I spent almost 20 years as a separatist lesbian. Not on purpose or not on purpose so much as women’s space felt great and the bay area affords a gay person the luxury of having a social world and a culture unto it’s self so large that one is never required to look outside of it. I was also in a profession most of that time that also was almost all women run with an occassional guy but nothing significant in numbers. Within the lesbian culture I had the further luxury packaged and delivered by the populations of the bay ares of hanging out in Butch femme culture, later part of queer culture here in sin central.
Even my leather life, for the most part has been lesbian by virtue of this subculture being significantly sized here. Dr. Phil said always pick a target rich environment, when trying to find dates…and the bay area for a lesbian is a target rich environment. Even for a queer femme the numbers are far higher than most of the country while still being depressingly low.
So when I started to prodomme. I was not just taking on a new profession. I was taking on learning to be in relationship with a species I had left in the dust 2o years ago and gladly so at the time. And as time went by I started to wonder if men had changed so much or had I. I found human beings with insight, awareness of women’s boundaries, vulnerabilities, honesty, and most surprising extreme likability. Did I miss something or was I before so overwhelmed with years of trying to fit where I did not, that I was unable to look outside of myself at the people I was trying to misfit with. And now it was different and I have felt often like a veil was lifted lately. I have concluded that one significant contributing factor is the difference between men into kink or bdsm and men in general. It might not be true, I am only looking from my side of the mirror but as a lesbian, I know that identifying that one’ desire is not mainstream and further finding the courage to act on that desire and accept that desire forces one to grow in compassion and insight. I have tremendous respect for anyone who has faced that process. For gay people in leather, bdsm is often, usually the second coming out so it’s not such a shock, you kind of know the drill. For a straight man, whose identity is so tightly linked to money, resources, community, society, the food chain……I wonder what is the journey. Is it as challenging as mine when I realized I desired women? or does privilege mean that it is less challenging because when you walk in the world of privilege even breaking the rules seems like a right?
I haven’t engaged in the conversation with any of my clients really since this is my first year of men. I have found out some shocking new pieces of information. One is that my desire is more linked to my bdsm desires than my gay desires meaning that the dynamics of leather in terms of desire supercede my interest in what body it comes in. I am still considering if that has made me qualify as bisexual. I don’t want to, I had the word for reasons to vast too tackle here for hating that word. I think it makes me pansexual. The bdsm community is often having pansexual events which pretty much means you don’t qualify by what body you are in or what gender you identify with, you qualify by being into bdsm.
So I am in desire when I am in any dynamic that plays with power. I can go to a pansexual event and find any number of different combinations of body and gender in any one other person, hot, challenging, seductive….and I wonder is sexuality really that fluid? or is just really that fluid…in me.
Have you noticed that if you are very lucky, as time goes by you have more questions instead of less?
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