It was my first weekend of such kind and initially I was quite reluctant to participate in something whose concept I could not at the time fully grasp. Luckily a dear friend from Finland kept asking me to join him for the weekend, and eventually I agreed — a decision which I will not regret a second!

So, on a nice Friday evening both me and my friend arrived at the Quälgeist, and encountered a warm welcome by the weekend organizers, followed by the obligatory practical matters. From the start, the sheer professionality of the organization and the venue surprised me pleasantly. Two common safewords were issued for the weekend: one to stop the action and one to signal that the safeword user wishes to end his weekend immediately. Luckily — to my knowledge — neither one was used at all.

After the practicalities and some informal talking with fellow bondage enthusiasts, it was time for the Friday dinner. The weekend included meals, which were professionally prepared and featured mostly German delicacies, not known for their light calorie content, but then again, you wouldn’t want to run out of energy in the middle of the action! Along with dinner there was an introductory round, where everyone mentioned their name and major interests.

After dinner it was time to start the playing. Quälgeist has excellent facilities for bondage, and of course every visitor had also brought as much bondage gear as humanly possible for the weekend. As a marvel of German ingenuity, every visitor had submitted his kinky preferences in advance, and these preferences were printed on a wall for everyone to see.

I will not walk you through all the situations of the weekend, because they were too numerous to remember or describe. Suffice to say, me and my Finnish friend both had a great time and hmm… his balls and my arm hurt after the weekend

I will definitely go to Quälgeist Bondage Weekend again, because in my opinion, it’s unique in three different ways:

1) Due to strict preregistration and screening (there are more applicants than space at the venue), you are in a group of genuine BDSM enthusiasts whose full identities are known to the organizers. This creates unique safety circumstances that allow you to play with people you haven’t met before, something that you could not do in a regular club, if you are safety conscious.

2) Because the weekend is almost 48 hours long, and you cannot leave in the middle without ending your weekend, there is no rush to do anything. On a normal club night people have a predictable pattern where they first drink and socialize, then play, and usually run out of time. This does not happen here.

3) Because the facilities and arrangements are so good, it gives the possibility to do semi-public play and long-term bondage (even overnight), both of which are not that feasible in other circumstances.

(click to enlarge)

Arriving on Friday, I hit the ground running, with Rubberboyseraph, who was kind enough to meet me straight at Heathrow airport. We picked up a few friends on the way and went through the usual suspects of Regulation and Expectations. All of the major shops were running promotions (and free beer!), but alas I found nothing of interest to buy and settled for window shopping.

The Friday party of choice was the Nexus party, presented under the aegis of the BLF Berlin Leder Und Fetisch organization. Even though the dresscode for the party was black (as in black rubber, leather, or anything), several of my friends had gotten the mistaken impression that it was a Leather Nexus party, and were not interested in going. Maybe a promotion slip-up? In any case, the clientele that night was indeed quite leatherish, but not to the point of complete disaster. There were quite a few guys in rubber, uniforms and other interesting attires. The venue was Hidden, an established venue in Vauxhall, but unfortunately a bit too small and unorganized for a party of this magnitude. Late evening saw a minor catastrophe in the cloakroom, which at that point consisted of a huge, unsorted pile of bags (they apparently had not expected everyone to bring a bag along, which is quite usual in a fetish party).

On Saturday I had the privilege of coffeeing up with a local fellow kinkster (jameskink89). We discussed everything from pain play to UK politics, and popped in to Rob to see what was going on. After that it was time for a good old bondage session with a local top whom I was meeting for the first time. Pictures of that will follow later.

The Saturday party was the biggest event of the weekend, Full Fetish presented by Recon at the superclub Pulse in Southwark. Compared to Scala, the disaster venue of Full Fetish last year, Pulse proved to be spacy and airy enough, with a proper industrial vibe, proper darkroom area and efficient but slightly slow bars. The party died down surprisingly quickly, being somewhat quieter at 3am already.

Sunday concluded the weekend with the double party combo of Rubber Party and Deconstruction (the official ending party). Organized similarly as last year, in The Hoist, the rubber party once again suffered from an inordinate number of naked people, leftovers from the earlier naked party. They should really ask the naked people to leave once the rubber party starts, considering rubber is philosophically pretty much the exact opposite of showing lots of skin.

All in all, Recon’s Fetish Weekend is the only big, multi-day gay kink event in London, and Recon seems to have sorted out the practical organization fairly well. I would definitely recommend that you check it out next year.

The sky blessed us with a temperature above 25 C, and there were no clouds in sight. We arrived at the staging area in normal clothes, soon finding the section of our local kinky club MSC Finland. People were nicely dressed, even a few people in full leathers. Almost everyone had also brought along a gas mask as requested by the club organizers, in protest for the last years unfortunate tear gas attack. As me and my friend started to disrobe and reveal our rubber underneath, heads started turning and the usual questions (“Where did you buy that?”, “Isn’t it hot in there?”) asked. Because of the hot weather, me and my friend both wore rubber shorts, a rubber shirt, harness and a dog mask.

After a long wait (we were unfortunately in the last section of the parade, the whole parade was about 55 minutes long) it was finally our turn to start moving, and there it was! My chance to walk as a rubber dog in central Helsinki, amid thousands of spectators. I tried to flirt as much as I could with every camera I saw, and the reactions were mostly of curious interest. Unfortunately I didn’t end up in any major media, but this just means next year I have to be even more extravagant. Maybe full rubber, if the weather is kind…