The Ultimate Guide to Kink

by Tristan Taormino

  Others ended the dialogue when I refused to entertain their need for intoxicants to undergo their fantasy. I am a firm believer in experiencing fetish to the fullest, rather than using drugs or alcohol to mitigate its effects. I have also found that drug-using slaves are useless when it come to service of any kind, and the Dark Lord demands to be served. It is all about the Dark Lord’s desires—they must come first.

  Desire

  Desire: To wish or long for; want. To express a wish for; request. A wish or longing. A request or petition. The object of longing. Sexual appetite; passion.2

  I have long held the belief that not every fantasy is meant to become a reality. We must decide which fantasies can be lived and which cannot. The track records of those 120 applicants made my decision-making process a lot easier than one would expect.

  Of the 120 applicants, some 15 are still showing interest, and about half of those are of more recent acquaintance. As with most cruising, the majority have simply failed to respond to the emails, chats, or phone calls I initiated in an effort to continue a dialogue. Few ever got to the point of seeing my dungeon. Some, to their credit, ended the conversation politely, giving such reasons as “You’re too old for me,” “I have to beg off due to family problems,” and “I’m not really into the raunch and worship you seek.” These results are the same I’ve found with cruising in general.

  But I think there is an unspoken message in this as well. When faced with the possible reality of our deepest desires, their desirability fades quickly. We allow other choices to take precedence over the darkest of our dreams.

  There seems to be a contradiction here that probably derives from poorly defined terminology. How, for instance, can an “object” object to the age of its owner? Could a chair or a goldfish do this? I think not. It is only when the full effect and the extent of the objectification dawns on us that we see what appears to be its intrinsic impossibility. Would any of these cybercruisers, after all, be willing to actually live in a dungeon without access to the Internet?

  Control

  In my 28 years as a practicing leatherman I have learned much about myself and my desires. I’ve come to the conclusion that my primary fetish is control, which is certainly exercised through other fetishes, especially those involving pain and bondage. As my profile made clear, the overriding characteristic I sought from an applicant was obedience. I wanted to be in control.

  The conundrum I repeatedly encountered was that applicants would make requirements that allowed them to maintain some kind of control. So I had men who wanted everything I offered but who, for example, refused to provide for their own upkeep.

  It seems to me that the control issue fundamentally stems from instinctual reactions (see Maslow’s hierarchy of needs) that we have little likelihood of overcoming, self-preservation being the most obvious of them. Ceding complete control to another is much too dangerous for the psyche to allow, unless the control is limited by factors that render it less than complete.

  The only plausible path out of this contradiction is to create a deep bond of trust between the “object” and his or her Lord. I wonder, though, if this bond, as necessary as it is, might not then pose another difficulty: that this trust mitigates or eradicates the polarity in such a way that domination and subjugation, in their most intense forms, lose their power and effect.

  Repression and Expression

  The great value of our BDSM subculture, I believe, is that it creates the conditions for us to experiment with desire without limit, judgment, or exception. The key word here is experiment . Experimentation often means just dabbling—that is, entertaining a thought without necessarily executing it fully. Our community is in the fortunate position of being able to express to an extent and therefore experience to an extent aspects of ourselves of which we are only partly conscious. This allows us the opportunity to experience the deepest darkness, neither repressing nor expressing it, while being able to assess its meaning and implications.

  Even given what little experience I was able to gain of the more extreme activities in the Dark Lord’s profile, I found considerable information about the meaning of darkness, of perversion, and of authenticity. That information can best be summed up as realizing that we can see the dark side, admit to it, learn something about it and about ourselves, without necessarily embracing or becoming what we might desire.

  Yes, I saw self-destruction in the motivation of some who sought refuge, degradation, or punishment in the Dark Lord’s dungeon. I have seen “Dark Lords” act irresponsibly as well. More often, though, I found men who were seeking to unravel the complexity of their desires while intuitively, if not explicitly, holding on to the more fundamental necessity of self-preservation and healthy activity.

  ABOUT THE DARK LORD

  In the final analysis, this exploration was more about myself than about my applicants. Though the conversation continues with a few men who are seeking a more intense form of slavery, the fruitlessness of the search leads me to question its validity and viability. I have also had to evaluate how real my desire was to become the Dark Lord.

  Patrick, my slave and partner of more than 15 years, commented recently that my failure to attract a viable “object” rested within myself. It was just not part of my nature, he thought, to engage in the kind of dehumanization, humiliation, and degradation that being the Dark Lord required. My discussions with applicants led them to see that I lacked the ego, the necessary haughtiness, to pull off the role successfully. I was just too friendly, too kind, to be that dark.

  A recent scene with one of the applicants I continue to have contact with illustrates my personal conundrum. The man in question vacillates between wanting degradation and avoiding it. When, after four months of nearly talking the idea to death, he arrived to try a week in my dungeon, he was well guarded by a list of limits I had agreed to, many of which left control in his hands, not mine. The fundamental issue was his inability to trust me. I couldn’t tie him to an immovable object, for instance—chain him to the wall in the dungeon or to a cross. It was obvious that putting him in a cage for the night was out of the question until he knew me better.

  Could I have simply violated his limits and tied him up anyway? I think I could have. Would the Dark Lord have done so? Certainly. Would I have? Not then and there, and probably never. Should I have? Ah, there’s the question, since I certainly wanted to. Darkness, it would seem, lurks in my heart just as fully as in any other.

  NEXT

  Having enjoyed and learned from the Dark Lord experience, I will continue it, adapting my approach to the lessons I learned. There’ll be less compromise and more authority in my words and actions. As for its fruitfulness, or lack thereof, I will most likely spend less attention on it, except for those candidates who indeed show some process of developing a relationship with me.

  I have come to the conclusion that if I am to realize my Dark Lord fantasy, I have to act as the Dark Lord would. I cannot be “Jack” and “Dark” at the same time. Only time will tell if I can become the Dark Lord. On the other hand, time has made it obvious that I want to do so. I want to see where this ends. If and when it does, I’m sure there’ll be another story to tell.

  Endnotes

  1 Definition of dark, www.thefreedictionary.com/dark.

  2 Definition of desire, www.thefreedictionary.com/desire.

  CHAPTER 20

  MINDFUCK (C’MON, DOES IT NEED ANY OTHER TITLE?)

  EDGE

  My name is Edge, and I mindfuck. Oh, I do lots of other things—beat the crap out of faggots,1 feed smoke to stogiepigs, throw some mean Japanese rope bondage, hell, I even cuddle (though only with my cub)—but mindfuck is what I’m most known for because, really, it’s what I do best. Dunno how, dunno why. Just a knack, ya know? I mean, give me a singletail and I’m a total klutz; I’ll have it wrapped around my neck somehow in minutes. Give me a TENS unit and I’ll end up crossing some wires and shorting the whole thing out. Give me a set of needles and I’ll g
ently place them back down. But give me one hour—just one hour—with you, alone in a room, and you will know what mindfuck is. And you will not forget. Not a promise, not a threat, just a fact. But, shit, you’re there and I’m here so this essay is gonna have to do.

  Read on. Get wet. Get hard. Get scared. Get excited. Get it. It’s good.

  Before we get into the meat of the matter, though, I have a few warnings. First, this isn’t an essay that teaches technique. There is no cookie-cutter mindfuck, really—no single thing you can do with everyone. That’s what makes mindfuck so powerful and really so intimate. My goal here is to introduce you to some of the dynamics in this kind of scene, to give you some sense of the process. Second, because you’re often playing with fear, which risks panic, this can be a kind of edge play. Third, I’m revealing secrets of the trade in this essay, so stop reading if that spoils it for you. It’s a bit like knowing the secrets behind a magician’s tricks. Knowing how the illusion works either 1) spoils it for you, 2) makes it that much easier for you to volunteer to be sawed in half, or 3) helps you enjoy the magic that much more because you can appreciate the skill of the sleight of hand. If it’s going to spoil it for you, stop reading and go get mindfucked. Finally, I’m going to sound like a psycho killer at times. I am not. Promise.

  WHAT THE FUCK?

  Assuming you’re still reading, let’s start by thinking about just what mindfuck is and isn’t. There are any number of ways we might define mindfuck: playing with someone’s head, edge play with consciousness, consensual hallucination (which is why mindfuck works so nicely in cyberspace), erotic terrorism, sexual lying, or perhaps even a theater of intimacy. But there’s one definition I tend to use the most because I think it best describes what happens in a mindfuck scene: Mindfuck is making someone think something is happening that isn’t really happening.

  What do I mean by that? Well, mindfuck can cover a broad spectrum of activities, ranging from the rather mild to the extremely wild. For example, a rather mild mindfuck would be tying up and blindfolding your partner and then making her think you’ve left or that someone else has arrived. An edgier example would be starting a scene by making someone write his suicide note at gunpoint. (And, yes, I’ve done that one. Always tear up the first note and tell them it’s not convincing enough. Be sure to obtain samples of their signature well before the scene so that you can confirm they’re not faking that part either. Doesn’t hurt to make them dig their own grave, too. Just saying.)

  There are many things mindfuck isn’t, even though it often gets bound up, mixed up, and confused with those other things. For example, mindfuck isn’t always edge play. Edge play is pushing the envelope of a scene—any scene. So edge play for you may include very risky activities, like breath control and weapon sex, but really, every scene has its own edge: plaster bondage is an edge form of bondage, double fisting is an edge form of fisting, singletail whipping is an edge form of flailing. So, while a lot of mindfucks can be edge play, they don’t have to be. Conversely, most edge play doesn’t involve mindfuck at all.

  Mindfuck isn’t playing head games, though you might think of head games as a kind of nonconsensual mindfuck. “Game players” (and they’re all over cyberspace) are creating that sense of illusion and are, essentially, lying, but not in a way that works for both players. Clearly, the person doing the lying is getting something out of it, maybe getting off on it, but the person being lied to has not agreed to be lied to. That’s not to say that head game players are not into mindfuck, but it is a way to further delineate what makes mindfuck mindfuck. One of its essential elements is the mysterious and intoxicating paradox of consensual nonconsent. Consensual nonconsent can be summarized like this: I’m going to lie to you all throughout the mind fuck but only ’cause you’ve told me it’s okay to fuck with your head like that. To put it simply, mindfuck always requires the consent of all parties involved.

  Mindfuck isn’t mind control. Mindfuck is making someone believe something is happening that isn’t really happening.

  Mindfuck isn’t mind control. Mindfuck is making someone believe something is happening that isn’t really happening; mind control is making someone believe something is happening that really is happening. With mindfuck, trust is used to enter and then leave this altered sense of what is real. With mind control, trust is used to enter and then make permanent this altered sense of what is real. The two work very well together and are often combined, but they’re definitely not the same thing.

  Finally, mindfuck isn’t interrogation. I often see mindfuck and interrogation paired in classes at various SM educational events, but there’s a crucial difference—you know the interrogation isn’t real: you’re not really a prisoner of war and your Top doesn’t really work for the Gestapo, you’re not really a perp and your Top isn’t really a cop (well, unless you’re really, really lucky). It’s the sense of could-be-real-but-hope-it-isn’t that defines mindfuck for me, and that’s something that doesn’t happen in interrogation scenes. Besides, you know how to end an interrogation scene: give up the right info. For a bottom in a mindfuck scene, half the fun is not knowing how, when, or whether it will end.

  Given what mindfuck is and isn’t, any scene can use mindfuck but some scenes seem particularly good for it. In particular, scenes that might seem difficult to do “for real” make sense for mindfuck, since mindfuck can make extreme situations feel real. I’m talking about scenes like kidnapping, white slavery, rape, castration, even snuff. Whoa—extreme examples, I know, but if you’re the kind of person who has desires like these, mindfuck comes in very handy.

  WHY THE FUCK?

  So why the fuck do people get into mindfuck? For one thing, there’s a good biological reason. In the kink scene there are a lot of endorphin junkies, often called pain pigs. They get a real, actual physical high from pain because the brain releases its own natural painkillers. In the same way, mindfuckers can be considered adrenaline junkies. Fear triggers the fight-or-flight response, fueled by adrenaline, which, as it turns out, is chemically related to amphetamines. Granted, it’s a very different kind of high for mindfuckers: not a mellow, floaty “my vulva is one with the universe” high but a jittery, revved-up “oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck” kind of high. Endorphins are like great downers but adrenaline is uppers all the way. And it’s just as addictive. Don’t believe me? Go ask anyone who likes to jump off bridges or out of airplanes.

  For others, though, part of the appeal of mindfuck is its potential for magic. One way to define magic is to say that it is the ability to alter someone’s perception of reality. In that sense, mindfuck literally is a kind of magic because during the mindfuck things feel very real. Thus it can be used for very transformative, spiritual, cathartic, shamanic scenes: walking someone through death or trauma, for example. I’ve used mindfuck a lot for catharsis. I helped one boy through the loss of his Daddy on 9/11 and a woman deal with the fact that her family had deliberately forgotten her grandfather because he didn’t get out of Germany in time during the Holocaust. Powerful, magical shit it is.

  But for the more jaded among us (me included) mindfuck is about a special kind of fear—the fear and wonder we had when we first got into kink. Let’s face it, at first kink is mysterious and unreadable and even a little scary, but it becomes prosaic, if not boring. You know what they say: it’s only kinky the first time. My cock used to drip just seeing a pair of cheap handcuffs, but these days I need the most elaborate restraints devised by the most devious minds just to get my attention. That kinda sucks. Mindfuck brings back the edge—the edge is where we teetered before exploring kink, before we stepped into this world. I can remember my first few scenes. My heart would be racing, my stomach flip-flopping. Nerves, fear, adrenaline. It’s nice to feel that way again once you’ve gotten inured to it all.

  And as with most forms of SM, people get off on mindfuck because it plays so well with power. The bottom experiences an enormous sense of being controlled, because someone is “in your head.” Mindfuck go
es beyond physical control and reaches into the psyche, where it feels much more real. And fuckkkkk, what a rush for the Top to feel that kind of power and control.

  Add it all up, and you can see that mindfuck also lets us experience outlaw SM. Safe, sane, consensual, risk-aware consensual kink—blah blah blah. Mindfuck lets you do all the stuff you’re not supposed to do. You’re not supposed to rape people. You’re not supposed to kill them. You’re not supposed to offer their souls to Satan in return for more power and pleasure. You’re only supposed to play nice—hard maybe, but still nice. Mindfuck lets you play nasty, though again only through consensual nonconsent.

  THE 3 F’N MFS

  I know a lot of my examples tend to the edgy side of mindfuck (look at my name, for Christ’s sake) but there are whole other categories of mindfuck to consider. And thanks to my enormous anal-retentiveness, I’ve categorized three types of mindfucks. I call these the “3 F’n MFs.”

  Fear-Based

  Fear-based mindfucks involve scenes that derive their erotic energy from fear. And yeah, these are the kinds of mindfucks I do, primarily. For example, playing with weapons is a fear-based mindfuck. The gun could be real—but it doesn’t have to be to get the same charge. The fear’s the thing, and fear is inherent to the scene. It drives the play and it gets the players off.

  Fantasy-Based

  Fantasy-based mindfucks involve scenes that may not contain elements of fear but rather transmutations that cannot happen in reality. For example, there are folks out there with micro-philia and macrophilia—fantasies of shrinking to the size of a toy or growing into a giant. That’s not something you can do for real, but it is something you can approximate with mindfuck. I’ve also run across more than one man who fantasizes about being turned into a cigar. Again, can’t actually make it happen, but since mindfuck makes you think something’s happening that isn’t, it can help a pig explore these kinds of unrealizable desires.