Domination & Submission: The BDSM Relationship Handbook

by Michael Makai

  Protect the furniture. One of the things you can expect to see a lot of at your fetish group’s play party is skin. Some nudity or partial nudity is fairly common, particularly for those who will be part of a scene or demo. Sometimes, folks who aren’t planning to be a part of a scene that evening will still change into fetishwear of some sort, just to get into the spirit of things. You shouldn’t feel as if you’re under any pressure to wear anything kinky or shed any of your clothing, particularly as a new person. But in the event that you do, remember the furniture. This may come as a bit of a surprise to you, but most household furniture simply isn’t designed to accommodate naked, wet, or sticky people. Not only can it damage the furnishings, but it can be something of a bio-hazard to sit in someone else’s couch puddle. Many people bring their own towel to sit on if they’re planning on getting naked at an event. Sometimes, the event host will make clean towels available to anyone who needs one. When in doubt, simply ask the host if bare butts are allowed on the furniture.

  Your fetish group will likely have a written set of rules governing the behavior of members at their events. Be sure to ask the group leaders where you can find them, and get familiar with them. Every group is different, and their rules may differ significantly from the protocols we’ve discussed here, but you can be sure that there is almost always a very good reason for any rule that is adopted. Applying a little common sense and consideration for the comfort, health and privacy of others will go a long way towards making you a welcome and valued member or any group.

  How to Find a Local BDSM Group

  Finding and contacting a local group of like-minded kinksters can have its own peculiar challenges, particularly if you aren’t already a part of those social circles. Chances are pretty good that you may already know someone in the D/s lifestyle, but just don’t know it yet. As we explained earlier, most of the people in the lifestyle try to stay under the radar, and rarely go around wearing t-shirts that read “Pervy and Proud!” Even so, you probably have a good idea which of your friends and acquaintances is most likely to be connected to, or at least knowledgeable, about the lifestyle. Diplomatically asking them about whether they know of any local fetish groups may just pay off. Who knows, it could even turn into a kinky date for the weekend. The recommendation or invitation of a friend is by far the easiest and most reliable way to find and connect to a local BDSM group.

  Another way to learn whether there is a group in your area is through (duh!) the internet. While this may seem like the easiest and most obvious method to those who are already in the lifestyle, it can be incredibly confusing and frustrating to someone who doesn’t even know where to start. Googling “BDSM” and the name of your town will usually give you about a million results, some nine hundred thousand of which will turn out to be porn sites. Most of the rest will consist of classified personal ads, merchants of kinky toys, and web cam sites. The sad fact is, only a handful of websites out there will turn out to be useful to you in your quest to find a local BDSM group.

  One type of web site which you will find extremely useful is the sort that caters specifically to the BDSM fetish community. Surprisingly, while there are a lot of web sites that make the attempt, only a few seem to be any good at it, and even that is debatable. Some of the most popular BDSM community web sites include FetLife.com, Bondage.com, Alt.com, and CollarMe.com. Each has its own unique strengths and weaknesses, and boasts a large number of devotees. The utility of any of these sites will depend a great deal upon your preferences and habits, and your ability to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to finding useful information and making worthwhile friends. Always remember that there are plenty of people in the BDSM lifestyle who cannot be a part of the online community for a variety of reasons, including career and professional factors, family concerns, or even technical reasons. Conversely, many people are members of multiple web sites and online communities.

  You should also keep in mind the fact that whatever online forum you use, it is simply a communications medium. It is does not necessarily equate to the real-life group of people you may encounter. Just because Joe-Bob has started a local FetLife group related to your home town on the website doesn’t mean he is the leader of any actual community group.

  The second internet resource that you may find useful is social media. Doing key word searches on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, or Google + can sometimes give you surprisingly good results. The best way to do it, however, is to know exactly who and what you are looking for. Many BDSM groups have their own social media pages, which are used to keep their members informed about events and other news. Lifestyle-friendly businesses, such as sex toy shops, leather goods merchants, piercing or tattoo parlors, and adult bookstores also are likely to have social media accounts. Following or friending them can often lead you to discover what you’re looking for on their friends list. You can ask them about their social media sites whenever you visit, or you can make a phone call to the establishment, or you can simply search for the names of the businesses on the web site in question. Many of the individual BDSM group members will have social media accounts which are specifically used to connect with their kinky friends, and may welcome new friends. Don’t be surprised, however, if they expect to have actually met you in real life first. On that same note, if you also plan to use your social media to stay connected with vanilla family, friends and coworkers, it might be a good idea to create a new account specifically for your BDSM lifestyle connections.

  Another great place to make progress is with blogs. A search of a popular blog portal may lead you to a group right in your own back yard. Since blogs can be a relatively easy way to create a web site, allow for collaborative authorship, and automate the process of registering followers, many lifestyle groups find them to be extremely useful. To see if any of your local BDSM groups have a blog-type website, check out Blogger.com, Wordpress.com, Tumblr.com, LiveJournal.com, Blog.com, Xanga.com, Weebly.com, or Posterous.com. A simple search of the terms “BDSM” and the name of your state or home town should reveal whether or not these blogs will be useful to you.

  One online resource that I do not recommend, if you’re serious about connecting with others in the BDSM lifestyle, is internet chat rooms. Generally speaking, internet chat rooms – while they can certainly be entertaining – can be incredibly frustrating and a huge waste of your valuable time. A significant number of the people you meet in them will turn out to be clueless, deceitful or both, and even their locations will quite often be deliberately misleading, which makes searching for new friends and groups in your geographical area somewhat problematic. On the other hand, once you connect in real life and make friends with other folks in the BDSM lifestyle, chat rooms can be a great way to stay in touch.

  Another method that is not recommended would be to confuse anything having to do with the “swinging” lifestyle with the fetish or BDSM community. Most major metropolitan areas have swingers’ clubs, swingers’ publications, and swingers’ web sites which are, more often than not, completely useless even to swingers, much less to those in the BDSM community. While vanilla folk may have a hard time telling a swinger from someone in the BDSM lifestyle, the differences can be quite stark, and are usually painfully obvious to the individuals in the two lifestyles.

  The bottom line is, the best way to locate and connect with a local BDSM group is to use pretty much the same methods you might use to find and join any other kind of group. While it’s true that you won’t be able to just look up “BDSM groups” in the yellow pages, you probably wouldn’t find the local model train club there, either. In the end, you will likely get the best results from networking with friends, using social media and blogs, and visiting with the people at lifestyle-friendly businesses.

  If done right, being a part of your local BDSM group can be an incredibly rewarding adventure. Not only is it good to know that you are not alone, but some of the friendships you make there will be unlike anything you’ve ever experienced be
fore. Regardless of your age, experience or expertise in the lifestyle, there will almost always be something fascinating to learn from your fellow fetishistas.

  My Two Cents on BDSM Munches

  The aroma of sizzling fajitas filled the air as twenty members of our local BDSM group were gathered together, as was our usual custom, at a trendy Mexican restaurant for our monthly social. We chatted amiably over our beverages as we sat clustered around a very long table at the center of the restaurant, and waited for our server to take our dinner orders. To the other patrons of the restaurant, we could easily have been mistaken for members of the local Rotary Club, or a group of co-workers or friends celebrating a promotion or birthday.

  As the waitress completed her order-taking, other members of the group would occasionally wander around the table to introduce themselves to first-time visitors, or to give others directions to the after-munch party, which we euphemistically referred to as “movie night,” on the off-chance that we were overheard by the other restaurant patrons or staff.

  Suddenly, to the surprise of everyone at the table and practically everyone in the restaurant, one of the young women in the group let out a shrill scream, burst into uncontrollable sobbing, and ran through the restaurant in a bee-line for the ladies’ restroom. One of her friends was quickly dispatched to check on her, while the rest of us were left confused and wondering, what the hell just happened?

  A worried restaurant manager rushed to our table to inquire about the incident, and we quickly concocted a semi-plausible story about the poor girl and the awful panic attacks that she sometimes suffers in public places. He left, not entirely convinced of the explanation, but thoroughly satisfied that the scream wasn’t the result of something important, like a fat, hairy roach crawling out of someone’s taco salad.

  It wasn’t until hours later that some of us learned what had upset the young lady. She had recently met, and gotten to know the young man who had escorted her into the restaurant that evening. During the process of getting to know one another, the young woman revealed to him a very private and, for her, somewhat embarrassing kink. She liked to be choked, and when she is, the effect is almost always an immediate and orgasmic experience for her.

  She revealed this to her new friend in the expectation that perhaps he might put it to use in the bedroom, not in the middle of a crowded restaurant which is, in fact, exactly what he did.

  In a pathetic attempt to bolster his own inflated ego, and to demonstrate to others that he knew something about this girl that they didn’t, this young man had stepped behind her as she sat at the dinner table talking with her friends, and choked her. Needless to say, she was not amused.

  Don’t be that guy.

  “The difference between sex and love is that sex relieves tension and love causes it.”

  - - Woody Allen

  Chapter 11: Sex, Love, D/s, & BDSM

  People mistake sex for love (and vice-versa) all the time, and that misperception isn’t just limited to the vanilla folk. This should come as no surprise to anyone. Yet, as complicated as that can be, try to imagine what happens when you toss D/s and BDSM into the mix. It can be enough to make your head spin, even if you’ve spent your entire life navigating those treacherous waters. There are many, many ways that a D/s relationship can be lost on dangerous shoals, but for our purposes, we’ll focus here on three of the most common and frustrating: mistaking BDSM for sex, mistaking love for BDSM, and mistaking BDSM for D/s. The following three real-life case studies nicely illustrate not only what can go wrong, but how it can go wrong. Naturally, names and locales have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals concerned.

  Mistaking BDSM for Sex

  Robert D., a twenty-six-year-old restaurant manager in Kansas had always been curious about the BDSM lifestyle, but had never made much of an effort to seek out like-minded individuals or a fetish group in his home town – that is, until now. Robert had recently created an account at one of the major online BDSM portals, learned about a local group having a get-together, and decided to attend. The munch was being held at a nearby Pizza Hut, which regularly reserved a semi-private party-room for the large group. Robert was familiar with the place, which helped him to get past his nervousness about going.

  Robert arrived at the appointed hour and introduced himself to those who were already in attendance. He enjoyed his pizza and listened to the conversations that seemed to swirl around and across the table. The two-hour social passed quickly and enjoyably, and at the end of it, one of the group leaders approached him discreetly and invited him to the after-munch play party. Robert hadn’t really been expecting that, but was flattered and excited at the prospect. Without hesitation, he agreed to follow his new friend to the home of the member hosting the event. During the ensuing twenty minute drive, visions of decadent, nubile sex-slaves danced in his head. Alas, it was not to be.

  Robert spent close to three hours at the play party and then returned home feeling deflated and disappointed. Before crawling into bed, Robert took a few moments to journal his reactions to his first-ever BDSM play party, and post them online for his friends to peruse and perhaps comment upon. His personal reflections, which have been redacted here for content and to protect his privacy, reflect what could have been the thoughts of any person new to the lifestyle, attending an event like this one for the first time:

  “I was excited and nervous about attending a BDSM play party for the first time, and wasn’t sure what I was going to be expected to know or do, so I decided to just watch and see what would happen... which turned out to be - practically nothing. One of the women there stripped down to a thong as soon as she arrived, but practically everyone else either kept their clothes on, or undressed for specific activities and got dressed again. This was not at all what I expected. I had expected this to be a clothing-free event, and was fully prepared to get naked myself, but I guess I had the wrong idea about how they do things. It’s probably just as well, since a lot of the people there weren’t the sort you want to see naked, anyway.”

  “Apparently, they do this thing at the start of the play party, where the girls have to identify who is allowed to touch them or play with them, and when none of them designated me as a potential play partner, I felt like a total loser and an outcast. They described their group as friendly, tolerant and inclusive, but this just made me feel excluded and embarrassed. If no one was going to play with me, what was the point of me even being here?”

  “People were mostly paired off into couples already, so I felt incredibly uncomfortable talking to anyone, for fear of stepping on someone’s toes or intruding. I don’t know how a single guy like me is supposed to hook-up with anyone, and even if I did meet someone interesting, I wasn’t authorized to touch or play with her, so what’s the point?”

  “Basically, all I got to do was watch an edge play demo and a couple of scenes. Yeah, I engaged in a few half-hearted, superficial conversations with people who were obviously not very interested in me, but after a couple hours of that, I was ready to go home. I hope not all BSM groups are like this one.”

  Robert had gone to the event looking for sex, but what he found there was – surprise! - BDSM. It’s unfortunate that one of the most commonly held misconceptions about the BDSM lifestyle is the notion that it is all about kinky, promiscuous sex. The lifestyle is kinky, without a doubt, almost by definition; but how much promiscuous sex is there, really? There is surprisingly little, actually - typically far less than is typically assumed by the general public.

  That is not to say that promiscuous sex doesn’t happen in this lifestyle. Of course it happens. But, it happens in the BDSM lifestyle pretty much the same way it does in every other kind of lifestyle, with the possible exceptions of the poly lifestyle and the swinging lifestyle. In other words, it happens mostly behind closed doors. The overwhelming majority of people in the D/s and BDSM lifestyles are either monogamous or polyfidelous. A relatively small minority of those in the BDSM lifestyle consider t
hemselves swingers. A good friend of mine likes to explain the difference to his vanilla acquaintances thusly: “We’re beaters, not cheaters.”

  Robert made more than just the simple mistake of assuming that a BDSM munch group’s play party would be a sex orgy. He erroneously assumed that these events were all about nudity when, in fact, nudity plays a very small role in most group events. He was judgmental about the appearance of the others in attendance, even though the BDSM culture is strongly supportive of being body-positive. He assumed that mostly single people would be attending an event of this type and was peeved about all of the couples in attendance, because it reduced his chances of hooking-up with someone. He was extremely superficial in how he approached and chatted with other attendees, as evidenced by his remark, “If I’m not authorized to touch... what’s the point?”

  Apparently, it never occurred to Robert that if he had actually been interested in anyone as more than just a sex object perhaps they, in turn, might have been interested in him as more than just a creepy stranger who ought to be avoided. Robert ended his narrative with the thought, “I hope all BDSM groups are not like this one,” but fails to comprehend that in BDSM groups across the country, there are a whole lot of people hoping that not all of their first time visitors are like him.