On kink and intimacy

“Have I always been like this - or have I just happened to meet the right person?” We all contemplate this question from time to time: which of our desires are authentically ours and which are invoked by other people?  My latest essay looks at how much agency we have in the very beautiful yet seemingly unpredictable fluidity of kink sexuality – and the vulnerability, ecstasy and grief of BDSM intimacy.

I stand there with a cane in my hand. I have no way of knowing how much pain reverberates through his shoulder blades at that moment. The skin on his upper back is red with cane marks, one of the softer spots which hurts more intensely. I am so high on the way he moans and breathes heavily. The cane is coated in black rubber – I remember, at the Regulation Store in Soho, trying it on my thigh when I bought it, but that memory is very far away, just like anything before this moment. I know I want more because the mental and erotic high is incredible. I look at him squirming in bondage, and it’s like an electric charge bouncing off my skin when I hit him again. In my sadistic self, I feel warm, wet, happy and powerful. How strange, I think, I didn’t know I had this in me. I rewind back to the moment when we contemplated to which degree either of us was into pain – and wonder how exactly we ended up right here.

A lot of conversations about BDSM are built around a simple duality: dominant and submissive, top and bottom, sadist and masochist. There is always someone giving and someone receiving – and you need someone on either side for the experience to be complete. In reality, kink of course is more complex than the binary: there are social and erotic interactions that include more than two parties, there are fetish events, there are things that you can perfectly well enjoy on your own.

And yet our kink identities, preferences and practices are undeniably linked to playing with other people. Our play partners leave a deep trace in our minds and bodies. Sometimes it’s hard to differentiate what is authentically yours and what emerged from shared exploration. Is authenticity even something that could be applied to kink identity? And what does it say about the nature of intimacy in kink?

We all have our kink origin stories. It could have been lying in a pile of leather coats as a kid. It could have been late-night internet browsing, a film or a book. It could have been a person who was open about their desires. Since that first-ever flash of erotic auto-recognition, the blueprint of kink sexuality (for most people) remains ever-changing. You discover new things, you fall out of love with old favourites to pick them up again in the future, you get into things you never thought you would. People you play with, people you see playing, and communities you’re part of are all crucial parts of this process.

I remember briefly hanging out with someone who had a kink for disposable gloves. As I listened to him talking about it, I thought of a beautiful sensation that I’ve always appreciated about getting a tattoo: the stinging hot pain, the way they hold you very firmly with gloved hands, and how you can feel the warmth of their skin through black nitrile. I thought of how gloves, paradoxically, make the process both more detached and more intimate – as if you needed to make up for the lack of skin contact with a more fluid and caring mental connection. I remember touching myself with a gloved hand after ordering the first box of black nitrile ones which fitted me right – and how since then they’ve become an intrinsic part of my sexuality.

I remember trying a rubber outfit on for the first time at a friend’s house. I remember dating a sadistic rope top and becoming familiar with rope burns, expanding pain tolerance and the capacity of my joints. Were these things always part of me? Did they just get unearthed when touched by another person? Is this question even relevant? Would I even buy a latex catsuit if I didn’t have an appreciative enough audience around me? And how much agency do I have in this very beautiful yet seemingly unpredictable process of changing?

Intimacy in BDSM is something very intense and rewarding. You experience a physical high – the adrenaline and endorphins from pain, fear, touch and playing with power. You create a space for each other to enact your erotic selves without shame, to tap into dark and complex thrills. You share extreme vulnerability. You talk openly and honestly about your boundaries, desires and personal histories. You share a highly creative language of care that looks very different to anything you’ve ever been taught – and might incorporate bruises, acts of service or pushing needles through your partner’s skin.

There is an underside to how deep and delicious this intimacy is: in each BDSM relationship, even in each hot scene, there is a bit of grief. There is grief for how short-lived the high is. There is grief for having to let go of that intense connection – to loosen the rope or unclip the restraints. There is a lingering sense of how brief the pleasure is – because nothing lasts forever, good or bad. There is grief at the very thought of the moment you would have to part ways. And with every story which didn’t work out, there is an added grief of missed opportunities – of something you haven't discovered and someone you haven't become. But is this grief worth experiencing for the ecstasy and connection? Absolutely.

Daemonum X perfectly sums up the emotional complexity of D/s relationships in her piece for Autostraddle titled “The Unique Grief of Ending a BDSM Relationship”: “In relationships with consensual power dynamics, lots of care and intention is placed in curating the connection between the dominant and submissive. Deciding what rules, rituals, and protocols each will commit to takes constant work and attention to build and grow. Unlike regular relationships, performing the default of what everyone else does isn’t really an option because unless you’re deeply involved in a community, there are very few examples to follow. There was so much creativity in our design, vigilantly searching for ideas from unlikely places – Catholic mass, horror movies, erotica. What I mean to say is that we built this house with our bare hands and sweat and tears, and that its undoing is unlike any pain I’ve experienced before”.

It has to be said, that ultimately you don’t need anyone else to be who you really are. To be dominant, submissive, masochistic, sadistic (or queer, for that matter) there is no need to prove your identity in any way through looks or actions. Grief comes, and grief goes, even if we’re continuously afraid of the void at the one side of the binary. There is always a bit of the previous experience in every next one, as much as there is always a possibility to change – as long as you trust your desires.

I didn’t go out that evening looking for this. I then stop myself and think, actually, maybe I did. Maybe there was an internal reason why I carried myself the way I did on that night. How did I know? I didn’t. There is no way you can ever know.

Photo of Audrey and Jimmy by Layla Kosima.