I first met Georgio at a fetish party when ordering a drink. As a sex educator in New York City, I’ve attended numerous sex-positive gatherings, and it takes something quite striking to catch my attention. I’ve been a guardian at sex parties, where my role is to ensure that there is consent when people explore public sex, which (when everybody is on their best behavior) essentially involves me getting paid to watch live porn. I have curated erotic experiences for couples at parties. I’ve hosted body paint dance parties, kinky carnivals—where we play Rope Bondage Twister, Pin the Clitoris on the Vulva, Strap-on Ring Toss, and other ridiculous games to see who gets to go home with the vibrators. I feel very happy with my life choices.
This Tuesday night in lower Manhattan, I was helping out some friends who were hosting a more low-key event that involved a man playing the role of a woman’s piano stool as she captivated us with music and some light spanking on a flogging bench as couples exchanged orange fleshy fruits.
When I took a break and walked towards the bar, I noticed what looked like an ottoman. I figured it was some kind of fetish footstool. Since the bar was high, and I was 5 foot 2, I stepped on it, surprised as to how uneven and squishy it felt. As I leaned toward the bartender to order the night’s signature cocktail, Flogger’s Fog Cutter, I felt the ground beneath me rumble. I glanced down at my feet and saw eyes staring up at me through a hole in what I’d thought was my footstool.
Shock gave way to affection as I leaned down and introduced myself to Georgio Carpet, a man who, true to form, was fully wrapped in a rug except for a small hole for his vision. He explained that he would love for me to step again, this time barefoot and on purpose, if I was open to it. I grinned and said perhaps later, as I was still on the clock and needed to return to the other room to teach partners how to erotically feed each other oranges.
As the people found their clothes and names and ways home, Georgio gracefully dis-carpeted, and we got to talking about his fetish. “You know how some people want to grow up and be a fireman or a doctor? Well, I’ve always wanted to be a carpet. When I was little, all the games I played with my friends involved me being a carpet that was stepped on.” As his sexuality developed, so did the type of pleasure that the carpet could provide.
He is truly living his best life, working out a schedule so that he can be a carpet up to five days a week. Despite the two-hour commute from Connecticut (“carpet-positive” events, it turns out, are harder to find outside of Brooklyn), he wished for even more events and to be a carpet every night, as it taps into the best parts of himself. As a result of the stigma towards out-there fetishes, we might assume Georgio was an odd bloke. However, he is pleasant, intelligent, kind, and a seemingly “normal” fellow in his 60s, living in the suburbs with his loving wife who accepts, while not fully understanding, his fetish.
This was not the end of Georgio and my story. We ended up orchestrating an event where 15 women stepped on him (yes, there was a nurse present!), breaking his and potentially the world’s record of Most Ladies Stepping on a Human Carpet at Once.
Georgio embodies my hope for the future of fetishes: Wrapped in his fetish for the world to see, joyful and unapologetic as he realizes his unique desire night after night. Where most of us wrap our fetishes in the veil of normalcy, Georgio proudly wears his on his body. His fetish adds color to his life and sexuality rather than being a barrier to it or a source of shame.
Excerpted from Fetish: Smash Taboos and Celebrate What Turns You On.