Faster than an erection, a book
Faster than erection was published by MACRO in 2021 in conjunction with Maybury's exhibition of the same name. The book is a sort of theory and methodology over sixty A4 pages that explains Maybury's practice, theory and methodologies of domination with accompanying imagery. The brilliant Cassandra Troyan was invited to write a poem for the book entitled ''I COULD NEVER TELL YOU; OR, ON THE QUESTION OF POWER''.
Available from Burning house Books, Camden Arts Centre London, After 8 books, Donlon Books and the ICA.
My legs are open. An acute awareness runs through My consciousness that life is an endless constellation of power plays and I mitigate My disease with this inescapable friction by employing Myself as a Dominatrix. I am switched on. Turned on. Electrically ready to rebalance.
The persona that I transmit as a Woman of fantasy is one who has transitory control over some men. This does not mould itself into the parameters of its roles, magnified yet illusory stereotypes of the Dominatrix as a kitsch archetype. Traditional sensationalism is always a dead end. Instead I relish in inflaming microcosms of libidinous chaos, and then having the ability to analyse the side effects of these inspidily gendered and most often transactional encounters with men. Experimenting with different ways I can disrupt existing conditions is My biggest thrill.
Fetish is an arena of the absurd because it is inherently about an infatuation with what is dead. When I am fetishized for My strength as a Woman I must not allow the attraction of these men towards Me to be an attraction to someone without a heartbeat, but rather a desire rooted in action. I am not an object, nor a play thing. My autonomy is palpable and much like an orgasm I am formlessly alive.
Presentations of My physicality as a Woman must at all times confirm that I am not just a hole to enter, instead I am the hole that eclipses.
The main tenet of My life’s actions is that I am beyond shame. Once I chose to keep My legs open––nothing could harm Me. I cannot be smeared. My sexual behaviour is a vehicle for both exhilaration and peace of mind, but most importantly a pulsating desire for power disruption. Shame kills and I am here, right now, talking to you, completely present because I reject what harms Me.
While sadomasochism may seem unbearably impregnable to some, what it achieves––to summarise––is the eroticisation of power and powerlessness. The Dominatrix is the one with the perceived power and I love to imagine My power and the submissive’s powerlessness as tangible pleasures, as something to hold that I birth Myself. It is through My work as a Dominatrix that I play with its endless formations, BDSM is my practice.
When I decided to begin My life as a dominant, the power dynamic between Myself and the submissive man could never be truly satisfied, so it became imperative that the submissive give Me more than money for My supreme services. Both parties in the dynamic want the submission to feel real and I create this through directing a never ending fixation. I do not want this experience to be fraudulent. This does not mean that I feel the prospective submissives are stronger than Me, rather that these mens’ relationships to the space they take up is almost always oblivious to them. I must challenge and remodel this form of structural power most often unacknowledged by them. This puts Me in a position of watching these men perform a facade of submission which does not acknowledge the everyday minutiae of their learned behaviour. This could be described as an insidious juxtaposition. These submissives may believe they have tossed off their aura of power, but when watching them submit it all too often produces the same nullifying effect as watching moralists at a costume party.
A Dominatrix’s job is to understand the paradox of the dominant and submissive dynamic, which is that the bottom is often the one in control through their perceived vulnerability and it is the Domme’s job to tune into this and avoid allowing the submissive to feel like the boss at all costs. I must analyse their suffering, zoom into it, then play with it. The Dominatrix is considered radical because She weaponises empathy.
There is the most sublime inauthenticity to which experiences money can enable, especially in the context of the transaction of sex work. Through recognising this facade I push past its performance– this form of power and submission can and must become deeper if I am the one with the desired influence. I must penetrate these men's desire to unearth a potency I, and many others, deserve. I am present and I want the submissive to feel this.
They can never give Me enough. These men’s submission to Me gives them a vulnerability which unfortunately has to be respected. Their masculinity versus what they perceive of My gender sadly means that My power has the aesthetics of steely seduction, but outside of the fantasy it is as robust as a freshly fatigued cock wearing a damp rubber.
Because of this––My life has made Me have to work faster than the speed of their erections.
This use of speed revolves around understanding a submissive man’s growing arousal and how I can manipulate it to its best for My own progression. It is a practice which is both invigorating to coerce and pathetically hilarious in its predictability. A literal adrenaline rush where the state of the men’s desire can be moulded into My own choice of outcome––if I play it right. I must create an atmosphere which will compound desire, mystery and control. This is a calculated and complex use of My behavior where every second counts. I must analyse their body language and their use of speech, how they use their bodies, how they interact with our surroundings and most importantly how they treat Me. What is left unsaid is often most crucial. I work as the analyzer and developer of power dynamics, this schism which I craft creates the appropriate erotic tension which becomes the sex.
I am the body of libidinal control and with that the options for persuasion are endless, however this labour must be fastened into more than just the man’s pleasure. I must violate these men's perception of Me as a fantasy. If they are attracted to My dominance it must be tangible, they must work towards My power. I must make them politicise their use of Me as a commodity. I must leave the session with something which will entrust Me with more than money. The natural result of this is that I work out what the submissive could do for Me when in one another's presence. This is always merged within the submissive and dominant dynamic, I tell the submissive what to do, they do it. These completed commands became artworks. Therefore the submissive man becomes My medium––My tool.
The submissive man rarely, if ever, sees value in what I tell him to make, as the objects or actions made vary so far from their conceptions of quality. There is profound pleasure in watching a submissive man tragically draw, write, move, construct or read for Me, the utter predictability and immaturity of their vision titillates Me no end. The artworks exist as evidence of the transaction and/or worship, they are the materialisation of the activities I command to exert humiliation, and most prominently objects to further the tangibility of my life’s actions towards new ways of living.
If My domination and lack of shame is concrete, how does a submissive with copious capital simply shake it off when meeting Me for an hour or two? He does not work to understand this, and I do. To feel truly submissive, they must recognise their own authority and ways of seeing. The submissives that put in the effort to untangle their access to ease inevitably get a truer experience of submission. This could be understood as the difference between the erotic and the pornographic. The erotic is the epitomy of being alive, the pornographic, in contrast, is a stunted purgatory at best, and I will not decive Myself with a cadaverous exchange.
My spirituality exists within the realms of anarchy and the erotic. The pornographic fills the minds of what many believe is sex and I refuse to partake in this innocuous disguise of the best thing in the world. I want details and I want the core. I want to touch My power.
The Dominatrix takes the euphoric, primal chaos of sex then scales it to a perfect reduction before administering it out in meagre doses to Her desperate submissives. She can handle the heavenly turbulence of sex. She is wise and capable, and the submissives go to Her for this because they are too incompetent to handle the true force of sex.
I began this life out of insatiable curiosity for the limits of female life. This interest in domination is simple, I want to know what it means to be a Woman who considers sexuality limitless. I want to attempt to work without ‘working’. I want to know what it means to be a ‘Strong Woman’ in a world where feminism is often a commodity and not necessarily an action. My favourite impulses include disrupting the pleasantries of everyday life, and I understood that being a Dominatrix would allow for a structure in which to navigate this. Pairing My desire for subversion with My libido centres Me in the most uniquely satisfying ways. I realised that the banality of everyday life has the opportunity to be radically altered when dedicating the focus of your daily life to sex. The exploration of fetish is a way to experience the world afresh, because sex is everywhere. The oscillation from the mundanity of the domestic, the bureaucratic or the generally myopic nature of capitalist city living is a construction made to suppress or poorly manipulate desire. With My life I unfurl this undercurrent of tension, that is in those places and everywhere else, to make life more bearable.
Fantasy is fabulous but it is even better when it is lived on the streets when the session ends.
