I’m a 28-year-old gay man who isn’t going home for Christmas for the first time in my life. I’ve been out since I was fourteen and my family has been amazingly supportive, and they love my boyfriend of four years. (They hated my first and third boyfriends, so it’s not like they love anybody I bring home.) We’ve spent the last three Christmases with my parents and sisters and nieces, but this year a kinky gay couple with an amazing dungeon invited us to spend Christmas at their place and we’re going. My boyfriend played with these guys before we met, so he knows them, and there are two other kinky couples coming. My boyfriend and I have some gear but nothing like these guys have. We’ve always fantasized about being in bondage together in a real dungeon and so we immediately said yes.
When I told my parents we weren’t going to be home for Christmas, my mom said she was sad, but she understood that we would one day want to create our own Christmas traditions. When she asked us where we were going, I panicked, and I told her we were invited to go skiing with friends at their chalet. (We do not know anyone with a chalet.) My dad called to tell me my mother was more upset than she let on and asked if we could “visit that damn chalet” some other time. I wanted to cancel the trip, but we purchased non-refundable tickets and my boyfriend — whose family doesn’t make a big deal about Christmas because they’re Jewish — was adamant that it was too late to bail and that we would never get invited back to this “chalet” if we cancelled at the last minute.
I’m not asking if we should bail. I’m literally writing from the airport during our layover, which means we’re halfway there and there’s no backing out now. I’m writing because I found two things online when I was a teenager that helped me figure out who I was: your podcast and KinkMen.com. You’re like a gay father figure to me, Dan, and I want you to tell me I’m not a bad person for choosing my crazy kinks over my loving family. (If that’s what you think. If it’s not, please don’t reply.) My boyfriend is worried I’m going to crash out and make things weird and uncomfortable for everyone. And he’s right: there’s a non-zero chance that I will feel so guilty about being away from home — and why I’m away from home — that I won’t be able to enjoy this experience. And if I can’t enjoy it, he won’t enjoy it. We’ve always gone to midnight mass as a family on Christmas Eve and it feels insane that I’m going to be mummified in some dungeon instead. Can I get a pep talk?
Getting Upset In Layover Terminal
P.S. We’ve done our “screw diligence,” Dan! We had a Zoom call with our hosts, and we’ve got a group chat going with everyone who’s coming about our experiences, limits, and desires. Everyone seems nice. And in addition to getting tied up together for the first time, my fiancé is looking forward to finally having his cuckold fantasies fulfilled and I don’t want to screw that up either.
Three quick takes:
1. I hope my advice reaches you before you’re mummified in that dungeon.
2. Your mom is right: It is important for couples to establish their own Christmas traditions. While jetting off to Europe to visit a sex dungeon might not be an annual thing, spending Christmas away from mom and dad and the rest of the family — being off on your own — might be something you and your future husband wanna do once in a while. So, this is a good precedent to set. And it will make the Christmases you are home for — like next Christmas — that much sweeter.
3. Oh, you gay kids who came out as teenagers to families that were nothing but supportive — it’s adorable, GUILT, and it’s exactly what gay activists wanted (and still want) for all gay kids everywhere. But never having to lie to your parents about where you were and who you were with and what you were doing — to say nothing about having to lie to them about who you are — means you never learned how to pull a really convincing fib out of your ass on a moment’s notice. Being loved and accepted is wonderful, but it left you unprepared for that moment your mom looked at you and asked, “So, where are you going for Christmas then?”
And now for the pep talk you wanted…
You are not a bad person for choosing to spend this Christmas doing something you love with the man you love. If you’re choosing to marry this man, GUILT, then he’s not just a member of your family, he’s about to become the single most important member of your family. Prioritizing your relationship with the man who is going to be your husband — and deepening your sexual connection with him by going on this adventure together — doesn’t mean your priorities are out of whack. It means they’re very much in order.
It might help you feel better if you stopped saying you aren’t going “home” for Christmas. You aren’t going to your parents’ house for Christmas this year — you aren’t going to your childhood home — but you’re going to be with your fiancé, GUILT, and when you’re with him, you’re home.
And not describing your kinks as insane also might help you feel better. Look at it/them this way: If you met your fiancé at kink event on a kink website, GUILT, it was your shared love of bondage that brought you two together. If you met in a normie gay bar or on a vanilla hookup app and three months later had one of those rare-but-magical Yahtzee! moments when you laid your kink cards down and they matched, GUILT, then discovering you shared a love for bondage was a sign you were meant to be. And while your kinks may be drawing you away from your family of origin this Christmas, GUILT, they’re drawing you closer to the man you plan to spend the rest of your life with.
I hope you and your fiancé have a wonderful time at the “chalet.”
P.S. If you guys have never acted on your fiancé’s cuckolding fantasies — if he’s never seen you with someone else — there’s a good chance he’ll be the one who crashes out. Going from monogamous to watching four other guys fucking your fiancé through the bars of a cage on the other side of a dungeon isn’t one of the baby steps recommended to couples who are just beginning to explore cuckolding, which is perhaps the most emotionally charged/tricky kink of them all. So, maybe he watches you make out with another guy the first night and then you check in with each other before going any farther the next night.
P.P.S. Go home in January! Don’t go home on January 14th, as you don’t know how your parents celebrate the Feast of the Ass and you probably don’t want to find out. But you could surprise your mom and dad by showing up on January 24th. Just remember to fake some pics with Photoshop or AI of you and your fiancé on the slopes before you go home. And unless the photos you took on your actual Christmas holiday are locked in a private album, do not let your parents hold your phone and scroll through your photos themselves.
P.P.P.S. I had a Jewish boyfriend once and his family didn’t make a big deal about Christmas either — weird coincidence or something deeper?
P.P.P.P.S. KinkMen doesn’t have an advice column — but I thought a little encouragement and a word of advice from someone at KinkMen.com might help, GUILT, so I shared your letter with Brogan, who has appeared in more than a dozen films on the site that meant so much to you when you were a teenager. Here’s what he had to say:
“I’m so excited for you! I’m excited for you to connect with a group of guys you can feel safe to explore with; for you to play in a real dungeon for the first time; and for you and your partner to share the experience together. I hear from guys all the time who dream about finding any single one of those things and you’ve hit the jackpot! Give yourself permission to explore and enjoy. Leave everything going on outside the dungeon on the outside, and let yourself be present with your partner and the rest of the group while you’re inside. Everything else will still be there when you’re done, and you’ll be so glad you said yes to this trip.”
Follow Brogan — pansexual muscle slut and Pro Dom and KinkMen star — on Instagram @broganxbrogan and on Twitter @broganxbroganx.
You’ve answered a few questions about long-term bondage play — people being tied up for hours — but I wanted to ask a more specific one. My partner and I both adore me being in straitjackets and I’d like to try spending a whole night in one. We mostly use medical-style straitjackets, which I’m not sure makes it better or worse. I find them quite comfortable, obviously, but safety is good too and I haven’t been able to find much online beyond some instructions for “medically necessary” use of straitjackets in mental institutions, which is a different vibe than the one we are going for.
Arms Locked In Confining Enclosures
“I’m into the exact same kind of straitjackets ALICE is — tight canvas ones — and I’ve been in one for hours at a time, even overnight,” said Paul Ybarra. “It’s an awesome feeling to sleep in a straitjacket but it can be tricky.”
Paul Ybarra is a singer, a songwriter, a tarot card reader, and — most importantly for the purposes of answering your question — he’s a straitjacket fetishist with more than thirty years of experience.
“What works best when you want to sleep in a straitjacket is to make the sleeves tight but not too tight,” said Ybarra. “ALICE will want to be able to move her shoulders and wriggle her hands from the wrist down. She still won’t be able to get out of the straitjacket, but she’ll be able to adjust when her arms get sore. And she shouldn’t panic if she wakes up and her arms have fallen asleep. That’s a temporary sensation called ‘parasthesia,’ which is caused by constant pressure on a nerve. That ‘pins-and-needles’ feeling resolves pretty quickly once you move a little.”
If those pins and needles don’t go away after you’ve moved and wriggled around a little, ALICE, you should wake your partner and ask them to let you out. When Ybarra spends the night in one of his straitjackets, he gets briefly released once or twice during the night.
“When my partner gets up to use the bathroom or something, he’ll let me out for a quick ten-minute break,” said Ybarra. “I’m able to stretch, get a drink of water, take a quick pee, and then it’s back in the jacket. ALICE will find she lasts a LOT longer — and she’ll be even more turned on — when her partner ‘forces’ her back into her straitjacket after a short break.”
And Ybarra says you’re right to go with canvas for overnight straitjacket play.
“Medical/institutional straitjackets — canvas — are better than latex or leather ones for long-term play, as you’re less likely to overheat in canvas, because it breathes. And these jackets were designed to be struggled in, hard and for a long period of time, which means they’re safer for long-term play than leather or latex.”
One last pro-tip from Ybarra: “The crotch strap is there to prevent the ‘patient’ from getting out of the jacket themselves and ALICE should make sure her partner makes that crotch strap nice and snug. Give it a good cinch. She’ll thank me later for that!”
Follow Paul Ybarra on Instagram @straightjacketarot. For more, go to www.straitjackettarot.com.
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