I Like A Good Orgasm.

I am, in common with many, partial too a good orgasm. So, since this blog is not noted for its good taste, I'm going to relate the story of one.

As with most things in my life this is inextricably linked to cardigans, an example of which I always like to wear when protein is to be expelled in the most pleasurable way possible. On this occasion I was wearing a nice lambswool five-button number; it's getting cool enough in this neck of the woods to make wearing such a garment a non-sweaty proposition.

I doubt whether the trajectory of my persuit of orgasm matches exactly that of anyone else, but I imagine that there are certain features in common. The slow start, followed by the incremental stage and then the logarithmic stage reaching an asymptote to the actual expulsion of fluids.

By sheer force of will and the imagination needed to keep the cinema of onan showing  more and more exotic sequels to the blockbuster that got me this far, I find it possible to hover at the asymptote for a protracted period. This was just the stage I was at; incessant thrashing; head thrown back; eyes rolled up into the skull, all accompanied by hyperventilation and loud groaning. Oh yes, it was going to be a good one.

I was on the home straight now, about to slip through that asymptote into uncharted gasm space. Breathing deeply and verbalising some of that wild fantasy, I was ready to splash gentleman's relish onto one of my favourite cardigans. I'm gonna...

"Have you any intention of buying that magazine?" Asked the man behind the counter.

Hence the picture below of an unbesmirched cardigan.

 

Cardigan Towers

Not posted anything for a while, if you’ve been following this blog you will be aware that Cardigan Towers has been undergoing a bit of a refurbishment. You may also recall that I promised a glimpse when it’s finished. Well, finished it is, except for a bit of tidying up. So here’s a little look into Cardiganwearers world.

It’s taken through the door of my bedroom, otherwise known as the Cardigan Room. In an ideal world I’d have a cardigan room as well as a bedroom but the cost of living in Cardiganland precludes that possibility. Given that what you see is an extension to a cardboard box in a multi storey car park on the outskirts of Cardiganland, I think it’s come out quite well.

You can see my shoe rack; regular readers might be surprised to hear that I wear shoes as well as cardigans. Above that on the mantelpiece is a favourite photograph, which can be seen elsewhere on this blog. Just visible to the left of that is the chrome plated sheen of  a well used Gomco circumcision clamp, now enjoying a comfortable retirement after a lifetime of cock-enhancing work.

And what’s this? There would appear to be a cardigan in shot, how did that get there?

It may have come from the three boxes of them to the right of the fireplace. And they’re not the only ones, yes I’ve been able to unpack all the cards I put away while the work was being done; I’m whole again. Atop the bookcase from which the cardigan hangs you can see a fan; given the peculiarity of my interest it may be my only one.

That’ll be all for today except to thank a reader, Gary S, who left a comment, or so I was informed by email, but I can’t find it in the comments section of the blog. Probably my own fault, but thanks again Gary, good to hear someone reads this shit.

Sporting Cardigans 2

For the second in my sporting cardigans mini series I'm going to take a brief look at the bowls cardigan. That's bowls, not bowling; the British game of marbles played by elderly gentlemen (and some ladies) on billiard-table smooth lawns or indoors. I know little about the game itself, but it's enthusiasts appear to be old and competitive. A look at their websites reveals this latter trait, they seem obsessed with competing and winning. A secondary, but also important concern seems to be with the sartorial; competing and being well dressed seem to go hand in hand.

In a sense this is understandable. Some people are just competitive and when the body starts to exhibit those failures and limitations which flesh is heir to, a more sedate outlet for this naked aggression is likely to be sought. Bowls would appear to be such an outlet.

I illustrate my piece with a picture of a Balmoral  bowls cardigan, one I bought on ebay. I have another which I bought from a bowls outfitter on Scotland. They are made of a dense and thick acrylic with five 2-hole buttons. They appear to be generously sized probably to enable their increasingly portly wearers to claim to be medium when they're in fact, how to put this politely... er... not. They are always white, the cardigans and their wearers. Being white they show stains, which in my experience don't wash out too well, so real enthusiasts need to watch where they're putting their gentleman's relish.

I have done an extensive search today and discovered that they are no longer available, can't find the men's version anywhere. We may have seen the end of an era.

Not a word of the following is true.

I used to help out at the local bowls club, helping the elderly gentlemen in their clubhouse. They used to get changed into their whites before matches and most of them wore the bowls cardigans. Some of them used to encourage me to help with their cardigan buttons and one of them, a particularly portly gent, name of Flowers took a particular interest in me.

I didn't think much to it. He was a married man and I wasn't really much of a gerontophile, apart from wanting to help portly elderly gents with their cardigans at the weekend. This particular Sunday he had made sure he pressed his ample tummy against me as I helped him on with his cardigan and I must confess I copped a feel just to feel how prominent and curvaceous it was. This appeared not to be lost on him, as the match proceeded he glanced in my direction on several occasions.

As with all bowls matches, what seemed like hours of tedium were leavened with moments of sheer monotony to the extent that it would not be hard to persuade oneself that these players out there on the lawn had started the game as much younger men. At last it finished and all retired to the clubhouse to boast of their achievements and remove their cardigans, a task with which I was enthusiastic to help.

I was to be thwarted in my desire to play with a lot of cardigans by Mr. Flowers's insistence that I help him and only him, and that interrupted by his insistence that he give me a lift home in his car. He was most forceful and I soon found myself in the passenger seat of his car. Large as it was, and commodious as the interior was, Mr. Flowers was a tight squeeze behind the wheel, his embonpoint  having been emphasised by his seated position. So enthusiastic had he been earlier to leave the clubhouse with me in tow that he still wore the sporting cardigan, now somewhat distended by his posture.

We set off, not in the direction of my place but his. He told me during the brief journey that his wife was away and that she didn't understand him anyway. At this point he put his hand on my knee. We eventually arrived at his house and he invited me in. By this time I was intoxicated by the sight of cardigan restraining ample tummy and followed him.

He closed the front door and bade me wait in the hall while he disappeared upstairs, he came down moments later and invited me to follow him upstairs. Bereft of all other garments he was still wearing the cardigan.

I shan't bore you with the details. Suffice to say he had an old fashioned view of sex, gentleman on top and very much in charge. I remember the sheer weight of him compressing me and the vigour with which he had to fuck to reach orgasm. I didn't have one and wasn't invited to have one, I suspect he was unused to his sexual partners having such things.

He appeared less frequently at the bowls club after that and eventually I heard through the other members that he had died of a heart attack. One of his closer friends brought me a cardigan. It had belonged to Mr. Flowers. The friend, who had helped his wife clear out some things, thought I might like it.

Like I said, they stain easily, and it doesn't wash out.

I took a photograph of Mr. Flowers on my phone that day. I still have it but those prudes at google have deemed it unsuitable so I've had to remove it.

Sporting Cardigans

Golf

I am particularly fond of golf cardigans, specifically Arnold Palmer golf cardigans. Personally designed by Arnold Palmer it says on the label. Yeah, sure I can believe a man who was exceptionally good at golf was also an expert on fabrics and garment manufacture. In another sphere, anyone interested in cycling will know many of the good framesets bear the names of past champions in the sport. Eddie Merckx, for example. Who would have guessed that such a champion was good at welding too?

So my point is that I doubt Mr. Palmer's input went much beyond make it a bit baggy in the upper body and have ample sleeves so I can take a good swing. In fact he probably just took the money in exchange for the use of his name and left it to Robert Bruce, the manufacturer to do the rest.

The AP cardigan was not the only card made by the above mentioned company, they made others. The examples I have share a design characteristic which may have been unique to the brand, a curled over edge to the material achieved by fine stitching pulling the edge inwards. This may have been unique to them; I've not seen it elsewhere.

The AP cardigans were available in acrylic, wool, and alpaca and thus available to a wide market. They seemed to be mostly marketed in the sixties and seventies and about ten years ago were plentiful on EBay. There's fewer of them about these days so I suspect they'll soon be gone.

A factor which drew me to them is that most of them had two-hole buttons. They later went to four hole and incorporated the AP emblem on the chest. Before then, the emblem, a golf umbrella was embossed on the buttons, except when it wasn't. I have AP cardigans whose buttons match the general pattern exactly except for the embossed emblem, no idea what was going on there at all. If anyone knows let me know.

There was another brand of golf cardigan, endorsed by Nick Faldo. If I recall correctly they were sleeveless and had a wide v at the bottom of the front, thus not buttoning all the way down; never liked 'em.

But Arnold Palmer cardigans I do like.

 Here's one with the plain buttons.

Now imagine a modern take on the golf card, we could have a Tiger Woods golf cardigan.Perhaps several different models, the "shagger" five button sleeveless and the "super shagger" six button with sleeves. The heterosexual dimension is slightly off putting but to coin a cardigan-related term, the idea has buttons.

On another topic, but one I've banged on about before, here's another interesting take on the poppers issue

more on poppers 

Thanks for reading I'll post again soon.

More on poppers

Here's a little adendum to my last post. There's a good discussion of the poppers situation here
link.

I've added a hit counter to this blog which has revealed that astonishingly I am not the only visitor!

Poppers

I am sure I'm not alone in noticing the decline in the quality of poppers; the current variety are shite. It seems the old formulation is now illegal within the EU, something to do with rats getting cancer if they're immersed in the stuff for half their lives.

As a complete screaming pervert I rather relied on the old amyl nitrite to fire up the imagination and make almost anything into a turn-on. I have a theory that poppers promote the release of a hormone, hitherto unknown to science (and because you cant get the real stuff anymore, likely to remain that way), preposterone which makes even the most preposterous things seem sexy. This "theory" remains in the realms of idle speculation; my chance of a Nobel prize having been scuppered by a piece of unimaginative legislation preventing further legitimate experimentation.

All is not lost; there are brands out there that give nearly the rush of the old stuff. These are the large bottle brands, Iron Horse and similar but I suspect they just succeed because the larger diameter neck on the bottle permits a bigger dose.

More hope, too, emerges from the fact that it is only illegal to sell the old formula stuff, not to possess it or even manufacture it. The chemistry is simple, the procedure not too complicated and the chemicals easy to get in principal. My reservation is that getting these chemicals will arouse suspicion and I think any nitrate chemical purchases will flag something dodgy to various authorities. Protesting that you use the stuff to fuel a weird fetish will probably only attract even more unwelcome scrutiny; in short you're fucked.

Regular readers (yeah, just me...) will have noticed that I've not posted for a while. This is because of the turmoil produced by the refurbishment of Cardigan Towers. It's going well and I'll post some pictures at some stage.

You can see a vid of me wearing this at


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCb6FYlOcyY



Will post more soon, do look in again.

Yearbook and Memory

You’ll all be familiar with the yearbook, though if you’re a Brit like me probably not too familiar. If I get this hopelessly wrong perhaps someone will be kind enough to tell me. My understanding is that each year through school a year group publishes a book with pictures of all the year’s members and a little bit of information about each, achievements, aspirations and so forth.

Some years ago I heard a short story about gawkers at road accidents, those people who gather round at such events. Their purpose is to inhibit the approach of a doctor, hence the expression “let me through I’m a doctor”. If these people weren’t there the doctor would have unrestricted access to the injured party and no reason to call out and announce his or her  status. Thus the gawkers have a function in enabling medical help to identify itself; that they may delay access is a small price to pay for the essential identification function.

None of this was in the short story, that concerned itself with an observation that all gawkers are in fact the same people, at all locations and all times. The suggestion was that there is a group of people who are forced to attend road accidents as a kind of curse (as opposed to paramedics, for whom it is a job). This was meant to sound rather sinister and mysterious in precisely the way my description has failed to convey.

What has this to do with yearbooks or indeed cardigans, which have gone three paragraphs without a mention? Well it is my contention that there was a cardigan wearer in all years at all schools and they can be tracked through yearbooks. Here in the UK obviously not, we don’t have yearbooks but we do have cardigans, there’s just no pictorial record of them at school. There was one in the year below me at my school and as far as I could tell at the time he thrust his cardigan at me in a provocative manner more than once; let’s hope he’s still wearing one.

Anyway, my illustration this week is a mock up of what might be lurking in yearbooks and in my case is lurking in my memory.

TV Show

My apologies to anyone who reads this regularly, but I missed a week. I've been having work done at Cardigan Towers and simply forgot amid the chaos.


The following could only happen in a universe where HIV never happened, it's pure fantasy.

Here's a pitch for a television show, might find a late slot on a porno cable channel or a gay cable channel if such exist. We'll use the working title "That Cardigan Show", it'll be studio based with an audience, have discussions, guests and much filth. There will be pre- filmed inserts of cardigan related fun outside the studio, made by the presenters. These may and probably will show explicit sex.

So, who to present it? I think we need two presenters, one obviously Dead Butch, the other Less So. The former, with a view to a potentially large market might be American; in fact he will be. He'll be circumcised too, and a provocative advocate for it. That will give us the basis for some good banter between the presenters. The Less So presenter will clearly be what Dead Butch would call a catcher.

They'll wear cardigans and posing pouches only and appear before an invited audience who will be required all to wear cardigans. An ongoing thread in the show will be the 'pot-o-spooge', being a tub of gentleman's relish provided by the studio audience and sent in by the audience at home. There could be an insert each week visiting a bunch of cardigan guys who have volunteered to contribute and we'll be able to see what they get up to in the production of that contribution, which is added to the pot back in the studio.

A member of the audience may be interviewed about some aspect of cardigan fetishism and as a reward have a large dollop from the pot splattered on his cardigan, in the 'cardigan custard' spot. Another volunteer from the audience may get the chance to drink from the pot through a straw as a reward for answering correctly some cardigan related questions in a 'mastermind' setting. At the end of the series the remaining spooge could be used to dunk a whole cardigan or someone could drink it. Perhaps a spooge gun could be created and a golden shot style spooge the cardigan target game could be arranged. 'Bernie, the spooge' could become a catchphrase.

Another studio item might be 'beat the cock' a race to orgasm between audience volunteers along the lines of the biscuit game.

The inserts can have our hosts visiting places of cardigan interest. Butch would ideally be a porn star and poster-boy for cardigan wearers. Each week an audience member who has submitted a photograph of his bedroom adorned with a poster of Butch will receive a 'surprise' visit and get a seriously good seeing to. Butch would also be on the road in the ‘cardivan’ encouraging cardigan wearing and promoting circumcision. We might even get a volunteer for circumcision and follow him through the process. There could be a visit to America where Butch dons a letter cardigan and gives the boy cheerleaders something to celebrate.

Less So can visit places like a dildo factory where he will invariably become the unsuspecting victim of hilarious consequences, usually involving penetration, large sizes and his anus. To this end there may be the occasional involvement of a football or rugby team. A highlight of the series could be a visit to an army barracks. A farm visit or a trip to a bottling plant might easily see Less So end up in casualty having to explain how 'that' got up there. The other participants in these items will be in the audience and come down to be presented in their custard besmirched cardigans. Less So could be involved in ‘dilation challenge’ where he vies with members of the audience to accommodate large and unusual objects with Butch on hand to loosen them up and make sure the objects go right in.

An element of the programme could be given over to portly, elderly cardigan wearers and perhaps visits to golf clubs or bowling greens where such gentlemen wear cardigans. Both presenters could be involved in this segment, giving and receiving.

The core value in the show will not be simple bawdiness but sheer filth, lots of cardigans, unbuttoning and much splattering of sperm both bottled and draught. The after-show party will be something else, and as producer, I’ll be there every week.

The closing credits will see our presenters taking a champagne bottle out of an ice bucket, we see it's labelled Spooge and indeed that's what it contains. They each pour a small quantity into an old fashioned champagne glass, toast (ding of glasses), take a sip and hen pour the rest down their cardigans.

A caption comes on saying "All the spooge used in this programme is genuine gentleman's discharge". They pour another glass and drink deeply.

I've a feeling Simon Cowell will not be interested in this format.

Further to my previous....

Well, it happened. I'm having some work done at Cardigan Towers and have had to show decorators and sundry tradesman around the place making massive and unreasonable demands (there's no point living in a place that's painted the wrong colour!). Naturally, the poster came down, as did a couple of adornments on the base of my bed. What I completely forgot about was a picture standing on the mantelpiece looking like the illustration below; I'm so used to it I simply don't see it any more. For regular readers of this blog (ha ha!) It'll be a somewhat familiar image, referred to elsewhere as a cracking cardigan.  It's about 6cm x 4cm and looks like a framed photograph.

So, people have been in and out to measure stuff and to bleed radiators and various other tasks and have naturally said nothing; they are after all British. Except for the plumbers, they're Polish, don't know how cardigans go down in that neck of the woods, but they know I'm British so probably expect a certain level of weirdness. I can't even say I was caused any embarrassment as I was unaware of it at the time.

The other upshot of this getting stuff done business is having to pack things up to clear rooms for various artisans to ply their trades. This has meant a chunk of the cardigan collection has had to be packed away in black bags and piled up out of the way. Thus my rack of assorted cards (see the picture with my last post) is no longer easily available and my choice is limited if I'm not going to rummage through bags. I am a fetishist, I miss my cardigan collection. I have acesss to only a few specimens and I'm missing them. Added to that the weather is getting warmer by the day and my excuse to wear them when I go out is declining. No, please, no sympathy, it's my own fault (well, not the weather obviously) and I must live with the consequences of my decisions. Perhaps next week I'll have something more cheerfull to relate.

Making my room cardigan freindly

Some considerable time back I decided to indulge myself in a fully cardigan-centric lifestyle. To this end I used an image, which has found its way round the web among the few aficionados of my particular fetish, to make a large poster out of multiple sheets of A4. I used a site called rasterbation. If they ever look at the images which pass through their site I can't imagine what they may have made of this one, they never came back to me despite having an email address to which they delivered the image as multiple PDFs. I fondly imagine they thought, "huh, another cardigan fetishist" and took little notice of it, much in the same way the thousands of visitors to this blog probably do (I don't use smilies, but you get my drift.).

Anyway, great image, practically life-size, on my wall to remind me what I know anyway. The real thrill is that my familiarity with it makes me forget it's there, with potentially hilarious consequences. Perhaps I'll reveal more in a later post.

Anyway, here's what it looks like, taken on a crap camera, so bad it seems unable properly to resolve a gentleman's enbonpoint.

You're going to tell me it's juvenile, aren't you? Well yes it is, but I like it.

Birthday

I well remember what I consider my cardigan birthday, I even remember the date. It was November 11th. 19--. I had been working for about three months in my first job and saw a nice white five button cardigan in a shop near where I worked. The shop was one of those independent menswear shops which are few and far between these days; it's now a kebab shop and has been for a long time.

I eyed up the cardigan in question over a few days, tempting myself each day as I passed the shop en route to the tube station as I made my way home. I had to pluck up the courage to go into the shop to buy it, as if it were some special under-the-counter item of dubious legality. To me, in a sense, it was; to the shop proprietor who eventually sold it to me without a second thought, it was a cardigan, nothing special.

I entered the shop trying to look nonchalant, despite being positively fizzing with excitement and asked for the cardigan that was on display in the window. It was duly produced and I was asked if I'd like to try it on. I declined, thinking the shop proprietor was about to say something along the lines of, "go on try it, we all know why you're buying it... we've got you trapped now, you will never know an end to this." Instead he just put it into a bag and took my money. I scurried out into the early evening air and breathed a sigh of relief before hurrying to the station to get home.

The journey took forever, and I kept feeling the package to see if I could feel the buttons. Disappointingly I couldn't, this meant that by the time I arrived home I was in a frenzy. I ran to my bedroom, took all my clothes off and put the cardigan on, my first cardigan! It felt absolutely right, just proper and correct, the very thing; it should always have been thus. And it has been since. I slept in it that night, something I’ve rarely done since.

That particular garment lasted for a few years, it soon had company at the bottom of the wardrobe. In the end it was damaged in the tumble dryer, too hot, but I still wore it. It was eventually thrown out in a purge, something I regret. I may well hold forth about purges at a later date, an interesting phenomenon and not unique to me or to cardigans.

My illustration for this entry is of a cardigan nothing like the one I’ve been talking about, except for the buttons. They are of exactly the same design as the ones on the proto-cardigan, they differ only in colour. So come November 11th., join me in celebrating my cardigan birthday.

Fred Perry

Among the earlier cardigans I bought was an original Fred Perry, this will have been in the early eighties.

A little history to begin, Fred Perry was an English tennis player in the thirties, did well at Wimbledon (may have won, I don't know, I never get the sport questions right) and then pissed off the tennis establishment by turning professional. He ended up in America reasonably wealthy having in the course of his career sold his name to a clothing label.

The Fred Perry cardigan was an acrylic creation with plastic faux leather buttons, six in number, made to look like footballs. They were available in plain finish or an argyle pattern. They had the trademark laurels on the left chest and to my eyes owed something to the style of American letter cardigans I discussed a while back. They were very popular at the time and I certainly thought they looked well sexy. They now command preposterously high prices on EBay. I have one of the plain ones, in a rather sorry state; it's been through the washing machine too many times. I am more than happy to be boastful and indiscreet and say that it is my, how to put this delicately, most "gigged" cardigan, if you get my meaning.

The label continues to this day and seems to have moved upmarket in price and now occupies a designer niche. The football style buttons are long gone and more upmarket fabrics are now the norm; fings certainly ain't wot they used to be. Times may have changed but the fond memories will, however, remain with me as detailed and vibrant as the day they were acquired (the rash cleared up after a few days, fortunately).

Here’s a nicely photographed one that sold on EBay some time ago.

The Y cardigan

Here's one from fable and legend, the Y cardigan. Popular in the early eighties and all but extinct by about 1987. I had one, I remember it well, I cut the sleeves off it (don't ask) and eventually gave it away to someone whose need for it I perceived to be greater than mine.

Let me describe the legendary Y cardigan. Made from a soft open weave acrylic, some were made in a waffle texture, they came in various colours. I had one in black, I seem to recall they had contrasting colour piping to the edges but this may be my cardigan clairvoyance misleading me. They had four plastic leather football-looking buttons and a large Y in a contrasting colour on the left hand side. This was not a patch but a pattern incorporated in the weave. Their kinship with American letter cardigans was apparent and the Y I think may have referred to Yale, though I think this was lost on us back then.

Their stylistic nod in the direction of the then Popular Fred Perry cardigans was obvious in their letter cardigan heritage and the football style buttons. What they had going for them over the Fred Perry is they were cheaper.

The fable and legend I refer to come from the fact that you don't see them anywhere now, not EBay, not retro fashion outlets, nowhere. This is very surprising considering their ubiquity at a time from which much other fashion survives, including some fine vintage cardigans. And here may lie the explanation; that word fine. Y cardigans were never expensive and were the sort of garment one might find on a market stall or at a discount clothing outlet. I think nobody hung on to them because nobody valued them.

Sadly, I can find no pictures of them, though there are several fond reminiscences of them on nostalgia message boards here and there on the web. Do get in touch if you find one, or even a picture of one. If you had the good fortune to have sex in one, please present yourself in person.

Nipples

Warning: a brief tale containing pornographic violence follows the pictures, don't read on if this is the sort of thing you don't like.

It was really only a matter of time before I came round to the subject of nipples. I am unashamedly a tit man, I have a prominent and sensitive pair myself and I appreciate the same on another man. The whole cardigan thing probably arises from some notion of convenience of access and the excellent view offered through some materials when distended by a party in the tits department.

You don't see many men with prominent nipples, they exist in a small proportion of men and a number of those are in denial and may even seek a surgical solution to what many of us would consider an asset.

Fortunately there are men willing to show off, albeit bereft of the obvious joys of the gentleman's cardigan. For example

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG7O5dJT9DU&feature=related

And just for a laugh

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0-HFeeLJ9I

Although I'd pay good money to get mine to do that!

While you don't see many men with prominent nipples you see even fewer with what, when they're found on women, the straight boys call "puffies"  (see the lower picture in my illustration below). I knew a man with a prominent pair of such nipples some time ago. He was also afflicted with the sort of sensitivity that made them, to use his expression, "go off" at the slightest provocation.

It will seem judgemental, but I have to concede that those occasions when his nipples did "go off" were a source of some discomfort to me. I just don't like the sight of these, seeing them induces the gag reflex (a reflex which has long since ceased to respond to anything pushed down my throat). I mentioned surgery earlier on, I'd be happy to see the NHS spending my tax money to help this person or anyone similarly afflicted. I'll not use your name, but if you're reading this and recognise yourself, do yourself a favour; a doctor, a bit of local aneasthetic, a swift flick of the scalpel and a couple of stitches should make you more than acceptable in polite company. .

I’ll get back to cardigans next time, I just had to get that off my chest. And that top photograph, photoshop or what?

 

Back in the day, aboard the pirate ship Cardigan, cap'n Fisheye wouldn't have tolerated any of this nonsense. He'd have had the man brought on deck before the assembled crew. Roger the cabin boy would have been given the job of rubbing the offending nipples with raw meat, stimulating and flavouring in one go.The crew would mutter as the cold meat produced a tumescence in the man's nipples that they all knew would be his last, many would reminisce about their responsiveness and sensitivity. The captain's pet rottweiler, "ooh arr, 'e be proper nasty today, cap'n", would then have been encouraged to chew them off.

With a ferocious growl, saliva dripping from it's canines, the dog leapt forward and gripped the man's left nipple in it's jaw. The dog's head swung vigorously and rapidly from side to side, its grip on the now bloodied nipple never tiring. Left, right, left, splattering blood and saliva to either side, the dog was relentless until finally it fell back, the now detached nipple in it's mouth. It didn't stay there long, two chews and down it went, soon it would be poop on the poop deck.

The right nipple had lost none of its tumescence during the onslaught on it's partner, it was as protuberant as ever it had been in many a seedy backroom ashore. The dog had lost none of its blood lust, it was attacking again as soon as it had swallowed. This one held out for nearly a minute before the dog fell back as the tasty morsel finally parted company with the man's chest. Having swallowed, the dog was led off and the man taken down to the ship's surgeon to be cleaned up. Roger the cabin boy threw up over the side of the ship.

In the insanitary conditions found below decks the mans wounds were unlikely to heal. If the wounds failed to show signs of healing or became infected, the ship's surgeon would have him thrown overboard.

I read somewhere that to be a writer one should write something every day; I doubt if the author had anything like the above in mind when offering that advice.

Work of the devil

I have mentioned in the profile, to the right of the postings, that I consider zips to be the work of the devil.

I am first and foremost a buttons man, but only if they are a certain minimum diameter and attached to a cardigan; if I encounter them under other circumstances my reaction verges on the phobic. Such, it would appear, is the curse of a fetish, approximations won't do. How many times have I had to take a stout piece of 4x2 and strike a potential partner about the head before throwing them down the stairs screaming after them, "call that a cardigan?". Well, as it happens, never. Neither do I possess a piece of 4x2 to hit anyone with. But be warned, turn up with a zip if you've promised a cardigan and I shall be ever so cross.

I have spoken to people for whom zips do the trick, in fact are interchangeable in their minds with buttons. I must admit I simply don't get it. Don't misunderstand me, some of my best friends like zips and they have my sympathy, for they will perforce lead sad and lonely lives, seeking out the few others with whom they can share their interests. I am sure society will eventually be able to accommodate them and they will be able to show themselves in public. Perhaps one day they will be able to parade openly and proudly through our city centres, or is it just cruel of me to raise their expectations? Really, as long as they wear proper button-up cardigans in public which of us can truly bear them any ill feeling?

To illustrate this particular posting I have found a garment whose constitution frankly disgusts me. It combines buttons and a zip and, if I'm not mistaken, pop fasteners on the pockets. This item is clearly the outcome of the miscegenous coupling of...well, what exactly? I shudder to think; some sort of ghastly three-way in the back of the wardrobe. How I wish I'd been there with a piece of 4x2 to prevent it. Alas, dear reader, I was not. And this is the result.

If you want to buy one they're available at

http://www.espyclothing.com/mens-knitwear.php

about two thirds down the page.

Anyway, thanks for reading, I’m off to the local timber merchant...catch you soon!

Gay Times

Did anybody read the December '09 edition of Gay Times? Me neither, but I saw the cover and that nearly made me buy it. A man in a cardigan, next to his skin, woo hoo! Too good looking to be real, probably a straight model (they do exist) for whom the agency was happy to find an easy pre-christmas gig.

My point? I have two things to say, one is about a magazine like Gay Times. What's it for? To attract advertisers, that's all; the pink pound is plentiful and somewhat recession resistant. There's a bit of editorial in there to fill in the spaces between the adverts but like in-flight magazines their main aim is to be as general as possible and not scare anybody away. I see they've done an item about that vile bitch who wrote about poor Stephen Gately in the Mail, well radical. But hey guys, lets put all that behind us and spend those pink pounds. Oh yeah, if you're poor and queer, fuck off!

Bitter, me? Anyway I'm supposed to be writing about cardigans, so to the second point. The cardigan on this cover reminds me of one I had many years ago which despite regular washing became so encrusted with gentleman's relish, if you get my meaning, that it cracked. Yes cracked, it didn't tear like a fabric but cracked like a sheet of plastic. You didn't need or want to know that, I fully understand but I just wanted to poison the well of all that is Gay Times with as unsavoury a cardigan related image as I could muster. I may be alone in this, but I feel so much better now.
It's snowing outside at present, time to button up and get down the shops.

Further to my post yesterday, I decided to dig out one of my shiny crimplene cardigans and wear it (not on its own, you understand) as I trudged through the snow we're experiencing in the UK at the moment to get to the supermarket. I bought my usual pot noodles and bottle of vodka (it really would have helped if I'd given breakfast some thought yesterday before the snow got so bad) and trudged back to Cardigan Towers.

Well, I should have guessed, those buttons, that plasticy material; I had to discharge myself as soon as I arrived home.

The crimplene years

There is a species of cardigan that comes up on EBay from time to time; they are always described as vintage and sometimes the subject of heated bidding wars. I've never seen anyone wearing one, but I do own a couple.

Quite when they date from is unclear to me; I'm guessing late 60's or early 70's. They are characterised by three major attributes each of which I'll deal with separately.

First, the material; they were made of a polyester fibre of some thickness and inherent stiffness. The kind of texture I associate with the period. Think drip dry shirts or crease resistant trousers (they will have been called slacks at the time, I'm sure) made of a substance called crimplene. These materials were lifeless, didn't relax or "fall" into a shape and felt like plastic. They were inclined to build up massive charges of static electricity in normal wear. It's a tragedy, but we knew no better at the time, these things were modern and groovy. Patterning on the material was geometric, often squares. A peculiarity of the design was that the patterning was applied only to the front, the back and sleeves were in a plain finish.

Probably arising from the properties outlined above we see the particular cut of these cardigans. Laid out flat, they were essentially square, no sculpting to body shape or any effort to contour them to mimic a real or idealised body outline.

The finishing touch was the buttons, nearly always five in number and large diameter, 19 or 20 millimetres, 2 hole fixing in the fisheye style and often quite thick. These are the real attraction for me in these cardigans and the ones illustrated below capture that period and look exquisitely.

I can imagine a cardigan fancier of the time spotting a fellow cardigan guy across a room at a crowded, noisy party. Trying to look discreetly butch (this was the sixties) he would advance stealthily through the dancing throng, moving his arms and shoulders in time to the music. His imagination taking flight at the possibility of a night of mutual cardigan fun ahead, he nonchalantly approaches his quarry. As the two figures converge the partygoers hear a loud crackle and see a blue flash as the two men evaporate in a million volt discharge of static electricity, leaving only feint cardigan shaped stains on the ceiling. Jumping jack flash by the Rolling Stones crackles slightly but continues to play on the Dansette record player in the corner.

Perhaps this is why one sees so few on EBay.

These two have been pinned to give them some semblance of shape.

These posts are enough to get going, I'll post once a week from now on.

Another day, another post. I thought I'd expand a little on yesterday's topic, the letter or letterman cardigan.
These are a uniquely American phenomenon and intended basically as billboards to display one's school award letters. Chenille letters were awarded by schools for participation in sporting activities; this was later extended to other activities such as music or drama. One can only speculate what the one which illustrates yesterday's post was awarded for!*

They seem to date back, in cardigan form, to the thirties or perhaps a little earlier, before that they were pullover style. The older ones are made of wool, quite thick and cleverly combining all the weight, suppleness and sheer erotic allure of the trench coat (in the case of the last of these qualities, none at all; sorry trench coat fanciers, this is a cardigan blog). They were succeeded by the letterman jacket, which we would probably call the baseball jacket.

I gather it was considered a mark of some intimacy for a boy to give his letter cardigan to his girlfriend so that she might become a billboard for his sporting prowess. Are we getting any nearer to an idea of what the one illustrated above might have been  awarded for?**

Here in the UK our exposure to them will probably have been mostly through Happy Days when it made it to our television screens in the mid seventies. By this time wool was out and acrylic was in, for he most part with five buttons instead of six, made of shiny semi-translucent plastic (slobber..).

The acrylic ones are machine washable, though why I (or you) should find that interesting I can't imagine.

They're still available, though these days considered costume items rather than practical everyday wear. I don't think they were ever considered sleepwear or erotic, except by me.

http://www.bristolproducts.com/sweaters/Gallery%201/41.html

and

http://www.mountolympusawards.com/ph/lettermansweater.htm

among others. They can be found on EBay too.

I particularly like the white ones.

Thank you for your time, feel free to reread, there'll be a test next week.


*I don't think finishing a sentence with a preposition has ever warranted an award in America or anywhere else.
**Strike two as they would say in its country of origin.

Cold last night.

Here in the UK we've had it a bit cold of late. I like to sleep with a window open, so the temperature in my bedroom got down to 3°C. There was only one solution to keep warm, cardigan in bed, which is something I don't often do (except when... never mind, I'll leave it to your imagination). But which to choose, there are the golf cardigans in acrylic and alpaca, the more modern cardigans in lambswool and various artificial fibres, five button, six button, by this time I was loosing sensation in my toes and fingers, so chose this.

I like these, they fuel my fantasies about getting a good seeing to from a well built jock. Must go now.