GERRIE BLUM
At this point in my life D&S is central to my lifestyle. My friends are all within the D&S community. I have less in common with people I used to know who are “straight”—both the militantly heterosexual and the nonkinky. I guess I am following the advice of an old friend of mine, when he reached his 50s. At lunch one day he told me [that] both he and his wife were “shedding the shoulds.” I think I am doing that in my life—not putting up with situations or people because I should, because that’s what I’ve been taught. I have been redefining my life for the past five years.
I was divorced about 10 years ago. Today would have been my 35th anniversary. But I lucked out. I’m bisexual, with a preference for men. In D&S I’m switchable, with a preference for submissiveness with my partner, more inclined toward dominance with other people. [D&S] is the kind of recreational activity I can engage in with other people without actually having intimate sexual experiences as well. There are people that I may meet and [I’ll] then be able to “play” with them in a nonthreatening atmosphere and do some roleplaying and express that side of me outside the bedroom.
Looking back, I realize that in many ways I was in a D&S-kind of relationship before, without having named it, without the actual S&M side of it being exhibited. There wasn’t any spanking or hitting contact involved, but in my marriage, I was the ’50s compliant wife.
I also remember an unpleasant aspect for me as a child in terms of being isolated as punishment. I remember punishments: being tied to the toilet seat. I’m still trying to correct some childhood errors on the part of my parents. I don’t think I had what I could identify as fantasies or wishes about D&S or [about] transforming it into something more acceptable. It wasn’t until after my swinger experience that I was open to S&M.
Swinging for me began at the turn of the ’70s. I was not happy with the way my relationship with my husband was going. I felt that I was capable of more and that he was the inhibited and controlled one. What I did was to contact the man who had been my first lover at the age of 16. He was sexually experienced, socially sophisticated, he was even—although I didn’t realize it [then]—a little kinky, and we had a relationship for a couple or three years. He opened my eyes sexually. When I was ready for something else, I contacted him again, and I was absolutely right. He introduced me to new areas of sexuality in a very slow and gentle way, first introducing me to one more woman, then one more man, then one more couple. The operating concept was making each other feel good. I look back now and realize his dominant role in all of this. In swinging I began to express a part of myself that I had kept repressed during my marital and child-raising years. I was now opening myself to other kinds of people and combinations and sensations that I found very pleasing and very positive. Also, as my marriage was deteriorating, I needed reaffirmation of my attractiveness, my beauty, my sexuality.
[When I went] back to the singles dating scene after my separation, I found, much to my chagrin, [that] things were as bad as they were in the ’50s in terms of how women who had an interest in sex were treated by men. When I was a teenager in the ’40s and ’50s, there were good girls and bad girls. Then we went through the sexual revolution of the ’60s and everyone was expected to go all the way all the time. Now [it was] the ’80s. The fears about herpes followed by the fears and dread about AIDS were throwing people’s mind-sets back to the ’50s. [They were] much more judgmental about people who were sexually active. The attitude was that it was the men who wanted the sex and the women who were giving it; it was a bad bargain all around. My feeling was [that] “Sex is the friendliest thing two people do,” but here I was back in the old mentality of “If you were that easy, you can’t be very good, and if you’re not good, I’m certainly not going to take you home to mother, but I’ll tuck you anyhow.” I did not like the way I was being treated or the way it was making me feel.
But then I met Mitch. He had had previous interests in D&S. So, with the same kind of slowness and gentleness that I had experienced with my sexual guru 10 years earlier, he led me very carefully. We met in September of 1984, so I guess 1985 was my introduction. First, it was a silk scarf around the wrists, another silk scarf trailing over my body while I was immobilized. He then exchanged the silk scarfs for soft ropes. We then put cup hooks on [my] bed frame, with the open end down, so that as long as I was maintaining the tension on the ropes around my wrists or around my ankles, they were taut and secure. But I knew that all I had to do was release the tension and I was free. I liked that safety factor while I was becoming acquainted with the feeling of restraint and immobilization. When I knew what he was about, I could turn the tables and do to him the things that I experienced. I severed my previous relationship with this old friend of mine and pretty much got out of swinging as a regular interest.
[Mitch and I] had an egalitarian relationship from the beginning, and he’s very much the feminist. We started from an equal base, so that we can be submissive to each other, depending on what our own wants and needs are. We are not in a full-time, master-slave relationship. That wouldn’t work for us. We have a full, well-rounded relationship. This is an essential part of it, absolutely, but of course we each have other interests that we share as well.
My favorite is probably when I’m the submissive and having things done to me and for me, but there are times when I will get pleasure and satisfaction out of pleasing him by doing things that he likes. For myself, hand spanking is always appreciated. We have some soft cabretta and deerskin whips that I love to feel all over my body. I don’t respond well to straps or canes. The feeling is too intense.
One thing I learned years ago was that my pain threshold rises with my arousal level. What I might have perceived as painful when I was cold, if I’m really sexually aroused, if I’m really hot, that same sensation is erotic and stimulating, and not “pain.”
One of the first things that we did to start our collection of various implements was to buy a braided whip. [It] was a gray suede, soft whip, and it was very expensive. Because of [Mitch’s] sailing background, he started exploring the ideas of making whips out of various kinds of nylon line, which we brought to the clubs. It was very flattering to think that things that we had made for ourselves were also liked by other people. We popularized the concept of the white whip in New York, because that was the only color we could get nylon line in at the time. Coincidentally, it was also at a time when people were becoming health conscious. They loved the idea [that you can] throw it into the machine in a sock, and you can wash your whip.
It was really by popular demand that he was convinced to make something for someone in leather. And now he’s fallen in love with leather and has become one of the preeminent leather whip makers in the country. We’re delighted because the side benefits of this kind of business is that we bring joy to so many people. It’s a very gratifying way to earn a livelihood; it has satisfied some very important things in both of us—being able to do well by doing good is very gratifying. To be able to enjoy work that is also appreciated by others, to me, is the best of all possible worlds. It’s been very good for our relationship; it has given it a very firm foundation.
My philosophy as I’ve enunciated it to others before is that when I’m 94 and rocking on my front porch, I want to have many pleasant memories and few regrets. The regrets that most of us have are for things that we didn’t do, so for me to have a fantasy that could never happen would be a waste of my creative energies. I would much rather think of some experience with my partner, who is an incredibly creative man.
LAURA ANTONIO
I consider myself a gay woman. I embrace the word dyke, because lesbian seems too formal. Specifically, I am more a sadomasochist than anything else. By calling myself a sadomasochist [first] I have defined my lifestyle as centered around sadomasochism. My friends are into S&M; I will not take a lover who is not. My social activities mostly center around either S&M activities or my S&M friends.
I switch, but when I do I find it
difficult to [switch] with the same person. I embrace dominance and submission on totally different levels. Sensually, I’m a masochist. I get off on pain. Emotionally, I get a tremendous charge, however, from being in charge. I don’t think I’m more one or the other. I think of it all as a kind of journey. Along the way I can go two different paths. But I can’t take both at the same time.
I wish I could say, “And suddenly I woke up and realized I want to be whipped,” but in my own experience, I swear it’s genetic. My earliest memories involve fantasies of power exchange. Before I could read, I was locking myself in my own closet. I put Barbie in bondage. I remember being fascinated and scared at a library when I was about six because I had found a book in the children’s section called Greek Slave Boy and there was a flogging scene in it. I didn’t know why I liked it so much. Neither did I know why I shouldn’t tell someone that I liked it. My childhood is full of experiences like that, finding a thrill in literature or in a movie, liking bad guys. Bad guys always turned me on. David Copperfield’s father—with the famous caning scene—drove me insane for years. [The bad guys] used power and trust to their own ends. Unfortunately, they did it maliciously. When the good guys did it, they almost always did it blindly, so to me it doesn’t have the same satisfaction. But casting myself in the role as either the moustache-twisting, highly uniformed—uniforms have always been a fetish for me—bad guy or their troublemaking victim, straining in bondage, or even just getting the worst of a duel, has always thrilled me.
I was a precocious reader, and somewhere between seven and 12 I started reading very adult novels, particularly romantic novels of the “savage love” variety. My mother left them lying around, and I would pick them up and read them. They would be full of bodice ripping and incredibly long rapes that included very untypical rape scenes, like 20-minute sessions of cunnilingus. They always ended with the heroine having screaming orgasms, and I remember reading those and then going to the thesaurus to look up some words that they’d used that I didn’t know. It was the thesaurus that led me to sadomasochism.
[At] about 14 I became a very radical feminist, mostly in response to an oppressive father figure in my home. I suddenly realized that all these fantasies that I had, whether I was top or bottom in them, were very, very politically incorrect. I remember reading Ms. magazine. A woman had written a short guilty letter about how she’s a perfectly normal, wonderful woman in all ways except that she likes her boyfriends to paddle her ass before they have sex. The debate over that letter lasted half a year. I read every letter, taking every negative comment directly to heart. I didn’t [even] know how to masturbate to orgasm yet. All I knew was that reading about this stuff, thinking about it, were pleasurable to me. Yet the women that I had singled out as personal heroines seemed to not support what I was thinking about.
Gradually, it took the realization that liberation means the freedom to choose. I realized [that] as long as I was not exploiting another person, then whatever I did in my lifestyle, public or private, only had to be okay with me. Once that was put away I was able to splurge and really go out and embrace S&M and look for it in lovers and other partners. [But the disapproval of other gay women] makes it real hard for me to get a date in New York.
During my first relationship with a woman, it was clear who had the power in the relationship. She was older, she had more money, she had a more independent lifestyle, and she was better at what we were doing. I loved her as you love someone who’s teaching you something. I lit her cigarettes for her, drove her around, and more or less came when she called and went away when she dismissed me. She ordered the food at dinner and paid for it; I was almost a gentleman companion to her. She used to dress me in men’s clothing. It wasn’t until this year that I reembraced that particular aspect of my play. Now, it’s become a very major part of what I do.
That relationship never became formal. We were just friends. We were doing girl stuff, and the sexuality of it, the power of it, were always dismissed. She was bisexual but primarily heterosexual, so she gave a lot of weight to her relationships with men. I grew dissatisfied with that, and we gradually grew apart. I haven’t seen her since. She did, however, invite me to her wedding. Last year I got a call on my answering machine, and my first thought was, I can’t see her in the arms of another man. I didn’t [go]. I really couldn’t.
After that, I got involved with the science-fiction crowd and was one of the few women there. I was not out as a lesbian. I ended up forming a relationship with a man who was younger than I and who, in many ways, was submissive to me, except in bed, where I would tell him what I liked having done to me. Because he was relatively sexually inexperienced, he was wonderful. He was willing to try almost anything. My relationship with him lasted about three years, until we realized something very important about each other. We were both really gay! We parted as friends and I still talk to him every once in a while.
I then went into a dry period. I was working full-time. I had started and ended a business with an old friend that didn’t work out, and I was alone. I felt alone. I was scared to go out to what I knew were the two public S&M clubs in New York. I can’t tell you why I was scared. I can’t remember what I thought might happen to me if I went out to them. But I grew desperate. I really needed some sort of outlet. One weekend a friend of mine came to visit me, a man I’d known professionally. Over the weekend that he stayed with me, we came very close to some form of sex. He knew that I was into S&M and that was what I was prepared to do with him. But it didn’t work out: We parted and went our separate ways. The following evening I was so frustrated. I realized that I would have slept with a man I didn’t know very well [and] that I didn’t like sleeping with men that much, but I was willing to do it in order to get that experience, just to feel the sensuality. I hopped into my car, drove into the city, picked up a copy of Screw magazine, read the club reviews, and immediately went to Paddles. And from that day on I was a public person.
At first I used a pseudonym. People who did computer sex and phone sex always told me, “If you ever go out in public, don’t use your real name.” The reasons for that were, presumably, that if you did, people would know who you really were and something bad would happen. Maybe they would blackmail you or come visit you at home when you were serving tea to Mom. I don’t know. I gradually stopped using [the pseudonym]. That’s why I agreed to use my own name with this interview.
So that was my journey toward being public. I have courage in places where courage really means something. I think of myself as a person of integrity. I don’t lie. I think of myself as a person of honor. I don’t think of myself as having battlefield courage but the courage to say who and what I am and stand by it and not apologize for it is very important to me.
I like whips and flogging. I have a large collection of whips. I have 30 of them. All of them are handmade and most of them by the same craftsman. I appreciate the beauty of a fine whip. I practice frequently. I like straps. I like a nice woodshed scene with “daddy’s” belt or the razor strop. I like the sound they make, I like the sensation.
The most moving experience I’ve had to date was a night last year when I offered my formal submission to Sir Adam in public in a ceremony we created ourselves. He accepted it for a year and a day. For the occasion, a friend of mine gave me a beautiful floor-length black hooded cloak with a red satin lining. We had a stage. We had music written for the occasion, we made programs. We even had formal entertainment.
It was a really simple ceremony. We took an oath, one that Sir Adam particularly liked, out of The Lord of the Rings. The entire ceremony was based on a classic hero’s journey. I was to enter the room, walk through the crowd. I was attended by a man who, then and now, wanted to be my submissive. I carried one of my personal whips. When I reached the stage I gave my whip to Sir Adam as a symbol of my giving up my dominance for him.
In many people’s eyes, I did not literally belong to him. For one, our relationship was bounded always by the fact that it
was an S&M relationship. He had a lover. I was not his lover. Neither was I his slave. I was his submissive. There were some things that people expected us to be doing with each other that we didn’t do. I didn’t perform household chores for him; I didn’t live with him. He had no control over my professional life or my money. To a lot of people, these things are necessary for a D&S relationship.
I fantasize and dream about being able to have two relationships simultaneously, one where I am submissive and masochistic, and the other where I’m a sadistic dominant. One of my most powerful images is coming home late at night after a session where I have been bottom—my body is marked, I’m tired, [and] I’m so emotionally tense that I need relief. I could come home and have my bottom waiting to take my boots off, to attend me when I bathe, and then to service and please me, to feel their tongue washing over welts on my body. I think that is particularly hot. I’m going to work on making it happen.
A lot of the things that I’ve touched on—and the fact that I am a lifestyler—sometimes scare people. I get reactions like, “I could never do that,” or “I don’t understand how you could do that.” The fact is [that] there are a lot of things I don’t understand about other people and other people’s lives. I don’t understand how a woman could go through childbirth. This, to me, is a startling and scary thing to contemplate. Yet billions of women do it. People tell me that they couldn’t be as dedicated to S&M as I am, because I’m dedicated politically, emotionally, and socially to it. Yet people are politically, emotionally, and socially dedicated to nonpersonally pleasurable things, like political parties and corporations. It makes a lot of sense to me that one should support and be active in that which gives [her personal] pleasure.
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