The Worst Date Invite I’ve Ever Received
And I use the word “date,” extremely loosely.
(Content warning: contains sexually explicit language.)
I didn’t start dating or having sex with people until my late 20’s. I’m 31 now, polyamorous, and living with a partner I love very much. Back in 2018, I spent some time exploring dating apps, FetLife, and Craigslist. I ended up getting my V-card punched by way of a Craigslist hookup, in a public men’s room, by a guy whose name escapes me.
Around the same time, I was talking to several people online and hooking up with some of them. A gentleman approached me on FetLife, the social networking site for folks who are into BDSM and other fetishes or non-vanilla sexual practices. I was being approached by several people, but this one stood out mainly because my gut said this person was not going to be someone I wanted to be around. When my intuition says something like that, it generally behooves me to pay attention.
Sure enough, this gentleman was full of red flags from the start.
Almost immediately, his word choice tipped me off. He said he wanted to “deflower,” and “molest,” me. That could have been meaningless, but stacked up against everything else, it would fit with his creeper persona.
He told me he drove by my house, which perplexed and alarmed me because I hadn’t given him an address. I have a long history of PTSD, and I’m usually armed with something sharp if I’m out walking, especially if I’m alone. This really didn’t help.
He also said that he had a white panel van, which is almost a little bit too on the nose, considering what came next: he wanted to play out a kidnapping fantasy.
I should say, before going further, that I’m not categorically opposed to such a fantasy… if it were carefully planned out by someone I know and trust. This guy, whose name I don’t think I ever got, was not someone I knew, and he damn sure wasn’t someone I trusted.
I’m also very kinky. I don’t have many limits — things I won’t try at all, ever — and I love being dominated by my partner. At that point in my life, I was expressly looking for a partner for that purpose, and I said as much in my profile. My real-world sexual and relationship experience may have been lacking, but I had done my homework.
This man fancied himself a Dominant, as many of them do. Unfortunately, some abusers also like to pick up on submissive types who don’t have a lot of experience, because they think they can get away with things that a more knowledgeable person wouldn’t let slide.
He told me he wanted to pick me up and immediately blindfold me, then drive me out to a second location, approximately 35 miles away, in the middle of nowhere. He did give me the address, but that didn’t mean that address would be the place he’d actually take me. And even if it were, I would have no way to get home.
The kicker was that he didn’t want to use a safe word once I put the blindfold on. For those who don’t know, a safe word is a word or phrase that you say when you want to stop a scene, or a particular act. If your mouth is full or if vocal communication is otherwise not an option, you would use a particular gesture. This is standard practice in the world of BDSM, along with a discussion of kinks, fetishes, and limits, especially at the start of a relationship, when you’re just starting to learn each other.
This goes double for playing out a scene involving a kidnapping fantasy, because I was supposed to act scared, pleading for him to stop, let me go, and so on. If “stop,” doesn’t mean “stop,” you need a code word that does mean stop. Even if your partner is perfect for you and doesn’t go too far with it, anything could happen. You might have a heart attack or another medical problem. If you’re using restraints, they might cut off circulation and need adjustment so that you can keep your appendages intact.
I tend to favor a stoplight approach to the safe word system: red means stop, yellow means slow down or “I need a breather,” and green means all is well. Because I can go a bit nonverbal during sex and may not think about it, my partner can ask me for a color, and I can say red, yellow, or green and communicate a lot that way.
As if that weren’t enough, and it was plenty, he then explained in vivid detail that he planned on putting his fist in my vagina, through my cervix and into my uterus.
Now, I don’t know if that’s even physically possible, but I’m not trying to find out, especially with some guy I just met whose idea of a first meeting starts with blindfolding me in his kidnapper van.
Fisting I understand. Putting it through the cervix is another matter.
I’m alive and kicking, and not chained to a radiator somewhere, so I obviously did not accept his invitation. His response to this was to tell me that I had said I was looking for a Dom and that this is what I asked for. It was basically, “Come back when you’re serious.”
I know there are these kinds of self-proclaimed Dominant types out there. I’m just glad I had enough sense to tell him where to go. The real problem is that a lot of people wouldn’t know any better when it comes to BDSM culture, and his nonsense may work on some people, and people like him definitely make us all look bad.
