Blogging From A - Z Challenge April 12 K

K is for Kink.

You've heard that rather tasteless joke by Woody Allen haven't you - that one about eroticism is using a feather and kink is using the whole chicken? I may be taking a bit of poetic licence with that one, but it is something that I find rather amusing.

Sexual fetishes are complex things, and greatly misunderstood. When I was in the BDSM scene, there were people there who were experimenting (I fell into that category) and there were people there who didn't properly understand themselves and were trying to understand why they were attracted to something extreme (I fell into that category as well) and then there were the fetishists, those who knew as early as two years old that they were sexually different.

Kink is most interesting when you're dealing with someone with a true fetish.

Coincidentally, when I was first discovering practicing kink, a straight freight I had all my life came out to me about his foot fetish. It had been a great contributor to the death of his marriage ("it's disgusting, don't even talk to me about it" was what he lived with) and he lived in terrible misery with it. It was a consuming thing, overwhelming. If he sat in the wrong place in a crowd - such as in a cinema, or meeting at work - and a woman was in view allowing her shoe to slip down her foot and dangle off her toe, he would have at best a painful throbbing erection, and at worst, evident spillage.

My friend described being a small child, and calling his "teddy bear", "tessy bear", and dancing Tessy up and down his body as if she were walking over the top of him. His kink was connected to powerful women, and he adored Madonna for her overt displays of sexual power. He had been caught around the age of five several times, hiding under the display frames in department stores, sliding his hand out in the hope a woman would accidentally tread on it in her heels. Something like that, and the consequential masturbation, could satiate the fetish for a small while, and ease the throbbing need of it.

We were good friends, I was experimenting with sexuality and was not in any monogamous relationships, so for a while I agreed to walk on him, as he'd never had that before. It only lasted a while, his possessiveness and sexual intensity didn't suit me, and It was accurate to say that I was more interested in the sex (it was fascinating) than in connection romantically with him, so inevitably it imploded in a horrible dark intensity that even our friendship didn't survive. I'll always have a tender place for him, though, He's a very special, deeply intelligent man and I treasure the time I spent with him in my life.

In many ways, I envied him. Imagine being that clear about what you wanted sexually? All the time. Imagine if a desire controlled you to that extent? This is what fascinates me about kink. Men and women are definitely driven by desire, and they think about sex "all the time" but not to the point where you can orgasm at the sight of a naked foot, and mostly these drives are part of the noise of our mind, part of the day, and you "find yourself "crotch watching" (a truly embarrassing habit I have) or "cleavage glancing" or fantasising over bottoms. I'm not talking about these kinds of things.

I have felt the ecstasy of teen female transcendent love - and that is probably the closest one can come to a real fetish like my friend had. I think back very fondly on our lovemaking - it always involved me standing on him, hurting him in small ways, demanding he do things, and inevitably punishing him for non-compliance. Probably the best word to describe it was intense. It was a very intense experience, but one I am very grateful for having had.

The desire for kink

I went to a book launch last week, that I will do a review on soon. It is a book called 'Kink' and it is an exploration of kinky sex that goes on around the Sydney area.

I'll talk more about this another time, but one thing the writer said intrigued me. She said BDSM ranges in severity. There are those who want to be treated as the object and to have seduction forced upon them, and then there are those who want to be nailed to a crucifix.

I thought this was a very interesting point, because what I find fascinating about writing erotic romance is the way it is revealing more and more about female sexuality. There are some modern day surprises - like the fondness for male on male erotica. I have to confess, I have always had a 'thing' for male on male porn, and it is a strong fantasy of mine, but to see that so many other women shared this fondness was liberating.

Another of the most popular styles of erotica is the BDSM fantasy. That women love BDSM has been a source of fascination for everyone, from the Marquis de Sade himself all the way through to Freud.

However, I suggest that it is not necessarily the masochistic or sadistic side of BDSM that women love. Rather its the role place and to be the object of obsession or intense focus. Women are very drawn to the idea of a man being so obsessed with them, he needs to tie them up and dominate them completely to his will. It is the idea of inspiring this response in a thinking, free male, that is so enticing to women.

For women, power is a difficult issue. We are not necessarily comfortable with exerting power over others. this is changing, however it is still very exciting to imagine that without trying you can render someone to the state of obsession, simply by existing.

When I used to engage in BDSM myself (more on this in later posts) I always found the role of the submissive to be an intensely powerful role. it is not as simple as having someone 'own' you. It is also about 'accidentally' owning them in a different way.