AirmaxUK

I'll be there this year: I'm not a great fan of the big circuit parties so I'll probably be hanging around the fringes at the more hardcore fetish-oriented events. I'm also there the week before to enjoy the city before the masses of tourists arrive.

I always take a shower douche attachment and a pair of pliers in case the hose is difficult to unscrew. Booking rooms, I always scrutinise the pics of the bathroom and will go for hotels/rooms that have shower heads on a hose rather than a built-in. I always have a plan B and that might be one of: nozzle attachment for water bottle (and a water bottle I know that it fits) I bought some disposable douches from AliExpress - they are currently £0.14 each! [think before following links] https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001478677129.html They are small volume, but good for injecting j-lube or similar. And you can throw them away after, too. I note Aliexpress have the black rubber bulb type douche for < £5 Search for "douche" on aliexpress and you'll find plenty of alternatives.

All over the UK - so far in the last year from west London to: Birmingham, Manchester, Hull, Leeds, Portsmouth, Southampton, Newport. I always have a plan-B in case of a no-show. I need to have spoken to the person - not just text message - to travel far for a meet. The success rate then is better than average if you speak or facetime - although there are the usual last minute excuses.

Not just rimming... sucking a cock that's been in someone's hole is also just as risky.

That’s a shame, really… as you well know I’m partial to a bit of rough scally…

Okay - it wasn’t worth the trip for CumUnion. It wasn’t very cumunion at all: the slings laid empty and there was a helluva lot of pacing and not much action. The sauna has a really warm jacuzzi when most of the others are turning the heat down because of energy costs. The staff were more interested in their phones than customers. Fortunately it wasn’t a totally wasted trip… unusually Grindr came up trumps at my overnight hotel…

Kinda. Booked a room at trades but also booked a room at premier inn in parallel so I had somewhere nice to sleep and leave my valuables….

I’m not a fan of PA Hotel. I’ve had trouble with them when Covid lockdowns meant travel to their events was impossible. If they were polite I would have taken the financial hit, but when I asked what was going to happen, without cause, the guy was really hostile, and argumentative. So much so that I was moved to ask VISA to refund it, which they did. Normally my attitude is that we should support venues like these but not when they are nasty to customers. There are plenty of alternatives.

Update: Just got a new iPad Air and tried accessing BZ… Despite your fix, I still need to turn off the Apple Limit IP address tracking in the Wi-Fi settings or pages on here fail to load completely. Usually on forum pages the reply box at the bottom of the page never works, and on picture galleries the image never shows. You can also tell there’s a problem because the url bar shows the cross icon to stop loading the page rather than the circular arrow ‘reload’ icon.

This - I’ve had success with that in sleazier bars, plus placing empty glasses in the trough or urinal ready to be filled. Funnel gag sends a strong message too. But these only work in sleazy places… if the clientele are a bit on the vanilla/fluffy side then it scares them off. That may be the case for a bathhouse/sauna.

Looks like it's going to be a trip to Sheffield for CumUnion at the Boiler Room and an overnight stop nearby. Anyone want to say hi in-person or meet, DM me.

Was at the greenhouse last Sunday. Was good but like I say looking for new territories!

Chiltern rail says trains from Wycombe are only going to Ruislip. TFL suggests a 2h21 bus journey to get from there to Kings Cross on Sunday. Some outside London suggestions would be welcomed as a change of scenery is always nice.

So… Train strikes this weekend and engineering work resulting in Marylebone being closed have scuppered my plans for the weekend, Any suggestions for some epic BB fun outside the capital this weekend?

Heading to Luton tomorrow for the Bears day - anyone want to join me?

I've been giiving it some thought and I haven't really come to any firm conclusions. When the time comes I'd be looking at the local NHS trusts and how they perform. Having seen how Buckinghamshire (a fairly affluent area) struggles to cope with my elderly parents needs I *really* wouldn't want to grow older here. My folks have me to help them navigate the NHS and in some cases sort private treatment, but I won't have anyone to look out for me in the same way. A friend of mine thinks we should get a group together and start some kind of gay commune - it's an extreme idea but it has its merits.

Follow up question: where profile names appear around the site, could profile names be tagged (maybe with a sleepy emoji 😴 ) or "greyed out" if the member has not logged in here for more than a year (or some threshold) to indicate they are probably no longer active?

When you search for members and get the list of results, you can sort the list by various means - reputation score, number of posts, date joined. What would be really useful is to sort by "last active" so you can see who remains an active participant and who hasn't logged in for 10 years. Is that possible? Thanks Andy

I believe it is the SOP birthday party this Sunday - however I'm unable to go because of the train disruption from strikes and engineering works - Marylebone is closed.

Sadly I missed out on The Fort - but I did frequent Play Pit in the Caledonian Road. Every time I walk past the old place I get pangs of nostalgia for it. It sounds like much the same sort of place - no attitude - just lots of horny guys doing their thing.

Probably The Bull Bar in Berlin. Famous for being open 24/7 and having one of the most active darkrooms. Close second would be The Underground Club at Central Station London for SOP.

I'm on twitter but only passively so as a consumer, but I do find the noise level quite high. Some guys reel you in with interesting stuff and then retweet political garbage. I don't plan on leaving or using it a great deal. I see that Wicker got bought by Amazon and they're not allowing new consumer accounts from end of 2022 and will discontinue it completely in 2023. They appear to be focusing on enterprise and corporate services going forward. I use WhatsApp mostly and Telegram occasionally.

There's a guy that goes to SOP regularly who has this - and similar graphics - tattooed prominently on him. If you have the graphic, you can get it printed easily. It can be done by an online printer, you can get iron-on print at home transfers - or if you know someone with a Cricut they could make it using transfer film or inpregnating ink.

Less of a seminal moment but more of a culmination of moments... Back when breakdancing was a thing we'd unroll peices of linoleum at break and lunchtime practice and show off moves. I remember one of the lads who was a better dancer came back from holiday to Florida and had a pair of Nike Hitops ho brought there. He claimed they were the reason he could do various moves so well, so one lunchtime I asked him to let me have a try, so I laced on his hitops and unexpecedly, it made me feel so good wearing them. That I think was the initiating moment. I also have incredibly focused intense friendships - probably a autistic spectrum thing - they were innocent - not at all sexual and I think that was also the beginning of the path for me. Time passed and I recall in my mid to late teens I was pushed to go to baptist church sunday school and the teenage 'christian endeavour' group. The way the group worked was everyone took turn to organise an evening's discussion, sutdies, or activities. One particular evening was organised by one of the lads who was in my year at 6th Form - he was one of those boys who was just good at everything they did - I think he was even Head Boy. I recall the evening was a discussion on avoiding teenage temptations - and started as a lecture in abstinance, but then rather quickly he started going on about the sins of being gay and delivered that part of the lecture staring right at me, spewing all kinds of vitriol. Everything fell into place for me at that moment. Hidden feelings, desires, internal conflicts all popped into focus and made sense. Somehow he'd seen through me and I knew what I hadn't figured out yet... and I guessed I'd been sussed out at that point. I never went back figuring I wasn't welcome. Since I was 18 at the time I was soon to leave to go to University, so my disappearance went almost unnoticed. Looking back, I wonder if part of the reason he sussed me so easily was because he saw a reflection of something he recongnised in himself? In parallel to this I was at an all-boys grammar school. It wasn't what you might expect - back in the late 80's early 90's it was a very hostile place to be openly gay. I am not aware anyone was, at the time. There was no support, and people generally supported Thatcher's Section 28. I rememeber we had someone come in to talk to us about HIV/AIDS from Terrance Higgins Trust and he got booed and jeered so much they abandoned it. Looking back a there were five of us that were friends - none of us were open about who we were or what we might feel but it turns out that in later life we all had something in common we didn't realise. The first I bumped into in Balans Soho. He was a waiter there. Others popped up over the years on gaydar.co.uk when that was a thing, and others I've met up at reunions and even job interviews. Strange how we all gravitated together but never revealed our true selves to each other. Oddly I recall we had someone in our year who was very disruptive - punishment didn't work and he was often exluded. He didn't really have any friends and wasn't violent towards other students or staff... just attention seeking, destructive and distruptive. They brought a therapist and as part of his therapy, he had to pick three students who he trusted to observe, feedback and help him. The three guys he picked... all of us it turned out were from that group of five. Looking back it really makes me wonder... Grammar School was very competitive academically and in sport - and there was a strong emphasis on Rugby and Gymnastics. I was far from an athlete and much more at home in the computer science and engineering labs. I remember trying to get out of having to do rugby practice or athletics by 'forgetting' my kit. I figured if you didn't have your kit, you can't play. If you had one of the softer games masters, you'd get sent to the Library. But two out of the three games masters were ex-army and seemd to be sadisic.. Generally their approach was that you had to pick some kit from the lost property box and carry on... It was likely unwashed, and not quite the right size, so it made you stand out and get picked on. So this idea of forgetting kit was not great... but it triggered something. I kinda enjoyed wearing other lad's kit and not knowing who's it was. The humiliation wasn't that good, but at least for a moment I had people's attention. At the time it was negative but I got a kick out of it somehow. The gamechanger for me was when one of the guys I was in engineering class with and had a secret crush on had rugby in the morning and offered to lend me his kit for my afternoon rugby session to avoid the humiliation of wearing lost property. I believe it was totally born out of purely innocent good intentions on his part. Initially at least, he didn't realise the effect on me - and the bonus was at lunchbreak he played in it again, and he took it off moments before giving it to me, so it was warm and filled with his fresh pheromones. I think, in that moment my gearfetish was born. It became a regular thing on Wednesdays that he'd play in the morning and at lunchtime, and in the afternoon I'd borrow his kit and play in it in the afternoon. After a while, he even got a little bit flirtatious sometimes, but never led to anything. What became of him I don't really know: I never bumped into him again but thanks for FriendReunited (remember that?), I understand he got married, had a family, kids, etc. So all this was hidden... and definetly not out in the open. Fast forward a few years and I'm in the final year of my masters degree. Still hiding in plain sight. But then I discovered IRC (Internet Relay Chat - a bit like Discord) and there were a lot of student run channels. In particular #uk-poofs was a very friendly channel - and unlike the social media internet today had one foot in reality. The channel had regular meet-ups and parties. I lurked to start with, then started to engage, met a couple of guys on a 1-1 basis and then and went to my first party in Finchley, north London. Fromt there I made friend who took me to places and I discovered 79CXR, The Anvil, the Sauna in Lavender Hill and Play Pit. And from there it's only gotten more interesting.... So here I am today.

If it's quiet, quite often it needs one or two guys to 'get things going'. I sometimes use these moments to chat to guys and see if I can get something going instead of joining those that endlessly pace around in vain...