real life is a pain in my ass

I haven’t been posting lately because (1) much of my free time is taken up with T., but not in a kinky way — I’m moving in with him at the end of the month [I have an apartment, he has a house and dogs; hence, I’m moving there rather than vice versa], and because he’s lived alone for a handful of years, the house needs to be made Teppycat-friendly, which entails ripping out the [extremely old, extremely manky] carpet and then cleaning/restoring the hardwood floors, along with other pre-moving-in tasks; and (2) I’m prone to wrist tendinitis, and in the past few weeks it’s flared up pretty badly, so I’ve been minimzing computer time as much as possible.

Hey, that was all one sentence. That’s….scary.

The wrist tendinitis ALSO means that there isn’t a whole lot I can do in the way of kinky activity; at least, not the kind of activity that T. and I prefer. When he submits, he loves lots of physical restraint, preferably rope. Lots and lots of rope.

And my wrists will not allow me to tie knots right now; not for bondage, at least. Even tying my shoelaces is a little difficult.

My tendinitis also won’t let me flog/beat/cane/etc. T., which is something else he loves. He’s not exactly a pain slut, but he loves being in situations that force him to struggle (hence the combination of pain while being securely restrained; he has something to struggle against, which is just about his favorite thing). So I’m not much of a top these days.

To be fair, there’s lots of topping/domination I could do that doesn’t involve restraints or impact play at all. I know that. However, that isn’t where T.’s interests lie, so we haven’t gone that way just yet. Plus, I’m so freaking *tired* after working on the house (particularly the damned floors, which really will look amazing when we’re done, but ye gods, they’re a lot of work), I don’t have the energy to be toppy.

I could be bottom-y — T. pointed out that ponyplay would be kind to my wrists, because we can (and often do) just leave my hands/wrists unbound when I pony up. Actually, I have wrist splints that I wear when I sleep, to keep my wrists in a neutral position, and they’re very solid and nonflexible; T. said that I could wear *those* as a pony, and they’d work quite well as makeshift hooves.

Which I’m more than willing to do, but, like I said above, all our energy is going into the house — and getting me moved into it — for the time being. After the end of the month, we should be back to baseline levels of kink. (We damned well SHOULD be!)

 

Midori says it better than I ever could

Among many, many other activities, Fetish Diva Midori writes a column, “Diva’s Debauchery,” for ErosZine. Her newest column is about gender fuckery/fluidity/switchery, and the whys and wherefores and oh-hell-YEAHs of it.

In her column, Midori describes a man who, in day-to-day life, was drab and unassuming; not shy, exactly, but not noteworthy or attention-getting, either. And then this man began cross-dressing, and in this femme persona, became the center of attention, outrageous, and one hell of a power domme.

I recognized the description immediately. Because, while Midori isn’t writing about my boy, she could be. At least, I seem to think so.

I really dig Midori. She kicks ass. She’s the bee’s knees, as the kids say. I love the way she views genderfuckery/role-playing: “Role playing of any sort, whether sexual, gaming or historical reenactment, offers a momentary relief from the daily roles we are confined to.”

People are multifaceted creatures, no matter how one-note they may seem. There’s no reason we should only ever be one variation of ourselves. Yeah, from 9 to 5 I’m Teppycat, good worker bee and (mostly) productive citizen. But my 9-to-5 self doesn’t allow for my messy, bratty, gleefully sadistic side to come out (though some days, I swear to god, my co-workers don’t know just how close they are to getting a serious ass-beating). Or my quiet, I-am-your-object-to-do-with-as-you-please, passive side to come out.

Or my inner pony.

It’s utterly important for all of our facets to shine, at least once in a while. I’ll quote Midori once more: “Through this vessel the person emerges and animates, enjoying newly visible facets of them selves. This new discovery is heady and potent like elixir served from the gods of the subconscious. Some people are frightened of this intoxication while some seek to drown in it. Most people, however, drink what they need, enough to give strength and quench the parched soul and imagination.”

And that’s exactly it, isn’t it? I don’t have to be a good pony all the time. Or a gleeful sadist. But because I can be those versions of me, sometimes, the result is that all my other facets — even the day-to-day ones — shine a little brighter.

 

more pony play, and a good flogging

It’s amazing how much of a charge I get from being told I’m a good girl (in scene, that is, though I like it in vanilla settings as well, though not in the same way).

The group had a party last night, which was small — maybe 15 people (we usually have 20-25). Everyone played at one point or another, and the group of people that was there last night was a group that generally gets along really well, so it was a good, mellow evening.

*I* was in a feisty mood, full of energy, and I wanted to play. Mostly, I really wanted to sub, to be told what to do, to be ordered around and have to forcibly squelch my feisty-ness. I was bouncing around — literally, I was hopping up and down at one point, b/c I felt like I was going to burst open with all the energy I had — and after we had been there for an hour or more, I was ready to get down to business, damn it. T., on the other hand, has a habit of getting to a party and flip-flopping on whether he wants to top or bottom (he’s a switch, too, and while that’s often fun as hell, it can also be frustrating), or whether he even wants to play at all.

And that’s what he did last night. He went from maybe wanting to top, to wanting to bottom, to maybe not wanting to play because he was tired, to wanting to bottom, to maybe wanting to top if I had something specific in mind that I wanted him to do. (Fortunately, I did.) I told him that I really just wanted to be ordered around, to be told what to do — to be *made* to obey — and that must have made something in his brain go BING!, because he said, “Ordered around? Like….a pony?”

Which made me go SPROING, and I asked, “Did you bring the bridle?” He said hell yeah, he did. And we suddenly had a plan.

So he got me all rigged up, bit and bridle and bondage mittens (because horses don’t have *hands,* he informed me), and he led me around the dungeon and then marked out a large circle and had me practice my gaits, etc. And, like I said at the beginning, I get SUCH a charge out of being told I’m a good girl.

No one else in our group does ponyplay — or, at least, not at our parties — so we had a bit of attention from interested onlookers. Which is a little unnerving to me, but I really *do* get into a different headspace when I have the bit and bridle on — a headspace where everything is much simpler, reduced down to commands and flicks from the riding crop and praise when I get it right — so it was easier to tune out the onlookers than it normally is for me.

After a while, I was hot and sweaty and needed to take out my contacts, and that kind of knocked me out of my pony headspace, and T. was hungry, so we mutually agreed we were done with the pony stuff. But he still had out all his equipment, and the floggers lying on the ground just kept calling out to me. When we play, if he’s the top, he doesn’t normally flog/paddle/whip me. At least, not as the “main event,” so to speak. Sometimes he’ll throw in a little flogging, or spank me a few times with his hand, but it’s just sort of an accessory. And he also has never really flogged me hard, despite me saying I want it, and I can take it, and he can trust me to tell him if it’s too much.

Anyway. I asked him if he would flog me, if he had enough energy left in him to beat my ass. And he readily agreed, which made me pretty happy. He started out easy, which is what you should do, and then built up to a moderate level. I waved him around to my front side to talk to me, and I said that I would absolutely, absolutely tell him if it got to be too much, too painful, so if he wanted to go harder, he could.

Sometimes, a good beating is just what I need. I understand the cathartic effect of medieval priests engaging in self-flagellation, believe me. In a way, it’s like the ponyplay, or at least one facet of it. Everything reduces down to the sensation, and then, for me, it’s a question of being able to take it, to ride it out and see what’s on the other side. There’s actually a great sense of clarity when all you can focus on is the sharp sting of a rubber flogger, or the heavy thud of a deerskin flogger. And then the endorphin rush is just spectacular. I get all fuzzy-headed and endorphin-stupid after a good beating. It’s better than drugs.

Back to the beating at hand. If you rank a flogging on a scale from 1 to 5, where 1 is easy and gentle, and 5 is “stop right the hell NOW,” a really skilled flogger will take their bottom up to *almost* 5, but never quite. T., in the past, has always stayed around a 2, occasionally straying into 2.5 or 3. Last night, he finally worked up past 3, and almost hit 5 when he pulled out a wooden paddle and whacked my ass with it. Then he switched back to the floggers for a while — at one point he had 2 floggers out and was doing some Florentine flogging, which was awesome — and then the paddle again, which really fucking hurt. (Yes, I *know* that’s the point.) I finally had to tell him that I couldn’t handle the paddle any more, but the floggers were still okay.

I don’t think he ever got as close to a 5 with the floggers as he did with the paddle, but he had some nice, nice 4s. And I was, in fact, spectacularly endorphin-stupid when he was finished. It was great.

On the way home, he said that he *really* enjoyed the pony play, and was glad that I stuck with his flip-flopping long enough for him to get into a toppy headspace. And then he said, “I was SO glad that you asked me to flog you — I’ve never really gone that hard on anyone, but I felt safe enough knowing that you would tell me if it was too much, so I could just let go.”

And I told him that that’s a big part of what BDSM is about for me — being able to explore the emotions and sensations that really don’t have any other outlet in the rest of our daily lives. And, even though he’s been active in the BDSM lifestyle for a long time, I don’t think he had really considered that viewpoint.

 

ponygirl

So, I got to try out T.’s pony bit and bridle the other night. He thought I could try it and see if I liked it before trying it at a party.

Uh….I’d say, HELL yeah, I liked it. Even the simple act of him putting the bridle on me started to bring about a mental shift for me, more so even than the mental shift that occurs when I get tied up or flogged. He patted me and rubbed my shoulder the way you would with, well, a real horse, and I put my head down and nudged him with it, the way horses do. He told me I was a pretty pony, and clipped a chain to the bridle and led me over to the door to tether me out of the way. Being a stubborn pony, I decided I didn’t want to be led that way, and refused to budge, until T. tugged a little more sharply on the chain. Even then I did that annoyed pony headshake thing they do, which made T. laugh. I stomped a foot warningly at him (and also at his cats when they came near, which made T. tell the cats “Better stay out of the barn, guys!”), but he persisted and led me over to the door and left me tethered there for a while. He came back a little later with a book of John Willie’s bondage magazine Bizarre, and told me to look through it, and when I saw illustrations of other ponies, to let him know by stomping. Which I dutifully did.

The hard rubber bit bag made my jaw sore after a while, though — maybe an hour? So the next time T. came through, I asked if I could take the bit and bridle off. It’s funny — I didn’t even *think* of taking it off without asking permission first. It’s not hard at all to slip right into those roles.

I really liked my initial foray into pony play. I’m hoping there will continue to be more.