Aaron97

Join the club

By Mistress Matisse



I get avalanches of e-mail from novice kinky people, and they're often asking me the same question: I'm kinky?how do I find a partner with similar tastes? I have answered this question so many times that if I had a concussion and you asked me how many fingers you were holding up, I'd probably start telling you how to find BDSM resources where you live, what kinds of social events are generally easy to access, and how to get involved with the BDSM community.

Some people take the information I give them and run with it, and I've observed something about them: They're usually different in some way aside from being kinky. Like pagans, or poly people, or?especially?queer people. Queer people have often already gone through the process of finding and participating in the queer community, and they know that when you have a nonmainstream sexuality, you're going to structure some of your life choices around it. So my advice makes sense to them.

You know who often are not very accepting of my advice? Straight people. I don't just mean heterosexual; I mean people who are down-the-line "normal"?except that they're kinky. These folks don't yet understand what it means to be sexually other. "Oh, no, no," they say. "I don't need to go to public events. I don't want my whole life to be about this. It's my private business. I just want one partner to do it with."

Well, if you're just a very occasional slap-and-tickle player, this may be true. But if being kinky is hard-wired into you the way it is into me, then you need a community. Because you may not think your kink defines you, but I assure you that kink-negative people do. And there are a lot of them. Keeping significant aspects of your life a close secret is more work than you think. Lying once or twice is easy. Lying every day of your life, over and over, and never slipping up?that's tough.

I'm not saying it's impossible. I've been editing conversations with my family for my entire adult life, and it works because they don't want to know just how kinky I am. But I would have gone crazy if I hadn't found a community of people with whom I could be my complete and unabridged self. It's important to have a place where you can experience acceptance of who you are. It recharges your ability to keep the mask on in other parts of your life.

So is your kink your private business? In one sense, yes. But other people can decide to make it their business. Aside from nosy friends and family, the scenarios in which your sexuality suddenly becomes of interest to, say, a cop or a CPS worker or a judge are too numerous to name. Hopefully that won't happen to you, but there are smaller stresses to being a sexual minority, and like-minded friends get you over those rough spots. Whether you like it or not, you're in the club. You might as well get the benefits as well as the drawbacks.