Different Loving

by William Brame

  In fact, I remember somebody actually doing that years ago and my finding it scary. What was scary about it was being helpless, because there have to be levels of trust in these things. If you are not trusting, then it is another kind of experience. I am mistrustful of people and the possibility that they might misuse the situation. With my husband, what happened was that he talked about it, [and] I said, “Okay.” I brought out some ropes; I think he was surprised. I’m sort of amused by a lot of this. I can’t say that there’s a big sexual charge, but there is certainly some amusement.

  I’m interested in dominance, but I’m not interested in sadism. The idea of hurting somebody is not appealing, even when they want to be hurt. The idea of causing welts and stripes and blood really is not especially appealing. These are things that my husband has liked to have happen to him. I think he still has trouble asking for something of that sort. He knows that I am uncomfortable with it. I’m more willing to experiment with different accoutrements, more willing to keep going—instead of five slaps, 15. So both in terms of variety and intensity, I’m willing to do more … and in the process I am probably causing more pain than I might once have, having realized that it’s not terribly dangerous.

  Our whole culture tells women that you don’t cause pain, that you’re nice. So there does seem something wrong about standing in front of someone who can’t protect himself, with crops or paddles or whips, and causing hurt and seeing the physical evidence of that. [I still feel that way] at times. One of the things that I try to do is get a reaction without [inflicting] a lot of pain. You can wallop the hell out of somebody, or you can strike them in a sensitive place, not especially hard, but in ways that get a reaction. I try to do the latter. [My husband] would like both. He was delighted [once] when I was annoyed and hit a little too hard. He wandered around for a week with welts and bruises. I was not happy about that. I thought that was a loss of control on my part. He thought it was wonderful.

  While I might be the dominant, my husband is the leader. He’s the one who has taken us to this, and [he] knows far more about it than I do. I appreciate that, because if it were left up to me, we wouldn’t do it. And I would like to go on exploring. His interest in these things has been aided and abetted by outsiders who have, I think, given him permission to do things that he originally might not have thought he could. He was then able to come to me with this and say, “This might be okay. Is it really okay?” I’ve been very supportive. I might not always want to participate in something, but I feel that it’s important that he tries to explore what he can, and I’ll do what I can.

  SECTION FOUR

  INDIVIDUALIZING THE BODY

  Fourteen

  BODY MODIFICATION

  “There is one thing that all we women know … we must labour to be beautiful.”

  —W. B. YEATS1

  What do the popular entertainer who flaunts colorful tattoos, the woman who gets breast implants, and the man who has several rings pierced through his penis have in common? They are all practicing body modification.

  The practice of modifying the human body has endured since before recorded history. The forms and methods of alteration are countless; fashion, cultural, and religious practices have dictated variations in placement, style, degree, and type. The alterations have ranged from the mundane to the extraordinary.

  The eroticization of tattooing, scarification, branding, or piercing is called stigmatophilia, from the Latin for “love of a mark or brand.” Although body modifications aren’t necessarily adjuncts to erotic stimulation, they cannot escape identification with the erotic. Among D&Sers body modification is often a unique means of combining the aesthetic with the sensual. In this chapter, we profile Fakir Musafar, perhaps the most audacious body-modification advocate today. A shaman and master piercer, Fakir was born Roland Loomis in 1930 in South Dakota. He holds a degree in electrical engineering and a master’s degree in creative writing; he has spent much of his life as an advertising executive. He has developed his expertise through research and over 40 years of personal practice of primitivistic body ritual. Fakir publishes Body Play magazine. He is married.

  WHEN DID IT BEGIN?

  The archaeological record amply demonstrates the ubiquity and antiquity of body modification. Representational art reveals that various South American Indians pierced their septums with a number of rings or elongated their earlobes with ear spools, as shown in effigy vessels and figurines made prior to European contact. Neolithic cave paintings in southern Europe depict hands with missing fingers, offering a tantalizing clue as to the antiquity of ritual amputation, which historically has occurred over much of the world. Human burials have yielded plentiful proof of body modification, from jewelry fashioned expressly for modification—earrings being among the most common—to the visible alteration of the human form, such as cephalic deformation, or changing the shape of the skull during infancy. There are far too many examples to enumerate here.

  Historically, travelers’ tales and the works of ethnographers and anthropologists have shown that body modification is virtually universal. People tattoo their skin, file their teeth, elongate their necks, burn or slash patterns into their skins, constrict their waists: Few possibilities have been left unexplored. In general, motivations to alter the body fall into four broad categories: the magical or spiritual, the medical, the cosmetic, and the erotic.

  In some cultures body modification had an ostensibly aesthetic purpose. For example, beginning with the T’ang Dynasty, the Chinese bound the feet of some female children. The smaller the adult foot, the more dainty and desirable its owner. Modifications for religious purposes are abundantly evident in many cultures. In some faiths adherents bear a “mark,” or brand, even if only symbolically (such as the ashes smeared on a Catholic’s forehead on Ash Wednesday). Christ’s stigmata remain one of the more powerful images in Christian iconography, appealing, perhaps, to a fundamental human impulse to make visible one’s sacrifice. Making one’s spiritual condition manifest is a reason frequently cited by contemporary body modifiers to explain their interests.

  Amidst an almost universal feeling of powerlessness to “change the world,” individuals are changing what they do have power over: their own bodies.… By giving visible bodily expression to unknown desires and latent obsessions welling up from within, individuals can provoke change.…

  —V. VALE AND ANDREA JUNO2

  Some modifications done originally for religious purposes were co-opted by modern medicine. Circumcision is a magical-spiritual rite practiced by peoples as diverse as tribal Africans, Aborigines, Jews, and Moslems. For a time it was a common practice in many American hospitals to circumcise newborn males, although no health benefits have ever been proven.

  Historically, body modifications for men usually represent a rite of passage, whereas women’s bodies are most often altered to signal or to enforce social subjugation. Male body modifications have rarely interfered with normal function (there are, of course, exceptions); women, conversely, have been severely limited, sexually or physically, by the physical alterations, many of which were forced upon them. Most notable are the clitoridectomies and vaginal infibulations still practiced in East Africa and parts of Asia.

  Among contemporary Americans modifications are usually an aesthetic choice, but, particularly for self-styled pagans and New Agers, the process may be symbolic of a spiritual transformation.

  The piercing and tattooing enthusiasts whom we interviewed typically described the process of body modification as emotionally intoxicating. They claimed that the unique stimulus of their ordeals sometimes results in out-of-body experiences.

  WHAT IS IT?

  In one way or another nearly everyone in our culture practices body modification, but some modifications follow culturally accepted models, and others do not. The man who has hair plugs implanted in his scalp and the man who chooses to have a ring implanted in his nipple, while seemingly quite different, share the desire to alter and the willingnes
s to endure pain.

  Basically, body modification is an alteration of appearance, usually entailing some degree of discomfort. Methods used to modify the body include perforation, incision, removal (complete or partial), cauterization, insertion, abrasion, compression, staining, distention, enlargement, adhesion, and diversion.

  Arnold Schwarzenegger is perhaps America’s most conspicuous and admired specimen of the laboriously self-designed man. The interest—enlargement of muscle—and its corresponding philosophy (“no pain, no gain”) has kept generations of earnest bodybuilders pumping iron. Similarly, fashion magazines, which exhort women to “create a new you,” appeal to the same urge to improve and modify the body. There is nothing new about this. The Kama Sutra describes a long list of substances intended to change a woman’s appearance, including natural ointments, powders, oils, and pigments. Men, meanwhile, are advised in diverse methods of annointing their members with exotic concoctions to increase prowess and “subjugate” their female conquests. And, if more dramatic results are desired, they may enlarge their organs by following complex prescriptions which include rubbing the penis with, among other things, “the bristles of certain insects that live in trees.”3

  The ancient Egyptians had an avid interest in specialized cosmetics, which rival the dermatological formulations of swanky skin salons. And in The Art of Love, written in the 1st Century B.C., Ovid advises women,

  With wax you know how to whiten your skin, and with carmine to give yourself the rosy hue which Nature has denied you.… Those famous masterpieces of the sculptor Myron were once but useless, shapeless blocks of marble. If you want a ring of gold, you’ve got to hammer it into shape.4

  Periodically, women’s cosmetic gimmicks have been censured. A law in ancient Alexandria, for example, chastised women who deceived potential grooms into marriage by cosmetic trickery. In the 18th Century the British Parliament debated legislation which stated,

  … all women … who … seduce or betray into matrimony any of His Majesty’s subjects, by the scents, paints, cosmetic washes, artificial teeth, false hair, Spanish wool, iron stays, hoops, high-heeled shoes, bolstered hips, shall incur the penalty of the law in force against witchcraft …

  —R. BRASCH5

  Nowadays, those who can afford pectoral or breast implants, liposuction or tucks, or any of the dozens of other common elective surgeries and procedures, are more likely to be envied than shunned, despite the fact that some of these procedures are medically dubious, if not actually deleterious to continued good health.

  WHY DO PEOPLE DO IT?

  Humans have an irresistible urge to improve on nature’s design. Body modifications have come into and fallen out of favor throughout history, but the majority of modifiers have sought conformity with prevailing tastes.

  With plastic surgery you conform; with tattooing you individualize.

  —THE DOCTOR

  We in 20th-century America condemn some and condone other types of modifications; at previous times and in other places, different standards applied. Breaking a nose and sawing off cartilage to construct a snubbed proboscis is currently sanctioned; inserting jewelry in a penis to heighten sexual response is viewed with horror. Thus, while piercing and tattooing are usually less physically traumatic than rhinoplasty, these practices are conventionally viewed as barbaric or unsavory while a “nose job” is chic.

  Euro-American culture generally has esteemed modifications that reverse or stall the effects of aging. They reflect a wish, conscious or unconscious, to thwart mortality and to attain a cosmetic ideal. The 1990s American line of demarcation between the valued (such as face-lifts) and the deplored (such as scarification) is crossed whenever the modification in question gives expression to a mystical or a sexual force. One can easily imagine that if a pierced nipple made one look younger, millions would be sporting nipple rings, and proudly.

  Stigmatophiles do not necessarily seek to regain youth by modifying their bodies, and their understanding of beauty is often idiosyncratic. This may partly explain why many contemporary body modifiers affiliate with Eastern or tribal philosophies. Body modifiers describe their activities as an intensely personal statement (for example, an expression of some interior reality), a powerful spiritual urge, or a physical challenge.

  Placing earrings in your nipples or in parts of your genitalia [is] … reclaiming your body. The change, the new awareness that you have of that part of your body simply because there is now an ornament attached to it, a piece of jewelry, is a really radical thing.

  —ROBIN YOUNG

  HEALTH RISKS

  Body modifiers and cosmetic surgeons alike argue that the psychological benefits of modification outweigh the physical dangers and discomforts. People who opt for expensive cosmetic surgeries assert that the pain and risks pale in light of the potential for an improved body image. (Whether an inflated bust line or gargantuan pectorals denote genuine improvement is open to debate.) Similarly, a piercer is likely to believe that his jewelry improves the quality of his inner life and gives him an intrinsic psychological reward. Medically speaking, however, all forms of body modification—including temporary cosmetic changes—carry a degree of risk (as anyone who has developed an infection from using mascara can attest).

  While we take a sympathetic look at the practices described in the following chapters, we note that each is risky. The potential for irrevocable damage to delicate tissue is great. Permanent damage to reproductive and other organs may occur. Furthermore, even a mild infection can become life-threatening if untreated. A piercing or a tattoo is a wound and must be treated as such. Aftercare is crucial. A doctor or other qualified specialist must be consulted.

  INTERVIEW

  FAKIR MUSAFAR

  I guess the most important thing [I’d like to get across] is that no avenues of exploration about the body-spirit connection should be callously discounted. Everything in our culture is changing very rapidly. A lot of views [which] might have seemed inappropriate fairly recently should be given a second look. Right now, [many] people between the ages of 20 and 30 are finding new ways to reclaim their bodies, to do their own rites of passage, to do group rites of passage. The means are different—it may be piercing, it may be tattooing—but all change the physical body and affect the way the world perceives you and you perceive the world.

  Young people have begun to discover that they can explore life and achieve a great deal of self-knowledge by using their bodies. They’re going at it full-bore. One of the first things they started to do was [to] tattoo the body. They didn’t go for the daggers and the hearts and the roses; they tried black work, primitive motifs, very bizarre and strange tattoos that covered a great deal of body area. Almost simultaneously, the revival of body piercing came about. I remember sitting in the back of a Los Angeles restaurant 16 years ago with a handful of people. We all had piercings; most of us had pierced nipples. At that point we could count up only seven people in the world who had pierced nipples. Since then I personally have probably pierced thousands.

  I’ve had the good fortune of not having to tone down what I say [in lectures to college students]. I can be passionate in what I’m doing and lay out what I really feel with the kind of audiences I’ve had. Number one, I’ve got a totally sympathetic audience with anybody into S&M. Two, [with] anybody that’s broad-minded or sexually liberated in any way whatsoever, I can be pretty freewheeling and frank. Three, there are young people who don’t have all those hang-ups. They’re ones who distrust banks, who don’t think politicians know what they’re doing: They have a history of disenfranchisement. Still, the bulk of people out there are probably not that sympathetic. I’ve learned to talk to them somewhat the way I did in [the film] Dances Sacred and Profane.

  In the film, I approached the subject from the standpoint of spiritual exploration, spiritual discovery. Joseph Campbell was probably more radical than I am, talking about most of the things I’m talking about. But he framed it in an acceptable way. He actually made a s
cathing indictment of Judeo-Christian tradition as it’s practiced in this culture. It was incredible what he got away with. But he knew what he was talking about, he knew how to say it, and he found a sympathetic ear.

  I had a hard time for a long time finding anyone who followed what I was trying to do or say. I kept looking. The only place I found people free enough, exploratory enough, who had broken down a lot of programming—who could understand this or who had been exploring it—was in the world of S&M. They had discarded body taboos and a lot of cultural garbage to do S&M. I found my niche. I found that, in a sense, everything I had been doing since age six always had S&M overtones. [Now] I’ve been a practitioner of S&M with other people for many years. Oddly, most people think of Fakir as a bottom because he hangs in trees with fleshhooks. That isn’t necessarily so! For the most part, Fakir is a top.

  Playing with intense sensation is what people do in S&M for the most part. That is what we do in rituals and in piercing and in tattooing. Many people have found that this is a way of opening up their body-spirit connection. When one goes about this consensually and takes intense physical sensation in an expected way, they find that they can separate the body—which is feeling sensation—from the spirit in[side] the body. They’re expanding their consciousness, their understanding of life. I have found that I can get into an altered state that can be used for many things, including healing.