don't be that guy

This vid may be explicitly about not being a creepy foot fetishist, but I think lots of people with other kinks could learn from it too.

the adventure

So yes, as I mentioned, I went to an "Ageplay Adventure" party a few weeks ago. It's a regular event held here in San Francisco, but this was the first and last one that I would see in my stint here before heading back to London, so I thought it'd be a great idea to go and check it out.

And, ultimately, it kind of was and kind of wasn't.

The event itself was great. I really liked the space (a sort of club-lite type space with a "dungeon" downstairs, that in this instance was primarily used as a space for photo ops rather than any real hard play; at least, as far as I could tell), I really enjoyed chatting with a lot of the people there (which, after some initial shyness, I found really easy to do) and there were some well-chosen food, games and toys to help bring out the littles in a lot of us (including some peanut butter & jelly sandwiches which, as a Brit, I had actually never tried before, yet somehow I still fell victim to their comfort-food charms).

The problem, though, is that this is still not an easy kink for Kitty and I to discuss, sometimes, and throwing her into the middle of a big ageplay event was perhaps not the greatest of ideas.

Really though, we didn't have much of a choice, it seemed. Even though she is still uncomfortable with ageplay and ABDL stuff on the whole, Kitty appreciated that this would be my one and only chance (for the forseeable future at least) to go to a big ageplay event populated by open-minded San Franciscan kinksters: a place where I could really explore my kink in a kind of space that I had never really encountered before (my own ageplay picnic that I threw a few months ago was an entirely different kind of beast). She felt that to ask me to pass up this opportunity for the sake of her comfort would seem really unfair to me, and so felt that she had to push through, go out of her comfort zone and give it a try anyway.

I, on the other hand, didn't want to come off as forcing her to go to something that she didn't want to go to, especially if she was doing it solely for my benefit. I tried to argue that, seriously, we could just not go, but in the tense atmosphere in which we were discussing this I think I wasn't able to prevent it from seeming like a disgruntled and adolescent-sounding "fine, if you don't want to go, I guess we shouldn't go then."

So yeah, horrible relationship stalemate argument thing. She didn't feel comfortable going but felt that I would ultimately hold it against her if we didn't go, I didn't want to force her into something she'd feel uncomfortable going to, but still really wanted to go myself. I tried telling myself that I would in fact be fine not going, but Kitty was right, I was probably just fooling myself by saying that, and would inevitably, immaturely bring up the fact that she "didn't let me go" in some hypothetical puerile future argument.

So in the end, we went, trying as much as possible to forget the drama that almost led to us not going. And like I said, I had a really great time. Kitty, on the other hand, felt really out of place. I would periodically check in on her and make sure everything was ok and ask if she wanted to leave - as per an agreement we had reached just before turning up - and she admitted that she wasn't exactly in the best place but was fine to stay if that's what I wanted. It was a little awkward, yes, but I knew that if I had said "well let's just go then," it would probably start a tiff.

This is, of course, one of the main reasons I have waited a little while before writing this. I thought it best to lay off writing or talking some more about AB stuff immediately after an event from which neither of us came away completely happy. The other reason is that I've been at Burning Man, which took up a couple of weeks of my time, so yeah, I feel that that was a fair excuse to not do some writing for a bit. I thought it best not to drag my laptop out into the middle of the desert.

So yeah, other observations/experiences from the event:

• I was positively surprised by the female-heavy turnout. I actually always feel more comfortable in female-dominated spaces. Even so, the men that were there were, on the whole, not the fetishist creeps that I feared, but were actually really fun to talk to. There was one major exception though: one guy who honestly talked in nothing but those horrible, clichéd lines one often uses to begin harassment-conversations on Diaperspace. Seriously, he was all "so, do you wear diapers all the time? What kind of diapers do you like to wear?" I didn't realise people actually talked like that in real life. I didn't realise it was feasible to start a real conversation that way. The worst part? He kept failing the Turing Test and when I posed him a question or try to turn the conversation a certain way he would just revert to one of his set questions like I hadn't asked him anything. Truly bizarre. Still, he was an amusing exception, not the rule, thankfully.
• I got talking with the event's hosts, which included veritable celeb of the ABDL world Penny Barber. We chatted somewhat about the event and about the scene in the UK. I must admit, after talking to Penny it sounded like there was some kind of huge scene in the UK that I am just missing out on. I'll clearly have to talk to some people when I get back, particularly the guy behind Care4Baby, apparently. Penny also had a changing table set up as part of the event and I even got changed by her after I had wet my diaper (after checking with Kitty that getting changed like that would be ok, of course). I must admit, this was the realisation of a long-time fantasy of mine. So yeah, once again, thanks, Penny!
• This kind of relates to what Charlie said, and what I was discussing some more in a previous post, but I actually felt really at home and really comfortable amongst the people there, even though many of the people there were people who had been at the previous event that had made me feel so uncomfortable I didn't even join in properly. I guess a combination of factors helped me feel more comfortable: the greater number of people made me feel less like I was intruding on a small, intimate group and more like I was at a club of like-minded people, and could step out of my relative anonymity and into talking to people whenever I felt like it. It also helped that, at this event, there were a lot more people around my age. The previous event had seemed to skew a bit older, making me feel a tad left out, but this time I felt fine.

So yeah, all in all, I had a lot of fun and would love to go to something like that again, if I'm being honest.

However, it did expose some issues that Kitty & I clearly have around this kink of mine, and we'll have to discuss those further (and have been discussing them since this event happened). I don't want to make her feel uncomfortable, but she doesn't want to feel like she's not allowing me to experience this kink of mine. It is a bit of a dilemma. Still, that's a post for another time, I think.

Plus, I imagine I'll come back and write some more about this event when I look back at this post and realise all the things that I forgot to write about this time.