Big Ed's Place

Wow.

That could pretty much be my review, except that I really need to provide details. Suffice it to say, I’m impressed.

The Upper Floor is a site dedicated to putting, on camera, an attempt to have a bdsm community that can live the 24/7 dream I posited was just an ideal. It’s the brainchild of Peter Acworth, the owner of Kink.com and other websites under the kink.com umbrella. Mr. Acworth (sorry, I just can’t bring myself to refer to him by his first name. It feels wrong) made a ton of money with kink.com, bought The Armory in San Francisco, and decided to see if he could create a community where bdsm principles really were in place 24/7. The results are… mind-blowing.

The site mostly consists of videos of bdsm scenes and parties that have taken place on The Upper Floor. These videos include edited movies, raw footage, stills, and live feeds. The scenes include slave training and other exercises. A couple of examples are below (click on them to expand). There are also discussion forums and extensive posts on the bdsm community.

First, I should say that I’m impressed with the professionalism of the site. I’d heard through the grapevine that kink.com paid its performers far better than the mainstream porn industry. They also treat them well, to the point of putting the explicit rights for models and rules for directors on the site. That means that every viewer becomes a de facto enforcer–”was this submissive treated right?”, “Did the director stick to the rules?”, etc.. Yes, stuff could have happened off camera–except for the live feeds. I really like this level of accountability.

I also think the video quality is delightfully high. No complaints at all there. Additionally, The Upper Floor has been decorated with an Edwardian theme and it really brings a sense of the mood to the events and parties. I can very easily imagine enjoying a drink or a conversation while casually watching a whipping occurring nearby. The videos are beautiful.

As for the scenes depicted–they struck me as truly representative of the bdsm community. Not everyone is a gorgeous model, but that doesn’t prevent them from being a great player. I included a photo of a guy below who won’t exactly be appearing in any Playgirls anytime soon, but he fits right into the scene here. The energy crackles as I remember it in the dungeons–far more casual and constant than the overacting one often sees in vanilla community depictions of bdsm. The sex is also real. Oral, anal, and vaginal sex are all out in the open and depicted in their glory as they happen, with very little of the artifice of much of today’s porn.

It feels authentic. More importanty, it feels honest.

So like I said–wow. I’m impressed with The Upper Floor and am enjoying poking around and learning more.

You can check out The Upper Floor yourself by following the link here.

In my experience in the bsdm world, most people just “play.” Bdsm may be an occasional or frequent part of their sex life, but it doesn’t define their life. This is consistent with how most people live their lives. Sex may be important or unimportant, but it is not the majority of their life.

There are, of course, exceptions where sex is the majority of a person’s life. Sex workers and addicts immediately come to mind. I’ve found very few people who aspire to either of those roles or lifestyles—a few natural courtesans and tantrikas but that’s about it. For most people, career, family or other hobbies are much more defining than what they do in the bedroom. Most people don’t aspire for sex to be more than “play” regardless of how kinky it may be.

However, in the bdsm world, there seem to be a notable exception, which is the 24/7 sub (someone who is a submissive 24 hours a day, 7 days a week). They’re sometimes called a “lifestyle” submissive and they spend their days serving their master, much as happens in the movie Secretary. I’d originally taken this to be just another fantasy like harem fantasies—fun to enjoy in the daydream, but unworkable in reality.

Aside—yes, I know there are real harems in the world these days. However, I have yet to hear of a real one that wasn’t either a case of women being held against their will or women being paid a whole lot of money to participate. The former I find repulsive and the latter is beyond the financial reach of 99% of men, even in the wealthy West.

So I was surprised when I met my first 24/7 submissive in our bdsm club. She lived with her Master and Mistress and served their needs around the clock without question. In exchange, she was a member of the household. She turned out to be happy to discuss her life at length. Later, I watched her break up with that Master and Mistress and be collared to another Master and his wife. That latter relationship lasted a few years before it too broke up, but by then I’d left the club.

For her, the lifestyle was in part because she just couldn’t manage life on her own. Despite being in her 30’s, she couldn’t manage her money, be reliable in meeting appointments, or even do basic household chores without screwing it up. I never understood why that was true, but she fundamentally needed someone to take care of her and tell her what to do on a day by day basis.

Such day to day direction gave her life structure and helped her relax and be happy. As such, she was more than willing to do whatever her Master ordered, be it sexual or not. I saw her first Master make some very wild orders too—including loaning her out to other Dom’s from time to time. Since I never played with her myself, I don’t know what her limits were, but from her public play and the stories she told, I imagine they were pretty far out there.

One example—she was blindfolded and taken to a party. She knew there were about 20 people there and it was in a private home and she could recognize some of the voices, but that was it. She was ordered to strip naked, then bound to a chair with her hands free. Then she was told she had to masturbate to ten orgasms before she would be released, which was a lot because she was not multi-orgasmic. As she tried to come, she could hear the party going on around her as if she wasn’t there, with barely a comment about her show. When she finally managed her last orgasm after many hours of masturbating while tied up, she was untied and taken home. Her blindfold was never removed at the party and she never found out who had watched her play with her clit. She told me that despite the orgasms, it was more an ordeal than pleasurable but she did it because her Master had ordered her to.

Now I don’t know if she was a good example of those who become submissives 24/7 or not. While I met a few other submissives who said they were 24/7 at play parties, I didn’t really get a chance to know them well enough to know what that meant.

That said, I did meet another submissive who almost lived the 24/7 lifestyle. She was fully capable of living on her own and a generally well-adjusted person (at least as well-adjusted as any of us are). She lived with her Mistress and their rule was simple–the Mistress could give her an order at any time while they were both home and she had to obey it. They had a code she could use if she didn’t want to obey it for some reason, so she wasn’t as deep of a submissive as the first woman. So sometimes she’d be told to go clean the sink and would say, “Is my mistress sure?” and then get a different order. Sometimes she’d be told, “Service me. Now.” and she’d immediately drop to her knees and begin licking her mistress to an orgasm.

So what would it be like to truly live the lifestyle? I suspect I’d personally be exhausted if I had a sex slave 24/7 because I know how much energy taking care of a toddler requires. Is it something that perfectly sound submissives, without the problems of the one woman I knew well, would sign up for? I lack sufficient data. Nonetheless, of the common ‘big sexual fantasies,’ it does seem to be one that does happen from time to time.

This past weekend, some screwups by an airline resulted in my family arriving home at 2 am on a night when I had to be at work at 7:30 the next morning. I managed only four hours of sleep before the next day.

It was a challenging day, both for the sloppiness of my work and my difficulties in concentration, but also because I realized I had to watch what I said. Lack of sleep had lowered my inhibitions, much the way alcohol can.

Which got me thinking about parties, particularly college parties where it seems that lowering inhibitions is the point. They start late, they involve alcohol, there’s enough people there to get a contact high and peer pressure to do things that one might not do on one’s own. Mix in a lot of single people with a lot of hormones flowing and it’s little wonder that hooking up for sex is often the result. The question is–would the hooking up occur without the lowered inhibitions? Or would the participants balk for one reason or another?

It also got me thinking about a conversation with a swinger friend of mine. He said that swinger parties often had alcohol flowing and sometimes to the point of definite excess. At the same time, the ‘action’ often didn’t start until midnight or later. He himself admitted that sometimes he and his wife needed a drink to help ‘loosen them up’ before they were ready to play.

So… you’re going to a club, planning on having sex with people there, and yet the inhibitions still need to be lowered. Hmmm…

In contrast, the bdsm clubs are pretty strict about no alcohol. The ‘play’ can be pretty dangerous if done wrong, and the line between right and wrong isn’t that broad. For example, spank someone across the meaty part of their ass–it can feel good. Hit their tailbone, and it just hurts (and can cause damage). Those two points are only a few inches away, and if you’re standing a few feet back with a flogger, your aim had better not be compromised by those beers you had earlier.

Yes, sometimes bdsm parties don’t get started until late, but most of the ones I attended started ‘play’ well before 9pm, and you could leave at midnight (as I usually did) having seen or done plenty.

Which means the ability to lower inhibitions is completely different. And it leads me to wondering if the result is a different type of people.

For me, I had to talk myself into going to a bdsm club over several months. I had a lover/friend who was a member and introduced me to other members in a social dinner well before I took the plunge. The first time, I pretty much clung by my friend’s side. It took a few visits on my own before I truly felt comfortable enough to lower my own inhibitions and join the play.

I also didn’t drink until I was in my mid-twenties, and I’ve never been drunk to the point of being sick. Hangovers, yes, but only in my own house. And then only with very close friends, where the comradery was the point, not trying to hook up.

So… the experience of drinking late in the night to lower one’s inhibitions as a desirable act is foreign to me. Instead, when I find my inhibitions non-intentionally lowered these days, it usually means that something went horribly, badly wrong.

I was going to riff on ‘lessons learned from being a Dom’ that applied to my real life, but what I first wrote was crap. The fact is, there’s no amount of pithy sayings that will accomplish much beyond possibly making you, the reader, nod your head. I mean, the first rule of being a good Dom is paying attention. But is that really a ‘lesson’ to be applied to life at large? Honestly, there are a large number of places one can get that lesson preached.

And I don’t feel like preaching. Not only because it’s preaching but because it’s not all that effective. There’s really no true lesson like the doing. I’d read plenty, and talked plenty, but it was still an ‘oh my god’ moment when my first true submissive laid herself across my lap for her spanking. And it was still an ‘oh wow’ moment when I realized that the difference in her writhing in pleasure and her jumping in pain was about a centimeter different in where I struck her. Distilling that ‘a ha’ out of the scene and reducing it to ‘pay attention’ doesn’t really convey it in a meaningful way. Or do it justice. I had to experience it to know it. And I think that’s true of you, the reader, as well.

Does that mean I think y’all should go off and find the local bdsm club, nose around until you find some Doms that’ll show you a few tricks, play with a few subs, and see what comes out of it? Well… if you’re into it, sure. But most of you won’t.

For I’m not a natural for bdsm. I was the bullied and the overthinker. I was the one who missed out on the girl because I was too busy wondering if I should kiss her to actually do it. Pain seemed antithetical to pleasure, unless one was truly warped, and I knew I wasn’t.

But I was also hungry. I yearned for greater control over my sexuality–for a way to put a heartbeat pause between my desires and my taking of them. But not a dozen heartbeats. A good Dom knows that balance.

I also knew I needed the edge. Yes, lovemaking and ‘worshipping the Goddess’ (tantric phrase), and all of the ‘drawing us together as a couple’ has its place. But sex also encompasses the howl and the messy ragged passion in the mud. Making love is fine, but I knew I also wanted to fuck.

And I found that a good Dom walks the edge. They carry that fuck like balled lightning in a bell jar. They’re in control, but they also crackle with possibility.

I don’t always do it, but it was good to learn how. And as a result, I discovered everywhere else where walking in with that stare and that body language can make all the difference. I may not walk into a staff meeting literally carrying a whip, but if it’s important, the energy is all the same.

Amusingly, when I got into writing I learned about the Alpha concept in Romance novels. I couldn’t help chuckling. The Alpha’s a Dom without the riding crop. You don’t need the leather outside if you’ve got the bell jar inside.

Which is why I think where telling the stories has to happen. I don’t think there is much I can say in a blog post that won’t come off as flippantly trite. But maybe, maybe, readers can catch at least a taste of my experience and what I learned.

Maybe not, since there’s no guarantee that I’m a good enough wordsmith to put the tang in a reader’s mouth that I felt when I walked into the bdsm club as a regular, knowing that there were people present who wanted to play. But there’s only one way to find out. And that’s to write.

One of the most profound things I got out of my time in the bdsm community was the concept of “core fetishes.” I was at a bdsm club party one Saturday night, in that transition between the demonstration part of the meeting and the open play part. I don’t remember what sparked the conversation, but I ended up talking to a much more experienced gentleman as we stood off to the side of the crowd. I asked him about fetishes and what the scene was like (I was still a newbie, after all) and he made a comment that stuck with me.

He said that he believed there were “core fetishes” and that part of the key to sexual happiness was finding out what they were for you. These were things that always turned you on–they were core. Often, something was a turn on because it was new, but when it lost its newness, it stopped being arousing. But a core fetish never did.

This struck me as very true. I’ve known “players” and swingers who were always looking for new partners. They got bored with sex with the same person after a while and the “new” was how they got the rush. Similarly, I’ve known people who’ve burned through all sort of sexual variations, constantly trying new ones out just to see what they’re like. In fact, that seems to be a rite of passage for many people.

At the same time, even after 20+ years of being sexually active, there are things that always turn me on. Women in stockings, for example. It hasn’t gotten old for me, and when I discuss sex with other people, I often find that there’s something that’s ‘never gotten old’ for them.

Obviously, the self-knowledge helps in my sex life, but I’ve also found that it helps in my writing. What’s a character’s core fetish? With that mindset, I can add a touch of realism in a genre that so often lacks it.

In my last musing, I wondered about whether there was more taboo porn available as a result of the internet. I mentioned the ‘jolt’ that the taboo can give. I figured I should expand on that.

There’s a rush that comes with arousal and, eventually orgasm, and there’s there’s a rush that can come with sex. In particular, mixing adrenaline and testosterone (or estrogen I suppose, but being male I have no point of reference). Sherri refers to this in Chapter 26 of Friends and Benefits: “That creates adrenaline, which is a powerful cocktail when mixed with lust. It’s kind of like a speedball of heroin and cocaine.”

Now, I didn’t come up with the analogy–I stole it from Spider Robinson. But in my experience, it fits. The rush or jolt that happens when arousal is mixed with adrenaline is pretty damn potent. I’d even argue it can be addictive.

So–how does one generate that ‘speedball.’ Well, “new” sex often does it–the trepidation and uncertainty of trying something one hasn’t (or someone one hasn’t). So does bdsm, in many scenes and scenarios. Risky sex, like being in public where one could get caught certainly qualifies. And so, I believe, does playing with a taboo.

Now that doesn’t necessarily mean crossing the line and engaging in the taboo. Simply flirting with it or getting it secondhand may be enough. I think simply considering the forbidden can often be enough to add to the rush.

A great example of this, I think, is interracial sex. Now I grew up in the American West in an almost completely white suburb. Of course the few blacks and other minorities at my high school dated whites–there wasn’t anyone else for them to date. And so it really wasn’t considered a taboo. Contrast this to the American South, where a county clerk recently turned down a license for an interracial marriage. It could certainly be a taboo for Southern white women, particularly those that are older. And there’s certainly a genre of interracial “big black stud” porn that seems to have some demand. Is that because it’s a taboo turn on for some? I suspect so, even though it doesn’t do anything for me.

So, is taboo porn popular because of the speedball? I think partially. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I think it just is what it is. No better and no worse than the rest of human sexual experience.

If you look carefully, you’ll notice that none of my stories have the “nc” or “non-consent” code (codes can be found by hovering over the story or chapter links). There’s a reason for that. It squicks me and I won’t write it.

Ya see, I stopped counting the number of women I knew who’d been raped or sexually assaulted when I ran out of fingers and toes to count them on. I wasn’t even out of college when I passed that milestone. Several of my past lovers were included in that count and a few more would have made the list even after that milestone. Some had dealt with it and were doing fine. Others… the scars and wounds were there if you knew what to look for. And those wounds affected me and many other people in their lives.

The worst, honestly, was dating women who were daughters of mothers who’d been raped, but not gotten counseling or help for it. I could see behaviors that were consistent with having a past history, but it was second-hand. That made it much more subtle and insidious.

And based on my own experience, and in the reading I’ve done as a result of dealing with this history in many of the women I’ve loved, I’ve come to believe that the black and white line really is ‘consent.’ If someone doesn’t give consent, it’s rape.

Now, consent itself may have to be determined on a case by case basis. Most sexual encounters don’t have pre-arranged lists of acceptable activities that the parties have consented to do, like the bdsm community often does. In fact, I’ve never seen the awareness of consent/non-consent outside of that community. So the particulars become important and the miscommunication opportunities are vast.

For example, I know a woman (S) who joined a couple in bed, all nude. The guy was trying to talk the women into having a full blown threesome but S wasn’t sure and the guy’s partner wasn’t interested. So he rolled on top of S and penetrated her, before she had a chance to react or object. Was S raped? By my definition, yes. That doesn’t absolve her of some of the responsibility for getting into the situation, but she certainly hadn’t agreed to intercourse. And that’s where the miscommunication kicks in big time. If he’d said, “is this okay?” first, even though it wouldn’t have been sexy, it would have made a world of difference.

So with my experiences, I just can’t find non-consent erotic. It’s not a pleasure to read, nor to write. That fact that there are so many stories on the web that do center on rape or abuse, or blackmail is a bit disturbing to me, but my speculations on the authors who write these stories will have to be another post. Suffice it to say, I won’t be one of them.

Now I do have to throw in the caveat about the threat of rape or other violence. Discerning readers will note that there’s at least one story on this site that does have that threat. It was absolutely necessary for the plot and for the dramatic tension. I hope that it lacks eroticism, because that’s not what I was aiming for.