"I really don’t like the term piss play. Or anything ‘play’, really. Sometimes the infantilisation of kink makes me feel slightly bilious." - Bitchy Jones.

An area in which I believe I agree, unsurprisingly.

I am still very much a n00b (look, I can use stupid internet speak too!) when it comes to this whole business of a fetish "scene" and I've ducked out of far more "scene" related nights out than I've actually gone to, much to the irritation of the friends who are determined to introduce me to the delights of this particular lifestyle. I am allergic to the concept of "scene" as it relates to anything, music, art, writing, whatever, but especially as applied to sexuality. It's a magnet for drama and pomposity and internal rubbish which leads to these incestuous and jaded groups of people moaning that they've done everyone they know and pouncing on "fresh meat" like a flock of PVC-clad vultures. Tiresome and probably not for me.

N00b as I am and will probably remain, I was a little put out to discover that one of the main staples of my ever-increasing list of Revolting Things I Enjoy constitutes "edgeplay". Once I'd had a bit of a lie-down and checked out what "edgeplay" means, I discovered what what I knew as "haematophilia" (love of blood) is known by the glorious arbiters of the scene as, variously, "bloodplay" and "dangerous". Part of me feels like smirking that I've managed to find, by instinct, one of the things that makes the self-appointed dangerous-kinky types feel uncomfortable. Part of me is just exasperated.

The lamentable CollarMe.com, which is riddled with annoying old men, vain teenage twits and a lot of people who can't spell and think that being able to write in the language you speak constitutes snobbery, threw up a grand total of one person even willing to consider the practice of "bloodplay", and she turned out to be lying (long, boring, drama-filled story involving the Dreaded Ex). It's quite a large website.

This apparently dangerous and unnerving perversion of mine has resulted in some interesting conversations, including one from J, whose boyfriend has fucked him with a knife-handle, in which he repeatedly informed me that I was mental because "blood belongs inside the body, Kapaṭī, inside - outside means something is seriously wrong." I could stay something about where knife handles do and don't belong, but that would hardly be conducive to a caring, sharing, Your Kink Is Not My Kink But Your Kink Is Okay mindset.

The other thing I get (because I am generally quite open about this) is questions. I am the go-to girl for education on weirdness. "So, explain this blood thing of yours", they say in the condescending tones of someone asking to have a child's painting explained to them. Or better still, "so how does it fit in with your whole self-harm thing?"

How Haematophilia Fits In With My Whole Self-Harm Thing

In a spectrum, the way things often do with human beings, who are never cut and dried hardline anything, despite what fiction may tell us; I have scars over most of my body, some because I was angry, some because I was miserable, some because I was numb and needed something to remind me I was alive, some because I was simply overloaded with thoughts and needed something to remind me I was a physical being too, and some because I get off on the sight of blood as well as on physical pain.

Not just the sight of it, but the smell, the taste, the way it's hot, body-temperature when it comes out. I like both feeling the sting of the blade parting flesh into a red line or a mouth as the sides fall away, and the sight of it on others. I like blood that comes from grazes, from lacerations, from stabs, cuts, gunshot wounds, boxing matches, head injuries, nosebleeds ... anything except menstruation, which has always struck me as a) cheating and b) somehow unclean. The latter is probably societal bias talking.

It doesn't matter if it's me bleeding or someone else, but I'm going to want to get my hands on it. Smear it around. On my hands, on my mouth, all over the other person or persons, leaving dirty russett-brown streaks and splodges on us both, on the walls, on the bedsheets. Kissing people with bloody noses is something I've wanted to do for a long time, just scoop up their face with my hands and kiss their mouth while the blood is still flowing; or vice versa. Or vice versa.

Or to be wounded somewhere I can't see, and have them bring their hand back to show me, covered in my own blood. Maybe they'd lick it off. Maybe I would.

No, That Does Not Mean I'm Into Vampire Roleplay

I'm afraid to say I outgrew the fasination with vampires at roughly the same time I outgrew the rest of my Sixth Form Goth behaviours - when I left Sixth Form. If anyone asks me to refer to them as My Dark Master/Mistress, I am probably going to wet myself laughing twice over, once at the request and once at the inevitable look of affront (I'm a terrible sub, aren't I? I can't seem to keep a straight face and BDSM is srs bznz, which is one of the reasons I find the scene so off-putting; most people do not appear willing to acknowledge how hilarious the whole scenario is). I'm also heavily not into fake vampire fangs, which I suppose will prove problematic if I ever manage to find someone who isn't freaked out by the concept of blood-and-sex.

I wish I could leave you with a pithy ending, but I suspect I'm just going to have to end with a whimper, and cast a furtive glance at the shelf of eclectic items that only count as sex toys if you're me.

KG, over and out.