Hard not to Play Games

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, those of us who are old enough to remember -- remember when things were different:

• The only folks who had tattoos drove Harley Davidson motorcycles.
• A cockring was a place where fellas, who looked like they belonged on the set of "Deliverance," brought their chickens to fight one another
• We learned to fuck the old fashioned way -- in the backseat of cars
• Restraint was something that kept some of us from getting pregnant before we got officially married, and bondage was the thing that our parents worried about so that they could hopefully retire someday
• A Magic Wand got Cinderella to the ball in time to meet Prince Charming
• And, of course, vanilla was only one of a relatively few flavors of ice cream

We grew up, made our way, learned what we could about sex and our own sexuality -- usually from furtive conversations and contraband porn smuggled out of parents' stashes and passed from one to the other of us along vast underground kid networks. Our understanding of the whole business was spotty at best, and our coming of age was (most often) managed by jerks and starts -- a little like a frog walking. For those of us who did not fit neatly into the tidy norms, it was an often lonely and desparate journey -- quite often burdened by feelings of shame and inadequacy and fear and rejection. Without readily available information, without role models, without guides, without companions, many if not most, spent long dark seasons believing themselves to be entirely depraved and outside the pale of the society in which they struggled to live.

The opening up of the Internet age changed everything. It made available a huge, interwoven community that speaks to us all and gives us the chance to find each other and talk about whatever comes to our minds. It connects and informs and brings us out of the prison of individual isolation. Now there is "virtual" and "remote" and "on-line" relating that makes it possible for us to share and communicate and befriend one another across time and distance. Nevermind the physical realities.

Whatever any of us can conceive in our minds; it only takes a Google search, and connections and links and advice and directions pour across the screen in vast profusion. None need ever feel isolated or alone or outside the pale anymore. Any knot, any implement, any technique, any device, any fetish, any protocol... All of it is there, only a search engine away -- just type it in and click search.

Sometimes though, in this new and wonderfully informative, sex-positive world, there's a new problem brewing on the horizon. Where it used to be if you had "those desires," you were considered depraved, now if you aren't far enough along the kinky curve, the pressure mounts to keep up, join in, go with the growing tidal wave. We've moved from the isolation and stigmatization caused by an almost total lack of available information, to a new and more insidious kind of malaise: Up-the-Ante-ism, Go-along-with-the-crowd-ism, Everyone-is-doing-it-ism -- a sort of spreading "group think" that spreads with increasing virulence along the cyber neurons of our collective consciousness.

It is hard: hard to know how to find your own voice amidst all the noise. I see people lament the need to stay true to their own focus in this medium, and then struggle with that very goal.

It is hard: hard not to get drawn into a sense of competitiveness that drives the foolish game of measuring "accomplishments" against arbitrary milestones set by someone else rather than internally within one's own relationship. When we get busy looking around to see who did more or lasted longer or has better toys or longer lists of whatevers, we get captured in pride and arrogance and chasing shadows. Up-the-ante-ism takes us away from our centers; away from our focus.

It is hard: hard not to want to be attached to those who get the accolades, who are "popular," who get noticed. We play in the realms of the psyche. To maintain a fully intact, secure self-image, and simultaneously lay one's power and life in the hands of another person takes great strength of character. Ego is a tricky thing. It will get its due if we are not vigilant.

It is hard: hard to find and maintain the voice that speaks our own truth whether anyone listens or not, to focus on the disciplines, to support the community without getting swept away by that same community.

swan