BDSM unit (3 of 4): Class.

For weeks, I had been hyping the kids up, and telling them that we were having “a surprise guest” for our BDSM class.

“Can’t you all just wait to meet – our suuuurrrrprrriiiiiiisee guest!”, I would be like, doing a special dramatic voice every time I said the word “surprise guest”, and framing my face loosely with my hands while I waved my fingers.

At the beginning of class, I said something to the same effect, and then I asked my kids, “And who do you think our surprise guest will be?”.

My one student who does fashion design and invited me to her spring show raised her hand, and I called on her.

“One of your friends,” she was like.

“Why do you say that?”, I was like, quizzically.

“Oh, you’ve mentioned a couple of your friends who are into BDSM,” my one quiet very observant student said.  “Is it that guy who has a hard time because he’s not polyamorous?”.

“No,” I was like, “Someone else.”

Then, I started class.

I always do discussion for the first hour or two, then a fifteen minute break, then some other activity for around the last half of class, which in this case, was a discussion with “our suuuurrrrprrriiiiiiisee guest!”.

Five minutes before break was over, he showed up: the one guy I know from the film series who runs the city’s once-a-month meet-and-greet social hour for people new to BDSM, and who not only runs a support group for submissive males, but also wonders where all the submissive men are (he has theories).

I was running out the door to refill my canteen, so I greeted him and turned to the other kids in the room and was like, “Hey, this is our guest, [his name] – please be hospitable, but whatever you do, don’t ask him who he is!”.

Then, I went and got some water.

I came back, and then we talked and I showed him the very nice view of the city from the classroom window, and then had him sit while I cued up a YouTube clip from the Original Mouseketeers -

today is Tuesday

you know what that mean

we’re gonna have a special guest

- they sang, and then the Mouseketeers did their role call, and as Annette Funicello came out and was like, “Annette!”, I nodded meaningfully and pointed to her and was like, “Annette,” because that’s an important pop culture reference my kids should know, and after the clip ended with a zoom-in on the “Special Guest” door, I turned the projector off, and then raised up the screen, and hidden on the dry erase board was –

! ? ! ? ! ? ! ? ! ? !

- and my special guest was like, “Wow, thank you, now that I am thoroughly embarrassed,” and then he introduced himself and we began our discussion, which lasted more than an hour.

After class, I checked email and then read the news, and found out that Annette Funicello’s family had decided to disconnect her from life support, and I was horrified; I simply hadn’t known, and had played the song since my mom used to sing it every once in a while on Tuesdays when me and my brother were little, and I had decided to use it for the “special guest” line, even though class was on a Monday, not a Tuesday.

Later that night when I was barhopping, I mentioned what I had done to a kindly old blonde bartender woman at a swanky Italian restaurant downtown when she greeted me and asked me how I was doing, and she listened, and said that it was a good thing, I was honoring her, though I’m thinking she may have said that because I left out what I’m teaching and who the guest was.

While I was sitting there, I texted several friends about my shock and horror – in my mind, Annette Funicello will now always be connected with BDSM – and my one Puerto Rican friend who’s into political science texted back –

See?  You are inspired by vibrations in the ether.

- and then texted a minute later –

Either that or you killed her somehow.

. . .

The next day I called my parents to find out their reactions, though I didn’t say why I was asking, and my mom said that ever since she heard the news, she was thinking about her childhood and how her and a couple other girls used to play in Diane Muraszewski’s basement and fight over who got to be Annette Funicello.