Squick City

By Lisabet Sarai

When it comes to perverse sex, I'm pretty broad minded. There isn't much that I wouldn't consider, at least in a literary or fantasy context. (The real world is something else. It has been a while since I've had the chance to test my actual physical or psychological limits.)

I've written enemas and golden showers (my editor made me excise the latter) and yes, it turned me on. I find incest, especially among siblings, embarrassingly hot. Necrophilia? Well, let's just say I can see the appeal, at least in a fantasy role play like Kathleen's story “Chill”. Bestiality? How can anyone who's ever been licked by a cat or admired a stallion not consider the erotic possibilities? I've never written a BDSM story about knife play, but I've read a few that made me shiver with arousal. (Tess Danesi's “Lessons Slow and Painful” in Fast Girls is the most recent example that comes to mind.)

Eating come? Sure, why not? Rimming? Thrilling, in the right circumstances. Diapers? I've written that into at least one story (“Poker Night”, in my Rough Caress collection). There's a scene in Ruby's Rules where a character gets fucked with a champagne bottle and another featuring clothespins on the labia.

There is one kink, though, that I can't imagine writing, because it scares me silly, despite the fact that I gather it's fairly popular. I'm referring to “breath play”, otherwise known as erotic asphyxiation. In case this isn't familiar to some readers, breath play is basically getting off by being strangled, smothered, or otherwise deprived of oxygen.

I found in my research that there are physiological reasons why hypoxia (the shortage of oxygen) is pleasurable. Supposedly, being deprived of oxygen produces a giddy, hyper-lucid or hallucinogenic state that greatly intensifies the experience of orgasm. According to some sources, the resulting state of bliss is as addictive as cocaine.

Sorry, but I'll choose other methods for my hallucinations.

In the context of a BDSM relationship, breath control obviously carries an emotional charge as well as possibly involving physical pleasure. The sub is literally offering her life to the dominant. I can understand the excitement of that level of trust, intellectually, but I still can't imagine ever be willing to participate in a breath control scene—even though it would pain me to refuse anything to my Master. It's so far outside my comfort zone that I don't think I could even write about it, at least not convincingly.

Yet some authors do. Rachel Kramer Bussel's story “Your Hand on My Neck”, in her acclaimed anthology Please, Sir, is about erotic asphyxiation. Rachel's an accomplished writer with a definitely kinky bent, and I usually resonate with her tales, but this one left me cold. I found it disturbing as opposed to arousing.

And yet...part of me hates to accept that there's anything I couldn't eroticize, if I tried. When I saw Charlotte's topic for the week, I was tempted to push myself and try to write a short piece focused on this, my most serious squick. (Actually, it goes beyond “squick”, which seems to have the connotation of disgust. My reactions to the suggestion are closer to terror.)

Then I thought about all the other stories on my mental list, waiting to be written. Better I should devote my scarce writing time to something more appealing – like gang bangs or face sitting, suspension or branding.

Everybody's got limits, right?

The Power of Place

By Lisabet Sarai

The roar of an unmuffled motor roused them from their embrace. A narrow boat with a high, sharp prow raced passed them, leaving the barge rocking gently in its wake. ‘A long-tail boat, as they are called,’ said Somtow. ‘A modern adaptation of the traditional dragon boats that plied the river in past centuries.’ He kissed her again, lightly. ‘Personally, I prefer a more leisurely pace.’

Katherine stood up and leaned on the gunwale, taking in the myriad sights of the river. Stretches of verdant jungle alternated with rickety-looking wooden houses, perched on stilts at the river's edge. Women in sarongs squatted on the porches of these shacks, doing laundry or cooking on charcoal braziers. The delicious smell of frying garlic came to her across the water.

She saw the slick heads of children, heard their shrill cries as they splashed each other. A flat-bottomed boat piled high with bananas passed their barge, propelled by a long pole in the hands of an elderly woman in a conical straw hat.

Then she caught sight of tiled roofs and gilded spires through the palm trees. It was a wat, a Buddhist temple, inaccessible except by water. A winding stairway led from the complex of buildings down to the shore. At water level sat a small pavilion, with the typical peaked roof and upturned eaves. Katherine saw a young man draped in orange robes seated there, pensively watching the river flow by. The monk looked up as they passed. Katherine felt an ache in her chest. His beautiful, serious face, lit by the late-morning sun, was too perfect.

Immersed in the scenes on the riverside, Katherine started when she felt Somtow's hands on her hips. She twisted around to look at him.

‘No,’ he said, ‘please, just stay the way you are.’ She obeyed, turning back the river and leaning her elbows on the railing. She felt her skirt being drawn up, until it was around her waist. Next, her knickers were pulled down until they were at her ankles.

From Raw Silk

My stories are about places almost as much as they are about people. In many cases, my settings act almost like additional characters. They establish the story context, generate conflicts and influence the action. Often, the characters only make sense in the place where I've put them.

Kate's odyssey of sexual self-discovery in Raw Silk could not have occurred anywhere else but in Thailand. Only in Bangkok could she have become entangled with a Dom who runs a go-go bar and a minor prince, or been seduced by the free-wheeling sensuality of the Thai culture.

Kathleen's topic for this week is “Writing Where You Know”. I know Thailand fairly well, having lived there for several years and visited frequently after we moved away. Bangkok is in my blood and spills out in many of my stories. I try to capture its contradictions and fascinations, and mirror them in my characters.

Places seduce me. I soak up their essence and then try to recreate them on the page. I was once lucky enough to live in Boston's historic Beacon Hill district for a year. The cobbled streets called to me. I walked them in a daze, drunk with history. I worked to capture this sense of past enduring into the present in Incognito, which has action set in Beacon Hill in both contemporary and Victorian times.

Miranda felt delightfully free as she strolled down Charles Street, enjoying the afternoon. It was only May, but already the trees were in full leaf, dappling the brick side walks with patterns of shadow. Girls passed her in tank tops and shorts, legs and arms bare and already burnished with sun. She felt warm in her long-sleeved pullover and overalls.

She loved this district, with its historic buildings and narrow lanes. Most of the town houses dated from the middle of the previous century. They offered a delightful jumble of architectural detail; wrought-iron balconies, fanlight transoms, stained glass, mullioned windows, Corinthian columns. Many of the brick-fronted buildings were draped with ivy. Some were traversed by aged trunks as thick as her wrist, twining around doors up to the many-chimneyed roofs. The tall windows offered glimpses of chandeliers, Oriental carpets, Siamese cats, and bookshelves that stretched floor to ceiling.

In Beacon Hill, gas lamps lined all the streets, burning day and night. Her own apartment looked out on a private alley, flanked by ivy-hung brick walls and lit by gas lights. Miranda appreciated the irony of her living in an environment that dated from the same period as her research. Perhaps, she sometimes thought playfully, I had a previous life as a Victorian matron.

Most of Beacon Hill was entirely residential, but Charles Street was lined with shops and cafés. There were many vendors of books and antiquities; Miranda loved to rummage through the crowded, chaotic shops, savouring the atmosphere of the past, although she rarely made a purchase.

She entered one of these places now, a dim, comfortable space half below street level. She had to duck her head as she entered. A silvery bell tinkled to announce her arrival.

The proprietor, an energetic, fussy old man with wire spectacles, knew her by sight. “Hello, hello,” he said as he emerged from a back room. “Can I help you find anything today?”

Miranda smiled. “No, thank you. I’m just browsing at the moment.”

“Well, if I can be of any assistance, just let me know.”

Miranda wandered happily through the shop. It was much larger than it first appeared, with several rooms stretching backward into the building. The front room, near the street, was crowded with furniture of obsolete categories, armoires, commodes, carved dressing tables surmounted by triple mirrors. There were other rooms with porcelain, jewellery, cutlery, iron fittings, tarnished brass. Finally, Miranda found herself in the book room.

Books were piled everywhere, in boxes, on shelves, in pillars that reached up from the middle of the floor. Although most were in English, Miranda noticed volumes in French, Russian, and Arabic. The room was veiled in dust, but Miranda did not mind. She loved the rich smell of the leather bindings, the tarnished gold embossing, the fragile texture of the old paper.

-- From Incognito

The shop Miranda visits actually exists, or at least it did back when I lived on Charles Street. Miranda's apartment borrows a lot from the one we rented, with its windows filled with wavy glass and its rickety fire escape overlooking the brick-lined back court. It was easy for me to imagine Beacon Hill in Beatrice's time (the Victorian era). At night I could see her ghost tripping along the cobbles, veiled, on her way to an assignation with a stranger.

Of course, not every place that I've been is exotic. That doesn't stop me from using those locations in my tales. When I was in graduate school I had a boyfriend from Nebraska and spent quite a bit of time there. That flat state stretching across the middle of America has found its way into a number of my stories.

The tractor was acting up again. I was on my knees in the straw, surrounded by greasy parts, when Sally came running into the barn.

"There's a tornado coming, Joe. Heard it just now on the North Platte radio station."

I looked her over. Her hair had half-escaped from her barrette and was floating in red-brown wisps around her ears. Her apron was damp; she must have been washing the lunch dishes. She was breathing hard from her run, ample breasts rising and falling under her print dress. I saw worry in her eyes, justifiable worry.

Twisters are no joke. When one comes roaring across the corn fields, all you can do is hide. In '96 we lost a barn and two horses, while we shivered together in the crawl space, holding each other tight and listening to the wind scream. After that, I built a proper cellar. I might not be able to save our property, but our lives were a different story.

I nodded to her, already covering the parts with a tarp and weighting it down. "Open the house windows, lock the door, and meet me in the cellar. I'll just be a few minutes." Without another word she went to follow my instructions.

Already I could feel that weird electricity in the air, that heaviness that makes it hard to draw breath. The horses were restless. I opened their stalls, so that they would have a chance if the building collapsed. They huddled nervously in the corners. Leaving the upper windows open wide to equalize the pressure, I locked the doors and headed for the bulkhead.

The sky was a sickly green. A mass of inky thunderheads sat ominously on the horizon. It was perfectly still, no hint of a breeze stirring the July afternoon, as I swung open the doors and headed down the concrete stairs.

I was mighty proud of the storm cellar. It stood some distance from the house, just east of Sally's kitchen garden. I had heard of folks who survived a twister in their cellar but who were trapped when the house collapsed on top of it. My cellar was spacious, twelve feet by fourteen, with a ceiling high enough to accommodate my six foot frame.

It was well-equipped. It had a little refrigerator (which I kept stocked with beer) that ran off a car battery, a good supply of canned goods and fresh water, a comfortable double mattress and some directors chairs, plenty of battery-powered lights and candles. Not to mention the flogging bench and the bondage frame that I had built in my spare time, and a reasonable assortment of home-crafted floggers, paddles and dildos.

-- From “Twister”, in Rough Caress

I've been fortunate to have travelled more than most people. Foreign locales almost always stir up a story or two. Here's a snippet set in Amsterdam.

"You know me. The coolest of the cool."

But I'm not. In fact I've been obsessed ever since last night, when Jane and I wandered through the red light district, staring at the women who waited behind the glass in their rose-tinted rooms. We wove our way through clumps of nervous, intoxicated men who were all staring, too. I could smell their sweat, underneath the beer and the pot smoke. I could feel their lust. It infected me.

They barely noticed us, two teenagers in jeans, although the tight denim in my crotch was so wet, I half-expected they'd catch my scent and turn to me. They had eyes only for the bodies displayed in the rows of windows lining the canals.

Some of the women were ripe, blond, Slavic-looking, their breasts exploding out of their lace brassieres. Others were slight, deliberately child-like in Gidget-inspired bikinis or brief plaid kilts. There was a Brazilian beauty with golden skin and coffee-colored eyes; a voluptuous African princess with strings of ruby-hued beads dangling in her ebony cleavage; a serious-looking brunette wearing dark-framed glasses who sat, shapely legs crossed, like a secretary waiting to take dictation.

Some of the women posed. Others danced suggestively, or made lewd gestures at their prospective customers. There were masked women in leather, snapping riding crops against their boots. There were women whose pierced nipples and labia showed clearly through their translucent garments.

Men clustered around the dimly-lit windows like moths hovering by a candle. Mostly they'd just look, inflamed by the mere thought of all this available flesh. Sometimes I'd see a hushed conversation through a half open glass door. Such conversations might end with the man turning away, disappointed, rejected, or perhaps simply unwilling to pay the asking price. Other times the door would open wider, just enough to admit the supplicant. Then it would close and the red velvet curtains would be drawn, hiding the rest of the dance.

Those curtained windows drew me. I couldn't stop imagining what might be going on behind them. I knew it was a straight commercial transaction in most cases, a workman-like blowjob, or a quick, bored fuck. Still, I imagined occasional revelations, epiphanies, ecstasies -- meetings of strangers pre-destined to be lovers, brief but unbearably intense conflagrations of lust, lewd and mystical connections that would live in his memory, or hers, long after the curtains were flung open again.

I'm nineteen. I've had enjoyable but ultimately frustrating sex with two boys my age. I know that, practical as I am, I'm a bit of a romantic. Otherwise, I would not have continued to roam the red-lit alleys long after Jane gave up and went back to the hotel in disgust. As the Oude Kerk chimed two AM, I wandered up Molensteeg and down Monnikenstraat like some horny ghost. The crowds had thinned. The curtains were mostly drawn. Some of open windows were empty. Next to them were the signs: KAMERS TE HUUR. Windows for rent.

-- From “Shades of Red”, originally published in Yes, Ma'am: Erotic Stories of Female Dominance.

I've written stories set in London, Prague, Montego Bay, Luang Prabang, and Siem Riep – all of which have been destinations for my real world journeys. Much of what I write is contemporary. Occasionally, though, I'll visit a place where history calls to me. In 2000 my husband and I spent ten amazing days in Provence. We visited the ruined abbey of Thoronet not far from Avignon. Wandering through the vaulted stone chambers, I had a strangely vivid sense of what it would be like to have been a part of that community of devotion, back in the twelfth century.

When my brother’s life was spared by the wasting fever, my father consecrated me to the Church as his thanks for answered prayer. This was seven years ago, just after my first monthly bleeding. I did not mind being sent to the abbey; I was thus saved from the rough and grimy hands of the neighboring lord, to whom my father originally planned to wed me. “The claims of the Lord overrule the poor intentions of men,” he told me when he left me with the sisters at Thoronet. “May your virginity be a gift that forever glorifies God.”

As a girl, I found the simple, orderly life of the convent a comfort. The sisters were strict but never cruel. There was always work to do, but it was the sort of labor that satisfies: tilling the garden, tending the vineyard or the convent’s goats, baking bread. I slept well on my straw pallet, in the dormitory with the other novices.

Seven times daily, we knelt on the cold stone floor of the chapel and prayed. I loved the stark bareness of that sanctuary. The flickering light of the altar candles scarcely reached the shadows of the vaulted roof. The gold-encrusted crucifix on the altar shone as if lit from within. You are the light of the world, Christ had said, and there in the chapel I was suffused with that light.

I especially loved the Compline service, though sometimes it meant a rude awakening and a stumbling through midnight corridors. In the heart of night, the chapel was full of mystery. With the other women, I raised my voice to sing the hymns of praise. The soaring melodies made me ache with joy.

Our songs came, the superior told us, from Mother Hildegard, whose abbey on the Rhine was one of the centers of our Benedictine order and whose visions blessed us all. As I sang, I dreamed of mystic encounters, of being tested in my faith like the virgin saints.

-- From “Communion”, in Fire: Short Stories.


Of course, there are many places I haven't visited (yet!) I've set a few stories in locales where I don't have personal experience. My paranormal romance Serpent's Kiss takes place in a mountainous village in Guatemala. Getaway Girl works hard to capture the atmosphere of a real North Yorkshire village called Kirkby Malzeard. (Ashley Lister helped me a lot with that one!) And one of my favorite recent stories is set on a tea plantation in the Assam hills, in the waning days of the British Empire.

The rain drops are Lakshmi’s tears. That is what Lalida had said—tears of pity wept by Vishnu’s consort at the sad state of mankind. From the sheltered veranda, Priscilla watched sheets of rain sweep relentlessly across the land. The silver curtain alternately hid and revealed the shapes of the green hills rising in the distance.

Priscilla swallowed the last of her biscuit and leaned back in the rattan chair, drawing her shawl around her shoulders. She knew, from the past week’s experience, that the downpour would end in a few hours. The lush wet bushes would sparkle in the sun, as though someone had scattered handfuls of jewels over their leaves. For now, the muted hues of the landscape matched her mood.

“More tea, Madam?” Lalida stole up behind her on bare feet, her orange sari like a streak of fire in the grey morning.

“Not for me, but please bring a fresh pot for Mr. Archer.”

“Yes, Madam.” The maid hurried away, leaving Priscilla alone again with her reveries.

Had it really been only a month ago that they had arrived in India? It seemed like a lifetime. She could barely remember the streets of London, the bustle and the noise, the clatter of hooves on the pavement, the horns and the backfiring engines of the autos vying with the carriages for space. It was so quiet here on the plantation. All she could hear was the hiss of the rain sluicing down.

-- From Monsoon Fever

I've never visited Assam, though I have been to India. But after working for weeks on Priscilla's tale, seeing the world through her eyes, I feel as though I know the place. I see it. I smell it. Research, imagination and analogy help me to bridge the gaps in my experience.

Some authors don't seem to spend much time or effort defining a particular locale for their stories. For me, one of the first questions that I ask myself is “where?” Move the tale from one location to another and it often becomes a totally different story. That is the power of place.

Naked Heart

By Lisabet Sarai



Give me your body.
Give me your mind.
Open your heart.
Pull down the blind...

My head encased in fat 1970's era headphones, I hear only the music, but I understand that he is speaking to me through the lyrics. He's behind me, towering over me, his big hands resting on my bare shoulders as I listen to the album he has brought me as a gift, a British group called 10cc. I feel my heart pounding in my chest, in time with the bass. I don't know what he'll do next. The uncertainty is disturbing and thrilling.

His fingers trace a path along my upper arms, light, teasing, raising goosebumps. Then they lock onto my nipples. I gasp as he pinches hard, then twists. I remember what he told me about clamps. What he promised. He knows what I'm thinking—I'm sure it is just what he intends. I imagine his smile, behind me, full of gentle mockery.

I'm soaked and trembling. I am mortified by my own desires, desires I hardly knew I had until he exposed them and showed me who I really was.

His slut. His slave. We both know it, know that I'll do anything he asks. I trust him not to ask for more than I can bear to give.

I was twenty five. He was a year younger, but with knowledge born of years of study plus the experience of two other kinky relationships. He told me that he had had S&M fantasies for as long as he could remember. And me? I was a total innocent—not sexually, but as far as BDSM was concerned.

Did he somehow recognize my latent submissiveness? Or was he initially just attracted by my ripe body and raging hormones, only later starting to wonder if my fantasies were the complement to his? He was my classmate in grad school. We used to flirt, but I never took him seriously. Then he left the university for a job on the far coast, and we began to write.

Postal seduction. Asking me how I felt about spanking. Sharing his desire to tie me up. Discoursing on homemade whips and the efficacy of birch switches. I pretended lightness, laughed off his outrageous suggestions, but they left their mark on my psyche.

He would call me late at night and tell me his plans for me, his intuitions about what I wanted. Did he plant my fantasies or simply lay them bare? He claimed that he was meant to master me, to open my eyes to my own perversity. Arrogant and charming by turns, he wooed me, instinctively pressing all the right buttons—buttons I didn't even know were there. Finally, he invited me to come visit him over Thanksgiving.

Never having even touched him in a sexual way—rash, crazy, my inflamed imagination totally trumping my rational self—I agreed.

It was the best decision I ever made.

The first night, we had vanilla sex. The next night we tumbled together into a well of dark fantasy. He led me through a magic door into a world of intense sensation and raw emotion, power and surrender, trust and communion. Looking back, thirty years later, I'm still astonished by that sudden connection—so real and so true despite the fact that we were practically strangers.

He changed me forever.

Our lives ran in different tracts. We lived thousands of miles apart. I had other lovers, though he had a way of slipping into my head when I was in their arms, reminding me to whom I really belonged. When we managed to meet, our days together were a frenzy of kinky experimentation: leather belts, bungee cords, ping pong paddles, hot wax. Ultimately, though, it wasn't the physical sensations that bound me to him. It was the sense that he saw me as I was, as deviant and sluttish as he himself, and didn't condemn me. No, he liked what he saw. I could be truly naked with him; he would not condemn me. From the very first, I trusted him with my body and my fantasies. Eager to please him, I exulted when he shared his own fantasies and allowed me to fulfill them.

Our relationship wasn't easy. We were both too young to realize the value of what we had, I now believe, or to nurture it the way it deserved. Misunderstandings, recriminations—we drifted apart, and three years after our initial incandescent coupling, I married someone else.

Yet all these years later, we are still in touch, and I still consider him my mentor and my master, though he would laugh bitterly at the epithet.

Lisabet Sarai the writer would not exist if it were not for him. My erotic writings began with the fantasies I sent him. Raw Silk, my first novel, is a fictionalized account of my own initiation into dominance and submission. I even borrowed some of the dialogue from his letters. From the perspective of craft, Raw Silk is nowhere near my best work. But hardly anyone can read it without being touched by its emotional intensity.

I have tried to branch out, to explore other paths through the tangled forest of erotica. Still, dominance and submission, power and surrender, remain the themes that fascinate me the most. Sometimes I feel as though I'm writing the same scene over and over. My readers will certainly be bored. Not me, though. I'm breathless and wet as I relive those magic encounters of my youth.

Here's a short piece dedicated to him, which perhaps says more than all the discourse above. It's part of my short story collection Rough Caress.

Ritual

To G

They meet, infrequently, to perform the ritual. She waits for him to arrive, heart slamming against her ribs, stomach twisted with nervousness. When he enters, they embrace, awkwardly. It has been so long. She attempts lightness, a joke, a jibe, pretending that she does not know why she is here. Then he gives the sign - a mere eyebrow, arched in a question - and her protective humor slips from her along with her clothing.

The ritual demands much of them, the steps choreographed, but always with room for improvisation. First he binds her, with rope, or silk, or leather, ceiling-hung with thighs spread, or splayed across the bed, or bent double over a hassock. Sometimes he will position her limbs and bind her to stillness with his command alone.

Then he teases her, dabbles his fingers in her wetness, lovingly mocks her sluttishness. She melts at his slightest touch, sinks liquid and helpless into the ritual spirit, moaning just as he intends. She could drown in his rich voice, nuanced and full of power. He pinches her nipples into aching peaks, captures them in clothespins, or cinches them with rubber bands. All the while he strokes her pussy, calls her his pet, muddles the pains and the pleasures besieging her.

Next, he beats her. Here the ritual has many variants, but all with a single purpose: to invoke the purity of her surrender. She writhes under the lash, twists away from the hairbrush, whimpers as his bare palm reddens her buttocks. She does not wish to resist him; her only thought now is to please. But the pain is difficult to endure. Breathe, he says, soothing, encouraging, even as he scourges her. Open yourself. Yield yourself to me once again.

His voice is the key that unlocks her. Some barrier shatters and she floats free, each stroke of the whip an ecstatic kiss. His mind moves with hers now, sharing her agony and her joy. His breath comes in gasps like hers. His organ is granite. Now, come to me, my love, he whispers, entering her front or rear or spraying her marked thighs with his burning seed. She obeys, sliding into climax as he slides inside her, white hot fringed with red streaks of the pain.

Transcendence. Communion. Completion. They do not speak of it as they dress. There is no need for speech when the ritual is complete.

They meet infrequently. Sitting alone, on the plane or the bus taking her homeward, she savors the gaping, twitching sensations in her rear hole, the sharp echo of her stripes as she shifts in her seat, the slickness, still, in her sex. His voice echos in her mind.

Theirs is an old love. She thinks of him daily, imagines his life, her chest swollen with bittersweet aching. He thinks of her less frequently, but when he does, he gnashes his teeth, driven almost to madness because he cannot possess her. Then he recalls her sweet pliancy, her willing debasement, and his lips curve in a smile as he strums on his cock.

The ritual renews them. When she lies in a dentist's chair, or on the surgeon's table, when she wakes in fear in the night, she remembers him. Breathe. Open. Surrender. She relaxes into the fear, trusting as she trusts him.

She is sure that she will think of him, that way, when she surrenders herself into the arms of death. And then, perhaps, their meetings will be more frequent, and the ritual will be perfected.

I Wish I Had Written That...

By Lisabet Sarai

I read a lot, by most people's standards. Since I am a reviewer for several sites, at least half of my reading material is erotica or erotic romance. However, it's fairly rare that I experience that mixture of admiration and envy that derives from encountering a work that I wish that I could claim for my own.

The last time this occurred was earlier this year, when I read Anneke Jacob's BDSM novel As She's Told. This book deals with a power exchange relationship that is more extreme and complete than most you will find in the erotica canon. Maia's deepest desire, for as long as she can remember, has been to be someone's slave--to be caged, controlled and protected. Anders has nearly given up trying to find a woman that he can make totally his own, someone who will give him absolute power over her, body and mind. When Maia and Anders meet, the intensity of their mutual connection is breathtaking. That was the point when I started to become jealous -- in between my exclamations of delight.

You can read my review here.

Ms. Jacob accomplishes what I've tried to do in every one of the numerous BDSM stories I've penned--to bring to life the electric thrill that comes with recognizing and acknowledging complementary desires, especially desires the world considers to be perverse. She expresses, with elegance and verity, the irresistible attraction, the sense of belonging, the fear and the eagerness that spill over into sexual realm, so that every touch is incandescent, leaving marks on the soul. I've already deleted the ebook that I used for my review, or I would include some quotations. It was clear to me, however, that Ms. Jacob had experienced this epiphany personally, as have I. She, however, had much better success in conveying the world-stopping intensity of this experience than I've ever achieved.

The early chapters of As She's Told are near perfect. However, as I read further, I became a bit frustrated by the novel, because nothing really happens. Anders takes Maia deeper and deeper into submission, turning her into an animal, a thing for his pleasure. The tale focuses on ever more extreme tests of Maia's devotion, increasingly shocking demonstrations of her utter servitude. There is no climax, no conflict really, nothing to propel the story but kink. In some ways, I feel that Ms. Jacob squandered the stunningly realistic depiction of Maia's and Anders' early connection by turning the story into a sadomasochistic fantasy.

My master and I have often discussed how a long-term, real-world D/s relationship would develop. (We have a long-distance connection that hasn't involved any physical BDSM in a decade, but I still mentally award him that title.) Surely it wouldn't be possible to continue pushing limits, engaging in more and more extreme experiments, more excruciating and challenging tests for the submissive. There are physical constraints. Yet a continued repetition of the same old kinks would get boring, wouldn't it?

If I were to write a sequel to As She's Told, I'd want to explore this question. Maybe Anders would try something that would physically damage his slave in some serious way. (I kept expecting this to happen in the original novel.) He'd come to realize how deeply he loved Maia and recognize that his arrogant superiority needed to be tempered by real world concerns. (This is the theme of my own story, "Higher Power", which you can find in my BDSM collection Rough Caress.)

Maybe Maia would discover that there was in fact some limit, some boundary, that she could not or would not cross. Perhaps Anders would get bored and find another slave, setting Maia free. How would she survive after having every detail of her life dictated by her master for more than a year? Or perhaps some natural or man-made disaster might separate them and the sequel could focus on their struggles to reunite, struggles that might require paradoxical assertiveness from Maia, patience and resignation from Anders.

There are many possibilities. Of course, I'll never write this sequel. For a long time, though, I've toyed with the idea of writing a successor to Raw Silk. I've penned a couple of chapters, but after all this time (I wrote this novel over a decade ago), my sense of the characters has become less vivid. If I did continue, the focus of the book would be on infidelity and forgiveness. Gregory is the same sort of absolutist as Anders, but Kate is not nearly as pliant as Maia. Although Gregory awakened her submissive tendencies, she would never allow him to make her into a thing. And she has an erotic imagination, fostered by her experiences in Thailand, that might not be completely satisfied even by a creative Dom like Gregory.

In any case, I've gotten over my envy of Ms. Jacob, though I still admire her accomplishment. And I'd love to see her write a sequel addressing the questions that her book raises for someone who is deeply interested in real-world D/s relationships.

Women on Top

By Lisabet Sarai




This is my week to select the topic for our discussions. I decided to talk about femdom largely because I wanted to invite my friend and colleague William Gaius to be our Saturday guest. His novel The Ancestors of Star offers an original and arousing approach to a genre that sometimes turns me off rather than on. Then I remembered that both Jude Mason and Ashley Lister write a lot of female dominant erotica, so I knew we'd have a lively week.

And what about Lisabet Sarai? I have written my share of female dominant scenes and stories. My novel Ruby's Rules features a heroine who mixes pleasure with business, using her sexuality to control the males with whom she competes. Near the start of the book, Ruby comments “I do find myself quite sensitive to my partners’ desires to yield to my power.” For most of the novel, she goes on to demonstrate this. The tale climaxes with a chapter-long dungeon session in which hero is teased and punished for his bad behavior by not one but two Dommes.

My short story “Shades of Red” reprised the character of Ruby at the tender age of eighteen, exploring dominance for the first time in a red light district of Amsterdam. Raw Silk and Incognito also include femdom scenes, and Exposure features a F/F relationship with BDSM undertones.

Nevertheless, I realized when I sat down to write this post that femdom doesn't come all that naturally to me. Almost all the examples of femdom in my own work are in some sense equivocal. Ultimately Ruby surrenders herself to the man from the dungeon. In “Domestic Goddess”, one of the stories in my BDSM collection Rough Caress, a sub turns the tables on her master, but only because he has been neglecting her discipline since he lost his job. “Bangkok Noir", in the same collection, includes the stern and implacable mistress known as the Professor, but her character is balanced by Nok, the gogo dancer who thinks that she's the one in control until she is topped by a stranger.

I can write femdom, but it's a stretch. I have to work hard to put myself in the right frame of mind.

One reason is that I find many of the conventions of the sub-genre a bit repellent. I have no objections to tanning a succulent male butt beat red or pulling out the nipple clamps to demonstrate that a guy's nipples are every bit as sensitive as a woman's. However, much of the femdom that I've read and reviewed seems to focus on serious humiliation. The tops tell their grovelling male slaves that the men are miserable worms--and they mean it. Dommes don't merely bind and beat their subs, they belittle and insult the poor sufferers. And it's not just an act. I can handle fairly extreme physical trials in a BDSM story, but I need to see that the dominant has some respect and affection for the submissive. It takes courage and self-control to submit to a mistress. The dominants that I find exciting will recognize this, even as they put their slaves through horrible trials.

The more fundamental reason that writing femdom is hard for me is that my own tendencies and experiences are mostly as a submissive. Having been topped by a man, I find it a bit difficult to imagine turning the tables. That was the deliberate intent of “Domestic Goddess”, to explore that scenario, and I found the tables didn't really stay turned.

This Thanksgiving will mark the 31st anniversary of my initiation as a submissive. Although I haven't engaged in any real BDSM activity in years, that night left indelible marks on my soul—and on my imagination. Anyone who reads my work will see that the purest emotion comes through when my character assumes the submissive voice.

A serious writer, however, has to push past his or her own kinks or squicks and explore other viewpoints. I don't want to keep writing Kate from Raw Silk over and over again. So I've tried my hand at writing pretty much every variation in the power equation: M/f, F/m, F/f and M/m.

Possibly the most successful (in the sense of genuine and arousing) femdom story I've written is “Be Careful What You Wish For”. This tale was inspired by a reader's fantasy. When I first started publishing, my website (which was and still is entitled “Lisabet Sarai's Fantasy Factory”) had a page where visitors could sketch out a fantasy which I would then expand into a full story. I'm not sure why, but I really understood what the guy who posted this request had in mind. I knew what would push his buttons. I wrote the story in a couple of hours and barely revised it at all. The individual who provided the original scenario raved about the tale and pointed all his femdom-loving friends in my direction. Probably over the years I've deeply disappointed them!

In 2005 I answered a call from Carol Queen for a collection called Whipped: Twenty Erotic Stories of Female Dominance. This project was something of an educational exercise. The book shipped with a video CD of interviews and scenes with real world dominatrices. My contribution, “Poker Night”, sums up my feelings and preferences when it comes to femdom.

The hero of the story is a regular guy, a married, church-going man who wears flannel shirts and works in a hardware store, drinks beer and plays poker with his friends. His Mistress, a professional but as down home as he, puts him through some extreme punishments including caning and infantilism. Through the entire scene, though, she's giving him what he needs and they both know it.

Finally she allows him to come.

---

Pleasure, untainted by pain, overwhelmed him. His whole body convulsed. Milky fluid spurted from his spasming cock, showering Helen's toes. He closed his eyes and felt all the tension, the rage, the fear, the shame, the self-disgust, flow out of him, leaving him empty and at peace.

"Clean me off." Helen's voice, gentle despite its message of command, broke his reverie. As though in a trance, he bent and began to lick his come off her white feet. He didn't mind the bitter taste. Long after he had consumed every drop, he continued to lap at her warm, fragrant flesh, dipping his tongue into the crevices between her toes, tracing the smooth arch of her instep.

"Enough." Helen raised him up until his face was level with hers. "Enough." She bent and kissed him with closed lips. "Get dressed. I'll wait in the living room."

Then she was gone. Jack groaned as he clambered to his feet and looked around for his clothes. The muscles in his thighs and shoulders were sore. His buttocks were on fire. He couldn't stand the tightness of his undershorts, though the rough denim created its own special agony against his punished flesh. Every step reminded him of Helen and his own degradation.

He smiled when he saw her, sitting in front of the TV watching the late news. She had put on a flowered housecoat, exactly like something Maude would wear. His heart swelled with something, something that actually felt quite a bit like love.

He fished another twenty out of his pocket and added it to the pile of cash. "Thank you, Helen. I really appreciate it."

She laughed. "Wait till tomorrow, Jack, when the pain really kicks in and you might not be so grateful!"

"No," he said softly. "I will."

---

That's the sort of woman that I like to see on top.

The Joys of Writing BDSM

by Lisabet Sarai



In my post two weeks ago I complained about the constraints of fitting into a genre. Now I have to admit that there is a genre where I’m comfortable -- the genre commonly known as BDSM.

I love writing BDSM. I find it far easier than writing so-called “vanilla” romance or erotica. I’ll be the first to admit the reason: it turns me on. BDSM pushes my personal buttons. My real world experience in the BDSM arena has been fairly limited but has had incredible personal impact. Nothing excites me like a well-written scene between a Master or Mistress and his or her willing slave. I know this is because the action and conversation contain echoes of my own ecstatic awakening to the joys of dominance and submission.

“BDSM” is short for Bondage, Discipline, Sadism and Masochism. It also subsumes “D/s”, Dominance and submission. What is included in BDSM fiction? Depending on who is doing the writing, bondage could be anything from naughty little games with silk scarves to ball gags, hog tying and suspension. Discipline can range from a playful spanking to flogging with a bull whip. Blindfolds, handcuffs, slave collars, dildos, riding crops, leather masks, stiletto heels – the paraphernalia of BDSM have in fact become familiar to the point that they’re almost clichés.

For me, though, the external tools and symbols of BDSM don’t matter, not really. The essence to BDSM, the key to understanding its appeal, lies in the relationship between the dominant and the submissive. Trust is the core concept. The submissive entrusts the dominant with her body, believing that he will administer no more pain than she can bear. She opens her mind to him, sharing her desire to be mastered. She gives him power over her, trusting him to use it wisely. Meanwhile, the dominant trusts the sub to use her safe word if he misjudges her limits, but otherwise, to let him lead her through the scene and not “top from below”.

(For convenience, I am using the terminology of a male dominant and female submissive here, but the dynamics do not change significantly regardless of gender.)

The two participants in this exchange of power are connected – emotionally, psychically, even spiritually. Successful BDSM scenes require a level of communication and honesty beyond what one usually finds in vanilla sexual encounters. A skillful Dom intuits the sub’s psychological and physical state from her breathing, her skin, her body language. To the sub, it can feel as though the dominant is reading her mind – and maybe he is. She cannot lie about her arousal or her agony. Both are plain to see. The experience of being seen and known so deeply is intoxicating, magnifying the sexual excitement.

I enjoy writing BDSM because I can participate vicariously in this intimate connection. I can write from the dominant’s or the submissive’s perspective, male or female. It doesn’t seem to matter. The buzz is the same.

This is just my view. Some readers, and writers, take a more fetishistic approach to BDSM. For these individuals, the paraphernalia are arousing in themselves. It doesn’t matter who is using them. And of course, there are people who find non-consensual scenarios of rape and torture sexually arousing.

It’s not my place to judge these people. After all, there are lots of fine upstanding citizens who would label my own interests and desires as evil or sick. However, neither of these perspectives on BDSM corresponds to my own. I write safe, consensual, responsible, emotionally satisfying BDSM scenes between adults who at very least care about each other’s welfare.

Sounds almost wholesome, doesn’t it?

It’s possible to write BDSM fiction with none of the traditional trappings. One of my all time favorite erotic stories, by Mike Kimera, is called “Other Bonds than Leather”. Better than anything I’ve written, it captures the essence of D/s, separate from the artifacts and the toys.

Meanwhile, here’s something of my own, an example that will perhaps make my point clearer than any more of this intellectualizing.

From “Wednesday Night at Rocky’s Ace Hardware Store” in Rough Caress (Eternal Press, 2008)

We pass a display of galvanized steel fittings. I stop, fascinated. Sturdy eye bolts and swivel bolts, hooks and pulleys, interlocking rings and brackets, all sensuously curved and shining a dull silver. I can't take my eyes away, imagining spread limbs and stretched muscles. Hardware stores always bring out my creative side.

He laughs at my intensity. "You know that we can't attach anything to the walls, Sarah. It's in the resident's agreement."

"Well... what about out on the deck?" Our top-floor condo has a lovely patio built out on the flat part of the roof. From there we have a fabulous view of the city, from Twin Peaks to the Golden Gate.

"You want me to bind you out in the open, where anyone uphill can see you?" He rolls his eyes heavenward, pretending annoyance. "And you say that I'm perverted!"

He steers me onward. Reluctantly, I leave the suggestive display of fittings, only to be transfixed by the rolls of self-service chain at the other end of the aisle.

"Chain is completely impractical," he reminds me with a grin.

"But it's so decorative, so evocative," I counter. "Whips and chains, you know."

"Whatever you want, dear," he says, bowing low. I make a choice and he cuts me a four foot length of the pretty, brass-finished stuff with half-inch links. He dumps it into our basket. It gives a satisfying clink whenever we move.

My nipples go taut at the sound. He notices, of course, and leans down to tweak one, hard. Another wave of lubrication gushes from my cunt. His nostrils flare as my scent fills the aisle.

"My turn," he says. "Let's go check out the dowels." His thumb and forefinger are still grasping my swollen tit. He leads me toward the back of the store.

I look around nervously, but there are few customers at eight PM on a Wednesday evening. Despite my comments about the deck, I'm actually terrified of public exposure. To be more accurate, public restraint or punishment is still beyond my limits, something I'm not ready to admit that I want. He knows that perfectly well.

He halts in front of a rack holding wooden rods of varying diameters and lengths. I have small hands; I could not get my thumb and forefinger around one of the thickest. The thinnest are perhaps a quarter-inch in diameter, like the sticks used to mount children's balloons.

When he releases his hold on my nipple, I still feel the echo of his fingers on my throbbing flesh. "Bend over," he orders. Trembling with fearful excitement, I bend at the waist. I rest my hands on my thighs for support, but he can see that I am not comfortable. He flips my skirt up, baring my buttocks. "Don't move," he cautions, and then disappears, leaving me alone in this awkward and obscene position.

He is gone for what feels like forever. Slight currents of air brush my exposed ass like ghostly fingers. My engorged pudenda ache for his touch, and the scent of my lust is stronger than ever. Sweat trickles down my neck, dampening my hair. My heart sounds so loudly in my ears, I do not even hear him when he returns. He has a folding stepladder, which he assembles and places in front of me. "Hold on to this."

The position is more stable and places far less strain on my back. "Thank you, Master," I whisper, once again marveling at how finely tuned he is to my needs.

He slips a casual finger into my soaking cunt and wriggles it around. "You certainly are wet, Sarah." My pelvis churns at his touch. Without thought, I grind myself against his hand. I am rewarded by a sharp slap on my butt cheek.

"Be still!" he says softly. "I did not give you permission to move."

He continues to explore my well-lubricated folds. Meanwhile I press my lips together and tighten all my muscles, struggling to obey his directive of immobility.

"What are you thinking, little slut?" he whispers in my ear. "Tell me."

I can hardly speak, aroused and taut as I am. "That I'm yours," I gasp, finally. "That I would do anything for you."

That’s it, in the last sentence. I get wet every time I read that sentence. That’s why I write BDSM.