Playing on the Edge: Sadomasochism, Risk, and Intimacy (8 page)

Marginality: Narratives and Identities

At a Horizons meeting I attended, a man named Jonas was to demonstrate how to throw a single-tailed whip. He was a large, awkward man with long hair and a lumbering gait. He wore old black jeans that hung sloppily from his waist, and his shoulders were slightly hunched. Without the usual greeting or verbal introduc- tion, Jonas immediately turned his back to the audience and pushed a button on a

portable compact disc player. A tall thin woman stood with her back to the audi- ence, and Jonas began to hit her back lightly with the whip. As he whipped her, he began to move, increasingly, rhythmically. He was not quite dancing in the performative sense; it was as if he were unaware that he was even moving to the music. He circled the woman, repeatedly throwing the whip in such a way that it curled around the woman’s body, appearing deeply engrossed. His movements were unconventional but unselfconscious and entirely in rhythm with the music. After the demonstration had ended, in a small, soft-spoken voice, he explained, “Words fail me for the most part, but this doesn’t.” He said little else.

The experiences of geekiness, obesity, incidental androgyny, and social awkwardness are potentially so closely linked that it can be difficult to extri- cate them from one another. Yet each is distinctly marginalizing, and their conflation results in a multi-layered sense of marginality, as Laura illustrated:

I didn’t have a lot of friends. People didn’t like me; I was the kid people made fun of. I was tall, I was fat, I was a geek. I was smart, which was probably a really bad combination. And kids are cruel. I was always the kid that had the answer. I fit in better with the geeks, but I wasn’t completely accepted. I wasn’t invited to things. Even when the geeks got together, I wasn’t invited. I was not a social person. I didn’t know how to be. That’s what it kinda came down to. I didn’t know how to be. I just didn’t fit in anywhere.

Experiences of life on the social margins are pervasive in the life stories of interview respondents, salient in the conversations among community mem- bers, and a generally assumed aspect of community life in Caeden. Whether these marginal experiences were meaningful for the members of this commu- nity before they arrived, or have been jointly constructed through community narratives since, the stories of marginality resonate very strongly for people in Caeden. The loneliness captured in many of these stories is striking, as is the framing of marginality as an affinity for nonconformity:

I would have these things that I was weird about, but I liked being weird about [them]. I would bring a book sometimes during recess and I’d get like friends to do it too; I’d be like “bring a book at recess and we’ll sit by the dumpsters and read!” I wasn’t a loner, I was just—I liked being different. There were usually like sixty kids in a class, in a grade. I was always, though my whole life, somewhere in the middle. (Interview transcript, Lily)

Membership in the Caeden SM community cultivates, reinforces, and sus- tains identities of marginality that draw from sources far beyond members’

interest in sadomasochistic play. Entrance into the community provides imme- diate reassurance that kindred spirits—and bodies and minds—exist. This observable validation suggests to participants that their interest in SM must somehow be connected to their other marginal experiences. By providing them the chance to cast SM as the (essentialist) explanation for why they have been different all along, the community reaffirms a broader and farther-reaching identity of marginality. This identity trumps the pre-community sources of nonconformity and highly values living life “outside the box.”

The members of this community make unconventional life choices at almost every turn. They generally view themselves as especially sexually libidinous. Many were sexually active earlier than average and engaged in less norma- tive sexual activities at a young age. Careers (and career paths) tend also to be unconventional; many people work at home, freelance, or live off passive income of one sort or another. They participate in a broad range of other non- conforming, extreme, or marginal activities, including Wicca, Satanism, the Society for Creative Anachronism, civil war reenactments, shamanism, fencing, barbershop quartets, marathon running, skydiving, and vampirism. In their livelihood and in their hobbies, the members of this community are noncon- formists. They are accustomed to defining themselves as outsiders.

Importantly, the alternative movements that attract the members of this community are pastime or hobby-based, rather than aesthetic or stylistic. Many members of the community reported having “Goth” friends in high school; Seth was not the only one to remark that he could have been Goth. In some ways, they bear strong similarities to members of the Goth communities (Wilkins 2008). Yet they are not Goth; they do not conform to a countercul- tural fashion style that would contextualize and present their outsiderness to the world. Their freakiness does not “resolve the dilemmas” of coolness that Wilkins observes for Goths, who consciously and deliberately construct their freakiness on their bodies as they move through heteronormative spaces from which they may have previously been excluded. The members of the Caeden SM community do not make these stylistic and declarative choices regarding self- presentation. Even when they are “out” about their SM identities, this declara- tion does not resolve their dilemma; they continue to live on the social margins everywhere other than within the SM scene itself.

In this context, community identity becomes important not merely because it represents shared interest in SM, but because it represents shared histories of living on the margins—of having been, for much of their lives and for multiple reasons, what Erving Goffman called “disqualified from full social acceptance” (1963).

Geeks and Freaks
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Chapter 2

Geeks and Freaks

Marginal Identity and Community

In celebration of Raven’s birthday, several of us were meeting at a restaurant in the vicinity of the club before the Horizons party. When I arrived at seven o’clock, twelve people were already seated. I waved to everyone and went to sit beside Elise, who jumped up to hug me as I approached. Four more people entered before we ordered. The place was busy, and the din made it difficult to hear each other. It was not our usual spot. The wait staff seemed slightly contemptuous, perhaps noting the preponderance of black leather—or the popularity of the fettuccine alfredo

dish with extra garlic bread—in this particular crowd.

At 8:30, the four of us who were scheduled to set up for the party prepared to head out. As we each rounded the table to give individual hugs to people we would see again in approximately ninety minutes, Sheryl stood up and yelled, “Wait! Wait! I won’t be there!” and rushed all of us to give a proper good-bye.

Adia, Kim, Larry, and I walked up to the club and set about hanging decorations, putting out prizes, setting up the food—cold cuts and shrimp, candy and cookies. The CDs needed to be queued in the disk player, along with whatever special instructions James needed to cut and cue the music for special events throughout the evening.

At 9:30, we were nearly ready for the 10:00 start. By 11:00 the place was packed—wall to wall people—and several scenes were underway. I sat at a booth next to Jesse and across from Adam, and we caught up on the day’s events.

After a few minutes, Jesse asked me, “Do you like knives?” “Sure,” I replied.

“Close your eyes,” Jesse said. She took my wrist. I felt a dull blade trail along the inside of my forearm. I opened my eyes and saw that it was not a blade at all, but a paper-thin, plastic card. We marveled at how like a blade it felt.

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Adam began to dig all of his sharps out of his bag. He held out his hand for mine. I gave it to him and watched as he placed a two-bladed finger cuff over his index finger. I had not seen a cuff like that before. It was a new toy for Adam also. He dragged it along the back of my hand. We discussed how to make them, how expensive they were, and where to find them.

Handing the cuff to Jesse, he said, “Here, try it on her neck.” “Do you mind?” Jesse asked me.

“No, it’s okay,” I replied, piling my hair atop my head with a hair band so that my hair wouldn’t cause the blades to skip.

Jesse dragged the blades up and down my neck, softly at first. It gave me goose bumps. When I shivered, Adam wrapped my arms in his. Within a few seconds Jesse was no longer using the blade lightly enough to tickle, and I was no longer shivering. Adam reached into his pocket, removed his pocketknife and flipped it open. Taking my wrists in one hand, he stretched my arms across the table, palms up.

In soft voices, just above whispering, Jesse and Adam talked as they used the blades on my skin. I kept my eyes closed and focused on the feeling.

“She marks so nicely,” Adam said.

“I know. And look at her face. It’s like it’s putting her to sleep,” replied Jesse. “Except when it hurts,” Adam said as he pressed the knife into my skin.

The three of us played at the booth for a while. When the impromptu scene ended, Adam stood up with his toy bag, gave me a dramatic look and said, “You ready for me?” I smirked and said good-bye to Jesse. As we wandered around, looking for an empty play area, several people called out, “Have fun!”

“Don’t let him be mean to you,” called James, the owner of the club.

Lars smiled as we passed him. “Always with a full dance card,” he complained jovially. “Let me know when it opens up!”

When we found a play space, Elise was sitting in the room. She squealed and clapped loudly.

“Oh goody, Dakota and Adam are going to play! I love to watch you guys play! Oooh, wait wait wait! I gotta pee! I’ll be right back!” She dashed off. Adam and I exchanged surprised and flattered smiles.

About an hour later, our scene was interrupted by an announcement over the loudspeaker that the club was closing. We ignored it. James, the owner of the club, played “Cotton-Eyed Joe,” a loud, fast-paced, grating bluegrass song intended to put a quick end to the scene. James lived far away from the city and had a long commute home. Disregarding the not-so-subtle hint, Adam danced a mock two- step as he swung his flogger.

The club went black. Startled, I gasped. James, a longtime community member and well-known spanking aficionado, sighed tiredly into the microphone.

“Okay, everybody. No more, you freaks!”

We laughed. I sat down and Adam hollered, “All right, old man, all right.” He began gathering our things in the dark. James turned the lights back on. We made our way to the front of the club.

It was nearly four o’clock in the morning. Only about twenty-five regulars were left. It appeared that everyone else had finished their scenes and was sitting around, glassy-eyed from either play or exhaustion.

As we made our way to the booths where we had left our things, Jacob commented to me, “Hey, I didn’t know you liked knives. I’m really, really good with knives. We should play sometime. Seriously. I make people faint!”

I smiled and thanked him for the offer, but did not accept his invitation to unconsciousness.

We arrived at the booths, and the ritual chatter began. Planning the post-club diner visit involved multiple simultaneous conversations that generated the same result almost every weekend night.

“Who’s going for breakfast?”

“Hey, are you guys going to Sully’s?” “You two going for food?”

“I think Joanna wanted to head over to Paradise.” “I’m going home. I’m exhausted.”

“Who just said home?? It’s only 3:30!” “Hey, you guys going for breakfast?” “What’s wrong with Paradise?”

“Schuyler’s my ride. Where is she? Oh, she’s over there—hey, can one of you guys ask Schuyler if she’s going for breakfast?”

“We’re going to go to Sully’s. We’ll save a booth in case you end up over there.”

In the end, we all ended up at Sully’s, as we had the night before, taking up several tables and annoying the wait staff with individual checks. I left the diner at seven and crawled into bed, thoroughly exhausted, at eight o’clock in the morning. Again.

Like “identity,” the term “community” is contested in the social sciences. Its meanings vary widely, and criteria for its use are elusive.
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It is always, however, about boundaries. The notion of community is used, in academic writing and in American discourse, to draw lines between insiders and outsiders. This division is what brings the members of Caeden—and what compels me—to consider it a community. Used interchangeably with “the scene” in the discourse, “the com-

munity” serves as a source of a good deal of personal meaning. Participants in the scene find in the community a bond created by shared life experiences and shared objectives.

Though the concept of community remains particularly nebulous in both sociology and anthropology, in psychology in recent decades it has been sub- jected to valuable hermeneutic shifts, from community as geographical and cultural territory to community as social-psychological responses to social spaces. This has allowed for the study of the “sense of community” (and, later, the “psychological sense of community”), considering the roles of identification and identity, community seeking and community building, and, ultimately, the intersection of community, identity, and interaction.
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