A meditation on tying up & loosening.
[No. 27]
WHY ARE OR AREN’T YOU A FAN OF BDSM?
“Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.”
Oscar Wilde
In much of my life, I play a primarily dominant role. I have my own business. I pay my own bills. I have seen the world, bought a house, raised a child. Throughout my day and even often in my dreams, I am “on.” And yet, when a lover playfully asked me to take a quiz a few weeks ago, I scored more submissive than I appear.
BDSM [Bondage, Discipline (or Dominance), Sadism (or Submission), Masochism] is a grand parasol, and it can be anything from a little hair pull to a visual role play to a word that makes you go wild. Pain, pressure, pleasure. There is something here for everyone’s taste. Truly.
Cartoon by Gene Bilbrew
At first a bit timid (or maybe just tired) when I saw the link in the midst of some playful texts, I clicked. “Welcome to the BDSM test!” Growing more open-minded, we screenshotted our placements while chatting, and a very honest and honestly hilarious back-and-forth came alive. The late-night test opened a door that made even our other conversations flow with light-hearted open-mindedness, like learning a few words in a friend’s native tongue and feeling proud to say them.
“Giovanni had awakened an itch, had released a gnaw in me.”
James Baldwin
As luck would have it, bed is the place I allow myself to unravel, to be more submissive than dominant (!) [not by a long shot, but by 12%]. Still, I suddenly understood how desperately I desired to tend to that 12%. I said this aloud to my special friend, at which point I was carried ten feet in the air to my bedroom. The rest is history. In turn I offered my partner their perfect fantasy of being the primal hunter. I guess this is the elegance of the orgasm: it is the art and science of exhaling with your entire body and your entire mind. In sex we walk to the edges of our flat earths and find we are still on solid clay. The openness we bring to our intimate adventures bleeds into who we are the next morning, who we become.
I want to be the person that can let go and let God. Here, in the quiet of being tied up with a rope or gently rolling a small pinwheel on freckled skin, we can.
So, am I a fan of BDSM? I am a fan of openness, of the idea of alchemizing pain into pleasure and dark into light. Pushing our edges. Is that a kink or just curiosity? Call it what you like. Call me by your name, and I’ll call you by mine.