Sadistic Killers: Profiles of Pathological Predators (37 page)

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assumption that SM enthusiasts are perverts who get off on cruelty (if they are dominant) and sad, pathetic victims if they choose to be on the receiving end. I can’t help feeling that it’s impossible to explain otherwise to those who have an ingrained view. Devotees just have to carry on speaking about it in open-minded books such as this, and use any other opportunities that arise.’

That said, she recognises that ‘the message will take a long time to permeate but some methods of achieving self knowledge, such as this, have to be discovered and fostered in private. Bringing them to the surface and making them more acceptable to the general public only serves to diminish their meaning, as can be seen in the adoption of fetish ideas as fashion statements. Personally, I find ignorant people’s negative attitudes towards what I choose to do completely irrelevant. It is simply none of their business. If they want to come in and try for themselves that’s fine but if they don’t then there’s no way of explaining to them.’

Paula has realised that there are different kinds of consensual sadist and masochist. ‘There are different sorts of sub. As I said before, some women are susceptible to certain buttons being pressed and then the right kind of man can manipulate her. These women are often suffering from feelings of low self-esteem. However, there are certain women who wish to play in the same way as some men play – we’ve all heard of the powerful managing director who arranges to be caned by a fantasy headmistress – meaning that they are dominant characters with a strongly defined sexuality who wish to experience the thrills of the submissive role. There are many perks for the submissive – being on the receiving end of all the attention is one of them, and feeling free of any obligation to make decisions is another. These kind of women are dictating exactly what they want and are not to be confused with the weak and easily led.’

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She has now reached the stage where her own physical interest in BDSM has been satisfied. ‘At first I was fulfilling a buried desire to exhibit myself. I submitted to whippings, like ‘O’, and experienced her satisfaction… sampled group sex. I know I allowed myself to be used on occasions but it doesn’t matter now – I learned a lot from it. I challenged myself to try new things and overcome taboos. I found out for myself what was good and beneficial and what was not so good. I learned when to trust and when not to. There were difficult moments, things that didn’t work, but mainly it was an adventure. Obviously I needed this extra experience though I can’t tell you exactly why. I needed to get in touch with something in myself.’

She notes that ‘Nowadays I don’t feel driven any more. I have found out the things I needed to know. Something happened when I was about 50… the desire for lustful adventures died down and my sexuality seemed to be differently centred: it was as if it had moved from the genitals to the heart. I suppose when all is said and done, all that matters is our ability to live and love abundantly and whatever helps us to this end is good.’

It should be clear by now to even the most anti-BDSM

reader that there’s absolutely no connection between Paula’s life-affirming exploration of sadomasochism and the kind of forced sadomasochism described in the previous chapters. As such, can she give a positive message to any reader trying to come to terms with their erotic power-play sexuality?

‘First of all,’ she says, ‘if you find yourself fantasising about any sort of SM situation, don’t start worrying about it. Initially you aren’t really responsible for what arises in your imagination, the ideas pop up spontaneously and are a sort of pointer towards something in you that needs to be acknowledged. So don’t ever be ashamed of what you fantasise about. On the other hand, what you decide to do about it is another matter – that is under your control. It’s always best to find someone sympathetic to talk to about these things, then you don’t feel so isolated and 311

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alone. It certainly isn’t good to brood and keep things inside

– that way they fester and become obsessions.’

She continues ‘Be aware and always respect others. There are very strict rules and protocols to be followed. The SM scene is not a free-for-all where anything goes. Trust and understanding must be built up, friendships made, before any physical activity can take place. When this happens you can establish a secure environment for letting your hair down safely. All this sounds a bit serious – actually it isn’t, once you find the right friends.

I remember much hilarity and amusement, as well as some more deeply erotic moments.’

CREATIVE

SADOMASOCHISTS

Paula’s deeply erotic moments illuminate her work – but there are many other consensual sadomasochists in the creative professions who are less at ease with their fantasies. Indeed, creativity and an offbeat sexuality often exist in the same individual, as the kind of unhappy childhood which tends to create a sadomasochist can also trigger an artistic temperament, probably because the humiliated and beaten child survives by creating a powerful imaginative life. The brief biographies which follow – of a composer, critic, poet and cartoonist – are just four examples of respected artistes with a strong interest in erotic sadism.

PERCY GRAINGER

The late composer Percy Grainger – considered by many to be one of the world’s finest concert pianists – was a well-known flagellation 312

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enthusiast. Whipped frequently and severely by his otherwise doting mother until he was 15, by his twenties he’d become an obsessive self-flagellant. He took a selection of whips with him on his worldwide sell-out tours and would beat himself until he bled.

His doctor noted that ‘by accepting himself as he was, biologically and sexually, he defused, so to say, a sizzling time bomb within him which otherwise might have blown his personality to bits’.

Grainger was fortunate that, as a life-long atheist, he had no qualms about masturbation or non-procreative sex. He wrote:

‘The world of modern doctoring, modern machines, modern art, modern amorality would be just paradise if we could only shed the blight of religion.’

He was also fortunate in finding several girlfriends and later a wife who were happy to be whipped. He and his spouse Ella even put together a document which said that if one of them died whilst being flagellated by the other, the whipper was not to be held responsible. (In reality, the law does not recognise such documents, a fact explored later in this chapter.) The Graingers’ union lasted for 32 years until his death in 1961.

KENNETH TYNAN

The theatre reviewer Kenneth Tynan – the illegitimate child of a deeply religious mother and already married father – was a confirmed flagellant by the time he went to Oxford, but, unlike Percy Grainger, he felt great shame at his sadomasochism and tried to sublimate it by entering into a vanilla marriage. He later tried to coerce his first wife into submitting to the rod, something which she loathed. The marriage broke down and she later said in her biography that he’d beaten her up.

Tynan embarked on a second marriage but couldn’t resist starting a sadomasochistic affair with an equally avid masochistic young woman. They brought in a third party to 313

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watch and participate in their erotic spanking games and he was in heaven. Yet he ended the affair and, when a friend asked him what his abandoned lover was supposed to do, he snapped

‘Remember.’

Tynan was at his best when he had lots of creative work (he wrote books and newspaper and magazine columns as well as numerous reviews) and occasional SM diversions. But as his work dried up – largely because of his vituperative attacks on people – he became more and more frantic to live out his sexual fantasies, and took to hiring escort girls and masseuses to beat him and submit to the whip.

Beleaguered for years by chronic emphysema, made worse by his addiction to smoking, he died in the summer of 1980 age 53.

PHILIP LARKIN

Widely regarded as one of Britain’s best post-war poets, Larkin grew up both admiring and fearing his father. The older man had a quick temper – his colleagues described him as ferocious

– and was increasingly irate with his wife. Larkin developed a stutter and later said ‘I never left the house without the sense of walking into a cooler, cleaner, saner and pleasanter atmosphere.’

Visitors rarely called uninvited at the Larkins’ and Philip grew up having nothing to do with girls – he did have a sister, but she was ten years his senior so inhabited a different world.

The teenage Philip had a strong sex drive but it was laced with unhealthy levels of derision and rage. He flirted with the idea of homosexuality but decided that he really wanted to be a schoolgirl, a role he saw as a mixture of enviable passivity and games-based fun.

At Oxford University, the young poet wrote two sadomasochistic lesbian novels for his own and his friends’

delectation,
Trouble at Willow Gables
and its sequel
Michaelmas
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Term at St Bride’s
. In the first book, a prefect forces a black-stockinged schoolgirl over a desk and removes her tunic for the headmistress to beat her. The girl is caned swiftly but inexpertly until she collapses on the floor. The rest of the sadomasochism in
Willow Gables
is latent, with girls lightly bullying each other and one tying another up in order to play a prank.

The sequel, where the girls are older, is even more tame, though two of the 18-year-old former pupils wrestle each other until one collapses into the other’s lap. Another girl stretches to show her silk stockings and yet another has to strip in front of a former prefect who openly admires her naked body. This same girl is threatened with a good thrashing by an older woman.

Though he attempted and failed to find a publisher for both novels, Larkin’s interest in sadomasochism remained, and in his poem
Administration
he talks of pulling down girls’ pants.

As he matured, he became enamoured of pornography and amassed a hall cupboard’s worth of magazines. He was loitering outside a sex shop one day when the owner came out and asked discreetly, ‘Bondage was it, sir?’ But the poet was terrified of police censure and would only buy milder pornographic mags. It’s likely that the tension between the type of sex he enjoyed and the sex of his most secret fantasies added an extra frisson to his writing, though he didn’t intend to tell the world of his sadomasochistic novels and wanted them to be destroyed after his death.

ROBERT CRUMB

The celebrated cartoonist Robert Crumb – honoured in 2005

with an exhibition at Bonhams in New Bond Street – is one of the finest examples of personal sexual confusion being sublimated into fascinating art.

Crumb and his siblings endured numerous cruelties at the hands of their tyrannical father, a quartermaster in the UK

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marines. Unable to cope, their mother retreated into a world of her own and became addicted to amphetamines.

Unsurprisingly, the children grew up into deeply troubled adults. His brother Charles, a brilliant artist who remained at home with his mother, eventually committed suicide. And his brother Maxon took to pulling down women’s panties in public places, resultantly becoming a registered sex offender.

He now lives in a Skid Row hotel and practises bizarre religious self-purification rituals, including sleeping on a bed of nails.

Meanwhile Robert Crumb describes one of his sisters as ‘a really negative lesbian’.

Crumb himself was deeply withdrawn for many years and admitted that he was full of hostility, especially towards women whom he liked to ride as if they were ponies. He dealt with this in his numerous drawings whose subjects included everything from incest to animal sex. But as his success grew, so did his sexual allure and he began to have relationships, including a second marriage which has lasted for over 30 years.

Insightful about the importance of his work as a release mechanism, he admitted in a 2005 interview with journalist John Preston that ‘If I hadn’t been a cartoonist, I might have been a psychopathic killer. Or else I might have killed myself.’

The law

Robert Crumb is not the only man (or woman) from a damaging background to come to terms with his sexuality and go on to lead a fulfilling life. Numerous consensual sadomasochists have spoken of their journey as a way of curing childhood hurts. Mark Ramsden, who has edited two fetish magazines and written several humorous and offbeat sadomasochistic novels, told this author ‘Some people find it therapeutic and liberating to confront childhood traumas in a sexual context,’

though he adds that ‘there’s no reliable data as to whether such sex enthusiasts are any better at relationships than anyone else’.

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Mark notes that ‘exploring the dark side with a sympathetic partner can heal some deep wounds and enable personal development – or at least provide a temporary respite from the pain of being human’.

As to the motivations of each party in a consensual sadomasochistic encounter? ‘It’s likely that the authoritarian personality seeks power to compensate for what they perceive to be their own weaknesses or imperfections.’ He believes that many of us are control freaks who lack the power to control anything, and adds ‘Seeking transcendence through role play is one way out.’