Fitzroy Town Hall - 21st September 2013
Fitzroy Town Hall, feeling slightly over dressed.
I had considered wearing a long western duster-style coat that I have worn and do on occasion continue to wear. It’s long and very dramatic when the wind is in front of me and can make it billow.
I didn’t, as it was forecast to be warm-ish and I mostly wanted to wear a t-shirt and a light jacket and my western duster coat isn’t as light as it appears (usually when it billows).
I attended the
OzKinkFest Fetish Expo because I’m curious about expos, and curious in general. I’m willing to go and see and learn, find out stuff.
The most interesting thing from attending the Fetish Expo was, not surprisingly the people who attended.
I wasn’t the only person who was noticing they were overdressed. Two guys behind me in the queue to get tickets were also worried, with one of them saying to his friend “well take your shirt off if you’re worried”.
He then commented “I would have worn my leather pants if they still fitted”.
Considering it was drifting up to 21 degrees on the day I think it was borderline being able to be comfortable for wearing any large amount of leather without sweating a lot.
There were some people who were cross dressers, whom I only really noticed because they had heels on and were taller than me, I’m 183 cm (or 6ft), so not exactly short. But these ladies were rather taller than me, it was interesting, and something that while I noticed still took me a moment or two to work through
why they might be taller than me.
There was one piece of body language exhibited from the couples that were there that I found particularly noticeable. It was something I noted while watching a brief bit of cabaret, of the audience watching, and then when I began to wander around noticed it from more people.
It was the rubbing or patting of partner’s backs. More so men doing it to their female partner’s backs.
It was an fascinating quirk that a lot of people seemed to be exhibiting, enough that I noticed it was I wandered around.
I did start to wonder if it’s just a particular quirk of couples in general, that the man in these sorts of situations needs to do something with his hands.
Or maybe it was an somewhat unconscious thing, considering the role-differentials that were at play at the expo they were layering their partners with their presence. I’m not sure.
As for the actual stalls within the expo, there were broadly 4 different stalls, those presenting or selling; outfits, clothing and costumes, these included some leather corsets, various outfits made out of leather, vinyl or rubber. Then there were an assortment of leather cuffs, collars and other accessories like that, within this broad-ish category there were also stalls presenting bondage equipment like ropes, beds and torture-esque-looking stands and equipment.
There were several stalls selling paddles and whips.
Finally there were 2-3 stalls selling books, including one who was the author signing copies of her book “
Catalyst - Stories of Awakening”. I won’t try to summarise it except to say that the reviews on Amazon say that it’s “good erotica” and it appears to be much better than “50 Shades of Grey”.
First up the clothing element to the Fetish Expo.
There wasn’t anything overly surprising in this element of the expo, as mentioned above there was a lot of vinyl, some leather and some other things. A catalogue of available costumes at one stall revealed nothing overly surprising. I would term it as fetish, but only in the very broad sense of the term, costumes based on various domestic industry employments.
The cuffs, collars and other things like that presented something a little more interesting as with these smaller items there is more a sense of craftsmanship about them, these, like the paddles, whips and other items you get a sense these have been designed by people who are within the scene.
This is in fact true of most of the things at the Fetish Expo, they all have a sense of being an industry, albeit small and specialised. Most of the items appear very well crafted and have been crafted and designed by people who know what they want and think they know what others would need or want.
One other interesting thing about most of these stalls was the prevalence of women in the main role. I don’t want to say domineering or even power role, but there were at least a couple of men manning stalls with women. The men were in string-vests or sleeveless vests or something like that while the women were dressed, not ordinarily, but in a standard sort of way. Calmly confident.
The men who were on a more equal footing, well the only one I really noticed was a cross dressing man. She / He (I’m not sure on this gendering here as I’ll explain), was dressed in a costume nurses’ uniform sort of styled sort of thing. Unlike one or two of the other ladies around this outfit seemed more of a caricature of a lady than those others.
This one of the things I found fascinating whilst being there, the power balances between the people there and how to read them.
The cues that when we’re out in about to read off of are skewed quite a bit so it’s sometimes not apparent and a first reading isn’t right.
I looked at this lady and her and her partner’s stall
missemm, which was paddles and canes. Very nice paddles in fact.
The most surprising thing I noticed when I picked up the paddle was how light the paddles were. These were wooden paddles, but very light, even the larger ones were very light. One that I handles felt like it didn’t weigh anything.
You’d think that paddles, to use in that sort of BDSM sort of play would need to have some weight to them, but no. Some of these were incredibly light.
They were also very well finished.
I’d like a piece of furniture made out of some of these timbers.
The fetish / bondage bed was actually rather nice looking, some tasteful shackles and hoops through which to have your ropes go and storage around the four pillars (it was a four poster bed). However it was a rather dark wood / dark stain that was applied to the wood. It was the sort of piece of bedroom furniture that you could have in any regular vanilla house and unless you thought about it would be difficult on first look to think that it could be used for such predilections.
Whilst in the Fetish Expo I also spoke with the member from the Australian Sex Party, whom I learned was also the candidate for Dunkley (my electorate) so had a short chat with her about the election.
Finally within the Expo there were a few stalls selling books, these weren’t really interesting to me, not because I don’t find the texts interesting, as mentioned throughout I find most things interesting, if only out of curiosity. There was one large stall that was from Polyester Books, which I have visited before and purchased book from in the past. So I’ve had a chance to peruse their shelves, looking at not only the subjects that they decided to bring to display at the Fetish Expo but their whole range of books and other items they have on sale at their shop in Brunswick Street.
Finally and what I probably should have started with, but it’s more of a subject on its own was what I was given after I’d paid my fee to get in. That was, a show bag.
The show bag has obviously been sponsored by
http://www.adultretailfinder.com.au/ as within the show bag is a branded dildo and “Sex Love Time Vibrator” plus a hot pink “Plain Colored Wrist Belt”.
Inside the show bag were also 3 copies of Kink-E Magazine along with some advertising and business cards for businesses that weren’t at the Fetish Expo and ones that were.
One piece of advertising material did catch my eye this was
Fetish House ‘Purveyors of Fetish, Fantasy, BDSM, Kink, Dominance & Submission, Dungeons, Roleplay & Cross Dressing etc, etc. Supreme Mistresses & Masters, Obedient Submissives, Adventurous Fantasy Girls’.
They’re in an industrial/commercial estate in Oakleigh and are a fetish business that is “licensed and legal, and conform to all Health Department regulations.” which is nice to know.
I don’t find it at all surprising that something like this is in an industrial estate, a lot of sex-based businesses are.
Usually their being in these locations is down to planning laws. You can’t be within X meters of a school and the NIMBY argument comes into play and industrial estates are the only places away from such concerns. They’re also buildings that are concrete boxes and therefore customisable.
But I digress.
Fetish House’s website is interesting and somewhat surprising. Though I shouldn’t be, it’s something I’ve probably assumed existed. That it actually does exist with such a detailed list of services in itself is enlightening to what they offer.
Whilst wandering around the Fetish Expo I wasn’t tempted to purchase anything, though I didn’t actually go there expecting to purchase anything. Being there did make me more aware of how many people of diverse ages were into the broad ‘fetish’ scene.
There were some people who were at least 60+ who had purchased some items and busily looking at other things when I walked past them.
It was fascinating to see the varied people and diversity that’s present at an expo like this, and there’s something that’s rather more honest and true about all of this. Compared to Sexpo (another expo I’ve attended in the past) which was, compared to the Fetish Expo a rather commercial and somewhat soulless affair. The Fetish Expo is quirky, odd, weird but all the people there know what they’re talking about, know how to handle their products and have a passion for their lifestyle and world.
