Strictly Anonymous Confessions - 924 - FETISH FRIDAY- Cat on Being Non-Monogamous, Running Kink Clubs, Starting the Kink Collective & More

Episode Date: September 20, 2024

Cat called in to discuss her journey into non-monogamy and kink, running kink clubs and starting the Kink Collective. Tune in the hear all the details including how and why after she got sober she discovered her sexuality and got into kink, the first guy she met who became her mentor and got her into going to kink/bdsm parties and what she did and didn’t like about those parties, how and why that relationship need and how she wound up in NYC in the kink world, how and where she eventually found her tribe that she felt most comfortable with, the next guy she met and how she started helping him run his swimmer club with him, how and why that ruined their dom/sub relationship and how they decided to get their bdsm needs met elsewhere, how and why that relationship ended, how and why she started running a club on her own and how and why she brought bdsm into it, how she met her current partner and started running clubs with him, their poly relationship and how and why that works for them, how the Kink Collective stated as a leather family and how it evolved over time into a place that helps people enter into the kink and bdsm community plus a whole lot more. You can find the Kink Collective here: https://kinkcollective.net **To see anonymous pics of my female guests + hear anonymous confessions + get all the episodes early and AD FREE, join my Patreon! It's only $7 a month and you can cancel at any time. You can sign up here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/StrictlyAnonymousPodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and when you join, I'll throw in a complimentary link to my private Discord! MY BOOK IS NOW OUT FOR PRE-ORDER!!!! Strictly Anonymous Confessions: Secret Sex Lives of Total Strangers. A bunch of short, super sexy, TRUE stories. GET YOUR COPY NOW: https://amzn.to/4i7hBCd To Join SDC and get a FREE Trial! click here: https://www.sdc.com/?ref=37712 or go to SDC.com and use my code 37712 Want to be on the show? Email me at [e-mail] or go to http://www.strictlyanonymouspodcast.com and click on "Be on the Show" Have something quick you want to confesss while remaining anonymous? Call the CONFESSIONS hotline at 347-420-3579. You can call 24/7. All voices are changed. Sponsors: https://bluechew.com Get your first month FREE! https://butterwellness.com/ Try the Butter Wellness perineum massager and use code STRICTLY for 20% off your entire order Follow me! Instagram https://www.instagram.com/strictanonymous/ Twitter https://twitter.com/strictanonymous?lang=en Website http://www.strictlyanonymouspodcast.com/ Everything else https://linktr.ee/Strictlyanonymouspodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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on my confessions hotline, and you could do that 24-7. The number is 347-4-7-4-2. Oh, my God, I can't breathe, sorry. 3579. That's 347-4-203579. I change all the voices on the confessions, too, just so you know, you'll remain anonymous on there. You get four minutes, leave a message. If you need longer, just call back and call from a quiet place, please. Put the phone to your ear and don't call me when you're driving. Some of those episodes, some of those confessions wind up on a naughty confessions episode. And I talk about them with my girl Layla. The rest of them go on to my Patreon. Now, my Patreon is a great place to join for just $7 a month. You get a ton of stuff. You get all the anonymous picks of all of my guests. So you want to put like a sexy body in a pick to one of my

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All you got to do is go to sDC.com and use my code 37712 or just scroll. Just go to the description and click on the link for your tree, for your free trial. Okay, listen, today I have on kink. I have on Katt. I'm saying kink because Kat is a part of the Kink Collective. Kink Collective.net. You're going to love Kat's story. She's super evolved and the lifestyle and now helping people in the lifestyle in the BDSM,

Kink World. She is currently in a poly-release. I've always been non-monogamous, but she wasn't always there. She's had a long journey. We do go all the way back to the beginning when she started out. She got sober at some point in her life and wanted to explore her kink side and all the things that she was always sort of secretly interested in. And that's what she did.

And her journey is a super interesting one. It brought her from San Francisco to New York. She really became a person who ran events and eventually owned her own. clubs and ran her own parties, Swinger Party slash BDSM party. She brought that all together here in New York City. And she talks about that whole journey. And then after doing all that, she talks about how and why she started the Kink Collective, which is a place where I feel like a lot of my listeners might want to go to get some help because they are a group of people who help other people navigate the Kink world, navigate their feelings, whether you're like a single person or a couple.

They can help and that's what they do. And she explained. all of it, right? So I don't need to explain anything more. She explains her whole journey. Then she explains exactly what they do at King Collective. All the information on how to find them, the link and everything will be in the description. So anyway, I'm going to get right to and be right back on with Kat. Hi, Kat. Welcome to the Strictly Anonymous podcast. How are you today? Hi, I'm well. How are you? I'm good. I'm excited to talk to you and I'm going to talk to you again in the future. And I'm going to talk to your partner, Joshua, because you and Joshua did start something called the King collective and it's so fucking up my alley. I've been needing to find some great sex therapist for

my show, especially for like my Fetish Fetish Friday series that I do. I'm always talking to so many people who have fetishes that are living a secret life or not just fetishes like kinks or when people sort of being having some shame about it. When you actually coach people and help people through those things, right? But let's, but you have a backstory like a major backstory. So why don't we go like all the way back to the beginning and start with like how you did wind up getting into all the things that you wound up getting into. Okay, fair enough. So once upon a time, no, I'm teasing. Well, we'll go back. My go back is a little, is a minute, right? So I had always been interested in kink. I'd had fantasies from the time I was young. I had a certain degree of that kind of shame that

comes from knowing, or at least sensing that the people that you know in your life are around you don't think the same things that you think and don't fantasize about the same thing you fantasize about and that maybe they would look at you with scans if you told them. So I put it on the back burner. I mean, I guess I can say it. Like, as it turns out, I had a drinking problem. I was, I'm an alcoholic. I'm in, I'm recovered now. But during my 20s, my life is fairly tumultuous around it, around drinking and using and codependency.

It was all crazy. So any, any sort of impulse or interest I had in anything like that was not able to be, I couldn't, I have no time to think about it, nothing to do with it. And so then at 29, I got sober. And shortly after that, my head. head started to clear and a little bit more of who I was started to come back to me. And I realized that I had this desire. And I also at that point grappled with my sexual identity, right, my sexual orientation. I had always been attracted to women, but had also passed us straight because I'm attracted to men too and I didn't understand it. And so it's much easier to be straight in our

community, particularly women of our time. Yeah, for sure. So when I got sober, I started reckoning with all of those things. I gave myself permission to quote unquote come out. So I I went around as a lesbian for a while. And then I started to pursue kink. I started to pursue finding, trying to find, like-minded others. And this is 30 years ago when there was no internet. Yes, there was an internet, but you couldn't search this stuff like you can now. There was nowhere to go to find this kind of stuff.

I don't remember how I found my first connection, but I made a connection. I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area at the time. and I made a connection with a man who hosted parties. And his name was Edward. Bless him wherever. I mean, I know where he is, but I started going to his parties. I had a, I got a partner at the time and it turns out they were interested to. They were on the same kind of journey I was.

They were exploring your sexual orientation. They were interested in kink. So we sort of did it together. And we would go to the parties. And then this man, Edward, I've always, I've been in hospitality all my life. So parties from the back end, interested me right from the start, like how to, like hosting them and what they were. So he would say, I would go to one of his events, one of the larger ones, and he would take me

around and say, this is what these people are doing over here. This is what this kind of play is. This is what safety looks like. This is what consent looks like. This is, and he just taught me so much. He saved years. He shaved years off of my journey had I had to navigate all that by myself going to an event, to event without understanding.

what I was looking at without understanding what I was engaging in. It's a really, really fortunate that I had an early mentor that just sort of fell into my life. Like I didn't even know that I was looking for him. So I got to have some involvement. And the relationship that I'm speaking of now lasted for about 15 years. Oh, wow. And that was with a man or a woman. Was that a woman at the time?

That was with a man. That was the universe is funny to me. Like I came out as a lesbian and then. You found the guy of your dreams. And it turns out he wasn't the guy. Oh, okay. But he was a friend that I knew in recovering. We spent a lot of time together.

And then I found myself with feelings that I didn't think I was going to have. So the first person I've ever fallen in love with when I was still drinking, it was a hot mess was a woman. That was the first time. I'd been married twice and had never fallen in love before. And then I met a woman. And then suddenly one day I understood that I had fallen in love. And the light was brighter.

And I understood what all the love songs meant. The bird sounded. It's like what people talk about like finally happened for me. And I was in my second marriage when that. happened. And I stayed with him for as long as I did. And that's another whole story that's not really relevant to this one. But let me ask you this, though. Let me just stop right there, because you do have this whole time with him. And you are going to these events. Now, you're learning the back end, and that's just something that's specific to you. But as a sober person, finally,

sort of facing all your kinks and desires, right? Clearheaded. It's all there. Did you have a lot of hot times? Did you, were you loving the experiences that you were having? having it, were you in the different swingers clubs? Was it one club that you were going to? Like, what went down in those early times for you? So in those early times, there was a club called Power Exchange that was a huge club in San Francisco. It was a BDSM club. Yeah. I didn't go to any swinger clubs per se, although I went to parties that were sex positive. I know that language now. Yeah. Yeah. And then my then partner and I found other people to play with privately. So we did do some, what would be like swinging or swapping or open relationship stuff, right?

We found people to play with. We played privately in homes, like not necessarily at clubs. But I wasn't having the kind of experiences you're talking about because the truth is is my partner and I weren't that well suited to one another in this realm. Interesting. Right? At the time, I knew that I was wanting to experience submissiveness, specifically, particularly, around sexuality, sexual submissiveness is what I recall. I didn't know, I didn't know about what I know

now about power dynamics and power exchange and what Dom Sub really means outside of sort of sexual flavor. And my partner at the time kept trying to be the dominant part. But what I can tell you in hindsight now is that he was just really submissive and couldn't own his own stuff. Oh, hilarious. So he was never really into it. I never really got to experience what I wanted to experience, but oh, by, did we keep trying? And was this the first time that you had an open relationship and was with a partner that was hooking up with other people? Yes. And how was that for you? Well, it was great. I never had a problem with that. And the truth is, I've been non-monogamous for, well, I was non-monogamous, non-consensually before I got sober, which we would call cheating. And then,

then once I got sober, I began to go down the path of what I now know to be ethical non-monogamy before I got sober, which we would call cheating. And then once I got sober, I began to go down the path of what I now know to be ethical non-monogamy. It was more intentional. More intentional. I mean, my journey with ethical non-monogamy has also evolved over time, but that was the start of understanding that like you need to be honest with partners you need to tell people the truth about things that it looks like something other than just cheating so that relationship runs its course I'm not really satisfied I'm not really experiencing what I want to experience and for a whole host of other reasons that relationship ends and part of the transition from California back to New York

from that relationship to what is now the rest of my life, came with finding another person. And I'm not going to spend a bunch of time on that part of the story just because I don't want to right now. But I ended up connecting with someone else who lived here in New York, who had been in the lifestyle, who was full-time in the kink, BDSM swing, in the whole of the lifestyle.

He hosted primarily swing parties, even though his personal background was in BDS. So we connected personally on the idea of having a BDSM connection, but I was really attracted to the parties that he was throwing and the people that he was helping. And part of that became the way that I ended my life in California and started my life in New York. In fact, my partner and I, the one from California, his mother lived here in New York. That's how I ended up in New York. But he and I would come here occasionally just to visit with her and we would try to find parties to go. to or events to seek out at night. She would go to bed early and we'd be like, let's try to find

something. And again, all there was was the paper back page magazines that you would get at the little bodegas. There was like no internet, right? So for instance, one time we found a club called Carousel and we didn't have a lot of experience with being at swing parties or sex parties. We didn't really know what the protocol was. So we went and we watched and we hung out for a while. And then we, as I now know is common, couples that are new watch for a while. They're not sure how they want to interact. They're not really comfortable interacting with new people. So usually the first order of business is to play with each other in a public setting.

That's like usually the first step towards involvement in this lifestyle. So he and I got to the place. We were ready to do that. And we sat down on one of the beds in the place and we turned our bodies and our attention. to one another with the idea of sort of initiating and maybe getting ready to play. And all of a sudden I had this sense from behind me that was very disturbing. And I turned around and this was a club that allowed single men to come. I turned around and there were literally, I want to say five, maybe that was an exaggeration.

But there were these men very close to me in my personal space with their cocks in hand. And I don't know what they were looking for expecting. If they were just trying to like kind of steal our energy or be voyeuristic, but it felt very invasive and it felt very unsafe. And I remember looking up around the room trying to see if there was anybody that I could find. Like this seemed like a problem that needed to be corrected. Right. And so I think I don't even know if we actually did anything. I think we may have just like ultimately collected our things and left.

And it was one yet again frustrating experience that he and I had together because we didn't really know how to navigate the lifestyle or really trying to be in the lifestyle with one another. And so that was a long part of my story. It took me a long time to navigate my way through that. My point of telling that story is that experience later informs what I do and how I do it when I get to the place of being someone who owns club spaces and holds those kind of spaces for people. Essentially, what I didn't know I was making an internal commitment to was that if I was ever in the position of taking care of someone who was like me at the time, they would never experience what I experienced that night. Yeah, of course. And that, that is what came to pass. So, so his mother lived here in New York, as I said. And then she was, she got ill and she was terminal.

And so I ultimately came and stayed with her. she didn't want to die in an institution. She didn't want to die alone. My partner at the time wasn't really capable of helping her for various reasons. And so I spent a couple of months here with her. We got called out originally to New York because we thought she was going to die in days and it took months. But I stayed with her during that period of time. And because my relationship with my partner in California had been very frustrating and somewhat repressed.

And then we got to a place for various reasons that we weren't even being sexual together. I sort of, when my mother-in-law at the time, she would go to sleep very early, I, then now there's an internet. So now I start seeking. I'm like, wow, I'm in New York City and he's back in California. And I have steam to blow off. And so I start looking for events. I start looking for something because I figured I wasn't looking to Chi, I wasn't looking for a relationship. I was just looking for a party, which is something that he and I had done.

And in my mind, I didn't see that as being a problem. I thought it seemed okay to me at the time. Ultimately, I do find someone, and it does become a relationship, and that's not what I had intended, but for whatever, for, no, for whatever reason, for a number of reasons, I let myself go in this direction in no small part, because at one point I went to one of the events that this man here in New York through, and what I found was a deep sense of connectedness to people who were doing what I had always wanted to be doing, and they were doing it in a safe environment in a way that was consensual and sane. And they were feeling good about it. And that's what I had always wanted. I have a vivid memory of being at a party, being intimate with someone who thought I was the most beautiful woman in the room.

And then I looked around the room and these were people who were all doing the same thing. And I felt like I had found my tribe. Yeah, that's hard to fight. If people in recovery were as my first tribe, this was now. my second tribe. This was the feeling of these are the people I've been looking for. This is what I've been looking to experience. And it's here in New York. And then a series of things happened. I had needed to leave that relationship in California. And so I just did. I just picked it. She passed.

I helped her to pass at home as she had wished. I cleaned up as much of what was here as I could. I went home. I packed my car and I moved to New York. And never looked back. And I never looked back. And it's interesting that you, I mean, the majority of places didn't match up to what you were looking for, right? It was like this one specific place, finally. It sounds like you did have a lot of experiences before that, that just weren't the right place for you. Right. And never connected me in this way that I had always imagined could happen. Right.

And so when I found it, it was compelling. Yeah, of course. This was what I wanted. And then as I got to know the man who, like, later became my fourth major life relationship, my last husband, et cetera. And he was hosting events like this. I wanted in. It's what I wanted to do.

It's like it was the perfect matching. Internally, it felt like the perfect matching of my desire, my skill set, not only for myself personally, but to help people in the world, like all of it lined up. And it was so compelling. I just said, yes, I packed my car. I moved here and jumped right in with both feet. And there is a guy involved in this whole scene that you're actually attracted to and something you have a connection with him as well. Did that happen before you even moved?

Did you know you were like coming back to that as well or did he show up later? Okay, cool. No, no, no. That started. So I mean, so full disclosure, it ended up being a cheating. I didn't mean for it to be that. It wasn't what I went looking for, but it's how it happened. Yeah.

And part of the reason why it exploded like that for me is because I was in a relationship that I had needed to get out. of and I couldn't see that. I have cheating stories on my show all the time, specifically because I feel like it's really important to always show the whole story before you judge somebody. I don't believe, I believe that human beings' lives are meant to be messy. Nobody's fucking perfect. That's what we're here for. That's fucking real life.

And I don't judge that kind of stuff. So I get it. I mean, shit happens. Right. And it's true. And I mean, thank you for, thank you for saying. that because I have held a certain degree of shame around the fact that that was, that I ended up here by way of cheating, because it's not my value system. I don't believe in cheating. It's not what I believe

in doing. And I love that, though, that sentence right there. I'm not a cheater, but I cheated. And I could say that. And I say that all the time. Like, I'm not a cheater, but I have cheated in my life. And both things can exist at the same time. You know what I mean? It's true. Yeah, it's interesting. We've been, Josh and I have been doing TikTok live every day for this month and today is a different question every day. And today's question was about mistakes. Yeah. What does it mean? What does it mean to make mistakes and how do we learn from them? And so, yes, that's exactly what you're talking about. It was certainly, and in some ways, I can't even say it was a mistake. It was just an unfortunate set of circumstances that I have

definitely have a part of, but it's what happened and it's how I ended up here. So, so yeah, so it definitely went like that. Right. And you're still with that guy, right? So we could look at that story, right? Is that the guy? Is that Joshua? No. No. My husband passed away in 2017. Oh, this guy, this guy that you're with. When did, how long were you with him for? From 2010 when I moved here until he passed in November of 2017. Okay, so seven years. Okay, cool. All right. So you come back and you're with him now. You moved to New York. And my intention, literally, I mean, I loved him and my intention was to be with him for the rest of my life. Of course. Yeah. And my, what he used, one of the things he used to say, and he would say it in Yiddish, is, Man makes plans and God sits and laughs. I made this plan. I was committed. I worked very hard to have relationships with his adult children and their children.

And I was as full and committed to a relationship as a person can be. And warts and all, was the relationship perfect? No. But we were on a similar path. We believed in the same things. We wanted the same things for people. He was a big-hearted man. I learned a lot from him about how to host events,

how to hold value for the parties that you throw. We used to throw swing parties, and we allowed single men to come, and we charged more than the market was charging at the time. And sometimes the men would say, well, why don't you charge this? And he would say to them, if that's what you want to pay,

then go to one of those kind of parties. That's not the party I throw. If you want to come to my party, then this is what you'll pay to come to my party, because it's the party I throw. I learned that value from him to understand that what I do for people has value and I know what that value is. And you don't have to come here and do what I do if you don't want to. There's other places that you can go. But you got that value

when you showed up to that party. You knew and that's what you wanted. I did. Yeah. I did. But I learned how to, I learned more about hosting parties. I learned more about the community here in New York. And I learned a lot from being with him and working. We live together and worked together. And oddly enough, from a BDSM standpoint, we got together on the, the idea that he was going to be dominant. I was going to have this DS relationship with him. Yeah. And then we connected as human beings and we connected as business partners and we connected

as life partners. And then we weren't really able to engage in a really in a DS dynamic. That's interesting. And there was a couple of different places of incompatibility, not the least of which was most of the dynamics he had ever been in where he was successful as a dominant with submissives were not these kinds. relationships and that he fell in love with me and he cared about me, he felt unable to really step into a dominant role in the way that he would need to in order to be effective with a

submissive because now he loved me and cared about me and it wasn't something he was able to do. Oh, interesting. So that ended up coming off the table. That was a trade I didn't know I was making. Yeah. But I wouldn't have traded that I loved him, that we were committed, that we were doing this work together. it was at least as fulfilling to me as I imagined being in a DS dynamic would be. Were you able to like, I mean, I'm assuming you had an open relationship at this time, right?

Well, we ultimately agreed to was that we would do all these things together, but that we would each go get our kink somewhere else. So that's what you did. Yes, we each found other play partners that were more suited to us in the kink realm, in the sexual realm, in the kink realm, and we honored what we had and we gave each other the freedom to go find what we couldn't. be for one another. Now, I would be lying if I said we didn't have a fair share of challenges around this stuff because we did. But one of the things he used to say to me is, you're my life partner,

I love you, you're the most important I relationship I have. And these other, these other involvements that I have, I enjoy them. They have value to me. But if they left my life tomorrow, it would make no material difference. And he didn't mean that in a bad way. He simply meant that there's different levels of relationship that we have with people and they have different values to us and that no matter what he did with outside people and beat us and et cetera that I should always know in my heart that we were together we were primary partners there's lots of different language around relationships in the lifestyle but we were primary partners it was essentially an open relationship we weren't really polyamorous we weren't having full-on

relationships each of us with other partners other than to say play partners people we cared for friends etc but we were each other's primary partner and that's how that relationship went so you're just getting your sexual needs met elsewhere sexual needs bdSM needs like from from a bdsum play standpoint like i needed warm up he didn't want warm up we had places where we weren't compatible and i would try to be what he wanted and he would try to be what i wanted and it wasn't very successful so one day we just looked at each other essentially i looked at him and said said, let's stop trying this together. Yeah.

That's just each go get our needs met around this BDSM stuff with partners that are more suited to each of us. Like I said, it wasn't without its share of trials and tribulations. And I learned a lot. And so in July of 2017, he was diagnosed with an inoperable liver cancer. Oh, my God. That's the worst liver. And then, yeah, and then in November he passed.

Whoa. During, backing up a little bit at a, and I want to say, I got here in 2010, and around 2013, we took over the space that was carousel, the space I spoke of. The man, the man who ran that club ended up passing away. We didn't know he was sick and he passed away. So his space was kind of available. So my, he became my husband later, but my husband and I, with another partner, took over the sublease and opened a club. We opened a club called Oasis. It was primarily a swing club. And that was my, we had been hosting parties in private spaces prior to them because we didn't have a dedicated space. So we would, we did this, I thought, charming thing where we would have couples only parties, but we'd find these single men who really wanted to participate who had beautiful homes, who allowed us to come into their homes and host the parties. And then they would get to be the token single guy at the party. Oh, there you go. That was the smart. That's clever. Yeah. And that was a model he had come up with. So I learned, like I said, when I learned things about how to host parties and how to do that, I learned these things from my late husband. Yeah. So once when this space became available, then we were able to run a club sort of full time where we had a space now where people could come in and we could host parties and we could do the things that we were doing. Only we were doing them now out of a dedicated space. And so we were in that space for a while, and then that space closed.

And then in May of 2015, we found another location, and we opened a club that was called Decadence. That was the name of the club. And Decadence was always, he always had had a dream to open a club and call it decadence. And so this club was sort of the culmination. He had had a club before I met him, that he'd been doing this for a long time. Yeah. And so this was the club he'd always wanted to have.

And so we opened it together. We did all the things we did together. A lot of blood, sweat and tears going into building the club. And then in 2017, when he passed, I essentially, it became mine. And so it was a very tumultuous time. He was sick. I was taking care of him. It was not as financially solvent as I thought it was.

So I had financial pressures and the pressure of running the club all by myself. And so 2017 and 2018 was challenging. But I just, but I just, what I, people would say to me, oh, you're so whatever. All I did was keep going. And there were moments where I, I wasn't even very graceful about it. Yeah. But my feeling around that is we really only have two choices in life. We can either sit down and stop or we can just keep going.

And so sitting down and stopping was not, did not feel like an option I wanted to exercise it. So as that was in the 17 and 2017 transition, I began to do more, because BDSM was really always where my heart was. From a business standpoint, people pay more money to go to sex parties and they do to go to BDSM events. Oh, okay. Swing parties, in a sense, is an easier way to make a living because people pay more to go to parties where sex is involved. And there's sort of a split in these communities between, swing parties being obviously sex parties and then in some realms of BDSM there's almost like an anti-sex like we don't do we don't mix sex with our BDSM in public spaces yeah for

so there was that going on so but I brought BDSm more into decadence and people came in behind that and and I began to mix the two fairly successfully and at a certain point Joshua comes in because he's from that realm and he'd been introduced to me by someone else, et cetera, et cetera. And then he and I just started, we were, we were compatible at a lot of levels. And I hadn't been able to be free or to be sexual with someone in a long time because my husband had been sick and et cetera, et cetera. So we were, it was really fun. We had a lot of fun right at the beginning. And what was true for me about him for a while was what my husband had said. He was in my life and I thought he was great, but I was very busy.

And so had it not continue, I would have been okay for a while, right? So it wasn't like, it was gradual as Josh and I built up our relationship together. How was it for him? Was he like, did he always know you were kind of like the one and he was like more interested and you didn't have any clue or you were both on the same page? We were on the same page. Part of our coming together was around as my husband had passed and he had left a relationship that he had had of almost the same amount of time. And there was a lot of stress and difficulty for him around that. So in some ways, we were like, you know, they talk about like we were on a life raft together in a way. We had both sort of experienced shipwreck in our lives and we sort of just clung together on this little life raft together. And that was good. And he did step into my space and he was able to help me.

He had been a party host. He had done events. And then in his breakup, he lost the place where he was doing his events. So it was sort of a natural progression for him to come into my space and help me run the events that I was running. And then we brought events that he had been running there. And we just sort of, and to this day, we're very connected. We're of a like mind about how parties should be run and the importance of all of the values of consent and of negotiation and of all of those things. From right away, we believe the same thing.

My mission at Decadence was to create a safe. and comfortable environment where people come to explore. And I did a lot of work with new people. A new couple would come in, let's say. And they would, decadence was set up. It was a full floor of essentially an old office building that was separated in the middle. So there was one half and then there was a mirror to the other half. So the first half was all social, right? There was no play that happened in the front half. And then all the play happened in the back half, right? So people would come in and they'd check in and then I would watch these couples sit in the social area, kind of with their backs up against the low, they'd have these

looks on their faces like they weren't sure why they were there or what they were doing and they were really nervous. And so I'd sit with them and I'd start by saying something like, so how long were you thinking about this before you showed up today? Is this your first time? Yes, it's my first time. I'd get answers for anything from a couple of weeks to a couple of years. I mean, literally sometimes people spend years thinking about it before they have the courage to walk in the And so my mission, my goal, what I worked to do was to make sure that those people have a safe experience so that at the end of the night they could look at each other and say, see, that was all right. We can do this again.

Because if people have a bad experience, the part of the couple that was the least ready looks at the other and says, I told you these people were crazy. I told you they were freaks. this was terrible and they met they if they ever come back to the community or the lifestyle it may be a very long time before they have the courage or the nerve to do it right and so so i took that that's been sort of one of my missions is to make sure that people who are new that finally have the nerve to step in and try have a have do not have the experience that i had had a carousel the years before that they don't look up and see see inappropriateness or they don't they don't they

They don't feel pressured or pushed by people who want something that they don't want. So the space I created was that for people. It was a safe place for people. People could come and explore. They knew they would be protected and safe. They knew if there was a bad actor that he would be fished out and not allowed to stay. I did have events that had single guys at it. But we ran it in such a way that they didn't get to be bad actors.

And so that's what I did. And I did that until so. And then Joshua came on board and we did it together. Our relationship flourished over time. It became more and more, and then we got to a certain point where we both looked at each other, and we went, okay, we're in this together now. And you're my person and I'm your person. And we kept going.

Now, this relationship is polyamorous. This relationship has other relationships involved with it. Oh, okay. So it's not like your, neither one of you is like the primary person. Well, to the degree that we- Or are you guys primary with each other than you still? It depends on how you want to look at it, right? By primary means we live together.

we're business partners together and we're in a committed personal romantic relationship with each other just each other first there are other relationships that are every bit as important that are every bit as meaningful that are every bit a part of life and so that kind of language doesn't necessarily fit it's it's not relationship anarchy i'm not really fond of that concept but it's not hierarchical Okay. There's no, there's no relationship in this polyamorous group that's no, no one relationship is more important than another. Right. Right. They have different parameters. They have, people have different amounts of time they can spend together. Those people are in other relationships as well. It's, listen, it's not easy. Joshua's often wanted to say, I wouldn't wish poly on my worst enemy. And so we've worked really hard and hasn't it always been easy? Absolutely not. Was it intentional? Did you guys decide at a certain point in your release? to become Polly? No, it was right from the jump.

Oh, interesting. Okay. That way from the jump. Absolutely. And was it because you guys had other relationships going on at the time and you guys were together that you were just like, let's keep it status quo and status quo is you guys are Polly already or? Well, we both came out of relationships where it was more of a primary partner model. Yeah.

Yeah. And so we both, we both had to heal from me from my husband's death and him. from the breakup of that relationship. Yeah. But non-monogamy, ethical non-monogamy, whether it looks like polyamory or open, whatever, was something that we both had in our hearts as who we were as people.

Yeah, interesting. It just sounds like you just keep evolving to the next level, really, because I do think the next level of being open. Sexually is being open emotionally too. This was taking your sort of evolution up a notch. Yeah, I think that's a fair statement. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. And so how did that work? Were you like, this is finally it? This is like what I've always wanted. Did, you know, because you had experienced so many other things in the past. Yes. Yes. Mm-hmm.

And, and, and, and, and this relationship has challenged me at levels that no prior relationship has ever challenged me at. And I've done more personal growth through this relationship than I've been able to do in any of my previous relationships. So, consequence, there are aspects of this relationship that have been harder than any of the other relationships that I've ever been in. But you see growth as important in life. Maybe that's the kind of person you are. So you see it as a benefit as opposed to a negative. Absolutely. No question. And that's one of those things that I don't know. That is one of those places where I'm blindsided because I can't imagine doesn't everybody feel like that. But they don't. It's weird. But that's

the way they're supposed to because I think that's what life is. I think life is school. And we go through different grades. And so when I say someone's more evolved, I mean, they're not any better, right? It's like, can't say someone who's in fifth grade is smarter than someone in kindergarten. They're just at another level because they've been through the other levels before, right? Here's what I say about that. When you, when you are in the heteronormative sort of world, you can go your whole life and not think about a thing. You go to school, you go to college, you get married, you have kids, you have a job, you go to weddings and funerals and bar mitzvahs and christenings and and then you die and then you die and that's not a bad thing of course not

but at some point in your life if you become aware of fill in the blank you're a man and you want to wear panty hose you're a woman and you want to kiss your best girlfriend if at a certain point you become aware of something in yourself that puts you outside of the norm of this what I call this white picket fence that people live inside of now you have a problem now you have a conflict now you have something inside of yourself that you can either ignore, push down, reckon with, act out on, but you can't get away from it and you can't live comfortably in this white picket fence anymore. So the work that I do and what I tell people is when you get the nerve to go to the gate and open the gate and step outside of the white picket fence, you're at, like when Dorothy lands at the beginning of the

Yellow Brick Road in Reserve Oz, right? She's on a journey. She's not in Kansas anymore. So when people step outside of their picket fence. They're at the start of a journey and they're not in Kansas anymore. And so from there, it almost doesn't matter. All you do is move forward. And that journey has ups and downs and is influenced by the people here, fortunate enough to run into, unfortunate enough to have to endure or whatever's on that journey. But you're now outside of the white picket fence. And what I feel like that means is you have to encounter yourself at some level, you have to begin to engage with yourself at some level to say, who am I really? What do I really want? And the society can't answer that for you anymore. So now you have to dig deep. You have to

begin to dig deep to try to find out who am I and what do I want and how do I want to be now that I'm outside the picket fence and I'm in Oz. What does it mean to be in Oz? What are I going to do here in Oz. How am I going to be? And we run into all the different characters that we run into in the story of the Wizard of Oz. We run into all those people out here. And I have a bias here. I do think that as a rule, these people are just a tad more evolved because you have to be whether you want to be or not. I think so, yeah. So that's why anyone who steps outside of the white picket fence ends up being my people in some way, she'd perform because I resonate with you, because you had something inside of yourself that you had to reckon with in order to step away and start to do something

different. Yeah. So is that what you like decided to start this kink collective thing that you have and to help other people as well? So, so the king collective, this is a good jumping off for it in the story. Yeah. When Joshua left his former partner and the space that they were doing, it was her space that they were doing parties out of. Yeah. And he has his own story about how he started doing events, et cetera, et cetera. And so we were like, what are we going to, he had the name for his group based on his partner's name and he's, I can't use that name anymore. What am I going to call? What are we going to call what we, what I do? I mean, I had decadence was the name of my club and everything that I did was essentially under the auspices of decadence. Yeah. But so we came up with the name King Collective.

And the King Collective in its, in its formative stages was essentially a collection of leather folk who had this we were committed to the same ideals we believed in honesty integrity transparency all of the things that the leather community holds up as its highest standards we all aspired to live by yeah and so the space of decadence was where where we did everything king collective was the name of the group of us and and that's how we were for a while and then people came people who sort of came into the fold of the actual king collective were people who through their experience and through their commitment to themselves to grow and to learn and to become their best selves we all saw that in one another in common and we all sort of banded

together and we for the longest time the kink collective was considered a leather family we were just like a chosen family as people who embrace the same ideals and had the same kinds of goals as it related to kink and bdsm and so we were joined together in that way and then decadence closed in the middle of 2019. Okay. And then, so we continue to do things. We had been living in the club at the time, and that's another story for another day,

how that came to pass. But he and I were living there, and then it closed. So we found another place to live. And so we hosted sort of events just for Kink Collective Family in our new space, just so we'd have a place to gather.

We weren't really doing, I mean, we weren't doing any of the sort of parties and paid events that people were doing when they came to decadence, we were just trying to keep the family connected and going. Right. And then we began to develop what became our way of helping people. Joshua has had a formula for how to connect with people that he developed through his professional

domination work. And I had this way of communicating with people, particularly new people, that had been developed out of the scores of hundreds and hundreds of people that I sat with in this way that I explained to you earlier, sitting with people who were new, shepherding through into the beginning of their experiences, et cetera. So we put our heads together and we said, how would we help people now? And in February of 2020,

we did our first weekend intensive where we had people come and we put them through a series of introspective questions, communication with one another. We taught them how to hold space for one another, how to speak openly and clearly. And at the end of the weekend,

I think there were six or eight people at this weekend intensive that we did. and everyone learned so much and got so much out of it. And we thought, wow, we're really on to something. And then just as we were getting ready to try to do another one in March of 2020, I don't have to tell you what happened. Yeah, okay. Yeah.

And so at that point, like, all of everything went to all of society shut down. And then what did it call us? In our quarantine. Yeah. In that time, we then took everything that we had experienced and learned up until that point and took it all back to the drawing board. And so we took everything we knew and everything we had learned from all our time before,

from that one weekend event in February, we tore it all apart and we put it all back together again. We had whiteboards and days and days of doing nothing but putting our head up against it to figure out how could we best help people? How could we best help people find themselves, be in this community, get from where they are to where they want to be?

and that started that road. So in the spring, in the meanwhile, he had taught at a place up in York, not in New York, I'm sorry, in north of Albany, at a mostly men's-oriented retreat that is run by a wonderful person who were friends with. They had to, of course, their all events had to stop. So he had taught there once earlier ago, and they reached out to us. And so what we did in, I believe, April of 2021, was we did an online weekend intensive that we helped host.

And so people came and online, and we did some of the work that I was talking about. We had people answer questions, introspective questions. Zoom allowed people to do breakout rooms. We had breakout rooms. We had demos that were done on Zoom. And so we did this weekend event. It was very successful. And then in August of 2021,

things opened up enough that we went up to Albany and we did this same sort of intensive in person at Eastern Mountain Retreat up in Albany. And that was the start of the road that we essentially are on now, which is to take everything that we know and everything that we've learned personally and professionally and put it to use, helping people break out of where they are now so that they can get on a road to where they want to be in this realm of kink and bdsm in this lifestyle and so for the people who are listening that want to that want help like who are those people that you help are they people like couples that maybe you're thinking about getting in the lifestyle couples that are in the lifestyle maybe they're newbies or they're people that have fetishes

that is all of the above who do you typically are talking to we're typically well we're typically talking to like mostly single people i would say most of our work happens with single people. There's a big chunk of it that's been with the gay male community. There's a lot of shame in the gay male community around sexual orientation and sexual identity. So Joshua was doing that work in his professional nomination work. He was working with quite a few gay men. And I ended up in that realm and had been uniquely suited to help them because I'm safe and I'm a woman.

And so I've done a lot of work with men helping. them to work past that kind of shame and in various ways overcome the hurdles that have kept them from pursuing this lifestyle. Yeah. Sometimes these hurdles are deep-seated challenges with their relationships around the religions that they come from, their relationships with their mothers. There's all sorts of things that I, because of my various life experiences, I'm able to help people with.

And then Josh was able to take them from that place of becoming aware that they have, you an interest in a desire and a willingness to push forward through their obstacles, then to be able to really embrace kink in a way that is meaningful for them. And so our weekend intents have been in nail-only spaces, and then we've brought them to more heteronormative spaces where we've been able to connect with and work with all different people. But the common thread are people who recognize that they have a desire for something, they don't know how to get there. They have some sort of internal block, some sort of either they don't

know, they don't know how to find, they haven't found a safe enough place. And then they find us. And in who we are as people and the spaces that we create, there's enough safety, there's enough experience between us and in what we do that they can begin to put down their bags, get past their blockages and begin to explore who it is they really are and who they want to be. I'm surprised you don't see more couples. I think you're going to get a lot of couples from my show because I know a lot of couples listen to podcasts now. It's a big way that people are like getting in conversation and dipping their toes and

figuring out what they're going to do. And there are like a lot of people are at the precipice of maybe getting into the lifestyle. And I feel you could be super helpful the same way you were like. Well, we do these intensives. And we also, we both do individual counseling and then we counsel together. We're very, very effective because we have different backgrounds and we have different strengths. We've been very, very effective with individuals. We take individuals from wherever they are, whatever they're challenged with.

And literally in months see like life-changing progress. Yeah, I love it. We see it with people who come into our weekend intensives and come to our events. Because we now, as of this, since last year in September, we have a space that we use for events again. And then most recently, we've been able to connect with an artist in the World Trade Center, the Westfield Mall. There's a digital art gallery. And the resident artist there is trying to do what we do with BDSM, with sex and sex work.

And so we've connected. And so we're working out of there, and we're working in the committed space that we now have as of this last year. And so the combination of what we do is with these events, the weekend events, the individual one-day, trainings. But the overall trajectory is being able to to meet people where they are, help them uncover what blocks them, and then let them get on the road to where they want to be. Yeah, I love it. I mean, I just feel so many people listening, whether it's the singles or the couples, I could use your help. And now, so because I have people listening all over the world, right? They could, you have in-person events if people are like in the area, but you also do stuff,

I'm assuming, virtually. Do you still host your virtual events for people to sign? sign up for? Well, what we have started is an online, what we call an online mentorship program. We have a six-month online mentorship program. Attendees meet once a week for three hours at a time. They get homework every week. We're in the fourth month of our first group. The results have been nothing short of life-changing. And it just, it further reinforces the work that we do with people. And that, yes, it can be completely done online. So we do counseling. counseling one-on-one work with people online, and we do this group of mentorship with people online. Right now, it's a six-month program, and literally as we speak, we are beginning to craft

shorter online programs that have slightly more specific goals in mind for people. And so this is absolutely a direction that we're heading in that people don't have to be here. Yes, they can be here and do the in-person things that we do in New York, but the essential part of the work that we do can be done completely virtually. Yeah, that's great. And so where could people find all of this information and get in contact with you if they're interested? Why don't you give a shout out to all your stuff? So kingcollective.net is our website. All one word, king collective and then dot net because dot org or dot com wasn't available. And then our email address is king collective, NYC, at Gmail. Okay, great. And then we're social media. You can find this King Collective on Instagram. You can also find Master Joshua. He has more of a social media president. We're building our King Collective social media presence.

But those are the easiest places. King Collective on Instagram, kingcollective. That's probably the primary place to reach us. Kingcollective.net, the website has an email us option. So you can log into the website and find the box that says, send us an email. And people can send us an email about anything. We would get back to you immediately.

And we're happy to help. Whoever feels like they would like to reach out and talk about it. we do free calls. That's what I wanted to say. I wanted to say you got to tell people like literally you offer like a free 15 minute discovery call and I think that that's great. So people could just shoot out a bunch of questions to you or give you a quick call just to see what the vibe is and check it out. And I think that that's always super helpful. And they could just sign up for that right on your website. Correct. Absolutely. Yes. Correct. Yeah. I love that. Yes. We're able to to make an appointment to meet with us. And we are very open. Like if we tell us what's happening and what's

going on for you and we'll tell you if we can help you and we'll tell you how we can help you you or if we can't where you can go yeah I love that like where you would where you would be better served to get the help that you're looking for yeah no I love your journey and I think who better to help people than you guys because you've kind of been there done that right have other people who work for you too right that people when use the use the term work loosely we have people who have volunteered their help with us all the people who help us facilitate with us and for us all have their own journeys, all have their own experience in the lifestyle. Nobody talks out of a book.

Nobody's talking from a place of education or anything like that. We speak only from our own experiences. And in that way, do we help people? In some ways, I can help you simply because I'm just one step down the road from where you are now. Exactly. I think it's important for people to hear, right? Because like I said, you're talking from experience and who better to help than somebody

who's further down the road. right? So I'm going to put the link to your website in the description. I'll probably bring you up in the future when I'm talking to people. But thank you, Kat. Thank you so much for calling in and telling us your story. And I definitely believe you're going to get a lot of people calling you from my show because I feel like there's a lot of people that could use this kind of specific kind of help. And how would you know about King Collective really, right? Unless, right? So I just feel like. Well, if you search King Collective on the internet, we are the first one that comes up. Right, which is good. But I don't think if someone's looking for a, guidance in this world they would even know to put that in. So it's just, I think it's just super helpful for my whole audience to now know that this exists and you guys are out there and that there's a place that they could go and get this specific kind of help, which is so killer. So thank you so much for calling in and sharing your story. Thank you. Thank you for having me and thank you for listening to my long and winding tale. No, I love it. Thanks, Kat. Thanks so much for calling in. Okay, great. Thank you. Bye. Okay, I just want to tell you before you go that my book,

It's called Strictly Anonymous Confession. Secret Sex Lives of Total Strangers is now available not only in paperback and e-book, but you can pre-order the audiobook. It's still not going to be out until August 25th, but you can pre-order it. The book is basically 17 different stories taken from my show. I kind of picked one story from each category that I talk about on my show. Like there's a hot wife story. There's a cuck queen story.

There's a cuck story. There's a gang being girl story. Like I said, 17 stories. And they're all told in the third person, and they're all true. I took the interview and rewrote it in the third person. And I wouldn't really call it like a total erotica book. Think like Penthouse letters. It's more direct.

It's not so over the top like erotica. I don't really like that kind of vibe, right? But these are true stories. 17 of them. They're really short chapters, easy read. you could read, you know, one or two and then skip around. You could read the whole book. It's available in eback format, paperback format. And finally, the audio book is available coming out August 25th, but you could pre-order it now. And if you buy my book in any format or pre-order it, I will throw in

a complimentary link to my Discord. My Discord does not disappoint. Okay. There's no way you get into my Discord any other way than getting the link from me. Okay. I, I give it to people who buy my book. There's tons of people in there. Everybody shares content with each other. And that's what you get to do there. You could post your own pictures and videos. There's tons of channels.

We have lots of contests where you can win a lot of money. It's a super fun place to be. It's a total strictly anonymous community and you will love it. I will be giving anyone who buys my book access to my Discord. It's private, like I said. All you got to do is email me a screenshot of your purchase, whether you did the audiobook, the e-book, or the paperback. Sended to me at Strictly Anonymous Podcast at gmail.com.

That's Strictly Anonymous Podcasts at gmail.com. And I will send you the link to Discord. So anyway, thanks so much for tuning in. This is the Strictly Anonymous Podcast. Good news. Strictly Anonymous Podcast is looking for people to call into the show. So if you lead an interested, naughty secret life that you want to talk about while remaining anonymous or not anonymous.

If you're out and proud, that's cool too. Send me an email, Strictly Anonymous Podcast at gmail.com. That's strictly anonymous podcast at gmail.com. Or go to my website, strictly anonymous podcast.com and click on Be on the Show. If you have a short confession that you want to get off your back, call my Confessions Hotline [phone]. That's 347-4-4-2. 3579. You could call that number 24-7. I change all the voices on the confessions too, so you remain

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slash strictly anonymous podcast. That's patreon.com slash strictly anonymous podcast. The links and everything else I spoke about are all in the description. Thanks so much for listening.