Things That Will Happen When You Find the Kink Scene

You’ll stumble on Fetlife one lazy Sunday afternoon during a Google search on masochism. You’ll see pictures of gore that are worse than the horror movies you used to watch as a child. You'll log off. You'll hire a therapist. You’ll talk about sex and tattoos and parenthood and Jack, your black fucking cat. You’ll talk about everything except what you hired her for: to find a cure for your sick ideas about sex.

You’ll take up yoga.

You’ll fire your shrink.

You’ll buy Freud’s “Totem and Taboo”.

You'll blame your sexuality on your primitive view of the universe, but then you’ll log back into Fetlife one night over a tall glass of cider and an even taller glass of courage. You’ll invent a thousand judgements about the people in the photographs before your seventh glass. On your eighth, you’ll email the most vanilla person you can find there.

You’ll talk about sex and tattoos and parenthood and Jack, your black fucking cat. You’ll talk about everything except what you contacted her for in the first place. Then you’ll go to sleep with red and black text floating around your dreams.

Two weeks will pass. Then three. A month. Then two. You’ll decide to go to an event, but you’ll develop a fake headache and stay at home.

Five months will pass. Then six. You will finally work up the courage to go to a play party. You’ll think of That Scene from Eyes Wide Shut. You’ll think of hedonism and orgies and enough nakedness to start a sex cult, but when you walk into the hallway, it’ll look like the party your sister threw for her last birthday. The scenes will feel too sterile and the conversations too ordinary, but then you’ll find a woman in black who’s as free as a panther.

You’ll think of Charles Darwin’s theory about early human societies—about the alpha male and his harem, only instead of carrying a spear, he carries a flogger and a ball gag. Sick. You think, but then you’ll arrange a date with the woman in black with the cherry blossom tattoo on her left shoulder.

You’ll talk about sex and tattoos and parenthood and Jack, your black fucking cat. Then you’ll talk about ball gags and whips and rope. You’ll tell her everything except the part about how you’ll never make any of those ideas a reality.

You’ll make all of those ideas a reality.

It will feel like home, so you’ll give away your crate of cider and do more yoga. You’ll begin to love your body, not because of the yoga, but because you’ve seen more normal human bodies in the last three months than you have in your entire life.

You’ll become a feminist. You’ll become an activist. You’ll finally learn how to say “no”.

Three years will pass. Then four. One day you’ll notice that you’re an entirely different person than you were on the day you hired that stupid therapist. You'll be less neurotic. You'll walk taller. You'll speak more confidently, not because of the kink, but the new friendships and the new level of honesty they've made possible.

You’ll stumble on Facebook one lazy Sunday afternoon during a Google search on COVID. You’ll see posts about Q-anon and Trump that are worse than the horror movies you used to watch as a child. You'll log off. You'll call the woman in black with the cherry blossom tattoo on her left shoulder. You’ll talk about sex and tattoos and parenthood and Jack, your black fucking cat. You’ll talk about all the ways the kink scene has cured your sick ideas about vanilla life.