Thursday, December 22, 2005

December has been a very different month for me and, with nearly a year of this blog behind me, I don’t really know where to start…

I have been away from home more and been out of rubber more of the time than I have in probably well over a year. But paradoxically – it has been one of the most fetish oriented months of the year!

Let me explain – previous months I have lived and worked wearing rubber. This month, the part of the day were I toil at the office has been sans-rubber – often leaving the majority of the hours of the day to indulge oneself. Being so far from home relieves one of the opportunity / duty to perform normal vanilla family and social activities, so there is rarely any need to spend much of these 15 or 16 hours being anything other than perfectly encapsulated in latex.

So, although theoretically I may be spending less of my waking hours in rubber, I have been able to be as systematically strict with myself about how I spend my recreational hours as I have previously been able to be about my working day. Basically I have rarely been able to find any reason not be in total encapsulation in rubber heaven 12+ hours each and every day during the week and 24 hours a day at the weekend. As none of these hours has been while working, there was little mundane distractions to think about while in total encasement – so typically my rubbery predicament was top of my consciousness during this time, oddly giving me plenty of rubber recreation time as I was not trying to stay focused on work etc while I just happened to be wearing rubber, as is my norm.

One of the great achievements has been to get very used to being in a rubber suit each and every night (I “often” slept in rubber in the past – but I put it to you that “often” is nothing like “every” in terms of a rubber lifestyle. The discipline required is on a different order, but the pay back is ultimately much greater levels of comfort). I eventually managed to get used to always sleeping wearing a hood with just small eye/nose/mouth holes – this was a challenge which ultimately I conquered by the odd means of stepping up a gear and wearing a rather tight gas mask over the top of the hood – complete with filter! Not sure how it happened, but think that my body just got so desperately tired from repeatedly disrupting it pattern each night, it decided it’s instincts to be uncovered were no match for my desire to be covered and it’s desire to be asleep! It seems the instincts are merely patterns to be broken - and my earlier apnoea blighted attempts catch a few moments of sleep are now something approaching hours of half decent quality snoozing.

There are still challenges here though. Sleeping in rubber is not a problem and doing it in hooded TE is possible- but the challenge is for it to be as comfortable as I know it can be. I am still having some problems with consistently controlling my perspiration which I don’t have during the day and time will tell how much the quality of the sleep with a hood and gas mask on will become…

…

As I have been spending mainly recreational time while wearing rubber, it means I have been able to spend more time catching up on talking to my fellow fetishists. There really are quite a lot of us out there – although it seems there are almost an infinite number of flavours of fetishes too. I have been busy chatting in chat rooms, messaging and emailing and surfing.

I even managed to meet up with a fetish couple IRL while travelling and working in the US. Meeting virtual complete strangers was quite daunting. We hardly knew each other online never mind in person – but MoF and his partner [name withheld!] were a total joy. Sure the first few moments felt a little awkward – but once we found a common language (you guessed it – a guided tour of their fetish wardrobe) everything just fell into place. The following weekend they kindly guided me to a local fetish store in New Hope PA and we just did the shopping, chatting and chilling out thing.

Parenthetically – one of the things I have been contemplating is the past tendency to link rubber lifestyle with sex (and ejaculation in particular) in my mind. After a lot of thought I think I am interested in decoupling the two. I will elaborate more next year – but it’s become clear to me that being sealed in rubber, sex, orgasm and ejaculations are just separate (admittedly important) parts of my existence and not an inevitable logical sequence! Talking to older and wiser rubber heads has started to rub off on me and think I am starting to enjoy a new way a looking at my rubber existence.

January will again be spent away from the home in the US (PA and NJ I think) and so I look forward to more of the same! Perhaps I can even meet so more fellow rubber fetishist – the search to find people even interest in rubber lifestyle has come to fascinate me…

This year I am being a little more open about my new years resolution – I want to raise the profile of the actual attainment of wearing totally enclosing rubber outfits routinely for long periods. I don’t mind talk of the challenges, but the starting point for this blog is that wearing rubber TE for most of the time is totally possible and for some of us desirable and the ideal. No one can tell me it’s impossible to wear rubber every day, as I have enough experience now to know that that, at worst, it can is merely challenging. I may not have achieved perfection, but can see that there are physical and psychological answers to much that the doom-sayers have presented as barriers.

For all those who contributed comments this year – a big thank you! Your interest has certainly helped me stay focussed on why I live this way. For those who lurked and never said a damn thing I say – you’re welcome! Of course a single line saying “hello!” would be so welcome and is unlikely to kill you – but I realise you are probably shy or busy or lazy – just like me!

Sealed

Thursday, December 15, 2005

Back in PA and building up my tolerance to sleeping in rubber. The main trouble I am having is sticking to the plan of a gradual build up to sleeping in total enclosure. Because in the period before sleep I am just chilling out, I just don’t feel right in anything less than TE – so often end up feeling odd about taking off the hood before going to sleep – so don’t (sometime finding it too much of a wrench to take my goggles and mask off!). This results in some reasonable sleep now – but interrupted regularly with restricted airways (the fit of my hood causing my jaw to sometimes move go a position that causes problems. This is all very stimulating of course, but does leave you with a sleep deficit the next day…

As for temperature / perspiration control – this is still not nearly as good as while awake, but is a lot better than it was. I usually find the inside of my suit is damp in the mornings – but now it’s usually just a covering in moisture and not free fluid sloshing about. I think I can do better if I modify my eating and drinking habits and diet.

I feel confident about cracking the problem of being totally comfortable /dry while sleeping in TE – particularly in a room with thermostatic heat control! From my experience working in rubber, I agree with Rubanix’s post about adapting to rubber so you perspire less freely and are more comfortable – although I take his point about being too dry being a problem – I occasionally find some irritation like joggers nipple can occur. He has been relating his experience over the years, via private correspondence - which I found very encouraging and inspiring.

As for Darks question on how the adaptation to wearing rubber and not overheating works, I think it is a combination of things. I do think you change your behavior before / during wearing rubber to compensate – becoming less tense, fidgety and over-active. I think this happens on both a conscious and sub-conscious level. Also, I think that diet has an effect – and know rubber can alter how I feel about drinking and eating. Also the physiological (& psychological) response to actually donning the rubber has changed for me – from excitement / stimulation to a calming / comfortable / relaxing experience. Being less excited and calmer naturally reduced perspiration.

In addition to all these thing though, I think there are more basic body adjustments going on as well. I think my body associates the feeling of being in rubber to be a signal to back off on generating heat and using perspiration as the main way to control temperature. For me I think of it as like when a I go to visit hot countries – it seems I spend days / weeks adjusting – during this period I perspire freely, can easily get heat exhaustion. Mean time the ex – pats in these communities seem to shrug off the heat almost as easily as the locals. The same occurs with altitude, diet etc. The point being that your body is capable of amazing degree of adaptation, as long as you give it enough time to adjust.

Last weekend was my birthday so decided to treat myself to 60+ hours in total enclosure. It didn’t go exactly to plan. First I found that I couldn’t do more than one night in a row in full TE. And then disaster struck 40 odd hours in, and my suit developed a wardrobe malfunction! It was only a quarter inch slit – but that was enough to ruin it for me. I did manage go patch it during the week but am going shopping on Saturday as my suit is showing signs of wear now.

On that subject, I just spent a very pleasant evening with a fetish couple who live nearby, who I found on IAR. I forgot to ask if they minded my posting their online names here, so will respect their privacy and not name them yet. Anyway it was great to talk to a couple who were both very much into similarly extreme rubber enclosure etc. We are meeting up again on Saturday to go shopping at the nearest fetish suppliers. So kind of them to look after a rubberist who finds himself so far from home.

Sealed

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

I have been asked how I have been coping without rubber – the question was so shocking as to warrant a small entry here. The idea of me not engaging in rubber at all while traveling on business was never a realistic option for me! Not sure I cold survive that, but you don't have to worry too much - I have brought my rubber with me!

Although I no longer work in rubber, I am spending all free time, evenings / nights and weekends in rubber. In fact, as I don't have the fix during the weekdays, I am able to push a few personal limits I have been neglecting so far.

I have never got round to fully acclimatizing to wearing rubber while asleep – in particularly TE. It’s not that it’s a usual activity, I quite often have a more severe hood on at night than during the day (I have a penchant for a particular dangerous type in fact) – it’s just that it’s not become totally routine. For various reason I have found it difficult to control my temperature overnight and usually always overheat and perspire by morning - usually after wake up in the middle of the night shivering from being too cold! It’s not a huge problem or anything – it’s just I know from my daytime experiences that it should be perfectly possible to be virtually 100% comfortable and reasonably dry every time if I get it right.

The main way I have found to acclimatize in the past is to stop doing things add-hoc and start being methodical, building up the gradually the severity to a point were I am living it every day. In the past, I was patchy about letting myself bail out if I thought it was not going well. So while I have been here, I have started building up my ability to be comfortable in rubber overnight. Still not got the hood / mask / goggles part totally comfy, but working up to it.

And again, as I have not spent every day of the week in rubber, my will power is more able to push things at the weekends. So I am engaging in longer sessions at the weekend with the aim being to build it up to total enclosure 24/7 for each weekend, starting 5pm Friday though to Monday 8am, as the norm while away from home.

Last weekend was a trial and went reasonably well - but was a bit over ambitious as I found it difficult to sleep in my hood for more than one night in a row and had also made a little too difficult in the rear plug department! None of it was stopping me as a one off – but I realized that to regularize this level of exposure to be a routine (long term) part of your life, it really cannot be uncomfortable or exhausting experience. I want this fetish experience to be my norm not a one off kinky trial.

So I think the moral of the story is to build up my acclimatization gradually! Once I have the whole rubber below the neck thing 100% sown up (it already feels very normal most nights, but it has to be a comfortable & dry experience every night to be sustainable) I will add the hood building up to breathing masks, goggles and breathing hoods. So far there have been too many things to deal with – this way there is only one challenge at a time.

At the moment I am in Washington DC is very cold and the temperature is totally suitable for rubber. Even if it were not, every place I have been so far had good A/C. Tomorrow I head back for PA which I suspect will be my HQ for a while – again in air conditioned latex luxury! Looks like I may have a little work near NY – but again the temperature is going to be perfect. So if I have to work away, it appears I have chosen the right time of year for the places I am working…

Sealed

Sunday, 04 December 2005

As always Dark makes some interesting and thought provoking points in his recent comment. Thank you, I am flattered by your interest. But it suddenly occurred to me how difficult it might be for others (even regular rubberists) to see why I believe that extreme total enclosure would be the ideal normal state for me – my own personal holy grail. For a long time I had assumed that ALL rubberist might dream about spending all their time in rubber from head to foot, if only they could acclimatise to it, get past the physical & psychological barriers and have a personal lifestyle that allowed for such unusual/total existence/behaviour in our repressive society.

There are really three parts to my desired lifestyle, the rubber, the TE (being as hermitically sealed as possible) and the length of time I wish to be in this state. Looking at the comments from Dark and comments and emails from others leads me to realise that these are not even universal fantasies, even less so personal aims.

Before I go on, I really must say that I would not denigrate those who follow the practice of just wearing latex for a particular fetish session, party or just for fun, and then strip when it is no longer needed. I feel this is a totally legitimate rubberist / fetishist / TE ist behaviour. Please don’t think I believe this is a hierarchy - there is nothing clever, brave or noble about aspiring towards a dedication to a rubber TE lifestyle. It’s just a personal preference that some of us have.

It seemed to me that Dark’s mental exercise only went part the way to explaining my “holy grail” of “full perfect encasement”, even though I could relate to all his points. It is true that I think that rubber feels great, skin tight better and the more coverage the better. But interestingly, I thought Dark’s term Full Perfect Encasement did come close to summing up one of the missing elements in the reasoning very well – that’s exactly how it feels to me when the encasement is as full/total/complete as I can make it - Perfect. Anything less is “imperfect” to me. For me, TE or FPE is not just about the feeling of rubber on every inch of your skin – there is another extra physical aspect the nearer you get to TE and something more yet again when you achieve a totality hermitic seal – which is more than just a physical sensation. In addition I prefer that my air supply is not too direct – even when I am not embarked on a session of breath play. This can be anything from wearing a simple filter mask to more elaborate masks and tubes – but the base line is that not even my lips / teeth / tongue are outside my total encasement. Again. the enclosure is not strictly total for me if my eyes are not covered in some way (e.g. rubber blind fold, goggles or full face mask).

As for the extended length of time I whish to be in this state – that is a little more difficult to account for. Lets start with the time it takes most people to perform a specific fetish session which may result in sexual climax. This is going to be different for everyone and different each time - but just try to imagine a long session by your own standards. My guess is that many have never made it past spending double this length of time in rubber (unless they fell asleep post coitus and woke up in the morning still in rubber or maybe were out partying all night). This period of say double the period strictly needed to achieve a fetish session is, in my mind, just the starting point for a whole different TE experience I desire. Problematically, it is also usually during this period when you get the strongest desire to strip from what suddenly feels like the restrictive grip of the TE.

Now, imagine it’s a good day and you have stayed rubbered for a time when you have had multiple sessions with rest session between and are now convinced you have had your fill (a session that could keep you happy for days). Now imagine resisting the now very strong desire to strip and just take a rest for a while instead. After a time, what would happen for me is that the desire to strip fades and suddenly I start to feel very comfortable again. Presently, I get a feeling of being very special and the feeling is both great and reassuring. Lets call this the beginning of Phase 2, which feels like I have entered an almost symbiotic relationship with my encasement. If I can come to accept the (mainly) minor inconveniences and restrictions of staying in rubber, I start to reap the true benefits of long term TE, this time without the “torture” of needing to repress my pent up sexual drive and over stimulation (or alternately the need to do something to relief the strong desire to come). Many of the benefits of Phase 2 get better over the hours and even days and I would say is a much deeper experience than just a quick phase 1 bang.

That’s half of it – the “why extended session” part, but again there is another part. Why should it become your default day to day existence? Well this is even more tricky to describe but partly it is because it is a just an important part of the technique of achieving Phase 2. And this is where the explanation gets a little recursive, but bear with me…

Now in a perfect world, if this TE Phase 2 is something you wanted to do even fairly regularly as part of your life, it would be better to get to Phase 2 as quickly as possible rather than “endure” Phase 1 for hours of each session (with all the time and mess involved!). One of the handful of techniques I use for this is to literally achieve phase 2 as regularly/constantly as I possibly can. Like a self fulfilling prophecy, the nearer you get to Phase 2 being an every day for most/all of the day experience, the easier and quicker it is to achieve Phase 2+. I call it 2+ because it has all the advantages of Phase2 without the daily inconvenience of involuntarily losing control for half the day, plus the advantage of still being susceptible to becoming highly sexually stimulated (usually) at a time of your own choosing, rather than in the first hour of TE. This becomes important if you want function in any way outside of just sex while wearing rubber.

I know this is going to sound difficult to believe, but the part of the fetish experience that most people aim for (that I call phase 1) is one of the single biggest nightmares of my latex lifestyle for me. The amazing rush, massive sudden increase in libido, the transition from mundane life to an exciting fetish dream existence are like crosses I must bear for my belief in Phase 2. To me Phase 1 has become associated with ordeal, torment and even suffering. Believe me, if you don’t get to choose the time it happens, holding back from over sexual stimulation day in day out, hour after hour does feel very much like a physical agony. It’s still enjoyable for me – but only in a very masochistic way. Luckily for me the cure is to try to minimise time spent in Phase 1 to minutes and not hours, partly by basically staying in Phase 2+ day in day out. (Other controls I use to deal with phase 1 are “ritual”, state of mind, time of day, diet, activity before and after being encased, use of toys and use of poppers… But I think the most potent would be to never spend more than a few minutes unsealed).

In addition to the above purely practical (if cyclic) reasoning, there has to be a more fundamental personal motivation to want to aspire to lifestyle of Full Perfect Encasement. This is almost as difficult for me as describing why you want to be a man or woman (I guess I am talking gender not just biological sex here). My current self image is wrapped up in the whole idea of TE as being a perfect (normal) state for the ideal “being”. It’s difficult to be certain, but I think this has always been the case for me since childhood. I don’t think anything will shake my desire to aspire towards this idealised (self) image.

Back to a more physical reason – rubber feels great on day 1 and still feels great on day 30 and this whole notion of recalibration of senses may have been overplayed, or perhaps poorly explained by me and others. Recalibration is a reality for me – basically you not only get used to the feeling of TE, but you actually adapt to it to some degree. Rubber does become less taxing to wear when it is your “norm”. In fact, after a month or two, it becomes significantly more comfortable to be in rubber than to wear anything else. But for me, you never feel like the rubber is not there for very long and it never feels anything other than very special – sure you sometimes forget for a short while if extremely pre-occupied – but the idea of rubber TE becoming a normal non-stimulating feeling is ludicrous to me (not that Dark claimed quite as much as that). I think of recalibration as being like taking a mild pain killer - taking aspirin may make your sore knee easier to live with, but if you touch your skin, or knock your knee, it still feels exactly the same as normal. If that can be true of pain killers maybe you will believe me when I say that rubber is ALWAYS stimulating to me, even when I don’t want it to be, even after several days of 24/7 encasement. For example, I have been in rubber constantly since Friday PM and I am still having difficulty controlling myself now on Sunday evening when I come to describe my rubber lifestyle, 48 hours later…

Maybe it’s not as intense for me as it is for other who ration themselves – I can’t measure that. For sure it is not as frantic involuntary an experience – but that’s not to say there are not deeper sensual elements to compensate. What does seem to happen over time is that the reasons and impulses to end a TE session lessen fairly constantly and the reasons to want to carry on stay fairly constant after the first few high/lull cycles – thus a tipping point can be reached were the balance of reasons to stay rubbered outweigh the reasons to go vanilla. I have been slightly worried when this has happened – as I have occasionally got to a stage where it’s be too strong a wrench to go vanilla and so affected my other work/life commitments…

As for the calculus of the fetish TE – I think this particularly well observed. For me there are always two sides to the equation which I have to balance. It also explains why some people are more able and willing to go for the lifestyle. For example, people who are gregarious with vanilla friends and family, don’t have personalities that like to shock, like doing very physical sport and/or work, get still crazy if they don’t regularly get a dose of outdoor life are going to find it more difficult to balance the equation than a book mouse, non-physical types who are very self contained.

For me, I tend to fit somewhere towards the type of person where a fully enclosed latex lifestyle does not sufficiently prohibit me from the life I want to live to stop me living in rubber the majority of the time. Admittedly I have manipulated the other part of my work & personal life to quite an extent to make them compatible with rubber. I expect I am done manipulating them – but suspect I have left it a little too long in my life to totally commit to a 24/7/365 rubber lifestyle – but that shouldn’t stop me trying.

For me, once you given yourself the opportunity to experience TE day in day out, it only gets easier to deal with the challenges and yet also becomes more pleasurable. The real answer as to why I would want to spend each day like this is that it’s better in rubber and I often cannot find any reason not to be.

It’s interesting to think that many like Dark try to acquire the next fetish level with money. I sometimes do the same, but my main investment is not monetary – it is something you never want to squander - namely time. Contrary to how it may sound, I find I cannot be judgmental about other people’s journeys to personal happiness and just whish everyone who is true to their dreams well.

It seems that rubberiest who aspire to and actively pursue a fully total enclosure lifestyle are in a very small minority. Those who write about even fewer. So it seems I am more alone in this endeavor than I thought. I hope to come to terms with this fact, but can’t help feeling very keen to hear from anyone who even has it as a dream – but be warned I always encourage people to make there dreams a reality…

Sealed