Complicit

Managed to grab lunch with Offensive Charmer last week, before he was due to wing his way back to New York and back to a very intriguing situation. He's always described himself to me as a disciplinarian rather than a sadist - punishment and correction is the key thing, not just inflicting pain. The D/s component has always been a figure in our conversations, which is one of the reasons I enjoy talking to him so much as we tend to be of a mind on these things: we both like the psychology of the scenario, that the violence, the deprivations and the suffering has a reason to it. Even the simplest of reasons will do for me: "because I want to hurt you" is perfect and makes my heart to a little happy flip. Until recently, he's needed more specific contexts, particularly that of instructional pain, whereby it is a way of controlling, managing and making the other person better.

However, whilst across the pond he met someone who described themselves as a "true masochist" and although we both tend to baulk at such a phrase, it appears that the lady might have a point. She wanted pain. Pain to the point of not being able to take any more pain. Just pain. No submissive tendencies, no intricate games of power, just to be hit until she could not be hit any more. It was something of a revelation to him, not that a person could want such a thing, but that he could get enjoyment out of it: here the pain has no point, no focus beyond that which it is - one person beating the hell out of someone else and both of them really getting off on it.

Perfect situation perhaps? But there were worries about what might drive the desire to be hurt so much. We are taught to avoid pain, taught to remove and erase it wherever we find it. It is something we are conditioned to think of as bad, a warning signal. Kinky folk know that pain can be hot and exciting and pleasurable, I'm one of them. However, when someone really, really desires extreme quantities of pain, even though we know, on some level, that it can be satisfying and sexy we also worry. Because we think of ourselves as safe, sane and consensual. And that means navigating the line between "good" pain and "bad" pain. We want to hurt just enough, but not too much. So when someone wants to be really pushed to the limits, it can be very worrying, both for ourselves and for them. Difficult thoughts for a dominant: is this the right thing to do, is it actually damaging, am I mentally unwell for enjoying this, is she mentally unwell for wanting me to do it? All things we have to work through, and with care.

Which is what he was doing. And I was trying to help. He felt complicit, and I suppose I can see his point, but unless we know someone really well, we can't judge what drives them to do things we consider dangerous or strange, especially when by all accounts, they enjoy doing it. There are endless reams of discussion on whether participation in BDSM is a cry for help, a precursor to needing quantities of therapy to get over such-and-such a problem. It's all to easy to succumb to this impression. Then start to worry. So there's no easy answer, we found, over our coffees, that we couldn't solve that particular problem, but he isn't going to be deterred. In the back of my mind, I have an image of him, grinning, and this mysterious woman being pushed to an almost religious level of ecstasy by the ensuing blows. It's a nice image. I wish them both all the best. Though as he says, society and general consensus is against him, so if there's a story of sexual misadventure in NY, we know the truth of it.