Around the Kinky Kampfire Podcast

We hit 100 episodes, and the biggest lesson is simpler than you think... | S4 EP100

• Julius • Season 4 • Episode 9

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We celebrate 100 episodes with gratitude, humor, and a clear message: just show up. From podcasting to conventions, improv, and ace-spectrum allyship, we share how tiny steps built a community around honest kink talk.

• why the campfire theme holds space for taboo topics
• what 100 episodes taught us about persistence and progress
• how podcasting led to volunteering, teaching, and new friends
• improv skills that improve consent, negotiation, and connection
• ace-spectrum views and practical allyship in sex-positive spaces
• time distortion since quarantine and rebuilding offline habits
• evolving relationships recorded in real time and what we learned
• balancing research, bias, and opinion with humility
• practical encouragement for newcomers: cross the doorway, then decide

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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Around the Kinky Campfire. Grab a tea or a drink and let's turn up the heat. This is the podcast where we explore the wild, wonderful, and sometimes wicked world of kinky PDSM and alternative lifestyles. Whether you're a seasoned player, a curious newbie, or just here for the story, we've got something for you. Join us on Thursdays on your favorite podcast platform as we share experiences, dive into deep discussions, and maybe even spark a little fire of your own. No shame, no judgment, just real talk around the kinky campfire. Let's get lit. Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of Around the Kinky Campfire. This is your host, the Magnificence. Yeah, right. I wish I was that confident. This is your host, the ever humble HH Julius Marquise. And ladies, gentlemen, and other people, gentle people, ladies, gentlemen, and gentle people, this isn't a formal announcement that this is episode 100. And the crowd goes wild. Yes, that is officially correct. This is episode 100. I believe I did my mask correctly. And I want to say congratulations to everybody that's been on the podcast. Congratulations to myself. Looking forward to more episodes. Not saying this is the end or anything. That'd be funny. That's it. I wanted 100. Done. That's all. I'm done. This is it. Ah, gotcha. There's a little bit of silence. I'm still here. Okay. So, in all seriousness, I wanted to take time in this episode and not really talk about a specific topic. I just want to talk about the sigh of deep breath. That it's been like four years, I think. I didn't do the math on that one. I think it's like three or four years and getting to episode. I don't want to say finally 100, but getting to episode 100. Never thought I'd make it this far. I mean, that was a goal. I was kind of hoping and wishing to make it this far, but I wasn't like super, super convinced to make it this far. I know there's a lot of podcasts out there that don't make it to episode 20, and this is like, uh, if I do my math correctly, five times 20 is 100. Um, somebody correct me if I'm wrong. Just uh message me on Instagram. Can't fire Kingsters, Can't Fire Luke. Uh, and let me know if I'm right or wrong about that. But the people that have stuck around for most of the episodes, I'm not assuming that everybody listens to every episode, but for those of you that have been here for most of the time, the ups and downs, the highs and the lows, and the damn months-long, months-long breaks, I appreciate y'all. Thank you so much for sticking around and downloading the episodes. If nothing else, I know people are downloading the episodes because I I uh I see those numbers. If nothing. If nothing else, I see those numbers and I appreciate y'all for downloading the episodes and listening even now. Okay, before I get started, y'all know what time it is. The ASMR, 2.5 seconds. I am drinking a Ruby Grapefruit Lockinsh style beer, nailed it, and it is 4% alcohol. So I count to three, two, one. Almost made a whole two seconds before my teeth started hurting. Ooh. Okay. Yes, congratulations getting into the episode. Thank you very much. I appreciate y'all sending me into thousands and thousands upon millions of messages. Congratulating me for making it to episode 100. Uh, messages on the Yahoos and on the uh Instagrams and the X's and the Twitters or whatever you want to call it now. Yes, thank you so much. That's that's not true. But I know y'all are out there listening. Somebody is otherwise, no, I would probably still do this. I was about to say something very negative, and I'm not going to. I'd probably still be doing this, whether people were listening or not. This is because I like to hear the sound of my voice. No, I just like talking. Hopefully, uh somebody learns something. If if only one person takes something away from the ramblings of myself, uh Julius Marquise uh here. Did I even introduce myself? I've been doing this a hundred episodes, forgot to introduce myself. HH Julius Marquise here around the Kinky Campfire. There we go. Official. New episodes on Thursdays, as you heard in the intro, and you'll hear in the outro. Uh yeah, hearing myself ramble, get on my soapbox and talk about all the different topics that I like to hear about. Once again, I am only here for my opinions and experiences and telling them to you all. I am not an official anything, certified nothing, and I'm just here to ramble on forever, ever until the end of time. Yes, there you go. That's it. Uh, and I appreciate y'all being here. Okay, appreciation's over. Um, one more appreciation. Thank you very much so much for listening and downloading. Appreciate y'all. Okay. Appreciation is over. Next part. I just want to go over the podcast journey. Having gone um on this journey for, you know, three, four years now, something uh unofficial. I don't remember what the maths are on that, but just started out. Uh went on to uh Buzz Sprout. Thank you, Buzz Sprout, for being a podcast distributor and putting it out onto the Spotifies and the iTunes or whatever. And um yeah, that was really great. Uh that was a random Google search that I did, and then they invited me to a convention, and I've been going to that convention ever since, and now I volunteer for the convention. Hopefully, we'll be teaching on the convention again. Um, just keeping that going. Uh, it's gonna be a little bit different than the relationship anarchy uh class that I've been doing. A little bit different, but not really, because there's still gonna be improv in there. So basically, it's just gonna be talking about improv in podcasting. So I specified it down even more, and hopefully people decide to do the workshop part of it, interact, and play some games, because that is my favorite thing to do. Still not an hour and a half, which is what I would prefer, but you know, that's uh something you you do um when you have time to do it. And this time it's I think it was uh 30 minutes, so we'll try to get as much as we can in there, and and then uh I'll talk about that uh the overall convention experience and teaching, which is great because as y'all have heard in the past, I like to talk about the conventions I I um volunteer for, and then the people I meet, because some of them are in the kink world as well. And they run the things, so hopefully more mixing of the world and all the different conventions I go to, and then we can do something even bigger. But the yeah, the teaching part in person is new for this year, so we're always evolving at some point, might be at like a snail's pace. Uh, I know everybody doesn't get always get the inside steps, but I try to talk about it as much as I can. Great food. And uh share them all with you. And once again, hopefully somebody listens. That'd be great. People like volunteer to more conventions now. You can do it, and you can do it. You all can volunteer. You have it within you to volunteer. Everybody can do that. Uh, and then yeah, so getting into podcasting got me volunteering in the conventions and then wanting to teach, and then wanting to be better at podcasting and teaching. I decided to do improv, so it's all baby steps. Everything, everything, wow, yeah, that was that feels like yesterday when I was first doing the first couple episodes, and you know, there's more people involved. Uh myself now for the most part, but there'll, you know, there'll be some repeat people at some point coming back on. Uh, I know definitely one particular guest would like to come on. We have a great episode planned for y'all, uh uh, especially those people that have dated people and have stopped dating those people. There's something for y'all, and you know, people that have different communities that they're part of. Yeah, that's it. That's all I'm gonna say for now. A little bit of foreshadowing, a little bit of tease. Not gonna say who it is I was talking to, but it was a uh previous guest. So I'm excited, very excited to talk about that topic. Because it's something else that uh I don't know the uh professionals, the certified people really talk about, but I know I have a lot of experience with it, so it's gonna be great. But I want to thank the people that have been on again. I don't know if they're listening or not, but I appreciate it. And for those that are are going to be on at some point, and then also the podcasts that have invited me to be on their episodes, that's definitely something that wouldn't have happened had I not started my own podcast and gone to podcast conventions. So I want to re-edit the reiterate the point, people just go out there and experience this stuff. You ain't gotta do too much, just show up, just just show up and then keep showing up. That's the first baby step. If you want to make it more complicated and like asked to do things, you can if you want to, but I would just say just go out and just go. Uh you know, listen, continue to listen to episodes, but even if you don't, just this is your first and only episode that you listen to. Even you don't even have to continue on for the rest of the episode. But if you take nothing away from Julius, just go try. You will survive. I'm telling you, barring outside stuff. I mean, I'm just saying the experience itself, if you just go and do the thing that you've been trying to do, um my thing is conventions, so there's a convention or a place you wanted to go to, just go out and try. I promise you, it'd be really awkward, probably, especially if you're an introvert type person. But the fact that you went in, uh, I know and went in and and like just went to the place and stepped through the doors, that's a big accomplishment. Congratulations to y'all. There's been many events, even just a regular old social event from like meetup or something, people just getting together at a bar or restaurant, just hanging out. I've gone for five minutes and left. And there's been many times where I never got out of my car. There's many times when I got ready, put my shoes on, took my shoes off, and went back into bed. So the fact that you actually made it through the door, even if it was a minute, five minutes, just go there. I mean, you can make it more complicated. Introduce yourself to one person, but just go there. Just go there. I have so many extra steps you can do. But the fact is, just start with going and making it through the door, okay? You ain't even gotta stay the whole minute. Just go in through the door, just the turnstile type thing, you know, a little roundabout. Just go ahead and do that. Go in and go out. That's it. That's it. Make it just as long as you made it out of your car into the thing. That's a big first step. That shit is scary, but I promise you, you will survive. If you go through the door and then you come out the door, that's a that's a win. You have survived. There you go. That's it. That's all you gotta do. Just do one little thing at a time. Baby steps. Okay. So speaking of baby steps, I took my little baby step and I recorded my first episode and I uploaded it. Then we, you know, it was five, ten, twenty, made it past the uh the drop-off that most people made it, and then we went to 50 and 60, 70, and now we're at a hundred. Oh man, what have I learned since I tell you what, I was not a fan of solo mono podcasting, sitting here where I'm at now and just talking to the microphone by myself, by myself in a room random times during the day, uh just talking into a mic. So I once, you know, I appreciate the people that have downloaded because I was not a fan of this many episodes ago, dozens of episodes ago. But I'm doing it now, actually enjoying it. I'm leaning more into it. As y'all know, there was the Pillow Fort Sessions where I would have solo uh episodes by myself, and I decided to go do away with that, and now it's just everything is around the kinky campfire. I'd say about 80, 20, um, 80% by myself, 20% with at least one guest. Um, but it's all around the kinky campfire because we're still talking about those topics that are considered taboo right now. Come and sit by the campfire, and we you know, we just have a little uh not even a gossip session, a sharing session. Um, I feel like anybody that has any experience camping or just bonfires in general, the good topics happen around the campfire, everybody was having a little conversation by themselves, and sometimes you would yell, yell, yell across the fire to somebody else, and then everybody would get into a whole conversation. It's like chef's kiss. That's a good way to have a conversation. Hopefully, people feel more vulnerable if everybody's sharing in a more intimate space. And I think the the theme of the pro the the um this podcast was a good theme to go off of. So if y'all did not hear that before in previous episode, that is why it's called Around the Kinky Campfire. Because we're talking about kinky topics, adult topics that a lot of people don't talk about, because for some reason sexual education in this country is banned in certain states. Fucking ridiculous. So somebody's got to have this conversation. And I don't think, you know, it's not really a job of like porn stars or OnlyFans models necessarily. They just, you know, it's something they do. So it's not really, you know, especially if they're not the type to educate, they're just kind of doing it. Uh, you know, there's there's people that like to research this stuff, pointing at myself, Julius here, and are obsessed with learning and nerd out and all those different kinds of topics. And also I don't get like weirded out or offended with like sex work or people being naked when they want to be. It's like if it's all consensual, do you. I um won't do it myself necessarily, at least 100% nudity. But I will uh be an ally and I'll come hang out and I'll rub some shoulders and be like, you need some water? Look like you're parched. You know what I'm saying? You're doing a lot of work there, my friend. I can get you a liquid to uh rehydrate yourself. That's what I want to be. Let me be the um the swinger party mom. That'd be great. I'll just come around with the condoms and the uh handy wipes and the hand sanitizers and towels and water for people. Do you need refreshing? Don't forget to change those sheets. That's something you do. Just leave in a better than how you found it for the next person or the next orgy. That's something you just go into. I just I don't know. It's that ace spectrum superpower that I have, I guess. Because I just negative people are just naked. It's it's totally cool. People fucking right there. I uh don't want to say I'm unaffected, but it's like you do you. I don't need to join in, but I applaud you for doing it. That's good too. I I like to watch sometimes. And you know, that's uh that's a thing people do too. You don't have to all be like getting their dick sweat or pussy stuffed. Pussy stuffed. I just came up with that, I think. And uh yeah, some of them just like to hang out. So from the ace people in the room, you just like to be there. I'm not repulsed by sex, it's just not super uh a priority for me. Uh like I said, still like a good cuddle. Julius the cuddle slut, cuddle gigalos what I am. Would I pay? Not just uh don't need to be paid the cuddle, but there is some barter system we can work out. Always like a good back rub. A good back rub. Not just any back rub, a good back rub. So could be tempted that way. But yeah, it's you know, not all of us are just horn dogs out there. Um, and no offense to the sluts ethically that like to do those kind of things, but it's just an assumption. When somebody hears that you're like kinky or like hanging out with swingers, it's like, oh, you like to fuck around. It's like, no, I just like being around people. I'm a very positive person and I like to spread positivity. And for me, I mean there's still judgments in the in the kink community, the swingers communities, but for the most part, people are just really positive and just really cool and doing their thing, and it's like I like the fact there's a place where people can get all kinds of debauchery going and they're just cool with it, and it's like perfect. This is great, this is amazing. Okay, got that little rant out of me. Okay, uh, the flow of time is funny. Okay, so the flow of time, I'm reading my notes here. I put the flow of time because good lord, four years have gone by. I don't know about y'all, but there was a little uh worldwide pandemic that happened more recently, a more recent pandemic. I hate when people say the pandemic, it's one of many. I mean, if you look roughly a hundred years ago, there was a thing called the Black Plague at the turn of the century. So we're all in accordance with the laws of nature here. Every hundred years there's a global pandemic that hits, whether you want to believe it's made in a lab or not. It is chaos theory. The world itself, the earth, is calling people, and it's you know, it's happening on a regular basis. It's just how it corrects itself. Um but I have a theory. Because a lot of people do not realize five years had gone by. We're at half five over five and a half years now since quarantine was started. Five and a half years, that's half a decade has gone by already. Fucking crazy. Five years, people, since quarantine started. Crazy. And I think the reason why it felt like it flew by for everybody, because we all started watching streaming and got on our phones. We kind of disassociated from the world because it was so fucking boring sitting in our house and not being able to go anywhere, that we all just kind of for that 18 months or so, we just kind of all started streaming movies and TV shows, and then just kind of kept it up from there. And now we're finally slowly starting to get out of the house on a regular basis. People are kind of starting to go back to normal reality. Uh, some places still haven't opened up, and some places like close down still, and then there's like one or two places, like a burger king down the street from me that's back to 24 hours, and that's not how it was originally, so it's like slowly coming back, and there's like new restaurants coming back or coming to the area uh that that were here. Some of them were here before, and some of them weren't. It's like first time getting into the area, so all that stuff's happening, and it's like, oh interesting. So we're just now getting back to normal sleeve, somewhat. And I believe it was a stupid streaming subscription. I've turned mine off, most of them, but I still disassociated. Still gotta change those habits now and start doing stuff more, and you know, we're getting there eventually. And it's like stupid COVID-19 bullshit. Oh, backwards. Yeah, I still wish I would have started this podcast before the quarantine. Before, but we can't kick ourselves and keep ruminating about that. We're at a hundred episodes, people! Yeah, we made it a hundred episodes. Okay. Now, with the passage of time, relationships have changed, and y'all here for part of it. That was very strange for me to have it part recorded um while it was happening. That has not happened before in any uh previous situation that I've had. So that is fascinating, and then you know, I've new people in my lives and they can go back and hear all that stuff, so it's fucking crazy. But I do appreciate the people that are completionists like me and need to go back and listen to older episodes and all the episodes, uh, kind of crazy. But I do enjoy that uh part of myself, the completionist part of myself. But you know, relationships change. And guess what? Julius is going to be here to tell you about it uh many, many times. I will I will uh tell you my life experiences. I mean, that's really what I have to go on is experiences from life and educating people that I will have an opinion, I will be emotions, I will be emotions about it. It will happen. That's a thing that will happen. Uh, I will say uh can't really future proof, but it's uh it's it's always changing. I feel like every time I get a new piece of information, as you know, hopefully y'all will see, I've improved. I would just like to say it. I'm not saying I'm nowhere near perfect and hasn't been super big or whatever, but I have improved since uh the podcast started. And I would say my relationship energy, relationship persona is better than what it was before. So we're always trying to change something new, still in a transition phase again, uh in life in general and also with relationships. So excited to see for myself how it has changed and um talk about it here with y'all. I am not an expert on any of these things. I just have experiences and I talk about them, and I will always have an opinion. And I don't care about being right or wrong and different, I just have it. And most of my opinions are based off of facts and surveys and such and research papers and all that. But who who's doing the research? Once again, I don't think that like happy people are on the internet filling out fucking forms about great Rudy. Filling out forms for surveys and shit. They're living their life, so like where are these research papers and surveys that we're getting, you know, they say with the take it with a grain of salt. I know y'all heard me a couple episodes ago, if you listened, talking about a survey uh or research study saying that poly people are more polyamorous than they are monogamous. And of course, I am biased because that had to fit my narrative. So there you go. Um shout out to uh Dr. Anna Meechin uh once again uh for backing up my theory of the world. Yeah, it is what it is. Uh will I ever uh talk about something, I don't know, like a convert con services uh podcast appearance? Sure, yeah. I mean, yeah, mm-hmm. I mean, before he got to his second reign of terror, uh Trump went on to uh a couple of podcasts. I still have not listened to those. Not a big political guy, but always like to hear from the other side's point of view and why they do the shit they do. I don't like to be like a vicious cycle type person and just listen to what I want to hear on a regular basis. So I have been listening to other points of view that do not line up with my own. Can I make a whole episode uh about it and talk about it for 25 minutes? Um sure, without wanting to flip the table and burn something down, because it's like why the fuck? But yes, people have different thoughts, and I want to hear those thoughts, even if I don't agree with it. Or of course, when I do agree with it, but it's like eh, all right. I I agree with it. That's not really uh enlightening as far as I'm concerned. I need to know, do I need to know? I like to know why people have thoughts um that are just illogical in my book, and you know, I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything, but it's just like I have an opinion. Once again, doesn't mean I'm right, I just have an opinion, doesn't mean I'm wrong, I just have an opinion, most of the time based on facts, but sometimes based on other people's opinions and experiences, and it's like, have you thought about it this way? You chop the tree this way, why don't you hold it by the blade and hit it with the hand hit the tree with the handle? No, didn't work. Okay, well, at least you tried it. You know, something random like that. Uh and then, you know, I could be I've always been a person that is just like obsessed with education, learning new things. So I don't know how to like relate that to anybody because that's just something I enjoy. I get a lot of positive energy from that kind of stuff. Learning something new is just a fascination of mine, you know. For example, learning how what a distribution site is for a podcast. What the fuck is that? And I'm also learning that people not everybody uses that shit, they just upload it straight to Spotify or something. It's like, oh, interesting, very, very interesting. Have you heard of uh Buzzsprout? Great. True. Does Buzzsprout need a brand uh ambassador? I would be 100% into that. Tell people what a distribution site is in the first place, because not a lot of people know how much easier it is. And thank you, Buzzsprout, again, for your AI assistance. Everybody has different opinions, but I enjoy what you've been doing so far. And it is great, fantastic. Uh but yeah, some uh always wanting to educate or being a fan of education is something I've always had within me. Uh, and I don't I don't underst I don't I don't understand. I don't need to understand, but I just don't understand. People that don't um like learning something new on a regular basis. It's like, oh yeah, I gotta I gotta I gotta learn something new and put it out there for the people. Um and that led me to improv because you know, uh like I said at the at the beginning, improv was something that was familiar to me, but I had never taken classes until like a year and a half ago. And it's been eye-opening, and now I'm putting on shows, uh uh putting on shows or being part of shows on a monthly basis, and like a YouTube channel, all coming out of improv and hopefully making these episodes, uh these podcast episodes better. Hopefully y'all can tell a difference. But it's like different world, always trying to learn something new, always trying to get better. So something else to be obsessed about and learning about all the time. It's like okay. So I take stuff that I that I've learned about in class or something, and then try to make it personable by trying it out on stage, whatever, you know, on the on the floor in front of people as much as I can. Fantastic, fantastic, and I love it. Oh, so good. And I'll be doing that forever and ever until the end of time. All things comedy. It's just something I enjoy, and uh oh, love it. So glad I did it. And I feel like it started with this podcast, just trying to get better, finally had like escape velocity to get out of my comfort zone and shoot into the astral moon phase of improv and meeting people in there and finding new friends uh along the way. Uh just uh even with the the conventions, um getting to be uh friends with people from there and uh more people that are creating stuff and doing things. And I would relate it's like a chicken and egg type of thing, either doing the podcast or being an improv. Picked up my social skills, and that is why I wanted to teach people that kind of stuff. Teach people the kind of stuff that is good for socializing, that is like an improv skill, and also like they're starting to use it in therapy as well. And it's like that's another chicken and egg thing. Who took inspired who? I don't say took from who inspired who to do the social skills of the thing. And I don't know if anybody is here from the uh pickup artist world, but yeah, I I understand now um from my many years of experience with the pickups artist community that a lot of those things relate with improv too. So anybody that's read the game, and y'all know how I feel about the book The Game by Neil Strauss, there's a lot of stuff with pickup artistry that has to do with it. I still follow some pickup artists' uh YouTube channels and listen to their videos and stuff, and it's like that's that's an improv thing, and yeah, and also that's like a kink dynamics negotiation thing, it's all similar, it's all related, people. The big old Venn diagram out there, and this shit is all related. So, anyways, I want to once again thank everybody for listening to these episodes and downloading and all that stuff, and look forward to a hundred more. Let's see where we, you know, change uh a hundred episodes from now, maybe five hundred, eight hundred episodes, a thousand. As far as I'm concerned, I'll keep doing this. You know, I mean, I like talking and then recording it and having y'all listen. So we'll see how the next hundred episodes maybe there'll be video, video, video, video, ooh, video, video, video. Speaking out into the universe, if you believe that kind of thing. Um, I kind of do. I flip-flop, actually, but we'll see what happens. And uh this is Around the Kinky Campfire. I am your motivational host, H H Julius Marquise. Catch us next time on another new episode. Hello. That's a wrap for this episode of the Around the Kinky Campfire podcast. We love having you by the fire, and we'd love to hear from you. Got a kinky question, a TV story, or a topic you want us to cover? Slide into our DMs and send us a message at AroundTheKinky Campfire, Campfire with a K at yahoo.com. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review wherever you're listening. Your support helps keep the flames burning and the conversations flowing. Follow us on Twitter, KikiCampfire, Campfire with a K, YouTube, Around the Kiki Campfire, Campfire with a K, or Instagram, Campfire Kingsters, CampfireWithAK. To stay in the loop, join the community, and keep the kick alive between episodes on Thursdays. Until next time, stay safe, stay sexy, and keep that fire burning.