I can remember having perilous fantasies as early as the age of three. At that time the fantasies were of a non-sexual nature, but I was fascinated by them none the less. The fantasies stayed with me as I grew older, but transformed depending on my interests at the time. For a while, in preadolescence, my fantasies included situations similar to scenes from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, which I had just read. A little later I incorporated images from H.P. Lovecraft, liberally mixed with images entirely of my own design.
Although the earliest fantasies involved peril and physical harm, they usually ended with the 'victim' miraculously healed and rescued. However, the fantasies always proceeded well past the point of simple threat (unlike most every example of such fantasies as portrayed on television and in movies) and would invariably include the virtual death of the victim (though she would, as I said, be miraculously healed later). After I entered puberty, however, the fantasies dispensed with any attempt at rescue, and ended with the death of the victim, though usually arriving there only at great length.
The fantasies from early adolescence often included women being devoured by immense creatures, often equipped with numerous tentacles with which they investigated the victim before devouring her. There were also fantasies involving quicksand, giant insects, and man (or woman, in this case) eating plants. There were even a few examples of woman eating furniture! I found an old nudie magazine of my father's and made tracings from it, to which I added knives, swords, spears, and tentacles. I have long since lost those drawings, or I would now be posting them on the net, since there would seem to be quite a demand. Later my fantasies became more baroque and gothic, including ornate dungeon scenes, complex ongoing plot lines, and ever more intricate methods of torture and demise.
I also remember being fascinated with the Batman live action series (in reruns when I encountered it) as well as select scenes from other television shows (Gilligan's Island, Star Trek, and Charlie's Angels leap to mind, but there were many others that I will not even try to enumerate here). I even remember a particular instance of a bondage game I played once with a playmate (I must have been in very early elementary school at the time) that involved tying her to a chair with a wastebasket at her back, into which hot water was to be poured to 'cook' her. The hot water, of course, was to be obtained from the bathroom sink, so there was no danger to my playmate, though I think neither of our parents would have been pleased had they found out.
Later, I combed comic book stores, used book shops, video rentals, and even my college library for more graphic and detailed instances of my kink. Did you know that there are some academic works on the subject of women, peril and eroticism? I managed to find some things that fed my fantasies, but nothing that addressed them directly.
By the time I was of college age I had been through several different phases with the perilous fantasies, and I recognized that they were, if not entirely unique, fairly rare. I began to wonder how I had become this way, or if, indeed, I had not simply been born this way. In an attempt to answer this question I embarked on, of all things, Women's Studies. Surprisingly enough, however, I was quickly rewarded with materials that served to explain, if only vaguely, what forces might have shaped my early fascination with women and peril.
Specifically there is a video that is commonly used in introductory Women's Studies courses, entitled Killing Us Softly (an analysis of the portrayal of women in the media by Dr. Jean Kilbourne, there is also an update entitled Still Killing Us Softly that is equally enlightening) that suggested that such fantasies could be a result of early exposure to standard media images of women. Similar explanations are put forth in Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth where she discusses the concepts of 'beauty pornography' and 'beauty sadomasochism.'
Essentially, advertising and entertainment media have glamorized and eroticized pain and death. Dr. Kilbourne presents examples of images of dismembered women being used to sell products in magazines, on television, and in store windows. She even shows that the images are quite common. Wolf notes that beauty is often associated with images of punishment, torture and humiliation: that being beautiful is equated to being in pain.
Is it any wonder that, growing up in a culture that bombards us with these images in magazines and shop windows, on billboards and busses, in television and movies, some few of us will come to find the more radical and graphic expressions of these same concepts appealing?
At any rate, this is how I have managed to reconcile myself with this dark and disturbing element of my sexuality. I have managed to find some comfort in the possibility that my fantasies have had a source in my experiences, rather than springing from some innate darkness. With the exception of these fantasies I am a gentle and non-violent person, as were my parents and grandparents. I would have a very hard time explaining these fantasies by recourse to some theory based on either genetics or family of origin.