I finished reading Radical Ecstasy recently, meant to post about it a while ago, and haven't gotten around to it until now. The book deals with ecstatic experiences in BDSM, descriptions of them, some technique advice, and a lot of descriptions of scenes. What "ecstatic experience," means is sort of up for grabs, and the authors spend most of the first part of the book trying to define what it is. Or what it might be. Or how it might apply to you. They are, admittedly, limited by language (which they also talk a lot about), and also by the lack of vocabulary surrounding this sort of thing. It might sound like I'm bullshitting my way through a description, but really, it's a hard book to explain, partly because it's a book that admits it's subject is hard to explain. It's really honest and open and great, like all of Easton and Hardy's books, but it's definitely more... woo-woo than say, The New Bottoming Book. Which was both good for me, and also got me into Super Serious BDSM Mode (see later on below).
On of my favorite things about Easton and Hardy is that their woo-woo is a self-admitted one. From The New Topping Book (also by them, along with The Ethical Slut and The New Bottoming Book and a handful of others):
"...one of Janet's regular partners, a highly intuitive body worker and martial artist, says indignantly, 'I don't do woo-woo shit'). But in our experience, the best tops pretty much universally use these concepts and techniques, whether they do so consciously or not."
They do a great job at the beginning of Radical Ecstasy explaining that, although they use words like "transcendence," and "ecstasy," and "spiritual," they know those words freak some people out, and so they give a long list of other words readers are encouraged to substitute.
I'm a bit of a hippie myself, although my sarcasm and cynicism often outweigh my woo-woo. I was a little surprised with how easy this book was for me, even though it was very.... spiritual (clearly, I can't even use the word without an ellipsis beforehand). Mostly, I just thought of what they were saying in the context of the Forever Place, or feeling close with Sir. There is something that happens in kink, for me, that's more-than-me. Or maybe, it's just an experience of myself that I don't get very often, and that I don't really believe I'm capable of creating with just me, so it seems like there's something "other" going on.
To clarify: I'm not a religious person, or really, a spiritual person. I'm a hippie, I think, because I believe a lot in do-no-harm, because I like and try to practice things like empathy and compassion. I also wear flowy skirts from time to time, had dreadlocks for a couple years, and like to go camping/make bonfires/do illegal substances on occasion/play the guitar, etc. I'm pretty sure that when we die we all turn to dirt, and I think the planet got to where it is by a lot of very complicated scientific and evolutionary phenomena that I don't understand, but that are nonetheless correct. I don't believe the placement of the stars at the time of my birth had anything to do with anything, and I don't have a spirit animal. Although I do like selkies and the mythos around them quite a bit.
But there's a certain magic to kink for me (not all the time, but sometimes) that I think of in the same way that a lot of people think about god, or spirituality (it happens in a real life too, not just in kink, but it's most obvious during kinky times, i think). But my magic (god, I hate hate hate that I can't find a better word for that) doesn't come from anything external. People are so incredibly complex; they have conscious minds and subconscious minds, they have infinitely individual experiences and personalities, and from that, there's a kind of unknown that I really enjoy. This is all sounding pretty new-agey. It's not meant to. Let's try again:
People are fucking complicated. Even me, tiny little me, has so much going on with her feelings and her thinkings that the possibilities of what she'll do or say or feel next are, in any given moment, pretty damn close to infinite. Put a single person, with all that depth, together with another single person, and man, the amount of shit that could go on there is... totally staggering.
This complexity, and the mystery within this complexity, are as close to religion as I come, and I'm pretty sure they're what keep sex (and life) pretty interesting, despite the fact that copulation is something I practice on a very regular basis. They're also what make, I think, the BDSM with me and Sir feel so fucking cool.
Imagine: He's angry, so angry, this malicious, dangerous, cut-throat look in his eyes and his muscle tensing, and he's coming, believe or not, for me. He's got rope in his hands, and the way he moves is methodical, intentional, making whatever is pulsing beneath the surface all that much scarier. I'm whimpering, frightened, but also prized, and wanting to give over to him. He touches me, red rope across my shoulder, hushing under my arms with a flick at the end, a sinlge sting, a fraction of what comes later. I sigh against it, the rope tightening, resting in the binds.
And that's just writing the very beginning of the stuff that language allows. There is so much other stuff, and the interaction of that other stuff does, I think, take me outside of myself; there are interactions and responses going on that I don't understand, and that I'm not really in control of. And it is ecstatic, and it is the forever place. I don't think it comes from anything but me and Sir being people and doing this together, but that doesn't make it any less incredible.
One side of affect of Radical Ecstasy turned out to be that I added a sort of weight to kink, as in, The Good Girl Gets Über Serious About Playtime All The Time. Which was cool, when Sir was up for it and when were both genuinely wanting to go to really dark places, and to play with the really heavy stuff. But I sort of forgot, for a while, that playing can also just be playing. That BDSM, for it's hard metal benches and deep scary voices and dungeon-esque emotionally possibility, can also just be fun. Like, Sir can pin me down and I can fight back and cry and yell and then, in a breath between moments, I'm also allowed to smile at him, and we're also allowed to have moments of kissing each other like we would walking down the street.
Fuck, even the language there: "we're allowed." Of course we're allowed! It's our sex life, right?
Anyway. Good book, good authors, good sex scenes, make sure you remember that Easton and Hardy aren't talking about all BDSM when they talk about these ecstatic experiences; this part of BDSM is an awesome one, but remember (because I forgot for a while) that you can still be playful. Read it with your hair in pigtails or your fuzzy kink slippers on or something.
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