"Dammit!" I punched my bicep.
"What?" Tori asked.
"Shit still HURTS!"
She grimaced. "Good, cheap, fast, pick two."
"Yeah well, bitch needs her license revoked if she's gonna stab people like that. I'm not some junkie, it's not that hard to find a blood vessel."
"You big baby."
"Hey, my hard and fast rule for my entire life is I put up a fight if somebody tries to penetrate me. That also applies to needles."
Tori giggled at my phrasing. "Don't forget, you organized this shindig. You're responsible for the whole kit 'n caboodle."
"No, I didn't organize anything this year. Ten years ago, I organized some people. Five years ago, I wrote an app. I never organized anything on Halloween."
She waved her hand dismissively. "Whatever."
We were in the car, headed to the Halloween Bash. Put on by several members of the Minneapolis kink community, it was a safe, organized opportunity to dress up in costume, meet your fellow kinksters, and screw them silly.
Ten years ago, as I came to terms with the fact that monogamy and a boring sex life were not anything I wanted a part of, I'd ventured through the Minneapolis kink community, building relationships among people, organizing us with message boards, texting lists, and occasionally, holiday cards.
Five years ago when I'd coded Selector, it made it possible for people to connect based on interest, instead of just showing up to a meet or answering an ad on the internet.
Or once hookup apps came about, trying to find people who were bent the same way you were. It'd taken about three conversations to find out my potential hookups weren't interested in leashes, leather cuffs, and spreader bars before I decided to start learning programming.
With Selector, you could see, in addition to their picture and bio, what their preferences for partner gender - and group size - were, what acts turned them on, and I'd even included a spot where they could scan an STD test with their smartphone camera and upload it, for those careful souls like me who always liked to see such stuff before trusting someone.
That's what I was complaining about now. The tech school where I taught also had a nursing division, and they provided cheap, twenty four hour turnaround for STD testing. Which meant that the people drawing your blood were not always the most skilled. In my case, Nurse Wretched had rooted around in my arm for what seemed like a year with a needle before finding a damn vein. I'd been almost at the point where I opened my arm up with a scissors just to show her that yes, I did have blood in me.
It would've been less painful.
But she'd gotten her sample and here I was two days later, my arm still aching, driving Tori to the warehouse where the Halloween Bash was held.
I was dressed as a soldier. It was a simple enough costume to put together, and fairly cheap too. Underneath her long coat, Tori was dressed like an interstellar warrior princess, wearing a metal-looking bra and a long loincloth. If she wasn't too worn out tonight, and if she came back home, I planned on holding her captive and torturing her for the location of the rebel base.
We parked in the side lot, and I marveled at the number of cars. I had helped facilitate this, in my own way - organizing people, and giving them a platform from which to communicate.
One door was propped open a crack, and we slipped in. The cavernous interior was well lit, loud with techno music, and warm. The temperature must've been cranked to eighty or above, expensive yes, but when most of the people are nude or close to it, and the temperature outside ranges from twenty to fifty, warm is necessary.
Entrance to the party was through a chainlink processing area where a costumed attendant printed a picture of you, took a copy of your recent STD test, put your cellphone in a black plastic bag, and stapled the whole collection to a bulletin board.
Further on, you had to pick out your wristbands, and sign your name to a sheet saying you agreed to play by the rules of the group. The wristbands were color coded. Blue on your right wrist meant you played with men, pink with women. The bands on your left arm signified your interests. Black for domination, white for submission. Blue for bondage. Red for anal. Yellow for oral. And a whole host of other colors signifying pain, pleasure, and the mutual exchange of bodily fluids.
We checked in and moved beyond the chainlink entrance, to a small bar slash meeting area. Tables were set up with stools, and a small bar operated off to one corner, people milling around in a riot of color. Two drink maximum, I knew from previous visits. The towering shelves ahead had been rigged with clotheslines and tarps, and I could hear sounds of carnal enjoyment and exploration taking place behind the blue plastic sheets. Along one wall, chainlink fencing had been set up for BDSM related activities, and the far back held a row of tents for those who wanted a more private experience. Off to the left of the cantina area, local sex toy shops had small display areas. I was amused to see that a local retailer for a popular national chain of low-quality lingerie had absolutely zero attention.
Tori squeezed my arm. "I'm gonna go see if I can find Nina. I'll see you later."
"Got it." She headed off towards the chain link and I people-watched. The guys were dressed like doctors and lawyers mostly, the suit-wearing dominant costume in full effect as it had been since that wretched book came out. I had to give props to the guy dressed as an MMA fighter. Shorts and fingerless gloves were his only clothing. Not much to remove, and easy to do so. Someone else must've realized it too, because a woman dressed like a sexy nurse walked up, grabbed him by the crotch, and leaned in to kiss his neck.
The women's costumes were pretty varied, though a couple of superhero movies had conspired to drop significantly more Amazonian warriors and Daddy's Little Monsters in our midst. But besides that, it was the usual assortment of sexy nurses, cops, tigers, schoolgirls, librarians, and devils.
I headed over to the bar, paid a steep charge for a lower quality vodka in a plastic cup, and tried to summon up some enjoyment. Since the cabin and the corresponding vandalism, I'd been in a funk. Not a bad one like dreaming about Sienna during a drunken shower, but a funk nonetheless.
I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned around to see a guy dressed in a toga proferring a wooden paddle. He looked like a punk grocery store clerk, half his head shaved and both ears gauged. "Please? If it isn't too much trouble?"
I held up my right arm, showed him my wristbands. "Sorry dude, not my cuppa. There's a guy dressed like the Lone Ranger, usually hangs out by the tents, he should be able to oblige."
He practically ran off. "Good luck!" I shouted after him.
Nobody in the cantina area caught my eye, so I ordered another vodka and wandered on. I strolled past the chainlink, stopped to watch. Mostly women, mostly undressed, cuffed to the silver fencing in various positions being cropped, caned, whipped, or paddled by roughly even mix of men and women, a chorus of pained cries and orgasmic moans rising from the play area.
I wandered on. I just wasn't feeling it. I'd caught a Selector date or two since the cabin, but they'd just been exercise with random people, no more enjoyable than the barbell workouts I'd thrown myself into now that the cold weather was making running painful.
The tents were a hub of activity, couples and groups waiting to get in, in various states of foreplay as they waited. Buckets of condoms, lube bottles, and unused sex toys were scattered around, and cries of enjoyment and agony echoed out of the nylon huts.
Into the rows of shelving, and I found myself among the tarp rooms, each one filled with a crowd of people, all gathered around a preferred sexual activist, or one they were curious about. One room featured a handful giving spanking demonstrations, showing off the use of paddles vs hands, diaper position vs over the knee vs standing.
Another room had two men demonstrating various knots on a man and woman, surrounded by a crowd of onlookers.
The next room was somewhat less crowded, five or seven people either drinking water or urinating on each other in a kiddie pool.
Behind that were a gay room and a lesbian room, both of which I did not stop to visit.
A large space had been cleared and separated with tarps, furniture arranged within it, most of it made by a company that specialized in cutting foam into unique shapes. People milled around, talking, drinking, watching the couples fucking on the furniture.
