Tomatoes Can Be Torture

[AtomicGarbage]

I don't know about you guys, but this article describes the main reason I enjoy the rape fantasy: humiliation, and the near transcendence that it brings.


Tomatoes Can Be Torture
by Tristan Taormino
January 31st, 2006 12:00 AM
(Source: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

Part 1

The first time I met Phantom and Femcar (not their real names), I was in the audience of their class at a BDSM event. I've been to hundreds of kinky classes around the country, on topics ranging from predicament bondage to master-slave relationships. People gravitate toward the topics that interest them, but I think that it's also important to check out those classes you think you won't enjoy or won't learn from. This was one of those classes. It was called Erotic Humiliation.

Humiliation is a form of s/m play for some people; as part of the dominant-submissive dynamic, a submissive wants to be embarrassed, degraded, or even verbally abused. I know a woman who likes to be called a bitch, a whore, and a filthy slut as people do nasty things to her. Hell, I like that too, in the right situation. I've met a guy who wants to be led around a party on a leash while wearing a diaper. Humiliation, I get it.

I went to Erotic Humiliation with an open mind, but I can't say I had no expectations. Months earlier at another event, I heard a woman recount her experience at the same class and it sounded, well, a little outrageous. There was something about a kiddie pool and a tarp, pissing, messy food, and some disclaimer in the program that said no latecomers were allowed. I was disturbed and confused by her description of the scene, but also intrigued. I showed up to the class prepared to sit up front and determined to really listen, really watch, even if something freaked me out.

When Phantom and Femcar stepped to the front of the room, my first impression was, this cannot be the couple I've heard so much about. Phantom was a stocky, sandy-haired fellow with a warm smile that said "I give good hugs." Femcar was a tiny woman with long straight hair and pale skin with freckles. Not only did they look normal, it turns out they were: As they began to tell their story, I learned that they have been together for more than 21 years (married for 16), have several children, and live in the suburbs. She started surfing the Web, stumbled on BDSM sites and chat rooms, and got hooked. The stuff really turned her on, and she wanted to try it in the real world. She went to him and said, "I really want to do this. No, I need to do this."

He agreed to try it out. Femcar quickly discovered that she wasn't into the pretend power play of "Surrender your will to me, slave! (Wink, wink, I really respect you, your body, and your limits.)" She wanted to go way past all that. She wanted to be degraded, used, objectified, and humiliated. She admits she has a huge ego, and she wanted to see what it would be like to strip that ego away, to chip away at the layers and uncover what was underneath. She needed to let her beast out—the being inside her that is driven only by instinct and desire, with no manners, pretensions, or facades. The only way for her to tap into that part of her was to be treated as if she were less than a human being—useless, worthless. She relayed all this complicated, intense, deeply personal stuff to the audience in a quiet yet strong and articulate voice. Phantom was honest about his initial hesitation to do what she wanted ("How can I degrade the mother of my kids?"). But then an interesting thing happened: he tapped into a deep, dark place within himself that he didn't know existed. He met his inner sadist, a bad guy lurking in his psyche. That guy was dark, depraved, and, surprising them both, ready to do battle with her beast. I was struck by how clear she was about what she craved and where it took her.

They fielded some questions; then the mood shifted and the demonstration part began.

Phantom turned to Femcar and grabbed her by her hair, dragged her over to a wood frame and tied her to it. He pushed her around and pulled at her clothes, stripping them from her small frame. It was not light roughhousing, but more like a 190-pound guy showing a 100-pound woman how he could do serious damage to her. That image alone was unsettling. Femcar started to get small. The bright, bold woman who stood before us moments ago was shrinking before our eyes. Her posture changed; she became limp. He brought out an enema bag and proceeded to give her an enema. I was beginning to see where the kiddie pool and the tarp would come in handy. Then he stepped about 10 feet back from the frame, to a table which had a variety of items laid out on it, mostly canned food with the tops already opened.

He dug his hand into one can and came out with a handful of what looked like stewed tomatoes. Then he threw it at her. And I don't mean he tossed it like a softball to a kid, I mean he hurled the tomatoes at her and they hit her right in the face. Then came more tomatoes, canned corn, barbecue sauce, sometimes he'd go up close and just smear the stuff all over her. He invited audience members to join him. Several men got up and started flinging food at her. She was tied up, so it was impossible for her to duck or move out of the way. Somewhere in the middle of this, the enema took effect. He told her to just shit it out right there in front of everyone.

OK, I thought, these two are serious. Then he started peeing on her and once again, invited others to do the same. All I could think was, who are these guys? Their behavior just disturbed me. None of them seemed ambivalent, they just stepped right up, whipped out their dicks, and started calling her names. It's like someone gave them permission to be brutes and they went for it.

By then, Femcar was covered in food and piss, wallowing in the purple plastic pool. She started to moan and the noises coming from her were like nothing I have ever heard before: deep, guttural, weird. She sounded like an animal. The sounds built, her body started to tense, and I thought she was having an orgasm. It was raw and profound. Watching it unfold, I almost felt like I was intruding.

======================
Part 2
======================

At the end of part 1, Femcar was wallowing and coming in a kiddie pool during a demonstration in her class called "Erotic Humiliation." I found out later that the men who had stepped up to throw tomatoes at her and use her as a public urinal—the ones whose willingness to degrade her I questioned—actually knew her and most had played with her before. So it wasn't exactly the free-for-all it looked like. Still, it was a lot to take in. In their class, Phantom and Femcar talked about how their public play was received within the BDSM community. Although the community encourages everyone to embrace their kinkiness, even sex radicals have their limits.

Our tenets are "safe, sane, and consensual," and for many people, Phantom and Femcar's play had trouble qualifying. Hearing them speak assured me that they were relatively safe, since Femcar can be coated in people's bodily fluids, but none penetrate any of her orifices. The pair were obviously sane, as well as highly self-aware, introspective, and articulate about why they do what they do. While their scenes might appear to cross lines of propriety and go beyond what is considered "edge play," they were absolutely consensual. In fact, the architect of their most extreme scenes, down to every last degrading detail, was always Femcar. Hearing them speak, I had a sense of who they were, and I never worried that Femcar was in real danger or being coerced into something she didn't want to do. But I could see how watchers in a dungeon at a party, without the benefit of any introduction, might look twice.

During their class I found myself thinking, wouldn't it be even more humiliating if, when Phantom invited people to join in, no one did? What if folks responded by saying she wasn't worth their time? Or started to leave, announcing, "There has got to be a better presenter teaching at this hour"? Being ignored is pretty humiliating. It scared me that I had such a sadistic thought, and it came to me so easily. But I liked the idea of taking away the one thing that Femcar clearly loved: an audience.

She wants her ego bashing to be witnessed, and she craves attention, even so-called negative attention. But she also really likes to engage others, more so than anyone else I've seen. And she does it with a democratic, nonjudgmental spirit most of us just cannot imagine or achieve. "People in the BDSM scene love to role-play with power, like when a submissive claims she is 'less than' her dominant, lower on the food chain," she told me. "But then that same person will turn her nose up at certain people. What if you really behaved as if you were no better than anyone else?" Femcar takes her role as object quite literally, and objects can't choose who uses them. When she gets used, except for assuring a level of safety and trust, she gets used by anyone and everyone. This part of her fascinates me and challenges me to look at the ways most of us judge each other and perpetuate social hierarchies and high school–esque cliques, even in a progressive environment like the BDSM community.

I got the nerve to talk to the two of them many months after seeing that first class, and I knew I wanted to play with Femcar. I was simultaneously drawn to and terrified of her. What attracted me was her boundless energy and fearlessness. What was intimidating was how clear she was about her desires. She had done so much heavy play and she was so smart that I would really have to step up my game. She was the ultimate challenge for a creative top. I wasn't sure I could find it in myself to be as rough, cruel, and unrelenting as she wanted. Her talk of letting her beast out had really resonated with me, but was I ready to let my beast out?

Our first scene was at an event where I was teaching, and it was not planned. One evening I did an anal-fisting demo she said she would come to but didn't. After it ended and the crowd left, I was cleaning up as a few people lingered. She wandered in. I knew that with all she had done, no one had ever anally fisted her. She mentioned more than once that she wanted to try it. At first, I wasn't sure. Anal fisting is a slow, sensual, spiritual experience for me. I have never done it with the aggression or attitude I know she likes.

I had covered the massage table I did the fisting on, and the paper drapes I used, now sticky with lube, were tossed on the cement floor. I told her to get on her hands and knees on the used drapes, amid the filth where she belonged. No cushioned comfort for her. I'd washed all the butt plugs I used on my demo-ee and put them in a pile on some paper towels. I picked one up and shoved it in her mouth, telling her that it had just been in someone else's ass. I put on a latex glove and lubed it up, telling her, of course, that I wouldn't be using any lube because she didn't deserve any. When I slipped the first finger in, she pushed back on it, hungry for more. But I had to balance warming her ass up (the responsible me) with taking her however I wanted (the sadistic me). I added a finger each time she begged me to, all the while saying nasty things to her. When I slipped the widest part of my hand past her sphincter muscles, she squealed, and I kept fucking her. She had one of her enormous orgasms, and as soon as she did, I gently pulled my hand out of her, ripped off the used glove and tossed it on her. Then I left her lying there.

Of course, I went right outside the building and spied through a window. She writhed around for a bit, then a friend of hers who'd been watching came up and asked her if she wanted help or anything. He took a bunch of the garbage scattered around her and threw it out. I wanted to rush back in—check in with her, give her aftercare—but I remember her saying, "If you totally use me, then five minutes later you're sweet to me, it ruins it." So I waited about half an hour. Then I went back in.

===================
Part 3
===================

On the surface, tomatoes can be torture. Especially when they're being hurled at you while you're tied up in front of an audience, as Femcar was in the first part of this story. One splatters on your forehead and runs down your cheeks and before you can even register what happened, another one hits you right in the eye. But for Femcar, tomatoes can be transcendent.

Tantra practitioners often harness their sexual energy to achieve a greater connection with their partners and the universe or a higher being. Some people who practice BDSM use the pain of flogging, piercing, and other intense physical sensations as a vehicle to greater consciousness. Femcar's process echoes these methods on a different level. "I think our emotional barriers and vulnerabilities are much deeper than our physical barriers," she says. "I am an emotional masochist. I need to go to places that are very difficult, emotionally painful, troubling, and uncomfortable. I need to go lower than what I perceive as possible for most people, the lowest place that exists in humanity. It's all about a spiritual journey for me."

She deliberately embraces states of humiliation, degradation, and objectification not only to feed her masochism, but to reach enlightenment. That may sound convoluted when you last heard about the girl shitting on herself in a kiddie pool, but when she explains it, it all makes sense (at least to me).

"I have to go to the places that I hate," says Femcar. "Sometimes, I can see all the horrors in the universe and I try to take them all on. I am trying to see it, I am trying to sit with it, I am wallowing in it, I am screaming in it. When I open my arms to the worst that we can be, I have this tremendous, horrible experience. Something inside me says, 'Because you are seeing it and you are owning it as you, it's OK.' Every cell in my being sees past the moment and into every other person and every other energy in the universe and it's all absolutely beautiful and peaceful. And it's not because I looked away from the horror. It's because I looked at it."

When she's in this altered state, she says some people think she's orgasming when usually she is "freaking out." I asked her about the first time I saw her, and she says she can't remember what happened exactly. Sometimes she does have an orgasm but it's more likely she was feeling awful about being humiliated. And sometimes the difference between pain and pleasure disappears altogether. "I have never had the depth of orgasm or transcendental joy as I have when I have gone through the places of despair, so I think the despair is very connected to the joy. Horror and ecstasy are the same thing because it's about being fully present in the experience."

Femcar and Phantom originally began teaching classes because when they played in public at parties or events, people would often try to stop their scenes because they looked nonconsensual or unsafe. Their desire to be seen and understood has created a forum for more in-depth discussions among kinky people about why we do what we do. Their classes have resonated with many people in the community, and I often encourage people to hear them speak. Some resist, saying, "I'm not into humiliation," or "I don't think we're ready for them." Others dismiss them completely.

"I think a lot of people hate me because I certainly create a lot of uncomfortable feelings in people," says Femcar. "Listen, I am just holding up a mirror. Whatever you are seeing, whatever you are freaking out about, it isn't about me, it's about you." I tend to agree. Whenever I see any scene that disturbs me, I am usually projecting my own shit onto it. It's tapping into something in me, so I look inward, whereas most people are quick to say, "Those people are fucked up." Phantom and Femcar take huge risks when they play in public as they act out some of the darkest, scariest, ugliest scenarios and fantasies—ones that aren't just swimming around in their minds. Their play pushes people's buttons, both positively and negatively, and it blurs the lines between pleasure and pain, comfort and dread, power and submission.

Femcar is not simply aware that her play affects other people; she wants it to. She wants to challenge herself and others to embrace all sides of ourselves, even those we don't want to show the world. "Instead of saying, 'How can you possibly see me as just an object, how dare you?' I say, 'You know what, I want you to.' And not only that, I am going to wallow in it and I am going to grow from it and be better for it. Call me a slut, call me ugly, call me stupid. Sometimes I am all those things, and so are you, and that's OK. I can love myself in the lowest place. We have this illusion that we are always strong, smart, pretty, but every one of us at some point is ugly and disgusting. When you actually open your arms and take it on, it's an amazing place of power. If I never thought I was any of those things I would be lying to myself."

What a lot of people don't realize is that it's not about the humiliation per se. It's not about the tomatoes. I think people get caught up in what's happening on the surface and can't see past it to really listen to what Femcar and Phantom have to say, and to see how it can apply to so many things. It's ironic, but also twistedly fitting, that people get stuck on he-did-what-to-her? and miss the deeper implications of their unique kind of play. "This whole journey is about accepting things that are very difficult to accept," she says. "I want to get to a place of authenticity where I can be as fully me as I possibly can in every moment. I don't want to pretend. I want to be true without the illusions, the niceties, all the things we put around us to hide who we really are."

================================================== =

I never really thought of it in spiritual terms, but between reading this and discovering the concept of Subspace, I now want more than ever to push my mental and emotional limits.