SEX:ED: Hump!ed and Hit
she is a “pain queen.”
SEX:ED is a column in which NAILED's Reyna Kohl steps very much outside her comfort zone to seek enlightenment on human intimacy and sexuality.
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Getting Into S&M
I had decided to watch some porn. Some amateur porn. In a public venue. With a couple of friends and many strangers. Of course I had to suck down some drinks beforehand, and tell myself that I might see some scary fucked-up stuff, so to just keep my eyes on the screen and take it all in. Do not flinch. Do not shriek. Maybe laugh a little (but only when it seems appropriate). I was going to the “Hump!” festival, for Christ's sake. It was supposed to be fun.
I chose some leopard-print pants to wear to the thing, but was immediately told by my friends that I looked like Peggy Bundy, and all of the sex appeal I felt I had been exuding shriveled and flopped onto its side. At the theater, it seemed like everyone had on t-shirts and cargo shorts, which made me feel even less sexy somehow.
As I sat in my chair drinking an IPA out of a plastic soda cup with lid, I anxiously tried to imagine what I was in for (I have never intentionally watched or paid any attention to pornography). All that kept popping into my head were extreme close-ups of people's genitalia–slimy, purple, and intermingling sloppily.
When the main event began, creator of the Hump! Festival, Dan Savage, appeared on the screen and went over a few rules, including “Do not be an asshole.” Like, do not make fun of anyone in these films for their body-type, sexual preferences, orientation, gender identity, kinkiness or lack there of. This seems like a pretty important rule when watching amateur porn with a crowd of people. You never know who is in the audience. Plus, making fun of people is plain not nice.
The movie shorts started out with a relatively innocent cartoon, featuring adorable animated penises and vaginas frolicking together. Maybe this whole thing was going to be cute and mild, and at the end I'll think, “That's it?” And for the most part, it wasn't too difficult to watch, I was entertained, but I honestly was never turned on. There was one film that did strongly affect me. And now I know that sadomasochistic pornography makes me cry (in a sad way).
The aforementioned porn short is called “Lauren Likes Candy,” and starts out with Lauren (the tortured) telling Candy (the torturer) that she is a “pain queen.” From there, Lauren is tied up to a chain link fence, teased with a very sharp looking knife, hit and pinched and punched in the breast until broken blood vessels have formed, and slapped in the vagina over and over again. Lauren looks terribly uncomfortable. Her face is red and she's weeping. Candy attaches a string of clothespins across Lauren's boobs, then yanks it off. Lauren quietly asks for more. After all, she IS a queen of pain. At the end of it all, she is released from the fence, and Candy takes Lauren in her arms, cradling and comforting her like she's a child who just fell down and scraped her knee. None of this, to me, is hot. It's difficult for me to comprehend the desire to be beaten, then held, without imagining that it must be connected to some kind of horrible abuse that occurred when the person was growing up.
Seeking more information, and maybe some opinions on the film, I began my internet research. Have you ever looked at a tumblr page called Slap 'N' Smack? Well, I have. “Lauren Likes Candy” was featured on this page, among many other videos and GIFs starring people (largely women) being slapped hard in the face by big, muscular men while being fucked or as their face is being pushed toward a gigantic, slimy (see?) cock. Others are being slapped in the clit, punched in the stomach, and there is a lot of talk about getting turned on by skin being made red, or bruises having been left. “Slapping and smacking boobs, dick, pussy, ass, face and everything nice,” is a quote from the blog's brief mission statement. How about the Tumblr blog called Roughly Does It, have you seen that one? Or ObedienceIsEarned.tumblr.com? DominatedGirls.com? Daddy-fucked-you.tumblr.com? Some of the captions the owner of that blog has written make me queasy. I mean, yeah, it's a thing. But I don't think I like it, and I certainly don't get it.
In the spirit of acceptance promoted by the Hump! Festival, and the mission I am currently on (see the previous SEX:ED installments), I'm now setting out to explore and attempt to understand this side of human sexuality. I want to know the reasons that people want to dominate, hurt, and humiliate their sexual partners. More than that, I want to know why being lorded over, abused, and shamed during sex is such a turn-on for so many people. We can get all scientific (and we just might), but I'm more interested in people's own reasoning and rationalizations behind their personal preferences in the bedroom (or wherever). So, I'm going to do one in a series of experiments via Craigslist, seeking candid explanations from a random sampling of other pain kings and queens of the world. I'll let you know how it goes. But, if anyone else has some insight into this topic in the mean time, send it my way.
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