collective kinky unconscious

if you aren't familiar with the psychology of carl jung, then you may have never heard of something called the collective unconscious.  or even if you have, you may not yet have wrapped your head around what exactly it means-- i know that it took me several go-rounds before the whole thing sunk in for me.

you can read a little more about jung stuff by following the links on this wikipedia page, but on a basic level the collective unconscious refers to the phenomenon of a whole culture, or even the whole globe, having the same idea in their heads.  this is usually something expressed in cultural norms or artistic expressions or even in prejudices or systems of morality.  

a simple example is the hero archetype.  all over the world and independently of each other, people are drawn to a basic story about a strong (strong-willed or physically strong) man who bravely overcomes adversity (and usually gets the girl as well).  the basic story line is recreated (with some variation, of course) in books, films, plays, paintings, and our imaginations-- our imaginations and imaginations of people far away, people we never had any contact with.  it's kind of meaningful across the board... it speaks to something deep inside us, something that makes us want to hear the story again and again.  jung says we all feel a draw towards this story and other stories or ideals because of the collective unconscious.

i bring up the concept because sometimes i feel like there's a collective kinky unconscious.  i'm sure i'm not alone in my noticing of similar themes across bdsm and erotica blogs.  the very same ways of playing with dominance and submission are present everywhere you look, told again and again with different characters and different verbiage but the same story at its core.

sure, some of the uniformity could be due to the reading and research that so many people do on the internet now.  we get ideas from each other, absolutely.  we try out the new ideas and we write about them.  but that source can't explain everything.

being with luke and watching his dominant imagination emerge has been a fascinating process for me.  i've done a fair amount of reading on the internet, and i've really been amazed by the way that luke naturally moves toward the very same fantasies and power games that i've read about in so many other places.  i know he's done a bit of internet research, yes-- but very little, i think.  many of his ideas have come from his own head.  

it was luke and his process that solidified in my head this idea of a collective kinky unconscious.  maybe holding my wrists down while i fight to get away is tame and passe enough that it's no big news that both meta and gray lily have written about the exact same thing, but i'm still compelled.  what is it about me and luke that makes us want the same things that these other couples do?  it fascinates me that the sort-of-pretend scolding he gives me before a spanking could have been pulled from an erotic video script (someone else thought of all that before and wrote it down).  i didn't tell him what to say-- he just got into the role and it came to him.  

and-- and this is the one that compels me most dramatically-- we've had lovemaking brought to its peak through discussion of a fantasy that oatmeal girl describes over a year ago.  did luke read her post, or any of a thousand others on the same theme across the blogosphere?  no.  and yet he described this same scene for me.  it's startlingly similar to what you've already read, although now you can picture luke and i as the main characters-- tall, willowy redhead with slender, anglo boy-scout-gone-sadist.  i am bent over, and he is nearby, close enough to touch.

this is the scene he describes as he fucks me... he describes it almost like a threat.  afterward, we marvel at how erotic it was and how scary it was and how we both prefer to keep it in fantasy.  but in the moment, as we live in the power and control and surrender and helplessness in his words, we are sure that it could come true any moment.

i'm tied to the bed by my wrists, you see.  face down, ass up.  and he's going to get a blindfold and put it on me, and then i'll see nothing but black.  i'll hear him typing-- he's gone on craigslist and he's put up an ad.  he's offered me up; he's looking for willing men.  he'll get responses immediately, and he'll invite the responders to the apartment.  he'll bring them in one by one.  i won't be able to see-- i won't know who is taking me.  all i will know is that it's a stranger.  and that luke is nearby.  he'll be sitting in my desk chair, watching.  making sure that i behave, he tells me.  intervening if i don't.  they'll each have me, one at a time, until he's satisfied.

shiver.

the fantasy turns me on because of the objectification, and because of the extent of possession that it implies.  so much his that he can loan me out?  it's intense.  for luke's part, he says he isn't sure why it turns him on.  but it does... it's leaked into our mid-coital erotic talk now and then for months.  each time, we tentatively imagine through it.  maybe a little less tentatively each time, although i'm sure that it continues to scare us both.

will it ever come true?  i think not.  i rather hope not, actually.  but it's created a snowball of erotic energy for luke and i many times over, just as it seems to have done for oatmeal girl and a thousand others.

i rejoice in the ways that "luke and meg" is just us, all us, and our own individual desires and interpretations of what love and sex and relationships and dominance, submission, sadism and the lot can be.  i celebrate that freedom.  and at the same time, analysis junkie that i am, i cannot help but consider us within the greater collective, or at least examine how we are connected.  i love that so many human beings secretly pine for the same kinky, dirty things-- but that there are few enough of us that we're still a bit on the fringe.  we're so different, but yet we're still so alike, even in our darkest, scariest fantasies.