[I’ve included a free voiceover for this post. I’m still a bit of a noob when it comes to recording, so it’s a little rough and I’m working out the bugs. To hear voiceovers for future posts, please consider supporting Please Kink Responsibly with a paid subscription. Paid subscribers will be able to listen to voiceovers for all future posts, as well as have access to voiceovers from the archives … which I’ll be adding in the coming weeks.]
“Be your most authentic self.”
“Walk in your truth.”
“Be present.”
We’ve heard these said in all different kinds of venues and situations. I’ve said them myself to others a few times, and I’ve had them said to me. The intention behind them has been generally sincere, but we can see how and when these can become as cliche as the “live, laugh, love” sign hanging in the kitchens of Karens and Christian trad-wives. That’s not to deride the intention behind them, but, like so many cliches, they can lose their meanings and be misunderstood and/or misapplied. And I think that in kink circles, phrases like these can and do resonate for the best reasons. As we speak our kinks out loud, or we negotiate our scenes and authority-based relationships with (hopefully) transparent communication, we can mistake honesty-in-the-moment with a more sustained, systemic “authenticity” which we often crave (or at least pretend to crave).
As we begin our kink journeys, do we even know who or what our “authentic self” is? Isn’t it a process of discovery? Sure, we’ve got the fantasies, and we might even have a general idea of whether or not we lean toward the Dominant or submissive; or that we know we like rope but not pain, but kink journeys can be fickle. And who we were one year, month, week, or even day ago is not the same as who we might be tomorrow.
And what about our “truth”? I’m sure we all have a vague idea of what we’re about, that is to say, we know what’s important to us and have a general idea of what our underlying ethics and values are, but did we somehow – innately – “know” our truth? Despite what some philosophers might say, I don’t see “truth” as a static object. It’s a process that involves discernment and discovery.
And, finally, “be present.” That is definitely some good advice when it comes to scenes themselves … but in a broader sense, it can be misleading. Surely, relationships that extend beyond a scene require some planning and forward-thinking; not to mention that we should also be learning from our past. What if our present isn’t too great? What if I don’t like where I am, or how I’ve been? Or the person I am now? Does that mean I’m living inauthentically? Dishonestly? In the past? In the future?
I’m sure we’ve all had these kinds of moments when faced with any or all of those phrases; and it can be particularly frustrating – or even downright insulting – when you’re in the midst of shifting your life around, or in an extremely stressful life situation.
Kink can provide us with brief respites – and often with a “rush” of feelings of being authentic, true, and present – especially when we’re in-scene or in kinky spaces. Those are spaces – as I’ve said in my previous entry – where we can let out guard down and “just be.” But, as “con-drop” will tell us, those moments, and spaces, are temporary. We eventually have to get on a plane or drive home or walk into our local Walmarts, and maybe not wear our leathers, or at the very least not lead our slaves/submissives around by leashes.
In the present, and in being present, we have to occupy what can be a very narrow space between where we’ve come from and where we hope to go; and achieve that ever-elusive balance between an acknowledgment of the past and letting it go. And the latter doesn’t mean that we let go of the lessons we learn from the past. Living in the present is not an abandonment of accountability. And sometimes I think that’s the most difficult balance to achieve. We’ve seen it time and time again in relationships (kink and vanilla); a partner transgresses a “dealbreaker” boundary, and, as one partner remains true to their principles and breaks off contact (possibly contractually), the other continues to transgress boundaries – either directly by attempting to contact the other person despite a no-contact agreement or request, or personally continuing the behavior that caused the breakup in the first place. The transgressor is acting from the pain they continually feel in the present, and how they feel now, but not necessarily respecting or recognizing the hurt caused in the past. They may be acting “authentically” in their current feelings of hurt and loneliness, but without any respect for the past, or awareness of the damage they’re doing to theirs (and their ex’s) future.
Conversely, we can give into the pain or loneliness we feel in the present, and not reach out when we know we could and should to the people who are prepared to help. The present mindset we’re in tells us we’re not worth help, or too much of a bother, or that we don’t want to burden the people who clearly are ready to support us.
Yes, “being present” and “being/living in the present” are different things, but they both require a certain maturity in order for us to fully occupy them. I want to be clear here that by “maturity,” I’m not talking about chronological age. I know plenty of fellow GenXers, Boomers, and elder millennials who are painfully immature, just as I know plenty of GenZs who are not only mature, but deeply emotionally intelligent. Maturity here is not about age; it’s about one’s perspective.
I defer the great poet and essayist David Whyte, from Consolations:
Maturity is the ability to live fully and equally in multiple contexts, most especially the ability, despite our many griefs and losses, to courageously inhabit the past, the present and the future all at once. The wisdom that comes from maturity is recognised through a disciplined refusal to choose between or isolate three powerful dynamics that form human identity: what has happened, what only looks as if it is happening now, and what is about to occur. (157)
This is the point where I will say that I think some kinksters might have a potential leg up over our vanilla friends and allies. We can and do actively live in multiple contexts, multifaceted, layered, and intersectional. The complexities that come with race, gender, orientation, and identity, mixed consensually with authority transfer/exchange can make us – at the very least familiar; at the very most adept – with navigating the rich diversity and (sometimes) absurdity[note as dissonant] of the arbitrary nature of power and intimacy. We (hopefully) learn from the mistakes we’ve made; the partners we’ve hurt, the consent we may have violated (no matter how small), the nerve damage we may have caused, or the errant wraparound of a single-tail or flogger. We occupy the present with an experienced and seasoned sensitivity, always keeping at bay the regrets and guilt of the past with the hopes and dreams of the future – or the awareness and acceptance of the fact that our actions of the past have curtailed the imagined future with the other that we hoped we might have had.
How many unanswered texts do we send before we finally accept that this present is one where that particular future is no longer possible? How many possible futures have been curtailed by the absence of one word said or gesture made at the right time, in the right place?
The present is where all of those moments are available to us at once, and where we, by the nature of our human relationship with time in our lived experience, are pulled forward equally by choices made or not made.
Walking in our truth is inevitable, simply by the fact that the present, as it is lived, as it experienced, is always “true,” in that fact that it is being experienced. Having learned from our past does not mean, however, that we are beholden to it, clutching it like an anchor that perpetually weighs us down, or by some kind of Dickensian chains; Jacob Marley-like, lockboxes holding not money, but deep guilt and regret. We lighten that burden by actively making amends when such contact is welcome or sanctioned, or by indirectly making amends – making the changes necessary to our lives – to at least acknowledge, from a distance – that a lesson has been learned, knowing that forgiveness is a privilege that may never be granted. In those cases, the weight we bare is one of a lack of validation; of not being seen by the eyes that had looked to us for comfort, love, leadership, or safety; of knowing that chance has passed.
So, “who are you now?” becomes a question that is inevitably open-ended. You are not who you were; but who you are now could not have been without that person; and the person who you will be could not be without the person you are now. As David Whyte tells us, we are our past, present, and future all at once:
“Maturity is not a static arrived platform, a golden epoch form where life is viewed from a calm, untouched oasis of wisdom, but the dissolution of living elemental frontiers between what has happened, what is happening now, and the consequences of our past; first imagined anew, and then lived in a waiting future.” (157-8)
This definition of maturity here is especially great for kinksters, because it is not necessarily tied to age, or being of the “old guard” or even of being “an elder,” it simply takes maturity as relational to an integrated present. As Race Bannon discusses in his “Embrace the Cringe,” we learn from our past (and present) mistakes and cringe at them in the now. We have to realize that maturity and “being authentic” or “present” or “living our truth” are the spaces from which we wisely make the best decisions. The present (or one’s truth or authenticity) is simply the place from which we do the best we can with what we have. The parameters of that space, however, are bounded by the core values by which we try to live; values which themselves evolve as we garner more lessons from experience.
We can look to our kink and kink relationships (whether they be authority based or not) and see, first hand, just how we continue to explore and integrate all the different contexts and facets in which our lives are embedded, and how so often those are tender spaces which require a great deal of care and compassion to maintain and cultivate. We learn. We fail. We learn again. We triumph. All simultaneously. We see a microcosm of that in our scenes, when we perpetually adjust to the situation as it stands, with how we’ve learned from the past, remain firmly rooted in the present, and keep an eye toward the future – even if it’s one we can’t predict.
Maturity allows us to open up to the greater spaces of a waiting future, where we will, again, risk ourselves.
*Who are you NOW?* That's the right way to think about it. The ancient wisdom about how you can only step in the same river once is one of the most sacred and accurate pieces of truth to me. And I believe it is quite true in the kink space, too. For example, a sub can only be whipped (near) mercilessly for the first time in a dark bar that is still open during the Covid pandemic once, and then afterwards, either the domme needs to change things up gradually, or the sub needs to look for something else. As it happened, a little bit of both.
*Who are you? Be you authentic self?* One's authentic self is always changing.
But, hell, I didn't even know what my authentic self was before I embraced my kink. I did know that I was submissive and that I was infatuated by dominant women. But I didn't really know what it was to be dominated by a woman. It took years of experimentation--slowly at first, but then accelerated by the pandemic and things--until I finally got over my senseless shame and jumped into trying things out. I thought I'd be scared by wax play for example. I loved it. But, more importantly, the whole experience made me realize I'd been holding back in life too much. That I should go out and try things I want to try, challenge my limits, be fearless, and live as I want to live.