"Why don't we talk anymore?": Dead Friendships and Social Media

Originally produced for my fetlife writing page I decided this would be good here too (I really enjoyed writing it!):

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When I lived overseas I stayed in a small town where even a ten-min trip to the shop would turn into a night out as I'd run into someone I'd know, we'd get talking then head to one of the nearby bars for happy hour drinks, then another bar, then another until I was staggering home drunk with my squashed loaf of bread thinking, "shit, how am I going to get up in the morning!"

Something shifted when I came home though to a huge city where if I go to my local supermarket, I am completely anonymous. I walk the isles finding what I need and pop it on the counter before flipping open my phone to a text message from someone about the weekend. I hardly connect with the check out chick (saying hi, how are you right back at her) then go home.

Every moment of my life is planned: I work five days' a week and plan my weekends before they happen. There is very little room for spontaneity and excitement which may be why I enjoy my time at local BDSM clubs.

Something I've noticed about disconnected Australian's though is that we're always somewhere else: at dinner mother and daughter are on their phones, chatting to their friends on facebook. Every few months I receive yet another email from someone who I used to know (kinky people more than not) asking, "Why don't we talk anymore?" to my surprise and often a response of, "Because we don't? Because we moved on in our lives and I'm living right now in the present. I've no need to look into the past."

When did Aussie's get so out of synch with what's happening right now? Why do people find living a life online to be more rewarding than living in the here and now? Will the BDSM "grow out of" this phase and go back to real time relationships and using fetlife and other tools as just that - tools to maintain connections they already have?

Just something to get you thinking on this mildly cold summer day.

The success of this blog?

I started this blog so I had somewhere to put my BDSM ramblings however it’s becoming more than that. When submissives find me on fetlife, the first thing many of them do before contacting me is read my blog, which could be positive or negative.

Negative because they could project what I write here back at me in a way that makes them sound like the most wonderful submissive and perfect for me.

Positive because the blog (I hope) is true to me and will hopefully attract a submissive who is a good match for me. If he read the blog and it resonated well with him being the biggest drawer.

I have had a fair few submissives let me know they’d love to be my service submissive in the recent past, which would be nice if their service was unconditional of being a sexual submissive too.

I am in two minds about this blog, part of me wants to start adding to it here as I adventure through kinkyland and part of me wants to stop, delete the link from fetlife and see what I attract on my own.

Ah, that wonderful fork in the road…

sexually "normal"? Quote

The term normal is meaningless in terms of sexuality. Itis commonly used as the opposite of abnormal and therefore as a euphemism for "good" versus "bad" The consensus among sex therapists is that anything that occurs between consenting adults that harms no one is acceptable

- Howard and Martha Lewis
(Taken from my very battered copy of Different Loving). 

Music Monday: Ode to the professional dominatrix

I think this song describes more of a relationship between a dominatrix and her client with it's themes of addiction (to play), BDSM play and nothing really about the woman behind it.

I'd be open to hearing other people's interpreations though of course...

Happy music monday!

First steps into the physical BDSM scene (what to explect)

I remember my first BDSM event. I was just eighteen and a friend of mine (from the early days of my talking about BDSM online to strangers as a minor – oops!) had asked me to accompany him. I went along to what I thought would be a big, scary BDSM event in Melbourne’s inner suburbs. Full of heavy metal music and girls being tied to things, whipped until their flesh came away. Perhaps that was partly fantasy too. 

I walked into this event and thought, shit where are all the young hot people. Everyone was so, OLD. I was standing there with my friend, his scene friends (who he’d quickly found after we’d arrived) and looking around, feeling very alone and perverted. I had found this interest very young, maybe there was something wrong with me? 

I am lucky that I live in a big kinky city, and I have seen my local BDSM scene grow over the years. Now there’s something on every week, not just two events a month. There’s a heap of these easy to attend (if a little boring) events. I would defiantly recommend anyone looking to go to their first event, that although it’s tempting to go to the hardcore leather bar, going to a tamer event or even a munch is easier than ever in Melbourne (and luckily us young kinksters are not alone, there are often under 30’s or under 35’s events in your city). 

Once you’ve found the tame event near you, weather through word of mouth online (link leads to the fetlife events board and opens in a new window), or are being dragged to the event by a friend of potential play partner the most important thing to do is relax. You’ve found your fellow freaks now. It’s time to enjoy that first moment when you look around and think (hopefully) “wow! They’re all just like me!”

The best advice I can give you aside from the “just go!” (and yes, a lot of people go alone – that’s how they meet new people!) is to remember that you are a newbie and that no-one expects you to play at an event. Often if you talk to the people on the door and say you’re new, they will set you up with someone to talk to who will explain the nature of the event and listen to you talk about how you’re so happy there are people just like you in the world (my friend did this, and it’s a thankless job, she really has heard it all!) or if you’ve chosen a munch, there will be other people there who you’ll be sitting with to talk to. Really it’s not that scary once you get there, and it’s a challenge to get over that initial fear. 

I’m happy to listen to you talk about your first event – but not happy to hear you talk about how you’d just love to go, adventurousness is attractive. Remember that!

How to get more approaches from dominant women online

After talking about which ways you should not be approaching domme’s online. I’ve got some suggestions for you on how to perhaps have domme’s approaching you (wouldn’t that be nice?). Some might seem common sense, but keep reading. You might find a gem you hadn’t thought of if you have not been very successful in the online BDSM community so far. 

Work out what it is you’re looking for

I’m openly polyamerous and I’m not hugely attached to outcomes – if I go have coffee with someone and we don’t click, I don’t get upset that that person will not be my slave. I just smile and keep going, so I’ve cast a pretty wide net, stating in my profile that I am open to whatever I attract (ie, new friends, play partners, a sub or even a slave to own) but you might know better than me what you’re seeking, are you looking for a play partner for a few sessions? Will they be public or private? Are you looking for a long-term relationship? Someone to hold the key to your chastity device? A new friend or a new community of kinksters who you can learn from, but you’re just a bit shy right now to attend events? Whatever it is, write it down.

Give others’ something to reply to

When I travel I often talk to strangers in drinking holes across the world, if someone is wearing an interesting tee shirt and has open body language, I’ll approach them for a chat. If they seem hostile or unfriendly, bugger the tee shirt, I’m going to avoid them like the plague. If you want others to contact you, or even reply to your messages, write a little bit about you in a vanilla context, talk about your hobbies, use a bit of humour to add some color and be positive, you don’t want people to avoid your profile after you’ve gone to all that trouble of taking fetish-ish pictures because you seem hostile. 

Talk about what you want to do for the mistress

The reason why professional domme’s get so much work from disgruntled attempted lifestylers is because the rest of us read the profiles of ‘do me’ submissives, turn up our noses and walk away.

The messages I’m most likely to respond to are from guys who tell me the things they can do for me that are mundane because I know that the mundane are things they are not going to get off on, so it really is about me. If you message a domme telling her you will give her free foot massages, she’ll know straight away that it’s about you (you dirty foot boy!)

Don’t invent experience

Nothing worse than a twenty five year old “master” with four or five middle-aged online submissive’s in his “leather family” telling everyone he’s been a master since fifteen. Com’on! (Yes, I know I was active online not much older than him, but I was only i*learning* online, not playing with anyone).

For the love of god – no child kink!

Whenever I read stories – the graphic ones are the worst – about games people play as children being tied to kink it really grosses me out, age play is fine. Telling people you like to be erotically tied because it always makes you think of Sally who lived next door to you when you were five is just weird.

Don’t take a S/slashy speak

Taking a slash in Australia is (normally) men’s urination. I hate the term as much as I hate slashy speak (ie. W/we are A/all over Y/your English butchery) I understand that perhaps some online-only mistresses may require their submissives to use this speech, but for the reast of us it’s irritating. Please only keep it to private conversations with people who’ve got the same language butcher fetish.

If you take these pieces of advice to heart and change up your profile a bit, you should have plenty of approaches in no time!

BAD approaches to dominant women by submissive men

The approach for the online “slave” can be one of the more annoying things for female dominants dipping their toe into the online BDSM scene. I’m going to discuss the good, bad and the ugly. Then follow this post with other how to type posts for those that want to be successful and don’t want to be members of this list.

Just exactly how are submissives supposed to approach dominants online?

I’ve recently signed up for a well-known BDSM personals site and have had the usual flood of responses to my ad, most I ignored and for various reasons. 

There’s the “Mistress, may I please contact you?”

Seriously boys, a submissive writing to me to ask if they could write to me – being attracted to intelligence, I cannot answer him.

Obvious SPAM

Sending me the same message multiple times that states they’ve never done this before, telling me I’m beautiful when I don’t have a picture listed or that we have so much in common when I have not written anything – much less anything kinky and fun – is all just plain annoying. Report it already ladies. Let’s get rid of this annoying behaviour! 

One liners – the type that don’t say anything

I don’t mind a one-liner that shows they have wit or that they read my profile, but if it’s “hi hru” please don’t waste anyone’s time – and stop butchering the language. 

“guilting” me into responding

Yeah, shut up. Everyone know’s you’re a loser. Don’t need to attempt to make amazing women feel bad because they’re not interested in engaging with you. It might have worked on your mother once, but it won't work on me.

Bitching about other Domme’s (worse: in your first message to me)

Being constantly bombarded by bitchy comments about how other domme’s are not “real”, “Genuine”, have different fetishes to them (read their profile and you’ll work it out pretty quickly!) or just don’t respond. I can’t say I care about their interactions with other domme’s online, hearing about it in an introduction too get’s them blocked. Not too sure why these guys’ think it’s attractive, either.

What’s better are the guys who use it as a compliment, “I read your profile and loved how genuine and real you are, not like all those fake domme’s…” *yawm*

If you are unsuccessful and you can point to any of these behaviours and go, “oh shit, that’s me!” it might well be why. 

Next week I’m posting a guide to getting dominant women to approach you. Stay tuned guys!