Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 26-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.
Love Wants You
Celia, a 45-year-old singer in a punk band, is uncomfortable making the transition from starving artist to working poor. With less frequent record releases and tours, Celia funnels her creativity into writing.
Using dating websites to find a man for an ongoing, monogamous relationship, Celia encounters deception, disrespect and manipulation. Her escalating frustration is reflected in updated versions of her online dating profile.
Celia gets a job as a fitness technician at a gym for women, who are always interested to hear about her dating adventures. Celia is writing a screenplay about her dating adventures. Her main character, Veronica, appears to be having similar experiences, but Veronica is much bolder and tends to get what both she and Celia want. Celia talks about her screenplay at the gym, and the women give their opinions about the men Celia is meeting. Celia ventures over to the Intimate Encounters section of the dating website and creates a profile using sexy self-portrait photos. Selecting male attributes from a drop-down menu—aggressive, will take control, knows what he wants—she is immediately swamped with messages from Doms assuming she’s submissive. Celia is drawn into the intensity of communication with these men, who are talking about “24/7” and “the lifestyle”: a subculture made visible through internet anonymity. Through chat, email and online research, Celia is compelled to delve deeper—she wants to understand her responses to questionable stimuli. Celia writes a new synopsis for her screenplay and posts it as her online dating profile.
***
Intimate Encounters
Sexullectual
Synopsis-in-progress
Veronica, a 45-year-old artist who frequently identifies herself as a feminist, is exploring a strong desire to be controlled within a sexual relationship with a dominant partner. Finding the realm of bdsm well-documented online, Veronica recoils at the highly codified activities and conventional nature of the lingo. The costumes and repertoire of activities don’t appeal to her aesthetically. She doesn’t want to dress up as a Catholic school girl or re-enact a Patty Hearst kidnapping scene, as one of her potential suitors suggests. Veronica’s interest is hinged to exploring how and why her physical and psychological responses are different from what she believes intellectually about power, injustice and feminist concerns. Exhibiting high levels of responsibility in her daily life, Veronica may be typical of people who seek to lose control in the psycho-sexual terrain of power exchange. Conversely, people who feel powerless may want a partner who needs to be controlled. Through Veronica’s online research, she learns that the dynamic she seeks is based on trusting that the dominant partner will respect and adhere to the specifics they have negotiated. While the dominant partner has the power, it is ultimately the submissive who controls what happens, how power is exhibited. The activities engaged in aim to satisfy the complementary needs of both people.
In setting out to learn where fantasy meets reality, Veronica posts a profile on a bdsm website:
I’m inexperienced within the dimension I want to explore. I don’t respond well to deception. I am responsive to a romantic and intellectual pairing as part of a sexual bdsm relationship. I’m interested in a highly communicative relationship based in honesty and respect. These aren’t essentially moral concerns, but they are the areas that I’m interested in. Trust and respect.
While finding the wide variety of information available online helpful, it is deeper analysis that resonates, drawing me towards the idea of a mutually agreed upon, ongoing exploration. An experienced partner would suit me, as I have found trying to educate both participants while in motion is rather frustrating and counter-productive. It is my intention to understand my responsive nature as opposed to engage in “fun” and “play” and vapid one-night stands with liars who need to rush home to their wives and then tell me more lies about why they cannot see me again. I find this upsetting and damaging and somewhat soul-destroying, except that I don’t believe in souls—or god, for that matter. I’m not compelled to replicate lingo and practices in any area of culture and society, and while I see conformity has a useful function in language-based and responsible interaction, I would prefer to find idiosyncratic forms of expression.
It is essential to communicate a groundwork of limits and preferences in advance. There is a very big chance that I will become attached, fall in love or otherwise be emotionally involved with the man I engage in sex with. This is desirable to me. The elements of bdsm that interest me—vulnerability, trust and respect—seem to bring an intensity of emotions and that is where I want to be, but not by way of deception. It is the intensity that I crave, not the hollow re-writing of a shared history after learning that so much of what happened wasn’t real when a man decides that I am not allowed to see reality because he wants to use me for self-gratification.
It is, of course, the person in the submissive position who dictates the range of experience and it is the dominant partner who adheres to those parameters. Those who maintain that submissives must do whatever the dominant says are unaware of the entire dynamic in terms of its reciprocal nature. If you feel the urge to insult me, you only serve to advance the negative stereotypes of Doms being a bunch of losers who have no other way to deal with women than boss them around. Oh, and to the Doms who like to write long pompous essays informing where I have gone wrong—skip it. Not interested.
To be continued next week.
