Ook Ook 🦍

When the Brit saw me in July I weighed 225 pounds. By October I had added 22 pounds of muscle and weighed 247 pounds (17 stone 9 pounds).

I arrived in the Brit's city the morning of Wednesday, 3 October 2018. He met me at the airport and drove us to his home. That afternoon we visited a lovely large park in his town and just enjoyed being together.

We relaxed at his home with tea and TV. The Brit showed me a couple of music videos he partiularly liked.

The next day, we visited the Gay Neighborhood. I cringed at all the rainbow flags. We visited a bar and met a mutual online friend from London who was also in town for Leather Weekend.

The Brit encouraged me to try a hypnotic arm lock on our friend. It worked! I was grateful for the Brit's mentoring.

That night we headed back to the Gay Neighborhood. The streets had been closed to cars and barriers were placed along curbs to keep foot traffic from colliding with people entering and exiting pubs.

As we walked down a busy street past a pub a couple of young men tumbled out punching each other. A security guard tried to grab them but they slammed into the curb-side barrier, the barrier and the men slammed into me. I started to fall over and grabbed at a pedestrian crossing sign. It was on a spring. I fell hard onto the pavement.

I picked myself up and dusted myself off. The Brit was 2 blocks further down the road. After I limped to him I asked him why he just kept walking.

"Why," he asked, "What happened?"

I told him about the fighting men, the falling barrier, and hitting the ground. He was shocked. He explained that his brain goes blank from sudden commotions just like it does when facing violence.

My left hip hurt badly. We walked a few more blocks, stopped for doner kebabs, and headed home.

Friday we took a train to meet a small group of the Brit's friends in a nearby city. We'd be attending a street festival featuring the Giants, a set of immense French marionettes suspened from heavy construction cranes. Because my hip hurt from last night's injury we negotiated staying about 2 hours in an 8 block area where the most festival activities would take place.

The Brit's friends were wonderful. The Giants were breathtaking. The crowd was friendly and fun.

But 2 of the Brits friends hadn't arrived yet. He called them, they said they'd be there shortly. We relaxed with beer at a pub.

The friends still did not show up. The Brit called them again, they said they'd need 2 hours. The group suggested walking to the waterfront area. I told the Brit I'd need to take it slow because of my hip.

And the stragglers still didn't arrive when they said they would. They needed another hour and a half. The group once again decided the best thing to do was... keep walking.

I told the Brit I needed a break before more walking. He escorted me to a plaza with benches and told me he and the group would be line of sight across a BIG intersection at a shopping street.

More walking. We arrived at a side street with many restaurants and chose a Middle Eastern one. We chatted, we dawdled, and STILL the stragglers hadn't arrived. We ordered our meals and started eating when we were served.

Finally the 2 friends arrived as we were having dessert. When even the Brit couldn't stand dragging out the meal any longer we thanked everyone for their company and headed to the train station.

I stopped us at some benches near the station. I told the Brit my hip was in great pain, we had negotiated how long we'd stay and how far we'd walk, and the Brit completely disregarded it. He apologized and said the group really did lose grip on their plans, and it might have been better to just tell the stragglers where and when they could meet us and not keep delaying-- and walking-- to accommodate them.

I thanked the Brit and we headed home.

The Brit hired us a hotel room for Leather Weekend, it was walking distance to the Gay Village and all the Leather Weekend events. After we got oriented we lied down on the bed.

The Brit said, "About yesterday... You were unfair and intolerable and I won't stand for it. You had no right to blame me for walking so much. You had every right to leave if you didn't want to be there." He started to cry.

He told me an anecdote about a young girl he knew whose mother taught her the "right to leave." A friend's birthday party, a sleep-over, at the playground, the girl always had the right to leave when she had enough. Or not even go at all.

I told the Brit we had negotiated time and walking in advance and my having the right to leave didn't change the fact that he didn't respect what he himself suggested. I told him I had never been to his city before, nor the city we visited, and he hustled us through mass transit so quickly I didn't know where train stations and tram stops were nor what tram lines to take to get to his home.

The Brit said I still could have left when I had walked enough but he'd help me learn the transit system.

This was the first of many times he'd apologize and a day to a week later he'd blame-reverse that apology.

That night we headed to the local leather bar. The Brit showed me a map and traced our walking route and told me a couple places we'd stop briefly to see if friends were there or events were happening.

About half way to the bar the Brit stopped on the sidewalk and told me, "We're going to go a couple more blocks and turn on Richmond Street--"

I interrupted, "I thought we were stopping at--"

The Brit bellowed, "I'M TALKING."

He continued to tell me in a teeth-gritted babysitter voice that I would have understood where we were going and why if I had just let him talk.

Despite the rough start to the night we had an excellent evening at the leather bar. We met a couple of men the Brit had talked to before about hypnosis. He demonstrated some concepts and techniques by ambush hypnotizing me with instant inductions. I demonstrated the hypnotic arm lock on one of the men. Fun all around.

The next day we connected with our London friend. The Brit and I wanted to be sure to could share our kink interests as a group of 3 men. Our friend has prior hypnosis experience with the Brit and gladly agreed. The Brit and I worked well as a kink couple and all 3 of us enjoyed ourselves.

Afterwards I lied down on the bed with the Brit and played this cover of Cyndi Lauper's song Shine on my cell phone:

I gave the Brit a big silver biker ring with gears meshing, individual but working together. I asked the Brit to marry me and he said yes.

He would everafter refer to his engagement ring as "the Very Big Ring."

On a Skype video chat the Brit unloaded on me again about my conversation habits. He was very clear that I had to change to suit his preferences.

His demands:

I was to let him start conversations and only speak after he gestured that he had said what he wanted. I was allowed speak first when I had a self-contained statement to make, not to start a conversation. I should listen to how long he speaks and not speak more than he does.

Interruptions and interjections are forbidden, I only do that because I want to derail the conversation and keep the Brit from speaking. Anecdotes, even if I think they illustrate a conversation point, were not allowed. Nor were sidebars like "I read a good book on that topic, you might like it too..." They're both just attempts to usurp the conversation.

And he didn't want me to mention annoying smartphone users or smartphones anymore, we've discussed that enough and it adds nothing new to the conversation.

I calmly told the Brit his expectations were extreme and he should discuss them with 2 or 3 friends he could trust to be honest if they disagreed with him.

He replied, "You're the only one I have this problem with."

Wait, what?

I have always thought that binary opposites like talkers/liteners are dangerous thinking, like all-or-nothing thinking. I believe conversations are an open format exchange, debates are carefully structured turn taking.