Fantasy & Role playing
Fantasy & Role playing
By Lorrett
Lorrett is the coordinator of Fantasy Makers, a longtime OPEN EXCHANGE lister. Fantasy Makers is a safe place for adults to role play and explore sexual fantasies, all without explicit sexual contact. As Lorrett explains, the nature of play can itself be therapeutic.
We live in a culture where certain kinds of social interactions, particularly anything to do with our mating rituals are askew. Other species learn to integrate their needs to control territory, provide for themselves, and establish families, as they go along - we reject that training. Sexuality is everywhere - the natural attractions are not going to be brushed aside by "no, mustn't" - but you're not supposed to talk about it. Children, especially, are "protected" from any knowledge of what sexuality is and what it might mean to them until they reach some magical arbitrary age, at which point they're ejected into the adult world and assumed to know what they need to know. That "protection" is enforced by silence, ridicule, punishment, and shame.
The result of that societal blindness is that they don't know. Most of what they learn in their formative years about sexuality and power comes from television, from video games, and from each other, by word-of-mouth. Much of it comes from people who know as little or less than they do.
They get misinformation, disinformation, or no information at all. Adolescents get themselves into all kinds of trouble because they don't know how to combine their growing sexual drives with other aspects of "real life." Then those newly-minted adults try to establish adult relationships and all sorts of things go wrong. Big surprise.
It's unlikely that we're going to change our culture and eliminate these problems anytime soon, but we have to live with the consequences and work out some kind of reasonable accommodation anyway. How can people do this?
Some people turn to therapy. But let's look at another approach - play.
Children explore by making up a game. They try on roles and behaviors; when something works for them, they keep it, and weave it into other games. If it doesn't work, it can be discarded and replaced without penalty. The games they make up evolve into their personal rituals, their fantasies, their internal worlds.
That doesn't "just go away" when they reach some arbitrary age, but as adults, they're supposed to "get serious" - conform to social convention. Most adults are embarrassed and ashamed of their internal worlds. What if instead they continued exploring "the rules" through fantasy?
In the East Bay, a group of people who call themselves Fantasy Makers started a "Playhouse" where adults do just that. I serve as the coordinator, which means I run errands and try to keep everybody happy. As the word "Playhouse" suggests, we look at what we do as theater, but it's an individualized theater, where a person can take a personal fantasy out, and with the help of people who play the same way, create a scenario from it.
Playing these roles out reveals both the differences among people and their similarities. Scenarios differ, but the themes of taking/giving up control, of trust and vulnerability, of separation and connectedness come through again and again, in an atmosphere that's accepting and supportive even when the game is pure "gotcha."
What do we do? That's a question we get asked dozens of times a day, and the answers have to be fluid enough to wrap around the needs of whoever's asking. Some people want to relax and be somebody they aren't in real life - the boss, the patient, the opposite sex, a puppy, a pony, an alien, a policeman, a baby. Dressing up can be a big part of making the scene real so that they can relate to their chosen role.
Some people are trying to learn things they can use in "real life." What do (women)(men) really want or expect from the opposite sex? How do women experience pleasure? Do men experience pleasure differently? How do you let someone else have control without feeling endangered? How can you enjoy the exhilaration of danger without being damaged? How can you take control of somebody else without abusing them? How do you open up communication when someone won't listen? Or won't talk? A lot of those questions can be explored through play-acting.
Some of what we do is purely physical: wrestling, tickling and being tickled, sensation play, including sensory deprivation or overload, physical restraint. Some are visual: perhaps enacting or watching "show-and-tell" scenes, perhaps modeling for photos or videos. Some involve "virtual" vision - it's amazing how the imagination takes over with a blindfold and a story!
Certain things we don't do, either for the well-being of the people who come to us, or to fulfill legal requirements. We perform a lot of adult-themed scenarios, but we don't include any kind of sexual surrogacy or sexual contact. We don't play with anyone under age eighteen. We don't permit mind-altering substances, even the legal ones like alcohol, because they might allow a person to ignore what might otherwise be their limit for something. We don't do "surprise" scenes with someone who hasn't explicitly consented to play (we recommend the use of a "gift card" for special occasions).
Some people have a very specific scenario that they want to play out. It may involve a parent, a partner, a sibling, or a friend. We've seen people "resolve" a conflict they had with a long-dead parent, and get on with their lives. We've seen people find closure for some personal guilt or shame that they've dragged around silently for years because there was no place and no way to bring them out into the open - it's amazing what a spanking can do, sometimes. Or the issue might be grief - the "strong" man who's tied up in a numb knot because his life partner is gone and he can't even cry - sometimes people need to cry.
One of the things we do, wherever appropriate, is helping people integrate their fantasies into their lives. If someone has a partner who is, or can be accepting of what they need, we encourage them to see us together. It's why our donation for a "couple" - two people who play together in their personal life - is the same as we get for a single person. We also recognize that that's not always possible. Some people are very frustrated because they care very much about a partner, but know, or think they know, that their partner couldn't accept their fantasies. For them, we serve as a "supplement," letting them express themselves without risking their primary relationship. Still others have lost a primary relationship because their partner couldn't accept their fantasies. We help them heal while showing them that perfectly every day, "acceptable" people can share the pursuits they enjoy - and hope they'll go on to find a partner who's more compatible. Some do.
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