Volume 2, Issue 14 June 22 - July 5, 2000

Christiaan Howard thought that Denver's fetish scene needed a kick. Seeing the need, he didn't turn away: last Saturday, 453 people crowded into a Larimer Street warehouse for his second local fetish party, Erotica Volume II.

Doors opened at 10 p.m., letting the assortment of vinyl-clad into a realm that, Christiaan hoped, would be a forum for both fetish play and education, allowing many practitioners of "different loving" to mingle. Fetish play generally involves the sexualization of specific, often non-sexual acts or items, such as certain fabrics, uniforms, body parts, bondage, sadism, bloodletting, or urination

Towards that end, he assembled some of Denver's notable fetish luminaries. Several female dominants worked one room of the warehouse, chaining both men and women to the wall, beating them with floggers and riding crops. One professional dominant, Mistress Alexis, verbally humiliated her gagged, bound, willing slave for much of the evening. Dave Reynolds, the head piercer at the Emporium, performed demonstrations of play piercing and decorative body cutting.

Christiaan himself has worked on parties at San Francisco's Power Exchange club and in New York City and Las Vegas. He was featured on HBO's Real Sex. His company, Afterdarkk Media, has been throwing parties for two years.

Less orchestrated fetish play took place in the various warehouse rooms. Experienced sadomasochists took turns using floor space to flog, bind, and spank their partners. Christiaan himself indulged in his favorite fetish, a form of body worship he's loved since childhood: using his tongue and lips to worship the feet of women.

Some dark corners held people giving backrubs and having sex: which are not fetishes, but are often associated with the fetish scene. In perhaps the most startling scene of the evening, two women tired of waiting in line for the bathroom took a man up on his offer, and peed on his prone body.

Several DJs and bands provided the ambient entertainment and dance music, including Ty Tek, Rob Rage, Demon, Black Cell, The Film Strip, and Burn Circuit. Their sets together combined gothic, industrial, dark wave/pagan beat, and techno music. Some people thought that the gothic fans would prefer that only their music was played, since the gothic and fetish scenes often overlap. However, "The rave scene plays [with fetish] a lot more than the goth scene does," said Brian Crowley of Burn Circuit.

Despite the variety and glamour of the crowd, several people found it a mixed success. "I wish that more people had interacted," said Christiaan. "Maybe I should run some workshops." Tension between serving the educational needs of newcomers and the need for a secure emotional space among experienced players created some strain. Although more common complaints about the evening related to the scarcity of alcohol, bathroom stalls, and chairs, unfamiliarity with fetish etiquette seemed to affect the party atmosphere the most.

"When you play at parties, there are a lot of problems with strangers," commented Rachel Fulmer, one of the dominants playing in the main bondage room. "They get in the way of whips, and give a lot of catcalls." Catcalls often break the mood in a fetish scene, and getting close to whips is dangerous. This venue was better than most, since a three-foot wall separated the players from the viewers. Still, occasional viewers insisted on shouting things like, "Hit her harder!" when Rachel was just starting to "warm up" a woman with her riding crop.

However Rachel, who has known Christiaan for six years, respects his efforts to improve the Denver scene. "There's not really an outlet for the 20- or 30-something scene players. The scene needs a home. But there are good people here, who watch out for each other and know each other's limits and experience."

An example: in the line for the bathroom, a blue-haired, submissive woman pitched a glass of water onto the wall. Her dominant, a woman with a shaved head, was instantly beside her, gazing into her eyes and cradling her head, talking her down. The couple had, the dominant said, recently found a mutual friend's body in his apartment. Coming to the party was cathartic and healing for them, she explained. Her submissive was pierced later in the evening.

Other fetish players also described their experiences as "cathartic." Ben Slagowski, multiply pierced and cut by Dave Reynolds, described the pain. Both he and Dave were sober: an important consideration to responsible fetish enthusiasts. After being given some juice to drink, to keep his blood-sugar levels high, Ben sat as Dave put three pins through each eyebrow, and one on each side of his mouth through both of his lips. Initially, Dave had intended on doing a body-nullification to Ben, sewing his lips and eyes shut, but the lights were too dim to sew safely.

"The piercings are a rite of passage, testing how far personally I can take myself," said Ben. "There's the pain, and shitty things were going around in my head, both past and present. [The piercings were] letting out the bad."

However, Dave feels that people fetishize piercing, branding, and cutting for their shock value more than anything. "None of the stuff I'm doing here tonight is permanent," he said before the show. "People are obsessed with aesthetics; branding and scarification are new and different."

Ben said having an image from the comic Faust cut into his skin was, in comparison with the piercings, "just fucking enjoyable, a tickley feeling. I was smiling and laughing through the whole thing." As he spoke, white bandages peeled away from the brown lines on his back.

Hot wax also inspired pure pleasure. "I loved it," said Bianca, a young woman sporting dried wax droppings on her back and belly. "It felt really really good: a tingling warmth that stings but is soothing at the same time. It's very erotic: almost as good as oral sex."

Rachel and her fellow dominants created a more complex pleasure out of truly painful experiences, mixing tenderness and sharpness. "Baby, are you ready?" she asked a submissive, David, before removing his PVC vest and fishnet shirt. She cuffed shackles over his shiny, gloved wrists, raising his hands over his head. Then she and another dominant, Sherrie, began working on him together to an arhythmic beat, one spanking him slow as the other tapped him fast with the crop. Then they switched to two crops, and then two floggers.

David moaned as his skin reddened. Then Sherrie pulled out a small roller: a miniature version of the kind used to cut pizza: and began running it over his bald scalp. David's knees gave, but the shackles held him. He rose, only to fall again as they both flogged his chest, beating his hands against the wall. "Stick your ass out," one said, as Rachel drew out a long flogger and began whipping his butt, and Sherrie twirled a shorter one on his back. Then Sherrie began to scratch his chest and nipples while Rachel continued flogging. Finally, David appeared to become agitated, swerving to avoid the blows. Rachel and Sherrie took him down and hugged him, stroking his head. He rubbed around them like a cat. His skin glowed red from the beating.

"The harder they hit me, the better it feels," David said. "It's a release of tension." Public demonstrations also please his exhibitionist instinct, he said. "I like having people watch. I like to let them know that it's okay."

Public fetish play also has other benefits, said Lucy, a submissive. "In an exhibitionist situation, you can feel safe playing with people you don't know well [because everyone is watching]." Lucy, like David and Christiaan, endorses newcomers to the scene: "Don't be afraid of your persuasions and perversions. Come out, there's other people like you."

Just before she had spoken those words, however, a man who seemed unfamiliar with the scene kept approaching her, although she asked him for some privacy. Which again raises the question: in an unpolished but high-potential scene like Denver's, how should the needs of new and experienced players alike be met at public parties?

Perhaps classes at parties are the answer. But the party educated some people itself. In the one well-lit room in the building, a woman in a poofy red skirt gamely flogged one submissive after another with a red rubber whip. Crowded around her were a number of athletic men in street clothes, baggy pants: not the traditional fetish type. They catcalled as their friends "got it" with the rubber whip, and laughed.

"Don't you think that's cool?" Christiaan asked. "They got something out of the night."

Christiaan Howard asked that anyone with questions about the party call him at 303-864-0157, and access his websites www.fivelittlepiggy.com and www.afterdarkkmedia.com.