BDSM has been a part of my life for a very long time. My first ex-wife and I were pretty involved in the lifestyle community in Dallas in the early '90s, (she still is, I hear). I sort of withdrew from that scene over the question ostylers should be more public and try to mainstream our dark tastes. I love my career and the toys and little luxuries it brings. Functioning at a high level in the vanilla world takes discretion and that's probably my number one requirement. That a girl be comfortable wearing the hat of my vanilla girlfriend.  

We do a have a much smaller community thing going on here in Corpus. Public play is fun but there's always a danger of it getting too big, and too known.

My own tastes focus more on control than pain. Forcing a girl's body to respond to my will rather than her own and the deep surrender that comes with that is my thing. For some girls that means daily beatings, but I think the more subtle levers like fear and shame and eventual praise lead to a more complete surrender. (That's not to say a good switching and tearful begging aren't fun,  I just like to keep a varied bag of tricks.)

Outside of BDSM, I'm a big reader, a good golfer and saltwater fishing enthusiast. I also play guitar and chess, though with no particular talent for either.