Trying out class ideas on my kids: Jonestown.

One of my students, the graphic arts girl who dresses well and is very conscientious with her work, was asking me before the BDSM class if I was going to be teaching again the next year.

“Not next year because I need to finish my dissertation,” I was like, “But the year after I’m hoping to try to teach four to five classes, I’ve already started to explore that.”

I then said that I was looking at maybe doing the entering freshman writing seminar, and was thinking that a great topic for the semester would be Jonestown, where for the entire class you try to understand it, and you look at its contexts, the history of movements like Pentecostalism that fed into it, scholarship on new religious movements, everything.

“For the first day,” I was like, “I would love to show news footage of the bodies, and then read off the names of all the people who died.”

Then, I added, “That was like nine hundred and twenty people.  I think it would take an hour-and-a-half.”

Then, I asked, “What do you think would happen if I did that?   We’d just all be in a circle, me and these freshmen, all with a list of names, and we go around in a circle and read names for like an hour-and-half.”

One of my students who was there was like, “Well, you’d get a lot of drops that first week.”

“I’d take it,” my one graphic arts girl said, quickly and seriously.

“I would too,” the student who said they’re’d be a lot of drops.

I then added that when I had met People Temples survivors, the one thing they said that they wanted taught if Jonestown was taught was that people weren’t mindless cultists, but were the most heterogenous group of people you’ve ever met, each and every one unique and such an individual.

“That’s what you have to understand,” I was like.  “Nine hundred and twenty is a number.  How do you break that down, how do you wrap your head around the magnitude?”.

I also said that Peoples Temple survivors have a newsletter, and one of the things they do regularly is evaluate artistic references to Jonestown, so the final class or 2 would be to look at how artists have used it and what Peoples Temple survivors thought.

At that, my one graphic arts girl said that in one of the Armistad Maupin Tales of the City books, one of the people in the building turns out to be a woman who fled from Jonestown through the jungle with her baby.

“That was the woman I met!”, I was like.

Boston bombings (2 of 2): Day after.

The day after the Boston bombings, I was working from home and called my parents while I was making lunch, since I wanted to find out what they thought.

My mom said that she saw a news report where all the major cities were under alerts, like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

"Los Angeles?", my mom was like, "Really?"

"What?", I was like.

"Give me a break," she said.  "It's not even a city, and if something happens there, someone will always step in to make movies.  If you have to put a city on high alert, make it San Francisco, it's so much prettier."

She and my dad are also thinking that the bomber may have been a rightwing gun nut.

"You wouldn't believe some of the people that we get in the library," she was like, "And if we have a handful here, you know that they're everywhere."

She then said that just last week, this one (white) guy she knows by sight came in to request that the library order some book, and he talked to the library director, who told him that if they started ordering that series of books, they'd have to order "all the other side" as well, and it would be just too much of an outlay.

It turns out that the book series was some conspiracy theory series, which my mom didn't elaborate, but I'm assuming was a kind of socialism - New World Order - "They're trying to take our guns away" kind of thing.

"[The head librarian's first name]" turned to me when he left," my mom said, "And she said, 'That is one angry man.'  You have no idea how many people like that are out there."

She then added that Bill O'Reilly books fly off the shelves "even though I don't think he writes them, how does he have time, and he even says he has a ghostwriter," and that people like him just stir up hate and make money off all the people who get riled up and don't see how it's a business.

Boston bombings (1 of 2): Night of.

After I finished class, I did a lot of work and admin, and then checked news, and found out about the Boston bombings.

My 2nd bar of 3 that night was the bar of a popular Italian restaurant downtown.

Oddly, the (early 40s) (white) man in a polo shirt sitting next to me drinking a glass of white wine was a prosthetics maker who appears to live in the neighborhood, and we discussed the news a bit and then his profession, but never linked the 2 together.

He said that one of the rare case that you face - he's never had one, in more than a decade of making prosthetics, though you have to study how to do it - is where someone has no pelvis, and you have to create a prosthetic where it's put on someone and keeps their guts from spilling out when they're upright, since your pelvis holds everything in.

"So is that permanently attached?", I was like.

"No," he was like, "They can take it off."

I then said something about how they must be careful when they do that, and be lying down.

He also said he makes helmets to correct the heads of deformed babies, where they wear it and it blocks growths in certain directions and the skull shapes into the others, and then their one eye goes from being on the side of their head to the front, and they look normal in 6 months to a year.

"So are the babies developmentally disabled, or do they just look funny?", I was like.

"They just look different," he was like.  "You have to calm the parents down a lot, 'No no no, your baby is fine, it's just their skull, everything will be all right if they wear this helmet...'".

With some prosthetics, he said, too, that if some are successful, in 7 months they end up in the trash, like if you make a support for someone while they have surgery on their leg and foot so they can walk while their limb heals.

BDSM unit (4 of 4): More class.

The discussion with the one submissive (white) guy who I know from the movie series went very well.

Among other quotes and topics:

- “BDSM doesn’t lead to abuse,” he was like.  “BDSM leads to carpentry.”

- Abusive and codependant relationships can be harder to discern in BDSM, since they can be hidden among the regular hurt and slave dynamics.

- Only 15-30% of scenes on a given night at the main pansexual dungeon in the city actually include penetrative sex.

- “Littles” do not always end their scenes with someone who’s a daddy coming up and fucking them.

“To clarify, so they can just show up at a dungeon, color for 2 hours, and go home?”, I was like, raising my hand and stepping into the conversation.

“Yeah, pretty much,” he was like.  “Though I hope they’re not coloring for two hours!”

“Unless their daddy tells them too,” I was like, and began to improvise voices.

“I said color, damn it!”, I said in a low, gruff voice.

 “Daddy daddy, nooo!”, I immediately said in a high, little girly voice.

“No, goddamnit, keep coloring, I said, keep coloring!”

“Oh daddy, I’m tired!”

“COLOR!”

Then I broke off my routine, laughing and snorting, and all my students laughed too.

- There are 2 male pro-doms (professional dominatrixes) in the city, but 23 female ones.

“I think that’s where all the submissive men are,” my special guest was like.  “You’re taught to keep your desires in a box, and so their clients compartmentalize their life and have a place for that and a place for their normal life, and never seek to integrate the two.”

- When asked about safety, he was like, “This is dangerous, sometimes an arm gets broken.”

Then, he added, “But, just like in relationships, you don’t know who someone really is when everything’s going great, you know who they are when you see how they react when they fuck up big time.”

- At one point, he added that he is engaged with a woman, but identifies as bisexual, and when he first got into BDSM, it was through the internet, and he played mostly with men, since if you wrote 15 dominant women and 15 dominant leather daddy gay men, 0 women would respond, but you’d have 15 emails waiting from you from dominant leather daddy gay men.

“The best way to get started is really just to suck it up, get over your fears, and start to meet people, since it’s all about networking,” he was like.  “It’s like with jobs, most jobs are already filled before they’re posted.  If people know you and know what you’re into, they’ll tell someone else and then you’re there.”

- When I asked about what types of play are controversial or forbidden in dungeons, he was like, “Vomit.”

“Because of disease?”, I was like.

“Because it smells,” he was like.

He then added if you’re having a dungeon set up in a hotel ballroom, you can also piss the hotel off too, if you have vomitplay going on.

He also added that scatplay was controversial, because it was an easy way to spread disease, and I also asked about breathplay.

“Oh yeah,” he was like, and then there was a pause in the classroom.

“What’s breathplay?”, one of my students asked, voicing a question that was on a lot of people’s minds, apparently.

“Choking,” he was like.  “Especially restricting the esophagus around the adam’s apple so you can completely cut off airflow.”

He also added that some people weren’t necessarily getting off on those, but rather got off on things that were shocking or disgusting to other people, “And that can be a dangerous mindset,” he was like.  “Some people get into wasabi nasal fisting just because it’s there.”

“Whoa,” my one student who’s into fashion design was like.  “Is that a thing?”

“No,” he was like, “That’s just my standard joke for the most outlandish ridiculous thing someone could get into,” and at that everyone laughed nervously, and we gave him a round of applause because time was up, and then he gave a quick bit of info about the next meeting for young people interested in BDSM, in case anyone was truly curious and wanted to explore.

. . .

Addendum.

Later that night, at my 5^th bar of the night, after the NCAA championships had ended, I was at a dark wood-panelled bar in a rich neighborhood that was clearing out from the sports-watching crowd, and there was this rich (white) businessman in his mid-50s who was having one of those conversations I’ve seen with the bartender that substitutes for real interaction, where the businessman is lonely and makes an observation, and the bartender replies politely and perfunctorily.

“Margaret Thatcher died today,” the guy was like.

“Yes,” the young (white) male bartender was like.  “MS, I hear.”

At that, the businessman grimaced and nodded, and went back to quietly sipping his drink.

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.

BDSM unit (2 of 4): More trip.

Later, when we were in the basement galleries and me and a couple students were chit-chatting more with the director, I made a point to ask about use of alcohol in public playspaces, since pansexual (i.e. “straight”) BDSM clubs are very abstemious, but gay ones usually allow a lot of alcohol.

The director said as much, and said a lot was linked back in to how gay leather culture emerged from the bar scene, whereas straight BDSM culture didn’t.

“If you have a straight playspace and there’s alcohol, people are like, ‘What is that?!?’, but if you have no alcohol in a gay space, people are like, ‘Where’s the party?!?’”, he was like.

He also added that the local gay playspace was BYOB, and members had keys, unlike with the straight space.

At this, a shorter grandmotherly-looking plumper (white) woman with glasses in her late 60s who was standing around listening chimed in, “I don’t know about you, but give me one glass of wine, and I can’t handle a whip anymore!”.

She also added that in their town, a lot of straight people have been through rehab, so it’s not a good idea for them to be around alcohol.

There was a tall goateed younger (white) guy near her too, and me and my 2 students started talking with all of them, and it turns out that they were in town from a major city in the south for a local all-weekend educational event.

In that city, everyone just uses all one dungeon, so you have a lot of people playing together.

“You should see [the grandmotherly-looking woman’s name] cane someone,” the guy was like.  “It’s really something.”

“Wait!”, the grandmotherly-looking woman was like, pulling out her iPhone.  “I have pictures from our Christmas party!”

“Wow,” I was like.  “Did you use a candy cane?”

“No,” she was like, “I called myself Candy Cane!”

Then, she showed me and my 2 students a pic on her iPhone, and I gave a sigh of relief when it was just her in a santa hat and red robe sitting down with a cane and pulling the hair back on this short (black) man in a harness who was kneeling like a dog and mugging for the camera.

“That’s his boyfriend,” the grandmotherly-looking woman was like, nodding up toward the tall goateed younger (white) guy she came in with.

“Isn’t he a ham?”, the guy said.

“Yes!”, she was like, “He’s always putting on a show.”

Somehow, they also got to talking about how there’s even “littles” who attend their dungeon, who are people who try to get inside the mind of a 7-to-8 year-old child for an evening.

“We give them crayons and set up a table for coloring,” the grandmotherly-looking woman was like.

“We did bubbles but it was too near the St. Andrew’s cross and it got it all sticky,” the guy was like.  “And someone put Hello Kitty stickers on my bootblack stand!”.

Later, about 4 other people started milling around, 2 of whom were slightly older and very muscled (white) gay guys with beards and tight jeans, and I introduced myself, and it turns out that they were all with the same group.

“This is Mr. [regional leather title] 2013,” the woman was like, introducing me to the one older muscled gay guy with a salt-and-pepper beer.

“Two thousand and twelve,” he was like, quietly but firmly.

“Two thousand and twelve, two thousand and thirteen...”, I was like, segueing into a slight dramatic pause.  “What’s a number when you’re timeless?”, I then added, with a wide smile and a wink.

At that, the regional champion leather daddy broke out into a genuine smile.