Curiosity and Desire: Journeying Into Kink
The beginnings of my first D/s relationship
At 11:00 on a Friday night, I find myself alone in bed, negotiating terms. The light on my bedside table is the only light on in my mother’s house, where I’ve been lucky enough to land after the final collapse of my marriage 6 months before. My home reduced to one room, at the same time the world is opening wide before me.
My introduction to kink and BDSM came in nibbles and sips, tiny bites here and there that piqued my interest and grew my curiosity about the real people beyond Christian Grey caricatures. Once I discovered that polyamory was a really-real thing that people do, the leap to understanding that so-called normal people can be kinky wasn’t a hard one.
Now, in the near darkness, two copies of The Ethical Slut are piled underneath my planner and the remainder of my four year old’s goldfish bedtime snack. First, the copy I borrowed and devoured, full of tiny slips of paper marking the pages where I had explosions, revelations, awakenings. Underneath, the new copy I bought knowing I want to read and reread to think and grow and develop all of these new ideas I’ve been having about the world. About myself.
My phone buzzes. Months before, when I was still with the person I thought was forever, I never imagined that a…
