In a recent conversation I was having on FetLife.Com, a friend mentioned that “Its all about trust and having fun while doing so at least for me.” That prompted a rather heartfelt response from me and I thought I would elaborate here.
As you know, I have been reading “50 Shades of Grey.” I have some arguments with it, particularly the emphasis on traumatic roots to an interest in D/s and SM behavior, but I enjoy its constant refrain of required trust, and its accompanying joy and outright overwhelming Fun. I believe strongly that if it is something you feel forced to endure, something you experience exclusively because it is enjoyable for your partner, then the relationship will not last. It must be fun and rewarding for both. (I would also wonder about a partner who wishes to take their pleasure knowing that their partner gets no joy from it, but that goes back to a discussion on Sadism.)
For me, ALL of this, is about two things, Fun, and finding that path, that channel, where a connection can be made between two people on levels usually not touched. That is what compelled me into the scene. I believe, with great regret, that for the vast majority of people, there is not the smallest comprehension that this depth of connection is possible. While BDSM is absolutely not the only way of developing such a connection, it is one, and I constantly look for ways to let people know that this connection is possible for anyone.
Something to which I alluded in one of my earliest posts, I had lived a life where the hunger for that level of connection was profound and unrealized. How can you know you are hungry for something when you have never tasted it? It is difficult to find an appropriate analogy, but it is like living constantly by ingesting vaguely warm, nutritious, green, amorphous soup. You live on it, grow on it and every once in a while there is an interesting lump. But the capacity to experience more is there, the hunger is there.
Then one day, someone walks in with a nice bowl of Hot French Onion Soup, with crisp toast floating, the bowl dripping down with baked cheese, the sight, the taste, the moment of realization that something is THERE, that it is POSSIBLE, that it EXISTS, is life changing. The senses explode and you are overwhelmed with not only the physical, emotional and spiritual Ecstatic Joy, but the accompanying melancholic sorrow that you have spent so much time without it.
I do not want you to think that this joy, once discovered is everlasting. The world does not work that way. As I heard many years ago, Before God Realization, hauling water and taking out the garbage. After God Realization, hauling water and taking out the garbage. Life goes on and you live it the best you can. But now you know, and in times of trouble, if you can grasp at a moment of clarity, you understand that what was possible, is possible, and you can aim your life in a direction more open to the grand possibilities. Do It.
The Eroticist