1996 – 1998 (late teens):
I’ve been interested in fetishism (specifically nylon fetishism) and BDSM since my teens after coming across the 1996 Nick Broomfield documentary, Fetishes, Bettie Page specials, and Marquis Magazine. I was a member of Dita Von Teese’s fan club in the late nineties and purchased several of her VHS tapes and I even mailed her (upon request) a VHS copy I recorded off MTV of her Green Day Redundant music video appearance (I guess back then there was no way to get a physical copy of music videos).
My original goal was to become a filmmaker in my mid teens, but I definitely got sidetracked in life. My favorite film directors (at the time) were David Fincher (Se7en), Stanley Kubrick (The Shining), David Cronenberg (Crash), and David Lynch (Lost Highway). I was a military brat and moved around a lot from California to Japan to Hawaii to Texas in 98 when I was 18. 98 was the year of the endless keg party Summer and attending rave events.
2002 – 2005 (early twenties):
I started doing videography and fetish photography in my early twenties around 2002, and used Hi8 and Mini DV for videos and an old Canon film camera for photography, focusing on black and white. My first video was called Corsetta and it was shot in 2002. I also started producing Fetish Ball events around this time, including one where Dita Von Teese headlined at a show that took place at a mansion on Beverly Hills Drive in Houston. This event was called Desire. The mansion had 3 levels, and we had a full underground Dungeon in multiple rooms in the bottom level which was under the street level. It was a pretty epic party that Houston hadn’t seen before. Tim Martin, Kerry Toorcana, and Jonathan Kramm (R.I.P.) helped put this event together. I always remembered Kramm telling me “People will remember this party twenty years from now”.
My fetish photography work with a model named Portia Surreal was eventually published in magazines such as Marquis Magazine and Skin Two Magazine. There was some toxic photographers in the scene back then that would tell other local models not to work with me and also try to tear apart my work online (one guy reminds me of the Hunter Moore fella that Netflix just produced a show about). From from what I understand, one of these photographers became homeless and the other pawned off his camera gear and no longer shoots (you can barely find a trace of him online these days). There was also a fetish ball producer/store owner that would have his minions remove flyers from my shows off of cars and other locations and throw them in the trash because he didn’t want anyone else producing fetish events in Houston. He later closed up his shop and stopped producing parties. I later saw him attending one of my events years later. The main lesson here is to just keep doing what you are doing and eventually your haters will fade away.
2005-2009 (mid to late twenties):
I was consistently doing fetish photo shoots (the most well known being of a dark-haired bondage girl on a kitchen countertop) until my mid-twenties when I become involved in the strip club business. My sister, Natalie, had recommended me to a man named Bob Glass. Bob was a strip club manager and also did photography and he was looking for a photographer for Rick’s Cabaret. Bob would send shoot assignments (and sometimes weddings he couldn’t do) my way and loan out his camera to me. I consider him to be one of my first mentors in life. One day when I was near the tail end of a bad relationship, Bob called me up and offered me a full-time job to work at a strip club as a manager. This helped me relocate to Downtown Houston and start a new chapter in life. I was full of anger at this point in my life and I had no problem kicking out drunk customers or gang-bangers from the club. I had no clue about gangs and just dived in when someone needed to be removed from the club. I believe my cluelessness and lack of fear saved me from getting hurt in the beginning, but I eventually broke my knuckles (punching in someone’s eye socket), had my shoulder dislocated fighting 5 people at a movie theater (not smart), and had a gun put to my head in early morning robbery at one of the clubs. I believe I got all the violence out of my system in these years. I worked at a lot of clubs, Rick’s Cabaret, XTC North, XTC South, Show Palace Cabaret, Legends, etc. And I met a lot of great people who I am still friends with, such as Jack Mallein, J.D. Stanley, Chris Baulch, Charles Crowson, D.J. Hernandez, Sajid, and others. Others have died from various causes: Moses Campos, Tommy Langan, Edlyn Munoz, Raymond Keith Scott. I married my first wife (she was a dancer at one of the clubs I was the manager at) in my late twenties and we had a daughter. That marriage lasted about 9 years. I have many strip clubs stories that I can’t post publicly, including one involving cannibalism and another story about someone picking up a mountain of used condoms with no gloves. I have seen some things!
2010-2015 (thirties) –
I started Sinical Magazine in 2010 and subspace Magazine in 2013. With print on demand companies like MagCloud coming around, it was becoming easier to publish magazines in an affordable fashion. In the past you had to print in bulk and have a large staff to make a magazine. I did research for several months on magazine design and publishing. I used InDesign to create the layouts, then I would upload the PDFs to MagCloud and make the issues available on demand. There was a lot less competition in the alt/pinup/fetish genre in the early days of MagCloud, but now a new magazine seems to pop up every week. Over the years, we have featured people such as Dita Von Teese, Masuimi Max, Cervena Fox, Angela Ryan, Ludella Hahn, Steve Diet Goedde, Chas Ray Krider, etc. We have also featured interviews with people like Henry Rollins and the art work of Marilyn Manson, when we were trying to figure out the identity of what the magazine was. Once people like Dita Von Teese and Masuimi Max were on the covers, the submissions from models all over the world started flooding in. I’m proud to say that we have featured female, male, and transgendered models of many different races in the magazine and on the covers. Many people have helped out and contributed content over the years, such as Angela Ryan, Kimber Fox, and Jones Grey.
2016-2019 (mid to late thirties) –
In my mid-thirties, I got a divorce and I started pursuing two other interests: filmmaking and BDSM. I revisited my interest in making films by making two short films: Solitaire and Curse of Witches, and a bunch of Sinical promo videos. Despite my interest in fetishism, I had never really explored BDSM play in my personal life. For a period of three years, I explored these activities consensually with around 13 Dominatrices (some pretty well known) at Dungeons, hotel rooms, and even a graveyard. These sessions involved: nylon fetishism, impact play, sploshing, nipple piercing, electro play, bondage predicament, religious play (fetish nun), and many other activities. I documented some of this in my magazine series: Dominatrices. I was kind of mentally/emotionally lost at times in this period (even had suicidal thoughts) and got involved with people I probably shouldn’t, but I met my future wife, Brittany, through a mutual friend, and we begin to do shoots and explore a BDSM relationship. Brittany was a professional Dominatrix at a Dungeon in Houston. We both lost friends (that weren’t good for us) when we officially got together and she retired from Dominatrix work. Brittany and I got married in 2020.
I co-produced several Sinical Ball fetish events at Cover Girls, the Houston Westchase Hotel, and Rockafellers, but the pandemic put this to a halt for a couple of years. I continued to do photo shoots and got a lot of advice from another mentor: Damien Hevia. Hevia gave me a lot of photography tips and helped me transition from consistent lighting techniques to off camera flash lighting techniques. Hevia passed away in 2017 and he is missed. My work from this period was published in Hustler Magazine and Goliath Books‘s Nylon Parade.
2020 – 2022 (early forties):
I revisted my original goal of becoming a feature film director and begin pre-production on The Goetia Diaries in November 2020. The film is about a vlogger (played by Jay Short) who becomes involved in the world of the occult and black magick and presented in a found footage style. After a successful Kickstarter campaign, we began filming in late June 2021. We completed filming on March, 14th 2022. After several months of editing we submitted the film in late July to a distribution platform called Filmhub and began manufacturing Blu-rays. We are awaiting the official online streaming release, but Blu-rays are now available for ordering.
I’m currently working on my 2nd feature length film script, which will be about my experiences in the fetish and BDSM scene. My goal is to begin shooting in late 2022 and to release the film before I turn 43 in March of 2023. Brittany and I are happily married and living in a house (with a cat and a dog) and the toxic people from our past have been removed from our inner circle. It is true that you are the reflection of the company that you keep. It is also true that it is never too late to revisit your goals in life.
~ Danny Stygion