St. Petersburg, Florida, 2008

I'm sitting at the table in the entry of Suite 7804 late Saturday night, the last night of the last party on a four-month string of scenes and dates that has left my heart trampled, my direction obscure, and my sanity in question. The door's on the latch as it always is and it swings open, its frame filled by the woman who started it all, all six-plus feet of her atop high heels and displaying the kind of curves that'll put a scenic railway in the guidebook. Black halter top, hot pink panties and signature glasses, "Moonie" is celebrating ten years since the founding of the original Florida Moonshine by offering free swats. Oh - and the panties, about four feet off the ground, are backless.



It seems like every bit of ten years that I've been promising to make it to a Florida party, but in truth the Florida Moonshine group as I know it - the current one - was started back up by Tony and Gail, Ian, and Alona back in 2005 or so - so it couldn't really be that long that I've been trying to get here. Even so...

I get off the shuttle in front of the hotel and immediately realize that I haven't been on an East Coast beach since I was fifteen. On the Pacific you don't get the heat and humidity this close to the water, and the feeling, the sense of it, is unmistakable. Boardwalks and crazy dreams of summer romance rush back with an immediacy that make it seem like yesterday - or at the very least, last summer. Of course, no one here calls this the East Coast - it's the West, or Gulf Coast. And I could not have chosen a better destination for my first visit to Florida - the beach at St. Pete has graced plenty of postcards, I'm sure; the view from my balcony is only surpassed by the view from my door.

We'll have to see what can be said and what can be hinted at and what is better kept to myself, but cutting right to the chase scene - was it better than Shadow Lane? Ian wants everyone on the planet there next year and every positive word helps - so I'll say this much: it was perfect. It was just what I needed just when I needed it. Everyone I knew welcomed me; everyone I met welcomed me. The setting was beautiful; of course the women were beautiful. One guy turns leather into art; another handles a whip with a touch that leaves his partners with open mouths and glazed eyes. It was relaxed; it was exciting. It was, in a word, "nice." After the dungeons of Dom Con, after the weekends spanning Sacramento, San Francisco and San Jose followed by Central California and Orange County, after I-5 has become yet another viewing of the same in-flight movie, it was perfect.

Did I miss my fabulous California crowd? Did I miss the familiarity of Ventura Boulevard, the Riviera, South Coast Plaza and the Strip? Eight video vixens on the bed? Shadow Lane is Shadow Lane, LA is LA, what can I say? Don't ask me to dis my home town. So no, no comparisons... but God, what a party... what a great time. Thank you - everyone. For everything.



This strap hurts, I know it, that's why I've chosen it. Slant-tipped, barely wider than it is thick, cut from reins for a Clydesdale. And I'm laying it on. But she is feeling guilty, she needs to feel it. Her bottom is well warmed-up, maybe too warmed up. I lay a practice stroke across her thighs, and a second. She says that's what she needs. When I make her.

Six across the bottom, hard... three across the thighs that make my teeth grind. She doesn't move, at least not much - maybe because her ankles are wrapped tight and I've tied her hands to the bedpost. Six and three, six and three - she is clearly suffering, the print of nine strokes standing out, short and rectangular on her near thigh, long across the other, the slant-cut clearly visible on the far side. Six more across her bottom. I pause and put my mouth by her ear, a whisper asking her to ask me to not give her the last three - she's had enough, I tell her. She's a good girl and does as I ask. I spend the next three hours in a state of relaxed satisfaction - filled or drained, I can't tell which... but the near panic of the past four, or five, or six months is palatable in its absence.