Call for participation: Hyperfiction and Hypertextual Porn

Category labels: Community, Erotica and pornography, Fantasy, Fetish, Sex, Technology, Writing and blogging

A few weeks ago I was geeking out about “web stuff” to Eileen, who was sitting across the café table from me sipping her gigantic flat white coffee. I was talking to her about iterative development processes, and how that matches how I think. Small bits, loosely structured, eventually coalesce and create something very refined, piece by piece, polish by polish. Somehow, in between all the geeking out, she remarked on a really great idea.

“Why don’t you write hypertextual porn, then?” Of course, leave it to us to turn a conversation that geeky into a conversation about sex—but still. It’s a really great idea: leverage the power of today’s Web to explore the creative potential of story telling. I started to do some research on the matter when I got home that night. Turns out, this idea is hardly new.

Indeed, this idea even has a name: hyperfiction, or hypertextual fiction. Nevertheless, there aren’t any really good sites out there that have compelling, engaging hyperfiction content.

Why not? I think it’s because hypertextual media is, by its nature, social. It’s social in the same way sex is social. For it to be really engaging, well, you have to engage other people. You have to link to other people. You have to share, and share-alike. You have to be social.

I know this because I tried to start a web site about hypertextual erotic literature. Well, okay, hypertextual porn—or htporn for short (and for funny geek references which I sincerely hope some of you will get). It’s in my playground. However, for the reasons above, it’s become clear to me that the way to successfully create this kind of content is not to do so alone. Besides, I don’t have anywhere near the amount of required cycles (free time) to really get a project like this—one whose direction is still undetermined and whose purpose is still largely an experiment—off the ground by myself.

So, consider this my Call For Participation. I’ve set up an introduction to the theory of htporn and a handful of other stuff on the web site. I’ve also set up a mailing list website with a specific hyperfiction discussion list that I encourage you to join—just send an email introducing yourself and your interest in writing (or reading, or whatever) htporn.

I’m not-so-secretly hoping lots of people will express interest in this idea and put forth their ideas. Right now, this project is really just an infant. It needs a bit of TLC and attention from folks like me and you. It also needs a bit of guidance and (dare I say it) discipline so it can grow up big and strong, knowing what it is and what it’s doing. And, along the way, there are going to be questions we’ll need to answer for it.

Even though I’m hosting this project, I don’t want to be the sole driver. I just really want to see this happen. That’s why I’m asking for your participation. Won’t you please come play with us?

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Sexism at Large in American Politics: Armed and Dangerous

Category labels: BDSM in the media, BDSM safety, Masculinity, Politics of sex, Sexism, Vanilla life

I’ve never been extremely thorough about pursuing political current events, but I’m finding myself ever more personally withdrawn from American politics now that I’m living in Sydney and no longer living in America. However, I actually feel more knowledgeable about American politics now than I did when I lived in New York City, mostly because local people here won’t stop asking my opinions on things.

It’s funny to me, how much Australians are interested in the happenings in America. I suppose that makes sense, but as an American who (like the stereotype) never really realized how much of an influence America was to the rest of the world, it’s taking me a little by surprise.

Anyway, needless to say, I’ve been keeping up (a bit) with the Democratic national primary. It’s hard not to. The whole world was practically sitting on the edge of its seat wondering who will win. A black man or a white woman as candidates give rise to only two topics in the right’s conservative hypocrisy: racism and sexism.

This was such a heated race that I’ve even received regular emails from some people in my extended family about it. Their emails are extremely strongly-worded short essays with arguments as to why I should or shouldn’t vote for Obama or Clinton (though mostly only because of the candidates’ opinions on Israel, which I couldn’t really care much about anyway). I’m thinking of telling them to start a blog.

I really have no opinion one way or the other about the merits of either candidate—I’m simply not very well informed. That said, Debra Haffner linked this 5-minute video produced by the Women’s Media Center showcasing myriad clips of all the sexist remarks made about Hillary during her campaign. I rarely link videos in this blog, but this one is worth your time.

There’s a lot of sexist language harassing women in this video, since its goal is to showcase how the media is sexist against women. However, that’s just half the story. There’s at least an equal if not greater amount of sexist language in today’s media against men since, obviously, most public political discussion happens about and between men. Where’s the highlight reel of political pundits proclaiming that some candidate “doesn’t have the balls” to do something brave?

One reason I’m more than a little withdrawn from politics is because I know I’ll never be elected to public office. Even if I had the aspirations, I would simply never survive a smear campaign. I mean, look at this blog!

Indeed, back in the “good old days” when I used to stay at Paddles, the local NYC public BDSM club until 4 AM, that was even a joke. The lot of us, my friends and I, would stumble up the stairs in the dark and then burst out onto the street like mole-people, bleary eyed from a long night. We used to joke with another, “Well, I’m certainly not running for public office after tonight!” the implication being that we’ve done yet another thing that would get us booted immediately if the word got out.

While this threat is meaningless to me, since I don’t want to be in public office anyway, I have met more than a few people over the years for whom this is a real concern. They remain anonymous to this day precisely because they do, at some point, want to be in public office in order to make our government better, and most of them don’t even want to get into the areas of sexual rights. They’ll never have a blog like this, though, because having a blog like this—doing what I’m doing right now—means I’ll never win a race for public office.

But hey. I still get to vote. And of course, I will.

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Article published in Kink-E magazine: Learning the Ropes

Category labels: BDSM psychology, BDSM safety, Beginner BDSM, Communication, Community, Femdom, Male sexuality, Myths and misconceptions, Personal experience, Personal history, Writing and blogging

I’ve been somewhat silent on this blog for a little while and some of you probably already know why. For those that don’t, my professional life has been all a twitter with all sorts of tasks related to my first (non-BDSM or sexuality-focused) book publication. That’s quite exciting, but it also means I’ve pretty much taken on another part time job in addition to my full-time one.

A while back before any of this began I submitted an article to a small local kink magazine here in Sydney called Kink-E Magazine. Apparently it’s been accepted and published and I never even knew about it. You’d think I’d get an email or something of the sort (if not an author copy), but I’ve not heard a word from the publishers. The only reason I found out the article was published was because I met a nice fellow at a dinner party of sorts who recognized my name and said he’d found this blog through the magazine.

Another very annoying thing is that apparently the magazine decided to print my article—which includes a picture of my back—on top of a large picture of a submissive, bound woman and some other random picture I’ve never seen before. I’m not claiming I should have had artistic input for the layout, but doesn’t it seem more than a little disingenuous to print an article about a submissive boy with a huge picture of a submissive girl behind the text of the article itself? This might be a great time for another one of my rants about the state of acceptance for submissive male sexuality but in deference to my exhaustion, I’ll let it slide without another word this time.

Scanned image of \"Learning the Ropes\" article text (Click to enlarge.)

Sigh…. Either way, I’m glad to see that the article is in print, and that it’s providing this blog and the great blogs I link to some additional exposure. Since the magazine’s website has seemingly gone from a partially free online publication to a closed “we won’t show you our content unless you pay us” model, I’m going to repost the entirety of my article here for your viewing pleasure.

This article was a part of my efforts to encourage educational events focused on BDSM and alternative sexuality (beyond queer or homosexual issues) in the Sydney area. See also My First Two Months in the Sydney BDSM Scene.

I still remember [my partner] Eileen’s face the first time she talked to me about hitting me with a single tail whip. “It makes a completely different noise when it hits skin,” she said, brimming with excitement. I gave her a knowing grin. When the two of us began playing together regularly she was the new-blood and I was the one with the reputation.

Her enthusiasm and eagerness to learn more and to try new things was enthralling, attractive, seductive. Sometimes she would tell me that her fingers itched, that they wanted to hurt me. I wanted nothing more than to give her unfettered access to me to do just that.

I think ‘access’ is a sexy word. It’s seductive in implication, explicitly slippery on the tongue, and just sounds raw. Even its meaning is primal: a means of approaching or entering a place, or person. Part of what I found so enthralling about playing with Eileen was how much her newness to the kind of play we were doing was teaching me things, too. Contrary to the popular stereotypes, I didn’t actually have much hands-on experience at the time.

For a lot of people, the answer to the question “When did you know you were into this BDSM stuff?” is very similar. It goes something like, “I’ve known as far back as I can remember.” I’m no exception.

I was four years old when I started making requests of my father to tie me up. At that young age, I wasn’t really questioning why I was asking this of him, I just knew that it was something I felt like I really wanted to have happen, something that would relax me. As a boy, I liked crawling into small spaces like the one under my bed or in my closet. At night I would wrap myself up in a cocoon of my sheets to relax, enjoying the compression and tightness of the fabric on my body.

When I was nine my family got a computer connected to the Internet for the first time. By the time I turned ten I had several hundred bookmarks of BDSM resources saved on the computer. I started reading each one voraciously. Thousands of words a piece, all about sexual dominance and submission, straight-out sex, sexuality, sadism, masochism, and erotica of course.

At first, most people look aghast when they learn this about me. In what world would exposing a ten year old child to endless information about BDSM sex be a positive experience? Indeed, I believe there are myriad dangers in doing so, arguably more so with today’s Internet than the one of thirteen years ago.

To be certain, that kind of access to information is Pandora’s Box. Looking in hindsight at my own experiences, as I’m sure Pandora must have done, I can now see both the good and the bad. The bad: misinformation, and deceitful, predatory, or just plain misguided people. The good: information in abundance, and a community of like-minded people.

For more than eight years I lurked in cyberspace, reading other people’s experiences. I spent a lot of my time filtering out what I thought was fanciful fiction from what seemed like an accurate representation of events and fact. I learned safety basics such as risky parts of the body to strike (kidneys, the tailbone, the neck, etc.), which led me to pursue other interests in anatomy.

Finally, together with my first kinky girlfriend, the two of us braved the real world together. We went to our very first BDSM-oriented meeting at The Eulenspiegel Society. It was a lecture-plus-demo-style presentation on flogging by the well-known Boymeat and his partner at the time, Luna.

“Not everyone plays this way,” I remember Boymeat saying with ernest while locking his gaze straight at my girlfriend and I, who—dressed in our casual cottons and Birkenstock sandals—stood out like a pair of sore thumbs in the crowd of some thirty-odd much older people wearing leathers, vests, and other black accoutrement. “Because we know one another,” Boymeat continued the caveats to his demo, “Luna and I play very roughly together.”

Little did he know at the time, but he didn’t need his caveats. When he began the demo and his flogger literally shoved Luna into the wall she was standing near, I was endlessly intrigued. Here, now, I could finally see with my own eyes everything that I’d been reading about for nearly a decade.

I realized that I could once and for all put to rest dozens of questions that I’d had about flogging and begin to answer dozens more. Watching, I remembered descriptions about flogging I’d read online and started cataloguing some as plausible and others as fantasy, distinctions I could not be confident of just twenty minutes prior. The experience of attending that presentation was invaluable, and for years following that attending similar presentations proved very rewarding for a lot of different reasons.

On a very personal level, spending time with other people who had similar desires as I did helped to legitimize my own thoughts and fantasies. It also showed me just how social an activity education really is. The vast majority of learning happens in the presence of either peers or teachers (or sometimes someone who is both). This is even more apparent in a community like ours that is heavily focused on physical, social experiences, either with a single partner or with a group.

Education, like sex and play, is a social activity—and learning can be very sexy. This makes face-to-face education even more valuable because, in addition to being the single most effective measure against accidents, abuse, and other negative consequences of ignorance, it can also provide opportunities to make friends and to network with others. At that first TES meeting I attended, I met Virgil, now former Vice-President of Columbia University of New York City’s BDSM discussion group called Conversio Virium, where a few years later I first met Eileen at a single tail demo I participated in.

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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.

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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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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.

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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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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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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!

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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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