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In: Chastity device fitting
My “normal” flaccid penis. This is not even close to how short it often gets.

Out of idle curiosity, I searched “male chastity” on Amazon. Tons of Chinese chastity devices showed up. Judging by the promised delivery dates (June), they are shipping from China. FYI, dhgate.com (search chastity) has the same stuff and more at lower prices. More interesting to me is that many of the devices are short–lion short. My Jail Bird has a one-inch cage. It’s nice to see that chastity device makers are creating cages better suited for most of us.

penis turtle size
Turtle mode. A cage about the same length as the head will work perfectly.

Many men who want to buy a male chastity device will measure their cocks when they aren’t at their shortest. A properly fitting chastity device should fit so that the head of the penis is always in firm contact with the front of the cage. Most of us have penises that will “turtle” a good amount of time. This is the correct size for the cage. After several adjustments in cage size, I discovered that the best fit was the shortest cage.

shortened jail bird
This is my Jail Bird with the cage shortened to 1-1/4 inches. Now my urethra poked out almost all the time. (Click image to view larger)

If you leave any space in length, the head of the penis will wander, and peeing becomes a seriously messy game of chance. Also, erection control and comfort are improved with a properly sized cage. The diameter of the cage shouldn’t be too small. Ideally, your soft cock will comfortably fit. Squeezing the diameter can result in edema, swelling of the penis in an uncomfortable way.

Speaking of male chastity devices, I expect Mrs. Lion to lock me into my cock ring or a cage now that the little sore I had is healed. She’ll probably lock me into the cock ring. The cage has a spray risk even at its very short length. My urethra can wander and “bite” the bar. This results in a messy trip to the bathroom. She might choose to leave me wild since there is no risk of me jerking off.

Before I started dealing with chastity devices, I had no idea that my soft penis had so many moods. Other men may not turtle as much as me. It’s important to understand this shortest length. For me that meant my cage is only slightly longer than the length of my penis head. I suspect that most men aren’t much different.

By:
In: Spanking, Domestic discipline

I slightly changed our site logo (on top of the web page). It better reflects the direction our blog has taken. It used to list “chastity devices” first. We don’t get many to review after nearly a decade. There simply aren’t any really new designs as far as I can tell. Male orgasm control remains a major topic. It’s also something we’ve practiced since starting the blog. I haven’t had one unsupervised orgasm since 2014. Mrs. Lion has produced every single one since December 2013.

Domestic discipline is up on the masthead. We practice it and talk about it a lot. Spanking remains prominent. It’s part of domestic discipline, but it also exists as a stand-alone activity. We have a lot of material about chastity devices and how to live with them so they remain on top. We need to acknowledge that our direction has changed a bit over the years.

The word “male” belongs in front of each item on the masthead. It looks unnecessary if I put it there. We’ve learned that all of those activities are different when it comes to which gender is on the receiving end. Spanking a man is functionally different from spanking a woman. The difference is partially physical. Men seem to have thicker hides than women. Spanking a man requires more force and time than for a female. How do I know? I’ve spanked dozens of women over the years. It isn’t that they can’t take as much. Many can take a lot more than this man. It’s that the application of force is different.

The other big difference is that some (many?) women can orgasm during a spanking. The pain is often overpowered by sexual stimulation the swats provide. Female sex parts are internal and can “feel” the movement and vibration of a spanking. We males don’t have that anatomy, and spanking is pure pain to most of us. The posts we offer on male (me!) spanking are not unisex.

Most domestic discipline is practiced with the female being disciplined. Our brand has emerged fairly recently. Traditional DD is often part of various Christian sects that preach a patriarchal home with the man of the house punishing his wife as needed. This isn’t necessarily consensual. Tradition replaces consent in that context.

Our brand of domestic discipline is consensual. It’s usually initiated by the member of the couple who wants to be disciplined. It can be either partner. We write about the male version, where the man is disciplined by his partner. I’m the disciplined male in our marriage. (Julie, of Strict Julie Spanked, writes about it from the disciplined female point of view.) I asked Mrs. Lion to become my disciplinary wife. She’s learned how to be very good in this role.

We’ve rarely written about consent. The fantasies about domestic discipline and male chastity suggest that once given, it can’t be revoked. This is never the case. The disciplined or locked-up male has to consent. Mrs. Lion can’t force me to lie on the spanking bench. Once I’m on it, I’m usually strapped down, so I can’t change my mind. I can always safeword. More subtle forces prevent the withdrawal of consent in real life. I get sexually aroused thinking about being spanked. This is a common thread in both sexes. That inner heat draws me to the spanking bench like a powerful magnet. Once I’m trapped in its grip, I’m usually sorry but can’t escape.

We both continue with male orgasm control and domestic discipline because it works for us. For medical reasons, we suspended DD, and both of us missed it. I don’t think either of us understands exactly why, but we are happier with DD and orgasm control. It’s become a welcome part of our lives.

Anyway, that’s why I changed our masthead. It reflects where we are now, in our ninth year of blogging.

By:
In: Lion's Journal

April is winding down. We have a slightly different version of April showers here in the Northwest. The song goes, “April showers bring the flowers that bloom in May.” Here, it goes, “April Showers bring the May showers.” We don’t get a lot more rain than other places. It rains about the same here as it does in New York City. The difference is that it comes down harder and faster in New York. Our rain is usually drizzle and mist. It comes down nine months of the year.

Since Mrs. Lion and I are inside kitties, the rain rarely inconveniences us. The dark days sometimes affect our mood—we both like sunshine. My mood has been pretty dark. I’m having a crisis about my ability to write good fiction. I don’t think I’ve found my voice. I’m very close to giving up my attempt to be a novelist. I’m not sure what to do with my time if I do. I like to write, but I can’t see spending the rest of my life writing crap.

This latest crisis of confidence was brought on by faint praise from an editor I consulted to help me shape up my submission package for agents. Her first pass included a lot of helpful comments on how to sharpen my style and corrected some focus errors. After rewriting the book based on the feedback, I resubmitted my work. There were no editorial changes to the sample pages I submitted. I wrote and asked why she was silent. Her reply was, “I think you’ve gotten your opening pages as good as you can.”

There you go. She didn’t say that the pages were good, just good as I can make them. From an objective point of view, I think that means it isn’t good at all. I could write porn. I know that I can write hot sex scenes. There’s a very limited market for that. Also, it isn’t much fun to write. To make matters worse, there is enough free porn on the Internet to make selling anything nearly impossible.

My father used to tell me that I could do anything I set my mind to. My mother used to say that childless couples are the happiest. Dad was wrong. Mom was partially right. Anyway, I can probably learn to write more marketable fiction. It isn’t an art, after all. Writing is a craft. I did my undergrad work in business and, later, computer software. My master’s is in computer science. I haven’t had an English class since high school. It shows.

Maybe writing over a million words on this blog has helped me express myself. It hasn’t taught me how to build characters. I can tell a story, but I don’t seem able to make people love my characters. I think that failing shows up here. People like our reporting but don’t identify with us enough to start a two-way conversation in our comments. Visit Julie’s blog, for example. She almost always gets thirty or forty comments to each post. We usually get none, or on a good day, one.

I think it’s because I’m not a compelling character. If I can’t draw readers to myself, I have no chance of inventing characters they will love. I’m lucky that Mrs. Lion loves me. She must see something that the rest of the world doesn’t.

By:
In: Sex, BDSM

The problem I have with writing a sex blog is that there are times I don’t want to talk about sex. Well, you might say, don’t write a post. You have a point. Lots of bloggers go weeks, even months between posts. Why do I feel compelled to write if I miss just one day? I’ve been asking myself that question for some time. I’m pretty sure that I won’t spoil your day if you don’t wake up to my latest adventure. Let’s face it, there is only so much one can write about male chastity and spanking.

One big topic that Mrs. Lion and I are well qualified to discuss is how to do those things over many years. We are in our ninth year of orgasm control. Mrs. Lion has been spanking me for the better part of two decades. Obviously, we have figured out how to integrate these kinks into our happy marriage. That’s something.

When I started this blog, I hoped that we could give and get advice from other couples. It didn’t take long to learn that our blog isn’t particularly interactive. Some other blogs attract lots of comments and conversations. We don’t. Is it our style? Are we unapproachable? Are the topics we discuss more like magazine articles than interactive forum discussions? I know from our web analysis data that lots of people actually read what we write. They just don’t talk back.

Writing a blog with a large audience is an ego boost. It also puts a lot of pressure on us to keep writing interesting posts. Since we get little feedback, we have to come up with things in a vacuum. Some bloggers use “prompts” to find things to write. A few blogs are actually dedicated to generating these prompts. Nope. I don’t like that at all. I don’t even read blogs written to these prompts. I watch our stats and try to use them to help guide our direction. Mostly, we write about what we are doing and thinking at the moment.

Mrs. Lion and I lead pretty isolated lives. We aren’t very social and we both work from home. Even when we went to our offices, we didn’t make many work friends. I wonder if we would enjoy knowing other couples who share our interests. Before I was with her, I did hang out with people in the local BDSM community. Mrs. Lion didn’t feel comfortable with that crowd. Then we moved west where we don’t know anyone.

If you read our blog regularly, you know that we make our own fun. We are content in our isolation. I suppose there is an area we might welcome prompts: sex and kink. We often run into trouble trying to come up with things to do. We also have trouble deciding what to have for dinner. For a while, we tried Mrs. Lion’s Box O’Fun. It’s a wood box with a collection of slips of paper containing BDSM activities. It worked well while we used it. Mrs. Lion stopped for some reason and never started again. When it comes to sex and play, if we don’t answer the question of what we are going to do, we do nothing.

The Box O’fun was far from perfect. Often, the slip of paper called for an activity one or both of us didn’t want to do. The game didn’t allow for that possibility. I guess we needed an IF NOT, THEN {something else] clause in our program. Usually I was the one who didn’t want to do something from the box. Mrs. Lion refuses to force me to do sexual things. Maybe the IF NOT should be to pick another slip of paper and return the rejected one to the box. Sooner or later, I have to do everything she chose to put into it. I would be postponing the inevitable. That has an interesting flavor.

See? I managed to come up with something after all.