Different Loving: The World of Sexual Dominance and Submission (53 page)

Electricity is often used in interrogation scenarios but may also simply be incorporated into D&S as another form of unusual or intense stimulus. Several interviewees reported that they have experimented with household 9-volt batteries to create a weak shock to skin.

So high and potentially lethal are its risks that electricity is both uncommon and generally confined to play with a few archaic, pseudo-medical machines. Even these, however, cannot guarantee safety.

Considerably less common and far more expensive is the TENS (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulator), a static-electricity generator most commonly used in medical settings to relieve chronic pain.

I
NTERVIEWS

I’m still pretty young. It’s not that long ago that I was an adolescent. I’m still very visibly and noticeably growing, and [I’m] getting a chance to get what I want sexually. I think for anybody, getting what you want is the most empowering thing that could possibly happen, especially getting something that you’ve been told is shameful your entire life. Getting to do it anyway because it’s what turns you on [is] incredibly empowering.

I never had a problem with [my D&S feelings]. I was raised as a feminist and consider myself a feminist. I know a lot of women have trouble coming to terms with [D&S]—especially heterosexual women who want to be dominated by men. I can understand why it might cause internal problems. But I felt a more external shame, knowing that everyone else thought that this was weird.

I’m a lesbian. [For me], being attracted to women is a separate issue from not being attracted to men. A lot of people don’t see it that way, so I often feel weird identifying myself as a lesbian. It buys into a paradigm that I don’t agree with. The fact is that I’m [just] not attracted to people who are male. I’m not intimate with women for political reasons. Women turn me on. I act on it.

I’m both a masochist and [a] submissive. I don’t eliminate the possibility of wanting to be a top sometime in the future, but being a bottom is definitely what turns me on. It’s only a couple of years since I first started having mild play with my lover at the time—spanking, a little [D&S]. I was much more into it than she, and that was tricky. More recently, I’ve been going to workshops and getting a lot of information. I [now] have a lover who is heavily into S&M. [S&M] is confined to sex play, although thinking about power in the way that you learn to think about it [as a result of] being involved in D&S makes me very attuned to the shifting of power in daily relationships.

I wonder if pain feels different to other people, because even in nonsexual contexts, pain does not bother me. I first started to notice this in high school. Perhaps the masochism is either physical or related to the organization of your perception. Sometimes pain feels like pleasure; [it’s] physically exciting. It’s like when you’re masturbating: The idea that [your] hand is touching [your] clit may not be exciting, but the sensation is; sometimes [the sensation of] pain is like that for me. I don’t have to be thinking about sex.
When pain [does combine with] mental arousal, there is a line between masochism and submission for me; then the idea that I’m in pain excites me, as well. The idea that I have to submit to pain [makes me feel] very submissive.

I did one scene with [my lover] where I got to do a lot of stuff that wasn’t directly pleasurable for either of us, but it was very submissive. I licked her boots; she also wore a strap-on dildo—the kind attached to underwear—and had me go down on her with that. So she probably wasn’t getting any direct physical pleasure out of it. Neither was I, but it was very submissive [and] a real turn-on to both of us. I like things like that just because they’re kinky; that is a turn-on [in] itself. There’s no hiding the fact that what’s going on is a purely submissive act. I like that feeling. My present lover has done a couple of things to me like that: held me down and put a nine-volt battery on my tongue. She didn’t have to hold me down; I wasn’t struggling, although I don’t like electricity—it scares me. But the fact that I don’t like the sensation [and] yet I’m letting her do that to me is a turn-on.

A while ago my lover and I went to a party at her friend’s house. It was not an S&M party, but she put a collar on me [and] a locked bracelet on my wrist before [we left]. The symbolism was heavy, and I liked that. I was getting progressively hotter, sexually excited, just having this stuff on me and being in this public situation. When we came home, she had me strip and tied my hands together and started whipping me. It was the first time I’d been whipped for any length of time. She whipped me until I started crying. That’s the first time I ever got to such an intense point. She whipped my upper back, which is not usually where I prefer to be hit, until I was on the edge of being out of control. Then she started fucking me and put her finger up my ass. I’d never had that done before, and she didn’t tell me she was going to do it. It triggered a really submissive response! If [she’d] asked me if I wanted her finger there, I would have said no. But I was very glad that didn’t happen, because I liked it overall. We went back and forth like that for a while, and finally I yelled. Actually, I don’t actually remember yelling, though I was sore the next day, so I believe her. All I know is that I was incredibly open to her and out of control, which was really nice. It was really nice when I almost reached breaking point, to hear her behind me going, “Yes!”

It was like a primal victory to get me to that point. [And] that someone wanted that from me was really nice and really helped. And then to be told, “Oh, you’ve been such a good girl! Now you can have whatever you want!” Then she went straight into pleasure stuff, instead of pain-and-pleasure play. I was really open at that point, physically and mentally, and she was able to fist-fuck me for the first time.

After resting a while I was [still] feeling very submissive, and she was
feeling keenly dominant, so she had me go down on her and eat her out while she was whipping me. I thought it was great fun. It was incredibly kinky, and I liked the turnaround. I don’t know if it’s true for hetero couples as much, but a lot of times between women there is this thing where, if you’re receiving pleasure, then you’re the bottom. But she was still the top and still beating me, but I was giving her pleasure and making her come. I liked her “making me give her pleasure.” That’s the most intense experience [I’ve had].

[Authors’ note: We first interviewed John in 1991; 10 months later we did a follow-up with him, and at that time we interviewed his wife as well.] 1991: My whole background is one of a lot of sexual repression. Except for four years at [college], I’ve lived all my life in the South. At home, sex was something you just didn’t talk about—
really
didn’t talk about. One time that I managed to sneak something by my parents, my father took me to the family physician, where I got the story of the birds and the bees. [In] reading, I came across the word
rape
and looked it up in the dictionary, which told me: “illicit carnal knowledge,” which was a big help! I approached my mom and asked, “What is this?” I think she said, “It’s when a man makes a woman have a baby.” Well, how can that happen? I mean, when two people get married, they have a baby, right? How can a man
make
a woman have a baby against her will? Eventually the bare mechanics came out. Because of my mother’s extreme discomfort with the subject, the message I got from her was that sex was such a
shameful
thing! When I heard that this is what you do when you get married, my reaction was, “I will never get married if I have to do that!” Of course, even then I was having S&M fantasies. I didn’t know what they were. I didn’t even know what sex was; it had something to do with my penis.

The first woman I had intercourse with was the woman that I was later to marry. I was almost 26 years old. In the early days of that marriage I felt like for the first time I was free of all the sexual hang-ups. But our first child changed stuff around. Nothing was as easy, nothing was as free, and before long I ended up back in the same shape. There was one very small S&M event with my first wife. We had so many other things to explore that we just didn’t get back to it. Now [that] I am remarried, we have been exploring. I’m a novice, though there’s certainly been a lot happening within the last couple of years, due to some wonderful people that have come into my life: my new wife and my friends in an S&M support group.

My wife’s even more of a novice than I am, not real comfortable with some of it. The psychological aspects of D&S are less comfortable for her
even than whacking me with a whip. She’s letting me push her a little. For example, I’ll come up with an idea, and we’ll do it. It ranges from me getting tied up and whipped a little bit to playing around with pins and needles.

I guess what excites me most is genital torture. I started off thinking that I wanted the pain. I found out that when I got out of fantasy and into reality that it hurts. Kind of obvious! But that didn’t lessen my interest; I’d like to go further. But I’m not quite as sure anymore that it’s actually the pain I want or something else that happens along with the pain. Or because of the pain. Or in spite of the pain.

Among my most exciting real-life experiences, the first thing that comes to mind is something that happened a year ago. It was accidental, which may have something to do with why it’s memorable and exciting. We were playing around with this little whip that I made out of clothesline. I was naked and with my feet far apart and my hands tied behind my back. She was hitting me with some force. The end of the whip caught the tip of my penis and caught it pretty good. I hollered. My wife dropped the whip because it scared her. I said, “Grab it [the penis] and hold on,” which is exactly what I would have done if my hands had been free. She did. At that moment I felt the most overwhelming feeling of love. It was terrific.