The closest I've gotten to sex lately is putting on my black leather motorcycle jacket and parading around, hoping someone will think I'm a sexual outlaw without actually calling me on it. I'm tall, which dissuades people from messing with me, and gray-haired, which makes me look like I might know what I'm doing but am probably too old to care.


"You look like you've been around," said Rio, who is not tall but my age or a bit younger, judging from the smoothness of her skin. I had the presence of mind to confess, "It's all a façade!" I gave a gallant flourish, making the most of my superficiality. Unblinking, Rio serenely gave me "instant cred" for having once had a motorcycle.

Rio's one of the organizers of Venus's Playground, the woman-only space in the upcoming Folsom Street Fair, San Francisco's hot, sweaty, black leather, fetish'n'bondage community block party in late September. She was on hand at that YMCA of the dark sexual arts, the Citadel, to assure the smooth running of Venus's fundraiser. She tracked the replenishment of hummus tubs on the free lunch table and tallied up who owed what on the silent auction of erotic paraphernalia.

I'd worn my form-hugging, Euro-style jacket with retro big zippers in hopes of fitting in. When I got there I felt perhaps I'd overdressed. After all, since the featured event was a workshop on knot-tying, I might as well have worn a sailor suit. Turned out, the only other people in leather were the presenters. Maybe that's a clue. If you're not using it, don't flaunt it. Ah, yes, but what if all you're good for is flaunting? Well, then, darling, seize every opportunity.


I hesitate to write about men on this site, but a precedent has been set with Barack Obama, who is, as Americans seem to have collectively overlooked, that lowest form of humanity: a politician. Two alternative exemplars of maleness are the Two Knotty Boys, or TKB, who have raised the craft of rope bondage to an art and even possibly a religion, of which they are the leading evangelists. Everything you need to know about immobilizing your love object for the price of some triple-braided nylon at your local hardware store is revealed to you on their YouTube channel and in their book.

For men, the Knotty Boys are disarmingly self-effacing. Charming, well turned-out and effortlessly funny, they utterly seduced the crowd of two dozen dykes, some of whom had seen it all and some of whom had seen very little. The TKB transformed the nervousness of newbies like myself into something approaching joy by doing what all great teachers do: They demystified their area of expertise, even as they demonstrated their own mastery of it, thereby rendering rope work both accessible and desirable in and of itself. They encouraged us to innovate, even as they explained the basics.

J.D., dressed in shiny black leather from his cap to his cuffs, is boy-band cute, his dark eyes brimming with mischief. Dan has an artsy High Punk aesthetic expressed through asymmetrical dyed-black hair with a Cruella de Ville shock of white at the temple. Together, they exemplify the best of San Francisco sex culture — being shameless exhibitionists, spiritual vaudevillians and non-stop educators. The proof was in the pudding: each guy had a "model" safely suspended from the ceiling via hip and chest harnesses in about 20 minutes, using nothing but rope, savvy and bon mots. They're making bdsm safe for the world.

I lost my vanillarginity at Venus's Playground's fundie. For exactly $69, I acquired a treasure trove of firsts: dildo, vibrator, leather cuffs and collar, lube, massage oil, rope and this black leather thing with small silver pyramids riveted to one side, designed to cause pleasurable pain when applied to the flesh of my love object if she ever lets me close enough again. Wish me luck.