Site Presented By
Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
In a suburban Ramada Inn, 1,500 players gathered to teach and discuss the sexual art of power and pain.
Nov 30, 1999 | I have just spent three days in a dungeon. The subterranean "playspace" has been the nerve center of the third annual "pansexual leather education and social conference sponsored by Black Rose of Washington, D.C." The description comes from the Web site of Black Rose, a nonprofit group for practitioners of dominance and submission (D&S), sado-masochism (S/M) and bondage and discipline (B&D).
The incongruity between the phrase "pansexual leather" and the bureaucratese that follows it reflects all the jarring disconnects I feel during the long weekend. Middle-aged Americans are indeed wearing name tags, exchanging business cards and wandering among exhibition booths. But they have also been doing things to each other that I would have trouble watching on a movie screen. The phrase I have clung to in the dungeon -- my real-life version of "it's only a movie" -- was "consenting adults, consenting adults, consenting adults."
The "differently loving" have assembled just inside the Beltway, at the Ramada Inn in New Carrollton, Md. With its narrow tower, which rises like a turret above the rest of the 10-story building, and its flapping flags, the gleaming white motel suggests a medieval castle. Meanwhile, in the 22,000-
On Friday afternoon, the last of the normals are checking out while people in leather pants and didactic T-shirts are checking in. Among the chest messages: "Tell Me What to Do," "Vanilla is For Ice Cream," "Remember my name, you'll be screaming it later" and the re-contextualized "The floggings will continue until morale improves." During the motel's metamorphosis, Dungeon Master Alexis, a married submissive, must accompany me everywhere I go. She's representative of the attendees: In her 40s or 50s, overweight, heterosexual, pleasant and articulate. We stop at a side door to chat with her husband, who's working security. Like most of the couples I meet, they "play" with others.
Alexis tells me the real action is in the dungeon at night, but during the day, vendors sell their wares in the Leather Market and experts host "workshops" in the motel's ballrooms. Among the dozens of seminars are "Piss," "Advanced Caning," "Duct Tape and Other Forms of Non-Traditional Bondage," "Negotiating Without Losing Your Hard-On," "Advanced Mummification," "The Ebb and Flow of Enema" and my favorite, "The Sting of Cotton: Vegan S/M."
