Different Loving: The World of Sexual Dominance and Submission (31 page)

One of my favorite things is to tie her: I cuff her ankles to her wrists
and her ankles back to her calves so that her legs are spread. I can pick her up that way [and] move her around: she’s a little compact bundle of woman who can’t move [and is] completely accessible. And [then] I like to do things to her. When I’m actually engaged in fucking her, I merge and lose myself in the experience of sex and orgasm. But in S/M, I can sit back and play with her. It becomes very erotic, very charged. I can watch her come without losing myself in the experience. I’ll bind her into a form where she isn’t my love: she’s an object of sexual desire. I can focus my eroticism on her, which I find is different from love.

Everybody has a light and a dark side. S/M means coming to terms with finding out where the boundaries are; why do some things repel you? Why do some things attract you? It’s a way to explore that boundary. A lot of people read de Sade and say he was horrible. I read it as a piece of philosophy: Here was a man who wasn’t doing these things [but] was pushing the bounds of what was acceptable dogma around sex and pain. In my sexual life I always wanted to push boundaries. I’ve always wanted to find out how far [one] can go.

Eight

F
or most of us, sex is an act or series of acts, done in private, often compartmentalized or distinct from our larger reality. It may bear little or no relation to how we live outside the moment of erotic pleasure and may not define how we feel, what we do, or how we view ourselves. For lifestyle D&Sers, however, sexuality is an integral aspect of identity.

In this chapter we profile three lifestylers:

The term
lifestyle
has no universal definition in a D&S context. Broadly speaking, it refers to those individuals who elect to be sexually intimate exclusively with other D&Sers. Lifestyle may be a statement of sexual preference or of sexual politics; it may dictate the choices one makes about friends and lovers. Lifestylers often limit new friendships to other D&Sers—indeed, many prefer the tribal atmosphere of an established D&S community for reasons of safety, common interests, and acceptance.

A more parochial definition of lifestyle D&S is used to describe permanent partners for whom the power dynamic is an ever-present reality in all areas of their relationship.

In such full-time lifestyle relationships the partners usually do not switch roles—the line between dominant and submissive is fixed. These relationships in some ways appear to resemble traditional marriages, where one partner is the authority figure. But the lifestyle dominant is as likely to be female as male, and the sex centers on D&S activity.

Although lifestyle D&S does not depend on degree or type of activity, many who have full-time partnered relationships seem to enjoy intense physical and psychological control. There are, of course, D&Sers who enjoy extreme activity without opting for lifestyle, just as some lifestylers prefer mild control. What is most important to the lifestyler is the constant awareness of power roles. This negotiated exchange is both erotically and emotionally gratifying.

Although lifestyle submissives live in service to their dominants, the personal dynamic does not alter their social or business personae. Lifestylers are as apt as anyone else to lead mainstream public lives.

Lifestylers generally feel that the clear delineation of power issues at home liberates them socially. In effect, once the submissive grants power to the dominant, there is no reason to cede power to any other. They also believe that the communication needed to make a D&S relationship work effects immense positive changes in their daily lives. For them, D&S may help to resolve larger control issues.

While some lifestylers publicize their involvement in the Scene, a majority maintain a low profile for fear of legal, occupational, or social harassment.

Virtually no pressure is put on people in the D&S communities to “come out,” and discretion is an unspoken law, particularly among lifestylers, since a high percentage of them appear to be middle- to upper-middle-class professionals.
Scene names
, or pseudonyms, are popular to ensure anonymity. Some lifestylers, however, will confide in family members or sympathetic friends.

Even the most private lifestyler often wears some token of his relationship, whether concealed or visible.

Such tokens remind D&Sers of the underlying power dynamic with their partners and of their commitment to D&S, not merely as a sexual variation but as a way of life.

Those who maintain a 24-hour lifestyle relationship bring a unique perspective to D&S. For them, the decision to control or to be controlled in a full-time relationship is fundamental to their identity.

To the lifestyle dominant, a consistent ability to control all areas of a consenting partner’s life is intrinsic to his or her identity as a person of power and authority and is a source of self-esteem. With this power comes responsibility, a responsibility that dominants find deeply fulfilling. Many actively work toward improving the quality of their submissives’ lives and see themselves in the role of protector, parent, and teacher. They are the submissives’ greatest ally and advocate.

A lifestyle submissive usually feels unfulfilled or bereft when there is no positive, dominant presence in his or her life. Emotionally, the lifestyle submissive typically desires to be in a subservient position to a fundamentally benevolent authority who supervises and disciplines, punishes, and rewards. This supervision may range from the sharply erotic to the sheerly mundane; in this context the fact of control is a confirmation of love and commitment.

Protection and guidance are of themselves erotic to the lifestyle submissive. The ways in which the dominant expresses control may also create a constant, low-level pitch of erotic tension between the partners.

Perhaps the greatest appeal of lifestyle relationships is the degree of candor between partners in them. Many of our interviewees insist that lifestyle D&Sers form unparalleled romantic bonds, partly because submissives forfeit all privacy.

Full-time lifestyle relationships can best be understood as an anarchic conspiracy between two intimate partners where the conventional rules are scrapped and an extraordinary agreement is negotiated based on the partners’ needs. Because of their unique situation, lifestylers have unique problems. Preeminent among these is a lack of role models. The few accessible examples of master-slave interactions derive from fiction, sensationalized crimes, or historical accounts of persecution. While most of our interviewees mentioned the profound influence of D&S cult classics on their sexual awareness, many also believe that such works grossly distort the reality of D&S.

Those who rely on fictional role models for inspiration or guidance regularly encounter stumbling blocks to romantic satisfaction. It is common for novice male heterosexual dominants, for example, to emulate the master in
Story of O
. As a result, they may expect submissives to be one-dimensional erotic objects and may be frustrated when ordinary problems intervene.