Over a year passed between the time I realized clearly that I am a masochist and the time that I found the BDSM community, with its social coffee gatherings and open-to-the-public play parties. It was a lonely year between my junior and senior years of college, during which I wasted entirely too much mental energy wondering if I was crazy. It did sound irreconcilable to be a sane, empowered woman and also really like men hitting me and/or calling me a whore. After a bad reaction from my college boyfriend, it took me a year to confess my "big dark secret" to a second person.
But in hindsight, blaming the college boyfriend was mostly a convenient excuse for my own confusion. Alternative sexuality scares a lot of people. I had to do a lot of reading and a lot of introspection on my own before becoming the sort of confidant woman who writes columns about BDSM for the world wide web.
Fortunately, I found Yes Means Yes by Kath Albury in my local feminist bookstore, which first introduced me to the idea that there's a kinky community. ...At least in New York City, home of The Eulenspiegel Society, and in San Francisco, home of the Society of Janus. Right, of course, sexually liberated people congregate in New York City and San Francisco. Unfortunately I live far from either coast, and at the time I had a year and a half of college left before I would have had an option of moving. Still, the awareness that the community exists was thrilling evidence against the notion that I'm just crazy - even if geography was working against me.
Knowing what I know now, the next stop should have been the Internet. I can't explain why it wasn't; over the last decade, most social organization has moved to cyberspace. Sadomasochists, yes, as the would-be censors like to yell - but also church groups, political movements, and everyone with whom you went to middle school. If you're reading this blog, it's probably safe to assume that you've already embraced the community-building wonders of the Internet.
But I am an incurable bibliophile/nerd, so I looked up "sadomasochism" in my school library catalog. The single result I got was Different Loving by Gloria Brame and William Brame, specifically in the library housed in the basement of the on-campus seminary. (To this day I'm not sure why the seminary had a copy of Different Loving and my regular university library did not, but it does give me a greater appreciation for seminaries.) Different Loving reads almost like a catalog itself, with each chapter highlighting a different kink or fetish. With more references to The Eulenspiegel Society in New York City, and the Society of Janus in San Francisco. Reading the names over and over brought mixed feelings: euphoria at their existence, and frustration that all the American kinky people live in New York City or San Francisco.
Spoiler Alert: If you live anywhere in America that anyone with a sense of imagination could call an "urban center," then you probably live near a BDSM or fetish social organization. If you're at least 18 (or sometimes 21) and know where to find them, you would probably be welcomed at their events. I finally learned the trick to from reading The Kinky Girl's Guide to Dating by Luna Grey: Google your hometown and "munch." You can throw in "fetish" or "BDSM" if "munch" is too vague. If you're between the ages of 18 and 35, there may even be a "TNG" ("The Next Generation") group for people your own age. The main difference to the New York City and San Francisco communities is the degree to which they're above ground.
Not all sadomasochists need the organized community in order to indulge their kinks, and not everyone who shows up finds what they're looking for. But the community exists, and it works as a social network as substantial as any "club" or religious group. I'm also grateful for everything I learned from the above books, and highly recommend them along with anything published by Greenery Press or Cleis Press. But making friends with other sadomasochists was, for me, the key to turning my "big dark secret" into a joyful social identity.
Bless the internet.
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