It seems to me that a lot of vanilla folks with little to no knowledge of the kink community think of perversion like a lightswitch: either you’re kinky or you’re not. It makes sense – a lot of our popular media portrayals of BDSM conflate bondage with spanking, or put animal roleplay on the same plane as schoolgirl/teacher roleplay, or show sex workers delighting just as much in stepping on balls as they do in mud-wrestling. True, most kinksters have more than one kink – but we’re not magically into every perverted thing just because we’re into some of them.
I often wish my kink palette was wider, and to be fair, it has broadened significantly over the years. But here are some things I just haven’t been able to get into yet, despite really wanting to.
Tickling. Don’t get me wrong, I have been tickled a fair bit over the course of my storied sex life. One of my past partners quite possibly even had a fetish for it, though sadly he was too much of a dick for me to stay with him long enough to meaningfully play with that. I’ve eventually come to consider tickling a hard limit of mine, because the physical and mental exertion of that particular type of consensual assault is just too much for me. But it can be sexy to me in theory, or in fantasy: it’s hot to imagine being overwhelmed by someone through a means that looks so innocent and lighthearted but is actually dastardly beyond measure. The lightheadedness brought on by laughing very hard for a long time is also similar in some ways to subspace, or even trance. Until I figure out how to find tickling sexy IRL instead of horrible, I’ll have to stick to just laughing my ass off at funny folks on Netflix and YouTube as foreplay.
Ruined orgasms. Why have I watched so many porn videos of this kink despite absolutely hating anything that approaches it in real life? I hate when my orgasms are ruined; I hate when my partners’ orgasms are ruined; hell, if a friend told me they had a ruined orgasm last night (and didn’t specifically seek one), I’d hate that on their behalf! But when I watch videos or read erotica of someone deliberately pursuing a ruined orgasm (or consensually being subjected to one), I feel a twinge of arousal. Something in there is satisfying for me… but when I jerk off to the idea of a ruined orgasm, I still want the session to end in a real, actual goddamn orgasm!
Leather. I have a leather fetish in the sense that suburban middle-aged moms might use that word, i.e. I have an aesthetic and tactile fondness for leather objects that exceeds the average person’s but is primarily nonsexual. I like to stare at leather handbags and boots online; I feel like a foxy bitch when I stroll around in my leather jacket and matching gloves; I usually shout something like “Step on me!” at the screen when a hot person on TV is dressed in leather. But I have never, to the best of my recollection, actually jerked off thinking about leather, and I kinda wish I could. Not only would this be a fun fetish to play with (I’m thinkin’ boot worship and olfactory Pavlovian conditioning), but it would also connect me to the age-old and fascinating leather fetish culture. Some people still use the word “leather” when they mean BDSM or kink, and fuck if that doesn’t make me wanna bury my nose in the crotch of someone’s leather pants and like it.
Lipstick. Another thing for which I have an aesthetic affection that doesn’t quite deviate into lust. I used to write marketing tweets for a porn clips site known for its vast variety of off-the-wall fetish content, and every time a lipstick clip came up, I shivered in my boots a little. There’s something so powerful about a femme smoothing glossy pigment onto their lush lips, knowing full well they’re having a knee-weakening effect on the observer. In the past I’ve relished the feeling of walking down the street with a collar on, carrying the quiet knowledge that my sexuality was represented on my physical form in a public space and no one necessarily even knew; I think that feeling would be amplified even further if I had a lipstick kink. Every day could be a magical sexy adventure – or at least, that’s what the fantasy tells me.
Pet play. This is listed on my FetLife profile as something I’m “curious about,” but in truth, I think I’d always feel too silly doing it to explore it fully. Even roleplaying as a little girl – now the bread and butter of my kink life – initially felt so ridiculous and cloying to me that I almost didn’t pursue it despite knowing it was likely my biggest fetish. So maybe I’m wrong, and maybe pretending to be a kitten could actually be intensely sexy to me if I could push past my initial reticence and embarrassment about it. In the meantime, it feels safer just to fantasize. (Can I drink bourbon from a bowl instead of milk?)