Kinks and fetishes are like a psychosexual itch on the small of your back. Under normal circumstances, no matter how you stretch and reach, it’s untouchable. Grab a back-scratcher or a wooden spoon or whatever’s available that suits the purpose, though? Ahhhhhh, what a relief! You just need to know what the tools are and how to use them, so to speak. (This is a metaphor, not a demand that you invest in some BDSM hardware.)
The best thing about Dying for Sex’s journey into dominance and submission this episode is that it shows Molly scratching an itch. Here’s a woman who’s lost her bodily autonomy for years at a time, as cancer attacks her body from within and doctors poke and prod and scan and irradiate and pump pills into from without. Her (ex?) husband, Steve, took total control of her treatment when he was around. Her best friend, Nikki, isn’t nearly so domineering and constantly encourages Molly to get involved — but Nikki’s primary mode of dealing with Molly’s illness is anger, which brings out Molly’s anger in turn, which makes her feel even less in control. The episode also alludes to the abuse she endured as a child — just briefly, just a good guess by a supporting character, but that’s a loss of control from which she’s suffered her whole life.
What better way to process all of this than by re-shaping it into something with the power to get you off?
That’s what Molly is in the process of doing. She’s already discovered that she enjoys being in charge, sexually, though her disastrous “date” with Neighbor Guy wound up shattering her leg, along with whatever connection they once had. Enter Sonya, the palliative care counselor, who (rather inappropriately if you ask me!) invites Molly and Nikki to a sex party run by her ex, Mikey (Robby Hoffman). Mikey sports none of the stereotypical trappings of the trade — she looks and sounds like an impatient middle-school science teacher — but she’s either a professional dominatrix or a very well respected amateur. Molly watches enraptured as she enacts a whole scene with a willing participant for the viewing pleasure of the partygoers. The power Mikey has is the power Molly wants.
But it’s not so easy to acquire. Molly ignores Mikey’s advice that to properly top, you need to bottom first. She cuts straight to a date with a submissive guy, who enjoys having his spectacular dick — “It was like a beautiful secret waterfall made of penis,” Molly describes it — caged while being stepped on. It goes well for a while, until Molly starts seeing herself in the submissive position and vents her resentment at herself for being a submissive patient at her submissive partner. He balks, correctly sensing that her mind is elsewhere, which is a boner-killer no matter how you slice it. He kindly leaps up and offers to comfort her through the trauma of “top drop” with snacks, but she knows only Mikey can really solve this problem for her.
So she visits her teacher in the “sacred skill” of topping at her workplace, some kind of home furnishing store, and gets topped right there in the storage room on a stray mattress. Mikey doesn’t do much — she simply solicits from Molly how she’d like to be bound and plays with the surgical scar on her hip — but it shows Molly how truly vulnerable submissives are, and how important it is for the people on top to be equally sensitive and open in terms of asking about, sensing, and honoring both their partners’ desires and their limits.
Molly practices her newfound skills on two unusual people. First, she more or less tops her doctor during a routine checkup, demanding he sit down with her, breathe with her, and begin to be more patient and detailed when he explains the procedures she’ll be undertaking. Second, she runs into Neighbor Guy in the elevator, basically says “okay, I get it, it’s awkward, but we live next door to each other, so get over it and let me know if you want to fool around again.” The answer is a big yes, delivered as meekly as possible of course, but the simple power to get this guy to make eye contact with her after days or weeks of avoiding it gives Molly a visible rush.
Full disclosure time: To paraphrase Maude Lebowski, kink can be a natural, zesty enterprise. It can be the bedrock of your whole sex life if you want it to be! I just have a personal disinterest in kink that feels like either a homework assignment or a Cub Scouts project. I’m here to forget my troubles and feel good for a while via the oblivion of arousal and pleasure. Memorizing terms, learning how to tie sailor knots — I’ve got enough to worry about, man.
But again, that’s just personal preference. For a lot of people, that extra effort, the imposition of impediments between yourself and the pleasure you want to receive that you have to develop the skill and know-how to overcome if you want to, you know, overcome, is part of what makes this stuff so hot. If that’s not quite yet the case with Molly (she’s getting there), it’s definitely the case with Mikey.
Which is where my personal preference becomes something of a substantive gripe. Mikey tells Molly that sure, anyone can disappear during sex, no big deal, but topping requires you to be present at all times, to Be Here Now. Personally, I don’t think there’s some magic line of demarcation between “normal” sex and the kind of sex Molly wants, a boundary that makes dissociating during the latter a serious faux pas but dissociating during the former par for the course. The next time you’re having vanilla sex, completely check out and think about the season finale of Severance instead, and see how that goes over with your partner. Treating kink like it’s magical and special feels hubristic. It’s incredible, it’s imaginative, it can make you feel better than you imagined possible, it can be deeply satisfying and psychologically healing, but in the end it’s just sex, no more and no less. That’s the beauty of it!
Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.
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