It used to be if you called your partner Daddy in public folks thought that your partner was your pimp, or you were both terribly sick. But times have changed, thankfully. With the influence of pop culture, songs that call out baby girl and Daddy and Mama/Mommy, AgePlay is starting to filter into the mainstream. While most of those who use the word have no idea of what AgePlay is, those of us who do sometimes get a kick out of hearing someone call their partner by those names. I do anyway.

What is AgePlay? It varies a lot, but a good blanket explanation is that it is a D/s dynamic in which one person takes on the role of the older person and the other takes on the role of the younger one. That means a lot of different things to different people. For me it is a relationship that is not just about Power Exchange and trust, but nurture. I can’t even begin to explain it all in just one article, but I can give you a rough outline and some of the common terms.

Littles: let’s start there. I am a non-sexual Little. Yes, at times I totally regress to about 10 years old. I wear footie pajamas, grab my babies—my stuffed animals, many of which I have had since childhood—and I go to the box my Daddy set up for that has the things that make me feel safe when I get into that headspace: my hairbows, my candies, my little girl shoes. The keyword here is MINE.

As a Little, I need to know I have control over my small slice of the world. And having that space where my possessions remain inviolate is what makes me feel safe. For most with Littles, safety is what we need, that and the freedom to feel free of all the responsibilities we often have to carry throughout our lives. I know Littles who color, who ride their trikes, and so on. Littles can be infantile, and some of us have what I call free range Littles, we might be ten or even six, depending on the day and what we need or want. I do not want or need sex as a Little, ever. It just is not the way I play, but some do. It comes down to the ‘Your kink is your kink’ thing here, but for some people, both those who possess Littles and those who do not, watching sexual play with Littles can be difficult. My advice? Don’t watch it if it is difficult for you because it is never going to be something you become cool with if you aren’t cool with it.

More likely to be seen, especially in public, is my Grrl. Grrl for me is an extension of my Riot Grrl days. I morph into a flirty Catholic schoolgrrl uniform wearing teenaged seductress who wants nothing more than to sit on Daddy’s lap, or give him a lapdance, and to tease him until he gives me that spanking and sex I truly deserve and need.

Incest is not what AgePlay is all about. The fact is that many who are AgePlayers have been abused, and no, we are not desperate to continue our victimization. We are people who are doing what we want, not because of the abuse, but in spite of it. Elders are not pedophiles, being called daddy or mommy does not make that person your Daddy or Mommy in a biological way.

I have to know I’m safe, and that I am cared for. Having a Daddy means that I get to let go at times, and say I can’t do all that I want to and knowing that it is perfectly okay. It gives me a space to be free, and to feel protected. In most D/s relationships there is a level of nurturing, and in AgePlay it is very heightened.

I have heard that AgePlay is the gentlest of all D/s relationships. Not so in our case. Daddy is a sadist and we play hard. It varies from person to person and dynamic to dynamic how Ageplay relationships work, some have no service at their core, others do. Some girls (or Grrls or boys or bois) have Littles, others do not.

The Elder may actually be younger than their charge because AgePlay is based on perception, not biological age. The Elder may be a Daddy no matter their gender (Daddy is a butch dyke) and Mommys are often seen in the company of daughters just as often as they are seen with boys, and male Daddies are seen with girls as often as they are seen with boys (or even bois). In other words, it’s all about what you are into. There are Youngers who have Elders who are part of their lives, but not their everyday relationships. Some people need a Daddy/Mommy/Uncle etc but their partner has no ability to handle it, so it makes sense to have someone they can go to for that need to be fulfilled. Littles play spaces are great for play dates for most who need it in their lives and don’t want a secondary relationship.

There is no real road map into the dynamic. There are pitfalls, though. It can be difficult for us to let go of the notion that we are doing something wrong, and that holds true on both sides of the equation. Guilt will happen, so will fear. The key to getting through that is honesty.

It’s almost upon us, the conference season. Events are being planned or are in the final stages all across North America, and sitting here today looking at my own rather hectic schedule I had a flashback to the very first three day conference I went to.

I did everything wrong.

To start with I took a trip to a state very far from my own instead of scouting out an event a little closer. I went alone, and when I got there I knew not one single soul. That was my first mistake.

The second was, I went into the bathroom at the airport and changed into a slinky little number and stilettos before dashing for ground transportation where I discovered my third mistake. I had not done my research, so imagine my dismay when the woman at the desk informed me that the event was nearly twenty five miles from the airport. I took the shuttle. I spent two hours crammed into a van with people who were busy trying not to say out loud that I looked like a hooker while giving me looks that let me know in no uncertain terms that they thought I was a hooker.

Mistake number four: I walked through the lobby, spotted a guy standing next to a cart, saw that he was wearing shredded jeans and a black t-shirt and automatically assumed he was one of us. Well, he wasn’t, he was a guy who happened to be in town for a Christian concert.

Mistake number five came about when I went to my room and decided that the vendor area would be a great place to hang out and meet new people. It is actually, but most vendors would rather not have you standing in front of their booth attempting to talk to every single person who happens to like the same toys you like used on you.

I somehow managed to be so goofy and clumsy that a few folks took pity on me and herded me, none too gently, into the social area. I met a lot of people in there, but committed a major gaffe when I saw this sparkly shiny collar around a woman’s neck and got a bit too close trying to examine it. (I am rather like a crow that way.) Mistake number six—I forgot that collars, no matter how intricate or elaborate or just damn unusual are still collars, and you never get close to someone’s collar. As territorial as I am about my own I think maybe I should say that twice, but you get that point. Mistake number six, now let’s move on.

I wanted to attend a class on needles. Keep in mind that this was over a decade ago, and classes in edgy things like needles etc. were just starting to surface in the smaller groups that I was used to attending. So I ran into the classroom, which was packed to the rafters, and looked around frantically for a seat. There were none, so I stood against the wall. I could see the demo bottom and the needles very well from where I stood, too well. I got woozy and nearly fainted. I staggered out of the classroom, in and of itself no great wrong, it happens a lot in fact. But instead of simply leaving the spot, I decided the best way to shuck off the shame was to stand in the hallway yelling about how damnably hot it was in there. A monitor had to come take me aside and ask me to keep it down. Mistake seven. Really I don’t know why they didn’t just ask me to leave the whole damn shebang at that point.

I went to my room, stripped down and fell asleep. When I woke up it was after midnight. I got up, took a shower and ate a pack of crackers and a Diet Coke from the vending machine for a late dinner. Mistake eight.

I didn’t go to the play party that night, so when I woke up the next morning I was determined to make up for that loss of time. Mistake number nine. I crammed in as many classes as I could that day, brutally determined to get my money’s worth from that con. I socialized my fool head off. No where in that frenzied whirl did I stop to eat, or really drink anything except the two cups of hotel coffee I had had that morning. Mistake number ten.

My eleventh faux pas was to pick up a play partner and go gung ho in the playspace with them. I didn’t know them, and they didn’t know me. It never occurred to me to inform them that I giggle when hit; it’s the way I process. They figured I was not really feeling it. The result was me finally screaming red and going upstairs to soak my furiously blushing behind in a cold tub.

I woke up several hours later dizzy and violently ill. I fell, literally, out of the bed and lurched out into the hallway to the vending machines. I needed food, and I needed it right then. I wound up eating a huge cinnamon bun in the vending alcove, just cramming it in, while people walking by stared at me. When asked, I said I was fine. Mistake number twelve.

I was so sick Sunday I could barely move. I dragged myself to classes just because I didn’t want to miss out on any part of the experience, not realizing that I was not getting anything out of the experience. I would have been better off resting for a few more hours, eating sensibly and then going to a class or two. Mistake thirteen.

My last mistake came Monday afternoon while I was sitting at my desk at work. I began to cry, for no reason at all. My mood then switched and I began to giggle. Mistake fourteen: I never took into account that con drop is as serious as sub drop and requires just as much attention.

So there you have it. That is all the things that I did wrong. You can likely figure out for yourselves which of those you don’t want to repeat.

See you out there!

I like to be hurt, both physically and emotionally. I’m a masochist, so a lot of my sexual needs are tied into pain. But do I like pain? Well, mostly I have a love/hate relationship with it.

There are times when I really struggle to accept it, to accept the pain that I need. I also struggle with being able to say no to pain that is not the pain I need but is, instead, just …well, painful.

I know, right? That sounds like a total oxymoron. How can I get off on pain but not like pain? How can I say some pain is okay but not other types of pain?

It is a lot simpler than it seems. I do not know one single person who really looks forward to a root canal or a major surgery, no matter how much they like pain. I also do not know anyone who can handle being verbally or mentally abused in a situation that has nothing to do with a scene (and even upon occasion in those that do have things to do with scenes).

As a kid I got bullied a lot. I was the second child in a family of five children and money was always scarce. We moved a lot and changed schools sometimes twice a year. I was afraid to make, and then lose, friends, so I made my friends up. I spent most of my time daydreaming and reading because, frankly, I grew up in a home where food was sometimes scarce and entertainment that cost money was a luxury we could not afford, so there was little else I could do for fun.

What that resulted in was me being ganged up on by bullies who sensed I was vulnerable. I had all the usual things happen: Hair pulling, shoving, name calling, my clothes poked fun of, and of course nobody would stick up for me because to do so would be to fall prey to the same mistreatment. I remember every name they ever called me, everything from fat to stupid to ugly. To this day, those words are triggers that will cut me clear to the bone and guarantee me a bad scene.

I struggled mightily with being masochistic. For a long time, I thought there was no way I could like being hit and verbally humiliated. I thought that to enjoy that meant that part of me really had liked that bullying that was dished out to me as a kid. I thought I was continuing my victimization, poking away at the rotted remains of my childhood like an abscessed tooth. I found myself questioning if I was simply keeping those old wounds good and tender, and if so—what the fuck was wrong with me?

I would lie awake at nights, calling myself names and enjoying it. I deliberately sought out people who were able to toss names like whore or cunt at me and played with them. During the scene, I felt incredibly hot, after I would be a mess.

It just never seemed to make sense to me. I would recall the time I was ringed by a group of kids on the playground and shoved from one to the other being called weirdo and freak. It didn’t stop until one of them pushed me down, and then another kicked me. Then it became a mass of piled on bodies and me on the bottom. I had to walk home bleeding and crying, and with my right arm dislocated. I would think about that pain and the feeling I had when they were calling me names, and my utter fear when it escalated. Then I would remember all too clearly my mom’s face when I finally got home, and how angry she was the next morning when she stood in the principal’s office and demanded that he either take care of the problem or she would. If I liked being shoved and called names and beaten up, did that mean my mom had failed to protect me to the point that I had become not just used to the pain but craved it?

I kept stumbling back against the blocks, tripping over the guilt, and losing whatever confidence I gained within myself to those things every time I did a scene with someone, no matter how awesome they were before, during or after.

One day I found myself staring at a picture of myself taken when I was eleven. I had gone through an awkward growth spurt that left me taller than the other girls in my class and with C cup breasts. In the picture, I was huddled over, my knees were bent, and my hands clenched in front of my chest. The picture said it all. I was ashamed, closed off, and desperate to be smaller than I was.

But why? Why be small? Why be ashamed? At the time it had made sense, being different had always made me a target. But I wasn’t eleven anymore, and having large breasts and being tall, well that was hardly a liability. I was still ashamed though, and closed off. And for what?

Being bullied had gifted me with an interior landscape dotted with landmines. But my masochism was not caused by being bullied; that was inherent to my nature. The mines were caused by bullies and could sometimes be triggered by certain things, and since I had never dealt with the actual issues of being bullied, I had no way to understand how to navigate the minefields, much less how to disarm the bombs.

Once I could see how to disarm them, I sat myself down and replayed as much of my childhood as I could stand. Doing that made me realize that the difference was not even so simple as consent; the real difference was in me not feeling fear at the words. Bullies made me afraid, even when I was at home and safe, because I knew they would be there in the schoolyard or in the neighborhood and my face the very next day. Fear was what had kept me feeling ashamed and guilty, fear of betraying those who had reached out to help me when the bullying became actual physical abuse, fear of losing my hard won strength, fear that I had enjoyed something that was wrong.

But they were the ones who were wrong, not me. I had not deserved the treatment they dished out, and I had not asked for it, nor consented to it. My cries of stop were ignored until the day those kids who had ringed me on the playground nearly broke my arm; the fact that four kids could attack one lone kid shocked the principal and the teachers into action. Finally. There was no red, no yellow, no I need a moment to collect myself. I just took it and internalized it all.

Seeing how to disarm a bomb and doing so are two very different things. Just seeing that I was not replaying my childhood with every scene wasn’t enough to ‘fix’ me. That took a lot of work. It took a lot of understanding that there will always be things that I need that scare the total shit out of me.

It took a very long time for me to grasp the concept that being called a whore or a cunt makes my nipples hard, but being called a fucking slut by the guy who first cuts me off in traffic and then curses me out can make me feel small, and afraid, and as far from hot as it gets.

Yes, pain is pain is pain. Except, you know, when it isn’t. I love pain, and need it sexually, and even emotionally, when I consent to it. But II’ll be damned if I need it in my day to day interactions with other humans.

I often sit and shake my head at some of the things that get sent to me in my FetLife inbox. Dominates (yes I wrote Dominates) who want me to show them their ‘proper due’. Read attend to their every whim and want with absolute adoration while I am chained and naked, oh and soaking wet and wanting sex sex sex for no reason other than the fact that I am a nasty little whore who wants only to be told what to do by a Dominate of such power and strength.

Sometimes I read these things, close my eyes and count to one hundred and ninety nine. Twice.

I often find myself at conferences or socials talking to people about the need for more gateway programs, because while there are some people out there who are just dickheads there are an equal number of awesome people who simply have never learned the rules, because it is one thing to read them on a website and a different thing entirely to go to a con and find yourself at a loss as to what to do. Hell, my Daddy and I made a huge gaffe not so long ago when we attended a conference that was being held in a hotel that hosted several different conferences a year. It never occurred to us to ask the rules or to read them, we had been there before and so committed the error of assuming. Daddy cut my clothes off in the dungeon and someone had to come tell u-mid-scene that nudity was not allowed. It was POSTED for Pete’s sake, we just forgot to check. It happens.

Now back to dickheads. I have a whip, even though I do not top at all. In fact, I have my own toy bag, a thing I strongly advocate for every bottom, because when it comes to sharing toys with multiple partners I get a little germ-ophobic. Plus I want what I want, and given that I like a lot of genital and nipple torture I’ll be damned if I want anyone using stuff that might be less than clean on me. So anyway—I have a whip, it’s pink and black so it can’t hurt right? One night this one guy grabbed it right up off the towel it was laying on awaiting use. This dude swung it around his head, crowing to the people sitting around that no way could a pink whip inflict any kind of injury. Then he hit me.

Daddy was already seeing red. When that blow landed he went nuclear. He grabbed the guy’s wrist, took my whip and said, “You just consented to be in my scene.”

Daddy is a whip vendor and a fearsome hot butch dyke. He was also pissed at having his property–me–being disrespected and violated. To top it all off, that whip was my very first piece of earned leather, it is something that has serious value and meaning to me and Daddy, and it is personal to us in ways we should not have to explain. That alone was enough to earn that guy a chastisement, and Daddy damn sure gave him one. That guy screamed like a girl when a pink whip lit into the tender skin near his nut sack.

It’s pink, it can’t hurt. Bullshit, think again.

That happened at a private party held in a private house. Only about ten of us were there, and the guy who did it was a friend of a person who decided it was cool to bring him even though he had not been vetted. Nobody has ever seen him again; apparently he decided the lifestyle was not for him after all. Since then, the person who brought along the friend has also been banned from attending parties there. It was not the first time that they had brought an uninvited plus one, and no amount of talking could make them understand why that is wrong.

Yes, here is a lesson for real time parties: Never hit people who are not yours, or who have not given you clear consent, do not bring along a plus one even if they are your bestest ever friend since grammar school, and whips or any other implement can look frail and fluttery or even fluffy and still kick your ass.

But how can we put a gateway program into effect for websites? Because I really think we need a few. You should have to take a quiz or something I think before FetLife will let you click on the box that will put Master by your name. Anyone who writes I am a Dominate in their profile should be immediately put into a separate space just for them so they can annoy the hell out of others like themselves. That way the people who really want to learn something, who are looking for a way into the real time, real life lifestyle don’t get scared off by trolls who think that PM’s like this one (An actual excerpt from a PM I received is below) is not only acceptable but will get them laid.

Dominate Dickhead (Not his real name): Yer fukin hot. I bet you like lots of hot cock in yer cunt and I got one for ya. Im gonna allow you to serve Me, but first you gotta bring Me My bride price. Back in the day kings were brought cattle by the families of the women they allowed to serve them, bring Me My due, come to Me on yer knees and you will be allowed to serve Me.

I know, I should have just laughed it off. But I didn’t.

Me: I’m sure you thought that the monogamous lesbian on my profile did not mean an actual state of being but a situation I am looking to change. That is so not the case. Even if it were the case I doubt you would be my first pick. In fact I doubt that even the threat of death could induce me to fuck you. And what the hell would I be doing with cattle? I live in a CITY.

DD: Fuck you cunt. I’m an Old Guaard (his spelling) master. I got my degree online and I know way better than you what little submissive bitches want. My Dominants is far superior to your submission. You would love to have Me and you will address Me properly and in capitals.

Me: So you went to what, Leather DeVry dot com? Really? Who are your Dominants? You do know you wrote that in such a way that it suggests that you are owned by two or more Dominants don’t you? Capitals huh? What, like you want me to call you Sacramento or Boise or something?

DD: you rotten little whore! I am a Dominate and you are here to obey Me.

Me: Dominate is a verb you stupid bastard.

I waited until he wrote me back and blocked him. I sat there giggling imagining his scarlet faced anger. I know it is silly, and maybe even dangerous, to do that. But damn if that was not just the final straw. I get so fed up with these guys, and sometimes these guys are women, and sometimes they are purporting to be both true Dominates or subbies.

There are no gateway programs for people entering the Internet world of BDSM but there freaking should be. I even made up a quiz for the new people:
(All questions true or false)

1. There is only one true way, and if you don’t believe that you don’t belong here.
2. All Dominates are to be obeyed immediately, and you may never question anyone who calls themselves a Master as to what gives them the right to call themselves such, because to do so will cause you to burst into flames, and deservedly so.
3. You are not a true submissive if you are not willing to lose, if not your actual life, at least a nipple.
4. It’s cool to walk around a dungeon strapped up like a gunslinger with floggers hanging from both hips and a bullwhip for a belt, it’s even cooler to pop a whip repeatedly around scenes so everyone will know how cool you are and invite you to beat their property.
5. Feel free to boss around any submissive you see in the vicinity if you are a Dominate because they all exist to serve, so why not serve you too.
6. If you are a submissive run to every Dominant in the room, fall to your knees and offer to do anything they want because, you know, you are a sub and that is what a true sub does.

If they answer yes to any question, their profile page should immediately burst into flames. Just sayin’. Enough times of getting their pages set on fire might teach them that they have a lot to learn and maybe, just maybe, these damn Dominates will learn there is no true way, but there is a dignified and respectful one.

The hotel’s corridors were nearly deserted and too warm. Sweat popped up on my forehead, I swore softly and patted it dry while I waited for the elevator. I always feel nervous at a kink conference, especially if it happens to be at a sex positive kink conference where anything can happen, and often does. Or at least, it does if I’m lucky.

The ding of the elevator broke into that line of thought. When the door opened I saw a woman in black leather pants, vest and boots, all set off by a white t-shirt. I grinned as I got in, looking at the curve of her hips and the silver chain that swung across the left one. She was on the phone, she turned a bit to show courtesy, and in her back pocket were two flags: one blue, one red. I tried not to get excited, just because she was flagging left the same two colors that I was flagging right didn’t mean it was going to be a good night.

I could see my blurred reflection in the doors: long blond hair, big tits in a brocade corset, leather skirt that barely covered the cheeks of my ass, and thigh high leather boots. On my right wrist were red bracelets and a blue one, a girl’s version of flagging. The green of my eyes was deepened by the black kohl surrounding them, my mouth was painted with a slick sheer gloss, and a bare dusting of bronzer made my cheekbones look razor sharp and high. I had to admit it was a nice job.

The click of my heels marked our passage down the long hallway toward the section of the hotel that had been put to use as a dungeon. My elevator companion walked to the dungeon quickly, I took my time, saying hello to people I knew and some I didn’t. I paused to flash my badge at the security, and she vanished behind the doors ahead of me. When I entered the play space she was nowhere to be seen, at first, then I spotted her scoping out a suspended redheaded beauty.

“Nice,” I said as I came up behind her.

She knew instantly I meant two things by that, her and the scene.

“Yeah,” her dark eyes crawled over me, “Very nice.”

“I happen to be alone.”

Her eyebrow twitched upward at my boldness, but I didn’t care. There was no sense in being coy. It was Saturday, and I would be on a plane home the next afternoon. I love conferences, being beaten and rough sex, and have long since lost any shame in that fact.

“Good for you.”

“It is really good.” I winked as I said it. “All I want is what I’m wearing, which happens to be the same thing you have on.”

She was fast, one second I was standing there looking at her, the next I was on my back. The takedown was so sudden it made pussy juice spurt out of me and slide down my legs before I could even reason it out. Her face was above mine, and a light was glowing in those eyes, a light that turned me on even more.

She bent her head to my left tit and bit the soft flesh that rose above my corset. I hissed in a long breath and she chuckled, a slow dark bit of mirth that made my belly weak.

There was no time to think, and I didn’t want to anyway. Her hands were hard, I could feel callouses on her fingertips. Musician, I thought dizzily as she squeezed my arms hard enough to raise bruises.

“Say it out loud.”

I love a voice that commands that leaves no room for doubt. Her’s was perfect; it was quiet and low, but undeniable. There was steel running beneath the syllables, and I whispered out, “Put your whole fucking fist in my pussy, Daddy.”

All around us were scenes being played out. From where I lay on the floor I could see naked men and women, some being flogged or whipped, some fucking. I could smell sex, and hear the moans and sobs of the others. My pussy tightened and leaked fluid down my ass crack onto my skirt. I could barely breathe for the lust she had ignited in me.

Fingers slid up my thighs; then she slapped them. The slaps were not light, they stung and burned, and I screamed almost as a reflex.

“I forgot; all you want is to give head and have your cunt filled up with my hand.”

There was laughter in her voice, and I wanted to beg for more, beg for her to spank me, to bite me, but I had set the terms, and she was prepared to honor them. How could I do any less?

Her butchcock was long, thick. Her hands tangled in my hair, and I was hauled to a kneeling position. Her cock pressed against my closed lips, and I parted them willingly. My face scrubbed against denim; her wallet chain slapped the side of my face. My corset was so tight I could barely breathe, and the dick in my mouth heightened that sensation. I came, rocking my pussy along the edge of my own boot as she fucked my face, harder and faster with each second.

Her hips jerked and bucked, and she growled out something entirely unintelligible, proof she had come, and the only evidence of it because she tore my face away from her, zipped her saliva slick cock back into her jeans and put me back onto the floor.

My back hit harder that time, what air I had was knocked out of my lungs. My nipples were rock hard, and my eyes wanted to close as she slid my skirt up over my hips, exposing my shaved nude pussy.

She pulled black latex gloves from one pocket of her jacket, and I spread my legs without a murmur. She grinned, and her teeth caught a delicate sliver of flesh near the junction of my thighs, pulled at it; and then let go.

“Lube is your friend,” she said as she smeared it onto her hand, then two fingers slid inside me.

She didn’t thrust, she simply pushed and pulled, testing my walls, my ability to accept and stretch for her. Three fingers and I began whimpering like a puppy. Her thumb stroked my clit while her fourth finger slid deep, joining the rest.

The dungeon spun away from me. I was on the hard cold floor, and my pussy was exposed to the cool air. The stroke of that air on my wetness was so exciting, and her hands were so insistent. I knew better than to come again, I wanted her in me, and she gave a little grunt of satisfaction as she pressed her thumb into her palm and then her hand into me.

There was that sensation, that feeling of opening, and then there was nothing but her fist inside the middle of my wet wet cunt. I arched my back up and fucked her fist, fucked it as hard as I could while she knelt between my legs and gave it back to me just as hard as I was giving it to her.

“Yeah Daddy,” I sobbed out, “Oh please let me come, please let me come.”

“That’s hot,” I heard someone say from a long distance, and when my head fell to one side I saw booted feet and stiletto shod ones as well. We had an audience, and that made me feel so sexy, so abandoned, and just plain wanton that I wriggled my hips and ground against her hand.

“Come.”

That damn voice, that no-nonsense command. I did as she said, come poured from me, ran out of my hole and down her arm, making her laugh, and the onlookers whisper with envy.

She pulled out slow, my pussy had tightened, and she had to stroke my clit to make me relax so she could get out. But once she did, she lay down on the floor with me and cuddled me close.

When I felt better she got up, walked to the station where supplies were kept and came back with a spray bottle of cleaning solution and paper towels.

“Clean that up,” was all she said, and then she left.

I watched her go as I cleaned my come off the floor. A grin kept crossing my face, and I was whistling while I worked. In two weeks, I would be at another conference, and that made me happy as hell. I love conferences, you never know what might happen.

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For many years kink was portrayed by the media to be the dark alley, the grungy dungeon. Kink was the iconic image of women being shackled to a wall with heavy manacles, in a basement with a gritty concrete floor. Kink was the black and white images seen in bad movies that warned against poor judgment in sexual practices, declaring kink abusive, and practitioners of it abusers, and informing the public at large that anyone who practiced kink was a pervert and should be shunned. Kink was always considered the hidden society, home territory of the poor, the degenerate and under-educated by those not in the know, and sometimes it still is.

But is that true really? Not that I have ever seen. I know many an intelligent person who enjoys kinky sex, and I may be a degenerate and am very definitely a pervert, but I am also very much in favor of safe sexual practices and against abuse in any form. While it is true that once BDSM was kept mostly out of sight, the advent of the Internet and chat rooms helped place the scene square in the light of day. And though I have played out in alleys, these days I attend conferences in three star hotels, and attend dozens of munches and play parties that take place in family style restaurants and in upper middle class homes in quiet cul-de-sacs in subdivisions and suburbs. Kink has become sanitized and available for general and mass consumption, just check out the flood of BDSM flavored erotica on the market, some of which I myself authored, or the one of a dozen porn sites specializing in kinky sex. Today’s dungeons are hardly the filthy pits most envision, or the squalid apartments I used to play in, nor are they hidden. Today they are easily Googled, and memberships to them are based on the ability to pay the fee and sign the waiver, in most cases, rather than the serious vetting processes of yesterday.

In this day and age, we have the media putting a polish on things, thanks to Christina Aguilera stuffing a diamond studded gag into her mouth and giving a video model a serious ride, Rhianna singing S..S…M…M…I like it like it like it, come on…. and many hip hop and R&B singers helping to make it perfectly acceptable to call your lover Daddy. In a lot of ways, that is a push forward. It is the cleaning up of kink, the making it more palatable to the general public, that will keep those of us who like it dark and dirty and edgy from being punished, in a bad way, by the legal system and the people who want to see us return to a time when being kinky meant you were classified as mentally ill and a danger to society and yourself. By selling kink to a large market, we have made it socially acceptable, that is as long as we stay within the lines set down by publishers, and network executives, and the tolerance levels of the general public.

With the conditions of suitable-for-the-public-consumption kink comes drawbacks, however. The conference floors are filled with wide eyed people who think of kink as the porn they see and have no ability to process the sweat, blood, tears, and screams of BDSM play when it is real and in their face. Many cannot comprehend how it can be so different than what they thought it would be. Many do not understand that they need to attend events like munches to meet people in order to be invited to play parties, mostly because, in general, they are held in private residences, and who wants someone they have never seen popping in for an evening? The dungeons are also full of people who have never heard the word etiquette as applied to kink, and so they touch anyone and everything with no regard or understanding as to the fact that it is a violation to touch someone else’s property, and as some people are actually owned and thus property as well, that includes other people. For the record, I refuse to be touched by anyone other than my inner circle, and any attempts to touch me by others are met with open hostility. There are people gleefully and savagely applying the toys they bought earlier in the day, ignoring the fact that they have no idea of how to use them, and then they become angry and combative when the dungeon monitors interrupt their play. Don’t get me wrong, those people are the exception rather than the rule, but the numbers of these types of people are growing.

Kink is being dressed up in shiny latex, PVC and leather then festooned with sex toys and condoms. While I am entirely sex-positive, I have issues with the lack of education amongst so many of our newer players. Kink, back in the days when it was still the bad neighborhood your mother warned you about and the cops kicked your ass for being around, demanded that you be careful in the ways in which you hurt and had sex with your partners. Back then, a trip to the ER was a nightmare. Now it is often a trophy, I have heard it referred to as the honeymoon visit, in fact. That scares me. So does the strange misconception that safe words are something you use only when you are at the end of your endurance. At a time when people can and do flaunt their bruises and marks in profile pictures on social sites, there is a woeful lack of conversation about pain tolerance and the need to take personal responsibility in a scene. I had that talk with a brand new sub at a party last week and was echoed by every other player who had been around for a while. The woman looked at us and said, “Oh, I thought a Good Dominant would just know when it was too much.” I have never seen kink porn where safe words were uttered, nor have I seen pauses for water and sugary treats to help stabilize things. But maybe the makers of these films (and authors of books) should start placing these things within the scenes. I have never seen the riggers rushing through the scenery either, it is amazing how many people think tying knots is easy, or that tying someone’s wrists to their ankles requires nothing more than a length of rope and the will to do it.

We have become the Instant Gratification Generation, regardless of age. When kink was still in hiding, learning a skill was not something to be taken lightly. Not long ago I heard someone at a conference say they wanted to shove a fist into someone. I stopped and began to explain that there is a process to that activity, and was met with an eagerness to learn superseded only by the shock that such an activity required technique. I run into moments like these a lot, actually. It seems people are less willing to take the time out to learn the skillsets. We want the knowledge, so we search for it by pushing a button. In the pre-Internet kink days, you had to go to a play party or find someone who knew how to do what it was you wanted to learn, and then you watched, and practiced until you got it right. Now it seems if you have the equipment you must be smart enough to use it. In our cleaning up of kink and its activities, we have somehow managed to shove safety concerns under the rug and onto the back burner.

So while the floors are cleaner and the view nicer in our dungeons and other play spaces these days, let us not forget that we are still on the fringes, the edges, and that we must bring education out of hiding and haul it out to our new found public homes along with the cross, the spanking bench, and the manacles.

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I admit it. I have never equated seduction with rose petals and candlelight dinners. I am more likely to toss away the petals and keep the thorn riddled stems, and the only saving grace in candlelight is the fact that you can use the candles for waxing someone like me. I have been the centerpiece on a dinner table, and that was one hell of a dinner party, but if it is not something along those lines I am really not all that interested in it.

I’m not saying I’m not interested in going out to dinner, or that I don’t appreciate getting flowers from my Daddy. I love those things. It’s just that when it comes to sex, I don’t need to be seduced or led into it. Drag me down the hallway kicking and screaming, throw me over the bed and then just fuck me like you hate me.

Years ago I fronted a punk band. I was the bassist, slash singer, slash songwriter of the group. So all the songs we did were about getting beaten up, and fucked, and politics, which are not all that different when it comes right down to it. I had never even heard the term BDSM back then. To the ones I hung around with and me, rough sex was just that, rough.

I say all the time that I’m a masochist, so I have a real and physical reaction to being beaten. I can orgasm during play. (For those who do not know what that means—play is what we call it when we are involved in activities that involve BDSM—Bondage, Discipline, Domination, Submission Sadism and Masochism. Or, to be blunt, it’s what we do when get our kinky on.) I like being beaten, and I react to it the same way most people react to sex when it is enjoyable to them. I come.

Does that mean I do not need sex at all? That I don’t want it or need it? Hell no. But do I want someone to snuggle me close and tell me I am gorgeous and special and so on? Yeah—I do, but first I want to be fucked like I am a stranger that happened to get drunk enough to let you fuck me. I want to be fucked like I’m the ex you wish you had never met in the first place.

I was talking to a few close friends one day about how life sometimes gets in the way of sex and play. I teach classes on kink at conferences, and have even found myself talking to people who were wondering if I had any tips on how to get their Dominant to be more receptive to sex and play after a long hard day of work, and kids, and reality in all its shapes and forms.

I have often said—Put the kids to bed, put the toys out by the bed and give them a bit of a massage first. Yes, you are tired, but you also want to play. Your Dominant will really appreciate the time alone and the care, because they are human despite being your Dominant. Sometimes we all need space, time, and pampering, and if the toys happen to be right next to them, out in the open, no way are they going to just ignore all you have done for them. Word of warning here—do not give them a full body massage and expect them to be anything else than limp and snoring. Give a shoulder rub, a foot massage, and then kneel down at the side of the bed and offer yourself up. It works, mostly, but like all things in life, sometimes it doesn’t because even Dominants are human.

Not only that, scenes do not have to be planned out hour long things. Sex takes, really, minutes to accomplish the goal. If you have a busy life and a limited schedule, the fact that you can fuck and be asleep in ten minutes is often a damn good thing.

If you start to let go of the idea that sex and scenes require a lot of time and energy, that you simply can’t fit them in because of all the things that have to get done, you can start to find ways to have little mini-scenes and fast and really hot sex. It may surprise you how incredible these things can be.

I am a lesbian in a Daddy/ grrl relationship. I call my partner Daddy, just to clarify things. Daddy and I have these types of scenes quite often, mostly because we are both always working and busy. We learned to let go of the notion that we had to be in our basement dungeon for hours at a time right around the day I moved in on a permanent basis. It’s easy to be involved on a one on one level when you are dating; you make the time because you can. Once you are in a 24/7 relationship, life sets in. So you have to work around it.

How do Daddy and I deal with the day-to-day and still have sex and play? We are flash fuckers. And we have scenes on the spur of the moment; those scenes are usually some of the best ones we have, although I have to say that a two hour beating in a dungeon does wonders for me too.

Daddy has an enviable habit of creeping up on me in the laundry room, tossing me over the washing machine and spanking the hell out of me. Once he blindfolded me with a stocking and stuffed my own panties in my mouth, my dirty panties at that. I was torn between horror and lust, and if that does not create a headspace, nothing does.

Ever found yourself staring at the box of Hamburger Helper and wondering how you were going to make it through another day without tossing your stuff in the car and hauling ass for parts unknown? I have found myself there. Back then, my daughter was a toddler and my then partner sent her to play with a friend next door for a few minutes. I found myself bent over in our kitchen, holding my ankles and being fucked hard while having my ass beat with the rubber spatula I had been waving around in irritation just minutes earlier. That was an incredibly intense twelve, yes twelve, minutes. My ass tingled for hours, and I was calmer than I had been in days. I wasn’t with Daddy then, but the point is, even with kids there are flash scenes that you can have, and they will not totally cure the itch to have your ass beaten, but they will go a long way toward keeping your relationship whole and healthy in the face of day-to-day pressures.

I have been shoved into a closet by Daddy, who put one hand on my throat, the other in my pussy, and whispered a lot of things into my ear during the few minutes we spent in that hot dark space. That happened during a day when we were both frazzled and exhausted from working and had a house filled with people.

There are any number of ways and places you can have these flash fucks and mini-scenes. Blindfolded and suddenly shoved into a shower, check check for fear play. Give it a try, and see what works for you!

I get asked that question a lot. It always makes me giggle a bit too. I am a masochist. That means when I get a good beating I get off on it, and nothing amuses me more than being asked if I can come during a bar fight. The answer is no, usually I am too worried about not losing half my hair and a good pair of stilettos to really like it. That is sarcasm, but true enough I guess.

There are different kinds of hitting after all, and no matter how much I like it, I am never going to react to a blow I didn’t ask for or set out to receive the way I do to a well-aimed kick or flick of a whip.

But how kinky am I?

I have read profiles that said “I like it thuddy, stingy, burny, slappy, stabby, grabby. Hell beat me with a meat tenderizer, I don’t give a fuck.” Okay—so I have to agree with that, to a point. I do have definite things I do not do because I have triggers just like the next person, but from the moment I got spanked in a bathroom stall at a punk club I wanted more. I owe a lot of my kinky life to a seriously hot dyke with heavy eyeliner and heavier hands.

Spanking always will turn me on. Spankings come in a wide variety too. Contrary to popular belief, they do not have to be just the average garden variety of palm striking flesh. You can use paddles, belts, shoes, SAP gloves, horse scrapers (I swear just try it), and even some biting to go along with it—bring it on. When my ass gets red and my pussy gets all wet I don’t go into head space, I go into a near frenzy.

I like all types of implements, but it is not always the tool, sometimes it is the setting that does it. Drag me into the basement room we set up as our private dungeon, and I get hot before we even get all the way down the stairs. It’s the thought of it, and the smell. Our whips hang on the walls, and the spanking bench I had made for my partner dominates the room (no pun intended). The smell of leather hangs over everything. Open the closet door and you will find dresses and shoes, and my cute little Catholic schoolgirl uniform.

It can also just be the look my Daddy ( I am a lesbian who has a butch dyke Daddy type Dominant) gets during play. I like to be blindfolded in dungeons, so it is a tone of voice, and the feeling of being restrained that does it then. Well that, and the beating.

Being tied up, or down depending, is something that is at once intense and highly personal. It’s sexual in and of itself. The rope can make me feel helpless, make me feel sexy and beautiful, it can make me feel afraid and powerful. It can make me fight or simply submit.

The kink that I am into sort of depends on the moment and what is happening in it, and even what I am or am not wearing. Daddy loves my heels, especially when I am wearing nothing else. I like boots with five inch spikes, it makes it harder to stand in one position, it makes me have to strain my thighs, and it is almost a kind of mental bondage.

I like the cross better than anything when it comes to public play. In our home, I like the bench, or to be tied to the wall in the garage. We have chains up out there, and the feeling of the gritty floor and the cold stone makes me feel cheap and flashy. Why, I couldn’t say, but I get a cocky and nasty cant to my hips and mouth when I am there. I never wear heels because I like to feel the concrete beneath my knees and feet, and the smell of old motor oil just does something to my belly.

During private play, I indulge my bratty side, and sometimes I let that pop out in public. But since public play is so very highly sexually charged for us, it is something about the crowd watching—and for the record, no we do not ever engage in sex of any kind while in public—I am usually too high and too in need of a release to do anything bratty.

We do have sex in private, of course, and in private, the play is more sexual, but less sexually tense. It is the change in energy again, I think. In public, I know I won’t be touched, licked, or stroked or penetrated. I don’t need it in public or private to come if we are playing, again masochist, but I like it in private.

Being bratty is playful and fun for us. It is not a case of topping from the bottom, or being a bitch, or being disrespectful. It is just me having fun, and Daddy allowing it because sometimes I need to be silly and step outside of the spaces we usually occupy.

I like sensation play, because I never really know what will happen next. I like when I am blindfolded and being stroked by vampire gloves or a Wartenberg wheel (I recommend the ones with seven or five wheels just for the crazy hot feelings you get), and then being shocked by a TENS unit followed up by a rubdown with a rabbit fur glove. It is intense, to say the least.

So does any of that stuff make me kinky? Well, I would say so. But kink is not defined solely by the fact that I like those things. Being kinky means I look at things a bit differently. Take me to Lowe’s or Home Depot, and I will wander the aisles thinking on how to pervert most of the merchandise. Show me paint stirrers, and I will show you a paddle. She me a garden hose, and I will remember that awesome cool toy someone made by bending a length of hose, filling it with marbles, and adding on a handle. Wooden dowels make me think of flogger handles. Do not even get me started on wood, I will look at it and wonder if we need a new piece of dungeon furniture.

I am in a long term monogamous relationship. To some that means I am most definitely not kinky, or if I am, it is just a little bit. I do not play with others, but my Daddy does. He plays in a non-sexual manner, so sometimes people will ask us if we are just into it for pain. That never makes me laugh. The truth is, it has nothing to do with pain for me. I have a real sexual connection and reaction to being beaten. For me sex is pain, pain is sex. Call it what you will, but for me it all translates into pleasure. So if you look at it in that context, well hell…I guess I really am kinky.

Just how kinky? Well…Daddy and I have broken a few meat tenderizers. What does that say?

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My former partner Max came back from Iraq a different person. She was quieter, and often moody. I often wanted to ask what had happened over there to change her from the loud mouthed and cocky person she had been, into the person that she was when she returned, but the answer was always painfully obvious—combat had done it.

She was less inclined to want sex, or play. She would go out at night onto the front porch and drink in silences so deep it made the sound of the television in the living room feel lonely. I was always afraid when she did that, but I never knew what to say to her to try to help make things okay. I knew she wasn’t okay, but I wasn’t okay either, really. She had been gone from me for nearly a year and a half, and honestly it was like she had not even come back.

There was no way we could stay together. I kept putting off telling her so, because I was afraid my leaving would be the last straw, and I didn’t want to be the thing that caused her to slide all the way into the depression she was struggling with. We lay side by side in our bed at night, staring at the ceiling, and rarely spoke about anything at all. I could feel the heat of her body, but she rarely held me, or let me hold her. It was brutal.

One night she turned to me as I lay there staring at the plaster on the ceiling and the shadows on the walls, she said, “Touch this.”

I looked down and she had her hand over her heart. I hesitated, Max was stone—she never let me see her naked, never wanted me to touch her in a way that was feminizing. For her to want me to touch her breast was so extraordinary that I had no ability to process the request.

Her warm honey-gold hand closed over mine and then my fingers were on her. I could feel the thin cotton of her tank top, and under that, her breast. It was soft and malleable, like mine except that there was some pebble hard thing in it, right under the skin of it. It wasn’t her nipple, though at first I thought it was, it was too close to her armpit to be that.

Cancer. That thought slammed into me. The dreaded word; the feel of a lump under my fingers. I felt instant terror. I wanted to snatch my hand back and wash it in case it was contagious. I wanted to say everything would be okay. I didn’t know what to do. A superstitious certainty that if I said it it would be true, took over my brain.

“I think it’s a lump.” Max said, and I swallowed hard, wishing she had never said it, or that I had, because I knew I should have had the guts to. That deep down, that was why she had put my hand on a place she held apart from me, she had needed something, and I had failed her.

“Have you gone to the doctor?”

“No. I thought it was a bruise maybe, you know from the gym.”

Max was a fanatic about her body. She worked out relentlessly and loved to practice different types of martial arts. It could have been a bruise, I grabbed that idea and ran with it.

“Maybe you got hit in the chest and didn’t notice it. Maybe you just need to get a shot or something. Maybe it is just a little blood clot and they could cut it right out or something, you know, it’s probably exactly something like that.” I knew I was babbling, but I couldn’t help it.

“I think it’s cancer. My mom and aunt both had it, so it’s possible.”

I knew she had lost her mom at a young age, and had been raised by her father. I had never thought to ask her why her mom had died. It had seemed impolite and nosy to ask, so I just never had. But right then I felt pissed off, pissed at her for having a genetic time bomb in her body that she had not told me about, and pissed at myself for being so selfish and only thinking about myself.

We just laid there for the rest of the night, not talking about the lump, about us or anything else, and I finally went to sleep wondering what to do when everything suddenly goes right off the rails in your life, and what I would do if Max died.

Four days later we sat in a cold exam room. Max’s face was tense and haggard. Neither of us had been sleeping, and she had been drinking even more. She was losing weight, and she had totally stopped going to the gym. Her eyes were puffy, and I knew it was because she spent half the night crying, but she would lock herself into the bathroom and away from me so that I couldn’t see her. She was the butch, and to her that meant she was supposed to be strong, and being strong did not mean crying in front of her girl. Because she would not let me see her cry, I could not find a way to comfort her, and by the time we sat in that room we had become strangers to each other.

Honestly, I didn’t know her at all. She was someone I used to know, it was like running into an old high school flame in the aisles of the supermarket. It was awkward and stilted, and I kept wondering what we had ever had between us, and I knew she felt the same. We just didn’t know how to fix it.

When the doctor pulled down her gown I saw her breast for the first time in our entire three year relationship. It was beautiful. The flesh of it was that tawny color of the rest of her skin, the nipple was just a bit darker. That nipple hardened as the doctor’s hands touched and prodded, and went limp when the needle went it.

I looked up from Max’s breast and she was staring right at me. She was not a stranger any more, she was a real live breathing woman. One who had taken me to Six Flags and who had held my hand after a ride on the Ninja left me sick and puking, who had held me tightly as I cried into the collar of her BDU’s the day she left for combat. She had always been there for me, and I had let my fear and anger keep us apart.

No, she wasn’t the same woman, and no, maybe we couldn’t stay together, but she was someone I owed a debt of love to. And I knew she trusted me because she was allowing me to see her breast, see it bared and vulnerable in a way she had never done before.

I got up and went to her. I held her hand, and she put her face into the cup of my palm, resting her cheek there. She began to cry, and I pulled her face to me, against my own breasts, and she lay there like a tired infant.

“I’m a butch dyke, dammit.” Max sobbed. “What will I be if they take my tits? I mean, I know I’m stone, but I’m still a woman. What will I be then?”

“You’ll be Max.” I said. “It won’t matter to me if you have them or not, you will still be Max to me.”

“Thanks,” she said and then asked me to turn my back while she got dressed.

It wasn’t cancer. We didn’t stay together either. Max still talks to me from time to time, and we never mention the moment that I saw her breast, or the way her body had shuddered and trembled while she cried in my arms. She’s a stone butch, those things are private. But I check my breasts monthly, and today, looking at my Daddy and thinking about the mammogram appointment he has Thursday at 11:00 in the morning, I feel a little afraid.

Is this the price I will always pay to love women? Knowing it is not just my breasts but theirs that are at risk? I wouldn’t change it, but I am aware of it. And I will always be aware of it. They say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but every month my fingers shake a little as I explore the contours of my breasts. But I check them anyway-and now that I am in my forties, I go and get that hated mammogram and make sure Daddy goes too. I have to. I can’t spend nights staring at the ceiling wondering ever again.

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For many in the kink community, the first event you will ever attend is a local munch. Munches are informal gatherings that generally take place in family style restaurants, though I have tossed and attended them as picnics in parks, and am about to attend one in a doughnut shop. Generally speaking they are laid back, and people dress accordingly, which means in non-fetish clothing. Some first-timers attend the local trivia nights or karaoke nights, but all the same rules apply. The best way to impress the people you are about to meet is to be well- behaved, well -spoken, and clean and neat.

This may seem like pointless knowledge, but it isn’t. People have shown up at munches in trench coats with nothing under them, and in thigh high boots, mini-skirts, see through tops, corsets, and all types of other things. If their first event had been a conference that would have been perfect, but it is not so wonderful at a Ruby Tuesday’s, let me assure you.

Why should you care what the people at a munch think about you? In most cases, the munch is where you will meet the people who make up your community, including its leaders. In many cities the play parties are held in private homes, by the very people who are sitting at the table with you, and they will be scoping you out carefully, in order to decide if you can get a ticket into that party. Believe me—the play party is one party you want to be invited to, because it is there that people play. In other words, it is at the parties where people get their kink on, and if you want to be there, you need to put your best foot forward at the munch.

Most of the people there do not want attention directed at them, so they dress casually, and you should too. Since most of us know we will be playing later, and are likely to have our hair wadded up in someone’s hand and our faces covered in sweat, we eschew the makeup and glam so we won’t have to go home with our eyeliner hanging to our jaws, and our hair looking like a birds nest that got caught in a high wind.

Many times people are surprised by how normal we look, that is sort of the point. I know it puts a lot of new people off; we all expect the movie version of things in the beginning, but it is nothing like the movies. It is real life, and we have to live it. Keep in mind that while we have the right to live with our kinks and be happy, we do not have the right to shove our kinks in the faces of those who do not share them. And to do so is to violate other’s rights.

To that end, leave the ass baring skirts and shorts, ass-less chaps, vampire makeup, elbow length gloves, full-on leather and latex, etc. at home. Or, if you do think there is a chance you will get invited to the party, pack that garb in a bag with your toys and leave it in the trunk of your car.

Also on the leave at home list—your kids. Yes, your children. It does not matter that it is being held in a family style restaurant: your kids do not belong at a munch. A few years back, I had a slobbering toothless kid plopped in my lap, and I was so horrified I blurted out, ‘Not that kind of Grrl!’ and heaved the kid back at the mom who had brought it. She could not imagine why we didn’t invite her back to the party.

Nobody wants to see your drunken imitation of a rock star, even if it is a karaoke bar you are at. Nobody wants to sit next to someone who is not in favor of soap and water. Most people who are kinky are intelligent, we appreciate debate and good conversation and we encourage it, but we don’t like smart asses or people who feel the need to monopolize the conversation. For many of us, the only time we get to spend with the people at that table is at that table. Join in, by all means, and feel welcome doing so, but do not attempt to take over.

Now—you have shown up. You have dressed well, spoken well and are feeling good. But then everyone begins to leave. You hear the word party, but nobody is asking you to attend. Do not take that to mean that you are free to jump in your car and haul ass after the car of an invited guest, it was not an oversight on the part of the hosts, nor does it mean you are not welcome. Sometimes people need to know more about you; sometimes there is something planned that is not newbie friendly, i.e. a very intense demo that includes fire and/or cutting. That type of play can terrify new people. Many new people do not know play party rules, and so if these types of things are in the works, odds are you were liked and wanted, but the group decided to ask you next time. Say goodbye and thank you politely, shake hands with those who offer but…this is important…never hug anyone until given permission to do so.

You may see a lot of physical contact among the members of the group, that does not mean you are welcome to touch as well. Keep that in mind if you ignore everything else I have said.
There are many reasons for this. Some people are property, and you do not touch someone’s property without permission. Some people have triggers or just dislike being touched by people who are unknown to them. I am that way, and you will find many more that are as well.

If you are invited to the play party here the basic rules:

These people live in the home you are walking into. It does not matter if they have spanking benches in every room, full on racks, and gyno tables, whatever. It is their home, and you are a guest so behave appropriately.

That starts outside. Don’t pull up with your bass booming, jump out of the car yelling ‘yeah I’m gonna beat some ass!’, or anything else remotely that asinine. People have neighbors; respect your hosts by respecting their neighbors. Don’t walk across the grass or through the flower beds, don’t strip naked in the car and strut to the door holding your also nude partner’s hand. If you have toys with you, keep them in a bag; the neighbors will notice the whip and giant dildo in your hands, I promise you.

If there is a common area where people are gathered, and there is some type of play going on, it is not safe to assume that that is a demo and you are welcome to comment and/or join in. Some people are exhibitionists, sometimes space is limited. Quietly ask your hosts if you are allowed to watch the proceedings before just flopping into a chair and doing so. Be respectful of anything that is going on. If it is a scene that freaks you out or frightens you, take your cues from others in the area. If they are not worried or frightened, it is likely that is a scene they have seen before. Quietly leave the area until it is over, if need be.

All skills are learned through watching, skill sharing by experienced players, and by trial and error. Don’t be shy, ask if someone has performed a skill you are interested in, but do so respectfully. That means after a scene, not during, and after aftercare, as well. Nobody wants to explain the mechanics of using whips while engaged in performing that skill on their blissed out sub.

Do not decide to perform a scene on your sub that you have never attempted before just because you feel a need to compete with the other players. That can lead to serious injury and loss of your sub. And that will not go unnoticed. The reason we have parties is to find others to play with and to learn skills, keep that in mind.

Manners Matter. Always say thank you, always ask if there is something you can help to do, always offer to pitch in to clean up if you are still around when the party winds down, and you will be invited back.