Editor’s note: At their request, most of the people interviewed in this story are identified only by their pseudonyms and not their real names to preserve their privacy.

With Kinky Con III on its way to Portsmouth, local kinksters discuss the region’s growing BDSM community.

Courtney Jane looks inconspicuous enough as she walks into Breaking New Grounds in downtown Portsmouth and orders a pot of tea. A grad student in her final semester at the University of New Hampshire, she fits in easily with the general student population. There’s nothing about her appearance to suggest that she spends many of her evenings at BDSM “play parties,” surrounded by leather, ropes and chains, as she participates in kinky role-playing rituals.

But she does. And, according to Jane and other local kinksters, the area’s BDSM scene is much more active than you might expect. Scanning the interior of Breaking New Grounds and the surrounding crowds in Market Square, Jane said there’s no telling who is a closet practitioner.

“That’s the fun part,” she said with a laugh. “Everybody sort of has their stereotypes of what a kinkster is. I mean, when I look at myself, most people wouldn’t know. Unless they really knew me and knew my sense of humor, they wouldn’t know.”

And yet, Jane believes just about every person has an inner kinkster. It’s just a matter of whether they let it loose.

“In my opinion, everybody has fetishes. Everybody has fantasies. Most people don’t talk about it. Most people don’t explore it,” she said. “I guess I’ve always been a very open-minded person and find it very easy to talk about these things, I don’t know why.”

Jane founded the group New Hampshire Seacoast Kink, which will hold its third biannual Kinky Con event at the Portsmouth Holiday Inn on Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 2 and 3. The group and the event are aimed at educating people about safety, technique, and how to get into the BDSM scene.

“I wanted to help open people up and let them actually see that part of themselves, because most people just ignore it or see it as bad,” Jane said.

Kinky Con is one of numerous BDSM events held around New England all year long. It’s a scene that appears to be growing on the Seacoast and across the region, with new social media tools like FetLife attracting more people while protecting their anonymity. The Internet has made it easier than ever for kinksters to enter the underground fetish community and find acceptance.

But “kinky people” are still far from accepted by conventional society. Due to the social stigma attached to BDSM, most practitioners remain secretive, afraid of what would happen if their bosses, coworkers or family members found out. And, in many states, they could even face legal repercussions.

BDSM is a three-part acronym standing for bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism. The S&M portion is what’s most commonly known to the general public, as depicted in movies and pornography. When many people think of BDSM, Jane said, they picture “the gimp” from “Pulp Fiction.”

“I get that one a lot, and that’s a very negative way of seeing it,” she said. “It’s not just leather. It’s not just whips and chains.”

In reality, sex is just one aspect of the scene, and many of the activities that fall under the BDSM umbrella are not sexual, at all.

“There’s a major stereotype that BDSM is all about sex, and they are so wrong. They don’t realize that it’s so much more about a connection, about an exchange of power, about trusting communication within relationships, whether it be two people or six people,” Jane said. “It’s all about getting down to what really gets you off and exploring it and not being afraid of those things.”

Seacoast resident Erika Renee Stetson has been active in the BDSM scene for about three years, and in that time she’s observed significant growth in the local fetish community. This summer, she began organizing a monthly event called the Boston Toy Party.

“It’s been fantastic,” she said. “In the past few years, it’s definitely picked up from what it used to be.”

She is transgendered, from male to female, and goes by her middle name of Renee. She said online tools like Yahoo groups and FetLife, a social networking site for kinksters, have made the community more accessible.

“It’s just helped the scene explode in terms of information about events and access to events,” Renee said.

Morghan, a 33-year-old kinkster from Auburn, Maine, said she started investigating the BDSM scene when she was 18, before the Internet was prominent. Back then, she said, it was much trickier to seek out the fetish community.

“When I started checking things out in the mid to late ’90s, it was a searching process,” Morghan said. Through adult stores, catalogues and magazines, she managed to find likeminded people in the area. “Once I found out that there was a social scene attached to it, I was like, ‘I’m curious. I need to check this out.’”

It was through a Yahoo group that Courtney Jane first gained exposure to the BDSM community around UNH. The group had been mostly inactive for several years until Jane took it over and changed its name to New Hampshire Seacoast Kink.

Initially, there were few events to be found in the immediate area. Jane traveled frequently to Boston and other established scenes around New England. Her first big event was the Fetish Fair Fleamarket in Providence, R.I. Hosted by the New England Leather Alliance and spread throughout an entire Westin Hotel, the Fetish Fair is one of the biggest BDSM events in the nation.

“A lot of kinksters,” she said with a laugh. “Yeah, it’s pretty crazy.”

Jane soon started a monthly “munch” on the Seacoast—an informal meeting where kinksters gather in plain clothes to meet and interact (the next one takes place at the Weathervane Restaurant in Dover on Sunday, Oct. 10 at 2 p.m., and is open to adults ages 18 to 35.) There are a handful of other regular munches in New Hampshire, including one in Portsmouth.

Jane put on the first Kinky Con at the Portsmouth Holiday Inn in November 2009. The one-day event included four classes and drew about 50 people. Kinky Con II followed in April, this time with 14 instructors and more than 75 participants.

Kinky Con III will include 28 classes in three separate rooms, and Jane hopes to draw 125 people. The cost is $25 per day or $40 for the whole weekend, which will include blocking off the sixth floor of the hotel for socializing on Saturday night. But the primary function of the event is educational, and guests are instructed to dress casually and wear no fetish clothing (collars are optional).

Renee, who will teach several classes over the weekend, said Kinky Con has provided an outlet for the Seacoast’s many kinksters.

“Kinky Con is meeting a big and untapped need, especially in New Hampshire. There’s really not a whole lot going on in New Hampshire other than munches,” she said.

The classes at Kinky Con include discussions, demonstrations and hands-on activities on a range of topics, some addressing legal and safety issues, others involving how-to lessons and technical skills. One of Renee’s classes is called “Pervertables.”

“It’s a topic that’s all about turning your common household items into creative toys for fun and mischief,” she said, describing it as “kink on a budget.”

The most common pervertables include spoons for spanking and belts for flogging or binding. But Renee’s complete list, which she posts on her Facebook page, includes more than 100 items divided into categories like spanking, sensation, binding, intimidation, role play, clamps, needles and “insertables” (several items fit into more than one category).

“Just about anything can be perverted,” Renee said with a laugh. “You name it, it’s all useful.”

Another instructor at Kinky Con goes by the “scene name” of Dr. Clockwork, who runs an online store for “electrically induced pleasure and medical play supplies.” He said Kinky Con will be his 22nd BDSM event this year, although he doesn’t teach at all of them. One of his classes in Portsmouth is called “Intermediate Violet Wands,” which he described as an “intro-level class.” Violet wands are devices that apply a low current of electricity to the body.

“The intro level class talks a lot about safety, a lot of history about violet wands, where they came from and the basic technique,” he said.

Clockwork’s other class at Kinky Con, “Electrical Play,” is more advanced, involving “temporary electrical branding,” among other things.

“I’m doing electrical fire play, in which rubbing alcohol is ignited by an electric spark,” he said. “The electricity actually creates like a bad sunburn, but it’s in a very localized area so that you can have very intricate designs that will fade over time.”

Sound pleasurable?

“It hurts, I’m not gonna lie. It’s like getting a tattoo. Some people do enjoy the pain,” Clockwork said. “Eventually, endorphins kick in and it actually becomes a very incredible feeling.”

Morghan, too, is teaching a class that pushes the boundaries between pleasure and pain. It’s titled “Florentine Flogging,” a specific style of BDSM flagellation.

“It is a two-handed technique that’s basically an overlapping pattern of strikes,” she said. “Once you get it down, it allows you to be fast and have really consistent rhythm.”

Morghan is also instructing a class called “Building a Scene,” which teaches people how to create an effective role-playing atmosphere. A variety of scenarios can unfold in a “scene,” often involving a dominant “top” and a submissive “bottom.”

“The idea is to give people tools to make it go smoothly,” Morghan said.

Bendyogagirl, or Bendy, for short, is teaching three classes at Kinky Con: “Signal from Noise,” “The Way of the D/s,” and “Yoga for Kinksters.” Now 41, she said she’s been interested in the kinky community since age 13. (“Apparently that makes me an old fart,” she joked.) Bendy said she’s always enjoyed the authority and power exchanges of kinky relationships. “And I like kinky sex,” she added.

A certified yoga instructor, Bendy said the techniques she shares at kink events are not dramatically different from what she teaches conventional students. It’s about relieving stress and anxiety, improving health and balance, and it’s tied to some of the fundamental tenets of Taoism and Tantric yoga, she said.

“It comes across as new-age, but 7,000 years, I’d say, is pretty time-tested,” she said.

The origins of BDSM, itself, stretch back thousands of years. For Courtney Jane, it’s not only an avenue into a fun and exciting world, but a chance to learn more about herself. Her attraction to ropes and bondage help explain why she was drawn to kidnapping films as a child, and why she’s always liked being roughed up a little.

“I feel like I have a better grasp of who I am, of really where I come from,” she said. “It’s great, because not only do I accept myself, but I embrace it. I embrace the things that I really enjoy, and I’m not scared to be myself and put myself out there.”

Renee agrees. While eroticism can spice up your sex life, she said, it’s more about celebrating your body, and it can also serve as an artistic outlet. Erotic play can be light and fun or deep and profound, she said.

“And, on the side of kinky play, with whips, cuffs, rope, paddles and all the rest, it’s not simply mere violence or pain without a plan,” Renee said. “Pain releases endorphins, pleasure releases endorphins. The most skilled practitioners have learned exactly how to blend both in just the right rhythmic mix so that the person they are with receives an experience that I can only describe as losing your sense of self, time and place in a rolling tsunami of pleasure and pain. It’s better than any drug.”

Renee and Jane believe BDSM can also strengthen conventional “vanilla” relationships, both by enhancing the sex and by achieving a fuller understanding of one another.

But, the perception of BDSM as a deviant or dirty practice has created numerous obstacles, both social and legal. In many states, a person cannot legally consent to being physically assaulted.

“In Mass., a person cannot consent to being hit,” Bendy explained. “Spanking of your partner in the bedroom could land you in jail. Imagine amping that up and using a flogger or canes or whips.”

And that’s not likely to change any time soon. Kinkiness is a subject avoided by most everyday people, Bendy said, let alone policy makers. Most feminist groups also oppose the dominant-submissive relationships in the BDSM scene. And, while the homosexual community continues to make strides toward equal rights, polygamous relationships are still taboo.

“This is like the new closet,” Bendy said.

Renee agreed, saying “multi-partner marriage is the next frontier in the fight for equal social rights.” That sort of talk might make gay rights activists cringe, since opponents have warned that gay marriage would throw open the doors to polygamy.

But Morghan doesn’t mind if BDSM remains on the fringe. She compared it to extreme sports like bungee jumping or Nascar racing. While its popularity may increase, it will always be practiced by a minority of people, which is fine by her.

Legal or otherwise, Renee said, BDSM is about freedom and honest self-analysis, testing the polar extremes of power and submission.

“The male-female dynamic, the will to withstand pain, the ability to experience pleasure—it all goes to the core of what makes us human beings, and celebrates it,” she said. “It is liberating, exhilarating and intoxicating.”

Courtney Jane put a similar sentiment in plainer language. New Hampshire Seacoast Kink will have a table at the UNH Sex Fair in Durham on Tuesday, Oct. 5, and Jane will be there in front of the masses. Outing herself to the public that way is challenging, she said, but in the end, it’s a rewarding experience.

“Honor yourself. Who gives a fuck about the rest of them,” Jane said. “Everybody always says you need to love yourself before you love another, and this is just a much bigger extension of that.”

 

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