Over the course of years I attended a great many play parties, especially up north in Vancouver B.C. For even more years I hosted play parties in my home. That's something I've gotten away from and for whatever reason I haven't felt a desire to attend or host a kinky party for quite some time now.

Last night I broke the trend. I attended a kinky Halloween party at the home of two very good, long time friends. It was great fun! I think that my long absence from public play brought the excitement and magic back to me.

As I was driving home last night, thinking about the party, two things came to me that I felt worth posting about.

S&M can be, and I think should be, art. If someone is watching us play, our scene should be conveying an emotion to our audience. Even when we are without an audience, our scenes should still convey an emotion, just because no one is watching is no excuse for less than the very best we can put forward. Clearly the better we do our play, the more we will enjoy it.

A scene can convey so many things: brutality, elegance, humor, joy, and so much more. Watching a scene take place in which both partners are on the same wavelength, in which they are both seeking and finding the same thing can be truly amazing.

On the other hand, many scenes convey nothing. They are dead, without emotion, without feeling. How sad.

When we play we should put our entire hearts, minds, and souls into that play. Doing so makes our play a truly wonderful experience.

The other thing that struck me is a lack of easily available information concerning a very small number of S&M activities. All S&M contains some measure of risk, but for most such activities that risk is negligible. A few are a good deal more dangerous. For all of these books and websites exist which attempt to teach their readers how to pursue the activities in the safest way possible.

There are though a small handful of activities that are considered to be so dangerous as to be somehow beyond the pale. They aren't written about often, and if they are at all, it is generally just a warning that these activities are too dangerous to actually do.

The problem with this is that people do them anyway. Do them with no knowledge about how to make them as safe as possible. That seems a troubling state of affairs.

I watched last night, a committed couple in a long-term relationship do something tremendously dangerous, but at the same time tremendously joyous and fulfilling to them both. The troubling thing to me wasn't their consensual exploration of this most physically dangerous play, it was that it could be done in such a way as to bring them just as much pleasure and fulfillment, but safer by great measures of magnitude.

Their activity will remain extremely dangerous no matter how they do it, but that risk could be tremendously reduced by making only one tiny change that would in no way reduce their pleasure or fulfillment.

How sad that there are some S&M activities that are simply deemed 'too dangerous' so that good information about making them safer isn't easily found. By deeming them 'too dangerous' our community makes them even more dangerous.