IV. Inferno

I was invited to attend Inferno, the annual play event held by the Chicago Hellfire Club in early September. I had heard that a lot of whipping went on there. Many bloodied backs on the men who sat nightly around the dinner table. Some of the most renowned whipsmen in the world converged at that magical event. I, of course, was terrified. It was as if I was plucked from the line-up of my softball team and invited to join the Yankees for batting practice with David Wells on the mound. I mean, Gadzooks!

The wonderful man who invited me offered cautious re-assurance. Yes, most of the men there know each other and have known each other for years; and yes, there is some level of scrutiny of newcomers. But that scrutiny only reflects how highly the men of Inferno regard the event, and the delicate alchemy that makes it so wonderful. For men with a good spirit and sincerity, it’s welcoming and nurturing.

So, I packed up my whips, floggers, restraints, and other accoutrements, and after a sidetrip in Montreal, I and my sponsor headed west across Canada to Inferno.

A few weeks before, I had an email correspondence with a couple that I learned were in charge of ‘fulfilling fantasies.’ When you fill out your invitation, you’re invited to describe a fantasy of yours, and the committee will see about having your it realized over the course of the week. I left that section blank.

After saying “Yes!” so much recently, there weren’t a lot of fantasies remaining that I hadn’t been able to realize on my own]. I sent what I hoped was a humorous email enumerating my fantasies: a flying jet pack a la Buck Rogers, a job that paid well but didn’t require any actual work, butterscotch sundaes for everybody! And so on. It was well received.

Then, days before the event, a thought occurred to me. I sent another email; with lots of qualifiers (“this is probably way beyond the deadline; it’s probably not what you’re used to hearing; if it’s unworkable, don’t worry about it.”). I said that I felt my life to be in transition, going from one mode of being to another. Ritual is and always has been very important to me. Ritual is communal, and works on the subconscious. My ‘fantasy’ was a ritual of some kind to mark this transition. I clicked on ‘Send’ and didn’t think much more about it.

Inferno was like a field burning. Where I grew up in Pennsylvania, farmers burn a field that has been left fallow for a few years before planting. The burning puts nitrogen in the soil, and kills the seeds of the weeds so they won’t choke the crop you’re planting. So they set it on fire. Fire is chaotic and wild and obliterating. The flames build higher. But it’s controlled. It doesn’t (usually) get out of control. So Inferno was essentially a safe place to let my demons out and invite them to dance.

And, A. was there. He introduced me to men I knew only by their looming reputations. It’s somewhat unnerving, when you’re trying to seduce some man into letting you whip him, and you ask if he’s ever had any experience, and he says, “Yeah, at Folsom Street in San Francisco by this guy…”—and he goes on to name someone who is pretty much world class.

And yet there I was[ at Inferno chit-chatting with this world class whipsman from San Francisco; throwing whips with him and others like him. In the middle of the compound was an enormous weeping willow tree. Under the branches, men with whips would gather and practice, aiming to hit little pieces of Styrofoam, painted orange, fixed to the top of stakes planted in the ground.

When it came to actual whipping scenes, words truly can’t describe what I witnessed. At times, I wanted to turn away: it felt like I was intruding on some incredibly intimate experience, but you’re not intruding, because when you’re in a scene, the two of you have the universe to yourselves for a while. But it’s on the scale of opera orr Shakespearean tragedy. After observing a scene, I would have to go and fine some quiet place, and sit and smoke and look at the sky. What was this world? Who were these men? What was I doing here?

I was percolating with notions of what I would find at Inferno, but here’s the thing I didn’t expect, and the thing that left me awestruck: there was so much love there. Love like I have never known. A love so powerful it’s frightening.

Working set-up before things got going, somebody got a splinter while unloading scaffolding. “Ow! Fuck! A splinter!” he wailed, while his eyes teared. “It sort of amazes me,” another guy wryly observed, “that somebody that can stand up and take a singletail goes to pieces over a splinter.” “No surprise there,” someone replied, “Where’s the love in a splinter?”.

Whipping is all about love. Love is a journey to a place you’ve never been, and to the deepest part of yourself. Love takes you to heaven, but, inevitably, it also leads you through Hell. Love is transforming, it’s steel, strengthened by blazing heat. Love is laughter and tears, the best and the worst thing that will ever happen to you, if you’re lucky. To be in love is to be fully alive. Just like whipping. Exactly like whipping.

So at dinner one night, my sponsor approached me. He said in calm, measured tones, “I have been asked to participate in the fulfillment of your fantasy. Look for me tonight after dinner by the beverage tent.” Uh-oh. Just what have I let myself in for. There I sat in the deepening darkness. Soon after night fell, my sponsor approached and asked if I was ready. “As I’ll ever be,” I responded. He lead me down the hill, and into the enclosure known as ‘the Whipping Tent.’ Outfitted with crosses and stocks and posts, it was where the majority of the scenes I had witnessed transpired. “It’s appropriate,” said my sponsor, “that your journey begin here.”

We walked through the quiet tent. The evening session hadn’t yet begun. “At this point, I’m going to blindfold you.” And he did. I held his hand as we moved to a secluded area. I was instructed to meditate on my coming out as a gay man, and later, my coming out into Leather.

The sounds of the Inferno encampment receded in my ears, and then I heard a new sound. Someone was cracking a whip in the distance ahead of us.

We came to a stop. My sponsor pressed a piece of rawhide over my face. “Smell the leather,” he said. “Taste the leather. Feel the leather.” Then, the blindfold was removed. I was surrounded by a circle of men holding bodega candles. There was A. There were several of the other whipsmen that I had met. I think at this point I started to choke on sobs.

I can’t recall the words. But I can recall the sense of them, and the feelings that welled up inside of me: Welcome. You’re one of us. We are here with you. Your journey has just begun. It’s going to be wonderful.

Then, without warning, they closed in, and poured the wax from their candles down over my chest and back. It passed through me. It was wonderful. A baptism. Then, A. stepped forward. He took my hand, and into it he pressed braided kangaroo leather. A whip. I knew without looking at it. “This was made for you,” he said.

And then it was kind of over. They blew out the candles that were still lit. I said, “Uh… Thanks.” We headed back, talking in low voices. Only it wasn’t over. It had just begun.


V. A Taste of What You Serve Up

One afternoon at Inferno, I was talking to a friend of A.’s, a tall German. He was one of those internationally renowned whipsmen I was now getting all buddy-buddy with. We were saying things like, “Whipping is really cool. Yeah, it is. Way cool.” And then he said, “So, have you ever had a taste of this dish you serve up?”

No. No,I hadn’t. Not really. I mean, at the conclusion of the Singletails workshop, we lined up and, one by one, wearing a denim jacket, each took a few hits. It was over before I knew it. So, in replying to my new acquaintance, I wanted to burst out in an explanation: “Y’know, I’m a lousy bottom. I don’t process pain very well. I don’t like the experience of giving up control. I’m much more Top-wired.” Blah blah blah. But I didn’t. I just said, “No.”

“Well,” said the man from Munich, “you should.” Twenty feet away, there was [“A,”] working his twin signal whips under the branches of the willow tree. He caught my eye and smiled.

Over the course of the run, I noticed that hardly any of these guys were exclusively Tops. One by one, they would be showing up at dinner with hamburger backs. I reasoned that it was a function of the paucity of whipping bottoms in the world. And it was probably instructive. And it would doubtless put bottoms at ease to know that you had been where you were aiming to take them.

When I returned from Inferno, I took up my responsibilities with the GMSMA Program Committee. One of the first Wednesday evening programs we were doing was on Singletails, and I was the coordinator. At the suggestion of my Inferno sponsor (although it didn’t take a lot to convince me), I asked A. if he would be the presenter, and he agreed. An email correspondence ensued: How do you want the room set up? Will you need a cross? Try and be there about 7:45 pm. Gene will introduce you.

At the end of one of my emails to A. I wrote: “PS: will you whip me sometime?” His response was an enthusiastic ‘yes.’ We agreed on a day and time, and Andrew found a place for us.

It would be a learning experience. I trusted A. and if it was really more than I could handle, we could pack it in. I sat down over dinner with my Inferno sponsor so I could get his advice on bottoming. “Breathe,” he said, “breathe.” I asked him if I could possibly be endorphin-naïve. Pain always triggered an adrenaline response: Anger, increased heart rate, tightening of the muscles. That would be bad.

The October days wore on. The weather got colder. I woke up on the day that I would be whipped and my very first conscious thought was, “You can call it off.” No, no. Just go through with it. How bad can it possibly be? It’s a learning experience. I prayed. I prayed for A., and I prayed for me. For courage and strength. And I thanked God for loving me all my life, and for loving me tonight at A.’s hands.

It was cold and raining that day. A few days earlier, shopping for clothes in Chelsea, I found this great pair of leather pants. The price was amazingly reasonable. I looked pretty hot in them, and I thought they’d be perfect for getting whipped, since they were pretty low-waisted, showing off my back. As I took a cab to the place where I would be whipped, sporting my new pants, I fished around in the pocket for money to pay the cabbie. I found a little piece of paper and pulled it out. When we went under a streetlight, I read, “Made from 100% Man Made Materials.” I was wearing pleather pants. I was a Pleatherman. A fabulous fake.

I got there early and sat sipping Vitamin Water, waiting for A. When he showed up, he greeted me warmly. We went back into the play space. There was the cross. It was a nice one. I’d been in this room before, but never particularly noticed it. I stripped off my shirt. I left on my pleather pants (“Don’t think about that now!”). A. put wrist restraints on me. Really nice ones. Very secure. I told him that instead of having my arms extended over my head, I’d rather have my wrists bound in front of me, sort of embracing the cross. He was fine with that.

He started out with a flogger. Breathe! I breathed. I didn’t anticipate. I just let it all happen. I felt loose and relaxed. After each blow, I would absorb it, let it pass through me. Feel it. And then open up my back again to signal to A. that I was ready for another.

I made a lot of noise. That was the first thing that I noted as significant. The sounds would come from deep inside me. “Uhn! Ahh! Hurrrgh!” It was like I wasn’t ‘making’ the sounds, they were just coming out of me. Making noise—loudly—felt great. I opted to really let loose, and not hold back. I love to sing, but I’ve been told again and again that I had an awful singing voice, and would I please be quiet. This was my time. I was going to sing out strong if I wanted to. And I did.

After the flogger, came a braided cat. ‘Sting’ rather than ‘thud.’ I was really making noise now.

Then the whip. I felt the first crack I felt in every molecule in my body. More cracks. A. was moving closer. Then, I felt it. Like a kiss. The sensation felt abstracted. I was experiencing it, my mind recorded the event, but it was like eavesdropping into the mind of someone else. I was floating. There were no thoughts. No thoughts at all. It’s just happening to me.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the New England Divine, wrote in his essay ‘Nature,’ “Crossing a common, in the snow, I become a transparent eyeball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the universal being flow through me.” That sort of sums it up.

I recognized the sounds I was making as crying. Crying like I’d never cried before. Not crying ‘because,’ or ‘for,’ but just crying. I was my crying. No. Not crying. I’m laughing. Not crying but laughing. Howling laughter. Sometimes, I couldn’t tell whether I was laughing or crying, or something in between. Or neither. Perhaps some new thing.

I was there in my body. I was my body. Here I was, flesh and bone and muscle and sinew and blood coursing through veins. I was matter. Just like earth and air and water, planets, stars, the far-flung atoms in the vast interstellar spaces. “Man is matter and man matters.” Who said that?

The amazing thing was, when A.’s whip would crack, it didn’t matter if it was connecting with my back or not. The reaction from my body was the same. I hadn’t realized that…

A. paused, and approached. “Are you ready for the ten count?” he asked. This is a trusted trope, a good way to close. The bottom counts the strokes, from ten to one, or from one to ten. He only counts the strokes that ‘count.’ So, it gives the bottom control over for how much longer the scene will go on.

“Let’s go for a while longer, then ask me again,” I said. (My first conscious thought that morning: “You can call it off.”) So we went for a while longer. And when we began the count, it was gut-wrenching. “Five, Sir” I’d bellow, weeping, laughing, contorting, and then regret it. “Damn! You hardly felt that! Damn!”

Then it was over. The whipping part, anyway. I got spritzed with the hydrogen peroxide (arguably the only part I didn’t enjoy). A. sat there with me. I was flying. Absolutely flying. I realized I had a big, goofy whipping bottom’s grin plastered on my face. Then I realized that the space where we were playing was starting to fill up. During the scene, A. and I had been the only people in the universe.

That night and the following week, I took off my shirt at every opportunity. The next morning, I craned my neck to see my back. There they were, A.’s marks, an archipelago of welts and scars. Every morning in the shower, I would have a sort of reminder of the whipping. It was like the savored aftertaste of a delicious dinner. I dropped off a present for A., apples in a carved wooden bowl.

I really noticed it exactly a week later, when I went to opening night of the Big Apple Circus. I was jumping out of my seat. I was laughing at the clowns, gasping in excitement at the acrobats and tumblers. When one of the trapeze artists came sailing from the summit of the big top earthward down a bolt of cloth, only to catch himself inches from hitting the ground, I cried out so loud I felt like I was becoming unhinged. I was feeling, I was experiencing, emotions were flowing through me like a swollen creek carrying the melting snow in the Spring.


* * * * *


Here is how I was changed. This is the crux of the transformation I have undergone. I will live my life only for love. Nothing else really matters. Love alone.