A young lady recently asked me how she could get "kinky" with her boyfriend. Specifically, she wanted to know how she could pour hot candle wax on him safely while having sex...à la ancient MTV erotica. I immediately envisioned cheesy black lace, a bad perm, and Spandau Ballet blasting while some Pat Benatar clone seductively tugs off her fingerless gloves with her teeth to give a vigorous handjob to the only guy in the food court with a rat-tail mullet. Ugh, please. You want kinky? Take one of those beer-can-sized vanilla pillar candles from Pier One, scrimshaw a cock out of it, and push it into something that makes you wince. THAT'S kinky.

Then I thought, maybe I'm being a bit harsh here...I know what MY kinks are...what kinds of rough and nasty things get me off and what pushes my threshold to where I might lose it completely. But someone, someplace, could think a woman on top is downright subversive. Conversely, someone may not be able to get off unless they're slammin' their junk in a car door or fantasizing about fuckin' their Grandma in her chain-smokin' neckhole. So what the heck is kinky?

In my younger days, "Kinky" was a planned thing. I would have handcuffs in my bag in case I got lucky. And if a partner wanted to get wacky with a belt, we'd establish a "safe word" such as "uncle." We'd slowly count the strikes 'til I said, "Uncle...uncle! Please, uncle...use the strap end, the buckle's gonna chip my teeth!" Nowadays it's more reflective. "Whoa, we got pretty kinky last night...." I muse in the shower as my breasts and hips look like I fed potato chips to a bunch of bears using my naked body as a plate. But is that kinky?

Not really, according to a few "experts" in the practice.

"Kinky is all about the mind," one dominatrix told me over the phone from her Manhattan "Dungeon," echoing exactly what some other pros had stated in their enlightening, though at times gassy and maudlin, diatribes on the subject. Looking at most of them, though, one would think it was all about corsets, black nail polish, and Siouxsie and the Banshees makeup. This particular "Mistress" also claimed to have eighteen piercings in her pussy alone...I envisioned wrinkles of sweaty roast beef being shoved through a cyclone fence.

"The mind is your sexiest and scariest organ," she continued. "Right and wrong are held in there, good and bad....kinky is a flip-flop on those basic concepts. An incredibly powerful Los Angeles attorney is one of my clients. He is feared and reviled in his world...and he comes to me [in New York City] and wants to be put in his place. He cleans my toilet with his tongue and loves to be pissed on...humiliated. He needs it to put things back into balance to feel human again."

"So kinky is about sexually exploring your inner opposite?" I ask.

"Not all the time. Mostly it's an exploration of your limitations--physical AND
mental. And it has very little to do with sex...sex is so...sloppy."

Mmmmkay. I s'pose it would be kinda sloppy trying to navigate a tackle box with your dick. Thank you, Mistress Tinseltwat.

In a pierced nutshell...venturing from your sexual safety zone is pretty much the definition of kinky. Don't be compelled to imitate. Just because it seems like the Goddess of longwinded, leather-bound horseshit seems to have a grip on the ropes...that yank on the scrotes...that hang from the blokes...who crawl in the House That Kink Built, doesn't mean that's all there is. I went to an S&M-themed club to learn more about this, and I only learned what it's like to be a fat chick searching for a life. Some of the kinkiest fuckers I know don't need a goofy uniform or a gang of corsetted D&D flunkeys to hang out with. They just bide their time 'til the green light signals GO, and they expertly break your ass down. God bless 'em.

So light your candles, let 'em get hot 'n' melty while you bind the limbs of your
present mount, crank up the Spandau Ballet, and get all sloppy. But if you were me, one of those lit fuckers'd be goin' IN someplace.