Getting kinky doesn’t have to involve studs and latex
“There are a lot of pervs in Mensa” Lady Green is telling me over fries and a grilled cheese at a diner in downtown Toronto. The kinky sex educator and founder of the kinky publisher Greenery Press ( www.greenerypress.com ) is in town from San Francisco speaking at a leather conference. She’s telling me about the time her mom came to see her give an S&M 101 talk to a Mensa group.
It seems a little odd. The Mensa part that is. Though Ms. Green — known to her two kids as mom and to her friends and colleagues as Janet Hardy — does admit she found it a little tough to focus on telling the smarty-pants folk how to give a good spanking with mom in the audience. “She’s a therapist and wanted to know what I did” says Hardy.
And the Mensa people? “Anytime you get people who don’t fit into the mainstream you’re going to get a higher than average percentage of people who are into kink” she explains. “You tend to see a lot of kinky people in the high-tech professions or in professions that involve a lot of abstract thinking. They need a way to reconnect to their bodies.”
Safe to say you don’t want to be drifting off while someone is caning your bare ass. “You have to be present physically whether you’re topping or bottoming” explains Hardy who has authored several kinky titles as both Lady Green ( The Compleat Spanker and The Sexually Dominant Woman: A Workbook for Nervous Beginners ) and Catherine A. Liszt ( The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities which she co-authored with Dossie Easton).
A self-described writer perv pain slut and educator who has been fantasizing about S&M since she was too little to wrap her hand around a whip handle Hardy comes across more soccer mom than kink queen. However while most four-year-olds are crying over the scary clowns at the circus Hardy remembers fantasizing about what it would be like to have the Strong Man spank her. Not surprisingly while she’s happy to teach workshops on all aspects of kink spanking is her “core thing.”
What’s to learn you think? Well before you toss your honey over your knee grab the hairbrush and start whacking there are important things like nerves and kidneys to consider. “If you want to play with pain and want to go to happy place instead of the ‘goddamn this hurts why doesn’t it stop?’ place there are techniques you can learn” Hardy explains. Like breathing. Borrowing from yoga and Lamaze Hardy teaches her students conscious breathing and relaxation techniques that help let the pain flow through you.
And lest you think the only way to introduce kinky sex into your life is to buy a leather hood for your honey and lead him around a party on a collar and chain Hardy assures me that even the most vanilla couples can up the kink factor in their sex lives without buying into the lifestyle. “It’s a shame in one way” she says “that while we have made it more acceptable safer and easier to be kinky we have created a whole kink iconography — the leather latex and studs thing — that a lot of people don’t like and don’t feel comfortable with.”
Even stud and latex-less Hardy insists there are ways to cross that psychological boundary and get kinky. She suggests a “yes-no-maybe” exercise for couples wanting to expand their sexual horizons. “Together write down every sexual activity you’ve heard of whether it sounds fun or gross or whatever. No censorship” she explains. “Then using a different coloured pen each of you marks a “Y” “N” or “M” beside each item on the list indicating your comfort level with each activity.” Now you’ve got a game plan. Yeses are a go maybes get discussed and nos get crossed off the list.
For a lot of people tying the hands to the bed with the bathrobe sash is as far as they’re ever going to go and that’s great she says. If you still don’t know where to start Hardy suggests one simple tool: a blindfold. “It’s a safe way to experiment with one partner having more power than the other because one can see and one can’t” she explains. “And it’s an intensifier. You’re taking away one sense so that you can feel the others more acutely. Plus if you start to feel overwhelmed you just push it up.”
