I Have Become Irreverent. I mean, irrelevant. Yes, irrelevant. (Emotional Rant)

It doesn’t matter that you recognize me, that you know my stories, have heard of my reputation. It doesn’t matter that I’ve gone to great lengths to carve out a little corner of this mad world to share my ideas and my sick sense of humor. I received no badges nor awards for helping others feel less alone with their self-made stories of suffering and loneliness. As I have less and less to write about a world quickly becoming more foreign every day, my meaningfulness and perhaps my very existence becomes the business of a small few. The ones who can’t bear to see me slink away in the night. But that’s not what really happened.

I’ve been forced to dive into almost a decade of emails, chats, notes, cards, etc, starting from when I only got teaching gigs because I was part of SMS – although as I have watched that group evolve, I don’t really think I ever really belonged. But through moxy and chutzpah and all those other odd sounds we relate to stupid confidence we have permission to both hold awe and laughter at the same time, I got some wonderful chances to live in the rarified air of a “commUNITY” (or my preferred “demoGRAPHIC”) where I did really feel that although I was never a size 8, would never be a bastion of femininity nor masculinity, that what got me hard sounds illegal to people outside of our dildo-shaped ivory tower, I did hit a ceiling.

Del the hypocrite. Blasting Pagans in ever increasing rantypants blog vomitous that our community values lay persons as much as clergy, elders, leaders, and mystics, crying for real because an event organizer I went to great lengths for threw me away before he even knew what it was that I was actually doing at his beloved events. Oh, it was never official – no one would dare admit out loud that I had overreached when I pointed out exactly how many volunteer hours doing things I did not find enjoyable nor did I do them “for the experience” nor the “exposure”, oh no. We never say anything untoward to the person we’re dissing; we wait for the prerequisite fifteen seconds after you leave to collectively feel better because at least it wasn’t happening to me…yet.

I have decided that I’m semi-retired. I haven’t actually taught at one of the East Coast circuit of events in about a year. (I do not count Catalyst Con among that, because it’s a very different thing. You can start by thinking of a certain idyllic camp ground that I haven’t been to for two years.) Yes, it’s been that long. Sure, it’s easy to chalk it up to my spiraling health, but that isn’t all the tuna in that can. I just don’t feel it anymore. In almost a literal sense.

Love and sex have become poison to me. When I can even summon the energy and the arousal for a good wank, I usually stop halfway through because I’m already imagining what excuse I’m going to hear about how this was fun and all, but they don’t want to be around for the other stuff. I’ve had some really energetically-destroying break ups in the last five years, and as I’ve confided to some, I am physically unable to even imagine having sex. Not “I can’t find a good fantasy to wank to”, but “If someone were to propose a romp with me, I would have just about no idea as to what they meant”. Also not that I’ve forgotten how to do it (and have been told I do it well), but that when I allow myself the briefest of moments to actually feel pleasure at the mere idea, the entire weight of my rapidly collapsing sense of self immediately floods my hormone channels with a hundred different reasons that sex is poison, and not even a sweet-tasting one at that.

It’s probably ironic in the Alanis Morissette way  that the one time someone has accused me of become a sex-positive professional (as in, getting paid enough to sustain my existence and expenses doing just that), it was in a court of law to prove what a secretly duplicitous person I am. Yup, it is now writ in the American Court “permanent record” that I am a professional something or other, and it’s used to hurt me. That just about sums up how I feel about desperately wanting to suck someone’s cock and knowing at the same time that there isn’t a soul who would trust me with their junk between my teeth. (Which is a goddamn shame, because I get compliments from the gay menz about my fellatio capacity.) When I dismiss those lovely compliments, I’m not doing it as some sort of egoless dodge or a invented humility: I literally think you are incorrect, that somehow you have been deceived.

At Yule, my lovely Kindred did a very moving ritual where we had to sacrifice something we felt was holding us back from our true passions. It was the first time I let anyone other than Rave see what has happened to my lower abdomen due to the ravages of 2013-14, when my body was changing radically and the doctors were wrong, and then more wrong, for a whole year they were wrong until it got so loud and brash that it was finally posted on a billboard across the street from the posh offices of my world-renown-hospital specialists. And the damage was done, and cannot be fixed unless I’m willing to risk my life. Which I am not. At least, not for that.

I tell people that I am the target of a large amount of slander, libel, threats of violence up to and including death threats. There has been a small escalation as of late, where I am pretty sure some incidents that have happened to and around our home were not coincidences. Another one of those times when I want to pick up a person desperately trying to be a shaman for Gods-know-what-reason and shake them and show them the notes on the windshield, the noisy investigations, the blog posts they don’t think I not only read but curate collections of. And no, I’m not talking about the obvious, because no. Oh, soon, I will have permission to loose my lips on some shit that has gone down, in a desperate attempt to have me die sooner, and with as much suffering as possible.

And I’m not making that up, either.

Am I depressed? Fuck, wouldn’t you be? I answer this the same way every time my primary care doctor asks. And she ups my antidepressants and asks about the last time I spoke to my counselor. I have regular meetings with the local Hospice palliative care nurse, at my house. I have a nurse who comes to give me meds and take labs.  I’m not exactly the life of the party I once was. And the pressure on and in my head that screams I just wish we could skip to the good part, and I’m absolutely okay if that good part is a remission of symptoms as much as any other outcome. Just right now, this, this quicksand of shit and rotted meat and broken oaths and broken windows and having to paw through decades of memories as though they hold no emotional sway, mere pieces of evidence of what a wretched human being I am for thinking that lying to me several, several times from the day we met until the day you decided this was too hard for you and completely abrogated the only thing you had to say to me as we officially parted ways.

I want to be clear. This is NOT just about my divorce. In fact, most of the time that’s a good source for a chuckle and a snappy comeback. It has something to do with the ridiculous amounts of completely irrelevant reams of paper that no one will actually read – but I’m happy to supply it. Because what is most appropriate for me right now is large amounts of paperwork as though Catbert were at the head of this thing.

This is about the role of the dying man – because we’re all dying, every single day. We play these elaborate games lest we remember that no one reading this in 2015 will live to see 2100, at least not in the living meatbag sacks we are today. (And please, this is not the appropriate time or place to discuss human life longevity or uploading your soul into a computer, okay nerds?) But I don’t share this early morning rant written on day three with absolutely no sleep because side effects, on the blog where it might seem most apropo. No, because this part of my job is directly related to the dehumanization that one experiences once you cross a line from virile to senile. From full of energy and life to barely being able to clothe yourself without a nap afterward. From remembering every embarrassing thing I’ve done in your presence to forgetting to close your garage or turn off the stove.

I don’t feel relevant anymore. I only have fleeting moments of feeling like lifeblood isn’t just pooling into my legs, cementing me in front of my computer even when I have friends waiting in my living room in hopes I can gain a spoon to share with them. I look at my class list and think, “When was the last time you actually did that, y’know, for fun?”

I never know how to end these cathartic blog posts. I just run until I hit empty, and then press the button. The rest of it is up to you.

Are the cameras ever off?

About a year or so ago, I found myself in a discussion with other kink educators. Someone had posted a rant about how they wanted the ability to play in public without having to keep their “educator hat” on; they wanted to be able to engage in actions that may or may not be considered “safe”, but you would definitely not teach to a class. In essence, they wanted to be able to play without having to worry that some onlooker will assume that since Mx. Big Name Educator did it, it must be safe to replicate in their own play. This onlooker may or may not have the same level of experience with whatever they’re seeing, or may or may not know that Mx. Educator has a different kind of relationship with their play partner (like, say, being fluid bonded), or may even be doing something that looks more dangerous than it actually is, but because they’re not teaching, they’re also not explaining to random onlookers that there are unseen safety precautions.

This came up for me last night, as I watched some free online porn. If you don’t know, one of the things I’m most known for in the kink community is needle/blood play, and especially the fact that I know and practice a very high level of safety/cleanliness when I do so. One of the scenes I watched was a needleplay scene, and although I don’t know the performer personally, we’re maybe two degrees of separation from each other (if that). In the scene, there was some safety measures taken – they did wear gloves to put the needles in and take them out  – but that’s about where it started and ended. What bothered me the most was that the performer touched the needles, laced a corset-like decoration with rope, had sex with the bottom after the needles were removed (but the blood was still evident on the bottom’s arms), and although it ended with a nice cuddle, during none of these activities were they wearing gloves or taking any other precautions so as to not come in contact with the bottom’s blood. Also, they were doing this on a bed, and there were no precautions taken to make sure the blood didn’t get on the bed, and since they were romping around nude, meant that the blood could have also entered the other person’s body a number of ways.

Now, I know, it’s porn. It’s not supposed to look or feel like reality. But if there’s anything I’ve learned and personally witnessed about kinksters and porn, is that porn is where we get a lot of our ideas for new and different things to try. Since the site this scene was posted on is not really a kink site, but a sex site that has kink content, there is a high likelyhood that this may be a person’s first encounter with needle and blood play. It’s also worth mentioning that right on the site’s bannerhead, they claim to be an educational site as well as a place for porn. Finally, the performer in question is not only a porn performer, but teaches many classes to the kink demographic, and therefore is an educator.

I also accept that as part of the non-reality of porn, there may be things going on in the background that I didn’t see. It may be that right before and after they touched the open wounds, they cleaned their hands with surgical scrub to minimize any cross-contamination. They may be fluid bonded with their bottom, may even be in a long term relationship with them where fluid exchange is an everyday occurrence. I’ll even be willing to entertain the idea that the director/producer gave them the instruction to use precautions as little as possible, so as to make the scene not feel sterile (not in the sense of clean, but in the sense of staid and unsexy).

I think these two discussions are linked. I totally understand the exhausted feeling that comes when you perceive that the “cameras are never off” – that every time you rock up to a dungeon, people start to gather to see what nefarious doings are going to happen, to see advanced techniques or ideas that they could incorporate into their own play, or even just to be entertained – and that you can’t have any sort of intimacy or privacy (however much you can expect in a public play space). I have experienced people interrupting scenes to ask questions, either about needleplay in general (including “Can I be next?”) or about a certain part of whatever you’re doing (What gauge has purple hubs?) or will just get very close to the point where I have to ask them to step back so I can access my bottom or my supplies. Granted, needleplay is one of those kinds of play that is hard to see from a respectable distance, but there are ways to ask if it’s okay to move closer and see what’s going on. And about 60% of the time, I don’t mind the interruptions. I tend to tell people that my scenes tend to draw attention, and ask them if they want me to keep people from getting too close or interrupting, or if they welcome the attention. I know that, in some ways, by allowing this sort of interaction some of the time, I may be radioing that it’s okay all of the time.

Is this part of the cost of being an educator? Many people talk about the perks, but few talk about the responsibilities and potential downsides that come with volunteering your time and expertise to share with others. You become a bit of a commodity, no longer a person with personal preferences and desires, but someone who can be considered “obligated” to provide experiences to whomever asks (and saying “you’re not my type” or “I’m not looking to Top/bottom tonight” is met with derision, or like it’s a personal insult; heck, even “My dance card is full” is sometimes met as though I am lying just to avoid playing with the person, even when it later proves to be true when I’m stuck in the medical play area all night). Are we also, then, beholden to only do in public what we would do in front of a class?

And does this transpose into performance, whether live or taped? If we are asked to “show off” in front of a camera or a crowd, does our educator status come first, and maybe sacrifice a bit of “show” in order to play to the common denominator? If we want to do something that looks, or gods forbid is actually, risky, is it part of our responsibility to make it clear that although we’re doing this for show, that the home consumer should know that there were precautions taken that they weren’t privy to?

I found the scene hard to watch. Instead of being able to get into seeing one of my particular turn-ons on the little screen, I ended up feeling detached from it, becoming judgmental and looking for further broaches of safety. I stopped focusing on the hotness and started a tally of all the things I would have done differently, even from an aesthetic point of view. In an odd way, I wonder if I have a right to porn that turns me on, which means that it looks as safe as I would want it to be in person, even if it may not be as artistically satisfying to the general consumer? Or should I just relegate myself to not watching needle/blood scenes in porn, because they’re always going to do it wrong and make me lose my erection?

This also traverses into safer sex procedures, too. There was a big brouhaha in LA when the law passed that all porn had to used condoms, and many porn performers and industry people have stated that it just means that porn production will move to another area with less legal restrictions. But I find that if I’m watching a fuck scene and there’s no glove/condom/dental dam, I turn it off or look for one that has them. I know I’m not the only, or even maybe the biggest, market for porn, but I can’t help but wonder if we made more porn with safer sex as part of the play, we would only encourage more people to take these precautions at home? If we can somehow make dental dams look sexy, then more people will use them? I mean, I’ll be brutally honest, the first time I saw someone unroll a condom onto a cock with their mouth before a blowjob, I lost all of my hesitation about using condoms for oral sex, because damn that was hot to watch. If we can find creative ways to make these things as sexy as the sex themselves, isn’t that a good thing? I’m sure the porn industry has been thinking or fighting about this since AIDS showed up, and maybe even before, but with the incidences of young people contracting AIDS on the rise again, especially in the age of “Abstinence Only” sex ed in schools, maybe it’s time to think about these things.

Are the cameras ever off? Is it ever okay for someone in the public eye to let their sex/kink be about the turn on and not about the education? Do you always play safer in public than you would behind closed doors? Do you think it’s ridiculous when play spaces require everyone to use safer sex products, even if the partners are already fluid bonded? What do you think?