Janet W. Hardy - IMPERVIOUS--Confessions of a Semi-retired Deviant

IMPERVIOUS:

Confessions of a Semi-retired Deviant

Janet W. Hardy

www.sincyrpublishing.com

Shifting culture, one story at a time.

Copyright

P UBLISHED BY SINCYR Publishing, University Place, WA 98466 Copyright 2019

Impervious Copyright 2019 Janet W. Hardy

Foreword Copyright 2019 Jillian Keenan

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages in magazines, websites, news, radio, or printed materials, any reproduction or distribution of this book, in any format, without the written permission of the publisher or author is theft.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have inadvertently been missed, the publisher would be happy to include those in future versions of the manuscript.

Print ISBN: 978-1-948780-09-4

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-948780-10-0

Edited by Sienna Saint-Cyr

Copy edits by Anna Sky

Cover by Lee Moyer

Photo credit Pat Kight

Foreword

Giving a spanking is a lot like writing a book. In both cases, you start with a clean slate a blank page, a bare bottom. The possibilities are endless but the question remains the same: what journey will this conversation take? It doesnt matter whether the conversation is written in bruises or in words. Either way, its an exchange, a dance, a partnership: the author leaves her mark upon the reader, and the reader transforms that mark with her gaze.

The first word. The first smack. Each is a breathless step into the unknown.

My point is, if the marks Janet Hardy leaves on a bare backside are anything like the marks she leaves on the page, she must deliver one hell of a spanking. Because shes written one hell of a book.

The book in your hands the book you are lucky enough to have chosen today tracks Janets life through the five stages of BDSM: negotiation, warmup, engagement, climax, and aftercare. I suppose that makes this foreword an even earlier step: contact. Its that moment when people, still strangers, manage to defy the odds on a planet of seven billion people and meet. At this point, stories are still unwritten; lovers are still unknown; hearts and blood-blisters are still unbroken. You know this moment. For better and worse, youve shared moments of first contact ever since you emerged into the world.

Once again, you have defied the odds. Of the estimated 130 million books in existence, you chose this one. Something drew you here. Maybe you saw this book from across a crowded shelf and were mesmerized. Maybe youve been fixed up: a friend thought you and this book might hit it off, and youre willing to risk awkward small talk over tapas in the hopes that your friend was right. Maybe youll find a connection. Anything is possible. The relationship has not yet begun.

Heres what fascinates me about the idea of a foreword as an allegory for the moment we first meet a significant new stranger: usually, those moments strike without warning. There is no trumpeter to announce that something meaningful is about to enter our lives. But this time, Im that trumpeter. This foreword is that announcement: the book youre about to read will mean something to you. It means something to me.

In my own life, I can recall only one meeting that had significance I saw coming before it arrived. On the surface, it was clich to the point of banality: I was a girl who knew she was about to meet a boy. But I had already infused our friendship with a degree of hope that was anything but banal. Like Janet, Im a spanking fetishist and author. Despite all the work I had done to shed light on fetishism as a healthy and natural sexual identity, I was lonely. I had filled my heart with words but still craved touch. I had no reason to feel so isolated: my inbox was full of letters. But letters are also just words. So when one friend offered to turn his words to flesh and meet me in Norway, where I was traveling with my best friend, the significance of the moment weighed on my chest. His name was Dan, and I could see it coming: for better and worse, Dan would mean something to me.

He was English, but no ones perfect.

As I walked toward the Oslo airport arrivals terminal, where I knew Dan was waiting, I had to stop. The airport made the significance of the moment obvious and literal: I had to walk through customs and enter a new country. But I paused. I needed to catch my breath before I crossed that threshold. Standing in the airport, as my best friend waited patiently beside me, I pressed my hand against my stomach and inhaled, willing myself to breathe in the courage I thought Id need. At the time, I wished for simple social confidence: the easy smile; the unneurotic eye contact; the calm certainty of pretty girls who know theyve got the right outfits. I wished for that, and it came: I emerged into the airport and introduced myself to Dan with a degree of confidence utterly unlike myself.

In the months to come, I would discover I had needed to inhale a much more brutal kind of courage: the courage to walk away from a marriage to a man who had stopped loving me years before and was willing to perform that indifference with increasing cruelty. But I didnt know that yet. I knew that a significant meeting was coming, but I had no idea it would set fire to a life that had failed me. That morning, in that airport, I was just a girl with the right yoga pants, and that was enough.

All around the world, people are yearning for that moment of contact. Although the kink community is huge and astonishingly diverse I once even received a letter from a Syrian refugee there is one question I hear fetishists ask more than any other: how can I find someone with whom to share this part of myself? How can I build a future that isnt burdened with loneliness, isolation, and shame, but rather filled with community and the comfort of shared history? Were all looking for the same thing: the points of contact that hint at the possibility of a future where people see, and share, our stories.

Congratulations. Youve found it. Youve made contact with the right book.

There is a profound depth of loneliness in the world, borne of our collective unwillingness to talk about sexuality, but Janet interrupts that silence. She always has. Through her books, lessons, and public advocacy, Janet has attained a near-mythical status: she is the grande dame (is it too obvious a joke to say grande domme ?) of American kink culture. In the relationship to come, Janet will do so much more than guide you through the story of how she became the woman she is today. She will guide us through the history of how our community found itself: from the pre-internet days of BDSM in San Francisco to its intersections with other sexual subcultures. As both Janet and the world she inhabits emerge into joyful acceptance of themselves, youll see your own stories echoed in their journeys. In this book, Janet showed me that, despite my thoughts in that moment of lonely hesitation at Oslo airport, there is no such thing as just words. Words are touch and can hit hardest of all. Significant meetings, both with people and with books, can change the course of our lives but only if we have the courage to turn the page.

So this is it. Your moment of first contact is almost over. Its time to move forward and discover everything this relationship will bring: the first step, the first word, the first page. As you read, my wish for you is that you inhale this book with courage. If you consent, it will leave a mark.