A Night of Kink

It was a rainy Thursday night when The Dulcinea and I headed to a mysterious address. The occasion was the inaugural meeting of an erotic writer's group assembled by Graydancer, a local who also happens to be an expert practitioner of shibari, Japanese rope bondage. It was a bit ironic as this week's edition of our local alternative weekly had come out earlier that day and the cover story was about the fetish scene here in town. Somehow the article completely neglected to mention Graydancer. I'd known of Graydancer for some time and I'd listened to his podcast, Rope Weekly. I also knew of him because he is polyamorous. Although married to charming women, Gen, he also takes other lovers. While I'm not current on all of the details of his situation, I do know that he also has a partner in Cunning Minx, hostess of the podcast Polyamory Weekly. And so it was rather neat to be able to meet someone whom I know only via a podcast.

GD came across as a rather unassuming fellow. Extremely nice guy. I should also remark that the session was held at the home of Miss R., a professional dominatrix about whom you can find out more at her page, Leathermines. The writing session was actually held in her dungeon. Looking around, I saw bars hanging from the ceiling and imagined some of Miss R's clientele being tied in place. I asked GD why he didn't appear in the Isthmus article as he seemed a natural candidate and he basically laughed it off as an oversight on the part of the author. (A major one, I grant you.) He said that he was quite angry at first but he eventually got over it when he realized that his goal in life was not to get mentioned in the newspaper. More folks rolled in – I, E, and B. Also present was GD's wife, Gen, who would be a model. You see, the idea was that she and Graydancer would do a rope demo to provide inspiration for our writing. B revealed himself to be a tranny as well as poly. I cannot recall any details about E or I, unfortunately. But The Dulcinea and I found ourselves smack dab in the middle of a situation where the "normal" one man-one woman, missionary position, no sex outside of marriage and only for procreation bullshit was nowhere to be found.

Why were The Dulcinea and I there? For starters, we both like to write and we both like to write erotica. So we took advantage of the chance to improve our skills in this area in what promised to be an interesting environment. Plus I we felt the allure of the situation. I mean, we're both into a bit of kink and, ever since our threesome last year, we've become poly-curious. The Dulcinea expressed her desire beforehand to meet some people into kink who weren't like those in the photos of the aforementioned Isthmus article, namely people who were more like her – not in their early 20s, not having perfect bodies, and people who had children. Personally, the fetish and kink nights at various clubs around town sound interesting but, honestly, I cannot stand much more than 5 minutes of the techno/goth/electronica music that's played at such events. It's not that I wanna hear a Brahms lullaby, but it just seems unfortunate to me that kink and fetish are so closely associated with that type of music. (Or perhaps it's unfortunate that I don't care for the stuff.) I think that there's a whole 'nother article to be done about fetish & kink outside of clubs and involving folks long out of their 20s. There's more to being kinky and into fetishes than thumping bass beats at a club.

Anyway, we introduced ourselves and gave an explanation for why were were there. E and I had both been creative writing majors in college yet had done precious little writing since graduation. GD had a couple novels in the can that he wanted to combine and polish off into something to shop around to printers. B was a member of other writing groups but was keen on finding one not full of sycophants who labeled everything from his pen great. I felt very comfortable with everyone in short time. The Dulcinea took a bit longer but I think she too eventually was put at ease.

Things began with everyone grabbing their pens and paper and Gen sitting on the bench in the middle of the room. Graydancer approached her with hemp rope in hand. He removed her top to reveal a black bra which seemed barely able to hold back her breasts. It was black and contrasted with her pale skin. GD made a few comments to her which were hard to hear as a) he spoke softly and b) the music for the occasion was coming from I's laptop which was right next to me. Gray dragged the rope across Gen's skin – over she shoulders and across her neck. This caused her to shudder in delight. Soon enough, the black bra was nowhere to be seen and Gen's breasts were exposed to the rope and Gray's touch.

The keys of a couple laptops could be heard being tapped while the rest of us diligently wrote on paper. I made the mistake of trying to keep up with the action. This was a futile task. I realized that I either had to take notes of the action and write a narrative after the fact or I could just write whatever came to mind. I opted for the latter. Seeing Gen lying on the bench with her body twisted and submitted to Gray, my mind immediately shifted outside. (Go figure.) I got this metaphor in my head: just as the leaves on the trees outside were bending with each water droplet that fell on them, so Gen too was bending and submitted to Gray. And so I started writing a brief paragraph about the leaves and soon found myself losing track of the erotic scene unfolding before me. And so I just started writing stray sentences which were little glimpses of the action.

Looking up at one point, Gen's skirt was gone, her wrists were bound, and Gray was securing the rope to a leg of the table as she knelt there on all four with only her black thong underwear remaining. He then whispered to her, "How would you feel about a spanking?" Gen laid her head down on a pillow and Gray started with some light slaps before moving on from there. As I was watching Gen's body react and recoil to the spanking, I found myself getting aroused…

With the scene done, we took 20 minutes to construct something on paper before sharing what we had written with everyone else. I basically went back and edited my series of out-of-place sentences so that I has relatively happy with each one. There was no narrative but I was fairly satisfied with my disjointed descriptions. Miss R. read her writing first. It wasn't bad but she suffers from the same problem I do. The story she wrote was almost all rote description of the scenes as they unfold. It's weird that I write erotica in much the same way yet cannot stand to read stuff written that way. I did like her descriptions, though. When it finally came to be my turn, I had to admit a fondness for flowery language and words that are not in common use today. For instance, when I was watching Gen get spanked, I at one point fixated on her breasts as they jiggled. With her head on the pillow and her ass sticking up in the air, I was struck by the pose. It seemed so primal, so animalistic and my mind followed. The word "dug" immediately came to mind. It's not particularly common and today it refers to the udder or teat of a non-human animal but its archaic usage referred to the breast of a human female. T.S. Eliot used it in this sense in "The Wasteland". I can imagine using the word in a story and having a modern audience just go "WTF is a dug?".

Like myself, The Dulcinea didn't come up with a narrative – more like a list of observations such as this one that Graydancer posted at his blog:

Things go slow in real sex. We take our time and linger over skin, slip, make mistakes and laugh. This is what I like about real sex that makes it impossible to write-without being dull.

The others actually wrote about the scene that Gray and Gen had performed. I felt a bit stupid as I had neglected to note down what had actually happened. These folks obviously did and wrote some good stuff. For his part, GD continued a story he had previously written involving a guy meeting a woman at a Ren Faire.

As we critiqued each other's writing, some interesting conversations arose. One was about the appearance of the characters. We debated the merits of having characters who had bodies like models vs. more realistic bodies or bodies with more variety. For instance, B remarked that he like writing about hairy men with small penises instead of men who had virtually no body hair and 10" schlongs. One side is more realistic while the other could argue that it was a fantasy and that the people in their fantasies conformed to our society's ideal body images. This line of conversation led to a comment by I. I is very beautiful and is not thin as a rail. She's not severely obese or anything – she just has some meat on her bones. I remarked that she had been a cocktail waitress at a particular establishment and was the only waitress that wasn't hyper-thin. She said that many customers commented to her that it was nice to see a "real" woman for a change. The whole conversation about confounding expectations really fit in well with the whole session because everyone there deviated from the norm as far as the cultural expectations I mentioned above.

At the end of the night, we agreed to meet twice a month. I thanked Miss R for opening her dungeon to strangers and hosting the event and we said goodbye to everyone. As we left, I couldn't help but think that, even if only a modicum of bi, poly, transgendered, dom, kinky folks were as friendly and interesting as this bunch, I look forward to meeting more of them.