Last summer I met the Biker. I was working as a cook at a mediocre pizza restaurant. I couldn’t afford a car and was passing my free time on long walks from Macarthur Park to East Hollywood. That summer felt apocalyptic: a haze of exhaust, meat-smoke, cigarettes, and heat-baked trash broken by a sudden whiff of white, sparkly jasmine. In the altered state of an LA heatwave, all I wanted to do was fuck.
I always liked the sex, even if it was bad. When I tell men I like it rough their little animal comes out. Sometimes it’s funny, like an ankle-biting purse dog. But at some point I tried all I could with the amateurs and it was time to get tied up by an expert. I had attempted bondage years before with my college boyfriend, an adoring construction worker who resembled Orlando Bloom with a Slipknot neck tattoo. We went to a sex shop on the Hollywood strip and bought the whole soft-core starter pack: handcuffs, a riding crop, a coil of red rope. Our dalliance in S&M was good fun, but he lacked the gravitas to truly dominate me. In my fantasy, a strapping leather daddy suspends me from the rafters like a subject of Medieval torture. He handles me so thoroughly that I forget my name. But I would come to learn that leather daddy isn’t real and the guys into Medieval torture are total nerds.
On my first date with the Biker, he took me for a spin on his Harley, a beastly low-rider that roared through my daisy dukes. He was a gutter punk wrung out to dry with stringy blonde hair, a gold snaggletooth and the patina of a kicked addiction. He had twelve years on me and he wore it, but I was looking for experience. His expertise as a dom meant that I could try anything. On a 90 degree day we rode through piles of exhaust, his hand sliding up my shorts at red lights. When we arrived at his decrepit house in K Town, he kissed me, wiped the tail-pipe emissions off my neck, and showed me his pirate chest. Inside the cartoonish plastic trunk were ball gags, restraints, dildos of all sizes, paddles, an overflow of kinky treasure in gaudy shades of pink and aquamarine.
‘The Wild One’ • Photo: Columbia Pictures.
Beyond his rough appearance, he was practiced in the etiquette of BDSM. He laid out the vocabulary, boundaries, and set a safe word with me. He threw around jargon I had never heard before: subspace and subdrop. I looked up the phrases on my own, finding varied definitions on reddit threads and blogs. The short of it is that ‘subspace’ is a euphoric state caused by a flood of endorphins and adrenaline from pain. ‘Subdrop’ is the depressive comedown— when all those chemicals leave your body. Both sounded appealing to me. But I didn’t care about distinguishing a “positive” experience from a “negative” one. I smiled and nodded as I assured him: I was down for anything.
Of the options from his treasure-chest I picked the most punishing: heavy paddle over riding-crop, zip ties over fuzzy handcuffs, metal folding chair over body pillow. The Biker landed the paddle in heavy thwacks, no hesitation. From ankle to ass to shoulders, no part of me was neglected. My flinching body became totally pliant, the pain turning to pure heat. In this state I found myself incapable of saying yes, no, or anything really. It wasn’t bliss or intimacy, it was an intensity that eclipsed my sense of self. This was what I was looking for. I sought oblivion—a total lack of control.
‘Pillion’ • Photo: A24.
But when I emerged from the trance, I was just in a dirty room with some guy who wanted to play Jeff Buckley at me on guitar. The fantasy was broken and I scurried off into the night. Even so I would come back for more. In between sessions he texted me sketch videos of his improv troupe. In truth, his Harley was an accessory to a more practical Subaru. He went to comic-con and ate terrible frozen pizzas that stayed on his breath. The aching evidence of his personhood made me itch. It was clutter in my fantasy of the mythic leather-daddy. I ignored his attempts at connection, at healthy play and used him as a blunt force instrument. Eventually his dorky earnestness was too much to bear and I cut him loose.
This sexual thrill-seeking requires a toughness that may not be sustainable or honest. While it takes bravado to get obliterated by a stranger, why knock down the guardrails if not to feel completely vulnerable? Exposed? Innocent? The person wielding the paddle is not a fantasy, not a 2D drawing of a bulging leather daddy, but a fallible, stinky, embarrassing human being. The ultimate surrender would be to not run for the hills at the first whiff of their humanity. I’m closing out another summer in LA, still sweating it out in kitchens and sleeping around. At this point in my life I don’t find romantic love exciting. Still, I am trying to be kinder to both myself and my lovers. The little details that used to make me cringe are disarming. The nervous tick, the slight bald spot, the bad poetry, the passing glint of naked sweetness in their eyes. We can share a genuine moment, a loving fuck, before I slip back in my jeans and out the door.
