//This is a bit ramble-y (hooray stream of consciousness)
How do you sum up three days of hardcore, intense action among some of the hottest guys from around the world and vendors with top-quality gear? I know I sure as hell can't do it justice, so this will have to be a quick recap.
We got up (motherfucking) early on Friday morning for the 11(!) hour drive from Atlanta to DC. I wasn't behind the wheel, but I rode shotgun while Loki drove the entire trip and *I* was exhausted. We go to the hotel around 1700-1800 and pretty much crashed after dinner/socializing in gear down in the lobby. I had the distinct pleasure of meeting so many guys I've seen on Recon but never spoken with before. Say goodnight, roll back up to the room, crash.
Everyone woke Saturday morning and decided that the breakfast buffet in the lobby was worth it (mostly for the eye-candy) before we went down to check out the vendors. I had a few things on my list I wanted to check out, namely a Mr. S Neoprene breath control hood and a 665 Leather neoprene sleepsack (are we seeing a trend here?). Both items were amazing and quickly found their way into my shopping bags after beating up my wallet a bit. Our shopping finished, we went back to the room to prepare for our next event.
> The harness Loki put me in while we were at the market
If you've read my previous entries, you'll note that I've very recently started to get deeply into pup play and the pup romp/mosh at MAL sounded like it would be an excellent first experience for me. But before I could go down there, I had to get my tail in. Even though it was a small square peg tail, I still expected to have trouble getting it in (zero experience with the ass). It slid right in though and even felt a little loose. Loki rectified that by sticking me in His tail harness which kept things from moving around too much. With that, Loki locked some fistmitts on me and clipped a leash on my collar and we headed downstairs to the ballroom where things were just getting started. He had previously mentioned that He wanted to take a few moments and help me get into the headspace beforehand, but that didn't happen. I was essentially thrown to the wolves (yeah, I know) and left to fend for myself. Luckily though, the hood Loki put me in provided some degree of anonymity and helped put me at ease with the whole thing. Even after the hood came off (latex doesn't really lend it self to moshing) I felt very at-ease and started to have a lot of fun. I had to scurry back up to the room early though to take off the harness and tail though, started to get some pretty bad pain from both.
> Perfectly sums up my general personality
My post-shower bed lounging was interrupted by Loki deciding to tie up our roommate (Mark) and give him some CBT, courtesy of a parachute and the room's ice bucket. While Mark did his best to keep the bucket off the floor, Loki got out my sleepsack and hood before zipping me into both. Unable to move or see and barely audible, Loki took advantage of the situation and did His best to make me make as much noise as possible, swapping between CBT and edging (after telling me I wasn't allowed to shoot that weekend). Whenever I got too loud, He simply stuck a hand over the hole in the hood and easily kept me quiet (sidebar: the one issue I have with the hood is that there's no one-way valve to exhale out of like a gas mask).
> New toy!
We were both released in short order so we could go grab dinner in the lobby (again, eye-candy wins) before getting social with all the other gear heads in the lobby. A few minutes into the mingling, I had what can only be described as my worst failure to date. This super-cute guy in a wetsuit walked by and everyone's heads turned to follow him as he passed. He wandered over a few minutes later to introduce himself and we started talking back and forth about wetsuits etc. Since Tebow's got no game though, that's where it ended. Loki later pointed out that he was waaaaaay into me and we probably would have been able to have a whole bunch of fun. I'm still kicking myself over it.
That little disaster behind us, BoD0ppel and SparkySea came over to say hello. Well, Bo did, Sparky was a little wrapped up in a straitjacket and pup hood. Somehow or another, we wound up back in Bo and Sparky's room. Almost as soon as Sparky had been extracted from his SJ, the door burst open and the room was suddenly filled with what can best be described as a menagerie of cute, kinky guys. I mostly sat in the corner and watched/tried to stay out of the way, being the experienced, confident and totally not shy pup that I am. Ugh. This was my theme of the weekend: not having enough confidence to insert myself into what were totally appropriate places to insert myself. Grr.
After a few hours in the room (and Loki beating the ever-loving crap out of Bo's balls), we decided to turn in and call it a night.
Sunday morning, Loki treated me to locking me in the neoprene hood while He took a shower (Mark was in the other bed so I wasn't totally alone). This is the kind of thing I love, minimalist bondage for somewhat extended periods of time. Sure, I could get up and walk around if I wanted, but a single padlock and some well-designed zippers would prevent me from getting that hood off. Unf. After that, we hit up a local Starbucks for lunch before heading down to the market area for some more shopping. What was normally an intensely boring part of the day (seriously, how many styles of leather vests are there?) was made somewhat more bearable when I found a spandex blackout hood with just a mouth hole. I'm a hood-whore (in addition to being a collar whore), so this was an instabuy for me.
Our shopping finished, we dropped off everything in the room and met up with Brian and Leo for lunch at a local hole in the wall. After some uinspired burgers and simply reheated fries, we headed back to their hotel room to sit in on a basic rope lesson. I personally don't like to use ropes, they take too long and there's a lot of risk with circulation etc, but the techniques we learned seemed fairly applicable and safe, I'm looking forward to being able to use them at some point. We also had an opportunity to see one of the hottest guys I've ever seen (Chris) getting worked over by another rope expert. After he was released we had a chance to introduce ourselves and discovered that we'd been trying to meet up all weekend. Chris was all for doing something, but Loki was a bit hesitant. The guy who'd just tied him up is one of the best in the US and He didn't want to follow that. Chris and I hit it off pretty well though, so we quickly went up to our room and tried to decide what to do. I had wanted to top a little, but ran into problems not being sure how to initiate that sort of thing. Loki got fed up and started wrapping us together in saran wrap and duct tape. Loki helped position us so that I was laying on Chris's chest, totally unable to move, while his hands were free to do what they liked (mostly edging me in my chastity cage). The neoprene hood was brought out and zipped over my head. Loki unlocked His(my) cock and started on the breath control while Chris edged my newly freed cock. Whenever I said I was close to shooting, he'd stop edging and give my balls a few wacks before going right back to edging.
Loki had originally said that I wouldn't be allowed to shoot at MAL under any circumstances, but between the edging, CBT and breathplay, He relented and after about 15 minutes of the most intense play to date, He gave me permission to come. I shot and it was amazing. Loki cut me and Chris loose, he left and I hopped in the shower.
Later that night we got dinner with Sparky, Bo and the boys from the night before at a local irish place. Unfortunately, the weekend ended a bit abruptly with an 11 hour drive back to Atlanta early Monday and I don't want to bore anyone with those boring details.
So. MAL was an amazing experience and this was just the recap. At somepoint in the future I hope I can take some time to sit down and analyze my experiences and what I learned. This weekend was a watershed moment for my life in kink and this single post can't do it justice.