Different Loving: The World of Sexual Dominance and Submission (50 page)

By this time I had something of a following. I put together a mail-order catalogue, placed a few ads, and did a number of things that people really liked. My central approach to building an implement of affection is [that] it’s supposed to feel a certain way. It’s supposed to be extremely sensual. When I make something out of cabretta leather, you can hit somebody with that anywhere but the eyeball. My first love in equipment building is for stuff at the sensual end, the mild equipment. I sell my equipment categorized by strength—mild, medium, and severe; some stuff is also marked sensual or atrocious. My lover’s my partner in this business. One of our jokes is that part of the payoff, along with the money, is the ability to make so many people so happy. That is how I see what I do.

There’s always something new to try, but in terms of having a specific goal I’m finding that, in general, my [real] interactions are a lot better than my imagination. I assume [that] my life will go on: I’m going to meet people, to love people, to play with people. I got into this never dreaming that this is something that I could actually like. I’m very fortunate; I don’t feel deprivations in my life. I am with the lover I want to be with. I have no desire to change. I was once asked whether I’m more into men or women. My answer was, “I’m more into her.” That is simply how it is. There isn’t an unfulfilled desire or fantasy. Oh, I guess I’d like to neck with Sigourney Weaver. And—I even expressed it to him, but he wouldn’t go along with it—I want to horsewhip Howard Stern.

At this point in my life D&S is central to my lifestyle. My friends are all within the D&S community. I have less in common with people I used to know who are “straight”—both the militantly heterosexual and the nonkinky. I guess I am following the advice of an old friend of mine, when he reached his 50s. At lunch one day he told me [that] both he and his wife were “shedding the shoulds.” I think I am doing that in my life—not putting up with situations or people because I should, because that’s what I’ve been taught. I have been redefining my life for the past five years.

I was divorced about 10 years ago. Today would have been my 35th anniversary. But I lucked out. I’m bisexual, with a preference for men. In D&S I’m switchable, with a preference for submissiveness with my partner, more inclined toward dominance with other people. [D&S] is the kind of recreational activity I can engage in with other people without actually having intimate sexual experiences as well. There are people that I may meet and [I’ll] then be able to “play” with them in a nonthreatening atmosphere and do some roleplaying and express that side of me outside the bedroom.

Looking back, I realize that in many ways I was in a D&S-kind of relationship before, without having named it, without the actual S&M side of it being exhibited. There wasn’t any spanking or hitting contact involved, but in my marriage, I was the ’50s compliant wife.

I also remember an unpleasant aspect for me as a child in terms of being isolated as punishment. I remember punishments: being tied to the toilet seat. I’m still trying to correct some childhood errors on the part of my parents. I don’t think I had what I could identify as fantasies or wishes about D&S or [about] transforming it into something more acceptable. It wasn’t until after my swinger experience that I was open to S&M.

Swinging for me began at the turn of the ’70s. I was not happy with the way my relationship with my husband was going. I felt that I was capable of more and that he was the inhibited and controlled one. What I did was to contact the man who had been my first lover at the age of 16. He was sexually experienced, socially sophisticated, he was even—although I didn’t realize it [then]—a little kinky, and we had a relationship for a couple or three years. He opened my eyes sexually. When I was ready for something else, I contacted him again, and I was absolutely right. He introduced me to new areas of sexuality in a very slow and gentle way, first introducing me to one more woman, then one more man, then one more couple. The operating concept was making each other feel good. I look back now and realize his dominant role in all of this. In swinging I began to express a part of myself that I had kept repressed during my marital and child-raising years. I was now opening myself to other kinds of people and combinations and sensations that I found very pleasing and very positive. Also, as my marriage was deteriorating, I needed reaffirmation of my attractiveness, my beauty, my sexuality.

[When I went] back to the singles dating scene after my separation, I found, much to my chagrin, [that] things were as bad as they were in the ’50s in terms of how women who had an interest in sex were treated by men. When I was a teenager in the ’40s and ’50s, there were good girls and bad girls. Then we went through the sexual revolution of the ’60s and everyone was expected to go all the way all the time. Now [it was] the ’80s. The fears
about herpes followed by the fears and dread about AIDS were throwing people’s mind-sets back to the ’50s. [They were] much more judgmental about people who were sexually active. The attitude was that it was the men who wanted the sex and the women who were giving it; it was a bad bargain all around. My feeling was [that] “Sex is the friendliest thing two people do,” but here I was back in the old mentality of “If you were that easy, you can’t be very good, and if you’re not good, I’m certainly not going to take you home to mother, but I’ll tuck you anyhow.” I did not like the way I was being treated or the way it was making me feel.

But then I met Mitch. He had had previous interests in D&S. So, with the same kind of slowness and gentleness that I had experienced with my sexual guru 10 years earlier, he led me very carefully. We met in September of 1984, so I guess 1985 was my introduction. First, it was a silk scarf around the wrists, another silk scarf trailing over my body while I was immobilized. He then exchanged the silk scarfs for soft ropes. We then put cup hooks on [my] bed frame, with the open end down, so that as long as I was maintaining the tension on the ropes around my wrists or around my ankles, they were taut and secure. But I knew that all I had to do was release the tension and I was free. I liked that safety factor while I was becoming acquainted with the feeling of restraint and immobilization. When I knew what he was about, I could turn the tables and do to him the things that I experienced. I severed my previous relationship with this old friend of mine and pretty much got out of swinging as a regular interest.

[Mitch and I] had an egalitarian relationship from the beginning, and he’s very much the feminist. We started from an equal base, so that we can be submissive to each other, depending on what our own wants and needs are. We are not in a full-time, master-slave relationship. That wouldn’t work for us. We have a full, well-rounded relationship. This is an essential part of it, absolutely, but of course we each have other interests that we share as well.

My favorite is probably when I’m the submissive and having things done to me and for me, but there are times when I will get pleasure and satisfaction out of pleasing him by doing things that he likes. For myself, hand spanking is always appreciated. We have some soft cabretta and deerskin whips that I love to feel all over my body. I don’t respond well to straps or canes. The feeling is too intense.

One thing I learned years ago was that my pain threshold rises with my arousal level. What I might have perceived as painful when I was cold, if I’m really sexually aroused, if I’m really hot, that same sensation is erotic and stimulating, and not “pain.”

One of the first things that we did to start our collection of various implements was to buy a braided whip. [It] was a gray suede, soft whip, and
it was very expensive. Because of [Mitch’s] sailing background, he started exploring the ideas of making whips out of various kinds of nylon line, which we brought to the clubs. It was very flattering to think that things that we had made for ourselves were also liked by other people. We popularized the concept of the white whip in New York, because that was the only color we could get nylon line in at the time. Coincidentally, it was also at a time when people were becoming health conscious. They loved the idea [that you can] throw it into the machine in a sock, and you can wash your whip.

It was really by popular demand that he was convinced to make something for someone in leather. And now he’s fallen in love with leather and has become one of the preeminent leather whip makers in the country. We’re delighted because the side benefits of this kind of business is that we bring joy to so many people. It’s a very gratifying way to earn a livelihood; it has satisfied some very important things in both of us—being able to do well by doing good is very gratifying. To be able to enjoy work that is also appreciated by others, to me, is the best of all possible worlds. It’s been very good for our relationship; it has given it a very firm foundation.

My philosophy as I’ve enunciated it to others before is that when I’m 94 and rocking on my front porch, I want to have many pleasant memories and few regrets. The regrets that most of us have are for things that we didn’t do, so for me to have a fantasy that could never happen would be a waste of my creative energies. I would much rather think of some experience with my partner, who is an incredibly creative man.

I consider myself a gay woman. I embrace the word
dyke
, because lesbian seems too formal. Specifically, I am more a sadomasochist than anything else. By calling myself a sadomasochist [first] I have defined my lifestyle as centered around sadomasochism. My friends are into S&M; I will not take a lover who is not. My social activities mostly center around either S&M activities or my S&M friends.

I switch, but when I do I find it difficult to [switch] with the same person. I embrace dominance and submission on totally different levels. Sensually, I’m a masochist. I get off on pain. Emotionally, I get a tremendous charge, however, from being in charge. I don’t think I’m more one or the other. I think of it all as a kind of journey. Along the way I can go two different paths. But I can’t take both at the same time.

I wish I could say, “And suddenly I woke up and realized I want to be whipped,” but in my own experience, I swear it’s genetic. My earliest memories involve fantasies of power exchange. Before I could read, I was locking myself in my own closet. I put Barbie in bondage. I remember being
fascinated and scared at a library when I was about six because I had found a book in the children’s section called
Greek Slave Boy
and there was a flogging scene in it. I didn’t know why I liked it so much. Neither did I know why I shouldn’t tell someone that I liked it. My childhood is full of experiences like that, finding a thrill in literature or in a movie, liking bad guys. Bad guys always turned me on. David Copperfield’s father—with the famous caning scene—drove me insane for years. [The bad guys] used power and trust to their own ends. Unfortunately, they did it maliciously. When the good guys did it, they almost always did it blindly, so to me it doesn’t have the same satisfaction. But casting myself in the role as either the moustache-twisting, highly uniformed—uniforms have always been a fetish for me—bad guy or their troublemaking victim, straining in bondage, or even just getting the worst of a duel, has always thrilled me.

I was a precocious reader, and somewhere between seven and 12 I started reading very adult novels, particularly romantic novels of the “savage love” variety. My mother left them lying around, and I would pick them up and read them. They would be full of bodice ripping and incredibly long rapes that included very untypical rape scenes, like 20-minute sessions of cunnilingus. They always ended with the heroine having screaming orgasms, and I remember reading those and then going to the thesaurus to look up some words that they’d used that I didn’t know. It was the thesaurus that led me to sadomasochism.

[At] about 14 I became a very radical feminist, mostly in response to an oppressive father figure in my home. I suddenly realized that all these fantasies that I had, whether I was top or bottom in them, were very, very politically incorrect. I remember reading
Ms
. magazine. A woman had written a short guilty letter about how she’s a perfectly normal, wonderful woman in all ways except that she likes her boyfriends to paddle her ass before they have sex. The debate over that letter lasted half a year. I read every letter, taking every negative comment directly to heart. I didn’t [even] know how to masturbate to orgasm yet. All I knew was that reading about this stuff, thinking about it, were pleasurable to me. Yet the women that I had singled out as personal heroines seemed to not support what I was thinking about.

Gradually, it took the realization that liberation means the freedom to choose. I realized [that] as long as I was not exploiting another person, then whatever I did in my lifestyle, public or private, only had to be okay with me. Once that was put away I was able to splurge and really go out and embrace S&M and look for it in lovers and other partners. [But the disapproval of other gay women] makes it real hard for me to get a date in New York.

During my first relationship with a woman, it was clear who had the power in the relationship. She was older, she had more money, she had a
more independent lifestyle, and she was better at what we were doing. I loved her as you love someone who’s teaching you something. I lit her cigarettes for her, drove her around, and more or less came when she called and went away when she dismissed me. She ordered the food at dinner and paid for it; I was almost a gentleman companion to her. She used to dress me in men’s clothing. It wasn’t until this year that I reembraced that particular aspect of my play. Now, it’s become a very major part of what I do.

That relationship never became formal. We were just friends. We were doing girl stuff, and the sexuality of it, the power of it, were always dismissed. She was bisexual but primarily heterosexual, so she gave a lot of weight to her relationships with men. I grew dissatisfied with that, and we gradually grew apart. I haven’t seen her since. She did, however, invite me to her wedding. Last year I got a call on my answering machine, and my first thought was, I can’t see her in the arms of another man. I didn’t [go]. I really couldn’t.