Turns out I gave two talks last weekend for SFSI students; on saturday I talked about sex toys and lube, on sunday I talked about fetish dressing. As in, fetishes for things worn on the body, *not* what you put on a salad. It’s always hectic — rush to be to the UCSF building on time, arrive and there’s another lecture in progress, I see lots of fellow sex educators that I want to chat with but can’t (or do so in a whisper until glared at), and then I leave after my talk to make way for the next lesson. It was the first time I’d seen my dear, close friend Thomas in ages. We hugged, then the first thing he said to me was (pointing at the energy drink in my hand), “That stuff makes me SPEW!” He gestured in a wide, illustrative arc. Nice to see you, too! This is what our friendship is like. Pro sex edcucators who make ass booger jokes.
Thomas and I co-presented the talk on sex toys and lube; I love lecturing with Thomas. He gets all nervous and I giggle a lot, especially when he uses words like “persnickety” in reference to pubic hairs.
Usually the fetish talks are done as a panel; 7 or 8 different educators talk about a particular and common fetish, each presenter is chosen because they have personal real-life experience with the fetish they’re explaining. Not all of the presenters are pro educators, sometimes they’re pro-dommes (educators in their own right), sometimes just plain old ponygirls or bootblacks. It’s an important distinction to make, I think, and I really love the San Francisco school of thought on how sex ed is presented, from Good Vibes staff to SFSI and The Center and beyond: there is educating, and there is personal sharing, and there’s a big difference between the two. The way we teach sex here (and in this case, teach others about teaching sex) is that it’s “just the facts, ma’am”. We use terms like ‘some’, ‘many’ and ‘most’, rather than ‘everyone’ or ‘no one’ or ‘normal’, because these terms are impractical and judgemental when it comes to sex. It’s not prescriptive or proscriptive, we just give people the info they need to make decisions for themselves and to be safe, and to enjoy sex. Pleasure-based education, with a clear distinction between information and opinion.
So for the fetish dressing talk, I tell the students that I’m going to give info on the practices and details and they can take notes, and then afterward, I’ll give a “personal share”, indicating that I’ll share my own experiences so they can hear from someone who actually does the fetish, and why, and how it makes one (me) feel.
Which is partly why it’s so fun to tease Thomas about his fetish lecture; his topic is necrophilia. I’ve done this panel countless times now, and I’ve heard others give the necro rap, and no one does it like Thomas. It’s…. eerie. I’ve told him that. Before we went on, I told him I’d recently written about his uncanny presentation on necrophilia, but that I pointed out how much I liked that he addresses the practicalities of necrophilia — rather than in other people’s lectures, where they don’t give out any info on how or why, but act as though it never really happens. Obviously it’s a fantasy, but someone with the fantasy might want realistic details. At any rate I told Thomas I didn’t name him in what I wrote, because it’s so *weird* that he knows so much about it. He said, “Ha! I don’t care, I’m not a corpse fucker!” Students glanced nervously. And I whispered, “Thomas, the first step is admitting the problem…”
Of course, they scheduled me to go on *after* Thomas. Ever try to follow up a lecture on the practicalities of corpse fucking with a discussion of corsets? I had to do my best. So I gave an overview on fetish dressing, and then had a few minutes for my “personal share.” I told the story about my first corset — but I felt really nervous, exposed, excited. I confessed to the class that I stole the corset. How I hid it in my closet so my then-boyfriend wouldn’t find it — he thought fetish and S/M was “sick”. When he was out, I struggled into it, got it as tight as I could. And then I blurted out to the whole class, probably with a really red face, how I had an instant hard-on, right then and there and I had to jack off as fast and as hard as I could.
I think I left the stage area a little sheepishly. I went to the back of the room and sat next to Thomas, who didn’t even look up from his laptop. In a whiny whisper, still fixed on the screen he flipped his head back and forth and mimicked, “I just *had* to jack off!” I looked at him sideways and whispered tersely, “So Thomas, when are *you* going to do your ‘personal share’ about corpse fucking!?” Still fixed on the laptop (displaying necrobabes.com), he quickly whispered, “As soon as I kill you!”
(Photo from saturday night.)
