I had bought a new dress for this occasion -- a gothic twist on the "little black dress," which wasn't exactly my style, but seemed appropriate. After considerable effort, I pulled in front of what appeared to be the gate to my destination, and was greeted by a massive security guard who waved my car to a stop and said, "We've been expecting you." He smiled as I wondered if he could detect my nervousness. The grand gate swung open and I felt as if I was a player in a movie, rather than actually here. I pulled my car into the parking lot while two additional security guards met me, rumbled through my purse while another took extra care to make sure I didn't have any recording devices or cameras.
This rite of passage wouldn't be unusual if you were entering the backstage entrance of a Madonna concert or the Oscars, but this wasn't that type of party. I had scored a ticket to enter the very private world of adult sexual playgrounds.
They are found in every major city in America, and the once underground networks are no longer staying underground. The people that frequent the establishments, attend invitation-only private parties, or join the various organizations come from every socioeconomic group, familial status and race.
Sexual diversity has definitely arrived in the Queen City.
Charlotte, located in the heart of the Bible Belt, hasn't had the in-your-face, on-premises clubs (and I'm not talking alcohol) to add a kinky variety to our Entertainment District, like Club Venus and Club Velvet in Atlanta. However, with population comes culture, and with culture comes diversity, and it's very difficult for any growing city to pick and choose what type of diversity it will allow. Some things manifest themselves and take off on their own.
It's a control thing
As I entered, I was given a guide for the evening. I had never been so comforted in my life by a total stranger. He looked like your best friend's older brother -- a dirty blonde, nice guy. I clutched my bottle of Pinot Noir in one hand and my purse in the other as I was given the grand tour. I followed him closely while I watched and wondered if I'd see anyone I knew.
I wasn't sure what I was expecting, but this certainly wasn't it. I don't know if I imagined a massive orgy, or a bondage wheel on the wall, but none of it was found here. This place was immaculately clean, smoke-free, and everyone was well-dressed and unquestionably the nicest crowd I had ever encountered. No slobbering drunks here. It wasn't your typical bar scene; then again, this wasn't your typical bar.
Figuring out what brings people from the traditional day-to-day sex routine within a marriage or a committed relationship or just plain single fun to something with a little more zing would give Sigmund Freud a field day. Everyone will give you a different answer to how they find themselves in alternative lifestyles. I soon learned that people don't wake up one morning deciding to be sexually deviant -- it's a slow and ongoing process.
I eventually met "Ted," a European man who had been in the States for some time. On the surface he was quiet, very shy, and his hobby was an obsessive passion for working out at the gym on a daily basis -- the results of which were clear. He was an engineer in the exclusive clique of the racing industry, and pretty much ran the show. However, traveling out of town 33 weekends out of the year, in addition to invitationals, etc., didn't leave him much leisure time, as his "weekend" would start as early as Wednesday.
This man used the internet to scratch his favorite itch. . .D/s, a lifestyle code word for Domination and submission, the word "submission" always beginning in lowercase. He was a Dom, the masculine form of a Dominatrix, and he looked for women who would agree to be his submissive female, or "sub." Most Doms eventually come to employ a favorite.
In this case, his sub's role was a type of modern sexual indentured servitude. He would take her to his favorite lingerie or fetish shops to pick things out for her to wear. Her personal preferences were, at best, secondary. I soon discovered that this was only a fraction of how deeply he was involved with his sub.
The goal is a mutual exchange of pleasure, but Ted and his sub derived their pleasure from two different sources, though it's not obvious on the surface. Ted is completely dedicated to his preoccupation of "owning" his female submissive, and teaching her his specific likes and dislikes so that she could eventually learn to keep him happy in every sense he needed her to. His submissive, in turn, derived her pleasure directly from being able to do anything and everything he asked in order to please him; her personal inconvenience or physical discomfort were unimportant.
In this intimate relationship, he ran the show. He would give his sub a day or two notice when he wanted to see her. He rarely asked her if she was free, as it became her job to free up her calendar whenever he summoned her. These D/s "sessions" or "scenes," as they're called in the community, could last anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of days. What kept her going? Her failure to listen to instructions, for him to have to wait or to repeat himself, could lead her to being subjected to consequences that could include any degree of physical pain, or what she considered to be worse, his ignoring her.
If this sounds like a game ordinary couples might play behind closed bedroom doors, think again -- the woman he described to me was not his girlfriend, nor was she a prostitute. She was simply his sub. His traditional, or "vanilla" relationship as he called it, mimicked that of any other. It was the relationship that his friends and family knew about; no one except for his girlfriend knew about his female submissive. In their eyes, there was no infidelity in their relationship. His girlfriend knew of her lover's sub, though the two had never met, and vice versa.
The source of his desire to be a Dom was his need to control without resistance. This Dom had been on his own from a very young age, and developed a lucrative career for himself in the racing industry, which carried an enormous amount of responsibility. His professional mistakes were outfront for the public to see, and his job was on the line with every race. His ultimate fear was having to give up control on any level of his life -- personal, financial, or sexual. He could never bring himself to do it.
Many of our inner fears and needs, any psychologist will tell you, can manifest themselves in our sexual behavior. This Dom's need for control gradually reached a level beyond what his current girlfriend could comply with, or had any desire to. He cared enough about their commitment to each other to stay together, and in turn, she chose to accept, rather than to change, his dominant tendencies which he felt were innate. They eventually found a solution that satisfied them both. That's when they found his female submissive.
Ted says his dominant tendencies went further back than his current girlfriend, all the way back to his teens. He had no idea until he came to the States that what he once described as "his personal kink" was oddly common. He soon found himself waist deep in the D/s subculture, learning the ropes -- and how to tie them.
Reverse dating
Prostitution, it isn't. These female submissives, and males on occasion, find their dominant counterparts with relative ease. That is, if you can believe the fact that there aren't enough experienced Dominants to go around for the subs who are looking for them. There is a pronounced community shortage. Oddly, it's nationally known among those in the lifestyle that North Carolina is a breeding ground for Domless submissives. Right here in the Bible Belt. Imagine that.
Female subs don't necessarily have sexual issues either -- this isn't domestic violence; everything is done by adult consent, and in some cases, actual written contracts of what is allowed and forbidden. It's a handy little thing if a neighbor hears a woman screaming next door and the police show up. The whole D/s ritual isn't about sex at all, which contradicts one of many misguided myths.
The driving force behind the curtain is control. One gives, the other takes. It may seem on the surface that the Dominant has all the cards and has found some poor weak submissive to prey upon, but ask any Dominant and he or she will tell you that it's the submissive that truly holds the reins. She is free to end the relationship or any session at any time she chooses. Her Dom only has as much control as she allows him to have.
These relationships may not be monogamous but, I came to realize, they are in fact, reverse dating. Some couples start out with a dinner here and there and eventually, if all goes well, a fantastic sex life emerges. For a few, in time the sex begins to get stale, and the whole relationship starts to pull apart at the seams. They find themselves watching porno flicks or frequenting strip clubs to bring some type of spice into their lives and many find themselves entering into the world of D/s. It's a last-ditch effort to save their relationship, but it rarely works.
With most D/s couples, respect, admiration and trust is at the core of all emotions. Love and friendship aren't considered necessary components, and lies are just not tolerated by either party. Some believe if you incorporate "vanilla" romance into a D/s relationship, it will destroy its carefully constructed integrity. It's hard for a man to cater to a woman in public by opening doors for her, helping her with her coat, picking up the check for dinner, when the roles take a 180-degree turn when they get home at night and shut the door.
I spoke with 27-year-old "Beth," who is a graduate student, and a submissive female currently working as a bartender. She had been in the lifestyle for only a year when she met a Dom on the Internet who frequented Charlotte on his business travels.
When I asked her why the Internet, which seemed to be the common denominator forum in which Dominants and submissives meet, she said, "Where else do you find one? It's not exactly the question you ask on the first date, and you won't meet them in the produce department at Harris Teeter." She had a good point.
To some, being able to achieve the degree of skill these people look for when finding a partner is essential to any relationship they enter. It's not up for negotiation, although some couples find their own individual arrangements.
There are many women and men like Beth who are in the "lifestyle" long before they actively participate. Beth thought her sexual needs and desires were perverted and dirty; she thought there was something wrong with her because she had never met another like herself. Beth had boyfriends in the past that made sexually aggressive suggestions to try things such as tying her up; although wanting to, she could never bring herself to comply because she didn't believe that "ladies" engaged in that type of play. She believed it was an activity that only promiscuous females or prostitutes engaged in, so she learned to hide her preferences and kept them on the back burner.
One night, she stumbled across a chat room on the Internet and was dumbfounded to find there was an entire subculture she knew nothing about. The people she found, and soon came to meet offline, were not only all over the United States -- there were large groups of them right here in Charlotte. She learned from others where her intense need to be a submissive came from. She was taught how to find her Dominant partner, how to be safe, and what to watch out for. She learned that being a submissive did not give any man the right to degrade her or treat her like a doormat.
Unfortunately, many inexperienced female subs don't have a mentor, and find themselves in situations that are nothing short of rape -- and that's a very difficult story to get the police or a jury to believe. Almost all of the episodes that are not consensual go unreported.
Beth refers to D/s as the best "therapy" she could ever get.
"There was always something missing from my relationships," she said, "and this was it."
Beth explained that her Dominant male was 15 years her senior -- 42, and had been in the lifestyle since he was in his mid-20s. He is divorced from his wife, because like Ted, he had a need for control in the bedroom that his wife had no intentions of catering to. To this Dom, it was worth ending a marriage over.
Beth's need to become a submissive was in sharp contrast to Ted's need to become a Dominant male.
"I always have to be in control of everything, my schoolwork, I'm a supervisor at my job, my house, the bills, I have to take care of everything by myself," she explains. "Sometimes I just want to come home and have someone to take care of me. I don't want to make any decisions. The feeling of total and complete release of control is like renewing my inner spirit. Until I became a submissive, I didn't know who I really was."
Unlike Ted, who was a control freak and had a fear of giving it up, Beth was tired of being in control. The day to day decision-making in her life wore her down to the point that she hated to do something as simple as deciding what to eat that day. She described often crying in the morning because she couldn't pick out what clothes to wear. The simple decisions the rest of us face daily overwhelmed her. She told me her biweekly sessions with her Dom empowered her again, and allowed her to take control of aspects of her life in which she felt she was losing a grip.
The Dom/sub sessions, however, do have their own set of risks. All too often, you occasionally hear stories on the Internet and read the paper about sex games gone bad.
Stephen King's Gerald's Game recounts in vivid detail a couple's bondage experience that has a tragic ending. These men and women don't intend to hurt anyone, but they do it out of inexperience. The last thing anyone wants to do is to engage in activity that causes a 911 call that lands someone on their annual Christmas party tape.
I learned that in the D/s lifestyle, couples often have what they refer to as a "safe word" which is used to immediately stop any activity in a session. They mutually choose any word that would normally not come up in a conversation, or during sex. The word "red" was a common choice. It was a signal to tell the other person to stop what they were doing because the session was getting too emotionally charged, or the activity was too physically painful to continue.
There seemed to be a universal unwritten law that when the chosen safe word was uttered, there were no questions or explanations needed -- the session abruptly stopped. If the safe word was ignored, it was considered grounds for ending the relationship. They also believed that ignoring a safe word could get you physically injured or killed, depending on the intensity of the session and what type of "games" were being played.
Who do you trust?
Both Beth and Ted described their individual experiences in the realm of D/s as the most intimate experiences they've ever had. They say the trust and level of respect and admiration they have for their individual play partners, was above and beyond any and all conventional unions.
"When you are bound and restrained to the point where you can barely bat an eyelash and cannot speak, and the person you are with has the power to do you serious harm or permanent damage," Beth explained, "you had damned well better trust the person and have no doubts that they'll be safe and know your limits."
In other words, to them it's the ultimate fall-backwards-into-the-arms game.
Ted felt that even his girlfriend didn't truly know him like his sub did. He felt his relationship with his sub and her "gift" to him to be his most prized possession, and he had an enormous amount of respect for her.
"I have no intentions of leaving my girlfriend," he said. "We are very much in love and I want to get married, have kids, and the all-American thing.
"However," he continued, "my sub will go on to be an important part of our lives."
He explained that his sub understood the ground rules and had accepted them. He and his girlfriend had even considered purchasing another home with a mother-in-law suite and explaining his sub's presence to friends and family as "the live-in housekeeper."
When I jokingly asked him what he was going to do in 25 years when his children were grown and in college and his sub is still living there, he laughed and replied, "Well, you know how these Southern families can be. If one family member questions another about the arrangement, I'm sure the consensus will be 'Don't ask!'"
Communal D/s "families," like the one Ted and his girlfriend are contemplating, are rare, but they do exist. They'll purchase real estate together, take vacations, and even raise children. Sounds more like the Addams Family than the Bradys, but think about it: what keeps both those familial units together is the high degree of respect and trust they have for one another, superceding everything else in their lives.
The "contracted" arrangements that Doms and subs share together are as varied as the people who find themselves in the lifestyle. D/s relationships were once en vogue almost exclusively among the biker and the gothic communities. Now it's become another type of game among the social elite. One look at any website selling the toys to play with will tell you that you need a lot of disposable cash to have a well-equipped dungeon in your basement or garage. Most of these items won't be found at your local Home Depot, either. Who would have thought there's still a market for chastity belts?
Some people play the moral trump card and believe it's an abomination against nature to participate in D/s relationships, or any relationship that's not 100 percent monogamous. But what truly defines a relationship? These people that I've crossed paths with are happier than most married couples I know. The unions are unique, as well as uniquely sane.
Sexual diversity is more common than ever in our society, and Charlotte is no exception. It used to only refer to people who are either gay or straight, but the connotation has shifted to incorporating all non-traditional relationships.
Are we, as sexually active adults, meant to be monogamous? Society promotes the courtship and marriage of two people in love, and yet 50 percent of all marriages are landing in divorce court, with money and infidelity at the core of most failures.
I've come to believe that definitions of socially acceptable relationships are starting to change, and couples, more and more, will have to make their own rules. What's right for one couple to engage in could be the death knell for another couple's relationship. Each of us must make choices we can live with and thrive on. No matter what you think of the D/s lifestylers' way of living, they do prove that trust, respect and loyalty in a relationship, regardless of the arrangement, can go a long way. Without it, you have nothing. *
Look for Elizabeth Chapel's new column, Sex and the Queen City, coming soon.