T O P I C R E V I E W
Ikeren
Member # 26880
posted 03-20-2006 07:08 PM
Taking a page from the GLBT Relationships section of the forum, I am creating a thread for the "Coming out" stories of those interested in varied forms of sexual expression, in particular but not limited to paraphilia (fetishs) and general sadomasochism (kinks, bondage, and all that other fun stuff). (@Miz Scarlet: Hehe, no problem. I don't try to be disrespectful or disagreable, I just come off that way ocasionally.) Well, early-mid puberty I started having these feelings (basically, I was interested in things other then sex). I never really thought about sex - never wanted to have it, was completely un-interested. Instead I had...other interests. For 4 years I pursued some of these interests, had the occasional relationship or sexual encounter. At one point, I tried to explain my feelings to some friends. Poof - a dozen friends vanished, horrified by me. I had a person run away from me, I had people refuse to talk to me ever again, but I wasn't really bothered. I didn't care, pushed the hurt away. I wasn't even aware that everyone else didn't have the same interests. I figured everyone was just like me. Haha, naive, eh? Even after that, I didn't really ever think about it - I just thought "So they haven't developed sexual feelings yet, or don't like talking about sex. *Shrug* " So a month or so comes into my first year of grade 12. I had just started dating, and fell madly in love with absolutely terrific girl, perhaps 2-3 weeks before. During music class we were discussing a composer by the name of Percy Grainger, and our music teacher mentioned he was a sadomasochist and had an eatapus relationship with his mother (which still is highly debated, but that is a story for another day). Of course, most of the class didn't know what sadomasochism was. I didn't, and somebody asked. So our music teacher explained to the class what sadomasochism is. It was completely open-minded and non-judgmental, and as far as high school goes, I couldn't expect a better introduction. Still, kind of sad that in 12 years of school, the only thing I ever heard of sadomasochism was a chance mentioning by my music teacher. The things they teach kids these days So I was kind of like "Wait a second, that sounds like me." So I kept my mouth shut and did reading. A lot of reading...I was pretty confused for a while - it was like "Wait a second...Everyone isn't like this? And when she did that to me it was called ..." I got over it pretty quick. Then I started to worry about what my girlfriend would think/say. Ooops - big mistake. I was fine when I was with her, but at nights I would get really melancholy. I talked to some people I found online for a bit, and that helped, some. Eventually, I started dropping hints like crazy to my best friend (no, not my girlfriend. My best friend - a lesbian girl who eventually my girlfriend accused of getting between us. And if Miz Scarlet is reading this, yeah, were back to being best friends somehow...that death threat wasn't serious, apparently). Anyways, so I was dropping hints like mad, eventually with a long conversation where I was pretty wild - overly wild. I was a jerk, truth be told. Completely inappropriate. Told her I hated her, that she was a nightmare...apologized, eventually. I had my second phone call for longer then 10 minutes in my life that night (the first being a conference call to organize a youth parliament. Never been much for the phone). We talked for hours. After a few weeks I was kind of down again (I had been living on music, and just had a few hours of rehearsal where I had done terribly. I was kinda emotionally shot for a while anyways...) Told another friend. Another hour long+ phone call. We talked a lot... Lets see...the next thing that happened is I got in a big long nasty fight with the first friend that completely crushed me. That night I tried to call to apologize, and she "hung up on me" (and two months later I found out she didn't...her mom hung up the other line, I muttered "Awww darn it" into the phone, and then I hung up on her...). That night I told one of my teachers, who is a great guy, absolutely terrific, kept me alive I think. So it went on like that. I told three more people over a couple months. It always helped to talk to someone. Then just after Christmas I told my girlfriend. The first few days she was completely okay with it . On Friday we parted with a hug and smile, and she said "You are allowed to be a little different and a little crazy...I still love you". By Sunday evening she had sent me several long e-mails explaining she didn't love me and couldn't do this - one of her parents friends had died because of asphyxiation play and she was completely horrified of me. For a week, she wouldn't talk to me, look me in the eye, or get near me. So I just left her alone. Buy the end of that week, 12 people who I hadn't told knew anyways. 4 of them I would never have considered trusting. My girlfriend only told 4 people - one of her friends decided to spread it around. So that went ugly. I spent a couple weeks doing damage control, finding people with enough leverage to sit on those I wouldn't trust to keep this safe. Here's where it gets nasty: I am paranoid. We won't say what or where, but I was worried I'd get jumped by somebody angry at the "Woman abuser" and I carried weapons (nothing illegal by Canadian law, a couple things that wouldn't be really friendly according to the safe schools act...of course I have a swiss army knife on me, how else am I supposed to cut open my lemons. And I have two incase I lose one. Honestly. At least I’ve never been forced to use them...) It actually started a long time before then, but at least now I had a reason. In 4 years there have been 3 places I've felt safe. But my paranoia, which ended up really bad for a couple weeks (watching the doors bad, marking the people that came in the room in case they came near me, leaving rooms where too many people were in that I may not have trusted if there wasn't a teacher around...interesting, I’ve never told anybody about that before...anyways), eventually, things got better. And it kind of accelerated my coming out. There were some great people that helped me a lot. (The aforementioned teacher was absolutely great.) Eventually things got better. I’ve told 10 more people since then, and I consider every step a step closer to being able to portray my sexuality without fear...I’ve also made the realization that I definately don’t want to tell anybody I am likely to get into a relationship with - basically, let the relationship start. I’ve learned how to look at it better - not, I am a sadomasochist, but “I am interested in some aspects of SM and play”. I don’t care how accurate the label “Sadomasochist” is, at this point, it is too strong for other people, people don’t like it, people can’t take it. So I am no Sadomasochist - I am somebody interested in sadomasochism. A little twist of the phrase makes so much a difference to some people...oh well, perception is reality. Among those 10 people, I told my parents. They asked me why the girlfriend and I broke up, I refused to tell them. My mom told me she would never sleep again until she found out. I was pretty annoyed. They were quite nasty. They told me “Maybe if we are lucky you’ll grow out of it” and “Maybe we can find a cure” and “You need to stop telling people because you are not allowed to openly express your sexuality”, not to mention “We need to get you to a psychologist ASAP”, “You will never get into a relationship again”, “God hates you”. I laughed at the last one - they know about my interest in Satanism and they know I don’t believe in any deity aside from myself, but they tried it anyways. So I went to a psychologist. It was great, the guy was totally awesome, he was like a 50 years older version of the teacher that I told about my interests, and mentioned a couple times above. I learned a lot from him, he was terrific, I enjoyed the 40 minute meeting, we laughed a lot, talked all over the place (school, culture and society, sadomasochism, relationships). He was very complementary and impressed with me, and all in all built me up really really high. After that, I could definitely see what was so great about psychologists. So here I am, now. Completely confident with this part of me, working on telling people. I attended a munch (non-play gathering) in the area over dinner. Talked with people, met people. There were about 10 of us. I was the youngest by 10, probably closer to 20 years. A couple people were shocked, the organizer asked me for ID before hand (they weren’t going to give me the location until I told him my MSN information was out of date - I had to promise to bring my drivers licence (dated photo ID)). I know a fair bit more about S&M and have done some play over the last while. I know far better who to tell and how to tell them... Aside from the ongoing paranoia thing, which I am not remotely worried about me (Everyone has those niggling “What ifs and doubts”, I just pay a little extra attention to them and make some effort to ensure they won’t happen. Call me paranoid, but that’s me. Preparing for even the most extreme eventuality. When my parachute snaps, I’ll be glad to have an extra, so to speak. Everyone thinks on ocasion "Oh know, what if I made that person really angry by saying this and they attack me?". I just say "Well, if they attack me, I can toss my bag and make for that exit. And if they cover both exits, I can fight..." Anyways, enough digression). Back to living life, loving life, and being filled with buoyant music. I had a rough time - but I never stopped laughing, which was the important thing.
lizenny
Member # 22661
posted 03-20-2006 10:31 PM
Specifically my interests include bondage, Domination/submission, and to a slightly lesser degree some s/m. Only three people including two close friends know this and this happened very recently but I wouldn't say I "came out" to them per se. The only reason why no one knew was because it never came up. I didn't think it was necessary and how do you bring something like that up anyway? It's not exactly something you blurt out spontaneously. Even if I had brought the topic up my not so close friends would either think I was kidding or cut me off completely since most people already considered me a freak when I came out of the other closet so to speak and they found out I liked girls. I wasn't willing to cut another chunk out of my group of friends after just recently losing so many so for a while even any thought of it was shoved faaaaar into the back of my mind and I wouldn't even think of it until I was home alone with my door locked. Thankfully I don't think this way anymore and anyone who would have deserted me has done so already, thereby cleaning the crud out of my social circle. About 4 years ago in the midst of all of the previously mentioned drama, my best friend and I made a vow to expand our knowledge of sexuality as far as possible to cover everything we "weren't supposed to know." The purpose was to allow us to better understand less conventional forms of sexual expression, to better define our own boundaries, and to try to make our future sexual experiences more enjoyable, less awkward and not reminiscent of a bad after school special. This really took the edge off all of our conversations from then on. With this in mind we declared ourselves "Virgin Freaks". I know...it's an odd title but we still use it and the vow still stands. So a few months ago we were having one of our usual discussions and the topic of kink just happened to come up. This wasn't unlike us. By this time we were pretty comfortable discussing absolutely anything so I expressed my interests very casually and non-confessionally. It was really too offhand and relaxed for me to call it anything more than one of our regular conversations. She wasn't at all surprised and the other two people who know now reacted similarly. [ 03-20-2006, 10:37 PM: Message edited by: lizenny ]
Ecofem
Member # 13388
posted 03-21-2006 02:08 AM
Just wanted to through out some movie recommendations: Have either of you seen Secretary or The Piano Teacher (Die Klavierspielerin , based on a book by Austrian author Elfriede Jelinek, who won the 2004 Noble Prize in Literature.) What do you think of them? Both deal with BDSM-related themes in some way, and both are worth watching just for the story, too. (I know there's an old thread on Secretary out there, but I thought it'd be fitting for this discussion, too.)
Ikeren
Member # 26880
posted 03-22-2006 03:29 PM
Nope, I don't do much when it comes to movies...Maybe I'll pick it up one night... Lizenny - I am glad things are more or less working out well for you. Thanks for sharing your story. I am thinking it may have been easier for me if I was already out as bisexual, but that realization came after I realized I had an interest in S&M. Only a couple people know that I have a bit of interest in guys, but I don't really care. But it would have had a similar result: part of my closest friends are serious parts of the Christian Right ideology, and they don't really appreciate people like me. Oh well, their loss, I've always said