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proud. I also have my full human share of faults and weaknesses, and I have done things about which I now feel ashamed. Like the rest of you, I work on improving my strengths and clearing up my weaknesses, and I like to think that I’m making progress.
    One thing I’m definitely not ashamed of is my participation in SM. I find revealing it somewhat embarrassing, much as anyone might feel embarrassed at revealing what they do in the bedroom — a place where nobody looks dignified — but I’m not ashamed.
    Among other things, I have a few friends that I’m not yet “out” to, and I’m sure there will be some chagrin on my face when we next meet, but that’s just part of the dues I’ll pay for writing this book. Also, I can just imagine the reaction of various people I used to work or go to school with. A few, I’m sure, will view my writing this book as validation of every nasty thought they ever had about me. I’m also sure that others, while they may join in ridiculing me, will secretly feel very glad that I wrote this — and quietly purchase it on their own.
    It’s time for SM people to stop needing to hide. What could the people I feared actually do to me? Well, some left-wing feminist lunatic or right-wing evangelical nutcase might try to assassinate me, but I thought that extremely unlikely. “The Powers That Be” couldn’t fire me; I’m self-employed. They couldn’t revoke my professional licenses; I have none. (One of this country’s greatest strengths is that you still don’t need a license to write.) They couldn’t take custody of my children away from me; my kids don’t live with me. They couldn’t use what I’d done to alienate me from my family; I’m already “out” to them. In short, I’m about as invulnerable in this respect as a person can get.
    So, really, the only viable choice was to publish it under my own name and just simply deal with what happened next. I expected that people’s reactions would fall into one of three categories: some people would object to this book and give me various degrees of flak about it; others wouldn’t care much about it one way or another, and still others would think this book was wonderful, and feel grateful to me for having written it. (That prediction has since proven true.)
    So the question became: Would it be worth putting up with the flak from the first group in order to benefit (and, yes, get the rewards from) the third group? After much reflection, and discussion with trusted others, I decided that the answer was “yes.” In fact, the answer was not only “yes,” but “hell, yes.”
I wouldn’t accept your submission if I didn’t respect you.
     
    Many, many people needed and wanted the information this book contains, and some needed it desperately. Many people who dealt with requests for information about SM, and knew that I was both a writer and into it myself, repeatedly (and a bit pointedly) mentioned to me that “there’s nothing out there” on this subject.
    Actually, there’s some pretty good stuff out there, and I’ve included the works I know of in the “References” section of this book. Unfortunately, much of it was either (1) written by gay or lesbian authors, and was thus (unfairly) “dismissable” by the more mainstream aspects of society or (2) written by researchers who only studied it (but who didn’t actually do it), or (3) written as fiction, usually under a pseudonym, by authors who, again, claimed that they only fantasized about it (but who didn’t actually do it).
    Much supposedly “SM” fiction in fact describes wildly unsafe, unrealistic, nonconsensual acts that no SM practitioner in their right mind would ever attempt. The movie “Blue Velvet,” for example, was widely referred to by reviewers as an SM movie, yet the virtually unanimous opinion among my SM friends who saw it was that this movie had essentially nothing to do with the realities of SM. One of the main problems surrounding SM is