Fetish Noir Mentor Program Review

This blog post is a review of the past 3 months I have spent in the Fetish Noir mentor/mentee program, working with Luke Jayden.

I started exploring BDSM at the start of 2010. I was ignorant of everything but the knowledge that this was something I wanted to try, and was lucky enough to stumble into Fetish Noir early on. After a couple meetings I became a mentee to Luke-Jayden, and have been working with him just over three months as I've figured out what attracts me to the LA bondage world.

I was very unsure of what to expect from working with Luke. I knew that he'd been involved in BDSM for over 8 years and was well regarded by the small circle of friends I had made. Our early meetings consisted of my telling him what I was interested in, where I was coming from, and what I was looking to gain. He mostly just listened, laying out basic safety guidelines and restrictions. He explained that his goal with mentoring was to give people a positive introduction to BDSM, helping them avoid early crashes caused by easy to avoid mistakes, as well as sniffing out mentees to make sure they had healthy motivations.

I expected my time with Luke to involve a lot of training in technique, theory, safety, and the assorted practicalities of craft. I was surprised (and sometimes frustrated) that these things rarely came up. Instead Luke's role was to provide a guide, to act as sounding board for the numerous questions that came up, to introduce me to members of the LA community, occasionally give me the necessary push to get involved in scenes, and I suspect to keep a watch on me to make sure that I wasn't risking myself and others.

Due to our mutually busy schedules I would sometimes barely talk to Luke for a week or two at a time, but it was still enormously helpful to know that there was a dedicated mentor available to answer questions, to update with my progress, and to use as a resource. Other times we'd be in frequent contact as Luke would question me on what I had been learning, planning, and seeking. He advised on relationships I was forming and play that I was participating in, and warned me of common traps and dangers that I might be heading into.

Going into the relationship I had an image of a mentor as more of a trainer, but found Luke instead to take the role of a good and wise friend. Looking back I see now that training in technique is not what I needed at so early a stage, nor what I was ready for as I formed basic relationships and learned about what it is that I want out of BDSM. With Luke's help I'm entering a state where I'm ready for more hands on practice, and so am enormously thankful to have had Fetish Noir's mentor program during my first step.