Thanks to technology, kinky is now fashionable. The Internet and other networking technology have given people with fetishes the opportunity to find their community and exposed millions to previously obscure practices while spawning whole new fetishes directly related to the technology itself. Whether they are just fads or innate desires, there seems to be no limit to how outrageous or potentially dangerous a 21st century fetish can become.
Segment I: Meet Kid Racer X
While most people would react to abduction with fear and panic, one motorcycle enthusiast from southern California actually seeks out such harrowing situations as his form of sexual gratification.
Kid Racer X has been into different facets of "BDSM" (
Bondage/Domination/Sado-Masochism) since high school, but in recent years his desire to be kidnapped, as well as be dominated, has evolved into a very powerful fetish.
The leather aspect of his persona came about innocently enough. In second grade he was caught trying to wear another student's jacket. The feel of leather on his skin sexually charged him and became a motivating factor in his sexual growth. By the time he turned 18, he knew that he was locked into a fetishist's life: leather, bondage, kidnappings, roughhouse, and so on.
He says:
For me as Kid Racer X, having the website and the Internet as a general rule, has allowed me to interface with anybody and everybody from around the world, which is fascinating enough. But not only that, to find a community, a forum, for anybody with particular interests -- fetishes, kinks, desires -- to congregate, to find each other in a way that could never have been done before. And I think it's a great way, in my world, to bring all those people together.
Guests
Segment II: Looners
Balloons are fun, playful symbols of birthday parties or a time when a skinned knee could be rendered painless thanks to their buoyant charm. Yet for "Kristi," balloons help make her sexual yearnings come to fruition.
She says:
It was about two years ago. My ex and I threw a party. And after, when we were cleaning up, we started getting it on. And as I was climaxing, you know, when you just start grabbing anything, I grabbed a balloon. And I was squeezing it and squeezing it. And as I started reaching my climax I obviously, I popped the balloon.
With that innocent grabbing of a balloon an intimate relationship or fetish was born. The smell and texture of the latex and especially the anticipation of the balloon popping arouse her.
Since she had already experienced the sexual energy of the cruising the Internet in high school, Kristi thought that perhaps there would be other people who "enjoyed" balloons almost as much as she does. She was right [Adult Content].
It's not that Kristi can't have sex without them. She loves sex sans balloons, too. It's just that the balloons have touched a nerve, so to speak, which makes the sexual experience that much more enjoyable.
Guests
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Kristi, "Looner" -
Katherine Gates, Author, "Deviant Desires: Incredibly Strange Sex" -
Camille Paglia, Author, "Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays" -
C.J. Scheiner, Professor of Erotology
Segment III: Love your computer
While Kid Racer X and Kristi utilize their computers to fuel their fetishes, Mark Allen's fetish was his computer.
Mark grew up in a religious family in a white, upper middle-class neighborhood of Dallas. Though Mark had sexual intercourse with a girl at the tender age of 14, he realized growing up that he was actually attracted to the naked men featured with the girls in "Penthouse" or "Hustler."
In the mid-90s, Mark was caught up in the Internet wave and realized all the sexual power his computer possessed: free porn, dating sites, and chat rooms. If one wanted to, one could have sex, either online or physically, quite easily.
Then he met Brian, a young man in his native Texas. They developed a romantic relationship via webcams, going so far as having a candle light dinner - over the Internet. They had their laptops on the table and opened up the event to people in their chatroom.
After a while, Mark "started to develop the sensation of those feelings of being needed and loved and all of that with my computer -- I actually became kind of attracted to it, in a way, in a very small way."
As far Mark is concerned, his situation never fully developed into objectum sexualis -- a love, not just sexual attraction, for an object or objects -- but it definitely teetered on the edge.
Guests
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Mark Allen, objectum sexualis fetish -
Al Cooper, Sex Therapist -
Richard Kadrey, Futurist
Segment IV: The bad with the good
The power of the Internet has opened the world of fetishes [Adult Content] to the masses. Yet this new-found exposure has its blessings and its curses.
On one hand, those who share an innocent hobby, like Kristi, have a larger community with which to interact. But if one develops a penchant for something extremely deviant (and illegal) like child pornography, having a community of others around can convey a false sense of "rightness" to the fetish.
