I was thinking this morning about why I’ve started this blog. Why I’m here. And although I have a thousand and ten things I want to write about, including color, olives, and formative moments in my personal development, I feel as though this needs to be said first. I feel as though it genuinely needs to be said.
When I was exploring BDSM consciously for the first time, it was online. Isn’t it for everyone, it seems? And I visited photo galleries, and poked about in forums a bit, and went to all manner of ridiculous subterfuge to hide the browser history on my family computer. And I met my first kinky friend online, and we chatted via AIM, and eventually I had my first real kinky relationship with him.
And just when I was ready to settle down and get comfortable with myself and the online world . . .
I moved to New York.
As the movies say, location, location, location.
I’m a blogosphere faker.
I’m actually, honest to goodness, in the scene. Not the bedroom scene. Not the online scene. The public scene. I go to monthly play parties. I’m a member of this completely awesome group and I’m one of the organizers for this event and I’ve taught here and I attend these meetings and every once and a while I hang out here and occasionally you can listen to me babble on this thing.
I don’t know the nuances of how the blogosphere is fucked up. And I’m not just musing here. There’s too much opinion going on. So why am I writing? I’m not the right person to fix the internet.
Well, the public scene is fucked up too. And just as scary to newcomers, and just as obsessed with weird rules, and just as full of clueless people. And if you think it’s hard keeping a straight face when someone on a forum demands that you call them Master Overlord of All Things, you try doing it when they’re standing in front of you.
I would like the scene to be better. I would like to expand the intelligent atmosphere that can be found there occasionally, and send good messages to the public and the kink curious, and foster safe spaces, and make the play and the education what it’s all about, instead of politics and power struggles. I seriously doubt I’m going to do that here. This is the wrong tool for that particular agenda. And I don’t think anyone really cares what I write at the moment, anyway.
But I’d also like to get the word out there that normal people do exist in the real life scene. That I’ve met funny, smart and smarmy male doms who don’t obsess over dominance, and subs who act like genuine people with wants and needs, and that we do argue about comic books and eat crappy food at play parties. I do have leather boots, I do occasionally wear high heels, and I do have a collection of corsets. I will also object to people I don’t know calling me Mistress, and show up at Paddles in jeans and a tshirt, and admit to more confidence issues than a preteen with too much body hair, and work a full time job, and have several unrelated hobbies. That the privately kinky and the publicly kinky can have a meeting of minds. We’re not all freaks out here.
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(I have at least three personal blogs: the kink one is the newest. I like to keep my topics segregated.)
Oddly enough while I read one the very first books on consensual BDSM about the time it was published and was in a Folsom St. leather bar as a youth it wasn’t until the web I found I felt I could envision actually letting me tie me up. I was stopped by sheer fear.
The public scene here in NC isn’t for me. Because the average kinky person does eat and McDonald’s and watch prime time TV. I don’t really begrudge them that but they aren’t for me.
Oddly the local scene is very benign. Anyone without my ineradicable arrogance would probably enjoy being around them.
Richard -
I have three blogs as well, although currently this is the only one that’s really getting air time.
The thing is, the average person in general eats at McDonalds and watches prime-time TV. They’re not for me either (what with fast food making me sick and not owning a TV.) However, in NYC there’s simply more biomass. More people in general means a larger percentage of interesting people, even if they’re still just a tiny slice of the overall community.
Arrogance is crucial, and so remarkably undervalued.
*laughs at being included in the “fix teh interwebz” group*
Umm, I think that Richard missed a decimal point. Just sayin’, you know?
I’m another multi-blogger (and I participate in several other professional groups). Not surprisingly, people often turn to me for a more balanced and unbiased opinion about professional issues. I’m just that kind of guy.
Eileen, I’m really surprised – You’re not wearing a teal skirt or tight leather. Both would go with a white cockatoo…
Tom-
I’ll make a deal with you. The day you fix the internet is the day I’ll post a picture of myself in a leather skirt. And hell, I’ll even throw the corset in for good measure.
Get right on that ;).
How the heck does being in the scene make you a blogosphere faker?
Almost -
It doesn’t. But I feel as though not being familar with the blogosphere does. It’s all a matter of appropriate audiences.
Truly, though, I don’t know much about tinternets either. I’m not on any forums of anything.
I’m writing about it. Well, I’m mainly writing a stroy about me completely failing to pick someone up on the internet.
I was aiming for a sort of tragi-comic thing. But now I’ve seen that photo I’m not sure if I can compete.
Bitchy-
Hey, don’t call my cockatoo tragi-comic! He’s very shy ;).
I don’t know quite why I wrote this post. I felt like I needed a statement of purpose to mitigate all the ranting.
Tom, I was only counting the ones that are really personal.
I was never much of a mixer, even when I lived in Manhattan. I was also in a monogamous relationship which greatly diminishes my sociability.
My arrogance was valuable to me when I was growing up. It protected me. But I had to scale it down from raw megalomania to simple self-esteem.
Richard-
For me, arrogance is at the crux of my self-awareness. It wasn’t until I could start accepting myself in positive as well as negative lights that I was able to get a good handle on analyzing my thoughts.
It’s frustrating to me that the scene in Manhattan is so unwelcoming of monogamy. But then, I also definitely relate to relationships making one less sociable. May and I are practically joined at the hip.
At the risk of sounding megalomaniacal (sp?) I will say that I take a great amount of pride in this post and some of your others because I can see many influences that have come from me in them. Also, love.
May-
Although I agree that plenty of the way that I think has been formulated and influenced in discussionw ith you, I’m actually not sure what elements of this post you’re referring to in particular?
the bird. it is eating your hair.
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