Mistress Alex’s blog has a fascinating new post entitled ‘I feel your pain’. It’s an excerpt from a book entitled Safe, Sane and Consensual: Contemporary Perspectives Sadomasochism, and as such it’s pretty hard to cherry pick representative quotes from. So I suggest going to read the whole thing over at her blog.
It’s admittedly fairly dense and requires a lot more parsing than the average sex blog post, but I think it’s worth it. I’m probably weird (most people would argue for striking that probably), but I found it an incredible turn on. By so accurately describing and deconstructing the extreme sensations of torture it allowed me to relive and better understand some of the intense sessions I’ve had in the past. I think it really captures some key elements of the S&M dynamic. In fact, having said I won’t cherry pick quotes from it, let me now do exactly that:
The world of torture is thus closed down—disintegrated—such that all limits of peace and solitude can be found and/or the thrill of exposure and merging of the self and world.
The world of the torturer inhabits this space between their still bounded self and the other, feeling the full force of the power and control that this entails, holding the other’s consciousness—their world—in their hands.
The pain I experience in a session is a type of peace and solitude. It’s impossible to have coherent thoughts or emotions. Worries about work or family don’t exist. There’s just the pain in the moment. And that simplification of who I am creates a very open and exposed person. I’m not constantly monitoring my expressions or emotions, mediating my communication, filtering my thoughts. Whatever I’m showing is what I’m feeling. That’s all that exists for me.
This also helps my understand the top’s perspective a little better as well. They are reducing and simplifying the other’s consciousness. Reducing it to the point where they can entirely control it. God of their victim’s world. I’ve heard of the idea of ‘top space’ before, but never really understood it. I think this has really helped me gain a little more perspective on it.
I can very much relate to what you said here. When I am in session I go some place else. Nothing exists but the moment. I have had profound experiences suffering at the hands of a beautiful women. Some of them have bordered on spiritual revelation. The joy of a great session is being able to get out of myself.
hmp – I think my reaction to pain has been the biggest surprise to me in my bdsm journey. A few years back, when femdom only existing in fantasy for me, I thought about bondage and domination, but didn’t really consider pain. I might have thought that some mild pain to emphasize the bondage would have been interesting, but I never would have described myself as a masochist.
Now, after having played with a lot of different BDSM elements, I’d say it’s probably the #1 component of a scene. Like you I’ve had some profound and almost spiritual experiences as a result of it. I think it’s also one of the hardest things to express to a non-kinky person.