Tristan Taormino - The Ultimate Guide to Kink - BDSM, Role Play, and the Erotic Edge

You have the courage to experience this abject state, if only for a weekend.

You want to confirm [or deny] through actual experience your inner conviction that you were born for life in this abject state and nothing else will satisfy you until you are completely controlled by your Lord and Master.

You will obey and surrender. Resistance on your part will be met by punishment.

I approach this process as one of testing your suitability to serve me. Show yourself serious and worthy of my attention or go chat with some other poser. Serious applicants may begin the interview process with a message to the Dark Lord that includes an email address, a chat ID, and a phone number. COMPLETE DISCRETION IS ASSURED.

This enslavement may include: Anal penetration and violation, Ashtray slavery, Ass fucking, Begging & pleading, Behavior modification, Bacchanalian celebration, Blasphemy, Bloodletting, Branding, Breath control, Chastity, Chores, Clamps, Cock and ball torture, Cock sucking, Confinement, Crucifixion, Cum control, Cutting, Degradation, Dehumanization, Demasculinization, Deprivation, Dionysian initiation, Domestic service, Encasement, Enforced exercise, Face fucking, Filth, Flogging, Groveling, Hobbling, Humbling, Humiliation, Idolatry, Inferiority, Isolation, Light deprivation, Long-term bondage, Marking, Milking, Nakedness, Obedience, Objectification, Oral invasion, Orgies, Ownership, Pain, Phallic worship, Piercing, Pimping, Piss, Praise and adoration, Predicament bondage, Prescribed dieting, Public display, Punching, Punishment, Raunch, Restraints, Rimming, Scheduling, Sex magic, Service, Shit, Silence, Slapping, Slavery to the Dark Lord, Smoke, Snot, Spit, Subjugation, Submission, Surrender, Suspension, Sweat, Tantric training, Total Control, Violation, Whipping, and Worship of the Dark Lord.

Over six months, I received numerous hits on my profile and a large number of “cruises,” where members signaled interest in serving me. To those who did so, I wrote back asking if they were interested in “serving my dark desires.” Many replied yes and were invited to apply.

Applying became the standard for evaluating their interest. I asked for their email address, chat ID, and phone number so I could contact them off-site. About 120 men responded with contact information, and it is on my communications with these men that I base the following reflections. (If you were one of these men, let me assure you that my interest was, and still is, genuine. It was more than just a research project.)

Over the ensuing months, I found myself in the position of explaining what I, the Dark Lord, meant by several of the terms in my profile. Among them were words we often use but that have troubling implications in our Judaic-Christian society. Let me begin by trying to shed some light on what I mean by some of these terms.

Dark: Lacking or having very little light; gloomy; dismal; sullen or threatening; difficult to understand; obscure; concealed or secret; mysterious; lacking enlightenment or culture; exhibiting or stemming from evil characteristics; sinister; absence of light. [22] 1 Definition of dark, www.thefreedictionary.com/dark .

For numerous social, religious, and historical reasons the polarity of Light and Dark is often equated with the polarity of Good and Evil. Therefore the “Dark Lord” is immediately identified with Satan, as is the Dark Side.

In nature, both light and dark are neutral phenomena. Only when we enter the realm of morality and theology does the imputation of evil to darkness begin to cause serious problems. If indeed God is everywhere, then God is in the darkness as well as the light. Is Satan really the opposite of God? Is Satan “outside” of God? I doubt it.

In much of the correspondence the Dark Lord received, there were inquiries into satanic worship. My response was to refer the applicant to Elaine Pagels’s excellent book The Origin of Satan . This renowned Gnostic scholar shows that Satan is the creation of Hebrew/Christian intolerance of others. I came to the conclusion that I was not a satanist insofar as I refused to worship a creature that I did not believe existed as the caricature depicted in my childhood.

Similarly, I was asked about blasphemy and eternal damnation. It became obvious that most applicants had a strong belief in basic Judaic-Christian paradigms, especially the ones that condemned them to Hell. Over and over again, I saw that both the fantasy and the discussion were in fact based in religion, and unfortunately based on unclear—and unconscious—beliefs.

I also noticed that many terms (some of which I used in my profile above) were relative, interpreted according to the applicants’ religious perspective. What is blasphemy, for instance, to one devotee is holiness to another. Muslims think that Hindus are blasphemous idolaters. I don’t get the idea that Hindus agree with them.

Intrinsic in the consideration of darkness is one’s spiritual beliefs and understanding of good and evil. Though we don’t often state it, an altered state is often akin to a Gnostic revelation. Gnosis is, after all, a theological belief that deity is present in and operates in the human selfhood. The Dark Lord made it clear in his list of stipulations that he wanted to be worshipped, to literally become the slave’s god.

Obedience, then, was seen as obedience to god. The Dark Lord’s authority, for the slave, would become pervasive, even complete. The gulf between the exalted Lord and the degraded slave would become—what? Infinite? Where does this god trip lead? What does the extreme nature of this polarity create in terms of the power exchange?

These questions might seem preposterous, but they are not out of order to those who are seriously involved in master/slave relationships. On occasion, a slave has admitted to worshipping his or her master or a master has admitted to having a godlike relationship with his or her slave.

It is easy to dismiss such practices by saying, “Oh, they don’t really mean God with a capital G.” But it is clear that for some, “the Lord” is not Jehovah, Jesus, or Allah, or any of the other gods of traditional worship.

When we look at the polarity of light and dark in terms of the known and the unknown, we find ourselves in the realm of what is conscious and what is unconscious. It is not an unfamiliar analogy; we are all cognizant of the phrase “the heart of darkness,” popularized by a novel of that title by Joseph Conrad. What evil, after all, lurks in the heart of man?

It is obvious that even as players flout some taboos, other taboos remain that are too kinky for most of us and that, therefore, we will not violate.

My reading of Jungian psychology has given me some ideas about what it is that we do in the BDSM community. As I see it, the intent of BDSM is to transport both the bottom and the top to an altered state of consciousness, though it certainly can mean other things to other players. There are many terms for the mind trip: an out-of-body experience, “going deep,” for the bottom, subspace , for the top, top space . Whatever name you give it, it is an often-sought but rarely achieved trip of extraordinary bliss, joy, and peace. In scholarly literature it has been referred to as an altered state of consciousness (ASC).

Though most players are satisfied with (dare I say it?) “conventional” fetishes such as flogging, whipping, and fisting as a way to enter an altered state, the Dark Lord’s applicants expressed a desire to progress to more intensive activities, such as blood play, extreme pain, degradation, and scat.