Best Sex Writing 2013: The State of Today's Sexual Culture (15 page)

Partly, I stayed so long because I believed my youthful indis- cretion would be justified if we managed to stay together and

vanquish our obvious incompatibility. After Michel and I had to let go, through my next relationship I tried to vanquish the sex itself.

My next long-term boyfriend was utterly devoted, loving and willing to be patient with me, even in the shell-shocked state I was in after Michel. Our sex life unfolded completely on my terms. I remember reading an article at the time about “born-again vir- gins”—Christian girls who had sex and then decided to return to abstinence, presumably to reclaim a moral and spiritual high ground. I hated the term but decided to try out the approach.

Like Michel, my new man wasn’t Muslim, nor was he other- wise religious, but he was willing to entertain this “born-again” status. He was significantly older and had already been in several long-term relationships. He seemed settled, and he was focused on the horizon, hoping we’d get married. We were together five years, and he was just as devoted to my newfound piety as I was, never once implying that I’d lose him if I didn’t loosen up. But the sexual repression I was imposing on myself didn’t feel right. I wish I could say that from being with Michel, I’d gained clarity that sex before marriage is ruinous. But it taught me more about what I
didn’t
believe: that because I had pushed up against a prohibition, I’d also traded in my status as an observant Muslim.

That’s not because I took issue with Islamic precepts around premarital sex, like some of my friends, who wrote them off as ir- relevant to their modern lives. I just wasn’t convinced that this one transgression negated all my other religious virtues.

In that sense, getting right with God was the easy part. But the post-Michel celibacy wasn’t driven by conviction—it was a shelter under which I could heal, without having to reconcile my past experimentation with a religious and sexual practice that would feel right moving forward.

Ten years after Michel, I came to the brink again, faced with the toll of the hard work I’d shirked. This time, it was with the guy on the air mattress. A year after we met, the struggle over sex was again driving a wedge in our relationship. He was asking for an open relationship, and rather than feel the pain of that betrayal, I decided to go whole hog. I gave him everything that I’d physi- cally withheld in my prior relationships.

At first, my heart wasn’t in the decision, and the fact that I wasn’t holding anything back scared me a bit. This anxiety begat paranoia. How could the man really love me and at the same time pressure me to have sex when I felt so ambivalent about it? Was this my pattern: becoming infatuated with selfish men who would do me wrong? I dizzied myself with these thoughts, and gave of myself tentatively. Moreover, the sex was often disappointing.

So it might sound delusional when I say that I considered our intimacy over the next five years to be redemptive. But finally confronting the ambiguity in my sex life allowed me to be more accepting of all my purported contradictions. And when the ob- session with my sexual status fell away, my religious identity came into relief. I focused on maintaining the practices that are core to my spirituality and my connection to God.

Ultimately, when Air Mattress Man and I fell apart, I didn’t regret what I’d chosen. So much for that compartmentalized exis- tence that parents, and many men, would like to impose: the idea that a good Muslim girl doesn’t engage in sex before she’s com- mitted for life. It’s a specter I’m glad to be rid of. Here, finally, was that unambiguous status I’d been refusing to claim. I’m an unmar- ried, Muslim nonvirgin. I’ve said it aloud; still, I don’t disappear.

enhancing Masochism:

How to expand Limits and Increase Desire

Patr ic k Califia

It was the third SM play party I had ever attended. Since I was one of the organizers, it was up to me (and my cohost) to get things started, even though I was barely more experienced at group sex than most of the guests. That lovely lady (let’s call her Fanny) was gracious enough to let me drag her into the center of the room and tie her up on all fours. She was a slender redhead with Celtic knots tattooed on her shoulders. The brightly entwined lines morphed into plants and fantastical animals as the design spilled onto her upper arms. She had long, very curly red hair, so she looked like a Raphaelesque angel you had divested of its robe and got ass-up and begging for cock. Like magic, as soon as we took off some of our clothes, everybody else formed couples and triads and got out their toys.

Fanny really, really, really wanted me to put my biggest strap- on in her ass. I did preliminary play with my fingers, an ass plug,

and my second-biggest dildo. I massaged her, talked dirty to her, slipped lube into her butt, and played with her nipples. But her ass would only open so far. We had reached a plateau.

My pervy little angel was whispering something. Given the volume of the music and other players, the only thing I could hear was “Please, Sir.” I leaned forward, but I couldn’t get close enough to her head to decipher the whole message while I was manipulating a slender vibrator in her butt.

“Speak up!” I finally roared, letting a little of my frustration show in my voice.

“Get my belt!” she shouted, matching my volume. Apparently she was feeling a bit more frustrated than I was.

A passerby was kind enough to find her jeans and tug her simple leather belt out of the loops. I put down the vibes and plugs and dildos and picked up the supple length of that ordinary article of clothing. Suddenly it seemed vested with power and fear, an implement that might help us cross the line into a new realm of experience. I doubled it up and smacked her with it, drawing a broad red stripe across her pale, shapely ass, increasing the force until she was shuddering and dragging on the ropes. She had told me that she liked pain, but I didn’t really get it until I saw her clawing at the leather tabletop, having what looked and sounded like an orgasm.

After that, we had no trouble getting my fat, ten-inch cock into her ass. She was as relaxed as could be. And if she did begin to tense up, all I had to do was trail the belt down her buttocks, pressing gently on her welts, to make her sigh and melt into me. It was a grand fuck, one of my first experiences with combining pain and pleasure, doing a scene that looked vanilla but most cer- tainly was not.

Would this technique work with anybody? No. You have to

start with at least some of the hardwiring for masochism. If you do have that hardwiring, should you be expected to stand up and get bullwhipped for an hour, with no warm-up, to entertain a crowd at a leather community fund-raiser for breast cancer? Only if you are an exceptionally heavy player and such an exhibitionist that nothing matters but the spectators. But can you perhaps learn to take a bit more, and then a bit more, to please a lover and your- self? Yes.

Some Definitions

In this article I use the term
masochism
to refer to the desire and the ability to become aroused and perhaps even climax while experiencing sensations that other people avoid. Although I talk about pain and discomfort, it should be understood that once a masochist is aroused and in a state of surrender to these in- tense sensations, they are not experiencing the kind of pain that someone who is ill or traumatized feels when they are shocked by how torturous it can be to have a body. I also want to note that there are masochists who seek out pain even if it does not arouse them; willingly tolerating hurt can have a number of positive results, which will be clear a little further on.

Unfortunately, the stigma of the label
masochism
has been per- petuated by sex-negative doctors, psychologists and other mental health “professionals” whose vocabularies lack precision. So-called experts get away with claiming that masochism is unhealthy be- cause they use the term loosely to describe other types of human behavior as well. Patients who stay in violent relationships, allow themselves to be exploited by employers or family members, can’t take control over their own lives, or harm themselves physically and emotionally are referred to as exhibiting masochism. Most of these people haven’t got a kinky bone in their bodies. Yet people

who enjoy being spanked, whipped, pinched, bitten, et cetera because it gives them an erotic rush and makes them feel closer to their partners are also called masochists.

This flawed logic has resulted in the diagnosis “sexual mas- ochism” appearing in the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-IV TR (DSM-IV-TR)
, the industry standard for mental-health bureau- cracy. “Sexual sadism” is in there, too. You can’t write a case report, create a treatment plan, or (most importantly) bill an in- surance company without using the
DSM
’s nomenclature of sup- posed dysfunction.

Is there any objective proof that people who get wet during a spanking are also getting ripped off financially, intimidated by bullies, anorexic, being battered, or likely to engage in self-mu- tilation? No. And there never will be, because we are conflating two separate categories of human experience. One is a sexual identity or experience; the other is a state of disenfranchisement, oppression, traumatization, or self-hatred. People consent to the former; they wish they could escape the latter. The earliest at- tempts to educate mental-health professionals about BDSM fo- cused on the fact that this was a sexual style based on consent and negotiation. These were pleasurable acts committed by adults who chose to enjoy kinky sex. This message reached a certain number of people. But it is very difficult to overturn generations of fear and disgust. For many “experts” whose credentials allowed them to pronounce on our mental health (or sickness), the fact that people would consent to do these things became proof that BDSM players had to be mentally ill. If you weren’t crazy, this reasoning goes, you wouldn’t want to do these things or agree to have them done to you. For therapists who are judgmental about sexual variation, the fact that someone would consent to wearing a pair of nipple clamps or having their face slapped just proves that

they are indeed sick and unable to distinguish between healthy and unhealthy experiences. And the person who does such awful things to them is a monster.

For alleged social scientists to judge human sexuality this way is embarrassing. The assumption that variant sexualities are mental illnesses has more to do with conservative religious values than it does with objective observation. If a mental state or human behavior is unhealthy, we ought to be able to demonstrate that it makes that person unhappy, interferes with their ability to give and receive love, prevents them from setting goals that give them a sense of fulfillment, and injures their health. It’s not enough to say BDSM is sick or crazy because most people don’t do it. Most people don’t become concert pianists or Olympic athletes, either. These are individual dreams of excellence that cause people to de- vote a great deal of time and effort to perfecting their abilities. If you took away the opportunity to compete in their chosen field, these “minority members” would be devastated. Does that prove they are addicted or coerced into loving classical music or diving from high places? You can see how this line of thinking breaks down if we ask some reasonable questions.

This is not to say that BDSMers (or our relationships) are al- ways happy and strong. Our community has its share of people who are mean-spirited or manipulative or crackers. Some of us find romantic love and lots of sex with ease; others experience higher levels of loneliness and unsatisfied desire. But this is simply the human condition. It’s okay for us to be imperfect. We struggle, like anyone else, to figure out what sort of relationships are ethical or will meet our needs, how to communicate unwelcome infor- mation to a partner, whether to let a conflict result in separation or rededication to the relationship. That doesn’t prove that we are sick or crazy. As long as we are conscious of our own and others’

well-being, and striving to contribute to that, we are on a good path and we don’t need to engage in harmful self-criticism.

An Alternative View of Masochism

How many times have you heard someone say, “Pain is a warning that our bodies are in danger”? It sounds like a truism. But, like most assumptions, it deserves a closer look. While pain can be a symptom of disease or injury, human beings have always sought to control their reaction to pain. If we couldn’t tolerate at least some discomfort, sadness, anxiety, or less-than-wonderful phys- ical states, how would any of us get through an ordinary day— much less deal with hard work or a chronic illness?

For millions of years, people have deliberately constructed painful situations and faced them to obtain a number of different benefits. In some societies, painful ordeals or body modification mark an individual’s transition from childhood to adulthood. Ob- taining spiritual guidance has often required a sacrifice, to prove the seriousness of one’s intent and create an altered state that al- lows communication between this world and other realms. Con- sciously choosing to suffer discomfort has resulted in the acquisi- tion of wisdom, experiencing divine rapture, obtaining healing, and locating and killing meat for the cooking pot. Whether the goal is mundane or transcendental, the ability to use our hearts and minds to convince our bodies to continue to function while we are aching (or worse) is the hallmark of courage, loyalty and strength.

One of the most painful physical events a human being can endure is the birth of a child. Are women “masochistic” because they endure pregnancy and birth?

The rituals and other trials I described above are not examples of sexual masochism. But they highlight the physiological rea-

sons why it’s possible for us to get aroused by pain. When our bodies feel stress, they autonomously produce chemicals that help us cope. We may pant, bringing extra oxygen into our bodies. Adrenaline, endorphins and natural narcotics flood our nervous system. Euphoria and agony are next-door neighbors—you can’t break that paradoxical connection. And if you are not willing to tolerate contradictions and paradoxes, human behavior will never make much sense to you.