SIREN'S SOAPBOX

July - November 2000
all material copyright © 1998-2000
dr. gloria g. brame

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November 10, 2000

Black Rose Report

I just returned, tired but happy, from the Black Rose 2000 event. The organizers did a magnificent job. Roughly 2000 people from all over the country attended, making it one of the most diverse and exciting events I've ever attended. No matter where you wandered you were sure to see something new and different. The event was so big two hotels were booked solid with pervs, which enhanced our freedom to be ourselves. Translation: lots of bedecked sissy maids, lots of bare nipples, and LOTS and LOTS of leather and fetish wear. YUM!

I knew we were in for an interesting weekend when I opened the envelope containing my room key. Inside, a friendly letter from hotel management welcomed Black Rose attendees to their premises. Alongside the usual bla-bla that you'd expect from any hotel sucking up to conventioneers, this letter included a very polite request that attendees please not drip candle wax on their furniture. The letter went on to say that if we had to do hot wax in our rooms we should get free drop-cloths from BR staff.

There were numerous other hilarious "SM Meets Vanilla" moments. Perhaps our personal favorite was when I called down to the front desk to ask for a replacement on our tv remote. Owing to an unanticipated, er, burst of submissive enthusiasm, my slave sent ours into a tail-spin. Literally. The front desk was very understanding. "Oh, we'll get the engineer to bring you a new one," they explained matter-of-facly, "But it'll be a few minutes because he's in the dungeon, right now, working on the air conditioning." Oh, for a world where everyone was so matter- of-fact about our perversions!

There were too many high points to enumerate but two do stand out for me. First, the "celebrity auction," which was--as expected--a truly fun event, with lots of kidding and kibbitzing on stage. To my pleasant surprise, the bidder who "won" me was a gentleman I've known for almost 12 years! We first met on-line in the BDSM support group I founded on Compuserve in the late 80s. We hadn't been in touch in nearly 8 years, so it was very charming indeed not only to give him the experience he'd wondered about for so many years, but to catch up on personal news. I invited him back to my room for conversation and SM, and a very good time was had by all (including my lucky slave).

The other very special moment came on Sunday when Abilina (who, along with her life-partner, Robert, were this year's BR organizers) put my slave into a delicious leather "sleep sack." He was totally mummified in there, tightly restrained, and delightfully overwhelmed by the pleasure of intense bondage. Abby was a sensual, caring top, and also used a toy I'd never seen, something called a "mouth prop," which dentists use to wedge open patients' mouth. Talk about helplessness! I was up half the night afterwards trying to find one on eBay!

Thanks also to the many wonderful people who came by to say hello and get books signed during the authors' events. It was too faboo to meet so many people I'd only known by email handle before. And what can I say to all you kind people who said so many nice things about my books...except....THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart. You're my inspiration!

If you'd like to hear more about the unrestrained fun and games at BR2k, drop me a line, and I'll either write more on this page or will post something on the Come Hither Board.


September 9, 2000

Poised in Creative Mid-Air

For those of you who are wondering why I haven't been my usual frenetic self in updating this site lately, an explanation. After a furious period of creative output (including writing both Domina and Come Hither), and study (leading to obtaining a PhD), and some not inconsiderable personal upheaval (among other things, the death of my father), I decided, in early spring 2000, that I had to SLOW DOWN THE PACE. If you've ever lived a lifetime in the span of two years, you know what I'm talking about. At the rate I was going, I calculated that by the year 2002 my wrinkles would outnumber my braincells by a thousand to one.

Cutting back my work-schedule to something human has been a revelation. I spent days working the garden and hours playing with my dog; visited with friends I hadn't seen in months and years; and caught up on reading and fixing up the house. I even learned to use some of the household appliances. Did you know they have machines now that suck the dirt up off carpets? Astonishing.

So absorbed have I been with life's most mundane pleasures that for weeks at a time my soul rested in a blissful state of inertia. Unfortunately, when the soul rests, the writing stops. Writers need a good kick in the karma to keep going.

Now the fall is upon us. With the advancing cold, the pastoral pleasures are ending. A certain metaphysical violence creeps into my thoughts and moods--the violence of creation. It's time at last to focus on the next set of goals. Exactly what those goals are I can't say--they are burbling in my cortex. Suffice to say, though, that my ambitions include two more books in the next 18 months.

Meanwhile, for those of you who have written me about my personal essays on the Holocause, I WILL GET BACK TO IT SOON. (And thank you very much for your letters!) Until then, check out what's new (and don't forget to drop by the Come Hither Discussion Board if you're looking for new ideas and insights to whet your intellectual BDSM appetites).


September 4, 2000

Laboring Away

I know, I know: I haven't updated this page in a few weeks. The second installment of my multi-part essay on the Holocaust is long overdue. If you looked for me at the Sex & Spirituality chat last week, you didn't find me. So where in the world was Gloria Brame?

I have journeyed to the American heartland. Destination: the Missouri Ozarks, for a family wedding. The ceremony and reception took place in a small rural meeting hall, and was attended by about one hundred hill people--from infants to octagenarians--and one short, yankee Jewgirl. But I didn't feel anymore out of place there than I feel anywhere else.

Will and I (with our dog Bobo in the back seat) traveled from Georgia to Tennessee and Kentucky, and then through Illinois and into Missouri, stopping often to explore local sights. We drifted through towns named Bell Buckle and Cadiz and Anna. We dreamily coasted blue highways that cut through boundless fields of bright green soybeans, fiery red sorghum, and tall, withering corn. We followed the Mississippi's coastline as the sun danced on its currents, and passed through the floodplains where, only a few years ago, the Big Muddy rose up and ravaged thousands of lives.

The most memorable stop was Land Between the Lakes--a lush expanse of protected lands that spill north from Tennessee into Kentucky. The park hosts a sanctuary for elk and bison. One of the ranges allows visitors to slowly drive through, quietly observing the animals freely roam. Bison came so close to the car we could see each hair on their magnificent shaggy heads. In another area, we watched a huge assemblage of new mothers tending to their little calves, some no bigger than large dogs. On the Tennessee border, we visited a replica 1850 farm, with original cabins and buildings, and a collection of farm animals. Bobo made friends with a pig, frightened some chickens, annoyed some oxen, and was roundly ignored by a pair of horses. If you'd like to see some of the sights we saw, click to the LBL photo page.

In Illinois, we loosely traced some of young Lincoln's paths (I am concurrently reading an excellent biography of our finest president and an equally fascinating collection of Lincoln's humor). Fate took us to Chester, Illinois, "Birthplace of Popeye." But the sailor man and Olive Oyl are not the town's only claim to fame. Chester became infamous some years back when rumor held that the town had been razed and rebuilt by aliens in one night. We didn't see any aliens, but that could explain the service at the local Hardee's.

Yet though this sojourn through America's rural splendor sounds relaxing, it wasn't. As so typically happens, taking a little time off just wore me out and makes me now long for a total vacation. Only this time, I would like a spell of glorious inertia. To lie, naked and warm, upon a large soft bed while fleets of submissive masseurs attend to each muscle of my body, treading softly, speaking in hushed tones and never daring to disturb my thoughts. No clocks, no computers, no phones. I'll live on chocolate milkshakes. Fed intravenously.

Until then, I guess I might as well work. If the force is with me, I'll get the second Holocaust piece up this week.


August 8, 2000

Holocaust Envy

the first in a series on being a child of Survivors and a sadomasochist

Read Part II: Growing Up Dark

Part I: Second Generational Sexuality

America is buzzing over the news that a Jew--Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut--is Al Gore's choice for the Vice Presidency. News of concern to Jews doesn't usually concern me, as I am one of the fallen, unschooled in the religion of my birth and lapsed in the practice of its faith. I've never fasted on Yom Kippur, know only one Hebrew prayer, and bacon mingles shamelessly with beef and cheese on my plate. And yet I am a Jew, have always felt Jewish, and likely will never be anything but a Jew, despite my ignorance of Jewish laws and traditions, and my marriage to a gentile.

What makes me a Jew more than anything, for better or worse, is the Holocaust. As far back as I can remember, I knew there had been a war in which millions of Jews were slaughtered, including all our relations. My parents, who were raised in what became the Warsaw Ghetto, ladled out stories about the horrors of the war years with the breakfast cereal and the dinner soup. There was no escaping it. In the dingy kitchen of my Brooklyn youth, the four members of my immediate family dined among ghosts. Our parents and grandparents, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles and cousins, all lost and none forgotten, hovered like uninvited guests.

Bereft of blood relatives, my parents created an ad hoc family in the U.S. It was made up of an eclectic, rag-tag mix of damaged and displaced fellow Survivors. Some were factory workers; others owned successful businesses; a few were poets and artists. Some had advanced degrees from fancy European universities; others never finished high school. There were Democrats, Republicans, Liberals, Conservatives, Socialists, and even a Commie. Under any other circumstances, they wouldn't have talked to one another. But this wasn't other circumstances: this was the Holocaust. And except for their bonds with their children, the Holocaust bond was the strongest one they felt.

Every weekend of my childhood and early teens, I would be swept along on their adventures. They organized family trips to museums, concerts, parks, botanical gardens, beaches, and cultural events. Once a month, they held huge parties which everyone attended: the women brought kugel* and chulent* and other Jewish delights, the men poured schnapps, and we all sang Polish and Yiddish songs. And every year, on April 19th, we joined thousands of other Survivors to mourn the six million Jewish dead in dark auditoriums where everyone wept.

Except during school hours, my early life was subsumed by Survivor culture. The past was, in a real sense, the only present I knew. If it wasn't someone recounting some harrowing torment in a concentration camp, the Holocaust would sneak in subtly--someone would reach across a buffet and accidentally expose the tattooed numbers stamped on their flesh. Instead of prayers, my parents taught me their Holocaust tenets: 1. You can't trust anyone who isn't Jewish (by which they meant Eastern European Jewish Survivors and their children--American and other Jews were as foreign to them as gentiles). 2. There is no safety outside your home. 3. The only people who will ever truly love you are your parents (with the implicit meaning that they are the only ones who would save bread for you when they themselves are starving.) 4. Secretly, everyone (except for Jews) is a Nazi or at least has the capacity to become one overnight. 5. All the Holocaust dead were martyrs and saints, and we will never be as good as they were. And last but most important: 6. Never forgive, never forget.

When I was eight, my parents and I boarded buses and rode to Washington D.C. to protest a big neo-Nazi rally. I vaguely remember lining up outside the White House gates and quietly marching down Pennsylvania Avenue; our column came to an abrupt halt when cops diplomatically steered us away from the oncoming neo-Nazi contingent. Though the protest itself was peaceful, its impression on me was not.

Until then, it had never occurred to me that someone could hate me without even knowing me. There was a nasty little boy at school who once called me a "dirty Jew," but since I took him for an idiot anyway, it didn't hurt much. And I once singled out at Girl Scouts for being Jewish: we were practicing Christmas carols when a den mother pulled me aside and told me that it wasn't right for me to join in their Christian song. While my mother was understandably upset about both events (and immediately banned me from Girl Scouts), their meaning didn't really strike home until the march in Washington. That several hundred Americans had actually organized an anti-Semitic rally just about unhinged my eight year old imagination, particularly as I was one of their proposed victims. That whole time in Washington, I suffered one mysterious ailment after another--blinding headaches, agonizing stomache-aches, lethargy, nausea, insomnia. I sleep-walked for the first and only time in my life. What had I done to deserve such hatred? What had I done? I bore no ill-feelings towards them. At least not until that weekend. I came home disturbed, anxious, and paranoid.

From 1966-1969, I attended a summer camp created by Holocaust Survivors for their children. When I first told some non-Jewish friends about Camp Hemshekh ("Hemshekh" means "the future" in Yiddish), they were astonished. The idea of building a summer paradise around a genocide floored them. At first, their surprise surprised me: I hadn't actually seen it that way before. The way I was raised, it seemed perfectly natural to create a protected, isolationist children's colony where none had to fear anti-Semitism and all could identify with each other's tragic family histories. We had everything in common: not only a history of persecution, death, and suffering but a language, a literature, a theater, and a rich artistic heritage. We understood each other better than we understood any of the American Jews we knew, much less the non- Jews we met at school.

My gentile friends were even more surprised when I described Hemshekh's annual children's Holocaust Memorial, where campers--ages 6 to 16, dressed in compulsory black--recited Holocaust poetry and sang mournful Ghetto songs detailing the plight of our forebears in the bleakest imaginable images. The memorials never ended well. Throughout the nights which followed, screams and sobs echoed and spread from bunk to bunk like a virus. I have a particularly vivid memory of the 1969 memorial because on that night, the counselors decided the only way to deal with the event was to smoke every joint, drink every bottle of bourbon, and drop every tab of acid to be illegally acquired in the Catskills. While their young charges wailed and mewled in the darkness, counselors tripped their brains out. I was fourteen, not old enough to get high with the counselors but too old to weep with the children. Unable to sleep, I wandered aimlessly, finally finding my counselor, all of 18, in another bunk, standing silently fixed before a mirror. She showed me her hands and asked if they really were disfigured by age spots and veins and wrinkles. I glanced at her smooth girlish hands and suggested we take a walk to help settle her hallucinations.

By the time I reached adulthood, there was a name for us children of Survivors: we are the Second Generation. This name permanently stamps us as the ones who came after--after the horror, after the suffering, after the tragedy. In that sense, our lives are the afterlives of the original victims. Indeed, most of us were raised under the shadow of ghosts, some of us treated as replacements for the missing relatives and for the children who our parents lost in the war. And because we lived in their shadows, we became victims of the Holocaust ourselves.

Innumerable scholarly studies have concluded that children of Survivors suffer their same neuroses as the original victims. On the bulletin board over my desk is a clipping from Science News, dated May 18, 1995, whose headline reads Trauma syndrome traverses generations. The story discusses recent evidence that children of Survivors suffer Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and are prone to all of their parents "psychiatric symptoms, including depression and anxiety."

Which brings me to the real topic of this series of essays I'm calling "Holocaust Envy": the connection between the Holocaust and my own sexual orientation. Over the years, a handful of brave interrogators have asked me whether I feel that being the child of Holocaust survivors has made me the sadomasochist I am today. I call these people brave because, while I suspect many people are curious about it, that's a very tough question to ask. There have been any number of studies about Survivors and their children, but none to my knowledge explore the effects on their sexuality. So it strikes me as a legitimate and even important question, and one which deserves an honest answer.

Since I have not conducted any formal research into the sex lives of other children of Survivors, I can only speak from personal observation; and from what I've seen, there is no direct connection. Sadomasochism, fetishism and transgenderism do not seem to be any more pronounced among the children of Survivors than among any other group. Closer to home, I am the only one in my family who is kinky.

This isn't to say that some of us haven't turned out kinky: obviously a percentage of us (ahem) have turned out to be very kinky indeed. Further, over the years, a handful Survivors' children have confided to me that they do have fantasies about being tortured by Nazis. But, as best I can tell, the eroticization of Nazism is more common among non-Jews and non-Survivor Jews. (And I'm not referring to garden-variety Nazi-idolatry of the Newt Gingrich/revisionist/Christian Right Wing, either.) As for Camp Hemshekh, though it may sound like a breeding ground for sadomasochists, in fact it wasn't. A breeding ground for yentas, perhaps, but that's about it.

For me the question is not whether being a Survivor's child made me an SMer but how the Holocaust has shaped my personality. Because if you were to ask me if the Holocaust has fucked me up, the answer is a simple "yes." Of course it has. How could it not? There was no Santa or Easter Bunny for me, there were jack-booted thugs and their vicious dogs. In my parents' house, we celebrated three holidays: July 4th, Thanksgiving, and the Holocaust Memorial. Just as I always knew that Jews were slaughtered, I always knew mankind was evil. Just as I knew the sun rose in the morning, I knew life could be extinguished at any moment, without warning or explanation. Just as I knew my relatives had died in Concentration Camps, I always knew life can be cruel. And now, as I approach my 45th birthday, and though I have long rejected my parents' prejudices, the Holocaust is still with me and always will be--even though I've been happily married to Will Brame, a Christian from the Missouri Ozarks, for over 11 years, and even though I am largely estranged from my Jewish relatives (for whom my marriage to an "outsider" was initially a bitter pill).

But. As I type now, Joni Mitchel is singing, "branded as a Jezebel, I knew I wasn't bound for Heaven." The line is in "The Magdalene Laundries" (from the CD Turbulent Indigo), a song which recounts the desperate plight of young women sent to a convent as punishment for sexual sins. It's a story about how religious orthodoxy can, to put it bluntly, fuck you up. So let me ask: if you were raised to believe that you risked being damned for eternity if you indulged your flesh--did it fuck you up? If you are African American, growing up under the shadow not only of the history of slavery but in a country where your young men continue to be murdered and jailed at inhuman rates--did it fuck you up? If you are a Cambodian who saw your parents dragged off to killing fields--did it fuck you up? If you are Japanese and your parents were hauled off to an internment camp during WWII--did it fuck you up? If you grew up as the proverbial "white trash," constantly hungry and without decent clothes--did it fuck you up? If you were beaten or molested as a child...if one of your parents committed suicide...if your parents were alcoholic...if you have a disability...did it fuck you up?

The reality of life is that it brings damages, harms, woes, perils, and evils for which no explanation can ever suffice. The reality of life is that most of us are damaged in one way or another. Disease, political injustice, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and a million other evils are universal plagues for which there are no universal cures. At best, we can only hope to undo the damage individually and in small groups, as communities who unite to work against evil.

So, did the Holocaust make me a sadomasochist? No. Holocaust images have no place in my erotic life. I find nothing in the least bit erotic about genocide, concentration camps, or persecution. I don't feel like a Nazi when I beat someone, and my fantasies don't include Nazi uniforms, near-death scenarios, or images of malicious and violent torture. In truth, I believe I would've been a sadomasochist no matter how I was raised.

But has the Holocaust shaped my imagination overall? Yes. Definitely. And, for that reason, it's worth exploring this issue further. In the next essay in this series, I will discuss the links between the dark imagination that was my birthright and the development of my sexual identity.

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Read the next essay in this series:
GROWING UP DARK


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Notes

kugel: a cross between a casserole and a pie, it can be made with egg noodles or with potatoes as the main ingredient. A lokshn kugle (noodle kugel) is baked with cheeses and sweetened with raisins. A potato kugel is like a giant latke (potato pancake).

chulent: A Polish-Jewish specialty, served on the Sabbath, it is a long-simmering stew usually comprised of beef, lima beans, barley and potatoes. In pre-war Warsaw, children would haul pots filled with the raw ingredients to the local bakery on Friday before sundown. The pots would be placed in the ovens to absorb the left-over heat. When baking resumed the next night, at the Sabbath's end, the children returned to claim their family's now-cooked stew. This way, the mothers--who could not prepare foods on the Sabbath--had a hot meal ready when the sun went down.

For further reading on Survivors and the Second Generation, visit:


To read some of my poetry about the Holocaust, see:


July 29, 2000

SM of the Mind

From time to time people write asking me to explore the art of mind-control-- whether it is a dominant who wants creative ideas on pushing a partner into "sub space" or a sub seeking help with getting into the right frame of mind for a whipping or some other type of physical SM interaction.

I'm never quite sure what to tell them because, personally, I think that the best SM springs naturally from your relationship dynamic, and takes playful but aggressive advantage of opportunities as they arise. Although I usually plan scenarios in advance, I don't over-plan. I leave plenty of room for surprises: to me, that's part of the fun and creativity of SM sex. It can go anywhere at any time and every encounter can be different. SM isn't just "spice" in one's sex-life; it's a new meal every time. So I don't have a standard routine on training and discipline. Nor do I believe that any one piece of advice is going to apply universally.

SM should be unique to every couple (or leather family) and serve the particular needs and fetishes and desires of the individuals involved. Speaking personally, my SM lifestyle--and play-style--is my own. It isn't modeled after books, and it is a very far cry from the pornographic model of the man-hating, repressed dominatrix who minces around the house in corsets and heels. I have a slave, and we have a 24/7 power dynamic, but he doesn't live with me. I have a husband, but he is dom too, and our relationship is best described as egalitarian, though I confess I often get my way. But then, I am, after all, the House Diva. As for this Diva's dress, at work and at play, it runs more to jeans than rubber.

Headplay has to operate according to individual style, too. There are some people who will never, for example, be able to wrap their minds around humiliation or coercion scenarios; others consider degradation to be a moral limit, and still others cannot do roleplay because they feel unnatural assuming another identity--whether it's the strict governess, pirate, or Batman. And then there are those of us for whom the mental games are the main point of SM: we need to enter an SM state of mind from time to time, if only to maintain our emotional equilibrium. For us, the physical acts are paths to inducing the mental states we crave. I've learned to appreciate and even to eroticize fetishes I didn't have (or didn't know I had) early on, and have become adept with canes, cbt devices, and other extreme toys that intimidated me when I first was exploring SM. Still the theme that has run through my entire life has been that the dynamics of sexual dominance and submission are wildly exciting.

Before going any further, I'll explain what I mean by "SM of the Mind." I see it as a combined emotional and spiritual state in which we feel as if we have journeyed away from our ordinary reality and into a realer, more vivid land, a place where we feel more at home, and intoxicated by intense, pleasurable emotions and sensations. It is as satisfying as an orgasm, and usually more emotionally gratifying, and it doesn't require any equipment beyond a creative imagination and a desire to express other aspects of your personality--whether it's a sadistic aspect or a submissive one, a bestial persona or a transgender identity.

SM of the Mind is filled with paradoxes, and those paradoxes delight us: we may feel extraordinarily loved in a moment of giving or receiving intense pain; we may feel liberated by binding or being bound; subs may feel powerful when giving obedient service; doms may feel humble when receiving exceptional service. Whether you call it headspace, domspace, subspace or "the Zone," the fantastic complexity of the SM mindset is subjective and difficult to translate into words.

Maybe I was just lucky, or perhaps I am just shockingly polymorphously perverse (or perhaps a succulent combination of both, she said ingenuously), but SM of the Mind was the first and easiest thing for me to grasp when I got involved in SM. It surprises me, and sometimes worries me, when I see people who think SM is really about the equipment, or who conduct scenes that rely entirely on equipment. In Come Hither, I wrote that "if people spent as much time working on the emotional and psychological skills involved in dominance as they do on their bondage or beating techniques, the SM world would be a happier place."

The fact is that any moron can flail a whip; competence with whip or cane, iron fetters or leather swings, requires nothing more than repetitive effort. Practice throwing a single-tail long enough and, by golly, you will eventually learn to crack it beautifully. But in my opinion there are not enough doms out there who are believable without the whips and toys, and not enough subs who can surrender control when the fetish gear is absent. It reminds me of an observation a girlfriend of mine made many years ago during a skiing trip to Lake Placid. She commented that you could tell who the novices were by their slick, fancy, overpriced ski gear. "They'll fall flat on their asses, but they'll look great doing it," she laughed. I see the same in SM: too many people rush into the physical side of SM before they grasp the mental aspects of SM.

GEARING UP THE MIND

The first step towards SM of the Mind is, quite simply, that you accept the reality of a power exchange, at least during your time together. (Note: if you don't believe in power exchange, you may as well stop reading now.) That means that the dominant person should really be dominant and the submissive should really be submissive. They should each understand what that means. The dominant should feel that he or she is truly a leader, a mentor, a caretaker, or a controller. The dominant should possess the qualities you'd expect in those authority figures, including self-confidence, self-control, compassion, responsibility, emotional maturity, a logical mind, personal power, shrewdness and both the ability and appetite to manipulate and control others. The submissive should feel that he or she is truly a follower, a student, a young ward, or a piece of property. The submissive should be the yin to the dom's yang, and feel deference, humility, obedience, emotional vulnerability, a measure of innocence or suggestibility, and the desire to please and to serve.

If you know who you are in your relationship it will be lot easier for you to understand what to do and what is expected of you. If you know you are a slave, for example, then you know that slaves are owned; your know that slaves must, at all times, behave respectfully to their owners; you know that slaves obey unquestioningly; you know that it is a slave's purpose in life to serve his master or mistress. Conversely, if you're a master or mistress, then you know it isn't only about what you get from a slave, but also what you provide. In consensual SM relationships, you know that a master or mistress is not only the giver of punishment, but also of love and validation; you know masters and mistresses are permission givers; that masters and mistresses assume the responsibilities that go along with leadership, including responsibility for keeping one's partner healthy by doing SM safely and sanely; you know that dominants must set the standards for the relationship-- insisting on honesty, trust, and communication--by setting an example for your slave to follow.

If you know these things and if they are indeed real to you, then you have taken the first and perhaps biggest step towards SM of the Mind. The next necessary step is to know your partner. If your partner is on the bottom, is he or she a slave or a sub, a masochist or an adult baby, a fetishist or a gender-bender, or none of the above? If your partner's on top, how does he or she identify? Master, Mistress, Dominant, naughty nurse, lewd uncle? Your roles should be complementary: if you are a sensual cross-dresser you won't be happy with a sadist; if you're a masochistic pain-slut, you don't want someone who is primarily interested in loving ageplay. Unless your roles complement and balance each other, chances are you will never be able to satisfy each other completely.

Ideally you should--if you wished--be able to stand before each other stark naked and utterly bereft of toys, without the power dynamic seeming less real: you should be who you are, at least when you are with each other, and you should feel a spark of recognition. If you're the sub, you should recognize that you are now with someone who really and truly has power over you, including the power to do things that will frighten and excite you. If you're the dom, behold your submissive! this is the helpless individual you are about to devour and possess

Tactics, Strategies, and Common Sense

Now to some very practical advice. First, to dominants. You have a tasty bundle of squirming submission awaiting your command. Perhaps you've planned a whipping or you intend to get into heavy bondage. What is the first thing you should do? The first thing, in my opinion, is to get the sub ready mentally. Your goal is to build anticipation by tantalizing your sub with the promise of what's to come.

You could, if you have the time and energy, assign tasks the sub must perform before you meet. You could have them shop for a toy you will use on them; or SM attire you want them to wear; you might order them to prepare their bodies in certain ways (shaving off pubic hair, wearing heels, inserting a plug or donning a chastity device); you could have them compose an entertainingly lurid description of secret fantasies, or the things they hope you'll do to them. In essence, anything you can do to get the sub's hormones hopping before you meet will push the sub towards that state you will of mind he or she craves. Think of it as SM foreplay--or pre-foreplay foreplay.

If circumstances are more restrictive and you can only begin the SM when you are together, you still need to do more than show someone into the dungeon. The best way to begin, in my opinion, is right at your front door. From the moment you greet each other, the power dynamic should be in place: you should know who you are (the person about to dominate) and who your submissive is (the person about to surrender control). If your partner is a pain-loving slave, voice your cruel ownership by saying the things that re-enforce your dynamic. Don't hesitate to state the obvious: make the obvious as obvious as possible. Stress your rights over the slave ("I own you head to toe, slave"); make their hearts go pit-a-pat with some softly growled threats ("I am going to beat you today") Watch your timing: pause after every phrase to see how your slave reacts: wait for a blush, a bead of sweat, a sigh, a wriggle, a gasp, and then say something even more intense.

Dom: "Do you see that whip I've placed on the table?
Sub: (nods, blushing)
Dom: Do you know what I'm going to do with that whip?
Sub: (looks fearful and squeaks out a yes)
Dom: I am going to use it on you until you scream."
Sub: gasp!

It's important for a slave to hear those things from your lips; these are the things slaves hear in their fantasies. And, if you're dom, these are probably things you've said in your own fantasies. Don't be afraid to say them: language carries the same erotic force as a stroke of a whip or paddle, sometimes more. The mere act of saying wicked, terrible, delicious, erotic sentences aloud will nudge your sub onto the right path; some will head directly into subspace, and grow hard or wet with anticipation. Don't be afraid to use profanity or rough language, either. So-called "dirty talk" is sexy. "I own your cock and balls" or "How will you feel when I clamp your pussy, slave?" or "I'm going to stretch out your asshole, whore," are powerful statements. And that's what a dominant is: a powerful person who makes powerful even brutal statements during SM. If your sub cringes at the use of obscenity, all the better. Cringing is good. :-) Personally, I seldom pick up an implement until I've talked my sub into a state where he is not only ready for pain but eager for it, because the tension my words build becomes unbearable, and the only relief will be the physical act itself.

And now some advice for subs. Ask yourself, first, what you are bringing to the table when you get together with your dominant. Are you there just to be "done"? In my opinion, there is a massive difference between submissiveness and passivity: put another way, I am instantly bored by people who contribute nothing but their bodies to SM play. I'd rather beat a rug than a stoic, speechless sub, or one who punctuates the encounter by chattering about vanilla irrelevancies. If you're presenting yourself as submissive, attempts to impress, push, manipulate, or otherwise influence me will turn me off: what will impress me is knowing you are eager and enthusiastic about your submission to me. The biggest turn-on of all is knowing that the sub is wholly PRESENT in the moment: that he does know who he is, why he's there, and why he has chosen to submit to ME.

The biggest mistakes subs make is when they behave as if the dominant bears sole responsibility for the power dynamic. It's up to you, as sub, to contribute your 50% to the power exchange. Now, I do NOT recommend subs take the initiative in preparing themselves for encounters: it's cute the first time a sub shows up, un-ordered, with freshly shaved genitals and a few toys; by the second time, it begins to feel like I'm the one being ordered to perform. Instant frigidity.

But what you can do is inquire of your dominant whether he or she would like you to make any special preparations. If you must shop before an encounter (you shopping sluts know who you are), buy a gift for the dom that is actually FOR the dom, and not something you want him or her to use on you. Be honest: when you buy a new whip or other device for your top, you are really buying yourself a gift. That's fine occasionally but don't pretend it's a selfless gesture of submission. One of the all-time worst gifts Will and I ever received was a carefully hand-written note on beautiful stationery from a sub we knew socially, "giving" herself to us as a birthday present. Ummmmmm. This gift had nothing to do with pleasing us (if we wanted to dominate her, we would've done something about it). It was purely selfish and purely passive/aggressive. Needless to say, we trashed the note, as we found it purely ridiculous (and more than a little presumptuous).

If you're a sub and you want a dominant who is a real dominant, then you have to respect and pay attention to the dominant mindset. No dominant worth his or her salt wants a slave who offers anything less than honest and sincere submission. Are you playing games, keeping secrets, or silently wishing for something the dom isn't giving you? A dominant needs to know you want to be there and are fully engaged: are you just playing along in order to avoid conflict? A dominant needs to be in control: are you obeying orders or questioning them? A dominant wants a responsive, interesting partner: are you acting like a zombie from Planet Doormat? A dominant likes to call the shots: are you sabotaging or undermining his/her power by trying to get him or her to dominate you the way you think you should be dominated? A dominant wants to climb in your mind: are you locking the dom out by concealing fantasies or lying about your feelings?

There are more pro-active things subs can do to make an encounter sexier and more exciting for doms, yet which fall perfectly into their submissive role. Offering your own verbal encouragements are especially appreciated, whether it's suddenly whispering "Oh, Mistress, I'm getting so WET" or meekly getting on your knees and begging for a privilege ("May I go to the bathroom?" "May I have a glass of water?" and so on). If you don't understand why those things, in an SM context, are privileges and not rights, then you haven't grasped the power dynamic.

The bottom-line is simple: SM is serious. It demands concentration, sensitivity to your partner's needs, and sincerity. Most of all, it requires that the power exchange is real and believable, even if it lasts for a one-hour play session. So don't rush. Don't reach for the equipment first. Prepare yourselves mentally and emotionally for each journey into dominance and submission. When SM of the mind leads the way, ecstasy will follow.


topics in this essay are also discussed in Come Hither

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July 25, 2000

News Not Views

I'm running behind on the weekly columns I've been writing for this space. As usual, my summer has turned out to be a lot busier than expected. I will have something up here Real Soon. Meanwhile, here are important news items for the BDSM/fetish communities, and site updates on gloria-brame.com.


July 11, 2000

Confessions of a Happy Sadomasochist

Looking back at the essays on SM I've written in recent years, most have dealt with the problems we--both as a loosely organized community and as individuals--face. From issues of guilt and shame to sorting out the bad apples among us, I've delved into numerous of the challenges that confront kinky adults. And, in the months and years ahead, I'll probably write a lot more essays on the difficulties of our lives.

But today I want to write about the reason why I embraced the SM lifestyle almost 15 years ago and why I remain committed to it today. Today, I want to write about how SM makes me happy.

That statement--that SM makes people happy--is something that most SMers already know for themselves. But people who consider SM to be sinful or violent would find that statement shocking, revolutionary, disgusting. For obvious reasons, such people want us to be unhappy. They feel better when they find out that we have problems with our relationships. They want to hear about crimes involving SM. They want to see SMers denied custody rights or arrested for gathering at clubs. They wish to believe this is divine punishment. What we know to be persecution is, to them, justice: to see us in trouble bolsters their prejudices about who we are and what we do.

And, unfortunately, I think you will find (as I have) that some among us communicate a similarly SM-negative attitude. They treat SM like it's some excruciatingly laborious and arcane ritual. They stress the dangers of SM long before they mention its joys. They fail to see the humor and playfulness of SM. They don't expect love, they expect dysfunctional relationships; they don't seek community, they expect (and thus often instigate) feuds and squabbles.

They just don't get it.

The best and really only sane reason to do SM is because it makes you happy.

Personally, I view SM is a gift from God, much as my ability to write is a gift. The two are, in fact, inextricably entwined. If you've ever met me, then you've probably seen the tattoo on my left arm. It's the only design I've ever wanted permanently inked on my flesh. It shows a quill pen and whip crossed. It represents the two paths of my life, eternally linked: writing and SM. I got that tattoo almost a decade ago and feel just as strongly about its meaning now as I did then. You may already understand what inspired me to stamp my sexual orientation on my skin. If not, I will try to explain it.

WITH SM CAME CLARITY.
The year I discovered I was an SMer my life changed radically, and all for the better. Until then, I'd had so many nagging questions about myself, so many confusions, such uncertainty about what would make me happy, if anything. I was drifting through one life, feeling as if my real life was somewhere else. SM opened the doors of perception, one by one. In the course of that first year, so many areas that had once been blurred zoomed into focus. I understood why conventional sex never gave me the emotional highs I craved. I realized why I couldn't climax without fantasizing about SM. I recognized that power conflicts had always been at the heart of my (all too many) romantic failures.

Ironically, it seemed that the more paradoxes I saw--how submissives can feel liberated by bondage, how sadists can feel overwhelmingly tender when they're delivering maximum pain-- the clearer everything became. Or maybe, simply, it was that I stopped needing to see everything in black and white. Gray became not only acceptable but fascinating. I learned that the most interesting things happen in the gray areas, away from the standard notions of how people are supposed to behave. Once you cast off those models, abandon your need to see everything as an either/or, it is simply astonishing how clear the world all seems.

WITH SM CAME TRUTH.
In 1985, in Toas, NM, I had a vision. A few months earlier I'd seen Georgia O'Keeffe's painting of a tree in Taos. The work mesmerized me. It spoke to me. The instant I looked at it, I sensed that something awaited me in Taos. And when I stepped onto Taos' streets some time later, I felt an energy all around, a wonderful, inexplicable energy.

The vision came on my first night there. It didn't take a bodily form: it was more like a sleeping consciousness awoke with abrupt force. At the time, I was still working on Wall Street. That night, in a small adobe house in Taos, I realized that I had to quit my job. I had to leave my (now, thankfully, former) husband too. I had to change my life's direction. I had to sever with the past and make a complete and unwavering commitment to the future. In sum: I had to live, work, breathe, eat, sleep, and one day die as a writer.

When I got back to New York, I followed that vision. I made small changes and big ones (including submitting my resignation). Then something totally unexpected happened: I stumbled upon the Scene. And, through a miraculous tumble of fast-flying events, somehow my quest for artistic freedom and my voyage into SM synergized.

I think back now on this time in my life as a rebirth. Although I sought to change my circumstances, I did not seek to change myself. I wanted to be a better person, of course. And SM has indeed taught me to be more compassionate, more confident, more forgiving. But SM hasn't changed me. On the contrary. SM has given me the opportunity to BECOME myself.

WITH SM CAME ECSTASY.

I can't talk about the joys of SM without at least giving a nod to its physical pleasures. But no string of words can really do justice to the entirely visceral experience of SM ecstasy.

What does SM ecstasy feel like? It feels like your soul and your genitals are in synchronicity. It feels as if time is irrelevant; only the moment exists, and that moment lasts forever. It feels as if you could safely fall backwards. Even if no one should be there to catch you, it's okay, because you can't fall hard. You are light as a feather. You are as fixed as a star burning in the sky. You inhabit a dizzyingly thin border between direct opposites. You feel safe in the most dangerous place in the world. You feel vulnerable. You feel giddy. You feel whole.

The ecstasy of SM is like a lantern lighting within us, illuminating every corner of our souls.

I won't pretend the last 15 years have been problem-free. I've gone through my own versions of hell over the years. Yet one thing has not changed in all this time, and that is the reason I do SM.

It's the reason why I only have intimate relationships with other SMers; the reason why I still love looking down at my tattoo; and the reason I get gloomy when I see bad things going on in the Scene. It's because SM gives me a kind of pleasure in life that I can only receive as a blessing, and I am too old and too wise to squander such a gift.


special thanks to T. Aquinas and S. Kierkegaard



WHAT'S NEW in gloria-brame.com

LET'S TALK ON JULY 16th! TANTRIC SEX is the subject of our next Sex and Spirituality Chat. If you want to learn some new tricks, or find out why Tantric has become so popular among sexual connoisseurs, join us Sunday, July 16, at 8 p.m. est. All welcome!

PICTURE THIS!
I just created the COME HITHER PHOTO GALLERY, featuring four of the headshots taken of me for the book jacket. Don't be too naughty with them or Santa will bring you coal for Christmas. And for those of you with an unwholesome affection for my hairy bear of a husband, check out Will's pix for a few new nifty views of the man in leather.


July 5, 2000

Rambling Reflections the Day After Independence Day

Yesterday, the United States celebrated its greatest national holiday. In declaring our independence 224 years ago, our founders set forth the guiding principle for a new utopia in the most beautiful and controversial sentence in American history:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The Declaration of Independence envisions a society in which each individual is guaranteed the right to equal treatment, fair and representative government, and free choice in private affairs. This vision has inspired generations of Americans. American soldiers have died for it. Immigrants dream of it. The U.S. is still the most desirable address in the world: the number one destination for millions of immigrants every year.

So, being the bleak sort, I couldn't help thinking yesterday how sorely disappointed the authors of that document would be to see the society that has morphed out of their utopian ideals.

Equality has never really been a firm feature of American society--not even in Revolutionary days. Race, class, gender, and religion have always influenced social position. But at no time in our history have we seen such large-scale chaos in the judicial system, a chaos that has turned justice into nothing more than a commodity.

For example, the most surprising part of the judgment in the OJ case wasn't that a famous, wealthy guy got off, but that people were surprised that a famous, wealthy guy got off. Imagine what might have happened if the Ramseys were not wealthy Christians but a typical financially strained, working-class couple; or poor, or black, or disabled, or gay. Even if they were innocent, they would have little chance against a prosecutor determined to solve the case; they certainly wouldn't be gabbing on Larry King or getting hours and hours of prime-time media placement. Innocence has become almost irrelevant while media appeal can make your case famous. Money and celebrity guarantee a better outcome than poverty and obscurity could hope for. Poor kids who sell pot or steal candybars get stiffer sentences than wealthy rapists and murderers. We have fulfilled Orwell's vision of a society where all pigs are equal but some pigs are more equal than other pigs.

Meanwhile, the increasing public fascination with executions is making me a little nervous. What's next? Televised executions? How about webcast executions where we all get to vote on whether or not to grant clemency, with a final vote count taken only 5 minutes before the scheduled execution? Just enough time to see the poor bastards sob and piss their legs, but short of physical torture so we can still feel our hands are clean. Regis could host. At least this would democratize the macabre and barbarian process. As it stands, life and death issues are decided by politicians, often during campaigns--people like Bill Clinton and George Bush, Jr.: real pillars of morality, eh?

One of the subtlest wordings in the Declaration of Independence is the phrase, "They are endowed by their Creator." By carefully selecting "their" instead of "the," our founders make it known that each American shall be free to worship his or her own Creator. The phrase proposes a nation where religious freedom is granted to all and where all religions are equal. Contrary to the impression given by any number of religious fanatics, Jesus Christ's name does not appear in the Declaration of Independence. Our founding fathers were wiser and more compassionate than that. They knew there were Roman Catholics and Jews and Animists in their new world. They believed they deserved religious freedom; after all, the Pilgrims came here seeking religious freedom.

Yet the notion that America was founded by Christians for Christians is spreading. Seemingly harmless activities like school prayer and the erection of religious signs or monuments in public places are being called free speech and civil rights issues. But free speech ceases to be free when it harms others. School prayer divides children into two camps: the righteous and the sinner (those of other religions). So, whether ignorant, bigoted assaults against all those who don't share a particular Christian point of view takes the form of bombings by people like Eric Rudolph, or is cooked down and served up as sermons from people like Jerry Falwell, demanding that others convert to your religious point of view, or even live under its shadow, is a betrayal of all that is American.

And now the most famous phrase of all: "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." I don't even know where to begin on this. I'll point to my favorite hypocrisy: our nation's attitudes towards alcohol, tobacco and drugs. Start out with this basic fact: more people die from alcohol-related deaths (not just drunk driving, but fatal fights, violent crimes, and a panoply of illnesses, particularly cirrhosis) than have ever died or ever will die from smoking marijuana. Yet alcohol isn't just legal, it's so cool that people are willing to be raped by luxury taxes to buy it. Indeed, most parents expect and accept that their children will drink alcohol by the time they are young adults.

So why not marijuana? Government propaganda on marijuana is just that. Despite the desperate efforts of generously government-funded researchers no link has been established between pot and lung cancer. Drug addicts usually start out drinking alcohol, long before they touch pot. And if pot really turns people into "dopes," then how does one explain that at least two American geniuses, Carl Sagan and Allen Ginsberg, were lifelong pot smokers?

The so-called Drug War has been one of the most disastrous and costly farces in U.S. history. Its most frightening consequence is that virtually every legal agency is now empowered to bust into anyone's house and seize property based on their suspicions. And cops tend to be suspicious individuals: in fact, it's their job to be suspicious. When they are granted permission to act freely on their suspicions, it means that anyone, at any time and in any place, can be searched, their lives disrupted, their children traumatized by the people supposed to protect us. And once they are in the door, what else may they find and try to use against you? If you're gay or kinky, Lord only knows.

Since when did DEA stand for KGB? Since the Drug War started. Not that it properly deserves to be called a war. It's more like a bunch of bullies targeting the weakest victims. It's really inspiring, for example, to hear of a SWAT team storming into a cancer victim's house to seize his medicinal pot. What about the armed foreign drug-lords, the ones who really ARE harming our youth? How come we don't get to see our boys trampling them on tv? How come it's always the improverished, toothless crack-addicts who end up getting busted? That's like arresting Dilbert for the sins of Bill Gates.

The Drug War hasn't stemmed the flow of drugs into our country. All it's done is raise prices. Along the way, it has destroyed many innocent lives, increased drug-related violence, and (in the case of marijuana) diverted profits away from American farmers and into the pockets of foreign gangsters.

And then there's tobacco. Talk about taxation without representation. I smoked cigarettes since my teens. I know they're bad for me. I still do it. You see, it's legal. I can afford the cigarettes, I have the desire to smoke them and I can buy them everywhere. I could understand if the government outlawed them. But I am being punished for acting within the law. It seems to me that if I have the legal right to buy them, I have the legal right to use them without being unfairly taxed, banned from smoking in public venues, and treated like a social pariah for even suggesting I should be allowed to smoke in public areas.

Perhaps the bigger question is whether or not you believe that, in a free society, I have a right to live my life as I please as long as I don't infringe on other peoples' rights or break this country's laws.

Which brings me to a final thought for this July 5, 2000.

I don't know what liberty and happiness mean to you. I only know what it means to me. And that is what this nation's founders wanted: for each of us to pursue her own notion of freedom and personal happiness. And that lovely American document, the Declaration of Independence, grants us the right to do it on our own terms.

WHAT'S NEW in gloria-brame.com

Ageplay & Infantilism links just revised, with 12 "newborns" added.

The Sex and Spirituality Chats are BACK. Join us Sunday, July 9, at 8 p.m. est

Calling all Olympians. If you're in or near Olympia, WA, tune in to KAOS Radio at 8 pm pst on Monday, July 10. I'll be on for an entire hour, talking about kinky sex. CALL-INS WELCOME.

The Other Side of Vulnerable is bob harris' fascinating new column for July on why some people are driven away from SM by emotional vulnerability--and why others feel it is the heart and soul of submission.

Find out why SKIN TWO said: "Gloria Brame is to heterosexual kinky sex what Pat Califia has been to the lesbian equivalent....Brame's authoritative writing is backed by sound knowledge of the science and psychology behind the things kinky people get up to (she has a PhD in Human Sexuality) and enlivened by her wicked sense of humour. Buy this book as a gift for someone, but make sure you read it first yourself!" BUY COME HITHER

Read free excerpts, see what other reviewers have said, or get more information on buying the book at COME HITHER ON- LINE.




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Dr. Gloria Glickstein Brame
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