Ask any working actor about how they do what they do, and they’ll all agree on this: that, in performance, lie moments of truthfulness. It is, of course, a bedrock principle of the Stanislavski System, which continues to inform so much modern acting practice, and each major acting school will have its own take on the same. The Meisner Technique looks to the real-time connection between actors for that truthfulness; Lee Strasberg’s Method Acting challenges its participants to publicly share what they think and feel in private, with only the veneer of the scripted character for deniability or disguise.
The actorly world of film and theatre seems, on the surface, to offer something of a contradiction, or provocation, to a high-end companion, for whom authenticity is everything, whether that’s the genuine relationship that underpins her Girlfriend Experience (GFE), or the spiritual vulnerability of tantric connection. It’s a contradiction because the actor insists that there is authenticity – truthfulness – in the performance of its very opposite: that is to say, in imagined fantasy, in fiction, or make-believe.
Precisely what that hidden truthfulness is and what form it takes, it’s doubtful most actors could say. But with fewer limitations, a more expansive physical freedom, and a great deal more discretion, it’s a truthfulness an escort knows well; one that, in time, she might even take you towards, provided you’re able and willing.
The journey towards that truth, through fantasy, begins with a single toy, or prop: a feather, a scrap of silk or fur, a piece of highball ice fished from an Old Fashioned, an unscented, paraffin candle from the dining room table. Whatever it is, its material properties – its softness, smoothness, chilliness or heat – can quickly become eroticised, and exploited for sensory and bodily pleasure. That transformation of a neutral, everyday object introduces a new hierarchy that wasn’t there before. Now, there’s a giver who initiates the sensation; now there’s a receiver to whom it is given.
Change the toy or even how it is used, and that new hierarchy becomes amplified. When a length of silk dragged over the chest becomes a blindfold or a restraint for the wrists, it effectively becomes costume, soon freighted with meaning and cultural resonance. A yellow Marigold from the kitchen is a glove to cover the hand, to be sure, but it’s not a velvet glove; or a glove with intricate lacework; or a long, red latex glove. And none of these share the same suggestion as a black leather gauntlet. Add a d-ring fixing to the latter, and it morphs again, further complicating expectations.
And wherever there are costumes, there are roles to perform, taking their cues from the prop, the ensemble, and the new dynamics these create. This kind of role-play differs substantially from the work of actors. There’s no implied audience, though plenty may like to watch. And, while it’s carefully negotiated ahead of time, it’s rarely scripted or rehearsed. Notoriously, it tends to trade in stock archetypes rather than the careful, psychologically nuanced characterisation of actors; improvising on the fly, and making use of whatever’s to hand.
A slick of red lipstick and a pinstripe skirt, and you have a capable, compliant secretary waiting for her chief executive’s next instruction. Add horn-rimmed glasses on a chain and opaque tights that make a silhouette of the leg, and the secretary becomes a stern librarian about to reprimand you for breaking the silence of her hallowed institution. Sit her in an armchair, cocoon her in a cashmere cardi, relax the face, soften the voice, and now she’s therapist to your wretched soul, yearning to free you from your unbearable burdens. Pull on polished riding boots, knot a silk cravat at her throat, place a riding crop lightly in her hand, and she becomes a haughty equestrian aristocrat, imperious and exacting, accustomed to obedience yet in need of someone to curb her lofty airs. Shelve the back-chat, force her to her knees and then to all-fours, the reins that once guided her horse now twisted into straps of subjugation, binding her wrists as the spoils of defeat. And she becomes the gladiatrix brought low, dust and blood matting her hair as she awaits the decision of her fate.
If this is sounding at all clichéd, trite, or even downright silly, then remember, firstly, that your own inventions are warmly received in role-play; and, secondly, that these roles are simply frameworks or dramatic vehicles for that sensory, eroticised exchange. They hold and amplify that exchange, providing a context for its repeated application and withdrawal.
And the end result is sensory, erogenous, or erotic pleasure, whether that’s immediate, as in the soft stroke of gloved fingertips; spiked with trepidation, as when the same roving fingers unexpectedly grab, twist or slap the flesh; or tantalisingly delayed, as when a clamp is applied to the body, and a rush of endorphins rises to take its place as it is finally, graciously removed.
But pleasure – titillating and arousing though it may be – falls way short of anything that could be described as truthfulness. For that, the scene needs to switch up a gear, from the silliness, frivolity and fun of light comedy, to the emphatic seriousness of melodrama, revenge play, and high tragedy.
As BDSM communities all over the world have discovered, increased duration and sensory intensity, catalysed by props, costume and set design, will do this, for the human mind is a deceptively malleable thing that frequently confuses what it imagines for reality.
Given sufficient prompting and care, all but the most hackneyed and arbitrary scenarios start to look and feel genuinely real for the parties involved, particularly when they touch upon weightier, live-wire subjects. Imagined fantasies of extreme powerlessness, cruelty and violence, for example, that may have their roots in, or otherwise be informed by personal or cultural trauma, take on a significantly darker inflection than the giggling, cheesecake pin-up girls of your grandfather’s porn stash.
Couple the intrinsic volatility of that imagined headspace with genuine restraint and resistance, genuine and extended sensory deprivation, discomfort and pain, and the minds involved, pushed ever closer towards extreme states, begin to collectively unravel. Primitive defence mechanisms, never seen in everyday life, kick in, much like they do in instances of real-world trauma. Expect uncontrolled sobbing and shrieks of pain, followed by marked shifts towards psychosis: age regression, maybe, whereby grown adults are reduced, involuntarily, into helplessly babbling infants with suddenly diminished capacity for thought, fine-motor coordination, or communication; auditory and visual hallucinations, often informed by horror movies, as high levels of stress hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol, flood the endocrine system, causing abject chaos to regular sensory perception and higher thinking; and, finally, a mental dissociation, that feels like floating, as the body numbs out entirely, its limp extremities turning icy cold as it initiates a deep survival response, and prioritises the preservation of its vital organs over its now-expendable limbs. For the player initiating the sensation, there’s the intoxicating feeling of absolute power and control. But, via the uneasy, often overwhelming emotional contagion that necessarily occurs, there’s also potential for long-lasting shame, guilt, and the threat of criminal investigation, if they somehow step too far.
What to do with these intense and heightened states of being that are usually locked away? It’s up to you and also a question of negotiation with whomever you choose to journey with. For some, they’re as simple as a series of biochemical and psychological mechanisms and failsafes, to be by-passed and exploited for amped up arousal and bodily pleasure.
For others, they’re a working out space for self-development and healing, the ultimate exposure therapy in which old wounds are forensically exposed, re-imagined, and re-scripted; a place where new memories jostle and compete with old ones and, in doing so, reduce and finally defuse the potency of the latter.
For others, still, the rewards lie far beyond even the pleasure principle or self-discovery. The psychoanalyst, Jaques Lacan, spent much of his career theorising this as jouissance, which simply means ‘enjoyment’ in French but, in this context, means anything but. For Lacan, jouissance is the state of being in which we are born but also soon expelled from, and which a part of us – hidden and sublimated in the subconscious – yearns forever, in vain, to return. It’s a state of natural extremes, one that exists before socialised language, culture, rational thinking and knowledge simplify and make sense of the world; where the world is felt rather than thought; and where the very notions of Self and Other have yet to be determined and are, therefore, entirely irrelevant and dissolved. Nothing that is known makes sense here; nothing that can be spoken can describe this place.
Approaching the shadowlands of these extremes is not without significant danger or risk; cannot be done without absolute trust, attunement and consent; and, even then, remains out of reach for the faint of heart whose edge – and there’s no shame in this – may be located far closer towards the casual and the carefree, however much their enthusiasm and curiosity is piqued.
For those fully resolved to relinquish, to endure, and to trust, however, the very tenets of human existence themselves appear, as an undiscovered country, through which they may voyage with open and new-born eyes.
Resources:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-37322-1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFma24S-Uvw