How
a Nice Jewish Girl Like Me Became an Unrepentant
Pervert
by Gloria Brame
Reproduction
is permitted by non-profit and not-for-profit SM groups
for educational purposes with acknowledgements given to
SAADE.
Now
that you've endured the torments of wading through my
(other work) you may wish to endure even more torment.
Thus it seems only appropriate at this point to raise
that delicate question: "how did a nice Jewish
intellectual from Brooklyn grow up to be a notorious
pervert (while still maintaining her sunny
disposition)?"
So, to start at the beginning. I've basically always
been sexually strange though it wasn't until I got
involved in SM that I looked back to my childhood and
recognized the early warning signs of my sexual
identity. For example, as a kid, I was fascinated by
movies featuring heroes in loincloths, armor, leather,
and fetishistic outfits. Tarzan re-runs and tacky 50s
B-movies about Roman Centurions kept me glued to my
parents old b&w tv on Saturdays.
At age five, I had a life-changing experience when my
parents took me to see "Spartacus." In his
bulging loincloth, with glistening jewels of sweat
pouring down his bronzed chest, Kirk Douglas was the
most naked man I'd ever seen. I was obsessed with Mr.
Douglas for a few years after. I had fantasies that it
was I who had brought on his suffering. I would imagine
him on that sun-bleached cross, surrounded by other
good-looking crucified men. My man would groan in agony,
his loincloth loosely wrapped. I would scale his cross
and take him in my arms, embracing him tenderly, my
tears mingling with his sweat. It seemed so romantic!
Even at that young age, I sensed that love brought pain.
I couldn't separate the sorrow from the rapture when
fantasizing that he was enduring it all for my sake.
I can point to other foreshadowings in childhood of what
was to come. At holiday get-togethers, when the kids
would retreat to a bedroom to "play house," I
was inevitably picked to be the Mommy who punished the
others with spankings for their imaginery crimes. When I
was in sixth grade, a fourth-grade boy attached himself
to me with masochistic passion. Our innocent SM dynamic
endured all year: he would follow me around and annoy me
until I just couldn't stand it anymore and then I would
viciously rabbit-punch him. He'd fall to the floor at my
feet, writhing and moaning dramatically. Then he'd pause
and gaze up at me hopefully, as if to say, "Aren't
you going to kick me too?"
But, unlike some of the fanciful creatures on Usenet
who, at age 25, claim they've been doing D&S for 22
years, I date my real experiences with D&S from age
30. This is because, when I talk about D&S, what I
mean is mutually consensual D&S, where both partners
agree that they are going to share this kind of
high-intensity sex. So in order for there to be true
mutual consent a person has to KNOW that what she's
doing IS D&S, not some schoolyard game. Otherwise,
the one year olds who bite each other at daycare centers
or the thirteen year olds who snap their classmates'
brassieres during recess would all qualify as Masters
and slaves.
And, unfortunately, on the Internet many of them do.
(Sorry, I just had to get that in.)
Movie scenes of bondage and captivity continuously
replayed in my brain as I moved into adolescence. I
watched "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." faithfully
(if not feverishly) every week, anxious to see whether
Napoleon Solo or Ilya Kuryakin would again be tied up
and humiliated by a beautiful, cold-hearted bitch: the
kind of woman who was comfortable taking complete
control of a man.
A powerful woman was a powerful role model for a girl
growing up amid the Victorian sexual mores of the early
1960s. I still remember one brief scene where Ilya was
forced by some femme fatale to cross a burning desert
wearing nothing but a pair of bvd's. That image played
some havoc with my libido for a few breathless
adolescent years too.
The comic art of R. Crumb was another important
influence on my adolescent imagination. Crumb, and some
other artists (like Gilbert Shelton) who worked for ZAP!
Comix and other underground publishers were an endless
source of fascination to me. Their grotesque take on
sexuality, their mania for explicit detail, the
hard-boiled sexual perverts they glorified, well, it all
spoke to me. Their comic art stretched the bounds of
outrageous behavior and obliterated the bounds of moral
decency. It was a dark zone for sure, but a dark zone
that made me laugh and feel I was staring into something
very real.
In my later teens and 20s, when I began actively dating
(a nice euphemism for "sleeping around,"
n'est-ce pas?), I had a few flirtations with kink--some
bondage here, a little "you are my love slave"
there, and so on. Still, had you told me I was a
sadomasochist, I would have vehemently denied it. Yes, I
liked it a little kinky in bed...but SM, I thought, was
a different kettle of sharks.
I didn't know any SMers; I'd never seen any SM porno; I
hadn't read Havelock Ellis or any other scholarly work
on the subject. But, like many people, I had read the
classic SM novels and had naively taken them to be the
gospel on SM relationships. And I was nothing like the
characters in those novels. The emotional cruelty and
brutal violence in DeSade's Justine, which I read for a
women's study course in college, repulsed me. I
certainly couldn't identify with any of the characters
in Story of O. No one even LIKED each other in those
books. They all struck me as self-destructive neurotics,
particularly O, who I did not see as sexually submissive
but rather intent on using men to annihilate herself.
Okay, so I'm opinionated.
The few times I'd seen SM depicted in movies (such as
Maitresse, Barbet Schroeder's classic mainstream film
about a professional dominatrix), everyone looked so
UNHAPPY. Again, not for me.
Through my twenties I remained clueless about my true
sexual nature. What's strange about this is that more
and more men were approaching me, specifically looking
for D&S relationships. During my Wall Street years,
a friend on a trading desk once handed me a copy of 9
1/2 Weeks, and urged me to read it as a favor to him.
"Okay...but why?" I asked. "I was hoping
you'd read it and take me on an erotic adventure,"
he murmured. This sounded interesting! So I read it.
And, yes, the first chapters were hot. But then I got to
the ending, where the heroine ends up in a mental
institution, psychologically devastated by her
adventures.
Hmmmm. I think not.
Another Wall Street friend tried a more direct approach.
He would periodically lure me into his office to show me
the SM toy catalogues he perused during company time.
(Naturally he had them shipped to him at the office lest
his wife, who lived in a fool's paradise of tennis
lessons and PTA meetings, ever find them.) He would try
to coax me into selecting a whip or paddle from a
catalogue, in hopes I'd agree to use it on him. Never
one to mince words, I believe my usual reply was,
"You have lost your damn mind!"
The clincher was when a managing director at Morgan
Stanley (someone I recently saw gabbing it up with Louis
Ruykeyser on PBS, in fact), stopped my cubicle to
confess--in earshot of some female colleagues--that he
had dreamed of me the night before, "dressed in
fishnets and high heels, and standing over me with a
whip." When giggles erupted from the women's
various cubicles, the MD loped away sheepishly. I
remained frozen in place, mumbling in idiotic
stupefaction, "Why do men always say things like
this to me?"
These experiences led me to one conclusion about
conservative types: the straighter the suit, the kinkier
the man.
It took a woman to open my eyes. She was another nice
Jewish girl, educated and successful, attractive and
funny, and very mainstream, except for her sexual
obsessions. She talked openly about being a
sadomasochist. I was often shocked by her stories, but I
admired her nerve. Back then ('85-'86), there was no
Internet, and you just didn't meet people who talked
about these things. Her candor impressed me.
Within a few weeks, she confided that the reason she had
pursued a friendship with me was because she could tell
I was a sadomasochist too. Now, I knew more about sex by
age fifteen than many women do at age fifty. I'd hung
out with self-avowed queers since my early teens; lots
of my hippie friends were bisexual; some were
polyamorous. So I always felt that unusual sex was
acceptable, and possibly even normal.
This was one of the advantages of being raised by
parents who were too repressed to tell me anything about
sex. I decided, early on that either EVERYTHING was
disgusting or NONE of it was. As an adult, not even the
most outrageous perversions have induced in me the
smallest fraction of disgust I felt at age 11 when I
learned that a man actually puts his, um, you know, into
a woman's, er, well....YUCK! It was really all downhill
after that.
Still sadomasochists were complete unknowns and their
rituals seemed morbid: I saw them as victims or
criminals and often both, like the characters in books
by DeSade and Genet. At best they were the absurd SM
couple played by Cloris Leachman and Harvey Korman in
Mel Brooks' "High Anxiety." At worst they were
the pathetic individuals who occasionally showed
up--usually murdered in some macabre way--on the nightly
news: people whose bizarre lusts inevitably led them
down the road to hell.
I couldn't see how or where a basically gentle,
non-violent, romantic person such as myself fit into
this world. I rejected my girlfriend's theories based
uniquely on my prejudices and fears. But, just as many
fans have written me to say that Different Loving helped
them to put a human face on SM and fetishism, my
friend--through her candor--helped me to see that the
fiction was just that: sensationalized accounts of a
sexuality that was far more common, and shared by far
more well-adjusted, loving people, than anyone might
guess.
She showed me her library of SM pornography and there I
found the Tarzans and Ilya Kuryakins of my youth: only
these men were naked in their bonds and obviously
aroused. That was exciting. She also showed me her
collection of fetish clothes, from leather wear of every
type to a Cleopatra-style costume. She encouraged me to
try on some of the outfits and, when I did, I simply
loved the way they looked and felt.
She did me another big favor: she turned me on to
cyberspace. I had purchased a PC in 1983, soon after
marrying husband number two (Will is husband number
three). Though I used it mainly for wordprocessing, I
had insisted on getting a modem (still fairly rare in
those days) because of an article I'd read chronicling
one man's addiction to interactive chat on The Source.
The idea that strangers from around the nation could
talk, 24 hours a day, didn't just amaze me: it gave me a
vision of what the future might be and a keen desire to
be a part of it.
When my girlfriend joined a local adult BBS (electronic
bulletin board) which featured a B&D component, she
nagged me to join too. This was late 1985 and I was more
than a little dubious. Despite dabbling in D&S porn
and costumes at her house, I still did not believe I was
"one of them." But my marriage was already
falling apart, and I was staying up nights at the PC to
avoid sleeping beside my husband. Caught between intense
sexual frustration (my least favorite kind of
frustration) and voluntary insomnia, and intrigued by
the new technology, I decided to give the world of
on-line perversion a whirl.
So, I logged onto the BBS and began reading messages
which shocked me. I'm not sure now if part of that shock
wasn't simply the shock of recognition. At the time, I
was mildly horrified and fiercely embarrassed. All the
things that, normally, are shamefully hidden were, in
this forum, publicly and matter-of-factly flaunted.
People talked about weird sex and extreme practices the
way my parents talked about going to Dunkin'
Donuts--with cheerful and eager anticipation.
The candor among this band of perverts was captivating.
Straightforward discussion of topics that most people
considered taboo? Confessions of sexual quirks that most
people (including myself) didn't have the balls to admit
having, even to ourselves? There was something else: I
had by then already made my commitment to art. The life
of the artist, I knew from the first, was all about a
commitment to living in truth. In their own way, these
kinky adventurers were sexual artists. In short, I loved
it!
According to the explanatory sheet that came with my BBS
registration, new members were expected to leave
introductory messages about themselves. So, buoyed by my
reading, I set to the task of describing some of my own
strange fantasies. Though I was operating under a
handle, I was terrified the first time I posted a
fantasy on-line that someone somehow would find out it
was really me--Gloria Glickstein aka nice Jewish girl--
behind the moniker, and that my life would be ruined.
But I think what frightened me most of all was to give
voice to the dark fantasies I'd hidden all my life and
thus to stand naked not just before the world but, more
significantly, to stand naked before myself.
Writing that first message was the most difficult step
I've ever taken. And it was at that moment, I think,
that I truly became a sadomasochist. Because what drove
me then was the knowledge that I was taking a step
towards my sexual destiny. I had no idea how it would
turn out or whether, indeed, anything at all would come
of it. But I was determined to find out. Was my
girlfriend right about me? Was I one of them? Was SM the
missing ingredient in my life, and possibly the reason
why my vanilla relationships had never worked out?
My greatest fear was that people would read my
introductory note and be alarmed or puzzled by the
fantasy I described--or, infinitely worse, bemused and
patronizing. (In other words, that they would judge me
as I had judged them.) The fantasies I uploaded were not
the stuff of SM novels: whips and chains didn't interest
me as much as psychological domination and some of the
more sensual fetishes. When fan mail poured in the next
day, I was astonished. People wanted to meet me! They
wanted to serve me! They wanted to enslave me! A few
actually wanted to BE me, or at least to wear my
lingerie!
Imagine revealing that one secret you're most ashamed
about, least reconciled with, and deathly afraid to
reveal because you are certain others will reject you
for it. Then imagine receiving immediate and
overwhelmingly positive feedback. Instead of rejecting
you, people think your secret is WONDERFUL. They
understand your secret. They SHARE your secret and feel
a special bond with you because of it. Suddenly, you are
not alone. You are indeed one of them, and being one of
them turns out to be okay, because they are actually
just like you: regular human beings with unusual sexual
needs. No big deal.
There was simply no turning back after that. After my
marriage ended, a year later, there was nothing to hold
me back from freely exploring the SM world. I visited
all the SM clubs in New York that welcomed
heterosexuals. I read every book about SM that I could
get my hands on. I went to conferences and special
events. And I made it a basic rule to date only men who
were similarly aware that they needed SM in their lives.
I felt more alive that year than I had ever felt before.
Alive and complete.
But the transition was not painless. I'd lived in denial
about my sexual interests until the age of 30. I was
still my parents' daughter. It wasn't so easy to give up
a lifetime of being a nice girl and leap into life as a
heartless bitch. (Though it undeniably was fun!) I was
worried what my friends and colleagues would think of
me. For a time I made a point of coming out not only to
old friends, but to people who expressed an interest in
pursuing a friendship with me. I wanted to be sure,
before we got close, that there would be no chance of
rejection down the road when they discovered I was a
pervert.
I wrote a poem about this phase of my life.
THE
ACID TEST
For years, the truth was an acid test
I gave to all my friends. If they knew the truth,
and still accepted me, I could trust them
with the secrets of my identity.
The acid test quickly revealed
whose loyalties were sure and whose
were weakened by ideologies.
It was my shame that made me give the test;
insecurity about the life I led.
I had to know that friends approved of me.
I had to know they would not abandon me
when they knew the truth about my sexuality.
The acid test screened out enemies.
But
now I know my solution was all wrong.
It's no sin nor shame to be myself.
Perhaps some will judge my life and sneer;
if they do, it is because they are weak.
If I accept myself, if I embrace the fate that was
shaped for me,
the acid test is unnecessary.
1991
In
addition to conflicted emotions about my sexual
identity, I also had intellectual qualms about the
implicit inequality in a power exchange relationship. I
have always been a stout believer in social
egalitarianism. My sexual pleasure in the
dominant/submissive dynamic was hard to reconcile with
my political beliefs.
I even had anxiety about what SM psychodrama might be
saying about my childhood. Until then, I hadn't looked
very clearly at my childhood: now that I saw it clearly,
I wasn't terribly pleased. I saw clear parallels between
the problems at home and the dramas I wanted to enact
sexually.
I was very lucky, then, to find a mentor on-line in
1987. He'd been in the Scene for over 20 years and held
my hand through that revolutionary period in my life. He
helped me to see how SM could and should, ideally, fit
into a loving and constructive relationship. We talked
about D&S being an intimate pact between lovers who
lived according to their own concept of moral behavior
and defined sexual pleasure on their own terms. This
kind of philosophy--part anarchist, part civil
libertarian, and purely humanistic--made sense to me. I
still see the paradigmatic D&S relationship as
living up to that ideal. Finally I understood that
however one is born or shaped by circumstances, you
can't not be who you are. The important thing is to
embrace yourself, as you are, and to find positive ways
to fulfill your needs.
So that is the story of how I became an unrepentant
pervert. In 1987, I founded the first on-line SM support
group (Variations II on Compuserve); in 1988, Will Brame
joined Variations II and caught my attention in a big
way; in 1989, we were married; and in 1990, Will, Jon
Jacobs and I began working on Different Loving in hopes
of writing a book which would tell the truth about SM
sexuality as it is lived and not as it distorted in
media.
And, now in 1998, I'm fortunate enough to live in a
society where I can tell this story about my own coming
out.
I'll close with one more poem, this time by one of my
literary idols, the early 20th century poet, Constantin
P. Cavafy.
HIDDEN
THINGS
From
everything I did and said
let no one try to understand me.
There was an obstacle which distorted
the deeds and the style of my life.
That obstacle was usually there
to silence me when I wanted to speak.
From my least-known deeds,
my most cryptic poems--
only from these can I be understood.
Maybe it isn't worth caring about,
or making the effort to figure me out.
In another time, in a better world,
there will be another made just like me
who will certainly appear and act freely.
translated
by Gloria G. Brame, using various English-language texts
Reprinted
with permission from the archives of the SAADE Gazette.
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