Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Becoming a Kinky Presenter

Did I happen to mention that I was a presenter at Beat Me in St Louis in March? The class was "Phone Sex and Distance BDSM".

The way I got the gig was to write the organizers and say approximately "I'm willing to present free if you need an awkward slot filled." Saturday morning 9 am after a late dungeon party? You betcha!

So I put together a list of classes I'm willing to teach. I'm sure I'll be updating it, but I wanted to remember how it started.

* Distance BDSM and Phone Sex
* Kinky Ice Breaker Game: "Choose An Offer"
* Hosting Play Parties
* Basic BDSM Safety & Negotiations

1. Distance BDSM and Phone Sex - sharing my experiences, ideas, mistakes, and advice on distance relationships and phone sex, from long-term distance to a week apart. As a phone sex operator, a switch, and someone who has participated in long-distance relationships with lovers, Doms, and subs, I understand that ache when you want to be together but can't... And how to turn that desire into intimate shared memories.

2. Kinky Ice Breaker Game: "Choose An Offer" - a fun, flirty, easy, low-pressure way to allow guests to get to know each others, and find out who might be interested in you! The game consists of people making offers of varying levels of naughtiness (spank me, I'll paddle you, grope me, I'll rub your shoulders), people choosing offers which interest them, and 60-second rapidly-negotiated warm-up-level scenes. Class time includes a few rounds of game play for all participants!

3. Hosting Play Parties - discussion of some legal, logistical, and community issues to be aware of when you're considering hosting play parties in your home. How do you structure invites? Space? Toys? Snacks? Costs? Nudity? Sex? Rules? Enforcement of rules? Neighbors? Dungeon Masters / Monitors? Group dynamics? Privacy? Sound? How do you use FetLife? And does hosting make you a community leader, a controlling narcissist, or both? (Hint: it's totally both)

4. Basic BDSM Safety & Negotiations - An interactive discussion about the basics of safety and negotiations. Where should I avoid making impact? What helps keeps rope bondage safer? How do I talk with a potential play partner before we play? What are expectations at most events and parties? Strongly recommended for newcomers to the scene, but welcome for anyone who wants a refresher.

Bio:
Known personally as "Angela", on FetLife as "PlaySmart", and as "Galiana Chance" in her career as a phone sex operator, Galiana and her husband are exhaustingly active members of the Central IL BDSM community. They host educational events, a monthly Meet n Greet, and a usually-monthly play party.

Galiana learned phone sex because Angela is a non-monogamous bisexual switch with long-distance lovers.

Galiana Chance has been a successful phone sex operator on NiteFlirt (the most popular phone sex web site in the US per Alexa rankings). For about six months when she was full-time, she was regularly in the top 10 most popular providers, and very early one Tuesday morning, she was number 1.

In her spare time, Angela makes up more names for herself while caring for her rescue mutts, PlaySmart uses too many words on FetLife, and Galiana sometimes writes about phone sex and other kinky life issues at her Jane's Guide recommended blog: http://galianachance.net/blog/about/

Presentation Experience:
I presented at Beat Me in St Louis 2013 (it went well for Saturday at 9 am). I have led kinky classes in central IL, a monthly kinky munch in central IL, and 20 years of professional non-kinky classes and workshops on technical topics. References are available upon request for my presentation / group dynamics skills.

Feedback:
-from Beat Me in St Louis 2013-

Funny, engaging, informative and fun

I am so glad I rolled out of bed for her! Excellent and gave me fantastic ideas

Love, love the ideas. You were descriptively awesome.

Funny, informative and the presenter was super hot! (Ed note: I think this was my husband's feedback)

Love the examples you gave of various scenarios.

Wonderful examples, tips, tricks that can be implemented in every day relationships.

Loved it! So engaging, funny, warm. Thank you!

Exact description of class. Funny and enjoyable presentation. 

Love the part about role play. Could have sat through an entire class on that.

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Coercion Play

My Coercion Role Play at Kinky Kollege Spring Break 2013

The names have been changed so I can blog anonymously, but if you wish to identify yourself, please do!

To fully understand what transpired, and still remain anonymous, I'm going to alter some historical details of my life: I'm going to pretend that I used to be involved in the data mining industry before I got debilitating vertigo (I wasn't, but it was a similar technical industry), and I'm going to pretend that I did a data mining presentation at a conference which was heard by Christian Rudder of OKCupid's awesome data-mining blog (I didn't, but someone at least that influential in my actual industry did hear me speak), and that Christian not only said nice things about my presentation but then invited me to work more closely with him on a prestigious data-mining publication with awesome smart people (he didn't, but something equivalent to that happened), and that working with Christian on his data-mining project is the thing I miss most about my technical career (it's not, but the equivalent thing absolutely is).

The primary reason I went to Kinky Kollege was to take some friends of mine, a guy/girl couple, to their first big kink event in a big city, because she is a self-identified dominant at a young age, which is rare enough in urban settings, but so rare as to almost be unique in our geographically scattered semi-rural community. I knew she could get the sense of support and community and training she needs at a big event WAY easier than in our "maybe one educational event per month" community where everybody willing to teach and mentor is already giving 100%, so nobody is gearing education specifically toward new young Dommes, because let's face it, she's the only one.

So in planning the event, I reached out to the only person on my Fet friends list who was signed up for Kollege: we'll call him Paul. He went to the camping thing last year which my husband attended but I didn't, and then came down to our house for a party and played with a good friend: we'll call her Pixie. He negotiated really intelligently with Pixie before they played, and their scene was super fun: giggly and bratty and wrestle-ey and delightful. She felt fantastic about it afterward.

So I contacted Paul, explained the newbie mentoring situation, asked if he could introduce us around, and said I looked forward to hugging him. He replied that absolutely he'd introduce us around, and he'd love a hug... especially as after care.

~ahem~ My stars. /FanMyself

In case you don't know, "after care" is what happens after a kinky scene. So he cleverly asked me to scene with him. Shock! Squee! Happy! I had all the yeses to that, especially since, at the time, I didn't think my husband could come along with us.

Paul has a teacher / professor kind of a vibe, so we arrived at the idea of negotiating and playing in front of the newcomers, as a fun education moment, and to help them with their "what do I do at an event" jitters. Yay. We have a plan.

So it's Friday night of Kinky Kollege, we all manage to dine together (my husband, his awesome submissive, Paul and his adorable girlfriend, my mentee couple, and me), except during dinner, I go to Dungeon Monitor orientation for 30 minutes. Afterward, it's just the four of us: two to negotiate and play, and two to watch.

We meet up in a lounging area with tables and chairs outside the dungeon, and we negotiate - we had talked about my vertigo ahead of time, and I had read that he likes coercive role play in his profile, which I rather enjoy as well, but we had not yet negotiated pain or sex boundaries, leaving that to do in front of the mentees.

Paul, as expected, does a great job negotiating with me, including emotional boundaries -- what I crave from a scene even more than pain is to have an experience that is SO different from my everyday life that it's like a mental vacation for my state of mind, regardless of the activity at hand.

Then he cleverly asks the observing couple for feedback, assumptions, what we missed, and has them ask each of us questions separately to make sure we are on the same page. It took an hour, and it was great. Mostly I think it helped the couple realize they do pretty well already negotiating.

So we start playing. He puts a rope harness on me, but leaves my hands free. He starts dropping odd references about coincidences, what he's heard of me, how he knows me, stuff that makes no sense. I let it go for a bit, settling in to the mood, letting my curiosity build, and I start assuming he is going to say he had been a phone sex client of mine, which would have been quite a shock. Finally, I ask him about it, and he shows me the logo printed on his toy bag: Acme Data Mining (not really the name, but the effect was the same).

WHAT. THE. FUCK.

That was a competitor of ours, of the company I used to work for before I got vertigo. I mean, I knew Paul was a computer guy, but why would he have an Acme bag? He clips my chest harness to the heavy furniture so I can lunge but not escape, and starts revealing things about the data mining industry that suggest he was in it.

Then he says that he has a name, someone I know, a name that would prove that it wasn't a coincidence that he met my husband, that he played with Pixie, that he flirted with me... A name of someone who would be very interested to know that I liked getting tied up and beaten in hotel basements...

I knew that part was bullshit, that he'd been stalking me patiently for almost a year. Nobody is that patient. He'd been a kinkster longer than that, so Paul had obviously talked to my husband, gotten some piece of information, the clever bastard.

Right?

But....

I was laughing and cursing him and squirming away from him and melting under his hands when he would grope me or hold me close, and yelping at his sudden strikes, and suddenly very very uncertain what exactly was happening.

My mind was reeling. I thought of a dozen names. My old CEO, my old Director, project managers... And I honestly didn't give a shit about any of them knowing anything. The company was sold, so even if my vertigo disappeared, I wouldn't go back that path to an IT career again anyway...

But...

But the guy who invited me to work on the highly respected data-mining panel, an honor my bosses had not been able to achieve for anyone else in the company in ten years of trying... Him. Christian Rudder. One of the smartest, kindest, most all-around awesome people I've ever brushed up against. He once told a room full of my peers that I was a "mythical creature - a technologist who can also speak English". He is literally the only person from that industry that I would give a rat's ass about his opinion of me.

"Do you want to know the name?" No! No, oddly enough, I didn't. And yes, I did. But the anticipation was incredibly mind-fucking, and what I really wanted was to have an experience that was different than my everyday routine, and holy shit, this counted already just from the sheer "what the fuck" ness of it.

Eventually I said yes, I wanted the name, thinking in my head, "Don't say Christian Rudder, don't say Christian Rudder..." And out of his mouth comes...

Christian. Rudder.

After that, it got blurry. He was smacking me, struggling against me, while I tried to buck free so I could think straight. I was so pissed. I was so amused. I was so confused. I was so flipped around mentally. I was so sure it was my husband who had told him... Wasn't I? Paul wasn't really there when Christian heard me speak, was he? He hadn't heard the mythical creature comment, had he? What the fuck?!?

In the following 20-30 minutes of struggle, I said "Fuck you" a lot. Sometimes, very loudly.

He threatened to tell all kinds of things about me unless I agreed to fuck him, to let him abuse me, to keep going after the event. He told me what he'd do to me, how much fun he'd have, knowing I was no longer doing it for my pleasure, but because I wanted to protect my reputation. And I kept pushing him off, sometimes shoving him or beating against him, wavering between doubt and belief.

But every question I asked him, he answered, down to shit my husband could never have remembered - the names of my subcommittee, the name of Christian's conference overseas. The publication where things had been published.

Sonofabitch! No. Fucking. Way.

He had my arms pinned down, my ankles tied together, and a vibrator wedged against my clit with his thigh while I was telling him to go fuck himself, while he told me what a kinky dirty slut I was and watched me struggle not to be turned on, not to come, but... nooooo, that was a losing battle. I came, hard and loud and struggling against his arms.

And then I paused. And then I called it. Red. We're done.

And I reached for his heart while he reached for mine, and I burst into tears while he held me close and told me it was all a game and no, he would never tell Christian anything. My response was a relieved, "Ohmygod thank you... and seriously, fuck you."

Turns out, at dinner, when I had gone to DM training, my husband asked Paul what he did professionally, and he is in my old industry. My husband mentioned I used to be on the conference with this semi-famous guy.... and Paul said "Christian Rudder, I've published papers with him - he's why I'm in this industry now! I'm gonna use that on her!!" He had always wanted to do a coercion scene with a touch of reality in it, but how often do you have something like that on someone?

It was awesome. And hilarious. And random as hell. But mostly, awesome.

So the newcomers said later they enjoyed watching us, plus it gave them an excuse to watch the other scenes in the dungeon, without feeling awkward about lingering for so long. My husband and his submissive had also played in the main dungeon (we were in a smaller one), so a good night was had by all.

Intense and HOLY SHIT FUCKING INSANE, but great.

And, Paul, if you're reading this: seriously, dude, fuck you.


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