FETISH NATION | PAGE 1, 2, 3 - - - - - - - - - - "Aren't they wonderful?" purred Michael in my ear. Each cavern of the basement offered a distinct diorama of torture: the rack, the cage, the pillory, the medical office. This last was the one that seemed to interest Michael the most. He rummaged through the supplies, the antiseptic ointment, the needles, the sterile swabs. "I prefer thicker needles," he muttered. I popped another Junior Mint. I was feeling my marrow grow watery. A gruesome whimpering that emanated from a dark corner sent my bile glands into overdrive. "I think I need to sit down," I stammered, rushing back through the caverns -- past a fabulously large bottom being caned to proud crimson, past two men engaged in consensual boot worship and, most horrifying of all, past a Susan Powter clone fisting a girl in a straitjacket. Back at the couch, with Linda Blair and my trusted candy, I sat with revulsion in my gut while my mind did cultural relativist gyrations. 1.) If my daughter turned out to be a masochist, would I feel like a failure? No doubt. 2.) Couldn't there come a time when society would regard disgust like mine as a backward cultural bias -- the way we now perceive Victorians who declared masturbation a sign of derangement? Of course. 3.) How can these people claim that their practices are brave, healthy and compassionate when they simulate the violence, horror and insanity that civilization has sought to stamp out? I didn't know. Michael joined me and began talking about a "leather conference" he recently attended in San Diego. "Maria and I participated in a wonderful workshop with a doctor who specialized in medical SM," he said in his gentlest voice. "Maria was screaming louder than anyone." Maria, his longtime girlfriend whose sobriety birthdays were celebrated with decorated cakes, wrapped presents and big brunches attended by clean-and-sober perverts, was known for her ability to withstand pain. Now I wasn't sure if I wanted to know why. "What were you doing?" I asked finally. "We were sewing up her vagina," he said, "with embroidery needles." "No anesthetic?" Michael shook his head. "Was it bloody?" He nodded. "Did she like it?" "She says she's glad she did it." He paused, with characteristic precision. "But I don't think she'll do it again soon." I remembered a paper I wrote for a college feminist theory class about the horrors of a similar ritual: infibulation. The procedure, forcibly administered to little girls in parts of Africa and the Middle East as part of a "full clitorectomy," is intended to staunch the flow of evil female sexuality until the wedding night when the husband cuts his way to consummation. Now I was slack-jawed at the idea that someone (a friend no less) would choose to experience the same practice that had launched a thousand human rights reports. The difference, of course, was that this bit of bodily torture was a modern woman's consensual turn-on. Paraphilias, or abnormal sexual practices, are as old and various as human society. (Within the "fetish" community, "paraphilia" is regarded as a pejorative term like "homosexual." In fact, a fetish is literally "a nonsexual object that abnormally excites erotic feelings," and so is only one kind of paraphiliac behavior.) Some, like bestiality and necrophilia, are so extreme they can survive only in the margins. But other fetishes have become accepted as normal. For centuries China was seized by a massive foot fetish: the rotting, gnarled hoofs produced by binding were considered the height of beauty, elegance and sensuality. Even the smell was a turn-on. In certain African tribes, necks are stretched, earlobes opened, faces scarred as a matter of ordinary beauty pains. In the West, corsets, high heels and chastity belts have been engineered to heighten various culturally endorsed erotic fixations. But over the years -- the prevalence of male circumcision notwithstanding -- most of these practices have come to be seen as the ugly vestiges of less-than-enlightened cultures. Now, under the banner of "adult consensuality," fetish culture is attempting to reclaim practices that humanitarians, feminists, Christians and other morality movements have struggled for a century to abolish. Branding has recently joined tattooing and piercing as a popular avenue to pain and fashion. And -- haven't you heard? -- corsets are back with a vengeance. Last year the San Francisco-based Dark Garden, one of dozens of corset shops in urban centers around the country, sold more than 500 custom-designed waist squeezers -- priced between $235 and $1500 -- to men and women ranging in age between 16 and 80. Even slave-master relationships are becoming more and more common as married couples go to "academies," like that of professional SM educator Cleo Dubois, to learn the arts of "safe and loving domination." What has spawned this brave new world of perversion? The movement has its origin in the sexual experimentation of gay culture, with advocates of BDSM (bondage, domination and sado-masochism) being the outspoken leaders. But it has taken a massive technological network of anonymity to disseminate it to the larger population. It's widely known that the Internet, that exalted tangle of switches and wires, is ground zero for the pornography industry, but its role in galvanizing erotically closeted individuals into a coherent culture, complete with support groups, chat rooms and national networks, has yet to be fully comprehended. With each surreptitious click, the shy accountant living in his mother's trailer in Idaho can connect with the married-with-children CEO and the precocious riot grrrl. Together they've allowed a million cyberspace fetishes to blossom into a virtual prelapsarian Eden. With the twitch of a forefinger, any Internet surfer can find himself or herself stranded on an erotic island so strange as to stretch the edges of the imagination. In addition to the Web sites for people into bestiality, sado/masochism and necrophilia, there are countless sites devoted to the erotics of uniforms, a multitude of body parts and, of course, every bodily fluid. But these barely graze this vast body of electronically channeled lust. Travel to the extremities and you'll find dozens -- and in some cases hundreds -- of Web sites devoted exclusively to erotic ticklers, lovers of orthodontia, cigar fetishists macrophiliacs (imaginary giantesses crushing buildings with their boobs), crush lovers (people into watching women mash food, cigarettes and small animals underfoot) and people who love to imagine being swallowed alive. In short, if you can think you are alone in your desire, take heart: There's probably a national network devoted to your private ideo-sin-crazy. And if you think you can imagine a practice so far-fetched, ludicrous or downright sickening that no one could find it erotic, think again. The human libido is a little like the universe: It may have an outer limit but so far, no one has found it. Dental pain? Snot? Stomping on ants? You guessed it: just another dirt road to Eros. After my accidental baptism into the dark waters of sexual deviance, I went in search of this underground river's many streams and sources. The dungeon was a porthole leading to the other quieter chambers of fetishland. I went in search of the edges of sexual pleasure, practices that I -- swimming in my vanilla-flavored libido -- could no more understand than ancient Sanskrit. "I like to peep," Tushell Leiberman tells me, her large eyes opening wide under heavy black bangs. We are sitting on the velvet couch in the back of her fetish store Bad Attitude Outlet in southeast Portland. Although her particular fetish has evolved into the pristine hobby of collecting antique peep-boxes, she has become a sort of den mother for fetishists in the Portland area. Three years ago she began organizing three-floor "fetish extravaganzas" featuring an "SM play room" (run by the National Leather Association), a comic cabaret, a DJ and dance floor and a floor of kink-friendly vendors. "We get the weird, bizarre little perverts at my show that never come out of the closet," she boasts. "We have people who like to be mummified; they come with their whole body taped." Like many fetishists I would talk to, Tushelle does exercise moral judgment, though it doesn't necessarily follow conventional logic. One minute she's enthusing about "interactive genitorture demonstrations," the next minute she's referring to public female nudity as "crass." "So many people have thanked us for not including 'vagina horror,'" she says, referring to their decision not to let the strippers strip nude. As a mother of two, who lives in a "normal suburban house," and she tries to keep her children separate from her work, though she admits that her 8-year-old son's favorite saying is: "I'm not listening." When asked if there is any behavior she disapproves of, she says no, as long as it involves consenting adults. She draws the line with child sexuality. (This is the norm among fetishists, although there is a very small contingent of the perv community that defends the pedophiliac organization NAMBLA [North American Man-Boy Love Association].) "It's really personal. Michael Hutchence, the lead singer of INXS, died asphyxiating himself," she says, offering her pro-choice explanation of auto-erotic strangulation. "He did that on his own, he just probably slipped. He was in the midst of having pleasure." "How about bestiality?" "Well -- yeah," she gulps briefly, as if vaguely appalled, then resumes in a cheerful voice. "Some people are into it. It makes them happy, so how can I be against it?" "Necrophilia?" She blushes. "We fantasize about that," she says, referring to her longtime partner Mac Daddy. (I do not ask if they are married; many pervs I speak to, ironically, prefer to keep their heterosexual marriages a secret.) "Whoever dies first, we're going to put time in our will to be with the other person. You want to do it when they're warm, so you want to do it before you call the ambulance, or whatever." She giggles. What was until that moment an unthinkable extreme suddenly seems like the vaguely eccentric last rites of a married couple -- though I shudder to imagine the poor paramedic who answers that call. "I'm interested in baseball players. I love pulling off their cleats and sniffing their socks after they've played a game. I want to be able to massage with my feet and lick between the toes and clean with my tongue," says Doug Gaines (duggaines@aol.com), an accountant and part-time special-ed teacher. Though we are only talking on the phone, it is clear that talking about his fetish makes him exultant. "For me, watching a baseball game is like watching an X-rated movie! Those stirrup pants, those socks! Who wouldn't want to worship at the feet of Tom Glavine?" Having made his fetish into a political and ethical mission before the rise of the perv population, Doug figures as a sort of pioneer. In 1981 he founded the Foot Fraternity, an international anonymous network for helping gay foot-a-philes find one another. Later, after an interview with Psychology Today, he was so inundated with letters from straight foot fetishists that he started Foot Fetish and Fantasy, a similar society for straight people. "We're an affirmation group," he says, sounding vaguely like Stuart Smalley. "I'm here to say it's OK. You have a fetish? That's wonderful! How can we help you enjoy it?" Of their oldest member, a 93-year-old man who waited his entire life before he allowed himself to share his passion, he says, "It's a crime he had to go through that." Over the last 16 years Doug has dutifully responded to more than 50,000 requests for information and networked more than 5,000 active members as a second full-time job. "Foot fetishists are about as heterogeneous as any group can be," he says, characterizing his group as a healthy legal alternative to prostitutes. "Some are into clean white socks, others into verbal and physical domination, some are into shoes -- loafers, boots, sneakers, cowboy boots." Doug became aware of his fetish, which he believes is genetic in origin, in early childhood when his macho older brother forced him to kiss his feet. "I learned I could manipulate my brother into making it a regular part of our relationship," he says. Later, during puberty, Doug began sneaking into the locker room during gym class to sniff the dirty socks of the most virile jocks. "But the fetish is only part of it," he explains. "You also want to kiss and hug and do all the other stuff, but it's just that the foot needs to be there. I can get off totally from being under a man's foot both from a sense of smell and the idea of worshipping that body part." In his estimation, feet are the second most common fetish (after breasts) and the vast majority of foot worshippers are male -- many of them straight, married men who nevertheless harbor a passion for other men's feet. Although he's currently not in a relationship, Doug has gotten to know a group of straight baseball-playing guys who donate their old shoes and socks to his libidinous cause and even allow him to "spend time with their feet." Over the years, Doug says that he has become an inspiration for many people who were too afraid to come out. "People tell me I'm courageous. I say, What the hell! I have only one life to live and I'm proud to be Doug. And if you don't like it, I really don't care." Things aren't quite so clear-cut for Fernando (at his request, his name has been changed), a nose fetishist I meet in an abandoned schoolyard 30 miles south of San Francisco. For me it is work and -- well -- nosiness, but what has driven this gentle, dark-haired man here? He works a graveyard shift and it is a throbbingly bright 10 a.m. Why would he want to confess his most personal desires to a total stranger? I find myself inspecting his nose as we look for a remote bench. It reminds me of those paintings of 16th century Spanish kings -- an Arab hook, a European tip, perhaps some Jewish blood playing at the nostrils. A nose that mixes cultures with inconspicuous dignity. "It has been isolating," he says, staring at the asphalt. "I don't know if there's anyone else like me." Unlike the other fetishists I've encountered, he's not a spokesperson, a professional sex worker or a community organizer. He works as a security guard in the town he grew up in and has a girlfriend who accepts his fetish, although she doesn't share it. He knows no one who shares his passion for noses, and this singularity still gives him a sense of sheepishness. "It's really strange to be talking about this," he stutters after I ask him what he likes about noses. Then, quietly, as if descending through decades of inhibition, he begins to speak. "I like to rub noses, and kiss them ... push them out of shape, suck on them ..." He exhales, rubbing his hands on his lap. "I know it's dorky, but I like it when women push their noses up or pick their nose ... I also like to lick their nostrils." I tell myself not to touch my own nose, but it itches furiously. I wonder if he interprets my scratching as flirtatious. This is the threat of the fetish, I realize. You can be walking down the street, fully clothed, and your shoes or a feature of your face or the fact that you are smoking can send someone over the edge. Eros bleeds into everyday objects and animates them. Nothing remains untainted. Fernando has long since stopped trying to figure out why he's so besotted with the female snout. He can't remember any formative experiences that hooked his libido to the nasal passages. He remembers being fascinated by Raquel Welsh as a boy. For a while he resorted to prostitutes and lap dancers just so that he could touch women's noses, but "I saw how it could become an addiction, so I stopped." N E X T+P A G E: Adult babies: Face to face with a Diaper Pail Friend