This essay was originally published in our 2017 Queer Issue. The 2018 Queer Issue comes out tomorrow.
My mom would spank me when I was a kid. She said it was for my own good. And she was right, because I really get off on it now.
I’m grateful to my dysfunctional strict parents and years of Catholic school repression for leading me to the rough stuff in adulthood, though bondage is getting problematic these days because I have to pee frequently and I’m prone to charley horses.
When Basic Instinct premiered in 1992, I fantasized about Sharon Stone tying me to the bed like she did to Michael Douglas. The gay community was outraged and called for a movie boycott because Ms. Stone played a bisexual novelist who might also have been an ice-pick murderer, a plot point GLAAD declared was the wrong message to send America about queer women. I believe it was the right message. Nobody fucked with us in 1992.