Where are you on your kink journey?

BY ALPHA MERCURY

The Kink Journey is what I call a person’s life in Kink. It’s larger than just one’s participation in the actual Kink/Leather/Fetish/BDSM community. Your Kink Journey began when you first started thinking about kinky things, no matter what age you were, no matter if you didn’t have the vocabulary to know what you were responding to or thinking about. Usually, we recognize the beginning of our Kink Journeys much later. Frequently (maybe usually), a Kink Journey begins in childhood. Mine certainly did. Some of my earliest memories are of watching Saturday morning cartoons and other children’s shows. Many of the stories included hero characters being captured by villain characters. There was usually restraining of some kind involved. There was the idea that someone could have power over another person. The characters in the scenarios I responded to were always male. These dramatic situations resonated with me way back then for reasons that were unknown at the time but became clear later in life. I was responding to the bondage and the Dominant/submissive dynamics in those scenarios. I believe those early viewing experiences were the beginning of my Kink Journey. As I grew older, certain objects began to take on significance, especially if used in specific contexts.

A signpost on my Kink Journey happened when I was in high school. I was vacationing in Europe. During a guided tour in the Finnish capital of Helsinki, our bus stopped at a traffic light. I looked out the window and was thunderstruck by what I saw. Two men astride motorcycles were parked on the sidewalk right next to the bus. The men were dressed head to toe in gleaming blue-green vinyl or leather, with matching gloves. They were wearing shiny black knee-high boots and had slung their helmets on the back of their seats so their heads were visible. I had never seen anything like them, except perhaps in science fiction or my young imagination. The sight of them — real, in the bright sunlight, just feet away from me — was absolutely enthralling. Not just because of what they were, but what they activated in my imagination. I remember thinking at that moment that, whatever world these creatures lived in or had come from, that was the world I wanted to live in. I could imagine both being them and belonging to them — whatever it took to be near them and a part of whatever sphere of reality they belonged to.

The bus pulled away, and the creatures vanished behind us. But that moment, however short it was, was a galvanizing turning point in my Kink Journey. I had just seen something that had given me a glimpse into a world I didn’t know existed. Now, of course, the “creatures” I’d seen were not leather-clad visitors from another world. They were just Finnish policemen on patrol. But the sight of them opened my mind, triggered my imagination, and propelled me forward on my Kink Journey so that I would be ready for what would come later.

I grew into a young adult and was able to connect these various resonances, feelings, and experiences to my emerging sexuality and recognize them for what they were: kinks and fetishes. And soon enough, a threshold was crossed, perhaps the most important threshold in any Kink Journey — the shift from imaginative exploration to real-life exploration. My first boyfriend and I were in bed one night, and he asked me nonchalantly, “I’ve got some handcuffs. Can I put them on you?” You can imagine how long it took me to answer and what my answer was. (ProTip for people new to Kink: If anyone ever asks you that question, ask to see the key to the cuffs before you say yes.) I was on my way. Do Kink Journeys end? Mine won’t. It has spanned my whole life and won’t end until my life ends. There is no destination – there is only the Journey.

Of course, this has just been a capsule description of my Kink Journey. There were many other hugely important experiences along it. (My discovery of the art of Tom of Finland was huge for me — it was as if I had found pictorial evidence of the world I imagined the Finnish policemen had come from.) Many thousands, perhaps millions, of experiences form the bricks on the road of a Kink Journey. I offer you important moments from my own journey to encourage you to consider your own.

Where are you on your Kink Journey? Have you crossed the threshold of imagination to real life? Are you not sure if you’re on a Kink Journey? I would encourage exploring what excites you sexually if you’re not sure. If it’s (literally) anything besides the most basic vanilla stuff (genitals, kissing, missionary position intercourse), you’re on a Kink Journey. Think about objects, positions, sexual acts, scenarios, aromas, tastes, sensations, and anything else that gets you going, arouses you, and gets you hot and bothered. Think about your childhood, your adolescence, and your young adulthood. Search your memory for experiences that seemed significant then but are more significant now. All of this might help you understand and continue your own Kink Journey. Enjoy the trip!

Have thoughts, questions, or comments about this column or anything to do with Kink? Write to me at kink@qsaltlake.com, and I’ll answer them in an upcoming column. Be safe, and have fun out there!

Alpha Mercury has been on his Kink Journey since he started watching Saturday morning cartoons in the 1970s and happily continues it to this day. He has a degree in film production from the University of Southern California and is a published author of erotic fiction. Alpha Mercury lives with his Leather Family in Salt Lake City.