I suppose I was first exposed to BDSM through reading and magazines when I was 10 or 11, a very precocious reader. by the time I was 12 and 13, I'd made my way through de Sade, von Sacher-Masoch, and Krafft-Ebbing's Psychopathia Sexualis and the first magazines showing Bettie Page with ropes and whips and spanking. I was raised by grandparents (father's side) who were as American Victorian as you can imagine, themselves having been brought up in the Midwest and South. But having gone through the wild 1920s and Prohibtion, they loved to gamble and weekend trips to Las Vegas were more than frequent, so I was given some money and pretty much left to my own devices. Wandering into book stores and drugstores, souvenir stores and such that even back then sold such magazines to a kid who looked older than his years I suppose.

In the middle to later teens, I hung out with the Beat crowd in local coffee houses near Venice and L.A. and the beach towns. It was beatnik girls and women who first introduced me to BDSM in the flesh so to speak. They were pretty open about their kinks, many of them masochistic introverts and existentialist -- it's true the more intellectual, the more savvy and kinkier, at least back then. I whipped my first at age 15 or 16 (it's a lot of years ago now LOL). Since then, it's been relationships that are sometimes vanilla, sometimes BDSM, or combinations of. But I am constantly learning and educationing myself and sometimes sharing information and experience with others, from the practical to the philosophic. In the '70s, the general populace seemed to open up a bit more about kinks and alternative lifestyles, then a bit more in the '80s, so that by the late '80s those who on the surface might seem vanilla began (through chat rooms and r/l venues) to open up more about BDSM and fetishes, particularly women. At that time, I began writing erotica fiction and slightly later began writing about a wide variety of sexuality issues for a couple of websites -- it's exposed me to a really amazing range of people, from Gloria Brame who I've interviewed twice to looners (balloon fetishists), from GLBT folk to well...you name them, I've probably contacted them one way or another LOL. Ten plus years of it is a long time, these days...and the education continues and I hope will continue. This is a grand site and forum for information, the exchange of opinions and experiences, and friendly support. I applaud it highly.