Around the Kinky Kampfire Podcast

From Small Talk to Real Connection: Communication Skills for Kink, Non-Monogamy, and Everyday Life | S4 EP101

• Julius • Season 4 • Episode 10

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We explore how “vocal image” transforms consent talks, small talk, and relationship check‑ins, especially in kink and non‑monogamy. We share practical tools—melody, pace, volume, pauses, gestures—and reflect on shedding labels like “shy” or “introvert” through practice.

• why communication habits matter more than labels
• using melody, pace, volume, pause, and gesture
• upgrading small talk into real connection
• practicing skills beyond two tries to build ease
• aligning voice and body language for consent and safety
• expressing emotion without performance
• applying tools to poly dynamics, scenes, and aftercare
• simple weekly drills to build vocal image

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Original episode - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIiv_335yus&t=2804s

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SPEAKER_02:

Welcome to Around the Kinky Campfire. Grab a seat or a drink. Let's turn up the heat. This is the podcast where we explore the wild, wonderful, and sometimes wicked world of kink, PDSM, and alternative lifestyles. Whether you're a seasoned player, 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 kicky campfire. Let's get lit. Hello everybody. This is your host of them all. Host the hostiest of them all. H H Julius Marquise, or just Julius, if you're feeling fancy less, less fancy, unfancyful. There we go. We'll go with that. Unfancyful. I'm here today, once again, from the Kinky Campfire podcast around it, of course, around the Kinky Campfire podcast. New episodes on most Thursdays. Going well so far to finish out the rest of the year, but I'm here today, once again, with a topic for you. But before we get into that topic, of course, we have to do our five seconds. ASMR, five seconds. I'm drinking Decaf coffee, not sponsored. It's getting towards the bottom of the cup, so it's not as hot as I'd prefer it to be, so I can actually sip for a little bit longer. So I think we actually made it to five seconds there with no countdown whatsoever. That's totally fine. Okay, today's topic is kind of a broad topic that I wanted to talk about because I saw a podcast on it recently. I'll play a little bit of the podcast here for you throughout the episode. Uh, it is a topic that is considered very uh trivial in some cases, but also paramount in some cases. Hmm, interesting. That topic is communication. Yes, uh communication, something that is not necessarily taught in in school, but you practice it on a regular basis, even though you don't really know the the reason for it, but that's fascinating to me that we have like math and chemistry. Who needs chemistry? Like, really, get this they get that shit out of here. Nobody needs fucking chemistry anymore. Uh unless you're being a doctor or something, but whatever. It's so interesting that we have all these uh these uh subjects in school that we actually don't really use on a regular basis. I don't remember when I did a compound equation. Like, why do we need this? History debatable, uh English debatable. I'm I'm in the technical fields, and it's like I don't even conform complete sentences most of the time, or just autocorrect it for me, or grammar correct it, whatever it is. The red line versus the blue line underneath the words. Yeah, that's what it is. It'll do it for me now. So what who needs English anymore? I say jokingly. But, anyways, this is this uh was inspired from an episode of Diary of a CEO with Stephen Bartlett, and he had a very interesting guest on there as a uh communications expert, a uh Mr. Vin Gyang nailed it. And uh Vin is a person that goes around and talks to people about communication, teaches people about communication, all the things that have above, coaches people on communication, and he gave some good pointers in this episode. I'm like, oh Julius here from Around the Kinky Campfire podcast talks about communication skills all the time, not to the degree that this person does, but I like to work on communication on a regular basis. As a recovering awkward person, I on a regular basis have to practice my social skills, and I will say I will congratulate myself because it's at the beginning of the week, and I successfully went to a social event and introduced myself to multiple people whose names I do not remember, but I still introduce myself to multiple people, and I also try to talk to people outside of the group. So that is a big step for myself. So congratulations to me. I will not even like pat myself on the back, I'll just say congratulations and moving on because we have to keep up with those skills and can continue to use them. And I actually tried to use some of the skills that Vin talked about in this video, so I wanted to go ahead and highlight some parts in this video. It's great because it's just, I mean, the whole series, the whole channel's great, the whole podcast, diary CEO. Um Steven Um I was actually recently on like Jimmy Kimmel or Jimmy Fallon, one of the two, and talking about the podcast. So that's pretty good for somebody that's like not in the TV movie famous. YouTube and the podcast world. Goals, life goals, people uh make it onto late night talk show. I guess that's not really a goal. It was when I was younger, but not so much now. But that would be nice to get recognized on an international level, quote unquote, for being a YouTube guy or a podcast person. That's really great. So uh let's see here. Uh da da Vin. Um I'll put the link for the episode in the description, like I did before uh of this of this podcast episode. I'll put the pot hit the diary CEO podcast link in the description of this podcast show so that you guys will know what's going on. Because I don't really want to go I mean, I could go into a deep dive of who Vin is, but a person that teaches communications for many years. Um many decades, apparently. So like two because he's not that old. So two decades, not a whole many, but two decades. And uh I'll go ahead and uh talk about this uh in between the the episode clips. All right, here we go.

SPEAKER_00:

Starting out then volume, melody, and hand gestures.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I was thinking to one example of one of my students who uh a female, Rachel, who who felt like she didn't have great executive presence. And it was because she became she she labeled herself as being shy. And I I like to break these things down for my students too. I'm like, the the reason you're shy, and the reason you're really good at being shy is because you've been repeating the shy behaviors for the last 25 years. So you're really good at it.

SPEAKER_02:

And that's yeah, it's like people. Once again, he's specifically talking about one of his students that's shy. But let's talk about non-monogamy, because that's what we talk about here on around the kinky campfire. I know I was back in the day, like monogamy, marriage, kids, is something you have to do until I started questioning it, and it was like, oh, there's something called polyamory and something called non-monogamy, that's something that's available. So I was very well practiced, and this is why I made a lot of my mistakes early on in my non-monogamy journey, because I was in the mindset of monogamy having to be the end goal, and uh, yeah, that's something I was oh man, ill-equipped to handle. So I'm practicing monogamy, trying to be go into non-monogamy. It's just you know what people have these pre-constructed notions of themselves, and it's like, have you tried something different? Have you thought about it this way? No, well, how about you try it and see how it fits for you? And then you try it multiple times. Could take years, people could take years. And he then is talking specifically about communication styles and people labeling themselves as shy or an introvert or something, or just not a people person. It's like, what behaviors have you done to the contrary? Have you tried different things? Okay, so explain this to me. Explain me this. How can you label yourself something if you haven't tried anything different or gone outside your bubble? As I said a few minutes ago, I went to a social event and I introduced myself to people. That is something I have trouble with, or will will have had trouble with all the above, past, present, and future tenses. I will continue to have trouble with them, but I'm gonna still keep trying. And hopefully one day I'll break through the wall. Yay, woo! But you have to actually try things before you label yourself as something that you're not. Have you tried not being shy or tried being non-monogamous? Mmm, coffee. And I'm sick and tired of people trying like once or twice, okay. Literally have to try it more than 10 times, maybe even a hundred, before you figure out whether you're good at something or not. Also, why are you caring about being good at something? What is the point of that? Just try it, and if it feels good to you, then keep going. Don't worry about whether you're good, quote unquote, at it or not. Just keep doing what feels good to you, and hopefully you can find people, partners, friends, whatever you're looking for, and they will go on the journey with you and hopefully build you up, build, build up with you, work on it with you, all these different kinds of things. I'm trying to tell y'all, if y'all work on yourself, that just brings in more people that like feel your flow and want to live life with you. You gotta work on yourself, and it's becoming more and more of a common thing. At least people talk about it on the social medias. I don't know if they're actually doing it. Um maybe they're just doing it for views or whatever. But it's like if those practices are actually useful, you can filter out all the other garbage, but they're the practices are actually useful if you actually try them and fail. You might fuck up a few times, but keep going. Trust me, I've failed and fucked up so many times. I keep telling you all this, and it's that's something that has to happen in order to grow. So that's a thing. All right, let's keep going.

SPEAKER_01:

It's all right. It's because you've been practicing shy for 25 years. Being more confident, it's about us just learning a new series of behaviors. Let's let's try a larger gesture. I've seen this on multiple podcasts now. You try a larger gesture, try stronger volume, try being more melodic with your voice. And then she was practicing that. And immediately the feelings of oh, it feels fake, it feels phonobal and go, oh no, she's unfamiliar. And the moment she makes that reset, she goes, Oh, I'll continue to explore them. Whereas if she thinks it's fake, she'll revert back to being who she was before. So, how do I speak impromptu? How do I be in the moment and come up with a good answer? Another one is I'm introverted. Does that mean that I'm doomed?

SPEAKER_00:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And another really common one is I don't have much connection in my life. I wish I felt more connected to the people that I'm around. Why is it that I can't get past the the the day, mate? How are you? Yeah, I'm good. How are you? Yeah, I'm good. All right, cheers, mate. Have a good one. Oh, the small talk. Yeah, yeah. This is a big topic, right?

SPEAKER_02:

So again, it's just Ugh, that's another thing, too. I'm an introvert. So that means you can't communicate with people, you can't talk to people because you're an introvert. We realize your energy is draining when you talk to people, as a fellow introvert, but there are ways to communicate with people where it drains your energy less. Or maybe it doesn't drain your energy at all because we learn the skills and develop the habits to talk to people. Oh, it drives me crazy. I'm an introvert. So you can't people at all. You you can have social skills, you can develop social skills in order to do this. It's a it's a thing that you can do. And it's like uh Vin talks about small talk there right at the end, and it's like, yes, small talk sucks, but you can also ask questions that are more interesting. I know for me, at least if I have something interesting to talk to somebody about it's not a boring conversation, it's usually a little bit better. Now, some people have trouble reciprocating that, and that's all right because that's on them. That's not on you. How about that? Okay, so let's go ahead and try to use these skills. And you know what? Don't make assumptions that people, everybody else can, first of all, and then also that uh they might respond to you even though you're practicing good skills. That doesn't mean you are fucking up, it just could be on them. How about that? Not everybody is great at these kinds of things, but you yourself are trying, and that's the most important part. So even if you're doing the correct skills, it might not work out, and that's okay too. But keep trying anyway. These people that uh these people, I'm one of these people, they just kind of go in and just think like, oh yeah, I tried, and that was it. Oh man, that's that's terrible. And then um I am an introvert, but it's like I will go out and do stuff on stage, and people are very confused by that. It's like I might be losing energy, but I'm still doing it because it is a practice, it is a skill, a habit that I worked on for multiple days and months and going on years now. It's a thing. So you can be a thing, label yourself introvert, x-ray, whatever the fuck you want to do it, but you can still practice skills and habits and do things, actions that are contrary to that popular belief, and actually help you get friends and romantic partners and regular partners, whatever partners you want, play partners, all the above. Because you practice these skills.

SPEAKER_01:

How do we how do we get to these conversations like that you get to have on so many of these wonderful podcasts that you do?

SPEAKER_00:

So I reckon you would have insights here too. It's like I was looking earlier, there's almost like a billion search results on Google for people trying to figure out um or trying to provide answers to how to communicate successfully. So let's get into it. So I you use this term vocal image.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

What does vocal image mean?

SPEAKER_01:

It came about when I realized I spend, and I think most of us spend a lot of time on our visual image, right? How we look, our body language, the way we dress. But very rarely do people spend time on their vocal image. Now, I'll make it make sense. When people see you and you reveal your visual image, they make assumptions about you pretty quickly. So they form assumptions, oh, this person seems friendly. Maybe they're confident because they've got good posture, maybe they're smiling, they're friendly. And then all of a sudden, when you open your mouth and you speak, they now turn these assumptions into beliefs. What may be assumptions before then now they go, oh, you are friendly. You are confident. Right? Or they might think, oh no, bit of a wanker. Right? And and and you've had these experiences before, I've had them before, where you are assumed, you see someone, you're like, oh, that person's really good, go and meet them, you're uh not really nice. That's weird. So it's another layer that we don't think about, though, because we again think we're stuck with our voice, we think we're stuck with the way we communicate. We think there's no way for me to ever change this.

SPEAKER_00:

So let's let's talk about how one can improve their vocal image just so that they're effective across context. Sure. You mentioned melody.

SPEAKER_02:

Developing that vocal image. Fantastic. This is the first time I've ever heard somebody say vocal image in this kind of context specifically, but yeah, it's super in general. Vocal image, volume, melody, and hand gestures. Your volume. I don't know about y'all, but sometimes I can't hear. Especially if somebody's talking in a lower tone, I have to yell. And I uh I have to yell because I can't hear them, so I think I'm talking low, and I have a low voice. So even sometimes I can't hear my own self speaking. I can I know I'm saying something because I feel the vibration, but I can't actually hear what I'm saying. So sometimes I yell. And then melody, I actually kind of speak kind of fast sometimes, and then it's like all up and down and sporadic, and it's like great, it's good if you're putting on a show, but not great when you're actually talking to people, or it could be interesting for them if they're um bored themselves. I don't even know how to say that correctly, but it's like interesting. So the fact that he talks about uh your vocal uh image is fascinating, and this is another reason why I wanted to comment on this video because I've never heard this before. So he's gonna go ahead and explain it to everybody now.

SPEAKER_00:

Volume hand gestures. If we start with melody, what the hell is melody? The different notes you can hit with your voice? Okay, so is that variety?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, variety, yeah, pitch variety, pitch and melody. Okay. Well, because there's a melody that lives underneath your voice. All right, let's do an experiment. I'm gonna play you a piano song, and I want you to listen to this, and then you at home right now, I want you to listen to to the track and see what words come to mind. So we'll just play, we'll play the song. Okay, yeah. Um, all right, sadness. Right. So you and then if if listeners at home could could could have a voice here too, that's maybe say that would say somber and that's just the magic.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01:

All these words would come up. And and again, if we stack with this for all, we'd get plenty of words. Let's try another one, right? Let's change the mood, let's shift to something like uh this um inspirational, motivational. Good. See, all of a sudden, and and I'm thinking running towards something.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01:

And then again, there's a part of it that thinks, oh, cheesy commercial, right? There's a there's that part of it too. So you can hear all these different things. Let's try one more. We'll shift gears again. What about this one?

SPEAKER_00:

Like a horror movie. It's scary. About to die. Yeah, something bad's about to happen. Omnius. Little three-year-old stood on the the landing of the staircase at nighttime with long black hair. Yeah, yes, correct. So that that that again, all of a sudden.

SPEAKER_02:

Why are we hating on the black hair people? All right, so great examples of that. Um, of the uh different emotions that are evoked by different kinds of music. It's great. Here's what he's getting to now.

SPEAKER_01:

Paints all these different vivid pictures in your head. The reason I did that experiment is there were no words in any of those tracks. Yet think about all of the words that rushed to your mind as you were experiencing the melody, the different notes. What people fail to realize is that you have a melody in your voice.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

This is why when some people walk into our lives, it it could drain the energy from our lives. And when they walk in, you feel the impact of them walking in, right? In the negative way or a positive way. Some walk in and you go, Oh, I feel good, I feel great. What is that?

SPEAKER_00:

It's the melody in which they come in with. Can you have a pretty limited range, a limited melody, but still hit people with scary and sad and inspiring? I believe you can. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Again, because we we genuinely don't have ADA keys, right? So again, it's one of the, it's a it's a metaphor. But I believe that we can create so many different songs with our voice if we learn to treat it as an instrument. And we we can we can play with the technique to help you increase your vocal range if you want. Sure. There's something called a uh this is fun. This is a fun one. There's something called a siren technique.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, so a siren technique is when you you read something with a low voice and then you go towards a high voice and you go back down to a low voice. So now I don't want you to do it to start with. I just want you to read this as you would, and then we'll try the siren technique. So just read it as you would neutrally first. So just read that as you would.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, so for those that can't see, Vin has passed me a card. Yeah, cue cards.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, so I'm not gonna go super deep into this next part. But basically, Steven is made to read a bunch of lines from uh bunch of lines, like five lines from different movies, and he's gonna say it as his normal self. As you can hear or have heard in the past, Stephen has a very monotone voice. It's great for podcasting, um, not great for movies and stuff, but he's not an actor, so there that's that. First one is a scientist technique. So you're changing the melody, making it high versus low. And then that is uh very interesting to see. Um once again, I'll put the description in the in the uh description. I'll put the link in the description. There you go. That's the words, and we'll uh you can take a look at it for yourself. Very fascinating because talking about the siren technique, um high low melody. Uh, and then another one is rate of speech, so going from slow to fast, volume, quiet versus loud, emotional, the tonality, and it's like move your face when you're speaking, which is also great if you have um uh dynamic facial gestures, and then also the uh lastly, I would say the biggest one is pause. Take a breath. So for those of you that have been listening to most of a lot of these episodes, know that I could probably work on this stuff, so this is why this podcast episode specifically spoke to me. It's like, oh yeah, probably should be practicing some of this stuff. So if you notice any differences or me taking a breath more often, then that is me working on those skills. So I actually probably should write these down somewhere and and put them up because yeah, I need to work on this myself. And uh it's it's gonna be an interesting um experiment. Interesting experiment as I work on these different things. And for me, it's like, oh, I was always taught to be uh in the background, seen but not heard, maybe that kind of thing. And so using more hand gestures, unless I'm excited, is something I don't do. Speaking very fast is a very uh interesting thing. Rate of speech is just because he's talking fast and having them speak so I can get all the words in and before I get interrupted, and I I I I can't uh let anybody else speak until I'm done speaking just so I get all my things out. And it's like I don't have to do that anymore. So I'm going to try to focus on these skills and learn how to work on them. Changing up the melody, rate of speech, volume, emotion, and pause. Oh god, especially emotion. Ooh. Ooh. That hit so hard when he talked about that.

SPEAKER_00:

It's like ah E.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that's uh that's uh very painful because emotion has been shoved down due to my culture, we'll say that. And it's like, oh we we can't experience emotion as a uh black man in America who looks like a black man in America. Can't be angry. That's not possible. That's not a thing we can do. Can't be angry, especially if it's unjustified, just random bits of anger are unregulated, just all up and down all over the place. And then maybe you can cry. That's still a thing now. Men cry, but still it's like you get shunned or whatever if you if you cry at the wrong time, it has to be justified once again. Why are we crying and we can't can't do it just right off the bat with people? So this is great. This is amazing. So we have all these different things, and I like especially with the emotion part of it. It's I need to do more of it on stage and try not to have it a mask on of trying to be cool or whatever, and it's like, oh yeah, that's probably something I should work on as far as the uh emotional bit and communicating with people in general. I've had issues with partners in the past where I didn't necessarily show a whole lot of emotion, and it did not help the relationship at all. It probably doesn't help like familial um interactions as well or friends, and it's like, oh, Julius the robot is here, and it's no, I wanna I want to work on this. So hopefully y'all took a little something and then check out the episode to get all of the um the the communication examples that Vin talked about, and uh I just wanted to point that out because this is great for relationships, which is what we talk about here at Around the Kinky Campfire. Stuff you can work on. I would argue that this would be helpful for you as well in your relationship. Maybe you talk too melodically, and there's no emotion in your voice, so you sound like a robot, and that's not very helpful either. Maybe we should just try to work on these things ourselves and take note. That's all I care about, really, is that you become aware of these kind of things and think about this it's the communication aspect of it all. Maybe you're trying to find a partner, or maybe you have a partner and you have an open relationship or a polyamorous relationship and you're not getting anywhere. Could be how you communicate, give some emotion with your voice, take a pause every now and then, learn how to breathe. Don't be so monotonous, monot monotonous, monotonous. Ah, made a new word. There you go. And uh hopefully this will help you out, and then you can go and practice that. Please let me know. Email me at the Yahoo's, message me on the Instagrams, and let me know how your journey's been going. And we'll keep it going here at Around the Kiki Campfire. This has been a little bit shorter episode brought to you by HH Julius Marquise. Hopefully, we'll be talking more about this later, and then I'll specifically uh go into what it's uh why it's helpful in in like the especially in the polyamorous sense, but communicating with people, going to events, that kind of thing. Could be helpful, you never know. Alright, that's it for now. 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 steamy 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, Kiki Campfire, Campfire with a K, YouTube, Around the Kinky Campfire, Campfire with a K, or Instagram, Campfire Kingsters, Campfire with a K. 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.