Something I neither hide nor advertise is being part of the BDSM / fetish / leather community. Perhaps that’s obvious to anyone who’s read my novels, but I still miss Atlanta’s great fetish club, the Chamber, where goth-industrial music used to play until 4 in the morning – and where I met my future wife.
That scene wasn’t for everyone. Costumes sparkled, music pounded, lights flashed, dancers crowded, and onstage were spectacular shows, like a workman “cutting” a dancer out of a chastity belt in a shower of sparks. (Not really – the sparks were made with a grinder against an added block of metal).
This was a great place to go and unwind after a long week at graduate school, for even at 1AM I could head down to the Chamber, watch the dance floor until until my nerves started to unwind (I rarely drink, so this took at least half an hour) and then join in for a couple hours of dancing before close.
The Chamber was a place I could, briefly, forget all the worries of my graduate studies and have fun in a very mildly transgressive way. But to me, the only norms worth transgressing are purely social ones, not moral laws, so I never let down my boundaries. And, thankfully enough, I always had a guide.
One of the great things about the BDSM community is its focus on respect and safety. Many of the things that people enjoy doing are dangerous, and so the community is built on the principles of “safe, sane, consensual” – don’t do dangerous things, stay in your right mind, and act with your partner’s consent.
Not everyone from outside the community respects these standards, and if you aren’t a person who goes out to “normal” bars and dance clubs a lot – why would I have? I rarely drink – the behavior of people from outside the community – the games that they play – can be a little surprising and upsetting.
Once, a few years before I met my wife, I was dancing at the Chamber and a girl started dancing with me. After a few minutes, the girl’s apparent boyfriend came up and shoved me. Put mildly, this ain’t typical behavior for the Chamber, and it very quickly became clear he was trying to start a fight.
But I’d thrown off his first shove with a sweeping Taido block, and turned away, dancing. I was there to dance, not play childish games, and I’d never been so over a pair of people in such a short time. The guy shoved me again, but I blocked again, continuing to dance. After half a minute, they lost interest, and left.
Now, my martial arts training helped here – while Taido is based on turning defense into offense, three of its broader rules are: “If you think there’s going to be trouble, don’t be there. If there’s trouble, don’t be there. And the mind, body, and spirit are one: be dignified by this unity and you need fear no insult.”
The point of that last, arcanely worded bit is easy to lose, so let’s unpack it a bit: Your mind is a part of your body, and your body is one with your eternal spirit, which cannot be damaged by mere words. So if someone insults you, don’t let it get to you; rest in the calm of your spirit instead.
In other words, turn the other cheek.
It’s been years since then, but in the moment in which that shove slid off my block and I turned away – and a fight did not immediately follow – that I recall recognizing the wisdom of turning the other cheek. I’d heard about this phenomenon in Taido class a number of times, and now I was seeing it in real life.
While I’m not telling you not to defend yourself, violence begets violence – as the character of Jesus said in the Last Temptation of Christ, “If you don’t change the spirit first, change what’s inside … [then even] if you’re victorious, you’ll still be filled with the poison. You’ve got to break the chain of evil … with love.”
Even in places that we might not expect to find him, Jesus is there. In a movie based on a book banned by the Roman Catholic Church for sacrilege, in a martial art designed to turn defense into offense, in a mildly-transgressive nightclub, even in the attack of a drunk jerk – Jesus is there, ready to guide us.
At another event, I decided to leave because my new boots were killing me. Grabbing a soda at the bar on my way out, I struck up a conversation with a nice dominatrix, who – and it’s really hard to convey how completely platonic this act was – massaged the tip of my boot to make the pain go away.
We talked for half an hour, until a friend dropped by and enthusiastically started telling us about a new development in their relationship which sounded, um, doomed. I and my soda-and-boots buddy listened, increasingly concerned, when finally, the dominatrix diplomatically asked, “Is that really what you want?”
Our friend didn’t listen, and ended up having serious problems in their relationship. But what really struck me in these encounters is that all of the traditional social taboos of our culture had fallen away – we were at a fetish club in outlandish costumes – but the teachings of Jesus were still there and as alive as ever.
The costumes were outlandish, but the people in the club were not characters in our internal dramas: they were people, who deserved to be treated like people – and who were trying to live to that standard. Fixing the kink in my boot was not a transaction – it was a Samaritan kindness to a fellow human being.
And the principle that motivated our concern for our friend was seeing that friend not treat their partners with the same respect they’d expect in return – a failure to love your neighbor as yourself. Our society’s traditional relationship norms were absent. The principles of Christianity were present and alive.
These events – the not-fight in the bar, the quiet voice of concern for a friend taking a wrong path, the rubbing of a boot, so like the washing of feet – started to convinced me that Jesus was everywhere, even in the places that our traditional society thinks would exclude Him. But Jesus will not be excluded.
The Christian faith is a catholic faith – for everyone. And if the key to following Jesus is not where you are on the path of goodness – for God is infinitely good, and is not impressed with our good works, even if we are – but what direction you’re facing, then Jesus is there for you on the path, to point the right way.
Even if the music is loud, and some of the people around you are shouting.
-the Centaur
Pictured: Willem Dafoe, portraying Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ. And the phrase “neither hide nor advertise” refers to things that I talk freely about if they come up, but which I don’t make a special effort to bring up on their own, as opposed to, say, robots. By the way … robots, robots, robots. Robot.
