Let's call them the SexoNauts.
SexoNauts are, generally speaking, more intensely interested in sexual matters -- in both an intellectual and, I suppose you could say, experiential way --- than the bulk of humanity.
Among clever Internet drifters, Melissa Gira is a well known SexoNaut. You can view a statement from her at this link -
<http://blip.tv/file/get/Sexerati-TheFutureOfSex279.flv>
She writes a crisp blog named, appropriately enough, Sexerati (sexerati.com) where she explores "the future of sex." It's smart stuff; light years removed from the sort of thing you get from mainstream treatments (for example, the endlessly recycled Cosmo magazine style '20 Ways to Drive Your Man Wild' article).
I dated a SexoNaut. She ran a successful service that offered dominance play, mostly to well paid execs who longed for a break from their multi-billion dollar responsibilities. I learned a lot from her. One of the things I learned is that while I'm certainly a horny enough bastard and very fond of exploring a woman's body with the unshakable dedication of five year-old licking an ice cream cone on an August afternoon I'm no SexoNaut.
That is, she was constantly thinking of new things to do. I happily went along with these innovations, many of which were quite nice but I was seldom the innovator. That's one of the key things SexoNauts do, they seek the new in sex. My ex-lover used to say, "if extraterrestrials arrived, you'd want to know how they reached us from across the galaxy and I'd want to know how, or if, they reached orgasm." I understood what she meant: we were both smarties, but focused on exploring different sides of the puzzle cube.
Now I think that what Brian (among others) has been saying is that bdsm offers us a method to explore the limits of our sexuality, a way to travel from the mundane to the super-mundane. This really doesn't seem so outrageous an assertion to me. Indeed, I'm totally willing to concede it's possible that mature, intelligent bdsm practitioners know a good deal more about their sexual selves than most people...including yours truly.
Still, the reality of human life is that we all reach our graves unfinished. It's true my lover was quite wise sexually but I think I understood some other things more deeply than she did (as she often said - one of the reasons she listed for the wildly intense attraction we felt towards each other).
Ideally, we'd develop all of our potential but I fear that's unrealistic given the short time we have and the limitations imposed by our cultures.
.d.
We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas.
Larry Fine
...................... http://monroelab.net/blog/