BDSM - An acronym for our time

If members of the general public were stopped in the street and asked the question “What does BDSM mean?” most people wouldn’t have a clue. Even I, who have been known to enjoy the odd fetish club or two, tend to sometimes forget exactly what the letters stand for.

I do know that the people who coined the acronym spent many months arguing over which letters from our alphabet would best serve. It had to be politically correct. One of its main purposes was to make all fetishists feel welcome. Most important of all, it had to be catchy. It amuses me to think of how those negotiations might have unfolded. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall...

”What about the light fetishists, the ones who get off on having their feet tickled with artichoke leaves, for example, or the oddballs who can’t think of anything more erotic than a long, hot soak in a bath of semolina? They’re going to be offended. We need to include everyone! Come on, suggest some other letters please!” Did they meet in a board room, or a darkened warehouse with fetish furniture dotted throughout?

Eventually, after months of squabbling, the movers and shakers, the leading lights in the world of dungeons, dominatrixes and 'deviants' came to an agreement, and it was declared thus “From this day forward, all fetishy activity will now be known as BDSM”

These four little letters strung together have at once made the subject curiously easier to talk about and more challenging. If you’re chatting with someone already involved in the scene you can casually mention, “Last week I had a great BDSM session with some guy who lives in Kennington” and no more explanation is needed. On the other hand, if you’re trying to describe to the uninitiated but curious where and how you spent the previous night, it becomes complicated. The minute you’re asked for a definition of the acronym you can find yourself in deep water.

At the precise moment that the word “bondage” has left your lips, it has hit the wall of prejudice that stands between you and the person ‘listening’. Simply say “Bondage, discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism” and watch most people shrink slightly as the small hairs stand up on the back of their necks. Sometimes I think it’s a shame that we have to use the language of words at all. It is certainly a complex and relatively inclusive acronym and it serves its purpose, but only to a point. As with all experiential as distinct from intellectual activity, it is impossible to convey with any real authenticity the true nature of the pursuit through words alone.

Nevertheless, I ask all newbies reading this blog to put aside their preconceptions at least for the duration of the piece. We all interpret words used to describe experience from our own unique viewpoint, usually based on our personal history, and thus cannot possibly ascertain whether an activity that someone else has enjoyed is inherently ‘good’ or ‘bad’, ‘innocent’ or ‘sordid’, and so on.

Human beings as a rule are instantly judgemental. We desperately want to believe that there is such a thing as the ‘Truth’ (our own preferably) and we walk through life scattering our opinions about as we go, spoken and often, more dangerously, unspoken. I say dangerously, because we are wont to write another human being off based on the misinterpretation of a word, without even being aware that we’ve done so.

I admit to that flaw within myself. Recently I met a man who told me early on in our conversation, with no self-consciousness whatsoever, that he’s into ‘swinging’. I shuddered, and made to leave. It’s a scene I’ve avoided for many years. This man, who had smiling eyes and a flirting muscle in fine working order, persuaded me to stick around long enough to buy his (intelligently written) book on the subject and we’ve since exchanged many informative emails, and enjoyed some stimulating and challenging conversations on the phone.

I’ve come to realise how I was tempted to dismiss in one, egocentric moment, a gentle and heartful soul, who is turning out to be a dear and valuable friend. We’re a very unevolved race.

So, for your vicarious pleasure (and education) I shall recount here in as much detail as I can fit into a blog, my latest adventure in the often maligned world of BDSM. I won’t bother to give you more insight into the definition and meaning of this clever little acronym - just type it into Wikipedia, the font of all knowledge.

I will pre-empt this story by pointing out that I don’t often allow myself to be bossed around. My friends will vouch for that. I’m usually beyond the reach of bossiness, rushing about striking terribly important tasks off my to-do list and generally being a control freak. Lately though, I’ve been longing for some relief from, well, basically, me.

For someone who is both blessed and cursed with a large amount of self-discipline and drive it takes a fairly strong force to cause a significant shift in the modus operandi. I often find myself searching for a ‘let-go’, a trigger that might shunt the personality out of the way, and make any kind of lasting difference to my daily life. I don’t have a telly, nor do I drink, so I’m very enthusiastic on my mission to find natural ways with which to alter my state of consciousness. When I heard about Dave and his magical healing powers as a ‘master’ I began to think that maybe I’d found an, if not the answer. Someone I could pay to beat the ego out of me. It had to be a man who I wasn’t required to see regularly, and I had to be able to place my faith unquestionably in this person, in order to fully let go and ‘release’, transforming the poisons into nectar (one of the main tenets of tantra).

I have great respect for people who have mastered any healing art to a degree of perfection that enables them to conjure powerful alchemy with confidence and surety. As Dave happened to be the husband of a friend of mine, I figured it was a safe bet. I respect her, so I naturally felt safe to act on her recommendation, “My husband is a master. He’ll dominate you to within a inch of your sanity. Darling, you can trust him completely. You’ll love it. You’ll love him,” she urged me with an encouraging smile.

I also figured that as Dave happens to be the ‘Dungeon Master’ at one of the top fetish clubs in London (I wonder if he puts this on his CV when applying for a job) he obviously knows his stuff. I mean, I’m a smart little dabbler, I’ve been at it for a long time – if I try any alternative healing modality, I’ll find the most proficient and experienced practitioner. I’ll search out the top holistic dentist, osteopath, massage therapist, so why wouldn’t I attempt to locate the best dom in town?

The basic structure that is used to form the foundation of BDSM is the ‘scene’, which is a fantasy scenario that players set up together with a strict set of rules and a common language of code words and signs that make the game a truly consensual meeting of minds and bodies. The code of communication between submissive and dominant, or ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ as they’re sometimes called, is agreed upon beforehand, the rules are negotiated, and 99% of the time a ‘safe’ word is agreed upon, whereby the dom will cease immediately if that word is spoken. As a general rule only couples who have been together for a significant amount of time, and know each other intimately play together without a ‘safe’ word.

I have only ever submitted to a master and have not had the pleasure of putting myself in the hands of a mistress (yet) but one thing they seem to have in common is that they get their thrill out of giving their sub everything they want and need – in other words, their money’s worth. Every dom I’ve met in the scene so far is an incredibly sensitive and generous person – they simply love to give love, in whatever form their sub requires it, and the truth of the matter is, for some people love can be delivered in unusual packages. A good dom can read body language and has instant reflex and response. He or she would very quickly earn a bad reputation if not.

So, it was with hopeful positivity and only a slight nervousness that I rang Dave’s bell on a dreary night down by the river Thames last month.
He soon put me at ease in his ultra-modern and more importantly clean flat, as we discussed over a cup of tea the details of our session in the most surreal and matter-of-fact way.

As he went down the list of potential BDSM activities I was supposed to respond with a “Yes, sure” – which basically means “I’m up for trying that. In fact I’ve been a very bad girl, and I want you to do lots of it, please sir” and “Not sure” which is shorthand for, “Actually, the thought of that makes my skin crawl and I’d rather have my nails pulled out one by one than succumb to that humiliation...but I might give it a go at some point...sir” and “No way” which means, “Don’t even think about going there.. sir”.

I only baulked at one suggestion, which I figure is a pretty good percentage (I’m up for trying most things once – its a short life) which instantly highlighted my jewish background. It was the mention of ‘force-feeding’ which he told me afterwards I had responded to with a look of sheer horror. I had never even considered such an abomination. I couldn’t even answer, I merely stuttered incoherently, which proves how abhorrent I found the idea of someone putting in my mouth food that I might not like. He promised not to feed me McDonalds while I was blindfolded. I promised to work on that limitation...

There was space for me to express my concerns. I expressed that I was afraid I might giggle a lot. This couldn’t have been further from the reality of what happened. Dave is so deadly serious about what he does I was in awe of him from the minute we started. I don’t often feel instant and total respect for someone I’ve only just met. Anyway, I giggled once I seem to recall and was chastised so mercilessly that I didn’t do it again.

Dave is a delightful mixture of tender and tough, and now I’ve met him (albeit in a rather unconventional way) I have to admit to being a little jealous of my girlfriend. But I am not one to begrudge others, and after all she’s gorgeous and extremely brave and powerful, and without question deserves her knight in shining latex.

Through my extraordinary session with Dave, a theory I had been tossing around, relating to the game of yin/yang, or sub/dom has been confirmed to be a crucial aspect for success. The master, if he is given the permission and power to play that role for a damsel in need of a release, has to be unequivocally and totally dominating, 100%, without wavering. Any wooliness or wishy-washiness causes a tiny seed of doubt to form in the sub, which will not allow the surrender to happen, or the ‘breakthrough’ to occur. It’s the polarisation, the meeting of contradictory elements that fires up the spark and creates the alchemy we need as humans in order to expand. Speaking for myself (which is all I can ever do, of course) if I’m going to be dominated I need to be administered to by a man who is in no doubt of his own strength and masculinity, who is in control every second and can really see and feel me and will not compromise. He will truly meet me. I have to say that as a woman, I honestly experience that as pure love.

So, back to the session. I’m sure you’re gagging to hear about it (I know, I know, I can’t resist at least one pun!). One of the things which makes Dave an all-rounder (I like multi-faceted blokes – hard to find, but worth keeping them around if you do) is the fact that he is well-practised in tantra. What a combination. He knows how to administer a severe and much-needed flogging and then pick you up and hold you tenderly and kiss your cheek and ask how you’re doing and stroke your hair and tell you how brave you are...yum.

I found the session to be a seesaw ride, ricocheting between pain and pleasure that yielded tremendous emotional reward. What I found in this ‘safe, sane and consensual’zone was that the more I could surrender to pain, the more I could expand into pleasure on the ‘upswing’. It certainly blew out the central circuit in the most effective way. Pain and pleasure slowly became one over the course of an hour and a half, which incidentally felt like twenty minutes, and then suddenly, towards the end I found myself popping out of the pain/pleasure oscillation, almost as if being shot up out of a rabbit hole into pure bliss. I was pulsating in a place that was beyond physical sensation. It was the realm of pure, cosmic energy.

I have to clarify here that I wasn’t in a ‘dissociated’ state. This is a comment that outsiders often make, pontificating on the theory that only wounded and abused people like BDSM, as they’ve learned to ‘cut off’ from pain in such a way that they require strong stimulation to feel anything at all. This is not my own personal experience. First, I’ve been looking at my general dysfunctions for enough years to at least be able to recognise where I’m hung up, secondly I was never abused (thank god) and consider myself a rational, highly-sensitised, well-adjusted, open-hearted and sexually liberated being. So yes, I’m sure there are desensitised folk in a state of denial who go into the fetish scene, just as there are emotionally retarded people who step into tantra, or fat and unfit people who dive into yoga. All paths that lead to Nirvana are a valid route, no?

There was one point where he made me stay on all fours, naked, with my legs spread apart while he walked around looking at me in a silent and detached manner. The extraordinary thing was that I found this simple instruction harder to obey and the experience more challenging to surrender to than all the other punishments he’d put me through. The 20 slow, deliberate and perfectly placed canings (I had to thank him for each strike) were nothing compared to this.

I found it interesting even while it was happening. I was watching myself having to breathe deeply to access enough will-power to just stay there, unmoving. I was squirming inside. It felt like the most humiliating thing that had ever happened to me. And I was also the observer watching my own discomfort. The experience gave me much food for thought.

At no point did I ever feel that Dave was a)taking advantage of me b)pushing me beyond where I could go or c)using the session for self-gratification. I’m not saying that there weren’t moments where it wasn’t painful or intensely uncomfortable, but there was welcome release in the pressure-drop that seemed to follow each punishment or degrading humiliation.

In case you were wondering, at no point did it become sexual in the conventional sense of the word. Dave stayed fully dressed throughout and neither he nor I even got close to any feelings of desire that one might associate with such an intimate encounter. This is what is so liberating about BDSM. It can take you to transcendental heights in the same way that great sex can. And there’s nothing emotional to disentangle oneself from afterwards. Or rather, the emotional journey is purely ones’ own, and one is free to engage with the post-session assimilation as thoroughly or as non-committally as one wishes. The healing is your very own, not linked to the participation of the ‘other’.

Dave was simply magnificent throughout. It seemed to me that the man was channeling some higher power through his mind and hands, rather like I do when I’m giving a hands-on healing. He was graceful, true and wise. There was no effort in the playing of his role. He looked to me at certain moments during the session like an enlightened and mystical shaman.

Now I know what to look for in a man – it’s a glint in the eye, a sign that indicates “I can see exactly what you need, you bad and beautiful girl, and I’m here to treat you in the way you deserve to be treated and love you right. I’m going to penetrate you to the core of your very being”.

Mmmmm....that look....bring it on. It’s enough to make a girl dissolve on the spot.