In the Kink Scene You Can Buy Acceptance For a Few Cents and a Can of Beer

When I created my Fetlife account, my health was in tatters. I’d spent two lonely months figuratively chained to my living room. I was too sick to leave my home and too ashamed of my condition to accept visitors. My Fetlife account opened a door to a different universe. You gave me the human contact I desperately needed while I patched up my body. Here, people shared secrets as though you could buy acceptance with a few cents and a glass of beer.

And you could, so I began packing my secrets out on the grass around me. For the first time in my life, I showed people who I really was. Each time I shared something terrifying, the knot of thatch in my throat dissolved. I learned that I was not strange. I was not patently broken. I was not intolerable.

Hell, I wasn’t even that odd.

During the time it took to push my health from ‘zero’ to ‘alive’, I made friends who now have a permanent place in my life. Still, Fetlife is not all unicorns and fairies. There’s an abuser behind every tree, so it didn’t take me long to pick one up. That relationship represented one of the most harrowing times of my life—one that I desperately wanted to hide.

Fetlife had taught me that you could buy acceptance with a few cents and a glass of beer, so I spoke about my experience instead. I thought the chaos of that relationship reflected on my value as a person, but the past year’s friendships had taught me that those kinds of beliefs were usually wrong.

The support my closest friends gave me was inhumanly patient. Sometimes, I thought I’d break those friendships in the chaos, but some people are too beautiful for breaking. You stuck me back together again with superglue and some hope.

Still, there’s always something in you that wonders whether the pixelated bonds you’ve formed will translate into flesh when you meet in the real world.

They did. I hopped onto a plane to meet a handful of Fetlifians in 2018, and I found out that these were not digital friendships. They were family, all cells and bone and forever.

Fetlife has revolutionised my life so thoroughly that I no longer need it. It’s no longer my home because its most important friendships have hopped off the screen and into my everyday life. Over the past five years, you’ve helped me boot a stalker from the site, seen me through my mother’s death, and stood up to my mobs. You’ve even helped me to improve my writing so much that I’ve doubled my income. 

This site is disordered enough to invent its own pathology. The best laid plans of unicorns and site admins oft go awry. Trolls don’t stay under their bridges, and the terms of use don’t play out as they should. Offense is Fetlife’s religion, and it’s almost as whiney as I am. Calling the site flawed is like calling bacon palatable.

Look beyond the mess, though, and you’ll find generosity that’s incomparable to anything you’re likely to enjoy in vanilla circles. Most days, I’m too busy walking the estuary with a little red dog to spend much time here, but I will always love the global kink community—not for the kink, but for the heart.