Bullwhips and Cookies
by Jennifer Leigh
April 25, 2007
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, 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 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 cruditˇs 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.
A thirty-ish woman in a baggy shirt offers me a glass of cranberry juice, sans vodka. No alcohol is available on the premises. This makes perfect sense since a drunk dominatrix could be dangerous, but a sober submissive like me is a very shy creature indeed. Deprived of my favorite social prop, I resort to other party tactics: I go to the bathroom. If no other amusement is available, at least I can fluff my hair. The juice lady tells me that the bathroom — the one for peeing alone with the door shut — is downstairs, where Grey didn't take me.
As I tread down the stairs, I hear a familiar laugh. I poke my head into a narrow room and see Amy and Max sitting together on a bench. "Come on in, sweetie, we're finished in here," Amy says. She stands up to greet me. She's wearing designer motorcycle boots and a black velvet thong. I've been at the beach and in the public dressing room at Loehman's with her, but I've never had the chance to just gape at her abundant femininity. Amy is a woman-sized woman, with pillowing curves and a tiny waist. The breasts that I've seen peeking out of tank tops and V-necks are now fully exposed. Her ass is monumental, round and high up on her body. She's well outside the envelope of conventional straight-chick beauty, and undeniably gorgeous. Max is tucking his strap-on back into his jeans and wearing a T-shirt that says "It ain't gonna suck itself."
"Hiya!" Max says in a southern accent. He buckles his pants and gives me a friendly hug. He's almost six feet tall and looks naturally masculine, with broad shoulders and solid thick legs.
Amy asks if I'm having a good time. I explain that not much is happening upstairs but the eating of cookies. "Typical," she says with a world-weary sigh. She slides back into her skirt and a black velvet bra. The bosom is now bobbing in front of her. We wander back to the Oreo alcove. The gravitational pull of those cookies is unbelievable. The same dozen women are milling around. Amy knows most of them, and graciously introduces me.
I shake hands with a woman named Mindy, who sees erotic possibilities in my long, pliable hand. She folds it into a streamlined phallus and declares I was born to fist. Amy concurs that I'm a natural, albeit on the small side. "I guess it depends on which type of fisting you're into," Amy says authoritatively. I have a Beavis & Butthead moment — she said into — but I keep it to myself. Sticking my fist into some woman's womanly parts, whether aft or fore, is quite a bit farther into the S/M lesbian briar patch than I planned to go tonight.
The dungeon is still empty except for the same pair of women. The butch aims a precision lash and the femme lets loose a luxurious groan. Amy asks me if I've checked out the upstairs. I tell her that yes, a very nice butch named Grey gave me a two-minute tour. Max and Amy murmur approvingly. Grey, they tell me, is a much sought-after top. "Did he ask you to play?" Amy asks.
"No," I sigh. "He didn't seem the least bit interested."
Amy rolls her eyes. "Shy butches. You need a net and a tranquilizer gun to get them to do anything." She laments that when she and her old friend Melinda, who (you guessed it) just got a job at our company, started on the scene a few years ago it took months before anybody would play with them. "Really, it's amazing that someone even talked to you."
"Now sweetie," she asks, switching from her catty drag-queen voice to her sensitive, motherly tone, "do you want to try anything?"
We're standing in an alcove near a gigantic wooden X that tilts against the wall.
"I like this much better than handcuffs because it supports the body," she says. She demonstrates by spread-eagling herself against it. "You can really let go. Do you want to try? Max or I could top if you want."
I reply, "Uh — "
My hands are fluttering from my hair to my skirt to an imaginary cigarette. Yes, I want to try, but with a stranger, not a friend. That being the case, I should get back to the alcove where people are socializing, but the social dynamics here confound me. I know how to flirt with straight men at a regular party: just stand there and look cute, and eventually someone will talk to me. I don't know how to approach a strange woman when I'm cold sober and ask her to perform highly specific sex acts with me right now. But that, it seems, is the key to participating in the S/M scene: asking in very precise terms for what you want until someone agrees.
As the minutes tick by, my nervousness tips into impatience. My first wild lesbian fetish party feels like a junior-high school dance, with all the boys lined up on one side of the room and all the girls lined up on the other. Except here, in spite of the butch/femme division of labor, everyone is female. At a high-school dance, the boys would be shy and awkward, but they'd also be full of testosterone, which would serve the supremely useful function of driving them across the room and asking the girls to dance.
Amy senses my frustration and acts appropriately. She pulls a move my best friend would in junior high, when I was too nervous to do it myself. She sees Grey across the room, walks over, and tells him that her friend wants to play with him. I pretend to be all nonchalant, looking at Max instead of the two people discussing me. A few minutes later Amy returns and tells me the deal has been brokered. Then there's another ten-minute delay, and finally Grey saunters back over.
We shake hands again. With the possibility of rejection behind me, I suddenly feel calm and sure of what I want: to be flogged, but not excessively since I'm not sure how much I can take. I tell Grey that I'd prefer not get marks, and could he please steer clear of my bony back and shoulders which, unlike my dumpling ass and thighs, don't have enough meat to absorb a blow. He tells me that he'll start with his largest softest whip, and if I want we can work up to something more potent. I agree. I strip down to my boots, while Grey unpacks his whips He's brought a bag-full. Then I walk to the wall and grip the chain between my hands.
He starts by massaging my shoulders, establishing the physical connection through neutral contact. The gentle massaging gives way to a gentle slap across my buttocks. There's a long wait, and then swoosh, sueded leather slaps across my ass. Grey is starting off very easy indeed. The large whip, with its dozens of velvety flails, carries no sting. The next blow is slightly harder, and the next one harder still. I yelp a little and shake my fanny at the next blow, to let him know that he can step things up. He does, and I really feel the next one.
"Oh!"
This eggs him on, and the next one is even harder.
"Oh my God!"
Without quite planning to, I slide into a fake southern accent. "Lord have mercy!" I yell when the next lash hits.
"What are you, some kind of smartass?"
Grey switches to a smaller, more aggressive flail, and the next one rips through me. Now we're getting somewhere.
"Oh! I wish you would stop that!"
Snap, sting.
Grey clearly enjoys my showboating — he's loosening up and starting to go at me for real. But even as he escalates the force of his attack, I know that he's exercising control over himself as well as me. I perform for him (and the room) because I'm a show-off, and it allows me to communicate to Grey without seeming to micromanage. The point of the game is to make him want to hit me more. Since he's a top he presumably already does, but I want him to really want to hit me. We're strangers, after all, and anything that gives our interaction specificity gives it more zing. And it's hotter to incite his dominance than simply demand it.
Endorphins are starting to flow as the whipping proceeds. It's getting to a point where he's surprising me, making me gasp for real. I swing my right hip out to meet him, each new lash landing on the same place for extra cumulative sting. I'm getting exactly what I want — an extreme and almost intolerable level of stimulation. I am grateful to receive it. As a submissive, I can't imagine anything more tiresome than flogging another person. Even though Grey seems truly enthusiastic (and I'm doing my best to keep him that way), I'm halfway amazed that he'd go to the trouble for a complete and perfect stranger. Instead of cruelty, the whipping feels like indulgence.
Grey switches to an even narrower flail and I sink deeper into the moment. He's concentrating the blows on the tender region where my ass meets my thighs. For a few minutes I stop intellectualizing, stop showboating, and just feel the blows landing one after another. My knees start to tremble, and a wavy sensation wells up inside me. It's sort of orgasmic, sort of not, coming from someplace new and strange. I feel like a teenager learning my sexual response all over again. But as the feeling deepens, the rush of sensation becomes unmistakable. Then my head clears and I'm back in the room.
The session winds down in another ten minutes. I could possibly take more from Grey physically, but emotionally I've gone as far as I can tonight. A small group of people had gathered to watch our session, which for a drama queen like me is almost as satisfying as the session itself. I'm high from the endorphins, and the attention.
"Wow, thank you," I say to Grey as he packs up his whips.
"Thank you," he says cordially.
The wall of reserve that made our tour so awkward an hour ago is back up — such a contrast to the heated connection of the lash. I put my clothing back on and decompress with Amy.
"You did very well, sweetie," she says, all motherly charm. We mill around for a few minutes more, and I eat my final cookie of the night. While Amy says goodbye to her friends, I spot Grey in a knot of people by the juice bar. I wave, then walk over and we exchange a friendly hug.
The mysterious, dark world of S/M, at least on this beginner's adventure, feels friendly, safe, and crisply defined — a refreshing departure from the rest of my personal life with its endless succession of melodramas. I can't imagine S/M replacing the sweet alchemy of touch, and my endorphin high doesn't compare to the heady rush of love. It doesn't compare to the weight of pent-up anticipation I went in with either — but it's palpable nonetheless, and I feel giddy as I walk home in the drizzling rain. What a relief to have shifted, however slightly, the balance between fantasy and reality. I can't believe I waited so long. n°
©2007 Jennifer Leigh and hooksexup.com