More expressions of a broken top - working backwards through "Playing on the Edge"

As I was reading the passage in Staci Newmahr's book that set me off last night and left me feeling as though my sadism is broken, by pure chance, this song started to play on my iTunes:



The lyrics included:

Look at me now I'm stronger than before,
Cause I found the strength within myself,
to close the door,
And I closed the door for you to ever come
inside again,
I've tried so hard to keep me sheltered from
your kind of men.

As you can imagine, that tied horribly into my feelings of:

If all SM is this, then I can't do it. I can only bottom [in future] because I don't feel that power, I don't feel the ability to be that "safe rapist" or whatever. I mean, my whole fear was that my sadism was going to turn me into a rapist-murderer and my relief on finding out I wouldn't be that was total. I can't live with the idea of being even symbolically that again, even though in my fantasies I am.

I woke up with another song in my mind, one that certainly captures how I feel about Newmahr's point: Richard Thompson's "Keep Your Distance":

It's a desperate game we play:
Threw our souls, our lives away.
Wounds that can't be mended
And debts that can't be paid.

Oh, I've played and I got stung
Now I'm biting back my tongue
And I'm sweeping out the footprints where I strayed

Keep your distance
Keep your distance
When I feel you close to me, what can I do but fall?
Keep your distance
Keep your distance
With us, it must be all or none at all.

***

Earlier in the book, Newmahr introduces the concept of "edgework", originally a term used to describe masculine testing of one's physical edges through risks taken voluntarily that require one's own skill to survive them. It explores the boundaries between, "life and death, consciousness and unconsciousness, sanity and insanity, and order and chaos, of self and environment". Newmahr then expands this concept to include emotional edgework, where the edges explored are: "between emotional chaos and emotional order, between emotional form and emotional formlessness, between the self and the obliteration of the self."

That's why last night, I said that, "In the language that Newmahr introduced, this has gone beyond the edge into chaos."

In Newmahr's argument, as I quoted last night, the bottoming woman especially is engaged in edgework exploring and challenging the boundaries of socially-constructed fear.

I still feel that my situation currently is "beyond the edge" and "into chaos", but to try to put some form on the formlessness, some order into the chaos, I have created some visual aids to try to figure out what, thematically, has gone wrong, where my sadism is broken, in a sense:

Here's what I understand to be the argument to intimacy and edgework that Newmahr produces, and how it is "supposed" to work:

In this picture, "edgework" happens where participants' edges intersect with one another, or with their partner's ordered sense. Newmahr's concept of "collaborative edgework" relies on the fact that each participant helps to create and define the other's emotional edge areas as well.

But here is where I now feel I am left, after reading Newmahr's argument that this edgework in SM is for women about exploring the boundary between social order and personal chaos produced by the socially-constructed fear of men:

Here, my partner's edge is already in my emotional chaos.   There is no overlap for me to feel safe enough to helping my partner to explore her edge because I have to cross my edge first.   I am no longer able to construct a space in which I feel safe enough.

It was bad enough when I felt I had to find someone who was already feminist and challenging of socially-constructed roles.   If a woman told me she wanted to submit because that was a woman's place - even in symbolic terms - then that took me beyond where I felt safe enough to explore my edges (or hers).   With Newmahr's construction (with which I find it impossible to argue as yet), it feels as though socially-constructed gender roles mean that I must always be cast in a role that represents chaos to me.

It is possible, of course, that it is not a mutual chaos that divides me and a partner:

Here, we have a shared "order", but moving outwards my "edge" comes before hers, meaning that I have to cross "chaos" to get to her edge, while she is still in "order" But this means that I still cannot help her explore her edge, and the collaborative aspect of SM edgework is lost. If it is all her supporting me in my solo edgework then there is no reciprocation and it becomes emotionally parasitic, in a way that is entirely within patriarchal constructions of gender roles. I do not believe, however, that this is an accurate representation of the situation, because the way Newmahr has constructed the theory of emotional, collaborative, edgework - and the feminist take on its place in SM - implies that the "ordered" zones do not overlap except where edgeplay takes place.

***

It is possible that in the formulation that Newmahr has found, that we can say clearly that for me in BDSM, my edgework is (was) actually similar to the form that Newmahr gives to women.   When she writes: "The rush of power that accompanies having survived a knife to the throat or a bag over one's head (albeit with a man who is not 'supposed' to kill her) facilitates a similar sense of control." What I can see as my edgeplay in this is "The rush of power that accompanies having had a knife to someone's throat or a bag over someone's head, and not killed them (even though I'm not 'supposed' to) facilitates a similar sense of control." Because that was always the fear, that was the thing that I felt was my inevitable fate - that one day I would start raping and killing and that would be who I became. In this formulation, I face the same violent demonised man that the bottom faces, and, just like her, I escape from him; I feel that rush of power by not being him or caught by him.

But here's the thing: if to her, even in some unconscious, socially-constructed way, I am that demon, then I can't be not that demon. I can no longer feel like I own the space, that I am safe, that I have the collaboration of my partner in not being him. In fact, probably the only way I could feel safe and so on would be if for a particular scene, it was negotiated that that's the roles we're taking - if it's explicit and temporary instead of implicit and permanent. (See the ways I talk about BDSM theory vs traditional marriage in one of my very early posts about BDSM and feminism.)

Several of the "creative representation" ("depictions of actual events" that may be "edited or blended") passages with which Newmahr opens her chapters really troubled me. In an erotic novel I would have found them extremely arousing, but the knowledge that I was reading (a version of) reality instead of fantasy left me feeling very uncomfortable. I felt that several of them crossed boundaries of consent and, very often, I initially read them casting myself in sympathy with the bottom (Newmahr) and feeling how I would have felt violated and abused in the situation. In nearly all of them, there was a point at which I was, in my head, screaming "RED!" (safewording) and turning to the top and saying "that was Not Okay". But of course, YKIOKIJNMK, so I accepted that Newmahr's account didn't have the bottom safewording, didn't (usually) have an angry confrontation, and seemed to be acceptable to her. So then I would look at it and ask myself, "what would be different if I had been in the 'top' role?" Nearly always, I realised that actually, I would have stopped, or allowed check-in, or something, before it reached the point where subbie-me was safewording in that scene. I would have been looking for explicit consent at or before the point where I felt that consent had been violated in the described scene, or else I would have made it clear what was happening and given the opportunity to withdraw consent explicitly or implicitly.

Again, YKIOKIJNMK, and if both partners were happy with the negotiated space and felt that these events were well within the parameters they had set, then what I would have done is completely irrelevant. I was troubled in part because either I couldn't see in the description where negotiation happened, or else felt that play had been initiated "by ambush" (Newmahr suggested that edgeplay (not to be confused with "edgework") on the boundary of consent/nonconsent, includes when a top "begin[s] a scene during a moment or in a place that is not understood by the bottom as 'scene space.'" - one or two of the creative representations seemed as though they involved doing this).

Again, the point of this is not to criticise the way that Newmahr and the various tops described in her creative representations played - I don't know enough about the relationships and the events outside the descriptions (such as negotiation and communication of "prior" consent) to make any such criticism, and if they were okay with playing that way, that is their kink and that's okay.

The point is to show that my edges, my boundaries, seem to be of a different nature than those explored by Newmahr. I have done, or explored the possibility of, edgeplay in many ways: actually done breath play, for example; played with issues of consent in other ways than Newmahr outlines; talked about permanent markings, all of which Newmahr mentions in describing possible elements of edgeplay (death or unconsciousness; nonconsent; permanent effects). But my emotional edges are different. The approach I took is different. The ways in which it affects me seem to be different. It's not that my topping or bottoming hard-limits were breached, but rather, the emotional hard-limits were. And in precisely those ways that key into my fears that are now left horribly exposed.

All of which is irrelevant to solving the fundamental failure point in my sadism. Because that isn't about what's happening for me, but about what's happening for my partner (or at least, about how I understand what's happening for my partner).

Seeing oneself through another's eyes is always very disconcerting, and I was braced for that when it came to reading Staci Newmahr's thoughts on BDSM, because she approached as an outsider wishing to research and understand the BDSM community, so her findings would always represent "seeing [my]self through another's eyes." The distance that is provided by the differences of "Rural/City", "UK/USA" and "Private player/Public player" would only shield me so much from the effects of this.

The bad feeling I have now, though, is a result of feeling as though that other-person gaze cannot be removed, that it is permanent and socially-constructed, and comes from just about any woman I meet within BDSM (or, indeed, outside of). It is not simply the disconcerting effect of seeing oneself differently from one's own self-perception, but as seeing in the reflected image that which you most hate, and that which you have tried to escape.

In Women Who Run With the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estés uses the story of Bluebeard to illustrate the unsafe psychic predator in all of us (well, Estés says all women, but I think it applies to men also), "The contra naturam aspect that opposes the positive: it is against development, against harmony, and against the wild. It is a derisive and murderous antagonist that is born into us...."

In brief, "Bluebeard" starts with a young woman marrying a handsome, masculine, wealthy man (a 'failed magician') whose main feature of note is his blue beard. Her two older sisters were not convinced by his charms, but she was. When Bluebeard goes away, he gives his wife the keys to every room in the castle but says of one particular key, "don't open the door that goes with this key!" Of course, the younger sister invites her family to stay, and her sisters persuade her to try the forbidden key to find out which door it opens. Of course, eventually they find the secret door, and it opens revealing the bodies of all Bluebeard's previous wives. The key itself starts bleeding and will not stop, providing evidence of the young woman's disobedience. She tries to hide it, but of course, Bluebeard notices it is missing from the keyring and demands to know where it is. The truth is revealed and Bluebeard determines that the young woman must join her predecessors as a corpse in the secret room. Pleading for a little time, however, she is able to distract Bluebeard just long enough for her family to arrive and save the day.

To Estés, Bluebeard represents this dark, destructive element of the psyche. The hidden room represents the truth that allows understanding of, and escape from, its negative, overbearing qualities. In a startling parallel with Newmahr's discussion of edgework, Estés writes, "In folklore there are any number of sorcerers' apprentices who foolishly dared to venture beyond their actual skill levels by attempting to contravene Nature." They are, if you will, failed edgeworkers! Estés continues (and thus shows how these stories differ from stories of edgework): "As we examine these leitmotifs, we see that the predators in them desire superiority and power over others," and they try to claim equality with or power over Nature. The consequence is always to be cast out and rejected - "If we can understand the Bluebeard as being the internal representation of the entire myth of such an outcast, we then may also be able to comprehend the deep and inexplicable loneliness which sometimes washes over him (us) because he experiences a continuous exile from redemption."

The youngest sister is then the creative spark within the psyche, that ends up being held captive by the overbearing Bluebeard. The key is "permission to know the deepest, darkest secrets of the psyche, in this case the something that mindlessly degrades and destroys a [person]'s potential." (The original said "woman", but since I am here applying some of Estés' ideas to myself, "person" seemed to fit my usage better!) "The youthful naive nature begins to understand that if there is a secret something ... it needs to be looked into."

Estés has the carnage inside the secret room as the wreckage of one's aspirations, hopes and dreams.

Once the door is opened, "Now the naive self has knowledge about a killing force loose within the psyche ... once we have seen the shocking truth of the killing room, we can no longer pretend it does not exist. And seeing the truth causes us to bleed energy even more."

In my usage here, though, the mapping works somewhat differently, and almost in reverse. I have always felt more sympathy for Bluebeard, trapped into a cycle of destruction instead of closeness, than for the nosy woman. For me, those bodies in the secret room represent the dark and destructive things that I felt before. Each one had to be killed or at least laid low before I could close the door and move on. But Bluebeard knows they are there. The young woman is my understanding of myself, and especially, my kinky self. I have always gone looking for answers to "why am I the way I am?" Bluebeard becomes the "moral guardian" in this version, not dissimilar to the role in Estés' casting, in that he monitors how progress is made in this quest and directs and controls rather than allowing free rein, knowing what damage could be done if the wrong door gets opened.

Going back to that "failed edgeworker" version of the sorcerers' apprentices (of which Bluebeard is supposedly an archetype), in my story, it is the young woman who now is the failed edgeworker, who attempted to control and own Nature (internally) and now has to face the consequences of going over the edge.

The key then becomes Newmahr's interpretation of women's edgework in SM, which bleeds the evidence of the dark things reawakening. Here, my story has to diverge from the version above: because the nightmare is not the corpses, but that they are still alive. In fact, the modern "zombie apocalypse" tale is more use to me at this juncture, because by awakening these beasts, the young woman (my kink and its self-curiosity) has become one of them. Moral guardian Bluebeard has to kill them all again, including the new one that was once an attractive woman (part of myself), and shut them all back in the room, because otherwise they will tear everything to pieces. And Bluebeard goes back to loneliness and fear of what lies behind the door.

Is there a way to save the newest zombie and revive her back from the undead to true life? Is there a way to drag her out of the room and leave the monsters within? I can't find it yet if there is.