Lashes & Cuddles: A Peculiar Evening

In November last year I was invited to Sadistique, a BDSM party organized by my friend Ayzad. I talked about the “erotica of martyrdom” in front of an attentive, colorful and half-dressed crowd, in the dungeon-style room where at the end of my conference quite appropriately a Saint Andrew’s cross was mounted.
I have mulled over the possibility of recounting that evening; I was afraid that capturing its unique atmosphere, and making it palpable, goes beyond my poor literary skills.
In the end, since this blog is still a diary of my explorations, I decided to transcribe the notes I took that very night when I got back to my hotel room. They already had some kind of basic form, although not as refined as I would have preferred, so I publish them here without too many revisions.

(All images come from Sadistique’s website, and are NSFW.)

The first intense sensory overload that I become aware of is sound.
Constant, incessant symphony of slaps and shouts, a narcotic torpor, like those morning half-sleeps in which hormones suggest only vaguely erotic — but really more subterranean — visions. The syncopated hissing and popping of the whips, the dry bumps of paddles and bare hands slapping on butts and legs, as hypnotic as my memory of the African drums — that night in the slums of Dar-Es-Salaam when I met that woman possessed by a demon. Reiteration induces the trance: back and gluteus and gluteus and back — the same body parts get hit again, again, again. Even when you want to be imaginative, sex is always repetitive. Variations at first sight seem very, very sporadic: however the tools keep changing, and the discerning public knows how to recognize the progression, taste the effect, knowing al the different nuances and sensations. (Note: every sadist identifies with the victim, or there would be no pleasure in inflicting a punishment; every masochist identifies with the executioner, or there would be no joy in seeing oneself so humiliated and hurt.)

One big central arena for “public” games, before spectators. In reality almost all the sessions, even those on the most secluded sofas, earn their group of admirers. But only  the most exhibitionist, or at least the most confident, dare to appear on the central stage. And you really have to be quite self-confident, because the audience doesn’t just watch, the spectators keep judging your performance, making technical considerations as if they were commenting a football match. “There, look, that knot should not be done like that, I say, at least loosen it during the transition!” “You must not miss this flogger, he has a wonderful wrist action. You won’t get to that level of mastery in a month or two.” “Look at that, if you use a cane like that, just to hurt, you’re missing the point. Where did all the poetry go? “

The most disarming thing: the constant alternation of sweetness and brutality. Brutality administered as part of a journey done together — even if it lasts just the time of one session — exploration and alteration of space-time… Three well-adjusted lashes, then the Dom approaches the Sub and caress him, whispers in his ear, makes sure they’re both going in the right direction. He needs to have the most precise understanding, because they’re proceeding together, united so the satisfaction is mutual. He asks if it is too much or too little. As if following the shaking of a divining rod, what they’re looking for here is the hidden vein of desire. An extreme spanking scene has been going on for almost half an hour on a nearby sofa: “Will you let me give you one last smack, with all my strength?” “No, not with all your strength…” (She is already almost crying, she writhes, her marked buttocks where two or three drops of blood adorn the purple bruises.) “Half strength then, can I?” “Half. But only once. “

A man is explaining to a girl how she will have to jump on him when he is lying on the ground. “Here, and here,” he says pointing at his naked torso. “Not here.” She is hesitant, terrified at the idea of breaking his ribs. “Number one: if I tell you to jump on my belly or chest, it’s because I know you won’t hurt me. Number two — and here he lowers his voice and leans towards her, in doing so he also comes closer to me, so I can hear what he’s whispering to her — remember that you to me are a gift.” She begins to cry with emotion. She shall jump on him several times that night, from the top of a stool, sinking her heels into his belly.

Evening proceeds not without comic moments. Even the Grotesque has a right of citizenship here — it couldn’t be otherwise, in such a mental space hanging on the edge of the precipice.
I love it when even the most experienced Master misses a hit. A whip spins around badly and hits the floor; a knot gets tangled and needs to be tied all over again; a cat o’ nine tails swooping through the air comes too close to a spectator (“Hey, be careful!”). Very human moments: wonderful contrast between the general sophisticated pose — we are in Milan after all, the city of fashion — and the surfacing of  carnivalesque tones.
One flashy girl is wearing a fetish mask with a zipper that covers her mouth, she walks up to the counter. The bartender: “What do I give you?” “Mmmfmmmfmsssmchhh,” she replies. (I have to walk away to keep from laughing.)
Involuntary but also voluntary comedy: I am told of a legendary session in which the safeword was the squawking of chicken, complete with elbow movement, QUACK!

One gentleman introduces himself to a couple asking if he can act as their footstool. “But what should we do?” “Nothing, I’ll just lie here, you put your feet upon me, every now and then pull on the leash, that’s all.” After ten minutes of this treatment the gentleman gets up, politely thanks them, then leaves.
And this sketch, with its dry surrealism, pushes me to another consideration.
The man under the couple’s has maintained a serious and discreet attitude the whole time, light years away from the drooling and horny slaves à la Tokyo Decadence. I couldn’t even say if he got excited. In fact in the common areas it very seldom happens to witness actual sex (there are private rooms for that); yet everything is sex. “I specialize in knives and cutting, but my wife is a needle artist”, one guy tells me. And in fact, shortly after, here she is poking the finger of a fifty-year-old man sporting hipster mustaches, slowly, several times. He sits there, as in a normal lounge bar, a cocktail in one hand and a young lady sticking a surgical needle deeply into the index finger of his other hand. Can this be called “sex”? I have no idea. Maybe it is sex, without being it.

A beautiful and almost totally naked  girl approaches me.
(I’m not one of those men who can’t help staring at a cleavage, but I wonder: in a situation like this, would it be considered rude as in the world out there? What’s the social rule, here?)
We chat a bit, she tells me about her degree thesis she’s just about to complete, and then says: “These thing need planning”. It is essential for her to separate these evenings from romantic commitments, she explains. She is only into ropes and whipping, the latter exclusively with the same trusted partner. I ask her what is the frequency. “Ropes I could do even once a week. Whipping just once a month, because then you have to recover and those marks take some time to disappear. This is why I say that it has to be carefully planned. Because if you go out with a guy shortly after a session, and things get hot, you might have to explain those marks, and you’ll end up looking crazy. “

My host Ayzad, an expert in alternative sexualities, often explains in his work how, in a context in which one person consensually inflicts pain on another, a “culture of respect” is even more congenital than in normal/normative sex. Here everything seems to confirm this idea.
The crowd is multi-ethnic, from all walks of life, encompassin all ages, sexual orientations, genders or genderbending possibilities, body types — including disabilities. Fashion outfits along with absolutely “proletarian” clothing solutions. Bodies that seem to come straight out of a Vogue cover, but here even adipose or withered skin is considered beautiful — in the end it does not really matter what you look like as long as you are good at handling a whip or enduring it.
I suppose the much heralded and a bit annoying “exclusivity” of the event, which I was discussing with M. the other day, is just a due facade; because on the whole, there seems to be a very high level of inclusiveness. I even see a guy wearing simple jeans, although clearly the fetish aesthetic, all studs and latex, is the prevailing one; even though a little corny by now, it’s a sort of established uniform of this subculture.

I think about how ambiguous, complex the BDSM imaginary is — one must never make the mistake of taking it at face value: echoes of slavery, imprisonment, torture… But it is, in fact, an image, a projection. And what are erotic fantasies if not a way of metabolizing the Obscene — if not even a social trauma — take f.i. Nazi exploitation films.
Translating fears, unconfessable drives and real horrors into the world of representation, of simulacra. Mise-en-scène of the obscene. (This is the reason why most of erotic literature is made up of functional characters, bi-dimensional figurines, puppets to move and recombine at will.)

I look at a woman locked in a cage. A naked female body in there would be a terrible image, if real. Instead this is what everyone here calls a “game” (again, a mise-en-scène): the woman in the cage is far from being a victim, and this whole pantomime is all but humiliating; she is delicately caressed by three or four people, men and women — and she’s the one pushing away those hands should they get too impudent, she’s deciding what’s approrpiate, she is the absolute protagonist of this theatrical tableau in which she can imagine herself as a sacrificial victim, or a captive Goddess.

A “game”. “Let’s play a game”. Everyone keeps repeating that, but is it really just a game?
Of course, there are the circus moments — sometimes I feel like I’m wandering down a sideshow’s midway. No fire eaters in sight, but plenty of fakirs: a man has 3 half-gallon bottles of water hanging from his scrotum (note: he seems to feel worse when he holds them still, so he keeps a swinging motion while his mistress is whipping his back).


There is all the picturesque panoply that one would expect: there are women hanging upside down, men trampled by stiletto heels, multicolored wax melted on breasts and genitals, male and female slaves, laces and handcuffs, collars, leashes and people on all fours.

But then I see this couple, two young people of a blinding beauty, she’s tied with her arms over her head to a metal structure… a clamped clothespin on her tongue… he’s fiercely belt-spanking her buttocks and back… the boy is methodical and expressionless, he seems almost an automaton, focused on his work. She pants and keeps her eyes closed, never opening them, not even when he comes over to say something in her ear (from what I can hear — I am very close — they seem words of encouragement). The clothespin forces her to the humiliation of a constant thread of saliva dripping down on her bare breasts, which he occasionally dries with a forgiving gesture. The body is a tuning fork, and to make it resonate it must be taken to the extreme. Curious animal, the human primate. How I would like to hide behind their eyes, understand what’s going on in their nervous system: is this public punishment a performance, a ritual, a pastime, a gym routine? A simple way of being and expressing oneself? Or is it really what it seems, an intimate moment of transcendence and total abandon to each other?
This strange crowd of people, who are always so sure of what they want or don’t want, down to the smallest contractual detail — how conscious are they of what they’re seeking?

At the end of the session, every now and then someone bursts into a liberating flood of tears. All the cuddling, the hugging, the murmured words, “you to me are a gift”… others instead laugh, chat, or they go for a cigarette break in the smoking room.
Right there I meet a 67-years-old man with whom I already spoke at the beginning of the evening, a retired employee in a copier company. Now he is caressing his wife’s shoulders. He tenderly examines the streaks he imprinted on her skin shortly before, as if those red tongues were an abstract work of art. He whispers to her, “You look like a baby tiger”. Her face lights up, and they both smile.

Here is perhaps the most surprising thing.
In this kaleidoscope of clamps, lashes, ropes, bruises, canes, screams — and that soporific, neverending slapping sound — I saw no trace of cruelty.

Hatari

Article by guestblogger Verina Romagna

The 2019 edition of the Eurovision Song Contest is open, the audience waves their flags in the stalls or collapses on the couch at home to watch the live event on TV: everyone is dazzled by the glittering, ever-smiling singers, by catchy songs obsessively repeating “love, love, love”.
It is now Iceland’s turn, a small competitor which never turned out to be very successful or surprising, and suddenly the stage turns blood red. With a harsh metallic beat, the scene is revealed: there’s a cage, and a group of androgynous creatures dressed in leather and latex; one of the singers lies like a dying man on a staircase; the other does not sing, he screams from the top of his lungs. With a growl that is not wild or liberating, but rather cold and hallucinated, the lyrics deliver a terrible message: HATRIÐ MUN SIGRA, “hatred will prevail”.

“What’s this? How could this happen?”, the shocked audience ask themselves.
Let’s take a step back.


Four years ago, on a bright summer evening, as the midnight sun was shining, two boys strolled through Reykjavík contemplating the rise of populism, the ruin of capitalism and the crimes of growing individualism in Europe. To them, the only possible answer was: Hatari.

Meet the band

Hatari translates as “haters”. The band defines itself as an “award-winning performative, anti-capitalist, anti-systemic, industrial, techno-dystopic, BDSM” band, modifying and adding adjectives at their will. Hatari is a multimedia project, chaired by a nebulous company going by the suspicious name of Svikamylla ehf. (“Relentless Scam/Web of Lies Inc. “).

The project is based on the musical band founded by the two boys of the story, singers Klemens Hannigan and Matthías Tryggvi Haraldsson, together with their “drummer gimp” Einar Hrafn Stefánsson. Joining the trio is a variable team of performers, dancers, choreographers, visual artists and independent stylists responsible for a keenly designed fetish wardrobe, as well as a series of branded gym wear for the band’s moments of relax.

The legend of Hatari’s foundation is a brazen ironic hoax, regularly administered to the press by Klemens and Matthías, but there are some irrefutable facts: Hatari has indeed won several awards, and most of its members actually graduated from the Art Academy of Reykjavík. Matthías, aged twenty-five, already gained some recognition as a playwright and his writing is at the heart of Hatari’s nihilistic lyrics. Klemens is a carpenter and set designer, Einar also plays in the indie-pop band Vök.

Defining Hatari’s musical genre is a tricky task, because the band is eager to reinvent its style whenever it gets too close to being apprehended. Asking Klemens or Matthías will result in the usual long list of adjectives created on the spot: it might start off with almost fitting terms such as “techno-punk”, but will soon turn to “pop”, “bondage” and “doomsday”, and eventually end up being defined as “cabaret” and “bonanza”. Among their musical influences are Rammstein, Die Antwoord, Rage Against The Machine, Abba (“if only they were more Marxist“), the Spice Girls, Naomi Kline, Noam Chomsky, Donald Trump and Theresa May.

Hatari’s songs feature an electronic rhythmic base, enhanced by Einar’s live drumming, and two contrasting voices: Matthías’ growl delivers the main part, while Klemens will usually sing the melodic line in a soft, imploring and plaintive tone which can rise to a shrill falsetto, as in the song Hatrið mun sigra performed at Eurovision.

Music, however, is just one specific feature in Hatari’s wider concept, which is carried out through different performances: their act consists in staging a fascist dystopia set at the end of humanity, in the unmasking of the relentless scam we are subjected to in everyday life, in dismantling capitalism… and maybe, in the meantime, sell some CDs and T-shirts. After all, as the band put it, “it’s not cheap to bring down capitalism“.

Hatari’s key feature is precisely this love of contradiction, paradox, opposition. The BDSM clothing aesthetic is deemed necessary, because BDSM “liberates you, but it constrains you at the same time […], just like capitalism“.
But their use of contrast is also evident in the relationship between the singers Klemens and Matthías, a dualism ceaselessly exhibited on and off stage, which, as we shall see, might be the true focus of the entire project.

Hatari’s characters

Matthías, the leader of the group, plays the role of the absolute ruler and dictator in Hatari’s dystopia. He is brown-haired, cold and imposing, and his voice has a solemn and cavernous tone. The tyrant Matthías is characterized by rigidity, repressed movements, and a blank expression. He barely moves when he’s onstage, and he addresses the audience with a few controlled gestures, dry and theatrical, a Nazi-inspired reference. Angry screams rise from his granite, absent face, lost in a hateful frenzy of self-assertion. Even when he is not singing, Matthías maintains his apathetic composure; if he utters ironic and paradoxical sentences, he does so avoiding any hint of hilarity.

Klemens is Matthías’ right-hand man, an innocent martyr that the dictator subdues and persecutes. He’s a victim whose torment becomes obscene ecstasy: Klemens represents the compassionate undertaker of a dying humanity. He is small, with blond or sometimes bright-red hair, sparkling and ephebic. Like Matthías, he exhibits Hatari’s odd rhetoric with the utmost seriousness, but does not follow the same self-discipline. The inspiration for his body language and expressive range comes from a variety of traditionally feminine incarnations: the tender and fragile angel, the cheeky lolita sporting a blatant look, the bored prostitute, the sleepy men-eating vamp.

Beside a frozen Matthías, Klemens staggers without peace along the stage and dances to the rhythm. His arms are raised, hips swaying, his body is softly disjointed, keeping the pelvis as a center of gravity. With his skimpy costumes and orgasmic moans, Klemens becomes the spokesperson for the erotic element in Hatari’s performance: he symbolizes light, life, sex, against the darkness and dryness of Matthías.

Einar, the drummer gimp, is a silent character. But then again, he always wears a studded leather mask which hides the lower half of his face, limiting his communication possibilities. Contact lenses blacken his sclera, or narrow the pupil, so that his features are unrecognizable and the only noticeable trait is his gigantic stature.

During performances Einar beats on the drums with a metronome’s stolidity, or he spins around a spiked mace. Sometimes he just stands motionless behind the band and stares at the audience, like a fearsome Golem disguised as a sex toy. The only sentence he has spoken so far, the one time Klemens generously opened the zipper over his mouth, is the prophetic title of the song Hatrið mun sigra.

Some dancers who collaborate in Hatari’s performances complete the whole picture: the elegant and lanky slave Sigurður Andrean Sigurgeirsson and the pale, robotic dominatrices Sólbjört Sigurðardóttir and Ástrós Guðjónsdóttir. Female dancers are no less dressed than men, and even if they happen to interact with male performers, they never do so in an allusive way: in Hatari’s choreography the sensuality remains exclusively homoerotic and masculine.

Rise and scandal at the Eurovision

So how could this freakshow ever get to arrive at Eurovision?
The first step was to win the Söngvakeppnin, the Icelandic musical competition where every year the national representative at Eurovision is chosen.
The band’s participation in a television pop competition made a sensation, not only because so far the band only played the underground scene, but also because Hatari in theory just split up – with a farewell concert and a press statement on Iceland Music News (the “most honest information channel in Iceland“, actually another fictitious company of theirs). The motivation behind the split up is the aknwledgemtn that their pojects has failed: “We could not bring an end to capitalism, in the two years we gave ourselves“. But this farewell lasted just ten days.
Their taking part in Söngvakeppnin was announced with a promotional video designed to reassure the event’s pop audience: in the video, the smiling group is dressed in middle-class clothes (Einar’s without his trademark mask, for the first time ) and gets together to eat a cake. In order to make this family picture more intimate, Klemens’ daughter also participates, along with the daughter of Einar and Sólbjört, who are engaged in private life.
Did Hatari become a family-friendly and bourgeois band? Not exactly: the script of the video is a copycat of the electoral campaign of Bjarni Benediktsson, a controversial politician who devotes himself to cake design.

When, during the award ceremony, Hatari was proclaimed the winner, taking everyone by surprise, Matthías nodded condescendingly and repeated Hatari’s leitmotiv: “Everything’s according to the plan“. Capitalism shall be dismantled starting from the Eurovision contest, he reasoned, since having Hatari as national representative will at least cause the collapse of the Icelandic economy. Hatari already prepared an apology letter to the government, in case of victory.

So let’s get back to the Eurovision, a festival that supports peace and friendship among peoples. The 2019 edition took place in Israel, in Tel Aviv, in the scenario of an occupation that is not at all peaceful and inclusive.
It was clear that Hatari was the ideal candidate to exploit this paradox, and the band was seen as an inconvenient competitor since their first public statements. The group clamied to be backed by an imaginary sponsor, a carbonated water called SodaDream – which echoes the name of the Israeli brand SodaStream but which unlike the latter “has never operated in any kind of occupied territory“, as Hatari was eager to specify.
A video appeared in which the band challenged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a match of glíma (Icelandic wrestling), raffling Icelandic or Israeli territories to be colonized at will by the winner.

In the European Broadcasting Union headquarters, anxiety was growing about Hatari’s stunts and interviews: what is this “plan” they were constantly talking about? Were they planning to disregard the competition guidelines?
Warned by the EBU, Hatari agreed to change their attitude: they switched to a more glittering look, and shunned any question that could can be seen as political, including the ones about their favorite foods. They made it clear that their song Hatrið mun sigra wasn’t really meant to incite hatred, but rather to inspire the same spirit of union at the base of Eurovision: an invitation to love, before Hatari’s dystopia might come true.

Everyone began to relax. All in all, maybe Hatari were just a clique of funny jokers, and any Eurovision edition must have their “freak” contestants. As the final evening approached, it seemed clear enough that no such thing as “the plan” really existed. The very idea of bringing capitalism to an end was nothing but a joke.

But then, just as the final score was being announced, the unthinkable happened. While the band was to appear live from the Eurovision’s “green room”, a second before going on air, Matthias exchanged a quick nod with Klemens.
He then extracted from one of his kinky boots some scarves decorated with the Palestinian flag, which the band secretly managed to smuggle past the Israeli military checkpoints.

As soon as it was announced that Iceland had gained tenth place, and as the crowd booed, security broke in to seize the scarves. Meanwhile, on Hatari’s Instagram profile, a giant Palestine flag appeared, while on YouTube a new videoclip was published: a collaboration with Palestinian gay artist Bashar Murad, shot in the desert of Jericho.

Male intimacy, the ultimate provocation

Besides their transparent political alignment, and having the nerve to remind the Eurovision audience that we do not live in the best possible world, Hatari also offered one final provocation – a perhaps more subtle but insidious provocation, destined to polarize and upset even their fans: the emotional and physical harmony between Klemens and Matthías.

In public appearances Klemens and Matthías coordinate perfectly their gestures and words, finishing each other’s sentences and sometimes even talking in sync. Yet sometimes the dynamics of domination and submission they exhibit during their musical performances seem to reverse: one of their running gags during the interviews is Klemens whispering some words in the ear of his “master” Matthías, who then just reports them impassively.

Still, what’s really confusing to the public is not even this inversion of dom/sub roles, but rather the peculiar intimacy between the two characters.
Klemens often leans against Matthías and reclines his head on his partner’s shoulder; Matthías, on the other hand, holds his friend to his chest, wraps him in his arms with a protective attitude.


The two singers claim to have a special, intense and long-standing relationship: Klemens supports and encourages the stoic Matthías to express himself completely, while Matthías acts like a shield and safe haven for that “very unconstrained emotional being”. They are two opposites completing each other, the feminine and the masculine, the Yin and the Yang.
Yet – and here is where gender prejudice arise – the two singers are cousins, childhood friends and above all heterosexuals.

The reactions are of dismay. “Impossible! Are they bisexual? Is it just a hoax? They must be lovers! ”
It seems that the public prefers to imagine a homosexual incest, rather than admitting that two heterosexual males can share such a mutual trust and fondness for physical contact; the affection and tenderness Klemens and Matthias show during their effusions is an even stronger taboo than homosexuality, as it seems to question the traditional and all too fragile concept of masculinity.

In spite of all their paraphernalia, their trickster attitude, their parodistic smoke screens and raw, gloomy aesthetics, Hatari’s real message lies in the group dynamics, which stand out as a true antidote. They give each other strength and courage, they trust in one another, they consciously abandon their bodies in the hands of their fellow members. They know how to nurture each other’s most unruly and dark sides, and how to mix them as if they were ingredients of a cake “full of love, but a bit sticky“.

Hatari’s quixotic struggle against capitalism is perhaps just another one of their jokes; yet if we want to avoid living in the toxic and deadly world they foreshadow, our only tools are empathy, trust, respect, bonding.
We just need someone to accept us, support us and – why not – cuddle us, without fear of ridicule, without it making us feel less masculine; here lies the strength we need to express ourselves.
And when self-expression, creativity and vitality are allowed to shine, then hatred cannot prevail.

Heaven is full of perverts

Ayzad is one of the biggest Italian experts in alternative sexuality and BDSM, author of several books on the subject. My respect for his work is unconditional: even if you are not into whips or bondage, my advice is to follow him anyway, because his explorations of the galaxies of extreme sex often entail innovative viewpoints and intuitions on all sexuality, on the psychology of relationships, on the semantics of eroticism and on the narratives we tell ourselves while we think we are simply making love. Addressing these issues in a meticulous yet ironic way, his cartography of the weirdest sexual practices offers lots of fun, awe and many surprises.
I met him the night before the opening of Rome BDSM Conference, where he was lecturing, and he kindly agreed to pen a report for Bizzarro Bazar on this unusual event.

_____

The Rome BDSM Conference report

by Ayzad

I spent the last few days surrounded by people in tears. Which was to be expected, since the setting was the largest BDSM convention in Europe. The surprising part, in fact, was the reason of their crying – but we’ll get to it later.

The third edition of the Rome BDSM Conference was held in a nice suburban hotel set in the farthest possible environment from the romantic imagery one usually associates with the Eternal City. The area is so existentially dreadful to be the subject of an actual gag in a rather famous Italian movie, where not even the overly optimistic protagonist can find anything good to it. Although I had been there the for the previous edition already, the mismatch with common expectations was no less bizarre – and would prove to be but the first of many during the kinky weekend.

What could be shocking for most people, who generally identify erotic deviations with crass porn or with the 50 Shades of Grey phenomenon, is that a sadomasochists’ convention doesn’t look that different from any corporate event or professional gathering. The lobby placards that point the attendees to the conference halls sit side by side with the indications for boring accountancy quarterly meetings, people wear nametags on a lanyard not unlike at an orthodontics exhibition, and exhausted-looking participants sneak out to the lobby bar to catch their breath – and the occasional nap in a corner armchair.
Ties and power suits are a rare sight among the casual outfits preferred by most, yet fetish clothing is equally uncommon. You don’t really see more naughty high heels or suggestive details in the common areas than you would on any given working day: the few discreet slave collars and corsets are largely offset by regular t-shirts and jeans.

The people themselves, on the other hand, are striking in their diversity. Besides their geographical provenience (foreigners outnumber Italians, puzzling the organization), it is apparent that this bunch is happily unburdened by the anxiety of conforming to social standards. Same sex couples mingle with a lack of care so refreshingly alien from the unending controversy fabricated by the local media and politicians around equal rights; several unapologetically oversized persons who’d be frowned upon in another milieu are accepted just as much as the coolest fetish models here, and the same goes for the random disabled ones. Twentysomethings mix with seniors on polite yet equal terms. The situation closely reminded me of naturist resorts, where nakedness is quickly forgotten as you instinctively see people for their human essence and value, not their appearance.

As a matter of fact, this aspect of the Conference has a tendency to pull the rug from under your feet whenever you stop and consider the situation from an outsider’s perspective. «Wait, am I actually discussing anal fisting with a Slovakian asexual surgeon and a girl who’s barely one third of my own age and identifies as a bratty pony?» It took the better part of one day, for example, for me to realize that I had been talking with a trans person, even if this was pretty apparent: I simply hadn’t given this aspect the littlest thought. On a similar note, once you are immersed in such environment it takes a little while to notice that sitting in a workshop dedicated to the various techniques to safely penetrate a woman with a bayonet, or watching a lesson about biting people, isn’t exactly normal – even for me. Because yes: of course the BDSM Conference is a pretty hands-on affair too.

The event itself takes place in the convention area of the hotel, consisting of several lecture rooms set along a hallway where kinky artisans sell whips, collars, floggers, leather locking cuffs and other wicked toys. This year they shared the space with an exhibition featuring the photos from an art contest organized by the largest Italian leather association, whose winner was announced during the gala dinner held on the second day of the Conference.
The program offered over eighty workshops, each of them one hour and a half long. Presenters come from all over Europe, Israel and the USA (and Japan, in the previous editions), and this is where the similarities with other conventions end.

In the attendees-only area of the hotel participants remained indeed cheerful and civil, but the sounds coming from behind the classes doors often left no doubt on the nature of the lessons. Whip cracks and loud moans mixed with laughter and the occasional yelp, as the workshops continued with a barrage of bizarre titles. Violet wands, what to do with electricity ran side to side with The culture of consent; you could jump from Negotiating a scene to Artistic cutting or the rather technical Progressions for freestyle suspension bondage; high concept classes such as The reality of total power exchange relationships, Destructuring a BDSM scene or my own Polyamory and BDSM coexisted with the definitely down-to-earth The ups and downs of anal play and Needleplay for sadists. Other topics included fetishes, psychology, kinbaku, safety, communication, instruments and subjects as exotic as erotic tickling and the semantics of sex. The one thing you couldn’t find anywhere were the chudwahs.

Chudwah’ stands for Clueless Heterosexual Dominant Wannabe, a portmanteau indicating the sort of troglodytes who plague kinky communities both on- and offline thinking that a loud voice and a snarl are all it takes to bring home hot partners willing to provide oral sex and housekeeping in exchange for a few face slaps. They cannot conceive that BDSM is an art that in order to be safe and pleasurable requires dedication, much less actual study.
All the Conference participants were definitely committed to bring their game to a higher level instead, so they behaved like proper scholars. This made the workshops an especially surreal experience, with people keenly taking notes as desperate interpreters struggled to find the appropriate words to translate speeches about topics as improbable as erotic ageplay, extreme mindfuck, traditional Japanese bondage or the historical origin of a flogger flourish in Reinassance Italy. Trust me when I say that few things in life are weirder than finding yourself at the end of a class compiling a feedback form and wondering with a fellow student whether the genital suturing demonstration should get four or five stars.

No matter how apparently absurd the situation, everyone was seriously committed to learning and sharing, because this sort of knowledge immediately translates into pleasure and safety once you hit the bedroom – or the dungeon. Extreme erotic literacy took absolute priority throughout the event, keeping the discussion going all the time. Even on the third day, when everybody was positively exhausted, the bilingual conversation during lunch focused for example on the comparative merits of the lecturing style of two presenters who had both tackled erotic humiliation in their lessons. Everyone agreed that the shock of feeling seriously humiliated does help to shed your everyday persona and give yourself permission to leave inhibitions behind. One teacher however had carefully built a safe mindspace to explore embarrassment, while the other had subjected his partner to an extremely degrading session which many attendees found plainly abusive. A heated yet educated debate ensued, and it would have continued if it wasn’t for yet another set of classes coming up and demanding our attention. But it wasn’t just work and no play, of course.

You cannot expect to corral hundreds of kinksters in a secluded locations without them getting to have fun in their own unique ways. The retreat program thus included two parties: one for the attendees only and a larger one the night after, open to outsiders as well. They were both held in the large, warehouse-like rooms where the bondage and singletail workshops had taken place during the day, due to their major space requirements. The same carpeted floors that normally accomodated sleep-inducing corporate presentations were cleared of conference chairs and outfitted with an impressive array of St. Andrew’s crosses, whipping benches, cages, fisting slings, pillories and other unsettling furniture. An immense structure built with the kind of tubes used for construction scaffoldings looked like the biggest jungle gym ever, but it was meant as a support for multiple suspension bondages.

I won’t delve in any depth on the parties. What really set them apart from many analogous play nights was simply being surrounded by the very same people you had met red-eyed at breakfast, then as diligent students during the day, then slacking off at the bar or making their moves in the lobby, then elegantly (or outrageously) dressed for the gala dinner, and now flaunting their latex and leather outfits as they writhed in pain and delight in the dimly-lit halls. As I queued with them again at the pancake and juice stations the morning after, I felt sort of voyeuristically privileged for the chance I was given to see these strangers so thoroughly naked in all their daily masks and without, candidly exposing sides of their character that only spouses would witness otherwise – and not even all of them at that.
If 24/7 intimacy begets deep bonding already, the awareness that everyone was there for their passion for extreme eroticism took things one step further. With our psychosexual phantasms exposed from the start, the need to conceal and sublimate our libido simply disappeared, with three curious effects.

The former was the utter absence of the sort of neurotic behavior that’s so common throughout our daily lives; repressed sexual urges and thoughts are the overwhelming cause of personal issues, after all. I venture to say that the rare uneasy persons I stumbled into all appeared to harbor problems of a different nature.
Another peculiarity was that lechery and creepiness were nowhere to be seen. People eyed each other, sure, but erotic proposals were offered and received with a characteristic lack of drama, just like refusals got gallantly accepted. Why wrapping a normal, healthy part of life in the shroud of anxiety, indeed? The contrast with the intensely sexualized imagery spewing from the few television screens and the magazines in the hotel lobby highlighted how “normal” society twists the joy of sex into its evil twin – and how weird it is that we ended up believing this dreadful charade, often missing entirely the point of sexuality itself.

The latter and possibly most fascinating effect of the unusual cohabitation was to witness the subtle changes in the participants’ body language. The more the event got underway, the more people looked relaxed and accepting of their own bodies – including the bruises and marks that were gladly worn not unlike actual badges of honor. Far from the frigid Helmut Newton stereotypes that are still so prominent in BDSM imagery, smiles and hugs abounded; movements became softer and more deliberate; people literally had learned not to be afraid of each other and of themselves. The general attitude changed as well: instead of being always ready to criticize or get annoyed by every minor glitch as it often happens in our everyday lives, on this particular occasion everybody tended to be more inclined towards being on the lookout for whatever opportunity of pleasure – be it a new erotic practice or a simple bit of nice conversation – ignoring the rest. As a sexologist friend commented during the previous edition, anyone who had came in looking for perversion and depravity would feel disconcerted by the tenderness displayed by the attendees.

And this is why, come the end of that three-days extravaganza, so many participants were crying at the closing cerimony. For these outcasts who finally found their home and tribe, this final moment becomes so emotionally loaded that they even bet on how long will it take for the burly organizer himself to burst into tears during his thank you speech. He is not alone in that, though: just imagine how would you feel if you had finally spent a heavenly weekend, and you knew you had to wait another whole year to feel among kindred spirits again. Imagine what it is like to have experienced a perfect world – free of prejudices, ignorance, pettiness, fear, competition, hate – and having to leave it behind to step back into the mundane mess we all suffer. Imagine how strange it is to realize that life would be so much better if only more people grew less scared of their own sexuality, and how odd to discover this at a kinky convention.

Kegadoru, gli idoli feriti

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Il quartiere Harajuku di Tokyo è famoso in tutto il mondo per le sue Harajuku girls, ragazze dai vestiti stravaganti, multicolori e inevitabilmente kawaii, sempre pronte a capitalizzare qualsiasi cosa faccia tendenza al momento. In questa fucina di mode alternative potete vedere sfilare sui marciapiedi decine di gothic lolita, oppure adolescenti vestite con abiti tradizionali mischiati con capi di marca, o ancora giovani agghindati come se fossero ad un festival di cosplay.

Una moda degli ultimi anni è quella dei kegadoru, ossia gli “idoli feriti”, cioè giovani donne che mostrano segni di traumi fisici, bendaggi e garze oftalmiche o di primo soccorso.

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Forse stanno soltanto cercando di attirare l’attenzione dei maschi orientali. Ma in realtà ricoprirsi di bende o fasciarsi un arto come se si fosse appena usciti dall’ospedale è un modo di strizzare l’occhio ad uno dei feticismi sessuali più in voga in Giappone: il medical fetish ha infatti sempre occupato una nicchia piuttosto apprezzata nell’Olimpo delle fantasie nipponiche, e non soltanto.

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In effetti esistono riviste erotiche specializzate sul tema, in cui belle e procaci modelle sfoggiano fasciature mediche, tutori ed altri apparecchi terapeutici o protesici. Cosa affascina il pubblico maschile in queste fotografie?

A prima vista sembrerebbe controintuitivo: gli evoluzionisti ci hanno sempre insegnato (vedi ad esempio questo articolo) che, seppur inconsciamente, scegliamo i nostri partner per la loro prestanza e salute fisica – segnali di maggiori chance che la procreazione vada a buon fine.
Ma in questo particolare caso diversi fattori entrano in gioco.

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Innanzitutto, le bende. Le fasciature che costringono il corpo, nell’ambito feticistico, rimandano al bondage e alle sue corde, ma con tutta la portata simbolica del contesto clinico. E tutti conosciamo bene il potere di un camice bianco sulla fantasia erotica: il mondo della medicina, in virtù del suo focalizzarsi sul corpo, è entrato prepotentemente nel comune immaginario sessuale, dall’infantile “gioco del dottore”, all’icona pop dell’infermiera sexy, fino ai feticismi che trasformano alcuni strumenti medici in oggetti di desiderio (speculum, clisteri, ecc.).

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In secondo luogo, il concetto di kegadoru fa leva sull’istinto di protezione. In questo senso, è un tipo di roleplay simile a quello che esiste, in ambito BDSM, nel cosiddetto rapporto Daddy/Little, dove il maschio è figura paterna e premurosa (ma anche severa durante le necessarie “punizioni”) e la femmina diviene una bambina, viziosa e incorreggibile ma oltremodo bisognosa di cure e attenzioni. Qui invece, la ragazza occulta parte del suo viso e del suo corpo sotto le bende, e questa sua “imperfezione”, oltre ad esaltarne la bellezza (attraverso il classico effetto “vedo – non vedo”), domanda premura e tenerezza.

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Infine, i kegadoru hanno anche una chiara connotazione masochistica. La donna, in questo gioco, è molto più che indifesa – è addirittura ferita; non può quindi opporre alcuna resistenza. Eppure nel suo esibire le proprie fasciature in pose maliziose, come fossero un tipo particolare di intimo o una divisa fetish, sta evidentemente accettando e scegliendo il suo ruolo.

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Tutto questo contribuisce al complesso fascino degli injured idols, che ha ossessionato almeno due grandi artisti: Trevor Brown (di cui abbiamo parlato in questo articolo) e Romain Slocombe, fotografo, regista, pittore e scrittore parigino che ha fatto delle ragazze “ferite” le sue muse ispiratrici. Ecco alcune delle sue migliori foto.

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Letto ad aspirazione

– Amanti sotto vuoto –

Parliamo oggi di un accessorio sessuale davvero particolare utilizzato nell’ambito del BDSM.

Il BDSM è un acronimo che comprende tutta una variegata e ampia gamma di pratiche sessuali: le quattro lettere rimandano infatti a Bondage e Disciplina, Dominazione e Sottomissione, Sadismo e Masochismo. L’elemento fondamentale è il rapporto fra il ruolo del dominatore e del sottomesso, rapporto che provoca piacere e soddisfazione ad entrambi; come poi questo rapporto si sviluppi, si consolidi o si trasformi nel tempo e in quali declinazioni si configuri sta soltanto alle personalità dei due soggetti.

Come è noto, il BDSM può esprimersi in giochi molto “leggeri”, ma può arrivare a pratiche estreme fino a vere e proprie torture. Sempre regolate, comunque, dall’utilizzo di safe words (parole concordate per indicare al partner che sta esagerando e per interrompere immediatamente il gioco), e dai principi fondamentali di sicurezza espressi dall’espressione inglese SSC – Safe, Sane, Consensual (Sicuro, Sano, Consensuale).

Una peculiarità del mondo BDSM è un’attenzione davvero marcata per l’estetica. L’utilizzo di abiti in latex (nero o colorato) esalta le curve del corpo, lo rende lucido e sinuoso, e l’associazione con il metallo brillante delle borchie, gli anelli, i collari e tutto l’armamentario sado-maso ha fatto entrare questo tipo di immaginario anche nel mondo della moda (fetish fashion) e della pubblicità.

Per gli amanti di questo tipo di pratiche, è un piacere indispensabile l’utilizzo di mezzi di contenimento del sottomesso, vale a dire degli accessori per immobilizzare il partner, prima di sottoporlo ai piccoli e grandi tormenti previsti dal copione della propria fantasia sessuale. Si può andare dalle classiche (e banali!) manette, alle complesse geometrie di corde ereditate dall’arte del bondage giapponese, alla pesantezza delle catene o al minimalismo del nastro adesivo in gomma.

Ma la forma di immobilizzazione più particolare e poco conosciuta è il cosiddetto vacuum bed, letteralmente “letto sotto vuoto”. Si tratta di una struttura (plastica o metallica) che tiene tesi due “fogli” di lattice abbastanza ampi da coprire interamente una persona. Il sottomesso si stende fra i due strati di lattice, e può respirare attraverso un tubo collegato con l’esterno. A questo punto, tramite un aspirapolvere o una macchina per il vuoto, l’aria contenuta fra i due lembi di latex viene aspirata, lasciando la vittima completamente bloccata nella gomma, incapace di reagire e istantaneamente immobilizzata.

Il vacuum bed ha alcuni svantaggi che hanno impedito un successo veramente ampio di questo attrezzo. Innanzitutto, è costoso (dai 600 € in su), ingombrante e molto delicato. Il lattice teso è continuamente a rischio di tagli e rotture, il rumore dell’aspirapolvere può essere una distrazione fastidiosa, le intelaiature in plastica sono talvolta troppo fragili e non reggono alla pressione. Inoltre vi sono alcuni pericoli per la salute di chi è “risucchiato” all’interno del letto: la respirazione è particolarmente difficile, il caldo e l’impossibilità di una normale sudorazione all’interno della gomma impediscono sessioni particolarmente lunghe, e la sensazione di claustrofobia può divenire più terrorizzante di quanto ci si aspettasse.

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Nonostante questi problemi, per molti appassionati il “letto” rimane uno dei metodi più perfezionati di immobilizzazione. Inoltre è innegabile che, fissato nel lattice nella posizione concordata, il corpo del partner divenga una sorta di opera d’arte, con tanto di cornice – e questo ancora una volta prova quanto l’estetica sia fondamentale per gli amanti del BDSM.

Il solletico

Cosa c’è di strano nel solletico? Lo proviamo fin da bambini, alle volte ci fa ridere, altre volte può darci francamente fastidio. Nulla di misterioso. E invece il solletico è uno degli aspetti più sorprendenti e meno compresi dell’esperienza umana.

Innanzitutto bisogna distinguere due tipi di solletico: la knismesi e la gargalesi. Dietro questi due termini esoterici si celano i due tipi di solletico che tutti noi conosciamo bene. La knismesi è quel tipo di solletico che avviene quando la pelle viene sfiorata appena; si avverte in qualsiasi parte del corpo, è un leggero senso di prurito e di attivazione nervosa, e può essere particolarmente eccitante dal punto di vista sessuale. La gargalesi, invece, è il solletico inflitto con una pressione maggiore, ed è localizzato solo in determinate aree del corpo – pianta dei piedi, ascelle, ventre, ecc. È quello, per intenderci, che ci fa ridere in modo incontrollato e ci fa contorcere nel tentativo di evitarlo.

Ora, la parte misteriosa è che non sappiamo a cosa serva, né come funzioni veramente il solletico. In parte sembra correlato alle vie nervose che si occupano del dolore, ma esistono alcuni casi di pazienti che pur non potendo avvertire dolore (a causa di danni alla spina dorsale) sentono benissimo il solletico. Attraverso quali vie si propaghi, quindi, e quale sia il suo effettivo valore evolutivo, è tutt’oggi materia di speculazione.

Ma le sorprese non finiscono qui. Anche in campo sessuale (e se seguite il nostro blog, ve lo potevate aspettare) il solletico è protagonista di un feticismo tutto suo. Il tickling, ovvero il provocare solletico al partner, spesso immobilizzato per impedirgli di sfuggire alla “tortura”, è una pratica piuttosto diffusa, tanto che in Giappone è considerata parte integrante ed essenziale dei preliminari.


Il tickling si pratica direttamente con le dita sul corpo del partner, legato con corde o cinture, oppure mediante l’uso di strumenti come piume, spazzole, forchette, penne a biro, spazzolini da denti, arnesi appuntiti, o altri oggetti adatti allo scopo. Viene considerato una forma lieve di tortura durante una seduta di bondage.

Quello che pochi sanno, però, è che il solletico nei secoli è stato usato effettivamente come una tortura vera e propria. In due momenti storici diversi fu legalizzato come una delle principali pene corporali. Nell’antica Cina veniva praticato mediante l’uso di aghi. Il famoso “supplizio cinese” consisteva nel punzecchiare la pianta del piede della vittima per ore ed ore. L’aguzzino era bravo nel provocare un misto di solletico e dolore, al quale la vittima stremata finiva per cedere. Questo tormento era riservato alle sole donne appartenenti alle “dinastie nobili”.

Nel Medioevo, in più stati europei venne istituita dall’Inquisizione la “tortura della capra”, riservata per lo più a donne accusate di stregoneria o di adulterio. Questo tormento consisteva nell’imprigionare alla gogna i piedi nudi della vittima, cospargerli “accuratamente” sotto le piante e tra le dita di un unto ricavato da una miscela di sale e lardo per poi lasciare libere due o più capre, tenute rigorosamente a digiuno da alcuni giorni, di leccarli voracemente nella parte sensibile. Anche qui i risultati erano scontati, la lingua ruvida lasciata agire per molto tempo seviziava atrocemente la vittima che quasi mai riusciva a resistere a tanto. Nei casi più gravi la capra veniva lasciata infierire fino a consumare lo strato della pelle, per far sì che dal solletico si passasse al dolore. Esistevano varianti coeve, che implicavano l’uso di cani e gatti e altri animali domestici, attratti dal miele cosparso sul corpo della vittima.

Il tickling ancora oggi viene praticato come forma di tortura in alcuni paesi. Anche se non palesemente dichiarato risulta presente nei metodi di tortura segnalati e portati a conoscenza da Amnesty International. Sono storicamente documentati due casi in cui il prolungato solletico ha portato alla morte le vittime, e almeno uno in cui la tortura ha causato la follia.

Un’ultima annotazione per i viaggiatori: nello stato della Virginia, negli USA, è illegale provocare solletico a una donna. Si rischiano denunce penali.

el periodo medievale, in più stati europei venne istituita dall’Inquisizione la “tortura della capra”, riservata per lo più a donne accusate di stregoneria o di adulterio. Questo tormento consisteva nell’imprigionare alla gogna i piedi nudi della vittima, cospargerli “accuratamente” sotto le piante e tra le dita di un unto ricavato da una miscela di sale e lardo per poi lasciare libere due o più capre, tenute rigorosamente a “digiuno” da alcuni giorni, di leccarli voracemente nella parte sensibile. Anche qui i risultati erano scontati, la lingua ruvida lasciata agire per molto tempo seviziava atrocemente la vittima che quasi mai riusciva a resistere a tanto, inoltre nei casi più gravi la capra veniva lasciata infierire fino a consumare lo strato della pelle, per far sì che dal solletico si passasse al dolore. Esistevano tuttavia, delle varianti coeve, meno conosciute ma più “redditizie” di questa tortura. La procedura consisteva nel denudare completamente la vittima e legarla in posizione di croce di Sant’Andrea su di una grande tavola in legno poggiata direttamente sul terreno. Qui gli “aguzzini” cospargevano i punti più sensibili (seni, ascelle, fianchi, genitali, addome, gambe, oltre ovviamente alle piante dei piedi) delle vittime con un nettare dolcissimo e del miele, poi liberavano e lasciavano che svariati “animali domestici” come pecore, capre, cani e gatti mordicchiassero e leccassero voracemente le parti evidenziate. I risultati si ottenevano dopo pochi minuti, le vittime sottoposte e straziate da un solletico “insopportabile”, perdevano totalmente l’autocontrollo e si arrendevano subito. Talvolta i torturatori eccedevano non ritirando gli animali che persistevano nella loro attività…. per punire maggiormente i malcapitati/e che, tendevano letteralmente ad “impazzire” esposti ad una tale sollecitazione.