Could sex play that involves pain and submission be, for some, a path to liberation?

Miles, Kim and Laura were in their living room, talking about how they first got into the lifestyle. Laura was in the easy chair, in a sleeveless flower print dress, her long brown hair framing intense brown eyes. Miles, sturdily built, with glasses, short cropped gray hair and a beard, was on a light-brown couch with the center seat folded down so he could rest a glass on its back. Kim, his wife, sat in a chair near the front door, heavy-lidded and quiet, wearing a summery black dress and a thick leather collar with a dangling brass ring.

I think I was five when I had a little boy licking my shoes," Laura was saying. "And I got in trouble, and they said, 'You can't do that,' and I thought, 'Yeah, sure I can. Watch. And these four will do it too.'" She says moments like those presaged a turning point, years later, when she was in Germany on her senior class trip.

"I'd been to Europe a couple times and the first time I saw a woman slap a man's face and him drop to his knees, that was it for me, vanilla sex was over. You know what I mean?" She laughed her hoarse laugh. "It was like, no this was unbelievable, to see this. I had never seen anything like this. And then I came back here, and there was nothing like that in Connecticut, and I went into New York City and found Hellfire" a famous S&M club in the meatpacking district. (Read full article here)