Masochistic Fantasies

It's the ultimate break from thoroughly modern stresses on the self.

You've got a respectably high-powered job. Maybe it's even visible one. You are regularly making difficult decisions that affect the lives of others, perhaps many others. You need to maintain a highly polished self-image. You like to feel in
personal control. You're constantly advancing your independence, your responsibility, your success.

So how do you take a break? If you're like an unknown number of others, perhaps you've already signed up for a spanking.

Across the country, from sophisticated cities to subdued suburbs, men and women are acting out fantasies of sexual domination and submission. With their own partners or specially hired ones, they're turning to rituals of sadomasochism. To borrow their own favorite term, they've happily become "sex slaves" to their submissive desires.

These are people--a minority of both sexes--who desire to be tied up, handcuffed, gagged, or bound in uncomfortable positions; adults who desire to be whipped or tormented with droplets of hot wax on bare skin. Some write longingly of receiving "an old-fashioned, bare-bottom, over-the-knee spanking." Others desire to be embarrassed, verbally insulted, given commands, made to walk on all fours like a dog, or displayed naked in front of others who are fully clothed.

Maybe you have masochistic fantasies that contain some new kind of sex act. Or a first homosexual experience. Or something highly degrading. And that is exactly the point -- the shocking degree to which you can, with a little imagination,shed your normal self.


The masochist's objective is not to suffer, but to fulfill that human need of letting down your guard and being vulnerable.