Everything I do for fun is kinky. How do I talk about that on the first date?
In a comment on yesterday's post, wotw asked,
This problem comes up repeatedly. It's a first date. We hardly know each other. She asks: "So what do you do for fun?". The honest answer is: "Stick weird foreign objects up women, set people on fire, host (with invaluable help from invaluable friends) large get-togethers for sexually open people, etc."I do usually get around to telling them about this stuff, usually on about, oh, the second or third date or so. But the first five minutes of the first date seems a little soon.
On the one hand, this stuff takes up a lot of my time, and crowds out a lot of other things I might do for fun---so if I don't mention this, I'm sort of at a loss for an answer. I end up saying someting really stupid like "Oh, you know, I like all kinds of stuff."
Or I say something like "I read a lot", which is moderately accurate (actually, "I buy a lot of books" is more accurate), at least as a matter of fact, but grossly inaccurate, I think, as far as conveying information about my funloving nature.
Help me, Cluechick! How do I answer this question?
This is a great question. There are lots of kinky people online, as we all know, but there are also lots of people who aren't kinky. And there's a time that it's reasonable to talk about your kinks and darker desires, but the first few minutes of conversation are rarely that time.
So, I recommend that you lie.
Okay, wait, no, sorry, I didn't mean that. But it doesn't hurt to have a few innocuous things that you can talk about in those first minutes before you get into some of the more, ah, extreme interests. While I'm a strong proponent of honesty in general, I'm also in favor of the occasional white lie to help people save face or to keep a new social situation flowing smoothly. This is probably one of those times.
Your approach of talking about books is a good one. Other fairly innocuous topics might be movies or current events (though that gets dangerously close to politics, which might also be best avoided), travel, or what have you. Now, innocuous topics will not, in fact, help immensely in conveying your fun-loving nature, as you put it, but they will help to break the ice, let you and your date get comfortable with each other, and come to feel comfortable enough that you can broach the topic of the last weird object you inserted in a woman. (That reminds me of a fellow I fondly called Insertibles Guy, but that's another story.)
Remember, in the first few minutes of talking to someone, you're not necessarily trying to convey every last tidbit of information about yourself, but rather, are just getting started on striking up a rapport.
There is, of course, another hand to this answer, however: If you would not be interested in dating/playing with/fucking this woman if she's not into the sorts of things that you're into, then you have very little to lose in scaring her away early. If she's into the sort of play that you are, she's probably not going to be nonplussed by your opening the conversation in that vein. I, for example, have been known to enjoy a variety of activities that might not be found on the regular menu, and I'm generally pleased when someone I'm flirting with lays out his interests early so we can see what overlap we have.
On the other other hand, you never know what she might be interested in trying after getting to know you and how fabulously attracted she is to you.
All of this is to say, then, that you have two basic options, both reasonable: Start on innocuous topics (which you will probably want to think about ahead of time), or dive right in. I recommend that you use your judgement on which to use based on the balance between how disappointed you will be if you don't get to stick weird objects in her because you've scared her away and how disappointed you will be if you get invested and then find out you won't get to stick weird objects in her.
