"VanillaKink:" Why I Keep Pulling Vanilla Girls Anyway

With apologies to myself.

This shouldn't be construed to mean that I will want to have vanilla sex with these girls; only that I will probably keep hunting for my partners in non-kinky environments.

But why would I do this? Why, when I have scazillions of pages of horny unicorns on Fetlife just waiting to fulfill my every desire?

The answer is simple: Tension.

To me, dynamic is all about tension. It's about polarity, it's about the dynamism of the unknown.

As soon as I meet someone - anyone - there is tension. If it's a guy, the tension is who's bigger and badder. If it's a girl, the tension is, how long would we have to spend on a desert island before we'd procreate - or how many seconds will it take to fuck you in the bathroom of this club?

But either way, in the silence between our words and our actions, that tension exists. Palpably. And when things are good, it can build and move until things are too hot to bear.

That's what tension is good for.

"The scene" to me feels mostly like family. I go to my parties and my munches, and I feel welcomed by all of my people, my tribe. I am safe, I am accepted, I am recognized, greeted, and admired. It's like the holiday dinners I'd always wanted to have with my real family, only there are more emotionally stable people at Paddles (j/k).

But what there isn't at any of these parties or gatherings is tension. Somehow we've found a way to "safe-en" our way out of the tension by becoming so accepting that we're not really in hunt mode any more. Hunting (and being hunted) involves all kinds of things you wouldn't normally do to people you care about. It means blowing off, letting down. It means wondering, will he, won't he? It means throwing your best girlfriend under the bus so you can get some hot cock. And it means fucking the girl your buddy wasn't smooth enough to seduce because, well, you were. And besides, she needed it.

These things are all awful human actions. They're much worse than any knot-tying, fire spitting, hook dredging craziness we do in the dungeons. It's the worst of humanity on display. And yet it's so completely fun.

It's a way of getting in touch with the taboo elements of ourselves (jealousy and backstabbing, non-egalitarianism, unabashed status-seeking and so forth) that kink-life usually bypasses to get to even more taboo aspects of ourselves (examples not necessary).

But in a way, explicit kink bypasses a lot of the tension that comes from the more pedestrian "pick-up" lifestyle by facing the other "worst" aspects of human behavior head on. And kudos to us all for doing it. But when we leave the more emotionally dangerous Tension out of it, we cheat ourselves a bit. And in doing so, kinky relationships can often take on a saccharine sheen of lovey-doviness, but without the revivifying spark that even vanilla relationships can have.

The spark has to be the bringer of the tension. And the art of the relationship is to sustain the flame created by that spark as long as possible, all the while increasing, diminishing, and coloring it as our own unique stories require. When we settle down into 'being in love with my best friend,' the spark has mostly died out and comfort has set in. Pleasant, but anodyne.

The beauty of kinky dynamics (to me) is that they provide a marvelous container for prolonging and deepening that initial spark. They prolong the tension through the relationship the way tantricas prolong the orgasm through their body. By movement and polarity. By increasing the tension and never letting it die. Whether that be through M/s, D/s or anything else, the "roles" we adopt can help to sustain a healthy flame over time. They can keep us from descending into the worst of vanilla vanillaness that send most of us screaming from the fate a lot of our parents suffered through.

So in kink, I've found the tools for sustaining the spark. But in the community, as safe and accepting as it is, I find few or no sparks to sustain. We're all "just friends" before we even begin.

It's been a conundrum for me since I began this journey: Do I try to manufacture that spark with scene girls, or do I take my chances in VanillaLand and count on the innate fantasies of regular girls to take them where I want them to go?

So far, I'll say I've had pretty good luck with the latter approach. The girls I've picked up this year in non-kinky venues have been very receptive to edging things out a bit. And the girl with whom I shared a sustained 6-7 month D/s relationship was someone I had no idea was deeply kinky when I met her. The gods just smiled on us there.

So like most people, I want it all. I want the hotness and the durability. I want the tension and the evolution. I want to be surprised and not satiated. And I want crazy ass sex with someone who doesn't feel like my cousin- someone I already know I'm not going to respect in the morning.

Does that make sense? Have we become inured to emotional risk in the scene as we have come to so masterfully manage physical risk? Is the scene itself too safe? Are we all vanilla without knowing it? I'm tempted to say yes to all of these questions; at least in the very broad sense.

My dear friend and mentor - who ties on his own time and doesn't haunt any Fet-approved venues - used to despair that kink and rope were going suburban. "Soon, everyone will be doing it, and we'll have to find deeper and darker places to experience the rawness of risk and terror that arouse us beyond what safewords and scissors can do."

The popularization of kink has been a wonderfully democratizing force for global sexual fulfillment. But like so many other generalizations of niche lifestyles, the spiciness may have gotten diluted somewhat in the process- like Thai Food from the food court at the shopping mall. Too much sugar; not enough heat. So real thrill-seekers, like my friend, have been pushed into darker corners that I am not even aware of. Or so I would hope.

For me, I can find excitement almost anywhere there are boys and girls interacting. My path is to cultivate the art of sustaining the inherent tension that arises when the two genders mix. Kink is an essential part of that, but the community tends to work against the hotness I need to motivate the process in the first place. I need to lose the kink to find it.

But don't worry. . .I'm not going far. I'll see you all around at classes and events, and I may even hit on a couple of you, if I get you in the right head space. But it won't be as fun as the girl at the coffee shop or the fancy restaurant, where the unknowns create vast dimensions of mystery. If I can read your profile and vet you with our mutual friends, then we're already well into VanillaKink. And for me, that's not what it's about at all.