to tell or not to tell

I have an impending dilemma that’s pretty common among kinky folk.

I’m getting together with my old college roommates this weekend for a reunion (not a *college* reunion; just the 4 of us who shared a suite many many years ago at a college you may have heard of), and we have a LOT to catch up on. It’s been years since we’ve gotten together in person, and it’s been nearly as long since we’ve really caught up via phone or e-mail. Life happens, people have kids, you get busy flogging your boyfriend…you know how it is.

Anyway. It’s a situation straight out of some Lifetime movie: 4 college roommates reuniting, no spouses/SOs, no kids, just a girls’ weekend. And lots to catch up on.

They have no idea I’m kinky. I mean not even a teeny tiny clue.

In college, I was more vanilla than vanilla. Very very very good girl next door. Practically asexual. I mean REALLY. I can’t really remember ever talking about sex with anyone (and that includes people with whom I had sex).

Now, let’s be clear: I had kinky fantasies for as long as I can remember. Since before I was really aware of my sexuality, or the possibilities therein. So in college, I was still just as kinky as I am now; it was just all inside. Really, really, really far inside. If I was embarassed to talk about sex in general, you can be DAMN sure I would have died on the spot to talk about kinky sex, let alone my interest in it.

(In retrospect, it’s a miracle that I managed to get past my hangups and get kinky. I was lucky enough, some years back, to have a seriously, wonderfully twisted friend-with-benefits who casually said, “I’d love to tie you to my bed all weekend.” I was so caught off guard that I blurted out, “Oh my god, I would LOVE that!” And thus a kinkster was born.)

So, yeah. I *know* that not only do they have no idea I’m kinky, they would be shocked as hell to find out that *I,* out of all of us, am a cheerfully enthusiastic pervert.

I don’t know whether to tell them. I don’t anticipate disapproval; they’re fairly laid-back women with healthy sex lives of their own, and even if *they* aren’t kinky, they’re pretty laissez-faire with the whole idea of getting down with whatever gets you off.

(That last sentence is one of the most convoluted, slang-y things I’ve ever written. I love it. I think I must marry it.)

But on the other hand, I honestly don’t even know how any of them feel about kink. Like I said, it was never a topic I even considered bringing up.

I’ve known them for a long, LONG time. There’s a lot about each other that we didn’t always agree with, but we always respected each others’ viewpoints, and above all, loved each other.

I guess I’m going to play it by ear. They might be cool with me mentioning that I’m into kinky sex, but not so cool with the idea that I belong to several groups that have regular play parties, at which I undress and beat my boyfriend or get beaten by him. But then I wonder, is not telling them the full extent being dishonest and not true to myself?

Gah.

Watch this space for updates after the weekend.

 

rope corset

The other night T. was playing with rope and decided to make a rope corset on me. We were at a friend’s house, so I didn’t have my good camera, but we took pictures with my cell phone (hence, the quality is less than good). Still, I thought it looked so nifty that I wanted to share.

Front:

And back:

They’re honestly very easy to do, and they look so damn cool. And you can do just the around-the-torso version; you don’t have to do the chest/shoulder harness part, like on mine. The harness part is more complex, and is actually a totally different tie. The corset part is seriously just a back-and-forth thing, with larksheads over and over. Google “rope corset” or “rope gauntlets” (a rope corset is the same pattern as a rope gauntlet, but on the torso instead of the arm).

Also fun at parties!

One thing to note, though, is that if the person wearing the corset needs out right away (claustrophobia, panic attack, gastrointestinal ick), the corset does NOT come off quickly. So if you know ahead of time that you might need to get out quickly (and obviously you can’t always know), then maybe skip the rope corset.

And if your rope bottom needs out quickly, just cut the damn rope. You can always get more.

And ALWAYS have safety shears close at hand (ideally, in a pocket) when you’re tying someone up.

 

when an idea is better than its execution

You know when you get A Great Idea, and it sounds like the best thing ever, and you can’t wait to implement it?

And then it falls…flat? Not falls flat like, say, the Edsel (no, I’m not that old; I just read a lot and one day hope to appear on Jeopardy [seriously, I’d love to go on Jeopardy, but mostly just to poke fun at the way Alex Trebek pronounces foreign and foreign-sounding words with such enthusiastic authenticity]). But a disappointing follow-through nonetheless.

At a recent party, T. was in full top mode, and pulled out 3 dice he had bought at the comic-book store (I’m the comics reader; he was just along for the ride and doesn’t really read comics [although I got him hooked on Blue Beetle before it got cancelled]). These weren’t the standard 6-sided dice you see on craps tables or…well, wherever people tend to play dice. (I’m not really a gambler, although I do love $1 blackjack at church festivals.)

These were gaming dice, of the kind used for Dungeons & Dragons and similar games. Neither T. nor I are gamers; he bought the dice mostly because he thought they looked cool, and then he hatched a scheme to use them during kinky play (as opposed to gaming play). One die was 20-sided, one was 8-sided, and one was 4-sided.

The basic idea was this: he laid out 8 beat-y implements (floggers, riding crop, etc.); I rolled the 8-sided die to pick which implement he would use on me. The 20-sided die determined how many strokes I would receive with the aforementioned implement, and the 4-sided die was used to determine if the strokes would be to my front side or back side (odd numbers were front and even numbers were back).

Out of all of the beat-y implements, I really only “like” the floggers. A good flogging leaves me loopy and stoned. The riding crop I can tolerate, but it’s not my favorite. The other evil toys (a plastic “magic wand” from a kid’s magic set, a short heavy lucite rod that I dubbed the “beat-y stick,” and a short piece of wood cut in the basic shape of a hairbrush, but without bristles, bearing the label “bald man’s hairbrush” — it was a goofy thing we found in a souvenir shop on vacation, and we knew it needed to be in our toy bag) were things that really freaking HURT me; it’s hard for me to take them, and when I do, it usually has to involve a good warm-up.

The problem with the execution of the dice game was this: it doesn’t allow for any warm-up. I’ve seen bottoms/subs/slaves who don’t need to be warmed up for impact play; they can jump right in and take one hell of a paddling. I, however, am not like that. So when my roll of the dice came up 8 strokes with the magic wand on my front side, it hurt in ways that I could hardly handle.

We kept on with the dice game for several rounds, until I finally told T. that the lack of warm-up was killing me. We moved to a spanking bench and he spent a long time flogging me — mostly florentine flogging, which I love. I was, in fact, loopy and endorphin-stoned when he was finished, which hasn’t happened to me in a long time. I slept very, VERY well that night.

I don’t think the dice game is bad, or something we’ll never do again. I just think that if we do it in the future — at least with me as the bottom — I’ll need warm-up first, and then we can move into the dice game.

It’s something that I think would also work well as a punishment. T. and I don’t have the kind of a relationship that involves rules and punishment, but if we did, I like the mindfuck-y aspect of the dice game forcing the bottom to be the one to “choose” her punishment.

This was the first time we tried the dice game, so neither of us knew how it would play out; we certainly weren’t expecting our most mind-blowing scene ever (though we also weren’t expecting a failure). And I wouldn’t call it a failure, either. I’ll just call it beta-testing.

 

clampy things and tender bits

The human body is a wondrous and strange thing. Here’s an example: my ass is the wimpiest ass known to ass-kind. Many people I’ve talked to say that, when their ass is being flogged/paddled/spanked, they are able to take more pain/stronger hits as the scene goes on. Not me. My ass gets more and more sore and tender as the scene progresses, and I can’t take more pain.

This is weird to me, because it seems like my ass should be a little bit tough. I sit on it all day, for one thing (my logic being that, since my ass supports my body weight — not insubstantial — all day, it should be hale and hearty). But no, I have a weak ass.

My vulva/labia, on the other hand, can take all kinds of evil sensations. And I would have thought that the general ladyparts area would be very tender. Apparently not. Or at least, not mine.

The other night, I asked T. if he would clamp nasty things on my tender bits (that might be a verbatim quote). He happily agreed.

First he put the leather cuffs on me and then ran a rope through their D-rings and through the headboard of the bed. Hands and arms out of the way: check. Then he tied my legs in a frog-tie and attached the spreader bar, so that my legs were held open. Pesky knees out of the way: check. Then he added a cloth gag (made from an old t-shirt; I have big time jaw issues and really can’t handle any other gag without serious nonerotic pain). Yelps and protests muffled: check.

For fairness’ sake — to, you know, make sure that all my parts were equally tormented — he put tweezer clamps on my nipples and tugged on them for a while. There may or may not have been grumbling from behind the gag….

Then he put racheting spring clamps on my outer labia (4 clamps total, eventually). Pinchy and tight and really, really nice.

He twisted them and tugged on them, racheted a couple of them down even tighter (more grumbling may or may not have come from behind the gag), and then he decided that the handles of the clamps were top-heavy and falling over, so he tied twine around them and then tied that off to the rope already around my legs, making sure that the twine was pulling on the clamps.

More torment ensued, with more twisting and tugging on the clamps, and eventually T. pulled out the Hitachi Magic Wand and ran it along the clamps, letting it vibrate them. The vibrations were both fantastic, in the stimulating sense, and terrible, because they made the clamps — which were already racheted down tight AND being pulled to the sides by the twine — wiggle and twist around more.

Evil. Naughty, delicious, evil.

 

bdsm is not sane

Dev, of Devastating Yet Consequential, has a post up titled “bdsm is not safe”. I agree with pretty much every word of it. She’s definitely NOT saying that BDSM is a minefield rife with tragedy lurking around every corner. Not at all. She’s just saying that we can’t guarantee that what we do is going to be harmless every single time we do it.

Kinky folk often use the “safe, sane, consensual” label for what we do, and I think the label is useful as a reminder of what we should always be aware of. We should always do everything in our power to be safe, but, frankly, shit happens. Shit happens all the time. Even the safest person in the world can get caught in an unexpected problem (power outage, submissive has a panic attack, dom’s allergies flare up).

Many kinky people have moved from using the “safe, sane, consensual” label to “risk-aware consensual kink,” which is, I think, more accurate. But notice what part of SSC is missing in RACK — we’ve gone from safe, SANE, consensual, to risk-aware consensual kink.

Sanity is nowhere to be seen.

And, honestly, BDSM is not sane. At least, it’s not sane to the degree that it’s also not safe, in the way that Dev described. I’m 100% serious about this. I let someone staple me in the arm, not with a medical stapler, but with a big ol’ Home Depot industrial electric staple gun. At the same event, I let someone take a baton that was soaked in alcohol and then LIT ON FIRE and run it — still ON FIRE — over my unclothed skin.

That? Not sane. At least, not entirely.

But the thing is, that’s okay. In fact, it’s even good. We all need moments of craziness in our lives, the chance to step away from our workaday lives and the predictable routines that are a part of them.

The crazy moments are exhilarating. They’re fun, and scary, and not entirely rational, and often exactly what our hearts and souls need.

Sanity is overrated.

 

back from hiatus, AND, how real life pain affects BDSM

Well, hi.

If anyone still checks this blog, thanks for your dedication! My last post was in September 2008; after that, the shit hit the fan in my life in a BIG way.

Over the summer, I had some serious job issues that required all of my mental and emotional energy to stay employed. That lasted until well into October. Things did eventually work out, and thing have been on basically steady ground for a while, employment-wise.

But then, right about the time my job calmed down, I had medical problem after medical problem. Some were severe enough that I ended up in the ER, with the doctor telling me I should have come in sooner. (Possibly the fact that the medical problems manifested right after my job problems got resolved is an indication that the medical problems were a delayed stress reaction affecting my physical health.)

All of that, too, has worked itself out, and things are more or less back to what passes for “normal” in my life. My health is good and my job is as secure as a job can be in this rotten economy.

I have to say, though, when you go through a lot of serious illness, some of which involves significant physical pain, even after you’ve recovered and are no longer in pain, the last thing you want to do is give or receive pain, even in an erotic context.

Or, at least, that’s the last thing *I* wanted to do. A friend suggested that bottoming would have been good for me, because then I would have been in charge of the pain I was undergoing, and I get that — the psychology behind it is pretty smart — but I just couldn’t do it.

Anyway, now that things have calmed down, T. and I have gotten back into the swing of our dastardly, dirty deeds. You can expect my posts to pick back up and be more regular than once every 6 months.

 

what do you call 100 kinky people in one place?

(The subject line isn’t actually a joke, although it sounds like one. I just think there should be a collective noun for kinky folk, like a flock of birds, a pride of lions, a [___] of kinky people. You know?)

Yeah, I know it’s been quite a while since I’ve posted anything. It’s been one of those summers. T. and I went away on vacation, and I returned to face a shitstorm at work (which is still continuing, alas), and that’s been pretty much all that’s consumed my energy and brain power for the past few months. Not very exciting.

However, T. and I recently went to a weekend-long kink event, and I thought that maybe I should drag the blog out of the mothballs and talk about it. (Hence my subject line — there were more than 100 people there [at least, it sure SEEMED that way at the play party!], but you get my point and my crappy attempt at a joke.)

The event offered 23 classes, in 5 time slots (so you could go to as many as 5 classes throughout the day) loosely arranged into tracks — i.e., you could attend all classes on rope, or all classes on lifestyle issues, etc. Because I’m a dilettante, I just jumped around and took classes on a few different themes.

I went to 2 classes that Graydancer taught — military-style bondage as well as his pretty well-known The Defining Moment class. (Completely unrelated to the class material, I’m in awe of how quickly he can tie. It’s really impressive, and just fun to watch.) The classes themselves were really helpful in giving me a new way to think about my kink, and how to create scenes that work for T. *and* I.

(And if that last bit doesn’t make sense — you may be asking yourself, “Why *wouldn’t* a scene work for both the top and the bottom?” — then I envy you your relationship(s) with your partner(s). There are quite a few scenes — mostly when I top — where I feel like I’m the one serving T., and *he’s* the one in charge, even though he’s the one tied up and being tormented.

And that sentiment deserves its own post, honestly. The bottom obviously deserves enjoyment out of a scene; I’m not saying that he doesn’t. But when I, as the top, feel like I’m not in charge, there’s something wrong.

I also realize that there are scenes where the bottom is *ordered* to tie up/torment the top; sometimes a top just wants to be beaten. And that might be the way we need to shift our view of our scenes. But that’s not what this entry is about, dang it!)

(Yes, the previous 3 paragraphs were a parenthetical. I’m verbose.)

Anyway, back to the classes I attended. The 2 that Graydancer presented were great. I should send him an e-mail to tell him that.

Another class I attended was “The Primal Self” in BDSM, presented by Jack Rinella. It was exactly the kind of nerdy, intellectual topic that I love, but it was also really relevant to life as a kinky person.

There was also a class on switches! This isn’t always the case at a kink event, no matter how large, although it seems like more and more, the bigger events at least have a “switches’ roundtable.” Anyway, this class was presented by Coral Mallow (that link is NOT from the event I attended), who is, as her bio states, a force of nature. She talked about the myriad ways that a person can be a switch, including gender, and how that might play — and/or change — at any given time.

The last class I took was for “novice” doms. At this point in my life as a switch, I still don’t have the kind of experience or confidence I’d like when I’m the one on top, so I figured that this class would help me, or at least point me in the right direction. And it did. (Side note: I’m always tickled by doms who are soft-spoken and unassuming, because they’re a delight compared to the loud, overbearing folks who seem to think that being loud and overbearing is what makes one a dom.) (And the dom who presented the class was a soft-spoken, unassuming guy, definitely. And yet his entire demeanor made it clear that he had a spine of steel. Metaphorically.)

The play party was one of the most well-planned ones I’ve ever attended. The venue where the event was held had enough space for there to be a HUGE main room for the party, as well as a side room and a separate “sensual space” play area. (I thought that “sensual space” was code for “lots of fucking on the floor!” but my cynical side was proven entirely wrong, and I am chagrined that I made that assumption.) The “sensual space” was MUCH quieter than the large play area, even though it had the same kind of play equipment that the larger space had (meaning, there were a lot of similar scenes — suspensions [including a self-suspension that BLEW ME AWAY], flogging, rope bondage, etc.); the difference was just in the intent of the space. It was supposed to be quieter and more intimate, and the people who played there adhered to that.

The large play area was like a CARNIVAL. I mean, really. There’s no other word for it. It was full, but not so crowded that it was hard to walk through. All the equipment was constantly in use, with a lot of really creative, high-energy scenes.

Since I don’t want to give away detail that isn’t mine to give, I’ll just list some of the types of play that was going on in the large dungeon: suspensions, takedowns, fire play, flogging, single-tail scenes, foot worship, rough impact play, spanking, caning — and that’s just what *I* saw; I’m sure there was lots more.

T. told me before the event that he wanted to be the top for the party, which was fine with me. The only problem was, there was so much going on around us, plus the music and all the other noises one hears in a playspace, that he just couldn’t concentrate enough to really top me. He gave it his level best, and tied me to a cross and flogged me a little bit, but he just couldn’t get his head into the game. (He started on my front side, and when he turned me around and immediately started Florentine (double) flogging my ass, without warming up, I *knew* he couldn’t concentrate.)

Honestly, I was okay with the premature discontinuation of our scene. I was exhausted after getting up at 6 a.m. to drive to the event, and a full day of classes. Don’t get me wrong; when we walked in to the party, I was fully on board to get a beating. But I was fine with stopping, too. I got to watch some amazing scenes I wouldn’t have otherwise gotten to see, and I got to socialize with people I hadn’t seen in months, so that was all good, too.

And now that we’re home, I’m fighting off a cold. Honestly, every time I go to a large event, I bring home some sort of plague.

But other than the plague, it was a very good event, and I’m glad we went.

 

play party etiquette

(This could alternatively be titled, “If Teppycat is Bottoming, It MUST Be Time to Talk to Her!”)

After my car’s iPod adapter was recently resurrected (yeah, first-world problems), I was listening to Graydancer‘s podcast, Ropecast, on the way home from work today. One of the things he was talking about with a group of people was play party etiquette, and it reminded me of what has been a constant theme in my kinky public life: if I’m bottoming at a play party, *someone* WILL come up and start talking to me, my top, or both of us.

WTF, right??? I thought everyone knew that actually talking to people WHILE THEY’RE IN A SCENE is uncool. Unbelievably un-fucking-cool, man. But I apparently have a sign tatttooed on my ass that says, “Please, come talk to me; why would I want to achieve subspace or any sort of intimacy with my partner?”

Literally every party I’ve ever played at — except one, which I will describe below — when I’ve been the bottom, people walk right up and start talking to me. Once, at a play party at an event (which means, yeah, a BIG play party, where you’d think people would be adhering to the rules lest they get bounced by the DMs), I was bottoming to T. He had me tied with my wrists above my head, attached to the crossbar of a pillory post. Because I’m self-conscious and have body image issues, I had on underpants (but nothing else). I have a lower-back tattoo (not to be trendy [although it’s nobody’s business *why* I have it]; rather, I had back surgery 5 years ago, and the tattoo serves to partially cover the scar and to also re-claim that part of my body).

While T. was pausing to switch floggers, someone walked up to him and asked him if he would PULL DOWN MY UNDERPANTS SO SHE COULD SEE THE REST OF MY TATTOO.

I think my eyeballs fell out of my head. WHO DOES THAT?!? That’s so fucking rude. Because (1) hello, we’re PLAYING, HERE; and (2) you want to see my tattoo, you come around to my face and ask ME (I have big-time boundary issues when it comes to my body, although I will grant that, if someone had never met me before that event, and then the first thing they saw of me was to watch me bottoming, it wouldn’t be an absurd conclusion to think that I was owned, and the appropriate person to ask would be my master).

But still. Even if I were owned, you still don’t walk up and ask to see someone’s slave’s tattoo while the master is changing floggers!

(Interestingly — or, really, NOT — when *I* top T. at parties, NO ONE comes up to talk to me or him. I have a very effective “Do NOT fuck with me or I will KILL YOU DEAD” demeanor. Plus, I don’t make eye contact with anyone while I’m topping, because I’m just hyper-focused like that.)

As for the party that was the exception, where no one walked up to try to talk to either of us during the scene: I had grumbled at length to T. before the scene about the fact that people always interrupt, and I felt like putting up a sign that said “Stay the Fuck Away!” Because T. is a nicer person than I am, we compromised and, on the back of a chair that was between us and the rest of the party, taped a sign that said, “Do Not Talk To The Animals Or They’ll Bite! You Have Been Warned!”

Worked like a charm. But, seriously? It shouldn’t take a sign, you know?

 

the safecall: learn it, love it, USE IT

I tend to assume that, if *I* know about something, then surely everyone knows about it. After all, I’m appallingly naive for a 30-mumble-something woman. So when a friend had a bad experience playing with a new partner, I assumed that, at the very least, her safecall provided a built-in endpoint to the scene.

But she didn’t use a safecall. And I wonder: how many people do?

Her experience is not mine to share in any kind of detail; it was an unfortunately common story, though. She met a top at a local munch, they exchanged e-mail addresses, talked via e-mail for a week or two, went out to dinner once or twice, and then they decided to play. Alone, at her house.

You know, all of that is, more or less, what you’re “supposed” to do when you meet a new potential partner (in the kink world AND the vanilla world, really). I, personally, would be uncomfortable playing with a new partner for the first time in a setting where we were alone, but not everyone feels the way that I do. I’m excessively cautious about some stuff.

Anyway, my friend. The scene went wrong, I found out the next day (which was the first that I had even heard that she had decided to play with this new top). The top didn’t respect my friend’s limits, my friend got freaked out, and eventually they stopped, but the end result was that my friend was really, REALLY upset afterwards, which is quite understandable. She was upset for days, and, in truth, is still kind of spun by it, but is doing fine, basically, now that some time has passed.

When I was pretty new to the local BDSM community, I encountered people who expressed disdain for safecalls, because they found them “insulting.” OF COURSE nothing would go wrong, they insisted. Did I think they were some kind of psycho? How rude of me! These people were generally (but not always) tops/dominants, and I realized right away that they were not people I wanted to play with. If you can’t respect my need for safety, especially when we barely know each other (and, hey, what if *I’m* the psycho, huh? you ever think about that?), then I have no desire to play with you.

And I encountered people who cheerfully admitted that they didn’t use safecalls because they tended to lose track of time when playing, and if you lose track of time and don’t check in with your safecall person, they call the police, and, well THAT’S embarassing. (To which I say: stop viewing your flakiness as a charming quality and get a watch with a goddamn ALARM on it. Set the alarm, call your friend to check in, and then keep playing.)

But when I hear stories like my friend’s experience—and the ones that are even worse, that end with someone being gravely harmed or killed—then I tend to think that maybe the perceived “inconvenience” of setting up a safecall isn’t really an inconvenience at all. It might just save your ass.

 

fire on my back and staples in my arm

At a recent event, I volunteered to be both lit on fire and stapled in the arm with an electric staple gun (not at the same time). I saw a demo on fire play, which was totally fascinating. The presenter asked if anyone had questions, or wanted to do it (and by “do it,” he meant, be the person wielding the fire), and one of the people watching asked, “Can I do it…but as the person on the bottom?” The presenter said sure, and demonstrated on the volunteer, who kept up a running commentary telling us how it felt. (“Like an extremely hot tennis ball rolling over your back,” was the best description.)

Now, I had seen fire play demonstrations before, and it always struck me as nifty, but not for me. So I’m not real sure what crazy impulse seized me when the presenter asked, “Anyone else want to try?” But, sure enough, I asked, “Can I try? …I mean, will you light me on fire?”

I’m certain that’s a question I’ve never asked anyone before. Ever.

So…yeah. Being lit on fire. It was pretty much like the other volunteer said — like an extremely hot tennis ball being rolled over my back. Because the lit baton is passed over so quickly, it lights the alcohol, and then the presenter’s hand follows right behind to make sure nothing is still burning. He did that a couple of times, and even tapped, sort of, my back with the lit baton. Weird. And nifty. Afterwards, my back felt like it had been in front of a bonfire — that sort of warmed, tight-skin feeling — and that feeling lasted for about half an hour.

I’m glad I tried it, but I don’t really see me making a regular (or even irregular) thing out of it. It was nifty, but in more of a sideshow freak way than a kink way. For me.

And then, the staples.

There was also a demo of using a staple gun during play — not a medical stapler, not an office-supply type stapler; an electric goddamn staple gun from Home Depot. The presenters were a couple — top and bottom — who actually made getting stapled in the ass look fun. (Well, maybe not the ass.) They explained in detail all the safety stuff first — how to make sure that the staples and gun are exceedingly clean — clean enough to puncture human skin without running the risk of infection. And then they just started stapling. Well, first they put strips of duct tape (ouch, right???) on the areas where the staples were going to go — arms, legs, ass, stomach (yikes, ow, and no fucking way), and boobs (again I say, NO FUCKING WAY).

And then they started stapling. That staple gun has a lot of force, let me tell you. And yet, not all the staples made it “all the way in” (allegedly) so the top started pressing on them with his thumbs, and then (yikes!) punching some of them.

Really, it’s astonishing the kind of pain that people not only take, but *love.*

After the top was done stapling the bottom, and then removed all the staples, the top asked if we had any questions. He also asked, in a tone of voice that indicated that he didn’t expect anyone to say yes, if anyone wanted to get stapled.

And watching, it was clear how much force the staple gun has (hint: A LOT), but I still wondered what it felt like. You know, like maybe just one staple.

T. raised his hand to ask a question, which made *me* say, “You’re going to get stapled? Cool!” (I knew that wasn’t why he raised his hand; he’s just fun to fuck with.) “No!!!” he said. “I just have a question…which I apparently already forgot.”

“Maybe there was never a question — maybe you just want staples in your ass!” I’m such a loving girlfriend.

After more banter in this vein, I finally said to T., “If you do it, I’ll do it.”

“Aw, shit,” he said. “I can’t turn down a dare.”

“It’s not a dare,” I said. “I’m going to do it whether you do it or not.”

“Great — I can’t let my girlfriend do it and then not do it myself! All right, let’s go.”

So T. got stapled in the thigh (6 staples), and I got stapled in the arm (5 staples). I need to note that the top wielding the staple gun used a completely different, clean staple gun on us than he used on his partner, and even cleaned the staple gun between T. and me, and put in a fresh row of staples for me, not continuing from the row that T. was stapled from.

Yes, the staple gun has a lot of force, but it’s spread out over the staple, so it’s actually not that bad. And it’s kind of a delayed reaction — staples 1 and 2 were really okay, kind of like getting an allergy shot. But staples 3-5 were done in rapid succession, and they hurt. Not horrible, bad, stop-this-now pain (although I *did* say, “You know, I think 5 is plenty for me. I’m done now, thanks!”), but more of a dull, burn-y ache.

Having them pulled out, though (I had purple duct tape on my arm first), REALLY hurt. Jesus. And the rest of the day, even through a shower and ibuprofen, it just ached like the combo of a BIG allergy shot followed up by a good hard punch. And all I could think was, if 5 staples to my fat upper arm hurt like this after the fact, how much must the demo bottom be hurting, after taking staples ALL OVER?

When I saw her at the party that night, I showed her my staple marks (“I look like a gang of tiny vampires attacked me!”) and asked her how on earth she could take so many staples and not be sore all over. “I don’t know!” she exclaimed, like she was aware it was sheer luck that she had such a high pain threshold, and then she bounced off for more owie fun. I was impressed.

I’m not sorry I did it, but, much like the fire play, it’s not something I can see me making a regular (or irregular) practice of. That’s a bit much for me to handle.

But it’s a great story.

 

there are days when I know I’d make a splendid service submissive

My astrological sign is Cancer, and while I don’t put any serious credence in astrology, one of the strong characteristics of people born in Cancer is that they’re caretakers. And that’s “caretakers” in whatever way it manifests — I tend to feed people. Come through my front door, cross my path, sit next to me on the bus — I’ll offer you food. More than once. When I have guests in my home, I make every effort to make sure they’re comfortable (as well as well-fed), and sometimes I have to stop myself and just say, “Okay, I get obessive about making sure everyone has what they want, and that makes me ask ‘Do you need anything?’ WAY too often, and it’s been suggested that this drives people nuts. So…if you need anything, please tell me, or help yourself.”

But even after I say that, I still keep my eye on glasses that need refills, empty plates that are in the way, etc. It’s what I do. Caretaking is a tangible way for me to show love to people.

Which is why I think I’d be a splendid service submissive, given the right dominant and the right circumstances. I enjoy taking care of those who I love. It pleases me to make sure they have everything they need before they even have to ask. And when I know that they’re aware of what I’m doing, they never need to thank me. It’s when people take it for granted that I’m disinclined to lift a finger for them.

Sex Geek has a recent post on entitlement, and how that plays into D/s relationships that touches on this. It doesn’t focus on service submission specifically, as much as the larger issue of how a sense of entitlement plays into a power exchange. On the face of it, entitlement sounds like taking something for granted, without any appreciation. At least, that’s how I’ve always thought of entitlement.

But Sex Geek explains it much better than I can — in a power exchange, entitlement is not taking something for granted; it’s expecting something that the other person wants to give, and expecting it with the knowledge that the other person wants to give it, and, more specifically, give it to YOU.

An example that Sex Geek gives is this:

Boi L once told me that if I were to take off my jacket and let go of it without even looking behind me to see if she was there to take it – if I assumed her to be paying attention, without feeling a need to check and make sure – that would be a high compliment, because it’s an indication of my trust in her service.

In that situation, that relationship, Sex Geek isn’t assuming from a place of arrogance that Boi L will take her jacket because that’s what she deserves. No, she’s aware that Boi L wants to serve in that capacity, and therefore Sex Geek can meet Boi L’s need to serve her by taking off her jacket and let it go, expecting Boi L to take it.

I guess I wouldn’t have called such a dynamic “entitlement,” but I see what Sex Geek means when she uses it.

In any case. I am, as always, switchy to the core, but there are times when — and people with whom — I know I could be a splendid service submissive. At the right time, and with the right person, who has that attitude that Sex Geek describes, I actually crave it. There’s something about caretaking that, for me, is deeply satisfying.

 

plays well with others

If I scene with someone who isn’t T., it’s only ever at a play party, never in private. That’s simply because, the way I’m wired, whenever I play with someone other than T. it’s a casual, less-intimate interaction to me. Enjoyable, but casual. And I think that playing in “public” (at a party) helps it to be more casual — for me, at least.

I’ve done electric play with one dom at parties, and I’ve done some impact play with another dom at parties, and it was really just about the sensation itself — the objective of the scene was just about giving and receiving pain/impact.

T. and I play differently than that with each other, because we (obviously) have a different relationship than I have with other play partners.

I guess the best way that I can explain it is that there can be, for me, different goals when I scene with someone. And I can have a scene that’s only about the pain/impact/sensation/etc. with a casual partner. We both have to know that from the start, but that’s the point of negotiation.

Or, to put it even more simply, sometimes I just need a good flogging. And that’s all it is.

T. tends to like harder impact play than I’m used to doing as a top, and so he’ll bottom to other people once in a while, and it’s just about getting his butt seriously kicked by someone who’s really good at it. He and I had to decide “ground rules” about what type of play we were comfortable with the other one doing with other people, but fortunately we have the same point of view, so it was easy to agree on what type of play was okay with other people and what type of play was not okay.

And it definitely helps if I know who he’s bottoming to (or vice versa). That makes things much more comfortable in my mind.

I know that there are countless ways for people to decide who they’ll play with, and under what circumstances, and what limits they have, etc. My way is no more “right” or “wrong” than anyone else’s — but it IS right for me.

 

turnabout

So, after my turn on top making T. have to ask for each stroke, I got my just desserts, and found myself on the bottom end of that scenario last week.

It was the first time that I had been the bottom in that particular mindfuck-y scene, and I have to say, I really loved it. Partly because I have a wimpy ass that can’t take a whole lot of intense pain, and partly because I just love a good mindfuck, whether I’m giving or receiving.

Being able to control how often I get hit, by asking “More, please, ma’am,” (which, by the way, is a MOUTHFUL, and feels like it takes about 5 minutes to say!) helps me to take a longer scene, because if any given stroke really hurt, I can wait as long as I need to before the next one. T. and I also worked out a way to ask for a specific implement, or even ask for a certain number of strokes with a given toy (like, “Ma’am, I can take 5 more with the crop, but then I need a different toy,”). Brilliant.

As for the mindfuck-y aspect — it’s almost like I’m mindfucking *myself,* because I got to a point where I was making deals with myself, like “Okay, just one more; I only have to take this one more, and then I can stop,” but then after T. gave me that one more — theoretically one *last* — stroke, I’d decide that no, I could take more, really I could, and I’d ask for another.

I found myself asking for more than I thought I would, and asking more quickly (i.e., not much time between swats) as well.

I assure you, my ass really hurt the next day. In a good way.

 

being mindful of manners

There are many other people in the BDSM world who have written about manners, and done so far more comprehensively than I’m about to. (And whose writing is undoubtedly better than mine, also.) Still, what’s a blog for, if not to spew forth one’s own opinions and crackpot theories?

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve experienced some surprisingly bad manners at munches. This morning, when I read Mistress Matisse’s description of some truly appalling behavior that happened to a friend of hers at a munch, I decided to offer up my 2 cents.

Honestly, people? I just don’t understand when people show up at a munch or a party and can’t even behave with the most rudimentary of manners. I’m talking the kind of manners that anyone, in any situation, whether vanilla or kink, should know and be able to actually USE. Don’t get me wrong; I am a big scaredy-teppycat when it comes to new situations and meeting new people. I totally understand that being in a new situation can make people feel awkward, and that can lead to some social gaffes. I totally get that. Hell, I’ve totally DONE that.

But I just don’t understand what thought process leads people to abandon even the facade of politeness in a situation where they are the newbie (meaning, yes, because you’re new, you’re being evaluated, since we don’t know whether you’re a kink god or a registered sex offender). It’s just common sense to bust out the good manners in order to make a good impression, no?

At one munch, I recommended a particular dessert to the people sitting around me (and, okay, by “recommended,” I actually mean “raved and swooned and extolled its virtues with terms befitting the food of the gods”), some of whom were new to the munch. They ordered the dessert, as did I, it was served, we ate, I made sounds of gastronomical bliss.

One of the new people, who had ordered the dessert on my recommendation, was sitting silently, having finished his dessert with no comment. Feeling flush in the postprandial glow of one truly kickass dessert, I leaned across the table and asked, “So? What do you think?”

The guy responded with an expression devoid of any reaction, save for his curled lip, and said, “Eh. I wasn’t impressed.” And so I just chuckled, hoping that he was trying to make one of those jokes-by-way-of-saying-the-opposite-of-what-you-mean.

He repeated, “Really. That wasn’t anything special.”

Okay.

No one has to share my opinion of dessert (or any other topic, come to that). And anyone who disagrees with my opinion shouldn’t lie to me if asked. But I just feel like maybe, just maybe, sneering at me and dissing something that I had praised to high heaven isn’t the best way to make a good impression on me.

There’s always a tactful way to indicate that you don’t agree with someone. Sure, I’m not known for being the queen of tact (or even possessing one iota of tact, actually), but I know how to behave with strangers upon whom I might wish to make a good impression.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m being too judgey, but when I have a very limited amount of interaction with someone as the basis for forming my opinion, I’m going to be feeling less than warmly towards someone who sneers at me and my choice of dessert.

It might be silly, but there it is.

One of the most comprehensive Web pages I’ve read on etiquette in the BDSM scene is by Ambrosio, who I also have linked in my sidebar. His page on protocol/etiquette covers a wide variety of situations, ranging from basic good manners that everyone ought to know for all venues, both kink-related and vanilla, all the way to etiquette at play parties, high protocol, and even the protocol surrounding the hanky code. It’s an excellent resource, and I highly recommend it.

 

you have to ask me for it

Ye gods, it’s been a whole MONTH since I last posted! It really didn’t seem that long, I swear.

Of course, you’re thinking that a month’s hiatus must mean that I have bushels full of salacious stories and torrid tales about all of my kinky exploits. But….not so much. Sure, there are some, one of which I’m about to share, but I really am a boring Teppycat when it comes right down to it.

Seriously. Last night, I cut out coupons. Hand to god. How’s THAT for edgeplay?

Recently, however, I did manage to get fierce on T.’s ass for a while. And — this is truly shocking — I managed to leave marks on him that were still visible the next day. You have to understand, he NEVER marks. Ever.

What we did was basically a reprise of the night that I made him ASK for each stroke with the cane/crop/whatever. (I originally got my inspiration for that from Dev and her own wicked ways.)

Because T. enjoys self-bondage — and because both I’m a lazy top and a voyeur — I told him to tie himself so that he could lie on his back and yet his ass would be, for the most part, accessible for beating. I wanted him to lie on his back because I wanted to be able to maintain eye contact with him. I love that connection when he’s asking me to cane him again and I can see the arousal and pain and enjoyment and submission in his eyes. Yum.

He tied his wrists to his ankles, same side to same side, and then I tied the ends off to the headboard, which allowed him to keep his legs up over his head, more or less. (He’s VERY flexible. I like that in a guy.) Then I reminded him of the rules — I wouldn’t give him the next stroke unless he asked for it by saying, “More, please, ma’am.” He could also ask me to switch implements of ass destruction in a similar way, as well as ask me to slow down, reduce the intensity, or stop altogether.

I used a cane on his ass for a long time; in fact, when I moved to switch to something different, he asked if I would continue using the cane. I ask you, HOW could I ever say no to such a delightful request? I actually caned him for so long that the cane broke. (Okay, it wasn’t a rattan/bamboo/wood cane; it was an acrylic cane, but I’d had it — and used it — for a few years. It was pretty sturdy. Operative word being “was.”)

While I was using the cane on his ass, he kept asking for the next stroke immediately, even though I could tell it was really hurting him. And I complied, but I admit that there was a point where I almost called yellow to stop for a minute and make sure he was okay, because even though he was readily and quickly asking for the next stroke, he was also yelping and practically hyperventilating. I didn’t, in the end, call yellow, but I did pause and tell him that I was switching to the riding crop, and I stroked his hair for a minute and waited until his breath was under control again.

(He was, he informed me later, in a lot of pain BUT ALSO incredibly turned on and rock-hard. The combination was exquisite torment and was kind of blowing his mind. But hyperventilation makes me uneasy, so I’m not sorry that I switched to a different toy.)

Throughout the scene, I alternated between the cane, the riding crop, a long skinny flat wooden paddle that really resembles a paint stirrer on steroids (i.e., longer and thicker than a paint stirrer, but the same general shape), and a bamboo back-scratcher. I tried to flog his ass with my bullhide flogger, but the angle was all wrong and just frustrated me.

It was a really good scene for both of us; for T., because he likes HARD impact play, and for me, because I really enjoy being able to evoke such a complex, multi-layered response from him. Pain, pleasure, begging for more, wanting it to stop, powerful arousal — *I* did all that. That’s what I love about being a top. (Well, that, and how utterly fucking gorgeous T. is when he’s restrained and/or in pain. Yum.)

 

enduring

The other day, I was listening to the Ropecast (Graydancer’s podcast about shibari and other kinky things), and much to my delight, Midori was a guest. She and Graydancer talked about a variety of topics, including her “Elements of Suffering” performance.

In describing “Elements of Suffering,” Midori talked about the Japanese cultural virtue of enduring. She didn’t elaborate on the reasons that enduring is a Japanese virtue; she just explained that it’s a common theme. And then she related that back in to her “Elements of Suffering” performance, talking about the idea of enduring hardship (or suffering).

When I first started reading books about BDSM (thank you, Amazon.com, for making it easy for shy kinksters to get their hands on good reading material!), one of the first books I read was Janet Hardy and Dossie Easton’s New Bottoming Book. In it, they tell the reader to think about what it is that he or she wants to get out of bottoming. In other words, what are you looking for, what do you want to achieve — why are you doing this?

It wasn’t a question I could answer right away; certainly not until I got involved with other kinky people and started playing at parties. Even then, I was just trying to learn everything I could, experience everything I could (or what I was willing to experience), and see what I liked.

Figuring out why I liked it could come later.

And, eventually, what I realized was that, when I bottom, what I want is to endure. I want to take the flogging/beating/pain and get through it, get past it, and see what’s on the other side. (I also want to be praised for taking the pain, to be told I’m a good girl, but that’s not my primary motivator in bottoming.)

This is very much in contrast with T.’s goal in bottoming; he very often wants to be broken, to be pushed to the point where he can’t take the pain any more. And as much as I’ve gone there with him, as his top, it’s not something I want to experience as a bottom.

Neither way is “right,” of course; when it comes to kink, there’s only what’s right for any given person. And it’s endlessly fascinating to me to see just how many permutations there can be, how many different ways people have to embrace and express their kink.

 

even when I’m asleep, I’m kinky (also very, very geeky)

The ultimate proof of how geeky-yet-kinky I am happened the other night.

I had a dream that I was using Photoshop, and it had a filter/action that would let me put corsets and collars on people in the photos. And it was all perfectly proportioned to the person’s measurements, etc.

The only way it could have been geekier is if I started talking about semi-colons or particle physics.

But note how well I integrate the kinkiness and the geekiness, even in my dreams….

Oh yeah. I’m a HUGE geek. Was there ever any doubt?

 

CBT

I don’t have a hell of a lot of experience with CBT; although I always have nefarious intentions, it’s something we never seem to get around to.

However, the other night T. suggested it, and I was certainly up for the challenge. He laid on his back, and I tied his wrists to his ankles (right wrist to right ankle, left to left); he had thoughtfully tied his knees so that they were attached to the bed and spread wide open. (Having a bottom who’s into self-bondage can be SUCH a help.) He wore his hood as well, and a wide collar, and we were off to the races.

I have some skinny black cord, which I tied in a modified karada around his cock, finishing it by making a secure loop around his balls. When that was finished, I had a lot of cord left, so I brought it up towards T.’s head and ran it through the loop on his collar and then tied it off. That way, if he arched his back or threw his head back, etc., he was just tightening up the cord on his cock and balls.

I love predicament bondage.

Then I set about with the torture part of CBT, flogging his cock with a small rubber flogger (which, let me tell you, stings like crazy), hitting it with a paint stirrer, running a Wartenburg wheel over it, etc.

Then I remembered I have a set of vibrating nipple clamps in my toybag. I didn’t attach them to T.’s nipples. I just clamped them to different parts of the cord around his cock and balls. They’re bulky (for nipple clamps) and heavy-ish (ditto), so at first all I did was lift them up and let them fall, repeatedly.

Then I turned them on.

I’m pretty sure he didn’t realize that they were vibrating nipple clamps when I attached them to the cord. (I doubt he was thinking very clearly — or in any linear fashion — at that point.) So suffice it to say that when I turned them on, it was one HELL of a surprise.

I played with that for a while, just increasing and decreasing the vibrations (the control is a slider, so there’s gradations of intensity, rather than just a couple of fixed settings). And then I added other things back in while the clamps were vibrating — the rubber flogger, the Wartenburg wheel, etc., all the while increasing and decreasing the vibrations. Sometimes just turning them all the way off.

I’d say that T. enjoyed it. Actually, that’s an understatement.

We’ll definitely be doing that again. Soonish rather than laterish.

 

this is me, sitting very carefully

So, last night’s party. I got my ass beaten well and thoroughly. And I was stubborn and didn’t want to call yellow to get T. to tone it down, so I’m really fucking sore today, and I have massive sub drop.

It was pretty basic beating: me, bent over a bench, and T. just pounding on my ass, upper back, the backs of my thighs, and, oh, MY ASS some more. He alternated various floggers (thuddy deerskin, sting-y owie rubber) with a riding crop and his own evil hands (in leather gloves). He warmed me up, but it was one of those nights where my ass just couldn’t take a lot of pain.

[I have a weird, weird ass. Most other subs/bottoms I know are able to take *more* pain as they warm up and get into the beating, rather than *less* pain. Not me. It’s like my ass has a pre-set amount of pain it can take, and then it’s finished.]

I tend to not be extremely vocal when I’m bottoming, even when I’m getting beaten. I’ll yelp once in a while, or make some other noise of approval/discomfort, but in general I’m a pretty quiet bottom.

Not last night. Because everything just *hurt,* I kept actually saying “Ow,” repeatedly. And loudly. More like yelling. And I got kind of irritated with T., because he knows how I bottom, and knows that I don’t get vocal, so I assumed that when he realized how vocal I was being, he’d take that as a cue to either (1) dial back how hard he was hitting, or (2) move to a different target, rather than hitting the same spot over and over and over. But he didn’t (at least, not as quickly as I would have liked).

I couldn’t tell if he was *trying* to get me to call yellow, or not. (And I’m well aware that “Ow” is not a safeword.)

I’m a big believer in safewords (I wrote about this a few entries back), but I *don’t* consider safewords to be an excuse for the top to ignore all other signs of distress. I consider safewords to be a failsafe, a last resort. But if you’re my top, and I’m reacting in a different way to a type of play we’ve done countless times before, maybe you should stop and think about WHY THAT IS.

We played for about 45 minutes, and I did call yellow once, when T. just wouldn’t stop with the really hard strokes to my ass, and I asked him to please leave my ass alone for a while. And he acquiesced, but I was still annoyed that he wasn’t reading my reactions as quickly and clearly as I thought he should. I was starting to think he *was* aware that I was reacting in an unusual manner (for me), but was choosing to ignore it. (He wasn’t. Choosing to ignore it, that is.)

I was completely endorphin-stupid when we were finished, and I ate all the cake in the WORLD. I’m starving today — T. already made us a huge brunch with cheese-o-riffic eggs, potatoes, turkey bacon (for me), english muffins, strawberries, and coffee; still, I feel like I could eat anything that isn’t actively decomposing. And I have big time sub drop. Stupid endorphins.

T. and I talked this morning about the “Hey, did you notice that I was reacting in a way I *never had before*? Then why didn’t you DO SOMETHING about it?” issue. And he did say that, yeah, he noticed that I was reacting in an atypical manner, but he didn’t think it was cause for alarm.

And I said no, not cause for alarm per se, but damn close enough to make me think about ending the scene, which ruins the fun for me AND you, buddy. So he said he’d pay closer attention to my reaction in the future, and adjust accordingly (like alternating really hard strokes with some less-hard ones, instead of all hard, all the time).

Man, my ass is SORE.

On edit: I’m afraid that I made T. sound like a dick in this entry, and that’s not at all what I mean. A lot of my irritation was because *I* thought he should have picked up on the nuances of my reactions with telepathic clarity. And that’s not fair on my part. Also, I was really reluctant to call yellow, because I feel like a big wimp whenever I call yellow. Again, that’s not fair to T., when it’s an issue of *my* stubborn pride.

He also wasn’t just whomping on one area of my ass over and over and over again for long stretches of time; it just felt like it to my ass. Frankly, all it takes is more than one hard stroke in a row to the same area, and that’s enough to qualify (to my ass) as “over and over.” He *did* move to different targets, and *did* alternate how hard/soft he was hitting; it just didn’t seem like it happened quickly enough to make my ass happy.

My upper back can take a hell of a lot more abuse than my ass can, which, again, is freaking weird.

Anyway. T. wasn’t being a dick; he was being a top. He wasn’t being telepathic, but then, that wasn’t part of the scene.

 

party tonight

One of the local groups is having a play party tonight.

T. has informed me that he’s feeling toppy.

::shiver::

Full report later.

[edit] I think I’ll do some yoga, so that I can move all my parts tomorrow….