Fetish night, Cracker Barrel morning...
Juxtaposition is the strongest spice of the literati, and I found myself wading through the spice this weekend. It was a charity fetish party during the night...pretty odd for mainstream america, but pretty normal for a wandering sociologist/writer/whatever else I am. Pairs and trios bound with leather, rope, chain, and ultimately by the comraderie of living in stigma. Social groups have the tokens that represent the adhesion between their members, and it's refreshing to see a group that wears their bonds as such. Relationships are often a waltz of power, freedom, authority, vulnerability, lust, and revulsion...some are more aware of it than others.
I walked through the club to immerse in sensation, talked philosophy and psychology with someone who giggled as she tied me into uncomfortable positions, then passed words about the haunting draw of old cemetaries and the importance of remembering where we put all the corpses with a gothy nymph trying to stay afloat in the modern world.
And then I ate at the Cracker Barrel the next morning...waiting for a table with "wholesome" families in rocking chairs playing checkers on oversized quaint quilted mats. Homestyle meatloaf and veggies for a person with ropeburns in places I can't see without a mirror... folksy chat with waitresses that could have taught Sunday school before their shift.
And I wondered if I were ever truly an insider at either place. The pixies and sugar daddies and femme fatales and boy toys at the club would tell me that they'd find my kink eventually--find something I fancy aside from intellectual curiosity and the pleasure of watching people dance to beats I don't hear. When I go back to the hills of Ohio and West Virginia, though, the salt-folk and hillbillies and blue collared bubbas ask me how long before I'll settle down and live out the simple life of too-quiet rural america.
I even stumbled when signing up with the SGs at what I should be called... so many names could apply but none are true. When one sees the machines behind the Oz of societal interactions, adopting any label feels disingenuous. So I'll be Chameleon for now, blending until I find a true name and true form.
Juxtaposition is the strongest spice of the literati, and I found myself wading through the spice this weekend. It was a charity fetish party during the night...pretty odd for mainstream america, but pretty normal for a wandering sociologist/writer/whatever else I am. Pairs and trios bound with leather, rope, chain, and ultimately by the comraderie of living in stigma. Social groups have the tokens that represent the adhesion between their members, and it's refreshing to see a group that wears their bonds as such. Relationships are often a waltz of power, freedom, authority, vulnerability, lust, and revulsion...some are more aware of it than others.
I walked through the club to immerse in sensation, talked philosophy and psychology with someone who giggled as she tied me into uncomfortable positions, then passed words about the haunting draw of old cemetaries and the importance of remembering where we put all the corpses with a gothy nymph trying to stay afloat in the modern world.
And then I ate at the Cracker Barrel the next morning...waiting for a table with "wholesome" families in rocking chairs playing checkers on oversized quaint quilted mats. Homestyle meatloaf and veggies for a person with ropeburns in places I can't see without a mirror... folksy chat with waitresses that could have taught Sunday school before their shift.
And I wondered if I were ever truly an insider at either place. The pixies and sugar daddies and femme fatales and boy toys at the club would tell me that they'd find my kink eventually--find something I fancy aside from intellectual curiosity and the pleasure of watching people dance to beats I don't hear. When I go back to the hills of Ohio and West Virginia, though, the salt-folk and hillbillies and blue collared bubbas ask me how long before I'll settle down and live out the simple life of too-quiet rural america.
I even stumbled when signing up with the SGs at what I should be called... so many names could apply but none are true. When one sees the machines behind the Oz of societal interactions, adopting any label feels disingenuous. So I'll be Chameleon for now, blending until I find a true name and true form.