Wpssh! Crack! Wham!

These are the sounds I hear as I ascend the Joint’s staircase Friday afternoon. I’m headed to the Lair, the newest element to AVN’s annual Adult Entertainment Expo.

The convention’s latest aspect is a BDSM playground, complete with retail vendors, dominatrices and a number of demonstration products and furnishings to try out. BDSM enthusiasts were able to purchase items, while noobs to the scene got their first look at the BDSM community.

After witnessing several attendees be spanked, whipped and tied up, I found Mistress C, a dominatrix and an organizer responsible for bringing the Lair to the convention. In between the whips, screams and roars from the crowd, I chatted her up about the BDSM scene, 50 Shades of Gray and more.

So the Lair is new this year. I see a lot of people getting their first taste of the BDSM community. How do people usually get their start if they can’t attend something like this?

How people generally get involved, like how I got involved, it was basically the things I liked to do and create and experience in my personal sexual life. I realized other people had the same types of fetishes, the same types of things that they enjoy doing. You kind of attract yourself to a little community of people in your local area. They can be munches—people call our lunch [meetings] munches—so you go [to] a favorite munch in the area and you’ll meet other people like yourself. In communities such as ours that continue to expand, we have classes, we have protocol training, we have different elevations of things, which makes it really fun because it is a society of people who enjoy the different types of masochism, or whatever. So people evolve and they come together. And an event like this is what helps them to go, “Oh, I like spankings. Well, there’s other people that like to give them, and other people like to have them, so I’m not weird.” You know?

I’m not really a BDSM enthusiast. For the clueless, can you say what the letters stand for? I know sado-masochism is in there somewhere …

Well, they are interchangeable. They’re used a lot for a lot of different things. It’s bondage, obviously, some people use the D for dominance, or discipline is sometimes a word D is used for, but bondage, discipline, sado-masochism, you know, is generally the school of thought with BDSM.

I was speaking with an exhibiting vendor about the movement of kink towards the mainstream, and he indicated it started around 20 years ago. Do you agree? What are your thoughts?

I would totally agree with it. I mean, an image here and an image there. … We’ve been seeing a lot going into the media in the mainstream. And what I find that has really pushed and propelled BDSM out there in this scene and in this space is that trilogy that was written by that young lady who wrote about the erotica standpoint in her way, the 50 Shades. And of course those of us in the lifestyle, we go, “Oh, it’s not accurate, it’s more romantic.” We always have something to say. But it is the book that has crossed over more lines … and asked people of different backgrounds to listen, breathe and hear that BDSM is here now. We are ushering it through because it’s about tolerance. Why not at least breed some tolerance?

For more information on Mistress C and her BDSM event company, head to mistressc.biz.