TrikootContinuing from the earlier post, I did have a few more interesting experiences during my July 2013 trip. I met a bondage friend in London on the last day of my London stay — in fact, just before heading to the airport to catch my flight to Paris. This time I was Spidey, who once again got into some trouble.
July 2013 saw the fourth ever Recon Fetish Week in London, and incidentally my fourth Fetish Week as well. As I find London a pleasant enough city to visit once a year, it is convenient to time this visit to coincide with something kinky.
Being in the city from Thursday to Monday, I got to see most of the party action, although Recon nowadays dubs the events as a full week, which it honestly really is not.
Arriving on Thursday afternoon, the first event was the Recon Welcome Drinks at the London Eagle, conveniently next door to my hotel in Vauxhall. I had never been to the Eagle before, and it was a rather nice bar with an excellent backyard outdoors area, which on this occasion even had a grill serving free food.
The main party of Thursday was Recon’s Sportswear Cruising Party at The Hoist, to which I once again went as Spider-Man, using the loophole in the dresscode that allowed superhero costumes, though strictly speaking they are not sportswear.
As I had a session for every full day of my stay in London, the first session was on Saturday afternoon at Battersea, where I met a very interesting gentleman into army play.
On Friday evening I managed to get some shopping done at The Regulation and, taking advantage of their 20%-off-everything offer, got myself a black rubber surfsuit.
![img_2430_9a145a[4]](http://35.202.156.131/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/img_2430_9a145a4.jpg)
The first party of Friday was the Fetishbound party at The Underground. Fetishbound is a rather pleasant and social play event, where bondage fans come together to talk and play. I managed to do three bondage scenes there, including a full rope suspension by Tskinboot.
The second party of Friday was the Nexus all-black party, which in the original Recon brochure was advertised as being in a location near London Bridge. This proved to be old information, but luckily I was not the only person roaming the vicinity of London Bridge looking for a non-existent kinky club. After pairing up with a few other lost adventurers (easy to spot since one of them was in full rubber on the street!) we managed to take a bus to Vauxhall, where the actual party was at Hidden, the same place as last year.
Instead of showing you cute pictures of me tied up in weird positions and clothes, I thought I should take this opportunity for the first time to do some public education on some of the dangers of BDSM.
I often repeat the fact that BDSM is a potentially lethal activity, but it should be added that so is driving a car. What makes BDSM a bit different is the fact that you don’t need a license to tie someone up, and unfortunately a lot of people are not sober while tying up either. It is for that reason that everyone in the scene is responsible for making sure that our colleagues in BDSM are familiar with the leading causes of death in the scene.
The first two factors cover an absolute majority of all BDSM casualties. The last one is more of a trivia fact, but lethal nonetheless.
When asked about the dangers of breath control, most people reply with the term asphyxiation. Asphyxiation is however an umbrella term for any problems in breathing, and I would argue that hypoxia is actually, along with the vasovagal response, the leading causes of death in BDSM, and also caused by things that have nothing to do with breath control at all.
Hypoxia means the lack of oxygen in the human body, and what makes it especially dangerous is the fact that humans in general are very poor at noticing it. This is evident in many contexts, such as hypoxia-caused shallow water blackouts that kill swimmers and freedivers. And commercial flights crashing into mountains. What people actually sense when they get “the urge to breathe” is an abnormally high carbon dioxide level. This is easily demonstrated with rebreathing, where a person continuously re-breathes his own air, causing a rise in carbon dioxide and an increasing urge to breathe. This is something that properly uses the body’s own warning mechanisms.
However, if oxygen is simply replaced with something else, such as nitrous oxide, the normal warning mechanisms of the human body do not work, and a sudden loss of consciousness may occur. If unconsciousness results in the victim being unable to get fresh air, death will follow.
How to mitigate the risk: Recognize that hypoxia may cause loss of judgment and unconsciousness without warning. Do not use inhalants alone.
The vasovagal response has a proven history of killing BDSM players. Most people know that activities such as choking or otherwise causing excessive pressure on the neck are dangerous and potentially lethal, but the methods of action are less known.
The vagus nerve is a nerve passing through the side of the neck and one of its responsibilities is downregulating the heart rate of a human being. In normal situations the nerve functions properly, but certain situations, including pain and neck pressure, may fool it to believe that the heart rate should be lowered when in fact it should not. This will usually result in a sudden drop in blood pressure, and is one of the main causes of sudden fainting.
Most cases of the vasovagal response resolve by themselves and the following unconsciousness is brief. However, if the nerve is continuously simulated, for example by a too tight collar or a vac bed, the low blood pressure may lead to a circulatory shock, and eventually death.
How to mitigate the risk:
Commotio cordis is a sudden disruption in the normal beating of the heart, caused by a strong blow in the area near the heart at the exact right (or wrong) moment of the heart rhythm. It is a relatively rare cause of death, and occurs usually in forms of sport where there is a risk of impact, such as soccer, baseball or ice hockey. However, if it occurs, without immediate help of a defibrillator, death usually occurs.
How to mitigate the risk: In impact play, avoid strong impacts in the heart area.
Just a quick reminder that the biggest gay kinky party of the year in Finland is happening this weekend. The Finlandization main party is tomorrow 30th July in Helsinki at Ravintolalaiva Wäiski, and the official lead-up party is tonight in Tampere at Mixei. More information at http://www.mscfin.fi/en/f25/
For the second time ever, Fetish Week was organized this July in London. This year saw an expanded programme encompassing the whole week, although I had only the chance to enjoy the weekend part of the celebrations.
Arriving on Friday, I hit the ground running, with Rubberboyseraph, who was kind enough to meet me straight at Heathrow airport. We picked up a few friends on the way and went through the usual suspects of Regulation and Expectations. All of the major shops were running promotions (and free beer!), but alas I found nothing of interest to buy and settled for window shopping.
The Friday party of choice was the Nexus party, presented under the aegis of the BLF Berlin Leder Und Fetisch organization. Even though the dresscode for the party was black (as in black rubber, leather, or anything), several of my friends had gotten the mistaken impression that it was a Leather Nexus party, and were not interested in going. Maybe a promotion slip-up? In any case, the clientele that night was indeed quite leatherish, but not to the point of complete disaster. There were quite a few guys in rubber, uniforms and other interesting attires. The venue was Hidden, an established venue in Vauxhall, but unfortunately a bit too small and unorganized for a party of this magnitude. Late evening saw a minor catastrophe in the cloakroom, which at that point consisted of a huge, unsorted pile of bags (they apparently had not expected everyone to bring a bag along, which is quite usual in a fetish party).
On Saturday I had the privilege of coffeeing up with a local fellow kinkster (jameskink89). We discussed everything from pain play to UK politics, and popped in to Rob to see what was going on. After that it was time for a good old bondage session with a local top whom I was meeting for the first time. Pictures of that will follow later.
The Saturday party was the biggest event of the weekend, Full Fetish presented by Recon at the superclub Pulse in Southwark. Compared to Scala, the disaster venue of Full Fetish last year, Pulse proved to be spacy and airy enough, with a proper industrial vibe, proper darkroom area and efficient but slightly slow bars. The party died down surprisingly quickly, being somewhat quieter at 3am already.
Sunday concluded the weekend with the double party combo of Rubber Party and Deconstruction (the official ending party). Organized similarly as last year, in The Hoist, the rubber party once again suffered from an inordinate number of naked people, leftovers from the earlier naked party. They should really ask the naked people to leave once the rubber party starts, considering rubber is philosophically pretty much the exact opposite of showing lots of skin.
All in all, Recon’s Fetish Weekend is the only big, multi-day gay kink event in London, and Recon seems to have sorted out the practical organization fairly well. I would definitely recommend that you check it out next year.