A three-day convention held in Corpus Christi this summer sought to educate, entertain and create shared community around one central unifier: kink.
The event, Coastal Bend Kink Weekend, took place August 14-16 as a safe space for like-minded individuals to engage with a variety of kinks, attend educational lectures, and see physical demonstrations on how to best practice a particular kink safely and consensually.
The evening hours featured entertainment and the Play Space, a dungeon area where people could engage in their kinks openly, though with strict rules: no cell phones, no one under 21 years of age, and perhaps to some surprise, no sexual intercourse, which was not allowed at the event whatsoever.
The third day hosted the contest for the first Texas S/switch Titleholder. The winner acts as a representative of switches, the term for a person who can be dominant or submissive in the realm of kink and is an often-underrepresented area of kink.
Production company The Whores of Babylon ran the event, consisting of throuple Viktoria Janosek, who goes by Absinthe; Clara Janosek who goes by Lady Vanovia Serpentine; and Sarah Janosek who goes by Sylhouette. They spoke of creating a feeling of acceptance and community within the kink scene, while emphasizing physical and emotional safety.
Absinthe, the education and accessibility coordinator and vendor assistant, explained why they chose to host in the Coastal Bend.
“My wife is a professional dominatrix, and every time we go to places, and she talks about her job, we always hear from people: ‘Oh, I’ve always wanted to learn rope. I’ve always wanted to learn this,’ or we’ve even gotten the midnight calls of, ‘I did this, and now I’m hurt. What do I do? Who do I go to?’,” she said. “And we realized there was that lack of education where people are getting hurt or they’re meeting up with partners and getting hurt because they don’t know what red flags to look for.”
“I decided that one of the coolest things that I could do for the community is … create an event where men can become vulnerable, women could feel powerful, non-binaries could be seen, and trans people can exist,” Serpentine said. “That way everyone can have a place where they feel like they belong.”
Whores Of Babylon hopes this event will be a starting point to connect with other city kink weekend conventions in the Austin, San Antonio and Houston areas to grow alongside Corpus Christi.
The event had about 100 attendees. The organizers’ focus for this event wasn’t numbers but cultivating the proper environment for this inaugural event.
Attendee “Baby Boy” participated as a model for the advanced sounding exhibition, a fetish that involves inserting a thin metal rod, a sounding rod, into the urethral opening. A low electrical current can also be run through the rod. He is a submissive and one of Serpentine’s clients as a professional dominatrix. He explained that sounding is done not only for sexual stimulation, but psychological thrills and plays on power dynamics.
“It is a pleasurable experience whether you’re giving or receiving service. You’re getting pleasure out of it …[and] some get pleasure from giving it,” said Baby Boy. The demonstration was his sixth sounding session, the second time with electric stimulation and first time in front of a crowd of curious onlookers.
He said attending the convention was a validating experience.
“More than anything, being able to feel validate that your curiosities are not going to be deemed as abnormal and frowned upon,” he said.
“I would like to see more people attend, have more of the information spread out throughout the community, not just the kink community, but even the general populace,” said Baby Boy of his hopes for future events. “Just for everybody outside and inside the community to be accepting and know that others are going to play however they want to play.”
