Two things a-poppin’

I was all set to tell the tale of the long holiday weekend and the forgotten key when two things popped up in comments that I wanted to hash out.

First is a question asked in a more lengthy comment by reader SunLocked:

As for the price: I think you should first decide on why you write the book – is it to make money or is it to give advice to those seeking it…?

That’s an excellent question.

It seems as though if all I cared about was advice, then this blog is it. Anyone willing to wade through the years of posts will undoubtedly find almost anything they need to know on the subject (at least is it pertains to my experiences). However, way back when I first introduced the purpose of this blog, it wasn’t so much I was thinking of advising others as much as I wanted a place to sound out ideas and even solicit others’ advice. That’s still the point, I suppose, though along the way my experiences rolled up into a big enough ball that I became an advisor, not the advisee. I think of the book concept as a declaration of where we’ve found ourselves. The opposite of the rambling and often inconsistent and contradictory play-by-play of the journey that is the blog. Told from a position of experience looking back, not from inexperience looking forward. Hell, when I started writing this I still hadn’t ever had anything locked onto to me and had barely been denied any orgasms at all (Oooo, he went three whole days without coming!).

Also, while this blog seems to be fairly well-known among a certain subset of netizens (yes, I did just use that word), I think that having a title listed in the various places one goes to find books can introduce a whole new group of people who otherwise would never find me because the internet is a scary place filled with some scary things (even my own site). When I think back on how we started, one of the first things we did was buy Male Chastity: A Guide for Keyholders. For Belle especially, this was a much easier introduction than most of what was available on the web then (with the notable exception of Tom’s blog from which I sent her many links). There was no Keyheld back then (or, for that matter, She-Held) and, even if there were, even those sites are more advanced than I’m thinking would have been right to share with Belle at the time.

With regard to the money thing, I’m not looking to make a lot off this. I’d like to get something in exchange for my efforts, but I already make a pretty good living and don’t really need the income (though more’s always better, right?). I don’t criticize Sarah Jameson her cottage industry, though that approach isn’t right for me. The more this feels like a job, the less I want to do it (which is the biggest threat to ever completing the book).

Billus chimed in with a thoughtful comment but said in the midst of it…

Tom’s site has more or less self-destructed, for reasons known only to him.

Which garnered a response from Tom to the effect that time has marched on and, like I’ve found, his blog is not what it was because he’s not what he was. Billus replied back that he’s lost interest in where Tom’s taken the blog, but it’s no skin off his nose.

The reason I highlight this (besides thinking that “self-destruct” is a tad harsh) is that I started this blog with an eye towards Tom’s and have thought that its evolution might also be influenced by his. I like to write. I like to write here. So what if someday I start to write about things other than those found in the chastity ghetto repertoire? These are, after all, personal blogs, right? What’s to stop me from talking about politics (man, I’d really like to) or media or whatever the fuck? Except that it may lead to fewer people reading it.

And that’s such a rub for me. No, I shouldn’t care about how many people read my words, but as a person who writes, I can tell you it’s a lot more rewarding when someone’s reading you than not. I have another blog written under my real name. If I get a dozen eyeballs a day (thirteen if one’s a pirate), I’m lucky. That lack of attention makes it hard for me to write there, though I know that more writing is what I need to do in order to get the eyeballs. In either event, as its popularity has grown, I’ve come to think of Denying Thumper as something like a channel. HGTV doesn’t show baseball games and ESPN doesn’t talk about kitchen make-overs and DT doesn’t compare and constrast UK Top Gear to US Top Gear (short story, US Top Gear sucks). But, of course, this isn’t a channel. It’s my personal blog, as I said. So why not write what I want? Sooner or later, it feels like I will have to expand the content here if I’m going to keep it going. Some of you may think of that as a kind of self-destruction, but where are the lines between your expectations of what I’m supposed to write about and what I really want to write about?

Anyway, it’s an interesting conundrum I’ve been pondering and one Billus’ comments bubbled to the surface.

The book

I’ve decided to write a book about male chastity and orgasm denial. There, I said it.

I have hesitated to embark on this endeavor for a couple of reasons. One, I like to start things but I don’t always like to finish them (for example). I figured if I ever told you people about the book I’d have to deal with the occasional, “How’s the book going?” thing which, while an innocent enough question, is a poisonous thing for a habitual procrastinator to hear. Second, I have a problem with the idea of writing the guide to this stuff. I have a very deep yet narrow experience set and I don’t think it’s necessarily applicable to everyone else looking to explore this kink. I’ve never really felt entirely comfortable being thought of as an authority, though I’ve kinda let go of that by asserting in the introduction exactly that: My experiences are my own, my opinions are my own, take them for what they’re worth (which is apparently whatever the book ends up costing), maybe it’ll work for you, maybe it won’t.

I expect I’ll release it as a Kindle book. Maybe iBooks, too. Maybe even as a Lulu print-on-demand thing. Minimally, it’ll be on Kindle. One of many questions I may have for you, my readers, as this goes along is how much you think I should sell it for? I have a price in my head, but I’m looking for some other opinions.

The next thing I want to ask, as I get into the planning and structuring of it, is what kinds of things would you want to see in it? I assume there’ll be all the practical gearhead chastity nerdery stuff that I’ve already regurgitated all over the blog, but what else? Again, I have my own ideas about this, but I think now’s a better time to ask for input than after I’m almost done with it.

Finally, there’s how this will relate to the blog. I expect a couple of things. One, I probably won’t be updating it quite as often while writing since all my energy for that will be going into the book (I guess that all depends on how my room full of monkeys with typewriters experiment goes and how how many monkeys I can procure). Who knows, though. Second, I will never (ever) make this blog nothing but a front-end sales pitch to the book. Promise. I’ll probably have some kind of element that promotes the book here, but I don’t see this being a giant hand reaching into your bank account. Third, it’s entirely possible that laying this giant thing onto the world will end up being some kind of dénouement for the blog. I’m already sometimes feeling like my tank is running low and there’s just not a ton of reasons for me to do this, but then again, I can’t imagine not doing it. I’ve tried blogging elsewhere about other subjects, but so far, I can’t stop doing this. I don’t say this to encourage a bunch of “BUT WE LOVE YOU!!” kind of comments, so please, don’t. I’m just sayin’ I can’t know how I’ll feel about blogging on this particular subject once the opus has landed. If it ever lands, of course. Blogging, in general, is a better way for someone like me to write in that I don’t like the idea of a big commitment, don’t want to plan much, and would rather say whatever I want whenever I want to, not according to some master layout.

Finally finally, has anyone reading this written a book on a subject like this? Or any subject, I guess. Any pointers? How did you approach it? What would you do differently if you had it to do over?

Random Jail Bird thoughts

Belle’s had me in the Jail Bird for the past couple of weeks for the first time in a long time. She’s made the Steelheart her main axe lately but seems to enjoy being able to poke and prod the penis through the JB’s bars and seeing it all bunched up and straining against its confinement.

In any event, having it on for a while has reacquainted me to some notable attributes of the device and a few other things worth mentioning…

  • The darn thing really is pretty comfortable. I continue to think the oval ring option is a great idea and one I think other device makers should offer. When we eventually get around to sending the Steelheart back for a new (slightly larger) A-ring, I’m going ask if they can make it oval.
  • The comfort of the device is evident in how much better I can sleep in it. It wakes me up during the early morning penile pressure check only about 30% of the time whereas the Steelheart (with it’s approximately 2 mm smaller ring) wakes me up more like 75% of the time (more often when I first get into it and less often the longer she keeps it on me). I assume this is due to the slightly larger ring circumference but also that it’s double-width and wider than any other A-ring I wear.
  • Darn thing feels really light. It’s about 20 grams (or about 10%) lighter than the Steelheart, but it feels like more.
  • So much easier to clean.
  • As I noted in my original review of it, there’s one annoying thing that’s just endemic to the design. The cage is made up of four bars: two that go along the top of the penis shaft, around the tip, and then back up the bottom and two more that make the same shape along the sides of the penis shaft. This makes a neat little square that’s more or less where the slit is at the end of the penis. All of this is fine and dandy, but I find that the end of the penis doesn’t stay lined up with that square. For whatever reason, it always shifts to the left a bit and the penis opening clomps onto the bar on that side of the square like a bear in the zoo trying to chew through its cage. Here’s an image of the clomping in action. Not a big deal normally. It only requires a moment of pinky prodding to get stuff aligned before taking a leak (otherwise, it’s radom spray pattern city). The problem comes in when the forgivingly supportive underwear I normally wear while in the Steelheart allows the JB and its occupant to move around somewhat freely in my pants. If the penis is anything other than totally flaccid, that bit of penismeat that’s left inside the square will be seemingly randomly get pinched against some combination of the underwear fabric, the seams of my jeans, and the steel of the device. That fucking hurts. Like, “FUCKWHATWASTHAT!?” kind of hurt. I find that I can’t just adjust the device to make the pinching stop. I need to shift the penis somehow. Not easily done in a casual way while in the presence of others. The way to keep this from happening as often, I’ve found, is to wear more restrictive (and concealing) underwear. It forces the device to stay situated more or less in a downward position, keeps the package from moving around as much, and the little meat flap doesn’t get pinched.
  • Finally (and this doesn’t have much to do with the device itself), my nuts are definitely getting bigger. I assume this is due to extended lack of orgasms. I can tell because of how differently it feels putting them through the various A-rings and cock rings we have. With the Steelheart, there is now always a definite moment of marked wincing as each pops though. However, if you look at the picture of me used in my review of the JB from last August compared to the image I linked to from today at the beginning of this post, they’re just fucking bigger. Maybe it’s not the testicles themselves that have grown. Perhaps it’s the epididymis or the vas deferens enlarging due to infrequent evacuation of their contents. Hard to know, but it’s a real thing and useful to know only in that it has an impact on how steel devices fit over time. I assume this is why the Steelheart’s A-ring (the oldest in Belle’s “fleet”) feels so much tighter than it used to.