Since moving to Sydney, my relationship with the public scene has drastically changed. On the one hand, because the scene I’m finding in Sydney is drastically different to the scene I know in New York. And on the other, because the things I want from the scene are now different than they were six years ago, or one year ago, or six months ago.
Let me break one factor of this change down. Hopefully with some delicacy. I want to talk about money.
Even though I should know it by now, it consistently shocks me how expensive it is to be kinky. Money is one way in which much of the public scene is privileged; there is literally a bar to entry open to a selected few. (Not to mention all the other ways in which much of the scene caters to a particular privilege: age, time, location, race, gender, orientation, able-bodied, to name a few. With a nexus of overlying, unspoken requirements, it’s no wonder the public scene is comparatively tiny.)
Now, I’ve come to realize that the Australian relationship with money as I currently see it is a little different than I’m used to. Namely, they spend more on their pleasures. It’s not just that Sydney is an expensive city, especially with food prices skyrocketed. NYC is also an expensive city; I’m used to this.
Rather, it seems a regular occurrence for the people I hang out with to drop $100 on alcohol in a single night. A weeknight. On a weekend? An American girl I met the other day told me, in hushed tones, that an Australian guy she knows spent $600 last Saturday, between clubs, cabs, and drinks. We stared at each other with our mouths open. $600 is my rent for a month.
So it doesn’t seem like a good enough reason, in this culture, for me to say that something is simply too expensive.
I have spent a lot of money on the weapons and gear of my sexuality of choice. I have spent a lot of money on events like Floating World and Black Rose. Thousands of dollars. Thousands of dollars that I, and others in my economic situation, cannot technically count as disposable income. And as half of a couple who travel together and split our expenses, for every dollar I spend, Maymay spends one too.
If we shall speak very technically, it is not too expensive for me to spend $40 to go to a play party. I do have $40 in my bank account, and it could potentially go toward such a thing. So let me be a little more honest.
Unfortunately for the good people I’ve met here in the scene, some of whom host simply gorgeous parties, I have a hard time getting myself out and putting down cash at the door. This, I should clarify, is not through the fault of their parties. This is because, as I mentioned, the things I want from the scene have changed:
Where I used to consider the possibility of pick-up play, I now play only with established partners and long-term friends.
Where I used to feed from the energy in kinky spaces, I now feel awkward and exposed.
Where I used to be willing to manage the social minefield of not knowing anyone on the room, I now feel more comfortable around at least a few people I’m close to.
And where I used to be able to make friends with people solely upon the common ground of shared sexualities, I now find myself unable to do so. This has unfortunately knocked munches off my list, as well as parties.
So the events are not at fault. But the events are no longer right for me. And the Sydney scene appears to be structured in such a way that these kinds of events are the first point of entry.
So when I say that something is too expensive, I am being a little unfair. What I should say is that I’m not, at this point in my life, willing to pay an entry fee in order to be exposed to a number of kinky people with whom I have a slight chance of becoming friends. Because that’s what these parties have become for me; the vapor of a possibility that one of the other attendees might be someone I want to make friends with.
In the end, having complementary sexualities has almost no value for me in forging new friendships. It comes below a laundry list of other factors that must first align: our humor, our interests, our intellectual inquiries, our attitudes toward society and life and ourselves.
Complementary sexualities become a real factor in maintaining a relationship once sex itself becomes a factor of that relationship. To say that I am more likely to find friends among the kinky is similar to saying that if I were hetero, I would be more likely to find friends among men. Largely illogical, consistently untrue.
I have been reassessing the return on my investments, so to speak. Unfortunately, if I go to a play party that does not yield me any kind of good feeling, friendship, or conversation, I don’t just shrug it off. I get upset at myself, a little depressed. And where I get a little upset, Maymay becomes angrily vicious and bitter. It is not uncommon for us to leave play parties that are unsuccessful (by our standards), go home, fight, and end up miserable and crying. So in many ways, an entry fee is not just an entry fee; it’s a gamble.
And as what I’m looking for diverges further and further from what play parties are designed to deliver, the gamble becomes increasingly bad.
13 Comments
Let me be the harsh and sharp to your incredibly over-delicate blunted-edge sword in this post:
The scene, wherever and whenever it presupposes a willingness and ability to pay utterly ridiculous prices for what amounts to no fun at all, is crap. This is true in Sydney as well as in New York City.
When I was still going to Paddles two nights a week, I spent over $2,600 a year on nothing but entrance fees to that one club in a single year. I spent an amount about equal to that on entrance fees to other clubs and parties (as their prices were even more exorbitant). I did this for two years, with expenses totaling upwards of 10 grand.
And what did I come away with? A distaste for pretty much all of it.
Save your money, kids. Just say no to for-pay BDSM clubs. Hang out with your friends instead. It’s more fun, and the sex is better too.
You have simply outgrown the superficial. Congratulations!!
Verity,
While I realize your comment is made in good spirit, I don’t think play parties are necessarily superficial. Nor are pick-up play scenarios, or munches, or friendships based upon common sexual ground. The argument that someone is superficial because they happen to be shopping for what play parties sell, in my opinion, creates unnecessary disrespect. Similar to telling vanilla people that their sex is boring and conventional.
Er, not to lecture the fun out, or anything.
Maymay,
Your point, and mine, are evidence that the kinds of spaces we want personally aren’t available. At this point I’m not comfortable calling the other spaces crap because they don’t give me what I want; obviously they give some people what they want, or no one would ever go there. So the issue is not that these spaces exist, it’s that these spaces exist to the exclusion of other, more personally appropriate spaces for us.
Excuse me annoyingly quoting you back at yourself, but I’m less interested in getting pissed off over this issue and more interested in creating new spaces.
Right. Which is, as I said very succinctly, crap.
We aren’t able to attend play parties due to there being few by us, but I never understood why there would be an entrance fee. Are the people there that amazing that I must pay for their company? Will the sex there be so life alteringly good that I must shell out? Or perhaps the logistics of throwing a play party is just that expensive, and the entrance fee covers the costs.
Will it be worth it to go to some kind of scene party when we’re there? Keep in mind that money will be somewhat limited (or at least it should be) for us when we’re there.
Patty,
Most parties that charge do so because the owners of the parties are spending a significant amount of time or effort to host the party. Some parties provide food, while other parties are business ventures that expect to support a kinky space or business.
It was common for May and I to spend several hours of our time in prep and cleanup and about $100 each time we hosted a party. But we also got a lot of great return on these investments, so we accepted them as the necessary outlay of hosting a great party. But that was our prerogative, and the norm in NYC.
Tyr-
Let’s talk about it closer to your trip, and maybe just play things by ear. “Worth” is relative, after all.
It should also not go without mention that we are thrifty and very resourceful, able to do a lot with a small budget. The fact of the matter is that more can be done than most people realize without huge amounts of cash.
All of the parties that I have seen in Sydney (and, interestingly, this is not the case for all of them in NYC) have been specifically designed to be extravagant affairs, purposefully showy with regard to the atmosphere so that it does its damnedest to look pretty, and expensive.
Which is a real shame, because that’s exactly the kind of look I find least inviting.
A few years ago I went through a similar process with G&L spaces (they certainly weren’t B or T), only it took me about a fortnight and didn’t cost quite so much. I realised that my desire to meet People Who I Could Be Friends With had no relation to my sexuality, and started moving in geek circles instead. The circle of friends I ended up with was predominantly queer, but not about queer, and that was good. I’ve never really embraced kinky spaces. Better to have friends and to uncover their queer and kinky sides more personally.
Where I used to be willing to manage the social minefield of not knowing anyone on the room, I now feel more comfortable around at least a few people I’m close to.
Connected to the outing, at all? That sort of thing has a way of destroying one’s ability to trust, something that’s important when stepping about a social minefield, I think - not least in kinky spaces, where a lot of people come to express a part of themself they usually feel they have to bottle up.
Hear hear. This has been one of the major factors that’s kept me from feeling comfortable in public BDSM spaces. I understand the cost of keeping up BDSM clubs (less understandable if events are house parties), but spending $40 on a party or workshop (or more!) is just not realistic for me and my partner. I wish there were more events with a sliding scale or “pay what you can” payment system, so BDSM education and public play wouldn’t be so exclusive. (And really, the focus there is on the “educuation” aspect; much more interested in that than play parties, at the moment.)
I went to a couple of the Sydney play parties (couple of things at the Kirk, one or two more private parties) and what really struck me was how joyless it all looked. Everyone very dressed up, cliques, lots of posing and not much talking. And the politics!
Thene-
Yes! Predominately x, but not about being x. Geek circles have been good to me as well.
I think you’re accurate in saying that this change is connected to my being outed. (Very astute.) I know that the “bottling up” you mention has definitely become more of a concern since then. I’m still sorting out how to deal with that.
subversive sub-
Working out a sliding scale among a group of people as incestuous as the kinky scene I know sounds like a challenge. And that’s putting in mildly. But perhaps a donation system would be more appropriate?
Andrew-
Hi! Thanks for stopping by. I admit, I am new enough that Sydney kink politics escape me, and I’m just fine with that. But your descriptions remind me that in some ways, people are precisely the same all over the world.
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