By Lisabet Sarai
I've always believed that flesh is
holy.
Having met others who were not so
fortunate, I understand how lucky I was to grow up in a family and
religion where sex was not considered a sin. My mom, in particular,
was a lusty woman who would sometimes dress provocatively and flirt
outrageously. I was never taught to be ashamed of my sexuality.
At the same time, from my earliest
years I was fascinated by things of the Spirit. I've written before
about my Catholic girlfriend who intended to be a missionary nun. I
was her first “convert”, when she baptized me at the tender age
of seven, after having been well-schooled about the saints and the
sacraments. Later, I was exposed to Hindu mysticism through an aunt
who was the disciple of an Indian guru. My few experiences with
psychedelics convinced me that, as many Eastern traditions teach, the
material world is a thin skin spread over a limitless ocean of
spiritual energy. I saw for myself how passionate imagination could
shape “reality”, crystallizing new truths out of the formless
potentiality of Infinite Mind. Many times in my personal experience,
the so-called real world has twisted and reformed itself in response
to my heartfelt desires.
For me, sex seemed to confirm the
existence of the soul. In many sexual encounters, I felt a sense of
connection with my partners that extended far beyond the physical.
Perhaps I conflated sex and love, shallow pleasure and deep joy, but
regardless, those experiences changed me. During what I like to call
my “sex goddess” period (others might simply label me
promiscuous), I was simultaneously fucking people right and left and
experiencing daily spiritual revelations. As I wrote in my journal
during that period:
Where will this
all end? Can there be such a thing as living too much in the moment?
Have I no “will power”?
How ridiculous! It
suddenly occurs to me that tonight's events with E were in fact a
straightforward manifestation of my own will, an expression of
numerous daydreams, night-dreams and fantasies....
Or am I just an
addict? God is giving me what I need. This I must believe. Lord
knows I needed G (in the sense: needed for my growth). E too has
something to teach me. (And I him.)
I am willing, open
to it.. but it is just too much!
Nothing taught me as much about Spirit
as my initiation into BDSM. In my early scenes with my Master, I came
to a new understanding of faith and trust. When I completely let go
of myself, allowing him to take total control, the rewards were
limitless. Not just pleasure but true bliss, a sense of deep
communion, an acute awareness of the power we wielded together when
our bodies, minds and spirits were attuned. It was just a step from
here to the notion of submitting to a non-physical Higher Power,
because in some sense we are all manifestations of underlying Spirit.
A poem jotted in my journal, from the
same era:
Take me, lord.
My hands
outstretched,
eager for your
chains.
Head bowed,
Long hair hiding
my breasts
(only so long as
you will it)
Take me.
Let me be
consumed in your
flames
of mercy and
desire.
Soul of the
priestess within me
Naked upon the
altar.
Faith incarnate.
Surrender.
Power.
Peace.
When
the first flames taste my flesh, I feel no pain. Eyes closed, I
attend to the summer dawn: blossoms mingling with the wood smoke,
birdsong greeting the sun. Ecstasy wells up inside me even as my robe
ignites. Grace, gratitude, glory. I open myself to the agony, let the
pain wash over me as the Master taught me.
These themes of surrender
and redemption run through much of my erotica. (They're too serious
for romance readers.) Here's a bit from another of my short stories,
“Higher Power”, about the true nature of magic.
He turned away for a moment, then returned with a
leather blindfold. "This will help you to concentrate," he
said. I nodded, not daring to speak. I blushed again at my reaction
to his brief touch as he slipped the blind over my head. Everything
turned velvety black, black as his curtains and his eyes. Now there
was nothing but darkness, darkness and his luminous voice.
"Myra, I want you to relax and trust me. Listen to
me. Focus on me. Let me fill your consciousness, until you know
nothing but me." As he spoke, I thought I felt his fingers,
dancing lightly over my body. Yet I could tell from the sound that he
was standing several feet away. He began to chant in some language
that I did not recognize. His musical voice rose and fell in a
soothing rhythm. I felt a stirring of air around me. Little by
little, the tension leached from my body. Warmth flowed in like honey
to take its place, thick and sweet, coalescing into a dampness
between my thighs. I could not understand what he was saying, but his
intonations gradually took shape in my mind, whorls and eddies of
vibrant color that held me spellbound. I hardly realized it when his
incantation ended. Then I smelled sulfur and heard the snap of a
match bursting into flame. My fear flared in response.
"Myra," he said softly. I could tell that he
was closer now, right beside the chair. "Trust me. There will be
no pain." I felt intense heat against the skin of my forearm,
smelled paraffin and singed hair. Yet he spoke truly. I felt no pain,
only exquisite warmth that began in my extremities and raced toward
that swelling center below my belly, which seemed to have become the
center of the universe.
"I choose you," he intoned. "I anoint
you. I consecrate you to my service." With each phrase, he
sprinkled burning wax onto my skin as if it was holy water. I smelled
the incense of my childhood, and felt the ancient awe. Yet at the
same time my whole self hummed with lust. I was aware that the
evidence of my desire leaked from me, staining my business clothing
and scenting the air. I did not care. Shame had left me. I hung on to
his voice, rising and falling, eagerly awaiting the next blissful,
fiery benediction.
Complete bliss. That was what I felt. Then suddenly,
there was a giddiness, a disorientation. My body was moving, floating
upward. A shard of terror threatened to rend my joy, but his voice
knit up the fabric of my concentration. "I choose you, I anoint
you. Trust me. Yield to me. I am the One, the One you seek, the One
you crave."
I was suspended in his net of words. I understood with
new wonder that my body hung unsupported in the air, mysteriously
buoyant. I was literally flying. I could still feel the embrace of
leather on my wrists and ankles, yet somehow, irrationally, I knew
that I hovered several feet above the seat.
Suddenly I comprehended the reality of his power. This
was no illusion, no hypnotic suggestion. I knew, with total
conviction, that magic truly lived in this man's voice. "Yield
to me," he said softly, and touched me between the eyes with one
delicate finger. A fireball of an orgasm seized and consumed me. I
swear that I smelled burned flesh as I convulsed blindly in the air.
The next thing I knew, I was crying. He was brushing my
hair back from my face and speaking some soothing nonsense. I looked
into his eyes, excitement flooding through me. "It's real, isn't
it? The tricks, the magic? The power?"
He smiled enigmatically. "As real as your
submission. As powerful as your concentration." He handed me a
glass of water, and my skin tingled at his brief touch. "In any
case, Myra, you've got the job." There was mischief in his eyes.
"That is, if you want it."
I
should mention that I had trouble getting both these stories
published. Mixing religion and sex tends to make people nervous, even
before you throw BDSM into the mix.
I have
to speak and write my own truth, though. For me, sex has been a path
to spiritual knowledge. And surrendering to my Master has bestowed on
me the paradoxical power to accept and embrace whatever comes, as
expressed in this one last excerpt.
Ritual
To GCS
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.
