Kiss the Boot of Shiny Shiny Leather

As I mentioned, the Severus fan fic represents the full range of S&M behavior. There is every permutation, from mild spanking all the way, at the other end of the spectrum, to rape and torture. Although that savagery isn't exactly consensual, as I guess traditional S&M is, it's obviously thrown in to set the mood, as it were.

And then there's the symbolic sado-masochism, typical of even the most Mary Sue-ish of romance novels: the hero is cold and dismissive to the interested party, repeatedly shaking them off in humiliating manner, often the rejection takes place in front of people (a bit of exhibitionism there--and the hero asserting his power). This cruel behavior only serves to heighten the interest of the admirer. Kind of old-school, really, and I should know as I've read "Wuthering Heights" and "Jane Eyre" dozens of times, as well as every single book by Mary Burchell. Needless to say, I'm certainly well-versed in the psychological components, at least as represented in overwrought romance novels. In all of these, though the hero relents at the end and shows his sweet side. And I always ask, whither the dark side? Surely a girl or boy who is initially attracted to cruelty will not be satisfied in the long run with kindness? But I suppose that kind of challenge would also grow tiresome in the end...

Although I'm attracted to fictional darkness and cruelty, I'm not sure it translates well into real life, although I've run into it often enough in boyfriends, and surprisingly in myself at times. But it's not a good basis for a stable marriage and family life... which is of course why these heros need ultimately to be tamed and domesticated...it wouldn't be so sexy in ten years with the hero still irritatingly chilly and distant, but maybe at that point having exchanged the elegant frock coats for a stained wife-beater. Anyway...

Although I've had much experience with what I now think of as tedious relationship S&M (coldness, lack of reciprocity, psycho-sexual game-playing etc. etc., I mean with everyone trading roles constantly--how too sickeningly puerile), my one experience of physical S&M was with my last college boyfriend before, thankfully, Sgt. Pepper arrived on the scene. Now it may not seem like much, and it certainly lacked the elaborate stylized trappings of full-on role-playing, but to me it is a telling episode. This boy was nothing like a spooky, chilly, and forbidding Byronic hero, really he was a complete pothead with strange cat-shaped eyes and a clumsily obvious habit of playing girls against each other. But he did have one less prosaic perversion, which was that he loved to be bitten. He would demand it, with more and more fervency. It was fine, at first, and I was happy to oblige.

A soft nip, sweet. A harder nip, a little sexy. Harder, then harder. And harder still, I'm biting down firmly on resistant neck tendon. Harder than that, I've begun to taste blood. At this I'm the teensiest bit disturbed, and still he's whispering "harder!" When I begin to be uncomfortable at the prospect of inflicting so much pain, and my god, what will happen if the skin fully breaks and the veins burst? I mean, is that even what would happen? will we have a homicide here? well, the sadist and the masochist have definitely switched places, and suddenly he's in control and I'm the masochist. As I've quoted before, from the delightful Venus in Furs, either you're the hammer or the anvil. But I suppose often, when one traffics in such behavior, it's not clear which is which...