In Episode 2 of the podcast, we talked about our whirlwind of preparation for our first sex event, a swing party in the midwest called Conclave. When I saw that there was a prompt on day 5 of Kinktober for corsetry, I knew I had to talk in more detail about that experience.
If you haven’t heard the episode, I was nervous about going to a swinging event, and we had never done anything quite like that before. I had read all about corsets and knew that something like that would be helpful to me to feel like I was confident about my shape.
It was only after I wore the corset for an entire event that I learned first of all, that it was a painful, restrictive, challenging experience, and second of all, that I liked that about it. Initially, the plan was just about finding a good steel-reinforced undergarment, to keep all my jiggle where I wanted it.
When I first started to search for a corset, I quickly learned that there are ‘real’ corsets, and decorative corset-shaped shirts. I knew that I wanted the genuine article, and at first I struggled to find any at all, and as I narrowed my search I found a lot of options in smaller sizes, but nothing in the range that I needed. I was about to give up, when I found myself at the party of a friend of a friend in downtown Chicago, and found myself surrounded by queer people for probably the first time in my life.
I learned lots that night, but one of the best lessons I brought out of it was that the queer community has resources. I don’t remember who pointed me in the right direction, but someone opined that if I wanted a corset in bigger sizes, the place to be was a little shop called Skyscraper Heels, a shoe and corsetry shop that specializes in connecting drag queens with the sexy shoes they love in the shoe sizes that they wear. Funnily enough, I remember being nervous about going in. I just felt so suburban and straight – I wasn’t sure I would be welcome.
I had never met a person of any gender who dressed in drag before, but whatever expectations I might have had, the gentleman who helped us in the store wasn’t it. He had the air of a tailor, an older man with neat, close cropped hair and clothes that were precise and very masculine and mainstream, if a little more dressed up than I might expect to see in the middle of the afternoon in a run-down little shoe shop.
When we told him what we were looking for, he immediately whisked us into a back room for a fitting. I had nothing to compare the experience to until years later, I saw the Harry Potter scene where the young magicians get their wands. This room looked like that one – long narrow boxes lining the walls, organized by style and size. He pulled a tape measure from his shirt pocket and took a few efficient measurements. I’d been afraid, before we went in that I’d feel uncomfortable with being fitted like this, but he was a clinician. I felt more at ease in his practiced hands than many doctors I had seen.
After he took his measurements, he looked around the room with a discerning eye, then started pulling boxes, seemingly at random, from the wobbling stacks around us. One after another, I tried the different styles on, underbust, overbust, varying lengths, colors and materials.
If you have ever laced a corset, you know that it can be a slow, tedious process. For him, it was not. His fingers moved like a musician, playing a harp – quick and sure. He tightened each one, then loosened it when we all decided it wasn’t quite ‘the one,’ so quickly it was like magic. (We were impressed then, but after we learned what it would be like to do it ourselves, we were even more amazed!)
As he made his recommendations, he talked about his own experiences wearing various styles of corset, about the challenge of long-term wear, of wearing a corset with high heels. The very young me who had gone into that store unsure of whether I’d be welcome or comfortable there walked out having learned what I think most of us have felt at one time or another – I’d found a place where I belonged.
Kinky, queer, leather or glitter, there are places in the world that are all about welcoming everyone who needs a safe place. Skyscraper Heels was one of those places, and my one visit there helped to rewrite my whole identity, even though back then I had no idea what it would mean or where it would take me.
I don’t know the name of the dapper gent who helped me find my first real corset (a corset that I still have, though it is somewhat worse for the wear of almost 20 years!) or whether he is still helping other baby kinksters find their worlds, but I like to think that he is. I like to think that if I thanked him, he would just nod brusquely, and get on with the business of measuring the next foot or set of hips, tape measure at the ready in his crisply ironed shirt pocket.