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The Comprehensive Folsom Street East Post!

Folsom is one of my favorite days of the year. It's like a second Christmas. It's the one leather event where I feel completely comfortable walking about in my bra on my own. I helped whore out Kinklets, and Boymeat single-tailed me behind the TES table. And pinched and punched and bit me, and we made out between rounds in a way that I haven't made out with anyone in a long time. It was really really nice. Yeah, I can't stress how much I love Folsom.

I saw tons of people I don't normally get to see, and I even ran into Jefferson and a friend of his. Lolita took our picture, but I can't post it here, 'cause it's got our faces in it. But in it, I am wearing my lucky purple Folsom bra (and part of my nipple is popping out), I wore it to Folsom last year and I got beat up, and I wore it again this year, and the same thing happened. So it's my lucky Folsom bra. You may have seen me walking about in it, I had a Kinklets flyer tucked in between my tits.

My friend and I firmed up our plans, because she is being uber-wonderful and giving me a ride to TES Fest. And then I bounced around for a while. It started raining at one point, and I stood out in my bra, because I didn't want my shirt to get wet, since I still had the train ride and the walk home ahead of me.

Terra was poking fun of me at one point, and I gave the best come-back I have had in a long time. "Up your nose with a rubber hose!" And then I burst out laughing and leaned back to smack Jefferson on the knee. "I just made a 'Welcome Back Kotter' insult, I am completely on top of my game today," I exclaimed. "You go girl," he said back with a smile. Not many people get those references, but when they do, I swoon. 'Cause I'm a geek like that. (Nevermind that my sociology teacher back in college asked who a famous Puerto Rican Jew was, and without really thinking I responded with 'Juan Epstein'. Only one person got the joke).

I saw two people that I know in my vanilla life, one of them I said hello to out of pure shock, and the other one I ducked behind someone when I saw him. He was dressed in full leathers with the exception of his shirt, which was for a fetish event. Every time I see him now, I'm going to picture him in his leather cap. I saw both of them within 15 minutes of each other, and nearly had a coronary right there on the street.

When I was walking back to the TES table at one point, I ran across a guy in a blue latex wresters suit flexing his pec muscles. I told him I used to be able to do that, and he turned to me and said "well can you do this?" and started rolling his stomach muscles. "Honey, I belly dance, of course I can do that!" I replied, and did it in kind and even put in a little bit of hip, and then I added a few Ohmis and a couple figure eight shimmies (it has a Middle Eastern name that I don't know how to spell), and some Turkish flat steps, and his boyfriend and this chick were laughing while we did this, and then I excused myself to skip off and talk to the Gay Men's Chorus about joining. So I now have something to think about and work on.

I left a little bit after it had started raining. I had gone on the Kinklet's trip to the aquarium on Saturday, and spent the night in the City, so I was pretty exhausted by the time that evening rolled around. I got on the train, and crashed. I read my book and listened to music and became really really anti-social. I was starving by the time my train rolled into the station, so I was going to go to the market and get some food (ironically an Eden's gourmet market opened up in the next town over where I catch the train), so I went in there, and got some food. I tuned into my music and schlepped on home to a shower and a nice warm meal.

Folsom totally rocked this year.

This is how it started

And then snowballed.

I was 5 years old. I didn't have very many friends growing up, in fact I was pretty much a loner up until high school. I had one or two friends, but I didn't meet them until the first or second grade. Anyway, in my elementary school when I first started there wasn't a cafeteria, that was installed later on, when I was about 8 or 9. So we had these portables where the food was served. They were placed with their backs to the fence about five or six feet away in the school yard. I remember going back behind the portables and playing by myself. Secretly I wanted someone to come back there, one of the bigger kids and do something horrible to me. I didn't know what, and they weren't particularly sexual thoughts, but I thrilled at them all the same.

I desperately wanted someone to do something horrible to me behind those portables, and in a way, I'm still waiting for the older kid to come and do those horrible things to my Little self behind those make-shift buildings.

There's a little more to the story, like how I thrilled at being the robber when we played 'cops and robbers' in the wintertime (which is when we played it). I loved getting caught being forced to relinquish control, pretending to get shot and then "dying" in a snow bank. And then when I was 14 and Jaqueline Carey came out with her Kushiel books (my first intro to S&M) and me thinking about how hot it was. The puzzle pieces slowly clicked into place about my masochism that summer. The rest came later, the following summer when I was 15 and got tied up for the first time. So that's my little story, a quick little post, just because I can.

Tesfest

I will be at TESFest this summer, going under the mysterious guise of my real name. But if I happen to meet you there, or recognize your blog name on your little tag thingie, you might just get to find out who the mysterious woman behind all of the sex and veils really is. So yeah, if your going, I'll be seeing ya'll there!

Pumpkin

The world was silent.

It was as though the City had gone to sleep, and the only ones awake in the night were Adit and myself. I laid in his bed, which seemed impossibly high up off the ground. My nerves sang in a chorus as tension rippled through my body.

Our conversations and desires had brought us to this night, to the decision to do this with each other. Our leanings towards giving our friendship a twist, but staying friends all the same, something we both felt was important. And then, after a couple weeks of talking and texting, I found myself back in his bed. Still a friend and an equal, somewhere in that time, I had become the little girl to his daddy.

So there I laid in his bed, nervous and scared, the darkness was almost oppressive, like it was keeping it's own council on what it was about to lay witness to. Adit caressed my face and shoulder and breasts, laying himself down next to me and wrapping one arm around me. "Are you going to be a good girl for Daddy?" He asked. "Because I want to play a special game with you, but remember, this is a secret, you can never tell anyone that we're playing this game. Do you understand?" I nodded mutely in the dark as he slipped his hand down into the silky folds between my thighs and began kneading my clit.

The tension mounted in my chest before it began to break up inside of me like waves on a beach. I buried my face against his chest. "Now Pumpkin," he said. "I want you to touch your special place, show Daddy what you like." I tentatively reached my hand down and grazed my fingertips against my clit. "There's a good girl," he said softly in the dark before his hand replaced my own.

He began rubbing his fingers against my clit, making me gasp and moan. "Daddy," I said softly. "It feels funny." "I know it does, it's supposed to, and if you do this enough, it will feel good all over, don't you want that sweety?" He asked. "Yes Daddy," I said softly. His fingers flicked over my clit, drawing me closer and closer to the edge. "Oh, oh Daddy," I breathed softly into his chest. "Yes, come for me, come for your Daddy little girl," he breathed into my hair.

As the tension rose within me, something in me began to give way, and I slipped into Little space. I came, gasping and moaning against his hand, holding him against my sex as my hips bucked against his hand. When I finished, Adit stroked my hair and told me what a good girl I was before climbing up to kneel between my thighs. I watched him roll on a condom in the dark, while he spoke. "Now it's time for Daddy to feel good, don't you want that? For Daddy to feel good?" "Yes Daddy," I said softly. He pressed up inside of me and began thrusting into me. "Now remember, you can never tell anyone that you play these special games with Daddy, do you understand?" He asked in the darkness. A ball of wariness had settled into my stomach. "Yes Daddy," I said softly. "Such a good little girl," he breathed as he began to move faster. After a few moments of silence, he came long and hard.

He pulled out and laid down next to me. "Daddy, do other daddies play these games with their little girls?" I had asked, gazing up at the dark ceiling. "Some daddies play these games with their little girls, but only because they are special, and you must never tell anyone that we play these games because some little girls don't play these games with their daddies, and you don't want them to be sad, do you?" Adit had asked me. "No Daddy, I don't want that," I said softly.

After a few moments, I lifted my head and looked over at him. "Adit, is there something wrong with us for doing this?" I asked seriously. "No Eden, there isn't. I've spent alot of time studying sexuality, and what we did is good and beautiful. We're both consenting adults, neither of us have any interest in doing anything like that with a family member, especially an actual child. That's disgusting. This is role playing, it's different, it's okay to do this because it's not real, do you understand?" I nodded quietly, then realized he couldn't see me. "I'm nodding," I told him.

The next day I kissed Adit, and left for the City where I met up with Terra. I told her what had happened the previous night, and as I did, I began freaking out. "How did you handle this?!" I had asked desperately.

"Oh I spent a good weekend just lying in Conor's bed, I didn't really eat, just laid there. He took it just as hard as I did, he did it for me, not realizing that he would actually like it," she explained. "You're only in part 1 of your freak out though, and you'll feel like this for a good long time. And then it will come easily to you, and that will fuck with you also." "You mean there's more?" I moaned, munching on my chicken. "Yup. Pretty soon you'll be calling him 'daddy' in public without a second thought. 'Candy Land' will never be the same again. And if he's anything like my daddy, he'll make you show where you like to be touched on your teddy bear," she said matter-of-factly. "But I've had my teddy bear since I was a babe-in-arms, I can't do that!" I squealed. "I had mine since I was 4, and I did it," she said. "He's even saying that I'm gonna have to wear white underwear for him at some point, I can't do that," I said indignantly. "Next thing you know I'm gonna be wearing ruffled socks and licking one of those huge lolli-pops. This is too surreal Terra, I can't be doing this. And what makes it worse is that I liked it. I really liked it."

"You've been talking about this for a year and a half, and you finally got what you wanted. You know you're gonna do it again, don't you?" She had asked. "Yeah, I know I'm gonna do it again. And what's really gonna mess with me is that I'm gonna keep on liking it. And then the day will come when I'll be used to it. And that, well, I'll deal with that when the time comes. One step at a time, right?"

I continued to freak out over the next couple days, hiding in my nest and watching horror movies to distract me from dealing with the emotions churning inside of me until I found myself asking myself what was wrong with me. Why did I want this, why did I like it. I pushed my back up against the wall, murmuring 'no no no' over and over again. Feeling scared and alone, I texted Adit who called me several minutes later. I was upset and began yelling at him for being so calm in the face of this. I was angry that he seemed oblivious as to why I was upset. The poor dear deserves better than me sometimes, but most of the time I'm pretty good. He asked me calmly not to yell at him, and to explain to him what was wrong.

"We're role-playing incest!" I had wailed. "Incest is wrong and dirty and disgusting, what is wrong with me?! I shouldn't like this, I can't like this, I'm not a sick person! I'm sane and healthy, I'm not like those disgusting perverts who hang out in play grounds watching children! I have normal healthy desires, what is wrong with me?!" "Nothing is wrong, it's role playing, those are the key words, it's not real. Do you really think that I would be interested in my daughter? Or any child or family member for that matter?" Adit asked, his logical tone cutting into my panic. "No, of course not," I said crossly. "And I don't think you're interested in doing these things with any one in your family either," he said. "No, I'm not," I said quietly. "We aren't sick people, we are sane and healthy consenting adults role playing this. But it doesn't make us worser people for doing it, and if it really bothers you then we can stop, and we never have to do it again. I know you're frightened by this, it's okay to be, but there's nothing wrong with us for doing this, alright?" He asked. "I just feel awful, because I want to do this again, like, I really want to do this again, but I feel like there's something wrong with me. And I'm having a really hard time owning that," I said, my voice sounded strung out to me from all the anxiety. "There's nothing wrong with you Eden, it's okay to want this. You're safe with me, I'm not gonna let you fall, it's okay," he said. He joked with me a little bit, and I laughed, and we got off the phone a few minutes later with his insistences that I call him no matter what if I had any further problems.

I felt a little better after the phone call, but my emotions still sat in the pit of my stomach, and I worried and wondered about what my next step would be. I'm still not sure what that step is, but I do know I'm seeing Adit soon. I'm wearing my overalls and a t-shirt. I'm learning how to own my new found fetish, it's not easy. It's really fucking hard, actually. But in it's own strange way, it works for me.

Rage

I came to the leather scene when I was 18, two weeks after my 18th birthday, I wandered into my first TES meeting, and never really wandered out. I had the crappy abusive relationship that all guppy subs seem to have to have before they get to the good stuff in the scene. I met people and made friends. I'm very lucky to have met the people I have, to have had the opportunity to make friends within my community. Of course, when I first came to TES, I had no idea that TNG existed. In fact it would be about two years before I was taken to a meeting, where I met Terra, my leather sister and best friend. Ironically the meeting I first went to was run by one of the founders of the TNG movement, but that's another story.

This story, I'm sorry to say, is steeped in rage.

I often tell people that my best friend when dealing with the community is the buddy system. And people laugh, I even laugh, but the truth is I utilize the buddy system because I don't feel safe in my own community. I don't feel that I can go to a party, or any other kind of kinky event alone because I get hit on constantly and obviously by creepy men who have no concept of personal space or finesse. Men who get all up in my junk because at 21, I still look like a 16 year old girl. And you know what? It sucks. It sucks that I don't feel like I can go out and enjoy my own community and feel safe. And I am outraged by this.

I'm not the same girl I was when I came to the scene, in the time that I've been here, I've learned how to stand up for myself. I've evolved into a heavy bottom, and I'm smart about it. I have rules, very strict rules that govern who I play with and how I play with them. I don't deviate from my rules. I had a scene that went bad a while back. I'm not blaming anyone, it's just that I had medical staples in my chest, and we couldn't find the staple remover, so we wound up having to remove them using pliers. It was one of the most painful things I've ever experienced in a scene. I've learned that the most painful things that happen to me during a scene are never intentional. And one of these aforementioned creepy men, who shall remain nameless showed up and was watching this like it was some hot amazing scene. And I looked at him, already in an intense amount of pain and said loudly and firmly that he needed to go away because I couldn't deal with him.

Or at the Pirate Party a while back, I did my first single tail scene. I was whacked out of my gourd on endorphins and adrenaline and feeling more than a little bit fragile. My top had gone to get some water for us, and this man saw me sitting there topless and staring off into space. He came over and actually had the audacity to touch me, I don't even remember what he wanted, all I registered was a threat. I said as loudly as I could "Get your hands off of me!" He backed away quickly, and I was grateful when my top came back.

I'm tired of these men who really need to stop using the same tired old 'Wanna look at my toy bag?' line. I'm tired of having to literally hug the wall on my way to the ladies after a scene, because chances are I'm still naked and probably more than a little bit spacey. It's like those construction workers who constantly hit on women on the streets, catcalling and yelling sexual comments at these women. They never seem to change their tact, they seem to think that eventually it will work in their favor. It's the same thing in the scene, the same sad, pathetic, terrifying approach is used time after time on whoever their target is. You think they'd get the clue.

I've told Terra that I want to teach a Miss Manners class, and she continues to remind me that I will in all likelihood get up there and revert to my Jersey girl nature and spaz out and start ranting for an hour and a half solid at these people about why they can't get anyone to play with them. Us Jersey girls play dirty sometimes, Aimee speculates that it's something in the air that comes to us by way of Refinery Row and the Pulaski Skyway. Personally I've always said that it's something in the water.

But the point is is that this has to stop, I desperately want to be able to go to a party on my own, or maybe meet people there and get there early and not feel obligated to stand outside in the dark street because I would rather take my chances getting mugged than having to deal with people who never learned the concept of personal space.

It seems to me that these behaviors are so common that they are accepted and tolerated by the rest of the scene. Now, I know that my paltry three and a half years doesn't come close to some of my friends' time spent in the scene, so I might be missing some really big piece of the puzzle here, but why is this tolerated? Why are these people just accepted and ignored?

There seems to be a new strain of classes about how to get people to play with you. It seems odd to me that we need classes on common sense things. I think it's idiotic that people need to pay some small fee to be told to act how they would in a vanilla situation. I just want to understand this. I want to work towards a better community for everyone. I can't be the only one who wants this, but sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who wonders why this is, and tries to figure out how it can be changed.

I don't know, I've only been here for so long. And my so long is really very limited. Maybe I don't know something everyone else does. But if we all know the same things, then why isn't anything being done to change it? My goal here is not to offend, it's to learn, to understand why things are the way they are. It's to help stop people from being hurt, to bring people into our folds instead of turning them away. There are so many wonderful people in our folds. There are wonderful people from age 18 up through 110 and beyond. Truly lovely people who are worth your time and energy and love and trust. They are people who can teach you things, and learn from you as well. I know they can be found, because I found them, they are my friends. But I also know that I had to drag myself through countless leering stares and bad pick-up lines. I had my bad relationship with an abusive man, who I later discovered had a pattern to go with it. I know that I wasn't the only one.

I want things to change so that people can come to our community and see that everyone is worth their time and energy and affections, and that they don't have to sift through the predators and creeps to find the diamonds in the rough. Everyone should be a diamond. There's no reason why it should be a mix of coal and gems. No reason at all.

So why tolerate the predators?