Gaps

I know people who wonder why they're not bisexual. I know people who wonder why they don't like beer. I know people who wonder why all sorts of things don't happen to be in their personal makeup as it is currently constituted and understood.

Me, I wonder why I'm not a masochist.

I picked up Raven Kaldera's Dark Moon Rising when it came out (one of the few books on pagan sexuality that I've seen that was worth the money, by the way). And in the early sections on S/M he talks about seven uses for pain as magical/ritual technique: altered consciousness, energy raising, centering/returning to body, sacrifice (generally to the sort of god Who likes that sort of thing), strength ordeal, emotional catharsis, and to make a sadistic partner happy.

In my life, I use or have used pain for three of these: energy raising, centering, and catharsis. I wouldn't be surprised if there were some altered consciousness stuff in there; huge chunks of my life spiral around altered consciousness. I have not specifically been asked to do devotional stuff involving this, but I'm pretty sure Big Red wouldn't turn it down (and 'strength ordeal' is right up His alley, heh).

I seem to have this sort of thin conceptual line between this mostly magical and psychological practice stuff and my sexuality, which is ... well, really, unlike me. And I wonder sometimes if it's really there, if I can push through the barrier of the occasional rough-sex line to find the rest of it and integrate. I wonder sometimes if there's this sort of failsafe on it, because of the intensity of things, that I need to be utterly safe to even begin to consider going anywhere remotely like this. (And I know that a lot of conventional S/M stuff leaves me cold, because of the impersonality of the tools. Back to my wondering if I could get somewhere with a vibrator if I awakened it so that it was enough alive to register to me as sexual.)

But I look at it and know that not all of my pain tools come from a healthy place. There's nothing wrong with the tools of themselves, but the need for them is a sign of my psyche gone plotz. People talk about cutting sometimes, and there's this whole subculture around it now, which I find kind of freaky to be honest, but I understand the release and the damnit-back-in-the-body need that the pain can provide, even though my own scars have faded mostly into memory. I know the effectiveness of the tools, but they have only ever come to hand in response to the howling void.

I think there's something fundamentally freaky to me about using something that reacts to the void in sex. But of course, there's an edge there, which is why I'm wondering about this these days.