A thing I learned yesterday is that Contra dance (folksy group dancing) is very big amongst the Brooklyn queer scene. It is apparently very wholesome. There’s a band with a fiddle. A caller to direct the dancers. And people lined up to twirl around and stop in unison.

Someone recently was explaining the goings on at an impact play party that involved sex and there was so many implicit rules of kink culture that I felt very uncomfortable.

Not with the sex and not with the kink but with just how implicit the culture is and how one misreading of a situation or a lack of profound knowledge could lead to very bad consequences. You have to negotiate prior to anything going on or someone being knowingly or unknowingly in “sub space,” which is kind of like being drunk on neurotransmitters and unable to consent.

I don’t know how an autistic person functions in that dynamic outside of controlled classes or some kind of non-autistic sherpa/guardian.

Especially though, how much eye contact is required.

Maybe I shouldn’t even generalize it to autistic people. I will speak for myself and say that I know there is an entire world functioning underneath the surface at all times around me that I do not know about. The analogy that comes to mind is not my own. Nikola brought up a terrifying sight. Watching rats form a bucket brigade between trash and their underground lair. It was complex, implicit, sophisticated, and terrifying.

The conversation I had about impact play also included polyamory and open relationships. It’s an ongoing discussion and I’m learning a lot. This is kind of a fascinating concept to me, but only as a concept. For the same reason. The complexity of polyamory and the potential negative consequences for getting it wrong are overwhelming, sophisticated, and implicit. I asked how people learn about this stuff and there’s required reading. I have resources now if I need to pass them along.

In Brooklyn, people go around sleeping with whomever, whenever and call it ethical non-monogamy or polyamory when they have no idea what those concepts are or they bastardize them for their own manipulative benefit. Just like contra dancing, there are rules, steps, music. When done right and with all the requisite knowledge, you have an entire community moving in unison towards a common goal. When you don’t, you have disaster.

Life doesn’t have to be that complex to still be beautiful. It can be simple and pure and still be sophisticated…moving…profound. I am a harbor in a tempest. Only very few people will ever be granted entry.