Unsafe At Any Speed
My fantasies have never been safe ones. Even back when I was a child, I remember coaching a playmate into behaving the way I imagined was proper for this little psychodrama we were about to enact. “You will be the one in charge,” I said, pushing from the bottom as only a six-year old novice can, “and you’re really mean. You tell me to do things that are impossible, and when I can’t, you punish me and laugh.”
What can I tell you? My tastes grew up with me. The amazing thing now, twenty-five years later, is how succinctly I captured the essence of S/M play. The role of the dominant as the active play-acting partner, and my role as a natural all-responsive passive partner, but only under the structure I created.
Unsafe at Any Speed; or Safe, Sane and Consensual My Fanny! was first presented at the University of Washington’s Society for Human Sexuality in 1995. The full transcript can be found here.
