A Warm Fuzzy Tale–PART TWO!

 

So...probably most of you in School, or Church, or some other Institution of Cultural Assimilation, read Claude Steiner's "A Warm Fuzzy Tale" in grade school.  And if you're like me, you sort of shrugged and said "well that makes sense but whatever." 

So...most people get "A Warm Fuzzy Tale" without any explanation that it's a core teaching element of Transactional Analysis, and explains the theory of strokes “the recognition, attention or responsiveness that one person gives another.”

It's actually less simplistic than I remember it from childhood...but it still leaves a little bit out, so I'm going to offer up "A Warm Fuzzy Tale II - The Legacy"

For folks who are too lazy to click, I'll provide a short summary of Steiner's allegory.

A Warm Fuzzy Tale – Synopsis

There's a town and everyone is happy.  People are happy because everyone has a bag of warm fuzzies.  You pull out warm fuzzies and put them on another person's shoulder, and they dissolve and make them feel good.  Going away when you use them, and not being granivores distinguishes "warm fuzzies" from “tribbles.”  If you're too young to get that joke, congratulations, you might be in my dating range.  If you're fucked up enough that I'm also in yours let's have coffee.

Digressions aside, when you give somebody a warm fuzzy it makes them happy.  And since you have a limitless supply of warm fuzzies, people give them out all the time, and everyone lives in a state of primal happiness like in that one colossally annoying R.E.M. song.

Then a bad witch gets annoyed, because it's her business to make potions to make people feel better, and nobody is every sick or unhappy.  We know she's a bad witch because the author says so, and because her morals come straight out of "Mad Men," but we don't know what formative experiences she went through, so I'm for reserving value judgments, yo!

There's a nuclear family who serve as the victims in all this…the kids are named Lucy and John (which leads us to suspect this story was first drafted while listening to Sgt. Pepper’s, stoned).

The witch goes around and puts it out to Dad that if you keep giving out fuzzies you'll run out.  It's unclear why anybody believes this, but presumably they're all so happy singing Kumbaya that they'll believe anything ...which may be a point in the Witch's favor, but the author doesn't go there.

So Dad notices the spousal unit giving out warm fuzzies to their daughter Lucy and son John, and gives her a talking to, because he's afraid the wife will run out of warm fuzzies for him, and it's pretty clear that bedtime nookie is not going to happen without warm fuzzies.  So the spouse backs off on warm fuzzies to the kids, and John and Lucy start watching their parents real carefully and being reserved about their behavior too. 

Pretty soon people observe them and word slips around and everybody gets suspicious about who is giving fuzzies to who, so fuzzies get in short supply.

Says Steiner: "After the coming of the witch, people began to pair off to reserve all their Warm Fuzzies for each other exclusively. People who forgot themselves and gave a Fuzzy to someone else would feel guilty because they knew that their partner would probably resent the loss. People who could not find a generous partner had to buy their Fuzzies and they worked long hours to earn the money."

The potion and salve business began to boom, because people would try anything.  But...did I mention, you need warm fuzzies to live.  No idea why, my guess is that these people lived in the far north and warm fuzzies had a lot of Vitamin D3, but I think it's really supposed to be an emotional thing.  But if you can't have a warm fuzzy a potion or a salve is worth experimenting with.  The problem is that even the "bad" witch wasn't an insane genocidal witch so having her customers die off seemed like a bad business plan. 

So the witch comes out with a new line...bags of cold pricklies. They keep you alive but feel shitty.  Instantly these are more popular than Marlboros and Absolut.  People won't give you a warm fuzzy, but they'll happily give you a cold prickly.

That's as much of the story as most people remember but there is one other bit that's genuinely interesting. 

"Another thing which happened was that some people would take Cold Pricklies.....which were limitless and freely available..... coat them white and fluffy, and pass them on as Warm Fuzzies.

These counterfeit Warm Fuzzies were really Plastic Fuzzies, and they caused additional difficulties. For instance, two people would get together and freely exchange Plastic Fuzzies, which presumably should have made them feel good, but they came away feeling bad instead. Since they thought they had been exchanging Warm Fuzzies, people grew very confused about this, never realizing that their cold, prickly feelings were really the result of the fact that they had been given a lot of Plastic Fuzzies."

I'm not making that bit about the plastic fuzzies up.  It's worth noting that Steiner lived back in a time when we actually still owned objects that weren't made of plastic, and used the word as a synonym for “fake.” 

So...

At the end a nice woman comes around handing out warm fuzzies and doesn't seem to care about the witch.  Presumably she came from Berkeley, or someplace they didn't have parents.  We don't know.

Kids love her because she gives out warm fuzzies all the time. It's important she's a chick because if not the story would take a decidedly dark turn at this point but...she hangs out with the kids and it's all good.  They call her the "Hip Woman."  Remember what I said about when this story was written.  So kids start wildly giving out warm fuzzies.

The adults get worried about the kids running out of warm fuzzies in their adulthood, so pass laws against this sort of reckless behavior.  And this is a big struggle at the end of the story because many of the children don't want to obey the laws and want to give out warm fuzzies.

And this little bit of revolutionism is designed to be read to kids to encourage them to blow off their parents and give out a lot of warm fuzzies, and honestly it's probably a good cultural influence, even if the bit about the children rebelling...to borrow a phrase "...marks the first place...at which Tonstant Weader fwowed up."

See...I'm making sure you get a good ration of cold pricklies in order to be able to digest this warm fuzzy story.  Because honestly as adults we're not equipped to digest this sort of thing without a healthy sidecar of "cold prickly."  But I got you through the story, and hopefully you're smiling.

Fast Forward

So...let's revisit the magical village a half-century later and see what happened, why don't we?

So...sadly...nobody is passing warm fuzzies or any other objects of measurable worth around for free.  There are magazine articles that say you should, but when you do, everybody looks at you like you're crazy, and you have a strange tendency to compose really irritating music, so...people take it easy on the whole warm fuzzy thing. 

The problem with the story is that it's a great myth for kids, but it doesn't realistically discuss the realities of living in the world of the Witch.  Steiner wrote the story in 1969, and...he was already trying to recapture something that wasn't.  Just as the "Summer of Love" of 1967 gave out into the riots, the assassination of RFK, and the defeat of George McGovern by Richard Nixon, we know that the children fail and the witch wins. 

Steiner was trying to incorporate some of the idealism of his time into an inspirational story, the ending of which Hunter S. Thompson sums up in his "wave speech"

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave ....

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark —that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

I think we understand that living in the witch's world is the status quo.  It is where most people are.  If you subscribe to Dave Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright's theory of tribes (summarized here by David Logan on TED) the society of the witch is a Stage III tribe, and the inability to exchange warm fuzzies freely means it cannot become a Stage IV Tribe where the people use language that describes their place in the world as meaningful because they are positively contributing to achieving outcomes valued by the tribe by cooperating with other members of the tribe."

Within our M/s Households we strive to create Stage IV and even Stage V Tribes, where "Tribal members exist in a state of flow. They use language that describes their place in the world as intrinsically meaningful and focused on the good of the universe. In short, "Life is Great!"”

And we run into the legacy of the Witch.  So let's explore some outcomes.

In the witch's world, there aren't a lot of cold pricklies.  Because cold pricklies frankly suck, and everybody knows it.  Instead there is a thriving mock economy in plastic fuzzies.  Nobody gives a cold prickly away without dressing it up to look like something it’s not, unless they’re doing it to someone very much their social inferior…or offering it ineffectively to someone who is their social superior.

John

John left the rebellion against the witch early.  He'd always been scared and jealous about fuzzies, and even when he was with the rebellion, he'd kept a lot of plastic fuzzies on hand, and kept the warm fuzzies to a minimum.  He liked to get warm fuzzies, but he didn't like to give them.  Because he quit the Rebellion early, he got a head start on business, and was richer than most other children his age.

Over time, John got very good at getting warm fuzzies without giving them out. He worked a lot and was very successful, and came up with a plan.  In order to get ahead in business, you needed to give John a warm fuzzy.  But John only gave back warm fuzzies to the top business people.

John held big barbecues, where he served microbrew beer and gave out a few warm fuzzies and a lot of plastic fuzzies.  In time he got to the point of giving even his top people plastic fuzzies.  But because those people didn't want to lose face they didn't dare admit they'd been given a plastic fuzzy.  They all assumed the other top people had gotten a warm fuzzy and they'd gotten a plastic fuzzy because they'd done badly or angered John.  So they would smile as their plastic fuzzy melted and talk about how genuine it felt and how good it was and even say it was better than anyone else's warm fuzzies.  Then they did the same thing with their assistants.  Most of them also hit on the trick of giving out all plastic fuzzies and hardly ever giving out warm fuzzies.

John worked a lot to have plastic fuzzies that were very realistic looking and they really did look better than most others.  He even had luncheons with other powerful businessmen where they gave each other plastic fuzzies on purpose and judged each other on how realistic they looked.

John married and had son and daughter.  He had a family ritual where he would call his children in and expect them to give him warm fuzzies.  Then he would give them plastic fuzzies, or even occasional cold pricklies.  But each child grew up believing that only they were getting the plastic fuzzies.  They actually knew very little about warm fuzzies, having hardly ever gotten any, and didn't have much idea of what a real one felt like, so half the time they thought maybe they actually had gotten a warm fuzzy and that there was something wrong with them because it didn't feel the way stories said it should. 

John's wife was attracted to him because he had a limitless supply of warm fuzzies (since he clearly didn’t give many out) and was very successful.  But he made it clear early on that she would only get warm fuzzies if she worked very hard.  He gave her a few from time to time and made a big deal of them, but mostly he gave her plastic fuzzies too.  Each time he gave her a plastic fuzzy he made her act as if she'd gotten a warm fuzzy. 

This lasted for some years and she grew more and more cold and distant.  But she had children, and didn't want them to see that she wasn't getting warm fuzzies, so she just covered it up and went along. 

With each child when they first came along, John's wife gave them a lot of warm fuzzies.  She also saw small children as sources of unlimited fuzzies, because at first she could more or less just take fuzzies from their bag without asking.  What she really wanted was a miniature human being to give her warm fuzzies all the time without question, to replace John.  This made John hate his children and be jealous of them.

At first the children gave her warm fuzzies back, but John would ridicule the children when they gave out warm fuzzies, and their mother was constantly demanding fuzzies and not always giving them out.  He taught the children to give out plastic fuzzies.  His wife would lose interest in one child and dote on the next, but in each case, it didn't last very long once the child got old enough to ask questions about fuzzies and make decisions about what kind to give.   The children then felt rejected, and confused and conflicted about fuzzies…they vaguely remembered what they had felt like and assumed they’d done something wrong.

John often got given high quality plastic fuzzies even by his own children.  Sometimes this made him angry, but as time went by he was actually alarmed to get warm fuzzies and also on some level felt guilty.  He came to feel more comfortable getting high-quality plastic fuzzies and valued fuzzies by how they looked to others, not now they felt to him. 

On his 50th birthday everyone in the Community held a huge party for John and not one single person gave him a real warm fuzzy, but he had a very good day and felt successful, because the party was big and well attended, and the plastic fuzzies were incredibly beautiful and elaborate.  People did not want to give him real warm fuzzies, but the fact they put such time into making plastic ones to give him showed they feared him, and he took pride in every cold prickly he smiled through.

John was so wealthy that with a few warm fuzzies he could have had almost any woman in the town, but he only had a few tentative affairs.  He felt bad about giving another woman warm fuzzies when he never gave any to his own family, so he started by giving women high quality plastic fuzzies.  They were so good that they looked realistic, but shortly they'd figure out what he was giving them and move away from him.  John found that he could get occasional sexual pleasure for money and some plastic fuzzies to go with it, and he felt a lot more comfortable with that.  He kept that part of his life private and secret and told himself it didn't matter to his family since he didn't give away any real warm fuzzies.  He was careful not to invest any warm fuzzies in his occasional sexual release, and out of his shame he communicated that value to his son through his words and actions.

When John's son was a teenager the boy learned about warm fuzzies.  He didn't even realize that his father knew about them, but he came home and tried to give his father some.  Every time he tried, his father grew uncomfortable, and gave him a plastic fuzzy back, or even a cold prickly, so he quickly learned not to do that. 

When John grew old some of his younger family members came to see him.  He found himself yearning for some warm fuzzies and asked them for some, and they gave him fuzzies but he realized that he honestly could not determine if they were warm fuzzies or plastic fuzzies, because he didn't really remember the difference anymore.  He gave them some plastic fuzzies and they left.

John's Son

Grew up confused about fuzzies.  He got some from his mother.  In theory he wanted warm fuzzies, but he spent most of his time setting up elaborate games to get them, and it was unclear he really wanted to succeed.  Like his dad he rewarded people more for giving him good looking plastic fuzzies than actual warm fuzzies.

John's son lived to emulate his father. 

He knew that when his father felt very powerful towards someone he made that person take a cold prickly not even a plastic fuzzy.  John's son wanted to be powerful like his dad...so he could get more warm fuzzies...so he began giving out a lot of cold pricklies because that's what you do when you're powerful.

He dated girls and liked giving them cold pricklies which they'd accept because he had a lot of money and social status.  It turned him on when a girl gave him sex for a cold prickly, because that proved he was powerful.  John gave a lot more cold pricklies than his dad because he saw that as making him powerful.

The few times he found girls who liked getting his cold pricklies and would actually ask him for more, he toyed with them then pushed them away, because he was afraid they weren't normal, and it didn’t prove he was powerful to give them what they wanted. 

Or he'd go looking for girls who said they wanted cold pricklies, and just pile them on in heaps and leave the girl to crawl away, wondering why he hadn't given her even one warm fuzzy.  Then he'd complain she wasn't as advertised.

He might have been happier if he'd been able to maintain a relationship with a girl who liked cold pricklies, and might have even begun to sort out his own issues with fuzzies, but his father taught him that rich and powerful men stayed within the law and only did things that were conservative, and girls like that scared him. 

He married girls who wanted protection more than anything else and would accept his cold pricklies for it, or who had been raised to feel that cold pricklies were the price of being successful in life.  But he was so intense about giving them out that after a while they would leave him. 

So he never had a satisfying relationship, and went through a series of divorces.  He had children and was fortunately little enough influence in their life that a few of them actually broke away and found ways to be happy. 

 

John's Daughter

Grew up desperate for fuzzies, but her household was tightly controlled.  When she went on dates, her father would check to see if the boy had given her any warm fuzzies and if John thought he had, he'd pour cold pricklies on the boy until he went away.

Eventually she went to college and got out on her own.

What she found was that early on in a relationship she got very excited when she was given a warm fuzzy.  But very soon it became uncomfortable to her.  She always expected the boy to begin giving her plastic fuzzies, and she hated plastic fuzzies, having gotten them most of her life. 

But she found that after a short time, getting real warm fuzzies made her intensely anxious.  She didn't feel like she deserved warm fuzzies and they really didn't even feel that good to her after the first few times.  She tended to date men only for a short period.

Cold pricklies were interesting to her.  They seemed to work as well as plastic fuzzies but they were more genuine.  They were familiar to her (because she'd been getting them all her life as plastic fuzzies) but exciting because they'd been a big deal in her father's house where plastic fuzzies were the rule.  They made her feel ashamed, and diminished, but when she felt that way she didn’t feel guilty.

Men who handed out a lot of cold pricklies also reminded her of her Dad, and made her feel safe. 

She went through a lot of men who just gave her cold pricklies, but she realized that many of them were like her brother and just weren't good people. 

Eventually she found the kink scene.  In the kink scene she would agree to accept a lot of cold pricklies and then one warm fuzzy.  It was hard and a lot of work but at the end she found that she wasn't afraid of the warm fuzzy and felt she deserved it and could actually enjoy it. 

She found a boy who liked to give out warm fuzzies but had learned at home that it was bad to give out too many, and that you should mostly give out cold pricklies.  She let him give her cold pricklies to get a warm fuzzy.  Their relationship was not ideal but it was the most stable she had to that point, and as she got better at taking warm fuzzies, he got a little better at giving them.

Lucy

Participated for a while in the rebellion against the witch.  She left her repressive parents and lived in a group house with a boy who gave her a lot of free warm fuzzies.  He was involved with another girl but he gave them both warm fuzzies and they talked about how good it was.  Then one morning Lucy realized that he was giving the other girl warm fuzzies and giving her plastic fuzzies.  She left and tried to hang with the rebellion for a while, but in the end, she had a lot of plastic fuzzies, and began to seriously worry about her supply of warm fuzzies running out.  She was pregnant by then and needed the warm fuzzies for her daughter, who wasn't going to have a father.

She brought her daughter up and despite the intention of saving all the warm fuzzies for her, in fact gave her very few and made a big deal of them.  She gave her daughter a lot of plastic fuzzies, because she needed to "learn to get used to them" and "they're what she had to give.”  It is possible that on some level she enjoyed denying her daughter warm fuzzies, like they’d been denied her, and that she felt satisfied giving her plastic fuzzies, because she’d been treated that way in the past and it felt good to pass it along.

She went through a pattern of finding a man, and giving him the warm fuzzies that she was supposed to be saving for her daughter, because it felt so good when he gave them back. Each time though it fell apart.  It was kind of hard to tell why.  She'd feel guilty about not giving her daughter enough, and either start not giving the man warm fuzzies, or demanding that he give her daughter warm fuzzies.  The man would almost always give her daughter plastic fuzzies, and often start to give her plastic fuzzies as well.  Or she'd start to give the man plastic fuzzies because she felt guilty about giving away the warm fuzzies that were for her daughter.  But she never seemed to actually give her daughter any more warm fuzzies.

Lucy's Daughter

Eventually one of Lucy's boyfriends started giving her daughter warm fuzzies.  A lot of them.  People had warned the daughter about strange men, but she'd never gotten a lot of warm fuzzies before so she was just overwhelmed.  She gave the man a lot of warm fuzzies back.  She would let him do anything he wanted with her because she was so grateful for his warm fuzzies.  Eventually he wanted sex for warm fuzzies, and while she didn't really know if she wanted that, she didn't stop him either.  She felt overwhelmed and out of control.

Lucy knew the things she was doing were against the law, because the man had to tell her that, so that he could make her promise to keep them a secret.  This made her uncomfortable and anxious.  So much so that she almost didn't care about the warm fuzzies.  But she couldn't exactly stop.  After a while though she began to develop a funny feeling.  When he gave her a warm fuzzy, she became so anxious and upset that it felt like a cold prickly.  It wasn't...it was a genuine warm fuzzy.  But getting it scared and upset her.

Eventually the man went away and Lucy was left with the fear and guilt. She felt guilty every time she took a warm fuzzy because she was reminded what she'd done to get them.  And sometimes warm fuzzies made her so nervous they seemed like cold pricklies to her, so that she began to feel he'd ruined warm fuzzies for her.

She told a few other people about what he’d done with her, and they immediately told her that she was sick in the head if the warm fuzzies he gave her had ever felt good at all.  And since some of them had, she agreed she must have been sick in the head, but she never admitted that, and instead swore they’d always felt like cold pricklies, from the first day.

It also bothered her that sometimes she thought about the warm fuzzies he'd given her, and didn't feel angry but...now that the anxiety was mostly gone...actually kind of missed them.  When that happened she felt she needed a lot of cold pricklies because that was what she deserved, and she'd even go find men who gave out cold pricklies...not just plastic fuzzies but actual honest to god cold pricklies...and take as many as they could give her.  She would push them to give her more cold pricklies just to prove that they would.

In the end she would end up hating the men who gave her cold pricklies.  She couldn't get close to them, but she was always able to find a new one.  When they tried to give her warm fuzzies she lost respect for them, and walked away because he had given her warm fuzzies, and she knew what that was about.  She had a few friends she accepted warm fuzzies from, but refused to have any sort of intimate relationship with them because that would make their warm fuzzies feel like cold pricklies to her.

The Moral of Our Stories

I could have written...forty of these...but I picked a couple that outlined situations I know to be very typical, and could describe well.  There are hundreds of variants on these themes, they're just...suggestions.  No two lives are the same.

The point illustrate how the theory of strokes applies to people's adult behavior.  If you haven't already mapped this one out, a "stroke" in T/A terms is a human social interaction that has emotional value.  A positive stroke is a "warm fuzzy" and a negative stroke is a "cold prickly."  The fact that we often give left handed or false social cues is the source of a "plastic fuzzy"...something that on the surface seems to be gratifying, but really isn't. 

People need strokes of some sort...that's why people tend to go crazy in solitary confinement.  We can get by on mostly negative social interaction, but we need and desire social interaction of some sort.

Through most of the 1990s, a very biochemical model of BDSM prevailed in the world.  In the late 90s, I remember reading that BDSM was basically about endogenous opiods.  We didn't really experience pain at all...it was just stimulation, and the whole phenomenon was like a runner's high.  We were all just healthy athletes.

This explained surprisingly little of the scene to me. The more I began to understand strokes, and life scripts, the more I began to see how our experiences with strokes shaped the type of strokes we needed to receive as adults.

My purpose here was to show how our childhood experiences with receiving strokes inform our future choices, and to explore some of the ways that sadistic and masochistic personality types might form.  A great deal more could be said, but this is...a brief and basic look. 

Full Day Workshop–Getting Serious!

I’m not big on self promotion, but I am going to take just a moment of your time (or feed) for a reminder that our deadlines for getting people registered for my first Full Day Workshop are coming up.  We have some smart folks registered and I hope we can get a few more.

http://www.gordonsdrysin.com/workshops/index.html

We presented a core taste of this class at Camp Crucible and got very good responses.  I know a number of you folks have talked about doing this, or reached out about it, and I really want to work with you to make it possible.

I have to be honest and say I’m not looking for any big return on this.  We’re charging enough to cover food (which should be delicious) and supplies to clean up the space and present, but…that’s not really the motive. 

I’m really excited about the chance to present this material without being in a rush, in an interactive environment.  I think there is a huge amount here that can help people who are into power exchange on any level, and I really want to get people out to it. 

We do have some limited crash space available, so please talk to me if that’s an issue, or ping JayLynn or Miranda.  I really want to make this possible for everyone and I’m really looking forward to it.

I wish I were an Oscar Mayer Weiner...

The Sexting scandal with Representative Weiner is a source for plenty of tittering and twittering, not least because most of us still have enough Junior High mentality to think "Weiner's weener" is funny.

For me it opens up a larger question. Has the dichotomy between conventional conservative American morality and the new media led to a situation where we are in danger of being forced to narrow our selection of political leaders along lines that encourage us to pick older, more conservative, and less socially functional men?

I say men advisedly, because the issue isn't with women. It may be some day, but so far it hasn't been, likely because women choose new sexual partners differently than men and for different reasons.

The Biology

Let's start with a biological fact. Successful men want to have sex with new partners. Part of the reason for this is that to be successful requires being a risk taker. The same internal qualities that lead to throwing one's hat in the ring, the vision to fly to the moon, or to speak out strongly about social injustice when others are silent lead to...the willingness to pursue and win new sexual partners.

This may seem like common sense, but there's been surprisingly little research on it. Probably because wealthy, successful, powerful men are not queuing up to have their infidelity studied. It's not very practical to put a sign up on the College Campus "powerful politicians needed for potentially damaging sex study."

Still, the facts support it. Dr. Edward Laumann, the principal investigator of the National Sex Survey in 1992 talked about the issue to Discovery analyst James Williams. Noting the problem with good research, he commented "People who are successful, tend to have higher levels of testosterone. There's a book called 'Social Structure and Testosterone' which looks at studies -- these are usually little mickey mouse surveys -- of small numbers of people in special circumstances"

Laumann continued, "In games or competitions -- and this has been observed in the animal kingdom as well -- winners (males) have a t-surge and those that are defeated have a dampening down of testosterone. Now that would make sense because [the losers are] less likely to challenge or fight with somebody who’s already beaten them. So they withdraw from the fight and the other gets priority for sex, for food, for whatever’s out there that they want to have. So you have a situation where you’re selecting on exactly those variables."

This seems common sense, even in light of research that the DRD4 gene may predispose one to infidelity. The male reproductive strategy is about having sex as much as possible in order to pass your genes along. At the low end of the ladder, some primates "cheat," hiding behind trees or distracting other primates with food for a chance to mate. Men who make less than their female partners are more likely to cheat than men who make about the same or slightly more.

But...At the high end, successful male primates may take additional partners because they have the resources to feed them. More partners means more children which means more soldiers and defenders for the homestead. Humans are only conditionally monogamous. Women also may select multiple partners, but the patterns don't predispose them as much to getting powerful and then into trouble.

Three Problems

The Fiction of Monogamy

The first problem is that our culture is based on a fiction of monogamy. Throughout history we've pretended to be monogamous, while understanding that the rich and powerful would make their own rules. I can't begin to go into the literature that describes this...there is extensive writing about the intricacies of the Victorian "Country Weekend" where the knowledgeable hostess needed to balance rooms between spouses and acknowledged mistresses. King Edward VII forced the Archbishop of Canterbury to sit next to his mistress Alice Keppel at table, and Queen Alexandra was on good terms with his former mistress Jennie Jerome, Lady Churchill.

But by and large we've been able to maintain the veneer that we're all monogamous on some level, even while there is a huge amount of literature documenting that we aren't.

For the first million years or so of human evolution the myth of monogamy probably played an important role. Just as one primate eating all the food is dangerous to the tribe, one primate having all the children is dangerous to the tribe. A general presumption of monogamy is tied to taking responsibility for the children you get. In many, probably most, primitive societies there were clear rules where successful males (and sometimes females) were allowed to have a larger number of sexual partners. That norm only vanished in the West in the last two millenia...and did not vanish at all in the Islamic, Chinese, and Hindu worlds. In the West, the wide acceptance of Christianity required several systematic areas of willful blindness in regards to making war and making love. The prevailing solution was some sort of "double standard" where powerful leaders were conditionally and quietly exempted from the normal rules of behavior.

Middle-Class ethics and the Double Standard

The second problem is that we've changed the double standard. In a lot of ways this is a very good thing. It is unfair that powerful men can cheat, while their wives are considered trollops if they do the same. There is nothing healthy about the media presentation that a man with many casual partners is sexually powerful, (James Bond is the classic model), while a woman with many casual parters is either emotionally damaged, or evil.

The real change came in the 1820s-50s when a vast pool of formerly lower class people pushed into the newly burgeoning "middle class." Up until that time "midddle class" meant a median class below the gentry, but was not the statistical norm. From 1820-1920, the middle class in the West became the majority of the population.

Unfortunately the ethics and morals of poor people are often more rigid than those of the wealthy. The reasons for this are entirely sensible. An Oil executive who throws away a hundred thousand on a lover doesn't cut into his wife's greens fees at the country club. A middle class couple can afford a custody battle and the sale of a house. But a laborer who trifles with another woman may be cutting close to the bone of subsistence for his family...his attempts to beget a new child endangering the one he has. Jealousy is the human tendency to want our partner to give us the benefit of their resources and not make us feel at risk those resources will go to someone else. Laborers cheat anyway, but it's important that the mechanisms of society discourage it, because it's dangerous. Puritanical ethics aren't borne of virtue, they're a rationalization of fear.

So...with the middle classes...came their morality. And the closer people are to the wire, the more their morality reflects fear. Look at a map of Red States and you'll see the rough distribution of non-urbanized poverty, and lower-income, in the United States. Blue States have an average income of $41,183, Red States of $34.202, a discrepancy of $6,981.

The New Media

The third problem, and the one that provokes crisis is that the new media has uncovered the double standard. In the well known film version of Choderlos de Laclos 18th century quasi-comedic novel Dangerous Liaisons the Vicomte de Valmont must go through a number of logistical and mechanical steps to steal and read the letters of a prospective partner in order to blackmail her. Now it's as simple as glancing at her phone when she's in the bathroom. Communication leaves records and cameras record everything, easily, whether we want them to or not.

In general this is a good thing. In the Middle East, it is breaking down longstanding repressive regimes, and crumbling an archconservative culture. But in the U.S. it may be facilitating the process whereby the Government of the entire nation is heavily influenced by "Red" America. And sadly the Democrats are contributing as much to this as the GOP.

To most of us in the socially liberal mainstream, sexting is at worst a fairly silly thing of no real regard and at most an issue you should take up with your wife. For that matter, choosing to be married, to have multiple partners, or not is one's own business. It may be juicy gossip, but it doesn't have much impact on our perceptions of management or political ability.

But because that's not how it's seen in the Red Heartland, we must invoke a second judgment. So while I don't personally have any issue with Weiner's weener...I have to also invoke that he had poor self control and showed poor political judgment.

And therein lies the issue

I feel free to have a wife, and three other partners in various relationships, as well as occasional partners, becuase I'm not a politician. And the double-standard has come full circuit. I expect Anthony Weiner to be more discreet than I am because he's an elected official.

There's nothing wrong with me being polyamorous but it's a death sentence for a politician in the way that being homosexual would have been in 1955. Eventually that dam is going to break and you're going to have a political couple that simply comes out and says "we know about this, we have dinners together, and it's none of your business." But that may be years down the road, because the common wisdom right now says it's an unrecoverable issue.

So, I'm judging Weiner not on what I think intelligent people, or even his own electorate would think but on what Red America would think of his behavior. Reputable Democrats who have better things to do than worry about sexting must now pretend they give a shit, and investigate whether or not he has broken any rules, in order to show that they are not in fact a party of radical sex maniacs.

And the Democrats have in some ways made things worse...

There is no question that the sexual hatchet job on Bill Clinton was an inexcusable. Forty Million dollars was spent on what was supposed to be an investigation into serious fiscal impropriety, but became a drive to "find some dirt at any cost," when a politically motivated lawsuit forced Clinton into either lying, or telling a tremendously destructive truth. His judgment in lying may have been poor but it was based on the old presumption of the double standard and status quo. The President is expected not to wave his affairs under the noses of the Press (as Kennedy was faulted for doing), and the public is expected not to spend millions of dollars in creating entrapments to find that Clinton got sucked off by his Secretary.

And that's the real problem.

Bill Clinton was a powerful and desirable man. He'd had sex with Miss America of 1982, Elizabeth Gracen. Since leaving office, he's reasonably believed to have had a longstanding affair with Belinda Stronach (one of the 100 most powerful women in the world according to Time Magazine) and appealing actress Gina Gershon.

So the most theoretically powerful man in the country was reduced to fellatio from a Secretary in a private kitchen, because the lack of privacy in his life made normal sexual conduct impossible.

That's not good. I get cranky if I have to go a couple weeks without normal sexual expression. Four years? Eight Years? A career?

The traditional Conservative assessment of Clinton is that he was not necessarily bad for the affair (at least that was the assessment after Henry Hyde and several of his other persecutors were shown to have their own sexual indiscretions) but for lying about it under oath.

Because presumably we think that a President who is willing to tell a lie to avoid a complete political diasaster is a bad thing. I wonder how far that assessment of the President's character is supposed to go. Should the President also begin the State of the Union Address "The United States is in an economic slump, there is no recovery in sight, and there is little I can do about it." Advise rogue nations that "We disapprove of your actions, but you can clearly see we're militarily overcommitted and unlikely to actually carry out punitive actions."

Obviously we don't want a President who is honest, we want a President who is a good politician. That doesn't mean being recklessly or maliciously dishonest. It means having a good appraisal of when telling the truth is a worse move than lying and acting accordingly. Clinton was forced into a gamble, and frankly with the existence of DNA evidence in the hands of someone other than Lewinsky, Starr got what we in poker would call a "bad beat" which is when a perfectly good playing hand is beaten by an unlikely last minute bluff. In political terms, it's as if Clinton decided to stand on A-A-J-J-J while Starr stood on J-10-8-7 and got a "9" in the River.

We don't want compulsive liars, but we want good gamblers whose ability to take reasonable risks isn't bound by rote or tradition. We don't want the modern equivalent of the Roman General who lost the battle by refusing to fight on the offensive because of a bad cock's innards. Julius Ceasar was known for winning fights by ignoring the auspices and doing what made strategic sense.

The Shift

Honestly things are already changing. One major reason for this is, oddly, Larry Flynt. Apalled by the politically motivated judicial attacks on Clinton, Hustler publisher Flynt offered a $1 million reward to anybody who could produce dirt on his opponents. In the process he brought down Robert Livingston (R-LA) the presumptive next Speaker of the House. Barr and Burton also both lost seats in the "free for all" sexual scandal.

And that probably represents the last time either major party will go on a publicly funded witch hunt along sexual lines. Statistically about 40% of the people seated in Congress are hiding an affair, and it is unlikely that the possible payoffs will lead to a gamble that has such potential for fallout.

The Press has also retained some dignity, the major news outlets generally refusing to give much traction to the alleged Obama / Vera Baker affair.

But there is still a willingness to embrace sex scandals. The process is cyclic. The Democrats viciously attack any Republican who is exposed in a sex scandal on the grounds of hypocrisy, and this has grown more frenzied and intense in the "payback" era after the Clinton Scandals.

And there isn't an "honesty" option. It's fine to say that Clinton "should have told the truth," but that's preposterous. For a person with multiple sex partners...with or without their spouse's consent (and that's always been up in the air with the Clintons)...admitting it is not allowable. The option is "be honest" or "have a political career." To suggest otherwise is to suggest that a gay man who served in high office in 1948 was "dishonest," because he was closeted, or lied about homosexuality. There is not a societal option for truth. And there needs to be.

The GOP feels stung and is more than happy to gangpile on the Democrats because they've been harsh about it, and so on.

In the end what needs to happen is that a few more men need to stand through these scandals and win re-election, like Clinton.

The Harm

The potential harm is that both parties will tend to see older, more conservative men as more desirable candidates, particularly for higher office. Moral and social conservatism creates the appearance of propriety and suggests that the candidate doesn't have damaging sexual baggage.

This may tend to have the advantage of making more profound hypocrites more viable as candidates. Clinton's problem is not that he was too hypocritical but that he wasn't hypocritical enough. He hadn't been especially careful to hide his early affairs.

Another tendency may be for both parties to favor older men. While Livingston resigned, Henry Hyde, the Legislator most responsible for steering the attack on Clinton was revealed to have had an affair as well. Hyde blithely dismissed the affair (at age 41) as a "youthful indiscretion" and at age 70 there was insufficient outrage to really pressure him.

In the end as long as sex scandals in the U.S. can gain significant traction, we'll be forced to limit our choices to men who have never been discovered, never erred, or never simply been honest. As modern society makes it harder and harder to conceal secrets, that may prove a dangerous restriction on who we can consider electable. And to that extent, the conservative Red States are doing a lot to dictate who can move to the forefront of the political spectrum.

This has led me to the interesting hope that Newt Gingrich shows reasonably well in the primaries or becomes a nominee. While I don't like Gingrich personally or politically, and don't want him as President, he is married to Callista Bisek with whom he had a six year affair that contributed to his political fall. If Gingrich can show nationally it creates the strong suggestion that even fairly blatant sexual indiscretion is not relevant to the political arena.

The Solution

I don't tend to write political or even social commentary very often, because in the wide sense, it doesn't make much difference. Social trends will happen and often the only point in documenting them is to say "see, I was smart, I noticed this."

That said, I'd put the ghost of a meme out to bloggers both liberal and conservative. Sex scandals serve neither party. And...Democrats...they serve you particularly badly so consider just giving it a miss the next time a noted Conservative is caught in the boy's room.

My voice won't change very much but other people in other places are doubtless having this idea and if I can circulate it into a dozen other minds and so forth...in time it will be one very small contribution to a sea change in how we think about sex and politics.

W.C. Fields was right...

I've always looked a little askance at Field's wisdom. Through most of his life he took little digs at the boredom of Philadelphia...the most famous being his proposed epitaph from a 1925 Vanity Fair. "Here lies W. C. Fields. I would rather be living in Philadelphia." Philly has been a fairly consistently charming city for me (you know who you are), so I questioned his judgment.

He also said "Never work with Children or Animals" and after this week at camp, I think he may be right.

I suppose Children aren't so bad. Camp Crucible is one of the few kink sites in the U.S. that welcomes ageplayers and has a strong, fun ageplay community. To a lot of more "straight laced" kinksters ageplay looks like pedophilia, and they're against it without examination. To anyone with a touch of compassion, you see a huge range of play...from people just trying to recapture a period when they had no responsibilities and were cared for, to those attempting to redefine their early sexualization, to those grappling very directly with thier own issues with incest or childhood abuse. Traditionally the kink Community is supportive of people getting into dark areas to grapple with thier own issues, but in this area we sometimes fall a little short.

Be that as it may, Camp Crucible has a vibrant community of "littles." And ribbing aside on the whole they're fun. Don't trust them with money, or sharp objects.

That leaves Animals, and therein lies a story.

For a long time, I've expressed that I'm really not a strong scene player. I do a lot of M/s a lot of D/s but when it comes to actual scenes, I'm sort of stymied. There are a lot of reasons for that. I see a lot of players who do the same scene over and over again. They bring the girl in, handcuff her to a cross, beat her with a flogger, finish with a Hitachi. That's not really thrilling to me. I want to fuck with her head, and do something *interesting*. The idea of sameness runs against my theatrical background.

In my own way I do some standard scenes. I like rough body play...punching, kicking, choking more than I like flogging.

But I envy those folks who can pull brilliant scenes out of their ass...or barring that...plan them months in advance. And it seems with a background in impromptu theatre and roleplay, I ought to be able to do that. And I have on a bedroom scale, but not on a Dungeon Scale.

For Camp Crucible this year, I decided it was going to be *different.* I thought about strengths in terms of what I enjoy...what is fun to me...what is visually appealing...and what would be shocking and a little off the beaten track.

I decided to do a period scene with roleplay. Everyone has their specialties, and there are plenty of people who can make a scene of turning a girl's back into a needle corset. I always believed in "stick to what you know" and a fun period roleplay scene would work well.

I have two partners and I had something totally...other...in mind for J. That may or may not ever get written about here...it was educational and personally intense. This scene was sculpted around M., and designed to play off her best qualities. She's okay with laughing a bit during a scene, likes roleplay, and has a pretty good tolerance for pain.

So...what would make a Victorian Medical Scene "pop." It wasn't as if nobody had ever used a violet wand, or a speculum in a scene. My immediate thought was "leeches!"

The first trick was to obtain leeches. We contacted the reputable Carolina Biological Supply Company which made us jump through a number of hoops. They wanted us to be a business, they wanted a TIN and paperwork. The funny thing is that all this precaution was worthless. Our Household is a business, and has all the necessary paperwork.

I understand that Carolina is probably worried about kids ordering leeches for pranks. Otherwise, it seems...debatably ethical to keep clean medical leeches out of the hands of the public on the grounds that they're medical, when the alternative is to go to any pond or bog and wait a few minutes with your foot in the mud. The only thing they're doing is supplying a clean version of something that can be found in any stagnant body of water.

Some friends who've worked with Leeches before recommended Niagra. We found them much more reasonable, presumably working from the sane point of view that very few people set out to buy leeches without having some knowledge of what to do with them.

The one issue with leechplay is that I was violating the "go with what you know" precept.

It's not that I'm unfamiliar with leeches. People asked me that. "Are you familiar with leeches?" My response was that I was very familiar with leeches, but not with clean medical leeches whose welfare and health I had a positive interest in. At one point it was my job to every few months rig a pump housing which pumped water to a filter. The water was pumped from near the surface of a pond which was fed by mountain springs, then filtered and chlorinated for drinking water. But rigging the housing required standing in foot-deep muck which would often produce a few...."hangers on."

I was familiar with detaching leeches from me.

So...we were going to do a leech scene. Another goal of the scene was to practice safe blood handling. There's this weird disjunction between the Kink world and the Normal world. In the normal world, when Miranda gets a cut, I slap a bandaid on it and go on my way. I don't really worry if I get a little of her blood on me, or vice-versa. But in the kink world there is a perfectly reasonably concern about handling any fluid as potentially contaminated with all the darkest diseases from hell, starting with Hep-C, and I understand and support this. I've been working on playing more with strangers and new people, and adapting my playstyle to people I'm not sort of "quasi-fluid-bonded" with is important. I'd been to a fluid handling class by Del presented by BR Education a few weeks back, and I wanted to be very aggressive about doing all the safe fluid handling things we'd learned in the class.

In the weeks beforehand, I learned a lot about leeches, mostly thanks to Pyrategrrl. She'd also referred me to Lady Greene who I spoke to onsite. This was useful, because the online sources for handling leeches in a Fetish context are...thin. I'm sure somebody will respond to this by linking me to the ultimate leechplay site, but I didn't find much and what I did was mostly some "rah rah" stuff put out by medical companies. Niagra's site had some good basic sense. I ran into a lot of sites that seemed to come through Google Translate or be cribbed from Niagra, with phrases such as "With 8 leeches the blutverlust for the patient is including to the Nachbluten with approx. 200 to 350 ml blood." While it's charming to know that the Germans actually have a word for "Blood loss" (and who is surprised) overall the page was less than clear.

I heard an amusing story about someone who had bought leeches, but didn't realize they needed treated water. They rushed out to the store to get water treatment, and told their partner "check on them to make sure they're alive." She refused, on the basis that "I'm not going to give it mouth to mouth or perform CPR if it's not." The leeches in question were fine...they're hardy and tolerate quite a bit.

The Leeches

I named the leeches Lenny (Leonard), Larry (Lawrence), Lenore, and Lorena. I printed out a little tag for their travel bottle. I'd thought I'd be clever and have them travel in a carafe that had a screw on lid. I didn't want to take a chance on transporting them in the glass display bowl and having it broken. I could leave plenty of air in the neck, and screw the lid on only when in transit. This worked swimmingly (no pun intended) at first. Then came time to transfer them to their bowl. Now leeches don't actually spend most of their time free-swimming. They mostly hang onto the side of the container with thier little suckers. I got the first one free swimming and knocked the other two loose. It had been suggested you could just slide them up the side of the container, but the carafe was too narrow for that. I was easily ten minutes getting the last one (Lorena) out and into the nice glass display bowl I'd brought.

Being myself, I provided personalities and commentary from the leeches from time to time. I suggested that because they lacked true brains, they were, as might be expected, birthers, and also that 9 out of 10 leeches supported Sarah Palin in the last election. On exit polls, 80% gave their reason as "warm blooded" and the other 20% responded "moose" which analysts are still trying to figure out. Periodically through the week I would voice ads for the leeches, typically starting with "Have you ever been in a car accident! Are you the victim of medical malpractice!"

I found that personalizing them and talking to them made them a bit less scary to Miranda, while also generally creeping out most other people I met, and causing them to doubt my sanity, which is always good.

A Man, A Plan

I started the scene with a little roleplay then got my "patient" strapped down on the table. I'd already decided that leeches would be the first element because they took a long time to feed.

I had a plan and it was a good one. I'd get them started feeding, then do the rest of the scene while waiting for them to drop off. I'd heard there could be a little pain and discomfort when they attach, but Miranda has done a hook pull, so I wasn't worried about a little pain from a leech. I knew they didn't hurt for long becuase I'd certainly never felt any of the leeches that attached to me. Leech saliva has an interesting analgesic property that has been described as morphine-like, and as of writing in the *Journal of European Medicine* and *Journal of Biochemistry* ten years ago wasn't fully understood.

But...it works, and I figured I'd do the rest of the scene with the leeches on, and that would make it theatrical and awesome.

No plan survives contact with the annelids...

The Set

I'd build a beautiful set. We'd gotten permission from the Dungeon crew to do bloodplay outside the designated medical area, as long as we brought our own tarps and floor coverings, and cleaned up well. I hung up a nicely printed victorian sign that said "Hysteria Clinic." I had three theatre scrims that I used to hang gold curtains to give a backdrop and a brass stand for the leechbowl, along with my usual collection of ancient and dubious looking medical instruments. There were some photos taken, but I don't have hands on them yet.

The Blood

The first problem came with my presumption that Miranda was a warm blooded mammal. This had seemed a pretty good bet, but once strapped to the table she behaved almost precisely like a five day old corpse...except for the part where she talked to me, which would have been more alarming were she in fact dead.

I'd just found my lancet gun, and not really planning this as a pain scene, I'd decided to use the gun to raise a few drops of blood. I'd used it before and it always raised a nice little globule...not too messy just enough to let the leeches know "here be dinner."

Four lancets later I had yet to raise so much as a tiny pinprick drop of blood. This was followed by skin staples, and a brief moment of comedy while I figured out how to use the remover. I'd been told how to use the remover, but there hadn't actually been one present the first time I used skin staples. It really only took a moment, and would have taken less time in brighter light.

Did I mention the light? So, all in all Camp Crucible was a great deal of fun, and the lack of restrictions on what you can do and how you can behave at outdoor/cabin festival events really outweighs a lot of the downsides. But...there is nature. And around the middle of the week the termites swarmed.

Termites aren't harmuful if you aren't made of wood. They don't bite, or even particularly care about you, and they're less trouble than mosquitoes. But they are attracted to bright light. And Camp was well lit. This means that anywhere there was really bright light there were swarms of termites...and they are kind of clumsy.

In the main dungeon it really wasn't too bad. There was a cloud...it's hard to describe how thick it was...swarming in front of the big halogens out front. Only a small swarm made it inside, and they were attracted to a series of lights strung across the dungeon, and as long as you didn't play under those you were fairly termite-free. But this meant we were conducting our scene in...subdued light.

In any case, I removed the staples...and...nothing.

I then tried with a standard sharp. This hurt a lot because I wasn't trying to be nice. I was trying to induce bleeding...and...

Nothing. Miranda was an onion.

I finally got a few tiny specks and hoped that the leeches would find them. This was followed by a few minutes of leech-wrangling. Again this really wasn't so bad, but it was less than expert. I tried with the glove, and the small forceps and decided I liked the rubber tipped forceps best. I got two on my first try, and tried getting them both on, but neither wanted to attach and they both kept struggling away, leaving me in one case to pull them off the floor. Miranda kept putting her arms down just as they fell off her chest, leaving me to fear they'd attach to her arm or armpit which would just be awkward and certainly not theatrical.

I had a brief moment of joy when the first leech attached...this was followed by...consternation.

The Pain

Now...let's remember, I'm a sadist. I don't mind putting people in pain. But I like that pain to be controlled and managable, and I like to be controlling it. This was leeches, and their miraculous analgesic effects didn't seem to be working.

I'd anticipated that they might sting. But...this is something that I'd had done to me without it hurting at all. Miranda was in shreiking, intense pain which she described as "like someone was poking me with a needle over and over again, in the same place."

The screams and wrenching against the straps were very pretty. I got her calmed a little and got the other leeches on. I felt bad about putting all four on her, but I knew I couldn't mix them once they'd fed, so they all needed to feed or it would be inconvenient for me to store them. And I am a sadist. And I also believed they'd stop hurting any moment now. I will say something about putting leeches on someone screaming in pain does bring out a bit of my inner monster.

But they continued to hurt. I managed to distract her a bit with the violet wand (she hates and fears electricity) and a cane, but really the leeches were stealing the show. They hurt and would break through whatever else I was doing, including hypnotic pain management.

Eventually she got up to go to the bathroom and after that they hurt less. I walked her to the bathroom and back to make sure any detached leeches were cleaned up, though there were none. I realized she had blood toys on her, but figured that they qualified as capped needles, being attached and close ended.

The Scene

The scene was basically "Miranda suffers with some leeches on her while I do a little other play." The leeches stole the show and submerged everything else. We did get some good pictures and it was certainly a taxing scene.

I had to deal with massive infrastructure cleanup. Also our order of Tegaderm hadn't come yet, so I was using some low end bandaids that weren't quite up to the leech wounds. Miranda did a good job of cleaning and bandaging herself. I went back for a few minutes to give her hugs and aftercare, then went back to break the scene down.

After Action Analysis

I have a whole rant on playing in a cold dungeon. I see tiny slips of girls that can play in 40 degree weather and still be fine, still cum, and fly around like Kylie Minogue in Moulin Rouge.

I do not know these people. I find that when I play with girls, if the temperature is low room temperature or below, they get cold, and when they get cold their pain tolerance goes out the window, and they have trouble cumming. This makes any scene involving actual bondage particularly problematic since that runs counter to the whole idea of keeping warm by keeping active.

Camp was hot the first four days then settled into lovely cool days that led into slightly chilly nights. It was getting chilly as I set the scene up (we had to run after the auction so about ten thirty to eleven to start) and while that calmed the termites down, it also made Miranda chilled.

Miranda was also a little scared. I know from my biology classes for hypnotherapy when you're anxious your body draws blood in from the surface of the skin and holds it around the organs in order to minimize bleeding if you get in a fight. It's an old instinct, older than primates.

And that leads to the other guess. My other surmise is that in order to work well, the analgesic found in leech saliva needs good circulation. Miranda was shut down like a bloodless corpse. The leeches couldn't find much blood and kept gnawing to get deeper or increase the flow. This made the pain worse which shut down circulation more. As circulation shut down, the analgesic was dispersed poorly or not at all.

And when we got her up to go to the bathroom, she moved a lot of blood and put things right. The leeches didn't hurt much after that.

Summary of "What I learned on my Summer Vacation"

• Leeches need dechlorinated water, like fish. They're okay in stagnant water so they don't need an air pump. Basically treat them like a betta. If you're keeping them, do a partial water change weekly or so, though they don't seem to manufacture as much filth as goldfish.

• Their bowl needs a breathable cloth cover secured with a rubber band (in the old days I imagine this was a double leather lace pulled tight). They can creep out of most anything else, but they don't gnaw through fabric. I used an unbleached cotton muslin that looked very 19th century, but also used a rubber band.

• Leeches are described as being shipped in a thermos, but mine came in a tupperware with some gobs of gel that I suspect had originally been a coolant of some kind. No water though there was moisture. Honestly I think they're pretty fucking hardy buggers.

• Don't mix hungry and fed leeches. Hirudo leeches are cannibalistic annelids, and unfed leeches will eat fed leeches.

• A full leech is a blood contaminated toy. Don't forget that. Even well after eating, leeches are going to have whatever was in the bloodstream of the person they fed on.

• They aren't reusable. Obviously they're fluid-bonded to the partner they sucked blood from. But you shouldn't re-use them on the same person either. Their environments aren't particularly sterile and as someone put it "you can't brush thier tiny little teeth." I've chosen to keep mine as pets, largely for the amusement factor. The Victorian Library at the manse seemed to need a leechbowl.

• Unlike the Audrey II, you don't have to feed them human. They'll eat bovine intestine with some blood wrapped in it, and one report says they can be fed by placing them on a blood soaked cloth. I'll experiment with that in 50-70 days.

• The suggestion for handling them was two layers of gloves. The idea is to keep them from smelling you and trying to attach. It isn't clear if anyone has determined whether or not they can bite through a layer of nitrile, but it's not unreasonable to assume they might. I used a heavy electrical glove I have.

• The recommendation was using plastic forceps. I got a pair of these, but also got metal rubber tipped forceps, and these were the best for handling them. http://www.regulation-london.com/attachments/images/product_large/rubber_tipped_forceps_v1.JPG . Apparently they are pretty tough.

• Generally it's recommended not to detach them before they finish feeding. Teeth or mouthparts can break off and contaminate the wound, etc. However it's also mentioned you can remove them with a thin object like the edge of a tablespoon, and in one case we did that. You really have to slide under them.

• It was suggested you can interest them more in certain areas by raising a little prick of blood. The theory seems sound, but the person has to bleed.

• They take between 20 minutes and two hours to feed. The usual time given is 20-40 minutes. We found they tended towards the high side of that under our conditions

• Warm the skin by rubbing it. Get the person warm and active with some basic exercise. Then apply leeches.

Conclusions

All in all, I'd probably use leeches again. I know a lot more about them now, and I'd bee much smoother and quicker at handling them. I believe I know how to limit their capacity to steal the show. It was a learning experience and all in all a pretty good scene but definitely reminded me that W.C. Fields was right....