There is a certain kind of magic that only happens in the still times of the late night. 2 am is probably my favorite time of day, that stillness when nothing is moving. The quiet, the darkness, that calm that settles over everything is just perfect in my opinion. It is in that stillness when I like to write.

So you can imagine my surprise when I stepped off the plane at midnight and stared up at the sun, still hanging low in the sky, but up none the less.

Welcome to the land of the midnight sun. Yes dear readers I’m in the far north today, Fairbanks Alaska to be exact. What am I doing here you ask? Is there some kink convention you have never heard of? Perhaps a gathering of erotic Eskimos? Nope, actually I’m here for a wedding. A vanilla wedding to be more precise, so no there are no rope bags in my room. No clandestine wedding scenes planed. No black leather or hankies hanging from my back pocket.

Why?

Simple, I’m a guest at the most important day of someone else’s life. Any kinkster worth their salt knows that there is a time and place for everything. Yes this is a free country and you should be able to express yourself however you wish, yes you should be proud of who you are and not hide it. However there is a time and a place for everything and weddings are stressful enough as it is. This is not a time for politics. This is not the place for debates on morality. No, this is about wishing the bride and groom many happy years.

This weekend I’m here to wish a family member good will, eat good food and help out where ever is needed. When anyone asks me what I do, I’ll smile and tell them that I work in “textile imports”.

Of course I will be wearing my kilt and tall boots. A boy can only "blend in" so much.

Dude, where is Monk?
Sorry for the lack of posts this week. In addition to the mad dash that was Thunder, we have a family event to attend to this weekend that is taking most of our focus. And to top it all off, my trusted laptop just died.

Thank goodness for backups.

So pardon me while I dust off my PC Tech skills and get this beast back up.

"Flying the colors"

One part of this job that just kicks ass is when a happy customer / reader sends me a photo of them displaying our logo with pride. This one came, courtesy of Devil's Angel, to me all the way from the middle east.

Monk,
I wear the shirt all the time around here, so it's no secret. Not outside,
of course since it's usually over 100, but when we hang in AC rooms it
usually feels extremely cold. The picture was taken at a base in
South-Eastern Iraq. It's called Camp Cedar II, next to Talil AFB.

Thank you! All politics aside, thanks for doing a tough job in a dangerous place. Come home safe.

We are collecting customer photos and hope to launch a gallery of them soon on the company site. Till then, if you send them I'll post some of them here.

Home again
Got back from the leather conference late last night. Damn these events are tiring, but very fun. This week is another rushed one, 3 days in the shop then I'm off to Alaska for a family event.

I have stories to share, but you will need to wait a bit till the coffee kicks in and I get the unsold stock unloaded.

In the meantime here is a quickie.

This weekend I met porn star, educator, author and activist Nina Hartley.(not work safe) Now one might assume that someone of her history and standing would be a haughty diva, you know a total bitch who would not have the time to talk with a mere rope maker like myself. Quite to the contrary. When she was introduced to my by a mutual friend the exchange went something like this.
"Hi, I'm Monk, I am honored to meet you." I say giving a slight bow.
"Nice to meet you Monk, I have heard of you."
"Really? wow! I must say, thanks to you I now have to shave my palms and my eyesight is bad" (yeah I know, bad masturbation humor)
*laughing* "Well I'm glad I helped you get though Jr. High"
Both laughing now, this would be the start of many more exchanges over the weekend.

Today started off badly.

After getting into Denver very late from Seattle, I woke late to the sound of my cell phone. It's distinctive ring tone, the theme from the horror film "Halloween" set the tone for the morning. On the other end, a worried customer. A huge rush order for a high profile event had yet to be delivered. Crack the trusty laptop to check the order and see what USPS had to tell us and I'm greeted by the dreaded blue screen of death. Not good. Oh and did I mention that this was also the first day of vending at Thunder in the Mountains and we were supposed to be unloading and setup in... less than an hour?

Shower, dress, call the Abbey to check on the missing order and we are ready to setup for vending. Forgoing food and coffee we make our way to the vending space to check in, only to find that in our absence not only has the table we requested been taken by another vendor. Our allotted booth space has also been annexed by an over zealous neighbor as well. Doors open in 30 minutes and we don't even have a place to show our wares. Tambo and I divide up and take no prisoners. She marshals food and coffee for us while I reclaim our space and twist arms till we have the tables, chairs, etc needed to do our job. This whole time I am on and off my cell phone as we try and track the wayward order and calm the anxious costumer. When the doors do finally open we are mostly setup and ready for the world.

Not the best start to a 3 day conference.

A few hours, and a bit more coffee later, Matisse tells me that there is someone here who wants to meet me. This was their first ever kink event and they came all the way from the east cost, just to meet me.

Me?!

Sure I often get folks who are local to the event I am working who come out to say hello and buy from me, but this one just floored me. Someone actually spent money to buy a plane ticket, paid money register for an event, took time off from work, sloughed through airport security and traveled across the country to meet me. I'm not a presenter nor am I'm not a featured guest, no I'm just some guy in the vendor area selling his wares and they came all this way to meet me. Me, a goofball from Seattle who makes rope and likes to blog

Talk about humbling.

Standing before me were the sweetest couple you could meet, beaming smiles at me and eager to thank me for my blog.

No, it was I who must thank them.

The day that had started out bady was no more.

There is more to this tale and I am not doing it near the justice it deserves. The customer got thier order, the day's sales were good and we met so many wonderful people today. However I must crash now, tomorrow is but a few hours away and it will be the long push, 13 hours on our feet rigging and selling. Oh and I just found out that another reader is bringing me brownies tomorrow too. Damn you are all wonderful, you know that?

Care to contribute to the newly re-designed Twistedmonk.Com site?

The company site has just had a terrific face lift! While we have many more changes and surpirzes to roll out in the next few weeks there is one thing I would like your help with.

The site features a testimonials page here.

We are proud to be the rope of choice for many of the top rope artists and websites, however we sell more rope, 11 miles in the last year to be exact, to everyday folks in places all over the world. We want to hear from you. Have you bought rope from me and want to share your thoughts on the matter?

Post your comments here and our web gnomes will do the rest.

Deathmarch, done.

Thanks to my awesome crew for slugging it out tonight. Just need to pack my personal rope and something fun to wear and we are good to go.

Now if you will excuse me, I need to go fall down.

The Raw Stock

This is what 1200 pounds of rope looks like. Yes we were using the great winch to move the pallet into place. Yes we used some raw 8mm hemp suspend the pallet.

Yesterday I came home from the shop to find Tambo with her nose buried in the new Harry Potter book. Like many of you she too pre-ordered it and made sure that all her chores were done well before the mailman delivered the much-anticipated tome to her door. Now I came home from the shop pretty late, 9 or so, and after some kisses and chatting she set back to her book while I set to the pile of rope I had brought with me with ends in need of my attention. And there she sat till well into the wee hours of the morning.

That must be one damn good book.

How good you ask? Well this morning while the coffee was brewing I took a peek at the first chapter. Just a peek mind you. I’m far too busy this week to get sucked into a book.

Next thing I knew was 20 pages in and wanting more. Danger Will Robinson! Danger!

I’m thinking that she will be done with it by the time we leave for Thunder in the Mountains and I’ll read it on the plane. Of course at this rate she will probably be done with it by the time I post this.

Speaking of work, the Thunder deathmarch is almost complete! A few more late nights and we will be ready to go. Oh I will warn you now, we have had a huge run on crimson rope. We can't seem to make it fast enough these days. If you are going to Thunder and want crimson rope, BUY IT EARLY! We don't have much on hand for this show. The good news however is that we just got in our FULL shipment from Europe. After an almost 3 month wait we now have over 1800 pounds of raw rope in the shop! I’ll ask Tambo to take a photo of it all tomorrow, that is if we can get her to put that damn book down long enough.

The newest member of the family


This is NerdyGirl, last week she helped us out at the Abbey and we all decided to keep her. While her hours are part-time, her contribution is immense. Her official title is “Sad Sweetheart of the Rodeo”

Oh and boys, she is single… but keep in mind who her “Big Brothers” are, namely Griffin and I.

Tunes Update

So awhile back I asked for some suggestions for an “atomic sex” mix. Now you all made some great contributions, but some were… well while many of the songs suggested were hot and definitely good for generating heat in the bedroom. They were a bit short of the mark. This mix was geared to be a bit more, as Tambo likes to say, “chunky” in tone.

Driven, forceful and more than wee bit on the agressive side. Perfect for an intimate evening with someone you love.

So it still needs some tweaking, but here is what I’m calling the

“Blood Beneth My Nails Mix” version .9 (beta)

“I Wanna Be Your Dog” Iggy Pop
“Hallelujah” Rammstine
“High” Jimmy’s Chicken Shack
“Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck”, Prong
“Sweet Dreams”, Marilyn Manson
“You Spin Me Round”, Dope
“Flesh”, KMFDM
“The Hand That Feeds”, NiN
“Rebel Yell”, Billy Idol
“Black #1”, Type O Negative
“Mister Superstar”, Marilyn Manson
“Down With The Sickness”, Disturbed
“Rain”, Cult
“Violet”, Hole
“Sin”, NiN
“Sex on Wheels”, My Life With The Thrill Kill Cult
“Suck My Kiss”, Red Hot Chili Peppers
“Venus in Furs”, The Velvet Underground

Like I said, the track order needs some tweaking and I think I’m going to swap out a couple of tracks, but you get the general idea.

Of course I need to now make a “gasping for air and in dire need to replenish bodily fluids” mix.

Life in the Abbey

I have this saying about working for me at the Abbey (the shop where we make all the rope).

“The hours suck, the pay is terrible and your boss is a jerk… but you will never go hungry”

On the late nights, and we always work at least one late one a week, Galahad is in charge of feeding us all. Some weeks it is a pizza and salad, other weeks, if he has the extra time, he will cook something yummy up and bring it down. Last week, well last week he thought it might be fun to cook AT the Abbey.

Now let me remind you that the Abbey is a converted copper mill built almost 100 years ago and could be called “rustic” on a good day. This is an industrial space and while we have carved out a great workspace, a gourmet kitchen or even a real stove is NOT on the list of improvements we have made. Undaunted by this, what does our dear chef decide to do? Why cook spaghetti over one of the 130,000 BTU burners we use to heat vats of water.



“Its sorta like camp cooking, over a jet engine”

I have to hand it to the guy, not only did he pull off a great meal but he also managed to do with out singeing off his eyebrows. Of course at one point, when he was going to cook the noodles, he did have a minor crisis. “Oh crap!” He exclaimed, “I forgot to bring salt for the noodle water.”

Of course a quick look over his shoulder revealed some THREE HUNDRED POUNDS of the stuff. We use it as part of the dye process.

“Oh, I guess I can borrow some of Monk’s”

So damn busy I'm cross eyed, but Liss sent me this today:

I'm forwarding on your Onion horoscope for possible amusement:

Leo: (July 23—Aug. 22)
Although you've always worried about dying alone and unloved, you can
put your mind at ease: A tragic mix-up at the pheromone lab will lead
to your being loved to death by nine separate species.

dashing out the door!

Too much to do today and not nearly enough time to do it all.
Sweltering Celt sent this to me and well, it is just sorta wrong... but in a good way. NWS

And something to ponder.

Folks who make ultimatums never win. Even if they get what they want, they still loose in the end.

Ok, this rope won't boil itself so I'm back to it.

Liar!

Recently, someone confronted me about my relationships, specifically the fact that I have a primary AND secondary partner and write about them all the time.

“How can you talk so blatantly about your infidelity!” they accused.

Interesting, normally when confronted by someone in this fashion I’d just kindly suggest that they fuck off and mind their own business. However this was someone I once respected and felt that they deserved more than that. So…

I think we have all experienced the pain of infidelity first hand. If not at the hands of a partner, then we have watched out parents, family or close friends be torn asunder by aftermath of such an event. Lives are destroyed by them. Dream and plans ended, respect for those involved is lost, never to be regained.

All relationships are acts of faith, faith based on trust in your partner. Trust that this person loves you and respects you and will do everything in their power to retain and grow your trust. It does not matter what the church calls it, the state or anyone else. A relationship, at it’s core, is all about trust.

The question I posed to him, and to you dear readers, is this. What is the thing that causes such pain and emotional destruction? Now I’m not looking for the biblical definition here, but rather the brass tacks reality. Is it the act of sex with someone other than your partner? That would not account for things like “on-line” affairs where the players have yet to actually press the flesh.

No, I argue that the true culprit is the lies you tell to get there.

You lied to yourself that you could get away with it. You lied to your partner. You kept lying, to yourself and to everyone around you. You have the audacity to look your partner in the eyes, a person you one swore to honor and LIE to them. You look your friends, your family and your god in the eye and lie. Like a house of cards you stack up the lies and keep lying to cover your tracks. Once you start, you cannot stop, till the house of cards comes tumbling down.

And there lies the burn, the gnawing pain of betrayal. The loss of faith, the destruction of lives.

Not the sex, while yes I will agree that there are ramifications to the act (STD, pregnancy, etc) the true destroyer is the lies you told in order to obtain that sex. The path of destruction from those lies never truly heals either. How many of us have parents/friends/family who are still, decades after the fact, still wounded by one’s inability to simply tell the truth?

So what happens when you remove the deception from the mix? When everyone involved knows and respects the bounds of the relationship? Is it still infidelity? Where is the pain of betrayal when you can look your partner in the eye and thank them for trusting you so much?

Sure there are all manner of issues that still must be addressed in this type of lifestyle (jealousy, boundaries, communication), but that is a posting for another day.

Afterthoughts:
So I’m re-reading this post and noticing that I tend to harp a lot about trust and the loss of trust. Long time readers of this blog will tell you that I talk a LOT about trust when it comes to relationships. Why? Well I think a piece of advice my Dad gave me once says it best.


“I’d rather live with a thief than a liar. A thief will steal your things, things can be easily replaced. A liar steals your trust, and that is something not so easily replaced”

Quick update, NerdyGirl has successfully made the trek west and is safe in Seattle.

While a bit overwhelmed by the sheer number of coffee houses per square foot, she seems to be adjusting to it all. Last night we took her to our favorite little sushi bar and fed her till her eyes bulged. Tonight we will be taking her to the WetSpot for her first party and introduce her to the rest of the gang.

Oh and for those of you so generous to send us goodies, please contact me directly.

Another Reader Photo

This was sent to me by A. She came to visit us at the Erotic LA show and got her first hogtie from me. She made me take several photos of the pose so she could show her friends and co-workers and now, all of you.



On the technical side, this is a basic hogtie. (You can learn how to do this tie if you take one of Max's 101 or 102 bondage classes, I belive that he will begin teaching public rope classes again in the fall.) On her chest I made a basic chest harness using 1 30ft length of 6MM hemp, 1 30ft length on her ankles, and a 15ft 8mm around her arms. The hair tie, don't know about you but I think hair ties are just pretty as hell, is a single 30ft 6mm rope.