Although the ritualized behaviour of the sadomasochistic relationship has traditionally belonged to only the most sexually daring, clearly, times have changed.
S&M For Beginners
Sadomasochism? A university of Colorado sophomore coed nears orgasm in a parked car as her football-player date unzips his fly. She is handcuffed and blindfolded, her only sensory input being his rigid cock slicing in and out of her mouth.
Sadomasochism? A Wall Street broker leaves his offices early for his biweekly hour session of bondage and humiliation with his dominatrice-mistress before going home to his family in Connecticut.
Sadomasochism? An engaged couple in Houston sit in a Fresh restaurant shyly courting over dinner. Under his clothes, the man wears his fiancée’s panties, has a cock ring around his penis and balls, and a small, greased plug inserted into his anus.
Sadomasochism? An elegantly dressed woman in a SoHo (New York) play sternly reprimands her pupil and is in turn forced by her principal to lift her skirt for “six of the best” with a birch rod. She leaves the stage to enthusiastic applause with a half-dozen scarlet welts blazing on her buttocks.
Sadomasochism has become a startlingly popular and widely accepted sexual practice among Americans. Kept under wraps as a part of the sexual underground for years, S&M is now popping up all over the place: in the commercial media, in the cinema, in the shopping mall. Slick films such as American Gigolo hint at it; Nine and a Half Weeks and Punish Me With Kisses lay it right out there for you. The limousines line up outside Manhattan’s Hellfire Club and the New York Post is there to cover it. Even Time magazine reports that sadomasochism is out of the closet. S&M has come of age. What is it all about?
Let’s start with the word itself, the S and M of it. The term sadism, meaning pleasure derived from inflicting pain, is taken from the French sadisme, after the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814). This eighteenth-century French nobleman declared that only through the medium of sexual violence could people heal themselves of their socially inflicted scars. The term masochism, meaning pleasure derived from experiencing pain, was coined by Krafft-Ebing and refers to the German novelist Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1836-1895), who wrote Venus in Furs. In this semiautobiographical erotic classic, he describes his fantasy of being abused and abandoned by a cruel mistress swathed in furs to signal her cruel mood. Simply put, erotic sadomasochism is a willing exchange of control between lovers. It is a sexual practice of myriad forms and ascending levels of intensity. Many elements come into play: costumes, spanking, bondage, the stinging kisses of the rod, verbal humiliation, and simulated rape. Pain, which can provide a blossoming rush of pleasure, may be involved.
Fantasy games are a basic raw material of S&M. Role playing allows the lovers to evoke their most provocative sexual thoughts and subterranean memories. Eroticized scenarios may be casual or complex. For example, the mere mention of a catchphrase in bed can program a certain style of sex; or, more elaborately, there is the well-practiced S&M devotee who dresses in full police gear and “apprehends” his wife on a monthly basis, letting her persuade him not to “arrest” her in exchange for her best fellatio.
Bondage is another theme in S&M, for many reasons. The satisfaction in this specific kind of control-surrender is almost universal. The idea of struggling against restraints is a tremendous stimulant to many people. Women who have been raised with strong inhibitions about “unladylike” behaviour use bondage to overcome their guilt about sex. A woman bound at the ankles and wrists by silk scarves feels she cannot be blamed for giving way to sexual abandonment, which she might judge wanton under other circumstances. Men burdened with heavy responsibilities in high-anxiety jobs can release their tensions and relax when handcuffs and collar fasten them down. Tied down, they are unburdened from making decisions.
S&M enthusiasts use a highly developed jargon. Since sadist and masochist can be harsh terms for lovers, people in the scene use other words to mean the same thing but without the violent connotations. S means sadist and M means masochist. Top and bottom also enjoy wide use in denoting sadist and masochist, respectively, and are probably the most popular and colloquial terms. To describe someone as a “hot topman” or a “heavy bottom” calls up pleasurable fantasies for those in the field. Dominant and submissive are also useful terms, because of both easy comprehensibility and the implied element of control instead of brutality. The submissive offers control of his orgasm to the dominant lover. The dominant takes control, guiding the submissive beyond his limits toward the ultimate pleasure of surrender.
Dominatrice, often misspelled as “dominatrix,” and master refer to female and male experts in sexual dominance, respectively. They are addressed as Mistress and Master, Madam and Sir. Sometimes more creative forms are used, such as “Baroness van Cleef” or “Lord Preston.” Submissives refer to their dominants in writing with capital letters and to themselves in lower case.
What transpires in a typical S&M encounter? We cite two actual scenes. Both involve New York City couples, each with a long-standing continuity of erotic experience with each other. These scenes represent well-rehearsed patterns of ritual and response. Although S&M doesn’t always include genital sex, both of these couples incorporate intercourse into many of their scenes together.
Anne Henderson and Elliott Myers go from their midtown offices one afternoon a week to meet their dominant lovers. (Names of people whose personal experiences are described in this article have been changed for reasons of privacy.) Elliott sees his mistress every Thursday after work; Anne waits for Les to call to arrange their lunchtime trysts. Both report heavy masturbatory fantasizing before and after their S&M rendezvous. This is difficult for Elliott because, in preparation for his “Baroness,” she demands that he abstain from ejaculation.
Anne, in turn, readies herself by carefully shaving her pubis. She also eschews her usual pantyhose for stockings and garters and removes her panties before visiting her lover’s Chelsea advertising agency. At other times, late at night, he has had her call up from a phone booth on the corner, instructing her to strip naked as she comes up on the elevator, but on this occasion she walks demurely past the receptionist and into his office.
“Elliott usually chooses the type of scene he will enact with Patricia, indicating his preference sometimes by wearing his special punishment belt and a leather thong around his throat.”
Anne met Les while doing voice-over work for him, and they have been seeing each other in a master-slave relationship off and on for three years. As Les has trained her, Anne closes the door, removes her skirt, crosses her wrists behind her back, and waits for permission to kneel at his feet. First, Les has her walk around the room, watching her long legs, balanced on high stiletto heels. He fixates on the little triangle of naked space at the top of her thighs.
When he asks her to clear the butcher-block coffee table, Anne knows she will be spending most of her lunch hour on her back with her wrists roped to its legs. Over the years, Anne and Les have worked out their favorite rituals, negotiating limits and parameters, so that each gets the most out of their time together. “What I want,” says Anne, “is sort of sexual sensory deprivation — all my senses under his control — and then the pain to take me out into that other space with skyrocket O’s.” Anne says that her orgasms are quite satisfactory with her boyfriend, too, but that the qualitative difference with Les is so great as to make this the highlight of her sex life.
Although this is their most familiar scene, Anne is whimpering and pleading from the minute the clothespins come out of the drawer. Les silences her by putting his cock in her mouth. He places earphones on her — and a blindfold. Then, one by one, he begins to clamp the wooden pins onto her flesh in two arcs, beginning inside her stretched armpits and moving toward her nipples. Each new clamp brings a jerk and a groan from Anne until her entire torso undulates from intensity of the sensations. He reminds her to breathe, rubbing her stomach and kissing her.
The ultimate gratification for Les is building his collection of videotapes of Anne and others struggling under his control. “I’ve got my proud beauties writhing against the shackles. I’ve got a camera in the elevator for those scenes. I’ve even got one out the window to catch them wrestling with their resistance in the phone booth. Sometimes, in fact, I leave — that’s part of it. But I watch them later at home in bed. My tapes are my insurance against old age.”
He pulls out of her mouth and mounts her. Les enjoys the imminence of Anne’s orgasm immediately upon penetration. This is the sign of a good scene for him. She begs permission to come, which is granted; her body tenses, arching to meet his thrusts. Before she slips back from her orgasmic plateau, Les removes Anne’s blindfold and one of the clothespins. Still inside her, he begins to pattern his rhythm on her writhing.
Each withdrawn clothespin releases a new wave of muscle contractions and gasping from Anne, which Les cuts into with his thrusts. Soon Anne is begging to come for the fourth and fifth times. With all the pins removed except the two clamping the nipples themselves, Les extends himself full-length on Anne, releasing the last two pins, and speeds up his strokes for his own climax.
A critically important part of Les and Anne’s scene is the quiet time they spend together after the high intensity of the bondage and orgasm. “Finding myself in Les’s arms as I’m coming down from that wild euphoria is one of my greatest joys,” Anne says. “I need a little tenderness after the rough stuff.”
Anne is in some ways typical of women who have immersed themselves in S&M. For example, her experience was male initiated: without Les, she would probably have lived out her sex life without ever trying S&M. Such behaviour is not a primarily female dynamic. In fact, sadomasochism, like all fetishistic behaviour, is usually a male impulse. We have only to look at gay men and gay women for confirmation of this basic point. While leather sex is popular among male homosexuals, such activities are virtually unknown among lesbians. (However, there are a few dramatic exceptions. Samois in San Francisco and the Lesbian Sex Mafia in New York, with a combined membership of 250, attest to a vigorous but extremely limited female audience.)
Patricia Jenning was also drawn into the S&M scene by her lover, Elliott Myers, a corporate vice-president. Elliott had bought the services of several professional dominatrices but was much happier when he found a dominant streak in his mistress. After six months of experimenting, they now choose to keep their dominant-submissive activities quite separate from the rest of their relationship. This makes it possible for them to isolate the intense role playing they find so satisfying in their scenes.
Elliott and Patricia have an elaborate seduction ritual. Since he is excited by the image of an elegant, unapproachable woman, they arrange to meet as strangers in an empty East Side lounge. The sight of her sitting alone, dressed in a business suit and a fox stole, staring at him coolly through cigarette smoke, haunts his masturbatory fantasies. Although Elliott feels he has surrendered himself to Patricia’s mastery — “She owns my manhood,” he says — it is he who usually chooses the type of scene they will enact, indicating his preference in this case by wearing his special punishment belt and a leather thong around his throat.
After watching him adjust himself and steal glances at her for several minutes, Patricia rises and leaves the bar with her powerful executive trailing submissively behind. Inside her apartment, she settles herself again into a chair with a cigarette to watch Elliott undress and present himself on his knees, with an unbidden erection. This sign of premature arousal will be added to his list of faults when Patricia hears Elliott’s confession, the scenario these two lovers have found to be most satisfying.
She ties his hands behind his back with a long thong, drawing the ends through his crotch to the front and binding his cock and balls, circling loop after loop of leather around the shaft down to the head. Removing her dress, Patricia exposes a black satin merry widow and seamed stockings, to which she adds thigh-high black boots. Elliott now pours out his troubles from the office and his feelings of inadequacy with his wife as Patricia toys with his thong leash, deciding on fifteen strokes as his punishment.
She forces his head down to her feet and he licks his way up her leg to her sex. When she rises, belt in hand, he assumes the proper position to be beaten, his face buried. in her crotch, his buttocks arched out as an offering. She loops the belt in half and loudly begins to smack his bottom, warming the surface with several dozen uncounted strokes. She continually repositions his head, rubbing his forehead, then his nose, then his chin, firmly back and forth across her vulva until the jerky strokes carry her over the edge into orgasm.
Finally she orders him to the floor, unfurls the belt to its full length, and, when his buttocks are properly arched up, strikes the anticipated strokes, each one producing a pink welt, while Elliott counts and thanks her aloud — and climaxes onto the carpet. After orgasm these two S&M devotees seem much more talkative and relaxed.
“Our relationship has always been an alternative-life-style sort of thing,” stated Elliott. “We met at Night Moves, a swing club; both of us were trying that. Well, the same place is an S&M club on Tuesdays and Thursdays — Chateau 19 — and as we talked to these folks, particularly Bob and Penny, who run it, I began to dream about Patty as a merciless mistress beating the shit out of me. I mean, it just stormed my dreams.”
Patricia says she patterns her dominatrice image on the costume and mannerisms of a character in the French film La Maitresse. “See, I don’t want to be just another kitten with a whip in vinyl boots. Each thing I add has to be real. The point for me is to really scare him. It’s the mental part that makes me hoi between the legs — really stringing out the suspense.”
Although Anne and Les and Elliott and Patricia inhabit the wilder shores of discipline pleasure, they were once beginners, who graduated from simple spanking and handcuffs to more severe forms of whipping and bondage.
Exactly how many Americans indulge in S&M? There are no reliable statistics. On the high side, Time cited Dr. Michael Evans, a psychologist at the Berkeley Therapy Institute, as estimating “that a third of all couples have tried spanking at least once and perhaps as many have tied up a sexual partner.” In fact, Dr. Evan denies this astounding figure. “I was misquoted,” he says. “What I really said was that one-third of the couples merely fantasized about these practices. Actually, the percent is probably much lower, but I wouldn’t be surprised if one out of ten couples has tried spanking or light bondage.”
On the low side, The Cosmo Report, a survey of Cosmopolitan readers, noted that only 1.9 percent of its female sample regularly participated in “flagellation or other sadomasochistic behaviour” like spanking and bondage. However, almost 10 percent of the Cosmo women admitted a fondness for pinching, biting, and slapping their lovers and having the same done to them.
The big-city-sex scene offers broad access to S&M rites. In New York City, for example, several theaters and clubs provide opportunities to watch and even participate. Another Way to Love, an Off-Off-Broadway show at the Project Theatre, presents dramatizations of several popular erotic fantasies, many of which deal with sadomasochism. The audience, which consists mainly of the uninitiated, is encouraged to remain after the show to discuss their own favorite fantasies.
For those eager to turn fantasy into action, there are several on-premise S&M establishments. Most charge a private membership fee, serve liquor, and set aside specific areas for socializing and dancing. The cozy atmosphere and clean facilities of Manhattan’s Chateau 19 make it a good place for couples ready to whet their appetite. This club has a comfortable lounge area and a dance floor that sports sturdy S&M equipment, including a ladder and a padded horse.
More authentic scenes unfold at the Hellfire Club, New York’s bastion of hardcore S&M. The raw space of its darkest corners truly evokes the S&M ideal of a deserted alley or pier. Parts of Cruising were filmed there. Although often inundated with curious “tourists” until the wee hours, late-night visitors willing to participate will certainly find real S&M devotees dressed for action and searching out partners to satisfy their own special tastes. The facilities include structural support beams with shackles for standing, spread-eagle bondage; a tub room for piss scenes; arm-and-wrist stocks built into a fist-fucking sling; and plenty of back rooms for raunchy sex.
How do people actually become dominant and submissive? We asked a few regular club-goers about the origin of their S&M urges. “I’ve always been this way,” reported an imposing dominant by the name of Mike Ross, “but I guess it’s something about leather itself. Maybe it goes back to my horseback-riding days, but that’s before I was getting laid. I never did train horses, but I guess that’s the basic idea. I guess I just feel really sexed up in my leathers.” He swept the belt out of his pants by way of illustration. “See, my belt’s an extension of my dick — I make them kiss it first. I make love with it, really.”
John Graften, a neatly dressed Hellfire habitue, had fantasized about submission since puberty. “All my life I’ve jerked off to the idea of different women pulling down my pants and spanking me. Sometimes it was in a classroom or in the locker room or over my machine at work. It never occurred to me until recently that I could make it come true. I mean, I’m not going to ask my wife. But I can usually get a good paddling at the club if I play my cards right. Funny thing is, I never was spanked as a kid.”
On the West Coast, too, the pain-for-pay scene is thriving. Sylvia and Aaron Wakefield call themselves the “love children” of Los Angeles’s domination houses. They met at The Chateau, became involved in compatible bondage fantasies, and married last year. “Now we’ve found The Padded Cell,” said Sylvia. “It’s twice as large, and has really super bondage equipment and none of that funny mind-control attitude from the staff. We treat each other to sessions there on our birthdays and anniversaries.” The Padded Cell is housed in a large Victorian building in Hollywood with rooms and equipment that can be rented with or without professional assistance. Occasional live sex shows are also part of the ambience.
Outside the large cities, the popularity of S&M can be measured by the growth of sex boutiques and mail-order businesses. The Pleasure Chest, America’s first S&M — oriented sex shop, opened in New York in 1971. At first, the customers came from the gay leather crowd. Now, however, the demand for S&M gear has spread to the heterosexual crowd, and consequently Pleasure Chest has expanded to eight franchises. In the Philadelphia, Chicago, and Washington shops the straight clientele outnumber the gay by ten to one. Even the mild-mannered erotic boutiques in Middle American shopping malls that were once content to stock push-up brassieres and babydoll nighties now find themselves delving into the realm of S&M.
Caren Ryer, manager of the A 1001 Nights boutique in Manhattan, says that she used to carry sexy lingerie exclusively but that recently she has extended her line to include leather wear, rubber sheets, and discipline equipment in keeping up with the needs of her customers. “Mistress,” “Master,” and “Slave” T-shirts are also big-selling novelties.
“I can’t tell you the number of whips I sell to little old housewives from Scarsdale. They even ask for rubber. Definitely rough trade. It used to be they’d say, ‘If you love me, you’ll go to bed with me.’ Then it was ‘If you love me, you’ll take it in your mouth.’ Well, now it’s ‘If you love me, you’ll let me beat you.’ It’s just the next taboo. Why, they had a dominatrice on ‘Hour Magazine’ on Channel 5 this morning. S&M’s all over the place.”
S&M practice is discussed in theory at weekly gatherings of the Eulenspiegel Society, a unique social and educational organization. The name comes from the character in German folklore who preferred to climb hills rather than descend them. Rather like the masochist, Eulenspiegel wandered across the countryside, always longing for the ordeal of the next climb. Starting out as sort of a “Masochists Anonymous” in 1971, the society has grown considerably and now attracts many dominants. Meetings consist of panels or lectures followed by “The Circle,” that is, group confession, in which each member of the audience confesses his or her sexual preferences and fantasies. There are also monthly parties, including two extravagant costume balls on Halloween and New Year’s Eve.
After a recent meeting entitled “Breaking Into S&M,” we asked Jack Jackson, Eulenspiegel’s president and a nationally known topman, what advice he gives couples just learning to love the lash. “If you want to have an S&M relationship, you have to begin first with a loving relationship — or at least a sexual one. You can’t start with the whip. S&M begins in the head. So sit down with your lover and talk out compatible fantasies you might want to play out if mutually agreeable. Say, if you both have a strong bondage fantasy, then try it out with materials at hand, maybe nylon stockings or neckties.”
Although happily married, Jack also maintains a primary relationship with his slave of seven years. They appear in public at S&M functions, but Jack says their time together doesn’t always involve an overt expression of his dominance. Sometimes they are just as content watching television.
However, the evenings of fantasy certainly highlight their relationship. Jackson’s slave loves to be treated like a thoroughbred. “She has very long legs and arms, so when she bends over her ass is in perfect position for my cock,” Jack remarks. “I have her walk on her hands. I put a pony’s bridle bit in her teeth and then, holding the reins and steering her with my thighs and a whip, I fuck her around the room.” Naturally, Jackson hopes that the burgeoning interest in S&M will translate into greater acceptability by straight culture. “When people imagine S&M, they think of a few nuts out there going around hitting each other. They have to understand that it’s a valid form of lovemaking.”
Well, Sigmund Freud did not. The founder of psychoanalysis explained S&M, in males at least, in terms of castration fear: the sadist does to others that which he fears will be done to him. Freud held that sadistic desires were, in psychological jargon, a primary behavioural impulse. Masochism, on the other hand, supposedly comes about from· a failure to deal with the sadistic drive, so that the desire to harm is inverted to one’s own body. Masochism is simply passive sadism, normal aggression turned violently against the self. Yet Freud, for all his musing on the perverse; was probably the first sexologist to comment on the importance of S&M as a basic psychosexual characteristic. In Three Contributions to Sexual Theory (1920), he states: “The roots of active algolagnia [love of pain] can be readily demonstrated in the normal individual. The sexuality of most men shows an admixture of aggression, of a propensity to subdue, the biological significance of which lies in the necessity for overcoming the resistance of the sexual object by actions other than mere courting.”
‘“I don’t want to be just another kitten with a whip in vinyl boots.” She says. “The point is to really scare him. It’s the mental part that makes me hot between the legs-really stringing out the suspense.”’
In Masochism and Modern Man (1941), Theodor Reik, a member of Freud’s inner circle, contradicted his mentor. Reik held that the masochist pursues pleasure like everyone else but is detoured by pain because he is unable to approach pleasure directly. Perpetually in flight from the agonizing anxiety of pleasure, he deals with his own created but manageable pain instead. “First he atones, then he sins,” as Reik put it.
More recently, Dr. Robert Stoller, a Berkeley psychiatrist, stated in Perversion: The Erotic Form of Hatred that many variations of sexual practice, including S&M, are generated from hostility born in childhood victimization and conflict, and are then acted out on the sex object. Going Freud one better, he says, “One can raise the possibly controversial question whether in humans, especially males, powerful sexual excitement can ever exist without hostility also being present.” Despite his dim view of pain as pleasure,
Stoller. regards the S&M impulse as basic. “If hostility could be lifted out of the sexual excitement, there would be no perversion, but how mu.ch loving sexuality would be possible?” In Stoller’s view the unconscious plays out hostility by dehumanizing the love object. According to the canons of psychiatry, this dehumanization is the core dynamic of fetishism. The stiletto-heeled foot and leather-swathed breast replace the person as a whole as incitement to sexual arousal.
Dr. C.A. Tripp, author of The Homosexual Matrix, has a far more sensible view of S&M origins. Transcending the simplicities of Freudian psychology, he refuses to see perversity or hostility in these activities. Instead, he draws the notion of S&M much closer to the idea of sexual well-being and fulfilment by explaining that many highly erotic acts including S&M are brought about as violations of taboos.
“The enjoyment of sadomasochistic techniques,” he states in The Homosexual Matrix, “is usually limited to persons who have had exceptionally strong social training in either the be kind-to-others direction or the sex-as-sinful department, or both.” He notes how restrictive social attitudes ultimately incite pain/pleasure stimulation by setting up behaviour limitations in the form of taboos, which can be electrically arousing to break.” A person with strong, personally held sexual taboos can be ripe for S&M experiences because his taboos don’t always inhibit sex-they may enormously intensify it.”
In a woman, for example, who has been brought up to feel that sex must be a pleasant, kindly act, spanking can be volitional to her early training and extremely arousing. A man whose macho training has impressed upon him the need to be domineering and on top can be tremendously stimulated by bondage and discipline. When the man finally has an orgasm, it’s absolutely explosive. “Everyone has tremendous resistance to taboos on some level,” says Tripp. “You just don’t know where the lightning is going to strike.”
People wonder, can pain be pleasurable? One approach to this question.is to consider pain as an extension of pleasure rather than as the antithesis of it. Along these lines, Tripp commented, “It is traditional for people to think of sexual activity as a product of moments of maximal contact — and it is.” Intensifying the caress to the point of discomfort can be part of this. There may be a heightening of many types of physical contact which remain well within the domain of the embrace. A good example is sexual wrestling where the dominant partner fights, as in the courtship combat of animals, to mount the submissive. This can include holding down, biting the ears and neck, rough stroking or sucking flesh, and overt slapping.
From a biological standpoint, pain seems to be a necessary component in the reproductive mechanisms of lesser animals. For instance, female minks cannot release ripe eggs from their ovaries unless they are stimulated by vigorous fighting during intercourse. Havelock Ellis, an English sexologist and contemporary of Freud, also remarked on the animal origins of S&M in Love and Pain (1903). “Among animals, the male wins the female very largely by the display of force. The infliction of pain must inevitably be a result of the exertion of power.” What does this mean for the human animal? Have we inherited this evolutionary taste for pain/pleasure? Ellis thinks we have: “While in men, it is possible to trace a tendency to inflict pain on the women they love, it is still easier to trace in women a delight in experiencing physical pain when inflicted by a lover, and an eagerness to accept subjection to his will. Such a tendency is certainly normal.”
Far more fascinating is a recent physiological observation that may help unlock the mystery of the body’s orgasmic response to pain. In the face of painful stress, the endocrine system secretes substances called endorphins. These amazing chemicals alter the pain message in the brain. In fact, the British Medical Journal has called endorphins “the real opiate of the people.” Some sex researchers believe that the escalating stress of S&M practices could generate higher endorphin levels and thus act indirectly as an aphrodisiac, creating an added measure of pleasure. Very simply, just as the distance runner pushes himself for the “runner’s high,” a masochist uses the painful stimulation of a scene to reach the euphoric rush of an endorphin high. This may account for the addictive quality in sadomasochistic practices where gradually escalating pain is necessary in each encounter to reach the desired level of pleasure.
Occasionally, this euphoria costs plenty. Some men with extravagant obsessions will pay as much as $4,000 for an evening of S&M in excelsis. However, the pay-for-pain scene starts cheap. Hookers who a few years ago would have been content to brag about their blowjob technique have now taken up the whip. They advertise themselves in Screw with claims such as “the baddest bitch in B & D” and “fiery domineering witch.” An hour of paddling and dirty talk runs anywhere from $75 to $200, depending on equipment and specialties.
Forty-second Street’s porno mecca, Show World Centre, has live S&M in its sex theaters. Many massage parlours, or “leisure spas’” as they are often called, have installed black rooms with special dungeon facilities. Even the fantasy phone services have gotten into the swing. “Serve a beautiful aggressive demanding woman and have your B & D humiliation fantasy fulfilled by phone. Master Charge/ Visa only.” Half an hour starts at $25. Elegant call-girl services offer dominance upon request at $125 per hour and up. The market, however, is not limited to dominant hookers; one phone service reported specializing in submissives whose need for “unimaginable humiliation” and “hard Greeking” and “masterful men” could be filled only by calling the number given.
But the problem is finding some shard of authenticity amongst all the prattle. Searching out extra-special S&M action may lead a man to extraordinarily high-priced mistresses-like Amber.
Amber, a well-seasoned “domme,” runs a house on the East Coast. She employs two other professionals and specializes in fantasy actualization. Mistress Amber’s fantasy enactments can be elaborately embroidered. We speak here of an extravaganza that she produced last winter for a lawyer named Martin. This eight-year veteran of discipline pleasures and his submissive girlfriend, Rose, a ballet student, wanted an erotic ritual that would incorporate three scenes they found most meaningful as a way of celebrating their first anniversary. Martin requested that the ceremony be entirely scripted and performed in front of fifteen friends from his S&M family.
“They used to say, ‘If you love me, you’ll go to bed with me.’ Then, ‘You’ll take it in your mouth.’ Well, now it’s ‘If you love me, you’ll let me beat you.’ It’s just the next taboo.”
After a champagne-and-caviar welcoming reception, the guests gathered in Amber’s dungeon room for the entrance of the dominant players, whom Martin had flown in from various cities. They arranged themselves with their slaves around a small, raised stage area. Rose was presented to the group .in a white negligee, entirely unaware of the specific proceedings in store for her. After stating her desire to perform the ordeal for her lover, she was stripped and shackled, standing spread-eagled on a dais.
Although she was instructed by Martin to call only him Master, each of the dominants then attempted to force Rose to acknowledge them as Mistress or Master with ten strokes of the whip. She never broke down, and the last of the strokes was meted out with the dais removed and Rose swinging free, suspended by her wrists. Throughout this the audience was quietly served champagne. The effect of the spoken words, the slow, measured pace of the strokes, and Rose’s unknowing innocence all made for a highly charged intensity as the ritual continued.
The next scene called for Rose to submit to “being sodomized by a masterful stranger,” as Martin put it, “while I gaze on.” With the words “Arch and present!” Master Odeon, a tall, powerful-looking man, ordered Rose to assume a position on her knees with her torso hyperextended, her hands at her sides, and her mouth open. He disrobed, lit a joint, and slowly walked around Rose, casually stroking himself and regarding her from several sides. Then he tugged back her head by the hair and introduced his cock to her lips, inch by inch.
When he was sufficiently aroused, a stool was brought on stage and Rose was tied down over it so that she could keep her eyes on Martin while her anal virginity was taken. Odeon slapped Rose’s buttocks and stroked his erection to full rigidity, then worked his way into her ass in several short jabs. Her cries seemed to fire his vigour; his thrusts became so fierce that two men came up from the audience to hold the stool in place while Odeon rode Rose to a bullish orgasm.
During a candlelit buffet supper that followed, the hushed atmosphere continued. Most remained silent until the final segment of the ritual. Rose was escorted back to the stage in a black peignoir and bound to a huge structure in the shape of an X. Mistress Amber then brought on master tattooist Phil Sparrow to complete the ceremony. He inked a beautiful black-and-red rose entwined with Martin’s initials onto Rose’s right breast. Then, pulling the flesh taut, he embedded the three-color design permanently into her skin with the buzzing electric needle. Afterward, Martin tenderly untied her himself and presented her with eleven red roses. Both of them broke into tears as they were toasted by the audience.
How, ultimately, can we understand the panorama of the pain/pleasure behaviour described here? Are Rose and Martin caught up in some inexplicable libidinal knot within the fabric of human sexuality? Dr. Alfred Kinsey, the master analyst of eros, offers the simplest and least judgmental answer. In Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female (1953), he observes that certain sexual patterns arise from the processes of learning in each individual. “Behaviour which may appear bizarre, perverse, or unthinkably unacceptable to some persons, and even to most persons, may have significance for other individuals because of the way in which they have been conditioned. Flagellation and masochism … may be no more difficult to explain than the behaviour of the male who reacts at the sight of his wife undressing for bed.”
Sadomasochism at Its Barest
In the final instance, sadomasochism is simply another type of sexual preference, no different from a fondness for blondes or a favorite coital position. A love for discipline, or for blindfolds, leather, or bondage, like any other erotic inclination, is an acquired taste, which comes about as a result of experience. “All of these choices and reactions to particular stimuli,” Kinsey says, “may seem reasonable enough and more or less inevitable to the person who is involved.” How natural it is, then, to discover that ritualized role playing, the giving and taking of sexual control and pain as an erotic stimulant, is a truly valuable element in love play for so many people.
Should you want to read about some rather more bizarre sadomasochism experience, we can guide you to a recent article, but know two things before you click that. … First, you may find yourself somewhere between shocked and appalled. Second, you may not.
