BDSM MEDIA NEWS!!!!
November 13, 2012
Master of her own desires(Book: Whip Smart)
Author says chronicle of S/M world flowed from lifelong urge to write
Source: Timesunion.com. - Timesunion.com - USA
USA - ALBANY - Melissa Febos has always loved secrets. As a child, she liked to bury household objects in the yard of her family's home on Cape Cod and then cut out the insides of her books as a hiding place for the hand-drawn treasure maps that showed their location. As an adult, the allure of secret power helped drew her to the life of a dominatrix.
Febos' memoir, "Whip Smart: The True Story of a Secret Life" (St. Martin's Press/Thomas Dunne Books, 2010; $14.99), outlines her experiences working for several years, during her early 20s, in a Manhattan S/M (sadism/masochism) "dungeon." "Whip Smart" describes in graphic detail the work of a dominatrix; administering enemas, role play, nipple torture, bondage and peeing onto naked men.
But what really distinguishes the book - makes it so moving and disturbing - is the author's steely intelligence and the honesty with which she charts her responses. We see her, for instance, sitting on a subway train headed to work, cupping her hand over her mouth and whispering her own name, "Melissa," in an effort to access a more innocent self.
As Febos becomes adept at the job, she discovers that what motivates her is not simply the cash and an almost-anthropological curiosity, but the extreme rush that comes from the job's constant reminder of her own sexual desirability. Eventually, she gets clean of the drugs that had started out as recreational and gradually become a habit. Later, with the help of a therapist, she is able to quit the job itself.
Febos teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, Salon and many other publications. On Thursday at the College of Saint Rose, Febos will read from "Whip Smart" and from the novel she is currently writing.
Q: Your memoir is very frank. Were there any parts that were especially hard to write about?
A: This book was simultaneously the easiest and most difficult writing I've ever done. It had the thrust of a story that wanted to be told, and so came out of me quickly, but yes, much of the content was painful to look at, as one has to, in order to write about an experience.
I was somewhat dissociated from a lot of the experiences during their happening, and so ultimately, I ended up feeling them even more during the writing process than I did in life. I had to walk back through all the addiction, sober this time, and feel what I was numb to the first time around.
Q: What are your thoughts on the "Fifty Shades of Grey" phenomenon? I guess many women have found it liberating and empowering.
A: I think that its power to spur a more thoughtful public discussion of women's sexuality, and sex in general, has value. How the media has treated it has been extremely revealing - disappointing, but not surprising. As a literary work, I don't think there's much to be said.
Q: How did you make the transition from dominatrix to writer?
A: I was a writer long before I was a dominatrix. Writing and reading are the only pastimes I've ever really cared about doing. My sense of myself is always a fluctuating thing, though I always felt like a writer, as someone interested in stories and language. I started out writing poems when I was a kid, and some stories, but didn't get serious about fiction until I was in college. I never planned on writing memoir, and in fact I harbored a lot of judgments about memoirists, particularly young ones. It simply turned out that the best story I had to tell was my own. The most urgent story, anyway.
Q: You write near the end of the book about your life after stopping work at the dungeon - about moving in with a boyfriend, getting a dog and what it's been like to have a more or less ordinarily happy life. At what point did you show your boyfriend the manuscript?
A: I have some embarrassment today about ending that book with the love story - I didn't want to suggest that a "vanilla" lifestyle or the love of a good man were my saviors or my solutions. But it was the true end of that narrative, or the truest I knew at the time. Love did change me, did carry me into the next story. He and I are no longer together, and a lot of other experiences, other people, have changed me since. The story always continues, you know?
Q: About your early life, you write that your mother was your closest friend for 11 years, but that you automatically began to shut her out starting in adolescence, so that she wouldn't catch onto your secret life of experimenting with making boys desire you. What's your relationship with your mother like now? If you were to have a daughter someday, how would you hope to bridge the distance to her during those formative years?
A: Being seen can be a painful thing, particularly when you don't yet know what you are or who you are becoming. I think we often hide most from those who have the greatest capacity to see us, those who love us most. The stakes are higher. I wanted to explore my darker parts without her witness, and to a degree, I think that's a good impulse, but I had a tendency to linger a little longer in the darkness than perhaps was advisable; I ventured further, and kept my secrets longer than was comfortable.
I'm sure I would do everything I could to invite my future daughter to confide in me, just as my mother did. And I'm sure I would probably fail, to a large degree, as she did. I don't really believe you can change that experience of young girls in our culture by changing yourself. I think we have to change the world first. We have to unmask desire, un-monster it, first.
Our culture has an uneasy relationship to desire in general, and female desire in particular. I try to maintain my idealism without sacrificing a clear view of how far we have to go. Frankly, I'd be terrified of having a daughter.
If you go
What: Author Melisso Febos; prize-winning young poet Eduardo C. Corral also will read.When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday
Where: The College of Saint Rose, Standish Rooms, Events and Athletics Center (second floor), 420 Western Ave., Albany
More information: www.melissafebos.com.
www.frequencynorth.com.
From "Whip Smart" by Melissa Febos: See More and Larger photo's:
www.timesunion.com.
