ALTcoach

Published 2008-03-07

Originally published in Penthouse Variations V, Mid-Spring 1979, 

When I label myself today, I call myself a lesbian sadomasochist. Women are my first choice when I look for friends, lovers, or companions: When I have sex with other women, I like to structure the encounter into roles. The roles can have many different names—mistress and slave, top and bottom, sadist and masochist—but the basic dynamic is always the same. One role involves taking and exercising power; the other role involves giving up power or having it taken away.

Once these roles are established, I use the power imbalance to build sexual excitement and tension and can create mental states in my partner that permit her to tolerate and enjoy very intense physical stimulation. I call myself a sadomasochist even though I'm probably more of a sadist than a masochist at this point in my life. But very few lesbians that I know who are involved in S & M perform exclusively in one role. Almost all of us enjoy switching off, at least once in awhile.

The oldest fantasy I remember is very simple. I would imagine that I needed to urinate very badly, and some vague, tall figure whose face I could not see forbade me go to the bathroom. At the climax of the fantasy, I lost control and began to urinate, and they were spanking me.

Later, my fantasies became more complex. Many of them involved my enduring a series of ceremonial tortures. In the process of submitting to this ritual, I acquired marks that set me apart from other people and gave me a special status and unique powers.

I was also turned on by the thinly disguised S & M content of comic books. I can recall only one fantasy derived from this source. It concerned a superhero who was part fish and who was unable to live out of water for long periods of time. A villain had kidnapped him and hung him in a huge net over a large pool of sparkling green water. The villain then gloated over him, as villains will do, and offered the hero his life in return for submission and cooperation in some evil scheme.

The hero spurned his offer. The villain then lowered another net which contained the hero's young companion, also helplessly trussed up and doomed to die mere inches from the water that would save his life. When I reached orgasm during this fantasy, I would focus on the hero's face, staring in horror and pity at his young protege, caught between love and honor, both of them suffering and near death. I never bothered to cook up a rescue sequence.

Both sadomasochism and lesbianism seem to come naturally to me. Nobody told me about them, and I had no labels for my feelings, but they were present as powerful components of my sexuality. When I realized that women could love and make love to other women, I felt an incredible sense of relief.

This is not to say that being a lesbian solved all my sexual problems. It took me about a year to learn how to become orgasmic with partners. I finally solved this problem by telling my partners that I sometimes needed to give myself an orgasm, that I got too excited to wait, and it took pressure off of me to perform if I knew I could always come when I wanted to.

Then I experimented with different lesbian lovemaking techniques until I found one that pretty closely duplicated what I felt during masturbation. (I masturbated by lying on my side and putting my hand over my entire vulva. I would apply pressure to my labia and mons rather than stimulate my clitoris directly.)

I learned how to have orgasms with a woman lover by lying on top of her and rubbing my clitoris against her hip or thigh. I would position myself so that she could reach behind me and put her fingers inside my vagina or sometimes my anus. The combination of pressure against my clitoris, penetration, and the feel of her whole body against my whole body was delightful. If I lost my ability to focus on my genital sensations, I could raise myself and offer her my breasts to kiss and lick.

I came out as a lesbian long before I came out as a sadomasochist. S & M is more stigmatized in our society than homosexuality. I met other lesbians long before I met anyone who would admit to being involved in S & M.

I blame my religious background for a lot of guilt and self-hate I felt about my sexuality. It was such a waste, both of time and emotional energy, since the guilt never succeeded in altering my desires or, ultimately, my behavior. All it did was make it more difficult for me to figure myself out and accept myself.

Even if I hadn't had such a sex-negative background to contend with, the attitudes about S & M that are prevalent in the lesbian community would still have intimidated me. A statement I commonly heard was, "Well, I'm just a lesbian, but those gay boys who dress up in leather and beat each other up are sick, sick, sick!" Many lesbians are feminists, and to many feminists, S & M is synonymous with acts of sexual assault like rape and child abuse. To the uninformed, there is no apparent difference between making love to your partner in a rough, aggressive way and attacking someone.

The difference, of course, lies in the feelings of the passive partner. How much control do they have over what is happening? Can they say no? Are they obtaining sexual pleasure from the experience? A rapist wants to degrade and damage his victim. A good top cherishes her submissive. She uses every ounce of her skill to provide her submissive with the experience of being out of control, yet safe. As a gay male friend of mine is very fond of saying, "S & M stands for sensuality and mutuality. If it ain't sensual and it ain't mutual, it ain't S&M."

I didn't know any of this then. All I knew was that it had taken me a long time to construct a support system to replace my family. I had lost contact with my parents and brothers and sisters because they could not accept my lesbianism. I was terrified of losing my second family by once again adopting a sexual lifestyle that was too different and therefore too threatening.

This did some rather odd and upsetting things to my sex life. While I was making love, I would often imagine that my partner was holding me down or giving me orders about how to move and what sensations I should experience. Sometimes I would let a lover penetrate me quickly and roughly, or move against her body in such a way that she hurt my clitoris. After the sex was over, I would feel guilty and confused. Occasionally, I would accuse a lover of being insensitive and blame her for "hurting me." She would react with surprise and anger, and really, it wasn't her fault. The truth was that a steady diet of gentle lovemaking was frustrating the hell out of me.

I worked up enough nerve to break silence and talk about my fantasies only once. I confessed to a lover that I sometimes thought it might be fun to try tying somebody up and then making love. I hastened to assure her that this was by no means an obsession or anything like that. She thought it over, had a glass of wine and admitted that there was a slight possibility that might be interesting.

I found a pair of silk scarves in my closet. She lay down on my bed, and I knotted her wrists together. When she realized I had done it so well that she couldn't untie herself, she got very nervous. Her nervousness infected me, and I laughed the whole thing off and untied her. She insisted on finishing the experiment, and had me lie down so she could knot my wrists and ankles together. My heart was pounding painfully fast. I was wet before she even touched me. I hadn't gotten wet in all the times we made love together. The power of my response was frightening me, and I promptly resolved to bury my fantasies even deeper.

My life became more and more frustrating. The distance between the sweet potency of my fantasies and the sterile reality of my life was almost unbearable. I had been living with the same woman for four years, and our relationship was no longer sexual. We had grown so far apart that the only thing we had in common was car payments. But she still insisted on monogamy, and I was not ready to give up the security and familiarity of the relationship. When a friend invited me to accompany her to a women's conference in California, I jumped at the chance.

I remember walking up to a big bulletin board that had flyers posted on it, announcing each of the workshops. One of the flyers said, "Feminism and S & M." Several women were examining the board. Trying to look casual, I signed up for the workshop and wrote down the location. I walked away, dazed, afraid to feel the hope and joy that were threatening to overwhelm me. Somebody was finally going to talk about it. I was finally going to talk about it. The workshop was that afternoon, and I couldn't eat my lunch or even unpack my suitcase.

I walked into a room full of chairs and blackboards (the conference was on a college campus). There were ten or twelve other women. My first reaction was, "But they look just like ordinary lesbians!" As the workshop progressed, each of us talked about our personal experiences with S & M. (Some of the women were like me. They had lots of fantasies and little or no experience. But a few of the women had been playing S & M games with lovers for several years.) I began to realize that if I wanted to, I could find support for exploring S & M.

I went home from that conference firmly resolved to change my life. I broke up with my lover, began to acquire S & M equipment and toys, started to write and speak about S & M to other women, helped start a group for lesbians interested in S & M, began to meet women who were creative and courageous enough to explore this kind of sex with me.

I discovered that S & M is basically about power, not pain. I define S & M as a sexual encounter that occurs after the people involved have made a clear contact that involves an exchange of power. The content of a scene consists of introducing and elaborating on various symbols of that power exchange. A mistress will ask her slave to endure pain as a symbol of the power and control the slave is abdicating. Bondage is another metaphor for sexual happiness and passivity. The bottom asks her top to take responsibility for a little while manipulating and conducting the bottom's world.

Part of the process of setting up a scene is finding out what the bottom's limits are, how long the scene will last, whether or not the bottom has any medical problems that should limit play and doing anything necessary to insure that all parties concerned feel good about themselves and each other. The highly charged interaction of an S & M scene is only possible in a context of mutual trust and turn-on.

I don't like S & M pornography because it leaves out this kind of information. S & M porn never shows people talking about what they want to do. It never shows S & M people as being concerned for each other's pleasure and safety. In fact, most S & M porn is about violence rather than genuine S & M.

Another thing that isn't commonly known about S & M is that most S & M people are very careful about keeping roles they adopt for sexual play separate from the rest of their relationship. Very few tops want full-time responsibility for directing a bottom's life and very few bottoms want to give away total, twenty-four-hour-a-day control.

I think the basic difference between lesbian and gay male S & M and heterosexual S & M is that it is harder for heterosexuals to maintain that separation. A straight, submissive woman can have a difficult time finding a dominant male who will gratify her sexually without exploiting her socially.

Heterosexual relationships have a very heavy power script. Men are supposed to be on top full-time, and women are supposed to be on the bottom full-time. Heterosexual male submissives often resort to the services of professionals because most heterosexual women aren't prepared to cope with a man who needs to be dominated sexually. They also aren't willing to lose the privileges and social status they maintain by hiding their masochism.

When two women prepare to do a scene, there is no social script to tell them how to behave. They have to examine their individual needs and drives.

When I first started playing S & M games, I viewed myself as a bottom. It never occurred to me to think of myself as a dominant. I was lucky enough to meet a woman who is very good at bringing out the sexual sadist in other women. She is an excellent bottom and responds so quickly to any gesture of sexual control that when I am with her I never doubt my own ability or her arousal.

The first time we had sex, I topped her and was amazed to discover I really enjoyed it. I realized that for most of my life I had put my partners' sexual needs before my own and given them most of the responsibility for initiating sex and controlling what went on during sex. I uncovered a tremendous hunger to take charge of my sexuality. I loved the challenge of seducing or conquering her, overcoming her resistance, testing her limits, using her, demanding service from her. The fact that she is usually my slave makes the few occasions when she turns the tables on me very piquant. Playing slave to my slave makes me feel deliciously decadent and kinky.

A typical evening might begin with her picking me up at my house. If she is late, I know she feels the need for some extra punishment and humiliation. I will ask her, "Do you have anything for me?" and she will hand me a short piece of chain that we use as a collar. I will have her kneel and lock this chain around my left boot. Then we will head for a gay male bar that caters to a sadomasochistic clientele. We both enjoy playing sexy games in public, and there aren't any women's bars where this behavior would be tolerated.

She will be wearing a dark t-shirt, jeans, boots and a leather jacket. I usually dress the same way. Occasionally, however, I am in a more feral and feminine mood, and dress in a black evening gown and high heels. She is taller than me and broader in the shoulders. When we go out together, she is often typecast as the butch. I find this amusing, and often remind her of it when I am beating her ass.

When we go out in public, she has orders to stay behind me and to my right. This way, I always know where to find her, and I can control our movements. Once we are inside the bar, I have her do things like fetch my beer, then make her stand while I sit and drink it.

As the evening progresses, I may begin to find fault with her, and perhaps slap her a few times. I will intersperse the slaps with prolonged, deep kisses. She has a very sensitive mouth, so one of the things I love to do is hold her mouth open with one hand and put my fingers in and out of it, while I describe the attentions I am going to force her to pay to my cunt before the evening is over. When we are both thoroughly turned on, I will remove the chain from my boot and lock it around her throat. I will make sure that someone is looking, so there is a witness to her being collared.

The gay men in these bars react to us in a number of different ways. A few of them are surprised to see women being sexual, since there's a very prevalent myth circulating that women aren't as sexual as men and lesbians don't do S & M. Some of them resent us for being in a space they perceive as being all male. I can understand this, since I don't usually like to see men in lesbian bars.

More of the men are delighted and amused. After all, they're into some rather outrageous sex themselves. S & M is a form of conscious perversity. If our act is hot, they're willing to aid and abet it and give us room to play in.

I often wear handcuffs on my belt. When I'm ready to leave, I lock one of her wrists to mine and drag her out of the bar as my cooperative captive.

When we arrive home, she goes straight to my room and kneels at the foot of my bed. I like her in a certain position—thighs apart, her hands resting upturned on her thighs. Occasionally, I will correct her posture, to make her look more appealing and helpless. She maintains this position while I tidy up my toys and decide what I want to do with her.

One night, I informed her that she was about to become an object that I would use for my pleasure. I stripped her, reminding her each time I removed an item of clothing that I was lowering her status, demeaning her, leaving her without protection or camouflage. When she was naked, I ordered her to bed on her back. My bed is on the floor and has eyebolts set around it at each of the corners. I have padlocked chains to the eyebolts.

I put leather ankle and wrist restraints on her, then locked the restraints to the chains, so that she was spread-eagled and completely open to me. I removed my own clothing. I took a bottle of massage oil over to the bed and poured some of it on her thighs, belly, and breasts. Then I began to rub myself all over her body, refusing her permission to move or respond to my touch in any way. Occasionally, I would kneel above her face and feed her my clit. At one point, I inserted a dildo into her cunt and told her that its purpose was to keep her aroused so that she would serve me more skillfully. It worked.

After I had come several times, I unchained her (except for one ankle), covered her up and told her it was time to sleep. She began to whimper. I closed my eyes and snuggled up against her. I sank immediately into slumber.

The next morning, I unchained her and brought her breakfast in bed. She tried to mask her disappointment and discomfort and ate her breakfast. I waited until she had almost finished her coffee, then took it away from her, grabbed her ankle and shackled, her once more to my bed. I threw her onto her back. When I ran my fingers along her cleft, she was so turned on that I didn't even need to part her inner lips to feel the wetness. I took some of her juices on my fingers and made her taste them, then slipped my fingers inside her. While I stroked the walls of her vagina and probed for her cervix, I instructed her to masturbate. She came almost at once and immediately stopped, since she is embarrassed about touching herself when I am watching.

But I wasn't done with her. I continued to fill her and irritate the opening of her vagina. Her sexual juices have a wonderful, silky texture. Her hand crept down her belly, then stopped. I began to describe the slightly rough feel that the walls of her vagina have and the way her inner lips were swelling. I told her that she was so aroused, the whole room smelled like her. She moaned and reached for her clit. Her orgasm was so powerful that I had difficulty keeping my fingers inside her. The muscles contracted and pushed at me with a force that was hard to believe.

After we do a scene, we always take at least a few minutes to talk about it. We compliment each other on pieces of dialogue that were especially creative, or suggest new variations on old fantasies, or tell each other what didn't really work well. She tells me that part of the reason why she trusts me is that I also play bottom, and she knows I don't do anything to her that I'm not willing to have somebody do to me.

My other primary lover is a top. (Once again, this makes our role reversals feel very naughty and daring.) She has the kind of body you get from being an athlete and doing hard physical work. She doesn't need to use bondage on me since she is quite capable of picking me up and can hold me down without any trouble at all.

I love her for being so strong in a world where women are encouraged to be weak. And I know I am safe with her. If I did not love and trust her, I could never enjoy the sensation of being overwhelmed. When I wrestle with her, I can be as vigorous and fierce as I like. It won't turn her off, since she knows she can put a stop to it whenever she likes, so I get to release the tension from my body and get myself very excited without escaping from or ruining the sexual situation.

Because I like to struggle and protest and scream, "No! No! Stop! Stop!" we had to invent a signal I could use to let her know I really did want something to stop. We picked a word that we wouldn't normally use during sex—"pickle." When the sex gets rougher than I can handle, I use this word to tell her I need things to slow down or stop.

I went over to her house one night, anticipating a quiet dinner and an evening of television. Instead, I was tackled at the door, thrown over her shoulder and carried into her bedroom. None of her roommates were home, so I screamed my head off. She threw me on the bed, slapped me around for being a noisy bitch, then produced several lengths of rope and a broomstick. She yanked my jeans off and tied each of my ankles to opposite ends of the broomstick. She ordered me to put my arms above my head and remain absolutely still, then left me for a moment. She returned with a shaving brush, a mug of shaving soap and a safety razor.

"I'm going to shave your cunt," she told me calmly. "What have you got to say about that?"

I told her I thought that was appalling and insisted that she untie me at once. She laughed.

"You know what to say if you really want me to turn you loose," she reminded me.

I get a little angry and embarrassed when she forces me to admit that I like and need the things she does to me. At the same time, I get turned on when I admit to being her toy and slut. So my face got red, but I didn't use my safe word, and she lathered up my pubic hair.

As she plied her razor, she began to talk about how bare my poor little pussy was going to be and how much she liked the idea of exposing me. When he job was finally done, she made me admire myself in a mirror and told me I looked like a little girl. Then she entered me. I was still holding the mirror, and she instructed me to continue to watch. When she reached for a can of Crisco, I knew what she was going to do to me. We use lubricant that is that heavy and thick for only one thing, fist-fucking.

It takes her a long time to get her whole hand inside my cunt, and she enjoys making it last, so she goes very slowly. (She also makes sure her fingernails are trimmed very short so she doesn't scratch or tear me.) The thick grease acts as a pad, protecting the vagina from irritation.

Being distended to that extent makes me feel as if I am being completely possessed. I can feel the pressure from her hand against my rectum and up in my belly. 1 lose track of who I am or what day it is. Nothing exists but my body and her hand, and my vagina gripping her fist, fitting around it like a glove.

It's at times like this, when I really lose control, that I rely on my top to take care of me and keep me from being injured. I am capable of getting so turned on that I will submit to more stimulation than my body can safely endure. This sounds scary, but the truth is that after an experience like this I feel incredibly close to and attuned to my lover. It's a kind of intimacy that few relationships can ever aspire to.

When I had come several times, and my vagina started to tighten up, she carefully came out of me, once again moving very slowly, cautiously. I was nearly oblivious to my surroundings. She flipped me onto my belly (I was no longer tied to the broomstick) and ran the leather tip of a riding crop down my back. I immediately moved into a different space, all my attention focusing on the whip. I arched my back and brought my ass up to meet the caress of the leather. She interpreted this as an invitation, which it was and brought the crop down across my ass.

Being whipped really hurts. She likes to whip me until I am bruised. I can't always tolerate this much pain, and when I can I feel I am offering her something very special. If I am very turned on, I usually find I can take a lot more pain than I can if I'm not aroused.

That particular night, I wanted very badly to give her everything I had. I begged her to give me something to bite down on, and she folded a bandana and shoved it between my teeth. Being tied up makes it easier for me to endure a whipping, but she prefers my body offered up without physical restraints. I bit down on the soft cloth and took several deep breaths. If I tense my muscles and fight the pain, I get scared and have to call the scene off. When I relax and accept it, I can go on and on.

Trips like this are very difficult for non-S & M people to understand. Why would anybody want to suffer that kind of abuse? Well, pain is a reality I constantly have to deal with. It is usually inflicted on me against my will, by people who are indifferent or hostile to me. My defense against this pain consists of a refusal to feel it.

I think all of us carry around a reservoir of unshed tears, unfelt anguish, and the tension accumulated in keeping those feelings repressed. When a lover inflicts a lot of pain on me, it allows me to make a connection between that pain and the stored-up misery. I am safe to scream, cry, plead, grovel and writhe. I don't have to hide anything or pretend indifference. All my pent-up agony rushes out of me.

Most lovers demand constant reassurance from one another. We all want tokens and proof that we are loved. I demonstrate my love for this woman by allowing her to mark me. I wear the bruises that she gives me with pride. They are symbols of my love. They are symbols of my courage. I earn the right to wear them by virtue of my willingness to enter emotional realms that most people shun.

My lover is an excellent top because she knows how to make that journey a two-way trip. She can obliterate my will, sweep away my defenses and my objections, devastate me utterly, and somehow bring me in for a perfect landing. When the scene is over, she comforts me, reassures me, accepts my grateful caresses, and hands my control back to me. She returns me to my autonomous self, feeling purified.

I've created a life that allows me to experience the kind of sexuality that comes naturally to me. I should mention that I still masturbate and don't consider it a form of second-rate sexuality. It's an important part of how I take care of myself. It's also a good time to try out new techniques.

And I remain faithful to all the mistresses and masters and villains and victims I acquired before I knew what S & M was. I add new characters to my harem, but I never send any of the old ones away.

S & M allows me to explore the erotic possibilities of my whole body, not just my breasts and genitals. I am always being surprised by the plastic nature of my sexuality. I sometimes wonder if there is any object or act that can't be sexually exciting if presented in the right context. S & M has taught me that the only way you can tell if something is right or wrong for you is to try it on for size. I've also learned that I can live without the somewhat ambiguous blessing of society's approval. If the reward for conformity is frustration, why conform?

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