Master of ceremonies

I've been building up to last weekend for longer than I thought. One of those nights when there's a much needed outpouring of emotion and physicality. I practically run to the venue, feeling my heart beat in my rib cage like it wanted to be free. Which was what I needed. A space to vent. Room to spread out wide and be a big animal. Unlike the compressed anger of my last public play venture this was vastly more positive. All the pre-play exuberance combined with an almost childish excitement for a party.

Well planned private parties are the ultimate safe space to let go. Whilst I tend not to be overly concerned by embarrassment for my sake I do often hold back in public because of other people. Not tonight. The theme and tone allows me as much scope as I want and I feel like I've been let loose. The sense of liberation continues throughout the night, I can't wipe a slightly crazed-with-happiness grin off my face and every now and then a shot of euphoria courses through me.

I'd planned the main event, an onstage scene / ritual with Mannequin, everything else I intended to take it as it comes. Total hedonism was my only goal, to do and behave exactly as I felt like whilst inspiring others to do the same. I'd chosen to "be" Ishtar / Astarte and I had no intention of letting the side down.

First. Outfit. That's important, there's an element of capturing a spirit, embodying something primal and other. To take off (and of) myself: revealing something else. To shock, yes, but to captivate, titillate and entertain also. I have a job to do, yet it's not work at all, but play. I'm here to make sure everyone revels in the night. Stripped to the waist, draped in gold and red silk, my face, torso and arms dripping in liberal amounts of fake blood made from honey that I encourage those present to lick from my skin. I grab a glass of wine from Ringmaster who's dressed as Bacchus, annoint people with blood and we toast to the night to come.

I dance. I love dancing. My body needs to move and move with others. I'm working up to something. There's a dervish-like necessity in what I'm doing, spinning around as the beat inside my rib cage intensifies. And I want to take everyone with me. Grabbing arms and pulling them towards me as I spin. Encouraging as many people as possible to dance with me, to pull them away from the bar and from chatting and into the main space.

When the time comes I know it's time and it's only in that moment that I realise quite how much I've been wanting and needing this, like all my coils and springs have just been released. Tension uncurls. I spring. A nod to my wingmen, Dandy and Fenrir and we're off. Grabbing Mannequin, hearing her squeal, and with satisfaction we jump on the stage and the lights hit me.

Everything feels like it's happening at once.

This is the first time ever that I have deliberately put an overt, explicit element of ritual into my shows. There's usually a sense in which all of my public performances are a personal ritual of some kind but this was different. I needed the crowd. Not just in the way that an exhibitionist needs a crowd but I needed them to watch, to witness, to shout back at me, to acknowledge what was being done and to join in. I remember bits of what I did. Not everything by any means and with none of the clarity or detail of more delicate, private play.

I got a massive head rush. Then this tingling, surging sense of eyes being on me and willing me forward. I roar at the crowd in some kind of address and hear them cheer back. There's an energy in the room and it's not just the buzz of performance spaces, or the heat of sex and sexuality. Power. Echoing back and forth. Calling on them to stop gaping and join in. A call to arms, a call to the spirit of the bacchanal that we are invoking. And I'm saying something as I fuck her but I can't remember what, but I can feel the press and pull of bodies as more are gathered from those onlookers able to step up and into the lights. Spirit steps up behind me and I feel her fuck me whilst I fuck the girl and every now and then I catch the eyes of those up there with me but mostly I just move and feel and listen to the moans. A jug of wine was emptied on all of us. I think I laughed.

Above all, above everything it felt right, it felt easy and it was fun. Cake was thrown (mostly at Captain, who ate it) and the so any conceit of pretension blown out of the water, which was perfect. This wasn't a "serious" sex ritual. This was a free flowing of fucking, affection and bodies. Hands. Lips. Mouths. Cocks. Cunts. And cake.

Later. Showered of cake, wine and honey-blood so I could provide less sticky after-care to Mannequin. Four of us naked in a pile on a sheepskin rug curled up like animals, limbs wrapped around limbs. Content.