I’ll need a photo ID as well as your insurance card.
A pleasant delivery doesn’t stop me from wondering aloud from behind the Silver Fox if they wouldn’t likely have a lot of imposters showing up to an appointment like his.
My pithy posit barely merits a side eye from The Fox, but I’m accustomed to my observations being met with an occasional absence of encouragement.
Today, you see, is a certain someone’s very special once-in-a-decade doctor appointment.
The dreaded colonoscopy.
You know it’s been longer than a decade since the last time we did this, right?
That was my question as I parked.
The Fox assures me that I’m wrong, but I remind him that a decade ago I was living in Seattle.
The email I got said it was my ten-year reminder!
As if that closes the conversation. I mean, “The email said” is a far better argument than “I read it on the internet”, but it’s far from authoritative.
Still, I let it drop, wondering if perhaps I took The Fox to his first “people pay for this experience?” appointment and perhaps there was a former boyfriend that filled in for me ten years ago.
It’s not unlike my best friend to be religiously early. We jokingly call it Fox Time.
Even for this. Closing in on his sixty-eighth birthiversary, if this happened to be his third procedure, I could easily see him justifying his first at a Fox Timely 48.
Of course, the problem there is that it probably only seems like we’ve known each other two decades. Especially to him, I imagine, given that he has to put up with me and sometimes I’m a little much.
For instance, we didn’t talk so much this morning in the our first of dozens of daily texts. I just sent him this:
So I dropped the timing question. No need to unnecessarily poke the bear, as the saying goes.
Or The Fox, in this case.
Poor guy’s about to get poked enough for a while, I imagine.
Besides, there’s plenty of other topical material presenting itself. As we step into the elevator, The Fox pushes to button for the top floor.
They’re on the top floor because everyone that goes there bottoms.
I could do this all day.
I did manage not to comment on the photograph of the canal hanging in the lobby of the office.
The gaping span framing a lovely waterway bordered by blossoming cherry trees.
Anyway, before the Silver Fox is done not responding to my initial query at the check-in window as to whether this office has a lot of imposters showing up for colonoscopies – it is Portland, the kinkiest city in America – I see this:
I cant help it. My derp thoughts just appear out of nowhere and without warning.
My imagination instantly starts creating this story where a translator is called in to break the process down into gay-speak.
Gurl, I hope you brought poppers because this. is. happening. Mmm. Git it.
And with a Cher tongue, flip of the imaginary wig and snap of a paper accordion fan, the consult is over and my best friend is led off by a GoGo Boy in gold lame hot shorts.
And the next time I see him, he’ll be all doped up and rubber-legged. I do recall that from last time…it was quite amusing to see my fairly dignified bestie a little worse for the wear.
But the light at the end of the <ahem> tunnel is food!
The last words he said to me were about how hungry he was. The last words he texted to me – a few moments after being led away – were about him being one pound inside his goal weight range.
That shut me up.
You know how many back to back colonoscopies I’d have to prep for to get down to the goal weight range that I abandoned?
Lots.
The staff would probably think I had fetishized a good snaking.
Like I said…it is Portland.
Now, I’d better go before they finish up and I’m tempted to write about The Fox’s behavior while he’s sedated!
Welp, I just deleted a draft called Dating Into Oblivion ep6. The only note I had in my draft was
Who was this bachelor? I know it happened…
…which is a bad sign on the surface. Thinking a little harder about it – as I’ve been doing, being the end of this yearlong initiative – it might have been one of the better dating experiences I had in 2018.
Nothing good or pleasant stuck out, sure…conversely, nothing awful kept my experience with him fresh in my mind.
No tardiness or flakiness about getting together.
Not a sexual misadventure.
No ghosting.
Just neutral.
So, here’s to the unmemorable dude that was probably my best date of the year!
Like I mentioned, though, being the year end, I had been giving some thought to my 2018 writing initiative.
Did I “meet” my goal? Sure. I can average my $20 dating experiences in order to meet my 1/month goal. Some months were “feast” and others “famine”, so I could have been more consistent in channeling content.
Strangely, that consistency thread kept coming back in my ruminations. As did the question, “Do I want to continue this theme into 2019?”
I’m blaming this percolation of thought for ending my New Years Eve watching Rom-Coms until 2:30 AM. Turns out, my mild night was the known wildest – by virtue of latest bedtime – of my friends.
Yay, me!
It actually started out with the intent to be lame. I’d thrown a personal gauntlet down as I left my parents after my Christmas visit: Dry Week.
They didn’t believe it.
Not sure that I did, either, I threw my discretionary money into my debt-abyss, saving $100 for spending money.
Just not enough to get into any real trouble.
Forced success!
Except…
The Silver Fox wasn’t having it.
Sallory was coming to town for a tweener holiday party a friend of hers – and frenemy of The Fox and I – was throwing. His annual is a post-Christmas/pre-NYE party on the 30th. She wanted to meet for a drink before, and I’ve been terrible about making it to Happy Hour on her recent visits.
For his part, the Silver Fox wanted to make dinner on the 31st and then go to Tanner Creek Tavern for a low-key drink. Since they were closing at 11, he was entertaining the notion of closing the place.
Fate stepped in to help my decision making: the hundred I’d set aside for incidentals until my post-NYE midweek payday evaporated overnight in the form of an auto-pay I’d set up on my renters insurance coming due. Alright, well…good to have that paid up again. I’ll bet I forget again next year, too, but I’m betting my coffers will be in better shape to absorb that surprise.
Still, The Fox just wasn’t entertaining my lameness. He offers to buy and I try on an exasperated acquiescence.
That’s howIcameto have some free time on New Years Eve 2018 to think about my writing goals for the past and upcoming years.
Of course, I didn’t realize it initially. I sat on my couch, TV off and remote in hand, debating just going to bed. I’d had two glasses of wine at dinner and one at the bar, I had enough alcohol on board to ease me off to Nod.
Deciding that the midnight revelries would just wake me up, I decided to wait it out. I put on the first movie in my Amazon queue without thinking much of it: Hitch.
Great. I enjoyed this movie in the theater and figured it was a good way to pass the time.
Now, once it hit me that this was a chick flick, my writing ruminations kicked back in. Those resurging questions made me reconsider whether three glasses of wine over five hours was actually enough.
I opened a throw away bottle of Robert Mondavi’s off brand Cab Sauv that I’ve had for about four years. I’d been saving it to serve up as a second bottle some night.
Since that opportunity had yet to present itself – and since I fully expected to be pouring most of this into my “cooking wine” bottle, I went for it. With a nice, healthy pour and settled back into Will Smith helping the fat guy get the pretty girl.
I raised my glass to the TV and toasted, “Screw you asocial media!” and watched the show about a dating doctor for men. My mind was engaged in a little back-burner thought exercise about deleting OKStupid since it had yielded only two in-person dates over 12 months.
More on that later, but key word: moron.
Hitch ended with me laughing and crying and possessing an empty glass. Amazon was suggesting a movie about a one night stand that lasts two nights after a blizzard shuts down NYC.
Well, three-quarters of a bottle ain’t gonna fit into my cooking wine
…armed with a second glass, I start the movie.
I didn’t expect this to hold my attention, and it didn’t. It was entertaining enough – in a disastrous type of way – but as its premise was based on two people meeting for a one night stand off a hookup site, I found my back-burner thoughts creeping to the forefront.
I distractedly opened up my vintage hookup site, just to see what was happening nearby. Note, I said “site”, not “app”…I tell myself that using an actual website is somehow better than using the apps I so vocally despise.
Hey, I haven’t gotten laid on a national holiday since the post-Rib romp of Thanksgiving…2013?
What could possibly go wrong, right?
Nothing major, but it does turn out that the closest gay guy to me is just 200 feet away…basically in the hotel whose bar I had left at 11 PM. It also happened to be an overly precious guy I nailed a couple of times while living in Shittatle.
I think he didn’t like that I didn’t feel as fortunate that he’d graced my bedsheets as he apparently thought I should. We probably both wrote that off as a character flaw and just never evered each other again.
Tonight wasn’t going to be an exception to that, certainly, but I kinda hoped he saw me next door. I was listening to our mismatched lovers on the TV as I looked out my naked living room windows, wondering if J’s hotel room window overlooked my balcony.
Karma.
I decided to polish off the bottle and focus on the movie, knowing it wasn’t good enough for me to ever come back to if I turned it off now. There was only 45 minutes left and one more good pour in the bottle, so why not?
See, it’s rhetorical reasoning like that that provides answers to the question I’m always musing on…
What could possibly go wrong?
Welp, I got back to the couch and settled into the end of the movie, unsure of exactly how our female protagonist ended up in jail…but rolling with it.
A few minutes later, my phone let me know I had a message. It was someone who thought I urgently needed to know what his butthole looks like without the benefit of even a “Hello”.
<block>
Back to the movie.
Oh, good…at the ungodly hour of 2:15 AM on January 1st, in the 2019th year of someone’s lord, someone has decided fireworks were necessary.
Someone very nearby.
Luckily, I hadn’t gone to bed.
Let’s see…an ex lovah next door, fireworks and anonymous assholes. Yeah, I think 2019 is off to a good start.
The movie’s big finish?
A New Years Eve party.
Perfect.
On that full circle happy ending moment, I drained my wine glass, shut down the TV, popped a couple of Mellies and hunkered down in bed.
What I ultimately decided on to answer my earlier “continue” question was; hell, NO! It doesn’t mean I will or won’t delete OKCupid or my throwback hookup site. Those decisions are TBD, but I’m looking at them through the stop/start/continue filter and leaning toward stopping those actions in favor of starting an unknown other.
Nor does it mean that I won’t continue to catalog any notable dating experiences under the DIO hashtag, maybe the final entry down the road will be about a great date with a guy that continues to show up.
But my immediate payoff for this thought exercise of the past week? Waking up to this suggestion from OKStupid
Really earning their nickname with that one.
Seriously? That Lost Boy is your best dating suggestion to welcome me into 2019?!?
Sometimes I’m surprised by what I encounter online, it’s why I refer to social media as asocial media.
Still, I consider WordPress a fairly safe haven from the general online weirdness. But every now and again, I get a surprise.
Usually, it’s a reader from a far off land reading my blog.
Sometimes, that reader is reading something truly unexpected like my blogs on kinks and fetishes or gay dating. I mean, when it’s a reader where homosexuals still face the death penalty, having this blog in your browser history could prove fatal.
I’m two weeks away from my third anniversary on WordPress.
Do you think they’ll get me anything?
I’m not registered anywhere.
I find myself torn emotionally about my blog, recently. I can’t tell if it’s an actual ambivalence about my blog or if it’s a low-grade professional depression creeping in and coloring my perspective.
Here’s what I’ve accomplished:
I’m closing in on 300 entries. That’s a lot to me. I think my original goal was to publish a couple posts a week, so I’m a little light against that goal. But I’m within about a dozen entries.
I’ve got about 150 documented followers. That’s a lot, considering I only started this blog because a few people in Facebook badgered me into it. Can I take a dare, or can I?
And I’ve got about 10,000 views. Well, more, actually…for whatever reason – probably, unknowingly the way I have it set up – when someone clicks into my homepage, I lose visibility to what they look at. Who knows where they go or what or if they read anything.
Still, while I count those as pretty solid metrics for something that started as a dare, I measure myself against other bloggers and fall short in the comparison.
That kind of bugs me.
I don’t blog every day. My posts are pretty long, usually over 1500 words. If you’ve read my blog, you wouldn’t be surprised to know that I’m not surprised that my fellow Americans can’t commit to something over 100 words.
I’m killing it in the UK and Australia, though!
I don’t get as many likes as the bloggers I measure against. When I see someone with more likes on a post than I have followers…I get a little
Then again, those bloggers have a specific content…and post daily. And I just don’t.
Effort I put into SEO for my blog? It’s not zero, exactly…I mean, I know what SEO means!
But at the same time, I use my blog semi-therapeutically. Bitching about the state of social graces in America, psyching myself up to endure another round of this Persistent Survival thing I’ve got going on, my dating – or not dating – exploits.
And, yeah…work, sometimes. Less so, and much less specifically nowadays since several people at work read this. I mean, I’d hate to get into trouble at work for my behavior on what could be considered a social media platform.
Which would be ironic, since what has me depressed about work is the futility of it. The absence of institutional accountability:
Those who have a personal work ethic, do good work. Demonstrating a will, at least, where they may lack a particular skill.
For those who don’t have a functioning mechanism within them that holds them accountable to consistently meeting the expectations of their roles…well, they don’t meet them.
And nothing happens when they don’t.
It’s depressing.
But, for all of my omnidirectional themes, I’m reminded of how sometimes just checking in with my metrics can be therapeutic in and of itself. A couple times a week, I’ll notice that there’s hits from a search engine. Search engines are one of the leading – as far as I can tell – contributors to homepage hits.
I used to think it was Sacha. Once or twice a year, he’ll fire off a rant at me to stop writing lies about him, that our mutual friends read this and then tell him about it.
I’d say that’s one of two things actually happening:
A) those are my friends and they don’t really like him that much and are fucking with him,
Or,
B) he’s checking in on his brand and doesn’t want to admit it.
Either way, I didn’t really care.
But then this started happening more and more often
My search engine hits have been lining up directly with my posts about BDSM and fetishes or kinks.
Ok, A) who wants to know what my thoughts are on that topic?!?
And, B) how many pages of results did you have to scroll through to get to mine?
Lol. There’s some unexpected sexual healing…
Now, why don’t you go out there and help a brother out by sharing a post from my blog that you’ve enjoyed? I’ll take more followers, happily!
I’ve had pornography on my mind quite a lot over the last week or so, albeit in a non-traditionally male manner.
Last week I had a strange experience that made me think about several guys that I have dated in the past who were or ended up working in the adult entertainment industry. Writing that really made made me think about the industry as a whole and how it impacted the people who work in it.
It was quite an unexpected result from that little walk down Chagrin Lane.
I alluded to someone that I’ve referred to as The Short Hot Mess for over a decade, but didn’t really flush out my experience with him, thinking that I had already created a draft that I could edit and finish him off. The strange thing is that I’ve been stuck in a thought eddy about him but also about porn in and of itself.
I hope it goes without saying that you might not appreciate this entry. But I swear, it’s pretty much straight reporting with a dash of Op-Ed.
I swear.
But, still…enter at your own risk. Here there be pirates. Butt pirates, mostly. Bahahahaha.
Onward…
A couple of months back, The Silver Fox and I were at Barista having coffee and talking as we watched the world wander by on NW 13th. We do this fairly often – several times a week – and just catch up from the past four to eight hours since we last chatted.
Aside from T-Mobile, the Fox is my longest term relationship. It’s hardly co-dependent.
Maybe.
Anyway, on this particular morning, I was oversharing the prior evening’s sexploits – Chrisism – because the young buck I bunked had tried to maneuver me into a situation where I was wearing him like a glove, to put it as mildly as I colloquially can.
Of course, my response during the recounting of this awkward evening was appropriately Woody Allen-esque. Not in the chronophilia (wait for it) aspect of his personality, rather in the mildly neurotic manner in which he is known to express himself. I wondered aloud what the fuck was up with these crazy kids anymore, how could they be into such extreme stuff at such a young age? It didn’t seem like they had even had time in their mid-20s to have really completely explored the vanilla side of sex, let alone have their appetites evolve into the more specifically kinky arenas of human sexuality like fisting.
At the time, he had impressively summed up this behavior in the younger adults as them finding their place in the world. It seemed like as good a theory as any. We have certainly put out a couple bumper generations of lost humans over the last 20-30 years. Or longer, depending on who you ask and how old and grumpy they are.
I walked away from that conversation knowing – or at least thinking – three things:
A) While valid parts of the sexual spectrum, kink and fetish are likely more of a distraction to the general population than they would likely be legitimately practiced if we lived in a less extremely competitive culture of followers.
B) Knowing what I like and not feeling the need to push my boundaries to have a fulfilling relationship or experience as a human, but in researching this entry, I learned that I’m not as innocently vanilla as I would have originally frosted myself.
And,
C) That the times, they are a-changing.
That said, I think that overall, kink and fetish cultures have a much larger fan following of hangers-on than they have true enthusiasts. People in our culture who – like the Fox suggested – have yet to find themselves and are drifting from one kink or fetish to the next sampling from them all and hoping to find a niche where they feel a sense of community and belonging to blend into versus actually developing their own personality as an individual.
Such work.
Just my personal opinion.
I’m reminded of a certain President from the Bush clan that was described by Stephen Colbert (I think) as being told by his handlers to pick a personality in order to be more appealing to the voters. Unfortunately, the comedian continues, he chose Yosemite Sam.
Yet, from personal experience, I can tell you about a frenemy of mine whom Diezel has nicknamed Capt’n Shitdick from his personal dealings with him – not that my classification of someone as a frenemy needs outside corroboration – but this fellow and I went on a couple of dates back in 2014. The last of which being the second; where I picked him up at his place and he wasn’t ready, a pet peeve of mine, answering the door and telling me that he just needed a second to finish dressing.
Good, I thought, since I really didn’t consider Daisy Dukes to be appropriate attire for his body type or my disposition.
About 20 minutes later, he reappeared in full leather gear: Chaps, Vest, Biker Boots, Cap.
Seriously.
Be careful what you wish for, people. I cannot stress this enough.
Apparently, when I suggested that he pick a place in his neighborhood for our date, he chose Eagle PDX.
Fuck.
But, me being an idle student of humanity, I inquired about his choice of attire and location as we walked over, he in his leather regalia and me in my usual jeans in tee shirt uniform. It seemed that during a time in his life when he was adrift – lost if you will – bad family situation, bad romantic affiliations, maybe drugs – I forget – and becoming HIV+ – he had somehow stumbled into the path of the Portland and Seattle Leather Communities.
Right time, right place…perhaps.
What he described to me was being welcomed into a group of people that accepted him as he was without judgment. Folks that were anxious to elevate him to a place of personal well-being. Him participating in their culture extended that positive trajectory in his life but also honored and acknowledged the life preserver that they had been to him during his time of need.
But I still didn’t get that this was a true identity for him. Maybe it was a place holder while he got to a comfortable enough position mentally and emotionally to continue his journey to truly realizing who he is as an individual, and I can’t feel anything but good for him if that is the case.
Nevertheless, my ruminations on the topic pretty much came to a screeching halt when we walked into the Eagle PDX and there were people walking around completely naked and rather turgid. Yeah, not the people you would look at and say, “You’re definitely wearing too much clothing” as is the usual with public nudity.
Check please.
I’m such a Puritan.
Of course, back to my original coffee conversation with The Fox, I thought at the time that it was a great blog entry. You know me, I love a great “WTH is going on blog entry” if only for the opportunity to relay the comedic misadventures of my grumpy old life. However, I created a draft and never went back to it.
Two months of living in the Kinkiest City in America – hell, even our radio station’s call letters are KINK – later and I’m still ruminating.
But it seems the universe is putting tools in my path to help me flesh out my opinions on the matter. It’s allowed me to learn more about the topics at hand and more about myself and all from the comfort of my dining room and laptop versus having to venture into the real world or – heaven forbid – make my bedroom any more of a classroom or laboratory than it’s already been.
The other day, though, I got an email from gay.com promoting their weekly editorial offerings. In it was this little chestnut. Really, 36 Fetishes that Every Gay Man Should Know?
Okay…
As I clicked through the article, I found things that surprised me not a bit.
And some that rather did surprise me.
Well, maybe I should just clarify first that there actually is a difference between a fetish and a kink. A fetish is generally some object that creates a sexual response, from a slight tickle to an uncontrollable urge. A kink is an actual sexual act, sure, it could involve fetish items but can also be a stand alone act, sans props.
Now, here I am reading my morning email blasts from the comfort of my own bed, wishing I had a live in Sub to bring me coffee. Kidding. Surprised to find myself relating to some fairly inane items in the article that I have generally appreciated – from an aesthetic perspective.
Jock Straps: Just a sexy garment, in my opinion. With the right piece of meat tucked inside, they are particularly impressive, likewise there is nothing better to show off a sexy butt that to showcase it between the three elastic bands of a jock. Nevertheless, I knew that these were common fetish objects, although did not know that the most commonly fetishized jocks were ones that had been worn for several days. I’ll take mine clean, please, and continue to hold on to the belief that my appreciation of them is more of the way they look better on others than they do on me…what’s that, Envy? Great, let me resist being a Fetishist in lieu of being a Sinner of the Seventh Deadly variety.
Skaters/Skateboarders: What can I say? These bad boys are hot. I’m pretty much a Sandra Dee, so it’s obvious that I would be drawn to this alternative style, right? Plus, they’re typically young studs in their prime, which leads us to…
Ageism: Chronophilia (there it is). I didn’t know this was an actual thing. Obviously, I have been transparently vocal about my attraction for younger guys in their later 20s-early 30s, but usually defended it as my tastes simply not evolving in tandem with my own aging. This can go both ways – older for younger and younger for older. Keep your fingers crossed for poor old Xtopher that there’s a younger for this older, I guess.
But at the same time, I’m a little disappointed that I’m not as unique as I had thought myself to be. I mean, I know all about the May/December relationship dynamic.
I go to the grocery.
I see the tabloid headlines.
Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones?
But it has a name.
A Latin name.
That kinda takes the fun out of it.
Ok, it doesn’t.
Because at the end of the day, I get to spend time with an eager young guy with a tight, sexy body and smooth, soft skin who I can be a mentor to that appreciates me as much as I do him. Albeit for different reasons. Someone who helps keep me in touch with new things that might escape my notice otherwise in my curmudgeonly existence and appreciates the insight I have to help guide him into his independent life as an adult.
My rule here? Leave ’em better than I found them. If I can’t do that, then I don’t do them. More than once. <wink>
Now, the real surprise for me in this article – read hot on the heels of a conversation I had with a friend where I shared this part of my personality – is Armpits.
Yup.
Armpits.
And, again, disappointing to my sense of uniqueness, this is an actual thing. For me, I’ve always just appreciated the musculature and envied a well manicured tuft of hair to highlight the powerful intersection of the chest, arm, back and shoulder muscles on a man. I’ve also found the same stimulation or appreciation from the sterno-clavicular notch, that area below the Adam’s apple/throat but right over the sternum (obviously).
And, again…in the fetishized version, the attraction seems to be pretty much equally visual and scent oriented. For me, as in the Jock Strap arena, I’ll take mine clean for optimal appreciation.
It’ll be interesting to see all my male friends crossing their arms around me come Summer.
But to recap my takeaway from reading this…I’m an older guy looking for a younger, possibly skater, guy with nice armpits that likes to wear jock straps.
That doesn’t actually sound that weird to me. I probably just pissed off more serious fetishists by using weird as an adjective, but fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke. AKA: my dating life.
My actual fetish is me.
A surprising fetish for me after reading that article?
Clowns. Really? Ok. But not for me. I’m pretty sure someone coming out of the bathroom dressed as a clown after freshening up would probably produce the exact opposite effect of arousal. Fear. Coulrophobia, here I come.
In addition to what I learned above, I also did some exploring – virtually, except when I was caught off guard – into the kink side of the coin. Obviously, fisting wasn’t mentioned as a fetish and that was what kicked this whole mess of a ramble off…so what about that stuff?
There is a little overlap between the kink and fetish side of the conversation, but that largely revolves around Leather and Rubber wear and their respective Communities. The other things I learned about, fisting, BDSM, Pup Play, Water Sports, CBT (google it, I won’t even link to it…it produces the opposite effect of arousal for me), etc all have aspects that can link to the fetish world, but as I said earlier, the kink can stand alone. It need not include items that are particularly fetishized by its participants.
Now that I’ve done some deep diving actual research to educate myself past my casual observations, I have to say…I’m more enlightened and have more of a sense of what my thoughts are on the topics and a more stable foundation from which to pose the question of people when the topics arise:
What the fuck?
What I’ve learned about myself is that I have some objects that could be considered somewhat fetishized. I already knew that I didn’t have any behaviors that could be considered to require a Safe Word.
But I am still curious about how people learn that they have a kink. How are they initially exposed to it? And why am I encountering so many 20-somethings that are getting involved in those communities?
So, the original question lingers. I may not find a solid answer to the question. I’m sure there are as many answers as there are humans. I get that. But the question behind the question? Is this just a distraction? Are people like Cap’n Shitdick finding a refuge on their way to becoming their fully realized selves or is this potential safe (word) haven more of a cult or commune that may retard or reverse their personal growth?
This point was reinforced for me earlier today on a friend’s Facebook feed as he posted the following:
Enter a captionHow deeply are we exploring all our sexual selves have to offer us as part of leading a fulfilled life at the expense of settling into a life that may very well be considered fully lived without the exploration of the kink or alternative relationship worlds?
Ouch. That hurt my brain to type. Sorry.
Are we not just expanding the realm of the In-Betweener as people find themselves, as The Fox put it? Someone who may fulfill all the traditional benchmarks our culture places on growing up but then tacitly refusing to participate in being an actual adult in that same culture.
Job.
Relationship.
Family.
Taxes.
Death.
Not that participating in a polyamorous relationship and/or being a Leather Daddy are mutually exclusive when paired off against being an adult. I just wonder what percentage of the people involved in these types of situation are involved in it simply because it’s cooler than living in your parent’s basement and playing video games while being socially awkward like a traditional or stereotypical In-Betweener who is trying to find themselves.
Plus, there appears to more sex involved than the whole Parent’s Basement Scenario. Which is decidedly not a kink scene.
atleastihaveafrigginglass 
