SM 101: A Realistic Introduction (8 page)

At Backdrop events, male-dominant/female-submissive energy rarely mixed with female-dominant/male-submissive energy. As the parties progressed, the male-dominant folks usually went to one part of the house and the female-dominant folks to another. In fact, one night during a party I went over into “female-dominant” territory to get a piece of equipment and, while I got the item I wanted, it was made much more than clear to me that male dominants weren’t welcome around there just then.

Unfortunately, while Robin and the Backdrop staff didn’t regard their professional sessions as prostitution, some local cops disagreed. Backdrop got busted and put out of business (although charges were later dropped).

Abhorring the vacuum. Backdrop’s demise put the rest of us at, so to speak, loose ends. What were we to do? Where were we to go? Eventually, other people started holding events.

Bill Burns, a man I had met at Backdrop, started a legally recognized, female-dominant organization he carefully named the Service of Mankind Church. Bill is erotically submissive to women in his private play, but he’s something of a dominant and an organizer out there in real life. A male-dominant couple started an organization called Roissy (named after the town mentioned in “The Story of O”), but they broke up shortly after that, and the club dissolved.

So Bill was doing a pretty good job of organizing the female-dominant folks, but us male-dominant folks had nowhere to go. Months went by, and nothing happened. I still considered myself a beginner, and didn’t even have a girlfriend at the time, so I didn’t feel it was my place to do anything about the situation. I kept waiting for the senior members of our community to do something.

Finally, as I am wont to do, I ran out of patience regarding the situation and decided to start a club on my own. I named it “Gemini” because of the “double life” I and many of my friends were forced to live regarding our SM interest. (Gemini is also my astrological sign, but that fact was purely secondary.) I placed ads in a local adult newspaper and spread the news through word of mouth. On my way to the Hooker’s Ball of 1978, I mailed the invitations to the first Gemini event.

And, boy, did we ever start out small. Our first event was a discussion-only meeting held on a Sunday afternoon at some picnic tables in a secluded part of a Berkeley park. (I wasn’t about to invite people I didn’t know to anyone’s private home.) Seven people showed up — five men and two women, if I remember correctly.

The discussion went well enough, and I decided to hold an SM dinner party at which the submissives would prepare and serve dinner to the dominants. That event drew around a dozen people, including both a “lifestyle” couple and a master who brought both of his female slaves.

Gemini grew from there. The parties got more organized, I got better at running things, and we slowly grew. Many people in the community understandably felt dubious about Gemini at first (I mean, who was this guy and what gave him the right to take on a job this big?), but they learned that I was committed to this task and that the organization was here to stay.

Continuing education. During this time, I also attended my first meetings of the Society of Janus. I met its founder, Cynthia Slater, and many other people who were also doing pioneering work in SM sexuality. Janus was almost exclusively composed of gay men in those days, and platoons of black-leather-clad guys filled our meeting areas. Several SM lesbians also attended, along with a few professional dominants and a sprinkling of bisexuals and heterosexuals.

Whenever I’m in bottom space I become sort of non-verbal. It becomes hard for me to remember how to talk.

The level of knowledge and skill these folks possessed was incredibly advanced. I was clearly back “in school” here. Other than once being asked to give a lecture on rope bondage techniques (a subject that remained dear to my heart) I listened a
lot
more than I talked.

I gained many insights while discussing SM with people who were other than heterosexual. Listening to men talk about what it was like to erotically dominate or submit to another man, and listening to women talk about what it was like to erotically dominate or submit to another woman, proved fascinating. I also talked with bisexuals, some of whom would only dominate one gender and only submit to the other. Again, hearing about that led to priceless knowledge.

I took a certain amount of kidding about being a “token het” in Janus. One day a leather-clad man came up to me and said, “You know, Jay, I have so much in common with you and yet I still can’t figure you out. We’re both in Mensa, we’re both est graduates, we’re both into SM, and we’re both dominants, and yet you’re straight and I’m gay.” When I nodded, he continued, “To this day, I’m still trying to figure out where you went wrong.”

Raising and letting go of my “child.” Gemini was tough to build from scratch. It could have folded at several different points, and many people expected it to do exactly that. But the Gemini Society kept on existing, sometimes for absolutely no other reason than because I kept on insisting that it exist, kept on recruiting new members, kept on putting on parties, and just generally kept on.

Gemini eventually made it “over the hump” and was accepted as part of the Bay Area SM community. I was its sole officer for about the first three years of its existence. When I finally stepped down because I was leaving the Bay Area to attend medical school, I must admit that I was much more than willing to turn over the job.

Let me add that I had become terribly proud of Gemini. It was a tolerant, inclusive organization that had helped many people resolve often-thorny issues around their sexuality. I felt especially proud of the work Gemini and I had done helping women realistically integrate this aspect of their sexuality into the rest of their lives. Male-dominant/female-submissive play is the “least politically correct” form of SM, and many women I met felt terribly guilty and ambivalent about doing this. They were clear that they liked it, and found erotically submitting to a man deeply rewarding, but weren’t at all sure that doing so was all right.

I remember in particular the time I told a novice submissive woman who was having trouble setting limits with her far-too-pushy boyfriend, “Look, just because you’re a slave to your lover in the bedroom doesn’t mean you have to be a slave to him in the rest of your life.”

She looked at me with astonishment.

“I don’t?” she asked incredulously.

“No,” I answered, “you don’t. Not unless you want to, anyway.”

I felt you enjoyed my submission, but didn’t exploit it. That felt really good.

A very thoughtful look appeared on her face.

Hearing that statement from the head of a male-dominant SM club clearly had an effect on her. That relationship didn’t last much longer.

During those days, I once wrote something to the effect of“Nowadays, a woman is free to do anything she wants except sometimes give up her freedom.” I heard from many, many erotically submissive women who agreed with that statement, and had experienced considerable emotional pain at how confining their new “freedom” was in this respect. Even though their sisters told them that they were completely free to make any choices they wanted, they weren’t
really
free to make some of the choices they were “free” to make. Thus is the human condition.

My return. I was away at medical school for about two years. During that time, I heard occasional bits of gossip, and occasionally got to read a copy of the Society of Janus newsletter “Growing Pains,” but, by and large, I was out of touch. When I returned late in 1984, the situation had changed quite a bit.

Digression. I’ve mentioned to you that I started medical school, yet you may have noticed that I’m not an M.D. Because I raised the issue, I believe I owe it to you to complete it.

Shortly after I returned to the Bay Area, I had to quit medical school, even though I was doing quite well. I was in the top third of my class, and passed the internship qualifying examination in about two years. I also helped teach classes in advanced cardiac life support to physicians, nurses, and paramedics.

Why, then, did I have to quit? This period, as I look back on it, was one of the darkest and most frustrating episodes in my life. I went to a Caribbean medical school somewhat like the one on Grenada. My money ran out, my family was no longer willing to help me, and the American medical establishment was trying its damnedest to limit the number of Americans studying medicine abroad by, among other things, denying us student loans. In this and many other ways, the treatment my fellow students and I received exposed me to the dark realities of the political and, especially, economic underbelly of how medicine is practiced in the United States. Despite the fact that many people wish it were otherwise, health care in this country today is, before anything else, a for-profit business; that brutal, basic fact is pervasive and decisive. Profit is to medicine what blood is to tissue.

It may seem contradictory to regard SM as life-affirming, but I assure you that it’s true.

Anyway, by that point it was also becoming increasingly clear to me that, while I was well-suited to being a doctor, I was even better suited to being a writer, and it was making less and less sense to spend my working life not using my strongest talents. I therefore, very sadly and reluctantly, let go of my dream of becoming a doctor and concentrated on my writing career.

Now back to our story.
Backdrop had re-emerged, and changed somewhat. I’m sure I had also changed. Robin Roberts and I were still on friendly terms, but the place just didn’t seem like “home” anymore.

Gemini had become more couples-oriented and bureaucratic. It was now also quite isolated from the rest of the SM community, and preferred it that way. (Among other things, my suggestion that Gemini donate money in support of a local, highly respected woman who had been badly injured in an auto accident was bluntly refused on the grounds that she was a dominant.) They also now prided themselves on having “a better class of people.” Once again, thus is the human condition.

Gemini and I went our separate ways not too much later, under very bitter circumstances. Frankly, I’m glad I played no part in what it had become. (Let me add that it is now under different management.)

On the other hand, Janus now had many more heterosexual members than before. It also now gave parties and socials in addition to its educational programs. Janus offered a flexible, tolerant option, and many of my friends were already members. I re-joined and started hanging out there again.

The final change was the grim and forceful emergence of AIDS. Several people I knew were now sick. A few were no longer with us. (More would follow, including Cynthia Slater.)

I’ve basically been hanging around Janus since then. I’ve found and lost lovers here, made many friends and a few enemies, been put on some “in crowd” mailing lists for private SM parties and taken off others, made contributions and created disturbances, helped edit the newsletter, taught “all pervert” CPR classes (I’ll never really stop being a medic), and otherwise continued as a “known member” of this community.

And what a wonderful community it is! The people I have met here have a sense of honesty and a level of personal responsibility for their lives that I have never found in any other group. They are caring people, excellent communicators, and top-notch negotiators. (I’ve long said that when two people are alone together, and one of them is naked and tied up, and the other is standing over them holding whips and other “torture” implements, this is not the time to have a serious mismatch of expectations.)

I have here found my friends, my peer group, my tribe, and my lovers. While they all, of course, have their flaws, these people, these “damnedest, finest perverts,” with their honesty, their honor, their high sense of personal responsibility and ethics, their strong communication skills, their caring for one another, and their playfulness make them the finest group ofhuman beings it has ever been my proud privilege to know. That they have accepted me “warts and all” into their community is one of the highest compliments I have ever received.

The Sociology, Politics, and Economics of SM

In the 1970s, we saw a fascinating phenomenon: the “Gay Liberation” movement. Rejected by society, these people joined together, pooled their resources, and became a potent economic, social, and political force.

The gay community’s support is now important, sometimes essential, for election in many cities. County, state, and even national candidates often take stands on gay-rights issues. If the Kinsey estimates can be believed, a group that forms about five percent of the population has become a major political force.

That being so, what are the implications for a group more than double that size? New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Washington are only a few of the cities that have had a self-aware SM community emerge. Such communities are also emerging in many other cities. Also, efforts are underway to link the SM groups in various areas into a national organization.

Gay-related parades, rallies, and demonstrations now often include an SM group. Organizations that refuse to include such a group are asked detailed, repeated questions regarding the refusal’s basis. The leather-clad people asking these questions do not feel inclined to take “no” for an answer.

Again, we see the beginnings of the emergence of a self-aware, organized group of people banded together based on their sexual preference. This movement is growing and getting stronger. Its implications are at least as strong as the gay movement.

Laws banning discrimination based on sexual orientation or sexual preference do not currently explicitly include SM people, and they should. I would have no problem with an SM person teaching in an elementary school, performing surgery, or serving in the military. Indeed, I happen to know that SM people have been doing all of those things, and many more, for quite some time.