How can you actually play in so-called sex-positive spaces and is it actually about sex or not actually about something else, but what do you call it?
While walking with a friend, we talk about my perception and experience of the so-called sex-positive spaces - out of her open curiosity, as she has not yet experienced these spaces first-hand. I start by describing a bit of the 'infrastructure': how it all started for me in the first place, how I first stumbled into a workshop by chance at a dance school where ropes and floggers were also used, how I then met Schwelle7 and Matís, whom I told about writing my master's thesis on Shibari and who then recruited me as an assistant for a bondage course in no time at all.
Finally, the more difficult part, trying to describe what interests me about the spaces in the first place. I mention the classics that many people in the "scene" report about. How liberating it is to meet people in such a different way; to share something even very intimate with them, for which both of them really go out of their way to make it a cool experience for both of them; but then you might never see each other again - and that's okay! More than that, it's even a bit magical.
I also tell her that this intimacy can be quite different from what we know from the other unwritten 'scripts' of the more classic encounter spaces such as dancing and flirting in the club or on a date in the bar (footnote: unfortunately, these rose-coloured glasses sometimes turn more grey and one realises that the heterotopias are not sooo different and sometimes disappointingly reproduce what we wanted to do differently. In any case, it can't be generalised and the dancing and data in the club can sometimes be more unusual than I'm claiming here for the sake of simplicity).
I talk about how these spaces enabled me to perceive bodies differently when intimacy is less genital and goal-oriented; it is more about sensations that are given to the body in a more holistic way. It is also liberating to be in an almost childlike play mode with each other as adults. To be able to experience yourself differently; to take a vacation from your other 'self'.
And then we realise in the conversation: Aha! It's called "sex positive", but the way we talk about it, sex seems to be the least interesting thing here.
I find this realisation very funny!
At least I know from myself and some others how, over time, such weariness can set in that it actually becomes very unexciting to watch sex in these rooms. On the contrary: sometimes boredom, disappointment or annoyance sets in. Maybe a bit like the classic, when after the infamous first time the thought is: "So THIS is it? THIS is why everyone is making such a fuss?"
From myself and some others I know this longing for a diffuse "other", for a "more!" than just sex in these rooms. What fills my heart with joy there are strange scenes: when people create a kind of human centipede with each other through cleverly draped bed sheets and thus go a few rounds. Is that sex? Or when challenging missions are set, when after a fisting workshop with a few friends the vision arises to form a circle of women fisting each other - the other free fist raised in the air in a feminist empowering way. Something like that.
I also tell my friend about a conversation I had with Matís a few days before. At the Konk - a sex-positive weekend near Berlin - he also took on a mission. At a "Gender Bender Evening" he wanted to try to embody a typical toxic male: taking up a lot of space, manspreading, being grumpy and permanently chewing on a toothpick like an old cowboy. I love him very much for tackling a kinky weekend like this. Talking to Matís, we repeatedly realised that the whole thing with the emphasis on sex (positivity) is somehow misleading, because what interests us at luhmen d'arc is something other than sex. In the absence of a better word, we say sex(positivity), but then we always have to emphasise that we have a very large concept of it that encompasses a lot. We would prefer to have more words, more language.
Luckily I was able to get out my recorder in time (with Matís' consent) and record the rest of the conversation, in which we somehow try to formulate what potential sex-positive spaces still hold, beyond sex. You can listen in from the point where I ask myself whether genital sex sometimes also represents something like an act of skipping: when you don't know what else to do, you've run out of small talk, the excitement is no longer bearable only through (that awful word!) foreplay, or you just want to get it over with, then you can skip the awkwardness and save yourself in the intoxication of sex. At the same time, I often find precisely these moments of silence and not knowing any more much more intimate and exciting than the more predictable and familiar terrain of smooching and the like.
More now in audio format, have fun playing with mice and listening!...
