Rev. Jen - BDSM 101

What is BDSM?

( And how I unintentionally become a sexpert )

Remember when you were trying to memorize the colors of the rainbow and you learned the acronym ROYGBIV (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet)? BDSM is like the ROYGBIV of kinky sex. The term is a condensed acronym representing practices ranging from bondage and discipline (B&D or B/D), dominance and submission (D&S or D/s), and sadomasochism or sadism and masochism (S&M or S/M). The kinks falling under this umbrella term are manybondage, whipping, role-play, spanking, strap-on play, cock and ball torture, foot fetishism, hot wax play, blindfolds, and morea cavalcade of sexual practices as colorful as the rainbow!

Because you have picked up BDSM 101 , I am guessing you arent writing a dissertation on the topic nor are you reading this alongside your hog-tied, latex-clad personal slave. This book is intended for beginners, for those who are curious and want to discover what BDSM has to offer. Maybe you and your partner have been banging away in the missionary position for twenty years and just want to spice things up a bit. Maybe you are single and looking to get involved in BDSM. This book will provide you with a solid foundation for doing just that. This is not a book for people who are already submerged in the lifestyle, but for those who are curious.

If you think of BDSM as a foreign country that you desperately want to visit, but where you dont speak the language, this book will teach you a few words to get by. Consider this a crash course in the basics and me your nutty professor. Keep in mind I am not a licensed sexologist. Though my qualifications are manifold, they are based largely on my sense of adventure, my libidinous nature, and years of debauched fieldwork.

My own introduction to BDSM came through literature. As a teen, I was interested in any book deemed obscene; so naturally, I picked up a copy of Story of O , a tale of female submission. In it, a beautiful Parisian fashion photographer, O, is brought to a chteau by her lover Ren, where she is trained to serve a group of men. She is blindfolded, chained, whipped, branded, pierced, made to wear a mask, and taught to be constantly available for intercourse. It was a novel I read several times, always with one hand. Despite being a feminist, Os objectification turned me on, and a few years later, when I found a boyfriend and we experimented with blindfolds and rope bondage, I discovered why. Surrendering made me feel appreciated and beautiful, if only on the most superficial level. It was the ultimate narcissistic high. And like reading a book many considered filthy, the idea that I was doing something bad got me hot.

Still, my sex life remained fairly vanilla until shortly after graduating from art school when I found myself without rent money or marketable skills. Rolling pennies, writing, painting, and doing performance art in rundown art-holes was just not cutting it in terms of a financial plan. I needed a job fast or I would lose my rent-stabilized Manhattan apartment. Thats when my friend, Velocity Chyaldd, made a suggestion. Velocity was the front woman for a metal band who also did performance art wherein she simulated knifing her vagina onstage. She suggested I could make some money at the dungeon where she worked. A dungeon (sometimes called an S&M/fetish parlor) is a place where men and women (mostly men) pay hundreds of dollars so that dominatrices will dominate them. Sometimes the men and women (again, mostly men) pay hundreds of dollars so they can dominate submissives. Velocity thought Id make a great submissive. I was twenty-three, had a gamines body, loose morals, a writers curiosity, and an ass made for spankingaccording to her. Plus, I was intrigued.

Though I had no experience in the sex industry and very little experience with BDSM, I got the job, which I accepted without hesitation. Though the sex industry scared me, the thought of eviction scared me more. As a result, I spent the next few years working as a professional submissive, first at the dungeon and then for a woman with a masters degree in human sexuality who founded a company for counseling, erotic role-play, and video production for health-related services.

Finally, when I tired of both the dungeon and the counseling center (which was really just a dungeon that offered therapy) taking 50 percent of my profits, I began to do private sessions with another submissive named Annie at her Chelsea Hotel pad. We did all our sessions together and only with regulars. Plus, we kept 100 percent of the profits, which meant I worked about five total hours a week while devoting the rest of my time to making art and going nutspartying, drinking, and screwing an assortment of crazies. (I was in my early twenties, a time when its almost a crime against nature not to.)

But when all was said and done, I got a lot more material than I bargained for. Like O, I was blindfolded, whipped, humiliated, caned, and chained, but the difference was that O had submitted for love and I was doing it for money. It was a big difference. I occasionally reached unbelievable heights of sexual ecstasy, but I also spent a lot of time dealing with douche bags. Money changes everything, though not always for the best.

Eventually I quit and found normal work in retail. In hindsight, I realize that there were other options I could have explored as a broke twenty-three-year-old, but I didnt. Why I didnt, Ill never know. Maybe it was truly writers curiosity that led me down this path. What I do know is that I chose to traverse the road less traveled and that it was a great learning experience. I got a firsthand look at the fetishes, obsessions, and desires of others and a thorough education in BDSM.

But the adventure didnt end there. Almost a decade after I quit the industry, Nerve offered me an even stranger job writing a column called I Did It for Science. Nerve is an online magazine dedicated to sex, relationships, and culture. Each month, they asked me to perform a new sexperiment and then write about it. For the next two years, I exhausted myself performing every deviant act known to man and in the process became an accidental sexpert.

I worked as a live nude girl at Wiggles (a nude strip club), made a sex video, threw a key party like the one in The Ice Storm , attended a balloon fetish party (wherein I jumped inside a giant balloon), became a nude housecleaner, attended fellatio school, held a Sex Toy Olympics, and more. At one point I attended an S&M academy called Princess Reform School where my graduation entailed being stripped naked at an orgy, chained to a wooden X, blindfolded, caressed by strangers, encased in plumage, and (via the use of a high-speed vibrator) brought to screaming orgasm in front of everyone. It was a BDSM scenario that became a permanent part of my mental spank bank. Yet, despite the fun I had, the column eventually ran its course, though my collected columns led to my first book, Live Nude Elf .

When I lost my job at Nerve , I didnt even bother looking in the normal help wanted section of the paper. Instead, I but turned immediately to the adult help wanted ads. Clearly, I was too insane to get a normal job but too sane to get disability. My search led me to yet another unusual gigworking as a sex surrogate for a renowned sex therapist.

Many people are confused by what sex surrogates actually do. Because the words sex and surrogate are involved, many people assume surrogates are prostitutes, which they are not. Most surrogates teach through talking, listening, and demonstrating sexual touch. Patients saw the therapist for forty-five minutes of talk therapy before seeing me for forty-five minutes of physical therapy. The list of problems I assisted in treating ran the gamut from premature ejaculation to erectile dysfunction and everything in betweeninexperience, shyness, vaginal aversion, and inhibited orgasm.