An Obsession with Self Disclosure

By Lisabet Sarai

I remember when I first heard about blogs (or "web logs", as they were initially titled). That was back in the dark ages - maybe 2001 or 2002. (The word "blog" actually dates from 1997, according to Wikipedia, but I wasn't on the bleeding edge of popular Internet phenomena despite working in the computer industry.) Of course, people had been putting up personal web pages long prior to that time. I'd always found it surprising that they were so eager to share their private selves - their thoughts, their words, their photos - with billions of strangers.

When I learned about the existence of blogs, essentially on-line journals where people chronicled their daily thoughts and activities, I shook my head. What an absurd obsession with self-disclosure! Why would anyone believe that their posts would be of interest to someone else? And how could they expose such personal information to essentially everyone? I shook my head. I'd never become such an "escribitionist" (as some bloggers styled themselves).

Never say never. Fast forward a decade or so and here I am, offering the world my most private thoughts, experiences and fantasies on a weekly basis - sharing things that my own family doesn't know about.

Of course, I hide behind my literary identity here at the Grip. Still, the intensity and dubious social acceptability of what I share here occasionally gives me the shivers.

So for this week, Garce has thrown out tri-partite challenge, as a stimulus to writing. I'll quote it here because otherwise the posts this week might not make sense.

In her craft book "How to Write a Dirty Story" by Susie Bright (the best craft book on this subject i have yet found), Bright has an exercise which yielded a story for me and I invite you here to try one or all three.

1. Explain a sexual fantasy about an experience in the real world you would jump on in an instant if it were offered to you, no questions asked. Something you would have no reservations about actually doing.

2. Explain an experience you would like to have but only under certain conditions, otherwise not. Under those conditions you'd definitely give yourself to it, otherwise not.

3. Explain a fantasy you'd love to do in your imagination, something that excites you but you'd never in a million years do it in the real world, because its impossible to perform or too squicky to endure. But something that excites you to imagine.

The first two items on this list struck me as too easy. I mine my plausible fantasies for narrative material every time I sit down to write.

The third one, though, gave me pause. I have a couple of candidates. The most extreme I'd never share, not even with you, my dedicated readers. One fantasy does definitely fit the bill, though, while at the same time being sufficiently common that (I hope) it won't outrage our average visitor.

I often fantasize about participating in a gang-bang. Not just any gang-bang, though, but one with a strong BDSM component. My dom acts as the organizer and ring master, offering me to all comers (no pun intended) and inviting them to use and abuse me as they will. Usually I'm bent at the waist and shackled in a manner that displays my rear to the crowd. Sometimes I'm even on a stage. In ones and twos, the men take what they wish from me. They penetrate their orifice of choice. They spank or whip my conveniently presented ass. They spray me with their ejaculate, or force me to swallow it. I take a half dozen of them - a dozen. I'm battered and sore, but still they come. Meanwhile, my master stands by to keep me safe, whispering in my ear what a filthy slut I am. He tells me how much he enjoys watching me service the lust of so many men, knowing as he does that I belong to him alone.

He takes me last of all, when I'm stretched, soaked and spent. I'm teetering on the edge of unconsciousness, totally exhausted, yet his entrance revives me and wrings one last orgasm (or maybe the first) from my broken body. Then he gathers me in his arms and takes me away, to clean me, tend to my wounds, put me to bed.

I thought about casting this fantasy into narrative. I'm sure that's what Garce had in mind. But I just regaled you with an extreme BDSM scene a few weeks ago, and although the details of this scenario are different, the emotions are much the same. In any case, while I can imagine that I just might go through with the cutting and scarification I described in my post "Blood Bond", I'd never play this scene.

There are many reasons why I'll never realize this fantasy:

1. Although I might enjoy the notion of being fucked raw, the reality is far less pleasant. My vaginal tissues have always been tender, and they've become more fragile as I've aged.

2. Experience has taught me that I don't generally enjoy fucking strangers. The emotional connection in sex is far more important to me than the physical sensations, and that's missing when I don't know the guy from Adam. Of course, a gang bang should have nothing to do with my pleasure, but if I didn't find it exciting, why would I ever want to go through with it?

3. In reality, my master wouldn't enjoy this scene at all. He's actually very shy and also somewhat homophobic. There's a slight possibility that he might like to offer me to a close friend, but strangers? It would never happen, even if I were certain that it was what I wanted. (I should say that the fantasy of a gang bang that doesn't include his participation and orchestration doesn't interest me at all. Go figure.)

He sometimes reads this blog, although he's a private enough person that he'd never comment. He probably feels something similar to what I did when I first encountered blogs: perplexity at my motives, amazement at the depth and breadth of what I'm willing to share, maybe some sense of smug superiority that he'd never sink to this level of obsessive self-disclosure.

I wonder at it myself. I doubt that it helps sell my books. There's something cathartic about baring your soul to a (hopefully) sympathetic audience. I'm always embarrassed, though, when I write a post like this -- as well as a bit worried that I've finally gone too far.

But I keep doing it.