Many kinksters, especially older ones, will immediately recognize the title of this post. It’s one of the slowest songs from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. For those of you not familiar with this seminal film, RHPS is a 1975 musical satire of 1950s science fiction horror films, in which the naive virgins Brad (Barry Bostwick) and Janet (Susan Sarandon in one of her earliest movie roles) stumble across a castle owned by the wildly hedonistic Frank N. Furter (in a performance that established Tim Curry as a cultural icon), an alien mad scientist from “transsexual Transylvania” who spends most of the film in a corset, fishnets and high heels. In the course of the film, he deflowers both Brad and Janet, who also has an encounter with Rocky, Frank’s sexually-charged but sexually innocent Frankenstein Monster.
About 20 minutes before the end of the film, Frank performs “Don’t Dream It, Be It”, in which he languidly reveals his guiding philosophy that one should “give yourself over to absolute pleasure” and he invites Brad, Janet, Rocky, his protégé Columbia, and the audience to “swim in the warm waters of sins of the flesh” as they cavort in a swimming pool, having finally shed their inhibitions, grievances, and criticisms of each other and simply embrace the joy of expressing their true sexual selves.
While hardly the best number in the film, it embodies the film’s central ethos that socially-deviant sexual pleasure is worth indulging in for its own sake and for the liberation it brings. Frank, who for most of the film is largely in control of things and essentially performing the role of mad scientist, finally allows himself to be vulnerable and show what motivates him–a powerful desire to express his authentic self and to have it be accepted by those around him.
And they do. Although Frank initially manipulates those around him into exploring sex, homosexuality, and cross-dressing, they all embrace what he is offering them once they realize that what is holding them back is simply social convention. (As a total side fact, RHPS is still technically in first release, meaning it holds the record for the longest first release in film history.)
The title of the song says something I’ve always considered a central principle of my exploration of kink. Do not restrict yourself to merely fantasizing about your desires. Find ways to explore and express those desires. Sitting at home and jerking off is perfectly fine, but don’t let it end there. Let your masturbatory fantasies help you find the drive to go out and pursue those dreams as things you can actually indulge in with other people.
Many people fantasize about being subs or doms, of an enormously wide range of shades: bedroom slaves, hotwives, cucks, rubber gimps, leather daddies, piss tops, bondage bottoms, sadistic teachers, faggot housebois, himbos, lifestyle slaves, kidnapping victims, pups, adult babies, and so many more. They know that they could be these things, that that part of themselves is desperate for expression, that the idea of actually being that thing either for a night or permanently is the thing that gets them wildly aroused.
And yet, despite that, they are afraid to take the next step toward actualizing those desires. They let their fears constrain themselves into staying at home and just jacking off to porn. They worry about what their family or partner might think of their desires. They worry those choices might affect their job, their social standing, their god’s view of them, or their afterlife, and so they smother that vital, essential part of themselves.
When I realized I was kinky, I was about 40 and was coming out of a bad breakup with a partner of 8 years, a relationship that had made it very difficult to recognize key facts about my sexuality. I knew that I was much older than was ideal to begin exploring this piece of myself. And yet I realized that I only had one life in which to explore this and realize it for myself. And I very quickly determined that I didn’t want to just fantasize about doing the things that got my dick hard. I actually wanted to figure out how to do them and how to find guys who wanted to do them with me. I didn’t want to look back at the end of my life and regret not at least trying to claim that part of me. I didn’t want to just dream it. I wanted to be it.
And that’s been my goal in my sexual life, to not just express those desires to myself but to embody them, in the very literal sense of acting them out in my flesh. I want to be, as far as I am able, the kinky man I know I am inside myself.
That’s not to say that I’ve always succeeded in that dream. I’ve run into obstacles of many sorts. I’ve let other things sometimes take precedence (because as much as I’m a kinkster, I’m not just a kinkster and the other parts of me need their screen time too). I’ve let fear or self-doubt or sometimes just laziness hold me back. And sometimes I just haven’t been able to find the guys who want to do what I want to do. But I want to know that, at the end of my life, even if I don’t get to everything on my erotic check-list, I at least ticked off some of the big things and tried to realize my erotic self.
But along the way, I’ve met plenty of boys who said they wanted to be my subs, but who let something thwart that desire. Sometimes it’s been a matter of logistics or distance, but often it’s just been fear, as far as I can see. They can dream it, but they are scared to try to be it.
That’s not to say that fear is always wrong. There definitely are risks to exploring one’s kinks. There are physical risks such as injuries, STIs and HIV, and unscrupulous or mentally ill kinksters and scam artists. There are spiritual risks, such as discovering a kink that challenges your sense of who you truly are or leaves you craving something your partner can’t or won’t provide. There are social and financial risks, such as rejection by spouses, parents, friends, co-workers, and employers. The world can be truly unkind to us kinksters because we reject the rules that society has persuaded itself must be upheld as all costs, such as rules about how we express our gender, our affection for loved ones, or our proper role in society.
And RHPS acknowledges this. Frank is ultimately killed by his butler Riff-Raff because “your lifestyle’s too extreme”. But I think Frank understands and accepts those risks because he needs the opportunity to be the man he knows he is. He dares to create not just Rocky, but a whole small society where he can be that man, and indeed, it is a rather significant detail that at the bottom of the swimming pool in “Don’t Dream It” is Michelangelo’s creation of Adam. Frank creates both Rocky and himself, God playing God in pursuit of his essential truth.
And yet, to me, those risks, managed as best I can, are still worth it to be the dominant man I know I am inside, because the rewards are intensely beautiful and pleasurable, and the downside of not being that person is much worse for me.
So if you’re stuck just thinking about expressing your sexual self, let me urge you to jump into the warm waters of the sins of the flesh, because I think you’ll find those waters far better and more pleasurable than you can imagine.
Don’t dream it. Be it.
Leather-Bound Press 