Via email Simon gave more than any other subject, and what resulted was the best and most bent interview I've ever had. Kinkorama opens with three quotes - one from Derek Jarman, one from a book about Foucault and the other from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. How important have those "texts" been for you in shaping your attitudes towards kink? Well, Jarman's films are an inspiration to me, though not a particularly kinky one. I'm fond of how he took queer theory, high culture, and hunky dudes and whirled them all together in an aesthetic blender, ending up with gorgeous, challenging films like Edward II. Foucault, yeah. As much of a cliché as he can be, anyone who thinks seriously about sexuality has to deal with him. His point about power - that it's complex, multivalenced, and not nearly as top-down as it may appear - sure has a lot to do with the way I view interactions between tops and bottomboys in dom/sub scenes. The Rocky Horror Picture Show seemed to me, when it came out, rather weak beer compared to the really edgy genderfuck camp that was extant back then - the Cockettes, for example. But the film's had, I think, a salubrious effect, introducing generations of suburban kids to the notion that, yeah, perversion can be fun. And I love the participatory aspect of Rocky Horror showings, the notion that, with a water pistol and a handful of rice, you too can be part of the action. The actual quote I used - "Don't dream it, be it." - is just so powerful. You write of partners who've been bullied and then seek similar treatment in kink encounters, instead of say therapy etc. (63). In turning the hate inwards, or externalising it onwards as the case may be, could an argument be made that this, like TV, anaesthetises the mind rather than calls it to action, to change? Well, I talk about that several times in the book: Is eroticizing our oppression therapeutic, or just a trap? I was going to say that guys who getflogged are no less likely to take pro-queer political action than anyone else, but that brings up the supposed conservative tilt of the established leather community, so I don't know. And I'm equally unsure about whether or not psychotherapy and kink mix - I do know that in San Francisco, there are a number of kink-friendly therapists. I'll come down firmly on the side of "it depends." The TV comparison seems unfair, though, if we're talking about actually playing rather than just watching porn videos. Kink, consciously done, is a learning experience. You're putting both your literal and metaphorical ass on the line. It's the difference between watching a TV show about mountaineering and actually going out climbing, testing your limits, risking. OK, so you irked me out with the tale of the "crusted-up funk socks" in the foot fetish section, which was cool because it's nice to know where our limits lie. Has anyone accused you of not going far enough, amputee or midget sex for example, or hard-core body modification? Was their a time when you said, nope, too much, not going there? And then went?
You wrote about the street-festivals and the "eventness" of sexuality, the kind of problems that arise through the popularisation of kink. Did you have any considerations of your own work in relation to this, and if so, how did you get around it? Once again: I don't think there's a hierarchy of kink. Some preppy boy who lightly spanks his boyfriend is not in any way "less than" a macho beast who shows up at a leather fair with a ton of cowhide on his back and an electro-torture kit in his toy bag. The problem isn't that kink is getting more popular; if anything, broadening the sexual discourse is a good thing for us all, even a guy who doesn't do anything more twisted than give blowjobs. What kind of irks me is what I see as the mindless conformity of some kink scenes, a privileging of formalities over the real experience of our own complex sexualities: wearing the uniform as a means of armoring ourselves against profound, maybe-dangerous vulnerabilities. On the other hand, as I wrote about in Kinkorama, what I might think is happening within a scene I observe may be very, very different from what the participants feel. When it comes to homos, I try to stay humble. I do have an agenda when I write: to open new horizons for readers, to maybe help them think about things they've already done in new ways, perhaps to inspire them to try something new, and to make them feel that they have permission to own their own desires and - in a consensual setting - to act on them. I hope Kinkorama is part of that. If it prompts a stampede to buy tit clamps, that's okey-doke with me. Philosophical/PO-MO question of the interview - if queerness is about performativity, of finding what suits, playing with it, then trying something new, could it be that the 1 day a year leather folk are pushing the limits of queerness? Could it be that their adoption and discarding of identities, while politically abhorrent (though I'm sure they have leather interiors in their SUVs), is a model for the rest of us to play with our sexual identities, to see them as not fixed to behaviour but fluid and subject to change? Fuck, yeah. I hope I never implied otherwise. It's fine if somebody dons a harness once a year, if only to show off his steroid-enhanced pecs. I do think that's really what Kinkorama is about: me trying on a variety of personae, from Punitive Daddy Top to Sniveling Foot-worshipping Bottom. And that's where I think it differs from a lot of books on kink - its open-mindedness. Unlike some sex columnists, I would never say I knew the "right way" to do anything. I'm not much of a conformist, I'm afraid. Certainly, I don't, as the saying goes, "live a leather lifestyle." For me, that would be as limiting as being a Holy Roller. But whatever floats your metaphorical boat....
Yes, I think our early erotic - in the fullest sense of the word - experiences imprint us deeply. And though in a strict Freudian sense it's maladaptive not to move on to Mature Genital Sexuality, fuck that. Hooray for polymorphous perversity! As long as it's not dysfunctionally obsessive, I can't see that a desire to dress in a diaper is any less healthy than wanting to be President of the United States. More healthy, most likely. And yes, I think that in any sexual scene, the "other person" is, in a sense, a construct, a screen for our own wants and needs. That's not, of course, the whole story. But let's face it, kink can exacerbate that. When you have a stranger wearing a gas mask tied up in your bed, it can be hard to relate to him as a fully rounded human being. So what? What happens in the playroom is related to our whole lives, but it's not our whole lives. We all deserve to be sex toys now and then, if that's what we want to do. In a hypothetical society where all kink was condoned, would abstinence/celibacy be the new kink?
Is Mel Gibson's The Passion the kinkiest flick to get a mainstream God-fearing audience since The Sound of Music? To quote the Mother Superior: Flog every backside, Piss in a stream, Make yourself a sex pig Till you find your dream. And Mel Gibson can kiss my queer Jewish ass. Kinkorama is published by Alyson and you can visit Simon here.
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Known in the gay erotica community as one of his
generation's best and hardest queer writers, Simon
Sheppard has turned his author's hand back onto himself,
documenting in Kinkorama his repeated plunges into the
world of kink. From leather lads to speed freaks in diapers,
via fisting, ball torture and other normal ways to get it on, off
and out, Sheppard exposes himself and the reader to the
multiplicity of desire. So in this danger and darkness, to
keep the aliteration going, we're coerced/slapped/dragged
into looking at how we make up our own desire, how we
act them out and why.
I think the only person who thinks I might be too vanilla is
me. There are still bunch of things, like learning to
play-pierce, that I haven't done but would like to. On the
other hand, over the years I sure have expanded my
horizons. Unlike many kids in this Internet Age, I was a slow
starter; my youthful sex was essentially vanilla, give or take a
fisting session at the baths. I haven't had sex with amputees,
no, but I have played with paraplegics. Is that a
self-regarding, objectifying statement? Dunno. Would I have
sex with an amputee? Sure, if I found him attractive. But not,
I hope, just to chalk up another "accomplishment," especially
not to impress some kinkier-than-thou critic. Kink is not, after all a contest: "He who has the
most perversions wins." Full disclosure; during the editorial process on Kinkorama, I cut a
chapter on scat because my editor and I were afraid it would simply alienate too many readers.
So if dirty socks squick you, count yourself lucky.
In your research you came to observe the presence of
infantilism that pervaded many of the kinks you
explored. Why do you think we come back to the
infantile experience so often, and do you think we move
on? Or could it be that all sex is trying to get back to
the primal eroticism, the rush of the first, before
language, just sensation? If that's so, does it make the
other person (if there is one) interchangeable, assuming
the tricks are the same (no pun intended)?
Well, there's already, in the wonderful world of Masters and
slaves, enforced-celibacy play - chastity belts and the like. I
do think that denying one's sexual needs, even to the point of
not masturbating, is pretty damn kinky. On the other hand,
from a Buddhist standpoint, it might just be enlightened. I
guess in another hundred incarnations or so, I'll know for
sure.