BDSM Goes Full Fantasy

Don't Piss Off The Vampires

In 2004 I was getting deeper into BDSM. I’d been married to Kris whose sexuality was very frustrating for me. Over the years it had gone from passionate, to snuggles, to yelling at me cause I was using a vibrator to get off, to making derogatory remarks about kinksters as degenerates, to sleeping in the other room, to wanting me again as a solo open relationship (I was dating others but he wasn’t, though my getting laid sparked our sex life), to wanting his ass fucked and to be pissed on while I wore thigh high patent leather boots, to having to keep him in leather cuffs when I went away to trade events, to confiding that he’d paid Dominants in the past, to frankly— I don’t recall the whole scope. It was confusing. I still don’t understand his whole story. Me, though, I was almost 40, and I wanted MORE.

When I moved out of our San Diego house, I found a dungeon party being advertised on Craigslist, back when you could find advertisements like that on CL. I figured if I owned a dildo factory and couldn’t get comp’d into this party, I had no business being in the business. I wrote the host. I was told to come into the “other” door, where the upstairs friends party was going on. Drinks, conversations, laughs about dildos…  Of course, I was comp’d and I dived in deep. It was the first time I’d played in a public dungeon. I was lured by a very beautiful woman to help her with her toy. I ended up bending this hooded person over and plunging into him as she ground into me dancing behind me and kissing me as I thrust. It was all that and more, and it took me a few days to realize I’d just had anonymous sex

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So, when I was pulling a line together for Tantus, my reinvigorated sex life was very much in the limelight. That was the year we came up with a Bottoming Kit with a leather collar, a butt plug and some lube, and a Topping Kit with a dildo, a leather harness and lube. The Topping Kit featured a graphic of this hot burning man model, tipping a Muir Cap, a photo Plaid had made happen. It was incredible. All of it was hot. Alas, it was too far ahead of its time for retailers. We soon discontinued it. We also discontinued the Slave a butt toy. The naming mechanism just didn’t sell.

The dildo that was in the Topping Kit was also quickly discontinued, which was a shame. It was a beautiful piece, what I call “streamline realistic”, it had realistic features as if they were an art sculpture. I named it Sire. We also had Spike. No one seemed to want to be “spiked”.  I hated to discontinue them. The toys themselves were so damned good.

In 2007 we went from an information-based website www.tantussilicone.com to a retail site www.tantusinc.com. To do that, we had hired a “marketing and coding” crew headed by Jon, cofounder of Dredcentral.com. Did Jon really lead them… I’m not sure. It seemed pretty peer to peer as I remember. There was Jeannine our graphic designer who had impeccable design skills, brought common sense to the equation but was the dry wit, and Ian a videographer who ended up organizing every aspect of every project we ran once he started, he was golden. They were a team to be reckoned with and they had a wicked sense of humor.

That humor came to a peak moment right as the most ludicrous bit of fan fiction ever was made into a movie. That’s right Summit Entertainment was releasing this Young Adult vampire story where vampires sparkled and as a lark the marketing people wanted to make a sparkly dildo. I grabbed an old Sire mold, we added mica to a slight bit of Caucasian flesh tone pigment made for the silicone prosthetics industry (thank you Gosnell Duncan) and they were off.

I was the one who named it Vamp but they wrote the copy "in the twilight glow of the new moon ... don't let this deal pass into the breaking dawn." I wish I had saved the whole thing. It really was hilarious. The dildo description mentioned each and every one of the books. They took a video too- it wasn’t very telling about the toy, you couldn’t see the form, but they did rotate the body of it in the sun, and yes- sparkled. Everyone was laughing. We made a small batch of maybe 10 and put it up online. It was a private joke to share with our friends. Mike an I approved it and we didn’t think anything of it.

And then, Perez Hilton picked it up.

Perez Hilton found the Vamp set it up, and that day “Twilight Dildo” was the number one searched term on Google. NUMBER 1!!!! The video was housed on our YouTube channel but because of how they filmed it just a 3 inch view of the cylindrical body rotated in the sun, it had hundreds of thousands of views.

Radio stations called, for interviews for shock jock fodder, which Mike, who was with us by then managed to turn around into real conversations about fantasy and sexuality.

And, of course, because of the publicity, the inevitable happened. The Cease and Desist arrived from Summit the next week.

We had good lawyers for such a small business, Fish and Richardson represented us. And they told us, in no uncertain terms, that we did not want to go head to head with Summit’s in house lawyers. They had their demands and for the most part, we complied.

They wanted the names of books removed from the copy. Done.

They wanted the comments on the YouTube video extracted. They weren’t ours so we argued that one.

They wanted us to change the name. Vamp doesn’t even mean vampire. According to Merriam-Webster a “Vamp is a woman who uses her charm or wiles to seduce or exploit men.” We got to keep the name.

They wanted all the profits from the sales of the toy… and here was the thing, number one searched item on Google had led to exactly 7 sales. I think rather than argue it, we sent them a check.

Each year, a new movie would be released. The Twilight Saga made Summit Entertainment. Each year, a cease and desist would cross my desk. Each year more press

Each year we would look at the new complaints and try to massage it down. Really it wasn’t us anymore, it was YouTube watchers. The fan fiction written in response to the dildo was incredible. It was all in the comments. People arguing that vampires didn’t have blood that pumped so it wouldn’t be hard. People jumping on Summits PR pitting Team Edward vs Team Jacob and figuring out what that dildo would be like (mostly they mentioned imagined werewolf hair). The beautiful thing was that the we weren’t legally responsible for those comments, so we didn’t have to detract them.

By the time the latter movies came out, we’d left San Diego. The Vamp sold really well as a dildo, not as a movie gag. I’d fought the fight over two movie releases. Why? I’m not sure. It wasn’t financially benefiting us, but it wasn’t hurting us once we changed our copy. The one thing though was that stupid video with now about a million views… and glorious comments. I fought it cause free speech was on the line for adult businesses and satire. I meant to hold my ground.

Last time I talked with Jon, someone had interviewed him about it and that interview was published on Salon.com. Timing is everything, so of course the next movie was being released. He swore to me that some of the words he hadn’t said and I didn’t doubt it. But it was the first time Summit might actually have a real complaint and I didn’t want to lose Tantus, so I finally deleted the video and all those incredible comments and Mike, while he couldn’t get the story retracted, at least got a company update tagged on.

And so it goes: Spike became Leisure and the Vamp lives on.

Bottom’s up!