What Lies Beneath The Pain Game:
 An Interview With Cleo Dubois and Her Botttom, Lori
by  Marianne Messina

Sadomasochism seems,
 on the surface, to be a
 virtual haven for tragic
 themes and epic or
 heroic struggles. The
 complexity of the actual
 interactions, even as seen
 from the viewpoint of one
 sadist and one masochist,
 can be mind-boggling
 and can touch on
 anything from chivalric
 trust to spiritual healing.

 Cleo Dubois, the San
 Francisco Bay Area S/M
 educator and long-time
 sadist, has a new video,
 The Pain Game, which
 shows Ms. Dubois at
 work in two extremely
 intense S/M scenes.
 Since these scenes are
 real and unstaged, the  responses raw, this  window on intimate
 interaction between  sadist and masochist  inspires questions about
 what the experience  brings to each  participant.

 I had a chance to put some of these questions to Ms. Dubois and to a bottom
 named Lori, who, in the privacy of Ms. Dubois’s dungeon, has played out
 scenes like the powerful "bird/zipper" scene from The Pain Game.

 When I first thought of tragedy in S/M, I was reminded of a story Ms. Dubois
 once told about one of her many couples sessions. It came out that the wife was
 revolted by the husband's fantasy, which was cross-dressing. The wife not only
 refused to work with that fantasy but she made her husband ashamed of it.
 Ultimately they divorced. It seemed that this lack of compatibility could easily
 become a tragic element in relationships.

 "I don't think it is crucial for partners to be truly compatible in their desires," Ms.
 Dubois reported. "There are other people to connect with and share certain
 fantasy realities with. But the relationship itself has to be able to support that
 kind of openness."

 On the other hand, Lori adds, "I think acceptance is more key than anything
 else. If the partner does feel repulsed, left out, or inadequate, I see a great
 danger of other channels starting to be blocked. Or if one partner feels too much
 shame to let the other know, hidden desires can begin to block the open sharing
 and intimacy which I associate with a true partnership."

 If we look to English Literature's quintessential romantic tragedy, Romeo and
 Juliet, it seems to concur: at the heart of tragedy is lack of communication.

 "Honesty and gentleness with one's partner are of the utmost importance," Ms.
 Dubois suggests. "So are setting clear boundaries and keeping communication
 open. Not all can do that. Many choose not to open that closet door to their
 intimate fantasies. I find that really sad. Since men are the majority of clients of
 professional dominants, I encourage them to come out to their mates slowly. I
 give them tools, proper books, etc.... Many do not want to try. They’re too
 afraid of being judged and rejected--even for craving a simple spanking or
 4-point restraint. What I do find is that sharing can and will lead to a greater
 intimacy."

 When you speak to "players" about the rewards of S/M play, you get responses
 that focus on the expansive nature of the experience; it's an opening process,
 which can lead to a sense of freedom or even growth.

 "The healing and growth that I have experienced has to do with stretching
 aspects of myself and discovering new ones," says Lori. Like Creed, the
 beautiful blond bottom in The Pain Game, Lori has been both Top and bottom,
 controller and receiver. "I can experience and act from a place of my own
 power in a more expanded and comfortable way in having embraced my Top
 energy. The bottom side has softened my protective shield. I am more willing to
 be vulnerable and open to my experience in ways that I was not before. I am
 more able to take in experiences, both positive and negative, and channel them
 through me; whereas, before, I believe I was more apt to battle and wrestle
 them with my brain."

 In The Pain Game, Ms. Dubois attaches two rows of feathers to Creed's back
 by means of clothespins, and when the two rows are in place, they present the
 visual effect of wings. Ms. Dubois considers this shamanic "bird scene" one of
 her favorites and performs it often, fondly referring to the bottom as "my bird."
 Lori has also been Ms. Dubois's bird, but she calls the scene a "zipper scene"
 because the feathered rows are ultimately pulled off in one motion, like a zipper.

 "The buildup that started with applying the clothespins," Lori reports, "started
 me going into a trance type of state. With the release of the zippers, I
 experienced something like an explosion of fire, then waves of physical feeling,
 emotional feeling, and euphoria. Afterwards, there was an experience of floating,
 not so much in a soft way, but a soaring kind of high. In part, there is the
 physiological and spiritual components, which have to do with the opening of
 trust and channels of energy between [Top and bottom], and with the entering of
 this trusting and open space within myself. There is the confrontation of fear
 within myself, and the conquering of the fear--fear of pain, fear that I will not be
 able to handle what is being done, fear of disappointing. And with the
 conquering of this, there is the elation of letting go."

 Like Lori, Ms. Dubois is also familiar with both sides of power exchange. In her
 first bottoming experience, Ms. Dubois was asked to kneel and hold two
 swords for as long as she could. "When my arms could not handle them any
 more, I was ready to submit, to surrender. And there was no shame. Since,
 from my teens, I was always in charge, this was a great relief, a new feeling I so
 much needed. Consensual expression of S/M became the key to letting go of
 old pains."

 Ms. Dubois has spent time in Malaysia studying body rituals that involve
 extreme piercing, often fastening objects directly to the skin. "I watched entire
 families support their sons and daughters as the young people offered their
 bodies to the ritual. When I returned to the U.S., and with the intent of healing, I
 danced with bells, fruits, or balls sewn on my skin or I pulled against hooks
 pierced through the skin of my upper chest--the heart chakra--centering on the
 sensations and letting them take me where I needed to go." For her, this space is
 "a place of stillness where I am bigger than my everyday reality. Burdens of my
 inner busy mind stop. Beauty just is, and there's a feeling of oneness with life."

 Having looked at these primal traditions, Ms. Dubois sees a much deeper
 significance in S/M practice than do many professional dommes. "Vision
 questing," as Ms. Dubois thinks of it, "where mind and body get to surrender, is
 often my intent when I do body rituals (in which I am the Top and the bottom),
 like in the ball dance. If I am granted to open up to the powers that be, I am
 grateful for the experience. In the zipper scenes, the image that came to my mind
 has to do with Kali. The destructive energy that is also loving, and the removal
 of the "skin" as a necessary part of growth and development."

 The bird/zipper scene from The Pain Game, then, has little in common with
 traditional S/M video imagery. "It brings up more of a primal sense, a stripping
 away of outer convention to a more elemental, exposed, and natural self."

 It is hard for the uninitiated to think of pain, from which we shrink in normal life,
 in terms of an opening or freeing experience. A good part of this is due to the
 way pain and dominance are often connected to a certain "meanness of spirit."
 So it's important to first see physical pain and emotional pain as existing on
 independent platforms, or coming from different places. It's for this reason that
 the Top's "intent" and the bottom's willingness differentiate S/M from "real life"
 situations, and the mutually negotiated agreement between Top and bottom can
 cause a reversal. What in real life would be a control or abuse situation becomes
 a space to explore issues like trust and internal freedom.

 Lori looks at this odd paradox from the bottom. "When I am in bottom space,
 and not just in doing the zipper scenes, there is a feeling of being beautiful for the
 person topping me. There is a sense of taking the sensation, the pain, in a way
 that will be graceful, accepting, beautiful--almost a sense of offering this back as
 a gift. I feel extremely sensuous, sometimes erotic, but always beautiful and
 graceful. This is not the same as having something forced on me which would
 raise ugly, victim, beaten down images. The Beauty Trilogy [by Anne Rice]
 describes this feeling quite well--the stretch to allow the pain to soften and gentle
 me, allowing the pain to transform within me into energy or release or whatever
 it may be, and the creation of beauty and gracefulness together."

 Ms. Dubois says, "When I push someone in an S/M scene to accept the
 expression of what I call my sadistic passion, I ask them to stay connected to
 me and stay present in their bodies, opening to the sensation and challenging
 themselves to accept what I am doing to them--not to fight, not to endure but to
 be open and accept. Once, at the hands of an especially gifted Top, I was
 ordered to stay completely quiet and not move as he stroked my back over and
 over with a stingy whip. Once I got to that place of suffering beautifully the
 concept of suffering disappeared and I felt completely vibrant, alive, and calm.
 In fact, I experienced surrender and power at once. Alignment is another word
 that comes to my mind. Empty and full."

 This idea of the beautiful sufferer seems to run strong in the way humans tell their
 stories, whether they be the internal narratives of our own lives or the great
 cultural myths. If you strip away motive and story and just look at the icon itself,
 I dare say the Beautiful Sufferer is wired to the same place in our collective
 psyches as the Pure Sufferer and the Noble Sufferer, from Christ to Prometheus
 to Osiris. One becomes the icon in this moment, and, to use Ms. Dubois's word,
 "aligned."

 "In accepting and offering up the physical suffering of S/M play," Ms. Dubois
 says, "or bearing the emotional stress of humiliation (within the boundaries of
 what is acceptable to the submissive, that is, not tearing up his or her true sense
 of who s/he is), opening to archetypal energies can occur. In that space one
 feels aligned and beautiful regardless of what the situation looks like--receiving
 intense blows of a whip or paddle, for example, or groveling on all fours like a
 dog."

 Beyond the icon, that is, beyond where literature can take us as experience (for
 it can go there as witness only) is the act itself. There's something beautiful about
 "accepting suffering" (from the bottom side of the picture) and "the willing
 sufferer" (from the Top side). In consummating this act, this S/M exchange, can
 we actually align flesh to soul, dark to light? Is there a sense that duality
 becomes one?

 Ms. Dubois has said, "Through embracing the body, physical transformation and
 journeying can occur. I have not thought of my body as a theater for spiritual
 forces, but I have actually experienced it a few times. It feels like a channel for
 something larger than this life experience." And of the S/M scene, she says, "In
 that free state, after the struggle, the fears, the inner voices that say "why’" or
 "can't." Love is. Nothing but love and self-acceptance."

 There is a lot of focus on the titillating component of S/M and (especially outside
 S/M circles) a lot less listening to what serious players are saying in this regard.
 At some point, and on a good day, the S/M participants arrive at a place that is,
 as Ms. Dubois might say, archetypal.

 In other words, the S/M ritual arrives at a place where the practice intersects the
 sacred. Lori, who in her working life is a counselor, says, "I feel more connected
 either topping or bottoming to the ones I am playing with than I do at any other
 moment. Trust, the suspension of everyday concerns, the focusing of energy,
 and my holding the play session as being a sacred space allow that."

 The words that recur in these accounts--trust, courage, surrender--are all
 chivalric concepts in the sense of what Joseph Campbell liked to call "the quest
 beyond meaning." The knight dons these qualities, searches for the grail or
 philosopher’s stone, goes through a purification process, ultimately uniting
 opposites in a place Campbell refers to as "the word made flesh." Others may
 simply call that place "love."

 Such powerful transformative experience can't help but bring about
 psychological change, in some cases a kind of healing.

 Lori has said, "The healing could be catharsis in the classic sense--the release of
 energy, or emotion, which has been bound up and not reachable in other
 fashions. I have been told by a friend that anger was only accessible when he
 was bound, and therefore it was safe to completely feel and give in to the anger,
 and in ways he wasn’t able to in talk-therapy. A replay of a negative experience
 in which the previous victim can re-script the scene and control it could be a
 taking back of lost power."

 "My sense," Ms. Dubois adds, "is all healers are wounded healers. We have
 been there, or in some ways we are still there. We have found strength within;
 others have helped us. We know our allies, we call for help to the Higher
 Powers, our ancestors. We hold the space for others to show their pain, their
 need to belong. We know how that feels. The Healer can appear at any time,
 using the whip, pushing one to accept more, closing the hood's eye and mouth
 piece while encouraging the nervous bottom to breathe, go inward and trust, a
 gentle caress after a moment of intensity, a word of praise."

 And Lori confirms the nature of this dance. "I do have a sense that when I am
 witnessing a person going through a cathartic experience, there is a reaching out
 sense in myself. I've experienced this as a counselor as well as in S/M scene
 space. When a person is wrestling openly with himself or herself, not dealing
 rationally the way they do in most of life, or covered with the usual social
 conventions and defenses, when someone is open to the raw pain of exploration
 and discovery, or is in the aftermath of that, there can be a real
 person-to-person connection that can't occur in usual social interaction. When
 life is raw, and we are open to it, we are the most genuine and authentic, and we
 can be connected with it. There is no pretense. The healing, counselor energy
 comes through for me in being allowed to be a witness for someone, to walk
 with someone, while they are being completely and genuinely themselves in the
 moment."

 In both accounts--in Lori's ideas of "being a witness," of "walking with," and
 Ms. Dubois's sense of empathy--there is the sense of Top and bottom joining,
 the two elements somehow becoming one. Perhaps the resultant merger creates
 a special energy. So even in this discussion of healing, we have, again, the motif
 of two becoming one.

 Chivalric trust/courage taken into a sacred space, creating/exploring/interacting
 with energies (combating dragons?), conjoining dark and light--it's quite an
 alchemical formula for human transformation, and warrants more of the serious
 exploration Ms. Dubois and her partners are engaged in.
 

 Marianne Messina is writer and calendar Editor for Spectator Magazine,
 has written S/M erotica for Circlet Press, and is a music writer/reviewer
 for several San Francisco Bay Area alternative weeklies.

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