How I Found the Freedom to Be ME

I remember the first time I heard about the BDSM and Fetish Scene. I must have been ten or twelve. A friend of mine and I had found my Dad’s Playboy magazines, and we curiously flipped through them. I remember seeing a picture of a woman in a black PVC outfit. It was so shiny and cool looking. I wanted to be like that woman!

My next introduction to it was a few years later. I must have been about thirteen when I read
The Story of O, which is an erotic narrative about the D/s lifestyle. (Don’t ask me where I got it, or why I was even allowed to read it. I read all the time and my parents didn’t pay much attention to my choices.) So, here I was, reading The Story of O, and I was fascinated by it. Needless to say, a little pervert was born!

I never really acted upon all these feelings and ideas that I had until I was much older. High school was pretty sexless for me, although I talked about it sometimes and thought about it a lot. My friends would talk about sex, but it was all tame, and no one else seemed to share my fascination with leather and PVC. When I talked about it, the guys got weird and the girls didn’t like me. The way people responded made me feel like a freak, so I stopped talking about it, but that didn’t keep me from being curious.

I didn’t have my first real boyfriend until I was out of high school, and he was very vanilla. He was an awesome guy, but I knew if I stayed with him I would end up living a very small life, and that was not what I wanted. I craved a fabulous, exciting life, with all kinds of wild adventures and wild parties. But that wasn’t what all the people around me were doing. Everything in my life was pretty mainstream, except for my ideas. My job, the college I went to, the place I lived, and the people surrounding me were all pretty normal. I didn’t feel like I fit in, but I played along with it.

One day, I got up the nerve to go to a Boston area club called Manray. I had been hearing about Manray for a long time, and it had a reputation for being very wild–all the “freaks” went there. No one I knew would go with me, and they looked at me funny when I asked. That is, until I mentioned it to my friend Brian at work, and he was all into the idea of going.

The first time we went was pretty awkward. We were both clearly under-dressed and lurked around the edges of the space. But this WAS where all the freaks were! There were people dressed in leather, PVC, and latex! There were cross dressers and transsexuals. The people were Heterosexual, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and everything in between. Doms led subs around on leashes. The music was awesome, and there were live spanking happening. It was sexy and fun, and I was in heaven!

Needless to say, I went back there every weekend. Pretty soon, I was rocking out my own PVC and leather outfits. I met all kinds of really cool people who weren’t afraid to embrace their fetishes and kinky desires. I had found my people, and to this day, some of my best friends are the people I met there.

You know what? I didn’t feel like a freak anymore… at least not in the bad sense of the word. I felt like I was accepted for who I was. I didn’t have to hide anymore. I was encouraged to let my freak flag fly and I did it proudly. That made a huge difference in my life. I didn’t realize how much I had been hiding who I was until I finally felt safe and had the freedom to fully be me. I became more comfortable in my own skin, and I was finally meeting people who shared the same tastes and desires that I had. It was so cool to be able to talk to other folks about these things and to learn from each other. I realize how important it was to surround myself with my right people, rather than my trying to fit-in to someone else’s ideas of who I should be.

My advice to you is to find your people! Surround yourself with people who aren’t afraid to let their freak flag fly. It’s amazing how different life can be when you feel accepted.