Benjamin Davis debates if he is ‘kink-less’ – or perhaps just deviant beyond his wildest fantasies…

The Kink of the Kink-less 

I lost my passion for public sex after an elderly woman glared me down on a transatlantic flight once she’d realized that my girlfriend was not asleep in my lap. I suppose I could have tried to lie – to say that my girlfriend had a neck condition that made her head bob up and down in her sleep – but I was too busy orgasming. If I get a private room in hell, that woman’s judgmental face will be poster-sized, framed, and bolted to the wall.

I had no interest in incorporating that kind old lady into my sex life – nor did the idea of a person seeing us in the act turn me on. In fact, none of the various sex stuff I’ve tried has turned me on by itself. For example, I’ve put a foot in my mouth, but I’ve never put a foot in my mouth and thought, “Yum, this is my kink!”

I’ve had someone use a belt to beat me into an erection, but at no point after that did I think, “Getting beaten gives me the best erections.” Quite the opposite. 

For me, the more I try something, no matter what it is, the more I find it mundane. What gets me off is the new, the exciting. It’s the kink of diminishing returns.

I did some research (and by that, I mean a 20-minute hardcore Google-sesh) and nowhere did I see people talking about getting turned on by new things. And it’s not only acts that get me going; it’s new toys, new places, new people, new positions. 

This has faded a bit as I’ve gotten older. Mostly because shame sits side-car with maturity. Still, I’ve never been able to fully shake it.

As a teenager, sexual promiscuity gets young men labeled as weirdos, pervs, and creeps. No one wants to pass around a list of things they’ve curiously put up their butts or share their eclectic porn-search history. God forbid you let it slip that, “Yeah, I’d suck a dick.” Though, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve met more and more men who have found their stop on the kink train. Eventually, a guy realizes, “I’m into feet”, “butt stuff is my bag”, or “lactate on my face forever” and so he hops off the kink train with whoever shares his enthusiasm and settles down.

However, I am still unmarried and kink-less. So, I set out to talk to other older, promiscuous, often single men, finding that they, too, are often kink-less. Which made me realize that there are two types of kink-less: the kink-less of conventional, vanilla house-husbands with generic and socially acceptable bedroom tastes, and the insatiable kink-less of trying everything – getting turned on by the new and exciting, a kink-less that is, in its own special way, a kink.

I discussed this with some of my more open male friends – those willing to admit their kinks, or lack thereof – and discovered that many of those who have designated kinks have also found someone who will satisfy them. They are not driven by the desire to explore new things. They are up for experimenting, but to them, a new kink is an experiment, for the sake of spicing up something they’re already happy with.

“You think,” my married coworker asked, “that you’re not married because you don’t have a kink?”

“Yeah, like, if I loved getting peed on and I found someone who would pee on me forever, I’d be more likely to marry them, you know? Since I don’t have a kink, or if my kink is trying new things, that makes it hard for me to see long-term potential.”

“I think,” he said, “that you’re seriously misunderstanding marriage. Or kinks. Or both.”

He clearly didn’t get it, so I approached my other friend, who is a bit older than me, still single, and similarly inclined toward the new and exciting. He saw my logic but made a fair point. “Maybe,” he said, “our kink is trying new things, or 

 we’re those types of guys who have kinks so weird and obscure, like fucking toasters or something, and we’ll spend our whole lives never knowing what true pleasure feels like because, c’mon, I’m not gonna fuck a toaster, are you?”

He might be right. It could be that ‘kink-less’ just means I haven’t found my kink. While some might take solace in that, knowing at least that they don’t have some dangerous or deeply perverse unforgivable kink, I find it only drives me and others toward the new, the exciting, and, yes, potentially even the appliance aisle.