Masochism of M: A Sexual Mémoir

by Janice Collins

  I had another piece of proof which I fondled and handled regularly, Sir’s bandanna. It smelled of him. Its worn and faded indigo made it all the more precious. Its sacred cloth, this Shroud of Turin, never left my body. I kept it with me always, even when I slept. To reach for and reverently hold it sent me rolling on the waves of ecstasy.

  Sir’s phone calls kept the magic alive and kicking. He made me high just with a whisper. I could not comprehend where we were going, or the heights to which we would ascend. The world of Sir knew no bounds.

  Hardly least among the items my Owner had given was a book. Not just any book, THE book; a paperback with slightly yellowed pages. What a revelation this book was to be.

  I had not realized the significance of the gift until I had squirreled it away to my lair and read the first page. ‘Had I heard of it?’ he’d asked me before placing it in my hand the night before.

  The answer was a heart-stopping ‘yes’.

  The book was Story of O, and yes, oh my god, yes I had heard of it.

  Years before, when casually riffling through my much-older brother’s bedroom while he was safely at work—as every nubile teen with an older brother has probably done, or at least dreamed of doing—I came across one of his Playboy magazines left lying on his dresser. I leafed through the centerfolds and skipped over the boring articles to land my bulging eyes on a very graphic display of a movie version of Story of O. It was a steamy recounting of the lusty adventure, complete with full-page, provocative color photos, naturally—being Playboy, after all. I was astounded. My heart leapt. The concept melted straight into my virginal loins like napalm with a perverse sexuality that, at thirteen, I couldn’t quite understand. No, I couldn’t understand, but I couldn’t possibly resist. It sucked me in like a beguiling whirl pool.

  It was that story, that underrated, underground classic that stirred me to masturbatory wetness and hard orgasms on many a sweaty night—and day. I’d steal away to the darkness of the basement, or the seclusion of the apple orchard, and play with myself all day, slippery fingers rubbing, probing. You don’t want to know the nasty little things I thought and did. Well, you might, but some I can’t divulge here. Yes, they were that naughty. Mmmmmm.

  I was rather bent in O’s direction already—the direction of bondage and masochism. It may be my fantasy—though I doubt it, it seems too real—but I can remember being incredibly young, still in my crib in fact, when some shadowy sexual stimulation’s, or what I somehow perceived as sexual stimulation’s, occurred. It involved a number of young people surrounding my bed, reaching in and touching my naked body. Not just ‘touching’, but spanking, or roughly handling me, diaper removed and totally uncovered and helpless. And then the vagueness sets in, like a hazy dream. I only remember feeling stimulated by it, the ‘punishment (?)’, the touching on my bare ass and skin and vagina. And it wasn’t unpleasant.

  And there were other times involving older children/siblings and me in bed together under the covers in which the situation was the same. I was smaller, I was touched, the touch was forbidden and seductively almost painful, and it was definitely to be kept secret under threat of ‘consequences’. Yes, I remember.

  Then there were the normal occurrences of playing ‘doctor’ with little neighborhood boys my age, but my ‘doctors’ were always overly-intrusive and hurtful, making me endure little pains (without protest) that I began to perversely enjoy, and which stirred immature coals. The little neighborhood boys began to come for me often and use me in this way, under the porch, in the garden, in dark, musty corners of their basements. It’s hard to say when it started, or from where the bent came. Maybe, like the song: ‘I was born this way’.

  Later, in grade school years I can recall playing dress-up with my young girlfriends. While we acted out scenes from various movies, I alone, to their giggles, allowed myself to be captured and ravished by burly, make-believe pirates and swashbucklers, a la a femme fatale in some sultry X-rated movie. There were the steamy hunks in all their testosterone sensuality to which on-screen women were mere objects with which to be toyed. Is this where it came from, igniting tender kindling?

  I have long maintained that all of us are masochistic and sadistic to different degrees. I believe statistics prove it’s entirely natural; as in our romance with fright, obsession with horror and violence, and collective morbid fascination with sensationalism and rape. We hide behind mock morality and feigned repulsion. Like a child in a horror movie we stare through eyes covered with parted fingers. But we do stare. And more importantly, we come back for more.

  Face it. We can’t stay away. It makes our heart race and our blood boil and, if we weren’t such liars and hypocrites, we’d admit that those things make our crotches tingle, too. Every movie maker, every novelist, every Wall Street marketer knows what makes its products sell: Sex, Hot Sex, and yes, BDSM (mild or heavy, pick your poison).

  We buy it, you and I, because we love it. Because we need it. We suck it up like cocaine through a straw. Whether it’s wrapped in brown paper, flickering on Scandal TV, or disguised as a Sunday morning chastisement from the pulpit, it’s all the same. We simply can’t resist. Think about it. Can you?

  Well, I couldn’t; and I knew I couldn’t even at age thirteen.

  Those pictures of O in the Playboy that I absorbed in my brother’s bedroom that fateful afternoon, in retrospect scarcely did Pauline Reage’s lovely heroine justice. The gentle beauty of O in her travails, in her glorious tortures, in her adventures tres erotiquè, and in her provocative training all came alive within the aging pages of that book. But at least the Playboy , which paled in comparison to my own imagination, had guided me toward my destiny and inched the writhing worm of constant craving closer to the creature I was compelled to be.

  Now, the siren call was much too wild and enticing to resist. The air around Sir and me was sweet, pure, and innocent, yet simultaneously depraved. I had to walk the narrow stone path on which my only source of light shed down, despite the howls of warning from the empty blackness on either side. Not left or right, but steadily on. Sir’s gaze, fixed on me so firmly, was enough to make Rasputin swoon.

  So I gladly waltzed with him, my meager tricks pale in comparison to those he had in store for me.

  Literally, as soon as Sir gave it to me, I read the entire Story of O without stopping. Literally, I absorbed it and could not put it down. So indulgent were my fantasies, so in tune to O’s, that I experienced instant identification with this work of seeming non-fiction, with this House of Roissy, the one to which I wanted so desperately to belong.

  I didn’t eat or sleep until I’d read it all.

  The pages of O were filled with reality. No amount of imagination could have conceived such sincerity. Only one who had lived it could know. As I know.

  I found myself sensuously electrified with every chapter’s beginning, and climatically spent with every chapter’s end. I coasted on a perpetual high. A fever burned inside me as passage after passage demanded I re-read it, and each re-reading fanned the flames ever higher.

  Sir called to find out how I’d found his gift. When asked, I could barely reply, so deep was its effect. There was no other way to describe O than as a literary classic, which had a more profound effect on me than any works of Poe, Milton, or Shakespeare combined.

  It was in these unparalleled, hypnotic moments that Sir spoke to me of wonders, of ‘making you mine’, of sodomizing me, and of tying me for the first encounter with ‘clean, white rope’. My heart pounded with his every word, but especially that phrase: ‘clean, white rope’. I couldn’t believe my throbbing ears; my dreams were coming true at last. But as I said, I’d known he was the one when first I’d met him. Our patient time bubbles had merely skipped up and down over two long years. We never totally went away. As in our past lives together, we were simply waiting to catch our breath. Sir had to be more than just a swirl in the pot of life into which God dipped his finger. Was it Sir that was here for me, or me for him?


  Now the idea of ‘being his’, of ‘belonging to him’ excited me as never before. The idea of being tied, bound and taken, especially in sodomy, simply melted me with desire. I thought about it, fantasized about it, dreamt of it in fitful sleep. I was truly obsessed—by the man, by his power, by his voice, and by his deep, dark secret thoughts. We were artist to artist whose talents rivaled each other’s, lover to lover whose impact was raw and wild, and now, Master to submissive, the final plateau in an ever-expanding plane of our existence.

  I simply could not cool down. Every telephone call with a momentary pause at the other end made my heart skip a beat. His hesitant, throaty ‘hello’—so malevolent yet so innocent—gave me absolute chills.

  So tonight, when the phone rang it was no exception.

  Tonight, he voiced in his inimitable, sultry style, that he wanted to see me at midnight. Down at our usual spot.

  I flew to be with him even at the late hour, parking in the dimly lit lot across from Harold’s. Within moments he arrived, again in his surly Camaro. He’d brought his camera and equipment to set up by the river—the now deserted river—and take photos. It was so cool. So wow. So Sir.

  We had made our way to the river in silence, slipping past the parks and the old churches, marching across the empty streets right down to where the cobblestones French-kissed the froth. There we planted ourselves; he with his tripod and camera, and I with my adoring curiosity. Above us the steel mesh of the bridge occasionally hummed a sweet tune composed by an infrequently passing car. It was magical, the way the lights of the fairy-lit girders danced and scintillated in the watery blackness, reflecting red, green, and blue on the river and lending a festive look to its treacherous depths.

  Sir’s tripod just tipped the edge of the curling water, avoiding the little waves by mere inches. It was completely wonderful, basking in his limelight, studying him studying midnight. Long, timed exposures filled his lens, as did the flames of the fishermen’s bonfire across the undulating liquid plane. I wondered if they, too, were observing us observing them, perched by the writhing water that surged and waned with every passing barge.

  I had deposited myself a few feet from Sir on the rough, thick, maroon-colored bricks that angled down the ramp, sitting and hugging my knees to me. How content I was just to stay as long as Sir’s fascination with the subject at hand played out. I was especially careful to be quiet, to be O-like, submissive and still. It befitted the night. It befitted the moment.

  It befitted us.

  Not another soul shared our cobble-stoned rendezvous at this late hour. No one except that little impromptu wine-and-fishing party far across the water whose barely-perceptible, dot of a bonfire flickered against the blackness. No one else was around, 360 as far as the eye could see. It was dampish but not the least chilly. The breeze off the water was ever so gentle, almost balmy.

  It was so serene to watch, to mentally compare his choice of composition with mine; to absorb the sexy beauty and the menacing allure of the midnight city.

  We were space travelers, Sir and I, moving so incredibly slow that everyone around us blurred into nothingness. Like a camera speed of 1/1000 whose foreshortened depth of field excludes all but the subject. It was incredibly relaxing to experience the transformed city with Sir. The ultimately protective and indestructible Sir.

  While walking the scary streets I felt unspeakably safe with this man; safe to pass dark alleyways, round corners, and fearlessly suck in the cool night air without ever having to look over my shoulder. Now, planted on the moist stones of the bank under Terminator Radar, I happily scoped the distant views on the opposite shore: shops’ dots of flickering security lights, the occasional cigarette glow of the night-fishermen no doubt passing around a bottle of booze. With Sir, it was all a magical fairy land.

  Sir shot a long exposure—four-and-a-half minutes—of a venerable old church across the rippling black glass plane. The tower’s ivory clock glowed like a floating specter in the night sky as it ticked off the hour. It was 1a.m. , I noted, helping him count the minutes by my wrist watch.

  This was wonderful; a fulfillment of an age-long dream. For years I had longed to steal away to this spot; to have the courage to sit alone at the water’s edge in the dark, and simply observe the rapture of night—sit till dawn if I wanted—to drink in the rising morning mists beading on my skin and hear the hustle of a new day dawning. Yeah, all peachy, if I’d been invisible. But my protective self—better known as common sense—said get real. In the best of cities to do something so stupid might mean getting your throat slit for the buck in your pocket, being raped, or both. No thanks. I’ll take Sir for $1000, Alex.

  At last Sir decided to move. I trotted along beside him as best I could, carrying the bag he’d handed me. I maneuvered the crooked stones and stepped gingerly over the thick steel cables that moored the party boat to shore. I could tell Sir was heading toward the park that loomed, dark and ominous up ahead. I shivered. Just one more reason to be glad I was next to this man-fortress.

  At 500 feet from the concrete walls, out of the blue a spotlight hit us. I stopped dead in my tracks.

  “Park’s closed,” a gritty voice bellowed none too cordially from a perch high atop the winding shelf.

  I looked up. Two dark, rigid shadows were barely visible in the star light.

  Sir never missed a beat; he simply snapped his eyes straight ahead, military-spun a left turn, and—shouldering his tripod like an M-16—kept right on walking. He was back in 3 Commando Brigade, mechanically—albeit begrudgingly—obeying a ranking officer’s command.

  “Jerks,” I muttered, and wondered why Sir hadn’t said anything to them. Stupid of me, there was nothing TO say. They obviously were cops and we—obviously—were not. We were cattle. What could cattle say to cops? MOOOO. You’d read all the time about police brutality, people being tossed in jail for ‘resisting’, or even shot. Were they resisting? Who knows. In the cops’ defense, there was a lot of garbage in Cheyenne, and I’d never envied the garbage collectors their jobs. But we weren’t trash. We were just little old sex pervs in search of a place to fuck. They didn’t know that, nor did they care.

  Nonetheless we kept walking in our best 'yeah-we-were-leaving-anyway' style, me hoping they weren’t going to run us in just for the hell of it.

  What I did see, in the split second that Sir glanced at them, screamed louder than any words. I saw stone cold eyes frozen in the granite face of a man who’d been issued way too many orders, for way too long. Been rode hard and put away wet. It didn’t matter all that much that they’d booted us. Sure they’d spoiled his plans, but no big deal. What was a big deal was the pissed-off volcano, seething within a god who’d been royally fucked—by the military, yeah, but also been fucked by a bunch of rinky-dink Barney Fife’s who didn’t have a damn clue who/what they were dealing with...and how he could lay them all down flat with a flick of his wrist and a slice of the blade he carried, or a quick draw of Big Bertha from his belt. I saw that it just deepened his hatred for the Establishment, and those two jackasses looking down on us like they owned the whole damn city. Good. I hated authority, too. Maybe more than he did, but it seemed like it could be a toss up right now.

  Little recourse, we continued to walk. We scaled a short wall, crossed the unlit street, and ascended steps to an overhead pedestrian bridge. Still tingling with excitement in this exotic play land, I just couldn’t get over how truly beautiful the city was at night—the sultry shadows, the hot neon glow; the palpable, earthy scent of the streets and the river; the incongruity of its ‘nasty/clean’. As we walked, literally no nook or cranny, no dark alleyway held fear for me that night, not being towed in Sir’s wake.

  I stepped with the air of a queen, my elite Black Guard beside me to deliver me from evil. It was enchanting to maneuver these scurrilous streets so completely carefree. After all, who was going to challenge John Wayne? Well, besides the Gestapo at the river bank and they were just sort of annoying. If sheer size a
nd brawn didn’t impress a bad guy, the swagger and confidence of a man packing a loaded .38 would. I think he carried his .38 with him all the time. I suppose he had it with him now, though Sir never brandished his weapon or ever even mentioned that he had it on him, most times. Between everything, there was never a doubt in my mind that whatever came up Sir could handle it. All I’d need to do—as he once told me, and he only had to tell me once—is duck.

  We strolled on.

  Arriving at the lot and opening the door of my small car, Sir agilely folded into its passenger seat like a sardine climbing back into the can. It never ceased to amaze me how those incredibly long legs could be so limber. But there he was and so was I, so close, so intimate at last. The seduction took my breath away.

  Sir sat back; with a sigh he closed his eyes, settled his head on the headrest, and placed a hand on each knee. He looked like a meditating emperor. Several minutes passed. I was frozen in my seat, waiting. Waiting for what...? Something. His edict.

  “Why aren’t you touching me?” He quietly questioned at last, eyes still closed.

  I was startled. I wanted to—god knew I wanted to. But, intimidated by his presence, all I could do in answer was tremble. Slowly I drew my courage. I extended a timid hand to stroke his thigh, that denim-covered mass of steel. Now, emboldened I traced the inner seam of his jeans. I let my fingers glide firmly over his hardening penis and then lightly scratch his bulging testicles. Suddenly all my built up tension exploded. With vigor I pulled at his waistband, tugging awkwardly and impatiently at the button. Freeing his dick at last, I could not wait to drop my mouth onto his stiff shaft and let my tongue go to work. I let it slide down to encircle his soft scrotum.