Doc / Social Hour from a while ago (part II of II): Social Hour.

The social hour the other week was good too.

I ended up talking to the ghost hunter and the prof of that one sex study I was in.

The ghost hunter as a vampire for Halloween.

"Just pulled one of my costumes out," he was like.

As it turns out, in his closet he has a whole rack of costumes for sex (vampire, pirate, etc.).

Later, we were talking and I mentioned my hometown.

"Shit," he was like, "You're from [there]?"

As it turns out, his grandfather was this retired western actor who lived in a nearby major city and dressed up as a cowboy for a saturday morning local tv kids show I knew ("Deputy Don"), and would also dress up as a vampire to host late-night movies (I think, I don't remember that character too well), and that at 5 years old when he would visit his grandfather they would dress him up as a vampire too and he would rise out a little miniature coffin next to his grandfather.

I told him how once when I was in middle school at a friend's house, his mom came home from a daytrip to that city and asked her how it was when she came in the door with bags, and she was all excited and was like, "I saw Deputy Don at YaYa's Chicken!"

Later, he was talking about his new tattoo and how it hurt when they put it across his spine, and when the sex study prof asked him what it was, he turned around and lifted his shirt and revealed a giant Ouija board across his back.

"Bitchin'," the sex study prof was like.

I then said it was a little impractical, since you could never get the planchette to slide correctly.

"No," the ghost hunter was like, "I'm gonna use women's titties."

Later, before he left, we talked more, and I'm getting from information from him about his ghost tour company he runs. In peak tour time, guides can do 2-3 evenings a week, and you get $25/hour for a 3-hour tour, plus tips. He also said he does a sex tour (i.e., a tour of sex-related sites) and that that's bread-and-butter and it's mostly bachelorette parties, and that as an ice-breaker he asks women what they get off on.

"For some reason," he was like, "All the women from the 'burbs like getting choked and having their hair pulled."

"Interesting," the sex study prof was like.

After he left, I talked with the sex study prof. He asked me (per our conversation at the swingers's barbecue) whether I'd been cycling - he's a big-time cyclist - and I told him yes, a daylong trip to Michael Jackson's boyhood home in Gary, Indiana, and he was quite pleased.

"That's great," he was like.

Then, he was like, "I think I figured out Michael Jackson this week."

"Like how," I was like, "Sexually?"

"Yeah," he was like, "What turns him on," and then he explained that he started from 2 things:

1) He had the money to do anything he wanted and turn into anything he wanted, whether a woman or a better-looking man, and he became what he did.

2) A gossip column quoted Debbie Rowe as saying he would dress up as Peter Pan for foreplay.

From there, he said that a not unheard-of thing is to want to look like your object of desires.

"You know what an autogynophile is?", he was like.

"Like Schreber?", I was like, and immediately he was like, "No, he was mentally ill," and then went on to explain it was straight cross-dressers, who get turned on by dressing like women, and want to do women, though they're not the only ones - there's auto-amputees who self-amputate and also want to fuck amputees, and he even met a gay dude who goes to bath-houses not to fuck, but to look at hot men and then go to a cabin to think about himself being them, and jack off.

So, under his theory, Michael wanted Peter Pan, and to look like Peter Pan.

After we talked more - he is very avuncular, and gave me academic advice - he was tired and went to leave, and I went to hang out with Steve the BDSM guy and some other BDSMers. They showed me some digital photos of Burning Man, and Steve was saying they're starting up a regional group and the other week they went to a campground and made a big model of a warship and lit it on fire to the 1812 overture, and then later this other BDSM guy explained the dynamics of puppy play and pony play to me.

The headspace (as he understands it) is being dominated by being made to walk on your knees without pads not being able to speak have a bit in your mouth etc., or being beaten if you're a bratty sub, but also having affection given to you when someone pets you or treats you well, so you have both sex and love at the same time.

"Man," I was like, "I bet people who get into that are turned on all the time when they're playing."

"Yeah," he was like, "And remember, the tales are attached to buttplugs. That helps, too."

Again, though, he said that he's never done it, except to play the part of a neighbor and tell someone what a nice dog they have, and pet them, or go to his car and get a newspaper for beating them if the owner forgot one.