12. Sex-Drugs-and-Philosophy
Question: What’s the connection between psychiatrists, the police, and the black-death? Answer: You should always try to avoid them. Unfortunately, this is not always possible, and during Marvella’s and my travels, we did strike-up a relationship with “Bellevue-Bruce”, the head-shrink at one of those top-security institutions where serial killers are kept. He was fascinated by us and kept on wanting to know what we “got-up-to” in our SM activities, but we were always able to deflect the conversation until, that was, he “got-me”.
In modern parlance he used a vanity-attack, one of the more subtle approaches used by scammers, and vanity is certainly one of my weaknesses. He suggested Marvella and I weren’t properly into SM, and only play-acted by dressing-up a bit. A Red-rag to a bull! I started to give details, then realized what I was doing. There was only one way forward, and I recommend this technique to everyone; trade. I said “OK, we’ll give you the low-down on the SM scene, but in exchange for you opening-up about your inmates”. To my surprise he agreed, and off we went.
From our-side we gave a detailed picture of “the-scene” and what went on there. From his-side came some interesting stuff. He hated having to deal with his inmates, or my “little-treasures” as he called them. He also said their crimes were all psycho-sexual, with the murderer gaining pleasure by killing someone directly, or being mildly-annoyed when their victims died-on-them forcing them to find another.
I was initially surprised that he referred to his little-treasures by their first names, as in Steffan, which sounds quite homely, and not by their soubriquet as in the “Subway-Slasher”. I suppose though it avoids the difficult-conversation on first meeting of “do you prefer being called Slash, or Slasher in full?”. He was so disturbed by his inmates he later tried private-practice for a few months, before returning to the asylum. Everyone thinks going-it-alone is easy, but had he done a business-plan, how was he going to find his very specialized-customers; by advertising, or word-of-mouth? I’m honestly not making-this-up, and at least he tried.
He then inferred there was a direct link between his “little-treasures” and us, something both Marvella and I took great exception to as we’re keen believers in “safe, sane and consensual”. Making things worse he then trotted-out the old-trope that only men “suffered” from paraphilias. This reminded me of the quote from that great philosopher Marx (Groucho, not Karl), that “you really should get-out some-more”, as he had never been to the parties and clubs we had.
Bruce then said these immortal words, “you two really are creatures-of-the-flesh”. I was initially a little annoyed as this seemed to ignore all our other factors, such as our work, intellect etc, implying you could be one, or the other, but not both. Now I think I’m totally with it; I wouldn’t mind a tee-shirt being made-up and inscribed by the words “Creature of the Flesh” in large-letters, with the understated strapline “Certified by Bellevue-Bruce, official head-shrink to US serial-killers” in small-type. What an endorsement!
But can’t you do both simultaneously; be a creature-of-the-flesh and be an intellectual? I think you can. Do we really want to be like Pope Clement XIII who ordered all the naughty bits be painted-over with fig-leaves, or worse, penises chiselled-off from statues? Or like some statues such as Michael-Angello’s David in the Uffizi that had a tiny one to emphasise his large head and presumably intellect. Who carried-out these acts? Are their names known? Shouldn’t these scoundrels-and-miscreants be outed on art programs covering the eighteenth-century? I think so.
However, this does provide an opportunity for restitution. Contemporary artists could be commissioned to paint non-damaging patches to cover the fig-leaves, this time revealing fully-functional dongers. Likewise knocked-off penises could be remodelled and reattached, and David’s micro-member in the Uffizi could have a polyurethane-rubber cover made to bring-it-up to an imposing matching size to his head. The current Pope could attach it during a moving ceremony that brings closure to this unfortunate cultural episode (micro-rant over).
Then Bellevue-Bruce asked something far more interesting: “why do you think SM exists with all its paraphilias, and how early were you driven in that direction?”. It’s a fair couple of questions, something most of us “on-the-scene” have asked ourselves at one time or another (before just “getting-on-with-it). I paused, before coming out with “its probably genetic”, something I don’t go along with now. Doing some sociology at college taught me to be wary of the “gay-gene(s)” theory of homosexuality. I should have said inherited, or even better, inherited or a natural-occurring hard-wired percentage of the population. I also said “being X, Y or Z doesn’t in itself give you any more insight than anyone else”, and he concurred with this.
As for how-early, for me it was seven years old when I started to secretly cross-dress in my mother’s clothes. As an aside, trannies who have sisters often borrow their clothes, and end-up with an entirely different taste in clothing and underwear. Mine was-and-is very 1950’s, and I still prefer a corselette-with-stockings over a bra-and-panties at-any-time. But the first questions lodged-in-my-mind for later, even though I had no idea of what the cause was, or even if there was a cause. I thought the question may be flawed, as in “have you stopped beating your wife”, or intractable as in proving the Rieman-hypothesis. Where could you hope to find an answer anyway? In science, in sociology, in psychology-and psychiatry, in religion, or by reading the tea-leaves?
The second event that lodged-in-my-mind on the sexual-dimension occurred a few months later. We were at a monthly SM event held at a venue on the Prinsengracht for the first time, and were exploring the space. There was a dance area, a chill-out area, a micro-dungeon with all the kit, a bar, and some separate rooms. As we entered one of these, which had the inevitable low-level-lighting, we made-out a gurney like you find in hospitals, with a naked lady sitting on the edge, that is with the exception of her red-high-heel shoes. Standing next to her was a young, very muscular black-guy with a wicked-smile who had a shaven head (too much testosterone?).
In the gloom both Marvella and I simultaneously saw what we both took to be some kind of long, floppy strapon/strapover that we hadn’t seen before, dangling from his crotch down to his knees. As our eyes became increasingly more accustomed to the low-light, it hit us both simultaneously. It wasn’t a strapon/strapover, it was his flaccid donger. He smiled cheekily at Marvella, and his limp-penis began to erect, until it was fully upright. We had never seen anything like it before, it was enormous; long, perhaps towards 40 centimetres, but it was the width that stunned.
In terms of food comparisons, it was longer-and-wider than a cucumber, and was the width of a Bavarian Weisswurst (I was educated on German sausages a couple of years later by my business partner). Then we made out a sign next to the gurney with the simple message “House Stud” (it’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it!). The naked lady then tried to stand-up and wobbled on her red-high-heels before being expertly caught by the stud. He then turned his head to Marvella as if to say “you next?”, and I swear she hesitated for a micro-second, before smiling back and saying “perhaps next time”.
From a kink standpoint what enhanced the house-stud facility at this venue was the “viewing” facility. This was a grill at head-height in the wall of the room where a voyeur, possibly your husband or lover, could watch your “servicing”. The grill allowed a full view of the facility by the voyeur, but prevented him/her being seen from within. Also available were ceiling straps so the voyeur could be restrained and forced to watch proceedings, and even be whipped for their impertinence. This is turbo-charged SM; imagine your feelings as the house-stud brings you to multiple orgasms in plain-view of your hubby. Or from hubby’s perspective, imagine the conflicting simultaneous conflicting emotions of lust, jealousy, envy, betrayal and physical pain. Absolutely delicious (if you’re kinky).
This (penis size) also reminded me of a story, perhaps apocryphal, perhaps not, of field-marshal-Montgomery inspecting his troops in the desert during the second world war. From second-hand experience he was much loved by his troops, Marvella’s father being one-of-them, who served in the eighth-army. Montgomery was quite religious, but this did not stop him recommending “horizontal-jogging” to his troops during their leave in Alexandria and Cairo, which no-doubt enhanced his popularity no-end. Anyway, the story goes he arrives at a parade, and does his usual morale-boosting pep-talk in that silly, high-pitched voice he had.
He then shouts-out to the lieutenant-colonel and asks why one of the soldiers was wearing long-trousers, not the regulation shorts. The lieutenant-colonel then has a word in Monty’s ear, causing him to pause in shock, before continuing with “good, good, carry-on, carry-on”. The point of these two stories is that the size of human primary-and-secondary sexual-characteristics of both females-and-males, in a small number of people varies drastically, from the very-small to the improbably-large (breasts being a more visible example). So now on the sexual-dimension we have two major differences between people, their sexuality (fetishes and gayness), and the size of their primary-and-secondary sexual-characteristics. Is this something significant?
Let’s change to the drugs-dimension. Many people never touch them, many stick to legal ones, and many are more adventurous. What controls this split is probably down to two factors; opportunity and personality. Opportunity is easy to understand as if you are not exposed to the possibility of taking a drug, very few people would actively seek it out. There are of course exceptions, Marvella and I being two of them. But these exceptions are themselves down to personality differences, as in extreme thrill-and-risk-taking, making personality the third large difference between people (primary-and-secondary sexual-characteristics, sexuality and personality).
Making bad-choices about recreational drugs often have even greater negative consequences than making bad-choices on the sexual-dimension. Both can kill you (e.g. overdose, lung-cancer etc, or getting aids, an STD etc.). Since this article is concerned with IT consulting, nothing cramps-your-style more than dying, or being in hospital or off-work for weeks at a time (guilty your-honour), or being strung-out, or even having to continually rush-outside for a crafty-cigarette (though often this was a sure-way to have a pavement-conversation with the CEO). The key-word here is choice, and has similarities with agency, system-2-thinking, free-will etc.
This is what I was chewing-over as I sat in the chill-out rooms of Amsterdam’s SM sex-clubs and parties (alongside drug-fuelled ultra-libidinous kinky-thoughts). I’ve never been that great a believer in drug-inspired insights since my LSD phase at Essex-University. Towards the end of the phase I was actively trying to get such insights, but didn’t even come-up with anything even as silly as what supposedly came from a group of US students: “higimus, hogimus, woman is monogamous, hogimus, higimus man is polygamous”. During Marvella’s phase, which was prior to us meeting at Essex, she had the revelation that all the world’s problems were caused-by friction (that was while avoiding the cracks in the pavement and attempting to float down some stairs rather than use her legs).
Looking-back it was probably dosage. It was the mid 70’s and the height of Welsh bicentennial-acid (I always thought the red-pills were the strongest, but others favoured the white and blue ones). It was not so much, as in Grace Slick’s words “one-pill makes you larger, and one-pill makes you small, and the ones that mother gives you don’t do anything at all”, it was more “one-pill dissolves your consciousness, and one-pill you lose-it-all, and the ones that mother gives you leaves you hugging a yellow-wall”, and that’s before I had even heard of qualia (FYI qualia are mental/mind experiences like colour, smells, fears, pains, pleasures etc.). Even the CIA came to the conclusion it was not reliable. I did hear later that a practical test of Bell’s-inequality was LSD inspired, but perhaps the era of micro-dosing had arrived by then.
While we’re on the subject of Essex-University (the jewel-in-the-crown of the county of Essex), let me take a few paragraphs to explain things to those unfortunate-enough not to have had first-hand experience of the place in the 70’s. I was raised in Essex, so I feel entirely free to praise and denigrate it and its university. As the saying goes, “you can always leave Essex, but Essex can never leave you”.
When trying to explain the county of Essex to Americans, I ask them to imagine New-Jersey, but not as sophisticated. It has a thriving market for second-hand-cars, a direct descendent of the horse-trade. While we are on the subject of the horse-trade, Essex’s most famous/infamous son was the horse-fief and highwayman, Dick Turpin. Compare that to Yorkshire who can only boast the second most famous captain of all time, Captain Cook, far behind Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise. Also compare how they died. Turpin was hanged and became a counter-culture-hero, while Cook was boiled for his bones by the good people of Hawaii, and didn’t even make it onto modern menus.
There was/is also a sub-genre of Essex-Girl jokes, such as they possess more high-heel-shoes than books. I don’t know about the girls, but for this tranny it was certainly true (high-heel-shoes four, books zero). By-the-way, Marvella claims the best trannies all come from Essex (Grayson Perry etc.) Also, Essex’s fine constabulary had a certain-reputation. If you were too violent or corrupt, even for the Met, you could always find a warm welcome at the Essex-Police. Supposedly, north-London’s successful career-criminal also retired to the county. Get the picture?
Essex-University was a must for me. Could you really imagine me in the dreaming-spires of Cambridge-or-Oxford, punting-down the river in a straw hat before taking high-tea with the college-dean? At Essex-University they were throwing cookers out of the window. Coming from the idyllic, rural, agricultural heart of Essex. It was so bloody-boring I once tried peeing on an electric fence to see what it was like. It was a bad-choice. Don’t do it, but if you are a true risk-taker like me, you’ll ignore my advice anyway. Essex-University was my one-way-ticket out-and-away. No contest. It was a choice, quite a good-choice, though be-careful-for-what-you-wish-for. But how did I make that choice? Was it pure homo-logicus, or something more interesting?
Again, when trying to explain Essex-University in the 70’s to Americans, I ask them to think of Kent-State-University, but try to imagine an even more radical institution. One of my campus friends, Cosmic-Ray, was very enamoured with the Kent-State protests, and particularly the imaginative banners used by the students. Alongside the anti-war ones was his all-time favourite that you could clearly see in the newsreels of the time: “we’re the people your mother warned you about”. He loved the lyrics to Country-Joe’s and the fish’s anti-war song, including “be the first one on your block to have your boy come home in a box”. He was also a great fan of that masterpiece of propaganda, Reefer-Madness, and lamented that “you just couldn’t get dope that good anymore”, a sentiment shared by all-of-us, I believe.
Essex-University provided me the possibility of trying illegal drugs. In no time I went from marijuana, to speed, to LSD and then to opiates-and-opioids. Each one was a choice, but again, how did I make that choice, and was it a good one? Then later-on, when I decided to stop using the majority of recreational-drugs, both legal and illegal, they were choices too. What was the difference in the decision making before-and-after, and was it as easy to stop something as to start it? If the mechanism behind choice was only driven by pure-rationality, I would not expect such a dramatic change over time. It was in the SM chill-out rooms of the late 90’s, that I assembled what I needed to be able to make at least a little progress in answering Bellevue-Bruce’s question, namely why SM exists with all its paraphilias (his terminology), or kinks/fetishes (our terminology).
I came to the conclusions the main discipline I needed to use was philosophy, with an occasional foray into hard-science. I had come-into-contact with philosophy before, but only its very hardest edges, as in laying the foundations of mathematics (e.g. first-and-second-order predicate-calculus, in case you asked, which you didn’t). I was now rapidly catching-up with its softer, social middle (e.g. free-will, moral-philosophy etc.).
Being a simple Essex-tranny I could never obsess over free-will as philosophy does, with all kinds of variants up-to, and including, Cartesian-duality. To me it was, and is, an exercise in the bleeding-obvious. Free-will was just the name given to the process of making choices in humans and other animals. It was/is clearly something quite hard to-do, and I’m sure if you put someone in an MRI scanner while exercising free-will, you would see the oxygen consumption of the brain go-through-the-roof. Making good choices is bloody-hard-work, even painful, which is why most people don’t do it. Its far easier just to “go-with-the-flow”, be on “automatic”, or in philosophy-speak, be a “philosophical-zombie”.
So how did humans and other animals end-up with the abilities above? A drum-roll here for Wallace’s and Darwin’s evolution-driven-by-natural-selection. The key bit here is natural-selection. Nothing is planned, or designed, or even necessarily optimized. You end-up-with what you end-up-with; a bewildering set of life-forms some of which can make sophisticated-choices (e.g. humans, mammals, birds, octopuses etc.), some that are most-probably on automatic (e.g. jelly-fish, ants, most insects etc.), and some with no mental capacity whatsoever (e.g. trees, grass, microbes etc.). One of my favourite stories concerns the sea-urchin; it used to have a brain and sophisticated nervous-system, but junked it-all for a set of very goods spines, a very Essex solution.
Focusing on making-choices, to me it seemed-and-seems to be weirder than just exercising rationality, though it obviously plays a major role. Natural-selection has “weighted-the-dice”. For instance, you might decide breathing is a waste-of-time-and-effort, all those in-and-outs, just stop it and watch the telly uninterrupted. This works well for about twenty seconds until your “rational” choice is increasingly crushed by the overwhelming urge to breathe. At no point does the body breathe for you, it just forces you make that choice over-and-over again until you chose the right course of action. The same goes for food-and-drink, or toothache which in short-order propels you towards your dentist, and are examples of negative-influencers.
If we think about sex, we find positive-influencer. The cleverer animals don’t sit down and think “now’s the time to start a family”, instead sex initiates a surge of chemicals in your brain, not dissimilar to that provided by certain recreational-drugs (especially the opiates-and-opioids). To misquote Spock from Star-Trek, “its free-will Jim, but not as we know-it”, or more precisely, its qualia-influenced-free-will Let’s see how this played-out in my decision to restrict my recreational drug use to only cannabis and alcohol.
On the way-up the drug ladder, influenced-free-will makes perfect sense. Each drug you take is even more fun than the one before it, and although you are completely aware of the health-issues, in the decision-making-process this is overridden by the prospect of even more “little-presents” for your conscious mind. In the case of opiates-and-opioids, its just like plugging-into-the-mains; guaranteed fun every time. On the way down the ladder, you still have the same information, but much of it is now confirmed, not speculation. Even then the health-angle is hard one to come-out-on-top, even though the bad-signs are obviously there (e.g. persistent cough, often strung-out, infections, etc.).
The factor that changed everything for me was to include an extra category in my decision-making, namely vanity, which can also be a strength as well as a weakness. I like being in control, and having a white-powder or tube-filled with tobacco regulate my life was so uncool, let alone how these drugs are administered. What sensible-person ingests carcinogenic smoke into their lungs, what sensible-person would always have a works and orange-spikes at hand to fix-up, what sensible-person would snort white-powders up your nose? For me it was vanity-what-did-it, for others it might be current or future family etc.
Taking an occasional alcoholic drink, or cannabis-edible, yes, that could be cool and natural. By-the-way, I found giving-up the opiates-and-opioids to be on par with giving-up smoking, but in a compressed time frame. After two weeks your body seems to quickly adjust to the new-normal and everything returns to what it was. A pretty miserable two weeks it has to be said, but better I’d say than the time it took me to get-over smoking tobacco (I was still having cigarette dreams two-years afterwards). So well done all of us who have chosen to given up smoking.
It also means you can eventually sit comfortably in your deck-chair underneath the tree-of-knowledge with its tempting low-hanging-fruit, without the slightest temptation of taking-a-bite out of any of them ever again. A benefit for society is that it doesn’t have to be in a permanent moral frenzy about the latest devil-drug, and passing ineffective prohibition-like laws that makes the situation worse. Educate the demand out of the system, but do it in such a way which understands what works for one personality-type will not work for another.
So now we have influenced-free-will entering the sexual “bear-pit” of relationships, and this applies to everyone. How does that influence express itself? Is it like not breathing, or is it like the buzz of finding a good solution to a situation, or something different again? Here we need to visit some examples of evolution-by-natural-selection to see if they can throw-some-light on how this sexual-influence is experienced. Bring-on the birds. Birds? You mean those things with feathers? What have they got to do with anything?
Answering my own question, they are easy to study as they are out-in-the-open, and are a very successful class with over nine-thousand different species to pore-over, behaviour-wise. All you need are some binoculars and hours-and-hours of patience. I suppose you could get similar results by studying animals in the sea, or under the ground, but you would need an aqualung or a spade in your endeavours, which to me seems a lot of extra, unnecessary work.
The fascinating thing is that every species of bird has evolved its own set of mating strategies, and sometimes more than one set within the same species. I won’t go through all the variants known so far, but just focus on those used by two species, ruffs and mute-swans. There are transvestite-ruffs who are less aggressive than “normal” males, which may well allow them easier and closer encounters with females. Once near a female, then anything might happen. Sound familiar? It certainly does to me.
Humans are not ruffs, but the parallels are interesting. From personal experience I have always worked extremely well with lady-bosses, and alpha-females in general, but often fallen-out with male-bosses over the long-term, sometimes leading to passionate but “career-limiting” arguments. No-one taught me how to behave around women and men of influence; it just came naturally. So, if you are looking to find utility as per 18th and 19th century enlightenment-philosophy, then here it is. And how might this utility manifest itself to the transvestite (subby-tranny)? Perhaps via a clothes-fetish and a submissive-fetish, or in psycho-babble, two paraphilias
But let’s not stop there with the relatively rare transvestite-fetish. Let’s go for two fetishes so common-and-widespread that many would be reluctant to call them fetishes, namely submissiveness in women and dominance in men. How can we find utility here? Perhaps the mute-swan provides a model. They are monogamous and the males tend to be slightly larger than the females. Natural-selection has meant this is a good mating-strategy for this species. If a similar good-mating strategy also exists for humans and is driven by fetishes, then here is utility by-the-bucket.
Summing-up I believe I can provide an intellectually credible answer to Bellevue-Bruce’s question, at least for some fetishes. Could you prove any of this rubbish? Probably not. I would suggest to anyone interested in doing so they first secure massive-funding from whatever university-or-institution they can, and use this to spend many years researching the various fetish communities in-depth. Perhaps they would need to fully immerse themselves and participate to gain a full understanding I.e. go “gonzo”). If no conclusions are reached, then it was bloody-good-fun anyway, and you can always follow the line “more research is needed” to get more funding.
That leaves us with fetishes with no obvious utility whatsoever, like bondage, other forms of sexuality like gayness, and let’s not forget the conundrum around why human primary-and-secondary sexual-characteristics can be of such different sizes. To be plain, I have no idea whatsoever “why” these exist. Perhaps even attempting to find a “why” that results in utility is pointless, I just don’t know. If you think differently, and believe you do have insights, please contact Bellevue-Bruce and his team, who I feel sure are ready to receive them, at:
Doctor Bellevue-Bruce,
Head Shrink,
The Serial Killer Unit,
Bellevue Top-Security Hospital,
New York,
10016