Dragon Mother of Children

My slave kneels by my bedside, his head to the floor with his hands stretched out in a yogic “Child’s Pose.”  I enter the room and stand at the crown of his head.  “Show me your gratitude.”  He moves his lips to my leather boots and presses a kiss three times to each. 
 
I pull a soft leather hood over his face and M-- disappears into a being that is my object.  His body is the one I lie next to every night, but his face is gone, no longer the man who chides me over the grocery budget nor the jolly father who throws his daughters over his shoulders. His face is a dark spot against the white bedroom walls, a Rorschach ink spill in which I perceive my erotic fantasy.
 
I instruct the slave to stand at the far end of the sturdy, steel canopy bed.  Unraveling a loop of hemp rope, I quickly weave a web that winds around wrists, ankles, torso, and thighs, securing the body to the metal frame.  My fingers pause by his chest, squeezing his nipples–– buttons that  directly activate his groin, which I also lasso tightly with a thin rope and tie directly to the bed frame. Any struggle will be surely and sorely felt.  Satisfied, I step back to admire the collage of rope and muscles, steel and skin.
 
From the many years of experience I’ve had as a professional and lifestyle dominatrix, I’ve learned that the body can be taken to greater lengths of pain, if the entrance is first through pleasure.  For many people, the threshold between pleasure and pain is not a clear line—a deep tissue massage, a spicy Indian meal, the 17th mile of a marathon.  For sadomasochists, that threshold is our limbo stick.  We want to cross it again and again, until our bodies can take no more.
 
I peruse a collection of instruments laid on the windowsill: a slim bamboo cane; a riding crop; a thick deer skin flogger; and a long single tail whip, the kind loaded with the iconic cracking sound.  I select the flogger and swing it in a fluid motion that allows the soft tails to brush against skin. Slowly, I apply greater force and mass so that when the flogger connects, the impact is firm, but not unpleasant, like the thump of a shiatsu massage.  I listen to my slave’s breathing and I, too, breathe loudly, encouraging our breath to fall in unison.  I watch his hands clench and open, steadying his resolve to take what I want to give.  If he were to say “Mercy,” our safe word,I would relax the force of the whip,  If he were to say it several times, I would stop the scene altogether, untie him quickly, and let the heat of our play calm to room temperature.  But he says no words; his groans are for more.   So I build the force to a degree that the leather pounds muscle, stings the skin, and calls the blood up to surface, a dark bruise  pooling under his sun-freckled skin.  At this point, I draw out the single tail, an elegant and exacting instrument that will open the body to my desire.  I am a sadist; I adore the tear of the skin, the pain that so effectively and visually trembles the flesh.  I touch my fingertips gently to the welts and release a sigh. Later,  when I would satisfy my sexual needs, I would focus on the moment of breaking, gripping that torn skin as the slave’s body presses over mine.  But this time, a baby starts to cry, a meowing muffled from behind two sets of closed doors and a hallway, a sound so faint and yet it’s ghostly cry hooks into my gut and swells my chest. It’s time to breastfeed.

My new writing on Motherhood and Sexuality will be posted soon on Salon.com. To join a parenthood & sexuality discussion group, see the events page for info.
​Photo by Aeric Meredith-Goujon 2012