Fiction Versus Life And The Story Of O
In a nice article for Medium about the sexual stories we tell ourself, Chelsea G. Summers has something to say about The Story Of O that I think many of us here will appreciate:
What’s truly fucking jarring about the inextricability of sex and storytelling is how much real life can come up wanting. I read The Story of O at a formative age. To have this seminal BDSM novel as a cornerstone of my erotic self is problematic. There is no fantasy I treasure more than O’s introduction into her sexual servitude — limo kidnapping, the blindfolding, the skirt hiked up to reveal her stockings and her lack of underwear, the tacit consent to being fucked by countless unseen men, the eventual reveal, the long-awaited cunnilingual orgasm at the scene’s end. Every detail of this chapter speaks to me in a voice that sounds like Jean Reno, and it feels good.
I would love to make real flesh O’s fiction except I can’t. In theory, I could try. I could corral a bunch of stalwart men, rent a limo, buy a blindfold, find a flat, give the willing dudes the essential script and let them have at it, but it will never be what I want it to be, and what I want it to be is a scene from a novel. A fiction. A story. That came from the brain of Pauline Réage (whose name is another fiction).
Elsewhere on Bondage Blog:
