Chapter 10 The Folsom East Street Festival
The Folsom East Street Festival
Miles Bennet
Miles was amazed at how quickly Darren managed to get a plan set into place.
The festival was only three months away, but with a couple of phone calls, they had the festival and the charity on board, along with a local BDSM supply shop.
They'd have a festival tent in between the charity and the rope shop, which was bringing in some inexpensive cotton rope specifically for the charity initiative.
"I'll teach you to tie harnesses with the cotton.
It's better for beginners who are just looking for something decorative, which is probably what we're going to mostly get," Darren explained when he showed him the ropes.
"If anyone actually buys some jute, I'll take them, maybe even try to upsell them on something more advanced.
Sarah's going to help out as well, so we've got a good gender mix. "
After several training sessions, they spent two nights at Mallorie's parties, tying practice harnesses on a seemingly unending line of eager volunteers.
Darren had picked up a giant spool of the cotton rope, and the donations their fellow party-goers insisted on giving them more than paid for it.
"We'll pass it on to the charity," Darren assured all of them.
"Careful, Red," Mallorie said with a smirk as he finished a harness around her naked body.
She'd brought her own, red-dyed jute, and squirmed shamelessly against the length that Darren had tied down her midline to press between her pussy lips.
Miles imagined he'd probably added a couple of specially placed knots for extra fun.
"We're going to want you to do this all the time. "
Darren, laughing, kissed her temple. "Ask me again for your birthday, and we'll see what we can do."
"What if I host an after-party after Folsom?" She batted her eyelashes and pouted. "I work so hard all day enabling so many kinky fantasies."
Darren looked over at him with a raised eyebrow. "What do you think, love? Should we leave the portable rig here? Wrap up the day with a bit of a suspension for our hostess?"
Knowing how good it was himself - and how much Mal put into making things like this happen - he smiled. "I'm sure we could handle it."
That night, Miles wore a cotton harness himself, along with a pair of brand new leather pants Darren had insisted they have tailored for the occasion.
He'd borrowed Darren's chaps in the past, but borrowing pants was out of the question.
"Gotta have something special to show off that Thicc ass," Darren had purred at the specialty shop.
Wearing more clothes did make him feel a bit more of a dom, even still in his collar.
The cotton rope was very different from when Darren tied him up in jute, with a lot of give that would make it unsuitable for most suspensions.
It felt nice on the body, though. He found himself enjoying the process of connecting with someone as he went through the slow and repetitive process of looping and knotting the rope around their naked chest or over clothes.
"I'm starting to understand why you like it so much," he admitted to Darren on their way home. "I'm really looking forward to the festival."
"You're going to have lineups around the block, my love," Darren purred, the pride in his voice warming Miles to the tips of his toes.
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Setting up the morning of the festival, it quickly became obvious that far more than Darren's pride was going to be warming Miles. And that the leather pants had been a huge mistake.
The look was hot, of course. Even setting up, Miles could feel the gaze of other exhibitors admiring him and Darren.
It was different from being admired as Darren's sub.
It was tempting to look away and pretend it wasn't happening, but that wasn't going to help him engage and get to know new people.
Instead, he tried to channel Darren, acknowledging admiring glances with a smile and a nod.
His pants were hot, and they were also quickly becoming the other kind of hot.
The mid-June day was clear and sunny. Setting up on asphalt and concrete made the temperature even hotter.
The charity had brought in misting fans, which hung from the top back corners of the tent, but they could only do so much.
From the sweat already trickling down the back of his neck, Miles could tell it was going to be sweltering.
"I don't know if I can keep these pants on," he said as Darren finished knotting a blue rope harness around his torso, positioned to accentuate his pecs and abs. "I'm going to start dripping." God, why hadn't he thought about the heat? Would chaps have been better after all? Utility shorts?
"Strip down to your underwear?" Darren had already stripped down to nothing but his own jute harness and an army green and mesh utili-kilt.
"I can't be that naked in public. Especially not today.
" Miles felt far more comfortable being seen at events than he had in the beginning.
Since the custody battle, he and his ex-wife had managed to settle into a fairly civil truce for the kids' sake.
It was probably because she'd decided Miles had been a poor, pathetic closeted gay for the entire duration of their marriage, but it was easier not to correct her.
He felt comfortable enough to start doing certain events without the mask and black Lycra sleeves that hid his tattoos. Still, they were doing this for charity, and it definitely didn't feel right to be running around in nothing but y-fronts.
"Maybe grab something from one of the vendors before things get going?" Darren suggested.
Miles stepped out of the tent to look up and down the street. Vendors hurried to finish setting up while volunteers moved signage. The crew manning the watersports pool at the end of the block were spraying down the asphalt with hoses, hoping to beat the heat.
Someone was smoking weed somewhere, the skunky resin mixing with the smell of frying oil. The sizzle from the food trucks and the whir of margarita blenders were just the beginnings of the chaos the street was about to be.
"I... don't think I have time for that."
"We have some extra booth boy spanks if you're interested." The owner of the rope booth had introduced himself as Michael, a warm, friendly bear of a man with incredibly luxurious long hair. He held up a pair of camo print spanks with "BOUND the festival was very strict about checking ID at the gate. "Thanks! And absolutely, let me see your rope. Do you want a harness just around your chest like mine, or down farther?"
He hadn't expected how many young adults would be at the festival. He certainly hadn't expected how many would call him 'Daddy'. Being an actual father made that feel weird and wrong, but he could push away the discomfort for charity.
Darren had been right about lineups; soon they were working at the very back of the tent as the crowd of shoppers pushed their eager potential rope-bunnies in farther.
The scent of spray-sunscreen and warm bodies made the air thick and stifling if he went too far from the fan misters.
"Next year we're going to have to charge more," Darren murmured, giving Miles a wink as a pair of young twinks wearing little more than Miles got to the front of the line.
"Did you see there's a kiddie pool where people pee on each other?" one of them asked him, shocked and delighted.
"There's been lineups there since the festival opened," Miles told him with a laugh.
Fortunately, Miles had practiced enough to work through the increasing claustrophobia, and the soft cotton rope was forgiving. He managed to get through the ties more and more efficiently, even as the heat and the misting fans made his hands and other people's bodies slippery.
Every time things started to feel like too much, all he had to do was catch Darren's eye. His husband's silent pride and reassurance were more than enough to settle his nerves.
He'd trained for this, and Darren wouldn't let him fail. He could do this.
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