Leadership Spotlight: Elissa

This is the eleventh of our spotlights on community members who help out the CSPC in leadership positions. In this issue, we’ve asked some questions to get a deep and personal look at our Programming Team Co-Lead, Elissa.

• Name:

  • Elissa

• Pronouns:

  • She/Her

• How do you identify?

  • I’m transfeminine, gender fluid, bisexual, solo poly, and a switch.

• How long have you been with the CSPC?

  • My first CSPC event was five years ago in the fall of 2015. I became a member and volunteer in early 2016.

• What brought you here and what are your main areas of interest?

  • Mostly, I came here to make friends and find partners. When I returned to Washington after college, I missed my friends from Minnesota and a lot of my old friends here had moved away. The Center gave me the community I needed, with the side benefit of a place to have hardcore BDSM scenes and group sex and various other fun activities. I’m primarily interested in pain, roleplay, cuddles, and I enjoy vanilla sex as well, when I get the chance to have some.

• CSPC e-mail address and title:

  • programming@thecspc.org Co-Lead of the Programming Team 

  • Contact me if you’d like to be part of our team where we plan and execute events, or if you’d like to suggest or run a new event.

• What was your path to your current position?

  • I started as a setup volunteer, eventually expanding to work as an ambassador and library volunteer at the old space. When we lost our original space in 2016, I went back to focusing on setup as those other roles were no longer available. I joined the Programming Team when it started, because I wanted to make a bigger impact on the direction things were taking. I was preparing to take on the role of Co-Lead before COVID hit and finally did once we reconvened the team again in the summer.

• Which CSPC event is your favorite and why? 

  • My favorite events that were running in the Pioneer Square space were Myself and F*cking Precious because there was always something fun to do or watch and everyone was always having a good time. My favorite at the old space was Women on Top, because I like being topped by women and topping as a woman, and the community around that event was the best.

• Day job:

  • I’ve done a lot of different things. Right now, I’m unemployed due to the pandemic.

• What do you like to do in your free time?

  • I take a five mile walk every day, I listen to podcasts and watch movies, I love professional wrestling, I write a little, I’m working on learning Japanese, I play video games, I like to bake and do origami, and I’ve been playing in several online tabletop RPGs, one of which I run.

• Living situation:

  • I live with my parents, my sibling, and our two cats; Cashew and Chanterelle, who are cute and also evil, because they are cats.

• Fun fact:

  • I used to be nearly fluent in Spanish when I was in high school, and my siblings and I would speak it to each other sometimes to say stuff we didn’t want our parents to hear. Even in the first few years of college, I’d watch telenovelas on an antenna TV while I was drawing. My favorite was Salome. I’m pretty rusty, but I can still speak a little and read more.

• Turn-ons and squicks: 

  • I like big noses, leather and latex, and a nice husky voice. I love the sound of a great impact scene. Curves or muscles are quite nice as well and both are better. The sting of alcohol sprayed on my split skin or giving or receiving a good solid bite. But the thing that works best for me is a good reaction, whether a laugh of delight or scream of pain from a bottom, the words of appreciation from a top at my own good job of bottoming, the approach of a partner’s orgasm... things like that. I have a fair number of squicks but the biggest one is feet. I’m fine to rub a partner’s feet, and I love a good boot, but I find a lot of the foot fetish standbys like footjobs, foot sucking, and sniffing dirty feet to be just really unpleasant, and I don’t even like looking at most people’s bare feet.

• Hopes and concerns for the CSPC and the greater sex positive community:

  • Even in the fairly short time I’ve been a part of the community, we have been through some hard times, but none as hard as this pandemic. I don’t know if we’ll make it through this. I’m going to do my best to make sure we do but it’s not going to be easy. That being said, I think digital events offer us an opportunity to reach out to a wider and more diverse community, which is great. Though we lost a lot when we lost our original space, when we came back, one of the great things we gained was a community that was much more diverse in many ways and I hope that continues. Another great thing is how much closer the greater sex positive community has become in the past few years. I think that’s important to foster. In the long term, I hope we’ll find a new place of our own, because that will be a gamechanger in how we can run events and foster community, and I hope that’s something we can work towards. 

• Advice for a new member or volunteer: 

  • Try out everything you can. I remember my first time at the Center, coming with a partner and telling her I wasn’t sure about all this pain stuff, and of course I immediately saw an impact scene that I couldn’t stop watching. There are tons of things that I got the chance to try at a tasting event or from a friend or acquaintance who wanted to show off their new toys or techniques, from claws to electricity to rough body play, that I might never have tried, but now are some of my favorite kink activities.

• Is there an event or organization, outside of the CSPC, that you feel our community should know about?

  • I love Diadem Events, a group that does play Femdom play parties and teaching events at the Streamhouse and other locations. It’s run by a good friend of mine and I help them run events as well.

• How can we build up each other? How can we be here for one another?

  • We have to ask what people need and want, and give what we can. Not everyone needs or wants the same things. We have to be aware of that and not assume we know best.