For one thing, I have not yet sorted what I want to be from what I want to have. Everything is all mixed up, and in the meantime I look in the mirror and feel as though my skin is quicksilver and my eyes are changing color.

But not only are these moments cute, they are a little bit ridiculous. They make us sound insane. We have actually had people cross the street when they hear us coming.

As an example, today Maymay accidently dressed entirely in black, with black Converse sneakers. When he bounded up the stairs to the bar where we met for dinner, I laughed out loud. “Hello, emo boy,” I said when I caught my breath. He stuck out his lip and narrowed his eyes.

Later, as we walked home, he clasped both hands around my arm and tucked his head down on my collarbone as we walked. I nuzzled his hair with my cheekbone. “You are a wiggler,” I said.

“I protest that you are the one who wiggles!” he declared, his voice high pitched and muffled in my shoulder.

I started laughing. That’s the thing about small spaces. They are silly, and odd, but mostly they are gleeful.

“You’re like a tiny chibi emo,” I said to him.

“Chibi emo!’ he chirruped back.

“If you’re a chibi emo, shouldn’t you be crying tiny, adorable tears?”

He shook his head and said forcefully, “Just because I’m a chibi emo doesn’t mean I have to cry all the time!”

I grinned at him. “Oh my! Chibi emo rage!”

He pulled away from me and crossed his arms in a small, exaggerated huff. “You’re mocking my chibiness! How could you do such a thing?”

I started laughing harder. “Chibi emo indignation!”

And he stopped there on the sidewalk, threw back his head, and wrapped his arms around his stomach as he laughed. “That’s it,” he declared. “Chibi-emo-indignation: the cuteness quota has been reached. Officially, if we get any cuter, the world is going to explode.”

I wrapped my palm around his soft, dry fingertips and started walking again. He bumped his shoulder into my side. “I love you,” I said.

“Yay!” he said back. “I love you too.”

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Saturday afternoon I finally, after six years in this city, made my way to The Museum of Sex.

Currently the Museum of Sex is running an exhibit entitled “Kink.” Supposedly, it is about BDSM. In reality, it is about fetish. I would guess that the curator would not know why I make that distinction. I would in fact guess that the curator is not kinky. But that is all right. It was enjoyable. May and I read about mud and macro fetishes, about how domination and submission are expressed in wolves, and peered curiously into the yiff tubes of plush stuffed animals. I applauded the way the exhibit handled their section on rape play. I was pissed that their leather sample was made from fake leather.

We followed the dark back staircase up and around, and wound our way through the history of pornography in film. I got a crash course in sexploitation films, and kept having to pull May away from screens of cute boys having sex, often pictured with demin around their knees and surrounded by the remnants of tight white tshirts. On the top floor we wandered through a sampling of the permanent collection, stopping on a bench to watch a film on a man who creates brilliant animated robot sex.

“I would have that in my house,” May said, indicating a series of graphic sex acts done in holograms, so that the images appeared only from specific angles. I was amused watching people walk by them and jump in surprise.

“No,” I answered.

“Why not?”

“I hate holographic art,” I answered. Although really, the content would be okay, maybe for a bedroom, I thought.

On the other side of the wall I pushed a red button and grinned in glee when a fucking machine next to me rumbled in to life. “Hee! Awesome.” The security guard chuckled with me.

The museum itself was enjoyable, small, and worth a second visit after new exhibits come through. Far more entertaining were the people, a constantly flowing crowd, mostly my age, maybe a little younger here, a little older there. It seems that in my age group the common reaction to sex is still to point and laugh. I almost don’t know why I was surprised.

I watched the people migrate, yelping and jumping, pointing and calling to their friends. Come look at this, look at that guy, what’s that a picture of, how does this work, are those really robots?” And even That’s disgusting!

And most often of all: Eewwww. Gross.

Oh, right, I thought to myself. Outlaw culture.

As May and I were walking down 6th avenue after we’d been kicked back out into the night, I mused. “Places like that make me remember how strange we really are,” I said to him finally.

“Mmmhmm,” he answered.

The curious thing about being an adult is that I finally understand the subtleties of how the world sees children. I see how we’ve linked maturity and age, though I don’t always see why. And yet, where are the lines being drawn between sexual maturity and emotional maturity? What do we say to the people who’re fully capable of fucking all the live-long day, and probably do, but who still need to snigger and point at genitalia?

The people for whom sex is still a dirty, weird, amazing mystery.

In some ways I grew up so, so fast. Sometimes I don’t know if that’s a good thing.

Standing on the third floor of that museum, Saturday night in New York City, I was unable to shake the idea that I was surrounded by children. I haven’t felt so old in years.

It seems to me that a group of powerless people people cannot expect to have their rights defended solely from outside sources. Unfortunately, Superman does not fly around the globe defending sexual freedom, although I have to say I’d love to see it if he did.

It seems to me that power comes when people listen.

Why do people listen?

Seriously. Think about that. Who do you listen to? Why do you listen to them? I don’t mean to use the word to imply just hearing another person’s words and then responding, using them as a springboard for your own thoughts. I mean the people you take the time to understand when they present a viewpoint that is not your own.

Who do I listen to? I listen to people I respect. Why do I listen to them? Because they’ve proven to me in the past that they deserve my respect.

Logical problem. Redefine the question: why do I start listening?

I start listening to people I find interesting, or who I see as potentially having characteristics I value. I like people who are articulate, smart, excited. Funny. Wise. I like people who talk about things I care about. Everybody’s got a different list of reasons they might start listening.

It seems to me that commonly (not always, but commonly) I listen to people who are similar to me. It seems to me that most of us do this.

So if I, for example, wanted to say something to people who are incredibly unlike me, how would I get them to start listening?

Why else do I start listening? Well, I start listening to people who already hold some kind of power. Academics come to mind. It seems to me that this is common practice as well. We give more power to the powerful.

Beauty is a kind of power; more attention is paid to beautiful people. Money is a kind of power; more attention is paid to the rich. Mainstream education is a kind of power; more attention is paid to the educated.

Yes, of course it sucks. In fact, that right there might be most of the reason our world is fucked over. A self-perpetuating cycle of power based on class, wherein class is defined by values that we do not agree with.

Eileen, what the hell are you talking about?

You know what sparked this weirdly rambling thought process? Susan Wright, media spokesperson for sexual rights, wore a suit jacket to Floating World, a situation potentially involving the press. That’s it. That’s all it was.

I wrote that I like blogging because it partially protects me from agism. I wrote that I like wearing business clothes because I get better service in stores. What this boils down to is that I like being able to control my appearance because it allows me to affect my own power. I have this one particular way to expand and contract my cultural footprint, the space I take up, the influence I have on others.

(That’s right, sorry. This post is going to end up being about fashion.)

At the beginning of Pirates of Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs is trying to get a bank loan. He goes to a bunch of different banks in grubby clothes and long hair, repeatedly failing to get his loan until the day he gets a haircut and wears a suit. Banks don’t like long hair.

As much as it sucks to say it, if I dyed my hair bright blue and started wearing my leather jacket everywhere I went, my mainstream cultural footprint would shrink. This gets handled differently by different people; most members of outlaw cultures choose to say, “Fuck it, lookism is bullshit and I have a right to wear what I want and be respected.” Which is true. Which is why sometimes I do wear my leather jacket, and maybe I will dye my hair blue.

In theory I should have just as much power no matter how I look, because in theory emphatic gestures sweeping aside stupid opinions work perfectly. But practically applied, emphatic gestures just keep failing me.

What I look like says something about me. Maybe it shouldn’t, but it does. “Don’t judge a book by its cover” is still a proverb because people are still doing it.

If I know I get more respect in a suit jacket, even if I think the reasons behind why the respect is being accorded are false and damaging to my community, do I wear the jacket?

Do I reject culture or subvert culture?

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That beach I went to last week? Was clothing optional. And I thought at the time that y’know, it’d be fun. Maybe I’d take my top off. Any old day at the beach.
I’m here to tell you now, clothing optional beaches are the best beach experience ever. It was so decidedly not weird. Friendliest beach I’ve ever been to. Not bunches of attractive girls laying out in the sun and young guys running about looking like ants dressed in Abercrombie. No feeling awkward or fat.

It appears that clothing optional beaches are self-regulating. The people who go are going to be more open minded, less mainstream. They’ll probably have different bodies, or occasional tattoos, or feel too big or too small. (Maybe someday I’ll write about how people farther outside the mainstream definition of beauty seem more inclined to alternative spaces.) Or maybe they don’t. Get anyone naked and there’s always a little something different. So people who show up hoping to ogle, to be surrounded by beautiful naked bodies, instead show up and get a bunch of normal people, all ages, all body types, all happily naked.

Also, you will never realize what a supremely annoying garment a bathing suit is until you take it off.

Going back tomorrow. This time I will get a tan, damnit. Skin cancer be damned, wrinkles be damned. It’s a chronic condition of the human psyche to worry over things. We don’t sit in the light enough. Every year I have to re-teach myself how to lay outside, how to let the sun work in me.

No, not about age play. I enjoy coloring books as much as the next person. About age. Specifically, my age.

Blogging is a wonderful leveler, in that each of us us represented by an arrangement of words on a screen. We invite others to form opinions on us based on the details of these arrangements. We are completely self-edited, faceless if we choose to be, ageless, our own perfect creations of grammar and vocabulary and ideas. But face to face, at a play party, at a club, at a class, over a meeting room table, the range of things I can self-edit drops like a clumsy mountain goat.

I am young. I will do a timeline a bit later in this entry, but I want to make my point entirely clear before I continue to expand upon it. The consistent practice of making judgement calls about a person’s level of experience, the validity of their decisions, or the boundaries of their intelligence based upon their age or appearance is harmful to that person’s emotional well being, and consequently harmful to the wellbeing of the scene as a whole. I’m using topic sentences in blogging now. Look what college does to a person.

I have a good scene friend I met two years ago, at an all night play party the night before my senior thesis review. That night we went out to breakfast straight from the party, and I went straight from there to my thesis show, which lasted all day. Recently he told me that he’d been inspired by me that night because, and I quote, ‘I thought to myself, if this young kid can party all night and go straight to work the next day, then damn it, so can I!”

When I meet new people in the scene, especially older people, and especially older men, there is this glance. I’m probably being overly sensitive here, but I swear they all do it. It’s a mix of appreciation, apprehension, and indulgence. It’s the indulgence that gets my goat, the patronizing smile. Like I’m so cute and young, and gosh, I’ve never held a singletail before, and gee golly, I’d never thought that my crazy personal sex life could be intellectualized . . .

Fuck. Off.

I am 24 years old. I came out to another person about BDSM when I was 18. I had my first scene when I was 19. I joined my school’s kink group when I was 19. I effectively joined the New York scene when I was 21. Grand total, six years.

This isn’t actually such a long time in the scene. My personal development is dependant on my willingness and ability to develop, and I have both willingness and ability in abundance. Most people don’t actually get to where I am, where my friends are, until later in their lifespans. There are many people in the scene who are older than me that I am smarter than when it comes to kink. In many cases I have actually been ‘out’ longer than them. But I get the patronizing looks, and I get the offers for lessons, and they don’t. They have to ask. Perhaps they consider having to ask a curse, but I would consider it a blessing. If there’s one thing that gets me steamed, it’s unsolicited advice from someone I don’t respect.

The misconception that young people are stupid consistently destroys potential growth for both young and old alike. The phrase has one too many words. It’s not “young people are stupid,” it’s “people are stupid.” Some people are stupid, and some people are not, and although more time on this earth means more time to gather knowledge, we do not gague people by assessing the number of facts they have stored in their heads. Although spending more years alive means more emotional experiences to draw from, the depths that those experiences create are not what draws us to people. We get drawn to the platform that supports those depths: a person’s smile, their sense of humor, their interests, their speech, their self awareness.
I was a different person six years ago, and I will be a different person six years from now. So will you. We consistently associate youth with change, but the truth of the matter is that change is ongoing, and never outgrown.

Then there’s the idea that my decisions are meaningless precisely because I’m young, because I’m subject to change. What kind of self-limiting bullshit is that? You know you’re grown up when you don’t change your mind any more? Dear god, let me never reach such a narrow minded, confined and idiotic place in my life.

I can say I don’t like bottoming, and well meaning, patronizing, fuckfaced older folks will pat me on the arm and say, “Oh, well, you never know.” Yes, I want to say to them, I know that I never know. Neither do you. Do you get that part of the equation?

And then there’s the idea that because I’m young I don’t play with x, y or z. I can’t do such and such a scene yet, because I’m not skilled enough. I’ve never heard of this or that or the other thing.
Look. Unless “the other thing” is some sort of reference to a 70s pop star, I probably know what it is. Unless it’s a dance that was popular the year before I was born, I can probably do it. And the gaps in my knowledge do not exist because I’m young, they exist because I’m human. So are you, by the way.
If you’re going to be the kind of person who accords respect to tops based upon how well they know how to hurt you, you will probably like me. I know plenty of ways to hurt people. It is commonly assumed that I do not, because I am young, but in reality the only limitations my age places upon me in terms of play have to do with being broke and not able to buy toys because I still have student loans to pay.

And then let’s talk about the fuckupery of according respect to a scene member based upon the intensity of their play. What kind of logic is that? That’s like saying that you respect The Rolling Stones more than The Beatles because The Rolling Stones are louder. Respect isn’t about what people do in the scene; it’s about how they do it. I have young friends who have been in the scene just as long as me, who don’t get the respect I do because they don’t have the balancing factor of being intense players as a weapon to carve out a place for themselves. God help you if you’re perfectly content with a light spanking now and then. The patrionizing smiles will probably drown you.

The logic behind all of this, of course, is that the longer you work at something the more you learn about it, and the more you learn about it the more you can do with it. The common thought is that as people in the scene grow more they push more limits. They become more intense players, approach more edges. Okay. A) Not everyone into BDSM is looking for edges. Some people, believe it or not, are just looking for a good time. Some people will choose to explore much smaller scopes than other people. And B) This process is deceptive, in that it appears to be time-based, but is actually effort based. Interest based. Self based!

Or in other words, holy fuck, how many times do I have to say it? It’s not what you do. It’s how you do it.

My age does not define who I am and what I do, it informs who I am and what I do. Being young in the scene should not make me automatically unlearned, or flighty, or even attractive. I don’t want to be associated with people who make those judgement calls about me, but I consistently find people doing just that. That harms my personal reputation, it harms my opinion of the other person, and it harms the attitude of the scene. We’re all about respect here. Let’s accord it appropriately.