How Can You Know You Want What You've Never Had?

Larry Townsend’s Leatherman’s Handbook was the first book I read about BDSM.

Ask Larry, a collection of his Leather Notebook column came into the shop and I brought it home.

If I often strike some of you as unduly negative here is the question that in many different forms often passes through my mind when I read many of you writing about what you “know” you want.

Perhaps the most difficult person to advise is one like this guy who has apparently experienced none of the he thinks he wants so badly. In his state of blissful ignorance he is willing to give up everything in the belief that he’s going to find Utopia as envisioned in his masturbatory fantasies. I often wonder how many of these men discover that it hurts to get whipped, and bondage can be uncomfortable, and Masters can be very demanding, and only then realize that this lifestyle isn’t for them. It isn’t at all like the easy turn-on turn-off of a JO session where you can control the time you keep the ropes on your wrists and ankles, or the leather harness around your cock and balls. Some guys take to SM without ever looking back; for others, the reality is not at all what they want. I hate to see a guy give up his comfortable life until he knows, even if he thinks he’s miserable with what he’s got.

This was in response to a man who wrote of his undoubted desire for a life of total surrender.