I have a role in a TV mystery. I like the cast, but the set's grim--rough stone terraces and steps, covered in cobwebs as exaggerated as a horror filmset. But not all the webs are fake; I spot a few living spiders big as my pinky. Move one aside so it's not stepped on.

Our team includes two women I'm attracted to. But when our day's done, the two go off immediately; I'd hoped for a ride and a conversation and contact info, I didn't want the bond built in the group to end. Feel as if they decided I'm disposable. Hurt.

But then I was shy with them, afraid to push. I'm good at self-restraint--too good. So good, I've been warned, it looks like indifference.

I walk to the corner. A weird cafe--ordinary tables inside, where people talk or work, but also a low stage so the front's like a shop's display window. But what's displayed are writhing teenage girls, bound and gagged in fetish gear. Sheets and ropes so they're not quite naked, but really pushing the limit of the law. It's not a sex show; those sitting at the tables are in bondage gear too.

They all squirm as if excited. At a table near the door, one tied-up girl looks me in the eye. She can see I'm kinda shocked. Wiggles and smirks.

Am I turned on? No and yes. By what they're into, no. Bondage just scares me. As a kid I got bullied a lot--being helpless induces flashbacks. But by them, yes. They're not just hot-looking--they're doing what excites them, and I can feel it.

But I don't go in. So sexy... but the wrong cafe for me.

Walk down the street thinking "Why am I shy with the women on my team when this is the new normal? Every kink out of the closet..."

I head on over to my after-work art class. A live art model, but... she's clothed. Everyone is--except me! They politely ignore my nonconformity. I'm uneasy--unsure how I lost my clothes. I certainly had them outside the cafe. Did just looking make me naked?

Wonder if there's a windbreaker in my art locker. I could tie it round my waist. Might make it easier to bike home unhassled... Though who'd bother? These days, anything goes.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Detective team with attractive women: saw two copshows back to back (Van der Valk and Murder in Paris) with such teams.
• Implausible spiderwebs: in Murder in Paris, spooky cobwebs fill a house. But it was recently lived in! Eet ees all about ze look, not ze logique. Frrrrrench! (Sorry, but the whole show was like that. It may want to be Extraordinary Attorney Woo or Astrid, but it's not.)
• Spiders, filaments, bonds: they repeat in the cafe scene, only this time, self-applied!
• Bondage in public: resembled art by Eawyne on Deviantart.com. She does AI-generated fantasy bondage scenes. She's complained of inconsistent censorship--some nude and sexual scenes that looked scary and nonconsensual got a pass, while clearly consensual scenes got banned without explanation.
• I'm nude in art class, fear harassment: With good reason! In a recent dream, Speargun, I nude-modeled, and DID get attacked. Not for nudity--a diver recklessly fired a speargun at me (symbolizing an irresponsible, pill-pushing doctor I'd seen.)
• ACTION: be more direct? Less squeamish? This decade ain't subtle, my friends.

I tried to sketch the scene from memory but my own fears and desires interfered--for me, the feelings were foreground--the girls, my reaction, and their amusement at my reaction--while the bondage gear and even the sheets were hazy reluctant afterthoughts--notice how loose these ropes are! Just draped on--barely bound at all. Yet it's precisely the constriction and lack of freedom that bondagists like. Or is it bondagees? (Uh-oh, here comes Bondajeesus!)

Eawyne, that AI artist who really is into bondage, got so mad at the inconsistent censorship at Deviantart.com that she quit. She politely left this farewell gift (see right).

I sympathize with her frustration. Whatever your opinion of sexually graphic art, even if it alarms you (and plenty of mine clearly threatens lots of folks)... surely any restrictions ought to be clear beforehand. And why single out sex? What did a censored image like Eawyne's farewell encourage? Masturbation! Yet sexual bullying and open violence--sexual or not--seem ubiquitous and uncensored in art, writing, movies... And those encourage, well... rape and murder.

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