| Sado-Masochism Well, here's an article retyped for this page from a magazine, and I think it pretty well sums up some aspects of S&M... |
| Pleasure Not Panic The Art of Welcoming Pain by Joseph W. Bean Introduction Pain is mysterious stuff, and everyone reacts to it. If five people get more or less the same thump on the heel from the same over-wound automatic door closer, one will glance behind himself, and go on to his next appointment: another will wince, shrug, and limp a bit; another will need pain relief medication; another will take the day off from the office; and another will sue for millions (or threaten to do so), limping and complaining and even actually aching for days. If the same five people see someone else in pain, their reactions might range from smothering sympathy to the genuine belief that the only way to get over the pain is to ignore it, and get on with what you were doing. What is intolerable pain to one person is cozy welcome midnight reminder of a hard-played afternoon football game to another. And yet, presented with the idea that there are people who seek pain, who get high on pain, and who get hard or wet from pain, even the look-a’-my-bruises football player will usually react with disgust. In fact, if athletes could think of SM as sports they'd always know who was winning. If executives who are willing to stare at columns of tiny numerals till their heads are about to burst and their eyes are watering could think of SM as business, they'd understand the acceptance of pain, but they'd always know who was profiting from whom. SM, though, is neither a sport nor a business (not as such, not usually), so it mystifies and disgusts. Not that they're more likely to understand, but it might be better to take the question of pain to a gardener rather than to athletes and businessmen. He or she would understand the idea, if not the actuality quickly enough: Pain is the weed-word of sensation. Last years carnations are unwanted when they push up among this years tidy rows of pansies. They are weeds. They are plants not welcome in this place at this time. Just so, pain can be seen as a sensation that is not welcome in a particular time, coming in the way it does. But just as the carnations are still flowers, pain is still a sensation, and, just as a gardener might choose to accommodate or move the pesky carnations, a masochist is able to process and use sensations that others would dismiss as pain. So, the eternal question arises, the one that has to be asked at just about every SM demonstration-lecture: If a masochist gets hit by a car, does he or she enjoy it? No. Its simple as that. No, a masochist does not enjoy being injured accidentally. His experience with pain may make him better able than most people to understand how badly injured he is, to know what kind of care he is likely to need, and even to bear the pain. None of which should suggest that an SM bottom wants, seeks, or puts up with accidental injury any more than anyone else. That sort of sensory experience is a weed. It is pain. SM bottoms learn very quickly what kinds of stimulation and sensation they do and donut want. They learn almost as quickly how to encourage Tops to give them stimulation they want and to prevent Tops from providing sensations they want to avoid. (The gray areas between what a person wants and what the same person wants to avoid are made up of the sorts of stimulation that are negotiable, more often than not.) What bottoms learn less quickly is how to process the intense sensation they get in SM scenes—0kay, the pain. The processing is necessary if they are going to bear sensation/stimulation for a longer time, which means getting more pleasure that makes pain-seeking attractive. Of course. Being able to remain gladly functional as a bottom in a longer (but not necessarily heavier) scene also leads to a bottom having a better chance of attracting better Tops. Processing pain, at least to a certain extent, is natural. If it were not, even a hangnail could bring the toughest bruiser to his knees (come on guys, you wouldn't want that for yourself so don't go wishing it on the big boys). For some people—boys more than girls—an additional degree of pain processing is taught from a very early age, but not always in the healthiest way. Then there are the lucky few who, once they become involved in SM, intentionally continue their education in pain processing by noticing what works, and developing that; noticing what others do, and trying that; and by asking questions or taking classes to increase their pain-handling capabilities. How a person goes about processing intense sensation into a tide of pleasure depends on what kind of person he is to begin with. Some people respond to pain with nothing short of "Oh, boy!" These are true masochists, processing pain is not an issue, what they need is to be told how to get more of the specific type of pain they want. Others react with "Oh, yeah." These people are going to fight for the Top position (even if it is an obvious foregone conclusion who will win the fight, and it isn't always). If they lose (was there ever any doubt?), these guys are going to "take it like men" (whether they are male or female), which is very rudimentary and fairly ineffective way of processing pain. In fact, a lot of bottoms learn to give the impression that they are toughing it out like good little soldiers when, in actuality they have learned and are using much more sophisticated pain processing methods. Another initial reaction to pain in the playroom is "Oh, no!" This comes from people who, supposing they knew what they were getting into, need help. They need to learn by heart the path from whack to heaven, and it will be hard if they can't shed their oh-no attitude. And finally, there are people who react to the prospect of pain with nothing heartier than "Oh, well." Chances are they will never be bothered to learn how to handle, use, and enjoy the ministrations of a good Top. Until they stop soaking up the hot SM energy and go back to the excitement of word-search puzzles, they will be yawning while one Top after another wears himself out at the other end of a whip or whatever. Techniques Strangely, the ways people process pain are often considered more personal than the most graphic details of their sex lives. Maybe the highly-guarded privacy gathers around pain handling because processing pain seems to imply that the bottom "needs help’ which he ought to be glad to manage without. Or, maybe the problem is simply that, because we don’t often speak of it, we haven’t developed a comfortable language in which to tell each other about our pain-processing successes and failures, methods and magic. Whatever the reason, most people prefer not to talk about the pain processing techniques they use to use or the unconscious processes they observe in themselves. Nonetheless, it is not difficult to describe a few ways to juggle pain while spinning into pleasure. Breath With TV motherhood in graphic and perennial bloom, you don’t need ever to have known a pregnant woman to know that they are told to "breathe, breathe, breathe" in order to cope with the pains of labor and giving birth. Why they should have to be told is another question since every little kid in the world seems to instinctive understand that huffing, puffing, and sucking deep breaths changes the way a smashed fingertip feels. Not surprisingly, breath is the most common vehicle for pain control in the SM play, too. Generally, the ides is to breathe out the pain, and breath in a relaxed receptivity to the scene in progress. There is no point in asking whether this, or any pain processing method for that matter, is more imagination or medicine, visualization or self-delusion. The point is that it works. Engaging the palpable sense of bodily presence initiated by the introduction of the painful stimulation, the process is simple: locate the breath within the body as a gatherer of the pain, deliver it to the lungs, and release pain and spent air together. If for no other reason, this method is bound to be effective with early stages and low levels of pain just because it stands as a reminder to breathe, and to breathe deeply. When we breathe deeply, we are doing a more effective job of heat exchanging between the surrounding environment and the interior or our bodies, and mild trauma is often greeted with slightly elevated body temperature. Not that anything is explained away by that fact, bit it may help in the skeptic engage his imagination and put breath to work in SM. Fantasy Some people find that pain is managed when they submerge themselves in the right fantasy role. A person being flogged, for example, casts himself in the role of the Roman galley slave for whom the pain of flogging (historically be damned) is an everyday experience. Since it is nothing out of the ordinary, it is nothing all that disquieting. In the end, it is tolerated. Whether this path to bearing pain closes some of the doors to pleasure is very debatable. Some bottoms claim that they don’t notice when the role ceases to be used, or necessary. For them, then, role playing (even if no one else knows they are doing it) serves a purpose, very likely either keeping them occupied until the body begins to handle the pain in its own way, or acting as a cover for unconscious pain processing methods they may not appreciate so much. Heat, Light, and Color Heat is naturally generated in the body most methods of stimulation. Whether it is slapped with a paddle, scoured with an abrasive toy, pinched, stretched, or punctured, the body sends its investigative reporters (armies of blood cells) to the sight of the trauma, and blood is the heat-carrier. So, it is not much of a leap to identify pain with heat. Just about everybody can do it, and that is the beginning of a rather simple method of pain processing. To experience heat as light is also a relatively easy step. Even speaking scientifically the distinction between what we call light is a matter of perception as much as anything. Similarly, to assign a color designation to any experience of heat or light is well within the realm of normal imaginative capabilities. So, pain processing methods that work with heat can also be performed with light and color. There are three distinct options available here, and combinations of two or three of them are not uncommon either. First, heat (which will stand for color and light as well at the moment) can be generalized. Just as a towel is less "wet" when the water in it is spread by the capillary action over a large area of it’s fibers, pain is less intense when it is experienced over a larger area of the body. Some people find it very easy to recognize the pain of a single blow in a specific area, then to release that pain so it can spread over a larger area, perhaps even being driven over larger areas with each successive blow. A good Top, recognizing that a bottom is having trouble dealing with the immediate pain will often stroke the reddened skin outward from the center, not to soothe per se so much as to encourage the generalizing of the pain over a larger area. For this technique to work, the bottom needs nothing more intention that it should, and a modicum of imagination. Next, the heat (light, color) can be drawn to the surface. This operation may require more imagination, and it seems to have less science in it than most, but it works for some people. Here in the experience of pain is heat, for example, is pressed outward from within the body, leaving the heat on the surface. Superficial pain is, almost by definition, tolerable. That is the primary force behind the effectiveness of this method, and a certain amount of its appeal comes from the fact that we have seen superficial injuries heal all our lives, but we retain (and should!) a fear of internal injury. In fact, if a pain is only skin deep, how could anyone possible find it intolerable, especially if managing that pain means that the scene goes on (with a Top who happens to be hot enough to have gotten the scene going in the first place). Heat, light, and—as a kind of light—color, can also be radiated. In fact, they actually are radiated from the body in their various ways all the time. Where generalizing spread the transformed pain around the body, and superficializing brought it out like a shell encasing the body, radiating expels the pain. There is, of course, still higher degree of imaginative capacity called for here, but it is not beyond the sort of imagination required for most meditations. Whether it is sensed as heat, light, or a defined color, the pain can be radiated outward from the source—however superficial or deep within the body. This not only reduces the experience of pain as pain, but it tends to encourage the experience of joy in the leathersex scene, and to connect leathersex with the most effortless kind of letting go, which multiplies the opportunities for SM joy. Storage A lot of people, especially novices, have trouble identifying pain with anything as welcome as heat, light, or color, they can’t deal with fantasy roles, or let go enough to use them; and they find their breath more often pushing them toward weed-pain than lifting them away from it. And yet, they are getting something they "know" they want. They wonder if they really want it, but keep coming back for more or less the same thing. Sadly, they also blame their Tops for not teaching them how to cope, or for not "doing it so it feels good." For these people, one method of pain processing that I almost always accessible, is this: store the energy of the pain in or near the site where it is being originated, let it build up without resisting it. Give your attention of full awareness of the sensation and of the fact that it is exactly what you bargained for, holding on to it as long as possible. Then, having warned your Top of this moment before the scene began, you can signal (perhaps with a safeword) that it is time to release the stored energy. Release it by shuddering if that comes naturally, shaking if you need to, screaming, squealing, wriggling, or whatever it takes, but remain aware that this is not meant to be a mad scene, just a complete release of stored energy. Minor variations on this technique are obvious. Bottoms who scream and squeal, wriggle, and shudder all through a scene without any encouragement are evidently performing energy releases all the time. This may be distressing for the Top. It may even be distracting for other players in the room. It may even be destructive for the entire leathersex atmosphere. Or not. It depends on the nature of the release activity, the intensity of it, and the attitude of the Top and others present. But the bad thing is that it is probably stealing all the more intense experiences from the bottom. Releasing your pain-delivered energy, stroke by stroke as it is received, is like spending your money dollar by dollar as it is earned: You never get to use it to buy anything big enough to have been wished for.
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