A Little Comeback?

I haven't posted in a long time. I haven't written in a long time. And I haven't published anything in nearly two years. I'm not that far away from being able to publish, but the creative juices for balloon-fetish fiction have been running a little dry lately.

Part of this is, no doubt, due to the lack of actual balloon activity in my life recently, just because of circumstances and life getting in the way, and not for any sinister reasons.

But another part is that I'm running low on ideas. I know that there are lots of permutations on this fetish of ours, but the problem is that only a limited number of them turn me on. And while I supposed it shouldn't be too hard to write on a subject that isn't in my sexual comfort zone, I'm not sure if the end product will be of interest to anyone who doesn't share my narrow interests.

That said, I'm giving it a go anyway. I'm writing some stories involving popping methods that are actually a turn-off for me, while trying to imagine how they might be a turn-on for someone else. Not that I'm really trying to get in the head of the character in this case (these are quick fantasies, not full-blown—sorry—short stories); but I'm hoping that I've framed the events so that they are a turn-on for a reader so inclined.

So I'm taking a risk, just to get past the writer's block, and maybe it will stimulate some ideas for the other book, the one that will actually contain short stories, with richer characters and, yes, some non-popping stories.

It will still take awhile, and I'm grateful to those of you who have stuck with me this long.

Not All Fun and Games

Don't get me wrong. I love having my balloon fetish. It's given me untold pleasure throughout my life. Even the emotional attachment to balloons that I feel is mostly positive; they can give me joy just by being in my line of sight, as they are now while I am writing this, hanging from the ceiling above me.

But there are downsides. I won't talk about the sexual downsides; I have before, to some degree, and they really aren't a problem for me now. Sometimes, though, the emotional baggage gets in the way.

I was in a hotel lobby recently, and in one of the function rooms off the lobby there was a baby shower going on. I wouldn't have even been aware that there were any balloons at the shower, were it not for a little girl running around near the doorway with a pink helium balloon tied to her hand. At that point, my only thought was that I'd be just as happy if the little girl stayed in the function room and out of the lobby.

Fortunately for me, she did. But I was still in the lobby when the guests from the shower were coming out. None of them was holding any balloons. I knew what was coming, and I was dreading it. And it's hard to explain why.

What was coming, of course, was the popping of all the balloons. Not for fun, not as a game, but just to get rid of them. This is something that bothers me emotionally. I want to rush in wherever it's happening and call out, "If you're going to pop those anyway, can I have them?" Of course, it's not usually appropriate to do that (though I did manage to a few times when I was young and single).

And so I had to bear the sound of balloons being popped. It didn't scare me because I wasn't close enough to it, but each pop pained me more than a little. Each explosion gave me the urge to go make it stop, to rescue the balloons from such casual destruction.

Why it affects me this way is hard to say, though it's something that's happened to me since I was a young boy. But then, when I was a young boy, any popping of balloons was painful, horrifying in fact. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, good about popping balloons.

But I've changed. I pop balloons myself for sexual pleasure. Why does the sound and sight of someone jabbing balloons with pins or scissors merely to get them out of the way bother me so much? I don't know for certain; it's just a gut feeling, something I don't think about when it happens.

But I do know that, for me, popping balloons is a meaningful experience. I don't pop balloon casually. I don't like to pop balloons without sexually playing with them, or at least fantasizing about such play when I pop them. And I think that what bothers me is that when balloons are being "cleaned up," there's no emotion at all attached. No one is having fun, nor is the person wielding the sharp instrument, as far as I can tell, sad about what they are doing.

And certainly no one is getting sexually excited by it. At least, not in most cases; I know that some of my fellow fetishists actually do get off on just this kind of popping, and that's great for them. For me, though, it's very upsetting.

I am fortunate, as I have mentioned, to have a very understanding wife. After the incident at the hotel, I asked her if I could blow up a balloon in bed that night. Not for any sexual purposes (though I would have been fine with that), but just to cuddle. I needed to have a balloon on my own terms, under my own control, to fight back the demons of uncaring balloon-poppers that have haunted me since my youth. I needed it just to sleep that night. And it worked.

The irony is, of course, that to some non-poppers, I have become the demon. Not an uncaring popper, but a balloon destroyer nevertheless. I'm unlikely to change in that regard; popping balloon holds too much sexual power for me now, and has since I was a teen.

But I get it. I get it much more than I think the non-poppers realize. I may destroy the objects that they love, but I do feel their pain. And truth be told, when I pop balloons for sexual pleasure, it is not without some trepidation. I just comfort myself knowing that the balloon, which wouldn't have lasted forever anyway, was much appreciated before and in the act of its destruction.

Nothing is simple. Certainly not a balloon fetish.

Happily Mistaken

At the beginning of this year, I wrote a post about the balloons I enjoyed when I was young. In it, I made two statements that I now know to be incorrect. And I'm delighted.

The first was that Qualatex no longer makes 9-inch balloons. I thought so because I couldn't find them in Pioneer's current catalog. But I did find them from my supplier, BalloonsFAST, and they are fresh stock. So, if you like smaller balloons, that's one place to find them.

The other statement I made is, "If I had a bag of Qualatex 9s, I'm not sure I would really enjoy them that much." Well, I couldn't resist. Along with my annual purchase of balloons for decorating and fun, I ordered my fondly-remembered 9s, a bag of standard colors, just like I remember.

It took a while before I had the house to myself, but when I did, I put on a pair of sleep pants and a T-shirt, blew up more than a dozen of the small balloons, which goes a lot faster than it does with 11s, and stuffed my pants and my shirt full.

And it felt wonderful. It was the same friendly feeling that I had all along, my lovely balloons pressed against my skin. I lay down on them and savored the feeling and being pressed so tightly against them, an act that I would not have dared as a child, and only figured out was safe as a young adult.

Of course, if one of them popped now, I would be startled, but I would also probably have enjoyed it.
As it happened, none popped by accident. It was just an hour or so of sensual pleasure. But, much to my surprise, it did not excite me sexually, at all.

And when I noticed that, I remembered that, as a young adult, when I would wear balloons around my apartment just to enjoy the feeling, it was the same way. The sexual pleasures were usually separate, and the only sexual feeling I had in regards to stuffing balloons in clothing were when I would imagine women doing it, or (very rarely) actually get to watch a woman do it.

I hadn't worn balloon in my clothing this way since early in my marriage, not since I had children. But it won't be the last time. And popping the balloons after was definitely a sexual delight. So I got the best of both worlds.

So I guess, in some ways, you can go back again.

Gone and Done It

I said I would. Well, at least I said I might. And today I finally did. I ordered a package of Tilly 60-inch long spiral balloons. I've never had any of these before, and I've been fascinated by them for a long time, and, well, I like the company.

I bought them on eBay, from Tilly's own account, and it shouldn't take them long to get here, because they aren't far away. I'm brimming over with anticipation, which is kind of a shame, because even after they arrive I probably won't get a chance to do anything with them until next month, after the kids are in school.

So, that will be torture. And then, when it actually comes time to use them, well, the truth is that I've always been fairly afraid of long balloons. If you've been reading this blog for any time, you know that, while popping balloons turns me on, and watching a pretty lady pop balloons turns me on more, it also scares me.

Round balloons blow up evenly all around, giving me a chance to inspect for imperfections before they get taut enough to pop (in most cases, anyway; accidents happen). But long balloons blow up along their length, and each portion gets fairly tight in very short order.

So buying these balloons that I've never had before, that kind of scare me, might seem an act of foolishness, or an act of bravery. Well, foolish it might be, but as far as bravery is concerned, we'll see when it actually comes time to blow them up.

Just a reminder, if you're reading this on the day it was published, Eric's Secret, my only story so far with a non-popping main character, is free today and tomorrow for Kindle.

What Turns You On?

For a balloon fetishist, it sounds like a simple question: "What turns you on?" And of course, the simplest answer is, "balloons." Beyond that, though, the answer is anything but simple.

In my case, for example, I like popping. Not just popping, but I do like popping. But not just any kind of popping. Pins, fire, fingernails, and knives just don't do it for me, although I know that all of those are a tremendous turn-on for someone else. I didn't even get turned on by popping until I was in my teens, long after I first started having sexual feelings for balloons.

And then it was only because some girl I had the hots for told me she liked to sit on them. I thought about her quite lovely ass pressed so hard against a balloon that it made it pop, and I began to see popping in an entirely different light.

So now, when it comes to popping, it's all about intimate contact. I've always enjoyed intimate contact with balloons. I like to pop balloon by sitting on them or lying on them. But that's nothing compared to how much I like to watch pretty ladies sit on balloons, or hug them to their breasts. Or blow them to bursting (though, frankly, I'm not sure why). And I don't like it when they cheat with their fingernails.

It turns out that I've very selective about what makes popping balloons arousing. It has to be done a certain way, or it doesn't turn me on at all. And if I see, for example, a video of a lovely lady bouncing on a balloon, even though I do plenty of non-popping play myself, I've very disappointed if the balloon doesn't pop.

Unless the lovely lady is my wife. See, it's complicated. My wife doesn't like to pop balloons at all. She has done it for me, on occasion, but she doesn't like it one little bit. She doesn't mind my fetish, as long as it doesn't take over our sex life, and she'll let me talk about popping balloons, but she does not like to do it herself.

Big disappointment, right? Well, not so much. Because, if I were to choose, between watching any other woman pop balloons in precisely the ways that turn me on most, and watching my wife play with balloons without any popping involved, which is a bigger turn-on, I'd choose my wife every time.

Because what really turns me on is the combination of the woman and the balloons, and no woman ever has turned me on as much as my wife. So the real answer to the question "What turns you on?" to me is, "My wife."

And, oh yeah, if she plays with balloons, that's icing on the cake.

Essential Nonsense

I won’t go into the various claims made for essential oils, but if you are interested in balloons, as I am, you've probably seen videos where peddlers of these products drip them onto inflated balloons to make the balloons pop.

What’s the point of this? They claim that essential oils, particularly lemon and orange, “digest” petrochemicals, that is, chemicals derived from petroleum. Now, for a variety of reasons, this is just false, and that’s for chemists and biologists to explain. Yes, essential oils will break down plastics made of hydrocarbons, but that has nothing to do with the human body and any “toxins” it might contain.

But the point of this post is that balloons have absolutely nothing to do with petrochemicals. They are made from natural latex, from the sap of rubber trees. And yes, citrus oils will eat them and make them pop. But it proves nothing; it’s just a lot of noise.

And, of course, in my view a waste of a good balloon. Unless you’re into that kind of thing.

It's Not All About Sex

If you do nothing but skim the surface, balloon fetishes seem pretty simple. Some guy or gal blows up a balloon until it pops and gets horny. Or does the nasty with a balloon or watches someone else play with a balloon.

And I guess for some balloon fetishists, it really is that simple: the balloon is an object that stimulates or enhances their sexual desire. There's a lot of variety within that description, of course, but it does cut to the chase. I think that my character in Popping Out meets that description pretty well, and maybe even the guy in Eric's Secret.

But for me, and I suspect a lot of us, it isn't nearly so cut and dried. I had a non-sexual relationship with balloons for at least eight years before they began to relate to sexual feelings at all. I will never understand how it started, around the age of three. I do know that I was deathly afraid of balloons popping, and that I felt a sense of loss when they were destroyed. I do know that I loved having balloons around whenever my parents would let me.

And for some reason that I do not understand, I loved having balloons stuffed into my pajamas. Aha, you say, a sexual relationship after all. No, not at all. A sensual relationship, maybe. It just felt good, like a stuffed animal or a particularly warm and fuzzy blanket. I just loved balloons. Even as I was afraid of them.

The sexual feeling for balloons came later, with puberty. Oh, there was probably some anticipation of that transformation earlier. After all, I was a boy, and things that get held against a boy's penis, especially with any amount of pressure, tend to cause an erection.

That's not necessarily a sexual response, mind you; often it's just the body protecting a vital reproductive organ from loss of blood flow. But your mind treats protective erections and erections from sexual arousal pretty much identically, and so the connection was made.

But discovering my sexual feelings for balloons did not take away the non-sexual feelings, and even decades later, as a middle-aged man, balloons in various circumstances can bring on waves of varied—and sometimes conflicting—emotional and even visceral responses.

I still love just having balloons around. At a former job, I decorated my office with them (we were in the entertainment business—such quirks were tolerated). Now I decorate my house with them in the winter. They oxidize in the summer, and I don't like oxidized balloons, even though when I was little, I kept them until they were oxidized and nearly flat. See? It's complicated.

I still like to cuddle with balloons, although I don't get much opportunity these days. Some of the cuddling leads to sexual activity, but a surprising amount of it does not.

And where popping balloons is concerned, things get even more complicated. I pop balloons now, something I never, ever did until I was in my teens. I can even do it without earplugs, in most circumstances.

But when I'm around someone else who has a balloon, I get a sudden flight response, and I want to get away as quickly as possible. I don't like being around popping balloons if I'm not in control of the situation.

And yet, watching a lovely lady do something that might pop a balloon is sexually arousing for me. So there's where the conflicting feeling come in. I really want to get away from the balloon, and I really want to stick around and watch the lovely lady pop the balloon.

Provided she's popping it the right way. If she's going after balloons with a pin, forget it, I'll run away as fast as I can. If she's sitting on it, I'll stay. If she's blowing it up until it pops...well, I don't know what I'll do because it scares the crap out of me and it turns me on. Conflicted!

I'm sure that there are a lot of stories out there just like mine—not in the details, you understand, but in the general sense that their feelings for balloons are not simply sexual.

Not, in fact, anything simple at all.

Popping and Not Popping: The False Dichotomy

It's supposed to be the great divide between balloon fetishists: popper vs. non-popper, as if we could picture some great room with a line down the middle, and on one side the poppers would be gleefully destroying their balloons, and on the other the non-poppers would be lovingly protecting theirs. And presumably, for those non-poppers who are also phobic, the line down the middle would actually be a soundproof wall.

It's a silly picture, I know, but it's the kind of simplification I hear over and over again. I even get asked, frequently, "Are you a popper or a non-popper?"

Well, the pseudonym I chose might give you a clue. But the first name is not short for Timothy; it's short for timid. I'm what you might call a sometimes-phobic-sort-of-popper. And that's about as much categorization as I'm willing to commit to.

Each of us has a very individual relationship to balloons. For some it's very emotional, for others it's only sexual, and for others it may be both. And if you think that there is an perfect correlation between the emotional side of the relationship and a fetishist's position on popping balloons, you might find yourself quite surprised.

Take me, for example. I have a strong emotional attachment to balloons. I love having them around, and I used to rescue them from being popped when I was little. I will often keep balloons around for months, hanging up or hidden somewhere to play with. My first sexual interest in balloons revolved strictly around close, physical, non-popping contact with them. When they popped by accident, it scared me and made me sad. Parties were a nightmare.

But somewhere along the line, I also came to be sexually excited by balloons popping, and I am to this day. But the prospect of watching even an incredibly gorgeous, totally naked woman take a pin and pop a huge number of balloons very quickly leaves me not only unexcited, but highly disappointed. Because the pop is not what I'm after. The pop that excites me comes at the end of close contact, as with sitting or lying on a balloon, or with the total involvement of blowing up a balloon until it pops.

Pin, lighters, knives, high heels, fingernails, even bare feet don't do it for me; I want to see intimate involvement. The best, for me, is bare butt against not-too-tight balloon, with considerable bouncing before the balloon gives up.

But that's just me. All of the things that I mentioned that don't do it for me, do it for someone else. So when someone says they are a popper, they are only telling a small part of the story, most likely.

Same for non-poppers. Not wanting to pop balloons—and it can be about fear, about loss, or even about indifference—says nothing about how a fetishist enjoys balloons, and the variety of ways can be rather staggering.

And the crossover, what the so-called experts who like to classify things would call being a "semi-popper" (what does that mean, that you only pop half your balloons?), can get even more complicated still. There are those who don't pop that are still somewhat excited by the pop, or by the danger of the pop without the actual pop. Conversely, there are those for whom the pop is a buzzkill. There are also non-poppers who don't much care if a balloon pops, but they are just not excited by it.

So the next time you see an article or TV show about balloon fetishes that claims that we are neatly divided into "poppers, non-poppers, and semi-poppers," take it with a grain of salt, and maybe write in and set the record straight.

Or just send them here.

Thinking About My Next Story

I'm starting a new short story, and I think this one is going to be about a non-popper who becomes a popper. Not venturing too far out of my own experience yet, but give me time!

My conversion experiences happened in my late teens, only about five years after my first sexual experience with balloons. It kind of started with the TV show Wonderama (if you're too young to remember Wonderama, try to find reference to the "Balloon Bottom Relay" on the Internet; you will not find any footage, which is just as well because all the participants were underage. But then, at the time, so was I).

Then a girl that I lusted over told me that she like to pop balloons by sitting on them. At first I was repelled by the thought, but since I wasn't repelled by the girl I started to have fantasies about her butt in such hard contact with a balloon, and my fetish took a very different direction after that.

But I think I'm leaning toward an adult conversion in this next story. I want to make sure I set up the character's fetish in such a way that the conversion is believable even after all his or her time being a non-popper (haven't decided if the main character is male or female yet).

That will probably involve a lot of time trying to recapture the way I felt before I was excited by balloons popping. I don't think that will be too hard; I still enjoy non-popping play, and I like to keep balloons around for a long time, as I've mentioned here before.

As to the actual conversion event, that will probably involve a lot of fantasizing. It's a tough job, but it's got to be done.

My New Year's Balloons

I finally took my New Year's balloons down, two and a half months into the year. In my house in the winter, good-quality balloons will stay shiny and firm enough to be nice to look at for several months. But when the spring comes and we start to open the windows to let in the fresh air, the balloons soon oxidize and lose that lovely shine.

We are still several weeks from that point, but I live in a house with children and don't get much privacy. So I took advantage of an empty house to have some fun with them while I had the chance.

The balloons were Qualatex jewels, and when they have been inflated for that long, the rubber is a little stiff, so they are not so good for sit-popping. But I also like to stuff balloons in my clothing, and they were still very nice for that.

I don't like oxidized balloons, so even though I was sad to not have the balloons hanging in my room anymore, I was glad I had some fun with them before they started to fade. This is different from many others who actually prefer oxidized balloons, or don't care one way or the other. Each of us has very specific likes and dislikes when it comes to balloons.

For example, a lot of people who like to pop balloons probably wouldn't keep them around so long. But I like to have balloons around to look at, and I like non-popping play, so I'm not always in a hurry to pop my balloons. Even balloons I've blown up specifically to play with sometimes end up in my closet for a time until I am in the mood (and have the opportunity) to pop them.

It's a good thing my wife understands.