I just read a remarkable article on Jezebel by a woman who makes a little extra money going over to a friend’s house and burning his feet with a cigarette while he self-pleasures. In the article, she interviews him extensively about why, exactly, he pays a number of female friends to do that. The result is a fascinating journey inside the emotional experience of what most people would consider a very extreme kink. One interesting section, for example:
I was thinking about the term for what this is… it doesn’t really feel like you’re acting out a fetish to me, the way we do this. It feels much more like a ritual.
It is a ritual, that’s a very good word for it. It’s many things. It’s a way for me to control how much pain is being inflicted upon me, and in what way, because as a kid, when that was going on, I didn’t have any control.There are so many aspects to it, like the fact that it’s on the feet and the hands… It’s ironic that that’s where the burning happens. I mean I’m not a religious person, in the sense of Catholicism and all that, which is how I was raised, which by the way didn’t help either. “Have some repression with your cigarette burns, Greg!” It’s not just a fetish. It’s getting into a deeper place for me than that, and that’s why I prefer to see people like you for this. Even though you’re hurting me, it’s about a connection, too. I need to feel connected to you before and while you’re doing it, even though I’m not necessarily connected to me when it’s happening. Sometimes I think I’m up in the corner of the room watching it, I sort of disassociate, which is why going to see traditional dommes for this never worked for me. I’m not criticizing them, but in general, they have their own personality that comes into play, and they’re more about objectifying someone. A lot of dudes want that, so a lot of times they have trouble being nice to me while they’re torturing me. For them it’s more about the absence of a connection. It took me a while to figure out that that just doesn’t work for me, because I tried that version for a while, and I was feeling empty and bad afterwards. I seek out people that are in their own bodies, that aren’t play-acting a role, because I like them to be in the room, in their bodies, while they’re doing this.
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I admire how introspective, and how specific, this guy’s understanding of his kink is. He’s thought seriously about it and come to understand it about as well as any of us can understand our weird and irrational desires.
The article does give me one reservation, though; I worry that some people might assume that because this guy was abused as a child, all kinky folks must have been abused as well. Sure, some kinky people were abused, but so were some vanilla people. Some folks, like the gent in the article, use kink as a way of controlling and recontextualizing experiences that left permanent marks on their psyche, the way some people get tattoos that turn their scars into art by incorporating them into a design. Other folks… just kinky. Not everything in life has a reason.
The best part about the Jezebel article, unquestionably, is how profoundly compassionate and human it is. People with extreme kinks are too often regarded as freaks, a living sideshow to be gawped at by “normal” people, whatever those are. The man with the burned feet is not that, however. He is a man intimately aware of his own foibles and fallibilities, finding a way of living with a painful past that does him the most good in the present. That’s not freaky, that’s not extreme, that’s human. That is all of us.
So the next time you hear about some strange and bizarre kink, some extreme thing way further along the spectrum than your own tastes (you know what I’m talking about; that one thing you always delete from your browser history. Yeah, that.), try not to see it as disturbing and creepy and Other. See it as a human being coping with their own desires and their own mind in a way that works for them, because that’s all it is.
I’m not trying to pick a fight with any one. I just have a question and wondered what people thought. A lot of people argue that men shouldn’t see prostitutes because even if these women weren’t being pimped or weren’t being economically exploited, many of them were abused as children and are therefore more vulnerable. Do you think that goes for when people buy sex also? If the guy is doing this in part because he was abused, do you think that the women have a moral responsibility to say I’m not going to do this even for money? Do… Read more »
In this particular case, I’d call them enablers. I.e. someone who makes it possible for another person to engage in self destructive behavior. I think taking money for it is pretty unethical, but that’s just me.
Noah, She’s a hooker, not a friend who makes a little extra money going over to burn someone’s feet while they pleasure themselves. I’m all for compassion, but kink is strange. It’s strange because during the one activity where complete focus on the moment, on the other person, on what you’re sharing, is one of the most exhilarating activities that two (or more) people can do together. The ‘or more’ was a wink, nudge. Pain, role play, having someone put you in a diaper, put you in a leash and lead you around like an animal or even choke you… Read more »
The guy involved doesn’t have trouble making emotional connections. He keeps his relationships and his burning separate. He doesn’t exclusively burn his feet to get off. You should read the full article if you haven’t.
From my teens to my 30’s, I sometimes engaged in self injurious behavior in order to deal with extreme emotional pain. I burned myself with cigarettes several times and cut myself with razors badly enough to need stitches. There was often a ritualistic aspect to my behavior. It was emotionally calming. At the same time, it was disturbing and upsetting. After many years of therapy, I realized that my behavior was self destructive and unhealthy. I will live for the rest of my life with some ugly scars that I have no good way of explaining. Even my current boyfriend… Read more »
You mean Jezebel is a genuine news site?
I thought it was a satirical site like The Onion when I read “Ke$ha had sex with a ghost” and the rise in the number of racially insensitive frat parties.
Those confederate flags in Frat houses only started showing up a few years ago, you know 😉