First posts are always awkward.
It’s the blogging equivalent of a first date – you turn up with all these intentions to be witty and intelligent, but ultimately just end up sounding like a wanker. It’s inevitable. But sometimes, underneath the horror and the angst of it all, something clicks. Something is coolly and clearly ‘right’ about it, despite the fact you’re blathering like an idiot and you’ve just spilled spaghetti sauce all down the front of your new dress. And, in a strangely similar way, I have that same feeling about this blog. Sure, we don’t know each other very well, the conversation is a little stilted, and I’m feeling irrationally paranoid that I’ve forgotten how to blog altogether, (it has, after all, been a while), but despite all that I’m hanging in there. In fact, I think I’m having fun.
So, what brings me back to blogging?
I resisted it for a long time because I’ve developed this horrifying idea of myself as some sort of ‘real’ writer who is far too busy with her novel to waste time on a silly little blog. Ghastly I know! But I’ve been craving the immediacy and informality of blogging that a novel simply can’t satisfy. And the connectedness – I’m sick of feeling like my ideas are pent up inside my head with nowhere to go.
And what, precisely, am I blogging about?
Ok, this is going to be a bit of a long story, but bear with me. When I was twenty years old I had a conversation with a man (on a first date, ironically), in which he asked me if I was submissive. Submissive? I’d never thought of it consciously before. I didn’t have the vocabulary to articulate that side of myself. To have someone point it out so plainly was a revelation. Spiritual. And it was also a giant relief, because I no longer had to pretend to be someone I wasn’t, or feel ashamed of who I was. It was one of the most powerful moments in my life.
I fell in love with him, and we proceeded to have a horribly destructive relationship.
After I eventually disentangled myself from that wreckage, I was confused. He was my sexual revolution, and in the wake of that relationship I questioned whether my sexuality was to blame. Had the relationship become abusive because of the Master/slave dynamic? Was that just a facilitator for the abuse – a fancy dressing for something depressingly cliched? Was my pseudo-Catholic guilt right all along? Were we were being punished because we gave into our immoral carnal urges?
I felt embarrassed and guilty for a long time.
During this time I pursued a couple of ‘vanilla’ (non-kinky) relationships, which ended up being similarly destructive, except without the awesome sex. Then I decided to find ways of ‘unleashing’ my kinky side through controlled means, like going to fetish clubs. This gave me some good experiences, and I found it to be fulfilling and liberating during a time when I was fairly desperately single and not exactly overflowing with self confidence.
By the time I decided to drag myself into the city and attend a drinks night for the Sydney Under 30s BDSM group (of which I’d been an inactive member for some time), I was no longer looking for a romantic partner, or even for sex exactly. I was just looking, in a very unspecific sense, to be involved. And because I wasn’t looking for any kind of romantic complication (I was, after all, planning to move to Melbourne later in the year), I of course met a man with whom I drifted slowly, sanely, towards love.
That’s where you’d expect to stick the happy ending. And it was, in one sense, an ending. An end to guilt, shame, confusion and depression. But it was the decision I made on that night, to go outside my comfort zone and seek something different, that’s where something began. A desire not just to distract myself with love or to get off, but to participate, communicate. Since then I’ve become actively involved in the running of the Under 30s Group, and I realised, lame as it sounds, the importance of community.
The kink scene, particularly for those of us under the age of 40, is undernourished in Australia. Not enough people are talking, and even fewer are crawling out of their shells to attend events. The arrival of a couple of New Yorkers (eee Eileen and MayMay) jolted me into the realisation that it’s one thing to be smug and happy in your own sexuality, but it’s another to share your experience. This is something that can be really thought provoking and interesting.
Every single day I’m frustrated by the conservative and outmoded ideas about sexuality that are shoved in our faces by the mainstream media (I have a particular loathing for ‘Sam and the City’ on smh.com – oh the rage!). The whole battle-of-the-sexes ‘men want sex and women want committment’ bullshit that finds its way into everything. Am I the only person who is sick to death of being force fed these (depressing) mantras?
While some might consider this sort of fluff to be harmless, I don’t. The overwhelming response we get from new members joining the Under 30s group is “thank god, I thought I was the only freak in the world” (or something to that effect). Most are painfully shy, and still dogged by a conditioned paranoia that they are doing something devious or wrong.
I’ve never been politically inclined. I used to roll my eyes when passing the Queer Space on campus at UTS, with all those fiesty kids with nose piercings and dreadlocks who were handing out rainbow condoms and protesting against oppression and other such Important Issues. It’s positively un-Australian to take yourself too seriously, and you wouldn’t want to speak with too much intelligence or conviction lest you be considered a tall poppy.
But, let’s face it, in terms of sexual enlightenment in this country, we’re mostly just a bunch of backward bogans.
I hate protest rallies. I hate gratuitous sincerity. I particularly hate politics. But I like to blog.
And thus welcome to my ramblings. I hope to be honest, frank and humorous at all times about my sexual/fetish exploits. I’m not really looking to change to world, more just to be vaguely amusing and to get people thinking and talking.
Blog on!
-lou
