Pavlov's dog

Pavlov studied conditioned responses in dogs.  He rang a bell as he was about to feed them and noticed that they soon equated the sound of the  bell with the imminent arrival of food - and so started to salivate before the food was produced.  This is called a Pavlovian response.

This isn't about Pavlov's dog, though.  It's about my "dog" and about the conditioned responses that men sometimes have to suppress.

Now, some dogs are better behaved than others - everybody knows that.  Young dogs tend to be excitable.  They're eager.  They'll jump to attention very quickly and draw attention to themselves.  A little bit of training, though - maybe a bit of anti-Pavlovian condition - will help to take care of those youthful impulses, so the dog gradually becomes a bit calmer and learns to behave itself.

Now, normally, I can keep good control of my own "dog".  I've always got to be aware of how he's feeling and usually - almost always - I'm able to anticipate any signs of eagerness and have a quiet and discreet word.  Today, though, was different.  Very different.  In fact, it's fair to say that there was absolutely no chance of keeping him quiet.

It started off fine.  The girls arrived, I introduced the class and we kicked off.  They had ordered some bottles Prosecco, so I even had bottle opening duties at a couple of points, which was fun.  I can be easily entertained, sometimes.

I introduced the Dalek for the first pose.  It's a great "warm up" challenge, sometimes, because there's often someone who will completely ignore me and only draw the Dalek.  One of the drawings went through a couple of transitions.  The girl gave it eyes, then added a thing that made me think of a burglar.  I said something about waking up in the middle of the night to find it burgling your home - you definitely wouldn't challenge it.  The girl added some spikes and tried to make it look like Darth Maul, but by then, I thought it looked a bit more like a punk.

It wasn't actually until the third pose that I started having any problems.  I asked for two volunteers and got them pretty quickly - something that doesn't often happen.  Usually, the girls will nominate two "volunteers" and those two will agree.  I've got to make sure there's no peer pressure that's responsible for people being pushed into something they're not cool with, but that doesn't generally happen.

But this time, the two volunteers were genuine volunteers - they quickly nominated themselves and joined in.  I produced the bag of props and showed them to the co-ordinator, who set about posing myself and the other model - she was positioned as a dominatrix and I was positioned on the floor at her feet.  She took a flogger and held it above me.

I'm not entirely sure, though, if this part was an accident.  As I was lying on the floor, the "tails" of the flogger brushed across my penis.  (Yes, that's right - the dog was just a metaphor, for what I was really talking about.  But I'm sure most of my readers were probably able to see through that bit of camouflage.)

Anyway, I was blindfolded, so couldn't see whether there was any intent or not, but the response was immediate.  Now... normally, the girls in these groups are very aware of where my penis is at any time - and even if they're not, then I certainly am.  So there's almost never any contact with it at all - even accidentally, when we're posing together for pictures.  But this brush against it felt very sensual and I rose to the occasion without any kind of hesitation at all.

The next pose is the opportunity for the model and co-ordinator to switch roles and it seemed that the dominatrix theme was reprised.  I was positioned on my knees, with one of my ties being used as a prop.  It was meant to be translated as... I think... a bridle and I had to hold my hands behind my back.  The model also held up my hat, as an extra little detail.  That's as close as I'll get to publishing evidence of the misbehaving dog here, by the way.  There'll be no photographs of it.

 

I was worried while I lay there and waited for the pose to finish.  There was general laughter going on, but that's kind of normal for these events - nobody seemed to make any reference to the erection that I was now painfully aware of.  I tried to convince myself that it wasn't that obvious.  Perhaps I was too aware of every single twitch and - since I couldn't see it - perhaps I was exaggerating it in my head. But when the pose was finished and I stood up, there was no denying it at all.  No ignoring it either, so all I could do was apologise and make a joke about it.  Try and hide it behind my hat.

I looked down and was pretty obvious.  Then I turned and looked in the mirror, so I could see it as the girls were clearly seeing it - and it was much, much more obvious than I could have imagined.  I think, by then, I must have been really blushing.  I could certainly feel that my face was very hot.

I kept hoping it would go down, but it seemed to be there to stay.  I've heard the theory that embarrassment feeds an erection - it makes the owner of it very aware of it, and very conscious of it.  And awareness tends to be an ingredient that an erection genuinely thrives on. And, to be honest, the very feeling of it bobbing and swinging - the weight of it as I move around - has a sort of sensory, tactile effect that doesn't help.  And that feeling of being so completely on display, definitely contributes towards feelings of arousal as well as embarrassment.  I still tried to ignore it and hoped it would go away - but it stuck around.

I was completely aware that seven girls were sitting all around the room.  There wasn't a single direction I could turn in and be hidden from sight from everyone.  And even if I succeeded, there was no way I was going to be able to run a class properly, like that.  I was just going to have to cope.  To brazen it out and keep going.

So I carried on.  I introduced the poses and the challenges, and - after a while - it did go away.  But it didn't stay away.  It returned twice more at different points in the class.  A couple of the girls drew it into their pictures, so whenever it was relevant, I made further jokes about it.  But I started to worry about how sleazy it probably seemed.  I pride myself on my self control at these events.  I don't ever want it to look like I'm enjoying myself too much, and so make it look like the classes are for my own creepy fun, rather than the girls' entertainment.

The humour helped, though.  One of the girls used Pan as a theme and drew me looking like him - adding horns.  That led on to a couple of vague gags about there not being any visible horns at that particular moment.  I genuinely felt that the best thing to do was laugh about it and treat it like it was something funny, while still acknowledging that it was a bit embarrassing for me personally.  I somehow perfected an air of resigned, vaguely apologetic sheepishness.  And the fact that the girls seemed to be completely relaxed about it anyway, made it all feel better.

One of the pose suggestions I had was something brand new - I was asked to stand "like a lobster" with my hands in the air.  Someone really ran with that concept and created something a bit creepy and very, very cool.

Towards the end of the class, though, I hit a stupid note.  I told them that I was on medication - that I had an infection in my knee and was taking antibiotics. I suggested that the reason for the arousal was chemical, rather than biological.  And instantly, a bunch of them harangued me about the fact that I had spent an entire class flattering them, and had suddenly withdrawn the flattery.  They were joking with me, of course, but it was still true.  They had clearly not taken any offence at all, and so - to throw in such a transparent excuse - was unnecessary and stupid.  I was annoyed at myself.

We finished the class with the traditional "Make-A-Giant-Man" pose and some of the girls left, because they had other things to move on to.  The remainder gave me a glass of Prosecco and I hung around talking to them, for a while.  Then we posed for more pictures by the scoreboard and then they thanked me and left.  Almost all of them took cards and promised that they would pass them on to friends.  A couple of them even gave me hugs, as they left - which happens occasionally, but not always.  So, another sign that nobody was offended or bothered by my indiscretions.

In fact, they were genuinely a lot of fun.  It was one of the better classes I've had recently.  A little traumatising and embarrassing at times, obviously, but still great fun.

Stags

I did my first ever stag night, recently.  It was an interesting and very different experience.  One I had to think long and hard about, before I was fully confident that I could - or should - deliver it.  After all, it's a very different vibe.  And not necessarily the right one for the kind of philosophy my business should aspire to - if the business actually has a philosophy.

In the end, I decided that just once couldn't hurt.  Just to find out whether it really was likely to be problematic or troublesome.  The main concern was that men might not be respectful to a female model, but then - that was a bit presumptuous.  I figured that for an art class the likes of which I normally do, they were no less likely to be respectful than the female artists I usually get.  They'd be just as cheeky and most likely a bit laddish.  That surely wouldn't be too bad.

So I hired a model.  It was Alison who helped me with that - she suggested a girl called Karla.  She had, apparently, just been talking to this girl about my classes, and she had suggested that she would do the job for a stag night if there was ever an opportunity.  So the timing was perfect.

It didn't go entirely without incident.  I arrived at The Standard and found out that I'd been double booked - that there was a wedding reception planned for most of the afternoon and the room that I use wasn't going to be available.  Unlike The Fiddler's Elbow, though, the management here really care about these events and they weren't just going to let me down or treat it like it wasn't their problem.  There was a quick 'phone call made and I was literally offered the use of someone's flat - just above The Standard.

Second problem was when the party actually arrived.  One of them was in a wheelchair and the flat was up a narrow flight of stairs.  The guy who booked me was very irritated, but thankfully not at me - he put the blame on the agency for not giving me all the relevant information.  Which was a fair point, because if I'd been warned, I'd have found an alternative option.

But the group got their friend up the stair without a huge effort, we moved into the sitting room and settled down and I introduced our model.

It was a variation of the same introductions that have been developed for my own class.  I made it sound like a boring art class, then stepped into a little side room just off the sitting room, took Karla's hand and led her into the sitting room.  After that, I had to learn how to step back a bit and let her run the show, to an extent.

Essentially, I had to make sure I wasn't upstaging the model - something I've criticised a couple of my tutors for, in the past.  There have been people before now, who have simply tried to take over the whole thing.  I'm tolerant of my staff making mistakes, and the business even thrives on improvising around small things that can make a class more interesting.  But when someone listens to everything I say, then turns up for an event and tries to run it her way - ignoring everything I've said - I don't give her a second chance.

So, I ran this event.  I stepped back and let Karla set the pace, but stepped forward and described the various challenges.  I instituted a blanket "no photography" policy, but discussed that with her first.  That's why this particular posting isn't illustrated.  I might relax that rule if I do more stag nights in the future, but even then I'll be the only person taking pictures.  I can reassure my models that I won't be compromising with the pictures.  Karla said that she would be cool if the guys didn't post them onto FaceBook or the internet, but I pointed out that there was absolutely no way of guaranteeing that - once they had pictures, they had complete control over what would happen to them.

The guys were definitely laddish, but - as I anticipated - respectful of Karla as well.  There was banter and good humour, but it was all just the male equivalent of the same kind of comments and questions I get in every one of my events, so it was all cool.  And Karla was able to banter right back with them.  She seemed to have a lot of fun, too.

In the end, once the party wrapped up, I set about tidying up the sitting room, putting the rearranged furniture back into their original places, returned the key to the bar manager and relaxed.  I'd been tense about the potential for spillage and damages, since we were in someone's private residence and I had responsibility for things like that, but it all went great.

And it was a really cool flat, too.  I wish I could afford to live there.