It's a fairly tame night, and the women seem satisfied with being served drinks. Sometimes, when the mood strikes, the women humiliate the maids by forcing them to rummage through piles of underwear and return each item to its proper mistress.
What else would you expect at a monthly potluck put on by the Denver chapter of the national S&M group People Exchanging Power?
How about a submissive bouncer?
Blocking the door at the recent PEP potluck--keeping curious patrons out of the back room of the downtown gay bar where the dinners are held--was Tom, a formidable figure in a long-sleeved black latex shirt.
He may look tough, but he's really just a pussycat. And when he starts talking about his sex life, Tom (not his real name) sounds like the education bureaucrat that he is in real life.
"When I give up being in charge to someone I trust," Tom says, "that's a feeling of empowerment--having the experience of giving up some boundaries you don't ordinarily give away can lead to a new sense of trust and intimacy."
Over a cup of coffee, the 33-year-old Tom has an engaging smile and friendly, candid manner. He seems to remember clearly when he first realized his desires were unusual.
"From the time I was five years old I've known I was different," he says. "I had an awareness that the funny warm feeling I got in my stomach when Catwoman tied up Batman, that's what was really exciting to me, made me different."
Tom dated a number of women without telling them what he really wanted--to be tied up, dressed in rubber, embarrassed and humiliated. Finally, when engaged to be married, he confided in his fiance. She left him.
"For me, PEP is the opportunity to sit and chat about this with people who think it's okay to be this way," he says. "It's freeing, it's affirming and it's important for me to feel better about who I am."
No, says Tom, there's no contradiction between acting submissive and feeling good about himself. It's a matter of definition.
"One thing we tend to do in society is equate feeling good with feeling in charge," he says. "In charge for me is about knowing what I want and being willing to get that."
Tom moved to Denver in the early 1980s and eventually found his way to a group called DADS--Denver Area Dominance and Submission. When DADS fell apart and its founder moved to Connecticut, PEP moved in.
The first PEP club was started by an Albuquerque woman, Nancy Ava Miller, in 1986 when she took out a classified ad: "Attractive dominant F seeks to own/love submissive, obedient gent..." She got 170 responses and concluded that a lot of people were looking for her kind of love.
Miller, who also runs a phone-sex service, has since made a life out of traveling across the country and setting up PEP chapters in Washington, D.C., Phoenix, Tucson, Philadelphia, Austin and Baltimore.
Since Denver joined the ranks last June, it's been attracting between twenty and forty people to its monthly meetings, says Aurora, Denver PEP's "mistress of ceremonies." "When people call about coming to a meeting," Aurora says, "they always ask, `What are the people there like?' I tell them, `They're probably just like you.'"
In addition to providing support to its members, Denver PEP touts itself as an "information clearinghouse" with frequent "educational demonstrations." A meeting late last year, Aurora says, featured one such learning experience when Angela, a sultry professional dominatrix, spanked Uzi store owner Mari Gustafson with a leather paddle, then, ripping off her own rubber clothing, chased Gustafson around the room with a huge dildo.
Gustafson, who opened her latex store on Colfax last August after a vacation in London where she fell in love with a pair of rubber hotpants, divides her customers into two types: "Perverts who want to know if I have little girls tied up in the basement and perverts who know they're perverts and are okay, happy and healthy with that." PEP members tend to fall in the latter category, she says, adding, "We're not freaks. We just like to whip people. It's a lifestyle choice."
Tom, of course, has a more cerebral view. "It's a real important struggle to me from the sociopolitical angle for us to be at least not considered criminals," he says. "If not accepted, celebrated and embraced, at least we shouldn't be seen as criminals. What S&M contributes to the larger society is the exploring and extending of the boundaries of human experience. There's clear and articulate communication about wants and needs that few other people do."
Aurora, a self-described "forty-year-old spinster from the suburbs," and Tom seem to have little trouble communicating their wants and needs to each other. At one PEP meeting, Aurora dressed Tom in a bunny suit, tossed raisins onto the floor, told him they were rabbit droppings and commanded that he eat them. He did.
