1. SM-Introduction

SM, S&M, BDSM, Bondage, Domination, Sado-Masochism, Kinks, Fetishes, Pervy, “The-Scene” and “The-Non-Scene”, all acronyms and words to help describe this subject area. Being of a mathematical inclination, I’m tempted to go down a Wikipedia-style rigorous definition of these and how they relate to each-other, but I won’t. Nor will I spend any time exploring-and-explaining their geographic and temporal origins, their cultural influences, and the fashions they have spawned. Nor will I compare-and-contrast the fetish and gay communities as they think we’re a bunch of perverts (and your point is?), and we think we “outrank” them. Actually, this is not true; a large fraction of our subculture is gay. I used to do this sort of technical documenting for my day-job as an IT-consultant (some people have all the best jobs), but this lifestyle deserves better treatment. As per the Australian saying, I don’t want it to be as “dry as a dead dingo’s donger”; instead, let the “juices- run”.

Instead, I want to provide a completely biased but accurate(ish) and entertaining account of it from a participant’s perspective. Like lord Wreath, the first director of the BBC (British broadcasting corporation – the state TV), I seek to inform, educate and entertain, but mostly entertain, as it is hysterically funny. I’m very much influenced-and-inspired by the 1970’s UK morality campaigner, Mary Whitehouse, and her campaign against the BBC for producing what in her opinion was “filth”.

I also want to report-on filth, not just defined by her perspective, but from everyone’s (i.e. filth for all, not just the middle-classes). Humour helps, philosophy can be interesting (please feel free to deconstruct, as per Monsieur Jacques-Derrida), but it’s pure-and-uncontainable filth I want to convey. I want it to ooze out of these pages and slosh-around the reader’s brain triggering severe-sexual-arousal. I appreciate that’s a lofty-and-noble goal, but we need to challenge Putinism with all its fundamentalism-tyranny, and help bolster the morale-fabric of the West. But how best to do this? Via random stories and views?

No. I’ve decided to do it narrative style, with the thread being time. For those of you unlucky enough not to be exposed to the theory-of-documentation, the written word is naturally sequential. You read left-to-right (in English), top-to-bottom, from beginning to end, mostly without those pesky-distractions of having to jump ahead-or-back in the text. This is writings’ natural strength, but also a weakness, which necessitates things like dictionaries, encyclopaedias and technical documentation.

 Here I have chosen time as the thread, running through stories and events, linking them together and building a narrative for human consumption; something you can read on the train-or-tram. Some characters and events are amalgamations, and all names have been changed for the usual reasons, except for my own. Additionally, thirty years of time between the doing and the writing naturally-causes a certain rosy “fuzziness” in recollections, compounded by the effects of recreational drugs (i.e. alcohol, marihuana and ecstasy), so cut-me some slack.

One last thought on my writing style, which has its origins in that bankrupt US company Enron, the erstwhile energy trader. Not only did it go bankrupt, it also brought down the IT consultancy company, Arthur-Andersen. One of the reasons was “twiddling-the-knob” where any internal-or-external project had its success overstated by a fictional ten-or-twenty percent, building a house-of-cards that eventually collapsed. I do this with the events-and-stories I write as it turns a good story into an exceptional one, except the ten-or-twenty percent thing is not fictional; it’s just remembering-and-conveying the background-and-context which enriches everything.

An example of this is a conversation my partner Marvella and I had with a newly-married couple we struck-up a friendship with at the Bull’s-Head pub in Barnes, London, as we were embarking on our SM-odyssey. I was describing quite seriously my transvestism when he said he had a transvestite friend who just liked to put-on female clothes because it made him “feel-right”; it wasn’t a sexual thing. I countered that for me it was absolutely a sexual thing, at which point Marvella chimed-in with “I can vouch for that, when he’s in a dress he gets an enormous stiffy, which I put to very good use”. Now comes the twiddle.

After an extremely short hesitation where I thought she might have realized she’d overstepped the mark, but not a bit-of-it, as she added “especially when I stick a vibrator up his bum – well sticking it in his ear doesn’t work so well”. At which point the four of us burst-out into uncontrollable laughter that caused the entire pub to turn their heads towards the four-of-us, with the somewhat dour Scottish landlord asking “care to share the joke?”, which of course we didn’t.

I hadn’t set-out with this heroic mission (help bringing SM out of the shadows for the few and into the light for masses), but its kind-of evolved. I had set-out to create a few consulting stories to “sex-up” my IT-company’s website, but it just got out of hand. First adult consulting stories, then a dabble into cannabis yarns, and now SM ones, all prompted by an overwhelming demand from my “extensive” fan-base (thanks Michael). I apologise if these stories cut across ones already partially covered in the consulting and cannabis collections. SM is like the USA; its big and diverse, and there are many roads from Chicago to Santa-Monica, other than Route-66. This is my road, or more accurately ours, as I could not have succeeded without my co-conspirator, Marvella (SM is extremely female-friendly).

A final few thoughts before we get into it. Trying to make it fun means understanding the “kick” from other people’s viewpoints. People differ from each other in two, not so obvious ways; their personality and their sexuality. So, you have to put your mind in the mind of others, which is sometimes easy, sometimes difficult, and occasionally almost impossibly. Would you believe it – there really are some very strange people out there! With fetishes it’s easier than having-to imagining what its like to be a bat using echolocation (thanks Thomas Nagel), though I think even this is possible. You just start with what you have and make a leap, sometimes a small one (group-sex) to a bigger one (Japanese-rope-bondage).

Also, just as there is a scam for everyone (based on greed, love, vanity, fear, anxiety etc.), I believe there is a fetish for everyone, though perhaps you don’t know it yet. Laying out a smorgasbord of gives the casual reader the chance to test-this-out. Sadism – no, Masochism – no, bondage – no, still-life’s models – no, rubber -no; actually, can we just rewind to still-life models; was that with whipped-cream or sour-cream? See what I mean. A fetish for everyone then, and if you are lucky enough like me, there could be quite a few you can sign-up to. You just need an open mind, an adventurous spirit, and lots of energy. Recreational drugs also help (free advice - no need to thank me).

Porn can help a little here in helping you understand your fetishes before venturing out into the wider world. Porn is OK but not ideal as it very much focuses on the mechanics of sex, not the emotions of sex. Let’s face it, few engage in these activities because of the pure mechanics, or plumbing as I call it (just thought, I wonder if there is a plumbing fetish?). No, its what your brain is doing while engaging in the aforesaid plumbing. A small amount of porn does do this, like Fifty-Shades-of-Gray and the Story-of-O, but they are the exception. Not that I’ve spent too-much time watching porn (lie), but there are interesting cultural differences; e.g. Japanese, European, American.  What I love about American porn is to get around censorship laws they have to embed it in a completely ludicrous plot. Keep watching.

There is a dark-side to this noble endeavour though, as I’ve often discussed with my Scottish psychotherapist, Miss-Mary-McNuggets NUTT. (national union of talk-therapists). She very nicely agreed to take me on after my original Dutch therapist suffered a catastrophic breakdown (he’s recovering well now). It was when I was thinking-through the image of Winston-Churchill masturbating, which is supposedly a difficult thing to imagine (“pulling” for victory?), a bit-like imagining your parents having sex. I’m quite OK with that image though, it was when I substituted Margaret-Thatcher for Winston-Churchill in my imagination that things deteriorated. Actually, even that was OK, but slightly disturbing. What tipped me over-the-edge was imagining what she was thinking about while she was masturbating (I’m sure you’re made of stronger-stuff than me). This is where Miss-McNuggets is currently helping. At least I can talk about it now thanks to the good-therapist. 

Now, let’s get stuck-in (so-to-speak)…