Sparr's weekend at Frolicon 2016
May. 9th, 2016 10:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sparrThis is the second half of my post-con writing, following a con report style post that's not specific to my experience.
I went to Frolicon this year, after skipping the event last year for logistical reasons, and not otherwise having been to Atlanta for a couple of years. It was a fun weekend, quite full of social and play time with friends and acquaintances, old and new.
My original plan was to register and get a flight and a hotel and then work everything else out later. That turned out reasonably well. Over the months leading up to the event I convinced a friend from SF to come with me, then she convinced two other people, and one of them brought yet another person, so we ended up bringing a small SF polycule. I also bought a badge for a friend from Atlanta who otherwise couldn't afford to attend. Over the course of the event I had a room to myself, shared with one or two of the people mentioned above, and shared with a couple of other local friends who got sexiled or otherwise wanted to sleep over.
I reconnected with a lot of old friends and acquaintances. As usual with such trips, I found out who remembered me fondly or not, who wanted to spend time with me or not. Some of those discoveries were surprising, some pleasantly so.
I tried to play matchmaker a few times but mostly failed despite repeated efforts. Someone posted online looking to have a gangbang organized and I got as far as negotiating what she wanted and finding the participants before she stopped responding to requests to set a time. Later I found out she had her needs filled by coordinating one of the sex-y room parties, instead. One of the friends I brought had a bit of a crush on a con regular and I let that person know, and they failed to get together until the event was almost over. Another friend I brought was looking for a particular kind of scene, but she was too timid to message someone I second-hand recommended. When I introduced the two of them he got distracted which derailed their conversation. I enjoyed trying, but I'd have more enjoyed better results. My sole success was at a party, where I pulled together a friend and a stranger after both had expressed interest in making out with the other; that went quite well for all involved.
Throughout the weekend, various subsets of the SF polycule came together at social events, for meals, etc. That was a very enjoyable situation, even though I was usually the third/fifth wheel. I've never had a "crew" at an event before, and this wasn't quite that, but I definitely have a taste of the appeal of that approach now, and repeating that experience is on my mind.
I bought some OmegaJute to augment my natural fiber rope collection, and plan to use it a lot more in the future. I've been doing almost exclusively nylon rope for a long time, and will be writing something elsewhere about that shift. Most of the rope things I did this weekend were with jute, and I think that was a good decision.
I checked out a few panels and classes, but didn't sit all the way through any of them. I think I'm a bit too picky on presenter style; most such events are too slow paced for me. I did encounter a couple of depressing gaps in the coverage and quality, though, and at some friends' urging I might be stepping up to do some teaching next year. Similarly, I'll hopefully be doing some logisical stuff to address some of the deficiencies mentioned earlier in this post.
I spent a lot of time in cozy private rooms and great private parties, and very little at the public parties. A couple of friends had a full party room for their friends of friends, and a couple more had a more social less-play gathering every night. I went to some of the public parties to say hi to the folks running them, but wasn't feeling the "loud music and everyone gets drunk" vibe.
Of course, I spent more hours than I'd like just sitting in my room playing video games, trying to convince myself to go out. Social anxiety sucks. However, the times that I did go out worked out pretty well.
I had more play, not including sex with my primary partner or decorative ropework or demonstrating a toy, at this Frolicon than at every previous con and burn I've attended combined. As the con drew to a close I told this to a few people and they were rather incredulous. For that reason and for insight into changes in my intimate interpersonal approach recently (and less recently), I'm going to catalog here how those changes led to most of the things I did:
Two of the friends that I invited/brought to the convention are people with whom I am intimately connected, recently and comet-style, respectively. With them I engaged in some instances of bdsm play and sexual activities. First and foremost, and covering all those activities, in the past I drew a relatively hard line regarding playing with people while I was otherwise spending a significant amount of money on their happiness/enjoyment, due to my worry about appearing to pressure them into feeling obligated to acquiesce to my advances. That line has gotten a lot more nuanced, and possibly a bit fuzzy, in the last year or so. Next, some of those activities were spontaneous and not immediately/recently negotiated; I accepted my interpretation of physical cues and was willing to take a risk of being told to back off after I'd initiated by grabbing or licking or biting. I'm finally getting over a lot of irrational people spending a decade telling me that this is never OK.
I had my first "con hookup", meeting a stranger and then playing and having sex. We met at the hot tub, where I struck up a conversation and asked if she'd like to wear some decoratively tied rope. So far, this is a usual encounter for me. "Of course" you don't proposition a stranger for intimate kink or sex unless they express interest first, but asking to do something PG-13 is a good ice breaker that I've been comfortable with for a long time. We returned to my room to get some rope and, us both being covered in chlorine I said I'd rinse off first, and then asked if she'd like to join me. That, right there, was probably the biggest single step here. A shower together can be platonic, but that's not the assumption between strangers. This is an example of being willing to risk an extreme negative response, much more so than I have been in the past. There's a reasonable chance she'd have been freaked out at the shower suggestion and ran off, or that she'd feel pressured into it after having already followed me into my room, and those are not outcomes I was willing to risk producing in the past. After we showered, she expressed interest in trying my vacuum cube before we played with rope. I asked if she had anything else in mind and she said she wasn't sure. Once she was inside and obviously enjoying the sensation, I started to ask if she'd like me to do certain things, escalating from simple touch to various sensations to sexual stimulation and pain. This is another very large departure from my previous MO; I have previously tried to maintain a pretty strict stance on not negotiating after someone is already immobilized or otherwise at my mercy. I fear a hypothetical play partner who would be dangerously frightened by those questions, given the prospect that I have her in a situation where I can do whatever I want regardless of her answers. Overwhelming amounts of advice to avoid that situation at all costs took me many years to escape from, and this would remain a trend through further activities with others as well throughout the weekend.
I met up with an old friend and her new partner. She and I had thoroughly negotiated various types of play, years ago. In the past, I've discarded information like that after some months or years. This time, I decided to run with it, going with everything we'd discussed before unless she (or her partner) objected. The result was five minutes of negotiation followed by 90 minutes of all sorts of play, rather than my typical approach that would have involved up to an hour of re-negotiation followed by significantly less (amount and breadth) play in the time we had available. Given the breadth and depth of our previous negotiations, I also went so far as to initiate some activities we had not discussed, but which seemed in line with those things in terms of intensity and intimacy. She was positively receptive to all of them, so I think I read the signals correctly.
Three women, a past acquaintance and two entirely new, approached me (in person or online) to ask for a specific kind of play, and that went similarly to past such situations. One of those was on stage, showing off what I could remember of a spanking class I took years ago, and the other two in the dungeon. However, unlike in the past, I had few qualms about re-approaching each of them before or after our scheduled play, by minutes or days, to ask for a different kind of play, including after some specific thing was declined. Doing this required discarding the notion that asking for more things than they had requested or said yes to was badgering them. Rather than stopping at the end of our first scene, or at the first specific "no", I was willing to keep going, with the plan to stop after 2-3 different such responses. We never got that far; We did all of the things I was comfortable asking before any of them said no a second time.
Prior to the event I contacted a friend who I suspected wanted to play with me in the past, and that suspicion bore out. We weren't able to negotiate much ahead of time, but we covered a few things we both wanted to do. We did those things at the event. I am relatively sure that she wanted to do much more, and she asked me a couple of times what else I wanted to do. Unfortunately, my past reflexes took hold in that situation and I declined to explore our mutual desires, for fear of asking for things that not only would she not want, but that asking for would upset her significantly. This is an ongoing problem for me, particularly in situations with close friends/partners, because the risk of scaring off a stranger is much less painful than the risk of scaring off someone close to me. This is one of the cases where risk to myself is a greater concern than risk to someone else.
A couple of times in the weekend I asked friends if they wanted to engage in some specific sexual activity, in public, without prior negotiation. The both said yes, and both seemed enthusiastic. In the past, I'd not have put them on the spot like that, in terms of needing to give me an immediate answer, nor would I have jumped from zero to sexual in one step for fear of it coming across as inappropriate given that they had not expressed interest.
A couple of times in the weekend, someone asked what I wanted, after I had spent time doing most of the work into giving them pleasure and/or pain, and I answered honestly. In the past, I have always been hesitant to tell someone what I want, in those situations where they might feel obligated to reciprocate something I'd done. The majority of the kinky and sexual play in my life is one-way, specifically to avoid that, and almost all of the rest starts with my pleasure before proceeding into all the things they want me to do to them. Becoming comfortable with asking for what I want after giving them what they want is a big step for me, and one I hope to keep working on.
These experiences were the defining characteristic of this year's Frolicon for me. There are some common trends between these various situations, and I aim to continue on my quest to figure out what the actual appropriate approach to these sorts of things are, despite the protests of the crazy people I often find myself surrounded by.
I went to Frolicon this year, after skipping the event last year for logistical reasons, and not otherwise having been to Atlanta for a couple of years. It was a fun weekend, quite full of social and play time with friends and acquaintances, old and new.
My original plan was to register and get a flight and a hotel and then work everything else out later. That turned out reasonably well. Over the months leading up to the event I convinced a friend from SF to come with me, then she convinced two other people, and one of them brought yet another person, so we ended up bringing a small SF polycule. I also bought a badge for a friend from Atlanta who otherwise couldn't afford to attend. Over the course of the event I had a room to myself, shared with one or two of the people mentioned above, and shared with a couple of other local friends who got sexiled or otherwise wanted to sleep over.
I reconnected with a lot of old friends and acquaintances. As usual with such trips, I found out who remembered me fondly or not, who wanted to spend time with me or not. Some of those discoveries were surprising, some pleasantly so.
I tried to play matchmaker a few times but mostly failed despite repeated efforts. Someone posted online looking to have a gangbang organized and I got as far as negotiating what she wanted and finding the participants before she stopped responding to requests to set a time. Later I found out she had her needs filled by coordinating one of the sex-y room parties, instead. One of the friends I brought had a bit of a crush on a con regular and I let that person know, and they failed to get together until the event was almost over. Another friend I brought was looking for a particular kind of scene, but she was too timid to message someone I second-hand recommended. When I introduced the two of them he got distracted which derailed their conversation. I enjoyed trying, but I'd have more enjoyed better results. My sole success was at a party, where I pulled together a friend and a stranger after both had expressed interest in making out with the other; that went quite well for all involved.
Throughout the weekend, various subsets of the SF polycule came together at social events, for meals, etc. That was a very enjoyable situation, even though I was usually the third/fifth wheel. I've never had a "crew" at an event before, and this wasn't quite that, but I definitely have a taste of the appeal of that approach now, and repeating that experience is on my mind.
I bought some OmegaJute to augment my natural fiber rope collection, and plan to use it a lot more in the future. I've been doing almost exclusively nylon rope for a long time, and will be writing something elsewhere about that shift. Most of the rope things I did this weekend were with jute, and I think that was a good decision.
I checked out a few panels and classes, but didn't sit all the way through any of them. I think I'm a bit too picky on presenter style; most such events are too slow paced for me. I did encounter a couple of depressing gaps in the coverage and quality, though, and at some friends' urging I might be stepping up to do some teaching next year. Similarly, I'll hopefully be doing some logisical stuff to address some of the deficiencies mentioned earlier in this post.
I spent a lot of time in cozy private rooms and great private parties, and very little at the public parties. A couple of friends had a full party room for their friends of friends, and a couple more had a more social less-play gathering every night. I went to some of the public parties to say hi to the folks running them, but wasn't feeling the "loud music and everyone gets drunk" vibe.
Of course, I spent more hours than I'd like just sitting in my room playing video games, trying to convince myself to go out. Social anxiety sucks. However, the times that I did go out worked out pretty well.
I had more play, not including sex with my primary partner or decorative ropework or demonstrating a toy, at this Frolicon than at every previous con and burn I've attended combined. As the con drew to a close I told this to a few people and they were rather incredulous. For that reason and for insight into changes in my intimate interpersonal approach recently (and less recently), I'm going to catalog here how those changes led to most of the things I did:
Two of the friends that I invited/brought to the convention are people with whom I am intimately connected, recently and comet-style, respectively. With them I engaged in some instances of bdsm play and sexual activities. First and foremost, and covering all those activities, in the past I drew a relatively hard line regarding playing with people while I was otherwise spending a significant amount of money on their happiness/enjoyment, due to my worry about appearing to pressure them into feeling obligated to acquiesce to my advances. That line has gotten a lot more nuanced, and possibly a bit fuzzy, in the last year or so. Next, some of those activities were spontaneous and not immediately/recently negotiated; I accepted my interpretation of physical cues and was willing to take a risk of being told to back off after I'd initiated by grabbing or licking or biting. I'm finally getting over a lot of irrational people spending a decade telling me that this is never OK.
I had my first "con hookup", meeting a stranger and then playing and having sex. We met at the hot tub, where I struck up a conversation and asked if she'd like to wear some decoratively tied rope. So far, this is a usual encounter for me. "Of course" you don't proposition a stranger for intimate kink or sex unless they express interest first, but asking to do something PG-13 is a good ice breaker that I've been comfortable with for a long time. We returned to my room to get some rope and, us both being covered in chlorine I said I'd rinse off first, and then asked if she'd like to join me. That, right there, was probably the biggest single step here. A shower together can be platonic, but that's not the assumption between strangers. This is an example of being willing to risk an extreme negative response, much more so than I have been in the past. There's a reasonable chance she'd have been freaked out at the shower suggestion and ran off, or that she'd feel pressured into it after having already followed me into my room, and those are not outcomes I was willing to risk producing in the past. After we showered, she expressed interest in trying my vacuum cube before we played with rope. I asked if she had anything else in mind and she said she wasn't sure. Once she was inside and obviously enjoying the sensation, I started to ask if she'd like me to do certain things, escalating from simple touch to various sensations to sexual stimulation and pain. This is another very large departure from my previous MO; I have previously tried to maintain a pretty strict stance on not negotiating after someone is already immobilized or otherwise at my mercy. I fear a hypothetical play partner who would be dangerously frightened by those questions, given the prospect that I have her in a situation where I can do whatever I want regardless of her answers. Overwhelming amounts of advice to avoid that situation at all costs took me many years to escape from, and this would remain a trend through further activities with others as well throughout the weekend.
I met up with an old friend and her new partner. She and I had thoroughly negotiated various types of play, years ago. In the past, I've discarded information like that after some months or years. This time, I decided to run with it, going with everything we'd discussed before unless she (or her partner) objected. The result was five minutes of negotiation followed by 90 minutes of all sorts of play, rather than my typical approach that would have involved up to an hour of re-negotiation followed by significantly less (amount and breadth) play in the time we had available. Given the breadth and depth of our previous negotiations, I also went so far as to initiate some activities we had not discussed, but which seemed in line with those things in terms of intensity and intimacy. She was positively receptive to all of them, so I think I read the signals correctly.
Three women, a past acquaintance and two entirely new, approached me (in person or online) to ask for a specific kind of play, and that went similarly to past such situations. One of those was on stage, showing off what I could remember of a spanking class I took years ago, and the other two in the dungeon. However, unlike in the past, I had few qualms about re-approaching each of them before or after our scheduled play, by minutes or days, to ask for a different kind of play, including after some specific thing was declined. Doing this required discarding the notion that asking for more things than they had requested or said yes to was badgering them. Rather than stopping at the end of our first scene, or at the first specific "no", I was willing to keep going, with the plan to stop after 2-3 different such responses. We never got that far; We did all of the things I was comfortable asking before any of them said no a second time.
Prior to the event I contacted a friend who I suspected wanted to play with me in the past, and that suspicion bore out. We weren't able to negotiate much ahead of time, but we covered a few things we both wanted to do. We did those things at the event. I am relatively sure that she wanted to do much more, and she asked me a couple of times what else I wanted to do. Unfortunately, my past reflexes took hold in that situation and I declined to explore our mutual desires, for fear of asking for things that not only would she not want, but that asking for would upset her significantly. This is an ongoing problem for me, particularly in situations with close friends/partners, because the risk of scaring off a stranger is much less painful than the risk of scaring off someone close to me. This is one of the cases where risk to myself is a greater concern than risk to someone else.
A couple of times in the weekend I asked friends if they wanted to engage in some specific sexual activity, in public, without prior negotiation. The both said yes, and both seemed enthusiastic. In the past, I'd not have put them on the spot like that, in terms of needing to give me an immediate answer, nor would I have jumped from zero to sexual in one step for fear of it coming across as inappropriate given that they had not expressed interest.
A couple of times in the weekend, someone asked what I wanted, after I had spent time doing most of the work into giving them pleasure and/or pain, and I answered honestly. In the past, I have always been hesitant to tell someone what I want, in those situations where they might feel obligated to reciprocate something I'd done. The majority of the kinky and sexual play in my life is one-way, specifically to avoid that, and almost all of the rest starts with my pleasure before proceeding into all the things they want me to do to them. Becoming comfortable with asking for what I want after giving them what they want is a big step for me, and one I hope to keep working on.
These experiences were the defining characteristic of this year's Frolicon for me. There are some common trends between these various situations, and I aim to continue on my quest to figure out what the actual appropriate approach to these sorts of things are, despite the protests of the crazy people I often find myself surrounded by.