The S&M “Community”

An antidote to yesterday: today we’ll be featuring one of the funniest things I’ve read in weeks (and how surprised am I that it was in the Guardian, which tends to get a little more humor-free with each issue):

Why is it that any mention of S-M nets more picky, niggling “corrections” than any other topic? … It’s the nature of the S-M community, which tends, as a group, to think too much and talk too much and write self-important e-mails when it could be playing. This could have something to do with it being full of the sort of people drawn to activities that, while they appear edgy and daring, are in fact safer than golf, which at least carries a risk of being struck by lightning. S-M lends itself to overplanning, overequipping, and an obsession with detail. In other words, it’s for nerds. I say this with all due respect and (as a risk-averse, nerdish person) self-recognition, but I say it anyway: S-M isn’t exactly running the bulls at Pamplona; S-M is a petting zoo. Get over your bad selves.

None of this explains why it’s always the scenesters insisting that any passing mention of perviness must include their own personal perversion. If I write about bondage, say, I’ll get “Of course, it’s originally an Apache initiation ritual, but you should never hang someone from their eyeballs without gloves. Also, I think you were remiss in failing to mention cortical saline inflation …” Sigh. I didn’t mention Apache cortical-inflation eyeball hanging because I was trying to make sure everybody understands what I mean by “top” and “bottom” first, and I only have this one little column to do it in, you self-inflated sixth-grade suck-up. Sit down. And don’t write me letters.

 

If I were going to have an affair with a woman, I think she’d be the one. Especially if she’d just keep saying this over and over again:

I’m just not convinced that sharing a taste for certain sensations qualifies a bunch of folks as a “people.”

Or maybe a community?