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It’s a darkened shopfront at the end of a nondescript alcove in the Canberra suburb of Fyshwick, best known for selling porn and fireworks.

From the outside the building looks like nothing much. Dingy, almost. Looks can be deceiving.

“That’s on purpose,” Kim, one of the co-owners of Kink Zone (KZ) says, laughing.

She runs this place with her husband. The tall, curvaceous blond, who is “past her 40s,” has a mischievous glint in her eye. She’s wearing a black and pink corset, caged around her ribs.

Once inside KZ, it’s like stepping through a portal. The entrance lobby is painted a smart fawn colour. Lockers, towels and a coat rack sit to the left. A candelabra adorned with crystals sits next to Kim on a glass table.

Some people arrive in ordinary clothes – jeans and shirts. Others are decked out in full kink gear – leather and PVC harnesses and corsets and six-inch stilettos on the women. A few people hold bags of “toys”: whips, ropes, electric play wands.

It’s just past 9pm on a Saturday and Kim offers glasses of pink champagne as guests come in. “Maybe is Moscato,” she muses, turning the bottle around to peer at the label over her glasses.

Kim ticks attendees off her list. Each event attracts up to 50 people. For the sake of safety, these parties are invite-only. Everyone must be vetted before they come.

KZ bills itself as “an alternative lifestyle club”, where guests come to attend kink and fetish parties, swingers’ nights, rope bondage parties and ladies-only nights.

Mistress Shy* and Squirrel,* two of the women who work here and Kim’s good friends, take people’s coats and welcome them in. Hugs, kisses and exclamations are exchanged. Newcomers get a brief induction, although most people already know each other.

It takes Squirrel a year to convince me to come along to KZ. I’m embarrassed to say that in the back of my mind is the so-called “mummy porn” book, 50 Shades of Grey – bland yet sadistic, demeaning and unconsenting.

KZ is a universe away from this. In fact, those who live a kink lifestyle scorn this problematic novel.

“It’s not BDSM,” one kinkster says to me of the book. “It’s coercive control.” (In case you don’t know, BDSM stands for: bondage, discipline, dominance and submission).

Yes, the club is littered with BDSM gear – suspension points in the ceiling for rope work, a human-sized wooden star with wrist and ankle cuffs, a swing to get strapped into, a queen bed with a cage underneath it.

Yes, there are people of all shapes and sizes and genders walking around naked or semi-naked. Some people are having sex on beds in dimly-lit rooms or getting spanked.

But there are also comfy couches to chat on and people getting into deep and meaningfuls in the smokers’ room or the kitchen. You can make a cup of tea and grab a cookie, jelly snake or icy pole. Not everyone drinks.

One of the first people I meet is 47-year-old Ken.

He skips all the boring Canberra public service talk, looks straight at me and says: “Why do you get up in the morning?”

As Shy tells me later, this type of communication isn’t an anomaly. People in the kink scene come from all walks of life.

And what they mainly have in common is a desire to connect “in an authentic way”.

Reflecting on her own experience, Mistress Shy says: “Through this community and lifestyle I have found my confidence, shed my self-judgment and have found parts of myself I did not know existed.

“You quickly start to feel more comfortable in your own skin … it’s amazing how your perspective can change when you’re not comparing yourself to airbrushed images and you realise how beautiful humans are with all of their imperfections.”

In Shy’s mind, traversing the kink world has an impact on people’s outside lives too. It changes them: “When you place yourself in such a vulnerable position it brings with it risk,” she says.

“You are forced to communicate better and to navigate connections with emotional intelligence. You grow as a person whether you like it or not.”

Ken never “plays” at KZ. When I press him about how this could be the case – it’s a kink club for heaven’s sake – he says: “I go to be around people who are in a space where they can leave that ridiculous, untenable, and disproven veil of normalcy. To be able to ask frank questions and get honest, unrepentant answers.”

For my part, I don’t consider myself that kinky. And the question of why people enjoy this kind of “play” is still baffling to me.

As a way to try and answer it, I ask one of the veteran shibari artists – the people who use rope to tie others up with intricate geometric patterns – to work on me. His name is Psigh and he’s been “rigging” for a decade. Psigh works slowly, constantly explaining what he’s doing. “How does that feel?” he keeps asking, as he deftly weaves the rope around my body and limbs, “Are you doing ok?”

“I’m great!” I say. And I am.

The careful process takes about half an hour. He ties my hands and legs up behind me and lifts me from the ground using the knotting in the centre of my back. It feels strangely secure, almost like being hugged. Then he gently sets me down on the floor again.

“Now I want to spank you,” he says afterwards. And I laugh, confident that’d he’d never do that without permission.

Why so confident? In stark contrast to the way the public imagines the kink scene, the venue is packed with ordinary people – tradespeople, medical professionals, IT workers, public servants, real estate agents, farmers and those in the armed forces.

The central value is consent – it’s written into the KZ rules and verbally explained to each new person at induction. You must ask permission to touch or play with another person.

“No” is taken seriously (and doesn’t cause offence – because I tried it out several times). And if you break consent, you aren’t allowed back to KZ.

“We don’t tolerate a**holes,” Squirrel says.

When I ask about reality vs perception, Shy says: “One thing that really grinds me is that we are seen as unethical, immoral and that we will f**k just anyone. This is the furthest thing from the truth.

“Consent and respect are of the highest importance in this space. I feel safer here walking around wearing nothing but a pair of heels than I do going out to a nightclub where I have been groped, leered at and abused for declining propositions.”

Squirrel agrees with her friend: “It’s ironic that in a space where there is impact play, it’s the safest I’ve ever felt as a woman in a club environment.”

To explain this from a bloke’s perspective, Ken gives the example of admiring someone’s clothing and body respectfully: “It could be as simple as someone saying, ‘those fishnets look amazing! How do they feel? Can I touch them?’”

KZ opened in October 2017. Since then, Squirrel says she’s collected many memories. Her favourite though, is when Graham, a man in his 40s, attended an “Explore” event, designed to cater for those who are curious about kink, sexuality and gender.

“Graham* came up and asked for a hug with tears in his eyes and he told me that night was the first time in his life that he’d ever been able to leave the house dressed the way he feels is truly him.

“He’d come dressed as ‘Jess’. He’d been given the opportunity and a safe space to be his true self. Honestly, it made my heart explode.”

*Not their real names

Source: News.com.au