*FOLSOM!*

I arrived in San Francisco early yesterday, about 9:45 AM, and took a cab from the train station to Folsom Ave. so I wouldn't have to walk it. Boy, was I sure glad I did; it started to drizzle as soon as I got there! After all the work I had done fixing my hair at home, the rain ruined it. :( Oh well.

I got a coffee at a local diner, called @winsome_gypsy, found out she and her group was still at the hotel (because duh, the fair started at 11:00 and not at 10:00 like I'd originally thought), and hung out to wait. The street was pretty empty, booths were still being set up...and the light rain was keeping people under whatever cover they could find.

Finally, around 10:30, things started to happen. Most of the booths were basically open for business, and people were starting to show up.
And then, all of a sudden, I felt like I had entered another planet.
A planet where every single fetish under the sun can come and play.
There were the ponies.

The puppies.

There were the dress-ups I had no fucking clue about.

(Yes, that's the key chain Husband bought me. I asked this guy to hold it for the picture, and he was afraid to touch it; I realized too late he was worried about where it had been, like he was afraid it was my sex toy or something. I thought it was hysterical that the guy was ballsy enough to dress like that, but cringing at the thought of holding my key chain. I think he was cringing. It was hard to tell with the mask and all.)
There were these naked dancers, doing some kind of strange modern-art dance, which frankly I did not understand AT ALL and thought quite boring after just a few minutes.

After a while, I realized something: I was fascinated by all the people/kink/fetish around me, but that wasn't what I was looking for. That wasn't what was exciting me. No, what I wanted to see was some BDSM action. I wanted to see some SPANKING.

I wanted to see some BONDAGE.

I wanted to see people propped up against a St. Andrew's Cross and worked over.

So I hung around the spanking sections for the most part, when I wasn't doing my shopping or meeting up with people.

I got some really nice stuff there. Cuffs, a new gag, a cane...I got a really cute mini-flogger for five bucks, not because I needed one, but because it was too adorable not to buy. I told the guy, it looks like two big floggers got together and bred a little baby flogger. He had a good laugh.

Some of the highlights of the day:

I found a guy with a rather unusual hebrew tattoo. 

I asked him about it, and he said it's the first three letters of God's name in Kabbalah, or something funky like that. I was just kind of like, 'oh.' 

Then he told me that he was aware of the fact that the tattoo could also be read as a word, Sho'ah, which in hebrew is the word for the Holocaust. But that was not how his tattoo was supposed to be read. Then he showed me how his friend has the same tattoo--like that makes it all okay.

What I wanted to say was, 'hey, whatever floats your boat, man. I mean, if you want to have a tattoo that could be read as Sho'ah (but not really, you're missing a letter in there, if you actually knew some hebrew you'd know that), then whatever, it's your skin. At least it's legible; which, when dealing with hebrew tattoos, is a crap-shoot.'

What I said was, "it's nice. Thank you very much for letting me take your picture." 

The other funny thing that happened was in a store called Mr S Leather, which I visited upon recommendation. It was filled with gay men, mostly young; understandable, given the store and the day. But many of these men looked at me like I was somehow intruding on their turf just by walking in the door. Some looked at me and turned away, others looked in surprise; but a few actually sneered at me. 

Inside the store, I started checking out their selection of butt plugs, because I'm always checking out butt plugs whenever I see any available (anal slut, hello). 

A couple of guys came up to me; I didn't notice them right away, until one of them said to me,

"Thinking of buying one?"

Without turning around, I said, "No." Then I heard him snickering, and looked up to see him passing a smug look to his friend, as if to say, see? 

I sighed, looked down at the plug, and said, "I have too many already. Besides, this one is way too small."

The shocked look on both their faces was priceless. PRICELESS. 

I hope I taught them that gay men do NOT have some kind of monopoly on anal sex. Straight women enjoy it, too.

Overall, the day was awesome. 

Tomorrow: What I Learned