As I said once after I finished spanking a stranger's bare butt and taking all the clothespins off of his penis, we can consider this equivalent of a formal introduction.

Hi, I'm T(anonymous). I'm a crotchety old grouch who has been hanging out in the BDSM community long enough to figure out some shit and write it down, but I am not a Cosmic Guru or an All Knowing Grand High Poobah Master of the Universe. I was not trained on the planet Gor by John Norman's secret love child. I do not have powerful connections to a Seekrit Society of Real Slavery that is located on a desert island in the Carribean.

Beware of anyone who makes such grandiose claims, for chances are good that they want you to believe what they say because it benefits them, not because it benefits you. We're all in the BDSM community together, and while it is good to honor our elders who have given many years of service, it is bad to elevate anyone to the status of All Knowing Guru and believe everything sie says without reality-checking. Egos, personal opinions and personalities can get in the way and color the information you need, even when the teacher means well. I am guilty of this as much as any other.

All I have is a reasonably good supply of common sense and some years of experience working in cooperation with professionals in our community such as medical doctors, EMT's, accredited sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists and therapists. I am not one of those professionals, unless you count First Responder training in a BDSM community classroom and a decade working in, managing and finally owning a professional dungeon. But I learned some things about the practical aspects of making BDSM work in real life, and you're welcome to share some of what I have if it works for you.

This does not make me anything like an infallible authority, so I always recommend that you do the same as I did - find the sane and sympathetic professionals and ask your safety questions directly. Race Bannon's network of Kink Aware Professionals can help you do this.

There is no substitute for good research. There is a lot of fantasy dreck on the Net that can cause you major problems if you try to do these things in real life. It is a very good idea to give everything you see and hear a solid "reality-check" with creditable outside sources, including the material on these pages.

A bit more about me, not that my personal statistics are of much importance to anyone but me and my play partners. I am a switch, with far more experience topside than bottomside mostly due to supply and demand. I like playing on either end of the equation; what is truly important to me is the personality and energy of my partner rather than the details of how we play.

If I like someone's energy and genuinely like the person, I will probably enjoy playing with them and visiting in their BDSM world for awhile regardless of what it contains. I have the capacity for total and responsible dominance as well as deep and sincere submission, but I tend to play casually with SM and sensation and save D/s for serious relationships.

I started out in the BDSM community in Los Angeles in the early 1980's. Threshold was still Southern Janus, and while the Net hadn't yet hit every red-blooded American household, there was enough communication going on by newsletter, magazine, phone and even BBS to constitute the beginning of a really national, pansexual BDSM community.

Later I moved to Northern California, attracted by the employment possibilities of Silicon Valley. I ended up working in a dungeon instead, after complaining in public at a Backdrop event about the job I'd found and discovered I really disliked. I was to spend the next ten years as a pro dom/switch.

Overall they were fun years and I don't regret them, especially since owning the dungeon gave me enough time and space to do nonprofit events and fundraisers for the BDSM community. There were some wonderful Munches and play parties and dinners and discussion groups and classes and workshops.

In the great extended family of the BDSM community, there were also weddings and funerals, births and deaths, collarings and brandings and rites of passage. I saw innumerable BDSM relationships begin and end, or endure. I learned a deep and abiding love and respect for all my brothers and sisters in the leather lifestyle. I was deeply committed to giving service to the community.

Eventually I discovered that service was not enough, and I needed time and space for myself as well. I sold the dungeon and moved to another state to pursue an entirely different career, and isolated myself completely from the BDSM community for some years. I needed that sabbatical badly, and even now I am not eager to return to the same level of involvment.

So I choose to remain anonymous and unimportant on the Net, because I have found that anyone who puts themselves forward to give service to the community becomes A Very Important Personality whether they really want that role or not.

Our community is beautiful and strong, but far from perfect. Very Important Personalities in the scene are gossiped about and are the object of annoying and nonconsensual political game playing. This sort of thing was what completely burned me out back in San Francisco, and I don't want to go there again. So I will remain semi-anonymous on these pages, and participate in the scene locally with as low a profile as my big mouth can manage. LOL I am no one of any importance whatsoever these days, and I prefer to remain that way.

Regards,

T(anonymous)