A Place To Draw Blood Laughing

The Components Of A Lifestyle

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Today I want to talk about lifestyle.

I am having some trouble sorting out changes in my perspective upon the world, and myself. And my New York friends, the lot of them, are trouping off to Floating World this weekend, an instance that has produced a welter of nostalgia as I reflect on the truly marvelous experiences of last year.

I am certainly not cut off from the kinky community. Sydney’s scene continues on around me. My internet connection continues unabated. But as I mentioned in my last post, a shared sexuality does not my community make.

So when we get right down to the nitty gritty, the reality is that I am isolated now that I’ve left New York City. I’m isolated from my kinky friends and my favorite spaces and my comfort zones.

My reaction to this is akin to exhaustion. I ask myself how much effort I want to spend on building a life here in Sydney? Aren’t I just going to pick up and move again? I had never envisioned our move here as being long term, and I know how quickly a year or two can pass. But “in an hour, there are many days.” I have great swaths of time I try to fill with work. I’m writing a novel. I could kick myself for being so cliche.

(As a side note, I have been stalwartly resisting the impulse to turn this into a blog about teaching, understanding, and perfecting one’s writing. I don’t think my readers would appreciate the switch. “What is all this nonsense on teaching styles, Eileen? Remember the kinky sex we come here for? Come on, kinky sex!”)

As a result of this general ennui, my kinky identity has been going through something of a hibernation. I can envision the kinky part of myself, curled adorably in a large fluffy blanket somewhere warm, sucking her thumb and cradling a singletail to her chest. I haven’t stopped having sex, I haven’t stopped thinking about sex in masturbatory ways. But I have stopped thinking about sex in community ways, about the connections in, and advantages of, communicating with others like me.

So, seeing this disconnect in my identity coincide with my withdrawal from public spaces, I ask: How much of my kinky identity is based not around what I do in the bedroom, but what I write and say and do in public?

I don’t actually know the answer to that question. Do you?

The kinky community consistently picks words to push back against. We’re cranky like that. Among the list that garners resistance is the word “lifestyle.”

But I don’t buy into that particular resistance. I like the word lifestyle, specifically because it implies that being kinky is not just a matter of freaks in their bedrooms. Being kinky crosses those boundaries; I am kinky all the time. My sexuality is a part of my lifestyle, and affects the decisions I make in multiple contexts, not just when I’m flipping through my porn stash looking for something juicy.

In my observations, one of the best ways in which queer communities have gained acceptance is the acknowledgment of queer identities as being connected to lifestyles. Having gay neighborhoods, gay bars, gay-friendly merchants, gay-friendly medical centers. Acceptance trickles down, slowly but surely, as we begin to insist that we can’t just leave our sexualities at the bedroom door.

So how do I maintain that lifestyle in a healthy way now that I’ve moved away from the community that supported it? And more specifically, how do I do that without spending four hours of my life every day surfing blogs?

The Price Of Entry

Thursday, July 31, 2008

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.

16. Nostalgia

Sunday, June 22, 2008

It’s Leather Pride Weekend in NYC right now, and damn, the nostalgia is just non-stop. My first Folsom Street East I had just started going out to public events beyond the boundaries of the tight-knit group of friends I was accustomed to. I remember I wore a green dress and a short leather vest, and I felt about seven feet tall. I watched the drag shows with a glee bordering on fascination, and had my boots shined, those pretty leather boots that were lost a few months later, somewhere in an apartment in Brooklyn.

I miss New York. Tonight I tied May’s hands above his head and ran my finger up and down his body, and then up and down his cock. I did it over and over, for almost two hours, and I watched him twist and pull his arms to his face to bite at the tender skin. As I did, I pressed into him. I swung my leg up along his shoulder and put my foot in his palm, and he wove his fingers in and out of my toes as he gasped. And I thought how glad I am to have him with me.

The Thing About Tiggers

Saturday, January 5, 2008

The events of the past six weeks (damn, six weeks already) have put me off the Internet. I have commented scarcely, posted rarely, abandoned my Scrabble games in lonely binary heaps. Curiously, in this age there is actually such a thing as an electronic hermit.

But, all things pass.

I’ve recently started reading Axe’s blog, ever since I got a few chances to chat with him in person. Axe is a sweet, smart submissive guy here in New York, who writes primarily about his search for a relationship with a dominant woman. I get the impression that his search has morphed into something of an epic quest at this point, spanning several years and causing him to move from the midwest to New York City.

As is often the case for those of us with experientially based learning styles, for me recognizing a thing is not the same as knowing a thing. As such, I often come to long foregone conclusions in my own way, and in my own time. Getting to know Axe has really driven some issues home for me, issues that Maymay and others have been writing about for ages.

Where the hell are all the dominant women? Where are the women like me?

The supposed scarcity of dominant women is bemoaned, condemned, dismissed and mistrusted. And yet, my experiential evidence within the New York scene confirms this scarcity.

And, a less-recognized issue but one that I find personally just as relevant: Where are the other couples in relationships like mine?

I think I’ve remained so persistently blind to this imbalance because addressing this issue demands that I acknowledge exactly how rare I am. I have no real sense of personal rarity in my life; it consistently surprises me that other people are not like me.

Obviously there are multiple issues at work here, which play against one another. The scarcity of dominant women in the scene says many (predominantly negative) things about how scene space welcomes women, and how the dominant sexual orientation is portrayed and understood. The scarcity of femdom/malesub couples speaks to the scarcity of desirable, sane, smart male submissives, which in turn illuminates how the scene marginalizes that brand of sexuality.

Honestly, folks, there’s too much at work here for a single entry, or even a single blog. Here’s my suggestion: for more insight on how scene space “welcomes” dominant women, I refer you to the brilliant, bitter Bitchy Jones. For more insight on how submissive men are marginalized, see Maymay’s entire blog.

Just right now, just here, I want to talk about what the scarcity of dominant women means to me, as a dominant woman in the public scene.

Axe writes not once but twice that Maymay and I are the only femdom/malesub couple he knows. This confirms my experience; we are the only femdom/malesub couple I know as well. The rare dominant women I do know in passing are usually dating dominant men.

I intend to keep my data on a meatspace level during this entry. Yes, I know other dominant women online who are like me. We make similar choices about our identities and maintain similar relationships. And I have online friendships. But, for me, they’re not the same.

The part of my brain that thinks the world should make sense finds it strange that Axe has not met an appropriate dominant woman. He’s a polite, sane, well spoken submissive man: an attractive rarity. He’s good looking, has great kinks, and a charismatic ‘nilla personality.

But it is ranging on impossible for him to find a partner.

I’ve had three long-term relationships with submissive men, at the age of 24. I’m picky as hell, but I can find partners. On the other side of the coin, I’m the first dominant woman Maymay has dated. Before me, he dated three submissive women.

Believe me, I understand how much the imbalance created by the scarcity of dominant women works in my favor. I see how unfair it is to him when Maymay and I compare our numbers of potential play partners.

I understand how desirable my age, gender and orientation are.

There’s a part of me that deeply distrusts this desirability. After all, it’s not particularly reassuring to know that one is the best choice because one is the only choice.

I suspect we all feel, at times, as though we are unseen. Being a young, sexy, dominant woman gives me privileges in the scene that I don’t earn. I show up, and people give them to me. At the same time, being desired (or respected, in a culture that consistently confuses sexual attraction with respect) because of a particular flux of timing, genetics, and orientation makes me feel like a cardboard cut out.

Of course, from many perspectives I have nothing to complain about. Inherited privilege trumps any kind of card I might play about feeling insecure, or unseen, or unwanted. In a world where rights are gained through suffering, yet again, I have no right.

I wrote after I came back from Floating World that I was wrestling with the difficulties of supporting a fluid culture from a standpoint of relative stasis. This was true then of gender, and it’s true now of power.

I firmly believe that power balances shift, that people are capable of embracing multiple roles and defining themselves as they choose, in as many ways as they choose. In short, I believe in the existence of switches.

Right now, however, I am not a switch. And perhaps because I love fluid people, the overwhelming majority of my friends are switches. Most of remainder of my friends are men who top and women who bottom. Within my circle of friends here in New York, there is not a single dominant woman besides me who does not switch. I know dominant woman as acquaintances, and almost never in couples.

The simple truth of the matter is, I have no friends like me.

Where are the other dominant women? Women my age? Yes, in friendship and the exchange of ideas on related experiences, age does matter.

Women who don’t switch, and are doing their best to incorporate that choice into their lives? In an avidly fluid, changeable culture, and possessing a chameleon-like personality, that choice is sometimes very hard for me to manage.

Women who’re smart, and wise, and local? Where are you? Could we have coffee sometime?

Options

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

The morning after this very devastating conversation, I woke up early, drove to the bus station, and started back towards New York. As I was leaving the house the family member who I believed had attacked me the day before gave me a tight hug. “Remember, I still love you, and we’re still going to hug,” they said. I felt numb, and bile rose in my throat.

This is when things started really falling apart. I’m having an incredibly hard time trying to write everything down retrospectively, as it’s now muddled in my head as a conglomeration of ideas rather than a series of events.

On the bus between my home and Boston I took out my laptop and wrote an entry for this blog. I intended to post it as my explanation of why the blog was going down that evening. A piece of it says “I don’t understand how this can hurt so much.” It’s hard to read now; it is far more revealing and far more raw than I now want to be. It was a little miniature catharsis in words.

(Why didn’t I post it that night? Three years ago I would have, in a heartbeat. Perhaps I’ve grown beyond such impulsive gestures. I know I’ve become far more private in my pain. My writing is histrionic and melodramatic when I’m hurting, and somewhere along the line I kept enough sense to know that.)

I cried the entire way to Boston, and even banged my head against the window of the bus for a few long moments.

From Boston to New York I slept.

Coming over the bridge into the island of Manhattan I have never felt more grateful to be coming home. I was dull and very, very tired. And yet, I’d woken up. I had settled back into almost rational thinking.

What do I do? What are my options and where do I go from here? Why did they do this to me?

If a person attacks some part of myself that I hold dear, what should I do? Do I want to keep writing? What does being out mean to me?

My family is incredibly dear to me. And yet, consistently, my wounds trace back to them. Usually I understand this, usually I forgive it as the inevitable push and pull of strong-willed people who love each other.

But this? This was wrongful, this was unnecessary and stupid.

I was suddenly, passionately angry. I wanted to scream. I wanted to yell and hurt and wound and accuse. I wanted to disappear forever and never speak to them again, to punish them for hurting me.

When I got to the bus stop I sank down by the wall near the door and silently fumed. After 20 minutes May walked in the door. As he pulled me in his arms I burst into violent tears.

“I’m supposed to have coffee with Blaise,” he said, once I stopped crying and kissed him. “You should come. Is that okay?”

I nodded. When Blaise came down the street to meet us, all silver boots and that bright, quirky smile, he pulled me into a hug and I started crying all over again. This was becoming a theme.

I explained. We hugged more. We picked up my bags and went to Burgers & Cupcakes on 9th avenue. “I need cupcakes,” I declared.

After a little while of watching May and Blaise talk, ordering food, and pawing through the bags I brought for gifts, I interrupted. “Can we talk about this thing with me?”

“Yea, of course,” May answered. Blaise nodded. “I didn’t know if you wanted to talk about it.”

I shook my head. “I definitely want to talk about it.” I stopped for a moment to eat some cupcake and gather my thoughts.

“Okay, these are my options,” I said, surprised that I even had options. When did I come up with options? “Option one,” I continued. “I give up being kinky, and therefore stop writing about being kinky.”

Blaise gave me an incredulous look and burst out laughing. “Why is that even on the list of options?”

I laughed for the first time in two days. “For the sake of completeness, since they think it’s an option,” I answered.

“But not really,” he stated.

I shook my head and made a motion to brush the idea away. “Obviously, not really.”

“Okay, good,” he answered, still smiling at me.

“Option two is that I continue to be kinky in my private life and stop writing about it publicly. Option three is that I continue to be kinky in my private life, and I continue to write about it publicly. And then, if I take option three, I can either choose to try and explain myself to my family, or to cut off communication with them.”

My throat started closing up again at the end of this list. Blaise looked at me thoughtfully. “Could that really happen? You could potentially just never talk about this with them again, move your blog and pretend it never happened?”

I nodded slowly. “That’s totally possible. In fact, that’s probably what they’d like to have happen.” I turned this option over in my head, and realized how exhausted I am with things that go unsaid.

“There are two separate problems here,” I said. “The first is how to teach them that I’m not the things they say I am, so that we can actually have an okay relationship.”

Sick, immoral, addicted.

I continued. “The second is to address the problem of whether or not I want to be out, whether being out will affect me negatively, how that might happen, and what I can do about it.”

A wry thought crossed my mind. I guess I’m learning negative affects the hard way.

And then, More important than what I’m going to do is why I’m going to do it.

That night when I got home I changed every entry in my blog to “Private.” I posted a cryptic, painful note, essentially uncertain of what I wanted to reveal. I wanted to say that I was in hiding, and I was in pain. In retrospect, I wanted help.

I curled up on our bed and pressed my back into May’s body, and thought how tired I was of being in tears. Can one be with tears, as one is with child? I felt pregnant with tears, full up with them, the subject of an inexhaustible pressure of sadness.

Pressured, angry, and shredded.

Protected: The Girl In The Sky

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Two And A Half

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Today May and I are celebrating our 2 1/2 year anniversary. I wouldn’t usually be one for half-year celebrations, but if the truth be told, we never actually got around to celebrating our 2 year anniversary, six months ago.

I’m home sick with uterine cramps (which yes, can be excruciating), my computer is on the fritz and has been missing for two weeks whilst I tap my thoughts out on a painfully bad keyboard, and it’s raining.

May is here with me, working from home, fiddling away with code. He made breakfast. We took a walk in the rain. Tonight I will make him dress up in a nice shirt. We’ll go out to dinner, we’ll be cute and fluffy and drink margaritas. We’ll come home and watch a movie. I’ll carve my name into his flesh and leave bruises on his skin like perfect painted fingerprints.

It is really just a good, sweet, ordinary day.

Monday evening May and I presented our sexual teasing and denial class for Conversio Virium. In doing this we have come remarkably full circle, as prettily as though Fate had planned it so.

I like telling stories, if you hadn’t guessed. So all right. Here’s the story of how two kinky people meet each other, the story we don’t tell when we’re asked, “So how did you two meet?” We have a prefabricated version for such situations, a bland dry tale about a party and a movie date, crumbs of the truth scattered through it.

In comparing notes, it seems that the two years before May and I actually met each other are a series of near misses. May went to CV regularly, every Monday night, about five years ago, until the tiny size of the group and his increasing indifference to the social scene made him give it up. Three weeks later I came to my first meeting.

A year after that, May was called back for one meeting, to bottom for a singletail demo. I was busy that night, maybe out of town. I missed CV for the first time in months.

I was invited to several scene parties. May was apparently a regular guest at these gatherings. I went to one party, but knew no one and soon moved on to other social groups. May missed that party; one of the only ones he ever missed.

And throughout this time, all over my conversations with people who knew us both, was the question, “Haven’t you met Maymay yet? You’d like him.”

“So I’m told,” I would answer.

Finally success, practically accidental in nature. I was asked, with another member of CV, to present on teasing and denial. This happened through no expertise of my own, nothing more than my obvious enthusiasm when the topic came up in conversation. I knew literally almost nothing. I knew that when I held my lips a fraction of an inch away from a man’s mouth and kept them there, eventually he would moan, beg, strain desperately to close that gap, to make the kiss connect. I knew it made me melt to do this.

A scheduling mistake. Sunday night, three weeks before the presentation, an email to the group. Apparently, teasing and denial was on the docket for the very next day. In a panic and a flurry of email exchanges late into the night, we get it sorted. However, there is no time to send a new email.

The next night I showed up to CV exhausted, caught in thesis frenzy. I had come straight from my studio, and had paint on my hands, my clothes, my body. We apologized to the group. A few faces fell. Maymay’s was among them.

He had come back to Conversio Virium after seeing an email that the group was presenting on this topic, something that he was passionately interested in and had never seen a presentation on. After the meeting he flagged me down and told me how excited he was to see me present in three weeks time. “Oh, you’re Maymay!” I remember saying.

Apparently, we had a long conversation. I say “apparently” because, I shit you not, I don’t remember a word of it. Apparently it was nice. Apparently we hit it off. Apparently Maymay thought I was dandy.

Sometimes I make him tell me all the nice things he thought about me that night, all over again.

Maymay liked me. He decided we should get to know each other. So what did he do?

He seduced me.

That’s right. He seduced me.

The seduction went down, so to speak, at a play party that weekend. Finally, we were at the same party. I watched as in the corner Maymay was kissed and handled by a boy who looked like Peter Pan. I got involved in a hair pulling scene with two friends of mine. I and another girl sandwiched a proper British boy between us on the couch and pulled his hair until his gasps could be heard even over the music. Maymay and the Peter Pan boy found this fascinating, and came to watch.

“What are they doing?” Peter Pan asked our British Boy.

“It’s hard to explain,” he answered.

Maymay sat down next to me, quietly. He leaned in, said hello.

“Hello,” I said. “You have amazing hair.” He did have amazing hair, long, fiery curls to his shoulders. He leaned in farther.

“Can I pull it?” I asked. He nodded. I ran my fingers through it, tracing the back of his scalp.

In the most forward gesture he had ever made, May leaned over and snuggled his head into my lap. He closed his eyes and let out little cries of pleasure as I pulled his beautiful hair.

I left the party at 5am. Before I climbed into bed that night, I checked my blogs. May already had an entry up, and a little stab of disappointment went through me to see that I was not in it. Oh well, I thought. At least I met him.

Silly me.

The new date for the teasing and denial class came rushing toward us. My presentation partner and I were struggling over how to create a demonstration. I mean, really, how do you demonstrate sexual teasing and denial in a space that prohibits not only sexual contact, but the display of genitalia? Eventually an idea was formed. We emailed Maymay, and asked him if he would consider being a demo bottom for the class. I knew from our previous conversation that he owned a CB-3000. (Why I retained that piece of knowledge and none of the rest of the conversation, I do not know.) Would he be willing, we asked, lock himself in his chastity belt for a week and give me the key?

His email response was long and excited. Its basic contents: “Hell yes!”

We tossed emails back and forth with the rapidity of similar minds. The meeting, Monday April 11th, came and went. I strung the key on a chain around my neck. The next day he emailed me again. A movie? Sin City was playing. Maybe we could . . . ?

Hell yes.

Thursday night we met for dinner and a movie. I remember recognizing the halo of May’s hair in the neon glow of 41st street.

We started talking and didn’t stop. After the movie we talked so far into the night I offered him my bed to avoid a 4am subway ride. The next morning we had breakfast. We talked. We took a stroll. We talked. The stroll turned longer; eventually we had walked eight miles in a vast loop around the city. We could not stop talking. Friday night I had an 8pm show to attend. He walked me to the theatre. At 7:55, seeing him go was almost painful. In the past 24 hours we had only stopped talking for the brief time the movie was playing, to sleep a few hours, and for a bright stretch of time in the night, before bed. I thought on those bright moments as I watched him walk away.

That night I had seduced him.

Exhibit A

Monday, October 8, 2007

In some ways I am a very bad New Yorker. I’ve never been to the Statue of Liberty. I’ve never set foot in Rockerfeller Center. I’ve never visited half of the places I’d like to, half the places I’m supposed to. I am holding on to my New Yorker title by tenuous threads.

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.

The Most Subversive Post I Have Ever Written

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

So. It seems to me that outlaw cultures benefit from having the power to speak to and influence more mainstream cultures, said influence then being our defense against attack and our method of creating a space for ourselves.

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?

A Grove Of Aspen Trees

Thursday, August 16, 2007

(Alternately titled: “Why would you want to talk about scene politics, Eileen? Don’t you know that scene politics are a sucking vortex? Why would you do this to yourself?)

Occasionally I step back and simply have to marvel at how the New York scene affects my personal development.

Lady Lubyanka wrote a complex post about the theory of inclusion within the scene. In a nutshell, it argued that the scene should be all-inclusive. This, I agree with.

Today I want to talk about misplaced inclusivity.

I want no, claim no, and hold no power over defining who’s kinky and who’s not. Personal identities are precisely that: personal. I will not stand for this bullshit about not being a real this or a proper that. (Although I will encourage the conscious use of words and personal vocabularies to avoid miscommunication.) You want to be kinky? Awesome. Go do that.

But there are plenty of people who want to do things a certain way. Who want to mold the scene, shape it. I’ve got news for you; you cannot mold a scene. You cannot teach a culture. You can only teach people. It happens online, it happens in real life. We fight, we expound, and we attempt to educate.

(I’m don’t intend this post to get down and dirty in the battle lines where fantasy and reality wave their heavy leather flags, trenches built from abandoned sex toys, officers scurrying about in tattered chaps as words and ideas are thrown wildly in the air.

Troops, where are the projectile strap-on launchers? Did no one remember the projectile strap-on launchers!?)

It’s very clear from reading this blog that I have some personal standards about the kinds of kinky people I’m interested in attracting and socializing with. If I put forth ideas in this blog that you feel don’t apply to you, you are free to move on. The Internet is a big place; if you don’t have a personal playroom, go make one. There’s plenty of real estate.

Both online, and in the public scene, the community splits. Online we split into camps of thought. In the public scene we split into cliques and organizations. And people consistently rail against these splits: Why can’t we all accept each other? Why can’t everyone be welcome? Why isn’t the scene inclusive?

Kink is naturally inclusive; all personal identities are naturally inclusive. You print your own membership card. This is obvious.

But if your goal is to do more than simply exist and be kinky, eventually you will have to deal with other people. And other people will form social networks based upon ideas and mutual interests. There is nothing wrong with this. I tried to explain to May a few nights ago that I see exclusivity in the idea of organizations with specified cultures. I kept saying that groups of people practice exclusivity by attracting and encouraging only those people with similar wants and ideas, and May kept saying over and over, “You’re using the word ‘exclusive’ wrong.”

He’s right. I was using it wrong. I’m not being exclusive by arguing my ideas of best practice. If you don’t like my arguments, you can go somewhere else. I’m inclusive, in that all are welcome to come and listen to me. But I’m not going to try and convince you that I am the all-inclusive scene. I’m not.

A group or organization, when putting forth its views and ideas, says it’s trying to educate others. Unfortunately, we have the idea of education all mixed and fucked up with the idea of politics. The personal is political. You think education is the goal?

Education is supposed to be unbiased.

Education is almost never the goal for these groups. Recruitment is the goal.

My experience with the scene is not online. It is in New York City. So let’s talk about that. It’s all interrelated, in the end.

(Cue the sucking vortex.)

So let’s leave aside the people who’re kinky only in the privacy of their homes, the kinky people who choose to structure their lives without seeking out a community of other specifically kinky people. Let’s say you’re new to kink, you’re in New York City, and you want to join the community. The public scene. You want to get some education, maybe meet some interesting people.

Well, you’re fucked.

Or maybe you’re not! Maybe, miraculously, the first meeting you find on Google and get up the courage to go to is perfect and the people are brilliant and you float off into a happy cloud of kinky sex and discussion and life has never been better. But I doubt it.

(Right now, I want to talk about the responsibilities of organizations that wish to educate. May often contributes the excellent point that the responsibility for education is not solely in the hands of the educators. Many people forget this; we assume that educational organizations will do the work for us. Well, as I’m about to spell out, these organizations cannot be trusted with your complete education. You must educate yourself. I would like to see the culture of education around BDSM improve; right now I’m talking on only one side of the issue. While I do this, remember the other side.

You must take responsibility for educating yourself.

Got it? Good. Moving on.)

We, as a community, are suffering under the illusion that we are a single community. We are not. We are a series of organizations with widely varied, self-selecting memberships. We’re all interested in basically the same thing, i.e. pursuing activities, partners or relationships outside the cultural sexual norm. But the attitudes, orientations, and purposes of the organizations are individualized. We exist in a naturally occurring state of cultural pluralism.

(This is a good thing to keep in mind when trying to educate oneself. You can write it on a little index card to look at when you get depressed or feel confused. “Don’t forget cultural pluralism!”)

Almost every single organization in New York advertises itself as absolutely, consciously inclusive of all comers. All, so it’s said, are welcome. But in practice, the implications of these messages of inclusivity are also followed through to convey that each organization is the all-inclusive community.

These organizations suffer under broader political agendas. Being a part of the New York scene is not about learning new things about kink, or meeting new people. It’s about what organization you belong to. This will shape everything about your experience. Being the leadership of a group means how many members you have. How many new fresh faces you can attract. How many parties you throw, how many famous presenters you have speak.

Like kinky people are a limited resource. As if there aren’t more born every fucking day. Like kinky people are a commodity, and everybody’s out for a market share.

Here are a few ways in which this destructive political struggle plays out:

Point the first: Organizations quickly learn that they cannot rely on other organizations to refer interested members to their meetings. The best (and pretty much only) way to learn about the existence, interests and meetings of organizations is through existing members. Why is it that after four years in the community I only learned that MAsT existed five months ago?

(See the note above about educating oneself. This was partially my own fault.)

Point the second: New people are actively, aggressively, inappropriately recruited to join groups that don’t provide the most ideal atmosphere for exploring their interests. Why did one of the lead members of a predominately M/f group practically fall over himself to offer May and I free memberships?

Point the third: The community accpets the misguided notion that being a member of a single group becomes the whole of one’s public scene identity. You are a TES member. You are a DSF member. You have aligned yourself with this, that or the other political force. Why was May put in the ludicrously awkward position of being “outed” as a TES member when he went to GMSMA?

(As Maymay would comment, it smells a little “One True Way” in here.)

May related to me a brief overview of the “message” he was given at his first novice meeting of TES. “There are a lot of bad kinky people out there,” he was told verbatim, “but we’ll protect you.” Which, in his case, turned out to be a massive, laughable lie. He was attacked, marginalized, and made to feel unwelcome. His ex-girlfriend was welcomed with open arms. (I hate to speak so harshly against one group specifically, but there it is.)

Why was he not given a positive culturally pluralistic message?
Oh, you’re interested in M/s dynamics and like group discussion; have you checked out Masters And slaves Together? Or, hey, your attitude reminds me of this guy I know who’s part of the New York Boys of Leather. Maybe you’d like it there. Seems from your preferences you might enjoy getting to know the folks over at Gay Male SM Activists. Or the Lesbian Sex Mafia. Or maybe Dom/sub Friends is a place you’d feel comfortable in? Or hey, you’re college age; have you ever been to Conversio Virium?

Because each organization is only actively advertised by its own members, because each organization has a political interest vested in keeping new people within its membership, and because each organization views the identity of scene members as essentially singular, there is no one at novice groups saying things like this. There is no avenue to self select out of or into appropriate groups.

The result? A lot of frustrated, stymied, formerly hopeful people who walk away thinking “the community” just isn’t right for them.

The people who never come back after their first meeting are bewailed. Lamented. “How, how can we keep people from leaving so quickly? Why don’t they feel welcome?” Each organization pushes to become more inclusive. More welcoming. The inevitability of self-selection, the reality of differing standards, the essential nature of critical mass in the exchange of ideas, all of these are ignored in the knee-jerk model of misplaced inclusion.

The community is inclusive. A single organization is not the community.

We need to accept that we do not have all the answers. We also need to accpet that not having all the answers is okay, as long as we have an idea of where the answers might be.

Organizations that stress inclusivity do so because they don’t wish to define a certain membership. But a self-selecting group of people is not the same as a group of people who meet predetermined standards. We naturally form social circles and organizations around similar modes. The process is organic. It is also inevitable.

The reality is that not everyone who comes to a CV meeting will be satisfied. If we’re truly an organization that fosters and encourages new members, an organization that educates, we should be able to recognize that. We should be able to encourage people to leave with as much grace as we encouraged them to enter. We should provide routes and resources that lead away from us.

When you live in New York, there is always another place to go. (God, I wish this was the rule and not the exception!)

The reality is that not everyone who reads this blog agrees with me. I did not design this blog with the intention of educating; I designed it with the intention of creating a self-selecting social circle in which to exchange ideas. If within this process I become a resource by which others learn a little something here and there, that’s great.

But if I am the only resource by which you form your ideas, I would like you to stop right the fuck now. Go read some opposing viewpoints. Educate yourself. Consciously self-select your social circle. It might not be mine. I value intelligence above sex appeal. I actively encourage appropriate arrogance. I wear leather pants, hate gender superiority, and like Indian food. Maybe you don’t. Maybe we have bad conversations. I’m fine with that. We’re all still kinky bastards.

There is always an opposing viewpoint. There is always an alternate camp. Don’t forget cultural pluralism.

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