18 February 2019:
Neighbors, Privacy, CP Noise,
and 'Passing' as a Conventional Household

What do you do when the doorbell rings when you're playing?

I live in a house in a suburban-style neighborhood in a small town in Southwest Florida. The neighborhood is made up of conventional middle-class "single-family" houses, with the demography skewed a bit toward older retired straight couples, most of whom have relocated from other states. The majority are year-round residents but some have homes "up north" and are at their Florida homes only in the winter.

On 16 January in the afternoon, two friends and I were playing in my dining room with the video set up. About a dozen CP toys were laid out on the far end of the table, and there was a blanket and pillow at the near end of the table for the 'boy' to lie over it with his legs spread and feet on the floor. I was paddling one of the guys pretty hard when the doorbell suddenly rang. IMMEDIATE PANIC!

We paused our activities. I was not expecting anyone and didn't know who it could be. My thoughts raced ahead about how to handle the situation: I couldn't let anyone into the house as I didn't want to risk their seeing what was going on. I went to look through the peep hole to see who it was, but when I got to the door no one was there. There wasn't a package, so it was not a delivery.

CP friends have told me that spanking sounds from the dining room can be heard pretty clearly from outside the front door. I have no way of knowing how long the visitor had been standing at the door before ringing the bell or how long after ringing the bell he or she had remained there. There's no way of knowing what he or she might have heard or inferred was going on.

Implicit in this blog entry, of course, is my desire to have good relations with my neighbors and not to be the subject of gossip or other unpleasantness.

I have reason to suspect the person who rang the doorbell was my neighbor from the house next to mine on the south side. We are friends to the extent of talking when we encounter each other, watching each other's house when one of us is out of town, etc. After the episode in question, I thought she seemed a little standoffish. I thought about what I should say to her the next time we encountered each other; I debated different approaches. Finally the situation resolved itself; she texted me about something unrelated and we started communicating normally as we always have. I still don't know if it was she who rang the doorbell that day.

Since that happened I have taken measures to protect against neighbors finding out what's going on. I have set up a little Bose stereo just inside the front door to play music with a heavy beat to mask the sounds of paddling, etc. I now play in my bedroom with the door closed to further muffle the sounds getting to the front door. I will try not to play in the dining room where there is no doorway to mitigate the sound. In the front entryway, there is a screened area about 8 feet deep and 5 feet wide leading to my front door. I have installed a passive alert sensor on the screen door that rings a chime inside to let me know the screen door has been opened. It warns me that there may be someone in the front entryway before the doorbell is actually rung. I'm also getting a Ring Video Doorbell that will alert me before anyone actually gets to the door and provide video for me to identify the individual. I may add Ring Video Cameras to further surveil the property.

I would appreciate hearing from other male-male CP aficionados about how they have handled this type of situation and what kinds of preventive measures they may have taken.