Spanking, Anyone?

On Friday I went to drinks with a guy who has provided our IT support over the telephone for the last 3 years. He and I had dealt with one another mostly by email, and a little over the phone. Recently he had been fishing out more information about me and once he established I was gay, asked me out. I agreed, and subsequently we exchanged photos.

Upon seeing his photo, I was pretty sure I wasn't going to find him sexually attractive, but thought it would be fine to meet up anyway. I suggested we go to the Tate Modern and do the Henri Rousseau exhibition, and have a drink in the members bar afterwards. It is my typical suggestion if I am meeting someone I don't know very well as it is a gorgeous venue and very familiar to me, so I feel 'safe'.

Anyway - upon seeing him, I was struck by how much of a 'geek' he was. And I don't mean 'geek chic' - he was a geek in the true sense of the word. Now I find geeks quite attractive, so this was a plus for him. It was also possible he was on the autistic spectrum - his hands kept being sent outwards from his body in an awkward fashion, and he walked with a strange gait. He was obviously quite nervous - and definitely shy.

We did the exhibition (pretty average, as an aside) and then went to the bar. After a couple of glasses of wine and some (very, very) small talk - mostly about Macintosh computers and vintage Commodore 64s (this boy works in IT afterall); he suddenly mentioned his partner. I clarified that he was talking about his 'boyfriend' and he confirmed this. Obviously I was comforted considerably by this, as I assumed that this meant I was 'safe' from the "I'm not interested" conversation.

I decided to ask more about his partner, thinking this a safe line for me to take. How wrong I was. It transpired they had met online (which is fine, I have no problem with that), so I asked which website. He told me it was a 'dodgy' one, and when I pushed for the answer, he told me that it was a site for Bondage/S&M.

WHAT!?!?!

At this point I probably looked (and certainly felt) completely confused. Here was this shy, autistic, geeky 25 year old telling me he was in to Bondage and S&M. Which again, is no problem - I try not to judge anyone's sexual proclivities; I just didn't expect it. The conversation obviously then took quite a different route... and soon he was telling me that he'd been on an 'Introduction to S&M' course. I kid you not. Here I was telling him about my pyschometric training and he had been on Sadomasochism 101.

Stupidly, my assumption that I was 'safe' (given the fact he had a partner) was not the case. After several more glasses of wine, he said to me: "so, when are we going back to your place to fuck?"

um... NO was my short answer.