| Captain Zip gets told what to buy at the Skin Two ExpoI’ve had a withdrawn year for various reasons, including a distinct lack of stamina and income, but I deserved a treat and a break from covering this year’s Raindance Film Festival and made my way to my favourite fetish event of the year, The Skin Two Expo at London’s Barbican. It’s simply packed with lovely people and lovely things to look at. I was brave enough to stroke my beloved Mistress Alexia’s latex on Saturday, and I even had a cup of tea with Mistress Destiny on Sunday to help me recover. The greatest delight for me at the Expo is all those latex-clad ladies. I can’t resist them. One of my favourites was the pony girl from Germany’s S.M. Factory. It’s such a delight to turn a corner and see shapely buttocks and breasts trapped in a tight rubber catsuit worn by a girl clip-clopping on the highest of heels. Fetish fashion suppliers abound at the Expo and they come from all around the fetish world. There was so much to look through. I kept attempting to resist the latex goodies on stalls such as Libidex, where the yummy girl in charge never gave up trying to lure me into finding something sexy to purchase every time I went by. I was doing quite well before my resistance entirely evaporated when I came across Jack the Rubber’s bargain bin. There before me was a deliciously thick and restrictive rubber hood complete with thick protruding eye and mouth tubes reduced from £70 to £30. I even managed to remember my pin number, so I had no excuse at all not to buy. I can’t wait for my next tipsy dressing up day. But the latex item I was having the most trouble resisting was on the Latexa stand. It was a gorgeously shiny catsuit zipped up at the rear. It had attached feet, gloves and hood with eye and mouth holes. I just wanted to get into it and be trapped in it for ever. I ran upstairs to try and control myself and who should I bump into but my beloved gas mask girl. I told her what a dilemma I was in. Buy it and have fun? Don’t buy it and save money? I couldn’t decide. She wasn’t wearing a gas mask this time. I could see her delicious new hair style. All spiky and straggly and lovely – just like her. She had no trouble telling me in no uncertain terms to go straight down there and buy it immediately! “And make sure it’s semi-transparent!” I think the rude girl wants to see my bits! I really do! Bless her! Alas, when popular me finally remembered where the stall was and got there just an hour before closing time, they only had it in black and small. I’d lost my chance to impress gas mask girl and to be kidnapped by her. I’ll just have to wait until she’s wearing her forthcoming new inflatable rubber ladybird outfit. I can’t wait to see it. Swoon! Faint! Thud! I thought I would compensate myself by trying out some intriguing electrical accoutrements. In a demonstration at the Vibrawhip stand, the cat and nine tails and the dressage whip both vibrated as they struck the flesh, giving a doubly delightful sensation. Fully restored, I wandered round the numerous aisles once more and came to the conclusion that my favourite stall this year had to be Germany’s Fetish Universe, from which two gorgeous girls ceaselessly paraded and cavorted about the Expo in an astounding variety of total enclosure rubber and lycra outfits, some of them in irresistibly cute animal prints. Purrr! I was amazed to find one of them spending ages trapped in an inflatable rubber ball with just her delicious trapped head poking out of the top. Yum! How lovely! I’m in love again! Swoon! Faint! Thud! Sunday finished with me being given a much needed glass of white wine by a lovely lady on the Essandemm stand. She said that she wanted to do something naughty with me, but she never did explain what. I couldn’t hang around to find out. I had to dash back to the Raindance Film Festival to see the closing night’s Venezuelan kidnap movie Secuestro Express. When the lovely Czech Louise Brooks look-alike Martina heard about my fetish exploits as we sat together and chatted at the after-party, she admitted that she strongly regretted not bringing her whip with her. My favourite film at Raindance this year was the superb Spanish comedy Inconsciente (Unconscious). This astoundingly funny and unrepressed romp through Spain’s social, sexual, psychological and sapphic sensibilities sumptuously recreates a visit by Freud to Barcelona in 1913. Most of the action surrounds the eternal battle between hysterical women and repressed men. Not only are the 1913 fashions and décor lovingly recaptured but there are numerous delightfully eccentric touches such as a reconstruction of a flickering BDSM film of the period complete with a charmingly cheeky dominatrix I couldn’t resist falling completely in love with. If you like girls in men’s suits dancing together, don’t resist seeing it. Meanwhile, if you’re getting withdrawal symptoms from the Skin Two Expo already, there’s rope bondage at The Barbican Gallery in Nobuyoshi Araki’s photo exhibition which runs until January 22nd. |