A Place To Draw Blood Laughing

Really, I should talk about Pride. Not the emotion, pride, but the event, Pride. I will cover the emotion of pride at some point in the future, possibly in reference to Jane Austen.

Leather Pride in NYC is the weekend before Gay Pride. Gay Pride involves a parade, which the kinky folks march in because, well, it’s not often we get parades. The parade is this Sunday, which means, doing the math, Leather Pride was last weekend.

Comparing with years past, events were a bit of a bust this time around. We went to Leather Pride Night intending to find super cheap used toys and goodies we could scoop up at their flea market. Last year I got a singletail and metal wrist and ankle cuffs for $40. If that’s not a great deal I’ll eat my foot. This year the event was moved to a new space, and due to space constraints they scrapped the flea market. Occasionally, or rather, much more often than I wish I could say, leather event organizers are dumbasses.
Similarly, Folsom Street East the next day was expensive, boring and far, far too loud. The multi-tiered surround sound speakers offered no escape, and although a good crowd of good people showed their faces, it was really the after-event dinner that held the value of the day.

Consistently I find that leather events, classes, workshops, parties, whathaveyou, are barely worth my time, but are resoundingly, consistently redeemed by the spectacle of five or ten or fifteen kinky folks, tricked out in leather and studs, descending upon some diner to chat and laugh and while away the late hours of the night. Meals just such as these have moved me, made me cry, taught me the minds of fascinating people, and brought me my current amazing boy.
It is remarkable the freedom that takes over when I can talk about BDSM to my peers and know, just know down in my bones somewhere, that they *get it.*

Bear, my ex-boyfriend/current-play-partner/forever-friend, came to the city over the weekend. I talked excitedly about Pride, the events, the sales, but in the end all I meant was, “Come meet the people I know.” The people I know are sexy and fun-loving and wicked, wicked smart.

I’m “in the scene,” whatever the hell that means. In this city it means I show my face at events like these, I get involved, I organize, I teach, i get off my lazy ass and talk to people. (I don’t do that last one a lot. My ass is, after all, very lazy.) Some folks are in the scene because they’re all about throwing themselves into the community. Some folks are in the scene because it’s the only community they know.
I don’t teach classes because I’m particularly passionate about spreading the love of play. I don’t really do it because I want to give back to the community. I don’t know why I do it, in the end. As I mentioned recently in a comment on Bitchy’s recent post, I like to geek out. It’s fun geeking out with an interested audience. I’ve been teaching since forever and a day, from drawing to writing to downhill skiing to Apple Computers.
And I don’t organize because I’m passionate, either. For example, I am now all of a sudden the head coordinator of programming for the upcoming event Floating World. I have only a very vague idea of how that happened. But I am obsessively organized, and it gives me an almost sexual thrill to see complicated mechanisms come together smoothly.

But anyway, back on topic. Sort of.
Last year I was at Pride events only through coercion and seduction. I really didn’t want to be there. A year before that I was gung-ho for everything. What happened?
Efficiently proving my point that %95 of the value of the public scene is derived from the people you know and the friends that you make, the minute I had made friends I stopped going to events. (I was also horribly, stupidly depressed pretty much all of last year, and okay, that may have had a teeny bit to do with my concurrent withdrawal from all social functions.) This year I was excited again. I’m going to march down 5th avenue with my hair in spikes cracking a whip. That cannot fail to be cool.
I speculate that this series of opinions over three years of Pride events indicates a kind of growth pattern within the scene. First I came to events to meet people and strengthen relationships. Then I stopped coming to events because I was getting my fix of lovely kinky people from my private social interactions: my friends. Now, I go to events to hang out with my friends in interesting spaces.

And, well, if the space isn’t interesting chances are there are six diners within walking distance, 4 of them are open 24 hours, and they all serve coffee, even if you’re in a group of fifteen and everyone’s wearing leather.