Ins and (Mostly) Outs of Public Displays of Kink

When time is short I'll occasionally dip into the pool of interesting ideas I've addressed with one correspondent or another over the years and dress it up a bit for posting on RSE. Here's one concerning my antipathy toward public play.

• What happens when the norms/rules are violated in a club? Do others provide sanctions or do some just look away? What if people consistently violate and are sanctioned…will they eventually stop coming because they realize that they aren’t wanted there? Have you ever seen someone who others ignored or sanctioned because they weren't respecting the rules? If so, what happened and what happened to them?

In my checkered experience of the public scene, the answer to this question seems to me highly contingent on the nature, structure and/or conditions of entry into the club. At one of the few surviving public BDSM clubs in NYC there is no vetting for fitness to the club's motif and putative purpose, so culture tourists and "wankers" (men who intrude on scenes while masturbating) are not only common but form the base upon which this club continues to do business.

Crowding by such persons reliably breaks scenes, mine and others. My standard line to unwanted participants (at first politely delivered) is "If you need to know where to position yourself, it's where I'm not hitting you," referring putatively to my reach inside the scene, but offered with a dusting of menace. More than once I've been brought to the point of physical confrontation with a wanker who simply would not keep his distance from my bound partner. In one instance an inebriant ended up being physically removed by myself and three other men (none of whom represented the club), but it is my impression that as a matter of policy no one who pays the cover is ejected unless the disruption has practically evolved into one for the police. I understand the club's position as a business proposition, however, and my choice to attend or not is, like any wanker, mine to make. It's impossible, however, not to conclude that under such conditions I am providing an attraction, and act, as it were, and indeed paying for the privilege of doing so, solely for the club's benefit.

In the interest of gender equality let me also observe that it is not only sexually repressed men who confound public play. Under different public circumstances and on more than one occasion women have approached me in public and endeavored to insinuate themselves by exaggerating their interest and experience, or by just lying. The latter behavior, if not pathological, one can usually chalk up to loneliness or an interest in something other than bondage (such as in one case the mistaken assumption that I was both substantially well-off and of a certain faith). More than a few women I've met have "always been intrigued by bondage" once, it seems, they've calculated my value on some other scale. Finding out I'm married usually puts an opportunistic intrigue down pretty quickly.

A counterpoint to this kind of tedious public dynamic are clubs such as one I used to frequent in Seattle, which fields 7 - 10 dungeon monitors on any given night. These experienced volunteers manage scenes in which perhaps a large number of people have taken an interest, or will assist with complex suspensions or other dangerous situations, and generally make their presence known and felt for the sake of those who can use them to, or, at the very least, to establish a perimeter.

(As an aside, gay bears and leather daddies make, I think, especially excellent DMs; robustly masculine and intimidating on the outside, politic, diplomatic and empathetic on the inside. The queer clubbing community also seems to have an intuitive feel for SM scene energy, irrespective of individual appetite. This reflexive and deferential civility toward concentrated human experience (in this case intimacy) is what I think endows a community with culture. Perhaps we don't use the word "culture" to qualify the straight or vanilla communities precisely because they lack the requisite erotic cultivation and civility to qualify as such. As I am often wont to observe here, BDSM just amplifies who one (or an entire community) really is.)

It helps that the Seattle outfit is a membership club, so all members are thoroughly briefed on the rules, and outsiders such as myself are obliged to either be accompanied by a member upon entry, or to be meeting one there. Even so, outsiders are obliged to sign off on the rule sheet. I'm given to understand anything untoward is very unusual, and that was indeed my experience. Likewise, in a private party setting all of the attendees have probably demonstrated their bona-fides to the host directly or by relation to a trusted source, so rules are largely unnecessary and comity is far more likely.

But, still, there are no guarantees. Once, some time ago, at a private party outside Austin I performed a semi-suspension that gathered a large audience. As the scene played out to the satisfaction of myself and my bottom (a friend's girlfriend), the respectful (and wanker-free) crowd dispersed to reveal two attractive young women, one of whom I had taken note of earlier in the evening, the other giggling cutely and asking if she could be next. I foolishly (and youthfully) said "of course," both flattered and feeling very full of myself on the heels of my moment in the spotlight.

Well, pride goeth before the fall.

Their excitement ended up centering around getting pictures of each other in situ at a BDSM affair, to which they had been invited as decoration (which I would find out presently). I had unwittingly volunteered to be their sideshow cut-out. With very little rope on her my initiate posed and mugged for a few snapshots before she realized she was in fact in the early stages of helplessness, at which point she began complaining loudly that she was uncomfortable, and went from giggly to apoplectic in a matter of a few seconds. Fortunately my creds were good with the organizers and, more importantly, the bouncers, who bounced promptly when the one I had initially found cute started shouting (most uncivilly) "Hey! This asshole's assaulting her!" There were several minutes thereafter of feather smoothing and drink ticket distribution, the effect of which apparently prevented the dialing of 911.

Turns out culture tourists can show up in grubby trenchcoats and shear back-seamed stockings.

The above constitutes the majority of my misfortune in the public scene taken over 20 odd years, so I consider myself actually pretty fortunate. Apart, however, from the occasional class or private tutorial (and, of course the fine art stuff), I've pretty much forsaken public play for these and other reasons, but mostly because I finally got wise to the happy fact that in all areas of life the right sorts of folks seem to show up right in my midst when I'm least expecting it, and with a lot less work and stress. To quote Bertold Brecht:

"What a miserable thing life is: you're living in clover, only the clover isn't good enough"

Notes from the Hermitage

This is picking up on the thread with which I started this blog of a lengthy email interview I did with a sociologist a while back. As I am just returned from travels (during which the last two posts went up automatically) it’s convenient to have something, in effect, already written, as it may be from time to time in the future. There’s still plenty left to this interview, so I’ll be posting the preserved hanks of it at times when there’s nothing fresh in the larder.

I know I will be receiving some energized mail for this post, and I would be indebted to those of you moved to write if you would post your rejoinders in the comments area where they may spur further discussion. Thanks.

***

I am very interested in further information regarding the politics of BDSM organizations. Specifically, I'm interested in the hierarchies of which I have some vague understanding. I'm talking about the individuals (or maybe the areas of interest in BDSM) that appear to reign king/queen and those who would be considered "lesser than". For example, who are the elites of the groups and what kind of people are criticized. I know there is one guy in Dallas who a few others said (in a derogatory tone) that he will let anyone spank him. He walked around just asking any and everyone to do so. So, I saw this hierarchy operating even before I began the interviews. What can you explain to me about the hierarchies that you observe? It isn't at all clear to me, but surely there are groups or individuals who reap greater status than some others.

With some consideration, I'm afraid I'll be of little help to you in this matter of the social hierarchies in BDSM. As you know, I (along with nearly all of my partners) participate outside the established scene. I do rarely link up with a woman who is on the board of one of our local organizations, and have from her some insight about the formally structured hierarchies, but I gather that is not quite your interest.

With said friend I did recently deliver a demonstration for the organization she helps direct, with her as my bottom. It was offered through the bondage special interest group, which is one of many SIGs organized by the membership. Our outing was very well attended, which I assumed originally had to do with the tricky inverted suspension we had advertised, and discussion following went on well past the alloted time. My friend corrected my perception later in noting that the outsized interest was engendered chiefly by my outsider status.

That I do not circulate in the club or organizational scene could add something, I think, to my currency in the NY kinky milieu. The partners whom I've introduced to the scene apparently enjoy greater cache owing, perhaps, to a subtle prejudice in favor of sexually independent and self-actualized women that both women and men in the scene deploy happily (for different reasons, of course). The woman who does not need because she already has is the stuff of which many Hollywood legends are built (think Dietrich, Monroe, & co.). Of course, the attraction is often quickly overlaid with envy or jealousy ere long, but the root fascination remains.

The self-actualization of peripheral pervs is communicated in terms of scarcity, which prompts me to speculate that another prejudice that lurks in the organized scene has to do with joining the organized scene itself, which is ipso facto expressive of a need for partners, and that need conveys weakness. It is, again, a way of wearing who one is on one's sleeve and sacrificing thereby certain tactical advantages. A woman I play with who lives in Oakland, CA used to work for Midori (The Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage, Grove, 2001), arguably the most active BDSM educator and presenter in the world. Observing that San Francisco has a lively leather scene, I asked which venues Midori prefers in her home town, to which my friend replied "Mac, be serious. You know the club scene. If she started showing up in clubs, that'd be the end of her speaking career."

In the BDSM scene, first among sacrificed advantages when one shows up publicly is mystery (a compelling quality, kinky or otherwise). BDSM refracts all manner of power expressed and exchanged between participants; minor defects of confidence or character that might be politely indulged in vanilla social settings (or even celebrated in certain therapeutic contexts) are often amplified in BDSM to the status of pathology when grafted to a particularly bizarre kink (which is, of course, any kink that is not my kink). Thus, as doubtless you've noticed, kinky folks are by and large a very well-mannered lot.

My egalitarian instinct recognizes the unfairness of this, the double standard, as it were, but the biological essentialist in me recognizes the pattern as natural. There is an incentive and opportunity, however, for people who labor with deficiencies in the confidence area to get a grip on their inhibitions and/or awkwardness, for once they have joined they find themselves in a setting where their peculiar fancies might finally find succor. While shyness inside an actual scene may be just the thing the script calls for, shyness in public, non-scene space is looked upon as a form of withholding as it might be in any social setting. There are many incentives to get out of one's own way in the organized scene; like in so many other areas of life, those who give of themselves fully (whatever it is that they have to give) enjoy generally greater status for being happier and freer people, and the same folks tend to attract attention more suited to their liking. In the scene, as elsewhere, givers gain.

That said, and at the risk of generalizing, I recognize the fellow in Dallas of whom you wrote, or I should say I recognize his type. Often, humiliation and rejection is a part of scene energy, and many are the players who will haunt the ranks affirming themselves accordingly. If this fellow's entire MO is to prostrate himself before any and all plaintively seeking intimacy, that may very well be exactly what he needs to get off. He may in fact rue the actual spankings he receives; the contempt and scorn of his peers seems as likely to me to be the instrumentality of his kink as you describe it.

Of course I'm speculating in respect to this case, but if I'm failing to describe a particular Dallas spankee, I'm describing any number of other kinky people. I am acquainted with a fellow who happens to work in my profession, but in a much more public capacity with a large investment bank. He is responsible for some 100+ analysts and makes pronouncements that affect the stock price of companies and the livelihoods of thousands. Last year, he announced that his firm would drop coverage of a large employer that had fallen on hard times, and that same company (upon having seen it's stock price drop by half) sold off a division shortly thereafter. The new European owners promptly laid off all employees (500+) and moved operations to India. My acquaintance is single, straight, handsome, 50ish, and spends the occasional weekend evening as a sissy maid crawling about the floor at private parties having his entreaties to lick women's boots rebuked. He is, of course, invited to these gatherings and a welcome feature of the proceedings. His role, however, could not be much more debased. As cliché as it might sound, his is not an unusual phenomenon; he suggests that this activity brings balance to his life (although his kink did cost him his marriage). For his part, he does not get what I do at all, finding bondage tedious and complicated (not an uncommon sentiment for those who are impatient for intensity). We agree, however, on the pleasures of keeping largely to ourselves.

As usual, you have a windy answer to a fairly straightforward question. In a nutshell, I would have to say that the elites in the formal scene are often not what they appear to be, and that they are often considered elite for not appearing at all.

The How, Who, and Some of the Why

As those closest to me would tell you, the question of "why?" is to me surpassingly unimportant. Any psychic or emotional energy spent on satisfying for "why?" is pure profligacy with respect to getting on with anything worth doing or which may properly be said to be actual living. "Why?" Feh.

However, "why?" is, as perhaps one might discern in this series of posts, central to the academic Weltanschauung. If what academic endeavoring came to was purely descriptive, most of the humanities (including my beloved philosophy) would promptly whither and die. "Why?" is a critical tool in the way of science, with its substantiation of theory and testability of hypotheses (Nietzsche took a very dim view of philosophizing with the scientific method - his preferred tool was a hammer). In word "why?" is rarely to be found, but as subtext it's often comically apparent. See what you think of the next few questions.

• How do you let potential partners know about your BDSM interests?

Since I undertook to have multiple partners, BDSM has been the exclusive interest which prompts a liaison in the first place. In my case, it's given that potential partners are interested in me in the first instance at least as an extension of their antecedent interest in BDSM.

With respect to the particulars of my interests in BDSM (that being principally, of course, the “B”), interested parties are either similarly inclined or have determined that they would like to experiment with bondage to enhance their overall experience or pervy résumé. I have suspended several people for whom the rigors of hanging in rope was challenging in a way they were drawn to, but the attractiveness of being bound purely for its own sake was minimal.

The circumstance of my meeting a new partner usually governs their knowledge of my BDSM interests.

• At what point after meeting a potential partner do you tell them about your BDSM interests?

If they are known by me to be kinky but are not aware that bondage is what I do, then I will query their orientation inside BDSM, which will inevitably be reciprocated. This is usually covered within the first few minutes of discovering we have kink in common.

• Are you “only” involved in relationships where BDSM is present?

Yes, although I am still involved in one relationship that has tempered its kink component and now favors straight sex. She was deeply interested in being tied up in the early going, but has since determined that the greater attraction was my passion for bondage, and it was that passion she found most compelling. In the end bondage itself did not suit her sex style. We still speak of rope with plenty of animation and enthusiasm, and she still enjoys other alternative sexual activities (which I would not characterize as BDSM in nature), but our companionship has tapered off significantly as a function of bondage having fallen out of it.

• If yes, how is BDSM used in your relationship?

In all my current relationships outside my marriage, bondage is the leitmotif upon which the relationship is founded. The interest and passion for rope is entirely reciprocal and the roles are very clearly complimentary, otherwise the connection reliably fades. Although rope is a prominent feature of my history with my wife, the foundation of our relationship is far more diverse and chambered. Our sex life would be unrecognizable without bondage, but our larger relationship is built on the notion of YES, of positive affirmation of the other’s interests and aspirations, and of making the contour of our lives according to our own designs. Thus do I believe that the relationship has neither static or durable aspect, but is an endogenous property of the continual friction of two people expressing without limit, the evanescent spark as it were. We have the pleasure of being fascinated by who the other is and is becoming, again and again, in the process of stoking the fires of aspiration and then walking into them.

The elective challenge of bondage impresses us every time we turn to it as an especially apt metaphor for how we live life. My position in my wife’s life is to make things “difficult” for her, to give her an honest and impassioned reaction to who and how she is, to challenge her assumptions about the world and herself, and to offer informed critique. As an artist this informs her professional activities (she readily acknowledges) to good effect. For her part, she puts down before me the requirement that I be in, acknowledge and accept the power that I am capable of expressing, which I extend profitably into many another area of my life. To paraphrase Anne Desclos in the epigraph to Story of O:

“You ought never have accepted the mantle of deity if you are unwilling to execute the office faithfully, and we all know the ways of gods are not all that gentle, don’t we?”

Before anyone gets it in mind that I consider myself a demiurge in some unique sense for having cited that bit of wisdom, let me say that I believe we are all perfectly capable of manifesting the divine, and that bondage (and SM more generally) is something of a fast track to that quality of experience.