PS034 - Spaces, Places and Desire

Aug 22

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Episode: https://shows.acast.com/660e243b2f834f0017de9181/episodes/660e2440acbcaf00174d993e

Which turns you on more - sensuously appointed bedrooms or debaucherous public dungeons? Lee Harrington explores the wide variety of places people enjoy sexual play, from private to public, and looking at what works for you. From the great outdoors to hideaway love hotels, swingers clubs to private rooms built in your home, let’s explore where works best for you.

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Announcer:
Welcome to Erotic Awakening, an exploration of all things erotic.

Every Thursday, your hosts Dan and Dawn share with you their experience and insights on kink, power exchange and erotic life, as well as bring you interviews with exciting people from various lifestyles.

Then every Monday, you'll hear from our various guest hosts.

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Erotic Awakening is intended for mature audiences.

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Lee:
Hello, fellow adventurers of sexuality and spirit, and welcome to Erotic Awakening with Lee Harrington.

It is so good to be back.

Last month, some life kerfuffles came along the way, as so many of us have happened.

And I am delighted to be back on this podcast, bringing you more thoughts, more ideas from the adventures of the world at large for sexuality.

Kink, delicious desire, hotness, and also the explorations of the heart.

And there has been a lot of that for me recently.

But what's been really exciting for me is looking at the notion of play.

Now, play means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

For some people, the notion of play is where we get to be children at heart.

And literally play with each other in an erotic context.

For some people, play involves the notion of a play.

A play that has scenes, individual scenes that have a beginning, a middle and an end, that have a context to them, a point to them, that in some cases are prescripted, and in other cases are things that slowly evolve over time that are improv, as it were.

Now, with play meaning lots of different things to lots of different people, the places that play takes in can take a lot of different forms.

And that's the piece I've also been really sitting with recently, is where do we do this thing called play?

Now, play gets referred to in The Kink and BDSM and erotic adventuring community as being this thing that just perverts do.

But really, I think that any sexual explorer can play, whether that is a pre-written script, whether that is improvisational theater, or whether that is playing, as children do, but as consenting adults.

So as I'm talking about this stuff today, I'd really like you to ponder as you're listening to this, what does play look like for you?

Because as we talk about the spaces that play takes place in, it's important that you know your own context.

I'm speaking from the journey of this person that gets referred to as Lee Harrington, right?

As the human being that is sitting here right now, talking to you.

I'm going to tell stories from other people that I know.

I'm going to mention places that I know of and haven't spent a lot of time, just a little bit.

But I'm also going to talk about places that I've been to and loved and immersed myself in.

But for you to sit with this material, it's really important that you have a context of what play means for you.

Because if I talk about a big dungeon space, you need to know for yourself whether that might be something that appeals to you.

And that's what I want to have us evolve and reveal together.

So you ready?

Ready to go for an adventure?

And if you're not, feel free to pause this, come back to it.

It's okay.

You can come back to this later.

But if we're ready to go, let's go on an adventure.

So I love interacting with people.

I love love.

I love connection and hope and dreams.

I am delighted by delicious debauchery.

And debauchery takes place in a lot of different places.

And by debauchery, I mean more than just the filthiest we can get to.

I mean diving into that which debauches out of our day-to-day life, that which delights us.

And so for me, the places that we do this in very widely.

I've been publicly in the scene for some number of years.

I think I'm at 17 or something, which is slightly distressing to me when I think about the math.

But anyway, I've been doing this for a little while, and there are such a variety of spaces that, to be honest, there are some spaces that just turn me off, that just make my engagement level and my desire to connect or my desire to just get it on, just vanish.

It just vanishes, and that's depressing to me because I want to be playing in places that inspire me.

I have other places that I walk into them and go, oh yeah, this has possibility.

Or other places where I go, oh, this is really beautiful and sensual and I feel like there's potential here.

Other places that feel comforting and safe, some places that feel dangerous and unsafe, and that I don't want to play here because I can't let my shoulders drop down.

And I'm a big believer as of late of listening to the body.

Now mind you, I'm also a hyperanalytical human being and so there's times where I do not follow my own advice.

But those moments where I walk into a space and my shoulders are up in my ears and I go, okay, I don't really even feel safe to have a conversation here.

But talking to lots of different people, I find that what was a huge turn on for me was not a turn on for them and vice versa.

So for example, let's talk about big dungeons.

So I think of Kinkfest in Portland, Oregon or the dungeon space at The Floating World in New Jersey, where it's a convention center space that's huge and massive and sprawling with spaces built out in grid lines so that each person can claim their area and that literally a thousand people can be in the dungeon at one time.

It's massive.

But I remember being at Floating World, I think it was the first year I went, and I was flirting heavily with this incredibly cute punk boy.

I'd been on his, he was boot blacking, and I'd been at his chair, and what started out as a sensual and sweet boot blacking turned into him humping up and down my leg, his lips making his way up the inseam of my jeans, eyes locking, eyes devouring one another, longing, such longing.

And we went to play that night, and we wandered around the play space, and it just, it just felt like a convention center, it just felt like a convention center, 4,000 square feet taken over by huge amounts of play equipment, suspension frames that went two stories up and could lift people up in the air, to flip upside down, right side up, or struggle there wondering if they could safely get down.

What felt like miles of single-tail space, a huge area for blood sports, decorative piercing.

All of this area that just went on and on, and it was beautiful.

It was well-appointed, but it's not what we were looking for.

We wanted somewhere that was dirty and hot.

We wanted somewhere that felt grungy.

And so we went hunting, and we ended up playing in a cargo container sort of thing.

Like a U-Haul kind of hauling thing on the back loading dock.

Now I know I'm not supposed to say that I broke into back property on a play.

You know, whatever, right?

But what was really interesting for me is that for me and this punk boy, what we really wanted was not what the event was providing.

It wasn't the right event for play for us.

For us, we wanted something dirty and intimate and connecting in the ways that we wanted to connect, which was private.

We wanted something intimate.

We wanted something where it was just the two of us.

And so thinking back on it, it would have been really good for the punk boy and I to play in our hotel room, right?

We could throw stuff on the ground, wrestle around, and you know what?

Something as simple, whether it's in a hotel room or in your bedroom at home, of changing out the sheets, putting down satin sheets if you're into that kind of deliciousness and sensuality.

Something as simple as taking a drapery and putting it over that ubiquitous television set that's bolted to every single hotel room.

Now, taking a drapery and making the space yours.

Putting out a scented candle even if you don't light it.

To create a space that is inviting to the senses.

And so thinking back on it, I could have done that.

We could have done that.

But it's not where we physically were.

We were at an event where it was appropriate for us to stay physically at the event, because both of us had dates afterwards and people we wanted to connect to.

That kind of play space can be really great for some people, though, especially for those who are exhibitionists.

People who want to be the center of attention, who want to have people over at the side with their genitals in hand, watching, watching, taking it in and thrusting it back and forth because you are their inspiration.

You are their visual delight.

In which case those big public play spaces are fantastic, or if what you're looking for is equipment.

If you wanted that two story tall suspension point, unless you live out in the woods or you have some sort of big vaulted ceilings, in which case rock on, go you.

For a lot of us, we don't have that.

So getting to go to the big public play space gives an opportunity for that.

There are other people who love those kinds of spaces because they are voyeurs themselves.

But getting to wander around those play spaces allows them an opportunity to be inspired.

And if they're at home in their bedroom, even with changing out the sheets, even with having the bolts back in the sides of the bed where the kids can't see it, even if the incense is lit, even if that perfect music is playing, they're not having that same level of inspiration.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

To have that kind of inspiration is fantastic.

For other people, having a play space that's outdoors can be really beautiful and erotic.

So think ahead of time about what you want in those kinds of play spaces.

Is it something big?

I think back to Living In Leather 2000, and what was really amazing to me was not the play space itself, though that was really cool.

I did some really intense scenes.

I was suspended for the very first time as a bottom, and we had one suspension frame, and it wasn't really a suspension frame.

It was literally a forklift with a giant piece of bamboo tied to it.

Like, I'm not kidding.

It was a forklift.

And you know what?

There's not nearly enough forklifts in dungeons nowadays.

Just saying.

Like, so if you're running an event that has a forklift, let me know.

It was really fun.

I'd love to go to it.

But what was really neat for me about that play space was that I came out of it with memories.

That it wasn't just my individual scenes that happened that weekend.

It's that I was part of a tapestry.

That I was part of something greater.

And that that plays into my notion of scene.

If people are familiar with it, if not, it's a fantastic episode.

Joss Whedon directed an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that was a musical.

And throughout a lot of the musical, a lot of the episode, it was our heroes and heroines, you know, with there at the forefront with the demon who's singing and, you know, Don and Buffy who are all singing, right?

Spike with that amazing song that was I died so many years ago.

Right?

Like it was this really, I don't know, is a really beautiful episode.

But what was really cool to me is that they weren't in a vacuum.

They were not in a vacuum.

There was this point where they're in the occult shop and they go, well, if it's just us, it'll be a spell.

And they open up the door and there are these people doing flips and whatever where it's, we got the mustard out.

Like it was just this ridiculousness that made it something greater, that made it something bigger, that made it part of this tapestry, this play, where it wasn't just the main players, it was part of this context.

And having a context can really be powerful and erotic for some people, especially for folks where this is the one big event they get to go to or this is the one at the time of year that they really honestly get to play.

Being part of a bigger context creates something to look back on, something really delicious, which I think is pretty neat.

But if we are looking to play at home, the thing that I like to think about is what about playing at home does it for us?

Is it about the intimacy?

Is it about the connection?

Is it about feeling like I have control over this space?

Is it about it being safe and ours that no one else plays here and it makes it special?

Is it about the decor?

Right?

Because I know some people who get totally turned on by the industrial look, where it's metal, metal, more metal, that drain in the center of the floor.

I went to a hotel in Sydney, Australia once, which was a crazy night because there were floods everywhere, and we still made our way to the hotel where we wandered into the bathroom, and it was literally chrome floors, chrome sink tops, chrome everything, and a drain in the center of the room.

And I remember my boy and I looking at each other and going, that kind of moment that we just got hard.

We just got turned on that that was an aesthetic that we didn't have at home and that it was something that we had both jerked off to historically.

But what if that was at your house?

I got to go to a play space in Boston, outside of Boston once, there was a home play space of this guy who he had decided to create theme rooms.

And so he had one room that was medical theme, where he had a medical gurney, he had an exam table, and he also had the shower that he'd built for his own fantasies.

He'd always wanted a fantasy shower space, and so it was this big, I'd say like 10 by 10, maybe it was 8 by 8 shower, where it had three shower heads off each of the walls and a direct overhead, like a release thing that you would have for washing off people who had been in medical waste accidents of some sort, that he'd built this space because it turned him on.

And that was that room.

He had another room that was kind of swinger, swanky, where it was a huge bed, where the entire ceiling was a mirror.

He had another room that was a library space because he was a total nerd, and so he had some sex wedges and a spanking bench surrounded by books.

But if you went down one of the hallways, there was a sconce.

No, it wasn't a sconce.

It was a book.

You got to pull this book off a bookshelf, and it opened up a fake wall.

And beyond the fake wall was a medieval torture-themed room.

Was it a little cheesy?

But the concept was fantastic, that he had built something really neat that turned him on.

I've seen people that build what's considered, what I think of, I should say, as dungeons that are the red and black classic BDSM iconography dungeons, where there's one St.

Andrew's Cross, where there's one overhead point, where it's chains and whips hanging from the walls, right?

And that's really hot for some people.

I went to a play space that was a dojo.

Clean wood floors, overhead points that were very visually obscured, yoga mats in a corner, those little meditation rounds for Buddhist practice, and that's what they had, and it was a beautifully modular space for doing whatever they want.

I've been to a home play space, what not, where it was more Moroccan themed, where it was fabric covering the ceilings, low light, sensual fabrics everywhere.

So think ahead of time about what's going to turn you on.

What kind of atmosphere is hot for you?

Are you going to be somebody like the folks at Power Exchange in San Francisco?

And I haven't been to their place since they've moved, so I don't know if they still have this theme room.

But they had a Frankenstein themed room that had the electric things going up and down and up and down the walls, and like an exam table kind of thing, it was like an autopsy table sort of thing that you could have sex on.

They had an all-white 1970s room.

They had like a military themed space that was all, like you had to go through this, like these mazes to get to.

They had an area that was all very industrial looking and had chain link fences.

And as a note, chain link fences make great bondage attachment points or things to hold on to if you're being flocked.

That you can be as creative as you want to be.

Now, part of that is of course thinking about what sort of equipment you actually want, what turns you and your partner on, but also what you want to do with that space.

If it's for you and your partner, that's great.

Claim it.

Make it yours.

But if it's going to be for a lot of different people to play in, or you're in an open relationship of some sort, or multiple partners living together, does it need to be set that everybody likes that kind of space?

Or is it one person or one pair of space and other people have the right to come in?

I was talking to somebody dear to me recently about the fact that they've finished out their home play space, but how do they really feel about their really sitting with, how they feel about other people now coming in and playing in their play space?

That they've made it really special and intimate and theirs.

It's surrounded by alters and it's really cozy.

And so do they want to have other people come in and play with that play space?

So that's something to think about as well is, is that what you're looking for?

I remember being at the studio in Chicago a number of years ago, which is a beautifully appointed professional domination space in Chicago, and that they had built the space for professional domination.

That was their purpose.

And so they need a space that can elicit an erotic response.

A space that is able to create not only the functionality of the things that you would need for professional domination, lots of different little rooms, lots of areas that they could do sissification, of feminization, as it were.

Well, feminization or sissifying people.

But also to have an area for flogging or impact play, spaces for bondage.

And so they built a space that worked really well for them in that way.

It was clean, it's delicious, it's delightful, really lovely space.

But I had a friend of mine come over, or a gentleman who wasn't quite a friend at that point.

And he came over and he was looking around.

He'd never been to a play space of any sort.

And he came over and he was looking around.

He's like, it's clean.

And I said, yeah.

He looked around and he's like, there's French doors.

And I said, yeah.

He said, it's clean.

And I was looking at him a little quizzically at this point.

And what I found out from him was that what he was expecting was a filthy, dirty space that, in his words, erotic ninjas would descend upon him and force him to do their wicked will.

Which I thought was hilarious at the time, but in retrospect, I've also thought about the fact that what he was looking for out of a play space, out of somewhere to be kinky, to be erotically adventurous, he was hoping for something that would be a little bit more down and dirty, a little bit more, well, you know, grungy.

That's what he was hoping for, not something that was pristine and well-appointed and beautiful.

Now, there are some people I met who love to play, but really, they could care less about the space.

You know, you want to give them an abandoned parking lot, you want to give them a hotel room, you want to give them a basement, you want to hand them something she-she.

They don't really care.

They're there to get their freak on.

They're there to have fun.

There are others, though, that the fantasy, that exploration, that diving into a world of itself requires creating that shared fantasy space.

I think it's one of the reasons that love hotels in Japan are so popular is that not only are you getting a space to get to adventure into where you don't have to have the thin walls interfere with you having the really hot, moaning sex that you want, but it also lets you explore somewhere new.

You want to be in a room where it's themed nothing but Hello Kitty?

You can have it in a love hotel.

You want to have something that's themed up like a 1960s love den?

You can have it.

You want to have something that looks like it's underwater, in fact, that actually is underwater with giant fish swimming around you because there's a wall made out of an aquarium tank?

You can probably find that too.

Human beings are so creative in their variety of sexual desires, and that includes in their desires for different spaces to do this stuff.

For some people, a bedroom, a bed at home is the perfect place to fuck all night long.

And for other people, a bed is supposed to be where you sleep.

It's where you cuddle up, where you feel safe, and it's not necessarily an erotic turn-on of any sort.

Neither is wrong.

Neither is wrong.

But at the same time, it's important to know which one you are.

Are you the kind of person who wants to go out to the big play spaces?

Who's happy doing stuff because you have access to all these different pieces of equipment?

Are you someone who that back room at a bar is going to be hot?

Are you someone that getting to go out to the playa at Burning Man and curl up underneath the stars or inside a huge tent that's full of pillows and writhing naked bodies, is that what's going to be hot for you?

Create it, dream it, or go find it and support it.

Because I see a lot of people who say, oh well I know it exists out there, but you know, it's going to be there next weekend.

If you know of something that really, really works for you, that somebody else has gone through the work to make it happen and it's what you've always been dreaming about, either make it for yourself or go support it.

Because if it's four years later and you're like, oh, it's a shame that place closed down, it's what I always wanted, and you weren't putting your money where your mouth is, that's not just upon them that that space is closed.

We create these spaces together, and if somebody's put the work into something that you've always wanted, if you're not going to build it for yourself, why not do so?

Why not start living your dreams today?

I'm serious.

Start living your dreams today.

Remember how at the beginning of this podcast I mentioned, what does play mean to you?

What might that look like for you?

Are you someone who wants a special place?

Are you someone who wants shared place?

Are you someone who wants private place?

Are you someone who wants something that's just for you?

And or you and your partner or partners that belongs to just you?

We deserve excellence.

I know I've talked about that in the past, but we really do.

I for one right now want a play space that is at home, that I could have that, that I could really dive into.

But I think it's also fun to play out, especially for me, playing outdoors is really nice.

Or in sexual spaces, doing really hardcore SM.

By hardcore, I mean something that pushes the edges of me and my partner, not necessarily about whether there's really, quote, extreme acts involved, taking it to the edge.

And the edge is wherever your edge is today.

And how those are things I want right now.

But that's my journey and my life.

What's it about for you?

And if you say, I don't play, I'm just listening to this podcast because I'm horribly curious about all these pervert things out there.

I'm doing research on a Fifty Shades of Grey paper or whatever it might be.

That's cool.

Translate all of this material to where do I feel sexy?

Or where do I feel special?

Or where do I feel loved?

Or where do I feel connected to someone?

So if it's dinner and you want to have dinner with someone, do you feel more special being taken out to that five star meal where people spent half their month's income on a food experience?

Do you feel more special if somebody takes you home and makes you a home cooked meal?

Do you feel more special if somebody takes you to their or your favorite little dive?

Where do you feel more special?

Where do you feel more connected?

It's all the same.

Do you prefer to have your intimate conversations over margaritas out in public?

Or do you prefer to pause a movie when you're at home?

Hell, with movies, do you prefer to watch something at home?

By yourself.

Do you prefer to watch movies at home with someone with a giant bag of popcorn pre-popped?

Are you the kind of person who'd rather watch something on your computer?

Are you somebody who'd rather go out to the big screen?

Are you somebody who'd rather go out to the big screen and then go and sneak in to the second movie when security's not watching?

It all translates.

So take a moment when you hear questions about sex and sexuality and consider how you can translate it too.

Because really, it's all the same question.

How do you be authentically yourself?

So I'm going to leave you with that, with considering what is play, with considering what you want, with considering the spaces that turn you on.

So that's my hope for you, is that you'll do that homework and that I look forward to talking to you next time.

You can find me anywhere on the internet by typing in Lee Harrington, or my website is Passion, P-A-S-S-I-O-N, and A-N-D, Soul, soul.com, passionandsoul.com.

And you can also find me pretty much anywhere on the internet with Passion And Soul.

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, FetLife, any of these kinds of things.

I'm pretty easy to stalk.

And until next time, my name is Lee Harrington, and thank you so much for joining me at Erotic Awakening.

Go forth, have fun, and most importantly, be authentically you.

Take care.

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