Don't Make it Weird
My first trip to a kink convention
I have been attending science fiction and fantasy conventions for the better part of twenty years, some of that as a fan, most of it as a guest or panelist. I have seen every kind of cosplay the human imagination, a sewing machine, and hotel lighting can produce: scantily clad Ariels, Snow Whites of multiple genders, more Doctors and companions than one could shake a dozen sonic screwdrivers at. But nothing fully prepared me for the sixty-year-old man in a Harry Potter robe standing on the convention floor with his wand and crystal balls exposed to the public.
He and I made eye contact.
I am certain my face said, I was not emotionally prepared for wizard nudity.
His face said, First time at AfterDark Con*?
* Not its real name. But close enough for a man making eye contact with wizard nudity.
We nodded at each other and moved on.
And that, gentle reader, was the least surreal thing that happened to me at the kink convention I attended a couple of weeks ago.
I knew the writing track director from another convention. We’ll call her Trinity, because that is not her name and because it gives the story a little Matrix energy, which feels right considering I was about to find out how deep this particular rabbit hole went.
Trinity asked if I would be interested in attending AfterDark Con.
I said I didn’t really write erotica. Most of my fiction fades to black before anyone has to remove complicated clothing.
“You don’t have to write erotica or romance,” she said. “They just want working writers to discuss technique. And you can talk about podcasts.”
Technique, I could do.
Technique was safe. Technique had structure. Technique wore pants.
So I said yes.
She sent over the forms, and near the bottom was a line that told me everything I needed to know:
You will see nudity. Don’t make it weird.
Now, I am a grown man whose sense of humor has not changed much since middle school, so telling me not to make nudity weird is a little like handing a hungry 12-year-old boy a debit card and saying, “Be fiscally responsible in the snack aisle.”
Still, I told myself I could handle it.
I am an adult. A mature professional. A man who has spent decades around fandom, theater people, horror writers, and hotel bar conversations that should have required waivers or, at the very least, an NDA.
Besides, people are people. We are all equipped with roughly the same factory parts, arranged in different ways depending on model, year, options package, and maintenance history. I go to the gym. I have seen plenty of men in locker rooms strutting around with the confidence of retired Roman senators.
Parts is parts, right?
That was my theory.
Then I arrived at AfterDark Con and learned that context matters.
Because parts in a locker room are one thing.
Parts attached to clamps, holsters, pins, leather harnesses, or, in the case of Harry Potter Man, performing a full Wingardium Dangleosa in the Author Alley section of the convention?
That is a different syllabus.
Check-in was deceptively mundane. A lobby. A pool. A few cheerful signs reading: Common Area: No Nudity.
Fair enough. That sign is probably necessary at more hotel pools than we like to admit, especially during spring break or anywhere in Florida.
After check-in, I was directed to the lower level, and that was when reality started to tilt.
The glass doors were covered in butcher paper—the brown, heavy kind butchers use to wrap your meat, which felt both practical and a little too on-theme. A fully clothed security guard checked my badge at the entrance. Another checked it again once I was inside.
This was a 21-and-over convention, and we certainly didn’t want a twenty-year-old sneaking in and seeing…
Honestly, I wasn’t sure what.
On the way to my panel room, I saw a few skimpy costumes, but nothing you wouldn’t see at a larger con after dark.
That was the trap.
It lulled me into a false sense of “this is just like Dragon Con.”
The panel room itself was cozy, about 20 chairs for attendees and a panel table at the front of the room. A standard convention setup. I like smaller rooms at cons this size, about 2,500 attendees, because you don’t feel like you’re in a cavern if only 10 people show up to your panel.
I introduced myself to the other two folks on the panel who were already there. We were all dressed in T-shirts and jeans; standard attire for most convention guests. Since I was moderating, I had my questions loaded on my iPad and was trying to look like the sort of man who had everything under control. I was only half paying attention to the conversations around me.
Until one of the panelists said, “Damn, I missed the masturbation panel this morning.”
Panelist number two replied, “Oh yeah, I saw that on the schedule. It was at 10 o’clock. How does that work? Do you do yourself or does someone do you?”
I did not catch the answer because a man wearing nipple clamps and a Speedo asked me if this was the writers’ panel. I assured him it was. A quick look around the room told me I was the only person who had registered the nipple clamps as noteworthy.
The panel went well, which at a convention means everyone found the room, no one weaponized the microphone, and people applauded at the end. They took the giveaways the guests brought. Mine was a Cold Cuts bookmark featuring QR codes leading to this page. Hello, AfterDark Con people.
I saw Trinity after the panel, deep in discussion with some folks about important convention director stuff.
A side note here: most of the directors at any fan convention, kink or not, are unpaid and do it for the love of the fandom. BE NICE TO THEM.
As it turned out, Trinity was discussing important convention director stuff, just not the kind I expected. Specifically, how she planned to suspend a human being by metal hooks the following afternoon. For the unenlightened—a group that, at this point, very much included me—hook suspension involves placing sterilized metal hooks through a consenting adult’s skin and then lifting that adult into the air using a rigging system that looked like something assembled by NASA, a circus, and a fishing supply company.
For the record: Trinity was the person installing the hooks.
She explained the suspension process. There can be blood, but not very often. Safety and consent are paramount. The hooks, she told me, are not the strangest part.
The calm is.
Apparently, when you are dangling by metal, the human mind may respond with peace, focus, even euphoria. I am going to trust Trinity on that one, because my own mind responds to bloodwork with, “Are we dying? I feel like we’re dying.”
Then she asked if I had been to the dungeon. Of all the sentences I never expected to hear at a convention, “Have you been to the dungeon?” was absolutely in the top three.
I told her I had not.
“Come on,” she said. “I can get you to the front of the line.”
I certainly did not want to line-jump a bunch of people who had planned their evening with far more confidence than I had planned mine, but Trinity did not seem to think it was a big deal.
She spoke to the dungeon director—dungeon master? dungeon foreman? assistant manager of consequences?—and asked if we could do a walkthrough. We were not going to participate. This was my first time at AfterDark Con, and she wanted to show me the dungeon.
The director was a topless woman who explained the rules with the relaxed authority of a Southern woman sipping mint juleps on a veranda.
No gawking.
No touching.
No shouting, “Oh my God, that’s not gonna fit.”
And absolutely no photos.
We showed her our phones were off, and Trinity led us inside.
The dungeon looked like a metal shop project that had gone wildly out of control. Or maybe it had followed the perfect blueprint. How was I supposed to know? I was new here. I still thought a suspension bridge was something you drove across.
There was a man on a device who appeared to be learning about leverage from a determined woman holding what looked like a piece of medieval plumbing equipment.
According to Trinity, the dungeon was about three large hotel conference rooms wide and nearly as deep.
The floor was covered in plastic, with a walkway marked off by taped-down butcher paper.
We stayed on the walkway.
That seemed important.
Around us, slaps cracked like gunshots. Moans and groans echoed off the hotel walls. Somewhere nearby, someone was either having a transcendent experience or losing an argument with furniture.
Possibly both.
After the tour, I thanked Trinity and told her I looked forward to seeing her at the next, far more mundane convention we both attended.
As I was leaving, a woman stopped me and asked a question about an earlier panel I had been on. We spoke for a minute or two. Nothing makes you question your cultural calibration like having a sincere professional conversation with a skyclad stranger and realizing she is, by far, the most socially comfortable person in the interaction.
I met and spoke with so many people at AfterDark Con who were less judgmental, more articulate, and better informed than half the corporate conventions I’ve attended. Which, to be fair, is not always a high bar. I have been in hotel ballrooms where grown adults nearly came to blows over microphone placement and the correct pronunciation of “Tolkien.”
AfterDark Con is absolutely not for everyone. I understand that. There are parts of it I am still processing. But if you do go, you may be surprised by what I was surprised by.
Not the nudity.
Not the hooks.
Not the dungeon.
The manners.
The amount of consent.
The weirdly impressive logistics.
The fact that the person explaining the rules of the dungeon sounded less threatening than the average HOA president.
And the realization that the strangest thing in the room might not be the person hanging from the ceiling or the topless woman calmly discussing safety protocols.
It might be you, standing there with your phone turned off, your eyes forward, your worldview making dial-up noises, trying very hard to act like a seasoned professional while every part of your brain is screaming:
Sir, this is not Dragon Con.
Cold Cuts is my weekly column about culture, memory, technology, and the everyday absurdities we’ve somehow agreed to live with. Subscribe if you’ve also suspected that normal life has some explaining to do.