the habit of being

He loves me, and writes “she sees the value both in sadness and in happiness, and revels in intensity and loss of control.”

At this time I am unable to make a statement in full, I cannot offer a definition. I realize, however, that the way I view control is a very central, if not falsely basic, element in what makes me round and unstatic. I gain all power, all pleasure, from my ability to give myself over to things. A measure of trust, I said, and that is not all. Yet it is somehow so very simple, and below intellectual description, how I feel that be giving up the surface control I am gaining something so much more valuable. This is neither physical nor emotional control, but both and neither at the same time, on different levels, contradiction, and at some central point it all makes perfect sense. Simply said, I am a receiver, yet in receiving whatever action or confession or glossy little pearl is thrown at me, I seem to add as much to the meaning of the gift as the giver. In a way, I am giving a gift as well, and therefore do indeed have control, only the control I gain is not the most obvious, it hides under blankets and behind opaque screens. I am an extreme, I am yin.

The issue is not so much that I find being held down, trapped, enfolded, devoured, to be among the most blaring of my sexual wants. I become only more aware that I have always been aware that power dynamics get me off. My earliest memories of masturbation center on rape fantasies, and I’ve had those dreams as long as I can remember. I can still see even early ones vividly: myself stripped in an empty parking lot, tied to a lamp post, and they came up to me in sequence and touched me (I touched myself), and then they fucked me, one by one, and I feel the concrete, it is cool, and the lighting is such that the ones not having their turn could stand outside a certain circle and barely be seen. (I will, of course, note that I am well aware of the many, many differences between what I would call rape fantasy and actual rape. I’m immensely glad that I have never really been forced into intercourse against my will.) All the same, I have a long-standing fetish, and I will always prefer the term “fuck” to “make love,” if simply because, like in French, the term is much closer to “rape.” I do not like the idea of consent, it seems false.

I discovered S&M in my early teens. I read everything I could find. I went to chatrooms. I visited pornographic websites. I don’t recall feeling guilty about it. At 15, I wanted a job as a model for bondage photography. (Seriously.) I was silly, very young, but I saw clearly I had a strong interest, was ever so intrigued. Still, it didn’t really click with me that my interest could be “real.” Honestly, at 15, I thought most everything about me was part of some false-personality I had created for myself, I thought my life was nothing but a continuum of fabricated stages, based on ideas of who I wished I could be, rather than who I was. For example, throughout the saddest periods of my life, I believed that I was not depressed, but rather that I was somehow playing the role of a depressed person, because I bought into the idea that sadness somehow created beauty.

It took me a long time to realize and admit that my fascination with domination and submission wasn’t just part of one of my goofy teenage personas, and to separate what it was that appealed to me from the blaring image of overly made-up women in black leather bodysuits posing provocatively under captions reading “Spank Me!” in bright pink letters. I never wanted the show. I never wanted the affectedness or the game. I’m really not after some token kink to make me feel like a radical.

Rather, I’d like to be fully comfortable with the reality that my natural inclination is to want to be dominated, that it’s perfectly alright if I find the idea of being tied up as part of sex play exciting (Extremely exciting), that D/s can be a beautiful thing, not necessarily plastic or pornographic or overly done, but simple, very real, unaffected, and satisfying.

{ Insert rant, with apology: It seems like almost anyone who’s anyone in feminism would be inclined to think I’m seriously fucked up. That I’m buying into some damaging stereotype of what a woman’s role is, that I’ve been somehow suckered into an outdated way of thinking that everyone’s been trying so hard to eradicate. My god, since when does the Revolution or whatever the hell it’s called these days cite as one of its goals to dictate how each and every member of the female sex must behave herself in bed in order to qualify as liberated? It’s completely ridiculous, and quite contradictory to everything -I- believe about feminism. But I’m no theorist, and I haven’t read much of anything on feminist theory, or queer theory, or any theory in general, so forgive me if I have no idea what I’m talking about. But I think it’s extremely strange that a movement which supposedly works to end persecution of women (sexual, economic, or otherwise) would do something so blatantly idiotic as to support the idea that women who CHOOSE to lead sexual lives contrary to a very strict set of I-won’t-blow-you-unless-you-eat-me-first standards somehow -deserve- to be persecuted. So I don’t understand the anti-porn movement, and I certainly don’t see why prostitution should be illegal, or why girls who like to be fucked are any less capable of standing up for women’s rights. }

I guess, getting back to what I’ve been TRYING to say…