BDSM is about Love, and Other Divergent Thoughts (AKA The Bob Deegan Column)
By Sensuous Sadie
SensuousSadie@aol.com
www.sensuoussadie.com 

Listen to the Podcast Instead!


A few weeks ago Griffin and I attended one of Bob Deegan’s single tail whip demonstrations.* On our way in, we observed a woman at his feet, gazing up with an expression suffused with sweetness. I couldn’t help but wonder what she was feeling, and what moved her to bare such vulnerability. Unlike my own submissive nature which is well hidden, her relationship to Bob was evident in her face, not to mention in the “Property of BD” tattoo above her mons venus. I admit that I was at first disconcerted since one doesn’t often see such a unguarded expression at a public event, but soon came to appreciate what her act signified. Her name was Sharon, and she was, of course, Bob’s Submissive.

The answer to the question of what moved her would come to me when, during the demonstration, Bob tossed out a rather radical idea, that BDSM is about love. Bob clearly wasn’t aware that this represented some pretty divergent thinking, but I could see it right off. With BDSM articles, interviews, and books ad nausium, nowhere is the art of dominance and submission examined as a conduit for emotions. Sure, there’s chit-n-chat about how to handle the problems that come up when your partner falls in love with you or vice versa, but contemporary dialogue is generally about products, safety, and etiquette.

So, here’s Bob Deegan, talking not about his objet of pleasure – the single tail whip – but about emotions and other fuzzy dynamics. We came for a demonstration of the one BDSM “toy” that many players consider to be the pinnacle of finely designed engineering, one that requires supposed years of skill and practice. What we got was Bob Deegan, who in jeans and bare feet, looked not remotely like the image I expected of a BDSM legend – which would have been something more along the line of Keanu Reeves in a black trench coat a la “The Matrix.” Perhaps it is that very every day guyness that made it easy to hear him speak about using the single tail not as an event in itself, but as a tool to transform your own energy, love energy perhaps, to another person.

Bob explained that his whip is a whip, oh yes, but it is so much more. To Bob Deegan, the whip is an extension of himself, a conduit of his love for Sharon . He may use this tool more often because they both groove on it, but also because in its simplicity, it wealds a tender touch as well as the power of breaking the sound barrier. You could almost see sparks as his whip tickled her skin, and her eyes glazed with a silent acceptance. Was this love I was seeing, there in a restaurant’s back room in Southern New Hampshire ?

In looking to explore this idea, radical or not, I realized that defining love in the context of BDSM is a near impossibility. Poets have been working on just the love part, not all that successfully, throughout history. But I can tell you this. I think what we saw in both Bob and Sharon was your garden variety love, expressed through the transformative power of BDSM. On the physical level Bob cut that whip through the air like a hot knife through butter. But on a another level, he was cutting to her very soul, reaching down deep and kissing her from the inside out.

I feel this same hot knife through my body and heart every time I play with Griffin . Now I hesitate to use the “L” word because Griffin, being fresh off a divorce, isn’t ready for that yet. But I know this and he knows it too; I have loved him, have belonged to him from the very first. Of course I say “I dig you baby,” and “Ah loves ya” instead, because saying “I love you” lays on the pressure to reply in kind. So, let’s say for the purposes of this story we’re going to use that “L” word, and it’ll expire at the end of the reading.

That same weekend after we had the pleasure of Bob’s love demonstration, Griffin took me to his cabin and gave me a sponge bath, allowing the cool water to tickle down my sides onto the summer-soft grass. On the surface his act might have appeared to be submissive, but in fact it was an act of dominance because of his intention – to lovingly care for me as his treasured pet. It is Griffin’s nature to nurture, and an expression of love as well. There are other ways he shows his affection: when he gentles me with his peaceful presence, and when he protects me from my own sometimes overdriven nature. Griffin says “no” to me too, when I most need to hear it, which is surely not the time when I most want to hear it.

My love for him manifests in the surrender of my body; no small thing (literally as well as figuratively). There is my total acceptance of him as a man and as a Dominant, and of his right to punish me as he sees fit. He knows I will adhere to his rules, and that is greatness in itself. Yes of course it is the nature of BDSM for me to accept his dominion, but playing BDSM for an hour is as different from surrendering my sexuality in totality as that single tail licking the tip of a balloon and licking Sharon.

In some ways love has been banished from the BDSM lexicon. BDSM is about control and surrender, or bondage or sadism, or whatever. To say that it is an expression of love is maybe more than radical, it is revolutionary. Ah, I hear the clamoring crowds beating at my back dungeon door. Let me rephrase that.

For Bob Deegan, and maybe for me too, BDSM is about love. Maybe not for you, gentle reader, but that’s ok too. I’m talking about love in the big way, with a capital L. The magical thing that connects us, body to body, spirit to spirit. I think it’s been banished because in the mad rush into BDSM in the last decade, many people are freed for the first time from the constraints of our sex-fearing culture, and they want to gobble up every last drop. Talking about love, commitment, spirituality – these thing smack of vanilla relationships, the kind that seem to somehow be unequivocally aligned with monogamy, jealousy, the missionary position, and perhaps a touch of homophobia. In moving toward a radical sexuality, it has become common, if not assumed that we have also tossed aside that old relationship paradigm. I cannot choose either of these extremes, and have my own divergent thoughts about merging the magic of BDSM with the power of love and relationship.

Still, there’s an awful lot of BDSM that goes on outside the purview of a love based relationship; so does any of this make sense in the context of, say, a play party? Bob says that you can see the beauty in a person, and love them for their own goodness. He added that you can honor the humanity in your partner (what I could call the soul) by touching them through the tools of BDSM. Bob doesn’t use the spiritual vocabulary that I do, but I believe that at its foundation, we mean the same thing.

At the end of the demonstration we discovered that Sharon, as submissive as she appeared, was also of a dual nature – and switched to Dominant when the spirit moved her. A glint came into her eye, and I only wished that I could have seen what came next. I loved that she so completely lived in herself, whether Submissive or Dominant, she was completely present. For that, and for Bob’s gift of making the mysterious familiar, I hope that I will again have the opportunity to see them make their magic.

~~~

* Bob Deegan is widely recognized as this country’s premier handler of the single tail whip, reaching a level of mastery never seen before. His single tail artistry represents the definitive body of knowledge and repertoire of skills found in the scene. He has been the catalyst for the spreading popularity of the single tail in the country over the last five years. The techniques developed and introduced by him have become the modern standard for a new generation of teachers and students alike. This column was sent to Bob Deegan and Sharon for review in July 2003. We were unfortunately unable to reach them for comment. www.bobdeegan.com 



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

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