Kinky Night Out

I have the frenetic energy characteristic of a person terrified of inertia. The reason why my days are so full is because I’m terrified of what will happen if I ever actually allow myself to be lazy. Because secretly, I love being lazy – it’s in my nature. I’m afraid that if I ever did slip into a sustained period of lying dozily in bed, I might never get out.

The all or nothing approach is perhaps not healthy, but it mostly works. I propel myself through life, stringing together social appointments and other endless commitments and obligations, ticking things off enormous lists with relish.

But it’s hard sometimes to keep up a sustained fight. And when I’m not feeling well, or it’s cold outside, it can become excuse enough to take the lazy way out. Even though I know that if I go out I’ll have a great time, I still have a really tough time with it, particularly at the end of a long day.

Which is why I need people in my life, so I don’t always have to rely upon my own motivation.

Last Friday, that person was Dragongirl – who had come up from Melbourne for the weekend. Since I had a sore throat and it was cold AND rainy outside on Friday night, I literally wouldn’t have gone out had it not been for her.

So I’m super glad she came to Sydney, because it was magic.

Fet Nights (as I’ve succumbed to calling them) start long before you walk in the door of the party. There is a whole ritual surrounding getting ready, and I’ve always been a sucker for rituals.

Actually, the process of getting dolled up for these things reminds me strongly of getting ready for the ballet performances I had when I was a kid. I’m also fascinated by the way people (particularly women) dress and prepare themselves; the little details that you wouldn’t think would make a difference, but do.

Public fetish parties are performative, absolutely. Makeup and costumes give you confidence and provide a sort of armour that you can lurk behind. They enable you to be superhuman.

There is something fantastic about the lead up to entering a party. Nervous energy rising towards the ceiling, like heat.

Even though I’ve done this enough times now to be slightly less awed by it, I still love that I never quite know how the night’s going to pan out. This used to scare me, and I would try to establish some control over the situation by seeking people out and asking for them to tie me up/hit me on the bum/etc. Being the driving force behind what was about to happen, despite the fact it would require me to relinquish control, made me feel safer. (Submissives, for the record, are the biggest control freaks of them all). These days I don’t do that – instead I just put myself in the room, and let it happen. It’s more fun, more organic, and then I can walk away saying: “well, none of that was my idea…”

Now, before Dragongirl and I got to the party, we went to Peter Pan’s house (who I refer to from now on as Pan). This was Pan’s first Fet Night, and might I say he looked resplendent in his basic black. Due to the fact I was hopped up on cold medicine and red wine, I don’t quite remember quite everything that was discussed in front of his straight-laced but inquisitive flatmate, but I don’t think it matters, since he was clearly preoccupied by Dragongirl’s amazing rack.

Although, Pan still seemed happy to associate with us the next day, so it can’t have been that bad. Heh heh.

Anyway, when we got in, I gave Dragongirl and Pan the unofficial tour of the place, and then we did the standing-around-having-strange-conversations-over-the-top-of-loud-music thing with some other people. This is always my least favourite part of any evening – because it’s one thing to follow through with social conventions at parties, but it’s another to do it while dressed entirely in rubber. It lends the scene a certain aura of ludicrous. (People still managed to pussy foot around their reasons for being there – at any time we could have been surrounded by a mixture of leather/corset/rubber/or PVC-clad individuals, as well as the occasional naked person, and STILL be discussing the weather. I suppose, after all, that weather is crazy, but…)

One of the reasons I like going out with Dragongirl, is that she has no qualms about cutting to the chase and doing something sadistic to someone as soon as possible. Which she did – to the youngest person there! (There was this cute metal/goth/emo dude who’d been dragged along by someone else, who we thought was eighteen, although that remains a question mark. He was super sweet, and his eyes were so big it looked like they were going to fall out).

We went into one of the more private play areas (that had the beautiful medicinal smell of a tattoo parlour, ahh) and she stuck a bunch of needles in his arm. Which he reckons didn’t hurt at all, because he’s a Real Man, even though I totally saw his lips quiver as they went in.

After we finished wiping the blood from Emo Boy’s arm, it was time for my flogging. There was a brief moment where I got uncharacteristically shy about taking my top off (the concoction of Codral and alcohol was wearing off by this stage), but it was thankfully short-lived. I peeled the rubber off, allowed Dragongirl cuff my wrists to the St Andrew’s cross, and let it happen.

Gods, it was good.

How to describe a flogging?

First of all, by ‘flogging’, I mean she used one of those implements that was a bunch of leather strands attached to a handle. There were a few different sorts available for our use, and she alternated between them. (The longer the strands, the heavier the blow. Also, there was one with knots in the leather, which really hurt a buggery, haha).

The feeling is of being beaten, but in the kindest possible way. An expert flogger (as Dragongirl most certainly is) will flog with a steady rhythm, which sends me almost immediately into a trance. There’s a sort of jungle energy to it – of sacrificing a virgin to a volcano, or, erm, some shit. (I’m on fire with this metaphor thing right now).

It doesn’t benefit from intellectualising too much – which is another reason why I love it. It sends me to a place like sleep, it makes me feel safe, calm, beautiful; it relaxes me more deeply than anything I’ve ever experienced; it sends me into the headspace of an infant, it pushes the pain out of me, it makes things tranquil, spiritual, peaceful.

The force of it almost winds you, the pain flutters across the skin like ripples of colour. And always at the other side of it – the person who is flogging you. The connection is as intimate as sex, or more so. Purer.

We’ve been doing this for years now – Dragongirl can read me so well. She takes me right to the edge of where it becomes unbearable, and then backs it off just a little. Massaged my skull occasionally between stokes. Covered my mouth; her hand getting coated in my tears.

I’ve taken to crying a lot during scenes lately, which I think is just evidence of having recently ended the longest and most functional relationship of my life. There is no lying in kink – the truth gets forced to the surface.

There are more embarrassing fluids that can escape you in an evening, believe me.

Later in the night, just when I thought things were winding down, Dragongirl bent me over a chair, tied me to it, secured my hands behind my back, and put a lycra hood over my head (which is a little something I picked up while I was in Japan – but had not until then actually used). I sank back down into subspace in a matter of seconds. The hood intensified the experience on two levels – it gave me an opportunity to completely disappear, and it gave me a break from being ‘me’.

See, I get sick of myself. During a scene, I hate being pulled from my reverie to answer a question or assure someone that I’m ‘okay’. Because the submissive side of myself doesn’t care for talk, or for reassuring people, or for being congenial. It just wants to roam, unchecked, unscrutinised. Do you know what a relief it is, not to have to smile, not to have to be nice, switched on, polite, funny, erudite, responsible? To go fully, quickly, towards that welcoming black, to give someone my body, to leave it behind?

To not have to apologise.

I know Dragongirl loves to hit people, and she knows I love to be hit. It works.

Towards the end of the night, Pan had to go.

“You’re crazy!” he said, all grin and sparkle.

“No I’m not,” I said. “Oh wait. Yes I am.”