Tao of Kink
Chapter 7
Pain and/or pleasure
How intense, how painful, how unbearable? How much torment is sexy? Can master give pain with love? Can slave receive pain with joy? Can we hurt without wounding? Could destruction of body be also reclaiming of self? Visual mediation on how scars from play supplement scars from life.
* introduction to the visual blog
Is it a pain for the sake of pain - or a bliss?
(Credits): Wikipedia - Flickr - Jere Keys from San Francisco, USA
Sadism and Masochism
My favorite psychologist – Thomas Moore – would probably say: Don’t bring light to darkness. That is not its point. Darkness must be dark. The role of kink is not to be explained, but explored. Darkness can’t be illuminated. … Kinky mind can’t be treated or healed if its role itself is to heal. Darkness can’t be suppressed. Sometimes the only way to get insight into it is to submerge in it. Talk to it through its own language – i.e. being dark and non-transparent to the eyes. Admitting it, indulging in it with some control (consciously, present, aware), getting to know it - we can find a key how to incorporate it in a way that it will enhance our life, instead of acting destructively.
Sometimes you have to indulge and go with the flow, to get in touch with the subject matter. Touch the hot iron to understand its damaging potential. Fall on the ground hundred times to learn the judo trick. But it does not mean being thrown on the ground mindlessly till we are unable to move. Not like shoe-fetishist spending fortune on thousands of sneakers without ever wondering what is it that he actually needs. Stay with the fetish but keep the perspective. As much as collecting items, as much as searching for more and more daring imagery, as much as going deeper into depravity – even pain could be intensified beyond bearable. But what for?
I find myself equally (almost indifferently) balanced between liking to receive and to give pain. The same excitement I feel when I submit to someone who torments me can be easily translated into the mind of tormentor. I’m in my body and in the same time in his mind. Because – it is not the pain that turns me on. It is the observation of myself withstanding that pain, that is quite alike the observation of the tormentor enjoying control over his voluntary victim. These observations are quite exchangeable. It is the willing participation in that play that excites me.
Being subjected to pain, I know there’s too little and too much for me. With quite a narrow transition between those areas. First time seeing ball skewering, or whipping of bloody ass, or bodies twisting through electro-torture - I was excited. After some time they have become boring. "What else?!" The stimulation could be magnified almost endlessly and quickly become dull. Thanks to all the pain pigs – for numbing my visual sensitivities – for bringing me to the edge of boredom and the end of dead-end street.
From there, I could start exploring what is it that really turns me on. In real life, I’ve tried less intense things and they were more than enough for me. I realized that this paradox in perception is not just question of personal thresholds. More than anything it is a matter of context. Those exciting first-timers represented "wow, what is he willing to submit to". But the turn on was not in that "what" (or "how much"), but in willing.
I quite enjoyed dropping shoes tied to my balls. At wrong time and wrong place, even gentle unfriendly ball squeeze could be too much. With a wrong person and within sterile scene: I could not bust my partner’s balls strong enough. He was bored, I was bored. On the other hand, playful spontaneous pull of another mate’s sack causing "that look" was far the best moment of the night we had. Similar act done, completely different experience. The keyword here is context. I became aware, that it is not the pain for pain that I am looking for, but the interaction. The exchange of looks, words, touches, the exchange of power, the way he gets me into the mood when I almost beg him to do "evil things" to me. I can enjoy intensity, but when it becomes real pain, the pain is just a pain, it is simply painful. But if he finds a way how to turn me on so much, to get me into the flow of play, to heckle me, so that I am willing to withstand the pain which would be normally unbearable – I’m actually enjoying that game, that exchange, that mind-blowing state of consciousness … that probably some quirky yogis demonstrate with their jaw-dropping stunts.
