Different Loving: The World of Sexual Dominance and Submission (86 page)

I am mostly heterosexual. Of the 11 or 12 partners I’ve had, 10 of them have been male. I almost feel at this point as though “straight” is a somewhat derogatory term. In terms of D&S, I tend to switch. I don’t do heavy S&M in either direction.

The role that I prefer really depends on how well I know my partner. The more I get to know my partner, the more comfortable I am being a top.
I need to feel confident about my partner’s needs and preferences before I can feel that I can successfully top [him]. As a bottom I feel fairly confident about my own ability to communicate with the top and say, “This is what I need.” There’s more risk involved in being a bottom, but I have never picked up anybody and gone home with them and done an S&M scene. I will at first be very vanilla and then work into more exotic things as time goes on and I get to know the person better. I’ve been in a number of vanilla relationships and been perfectly happy, so it does not bother me not to have an S&M element [to] things.

In my life as a whole, my D&S sexuality so far has not been very explicit. I think of myself as a very normal looking person. I don’t have tattoos or multiple piercings. I look like a college student, and most people looking at me would not notice anything that indicated that I was into D&S. The role [it plays] in my life is very personal. I am aware of power dynamics in relationships between myself and a stranger, or between two strangers. Even [when] looking at what people consider to be straight relationships, I often see very clear D&S overtones. One of the most interesting things for me about learning more about D&S is becoming aware of how prevalent [D&S relationships] are in society as a whole. I don’t feel as though I had a complete understanding of relationships between people until I started being aware of D&S overtones.

I think about my D&S activities [as] primarily sexual. Usually I negotiate with my lover—we go back and forth and ask, “Is there something that you’re particularly interested in doing, or do you want to leave it up to me?” We negotiate for a day or two or sometimes longer, and then we get together and spend the evening doing something that [has] D&S elements to it. We don’t have lots of costumes, and we don’t memorize scripts. It’s fairly unstructured.

I’ve wondered about how I came to be interested in D&S for quite a while. When I was five or six years old I would draw pictures of people who were tied up. I was interested in horses, and I would draw pictures of centaurs with harnesses and bridles in their mouths. I remember thinking at the time that this was not something that I should let my mother know about. I [also] remember playing doctor games with the neighborhood children [between ages] six and nine. We would tie each other up and stick pins in each other or tickle each other. There was very definitely an element of illicit, forbidden play to this.

I never thought that I was particularly sick or weird for having D&S fantasies. My self-doubts tended to come in less-personal arenas—like am I going to be able to hold a job? I’ve often had doubts about whether I was a particularly good lover, but I haven’t felt uncomfortable with resolving
D&S once I got over the political problems. One of the things that helped me is that I spent much of my childhood and adolescence not being part of the in-crowd at school or in any of my peer groups. I was fairly accustomed to being very independent and self-motivated. Feeling as though I was a societal outcast did not particularly distress me.

When I was about 19 I went through a rather strong religious conversion, [as] I like to think of it, and became a fairly radical feminist. Prior to that time, although I had D&S fantasies, I had not done any actual D&S. I experienced a cognitive shift in becoming a radical feminist. For about four years I called myself a lesbian, largely [but] not entirely for political purposes. I did have strong sexual feelings toward women, and I had a very good time. The thinking about feminism and the thinking about lesbianism allowed me to think more acceptingly of my D&S feelings because I was already doing something that was fairly outlaw.

I went through the feeling that D&S was not feministically correct for a long time. [But] my feelings were right there, and I had to confront them all the time. [So I said], “Politically, I don’t like D&S, but let’s face it, I have these fantasies.” I think a lot of my friends who had D&S fantasies simply refused to acknowledge them. I found it very difficult to do that. I was also trying to resolve the conflict of wanting politically to be a lesbian but still being attracted to men. So after many years of wrestling with these two conflicts, I finally decided that I was being too hard on myself in a number of ways and that I should try and accept both the fact that I could be a radical feminist and still be primarily heterosexual and also that I could be very concerned about the domination of women in society and still have D&S fantasies. I still feel uncomfortable with certain D&S fantasies, [like] costumed roles involving Nazism [or] roles that have to do with slavery.

One of the things that I really enjoy in my sexual life, which is something a lot of my S&M friends regard with horror, is switching within a scene. I am not a submissive bottom. I will sometimes break free and take over. Sometimes if I’m topping somebody, I will allow [him] the opportunity to break free and take over. I enjoy overpowering and being empowered. The idea of spending 24 hours a day in one role to me seems very limiting. A lot of times I will try and turn tables, and the dominant will resist. I get a lot of fun out of fighting. In fact, I prefer to be tied up rather than to actually be held down by someone. When I’m being held down physically, I do not like the feeling of powerlessness if I’m unable to break free. I feel stronger when I am resisting ropes, mostly because few people can break through ropes. If I’m wrestling with somebody hand to hand, I want to be able to break free. So the dominant who wants to keep control of the scene has to tie me up. Even then, I’ll thrash around a lot. I don’t like a wholehearted submission.

My partner and I recently got into a wrestling match. We were having some sort of argument, and it ended up with him trying to hold me down and to make me agree with whatever he wanted me to agree with. I kept saying, “No, I’m not going to.” And so he spanked me, and I still refused to give in. I was fighting, and I got out of the hold and then got caught again. This time he decided he was going to put me in an arm lock and just apply leverage until I gave in. That didn’t work. At one point he had me in a scissor, where he had his legs around my waist and was squeezing hard. I kept saying no. And the thing that was really fun for me was that I really felt as though there was absolutely no way that I was going to give in completely!

As it turned out, I was completely physically helpless by the time he got me in the scissor. I could not get out of it. But he was not going to be able to make me say what he wanted me to say. So we were basically at an impasse, which I found vastly entertaining. It made me feel empowered in that even though I was physically incapacitated, I still had my identity, and I still had my point of view, and I was not going to give it up. I found it humorous as hell. We were laughing hysterically throughout the entire thing.

I have tied up my lover, and I have really enjoyed the ability to do whatever I wanted to [him]. When people are doing something that’s vanilla, I find that things happen very quickly: Both people are caressing, both people are getting aroused, both are letting go of control of the situation. When I have my lover tied up, I can take my time. I can sit back and think, What do I want to do next? For me, there’s a very different flavor to the sensuality of the encounter. When I am completely in control, I don’t have to worry about my own responses as much. I can be turned on, or I can not be turned on. I can be in a playful mood, not particularly feeling sexual yet and [saying], “Oh, what happens here?” It’s much more of an exploratory, sensual feeling than a sexual one.

It also has real strong power connotations that I enjoy a lot. I enjoy being able to make my partner respond and to watch his body moving and to see how he reacts to things that I do. When I am completely in control, there’s never any question of who’s giving in. I don’t know if this is because when my lover is tied up, he doesn’t choose to struggle, or [because] he surrenders in an emotional way that I cannot. When I bottom to him, the power struggle is still very much there.

When I’m not working, and when I’m not raising my children, I paint and watch television and listen to music. Sexually, I’ve long had a fantasy-obsession with watching women wrestle. I collect videos and literature and write about it and think about it and talk about it and see it every chance I
get. [But] in and of itself, it isn’t sex for me—or for anyone else. It’s not a substitute for [sex, nor] for a relationship. If anything, it enhances a relationship. The optimum for me would be to have a relationship with a woman who does it. I have found myself increasingly insisting that, at the very least, I be able to share and have [my partner] know about my interest and know that it’s sexually stimulating for me. I have love-wrestled, so I have some interest in doing it, but that does not come even remotely close to the interest in observing it.

For a long time I was absolutely in the closet about it. The first person to know, concretely, was [my ex-wife]. I was living a dual life, in a closet about that particular corner of my sexuality. It had become too difficult; so I told her, and we talked about it briefly. She wanted to see a film to see what it was—and understood it, I think, vaguely. However, it wasn’t something she expressed interest in doing or thinking about or talking about. Subsequent to that, in all the relationships I’ve had with any level of seriousness—anything that’s gone beyond a couple of months, anyway—I’ve spoken to the woman extensively about it and have insisted that she see whatever videotape or material I think is appropriate. A lot of women don’t understand what happens. They’re used to seeing professional wrestling on TV.

I would characterize [my interest] as a difficult necessity. I initially broach the subject with some trepidation. What I have found is that, in general, they’re very understanding. I think that you can tell almost anyone any truth about yourself, provided that you’ve been able to communicate the real truth about yourself. There’s a lot more to me than this particular sexual turn-on. Women don’t have to be afraid that I’m some violent human being who enjoys the idea of them being hurt without consent. I think that it fits in with the rest of what they know about me, in terms of personality. I’m fairly open. I’m also knowledgeable about [sexuality] to a rudimentary extent, but the rudiments of my knowledge far exceed those of the average person in this society. I think I communicate that. Also, I am drawn to people who are fairly adventurous—if not in practice, at least in fantasy. The people I go out with tend to be women who have dealt with and enjoyed their fantasies on a much more conscious level than most other people. I’m attracted to more intelligent women—or, at the very least, more educated women. They try to be a bit more sophisticated about these issues.

For me, I think there’s some deep-seated psychological thing that works itself out in the context of a [wrestling] scenario. Some shrink once said to me that she felt—it may sound as if I don’t take this seriously [but] actually I think it was an incisive insight—that one of the two combatants was my mother and that the other one was me or my champion. There is this need for someone to vanquish the other. The champion beats my mother: I think
that’s part of it. The other part is that I have a great attraction to women’s bodies, and [when] they are in the wrestling match, if it’s properly done, they are in a physical configuration that’s very exciting.

In female wrestling there is a gamut of visuals. It’s complex, because the universe of people who do it for real may be as different as everyone is different, but the women who are paid to do it are basically of three types: dancers, actresses, or bodybuilders—body professionals. I look at tapes of all three and find I’m a glutton: I’ll take it all. I have a very catholic approach to female physiology.

There are variations within each type [of wrestling], but the major set of activities is not very much different than what two males do in a collegiate wrestling match. It’s based on headlocks, scissor holds, and things like that. There is not a high degree of possibility of injury, and there’s no attempt to [inflict] permanent injury. You can’t—it’s barbaric. It can get very competitive: A lot of strength, a lot of fast—and a lot of painful—moves are used.

A
catfight
is a form of wrestling in which the combatants are allowed to pull hair without yanking it out, which is pretty tough—there has to be [a] mutual understanding—and [they may also] grab breasts or buttocks, which is normally not done during freestyle wrestling. Sometimes they’re allowed to slap. I have never seen a catfight go any further than that. You always have a third person [who’s an observer]; it’s very dangerous to do with just two people. People who are knowledgeable never have private matches, unless they know the person very well.

There’s [something] called the
AmFem Directory
, in which couples advertise for [private] matches with other couples; they get together for an evening, and the women wrestle or fight. In those kinds of matches you often have different, more erotic variations. An erotic wrestling match might end in a face-sit. On tape that means that you’re sitting on someone else’s face and smothering them—there’s an implication of sexuality that is not really true. In real life, it is true: You’re fighting for control of the loser. The loser does anything that the winner wants, and that’s usually sexual. That doesn’t happen all the time—not even the majority of times—but it happens, and it’s set up beforehand. In a certain type of erotic wrestling—and this is particularly true of women who are just into the more erotic aspect of it—there’s actually some kind of sexual manipulation during the match. They try to get each other to come by use of the fingers, knees, legs, rubbing, that type of thing. The woman who comes to orgasm first is the loser. In order to do this, you can’t have very much clothing on. You can’t lick them through a bikini bottom—well, you can, but it’s much more difficult! So you have to get those clothes off somehow. That’s also decided, usually before the couples get together.