There’s some sort of spiritual release that happens during the crossing of that fine line between pleasure and pain. Something leaves you (perhaps it’s all ego) and something else is brought back to your awareness (perhaps it’s feeling, emotion) when you experience any form of BDSM (Bondage and Discipline, Dominance and Submission, Sadism and Masochism) play.

This is one of my stories.

I had never been caned before, let alone caned in public, and I hadn’t really thought about what that first experience might be like and actually feel like. I hadn’t really wanted to get caned; it wasn’t one of those things on my things to do before I’m forty checklist. I worked at Babeland – a sex toy shop on the Lower East Side – and I rarely ever touched the canes, unless I wanted to be annoying and poke one of my co-workers when the store was slow – y’know, just sort of jab them. So when I read the finished script for the first legitimate porn I’d be producing, I really loved this one role, and I wanted to act in the film. The role was a girl who answers the phones at a dungeon. She’s jealous of the dominatrix she works for. She has a slave she calls “bad dog.” She’s a bitchy girl, with a big, big mouth. And truthfully, it wasn’t much of a stretch.

All throughout college, I had vanilla sex with my vanilla boyfriend, and the craziest thing I ever did was live in Australia for a semester where I both jumped off of a bridge and out of a plane. It took me nine years to break up with this dud. And that’s when I started dating girls. I kept dating boys too. But now I was having one night stands. Threesomes. Vanilla and not so vanilla Sex. Lots of sex. And then, one day, it became my life.

It was a whole new world.

The first time I was really able to understand the threshold between pleasure and pain was when I was 26. I was at a dinner party of sorts with Betty Dodson and some other, well known sex professionals. We were at a restaurant, eating, surrounded by lots of other patrons. The erotic artist across the table started talking with me. We got into a conversation about pain, and she asked me what I felt about it. I told her I didn’t think much about the subject. I didn’t think I could really enjoy it. She asked if she could pinch me, which taken out of context is kind of strange. Some stranger at dinner in a nice restaurant wants to ….pinch…. me. She demanded that I place my hand in hers. I willingly moved my wrist over the bread plate, making the sacrificial offering. She took it in her hand, and twisted my skin until it was red. I didn’t flinch. It hurt, but I didn’t move. I had years of training back home to get me through this point, but as it continued I realized I didn’t need to get through it, I was actually enjoying it. The rush of excitement between my legs was incredible. I was experiencing a level of eroticism I didn’t know existed. I was getting off on getting pinched.

Then I went to my first Submit party. Submit was a party held in a play space on the Lower East Side. It had playpens, bondage tables and a bondage cross. I watched fisting and blood work, nipple twisting and public flagellation.

I had never been flogged in public before, only whipped with a belt in private by my mother in one of her occasional fits of rage. The woman who was the main “floggee” (if that’s such a word) was not only my co-worker at Babeland; she was one bad ass mother fucker. She was one of those elegant Jewesses who had gone from Upper East Side girl to Brooklyn motorcycle riding dyke. She loved BDSM, she taught classes on it, and she made all forms of hitting and smacking sound sexy. If there were ever a time or a place, I felt this was my calling.

So I went up to Felice and asked her for a flogging. She insisted I remove my shirt, and I stood topless before her, and lots of other women I didn’t know. This was also rather daring for me, as I’ve never been completely comfortable with my less then perfect breasts. But it didn’t matter. She had me place my hands on the wall, and spread my arms and legs apart. At first it was gentle, like a massage, each bit of leather slightly grazing my back. And then as she swept one side, and then the other, she began to pick up the pace. She continued to essentially whip me with the leather bits - on places like the meaty parts of my back, my shoulders, my ass; it felt like I was going through a car wash, only without the car. It was hot. And this continued for ten or fifteen minutes, and a crowd gathered to watch. In a way I felt that I was purging my Jewish guilt, my years of repression, boredom and complacency. It was really liberating.

After it was done, we hugged, and I went home. I didn’t think it would be years before I experimented again, but the truth is, I’m pretty submissive in the bedroom, and my lovers and I, we never stayed together long enough for them to care or for me to switch.

So now I’m about to get on camera, in front of a crew and a cast that I not only hired, but that I am sort of the boss of. And they’re going to see my Casper-white, friendly, round ass in doggie style. They’re going to watch as the camera guy pans up my crack and in between my thighs, and watch as I get degraded in public.
We do a couple of takes, as you have to, in order to make movie magic. I tell the actress who’s acting all “dom” to get into it, to do what she needs to do in order to really be the role. She strikes hard, at least every once in a while, occasionally hitting my ribs, but most often getting me right on the plump part of my tuchus. I do bruise easily, and this kind of sucks, because you can’t bruise easily in adult film, because then it looks like abuse – and then it’s a whole other story. But we do it, and she strikes me, and it doesn’t feel good, but it’s not as bad as say, having anal sex without lube.

Maybe it’s because it’s for a movie and maybe it’s because we’re not real lovers, but my first caning is about as memorable as my first birthday. And while I can’t recall all that much about it, except the getting hit in the ribs part, like my first birthday, it’s forever caught on film.