Sadie Comes Out as a Bawdy Girl, and So Much More!  Part 1 of 2

By Sensuous Sadie
SensuousSadie@aol.com 
www.sensuoussadie.com 

We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal. I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force, a force which moves us toward living in a fundamental way.
~ Audre Lorde

The other day my sister asked me if I had ever known a man who was as sexually oriented as I was, not just in having or wanting sex, but in looking at the world through a sort of rose-colored sexual lens. After a few minutes thought, I realized that no, I hadn’t. Sure, men love sex and spend a lot of time chasing it, but it’s more than that. I look at the world from a paradigm of the erotic, which is expressed through my interests, my sense of humor, and the kind of people with whom I surround myself. My sister thought this mindset was something genetic in the women of our family since she and mom were the same way. She described me as a Mae West type, a bawdy girl. At last, an archetype which fits.

So, when I came out in the D/s community, such as it was, it wasn’t a big dramatic moment. The moment arrived when I was chatting to my friend Zenobia, and I told her, with much hemming and hawing, about my sexual orientation. To my surprise she replied “Oh, I knew that!” It turns out she had a friend who was into the BDSM scene, and she had been tipped off by my everyday conversational language. As a writer, she was more attuned to those things, but it still surprised me that she could read me so easily.

Meeting My First Out Friend

Zenobia introduced me to her out and about friend Ethan. He was the first person I met who lived the BDSM scene in the open, with unfettered joy. I questioned him for hours as he explained how it all worked, and how he had suffered no ill effects from the process. While he talked, all I could think about was my own fears, of course. I was afraid if people knew, I’d lose credibility as a writer. I was afraid I wouldn’t fit into the “leather” crowd, being a pretty typical Vermonter with an apartment, a job, an active church life, and so on. I was afraid, because I knew at the most intimate level, this would change my life.

Still, green as I was, I could see that BDSM folk experience a similar process of coming out that the lesbian/gay crowd has experienced for the last few decades. Both on a personal and a group level, we learn to accept our orientation, take the steps to pride, and the steps which release us from fear. The process for us is newer with so very few of us coming out of the BDSM closet. Only in this last decade are we blessed with the Internet and the monumental difference it makes in our access to information and our ability to build community, even in an obscure spot like Vermont .

I started my own coming out with research, reading, and exploring until I had an idea where I wanted to start. Then I had to come out to myself, which can be the hardest step of all. Issues of consentuality were always clear to me, and being brought up a Unitarian-Universalist, a religion with a liberal tradition, there was no residual guilt. So at least in the beginning, I felt very little conflict, but it sure did help having Ethan, who not only listened to me, but took me to my first munch. I am unusual I know. Many men struggle with their upbringing which taught them not to hit women, or that they were a wimp if they allowed someone to hit them. Women struggle with the specter of domestic violence which appears, on the surface, to have something to do with BDSM. For those of us who are feminists, we wonder how to reconcile a need to submit. Blessedly free from most of these issues, I jumped right into the dating scene.

Telling My Friends

My venue of choice for dating, there being no world wide web at the time,  was alt.bondage.personals which was the first place I discovered information about BDSM, as well as a vast supply of dominant men, or at least men who said they were. As I learned how to talk to them about my own sexual orientation, I used these skills to also tell my friends about it, a process which became easier with each telling. Fortunately, my friends were mostly liberal intellectual types and the response varied from a vague disinterest to a smile accompanied by a raised eyebrow. I tailored my explanations to the sexual sophistication of the listener, being careful to make sure they didn’t get caught up in silly stereotypes of Submissives being doormats or Dominants being abusers.

Most people have at one time or another engaged in a little silk-ties-to-the-bed type of bondage or a friendly spanking, so I used these common denominators to help them understand. I call it the “vanilla” version of D/s since these things are palatable to just about everyone. Sometimes I bring out a purple deerskin flogger so they can see how gentle and sexy the toy is. Not to mention the fact that it matches my outfits so well. Most importantly, I recognized that explaining D/s takes patience, so I gave each person sufficient time to absorb the information and ask questions. If they are ready and interested, we talk in more depth about things like the eroticism of pain and how serving can be a great gift.

A short word of warning here. Be sure to tell your friends that what you are telling them is absolutely confidential. This may be obvious to you, but this kind of juicy gossip can be a temptation. For example, one of my friends who didn’t have strong boundaries “outed” me to another person. He didn’t do it on purpose. He really just felt he was giving his friend additional information about me, but his way of explaining BDSM was unquestionably not the way I would have explained it. As a result, when I met this third party he treated me with less respect. Like it or not, based on the mores of our culture, it was natural for him to think I would hop in bed with him. I was never able to get this man over his initial impression of me, and so any possible friendship was doomed.

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Sensuous Sadie is the author of It's Not About the Whip: Love, Sex, and Spirituality in the BDSM Scene (http://www.trafford.com/robots/03-0551.html). She is the founder and leader (1999 - 2001) of Rose & Thorn , Vermont 's first BDSM group. Comments, compliments and complaints, as well as requests for reprinting can be addressed to her at SensuousSadie@aol.com  or visit her website at www.sensuoussadie.com. Sadie believes the universe is abundant, and that sharing information freely is part of this abundance, so she allows reprints of her writing in most venues.

Copyright 2003 Sadie Sez Publications