Hello, everyone reading this. This is not going to be a coming out as gay story, this is the coming out of Richard (my dominant side) and scrappy (my pup side). Not many people know who either are and my goal is to give people a glimpse at who I am and where I come from. I am new to the leather, kink, and pup communities. I already am starting to feel a part of these communities through interactions and being treated with kindness, love, and acceptance.
It started roughly in 2016. I met a guy that we started having over for naughty fun and he would tell me he liked it rough, getting spanked, and tied up. That meeting opened the door for Richard to emerge. I took onto this almost immediately and loved being dominant, spanking, and tying someone up so I can pleasure torture them. This person had a master and would call me sir during a play session.
This person became a good friend. We would chat about what we would like to try with the next play session. We even would talk about non-sexual topics. Time went on and we would try different things like paddles, floggers, and rope. My husband would see how much I enjoyed this and started wanting to try some of the things too. So we started exploring different kinks as well.
In 2017 I started joining chat groups on Kik that were for bears. This was about the time I started growing a beard. I have always been attracted to bears, and now I am attracting them. About this time people started calling me daddy because of the beard. I would never ask them to call me this because that is an honorific and honorifics should be earned, not just given to anybody.
In 2018 I was introduced to the pup community. At first, I labeled myself as a handler. I would do online training sessions with pups on Kik. These were not always sexual in nature. Sometimes it was just to talk and teach them some of the tools I have to help me get through life. That is when I met a very special pup named Chancer from Scotland. We immediately bonded and stayed in touch. In December of 2018, my husband and I finally got married after being together for 11 years.
After getting married we started discussing our future and how we wanted to have our own thing and stop working to put money in someone else’s pocket. That's when we started to look into starting our own website selling kink and fetish gear. This was the birth of the idea that was to become Dick’s Dirty Dungeon. Our goal with the website was to have a safe place to discuss kinks and various sexual topics along with having a great selection of products to offer. This would hopefully fund a physical location to sell products and have kink education classes so that people would have a place to learn how to do some kinks safely.
In 2019 I was told that to understand how to be a good handler, I should be a pup so I could see things from both sides. That was the birth of Scrappy. Scrappy is a pup who is still learning how to be a pup. My husband is not into pup play. We are open so exploring kinks with others is allowed, providing rules are followed. Scrappy does not get much time in headspace, that is something I am working on. I also started joining pup/pet play chat groups to get to know some awesome people.
We also joined a BDSM munch discussion group. The group we joined was small but it gave them time to focus on different things the group could do. The group started on Kik, then moved to discord. Since moving to discord the group has become more of a family than just a BDSM discussion group. It is like a family and kinky perverts. We discuss all aspects of life and have been a great support during the pandemic.
Memorial Day weekend I went to bear camp without my husband. The first time away since we got together. That weekend my mom passed away. Here I was at camp, without my rock. The next morning I told the bears what happened and I got so much support from them. Losing a parent was one of the hardest things I have ever had to deal with.
Later in the camping season, I got the opportunity to attend a kink camp. This was a great group of guys who just happen to be kinky. We did kinky crafts and I got to meet a lot of really nice guys. November came and I was working my retail job on the day before thanksgiving. Five minutes before closing a man entered with a gun and robbed us. I ended up calling off work for a couple of days after this and work actually paid for me to go see a counselor.
The holiday season at mom’s house was always spent making cookies and candies to give to loved ones. This was the first holiday season without her and was hard for me since I was the only one to have been carrying on the tradition of baking holiday cookies. Christmas came and new Year was fast approaching. Two days before new year’s dad was downstairs calling out for us in the middle of the night. He was having a heart attack and was taken to the hospital for a couple of days for recovery. At this point, I was thinking that 2019 can kiss my pasty white butt because it was not a good year. And then came 2020…..
Working retail during the start of the pandemic was not a good experience. I had just been robbed at gunpoint a few months prior by someone wearing a mask. And now everybody was wearing masks. Every night I worked my anxiety was tearing me apart inside. We had customers who would get mad and throw things at us, threaten to come by when we left, etc. About the time that the riots started is when I had a breakdown and we decided that it was better for my mental health to stay home and focus on the website.
The very next month our website sales started increasing. I started reaching out to a few people within the community to get to know them and to offer support for any events that may or may not be happening. Which at the time no in-person events were happening due to the pandemic. The point of reaching out was to let it be known we would like to give back to the community we were a part of. I was warned to be careful reaching out to those in the leather, kink, and pup communities because I could be seen as an outsider and be shunned. Hearing this made me hesitant to reach out to some but I knew I had to push past that fear and start with something simple, like a hi my name is scrappy.
I have been getting to know so many people within the leather, kink, and pet communities that I have come to realize that being told to be careful just stopped me from getting to meet some really awesome people sooner. I'm just a pup trying to figure out who he is and wanting to give back to the community in any way that I can. Making friends along the way is just a bonus. Not everyone likes me along the way but I feel that it's not about liking everyone or being liked by everyone. It's about treating everyone like you would like to be treated.
Now we are in 2021 and the year started out no better than 2020. We lost my grandma in January and then found out my mother in law has cancer in February. It was a rough period and we are still working through things the best we can. Going through loss during a pandemic is not the easiest thing to do. Emotions run high and the process of grieving and coping can be very different for each person. I just hope that I am able to use my experience to be able to help others. I did get to meet a new boy and we are learning how to navigate the relationship we are developing. People are asking us to define what we have and my response is that I do not know how to define it. We haven’t sat down and given what we have a label yet. We are also in no hurry to define it as we are still finding out.
With many events still being canceled for the year, finding an event for in-person socializing can be a task. Some organizations were still holding virtual events. I started attending zoom calls sponsored by IA-PAH (Iowa pets and handlers) and also by the Iowa Leather Weekend family. These events helped me to socialize and make new friends. Everyone wanted to meet in person so badly but we all knew what we needed to do to keep our community safe.
2021 also brought on some opportunities for us to give back to the community by sponsoring some events and donating to raffles. We got the opportunity to sponsor a think kink zoom class by Iowa leather weekend. We donated a wonderful wax play kit as the subject of the class was wax play. There were discussions and demonstrations on how to do things. As a novice in wax play, I was very excited about this. We also are donating for a contestant to a national title competition. And in August we will be donating for a pet talent show that will be donating proceeds to a charity.
Pride month is always full of activities for the lgbt+ community. Most if not all pride events were canceled for 2020. With vaccinations and numbers dropping in the United States, many pride events were still being held. While our local pride events were canceled, our main pride group thought it would be best to celebrate small events throughout the month of June instead of cramming everything into one weekend. This made some of the events not so crowded and gave people more opportunities to enjoy the festivities.
We decided to make a trip up to Des Moines to attend the first hybrid gear night event held by Iowa Leather Weekend. This would be our first gear night ever and I was both nervous and excited. At first, I got in my head about what to wear and what I was told not to wear. Then a good friend gave me the same advice I had been giving and that was not to worry about what others said and to wear what I felt comfortable wearing. And I did just that! We met so many great new friends we had made over the last year. The staff at The Blazing Saddle and the Iowa Leather Weekend family showed us how to have a good time and treated us like we were family.
And that is pretty much the coming-out story for Richard and Scrappy. I may or may not have left some things out and if I offended someone, I am sorry. This was something I procrastinated on for so long and was nervous about doing. Telling my story makes me feel vulnerable because now people will know who Richard/Scrappy is and see some of my scars. I am not ashamed of what I have been through. After discussing with a few people I realized that by sharing my story, I might be able to help someone else out. And that is what my whole goal was, to give something back and to help others.