March 7, 2000

Over in the city this weekend running school errands, as usual. Most people neither know nor appreciate this little fact, but being a teacher is a full-time job. We get paid so little and we have to do all of these things outside the classroom: Grade papers, construct letters to parents. And shop for supplies. Shopping shopping shopping for pencils, consturction paper, staples, books even. You'd think we got reimbursed for that. Guess again. My class supply budget is roughly $300 a semester. I surely spend three times that.

It's a labor of love.

At any rate, I was over in the Tenderloin picking up the latest edition of "The Latin Times", aka "Times Roman". It's basically the New York Times week in review section, translated to Latin. The kids love it, those that love Latin. Wish someone had thought of it when I was growing up.

At any rate I made my purchase and was heading toward the Powell Street BART station to make my way back across the Bay, when I ran across a pretty curious window display. It seems that May 6-13th is National Leather Month (at least in San Francisco). The bookstore/sexual novelty shop had a pretty artistic display of two mannequins in the act of flagellation, one the flaggelator (female), one the flagelatee (male). The female had on a Wonder Woman-type costume complete with armbands and tassles mind you. She was holding a cat of nine tails. A comical smile was painted on her face. The male mannequin was bending over, tied to the bed post. On his head was one of those slave masks you always see in movies, so I couldn't make out what his facial expression was. All around the display were red and pink hearts and flowers, made mostly out of tissue paper and paper mache. Had the whippee been female and whipper been male I'm sure we would have heard about it on the 10:00 news. But this way it was just gaudy enough to work.

So I ambled into the store to have a peek and came across a book on bondage. Must have been put out by some nautical organization or something because, although it was clearly sexual in nature, it appeared that the editors were more concerned about showing the correct depiction of knots than anything else. Beautiful knots, ornate knots, functional knots. Carrick bend, sheet bend, double running noose, you name it. This point of view made it all the more interesting. On the cover was a black and white photo of a young girl (roughly 8 to 9 years old) standing in front of a garden of light roses holding a length of rope in both hands. She was smiling, offering the rope (which was unknotted) to the camera. To the left bottom was an insignia of a cross.

Being the gallant sort of fellow I am, and always looking for a good present, I bought the publication for Carol's upcoming birthday. (Carol's DOB: 04/03/1972)

Did I ever write about Carol's thing about bondage? Okay, I had a hand in this too.