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MarsBonfire -> RE: BDsM "back in the day"... (5/9/2009 7:21:34 AM)
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Sadly Pact, I DO qualify.
I was in Denver, in the early 1980's. AIDS hadn't been identified, much less named yet. There were just vauge rumors about gay men on the coasts getting sick and dying. The straight medical community didn't really care, and Ronnie Regran was still several years away from saying "Let them all die."
I was living in a crummy first apartment at about 11th and Broadway. A little roach trap place across the street from the Gart's Sports Castle. The rent was cheap, and it was furnished in early "off the street." Perfect for a young bi kid out on his own for the first time.
There wasn't much support there at the time. My family was a good 700 miles away, and being the new kid in town, I didn't have that many friends. Home computers still hadn't really come to the fore, although I had a used Mac, which I used to write letters and such.
My contacts into the community were threefold: First, there was the Old contact newspaper, "The Rocky Mountain Oyster"... although that venue was a bit scary. Responding to an ad there would be like going to a f2f meeting from Craigs List, with only a single exchange of letters. The other two were the bars, and the bath houses. I frequented both on the weekends. Those felt more safe, because you could meet others safely, and you had the crowd around you to call upon if someone was hassleing you.
It wasn't until almost 1990, after the bath house scene died from the plauge scare, that the pansexual movement started. I was really getting tired of the same crowd, at the same bars, every weekend by that point. I was looking for a new home, with different, more varied people. I volunteered to be a part of a start up group after a woman named Nancy Ava Miller came to Denver to organize us. (You can read more about Nancy in the anthology od BDSM essays "Some Women." We had a rocky start, mostly meeting in the backrooms and basements of several Drag joints. Play there was limited, and a lot of straights were really uncomfortable, apparently, to be surrounded by "fags." Then, one of our members and boosters, a woman named Diane Marie, attended a rave that was being held by the owner of an industrial welding shop out near the old Stapleton Airport. (A really gothic feeling place that specialized in restoration of turn of the century wrought ironwork... very darkwave industrial/steampunk... even before those subcultures existed. LOL) Surprisingly, the owner of the shop was very kink friendly, and was happy to rent his space to us for a paltry fee... Suddenly, we were in business!
The memory of that first night we were there will always bring a smile to my face. I was asked to speak on behalf of the group, and I could tell, looking around the room, that everyone there was expecting the "party" to be like all the others.. "a kiwanis club meeting in leather"... I made a couple of quick announcements, said that in the future, we hoped to have demos and discussions... but the primary reason for us to be there was to play... to watch, and to be watched, and learn via experience. I said, "...and with that, LET'S PLAY!" and saw the stunned and delighted looks on their faces. Within a few short months, word got around and we were hosting up to 150 people at the monthly parties.
That first group became both the base camp and the gateway group for the rest of the pansexual Denver scene, I'm happy to say. And I'm very proud of what we, the core group of about six people, accomplished during those first four years when we were meeting at that welding shop. We were a group called PEP (People Exchanging Power) and they begat COLLAR, and DADS, and Uncommon Ground, and Colorado Bound, and so on and so on.... (To some extent, we also had a hand in organizing the first Thunder in the Mountains... but thats a different story.)
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