Something has been swimming around in my mind of late. The idea of loneliness. It’s not often talked about when people talk about the kink life, but it does come up in my conversations with other kinksters. One on one conversations usually. There isn’t a manual, a way to cope or talk about loneliness in the kink community. A lot of our blogs and treatise and codes of conduct focus on connection, on negotiation, on the presumption of community. But to date I haven’t read anything on how we deal with isolation.
Kinksters are a wonderful and vibrant community of sharing, giving an receiving and I never doubt that camaraderie, especially online. Through kink and the internet I have met some of the most steadfast people I have ever had the joy of getting to know. Teachers, friends and dare I say compatriots. But this doesn’t really negate the fact that as a kinkster I walk in a world that is decidedly vanilla. Whether that company is a straight, cisgender one or one filled with LGBTQ folks, I walk and live and breathe their world, and only experience a kinkier one when I steal a few glimpses on social media or have a kinky chat with a friend across the country, or across the world. This makes my experience of a kinkier world isolated, sparse and momentary…And then its back to a world of silence.
I’ve thought a bit about loneliness and how one deals with it. To my knowledge and own introspection this isn’t the loneliness I felt in grad school that caused my health to decline. It isn’t that severe. But it is loneliness all the same. What does community mean when you can’t just pop into a neighborhood leather bar and have a drink or a pub quiz night? What does community mean when the closest kinkster who shares your kink is a four hour or more drive away? What does community mean when you have to wait months or years before you can be in the company of your own people?
I sometimes feel untethered to any sense of a kink community. Chats and conversations and even sharing is good and gets me through most days…But sometimes I miss the presence, the physical and real presence of others like me. And it reminds me of that utter loneliness. To my experience I have not read how kinksters deal with loneliness and isolation in an otherwise vanilla world. That isn’t in any manual I have found.
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