Ever notice how introspection is a seasonal thing? No accident. The weather turns, the leaves change, the hunters bed down in their dens, and fires are made to contemplate yet another year’s passing. Hopefully, their bellies are full.
The prophets used fire to foretell the future. Maybe it was self-hypnotism. If you’re still enough, long enough, the future can be predicted by noticing the patterns of the past. A flame dancing to its own tune tells its own tales. There is no school like the old school.
I’m in the business of foretelling. X + Y = Z. People are a mix of habits, responses, and plain ole chemistry. Change one, you change the other. I make a living getting people to talk about anything other than their normal daily patterns. Trust me. If you get in a room and start talking with a chick who makes it obvious she loves the parts of your kink, character, childhood stories of being beaten up by your sister, how you fantasize about having a penis, and is thrilled that you love being dominant, submissive, anything under the sun so long as you feel ALIVE, the last thing you want is small talk in the break room.
As an observer and a writer in which all character traits from the type of oatmeal your Mom bought to the career chosen after grad school means gold, one of my favorite activities is to sit down with a nervous traveler and wait for them to spill the beans.
This is fantasy work. Stuff they’ve carried around since childhood, stuff they’ve longed to tell in the quiet privacy of their own psyches, and more than likely, stuff no one, not even their dogs, know about them. Whether that’s from fear of rejection, past humiliation, or lack of exposure, that’s not my business.
I’m not a doctor, psychologist, sexologist or therapist. They don’t need help. They don’t need to be fixed. There’s nothing wrong with them. This ain’t the place for Captain Save A’Ho.
See, it’s simple. When we’re kids we pretend, we try out different modalities, experiment with power and play without too much concern over how we are perceived until someone tells or shows us to cut it out, grow up, act our age. Typical life lessons.
So we grow up, carry our adultness around like a briefcase, and wonder when everything got so hard. What happened to the child? The fun, the freedom, the sense of adventure? He or she is still there. Somewhere. We didn’t club our flexible brilliant child-selves and bury them in a dark hole, right? We still want to play.
It is my extreme privilege to create a space where a man, woman, couple or group can experience the relief of play without judgment and ridicule. I’m a sessionist with a knack for words. I love all parts of a story, from every perspective I can manage. Lord, it is sexy to watch someone unravel their deep, dark secrets. If I can give them an hour or two to feel how they felt as a kid, a nervous, excited, awed in wonderment sponge of exaltation, they will go back into their lives, a spring in their step, a quiver in their groin. None of this means they stop taking care for responsibilities, tattoo their heads, and join Freakling Bros.
Passion without politics. Play is infectious. Happiness can spread like a virus. Grace is in the woodwork. Come on, people, work with me here.
I did not stumble across this ideology wrapped up in a picnic blanket under a full moon. Nope, I took the darker path into the woods looking for the wolf that ate Granny because that wolf, persecuted and shunned, was doing what was natural, same as Little Red, same as the hunter, same as the townsfolk and all their well-meaning fear. Everyone had a role to play and in those roles they were given purpose.
My purpose is straightforward. There’s enough willing if unconscious suffering going on. Enough already. I like sexy time. I’m a cheerleader for fetish fun. When you feel better, you do better. This usually means getting off your ass physically and mentally and taking a poke at something new. What the heck am I doing here if not to advocate we go play mental tag in the wildflowers?
Seriously, you’ve been punished enough. There will always be reasons to feel guilty. There will always be promises you declare for yourself and in the name of others, both of which, you can for the remainder of your days, cling to like a bug on a windshield.
Yes, we are all special. We’re glittering little snowflakes. Even identical twins fart out of tune. But in the playing field, we are all equals.
I’m Devora Gray, aka Scarlett Devine and it’s my job to teach you how to play again. Rather, it’s my goal that you remember how to play again. Nice to meet you.
As a contributing writer, I get to share my crazy adventures, poke at your vulnerable parts and train that mind of yours to expand, ever so slightly, into the world of fantasy. It’s important and you know you want to. Just in case you’re hung up on procedure, social stigmas, or outdated programming that says for whatever reason something is good, bad, right, wrong, twisted, straight, holy or evil, I offer a little absolution for the road.
My past comes straight out of Christian Conservatism 101. I was read scripture before I popped from the womb. I have always loved good stories, the Bible is chock-full of them, and I have always had a problem with other human beings telling me what to believe according to their own translation. Pulpit thumpers? I’ve had my fill.
I have the greatest parents in the world. Deeply introspective, kind, mostly nonjudgmental, they put the love into Jesus-lovin’ folk. I was not abused, beaten (other than what I had coming from sheer stubbornness), ignored or belittled. Just the opposite. I come by my kinky mind naturally. Pondering sexuality and fantasy was the best way to while away a Sunday morning, sitting on hard pews, steeped in seriousness. In my religious sect, walking the fine line of righteousness meant salvation, but that never made sense. Love the sinner, hate the sin, all the while singing, “God is love, God is love” and He will smite at thee like a pissed off hornet. Do as I do, not as I say, because everyone sounds so confused but really wants to be accepted, and hey, if you’re not doing it this way, you’re damned. That doesn’t sound like the God I know. Don’t get me started on the Hebrew translations.
What it did teach me, and for this I am eternally grateful, is that human beings go nuts for power play. It is inherent in all natural creatures.
By the time my family got fed up with the hypocrisy, a tidy fire of rebellion had been stewing long enough that I decided, Nah, I’m not going to assume anything anymore. What is good or bad is not inherent, it is often just a role a person plays for reasons I have yet to understand. More on this later.
I made a list of all the devious, fetishized, bizarre and supposedly taboo practices I’d heard around the schoolyard, created a nice alter ego to share the workload, and was baptized by fire.
The results shocked me. No, not that way. The play is the play is the play. I mean, I could not find “good” or “bad” people in the most sneered at recreational excursions, and we’re talking escorts, hobbyists, foot parties, dungeon meet & greets, cuckolds, live wrestling events, kidnap scenarios, S&M retreats, ball-busting videos, bondage playdates, and more sessions than you can shake a stick at in nearly every major city the States have to offer and some in Canada.
That’s hundreds, maybe thousands of people, who do not want to burn down civilization as we know it, have respectable jobs and families, do not throw themselves under the Victimhood train, and have all reached a point in their lives when it was more important to LIVE than give the keys to their happiness to whatever commercial propaganda is en vogue.
Rebel with a cause. I can dig it.
My cause took me more than seven years to manifest. It deals with honesty, transparency, and the abolishment of fear. It deals with understanding the fantasy, that beautiful psychological mechanism, used correctly, that can point us in the direction to a more balanced heart, mind, and body.
So, there ya go. You’re off the hook and I intend to keep it that way. No blame campaigns. No right-wing, left-wing agendas. To the best of my knowledge, it takes two wings to fly. If there’s guilt or punishment involved, believe me, I will be pimping out the finest details of their involvement.
For now, relish in the freedom. Take a deep breath. We are not broken. We are not sick. We are meant to play.
And my belly is a long way from full.