The attention that Sadists and Masochists pay each other is qualitatively different from that found in other forms of sexual, psychological, and social relationships. The difference lies in its honesty. Vanilla sex is dishonest sex, and dishonest because those party to it pretend to a concern for the pleasure of the other with whom they are involved that is meant to exceed the concern of each for their own pleasure. Hence the myth of the tender, caring, and passionate lover who thinks more of his partner than he does of himself. Perhaps 'myth' is the wrong word. Perhaps I should say 'ideal' instead.
In a Vanilla sexual encounter each partner to that encounter is as much concerned for his or her personal satisfaction as any Sadist or Masochist - but they cannot admit to it, nor seek it with the intensity that full satisfaction demands of them, because to do so is to contradict, overturn, break that ideal. And what follows from such a break is guilt, shame, self-doubt, recrimination and bitterness.
Neither the Sadist nor the Masochist is subject to this ideal. The purpose of the Sadist in his encounters with a sexual partner is simple. To inflict the maximum degree of pain that is consonant with that calculus of risk and gratification that must govern him if he's not to end in jail.
Since it's rare for a true Sadist to fall into the company of a true Masochist that calculus must also include the slow steps by which an essentially Vanilla partner can be weened away from the notion that violence and blood have no part in sex. The true Sadist is an infinitely patient, profoundly cunning monster. As is the true Masochist.
The true Sadist exercises that patience and cunning in a campaign to induce in his partner a moment of sexual abnegation and surrender. In the case of that lover of whom I spoke in a previous article we developed a myth of 'the moment'. In the moment of our encounters there was nothing she would not suffer at my hands, from sexual strangulation, to beatings with crop and whip that drew blood, to sex that she, before meeting me, would have regarded as rape. From the point of view of the physical acts carried out, the violence of them, there was very little difference indeed between these so-called 'play-rapes' and actual rape. What marked the difference was not anything done, but her emotional acceptance of the final outcome - her sexual subjugation through physical force. As she said once; "You rape me, but I don't feel raped because you are there with me.'
And let no one think that she 'enjoyed' these encounters. In the moments in which they took place she hated me and fought with all her strength. But she would have hated me far more fiercely if I had not, each time, succeeded in overcoming her and forcing sex on her.
My wife hates me when I beat her, when I cut designs in her flesh with a razor-blade, when I beat the wounds after with the riding crop so that her blood spatters the wall. But she would both hate and despise me if I could not by force of will make her be still and endure these things.
But, in relation to this former lover, there was never a moment between us in which she regarded herself as my 'submissive' (still less my slave). Outside the periods of frenzy in which nothing whatever existed beside ourselves, when the world contracted first to the limits of my bedroom and then to being no more than a few millimetres of supercharged space between our skins, we were in every way a perfectly Vanilla couple. We indulged in the commonplace fantasy that there was between us no hierarchical relationship; we were equals; partners.
Whereas in reality there was on my part an ongoing campaign to extend those moments of subjugation outside the bedroom and into the world of our 'everyday' relationship. And on her part an absolute determination to resist further encroachment.
It is a founding principle of the nature of the Sadist that he wants more. That, in fact, he wants everything. Give him your body and he will seek to consume your mind. Give him both body and mind - and he will want your soul. My partner of the time was (and is) a peculiarly self-possessed woman. It was a continuing astonishment to her that I had managed to breach that self-possession to the degree that I had, that I had succeeded in bringing her to those levels of abnegation and servitude that we achieved. A part of what brought that relationship to an end was my lack of cunning in the way I pursued her soul. I was too crass. In the end, she revolted and we parted. Having learned my lesson I will not be so crass again.
So much for the purposes of the Sadist. What of the Masochist?
Among the D/s-BDSM community, on- and off-line, there is a phrase: 'topping from the bottom'. In essence, this means that the supposedly subordinate, 'submissive', partner in a D/s-BDSM relationship manipulates the supposed Dominant into satisfying the cravings of the 'submissive' as and when she (or he) requires them to be satisfied. Without exception (though they may sometimes be disguised as something else) these cravings are for subjugation and sexual humiliation. This may take the form of engineering situations which the submissive knows her or his Dominant will find displeasing, so bringing about punishment. Such manipulation occurs both in public and in private - and it's been my experience that it is Masochists (knowing or in denial), masquerading as submissives, who usually behave in this way.
The Masochist has one aim: to suffer. But they usually prefer to suffer in situations which they control and on their own terms. Masochists, unlike true submissives, have no desire to feel powerless. My wife, for most of her life, has been drawn to physically powerful, brutal, largely stupid men - precisely because they were easy to manipulate into giving her what she wanted but could not admit to.
Her inability to admit what she wanted to herself put her in many precarious situations over the years. Because a Sadist who does not understand himself usually practices his Sadism through uncontrolled rage. I have beaten my wife with whip and crop to a point where she could barely move - but never to the point where I put her physical safety in jeopardy. Her former partners, lost in their fury (she can be utterly infuriating) were incapable of considering her safety.
The Sadist and the Masochist each seeks to dominate the other: to bend the other to their respective will. This is often the case among Vanilla couples too - but the knowing Sadist and the knowing Masochist do so from a stand point of total honesty, with themselves and with each other, that is unavailable to either those who do not know themselves as Sadists or Masochists, or to the Vanilla couple caught up in the ideal of the tender lover.
To most who read this (as well as those other articles in which I've written honestly about Sadism) the things I've discussed will no doubt appear abhorrent, perhaps entirely incomprehensible. But let me ask you this.
When was the last time you knew with absolute certainty that you were the total, complete, utter and absolute focus of your lover's attention? When was the last time that you knew with certainty that you, and you alone, were the sole center, the burning core, of everything that mattered to your lover?
The Sadist's eye has only one focus, with which nothing can interfere: the body subjected to the will of the Sadist, the body and its suffering. I would not exchange a single tear, a single cry of pain, that I have extorted from my wife, for any amount of money that can be named or conceived. When her eyes take on the look of chromed steel, blazing in the light of her hatred for me, I know as in no other moment that I am alive, and that for her nothing else in the universe exists. I am the fundamental core of her universe, as she is mine, and my eye comprehends in her tormented face all that is or ever can be of true value to me.
When was the last time you were alive, in that way?"
