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You've just barely recovered from the special hell that is the ChrisHanuRamaKwanzolstice Holiday season, emerging battered but breathing from the firestorm of retail desperation and running the in-law gauntlet. Just when you thought you were safe to go back out to the mall, it's the attack of the killer hearts and Hallmark's conspiracy with your sweetheart to make you prove your affection in increasingly expensive and ridiculous ways. Roses, chocolates, and lots and lots of heart shaped made-in-China chotchkas and baubles piled shelves fill your sights to the horizon. Are you ready for Valentines Day? What? You haven't gift wrapped the Louis Vuitton Valentines edition of the Hummer in romantic red? Nothing says love like bulletproof, armored soccer-mom mobile. Or how about something small and delicate, like an adorable pink Taser? Is the over-the-top sweetness of Valentines giving you a case of psychic diabetes? Have you crashed from the sugar high of socially approved expression of love and romance? Are you feeling that there's more to all this?
Then it's time to reconsider the romantic potential of a good ol' fashioned beating - and number of other things your mama told you not to do to people you like. Of course your mama didn't figure you'd have the sort of lover and love life that you do. If you've ever wondered what all those dreamy eyed BDSM and leather people are droning on about, here's the answer. Every time they play it's Halloween and Valentines rolled into one. It's about a deep, even if fleeting, sense of romance, intimacy and connection between people. (Sociopaths in leather speaking SM jargon excepted from this, of course.) It's a compelling perspective and an alluring alternative to the usual routes for closeness. You only need to look as far as the countless social networking sites to know that today, more than ever, people are hungering for connections. Some substitute the consumer high and pride of presentation for the happiness of intimacy. Some confuse giving heart shaped trinkets for giving of one's heart and soul. Some go looking for unconventional paths to intimacy, sensing perhaps that there is more to love than paper hearts.
Of course both travel and SM can be as mild or as wild as you like. I can go to Disneyland to see a castle and do some thrill rides, or I could trek Cambodia to see ancient palaces and raft down a jungle river. We could get a light spanking with sweet sex or explore strict dominance and submission with bloodletting single tails - with the same person, no less! Part of the romantic appeal of SM sex is that for it to be hot, it rigorously demands honesty, authenticity and vulnerability for all participants. In meeting these demands, even in the privacy of the bedroom, we're called to task to a higher standard and feel the achieving state of internal validation and fulfillment. Humans are strange creatures. We can feel nice and smug for lying or posing and getting away with things, but we feel awesomely amazing and exponentially better when we succeed in being "good and just" despite adversity and struggle. In experiencing honesty, authenticity and vulnerability, there must be some neural chemical natural happy-dope released in the brain when we know we're being "good". It's a nice jolt on top of the basic "runner's high" adrenaline rush of kinky sex. This is why in the arena of love and all else, liars and posers find do-gooders so infuriating. The do-gooders are getting the sweet stuff that they can't. So when a lover asks her partner to submit and endure ministrations of pain, there is more going on than meets the eyes. What may appear to be a whollaping is the physical manifestation of breaking down defenses to connect at a primal level. Cries, shouts and tears that make some wince are welcome outbursts relieving pent-up stress from living in a control-freak world. With the leash and the collar, what might seem like the domineering bullying around the weak is a dramatization of human need for attachment, belonging and surrender.
Conversely, surrender implies that there will be some force to surrender to, to be trusted, a big psychic safety net with the potential for pleasure - this is the role and expectations that the top steps into, or up to as the case may be. Actions that appear to be cruelty are actually expressions of love and compassion. To create an emotional and physical space where one's lover may be naked to the soul, be profoundly vulnerable and shed the yolks of social expectations of conventional behavior, that's a huge set of expectations and takes desire and love to do that. And a top can love a bottom, perhaps even a bottom they barely know, while not being in love with them. In addition the top must on every nuance of her bottom's physical and emotional responses while keeping her desires and hungers firmly in her sights. She walks the tightrope of total selfish indulgence and deep, loving generosity. For both people, when the scene hits that sweet flow, when it's just right, each pours intense focus and attention upon the little bubble of a universe that they fill with their existence and reactions. Even in objectification or seeming harshness the focus is intensely inward looking to one another. But when the focus wavers or when one or more of the players fall short of authenticity, the potential for bliss begins to unravel. At best this comes off as a slightly off, vaguely dissatisfying experience. At worst it cuts like a deep betrayal. When it doesn't work, when the sense of connection crumbles, it's often because one or all the parties are just going through the motions rather than putting themselves on the line. At this point it's no different then a diamond heart bauble given with an empty heart from obligated hands.
This is also where SM sex (and travel) trumps flowers and hearts in the awesomely hot and romantic department. You don't have to be in a couple to enjoy travel or SM - both adventures that can be done solo, with different partners or many partners at once, while being totally authentic and present for the all. Kink practitioners have for a long time learned to navigate sharing pleasures and work around non-standard relationship formations. Pairs and couples are certainly common and accepted, but it's no longer an expected norm. Solo practitioners aren't looked down upon and those with more than one partner fulfilling various needs aren't labeled Lotharios or irresponsible. Instead kinksters are challenged to share affection and love others beyond conventionality, to examine what it means to love differently. The very fundamental act of discussing the boundaries of one's erotic interaction and boundaries of emotional and sensual relationship forming is profoundly honest, caring…. And well… romantic. So this Valentines, consider the romantic virtues of a sound beating for your lover. Midori is a globetrotting sexpert, who parties and teaches cool classes on fun sex and wild kink all over the world. Want more Midori? Find more of her writings, blogs and hang out with her on line at www.PlanetMidori.com.
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