Trafford Publishing: It's Not About the Whip: Love, Sex, and Spirituality in the BDSM Scene

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It's Not About the Whip: Love, Sex, and Spirituality in the BDSM Scene

by Sensuous Sadie

229 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); Mature audiences only - contains graphic sexual content; catalogue #03-0551; ISBN 1-4120-0183-8; US$24.00, C$28.00, EUR20.00, £14.00

My columns offer a friendly and intimate portrait of the Dominant/submissive lifestyle from someone on the inside. They focus on my expiences - from coming out, to dating, to particular interests such as sadism.

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about the book      about the author      excerpts      catalogue info

About the Book

    I first started exploring Dominance and submission with my friend Bailey. We went camping one summer in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and in the dark of the tent we shared our secret fantasies. I told him about wanting to be controlled in a sexual manner, although I didn't really know what that meant. Bailey knew. To my extreme embarrassment he ordered me to masturbate, right there in the tent, right there in front of him. Then, when I was just short of orgasm, he made me stop. When I had cooled down, he started all over again. This feeling of being so close and then not being allowed release created an erotic pain, a submission that thrilled me. I wanted more.

    This would be the experience that turned me on to the world of BDSM: Bondage & Discipline; Dominance & Submission; and Sadism & Masochism

    When Bailey and I started looking for information on what we were doing, we found the book Screw the Roses, Send me the Thorns, which is still my favorite, not only for its content, but also for its lighthearted approach. Today there are many books on safety, apparatus, and erotica, but few that explore the power exchange from an emotional and spiritual point of view. Yet, it is this transformational aspect that makes my heart and body sing.

    As I explored this lifestyle, I began to see how my BDSM experiences had a relationship to my spiritual path. I would describe my spiritual approach as Taoist in nature, with a relativist twist. This is why I capitalize both Dominant and Submissive; because just as in the yin/yang symbol, they are equal and interlocked parts of each other. Going into subspace isn't just kinky sex for me, although it sure does turn me on. It's also an entre into a mystical place similar to a walking meditation. The everyday world recedes, and I become more in touch with my own nature and with my higher power. Through exploring my BDSM orientation, I became more grounded and focused.

    This book is a collection of columns that I wrote over the last few years as I recovered from a very painful breakup (just like a country song). The first section includes my personal reflections about being a Submissive, a Switch, and yes, a Dominant too. The second section includes the writing I've done in some unconventional, and sometimes controversial areas. The third section, Dating in the Scene follows the somewhat entertaining stories of my dating life. The fourth section, Diary of a Journalist Submissive, is the story about my experience at House Mermaid. In the fifth section I write about how the BDSM community has changed my views about our place in society. Finally, I write about being "Sensuous Sadie," and how being a leader and a writer has changed my life.

    I'm hoping my travels through these strange and mystical places will light your path as well.

What people say about Sadie's Writing:

With her generous spirit and questing intelligence, Sadie isn't satisfied merely to have been there and done that - she needs to find out what it all means. Her insights will help speed many others along on their own journeys toward sexual self-revelation.
~ Gary Switch, Contributing Editor, Prometheus

It's very educating to get into Sadie's mind through her writings. She definitely has a unique and refreshing view on what we do.
~ Sir Victor, Leader of DomSubFriends of New York City

It is evident that Sadie's writing comes from the heart of someone in the D/s lifestyle. It's nice for a change to have someone with experience in what they write.
~ Angel Babee, Leader of Sisters in Submission

Sadie's scene writings are fresh, witty and observant.
~ Mayafire, Co-Leader of Albany Power Exchange (APeX), of New York

Sadie writes with compassion and conviction about the complexities of BDSM. Her writing has given voice to the needs and dreams of our community.
~ Jonathan, Executive Director of Rose & Thorn of Vermont

Your writing voice is clear without being strident and the breezy tone helps keep the "sturm und drang" out of what is surely a subject filled with a bit too much of that. Most of what I read on the web is so hopelessly cloying, overdone or just plain bad, so this a refreshing counterpoint.
~ Anne Marie Delaney

Sensuous Sadie is an exceptional writer, with a zest for the lifestyle few have.
~ Lady Bleu, Editor of DomSubLifestyle Online

I find Sensuous Sadie's writing style an easy to read and refreshing view of the BDSM lifestyle from a real time player. She is a great resource with her perspective from both the top and the bottom.
~ Lord Battista, Erotic Power Exchange Dominion

Julian Robinson's review of Sadie's book

About the Author

    Sensuous Sadie is a BDSM columnist and edits SCENEsubmissions, an online newsletter focusing on BDSM and spirituality. She founded Rose & Thorn, Vermont's first BDSM group in 1999 and led the group until March of 2002. She now devotes her time to writing, both for her columns and her series of interviews with scene personalities called SCENEprofiles.
    Sadie lives in northern Vermont and has a great passion for its beautiful Green Mountains. She is an avid portrait photographer, works out religiously and spoils her cat Spencer, who she describes as "not remotely submissive."
    Sadie can be reached at SensuousSadie@aol.com as well as through her website at www.sensuoussadie.com

Excerpts

Imagination is more important than knowledge
- Einstein

My first Dominant owned one toy, a leather slapper I bought at a sex shop, a toy that regularly got lost in the murky depths of his car. The thing was, we didn't need any toys, and could not have imagined the wealth of accoutrements now found in my closet. Our D/s experience was the stuff of dreams: exploratory, magical, transformative, scary.

On our first night together, I sat waiting to see if he would take the reins, to take me. He stood behind me, and I smelled the scent of his passion. I felt his breath, his heartbeat. So, too, did I feel his indecision, his own question about how best to proceed. Secretly, I wanted to feel a cool breeze around my ankles, telling me that he'd walked away to watch the rest of the hockey game; to grill up some shish kabobs; to shovel the driveway. I was afraid of this dark realm which yawned ahead. I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was or where I was going. I was lost in a breathless moment of sitting on that fence, not knowing...not knowing. A moment still and silent in my memory, even now.

Then, Bailey lifted my chin so my eyes could meet his. I saw the decision there, clear and intent. Knowing he had decided, I did, too. I relaxed into him.

Bailey and I traveled this D/s path without benefit of paddles, whips, and floggers. We did it with only a bit of information from the just-born Internet. We did it knowing nothing, less than nothing, about etiquette, safety, technique, protocol, or equipment of any sort. Instead, we had common sense, which in the end, turned out to be all we needed.

Today, after years of being a leader of a BDSM group, I have a boxful of toys: floggers and paddles and wax and rope. Condoms and clamps and crops. Spreader bars and scarves. What I do not have at the moment, is a man like Bailey to look into my eyes and tell me I'm his. But if I did, I know he wouldn't be about the "stuff." He too would be a mystic, an explorer on a path of shadows dappled from an overhang of heavy boughs, a path made apparent only by the empty branches of blueberries eaten along the way.

It wasn't just toys I collected along the way. I also learned about BDSM safety and etiquette, enough perhaps to take a step up to more edgy play, enough to prevent making a fool of myself. The demonstrations at our parties are the kind easy to do in public: not much skin, not much intense sexuality, not much overt humiliation. Nevertheless, after a few years, I have the feeling that for so many scene folk, the power exchange has come to be about the apparatus, not about the experience.

Let me be completely clear here; education and safety are important. If you are going to tie someone up, you have to do it right or you risk hurting them. Same with flogging. But techniques and safety knowledge are simply the essential basics, elementary mechanics. That car will run fine, but I want to go to the moon.

It's also true that if you go to a play party, or otherwise join the larger BDSM community, you need to know proper manners and etiquette for each type of event you attend. For these reasons, many BDSM groups see education as their mission. Education is a good thing, but if that's all there is, BDSM becomes form without substance.

In contrast, my approach has been to build a community and provide a safe space to explore our sexual identities. For many of us, D/s is not just about the toys, but rather the emotional and spiritual transformation occurring within, where the mind and soul surrender. My approach is of an artist, more interested in the expression than in who made the paint.

The usual way to get to this place is through the body as vehicle, using tactile sensation and sensual stimulation. It invokes a shift in perception, a shift from the daily world pronounced enough to enter the realm of Dom, or subspace. I wonder about approaching that door not through stimulating the body, but through the silken pathway of the soul. That's the mystica I seek, where he and I meet through the translucent waves of voice, of touch, of scent, of magic.

I don't care about floggers; which way they're made or how much they cost. I want to feel my blood rising to the surface with a tingle, rising to meet another stroke.

I don't care about the fifteen ways to tie a person to the door. I want to feel not the pressure and pull of the rope against my skin, but rather the helplessness slipping between my legs, opening me wide so I am without barriers.

I don't care about whether or not protocol tells me to gaze this way or that, to speak or not, to wear this color flag or another to announce my intentions. I care about hearing his whisper, close from the chattering crowd, close enough to hear his possession of my sexuality, my strength, my self.

What I want to explore is not the "stuff" of BDSM, but the enchantment. The trembling feeling that wakes me far past midnight in a sheen of heat.

But still I am dragged back to the practical. Novices write me for recommendations about what they should buy in the way of BDSM gadgets, and I send them a list; the usual suspects.

What I'd really like to give them is a list of mental, spiritual, and emotional qualities to bring to the table. I'd tell them to bring joy, creativity, and enthusiasm. Bring caring and patience and a commitment to communicating, even when it's a hassle. Bring not what you think a Dominant should be, but rather your own passion to dominate cleanly and without measure. Bring awareness of your self and a willingness to face your own fears. Bring yourself present, genuine and alive and here in this very moment.

Bring your questions.

If you are a Dominant, how will you discover what makes your Submissive's world "go round?" What can you do to create a whole new awareness for your Submissive? How will you care for her or his emotional well being? How will you deal with the vulnerable place they will be in, not only during a scene, but even as early as the first time you meet and feel that little tingle?

How will you learn to read your Submissive's reactions, physical and non-physical so you can teasingly torment them into a state of mindless sensual bliss? How will you learn to play your Submissive's body like a fine violin, to compose a symphony of subspace?

If you are a Submissive, your responsibilities are different; your questions different. How do you protect your inner self enough to negotiate fully with this person, while still opening up enough to let yourself be known? How do you learn to trust being vulnerable when so many Dominants don't have the emotional skills to cope with garden variety emotions, much less the profound ones of D/s play? When will you tell this person about your sexual and BDSM preferences? If you do it too early, you will not have kept to your personal boundaries about privacy and intimacy, but if you hold back too long, your Dominant won't have the necessary information. Are you caring for yourself enough, so your Dominant doesn't have to rescue you? Do you know who you are and what takes you to that magical place so you can communicate this to your partner? What is subspace really about for you?

If our life journeys unfolded in a straight line, we would each have an unambiguous path ahead. But D/s, like life, is a series of parallel paths instead. For me, its transcendent nature begs to be explored, not through apparatus, but through the hush of his breath on my neck, the linger of his hand in my hair, and the soft and steady resonance of his voice leading me to our destination.

Catalogue Information