BDSM Conference Reflections

We are home after the Winter Wickedness experience. We attended one workshop Saturday about how to Top as a Shaman (or such) facilitated by a young woman who aspires to be Miss Leather USA or some similar title. We went out to dinner at a very upscale restaurant and had the most wonderful (and extravagantly expensive) restaurant experience.....I think perhaps ever. We savored every bite and the food was as superlative as the bill was extravagant. BTW, half way through the dinner our waitress asked if we were attending "the conference." It became clear she knew exactly which conference we were attending when she shared she had a gay friend who was very involved in the local chapter of NLA. When we left we told her we were going back for t to do her shift as dungeon monitor, and that when that was done we would play. She commented, "Now there's something I don't hear every night:)" We found when we did get to the dungeon we lacked energy just as extremely as we had felt hugely energized Friday night. We didn't play, returned to the room and were in bed by a very civilized 11:30 PM. How do you know when you are aging in "the Life?" It is when you sit in a dungeon watching people, all of whom are younger than you, play, and the second night, you decide you need your sleep more than a trip to the St Andrew's cross:)

I have numerous thoughts, reactions, and observations about the experience, and want to document them before I lose them. I feel a little like when I underwent Jungian dream analysis and had to write down my dreams on a notepad as soon as I awakened so that I didn't lose them.

This conference was well planned, executed, and attended (about 400 attendees -- I suspect the largest turn out for one of these in Ohio to date.) From what I hear many other conferences have struggled recently due to the economy. This one thrived despite the current economic environment. They managed the "crisis" created by the right wing Christian nuts well. NCSF was a great resource in providing expertise in media relations and other technical assistance in that regard. There was a conference in D. C. at the time of the Presidential Inauguration. The same right wing organization that went after closing down Winter Wickedness "exposed" it. It was cancelled. The Winter Wickedness organizers and the BDSM community succeeded in thwarting and surviving their assault when other conferences have failed.

There were many younger people at this conference, and a few with obvious disabilities, and several African Americans. For years young people at these conferences (and often newbies) were in their early forties. It is wonderful to see dozens of people in their twenties and thirties attending and participating. I think this is a very healthy development for our community.

The BDSM community continues to be the great refuge of the morbidly obese. I would venture a guess that 50% of conference participants had BMI's of 3 or higher (including t and I of course.)with some in the 4 and 5 range. I am likely more sensitive to this because of our upcoming surgeries. It is always good to see though, that these are people who accept themselves for who they are, are active, very much leading healthy sensual erotic lives, and generally having fun and feeling good about themselves.

It is increasingly difficult to be "lectured" in classes about the how to's of The Life or BDSM practice by people who were likely in their Junior year of high school when we began in The Life. That one class we attended was like that. The future Miss Leather America summed up her input for us with "I'm really pretty lazy. I really wouldn't spend two hours beating someone unless it was going to end in our both having this wonderful warm feeling of intimacy and union when it is over." (I know I used quotes, but that is really a paraphrase). The class should have been named, "Service Topping 101 with a Neo-Pagan twist." It was clear many of the newer and younger folks were sucking up this wisdom and taking it to heart so they too could do it "right." The presenter explained this was based on her extensive (11 years) experience as a switch, but that in "all that time" she still had things to learn. Well damn -- eleven years huh! If it takes you two hours to beat them you are likely doing something a little wrong unless you are really attempting to have some sort of BDSM marathon. If I beat you it will be because I enjoy beating you. I may feel that it is also important to me for you to come out of it feeling good. I may feel it is important for you to come out of our session feeling really punished. If we wind up with us both feeling tremendously bonded, connected, flying, at one with each other, in subspace/Topspace, and on and on.........well that's icing on the cake. But I enjoy the hell out of beating you. If not I wouldn't do it. Sometimes I enjoy it more if you really hate it. The S in BDSM stands for sadism. It refers to someone who enjoys inflicting pain on others!

She also talked a lot about the creation of "sacred space." This whole sacred sexuality thing has gotten to be a huge topic of group think in the community in the last few years. Now often I find myself just shutting off when folks go into the sacred space thing. She described a number of practices that make absolute sense in terms of setting up a scene........practices which have been practiced by men and women (or same sex partners) forever. It used to be called something like preliminary foreplay. Now lo and behold, it is called creating the sacred space. According to our "guru," one of the most critical aspects of this is ritually expressing the intentionality of your scene in preparing for it. I joked as we discussed this last night, that at the next conference we attend I am going to get some knee-high rubber waders, and when we identify the play station we are going to use, while t gets swan ready and unpacks the toy bag etc., I will put on my new "sacred space boundary setting rubber wading boots" and goose step about the perimeter of our station....perhaps three times in each direction, and then stop at the four corners of the compass and do Tarzan Chest Thumping and yelling. Then all the good energy will be there with us and we can proceed to play in our sacred fucking space.

Years ago I attended a conference and there was a BDSM 101 class there and someone was waxing eloquent as he explained to the relative novitiate practitioners there the huge value of post session "after care." There was a very much older practitioner there, who had attended I suspect, to see what it was that went on in BDSM 101 classes. During most of his time in "The Life," there would have been no conference ergo no BDSM 101 classes. If you learned the life in his experience it was via the school of hard knocks.....well..uh hard spanks and lashes. At the end he looked bemused, and said, that in his practice, after care was when you let the submissive out of restraint and said, "Clean this shit up, bitch." The generational evolution of the BDSM community and practice continues. I am getting to have been at this long enough to perceive the evolutionary changes.

In that regard, the play at this conference was way different. The last few years in the dungeons it has seemed like 50% to 2/3 of the play was single tail flogging. There were almost no single tails to be seen and none on sale in the vendors' area. There also was a minimum of spanking / paddling related play, whereas in the past that has certainly been the majority of play. Play has become more erotic/sensual touch, electro-torture, and flogger play. Although among the flogger players the whole Florentine Flogging craze seemed to have passed as well. There were people with one flogger or two but few using Florentine technique.

The evolutionary trend toward stand & model SM continues. The first night we watched a truly lovely young couple come into the dungeon. She could have been a fashion model, and was wearing about $500.00 of the finest dungeon fetish fashion wear. She looked like she was right off the cover of J. T.s Stockroom Catalog. She had a handsome young man in tow, whom she hooked up to a St. Andrew's Cross amidst a good bit of folderol (likely creating sacred space). She then proceeded to caress and fondle his back for about an hour and a half amidst at times hugging him, grinding her body against his, and occasionally (very occasionally) rearing back with her hand and in slow motion landing a pretend (likely sacred) spank on his ass. She would stop occasionally and literally pose (variously) for a while, so everyone could benefit from her loveliness and her performance. Nearby there was a guy who had an attractive young woman tied to a rack with a lot of chain on it. He was flogging her very slowly with what appeared likely to be an elk flogger. Each time he would hit her (maybe once a minute) she would scream an agonized shriek and writhe back and forth for 30 seconds or so before settling down to quiet whimpering and cringing. If you have ever been hit with an elk flogger you know it is virtually all thud, no sting, and well..........I just wonder what's wrong with these kids today:)

One of my great recollections of this event will be that my lovely Teresa played dungeon monitor wearing her killer rabbit slippers that we purchased when we attended Spamalot. She had people laughing all over the place at this D. M. with her killer rabbit slippers. With all this current stuff about play being a quasi-religious service of some sort, it was great to have her demonstrating that she was having fun...frivolity.

I loved our play the first night. The first night, the energy was infectious (hmmmmm.........I wonder if it was sacred?) We'd all had long days and had not gotten into our room in the hotel until 10:00. We almost just went to bed but then decided to go look at what was going on. We were in the dungeon for about a half hour before I knew I just had to beat swan. I sent her back to our room (no short distance) to fetch our quite heavy toy bag. She returned and, magically, the perfect play space opened before us. t and swan herself participated in restraining her on the cross, and we had a quite intense session with multiple implements, with swan in tears, and taking it all wonderfully. She still bears a good bit of marking from that play (which took a good bit less than two hours.) She wound up somewhat drained, and a good bit loopy, signifying there was some endorphin intoxication that had been achieved as well:) Throughout her sister-heart, t had supported her, fetched me implements, gotten her aftercare supplies, and collected implements and repacked the toybag. They were both excellent as they could have been, and we went off to bed pleasantly relaxed, connected, and proud as a family at where we are in our place in The Life.

We fully understood the need for the black polyurethane that covered all windows in the hotel and the rule that all drapes had to be closed at all times, considering the community stir and media attention the event had drawn. Hell, if this same flap had occurred regarding an event in Cincinnati, as fascist as the police and local prosecutors are, I suspect the event would have been raided and everyone hauled off to jail, whether charges could have been made to stick or not. On the other hand, some of the benefit of having the event moved to a nicer hotel, rather than the relative flea bags where previous Central Ohio events have been held, in terms of community self-concept, was lost in the need to have everything so carefully hidden. Hell, throughout the event we looked like folks in London during the blitz trying to make sure no light got out.

Oh yes and we/I bought toys. One of our all time favorite vendors is Leather by Danny. We have found his restraints to be the best there are, and to last a lifetime. He was there, as I think he has been at any BDSM event I've ever attended anywhere. I bought two unique lexan paddles he had: one translucent red, and the other opaque black with flame design etched into it. Then in his mark down box there was this leather strap. It is your classic 'warm-up strap." It is very well made of colorful leathers (Danny is a superb leather craftsman.) It looks imposing and has a great loud crack it makes when it is slapped. It imparts little pain. It is the kind of strap submissives and porn video producers just love. And then there was the find of the trip. One of the few restraints we've never acquired was a spreader bar. I've often thought about getting one but never have. They are often expensive and I didn't really know what I was getting. Lo and behold Danny went into a sales pitch about his latest and greatest new product........The Leather By Danny spreader bar. It is uniquely engineered to accommodate his ankle cuffs (good in that all of our cuffs are his) with original Magnetic pins that "jump magneticaqlly" into place, once you have hooked the D-ring on the restraint to the the bar. Then there was the deluxe model that can be adjusted to a variety of widths (out to quite wide). They are beautifully crafted out of wood. He had one in particular that was his proto-type that was made out of wood salvaged from an old building at Harvard University (Danny is a Bostonian.) We bought it. It was a prodigious investment -- $160.00, but way better than any spreader bar restraint we've ever seen. And Danny stands behind his stuff forever, although that's not difficult. His stuff lasts forever so far in our experience. Oh yeah I bought two three foot long grommeted restraint straps too. I just felt I needed more. I think Danny realized as we left how much we'd spent with him, and what good customers we'd been with him for many years. As we were leaving the vendor area, he came and found us and gave both t and swan lovely leather wrist bands stamped "slut." Now there's a vendor who just knows the sweetest thing to say to the ladies in his customer base:)

We went to this event with mixed feelings, a lot due to what we've been dealing with in our lives. During the event I found swan, who was pretty determined she wasn't going to like this before hand, singing and dancing and smiling. And I've told you how t had fun just blasting everyone with frivulous energy in the dungeon with her killer rabbits:)

In "sacredness:)"

Tom

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.