As you know by now, we are producing a romantic comedy of sorts about the BDSM subculture, called
Hurt So Good. This past weekend was the Fetish Marathon in NYC and a group of POYers decided to attend one of the functions to educate ourselves and hopefully to promote the show. Here's a taste of what I experienced (remember, this is a first-timer's experience, so expect to read a little wide eyed naivete):
Marc Adam, Johnny Blaze, and I arrived with a few friends at the club around 11pm. When we first got there, it was still relatively quiet, but there were some interesting characters - a larger than life drag queen in latex, a man on the floor wrapped in carpeting, more latex... there was even a guy who looked like Marilyn Manson complete with odd colored eyes, latex body suit, heels, long black hair and nails.
Shortly after arriving, an innocuous fellow in a tuxedo and glasses walked up to me and told me I was beautiful and he wanted to know if I was a Mistress in the city. I told him, no I was from out of town and he hoped that I was a Mistress wherever I lived. I thanked him and moved on. I wasn't sure how to respond to his question... it was flattering, but I felt like I was a bit of a disappointment - apparently all decked out like a dominatrix. The reality of it was SO different (girly voice, big friendly smile).
We perused the vendor tables where we could get collars, leashes and other fetish gear as well as custom vampire teeth in 30 minutes. We saw various performances and interesting demonstrations (combat scene with flogging, regular flogging on a saw horse, foot worship... some poor guy was all tied up in a rope harness and a Mistress was whipping his bits from afar - ouch! He didn't seem to mind). Very educational.
After watching more demonstrations downstairs, we all went upstairs for the fashion show, which was lovely. My favorite was the nurse in black latex with a black latex mask that covered half her face. I have to wonder about the latex... it certainly isn't breathable, but almost EVERYONE was wearing it.
There were much older gentlemen there as well, a gentleman in tweed, the aforementioned tuxedoed gentleman, and I even saw a couple of older gents in latex and heels... this seemed like an environment that was very accepting of ANYTHING. I even saw an Orthodox Jew there!
At one point in the evening, I got to experience foot worshiping first-hand. It was interesting to see that something as simple as rubbing ones hands over my boot would be so satisfying.
All in all, it was very educational. Everyone was really nice and open. It seemed to be ALL about the costumes. I felt far more confident and sexier there than I normally do in real life. It's a chance to be someone else for a little while, a release from the tedium of day to day life and it is not all about sex.
So, there you go! I feel far more knowledgeable about the subculture and I can appreciate what Johnny's trying to do with
Hurt So Good even more. I'd definitely be up for going to another event, but I think I need to learn more about protocol so that I feel prepared.
We papered the place with HSG flyers, so hopefully, we'll see some of these great people at our show.
Johnny snapped a quick picture of me dancing
around on the stage. Just call me Meltrix.
We had our first reading of Hurt So Good last week and it went really well. The cast is HUGE, but I think it'll be a lot of fun. Everyone did a wonderful job and had great chemistry. I'll be putting photos and bios of the Guest Artists up on our site in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.
