Since turnabout is fair play I asked another of our reviewers to take a look at Sensuous Sadie's new book It's Not About the Whip: Love, Sex, and Spirituality in the BDSM Scene. If you visit our site on a regular basis you should be familiar with Sadie’s excellent interviews which we have been running for the better part of this last year. If you’re not, go back and read them. In my opinion they will tell you more about the superb quality of her writing than any review can. But by all means read the following review and then go out and buy her new book.

Sadie’s book can be purchased at:
http://www.trafford.com/robots/03-0551.html
Her website is: www.sensuoussadie.com

It’s certainly true that my SM bookshelf includes all the most interesting authors, but Sadie’s book is the first one that crosses the great divide between SM erotica and SM non-fiction. Her first book, It's Not About the Whip: Love, Sex, and Spirituality in the BDSM Scene is a collection of her columns which are neither fiction nor non-fiction, but a blend of intimate and sometimes funny stories about her adventures in the scene. What’s lovely about Sadie is that she doesn’t pretend to be an expert on anything, yet her breezy style makes for a "can’t put it down" read. Her writing is also interesting in that she’s clearly telling the story of her (mostly) submissive experiences, but perhaps has left out the more mundane parts.

My first Dominant owned one toy, a leather slapper I bought at a sex shop, a toy that regularly got lost in the murky depths of his car. The thing was, we didn’t need any toys, and could not have imagined the wealth of accoutrements now found in my closet. Our D/s experience was the stuff of dreams: exploratory, magical, transformative, scary.

On our first night together, I sat waiting to see if he would take the reins, to take me. He stood behind me, and I smelled the scent of his passion. I felt his breath, his heartbeat. So, too, did I feel his indecision, his own question about how best to proceed. Secretly, I wanted to feel a cool breeze around my ankles, telling me that he’d walked away to watch the rest of the hockey game; to grill up some shish kabobs; to shovel the driveway. I was afraid of this dark realm which yawned ahead. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was or where I was going. I was lost in a breathless moment of sitting on that fence, not knowing… not knowing. A moment still and silent in my memory, even now.

Then, Bailey lifted my chin so my eyes could meet his. I saw the decision there, clear and intent. Knowing he had decided, I did, too. I relaxed into him.

Bailey and I traveled this D/s path without benefit of paddles, whips, and floggers. We did it with only a bit of information from the just-born Internet. We did it knowing nothing, less than nothing, about etiquette, safety, technique, protocol, or equipment of any sort. Instead, we had common sense, which in the end, turned out to be all we needed.

Today, after years of being a leader of a BDSM group, I have a boxful of toys: floggers and paddles and wax and rope. Condoms and clamps and crops. Spreader bars and scarves. What I do not have at the moment, is a man like Bailey to look into my eyes and tell me I’m his. But if I did, I know he wouldn’t be about the "stuff." He too would be a mystic, an explorer on a path of shadows dappled from an overhang of heavy boughs, a path made apparent only by the empty branches of blueberries eaten along the way.

It wasn’t just toys I collected along the way. I also learned about BDSM safety and etiquette, enough perhaps to take a step up to more edgy play, enough to prevent making a fool of myself. The demonstrations at our parties are the kind easy to do in public: not much skin, not much intense sexuality, not much overt humiliation. Nevertheless, after a few years, I have the feeling that for so many scene folk, the power exchange has come to be about the apparatus, not about the experience.

Let me be completely clear here; education and safety are important. If you are going to tie someone up, you have to do it right or you risk hurting them. Same with flogging. But techniques and safety knowledge are simply the essential basics, elementary mechanics. That car will run fine, but I want to go to the moon.

It’s also true that if you go to a play party, or otherwise join the larger BDSM community, you need to know proper manners and etiquette for each type of event you attend. For these reasons, many BDSM groups see education as their mission. Education is a good thing, but if that’s all there is, BDSM becomes form without substance.

In contrast, my approach has been to build a community and provide a safe space to explore our sexual identities. For many of us, D/s is not just about the toys, but rather the emotional and spiritual transformation occurring within, where the mind and soul surrender. My approach is of an artist, more interested in the expression than in who made the paint.

The usual way to get to this place is through the body as vehicle, using tactile sensation and sensual stimulation. It invokes a shift in perception, a shift from the daily world pronounced enough to enter the realm of Dom, or subspace. I wonder about approaching that door not through stimulating the body, but through the silken pathway of the soul. That’s the mystica I seek, where he and I meet through the translucent waves of voice, of touch, of scent, of magic.

I don’t care about floggers; which way they’re made or how much they cost. I want to feel my blood rising to the surface with a tingle, rising to meet another stroke.

I don’t care about the fifteen ways to tie a person to the door. I want to feel not the pressure and pull of the rope against my skin, but rather the helplessness slipping between my legs, opening me wide so I am without barriers.

I don’t care about whether or not protocol tells me to gaze this way or that, to speak or not, to wear this color flag or another to announce my intentions. I care about hearing his whisper, close from the chattering crowd, close enough to hear his possession of my sexuality, my strength, my self.

What I want to explore is not the "stuff" of BDSM, but the enchantment. The trembling feeling that wakes me far past midnight in a sheen of heat.

But still I am dragged back to the practical. Novices write me for recommendations about what they should buy in the way of BDSM gadgets, and I send them a list; the usual suspects.

What I’d really like to give them is a list of mental, spiritual, and emotional qualities to bring to the table. I’d tell them to bring joy, creativity, and enthusiasm. Bring caring and patience and a commitment to communicating, even when it’s a hassle. Bring not what you think a Dominant should be, but rather your own passion to dominate cleanly and without measure. Bring awareness of your self and a willingness to face your own fears. Bring yourself present, genuine and alive and here in this very moment.

Bring your questions.

If you are a Dominant, how will you discover what makes your Submissive’s world "go round?" What can you do to create a whole new awareness for your Submissive? How will you care for her or his emotional well being? How will you deal with the vulnerable place they will be in, not only during a scene, but even as early as the first time you meet and feel that little tingle?

How will you learn to read your Submissive’s reactions, physical and non-physical so you can teasingly torment them into a state of mindless sensual bliss? How will you learn to play your Submissive’s body like a fine violin, to compose a symphony of subspace?

If you are a Submissive, your responsibilities are different; your questions different. How do you protect your inner self enough to negotiate fully with this person, while still opening up enough to let yourself be known? How do you learn to trust being vulnerable when so many Dominants don’t have the emotional skills to cope with garden variety emotions, much less the profound ones of D/s play? When will you tell this person about your sexual and BDSM preferences? If you do it too early, you will not have kept to your personal boundaries about privacy and intimacy, but if you hold back too long, your Dominant won’t have the necessary information. Are you caring for yourself enough, so your Dominant doesn’t have to rescue you? Do you know who you are and what takes you to that magical place so you can communicate this to your partner? What is subspace really about for you?

If our life journeys unfolded in a straight line, we would each have an unambiguous path ahead. But D/s, like life, is a series of parallel paths instead. For me, its transcendent nature begs to be explored, not through apparatus, but through the hush of his breath on my neck, the linger of his hand in my hair, and the soft and steady resonance of his voice leading me to our destination.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sensuous Sadie is the author of It's Not About the Whip: Love, Sex, and Spirituality in the BDSM Scene (http://www.trafford.com/robots/03-0551.html). She is the founder and leader (1999 - 2001) of Rose & Thorn, Vermont's first BDSM group. Comments, compliments and complaints, as well as requests for reprinting can be addressed to her at SensuousSadie@aol.com or visit her website at www.sensuoussadie.com . Sadie believes the universe is abundant, and that sharing information freely is part of this abundance, so she allows reprints of her writing in most venues.

Copyright 2003 Sadie Sez Publications

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