Different Loving: The World of Sexual Dominance and Submission (41 page)

It was mainly a matter of child’s play throughout most of my life until I was married at 23. Then, having been married to my wife for a couple of years, I noticed in some [sexually-oriented] magazines that other people had these same desires. I showed it to my wife and asked her what she thought about it. She wasn’t very impressed, but over a period of time I was able to convince her to tie me up for sex. That was the first sexual experience that involved bondage that I engaged in. I found it very exciting, [but] at the time my wife didn’t.

I think she derives pleasure from it now in that when we’re engaged in these activities, in my submissive role, I do a lot to serve her and pleasure her. So, typically, we might start out with her tying me up for maybe an hour or so, then releasing me. Then I’ll give her a good massage and rub lotion on her feet and perform cunnilingus on her and do whatever I can to satisfy her, according to her dictates. Then later on, maybe tied again to the bed, spread-eagled, she’ll use me for her pleasure, which may involve sitting astride me, using my penis to satisfy her. Then after she’s had her orgasm, she may leave me again for a while and go about her business in the house and then eventually come back and jerk me off.

Some of the most exciting bondage has been bondage I’ve done to myself when traveling. If I’m going to be in a motel room for the night, I’ve devised a way to use an automatic timer switch with a combination lock. This may seem a little strange, but I tie myself to the bed and attach the automatic timer switch to the light. When the light goes out, I can’t see the combination lock. That’s the key to the whole system. For a period of time—two or three hours or more—I can’t get free. When the light comes back on, I can release myself. The backup is that eventually the sun will rise, and I can see at that point.

The most exciting point is after I’ve tied myself up and the light switch goes off: I realize that there’s no way to get free. I’ve been very careful at setting it up so that until I get light to see by, I am committed to that position. As I become sexually aroused, it’s difficult or impossible to do anything to satisfy myself.

The first time I did this to myself really sticks out in my mind because it was different and exciting. I built myself a timer switch. I spent a lot of time fantasizing and trying to decide just how this would be built. The first time I tried it I was home alone. I tied my ankles to the bed, and then made a
couple loops in the headboard. I had two locks and managed to attach my arms so they were folded in front of me. I locked myself in position and had the timer set to go off in about half an hour, so I had plenty of time to sit there and think: Did I really want to do this, or not? I could have gotten free very easily. Eventually I heard the timer click, and the lights went off, and then I knew that decision had been taken away from me. I spent most of the night in that position.

My wife doesn’t relish the dominant role, so although I’m in a submissive posture, her attitude is one of pleasing. She wants to give me what I want and, frankly, I think what I want her to give me is what
I don’t
want. If I say, “Touch me,” that means “Don’t touch me.” If I say, “Untie me,” that means “Don’t untie me.” We can’t seem to get past that; she wants me to be happy. When I do this to myself, alone, where I can’t be untied, can’t be touched, and there’s no one there to try to please me, I have to live with the decision I made.

My most compelling fantasies are ones my wife is not privy to. I had a couple of homosexual experiences when I was younger and frankly quite enjoyed them. So I have various fantasies that involve both bondage and sex with another man. Also, I went to a fair one time, and I saw a sheep being led to a block. They put the sheep’s head into a collar, half metal and half leather, so that the sheep was held in place there. It could not move around while being examined by the judges. That device has been in my fantasies a number of times. These are fantasies I wouldn’t dare act on, because I have a position in the community.

That part of me that likes to be tied up is [not] so evil that it negates the good parts of me. It’s just part of me. At this stage of my life I don’t think it’s a bad part. It’s a troublesome part, and the reason it’s a troublesome part is because so many other people don’t understand or refuse to understand that it’s not a bad thing. Because of our culture in this country, these activities have been labeled as being bad, maybe even evil. As a result, I can’t share that part of myself with anyone. It’s even taking a hell of a risk to share it with my wife. I think it’d be a wonderful thing if I could share myself completely with my friends and the people around me. Maybe they then would be able to share themselves with me. I know that I work, play, and talk to people every day who have little secret corners in their lives that they can’t share with me. It may not be B&D, but, believe me, we all have secret corners. What a wonderful thing if they could share those secret corners with me and I could share mine with them. Then, who knows? We may find some common ground.

I’m straight. I enjoy all expressions of standard sex, but D&S [is] critical. I’m dominant, and I have to have that in my relationship, or else it is of no consequence. Vanilla sex is a very small aspect; D&S has been the major portion of my sexuality for the last 15 years.

I think there would be a lot fewer divorces if power roles were discussed early on. People ask things about the home they’d like to live in, about the foods they like, and various shared interests, but one very critical question is how the power is going to be shared in the relationship. I think this would solve a lot of people’s problems. If [one] said, “Well, basically I like to be in charge; I’m a dominant individual, and I want to do this,” [or] “I like being submissive, and I would like to do this,” you wouldn’t have people trying to make a car run on square tires.

In the past, during typical sexual encounters, where you’re screwing, you hold somebody’s arms over her head: Her response would increase, and my response would increase. I became more and more cognizant of that. There was an evolution: The ropes start coming out, and then cuffs and chains. When we were still playing cowboys and Indians, I always made sure to wind up on the side that was doing the tying and the chasing. I remember the thrill of that. One time, this one girl and I played the game a little further. At first she protested, and then she kept on coming back. I used some clothesline around her back. She liked it. I was the one who said, “We shouldn’t really be doing this. Are you going to tell your mother?” And she said, “No, no, no!”

[Sometimes I’d] go out with somebody for a few months, [and] once past the [standard] sexual aspects, [I’d] start introducing aspects of the Scene. They would go along with it but then would start sharing with their friends, and the peer pressure [and] feedback would be negative. They’d say, “We can’t do this. It’s sick.” I would say, “Wait a minute! We’ve been doing it for a month, and you’re well and fine, and this has heightened our experience.” [And some would respond] “Yeah, but I can’t do this anymore, because it’s just not right.” And you find out that their friends were kicking them down.

Generally, I work with large-breasted women. That’s one of my requirements because I do a lot of breast bondage. Besides, it’s like the frosting on top of everything. During a scene you literally see body modification occurring, even in smaller-breasted women. When I do them, their breasts increase in size to a great extert, and their bodies become trimmer. [The bonds] accentuate the female pinching-in of the waist. Even after the bondage is off, there’s a residual effect. It increases the feminine aspect, and I think this occurs on a psychological and spiritual level [as well]. At that point, because all the barriers are removed, it’s really manifesting [itself] into the individual.

I believe in the spiritual part of all this. With my current slave, we had an incredible session where her body actually took on a different shape. She’s a little overweight: It was [as if] her waistline completely disappeared during the course of the scene. I took a Polaroid of it and showed it to her later. It was absolutely incredible. It was like a physical change. Stuff like that isn’t supposed to happen, technically, but it did. I had done a lot of initial body bondage and then a lot of sexual play. Then she was in a suspended position and [taking] a lot of clamping. At that point it was like she was on autopilot. I knew we were at a special threshold where you’re also responding to something else. The things that you’re doing are so unique to that particular situation that there’s almost a higher energy at work between the two of you. That was what was really going on. Something else was inputting there. You get to a transcendental level—but it’s not a subconscious level; it’s actually happening in the physical. I’ve had some experiences where I’ve done fire walking, going over hot coals. Technically you’re not supposed to be able to do that. What were normal limits suddenly just dissolve. You’re able to do things and endure things that would [ordinarily] cause you some discomfort. Some people call that state the shimmer level.

I have a very strong personality—what I like to think of as a survivor’s personality. As far as submissiveness in my normal life, I think it’s more directed towards trying to do good deeds and helping with elderly members of the family.

In D&S I continue to discover my sexuality. Sexually I’m submissive; psychologically I’m dominant. [Some] say that I’m not submissive at all—that I’m a dominant masochist. [But] when I look for gratification, I seem to find it in submission to a man.

I’ve always enjoyed lovers who held my arms down around my head while we made love. I probably have been attracted to men who behaved in a subconsciously dominant way all along, but I did not actually find the Scene until [roughly two years] ago. [When I did], I felt I had finally come home. I felt as though I was understood for the first time. At first, I was overcome with joy. I have a very high-pressure job. My judgment is not always good; I’m too emotional; I have mood swings. If I can find someone who I feel has better judgment than myself, I am delighted not to have to make the right decisions all the time.

I had a rather abusive childhood emotionally and physically. Part of it is the old sibling-rivalry thing: My sister resented me. [She] beat me up constantly. She would do lots of sadistic things. My mother felt that there was no limit on the number of times that you could hit the child on the rump.
I’d come home from school and find that all of the contents of my dresser were dumped in a big pile on the floor because my underwear was crooked. Once, after my sister had beaten me to a pulp, I said, “Damn you to hell.” My mother, being a devout Catholic, made me kneel on the floor in front of her and my sister and beg God for forgiveness. I was about 11 [then]. My mother left home when I was about 12, and my sister left about a year after that. It was as though Lincoln had freed the slaves, because my dad was actually a great guy. He had never liked punishing us. From the moment my mother and sister left, I never experienced sadistic behavior again.

In my household, my father thought that pornography was fine, and my mother, having been raised in a convent, thought it was the most heinous thing on the face of the earth and should be obliterated. I managed, as all children do, to be rather investigative. I discovered where my father kept his porno books when I was about 12; I enjoyed the ones where guys were on the more aggressive side. After my father died, I managed to end up with [those books], and that kept me happy in the privacy of my bedroom until I got to be about 28. By then I had read that stuff so many times, it didn’t work anymore.

I ventured out to a 24-hour newsstand, in the dead of night, making sure there was nobody in the store. I snuck in and looked for something that looked like it might be bondage-y. I knew that I liked reading things where girls would be tied to the bed while the guy ravaged her. It was always friendly ravaging: I’m not into guys doing terrible things to you, although I’m sure we all define terrible as something different. I bought one of these little newspaper magazines, which advertised a club they opened in the city. I went there and had a couple of experiences with a gentleman who was in charge. I realized that I like to be tied up. He eventually asked me to write for his paper. I started writing “Continuing Adventures of V”; that’s all I did for the next [several] years. In fact, I wrote an article where I said that writing the column was the kinkiest part of my sex life.

[Then] I married a vanilla guy who said he was going to save me from S&M; he whisked me off to the countryside for three years. Ultimately, we moved back. Our sex life became less and less satisfying. He tried [D&S] a few times, because before we were together, I said, “I need to be tied up, and I’ll need you to do that.” He said, “Don’t worry; I’ll do it.” He did it exactly twice in five years. As far as he was concerned, it was weird, it was sick, it wasn’t right, and he didn’t want to do it.

I learned something very important [about the difference between writing] from my imagination versus writing what I know from being in the Scene. That comes from an experience that I had with someone who had read my column for years. When I was alone with [him], the first opportunity he
got, he did something very painful. It wasn’t really severe; it was just how he did it. I stopped him and said, “How could you do this to me? There’s nothing pleasurable about this.” He said, “But you love pain! You write about it all the time!” So I learned something very important: For some people, what they are reading in their closets and under their covers with their flashlights is all they ever learn about S&M! There’s a tremendous responsibility [in] writing that column, because for some people, that will be the gospel and doctrine. So now I try to teach in my column.

[At one club], I met an older gentleman who didn’t know much about the Scene itself but evidently knew about S&M. He was probably physically the best match I’ve ever had. He did exactly the stuff I liked to do—bondage and clamps—and I transcended with him. For me to transcend doing S&M doesn’t happen with severe stimuli but with a steady building of the stimuli. If I can gently take a curve that brings me over my pain limit—a gentle, sloping curve, as opposed to a sharp spike—then I actually leave my body. For me to actually surrender, a man must be able to produce that reaction in me. He didn’t know what to call it, but he was making it happen routinely. We did a scene at Paddles one night where I was chained up to the St. Andrew’s cross and he was doing all kinds of lovely things to me. When I sat down afterwards, a young man came over to me and said, “My goodness, you do have some endurance!” I said, “Aw, geez; I could have been up there at least twice as long.” He said, “Are you kidding? You were up there for two hours.” I said, “Naw!” He asked me if I had ever heard of Eulenspiegel. He spelled it for me and told me to call Information and ask for the number. I went to the next [dominant-men submissive-women’s] group meeting. I was delighted. I was really impressed with what I saw. I don’t know what I expected, but I found the upper crust of S&M. They were like spiritual guides.