By the time she began dressing up in her big sister's old Brownie outfit and hanging herself from her bedpost, Melissa Coffey had realized she was wired a little differently from the other kids.
Her favorite childhood TV shows included "Batman," "The Man from U.N.C.L.E.," "The Avengers" -- basically, any series in which the heroes regularly got tied up.
At 13, Coffey read a story about a masochistic little boy who liked to wear his underwear too tight. She remembers wondering: I get a kick out of extra-snug socks and too-small underwear, as well; does that make me a masochist?
High school dating provided the acid-test answer.
"You find out you're kinky when you realize your idea of what's pleasurable is not like other peoples'," explains Coffey, who, at 23, has already become a veteran of Atlanta's burgeoning S&M scene.
Looking back on the naive-but-warped fantasies of her younger years, she adds: "I feel like I was always this way."
Which still doesn't fully explain what the 23-year-old is doing in the middle of a Midtown hotel lobby on a Friday evening wearing a sheath dress made entirely of safety-yellow latex. Wrapped around her torso and tied in intricate knots is a length of thick, day-glow-pink nylon rope. You can't say the girl doesn't know how to accessorize.
She fits in well with the rest of the crowd attending Fantasm, the 4-year-old fantasy and erotica convention that has effectively taken over the Sheraton Colony Square this Easter weekend. The event has attracted 1,000 weirdos and gaming geeks, many of whom are more than willing to experiment with S&M.
Time was when most converts to the once-insular community of bondage, domination and sadomasochism came into the fold much like Coffey did, finding their own dark way into the kinky crowd only after years of uncertain yearning and frustrating experimentation.
Like her, they typically grappled with ambivalence and even guilt over the nature of their obsessions with pain, bondage, even humiliation. Is it perversion? Personality disorder? Pathology?
These days, though, the S&M subculture -- especially in Atlanta -- is attracting more interest and drawing more converts than ever before. Beyond all expectations, our city's beloved fetish-themed dance club The Chamber will observe its 10th anniversary this fall. In addition to unspooling what is probably its 10,000th roll of black electrical tape, the club is making a committed return to its S&M roots with a new torture dungeon and a renewed emphasis on the flamboyantly morbid.
Add to the mix Klub Kink, a brand-spanking-new, full-on S&M venue in far-west Atlanta; stir in Fantasm, which celebrates Easter weekend with acts of debauchery that are off the perv-o-meter; and voila! You've got what looks to be a mini-boom in the local BDSM market.
Not everyone's happy. In the midst of the bondage boom, old-school adherents to the lifestyle known as, um, The Lifestyle feel as if their kinky little community is dissolving before their eyes.
Which is certainly understandable, given that both of metro Atlanta's long-running hardcore bondage parlors -- the innocuously named PEP (People Exchanging Power) in Tucker and the more ominously titled Sanctuary of a Dark Angel near Morningside -- closed down about two months ago. Consider also that the owners of Klub Kink and the Chamber are businessmen who aren't into The Lifestyle.
In short, there's a tug-of-kink going on. On one side are S&M purists who want to preserve The Lifestyle's established hierarchy and arcane traditions. On the other are a motley but growing collection of deviants, dabblers and faddists hungry for new ways to get kicks. Look out, somebody could get hurt.
"I'm growing skeptical about the organized scene," sighs Dr. Gloria Brame, an Athens-based clinical sexologist and veteran bondage maven. "It's getting too watered down. The old rituals are falling by the wayside and people are making it up as they go along. It's becoming one huge Kiwanis Club."
For someone who spent much of the last decade organizing underground torture sessions in darkened clubs and back rooms across Atlanta, Jason Freeman comes across as surprisingly cheerful.
It's Easter weekend at the Chamber, and the suggested dress code for this occasion is "blasphemy." Dressed in a hooded cloak, with his skin painted bright red and small horns sprouting from his temples, Freeman reminds me somewhat of a certain smiling corporate mascot ready to hand out deviled eggs.
And why shouldn't he be upbeat? He's settling into permanent residency at the Chamber, where he's been given free rein to overhaul the look and, more importantly, the feel of a club that had seen its popularity wane in recent years.
Hell, he's even started to attract corporate sponsorships. On a recent weekend, he helped oversee a promotional event at The Chamber for the movie House of 1,000 Corpses. Freeman was delighted that more than 40 club-goers showed up dressed as zombies. "This place is really coming back to life," he says, somewhat paradoxically.
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