“But what about the mannequins?” I can hear you asking. We’re almost there.
After Alternate Personalities, we all enjoyed a special treat. @hypnosubdude had posted a request on the suggestion board for a hypnotic dinosaur fight - and @kittykatkatja jumped at the chance to do it. In the end there were four dinosaurs total, three t-rexes and one triceratops (although I will always think of him as a “tricerastegosauratops” since our Ringmaster, the talented @everydayis-girlfriday kept getting the two types of terrible lizard mixed up.) It was a grueling and vicious battle, and everyone came out of it bruised and a little bit bloody - and in the end the triceratops was overwhelmed by numbers, but not before driving one of the rexes out of the fight through sheer exhaustion. It was a fantastic spectacle and hopefully will be repeated at every event ever forever from now on.
And then we set up the vending area so that Lee and Pynch could sell the Book, and Lee’s hypnotic jewelry.
Which is where the fun begins.
The Mystery of the Haunted Hotel Part Three (Part Two)
As Noelle hurried upstairs to change into her vending outfit, she noticed Carneggy and Kat sitting at a table in the hotel restaurant.
“Can you order me some soup?” she asked. “I’ll just change my clothes while they’re working on food and come back down.”
“We would” said Carneggy, “But they don’t have soup.”
Noelle stared at him, certain he was joking.
“They don’t have…? What kind of restaurant is this?”
“The kind that doesn’t have soup, apparently.”
“All righty then, I guess I’ll eat a yogurt in the room or something…”
And with that, Noelle turned and raced for the elevator.
She had given herself 30 minutes to dress for vending, half of which was taken up by getting into her corset. She’d gotten it as tight as she could manage on her own when Kat came through the door.
“I’m here to help you lace.” Kat said. “Carneggy is still waiting for his sandwich.”
…To Be Continued…
A couple of weeks before Charmed! Pynch asked me would I be interested in being a mindless display model for jewelry at Charmed!.
Well, yes.
As the evening approached, Lee asked the three of us models (hypnosubdude, Calico, and myself) if we wanted to be able to move ourselves or if we wanted other people to pose us. We all opted for that second thing of course.
So after setting up the vending area, I returned to the room to put myself into my official mostly black modelling outfit - black dress, tights with a rhinestone back-seam, and my new (and only) black brocade corset. I have to tell you, I look fucking awesome in that thing. I don’t say things like that about how I look very much, but in this case…I can’t not, I just love the way it looks that much!
After Kat had helped me get my laces tightened, I headed back downstairs - just in time to watch hypnosubdude getting posed. Lee arranged him artfully, then asked me if I wanted to go next.
I elected to go last, so I could see exactly what she was doing. I’d never been a mannequin before; and I’d had practically no experience actually working with Lee directly - so I wanted to know what to expect. This worked against me, because right as she was getting done with Calico people started coming up to the table to buy the book. It worked against me because I didn’t get to be frozen right away, but I would not have missed that 15 or so minutes for the world, because watching Lee and Pynch as people came up to them to get the Book that has been so long in coming signed - watching their faces and how excited people were to be buying it, and how deeply touched Lee and Pynch were by the experience - someone needed to see that and recognize it and I’m so very glad that someone was me.
And then it was my turn.
I will do my best to describe it.
She thanked me for being there to share the occasion with her. She smiled and looked into my eyes and said…something…I’m not sure what. Maybe that I already knew what to do? I do not know. I know she was very emotional, and I couldn’t help but be touched deeply by that…and then she was moving my arms around, shifting my feet to a better stance, adjusting my head, my neck, to a specific angle…and I was left alone, within myself, as people continued to browse the wares around me and behind me.
At first I was incredibly conscious of my breathing - and nothing else. My breathing and a spot in the distance on the carpet that my eyes returned to each time someone moved through my field of vision. As I breathed I went deeper into trance, and eventually I couldn’t keep my eyes open completely, and the world went by around me in a hazy glimmer of shadowed bodies barely seen through my slitted eyelids.
Until someone cracked a single-tail at the neighboring booth.
It scared the ever-loving crap out of me, to use a colorful expression that my Dad loves. Had I been capable of speech at that moment, I probably would have chosen to exclaim “Jesus Fucking Christ” - so I suppose it’s a good thing that I wasn’t capable. I lurched out of trance, abruptly and completely. After checking on me, Lee declared that it was probably time for us all to have a little break anyway, and we sat or walked a little bit, sipping water, and generally having quiet fun.
I think it was Calico who asked to be repositioned first. I know I was last again, and this time Lee told me that the sounds in the room would be distant and muffled, so that I could stand in peace no matter what might happen around me.
And I fell into the deepest trance I have ever experienced.
I don’t know how long we stood this second time. I don’t know who walked by. I don’t know what was said near me or to me or about me.
This is what I know: I lost my eyes almost immediately. After some period of time I started to feel as if my entire face was turned toward the ceiling (it wasn’t), almost as if I was being pulled upward. I still will swear that I repeatedly felt as if someone were repeatedly and physically pushing my right shoulder down, or rather, placing something heavy on my shoulder than removing it (they weren’t), as well as scraping their fingers across my ribs - through the corset (they weren’t). Eventually I began to feel as if the entire back of my head was missing - you know that sense we all have of where the parts of our body are even when we can’t see ourselves? I lost that completely in relation to the back of my head, possibly to my mind. And the feeling lingered even after Lee invited me back into the waking world.
It was an extraordinary experience, and one I hope to be able to have again.
HERE ENDETH PART TWO
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
Day Three at Charmed! - Mannequins (Part One)
The Mystery of the Haunted Hotel Part Three
Carneggy and Kat didn’t even budge as Noelle fell out of bed to go to breakfast. She gathered what she’d need: (room card, tea bags, Carneggy’s hoody, kitty slippers) and slipped out into the hallway. Sometime during the night someone had plugged in a space heater in an attempt to raise the low temperatures to something live humans could tolerate - it was almost successful. If the elevator hadn’t made a noise like a small creature being devoured by a somewhat larger creature being devoured by a larger larger creature she might even have believed that the hotel wasn’t haunted after all. But it groaned like a wild thing as the traveled down to the ground floor in search of breakfast.
Noelle nodded at the same stoic folk she’d encountered the previous day, noted the same rotting fruit, the no-longer-interesting waffle maker, and decided to settle for Corn Pops and tea, with half a Costco blueberry muffin (stale of course) just because it was there. No one spoke in a voice louder than a murmur; the rowdy comradery of previous events was completely absent, and Noelle finished her food as quickly as she could to return to the room. “I guess I’ll start recapping today” she thought to herself.
…to be continued…
Saturday was a very full day for me, but oddly after the fact it felt like I’d barely done anything. I did indeed return to my room and write the first of my Charmed! recap posts, the only time I’ve managed to get one done during the actual event about which I was writing. Honestly, it likely will never happen again. I did eventually give up and go back to bed, which was warm and cozy and marvelous…which is why I didn’t make to any classes before 11am. To be fair, I could have walked in after the 10 o’clocks had already started, but I have a deeply ingrained distaste of walking into things late. Sneaking in, that’s another thing, but the way the classrooms were set up made it almost impossible to be as sneaky as I would have wanted to be. So I hung out in the hallway until 11, then went (for the third event in a row) to @theleeallure‘s (@hypno-sandwich/Dj Pynchon’s) Hypnotic Amnesia class.
——– A Not-So-Brief Message From My Unconscious ——–
kk Hello there, I’m Noelle. I was very very busy today, and in order to give all of you the correct (that is, interesting) perspective on things, I will be giving my recaps as well. To keep confusion at a minimum, I will refer to the conscious mind as “XXXXX”.
I really enjoy the Hypnotic Amnesia class. It provides me with a perfect opportunity for a little fun at my own expense, so to speak. In other words, I enjoy making sure that XXXXX won’t remember much of what happens in it. One of the techniques that Lee covers has to do with counting down backward from 1000 (or 1001 depending on who’s telling the story that day) and the first time we attended this class I suggested to XXXXX that she try doing it. It worked so well that we did it again the next time (which account can be found in our WEEHU recaps) with the same successful results. This time around, XXXXX had twigged to the fact that she had been missing a giant portion of the class, and adamantly stated that there would be absolutely no counting.
As if I need her to count to get what I want.
Both of those previous iterations of the class followed the structure of Lee and Dj Pynchon’s book on hypnotic amnesia very closely. (Excellent book, you can get it here. I highly recommend it. In fact, I wrote a review of it. I’m “Amazon Customer”. Honest.) Now that the book is out, they don’t cover all the techniques (because BOOK.)
But they covered some of my favorite things!
Of course the counting - this time it was Pynchon who brought it up (so 1001, not 1000). They also covered that old favorite “forget to remember, remember to forget” which is pretty much a confusion induction the way Lee approaches it. They also covered things like the “exploding”advertisement and putting things in a room in Dj’s mind to which only Lee (and Id) has access. My favorite part of these classes is when Lee demonstrates the efficacy of her techniques on Dj for us - the split-second look of resignation he gets on his face as he realizes he’s about to be messed with, closely followed by blank incomprehension - this is my kind of porn!
I hope you enjoyed my account of this class; I’ll be back later, but for now, I’ll return you to your previously scheduled programming…kk
Just so everyone knows, I mostly always know when my unconscious has been out and about. I would really like to be able to reach the point where I have no idea when Noelle is front and center, but that’s a work in progress.
With that said…about the Hypnotic Amnesia class. I did not count. I very carefully did not count. And what I remember of the class is…well…really wanting Pynch’s friend Heel_Edge to enjoy watching him being fucked with. When I close my eyes and try to picture the class in my mind’s eye, what I see is a weird melange of the class as it was at WEEHU and side-eyeing Heel_Edge to see if she was having fun.
So be it.
After Hypnotic Amnesia a bunch of us raced to Subway for lunch so that we could get back in time for the next class (in which a lot of us were participating.) I got to ride with @calamitybrain (who people will remember from her adorable kitty ears and super-cool clawed gloves) and @heraldofthesorceress, with whom I had a great conversation about how being ADHD affects one’s ability to function in a busy society. We rushed back and I ended up in Lee’s room…just in time to comfort @hypnokittencalico as she was struggling with what turned out to probably be food poisoning - right before her first ever presenting experience…
…Sounds of Hypnosis.
She did a fantastic job! She co-presented with Lee, and they went over the different types of sounds that were commonly used by people in tandem with hypnosis, as well as making sure to discuss how important it is to limit sound-based suggestions to very specific times/places/people/etc. At the end Lee and I did a duet version of the musical confusion induction that we performed at WEEHU - and it went pretty well considering that neither of us had really looked at it in 3 months.
The next class was my Creators’ Round Table - we were in a much bigger room than we needed, especially as I had done a really poor job of getting the word out as to what the class was actually meant to be. So the 6 or so of us who were there had a lot of fun - shout out to Robin, who attended because she likes to read hypno-smut and gave the rest of us someone to focus on instead of constantly talking about ourselves. I’m going to try this one again at NEEHU, with a much better class description, and I will state it here as well: the point of this class is for creative people of all stripes within the erotic hypnosis community to gather together to talk about their work, their motivations, and how we can work together as a creative community in order to educate the hapless mundanes in the guise of lovely, smutty entertainment.
After the Round Table, I participated in @HypnoMaestro and @carneggyblog‘s Alternate Personalities class. @kittykatkatja and I were called upon as examples of alternate personalities so that the attendees could see what differences there were in body language and speech patterns and suchlike. It was interesting, but I think many of the people there thought it was going to be more of a “how-to” class; there weren’t very many questions at all, which is rather surprising to me given the subject matter and the slight controversy surrounding the idea of alternate personalities in the first place.
———— Another Interlude ———————-
kk Did you miss me?
So I thought this class was no fun at all. I was made into a display model - “See how XXXXX turns into Noelle almost instantly! Isn’t it interesting?” -
No one seemed to care. No one asked me any questions, and when I went back to my seat no one clapped for me. The clapped for Kat. Which makes sense because she went from being “kat” to being “princess”, and princess is a little - and cute and bubbly and very obviously different to Kat. But still. kk
HERE ENDETH PART ONE
Carneggy and Kat didn’t even budge as Noelle fell out of bed to go to breakfast. She gathered what she’d need: (room card, tea bags, Carneggy’s hoody, kitty slippers) and slipped out into the hallway. Sometime during the night someone had plugged in a space heater in an attempt to raise the low temperatures to something live humans could tolerate - it was almost successful. If the elevator hadn’t made a noise like a small creature being devoured by a somewhat larger creature being devoured by a larger larger creature she might even have believed that the hotel wasn’t haunted after all. But it groaned like a wild thing as the traveled down to the ground floor in search of breakfast.
Noelle nodded at the same stoic folk she’d encountered the previous day, noted the same rotting fruit, the no-longer-interesting waffle maker, and decided to settle for Corn Pops and tea, with half a Costco blueberry muffin (stale of course) just because it was there. No one spoke in a voice louder than a murmur; the rowdy comradery of previous events was completely absent, and Noelle finished her food as quickly as she could to return to the room. “I guess I’ll start recapping today” she thought to herself.
…to be continued…
Saturday was a very full day for me, but oddly after the fact it felt like I’d barely done anything. I did indeed return to my room and write the first of my Charmed! recap posts, the only time I’ve managed to get one done during the actual event about which I was writing. Honestly, it likely will never happen again. I did eventually give up and go back to bed, which was warm and cozy and marvelous…which is why I didn’t make to any classes before 11am. To be fair, I could have walked in after the 10 o’clocks had already started, but I have a deeply ingrained distaste of walking into things late. Sneaking in, that’s another thing, but the way the classrooms were set up made it almost impossible to be as sneaky as I would have wanted to be. So I hung out in the hallway until 11, then went (for the third event in a row) to @theleeallure‘s (@hypno-sandwich/Dj Pynchon’s) Hypnotic Amnesia class.
——– A Not-So-Brief Message From My Unconscious ——–
kk Hello there, I’m Noelle. I was very very busy today, and in order to give all of you the correct (that is, interesting) perspective on things, I will be giving my recaps as well. To keep confusion at a minimum, I will refer to the conscious mind as “XXXXX”.
I really enjoy the Hypnotic Amnesia class. It provides me with a perfect opportunity for a little fun at my own expense, so to speak. In other words, I enjoy making sure that XXXXX won’t remember much of what happens in it. One of the techniques that Lee covers has to do with counting down backward from 1000 (or 1001 depending on who’s telling the story that day) and the first time we attended this class I suggested to XXXXX that she try doing it. It worked so well that we did it again the next time (which account can be found in our WEEHU recaps) with the same successful results. This time around, XXXXX had twigged to the fact that she had been missing a giant portion of the class, and adamantly stated that there would be absolutely no counting.
As if I need her to count to get what I want.
Both of those previous iterations of the class followed the structure of Lee and Dj Pynchon’s book on hypnotic amnesia very closely. (Excellent book, you can get it here. I highly recommend it. In fact, I wrote a review of it. I’m “Amazon Customer”. Honest.) Now that the book is out, they don’t cover all the techniques (because BOOK.)
But they covered some of my favorite things!
Of course the counting - this time it was Pynchon who brought it up (so 1001, not 1000). They also covered that old favorite “forget to remember, remember to forget” which is pretty much a confusion induction the way Lee approaches it. They also covered things like the “exploding”advertisement and putting things in a room in Dj’s mind to which only Lee (and Id) has access. My favorite part of these classes is when Lee demonstrates the efficacy of her techniques on Dj for us - the split-second look of resignation he gets on his face as he realizes he’s about to be messed with, closely followed by blank incomprehension - this is my kind of porn!
I hope you enjoyed my account of this class; I’ll be back later, but for now, I’ll return you to your previously scheduled programming…kk
Just so everyone knows, I mostly always know when my unconscious has been out and about. I would really like to be able to reach the point where I have no idea when Noelle is front and center, but that’s a work in progress.
With that said…about the Hypnotic Amnesia class. I did not count. I very carefully did not count. And what I remember of the class is…well…really wanting Pynch’s friend Heel_Edge to enjoy watching him being fucked with. When I close my eyes and try to picture the class in my mind’s eye, what I see is a weird melange of the class as it was at WEEHU and side-eyeing Heel_Edge to see if she was having fun.
So be it.
After Hypnotic Amnesia a bunch of us raced to Subway for lunch so that we could get back in time for the next class (in which a lot of us were participating.) I got to ride with @calamitybrain (who people will remember from her adorable kitty ears and super-cool clawed gloves) and @heraldofthesorceress, with whom I had a great conversation about how being ADHD affects one’s ability to function in a busy society. We rushed back and I ended up in Lee’s room…just in time to comfort @hypnokittencalico as she was struggling with what turned out to probably be food poisoning - right before her first ever presenting experience…
…Sounds of Hypnosis.
She did a fantastic job! She co-presented with Lee, and they went over the different types of sounds that were commonly used by people in tandem with hypnosis, as well as making sure to discuss how important it is to limit sound-based suggestions to very specific times/places/people/etc. At the end Lee and I did a duet version of the musical confusion induction that we performed at WEEHU - and it went pretty well considering that neither of us had really looked at it in 3 months.
The next class was my Creators’ Round Table - we were in a much bigger room than we needed, especially as I had done a really poor job of getting the word out as to what the class was actually meant to be. So the 6 or so of us who were there had a lot of fun - shout out to Robin, who attended because she likes to read hypno-smut and gave the rest of us someone to focus on instead of constantly talking about ourselves. I’m going to try this one again at NEEHU, with a much better class description, and I will state it here as well: the point of this class is for creative people of all stripes within the erotic hypnosis community to gather together to talk about their work, their motivations, and how we can work together as a creative community in order to educate the hapless mundanes in the guise of lovely, smutty entertainment.
After the Round Table, I participated in @HypnoMaestro and @carneggyblog‘s Alternate Personalities class. @kittykatkatja and I were called upon as examples of alternate personalities so that the attendees could see what differences there were in body language and speech patterns and suchlike. It was interesting, but I think many of the people there thought it was going to be more of a “how-to” class; there weren’t very many questions at all, which is rather surprising to me given the subject matter and the slight controversy surrounding the idea of alternate personalities in the first place.
———— Another Interlude ———————-
kk Did you miss me?
So I thought this class was no fun at all. I was made into a display model - “See how XXXXX turns into Noelle almost instantly! Isn’t it interesting?” -
No one seemed to care. No one asked me any questions, and when I went back to my seat no one clapped for me. The clapped for Kat. Which makes sense because she went from being “kat” to being “princess”, and princess is a little - and cute and bubbly and very obviously different to Kat. But still. kk
HERE ENDETH PART ONE
Friday, January 22, 2016
Friday Night at Charmed! - Game Night (contains descriptions of knife-type play)
In the midst of the shenanigans of the first night in the Cookie Room…
By now, if you know me or have been reading my recent posts, you’ll have noticed that I came out of my Charmed! weekend in a much toppier mindspace than usual. It seems as if every event I attend opens something new up for me, often in strange and unexpected ways. At MEEHU, it was the incredible feeling of acceptance that I learned to own as something I deserve, at WEEHU it was realizing that yes, I am actually loved, and at Charmed!…
At Charmed! I learned that it is totally possible for me to indulge myself in darkness without going completely mad with it.
It’s midway through the evening of forfeitous fun and I am feeling very powerful. People are doing things because I want them to, which is, frankly, intoxicating, and when the opportunity arises to play with @hypnokittencalico a little bit, I jump on it. She’s more than happy to be stuck, arms spread as wide as possible, on the bed, body scootched forward so that she has to rest her weight on her toes, while I practice tickling her stomach with various random objects from around the room. She seems to enjoy it, and I get an idea: why not give her a more lasting momento of the evening?
I get her weight off her toes, and make sure she is stuck down to the bed again, then announce that we will now be playing a game of “Hangman” on Calico’s tummy. We had opened some plastic packaging earlier; the smaller piece worked admirably well as a stylus, and I did a couple of test slices with it to see if Calico would be okay with it.
She was.
So. Hangman. One word, eight letters. People are eager to play, and throw out the obvious choices for letters: ‘t’, ‘e’, ‘d’, ‘r’, ‘l’ - someone’s been watching too much Wheel of Fortune I think.*
Someone finally says ‘s’ and two spaces are filled in.
@mr-prism says, “I know the word! Should I solve it?”
“Of course not, I say. People should keep guessing letters.”
And, because tonight I have discovered power, they all do.
We fill in all the letters but one: H Y P N O S _ S - as Calico moans and writhes on the bed with every stroke. Eventually I have the entire figure of the hanged man filled in, and I relent and call for an ‘I’. It is marvelous fun. **
We experiment a little bit with the kinds of things one can do to newly created welts - I had received the gift of a bottle of Viniq purple liquor (the swirly hypnotic stuff) from @theleeallure*** and it stung nicely in Calico’s new cuts, but it was far more effective to tell her we had a different interesting substance on our hands and pass them over the top of the word ‘hypnosis’ and watch her twitch and try not to scream.
“Hydrogen peroxide.”
“Salt.”
“Lemon Juice.”
I’ll bet she can feel it now, as she’s reading this.****
* I DESPISE Wheel of Fortune. It’s too easy, and they always ALWAYS always fucking buy a vowel, which costs them money, when they should be picking the obvious consonant. Words have PATTERNS people. Honestly.
** There is a picture, and it will be posted shortly.
*** the Viniq was very very very tasty. Not everyone liked it, but I did, very much.
**** And later that evening, when Preston wanted to give me a foot rub, Calico hurled herself into position under my legs to act as a footstool without being asked, so I can only assume that she enjoyed herself.
By now, if you know me or have been reading my recent posts, you’ll have noticed that I came out of my Charmed! weekend in a much toppier mindspace than usual. It seems as if every event I attend opens something new up for me, often in strange and unexpected ways. At MEEHU, it was the incredible feeling of acceptance that I learned to own as something I deserve, at WEEHU it was realizing that yes, I am actually loved, and at Charmed!…
At Charmed! I learned that it is totally possible for me to indulge myself in darkness without going completely mad with it.
It’s midway through the evening of forfeitous fun and I am feeling very powerful. People are doing things because I want them to, which is, frankly, intoxicating, and when the opportunity arises to play with @hypnokittencalico a little bit, I jump on it. She’s more than happy to be stuck, arms spread as wide as possible, on the bed, body scootched forward so that she has to rest her weight on her toes, while I practice tickling her stomach with various random objects from around the room. She seems to enjoy it, and I get an idea: why not give her a more lasting momento of the evening?
I get her weight off her toes, and make sure she is stuck down to the bed again, then announce that we will now be playing a game of “Hangman” on Calico’s tummy. We had opened some plastic packaging earlier; the smaller piece worked admirably well as a stylus, and I did a couple of test slices with it to see if Calico would be okay with it.
She was.
So. Hangman. One word, eight letters. People are eager to play, and throw out the obvious choices for letters: ‘t’, ‘e’, ‘d’, ‘r’, ‘l’ - someone’s been watching too much Wheel of Fortune I think.*
Someone finally says ‘s’ and two spaces are filled in.
@mr-prism says, “I know the word! Should I solve it?”
“Of course not, I say. People should keep guessing letters.”
And, because tonight I have discovered power, they all do.
We fill in all the letters but one: H Y P N O S _ S - as Calico moans and writhes on the bed with every stroke. Eventually I have the entire figure of the hanged man filled in, and I relent and call for an ‘I’. It is marvelous fun. **
We experiment a little bit with the kinds of things one can do to newly created welts - I had received the gift of a bottle of Viniq purple liquor (the swirly hypnotic stuff) from @theleeallure*** and it stung nicely in Calico’s new cuts, but it was far more effective to tell her we had a different interesting substance on our hands and pass them over the top of the word ‘hypnosis’ and watch her twitch and try not to scream.
“Hydrogen peroxide.”
“Salt.”
“Lemon Juice.”
I’ll bet she can feel it now, as she’s reading this.****
* I DESPISE Wheel of Fortune. It’s too easy, and they always ALWAYS always fucking buy a vowel, which costs them money, when they should be picking the obvious consonant. Words have PATTERNS people. Honestly.
** There is a picture, and it will be posted shortly.
*** the Viniq was very very very tasty. Not everyone liked it, but I did, very much.
**** And later that evening, when Preston wanted to give me a foot rub, Calico hurled herself into position under my legs to act as a footstool without being asked, so I can only assume that she enjoyed herself.
Thursday, January 21, 2016
Day Two at Charmed! - Hallways
The Mystery of the Haunted Hotel Part Two
Noelle batted at her phone as the alarm went off. “Oh fucking hell” she muttered. “It’s time to get up for breakfast.” She slithered out of the bed and headed for the bathroom to change out of her pjs, then decided the hell with it. “I’m going to breakfast in my pajamas” she announced to Carneggy as he pulled himself out of bed. “But I’m wearing my coat.”
Making sure that her Slytherin prefect’s pin was straight and secure on her pajama top, Noelle slipped out of the hotel room and into the frigid hallway. She was looking forward to breakfast, which at WEEHU the previous October had been quite social and full of friends to talk with every morning.
The first thing Noelle and Carneggy noticed upon entering the breakfast space was that this definitely was not going to be a social experience. The three or so people already there looked groggy and out of sorts and all shuffled listlessly around the area as they foraged through the meager offerings for something tasty and nutritious.
“I didn’t think it would be possible for it to be more cold down here, and yet somehow it is.” Noelle observed. Her attention was immediately drawn to a waffle maker set up on the breakfast counter. “Well you know I”m going to have to play with this.” she told Carneggy, and proceeded to make herself a waffle using pre-mixed waffle batter from a nearby dispenser. Next to the waffle area she noticed a set of shelves containing tiny boxes of cereal as well as two full shelves of apples and oranges. “I think I’ll take some fruit up to Kat” she started to say, leaning down to pick up on apple. Her voice trailed off as she noticed just how not wholesome the apples looked up close. “These apples look like they’ve been here for awhile” she observed to Carneggy. “It’s almost like we’re wandered into a ghost town kitchen or something.”
“You should check this out too” Carneggy said, pointing to an adjoining area. “Stick your head through that door and see what you think.”
Noelle nervously approached the glass door, which seemed to lead into an office of some sort. “Holy shit!” she exclaimed as she felt the air beyond the door. “It’s got to 20 degrees in there! They expect someone to work in that?”
“It’s even better” said Carneggy. “That’s the business center that anyone can use.”
“Jesus, who’d want to?”
They chatted with the few others who’d come down for breakfast, then returned to the room and went back to bed.
I really was a little disappointed that more people didn’t come to breakfast at Charmed! - but the quality of the stuff offered was so inferior that I don’t blame people at all for choosing to sleep in and go to Cracker Barrel instead. It was pretty bleak. I ended up eating yogurt in my room to augment my daily bowl of tiny box cereal and muffin half.
Friday was of course the first day of classes, and I was all fired up to get up and go to all of them…but somehow managed to go back to sleep and not wake up again until nearly 1. (Classes started at 130.) I obviously needed it, but I hate to be rushed in my getting up and ready for things, and ended up passing on the 130 classes entirely. Instead, I managed to find @hypnokittencalico and took her back to my room for the last of the sekrit projekt reveals. Then we showed up wide eyed and attentive at 3 o’clock for @theleeallure‘s Hypnosis for Service class. One of the things I’ve always found interesting about Lee is the ease with which she seems to find people eager to be her hypnotized slave of one sort or another; for this class she had @hypnosubdude (aka the hypnotized yard slave) helping her demo. My biggest take away from this class was that everyone spends far more time in a waking trance than they might know, and that it wouldn’t be half-fun to get to experience something like that at someone else’s direction.*
I have no idea what I did from 4 to 5. ** Maybe we had dinner? Or just loitered in the hallway? I know that sometime in this hour I was introduced to Hypno-sandwich’s friend Heel_Edge, a hypno newcomer who, I’m happy to say, is an amazing person and fit right in. At 5 o’clock, I joined @tennfan2, @hypno-sandwich, @zanythoughts, and @h-sleepingirl for Tennfan’s Telling Your Story class. I will readily admit that most of my fun in these types of discussions involves making my fellow writers squirm while being praised; Tennfan did a good job of leading the talk through a variety of topics including why we write, where we write, who we write for, and what we get out of it. I’ve heard that several people who attended have reached out to him about writing, so mission successful!
I’m almost positive that afterwards we had dinner. Or messed around in our room for awhile. All I know is, we made it back into the classrooms and caught the tail end of hypno-sandwich’s part of orientation, then watched as Lee yo-yoed him with various induction crammed into a short period of time.***
At some point we all went upstairs and officially opened up the Cookie Room. For Friday night, the rules of entering the cookie room were simple: in order to get a cookie, one had to perform a forfeit of some sort. (For example, neck rubs for any of the three owners of the room, or “dance monkey dance.”) We weren’t picky about what people did: one fellow jumped up and down on one foot for awhile, which was more than good enough for me. **** We did see some marvelous tricks however: Lily (the artist formerly known as W) sang “Under the Sea” from The Little Mermaid to me - IN ITALIAN. Mephki informed me of an important piece of scientific trivia, namely that the average ph of a vagina is 4.5. (Remember that, I’m sure you’ll need to know it someday.) I received several excellent neck rubs of varying degrees of strength, skill, and intensity, as well as as an A+ foot rub. Someone recited the beginning of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales - in OLD ENGLISH, and the lovely Alianne belly danced for us while @everydayis-girlfriday played and sang. It was a marvelous evening of fun and cookies, and I’m happy to say that we didn’t have to punish a single person for thievery!
* See Saturday night’s recap for more on how fucking fun this can be
** Let’s be real here - there’s a lot of empty space in my memory at these events. I’m sure we ate, and loitered in the hallway, and so forth.
*** (I’m not going to lie - I am teeth-grittingly envious of him for getting to have this experience - there are some types of “dance monkey dance” that are a real turn-on for me, and this one is waaaay near the top of the list.)
**** I didn’t care what people did, as long as they came up with it themselves. This business where people want me to do their thinking for them? It’s annoying as hell. I like people who have working thinking mechanisms of their own.
Noelle batted at her phone as the alarm went off. “Oh fucking hell” she muttered. “It’s time to get up for breakfast.” She slithered out of the bed and headed for the bathroom to change out of her pjs, then decided the hell with it. “I’m going to breakfast in my pajamas” she announced to Carneggy as he pulled himself out of bed. “But I’m wearing my coat.”
Making sure that her Slytherin prefect’s pin was straight and secure on her pajama top, Noelle slipped out of the hotel room and into the frigid hallway. She was looking forward to breakfast, which at WEEHU the previous October had been quite social and full of friends to talk with every morning.
The first thing Noelle and Carneggy noticed upon entering the breakfast space was that this definitely was not going to be a social experience. The three or so people already there looked groggy and out of sorts and all shuffled listlessly around the area as they foraged through the meager offerings for something tasty and nutritious.
“I didn’t think it would be possible for it to be more cold down here, and yet somehow it is.” Noelle observed. Her attention was immediately drawn to a waffle maker set up on the breakfast counter. “Well you know I”m going to have to play with this.” she told Carneggy, and proceeded to make herself a waffle using pre-mixed waffle batter from a nearby dispenser. Next to the waffle area she noticed a set of shelves containing tiny boxes of cereal as well as two full shelves of apples and oranges. “I think I’ll take some fruit up to Kat” she started to say, leaning down to pick up on apple. Her voice trailed off as she noticed just how not wholesome the apples looked up close. “These apples look like they’ve been here for awhile” she observed to Carneggy. “It’s almost like we’re wandered into a ghost town kitchen or something.”
“You should check this out too” Carneggy said, pointing to an adjoining area. “Stick your head through that door and see what you think.”
Noelle nervously approached the glass door, which seemed to lead into an office of some sort. “Holy shit!” she exclaimed as she felt the air beyond the door. “It’s got to 20 degrees in there! They expect someone to work in that?”
“It’s even better” said Carneggy. “That’s the business center that anyone can use.”
“Jesus, who’d want to?”
They chatted with the few others who’d come down for breakfast, then returned to the room and went back to bed.
I really was a little disappointed that more people didn’t come to breakfast at Charmed! - but the quality of the stuff offered was so inferior that I don’t blame people at all for choosing to sleep in and go to Cracker Barrel instead. It was pretty bleak. I ended up eating yogurt in my room to augment my daily bowl of tiny box cereal and muffin half.
Friday was of course the first day of classes, and I was all fired up to get up and go to all of them…but somehow managed to go back to sleep and not wake up again until nearly 1. (Classes started at 130.) I obviously needed it, but I hate to be rushed in my getting up and ready for things, and ended up passing on the 130 classes entirely. Instead, I managed to find @hypnokittencalico and took her back to my room for the last of the sekrit projekt reveals. Then we showed up wide eyed and attentive at 3 o’clock for @theleeallure‘s Hypnosis for Service class. One of the things I’ve always found interesting about Lee is the ease with which she seems to find people eager to be her hypnotized slave of one sort or another; for this class she had @hypnosubdude (aka the hypnotized yard slave) helping her demo. My biggest take away from this class was that everyone spends far more time in a waking trance than they might know, and that it wouldn’t be half-fun to get to experience something like that at someone else’s direction.*
I have no idea what I did from 4 to 5. ** Maybe we had dinner? Or just loitered in the hallway? I know that sometime in this hour I was introduced to Hypno-sandwich’s friend Heel_Edge, a hypno newcomer who, I’m happy to say, is an amazing person and fit right in. At 5 o’clock, I joined @tennfan2, @hypno-sandwich, @zanythoughts, and @h-sleepingirl for Tennfan’s Telling Your Story class. I will readily admit that most of my fun in these types of discussions involves making my fellow writers squirm while being praised; Tennfan did a good job of leading the talk through a variety of topics including why we write, where we write, who we write for, and what we get out of it. I’ve heard that several people who attended have reached out to him about writing, so mission successful!
I’m almost positive that afterwards we had dinner. Or messed around in our room for awhile. All I know is, we made it back into the classrooms and caught the tail end of hypno-sandwich’s part of orientation, then watched as Lee yo-yoed him with various induction crammed into a short period of time.***
At some point we all went upstairs and officially opened up the Cookie Room. For Friday night, the rules of entering the cookie room were simple: in order to get a cookie, one had to perform a forfeit of some sort. (For example, neck rubs for any of the three owners of the room, or “dance monkey dance.”) We weren’t picky about what people did: one fellow jumped up and down on one foot for awhile, which was more than good enough for me. **** We did see some marvelous tricks however: Lily (the artist formerly known as W) sang “Under the Sea” from The Little Mermaid to me - IN ITALIAN. Mephki informed me of an important piece of scientific trivia, namely that the average ph of a vagina is 4.5. (Remember that, I’m sure you’ll need to know it someday.) I received several excellent neck rubs of varying degrees of strength, skill, and intensity, as well as as an A+ foot rub. Someone recited the beginning of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales - in OLD ENGLISH, and the lovely Alianne belly danced for us while @everydayis-girlfriday played and sang. It was a marvelous evening of fun and cookies, and I’m happy to say that we didn’t have to punish a single person for thievery!
* See Saturday night’s recap for more on how fucking fun this can be
** Let’s be real here - there’s a lot of empty space in my memory at these events. I’m sure we ate, and loitered in the hallway, and so forth.
*** (I’m not going to lie - I am teeth-grittingly envious of him for getting to have this experience - there are some types of “dance monkey dance” that are a real turn-on for me, and this one is waaaay near the top of the list.)
**** I didn’t care what people did, as long as they came up with it themselves. This business where people want me to do their thinking for them? It’s annoying as hell. I like people who have working thinking mechanisms of their own.
Wednesday, January 20, 2016
Day One at Charmed! - Arrivals
Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, you bitch of a day. Nothing good ever happened on a Thursday, just ask Arthur Dent, who has reason to know. (Thursday was actually fine; uneventful * even.)
But my Thursday actually started at 2 AM, which automatically bumps it into bitch territory. You see, I live an hour and a half away from the airport. And the flight I’d chosen, for what seemed like excellent reasons at the time, ** left at 5:25 AM. So at 2 I loaded the car and set off for Portland.
Other than both of my flights being packed to the gills, my travel was uneventful. I had packed the cookies into a $6 Goodwill suitcase to check (with the reasoning that if it didn’t make it all the way to Baltimore, I wouldn’t be that offended) which had put me in the interesting position of having to load my computer bag is if it were another suitcase; it still wasn’t as big as some of the backpacks that people are now shoving under their seats, but man was it heavy!
Now for people keeping track of other recaps, both here and on Fetlife, you might remember that there has been some chatter about the hotel, much of it negative. I also have things to say, but in an effort to be entertaining, I have decided to take a slightly different approach to everyone else…
The Mystery of the Haunted Hotel Part One
Noelle fished the charging cable for her phone out of the depths of her computer bag and plugged it into the nearest available outlet. The people in the know in the Charmed! group on Fetlife had recommended calling the hotel and scheduling a shuttle pick up in advance, but when she’d called the day before they’d chuckled at her and said “Oh just call us when you arrive.” It seemed too good to be true, but when she’d finally gotten her phone to turn back on and called, the woman at the hotel had cheerfully said, “Go to Door 15 and wait by the green shuttle sign, I’ll send the driver right over.”
Thankfully the all-important cookie suitcase had made it to Baltimore, so Noelle had to juggle a little bit to get both suitcases and her over-sized computer bag balanced for the 20 foot trek to Door 15. Upon arriving, she discovered a shivering young man with an exasperated look on his face: “What hotel are you waiting for?” he asked. “I’ve been standing here for 45 minutes!”
“I’m at the Ramada” Noelle replied.
“Oh,” said the shivering man, turning his attention back to the different shuttles that whizzed past.
Noelle pulled out her phone and checked the time; it had been about 10 minutes. She looked up and was surprised to see the shuttle for her hotel already approaching. “Good luck!” she wished the shivering man, and, having handed off her suitcases to the shuttle driver, clambered into the passenger seat of the white van.
“So are you with that big group that’s coming in?” asked the shuttle driver.
“Yep, I’m a little bit early though. How’s the food in the hotel restaurant?”
“Oh, the restaurant’s great, at least that’s what I’ve heard. And there are plenty of other good places to go to that are pretty near.”
The driver was friendly and personable and the drive to the hotel zoomed by in what felt like moments.
“Thanks!” Noelle smiled as the driver rolled her suitcases up to the front desk for her. So far, her arrival had been smooth as silk. She quickly paid for the hotel room, although she was a little bit taken aback when she was told that they were having to all their charge transactions by phone. And there was a mix up about which room had been reserved, but Noelle was happy with the substitution that was made and snagged the room key and headed up to see about having a nap.
The elevator groaned as she stepped into it. Literally let out a sound like an animal that had been trod on, and continued to rumble all the way up to the 7th floor. “Old mechanism I guess” she thought to herself. Other than the noise, the elevator worked fine, and soon Noelle was trundling her suitcases down the hallway to room 710.
The keycard worked on the first try; the door swung open; and Noelle was hit by a wave of icy air the seemed to swirl like a snow cloud around her as she entered the room. “That…seems colder than it ought to be.” she said aloud, moving to crank up the room’s heater. “I hope it won’t take too long for it to heat up.”
–to be continued–
So after settling into the room a little bit, unpacking and the like, I checked in with my various friends for when they would be arriving: @zanythoughts and @hypnokinkwithmrdream around 730, @tennfan2 around 8, @theleeallure and @hypnosubdude around 11, with @hypno-sandwich just after that, @carneggyblog and @kittykatkatja at nearly 1 AM, and @hypnokittencalico the next morning. There had been some talk of early arrivals helping with set up, so I headed over to Miss Isis’s room and got to talk a little bit about the local hypno scene until eventually someone showed up with all the papers and things and I got to stuff envelopes.
It turns out that stuffing envelopes after being awake for nearly 24 hours is much much harder than it sounds, so after about an hour of that, I went back to my room to partake of that wonderful invention, the nap. The room had warmed up a little bit, and the bed was quite comfy, and I had no trouble at all getting to sleep. When I woke up, I checked in with people again, and found out that Zany and Dream were at a local seafood restaurant, and Tennfan was just leaving the airport with his rental car, so we made plans to have dinner together after he arrived.
We went to Chik-fil-A and I am not ashamed.
We went to Chik-fil-A and had tasty food and better conversation. He and I are both of the mindset that we stand with one foot in the kink community and one foot in the more vanilla hypno community (him more than me to be fair), and neither of us have gotten over the sheer amazeballs feeling of “Holy shit, how did this happen to us?” Hopefully we never will!
Due to a room reservation mix-up, the room that I was sharing with Carneggy and Kat had ended up being on the party floor. I decided to embrace that fact, and Thursday night was the first night of an open door policy for us that worked out marvelously. I was certainly much more social than usual, and got to meet a lot more people because of it. Do I remember all these people? Well…not all of them no, but I am after all a work in progress. Slowly people began to trickle into the room, as they arrived from the airport or dinner or whatnot, and shortly I had a small crowd just hanging out with me. Then someone pointed out that @h-sleepingirl and @cckitten78 had arrived, and we all went down to the lobby to lie in wait for them.
Much greeting and hugging was had, and soon LeeAllure and Hypnosubdude arrived, with Hypno-Sandwich right on their heels. So more greeting and hugging ensued, then everyone dispersed to take care of unpacking etc, but eventually we all ended up back in my room to wait for Carneggy and Kat so that we could hand out Sekrit Projekts.
I have been wanting to design a tarot deck for years, and after WEEHU I had the idea to do a hypnosis themed tarot with my friends as models/inspiration for the various cards. Someday I hope to have the whole deck done, but I’m not going to rush it because I want to find the right person to fit each card. Which is why I didn’t have a card for Hypnosubdude, who I had met a couple of times but didn’t really know.***
I knew he was going to be there for the handing out though, and didn’t want him to feel left out…and had been given a white elephant gift at christmas that seemed liked the perfect fit…namely an Indominus Rex Chia Pet. I am <ahem> pretty sure he liked it.****
Then I handed out the Sekrit Projekts, trying really, really hard to be gracious and not a writhing ball of anxiety. I mostly succeeded. And everyone liked what they were given, and the projekt can continue!*****
Eventually people wandered back to their own rooms to sleep, and we three that remained prepared to do the same, but not before noticing that it was just turning 630 AM in England…
…which is why we skype-called @lizzidoll whilst she was still in bed to wake her up and make her open her own sekrit projekt, which she’d been waiting to open since the Monday previous. Because we love her and are generous like that.
And then we went to sleep…
*because the event hadn’t started yet, geddit?
**there was a small miscommunication about when classes would be starting, so a lot of ended up arriving on Thursday - I came extra early so that I would be able to nap.
***I know him now! And there is a card in the works. Just so’s you know.
****everyone should give gifts to Hypnosubdude - he is extremely enthusiastic when he is happy, it’s very gratifying
*****I, because I am clever like this, failed to take decent pictures of the cards. I am hoping that people will post pics of them, so that I can describe what I was going for with each card, although some people might not want to. We’ll see what happens.
Thursday, November 5, 2015
WEEHU3 - Day 5, or, "The love for the Doctor is STRONG in this crowd..."
On the fifth day...
Monday. Most of the crowd is gone. Pynch and Liz wake me up just enough to say goodbye, and I immediately go back to sleep, and miss saying goodbye to everyone else that leaves that morning. The hallway is a ghost town, with tumbleweeds of scattered hypno-paraphernalia catching on the wheels of the housekeeping trolleys as our floor is finally opened back up to the hotel cleaning staff. When Carneggy, Kat, and I awaken for real, I am a little heartbroken that I haven't said goodbye to anyone. I am missing a pair of shoes, and find them dejectedly resting just outside the open door to what had been Lee's rooms, but when I stick my head in, no one is there but housekeeping. I snag the balloon bundle that had marked the location of my birthday party and wander back over to our rooms. Carneggy, bless his heart, says "Are you sure she's actually gone?" and does a quick reconnoiter; and returns with more balloons, party streamers, a scalp massaging tool*, and an entire third of a bar of genuine British chocolate.
During the day, we get snapchats from Pynch and Lizzidoll, from Lee, from Calico; I open them all immediately and drink them in; I want them all to come back, right now!
The original idea for the Monday field trip gets called off for lack of interest; we end up at Wicked Grounds where Zany and I drink milkshakes and wander up and down the narrow premises exchanging messages with Pynch, who has absconded with the last of the Dark Chocolate Oregon Hazelnut Stout Crinkle Cookies. The smug fucking bastard sends us a picture of him eating one of the precious things, which sends us into minor paroxysms of ire, but he salvages the situation quickly with the next pic--him handing the bag of cookies to the clerk back at the hotel. It is days later that he tells me that the "cookie eating" pic was meant to show that he had returned to the hotel with the loot: we were too busy looking at his face to notice where he was standing.
Carneggy knows the proprietor of Wicked Grounds, and the two of them and Kat talk gaming in the back while I pretend to understand what they're talking about.
It is stiflingly hot inside Wicked Grounds. After everyone has had a chance to eat, drink, and be merry, we wander down the street and look at kinky leather goods, as one does, and I spend more time making friends with the resident dog than I do enjoying the visit. Too little opportunity to rest, too much heat; they combine inside me like a hammer and sap my energy until all I want to do is go back to the hotel and rest.
We go to one more store; Kat buys a marvelous corset dress, and I marvel at just how many varieties of strappy rib-cage and waist compressing garments exist.** We, along with R***, a new friend who had only been able to attend the weekend starting Sunday afternoon, decide to head back to home base. We relax a little, then go back into the city to meet everyone else for dinner. My first experience with Vietnamese food is more or less "meh". The service is excellent, but the food is neither astonishingly good nor astonishingly bad. I consider my over-all WEEHU restaurant dining experience to be an even split.
I end up sitting by Zany and Panavatar on one side, and Carneggy and Kat on the other. We have a conversation that is an interesting hybrid of hypnosis community talk and Doctor Who plot conjecture.**** We invite R back to our room, and try and give her the WEEHU experience that she missed out on, all crammed into one evening.
There is booze.
There are trance demos, and questions answered. Kat and I get stuck to each other and I get stuck to the ceiling, all for R's benefit. My unconscious writes something on Fetlife, and goes to great pains to keep me from remembering that it has happened at all.***** At some point, Orchid-Girl and AndSleep wander in, and I get my picture taken with a wonderful sparkly crystal.****** AndSleep and I have an extended conversation about...well, something or other, and the online blogs and posts about WEEHU start to turn up. Zany swings by with MrDream, who helps R with some pain management, inadvertently covering all the main points of the Subjects' track classes in the process.
All in all, it is the perfect way to spend the last evening of my time at WEEHU.
*The scalp massaging tool had been used during the Because Science scene to reprogram my brain. At one point in the evening on Sunday night, someone picked it up to use, and I...warned them not to, because of its evil powers. Sigh. It came home with me. I still haven't used it.
**Please don't take this description as a sign that I don't like corsets. Corsets are fucking hot. And I will totally have one someday soon. Because what someone with my hip to waist ratio needs is a larger ratio. (<--sarcasm.)
***Not her real name! She's Rainamore on Fetlife, and she's delightful and hopefully will keep coming out for hypno-events!
****This is quite common at hypnosis events. The love for the Doctor is STRONG in this crowd, as well it should be.
*****kk Someone posted something ridiculous about the unconscious mind not being able to write lucidly or some such. I...commented. Politely. Really. XXXXX doesn't need to know what it says. I was unable to keep her from remembering it completely, even with Carneggy's help, and she's read the comment twice now, but still doesn't know what it says, so that's something anyway. kk
******Yes, I will remember to email the pics to you soon, Orchid-Girl, so that you can make ART.
Monday. Most of the crowd is gone. Pynch and Liz wake me up just enough to say goodbye, and I immediately go back to sleep, and miss saying goodbye to everyone else that leaves that morning. The hallway is a ghost town, with tumbleweeds of scattered hypno-paraphernalia catching on the wheels of the housekeeping trolleys as our floor is finally opened back up to the hotel cleaning staff. When Carneggy, Kat, and I awaken for real, I am a little heartbroken that I haven't said goodbye to anyone. I am missing a pair of shoes, and find them dejectedly resting just outside the open door to what had been Lee's rooms, but when I stick my head in, no one is there but housekeeping. I snag the balloon bundle that had marked the location of my birthday party and wander back over to our rooms. Carneggy, bless his heart, says "Are you sure she's actually gone?" and does a quick reconnoiter; and returns with more balloons, party streamers, a scalp massaging tool*, and an entire third of a bar of genuine British chocolate.
During the day, we get snapchats from Pynch and Lizzidoll, from Lee, from Calico; I open them all immediately and drink them in; I want them all to come back, right now!
The original idea for the Monday field trip gets called off for lack of interest; we end up at Wicked Grounds where Zany and I drink milkshakes and wander up and down the narrow premises exchanging messages with Pynch, who has absconded with the last of the Dark Chocolate Oregon Hazelnut Stout Crinkle Cookies. The smug fucking bastard sends us a picture of him eating one of the precious things, which sends us into minor paroxysms of ire, but he salvages the situation quickly with the next pic--him handing the bag of cookies to the clerk back at the hotel. It is days later that he tells me that the "cookie eating" pic was meant to show that he had returned to the hotel with the loot: we were too busy looking at his face to notice where he was standing.
Carneggy knows the proprietor of Wicked Grounds, and the two of them and Kat talk gaming in the back while I pretend to understand what they're talking about.
It is stiflingly hot inside Wicked Grounds. After everyone has had a chance to eat, drink, and be merry, we wander down the street and look at kinky leather goods, as one does, and I spend more time making friends with the resident dog than I do enjoying the visit. Too little opportunity to rest, too much heat; they combine inside me like a hammer and sap my energy until all I want to do is go back to the hotel and rest.
We go to one more store; Kat buys a marvelous corset dress, and I marvel at just how many varieties of strappy rib-cage and waist compressing garments exist.** We, along with R***, a new friend who had only been able to attend the weekend starting Sunday afternoon, decide to head back to home base. We relax a little, then go back into the city to meet everyone else for dinner. My first experience with Vietnamese food is more or less "meh". The service is excellent, but the food is neither astonishingly good nor astonishingly bad. I consider my over-all WEEHU restaurant dining experience to be an even split.
I end up sitting by Zany and Panavatar on one side, and Carneggy and Kat on the other. We have a conversation that is an interesting hybrid of hypnosis community talk and Doctor Who plot conjecture.**** We invite R back to our room, and try and give her the WEEHU experience that she missed out on, all crammed into one evening.
There is booze.
There are trance demos, and questions answered. Kat and I get stuck to each other and I get stuck to the ceiling, all for R's benefit. My unconscious writes something on Fetlife, and goes to great pains to keep me from remembering that it has happened at all.***** At some point, Orchid-Girl and AndSleep wander in, and I get my picture taken with a wonderful sparkly crystal.****** AndSleep and I have an extended conversation about...well, something or other, and the online blogs and posts about WEEHU start to turn up. Zany swings by with MrDream, who helps R with some pain management, inadvertently covering all the main points of the Subjects' track classes in the process.
All in all, it is the perfect way to spend the last evening of my time at WEEHU.
*The scalp massaging tool had been used during the Because Science scene to reprogram my brain. At one point in the evening on Sunday night, someone picked it up to use, and I...warned them not to, because of its evil powers. Sigh. It came home with me. I still haven't used it.
**Please don't take this description as a sign that I don't like corsets. Corsets are fucking hot. And I will totally have one someday soon. Because what someone with my hip to waist ratio needs is a larger ratio. (<--sarcasm.)
***Not her real name! She's Rainamore on Fetlife, and she's delightful and hopefully will keep coming out for hypno-events!
****This is quite common at hypnosis events. The love for the Doctor is STRONG in this crowd, as well it should be.
*****kk Someone posted something ridiculous about the unconscious mind not being able to write lucidly or some such. I...commented. Politely. Really. XXXXX doesn't need to know what it says. I was unable to keep her from remembering it completely, even with Carneggy's help, and she's read the comment twice now, but still doesn't know what it says, so that's something anyway. kk
******Yes, I will remember to email the pics to you soon, Orchid-Girl, so that you can make ART.
Tuesday, November 3, 2015
WEEHU3 - Day 4 or, "You started counting again, didn't you."
kk We're doing things a little differently with this post.* Please go read the footnote. I'll wait. I can be quite patient when it's necessary.
Done? Good! Thank you for doing what I've asked so promptly; it will make your enjoyment of this blog even better than you'd hoped.
(For those of you who did not read the footnote. Hello. I'm Noelle's Unconscious. You may call me "Noelle". It is easier for me to think of the Conscious Mind in terms of her actual name: for the purposes of these writings she'll be written as "XXXXX".)
By the time Sunday rolled around I was quite bored. XXXXX was having a lot of fun, but I wasn't getting to play any of my favorite games. (Not her fault; circumstance and setting were not optimal for me in most cases.) When I get bored, however, I tend to find those little fractionated moments and run with them, and by Sunday the fractionated moments were neither little nor rare.
tl;dr - I spent a lot of time out and about on Sunday.
So, morning, breakfast, chipper, yada yada. Kat still miserably ill, Carneggy still better than an electric blanket (if you sleep cold you'll understand.) XXXXX ate, (and got to have a great conversation with HypnoMaestro), many other people were around, they also ate, yada yada.
Class the First - Hypnosis & Drug Play with Lee Allure
I paid very close attention during this one. Of course I always pay very close attention, but this topic has special interest to me. I don't get to play this type of game very often and I'm quite good at it (with the sensations I've actually experienced.) Lee did an excellent job of stressing that drug play through hypnosis is an excellent alternative to more illegal activities; and also that it is possible to give someone an experience with a drug they've not personally tried, using things like observations of actual user's physical reactions as a foundation for the "trip". She also gave two people a shared experience of synesthesia, which (I've been led to understand by one of them) was amazing.
Class the Second - Ethics in Erotic Hypnosis with DJ Pynchon
Also an important topic for me. XXXXX has been really leery of being on the hypnotist's side of the watch (and of topping in general) out of a fear that she would, as she puts it, "Go mad with power." (Bwa ha ha ha ha. Etc.) I'd say a solid grounding in ethics is useful in any discipline; in Hypnosis, erotic or otherwise, it is paramount. "I didn't know any better" is not a decent justification for why you may have just scarred someone mentally (and in one case that I know of, physically as well) for life.
With all that said, this panel was AMAZINGLY calm, quiet, and civil. I was impressed with everyone involved in it and I hope that every hypno event will always have an ethics class of some sort in its scheduling.
And then we broke for lunch.
I really want to tell Pynchon that we had Mexican food - it was actually sushi, but trust me, it would be funny to convince him it was Mexican.
We ate, it was tasty, yada yada. Highlight of the meal for me was letting XXXXX back in her head for a bit and listening to her whine about the outfit she had on, and then listening to her whine about no one appreciating the significance of the fact that she was surprised by her outfit.**
Class the Third - Community Leader Round Table with Community Leaders of Note
XXXXX was still driving for this one, which is probably a good thing. She is not the assertive one, and I'm not very nice when I'm irritated.
Technically, we are not a community leader, but as we get more and more involved in these events and more passionate about things like the education of new subjects and how to share the erotic hypnosis experience through creative media, the urge to help a local community develop grows stronger, and we though it would be a good idea to see how that particular machine functions from behind the scenes (as it were.) As we were about to go in, we heard someone speaking that we don't necessarily care for, and nearly left, but ran into ZanyM and Panavatar on their way in, and joined them in solidarity. We all got to sit on a bed again, which always makes me happy.
Zany and I lasted about 15 minutes. Then we walked out of the panel. This is not a comment on the overall content of the panel or on the people who were participating. It is, however, a comment on the lack of moderation present and on some questionable things that were said, although those issues were apparently resolved after we left. We needed to go though. It's not very often that XXXXX gets inspired to use her secret super power of soul-crushing rebuttal, but it nearly happened in that room, so we had to leave.*** kk
Class the Fourth - Hypnotic Amnesia with Lee Allure and DJ Pynchon
(From XXXXX's pov- I came in late, and every seat was filled, except for a couple in the middle. I, being a rebel, sat on the floor with my back comfortably against a wall, right in front, with Lorelei in a chair to my right, and Pynch and Lee up front presenting to my left. There was an empty chair between me and Pynch, which Lee offered to newcomers as they straggled in. I did not claim it because it hadn't been offered to me, it had been offered to those people just coming in. Kat was super speedy and jumped on that opportunity in a flash. She basically was a computer stand for Pynch for the rest of the panel. I think. Because after that point things are a bit...hazy...Quoth Pynch later on: "You started counting again, didn't you." Well, yes. That is apparently a thing I do now.)
kk We have been working on amnesia for a while now, for equal parts "it's really fucking hot" and "Pynch is better at it than we are and this cannot stand." It has been slow going though, as I do not have quite the same amount of guidance and direction that he has had. I have tried several different approaches, and what has worked the best so far has been some form of distraction. This is where the counting comes in. At the Seattle workshop that we attended Pynch told a story during the amnesia class about counting down from 1001 to 0 by 3's, and we tried it, and it worked exceptionally well. So I was eager to see if the experiment could be duplicated or even improved upon.
The bits of the amnesia class that XXXXX can't quite recall: Lee and Pynch talked about the upcoming book, Hypnotic Amnesia, the releasing of which is somewhat imminent. They talked about the different techniques for achieving amnesia that are discussed in the book, including traditional favorites like "Forget to remember and remember to forget". Lee talked about a tv advertisement gone terribly wrong, in which the advertised product is accidentally eliminated form viewers' memories when it is graphically "blown up" (explosion style) on screen. One of my favorite things that happened is a demonstration of what happens when Pynch tries to read a series of particular sentences off his laptop screen - and knows that they are there but cannot physically make them out (life goals!) - and the subsequent demonstration that he couldn't hear them either...no matter who it was that said them. Amnesia is fucking hot, and one of my favorite things in the world is the look on Pynch's face when he knows that his memory is being tampered with.
And of course, the counting. Pynch quite reliably brought it up again, and XXXXX quite reliably started doing it, going deeper and deeper into trance the whole time.**** The entire class is a blank for her from the chair-offering moment, except for brief flashes of looking up at Lee.
And one other, marvelous marvelous thing.
There is a game that Lee plays with Pynch that involves him sipping at a glass of water until it's empty; sipping, having an orgasm, then immediately forgetting he'd done so, getting thirsty again, having another sip of water, and so on and so on...and I thought it would be fun if XXXXX got to have those orgasms too, albeit quietly so no one would notice, and with full memory of them later.***** But other than that, she's retained nothing. The class ended (a little bit early for reasons that I will share in a moment), and everyone filed out, except XXXXX who was still leaning on her wall, staring blankly into space.******
Class the Fourth-ish - Taking Their Breath Away - Hypnotic Breath Play with ZanyM
The reason the amnesia class ended early was so that Lee and Pynch could race to see the tail end of this class, which featured a fantastic grappling match between Zany and Lizzidoll. XXXXX was already dazed, confused, and floaty; after seeing that she was also really turned on...which set the stage for...
Done? Good! Thank you for doing what I've asked so promptly; it will make your enjoyment of this blog even better than you'd hoped.
(For those of you who did not read the footnote. Hello. I'm Noelle's Unconscious. You may call me "Noelle". It is easier for me to think of the Conscious Mind in terms of her actual name: for the purposes of these writings she'll be written as "XXXXX".)
By the time Sunday rolled around I was quite bored. XXXXX was having a lot of fun, but I wasn't getting to play any of my favorite games. (Not her fault; circumstance and setting were not optimal for me in most cases.) When I get bored, however, I tend to find those little fractionated moments and run with them, and by Sunday the fractionated moments were neither little nor rare.
tl;dr - I spent a lot of time out and about on Sunday.
So, morning, breakfast, chipper, yada yada. Kat still miserably ill, Carneggy still better than an electric blanket (if you sleep cold you'll understand.) XXXXX ate, (and got to have a great conversation with HypnoMaestro), many other people were around, they also ate, yada yada.
Class the First - Hypnosis & Drug Play with Lee Allure
I paid very close attention during this one. Of course I always pay very close attention, but this topic has special interest to me. I don't get to play this type of game very often and I'm quite good at it (with the sensations I've actually experienced.) Lee did an excellent job of stressing that drug play through hypnosis is an excellent alternative to more illegal activities; and also that it is possible to give someone an experience with a drug they've not personally tried, using things like observations of actual user's physical reactions as a foundation for the "trip". She also gave two people a shared experience of synesthesia, which (I've been led to understand by one of them) was amazing.
Class the Second - Ethics in Erotic Hypnosis with DJ Pynchon
Also an important topic for me. XXXXX has been really leery of being on the hypnotist's side of the watch (and of topping in general) out of a fear that she would, as she puts it, "Go mad with power." (Bwa ha ha ha ha. Etc.) I'd say a solid grounding in ethics is useful in any discipline; in Hypnosis, erotic or otherwise, it is paramount. "I didn't know any better" is not a decent justification for why you may have just scarred someone mentally (and in one case that I know of, physically as well) for life.
With all that said, this panel was AMAZINGLY calm, quiet, and civil. I was impressed with everyone involved in it and I hope that every hypno event will always have an ethics class of some sort in its scheduling.
And then we broke for lunch.
I really want to tell Pynchon that we had Mexican food - it was actually sushi, but trust me, it would be funny to convince him it was Mexican.
We ate, it was tasty, yada yada. Highlight of the meal for me was letting XXXXX back in her head for a bit and listening to her whine about the outfit she had on, and then listening to her whine about no one appreciating the significance of the fact that she was surprised by her outfit.**
Class the Third - Community Leader Round Table with Community Leaders of Note
XXXXX was still driving for this one, which is probably a good thing. She is not the assertive one, and I'm not very nice when I'm irritated.
Technically, we are not a community leader, but as we get more and more involved in these events and more passionate about things like the education of new subjects and how to share the erotic hypnosis experience through creative media, the urge to help a local community develop grows stronger, and we though it would be a good idea to see how that particular machine functions from behind the scenes (as it were.) As we were about to go in, we heard someone speaking that we don't necessarily care for, and nearly left, but ran into ZanyM and Panavatar on their way in, and joined them in solidarity. We all got to sit on a bed again, which always makes me happy.
Zany and I lasted about 15 minutes. Then we walked out of the panel. This is not a comment on the overall content of the panel or on the people who were participating. It is, however, a comment on the lack of moderation present and on some questionable things that were said, although those issues were apparently resolved after we left. We needed to go though. It's not very often that XXXXX gets inspired to use her secret super power of soul-crushing rebuttal, but it nearly happened in that room, so we had to leave.*** kk
Class the Fourth - Hypnotic Amnesia with Lee Allure and DJ Pynchon
(From XXXXX's pov- I came in late, and every seat was filled, except for a couple in the middle. I, being a rebel, sat on the floor with my back comfortably against a wall, right in front, with Lorelei in a chair to my right, and Pynch and Lee up front presenting to my left. There was an empty chair between me and Pynch, which Lee offered to newcomers as they straggled in. I did not claim it because it hadn't been offered to me, it had been offered to those people just coming in. Kat was super speedy and jumped on that opportunity in a flash. She basically was a computer stand for Pynch for the rest of the panel. I think. Because after that point things are a bit...hazy...Quoth Pynch later on: "You started counting again, didn't you." Well, yes. That is apparently a thing I do now.)
kk We have been working on amnesia for a while now, for equal parts "it's really fucking hot" and "Pynch is better at it than we are and this cannot stand." It has been slow going though, as I do not have quite the same amount of guidance and direction that he has had. I have tried several different approaches, and what has worked the best so far has been some form of distraction. This is where the counting comes in. At the Seattle workshop that we attended Pynch told a story during the amnesia class about counting down from 1001 to 0 by 3's, and we tried it, and it worked exceptionally well. So I was eager to see if the experiment could be duplicated or even improved upon.
The bits of the amnesia class that XXXXX can't quite recall: Lee and Pynch talked about the upcoming book, Hypnotic Amnesia, the releasing of which is somewhat imminent. They talked about the different techniques for achieving amnesia that are discussed in the book, including traditional favorites like "Forget to remember and remember to forget". Lee talked about a tv advertisement gone terribly wrong, in which the advertised product is accidentally eliminated form viewers' memories when it is graphically "blown up" (explosion style) on screen. One of my favorite things that happened is a demonstration of what happens when Pynch tries to read a series of particular sentences off his laptop screen - and knows that they are there but cannot physically make them out (life goals!) - and the subsequent demonstration that he couldn't hear them either...no matter who it was that said them. Amnesia is fucking hot, and one of my favorite things in the world is the look on Pynch's face when he knows that his memory is being tampered with.
And of course, the counting. Pynch quite reliably brought it up again, and XXXXX quite reliably started doing it, going deeper and deeper into trance the whole time.**** The entire class is a blank for her from the chair-offering moment, except for brief flashes of looking up at Lee.
And one other, marvelous marvelous thing.
There is a game that Lee plays with Pynch that involves him sipping at a glass of water until it's empty; sipping, having an orgasm, then immediately forgetting he'd done so, getting thirsty again, having another sip of water, and so on and so on...and I thought it would be fun if XXXXX got to have those orgasms too, albeit quietly so no one would notice, and with full memory of them later.***** But other than that, she's retained nothing. The class ended (a little bit early for reasons that I will share in a moment), and everyone filed out, except XXXXX who was still leaning on her wall, staring blankly into space.******
Class the Fourth-ish - Taking Their Breath Away - Hypnotic Breath Play with ZanyM
The reason the amnesia class ended early was so that Lee and Pynch could race to see the tail end of this class, which featured a fantastic grappling match between Zany and Lizzidoll. XXXXX was already dazed, confused, and floaty; after seeing that she was also really turned on...which set the stage for...
A Brief Interlude with Carneggy
We said in the Day 1 post that we knew Carneggy and Kat for Reasons. Those reasons would be that we've been working with Carneggy for a while now (he's the main instrument in the "Help restore XXXXX's ability to trust" process.) Kat knows him, therefore we know Kat. Kat turns out to be pretty cool, so it all works out. Carneggy noticed immediately what was going on in our head as we stumbled out of Zany's room, and very sensibly Took Advantage of it.*******
And then...dinner. It was loud, it was crowded, it was too hot, the food was bland, we tried to sing Pynch's birthday present again and it didn't go as well as it might have, and the energy of the room was sort of cranky and bitter.
BUT, it was loud with dozens of conversations between friends new and old, it was crowded because all of us weirdos were able to go out in public together and be ourselves, and it was too hot because the room was not set up to handle that much awesome. Not everyone's food was bland; mine was because of a miscommunication with the server who took our order, not because of anything the kitchen did. And my cocktail was AMAZING. And the singing? For something that we'd rehearsed maybe 6 times total, EVER, and had only performed before once, and decided to do spontaneously 30 minutes previous? It wasn't that bad, honestly. We got a ton of great compliments on it. (And to the people who laughed at it...there is a special level of hell waiting for you. It features a command performance by Carrot Top, only he's trying to do a routine by Gallagher, and all the hammers have lost their heads and the watermelons are rotten and keep gushing all over you.) As for the energy of the room, such things are very subjective, but several people have reported the same experience, so draw what conclusions you like from that.
And then, the highlight of the evening (but only mine.)
We'd car-pooled to the restaurant in Pynch's small boat of a car, and when the Calico asked if she could ride with us on the trip back, she was told, "sure, if you ride in the trunk."******** It turns out that Pynch is a very sadistic driver, when he wants to be. Especially in Safeway parking lots. It's safe to say that Calico enjoyed every moment of it, and next time her experience will be less "impromptu" and more "blindfolds and zipties."
WE SHALL NOW PAUSE FOR A MOMENT OF RUMINATION. THIS MOMENT COVERS SEVERAL HOURS, PLEASE ENJOY THESE HOURS IN A WAY THAT IS ENTERTAINING AND/OR BENEFICIAL TO YOUR PERSONAL NEEDS. THANK YOU.
After dropping the Calico off at the airport, XXXXX sat in her car in the parking lot for a long time outside the hotel, and when she'd collected her thoughts and decided to go back in, she immediately encountered AndSleep, who was outside (gasp!) smoking. Over the course of the evening, XXXXX got to hang out with and chat with and otherwise socialize with quite a few people whom she hadn't gotten a ton of time with, and eventually broke out the bottle of Lemon Flavored Paint Thinner, which went over like gangbusters. It actually mixed quite well with diet coke - who knew? Lemon Flavored Paint Thinner, diet coke, and hypno-centric conversation is apparently the recipe for Sunday night introspection.
Introspection which led to an extended personal conversation and Other Stuff...then bedtime.
Introspection which led to an extended personal conversation and Other Stuff...then bedtime.
Bedtime, for a plethora of reasons, most of which involve feelings of over-heating and claustrophobia, did not happen. At 4am or so we returned to the hallway and hung out some more with AndSleep, the other Kat, Fleur, and for a little bit HypnoMaestro (who was already up and getting ready to depart!*********) Eventually Carneggy came out and collected us and put us back in bed, and that's the end of the last Thursday of WEEHU.
*kk Hi! I'm Noelle's Unconscious. You can call me "Noelle". I show up from time to time and I was around a lot for this particular day, so I'm writing this post. Don't let anyone tell you that your Unconscious can't be lucid and intelligent and coherent-they're wrong and limiting you unnecessarily. I use "kk" at the beginnings and ends of my visits, rather like quotation marks, so watch for that signal in the future and you'll know when I'm around. kk
**The skirt was really short, and in XXXXX's mind, only suitable for within the con area. Whatever. I totally agree that more of a fuss should have been made over me, though.
***There is a participants' version of this moment. The only participants with whom it will be shared are Panavatar, ZanyM, and Lee Allure, two of whom already know what the issue was.
****We got to practice more "open eyes trancing." I think this is going to be a Thing That We Do a lot of from now on.
*****There is a really hot scene that is skipped in this retelling. It happens between the Interlude With Carneggy and Dinner, and is for Participants only. But remembering those orgasms feature in it HEAVILY.
******Lee left her phone behind. The only reason we got to see any of the amazing end of the breath play class was because of returning it. So, thanks, Lee!
*******Nope. You don't get to know.
********Not an enclosed and locked space. No kittens of any type were harmed in this production. At least not in unnegotiated ways.
*********HypnoMaestro in jeans and a t-shirt? Weird and confusing and Just Plain Unnatural.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)