Different Loving: The World of Sexual Dominance and Submission (18 page)

[My D&S sexuality] was very difficult for me to acknowledge. Cybele has never been in the closet about anything; I’ve been in the closet about everything: Awareness is a constant process of coming out for me. Like many vanilla folks, I had a certain number of S&M experiences that I did not call S&M. And though my fantasies were elaborate, one thing that was clear to me was that I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t quite know how to find out.

Since I didn’t know anybody who knew anything about the subject—it turns out I [did] know people who were involved, but they weren’t talking, and I wasn’t asking—I started visiting professionals. Some of my fantasies were submissive, but they were vague, because I didn’t know what
submissive
meant or what a submissive did. Most of my fantasies involved substantial dominance, with me as top, just as they had when I was younger. I wanted to top helpless women who would swoon and love me. I searched for a submissive who was very experienced, to teach me to top. She was not easy to find, so I visited a number of professional dominants, trying to figure out what to do. None of those dominatrices was very good. Now that I am in
this community, where there are several excellent professionals, I see none of those others around, so I conclude that they are people who simply do S&M professionally. Unlike the professionals in the community, the activity is not meaningful to them; it’s just a way to earn a living.

[But then] I spent several hours one evening with a man who advertises as a professional dominant. He was intelligent, educated, informed, and articulate and able to explain to me what was going on in a language I could grasp. He was also a very adept leather top. On the one hand, I learned something about how to top; on the other, I discovered that I had a genuine submissive side that I had not seen before.

[With his approach in mind], I answered an ad that turned out to be Cybele’s. I got her answering machine, and her message was grammatically correct. I’m a writer with a graduate degree in English and experience teaching college English, so it was important to me to have a grammatically correct partner. We traded messages and talked a number of times before we met. She was anticipating somebody much straighter than I, as she tells the story; a voice went off in the back of her head when I opened her door, saying, “Oh, it’s you.” But since she’s a good professional, she ignored the voice, and we had our little introduction and the session. However, this session, which was supposed to last an hour, went several hours. A woman who works with her listened at the door at one point, afraid that some harm had come to Cybele.

One of the things that is most engaging right now—I mean that in all senses—is that Cybele has a persona who really wants to bottom to me. [And] her baby persona—Baby Pixie—is very happy to have a submissive daddy. However, the context of our erotic relationship has been very different from that, and it is hard for me to come out as a top with her. Mistress and slave really undergird our relationship.

SMC is a church dealing with goddess worship—the dark-side goddess. It got its origin about 10 or 11 years ago when a group of people were fantasy playing with S&M energy and female-domination energy. At the same time, goddess worship was being discussed at an academic forum on the other side of town [among] sociologists at U.C. Berkeley. To make a long story short, there was a convergence of people acting out some old mythologies of dominant goddesses and sacrifices to them. It was merely speculative at first, but a few people decided to organize this energy under a religious corporation. This group ultimately became the Service of Mankind Church, which is a funny, yuppie name, but they wanted to come up with a nonthreatening
name [so] the church could function without attracting attention. People didn’t want it connected with [the] other strange things coming out of Berkeley.

The articles of incorporation define the church as based around worship of a dominant goddess. SMC’s religious practices are varied. One of the things that we would like to get people into doing—especially since so many people are attracted to us because of an erotic interest—is a search within. We have a woman who leads a group in basic guided visualization. She talks for several minutes and then asks people to sit quietly and imagine themselves in [a] particular scene. We’ll also chant the names of goddesses, because that helps center the mind and gets individuals out of individualism and into the group. The religious part is merely the acknowledgment of that goddess [and] surrendering, making an offering to that goddess.

We’ve done a lot of rituals. We find some interesting little mythology [about] some goddess, and [a] woman will play the role of that particular goddess. We’re not worshiping that particular goddess or that particular woman: It’s an acknowledgment of the feminine aspect of divinity. [For example], there is a ritual practiced principally in Nepal. A young virgin girl is seated on a throne; she incorporates the spirit of a goddess. The village people will come in and lay down fruit and gifts and flowers. They’re not worshiping that little girl; they’re worshiping the feminine aspect of divinity. It’s symbolic. We’re not Kali worshipers; we invoke different goddesses [symbolically].

Perhaps [it was] my Catholic school background and dealing with the Blessed Virgin that influenced me. Through grade school and high school I saw the Blessed Virgin as a surviving form of goddess worship. I think that drew me to [goddess worship] as a young person. [But] the Judeo-Christian point of view is that good and evil are located in two different deities: All good is in God and Jesus, and all evil is in another god, called Satan. In the Hindu pantheon and in other [Eastern religions], good and bad are combined in one deity. In monotheism we separate these [aspects]. The dark-side goddess—[from] the Eastern point of view—is not evil; it implies that we have to recognize within ourselves the potential for the maximum of good as well as the maximum of evil. To believe in the dark-side goddess is to acknowledge within ourselves just this potential. We worship the dark-side goddess because she is the one who can take these energies and do mass destruction. If we’re aware of what she is [and] give her acknowledgment, she could be quite benign. Keeping her benign [is] why you worship the dark-side goddess.

From a Jungian point of view, there is not evil but a dark or hidden side of our psyche [containing] various taboos [and] things we try to hide from
ourselves. And if, from the Jungian point of view, you have a support situation in which to open these doors and face these things directly, it is like looking at the dark or hidden side. Certain alternative sexual persuasions run parallel to what we call Shakti. Shakti’s a form of goddess worship, goddess power.

Going through Tantric books, books on other Indian practices, there was this recurring theme of a male figure on the ground [and a] goddess figure standing on his prone body. There’s one particular rite where one male is selected who becomes the human-assailant symbol of the god Siva. He is usually put down flat on the ground, and he’s usually bound. He crawls forward toward a female sitting on a chair, who is emanating the focus of this goddess energy. [She is] the Kali figure. He makes a long slow crawl—because he’s bound, it’s very laborious. When he finally gets there, he becomes the basis upon which she stands: A triumphant standing on the male god. Such images go back quite some time. And [then] you go through pictures of beautiful women you find in S&M magazines. There are men down on the floor with a woman’s feet on their heads. I found out that this is a sex picture; [it’s] there to turn some guys on.

Tantra recognizes that the way to thinking about the oneness of the universe can be achieved by traveling an erotic path. When an erotic path is established, it’s not sexuality. [In] Tantra you hold that energy, and as long as it’s being held rather than released, there is an altered state of consciousness. When a man [has] an erection, he’ll do anything that the woman wants, because he wants some realization of that. During that time he’s in an altered state of consciousness. The same goes for the female. We try to get that kind of a state going so that during that period one can have this inner trip. For example, the priestess playing the part of the spirit who sits on the throne [is] usually dressed erotically [to] get that male energy going. We use the iconography of this dominant goddess. That’s when the ritual [and] the chanting occur. We have icons of Kali standing barefoot on the chest of Siva. The mythology is that Siva lies dormant as dead until Kali steps on him, and at that point her power, her sexuality, her Shakti is so strong that she’s able to raise an erection in this corpse. From the Western viewpoint, this is a bit crude and weird, but this is the Hindu point of view: First comes the erection, and then comes life. She brings him back to life. As the legend goes on, they eventually copulate, and when they do, that sustains life in the universe. In other words, this union makes life go on.

We never [have] an orgy or anything like that. In order to give up all of his symbols of power and ego, a man may strip himself naked and lie prostrate at the feet of the goddess. Only certain individuals are selected to perform that symbolic surrender of the male to the feminine aspect. In some
cases he’s bound, in some he’s scourged—to show that he’s making his ultimate surrender. To straight people, that’s not sexuality; that’s just plain weirdness. But to others, like dominant women who’re watching, that’s very hot, very erotic, and they’re sure it’s explicit sexuality.

The Service of Mankind Church is our official name, but our subname is Sanctuary of the Goddess. And in the Sanctuary of the Goddess we wanted to establish a sacred place. [Our] mission is to make a reaffirmation of [our] theology, [to] define a group of people—men and women—who can learn more about the spiritual trip and actually become a part of it. We want priestesses and monks to carry on the ritual as well as to teach others. We call it the Inner Circle. We are doing this as a means of separating ourselves from the army of hedonistic men and a few women who see the Church as a place to expand their sexual and social lives, a place where they can meet a woman who is into S&M and female dominance. We’re being drowned by these people.

I became a dominant because, since I was three years old in the playground, [I was] a take-charge person. I don’t like to follow directions; I usually pick people’s directions apart. If I could have worked in camouflage for the military, I would have. I always see how things could be made better. I’m an innovator. I like dealing my own deal. I’m used to leading groups of people. I’ve been the head of organizations, on the national board of [the massage] organization I belong to. This is me: I walk in, and I take over. I do what needs to be done.

I got into S&M because I had a sexual partner, and we had been together for eight years. We were trying to find something new to do, and I played with cross-dressing and he became completely submissive. And that’s how I got into it. I didn’t know what to do at that point. So I went to the Eulenspiegel Society and learned what S&M was. I [would] go every Monday night, come home, and tell him what I saw. We played the games at home. Then it became a part of my life.

I’ll tell you what S&M has done for me: It’s made me a better businessperson, a better mother. I get along better with people. I’ve been able to be more real with myself. I was an entertainer all my life: I’m even better [now], because I’m not afraid of people anymore. It’s made a complete person of me, because I have this power and this control.

People who dig black women will come to me. There’s no doubt that’s what they want. One thing about people in the Scene: They won’t come to you if that’s not what they want. If I advertise anywhere, I always say I’m a big, black, buxom woman; a lot of men have been attracted to me because
I am big and black, and prominent. I don’t think of myself in any ethnic form. The mere fact of being a woman never affected me until I realized I could flaunt it. But I’ve always used my body to get what I want; I’ve always conned men into doing what I want. Being a woman, being black—these things aren’t deterrents for me. They’ve been very advantageous for me. I don’t think that black people really know where they’re coming from, so I’m not coming from anywhere but my consciousness as a woman; and it so happens that I am black.

I particularly [enjoy making] a dominant man submissive: That’s really a big kick of mine. [And] I like meeting new slaves and watching them submit. I love walking into a room and watching guys just scramble to get me a seat, to make sure that everything’s okay for me, and coming up to me to see if there’s anything they can do for me. I love the idea of being paid attention to, being paid homage to. Usually someone will come up to me after I’ve led a meeting at the Eulenspiegel Society, and we’ll go out for coffee and talk. I’ll know if I want to be with them by the body movement they have and by the way they look. [Many] men respond to me, but a lot of times I just slough them off. I have to be visually, physically, [and] mentally turned on to them. If I decide that I want to see him again, I’ll give him my card: If he calls and I really like him, we’ll set up a time [to] meet and talk [again]. I’ll ask them things about their life and what they want to do and how they want to do it. And if a man sees I’m receptive, there’s such relief; if I’ve just met them and I say, “Give me a call,” the response is “Wow, you really want me to call?” And if I like the guy, if we have any chemistry between us, I’ll know. I may touch them; I may let them kiss my feet, kiss my hand. It all depends on how I feel.

I recently met
someone
who I think is an absolute dream. He answered my [personal] ad, [which] said that I wanted him to write me a 500-word essay concerning himself and how he would worship me. My ad said I was a brown goddess. On the telephone he said that we met [once] at the Eulenspiegel Society. I didn’t remember it; that’s how nondescript he was. Before inviting him over, I sent him on a treasure hunt. I wear Opium perfume, and [Bloomingdale’s was] having a sale, so I had him go pick that up. He brought that with him, and he came, and we sat here, and we just talked. We like the same things. He’s in music, so we spent three hours talking about music and the people in the business that we knew in common. [When] he got ready to leave, he [was] still nondescript to me. At the door, I turned to him and gave him a kiss on the lips. His lips were so soft, I said, “Hmmm.” I was holding his hand, and his hand was soft, and I said, “Hmmm.” [After that] we talked almost every day, and we made a date. Over dinner he told me that he had a breast piercing. [I asked], “Why did
you do that?” He said, “Because I knew that one day I was going to meet a queen, and they would already be done for her. That’s you.” So at home I helped take off his shirt. I [had also] told him to buy a pair of red lace bikini panties, and [to] be wearing them. He took off his clothes, and he was wearing them. There was [his] gorgeous chest, this beautiful tan, and these things in his nipples. It just looked so hot.