The Ultimate Guide to Kink (44 page)

GLOSSARY OF TERMS

Over the ensuing months, I found myself in the position of explaining what I, the Dark Lord, meant by several of the terms in my profile. Among them were words we often use but that have troubling implications in our Judaic-Christian society. Let me begin by trying to shed some light on what I mean by some of these terms.

The Dark Side

Dark: Lacking or having very little light; gloomy; dismal; sullen or threatening; difficult to understand; obscure; concealed or secret; mysterious; lacking enlightenment or culture; exhibiting or stemming from evil characteristics; sinister; absence of light.
¹

For numerous social, religious, and historical reasons the polarity of Light and Dark is often equated with the polarity of Good and Evil. Therefore the “Dark Lord” is immediately identified with Satan, as is the Dark Side.

In nature, both light and dark are neutral phenomena. Only when we enter the realm of morality and theology does the imputation of evil to darkness begin to cause serious problems. If indeed God is everywhere, then God is in the darkness as well as the light. Is Satan really the opposite of God? Is Satan “outside” of God? I doubt it.

In much of the correspondence the Dark Lord received, there were inquiries into satanic worship. My response was to refer the applicant to Elaine Pagels’s excellent book
The Origin of Satan
. This renowned Gnostic scholar shows that Satan is the creation of Hebrew/Christian intolerance of others. I came to the conclusion that I was not a satanist insofar as I refused to worship a creature that I did not believe existed as the caricature depicted in my childhood.

Similarly, I was asked about blasphemy and eternal damnation. It became obvious that most applicants had a strong belief in basic Judaic-Christian paradigms, especially the ones that condemned them to Hell. Over and over again, I saw that both the fantasy and the discussion were in fact based in religion, and unfortunately based on unclear—and unconscious—beliefs.

I also noticed that many terms (some of which I used in my profile above) were relative, interpreted according to the applicants’ religious perspective. What is blasphemy, for instance, to one devotee is holiness to another. Muslims think that Hindus are blasphemous idolaters. I don’t get the idea that Hindus agree with them.

Worship

Intrinsic in the consideration of darkness is one’s spiritual beliefs and understanding of good and evil. Though we don’t often state it, an altered state is often akin to a Gnostic revelation. Gnosis is, after all, a theological belief that deity is present in and operates in the human selfhood. The Dark Lord made it clear in his list of stipulations that he wanted to be worshipped, to literally become the slave’s god.

Obedience, then, was seen as obedience to god. The Dark Lord’s authority, for the slave, would become pervasive, even complete. The gulf between the exalted Lord and the degraded slave would become—what? Infinite? Where does this god trip lead? What does the extreme nature of this polarity create in terms of the power exchange?

These questions might seem preposterous, but they are not out of order to those who are seriously involved in master/slave relationships. On occasion, a slave has admitted to worshipping his or her master or a master has admitted to having a godlike relationship with his or her slave.

It is easy to dismiss such practices by saying, “Oh, they don’t really mean God with a capital G.” But it is clear that for some, “the Lord” is not Jehovah, Jesus, or Allah, or any of the other gods of traditional worship.

The Unconscious

When we look at the polarity of light and dark in terms of the known and the unknown, we find ourselves in the realm of what is conscious and what is unconscious. It is not an unfamiliar analogy; we are all cognizant of the phrase “the heart of darkness,” popularized by a novel of that title by Joseph Conrad. What evil, after all, lurks in the heart of man?

It is obvious that even as players flout some taboos, other taboos remain that are too kinky for most of us and that, therefore, we will not violate.

My reading of Jungian psychology has given me some ideas about what it is that we do in the BDSM community. As I see it, the intent of BDSM is to transport both the bottom and the top to an altered state of consciousness, though it certainly can mean other things to other players. There are many terms for the mind trip: an out-of-body experience, “going deep,” for the bottom,
subspace
, for the top,
top space
. Whatever name you give it, it is an often-sought but rarely achieved trip of extraordinary bliss, joy, and peace. In scholarly literature it has been referred to as an altered state of consciousness (ASC).

Though most players are satisfied with (dare I say it?) “conventional” fetishes such as flogging, whipping, and fisting as a way to enter an altered state, the Dark Lord’s applicants expressed a desire to progress to more intensive activities, such as blood play, extreme pain, degradation, and scat.

It is obvious that even as players flout some taboos, other taboos remain that are too kinky for most of us and that, therefore, we will not violate. The Dark Lord’s exploration raises the question “Where do we draw the line?”

Yet are there really any lines to cross in the mind? What darkness lurks in the depth of one’s unconscious self? How do we integrate that darkness in our lives to become whole persons? Or do we do so at all?

Limits

The most difficult part of my exploration of the Dark Lord was the question of limits. In light of the extreme nature of some of these desires, what were my own limits? How far was I willing to go? Would I, for instance, allow a partner to worship Satan, eat my shit, or languish in darkness while chained to a cold stone wall in my dungeon?

I believe that one of the most important benefits of BDSM is that it creates a space and a community where we can safely explore the deep longings of our soul, where we can be the sissy maid or slave or pirate or top or lady we long to be.

How do you answer these questions when faced with an email such as this: “SIR, it knows it was predisposed for a life of slavery under your control. It knows it is ready to surrender its worthless pathetic self in submission and obedience to your will, helping it to obtain deeper actualization of its true slave nature as it satisfies your every command. Its innermost need is to submit 100% of its mind, body, soul, and spirit/ego. It is ready!”

I believe that one of the most important benefits of BDSM is that it creates a space and a community where we can safely explore the deep longings of our soul, where we can be the sissy maid or slave or pirate or top or lady we long to be. Is it so unlikely that the same subculture could allow us to be the shit-slave toilet, the degraded object, or the worthless subhuman?

As we say, “It’s only kinky when you don’t do it.” How can we label something as “too extreme” when what we do every day is labeled just that way by mainstream society?

In the end I did come up with limits: I wouldn’t do anything that was illegal. I would not spread disease or inflict physical harm that would necessitate a doctor’s care. I would not allow an applicant to become financially dependent upon me.

Those limits were generally acceptable to most applicants, though several of them refused to continue the conversation when they figured out that the Dark Lord would require them to pay room and board and to have health insurance. “I’m the Dark Lord,” I wrote more than once, “not a jail keeper or a sugar daddy.”

Others ended the dialogue when I refused to entertain their need for intoxicants to undergo their fantasy. I am a firm believer in experiencing fetish to the fullest, rather than using drugs or alcohol to mitigate its effects. I have also found that drug-using slaves are useless when it come to service of any kind, and the Dark Lord demands to be served. It is all about the Dark Lord’s desires—they must come first.

Desire

Desire: To wish or long for; want. To express a wish for; request. A wish or longing. A request or petition. The object of longing. Sexual appetite; passion.
²

I have long held the belief that not every fantasy is meant to become a reality. We must decide which fantasies can be lived and which cannot. The track records of those 120 applicants made my decision-making process a lot easier than one would expect.

Of the 120 applicants, some 15 are still showing interest, and about half of those are of more recent acquaintance. As with most cruising, the majority have simply failed to respond to the emails, chats, or phone calls I initiated in an effort to continue a dialogue. Few ever got to the point of seeing my dungeon. Some, to their credit, ended the conversation politely, giving such reasons as “You’re too old for me,” “I have to beg off due to family problems,” and “I’m not really into the raunch and worship you seek.” These results are the same I’ve found with cruising in general.

But I think there is an unspoken message in this as well. When faced with the possible reality of our deepest desires, their desirability fades quickly. We allow other choices to take precedence over the darkest of our dreams.

There seems to be a contradiction here that probably derives from poorly defined terminology. How, for instance, can an “object” object to the age of its owner? Could a chair or a goldfish do this? I think not. It is only when the full effect and the extent of the objectification dawns on us that we see what appears to be its intrinsic impossibility. Would any of these cybercruisers, after all, be willing to actually live in a dungeon without access to the Internet?

Control

In my 28 years as a practicing leatherman I have learned much about myself and my desires. I’ve come to the conclusion that my primary fetish is control, which is certainly exercised through other fetishes, especially those involving pain and bondage. As my profile made clear, the overriding characteristic I sought from an applicant was obedience. I wanted to be in control.

The conundrum I repeatedly encountered was that applicants would make requirements that allowed them to maintain some kind of control. So I had men who wanted everything I offered but who, for example, refused to provide for their own upkeep.

It seems to me that the control issue fundamentally stems from instinctual reactions (see Maslow’s hierarchy of needs) that we have little likelihood of overcoming, self-preservation being the most obvious of them. Ceding complete control to another is much too dangerous for the psyche to allow, unless the control is limited by factors that render it less than complete.

The only plausible path out of this contradiction is to create a deep bond of trust between the “object” and his or her Lord. I wonder, though, if this bond, as necessary as it is, might not then pose another difficulty: that this trust mitigates or eradicates the polarity in such a way that domination and subjugation, in their most intense forms, lose their power and effect.

Repression and Expression

The great value of our BDSM subculture, I believe, is that it creates the conditions for us to experiment with desire without limit, judgment, or exception. The key word here is
experiment
. Experimentation often means just dabbling—that is, entertaining a thought without necessarily executing it fully. Our community is in the fortunate position of being able to express to an extent and therefore experience to an extent aspects of ourselves of which we are only partly conscious. This allows us the opportunity to experience the deepest darkness, neither repressing nor expressing it, while being able to assess its meaning and implications.

Even given what little experience I was able to gain of the more extreme activities in the Dark Lord’s profile, I found considerable information about the meaning of darkness, of perversion, and of authenticity. That information can best be summed up as realizing that we can see the dark side, admit to it, learn something about it and about ourselves, without necessarily embracing or becoming what we might desire.

Yes, I saw self-destruction in the motivation of some who sought refuge, degradation, or punishment in the Dark Lord’s dungeon. I have seen “Dark Lords” act irresponsibly as well. More often, though, I found men who were seeking to unravel the complexity of their desires while intuitively, if not explicitly, holding on to the more fundamental necessity of self-preservation and healthy activity.

ABOUT THE DARK LORD

In the final analysis, this exploration was more about myself than about my applicants. Though the conversation continues with a few men who are seeking a more intense form of slavery, the fruitlessness of the search leads me to question its validity and viability. I have also had to evaluate how real my desire was to become the Dark Lord.

Patrick, my slave and partner of more than 15 years, commented recently that my failure to attract a viable “object” rested within myself. It was just not part of my nature, he thought, to engage in the kind of dehumanization, humiliation, and degradation that being the Dark Lord required. My discussions with applicants led them to see that I lacked the ego, the necessary haughtiness, to pull off the role successfully. I was just too friendly, too kind, to be that dark.

A recent scene with one of the applicants I continue to have contact with illustrates my personal conundrum. The man in question vacillates between wanting degradation and avoiding it. When, after four months of nearly talking the idea to death, he arrived to try a week in my dungeon, he was well guarded by a list of limits I had agreed to, many of which left control in his hands, not mine. The fundamental issue was his inability to trust me. I couldn’t tie him to an immovable object, for instance—chain him to the wall in the dungeon or to a cross. It was obvious that putting him in a cage for the night was out of the question until he knew me better.