NAYLAND BLAKE - PART 1

INTERVIEW BY JESSE PEARSON
PHOTO BY RICHARD KERN
Styling Assistance by Annette Lamothe-Ramos, grooming by Shane Tison


This guy right here is an artist and a professor and a bear and a pipe man and an S&M switch and—what in hell does all that mean? We don’t know. Let’s talk to him and find out.

Vice: You were telling me that you’re about to go away for a very special weekend...

Nayland Blake: It’s basically this annual gathering of gay men. It’s been going on for something like 20 years at this point.

More photos of Nayland Blake by Richard Kern

Does it have a name?

It does, but I’m a little wary of saying it.

That sounds kind of Eyes Wide Shut-ish.

Well, it’s an invitation-only thing and this is my first year going.

Ah, so you don’t want to get kicked off the list for next year.

Exactly.

OK, then let’s talk about these photos that Kern took of you. For example, the garbage-man shot. You actually have a garbage-man fetish. All of the gear in that photo is your own, and it’s all authentic New York Department of Sanitation stuff. Why do you like to dress up as a trash collector?

I keep coming back to the way that appearance is not an index of identity. I think that identity is kind of a performative thing.

And these events you go to are full of people who are into playing with identity.

Yeah. You asked me what the people at these events look like. The answer is that they kind of just look like America. Sometimes it feels like the vibe is suburban, but then it’s like suburban kinky. I find myself starting to wonder what’s really going on in the houses that you drive past in the suburbs.

A lot of people have wondered that. David Lynch comes to mind.

Yeah. It’s not as easily defined as we’d like to imagine.

I fear that behind all those closed doors, the ones where you wonder what kind of crazy shit is going on, there’s actually nothing going on. I feel like sexual self-repression is a big thing for a lot of Americans.

I don’t know. But we are in a really funny time because, in part, of the internet. A lot of the S&M organizations around the country have seen a decline in membership. If you look at New York in terms of gay bars and leather bars and stuff like that, there’s been a big drop. A lot of people attribute that to the fact that people just hook up online now. You don’t have to go to a bar anymore.

I used to wait for the bus outside of this place in the meatpacking district. It was called the Hellfire Club. I think it was also called the Manhole. There were two signs there. Anyway, it’s gone now. That makes me sad. I liked the fact that that place even existed.

Oh yeah, I spent a lot of time in there. [laughs] I used to go to cigar-play parties there.

You told me before that you’re a “pipe man.” What’s that?

It’s basically someone who fetishizes pipes, and sometimes cigars, as part of sex.

And how does that work?

One of the things that a lot of kinky people are into is breath control. That’s where you’re muffling someone’s breathing or somehow controlling their oxygen intake. One of the ways to do that is by feeding them the smoke from a cigar. Another thing is to use the heated end of a cigar or the heat from the bowl of a pipe on people’s bodies.

Do they get burned?

Some of them like to, but you don’t really have to. You can get someone really warmed up without them being in any danger of being burned.

There’s a big trust thing inherent in all of this stuff.

You need to have a real discussion about what you want to do and what you’re willing to do before any of it happens. Also, I think part of the reason why these events tend to skew toward older men is because when you’re really young, just fucking is enough.

Right. When you’re 20, fucking is plenty. At 30, you have to start getting weird.

And you also might not have the negotiating skills at 20. Like you’re so eager for it that you don’t necessarily think before agreeing to do something. The older people who have been around these scenes for a while are very comfortable with talking about what they want to do.

A lot of people with more traditional values would say that S&M is perverted or unnecessary, but I’ve always suspected that maybe you guys are just evolved beyond the rest of us. There’s some kind of deep self-honesty that comes along with getting into kinky shit. You guys are psychologically advanced!

[laughs] There’s also the whole concept of after-care. You do a scene with somebody and then you check in with them to make sure they’re OK. And people have any number of ways of putting a stop to something if it’s not going right.

Are there really safe words or is that an urban legend?

Oh yeah, totally.

Do you have one?

It all depends on who I’m playing with. When I first started getting into this, I was really nervous and intimidated and I would talk to someone and be like, “We need to agree on a safe word.” A couple of times, people were like, “You know, um, ‘stop’ seems to work.”

Right, unless your deal is rape role-playing or something.

Yeah, if you’re really going to do a scene that’s about being overcome. But generally, the amount of negotiation and discussion is much more involved in the kink scene than in the regular scene. No offense, but I can’t fathom how women deal with meeting straight guys.

We’re not great communicators. I guess in a lot of traditional relationships, there can be a lack of a certain kind of talk.

And tied up with that is this hope that it’s going to “work out.” Like you’ll meet the magically right person and they’ll do everything right and you’ll just know. One of the things that’s interesting about the kink community is that it’s very self-policing. If someone is an asshole, word gets around.

Is there a flipside to that? Are there people about whom everyone says, “Listen, if you want to get tied up real fucking good, you have to meet this guy Joe”?

There are people whose skills are valued, and there are a lot of classes and skills-acquisition things at these events. For instance, with something like caning—hitting someone with a cane—you need to know what you’re doing. You need to know where you can hit somebody safely. People who are really good at doing things have a full dance card regardless of what they look like, what gender they are, whatever.

It’s like how you need a special license to drive an 18-wheeler.

Yeah. So somebody who’s a really good rope person will have women, men, everyone getting in line to get tied up.

Do you think people who aren’t getting into all this stuff are missing out on something? Or are some people only meant to do in-out, in-out, drop-a-load-and-call-it-a-day sex.

I can only speak for myself. It’s very tied to my artwork, which is always about learning stuff about myself. But there are also people who are in the kink scene for whom it’s all about reaffirming a really rigid role, like they’re a master and that’s that. So for some people it can be a really great experience but for other people, I don’t know...

Can it get constricting or limiting?

Yeah, if you’re not an introspective person, you won’t get any more benefit out of it than anything else that you do.


CONTINUED
NAYLAND BLAKE | 1 | 2 |

< PREV

MORE FROM THIS ISSUE

NEXT >