2005 to 2007, Chicago, Illinois

By Annabelle River

Most people would be surprised at how often and how reliably most regulars in sadomasochists’ dungeons quote Monty Python.

Then again, most people would be surprised if they actually knew how close the nearest sadomasochists’ dungeon was to their own home. Advertising would cost most sadomasochists our jobs, civil relations with our parents, and for some individuals, custody of children.

My discovery essentially began my senior year of college, with a book by Luna Grey called The Kinky Girl’s Guide to Dating. Actually, I wouldn’t have bought such a book if I hadn’t already realized that I am, in fact, a kinky girl.

Incidentally, I was also on the dean’s list through all four years of college. I also come from upper-middle-class, moderately liberal, happily married suburban parents. I work in a law office. Pick your good-girl cliché.

And when puberty hit me at age 11, I started to lay awake in my bed at night and daydream about large, strong, faceless men sneaking up behind me, covering my face, and yanking me into the night before I could scream. I would pull my cotton panties as high as I could into the slit between my legs while I applied my childhood-vivid imagination to handcuffs and to knives cutting my clothing off of me.

This was before I had ever seen any R-rated movies, before I understood the vocabulary word “orgasm” — let alone “sadomasochism.”

I feel the need to clarify that I was never abused. My mother trained me young that if anyone ever tried to touch me and I didn’t like it, then they were bad, and I was supposed to tell her. I memorized the lesson, and thank goodness, I never needed it.

I went to school, got straight A’s, got teased for being a teacher’s pet and a crybaby, and I discovered masturbation while I conjured imaginary men with knives to shove me onto concrete floors.

Even at 11 — especially at 11 — I knew that this didn’t sound psychologically healthy. I masturbated nightly, but of course, no one talked about it. I can still see the images, but I never referenced them, even in my obsessive private diary, a “normal” preadolescent girl’s litany of cute boys and useless attempts at popularity.

I waited almost a decade to divulge my secret for the first time. At age 20, when I finally told my boyfriend that I wanted him to bind my wrists and spank me, he reacted as if I had suggested sex in gorilla costumes.

He humored my kinky requests for a little while, but eventually, he complained that he missed sex “as if I really cared about him.” In a fight, I asked him, “Do you think I have gross psychological problems?” He hesitated and then answered, “I love you anyway.”

I ended the relationship, convinced that my “gross psychological problems” made me unlovable.

And then, in a bookstore, I stumbled across The Kinky Girl’s Guide to Dating. And on page 7, I learned a startling new vocabulary word: “munch.”

“Many communities have BDSM organizations, quoth Luna Grey. “Munches … are informal gatherings in a neutral space like a restaurant.”

On the Wednesday night that I read page 7, I did a 5-second Google search for my home city and “munch.” My local “Next Generation” group — a social club for sadomasochists ages 18 through 35 — meets in a coffee shop on Thursdays. I went the next day.

It occurred to me that, in a worst-case scenario, I could be abducted by rapists in black leather and never heard from again. In which case, I ought to have told at least one friend where I was going. But then I seriously considered telling any one of my friends that I get off on men hitting me. Imagining their reactions upset me more than risking my own disappearance.

I left my college campus without saying good-bye to anyone. It took me an hour and a half to get there, and the whole time, a voice in my head kept repeating, They’re sexual sadists, and nobody knows where you are.

I arrived at the coffee shop and took a deep breath before opening the door. This is it: this coffee shop is full of real-life sadists, and I’m such a demented slut that I’m going to tell them that I’m a sexual freak, and I’m going to get tied up in an alley, and no one will find me for weeks.

And there, sitting on plush velvety couches, were four people in jeans and T-shirts playing Scrabble on a wooden coffee table. Besides a middle-aged man with a moustache behind the counter, they were the only people there.

Maybe I’m early, I thought. I breathed in the delicious smell of coffee, to which I’d already been addicted for years, and I ordered a house specialty drink with syrup. I stood and sipped it awkwardly, watching the door, until the Scrabble player in a Princess Bride T-shirt asked me, “Are you here for the Next Generation?”

I nodded. She immediately smiled and scooted over to make room for me on the couch. I sunk into it. The Scrabble players each introduced themselves by first name and shook my hand. “What’s your name? How did you find out about us?”

So the night I joined the BDSM community consisted of drinking coffee and playing Scrabble.

After my second munch, when everyone else had left, I stayed behind to flirt with one of the men I had just met. First, he asked me the normal getting-to-know-a-stranger questions about what music I listened to and what I studied. Then, when he kissed me, he gently pulled my hair.

No one had ever pulled my hair sexually before, and I melted in ecstasy. Reading me correctly, he pulled harder. And bit my shoulders. I went home to write in my diary that this man pulling my hair and biting me (fully clothed in public) was sexier than any of the sex I had had in the previous year.

Elated as I was to finally have a kinky man to play with, I probably could have been more careful. I started following him home quickly, which went against everything I had ever learned about protecting myself. And the versions of this story that sell newspapers would end with the girl suffering some tragic end.

In the my true version, as I spent more and more time absorbing his knowledge of sadomasochistic practices and having multiple orgasms, I also learned that he cooks omelets better than any restaurant’s, that he shares my taste in video games, and that he quotes Monty Python as often as I do. We first said the words “I love you” while snuggling in our hotel room at a rope convention.

My parents adore him. His parents seem to like me too. We told our families that we met “in a coffee shop.”

Now, when I watch movies with the protagonist tied up, it’s glaringly obvious to me when the actor isn’t really bound effectively. My aim with a flogger is improving. My wardrobe of latex and black PVC and leather is expanding.

And since I’ve gotten closer to the people I met at sex parties, I also frequently go out for dinner with them. Together, we all watch movies, we discuss our careers, we repeat the same jokes, and we endlessly debate the finer points of Harry Potter. And sometimes we have kinky orgies.

Every Monday morning, I show up at the law firm that promoted me six months ago, and my co-workers ask me what I did over the weekend.

“Not much,” I usually say. “Relaxed. Hung out with some friends.”

And I realize that they must think I’m terribly boring. The typical reactions to my lifestyle — shock, disgust, confusion, even exotic fascination — are too tiring for me to bother with on a daily basis. But then I wonder how many of my co-workers, my family, or strangers on the street are similarly “boring” like me.

Annabelle River is an avid diarist in the Midwest. She is using a pseudonym.

Posted by Common Ties on Monday, January 21st, 2008 | Email This Post

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