After Action Report #41

[00:00:04] [SPEAKER_00] You're listening to After Action Report at Savage.love

[00:00:07] [SPEAKER_01] After Action Report Welcome to After Action Report, where you give something new a try, a long-time fantasy, or a big step outside your comfort zone, and then come on with me to tell me all about it. This week, meet Ty, who with his bear companions entered a very new space for him. Listen in. Ty, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us. Ty, thank you so much for having me, Dan.

[00:00:34] [SPEAKER_01] So before we get to the new thing that you tried, tell us a little bit about who you are.

[00:00:40] [SPEAKER_00] So I am a queer trans man who moved to a big city a couple of years back for love.

[00:00:48] [SPEAKER_01] Aw, I love. That's a decent reason to move to a big city. I hope it worked out. Some people move for love and it doesn't work out, but for you?

[00:00:58] [SPEAKER_00] It has worked out. So far, so good. And I also love my city, so I'm pretty happy.

[00:01:03] [SPEAKER_01] So far, so good is the right thing to say. It removes the jinx of saying it worked out. So far, so good. You don't want to take anything for granted. You don't want to jinx yourself. I hope it continues to work out for you moving for love. Thank you. So what was the new thing that you tried?

[00:01:18] [SPEAKER_00] So I tried cruising at a gay leather con in my city for the first time. I tried cruising for the first time.

[00:01:26] [SPEAKER_01] So before we get to the specifics of how you define cruising, what your first cruising experience was like, you were at a big gay leather con as a trans man. Did you feel welcome?

[00:01:36] [SPEAKER_00] I felt very welcome. Like, I was nervous beforehand. But it turns out nobody cared. I'm not that remarkable even. And I brought my two boyfriends with me, which was very helpful. So you had backup. I had backup. I was walking around these two beautiful bears on leashes and I felt great about that. I felt like the envy of the whole con.

[00:02:00] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, I think so. I think you would. And hey, like I'm gay and I'm going to leather events, fetish events with my husband forever. I still get nervous before I go. Yeah, but people were so welcoming, honestly. So the new thing you tried was cruising. Yes. How do you define cruising? If somebody said to you, you did what? Cruising? What is that? How would you describe it to that person who had no idea what cruising was?

[00:02:29] [SPEAKER_00] So I would count it as hooking up with a stranger that you have only just encountered on this occasion and communicating very quickly that you were interested in having sex with them and then having sex with them.

[00:02:42] [SPEAKER_01] Sometimes people talk about going cruising in the park. Sometimes people talk about walking around just a gay neighborhood and cruising and they're just like scanning for that little bit of eye contact that lasts a little longer than it might otherwise. And like the looking back over your shoulder to see if they're looking back at you and then coming together to negotiate.

[00:03:02] [SPEAKER_01] Some cruising spaces, there's no verbal communication at all. It's just people come together and it's all nonverbal communication and they get right down to it, having nonverbally telegraphed their consent. But you spotted somebody at this big leather event and then what happened?

[00:03:21] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. So, right. So a couple of things happened. So part of this was facilitated by the apps because my boyfriends and I decided that we were interested in having sex at the con, but we didn't have a hotel room because we all live in the city. So one of them went on one of the apps and there's a feed where you can post an ad and asked if somebody with a room could let us have sex in their bed and watch us. And this was mind-blowing for me. I was like, oh my God, you can do this.

[00:03:51] [SPEAKER_00] And it sort of worked. Well, it ended up working, but it worked really slowly because of course the person's then like, my roommates are about to leave. They're about to leave in 15 minutes. 15 minutes lasts for several hours.

[00:04:05] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, it takes us some time to get ready.

[00:04:08] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. So as we're wandering the halls, like looking for a little deserted stairwell, we run into this beautiful man who is kind of looking at us and sort of looks interested in joining in and sort of stops by. So we didn't talk about sex. He's just like, he's got an erection and he's sort of touching it. And we're talking about the weather or why we're at the con or something.

[00:04:38] [SPEAKER_00] But there's all this subtextual communication going on and pretty quick dicks are coming out.

[00:04:44] [SPEAKER_01] I don't know. I think standing there with a boner that you're touching is pretty textual. I don't think that's subtextual. I think that's foregrounded text. Practically Braille. It's so textual.

[00:04:54] [SPEAKER_00] I was able to read Braille. I'm so proud of myself.

[00:04:58] [SPEAKER_01] So this is your cruising moment. You're like in a hallway waiting to go and have sex in somebody else's room with their permission. And they're excited about having guests. They're a voyeur. And you spot this other guy. You were just going to this room to have sex with your boyfriends.

[00:05:15] [SPEAKER_00] Yes.

[00:05:16] [SPEAKER_01] Your bears, your man, and your men, plural. And then you picked up this other guy on the way?

[00:05:23] [SPEAKER_00] Yes, that's right. We ended up kind of all moving to the stairwell because the guy's room wasn't ready and we thought he might flake.

[00:05:32] [SPEAKER_01] So how did you get from talking about the weather and the guy groping himself to messing around in the stairwell? Is that what you did?

[00:05:40] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. So first, one of my bears, so the guy apologized in this way that, like, it wasn't an apology, really. It was an invitation. And one of my bears said, oh, no, that's fine.

[00:05:53] [SPEAKER_01] What did he apologize for? Wait, wait, what did he apologize for? The weather?

[00:05:57] [SPEAKER_00] For having a boner. For having a boner? Which he was displaying for us as an invitation.

[00:06:03] [SPEAKER_01] I'm so sorry I have this boner. Look here, I have this boner. I'm so sorry about this boner. If my boner is bothering you, I can take my boner and go.

[00:06:14] [SPEAKER_00] It was exactly that.

[00:06:16] [SPEAKER_01] Centering his boner in the conversation and laying it out before you. He wasn't apologizing for, he was offering up.

[00:06:23] [SPEAKER_00] He was offering. And so then one of the people with me accepted the offer and that opened the door for anybody to kind of, you know, move in and suggest that maybe we might want to touch it and see if he responded well or badly and moved toward or away. And he moved toward.

[00:06:42] [SPEAKER_01] And so anybody who had come down the stairs at that moment would have found you, two bears on leashes, and this guy with the visible boner all in a little huddle having a group grope?

[00:06:55] [SPEAKER_00] Yes, and somebody did come down the stairs. And I had this moment where I just tensed up. And then the weirdest thing happened. So before I transitioned, I could not have ever imagined that I would say this. But I looked up. I saw that the person coming down the stairs had his dick out. And I was immediately relieved. I was like, oh, thank God we're safe. He's got his dick out. He's implicated too. Right?

[00:07:21] [SPEAKER_00] Yes. He wasn't coming to bust us. He was coming to join in.

[00:07:25] [SPEAKER_01] We're all doing something naughty in the hallway. Nobody's been violated. Anybody who's in a stairwell at a big leather event, a big hotel takeover, has kind of consented to see stuff in hallways and stairwells and ballrooms and restaurants. And so it's not, although some people may regard a guy coming down the stairs already with his dick out as kind of a consent violation, at a big leather fetish event like that, you have consented to see shit.

[00:07:55] [SPEAKER_00] Yes. And it was, in fact, it was a reassurance. It was like, I'm here for the same reason that you're here. And you haven't violated me and y'all don't need to put it away.

[00:08:03] [SPEAKER_01] Yes. Did that person join the crowd, the group? Or did that person just go on his way with his dick out?

[00:08:11] [SPEAKER_00] So he didn't join because at that moment the room opened up and we asked the host of the room if we could bring our new friend to and we ended up bringing him.

[00:08:21] [SPEAKER_01] All right. So the moment you wanted to talk about was that moment of cruising, the eye contact, the like from zero to 60. Sorry about the boner. Oh, apology not accepted. We will take the boner instead. Yes. So that was the moment. That was the new experience, like picking somebody up in an instant, not a long conversation, not negotiation, not exchanging messages on the apps forever and ever and ever, just grabbing dick on the fly.

[00:08:48] [SPEAKER_00] Yes, that's right.

[00:08:50] [SPEAKER_01] And so then how was the sex? That was the moment. That was the new thing that you did. You obviously had sex before. So the four of you get up to the host's room. How was the host? How was the sex? How was the rest of it?

[00:09:01] [SPEAKER_00] It was great. The host was very chill and exactly as advertised. Just wanted to sit on the other bed and watch us fuck. So I didn't have quite as much of the kinds of sex with him as I would have liked because I was like, ah, I've got some complicated safer sex agreements. This is too complicated. I will stick to like hand stuff. But I think he had a great time. Hand stuff is great stuff.

[00:09:28] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, he was beautiful. And also the other thing is that, so a thing that I was kind of apprehensive about was that I had not revealed that I was trans like in a conversation because there was no point to. Like there was no point where it made sense.

[00:09:43] [SPEAKER_00] So we're in the stairwell and everybody's taking their dick out. And I'm like, oh no, I've got nothing to whip out. And so I ended up just like reaching down my pants and jerking off in my way. And everybody was fine. And then when we got naked, everybody was still fine. It just wasn't an issue.

[00:10:00] [SPEAKER_01] It wasn't an issue either. I mean, do you think that he recognized that you were trans in that first interaction or just when it became apparent that you were a trans man? It was just he's into you. It doesn't matter to him. Or was it a value add as it is for some?

[00:10:19] [SPEAKER_00] So I didn't talk to him about it. So I don't really know. Like I doubt that he recognized in the first moment, I'm not super clockable with my pants on. In fact, there was another kind of moment where I had been playing with his nipples and he tried to play with my nipples. And I had to be like, oh no, they're not real. They're not hooked up anymore. I've had top surgery and they're decoys.

[00:10:42] [SPEAKER_01] Oh my God, I've never heard it described that way. They're decoys.

[00:10:45] [SPEAKER_00] I told him to play with my scars and he couldn't register that I had scars. Like he wasn't parsing my chest as a chest that had top surgery and had scars. I was like, oh, he's not familiar with this, but it's fine. We'll just mess around until we feel good. Do you have sensation in your scars?

[00:11:03] [SPEAKER_01] Oh yeah. So that's some compensation. Oh yeah. You know, we all make sacrifices to be ourselves and to be who we are. And I'm not comparing getting nipple piercings to the gender confirmations in surgery that is top surgery. I'm not equating the two, but you know, I have lots of friends who've gotten their nipples pierced and lost sensation. Oh, that sucks.

[00:11:28] [SPEAKER_01] Whenever anyone's asked me why I haven't had mind piercings, I'm like, because nipple sensation is too important to me to gamble with it like that. Was loss of sensation a consideration for you before top surgery? Was nipple sensation really important to you or was it a sacrifice you were willing to make to be the man you are?

[00:11:48] [SPEAKER_00] I never really enjoyed having them played with that much before top surgery. And now I love having my scars played with. So it's kind of just a value add.

[00:11:57] [SPEAKER_01] That's great. And I'm really happy for you. I'm really happy that's true for you. So how did it wrap up? Did you, so long, farewell, evita, zang, goodbye, and never going to see you again, mystery stranger of the stairwell? Did you exchange Instagram handles? Are you going to hook up again? Or was this just one of those things?

[00:12:18] [SPEAKER_00] I very deliberately didn't get his contact info because he's too cute and I don't have time for another boyfriend.

[00:12:27] [SPEAKER_01] And you would be too tempted to drag him towards your relationship escalator because he was that hot?

[00:12:32] [SPEAKER_00] He's so beautiful. Yeah.

[00:12:35] [SPEAKER_01] Well, I hope you run into him again. The thing about the big leather fetish cons is that if you go regularly, you tend to make friends who that you see at the event and see regularly. So even though you don't have the bandwidth for this beautiful man in your life and you didn't want to risk the temptation of creating space for him in your life by getting his digits, as we used to say.

[00:12:58] [SPEAKER_01] Anyway, I hope you run into him again because it sounds like a pretty amazing experience and you could repeat it. You could do it again.

[00:13:06] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. If he's listening, hey, I hope that we do that.

[00:13:11] [SPEAKER_01] Ty, thank you so much. And I'm really glad that your first experience at a big gay mostly, they're not gay entirely, leather fetish event was so positive. That makes me really proud of the gay queer fetish community and scene and the events have worked hard to be more welcoming. It's really great to hear that you paid off.

[00:13:33] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. Thank you so much. I would 100% go back. I think I will go back next year.

[00:13:39] [SPEAKER_01] Thank you, Ty. I'm so glad everything worked out so well for you. And here's to the open-mindedness of my fellow homos. If you have a story you think me and my listeners would like to hear, write me at Q at savage.love. Let us know what you tried and you might be my next guest here on After Action Report. After Action Report