On my first day at Los Angeles DomCon — the BDSM convention with a self-proclaimed mission of “bringing together those in the BDSM Lifestyle, Leather, Fetish, and Professional Communities” — I realize only after I’ve paid an absurd amount for parking that I’ve come too early (insert rimshot, and then insert a second rimshot for the word rimshot). I’m sure there’s lots to do if you’re experienced, but I’m a public-BDSM-event rube. The exhibition hall isn’t open, classes and workshops haven’t started, and only the very committed (and by extension very connected and very busy) have arrived. Being here before the real inrush of weekend attendees makes me feel like a kid showing up to a new high school. Everyone knows each other, knows the culture, knows the wardrobe (sexy leather and latex), and I’m here like a hayseed in my stupid-ass light wash jeans.
When I emailed asking if press passes were available for DomCon, I wrote that my publication was “deeply pro-queer, pro-kink, and pro-sex”. Which is the truth! I call myself a “girl pervert”, I consider myself a girl pervert. But all the gritty desire that began in my teens was relegated to sweaty daydreamy Tumblr scrolling back in its porn days. I followed accounts of people in a variety of kink and BDSM lifestyles, loved reading about the vast spectrum of potential sexual paths, and the terminology and baselines that allowed for such exploration to occur. But in reality, I’ve been either a by-choice benchwarmer or private. Recently, I’ve decided that it’s past time that I get into the thick of it. I want to be open about my interests, and I want to be blatant in my desire to cover sex journalism beats; I think it matters all the time, I especially think it matters right now.
DomCon’s registration is directly next to the hotel’s human resources office. It feels like an easy gag regarding the workplace violation of it all, but the thing about people within the BDSM community is that they are sticklers for boundaries, rules, and open communication.
When I get my badge, I also receive a gift bag of sponsored items which contains stuff like:
- Hustler Hollywood-branded condoms
- Something called SpunkLube (lube that looks like semen! science is amazing!)
- A “spank stick” made of thin, reedy wood (I see a mistress examine her own gift bag later, and she laughs: “I have broken so many of these things on asses.”)
- Candy and decorated clothespins from The San Diego FemDom Alliance (I ate the Hershey’s Kiss while I gave up on my heeled boots and changed into more comfortable sneakers stowed in the trunk of my car. The comfort of my shoes is something I do not take for granted here; almost everyone is marching around in towering platforms of lucite and leather. “I saw a girl go down earlier,” one dark-haired dominatrix murmurs to another as they watch a submissive in translucent pink platforms stumble out of a seminar room).
Aside from a run for my first ever dirty soda at Denny’s (shoutout Mormons), I remain at a little table on the level above the main lobby. It offers me a vantage point to look down at the crowd, acting as the king pervert of all perverts. Everyone looks like they’re a DomCon pervert if you have on your special pervert goggles. The man in the Dickies and Doc Martens with the unassuming black bag, the handful of middle-aged men in mostly Harley-Davidson brand clothes and ball-caps. There are surely non-DomCon attendees at the hotel, and DomCon’s policy asks that you appear (reasonably) appropriately dressed in the common areas of the hotel. Unless someone is wearing distinct latex or a dress with extreme cutouts (which some are!), potential perversion is projected upon even the most unassuming people. At one point, a man walks by holding a leash. I lean forward to gaze at the exciting, erotic reveal. Unfortunately, he’s just walking an actual dog.
In the evening of day one, I meet two men who have been in “the scene” since the 1970s, and who play off each other with perfectly honed comedic patter, the deviant Abbott and Costello. “They’re the Statler and Waldorf of the community, and it’s impossible not to meet them,” another member of the community tells me when I mention chatting with them. The description is apt, and their reputation precedes them; mistresses often clock the duo in their lectures and offer a showy “oh boy” or “uh-oh”. During our first conversation, the two men give me a few basic tips that I’ve clung to for the last forty-eight hours. Smile lots, go to classes, and use what they call “The Princess Bride” method: my name (“Inigo Montoya” into “Veronica”), my intentions for talking with the person (“you killed my father” into “you seem cool/sexy/funny”), and a setting of expectations (“prepare to die” turns to “would you like to play/tie me up/answer what I hope don’t sound like hit-piece journalistic questions?”).
I stay for some of the Opening Ceremonies, where DomCon founder Mistress Cyan emphatically announces, “If you’re here, then you belong here.” Still, I leave feeling a little untethered. I’d like to be holding my girlfriend’s hand, or to know the magic set of words that will assure people that I have the beating heart of a sicko within me, that I am curious, that I’ve heard of all this shit, that I am not judging.
Day Two offers two immediate doses of relief for me: there are tons more people, and I am going to spend most of the day doing what I do best: sitting quietly and taking some notes. The classes at DomCon are varied and delightful, and I am given the opportunity to attend, learn, and raise my hand like a little keener. As a deviant nerd, I dutifully attend four: “Wrap It Up!: Plastic Wrap & Duct Tape Bondage”, “Intro to Rope Bondage: Safety & Consent”, “Embracing the ‘Play’ in Role Play”, and “Do What with Electricity?”. Unlike in high school and college when it was often only my annoying-ass-Tracy-Flick hand shooting up, at DomCon there are lots of little keeners. At my first class of the weekend, hands rocket up at any and all calls for questions, comments, and volunteering. Can any ropes conduct electricity? Did you know there’s a way to tell if your carabiner for suspension bondage is legitimate? The usual group dread toward a request for audience participation is non-existent at DomCon — everyone is here to study their favorite subject. At one point, a couple in the plastic wrapping class are bound up into a sweet hug. “Will someone take a picture?” the woman calls softly as she sways to keep balanced against her partner.
I think what draws me to BDSM is its objective openness to play. After someone is viciously reamed out and sent to the corner for being late to the roleplay seminar(which is— surprise! — an introductory roleplay!) people share some of their favorite previous forays: a train kidnapping, schoolgirls negotiating for a hair bow, a scripted, five-hour legal trial scene. Someone asks for insight on how to go about creating the alien abduction scene of their dreams. What to do about the fact that aliens probably wouldn’t speak English? Many hands fly up with helpful advice. In all my classes, people laugh more than they do anything else — even while they’re getting zapped, tied, and yanked around.
In between classes, I brave the vendor section of DomCon. The exhibition hall is dense with specialty kink and fetish items: tentacle sex toys, paddles engraved with Hello Kitty, nipple clamps sweetly beaded with glass strawberries, floggers with the handle designed like the base of a lightsaber. People make crops from old Ford truck antennas, bondage equipment from the packaging section at Home Depot. One of my favorite terms learned from my first two days at DomCom: something unexciting that you can purchase for kinky reasons is called a “pervertable”!
Which brings me to the other aspect of BDSM that gives it such delightful flavor to me: the play and creativity required of so much of kink is paired with an unabashed willingness to deeply give a fuck. I talk to a man who claims to be the inventor of leather-made rope. He struggled, at first, because it usually takes three people to make rope of even the traditional variety, and he lives in what he describes as a “podunk kink black hole”. Instead of giving up on the vision, though, he decided to design a machine that meant he could make his own rope out in the middle of nowhere. “Sorry, I can’t shut up about this stuff,” he smiles after giving me an impassioned speech on his work.
I want to ask some people on the floor where they feel their love for perversion, fetish, and the community stems from. A table specializing in tickle torture says they’re happy to answer in exchange for tickling me. (It’s not being coercive, they’re actually very sweet.) I sense they’re testing my non-narcness. I take their point. My girlfriend always calls me a “good sport”, anyways. After a squeal-dense interaction with an electric toothbrush and this poky little implement I forget the name of (the feather, surprisingly, doesn’t affect me at all), the tickler confides that they’ve felt this way forever: they used to drive babysitters insane by chasing them around the house with the threat of tickling.
At a performance, a mistress spanks what appears to be a pet bunny (if I am reading correctly from their pointed leather ears and sweet, round-nosed mask) with a DIY paddle made in the image of a navy blue Gideon Holy Bible. “Did you know you’re a sinner?” Mistress calls to Bunny. Bunny’s hand lifts into a fist and twitches up and down, up and down in what appears to be the duo’s agreed upon signal for yes. Bunny’s eyes beneath the mask crinkle in a smile.
By the end of day two, I’ve seen many more leashes, and not one of them leads a real dog. Thank God—I couldn’t have borne that disappointment. A mistress walks away from a group of “puppies” rolling around on the floor. One of them stops playing with their ball briefly to shout, “Thanks for the treats!”
Forty-eight hours in and I’m still hovering at the corners a little, but I, too, have liked the treats so far.
