Best Sex Writing 2010 (10 page)

Usually I prefer, even insist on being the instigator of racially charged play. I need to be able to look, objectively, at the top in question and see how I feel about them as a person, how they are within the community, if I like them and can see myself forming a friendship. Without this knowledge, I can’t begin to think about exploring very dark edge play. Someone who approaches me outright will immediately put me into a defensive mode. I’ll always wonder if the reason they asked me was because they really are a closeted racist and I am a convenient outlet.

I was slated to teach a class on race play in Chicago, and I was not planning on having a demo for the class. It was a city mostly unknown to me, and I’d have none of the people who I might feel comfortable scening with in attendance. I was surprised when a new acquaintance of mine, also a presenter in the BDSM and leather community, offered to help by acting as demo top for this presentation. I knew Gray (aka Graydancer) well enough that my hackles weren’t raised, but I was curious as to what inspired him to put himself out there in that manner.

“I offered to help with Mollena’s race-play workshop for a variety of reasons, none of which was that I enjoy playing with racial stereotypes,” said Graydancer. “It’s not something I’ve ever had an interest in, any more than medical play or age play. The reasons were more selfish than that—wanting to see Mollena, wanting to
expand my own skills as a ‘demo top,’ wanting to go visit my old stomping grounds in Chicago. But there was definitely a tinge of edge play to the material itself, a kind of challenge to my own comfort zone, a question of ‘Are you really a good enough top to be able to go there, and not just make it work, but make it hot?’ Going into the workshop was very much like the feeling you get at the top of a ski hill you’ve never tried, or as you approach the edge of the high-diving board. Am I really going to do this?”

Since he had no experience in this type of play, I mustered up the courage to send to him the story I’d started writing for James all those years ago, a segment of which you just read. We did some basic negotiation, and that was pretty much it. This was a real cliff dive, as he was as much at risk as I was in this scene: I wasn’t that worried about how far I might go, or about negative feedback. I’ve been down that road before. But I knew it could possibly be dodgy for Gray, so I made it clear to the class that not only was it the first time I was doing this type of scene (an explicitly Antebellum South–style plantation scene) but also it was his maiden flight into this turbulent air.

I was surprised by the immediate submissive headspace I hit in this scene, but in retrospect, it made total sense. Gray had been privy to a fantasy that had lain, pristine, for over a decade. In my head there were all of the emotional trips and triggers that would be critical to making the scene hot. I wondered if I would be aroused or disgusted with myself for permitting this scene to breathe into life, but after the opening salvo, and as my clothes were sliced and ripped from me in preparation for punishment by this rather brutal and sadistic “slave trader,” there was no doubt that I was not only turned on but completely in tune with this fantasy. As the bottom, I am able to roll with the flow of the scene, but the top is the one who has to keep things afloat. They
have to do the steering, the pushing. That was Gray’s job.

“While doing it, there wasn’t much thought involved,” Graydancer said. “No thought about the ethics or morality of it, anyway. I was in the moment, playing a character I’d plucked right out of Mollena’s own fantasies, doing my best to break through her shell of self-control by hitting precise pressure points in her psyche, and doing it with as much method acting as I could muster.”

It was certainly beneficial to Gray to try this type of scene with, essentially, a blueprint and an experienced bottom. Even as I was pushed over a bench so that I could be “inspected” for “usefulness” and then was found lacking, the shame I felt veered from shame at my wanting this to happen at all to shame at the “me” who was truly present in the role-play feeling shame at somehow failing to be pleasing. The framework of this dynamic provides a set, lighting, and costume for the psyche to play out the emotional drama. We already have this knowledge, this shame, this nightmare, and yes, this lust, within us. The capacity to pull it out and make it arousing is nothing short of miraculous.

I’d joked with Gray that he would probably have people asking him how the scene was for him afterward, because of the relative scarcity of whites who do this type of play. Everyone wants to know how it feels to be “the oppressor” in these scenes, and this is a unique opportunity for them.

I’d left the demo area for a moment to put on some clothes after the scene, and catch my breath. As I returned to the classroom, I heard a Black woman who was in the class participating in the discussion. “I really wanted to jump in there and help you a few times,” she was saying. I turned to her, a bit bleary but grateful for the support. It is scary up there! As I started to speak, she waved me off. “No, no, not you. Gray. He was being way too nice to you.”

Nonplussed, I turned to Gray. “There you go! Always leave’em wanting more.”

He was surprised by the responses as well. “We came to the end of the scene, and that was when it got weird. People were concerned, people wanted to make sure everything was okay with
me,
not Mollena, who had been beaten, terrorized, and literally dehumanized. No, the questions were coming from people—regardless of skin color—who wanted to make sure I was okay, that my psyche had not been bruised. In fact, when I travel through the Midwest I will still get people who come up to me and express appreciation for the demo. I’ve never heard one negative comment.”

That was an added flavor of humiliation, unexpected even for me, and, in the way that the pain can be pleasurable, yet another shove down the slope of erotic humiliation.

Humiliation is a delicate balancing act. The person laying on the abuse has to remain focused, and watch themselves and their bottom for signs of the scene veering off course. There is a very likely possibility that something you say will push a button, and some reaction—rage, fear, terror, despair—will rear its head and start flailing about, thrashing in its pain and potentially dragging the scene to a destructive place.

For me, humiliation is a broad-brush full-bore way for me to feel the worst of how I feel about myself, give it away to someone, and have them hold it.

Once someone else holds it up for me, mirrors it back, shows me the depth of my own feelings, my self-deprecation, I can see it for what it is.

And then they let it go.

And then, they come back, and love me for who I
truly
am.

And then, sometimes just for a second, but usually for much
longer, I feel immensely powerful. Present. Whole.

Add to this mix the humiliation of years of racism, oppression, the struggle for identity. Add to this living in a country built by your ancestors and one where, in your parents’ memory, your ancestors were living in segregation.

Imagine, instead of covering up that scar, that wound, pulling it open, letting that suppurating pain see the light of day, bare, open and painful, but able to breathe, to heal, and so find peace in surviving it.

I go there because I am that much more powerful for taking that which I cannot control and shaping it into something I
can
control, and learning from this.

And the next time someone mutters an epithet under their breath, or I’m followed in a store by security, or get “That Look” when walking into a restaurant, I can take a deep breath, focus my energies, and do battle with that monster as I see fit.

Because I have tamed the dragon, and now we play.

 

 

Okay, call me old-fashioned, but I still like pubic hair. Internet porn sites now present several choices—completely shaved, vertical landing strips that look like exclamation points, heart shaped, the Charlie Chaplin with just a little patch above the clitoris, and a tiny triangle that serves as an arrow
pointing
to the clit—yet, for pubic follicles one has to search the Web for “hairy” sites that are considered as “specialty,” “kinky” or “fetish.”

Retired porn stars have commented on this phenomenon. Gina Rome, retired after six years, shaved every day. “It was part of getting ready for work.” When she switched from acting to film editing, she stopped shaving and let her pubic hair grow out. “Shaving was work. I don’t have to do it anymore, so I don’t.” And Kelly Nichols says, “I was a
Penthouse
model in the early 1980s, and I posed with a full bush. No one in adult entertainment shaved back then. Now everybody does.”

Although Martha Stewart is back on TV, you can be sure that she’ll never give any suggestions on what to do about those big red razor bumps that result from shaving your vagina, so here’s a helpful hint I’d like to pass along—they can be largely eliminated with, of all things, Visine eyedrops.

The porn industry has played an important part in shaping pubic styles. Jordan Stein writes in an article titled “Has Porn Gone Mainstream?”: “Consider the near icon status the female porn star has achieved. She is so mainstream that even good girls are imitating her various styles of undress, disappearing hair and all. Porn chic? You bet.”

However, Julia Baird writes in
Celebrity Porn
: “The idea that the fashion industry can strip, then exhibit women in the name of ‘porn chic’ is a bit silly, frankly. But, ‘flesh is the new fabric’ could be the new catchcry. Americans call their bush George W. It’s fashionable—the curious fact is that it is fueled by the porn aesthetic that celebrities love to love.”

Among Hollywood actresses, Gwyneth Paltrow and Kirstie Alley have both admitted favoring Brazilian wax jobs, where most of their pubic hair is removed, leaving a small tuft that remains hidden under a thong bikini. Sarah Jessica Parker’s character, Carrie Bradshaw, had her pubic hair removed during the third season of “Sex and the City.” Presumably, it’s now in the Smithsonian Museum along with Archie Bunker’s chair and the Fonz’s jacket.

On ABC’s “Women’s Murder Club,” a medical examiner directs her gaze to the crotch of a female corpse and says, “That’s not your mama’s bikini wax.” On “The View,” Joy Behar said, “No pubic hair creates a wind tunnel.” And in a hysterical episode of HBO’s dark comedy series, “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” former “Seinfeld” producer Larry David performed oral sex on his wife, and in the process he sort of swallowed one of her pubic
hairs. The next day, he was still choking on it, like a cat trying to get rid of a hairball.

A psychologist at Harvard Medical School and author of
Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty
, Nancy Etcoff, writes that “There’s also an erotic, sexual component to hairlessness because your skin is more sensitive when it’s more exposed. Women today are emulating porn stars who have no pubic hair, and I think men like it.”

My own resistance to the plethora of bald pussies stems from my preadolescent days when pubic hair was such a big taboo that I became obsessed with it. In those pre-bikini days, I would go to Coney Island and stroll around the sand, sneaking glances at ladies in the hope of finding a few stray curlicues of forbidden pubic hair peeking out from their various and sun-dried crotches. And if I was able to discover any, why, it felt as though I had experienced a really productive afternoon.

Betty Dodson, sex educator and producer of
Viva La Vulva
, says, “I think we have changing ideas about what’s public and what’s private. And now that nudity is more public—nude beaches, routine nudity in film, and the enormous amount of exhibitionism and porn on the Web—I’m not surprised to see a trend toward pubic shaving. I think it’s probably here to stay.”

As for men, California Governor and former actor Arnold Schwarzenegger was only joking when he announced that he was going to get a bikini wax, but actually, Beverly Hills skin care and waxing expert Nance Mitchell has about fifty regular male customers that come for pubic waxing who “are not gay and they are not porn stars. Some go totally bare, some just do the shaft and up around the pelvic area.” She explains that “It depends on what their wives and girlfriends want. Men go along because removing the hair makes the whole package look bigger.”

Yes, the
illusion
of size does matter.

 

 

The year was 1982. I was four years past menopause and at fifty-three, the hormone levels were still dropping. Marijuana had always been an aphrodisiac, but I no longer smoked pot, to keep my short-term memory sharp while writing my sexual memoirs. Along with my yearly sexual adventure as an anonymous prostitute and running my Bodysex Groups, I continued to be interested in ways to be erotically entertained during the many years that lay ahead.

One evening over dinner, my friend Suzanne was talking about a new support group of S/M lesbians that had just started up that year. She had only been to one meeting, but when she described the kinds of topics discussed, I was transfixed. Here was a group of outrageous lesbian feminists who were enjoying the most politically incorrect sex imaginable. When I asked if she could bring me to their next meeting, she said she’d be happy to introduce me to them.

The notion of politically correct sex came from the early seventies when feminists wanted the ideal of love between equals with both partners monogamous. For heterosexual women, PC sex put them in the age-old bind of trying to change men by getting them to shape up, settle down, and be faithful, a project that has consistently failed for centuries. Most lesbians assumed sex between women would naturally be equal and faithful, which of course wasn’t true. During the seventies, I too longed for the ideal of love and sex between equals, which I was never able to establish. When I had a primary relationship with myself, that was as equal as I could get. Even then, there were times I broke up with myself for treating me so badly.