5:04 a.m. - Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2004
Ms Leslie's Last Frontier - BDSM
I spent all day in Montgomery Saturday as part of a very small seminar featuring Guy Baldwin. He is a noted author and gay leatherman who has not only lived in the BDSM lifestyle for thirty-five years, but has helped define that same lifestyle. He is also a licensed psychotherapist, practicing extensively with the BDSM community in Los Angeles. His comments about BDSM closely mirrored yours to me on the same subject. I just thought you might like to know that.
Later that evening I outdid myself once again by being the subject of another exquisite session during which I was beaten by a man and wife team of well known and respected dominants from the area. Although they respected my limits (no intentional bruises or cutting), they did administer a beating described by those who witnessed it as �severe�. In the final moments, I was introduced to the single tail whip� something I thought I would never agree to endure.
I found inside that experience, securely bound to a cross and so focused on the ebb and flow of the pain I was accepting, an unimaginable clarity. It wasn�t a clarity of thought, for I became incapable of thought. It wasn�t clarity of action, for I became incapable of hearing or speech. Much of what happened is lost to me, but I do remember at one point that the man was speaking to me, but I couldn�t understand what it was that he was saying and after trying to make sense of it, just giving up and letting go of it as unimportant.
It was more a clarity of being. It was being able to focus very narrowly on the simple act of breathing my way through the pain. Breathing was the one thing over which I had control, yet in the loss of control I found a great freedom. For a little more than an hour, I was free from my thoughts. For that little time, I had no family, no traumas, no anxieties, no loss, no dreams, no insecurities, and no future. I only had breathing and pain.
In the end, I stopped feeling the blows. The sense of euphoria that competed with the pain won. I was aware of the strikes that assailed my body, but they lost their importance. I could open my eyes, but reality seemed to be no more than images on rice paper� and it wasn�t worth the effort of looking.
I could have gone on forever. My tormentors, however, were much wiser than me. They knew where I was and they knew when it was time to bring me back. I can remember feeling them reaching to unfasten my wrists. The overwhelming feeling was of disappointment. I did not want them to stop. But they chose for me, and as I felt my arms fall free, I was overcome by a rush of emotions. For the second time, I broke down in difficult tears. I had wondered if this would happen, and I wasn�t as surprised when it did. Not like the first time, when it took me completely unawares.
I found something of value even in the tears as I hugged my wooden cross and sobbed with the intensity of the return to reality, the sense of relief from the pain, and a certain feeling of victory for having endured it. As I stood there crying, My tormentors held me silently. They held me against them for as long as it took for me to finish crying. They got me cold water, a blanket, and a pillow on which to sit. They hugged me and held me in their arms until I was able to take my feet. I took great pleasure and comfort from that tender care. They broke me and then gave me what I needed to reassemble.
Now, at the beginning of the second day, as I feel the shades and shadows of the pain on my body, I sense that these �scenes�, which are meant to be simply a very intense form of play, contain something of much greater worth. I�m coming to realize that the intense, unbearable stimulation, the security of physical restraint, the simplicity of the moment, and the loving support of aftercare all combine to fill a void in me. They center me, whatever that means, and they re-ground me. I feel for a short time that my energy is all going in the right direction somehow. It fills me up in a way that eating has failed to do.
Whatever it is, I think I�m knowing that BDSM is a part of me. It�s unfortunate that it has such a dark and forbidden connotation. If it were clean and white and I paid a hundred dollars an hour for it, then it might be called extreme stimulation, or �rolfing� instead of pain. Inside a smoky sweat lodge in remote South Dakota, it might be called cleansing instead of punishment. If I left reality behind while I was kneeling before a Christian altar, it would be a vision rather than a trance, and I would not be depraved but rather spiritual. But in reality, none of that matters. BDSM is dark. It�s also stark and basic. It�s human relationships stripped of pretense. It�s raw emotions and honest desires. It�s a family that will accept you without defining you. They will love you so long as you don�t attempt to treat them like prey. They expect nothing more than honesty and nothing less than integrity. My two favorite words.
Happy Thoughts, Deep Breaths,
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