Memories of my first BDSM event

In 2000, I attended my first public BDSM event. I attended the annual Black Rose weekend (BR-2000) that was held in Washington DC. I didn’t know a soul but I wanted to network myself since all my contacts up to that point had mainly been over the internet.

The BR-2000 was held at two hotels, a Ramada and a Best Western. They took over both places and they ran shuttle buses back and forth. The Ramada was the main hotel but they had classes and play parties at both locations. The dungeon area they set up at the Ramada was huge, something like 22,000 square feet. They had a smaller dungeon at the Best Western, which is where we stayed.

Elise Sutton arranged it so I got an invitation to a Mistress meet-and-greet on the opening Friday night of the BR-2000. The meet-and-greet was held in the backroom of a Chesapeake Bay Seafood House, which was across the street from the Ramada. I sat next to a woman from Baltimore, the beautiful Mistress Fawn.

Later that weekend I ran into her at one of the play parties and she introduced me to the two men she had brought with her to the BR-2000, her cuckold and her boyfriend. Her cuckold was an older, very distinguished looking gentleman. Her boyfriend was young. He looked like he could have been in college. I was very impressed with Mistress Fawn.

Saturday and Sunday I signed up for a few classes convincing myself that some BDSM education would be good. And it was. The classes were very informative and the people were friendly. At night they had play parties and the dungeons were full of sights and sounds that up until that time, I had only imagined.

For the entire event I remained but a spectator as I was in too much shock to even think of participating. I had my share of submissive men who came up to me, wanting me to play with them, but other than allowing a man with a foot fetish to worship my feet, I remained a spectator.

After each outing that weekend when I went back to my hotel room, I tried to gather my thoughts about what I had seen, but to no avail. In fact, when the weekend was over and my husband and I were traveling in the car back home, we remained in stunned silence practically the whole way. I guess the only way to describe it was a total culture shock. Funny because a lot of things that I had seen during the weekend, I was participating in some of those activities behind closed doors at my home. But to see strangers doing it so openly and blatantly was the shocker for a beginner.

I made a few acquaintances at the BR-2000. Mistress Brianna of Washington DC was especially nice and helpful to me.

We even discussed meeting for dinner the next time she drove through my town on her way to the ski slopes. I exchanged numbers and e-mail addresses with both Brianna and Fawn. I communicated with them via e-mail but we never set up anything in concrete.  

Probably the biggest happening for me at the BR-2000 was a woman I met at the leather market, which was the retail and vendor area where you could buy fetish clothing and toys. One of the vendors sold corsets and as I was browsing through the gorgeous inventory of corsets, the woman running the booth struck up a conversation with me.

I confessed to her that the weekend was a little overwhelming and she communicated to me how she prefers smaller, more intimate groups over the larger fetish and BDSM conventions. This woman ensued to tell me about small FemDom groups that were starting to form around the country. The groups were called ClubFEM (Females Enslaving Males). I initiated contact with the main headquarters of this group and since there were no groups in my area, the FemDom couple who started ClubFEM (Dee and Gene) talked me into starting my own chapter.

I was the Head Mistress of the Maryland/DC Chapter of ClubFEM for two years. Those were exciting times and we had a wonderful group of FemDom couples. I will share some of my favorite ClubFEM memories in future posts.