A very good friend of mine, someone I’ve known for most of my life, is in town. While he’s like a brother, he has no clue about my….lifestyle.
When he and I are together we tend to be very silly and to those who aren’t in on our jokes, we can probably come across as total buffoons.
Tonight was no exception.
Since we’re both on tight budgets, we decided to paint the town red by going for long walks and stopping in coffee shops to fuel up on caffeine.
We were standing in line for the bathroom at Starbucks. He was behind me in line and doing something silly with..well I can’t even remember what the hell we were doing. Maybe we were talking about our favorite Bill Hicks moments or doing fake spit-takes with our coffee cups or…fuck I don’t know. All I knew is that we were brothers once again and it felt damn good. I had missed these moments with my friend and we were making up for lost time.
All of a sudden, I froze.
Holy fuck.
Standing right behind my friend was a well-known person in our little BDSM world.
No, I’m not going to name-drop.
Now I’m not egotistical to think this person would have any clue who I am, but I know we’ve met a few times and exchanged pleasantries. Under any normal circumstances I would have said “Hi, blah blah blah nice to see you again and blah blah….” But with my friend there, I had hoped they wouldn’t recognize me. What if this person said “Hey aren’t you the guy that translated ASL for my class at….” then revealing to my bestest buddy that I’m into “….”.
Now I realize that they’re probably not the type to just blurt out stuff like that, it was still something that made me paranoid.
My friend asked me why I stopped goofing around and I just told him to shut up and I’d tell him later. He looked at me and said “You’ve never NOT wanted to goof off. What’s wrong?”
I looked at him in a way that I hoped would make him just drop it but he didn’t.
I ran into the bathroom and did what I needed to do. The bathroom was filthy and I didn’t linger. My friend ran in quickly and I wanted to say something to my fellow kinkster, apologizing for my friends behavior but he came out before I could say something he came back out and started joking to this person about the filthiness of the bathroom. Sure I knew he was just trying to be charming but I’m pretty sure he came across as someone on an hour pass from the mental ward.
I dragged him away as we all parted ways.
“You have no idea who you were just goofing around with do you?”, I asked.
“Them? No, who was that? Is that why you were acting so weird and trying to get me to shut up?”
“Just a friend of a friend”, I said.
While all night I had wished Sade had been with us as well, I then realized Sade would have been recognized….and possibly had been called this name that my buddy had never heard before.
So that’s why I’ve been saying “Fuck, that was close” for the last few hours….and why I’m still a bit embarrassed.
Thankfully I’m not that well known.
5 Comments
Oh, axe, I thought you, with all your club experience had covered this several times already. Here are the common-sense rules from all BDSM-groups I have met, for accidental meetings outside of BDSM contexts:
1: While it’s ok to say hello or give a little greeting to let people politely know you are aware of them and you want to be polite, it’s no ok to go into details about where you met last, what you did and with whom.
2: Don’t use obviously fetishy nick-names (cumeatingslut, FistingMaster). Other nicknames can easily be explained as online handles, so if somebody were to address her as Sade that wouldn’t really be such a big deal.
3: It’s ok not to explain every detail about where you know people from. Actually, your discretion is expected, same as you expect it from others.
4: Don’t brag, don’t name-drop.
As for your goofy friend? We all have goofy friends 🙂 They are wonderful and special and embarassing and ubiquitous.
Axe,
I completely sympathize with you about not wanting to be “outed” although I have to say I am a little disappointed that you were embarrassed by your goofy friend. In a way, you made your association with the kinky person more valid (even important?) than your friendship with your buddy by wanting to apologize for him. I mean, have you ever heard your buddy apologize for your equally goofy behavior? Just something to consider…:)
I truly don’t think kink would have been brought up in a casual situation, especially with the kinky acquaintance not knowing your goofy friend, even if Sade had been with you.
As Cinder pointed out most of us in the kink-world know and understand that we all have vanilla friends and to keep casual interactions in public – well, casual – not disclosing any kinky personal information.
You might not want to approve this one for posting.
You might not be as anonymous as you think. Any one who knows that you are Axe can find out what you look like quite easily. Your lovely Mistress has pics of you on her site.
Probably would not be a problem for those that do mot know you as Axe but otherwise.
Cinder said most of what I wanted to say, except that I’d hasten to note the etiquette I learned (and still prefer to this day) is that the person in your shoes, Axe, has the “right of way” to say hello or start a conversation, not the other way around.
That is, if I am by myself and I saw you in a store with someone I didn’t know, I would stay quiet unless and until you said hello to me.
Hope this helps.
Would it be so bad to come out to your friend?
Granted, that particular situation would not be an ideal time to do it, but talking about it might not be a bad way to segue way into a conversation.
All I can speak from is personal experience, but I would not want to try to hide an essential part of my life from a good friend. Someone I don’t know well?, probably yes. A co-worker, absolutely.
I’m not saying that you need to come out to anyone (although I realize it may sound like it), but the panic response to situation struck me as odd.