If you know my story, you know that I was an ABDL blogger for about eight years before I began captaining the Luvs Boat. Over the years my blog gained a steady readership, becoming a place members of our community could come to read real-life experiences from me and others. I invited guest entry submissions, created the Q&A Series, hosted several photo and essay contests, and even did a community-wide survey. At one point we celebrated my blog’s millionth pageview. One million views! Yet all that time I was living in a community where I was - for lack of a better term - blackballed.
It seems that several of the local community ‘leaders’ had taken a strong dislike to me. They had a problem with someone who they had only briefly spoken to and had never met. Because of their dislike for me, I’d meet zero local ABDLs in the community that I lived in for nine years - before I finally moved.
Contrast that with the sixty visitors I’ve had - many of them local or regional to me - since!
I share the details of my story with many of the visitors I welcome to the boat - but tend to share it less openly online, because it is ugly.
I hesitate to share because I know that this website will be the first exposure to our community that some ABDLs will have. They are brought here from a YouTube video I posted that has garnered nearly 100K views since it went up. They see a boat filled with littles, and all of the fun we’re having, and they visit the website to see more. I don’t want to dampen the fun, so to speak, with my story.
And I know, too, that some members of our community have shared the LuvsBoat.com link with people not in our community - wives and partners, friends, and college roommates are among those I’ve been told about. It seems when someone is trying to normalize a fringe lifestyle lie ours, a site like this one, filled with scenes of happiness, may just be the go-to.
And I know, also, that vanillas sometimes find this page - through us, or on their own - and are spellbound by what is happening here. I’ve heard from reporters representing national media outlets asking to do feature stories on the Luvs Boat - I declined for security/safety reasons - and I’ve heard from a boat brokers wondering if it might not be time for us to upgrade to a newer, bigger boat. (Not yet).
Knowing all of this, I hesitate to share a story that paints the community that I love, and am so proud of, in a negative light.
Still, my story is such an important part of the story of the Luvs Boat.
The gist of it is this:
The ABDL community is an 18+ community. We know that most people into this (and other kinks) tend to discover this side of themselves in their adolescent years, and some begin exploring online shortly afterward. But we keep a dividing line between those above 18 and those below - no exceptions. Responsible members of the ABDL community don’t converse with minors, don’t consort with minors, and we do not allow photos of those under 18 to be shared within our communities.
It hasn’t always been this way. Including, unfortunately, in my former city, and others. While the vast majority of the ABDL community have always been good people, a small fraction of them have a problematic past, welcoming pedophiles, pederasts, and child pornographers. You need only read my years-long Hall of Shame series to understand that.
Communities with problematic people in them have been known to ostracize those they considered ‘judgy’ - people who came into town with their “18+” requirements. #blackballed
‘Community leaders’ who were unconcerned with the safety of our community and its youngest (future) members often threw the best parties. Sometimes they would throw in free travel, theme park tickets, unlimited diapers, and what might seem like the best changes in the world. There was a time that many of the diaper gatherings you’d see on the internet openly welcomed people with checkered pasts - and barred those who questioned their attendance.
The desire to belong - to be accepted by a group of people who are like us, and to be invited to the pool party, to appear in that group photo - that desire is unbelievably strong. It has caused many an ABDL to abandon their principles and stand with people they otherwise would probably want nothing to do with.
What sometimes resulted would be a clique that, in some areas, excluded those who dared to ‘judge’ (aka insisted on 18+ for themselves), yet warmly welcomed problematic people the majority of our community now stands against. And the fear of being excluded from a party for having upset the party host used to be all it would take to keep people from being able to meet others - including me, in my old city.
Believe it or not, I lived in my previous city for nine years, yet met zero local ABDLs in all of that time. (I did get to meet a number of visitors to the city - thank God for tourism!) The first few years were their decision - I didn’t even know why I was being excluded. Eventually I found out, and for the rest of those years, the decision was mutual. Community ‘leaders’ finally invited me out for a cup of coffee in year 10 - after I’d left and returned to where I live now.
The Luvs Boat changed everything.
I started this adventure by inviting a college student from a town about an hour away. I wasn’t sure if an ABDL would want to spend time on a boat, so I was a little apprehensive. He was, as well, until he arrived and saw the boat. “This is way bigger than I expected,” he told me. “It’s basically a floating house. This is cool.” He also told me that he thought the bed in the back would make a nice crib…
When two of my guests came to visit the boat at the same time during year two it would be the first time I’d ever met more than one ABDL at a time (outside of CAPCON). A few weeks later I’d host six ABDLs at the boat at once, and the feeling of belonging and acceptance was overwhelming.
While I still didn’t agree with it, I think I understood, then, for the first time, why good people might have been willing to accept such bad things just to be included.
I resolved, then and there, to make sure that visitors to this space wouldn’t be put in that position.
We’ve had 60+ visitors to the Luvs Boat since we launched in 2016.
I like to throw those numbers around a lot, because I know that the ‘leaders’ in my former city used to tell new members familiar with my blog that I was “anti-community” and etc., and I’d like to think that what we’ve done with the Luvs Boat should dispel that gibberish.
Many of those who comprise our little community are local. (All actually live at least 45 minutes from me - the boat serves as a central location for visitors from six different cities, each 1-3 hours away, so they travel a bit to come).
Others are not local at all - they’ve come from states across the US, and from Canada and Mexico. (We’re open to visitors from other places, as well - where ya at, Europe and Australia?) Some are one-time visitors looking to check “ABDL boat” off their ABDL bucket list, but most will be repeat visitors. Some even become, for lack of a better term, ‘regulars’.
I’ve had people tell me that they hesitate coming to the boat because they’re not young enough, thin enough, or attractive enough. I tell them that’s nonsense. Though those who pose for photos do tend to skew younger and fitter, our visitors come in all ages and sizes, as well.
For me, this boat is about creating a space where ABDLs can gather and experience a feeling of belonging, of acceptance. Of community…
The best part? They don’t have to abandon their principles to do it.
I’d been hosting my little boat events for about three summers when, in 2020, I was diagnosed with cancer - right after COVID hit.
I won’t lie - I had a tough time that year. I’d long since accepted my treatment at the hands of the ‘leaders’ in my former city, and I’d even convinced myself that I’d probably dodged a bullet in being blackballed. But for those first three years of the Luvs Boat I’d been making up for lost time, creating the community that had been denied me for so long!
Now COVID was being talked about as though it might never end - social distancing and an end to gatherings was being called "the new normal” - and my cancer was stage IV with no real way to gauge the prognosis? Surgery carried with it some risks, as well.
So I started talking about the things I don’t like about the worst corners of this community. Places like my former home.
I realized, that summer, that our community is amazing. The outpouring of love and support that I received in the lead-up to surgery, and during my recovery, was overwhelming. Just a few years earlier I’d had no local ABDL friends - I couldn’t have even told you what having one might be like - and now I had a group of ABDLs ready to raid my boat and de-kink it on a moment’s notice should surgery be unsuccessful.
I had friends who checked on the boat for me every day until I was able to return to it myself.
And I had a steady stream of messages to read and respond to while I was in the hospital, and recovering at home.
I can’t imagine this part of my life without the ABDL community, and it makes me sad that not every ABDL gets to experience this.
The story of the Luvs Boat is the story of my efforts to make other ABDLs feel included in a way that I never was, one ABDL at a time.
The story of my creating a community out of thin air, on the water of all places, on an old cabin cruiser.
We don’t allow those who believe minors should mix with adults. And we don’t allow ‘cliquebois’. Or ‘mean girls’. If you’re a good person, and a nice person, and someone who wants to experience - and, hopefully, contribute to - a true ABDL community… you might just be visitor 61.
When I say “hit me up if you want to visit” I mean that. Whether you live in a neighboring city, plan to pass through upstate New York on a road trip, or just want to buy a plane (train, bus) ticket and come - I’d love to have you.
And thanks for taking the time to read the story of the Luvs Boat.