Day 680
Someone just sent me a message and it got me thinking about something. They asked if it would be an imposition to come over with their partner/play partner/friend/whatever and use some of the toys/equipment that are set up in the house one evening this week.
At first, I was a little caught off guard. Nobody had ever asked me that before. I didn't really know what to say or how to react.
But then I realized something. How much different is it now for newbies getting involved in the scene than it was even a half-dozen or so years ago when I did?
Sure, there's a shitload of munches. There's a lot of ways to get information. FL is pretty much the Facebook of the kinky world and you can learn and share a lot there and even establish some connections before ever venturing out into the real-world of kink. There's always something to do that can get you involved in the scene. From something small to something big. Demos. Munches. Bar Crawls. Concerts. Gallery stuff. Fucking bowling. Whatever. That's awesome. There's always shit to do. That's a big change over the past decade with growth and expansions and splinters and fractures and everything else. Every crack or fracture has led to more surface area, like a disolving grain of sugar, from which expansion can happen. It's grown the scene. It's spread it out more and helped new people get involved a lot easier. It's made that transition from vanilla to kinky life a little easier for a lot of people.
The major difference though. The major negative in the past few years... Play options. And this is because of the lack of a public play space.
No, I'm not going to start a thing about it. I'm not even going to harp on it much. I'm not writing this to call for someone to donate the time & energy & money into putting something together. I really don't care if there's another dungeon ever opened in this city. I have a lot of thoughts on that topic that I've written about before and that you can hunt down in my archives if you want to know my thoughts on dungeon vs. no-dungeon, and I'm not about to rehash them here. I'm just pointing out this paradigm shift for newbies compared to when a lot of us got involved.
When we started out, we either had been playing privately for a while and had some toys & equipment at our disposal that we had collected over the years prior, or just hit up the dungeon as soon as we felt comfortable doing so (and were aware of its existence). If we didn't have any toys, they could be borrowed (within reason) from friends. And the dungeon already had the equipment. So unless we wanted a certain particular piece of equipment, we had most of what we needed available to us. Every Friday & Saturday night. For a couple bucks, you came and used whatever equipment you wanted. Some nights it was busy, some nights it was dead and you had the run of the place. But either way, it was there. It was an option.
Obviously, now it isn't. Well... you know what I mean.
I know that this is a far cry from my normal "oh, fuck them" attitude when it comes to new people, but I guess what I'm saying here is that some of us older, more "seasoned" people... we need to maybe try to put ourselves in their shoes a little bit. Try to remember being younger, or at least new to all of this. Try remembering the first scene you did in public. There's always that stage-fright of doing something for the first time in front of an audience.
Well, unless you're a self-indulgent, egotistical, and borderline sociopathic asshole like me. And then you just don't give a fuck.
That's all I'm saying. I'm not asking anyone to open their home or anything to just let newbs come over and use your shit. I'm just saying that it's gotta suck to not have space to play EVER unless you buy/build shit yourself, get to meet and not piss off the right people to get invited to a house-play-party or fight with hundreds of other people for play space at a big event hundreds of miles from Pittsburgh. But rarely, if ever, have a chance to play without being nervous about who is watching.
Well, I guess there is the Link bar munch (I still, to this day, can't remember which one exactly that is?) with the after-party. So that's an option.
I don't know exactly where I'm going with this one. I guess just the question prompted me to compare & contrast the paradigms that have changed in 6 or 7 years. And how jaded that some of us might be. How accustomed we are to "the status quo" for how play works. And how far removed we might be from being new. Then again, I didn't get much in the line of hand-holding for getting involved in the scene at all & I damn sure didn't get anyone volunteer to play with me or make me feel comfortable my first time around the dungeon.
Maybe that's why I'm such a cynical jackass.
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