(This is kind of boring political stuff: there will be scene reports aplenty in the coming days, but I felt the need to get this off of my chest.)
I went out and bought “Yes Ma’am: Erotic Stories of Female Dominance” today, because I’m a giant coward. The editor was nice enough to offer me a free review copy, and I was all for it until I realized I’d have to offer up my address for shipping. And I thought, “Wow, I don’t know if I’m ready for that.” I’m enjoying being an anonymous figure right now, and all of a sudden I was faced with, you know, admitting that I was John Doe of West Palm, Florida. And so I just quietly waited until the local Borders got the book in, strolled over to the erotica section, grabbed a copy, and then went over to buy a book by a feminist author who I’d stumbled upon via a blog. Borders down here being what it is, the Women’s Studies section was next to the Gay and Lesbian Erotica Section, and I spent a half hour looking for my book amidst the confused shelves, scanning through bookcase after bookcase of gay porn and stories of transgendered struggles, getting weird stares from the two geeky guys sitting on the ground reading books of folklore, because somehow Women’s Studies is with imaginary myth and not with all of the other studies — African-American Studies, Asian Studies, etc.
It didn’t hit me until I was in the car, really, that I had calmly walked up in my suit and tie and purchased erotica with a credit card with my name on it without blinking, yet the idea of giving somebody my address had me nervous. I’d sat there and caught nervous glances from a couple of vanilla geek boys because they thought I was some gay guy from the beach looking for pornographic novels without blinking (and I admit to thumbing through one or two books just to see what they were like.) I hadn’t worried about the look from the girl behind the counter or the stares from the geek boys, I just calmly went about my business. But my address? Oh, no…
It’s one of those illogical quirks that you realize after the fact, and then want to punch yourself for. I end up refusing a perfectly wonderful gesture out of some bizarre shyness and then calmly look at gay porn around a bunch of increasingly nervous college freshmen without blinking.
And what this quirkiness made me wonder about, afterwards, is this: Is my submission less genuine because I leave it separate from my other self? My daytime self, who’s strong and dominant and can work a room of people like they’re putty in his hands? Is my wife’s dominance less valid a reversal of gender roles because it’s limited to our private life? Is our kink less politically genuine because it’s closeted? In fact, is our kink hypocritical because all of the gender bending and power exchange we do is basically something that’s there to get us off? To get me off? Is my request that my wife dominate me and peg me and hurt me just me exerting some kind of patriarchal power over her, an expression of weakness that’s okay because I initiated it? Is our play a slap in the face of people who really are dominated unwillingly? Is our use of the word “slave” a giant, ahistorical bit of cluelessness?
Now, obviously, not everything is political. The undergrad part of me that did his tour of the Sociology department and became the darling of the Women’s Studies professors demurs, politely, and recalls that everything is political — but the older, married part of me thinks that when I undertook this journey, I was not thinking of feminism or patriarchy or what it meant on that level for me to exchange power with my wife: I was just praying and hoping that she’d be receptive to making me lick her leather boots. My actions may have had a political meaning, but it’s not something my wife or I thought of at the time, and there’s not much point in dissecting our wonderful ride to the extent that it stops being the joyful trip it’s been.
More to the point, I have to admit: there’s something of the Victorian hypocrite in me. I like being normal and dominant and vanilla on the outside, and then being tied up and beat in private. I like being manly and smelling like alpha male and then curling up at my Mistress’ feet when she taps her leg with the crop. The Victorians were prudish people, on the surface, but their sexuality roiled under constant pressure, and I think — in my mind, at least — the energy generated by being constantly contained made the release that much sweeter when it came.
To put it another way: I like that my wife sings in the church choir and is — really is — sweet and innocent and domestic in her daytime life, and a cruel, selfish and pain-loving bitch in private. I like the idea that my life is a James Ellroy version of the ’50s — clean and pretty and neat on the outside, full of dark twists and turns on the inside.
I’m good at bifurcating my life. I was an awful geek when I was younger, well before geek-chic gave playing RPGs and reading comics and liking sci-fi a veneer of coolness. My response to the stigma was to closet my geekhood deep, and go about trying to be — well, normal, except when my buddies and I got together to play D&D or see an indie-band. When all of a sudden, being a geek and a music nerd had cachet, I quietly scorned it — I had worked too hard burying the more obvious bits of my dorkiness to let the cool parts out. I knew I’d never hide all of my geekiness — it’s just too strong to bury entirely, and anyone who gets to know me privately can see it in all its glory — but I could at least get by amongst strangers without showing off my Mark of Cain shamelessly.
And now, BDSM is kind of like that. It’s another dirty, glorious secret for me to hide. Just like those nights I snuck away from my surfer-girl, geek-hating girlfriend to play D&D were wonderful because of their taboo nature, there’s something about being strong and normal at a party and knowing, in my heart, that the other me is just under the surface. The other night I was having a wonderful conversation with several beautiful girls at a banquet, and while I could appreciate their looks and their personality and their kickass intellects, I wasn’t too attracted: only my wife can give me what I need. Only my wife knows and can satisfy that part of me. The public me gets shared with everybody, but the submissive part of me is hers, and hers alone.
(Naturally, when I examine this love of double-existences in the same political light I spoke of a few paragraphs ago, part of me thinks that it’s the straight, white male’s luxury to enjoy being in a closet, whereas other people have it forced upon them. But…I can only say, I get off on what I get off on.)
Oh, and for the record, the book is delicious. If my wife didn’t have me on the masturbatory equivalent of starvation rations, I would be reading the whole book tonight…
