I was a little nervous and didn’t really know what to expect. Even though I’ve been “in the scene” for several years, and have attended play parties, bar-b-ques, workshops, retreats, and other educational opportunities, I’ve never been to a “munch”. A munch is a low-key, informal gathering of like-minded kinksters. There is no overt play at a munch, and the dress code is informal. It’s an opportunity to meet local people in your friendly neighborhood kink community.
For myriad reasons, I have been less inclined to play in public spaces in San Francisco since I moved here about 2 years ago. Partly because I’ve been so busy with graduate school studying sex, who has time to actually participate in a lively sexual subculture as BDSM? So I took one more step into the scene and guess what? It was really nice. The group reserves the back room of a family-style restaurant, where the doors can be closed during the introductions. The people who attended were all very nice to me, and curious as they had not seen me at any events. The first assumption was that I was a newbie… if only they knew! But I squashed that assumption right away and explained I was from Southern California and hadn’t gotten my feet wet up here yet.
To an outsider, or “vanilla person”, it would have looked like just any old meetup group. Only once you listen closely to the conversations do you realize that they are talking about kink. They talked about a variety of past and upcoming events, and invited me to all sorts of functions that I may not have known about online. For instance, there is a decompression party in the city this weekend, and you may just see me there volunteering at the Pampered Pussy Lounge to have my pubes dyed hot pink!
And there’s a pansexual play party Saturday night that I’m considering going to. I’ve been told that the dungeon is really nice and has a homey feeling to it. I like that. I miss that with my previous dungeon -- my home away from home -- where I had spent many amazing nights exploring my own sexuality. The place where the whole community pitched in to help rebuild when there was a fire in the kitchen. In fact, the only time I have given blood was for a member of this dungeon who I’d never met, because they posted her situation to the yahoo group and I was compelled to help a fellow kinkster. So hearing this dungeon described as “homey” made me happy.
The other topic that kept coming up is a website called fetlife.com. I explained to them that I had created an account a while ago but that I really didn’t quite know where to start. Many of them chimed in and explained the many features of this marvelous website. It’s kind of like Facebook but for kinky people. I may just have to spend some time on there to get the hang of it.
So, it turns out I had nothing to be nervous about and am so happy I pushed through my anxieties to meet some really interesting people.
