Never the Face

In the time when everyone seems to be reading – or talking about -- 50 Shades of Grey, I wonder, instead, about the reason why BDSM is suddenly and so surely infiltrating the mainstream.  Is it the anti-feminist backlash, rebelling against the notion that a self-respecting woman shouldn’t desire to be dominated by a man? Or is it that finally this light erotica is answering the long-repressed need of so many women to speak about their sexuality and its many different facets, especially those aspects that they grew up most ashamed of? One of the driving forces behind fetish communities, I think, is that desire to feel that you’re not alone, not utterly different from everyone else in the world – that your perversions don’t make you a monster, and that in the realm of “safe, sane, and consensual” they are perfectly acceptable.

Of course I find this phenomenon wonderful. I too grew up ashamed of myself, refusing to accept, even inside my personal closet, the validity of my desires. The fear, however, is that by being introduced as such a surface topic by poorly-written and not very thought-provoking works, BDSM runs the risk of being further relegated to “that kinky element of sex” – accepted, but unexplored. Meanwhile, I believe that both the intimacy and the explicit power dynamics of BDSM make it both more satisfactory and dangerous to those willing but ignorant explorers.

And so, I am happy to come across a book like Never the Face – an intelligent and sexy read that I have already (topically) reviewed elsewhere. I reread it again, just to see if I’d find it as powerful the second time around, and was glad to notice more details that make it so mesmerizing – and relatable – of a story. At the same time, I won’t lie – I found it very disturbing, precisely because the author describes so well some of my own desires, experiences and apprehensions.

For example, here’s her description of subspace: “I’m not sure how long he beat me that night. Time became suspended. The world shrank to two people inside a shack: nothing else existed” (18). When you meet that person who can take you to subspace and then take care of you while you’re in it, it is an intimacy so deep, so powerful, no wonder the narrator becomes addicted to it – and falls in love!

She writes about the sex that follows this beating – and this intimacy: “I thought about the countless times I’d had sex before. They had as much resemblance to what I’d just experienced as a stuffed toy has to a tiger. A small voice pointed out that tigers are dangerous, but I ignored it” (24). Though she is scared of the danger that inevitably comes with such an intense connection (BDSM or not), she also realizes that it’s incomparable to anything she had experienced before. While pain, and the risk of becoming this deeply involved, are the undeniable drawbacks of this relationship, the rewards – oh the rewards! – make us fall harder every time….

I love the internal dialogue she constantly has with herself that shows us her utter confusion at this new and different relationship. Society tells her (and all of us) not just how we’re supposed to act, but also what we are supposed to want and how we’re supposed to feel. When we find ourselves suddenly at odds with these directives, the confusion can be paralyzing (and probably scares many more women than will admit to it from pursuing their desires). She writes about her experience at a restaurant with David, after their D/s affair has begun to pick up speed: “This time, I hadn’t been allowed even to look at the menu: he handed my copy straight back to the waiter. I flushed. Yet, while one part of me raged, another felt coddled and cared for. Which brought a pulse of guilt. You’re not a child. You’re not supposed to like this” (26).

And no matter what I think of David (I would like to believe I pick up on his flaws before the narrator, less experienced in this lifestyle, does), his explanation of the desires that draw us to BDSM is excellent:

“It’s an intimate thing to beat someone. Way more intimate than fucking,” he said.

“Why?” I said, looking up.

“Because it strips away pretense and self-consciousness, it reduces you to your essence.” I shifted under his gaze. “When you fuck someone, your mind can be somewhere else,” he said. “You don’t have to show anything of yourself. But when you beat someone, or when you are being beaten – you can’t help it, you reveal who you are.” (28)

And here is the narrator’s even more astute description of the self-awareness that comes after an intense and emotionally satisfying session:

My mind was still. Empty. Again, I had the sensation that my body was floating.

I curled against him, aware of the warmth of his chest, the heaviness of his arms, the scratchy stubble on his chin.

Aware of the sheets, and the twilight.

Just aware. (39)

This awareness, this feeling of calm is almost like the peak of meditation, as near as one can get to the out-of-body experience. And it stays with you, after the fact: this realization and deep understanding of everything you found out about yourself in the moments of pain and suffering, but could not process till now. By going through pain, through “total sex” as the narrator describes it later in the novel, and surviving it, you become suddenly aware of your physical presence, and the materiality of the world around you, and then every sensation feels like a discovery – because you are truly feeling it, like this, for the first time.

We are first given a glimpse  into what’s going to go wrong between the narrator and David, when the narrator thinks: "Brutality without tenderness" (26). She doesn’t expand on it, or address it at this point, but we see it’s her greatest fear – and a premonition of how the affair is going to end. This is done with such subtlety, you get a feeling that you’re sneaking a peek at something no one else can yet see. And then again, 20 pages later: “He pulled out. I collapsed, sprawling and devastated, on the bed. Cuddle me. Please cuddle me“ (47). Despite her pleading for aftercare, David tells her to get dressed and takes her out.  I felt hurt reading this – imagining how uncared for I would feel if I didn’t get held and cuddled after a severe beating or a rough fuck. Gradually, we are beginning to see David for what he is – his selfishness, his lack of insight into her needs – in spite of what he thinks, his carelessness with her emotions. He only notices that something is wrong when she almost faints at the restaurant – and that is definitely not the attention that a good Dom pays his sub.

Another few pages later, the alarm went off in my head. I wanted to scream to the narrator: he’s bad news! Run now while you still can! This is what David says about safe words and people who use them:

His voice became scoffing. “They’re the pussies who use safe words when they  ‘play.’”

“What’s a safe word?” I said.

“It’s a way to say” – he put on a whine – “Oh! Stop what you’re doing. I can’t take it.’” He paused. “Safe words – it’s like someone telling you to wear a seat belt and a crash helmet during sex. Kinda takes the edge off.” He changed gear and passed the car ahead of us. “A good top – he knows where his bitch is. He knows what she can take and what she can’t. Better than she does herself.” (50)

It’s this kind of arrogance that gets to me – while a good Dom, playing with an experienced sub whom he knows well, can usually tell exactly where she’s at, you can’t count on it – and especially if you’re playing with someone this self-centered and proud. A guy like that won’t admit defeat even when he sees the signs! I know there are people who don’t use safe words –and I don’t think I’ve ever actually had to use one myself – but if that’s the choice they make, it should be the sub’s choice, her willing consent to fully entrust herself to her Dom, not the Dom’s choice to just take that power from her. It’s the issue of control, but that control can’t be taken – it has to be given freely, otherwise I believe it IS abuse. And this foreshadows everything that’s going to go wrong with the relationship – the way that David ends up taking full control while the narrator abdicates it completely, and when he starts losing it himself there is no one to take over, to keep it together. She – an independent, strong woman – doesn’t even know she has that choice when she is with him. And when EVERYONE loses control, things fall apart – and people get hurt.

As the novel continues, and the affair grows hotter, we see more and more of these danger signs. And the narrator can’t keep ignoring them either:

“Sometimes you have to be cruel to be sexy,” he said.

Sometimes – what?

I shivered. Somewhere, in a distant corner of my brain, an alarm bell started clanging. But I muffled the clapper in cotton wool, and ignored it.” (66)

For the first time, she briefly sees him for who he is – that he cares more about passion itself, than about her. It’s not her needs he’s responding to when he beats her, but he’s doing it for the sake of sex, of excitement, while she is doing it for the intimacy – something that cruelty can forever destroy.  She hates pain, so she needs the care and tenderness that come after, while he only gives those because and when he feels like it, not to fulfill her need (and as the story develops, he gives less and less).

I love that throughout the novel we are shown the narrator’s hyperawareness of what’s going on, not just what she’s experiencing, but what her Dom must be feeling as well. She really tries to understand and see the responsibility on both sides of the equation. At some point, explaining it to her girlfriend, she says: ”I think it must be difficult to know how hard to hit, to know how to read the other person’s responses. To generate a feeling of safe danger.” (61)  At another point, she questions: “Who is really serving whom? I began to see glimmers of a paradox.” (54) When it’s working properly, a D/s relationship is a delicately balanced dance (no, I didn’t come up with that J  ), with both partners superbly conscious of each other and the fluctuating dynamic between them.

For me, this novel raised very important issues of consent, especially implied (rather than openly stated and negotiated) consent, that I still can’t entirely resolve. There are elements of the relationship that make me think David is abusing the narrator (even before he actually – and openly -- does), but on the other hand, she yearns for that complete authority, she wants to be taken against her will. In a way, she’s giving him consent by staying with him – but when does that become simply a battered woman’s consent? Here are a few examples that (if this relationship were real and not a wonderfully written work of fiction) would make me most concerned:

When David points out that the narrator didn’t even defend herself, she responds (in thought):

“I was startled to realize that it hadn’t even occurred to me to try.” (26)

And then, when she is telling her secret to a friend who asks why she’d let David beat her, she thinks to herself: “Let him? I didn’t let him. He just did it. Don’t say that. She’ll freak.” (61)

Although I perfectly understand how someone taking control like that can be a major turn on, I am deeply disturbed by the fact that she doesn’t think she could stop him even if she tried; that it has nothing to do with her wishes or her consent, but everything with what he chooses to do -- or not to do.

And so, I am not at all surprised that when David loses control of the situation himself – his marriage falls apart, his sex kitten (the narrator) won’t blindly obey him – the affair finally explodes. He tells her the most unforgivable words of them all: “If you won’t give it to me, I’ll take it by force” (211), and then he carries out his threat – till she actually passes out on him. His actions at this point have nothing to do with her, and not even a pretense of love for her shines through his words. He has lost control as a Dom the moment he feels he has to take her through sheer, brutal force, and he shows how little he has thought of her all along. This complete lack of consideration finally exposes him as a fraud – an amateur in domming, a lover who’s not really in love with anyone but himself. Instead of a careful balance of needs and desires, there’s only him – and that’s the end of any relationship.

This is the end of the story and their affair: David leaves the narrator and goes back to his wife, but although she is the one left howling on the floor, I get a feeling (or maybe it’s just a hope) that she is the one who can no longer believe in his power, see him as her Dom, or even as her lover. Because the book begins awhile later, and is told through flashbacks, we know that the narrator survives this ordeal and finds a way to grow into her new understanding of herself and her desires. She can look back at it now as the moment she became “awake,” and in that word we see that there is more than just pain that she took away from this affair.