B003B0W1QC EBOK (6 page)
Authors: Dossie Easton,Catherine A. Liszt
Yet people who play with such energies may be accomplishing something very powerful and real. Often, they find that the experience of giving up power for a pre-negotiated period of time, then taking it back afterward (or being given power and learning to handle it responsibly and give it back intact) leaves them feeling more powerful, not less; it’s as though handling the “currency” of power actually makes us better power-handlers, wiser in the ways of power and the ways in which it can be used or abused.
For players who enjoy dominance and submission (often abbreviated to D/S or D/s), exchanging power by assuming the roles of all-powerful dominant or powerless submissive is more important to their sexuality than any physical stimulation could be. They express themselves by commanding and obeying, in serving and being served, and find deep and profound satisfaction in these roles.
The relationships they form are most often described as Master or Mistress and slave, or perhaps a variation such as Baron and body servant, or Goddess and acolyte. Often, symbols of ownership such as collars or special rings serve as reminders of the relationship even during times when the participants can’t be physically together.
Sometimes these roles have overtones of teacher/student or nurturer/nurturee; relationships such as Daddy/boy allow the participants to reclaim part of themselves by playing as a parent - strict or indulgent or both by turns ― or as a beloved child.
Some players enter into these roles only while playing. Others form partnerships in which their roles are enacted, at varying levels of intensity, full-time.
D/S play may involve a lot of sex, very little, or none. It may also involve a lot of S/M stimulation, or none at all. The players design relationships and activities that give them the thrill of control or of being controlled with the greatest possible feeling of safety and reward.
Alternate personae.
A persona is kind of an alternate self - an aspect of your personality that can be brought to the surface and played out as if you were someone different from your everyday self. Many kinkyfolk enjoy exploring aspects of themselves that they discover in their fantasies, or in someone else’s fantasies.
A persona is kind of an alternate self - an aspect of your personality that can be brought to the surface and played out as if you were someone different from your everyday self. Many kinkyfolk enjoy exploring aspects of themselves that they discover in their fantasies, or in someone else’s fantasies.
Kinkyfolk enjoy exploring many personae - people of different ages, such as children or infants; people with a lot of power, such as cops and nurses and drill sergeants; people with very little power, such as slaves and captives; animals like puppies and ponies; and even fantasy creatures from science fiction or myth. Some players develop a whole cast of characters that they may play out on different occasions, and who grow and change over time, just like regular people.
To play out a persona, players may acquire costumes: Victorian governess and schoolgirl are popular, as are military and police uniforms. Furnishings might include an oversized school desk, or a corner of a room made to resemble a prison cell. The purpose is to bring forth some part of one’s self that is not expressed elsewhere, and live it for a while in an erotic context. Like any kind of playacting, the rewards can be playful or profound. Sometimes we learn something about ourselves that we didn’t know before: Catherine, who was in real life a rather well-behaved child, has had surprisingly moving experiences when allowed to play the part of whiny and rebellious nine-year-old “Jessie” with her astonishingly patient although firm “Daddy.”
Most people who play with personae do so only occasionally, as kind of a “vacation” from their day-to-day selves; others more frequently or at specific times, like when they have sex. It is unusual but not unheard-of for a person to choose to spend most or all of her time in an alternate persona - or perhaps it would be better to say in what looks like an alternate persona from the outside. She may tell you she has discovered, in this form, her true self.
Dancing in the shadows.
All the players we’ve described in this chapter may achieve tremendous personal growth by playing in the area of their consciousness that Jung called “the shadow.” Your shadow is the place where you keep all those aspects of yourself that seem dangerous or unmanageable or too scary to take out and look at ― maybe cruelty or bossiness or anger, maybe neediness or dependency or “smallness,” or whatever else you may have forbidden yourself to be aware of. Important parts of our shadow selves may come to our attention as images in dreams - or, more to our point, in fantasies: just about everybody’s erotic fantasies involve archetypes from their shadows. Jung believed that personal integration and therapeutic healing resulted from reclaiming those parts of ourselves that we may have lost in the shadows, welcoming them home so that we can become at one with ourselves.
All the players we’ve described in this chapter may achieve tremendous personal growth by playing in the area of their consciousness that Jung called “the shadow.” Your shadow is the place where you keep all those aspects of yourself that seem dangerous or unmanageable or too scary to take out and look at ― maybe cruelty or bossiness or anger, maybe neediness or dependency or “smallness,” or whatever else you may have forbidden yourself to be aware of. Important parts of our shadow selves may come to our attention as images in dreams - or, more to our point, in fantasies: just about everybody’s erotic fantasies involve archetypes from their shadows. Jung believed that personal integration and therapeutic healing resulted from reclaiming those parts of ourselves that we may have lost in the shadows, welcoming them home so that we can become at one with ourselves.
When kinkyfolk explore their roles, they are dipping into that shadow, bringing their scariest stuff into the light in a controlled way, learning that just maybe it’s not quite as awful as they thought it was. Imagine what it must feel like to trot out some of your worst stuff, and to discover that you can control it - that it won’t take over and turn you into a monster, that you can tuck it away again when you’re done playing with it - and that someone you care about finds it sexy. An astonishing revelation, isn’t it?
A birthday kidnapping.
We would like to share with you a description of an elaborate scene, complete with behind the scenes details, so you can understand better both the safety, and the thrills and chills, of how we play. For many of us, one of the finest forms of birthday celebration with which a player can be honored is the birthday kidnapping.
We would like to share with you a description of an elaborate scene, complete with behind the scenes details, so you can understand better both the safety, and the thrills and chills, of how we play. For many of us, one of the finest forms of birthday celebration with which a player can be honored is the birthday kidnapping.
Kidnapping is one of the most common fantasies, seen throughout several centuries of literature and other popular media. Some of Dossie’s most treasured childhood fantasies derive from those Nancy Drew mysteries in which Nancy gets kidnapped and tied up. The basic kidnap fantasy has the victim enjoying being helpless against a greater force and somehow, in the fantasy, all the mean implacable kidnappers magically seem to know exactly what the victim likes and exactly how to do it. Perhaps a key part of this fantasy is to have our own sensation, sexuality, orgasm, forcibly birthed from us with no conscious effort on our part.
So if your kinky person wanted to set up a birthday kidnap for her beloved - and what a fine birthday gift this might be ― here is how she could go about it.
A partner, play partner, lover or best friend usually coordinates the event. A number of other close friends, perhaps from two to six more, assist. The coordinator - why don’t we call her the M.C. for Mistress of Ceremonies? - picks the birthday child’s brain for fantasy material, and establishes a detailed list of what is okay and not okay with her. One of your authors has been tactfully and discreetly asked if there is anyone among her friends that she might not want to be kidnapped by.
The consent list is often posted at the event so everyone can refer to it. Details like “wears contact lenses” and “the M.C. will have her asthma inhalers ready if needed” are listed, along with safety precautions : “Be careful with his right wrist, he sprained it last month,” and the all-important list of limits, which is what she doesn’t want done - examples might be “No penetration, and no tickling whatsoever,” or “He only does genital play with his partner.” Safer sex precautions would also be listed here.
Very important on this list are the things she enjoys - “Blindfolds, earplugs, relaxed bondage, gentle hair pulling,” “She loves the vibrator but very gently, please,” and some useful ways to get her turned on: “He totally melts if you nibble on his neck.”
Most often, the birthday honoree has given consent to the kidnapping in advance, although sometimes he is not told when this is going to happen to maintain an element of surprise.
The M.C. then gets together with the gang of kidnappers, with the written list, and a plan is devised. For instance, the M.C. might arrange to have the honored kidnappee in a certain parking lot at a certain time where the gang will “subdue” her, blindfold her, pack her into a car and drive around for a while to get her a little disoriented. The location and nature of the kidnap requires careful planning to be sure that no passersby see fit to attempt a rescue.
A more discreet kidnapping might occur at the birthday boy’s home, with the “gang” showing up in costume as pirates, juvenile delinquents, cowboys or just plain old scary leatherpeople. The fantasy may be announced - “We are kidnapping you, and you have no choice in the matter, so you might as well relax. Don’t move, or it will go hard with you.” Kidnappees who want to physically struggle as hard as they can need to get consent, and give warning, in advance, as it is much harder to subdue a struggling victim than the movies might have led you to believe. Struggling is also ill-advised in public. Usually, a small amount of pulling and whimpering “No, no, no” will suffice, although for those who love to struggle, arrangements can certainly be made.
Why are we kidnapping you? Because it’s your birthday, silly, and because we all earnestly desire to see you writhe and squeal in ecstasy.
Since unfamiliarity and disorientation add to the feeling of being helpless and out of control, the “victim” may then be moved to another apartment, still blindfolded, so the sense of being un anotherspace/ stand if you refer to your own fantasies. The slow removal of clothing, while a number of people carefully control the arms and legs, can be a suspenseful beginning. Once the victim is naked, several people might give a gentle massage, until the big muscles of the back, arms and legs are relaxed.
As with any scene, kidnappings tend to start very easy and work up. Massage may be followed by pinching, slapping, stroking, spanking, and whatever else the attendees’ perverted imagination and the consent list might inspire. A good kidnapping might last for several hours, as the “victim” becomes entranced. Stimulations don’t have to be intense - Dossie recalls one birthday kidnapping in which the predominant activity was smearing chocolate truffles all over the “victim’s” bound and blindfold body, and then licking and sucking them off. Mmmmm, Godiva!
Lots of very pleasurable stimulations become possible when you have a number of pairs of hands. For example, some people might just hold the victim while others stimulate. Being held is a nurturing and reassuring experience, a sexy contrast to more intense stimulations that others may be offering.
Don’t forget that the victim’s lover knows more than anyone about how this birthday child gets off, so for practical reasons, often the most familiar person takes over as orgasm approaches. There is a romantic aspect to this ― kidnapped and “tortured” by all these “strangers,” finally to wind up in the capable hands of your own true love.
Because that’s what a birthday kidnapping is all about ― love. The love of a lover and friends that would go to all this effort to put together a production number of the senses for a very lucky audience of one. Most of us get to experience this kind of spoiling... well, only in our dreams.
Spiritual practices.
Some S/M and other kinky players have developed forms of spiritual practice based on the same body stresses and intense sensations we have already described in the context of personal exploration and eroticism. This might sound off-the-wall to those of us who are not accustomed to seeking spiritual consciousness in the body. Our cultural history, starting with the Puritans, has tended to see body and soul as incompatible and inexorably at odds with each other, and to think of religious practice as a process of freeing the soul from the body.
Some S/M and other kinky players have developed forms of spiritual practice based on the same body stresses and intense sensations we have already described in the context of personal exploration and eroticism. This might sound off-the-wall to those of us who are not accustomed to seeking spiritual consciousness in the body. Our cultural history, starting with the Puritans, has tended to see body and soul as incompatible and inexorably at odds with each other, and to think of religious practice as a process of freeing the soul from the body.
Other traditions, ancient and current, have explored many paths to spiritual consciousness that involve being in the body: trance dancing, Sufi whirling, gospel revival, yoga, ritual drumming, sweat lodges and the like. Ancient Mayans practiced ritual piercing, and medieval European monastics practiced flagellation. Certain religious traditions in India, Southeast Asia, and among the First Americans involve piercing the body and then putting tremendous stress on these piercings by dancing, tying them to a tree or by suspending the body from them. Many peoples have discovered that body stress can be a route to religious ecstasy.
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