In the dark days, in the dinosaur era when I was young, they called it the second coming out.
Your first coming out is when you identify as gay, of course, but the second one? That’s usually in your 30s, and it’s usually as kinky.
[The second coming out is] usually in your 30s, and it’s usually as kinky.
There’s such a taboo, still, to this day, about having kink on your personal menu — which is incredible! We think we’ve come so far as a society — and certainly we have come a long way — but in the world of sex, there’s not been enough progress. And diving even deeper into the world of kink sex, well, there’s been nowhere near as much progress. You would think by now it wouldn’t even be a big deal — this second coming out where you’re not ashamed to say you’re into bondage or role-play — but people are still hesitant to reveal these things, and I think that’s a real shame.
Part of that is that porn often seems unable to show authentic bondage scenes. Think about it: for years, porn has normalized sexual activities by being matter-of-fact about them. But credit card processors have porn studios in a stranglehold, preventing them from showing a lot of popular kinks and fetishes, from golden showers to bondage. And if a porn studio has the temerity to include one, it’s subject to so many rules about what can and can’t be shown that it’s not even a real bondage scene. It looks so lame, it’s not exciting to anybody!
How did we ever get to this point where we can’t make the distinction between reality and play? Because that’s what happens when we go into the kink world: we’re playing. As a kid, I had a toy gun and I would go, “Bang, bang, bang.” That was play! I could tell the difference between that and a real gun when I was five years old. But adults and bondage? Apparently not.
Where are the screams of outrage about these regulations that make the world of kink seem so vile and distasteful? This kind of play can be so good for the mind, so good for your psychological health, so pleasurable and so much fun and so exciting.
I tell young guys all the time who are just getting into this scene, “You don’t know what dishes you like and what you don’t because you haven’t tried them all. But when you get older, you will feel sorry for your friends who never tasted from this particular buffet, who stuck with vanilla ice cream for dessert every night.”
Kink so often begins with an aesthetic of almost cartoonish hyper-masculinity with leather and rubber and images of dominance and submission. No one interested in starting out has to rush it! But the visuals of kink — that’s where you start. Hopefully not with that wretched movie, “Fifty Shades of Grey,” which is sadly what most people think of when they contemplate bondage.
There are so many photos and artworks revolving around this idea of the alpha male, like Tom of Finland, or the sexy playfulness of bondage in Helmut Newton’s work. But, in terms of film or TV, there’s really just been “Fifty Shades of Grey” and Netflix’s “Bonding.” That’s not a long list.
We won’t even mention “Exit to Eden.” Part of that is because culturally, we’re quite afraid still. That’s a shame, because in a major movie how much fun you could have and what an incredible way this could enhance your life. It would really help people.
Certainly, it helped me when I had my own second coming out in my 30s. Of course, I was lucky: I was into big, burly leather dudes smoking cigars in the ’80s in New York City, so at least I had clubs like the Mineshaft to explore!
All my friends were curious but afraid. You have to remember, back then the Mineshaft bouncer would stop you at the door if you had on an Izod polo shirt, or if you had on too much cologne. It was a Studio 54 type thing, and you felt special that you were able to get in there. So there I’d be with my friends, nonchalantly conducting the tour. “Here’s the sling, over there’s the piss trough. And this here is the grope room.” And they probably went home and jacked off thinking about everything that they saw!
People really took it seriously. Everybody who got past that door was there to play and not to be a spectator. We were doing it, and doing it harder than anywhere else in the world. And it’s funny, because Europe saw that and took it and ran so much further with it than we have, and they’re looking back at us going, “What happened? You started this thing!”
If there are any silver linings to the COVID-19 pandemic and the shutdown, I think people stuck at home discovering kink is one of them. People finally got so bored that they said, “Well, let’s try those cuffs we’ve been talking about.” Or, “Let’s try some role-play tonight, honey.” I honestly think, because people have been very limited with who they’re playing with, they have had to introduce kinky toys to keep it going.
But who the hell really knows? After all, not everyone is ready to go public for their second coming out.
Louis Ceruzzi is the CEO of online retailer Fort Troff (www.forttroff.com).
