Kink It Yourself | Live it your way

I have not always considered myself kinky — I just never realized how non-vanilla I was. When I went back to school to study architecture a few years back, I thought I might fulfill my passion of designing experiences through space. (OK, enough of the intellectual masturbation) I had high hopes: I was eager, I was enthusiastic and beaming with all the possibilities before me. In short, my long standing non-chalant, jaded self had been swept away by an optimistic plume. This period of my life will go down in my history as the time when I received the most glowing compliment by someone uninvolved in my life. This is the one compliment thus far that I could understand and take to heart without being awkward. I know that sounds ridiculously specific, but it’s a feeling I can still conjure up, that makes me smile, and that I haven’t received since.

At a colleagues going away party, somewhere between shuffling seats and perusing the good ol’ jukebox, my soon to be ex-coworker looked me straight in the eyes and said, “Jessica, right now you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. No really… Women are the most beautiful when they smile, and your smile, you are so genuinely happy.”

I know it sounds corny, I know it sounds like some pick up line, but it read to me as an amazing compliment to which I could sincerely say “Thank you”, and I did. My enthusiasm, my joie-de-vivre was exposed, transparent, flooding from me and apparently appreciated.

It didn’t last long. I have no idea how you go from radiant, little Miss Sunshine to flatter-than-flat tap water without major trauma, illness or tragedy in such a short period of time , but I did. {Note | I am currently making headway at getting back to ‘beautiful’ and enjoying the prospects of my life again, part of which is KIY} My traumas were simply compounding moments of culture shock, individually minor, but ultimately life changing. You would have thought the law of attraction and manifestation would have succeeded here, but maybe that still has to come to fruition.

Don’t get me wrong, I am really into exposing myself to new cultures and experiencing other ways of living. I just wasn’t prepared for this kind of battle. You see, I’m an American, West Coast Anglophone. Well, not exactly the words I would use to describe myself, but those were the pigeonholes I was shoved into at my Quebecois, Elitest Francophone architecture school (not the words they’d probably choose to market their program). I spoke enough French to pass the exam, I was eager to learn more, I was there to learn about architectural design, I was their to share, explore and contribute… but things were tough as an outsider. I don’t mind tough, I don’t mind being an outsider — hell, that’s my comfort zone, but I had never faced this kind of environment.

Let’s talk about my expectations which in hindsight were unreasonable. I grew up in an overly PC region of North America, but had still faced outright racism, ageism and sexism. I am not naïve. I had expected to be treated with the respect warranted to all humankind. I had expected that people I interacted with would try to understand me, because that’s what I do. I expected a minimal amount of patience and effort in communicating ideas across cultural boundaries. Unfortunately for me, I found very little of this. These presumptions of mine were what led me down the disastrous path to distrust, disenchantment and ultimately distaste for a large group of my contemporaries.

I won’t give too many details, but eventually it hit my sexual normalcy button, and I realized I am not ‘normal.’ Mid-way into the second semester, while we were developing our projects for three 3-person dwellings, we were asked to think about alternative families. Domiciles are always intense to develop because they touch upon the subject of how people live. For instance, a house expressly designed for three roommates
may be entirely different than a house for two parents and their child. Add to that the word ‘alternative’ and you can see what was coming.

The funny thing is I didn’t see it coming. I had already been confronted with my otherness from being so open. Yes, because I chose to respect people who dressed differently and spoke differently I was grouped in with ‘them’. I was abnormally open, called ‘libertine’ for my non-judgment of other lifestyles. Somehow, I still expected my views and openness to be respected, and for those around me to attempt to understand me. So ‘alternative’ threw me a bit. What was an alternative family?

Surely we could be creative here. A single parent family isn’t really so interesting as it is common. I can’t think of any important design differences for a same sex parent household. Roommates, sure a type of family, but again, common. Hrmm, what could be different and interesting to design? My three alternative households included: the hospice residence (parent, nurse and terminal child), the work-study residence, and the BDSM residence (one dom, two s or some variation there of). Upon presenting my teacher my choices, there wasn’t even laughter, just shock and, “You’re kidding, right? No. No.” It was fine until the last household. I had to leave the studio for the rest of the day just to get over my own shock at his reception. I was not embarrassed, I was incensed. How dare he dismiss my proposal like that!? Why not ask “why?” This teacher, in his early thirties, bilingual, did his post Masters in my old stomping grounds, decidedly not archaic, became ‘typical’ in my eyes, and ‘typical’ in the bad way.

You see, I’m not in the BDSM scene (yet). At that point, I wasn’t even that interested in checking it out. But the prospect of building a residence not necessarily based on equality in most areas presented a really fascinating possible exploration. Actual justifiable hierarchy of spaces are rare, especially in a home for three. But, no, we never made it that far in the discussion, because no one would discuss it. Shame.

So here I am, realizing that this experience at its base is what brought forth KIY. I realized that a place to discuss things like this may not be present in the lives of many, and wanted to foster such open conversation, free of ‘typical’ judgment. My aim is to open people up to not judge or disrespect other peoples lifestyles. If ‘kink’ is what lies just beyond ‘normal’ behavior, this is when I realized that I am kinky to many more than I thought.