The Shrieker
Sep. 19th, 2008 09:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsLast night, Omaha and I managed to get a babysitter and go out. We had a lovely dinner and then headed over to an S&M party we knew about, where I practiced tying her down and then, well, you can imagine what happened next. Well, you can try.
The remainder of the evening, however, was not so delightful.
Parties are meant to be public, by definition. There aren't that many private spaces, and even the semi-private ones usually allow others to watch, sometimes with limits or restrictions. S&M parties are going to be filled with noise: a giggle, a slap of a hand, the creak of a wooden frame, the clink of a suspension harness, a moan. You go to the party expecting that kind of thing. Sometimes, for a moment, a couple goes way hard and loud with screaming and sobbing. Eventually, it fades.
Back in the 1960s and 1970s it was fashionable to write articles for 'mainstream magazines' about the kinky wildlife going on "somewhere else," and one of the universal phrases found in these articles was that while there were "S-and-M parties" going on somewhere you were not, "nobody ever really inflicts pain on one another during these games. A little slapping, a little tickling, that's about it." That's simply not true, and reading Geoff Mains, who chronicled the S&M scene in the mid-1970s in San Francisco, it was never true.
And when a very heavy pain scene breaks out at a party, there's a rhythm and flow to it that assures onlookers that everything is okay, that both people know what they're doing (or at least getting into).
Last night, though, there was this one couple, man top, woman bottom, and she shrieked at every thing he did. And not in a good way. I mean, full on "I'm being eviscerated please dear god someone stop him help me I'm going to die I'm being murdered!" shrieking. It was horrible. It was the kind of screaming that went on, that reached deep into the ancient lizard part of your brain and shook the alarming ganglia that insisted a member of the tribe was being hurt and you should do something now. It was agonizing being in the same room with them. Every time you'd think they'd reached an end point, that it couldn't possibly get any worse, they'd start right up again.
It was terribly unfair to the rest of the people there. Those two involved the rest of the party in their scene without attendees consent. They ruined other people's scenes. They made mere attendance unpleasant. I spoke with several other people at the party whom I've known a long time ago, and almost universally they agreed.
I complained to one of the party organizers. He shrugged and said, "What can we do? It's an open night. Maybe they come here because she's so loud like that her neighbors hate her."
I mean, it's gotten to the point now where, next time I go to a kinky party around here, I'll have to ask if I can come in for a look-see first and if that couple is attending, I'll leave.
The remainder of the evening, however, was not so delightful.
Parties are meant to be public, by definition. There aren't that many private spaces, and even the semi-private ones usually allow others to watch, sometimes with limits or restrictions. S&M parties are going to be filled with noise: a giggle, a slap of a hand, the creak of a wooden frame, the clink of a suspension harness, a moan. You go to the party expecting that kind of thing. Sometimes, for a moment, a couple goes way hard and loud with screaming and sobbing. Eventually, it fades.
Back in the 1960s and 1970s it was fashionable to write articles for 'mainstream magazines' about the kinky wildlife going on "somewhere else," and one of the universal phrases found in these articles was that while there were "S-and-M parties" going on somewhere you were not, "nobody ever really inflicts pain on one another during these games. A little slapping, a little tickling, that's about it." That's simply not true, and reading Geoff Mains, who chronicled the S&M scene in the mid-1970s in San Francisco, it was never true.
And when a very heavy pain scene breaks out at a party, there's a rhythm and flow to it that assures onlookers that everything is okay, that both people know what they're doing (or at least getting into).
Last night, though, there was this one couple, man top, woman bottom, and she shrieked at every thing he did. And not in a good way. I mean, full on "I'm being eviscerated please dear god someone stop him help me I'm going to die I'm being murdered!" shrieking. It was horrible. It was the kind of screaming that went on, that reached deep into the ancient lizard part of your brain and shook the alarming ganglia that insisted a member of the tribe was being hurt and you should do something now. It was agonizing being in the same room with them. Every time you'd think they'd reached an end point, that it couldn't possibly get any worse, they'd start right up again.
It was terribly unfair to the rest of the people there. Those two involved the rest of the party in their scene without attendees consent. They ruined other people's scenes. They made mere attendance unpleasant. I spoke with several other people at the party whom I've known a long time ago, and almost universally they agreed.
I complained to one of the party organizers. He shrugged and said, "What can we do? It's an open night. Maybe they come here because she's so loud like that her neighbors hate her."
I mean, it's gotten to the point now where, next time I go to a kinky party around here, I'll have to ask if I can come in for a look-see first and if that couple is attending, I'll leave.
