When Francus comes to sollace with his whoore
He sends for rods and strips himselfe stark naked:
For his lust sleepes and will not rise before,
By whipping of the wench it be awaked.
I envie’him not, but wish I had the powre,
To make my selfe his wench but one halfe houre.
Thomas Middleton and John Fletcher’s seventeenth-century play The Nice Valour includes a character, Lapet, who delights in submitting to beatings and even writes a book about how to optimize the experience of being beaten. Sixty-seven years after Shakespeare’s death, Robert Dixon addressed masochism in Canidia, or the Witches: A Rhapsody in Five Parts, which describes a “bumpkin lout” who
. . . beg’d for Rods, would madly rail,
If Lictors with Rods did not brush his Tail
. . .
And so furious was the Lown,
That he must see the Blood run down.
Thus he delighted above measure,
To feel at once both Pain and Pleasure.
The more tormented, the more he itcht,
None can say, but he was bewitcht.
He was conjur’d into Venus Arms,
No otherwise than by Whipping Charms.
We taught him upon Rue to feed,
To stop the Urine of his Seed,
For fear [there] should be more of his Breed.
As John Yamamoto-Wilson has pointed out, these early references to masochism are not without judgment: Dixon’s masochist is “bewitched” and must eat rue to prevent him from passing his affliction to a new generation, and in The Nice Valour, the masochist’s name—Lapet—is French for “the fart.” In a 1639 disquisition on sexual masochism, Of the Use of Flogging in Venereal Affairs, by Johann Heinrich Meibom (which was, according to David Savran, the authoritative text on the subject for two hundred years), the author “rejoice[s]” the fact that if such a “perverse” case were to occur in Germany, the masochist would be “severely punished by avenging flames”—that is, he or she would be burned alive.
When Shakespeare himself wrote about kink, it was in much more subtle (and compassionate) ways. Cleopatra describes a “stroke [that] is as a lover’s pinch, which hurts, and is desired,” and there are powerful sadomasochistic allusions in Measure for Measure and King Lear, too. In the scenes where Petruchio “tames” Kate by depriving her of food, sleep, and new clothing, it’s worthwhile to consider that sensory deprivation (in other words, deprivation of sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste, along with the associated loss of control) is a kink of its own. Who’s to say how Kate and Petruchio get down?
Kate and Petruchio are performers. Before they meet each other, they play the roles of a shrew and a madman—and later, while he “tames” her, they are still playing. But it’s a game for which they wrote the rules themselves. That’s the only thing that matters.
Kate and Petruchio are in love. They fall in love almost from the first moment they set eyes on each other. In fact, their mutual attraction is so strong that they joke about cunnilingus during their very first conversation:
PETRUCHIO
Come, come, you wasp, i’ faith you are too angry.
KATHERINE
If I be waspish, best beware my sting.
PETRUCHIO
My remedy is then to pluck it out.
KATHERINE
Ay, if the fool could find it where it lies.
PETRUCHIO
Who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting? In his tail.
KATHERINE
In his tongue.
PETRUCHIO
Whose tongue?
KATHERINE
Yours, if you talk of tales, and so farewell.
PETRUCHIO
What, with my tongue in your tail?
From a modern perspective, it sounds like Petruchio is joking about putting his tongue in Kate’s butt. (And if we learned anything from Mercutio and Romeo and Juliet, it’s that Shakespeare is not above anal bawdry.) But in Elizabethan England, tail was actually slang for vulva, not ass. With that in mind, read their conversation again. Imagine that sting is a sly reference to orgasm. This time, Kate teases Petruchio about whether he can “find” a rather critical (if sometimes elusive) target of female sexuality, and Petruchio proves that he does indeed know exactly how to find it.
Even today, female sexual satisfaction is often swept under the rug. But not so with Kate and Petruchio. From the very first time they meet, their relationship is built on a foundation that emphasizes her sexual satisfaction over even his own. To Petruchio, Kate comes first (in every sense of the phrase).
Many people assume that Shakespeare’s stories are fundamentally male fantasies. After all, the English theater was restricted to male actors, and Shakespeare himself was a man. But as the Shakespeare scholar Stephen Orgel has pointed out, that interpretation isn’t entirely correct.
“The theatre was a place of unusual freedom for women in the period,” he writes. “[F]oreign visitors comment on the fact that English women go to the theatre unescorted and unmasked, and a large proportion of the audience consisted of women.” Orgel goes on to argue (correctly, I think) that the success of any play or playwright at that time therefore would have depended on the endorsement of both genders. If women in the audiences did not enjoy Shakespeare’s stories, his work could not have been a success.
PAIN IS NOT the opposite of pleasure. The opposite of pleasure is numbness.
In John’s hands, I was never numb.
His hand cracked against my butt. He had been spanking me for about ten minutes, and I winced at the impact. I curled my fingers into the couch.
“This is for your own good, you know,” John said. “How do you think your professors will react next year if you’re late for a class?” He smacked me again.
“To be honest, babe, I don’t think they’d react like this,” I said. “Although if they did, I could probably blackmail my way into an A.”
The joke broke John’s focus. He stopped spanking me and laughed.
“That was cute, Jillian,” he said, walking across the room. He went to his desk and opened a drawer. “I hope you think you’re funny. The only thing your little jokes do is remind me that I don’t have your attention.”
He pulled a thick ruler out of the drawer.
“Maybe this will help you focus,” he said.
A wave of adrenaline turned my stomach inside out.
“That’s not one of those ones with a metal edge, right?” I asked, nervously.
“No, darling,” he drawled. “I bought this one just for you. It’s only wood.” He tapped it, very gently, against my bottom. The gesture sent a thrill of anticipation up my spine.
“I should have sent you to the store to buy this,” John mused.
“I wouldn’t have gone,” I muttered.
John grabbed a handful of my hair and pulled my head up.
“Did you just say something?” he asked.
“No,” I squealed. (I can feel the weight of collective judgment from all the kinky people out there who are disappointed in me for saying “no” instead of “no, sir.” But what can I say? John and I didn’t play with the word sir. He never asked me to, and it never occurred to me to introduce it. That word is all over my erotica, but it’s just not part of my real life.)
“That’s what I thought,” John said, letting go of my hair. I reached up to rub the sore spot on my scalp.
Then I heard the swish of something moving through the air and felt a sharp, broad smack. I squealed and reached back to wrap my fingers around my butt. I’m a masochist, but pain is pain.
John set the ruler on the edge of the couch, next to me. For a second, I wondered if we were done. Then I heard the familiar sound of silk sliding against cotton as he took off his necktie. (When he changed jobs and moved to Barcelona, the T-shirts and jeans of Seville had disappeared.)
“I’ve told you before to keep your hands away from there,” John said. “I coul
d hurt you if I hit your hand.” He leaned forward and grabbed my wrists, binding them together in front of me with his blue tie. Then he stood up again. I frowned and moved my hands, adjusting to the fabric around my wrists.
“Why am I spanking you, Jillian?” John asked, from behind me. His voice was hoarse. He hit me with the ruler a few more times.
“Because I was late.” I sighed.
“What are you going to do to make sure that doesn’t happen again?” A few more smacks.
“I’m going to find a magical train that never, ever gets stuck in a tunnel,” I snarked.
At that, John put his left hand on my back to hold me down and paddled me with the ruler, hard, thirty or forty times in rapid succession. My hands strained to reach back and stop him, but John’s tie kept them locked in front of me.
“That’s not the answer I wanted,” he said.
The pain and surprise of that flurry of smacks overpowered my last bit of resistance, and I started to cry. I pulled away from the sofa and bent my knees, dropping my bottom to safety just below the range of his ruler.
John gently tapped me with it.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he said in a firm tone of voice. “Stand up. We’re not done.”
I shook my head. A tear fell onto the carpet.
“No,” I sobbed. “Please. I can’t.”
And I meant that. I really did.
Of course, if John hadn’t done what he did next, I would have been frustrated and disappointed the next day. The best translation I can offer is that John was like a personal trainer, pushing me to do one more set at the gym. (I’ll never understand why pushing through pain in pursuit of an athletic goal is praised as evidence of mental strength, while pushing through pain in pursuit of a sexual goal is stigmatized as evidence of mental illness.) And please don’t forget: by this point, John and I had established a safe word, and “no, please, I can’t,” even when sincere, was not it.
“What did I just tell you?” John replied, unmoved. “You don’t want to make me ask again.”
With a shuddering sob, I obeyed.
John reached out to touch me.
“Breathe, Jillian,” he murmured in a soft voice.
I nodded.
“Do you want to try my last question one more time?” John asked. The soft voice was gone.
“Next time, I’ll leave fifteen minutes earlier,” I recited, sniffling.
“That’s better,” John said.
He reached out and brushed the tips of his fingers against my butt. I wasn’t expecting the gentle touch and flinched, but then I relaxed into it. I understood what he was doing. He was giving me a break. I needed to ramp down before I could ramp up again.
“We’re almost done,” he told me. “You’re being very good. I’m proud of you.” His finger traced the edges of a bruise that was coming into focus, like a Polaroid photo, on my left butt cheek. I hugged my face into the couch cushion. My senses were so raw and active from the spanking that John’s gentle touch felt almost unbearably intense, like the hypersensitivity of skin after an orgasm. I took a deep breath, released a quiet moan, and shuddered. At that, John pulled his fingers away. The contact high of his touch vanished.
“I’m going to give you ten more,” he said, tapping my butt with the ruler to show me what to expect. “I want you to count them out loud. If you behave, we’ll stop at ten. But if you feel like sharing any more clever remarks, we could go much higher than that. Is that clear?”
I nodded into the pillow.
In that moment, I understood my options: If I couldn’t take much more, I’d “behave” during those last ten smacks and then it would be over. But if I wanted to go further, I could be argumentative or disobedient and the game would go on. Kink is more collaborative than it appears. I had control over the situation, too.
But I didn’t need to use it. We’d only reached number four when John stopped spanking me and put his hand on my lower back. His touch felt tentative and uncertain. Something was wrong. I wiped some tears out of my eyes and looked over my shoulder at him.
John wasn’t looking at me. His eyes were fixed on the wall behind us, which had a long, wide window. Although we were on the seventeenth floor, another apartment faced ours from the building across the courtyard.
“I think someone is watching us,” John murmured.
“Oh, my God,” I breathed, dropping to the floor, out of sight.
“She’s gone now,” said John, pulling our curtains shut. “It’s okay.”
“It is not okay!” I screeched. I jumped to my feet and ran—as best I could, with my pants and underwear twisted around my ankles—across the living room and into the bathroom. I locked the door.
“Oh, my God,” I moaned again.
John tapped on the door.
“Let me in, bird,” he said. “It’s okay. She was probably just turned on.”
He didn’t sound convinced.
“I am going to drown myself in the bathtub,” I announced. I could imagine exactly how we must have looked to the woman across the courtyard. John laughed.
“Don’t laugh,” I roared. “This is so not funny.”
Outside, there was a muffled thud.
“I’m sitting against the door now,” John said. “Warn me if you’re going to open it. I don’t want to fall back and crack my head open.”
I ignored him and focused on unbinding my wrists with my teeth. Then I pulled some towels off a rack and began to build a towel nest with them in the bathtub.
“I don’t know why you’re freaked out,” John continued. “I’m the one who’s about to go to prison.”
“That’s true,” I agreed. “But at least prison will improve your Spanish.”
“Are you going to come out of there and vouch for me when the police show up?” John asked. It was only half a joke.
“No,” I announced. I climbed into my towel nest and curled up. “Don’t drop the soap,” I added, helpfully.
On the other side of the door, I heard John sigh.
“Aren’t girls like you supposed to be submissive and deferential, bird?” he asked.
I froze. That had struck a nerve.
“You’re just lucky I’m willing to do this stuff for you,” I finally said.
Another sigh.
“Okay, okay,” he replied. I leaned my head against the edge of the tub and closed my eyes.
When I next opened them, Katherine was sitting on the edge of my bathtub.
“The door is locked,” I said to her. “How did you get in?”
Kate shrugged.
“It’s one of the perks of being fictional, I guess,” she replied.
I leaned back into my towels.
“Some people don’t like you,” I told her. “George Bernard Shaw said that your relationship is ‘disgusting.’”
Kate sighed.
“I know,” she said. “But your reflection in another’s eyes is just that—a reflection. It’s as intangible as a word, and changes just as fast.”
“We’re not talking about my reflection, Kate,” I replied. “We’re talking about yours.”
She stood up and quietly unlocked the door.
“Are you sure?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder at me as she left.
Twenty minutes passed. The police weren’t coming.
“I wish you’d let me come in there with you, bird,” John said from the hallway.
“It’s been unlocked for almost half an hour,” I replied from my towel nest in the bathtub. “You could’ve come in anytime.”
The door cracked open. John looked tired.
“You unlocked it?” he asked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I shrugged.
John pulled off his shoes and climbed into the tub, on top of me.
“Do you have a condom?” I asked.
John wrapped himself around my body and lifted me to the side. He slid to the bottom of the tub and I moved on top of him.
“That’s n
ot what this is about, Jillian,” he said, as he settled in. “I just want to hold you for a minute.”
“Oh,” I replied.
“But, for future reference, I always have a condom,” he said, with a weary smile.
I rolled my eyes.
“Does that mean you were a Boy Scout?” I asked him.
“What?”
“Their motto is ‘be prepared,’” I explained.
“No,” John said, in a soft voice. “I have never been a Boy Scout.”
I snuggled into the crease between his body and the side of the tub, and rested my head on his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around me and closed his eyes. We stayed there, silently, for long minutes. Eventually John’s hand slid down to my butt.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“If I say ‘I’m fine,’ does that mean you’ll feel free to use that thing on me again?” I asked, looking up at him. He smiled and pulled away, so that I slid back to the bottom of the tub, where I started. He was on top of me again.
“I, for one, enjoyed ‘that thing,’” he drawled. “What about you?”
I ignored the question.
“My train did get stuck in a tunnel, by the way,” I said. “That wasn’t a lie.”
John sighed. He seemed tired.
I reached over the edge of the tub and grabbed his blue necktie, which I’d left on the floor after I freed myself from it with my teeth. I wrapped it around his right wrist.
John looked at me. His eyes flickered with amusement.
“What are you doing, bird?” he asked.
“I’m giving you a bow,” I replied, as I pulled the fabric to spread out the loops. “It looks nice.”
In response, John slid his fingers through the hair at the base of my neck, leaned down, and kissed me.
“It looks better on you,” he murmured.
We stayed there, on our platform of rumpled bath towels, for a long time. Long enough for the sun to set. By the time John climbed out of the tub, leaving me alone on my ruined former towel nest, it was night.
“Hey, little bird,” John said, unwinding the fabric from his wrist. “Do you want to go to that place with the good tofu?” He reached down, scooped up the empty condom wrapper we had dropped on the floor, and deposited it into the trash.
Sex with Shakespeare Page 10