Cost of heavy-duty leather palm cuff restraints - $139. Inflatable rubber blindfold - $36. Ball gag slave collar - $129. Full Face Executioner’s Hood - $119. The Flat Braided Cat flogger runs for $249 and the Chastity Cock Cage is $169. Total cost - $841. Cost of a professional dominatrix – around $300 an hour.

What I see is kinky sex practiced by an overindulgent, affluent white business man. You know, the kind of old man who spends all day at the office telling other people what to do, then lying to his wife about having dinner with a client while he goes to a dungeon to get beaten by Miss Kitten. It must be hard work being in a position of power all day long and living off of a monthly salary that would house a college student for two years.

It pretty much seems a pursuit of those of privilege to escape their lives into a fantasy world. The fantasy seems so far off that every tool of that fantasy is even given a creepy, nerdy “Lord of the Rings” name. It’s enough drive anyone of us at the other end of the economic, racial, sexuality, and gender spectrums to either laughter or disgust.

But we want to be beaten, too! Or restrained, or flogged, or gagged, or pierced, prodded, poked, or generally played with. Give BDSM back to the freaks! DIY BDSM exists and is really only a luggage strap or old bicycle tire away. If you can’t afford or don’t like what the mainstream is doing, then do-it-yourself; sort of the punk rock way of adding kink to a sex life.

Across the sea, I was at the Copenhagen Queer Festival during the summer. The Copenhagen Queer Festival was a week long DIY endeavor incorporating art, performance, politics, and celebration.

I attended the festival, and a bondage workshop was put on there specifically for amateurs and the “BDSM-curious” (which almost always means they’ll be the ones diving into it the fastest and hardest). Reverend Scapegoat, a 28-year-old performance artist whose pieces are heavily centered on BDSM, coordinated the event.

A small group of boys, including me, were led up to the top level of the Råhuset house to find out what is in store for them. In the summer heat, the room is boiling hot and everyone is already sweating.

“The place is great, I love attics,” Scapegoat said about the room in a thick but understandable Italian accent. “It is the dodgiest place of every house. If any of you want to set up a dungeon, find a nice attic under an old wooden roof.”

It was a little nerve-wracking to say the least, but exciting at the same time. I took my boyfriend with me so I wouldn’t end up being tied up by a 300-pound man named “Mondo” or “Sarge” or something equally as intimidating. And having someone I trusted there helped immensely.

What we found up there was not exactly what was expected. There was no prefab dungeon with chains attached to the wall; there was no rack of shiny, black leather whips, no large wooden paddles with air-holes in it. In fact, at first glance all I could see was a pile of junk on a table – old pieces of electrical cord, straps from backpacks and handbags, old luggage, hand gloves, meat tongs and other kitchen utensils, and a bag of emergency candles.

These items were our tools of play. Masks and mouth gags were made out of the old, leather luggage just using some scissors. Restraints were made out of electrical chord, which is strong and durable and not too abrasive. Make-shift floggers were made out of the straps of found leather hand bags and backpacks. These things were perfect for play. And we played hard, even for a group of people who had no experience or formal tools of our own.

“People were totally ready for it,” says Scapegoat, “and I did nothing but show some basic tricks. So I think that there is a really big willingness to go wild, sometimes you just need a little push.”

Here in the city, people are practicing DIY BDSM as well. A group like Screw-Up exists to give a space for people who don’t fit into specific boxes of identity, gender, and/or economic status.

“A lot of people who do BDSM are pretty fucking mainstream,” says Turtle, a 31-year-old BDSM practitioner who has been doing it for about ten years. “A lot of these [bondage parties or] spaces say they are inclusionary or welcoming, when at best they are tolerating.” The typical BDSM community is something that involves a certain class or type of people with a certain amount of discretionary income.

That’s why there are groups like Screw-Up, though, which Turtle belongs to. Screw-Up is an anarchist, DIY BDSM collective that meets every second Friday of the month with a trans-centric focus. It has been around for five years and has been awarded “Best of the Bay 2005 - Outsider Education” by the Bay Guardian.

“Screw-Up came about because a lot of us were in the fringe of a lot of stuff,” says Max Joire, a 37-year-old video game designer and member of Screw-Up, “punks, radical queers, freaks, anarchists, activists. People who generally just don’t fit into mainstream groups.” The group inhabits a space at San Francisco’s New College of California on Valencia Street for meetings about planning play parties, BDSM, and different ways of approaching BDSM.

And Screw-Up is different. I attended the meeting in September and the focus was silly scenes or incorporating laughter into play in a field where there is so much seriousness, posturing, and posing. Ideas were being thrown around like “lobster play” (being wrapped up in red plastic wrap and using a stick of butter as part of the scene) and “a perverse Christmas” where there is a hanging of the angel (suspending someone dressed like an angel in the air for a play scene).

As a group, Screw-Up does a variety of things: workshops, speakers, movies, discussions, performances, and demonstrations are all things thrown around at their meetings. Trading tips on how to make things, like floggers, happens as well. Things like recycled bicycle tires are the raw material.

The possibilities of DIY BDSM are endless because all you need is yourself and your imagination (an adventurous friend helps as well). For all those that wondered what that smacking sound you heard at Folsom Street Fair felt like, there’s always a wooden spoon lying around in the kitchen. For all those that wondered what leather feels like against different parts of the skin, there are always old bags at Goodwill to cut up. For all those who have been curious about kink before, DIY BDSM makes it easier for you to just give it a try. And DIY means for everyone, not the old man with the high-paying job. Now that you know how and why, do you have the guts to do it?

Venus in Words: A Glossary of Terms for new BDSM-ers

If you’ve ever considered getting into BDSM or pain/pleasure play but are any bit unfamiliar with it, there a few terms you should know.

BDSM: A blanket term for a number of activities on the kinkier side of play. Not all BDSM activities necessarily end in “sex,” but can, and are seen as acts of intimacy. BDSM stands for:

B&D – Bondage and discipline
D&S – Domination and submission
S&M – Sadism and Masochism

Top: The participant in play that gives out the discipline, pain, or restraint. Usually the more experienced of the players.

Bottom: The one who receives, consensually, what the top is dishing out during play. Usually, but not always, the less experienced of the players.

Switch: The player that does both top and bottom roles at different times.

Submissive: Someone who desires to give up control, either mentally or physically, to another person. Bottoms are not always submissive.

Dominant: The person who does the controlling in a dominant/submissive relationship.

Prodom: Someone who plays the dom role for another person in exchange for money. Easily found on the internet. Sometimes “pro domme” is used to specify a female gender.

Flogger: A multi-tipped whipping toy very commonly used in BDSM play. Can spread out the intensity of impact during play.

Venus in Furs: Famous book written in the nineteenth century by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch about a man who wanted to be completely submissive to the women in his life. One of the most well-read books on BDSM in the world. The term “masochism” was taken from the author’s name.