The Remote Island by Bryan Christian Palin camp may get SNL time to respond to Fey sketches. Wahlberg camp still mum on their demands. Plus: Dexter, Brothers and Sisters and Gwen Ifill reacts to Queen Latifah.
Seeking solace from the chaos of dating, I turned my interest to something safer: S/M. This wasn't a casual whim or a stunt. I've had bondage fantasies since I was six. Blame it on Grimm's Fairy Tales, with all those captured princesses. My mother smelled misogyny in Penelope Pit Stop — the Saturday-morning cartoon wherein helpless Penelope got lashed to train tracks and cliffsides by bad guy Dick Dastardly — but evidently I smelled porn. I'm sure the world is filled with S/M dilettantes like me, who dabble in power play and keep rope in a drawer for special occasions. We're far down the spectrum from the lifestylers whose closets (and, perhaps, their asses) are stuffed with menacing rubber devices, who don latex and leather, and artfully inflict pain on each other.
Some of these more committed types are my friends. I met them at work. The non-profit where I work is a hotbed of sexual perversity. Maybe every office is, I just never stayed at one long enough to find out. But find out I did, naughty details exposed one by one through water-cooler chit chat. My office friends include Amy, a polyamorous femme lesbian S/M aficionado who is quickly rising through management; Jody, the elegant butch who handles our legal affairs; and Edwin from accounting who was broadcast flogging his wife for a cable TV show a week after I started the job. And I thought getting a job would make me respectable.
In the meantime, my childhood "princess tied up in a dungeon" fantasies have grown up,
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incorporating details from the ever-less-hidden subculture of fetish and my ever-more-twisted imagination, providing my most consistent and effective source of masturbatory fodder. I'm ashamed to be such a sicko. I'm even more ashamed to be such an indecisive wimp that I've only been a prisoner in the dungeons in my mind, thus making me a prisoner in the dungeon of my mind. But the shame makes it hotter.
And so, on a Thursday night at the age of thirty-five, I arrived at an unmarked studio in Manhattan for my first-ever lesbian fetish party. My mission: to get a good flogging. I should mention that I am not a lesbian. I prefer men — their bodies, their energy and, of course, their cocks — to women. But I don't want to put my inexperienced ass in the firing line of some dude's unexamined misogyny. "It's about control, not misogyny," I've been lectured by Edwin, who clearly adores his submissive wife. But she knows that he knows the difference. Could I know that about some strange man in leather chaps at the Vault? Probably not. So here I am with the lesbians, whom I trust generally because they're women, and specifically because some of them are friends.
I pay my fifteen dollars and sign a waiver agreeing to rules, which are many, but all have a common theme of safety and consent. Reading the admission policy opens up a world of gender nuances that goes far beyond the simple straight/gay, male/female divisions I'm used to. Access is offered to biological females and a number of sub-categories that are most easily summed up as "no men unless they're trying to become women."
I pass through the curtain into a small alcove. I find not a flock of half-naked nubiles plying each
I follow Grey into the dungeon as he points at the chains bolted into the wall.
other with butt-plugs and bullwhips, but a dozen of fully clothed women eating Oreos. Yes, cookies — the most banal and nefarious feminine temptation. I shuffle nervously and ask if anyone has seen my friend Amy, who invited me tonight, and her play date Max. Someone has, farther inside. I peer into the cavernous main room. Brick walls, high ceiling, and one pair of women: a skinny femme (not my friend) who is chained to the wall and groaning dramatically while a squat butch steadily flogs her. I reach for a cookie.
"Are you new here?" Lo and behold, a butch is talking to me. I'm easily classified as femme, with my handkerchief skirt and dangly earrings. Butch is butchy enough that I wonder whether to address this person as a him or a her. Thanks to Amy's schooling on lesbian anthropology, I know that some butches mold their identities with tools that range from masculine hormones to masculine pronouns. I survey the details — crew cut and a tight NYPD T-shirt — and decide it's a him.
"I'm Grey," he says and shakes my hand. The name clinches it: it's another layer to the masculine identity he drapes over a distinctly feminine anatomy. Grey is petite and leanly muscular — a beautiful woman behind the butch exterior. I follow Grey into the dungeon as he points at various installations: a pair of chains bolted into the wall at shoulder level; a huge elevated bed with black rubber sheets; a recessed tile shower for water sports; and a variety of devices that people presumably get tied to and beaten on.
Barely making eye contact, Grey completes the circuit of the big center room and the small galleries at the back, then waves toward a staircase — "there's some more stuff downstairs" — and leads me back to the Oreo alcove. A platter of crudités is now in circulation. Grey shakes my hand again.
"Thanks," I say.
"You're welcome," Grey says, turns on his jack-booted heel, and disappears. I'm crestfallen. I thought he was hitting on me, but apparently he was simply being hospitable. Just like a girl.
