"6": Prettiness. i.

I recently saw Kill Bill 2 for the third time. There are very few movies I have seen or would see that many times. I love this film. I love what Tarantino does with characters. He gives them time to etch themselves slowly on the screen, filling in between the lines and bringing themselves to life. I love the archetypal journey of a woman, a hero, a fighter and conquistador who is courageous and fierce.

I'm with a male friend. We're at the scene where Uma has been buried alive in a nailed shut coffin. She's panicking - she's going to die there. She's sweating, crying, screaming and bleeding. Until she has an epiphany and realizes she has the ability to ratchet herself out of this impossible situation. And out she comes. Pounding, swinging and clawing her way through this mess. She's covered in dirt and blood and sweat and she's looks better than I've ever seen her.


"She's beautiful," I say. He looks at me quizzically. "Uma."

"I've always thought Uma Thurman was beautiful," he says.

"Hmm. Sort of. But she's gorgeous now. Her hair is matted, there's shit all over her, she's bleeding and she's a fucking mess. But she's more self-possessed than I've ever seen her. She's far more beautiful than when she's in her perfect dresses, dolled up or playing stupid hookers."(Smart hookers are fine.)

I remember reading an interview with Uma after the making of Kill Bill. She was talking about how Tarantino claimed to love her. "What kind of love is this?" she said. "He's constantly covering me in shit and dirt... This is love?" I think Tarantino knew exactly what he was doing. You take a born-pretty girl and you dress her up in pretty things, curl her pretty hair and she becomes empty. Vacuous. The only thing she can claim as a self identity is her one dimensional beauty. But take a pretty girl and throw some shit on her, and make her fight her way out of it and she'll grow to be other-worldly radiant and a force to be reckoned with.

"6": Of love and human bondage

It is incredibly freeing to be tied up.

I have permission to relax. To receive. My legs are spread open, my will forced open and my cunt is the focus of the room. My arms splayed out by my sides exacerbate a feeling of helplessness and powerlessness. The restraints edge away the tiniest remnants of resistance and I am free to accede. I am the embodiment of "yes," of being able to accept whatever happens to me, on any level.

My fantasies constantly replay the motif of coercion. It's usually light, and I'm a willing participant, but the coercion is a catalyst - an excuse for me to be as slutty as I truly desire. The more I am tied up, the more I own my utter, dripping wantonness.

*
Andre was the first person to truly tie me up. It's one thing to be bound with fishnet stockings and pretend to go along for the ride. It's another to feel solid leather handcuffs around the wrists and hear the clasp of a metal carabineer fasten shut. There is no turning back.

He tied me up a few times in his home before we ventured out in public: Spread-eagled on the king size bed and in the door frame standing up; with my back on the floor and my legs up over my head, ass in the air. Bondage can be a contortionist’s art, a measure of endurance. Ultimately, the aim is to distract and quiet the mind and let the body take over - the body in its infinite wisdom.

The evening he first took me out into public *and* tied me up, was choreographed very carefully - he arranged with a dominatrix friend of his to set up a cadre of experienced players. He wanted to be sure that my first foray into group play would be positive and memorable. It was.

I'd just come back from a surf trip in the Mexico and my body was tanned, firm and striated. We'd gone shopping for a "display" piece for me to wear - a slightly cheesy stripper-esque ensemble: a bright orangey-red satin thong and matching bikini top with clusters of gold sequins. It was cheaply slutty - a look he liked to encourage in me.

When we arrived at his friend's apartment, a number of people were there already. "Lady Cynthia," dominatrix in residence, was attending to aperitifs in the kitchen, while a couple of nubile young slaves – one male, one female - scurried around her, carrying out her demands.

Cynthia was an Amazon. She looked like one of the voluptuous, crazy busty, narrow waisted women from Conan the Barbarian. Long, wavy, platinum hair, a corseted waist, black thigh high boots and topless. Her breasts were magnificent - large and full but with a lovely shape. She was dominant in the way that few people are - she commanded the entire room. No one would dare fuck with her. I was in love.

Her apartment was small, with a lot crammed into the space. Her bed was in one corner of the main living room and there were chairs and sofas filling the remainder. Andre greeted Cynthia with a kiss on the cheek. She was warm and seemed glad to see him. I stood waiting as they spoke for a few minutes and then she turned to me. She had a wicked look in her eye - fearless, but playful at the same time. I stared back at her, my breathing shallow. She held my gaze for a long time, with a slight smile. Finally she looked back at Andre. "Undress her," she said. I could feel the blood rush into my pussy. He looked at me and nodded. I kept my eyes riveted on him as I unclasped my top and slid the g-string down my hips. I placed my hands behind my back and opened my legs in a wide stance.

Others in the room stirred and began to watch us. Cynthia reached for my nipples and squeezed them hard. My labia were thick, heavy and swelling. She led me by my hands, still behind my back, into another room.

Her dungeon. It was also crammed full, but with pleasure and torture equipment: a huge black throne of worship, a padded wall rack, an X-frame, harnesses and stretcher bars hanging everywhere. She led me to one side of a device that looked like a human size scale of justice. There was a metal bar running across the top, suspended from the ceiling. A cable ran alongside it and then split into two cables dangling from either end. She secured my hands behind my back with a set of cuffs and then fastened my legs so they remained in an open stance. She pulled the two cables down to my chest, and adhered two clips to my nipples. She then pulled on the other end to create tension, hoisting my nipples up until I was forced to stand on tiptoe. The pull on my nipples was searing.


People wafted into the room. Her female submissive, a petite, loud, mulatto woman - half-Jamaican, half-German, with aqua colored eyes – strutted in, wearing only light pink panties and asked Cynthia if she could spank me. “Of course. You can do whatever you want with her.”

The mulatto woman slapped my ass with her hands, cackling. My nipples were starting to burn. Hands squeezed my breasts, brushed my pussy, groped my inner thighs. So many hands. I had no idea where they were coming from. I was awash with pleasure. Writhing. Throbbing. My head was bowed, hair falling over my face when I felt a sharp tug on my nipples. Cynthia’s other sub, a soft spoken twenty-something mural painter with wavy blond hair falling over his face, stood directly across from me, in the opposite position on the human scale. She began hooking him up in the same was she had me, except that she wrapped a thin rope around his testicles. We were now in a similar, complicit predicament. If I let my heels sink to relieve the pressure in my calves and nipples, I would pull up at his tightly wound testicles. And vice verse. We stared at each other with what I can only call love. I wanted to save his testicles. He wanted to protect my nipples.

Someone’s head buried itself in my chest; a man was nuzzling and kissing my breasts. Fingers danced around and in my pussy, flicking my g-spot. I wanted to collapse and float but my nipples constantly reminded me that I must remain standing.

*

At the point when I had become a mass of sensations, I was released. The combination of my nipples, my calves, my stretched feet, my pussy, the back of my neck, the slapping on my ass – I sunk into a well of pleasure, of feeling, an amorphous weave of just being. I had no thoughts anymore.

I was led back into the other room and placed on the bed, on all fours, with my ass facing the room and my head toward the wall. Cynthia dropped a pile of candles beside me and announced to the room: “You can fuck her with these.” By now, every sensation was becoming exquisite, slowed down into deliberate motion rendering only pleasure. My ass was slapped, my pussy gratifyingly prodded, my body squeezed and all I could do was laugh. I was absolutely euphoric. I loved this. Loved it.


Andre guided me onto the bed. The female submissive crouched on all fours, sucking the painter’s very hard cock. “Eat her pussy,” Andre said. I paused for a moment, looking at her, looking at him. This was my first pussy. I leaned forward, tasting her delicately. The taste was foreign – musky, sweet. I was slightly repulsed at first; it was so different than cock. I kept tasting, roaming around her with my tongue and I realized slowly that pussy is delicious. I was lost in her cunt. I could have stayed there a long time. She groaned and Andre pulled me back on top of him. I kissed him tenderly. I was so utterly open. Everything felt like it was in slow motion, like I was moving through syrup. Between my legs, painter sub boy spread my thighs apart and licked my pussy. I had never felt anything like it. Was it him? The evening? My endorphins? No matter. It was the best cunnilingus I'd ever received.

Andre flipped me on my back and climbed on top of me, fucking me slowly, gently. Someone else reached over for my nipples and squeezed hard, so hard and it only made me smile. I had completely melted. I felt gentleness and exquisite pleasure from everyone who touched me and a sense of being suspended in a thick, viscous warmth. I wanted them all to touch me. Again and again.


Photos: Unknown, Signe Vilstrup, Ellen von Unwerth (last two)

"6": The 400 blows: Pain is pleasure is pain...

I have a strong mind and an even stronger will. While I’d been waiting for years for someone who could subdue me, sometimes I wasn’t all that easy to subdue. Even if I wanted to be. Even if I wanted to reach that place of softness, of opening, of letting someone in, I couldn’t necessarily command it into being.

So he’d whip me.

There was an element of ritual to these whippings. A footstool was placed in the middle of his living room that he’d bend me over. I’d be on all fours, with my ass in the air, expectant. Scared. Sometimes the sweat would drip from my armpits, as I knelt poised on the edge of anything-could-happen. I could not move away or flinch or he’d whip me harder. The only recourse I had was acceptance. I could hear the whoosh of the crop through the air and its subsequent sting, slicing my ass, or my upper thighs, would reverberate through my entire body.

Sometimes the whipping was sensuous. He’d alternate moderate strokes with rubbing my pussy, working me into an endorphin-fueled fever. Other times he was severe and I would be welted for days afterward. I never knew which it would be. He carried only one accoutrement with him when we ventured out, and when unused it lay on the footstool over which I bent when we were at his house. It was a riding crop and it easily wielded a fierce, sharp blow.

I remember going for a massage and when the woman came to my naked buttocks, I could hear her draw in her breath. I could sense her worry, her thought that I was being subjected to horrific things and that I might be in danger. She stuttered, trying to address the bruises on my ass that would have been in various states of transition – colored blue, purple, yellow - the remnants of that weekend's calisthenics. I enjoyed looking at them afterward, these symbols of my endurance and evidence of his ability to retrieve me and greater still, of his desire to. I dismissed her. She had no idea.


After a beating, I was malleable. Soft. Suppliant. Full of feeling. After each blow, he had me thank him. I didn’t understand the power of this until one day I was at my gym after a workout, in the communal showers. I turned the faucet all the way to cold and I felt the water hit my skin. Something curious had happened. I didn’t distinguish anymore that the water was cold or that it was uncomfortable. I was only aware of it as a sensation. I had no judgment of it, only the experience of noticing it was cold. I did not flinch, I did not back away, I accepted it completely. That’s when I realized that I’d ceased to let the fear of pain prevent me from living. Or more precisely, from loving. The thank yous became a thank you to life, and to all that it might bring me.

**

There is a gift in someone who dares to be so rough with me. Most men would never dare. I need to know that a man will be so bold, that at least he is capable of this sort of wielding. Then I can trust him. The flimsy men, the ones who would never dare to hurt me, to see me flinch, to bend me over and take me anywhere, anytime; I have no use for. Their trepidation is suffocating to me. And reflective of their behavior outside the bedroom. It always is. You can tell a lot about someone by how they fuck: Timid or decisive. Experimental or staid. Hard-driving and fierce or languid and droopy. My selection criteria is all about this crucial element: Can this man take charge? Does he dare?

Top photo: Bruno Bisang

Other photos: Sources unknown

"6": Fantasy and taboo

My sexual fantasies generally follow a similar trajectory: uber-exhibitionism and being a fucktoy for many men. These are the fantasies I masturbate to, the images that inevitably bring me to clitoral orgasm.

It's always been like this, for a long as I can remember.

A friend sent me a link to this article in the Economist, Secret Cinema. A few highlights from the article: "Some people, not unexpectedly perhaps, fantasise about celebrities. A handful imagine romantic tenderness with their real-life partners. But many of those surveyed say they like thinking about doing disgusting things with, to, or in front of, total strangers, or (perhaps more unsettlingly) the people they love.... The upshot is that nine out of ten people have sexual fantasies, mostly pretty lurid ones—and Mr Kahr thinks the remaining tenth are crippled by shame, guilt or repression."

We all have them. Some of us (though I'd wager it's a small number) act on them. My first foray into playing out fantasies was with a very willing partner. He had an acting background, was very animated and could improvise very easily and convincingly. He was game for every fantasy scenario I suggested: Me, office slut interviewing for a job, must fuck every employee daily; me, on my way home from grocery shopping, I am thrown into my stairwell and molested by forceful stranger, etc. However, no matter how engaged he was, or we were, the fantasies were never quite satisfying. I never felt like I was completely in them, like they could take on a life of their own.

Until I met Andre. With him, the line between fantasy and reality was constantly blurred. Since I agreed early on to concede control to him, I never knew what was going to happen next. We journeyed together into my dark places and the territory felt very real, and very fraught with uncertainty and potential danger.

I could say no at any time but I had challenged myself not to. Ever. I was a perpetual yes. I exposed to him the underbelly of my desires and let myself succumb to them. To him. To myself. The more I *realized*, i.e. made real, my internal experiences, the more the nature of my own reality began to change. By unleashing my demons, the secret, masturbatory fantasies I'd carried with me for years, I found myself feeling different after these experiences. I felt less fear. More self-assured. More whole. I felt less concern about what other people thought of me and freer to be more of who I was/am. The less I judged myself (by owning my fantasies and sharing them openly, outwardly), the less I felt susceptible to judgment by others. I simply wasn't fazed any longer about what people thought of me. I felt free to be myself. I've also found that being able to share these parts of myself with a lover, someone who accepts me, and vice verse, has brought us closer together. I think a lot of us live in fear of judgment about our sexual desires, when in reality, these experiences are amazing portals to self-realization.


This idea that the key to wholeness lies in exploring and understanding our "dark sides" is a theme that is repeated consistently in mythology and psychology the world over. I'd hesitate to label these areas as truly "dark" though. They are secret, often uninhabited areas of our psyches and, from my own experience, fertile territories for growth. For example, the Greek story of Persephone sees her banished to spend six months (half the year; quite a long time when you think about it) in the underworld. When she returns to the earth's surface for the other six months, spring accompanies her - rebirth and illumination.

Jung talks about the shadow as being areas of the unconscious that are socially unacceptable, as well as undeveloped positive potential. He suggested that the more these thoughts and behaviors were suppressed, the larger the shadow grew. "In spite of its function as a reservoir for human darkness—or perhaps because of this—the shadow is the seat of creativity."

The Senoi dreamers of Malaysia apply the same concepts of approaching "darkness" to their dream travels: whenever encountering danger in a dream, the dreamer was encouraged to confront and conquer his or her attacker. Once obliterated, the dreamer asks this now defunct "demon" for a gift. There is transformation.

The greatest gifts I've received from the people in my life, Andre being one of them, was their understanding and utter acceptance of me and my myriad shadows. This lack of judgment - of ourselves and others - liberates us. It isn't achieved without courage though, both in the revealing and the accepting.


Photos: Lauren Bentley, "Where I buried my secrets"
Other photos: Sources unknown.