Confronting America’s obsessions with ‘vice and perversity’
Gendy Alimurung
No pain, no date." For some, it’s not just a quirky saying, it’s
a way of life.
A huge Marcellus Wallace-ish man stood over a voluptuous young
blonde woman strung up in a makeshift medieval torture rack. His
black T-shirt flaunted his sado-masochistic tendencies in white
bold-face print. The woman wore tight patent leather pants with a
matching open-breasted leather bustier. Heavily lipsticked,
blindfolded and lashed onto the wooden frame with several thick
ropes and chains, she assumed the stoic pose of a Joan of Arc.
This bound and blindfolded woman would not, however, be "burnt
for heresy, witchcraft and sorcery" as Joan was in 1431. In 1995,
this woman volunteered for subjugation. Like a fat spider stalking
his juicy prey, her sadist-for-the-night circled around her in a
twisted and surprisingly amusing parody of mother nature’s grand
show. Only this particular fly, however, did not struggle or
resist. She wanted it. For whatever reason  "it’s kinky," "I
need more money," "I’m bored," "I like the way this leather rides
up my crotch" Â she was up there of her own volition.
"Marcellus" brandished a six-inch carving knife, tracing
increasingly smaller and smaller concentric circles around her
erect nipples; I wonder what exactly a date with this man would
entail. Might he perhaps greet me at my front door, tuxedo-clad,
corsage in one hand, bolo whip in the other? Would he then
compliment me on my striking ensemble, command me to get down on my
knees, pull up my prom gown and whip me silly until I barked like a
dog? Such notions I entertained while my friend Ryan plowed through
the crowd and commandeered an empty chair for me to stand on. It’s
"sick," it’s "twisted," "deranged" even, but dammit … I needed a
better view.
We were in the "back room" at Sin-O-Matic, a strange little club
on Santa Monica Boulevard. It was Saturday night and the nerds were
restless: "Let’s go out and get some pain," I said to Ryan.
"Sure, why not?" he replied. "I’ve done all my homework and I
know you’ve done yours because that’s just the kind of girl you
are." After just a few shakes of a lamb’s tail, we were off in
search of depravity.
What force drives us to seek out the strange and unusual,
especially the sexually strange and unusual? It’s not news that
American culture is obsessed with vice and perversity. Witness the
mainstay of the media: Details magazine heralds cover-girl/nasty
nymphette Drew Barrymore under the headline "Generation Sex" and
features ex-porn star Traci Lords. Soft-core sadomasochistic porn
films like 9 1/2 Weeks and Basic Instinct linger in theaters for
weeks on end. Heidi Fleiss dominates not only her wealthy clients
but countless news radio and television programs, magazines and
papers. Adolescents across the globe (I know, my cousins in the
Philippines were talking about it) ponder the ultimate 90210 Double
Jeopardy question: "When will Donna do it?"
Even when we are not obsessing about sex and violence, we obsess
about not obsessing about sex and violence. Christian dogma warns
us to be vigilant in our fight against sin: "For his whole life
Joyce was desperate with sexual urging, embarrassed and obsessed by
it, bewildered by the addictive power of sin," Sally Tisdale says
of ex-Catholic James Joyce in her book "Talk Dirty to Me."
When I consider sadomasochistic sex from the safety of verbal
abstractions on some opinion column, it makes sense to me Â
the pleasure of orgasm, taken just a few levels higher on the
intensity scale, might be construed as pain. Fear of pain might
even translate into the excitement of arousal. Think of it as a
blending of our "fight or flight" instincts: don’t just pick one,
do them both.
But to actually be in it? To be swallowed whole by sexual
situations whose very means of excitation rely on the fact that you
will very possibly be out of control of the things being done to
you  now, that is a bit more difficult. Where do we draw the
line between situations of that nature and rape, their altogether
more sinister twin? If we sanction the one, do we inadvertently
pave the road for the other? The problem with vice is that it does
have a rather "addictive" quality; we need larger and larger doses
of it to keep us happy. And we can only acquire so much before we
start hurting others. Yet there is also a corresponding problem
with ideas like "sanctioning" certain behaviors and condemning
others. These notions take on a distinctly fascist quality and
censorship isn’t an idea that sits too well with me either.
At Sin-O-Matic that night, the backroom show was extremely
popular. We waited a good 30 minutes before we could even get in
the door to see what was going on. What’s even more interesting,
however, is that the participants in Sin-O-Matic bondage, like
those of WWF wrestling, do not engage in bona-fide pain-inducing
sessions (at least not for the consumption of the crowd gathered
there that night), but rather, they perform a campy exaggerated
act. It surprises me that there is actually enough of a demand for
this sort of thing to warrant a performance  it did cost us a
good $10 to get in.
The man in the T-shirt exchanged his carving knife for a wooden
torch which he dipped in kerosene and lit on fire. Maybe they were
going to burn the woman as a heretic. He waved the flame over the
woman’s exposed right breast. Girls in tight jeans and suede coats
cringed a little and scrunched forward in their seats. The man next
to me took another swig of his beer. That knife was probably
plastic, but fire is fire. In an unusually close pass, the torch
brushed against her skin. Some of the kerosene rubbed off and the
nipple caught fire. The woman woke from her stupor (I was beginning
to wonder if she was sleeping underneath that blindfold) and let
out a tiny  probably unscripted  yelp and her
sadist-turned-Florence Nightengale hastily blew out her flaming
breast.
Aaaah … the first real pain of the night.
Alimurung is a fourth-year student double-majoring in English
and psychology. Her column appears on alternate Mondays.