Brands Of Balloons

With my recent discovery that Tilly is back making balloons in the US again, I've been doing some thinking about an interesting aspect of balloon fetishes: brand preference.

Now, not being well-acquainted with fetishes other than my own, I don't know how much this applies beyond the world of sexual attraction to balloons, but many balloon fetishists are very selective about the brands they choose. Some are even fiercely loyal.

Like me. I rarely buy any brand other than Qualatex these days, and when I did buy other brands, earlier in my life, it was mostly out of curiosity or just because of availability. This has been my preference for as long as I can remember.

Now, Qualatex balloons are of good quality, but so are a lot of other brands, from what I've read from my fellow fetishists. Are Qualatex balloons superior from an objective standpoint? Well, I think that depends on what qualities you're looking for in balloons, and if you evaluate each brand based on your preference, you might be able to choose one brand over another in a side-by-side comparison based on your most important criteria.

Or maybe not. I think that for me, I buy Qualatex balloons because when I was forming my attachment to balloons, long before they engendered any sexual feelings in me, Qualatex was just what I thought a balloon was. I vaguely remember that my doctor, when I was very young, probably four, gave out balloons at the end of each visit. (Can you imagine that happening today, with liability and latex allergy worries?)

That memory is vague, but the memory of the Qualatex clown logo stands out vividly in my mind, and when I started buying balloons for myself, I always went looking for that logo. (Here I'm aging myself; that logo hasn't been used for many years, and I can't even find an image on the Web for it.)

So I have always associated Qualatex with what makes a balloon a balloon, for no rational reason. It seems to be ingrained into my fetish. I have used, and enjoyed, other balloon brands, but I always come back to Qualatex.

Maybe I'm unusual in that regard. Maybe others have developed their brand preferences over time, or have no preference, or no strong preference, as to brand. But I think that for at least some of us, the brand of balloon we choose is less a matter of rational thought and more a matter of impulses that ride along with our fetish.

I'm tempted from time to time to try some other brands, particularly Tilly. What keeps me away from Tilly is that all of their current balloons are rather large, and I just don't use large balloons often enough to try out another brand. But if they come out with something around the 12-inch range, I think my fate is sealed, and I'll have to give them a try.

But I have a feeling that, no matter how good they are, something in the back of my mind will tell me that they aren't as good as Qualatex. Whether that's actually true or not.

A Little Saturday Poetry

A Balloon Fetishist's Lament

Bags of balloons wait patiently in my nightstand drawer,

Flaccid in the dark, packed tightly in Ziploc,

Waiting not for passion, or lust, for those are present daily.

Just waiting for a little time, a little energy.

A little privacy.

For a chance to stretch, come to life,

And wanting, like anyone else,

Nothing more than

A really good blow.

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.

The New Year

On New Year's Eve, of course, many a balloon fetishist's attention was focused on balloon fun. But that's only one night, and there's a whole new year coming up, and while I'd like to dream about it being a year filled with latex fun, the fact is that it will mostly be taken up by the day-to-day things I have to do to try and fulfill my goals.

In other words, this is a reminder, to my readers and perhaps to myself, that I am not just an author of balloon fetish stories. Like other fetishists, I'm just a regular guy with bills to pay and things I need to do to keep my family happy. And while I'd like to say that the balloon fantasies keep body and soul together (okay, maybe they help a little with the soul part), the fact is that balloon fetish stories will never put me on the bestseller list.

This is not to say that you won't be seeing any stories from me this year. In fact, I've outlined and entire book of them, as I've said before. It's just that this is not what I do for a living, and so, try as I might to keep a schedule for balloon fetish stories, those projects get bumped for paying work.

As you well know, there's more to life than balloons, and just as you can't spend all your waking hours playing with them, I can't spend all my time writing about them, even if I want to (and even writing about them is not much fun if I don't get time to play with them myself).

But the stories will come, and I'll be most appreciative when some of you out there care enough to spend a little of your time and money to read them.

A Question For My Readers

As I mentioned in my last post, I am planning a book this coming year which will have a collection of shorter stories. I have developed a list of ideas, already about 13 story ideas. I am sure I will come up with more, and I’m just as sure that some of them will lead nowhere and have to be abandoned, but I expect when I am done I will have something on the order of a dozen stories in the book.

Now, here is my question: some of the stories will be about poppers, and some will be about non-poppers. Some of the non-popper’s stories will have depictions of accidental or unwanted popping. And there may be a couple of stories that involve both popping and not popping (for example, a non-popper who becomes a popper, or has to deal with a popper, or something like that). Should I put some kind of—I can’t think of a better way to put this—warning for each story? At the head of the story or in the table of contents, something that says if there’s popping, and in what context?

This isn’t something I’d normally do in a short story collection, but balloon fetish stories, I think, are taken more personally because of the subject matter. Do you want to know ahead of time what you’ll be running into? Or are you okay just diving in with the knowledge that you may find something that makes you feel uncomfortable?

Of course, it isn’t only the matter of popping or not popping that might make you feel uncomfortable with some of these stories. In short-short form, I feel less constrained, with less of a need to insure a happy ending for every single story, or to depict every balloon fetishist in the most positive light. It’s liberating, and it lets me explore more of the various aspects of this unusual sexual (and emotional) interest.

But you probably won’t like every story in the book, no matter what your preferences. And on that, you have already been forewarned.

A New Story

I know it's been a long time in coming, but I've been busy with other writing projects with, shall we say, a larger potential audience.

But, just in time for a nice Christmas download, I've finally come out with a new erotic short story, Friends With Fetishes. I won't bother to describe it here—it has its own landing page in the tabs above, and there's a link to the right. I hope you'll check it out.

This coming year, I'm going to try something different. No, not another novel. At least I don't think so. No, I'm going to try to write a larger number of short-short stories and publish them as a collection. We'll see how that goes, but I have a lot of interesting ideas that just aren't involved enough to make for five or ten thousand words.

And I just might do what I've threatened for awhile and write a non-fiction book about my balloon fetish. Maybe. I'm not making any promises on that one; we'll see what flows out of my keyboard in the next year or so.

And, in case I don't get a chance to post before then, I hope you all have a Happy New Year filled with whatever kind of kinky balloon fun you most enjoy.