campground in August. I was initially very excited about it, until it came to packing for it and coordinating camping and rides for everyone (because apparently no one knows how to manage this stuff themselves??). Hauling everything there and getting everyone there was a challenge from the start. Then the crew that had nothing to do all day Friday decided to show up late and we ended up having to help them set up tents in the fucking dark!

All weekend, I was cooking meals for eight, trying to get some rubber activities going on during the day, culminating in our grand demonstrations in the clubhouse Saturday evening. We pulled off a successful 'introduction' demo for all the campers who had never seen this type of stuff before. That's all fine and good and we got a lot of kudos, but this was originally supposed to be for rubbermen. I don't really care about entertaining the cotton people - in my experience, 0.0025% of them ever think kink or anything outside of their contemporary view of the world.

And then on Sunday, I kinda lost it. Two more meals for eight - I basically shut down and didn't want to interact with anyone anymore. To me, it was a terrible end to what was supposed to be an exciting weekend.

This led me to think about the bigger picture....WHY THE FUCK AM I DOING THIS!?! Why am I spending all this time putting guys into rubber bondage, paying for repairs, washing rubber, storing rubber, running kilos of gear in and out of storage lockers numerous times a month, spending hours getting rude sponsors to donate gear to Rubbout's raffle draw, wrangling a team to run a demo pit, constantly picking up after people, and inevitably lending my shit out only to have it break, get stolen or lost?

I am at my wits end. I cancelled the September VRM Meet + Play until another guy volunteered to host it - he means well, but he is one of these guys that has lost my stuff, is disorganized, and has a knack to not think out the consequences of his actions very well. I am a little worried about him hosting the event this weekend, though I'm at the point now that if I'm not planning to continue the rubber meets, why do I care?

I've also cancelled the Vancouver Rubbermen 5th Anniversary get-together on October 4th. Firstly, because I've only had ten responses, secondly, because the pup group have one of their fucking ten monthly events that night so had to inform me that they were there first, so we had to find another place to go. FUCK. IT.

I am having to miss MIR again this year due to my financial situation, which pisses me off to no end, and I'm seriously considering stepping away from Rubbout entirely next year, possibly even for the 30th anniversary year. I don't really care anymore.

A friend lost some of my rubber at Pride - it got stolen. I've lost many pieces of gear this year that were being worn by others at the point of breakdown. My gear is getting all worn out due to over use and age, and to top it all off, I lent out my sling for the Pride Backdoor play party (to the same guy that is hosting this weekend's rubber event) and it came back to me with a busted storage bag, and as of yesterday, when Mook and I assembled the sling for the first time since I got it back - one of the bars is missing! FOR FUCK'S SAKE! WTF!?!?? I am so angry, I can't even.....

I have completely lost my passion for rubber. I have completely lost my vision for the reasons why I was doing this in the first place. Hell, I don't even have any desire to keep this blog up-to-date. I have been having some very heart-to-heart talks with Mook and SemFolego about all of this, and they are very supportive of my perspectives on what is going on. Thank god I have at least some support in my life. They want me to get my passion for rubber and zest for perversion back. I honestly just want to retreat back to basics - rekindle my love for rubber with the ones closest to me in the comfort of my own environment. 

I don't want to become bitter, but I haven't found Vancouver's gay kink scene to be very supportive of Rubbout or the rubber community....it's like they don't even realize the gift they have with this unique and exciting scene right in their own community. Well, they are going to lose it. I'm pretty much done. If everyone can be selfish and unsupportive, and no one gives a shit, I'm about to do the same for my own mental health. 

I am tired tired TIRED of busting my ass repeatedly for a group of people (I will not call a 'community') that love to take advantage of free shit, won't get their own stuff and just want to keep using mine, and don't give a crap about being supportive of the people that host and put this stuff on. I've been doing it my entire life, and I've reached the end....I honestly have, my entire life, been the community booster and been so generous with my time and energy to get these things kicked off. Nothing used to make me happier than seeing the looks of joy, surprise, and ecstasy on guy's faces as they were discovering the magic of rubber and kinky sex. I'm not so sure about the significance of this in my life anymore.

I was always so excited about sharing my passion with a bigger community, and right now I don't feel like it was really worth anything. All I'm left with is lost gear, repair bills, a lot of work, and really no new rubber padwans or candidates to transition the legacy to. I know many of the other producers are burned out too.....there is a very very strong possibility that Rubbout will be done after the 30th anniversary in 2021.

I have thought about other options though....Central Studios is a new queer space in Vancouver that runs under the auspices of special event licensing, much the same at Club 8x6 back in the day, which I wholly supported. I want to support CC, and I've been approached by the owner to discuss putting on special events - perhaps special events are the way to go. Vancouver isn't big enough to support a monthly rubber event, perhaps, but maybe it would support a hard-core gay rubber play party every three or six months? Perhaps I've just been approaching this all wrong, or it's been in the wrong venue and held at the wrong time. I don't know for sure. I'm not sure how much energy I'm wanting to expend to figure it out, either.

2) Second is the boys. Mook is seeing another guy that we met on Labour Day long weekend. It's been really disorienting for me to have to share him with someone else; for the first time I've had to share his heart with someone else...I think. I don't think this will be a big deal in the long run, no doubt he and I have had lots of talks about this and how we feel about it, but it's been hard. I think it's also a simple matter of getting to know the 'other guy' better too. He is very nice and very sexy and I think we'll get along swimmingly, however I don't know much about him and my protective instincts are raising the hairs on my back in defense. Once I'm disarmed this isn't going to be a big deal. It was pretty weird though, that on Monday we were at pub trivia and 'the other guy' came along and started touching Mook under the table. I saw this and the first thing that crossed through my mind was, "do I not interact while this is going on, or....?". It was the first time since Mook has been with us that I hesitated to touch him. It was a very uncomfortable feeling and something I've never had to encounter with him. Anyways, time will tell where things go in that department. All I know is that my love for Mook runs unfailingly deep.

Then there's SemFolego - such a handsome, well-adjusted young pervert. An apple of my eye, perhaps. I wish I had met him five years ago, perhaps the way I feel about issue #1 in this diatribe would be different. Both he and I want to strengthen our bonds more; I think given my schedule and obligations that this is a challenge for both of us, however we went out last week and had a really good talk about it. He really wants me to get my passion for rubber back and I think he wants to do this journey together. I want to spend more time with him and develop stronger bonds with him, I just need to allow myself more time and availability for him.

There are others, but those are the two I really want to bond with. Mr P and I also have some work to do, and he needs some help getting the confidence to get back in the game. I feel so bad for him, but at this point we really have no other options than bringing more income into our household. If I wasn't so stressed about finances and stuff I would probably be able to do better on so many of the other things that are bringing me down these days. 

Folsom Europe 2019 Shiny Scenes

Someday....someday....

Some Nice Tight Monday Morning Viewing

Lots to look at in this one....from 1991, shame the quality is shite.

THAT is How You Fill Out a 0.2mm Black Fullsuit

Get Over It

For all those victims/purveyors of fragile masculinity out there, it's a fact that men, in general, have the best butts and legs for wearing skintight anything; there shouldn't be any reason why so many women who think they have a right to wear spandex (meanwhile cannot pull it off),  cause men who would rock their masculine curves and angles to be afraid to do so, at the expense of their own performance and enjoyment. I'm tired of frumpy women wearing tights everywhere, anytime, while gorgeous male curves are left to the imagination under gross, loose, poorly-fitting gymwear. I'm tired of fragile men having an opinion too. 

If you can wear your spandex without cover confidently, you have my utmost respect. Just be smart about it.

Rock that spandex fiercely, boys!

Why Men Should Embrace the Leggings-Only

Are you bold enough to ditch your shorts?

BY BRETT WILLIAMS, Men's Health

JAN 29, 2019

Since athleisure exploded onto the fashion scene, women have embraced form-fitting leggings as a wear-everywhere, do-everything garment.

What about men? Our sweatpants slimmed down as joggers gained popularity, and the baggy basketball shorts that hid men's knees from the '90s through the late-aughts thankfully shrank as dudes realized working out wearing enough cloth for a bigtop tent is counterproductive.

But we can take the movement further, guys. It's time to fully embrace leggings—without anything layered on top—when we hit the gym.

Shorts, or No Shorts?

Before you start shaking your fist at me and threaten to ban squats for public decency's sake like the adults in Footloose, take a minute to breathe. I'm not advocating for everyone to totally ditch shorts for good if they don't feel so inclined (not all women love the tight all over look, either). I'm just saying that the stigma that surrounds a leggings-only outfit for men should be lifted.

That dismissive attitude does exist. Go to any gym or athletic event and you'll find tons of guys rocking compression leggings as a base layer, but most (if not all) of them will also be sporting a loose pair of shorts on top. That doesn't always make sense for performance— you'll get the same compression benefits and comfort whether you layer it up or not.

When I asked my colleagues at Men's Health for their thoughts about guys wearing leggings sans shorts in our general intraoffice messaging channel, most of them were against the trend.

"Tights = always, but ONLY with shorts on top," said Editor-in-Chief Rich Dorment.

"I'm pro-shorts over tights, mostly because I otherwise feel kind of naked without them," explained Digital Director Mike Darling.

Most of the responses from men in the chat referenced how exposed they feel without the buffer a pair of shorts provides between their privates and the world, not anything about the physical comfort or functionality of the setup.

This sentiment extends beyond Men's Health HQ. I asked famously buff actor Zac Efron his preferences in an interview to kick off 2019, too. "I’m not going to knock anyone for the leggings look—I’m sure there’s reasons superheroes wear tights," he told me. "If you pull it off and it works… I just have to wear something over them or I feel too self-conscious."

A Case for Leggings

Efron's open-minded approach is on the right path, even if it's on the other side of my point. Everyone should feel as comfortable as possible when they exercise—and that includes guys who've been too wary of the status quo to break free of the shorts covering their crotch. I never thought I'd be okay with exposing so much in public myself, but now, I'm a convert.

The first time I saw a guy wearing only leggings in public, I thought there was something deviant happening. My cool high school indoor track coach showed up to a winter session in nothing but a pair of ColdGear tights, and I was weirded out for longer than I should've been. Masculinity, especially for a Midwestern teenage boy, can be very fragile.

But as I worked my way up the sports ladder I realized how much more comfortable—and more importantly, functional—leggings are on their own, especially for runners looking to cut down on drag. Squats and other lower body exercises are better in leggings too, since you can really check out the biomechanics of the movement without being impeded. The final piece of the puzzle came when I started Muay Thai training, which requires lots of high kicks and movement. One day I realized that I cared more about how much freer my hips would feel without the extra layer, and I ditched the shorts for good.

Since then, I've worn leggings in the weight room, to HIIT workouts at boutique group fitness classes, and everywhere else I damn well please.

The key to this confidence is to quash any doubts or concerns about how other people might look at you and focus on what's most important for your performance and comfort instead. It's not easy, but if you can remember that everyone else is just trying to power through their workout too, it's possible. As long as they're not hurting anyone else, I will never judge another person for living their best life.

Some Tips for Living Your Best Leggings Life

If you're ready to take the plunge, these tips can help:

Be Smart With Your Shirt

Still a little self-conscious? Just wear a longer shirt that covers some of the crotchal region.

Get Better Gear

Don't just rock any old pair of long underwear. If you're making this bold move, invest in a quality pair of compression leggings. Try any of these for a good start.

Fit is Key

Most importantly, if you're going to go for the shorts free look, just make sure your goods are in a good place, so to speak. Feeling free is one thing; indecent exposure is another.

MH.com Deputy Editor Jordyn Taylor put it best: "It's also about the... bounce factor," she said. "If you're gonna wear the leggings, they have to hold everything in place, you know. They really gotta compress. I want to see no movement."

Worst of all are the examples I hear from my guy friends rocking their serious workout routine in tights and tees in the gym, who are eventually approached by women who (of course) have a negative opinion on the male look in spandex, while doing all their proselytizing in a tight exposing sports bra and low-cut slutty tights themselves! The irony is ridiculous! 

I expect men to defy this puritanism....yes, of course be modest and smart about your look, it's true, not everyone appreciates an ample bouncy, bulge in the gym (though some certainly do!), but fuck those people who say it's okay for some but not for others! Either we all have the right to rock spandex or none of us do LOL