Sunday, May 11, 2008

CBT? WTF is up with that?

Category labels: BDSM in the media, BDSM psychology, BDSM terminology, Cock and ball torture (CBT), Femdom, Foot worship, Male sexuality, Myths and misconceptions, Stupid dominants, Stupid submissives

I just got an email I thought was pretty funny. In it, the sender implies a conspicuous lack of an item from my toy collection: weights. I mean, doesn’t everyone have weights, at least for cock and ball torture?

Actually, no, I responded…and why would I? I don’t actually like cock and ball torture that much. I don’t really mind cock and ball torture—I mean, it can be fun and all and I’ve done it and stuff, hell I’ve even felt Eileen pierce my ball sack with a needle and poke my penis a bit with one, too—but I just don’t really enjoy it. It’s not a fun kind of pain for me. I just don’t get off on it.

Even if I did, though, would I really need to go out and buy special weights specifically for the purpose of dangling them from my genitals? Eileen’s response to this idea was something along the lines of, “Why the fuck would I spend money on that? There’s tons of shit in my house that’s heavy and tons of ways I could attach it to you. I am way more creative than that.”

Evidently, this sort of attitude is nearly unheard of for submissive men. It’s one of those things, right along with foot fetishism and a desire to be forcibly feminized, that many people tend to automatically assume every single man who is submissive must be into. I mean, I must at least have a weight for cock and ball torture, right?

You see this everywhere. Cock and ball torture is probably in every single stereotypical representation of BDSM that I’ve ever encountered. Women, usually women dressed in stereotypically shiny outfits, who are kicking, punching, slapping, poking, clamping, or otherwise delightfully abusing the male genitalia. Again, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Like I said before, if this is the kind of yodeling garden-gnome sex session you want to have, be my guest, but don’t assume that I’m going to want to do it with you.

And while I’m on the subject of yodeling garden-gnome sex, I’m sure there are a lot of dominant women who aren’t particularly enthusiastic about the idea of cock and ball torture, either. Like chastity and orgasm denial, this is so often just one more unbelievably penis-centric fantasy that the men who perpetuate the stereotype don’t even stop to think about what’s in it for their partners.

Cock and ball torture is so common, actually, it’s got an acronym: CBT. I kind of like this acronym, though, because it means I get to snicker quietly to myself when the HR director says something like, “Maybe we should invest in that CBT package to help our employees understand the new database system.” Of course, she’s talking about computer based training, which actually gives my filthy mind even more awesome fantasies in the office.

Anyway, I find the whole thing to be rather a big nuisance. It’s a little like going to a big city, New York for example, and assuming everyone you meet is a fan of the most well-known sports team, say the Yankees, right off the bat. Most of the people you meet are actually not going to be huge baseball fans at all, and some of them might like the Mets instead. Obviously, making the assumption that everyone you meet is a Yankees fan is kind of dumb.

Well, so is the assumption that all submissive men like CBT, or feet (which I think can be beautiful, but are often very silly looking). It’s more likely to make you look like an ass than anything else. So my advice is the same as it’s always been: stop treating sexual situations so differently from the rest of your life; if you’re not walking around making assumptions about sports teams based on where I live, stop making assumptions about my sexual preferences based on my submissive orientation.

Comments (6)

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Wednesday Wanderings: Sexy Techie

Category labels: Bisexuality, Community, Humor, Technology, Vanilla life, Wednesday Wanderings

If it weren’t 12:50 AM here right now, this entry might be more than a PSA, but there is way too much wine in me (and I have way too much work to do) for it to be anything but. On that note, however, I would like to share with you my new absolute favorite web sites:

Firstly, let me just say that I might go to sleep tonight and have a wet dream.

Secondly, let me point out that only among techies do I often see the evidence of equal opportunity, even if cultural overtones are still in full force. Seriously, in what communities other than the realms of utter geekdom does a “Dig a Tech Girl” web site give rise to a “Dig a Tech Guy” web site in literally under a day?

For those wondering how I know these ideas were cemented within a day of each other, the answer is geeky (obviously)! I checked the whois records for the creation date of the domain names. :)

Perseus:~ maymay$ whois digatechgirl.com | grep Creation
   Creation Date: 29-oct-2007
Perseus:~ maymay$ whois digatechguy.com | grep Creation
   Creation Date: 30-oct-2007

Yes, my machine really is named “Perseus.” Yes, my username really is “maymay.”

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Friday, April 25, 2008

“Finally! Something that speaks to dominant women!” they said

Category labels: Uncategorized

Ever since all that life-rebuilding stuff I’ve been doing in Sydney to get from the “Oh my god, how am I going to maintain positive cash flow?” state of mind to the “Wow, I’m really enjoying my new job” one, most of my thoughts haven’t been geared towards kink. Eileen and I aren’t playing quite as regularly because we’re both super busy, and besides, we still don’t have most of our toys back anyway. Not that we can only ever play when we have a massive pile of leather and metal and hemp, but it helps.

Lately, however, a few things have happened that have put kink and sexuality back on my mind again. Obviously, the presentation Eileen and I did to kick-start the über Skill Share Workshops is one of them, but more specifically, it was the fallout of the workshops that was really interesting. We got some excellent feedback from the presentation, almost entirely positive, which I’m very happy with. Here’s a few snippets, with emphasis added by me:

informative - finally something that speaks to dominant women

Certainly interesting. Focus on chastity and denial with little on the tease build up. But good
good info

Excellent. Very knowledgeable and enthusiastic presenters. Interesting anecdotes and comments
very informative

excellent, very constructive and professional

informative, fun and very horny :-)

inspirational and realistic. Really interesting topic and well presented

informative, well presented, good structure and extremely worthwhile

interesting - gave a good range of perspectives

informative, Entertaining - good tips & things to think about. Thanks!

It was great. Very informative. It was a friendly environment

The really interesting bit was the first item, right up there at the top. Someone exclaimed relief that they had finally listened to something that spoke to dominant women. Wait a minute, aren’t there lots of things that speak to dominant women? I mean, aren’t there hundreds upon hundreds of submissive men and other dominant women milling about the place, whether online or in person, all talking about femdom and stuff? Well all know that there are. Hell, there are even books!

But if you take a closer look, almost none of them are actually saying anything to dominant women about dominant woman, and instead they’re all just regurgitating the same stereotyped male fantasies over and over again. In other words, there are no good materials from which dominant woman can draw knowledge about how to be the dominant woman that they want to be. There’s no good resource (that isn’t a blog, as far as I know) that discusses the kinds of things necessary for self-discovery or sexual self-actualization, such as exploring what turns you on, and why.

In conversation the other day, the woman I was speaking with remarked on how her male friends found her own awkwardness in revealing her sexual proclivities to others strange. One of her male friends, she told me, said quite bluntly that he just tells other guys he likes to tie girls up, and they all think that’s great. This guy doesn’t understand that if he had any other sexual orientation or interests, or if he were not a male, then the people to whom he might announce this interest would not think so highly of him. Why? Because any proclamation other than a male-dominant, female-submissive heteronormative paradigm is seen as “abnormal.”

That’s why this woman, and most others I know, don’t go around telling other women how they’d love to tie boys up. That’s why boys like me don’t go around telling other boys that we’d love to have women tie us up. It’s just not met with the same kind of accepted “boys will be boys” attitude. It’s not “normal.”

Thanks in part to this idiocy, I’m sure, we end up with literature and resources that proclaim themselves to be femdom-themed and “aimed at women” but in fact do nothing other than mirror the supposed male fantasy ideal. As I was drafting this entry, I found that Calico may have said it most simply:

There’s a big difference between learning to be a good pro-domme […] and learning about your own dominance. They are not always interchangeable.

She should know. (She’s a pro.) Like most things, this is also a two-way street. Submissive men, for whom new and updated content seems to be in endless daily TGP-style supply, also have a sad lack of any really good material that speaks to their needs. But I don’t want to get distracted, so back to my original point, which is that no one’s really talking to dominant women….

The next day, I read a couple of emails from a chastity group I subscribe to. I almost never read these emails, and I wouldn’t have read this one either if it weren’t from a first-time female poster who was asking the group for advice. The original inquiry read as follows (emphasis added by me):

I am new to the group. My husband and I have used the CB for play over the past few years, but he has never been locked up longer than a few days at a time. To be honest, he seems to enjoy it more than me.

He has been wanting to be locked up for longer, so I put the cage on him a week ago. I let him take it off to go to work, and sometimes I take it off at night when I want to tease him.

How do I decide how long to keep him locked up. Also, what can I do to make this more fun for me?

If you have suggestions, please help.

Here’s what blew me away. She says—in what I can only describe as painfully blunt language—that the whole chastity thing isn’t really doing it for her right now and that her husband’s the one getting his fantasies fulfilled, not her. It just isn’t fun enough. Yet nobody, not one person who responded to her, said anything about her, or even any woman, at all. Every single sentence in every single response was focused solely on the guy in the chastity device and, of course, his penis not getting to squirt.

I don’t know about you, but for me, it’s really hard to get my rocks off when someone pulls a garden gnome out from under the bed and starts yodeling at me. I’m not frigid, I just don’t get off on garden gnomes and yodeling. If you do, great, and if I like you enough and we can agree on some additional, mutually enjoyable activity, then I’ll probably even go along for the garden gnome yodeling sex session every so often. But the fact of the matter is, it’s just not going to be as exciting for me as it is for you.

If you think this analogy is unfair, take a look at some of the absolutely horrific responses this woman got to her post. Here’s the very first response:

Maam,
For the past 4 months I have been locked up in a CB 3K.  Here is how things work at my house:

1.  It doesn’t come off except for showering and she stands there and watches me so I can’t jack off (Every guy is going to jack off at work if you take it off for them to go there).

2.  I am required to deliver a minimum of two, but as many orgasms as demanded using my tounge most evenings.  I am so hard, and dripping so badly with the sorest balls imaginable after this.

3.  If I do not get to cum, I get milked every week but into a condom and I must consume the contents.

4.  If I had a nocturnal or other unauthorized ejaculation, my cock and balls are punished pretty intenseley.

5.  Sometimes when I have pleased her and am given the opportunity to cum, she will release me, have me roll a single dice, and that is how many minutes I get to cum. If I don’t, then tough luck.

Thanks Maam.

If you think that’s bad, here’s the second response, supposedly by a woman:

 
Ann ,I  somewhat agree with geoge;s list to start with ! Most deafly Keep him LOCKED when goin to work ! Try 24 hours for min of two weeks ? Switch roles and use Strap-on on him ! Milk his prastate also Very Important ! Do just as geoge said ! Cuckholding is also Very Good and Can be LOTS of fun for you ! Especially if ypour hubby avg sized and you can Find Well Hung Stud to use in front him !   Good Luck !

Mistress Coral

Okay, okay, surely the good responses just take a bit longer to arrive, right? Um…wrong. Here’s the third response:

Try this.

Put it on him. Tell him you’re giving him a longer period, but don’t say how much - tell him you haven’t decided.

Next, think of some things you really want him to do for you.

Then just let him simmer till he asks to be let out. First time he asks tell him to wait a while. Then start making conditions.

Meanwhile don’t take it off at night. If you want tease, have him satisfy you in other ways.

Sigh. I could go on, but I think you get the picture.

What does any of this have to do with answering her question, or even with her at all? Nothing. Which, for any of you unable to follow along at home, means she probably didn’t find it all that hot (even if other submissive guys did).

You see, that’s the thing about male submission. It’s been so utterly divorced from female dominants, segregated by this absolutely unbreachable moat around the castle of male fantasy (with all of its very long, very hard, very locked-up spires), that there’s just no way for womankind—dominant or not—to have any hope of actually penetrating it. Which I think is odd, considering how much some of these guys seem to enjoy being penetrated.

You don’t have to read past the first sentence in most of these responses to see that they’re entirely dick-driven, that absolutely none of them—not a single bullet point in any of the responses—have to do even the tiniest bit with how she’s feeling, or what she might want out of the chastity play. So what if you get off on having her not tell you how long she’ll keep you locked up for? What’s in it for her? Is “satisfy you in other ways” really the best you can come up with?

Why is nobody talking about the sexual rushes she might feel (instead of what the guy’s tongue may or may not be doing), or the feeling of power and self-empowerment that being sexually dominant might engender in her? Modern waves of feminism may have done heaps for women in the workforce, but they seem to have done absolutely squat for women who want to find good resources on being dominant.

Of course, none of this is all that surprising. Send an email to a group of locked-up guys who probably haven’t been having a lot of orgasms recently and I suppose you can’t expect much more than dick-driven responses. Like Robin Williams said (sort of), God gave all men a penis and a brain, but he only gave most men enough blood to run one at a time.

That, of course, doesn’t even begin to address the issue of whether or not submissive men can even speak knowledgeably about the self-actualization of dominant women. After all, I know of no dominant women who can speak with much first-hand authority about the self-actualization of submissive men.

In the spirit of being the change I wish to see in the world, here’s a snippet of the response I sent to the original poster (privately):

 
I am a submissive man, myself, and my dominant girlfriend and I play with chastity, too. We both have a lot of fun with it. I love the control over me it gives to my girlfriend, but I wouldn’t like it if my girlfriend didn’t also enjoy it for her own sake. She finds our chastity play fun because she genuinely enjoys having the power to make decisions about my sexual state, but that is not necessarily what I would expect every woman to think was sexy.

The only way to make chastity play more fun for you is to find out what you think is sexy about it. Chastity play and sexual teasing of this nature should be fun for both you and your husband. You don’t have to be a mean and demanding bitch, like some of the responses might have implied, nor do you have to go find additional sexual partners, give up penetrative sex, or set goals or tasks for him to “achieve.” These are all just things that other people, mostly submissive men, have found to be arousing. Don’t feel bad if they don’t sound sexy to you.

The key to enjoying chastity is no different than it is to enjoying any sexual activity, for that’s what a chastity fetish is—a sexual activity. What other kinds of things, imagery, thoughts, scenarios, emotions, sounds, or other stimuli do you find erotic? What do you really enjoy? You don’t have to follow stereotypes, because sexual desires are individual.
 

So, I guess that’s why I was so heartened by seeing that first line of feedback from the presentation I gave with Eileen. Someone sees that we want to talk to dominant women. I hope more people start doing that—not least of all submissive men, since it’s kind of in their best interests to do so, y’know?

Comments (11)

Monday, April 21, 2008

The Gadfly publishes an interview with myself and the VP of CV

Category labels: BDSM in the media, BDSM psychology, BDSM safety, BDSM terminology, Beginner BDSM, Community, Masochism, Sex

This is probably old news to a lot of you, but for those who don’t keep up with news from Conversio Virium, I wanted to direct your attention (however briefly) to the latest issue of The Gadfly, Columbia University’s undergraduate philosophy magazine. As part of their Winter 2008 issue, the Gadfly has published excerpts of an email interview that Tyler, the current Vice President of Conversio Virium, and I agreed to do with Stephanie Wu, the Gadfly reporter.

I think the article, which is titled Tie Me Up: A Gadfly Interview with Conversio Virium and begins on page 13 of the PDF, came out really well. I hope it gives CV some more positive exposure to the Columbia University community, and to other colleges and universities as well. Here are a few choice samples:

Gadfly: Are there ways to think about pleasure and pain apart from the classic continuum defined by opposites, with a line in between marking the transition? Is the relationship between pain and pleasure actually circular?

Maymay: I think there are as many ways of thinking about pleasure and pain as there are people thinking about it. When you generalize, you begin to see that more people share classic opinions than those who share the radical ones, but that is true of anything, not just pleasure and pain. People who do SM often find themselves broadening their own awareness of what kinds of interpretations of pain and pleasure are possible, thereby increasing their own maturity and capability to navigate the world around them.

It behooves us to be humble, to acknowledge that we don’t know as much as we think we do. SM doesn’t suggest a relationship between pain and pleasure. On the contrary, SM challenges the relationships science, theology, morality, and other cultural norms have already established about pain and pleasure. SM doesn’t aim to indoctrinate, SM aims to free us from such indoctrination.

[…]

GF: Besides an interest in pain, what commonalities do the activities covered by BDSM share that are unique from other sexual interests?

MM: These things are grouped together largely because there is no other space where people can talk about them. Not even the Queer clubs do enough to educate people about how to practice these forms of sexual activity safely (both physically and emotionally) and consensually, and that’s okay as that’s not their place. These activities are grouped because they share a common physical theme. This is rough sex. Like a sport, people can get hurt. Like a sport, people can become very skilled in doing it in a safer, more effective manner.

You can read the full interview (PDF) over on the Gadfly’s web site.

Comments (2)

Monday, April 21, 2008

How to present an educational BDSM topic and not make it boring

Category labels: Communication, Community, Kink events

The other day, Eileen and I were absolutely thrilled to present Sexual Teasing and Denial at the inaugural über Skill Share Workshops hosted by the generous (and fabulous) Mistress Dee at her über dungeon and BDSM playspace. Eileen and I have done this presentation quite a few times before, once at TES-TNG, once at Conversio Virium, and once at the first-ever Floating World. I’m not at all exaggerating when I say that this time, the presentation was the best it’s ever been, with an uninterrupted nearly two-hour long talk that included wonderful questions from and discussion with the audience.

Earlier, I wrote that I think the Sydney BDSM scene is suffering from a lack of educational programming. I’m glad that I’m not the only one that thinks so. I’ve had numerous conversations with people in the scene here who would like to start seeing educational events becoming common place, and many Australians are eager and able to contribute. Especially noteworthy in this arena is Mistress 160, who runs what is probably the best informational blog about BDSM in the entire region, and has been doing so for quite a while.

Of course, the World Wide Web is probably the single greatest tool we as kinky people have in our efforts to educate each other and make information easily accessible. Bridging the gap between the online world and the physical world, however, isn’t easy. Ultimately, every Web site and cyberspace venue is really a support structure for meatspace venues and real-world events where people meet with other people face-to-face. That’s why I was so excited to be involved in helping to get the über Skill Share Workshops off to a roaring start.

Now, back in the United States, Eileen and I have done a few other presentations in the past in addition to this one on chastity, orgasm denial, and orgasm control. We’ve been in attendance at countless others, too.

Some of these presentations were really fantastic. At a minimum, these kinds of presentations always made me want to go straight home and pull Eileen into bed with me, or at least go out to dinner afterwards and have a long debate about whatever the topic of the presentation was.

Unfortunately, most of the time I didn’t really find presentations that engaging at all. In a few of the worst cases, I’ve literally fallen asleep. That’s right, I’m in a room full of people who are all talking about sex and BDSM and getting off and it’s been so boring that I’ve literally fallen asleep.

Over time, I’ve learned that there’s a distinct skill in teaching or speaking to others about what you know that’s entirely separate from just being good at that thing you’re talking about. So, in an effort to document some of those things that should probably be common-sense but clearly aren’t, here’s a list of things you can do to make your presentation for a BDSM educational event not suck.

Be enthusiastic

Chances are that if you’re presenting on anything at all you’re presenting on a topic of personal interest. Since this is supposedly something that really gets your rocks off, it should be easy to be animated and enthusiastic while presenting about it, right? Wrong! For a lot of people, it’s actually very difficult to feel comfortable and relaxed enough in front of a room full of people to let their genuine enthusiasm show. That’s okay, and this gets easier with practice.

That said, there’s nothing worse than listening to a monotone voice for an hour straight. Enthusiasm on behalf of the presenter begets enthusiasm on behalf of the audience. One of the best ways to loosen up and show some enthusiasm if you’re having a hard time of it is to tell personal stories. Share a short anecdote about a time at a club when you saw this amazing scene and how it made you all tingly. Don’t wax poetic about days long gone—stick to the topic at hand, but show some personality. Trust me, if you love what you’re talking about, your eyes will light right up.

Of course, the reverse holds true, as well. If you’re not actually excited about the topic you’re presenting on, why are you even presenting on it in the first place?

Prepare talking points, not a script

I think that in the entire history of the Universe, no one’s ever gone to an educational event just to listen to someone read aloud what they could have read themselves. If you have a handout, use it as a reference or as supplemental material, not as a script or the meat of your presentation. Chances are that by the time your presentation has started, everyone who received a handout has either finished reading it or has decided it’s not worth reading. If you just read what you’ve given them, you’re not going to have added any value to the presentation. You might as well have just emailed everybody your handout and stayed home.

That’s not to bash the usefulness of such things. Handouts can be wonderful reminders for people to take home with them so they can recall what you’ve said. They can serve as an outline of your presentation so that you can ensure you hit all the major points you wanted to hit. You can put together supplemental material in the form of a handout for people to peruse at their leisure, after the presentation. Just don’t obsolete yourself with it.

Don’t just demo, inform

Way too many presenters get caught up in the idea that their presentation is some kind of act, as if they are putting on some kind of show. If you’re at a fetish club and you’re doing some kind of BDSM performance art, then fine, you’re putting on a show. At educational events, however, this is like shooting yourself in the foot. Remember that you’re not there to show off, you’re there to inform people about a topic.

If you just spend the whole presentation playing with your demo bottom and not actually talking the audience through what you’re doing, you’ll be seen as an ego-centric opportunist who’s just interested in playing in front of a captive audience. On the other hand, if you actually walk the audience through the subject matter, both visually and verbally, you’ll be praised and heralded as an expert. And then you can go show off at the next party you’ve suddenly found yourself invited to.

Know your shit, but don’t be a know-it-all

Recognize that presenting on a topic is not the same thing as knowing that topic inside and out. That said, you’d be hard pressed to give an informative presentation if you don’t know your subject matter really well, so be certain you do. Spend some time talking to friends or people at parties about the subject you’re going to be presenting on so that you can get familiar with what other people might ask you about it. This also gives you the opportunity to practice explaining it to others.

Of course, if you’ve been asked to be a presenter, it usually means you’re seen as someone who knows a great deal about something specific—but not always. Presentations are sometimes just as much of a learning opportunity for the speaker as it is for the audience, and both parties can benefit from an arrangement such as this. When your fifteen minutes of fame arrive, don’t be a know-it-all. You never know when you might learn a thing or two that you can then add to your next presentation about the same topic.

All right, that’s quite a bit of advice. If I’ve missed anything, feel free to add your own input in the comments. :)

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Monday, April 21, 2008

My first two months in the Sydney BDSM Scene

Category labels: Community, Personal experience, Vanilla life

It’s been almost a month since I’ve last written here. Even Though I don’t feel beholden to this blog, I do feel committed to it. That’s why I sometimes feel bad when I grow silent or distant from this outlet and spend my energies elsewhere. Nevertheless, such breaks are necessary for me to maintain this blog in the first place, so it’s all a sort of give and take.

My first month in Australia was spent in an absolute whirlpool of chores and errands. Not only was I horribly ill my first week here, I also needed to find an apartment, a job, and all the other bits of a life I wanted. I left New York City so I could go be a different fish in a different pool. Sydney has this strange culture, which I hardly feel qualified to discuss with any authority. It’s exceedingly different from the culture in New York City and it interests me. What I didn’t expect about coming to Sydney was just how small of a pool I was going to end up in.

According to Wikipedia, Sydney is populated by roughly 4.2 million people and is spread over a geographical area of about 4,700 square miles. New York City, by contrast, is populated by roughly 9 million residents (a number that swells to even higher numbers during business hours) and is approximately 470 square miles in size. What this means is that the words “I am from New York City” have an almost magical effect on people here, and even after two month’s time that’s still taking me by surprise.

This is true in both the workplace and the social scenes, though obviously it’s the social scenes where this sort of introduction can lead to any real discussion of culture and history. I’m happy to say that as far as work goes, with little trouble I think I’ve found a really nice employer, with awesome people closer to my age (even if I am still the youngest one in the office by at least half a decade) who I can actually enjoy getting a drink with. That’s never happened before, and it’s nice to see my efforts to mix social and office spaces together actually succeeding.

Also, thanks in no small part to the kindness of our friends, over the past month Eileen and I have been introduced to many of the proprietors of BDSM and fetish venues and parties that are scattered across the Sydney area. We’ve already attended two invitation-only parties of this nature, and we had the opportunity to go to a few more public parties, but decided against it. Firstly, we simply don’t have forty dollars each to spend on a party every weekend (and every party is at least 25 dollars plus transportation costs ’round here, which is just fucking bloody expensive), and secondly I’ve been so busy that the only reason I’m even writing this post is due to the fact that I’m home sick (or rather, working from home).

Of the literally dozens upon dozens of people I’ve met at these parties, munches, and so forth, almost none of them are anywhere near my age. I don’t mind hanging out with older people—I have been doing exactly that since I was a young boy—but the distinct lack of a young person’s kinky space is isolating. There are quite a few organizations for young queer kids, but frankly, most of the time queer kids are just as vanilla as straight kids. It feels a lot like time traveling back to New York City before Conversio Virium became as successful as it is. I think I might just miss my kinky friends.

Along the same note, the BDSM culture here feels old fashioned, as though I’m getting a taste of what it might have been like in the mid 1990’s in New York City. What we in NYC would call “classic leather” or maybe “old guard” isn’t just prominent here, it’s fashionable. Everyone’s always decked to the nines in heavy leather or shiny vinyl outfits. Corsets are pretty much a prerequisite if your body has breasts in much the same way as ass-less pants are if you were born with a penis, and (as I keep bringing up) even the private parties have dress codes (augh!). The local people with any stature whatsoever are the ones that have been around the longest, because they have been around the longest.

The scene superstars here are the same people as the ones I know from the States. Lolita, Lee, Midori, Dov, and others are household names here just as they were in The City. Whereas in the States superstars like these run workshops and spend their time teaching or producing pornography and erotica, all the local superstars here are venue owners, or people who run “donation”-based parties. In Sydney, so far, the word “community” simply seems to mean “I go to some of the same parties as you.”

But it’s not all doom and gloom. There are some younger people, even if they tend to lurk in online forums instead of being willing to come out to events. Even better, there’s a much more populous group of female dominants who aren’t pros (though there are a lot of those, too). Ultimately, I think it’s the monopoly of the party culture that is preventing a lot of younger people from feeling willing to come out of the woodwork. Firstly, it’s too expensive, and secondly—despite the stereotypes—it’s not attractive to the majority of young adults.

The Sydney BDSM scene suffers from a lack of educational events. The people here seem just as capable of doing excellent BDSM as they are in the states, but they’re not talking about it to anyone, not even each other. Most of them seem afraid to, as if doing so will give them a bad reputation. It seems okay for me for to do it, since I’m from New York City and all, but for some reason, they think they couldn’t possibly have anything to teach me.

I’m hoping to help change this and over time I’d really love to see more educational events run by local people, advertising local speakers, promoted hand-in-hand with parties and munches.

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Thursday, March 13, 2008

Stuff I use for sex

Category labels: BDSM safety, Beginner BDSM, Fetish, Pic Post, Sex, Sex toys

It’s Thursday and all and I’ve not posted for too long. Australia is keeping me busy, but I’ve had these photos in store for this blog ever since I was packing, and I figure there’s no better time than the present.

Toy Bag Picture 1

A while back, Mischief made a pact with Switch and Boy to bare their toybags to the world. I don’t remember exactly how he wrangled a promise for the same out of me, but he did. My excuse for the tardiness of this reveal is, well, look at all that shit! I didn’t even know I had that many sex toys.

In fact, not even all of the sex toys Eileen and I had were in this photo at the time of the shot, and some of the items in the shot were items we (regrettably) never got the opportunity to use (like the big eye-hook and ring wall mounts from Home Depot). Alas, with our move to Australia, we’ve had to slim our collection down even further into two categories.

  1. The bare essentials, which we have brought with us in our luggage.
  2. The really-want-to-haves that we’ll (probably) be shipping as cheaply as possible to our new home Down Under.

If you’re brave (and bored) enough to read through it, here’s a pseudo-itemized tour of all the items you see in these photos.

At the top left of the photo, right beneath my feet, you can see the TENS unit we own. We’ve not used this much due to lack of experience with such toys and because it was a relatively recent acquisition, but I’m looking forward to learning about more of what it can (safely) do.

Laying alongside the TENS unit are two wooden homemade spreader bars—cheap one-inch diameter dowels with eye-hooks drilled into them, all from the kinkiest store in the world, Home Depot—laying atop our small and growing collection of three whips. Only the two whips with the green coloring are ones we use for play; they’re both four-and-a-half-feet nylon singletails. In fact, the one on the left was my first, and a gift—and still a favorite (thanks, dad). The other one, an old nine foot bullwhip we got for $25(!) at one of the Leather Pride Night Flea Markets is mostly for making loud noises in parks.

Back at the left edge of the bed, you can see our pile of rope. Most of it is MFP from Rainbow Rope, but there’s are a fair number of hemp bundles mixed in. We’re somewhat new to hemp and so we’ve got bundles from just about everywhere: Twisted Monk, Venus Ropes, Rainbow Rope as mentioned earlier, and I think I’m missing another vendor, too (sorry!). At this point, hemp is hemp is hemp to me just because I don’t have enough experience with it to really feel the difference, so I mostly look at price when I shop. (Ask Dov your hemp questions, he’s very knowledgeable. So are Switch and Boy.)

That said, the hemp is clearly far superior to the MFP and other synthetics if rope bondage means something special to you. Also, the different diameters of some hemp over others makes that length more or less suitable for certain things. Most of our hemp is 8mm thick, but for wrist, ankle, and other body-part bondage, Eileen and I are finding that the 6mm or even the 4mm is much better. Of course, for genital bondage, we’re strongly considering even thinner lengths, like 2mm in diameter. Or, y’know, really coarse twine from Home Depot.

We’ve also got a roll of bondage wrap (larger, left) and one of bondage tape (shorter, next to the ball gag). I absolutely adore bondage tape, and I’m not too embarrassed to admit that it’s partly because of the aesthetic. Pretty boys and girls bound in bondage tape are shiny, and the whole industrial tape-gag damsel in distress look is smokin’ hot. The only thing missing from this pile is vet wrap, which is probably more useful than both bondage wrap or bondage tape (especially for turning your human pet’s hands into paws), but it’s also more expensive.

Of course, along with the ropes and the rest of the bondage equipment is the EMT safety shears. Ropes and bondage wraps or tapes without safety shears are one of those bad situations you should take care to avoid finding yourself in. And, of course, you should make absolutely sure the safety shears can cut through whatever it is you’re being bound or binding in. How do you do that? You cut a small piece of it once before you play (not necessarily every time). You do lose a little rope, but that’s a lot more palatable than losing your life.

A good tip when buying rope is to buy one longer strand than you need and cut it yourself. So if you’re intent on purchasing two 15-foot lengths of MFP, buy one 30-foot length and cut it in half yourself. That way you know your EMT safety shears work properly.

Between the rolls of bondage wrap and bondage tape we have a standard-issue ball gag, vibrator, and nylon quick-release wrist and ankle cuffs. The ball gag, unfortunately was too big for me when I bought it because I got it at The Leather Man, a shop in the Village for gay men. Apparently, anything and everything made for gay men is way too big for me. Instead, when I shop for bondage gear, the only restraints that won’t slide right off me are the one’s in small women’s sizes. Unbelievably, even the most heteronormative-focused novelty shops, the ones you’d think would carry all sorts of little bondage things for men to put their heroin-skinny girlfriends into, don’t often carry restraints small enough for me.

Anyway, at the very corner of the bed on the lower left of the photo above (and much more clearly visible in the photo below at the bottom right of the picture), are three toys laying atop the case for Eileen’s Njoy signature product, the Pure Wand, which is nestled within the tender pink folds of…ahem, its case.

Toy Bag Picture 2

To the right of these things are a number of synthetic sex toys. There’s the unmistakable, must-have Hitachi Magic Wand and beneath it is a see-through (”Ice”) Fleshlight. Beneath that is a cyberskin pussy, one of the items from my EdenFantasys sex toy reviews.

Moving on, to the right of these sex toys lie our small but growing collection of dildos and ass toys. There’s the funny-shaped Aneros Helix in white sitting to the right of the Fleshlight and beneath that is the black Nexus Titus, both prostate massagers. Two black butt plugs lie beyond a cylinder containing the Mistress silicone dildo by Vixen, and next to these are the two medical-grade blue plastic attachments for the Hitachi Magic Wand.

Moving back a bit, there’s also a collection of metal cuffs of various sizes and shapes, mostly silver. Eileen’s favorite fire-engine red handcuffs stand out, as does the silver asshook—another gift from the generous and talented Boy. Then, of course, there’s a long bunch of black leather and nylon straps, buckles, and collars of various sorts. There are also (some of) Eileen’s play knives there, including her poniard and curved hunting knife, and her butterfly knives (those are the scariest ones).

Finally, the last patch of the bed is covered by our medical supplies: needles, gloves, gauze pads. There are also the sex essentials: condoms, lube (such as Babeland’s excellent Babelube), our strap-on harness, a blindfold (a Mindfold branded one, as well as a few soft pieces of dark fabrics), locks to go with our loose lengths of chains, and a number of other odds and ends. Our (sadly, now broken) graphite evil stick is there with the blue and white handle, as well as the Master keysafe, used for storing emergency copies of really important keys like the one to our chastity belt I sometimes wear (not pictured).

And, of course, the boy in the photo is me, wearing my “Vivid”-style Eternity Collar, as usual. Eternity Collars are making a name for themselves as being extremely elegant. I’ve worn my collar shamelessly for months on end, including time spent in the office. My office-mates thought it was “kinda hardcore” at first, but said nothing of it afterwards.

Though unabashedly overpriced, the collar is a great fantasy object, not to mention useful for relatively safely attaching leads and ropes to a bottom’s neck. When Eileen started kinking real hard on a certain porn story involving metal collars and was spending quite a bit more time than usual lusting over the pictures at the Eternity Collars web site, I knew I’d buy us one.

I’m also wearing a small leather wristband—a purchase from the innovative Leather by Danny of gripcuff fame—with the words “Boy Toy” engraved on it. Perfectly fitting for this photo.

Phew!

Comments (17)

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Fetish fashion is the same no matter where you go

Category labels: Beginner BDSM, Community, Fetish, Personal experience, Sex toys, Vanilla life

I’m in Sydney, Australia.

Without a doubt, the hardest thing about moving across the world for me has been the sudden lack of connectivity to the information I’m so used to getting on a regular basis. Nothing else really compares, because more than anything else the cost of that information is time—something (generally speaking) that we all have in equal amounts. Rich or poor, there’s still only twenty-four hours in the day.

So between learning the geography (and public transit systems) of a new city, getting a cell phone, looking for a place to live, setting up a bank account (and doing the dance of juggling one’s finances across two of Earth’s hemispheres while not bouncing any checks), going on job interviews, meeting freelance work deadlines, figuring out what the cost of living might be like, trying to understand people through their (sometimes unintelligible) Australian accents, and a whole lot more (like wasting four hours over three days on a health insurance claim [don't ask]), I’ve barely had enough time—much less an actually usable Internet connection—to do any information-consuming.

Slowly, that’s all getting sorted and the stress that makes all the differences I’m seeing between Sydney and New York City insufferable are making way for me to feel interested by them. Some things I’d have thought would be the same aren’t (like coffee, which is practically a whole different language here), and other things that I hoped would be different aren’t (yet).

Most striking is the (very painful) reminder that I’m not like almost anybody around me. Eileen’s just started classes, and we spent the better portion of a week exploring the campus. I’m meeting lots of students, but I am always reminded (typically rather explicitly) that I am not a student here, and thus not privileged with the same monetary discounts, opportunities for networking, or even casual social invitations for conversation (at least, not at first). It’s making me feel very segregated and lonely.

This past weekend was the climax of the Mardi Gras celebration in Sydney, and the famous parade. I watched the whole thing from the corner of Oxford and Riley streets, right up at the barricades, accompanied by Eileen and our gracious friends from the Blogosphere (and temporary Mardi Gras tour guides) Mistress 160 and Solipsist. It was a lot of fun in its own right, yet I couldn’t help myself from comparing the experience to the one’s I’ve had at the New York City Gay Pride Parades. They are, of course, incomparable in some respects, but not all of them.

For instance, one thing I noticed right at the start when people were beginning to crowd the streets was that at Sydney’s Mardi Gras, the spectators themselves were much, much more participatory in the celebrations. Costumes could be seen everywhere, on a huge chunk of the population, not just the marchers. In New York City, it’s typically only the people actually marching who do anything other than just show up to watch.

Another distinct difference was the abundant presence of alcohol. Beers and wines were so prevalent that by the end of the nearly two-hour parade the street was literally covered with so much trash (called “rubbish” here, by the way) that for a good half-block’s walk you had to be careful where you stepped. For the next few days, I occasionally walked by bits of broken glass. Maybe it’s just that you can’t really tell the difference in New York, but the aftermath of the Gay Pride Parade in New York City doesn’t look like a huge house party. That said, Sydney is surprisingly clean—especially for a city with an unnerving scarcity of public trash cans. Sorry, I mean rubbish bins.

All in all, Mardi Gras just can’t match the scale of the parade in New York. But then again, what can? After all, the entirety of Australia, whose geographic size rivals that of the United States, sustains a population equal merely to that of New York State.

The highlight of Mardi Gras, for me, was the single obvious leather group that marched. Predominantly male and bearing all the earmarks of what the New York City BDSM community would call “old guard leather,” they were sporting leather puppy boy outfits complete with paws and snouts, straight jackets, heavy metal shackles, and no shortage of exposed skin. By the point they marched by—well after halfway through—I had almost given up hope of seeing a kinky group march and advocate for BDSM, so vanilla (if very obviously GLBT-centric) was the rest of the parade and whole general atmosphere.

Shortly after that group marched by, I saw another much smaller group holding a banner that read Sexplorer08.com that had a few other hopeful signs: a woman in a shibari rope harness and a few others dressed in classic fetish outfits. To my surprise, the woman in the rope harness came right up to Mistress 160 and gave her a hug, which prompted quite a few questions from me because ever since I got here Eileen and I have been trying to find the kink scene in Sydney (as well as trying to find the time to search).

I’m really thankful for this blog because it’s given me so many lovely connections to kink communities on an International scope (Curvaceous Dee being another “AsiaPac” example).

One of the things I’ve been chomping at the bit (only figuratively, unfortunately) to see is how, if at all, kink is different across the planet. A lot about BDSM and sex in general is culturally influenced, and geography has a very heavy influence on culture. What sorts of differences, then, will I find in the kink communities here?

Browsing through the aisles of the fetish shops won’t reveal the answers to that because, low and behold, the accoutrements of kinky sex are evidently the same the world over. Not just similar, mind you, but identical, right down to the label. One shop in particular stands out as the clear premium BDSM shop in Sydney: Sax Fetish. Comparable to The Leather Man or Purple Passion in New York City, the only surprising thing about Sax Fetish is that they’re the only ones—something that speaks to Sydney’s smaller size.

This is also exemplary of the way smaller community sizes actually beget a more mixed crowd: wherein New York City you have specialty kink/fetish/leather/BDSM shops owned, operated, and marketed to distinct communities (like the gay community or the heterosexual community in the case of The Leather Man and Purple Passion), in Sydney every kink space is explicitly, pro-actively inviting members of all gender identities and sexual orientations to participate in a singular space. The same is true of the monthly fetish party, Hellfire Sydney, which (and I’m guessing because I’ve not attended it yet) seems reminiscent of BYTE. Specifically, both are monthly “fetish parties” with strict dress codes (the exact same dress codes, in fact), yet because Sydney only has this one monthly public fetish party, the proprietors make great efforts to be inclusive of everyone under the rainbow. These are statements that are mere afterthoughts in the New York City fetish scene, if they are even made at all.

On their web site, for example, Hellfire Sydney says:

[Hellfire Sydney] is a very mixed club. You’ll find varying proportions of people who identify as straight, bisexual, lesbian, gay, transgender, queer, intersex and some that defy even those labels. Which is just as well because we’re not too keen on labels anyway. Celebrating human sexuality in all its weird and wonderful diversity is what we’re all about, so as long as it doesn’t involve children, animals or the unwilling then hey, let’s party, whoever you are!

We’re also a club that celebrates physical diversity, with deliciously dirty deviants of all shapes and sizes dressed to thrill.

That may be so, but doesn’t it seem strangely at odds to you that a club which so adamantly touts its acceptance of the diversity of sexual expression has such a strict (and some would argue, boring) dress code? It does to me. But of course, as Richard has recently pointed out, the “fetish scene” is hardly representative of actually practicing sadomasochism, though there is some obvious overlap.

Perhaps it’s my New York conditioning, but I’m wary of any space that has strict dress codes because I believe it’s likely to be full of “stand-and-model S&M” and lacking for actual play. This is one of the clear differentiators between the “fetish fashion scene” and the “BDSM scene,” and I’m simply not interested in the former.

And so, I’m in Sydney. I’m still waiting to find out what I’ll find here.

Followups: Check out Mistress 160’s post about our night at Mardi Gras, too!

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Friday, February 8, 2008

One, sir: On Titles in Scenes

Category labels: BDSM psychology, BDSM terminology, Beginner BDSM, D/s dynamics, Exhibitionism, Masochism, Myths and misconceptions, Personal experience, Whipping, Writing and blogging

Reading through my own personal journal’s archives reminded me of how early on many of the thoughts, feelings, and ideas that I express today have been inside of me. It’s also shown me how some things changed, and looking at which things have changed and which have not is an interesting pursuit in itself. This post, below, which I wrote on April 26th, 2005, references a Singletailing demonstration I did with an occasional play partner and friend of mine at Conversio Virium that was very well-received.

Back then, I didn’t even identify publicly as submissive, and in fact I was such a stalwart bottom that more often than not I was often described as being one of the “toppiest bottoms” people knew. I knew how I liked to get hit, with what, where, and when. I would scoff at attempts to get me on my knees and never, ever wiggled cutely.

Along those lines, I never used titles in my play or otherwise, because that’s something submissives did. I cared little for honorifics, not out of a lack of respect but out of a narrow-minded view engendered by my environment of what they were for and how they could be used. Of course, now I use some titles more than others, and have even grown to enjoy their use at times. That’s not to say that titles are “better BDSM” or “more real” or anything of the sort (that’s bullshit), but I have managed to broaden my view of what they can do.

This post from April 2005 is republished here in part because I think it’s a pretty good entry, in part because I still strongly believe the things I said were true for me then and are true for me now, and because I’m way too busy to spend that much time writing posts at the moment but I’d really like to keep some new content flowing into the blogosphere from this blog. Enjoy.

I’ve already decided this kink-blog thing is a step in the right direction. Many reasons, not least of which is the enormous relief I feel to be able to unburden myself of these musings and, later, look back on them as I do with all my other writings. Another benefit, however, (beyond the social ones of sharing these writings with pertinent folk, such as those with whom I play) is that it will lead to reflections I’ve not been able to access for a very long time.

Eileen brought up some great points about tonight’s CV singletailing demo/scene (was it a demo or was it a scene?), which I did not have the presence of mind when I was writing the earlier entry about it to make note of. Specifically, I said Sir.

Titles are a funny thing. They’re amazingly common, I dare say deeply loved and deemed important to many, and yet they make very little sense to me. Calling someone (my top) “Sir” or “Ma’am” (or “Mistress” or “Master” or whatever) during scenes just isn’t something I’ve ever had the inclination to do.

That’s not to say I have much of an issue with it. I’ve occasionally done this during private play sessions with past partners. In every case I can recall, though, it was either initiated by their request or due to a role-play scenario which was currently unfolding. It makes sense to me if, say, a partner and I were playing out some specific scenario with very defined roles to then refer to my partner with a name respective of their role in the scene. After all, we’re already role playing.

But scenes, for me, are not usually role play. I love BDSM. I do not love roleplaying (though I do enjoy it on occasion). When I scene, I’m not “the victim” or “the slave” or anything like that. I’m me, plain and simple—and it’s so much hotter that way, too.

Similarly, my tops aren’t “my Master” or “my Lady” or anything. They’re just themselves as well (at least they are in my head, most of the time) and again, that’s so much hotter for me. I can’t speak from a top’s perspective, but Eileen expressed this issue for herself rather eloquently: I feel like I’d rather be a scary-yet-caring version of myself, rather than a scary-yet-caring hypothetical dominant construct.

Three things about this statement:

  1. First, version of myself. Yes; when I bottom to someone, I have chosen to bottom to them, not their image or their reputation. (Sidenote: For now I’m going to assume that this is one of the reasons playing with pro Dommes at the parties they invited me to was never as much fun as playing with lifestylers in clubs or friends at home; pro Dommes are constantly keeping an eye out for potential clients, and showing off what they can do to me is an advertisement for themselves more than it is a scene for me. Fun, but lacking.)
  2. Second, scary-yet-caring. One of the overriding themes of my fantasies, for as long as I can remember having fantasies, is the notion of feeling precious to someone, specifically, my top. (You will get smacked if you make a LOTR reference in the comments.)
  3. Third, hypothetical dominant construct, which ties back in with the first thing. Titles make things fake for me. They turn something real into something imagined. They build hypothetical dominant (and submissive) constructs of who we are in our heads.

    For some scenes, like the one during the demo, this is fine. Other times, such as during structured role play scenes, it’s even great. For other scenes, it just has no place because it wrecks the realism. (Sidenote: I have a huge thing with realism. For instance, it’s one of the reasons I simultaneously love and fear knife play. I have to write about that sometime in the future.)

So, I said Sir. That’s not really the big deal. The big deal is that I said it publicly, and not just publicly out at a club where it’s noisy and dark and no one can really hear. No, I said it in a room full of people who were neither doing nor saying anything because they were intently watching his whip and my welts.

The effects of this was interesting. Fortunately, singletails hurt (god, do they ever!) so at the point where I was counting strokes there was little actual thinking going on inside my head beyond “Oh fffuck!” and similar. I neither wanted to nor do I think I could have, at that point, think too much about anything that was happening. (Also, see earlier entry about feeling free, relaxed, and not self-conscious, which helped.)

When asked if I could count strokes, my response was a tentative I think so. When pressed, it did take me a moment to respond. Why? What was going through my head at that moment? I’m not sure, but after the above reflection I think I entered “a role”—specifically, “the demo bottom.”

That sounds obvious; may, you do realize you were actually demo bottoming, right? Well, yes, of course I do. But in the role, it wasn’t me at CV being hit with the singletail while leaning against the chalkboard playing with my top anymore. Instead, it was me as the demo bottom at CV…. The difference is subtle, but the difference was there, and it did change the scene. (It didn’t make it worse or anything like that, it just changed it.)

At first, I was being singletailed and then, later, the demo bottom was being singletailed. Again, that’s not worse. It is enjoyable in an exhibitionistic sort of way to perform in such a manner and such a performance is not necessarily less authentic, though it has more potential to be. The devil, as always, is in the details.

My conclusion, then, is that for me (like most things) titles in scenes are tools to be used when appropriate. It’s important for me (as well as for my play partners) to understand how things like this affect my head and what responses they will get from me. All of this needs a follow-up entry, but that’s for another time. It all also ties in very strongly with the realism bit which I mentioned earlier, so that will need to be explored as well.

For now, however, I’m headed to the shower and to tend to my skin. I’m really looking forward to that first hit of the water on my back. After that, it’s bed time. ‘Night, all.

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Thursday, February 7, 2008

Firsts are always changes

Category labels: Community, D/s dynamics, Emotions, Femdom, Kink events, Male sexuality, Masculinity, Masturbation, Personal experience, Relationship, Sex, Uncategorized, Writing and blogging

One of the reasons I’m so interested in kink and sexuality is because it’s implicitly a big part of my life. It’s everywhere and nowhere at the very same time, not unlike how many people understand god. For me, my sexuality is akin to my religion: self-expression (and particularly sexual self-expression) is my prayer, I am my own god, and the pleasure-positive, queer-friendly, self-empowering communities of which I am a part are my Church.

I like the references to religious imagery apparent in much of my play even though the thought of religion in my sex life makes me feel viscerally repulsed. I won’t do religious-themed play (naughty priests, nuns, and even Rabbis spring to mind—all potentially sexy for some people if not for me), but I understand the impetus of those who do. I like getting wings, being referred to as an obedient angel, or the idea of being nailed to a cross. I am no martyr, for martyrdom and ultimate self-sacrifice is in many ways the epitome of what I find repugnant; I ask to be hurt, to be beat, to be etched and marked, because it’s what I want, not something I dislike that’s merely a path to something “more.”

Parts of my life, like kink, present themselves in interesting ways sometimes. They’re like habits, much in the way going to the gym is something that is at first difficult but over time becomes habitual and—not necessarily in a negative context—addictive. If I don’t get my kink fix for a while, I start getting antsy. The physical catharsis of a good beating goes hand-in-hand with emotional catharsis of some kind. It’s one way that I experience the connection between the body and the mind.

What I’ve found over the past few weeks is that, at least for now, writing about these experiences and continuing my own introspective explorations about myself, my sexuality, and how I relate to the world around me (as well as why the world around me is so fucked up), is similarly emotional cathartic. Yes, I’ll admit it: I blog as a form of self-treatment. And I’ve been itching to start writing again.

However, I’m a horribly change-averse person at my core, in spite of the fact that I am also occasionally an eager risk-taker. When I stopped writing often, it became difficult to start up again. So many pieces of my life are scattered about the floor around me, in piles waiting to be sorted, packed, and shipped off to the other side of the planet (I’m moving to Sydney, Australia, from New York City), that I desperately wanted to maintain some semblance of continuity and order among the change and chaos.

You’d think, naturally, that with all the preparations to be made, the telephone, Internet, gas and electric, and other utility accounts to close down, the bank accounts to open and close, the taxes to complete for the previous year, the stuff to move, the apartments (and jobs?) to find on the other side of the world, and everything else I have to do to move my whole life from one of Earth’s hemispheres to the other, that I wouldn’t be able to squeeze in time for more play. In fact, I expected to be so busy that kink would have to take a back-seat to the rest of my life until I was settled again. Boy, was I wrong.

In the past few weeks, I’ve played more often than I have in the past half-year. Furthermore, I’ve played with more people in less time than I ever have before—the exact figure would have been even higher had there been the time. I lament the fact that it’s only now, with my imminent retreat from the in many ways stifling New York City scene that I’ve suddenly experienced an explosion of play partner possibilities who are not only fun and intriguing but who also seem to actively desire playing with men who bottom or, (gasp!) are actually submissive and self-respecting. C’est la vie….

The experiences are not all incredibly intense in and of themselves, but the experience of my own broadening “promiscuity” and apparent desirability is incredibly disorienting, and surprisingly uncomfortable at the same time that it is very welcome. After repeated conversations about the topic, in which I often express confusion, doubt, and glee at the situation, the best I can come up with is that “I’m not used to being liked at so intensely,” to borrow one of Rona’s lovely grammatical idioms. Of course, I’m not oblivious to the reasons: I’m relatively good-looking even if I still don’t consider myself “hot”, I have a pretty wide and (to some) intense range of things I enjoy doing, and I’m an all-around decent person.

What’s so astonishing to me, then, is that other people have taken note of these things, too. Actually being in demand by people who’ve never even heard of me before, as opposed to being merely available, is a lovely, self-affirming experience. It’s the ego-boost I’ve heard so many women talk about. And I’m not too proud to admit that it was really, really nice to have.

The weekend after the Flea in Rhode Island, I went to a weekend-long private party near Boston, having been invited by a friend along with Eileen, and the experience (much of which is the foundation for the feelings expressed in this post) was the exact opposite of what I expected. Instead of feeling shunned, I felt wanted. I played each night, each night feeling a bit more comfortable than the one before, until on Sunday night I not only got beat in ways that made me moan when I moved for days, I also had my first semi-public orgasm and outright sexual experience with someone I’d just met.

Oh, it was tame, and relatively short-lived, but the fact remains that it was the first of its kind: invited to join Eileen and the top both she and I had met (and played with) earlier in the party on the floor in a corner of one of the party rooms, I lay back and the two of them proceeded to rub and caress my bruised body while he (the top) pressed a Hitachi Magic Wand against my penis. A few minutes later, while I was just beginning to start writhing in pleasure on the floor, my friend from Kink in Exile, who had just gotten through beating my thighs and ass with one of her metal pipes, joined our corner and took a spot rubbing my chest, nipples, and sides.

I was uncomfortable being the center of so much explicitly sexual attention. Three people, one of whom I didn’t even know before the weekend started and another whom I’d seen in person for only the second time, were now sitting around me while I lay on the floor and braced myself against the vibrator’s insistent buzzing. And at first, I really was bracing against it.

“This is not very like me,” I was thinking. It was weird and uncomfortable, and I wondered if they were actually enjoying this anyway, letting me just lie back and enjoy myself with almost no words exchanged about it. “Maybe there are expectations I’m not aware of. That’d be bad!” I closed my eyes early on to try to fend off any triggers for more doubt, and not being able to see is something that helps me turn inwards, to focus on the sensations in my body rather than the thoughts in my mind.

It took me a long time to shove the nuisance of my own self-doubt out of my head in order to relax enough to enjoy what they were doing. At the start I was giggly and clearly nervous, but they all reassuringly told me to hush. The orgasm built slowly, but as a result it was fierce and explosive and wonderful and it left me a little dizzy.

After it was over and I came back down from the high of the beatings and the orgasm, the newness of the experience struck me most clearly: I’m changing, too. For years, even though I’ve had due cause, I’d been walled off and detached from the social and sexual possibilities and opportunities laid out before me. No, they aren’t always there in such massive quantity as they were at this party for the first time, but I know they were there.

Maybe I’m starting to be ready to really say “yes” to a lot of the things I wanted but wasn’t ready for before. It took the right people, in the right place, at the right time, to make it happen. Just as it did when Eileen and I first met.

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