Dossie Easton - Radical Ecstasy: S/M Journeys in Transcendence

Radical Ecstasy

SM Journeys to Transcendence

Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy

greenery press

Entire contents 2004 by Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy.

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, television or Internet reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording or by information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

Published in the United States by Greenery Press, 4200 Park Blvd. pmb 240, Oakland, CA 94602, www.greenerypress.com.

ISBN 1-890159-62-X.

Contents

Ben Teller, M.D.

Chester Valentine Anderson

Clo Dubois

Daddy Drew

Doc Tsai

Fakir Musafar

Goddess Lakshimi

Huckleberry

Jay Wiseman

Joi Wolfwomyn

Lin Allen

Lin Hill

Lizzard Henry

Lynn Sockermom

Mic Bergen

Paul Romano

Raelyn Gallina

Squeeze Edward

Thomas Alva Waters

and all the other wonderful players, partners and friends who have traveled into ecstasy and back with us.

Very special thanks to our dauntless editor, Carol Carmick, whose patience and judgment were an integral part of making this book what it is.

We met ten years ago, as some of our faithful readers will remember, when Janet volunteered to be my demo bottom for a seminar on receiving the cane. We got together before the seminar to establish limits, communication and so forth, and again afterward for lunch, to debrief. Janet said, I think you should write a book Ive got a great title, call it The Bottoming Book. I said, Im too neurotic to write a book by myself, I get anxious and panicky, youd have to write it with me, and Janet said Sure. Thats how we started. Its ten years, five books and two revisions later, and more scenes than I can recall.

During these ten years we have become best friends, lovers, collaborators, co-authors and SM explorers together. Much of this book is about our explorations. And we are not primary partners. During most of the time we have worked together, one or both of us was partnered to somebody else.

For me, one of the most remarkable things about our relationship is the way our writing and thinking flows along with our play. For instance, we might be stuck trying to describe something that seems undescribable, and then well play a scene. The scene will go wherever it goes, and next morning one of us might wake up with a good answer: the story of the scene becomes the teaching parable.

We fit together. We fit together very well. We like to cook together, hike, go to movies, hang out with our kids and all those other good things. We both sew and knit, we are both crafty Janet wrote her delightful book Kinkycrafts, and I was a cottage industry leather crafter throughout most of the 80s. We like to make things.

We also fit together in our differences. Janet is an older sister, Im a younger sister even though Im eleven years older than Janet, you can see the dynamic. Janet describes herself as a reformed caretaker, I as a reformed clinging vine if we hadnt reformed before we met each other, wed be impossible. But somehow we avoid codependence and keep on doing what were doing.

We both write and think and edit. Janet tends to do the big editing, has a vision for the overall structure of a book, while Im the detail freak, doing tons of copy-editing and smoothing and clarifying the language. Nobody is anybodys ghost writer here we both write and think. And edit. Each other.

We have never had a quarrel about our writing. We are, actually, both conflict-avoidant to a fault, but since its both of us, were on equal ground here, so it pretty much works. The few times there have been conflicts that we needed to talk about, we were pitifully polite about it. When one of us says I hate to bring this up, its always true. Our disagreements are usually resolved easily, possibly because we both give in too easily, but then neither one of us is very pushy, so were not in danger of overwhelming each other.

We love each other. This is not romance: violins dont often play (although there are moments when we hear a note or two).

Janet mostly tops, I mostly bottom, although we do switch from time to time, and our play involves many different roles for both of us. Shes bisexual and gender-bent and Im a femme dyke. Im a therapist and shes a publisher. Im a pagan who has been exploring spiritual practice for forty-two years, she is stubbornly secular and puts a lot more faith in science than I do. And sometimes our differences make friction, but mostly they make wisdom and fun.

We are both really, really smart. And serious about our work.

In the movies, the lyricist stands by the piano and says a few words, and the composer plinks out a phrase on the keyboard, and they look at each other with a dawning recognition, and suddenly burst into song: and a song is born.

They hardly ever retire into the bedroom to torture and fuck each other as preparation.

Dossie and I have been friends, play partners, collaborators, lovers, co-conspirators and confidantes for more than a decade now. Weve seen each other into and out of one primary relationship and several hot flings each; weve written five books, moved each other into seven houses, had several miserable weeping arguments over money, and collectively gained and lost easily a couple of hundred pounds.

We are not romantically in love with each other, probably never will be thats a role that just doesnt fit, although in some ways I think wed both like it to. I usually fall in love with men. She falls in love with women, but the women she falls in love with are a particular flavor of crazy that doesnt match up with mine. Yet our sex is blazing hot, and we know more of each others secrets than anybody else, and we sleep peacefully and blissfully in the same bed, and we cook fabulous meals in the same kitchen without tripping over each other.

She lived communally with drag queens while I commuted through suburbia in a station wagon; she was taught violence by men, I benevolence; she floats easily in realms of spirit and ritual that cause me profound discomfort. Yet when we sit eye to eye and join our breath, we fly together; and later, when we talk about what we felt, it is the same only the words are different.

Weve role-played everything from Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf to kids at a birthday party to inner-city pimp and whore, then gone out to the kitchen in our robes and slippers for fruit and cheese and chocolate and arguments over philosophy, and then back to the bedroom to get out the vibrator and finish the evening properly.

So what we have is this odd, puzzle-piece of a relationship thats defined by what its not: were not spouses in the way most people are spouses, not best friends in the way most people are best friends, not lovers in the way most people are lovers, not fuck buddies in the way most people are fuck buddies, not co-authors in the way most people are co-authors. No word for it at all, I guess. Just us.