What is Your Safe Word? Exploring BDSM with author Molly Weatherfield

Through two hot and steamy romps, Molly Weatherfield (aka Pam Rosenthal) created erotica classics with Carrie’s Story and Safe Word. I chatted with this intriguing author about BDSM and kink, and the use of safe words.

What intrigues you about the world of kink and BDSM?
There are two separate, equal, and yet opposite forces that draw me (Gemini-like) to kinky sexuality and BDSM fantasy. In the first case, I’ve always been fascinated by the fantasy of a secret world existing, half-hidden in the nooks and crannies of our own. Story of O was hot in the initial Roissy episode, but it gained almost mystical power for me when O returns to Paris, to be told that she’s still in bondage to the secret society that runs Roissy, and that so long as she agrees to it, she needs to understand herself as always open and available to anyone who belongs to the elite society of the gold and iron ring. Gosh, I thought (at the very young, impressionable, and wildly romantic age when I first read that BDSM classic). Wow. Cool. So this is the back-story to this secret, obsessive erotic fantasy life of mine.

While on the other hand, I’ve always found all this stuff kind of funny: the lace and leather self-importance of formal, ritual BDSM sexuality, its childish adoration of authority and its props; the Morticia-meets-the-Village-People obviousness of the costumes and fetishes—in general a kind of dearth of, shall we say, nuance or subtlety?

Geez, the snarkier side of my Gemini self is given to musing, this is all kinda redundant, isn’t it? Because much as I cherish my secret, obsessive erotic fantasy life, I’m always also hearing this deadpan smartass voice that wants to make affectionate fun of it. In a nice affectionate way, of course—the way that led to Carrie’s voice, and the novels Carrie’s Story and Safe Word.

The nice surprise, I think, was that so many BDSM practitioners (some of them much more active and hardcore than I am) seem to enjoy laughing at themselves too. Maybe because they know I really do love this particular kind of eroticism even if I can’t help see the humor in it.

What is a safe word and how is it used?
In a BDSM scene, you need a word that’ll stand out, one that you wouldn’t use in the context of your play, that a bottom and her partner have agreed beforehand to mean STOP, and that will be easily and quickly recognized. So things won’t go beyond consensually agreed-upon limits.

Safe Word continues from Carrie’s Story, one year later. How much does kink education play a role in Carrie’s life in that time?
Hmm. If you mean helpful, real-world kink education, as is brilliantly practiced by, oh, say, Midori, or Dr. Carol Queen—it plays no role whatsoever.

Carrie’s erotic education is much more my fantasy of Xtreme Obedience Training. At the hard hands of some of my favorite characters, like Annie the tiny trainer, she gets really good at wildly exaggerated modes of submission in elaborate venues. But it’s all don’t-try-this-at-home stuff, meant to be read to get yourself in the mood for whatever it is you’re actually going to do in a safe, sane, and sensual fashion. Neither Carrie nor O, for example, uses a safe word, even though the rest of us need to. And though Carrie does have a safe word, when she finally reveals it (at the end of the novel), it’s in the context of romance rather than safe erotic play.

Can we expect more adventures from Carrie?

I hope so, and not only to satisfy the amazingly nice readers who write me amazingly smart letters asking for those further adventures, but because I love Carrie and her secret world and want to go there again.

But while fantasies may be redundant, novels shouldn’t be. I want to write a somewhat more grown up Carrie this time around, returning to the world of the association on subtly different terms. It’s hard. Stay tuned and wish me luck.

Care to share a safe word you’ve used?
Oh, you know, the basic boring color codes—yellow for caution, red for stop. But you don’t really want to hear about my adventures, when Carrie’s are so much more interesting.