Being part of a welcoming community

I'll probably repeat this too often, but it's worth repeating because it's so important: the BDSM community is a welcoming community, and good studios make their guests feel at home.

This means more than simply providing a “safe space” where consenting adults can live out their fantasies: a hotel room can provide that. It means creating an atmosphere where you know you are with like-minded people who want you to be part of their scene.

 

This doesn't happen automatically: it has to come from the top (so to speak): from the person or people in charge of the studio. Ideally, the domme isn't just someone on a studio's webpage of dommes, who books a room at the studio when she needs it and only turns up at the studio when she's sessioning with a guest, but is part of a team.

 

The good news is that - as far as I can tell, as a guest who's not in the studio for more than an hour or two - this comradeship is being created at Berlin's Atrium studio. At today's excellent lunchtime session, Mistress Bella and I were in one of the private rooms, and not in the central "public" space we used at my first Atrium session. Obviously, no third party will interrupt a session in a private room: discretion and privacy are absolute. However, at Atrium, the arrangement is that, if the door to the room is left open, the privacy is lifted: anyone may drop in and see what is going on or even join in the fun and games.

 

Today, I was strapped by foil with my legs forced apart on a Y-shaped bench, being required to drink the Mistress's piss, nasty clamps digging into my nipples, a plug up my asshole, heavy weights on my balls, a spiky sleeve on my cock. Nothing unusual in any of that: plenty of stimulation to generate endorphins and a sense that all is well in this masochistic world.

 

But – we lifted the privacy: we deliberately left the door open, and when the session was in full swing, we received our first visitors: a sexy domme with a shy newbie. He was wearing a mask for anonymity, but was able to see the sort of things that he may well have spent years fantasising about, that might now be coming his way, and could witness how an experienced slave interacts with his domme and expresses gratitude and respect for the pain and humiliation she inflicts. And then other people also came by - another domme and guest, who stayed by the entrance and viewed things from a distance, and towards the end, Johanna, one of the leaders of the studio, dropped in for a chat.

 

We might as well have been part of an art class or a craft workshop, for example, where people are wandering around to get inspiration from and to give advice to others. I loved it, not just because I'm an exhibitionist and want people to see my humiliation, but also because it felt to me that what Mistress Bella and I were doing is nothing to be ashamed of, nothing which needs to be hidden away, but something that is fully accepted and perfectly normal.