Piquerism and Notes on Knife Play

The Ballard of Jazz the Knife 

(c. 1992)

 

 

I. Opening Remarks 

 

Piquerism - for those of you unfamiliar with the practice - is a perverse sexual interest in penetrating the skin of another person with sharp objects, including pins, razors, and knives. 

 

Most often, the targeted areas of the body are the breasts, buttocks, and genitals and whilst for many lovers it's a form of edge play or risk-aware consensual kink, for the true sadist - who laughs at the idea of obtaining permission or that libertinism should conform to a code of health and safety - piquerism only becomes interesting when it results in extreme suffering and death or is performed post-mortem.   

 

 

II. Biofictional Remarks

 

As a young child, I might be said to have had something of a piqueresque liking for sharp objects myself. I far preferred, for example, pricking balloons with a needle, than inflating them. And once, at school, I placed a drawing pin on a fat girl's chair in order to see if she too would explode with a bang [1].  

 

And whilst I had an extensive range of toy guns, my favourite thing to play with was a plastic dagger with a retractable blade with which I could create the illusion of having stabbed myself through the heart (or knifed a friend in the back).    

 

 

III. Literary Remarks

 

I don't know how D. H. Lawrence felt about this subject, but the following scenes are worth noting:

 

(i) Women in Love (Ch. VI) [2]

 

Pussum has confessed that she's not afraid of anything except black-beetles. She's certainly not afraid of blood ... 

 

So when a man with a pale, jeering face laughs at her, she suddenly jabs a knife across his hand, causing him to leap up, cursing. He glares at her with sardonic contempt as the blood begins to flow from the wound inflicted by this feline young woman. 

 

Birkin looked on with obvious displeasure, but Gerald is aroused by the girl's action. Later, in the taxi home, she sits close to him and grasps his hand in hers; "rapid vibrations ran through his blood and over his brain [...] and all his nerves were on fire, as with a subtle friction of electricity".     

 

(ii) The Plumed Serpent (Ch. XXIII) [3] 

Cipriano strips and publicly executes a group of prisoners with a bright, thin dagger ...

"'The Lords of Life are Masters of Death,' he said in a loud, clear voice. 

      And swift as lightning he stabbed the blindfolded men to the heart, with three swift, heavy stabs. Then he lifted the red dagger and threw it down.

      'The Lords of Life are Masters of Death,' he repeated." 

Later, Cipriano and his fellow revolutionaries indulge in a little fetishistic blood play, dipping their hands into blood collected from the bodies of the executed men in a stone bowl and raising wet, red fists. They then sprinkle some of the blood on a fire in a neo-pagan religious ritual.   

(iii) The Woman Who Rode Away [4]

 

A bored, middle-class white woman goes in search of adventure and to give her heart to the god of the Chilchui Indians ... 

 

Two men grip her arms whilst two others "with curious skill slit her boots down with keen knives, and drew them off, and slit her clothing so that it came away from her". 

 

They also remove the pins from her hair and touch her on the breasts and back. Then they drug her and groom her over the course of several weeks into the role of sacrificial victim. Her captors, the Indians, are superficially kind to her; gentle and considerate. Yet she sensed their cruelty underneath and when the time comes for her to die, they show no hesitation in killing her:

 

"When she was fumigated, they laid her on a large flat stone, the four powerful men holding her by the outstretched arms and legs. Behind stood the aged man [...] holding a knife and transfixedly watching the sun; and behind him again was another naked priest, with a knife."

 

They are waiting for the right moment, when the red sun is about to sink: Then the old man will strike with his flint blade and accomplish the sacrifice ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] She didn't. And rather than encouraging my scientific curiosty, the teacher, Mrs. Horncastle, gave me a telling off in front of the class and made me apologise to poor, red-faced Mandy Howard.    

[2] D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1987). Lines quoted are on p. 73. 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, The Plumed Serpent, ed. L. D. Clark, (Cambridge University Press, 1987). Lines quoted are on p. 380.

 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Woman Who Rode Away', in The Woman Who Rode Away and Other Stories, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn, (Cambridge University Press, 1995). Lines quoted are on pp. 55 and 70. 

 

For another post involving knife play (and with reference to the case of Sid and Nancy), click here.

On Compassion Fatigue

Compassion Fatigue (2014) by Ashley Reaks

As a full-time carer for an elderly parent, 92, with Alzheimer's, I'm intrigued by - and potentially at risk from - secondary traumatic stress (STS), or, as it's commonly known, compassion fatigue; a condition characterized by a gradual hardening of the heart and increased indifference to suffering.

For the fact is, nothing is limitless - not even love - and, sooner or later, everyone involved in providing care for the sick, the vulnerable, the poor, the feckless, or the otherwise needy and dependent, reaches the limits of their patience and concern (even if they are professionally trained to work with such people and cope with traumatic conditions).

It's little wonder then that the highest idealism often results in the most grotesque forms of abuse; for in the end, caring makes sadists of us all ... As does the endless moral insistence by the liberal elite that we in the West should assume responsibility for the entire world.

Arguably, it's not people like Donald Trump and Matteo Salvini who are inuring ordinary people to the acceptance of acts of extreme cruelty, as some suggest. Rather, ironically, it's the bleeding-heart news media that has caused widespread compassion fatigue by constantly broadcasting graphic images of starving children, drowning migrants, and the victims of catastrophic natural events, making us all feel helpless and hopeless and, ultimately, resentful.
      

Desensitised and depressed by global suffering, it's understandable that many people eventually think fuck 'em and look away, deaf to all further cries for help, or appeals to their charity.

And it's this, I think, that explains the rise of populism; figures on the so-called alt-right understand how tired and fed up and anxious and angry people are already feeling, in a way that those on the self-righteous left refuse to. 


Note: this post was partly written in response to an article by the Irish journalist Fintan O'Toole in The Irish Times (26 June, 2018): click here to read online. Many thanks to Simon Solomon for bringing this piece to my attention.

On Sadism and the Case of Ian Brady

For a genuine sadist any form of legality is anathema and deserving of contempt; they are simply not aroused out of flaccid indifference and apathy by the thought of a consensual exercise of sexual violence. This is what makes such an individual far rarer, far more dangerous, and far more philosophically problematic than a masochist for whom cruelty is always contracted, rather than criminal.

And so it is that whilst the latter hangs about looking slightly ludicrous and self-conscious at the local fetish club, the former is out burying the bodies of murdered children on Saddleworth Moor. 

What I'm conceding here is that Simon Thomas was perhaps - perhaps - right to insist that Ian Brady cannot be ignored or dismissed simply as a bad reader.