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awful things to us, and the perfect toy or piece of equipment magically appears at just the moment we need it and disappears again when we're done with it.

    Yet as perfect as that stage is, most of us sooner or later hanker to step oft it and into something a bit more, shall we say, immediate. We want to connect with real partners and experience real sensations. This chapter is about how to step across the chasm between our fantasies and our realities.

    Where Are You Starting From? Both of us started out with solo and rather lonely fantasies, feeling like we were the only people in the world who had thoughts like ours. Dossie struggled to reconcile her fantasies of kidnap and captivity with her feminist beliefs. Janet had a hard time figuring out how a nice girl like her could be hankering to wallop perfectly innocent backsides. Eventually, we both hooked up with folks who helped guide us to recognition that there were safe, healthy and ethical ways to enact our fantasies without taking or giving up any more power than we wanted to.

    Sad to say, many people still struggle in isolation with questions like ours — although it's certainly a much easier and more informative world in which to be a pervert than the one we came of age in.

    Today, many people pick up an erotic or educational kinky book or magazine, and find that something in them responds to the thoughts or images they discover there. Some may learn about their local educational or support group through an ad, a booth at a street fair, or a public demonstration of some kind.

    And then, of course, there's the Internet. We think it's safe to say that as we write this, the 'Net is by far the greatest single point of entry for new players into the BDSM scene. (In the first edition of this book, written a decade ago, there is one paragraph of information about the 'Net. How rapidly the world has changed!)

    Whatever your point of entry, we think it's safe to say that you'll experience some rude shocks as well as some blissful revelations as you cross the threshold into realtime play with a flesh-and-blood partner.

    About the 'Net. Whole books have been written about sexuality and the Internet - it may well be the cause of the most radical shift in sexual thinking since the advent of reliable birth control. One of your authors is a dedicated 'Net geek, the other uses it only when absolutely necessary — but each of us has been part of the leather scene for well over a decade, and know our way around pretty well by now. If you're new or just learning, we think it's a
    pretty good idea for you to get on-line and begin exploring. However, there are some pitfalls as well as many benefits to on-line oration, so we'd like to give you our thoughts about what you might expect from the many different venues available through your friendly household computer.

    In some ways, the Internet is not much like reality at all — one of our friends says, "The 'Net bears about the same resemblance to real life that television does." But, like TV, the 'Net affects real emotions and addresses real issues, and is an important mode of interpersonal communication for a and growing number of people. Electronic interactions are like real-world ones in some ways. Although a cyber-scene or discussion may not leave you with bruises or welts, they can affect your emotions and relationships in many of the same ways that real-world play might. The skills you're learning elsewhere in this book — negotiating your needs and wants, setting your limits, getting to know your tops before you play with them, going slowly, checking in afterwards, and so on - are just as necessary when your scene takes place on a monitor as they are when it happens in a dungeon. We've both heard many unhappy tales of bottoms who thought that just because their play was virtual instead of real, that they didn't need to take good care of themselves... and who found out otherwise when a scene left them feeling surprisingly