Submission and masochism mean to be challenged by another, to be forever transformed by them. We enter into a sadomasochistic relationship not simply out of a desire to fulfill our sexual needs, but a desire to be freed by trust and acceptance. It is only when we can let go of conditioning and fear that we are able to step into the core of our being. In those moments something wild and untamed is released, something that might excite in us the response to run, or hide away. Yet in this intimate world this is not fear, this is not the false beliefs that leave our spirit diminished. This is a willingness to fully embrace the unknown and maybe even the unknowable that lies hidden within us.

To deny our sexual nature is a vagrancy of the soul, it is to find ourselves alone without emotional shelter, or the sustenance of self understanding. We must have the courageous heart of the hermit, or the fool, the wisest ones able to walk their own paths. To be willing to be dominated by the one able to awaken a spark within your mind and body is an act of pure self-love. To love oneself is to release inner conflict and to fully awaken to pleasure. To feel in your body exactly what you desire, not defined or limited by the mores of culture, or shame. To feel pain precisely because you want to, to feel the liminal state between the terrible and the divine.

The most erotic moments are the borderlines, the thresholds of the psyche. The first time the loss of control becomes visible in the eyes of the submissive, or the second a word is uttered that will set in motion a sexual rage that will lead her to her limits, and beyond. I want to see in her the moment her desire becomes uncontainable, the point she can no longer hold on to the illusion of self. All restraints of the mind are lost, while the restraints of the body that I have placed around her – steel, rope, and muscle – exaggerate her inner release.

I imagine her in one moment the lost vulnerable one, running, hunted, watched from afar. Her body encapsulating all that is pure, innocent and virginal. Yet like in the ancient myths she will be changed by what she encounters in the mists of the wilderness within her. One bite from the beast of experience will begin the transformation. A part of her will become still, deathly, but another will become powerful beyond the world around her. She will be an outcast, a shadow, but in her desires she will become more than human.