A Toy Review

Lily and like remote controlled vibrators. We like them quite a bit. These are vibrators that a woman can insert into herself, and then her partner can carry a wireless remote control that can be used to turn the vibrator on and off, well, remotely. Usually, the definition of remote is tens of feet, but that’s plenty.

They are huge fun, and we love them. They allow a style of play that is really exciting. In a public place, I can play with the controls and give Lily the most amazing sensations. Public, yet covert play is a very special and wonderful kink, and these vibrators are an excellent tool in that arsenal (erotic hypnosis is good for this also, but that is for a different post).

What we very much DO NOT like about these remote vibrators is, well, typically they are, to use a technical term, pieces of crap. They have a very circumscribed range, they take expensive batteries that can only be obtained mail order from the planet Neptune, they rarely give me any feedback at all as to what setting the inscrutable controls are on, and, most importantly, they are flimsy junk that works once or twice, then gives up the electronic ghost. And, given how expensive they are, that is not good.

We have bought many of these, over the years.

Many non-working remote vibrators

None of the vibrators in the picture work any more. A few worked a few times. Some took quasi-normal batteries, ad one or two had an lcd display, so I could determine if the thing was even ON by looking at that, though that kind of killed the whole covert thing.

One day, we were shopping at Good Vibrations, a very excellent store with a very excellent web store also. The staff there are enthusiastically helpful, and the stock is wonderful. The only place near me that is in the same class of excellent service is Hubba Hubba in Cambridge, but they cater to a very different audience and have a very different stock.

While we were at Good Vibations, we saw, well, a good vibrator. Specifically, we saw a very good looking remote vibrator from Lelo, the Lelo Lyla (which can be had from Good Vibrations). It is VERY expensive, but it was different from any remote vibrator we had ever seen. The vibrator itself and the remote were beautifully made, as are all Lelo products, and it was sleek and elegant (and sexy) while simultaneously looking like it could survive a nuclear explosion.

The remote was unique in two ways. It vibrates exactly as the insertable does, so the person using the remote can feel in their hand exactly what the person wearing the vibrator is feeling. And the remote has an accelerometer in it, meaning that as you move and tilt the remote, those actions are mirrored in the way the vibrator vibrates. Subtle motions of the hand fly through space and into the purring object in your partner’s body.

Those two things would have been good enough, but it does not take crazy batteries (the remote takes AAAs and the vibrator is rechargeable), it has a great range, and it’s water proofish (resistant).

We did not get a Lelo Lyra, however. We talked it over, and we saw from the marketing literature that the very helpful sales person showed us that there were two similar Lelo remote vibrators. The one that looked awesome to us was the Lelo Tiani. It was very much like the Lyra, but was designed to have the vibrating bit outside, resting on the clitoris. DING! We have a winner.

So, I ordered one on line, since they had none of those in the store. It came just before valentines day.

Here’s what’s in the box (except one thing).

Everything that came in the Lelo vibrator box

You can see the U shape of the vibrator itself, and the circular remote. There is also the charger, a handy travel bag, instructions, and the little black thing, which is a tool for opening the remote to put batteries in.

Here are the vibrator and the remote, in a closer view. The remote is disassembled, so you can see how it charges.

Close up of the Lelo Vibrator

Look at how elegant and nice it is. The controls are easy to understand, but have an amazing range. And the whole thing has a solid, super well made feel.

There was one more thing in the box. It was a little golden pin in the shape of the Lelo logo.

Lelo Pin

It’s not the kind of thing Lily would wear (she likes her bling a bit more blingy), but it is sitting in her jewelry box.

But, all that is nice, you are wondering how it worked. Well, I will let Lily comment on her perspective. My perspective is, it was fantastic. I could not have liked it more. The remote was very easy to use, felt great in my hand, and told me at once what was happening. We used it out at dinner at a fancy Italian restaurant. I could see from her expression that it was very much having the desired effect on Lily. My wickedness was instantly realized inside her body, and the motion control felt extremely natural, like my own hand was in there providing the sensations. It was also quiet enough so that, in the public environment, no one could hear it.

When we were in the car going home, the vibrations were audible. But when we were on the town, it was a private thing. A powerful sexual tool in my hands, but no one knew but us.

So, was it worth the huge money, you might ask. Well, yes, I would have to say so. Look at that first picture of the remote vibrators we’ve bought over the years. That is not even all of them. There were at minimum two more (I have the remotes). Add up how much all those cost, and then think about how this amazing object is likely to keep going for a decade or more (maybe a lifetime). So, I say, that is a first rate product, and I’d recommend it to anyone.

Hi Bryce! How’s it Going

Lovely, thank you. How nice of you to ask!

I’ve written little, of late, and there are a number of reasons for that. I have had a busy life, with a great deal of activity at work. My older son has largely taken over my actual computer (since his own is rather inadequate to his needs), so my major connection to the internet is through my phone, which is fancy, but difficult to blog with. Since I do spend much of my time at work, I can’t really post from there, even when I do have a moment. And, honestly, I have been kind of wrung out, which for me makes posting difficult. Lily seems to write all the more when she is wrung out, which is amazing. Me, not so much.

So, what’s been going on that’s been doing all that wringing, you might wonder. Glad you asked.

Well, there is the a fore mentioned work. It’s been taking up my very valuable time, and my valuable head space also. At work, we managed to successfully complete something that I’ve been working on for nearly five years, which is good, but it was draining. It’s also not very sexy. Let’s not talk about that.

I have also been having some serious complexity of daily life things going on, and that can be rather anti-sexy, as I have written about before. I may write even more about that topic, but not this day, no, not this day.

But one big thing that has been occupying my time and my head space is my experiments with non-monogamy. For me, this is a HUGE big deal. Lily has been seeing her girlfriend, Holly, since the late Cretaceous, or maybe for about two years, and we agreed to open our marriage well before that, but I have not been partaking of this openness thing. At first, I just did not feel like doing that. Lily would ask, I would say I was good with the way things were, and I very much meant it. More recently, I began to feel a desire to walk out onto the ice, and see where that goes. And so I have.

Getting here has not been easy. It messes with my idea of my identity (Lily would say it messes with my Privilege. We’re both right!). And there is he whole thing about how I remember hating the process of dating (except with Lily. Dating her was wonderful, which suggests one reason why we are married). And, honestly, who has time for this stuff. But I moved to a place within myself where I was able to overcome these objections, and to a place where I really want this. But these things must be done delicately, so I am trying to be careful about it.

I have been dating with, as one might imagine, mixed results. I put up a profile on okcupid, and I have been sending little inquiries to various women, have done some dating, and am thinking about what this all means to me, and what I want from it.

Lily has a spectacularly romantic, wonderful relationship with Holly, and I believe I would like something like that also, but something that is organic to me. And I am in the process of understanding what that is, while also trying to put on my best face for these lovely, wonderful women I’m meeting, and to continue to remind Lily of her awesomeness and the inviolability of the bond we share.

So, I’ve been busy. I’ll keep you informed. And let me know how you are. I like hearing from you.

Right Under Your Nose

When I walk in the world, you might not recognize me. I might not be the one you were expecting. That guy who is the peace maker, the one who brokers deals, mends fences finds common ground. That’s me over there. The conciliatory one. The sympathetic ear. The one who fixes the hurt feelings, greases the wheels.

You heard that story about the guy, right. The one who went up to see the person who was causing all the trouble, blocking everything. Went up to see the person who says no to everything, and calls everyone an asshole. Went up and got that person to do everything he asked, and more. By listening, calmly, patiently. That was me.

And I am patient. I wait as the world ticks along. Wait for everyone to wear themselves down, talk themselves out. Wait for it to all go quiet.

Could I possibly be the Top, the Dom, the man in charge

Could that be the Bryce Lloyd you’ve been reading about

It doesn’t seem to make sense.

But it does. I need make no show. I am not trying to prove anything. I have already proven it to the only one that really matters, which is myself. Lily knows me better than anyone, and sometimes even she doesn’t know what to think.

But only I own me, and I do not need to puff myself up to giant size. I already am. You just didn’t notice.

Celaeno’s Curse

So, here’s a weird topic. Around 2000 years ago, a Roman named Virgil wrote an epic poem called the Aeneid. And it contains a story which had a huge effect on me, and made me think about the world differently. And I’m going to tell you about it. Isn’t that exciting!

The Aeneid is, roughly speaking, a story about a bunch of Trojans, who, after the Trojan war, which they did not win, went wandering through the world, and eventually find Italy, and become the progenitors of Rome, and the Roman empire.

Like all epic poems, it’s long and rambling. Aeneas, the protagonist of the story, and the person after which the book is named, goes wandering around getting in all kinds of trouble, everywhere he goes. And he get’s cursed quite a bit. The most famous of these curses is Dido’s curse. He and Dido had been, well, rather intimate, and then he suddenly took a notion to leave, and she put a curse on him that her people and his would fight endless war until one of them was utterly destroyed. This did not work out well for her people. But that is a different story.

The curse I’m here to talk about is Celaeno’s curse. Caeleno was a harpy, who were basically bird women with wings. Wait, I will get to the good stuff eventually. The Trojans were fleeing from somebody and they wandered into the harpies’ realm. In the process of escaping, Celaeno put a curse on Aeneas and his pals. She cursed them with hunger, horrible, horrible hunger.

She said that they would be consumed by hunger, a hunger so terrible, they would have to eat the tables. Eat the tables! That’s hunger.

So, they sailed around, had adventures, met the a fore mentioned Dido, and eventually landed in Sicily.

It was nice there, so they had a picnic. A big picnic. They did not have picnic blankets, so they used these mats, made from a kind of hard bread crackery kind of thing to put the food on. And they were hungry, so they ate all the food, but crackery things were kind of sitting there, so they ate those also.

And that’s when Aeneas’ son, Ascanius, realized what had just happened. They were so hungry, they ate the tables.

You may wonder why I am telling you this boring story.

Because it’s not boring. Aeneas and his crew were cursed before the gods. They were doomed. Doomed to a horrible fate. And yet, that prophecy came true, and it was as nothing. It was literally a picnic.

That had a huge effect on me, and how I view the world. Fate, destiny, the path I am forced to tread, there is naught I can do about that. But I own it. It is for me to decide what it means. I can take what I am handed and make it a picnic.

And that’s a pretty good lesson from a two thousand year old text. I’ll take it.

What’s your Favorite Song

Lily was brave enough to post about a sandwich on her sex blog, so I will post about music. I’ve been on this Quebecois pop music kick (my friend A., who is from Montreal, discovered that I like Les Trois Accords, and pronounced me a true Quebecois. I am from New Jersey, and speak comically bad French. I think I have a ways to go). So, it is not surprising that this might be my current favorite song, despite the weird, dark and poignant subject matter:


Karkwa – L’acouphène – Live (Rockomotives 2011) by sourdoreille

(this is a live performance. The studio performance is the one I really love)

It is not my favorite song of all time, it’s the one that’s stuck in my brain right this minute.

I could not understand what they were singing about. I knew it was dark (did he say guillotine, and chambre gas, that can’t mean what it sounds like, can it), but I had no idea what it really meant. So I looked it up and applied Google translate, and it is much stranger than I had imagined. The song is about tinnitus. It is about a guy who is being driven insane, literally, by tinnitus. I was not expecting that. Having said that, I continue to feel it is a wonderful, compelling song, and, crappy as my French is, the poetry seems intricate and powerful.

Favorite of all time is hard. This one was big for a very long time:

Pizzicato Five arrived in my life when I was eating a muffin in central square one morning. They were playing on the stereo in the place I was eating, so I asked the woman at the counter who they were. She showed me the CD and I ordered it that day. And I came to love them. I came to more generally love Japanese pop music after that. I may someday post a selection of it. It is as varied as ours, from the cheesiness of Swinging Popsicle, to indescribably indescribable ムラマサ☆ (Muramasa), I will just have to play it for you.

There are two versions of this song, A Perfect World, this slower one, and the fast one. Which one I like best varies. There are two English words in the song, Perfect, which you might recognize, and Love, which she renders as Rhabu. That makes my heart melt a little, but my heart can be kind of melty anyway.

In general, I love music in different languages. It began with Samba, which I have loved since Segio Mendez in my childhood, but quickly became a wider fascination. I have, for example, a big collection of Welsh pop music, which turns out to be a huge, vibrant world (the Welsh love their language and love to sing). Maybe someday I’ll post a little Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci. Or Big Leaves, a Welsh hair band.

John Faye wrote many songs I have really loved. He has terrific talent. He also has a remarkable ability to write songs that are brilliant and sensitive and utterly purile at the same time. How does he do it

This one, this one is lovely. It’s called Just a Moment. Here he is playing it live:

There are 535 songs in my mp3 library that I have given four or five stars to (from about eight thousand songs. I really like music), so it’s hard to say what my real favorite is. I am going to go with this one, but don’t hold me to it. It’s not really my favorite of all time, but it reminds me o certain bright, and younger days and all that goes with them:

I love me some Todd, and I really love me some Something, Anything. I wore out the grooves on that one, back when we had grooves.

So, tell me what your favorite song is, right this minute, or recently, or EVAR. Maybe you will start a movement!

The Magic Rings

On Saturday night, Lily and I were discussing what kind of sex we might have that evening. I was thinking some rope bondage, and perhaps a bit of spanking. She was lamenting that all the ways available to us to do that involved her being face down, and that she would love some way to be tied with her hands over her head, standing, the ropes coming from the ceiling.

So, I figured I’d be magic. I made a quick trip to the nearby chain hardware store, which is open (and busy) late, and got some hardware, and the tools I needed, and I came home and installed two eye bolts (actually 1/4 inch by 4 1/2 closed loop screw eyes, but whatever).

image

I could go on at length about how I did it (and get sued if you try it and hurt yourself), but I will rather write about being magic.

You can do that. It’s easier than you think. So often, the barrier that keeps things from being perfect and wonderful is really easy to overcome. You just have to commit to doing it. To qualify, it needs to be done fast, be within your skill level (but maybe beyond your comfort zone), and it needs to seem impossible, or perhaps undoable. Then you just do it. You can do things, and you can make it look like magic, if you commit to doing it.

image

It helps if, as you go through life, you collect skills and knowledge. The internet helps. Search for the thing you are trying to do, you may find a tutorial. And magic sometimes requires spending just a little money to make it more magical. Don’t go crazy, but it can be worth a bit of cash. There will be things that seem like road blocks. Think calmly and think your way around them. There is usually a way if you think about it.

I will give you one pro tip about being magic. Sometimes being magic requires something electrical. Avoid rechargable thing. Use things that run on batteries, or on house current. If your rechargable whatever is not charged, because it’s been sitting around, or because you just purchased it, it will take hours before you can use it, and that is not good.

image

Anyway, that’s my advice. Have fun with it.

Toptastic Reading List

A reader writes

Dear Bryce,

I am a novice Top, and I wondered if there are any books you could recommend to help me learn the ropes (heh). What was helpful to you when you were learning to Top

Please let me know.

Thanks,

Person from Place

Well Person, here’s what I recommend.

  • The New Topping Book, by Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy. This one is a great place to begin. It is a thin book, and a quick read, but I found it to be invaluable when I was getting going. While it contains a great deal of extremely practical advice, I most valued this book because it was so very human, and talked about the subject in a very familiar, very human way. More than giving me practical advice, it helped me process my feelings, and feel less like a freak entering exotic territory, and more like a human, doing a human thing.
  • The New Bottoming Book, by Dossie Easton. This is the companion to the previous book. Why, you may ask, am I recommending a bottoming book to a person trying to learn to be a top. Go ahead, ask. I’ll tell you. First, this excellent book has good information about topping, despite the title. Second, and this is most important, you cannot be a good top if you do not understand bottoming. In the old school leather culture, one was required to bottom before one could top. I do not belive in that, but I do believe in the absolute requirement of understanding bottoms and bottoming if one is to be a good top.
  • Screw the Roses, Send me the Thorns, by Philip Miller. This was a fun book to read, and it is full of good practical advice. It’s large format, easy to read, and helps you understand what it is to have a bdsm or D/s relationship in an approachable, non-frightening way.
  • The Way of the Superior Man, by David Deida. This is not a book about topping, per se. But it was really helpful to me in becoming a better top and a better Dom. I highly recommend it, even though I am kind of a scientific rationalist and the book often dwells on vague spiritual concepts that normally irritate me. I would also recommend it to women as well as men, because he is quite explicit that he is not talking to men, but to people with ‘male energy’, by which he seems to mostly mean tops.

 

These should help you to begin with. Eventually, you will need more specific practical advice about ropes, or flogging, or wax play, or hypnosis or whatever you discover you are into. But begin with these, or some subset of these. They will help.

Thirteen

image

Lily and I have been married for thirteen years, tomorrow at around noon.

Lily wrote a lovely post about it that fills my heart with joy. I am, typing on my phone, since I did not have the foresight to bring a computer I could use to Montreal. I will try to say what I mean anyway.

I have always been a big believer in a love that can last forever, in contrast to Lily, for whom this is a radical idea.

But I have evolved. I used to be drawn to symbols of eternity. People use diamonds for this (just so you know, diamond is chemically unstable at the temperatures and pressures on the surface of the earth, so they degrade into graphite after about one million years).

This afternoon, I walked around looking for the perfect florist in Montreal, and bought the roses in the picture. They are the most transient thing. They are the opposite of eternity.

But they are exactly what I need to express. My love for Lily is not what it is because we declared it to be so, one November day, thirteen years ago. Our love is strong, and stays strong because we renew it every day. To have beautiful flowers all the time, you need to get fresh ones, over and over again. Our love is what it is because we bring it fresh, nurture it, and re-invent it. Our love is not a rock, it is a, perennial thing, rising again and again because we make it so.

My love for Lily, my true love, survives and grows because we do not expect it to just sit, like a stone, even a gem stone. Love is a living thing. And it is a pleasure, and a privilege to make it grow.

Happy anniversary, my love.

Protocol Protocol

So, this conversation took place, recently:

Bryce: When I sent you an order, I will begin the subject line with ‘Order:’, so there is no confusion about the nature of the email. I will expect a response to such emails, acknowledging that you received and understood it.

Lily: Are you going to define an XML format for it also

Bryce: That’s a great idea! I’ll get to work on the XML Schema right away!!

Now, of course, an XML format for sending orders is silly. I am not going to send Lily a blob of incomprehensible crap to define an order. That’s taking geeky D/s WAY over the top.

Except, I really AM working on the XML format for giving orders. Why would I do that

Well, it’s fun, and it’s playful and silly in a way that I like to be playful and silly. That’s a good enough reason to put ten minutes into it. But I’m putting much more time into it.

So what’s that about

Well, generally, I have learned that thinking about a thing becomes much more real, much more powerful, and much more clear when you have to codify it. I am a programmer by profession, so I often codify by, well, coding. That involves forming thoughts into very precise structures. One is forced into a formalism, like a sonnet or a haiku, only formal in content as well as structure.

This XML format is a formal structure like this, and by coming up with a way to render orders into it, it provides me with a clarity of thought that is very helpful.

Many Dominants make Protocols or Manuals. What I am doing is defining a yet more formal structure for describing the same thing.

When I have it in a good first draft, I will publish it here.

But, even after I publish it, I will send Lily orders in regular old English text. I’ll just have a clearer idea in my own mind of how to describe them.

I Don’t Know Why I like These So Much

I really love these pictures with a woman first clothed, then naked, like this one

I blogged one of these before. It’s something about the progression, and the story. It’s also about the promise of the beauty that is walking around under their clothes, and the promise revealed.

I love women. I think they are beautiful and marvelous. It is a privilege to have Lily, to love her. It is also a true pleasure to be surrounded by women. I often post pictures of women who look close to the archetype of beauty in the West, at this moment, but honestly, I don’t see many women who I don’t find attractive. I have wide and varied taste, and women are tasty.

The image in this post came from Loves to Lick. I tried to determine where it came from before that, but grew weary of that.

1 2 3 4 5

  • Bryce Lloyd