9. Corporeal Punishments

"To experience pain as pleasure seems paradoxical. Yet the playful pinch or slap of a lover in a moment of high passion are varieties of pain, and both are widely accepted aspects of intimate play. Pain is pleasurable when it is perceived as pleasurable."

Contents:

Painful Beginnings

Do All D&Sers Enjoy Pain?

What Kind of Person Likes to Give or Receive Pain?

Where Does the Interest Begin?

The Love of Intense Stimulation

Quick cuts from our interviews:

Cleo Dubois....
...is a professional bondage specialist and professional sadist, as well as a lecturer and advocate of sexual choice. Her private pursuits include avant-garde theater, swimming, bicycling, and gardening. She is married.

"I get enjoyment out of inflicting pain.... Besides making a living at S&M, I get sexually turned on by it. I feel alive. I look at the whole thing as a dance."

Jean L....
...is 49 years old, divorced, and works with children. She is the editor of the Society of Janus (San Francisco) newsletter Growing Pains. Her interests include education, reading, shortwave radio, and computers.

"I experience pain as pleasure.... Nobody wants to really be hurt [in S&M]. It is a lot more controlled, a lot safer than ordinary stuff being done out there."

Cassandra....
...is 36 years old and an engineer. She lives with -j- in San Francisco.

"The first time I tied him down, I knew what to do. It's very frustrating when you finally get somebody to tie you down and you lie there thinking, Well, you could do this, or they start to do something, maybe run their hand lightly along your legs, and you think, Okay, now pinch!"

-j- ...
...is a graphics engineer. He is Cassandra's life-partner. They both submit to a male dominant, to whom they refer as "my liege."

"For me, [S/M] isn't just a physical action; it's got a spiritual aspect to it.... I use the term S/M to mean 'Sex Magic.' It's transformational, it's empowering...."

 

"The practice of bondage is a blank slate upon which almost any sexual interest or practice may be chalked."

Cleo Dubois

"A lot of people want bondage. I had a friend who said that when the ropes are on the outside, the ropes on the inside get loose.... Bondage gives you permission to let go. It's a paradox: If you are helpless, you are actually freer."

Gene...
...is 41 years old and married. He is an engineer.

"Basically, I like to be tied up and held in bondage during sex, in various positions.... If all my dreams came true, then my wife, whom I love, would be more interested in such activities."

Michael V....
...is 38 years old. He was born in Europe and works in computers. He and Slave V. live together.

"I believe in the spiritual part of all this. With my current slave, we had an incredible session where her body actually took on a different shape. She's a little overweight: It was [as if] her waistline completely disappeared during the course of the scene."

Slave V....
...is 38 years old. She writes a column for Bondage Pleasures magazine.

"One of the reasons I was attracted to my current master is because he practices [Japanese] bondage, which has always been my very favorite form of activity. That's a very intricate, interwoven bondage all around the body."

Robin Young...
...is a 21-year-old computer programmer who lives and works in the Bay Area. He is single.

"Bondage for me is a sense heightener. It enhances my awareness of my body; it's a pleasurable stimulant to want to move and not be able to."

John H....
...is 28 years old. He is an electrical engineer.

"One of my enjoyments is enforced chastity--to make or to get very interesting chastity belts."

11. Spanking

"Although spanking is commonly associated with the disciplining of children, adult spankings long have held an accepted, often humorous, place in popular culture."

Eve Howard...
...is an entrepreneur, editor, writer, producer, video star, and publisher. Ms. Howard's company, Shadow Lane, publishes Stand Corrected magazine. She is single, 37 years old, and lives in Los Angeles.

"My favorite kind of spanking is given by a man that I like, respect, and enjoy being with. It should always be over the knee. I like it to begin on my skirt and to have the layers of clothing slowly pulled up and pulled down."

Harold...
...is 45 years old and an attorney. He is married and has children. He is a regular churchgoer.

"Two months is about as long as I want to go without getting a real good spanking. I do mean GOOD. Little play ones in between are fine, but going without it can make me irritable! Cranky, quite frankly. After I go through a severe session, I'm laid-back and comfortable. It's an aphrodisiac."

Kiri Kelly...
...has appeared in scores of bondage, spanking, and fetish videos and magazines. She is 33 years old and divorced. She lives in California.

"My fantasies started when I was probably about seven years old. I didn't even know what sex was. But I started fantasizing about being captured and tied up. I also started spanking myself."

David C...
...is a stage actor and musician. He is 28 years old and single. He lives in New York City.

"I consider myself a relatively gentle and caring lover. It has been very difficult for me to reconcile that identity with the side of me that loves to give and receive spankings."

"When the rock band Devo sarcastically intoned, 'Whip it, whip it good' in the early 1980s, it joined a tradition historically populated by monks, not punks."

Mitch Kessler...
...is 47 years old and a native New Yorker. He crafts whips and "implements of affection" under the name Adam Selene. He is an elected officer of the Metropolitan New York chapter of the National Leather Association (NLA). Gerrie Blum is is life- and business partner.

"If you pick up a flyswatter and paddle your lover's backside, this does not mean that in five years you're going to be dressing in black leather and pleasuring your lover with a cattle prod. People find their own levels. This is about pleasure and about communications. This is about all that good stuff that genital sex is supposed to be about. It's just another way of getting there."

Gerrie Blum...
...(also known as Gillian Boardman and Lady Gillian) is 54 years old. She and Mr. Kessler own Adam's Sensual Whips and Gillian's Toys. Ms. Blum is an officer of the Metropolitan New York chapter of the NLA and is a delegate to the NLA National Advisory Council.

"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'm cold, if I'm really sexually aroused, if I'm really hot, that same sensation is erotic and stimulating, and not 'pain'."

Laura Antonio...
...Laura Amtonio is 27 years old and lives in New York, where she works in the design and production of magazines. She produced the 1992 Miss Northeast Leather Contest.

"I like whips and flogging. I have a large collection of whips.... I appreciate the beauty of a fine whip. I practice frequently. I like straps. I like a nice woodshed scene with 'daddy's' belt or the razor strop. I like the sound they make, I like the sensation."

"The countless forms of extreme sensory experimentation are impossible to catalogue comprehensively. Kinsey allegedly chronicled thousands, and his work remained incomplete."

Johanna...
...is 22 years old and a graduate student in linguistics.

"I think for anybody, getting what you want is the most empowering thing that could possibly happen, especially getting something that you've been told is shameful your entire life."

John M...
...is 48 years old. He is a devoted music lover and a devoted father. He is married to Sara K.

"I've asked myself [why I like CBT]. I think the idea of torturing someone's genitals is so outrageous; it's such a personal, private, intimate part of the body.... Genital whipping has formed the heart of a plurality of my fantasies for close to 40 years."

Sara K...
...is 48 years old and works in a university.

"Our whole culture tells women that you don't cause pain, that you're nice. So there does seem something wrong about standing in front of someone who can't protect himself, with crops or paddles or whips, and causing hurt and seeing the physical evidence of that."