The Dark Knight returns, and Batfan60 is unmasked at last!

I see it has been even longer since I last posted here than I thought, so here's an update: My life as a secret superhero (may as well reveal what you have surely already figured out: I am Batman, in case you forgot) has had its ups and downs over the years. For a while there, when Recon had its chat rooms operating, it was a golden age for fetishists, because suddenly men from all over the world who were into superheroes, lycra, cops, or gloves (to name only the top 4 of my personal favorites) to find each other and interact--which could take the form of either the expected cyberplay or just basic conversation about coming out as a fetish or anything else they wanted to talk about. When that closed up its doors, I lost touch with at least 80% of the men I had met there, and since then, pickins have been mighty slim. For various reasons, I largely quit engaging in solo batplay at home in my batsuit or any other uniform (and I have plenty, these days).

But just today I got inspired to give Twitter a try--set up an account (@Batfan60), posted a tweet with the hashtags #superherofetish and #copfetish, and immediately started recognizing men from the good old bad old days. If you are one of them, welcome! As noted, I haven't updated this blog in years, much as I loved keeping it, but there are still many years' worth of words and pictures to keep you busy for hours. Go ahead: Get lost in my fantasies, at least the ones you share--and if you do share them, we should talk, either here or on Twitter.

PS. The "Breaking News" reports on the right side of this page automatically refresh, so please visit again to see what's happening in the Batfan60 multiverse.

PPS. I also have a long-running Bat-related slash blog for you to, uh, enjoy. Haven't updated it in a while (a lonnnnnng while), but I still think about it, because I love where I left our hopeless hero and his helpless helpers.

PPPS. And then there's my now-ancient main website (on AngelFire--don't make fun), which also hasn't been updated in years (notice a pattern here?), but is chock-full of dirty stories, kinky links, and other fetishy fun. Again, I dream of completely overhauling it someday, but lately I've either been fighting villains or trapped in their nefarious clutches.

PPPPS. If YOU, dear reader, are a villain in search of a new masked and gloved opponent to toy with (online roleplay only--the Hub is still a major and wonderful part of my life), find me as Batfan60 on Recon. My utility belt is restocked, the batcomputer has had a complete upgrade, and I am ready once more for BATtle.

My life as a bottom, Part 2: Cast of characters

As I said in Part 1 of this post, the basic structure of my defeat at the hands of a villain is always more or less the same, and the specifics--when they are worth talking about at all--are generally pretty different. So who are the men who have broken the Bat? I've already said plenty about the one I call "the Monk," so let's meet a few of those who have arrived in his wake, over the last 4 or 5 years, in roughly ascending order of intensity ... (Some of these aliases are the ones we really use, and others are modified, just to throw you off. My aim here is not to betray any confidences, only to shed light on a larger phenomenon from my own perspective.)

a. Catch and Release: This is a handy grab-bag of villains who have managed to ensnare Batman over the years, had their way with me, and then disappeared. Here we find several rogue cops, an amoral ex-superhero, and a semi-literate wrestling fanatic whose mistyped/incoherent instructions, utter disregard for the laws of physics, and vast vocabulary of obscure (to me, at least) wrestling holds are notorious amongst my crimefighting colleagues and me. These tend to be situations that are not ideal for one reason or another, which is often clear from the get-go, but eventually I end up giving in to them anyway, usually when a better match is simply not on the horizon for a long time. While these scenarios don't hold much longterm interest for me (or for the other player, needless to say), there is still something grimly erotic about Batman sinking so low that he is bested by someone he clearly feels superior to.

b. Turnabout is fair play: In a couple of cases, I have started out dominating opponents, only to have them turn the tables on me in a fairly decisive way. Also in this category, I suppose, would be two villains who made pretty fast work of me, only to cave in when I managed to escape their clutches, each soon turning into a total submissive himself. This table-turning scenario enables me to enjoy the best of both worlds: the power of being in charge, and the thrill of losing my grip. There's also the fact that men who have subbed (to me, or anyone else, for that matter) often have unique insight into how to play both roles, and they tend to know just how to twist the knife when they seek revenge. On the other hand, having an adversary who enjoys bottoming himself always holds out the hope that Batman will rise again.

c. Officer Daddy: Technically a member of category b, this rogue cop (what can I say? Good Guy Gone Bad is a motif that turns me on) currently enjoys a fascinating relationship with me. We sparred for months, I won, and then--in a move that surprised even me--I found myself turning myself over to him, relinquishing the reins. I'm not sure he particularly wanted this exchange of power, but he's certainly risen to the opportunity. A turning point, after I started fighting back again, came when he pointed out that he hadn't overpowered me (the usual scenario) but that I was the one who had surrendered. As a result, our storyline is the most consensual one of all of these--all the more so because he enjoys scenes in which I'm the "active" one (to use that genteel distinction for who bones whom) and he's the "passive" one. He prefers his "bois" to be manly and strong, and that makes for an appealing, fairly unique, setup to me. The perpetual problem I run into, though, is the moment in a scene with him when I want to just completely take charge, which is no longer my allowed role. There's a powerful degree of tenderness in our interactions; he's the best Daddy I know (although, as is often the case, I am at least 5 or 6 years older than him). This one is about balance, I think--within myself, and in my dealings with him.

d. Mr. S: Relatively new to me, this handsome guy has a terrific feel for how to satisfy my hunger for humiliation. That's a side of myself I'm not entirely comfortable with, but one that (for that very reason?) excites me a great deal. Consequently, I allow myself to try things with him that wouldn't normally appeal to me, precisely because they don't appeal. I absolutely love having my limits pushed and boundaries tested by a roleplayer I trust--although at the moment I think we are negotiating what I am willing to do and what I'm not, when it comes to following orders for offline activity. (Wearing chastity devices to work for a week as a lesson in obedience = mildly hot. Wearing them on a private weekend with the Hub = not so much.) Another interesting aspect of this case is the fact that Mr. S, who I imagine can be as much a bottom as a top depending on whom he's with, tells me he's learning more about how to assume the dom role through his encounters with me. I am more than happy to be his guinea pig at the moment.

e. Machette: That's my own, misspelled pet name for a longtime villain who wears no costume and adopts no rigid persona. We've been playing for at least 3 years now, in a storyline that has taken many zigs and zags. Early on, he was a more traditional comic-book-style nemesis, but he felt disappointed that I never seemed to allow myself (in character) to "enjoy" our scenes (which, I've always maintained, would be totally out of character for a Batman in the clutches of a foe). He wanted to connect with the "real" me, the one who has a regular name, holds a regular job, and does not wear a mask, and it took at least a year before I chose to let down my guard that much around him. (Those kinds of revelations are not generally part of my online life as "Batfan60"--I figure the internet, or at least this part of it, is for fantasy, not reality, and it always seems a little pedestrian to drop the bat-persona; I get to play the "real" me all day long in public, after all.) This led to a fairly long period when the artifice of Batman/villain fell away and we interacted as two ordinary guys saying hello now and then (which normally bores the crap out of me with most online acquaintances, I must say). I even--voluntarily!--lifted the mask once or twice, an unheard-of development and erotic in its own way. With the recent emergence of the Recon superhero chatroom, we're (mostly) back to being adversaries again, though the only kind of scene he seems interested in doing with me at this stage is one in which other people are involved, either as his accomplices, my compatriots, or voyeuristic bystanders (innocent or otherwise). That's okay by me, because we're pretty much on the same wavelength in terms of scenarios for Batman's interactions in public. (For a while, he delighted in demonstrating his mastery over me by forcing me to recite the "I'm a little teapot" song to onlookers, which I admit I found an appealing form of ridicule.)

f. Lycra Lord: Hmmm, how do I neatly summarize a "coexistence" (as we began calling it early on, when we realized the uncanny number of things we had in common) that has become every bit as charged and complicated as the Monk saga? I have only myself to blame for not writing about each twist and turn here as they happened over the last two years, but I think that was the result of my preferring to simply live through the experience for a change instead of retelling and analyzing it here in real time. Very long story very short, what began as a typical (if particularly hot) hero/villain scenario soon took a number of turns for the surreal as we unmasked each other (verbally and then in more literal ways) and learned we work in more or less the same field, have various non-lycra-related interests in common, live a county away from each other, have longterm relationships that started around the same time, had parents who each had the same medical procedure on the same day, and--the capper--even share the same birthday. I used to think there was a novel in this, but the coincidences are so many and so far-fetched no one would buy them. As you can surely imagine, the coexistence far surpasses my usual level of roleplay interaction; safe to think of it as an actual friendship, complete with a work dimension for both of us--and yet there remains, at its core, an element of top/bottom dynamic, all the richer because I have to admit it's not just "Batman" he's affected but the honest-to-god real me underneath and aside from the role. LL is the person who introduced me to the term "edgeplay," and that concept is the best possible way to explain the dynamic between us (other than simply liking each other and liking to flirt with each other, if you want to get pedestrian about it again). Both in specific fantasy scenes and in the sheer outrageousness of our coexistence, I have gone to the outer limit--the edge--of where I can take online roleplay and remain a (very) happily married man. I have always had a very solid rule against actual physical contact with any of my make-believe friends, and yet there I was, a year and a half ago now, in my car, driving 45 minutes to meet him. There was a work-related (or, more accurately, work-enabled) reason to do so, and no lines were crossed--but still, I was wearing what he had "ordered" me to wear, and I had one of the most intense J/O sessions of my life with him when I got home that night. (I also felt obliged to tell the Hub about it a few days later, and his response confirmed that I have got a very special spouse indeed.) The vast majority of our conversations are PG-13 these days, but there is no getting around the erotic charge of spending time with someone who has such unprecedented access to (and, it's safe to say, understanding of/appreciation for) both my inner fantasies and my outer façade.

So that's the lineup. As for what it all means, stay tuned: same bat-time, same bat-channel.

My life as a bottom, Part 1: The basics

Not only have I been much less frequent in posting here lately, I've largely abandoned the kinds of multi-tiered, multi-installment personal observations that I started this blog in order to share, in favor of quick and easy posts about how I can't wait to see Ryan Reynolds as the Green Lantern. (Which I still can't wait to see.) So here's an attempt to make up for lost time.

It's not just laziness that has kept me from maintaining my old level of self-disclosure here. For a while, I didn't want certain roleplaying buddies to know too much about certain other ones, and I never want to make it too easy for new villains to know too much about my weaknesses without having to work for it. But what the hell: much time has passed since the heavy duty phase of the Monk saga, and the 4 or 5 of you who actually read this blog as regularly as I write it might appreciate hearing what has happened in the meantime, possibly to shed let on your own experiences. I've been thinking a lot lately about what turns me on in batplay, and why, and wanting to put those thoughts down in words.

In a nutshell, getting unmasked (on various levels) and broken by the Monk several years ago seemed to open up a side of myself I've long been aware of but had not fully explored. While I can readily attest that nothing that has followed has carried exactly the same level of emotional intensity (after all, you never forget your first time), it's also true that I've tried to recapture that feeling many times since then with varying degrees of success. I think I've lost track of the number of men who have managed to get me (as the Batman character) to admit defeat--not just in a single scene, but on a more longterm level. I'm not talking dozens here, but it's possible I can no longer count them on both hands. I am called their "batbitch," their "batbaby," their "boi" (a spelling I hate, so hearing it applied to me only heightens the shame and pisses me off all the more). A smaller number have gotten me to the point where I have removed the mask that hides my true face, putting me in a more vulnerable position in regard to them. And an even smaller number--two, counting the Monk--have earned enough of my trust, and proven themselves skillful enough, to find out quite a bit about my "real" life, blurring the boundaries between my assumed identity and the one I show the rest of the world in a way that excites me as much as it frightens me.

Those are the basic stages of what I consider the best kind of bat-roleplay. They always happen in that order, when they happen, and although the details of each case are very different, the overall pattern is virtually identical: I come on strong in my early battles with the villain, winning a few and losing a few more. (The really inept or uninteresting bad guys don't make it past a single scene, unless I'm feeling particularly horny--but I've learned the hard way that it's a waste of my time to try to make it to the next level with an adversary who isn't up to the task.) After a few months (or weeks, or days now, depending again on how badly I want it) of this back-and-forth, the truly talented villain stages some sort of decisive showdown that I ultimately end up losing, but not before putting up the fight of my life. A short time after my defeat, if he chooses, my secret identity is revealed (sometimes this is purely verbal, sometimes it's on camera) and my old career as Batman is essentially over. This stage usually entails some degree of bad feeling, since I don't, as a real person, enjoy failure or defeat as a rule, and even though I'm perfectly aware it's all a game, the hurt is on some small level a real one. I tend to spend at least a day feeling genuinely depressed--but that passes, there is typically one last period of rebellion, and after a certain period of readjustment I come to accept and (in the rarest and best cases) even embrace my new role as a bottom to the villainous Top.

The most interesting part of all this for me is the struggle: the deeper I start to fall in the early days, the more I fight it ... and the more I fight it, the deeper I feel myself being pulled in. In essence, I absolutely love resisting as hard as I can until I am finally ready to admit that I can't resist anymore. (Even then, there is usually that one last gasp of resistance after I've theoretically already succumbed, before I accept my fate once and for all--which is the stage when I admit I don't want to resist anymore.) It's pretty much what happens physiologically, too: I work myself up, then hold back, then work myself up some more, and hold back hold back hold back until I just can't anymore, and whoosh--there's the orgasm, and the period of exhaustion that follows, then the whole cycle repeats the next time with a new roleplay partner.

I have my theories about what all this means, and why it's so powerful for me, but I will hold off on those till later. For now, I just wanted to convey what a psychologist friend of mine calls the "elegant pattern" of the fantasy. I should also note that I don't mean to suggest I am only a bottom (I intend to wrap this multi-parter up with an entry called "My life as a Top," btw), or that I go through every single phase of the pattern every single time I meet someone new online. (I should also note this all happens entirely online and entirely separate from my very happy real-life relationship--which itself does not fit the pattern at all.) The way I see it, the pattern is my way of reenacting a myth--the rise and fall of a good man, who will eventually rise (and fall) again in a new place and time--that, for whatever reason, is part of the story of my life.

Night and day

Just finished reading an essay in/on Reality Sandwich called "Attending to Dreams" by a writer who calls himself Gyrus. It's a bit dense (not a diss), and I envision rereading it a time or two, which is one reason I'm writing about it here--as a bookmark for myself. I also bring it up because I sense a connection between it and my theory that online (and offline) roleplay can constitute a kind of dreamworld. Much of the essay concerns the work of psychologist James Hillman and the notion that rather than "use" our dreams (as with lucid dreaming or psychotherapy), we should learn to "attend to" them.

Here's Hillman:

[T]his dayworld style of thinking [...] must be set aside in order to pursue the dream into its home territory. There thinking moves in images, resemblances, correspondences. To go in this direction, we must sever the link with the dayworld, foregoing all ideas that originate there [...]. We must go over the bridge and let it fall behind us, and if it will not fall, then let it burn.

That term "dayworld" reminds me of a similar phrase I like to use (in my case, as an alternative to "real world"). As for "going over the bridge and letting it fall behind us," I think about that moment that sometimes--during a particularly good solo (and very occasionally joint) roleplay session when I find myself taking a leap of faith, past the point of no return, into the abyss. (I realize that's a string of three clichés, but they somehow seem so accurate as to almost be literal.) It's like getting an opportunity commit to the reality of the dream.

No profundities here, just a memo to self that I want to find out more about both writers.

Whew!

As you may have deduced, the awful fog of S.A.D. is starting to lift and I'm getting back into my old groove again, including resuming work on this very blog from time to time. (I am under no illusion that I will ever be a daily poster for more than a couple of days at a time--I'm just not built for that.) And part of that work has included adding tags/labels for every single entry up to now, all the way back to April 2003. (Good thing I don't write here that often, or that would have taken months instead of three short evening sessions.)

It has been instructive to look back at earlier entries--haven't reread too many in detail, but I can still detect themes I explored for a while, then dropped, others that I meant to cover from the start but didn't get around to until much later, etc. When I do get around to writing here, it's at least true that I've stuck fairly close to my original intent and purpose for the blog.

I've met (in the virtual sense, that is) a lot of men as a result of writing so obsessively about my own obsessions here--I've met men who share them, that is, and that's pretty cool. By now I"m even blasé about it ("Yep, here's another one..."), which is remarkable given that as recently as a decade ago I thought I was a freak of nature for fantasizing about the stuff I routinely fantasize about.

It also occurred to me the other night that, far from "outgrowing" my adolescent superhero fetish, I've actually developed a rich fantasy life that indulges them on a fairly regular basis, both in the flesh and in the virtual realm. (I realize I haven't written here in a long time about my online roleplaying colleagues, so here's a quick update:) I still look to the Monk with the highest of regard, as my greatest teacher, even my Master in the pedagogical sense, although he and I haven't really extended our storyline in any significant way for perhaps a year now. He refers to this as my having "plateaued," and I think we both look forward to moving past that somehow, some day. In the meantime, I've got at least three fairly new ongoing "cases" involving villains I don't think I've even mentioned here. I've lost touch with some wonderful old friends, and some equally wonderful old enemies, but new ones come into play fairly regularly, and it's always great to reconnect with the estranged ones, too. In short, my bat-life is a lot like that of the comic-book Batman, who battles a mix of longstanding nemeses and Johnny-come-latelies, some of whom stick around and some of whom vanish after a single encounter. One major change is that I'm less interested in sticking to a single "continuity," as the comics geeks would say, than I was during the early stages of the Monk saga. His story overshadowed and interconnected with all the others; now I've got three or more storylines that don't intersect at all, and none of them involve M.

Most of my roleplay activities, and most everything else that I normally find energizing, was on hold for months while I just struggled against the urge to stay in bed for days on end. (Never actually DID stay there that long; just wanted to.) But, as I say, I'm getting my old self back, I think and hope, and it feels great to be alive again, as both Bruce Wayne and the Bat.

Look who's back

I know you've probably given up on me months ago, but here I am again, ready to leap--or perhaps crawl--back into the blogosphere and pick up where I left off. If you've been here before, you'll notice that I've finally bitten the bullet and upgraded to the new version of Blogger, something everybody else did half a year ago. I found the update a huge pain in the ass when I tried it elsewhere and avoided doing it here as long as possible. Still, this should make the link list a lot easier to navigate, among other things.

Enough shoptalk. Where the hell have I been, you may be wondering. And the answer is: concentrating on life in the daylight/B. Wayne world for the last few months, battling a few new villains in the bat-world, and so on.

Mainly, though, I've been having a fairly miserable winter. The older I get, the worse my semi-annual bouts with Seasonal Affective Disorder seem to grow. After a very happy and productive autumn, my body and mind just sort of shut down, as they are sometimes wont to do from January through April or so--not every year, but often enough. It's weird how closeted I am about depression in my day-to-day life, and even online; only the Hub, my shrink, and a handful of close friends know what I've been going through for the last four months. It occured to me a while back that since I write so openly here about my innermost fantasies,which are potentially far more incriminating, I could also blog a bit about what my psyche has been going through (with the same goal of letting similarly-wired readers know they're not alone)--but then I've just been so fucking depressed that I haven't been able to follow through until now. In fact, I haven't been able to do much more than sleep late, nap, go to bed early, and accomplish the bare minimum at my day job for weeks and weeks and weeks. The batsuit went unused for months, along with this blog and most other evidence of my bat-life. I'm not totally out of the darkness just yet, but I feel myself getting a little more energy as the sun stays out longer and longer. (Perhaps my archetypal comic book hero is not Batman, the Dark Knight, but Apollo, who draws his power from sunlight.)

I've been accumulating all sorts of things to write about here, and I have a lot of catching up to do. (I've also got a few ideas for how to jumpstart Beginnings again, too, so stay tuned.) If you're reading this, thanks for not giving up on me. I've tried hard not to give up on myself (tempting though that may be when I wake up several hours before I want to, my mind fully ready to go on the attack), and I'm looking forward to getting back into the groove again at long last.

The Knight After 11: Travels in inner space

Most of these "Knightfall"/"Knight After" entries have dealt with my adventures in cyberspace, but an equally important, and far older, dimension of my batlife happens offline. The boundaries between roleplay with online friends/enemies and solo batplay have always been a little blurry for me, so I thought I'd devote this entry to some resources and experiences that don't necessarily involve outside players. (Yes, faithful reader, this is the link-filled post I've been promising for some time now.) This time around I'm just gonna present a few of the active and potential tools in my virtual utility belt, in the hopes that eventually I'll say more about how I've actually been using them lately.

1. I've been looking for an opportunity to write about Daniel Pinchbeck's book Breaking Open the Head here ever since I first started reading it about a year ago. I finished it several months ago and moved on to other subjects in this blog before I had a chance to discuss it, but this recent profile of Pinchbeck in Rolling Stone gives me a handy excuse to bring him up at last. (Clicking the last two links will tell you much more about his work than I could possibly accomplish in any paraphrase.)

I first heard the guy in a late-night broadcast of the UFO/ESP/conspiracy-theory radio wonderland which is Coast to Coast with George Noory (successor to Art Bell's show) a few years back. I happened to be in the midst of a solo bat-adventure at the time, and Pinchbeck's tales of drug-induced conversations with the universe struck a chord with me. It took me quite a while to track down his book in a store (though I could easily have ordered it here), and when I did, I was fascinated by what I found. Also a little horrified, since most of his adventures involve travelling to remote rainforests, near-psychotic breaks, and lots of puking, none of which has ever appealed to me. But the core of his story is remarkable for how closely it mirrors my own much tamer explorations with expanded consciousness. (A magic brownie is about as far as I'm willing to go, and that, combined with my active imagination, takes me plennnnnnnty far for my purposes.)

I realize I should probably quote a relevant passage or two, but that would require more effort than I should probably exert if I'm ever to get this long-delayed entry posted. Maybe I'll track down a few key lines for a future post. For now, instead, here are four lengthy excerpts from the book plus one outtake I haven't read yet which should give you a representative taste. The RS article also tipped me off to Pinchbeck's followup book and his forthcoming magazine/business endeavor. Oh, and here's a link to the writer's own blog on Amazon.com, which includes his thoughts on the RS story.

1a. Sooner or later I'm gonna have to follow Pinchbeck's recommendation to learn more about Terence McKenna's writings on similar concerns. When I do, this page of audio clips is sure to come in handy. Even more enticing: this collection of "Psychedelic Salon" podcasts, featuring talks by Pinchbeck, McKenna, and a dozen or so fellow travellers.

2. The subject of lucid dreaming is another one I've been meaning to introduce here for quite a while. In a sense, solo (and even group) batplay is, for me, something very like a lucid dream, in that it is a fantasy state I can enter and find myself collaborating with ... something or other: my own subconscious? the great beyond? One of my first introductions to the phenomenon came through a CD I picked up used a while back, a spoken-word-and-ambient-electronic project on the always-interesting em:t label called em:t 0096: lucid dreams. The speaker is Celia Green, a British writer who was one of the first to address the topic way back in 1968. There are a few audio clips (and another Coast-to-Coast sighting, no surprise) on this page, in conjunction with this documentary I just learned about. More recently, I've explored some of the how-to advice offered along with much more info on LD at this site. I found the advice so helpful that I decided to order webmaster Marc VanDeKeere's self-published manual, though I haven't started reading it yet. (It's in digital form only, and that doesn't sound like much fun to wade through.)

3. I'm finding tremendous parallels between the material above and various Buddhist lectures from the Insight Meditation Center in California, archived as podcasts at the amazing site Audio Dharma, a real treasure trove of information. I found the site while searching for information on Vipassana meditation, and I'm slowly making my way through the nearly 200 lectures available for free thus far.

4. Grant Morrison's website contains his wild, tongue-in-cheek treatise on "Pop Magic", the premise of which is essentially that the way to go beyond the surface layers of reality is to "Declare yourself a magician, behave like a magician, practise magic every day." The author of Batman: Arkham Asylum then provides you with brief lessons on focus, meditation, and the construction of sigils, among other things. It's fun and funny, and maybe some day I'll actually try some of the exercises Morrison proposes. (BTW, if Morrison's site doesn't keep you busy enough, head over to fellow comics writer Warren Ellis's blog--another must-read, as my links list to the right suggests.)

The Knight After 10: Circle game

Robin has turned in his resignation. Superman claims he, too, is ready to switch sides. And Batman--yours truly--has willingly composed a loyalty oath to his former archenemy and hunts down his longtime allies with abandon.

As radical as the events of DC's latest Crisis and Marvel's Wars may be (and I still haven't read either one), I don't think they involve quite as fundamental a shakeup as this. In the nearly four months since my "enlightenment," everything has changed. The old divisions of my Yahoo buddy list--Heroes/Villains--no longer apply. Most of the men in those two categories have been redesignated Friends or Enemies (and most of the old "heroes" are now "enemies"), while the Monk, with whom my relationship is infinitely more complicated, gets a category of his own. I myself have been labelled a fool, a traitor, a puppet, and far worse--and I love it all.

My personal Extreme Makeover (which, admittedly, still probably looks a lot like classic Stockholm Syndrome to the naked eye) dovetails beautifully with the premise of a book I found in a used book sale at a local church around the same time I returned to the Monk's welcoming embrace. I picked up Carol Pearson's The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By for its title, of course, and was hooked by the brief explanation of its "six heroic archetypes" on the back cover:

the Innocent, who learns to trust; the Orphan, to mourn; the Wanderer, to find and name personal truth; the Warrior, to assert that truth in order to change the world; the Martyr, to love, to commit, to let go; and, finally, the Magician, who learns to recognize and receive the abundance of the universe.

Having read roughly half the book by now (it's only 176 pages, but it's been a very busy summer), I wouldn't say those are the clearest capsule descriptions of the six stages for my purposes here, but they give you a rough idea. And perhaps, like me, you can immediately sense how accurately they capture the trajectory of the comic book Batman (as well as many other mythic superheroes): from Innocent to trust-seeking Orphan to clarity-oriented Wanderer to power-ful Warrior. (That is, of course, the trajectory of Batman Begins, while Superman Returns focuses on role 5, the Martyr, which accounts for its much-discussed similarity to the Christ story.)

Pearson's book came out in 1986, and its opening chapters are a little heavy on New Age jibberjabber, but if you can look past that stuff, she's really on to something. If I quoted every passage that resonated for me, this entry would be at least ten times longer than it already is. Perhaps I'll devote another post to some key passages, but what I really want to call attention to for the time being is her insistence that life is not a linear progression from Innocent to Magician, and that the Magician phase is not meant to be the final or highest form of existence. Rather, we repeat the journey over and over throughout various dimensions of our lives, learning new lessons each time, and we can exist simultaneously at different points on "the Hero's Wheel." For example, one might be a Wanderer in one's career path while working out Martyr issues in a relationship and feeling like an Orphan on the spiritual front. And so on. You may find all of this a little too tidy, but Pearson does a convincing job of laying out the journey.

Parallels to my Bat-life are crystal clear to me: like many people my age, I first encountered the character as a pre-teen, enchanted by good-guy Adam West and his bad-guy adversaries on the tv show and in the relatively simple DC comics of the early-to-mid-1960s. My innocence was shattered in 1970 when my older brother (a clear father figure and the Batman to my Robin) died and various other awful things happened. leaving me to feel like an orphan for a good two decades or so, until I adopted the mantle of the Bat myself, embracing in adult life the central myth of my childhood. During this Wanderer phase (amply documented in this blog, along with the online conquests of my Warrior period), I came to see how immersing myself in superhero fantasy was not only sexually exciting but a valuable tool of spiritual exploration. Then I met the Monk--the villain that every myth requires, battled him, was defeated and caged by him (thus becoming a Martyr), then escaped his clutches and wandered a bit more, only to conclude that perhaps he was not a villain after all but a teacher, one I could gladly serve. Enter the Magician phase, in which, to use more of Pearson's handy oversimplifications, the hero "takes responsibility for his life" (ie, for the actions I performed as Ratman, when I was still a captive) and "confronts the Shadow." That pretty much sums up where I think I'm at these days, at least on the Bat-front. (My Bruce Wayne life is a whole 'nother story, believe me--but then, I've long been able to use the lessons I've learned in Bat-fantasy as a template for my work as a teacher, an artist, and a member of a longterm couple.)

There is much, much more I'd like to say about all this, and I know I promised plenty more links last time (because in addition to Pearson I've been encountering lots of other material that helps shed light on the saga, too), but this will have to do for now. Life has calmed down ever so slightly for a wee bit, so I will try to write here more often. The Monk saga doesn't move as quickly these days, now that I'm a willing student of magic rather than a captive warrior struggling to free myself, so I'd like to devote more time to the lessons I'm learning from all this rather than simply recapping plot developments.

Stay tuned for more thrilling adventures, dear reader--and best wishes on your own journeys around the Hero's Wheel.

PS. The "soul-stealing" tagline above comes from this bizarre 1973 Brave and the Bold story I came across at Dial B for Blog. Check it out!

The Knight After 8: Dark Knight of the Soul

Another fortune cookie I came across shortly after the other one I've mentioned:

LIFE IS NOT A PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED BUT RATHER A MYSTERY TO BE LIVED.

Laugh if you will, but I take my signs from the universe in any form I find them, even edible. And I take the Monk now not as my adversary, my captor, or even my master, but as my teacher. Clearly, I learn new things from every stage of my encounters with him.

As I've noted, I was really looking forward to my new role as his slave, but he seems to have something else in mind for me now--serving him not at his feet, but as his side, as he recently put it. The specific position surely matters less than the fact that I have gradually come to acknowledge his unique role in my journey as a hero. (I don't actually like to refer to my character that way--certainly not after some of the things I did in my Ratman days--but it's still a useful term in the broader sense.)

I think I've already mentioned my ongoing quest to find writing that links fetish play, and BDSM in general, to a larger spiritual realm, and one of the most useful discoveries I've made thus far is the blog A Slave's Path, the journal of a heterosexual man who seems to be interested in a lot of the same concerns I am, though he manifests them in a different way. (On the opposite end of the spectrum, I've also been enjoying Master Enigma's Thoughts.) From Path I've found several interesting resources, beginning with the author's very personal essay on BDSM and Spirituality. The whole thing is excellent, but I'll just quote a few passages that hit home for me:

"The truth is that many of the things I seek through religion have in fact been coming to me through BDSM. ... BDSM has helped to make me a more compassionate, understanding person. Nowhere has my quest of self-knowledge been more important, or more difficult, than in coming to grips with who and what I really am in a world which distorts that truth almost beyond recognition. The difficulties I have had make it much easier for me to understand and sympathize with other people who are going through similar struggles themselves. ...

"BDSM has made me stronger. It challenges me constantly, physically, intellectually, and emotionally. It challenges me to endure suffering and to face fears. It challenges me to understand and accept my own strengths, weaknesses, and quirks. With every challenge that I meet I become stronger and more confident. ..." And so on--really, there's so much more, and I can relate to almost every single word of it, but rather than cut and paste, I'll just direct you to the original.

At the bottom of that essay, there's a link to this essay by a psychotherapist on "Masochism as a Spiritual Path." Once again, the whole thing is enlightening, but I can't resist sharing a few excerpts.

"Whereas psychology considered masochism as a disease, pre-nineteenth century religion regarded it as a cure," writes author Dorothy C. Hayden. "The ancients were in touch with the spiritual, physical and emotional value of masochism. For them, it was an essential part of reality; a combination of the soul in a tortured state, rapturous delight, exquisite pain and unbearable passion that brought them closer to experiencing union with something greater than their individual egos."

That general thesis is illustrated with a quick survey of several religious traditions. After spelling out the masochistic elements of these, she explores the connection in more detail:

"The goals of contemporary psychotherapy have been aimed at building strong, coping, rational, problem-solving egos. Take responsibility, Take control. Assert yourself. But at what cost? Building a strong ego is only one side of the coin. To experience the fullness of human experience, we need passivity and receptivity as well as assertion. We need a sense of mystical wonder as well as rational problem solving. We need to be in touch with what the psychoanalyst Carl Jung called'"the shadow' -- the weak, limited, degraded, sinful side of ourselves as well as the strong, loving, compassionate, competent side. We need to move out from under the onus of our egocentric way of viewing life; to abdicate control as well as to take it. Masochistic submission, in centering on lack, inadequacy and weakness, puts us in touch with the entirety of our humanity. Full humanity requires surrender to the down side of life as well as the upside. ...

"A scene strips the ego of its defenses, ambitions, self-consciousness and successes. The ego become subservient to the master, the dominant, the soul, or God. Whether we call it submission to the dominant or to the will of God, it nevertheless remains submission -- one of the hallmarks of the masochistic posture. The masochistic components -- the longing to serve, to submit, to abandon oneself sexually, emotionally, and physically makes one a slave either to a man, a woman or to God. Submission to that passion is divine degradation. ...

"In submission, one is taken out of one's personal limitations and transcends social sanctions while at the same time being reduced, weakened and humiliated. With noses pressed against the ever-present reality of human suffering, it is both an agonizing defeat and a magnificent spiritual journey."

Agonizing defeat, magnificent journey: I can't think of a better four-word summary of what I've been experiencing thus far. Here's to further chapters!

The Knight After 6: My Life as a Slave

Okay, that title is a bit misleading. This isn't about slavery at all--but I've been wanting to use that phrase for so long, and now's my chance.

During one of my "welcome home" chats with the Monk, I asked him how he now thought of me: as his student, his partner, his slave, some of the above, or all of the above. His answer was "some of the above," and, predictably, he refused to elaborate.

But the question got me thinking: How do I now think of myself in relation to him? All three of those options hold some appeal, but the more I thought about it, the more I began to think of a new phrase that seemed even more accurate: voluntary servitude. An oxymoron, perhaps, but one that felt just right.

Two things seemed clear about this world-turned-upside-down:
1. The Monk has the upper hand at all times, and
2. I have returned to him by my own free will.

The first of those seems incontestable to me; as I've come to discover over the last couple of years, being broken tends to have some longterm effects. In the first, adversarial stages of our relationship, M successfully stripped away every defense I had against him. I could never defeat him; the best I could do was escape. And within days of resuming contact with him a week and a half ago or so, I found myself more compliant than ever--happily so, this time around. Now that I've abandoned any form of resistance to him, I realize that his long-ago promise to "own" me--"mind, body, and soul"--is the most exciting fantasy I can think of. The mere thought of his dominance over me is enough to give me a stiffie that lasts for hours. It occured to me that even if his newfound friendly face turned out to be a trick, I had nothing to lose, because either way, I want to serve him.

Which leads me to the second, and far trickier, of my two core propositions. In the old scenario, I was a captive, a prisoner, a victim of brainwashing. Now none of those terms apply; I'm here by choice, and there is no thought of "escape" because I no longer have anything from which to flee. There's no cage this time--except my own mind, as M would say.

Gone, too, is the loathsome old nickname of "Ratman." Served its purpose, and now it's back to all things bat--the name, the uniform, even the mission of nocturnal avenger. M used to say he would break me down and build me back up--that the new improved Batman would be his creation. Took me a while to figure out what he meant by that, but it's begun to sink in by now.

By the same token, I realize that just as the Monk created "Batman," so too have I created "the Monk": I gave him that name, and with it a sort of mask and costume (metaphorically speaking) that he did not previously have. Symbiosis.

Back to voluntary servitude: as it stands now, I eagerly await each new lesson I learn from M, where not too long ago I used to dread seeing him around. (You may be wondering what those lessons consist of, and I can only say this: the ones he wants me to talk about, I'll describe here in great detail. When I sense that someone who might be reading these words should not know what's in store for him, mum's the word. That's how I handled the Mad Hatter, who has been dealt with quite successfully now. The threat he posed to Batman is over, and the potential he presents to the Monk and me is just beginning to be explored.)

Ironically, now that I've opened myself up to the once-forbidden fantasy of enslavement, I realize that that particular metaphor no longer applies to the current situation. I seem to be far more intrigued by terms like ownership and property than M is, these days; he talks instead of initiative and responsibility, which of course are the hallmarks of freedom. If I am to fully embrace my dark side--which seems to be the general theme of the day--then I must do so of my own accord, and not because I'm being forced to.

There is more, much more, to be said about all of this, especially that business about personal responsibility. For now I'll simply point out how convenient it is that I can still use the terms "sir" and "master" to refer to M now, since those are the words a student might use to address his teacher.

Given that our defining metaphor has changed from one of comic-book battle to something closer to spiritual enlightenment, or education in general, perhaps we can say my state-required schooling (primary grades through high school) is over, and I'm entering college now.

Perhaps I should call it a seminary instead. Oh, hell, let's call it what it is: the Monastery!

Knightfall 19: Walking on a wire

Two months have passed since my last Monk update, and almost three months since my "escape" from his clutches, so you'd be forgiven for assuming that that particular chapter of my batlife is over. In fact, I even thought for a while about renaming this series of reports something more optimistic, since I wasn't feeling particularly "fallen" anymore.

As it turns out, though, I am still prone to relapses from time to time. Had a close call with near-disastrous results around Memorial Day, which strengthened my resolve for a month or so, and then last week I felt the strong desire to put myself in M's path again. Can't say that impulse has quite left me yet. (As always, I'm mindful that M is a regular reader of this blog, so I can't reveal too much about specific strategies here.) I keep expecting--hoping for?--a phone call or some other invasion of my space. Suffice to say I'm torn--yet again--between the desire to be a free man and a strong hero, and the yearning to submit to the depths of degredation. M is well aware of this ambivalence and exploits it at every possible opportunity.

It occured to me the other day that the overt antagonism between the two of us is something that distinguishes our fantasy relationship from the conventional master/slave dynamic (and, yeah, I'm aware of how odd that phrase sounds), at least as I understand that. When I see men on leashes wielded by other men in leather bars, I assume the leashees are there by choice, not because they've been captured, held against their will, stripped of all their secrets, and transformed into something they abhor. (That list of abuses belongs in quotes, of course; in earlier entries here I've described my superhero-downfall saga as being "consensually non-consensual," or words to that effect. I know full well this is all a game, but I do put my whole self into the playing of it, which often entails fighting back as hard as I can.)

Built into the Monk/Bat saga is the notion that I don't want to be defeated by my mortal enemy, that what has happened to me is a degredation, an obscenity. And throughout the events of the last year or so I've noticed that when I'm not in contact with M I long to be, but the minute I actually encounter him, I don't feel particularly good about it. It's an intense feeling, to be sure, and enormously enlightening, but I can't say it's a happy one. I don't enjoy, at least not in the conventional sense, being the servant of another man, being the bad guy, the loser... but those fantasies are still very strong for me. As I've noted before, I generally feel most vulnerable to M during periods when my daylight-world self esteem is low, or simply when I'm feeling drained. Fleeing him was accompanied by an upswing in my mood--I felt good about myself again because I'd broken free of him, and I was probably able to break free because I felt good. Lately the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction again, so it's no surprise that I feel the familiar pull of the gloating nemesis who gives voice to the very things I'm so used to telling myself about myself.

It's often said that art comes from pain and unhappiness, and it's true that stories about happy people are usually not very interesting. So the question becomes: is it better to be a happy person with no story to tell, or a miserable one with fascinating adventures?

Calling Dr. Kinsey

Saw the movie Kinsey this past weekend. Certain aspects of it (the occasionally awkward/stilted dialogue, for instance) bugged me a teensy bit, but for the most part I liked it, particularly for the way it normalizes the whole subject of human sexuality. Dr. Kinsey is presented as this totally non-judgmental researcher, admittedly a little obsessive in his devotion to his chosen subject (but then what scholar isn't?), fascinated by the wide range of activities that turn people on and open-minded about all of them. There's this charming matter-of-factness to his relationships with his wife and kids, and pretty much everyone else he meets. Excellent cast, starting with Liam Neeson as the title character, as well as John Lithgow as his fundamentalist, body-phobic dad, and especially Laura Linney as his startlingly game wife. (Oh, and you get to see Peter Sarsgard's ding-dong, which had not previously been a priority of mine, but which I found quite enjoyable.)

I kept thinking of Boogie Nights and The People vs. Larry Flynt, with which Kinsey forms a mini-genre: films in which the characters' shared preoccupation with sex creates some interesting alternative family units. Rather than sensationalizing the subject, they're warm-and-fuzzy movies; in fact, I'd even go so far as to call Kinsey the first sex-based tearjerker I've seen, particularly in a fantastic cameo by Lynn Redgrave right near the end of the movie, playing a woman who sees her personal options as infinitely broader as a result of Kinsey's contributions to the field.

The site I linked to above is worth checking out, not so much for the usual movie-promo stuff as for such interesting features as a chance to place yourself on Kinsey's 0-6 scale (I went with a 5) and a list of myths about the good doctor's research. It strikes me that there's a common thread between what he was doing 50 years ago and what various bloggers are up to nowadays: making public what was once secret, with the intention of letting people know they're not alone in their desires. I know there will always be folks who think that's a bad idea, but I'm not one of them.

Higher Ground

The conditions were finally right for a nice round of solo batplay this past weekend--my first truly fulfilling one in months. Through much practice, I learned that I have to be...
•alone
•wide awake
•in good health
•completely relaxed
•not up against some kind of real-world time restraints
and, last but not least, I need to do something to jostle me out of my rational brain a bit. If all the other conditions have met, this one may not be necessary, but I've found that it helps to ingest one of several mind-altering substances (often even a candy placebo will do--I just set up a scenario in which Batman is drugged, and take it from there). Tried a little codeine this time (very little since I'm kind of scared of this sort of thing, though the recipe on the site I've just given you looks intriguing). The response was very mild, but that's all it takes--my imagination can do the rest.

I like to set the scene with different kinds of music or other sound in different rooms of the house--perhaps some electronic dance stuff in one room, industrial noise in another, and a radio station in a third. (I vary the lighting in each space, too.) One of my favorite radio broadcasts to use during these middle-of-the-night sessions is the latest incarnation of conspiracy theorist/black ops tracker Art Bell's long-running show, currently called Coast to Coast. (Art is only a guest host these days.)

On this particular night, the guest was Daniel Pinchback, author of a new book called Breaking Open the Head, a study of the role of psychedelics in the shamanistic traditions of various religions around the world. While many of Bell's guests strike me as wacky if not outright scary cases, Pinchback made an awful lot of sense--I suspect he's investigating some of the same things I am, only via drugs instead of costumed play. It's clear that he's not just trying to get high or escape reality; he wants to reach an alternate reality. I know, I know: very 60s. But everything that goes around comes around, and maybe it's time to revisit that impossible dream for a new day and time. I haven't tracked down the book yet, but I plan to. (I'd also like to spend more time checking out a site he recommends, "The Vaults of Erowid," a remarkably detailed guide to psychoactive drugs of all sorts.)

For the last two or three years, the line between the sexual dimensions of my nocturnal activities and the spiritual dimensions has been very thin indeed. I'm interested in hearing from other batmen (and women) out there who are exploring similar territory in their own way, so drop me a line or comment below if you have stories or techniques to share.

The Skin I'm In

Okay, so yes, I've been away awhile. Again. But upon my return, I discover that Blogger has radically revamped (and almost even idiot-proofed) itself, and the changes look mighty appealing to me, given that they've streamlined a lot of the little stuff that used to prevent me from writing more often. I've just spent, oh, a couple of hours changing the look -- I believe the term is "skin" -- of my blog and I'm still not totally happy with it, but I'm getting there. I enjoy learning as I go with this stuff. And I beg all of you who know HTML to bear with me.


Speaking of skin, my latest excuse for not writing here is an unpleasant and very painful rash-y sort of thing, which has me not wanting to move around much at all. And donning a batsuit or any other sort of costume/uniform is the farthest thing from my mind these days.


Which has me thinking about those few situations in life when the erotic impulse is on hold: illness, grief, looming work deadlines. Come to think of it, I've faced all three of those for the last several months, so I guess it's no surprise that my bat-duties have taken a back seat lately. I can't tell you how frustrating it was to finally have my schedule (and my psyche) freed up enough to resume batplay, and then have a chunk of my body covered with miserable little bumps...


Actually, I wasn't intending to write so much about myself in that last paragraph; I wanted to make a point about how the body -- any body -- tends to shut itself down now and then. And that was going to lead into some thought-provoking discourse on ... uh, I forgot what the discourse was going to be about. See?! I'm hurtin' here, people.


Oh, one more thing: in the new, improved version of this blog, you, dear reader, can now at long last leave comments of your own. And I encourage you to! I've never liked the feeling of jabbering into the abyss here; from my very first entry I had hoped to make this more of a dialogue than a monologue. I get great e-mail every now and then from people who stumble across this site, which always makes my day, but since there seem to be so many of us out there who share similar fetishes (and the stigmas and logistical problems surrounding them) I think it would be great to see some other voices represented here, too.

Circumstances in my real life lately have meant that I haven't had a lot of time or mental energy to explore my fantasies, either in word or in deed. That makes me sad, because after a very long period (ie, adolescence and a decade or two of adulthood) of feeling like a freak for getting off on the things that get me off, I've actually come to embrace that very aspect of myself, and I miss it now that it's dormant.

I still get turned on, I just haven't been able to indulge the kinky side of myself for a few months now. I could blame my new job, or a recent death in my family, or the general funk I've settled into (and may finally be emerging from), or the combination of all those factors and several others, but I guess it's all just a part of the ebb and flow of life.

One of the fascinating aspects of the Batman myth for me has always been the hero's obligation to maintain both sides of his dual persona, come rain or shine: once you create a bat-self, you have to keep it up, whether you want to or not. (Likewise, you have to keep being Bruce Wayne, even when that's not so fun, either.) As I think I've written here before, I've often thought about those times when Batman is being held captive for days or weeks on end--what kind of stories does that compel him to create to explain his absence from Wayne Foundation duties? And what if Bruce just wants to take a vacation from crimefighting every so often--how can he escape the burden of his calling?

I guess a big difference between myself and my favorite comic-book character, then, is that I'm theoretically free -- if not downright obliged -- to let go of the fantasy double life every now and then and just exist in my "real" one, with all its sadness and anxiety and self-doubt. But in times like these, when I'm feeling more Bruce than Bat, it feels like I've lost touch with a crucial part of myself: my ability to dream.

I'll get it back, I have no doubt, but it gets lonely in the meantime. I can't wait to slip back into that outfit on a long, solitary night and see where my imagination takes me.

[My first-ever link-free blog entry!]

Holy moly, Batman: almost a month has gone by since my last post, and that one was mainly an apology for not having written in so long. What can I say? I was gonna blame my Bruce Wayne self being so damn busy for so damn long lately, but come to think of it the Bat-self has been pretty booked up, too. Suffice it to say I'm having a great, intense time on many fronts simultaneously, but this particular front--the blog combined with my "Secret Room"--has not seen a lot of action as a result. But they will, they will... I have so much I want to say here, and only a limited amount of time to say it at the moment.

Enough excuses. Time to write about something substantial, like the cosmos. Last week I spent at least three, maybe four days wearing one of my batsuits, morning, noon, and night. When I was home alone, I wore the whole thing--mask, tights, gloves, boots, etc. When I had to venture outside, I removed the more obvious elements but kept the bodysuit on. (Naturally, this meant no showers for several days, and it's a miracle nobody complained out loud about my not-so-fresh aroma.)

I've actually done these marathon costume sessions many times before over the last seven or eight years. There is nothing quite like the super-relaxed feeling of waking up in that costume/uniform, sensing you are one with the cosmos, celebrating that and then getting to work. And when I say "work," I mean both the job of pretending to be Batman and the job of actually being myself. My utility belt used to be filled with toy props, but over the years I've come to replace most of them with more functional items so that I can write, vacuum, do laundry, whatever, as efficiently as possible. In fact, these days it's much easier to accomplish most tasks with the belt on than with it off.

Now, while wearing the outfit from dusk till dawn and beyond is not a new sensation for me, the idea of doing this while my partner is around is. I think by now he's used to many of my eccentricities, and takes them in stride. It feels like a small but significant landmark in our relationship that I can show this long-hidden side of myself to him. Not the one who dresses up to have sex--he's quite familiar with that one, believe me--but the one who dresses up to do the more mundane tasks of life. I'm not sure he understand it now that he's seen it a few times, but he's clearly okay with being slightly confused.

I mention all this not out of some desire to air all my dirty bat-laundry, but because at least half of my 5 or 6 readers have written to tell me that I'm lucky to have a spousal equivalent who can appreciate and sometimes revel in my otherwise embarrassing fixation on superhero sex. Damn right I'm lucky! Only I say it's not about luck, it's about taking a risk -- every time I show some new side of me to him, I run the risk that he'll not like what he sees and head for the hills. Hasn't happened yet, and at this point I strongly suspect it ain't gonna happen anytime soon.

My point is this: If I can do it, so can you. What do you have to lose in revealing more of yourself to the man or woman you love? No matter what your secret, if you have a dream that you can't fully accomplish by yourself (like being captured by a cop/superhero or capturing one yourself for starters, but really, you can fill in the blank for yourself here), consider taking that scary leap of faith into the unknown. I can't guarantee you'll get the results you wanted, but I'm almost positive the leap will land you somewhere interesting at the very least.

I'm intrigued by a recent news item about a British zoologist who proposes that gay people are more highly "evolved" than their hetero peers because they remain in the state of infantilism longer -- ie, the playful, creative phase which most adults are encouraged to grow out of sometime around high school graduation.

I'm not entirely convinced by the argument, but I appreciate the way it turns conventional thinking on its head. Thanks to years of cultural bombardment, one of the things I've always wrestled with as a gay man, particularly one with, er, artistic tendencies, is the lingering suspicion that I haven't fully matured (and presumably never will) because I won't be meeting some nice girl, settling down, and raising a family. And on those occasions when I find myself in a gay club after midnight with a roomful of bare-chested men who are dancing the night away, I can't helping thinking how different their/our lives are from those of most adults in mainstream culture. So this scientist Clive Bromhall's assertion (apparently fleshed out in his new book The Eternal Child) essentially celebrates that difference rather than bemoaning it.

Following that same logic, it seems to me, fetishists must be at the very peak of the evolutionary ladder, since most fetishes are drawn from unresolved childhood attachments. I spend an embarrassing percentage of my waking hours in the realm of comic books, cop fantasies, superhero-themed tv series and movies (like tonight's cable-tv-facilitated choice between Spider-Man and The Phantom), and costumed play. How delightful to be able to claim that being so in touch with my "eternal child" is not a symptom of arrested development but a sign of my higher state of consciousness!

PS. Speaking of comics, the minute I finished The Long Halloween, I raced back to the store to pick up the sequel, Dark Victory. That one's not nearly as good -- it's sort of like 2010, the completely unnecessary followup to 2001 that tied up every conceivable loose end from the original, when a little ambiguity and unfinished business is really not such a bad thing. Still some excellent artwork -- and the writer, who shares my preference for a solitary Batman, still finds an interesting way to incorporate young Robin. (Tip: don't even think of reading Victory before Halloween.)

Coincidentally, there is much in both books, and other recent bat-lore, about Bruce Wayne's own obsession with unfinished business from his childhood. Pretty much every serious bat-story these days seems to feature a flashback to the traumatic night when his parents took him to see Zorro and wound up murdered. Everything Wayne does from that night on is devoted to avenging their deaths. Like me, he dresses up in funny clothes and spends the wee hours of the night doing things his neighbors would never dream of -- and yet he still seems pretty unquestionably adult (as fictional characters go, that is).

I'm clearly still learning my way around this Blogging business. (I'm not normally an early adopter of anything technological--I've still got a Betamax VCR I won't get rid of.) For one thing, I just spent half an hour composing an entry for this journal, only to have it disappear into the ether at the very minute I wanted it to materialize here. This is the second (nope, make that third/damn, FOURTH) time this has happened to me, and I'm trying hard to resist the temptation to dismantle my computer and hurl its innards against the wall.

I also just discovered from a Blogger how-to that apparently I can't currently invite other people to add comments directly to this blog. Grrrrrr. So as a back-up, I encourage you to e-mail me any remarks you'd like to post here, and I'll paste them in myself. (Even if you don’t want your feedback made public, I'd still love to hear from you.)

What kinds of things do I have in mind to discuss in this venue? Here are two biggies:

1. In my daylight/Bruce Wayne existence, I am a longtime lefty pacifist who abhors violence, including police brutality.Yet when I see images of a line of cops in full riot gear facing down a crowd of anti-war demonstrators (as happened on a daily basis around the world recently), I get weak in the knees. The protestors are my friends, metaphorically and sometimes literally, and I have stood with them every chance I've had to do so -- but the sight of baton-wielding officers decked out in shin guards, face masks, sap gloves and Dehner boots is enough to make me cream. Does anybody else reading this feel a similar conflict between personal politics and sexual desire? How do you reconcile yourself to the disconnect between your head and your cock (or other genital of choice)?

2. When I first started donning a batsuit of my own in the wee hours of the night, I thought of it mainly as a sexual act. And it still is, although for the last year or so it has come to feel more like a form of spiritual practice. When I pull off my sweat-soaked mask at the end a long session of what I call "batsex" or "batplay" (though sometimes it's a cop uniform), I feel a peace of mind more powerful than anything I've ever experienced. I've heard S/M-ers speak of achieving a kind of transcendence at the peak of a scene, and I completely understand what they're talking about. Anybody else out there have any similar stories to share? (Given my circle of daylight friends, it's pretty much as hard to come out as a spiritual person as it is to come out as a fetishist -- the taboo against bringing up god in my part of America often seems as strong as the one against dressing up like a superhero or privately impersonating an officer.)

More to be said on both these topics, but I'd better get this much posted before the blogmonster eats it all again...