Your own personal Beatrice

I like playing tour guide, I won't deny it. Since my own, rather determined, re-entry into BDSM over a year ago I've been grabbing peoples' hands and pulling them along with me, keen to show anyone with a flicker of an interest just how exciting it can all be. Why? Well, I suppose it's simply nice to share one's hobbies with people around you - saves having to talk about the weather all the time. But there's more to it than that, of course.

I remember how it felt, when I was younger and I didn't know what kink was or what it meant to be kinky or even that there was a thing called "kink". I certainly didn't know that it was ok to have those urges, to want those things, or that it wasn't "abnormal" or "freaky" to not find vanilla sex especially interesting. I remember how it felt to be in love with someone but to feel totally sexually disconnected from them, how upsetting it was, how difficult (impossible?) to change a basically vanilla relationship into a D/s one when one party was disinterested at best, turned off at worst. I remember the arguments, and feeling sorry for myself.

Then there came the good stuff. Finding those like-minded people to play with, to form relationships with, to enter into agreement with. And feeling like a proper person, after all, finally getting what I wanted. I'm not going to apologise for needing sexual satisfaction to make a relationship work, and certainly not for needing it to be D/s flavoured sexuality. I'm not going back, and it's extremely freeing. Not just to get what you want. But to know what you want, and to be able to go out and get it. I want that opportunity to exist for everyone I know.

So, with a light heart and a wicked grin I've been walking people around my version of the nine celestial spheres of kinkdom, as I did with my friend Green Man over email and this weekend. Some gentle prodding encouragement to go to a munch, an internet link here and there. A personal voyage of discovery is one thing, but a journey that allows others to make their own inroads into paths previously desired but untrodden makes what I've done all the sweeter.

Come on in, the water's lovely.