Night Of The Cane
Sunday 19th October.
Welcome to The Firm’s Website
Are you a journalist or television researcher? If so click here before you start.
We are a politico-criminal organisation dedicated to the proliferation of SM.
We have been doing this for a very long time.
There’s more about our history elsewhere, but The Firm started in 1989; it has been helping people do SM for longer than some promoters have been alive.
The founders of The Firm were of the Punk generation; we had the cane at school, Doc Martens, the Sex Pistols and motorbikes. Leather has never been quite so cool as it was in the early 80s. When we found The Scene, we were the young upstarts but, now that we are definitely part of the Old Guard we, like Napoleon’s Imperials, have lost none of our enthusiasm nor our general belligerence.
Joining The Firm
There’s no application form; and it’s not even like the Mafia, where you can at least turn up on a daughter’s wedding day and ask her father to be your friend – we’re more like the Masons - if we like you, we’ll invite you. And there is an arcane ceremony of enjoinment.
What’s it get you? Same sort of things that membership of any secret society gets you; a little cachet, a little added significance, the fellowship of other people of similar moment. The security that, should someone become your enemy they shall become, if not actually our enemy, someone we at least think twice about.
Occasionally, and perhaps that day will never come, we may invite you to assist us with such perverted delights as making ice-cream sundaes, rigging lights, or fettling dungeon equipment. One hand washes the other. It is even more fun to be part of a hard-working team of organisers than it is to be one of those very special people who come along and pay their money at the door.
This may not get you to the dungeon any faster than a handful of tenners – but the journey there will be more interesting.
SM: A Hobby
Being kinky way be a sexual orientation but actually doing SM is a sexual hobby – it really is – it’s something you can learn, practice, read books about, be good at, show off you your friends, and buy pretty toys to play with and kit to wear; that makes it a hobby.
In some hobby communities, there are some that aren’t very good at the actual hobby (they probably don’t even like it), but are very adept and enthusiastic at climbing the greasy pole of hobbyist politics and, from the lofty summit, telling other people what to do. We do not approve of this; we dislike tin gods.
SM is our vocation, not our job, and it is creative, imaginative, enthusiastic and intelligent people who are most especially welcome (though the merely rich or decorative are seldom shown the door).
Being a voluntary organisation, means that we have scope to improvise, fool around and try new ideas. Much of the stuff we've done, the parties, the Boat, the Boxing Ring, the School Room et al, wouldn't have come about without serious input of those donating their time to the cause of SM.
The Firm is very grateful to all its members down the years: the computer experts, dominas, the maids, riggers, performers, front of house staff, organisers; we salute them all.
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