Cruising Service, Flagging Orange

Recently, I co-ran a city-wide, radical Pride event with my girlfriend/Owner/flatmate. We got about 1,000 attendees, had over 40 local grassroots orgs in attendance, a nearly-full schedule of talks and workshops, and free food for around ~100 people. It involved around 6 months of increasing amounts of work. Including my full-time job, I was probably pulling 60-hour weeks for the last 3-4 weeks before the event (Miss was pulling ~40 hour weeks including her full-time unemployment). Lots of our friends work a full day for free for various orgs that they're involved in, for the event itself, or both.

Miss and I hosted afters with "kissing and drinking" as per the invites we've printed out, with ~20 people spread across our living room (which is our bedroom) and the spare room drinking whisky in varying states of undress. People seem to have a nice time, it's a satisfying conclusion to this year's event for Miss and I, and no one expects us to really do anything now we're home. We mention that most everyone knows where everything is and can just help themselves to the home bar.

A week or so afterwards, I talked to Miss about how it'd have been nice if I'd had more service opportunities at afters. She asked me to get her a drink once or twice and I got to lace up a hot dyke's boots as they're leaving (both highlights of the night for me) but there isn't quite the same availability I've had at other parties where there's been some way for friends I don't necessarily have an independent service dynamic with to navigate requesting service from me. I assume there's a level of not wanting to ask me to do things when I'm tired and as lots of forms of service are quite obviously forms of work themselves it seems easy for everything to fall under the mental category of "too much to ask for". Miss pointed out that people are probably putting service into the category of "work" and not the category of "sex" which is where I'm usually engaging with service for kink from (certainly within the context of parties and hanging out with friends; whilst some of the service I do at home does need to factor in my capacity, thus far no one has asked me to do loads of washing at their house or hit on anything that could be actually difficult for me).

Free use service

Miss plans for me to eventually be free use for service to most anyone either of us would invite home; this is an important part of the "no limits" dynamic to her and it's an important part of the whole "property" thing to me. For us, "service" does include sexual service; it doesn't really make sense to me to differentiate those things in social circles where we all agree bootblacking is sex and where there's still potential for both intimacy and relational issues. In practice, though, scaffolding free use for more mundane service and free use for sexual service probably needs to happen somewhat separately. I think both things feed the other, but presumably some people will feel more comfortable demanding an espresso rather than a blowjob and vice versa.

There's a few practical limitations here (sometimes we host a regular queer community event at ours when there isn't normal venue access available, and it would probably be weird for everyone to suddenly be exposed to full lifestyle M/s when they're expecting clothes mending and art practice) but broadly, the long-term plan is for most of the people we regularly choose to interact with to understand that the option of opting in to expecting service from me is available to them. So far, we have a proposed whitelist with three people on it (none of whom I think have actually yet been invited to participate) and I'm getting a whiteboard for the fridge where I can list service skills I'm currently practicing (to give people some ideas of what might be welcome to ask for).

Choosing to lean into service needs a few things: recognising a dynamic of service orientated towards the other person, understanding the possible dynamics involved in asking me to do something if I'm unable to refuse, and understanding the options for repair if either of us feel weird about it. It doesn't really need me to want or enjoy it (though I am very likely to, and would get something out of not wanting it regardless), and it doesn't really need much from them (since this all gets facilitated through my dynamic with Miss, in most one-off cases I can talk to her directly about anything that's weird for me). It's not uncomplicated, though; repeated engagement in service can itself create some kind of ongoing, independent dynamic and it's still my responsibility in those cases to do any repair work myself. It's also my responsibility to be proactive about opportunities to serve when they're there, and work on creating more of those (this blog is part of that project).

Cruising service

Something that makes me feel weird about making opportunities for service is how much you have to go out of the way to do it. I can flag for needles or knives or heavy SM, but not everyone's actually down for power exchange with their hankies. Whilst the hanky code originated as a way to indicate interest in leathersex, something that includes power exchange by default, but that understanding isn't always present and you can just as easily hurt someone who isn't expecting that as you can escalate flirting by making the implications of power and service explicit.

I talk not infrequently about flagging orange on the right, and how the meaning we use in Glasgow for that is anything anytime/bottom. For me, flagging anything else just feels like it'd give the wrong impression. There's things I particularly like or dislike, but what I'm actually trying to cruise for is a (temporary or ongoing) service dynamic. I'm really not that concerned with what happens next; I want spontaneous interactions with the possibility for escalation, but I don't really care exactly what they escalate to. I want to feel able to defer to someone, to want to please or impress them, and to feel like the control is in their hands. If I have that, and if circumstances allow, I'll escalate as far as they're willing to go and in whichever direction they like. There's things I'll refuse for skill, confidence or risk profile reasons (if a D-type I trust enough asks me to top a floor rope scene, I'll do my best, but I'm not going to attempt a partial without training).

I'm still working on making cruising or approaching for service feel more comfortable. It's a sort of strange proposition to go "hey, want to play? The thing I really want is for you to interact with me as if I'm default totally available to you, and spend some time together that feels dynamic-y, and then maybe have sex if that feels like a natural escalation but honestly I'd be thrilled if you'd let me get you a drink or just hang around in case you need anything". It's not that I don't want the escalation; I just don't get much out of impact or (unfortunately not yet successful) fisting or needles without the service orientation as a bottom, and it's hard to envision what service-oriented play looks like absent the dynamic itself (particularly as I'll happily service top or bottom).

Much as I'd love to bemoan that we don't reliably have the power dynamic association with flagging and that not everyone knows what leathersex is, I probably do want to do leathersex with some people who haven't read Coming to Power and practically I need a quick way of explaining my deal to people I'm interested in or maybe (hopefully) to people who want whitelisted. This isn't really that quick, but I'm hoping it'll help me nail that down more.