david stein sent a thought-provoking email on my 'bait and switch' email the other day. I crafted a response just now. A portion of it merits posting.
To wit:
I like your 'Orient Express' theory of mind. ("C'est n'est pas rien. C'est une couche mal.") It is never possible to single out one urge or motivation among many and say definitively that "it was *really* Mrs. Hubbard or Mr. MacQueen or the Princess Dragomiroff who did it. They all had a hand. Psychological motivation is a black box.
Note that I was thinking not so much about what motivates a mature practitioner of S/M. Rather, I was considering a sort of proto-S/M. Speaking for myself, and at the risk of providing Too Much Information, my early masturbatory fantasies involved being tied up by Older Boys and subjected to being jerked off by them. The motivations involved probably arose from my subconscious conflict over assimilating my homosexuality, and the adolescent experience of sexual desire seeming to be out of control and wanting to bring that under control. But I think it's telling that these fantasies revolved around domination and submission. I was not fantasizing about flogging or dog training or clothespins or any of the measured and considered forms of play that I and others now find to be satisfying outlets for sadistic urges. And what's more, when I was first getting tied up and tying up in my early twenties, I would leave the scene and play in my mind images of dominance and submission in order to get off. Today, I remain focused and 'in my body' and keep an eye out for signs that my bottom is leaving the scene and doing this fantasizing so that I can bring him back.
Or, think of the odd juxtaposition in Drummer Magazine of fantastic fiction--for the most part involving abduction and coercion and depersonalization--with the S/M how to and advice columns dealing with the fun you can have with hot candle wax. What is this alchemy that goes on whereby the straw of wild fantasy is spun into the gold of a good scene? It seems almost batty that all of this is lumped under the same S/M rubric.
So that's what I'm thinking about: that interplay between S/M fantasy and S/M reality. Given the extreme forms that fantasy can take and the mundane forms that reality can take, I wonder if it can even be said that fantasy informs the reality. But whatever the case, the reality is deeply satisfying. Probably due to the important fact that reality typically involves another flesh and blood human being.
Huh.
Maybe that's it in a nutshell. Only connect. The experience of connection with another human being, even with the most mundane of apparatus, is far more powerful than the solipcism (sp?) of fantasy, no matter how wild.
So it is 'bait and switch' after all.
"Hey boy. You've got that look in your eyes. I know what you're looking for. The white unmarked van pulling up behind you on some lonely street. You get stuffed in the back. Chained like a dog. Your clothes cut off you with a hunting knife. Shaved. Branded. Your name taken away, and for the rest of your days, you're called 'shitpile' if you're called anything at all. Every day you're fucked till you bleed and every day, you get deeper and deeper into degradation. You're nothing. You're a slave. You're a piece of meat. Not even an animal, but something less.
"Tell you what, boy. How about I take you home, tie you spread eagle on the bed that Dial-A-Mattress delivered to me. I hood you with a spandex hood I bought at the Leatherman, and then I start to work your body with a little spiked wheel used to test for nerve damage, a nubbly rubber glove used in dog grooming, some clothespins I have that have never fastened laundry to a line, hot wax poured from candles you buy in a bodega. If we stop and pick up four AAA batteries, I'll be able to fire up a little device I have that's used to give a massage of sorts by electrically stimulating muscles to contract and expand. And in the process, I'll lay bare to you my very soul, and you'll show me yours.
"How 'bout it, boy? Up for it? Good. Finish up your bottle of water and let's get out of here. What's your name, by the way? Live here in the city? What kind of work do you do?"
I think a significant part of the allure that basanos holds for me is extending the possibility of reality approximating my (and his) fantasies. How close can we come? Using all those mundane implements purchased from Home Depot and the Leatherman and such, combined in the crucible of my erotic imagination, how close will we be able to come in... perhaps not realizing fantasies, as I think that phenomenologically fantasy is a different thing that reality... but enacting (the mot juste, I think) all of those deep dark desires? The interplay should be a source of tension, and that tension can either be destructive or something wonderful. I hope for the latter.
Uniting fantasy and reality, "as these two eyes make one in sight."
How long, O basanos, how long?
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