The Diverse Dungeon

Episode 7: Tidying Up the Psyche and the Significance of Aftercare in Kink

• Rae • Season 1 • Episode 7

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Emerging from a period of disarray akin to the scattered puzzle pieces of a complex jigsaw, I've pieced together the chaotic corners of my life, tidying more than just my office. The journey reminds me of an ex whose cluttered haven mirrored our tumultuous partnership, and now, as I organize my space, I’m setting the stage for a candid discussion about life's unexpected parallels. The air is electric with the buzz of reconnection as I recount the resounding success of the NeuroSpicy meet and greet; a testament to the strength and solidarity discovered within the kink community. My adventures at the vibrant KinkFest in Portland take center stage as well, complete with lavish praise for the dungeon dreamland and insightful suggestions for our ADHD friends craving focus amidst the frenzy.

Transitioning to a more intimate note, the essence of aftercare in BDSM becomes tangible through a recounting of a scene with Master J that veered off course post-play. The chain mail flogger was not the only new element that night; the absence of expected aftercare uncovered an emotional landscape that begged for attention. The episode peels back the curtain on the paramount importance of communication and mutual care, as I take you through the raw emotions that underscore our shared responsibility for each other's emotional safety. Whether you're navigating the waves of BDSM or simply curious about the intricate dynamics of these relationships, this episode offers heartfelt insights and a call to action for greater advocacy and connection within the lifestyle.

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Website:
http://www.neurokinkster.com

Musical Intro:
Not So Fast (Quarantine Beats #01) by Patchworker f.k.a. [friendzoned] | https://soundcloud.com/patchworker
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com
Creative Commons / Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en_US

Musical Outro:
The Crossover by Pyrosion | https://soundcloud.com/pyrosion
https://open.spotify.com/artist/51pxQJ5wdwSikfgYDBNXPE
https://www.instagram.com/pyrosion
https://www.youtube.com/@pyrosionmusic8562
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com
Creative Commons / Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-S...

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Diverse Dungeon, episode number seven. This podcast deals with mature themes and ideas. Please don't listen if you do not wish to hear about BDSM, sex or neurodivergence. Thank you, welcome. Today's quote Life is designed to knock you down. It will knock you down time and time again, but it doesn't matter how many times you fall. It matters how many times you get back up. Lilly Singh, all right. So my question of the week Well, okay, it's left the past six months. Where did I go? Well, I didn't really go anywhere, but that's the problem. So let me start out with a story.

Speaker 1:

Once upon a time I dated a guy who had his own room in a little three-bedroom flat and his room was unusually messy. In fact, he had a double bed and he was sleeping on half of it and the other half had, like books and clothes. And you know, he was only sleeping on half of it and I don't remember what started the fight. But something did and he said oh my God, can't you see what my room looks like? Can't you tell what my mental state is? By the state of my room? You think this is normally me. I had no idea what he meant at the time. I mean, I kind of did. I'm not an idiot, but I understand it. Now my life got messy and my room got messy and the space in which I record, which is also my office, got too. I could not literally get in the door and sit down at my computer. My life went to crap, the room went to crap and everything just followed. I'm going to talk about that a bit later, but I'm happy to say that, with some help from a very dear friend, the room got cleared out. I'm back on the mic and hopefully I can get the rest of my life organized right along with my office.

Speaker 1:

So in my last episode, way, way back in October, I talked about the fact that I was going to be hosting a meet and greet at a BDSM convention specifically for neurokinksters, and I did and it went really well. So here's what I did I chose the first class slot of Saturday morning and I think I would continue to do that, if I am allowed, asked, invited to do future meet and greets. The reason is is because a lot of neurodivergent or neurovariant, which is another term I heard, and really like we're not really so great on the whole early morning thing and really like we're not really so great on the whole early morning thing, and so a lot of people were telling me that they were going to miss the first session anyway. So when I started at nine o'clock there was hardly anyone in the room. I had maybe four or five people who showed up at the beginning, but over the course of the 90 minutes of the session we had probably 45 to 50 people stop by. Some stayed for 10, 15 minutes, others stayed for an hour. There was a big circle and we kind of shared for a while and just sort of talked about what being neurovariant meant for us in our BDSM practice. And then people got into smaller circles and I heard some people set up play dates. I heard people decide to go to classes together. It was exactly what I wanted it to be a safe space for NeuroSpicy people to hang out and meet each other. So I absolutely want to do it again and will start asking as I start signing up for more and more events. Unfortunately, since I dropped off the face of the planet, as did my podcast, I probably lost a lot of momentum and I'm going to have to try again. So any help, any suggestions, any shoves in the right direction I will happily take, because that is one of the things I learned is that I need to be better about asking for help. So help, if you want me to host a meet and greet, let me know, tell me where and I will do what I can to help set it up, especially if I've got some advocates in the area.

Speaker 1:

I went to KinkFest in Portland, oregon, just at the end of March, so not too long ago and let me give it the neurodivergent review Dungeon 10 out of 10. It was fantastic. It is a huge dungeon space, incredibly well laid out. They taped down paths so you knew exactly where you were allowed to walk, where you could watch, where you could sit, where you could stand. They had a clock on the wall that was like a computer projection, like an LED screen showing you the time. That was fantastic and it was huge. You could see it all from all over the dungeon.

Speaker 1:

They had various spaces, some were. There was a huge variety of equipment on offer. They had cleaning chairs, spanking benches, there was a barrel you could put somebody over, there were ladder bars to tie people to. You name it. They had it. And they were very thoughtful about having little posters telling you where you could buy that same equipment for yourself. Telling you where you could buy that same equipment for yourself. There was great lighting, so it was easy to see. They had specific spaces for specific activities. One thing I really liked was there was a fenced-off area with chain-link fence, no doubt for bull whips and other whipping activities. So there was a demo station where they did a number of different demonstrations over the course of the weekend. It was a really welcoming, open, comfortable space. So any dungeon that uses that plan I am a fan of. It was wonderfully done, and if you have not been to Kinkfest and you're a dungeon planner, I cannot recommend it enough.

Speaker 1:

Classes the classes were fantastic. The space in which they are giving the classes no, just no. If you are at all prone to ADHD or you have issues with noise or you have trouble with focus, you're going to have problems there. I did, and I heard it from a lot of other people and apparently it was improved from the year prior. I am not a sound designer. I could suggest some things, but the best thing I could honestly suggest is that if they're going to have to use that space, they need to mic the presenters and have it run through like a silent disco. Let everybody just bring their earphones, that would be huge. I think that would make a big difference. I only managed to sit through two classes. Both of them were quite good and I will talk about them, but I disliked the class setup and I definitely would not go back if that was going to be my intention and I do like the BDSM classes. I mean, I'm a teacher, which means I love learning stuff and I love classes and I get huge teacher crushes on like the best presenters. So I was really bummed about the classes.

Speaker 1:

The vending hall was, oh my God, huge. They said 106 vendors and I believe it. There was everything from dance clothes to silicon things, to whips, to chains, to everything. I don't even know how much money I spent. I will definitely put some links to my favorite vendors in my section below because, oh my heavens, I spent so much money that I did not have. Ah, I got. There is a build, a kinky bear place, which I'd been seeing before, and I finally made myself a kinky bunny. She has a corset. I will have to take a picture and post it because she's just so adorable. It's my bunny Abanda, so I have a little and she finally has her own little kinky bunny, which I've wanted for like three years. I bought Hello Kitty stuff. In fact I have to contact Leather by Danny because he's got a couple of Hello Kitty paddles for me that I don't need but I want anyway and I have a collar on order. Yeah, oh, my gosh, it was great. So much good stuff. I haven't even dealt with it yet. Oh, and there were these people who made low temp wax and they had this really great packet and I haven't even gotten to play with it yet and it's so cool. So vending hall 11 out of 10. Cool, so vending hall 11 out of 10.

Speaker 1:

Venue the venue is great, except one thing it is a giant convention hall. There's no hotel, which means that you park and you walk on and you park and you leave, and then you come back and you might be able to stay at the nearby hotel, which I believe has a shuttle. I went two miles away and I brought my RV in trying to save money, which I did do. It was only 50 something a night for me to keep my RV, but on the other hand, my friend and I never went back for the evening. We just we would get there at about noon. We'd stay till about six. The noise and everything was overwhelming. We'd go back to the RV and have dinner and then we'd just say you know what, we could just not go back and we didn't. I might try going to King Fest again and try staying at the hotel, if I can afford it, that would probably be. My big concern is that between the classes not being easy to listen to and having to leave the venue in order to change or get food made it really difficult to kind of immerse myself in the convention, unlike a convention that's held at a campground or at a hotel. So that's sort of where I am.

Speaker 1:

With regards to KinkFest, I did attend two classes, both of which were remarkably good, especially given the venue. One was given by Lady Steele and it was called Navigating Neurodivergence no, pardon me, navigating Neurovariance in the BDSM Life. Lady Steele and I'll put a link down to her FetLife and whatever webpages I can find of hers was a really great presenter. She's sassy, she's southern and she knows her shit. I really cannot suggest her enough if you can catch a Zoom class or a call, and if she's got any upcoming classes I'll link to them. I was very impressed with what she had to say about neurovariance and how she talked about it and, given the fact that she's from the other side of the country, it was really interesting to see some of the places where we were in parallel and some of the things she challenged me to think about, so I really liked her.

Speaker 1:

The other presenter was surprising. He's actually somebody I knew locally, although I mean like I don't think he could pick me up out of a crowd, but I've seen him before and that's Dana Rama, or Dana Rama, and I understand he is an adult performer and he's really good at what he does. So it was a bit warm in the hall and I was tired, so I nodded off at the beginning of his presentation and when I woke up they were having sex on stage, which is not what I expected. It made perfect sense. He was talking about how to create a more intense scene and he gave lots of really authentic and off-the-cuff ways to do it, and I have no way of doing justice other than to say, if you can catch a class with him and you are interested in how to make your scenes more intensive, he is your guy, maybe they them, and his partner was fabulous. They were also amazing, so absolutely recommend both Lady Steel and Deana Rama as people. You should definitely check out If they're doing Zoom classes or if you can see them locally. I am a fan.

Speaker 1:

So overall, king Fest was, I'd say, a 7 out of 10. If it weren't so far away I'd be more inclined to go, and I do have friends who live up in that area, so that might draw me up there. Also, if it continues to be during my spring break, that's a huge plus. If I go to Kingfest next year, I will try and put together a meet and greet for Neurodivergent Kingsters. They do have a space for that and I know it would be popular, since a couple of people who've listened to my podcast were actually there and gave me the hey, we haven't heard from you in a while, Are you okay? So I guess I owe you an explanation. Okay, I don't owe you anything, but what's the point of doing a podcast if I can't lay my heart bare? So content warning a podcast if I can't lay my heart bare? So content warning. I'm going to talk about some pretty intensive stuff. No rape or violence, just a scene that went really, really bad and how I want to fix it in the future. So content warning when I come back, it's going to be a little more intense. What went wrong? Okay, I'm back and hopefully you caught that content warning one last time before we go.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so in October I was at a BDSM convention. I was there with my current partner and I was also there with another one of my polycule and Master J and I had been seeing each other for about a year and we've known each other since about 2021. So a while Master J is not their name, it is not any name they go by, I am using it as a throwaway. So, just so we're clear, I do want to protect this person's anonymity, even if I don't think I should. I would hate it if they were to talk smack about me, so I'm going to keep them anonymous as something I should do. So here's the situation. It's Saturday night.

Speaker 1:

Master J has a brand new toy that they bought. It is called the safe word. I named it. It is something that is sold at Barbarian Design. I will put a link below because I love Barbarian Design. I have a bunch of their stuff and nothing about this story should reflect poorly on the maker and I will continue to sell safe words to anybody who wants to buy them. It is a chain mail flogger. It is heavy and I agreed I wanted to try it out. So I agreed to allow Master J to use the safe word on me.

Speaker 1:

The first problem was Master J did not know how to use it appropriately. I had to show him. After he made a couple mistakes. He tried to throw it overhand. It is too heavy to be thrown overhand. You need to throw it more like it's a tennis racket, a backhand or a front hand. It needs to be side. If you throw it overhand you're going to have too much weight and too much momentum behind it and unless somebody is a heavy, heavy masochist which I am not they're not going to be able to take it. So that started off a little badly but once we corrected it the scene went fine. It was a heavy scene, it was an intense scene, but no permanent damage was done and it stayed well within what we had negotiated. So the scene was not the problem, it was the aftercare that was the problem. It was let me reword that the absolute lack of aftercare. That was the problem. Master J has ADHD. That does not excuse his behavior. It does explain it.

Speaker 1:

After we finished the scene, we went out to a lit area with chairs. He fetched me some water. I was wrapped up in my fuzzy little robe, and that's when the debriefing should have began. And as we began to do the debrief, he realized that he didn't have his credit card. So, understandably, he ran back into the dungeon where we had been set up to see if he could find it, and I waited for him patiently. I believe this is how things happened. This is how I wrote it down, if my memory isn't correct, I'm human.

Speaker 1:

He came back and as he came back and sat down, he got a phone call from his partner who was looking for him. That partner walked up and he got distracted and he walked away without leaving, giving me sufficient aftercare or checking in to make sure that our aftercare was done. I followed him thinking because he was just walking like a hundred yards away. I followed him thinking that he would pick back up again or I could reconnect with him and say hey, you know, can we? I need a little more aftercare, can we finish this? Could you walk me back to my room, etc. Well, he got distracted again by some pretty young thing that he was flirting with. I need a little more aftercare. Can we finish this? Could you walk me back to my room, etc? Well, he got distracted again by some pretty young thing that he was flirting with and I stopped existing and I just stood there for about 15 minutes absolutely dumbfounded that this person that I had been dating for a year was treating me so badly. There are a lot of things I should have done, but what I did do was I just left. I went back to my room and then did not wake up my partner to tell them that something was wrong, because I didn't want to wake them up when they were sleeping, which they later explained to me was a huge mistake, and they were right.

Speaker 1:

By the time I was up the next morning, I was a mess. I bottomed out. I was crying. I was oh my God, I don't. I've never come off of ecstasy, but I have been told that that's what it's like and I will never try ecstasy if that is the case, because I never want to go through something that horrible again. I was a mess.

Speaker 1:

I left the convention. I could not bear to stay. I tried calling Master J to let him know that I had not. No, let me reword that. I texted Master J to tell him that I had not had sufficient aftercare and that my day was going badly, and he blew me off. Apparently, the way I texted him came across as criticism, and he didn't like it, because he's really sensitive about being criticized. Pardon my language, but, motherfucker, if you're going to play like that, you need to learn how to do aftercare. And if you're not going to be able to do aftercare, I don't care. What's wrong with you and anybody who wants to play with Master J. I would tell them that exact same thing. Now.

Speaker 1:

Did I do some things wrong? Oh fuck, yeah, I did. Number one I should never have agreed to a scene that I wasn't absolutely positive about, and I wasn't. I did it because I wanted him to like me. When he walked away, I needed to get off my ass and say no, we are not done, you need to walk me to my room and I don't care what's going on with you. I needed to say it right then and there. And when I didn't do that, I needed to call him the next morning and say motherfucker, you need to come fix this right now, because I don't care if he was criticized or not.

Speaker 1:

When somebody tells you that they did not receive sufficient aftercare, you give them their aftercare. You may never want to play with them again and that is perfectly fair, but I deserve to receive adequate aftercare and I'm very frustrated and upset that I did not. And one of the reasons I'm frustrated and upset that I did not is because I couldn't face BDSM. I couldn't face scenes I couldn't play. I was tempted to take all of my toys and pack them up and take them to the next fetish flea and just say have at it. Thankfully, I wrote down that intention, and an acquaintance that I do not know particularly well wrote the nicest response and said if you want to do that, bring them to me and I will hold all your toys for you until you change your mind, because I promise you you will come out the other side of this and you will want them back. I did not take them up on their offer but they were right and although it has been slow going, I have gotten back into the BDSM scene again and I have played a few scenes. It's been careful, it's been tentative, but I'm back and you could hear some of my excitement talking about Kingfest and some of the things I bought. So you can imagine how much of an improvement I'm doing now as opposed to where I was in October.

Speaker 1:

But because of everything that happened in October, I just let everything go. I stopped caring, I hit a really hard depression, I got very sick and I just let everything go. Part of the problem is being neurovariant or neurodiverse or whatever we're calling it this week, because I have ADHD and I can absolutely hyper focus and I went through every second and every minute in my memory and tried to figure out what I did wrong and how it was all my fault. As you probably heard, I no longer feel that way, but I will say it's 50-50. Master J screwed up absolutely, but I did too and I have learned from that situation.

Speaker 1:

What have I learned? Number one only do a scene that I'm absolutely ready and willing to participate in. Number two negotiate the aftercare before anything begins and over negotiate, as opposed to expecting that somebody I've been dating for a year will know what I want. And number three no plan survives contact with a scene and with a BDSM convention. Plan for backup, plan for a second in case the primary for some reason cannot give me the aftercare I need. I need to have a backup plan, because if I don't get aftercare I'm going to fall to pieces and that is not healthy for me. Not healthy for me.

Speaker 1:

So that is what I learned, I suppose, and that is one of the reasons I am back, because I wanted to share it with everyone, because, as hard as it was, I can't be the only one this has happened to. I am very fond of something that an educator around here says rain to gray and she says they say I'm not sure what their pronouns are so they say you will be somebody's worst scene whether you intend it or not. It just is the way life goes. So expect it, embrace it and learn from it. So I am sure that I have been somebody's worst scene and I have had somebody be my worst scene and I am going to learn from it, embrace it and move on, and that is what I'm trying to do. And so step 15 of that was coming back to the mic and sharing it with all of you. So what's coming up? I haven't any idea. I still have a couple of interviews that I want to put on. I still want to do some follow-up we will have to see.

Speaker 1:

Right now I am finishing out a really rough school year and I am taking a four-unit extension class through a UC, so I'm pretty busy these days. But I got all my homework done today and I decided that it was time to get off my butt and finally record another podcast, since my friend was so kind as to give me a space in which to record it. So thank you, friend, for getting me a space. This particular podcast is dedicated to you. For all the rest of you, I hope to come back again in a week. I have the feeling that I will just start posting on Sunday nights if I get my homework done In the meantime. Your anxiety is lying to you. I hope you all have a great week and until next time. This is Rae and this is the Diverse Dungeon. The musical intro was Not so Fast Quarantine Beats no 01 by Patchworker, formerly known as Friendzoned. The musical outro was the Crossover by Pyrosion.