‘A fetish could be anything. People think of corporal punishment and
someone up on a wall getting fl ogged, but everybody has one. It could be
as slight as a sexual position or a part of the body that you prefer.’
— R UTHIE L A F ORCE , DUNGEON MONITOR , D IABLO ’ S
to the idea that he has a thing for wearing
dog collars and leather chaps exposing his
naked butt, instead of the notion he might
have a small wooden carving in his pocket
he believes has magical power. “Fetish”
was fi rst used to describe sexual activities
in the 1800s and was associated with the
idea of perversion or sexual deviance, but
it signifi es lot more than that today.
So what is a fetish? Fetishes run the
gamut from something as simple as only
wanting sex with red-haired women to less
socially acceptable activities like getting
off on watching women in high heels
stomping bugs, worms or sometimes (less
legally) fl uffy critters like mice.
Plushies or plushophiles are people who
get off on stuffed animals. Literally. Furries
are folks who fi nd large furry costumes
tantalizing. You might be watching the
Ducks play UCLA during Saturday’s game,
but a furry (or a furvert) is watching the
Duck mascot. A fur pile is when a group of
furries pile on top of each other and skritch
one another, often resulting in spooging
(we’ll let you draw your own conclusions
about what that might be), and www.
Pounced.org is the primo meeting place
for those of the furry persuasion. (Mental
note: We will never refer to our pets as “fur
kids” ever again).
If there were any furries at the last
Diablo’s Fetish Ball, EW didn’t notice, but
it may well be that we were distracted by
the guy getting a butt tattoo, the girl getting
spanked on stage and the good number of
bad fairies that showed up.
A foot fetishist might fi nd painting
someone’s toenails the height of eroticism.
“I have people who want to worship my
feet and paint my toenails for me,” says
Mistress Cecelia, a local former professional
dominatrix who now does it just “for fun
and pleasure.” She also mentions “electric
play,” which uses low-level electric currents.
She says, “There’s something I’ve heard of
called the ‘forced cheeseburger,’ but I’m not
sure about that.” Mistress Cecelia speculates
that the forced cheeseburger might be when
a vegan is forced to eat meat. “It’s the control
of being forced to do something,” she says.
“There’s nothing like true submission.”
A lot of fetish revolves around fashion.
High spiked heels, leather corsets, vinyl
dresses and leather collars epitomize the
associations most of us have with fetish.
A gerontophiliac is sexually aroused by
a signifi cantly older person. Finger sucking,
sex with people with piercings, latex wear,
leather wear, men wearing women’s
panties and sex with vegetables — these
are all fetishes. Most people involved in
the fetish scene, when asked to list what
fetishes are out there, typically resort to
saying “everything.”
Feels good to be bad
For most people with a fetish for
BDSM, wearing leather and carrying a
whip is something they do in the privacy
of their own home. As it turns out, Eugene
does have its own dungeon.
The Asylum Dungeon, located in a
former fi re station, proudly advertises 15
play spaces with sets from medical to Asian
motifs on its website. Owned by “Boss
Bondage,” the Asylum offers monthly
pansexual parties to its members. Boss
Bondage also sells bondage merchandise,
from very Eugene hemp ropes in a
plethora of colors for tying people up to
body piercing kits, paddles and canes for
spanking.
Boss Bondage said in an email to EW
that he makes “a living by traveling the
country teaching bondage at some of the
biggest events around the country,” but
unfortunately, he didn’t respond when
asked for a longer interview. He must be
tied up somewhere else.
But Boss Bondage seems the exception
to the rule when talking about BDSM and
fetish in Eugene. While many of those in
the scene want to maintain their privacy
and anonymity, they are happy to talk
about what they do in the privacy of their
own homes or in public at Diablo’s Fetish
Nights.
Ruthie LaForce lights up when she
talks about her involvement with BDSM,
fetish and Diablo’s Fetish Ball. A former
small town girl who was persecuted
when she came out as a lesbian, she’s
the appointed DM (she prefers Dungeon
Monitor to Dungeon Master), and has
been working with Diablo’s owner and
fellow fetish afi cionado Troy Slavkovsky
to put on Fetish Night since it began about
10 years ago.
“A lot of the people come to Fetish
Night that are new to the scene and don’t
know where to start,” says LaForce. Fetish
night at Diablos, she says, “is a safe and
secure environment for people who want
to try this.” Those into BDSM can also
meet others with similar inclinations
at “munches.” Munches, says Mistress
Cecelia, take place at local restaurants and
are a comfortable place for people new
to the scene to meet up and talk, wearing
street clothes.
Munches also provide a meeting place
for those in consensual power relationships.
Sheryl, a slave in a power relationship
and the organizer for Eugene’s chapter of
Master And slaves Together — the word
slave or submissive is always lower case in
power exchange relationships, according to
MAsT’s Pacifi c Northwest website www.
mastpnw.org) — says people interested in
a Dominant/submissive or Master/slave
relationship can meet up, whether they are
already in a relationship or not, through
munches or at a monthly local meeting,
held at a private home. A quick Google
search reveals that various McMenamins
pubs around the state seem to be a popular
spot for MAsT and other munches, and
at one point Sheryl says, Eugene’s MAsT
was meeting at the Valley River Center
Food Court.
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It’s about relationships
LaForce, like many in the Eugene fetish/
BDSM scene, is blissfully in a long-term
relationship. Participants in the scene are
often happily married and hold down full
time jobs or are full time parents. “Lawyers,
DAs, schoolteachers,” says Slavkovsky, “it
doesn’t make them freaks.”
Members of MAsT, Sheryl says, are
less focused on the sensation aspect.
“We’re more focused on lifestyle and
relationships.” Sheryl, who prefers only to
use her fi rst name because she works for the
state of Oregon, identifi es as a slave in her
consensual power exchange relationship.
“There’s such a sense of oneness with your
partner,” she says, despite what outsiders
might think of a Master/slave relationship,
“You have great communication. A huge
amount of mutual respect.”
Downstairs at Diablo’s
If a munch isn’t your thing, and a full
time Master/slave relationship is more
commitment than you are ready for, but
you think maybe you may want a little
kink in your otherwise vanilla life, then
Diablo’s Fetish Ball is the place to explore
your latent desire for a spanking or getting
tied up. Walk down the dark steps to
the lower level of Diablo’s Downtown
Lounge, and you’ll come face-to-face with
Slavkovsky’s personal A-frame: a wooden
frame adorned with cuffs and bondage
accoutrements, designed to have willing
participants bound to it.
LaForce shows how the frame is set up
for quick release. All the bondage situations
are designed to be safe she says, and she
keeps scissors on hand for cutting people
loose. And this is where safe words come
in. If a submissive (sub) is getting too close
to the edge in a “scene,” he or she uses a
safe word like “yellow” or “rainbow” to
let the person doing the spanking, fl ogging
or piercing know that it’s getting to be a
little too much. A stronger word like “red”
means the scene needs to end. In a noisy
setting like Diablo’s a gesture is used
instead, something as simple as making
the upraised palm “stop” gesture, Mistress
Cecelia says.
“Safe,” “fun” and “consensual” are
the words LaForce, Mistress Cecelia and
Sheryl bring up again and again. “I am a
very happy sadist,” Mistress Cecelia says,
“I’m always smiling when I do this.”
Gearing up
Good fetish gear isn’t cheap. LaForce
says she can tell someone who’s skilled
with a single-tail whip from a newbie
just by looking at the whip. “A single tail
from the local porn store costs $75,” she
says, while a good one, made and sized
for its owner, can cost as much as $600.
A single tail, by the way, is a bullwhip
type of whip — think Indiana Jones.
And LaForce says it takes training to use
a single tail or any other kind of whip
without causing lasting damage. You
want to avoid the kidneys, she explains,
and areas like the spine.
Along with single tails, other whips
used are fl oggers — whips with multiple
“falls” or lashes (a cat o’ nine tails is a
fl ogger with nine falls), bamboo canes,
crops and birch branches. Birch branches,
LaForce says, “are cheap and disposable.”
They get thrown away after use. All the
other gear is carefully cleaned.
“It takes me three days to clean
everything after an event,” she says. Whips
can be “stingy,” she says, like the branches,
which can draw blood, or “thuddy,” which
she says feel like a punch in the back.
For Fetish Night, LaForce brings in
local dommes, like Mistress Cecelia, as
well as others from around the Northwest
who are skilled at everything from
whipping to mummifying. Most of them
lately, she says, are women. Contrary to
the popular belief that BDSM debases
women, LaForce says that right now she
has more dominant women, also called
“tops,” than men.
The dress code for Fetish Balls, La
Force says, is fetish gear or black, but
many of the 400 or so people that attend are
there for the fi rst time, she says, checking
out the scene. If someone wants to come
down to the lower level and watch what’s
going on but isn’t wearing fetish gear or
black, LaForce will ask him to strip down
to his underwear. She says, “It’s the fi rst
lesson in humiliation.” She adds, “Ninety-
fi ve percent of people we do that to come
back dressed up.”
The Fetish Balls focus on what
LaForce calls “eye candy”: scenes that
are visually interesting like suspensions,
where someone is tied or pierced and
suspended from the ceiling, or bondage
and fl oggings. Fetishes like blood sports
(yep, bleeding, but practioners say they
are very careful about contamination) and
water sports (and when we say water, we
don’t mean the kind you drink) have less
visual appeal to the newcomer, and even
mummifi cation — wrapping someone
up entirely so she can’t move — while
a turn on for the wrappee, is diffi cult for
bystanders to relate to.
Many use Fetish Night as their fi rst
introduction to the BDSM and fetish scene.
For the upcoming Fetish Ball, newcomers
can expect burlesque, fi re dancing, play
piercings, suturing (for example, fl owers
being sewn to the body), sensory play
(things like dripping hot candle wax onto
the skin) and fl oggings, spankings and
suspensions. All of this activity LaForce
says, takes place “behind the ropes” where
she and her assistants can monitor the
scenes, and newcomers can participate, or
just watch.
Is fetish fun? The next Fetish Ball is Oct.
10 at Diablo’s at 959 Pearl St. “Everybody
has a fetish,” says LaForce, “whether they
want to admit it or not.”
ew
EUGENE WEEKLY OCTOBER 8, 2009 13