How did your fetish begin?

[steve70]

Seeing quicksand scenes on TV when I was 3 or 4 years old, I think. Can't remember all the details but I remember being exposed to the idea of sinking in quicksand at a very young age and being fascinated by it.

[Muyro]

Can’t recall due to me being so young. I believe you’re born with the interest and media just solidifies it

[dlodoski]

Can’t recall due to me being so young. I believe you’re born with the interest and media just solidifies it

Solidify? NNNnnnnnnooooooo!!



Seriously though, that's a pretty good assessment of how it works.

[QuicksandMania]

I retired comfortably from NASA in July 2022 after 36 years of federal service as a mechanical engineer. This extra time has given me resources to reflect and consider this fetish question in depth (pun intended). I have undertaken a second career in a completely different field of financial services in partnership with dear wife. Moving from a "task" field to a "people" field has completely turned my logical brain on its ear. People are not logical! I spent ages 16-56 completely immersed (pun intended) in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The NASA Chief Engineer and his review board did not care one rat's dropping about how anyone felt about anything. Facts, figures, reason, science, logic, receipts, documentation, and proof were all that mattered.

Now I have completely red-pilled my way from that mentality to its opposite:

1. People don't care what you know until they know that you care.
2. People don't care what you know, only that you know.
3. Some people will literally die for recognition.

This transition has been hard but necessary for my mental and emotional health. Google "Artemis Program" and you will learn what a kluge the new NASA moon program has become. Their leadership quagmire makes our hobby look like solid granite by comparison. Technical excellence takes a back seat to political correctness and Diversity, Inclusion, Equity (DIE) programs. I could not leave soon enough but exited the month I reached minimum retirement age (MRA) and could draw my pension. #NotMyNASA

In researching fastest "hacks" to change mindset quickly, I discovered the modality of hypnotic breathwork. I learned that a local young lady of my wife's acquaintance had recently completed a certification program in that discipline and offered it as part of a broader mentorship program. My wife and I both struggle with this completely different lifestyle so we both registered in a "dual track" for a discount for separate mentorship sessions. She gets to work through her baggage and I get to work through mine.

In digging through early formative childhood experiences that shape long-term personality traits, I finally related this fetish to the young lady. She took it all very professionally. So here is how I recall it after much deep (pun intended) thought.

My earliest memory of quicksand comes from the 1965 movie "The Hallelujah Trail" which was broadcast on national television some time when I was a very small child. (I was born in 1966.) I have a very specific memory (https://youtu.be/g3vx8BMXSUY?si=AaRV6oMuWqZSMN8U&t=8343) of seeing a cowboy sinking into a large field of gray quicksand (black and white television). That same film showed a wagon rising from the quicksand a few minutes later when the changing seasons changed the physics. My theta-wave developing brain just could not grasp this at all: "Why is that cowboy sinking into the ground? Why is his sinking making that church steeple with the choir rise out of it and how are they still alive?" (I mistook the mud-covered wagon with the background chorus for a church with a choir!) This confusing imagery formed a sort of trauma that stayed with me from that point forward. Every repeating witness of quicksand in the media reinforced that initial emotional response and created a stacking effect. Any time I saw quicksand on television I either had to leave the room or suck it up and deal with deep anxiety and heart palpitations: "You mean the ground can just open and swallow someone without warning?" I became obsessed with the topic and would routinely check new encyclopedia sets in the libraries for what they said about the subject. I remember an episode of "Lassie" that had a little boy in quicksand who looked just like me. Do not even get me started on "Tarzan's Hidden Jungle" which was challenging even before puberty.

Once puberty hit, I started having the same feelings of deep anxiety and heart palpitations around girls that I had around quicksand. So you can guess what happened. The deep and similar feelings became conflated in my developing pubescent brain. Coping with the anxiety around girls turned into obsessive thoughts of them sinking in quicksand. I kept all this to myself and shared it with no one for many years. I was already viewed as the weird geek in the school.

Through the miracles of modern living I managed to use my brain to get through high school and university and land a lasting career at NASA. I never got into a serious relationship with a woman until after college. Once I did, I kept my unusual interest to myself because, well, it was just weird, and no one else feels like this, right? We married in 1991 in our early 20s. I would heighten my lovemaking experience with silent fantasies of her sinking in quicksand.

The rest is a familiar story of finding this community in 1995 and struggling to deal with this massive unexpected discovery of others of similar kink. I finally had to come clean (pun intended) with dear wife a year later. She took it in stride because she loves me for me (and this explains why we remain married to this day).

All this brings me back to a humorous note to close. The gift shop where this young lady works offers a range of services including metaphysical courses on astrology, tarot, etc. Do not laugh. The older woman who runs it is smart and injects a great deal of rich history worth learning into her courses. I watched one of her video courses and in several places she talked about a recurring problem with paralyzing anxiety in her earlier years with which she still occasionally copes using medical marijuana. "I felt like I was in quicksand!" she repeated on several occasions throughout the course. I felt like I had to bring her some natural anxiety relief with a different perspective so maybe she could smoke less weed to cope. She is cool and open-minded and advocates for sexual education and we have known each other for years, so after a paid private Reiki training one-on-one with her, I gingerly approached the subject. She and I are on the same page about the formative years and their lifelong impact. After confirming her agreement that moving images can have a lifetime formative impact on the theta-wave mind (ages 0-7), I gently if hesitatingly described the prior sequence of events and suggested a fifth trauma response: Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn, or Fun. She shared with me that her traumatizing event happened at age 4 when she saw the horse Artax disappear into the Swamps of Sadness in "The NeverEnding Story" and described it as "devastating" to her. I asked if she would be willing to watch a five-minute video clip of a woman in a bikini sinking into natural quicksand from her ankles to her shoulders, drinking some champagne, then pushing herself out of the quicksand and walking from the scene. After a slight hesitation, she shrugged her shoulders and said, "Sure." So I cued an old (no longer available) video on my phone of exactly this scene recorded on the Mississippi River mud flats which she watched with complete attention.
"So why exactly did you share this with me?" she inquired.
"Mother Earth wants to support you if you will let her," I replied and added, "Sometimes she wants a deep connection with you."
"I like that!" she smiled.
I also shared to her with her permission the scene at https://youtu.be/jaJZOBa7HLU?si=nWSdhCpOiorxp6Mv&t=900 of the National Geographic documentary recorded at that same location featuring several of us from the community, explaining that my experience there confirmed my suspicion that I am a watcher of women and not a sinker of self. She gave me a hug and thanked me. I am sure she will never think of quicksand or anxiety exactly the same way again.

EDIT: I should add that back in 2017 I took a diagnostic test and discovered that I am not on the spectrum of autism but land within spitting distance of it which might explain some of my peculiar traits. I know we have discussed this topic on this board elsewhere in the past. I think it bears relevance here.

[PA Jack]

To Quicksandmania: a very thoughtful and insightful post. I, too, am a retired engineer, probably undiagnosed spectrum-edged as a kid. As you described, I also felt traumatized by a quicksand scene as a very young child (in this case, the mad doctor getting pushed under by his zombie wife in the horrible B-film Revenge of the Zombies). After that, any quicksand scene made my heart pound and made me feel breathless. Your observation that, as a young teen, these were the same symptoms around girls strikes a chord with me. I had never put those two facts together, but maybe there is something to that for me, as it was during my early teens that I put girls and quicksand together, and it actually became a turn-on thing for me.

Of course, I felt weird and absolutely, fearfully alone with this kink, until the advent of the internet and discovering that there were others. I married keeping this a secret for years until finally fessing up to my wife (of now 42 years). She did not judge me and knows that I continue to pursue this interest on line, but it is just not her thing to participate in any way. I showed her a few of the movie scenes and Dave’s videos, and she just said “OK, but I just don’t get it.”

So while I still don’t totally understand the interest, it has become a lifelong thing that I finally have made peace with and actually enjoy. Thanks again for your post.

[PA Jack]

I also shared to her with her permission the scene at https://youtu.be/jaJZOBa7HLU?si=nWSdhCpOiorxp6Mv&t=900 of the National Geographic documentary recorded at that same location featuring several of us from the community, explaining that my experience there confirmed my suspicion that I am a watcher of women and not a sinker of self. She gave me a hug and thanked me. I am sure she will never think of quicksand or anxiety exactly the same way again.

EDIT: I should add that back in 2017 I took a diagnostic test and discovered that I am not on the spectrum of autism but land within spitting distance of it which might explain some of my peculiar traits. I know we have discussed this topic on this board elsewhere in the past. I think it bears relevance here.

Also, thanks for posting the link to the above National Geographic documentary - had not seen that one before.

[Black Clay Lord]

My fetish began in a period of strife, when I being persecuted for my beliefs.

Kidding. It started when I did my quicksand research, and it eventually just grew & grew.

[Theo]

I also shared to her with her permission the scene at https://youtu.be/jaJZOBa7HLU?si=nWSdhCpOiorxp6Mv&t=900 of the National Geographic documentary recorded at that same location featuring several of us from the community, explaining that my experience there confirmed my suspicion that I am a watcher of women and not a sinker of self. She gave me a hug and thanked me. I am sure she will never think of quicksand or anxiety exactly the same way again.

EDIT: I should add that back in 2017 I took a diagnostic test and discovered that I am not on the spectrum of autism but land within spitting distance of it which might explain some of my peculiar traits. I know we have discussed this topic on this board elsewhere in the past. I think it bears relevance here.

Also, thanks for posting the link to the above National Geographic documentary - had not seen that one before.

Much appreciated also! I hadn't been able to find that for a while; only place I get to see the sinking by Coleman lamp light video in that awesome Mississippi river mud. Only wish I was around back then to see more

[QuicksandMania]

Much appreciated also! I hadn't been able to find that for a while; only place I get to see the sinking by Coleman lamp light video in that awesome Mississippi river mud. Only wish I was around back then to see more

Sadly, of the five of us men in that brief segment, only two (Duncan and I) remain. The other three (Chuck, Don, Mike) passed prematurely of natural causes accelerated by lifestyle factors (stressing, drinking, eating). The metaphysical woman I mentioned wanted to make something metaphysical of their consecutive passings until I explained that lifestyle part of it. I think our imbalance sexually reflects imbalance more deeply in our nervous systems. I have been spending a lot of time studying emotional dysregulation and how to process emotions to become more self-regulated emotionally. The metaphysical woman and other cohorts of hers in the area have a lot to say about this and tend to tie into a lot of Hindu teachings about chakras and so forth. The sacral chakra centers on the sexual organs and is related not just to procreation, nor just to recreation, but to creation itself. All desire springs forth from those organs according to those teachings. I am rambling here a bit, but I am speculating about how imbalanced we are in other areas of our lives and whether we need to pause and self-examine about this.

[PA Jack]

I actually had several of Chuck Lang’s videos, including the scene mentioned above. However, they were all VHS tapes at the time, and I wasn’t proactive enough to transfer them to DVD, so I have lost them as the tapes decayed. Live and learn. His scenes were simple and mostly single camera, but they were great, with really good sinking locations. I miss them.