Strange Conversations

Sometimes it gets lonely. One of the realities of this life is that there is often a shortage of "outside the family" folks to talk with. The people that I interact with socially and professionally must, necessarily, be kept entirely in the dark about the truth of my life. It is not that I am ashamed, but revealing the facts of how I live would jeopardize us financially and perhaps legally. So isolation is the price we pay for safety. I am not a social butterfly, but I do, by times, long for conversation and companionship -- for the simple comfort of talking with others who understand what it is to live life as we do.

Lately, I've been spending time in a BDSM chat room. I've never really done the chat room thing before. It has been an interesting experience.

For starters, I'm generally one of the oldest people in the room, if not THE oldest. Sometimes that means that no one talks with me at all. Sometimes. When that happens, it gives me the opportunity to observe the goings on.

I understand that the majority of participants in the room at any point are probably not there, as I am, simply for the sake of companionship and conversation, but good grief! The place is not a "chat room" -- it is a meat market where those who are nominally dominant and submissive are clambering (in a cyber sense) over one another to get to each other. That's just fine, if that's your thing, but I find it oddly distracting and disturbing somehow.

A couple of examples of the exchanges I've been involved in during the bit of time I've spent --

One young woman, who claimed to be submissive, and who stated that she "had" a Dominant, was all over the place, making over every would be "Master" in the room. Most were more than glad to "play" with her -- an interesting phenomenon, but she seemed to not mind it in the least and cavorted gaily from one to another. Finally one enquired if her Master did not mind such antics. she replied that He was not a master -- "just a DOM." I was stunned. No one else seemed to question the logic of her statement, but I wondered at the devaluing of the D/s relationship that she had entered into with the person to whom she referred as "just a DOM."

On another occasion, I was hanging out, just observing. Most of those who were in the room were male. Eventually one of them asked if I were male or female and I replied that I was female. Then he asked if I were submissive. I told him I was The Heretic's slave. He wondered if I had permission to play with others, and I told him, "no -- that I enjoyed talking and came for the companionship." I thanked him, politely for asking. He was accepting of that and did not make an issue of it. Shortly someone else came into the room, and essentially the same conversation was repeated. And then there was a third repetition of the same gambit. This time however, the fellow was not at all accepting of my polite declining of his wish to play. He became angry and beligerant -- "why was it that everyone in the room was already attached and not available?" The room would soon fall to ruin; people would get bored and stop coming, yada, yada, yada... I chose to simply have no further conversation with him -- seemed no point. One other man in the room did comment to me that he had a slave of his own who would have behaved the same way. He told me that he admired my sense of faithfulness and decorum.

It is strange. I don't find it bad or wrong or inappropriate so much as just disappointing and shallow. When I did finally find my way to the BDSM lifestyle subculture, I found (very quickly) people who were living it in real life. I found people who went to public dungeons; or more correctly, private clubs and practiced the arts and disciplines and techniques of the life WITH other people. There were protocols and there were acceptable norms and there were expectations. I "grew up" with a community understanding of decorum that suffused everything. We understood that what we did was sexual and erotic and alternative. We also knew that it was social and interpersonal and communal -- that we relied on and needed one another and that the rules that governed our interactions were important and protected us all. Top, bottom, Dominant, submissive, Master, slave, switch, male, female, gay, lesbian, transgendered -- each of us honored who we were, and we honored one another. In my experience, that is still mostly true in the public scene. Cyber seems to lessen people's sense need for rules or norms. I think we are poorer for it.

swan