Looking into the Hole of Glory

Gloryhole @ the Pleasure Chest in West Hollywood 9/13/2012

I walked up to a wall of white fur, dotted with circular puncture wounds-- holes, some might call them. Other party-goers at the Pleasure Chest event were pressing their eye sockets to the wound-holes and sedately buzzing about something. So I followed suit-- these were people 'on a list' after all, so I figured their actions were worth an act of mimicry. I a-pressed and found myself staring into a life-size diorama of a dingy bathroom, complete with lewd slang, like "i'm banksy" scrawled on the dirt streaked walls. But, apart from the faraway suggestion that this was the collective conscious rendering of A Raunchy Sex Place, there wasn't anything actually going on beyond the fuzzy firmament. As in, no fucking.

I turned towards my friend's (the one who put me "on the guest list") boyfriend and tried to formulate my impressions. All the sudden it was clear, "Wait, that's not what a glory hole is... A glory hole is where you stick your cock, not your socket: eye, electrical, or otherwise". I could hear other people musing about the same apparent misunderstanding/disappointment. Of course, I'm sure something did happen behind the furry curtain eventually, but I was only able to party it up for an hour, and never did return to seek the glory of the white hole.

Anyway, that moment was kinda the microcosmic event that summed up the whole shebang. It wasn't a traditional gloryhole; no cocks came to greet my retina. But it did relay a poignant truth: sometimes there is nothing behind the alluring partition, no matter how downy its backside. Sometimes there ain't even hot-monkey shenanigans in the shit-streaked gas-station bathroom in West Hollywood. Well, at least not at the exact moment you decide to peer into a Shakespearian chink while holding your wienerschitzel. The Gloryhole party was real talk.

People mulled about, chipper but contained. The atmosphere was rife with lots of good feelings and relatively low-key costumes. Sure, there were lady-girls speaking in falsettos, donning full leather corsets (and stilettos, for the rhyme), but nobody's garb really stood out to me. There is a possibility that after 5 years of working in a dungeon I have become desensitized to such things, but I imagine most people in that scene have also seen their share of the dark arts. When a guy in a conservative suit and a I-might-try-to-sell-you-something tie chatted me up, I indulged myself and easily answered his query about how I paid/made my way, "I'm a professional dominatrix".

The words floated gently on his ears. The reaction was mild-- inside the corral of the Gloryhole, kink was the reigning stasis. For those folks who predominantly congregate with kinky coevals for this feeling of acceptance, this probably seemed like no big G-thang. But for a girl who hasn't learned her lesson, and frequently finds herself chasing the shirt-tails of vanillas, this was an incredibly calming experience. Our conversation continued in this vein, as he expounded on his proclivities and travails-of-late. It turned out that this guy (who I had quickly and incorrectly pegged a "normal") and I actually had quite a bit to talk about. Now we're real-life Fetlife friends! Again, in the parallel universe of the Glorified Hole, one's deviancy was the conversational equivalent of talking about the weather.

My bout of Glasnost (openness), in conjunction with the free champagne being proffered by circulating womanfolk, was making me giddy. I started prancing around in a Hunter S. Thompson-type gallivant. In a corner, there was a small spanking demonstration (act?) where 2 pretty ladies were stacked on top of one another and leaning on a black Prop. The uppermost pretty ass was being spanked by a pretty hand connected to a pretty lady. I rubbed my hands, licked my lips, and ventured to the outdoor section.  I saw a man chewing his gum like cud, getting tied up by the hired professional bondageur. He looked too dumb to be sassy, but still appeared to be thinking something vaguely ironic, like, "I bet Cheryl's gonna get a kick outta this one". I was getting the fear.

I ran towards the throbbing music emanating from the taco stand area. My feet started kicking up to the beat but my eyes wandered, longing, taco-ward. And then: strike of luck! My friend and her boyfriend were eating tacos but a few feet from my gyrations.  I greeted them and crooned my neck to perv on the asada, "You want one?" The Taco Man asked. "Oh. Oh yes." He waved my money a way. I can always tell when I'm in my element by the amount of free food that materializes. When I turned around, smiling wildly with asada excitement, an older man tapped me on the shoulder and asked me, "Who are you?" as if I was really a somebody. I replied, "My name is Nobody", trying to make an out-of-context Odyssey reference and feeling very clever. He didn't get it, but we chatted and talked shop and I made another Fetlife friend.

DING DING DING!

The clock struck 9:30 and it was already time for me to leave-- lest I be transformed back into a kinkster living behind murky curtains. Me and and my uneaten taco rushed to the dungeon to pick up heels and then to Torrance (I.e., the end of the earth) to do a session that would turn out to be my most lucrative one to date. I walked in and my client was raving drunk, watching TCM: "I just love Laurel and Hardy", he gurgled. I would not emerge until 5 hours later...

* * *

And so, my experience at the Hole was curtailed but enjoyable. The night left a strong impression on my psyche, not because of its intensity or outlandishness-- I found it to be utterly neither of those things-- but because of the comfort it engendered. It offered a fun, frisky, safe place for me (I'm hoping others, too) to let my two discreet lives blur together for an hour and a half. Honestly, I probably just need to start hanging with a kinkier crowd.