Fetish Convention Not For the Uptight

TAMPA, FLORIDA – Few conventions require black curtains, feature self-described latex fetish models named RubberDoll and offer workshops entitled “Wax Play: Hot Fun for Everyone.”

“It’s not the normal convention that you would see on a daily basis here at the hotel,” said Darren Gidney, the director of catering and convention services for the host hotel, the Hyatt Regency in downtown Tampa.

And the organizers of FetishCon, which ends its fifth consecutive run in Tampa today, don’t promote it as such.

Billed as the largest adult fetish gathering on the East Coast, there are demonstrations on “mummification” and “beginning bondage.”

“They’re working people from all walks of life,” says Genesis Lynn, who started FetishCon eight years ago in New York. “There’s lawyers, doctors, teachers, everything you can imagine here.”

Behind the black curtains, an estimated 5,000 conventioneers — most of them local, but some from as far away as England and Japan — reconnect with people they’ve met at past conventions and live out their private fantasies.

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Heads turn when he enters the Hyatt ballroom, a space more accustomed to wedding receptions or the Tampa Organization of Black Affairs’ annual leadership breakfast.

Burly and hairy with the physique of a pro football player, he saunters through the convention floor wearing red stockings and knee-high boots, a leather corset and a skirt that exposes his ruffled panties.

He covers his face in a black mask. He won’t give his name. No one gives their name here — where all have to be at least 18 years old — only first names or pseudonyms. His is SirLove2000. He says he’s from Jacksonville and that this is his fifth consecutive convention.

He keeps coming back because the experience transports him somewhere else. “Out of the real world,” he says. “Just escaping day-to-day grind and the real pressure everybody’s under.” He doesn’t expect anyone to understand him. He says people may perceive the convention as explicit, but he doesn’t see it that way. All he wants is for people to talk to him, take his picture. “Just to blow minds,” he said.

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Tommy is a first-timer from Sarasota. He learned about FetishCon while surfing the Internet. He programs computers and says he came strictly for work. He planned to attend a 3 p.m. lecture on “legal issues & the adult industry.”

“A person I met recently wants to have a Web site done, so I figured perfect timing to come out and see some of the legal issues behind it,” he said.

He had a few hours to spare, so he swung by the convention early. He stopped at one exhibit of a man applying plaster to a topless woman behind a cage. The crowd of onlookers grew. Cameras clicked and flashed.

“I’ve never been to anything like this before,” Tommy said. “I really didn’t know what to expect. Interesting.”

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Bill, a widower from Jacksonville, seems conspicuously out of place. He’s 74, and while folks around him wear tights, girdles, leather gags and vests, he wears a white dress shirt and khakis.

He swears he’s not into this lifestyle, just “broad-minded.”

“It doesn’t bother me if people want to do this,” he said. “This is fine. This is their thing.”

A convention junkie, he’s been to trade shows, home shows, tattoo shows. “Everything imaginable,” he said. He said he was on his way to Orlando on business when he decided to drop by.

First impressions?

“Nothing shocks me,” he said. “I’ve lived too long to be shocked.”

Courtesy St. Petersburg Times via TampaBay.com