Different Loving: The World of Sexual Dominance and Submission (91 page)

I’ve called myself bisexual since I was 16 and realized I was a dyke when I was 27. I [am] mainly a bottom, although I do switch. I’m finding ways to get satisfaction in [the dominant] role the longer I’m exploring.

I was hospitalized when I was 18 months old and was catheterized. I [had] fantasies about urine fairly early on, which helped me to remember my early experiences [and] why I was interested in this. They were memories that used to take over me, and I would think those things were happening over and over again. But when I was about six, I finally figured out that they were memories and not reality, and I hid them [from myself].

[As a small child], I was really interested in my father’s piss. I could hear the difference if he went into the toilet as opposed to when my mother was in there. I was more interested in my mother, but that was all hidden, because of the physical reasons, so I was really fascinated with my father’s urine stream. I remember wanting to put my hand out to touch it. It seemed like a stream of water. I was a real water baby—I was swimming when I was two—and so I wanted to experience the sensation.

When I was about 181 was reading one of the popularized sex-positive books that came out in the 1970s. It made brief mention that some people liked to play with piss. It triggered that desire in me again, but I did not act on it. By that time, I was very much aware that most of my sexuality was really not okay with peers. I deeply wanted to have experiences with women, but it was difficult for me to get away from the homophobia, both [personal] and community, and to explore who I was. In some ways I felt freer to discuss S/M fantasies, as long as they were in a heterosexual context. I turned 12 in 1968. I was too young to protest the war, but I did pick up the ’60s’ countercultural values. For me, sexual exploration was a human right. It’s such a strange thing to hold that as a deep value and yet not be able to give myself permission to explore the gay stuff.

Though I was actively exploring lots of different areas of S/M [with men], the intimacy of water sports was not something I was prepared to [share] with a male partner. It wasn’t until I came out with women that it felt accessible to me. I haven’t done play with piss with anyone besides really close lovers. I definitely play with other people, but I’ve only really done water sports in love relationships.

There’s basically three [pleasure] modes for me. One is the expectation
of it occurring: That sets up a real physical desire in me. The second mode is when it actually starts to happen, when the person is standing over me and the urine is starting to flow over my body. It feels really good. And then when the sharp smell starts rising and hits my nostrils, at that moment the negative cultural aspects of it hit me. [In] realizing that I really like and really want this, I experience a degree of humiliation about my desires.

As an experienced player, I know that [in] that moment of humiliation I can either be freaked out, or I can turn it into a sexual drive. For me, that is a moment of vulnerability: I can open further into my own sexual desires. That third mode [means] going into really intensely pleasurable bodily desires. Going through the three modes that I’ve discussed can be really cathartic, because it’s a play that involves my whole body in sensation; it’s really satisfying to savor that experience.

I didn’t start playing with urine until after safe sex became so necessary. I have drunk urine, but under very controlled circumstances, and I really enjoy it. My drinking it is deep intimacy; the intimacy is on the inside, so it’s kind of like getting even more of that whole body experience.

Not surprisingly, given my early history, I had a lot of medical fantasies as a kid. Usually I would be strapped down in some hospital bed being given an enema. They’d get very complicated, like I’d be strapped down, and they’d put the water in, and then the nurses would be called away. I’d be [left to deal] with this enema. Finally I’d have to let go, and I’d make a big mess. Then they’d be angry, and they’d punish me. I don’t have a physical memory of [getting] an enema [when I was little]. But I definitely know that I’ve always been fascinated with it. Every time I would hear the word or hear a reference as a child, I would just get this warm, squishy feeling. At the time, I didn’t know it was [a turn-on]; it was just that “mmmmmm feeling.”

My first piss experiences were transcendental. My first enema experiences with women weren’t transcendental, but they met needs. I was able to make it past the humiliation point sufficiently that it made it worth it. But enemas are really a different trip, I guess because shit is even more taboo; it’s also very messy and very smelly, and it has bacteria in it. So one has to take many more kinds of precautions. There’s also pain involved in an enema. Even a high colonic for health reasons is uncomfortable, whereas piss is all pleasure. It doesn’t have [any discomfort or] friction. I think [the turn-on of the enema is] that it’s a supreme humiliation to be so out of control; also penetration of the anus. [But humiliation] is very positive for me; it is an indication that I am right up against programming. And for me, challenging that programming is very important in my life. It is the letting-go through the humiliation which arouses me.

I’m working class, and I became a feminist at a very young age. To
discover in the last couple of years that I have a fetish for cleaning floors was very difficult for me to accept. That was something I wasn’t prepared for. I tell you—you discover that just about everything is eroticized.

My S/M play isn’t just sexually focused, but doing somebody’s menial labor and getting sexually aroused from that—I was not prepared to accept this in myself. That’s what is so shocking to me. I’ve done it where somebody stood over me or ordered me around while I did it, and that was wonderful. I’ve also done it where I was alone in that person’s house doing it, and that really worked, too. I think the key is that I have a relationship with this person. The most scary part about it is that the person has an upper-middle-class background, whereas I have a working-class background. So I’m playing with class, which is an extremely loaded area of play.

For me, liberating my body, its experiences, its desires, and pleasuring it as it wants to be pleasured has opened doors in my life that I did not know were closed.

I’m predominantly submissive; however, I’ve had a few dominant experiences in the last few years and now consider myself a little bit of both. D&S is an enhancement to my sex life. My wife does not participate in the Scene, although she and I play mild variations in our sex life.

[D&S] is such a compelling, intriguing force within my life that I find it hard to stay away from it. I don’t participate in it on a regular basis because of the logistics it requires, especially since it is a secretive part of my life. When I do stay away from it for a long time, I find my desire to participate builds to a point where I must make a move. If I had my druthers, I would prefer D&S to be a larger and more accepted part of my life.

[D&S] goes so far back in my life that I hardly can put a finger on it. It seems to almost begin with my first sexual thoughts as a small child, when I first discovered masturbating. I don’t know why, but some of the external stimuli that were around at the time seemed to suggest it to me. For instance, the concept of playing cowboys and Indians: Somebody’s tied up, and somebody is tormented. Frankly, in conjunction with the fact that I had a rather domineering mother, it goes so far back I can’t point to one particular event. The realization of what this was and where it may or may not fit into society didn’t occur [to me] until I was a teenager. I always assumed that it wasn’t popular—it was part of a sexual fantasy, and sexual thoughts were frowned upon in children. Obviously, if you got caught masturbating, you got in trouble; that part was reenforced early.

I think I had a bad self-image as a child, but not directly related to this aspect of my personality. However, knowing that I had these cravings for
things that were not acceptable didn’t help. I assume that my mother’s personality was a part of [my interest in submission], although I don’t blame her entirely. From a very early age I had this fantasy of rescuing the heroine and undergoing extreme trials and tribulations and torture on her behalf. That overlapped into being submissive to women,
putting
yourself through pain for the purposes of pleasing a woman.

I always wanted to become a lawyer, in part because my mother told me I should become a lawyer because I had a big mouth. I guess the biggest thing that happened to me when I was a teenager was the switch from having a bad self-image to figuring out that I had a value as a person. I became very active in school activities. I wasn’t blessed with the abilities necessary to become an athlete at the highest level, but I have participated in athletics all my life. I always had a job. I worked hard even as a kid at various jobs because I had this goal of going to college, and I wanted to make it. I also had, from very early on, a strong drive to get married and have kids. [Having] kids was my number-one goal in life. I decided early on that the best thing that a person could do was to have children and raise them properly.

The D&S was a real part of my sexual thoughts but didn’t seem to fit in with my very white, middle-class goals. On the other hand, I can’t say that my interest in D&S ever made me question [these] goals; nor did the goals make me question my interest in D&S.

I had an all-Catholic upbringing [and] a strong Catholic education. Very often, we were required to go on retreats and to introspect. It was part of your religious [and] personal development. I can remember discussing at one retreat the song by Crosby, Stills, and Nash in which they sing, “Do you expect for me to love you when you hate yourself, my friend?” That line has always stuck with me. It made so much sense: You know yourself better than anyone; if you can’t find anything in yourself that’s worthwhile, then how do you expect anybody else to find anything about you that’s worthwhile?

The things that I like to do the best are predominantly body worship and sensual submission to a woman. To me, body worship is the bringing of physical pleasure to a woman in a manner which she directs. It runs from a gentle massage by hand to complete oral servitude. The concept is that it is required of you to do this because of her superiority. That extends far beyond the sexual. I truly believe that women are superior to men. I expect women to be “better” as persons, to be good in every sense of the word: morally, socially, politically. I know that [my] prejudice can be defeated by actual facts, but when I deal with women I expect them to be better in many ways, more intelligent.

It’s not a natural activity for me to be a dominant with a woman. In situations where I’ve done it, it is because I have confided in a woman my
own interests in the D&S Scene. The woman is also somewhat interested in the Scene for whatever reasons, sexual or intellectual. I participate as the dominant in order to give her a taste of the excitement and the exhilaration of that activity. I’ve enjoyed it; it’s been very exciting for me.

I could count off five or six wonderful, ecstatic [D&S] experiences. One experience that stands out was memorable because it was with a very large, dominating woman—a woman who was physically bigger and stronger than I was. It was very exciting to be helpless with this woman, because there was no way that I could overpower or overcome [her]. Not that I ever had that desire in a scene, but in the back of your mind, it’s part of your safety mechanism—that maybe, if you had to, you could fight your way out. [But] I was truly helpless with this woman. Her real interest was in forced body worship. I remember being absolutely ecstatic to have this very tall and large woman sit on my face and force me to eat her out: I was just absolutely wired in terms of excitement.

She was also very much interested in golden showers, which was something I was desperate to try. That was my first opportunity to experience it. I’m very intrigued with it. It’s a natural part of my interests in the Scene. It’s attractive to me because somewhere in my mind, mentally, it shows the depth you will go [to] to please a woman. Deep down in my sexuality, that’s what I want to do.

I have to admit that there is a difficult dichotomy between humiliation [being] attractive and still having an image of yourself [as] a person of value. I think that when you are truly submissive, you want to [demonstrate it] in as extreme a form as you can. My true sexual desire is to please a woman in any way, shape, or form. I think of myself as a valuable person because I
will
do that to please her. I can’t say that it necessarily makes logical sense in an asexual analysis—but it’s not asexual. I don’t think you can understand it unless you experience it in a sexual context. I think that a submissive can reach that conclusion, even if they’re not willing to participate in a golden shower. I don’t think that somebody who isn’t submissive can readily understand it.

I know I’m always going to pursue [D&S]. Once you’ve experienced it, if you’ve enjoyed it, I don’t know how you can lose it. It’s as compelling, I’m sure, as any drug. I’ve never had a problem with substance abuse, [but] I can’t stay away from this. I will pursue it whenever I can—tempered by [my] need to pursue it in a safe fashion. The other side of me, the public side, keeps me from just willy-nilly delving into it.

There are professional dominants out there who are exceptional people. They’re not only exceptional at dominating men; they are exceptional persons. I have a number of friendship relationships with women who dominated
me. I have also had some experiences with professionals who were nothing more than prostitutes who [do] this as a way to up their fee. It was a real come-down to find that there are women out there who are a sham. They aren’t truly dominants; they’re merely acting out a role that they don’t even believe in personally and have no concept of what the Scene is about whatsoever.

Twenty-Six