After Pandora

When we’re very young, our worlds are really rather small. As a child, all my friends knew what television programmes I watched, which toys I played with, what music I liked, and that I wanted a pair of roller skates for Christmas. Other kids might have laughed when I said I preferred Wham to Duran Duran, but no one was actually offended by my choice. Fast-forward to now, and my life is rather more compartmentalised.

There are very few people who know everything there is to know about me, because… well, they don’t all need to know. Vanilla friends know the vanilla stuff, kinky friends know the kinky stuff, and both groups know about the burlesque. My burlesque shows are the only time when both worlds collide, and I will admit there are certain vanilla folk who I would not invite along for that very reason. They might get a bit of a shock.

I have much I could be more open about. I am bisexual, kinky and non-monogamous, but no everyone knows this about me. Much as I would perhaps like to be more open about all of those things, I realise that there are a lot of differences between each of us in the adult world and prefacing everything I say to people with a long explanation about what it means is perhaps asking for trouble. Or just a bunch of hassle that I could really do without.

If it comes up in conversation, I will tell some of my colleagues that I’m bisexual. Being a woman in a long-term relationship with a man has meant that I am one of those pesky invisible bisexuals, so it doesn’t come up in day-to-day chatter as often as you’d think. If the chance arises, I will also tell people I’m polyamorous. Both of these are things that most folk I like to spend time with should hopefully be OK with, even if they don’t understand them.

However, I personally think that BDSM falls into another category entirely. Perhaps because it’s not something that’s especially ‘worksafe’? It’s easy enough to explain orientation and relationship preferences to people who don’t talk about sex with anyone they don’t know well, but anything more intimate has the potential to offend. Would you ask a friend’s mother if she likes anal? Probably not! I reckon that discussing kink in some situations is perhaps a similar case of TMI.

When you only hang around people who share your life views, it can become tricky to forget that there are certain things that some of us just can’t come out about. If all your friends are kinky, they you have no reason to hide things like that from them. However, if some of your friends are vanilla or you are invited to events where a kinky mate’s vanilla family will be in attendance, it is often wise to reign it in a little. Not everyone is fully ‘out and proud’, so why insist on pushing boundaries when someone might get upset? It can sadly be a way of losing friends.

So I guess my main question is; do people really need to know? Being kinky is not necessarily something that affects the way I live my life – after all, many people go out clubbing and to parties – whereas my orientation and choice of relationship type do. In my mind, this means that people who aren’t themselves kinky just don’t need to know that about me. In much the same way that a friend who is never going to cook for me doesn’t need to know that I dislike carrots.

Much as I envy people who are open about everything in their life, I do think I have got the balance just right for my own life. After all, we’re all quite different and it’d be a pretty dull world if we were all the same.