Friday, March 31, 2006

Don’t forget, this Sunday Photographer Michele Serchuk and her partner Delano are presenting “Rope Bondage Relationships – Connection and Intent” at the WetSpot here in Seattle. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing and working with both the presenters and am constantly impressed by their work.

In fact, I’m taking the whole damn day off just to attend this class. You should too.

Thursday, March 30, 2006

Damn do I need a day off!

We were working like mad in the run up to Kinkfest and since coming back things have not slowed down. After rigging for three separate photo shoots, my hands are feeling like claws and the body… oh the body is just not motivated. Of course it does not help that I have a pile of things to finish today.

So blanket apology time. If I owe you an e-mail/phone call/blog post/foot rub this week, I’ll get to it I promise.

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Shit, where do I begin?

Just a quick note here while I still have strength left in my fingers. These have been some busy hands today. Let me see, today I did three suspension scenes for a famous photographer. One involved 2-dozen doughnuts and my beloved wife, Tambo.

Must crash now before my face hits the keyboard, but first I need to thank Johnny Sunshine, M and Lil’ Red Ridinghood for pitching a fantastic surprise birthday lunch for Nerdy.

Maybe I should shower off the layer of doughnut glaze off my body first.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Godzilla 1, Tokyo 0

The problem with writing about the aftermath of a kink convention like Kinkfest is really where to start. The sheer quantity of interesting events and cool people to talk about tends to make one feel a bit overwhelmed when they set about to tell the tale. I fear that I undoubtedly forget someone in the retelling of the tale so sometimes I think that the best route would be to just not even attempt the telling at all. However if I did that, this would not nearly be as much fun to read, no?

Here is a fun tale from the weekend I want to share.

The event organizers came up with this great idea. They printed up a set of stickers that read “I’m a TOP looking to play tonight” or “I’m a BOTTOM looking to play tonight”. They were brightly colored (and in different colors) so that from across the room you could spot them and if the person struck your fancy… well then you now had an excuse to start up a conversation with them. Tambo was to be off doing her amazing facial bondage on Peanut for the first part of the evening and I found myself with an open slot on my dance card for Saturday night. I was wearing one of these shirts so I grabbed a spare “I’m a TOP” stickers and placed it right next to the image of Abigail (our company logo).

Tambo would tease me for the rest of the day, “Why don’t you just put a tag under Abigail that reads, ‘This could be you, ask me how’?”

Its late Saturday afternoon and I’m doing my thing at the booth. Pressing rope into the hands of all who come by and tying up as many smiling bodies as possible. Of all the demos I teach, my favorite is a limb/chest bind I learned from Berlin performance rigger. The tie is all about speed and motion and makes a dramatic demo, often leaving the recipient slightly wobbly and giddy with surprise. The girl, a raven-haired beauty from NYC with rich almond eyes and firm skin that screamed to be bound, was unsure about the whole rope thing. She knew she wanted rope, knew that she liked the idea of rope play, but had no idea of what to get or how much. After running though a bunch of ties on her limbs, I finished with the chest tie. Now the final move of the tie is to take the knot in the back, tug it tight and give the whole harness a good firm shake (and if they are cute, pull them backward in close to my body).

It was when I finished that move that she looked up at me though her disheveled hair and asked, “Is that sticker you are wearing correct?”
“perhaps”
“I have a sticker around here somewhere too…”, she said making a nodding motion with her chin towards the pile of belongings she set down next to the table. The bright pink “I’m a BOTTOM.” Sticker was easily visible.
“Oh yes, I see you do have a sticker? And what does that mean to me.”
“Please time me up again and throw me around like this tonight, but I fucking wanna be naked for it!”
“Tell you what, you pick out the ropes you like and I’ll tie you up in them tonight. Deal?”
“Deal!”

And so the date was set, she would meet me at the play space at 8 with her new rope.

I just love doing very rough, physical rope play. There is something very powerful and sexy about getting right up close to a person and binding them. I tried to describe this sort of play once as, “I just want to be Godzilla to her Tokyo and knock shit over.” Wrapping their limbs in hemp and tossing their giggling/screaming/cumming form about is just a delight.

Finding a nicely padded space to work, she was barely out of her clothes before I leapt upon her naked form. Part take down, part hog tie and all fun. That was the order of business tonight. Limbs were bound, legs spread, pressure points were tormented, breasts were punched and tormented, and was rope passed though wet pink places. I think it was an hour or two later when we came up for air. Her naked body now covered in rope marks and bruises and mine, while still clothed, was covered in sweat. (Hey, it takes a lot of work to lift up a girl in a hog tie and carry her across the room while she screams, “I’M A LITTLE FUCK BALL!” for you.)

The next morning she returned to the booth, still bearing the smile she wore when I kissed her forehead and sent her on her way the previous night.
“I think I need more rope. I kinda got some of my new rope… um… dirty last night” she said with a slight blush.
“Yeah, crotch ropes will do that,” I responded, “You can wash them you know?”
“You have got to be kidding! I want to save that rope just for me.”

Somewhere on the isle of Manhattan, dear readers, there is a girl with a bruise on her left shoulder that is a PERFECT imprint of a man’s size 11 Converse All-Stars (red).

Saturday, March 25, 2006

Quick note from KinkFest

Its Saturday night, Tambo and I just grabbed a bite to eat and are chilling out before making our way to the dungeon to cause some mayhem. Sales have been, well the have just been fantastic. On Friday the bins you see below were full to overflowing. Today they are looking pretty empty.

Thanks again Portland, we love you.


So this is what the new booth layout looks like. Like it? This was Tambo’s idea and I think it is fucking AMAZING.

ok, I'm off to try and catch a quick 20 min nap before I go set about to trash a pretty girl.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

We are all packed and heading out the door for Kinkfest.
Funny, for being a “small” event for us we sure do pack a LOT of stock. You are looking at over 1.5 miles of rope (8,500 feet!). I’ll see if we can’t get a photo before the event opens so you can see what this mass of crates and steel turns into once we get it all put together.

Till then, enjoy my latest Jane’s Guide column and if you are coming to Kinkfest, do stop by and say hi.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Nope, I have not forgotten about you all.

Just wrapped up in the final preparations for KinkFest. It is amazing really, even after doing so many shows I always forget how much goes into staging a good convention presence. Of course it does not help that we use KinkFest as a testing ground for new products and displays.

So pardon me while I tend to things at the Abbey today and enjoy this amazing short film about the rise and fall of one woman told via her name.

Monday, March 20, 2006

Proof that I am a sick, sick boy

Swiped from one of my favorite on-line comics
I'll leave it to you to figure out why I laughed so hard that my coffee just about shot out my nose, but this comic never fails to make that sick, twisted part of my brain howl with glee. Wrong, deeply wrong I know.



Thank you for all the great comments and questions about this week's Jane's Guide column. Let me get some pressing things done first and then I'll see what I can do to address some of them.

OK, we got like 4 days till KinkFest, I best get my ass down to the Abbey.

Saturday, March 18, 2006

My new Jane's Guide column is live, enjoy.

Friday, March 17, 2006

Running behind on the column, spent this morning ”distracting” my editor, (there was much nudity involved) so things are a wee bit behind schedule. I’m thinking it should go live later tonight / tomorrow morning.

In the meantime, I’m giving you first dibs on something very cool we now have in stock at the Abbey. Twisted Monk Exotics: Hand Spun “Cashmere” Hemp

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

A lot of thoughts race though one’s brain when they have a bound and gagged girl in the back seat of their car.
“Her breathing is steady and normal, good”
“If she needs to give me her ‘let me out now’ signal, I have my EMT shears in my pocket”
“Of fuck, I have a headlight out. How am I going to explain this to a cop?!”

As abduction scenes go, this one went pretty well. Her partner contacted me almost 2 months ago with a request. They were coming to Seattle for spring break and she wanted to surprise her girlfriend with something memorable. Don’t you just love partners who conspire against you? Some plan surprise birthday parties; we planned a surprise abduction scene.

Simple plans make the best plans, so this one was going to go down something like this. She thought that they were going to come down to the Abbey for a visit, bring us some treats and get hung from the great winch. What she did not know was that after Griffin and I tied and tormented her till she was all but breathless from giggles, her partner was to step out and then the things were to get a bit more… interesting.

She did not see Griffin pull the roll of bandage tape from his pocket as I unbound her from the suspension rigging. As I pulled the last lines from her torso, her sigh of relief was quickly replaced with a look of wide-eyed terror as hands firmly placed tape across her mouth. Holding her fast, on hand on her mouth and one on the small of her neck, Griffin asks in his most menacing tone, “Ok, so when do we have to return her”
“8Am tomorrow, her safe word is “farm” and if she is gagged then she will snap her fingers,” I bark back and I roughly cinch her blindfold down.

She’s a small girl, a tiny thing really. The plan was to stuff her into one of the giant duffel bags we use for transporting rope to shows and lug said bag out to my jeep. Pulling the bag over her feet and doing our best to manhandle the girl with out actually permanently injuring her we discover the first problem with the plan. Even scrunched down, the bag only comes up to her chest. Thinking fast I grab the tarp we had just laid down and wrapped her from the neck down in the tarp and then tape it around her body. Now immobilized we needed to get our bundle of moaning girl out to the car and off to Dancer’s place for the second half of the scene. Next problem, the usually deserted loading dock that we were going to carry her out though was now populated. New building tenants who would probably not appreciate the sight of two grown men lugging a roughly girl shaped package out of their shop.

Walking past her partner, who has been listening to the entire scene from around the corner and will spend the remainder of the scene nearby watching, I hand her the box of cupcakes they brought and whisper, “See those guys, distract them!” She does her best to have them all be looking away from the doors as Griffin and I quickly spirit the bundle, now draped in a blanket, behind them and into the back of my rig.

Now secure in the backseat, I hop in and pull my phone. Calling Dancer’s home I bark in my best topping voice, “I have the package and am enroute, by ready.”

Dancer talks about what was like to have a girl delivered to her door here.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Important Announcement!

Max has just started taking reservations for his next 2-day intensive. If you are looking to learn rope bondage, this is the weekend to attend. Max packs a lot of great information into 2 full days of teaching. Also this is the only place where you will learn suspension bondage from one of the best, safest and most trusted rope tops in area (if not the whole damn west coast). Hurry, he only does this twice a year and the classes always sell out.

In other news, I’m thinking that I am due to write a reader questions column for JanesGuide.Com soon. So what questions would you like to ask for my first “Ask Monk” column?

Monday, March 13, 2006

OK, I’ll admit it. I love bad horror flicks. Some will say that they are a blight, a pox on modern cinema that has clogged our screens with crap and contributed to the continual decline of our culture’s collective IQ. (And they probably have a valid point.) I however adore them, there is something very relaxing about sitting back, putting the old brain in park and enjoying the ride. In some ways I guess you could say that watching a horror flick is a bit like bottoming. As a viewer, we know the rules of the genre and we know that when we buy our ticket that we are giving up control to the director and saying to them, “ok big boy, do your worst”. (A good director knows this, and will play to that) Needless to say this time of year, that dead space between Oscar season and the summer blockbusters, is a great for bad movie fans. See this is the time when the movie studios send all their “less” than perfect films to theaters. Sure you get another bad sequel to a remake of a prequel of a movie based on a video game character, but also some gems of crappy cinema get some much deserved screen time.

Last night, after a particularly long and bone weary week, Tambo and I decided to hop down to the local multi-plex and walk into whatever movie was showing next. The winner, Underworld:Evolution. Not having seen the original we were pretty confident that we could pick up the story ok. Vampires vs. werewolves and a hot chick in a cat suit with automatic weapons blowing shit up…cool.

Now to just give you a glimpse into the level of Tambo and I’s nerdieness, after the film we spent the better part of dinner discussing the tactical merits and weaknesses of a war between said werewolves and vampires based on the historical evidence (ie, what we have seen in other movies). The end result of said debate? We had to obtain the first Underworld film and watch it, that night. Mind you that it is now 7pm on a Sunday night. After hitting not one, not two, but three stores we finally found said film and watched it, curled up together in bed with our cat and dog tucked in at our feet.

The final analysis, vampires are inherently more sexy creatures and tap into our lust to be so. Werewolves, while more powerful creatures, are dammed to forever be painted as tragic characters and Tambo is the most wonderful nerd in the world.

Friday, March 10, 2006

Not sure about the rest of you…
But damn am I glad this week is done! First and foremost, yes my new column is done and up at JanesGuide.Com

Podcaster extraordinaire, Minx, has a spread on eroszine. Now having spent time naked with her in a motel, I’d like to go on record here and say that yes, she is just as charming, sexy and delightful as they say she is. Ok so said motel room was one that her, her partner Gray and I all split in Austin together, but there was much nudity to be had. Oh and she makes great cookies too.

In other news, we are ramping up for KinkFest and doing a damn fine job of it. Thanks to the tireless efforts of the Abbey crew we are now filling orders faster than ever before. Our “standard” 15 day wait time for orders has fallen to less than 5 and in many cases we are filling and shipping orders the same day. So if you have been waiting for a good time to buy some rope, now would be a great time to place that order.

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Its a longshot, but...

Do I have any readers in Tokyo, Japan who care to help me with a project?

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

“Feels like I’m giving birth to a sandpaper baby.”

That’s the line Dancer and I use when we complain about struggling to get a writing project done in time. So please excuse the lack of updates, this week it feels like it is 80-grit and coming out feet first.

Friday, March 03, 2006

Happy Friday kids, let us all rejoice.

Ok, so my new column is up at Janesguide.com. You can read it here.


I have only a handful of these left so I best offer them to you first. Autographed copies of Midori’s book, The Sensual Art of Japanese Rope Bondage. These copies are $35.00 and $10.00 of that will be donated to Midori’s favorite charity.

Lastly, some ideas are just so perfect that when you see them you think, “My god, I can die now. Mix Jack Black and masked Mexican wrestlers and what do you get? Genius, pure genius.

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

March's Color of the Month

It would be impossible to stock the entire rainbow of colors that folks ask us for on a regular basis. So instead, we now offer a new and unique color every month – watch for the color you want!

If you have ever called the Abbey to place an order, then you have probably spoken with Nerdygirl. In addition to being the queen of customer service, our pint-sized powerhouse keeps the insanity to a minimum and the orders flowing out the door. Enabling the rest of us to do what we do best, make rope! We like to joke that if TwistedMonk.Com were a band, Nerdygirl would be our drummer.


This month is Nerdygirl’s birthday and in honor of that, this month’s Color of the Month is her favorite color. A sage green that we are calling “Sad Sweetheart of the Rodeo Sage.

This is a limited, one time color run. Once the color has been sold out, it is sold out for good.