This weekend, I had the singular delight of attending my very first TES fest, courtesy of the lovely Vera. It has usually been my habit to find a content island of awareness in the stream of subtle and not-so-subtle perversions flowing around me on all sides. Easily one of the most fascinating and awe-inspiring things I’ve encountered, the bondage convention is a joyful collision of acceptance, erotic denial, and satisfaction – a two or three day utopia in which the attendees can revel in their deepest dreams, limited only by physics, consent, and some measure of good taste and casual legality.
I have a loving partner, one who understands that the smell of leather does things to me and that my tastes run a little left of center. He is about 85% vanilla, with the other 15% chiseled out by yours truly in gentle, gradual baby steps over the last six years or so. He has not attended these conventions with me, and so I strive not to engage myself in anything that would dissapoint him – not to push limits or lines that would make my stomach sink with a sick feeling if I’d found out he had done the same. It’s a show of mutual respect, this trust and validation, and the only choice for a unique monogamous relationship like ours. At times, I wield my engagement ring as a shield, because the conventions are so rich in relationship diversity that I often become a be-ringed minority the moment I pass the registration desk; and some less tactful attendees sometimes don’t “get it” when they proposition me.
I’m not one for mind games, so I generally make clear in my body language and choice of places for sitting and observing that I’m not interested in involving myself. I will gleefully observe a flogging, a wrapping, a latex-bodysuit-painting, because it’s just too damn beautiful not to. (In Las Vegas this year, I had the singular delight of watching a glistening young man twirl double-fisted floggers artfully against the back of a St. Andrew’s Cross-bound young lady, the flogger handles dancing with flames. The fire trails lit up the tracks the tails had just traveled, and it’s a scene I doubt I’ll ever forget, both for the skill and beauty of it all.) I am a mental photographer, I murmur in mantra as I glide through the crowd – I am here to watch.
I walked to the courtyard with a new friend, having just been educated in the concept of “littles” as a fetish, and looked forward happily to the petting zoo my schedule said was just beginning. I love animals (strictly in the platonic sense, just to clarify) and was looking forward to seeing the goats, sheep, and chickens that a working adulthood near a city makes so few and far between. I hung up the phone after cheerfully reassuring my partner on a check-up phone call that “No no, like, actual petting zoo. Animals. It’s for the littles!” and looked up into the courtyard. There, wriggling on the grass was a half naked asian woman and the attractive transman that had checked me in, both on all fours and straining the ends of their leashes, making the most of their faux ears and tails as they writhed in front of the leashholders. Beside them, a cheerful beauty in overalls and pigtails held the leash of a giant chicken-suited attendee, face obscured by a rubber woman’s mask.
Ok. So. Not actual animals.
While I was still working from my puzzlement into the slow dawn of forehead-slapping AHA! I also noticed something that provoked me in ways I wasn’t ready for – wooden fencing propped up into stalls, draped with all manners of equestrian tack. Tails, bits, bridles, and ears spun lazily in the breeze, hanging like ornaments from a shady tree nearby. A high-stepping ponygirl pulled a cart merrily along in front of us, her two passengers waving to the crowd assembled for naked yoga. I found myself and my new friend wandering inexorably over to the tack, where I gingerly finger-combed a tail with more reverance than I was expecting. We were soon approached by a woman named, simply, “Mom”, who owned the various and sundry accessories that were busily transforming people into erstwhile animals. As I shyly murmured admiration to my friend, the matter-of-fact Mom saw right through a coyness I was still confused to be hearing in my voice and began equipping me before I fully processed I was about to become a horse.
The bit between my teeth tossed me into a different headspace like someone nudging a beanbag over the side of the grand canyon. Holy shit. I’m a horse. The ears, tail, and even hobble ankle cuffs followed quickly, expertly and tightly applied by this short firecracker of a woman, cigarette hovering out of the side of her mouth as she tightened my tail and clipped a lead onto the side of my bridle. In less than two minutes, I went from a casual conventioneer voicing an equally casual interest into a horse, the temporary property of this quick and unlikely equestrian tutor. What struck me was her disinterest – not to the end of being uncaring, because she was very kind in a maternal sort of way – but her absolute assumption and movements that said in no uncertain terms I WAS a horse.
Before I knew it, I was hobbled, mute, wearing ears and a tail, and catching every few words as she stood in front of me and led me to the cart. I did my best to listen intently, but was still somewhat dazed at how fast everything had happened. She ushered my new friend into the cart – a very nice girl of equal age that I may have tenatively planned on hanging out with in a coffee shop under different circumstances. Belled reins were clipped to my bit and handed off to my new friend, who must have been as stunned as I with the speed of it all. And then, with a click and a tap, I was ferrying my friend of barely four hours around a hotel courtyard, with a woman I met five minutes prior leading me by a leash tied to the bit in my mouth. Then we returned, I was blindfolded, and I made the circuit again, blind and mute, dependent on only the rein movements of my new friend to keep me from colliding with trees, people, and “animals”.
If you are uncomfortable or want to stop, just stomp. If I see you stomp, I will assume you are safe-wording and halt everything. The woman had told this to me, just before the bells jingled their way over my shoulders.
As my hands wrapped around the cart handles, and my friend gently snapped the reins for the first time, I felt right in ways other power exchange hadn’t afforded me. It wasn’t sexual, it wasn’t arousing, it was simply correct.
The next day, my bit-worn molars ached delicately as I ate a hamburger at a family BBQ. No, I decided then, I couldn’t have brought myself to stomp.
