Within the space of a single month this year, I flew into Texas twice from London. The first time was near the end of May for the Houston FetishBall and the 2nd time was in June. First I flew into Dallas and bounced over to San Antonio for a couple of days and then headed back to Dallas for the rest of my visit.





Several months ago, around the time of my birthday, I made a couple of decisions. The first was to use the rest of this year to wrap up my shooting - that is, to travel as I normally would, but also tell any interested photographers that this would be my last year of booking such shoots. I'll still do some work next year with friends like Valentina and HW/FetishLive though. The other thing that popped into my head was the idea that I wanted to try and hang. There are a number of people I am friends with that regularly do this, but when it came to figuring out who I'd look to for my first attempt, it was pretty much a no-brainer. So off to Dallas it was to visit allenfalkner . Samar flew in from San Francisco to help out (make me bleed) and Athena Fatale was there as well to document. Courtney arrived after work to help out a bit too.

There were another thing I was certain of as well. I wasn't interested in putting on a performance. Shifting into doing hook suspensions for shows is still not my intention. I wanted this to be a private, personal attempt and putting myself on display like I normally do for work would detract from my goal.

I made the decision to do this sometime around February/March of this year. I also mentioned it to Allen when he came out for my birthday party. After that I really didn't think much about it until I had to book my flight into Dallas. Once that was done, again, i didn't think much about it at all. For some reason I thought that it'd be something to slightly stress over but in the end, the idea only started to make me nervous about 30 minutes before the first hooks went in.

So I spent the week hanging out with Allen & Samar and even Kurt from Art with Latex who hooked me up with some cool pasties for my Sunday evening performance at the Church. We even went shopping at Ikea to buy candles... super great smelling candles. But the show is another story. Hell, I think the ropes hurt me more than the hooks in the end. It seemed definitely more traumatic to be honest, especially after the uncontrolled rack-like experience the audience subjected me to.







tweeting at each other








OK. So here are the photos of the hanging day.
It's almost funny to see how stressed out my face is before the first hooks compared to after the 4 are through.

before:


after:






here are more shots from athena's phone



SushiTime after that.


The next day (June 30)  I headed over to the aquarium to walk around and check it out for a couple of hours before heading to airport for the flight back to California finally. I'd been away for just over 3 months this time.

Next week I'll be flying to Phoenix with Samar.
We're performing at the Arizona fetish ball
no suspension or bondage though. just latex :-)

----



www.azfetishball.com/

The tickets for Pink Martini and the San Francisco Symphony were announced some time ago and I don't know why I put off getting tickets.
There were much cheaper ones than the $110 seats we ended up getting but by the time we got around to getting them both shows were just about sold out. Friday nite was sold out, but Thursday only had the 2 seats and we ended up getting those.

I was disappointed to see so many empty seats for a sold out show. I suppose some of them probably belonged to the scalpers on craigslist charging too much money. buttheads!

In the end, they were wonderful seats in the Loge and happened to be right above the box I was in the last time I was at Davies Symphony Hall.
I think we probably couldn't have chosen better seats although I know at the end of the show I wished I was down in the general audience when Brazil came on and Thomas Lauderdale left the piano and jumped into the audience to grab people for a conga line. I think Samar wanted to jump in too.

I don't recall the line up of songs. I don't have the program (samar has 'em) but I do remember that the show was super great overall.
I was elated to be there and some of the pieces were just amazing to watch and hear, especially those that featured individual musicians including Pansy Chang on cello and Nicholas Crosa on violin (his playing made me think about how sore my arm would be).
Watching the pianist was always fun, even if he wasn't actually playing.
I'm actually starting to recognize some of the regular symphony players. A few of them were featured during the evening and they were wonderful.
Oh and I liked the trombone dude Robert Taylor singing Veronique too :-) Me n Samar kept watching him play with his knees all bent.

This is Crosa playing at the Crystal Ballroom dec 08. (lol, last time i was there, i jumped off the stage to chase a pig's head)
Praeludium & Allegro
It was quite thrilling live and the sound at Davies is awesome - the video doesn't quite do it justice.

I wish I could find a video of Pansy playing her cello piece.
Well, I hope it's on the symphony album they're working on

I wasn't too thrilled with the version of "Ebben..." from La Wally but then I'm used to hearing Callas or Tebaldi sing it.
There was also another piece I could have done without. i wished I could have heard La Soledad or Mar Descondido instead.

In the end, I wish we could have gotten tickets for both nights and with other people too because I kept thinking how great the show was and how I wished other people could see it too. Hell, I think my parents would have totally loved it!
They're playing again in October in Santa Rosa,  but it will be without the symphony.

Some photos:
(again, better shots are from Samar's phone)