2. SM-Pre-Contact

Sexuality was taboo. It is not something that we talk about freely now, as adults, and certainly not before. This leaves a vacuum where ignorance, fear, prejudice, and guilt can and does, run free. Why it was so taboo I don’t know, but it was. Hopefully these days, with the internet and social media, this is less so. The taboo also seems to go across cultures. Its not like you can rock-up in India and start discussing cunnilingus in the office, or visit the gulf and talk about group sex. Again, I don’t know why; surely, it’s not a default state otherwise the human race would have snuffed-it long ago due to no one knowing what to do. Is this also true across the centuries? I get the impression in the middle-ages things were more relaxed; perhaps there was fuck-else-all to do then apart from getting drunk. Anyway, I was a victim of this like the rest of my generation and I hoovered-up the common prejudices of the time. 

These prejudices were that men-and-women did it, one-to-one, and anything different was a sexual perversion that should be illegal or highly frowned-upon. It was only the Romans that did this sort of thing, and look what happened to them. This prompts one of my relatively few childhood memories of there being a giant Roman dictionary in our classroom which we scoured for filth, and we found it. There wasn’t just one word for having-it-off; there were loads (I can’t remember now if they were regular or irregular verbs, a classicist would have to help here). We just didn’t have the option of a quick Porn-Hub session on the pc. 

At the same time as holding these “received” views I was already cross-dressing from the age of seven. Having no sister I “borrowed” my mother’s clothes when my parents were out. I was good at it; sneaking into their bedroom, dressing, admiring myself amid semi-formed fantasizes. I reconciled these two contradictions with ease as I hid my cross-dressing well, even from myself. Though I knew the term “transvestite” I didn’t identify as one. Bizarre. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. Looking back, it was probably right I hid my activities otherwise it would have been electro-shock-therapy for me, or something equally as horrible. Even at seven I had a strong sense of self-preservation. 

This continued throughout high-school, but I was becoming more resistant to the brain-washing. First it was politics as I came to understand that people deserved better than a barely democratic system heavily weighted towards “traditional” values. Then as I got bolder, I hit-out at religion. I was never convinced I was resisting enough, imagining that a teenage-boy could take-on and win against this wall-to-wall prejudice. Then onwards, against interventionist militarism and the endless replaying of the second-world-war. I was getting seriously bolshy, but never pushed it far enough to get excluded or expelled. With hindsight I think this guerrilla warfare was the correct tactic. 

I got harder, too hard perhaps. I remember promising at the age of thirteen never to cry again. What is damaging is not that I made this pledge, but I actually kept it until I realized, slowly, with other people’s help, that although this was possible, it was not the right approach. People are meant to have emotions, and not having them or burying them makes you less of a human. All the time my sexuality kept presenting itself to me, ever stronger, ever more insistent that I do something about it. I knew I wasn’t gay, but sort-of-assumed I was one-of-a-kind. How gloriously ignorant I was.

Then college and freedom, and meeting young ladies. Clumsy as hell, but persistent. A slow learner, but a learner. I met my eventual soulmate, Marvella, older, oozing sophistication and self-confidence, and so far-out of my-league as to be unobtainable. What I didn’t understand was mutual self-selection, or chemistry, can work both ways. Those little signals flitting between brains far more complex and subtle than the dance of the birds of paradise. It was of course she that made the move. Into bed (pretty disastrous), then the make-up. I’d never been properly been made-up before; just some self-administered lipstick sneaked from my mother. I looked really good, until Marvella overdid it, and I look more like I had two black-eyes from a boxing match (she always did underestimate the strength of that “kid’s-drug”, dope). In Squeeze’s immortal lyrics, and the most inventive rhyme in the English-language, “I never thought it would happen, with me and the girl from Clapham”. 

After college a few lost years, then we cleaned-up our act, and even stopped drinking before giving-up smoking. I shot-up that greasy-pole at work, travelled internationally, and was content, but not at ease. Often Marvella would come on trips with me. Sex was kinky and between the two of us; private and hidden. By-the-way, always use condoms and lube when being analized (like being analysed, but much more fun). If you don’t you might end up in hospital like me undergoing two weeks of “anal-repair” (don’t you just like medical jargon). It was in my mid-thirties that things began to fall into place.  

It really began by me reading an article in one of my American science-magazines. They had an article on psychology, a subject I usually kept well away from, but what-the-hell. It was about paraphilias; what they call kinks in psychobabble. What hit me is they actually described not just the kink, but what the “sufferer” was thinking about with that kink; SM punishment-prisons, enslavement by sadistic dominatrices, slave girls and boys, forced feminization and chastity etc. It was all home territory. I was not alone. There was a whole population of wonderful men and women out there who shared my sexuality. 

It was also at this time I became aware of the modern fetish press; Skin-Two, Fetish-Times and Secret-Magazine (which eventually Marvella one guest-edited) etc. These were cool, high-quality magazines with photos of the most incredibly sexy-models alongside fact and fiction articles. I’ve nothing against the more traditional “top-shelf” or “under-the-counter” dirty-raincoat mags, but they serve a niche market. I/we were being educated. We also discovered where the action was; in Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Milan and London (our home-town), but in particular, Amsterdam. 

Also at this time, we had decided to chill-out a little more. We re-established our relationship with booze and cannabis, and started to visit festivals and music venues. I had reached pretty near the top of any greasy-pole that I could climb work-wise, not being bossy minded (who ever heard of a boss being a tranny?). We had three dynamics converging; fetish, travel and those two recreational drugs. So, amongst all the other destinations I visited for work across Europe and the US, one loomed large in the diary; Amsterdam. 

I remember Marvella saying on our second-or-third visit there “I suppose we’ve got to go and meet them”. By “them” she meant the beautiful-people, the boys and girls in the magazines. They looked so young and self-confident; early twenties, all immaculately fetish-dressed, with the occasional domme or dom in their forties, all oozing sophisticated-sexiness. It was high-summer in 94 when we went, and things would never be the same again.

 Marvella had consulted a recent Time-Out magazine with Amsterdam specially featured. In amongst the usual places to visit such as coffee-shops, restaurants, bars, and clubs, were two places of interest. The first was Henny’s-Place, a sex-bar with a stage and discreet play areas. We visited and it was quite pleasant, with a few people at the bar, behind which was Henny herself. We stayed a bit, and soaked up the ambience, which was all new to us. Lights, red décor, pouffes, sofas and bar stools, with the brightly lit optics behind the bar. Nice, if you like that sort of thing, which we did. Then we wandered off towards the city centre.

At lunch-time the next day, Saturday, we tracked-down the second place of interest. It was very hard to find, half way down a narrow connecting alley between the Warmoesstraat and the Oudezijds-Voorburgwal in the red-area (red-light-district). It was high summer with a blazing-bright cloudless sky, but in the alley, it was still dark, which reminded me of the souks of Dubai. There was an entrance with a dim, red neon-sign above it, with the simple four characters, “DSM4”. The entrance was arch shaped, the top of which was still less than my height. At the base of the arch were three steps, leading into the inside. There was no obvious door, just a near complete darkness through which we could discern nothing. 

I glanced at Marvella, and she at me, and we hesitated. It was hidden, hardly even advertising its existence. It was unlike any bar or place we had seen before which usually shout their presence to passers-by. Looking back, even then, I think we both understood at some deep subconscious level that we were about to make a life-changing decision. We could continue on our way, back into the bright summer light, back to our comfortable world we knew so well, back to the touristy hurly-burly of the red-area, back to our settled lives in bourgeois Barnes in London, back to respectability. Or we could descend the steps into the unknown darkness and abandon our comfort-zone. Nothing was spoken, Marvella acted and boldly descended the steps, stooped to get under the low arch, and disappeared into the gloom. I stumbled down after here. The die had been cast.