Eros Daily Musings and Digressions

Beat Me in St. Louis 2009

Last weekend was Beat Me in St. Louis, the largest annual BDSM event in the area. I almost didn’t go, but then a mysterious benefactor stepped in and got me tickets for my birthday (thank you, fairy kinkfather!) I’m glad I got to go - it was bigger and better than Spanksgiving last year. I love the kind of events that have to state that no chainsaws are allowed.

Everyone attending was so happy and excited, like kids at Christmas. We saw lots of friends there, and spent most our time with Marie Haynes and her Handsome Husband. When we weren’t drinking whiskey up in their room, we were attending some great speaker presentations.

My favorite was the multi-talented Graydancer and Dana. He taught a class on how to put on a good kink performance, very clever and professional. I learned that I’m an exhibitionist, not a performer. I love getting naked and flogged or fucked in front of people, but I get nervous thinking about standing in front of a crowd and talking.

The incredibly adorable and sexy Rita Seagrave gave a fun presentation on gangbangs. It was so cute watching her scurry around the room flipping her wild mane of red hair and perching on laps as we discussed the details on planning a successful gangbang. I learned the term “spit-roast” - a person getting fucked while giving head.

I also learned that you should invite double the number of people you hope to have there, and double the lube and condoms as well. Provide beverages throughout the event and a spread of food for afterward. Beast would have a ball conducting something like this! I’d definitely like to make my own gangbang happen someday, but need to take care of a few other things on my kinky wish list first - rockin’ MFM and DP, for example.

I also really liked Lee Harrington, a flamboyant character who had us guessing gender. I thought he was a flaming homosexual from San Francisco, and Beast though he was female in origin. If you check out his bio, you’ll see Beast was right - he’s female to male transgender, a “guy with a twat.”  What is up with Beast having better Gaydar/Gendar than me?!?! He’s right just about all the time on everything. I don’t bet him on things unless I WANT to lose.

Speaking of losing (or winning), one of his goals for this event was to get a good flogger. It’s more fun to see the selection in person and touch them than to order one online. You know I’m not into things made from animals, but the rubber and synthetic floggers I’ve seen haven’t felt right to me, so I looked the other way when Beast bought this one made of elk (at least it’s not a factory farm by-product):

Even better, it has an INSERTABLE steel handle, which is my first steel sex toy. The flogger is very big, heavy, buttery soft and thuddy, and the handle is super cold, but warms up incredibly. A great addition to our sex toy collection. We tried it out in the dungeon there, and have played with it a few times since. I love being warmed up until I can happily take 70-80% strength blows MMMMMM….

I also got blindfolded and birthday spanked by some random attendees, and did what I usually do at events where nudity is allowed - shed my clothes until I was running around naked. Other seminars that I missed included “Abduction & Rape Play,” “Catheters & Enemas,” “Fisting,” and “Anal Play” - for that one Rita Seagrave rimmed one of my friends in front of a classroom of people. NICE!

As for what I didn’t miss, we had a late night MFMF play party up in the hotel room after checking out the pool where you could skinny dip. Marie knows how to class a joint up! She had rose petals, candle, honey liqeur, brie… but we still made Handsome Husband run down to the dessert bar (which was packed with perverts - nothing clears a dungeon like free cake) and grab us some brownies. And then we sucked his dick as a thank you.

I’ll see a lot of you at Cirque du Erotica tomorrow night, which will feature an incredible lineup of talented and sexy performers.

You can find out about other area BDSM events by visiting the StL3 website. J-Sin and Miss Regina rock!

this week’s Chron column: sex and zen with Brad Warner

Image by my friend Steve Diet Goedde, taken with his iPhone and processed with CameraBag.

This week, I got to meet and interview Brad Warner (thanks, Eddie!) Warner’s an ex punk turned Zen master, and had quite a bit to say about Buddhism and sexuality, such as how it relates to sex work and survivors of sexual trauma. I think you’ll like the piece a lot. Snip:

(…) Saturday at Green Apple Books I met Brad Warner at the signing for his new book “Zen Wrapped In Karma Dipped In Chocolate.” We immediately started talking about sex. Not because I asked him if he’d seen the cult film, Hong Kong action porn farce “Sex and Zen,” nor because of my own work. It was because Warner’s subtitle reads “A Trip Through Death, Sex, Divorce, and Spiritual Celebrity In Search Of The True Dharma.”

It was the “sex” part that made me do a double take; and that Warner writes a column for soft-core pinup Suicide Girls opened up a world of wonder; how, exactly, do sex and Zen go together? Sure, I’ve heard plenty of puerile pontification from Yoga nerds about “achieving Nirvana, baby” while they show you their downward dog, and this town already has a New Age-y sex cult or two where it’s always “ladies’ night.” But Warner is on the level; “Zen Wrapped In Karma” is a no-bullshit first-person account of the year Warner’s life completely fell devastatingly apart as he navigated heartbreak and loss, becoming a self-described “porno Buddhist” as his day job, all while he counseled Zen practitioners through their own crises.

Then he told me his next book was going to be about sex. All about sex. And here I thought Zen Masters were celibate. Turns out, I was only half right. Further investigation was required. Sharing a huge plate of vegetarian Ethiopian food at the Axum Cafe in the Lower Haight later, Warner probably channeled the patience of Buddha as I excitedly grilled him with questions about sex and Zen.

Violet Blue: What’s the basic philosophy about sex from a Zen perspective? (…read more, sfgate.com)