THE PLEASURE AND COST OF PLAY

Words by Dhvani Ramanujam Illustration by Maia Grecco

“H ow many play partners do you have?” “Are you into the edge play?” “Do you want to go to a play party with me next week?”

Whether you’re describing play as a set of activities or kinks, as a descriptor for a sexual partner, or simply a verb that acts as a call to action, play is inherent to BDSM.

Perhaps the most familiar way of thinking about play’s relationship to BDSM is in the concept of the role play: the idea of constructing sexual scenarios and identities to act out particular fantasies. Role play is, in some ways, the adult way of dressing up and making up stories; it allows us to flex a creative muscle that might not have gotten much use since childhood. It presents an opportunity to imagine better versions of

worlds and characters that we might not be able to live out in our real worlds. It’s a chance to centre desire, in a society that often stifles our impulses of towards pleasure, in favour of making us more productive. Role play can (if only temporarily) liberate us from the endless mundanity of capitalism.

I’ve always been drawn to role playing, to fantasizing in general, as a form of escaping the mundane. When it comes to BDSM and role play, I’m also attracted to what this form of play in particular can offer me— what it can help me escape from. I mostly identify as a submissive, but sometimes play as a switch. My partners and I, in the past and present, set up various power dynamics and let certain scenarios flow from those dynamics, before introducing particular forms of sexual activities or “play”.

As a South Asian woman, my body is often susceptible to a sexual politics that demands respectability. In role play, I’m anything but “respectable.”

I’m drawn to the games, to the theatricality of it all. A scene in BDSM is constructed like a delicate dance. There are decided roles and rules; negotiated boundaries and limits; the use of props; a setting, real or imagined; a basic plot and outcome. A basic punishment scenario, for instance, has a dominant and a submissive. They’ve decided the submissive has misbehaved, and must be punished—maybe spanked—for a broken rule. They decide on the level of punishment.

Perhaps the dominant has certain implements they want to use, or they simply will use their hand. They decide that the punishment must be private this time; , in the bedroom. The goal is for the submissive to learn their lesson— before being taken back into their dominant’s arms.

Yet even though a scene has it’s given ingredients, not everything is predetermined. With sexual role play, there is always room to be surprised. A particular phrase or implement might add an unanticipated intensity to the scene. A breadth of new or unforeseen emotions may be brought to the surface. The balance between pain and pleasure can alternate

in unexpected ways. It’s the mixture of the planned and unplanned that makes role play so exciting; the ability to perform personas you might not ordinarily have access to and yet still, be surprised in the ways that you can be acted upon.

As a South Asian woman, my body is often susceptible to a sexual politics that demands respectability. In role play, I’m anything but “respectable”; I put my own pleasure and desire first, and that itself makes me powerful. But my power also grows with the subversive nature of role play: through the kinds of roles I opt to perform, play within BDSM allows me to break with constraints that demand me to have a chaste, pure body where my desire is controllable. Instead, I let my desire run wild. My tongue is vulgar, as are the movements of my limbs and the sounds they elicit. The crassness of the spectacle I create during sex becomes a form of resistance against any effort to subdue or control my body.

But it’s the cathartic release that makes play so euphoric. Vulgarity, hysteria, those particular sets of emotions and behaviours that the daily grind forces us to keep at bay. They are finally let out in the open, even if it might only be in the openness of

bedrooms, of sex lounges, and play parties. In submission and masochism, I find joy in the pain that predates or mingles alongside pleasure. Taking a punishment, for instance, reminds me of all my body is capable of doing and taking. Crying, letting my tears fall after an intense form of punishment, allows me to release all the anxiety that has built up throughout the day. In role play, I

But it’s also capitalism that reminds me over and over again that the power of sexual role play is only a temporary form of escape from the daily drudgery, and that it, too, is just as susceptible to commodification.

can experience fear, power, anticipation, loss, pain, pleasure, euphoria, and all at once at that. What I often hate so much about capitalism, is how tired, how exhausted it makes me, until all I have left at the end of the day is exhaustion with no more room for any other feelings. It renders my world grey. Role play is my escape from it, into a space where I can experience the whole spectrum of emotions—a world of colour. Role play reminds me, over and over again, how to really feel.

But it’s also capitalism that reminds me over and over again that the power of sexual role play is only a temporary form of escape from the daily drudgery, and that it, too, is just as susceptible to commodification. BDSM seems to be gaining more mainstream credibility and legitimacy, in part to (not necessarily accurate) recent media depictions of the community. Yet ironically, I worry about the rising costs of accessing this sexuality, and then in turn how it makes play increasingly expensive and therefore inaccessible.

I cherish role play in BDSM as an escape—a window for creativity, to let my imagination run free, and to let my body perform accordingly. But if it takes a certain level of funds to fulfill our imaginations and our fantasies, then in some ways I wonder if this form of play loses its power.

Engaging in BDSM and the larger community is not a cheap thing, especially in this city. Sex toys and implements are not cheap. Lingerie is not cheap. Erotic photography is not cheap. Fetish events, or entry to sex clubs are not cheap. Kink workshops, though very instructive and useful in learning new skills, are usually not cheap either. If BDSM is organized around certain techniques, rules, and props, but it costs (a lot) to accrue those skills and paraphernalia, then is play even accessible? And if it isn’t, how subversive can play be?