My Kink isn't a Lifestyle

In 1952, John Cage and a collection of musicians performed a piece for a live audience called 4'33". The musicians picked up their instruments, then didn’t play for four long minutes. Cage was drawing the tiny sounds we usually don't notice to the fore as if to say, “Everything is music.” This year over 50 musicians covered the piece, which will be released as a box set. The only trouble is it ain't music, and it ain't coverable. Crickets and raindrops are beautiful, but they're also accessible to millions of people every day, so Cage could have saved a lot of time just telling us, “Hey bru. Did you ever notice how, like, silence is not, like, silent?”

 I'm not one of those people who sit in dark rooms saying, " Deeeep bru."  I'm a militant atheist with a colander up her ass in place of a stick. That colander is large and unwieldy, so I don't have much patience for woo, especially when BDSM is involved. I don’t think our dynamic as serious as a broken wand.

 It’s not spiritual.

It’s not therapy.

It's not a lifestyle.

It's a framework for sex and love. It's filthy and gritty and delicious, so why would I want to mar it with lofty and spiritual pursuits? (ptuey) I date a certain kind of man for his despicable perversion, not his ability to heal a sub's soul using 50 forms of funishment and a super-sacred task-giving strategy. You can’t heal my black, black soul merely because you’re a dominant, so if you don’t mind, I’ll take responsibility for my own personal development.

Is there beauty to be found in power exchange? Of course. Does that mean I want to genuflect in its presence while performing 10 Hail Hitachis? No, please let's not. To me, kink is an ingredient of sex, which is an ingredient of love -- a part , not the whole. I won't complain if you treat your dom like a holy fuckanista but I'll be around the corner trying out the trampoline.

In conceptual art, ideas trump experience. Cage's "performance" never hoped to be transcendent, only intellectual. Intellectualising strikes me as an ego wank fest. Sorry, but sort of not. If a man takes his intellectual understanding of kink too far, I instantly lose interest.

I get it. You have a theory about how the length of punishment is inversely proportionate to the sense of dignity a sub has in her personal life. Go write a book about it. Everyone's doing it these days, but if you don’t mind, I’ll be reading The Hot Zone instead.