Risk Everything All the Time, Part 2

Partners very reasonably expect that I have at least a modicum of skill in the dance I would lead, and while I have never dropped anyone in the (literally) hundreds of suspensions I’ve rigged (nor in dancing, come to think of it), I have crushed nerves, left unintentional marks, had to cut rope and generally made acquaintance with the many crises common to bondage play. Still, I’ve no interest in mitigating any of the risks to which I expose myself or my partner.

By risk I don’t mean of incompetence or negligence (I, after all, derive a significant measure of my satisfaction in tying by successfully getting and keeping my partner in the form or pose I fancy), but rather of surprise interludes or endings within the scene. Those sometimes include quick arrests of erotic energy and emotion (which, once they’re flowing, understandably want to remain so), but that they too are at risk of unforeseeable detours adds immeasurably to the charm and intimacy of BDSM.

I would risk saying that in BDSM the only risk worthy of the common conception of the word is that of incompetence, and even then two people may consent to venture into experiences with which neither is familiar - both are incompetent, ipso facto, until they’re not. Yes, we should be aware of the risks of tying and being tied, of wine enemas, of an involuntary twitch with a knife in hand, of the local laws, of hot, of cold, full, empty, up, down, open, closed, in, out, right, wrong, rough, soft, loud, silent, on, off, loaded, slack, tight, loose, happy, sad… we should be aware of all of it… and therefore none of it.

Stepping full into possibility is what, in the end, will have given life its sweetness. In this sense being a pervert is a gift par excellence. What gets me off is not binary possibility, but quantum possibility – vagueness, indeterminacy, gray areas, the interdigitation of one and zero. I’m more a student of Buddhism than a practitioner (because I believe the teaching has gotten the matter of suffering wrong), but I am totally on board with the idea of unknowing. Knowledge is static (a common starting point in any epistemology) – it does not flow. It’s on or off. Not knowing is flowing… and risky.

Embracing risk takes a certain amount of being out of one’s head, and by that I mean absenting oneself to thought and calculation and analysis (and knowing), and admitting full feeling and presence. I am continually delighted by what ensues from the simple fact of my having been fully present and aware. Were I feeling really bombastic I’d suggest that nothing ever goes wrong when I’m present, but what does go wrong turns quickly right when I’m aware and full in feeling. Going wrong is in the flow to right. When I’m in my head I miss things, mostly the flow.

I’ve taken thousands of trips on New York’s subways and never felt in danger of loosing my life, but obviously that does not mean that risk is not present. Doubtless many of you reading this will have driven somewhere today, which is a far riskier venture than gliding under rivers in giant aluminum sarcophagi. Still, risk is what gives living in New York its complex flavors and frisson, and we all share in it, on subways and elsewhere. It’s why the world tilts constantly in our direction. Shared risk is more prosperous and more fun. It’s why money and art are here in such profusion. It’s one of the more obvious yields of kink.

I don’t believe I’ve mentioned it, but my bread-and-butter is risk analysis and mitigation. People hire me to ride herd on their investments and they pay me only when I do better than the markets. Their risk is my risk. That said, I trade very aggressively and take only those clients who can stomach volatility (for which I am the poster child). My competence is in limiting the downside, a discipline for which I have to show up daily. I control what I can, which is a very small percentage of the whole. The making of the money, the main event, is something I just get out of the way of and let happen. I get out of my head. In effect, everything is at risk because it’s in play and working – if it’s not in the ring it’s safe, but no good comes of it.

With rope what I control is ultimately a very small part of a whole scene. My best gambit is to get out of the way and let the main event happen, what ever that might end up being. I’m a firm believer in non-zero sum outcomes - win-wins are possible and even probable if everyone is willing to put something on the table. There can be no winners when everyone is safe.

Meeting with BS 3

Returning now to matters more pleasantly esoteric...

***

Since a live feed had happened just the previous night the space was given over largely to sets and the scattered paraphernalia of what appeared to several womens' torture. The chair (the one desk chair that has ever appeared in Insex media) was positioned prominently, a mop leaned upon it and several coils of hemp rope stacked in its seat. Beneath the chair was a bundle of plastic wrap or bags shot through with black PVC tape, several latex gloves and other matted, damp-looking bits of detritus. Before the chair stood two Sony cams, partially disassembled with open cases between them. Emptied light stands and a boom were arrayed to one side and behind these a long table held piles of leather goods, rope, tape in various colors and widths, wooden and metal devices and copies of what I would come to learn were scripts. In a tall stock pot at least one insertable item presumably awaited boiling.

Shelves positioned back and away from the set overflowed with raw materials of all descriptions – wooden planks, wire, medical supplies and entire sides of latigo leather spilled off the upper reaches, while the lower slots held tubs of Neats Foot Oil, isopropyl alcohol and racks of hand tools. These later were clearly intended to be used in the darkest corner of the room where a lathe, a small band saw and a couple of other machine tools had been pushed together temporarily. On the lathe was the beginnings of a wooden pear gag which, when he showed it to me, PD allowed he was considering having manufactured in volume, likely as a plastic casting. The part on the lathe was an element of a prototype; the other bits stood carefully arranged on a nearby work stand, the hand-carved leaves impressing me greatly in their uniformity and excellent finish.

We talked throughout, PD throwing off references to authors and artists whose work he admired and from whom he took his inspiration. I observed that the pear reminded me of something I’d seen on Jeff Gord’s site and my host steered me immediately to another shelf containing dozens of volumes of the Gor series, a score of cheap Japanese trade shibari books (the first I’d ever seen), obscure Italian and French editions (Glittering Images?) on John Willie Coutts, Bettie Page, a army field surgical manual from the 1950s, a copy of Research (#49) featuring Fakir Musafar, and, most relevantly, a number of graphic books featuring the works of Simon Benson, Eneg, Jim and others. He flipped one open to a bookmark and pointed out a Benson image by which he and Jeff had likely been similarly inspired. PD heaped praise on House of Gord, the evil genius of its master and what he assumed must be Jeff’s minion, given the profligacy of mannered abominations issuing forth from that site, especially in the area of fornophilia. (editing note: I would later visit the Gord compound outside Seattle on a similar mission and learn that Jeff Gord does engineers and machines all the designs appearing on HoG almost entirely on his own).

Inspired upon learning of my interest in fornophilia, PD dropped the Benson book and made for a terminal. He opened a browser and typed in the URL www.b****s****.com and loaded the very first ShockWaved website I’d ever seen. A grid map of a gallery with an insect icon crawling around in it came first to the screen, and links opened into a crude virtual tour. It was very impressive.

“That’s you? You're BS?”

“That’s me, formally, maybe formerly.”

Meeting with BS, 2

“Mac! You’re early, fucker.” That much I remember verbatim. (The next bit I don’t think I’m making up, but I scribbled down something to the effect of) “Too bad about last night. You would have been a good distraction for the girls.”

In any case, for openers he didn’t do half badly.

PD stepped back, took my hand in a surprisingly weak but perhaps just early-morning grip and ushered me into his vaulted atelier of dangerous ecstasies. Directly in front of me was an impressive video editing suite, the screens of which were variably papered with images of (enslaved.com’s) Paige White’s extremities sunken in the sands of Muir Beach with driftwood occupying both her ends of her alimentary canal, and a terminal set-up with less obviously interesting data scrolling lazily upward. I would learn two things shortly; first, how to make an anal hook and a bit gag from found objects (and how the two relate), and second, Insex’s rate of customer acquisition.

Before becoming educated, however, PD and I exchanged pleasantries, starting with the disarming mutual admission that the matter of how to handle my interest in investing in Insex was a mystery to us. I allowed that I’d never done anything like what I was proposing, and PD allowed that neither he nor his partners had ever imagined taking in outside capital. We were both immediately more at ease since there were no longer any expectations of a right way to go about our business, should it happen we would end up having any to do together. His suggestion for the time being was to “fuck that’ and show me around the space, which was more compact than seeing it on screen had led me to expect. For a New York studio it was still substantial, but PD’s inventiveness and the place’s own rustic qualities had impressed me remotely as endless. Just another trompe-l'œil of which I’d learn there were legion.

(As the critic Kenneth Tynan once wrote of Marlene Dietrich, the art is in the seeming)