Macho Sluts (9 page)

Which brings us back to the question I asked earlier. If somebody does not want you to read this book, why is that? Because it goes beyond customary limits of candor? In other words, because it is a little too honest? What are they afraid of?

No matter how poetic I am, some people will never be able to see anything beautiful about the authoritarian set of a woman's broad shoulders inside a leather jacket that is well broken in, or the curve of a submissive's back when she dares to kneel and arch her shoulders for the lash. The prospect of a human body being rendered helpless, put under slowly increasing stress, so that the maximum amount of sensation can be run through skin, nerves, and muscles, will always seem horrifying to some readers, not a fascinating attempt to bring out the body's stamina and grace. Do these people hate me, do they want sadomasochists to cease to exist, because of a different notion about what constitutes the good and the beautiful?

Sadomasochists are immensely useful as a metaphor for evil, for violence, for prejudice, for hate—and that metaphor is a big lie; it is nothing but projection.

It is the notion of consent that the rest of the world finds so abhorrent. It is the notion of sexual choice. It is the notion of having an absolute right to set one's own limits. The majority prefers compulsory sexual arrangements, wherein people can be labeled according to race, age, class, and gender, and plugged in and made use of, performing as suburban housewives or street hookers, young work-a-daddies and pimps, street kids and their clients, incest victims and their abusers, mistresses and their keepers, unwed mothers, closeted choice, lesbians and gay men, everybody a guard or a prisoner, with no safe word, no negotiation. This system generates relatively little selfish, individual, direct, genital pleasure. Instead, it generates abstract pleasure, vicarious pleasure, pleasure-of-social-position, the cud-chewing pleasure of belonging, of being fenced into a pasture with other cud-chewers, the resentful pleasures of martyrdom or the intrusive pleasures of overseeing and bullying others (and the attendant anxious pleasure of anticipating their revenge).

Force is not a part of the province of sadism and masochism, not part of the territory of leather and latex, bondage and discipline. It is normal. Coercion is an accepted part of daily life for most people. And most people are unwilling to relinquish the threat of violence, of bodily harm, of stigma, of forced reproduction, of curfew and limited movement, of a vague danger that lies in wait to punish the person who is too sexually different, too adventurous, to enforce their morés.

Until all deviants are no longer hounded, there will not be such a thing as vanilla sex, if by that you mean a sexuality free of compulsion. And the closest you will be able to come to sexual freedom of choice will be in the territories of the erotic minorities, which you must struggle hard to locate and gain admission to, which you must work hard to maintain a membership in, and which takes even more effort if you want to expand the little bit of territory your community has. If you don't believe we choose to do S/M, you aren't using the term “consent” in any meaningful way, but rather as a synonym for “mature,” “socially acceptable,” and “politically correct.” What we choose to do with our freedom may appall you, but it is none of your business. If you are prepared to do anything at all to compel us to make other choices, or even make it more difficult for us to wear our leather in public, buy S/M equipment and literature, and meet one another, are you really one of the good guys? Or just another vice cop without a badge?

When attempts are made to keep people from reading about S/M or hearing us speak out, or even associating with us, it isn't knowledge about S/M that is being banned or controlled. It is knowledge of itself that the supposedly egalitarian, democratic, vanilla majority fears. If someone believes that there is nothing wrong with the object of their desire, and yet is willing to repeatedly postpone obtaining it, to sacrifice it, to do without it, or trade it for a romance or a better job or a good reputation, they are bound to be angry when we insist on having our deviant desire, without guilt, apologies, or explanations.

Some people cannot be trusted with a helpless body. You know who you are. Some people don't choose to take responsibility for the pain they inflict on others. Some people think it's kinder to ignore a need they don't understand, to starve someone in the name of decency or equality or love. I don't believe in an omnipotent, omniscient God, because that would make the world a truly horrible place, beyond human redemption. But if you'd feel safer spending a night with one of them than you would with me or some other macho slut, I'll remember you in my prayers.

Jessie

I wandered around the huge loft, dodging elbows and carelessly held cigarettes. Small groups of women sprawled in chairs, doing more laughing than talking, unaware of how raucous they had become. “What was this, a benefit or something?” I heard someone ask behind me. No one answered her.

The party had gone on until the floor was littered and the room was almost empty. It was past midnight. Women who had to work in the morning and the tight, fledgling couples and the militant nonsmokers had picked up their jackets and gone home. The rest of us would probably have to be asked to leave one at a time, and helped out with a hand on the elbow. In the meantime, it was still possible to convince yourself you had a chance to pick somebody up, and there were enough dancers to attract a ring of voyeurs, all of whom seemed to have their arms around each other.

“Fanatics,” I muttered, and edged past an ample hip clothed in denim. Eventually, I successfully threaded my way to the aluminum garbage cans that held the empties and carefully balanced my contribution on top of a precarious mountain of cans. I stepped back and admired our collective alcoholic capacity. The sight gave me a foolish, vicarious pride.

Leaning on a column, I added up my individual score—my rule being that any total is okay and calls for another drink as long as I can get it without counting on my fingers. By that lenient reckoning, I wasn't really drunk, just loose in the joints. So I drew a bead on the refreshment table and swam toward it, navigating in slow, exaggerated circles around various female obstacles.

“Don't shake anything loose!” some irreverent dyke yelled at me. I laughed at her and stuck out my tongue. She was not attractive. “What's your hurry?” she persisted. I kept going, pretending I hadn't heard her.

The women selling beer were harassed and impatient. “We're going to close,” one of them told me over an ice chest full of beer and cold water. Her black hair was stringy with perspiration. “That's nice,” I said. “I want a Bud.” She sighed with exasperation and fished me out a dripping can. “Buck-fifty,” she grunted. I dug up exact change. She tossed my money into a little cardboard box and hustled over to her comrades, who were sharing a joint in a not-too-dark corner. “You're welcome,” I politely informed her scapula.

“Bad service is politically correct at women's events,” someone said at my elbow. I checked her out while I was laughing. She was tall and blonde, with the shoulders of a swimmer. I love butch-looking women. They are disconcerted by my admiration, my willingness to be flattered into bed and ordered around. Sometimes they treat me with suspicion, which I blithely ignore, continuing to give them what they like without talking about it. I'm not looking for a husband or a daddy, and I don't consider myself a femme—I just turn on to aggressive and strong women. I love french kissing and finger fucking, and I could very easily imagine this woman probing my mouth with her tongue, arranging me on her bed to allow her to penetrate me still more deeply, more fully.

“Hey Maxine!” somebody yelled. “Get your ass over here and DANCE with me!”

Her eyebrows, which had begun to frame a question, shot back to home base. “'Scuse me,” she said, and shouldered by. I sighed wistfully, shreds of fantasy trailing uselessly around me. Tomorrow morning, as I salted my scrambled eggs, it would come to me in a sudden burst of inspiration—what I should have said to hook her attention. Alas and damn.

Thinking I was maybe a little drunk after all, I wandered away from the music and noise. There was an open window in the back of the room. I climbed up on a table to get to it and perched on the sill. This was the second story of a warehouse, so I had a good view of the stars and the freeway. I didn't open my beer, just rolled the cold can on my forehead and cheeks. When the metal got warm, I set it beside me, and ran my fingers through my hair. The slight breeze was ice-cold on my damp scalp. It set my teeth on edge and made me shiver with delight.

Up to now, the evening had been a success. With enough rock 'n' roll and beer under my belt, the universe had begun to make sense; I had no grievances against myself; all the women around me were funny or sexy or at least basically good at heart. Now, I felt an ache in my bones from too much boogeying, and along with it came an edge of creeping misogyny. There went a woman who looked like a monkey—and that one looked too far gone for Maybelline or methadone to fix what was wrong with her. My high, fine feeling was beginning to melt away.

The party was going through an ebb cycle, too. A big, dark woman left her buddies with a parting insult that had them roaring with laughter. She dug her patient, wallflower lover out from under a table where she had fallen asleep, gently shook her awake, and propelled her toward the stairs. The dancing partners in silver lamé jackets and David Bowie haircuts who had been the Disco Queens of the evening finally collapsed in each other's arms and tottered on their glitter-encrusted platform shoes to the EXIT sign. The nice lady who had sold me my beer grabbed her purse and split, a six-pack under each arm.

I popped the top of my beer and took a gulp, trying to recapture my euphoria. My epiglottis had begun to bob when I remembered that my car was in the shop—sideswiped yesterday morning in the parking lot. The buses had stopped running hours ago. Shit, I would have to call a cab. The thought of hunting a pay phone in this neighborhood, at this hour, was bitterly depressing. The beer tasted like shampoo. I turned and spat my mouthful out the window, and poured the rest of the can after it.

I should have struck up an acquaintance with that baby butch who harassed me about my walk. In fact, there were half a dozen women I suddenly realized I could have and should have taken home with me. I was just too damn picky. One was too scrawny, one was a phony, one was not The One, and then there was none. I sorted madly through the available bodies. Not one of the runner-ups was left. I would have to start from scratch—and I couldn't see anybody who stirred even a faint interest in me.

“Come clean,” I told myself sternly. (I am always forcing myself to confess to one sin or another—when I can't find someone else to make me.) “You have cut off your nose rather than iron a handkerchief. You have made your own bed and short-sheeted it. You have counted the bush in your hand before the bird was hatched. In fact, my dear, you didn't really want any of the ladies who made themselves agreeable to you. You had your sights set on Jessie, and when she walked out with her latest cheap thrill, you just weren't going to settle for second best. Well, you sat on the merry-go-round with a poker up your ass. Now you can twirl on it.”

I reminded myself that masturbation is the foundation of female sexuality, a mode of gratification that is every bit as valid as getting it on with a partner. I tried to work up a little enthusiasm for the new forty-dollar vibrator a friend had bought for me in Japan. It was only a week old, and bright orange. I asked myself, what would Betty Dodson think if she could see me standing here, practically in tears because I can't get some woman who doesn't even know my name to seduce me? She would hit me over the head with my own cunt portrait and send me back to Remedial Sexuality with my index finger taped to my clit.

I could make myself laugh, but I couldn't make myself any less horny. I started thinking about Jessie, lovingly enumerating all those things about her that made my toes curl.

One of my more articulate lovers once told me I was a star-fucker. She was as accurate as she was hostile. Oh, my, yes, Jessie was a celebrity. She played bass for a women's band that performed regularly in the city. And she was good. In fact, The Bitch had been playing for the dance tonight—which is why I showed up.

There wasn't a woman in town who didn't want to be held the way Jessie held that bass guitar, and she new it. At every performance, she had this little ritual she went through. The whole crowd knew it by heart, and some of us shook our heads and said, “Oh, Christ!” as we watched it unfold, but we all loved it. She always started off behind the rest of the band, in the shadows where you could hardly see her. The Bitch did their tuning up while restless women milled around, greeting stray friends with the demand, “When are they going to start, for godsake?” While the rest of the band was still trying to find high C, Jessie would slip off her leather jacket and hand it to her current lover, who would worshipfully accept it, carefully fold it, and carry it offstage, to jeers and cheers from the audience. We all thought it was humiliating as hell, but none of us would have refused to do it.

Just when you were ready to bet they wouldn't get started for another half hour, Jessie would hit a chord and they'd be on. They nearly always opened with the Stones' song, “Bitch”—what else? She didn't sing on that one, but if you sat in the first two rows, you could catch her cynical smile at the crucial lines.

She wore tight, ragged T-shirts that clung to her frame. Her lean body an arc of total concentration, she would bend over her instrument, creating a hard, clean rhythm that was the power behind The Bitch. It was irresistible. You couldn't help but respond. The beat she laid down could have taught a fool how to dance.