Playing on the Edge: Sadomasochism, Risk, and Intimacy (18 page)

Similarly, players who “stretch” their limits emerge from play with a sense of having triumphed over adversity. In this situation, players (usually, but not always, bottom-identified) having previously cast a limit as a source of fear, discomfort, or anxiety, overcome this concern within and through play, and frame this experience as an accomplishment. For Faye, the trauma of having seen a man flogged to death in an Asian country, while on military duty, had left her deeply disturbed by the idea (and the imagery) of flogging, and so she was consciously working toward becoming comfortable with a flogging scene.

CATHARSIS AND HEALING

As others have noted, SM can be cathartic (Weiss 2006b). Participants are aware of the potential for SM as a space for emotional liberation (though some argue that “anger” is not included in the array of permissible emotions with which to play). A scene from my field notes provides a good example:

Russ stood behind Janelle and swung the flogger as hard as I’d ever seen anyone swing anything, and it landed on her back with a tremendous thwack. I thought she was going to break in half. She screamed, loudly, and he hit her again. Over and over he hit her that hard, breaking a seri- ous sweat by the fifth swing. And over and over again she screamed, until one—the last one—brought her to her knees. He turned her around, played with her nipples and she dissolved into tears. Russ later told me that this was a formula for them; Janelle’s goal was to cry.

The catharsis of play is not always intentional, however. One night, a long and intense scene with Adam ended just as the club was closing. We left imme- diately (without the usual “come-down” time), and walked to a diner with Sam. As we sat down and opened our menus, I burst into laughter. I was lying on the seat of the booth, gasping for air between gales of unprovoked and uncontrol- lable laughter. I could not breathe easily, and Adam grew very concerned. I felt out of my mind with giddiness. Adam tried holding me and talking soothingly. When that did not work, he grew serious, but I laughed even harder at his stern- ness. At one point, he slapped me in the face. Still I laughed.

Regardless of whether catharsis is the objective of a given scene, the physical, emotional, and psychological intensity of SM, combined with its marginalized sta- tus, generates emotional responses of an intensity that players often find cathartic. Some participants play with the express purpose of healing from past trauma; among incest survivors, incest play can sometimes be an example of this.

FLOW

In 1990, psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s treatise on “the psychology of optimal experience” was a national bestseller in the United States. In it he identified optimal experience as autotelic, that which is an end in and of itself, for its own sake. Csíkszentmihályi argued that this state of consciousness, which he called “flow,” is the result of attention so intense and all-encompassing that one achieves a sense of order in consciousness, against the default state of psychic entropy. Flow involves challenge and the utilization of skills, intense

concentration, an altered sense of time, the loss of self-consciousness, goals, feedback, and the conflation of action with awareness. Elsewhere Csíkszent- mihályi described the flow experience as one in which “[t]he ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one.”
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This optimal experience, Csíkszentmihályi argues, can be generated in activ- ities as varied as playing a musical instrument, running, and performing man- ual labor. For Stebbins, the flow experience is a motivation for the undertaking of various kinds of serious leisure, including mountain climbing, kayaking, and snowboarding (2005). In SM, flow is generated physically and/or psychologi- cally, and through topping or bottoming. Bottoming is more likely than top- ping to result in observable altered consciousness, but the community is also more highly motivated to recognize altered states in bottoms than in tops. The flow experience for bottoms is most frequently called “subspace” or “bottom space.” It has many other descriptors, including loopy, flying, and fried. To the (lesser) extent that the flow experience in topping is recognized discursively, these phrases include “in the zone,” “grooving,” or “in top space.”

Tops achieve flow through mental focus, particularly when engaged in activities that require intense concentration such as knife play, needle play, and advanced bondage. Tops also experience flow through the physical act of topping; the physical and auditory rhythm of flogging, juxtaposed with the concentration required to do so safely, can be meditative. Eric describes his experience as being “in the zone”:

I feel very large. There’s an intense sense of space, of infinity, of pure control, of being one with everything. [ . . . ] I’m not here right now. I’ve hit that zone. In thirty minutes I’ll come out of it and go wow, did I do all that? You know, I remember it but you’re totally in the moment in that respect.

At a party one night, I watched Samantha singletail Shaun. She began to “zone” during the scene, and when she ended it, she was very glassy-eyed and seemed intoxicated. Because I had not seen a top look quite so much the way a bottom looks after a scene, I was standing nearby, watching her intently. She saw me and instructed, “Go get me a Pepsi and put it aside.” It was not Saman- tha’s custom to speak that way to people, and she had never spoken that way to me. When I did not get her a Pepsi, she “sent” someone else. The next day she did not quite remember the interaction. She apologized to me, explaining that she had been in “top space.”

Bottoms experience flow as a result of intense rhythmic sensation, sensation or pain itself, unrelenting focus on a particular task, or concentrated effort to endure a sensation or circumstance. Lawrence said of the first time he experi- enced the “endorphin rush” of SM play:

It was a very intense buzz. My body was very light, I didn’t feel the weight of my body. I didn’t lose awareness of where I was, but my head cleared up completely, which was really wonderful because I’m always thinking. I have a very busy mind and sometimes that gets the better of me. And it was wonderful just to be able to relax and not have to force myself to relax . . . I’d describe it as more as a high than a buzz. The closest thing I can say is that it’s like being drunk . . . so it was really amazing at that moment to be—all that I was, was the sum of my five senses. That was the thing that I most relished, being able to use my body to the utmost.

Leah calls her flow experience “the happy place” and frames it as obliteration:

It actually has a color, it’s really strange. ’Cause sometimes it has, some- times it’s really tropical and beachy. And it’s just a place where I am so blissed out from whatever is going on that all I can do is pretty much smile and nod and try not to drool. [laughs]

For Kyle, flow is a more classic nirvana:

Kyle:
I was at that point notched up so high that they needed to bring me down from that [ . . . ] and it stimulated every nerve just right, and I just soared. I’ve never had an experience like that since, where I’ve just absolutely flown.

Me:
What does that mean?

Kyle:
Trying to put something like that into words is difficult, because a lot gets lost in translation. But I’ll do the best I can. Picture for a moment that you are in a desert. And it’s very hot and very uncomfortable and you’re dehydrated, and you’ve been walking for days and your muscles are tired. And you’re just about to fall over. And the, all of a sudden, you fall off a cliff and you land in a tropical paradise of an oasis. In the water, but it’s drinkable. And it’s the perfect temperature and it’s very refresh- ing. And you come out of it and you’re clean-shaven automatically, and everything is 100 percent perfect. You went from, really really difficult to deal with and like doing your best just to hang on, to everything’s groovy, just like that. That’s soaring.

REINVENTION AND REBIRTH

In much the same way as identification shifts create opportunities for the rein- vention of the self, immersion in the community facilitates a rebirth process of its own. For most people, immersion leads to a burnout-rebirth process, in which members become temporarily depleted by the scene, decrease their par- ticipation or withdraw completely, and return in full swing weeks (sometimes months) later. This phoenix-from-the ashes cycle is so widely accepted as part of the community that it has in recent years become part of the programming for at least one major organization. Thus “burnout” has become part of the community discourse, and how to handle it part of the toolkit one needs to navigate the scene. This commitment to remain involved in the community despite periods of diminishing returns—what Stebbins calls “perseverance”— evidences the centrality of SM identity for the members of this community.

SM identity is important among the members of the Caeden community. This identity is not the same as particular SM identifications (as top, dominant, sadist, bottom, submissive, masochist). These identification labels are not understood as fixed for most participants. For a given individual, they change often, sometimes even day to day.

Identification labels, despite their flexibility, capture a particular “point in the journey” of participants, and, at any given moment, the most current incar- nation of what is understood as an SM identity. That identity, in the first place, and the fluidity and flexibility of it in the second, evidences the functions of the community itself in the lives of its members. The possibility of reinvention of the self from week to week—each introduction to the group offers the poten- tial of a declaration of a new identity. Entrenched in meanings that members eschew but uphold through play and non-play interaction, these identity labels shape the way people respond to the bearers. They dictate opportunities for play and friendships, determine their place in community hierarchy, and provide different governing rules for social behavior.

If identification labels in Caeden are mercurial, and play is consistent with these labels, then kinds of play and dynamics of play change as well—from scene to scene as well as day to day. The potential for the reinvention of the self arises not only out of a different self-declaration and therefore out of dif- ferent social interaction, but also out of play, moment to moment. This is an adventure of the self, a trip to different parts of the self, that may ultimately function to integrate them.

Research on discourses among SM participants in Britain revealed some similar readings of the rewards of SM play, including pleasure, escapism, and transcendence (Taylor and Ussher 2001). Even beyond these direct and specific rewards of topping and bottoming, the engagement in play, in a broader sense, facilitates the achievement of additional rewards in the community.

STATUS

Social status within the Caeden SM community operates on multiple levels. Paths to high status are varied and related to identification labels, and means of status achievement in Caeden are clear to most participants. The highest status is accorded to people who become community leaders. Community leaders are involved in the local, and often the national, SM scene at the organizational level. They are well-networked and serve as liaisons to leather, gay, lesbian, and fetish communities. They are also generally respected in the scene. Though there are several organizations that serve the pansexual SM scene in Caeden, community leaders are concentrated in Horizons.

There are two additional paths to high status: status as a player and status as a volunteer. Those who become community leaders succeed along both of these tracks. Though these paths do not always lead to community leadership, they are necessary in order to become a community leader.

Status as a Volunteer

SM participants in Caeden represent their commitment to their SM identity and community through organizational involvement. This engrossment (Goff- man 1974), closely linked to immersion in the community, occurs quickly and easily. Volunteerism is possible for even the newest arrivals in the scene. This is particularly advantageous for people who top. Because of safety concerns, nov- ices who bottom have less difficulty finding play partners than those who top. This results in faster access to status through play for bottoms, but also serves to track tops as volunteers. Volunteerism can result in increased access to play, which helps to mitigate the disadvantage tops face on the path to status in the community. It also contributes to an imbalance between tops and bottoms at the level of community leadership. Because most participants want to play soon after they enter the scene, and because bottoms do not
need
to become involved in order to obtain play, the result is the cultivation of tops as community lead- ers far more frequently than bottoms.

Entry-level volunteer opportunities include assisting at events with collect- ing admission fees/tickets and setting up and cleaning up at parties. Although

volunteering at this level provides visibility and increased contact in the com- munity, the selection process for these opportunities is nearly indiscrimi- nate. Often, members must therefore become more deeply involved in order to achieve high status. Further involvement means serving on organizational committees or in multiple organizations simultaneously, or volunteering at national SM events.

Status as a Player

The means of status attainment through play also differs by SM identification. In general, being a good player entails achievement in the areas outlined in the previous section, as well as versatility of skill and interest. Play partners confer status as well. For example, submissives, and especially service submissives, can achieve high status by being “trained” (formally or informally) by high-status dominants. Play partners also confer status by virtue of (mainstream) attrac- tiveness. This is especially the case with people who bottom (whether men, women, or queer-identified); tops in particular enjoy a higher status when they play with more attractive bottoms. Overall, though, status as a player in the community seems more tightly interwoven with skill than with conformity to conventional standards of attractiveness.