Coming out of the kink closet, pt. 2

So Jack is thinking about coming out to his mom.

I totally understand this, as I think we're feeling a lot of the same things in respect to people who know/people who don't know.

I know I feel kind of cut off from people I'm close to but don't talk to about this sort of thing. My best friend from college, someone I used to talk about every single thing with, doesn't know. And I feel like I'm isolating myself from her, even though I know I can trust her and she's seen me crying over dumb stuff and falling down drunk. I know I need to talk to her about this, but I'm having a hard time finding the way.

What makes me even more upset than the few close friends I haven't gotten around to telling yet is that I believe in kink. I know that sounds really silly when I say it like that, but I believe in being sex-positive and talking about sex and that talking about kink is part of that. Whenever I see a movie that portrays BDSM in a negative light, or read infuriating, biased blog posts on the subject, it makes me want to tell everyone that I'm kinky. Because I feel like the best way to counter all the misconceptions and stereotypes and shaming is to actually talk about things.

The problem, of course, is that I'm terrified of my parents finding out. My parents are generally pretty liberal, and don't generally get upset over sex-related stuff...unless it also involves me. Their take on sex seems to be that everybody does it, except their little girl. And beyond that, they seem to think that a lot of kinky stuff is, well, kind of silly. And the thought of my parents knowing and judging me and possibly disapproving makes my skin crawl. I love my parents, I think they're really cool most of the time, and while I don't think they would disown me I can't help but think of the people I know who haven't spoken to their families in years because they came out or were outed as kinky.

So that leaves me feeling stuck. Because you can argue that while BDSM is something between you and your partner and, like your favorite sexual positions, not necessarily something to share with anybody and everybody, that argument doesn't work as well when...well...it's not something you do in your bedroom with your partner. What if it's something you do in a bar twice a month with your friends? What if it's actually how you know most of your friends? I may have gone to a sports bar for beer and wings, eaten at an Ethiopian restaurant for the first time, and gone to a Korean bakery in the past week (as well as going to a play party) but I did all these things with friends I made in the scene.

So yeah...I pretty much don't know what to do. I'm lucky in that I'm not at risk of losing my job or my nonexistant kids or anything like that if I did decide to come all the way out of the leather-lined closet, but I still cringe at the thought of my parents finding out. I just...I want us to be in a world where this wouldn't be a big deal. But if it weren't a big deal, I wouldn't feel as much of a need to talk about it, to try to counter the misconceptions.

I don't know what to do.

A Note on Etiquette...

There's one particular group I know that seriously emphasizes this particular aspect of scene etiquette, and I think it should definitely become a more widespread thing: Don't assume anything.

Basically, don't assume anyone's role or preference or relationship with anyone. Let me repeat that last part, for emphasis: Don't assume anyone's relationship with anyone.

So, for example, if you see a scene in progress and the top is say, using the rubber grip on her riding crop to rub between the bottom's legs, and the three people involved in said scene graciously allow you to join in, don't fucking assume you get to put your toys between the bottom's legs as well.

Maybe it's just because the people I generally play with are above average communicators, but it seems like a pretty common sense thing to ask before you touch someone's crotch with anything. I don't care if it's just your toy and not your hand, fucking ask. Ask the bottom, or, hell, ask the top who clearly has an established relationship here. But definitely, definitely, do not start touching the bottom's crotch with your toys without talking to anyone first, and doing it when the top is obviously distracted by something outside the scene makes you look like a creepy predator-type.

You know, just to pull an example out of the air. A completely fictional example.

Seriously, people, what the hell? Who does that?

Another Post About Rope

Jack and I went to a rope bondage class the other night. Now, as I've mentioned in an earlier post, I think rope is awesome, and I definitely enjoy being tied up. I really like being more or less immobilized and I like the sensation of rope (especially hemp!) against my skin. It's a fun, fun, super-hot thing.

What I didn't count on is how much I enjoy tying up other people.

It's actually not that surprising. I've always had kind of a knack for three-dimensional stuff - jewelry making, sewing, sculpture. When we covered knots in my Stagecraft class in college I was surprised at how easily I figured all of them out. The thing is, when I'd thought about rope bondage in the past, I didn't think of it as an artistic and creative outlet--I thought of it pretty much entirely as a sexual thing. And, y'know, I figured if you're tying people up, being a "rope top" as the kids say, you're, well...a top. And I am pretty emphatically a bottom in pretty much every area of sex and kink that I participate in.

But this is totally different. Jack had been saying for a while that he thought I'd enjoy tying, so at this class he insisted I try it. And I was pretty much instantly hooked. Seriously, all I did was a relatively simple two column tie (there's video of how to do one of those here, though I learned it differently than it's shown in the video) but it was kind of fascinating to me, to understand that by putting the rope there, then there and through there I had created this nifty little tie that held Jack's wrists without tightening around them. It looked pretty, too.

It just made sense to me, in the way that sewing makes sense. I am not the neatest seamstress in the world, but putting a garment together, knowing that by attaching this shape to that one and adding this piece like this, I'll be putting together a three-dimensional piece of clothing that fits a human body is really exciting to me. There's this point I reach when I'm making something where it transforms from flat cut-outs of pattern pieces into something recognizable as clothing, and I like that feeling a lot. Finding where to put the rope to tie someone the way I want uses the same part of my brain and it gives me that same sense of satisfaction--I made this!

So yeah...totally not a sexual experience, but so satisfying in a different way. I like rope. I'm starting to find that I like tying people up.

A Bunch of Really Random Thoughts

-Jack said back in January that one of his goals for 2010 was for me to be fisted. I'm pretty sure he was mostly joking, but the more fisting comes up in my life the more intrigued I am. I think I'm now on board with the fisting mission.

-I've discovered that I put way too much pressure on myself for things to be awesome. If I go to any event, whether it's a play party or to a bar with my college friends, with really high expectations, I'll freak myself out so much that I end up having a terrible time. I'm working on not having expectations, but just letting things happen.

-I think How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship, and Musical Theatre by Marc Acito is the most sex-positive novel I've ever read. I may actually write an entire post on why and how cool that is, but I can never think of a good way to bring it up.

-I feel like I have an identity crisis every few months. This has been going on pretty much my whole life, except maybe briefly in high school. I never feel like I quite fit in anywhere, and I wish I was more comfortable with that and didn't feel the need to label myself.

-I can't talk to my parents about sex at all unless it's as a very abstract concept. Whenever they mentioned it to me in the past, I got horribly embarrassed and awkward and froze up. These days, the reverse is true--they freeze up. I find this weird, since my dad once said, in response to a TV show, "Anyone who says they've never touched themselves is either frigid or lying." I feel like my parents are probably pretty cool about sex, except when it comes to me.

-I now have as much trouble watching movies that reference kinky sex as I used to watching film adaptations of musicals or costume dramas. Instead of yelling out "OMG! They cut one of the best songs!" or "OMG! The sleeves on that dress are completely wrong!" I'm now going "OMG! They just pierced his nipples with no real consent!"