**Please send your scandalous submissions to Sensuous Sadie at SensuousSadie@aol.com

According to the Seven Days Sex Survey (Vermont Arts Newspaper), 18% of their readers practice BDSM. 68% practiced anal sex, and 52% have used dildos.

Feelings that originate in the human genitalia are among the most powerful forces on earth. They have a complex relationship with the feelings that stem from the human heart; at various times in competition or in harmony... One of the supreme goals of spiritual work is to harness the sexual urges in service to the heart's wisdom.
~ Rob Brezsny, www.freewillastrology.com 

There's a fine line between pleasure and pain. Love me like a ball and chain.
~ Brian Setzer, "Ball and Chain" from the CD The Brian Setzer Orchestra

"In the beginning I was fooled by Dominants who were good looking, had charisma, dressed well, and had that "dominant" personae. I soon realized that these things are easy to fashion. Real Dominance is a deep and visceral thing, something that has nothing to do with the trappings of BDSM."
~ Sensuous Sadie

My soul is a broken field
plowed by pain
~ Sara Teasdale

If you are meant to be in the lifestyle, you will find that, where you were once only walked through life, you will be gliding on air. Parts of you that never were complete will then become whole. In relinquishing control, I have found freedom: freedom to find and be the person I am inside.
~ miria hunter

Thou art to me a delicious torment.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The lifestyle that we have each chosen is not a path of one-upsmanship, and we don't get points on the astral plane for having attended more seminars or gone to more retreats.
~ Karen

Sexuality is a sacrament.
~ Starhawk

She sprinkles testicles on her cornflakes.
~ "Ms. Bigalo," Literary agent played by Marsha Mason on The Education of Max Bixford

How to have a lousy scene: play talkradio, wear white athletic socks, chew gum, don't shave the pits or legs, talk about politics while flogging, just stop play whenever.
~ Queen Maureen

To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself and so to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.
~ James Baldwin, Author

A riding crop and a blindfold doesn't make it BDSM. There is a big difference between being kinky and being in the scene. It's not a sexual thing to me, it's a very spiritual thing.
~ DominaBlue

Most power is illusionary and perceptual. You have to create an environment in which people perceive you as having some power.
~ Carrie Saxon Perry

The two best teachers are love and pain.
~ Andrea Haskell [played by Marcia Gay Harden in The Education of Max Bixford]


"Listen, when I slap you you'll take it and like it."
~ From The Maltese Falcon, Humphrey Bogart to Peter Lorre:

Look, if you want to torture me, spank me, lick me, do it. But if this poetry shit continues just shoot me now please.
~ Lori Petty in Tank Girl

Stars hid your fires. Let not light see my black and deep desires.
~ From The Talented Mr. Ripley

"Intimacy is based on shared vulnerability...nothing deepens intimacy like the experiences that we share when we feel flayed, with our skins off, scared and vulnerable, and our partner is there with us, willing to share in the scary stuff"
~ From The Ethical Slut by Dosie Eastman and Katherine Liszt.

Whenever I call upon a woman I never fail to take with me a little whip.
~ Nietzsche

If you can't beat 'em…. let them beat you..
~ Courtesy of Xaveness

Understand the preciousness of the unfulfilled desire. Begin to feel appreciation for the fact that the desire exists, rather than instant disappointment that it has not manifested.

New York, NY Maxim magazine reported recently that a new dining establishment is open in Manhattan called La Maison de Sade. They serve traditional French cuisine with not so traditional side "dishes." For $20 a throw, you can have hot wax melted on your nipples, or order "Spanking of a Slave", "Foot Worship", and the ever popular, "Public Humiliation." [I wonder if the kids eat for free on Tuesdays.]

The slave escapes her bonds to find a stronger set of chains.
~ Anonymous

"Get in good physical condition before submitting to bondage. You should be fit to be tied."
~ Robert Byrne

Sticks and stones may break my bones but whips and chains excite me

Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor services to do till you require.
~ William Shakespeare

"It doesn't matter that my limbs are fastened to this bed. Power is not in the body. It's in the mind. Hard to explain to a novice. But I've got the time, if you've got the inclination to listen."
~ Alison Tyler, "Blue Sky Sideways" (story from Bondage: An Anthology of Passionate Restraint - available at Imago for $1.99)

What is most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine.
~Susan Sontag

Passion is our ground, our island - do others exist?
~ Eudora Welty

The Master gives the gift of control. The slave gives the gift of submission.
~ Master S.

I’ve always been into it in fantasy going way back, and in practice taking what I could, playing around the edges of vanilla relationships. What I’ve come to realize about myself is that I cannot be happy without a strong D/s, s/m element in my lover. I feed to deeply with it for me to try to patch together a relationship, no matter how loving, without having it. So, realizing that I got involved. Started on a path to become the kind of man who can be trusted to Top a woman cleanly and with passion, and tried to find partners for whom my roles, fantasies, my dominant and sadistic nature is not an undesirable or merely tolerated inconvenience, but an asset, something prized and sought.
~ Master Foxx

A sadist is someone who refuses to be mean to a masochist.
~ Anon

I yearn for he who can lead me there, take me to the next level. Not another Dom wannabe who can’t control his own life, much less mine, but a man with power and imagination and confidence.
~ Submissive Sadie

The seduction emanating from a person of uncertain or dissimulated sex is powerful.
~ Colette

Ritual is the act of sanctifying action - even ordinary actions- so that it has meaning: I can light a candle because I need the light or because the candle represents the light I need.
~ Christina Baldwin

Many vanilla people are surprised to learn that S/M includes erotic spanks, scratches, and bites, which are amazingly common forms of erotic expression. They are also surprised to find out that S/M practitioners can fall in love, and that they enjoy conventional sex acts such as oral sex and intercourse.
~ Laura Goodwin of United Leatherfolk Of CT

It doesn't matter what you do in the bedroom as long as you don't do it in the street and frighten the horses.
~ Mrs. Patrick Campbell, in Daphne Fielding, The Dutchess of Jermyn Street

When i first began this lifestyle, i thought there was nothing i wouldn't do. Sound familiar? Seems almost everyone new to the lifestyle says that there is nothing they will not do. Then they start reading and hearing of the totality of possibilities, and reality sets in.
~ miria hunter

We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal. I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force, a force which moves us toward living in a fundamental way.
~ Audre Lorde

Lead me not into temptation,
I can find it just fine myself.
~ Anonymous

"Be careful Anais, abnormal pleasures kill the taste for normal ones."
~ Eduardo, (Anais Nin's Cousin in the movie Henry & June)

The single most common question in BDSM is "How do I find a submissive?"… Occasionally, it is spoken with an air of angry frustration, as if there should be a branch of Subs R Us on every corner.
~ John Warren, Ph.D., in The Loving Dominant

Sometimes I feel, like I've been tied to the whippin' post.
Oh Lord, I feel like I'm dying.
~ The Allman Brothers (song)

Novice Doms think that once they have a sub, life will be perfect. They’ll have someone to cook, clean, kiss their feet, and suck them off. What more could a guy ask for?
~ Submissive Sadie

If one could discern the centers of dominance in any society, one need only look to its definitions of "virtue," and "vice," or "legal" and "criminal" for in the strength to set standards resides the strength to maintain control.
~ Freda Adler

A continual atmosphere of hectic passion is very trying if you haven't got any of your own.
~ Dorothy L. Sayers

Slave isn't just a word; it's a way of life, a defined action.
~ miria hunter

There was no reality to pain when it left one, though while it held one fast all other realities faded.
~ Rachel Field

A persons best piece of equipment is their mind. Reading and talking with people who are truly knowledgeable in the lifestyle is the best piece of equipment. I would suggest that every new Dom go out and get a mentor or two. Learn, listen, and check their ego at the door. Listen to those who have made mistakes before them.
~ Eric I.

We are the masters of words we've never spoken and the slaves of the ones we have.
~Sandra West Prowell, in When Wallflowers Die

I don't know what I am, darling. I've tried several varieties of sex. The conventional position makes me claustrophobic. And the others give me either stiff neck or lockjaw.
~ Tallulah Bankhead, in Lee Isreal, Miss Tallulah Bankhead (1972)

You see what power is - holding someone else's fear in your hand and showing it to them!
~ Amy Tan

Sometimes, being a bitch is all a woman has.
~ From the movie Dolores Claiborne

At times, it is strangely sedative to know the extent of your own powerlessness.
~ Erica Jong

You know I'll always be your slave
Till I'm buried, buried in my grave
~ Sam Cooke, Bring It On Home To Me

Resentment comes into play when I give 150% of myself, even when it gives me pleasure to please.
~ Amber

I truly feel that there are as many ways of loving as there are people in the world, and as there are days in the lives of those people.
~ Mary S. Calderone

My Dom must be superior in his mind and heart; he must not be afraid of me even deep down where he thinks I cannot see.
~ Submissive Sadie

My kink is better than your kink? Never! It is just our way of doing things. What we all need to remember is my kink and your kink is, in the end, OUR kink and we really need to learn to stand together and respect one another for our individuality as well as our collective identity.
~ miria hunter

Submission without domination is when you keep doing what he wants even after he keeps insisting he doesn't want it. Domination without submission is when he keeps telling you to do something and you keep telling him to fuck off.
~ Linda

When the combination of all needs are met through the Dominant mind, the true satisfaction of the submissive need is met from her strengths to endure, to overcome and to heighten her every sense of being.
~ Amber

I'm all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.
~ Gore Vidal

Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments. I am in accord with the surrealists, searching for the marvelous.
~ Anais Nin

I could spend my life in this sweet surrender.
~ Aerosmith

"D/s is powerful stuff, and if you are new to the heady feeling of the power exchange, it can easily be mixed up with different powerful emotions like love, relationship, and commitment. "
~ Submissive Sadie

I do not want to be the leader. I refuse to be the leader. I want to live darkly and richly in my femaleness. I want a man lying over me, always over me. His will, his pleasure, his desire, his life, his work, his sexuality the touchstone, the command, my pivot. I don't mind working, holding my ground intellectually, artistically; but as a woman, oh, God, as a woman I want to be dominated. I don't mind being told to stand on my own feet, not to cling all that I am capable of doing but I am going to be pursued, fucked, possessed by the will of a male at his time, his bidding.
~ Anais Nin

Once you familiarize yourself with the chains of bondage, you prepare your own limbs to wear them.
~ Abraham Lincoln