A friend of mine told me the other day that he had wandered into the Folsom Street Fair by mistake.
I would have loved to have been a fly in his brain at that moment. I can't even begin to image the thoughts that would have raced around in his head. He comes from a place very far away which has three very old and strong religions and a culture that is steeped in tradition. And there's not a scrap of leather in any of it.
We went to Folsom a few years ago with friends who live in San Francisco. Luckily, they had prepared us for what we were going to experience.
Don't get me wrong. I've been around the block - so to speak - and I am far from being a prude.
Quite the opposite.
I have nothing against any fetish - foot, neck wattle, rubber, enema - do your thing. As long as no one gets hurt, all involved are consenting, and there are no minors present, get your freak on and let your flag fly.
To quote the goddess Madonna:
Poor is the man whose pleasures depend on the permissions of another.
And so we went to Fulsom. There was leather - a lot of it. There was nudity. There were handcuffs, whips and - you guessed it - chains.
The most beautiful thing we saw - which, for obvious reasons, made Fluffy Bear's day - was a pony girl and her mistress. She was very pretty and her leather harness, bit and saddle were stunning. There are some real artists making this leather stuff.
Her harness went around her boobs, squeezing them up and out. She wore nothing but the harness on the top half of her body.
There was a small group gathered around her because her equipment was just as stunning as she was. I was transfixed. Until I saw the guy on the other side of the crowd. He was naked apart from a leather cap, and he was looking at the pony girl and wanking.
I know your first reaction is to say that someone should have bopped him on the schnoz, or at least told him to stop but, here's the thing, that's probably exactly what he wanted - public humiliation - so the best thing to do was ignore him.
He wasn't the best looking specimen of a man. I have no issue with nudist but Folsom is about leather, not leathery, flaccid skin.
I don't have a delete button for that image of him in my mind.
Next to the pony girl, he was like a white blob of bird shit on a shiny red Ferrari.
Thankfully, there was one other highlight of the day, and it was guano-free.
We were walking along when we saw a guy spread-eagled up against the wall of a building. He wasn't tied up or anything, he was just choosing to stand there and be dominated.
The whip kept swishing through the air, expertly connecting with his skin at varying intensities, from bite to kiss.
And the dominatrix in question?
She was standing sideways, not even looking at her slave, having a very boring sounding conversation on her cellphone.
To read more in this series, click here.
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