Playing on the Edge: Sadomasochism, Risk, and Intimacy

Playing on the
Edge

Sadomasochism, Risk, and Intimacy

Staci Newmahr

Playing on the
Edge

Playing on the
Edge

Sadomasochism, Risk, and Intimacy

Staci Newmahr

Indiana University Press Bloomington and Indianapolis

This book is a publication of Indiana University Press

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© 2011 by Staci Newmahr All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to

this prohibition.

o

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Newmahr, Staci.

Playing on the edge : sadomasochism, risk, and intimacy / Staci Newmahr.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-253-35597-3 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-253-22285-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Sadomasochism. 2. Sexual dominance and submission. 3. Sadomasochists—Case studies.
   

   1. Title. HQ79.N49 2011 306.77’5—dc22
      

      2010035371
      

      1 2 3 4 5 16 15 14 13 12 11
      

      Portions of earlier versions of this work have appeared in
      Journal of Contemporary Ethnography
      37 (2008),
      Symbolic Interaction
      33 (3) (2010), and
      Qualitative Sociology
      33 (3), (2010). All works were written by Staci Newmahr and reprinted with permission of Sage Publications, University of California Press, and Springer, respectively.
      

      For my mother, Irene,
      

      who taught me to be comfortable with risk, for Riordan,
      

      whom I hope to teach the same, and for Paul,
      

      for whom there simply are no words great enough.
      

      Contents
      

      Acknowledgments
      ix
      

      Introduction
      1
      

      Part 1: People
      

      1. Defiance: Bodies, Minds, and Marginality
         23
         

      2. Geeks and Freaks: Marginal Identity and Community
         39
         

         Part 2: Play
         

      3. Tipping the Scales: Striving for Imbalance
         59
         

      4. Fringe Benefits: The Rewards of SM Play
         81
         

      5. Badasses, Servants, and Martyrs: Gender Performances
         103
         

         Part 3: Edges
         

      6. Reconcilable Differences: Pain, Eroticism, and Violence
         123
         

      7. Collaborating the Edge: Feminism and Edgework
         144
         

      8. “What It Is That We Do”: Intimate Edgework
         166
         

Concluding Notes: Erotic Subjectivity and the Construction of the Field
187

Acknowledgments

Many open-minded and generous people took a leap on this project with me, or for me. I appreciate their adventurousness and their confidence.

I am ineffably grateful to Judy Tanur, my mentor and friend. Her encourage- ment and support energized this project from the moment of its inception over a decade ago until the last word was written. My thinking and my writing have benefited tremendously from her steadfast commitments to theoretical preci- sion and methodological rigor.

Aisha Khan’s unflinching support for this project was a source of inspiration and sustenance from the very beginning. Our conversations about the scene were always exciting and intellectually catalytic. I thank her for her brilliant and con- tagious energy, and for helping me to trust myself.

I thank Javier Auyero, for breathing life into ethnography in our department, for tirelessly reading draft after draft of my work, and for never pulling his punch- es. I appreciate also the efforts of Naomi Rosenthal, in finding entry points into this project, in challenging me to think differently, and in letting me know what I was up against. I owe thanks also to Erich Goode, Marc Olshan, and Bob Zuss- man, all of whom helped hone my thinking in the early stages of this project.

My colleagues at Buffalo State College have been supportive from the moment I arrived there. Gerhard Falk and Tom Weinberg encouraged me and regularly expressed confidence in the book. Virginia Grabiner read excerpts and provided me with helpful responses, and Cheryl Albers graciously provided valuable feedback on a tricky chapter in the final hour. Finally, I am deeply indebted to Allen Shelton for his close and keen readings of pieces of this work, for inspiring me anew in each and every conversation, and for his significant emotional and intellectual support as the book came into being.

ix

x
Acknowledgments

Three readers for Indiana University Press offered me wonderfully thoughtful and constructive reviews. Patricia Adler, Leon Anderson, and Katherine Frank provided enthusiastic and meaningful support and made insightful contributions to this work. I owe special thanks to Katherine Frank, whose own work helped me think this one possible, and whose incisive feedback has made it much, much stronger than it would have been otherwise. I would also like to thank Rebecca Tolen and Peter Froehlich at Indiana University Press for their support.

Fieldwork is often an emotionally intense experience, and this project brought with it particular intensities. Over the past ten years I relied heavily on my friends, all of whom shouldered the burdens I placed on them with grace and astounding generosity. They engaged with me in countless conversa- tions about the concepts in this book, about the scene, and about my play and my responses to it. They helped in dozens of incredibly valuable practical ways as well. I cannot overstate the ways in which these relationships sustained me while I was working on this book. Among these are Regina Alandy, Katherine Cherbas, Natasha Khost, and Jaquelyn Lacovara (who may have forgotten her multi-leveled role in this project, but I have not). I thank my brother, Todd Newmahr, for his enthusiasm for my work, and for always being there when I needed him.

For their time, attention, and candid feedback on various pieces of this work, I would also like to thank Martin Barron, Tarek Elnicklawy, Sue Ferziger, Michelle Fox, Paul Fuller, Crystal Galloway, John Galloway, Tor Gunston, Mary Link Habib, Jacob Heller, Kerri Kennedy, Tobin Kramer, Jason Kress, Beth Kress, Jason Lampert, Jon Lehrer, Meitar “Maymay” Moscovitz, Paul Park, Asaf Ronen, Jason Salomone, Natasha Schreib, and Robin Wetherbee.

I suspect that most ethnographers would agree on the futility of trying to express the depth of appreciation for the collaborative relationship that is eth- nographic research. I am profoundly indebted to the members of the SM com- munity in Caeden. I thank each one of them for their welcome, their trust, and their intensity.

This work is in part the result of the generosity of the twenty members of the community who spent so many hours talking with me, sharing the stories of their lives, their thoughts and fears, and their answers to my seemingly endless questions. I cannot thank them enough for their openness and their time.

To those who trusted me enough to play, risk, and trust with me—most especially Bo, Dov, Jason, and Mike—I am deeply grateful. Without them, this book would not exist; my journey would not have been what it was and I would not be who I have become.

Acknowledgments
xi

My partner, Paul Kress, lived and breathed this project alongside me. An inclusive list of his contributions to this project would require a chapter on its own. I thank him for the self-confidence and generosity of spirit that rendered my pursuit of this project possible in the first place. I thank him for his patience with near-constant conversation about my work for such a very, very long time, for reading each draft of everything so thoughtfully, and for his superb skill in complicating questions and in clarifying muddiness. I thank him also for his unwavering encouragement of this project and of me, for his rock-solid opti- mism and his spirit of adventure.

There are two other people whom I cannot adequately thank, for their positively brilliant insights, provocative questions, loyal friendship, and the fortification that only hearty laughter can provide. It is impossible to extricate my thinking from theirs; this book was, in too many ways to count and ways impossible for anyone else to understand, also written by Mike and Maymay.

Playing on the
Edge

Introduction
1

Introduction

The warehouses on the street had been closed for hours. Taxis thumped down the pothole-plagued city block. Rap music blasted from a nearby nightclub. I locked my Club onto the steering wheel of my car, double-checked the parking sign, and headed down the street. The pavement glittered under my boots, embedded glass reflecting the reassuring lamplight in this downtown district. Halfway down the block, I stopped at a brick wall. I parted the dirty clear plastic vertical blinds that obscured the threshold, and walked inside. A tall, thin, disheveled man was perched on a stool just inside the unlabeled doorway. He nodded at me as I entered.

The walls were gray concrete. Black stage lights lined the floor of the dark hallway. High along one wall, swirly, high-school girl handwriting welcomed me to “The Playground” in enthusiastic romantic loops. The bass of techno music lent rhythm to the muffled sound of party chatter below. I walked down the winding stairway at the end of the hall. Lorraine sat at the window before the heavy steel entrance to the club. Recognizing me, she smiled warmly and said, “Free for the lady.”

I opened the door. The smell of chocolate and freshly made waffles invited me inside. As soon as I entered the room, Jacob saw me from across the soda-fountain counter and waved.

“Dakota!” he called to me.

I waved and headed over to him, past the old-fashioned stools that lined the counter, dropping my bag in a booth along the way. He gave me a hefty hug hello. I climbed onto the sparkly red vinyl seat that threatened to spin out from under me as I tried to sit down. Across from us, handwritten signs offered us milkshakes, Belgian waffles, and nachos.

Jacob looked at me with a solemn expression on his rather large and jowly face. He has kind, intelligent eyes that often sparkle with mischief, but tonight he said seriously, “Dakota, do you know why Jesus died on the cross?”