Rambly post here, but bear with me. Skip down to the ***s if you want to get to the important stuff.
So, I've been realizing that I'm really just not very much involved with the "normal" world any more.
I went to a party and was weirded out.
Nobody was naked!
Nobody was screaming or even moaning!
Nobody was chained up or striking anybody with a flogger!
I was at a loss. OK, we can talk about stock options or something, Steven. Hi Karen, how are your rose bushes doing? Gosh, traffic sure is bad these days!
I suppose vanilla parties tend to involve people drinking a lot of booze and grilling shit.
Mind you, I've hosted my share of vanilla parties. Generally they involved excellent food and a lot of conversation about life, the universe, and everything. I haven't hosted a "let's all get drunk" party since my early 20s. Maybe it's not that I'm not at all vanilla. Maybe it's that I'm getting old?
Anyway, turns out I was only kind of right, since there turned out to be a dungeon downstairs. Nobody was using it when I was there, but it was a thing that was there. Nice padded St Andrew's Cross, spanking bench, futon with soft blankets, some floggers laying about. I don't even end up at parties hosted by actual vanilla people, lol!
It was nice to see a bunch of old friends, and I found a bunch of fellow kinksters were there, but I was home before midnight. I really don't drink much at all, except when Master and I crack open a bottle of the mead he brews. I almost never go out and drink. Bars aren't my thing. I don't like the loss of control. I want to be able to escape safely any time I want. I want to be clear-headed, and able to give informed consent- or revoke consent.
***
Sometimes I will go to a private BDSM play party, and there will be booze there. I think, for people who have a high tolerance for alcohol, a small glass of wine or a single beer is probably OK, but for me, I won't even go that far. I want to be stone cold sober, and I want my partner to be, as well. I might take a small amount of painkillers, but only enough to help with my chronic pain, not enough to impair my judgement, or ability to tell if something is harming me.
Drinking and playing with a new partner is just out of the question for me. I learned about the lifestyle in the 1990s, and in the mixed gender BDSM scene, drinking and playing was a HUGE no. It was different in the gay leather scene, and that's still a problem, but thankfully here in SF we have a movement to change that- there's even a Mr Sober Leather contest, which I think is awesome!
Really, alcohol shatters lives so often. BDSM is very much like driving a car- you could do someone serious harm. You could kill someone. You could get seriously harmed or killed. Don't mix the two. Please.
You can always ask Jay Wiseman about it. He's flown all over the country as an expert witness for BDSM-related deaths. These are murder trials, even though they are mostly accidental deaths, and a lot of them DO end in manslaughter charges, even murder charges. Whether or not you like Jay, you should hear some of his stories.
Recently he told me about one where a really drunk person was fisted so roughly they started bleeding. Too drunk to know when to tell the person to stop. Too out of it, too numb, hardly even conscious. Alcohol makes you bleed a lot more, too. They BLED TO DEATH.
DON'T PLAY IMPAIRED, PEOPLE. It is not worth it. If you can only make yourself play if you aren't sober, YOU ARE NOT READY TO PLAY.
