Derek da Silva

17 March 2009 - The double LP's out! The Grabby nominations are out! The sun is out.....!

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 01:26:34 GMT

So first off, the double LP is out - producing, engineering and mixing this record was a good 2 years of hard work. It's epic. It's beautiful. It makes a great rolling tray if your proclivities run that way. And you can even get it on limited edition white vinyl if you hurry [too late - sold out!] The vinyl double LP comes with the CD inside, so if you want all the cool liner notes in the gatefold, you should get the LP. And the mastering on the LP is fabulous - as a total audiophile snob I shit thee not. I was ready to be all pissed off at a poor lo-fi mastering job (which happens way to often and makes me really depressed). Not this time! While the grooves on side 2 are a little cramped, the vinyl sounds way better than the CD. Meaning it sounds totally awesome. I am very happy that this project is finally out - it was a lot of work to get to this day.

Next up in news of the day? Grabby Nominations came out yesterday and a bunch of my vids were nominated (alas no scene noms for me, but that's ok cuz my scenes are about the kink, not the basic sex that the categories are about - I'd win an award handily if they just had a "best fucked up scene" category).

Here is what got nominated:

Folsom Prison (Titan) for best Fetish video
Sounding #1 (Raging Stallion) and The Mechanic (Steel Mill) for best extreme fetish
Funhouse (Titan) for best art direction

While I'd argue that Prison was pretty extreme (350,000 Volt stun gun and a real face punch k.o. that is as real as it is subtle, real shower beatdown with nice bruises the next day... hello!), being in a few categories does increase opportunities for one of them to win, so I guess it's all good.

Tony got lots of noms (naturally), but I was particularly happy to see him nominated for best newcomer. I think he's a real contender there and hope he takes home the award as he really deserves it.

Finally...
I love spring.

Oh my god it was beautiful out today. 75 degrees and clear blue skies and everyone smiling and enjoying the day. While record releases and video awards should make me happy, really I think it's days like this that really work for me.

One more random note: please check out Steve Cruz's blog for previews of my next release XXX from Mustang!

12 February 2010 - new essay on public play posted

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 00:05:00 GMT

I just posted a new essay on playing in public - it's something we believe in strongly.

Tony has posted an entry in his blog giving the context around why I'm saying more than I've said in the past. But the gist is someone made some online remarks which everyone that loved me hoped I'd never see. I finally saw them last week and they hurt the way they were intended to. But whatever. This isn't about someone attacking me or Tony. This is about how that attack undermines something I believe in: preserving our BDSM culture in places like our bars and clubs.

Here's the Essay:
Top 10 Reasons to Play in a Leather Bar

Top 10 Reasons to Play in a Leather Bar

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 23:23:00 GMT

Bitch if you will, but when we are in a leather bar we like to play. Some take issue with this, but they can go fuck themselves. We're gonna keep on playing when we are out in our spaces. And we want you to do this too.

Here are 10 good reasons why:

Turf. It's our fucking space. We aren't gonna be shoved out by people that can't even be bothered to look the part, let alone play it. It's SM not S&M, the difference being the "&". There is no ampersand in Sadomasochism - but there is in Stand & Model.
Advertising works! We're not just living the life, we're spreading the lifestyle. Lots of guys are curious about this stuff and fantasize about it. Seeing that others are into this stuff is a huge life changing revelation for lots of guys. Public play validates people's sexualities and helps them out of the BDSM closet.
24/7 means 24/7. We live this life all the time. We aren't going into the closet because we are in a leather bar.
Teach safety. We can show this stuff and when people ask we can show what we do to make this edgy play safer. It's called leading by example.
It's safer to play where others are around. Every single BDSM death I know of has occurred behind closed doors.
Exhibitionism is a valid fetish. And thank god cuz the best porn is made by guys that love showing off.
Public Humiliation is a valid fetish. Don't be ashamed that you like being ashamed.
Voyerism is a valid fetish. Some people whine about show offs, but even they seem to enjoy watching. Hmmm...
We're topping all you fuckers!! BWAHAHAHA!
Out of the bedrooms and into the leather bars - or else the leather bars die.

19 December 2009 - Holiday Video Posted

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 21:27:00 GMT

So here is my first YouTube outing. No living trees were harmed in the making of this video.

1 December 2009 - New Essay For World AIDS Day

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:02:00 GMT

Safer Sex: A Less Nuanced Position

It is my response on why political correctness is causing us to lose the battle...

Please read it and give your responses to the email address on Contact Me (to the left).

Safer Sex: A Less Nuanced Position

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:48:00 GMT

Tony Buff just wrote an excellent essay on the issue of bareback porn in the leather community entitled A More Nuanced Position. While I agree with all that he says (indeed many of the thoughts expressed stem from our many all night conversations on the topic), I wonder if perhaps he is stating his position in too deferential a fashion. Indeed, I wonder if we all have failed to create an environment where safer sex messages can succeed, all because we are trying to be politically correct, sensitive, respectful or whatever else you want to call this weird thing where we all pretend that HIV (and AIDS) is no big deal.

Fuck that. HIV is a big fucking deal. A good chunk, perhaps a majority, of my gay friends are HIV positive and of those a fair number have full blown AIDS. These men are my friends, sexual partners and even my biological brother. While some of them are truly asymptomatic, the bulk have a good amount of extra medical drama in their lives and I'm still losing friends to AIDS (albeit thankfully less often). My biological brother is in a wheelchair and spends plenty of time in the hospital. Life expectancy and quality of life has vastly improved for poz men – no question there. But let's be honest – it still sucks. Being poz reduces your life expectancy by 20 years on average, and during that reduced time, your quality of life will have plenty of ups and downs not to mention all sorts of financial and administrative challenges. You can paint it rosy if you want but it's not just “a treatable chronic condition.” You can talk about how it's freed you sexually or made you appreciate life, but that fact is, no one honestly wants HIV, never mind things like Hepatitis C or even the more easily cured STDs.

Safer sex education is a tricky business. It seems like there are two conflicting agendas. On one hand you want negative guys to stay negative. You want them to be motivated to use condoms, even though to be honest, it's a bit more fun to do without. And idealists think this can be done without resorting to fear – although to be honest, a good rational fear of HIV is probably the only reason why I'm alive today.

You don't skydive without a parachute, and you really shouldn't have sex without a condom unless you are doing it with an exclusive partner or set of exclusive partners. And even then you need honesty and all sorts of STD testing to make it all work. To really succeed in keeping HIV negative men from seroconverting you need to portray exactly why they don't want to be positive and give them strategies that help them feel good about making the decision to use a condom every time, even if doing so has the effect of stigmatizing guys that decide to fuck without condoms (and many poz men think this is their right even if it does expose them to all kinds of hazards that an immune compromised person should steer clear of). I'm not suggesting scare tactics – I'm suggesting that the real facts are scary and we are being negligent when we fail to give out unadorned factual truths about HIV and AIDS.

While we want to show a realistic portrayal of HIV to the negative guys, there is a contrary impulse where we want to give poz guys an upbeat view that says they will make it. It's important to keep your head in the game and to not fall into guilt or self loathing when you are HIV positive. So we are sensitive and play down the impact of HIV and try not to talk about unsafe sex in a way that is too judgmental. Coming down hard on unsafe sex is frowned upon, because people we love in our community were human and made mistakes that are common and understandable. We all have urges and passions and moments of impaired judgment. Still, let's be clear: we dance around these issues not for the physical health benefit of the negative guys but rather for the feelings of the poz guys.

Those who deal with HIV education clearly are sensitive to the emotional needs of poz men even if society at large (including large swaths of the gay community) is not. But are we also being equally sensitive to the needs of HIV negative men? Are we giving them the information and the psychological support they need to stay healthy? Because if we fail in this, they may not make good decisions. They may not stay negative and thus may die early. I would suggest that in an effort to be politically correct, we are lying to them and allowing far too many to seroconvert. And we are also acting as if HIV transmission was the only reason to use condoms when it simply is not. Finally we are forgetting that information alone will not do the job – they also need the societal support network to feel good about making small sacrifices to stay healthy.

It's not easy to stay negative – it takes a lot of will power and self confidence to refuse to give in to the pressures of others not to mention your own desires. While it's great to be affirming of poz men and fuck knows much of the world isn't, I would argue that we have gone way, way too far. Yes it's a bummer to be a poz man having to hear someone talk about how important it is to strive to stay negative. But frankly, most poz men I've met are a lot stronger than that, and they don't need to be coddled. They know the costs of being positive far too well and don't wish that on anyone. They understand that we have to be frank and even brutal - and they affirm that they don't need to be handled with kid gloves.

Respecting people's “personal choices” sounds good on paper, but the fact is we are all social animals, and we don't really make our decisions alone, but rather make them with a lot of influence from the society around us. Many personal choices are more like personal mistakes that we later rationalize. I think it's more important to respect people's humanity, to allow them their mistakes, but to help them to not make other mistakes in the future. By supporting each other rather than washing our hands of responsibility for each other in our community we can all be healthier even as we make sure that the meager assets we have go to those in the most need.

Allowing people their mistakes is important as it allows truthfulness – but these mistakes are mistakes, not “personal choices.” We all have moments of impaired judgment, and no one should feel unloved because of this. Blame is uninteresting as it lies in the past, and all that can be influenced lies in the future. One mistake does not impel you to save face by saying “I meant to do that,” and then repeat that mistake and tell others they should do the same.

I will judge people based on their personal safer sex practices. I won't love anyone any less because their practices don't jive with my convictions on what I consider to be grave matters affecting human life health and sexuality. But I'm not going to tell a good friend what they are doing is fine when I am actually concerned that their behavior could harm them or harm others. The more I care for you the harsher my judgment. Why? Because I care about you and want you around and healthy for a good long time.

We also need to look at factors that contribute to unsafe sex in our community. Drug and alcohol abuse is rampant, and we need to deal with these problems as they impair judgment in ways that are often dramatic. Our treatment of each other as gay men is also a huge problem. Growing up all of us were beat down for being gay, so even as young men first coming out we tend to be emotionally damaged. Each of us has had our self esteem battered by growing up gay in a world that mostly is against us. Knowing this you'd think as adults we'd learn to love each other in ways mainstream society has not. But really we don't support each other in our moments of difficulty and frankly we can be some mean bitches to each other – as if putting each other down or just allowing others to fail makes us better.

Self esteem issues fuel a lot of the problems we see in our community. If you don't value yourself, if you are looking for approval from people that hold you in low regard and seek only to use you to feel better about themselves, then it can be very hard to have the self discipline it takes to play safe, to limit your use of alcohol and drugs, and to be attentive to your own emotional health. Instead, many of us seek acceptance in sex, and escape our emotions with drugs and alcohol.

Our public service organizations have mostly failed us. They have tended towards political correctness instead of hard facts, and seem to advocate foolish strategies like serosorting.

That is no great matter because their impact is minor compared to the impact we could have on each other. We need to love and support each other. The brutal bitchiness needs to be turned into brutal love and honesty. If all of us as community admit to what is really going on with unsafe sex, HIV, Hepatitis C, drug and alcohol abuse, all of it, then we can also start solving the problem as a community.

To get people to value safer sex we need to care about each other to poke our nose into each other's business – and this needs to be done in a caring, respectful fashion. We need to value our lives and each other's lives in a real way. Saying it's people's personal business is a cop out. If it's only a few people speaking out, it comes off as the sex police. But if all of us, positive and negative, set a higher standard for each other, if we all make it clear that practicing safer sex is worth it, if we help each other avoid excesses in drinking and drugs, we might actually stand a chance. This isn't mucking about in other people's business. This is about valuing the lives of each person in our community and loving each other enough to actually give a fuck.

I want people to have lots and lots of great sex. But I also am weary of watching people I love struggle and suffer. It's not an either or choice. It takes more investment in each other to say I care enough to tell you I think you need to use condoms. It may not feel comfortable to get close enough to someone to actually have a frank discussion about sex. But if we don't get over this, we will never solve this problem.

While I'm frustrated with the mixed messages being sent out by our HIV service organizations, even if their messages were more direct they'd still need the support of all of us. I'm fairly certain the bulk of our struggles come from the self esteem issues that are pandemic in our community. While it can be hot to play the sexual role of a worthless piece of sex trash, it's important not to believe it so deeply that you don't value your own well being. I hope that every gay man reading this leaves with a single idea. You are important to all of us, and we need you to take care of yourself. And when you've got that down we need you to spread that to others. It's what real communities do – let's start building the kind of community that “feeds our souls.”

The only way we will solve our problems is by acknowledging them as real. HIV is still a big deal and is not cured and there are lots of other serious STDs that are worth avoiding. Gay men still lack the basic info the need to make good sexual decisions and there is still a misperception that HIV is an easy to manage chronic condition. Drug and alcohol addiction are prevalent and make it hard for people to make good decisions even if they have good information. And all of this is made worse by a society that values us little and destroys our self esteem as we are young even as it fails to teach us basic safer sex techniques when we are adolescents.

All these problems require that we be honest with ourselves and each other. All of them require that we give a damn, that we support each other in safer sex, in staying clean and sober if we have addiction issues, and in caring for each other despite any past mistakes.

Respect for each other is essential to overcome the self esteem issues each of us face. I may not respect your choices to play unsafe or to use crystal meth, but I should respect you enough to be honest with you about this and to make it clear that my concern stems not from a need to feel superior or to control you, but rather from an honest and deeply felt valuing of your life and of all the lives in our community. This kind of respect goes hand in hand with responsibility. We are all responsible for the collective well being of our community. It is not meddling to hold each other to high ideals and to call each other on our shit – as long as we do it in a manner that respects the person we are seeking to help.

We owe it to every young man coming out into our community to not assume that they know the facts about HIV and how it can be prevented. We also owe them an environment that supports healthy choices even as it affirms their sexuality. We need to give them the tools to stand up against those that would suggest that HIV is cured and that unprotected sex is ok. This means growing a set of balls – because you will be mocked by some. Make no mistake, if the proponents of unsafe sex are trying to paint me as a sexual prude, heaven help the rest of you all that don't do half the crazy stuff I do. Pay this crap no heed – they are preying on the insecurities each of us has, often for their own selfish gain.

Being honest about the value of safer sex does not degrade those gay men that are HIV positive. It shows respect for the challenges poz men face, it says we don't need to create distance because we can fuck safely, and it makes sure that we are able to spread our resources for helping poz men as efficiently as possible. It also means each of us must learn to feel good enough about ourselves that we might better care for each other.

– Written for World AIDS Day 2009.

9 July 2009 - Learning the play seen in Shock Treatment

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:13:00 GMT

This entry has been long in coming, basically because it is more or less a memorial to man who was one of the best tops I've known. While he died quite some years ago, his passing still upsets me. I'll be just using his first name - those that knew him will know who I am talking about. While I've played with a lot of legendary tops, Jon was someone that was able to really push me in ways I'd never imagined. We'd only play once a year at Hellfire's Inferno (a week long, immersive BDSM experience) and each year we felt obliged to up the ante on our already fucked up scenes. The hard really part is that he died when he was around 30 years old - he was taken by cancer far too early. Making harder on me was the fact that and he died a year after another top whose play with me at Inferno was extremely important, Tony DeBlase. For a bit there I felt cursed - anyone that gave me an intense scene seemed doomed. Unlike Tony, who is one of the most famous figures in BDSM (having edited Drummer and created the Leather pride flag among many notable things), Jon died without a major reputation on the scene - he was just too fucking young. The BDSM scene often discounts its younger players, but it does so at it's own peril. So perhaps that is why it's so important to me to remember Jon properly.

As far as why I'm mentioning him now, well he was the man that single handedly introduced me to the kind of play you see me bottoming in my latest movie, Shock Treatment, from Titan's new Rough line.

Jon was one of those people whose straight forward, level headed manner hid a certain childlike humor and mischief. I never really was able to get intimate with him although later I learned he had might have had interest in fooling around with me. At the time he thought I was only into pain, not plain old sex. Alas, I should have said straight up that I like both, and that sex is one of my favorite ways to come back from a heavy BDSM scene - good sex is amazing aftercare. But he knew I have a long term partner and I knew the same about him. I think we wanted to be respectful of that so neither us ever let on a hint of interest. He embodied that sense of respect for others, even to a fault. In that respect I think there was a little fear - doing an intense scene is very intimate. After our scenes I think both of us would recoil in awe of what we had just done. I would quickly move on with my day, butching it up and acting like I needed no aftercare, even if this one one of those rare times I really did.

It was just once a year that we'd do this major blow out electro scene, nicknamed Screamfest. Without fail we'd either have to call the DungeonMaster into the dungeon to get permission to do things that were safe, but that were on the edge of what club rules allowed - or I'd be screaming in pain so intensely that a bystander would call the DungeonMaster over to verify that I was safe and consenting (they weren't going to probe into matters of sanity since we were both clearly a little insane in that moment of play!)

The first year we played, it was just heavy use of several Tens type units turned up full bore, culminating in one side being attached to three needles pierced through my right nipple (hence the need to ask DM permission since electro above the waist can be deadly if done incorrectly and thus the rule in the Hellfire dungeon was just don't do it). The way it was set up the needles could be moved so as to short out - making the pain go from intense to excruciating. Simple, yet devious - and a really great way to make a unit like a TENS more intimate and interactive. Tapping a needle is more direct than twisting a knob.

The next year he added a magneto ( also known as a telephone transformer or "crank generator.") This device is sort of the big bad in the world of non-injurious, no marks torture - done to an extreme it can drive you crazy while leaving no marks. I can think of no scene that is as unrelentingly painful. His scene climax of counting to twenty while turning the crank generator led to what is probably the only time I've ever used my safe word. I made it to 19, and you'd think I coulda made more more count - and I probably could have. I certainly was in no danger. But somehow that level of pain makes it impossible to be rational and I'd say anything to have that pain stop - and using a safe word was a far too easy out. Oh well. We learned and adjusted accordingly...

The next year he added in the stun guns - which I loved, and I soon started collecting stun guns on my own as they are awesome edge play toys. I screamed so loud that a renowned top working across the dungeon complained to Jon. He was single tailing a guy who is pretty much the world's loudest pain pig - I guess he didn't like his bottom's screams being drowned out.

By the final time we played things were completely ridiculously out of hand. It was one of those scenes where it was excess upon excess. Excessive pain just for the sake of saying you went way way too far - no sexual energy, just the pure white light of pain slamming your brain against the wall. Four stun guns, 2 crank generators, and a few acupuncture needles. Obviously to use this much equipment effectively required two tops so Jon brought in a second to assist. The resulting play included a crank generator hooked to each leg with acupuncture needles for contacts (smaller contact points mean more pain, so this was nasty - a deep slicing pain the would go down a single strand of muscle in my leg.) The scene culminated with 4 stun guns on my cock and balls at once - and with my laying in a pool of sweat and my endorphins blown through the roof.

For the next few days after that scene I had post traumatic stress (although at the time I didn't know the name for it). Whenever a whip would crack in the distance, I'd jump about 50 feet like a skittish kitten. I hid with a hoodie blocking as much sensory input as possible and wandered about lost, finding that every social interaction left me feeling a dejected alien boy. Finally a couple of club brothers, Frank and JP, noticed me wandering about lost and glassy eyed. It was night and they sat me down next to them on a big hill ("Come here little lost boy," they said). We looked at the stars, reminding me of many childhood nights in late summer watching the Perseids meteor showers on the big hill in my old country backyard. Frank mentioned that he had never seen a shooting star before - and not 15 seconds later a beautiful one blazed bright across the summer sky before vanishing as it burnt out. It was cool to share that moment with them, and part of the beauty of my Hellfire club brothers is that they form a huge protective family, especially at an event like Inferno. You might fool yourself into believing you are alone, but they are always really there.

That was the last time I did the scene that Jon and I did called "Screamfest." We did it on a Monday afternoon. The next day was 9/11. The morning of 9/11 I had just finished my Ashtanga yoga series and was entering Shivasana - the corpse pose used to still the body after an intense practice. As I floated in space on my back, eyes closed Peter Fiske comes running down the hill to me, yelling "It's horrible they're bombing NY and the Pentagon." Experiencing 9/11 at a BDSM run was weird enough, but in my state, it was probably even more surreal. In a certain way, my mindset left me a little numb - I was in mourning, not for what had just happened, but for what I thought was certain to come in its wake. All I could thing of was all the tragedies our community had faced and our slow fragile progress around them. Right then and there we had something precious that we needed to treasure while we still could. My reaction was, oh fuck - we may never have another Inferno. Bush will use this as an excuse to send the nation into a panic and take away our civil liberties - but no one wanted to hear this or think about this. Luckily, I was only half right. Bush certainly exploited the situation, but not as much as I feared in my oversensitive state of mind.

In the following year Jon died of cancer, and as is typical with a friend's passing, I learned things about him I never knew about him in life. We always connected on eastern spirituality and martial arts and technology. Like me he was a geek of sorts. He practiced martial arts and I did yoga and grappling, He was a Buddhist, I was a Hindu. But I never learned exactly what he thought of me - or even what I thought of him - until he was gone. We each had partners, and both of us respected that. But somehow we also never connected more deeply out of that respect. Only times we connected deeply was in the most extreme play I'll probably ever do.

Perhaps that brief bright moment of connect is enough. For those of you that engage in heavy BDSM and have merged with another person in play you know the deep connection in those hours spent in a scene. It's certainly a lot, and I know I'll never forget those fleeting hours we spent on the edges of human experience.

I'd like to dedicate the last scene of Shock Treatment to Jon, just as Tony is dedicating the opening sounding scene with Element to our club brother Parker. Parker taught Tony how to do this scene on me, and then made him the plug you see today in the video. Like all great players, Parker taught as well as he played. So I'd like to express my sincere gratitude to Jon, Parker, and all the great teachers in our scene - they pass on the arcane knowledge that makes all these intense moments of possible.

We all have only a short time on this planet and Jon's time is fondly remembered by many.

5 June 2009 - Changes

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 19:45:00 GMT

So lately I've been doing a little searching and reconsidering. I've been taking a few steps back to take a better look at things. When you're in the middle of something it's very hard to get an objective perspective. But I've not been thrilled with my path of late. While I've been successful at all of it, now I'm left wondering is this the success I want. My parents raised me to believe that I could be pretty much anything I wanted. While they made their desires for me pretty explicit, truth be told, the stuff they wanted for me was simple and easy to obtain. A good job, a stable life, health and enough money to not worry about the day to day.

But they also knew I would do things my own way and their biggest worry was I might chase a dream that really left me successful but broke. Or that sex and drugs might become detriments to my well being. Well quite the opposite happened and at least by my mom and dad's standards I'm a smashing success, even if they don't have any grand kids.

Still my own desires for myself have been far more ambitious and dispersed. I've spent time as a musician, a promoter, a writer, a record producer, a fighter, a yoga teacher, a leader in the leather community and as a porn star. And I have a good career as a computer geek that actually pays the real bills.

Those are kind of a wide spread and none of them really intersect that well with the milieu I'm most comfortable in.

Lately I'm realizing that luckily there are smart fags that aren't old and stodgy. The old gay cultural avant garde may not be what it once was, but there are still a few of us that like ideas and culture and pushing the boundaries. And not everyone in this category is campy and smug in a sort of misunderstood parody of Warhol.

Guys like Ron Athey remind me of this, as do a many of the writers and musicians I've met along the way. Heck there have even been a few folks in porn that have this intelligence. Guys like Christoper Rage and Fred Halsted did this back in the day. And I was pretty impressed with Chi Chi La Rue's love and depth of knowledge of the porn genre. Still I'm not certain I belong in pornoland as a full time identity. While I joke about these things, at the heart of this is a simple matter that is quite serious. Trying to gain love and acceptance from people whose values don't match your own is foolish - my modest success in adult video has never meant this was a path for me to follow all that seriously. After a few years of watching the press for my reviews and being happy when my vids won awards, I'm less impressed by it all, and I also know the days of these sorts of accolades are ending anyhow.

Still I love good BDSM play, and I love depicting it. I'm not quitting in this world, but I'm through trying to chase after the parts of it that aren't my passions. I belong to many communities, but my ties to the porn world have been tentative at best. I can own being a BDSM player, or a record producer, or even a academic writer on sex and philosophy. But I'm no porn star.

So where do I go from here? I'm still gonna take whatever fetish roles I'm offered as a performer - it's still fun to shoot good sex. But that's not my primary ambition and if the phone doesn't ring, I'm not gonna stir up action like I used to. Instead, I'm doing what all old porn stars seem to do, but I'm doing it much differently. I've been studying video production and I've invested in a nice HD rig, good lighting, editing system etc. I've been going back to the movies that make me want to do porn vids and I'm realizing they are really art vids that use porn as their medium. Movies like "My Masters" or "LA Plays Itself" or "Scorpio Rising" are hot, but they also really depict the deeper meanings of sex and depict it in a powerful way that isn't just recreation.

Moving forward my focus will be on serious films that really seek to show and celebrate the deep core of human sexuality as expressed in BDSM. It's been done before, but the results have either always been too much art or too much porn. If I can find a way to balance these, I think I might have something... Let the explorations begin. And yes, I'll be casting, so if you're a performer that wants to do something that has a little more depth, give a holler. All great film making comes from great collaboration and I'm building a team to do something new and exciting. None of this will make much money, but I at least hope to create something hot and beautiful that shows how profound human sexuality really is.

Quote of the Day

Tue, 12 May 2009 03:13:00 GMT

July 15th, 2010
What is called Love.
From Friedrich Nietzsche's "The Gay Science" Book one, section 16,

Greed and love: what different feelings each of these ideas evoke! and yet it might be the same impulse twice named: once disparaged by those who already have (in whom the impulse has attained something of repose, who are now apprehensive for the safety of their "possession"); on the other occasion viewed from the standpoint of the unsatisfied and thirsty, and therefore glorified as "good." Our love of our neighbor, is it not a striving after new property? And similarly our love of knowledge, of truth; and in general all the striving after novelties? We gradually become satiated with the old and securely possessed, and again stretch out our hands; even the most beautiful landscape is no longer certain of our love after we've lived there three months, and any distant coast excites our greed: the possessing usually diminishes the possession. Our pleasure in ourselves seeks to maintain itself by always transforming something new into ourselves, that is just what possessing means. To become satiated with a possession, that is to become satiated with ourselves. (One can also suffer from excess, even the desire to cast away, to share out, can take on the honorary title of "love.") When we see any one suffering, we willingly utilize the opportunity then afforded to take possession of him; the beneficent and sympathetic man, for example, does this; he also calls the desire for new possession awakened in him, by the name of "love," and has enjoyment in it, as in a new acquisition suggesting itself to him. Sexual love, however, betrays itself most plainly as the striving after possession: the lover wants the unconditional, sole possession of the person longed for by him; he wants just as absolute power over their soul as over their body; he wants to be loved solely, and to dwell and rule in the other soul as what is highest and most to be desired. When one considers that this means precisely to exclude from all the world enjoyment of this precious good, from sharing in its happiness and enjoyment; if one considers that the lover has as his goal the impoverishment and privation of all other rivals, and would like to become the dragon of his golden hoard, as the most inconsiderate and selfish of all "conquerors" and exploiters; when one considers finally that to the lover himself, the whole world besides appears indifferent, colorless, and worthless, and that he is ready to make every sacrifice, disturb every arrangement, and put every other interest behind his own, one is verily surprised that this ferocious lust of property and injustice of sexual love should have been glorified and deified to such an extent at all times; yea, that out of this love the conception of love as the antithesis of egoism should have been derived, when it is perhaps precisely the most unqualified expression of egoism. Here, evidently, the non-possessors and desirers have determined the usage of language, there were, of course, always too many of them. Those who have been favored with much possession and satiety, have, to be sure, dropped a word now and then about the "raging demon," as, for instance, did the most lovable and most beloved of all the Athenians Sophocles; but Eros always laughed at such revilers, they were always his greatest favorites.

Here and there earth there is probably a kind of a continuation of love, in which this greedy desire of two persons for one another has yielded to a new desire and greed, to a shared higher thirst for an ideal above them. But who knows this love? Who has experienced it? Its true name is friendship.

Previous quote:
June 25th, 2010

Over the footbridge.
From Friedrich Nietzsche's "The Gay Science" Book one, section 16,

One must be able to dissimulate in conversations with persons who are bashful about their feelings; they have a sudden hatred of anyone who surprises them in a state of tenderness, or of enthusiastic and elevated emotion, as if he had seen their secrets. If one wants to be kind to them in such moments one should make them laugh, or say some kind of cold, playful witticism - their feeling thereby fades, and they are again recomposed. But I give the moral before the story. Once in our lives we were so near to one another, that nothing at all seemed to hinder our friendship and brotherhood, and there was merely a small plank between us. As you were just about to step on it, I asked you: "Do you want to come across the footbridge to me?" But then you did not want to cross any longer; and when I again entreated, you fell silent. Since then, mountains and torrents and whatever separates and alienates, have interposed between us, and even if we wanted to come to one another, we could no longer do so! When, however, you now remember that small bridge you have no longer words, but merely sobs and bewilderment.

9 May 2009 - Flame: is this cool or what??

Sun, 10 May 2009 03:08:00 GMT

So the banner ads and preview clips for my XXX: Flame bonus clip are out.

(NOTE: this scene is online only so if you click the link wanting to see it, you have to click on Buy a Scene and download XXX: FLAME director's cut).

I spent a lot of time envisioning something totally new for this scene and then engineered how to do it safely, so it's really exciting to finally get to see how beautiful it is:

Special thanks to Steve Cruz, Leif Gobo, Mustang and Falcon for making this happen. And very special thanks to my amazingly hot (literally hot?) co-star Scott Campbell for trusting me in this crazy fucked up scene.

As far as what you are seeing in this scene? The swinging chain is electrified and Scott's chest was painted with alcohol. When the chain swings across his chest, the "X" I painted in alcohol is ignited. This did burn his chest hair off in an X pattern! Please don't repeat this scene unless you are taught by someone familiar with both electric play and fire play - it's an advanced scene and we had a lot of precautions in place on set to make sure Scott was safe.

1 May 2009 - A season of adjusted expectations (subtitle: working in a velvet goldmine)

Fri, 01 May 2009 14:47:00 GMT

The Wolverine movie comes out tonight. Like the Watchmen movie it won't be bad - but it won't be all that amazing either, and certainly won't live up to any of my hopes. But, really, this entry isn't about superhero movies.

This weekend I'm finishing tracking on the metal punk album (well I hope I'm finishing as this has already been a lot of work). Which means next week I get to get to work on guitar and vocal tracking for the glam band's record. [cue: elated anticipation]

I think this glam project has me the most excited of any music project I've ever worked on - ever. With my last major project I warmed up as we went because we shared so much musical background and because they are such talented musicians - and because the album concept they presented was so ambitious and challenging. The results were pretty amazing, and the double LP has done extremely well by any standard (besides, perhaps, my larger than life hopes for it and there is still time for that).

But back to the glam record. Thisisn't a dress up and be silly glam rock band. It's the real fucking deal. It's T.Rex and the Sweet and Bowie and Slade all rolled up together to rock your fucking balls off. It's pure rock and roll, raw and over the top at the same time. The kind of glam rock that kept a torch burning bright in the dark days before punk came along to save us all.

Still when my hopes get this high I'm setting myself up for a fall. My last project snuck up on me and before I knew it I was part of creating something that deserves to be a classic, no matter how it actually goes down.

I have to manage myself and keep my feet on the earth. There is a reason why the old Junior Murvin song "Cool out, Son" is a theme song of mine:
Son, don't put your hat/ where you can't reach it / it doesn't make no sense
Good things come / to those who work hard for it / adjust yourself to the life you can afford to live
The road to the top is long and wide - yeah
A foolish dog barks at the flying bird
Patient Men ride donkeys
Cool out son.
You have to creep before you walk - where there is life there is hope
Cool out son.

Of course I often feel like my time is running short. Porn, pop music, MMA. These are young men's games and I'm not so young anymore. I'm still young enough but I do see my time ticking away. After busting my ass for so long, I'm wondering if my star rose and fell already in my years as a queer punk figure in the 90's. Yeah I've been through this modest fame thing before, but this time it's a smaller pond and one in which I'm far less important - so I just have to remember to enjoy the ride for what it is.

Getting a GayVN's nom was fun, but it was also a bummer cuz I knew I couldn't win - I'm just not known by the folks that generally judge these things. Case in point, I met a couple of that judges - neither knew who I was, and one apparently hadn't actually seen any of the four nominated movies I was in - or at least not my scenes in them. Which creates a picture in my head of a dude running down the noms looking for names he might have heard before. At least this is just porn awards voting - I have a sneaking suspicion this is how we elect our government as well!

So back again the the topic lest I digress too far. The vocals for this record are gonna be tricky to record. The lead singer easily has my favorite voice among Chicago punks - heck, he's even better than that, he's an all time great. He also likes using lots of low-fi effects on his voice. It's going to be a tricky balancing act capturing all the over effected fx processing madness of his stage voice, while still creating a good proper vocal that sits up front and really drives the song. I've done it with him before, but still it's tricky. My normal inclination is to leave the effects to mixdown, but when they become part of the performance it's not so simple, and once you've added the kinds of effect he uses, you really can't take them out. I'll probably cheat and record two tracks, one with effects looped in and the other dry as dust. Enough of the geek speak tho... anyone that actually likes talking about recording music should probably just write me as I could go for days.

So, as usual I'm stuck between cockiness and insecurity about my ability to meet my own standards. I guess that's the human condition though - and even when you've got it, it never feels that way, because they only way you get anything is by shooting higher. I see a band like the Rolling Stones who did a string of records long ago that are among the greatest popular music ever. The band members are rich and will continue to be rich just from these old records. But they still create new music and tour. Why? Do they just love it? Or do they think, "this time I'm gonna do the best show ever," or "this record is gonna be another classic." Cuz, well it ain't gonna happen - Mick and Keith will never top "Let it Bleed" or "Exile on Mainstreet" or "Sticky Fingers." I wonder if they know this and I wonder if it makes them unhappy - or if they're just happy to be the Rolling-fuckin-Stones.

My hope for them is that they just keep doing it for the joy of doing it - and I need that to be my goal as well, so that maybe I can just be happy with what I have.

Cool out son...

30 April 2009 - Rope, Bondage and Power is out now

Fri, 01 May 2009 04:55:00 GMT

Yes, it's true. Porn stars can write.

Tony and I just wrote a chapter in the new book, Rope Bondage and Power. It contains a lot of different perspectives from a bunch of well known people in the bondage scene and is very much worth checking out!

For more info (or to buy it!) click below:

28 April 2009 - Instigator article is DONE

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 23:42:00 GMT

So Tony and I got to see the final layouts for our newest Instigator column, "Anatomy of a Scene: Bondage." They looked amazing. Thorn's layout was clean and allowed Clive Barker's amazing photographs of our bondage suspension blood art ritual to dominate. As usual, the article is about the psychology of a particular area of BDSM play, about the limits and about how we strive to mitigate risks when we play at the limits. I think people will enjoy the article as it gets into some of the dynamics of our play that are commonly misunderstood. In early revisions Thorn wanted us to show how the come down period at the end of a scene allowed us to reconnect. But the fact is, it is in deep play that Tony and I connect most fully - indeed when we don't get to play heavy I feel less connected to him. So a good chunk of the article ended up being adapted from our conversations with Thorn where we tried to explain to him how it really works for us.

Now to be certain, some people play in scene where they become someone else or where they turn their partner into a stranger. Such a mind set can be crucial to more role play based fantasies and in those cases, it is important to come back out of roles. But for Tony and I, play is different and is a way to connect. Even when we've done play that is explicitly role based - like puppy play - we are still essentially playing ourselves, just through a filter that allows us to express different aspects of our personalities. So while I might need to come out of puppy space, that isn't the same as coming back to re-establish that the person torturing and raping you isn't a Grand Inquisitor, but is rather your partner.

In other news, XXX is out. I have a doozy of a cum shot in it. It's like.... wow. And shot against a black background. XXX is an important career turning point for me in that I play a top role - something I mostly stopped doing when I met Tony - and in that the DVD edit is just sex, no fetish or BDSM content. While I'm not sure how often I'll do pure sex vids (though if Chi Chi La Rue cast me as a hot daddy I'd be there in a heartbeat), it's definitely great to be establishing the next phase of my career and fans of my better topping roles in videos like Knots will be happy, I'm sure.

Right now I'm busy recording vocals for a metal influenced record. I forget how comfortable I've gotten with production. I've tuned my ears to the point that I can hear problems and fix them rather quickly, and I've found ways to make bands very happy by hearing things in their music that they didn't realize were there and helping them bring out new points of interest. It's a subtle kind of creativity, and one that gets little credit, but somehow I love it. There is something awesome about doing just that little bit of extra that a pure audio engineer wouldn't.

Not much else is new. Getting ready to celebrate my 13th anniversary with Doug on May 5th. It's also our 10th anniversary of moving in together. Gay anniversaries are odd things since we all pick our own events to commemorate.

Right now I'm just happy that tonight I have a night for Doug and I to lift weights, watch TV and get back to routine for a few weeks. Having house guests is fun, especially ones like Midori. But right now I need a little less chaos for a few weeks!!

26 April 2009 - Back from CLAW

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 02:28:00 GMT

Just a quick update. Tony and I did a new class at CLAW that went over quiet well. It's our 1-2-3 class and the color handouts are in the Education Section. And we passed out 75 safer sex hankies at CLAW. Our flight was delayed, so we ended up getting to spend a few hours getting to know Chuck Renslow - one of the true legends in the leather scene. It was really great talking with him, and I'm thinking I need to be at the IML contest this year to hear his speech!

Tony is mostly recovered from his concussion (see his journal for a funny entry on the dangers of watersports). But I think he'll be in pain from his bruised rib for sometime. As we say, "It's a contact sport."

The weather is so nice it's freaky, but in the midwest the rule is "if you don't like the weather wait a bit and it'll change." Sadly that goes both ways.

Anyhow I've got a Throbbing Gristle show to get to...

22 April 2009 - a double recording session

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:13:00 GMT

Last weekend I recorded the base tracks for 2 albums from two different bands, one all day Saturday, the other all day Sunday.

While it was pretty grueling, it still turned out to be far easier than I thought. Because the bands had very similar setups and because they shared by drum kit, the setup/tear down time was like what it would have taken for one band. I spent Thursday night cleaning up, Friday night setting up and by the time Saturday came around we were able to hit the ground running.

Shifting musical genres between days was interesting - the first band was very metal influenced, the second very glam rock with cleaner guitar sounds. But given how it all went I would probably do this again for other projects. I don't get a lot of free time to record, but my last few releases have been well received and are giving me a decent rep around town as a good producer/engineer/mixer (just don't ask me to do the mastering). And if I get time, I hope to expand that reputation to that of a good director of music videos - but right now getting time to complete this music video is rather challenging.

With the time constraints of doing BDSM education, adult vids, and keeping several relationships strong, finding time is hard and being able to double up on the loudest and most difficult day of recording really will make it easier for me to get more recording done moving forward.

Tony gets in tomorrow night, as does Midori. Tony and I will be at CLAW this weekend, teaching a class on bondage, doing demos, teaching scene etiquette and Tony will be on a panel about living in a leather family. Midori is teaching classes in Chicago and will be here a whole week which will be fun. My long time partner Doug hits it off really great with her - they'll probably be up all night gaming.

XXX is coming out next week - and Taken, my Channel One video, should be out shortly thereafter. So life is pretty exciting right now...

12 April 2009 - XXX "Flame" preview is out

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 23:10:00 GMT

Check out the scene on MustangStudios.com - the online version is pretty over the top (and the fire scene was too crazy for the DVD edit that is out April 28th, so online is the way to see it!)

11 April 2009 - a teaser for TAKE

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 01:08:00 GMT

My Channel One vid, Take, has a teaser clip showing my bondage, wax play and flogging... out in June! (UPDATE: the title is now "TAKEN: to the lowest level")
Enjoy.

More on TAKE including stills right here!

SiteUrl

Sat, 11 Apr 2009 02:46:00 GMT

http://derekdasilva.com/

8 April 2009 - The Titan "rough" shoot was electric but now I'm just trying to get caught up

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 23:17:00 GMT

Sometimes people ask me when I sleep. My real answer is, I don't sleep that much - but usually I'm daft and say, I'll sleep when I'm dead! But the last couple of nights were all about finally catching up after a few weeks of pushing myself a little harder than usual and finally hitting that point of total exhaustion.

Last week I shot my newest video with Titan. As usual I'm not going to be giving away shoot details since I never even know what will make the final cut anyhow. What I am certain of is that this latest video promises to capture electro play better than you've ever seen it before. Capturing electro play is technically really difficult, but Titan's HD rig and stellar crew were up to the task - we not only did things that you've not seen on video before, but we've made sure that they were captured in a way that really lets you see what is happening.

The scene Tony and I did involves some of the heaviest pain play you'll ever see on video or off. By the end of it I was giddy on endorphines and even had a mild case of post traumatic stress disorder that lasted a couple of days. Tony liked the effect and promises to repeat that scene again. And unlike when he flogs me, it doesn't require that he wear himself out to get a reaction out of me. While the techniques we used in this scene are among the most notorious known in the world - and are things that our government wouldn't try to pass off even at Guantanamo - there is an important difference. Unlike when it's a POW, this as a consensual scene and that makes a huge difference.

This coming weekend should be a nice one. We've got most of our work off of our plate - just a few last sidebars to add to our Instigator article and some handouts for the basic bondage class we'll be teaching at CLAW in a couple of weeks. So this weekend will mostly be about reconnecting with Tony, hanging out at the only leather bar that matters (the Hole) for our local Sir/boy weekend, and attending Chicago Hellfire's Party - where I'm hoping Tony gets to meet some of the boys I've been playing with lately. They are a good bunch and are at that cool age where they are grown up enough to really know that this whole scene is what they want in life, but still young and new enough to really be excited by all the new discoveries they are making. I miss that rush of discovery although being experienced has its own rewards to be certain.

In another week, one of my boys will be helping me engineer a couple of recording sessions. I've never had an assistant, so this is really promising. One thing I love about this newest group of boys is they are really smart, and many of them are involved in audio or video work - things that I am equally into so there is a nice commonality between us. We are all chatting about doing work together and if we start, I think the world had better be on notice to watch out!

Otherwise it's all just the little things - getting my taxes in, cleaning up my place and unpacking the stacks of suitcases that I have laying about from my constant travel.

Right now things are changing, new possibilities are aligning, and I think something good is around the corner. But for now I'm just waiting and trying to be ready to seize whatever comes next.

Scenus Interupptus

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 04:02:00 GMT

It's like going to a punk show where they have "No Moshing" signs all over. And it might be another cause of the death of the scene.

The 2009 GayVN awards were fun, but truth be told, we weren't totally at home there, and we wanted to be with our people, the folks that understand who we are and what we're about. The ones who don't recoil in horror and treat us like freaks for our D/s relationship and for the intense way we express our love.

So after the awards we went to have a little drink with friends at the bar we had chosen to call our home away from home in San Francisco. It was a Leather bar and up until very recently it was managed by a fellow member of the community - so it really was a true Leather bar, for people that actually live the lifestyle as opposed to dress up in costumes to get laid on a Saturday night. It was a players' bar like the ones I had many great experiences in when I was first coming out.

But with new management that all changed apparently. We waited for the bar crowd to thin a bit, but once it had, Tony was going to give me the good flogging I had been needing for a while. This is a scene we've done dozens of times and without any harm to my person (Tony on the other hand has lost contact lenses on several occasions - I need to be hit hard and sometimes this can have collateral damage on the top!) As we were ramping up, I allowed myself to process the pain verbally - while I can probably be stoic, really a scene is better for top and bottom when the energies unleashed are allowed to build. Plus, my verbal feedback is my primary way to communicate in a scene to let Tony know exactly where I am at. And good communication is extremely important in a heavy scene.

But our play was disturbing to the new manager, who apparently isn't aware of the rep of this bar he now is in charge of (or perhaps of our rep!) So he sends a bartender over to stop the scene. I'm not gonna get into the specifics of how it all went down. My back was to it all anyhow and I was just trying to keep in head space during the interruption - usually when this happens we start again as soon as every realizes that I'm more than ok with what is happening. The music was too loud for me to really hear most of it, but I've heard it all before anyhow - but this time we didn't start up again and thus we never finished our scene.

Scenus interupptus. Again and again, the same old crap keeping us from having fun and living our lives. You can't do that because "I don't like it and it scares me" - or the alternate version where someone likes it so much he has to push his way into our scene, ruining the energy and causing us to give up rather than be subjected to poor imitations of 70's porn dialogue and the odors of popper abuse.

Even in a leather bar, there often is someone that doesn't want BDSM to occur around them, and unfortunately, sometimes it is someone that is in charge or that has some authority. Maybe they should watch Al Pacino's "Cruising" before accepting employment in a leather bar. Sort of like the sensitivity training they give cops that work the gay ghetto.

At least this time they were talking to Tony and not trying stupid things like physically blocking him, grabbing his flogger mid stroke or harassing me by asking if I needed protection (whilst being oblivious to the fact that I could just walk away at any time - never mind that fact that I'm more heavily built than Tony and look like I could kick his and anyone else's ass).

A long while back, in my pre-vegetarian days when I still wore leather, I was thrown out of a Chicago "leather" bar for having my leather jacket off in the backroom while I was being flogged. I didn't go back to this bar for almost a decade. Perhaps they were really that serious about their dress code and some literal version of leather. But I've always figured it was the BDSM play that really bugged them.

And the silliness of these control freaks goes on. The Chicago Eagle wouldn't let me in the backroom a couple of times in a row because my pants and chaps are from Nasty Pig and thus are technically neither rubber nor leather, but "polyamide nylon" as the doorman sternly informed me. The point of these dress codes is to keep the feel of the bars in character and to keep outsiders out - but on most nights I can say with out bragging that I'm pretty much one of the few guys that actually looks the part - even if my clothing isn't literally leather. I present myself stripped to the waist, showing my muscles and extensive tats - these things aren't off the rack, they are earned in sweat and pain, just as my insider position in this community is earned through my decades of work to make it a better, more inclusive and safer place for all. But somehow, that's not the point when you run a leather bar - and they wonder why they are increasingly dying and irrelevant. I stayed away from the Eagle for a couple of years - visiting again only the night before the bar closed. When the Chicago Eagle reopens in its new location I'll be willing to see if it is different, but somehow I think I'll be sticking to the Hole with its younger, wilder and more play oriented crowd.

People don't need to go out to be held to strange rules that aren't even in keeping with the real soul of what these bars are about. These are the places where we should feel at home and not made to be strangers like everywhere else.

Perhaps our scene is dying because it's no longer a welcoming home to the people that actually need a home. Instead, it's filled with people left over from another time because the bars refused to evolve even as they got more conservative in their sexual mores, people whose belonging is predicated on excluding anyone that is new and threatening to the ways they've grown accustomed to.

Or I could be totally wrong. All this might sound like egomania in the end - but I think something is going on that is bigger than us and that really indicates that the next generation of serious players needs a home. If we keep it in our bedrooms, if we don't set safe examples and if one is around to explain what is safe and what is not and where to go to learn more, then we are sure to reap the results (correction: I think we are already reaping them). When Tony and I do a heavy scene, anyone that is actually interested in such activities is on us seconds after we finish the scene - often too soon since we need time to come back to earth, but we do understand the emotion in this earnestness having been there ourselves. When I first saw guys safely do some of the crazy things I've always had in my head it was like the whole world opened up to me and I was so fucking happy. I knew then that I maybe wasn't so crazy and I felt all sorts of fear and shame fall away. I was giddy with happiness to know I could actually do this wild stuff and that it was OK. And fuck if that didn't change my life for the better.

There are those of us that like to play heavy yet safe - and who enjoy doing it in public. This is not just out of our own exhibitionism (which frankly is OK, too) but also because we like sharing the idea that what we do is fun and valid and that can be done in a safe and healthy fashion.

The internet has opened doors for many, but it's also made it easier for novices to hook up with guys that don't know what the fuck they are doing and that aren't safe and that aren't willing to put a public face on what they do or to stand up for certain long standing community values. (I won't say "Old Guard" values, because what I speak of here is eternal and real).

Our point is simple. We aren't prudes. We like pushing the edges and we do it safely mitigating all risks that we practically can. Our example is one of playing wildly but taking the precautions needed to make it unlikely that you'll ever go to far. We stand in opposition to folks whose work you'll often see in bars - that of the bareback video producers. We play safe and we play intense. We aren't sorry if our intensity scares people - because what we are doing is far less harmful than activities that seem to scare no one these days. And our kind of twisted play requires skill - skill that only comes by forming teaching communities.

We play in public because we we enjoy it and because we have nothing to hide. Our friends that have died from BDSM play, died alone away from watchful eyes. They died from tops that stupidly left them alone in bondage or from their own foolishness in playing autoerotic asphyxiation games alone. There is safety in public play and those that would hide safe kink from view kill communication, invalidate alternative sexualities, and ultimately harm our communities.

When our play offends you, we ask you to do one thing. Let us finish and then talk with us about the risks we take and how we work to mitigate them. Don't judge until you understand. In following the Risk Aware Consensual Kink model we walk a line that we feel is defensible and we're fine with honest open dialog. And even in the RACK model we tend to take a very safe, risk adverse posture. What we don't care for is fear of play that is different not because it is known to be bad or dangerous, but simply because it is unknown.

. . . .

And yes, in case you are wondering: it hurts intensely to be treated as a pariah and a freak, even (especially) within your own home scene.