I did it again… (NEST '26 recap, v.2)
I was looking at things like an outsider.
I’m so used, as a writer, as a trained journalist, to eliminate the first person out of my viewpoint, that in my NEST writeup, I wrote it pretty much as a travelogue for someone who had never been there, and for the most part, leaving out how I felt about it. (Plus there’s the fact that this kink is still deeply, ashamedly buried in my psyche. These are the things that come with being a OG in such a niche kink.)
After my past two go-arounds at NEST, I figured I had the trick down: meet people online FIRST. Still, that too has its challenges. For starters, I have that thing where I just can’t recognize faces. Like, I could be in Manhattan and have Taylor Swift standing next to me and I wouldn’t figure it out. People don’t look like their pictures to me. Never have. Any time I’ve met famous people, it’s always been in the context where I was fully aware they were coming, met the whole entourage of posse that goes with them, etc. I always tell people I become friends with that I need to meet them three times in three different places before I’ll recognize them—and even then, that’s not a sure thing, since often I’m deep in my head.
So I knew @TicklishTexan and @burrovolador from last year. (Sadly, of the two people I played with last year, neither could make it this time around. So that was a minus.) I spent almost a full year getting to know @theminipotat due to her friendship with my delightful local friendship with @quietlee99, so in the words of Caddyshack’s Carl Spackler, “I had that going for me, which is nice.”
And uh, other than that? All I had was my ‘rep’ as someone who ran a tickle clip store for 20 years. (Although thankfully last year I was recognized as such by legend-in-the-modern-time @shizzu, who still makes stocks that leave me in awe.) On top of that—Discord. Ugh. Maybe it’s a sign that I am officially “old” but I Just. Don’t. Understand. That. Platform. It’s a Dave-and-Buster’s pinball machine of Too Much Going On, and every conversational thread moves at 85 miles a minute and everything is too hard to follow. EVERYBODY GET OFF MY LAWN. (Old Man Shouts At Clouds.<>)
But Thursday morning I packed six bags of sandals into the trunk of my car, along with my newly purchased bondage-rigged massage table and the Surfboard Mark III™ (portable stocks) and hit the road for Philly. Got to the hotel mid-afternoon, checked in and waited about for the first orientation, having learned from last year (and the disastrous 2019 effort) that if you haven’t gone through that, you can’t really do squat (which I found out this year they have made some efforts to alleviate, thankfully.)
Orientation was painlessly run by the charming Kaysadillo, and I still think the “squid” references are delightful and make the subject of consent clear as day even for the most clueless who might not ‘get it.’ I sat near the door next to RoosterTodd, which was great, since we both are graybeards. When it was over, since we were closest to the door, I made it into the check-in line first and felt a small swell of pride getting that out of the way quick. (This is me, lowering the expectations bar for the weekend to the level of the floor.)
The first class I made it to was “Negotiation Like A Boss,” which was done fabulously. I started my clip store in 2005, and of the (to date) 147 women that have put their feet in my stocks (I’m OCD—I keep records), only 18 have been kinky and about 8 were really into the tickle scene. The rest were vanillas I talked into it. So I think I did a pretty good job, considering most came back for more.
I met up with @theminipotat early in the afternoon in the lobby, since I could spot her spectacular smile all the way across the room. She surprised me right off the bat by suggesting we get to play that afternoon, and since I didn’t have anything else on the schedule—well, we went back to my room and I got a full half hour out of hearing, seeing, and feeling her glorious laughter after a photo session in the sunny hotel courtyard. (I had shopped for sandals for her for almost a full year, so that alone was worth the trip. She has Vogue model-worthy feet for pictures, and I felt honored to be the photographer.)
After that was pizza and icebreakers, where we got to wander around the room trying to find people with experiences that matched a Jeopardy-style card with things listed on them like finding “someone who can juggle” or “has a PhD.” If you got three in a row, you could get one ticket for the raffle, four in a row, two tickets; all the way up to six. I got six in a row two ways and got ten tickets, which all were working toward my (annual) goal of flooding one box at the raffle.
Saturday was glorious and sunny and I got up and drove out to find food, doing my best to NOT repeat my previous year where even though I had a car, I didn’t go out for food. There was a wonderful local Philly sandwich joint just down the road—“Fat Daddy’s—how can you pass up a name like that? Snagged an ENORMOUS Italian sub that lasted me both Saturday and Sunday for sustenance.
The PoC Mixer was something I had looked forward to since the previous year, since I didn’t get a chance to mingle in ’25. I started out clinging to the side of the room when they went around introducing themselves and I was so wound up that all I could do was say my name and that I was there the previous year and in 2019 when I ran away in the middle of the day. Then @tkprince told me about how he knew me from my store going ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE BEGINNING and it was the like the floodgates opened. Holy shit—I exist! I got to update them on a status of all of the vanilla friends I had talked into this tickling world of ours going all the way back for 20 years! Suddenly I felt like I belonged in this magical world that I had been peering into from the outside.
Saturday afternoon I got to play with the always marvelous @TicklishTexan, who is about as much of a Celebrity as one can get at NEST, seeing as she is 1) UNBREAKABLE and 2) as sparkling and glorious a lee as you can get. After meeting her and @winecrate the year before, I had set aside some of the Stuck In The Stocks proceeds and bought her a pair of soft lambskin sandals from a consignment store in Manhattan with a toe-loop for the middle toe (because I am ALL ABOUT things that go between your toes like toe-ties), and a pair of shankless wedges that exposed the middle of the foot for tickles and teases. Aside from @quietlee99, I don’t think I know anyone who loves being tickled as much as she does. I put her in my straitjacket (which she had never been in before, so brownie points all around) and we spent a delightful half hour when I think I got at least five “ohgod” exclamations out of her, which I will take as a win.
The raffle is the Big Social Event of the weekend. It is where participants (I think I covered this in my previous note) participants put themselves up to be either lers or lees, in singles or groups, where their names, roles (lee, ler, top, bottom), preferences, safewords and boundaries are listed, and then they are given a box with a slot in it. Every attendee is given a number of tickets (with the option of winning more tickets over the course of the weekend) and then you can drop those tickets into the various boxes with the possibility of "winning" a chance to have some interaction with your choice of raffle-ee.
By the time we go to the actual raffle, I had amassed something on the order of 35 tickets. Last year I got ten tickets total, and put them all in one box—and lost. This year, of the 35, I put 25 in one box (who will stay nameless) and then split the remaining 10 between @ticklex and Nixxiesoles, because I was trying to hedge my bets and possibly save my weekend. (This also did not work. Dammit.)
In the end—total failure. Didn’t win a thing, and I spent the Saturday night in my room with a bottle of wine and the internet, trying to figure out what I could have done differently and thinking I may have gotten yellow-slipped (where the box owner lists people they would not want to win) out of pure self-loathing.
Sunday morning the weather was shiny and glorious, which went a long way toward alleviating my raffle gloom—and then I met up with @lolo10toes, with whom I had a short chat on Fetlife before the event. (I for some reason expected her hair to be pink when it was blue, so I didn’t really spot her until Sunday.) We repaired to the courtyard where I could take pictures of her in some of the size 9.5 sandals I had brought, and then went up to my room where—contrary to her statement that “I didn’t safeword with @shizzu and I won’t safeword with you either!”—um … DENIED. And she really was one of the most delightful experiences I have had all year—a truly lovely lee. (Apologies to the hotel staff who probably thought someone was being murdered in Room 249.)
On the whole, I feel like I left too much on the table. Much of Sunday I spent feel ing like the “guy who was left out.” I moped a lot of Saturday night when I could have been more social. I met @Nixxiesoles and her man @3kftworld, along with @ticklex in the lobby (and stupid me, didn’t bring the sandals for @ticklex that I had realized were PERFECT for her). Sunday I also realized that there were so many people I could have and should have interacted with … and didn’t. So I spent a lot of time sort of playing “SURPRISE! SHOE FAIRY!” with lovely folk I could have gotten to know earlier in the weekend ( @V-Lee92, @Squeaccups, @lishbabyblues and more )
Fucking Discord, man! @EgoInvicta invited all and sundry to join in and tickle torture @lorankh, which is something I would have loved to join in on, having met them @ NEST2025. But I didn’t see the open invite on Discord until later that night, and as I am loath to join in on scenes already in progress, I stood by on the side and watched her lose her shit. Which was delightful, but really? (Because we all think, when we’re watching a scene, “You know—right there I could have made her lose her shit…”
I cannot express my thanks enough to the people who do all the work to put on NEST—ChrisP (Bacon), Kay(sadillo), Liger, Ben (Franklin), Rhino (that funny motherfucker who runs the Raffle), the dungeon monitors and newbie, 'napping, and volunteer coordinators, and Xander putting together all the activities. I knowwhat it takes to put on an event of this size and scope, and all of them did a spectacular job.
(And you know someone's kicking ass at the job when you see the Man In Charge, ChrisP, giving the ladies who were the hotel general manager and the bar/kitchen manager foot rubs on Sunday afternoon. PROPS FOR SCHMOOZING, DUDE! 🙌🏼 )
I am so betting we're gonna be in this same hotel next year. 😏
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