monthly column from author/activist
Carol Queen

The Royal Treatment

Behind the Zion Curtain

Going to Utah is a bit like time traveling. The particular conservatism favored by the Mormons gives most of Salt Lake City the feel of the '50s or pre-sexual revolution '60s, with plenty of old signs dotting the main drag and row after row of ranch houses and bungalows housing the next generation of true believers. So it's even more amazing than it would be in some other city to pull up in front of a piercing parlor (housed in an old gas station, so there's plenty of parking), to see nasty, femmey finery displayed in the window of a fetishwear store, or to walk into The Temple -- and I don't mean the Tabernacle -- and see jack Mormon perverts chained to the ceiling and flogging each other like crazy.

No, it's not where they punish the apostates, although if the Mormon leadership knew The Temple occupied a quiet residential street corner only a couple of miles over from Tabernacle Square, they might decide to send some of their own bad boys over for spiritual cleansing. Plenty of spiritual cleansing happens there, all right, but it's mostly in the context of the usual jack (that is, lapsed) Mormon inhabitants working out all the repressions of their upbringings. That can put real oomph in your flogging arm, okay?

Somehow the mixture of repression and true community spirit that resides among the mainstream Mormons -- that is, most of these people's parents and siblings -- boils down in the alchemical swirl of a kinky psyche. The resulting elixir gets lots of energy from the repression, eager to bust loose and play, and the community focus stays just as strong -- it just shifts to the new community, namely, the denizens of The Temple.

The last time we went to Salt Lake City The Temple didn't yet exist, except in the imaginations of the friendly gang of perverts who used to meet in secret basement dungeons tucked away in cookie-cutter subdivision houses. If you read my tale of visiting Tennessee last month, you'll recall how much I value having my head fucked with: Boy, did Utah ever do it for me that first time. I couldn't imagine, before Robert and I arrived, what kind of leatherfolk we'd find in one of the most conservative cities in the hemisphere. We were there to teach anatomy and anal fisting to a tightly-knit group calling itself the Journeyman Academy, almost all members of which were jack Mormons. The group was (and still is) helmed by an older gay man, a leather Master whom his charges obviously love and respect. Between the group's former Mormonhood and their current identification as a group of serious students of the SM craft, they were the most exquisite hosts ever.

You Won't See These Games At the Olympics
And when they dropped the "sir" and "ma'am" and got down, they were intense and serious players. Maybe you saw my story in Taboo about their unique game, which they called "Slave Tennis" but which I re-christened "Lucky Ball" after participating in a lively round or two. Here's how it's done: At least two players, armed with "tennis rackets" (crops or paddles, usually) and dildos, sit opposite each other. The "ball" is a person -- when I played, a spunky, jock-y young dyke -- who somersaults from one player to the other, getting dildoed to jesus until almost ready to come, at which point the player smacks her on the ass with the "racket" and somersaults back across the playing field (in this case, a nasty shag carpet) to do it again. And again! The game ends when the ball collapses and can't somersault any more. In the game I played, that meant sixteen rounds of back-and-forth.

On about Round Ten, when it was my turn, I heard the flushed and panting woman before me, who was busy scooting her butt in my direction after she'd tumbled across the floor, exclaim, "I'm such a lucky ball!" Hence my temerity in re-christening their game. By the way, the greatest hazard, should you decide to play this at home, is rugburn, and you do need a rather sizeable living room, which is why I don't host tournaments at my house.

We didn't play Lucky Ball this time, but we did attend a party at The Temple, and we held our classes there as well. The kinksters share the place with various New Age groups, so its decor is a fanciful post-modern mix of Egyptoid plaster statuary and kinky stuff. The slings are stowed up in the false ceilings when the other space users are there, although they apparently know about their SM neighbors. All these groups are, by Salt Lake City standards, so underground that they coexist quite peacefully. One of the slings, by some amazing quirk of fate, hails from the old Catacombs in San Francisco, the notorious fisting club which closed in the 80s. Robert settled himself into it and waxed nostalgic about the old days as several Cadets from the Journeyman's Academy gathered around and listened with respectful interest, as though class were still in session and Robert was not about to simultaneously get his nipple pierced and his dick played with. Before we left the sling a chain of high-energy scenes had taken place there, from Robert's piercing to a lively fuck to a shrieking, giggling session of pussy-whipping -- and I do mean that literally. A really nice finale to this scene was provided when the whipper switched toys and brought out a vibrator in the shape of a six-shooter. Utah folk do appreciate their right to keep and bear arms, if I remember correctly, and it struck me as beautifully fucked-up that in their fetish shop adults can buy toys probably made in the same factory in China as their kids' toy guns.

Elsewhere in the room a couple of Goth guys were being laced together with temporary piercings, a man festooned with clothespins was howling happily, and the rhythmic sounds of flogging were everywhere. In another room, tied to a suspended bed, a guy with an enormous intolerance for tickling was being "cured" by a couple of gleeful dommes. And a woman with exquisite tits was having them painted with liquid latex in the colors of the SM flag -- black and blue, with the requisite red heart. As with any SM party, you had to be there, but take my word for it: for energy, enthusiasm, and level of sophisticated play it matched any party I've ever attended. In fact, it bettered any party I've attended lately in jaded old San Francisco. Maybe it's just that we have too many options; maybe there are too many people joining the community through the fundamentally isolating medium of the Internet; maybe we're just too damned busy with our start-ups and our evictions, but in the City the community's energy has changed. For the jack Mormon perverts of Salt Lake, a community orientation means caring for (and playing with) each other, and this Temple really is a temple.

"We should make our own replica of the Angel Moroni," mused one man the next morning. (The gold Moroni tops the highest spire of the Mormon Temple, holding a trumpet to his lips.) "Except he'd be holding a dildo."

At the May 6 Masturbate-A-Thon in San Francisco as a benefit for the Center for Sex and Culture, Carol "came five times" in 75 minutes of self-pleasuring. Those wishing to make after-the-fact pledges in support of Carol and/or the center can send checks to the Center for Sex and Culture, Attention Carol Queen, 2215-R Market St., San Francisco, CA 94114. Carol is one of five Grand Marshalls for this year's Gay/Lesbian/Bi/Trans parade in San Francisco on June 24.