By D. Scot Miller
Kink.com's Van Darkholme, Peter Acworth, and Princess Donna in the Armory boiler room, photographed by Pat Mazzera for our 2008 "Kink Dreams" cover story.
I've always been fascinated with the Kink.com building on 14th and Mission.
A former armory, and reproduction of a Moorish castle, it looks like a parochial school for wayward souls. Often I've wondered what goes on in this monolithic old-world structure, seeming more suitable for doling out justice than ecstasy. I checked out a few of Kink's family of Web sites and recommend all you surfers out there do the same. There's an aura around the building, the history, and what it now houses that epitomizes what San Francisco was, is, and can be that I'm behind with everything I've got.
Of course, there's BDSM with Hogtied.com, MenInPain.com, and TheTrainingofO.com. Woe unto the cynic within me who has become jaded by BDSM. Though the people are enjoying themselves and others, maybe too many trips to the old Power Exchange (and sub-station) and Folsom Street Fair in my youth have taken their toll.
The ones I find fascinating are WiredPussy.com, TSSeduction.com, FuckingMachines.com, and UltimateSurrender.com.
Ultimate Surrender creates wrestling matches between two nubile nude gladiators that morph into a strap-on love-fests. I found myself admiring great athleticism one minute, great sex the next, and confusing the two all along the way. I wondered, is this the reason why folks watch Ultimate Fighting? Maybe a little, right? Ultimate Surrender is just more up front about it.
I had seen demonstrated the famous Sybian machine nearly twenty years ago, who knew that Fucking Machines would continue to be developed and become a genre unto itself?
Watching sexy people getting fucked silly by a mini-jackhammer with a big, black dildo attached is more mesmerising than I could have ever possibly imagined. The gamut of emotions run across their faces and the a spirituality that lingers near beatific as they are assailed by waves of orgasms that are almost enviable to witness. The fact that something as cold as a piece of hardware is working this magic makes the future a wonderful and weird place to live.
TS Seduction often turns the tables in a way that the rest of the sites do not. It's the only one with an interracial couples. Black and brown transsexuals usually dominate, flog, and top their white male partners. Like all of the BDSM play, there is a playfulness and tongue-in-cheekiness to the encounter; but the racial/gender-fuck adds an AfroSurreal element. It's a new day when black and brown people don't feel a deep, disturbing resonance around whips, and chains; especially when white men are involved. On TS Seduction, maybe they still do? Moving on...
To me, the crowning achievement is WiredPussy.com, which is a culmination, of sorts, because all the action from previous scenes take place before an audience. Think final scene of Behind The Green Door with more props. What's most seductive is the audience participation. The submissive is put through this complex ritual centered around denial of orgasm. People are asked to participate, and the onlookers seem to experience intense moments as one body. Eerily, the room becomes a call-and-response church where the passions provoke a simultaneous experience that has to be seen to be believed.
