A pierced librarian....whatever next....where will it all end? I really don't know, but this is my story so far.
About me: Born in 1948, which makes me...OK, so you do the math.
Eyes - Green.
Height - 5ft 9ins.
Weight - currently 154lbs (but trying to get it down).
Starsign - Libra: the sign of a balanced personality, hmmm.
Likes: Being nice to people. Beautiful golden sunsets. Cacti: the way they defy the odds of nature.
Chinese food. Feeling the need not to take anything too seriously.
A long soak in a hot tub. On-line shopping. Relaxing and doing nothing occasionally.
Sixties' music.
Oh - and BME, of course.
Favourite film of all time: Casablanca.
Dislikes: Whingers - 'If you can't cheer up, shut up'.
Cold wet winter days. Homophobia. Indecision. ISPs that cut out on you after two hours. Junk mail that's sent in an envelope saying "Important - This is not a circular". Machines that don't work like they're supposed to. Weak coffee.
Websites that say only 'Under construction'.
Cruelty to animals - remember, they were here first.
Quote: "Don't knock it till you've tried it."
Turn-ons: Big boots, high heels, black leather, skin-tight rubber, PVC, corsets... Mmmmmmm!
Turn-offs: BO: there's NO excuse for it - soap and deodorant are NOT that expensive.
Pet hate: Intolerance - 'If you don't like it don't do it, but don't tell everyone else they shouldn't like or do it either'.
Goal in life: Be happy - There are enough miserable ****s in the world without me adding to them.
My "library catalog":
In stock (in order of acquisition) - PA ring (now 5mm); paired standard lobe rings (currently at 4mm); septum (now with circular barbell); stomach tattoo; pubic piercing (titanium CBR) *RIP 18 Jan 2002*; centre tongue (2mm barbell); navel rings (only the inverse remains out of the pair); paired 21mm dia nipple rings (first two pairs both rejected); BME and Celtic Rings logo tattoos - matching pair on both outside shoulders; Madison (14ga CBR) *RIP 17 Mar 2002*; wrist bar (PTFE) done during the British Meet at Brighton - rejected, but only after 4 years; 'love handles' - paired D-ring surface piercings *RIP*; cartilage ring (left ear); tragus (right ear); nape (PTFE bar)*RIP*; second pair of nipple piercings (vertical barbells); second nape *RIP*; bridge; BMEboy tattoo (centre back); 16mm dia guiche (my third try at a guiche) *RIP 6 Jan 2002*; third nape *also RIP*; 'Cell' back rings - a set of 6 D-Rings (lasted around nine months); pair of spinal surface bars *RIP*; replacement pubic ring *RIP* and guiche *guiche RIP 13 Apr 2002 after only two weeks!*; replacement Madison (12ga CBR) *RIP*; smiley aka scrumper *RIP*: paired foreskin rings. Future additions: It's been some years now since I added anything new, or replaced anything. But that doesn't mean the urge may not strike again at any time! And I'll bet that that you thought that librarians were boring old ****ers!
My buddy pics: You're out of luck here: there aren't any. Why not? Not because I don't have any buddies - there are lots of really great people here on IAM. But I didn't want to put up a screenful of buddies just because everyone else's page has one. I like to be an individual, to do what's right for me - that's what BME is all about, really.... Just in case you were wondering.
My character: (And here I quote from the results of a psychometric test): "Happy in his own company. Prefers to make his own decisions. Co-operative and obliging. Avoids conflict. Modest. Even temperament. Non-emotional. Relaxed. Copes without being flustered. Concentrates on the big picture rather than the detail. Quite radical. A challenge rather than the conventional. Non-conformist. Disorganized. Spontaneous reactions. Solution-focussed. High expediency. Finds his own way of doing things. Confident intellectual. Generates interesting, practical ideas."
My chastity:
Ever wondered what it's like to be locked up in a chastity belt? You can read all about my chastity escapades in the IAM Chastity Forum
My corsets:
Yes - I wear a corset! My current favourite to be laced up in is my black 28" PVC one, which you can see along with my others in my Corset Collection gallery.
My counter:
Currently at: 23,218
- Thanks for stopping by: enjoy your visit!
Cool dude with shades None other than Rosco from the BME Kids' Club!
Bits and pieces
Locked up - me in Bondage!
Wearing leg irons: Relaxing in my new leg irons July 2009
Corset collection
In my 28" black PVC corset: This one feels really sexy to wear!
Fun stuff
WARNING: ADULT CONTENT: You must be over 18 to view the content of this gallery
Down below
WARNING: ADULT CONTENT: You must be over 18 to view the content of this gallery
Clothes closet
Cold Front: The brass monkey gets a T-Shirt
BBQ fun
London Meet - 28 June 2003: titanium_angel
Up front
Porn star revisited: My second try at a Madison: July 2002
Bit in the middle
Spinal bars: My paired spinal surface piercings - October 2001
Dear diary....
2009/11/05 21:51 Which was the title of my very first entry, nine years ago tonight, on Guy Fawkes Night 2000. There's nothing intentionally symbolic about the choice of date, incidentally: it was just that it had been about three weeks or so I think since IAM had first started and it took me that long to make my mind up about whether to try my hand at a page. I'd never kept a diary of any description, nor opened myself or my mods up to any form of public inspection, so I wasn't at all sure it was a good idea, but it seemed like fun. And it was.
I'm not going to even attempt to select a few entries as some sort of "edited highlights": I wouldn't describe anything as particularly representative of the last nine years anyway. Some of what I've written was happy, some sad, some trivial, some irreverent, some introspective and some almost narcissistic. But above all it's represented what I was thinking and feeling at the time I wrote it. I've edited on many occasions for spelling and grammar where on re-reading it I felt the meaning was ambiguous, but I've never actually deleted anything.
Looking back at those first few tentative entries, I concentrated virtually exclusively on mod-related topics. It wasn't until much later that I felt confident enough to start revealing more about myself as a person, and even so, that's been a fairly gradual process. But I like to think the bouncy positive style I started off with has set the tone for most of what's followed. The entries have certainly got longer, which may or may not be a good thing, and in so doing it's becoming in some respects more of a proper blog. It's hardly creating anything for posterity, but I still reckon that recording my own small snapshots of the last nine years is something of an achievement, and certainly one I never expected to turn out in the way it has. Let's see what the next nine have in store?
2009/11/03 10:03 I can tell before I write it that this entry probably isn't going to make much sense - but I found that writing about my long-lost time at Uni all those years ago has proved to be curiously unsettling. I won't go so far as to say I wish I hadn't opened up about it, but I certainly hadn't anticipated the mixed feelings I've experienced since as a result. I hadn't fully realized I had quite such a big 'mental block' about it.
Without a doubt it was a wasted opportunity - which a lot of people never had and would've given their right arm for - and I probably could have tried to salvage something from the wreckage. My father tried to persuade me to swap to a language-based course at college which one of the neighbours who was a lecturer there said he'd be happy to give me all the details of. But I was only 17 - and young for my age - when I'd started at Uni: it was the first time I'd ever really made a huge big disastrous mistake, and I was so disenchanted with it all at that point that I felt I wanted to draw a line under it and make a fresh start instead with something I was reasonably sure I'd be happy doing. While I sit here now feeling introspective and a bit miserable speculating on what might have happened, and feeling more than just a tinge of regret that it didn't, whether I'd have been been any happier is a huge unknown question to which there simply isn't an answer. I know in my heart it's pointless trying to find one, but for now, I can't stop myself from wondering.
I guess that when you deliberately stir up a load of unhappy memories, you can't expect to just feel nothing about it all afterwards. It takes time for the mind to store it all back in the right order in the memory bank, and for the brain to re-apportion its proper significance. I daresay I should've done it ages ago, and it would have doubtless been a lot easier, but surely better late than never? I thought I'd have probably dreamt about it: I was fully expecting to, but I haven't (yet). But I know that eventually I'll stop thinking about it and accept that it was just another one of those things that, to quote one of my mum's favourite phrases, "wasn't meant to happen".
Confession is good for the soul
2009/11/01 15:27 Predictably, I found writing yesterday's entry not the easiest of things to do. A couple of times I started wondering what the point was of dredging up old unhappy memories, and I nearly stopped. But I'm glad I persevered. It sometimes helps to actually write something down and physically look at it before you see it for what it really is (or was). More than anything else, it seemed the product of conditioning and expectation which were one of the more dubious benefits of a grammar school education. Certainly, set against the hippy-go-lucky, flower-child, drop-out era that characterised the late 1960s, one way or another I probably put myself through a fair bit of anguish quite unnecessarily.
Just to satisfy my own curiosity I did a bit of digging and unearthed this table of drop-out rates according to which the average was 16% - although Exeter did have one of the lowest ones. That dates from 2001: I've no idea whether any comparable data exists for 1967 and even if it does, huge changes in the nature and structure of higher education over the last three decades would make meaningful comparisons pretty well impossible to draw.
One thing which does put it into some sort of perspective is that when I did my part-time degree in 1980, out of an initial enrolment of 38 or so, the proportion of drop-outs in first few weeks was enough to cast doubts on the continuing viability of the course. It eventually bottomed out at 21 or 22 of us, I think, who kept going till the end. And I'm glad, too, that my parents eventually got the reward of a graduation ceremony with photo of me in gown and the rest of the paraphernalia. However cheesy these things are regarded as, I know it gave them a lot of pleasure and I hope helped make up for some of the disappointment I'd caused them.
2009/10/31 19:52 It's funny, thinking back to yesterday when I was reminiscing about my schooldays - and I actually came across some old school photos afterwards, believe it or not - because I've never really told anybody about what happened to me when I left. So tonight of all nights, when the kids are all out in their Hallowe'en skeleton costumes playing at ghostly ghouls, it's maybe time I let that particular skeleton of mine out of its cupboard... I've kept it hidden far too long.
Like almost all my sixth-form classmates, I applied to University: I wanted to read modern languages, in particular French, and I had aspirations of being a teacher. To tell the truth I hadn't really given that much thought to career choices, but in those days jobs were reasonably plentiful to qualified applicants, so there'd have been a 'Plan B' of some sort whatever happened. I got the grades I needed - two 'A's and a 'C' - and off I went one October weekend in 1966 down to Exeter. The place itself is beautiful: I had a nice modern room in a Hall of Residence within walking distance of the main campus, and it didn't take long to find my way around. So what went wrong?
I was lonely from the word go. I've always been shy and never made friends easily, and coupled with my first time being away from home for more than just a holiday, I was homesick on top. The course was mixed: I loved the Italian and an optional linguistics module - but the bulk of it, the French, I found to my horror seemed predominantly classical literature-oriented, which I'd hated at A level, and I soon found myself losing interest and struggling to keep up with the work. I was desperately unhappy, and I couldn't see what I could do about it.
I stuck it out for two terms, but when I came home for the Easter holiday the following Spring, I was totally panic-stricken at the prospect of any more. I remember I was upstairs helping my mum make the beds, when with one of those intuitive flashes that only mothers know how to do, she turned to me and said: "Why don't you tell me what's wrong?" I sat down on the bed, blurted it all out and at the end she astonished me by simply saying: "Well, if you don't like it, don't go back". It hadn't occurred to me that it was that easy.
I felt awful. I felt guilty I'd let my parents down: they were so proud to have got their only son off to University, and when I did go down briefly the following week, to 'sign out' and collect my things, everyone was really nice, asking me to reconsider and saying "But why didn't you say anything?" I honestly hadn't known where to start. I hadn't kept in touch with many of my classmates, so I was spared the emabarrassment of a lot of potentially awkward explaining, although funnily enough when I did bump into one at the bus station shortly afterwards, he told me he was about to get kicked out of Birmingham for failing the course. So I probably needn't have worried!
I asked at the library if I could have my holiday job back as a permanent one, and got it. I did have a slight 'sticky moment' when I applied to go to college in Birmingham the following autumn in case I was going to go through some sort of deja vu - but it was totally different. For starters I was a day student, and they treated us just like schoolkids even to the extent of calling the register at the beginning of classes. And I'd been working nearly 18 months by then, so I was familiar with all the coursework concepts as well. It all came full circle in fact ten years later when I went to Polytechnic one day a week for three years on day release - and I got my degree after all (just not a French one)!
Looking back at what I've just written, I'm not sure why I've never told anyone. Initially I was ashamed, although I suppose it's no big deal really - but it did seem like it at the time. It was easy enough to leave out of a CV, since there was only a gap of six months and it wasn't as if anyone was going to check up on it. I learnt something from it - to trust my own judgement and recognize my own limitations - and I suppose that's a far more valuable lesson than anything I might have learned had I tried to suffer in silence and soldier on into complete disaster. There's certainly no reason to carry on keeping it a secret: it was all so long ago now that it really doesn't matter anymore.
2009/10/30 17:53 I'm not sure whether I've tended to write much about my schooldays - probably not, after all, it was a very long time ago! But I went to a local grammar school and became something of a linguist. I studied French from the first form (Year 7 in modern terminology), followed by Latin and then German, all of which I took at A level. Latin, rather sadly I think, has become something of a rarity these days: I think only around 15% of state schools still teach it. Despite its somewhat fearsome reputation as being fiendishly difficult to master, I can't say I recollect struggling with it that much, although I will admit that I found French the easiest of the three, probably because at seven years altogether I'd studied it the longest. I never did quite master the same fluency in German: it was mainly down to acquiring a much smaller vocabulary as I recollect, although I still managed a grade A!
I did a smattering of Spanish in the sixth form as part of a General Studies course which fizzled out when the teacher left and there wasn't anyone else who could take it on, but I got on better at college, when I did Italian as an optional extra up to 'O level' standard (but without sitting an exam since I didn't actually need the qualification for anything). Some years ago I did follow a weekly TV course on Portuguese, but didn't 'use' any of it and can't even remember any of the basics now.
The others, though, although I've let lapse a bit through laziness, I can still resurrect with a modicum of proficiency even now - and I'm sure with a bit of practice (not to mention willpower) I could be 'A' grade once again. The predominance of English on the Internet may be a boost to European online trading (I've bought goods from sites in Holland and Austria, for example), but it's a bit of a disincentive to actually learning or practising the language - or at least, that's my excuse. Now that the dark winter nights are upon us, it seems like a good opportunity to rectify that.
