To spank or not to spank?
Ai or nai thank you?
Hit Me Baby One More Time
Funny old thing Pain - the giving - the receiving And then there’s its close cousin, Constriction, and that chirpy, flirty niece, Humiliation, lurking red faced and happy behind the mask.
Pain doesn’t seem to be an immediately obvious contender for most vital ingredient award in a sensitive and respectful sexual relationship and yet millions upon millions of consenting adults regularly ‘bring up the blood’ using everything from a tickling feather and fluffy cuffs to spikedIn fact, given the popularity of Extreme Sports these days the current lipstick celebration of S&M shouldn’t come as that much of a surprise.
For example, if you’re the kind of person who regularly chooses to play knock down ginger at death’s door by throwing oneself down a mountain on some form of tray, board or rope, quickly followed by industrial levels of alcohol & drug abuse, the odd random bout of impersonal, violent, flailing sex fits quite nicely into the genre.
S&M, and it’s slightly more refined cousin, Flagellation, (Le Vice Anglais) really do span a vast kaleidoscope of fun and frolic to be enjoyed with lusty abandon, the odd cheeky welt from a cane wielded with fly-fish aplomb - though some of the more extreme practices allow you to drive straight past the simple and almost slightly retarded Orgasm stage straight to the doors of the A&E department.
The delectations of S&M are of course rooted in literature’s equivalent of the Gentleman’s Etching, the writings & philosophies of the fey decadent and rightly imprisoned noble, the immeasurable Marquis De Sade.
120 days of Sodom is a right-riveting read in both a physical as much as a philosophical sense, with the nailing of various softer subcutaneous human appendages and extremities central to the fun.
The works of De Sade tend to be read by people who misguidedly believe they have enough intellect and panache to tell the difference between fantasy and reality: their appearance, either at A&E resplendent with internal heamorraghing, or dressed in a rather nice suit in the High Court dock the proof that they really had no idea what they were getting into.
Between De Sade’s violent lusts and Masochism’s invitation to do pain unto oneself (as explored in the seminal Venus In Furs by Leopold Sacher-Masoch) there’s a lot of room for the more inventive imagination.
Though there is a certain baroque mystique to a feather being delicately tapped across taut muscular buttocks or spiked gently into welcoming genitals it is difficult (even to the well informed) to always be able to tell exactly where frivolous pricks turn into spiked unwanted aggression - to some, that’s the point: the frisson, the fear.
This does create a small watch out for anyone thinking of taking a run at a little light S&M.
Remember: what constitutes the difference between a little slap and tickle and getting trussed, gagged and battered for pleasure can differ hugely from individual to individual.
There are some practices at the furthest reaches of the S&M porfolio that even the most liberal societies think beyond the pale.
That experimental cabal of sexual deviants, the legal principals at the European Court Of Human Rights, recently found against a very happy little band of men and women who took enormous pleasure in nailing parts of their genitals to tables and chairs, filming it and posting it on YouTube.
Glans, scrotum, labia, clitoris, shaft, nipple, anus: you think of it, they nailed it to something.
Though they all consented to (and thoroughly enjoyed) the pain and maiming, the Court felt that the practice was in effect ‘bad for the soul’ and to happily sanction this kind of behaviour in a civilized society was wholly unacceptable.
So, before entering into any S&M associated sport that involves hammers and nails, remember, if you thought a man’s genitals are his own private kingdom, think again. Someone out there will have something to say about it.
So what, we might ask, lies at the heart of the S&M psyche: the want to control fear? fear itself? Hyper-sensation seeking? Deep seated scars?
The role of fear in S&M is certainly a large part of the frisson.
And Fear is not that hard an emotion to raise in one who is already bound to a bed with their legs slung up under their arms with a gimp mask on. Add the waxing waning drone of a highly charged and outsized vibrator held to their ear, heard through the spicy, musty leather darkness of a sightless mask and its all starting to build nicely.
Include a mouth bit that stretches the jaw while constricting the nose while a little light paddling and now we’re talking.
But if the person is then winched upwards and spun around slowly while assorted assailants unknown violate that person, you can see where the S&M version of The Tipping Point arrives. It can all start to get out of control quite quickly.
So a primary and easy rule to apply is that any form of sexual practice that leaves you wholly incapacitated needs a health warning (and we’re not talking about a ‘leg cramps and frozen hips after a weekend shag fest swinging off the chandelier’ kind of incapacitated).
One of the small upsides is that the S&M crowd like to party. No shrinking violets here. Social tumescence is the way forward. Their house magazines; Skin Two and Marquis, are packed with the diaries of saucy little debauches of leather and PVC wrung out and powdered over a few sherries and a red bull.
The kaleidoscopic spectrum of the S&M dressing up box takes you from louche leather Victorian constrictions and mediaeval nuts and bolts to the gothic majesty of the Adams family on Viagra and the vampiric crimson-silk-lined priapism of the horror flick.
Mix them all in together and it’s Christmas and Halloween all at once.
But is the S&M scene all that it seems?
Though the S&M world presents itself as a fetish wrapped in a basque with the merest hint of fragrant ambergris & rose petal suffering, you sense that, scratch at the surface a little (a recognized sub-section of abrasive sexuality) and you’ll find there’s a smack of the dry sherry and Demis Roussos about a lot of the people involved in S&M: suburban couples and lonely senior regional postal managers seeking to add the whiff of desperate mystery and exotic glamour to their dowdy cul-de-sac lives.
Does it matter? No. And if you are a senior regional postal manager, more power to your whip, because a happy postal manager makes for happy post: and that’s good for the world.
Don’t be lulled into a sense of benign security by the Abigail’s Party New Build-ness od a lot of the S&M balls. You can quite quickly be drawn (or dragged) into the blood letting and uric chaffing of the heavier leather and bondage nights where the idea of being harried, violated and humiliated is their equivalent to a nice evening in with a Mexican supper.
So secondary rule to apply: always check the small print.
And though dressing up can be a lot of harmless fun you need to be certain that the man looking at you in your bosom-popping corsetierre and hot-musk rubber, labia-loving knickers knows that you are a visual feast, a tableau of erotica and spice, to be enjoyed as such, and not someone who wants seven bells knocked out of them with a dildo and a spade the second you’ve slipped beyond heavy petting.
In summary, apart from the great outfits, fetish news letters, a rich spread of variations and playful deviations at the lighter end of, S&M has to be approached with a healthy respect and undertaken with people that you trust.
BUPA do not have special dispensation for people who got the wrong side of their partners’ anger management issues while dressed as Cruella DeVille.
Once you are incapacitated with the blood draining from your bound thighs and are unable to talk through the balled stockings shoved in your mouth, you need to know they’ll respect you in the morning.
Your opinions
Andy, Essex
Agree
def spank!
