Please take a moment to visit my Flickr photostream and scold me for not having uploaded anything in far too long. (And, yes, I'm a comment whore shamelessly soliciting feedback.)




           

A heartfelt thank you to Lady Arrakis for allowing me to do a bit of dreaming about how a non-chromosomally challenged Stays might have turned out. She does amazing work and is wonderful to work with. See more of her artwork at ArrakisArt and commission your own piece. Give yourself a present and take advantage of the 15% discount being offered until Christmas.

I'm in a committed and loving, though sadly vanilla, relationship (so unless you're an experienced professional dominant who simply could not face another day of living without doing unspeakably cruel and exquisite things to various parts of my body, I'm sorry, but I'm not looking for any private play dates.) My fascination with rubber and restrictive undergarments preceded even my becoming sexually aware. I've since gone through all the various phases which people with taboo desires are likely to experience; frantic cravings (absolutely no way in my day of even knowing what I was feeling), self loathing (why was I burdened with such freakish thoughs?), denial (it saddens me to think of the things I threw away in my attempts to purge myself of my abnormalities), enlightenment (how did kinky people ever survive before the internet?) , and ultimately self acceptance. I've since come to peace with myself, and am lucky to have a wonderful partner who accepts me as I am.

On Coming to Terms with Considering Myself a Transvestite

I struggled with calling myself a "T-Girl" for quite some time. Though I certainly fantasize a female persona, even dream of being the opposite sex, I have no doubts about what gender I actually am. But at work I tend to hang with the "girls", not really relating to the my highly testosterone charged male co-workers; no matter how many times I've seen it, I can't resist sitting down for Casablanca when it's on; and recently I found myself spending an unseemly amount of time in the women's shoe section of Von Maur dreaming not of how the boots would look on my wife, but on me. There just may be something to this whole "T-Girl" thing after all...

Adventures in Chlorination

The success at chlorinating my wardrobe has come almost entirely from the information I've gathered online, the bulk of which has been provided by RubberPal member Gord. He's shared his knowledge on any number of sites, including the forums here, but I followed the clear directions on his (and Mrs. Gord's) Catalyst Latex web shop. I owe him my thanks for making this a straightforward and successful process. The following is by no mean intended to be a guide to chlorination, nor will it replace information found elsewhere; these are merely my experiences with the process and results of chlorination.

     Supplies

Most of the supplies necessary came from a single stop at the local home improvement store. I'm in the U.S. and shopped the Lowes chain, but brands aren't important; you should be able to find similar items at almost any hardware or general goods store.

1. (3) 5 gallon buckets. Many of us probably already have these around the house, but I went ahead and bought clean ones.

2. 1 quart measuring cup. A 1L cup was recommended, but this was cheap (yay!) and marked with a 500ml line, so it worked fine.

3. 100ml graduated cylinder. My local stores did not having any fine measures available so I ordered this inexpensive, poly cylinder off Amazon. I was pleasantly surprised to receive a nice, German-made item rather than some cheap Asian import.

4. Respirator. While it's stated that a windy day will work to keep the chlorine gas cleared, I frankly wasn't going to take a chance on damaging my health for a bit of fun. It was by far the most expensive item I purchased, but I went with a 3M respirator with their 60923 chlorine approved filters (the filters weren't in the local shop so I ordered them online).

5. Chemical gloves. O.K., so which of us doesn't have a lovely pair of long latex gloves that would work just fine for this? However, it would be difficult enough explaining what I was about to the neighbors without the fetish gear, so I went with a sturdy pair of heavy chemical gloves.

6. Reagent #1: Muriatic Acid. Sold for cleaning pools and concrete, this is a straightforward 32% solution of Hydrochloric acid.

7. Reagent #2: Chlorine Bleach. Avoid the extra-strength and added ingredient formulations and go with plain household bleach, in this case Clorox Regular. This was a slightly high solution at 5.7% (less than 5% is recommended) but it worked well.

Recommended, but not used:

8. Goggles. Once it saw my heavily bleached outfit and what the solution could do to some metals, it realized it would have been wise to wear goggles. You'll have your arm down in the bucket and it WILL splash, so I'd recommend protecting yourself completely.

     Preparation

Much of my clothing, particularly the older items, were liberally coated in an accumulation of old shine products, most of them silicone based, which I understand to be a sure way to cause chlorination to fail. Luckily I chanced upon a forum response to a post on cleaning latex that suggested a household cleaning product by the name of "Simple Green" for removing shine. I've since washed all my items in a Simple Green solution with complete success.

One caveat when cleaning with this product; to ensure I cleaned a heavy shine from my first test item, I submersed it in a 1:1 solution of Simple Green. Upon removing the garment from the rinse water, it immediately clung to itself like mad. My frantic attempts to free it from itself merely made matters worse. Only re-submerging it in the cleaning solution would allow it to release it's grasp. A desperate e-mail to Gord brought the suggestion that I put several drops of Simple Green or dish liquid in the chlorination water to act as a wetting agent, place the garment in the water and separate it from itself and then continue with the process as normal. This worked like a charm and I've had no trouble since.

     The Result

You can familiarize yourself with the process and read the testimonials from others, but nothing quite prepares you for putting on a chlorinated garment. It's a bit disconcerting the first time you effortlessly slip your hand into a long pair of gloves and a complete joy the second. It has completely changed the way I wear rubber. Rather that planning a time when I can break out the talc or lube, struggle into the clothing, clean up the mess, etc; I can pull on an outfit any time in just a few minutes. Layering, far from being a pain, is even easier than putting on the first item, since chlorinated rubber on chlorinated rubber is almost frictionless. I've spent more time in my latex recently than I have in the last few years combined and I continue to receive little surprises (painlessly reversing gloves for example) from chlorinated rubber clothing.

The best comparison I can think of for the look and feel of newly chlorinated garments is that of having been lightly talc. Each person has their own preference, but I truly enjoy the silky softness of talced rubber. Some items came out with an alarming chalky whiteness, but for the pieces I have worn so far, normal wear and washing have returned them to a normal, soft luster.

I've test polished one piece and it came out looking exactly as you'd expect. For the time being I'm not planning on polishing my garments as I rather enjoy the soft shine of rubber and I've become concerned about the long term effects of polishing products.

     Tips

1. I found that 4L was a good volume of water for most of my work. It would easily handle two medium sized garments (a top and a skirt, for example) or a half dozen pairs of gloves with a couple pair of stockings. I used up to 10-12L for larger, heavy items such as a full catsuit to ensure it could be fully submersed. This might have been excessive, but I had plenty of reagent to spare and I didn't want to have to re-chlorinate if it failed the first time.

2. The chemical reaction has a limited life. Keep this in mind when chlorinating garments that can be difficult to reverse, such as gloves or stockings. You don't want the reaction to finish while you're desperately attempting to reverse a dozen gloves. I processed a large batch of gloves in two passes; by chlorinating and rinsing one side first, reversing them all, and them running them through another pass of chlorination.

3. This is acid, folks, which just happens to react quite well with the plating on metal hardware. The process stripped the nickel and black plating from many of the brass and copper grommets used on my garments. Keep in mind that copper will stain latex, particularly lighter colors, so take this into account when deciding what to chlorinate. In my mad desire to process every single item I own, I threw my Murray and Vern corset into the bucket, only to find that all the buckles and eyelets had been turned thoroughly dull by the acid. Luckily the plating appears to be thick enough to allow me to polish the hardware back to a respectable sheen, but I wouldn't do it again.

4. This is bleach, folks, which does a wonderful job of removing the color from any of the cloth components of your garments. All of my zippers had been thoroughly coated with latex in preparation for glueing to the rubber, so these were protected from fading; but the fabric straps on some suspender clips faded from black to a light tan. I should be able to re-dye these, so I'm not particularly worried, but something to be aware of.

5. Be patient! I towel dried all the items and then hung them up, but the temptation was too great and I attempted to don one item while there was still a slight bit of dampness. It was no easier to put on than before chorination and I though I had failed. Wait till it's fully dried and you'll save yourself possible disappointment.

6. No miracles in sizing. If it was too small to fit before chlorination, chlorination will do nothing to make it easier to don afterwards.

7. Chlorinating will not save deteriorating rubber. For fun I chlorinated a very old pair of Latexa molded latex gloves which were quite a ways on in the aging process. One glove failed to survive, but the other came out intact. Just as with new garments, it was slick and easily slid on, but it was still fragile and lacking elasticity. (It was this piece that I used to test polish.)

Making Latex Clothing


A huge shout out to Latex Kitty who's Making Latex Clothing blog was both the inspiration for my first attempt to roll my own and the primary source of information as I got started. I'd also like to show my appreciation to MJTrends from which I sourced most of my supplies and FelixKatz for his excellent videos on applying latex appliques. MJTrends also has a growing selection of instructional videos on working with latex that are very helpful. Unfortunately the one thing all these great tutorials can't do is make you good at working with latex, and frankly I'm not sure that's going to happen for me. However, it's been a great experience so far and it's both taught me to respect those of you who can do this well and taken away much of the reluctance I had to working with latex. I strongly recommend giving it a try yourself. Here's a shot of my first item, a nun's cowl:

If You Read Nothing Else in My Profile, Please Read This:

I do love RubberPal, especially because we can all come here for our own reasons. My reason for being here is to meet other fetishists, and discuss and learn more about our shared interests. If you are here to find someone to talk dirty to you or to whom you can tell all the things you'd do if they were bound at your feet; I'm afraid I can't be that person for you. And words simply cannot express how much I do not want to see your thingy. The only sex organ I'm looking to exercise on here is my brain. I don't like to be rude; so please don't put me in a position to be that way whether via email or chat.

A Few of My Favorite Things

     Latex Haute Couture

While I crave latex dripping with fetishistic imagery; inflatable bits and bobs, zips and snaps in useful places and insertable thingies; I still enjoy what designers such as Atsuko Kudo and Vex Clothing are doing along more fashionable lines. Don't let it be said fetish can't be either beautiful or fashionable. And let's not forget RubberPal's own Kriszta!

     Corsets

If there's one thing likely to take my mind off of latex, it would be the pleasurable restriction of a fine pair of stays.

from left to right:

1. Brocade Gallery Serpetine waist cincher. Nothing particularly fetishy about this, at least as far as rubber goes, but a surprisingly good fitting little cincher that was a huge bargain at less that half the cost of any other corset I own. The heavy brocade fabric makes it quite good at taking the breath out of you.

2. Patent Starkers underbust victory corset. My second ever custom fit corset and, with the detachable garters, a good all-around stomp about the house wear.

3. Latex Murray and Vern underbust, buckled corset. This is actually a very lovely looking corset; just not on me. Like many latex corsets, it's far too stretchy to do any serious waste reduction. Can't beat the feel of rubber and pressure combined though.

4. Bengaline Wasp Creations mid-length underbust corset. My first custom made corset and by far the most challenging wear. Her corsets are for serious tight lacers (check out her profile for proof) and the wasp waisted profile she uses isn't your typical corset fit. Took me quite some time to comfortably wear it fully cinched down, but fits like a glove now. One of only two corsets I own that will actually give me something approaching a decent figure. It is with great sadness that I learned of Amy's passing in May of 2010.

5. Vinyl JDesign buskless underbust corset. Wow. Where to start with this thing. It doesn't do it justice to say it's made from vinyl. This is extremely heavy vinyl, as in stop bullets heavy. Any buskless corset is challenging to put on, but given this thing is stiff enough to stand up on it's own, I keep a lot of extra lacing on it. You can't help but have curves wearing this because the curves are already there before you put it on. Quite frankly, I love this corset. J's corset designs were carried under a number of brands after JDesign folded, most recently Deadly Girls from Hell 7, but a quick look at their site shows they're no longer available there either. That's a real loss. On my last visit to their site I found DGFH7 are no longer in the business of making corsets. Thing change, but no always for the best.

6. Leather Demask Leotard Corset. Took a chance on buying this off Ebay and was pleasantly surprised that it fits as well as it does. Too lightly boned to be a true corset, but it's good for the occasion bit of leathery fun.

7. Latex Libidex Bastille Corset. Wasn't planning on buying this, but Libidex were having a sale and what nun doesn't need a matching white corset? A fairly basic and stretchy corset, but it adds to the outfit. Now if somebody will just kindly grant me the substantial windfall necessary for me to get a serious HWDesign corset in white... (Hope to have a pic up soon)

     Fetish Art

Photography is great, but some things can only be visualized by putting ink to paper. There are a number of very talented and imaginative artists dedicated to fetish; not the least of these is Michael Manning, creator of the exceptional Spider Garden and Tranceptor series of graphic novels. I'd be remiss in not mentioning fellow RubberPaller Lady Arrakis, who creates the charmingly humorous Goomnicks cartoons and who inked a lovely piece for me.

     High Quality Latex Photography

In case you've just joined RubberPal in the last few minutes or perhaps have been a long time member and are in fact dead, you might not yet have come across a_thing_for_rubber's profile. If you haven't, you simply can't imagine what you're missing. Check out their fantastic style and photos at their website.

     Latex News

Always nice to keep up with what's going on in the rubbery world.

A Few More of My Photos (of decidely lower quality...)