Fetish

CultureSex

People tell me things they would not tell anyone else, not their mom, not even their therapist or childhood best friend. I get bro status instantly when most girls would not. Guys hear that I like girls too (I like all humans) and assume that I want to hear about all the dirties of their sex life instantly. I’m not mad, always looking for artistic inspiration.

This is what brings us to the topic of erotic asphyxiation. A guy was telling me how he was fucking a girl half his age and she liked to be choked.

Another guy told me about the first girl that ever asked him to choke her and how it felt powerful. One time they were in the act and he was choking her and her eyes rolled back into her head. Her body went limp. He then slapped her awake. She said “Thank you for bringing me back,” then he continued fucking her.

What the fuck? This disturbed me. Who would want that? Choke out a young girl, thats not making love, thats some carnal strange right there. She asked for it, he said. She wanted it. She was looking for a little pain, a little pause in time and oxygen deprivation.

I bruise easily so I never really wanted to try it. But one time I was hooking up with someone and they were definitely dominant, and knew what they were doing. Their expert hands knew the exact pressure point to hit to cut off oxygen without hurting me. It felt like a whip. I needed to tap out, it was too intense, and not in a sexual way.

Erotic asphyxiation or breath play is when you intentionally restrict the flow of oxygen to the brain for sexual arousal. The term autoerotic asphyxiation is used when the act is done by a person to themselves.

Gasper is used to describe a person participating in this fetish. Author George Shuman describes the effect as such, “When the brain is deprived of oxygen, it induces a lucid, semi-hallucinogenic state called hypoxia. Combined with orgasm, the rush is said to be no less powerful than cocaine, and highly addictive.”

When death occurs during auto-erotic asphyxiation often the families will “clean up” the scene and make it not seem sexual, but like suicide. If a partner is involved it can be classified as murder even if there was consent. Thats crazy!

Back to my conversation with the dirt ball. He also added “of course the girls are always younger” as if it would be gross to sleep with a woman his age or older. The other guy stated that he liked older women. I wonder if it was because he wanted to sleep with me.

Daddy complex- so many older men fetishize young girls, like the only creatures capable of sex are young fertile girls. It is absolutely disgusting how children are sexualized by the media for consumption by the scummy old men who rule the world. Goes the other way too when younger people are looking for sexual “guidance” perhaps to make up for a lack of actual parents in their life. A whole generation is being raised by the internet and are incapable of healthy relationships because of this.

Mommy complex- while most men seek out younger women they also take advantage of older women to do things like their cooking and laundry. For the most part they want to be treated like babies and also fuck babies.

Some people also put themselves into the mom role. I definitely do this. This is still problem, but a little less creepy. I will never have children pop out of my body but I will have an influence on younger people. I will help others grow with my wisdom and resources.

I love to feed people, I love having people in my home and cooking them a vegan feast. I will go without to fill someone else’s belly. I care about others in that ever loving maternal way.

For me, I feel funny if someone is much younger than me. When on dating sites/apps I usually swipe away from even 21-22 year olds because I know they are in a much different place than my 30 year old ass.

Do I fuck them to feel young? Is it like Elizabeth Báthory bathing in their blood? Ageism is rampant in porn and the sex industry. Age is a fetish too: nubile lolita vs dried up spinster, youth vs experience, it’s all what you are looking for.

Burlesque is so appealing because there no age restrictions. All bodies are beautiful and inspiring vessels. Everyone is fucking sexy! Old and fuckable are not oxymorons!

I love that people like to tell me the gory details, knowing that not many other people would be as impressed by their filth. I love being the one who knows the thing you can’t tell anyone else. I don’t get grossed out. I do disgusting shit everyday. We all do.

How do you react when you know dirt about someone your friend is thinking of dating though… like they start describing a random tinder hookup that they are falling in love with… same physical description, kinda average, kinda whatever… same job… wait he started what?… awww fuck that’s the guy that ____ to my friend when she was _____ and you think that maybe he _____ to you but you want to justify what happened.

Like staying with a phone company that sucks just to get an angry but loyal customer discount. You asked me if I ever stole anything from anyone.

We ate brunch, vegan tofu hash with a pita, strong coffee with almond milk, you had a bloody mary, we both hate olives. You very loudly told me about all of your sexplotations and adventures spanning the course of continents.

A man sat in earshot pretending to read. I forgot his name but we definitely knew each other. I did not make eye contact.

Hopefully our explicit conversation inspires him to make art. Us talking dirty on the patio of a cafe on a fall morning makes Buffalo that much more sexy. That kind of girl lives there, artists having conversations about art, sex, traveling, ridding ourselves of negative energy, and bonding over coffee and early morning alcohol that’s ok because it’s in tomato juice like a meal.

Talking about choking, fucking outside, and so much more. Things were said that would make anyone gasp. I know he had to read those pages over. We acknowledged each other as he left, he said he didn’t want to interrupt our conversation. You are welcome sir.

Culture

I was sitting in the local dive bar with a beautiful female friend of mine who happens to be transgender. As we were sitting there discussing lipstick shades, makeovers, and other various girlie things the conversation took a drastic change when I heard an employee of the bar say “No men in the women’s bathroom.”

Instantly we both perked up to make sure some horrible injustice wasn’t happening. We were about to jump into action like wonder women to make sure that another trans woman wasn’t being discriminated against. It is monumentally important to have each other’s back. I stand in solidarity with my trans brothers and sisters.

Thankfully the bouncer was escorting out an obviously cis gender male identifying bearded man from the ladies room, who was most likely accompanying his lady to do some drugs or something of that nature. Ok, he had no business being in there, crisis averted. This time…

This opened up a greater conversation of what transgender people have to go through on a day to day basis. She is a woman using the restroom and has to deal with people constantly questioning her, “Why do I hear a man’s voice in the women’s room?” Wait until you see the person who spoke to make that judgement.

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All women are real! There is no cookie cutter for a what a woman should look or sound like, we are all different and beautiful. Don’t be ashamed of your broad shoulders or the fact that you tower over other girls when you wear heels. You are perfect, a real woman in a very imperfect world that doesn’t know how to handle you. I am proud of my trans brothers and sisters, standing up for their sanity and being their true selves regardless of what society thinks.

Bathrooms are just the tip of the iceberg for issues that the trans community has to deal with. Perhaps one of the worst feelings in the world, yes, as horrific as being a female born into the wrong body, is being fetishized.

So many of my friends blur and defy gender barriers, they are warriors, the strong few who know what they need to do to become whole and satisfied. It is a long journey, with enough roadblocks that the douchbaggery and objectification is beyond unnecessary.

There is nothing worse than being treated like a “thing” rather than a fucking human being. The definition of fetish is an inanimate object that is worshipped, a sexual fetish is a form of desire in which gratification is linked to an abnormal degree to a particular object, item of clothing, part of the body, etc. Fixation, obsession, compulsion, and mania are synonyms.

Anything can be a fetish. Some common fetishes involve leather clothing, parts of the body such as feet, body modifications, food consumption, costumes, and what I am talking about today: body types.

Similar parallels exist between fat women and trans women, we have more in common than our trouble with shopping for clothes that fit and don’t look frumpy. Try finding a sexy shoe bigger than a women’s size 10, I dare you.

I am in no way saying our experiences are the same, I will never know what it is like to be transgender, or how difficult of an experience that is. What I do know is how it feels to be treated like an object and not a human being.

While many times both trans women and obese women are treated as non-sexual due to our stray from body image normativity, there is also a group of people that desire us only for our “deviations” and not for who we are.

I am a big woman, I love my body and I really don’t care what people think of me. I get judged by other women and men all the time for showing off my body, “She’s too fat to be naked on stage! how gross!” I have also had men interested in me only because of my body type, they never cared about me, just the size of me.

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I am more than my body. I am a fully rounded human with emotions and deserve to be recognized as such. I remember the same boys in school picking on me and then trying to kiss me when nobody was looking. Girls need to learn that it is not right for boys to be mean to them when they have a crush, it’s twisted.

A lot of times the fetishist hides their desires, keeping the object of their attraction as a deep dark secret. They maintain “normal” relationships in the hopes that their fantasies subside, and when they do not they seek some down low loving from the fetish of their choice, often leading double lives.

This is a big problem with the world we live in. People are raised to think that being attracted to a fat person or transgender person is a deviant behavior, something that they should be ashamed of and hide. It’s total bullshit. All of us want the same thing, to be loved, to feel beautiful, wanted, adored. Nobody wants to be a dirty little secret, shoved back into the closet.

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Trans women are so brave. Enduring a life of struggle to be their true self. They have gotten this far, found the strength to make positive changes in order to feel comfortable in their body, and as soon as you turn them into a dirty little secret sex object you take away all of that progress.

By shoving someone back into the closet you make them feel inhuman. I’ve spent a lot of time being a dirty little secret, too.

Nobody would proudly date a fat woman. You will never find a man with a body like that! BULLSHIT. I know that I am worthwhile, I know that my large body is beautiful, so is your small body, your trans body, your medium body, your cis gendered body, your female body, your male body, your brown body, your white body, your young body, your old body, YOUR UNIQUE BODY.

Demolish unrealistic archetypes. All bodies deserve proper credit, nobody should ever be treated as subhuman for someone else’s twisted pleasure. Celebrate your uniqueness, respect yourself, you are a lovely and imperfect creature, just like everyone else.

Fetish weekend
CityCultureSexThe Morning After

Fetish weekend
Eric Paradis, one of the organizers of Montreal’s Fetish Weekend

One of the things I love most about Montreal is the abundance of unique ways to spend your weekends. With all the standard pubs, bars and clubs that proliferate throughout the city, party planners are challenged to come up with fun and interesting ways to draw crowds to their events. Here are two of the sexiest ways to spend the subsiding, not-quite-as-sweltering nights of the Labour Day long weekend:

No Pants, No Problem

I am a huge fan of underwear dance parties. They frequently happen in the comfort of my living room, dancing wildly to everything from the Kinks to Boney M spinning on my turntable. This Saturday, I can enjoy all the fun of a pantless dance party in public as the infamous No Pants, No Problem night returns to Montreal.

The concept is simple: head on down to Il Motore (179 Jean-Talon W), check your pants at the door and dance it up for a good cause. The cost is $5, and the funds raised from the night will go to benefit Aids Action Now, who will be hosting a community table with provocative goodies. Also, Cactus, will be on site handing out condoms and other goodies promoting safer sex and harm reduction.

The night was born in 2003 as a place for like-minded people to come together and challenge the conventional ways of approaching sexiness. This involves creating a safe space for people of all persuasions and orientations to question binary norms on gender and sexuality, and engage in constructive dialogues about body image and self esteem… and have some fun while doing it!

DJs Hungry Like the Wolf and Bratface will be keeping the booties shaking til the wee hours of the morning. As well, there will be burlesque performances by Toronto’s Mikiki and hometown favorites Glam Gam Productions. There will also be a Kissing Booth on site for you to practice your lip-locking skills.

For those who are a little shy about revealing too much at this cheeky night, there is an option of leaving your pants on for a $5 penalty.

For more information, check out the Facebook event.

Explore Your Fetishes

Montreal Fetish WeekendFor those on the slightly more adventurous side, there’s the 8th annual incarnation of Fetish Weekend. Members of the fetish community from around the world congregate in Montreal for an unforgettable weekend of kinky parties and enlightening workshops. Let your imagination run wild within a sensual playground of deviancy and delights!

The key events are Saturday night’s Latextacy retro fetish extravaganza, where renowned entertainer Jean Bardot offers a thrilling sideshow-inspired experience for watchers and worshipers alike and Sunday’s sensual Steampunk masked ball, where the anonymity of a mask allows participants and voyeurs alike to indulge their wildest dreams. Both take place at the gorgeous L’Olympia Theatre (1004 Ste-Catherine E), completing the sensual experience with its vintage glamour.

If you’re interested in exploring the cerebral side of the underground, try one of the weekend’s workshop at the Hotel des Gouverneurs (1415 St-Hubert). On Saturday, you can learn about kinky drumming and percussive play with Gaia, or get an insight into the D/s relationship from the submissive’s perspective with Slave Petal. On Sunday, Viktor and Sasha can teach you about basic bondage for beginners, or explore the wonderful world of wax play with Contessa Alura.

For more information on either of the parties or the workshops or to purchase tickets, please visit the Fetish Weekend website.

Fetish Weekend pics by Chris Zacchia for more visit Forgetthebox on FB

CityCultureSexThe Morning After

Imagine a place where exotic mystery and unbridled sexuality come together, a club where self-expression isn’t merely encouraged – it is pretty much required. This is the kind of place where the open-minded congregate for an all-out assault on the senses.

Those behind London’s most infamous fetish club, the Torture Garden, are making their first-ever visit to Montreal on their 20th anniversary tour. Founders Alan Pelling and David Wood aimed to take the fetish club to the next level. They integrated multiple diverse party environments, progressive music and extreme performance art with the alternative fashion that fetish is famous for.

Two decades later, they’ve built a reputation for staging lavish fantasy parties attended by the likes of Jean Paul Gauthier and Ditta Von Teese that make you feel like you just stepped on to a movie set, giving you the freedom to adopt a new persona and play with like-minded individuals.

They have the strictest dress code policies I’ve ever seen for any event:

“Dress the f*ck up… the more effort you put into transforming into somebody different from your day to day character the more you will get out of your TG experience. Please, always remember that if your outfit wouldn’t turn heads in the street – don’t bother to wear it to Torture Garden.”

You’ll get your first chance to command the attention of the Torture Garden’s finest at the opening night party on Friday November 25 at The Belmont (4483 St Laurent). With a “military” theme, they offer the following suggestions as inspiration:

Military, WW2, Cold War, uniforms, soldiers, military nurses/doctors, wounded soldiers, battle scars/wounds, Canadian military, American military, German military, Soviet military, Chinese military, Japanese military, North Korean latex, leather, gas masks, stars & stripes, TG logos, etc.

The main event takes place on Saturday November 26 at the Bain Mathieu (2915 Ontario Est), a converted bathhouse built in the 1930s that sounds almost too perfect for this type of event. The main room features an emptied pool as the dance floor and platform for the main stage shows, a mezzanine area surrounding it for mixing and mingling and a second room accessible through the pool featuring more eclectic music and a smaller stage for performances.

The impressive line-up of talent includes both TG founders taking their spin at the decks, as well as local and international performance artists and latex experts. If you’re looking for inspiration for an outfit, think Berlin Kabaret meets Moulin Rouge with a little circus freakshow and a bit of Victorian steampunk thrown in for good measure. For the not so faint of heart, there will be an on site dungeon play area where the most sordid aspects of the fetish scene may be explored.

All patrons must adhere to a strict code of conduct while in the club that includes no unauthorized photographers, no harassment of any kind, or non-consensual groping. ()

And if you’re not quite tortured out by Sunday, the closing night party takes place at the famed Old Port nightclub Velvet (426 St Gabriel). The theme for the closing night echoes the opening night party with a speakeasy, post-war, celebratory cabaret vibe.

Weekend passes and individual tickets are available at a number of local retailers or on the Torture Garden Montreal website.

CultureSexThe Morning After

If lust is seen as excessive thoughts or desires of a sexual nature, then pretty much everyone I saw attending Montreal’s 7th annual Fetish Weekend is guilty of sinning in style!

My partner in crime, photographer Chris Zacchia and I sported matching “underwear as outerwear” themed-ensembles with cowboy boots to the Kabaret Kink party last Friday at the historical Olympia theatre. There we encountered a crowd of PVC-clad revelers engaging in the cardinal sin of pride, parading their kinks and perversions around for everyone to see.

The Montreal Fetish Weekend is put together in large part by organizer and world class guy, Eric Paradis. It is largely due to his diligent efforts that the Montreal (and Global) Fetish community has events like this! He has helped this event grow into its now 7th year, and it continues to grow year after year. (Eric pictured below)

While we may have missed part of the night’s organized fashion show due to the requisite consumption of liquid courage necessary to leave the house in nothing but a shiny black corset and fishnets, the real fashion show was everywhere: sky high faux lashes with patent platform boots to match, Goth chicks leading boys wearing too much eyeliner around on leashes, and shirtless men whose bondage rope-wear really accentuated their man boobs.

Luckily for us liquor gluttons, the bartenders at the Olympia were serving up refreshing beverages, and lucky for little old me, the boys were buying. As one partygoer commented, “You ladies deserve it for looking so good! You buy the fishnets, you buy the outfits… the least I can do is buy you a drink”.

Even with the sexually charged atmosphere, the party was surprisingly tame. That is until I was dragged upstairs into the empty balcony seats for a good ol’ fashioned spanking. But then again, it wouldn’t be a fetish night without a little bit of wrath.

Rumour has it the next two nights (and subsequent after parties) were more on the scintillating side, complete with a play area, lurid demonstrations and a latex-shining station. But for the really good stuff in this city, unfortunately you’d need to build a time machine and set it for about a hundred years ago to the golden age of the Red Light District. Luckily…

Infringement festival co-founder Donovan King and burlesque dancer Velma Candyass gave us the next best thing to a time machine with their Red Light District walking tour, revealing all the licentious secrets behind the concrete facades and boarded-up buildings. They certainly made me envious of a time when, as Mordecai Richler put it, the street “was lit up like a neon cake” and you could head down to the Gaiety Theatre and catch a show by Lili St. Cyr.

I’ll never see the corner of Ontario and Sanguinet the same way again after learning that it once housed a brothel so well-known that merely uttering its address would prompt titters from the boys in the schoolyard. 312 Ontario used to feature round-the-clock service by a team of 80 sex workers, all just down the street from the Number 4 police station.

Of course, all that remains now of the infamous strip of burlesque houses and bawdy bordellos on the Lower Main is Café Cleopatre. With its vintage marquee boasting “Strip-Teaseuses” and “Spectacles Continuel”, the strip club and cabaret venue became a lone David facing a Goliath development plan by the city, that would have essentially extinguished the evidence of the seamier side of the Lower Main.

Many, including King and Candyass fought hard to keep it from falling victim to the greedy sprawl of gentrification, as the area became rebranded as the decidedly more family-friendly Quartier des Spectacles. A recent victory by club owner Johnny Zoumboulakis has permanently halted the construction of a 12-storey Hydro Quebec office tower.

The notion of cleaning up these streets is not a recent invention in Montreal. Three streets east of Saint Laurent is de Bullion, once known as Cadieux. Rue Cadieux’s claim to fame was its venerable status amongst sailors for having the best brothels in the city. To extinguish this unwanted reputation, the city renamed it in 1927 after a religious Roman Catholic woman.

King and Candyass plan to resume their tour next summer, a truly fascinating 90-minute look at the vibrant, racy history that earned Montreal the reputation of Sin City.

So let’s see, that puts our Sin Count up to six- lusty glances and intentions, freak pride, gluttonous appetites for hedonism, wrath against my ass, envy of the glory days of the Red Light District and the greedy desires of developers. The only one missing is sloth, but he was so lazy he missed the party… better luck next year, sloth!

 

Photos by Chris Zacchia.

For more pics of this salacious weekend check out the photo galleries on our FB page.

CityCultureNightlifeSexThe Morning After

Dust off your whip and polish up the latex: that’s right, it’s Montreal Fetish Weekend. To commemorate its 7th edition, this year’s theme is the Seven Nights, Seven Sins. Photographer Chris Zacchia and I will see how many we can commit as we pop our Fetish Weekend cherries and explore the darker side of human sensuality.

Having never been to any large-scale fetish event, I’m not entirely sure what to expect. The website is laden with glossy images of sexy men and women in sleek, intriguing costumes. Despite losing almost 95% of their sponsorship from donors and supporters that were hit hard by the global financial crisis, the festival keeps growing from year to year. And ticket sales are up for this year’s edition again!

The weekend kicks off with a night of sultry opulence and fetish fashion, the Kabaret Kink at L’Olympia Theater (1004 Ste-Catherine East). The cabaret-style fashion show will feature over 40 performers and models showcasing designs by local up-and-comers and international icons, set against the elegant backdrop of a gilded 1930s theatre. Watch for my review next week!

Saturday night, Olympia again plays host to Latextacy, a fetish fantasy ball with an emphasis on avant-garde fashion. And if you’re not completely fetished out by Sunday, there’s the Night of Masks, which is being billed as a sensual Victorian masked ball. All three events have fetish dress codes that include the likes of leather, latex, PVC, cosplay, Gothic, glam, lingerie, etc.

And it’s not all just corsets and galas either. On Saturday and and Sunday, there’s a vast array of workshops as well as the Expo Kink, which features local and international designers at the Hotel des Gouvenors, 1415 St-Hubert Street.

On Sunday afternoon, Infringement Festival co-founder Donovan King and burlesque performer Velma Candyass will give a walking tour of hot spots from the city’s former Red Light District. This will be their third time this year leading the tour that examines the Red Light District from both a historical and contemporary perspective, touching on the impact of gentrification, police brutality and corporate attempts to rebrand the area as the “Quartier des Spectacles”.

I’m very interested to revisit the dirty glory of sin-city era Montreal and learn more about the last few remaining institutions including Café Cleopatre, host of the monthly “Club Sin” fetish events. It starts at noon at Bar le Midway, 1219 Saint-Laurent, and lasts for 90 minutes. To reserve a spot, email optatif@gmail.com. The cost is $10.

In an attempt to open the weekend up to a wider audience, this year’s Festival Weekend also includes a variety of free events, including an afternoon of fetish bowling and pool at Sharx (1606 Ste-Catherine West), and an exhibitionist walking tour on Sunday afternoon. Tour guides Tanis and Stephane will parade the group of fetish-clad freaks and foxy femmes past some of the best photo hot spots in old Montreal. It leaves at 2pm from the Hotel Gouvenors, and fetish wear is compulsory… unless you want to hang about ten feet back of the group to watch the reactions of the tourists.

For more information on any of these events, or to purchase tickets, visit http://fetishweekend.com/.