The conundrum I repeatedly encountered was that applicants would make requirements that allowed them to maintain some kind of control. So I had men who wanted everything I offered but who, for example, refused to provide for their own upkeep.
It seems to me that the control issue fundamentally stems from instinctual reactions (see Maslow’s hierarchy of needs) that we have little likelihood of overcoming, self-preservation being the most obvious of them. Ceding complete control to another is much too dangerous for the psyche to allow, unless the control is limited by factors that render it less than complete.
The only plausible path out of this contradiction is to create a deep bond of trust between the “object” and his or her Lord. I wonder, though, if this bond, as necessary as it is, might not then pose another difficulty: that this trust mitigates or eradicates the polarity in such a way that domination and subjugation, in their most intense forms, lose their power and effect.
The great value of our BDSM subculture, I believe, is that it creates the conditions for us to experiment with desire without limit, judgment, or exception. The key word here is experiment. Experimentation often means just dabbling—that is, entertaining a thought without necessarily executing it fully. Our community is in the fortunate position of being able to express to an extent and therefore experience to an extent aspects of ourselves of which we are only partly conscious. This allows us the opportunity to experience the deepest darkness, neither repressing nor expressing it, while being able to assess its meaning and implications.
Even given what little experience I was able to gain of the more extreme activities in the Dark Lord’s profile, I found considerable information about the meaning of darkness, of perversion, and of authenticity. That information can best be summed up as realizing that we can see the dark side, admit to it, learn something about it and about ourselves, without necessarily embracing or becoming what we might desire.
Yes, I saw self-destruction in the motivation of some who sought refuge, degradation, or punishment in the Dark Lord’s dungeon. I have seen “Dark Lords” act irresponsibly as well. More often, though, I found men who were seeking to unravel the complexity of their desires while intuitively, if not explicitly, holding on to the more fundamental necessity of self-preservation and healthy activity.
ABOUT THE DARK LORD
In the final analysis, this exploration was more about myself than about my applicants. Though the conversation continues with a few men who are seeking a more intense form of slavery, the fruitlessness of the search leads me to question its validity and viability. I have also had to evaluate how real my desire was to become the Dark Lord.
Patrick, my slave and partner of more than 15 years, commented recently that my failure to attract a viable “object” rested within myself. It was just not part of my nature, he thought, to engage in the kind of dehumanization, humiliation, and degradation that being the Dark Lord required. My discussions with applicants led them to see that I lacked the ego, the necessary haughtiness, to pull off the role successfully. I was just too friendly, too kind, to be that dark.
A recent scene with one of the applicants I continue to have contact with illustrates my personal conundrum. The man in question vacillates between wanting degradation and avoiding it. When, after four months of nearly talking the idea to death, he arrived to try a week in my dungeon, he was well guarded by a list of limits I had agreed to, many of which left control in his hands, not mine. The fundamental issue was his inability to trust me. I couldn’t tie him to an immovable object, for instance—chain him to the wall in the dungeon or to a cross. It was obvious that putting him in a cage for the night was out of the question until he knew me better.
Could I have simply violated his limits and tied him up anyway? I think I could have. Would the Dark Lord have done so? Certainly. Would I have? Not then and there, and probably never. Should I have? Ah, there’s the question, since I certainly wanted to. Darkness, it would seem, lurks in my heart just as fully as in any other.
NEXT
Having enjoyed and learned from the Dark Lord experience, I will continue it, adapting my approach to the lessons I learned. There’ll be less compromise and more authority in my words and actions. As for its fruitfulness, or lack thereof, I will most likely spend less attention on it, except for those candidates who indeed show some process of developing a relationship with me.
I have come to the conclusion that if I am to realize my Dark Lord fantasy, I have to act as the Dark Lord would. I cannot be “Jack” and “Dark” at the same time. Only time will tell if I can become the Dark Lord. On the other hand, time has made it obvious that I want to do so. I want to see where this ends. If and when it does, I’m sure there’ll be another story to tell.
CHAPTER 20
MINDFUCK (C’MON, DOES IT NEED ANY OTHER TITLE?)
EDGE
My name is Edge, and I mindfuck. Oh, I do lots of other things—beat the crap out of faggots,[24] feed smoke to stogiepigs, throw some mean Japanese rope bondage, hell, I even cuddle (though only with my cub)—but mindfuck is what I’m most known for because, really, it’s what I do best. Dunno how, dunno why. Just a knack, ya know? I mean, give me a singletail and I’m a total klutz; I’ll have it wrapped around my neck somehow in minutes. Give me a TENS unit and I’ll end up crossing some wires and shorting the whole thing out. Give me a set of needles and I’ll gently place them back down. But give me one hour—just one hour—with you, alone in a room, and you will know what mindfuck is. And you will not forget. Not a promise, not a threat, just a fact. But, shit, you’re there and I’m here so this essay is gonna have to do.
Read on. Get wet. Get hard. Get scared. Get excited. Get it. It’s good.
Before we get into the meat of the matter, though, I have a few warnings. First, this isn’t an essay that teaches technique. There is no cookie-cutter mindfuck, really—no single thing you can do with everyone. That’s what makes mindfuck so powerful and really so intimate. My goal here is to introduce you to some of the dynamics in this kind of scene, to give you some sense of the process. Second, because you’re often playing with fear, which risks panic, this can be a kind of edge play. Third, I’m revealing secrets of the trade in this essay, so stop reading if that spoils it for you. It’s a bit like knowing the secrets behind a magician’s tricks. Knowing how the illusion works either 1) spoils it for you, 2) makes it that much easier for you to volunteer to be sawed in half, or 3) helps you enjoy the magic that much more because you can appreciate the skill of the sleight of hand. If it’s going to spoil it for you, stop reading and go get mindfucked. Finally, I’m going to sound like a psycho killer at times. I am not. Promise.
WHAT THE FUCK?
Assuming you’re still reading, let’s start by thinking about just what mindfuck is and isn’t. There are any number of ways we might define mindfuck: playing with someone’s head, edge play with consciousness, consensual hallucination (which is why mindfuck works so nicely in cyberspace), erotic terrorism, sexual lying, or perhaps even a theater of intimacy. But there’s one definition I tend to use the most because I think it best describes what happens in a mindfuck scene: Mindfuck is making someone think something is happening that isn’t really happening.
24
1 As a gay man, I am not allowed to marry, I am not allowed to donate blood, but I