I’m not terribly secretive about my interest in BDSM or sexuality in general, and anyone who knows me, knows I have very strong opinions about these matters, and that I’m not ashamed of my interests; if confronted about them I won’t lie about them or cover them up. Still, I find it crucial to keep that side of me considerably apart from my vanilla life, if only for my family’s sake.
My parents are aware of what I write. The extent to which they do, I’m not quite sure. The way I approached kink to begin with was strictly academic. My first year abroad in college, when I had complete access to bookstores and online delivery, I immersed myself in all sorts of texts. I’ve always been guided by obsession, and as it is with most things, one thing lead to another, I discovered kink, and I never looked back.
I suppose my first exposure was CSI, with Madame Heather. I fell in love with all of it, but dismissed my strong responses the same way I’d done with Michelle Pfeiffer’s brilliant portrayal of Catwoman. When I was fifteen, and going through an obsession with Anne Rice’s novels, I downloaded The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty with no clue as to what it really was. I fell absolutely in love with it. Because it was an audiobook, the voice simply charmed me and seduced me and utterly de-sensitized me.
I still recall sending it to a friend who was actually the first person to ‘corrupt’ me, as we so lovingly put it, exposing me to not-so-innocent role-playing between our characters. None of that Stephenie Meyer BS where the lights fade off, suddenly it’s the next day, and we have the remnants of ‘extremely kinky sex’ in the bruises and bite-marks to be found everywhere.
She was thrilled with her accomplishment in having tainted this little prude who’d blush and freeze at the mention of something an vulgar and un-lady like as sex.
Though I listened to those books hundreds of times, something didn’t really click. This couldn’t possibly be pornography, since it was so beautifully written and psychologically complex. I felt like such a naughty little girl listening to those books, but there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with them. I hadn’t been terribly exposed to pornography, but I understood pornography was supposed to be sinful disgusting filth that somehow made you into a sexual criminal.
I got over those books, and for the longest time didn’t give them any real thought.
Fast-forward several years later. Finding myself with easy access to bookstores (where I lived there were seldom any), I could continue with my Anne Rice obsession (yes, this obsession has lasted over five years). I’d read all of her Vampire Chronicles, and her Mayfair Witches; all of these very sexual books which I devoured completely unfazed by their contents despite everything that had been drilled into my head, because they were good art.
I read Belinda, then moved on to Exit to Eden. It was with Exit to Eden that everything just clicked. the social critique in that book rang so unbelievably true. Combine that with my purchase of Katherine Ramsland’s ‘Roquelaure Reader‘, and my whole view of the world absolutely changed.
Any feelings of Catholic guilt over my sexuality and my role as a woman positively vanished.
I recall at that time openly reading my pornographic novels challenging anyone who dared to call me out on it, and I engaged in such enriching conversations with those who went out of their way to ask me why I was reading what I was reading, or if I felt not shame for doing it in public.
My attitude echoed very much that of Lisa Kelly in Exit to Eden.
And finally discovering in a bookstore near the Berkeley campus, in silent disbelief and blushing excitement, that shocking French classic which others must have known for years, looking so innocent in its smooth white book jacket, The Story of O.
No, you are not alone.
I felt everyone in that store was looking at me when I paid for it. Yet flushed and glaze-eyed I sat in the Cafe Mediterranee turning page after page, defying someone to see it, comment on it, come up to me, closing it only when I had finished all of it, and staring through the open doors at the students hurrying through the rain on Telegraph Avenue, thinking I will not live all my life with it being fantasy…
A shift in personality occurred in that I felt no shame or guilt, or dread in regards to my sexuality. If anything I became enraged because of society’s assumptions that males are the only ones who should be allowed to be blunt about their sexuality, since ‘They’re guys.. all they think about is sex’. Yeah, guess what? Women do too.
I am tremendously open in regards to my sexuality and my opinions in regards to it, but something a friend pointed out a few days ago when confessing to her own overly-sexual nature: some people are more comfortable with kink and sexuality than others, and so out of common courtesy, one picks and chooses who they can show that side of them to.
A few of our mutual friends are considerable prudes (and we love them for it), and so it’s not even a matter of keeping up with this asexual, lady-like facade society makes us wear (though that is a partial reason). It’s out of consideration to them, not to make them uncomfortable.
I love that people seek me out to talk about these things, because they’re not topics they can usually openly discuss.
Yesterday I had an unexpected visit from a friend who dropped down for a week from college for Thanksgiving break, and we spent two hours talking about topics ranging from our introductions to pornography, to the validity of sapphic fantasies in a woman and her desire to experiment.
I love seeing this side of my friends, and in no way look down on them for it; if anything it increases the amount of respect I have for them, because they’re not pretending to be that asexual victorian prude of a woman ‘good girls’ are supposed to be.