Friday, July 20, will be my 32nd birthday and mark my not quite 11th year in the scene, and working on the 5th year of being active. While my 32nd birthday is by no means a milestone, it has for some reason made me start to look back over the last 10 years in the "scene".
Funny how ten short years change so much.
When I came, in late 1991, via the Internet, I had no idea that there was such a thing as BDSM until a friend of mine took me to "her channels". There were a good number of people in the channels even then, but most of them wanted you to check them out so that you knew they were for real. It was sexual even then, but the Internet had not exploded yet and it was not all about sex. alt.com and bondage.com had not yet been thought of, at least not that I remember. SSC was not ten years old and it had not become the mantra that it is today. "Pansexual" was still a new word and not nearly as often heard.
I was hooked early, it seems to me like after about 15 minutes online. I began to look for a real-time (a phrase not coined then) group so that I could learn more about BDSM. I was getting laid regularly then, so the sex part had not really entered my mind. I looked for a group within a decent driving distance of myself. At that time I was living in Asheville, North Carolina, and the closest thing I could find was in Greensboro, North Carolina, about 3 to 4 hours away, each way. I don't think that the group that I found out about is still in existence today. I moved to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and still had no luck finding anyone or any group, except one female submissive. I had been fortunate before I left Asheville, in that my current girlfriend was interested in some of the same things, specifically spanking, wax and flogging and so I had gotten to make a lot of mistakes across her ass and back. I was self taught, there was no one that I could find to teach me in real time and all the instructions that I got from the net were nice, but not like the hands on training that you can get today.
Today there are over 500 groups nation wide and most of the major cities have public dungeons. Stacy liked to be spanked and I discovered that I liked spanking her. She was my first flogger victim. She was the first person who not only allowed me to have kinky, rough sex, but also LIKED it and encouraged it. There have been three other submissives to wear my collar in those first 10 years. gloria is the latest and will have been with me for 3 years this November. I never had the 2,768,124,891,245,968,264,337,643 online collared subs that seems to be somewhat common today. I don't feel like I missed anything either. There was one point when I did not really date because I knew what I was looking for, I just couldn't find it.
Then I met gloria on the heels of the one relationship that I did start online and took to realtime. I was wary of going from online to real time again. I gave gloria more info online and on the phone than she probably ever wanted. I made myself out to be as big a loser as I could…she still wanted to meet and we did. We broke a lot of the big rules for people meeting for the first time. We did meet in a public place, and she came with three other people for the initial meeting. They stayed about a half hour and we finished eating at Pizza Hut and headed for an adult store to buy toys to play with. We had planned to play on the first meeting and we did...for about 15 minutes at a time, then one of us was making a safe call. We went to lunch the next day and I asked if she would like to come back with me for a few days to Columbia South Carolina, where I was then living. She did. We finally went back to pick up her dog, a toy poodle named Romeo (dungeondawg@furrypoodle.bark), who she was not going to live without and who is now bettered traveled and has seen more scenes than a lot of people.
gloria found LOCK online when we moved to Greenville South Carolina. Finally!! A group in my own town! We got on their list, rsvp'd for the meeting and went. gloria had been part of another group in Durham, North Carolina, where she was living when we met, so maybe her butterflies were not as large as the B 52's that were in my stomach, but I had wanted this for about 5 years and we went. LOCK made us feel at home in about 15 minutes and I was hooked. I started meeting other people from Greenville, Anderson, Pelzer, Williamston and Charlotte. We started hearing about the play spaces that were available in Atlanta, a mere 2 hours away. I was not interested in being part of the local or regional community at that point, I just wanted to go to LOCK and learn and hear the discussions and see so that I could be able to DO.
gloria and I went to Atlanta to PEP for New Years Eve and were blown away but all that we saw, all the different play that was going on and all the PEOPLE. I was especially drawn to a black man who was poetry in motion with a flogger in each hand and I screwed up the courage to introduce myself when he was finally not playing or surrounded by female bottoms. He agreed to come to Greenville to do a class and demo for LOCK and was the biggest draw that LOCK has ever had to that point. Almost 30 people came out that night to watch him work his magic and prior to that 10 to 12 people had been a lot for anything that we did. The people in Greenville wanted to be able to see more and gloria and I kept going to Atlanta, not to bribe anyone to come to Greenville, but to PLAY. We kept meeting people and found a huge pool of wonderful, nice, and talented people that kept agreeing to come talk to our group and do demonstrations as well.
Before I knew what happened, I was now on the board of LOCK and becoming active in the Community. Gloria and I had also started going to The Sanctuary to see and watch and play. I knew that the place was owned and operated by a gentleman named Master Doug Harris, but I did not know who he was until the third trip to the Sanctuary when I heard someone say, "there's Master Doug".
Master Doug was sitting in the kitchen and I went up and waited till there was a break in the people surrounding him and went and introduced myself. He was friendly, affable and also more than willing to come to Greenville with his boy bob and talk about the Old Guard, as he knew it, having grown up in it since the age of 13. He and bob exuded something intangible that I was drawn to;
Little did I know that they both would play a huge part of my life, my growth and my understanding of many things, not only BDSM related, but in my life as a whole. Listening to them I was drawn to what they spoke of, what I had always believed in, but had never really put into words. It was strange. The Old Guard was made up of mostly gay males and I was not even bi, I was heterosexual. I was told about a year later by Sir as I then called Master Doug as I was (and am) in service to him, about earning your the leather that you wore, about how to conduct myself, about "protocols". None of it was being forced on me; I was taking to it like a fish to water.
Sir became a behind the scenes benefactor to LOCK, because he liked the energy and the group that the energy came from. He began to introduce me to people that I had never heard of at that point and encouraged them to come to LOCK to speak to the little group there that shared the same town as Bob Jones University. I did not understand then, nor do I fully understand now why he did all this. He told me I had the "spark" and while I did not understand, I was honored that he seemed to think that I was worth the time.
LOCK continued to grow, more and more people were coming and gloria and I were making more new friends, some of which we did not know that would become what we considered to be our "leather family" in Greenville. Ann and Susan and penny, Kat, lori, Ben, nicole and Jim, Beaker, sonya, Joe, sabrina and even more.
I knew that they were truly family when I was in an automobile accident and I went through the windshield of the truck I was driving at 50 mph, hit some trees, landed on my head, and lived. They were there even before my parents could get there. They took care of me while I lay in an induced coma, when I was moved to a rehab center and when I was finally home. And not just the people form Greenville, but from Atlanta and Charlotte and points in between. When about 2 weeks after the accident I was given a "pass" from the rehab hospital I was in and could leave, I had gloria and penny take me to the Sanctuary to an event that I was supposed to be working, that LOCK was putting on. Jaws dropped when I walked in because a lot of the people there could remember me being restrained into a bed with catheters and IV's running out of me. I stayed for about two hours and then was driven back to Greenville to the rehab hospital and on the way back it occurred to me that I had been spared (because I should have been dead) for some reason. I could not then say, nor can I now, that I know for sure what that reason was, but I do know that it has to do with these people, and this community of people.
I was on workers comp and had a ton of time on my hands and I threw myself into working in and with my local community and region. Has it been a good financial move? Did I make huge money? No. It wasn't about money, it was not about fame, it was about, and remains to be about, helping the next person who is coming "in" to the scene as best I could. Has it all been chuckles and giggles? Certainly not. There has been more than one occasion that I wanted to turn and walk away, because of what I was seeing and hearing go on around me. The lack of respect for people as a whole, the total lack of manners, the easy come, easy go attitudes that seem to mark the 90's makes wonder sometimes why I continue to put my heart and soul into the leather community and the BDSM world as a whole. Then I see one person coming in who genuinely wants to learn, who has the "spark" and it all becomes worthwhile again.
When I become frustrated, I try and think back to where I started ten years ago and where I am now and how I have changed and it makes me think about all the people who reached a hand back to me when I needed it, who helped me and who have stood by me. Vi Johnson one of the people whom I respect and love the most in the world said when she came to Greenville, that when she started out she and the lady who has been her life partner for almost 30 years were taught and helped by people who were very different, except for one thing. They were all bound in and by leather.
That's what finally hit me between the eyes tonight when I sat down to write this. Vi was right. That's why I am here and that 27%'s why I will be here till my time is finally up. Its the energy, the emotion that exist in our community, even today, among those bound by leather that not only keeps me here, but makes it all so very much worthwhile. Thank you all for making the past 10 years what they have been. I look forward to being able to help some of those that want it in the next 10 years and beyond. It’s not about the sex, the play or the power exchange. Its about the energy.
Justin Medlin
Now that I have your attention feel free to email me. I may or may not respond to the emails, but I promise to read all of them.