Fridae

Before reinventing herself as the earth mother and becoming Mrs Ritchie, Madonna was Dita. Flashing her gold-capped tooth and wielding a whip she professed to the world in a husky voice that she'll teach us how to f***. Meanwhile, Sharon Stone got friendly with an ice pick, and showed the world how an elegant white Hermes scarf can come in handy in sticky situations. Before you can say "BDSM", the subculture of kinky sex was thrust into the limelight of pop culture.

Eager to try out this new way of love making, my good friend George and his partner armed themselves with wooden pegs, white "good morning" towels, eyeshades, an oversized shoehorn for a paddle and got busy. While I applaud their improvisational abilities, I cringe at the outcome. They spent three hours picking splinters out of George's nipples and the rest of the weekend applying chilled aloe vera on his grotesquely welted butt. They broke up the next weekend.

Ten years later, we find kinky sex more popular than ever. While the larger part of Asia remains untouched by kinky sex, there is no denying that the number of people getting into it globally has grown considerably. A simple search on the Internet will throw up gazillions of websites dedicated to bondage and discipline (BD), sadism and masochism (SM), domination and submission (DS), and the list goes on. Since so many people are getting into it, I can't help but wonder if hardcore kinky sex is better. Can good old-fashioned vanilla sex be just as satisfying?

I, for one, am a strictly vanilla sex person. Sure, I get excited when my partner holds my wrist down during sex play and enjoy the occasional teasing, but when someone starts to spank me and call me his bitch, I spank him right back and call his mother. By dismissing all forms of hardcore kinky sex too quickly and absolutely, am I then depriving myself from a treasure vault of unknown sexual pleasures?

"Of course you are," says Steve, a 29-year-old account executive who's into SM. "The problem with you and many others is that when you guys think of BDSM, you think of people enjoying pain and suffering and you get turned off. But it's more than just physical. It has a lot to do with your mind. It's about realizing your innermost fantasies with another person who is just as into it as you. And when that happens, I cannot even begin to describe to you the high I get."

By this measure I think I'm not missing out on anything. I have my own sexual fantasies like pretending to be the jock discovering a new meaning to the annual once-over with his doctor or having a hot wrestling session au naturel. But just because my fantasies doesn't involve whipping or peeing on someone, it doesn't mean that realizing them gives me any less of a high. It is incredible when I manage to act them out and even more so when I find someone who shares them.

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But Steve was on to something when he says BDSM is more of a mental than physical thing. Someone once said that power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. And to many people who are into BDSM, this is what draws them to it as it is often referred to as a power exchange. It is a reciprocal interaction between two parties where intellectual faculties are cast aside. Typically, one party relinquishes all power to his partner who in turn adopts the dominant role while not forgetting to respect the needs and limits of his partner.

I, on the other hand, question if BDSM is the only avenue to experience this granddaddy of all turn-ons. To me, all relationships intrinsically entail a certain degree of power dynamics. We go through a process of power negotiation, discovering how far you can push your partner and (if you are lucky) finally settling into the comfort zone of your respective power roles. This power play by no means ends in the bedroom and I find that mentally and physically satisfying enough for me, thank you very much.

"But that's not all," added Simon, a part time model and a full time proponent of the BDSM persuasion. "You see it's always a two way traffic. Just as one party gives power to the dominant partner, the dominant one must provide trust for the one who submits. He then must learn to trust that his partner will not cause any grievous bodily or emotional harm. And once this trust has been established, it brings the couple to a completely new level of intimacy."

At this point, I cannot help but wonder if these people have ever been in a real relationship where trust is an important if not crucial element. Ironically, vanilla sex with one's partner is riskier than any other forms of sex. It has the highest risk of transmitting HIV and other sexually transmitted disease. While a kinky sex session may not necessarily involve any form of penetration, vanilla sex with your partner inevitably includes either oral or anal sex and therefore puts you at risk.

For me, the ultimate level of intimacy between a couple is when they make the commitment to stay exclusive to each other, trusting unquestionably that each will keep his word and engage in unprotected sex. That is an incredible leap of faith as trusting the wrong guy in BDSM may only leave you with some scars to remember him by while trusting the wrong guy in love and plain sex may leave you a lifetime of regret.

Now, I am by no means discounting all the feelings of pleasure and satisfaction that people like Steve and Simon derive from kinky sex but when they get into a kinkier-than-thou mindset I have defend my own choice. Since I can find the purported benefits of kinky sex in regular sex, why should I try out something that doesn't turn me on?

As the saying goes, one man's eroticism is another man's belly laugh. I say it's your sex life, live it as you please.