O Self

Light BDSM With A Lover

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“If you wanted to torment me, blindfold me and tie me to the bed and force me to have an orgasm with the (Hitachi Knockoff) vibrator, I wouldn’t mind,” the request is made as coyly and casually as he can manage, couched in terms that let him pretend he’s not asking for a very specific scenario.

He doesn’t like to ask for things- but then again, neither do I. For me, I deal with it by hinting, coaxing or just flat out taking. He’d been toying with trying to seduce me, little misbehaviours and touches for the last day or so. I’d noticed, but I’d been careful about the bait- he’s been under the weather and I’ve started to second guess myself, not sure if he’s doing this courting because he’s ready or because he feels like he should be ready because he cares about me. (Holy first world problems, Batman!)

At times like this, my body is at once throbbingly libidinal and jealously guarding that same energy. I certainly wanted sex. I’d spent the morning of that day intermittently wandering out onto the sun warmed back balcony, looking at down at where a pair of young men were pulling apart a brick patio- gloves, t-shirts and well fitted jeans on slender, muscular bodies. They didn’t seem to notice that I noticed them, the handsome one in the grey shirt, kneeling and pulling up red rectangles from the spring damp ground.

I thought about something cliche, taking him for an anonymous fuck that made him feel used, working out the logistics in my head: the condoms, the communication, the nail scratches on his work dirtied skin. Then I put these thoughts out of my head because something, beyond the challenge of the chase, is off. I don’t typically tell Wildcard about these momentary distractions because I don’t know how to convey that when given a sexual choice that doesn’t mean  either/or but also, I still want him more. The presence of attractive men makes me grumpy that they are not him, and I don’t like admitting that. Given free reign to fuck any man I want, I find myself recoiling, not even mustering up the enthusiasm to flirt. Even weirdly resentful.

But that night, after a morning of fuzzy headed domestic productivity and little in the way of writing, I’ve put those thoughts away. I feel, and dismiss, the sort of pressure that suggests a migraine is looming, a throb in my sinuses and behind my right eye. I’ve been moody again, slow moving and prone to looks of introspective sadness that leave him asking: “What’s wrong? is there anything I can do?”

He feels responsible when I look that way, like he has to find out how to take me out of my head and back into the moment. It’s the sort of relationship thing you discover is important when you’re an adult. But my mood is my mood, and I don’t want to deal with that, for the moment, and so I find the wound up cloak of my aggressiveness, the thing that blankets comfortably around me when I dominate. Casually, I select a candle from where it’s resting in the clutter on his bureau and tell him to take off his shirt. White paraffin lit with a red lighter is then tipped over his bare back.

The little drops cast a shadow before they land, making it easy to guess where you’ll see a splat materialize. I test them on the back of my hand, and pepper him with wax drops. I know he likes the sharp, quick and hot pain on his skin. It’s a cheap trick, but all fetishes are cheap tricks and easy shots, the sex version of knowing where someone hides their spare key so you can rifle through their home unmolested.

His back is like leather, for whatever reason, probably just one of those genetic quirks. When we were first discovering each other’s bodies I wanted to hurt him, to see if he could deal with my level of sadism, and sunk my sharp nails next to his spine. He gave a deep sigh and relaxed, his taut shoulders loosening. For Wildcard, that was just the right amount of pressure to deal with his constant knotted state.

Watching the wax fall, it lands clear and hardens in white, fuzzy edged blots. He shifts a little, and I know he’s enjoying it. This is light BDSM, nothing terrible or complicated, no fearsome scourges or complicated rigging. He’s not even tied down at this point, although his arms are held up and well out of the way, but his head’s going to the right place. It is, as it should be.

When he drops, it’s always very subtle and achingly vulnerable. He lets the tightness of his body’s assembled parts relax and folds down, head dipping and nuzzling against me. His large eyes will half lid- decadent, his guard down. I flick and peel most of the wax off his back and make him stand to brush the rest off, and I can feel the lightest pressure of the connection I’ve just built.

If you were into woo, or magic or tantra, there would be some poetic insertion here about energy, or sacredness, or waking the goddess in me. I’m an atheist and left stumbling around with half remembered undergrad psychology lectures and the sort of inaccurate drug metaphors that hint the closest I’ve been to getting high is wrinkling my nose at someone else’s pot smoke.

Nonetheless, I feel in control, and push him back onto the bed, climbing on top, my eyes meeting his as my hands find and capture his wrists to pin him. He doesn’t like meeting my gaze when I get like this, as much as he likes the dominant part of me- it’s like looking directly into a light.

I tease him that I’ve never really hurt him, and he tells me that just my eyes are scary. He knows I can be mean, but I never force him past what he can handle, and yet the way my eyes look are a reminder that this rigidity is always there.

Wildcard’s a switch- he knows what it’s like from the other side. He’s made those eyes at me and dealt with the fact that I don’t look away and I don’t inherently find I want to, not with anyone. We navigate it as a power game. I know from experience with him that one session like this will discharge his submission and he’ll flip the other way, joking about spanking me and possibly doing his best to make that happen. I look forward to the play scraps in the future, but tonight, wriggling up against him, I can feel the hints that he’s aroused by what we’re doing and still hoping for the reward he hinted for before we started.

I tease him, threatening to not carry it out, tasting the power to say no, but I enjoy it, tying my soft red scarf over his eyes and buckling him into dark leather cuffs and clipping those above his head so his cock is mine to tease. We use slippery, cool lube from the pharmacy, Life brand “Intimate Fluid”, less viscous than ordinary KY, trickling it into my palm and in a wet glaze over his penis, pink and shiny like he’s just pulled out of my cunt or he’s breaking a world record for volume in pre-cum. I use my hand first, before I find the toy. I watch him wriggle and tell him I miss seeing his vulnerable eyes, now hidden away under the scarf and he tries to assure me I can still see his mouth.

The strong pulse of the wand works best squashed flat against the middle of his penis, my other hand curved to cup around, so I can feel the tremors and better jerk him up and down. When he comes he utters three sounds, starting with “Oh…” the two other words too garbled to make out.

When we started doing this he used to utter “Oh fuck!” just as semen started to fountain. Like he was holding a particularly awkward and fragile object that just slipped his grip, or he was startled to suddenly be aware he’d came under these circumstances, his whole body jerking forwards. I don’t know if he’s consciously decided to change what he says, but it’s the selfsame ejection of warm cum, three strings spurting, onto his furred stomach and my fingers.

I let him relax, and sort out the business of the cuffs that are holding his wrists. Kleenex blots away the evidence except for a little residue, and I wash my now slimy hands as lube and cum cool and curdle. The icky part of sex- but not a bad part. Sex is not supposed to be sterile or dignified.

He wants to be a good lover, so he does his best to try to make me come, touching and stroking my body, bringing his mouth and tongue to my nipples. He knows how to do this, but I never got rid of the migraine. Instead we talk a bit, and then my headache spikes and it’s his turn to dig into my back, massaging until the stab behind the eyes fades.

Tomorrow, he’ll help make me come, selfless about his own pleasure as the wave pattern of my own orgasm builds and my mind still carrying the lingering traces of the things I did the night before, but right now he gives me what I need in the moment and exactly what I want. The pain in my head fades and in the dimmed lights, bouyed by the warmth and the weight of the blankets, I sleep with him, in his bed, nested like lego bricks.

BDSM can be a lot of things for people: structure, an escape, release or catharsis, a way to be someone or something different. For me, it’s intimacy.

On Being a Femdom Unicorn

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So, the thing about being a non-pro female dominant, especially one that’s vaguely conventionally attractive or has something approaching a civil personality, is that you are, in effect, a lot of people’s unicorn.

The problem with being a unicorn, is that it often ends up being an unlikely stand in for an actual fully fleshed out human being. For example, if you’re a femdom, some guys go their whole lives dreaming of someone just like you, while trying to convince other kinds of horse to wear a horn for them. Many of them have come to terms with the fact that they’ll probably never meet a ‘real’ femdom, and may even be convinced that the only way they’ll ever touch one is if they pay vast amounts of money to rent time with, or share her. You’re elusive, mysterious and probably, in their minds, just about mythical. They may even have their own personal beliefs that only someone who is true and pure of heart in some way can attract you, or draw your true form, where it was trapped in the body of a normal women, or come up with curious theories about your motivations and powers.

So, it’s not unusual for sub and switch identifying guys to flip their lids on meeting me. Heck,  a lot of these guys, still unable to imagine having me via the limits of geography or age, seem to be brightened just knowing people like me are out there. They’ve caught a glimpse of magic, and that’s enough to help them believe. You’d think it would be endlessly great for the ego. I’m special, right?

But the flip side about that is that you meet a lot of people with big expectations for what it’s going to be like and no ability to deal with the real you. These guys basically have put so much time imagining what unicorns are like, and what they enjoy, and how to make them happy, that when one comes clopping into their reality, said unicorn can find herself simultaneously fawned on… and rejected.

It’s lonely.

You see, with no actual experience with unicorns, theses guys have done a lot of thinking and planning about what it might be like. With all those poor other horses that just couldn’t measure up, any problem that appeared was blamed on the lack of a real horn. Meanwhile their expectations for what unicorns are like has been entirely fed by art, and stories, and poems, and people who do a great job wearing the horn for love or money and know all sorts of pretty tricks. Unicorns are imagined as trip-trapping about on rainbows, milk white and glowing like the moon, magnificent, fierce and deadly. Your average random unicorn chaser is not quite ready to deal with the fact that his unicorn might in fact be a piebald hack with a pointy bit.

And if you are a femdom, that horn just grew there and it’s not like you were trying to be the Twilight Sparkle of sex on purpose. It’s not particularly magical for you- often it’s been a major draw back in relationships where the guy wanted a delicate foal to tame with tenderness or some mane tossing pony or massive and sturdy plough beast. But try as you might, that horn was always poking in ways that couldn’t be ignored- that thirst for submission demands that even a genuinely awesome vanilla boyfriend couldn’t quench it. Quite likely, you’ve tried all sorts of things, from wrapping it in a pillow to filing it down so you could be just a normal kind of horse.

But the unicorn chasers aren’t actually natural unicorn riders- the thing that you are looking for is just as much a unicorn for you. So it’s very easy to find yourself a chaser who gets desperately enamored on the spot and… fizzling out as soon as they actually realize that horns are kinda sharp and ouchy. Or who is so into the fantasy ideas that surrounded their idea of what a unicorn is, that they start dressing you up in a desperate attempt to make you fit- a little glitter here, a little hyperbolic behavioral attributions about your “piercing dominant gaze” there- and you’re left with the guy still asking you to wear a fake horn over your real one.

You also get very familiar with people who have thought long and hard about how they are going to deal with the horn, but have put no thought into the rest of the animal- for example shyly explaining that they’ll try any of the fetishes they think you have, but they can’t promise they’ll like them. They’re just stuff that they heard comes attached along with the horn- yeah, they’ll *try* strapon sex because that’s how every femdom gets her kicks and how else will they end up in women’s panties? They *suppose* they like the idea of being beaten or forced bi- it’s always been hot to masturbate to, so, yaye? You get a lot of people who think that just having a unicorn shaped hole in their life will cause you to embed, like it was a you specific vacuum.

Or they get super into it and then burn out, because they are trying to be the perfect sub… and then poof, the day in, day out aspect of living with a unicorn means that they realize that anything magical was very common place. And being a femdom, in real life, is just like being a regular kind of horse, only stabby. And sometimes you end up feeling that a lot of people would rather want a femdom unicorn they can’t have and imagine the stabbings, than deal with the inevitable hooves, tail and impalement every day.

Teasing Wildcard- Femdom Sex and Lovelife Updates

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I want him to want me. It’s a powerful ache, indistinguishable from the sort of desire people would think of as “horny”, a straight trip into wet and throbbing, with a scenic view of my ego, made on a road paved with my vulnerabilities.

Usually, it’s easy to make myself happy without another person- anyone with a decent supply of pornography or at least an active imagination and the capacity to orgasm can take the basic pressure off. Desire for desire and power games are why I bother with other people, rather than just fucking myself. Well, that and falling in love, but the body urge that sustains it takes its power out of the first two things.

So I seek and touch and look for cues that my effect is working. I adore grinding up against a man, him feeling the unmistakable roundness of my ass with all those stimulating places on me pressed to his groin, letting the muscles of my thighs work, up-down, pushing against him until I can feel that familiar lurch as his weight starts to shift onto you as he weakens with lust, and the way he reacts when you pull away.

I often dress to please myself by pleasing the eye of person I want to tease. I got lucky with bodies, or at least I think I am blessed, breasts and hips that do as they are bid and few overwhelming hangups- enough of a little of everything like tools in a kit: sharp collar bones, pale nipples, nipped waist, cream soft thick thigh and thin wrist and ankle, enough that’s average and exaggerated to let me play with both. But I like my body best when it is being a lure. I like to feel like I’m hunting and baiting and my skin feels shivery and fitted best to me when I pull his gaze.

Like all things to do with sex with me, it’s unnecessarily complicated and personal. Wildcard reacts best if I initiate sex, but is very coy and careful- tug or pull the wrong way and something tears or breaks and the immaculately self contained facade melts into water, rushing out or becoming un-graspable as he slips away completely into himself. I did not pick a partner who came prepared to surrender, but one who has to be lured there.

He speaks in subtle things, but seldom seems to notice little touches, or prefers to pretend he doesn’t feel the hints in our brushing legs or my fingers on his arm. I can kiss him and still feel a distance. At times, to push past this, I am blatant, outright forcing him to look. Last week, feeling impish, I set him to the task of preparing dinner and then joined him, stripping off my clothes, layer by layer until I was naked except for a line of black jewels down my sternum. It was my pleasure to touch him how I wanted but deny him, and delight in his aggravation when I added high satin pumps to parade my nude self past him, hearing him groan. “Oh come on!” before he followed me around trying to get my denying self to give him some release.

Often, he ends up on his back, my hand circled around his cock. He takes the gentlest stroking, like some sort of fragile creature. It reminds me of holding a snake, the way that it is at once clearly rigid, and alive and able to give and shift and respond to your warmth, but the skin is so velvety, the softest thing I’ve ever touched. I make him beg to cum, sometimes pressing him between my breasts, or adding a palmful of wet and slippery lube or licking and sucking him until I’ve made him wet with me.

And he just can’t resist. And for me, that desperation is downright addictive.

How I Learned Modesty

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Image by Susan Rosen

So, me, the blogging exhibitionist, developed a sense of physical modesty to enhance my sex life. As an experiment, it not only proved completely possible, but I’m finding I’m enjoying the results.

This may seem like the exact opposite of a positive step for someone who values sexual frankness and freedom- after all, “modesty” tends to be the baliwick of people who are doing it out of religious subcultural affiliation and it tends to have a bunch of unfortunate stereotypes on board about body shame. But modesty is also about control, either artificially imposed on someone or imposed on the self. and when you fetishize power it’s too tempting a toy to pass up.

Besides, there is a certain tension inherent the commonly covered body that makes you keenly aware of bared skin. It sensitizes you to touch, to the the slide of fabric up your thighs and off your shoulders. Whether the brush of air or fingers, it’s part of the sensory buffet that’s part of sex. I do not suggest it for everyone- for some people always being brazen is better.

But, Wildcard and I have one of those complicated dynamics that are inherent in the fact that he’s a switch and I’m a dominant sadomasochist. Asides from adorably awkward attempts to navigate each other’s comfort zones, since he’s the kind of switch that doesn’t prefer to be in one mode in exception to the other, and I balk and get prickly when my sadomasochism moves into more than a temporary defeat, we both seem to keep things in a comfort zone where we both need to feel we effect the other and a lot of the erotic charge comes from the resulting sexual tension.

One of the things Wildcard brought to the relationship is a particular fondness for forced nudity, an exhibitionist thing based on control of gaze. He’s very equal opportunity about this, just as happy to strip or be stripped. It’s nice to get to play with a set of fantasies that I enjoy but are not my main set and he makes them exciting by how they are shared with me.

Yet for me, it provides an extra challenge. A lot of kink related to power has the paradox of wanting something you don’t want (or wanting the person not to want what you are giving them). I am the aforementioned brazen by default- body shame isn’t part of my general makeup. It is not in my nature to be easy to get at, and yet I also enjoy getting attention, especially the kind that makes me feel in control. A reasonably portion of my sexuality thrives from baiting an aggressive and more predatory streak in my partner and watching how that plays out. With Wildcard, nothing faked was going to cut it and he already knew I was happy to lounge around naked.

Nothing by real coyness would do,  and for that I first had to break the assumption on his part that he could take my nudity for granted. I put on clothing on a regular basis, for the first time since I moved out from my family, adopting a regular winter habit of comfy PJs. When I changed for bed, I did it in another room or ordered him to look away, while I changed. It wasn’t about what was wrong with my body, it was about how it was mine. It didn’t take long before I caught him disobeying, and my very real reaction to that proved I was taking it seriously, so of course he began to take it seriously. I like feeling like I can frustrate him, and like I have a means of denial, but also that I can tease and the risk that sometimes that can be exploited.

As a side effect of making sure I was covered, it meant more mindfulness about the subject and more attention about what and when I was on view. Of course Wildcard knew I was doing this all along and why. The results, since I started the experiment, have been very entertaining. Now I want to see what would happen if I put him through the same project.

He’s Been Feeling Submissive Lately

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Wildcard saw me typing away on a blog post comment the other day, (this one actually), and when I turned and smiled to reach up and touch him from my nest on the couch, he leaned over and mimed typing with two fingers to add random content to my post.

“No! Bad!” I grabbed him by the robe, near the lapel and at the waist below the belt, and tugged him down over my lap, landing then playful spanks through the terrycloth fabric.  He looked amused, but compliantly flopped.

“Have you learned your lesson?”

“Yes. I will never write anything ever again,” he announced solemnly, as he rose back up.

I hesitated long enough to give him a look, pulled him back down and flipped his robe up, landing the next series of blows on the thin plaid fabric of his pyjama pants, “No! That’s not it at all!”

After a time I paused my spanking again. “There. Have you learned now?”

“Hunt and peck typing is bad?” He opened his eyes wide and innocent, making a stabbing gesture with his index fingers.

I made a grumbly noise in my throat and hooked my fingers into the band of his pants, pulling them down to expose his ass. My strikes went from pats to swats, and he buried his face in the couch. He’s never a very demonstrative victim- you can never really know for sure if he’s having fun, but if you watch him closely, you can see the way his shoulders move and how he relaxes into it. It’s the same coziness of a hug.

Each time I got a silly answer I intensified the strength of the blows until he conceded that editing my posts was not a positive quality, a surrender made mostly because he’d run out of funny comebacks.

It was one of those happy little moments, like a few days before, when I’d leashed his brown leather collar to the bed with the help of a rope and metal clip, and then bound his wrists with bondage tape so I could tease him.

I made him fuck the rippled, massaging inside of a Tenga Egg, half using it to stroke the length of his shaft, half making him thrust into the slippery channel I’d made with my hand and the toy. He had to beg to come, stretching it out until the orgasm was so intense he got a cramp in his foot, and I’d made him promise a forfeit: I got to take naked pictures of him..

This weekend, I made good on my threat, dragging him, nude except for the brown leather collar around his throat and made him pose, threatening him with all the places I was going to put his pictures while he stroked his cock. It was massively erect near the end, leaking a few drops of shiny precum- and he was absolutely gorgeous in the pictures.

Sexual desire makes  sort of vulnerability, especially when you can make the person pose any way that you like and he knows it. It’s all pouting lips and wide but shadowed eyes. I have a favourite picture in my collection of him, his hand on his cock, and my hand on his neck, shot to show his body and a glorious expression of helpless desire.

So yes, it’s been fun.

Real Life Femdom Party: Wildcard’s Birthday Spanking

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Balloons!Last Saturday I helped hold a celebration for my Gentleman Nemesis’s birthday. It was a simple, casual six person dinner-and-company-affair, with two other femdom couples. That’s right guys, a real life femdom party- but maybe not completely like the kinds you see in porn. Also, we had tacos. :9

The founding kernel for this event was organizing a proper, mean birthday spanking for Wildcard. The first misconception to throw out, if you’re trying to imagine this, is something ultra high protocol in a classy mansion or high end loft. Although Wildcard’s residence is plenty homey and tasteful, the reality of secret BDSM is how well we blend in. The subs did not arrive on leashes, and the only fetish-y thing was that I decided to wear my corset, which is a steel bone and satin number in severe black, but this was as much because I don’t have many occasions to have my waist cranked down by 3.5 inches. Everyone else, on the other hand, came in comfortable, casual clothing, the sort of stuff where you won’t feel silly or awkward. None of the female doms or male subs have a thing for cross dressing, so there were no submissive sissy maids simpering over tea. Sorry, I know, trés disappointing for a certain hopeful number of you.

The guest list was some familiar faces: LadyCobra, Vosko, Ballbuster and Mr. Sub, which meant two other couples with solid dynamics. Once again, I really have to say they emphasizes how you can all be technically on the same page but have radically different ways to do things. It’s also possibly one of the best parts of playing with other people because you get such a wide range of dynamics and outcomes.

Powerhouse couple Ballbuster and Mr. Sub have had years to build their dynamic together. They’re real proof that some of the meanest, hardest play is built on a strong foundation of love and mutual support. Their style is also something that developed together, with definite switch tendencies in Mr. Sub that mean that when he’s not otherwise occupied in the sub role he’s eager to give input. With two minds put to the task, a lot of predicaments and pure wanton sadism pops up, and he’s as eager to share it with any and everyone else as his dom. On the flip side, with that sort of regular play partner, in scene Ballbuster runs things hard and fast, with intense cruelty and no warm ups- then again Mr. Sub takes a lot to get him down, and his idea of after care if bouncing around all pumped up, while the dom flops, exhausted in a corner. If you need to imagine them: Think huge toys, heavy pain and hard humiliation. With a sub like Mr. Sub it’s quite clear where Ballbuster learned her confidence- she doesn’t seem to worry about pulling out all the stops and the effect is spectacular. Also she went as a pink pixie fairy last halloween- take that how you will.

Meanwhile, LadyCobra and Vosko’s dynamic is a lot more characterized by LadyCobra’s attentive preciseness to detail. Vosko is a lot more vulnerable in play, and while he’s got a great sense of humour and strong public persona- in kink he’s got a softness there (and incidentally is the baby of our little group of libertines), which is not to say he is a wimp, but rather that there’s much more of an impression of fragility there while he’s being given fierce looking bruises. Paradoxically, by appearance, he’s also the sort of massive Scotsman that gave the ancient Romans second thoughts, and would not be out of place among a line up of metal fans. He’s well matched by LadyCobra who is, as I described before, incredibly technically precise and proper, with impeccable scene control. If anyone’s going to make “traditional” kink look good it’s her. She’s also very, very good at bringing just the right level of pain or strictness the moment needs, and making her approach to a submissive or bottom fit with just what the sub can take, all without making her subtle adjustments obvious.

Organizing an event is mostly complicated by the shyness that’s inherent in trying to get other people up in your sexuality without creeping them out or getting creeped out. Everyone’s needs and desires are intensely personal, so I’m always careful about presuming too much. Suffice to say, these things never happen with any sort of script or expectations beyond good taste and common sense. We agreed to a round robin, each of the guys in the sub role would get beat, birthday style, with each dom, and the implement of her choice, one whack for each year.

Wildcard was perfectly happy to share his day, because he’s one of the least selfish people I know. (Well, perhaps he’s nursing secret grumbles, but I don’t think he’d ever dream of vocalizing them if he did.) He also provided the homemade pork tacos, which sounds dirty, but actually was more that he’s an amazing cook- food which the guest inhaled, and I made a white cake with chocolate ganache and a caramel middle. I mention this because having fun is key, and if you want to organize your own party, keep in mind that you will have more fun if want to spend time with the people you play with outside of being kinky with, and at them. But, back to the beating and the humiliation!

I had Wildcard strip in front of us, piece by piece, folding as he went. He blushed really cutely as I made him remove every single item, except for his socks. Wildcard is ultra-slim in a trim bodied sort of way, and by affect, naturally very reserved and non-demonstrative about his feelings. He generally puts a lot of effort into his appearance- you won’t see him with his hair unseen to, or his beard untrimmed and even his casual clothing is well fitted and flattering. There’s a certain sort of pleasure I get just from mussing that perfect control in how he can present himself.

And it seems like my “take it off and fold it!” approach encouraged the others, because they soon followed suit, and Vosko was all vulnerable and stripped under much the same script, and then in his turn, Mr. Sub shucked clothes with the casualness that belays his long experience. There are not, to be frank, many chances to objectify men properly. I enjoyed it.

The best parts, for me, are always the reactions. Watching the way they take the hits, in this case posed just so, kneeling in an arm chair, with ass raised. My friends had brought their toys: paddles, bamboo canes a rubber baton and other entertaining means to smack flesh into submission. Wildcard had, for the second half of the evening, lost the right to speak unless spoken to or unless given permission. The effort was a practical one- with so many interesting people it was hard for him not to get distracted and interject into what people were saying. Charming conversationalist or not, he has an extremely hard time getting into anything approaching a submissive head state and his play collar was undergoing repairs.

I’m going to be honest and say that getting him in role or close to in role calls upon pretty much every shred of latent telepathic talent I might have in regards to reading subs (or in his case switches)- if his current job fails the guy should take up poker as a career. It’s also somewhat compounded by the sexual etiquette. I knew that he was incredibly excited to get a birthday spanking from multiple people because he told me as much, but the flirting that tends to be involved in BDSM encourages br’er rabbiting, ie other words pretending to be emphatically not into the act that you’re very much craving so the dom can feel like a meany with power over you, which means cultivating an air of reluctance. Since there’s an extra onus on dudes to be reserved in their sexual approach to avoid coming across as pushy, this can lead to kinksters behaving as shyly as a bunch of debutants.

Letting other women beat Wildcard is interesting for me, because it lets me watch how he responds. I gave him a warm up first, a bare skin, bare handed spanking to help him get ready for what was going to happen and passed him off, to go first in the chair. His fate involved his own belt laid hard against his skin, swung by Ballbuster’s hand. Then each man had his own turn following him.

The fact that Vosko was the youngest (and least spanked) did not, in any way, mean people went easy on him. Although he took less hits, it’s Wildcard who has the gentlest limits. Mr Sub, of course, needed a vicious thrashing to even make him do more than go “that’s niiiice” and go to sleep. All three men ended up with deep purple bruises, eagerly photographed and watched over as they faded over the past week.

I liked the fact that Wildcard was gently shaking a little bit, after his first third of his use. I liked that he melted into quiet vulnerability, rolling into a curled up naked ball, and that he would occasionally whisper to me. I liked that LadyCobra caught the vibe I was trying to build and worked well with it, and that Ballbuster, while she didn’t seem as into it, was patient enough to play along.

In any case, the guests seemed happy enough I can be sure there will be a repeat. Hurrah!

His Collar, My Needs

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For Christmas, I got LadyCobra (a leather worker, among her many talents) to make up a play collar in a rich, dark chocolate brown to add the Wildcard’s Christmas basket. It’s a prototype, as she expands her business, and it was something missing from the toy collection.

Why a collar? D/s involves a lot of purely-in-your head stuff. As much as I generally avoid anything with a whiff of Olde Guarde Leather and don’t like being called Mistress or otherwise dabbling too much into the Sekret And Strikt Tradition of BeeDeeEssEm shtick where there is one right way to be, but it seemed like a really practical tool for what we are trying to do.

Coming together as we did, knowing precious little, other than practically palpable physical chemistry to a degree that sends me mewling about like a cat in heat and our blissfully intellectually compatible brains, we went straight from chaste friendship to trying to figure out everything all at once in a backdrop that wasn’t what I’d describe as conducive to pacing.

Additionally, while Wildcard wasn’t a complete novice, a lot of this is pure theory to him that he wanted to try, and something that, fundamentally speaking, I only had slightly more practical experience to help us figure out what we’re doing.

Add an extra level of self imposed pressure- if he was, fresh from the land of vanilla, immersing himself with me as a guide, I of course allowed myself to get completely wound up about the fact that done wrong it might leave him with the wrong impression about some aspects of kink. Things went in little nibbles, a little impact play, a little rope- nothing big picture. Hell, roll back about six months ago and the poor man was convinced I was some sort of submissive. Whoopsies.

The other challenge for me was a desire to take him to a place, mentally, where I wasn’t sure he was capable of going, as much as he was down to try anything once. He had, at the outset, described himself as “bedroom only”. Realistically, that in itself is a fairly non-descriptive summary, since it means anything from trying to set yourself apart from the people who form their whole lives around their kink identity, to literally confining it to the immediacy of sex.

But in our case it’s not a relationship where I can simply, at any time, pull his hair and drag him to his knees to “force” him to submit to me the way I want. And I had no way of knowing precisely what his psychological construction around this is, even the means of just outright asking. He’s also fairly conservative about talking about his fantasies- I’ve not so stealthily been watching porn with him just to figure out precisely what he’s responding to.

When it comes to collar shopping, when he first got hints that was what I was plotting, he he declared “I reject any and all symbolism!” In the sort of pleased, fighty voice that suggested a certain degree of pleasure that I was going to enforce precisely what he claimed not to want. Of course I could have just gone the Pet Smart route, but the reality was that getting it custom made was one of those Things That Feels Right. It’s a play collar, but it’s got loads of symbolism attached because it’s an attempt to express my feelings. Which of course means lots of awkward fumbling, denial and blushing on my part.

But… it works, thus far.

The collar I mean, not the fumbling and getting a warm face. I mean that with it on, he’s much more focused in the moment and being where I’d like him to be. He shows it in his body language, the way he sits and curls up. Nothing is a panacea, and we’re still experimenting but it is pleasing and very good for my need to dominate.

 

Regular People Kinky Sex

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It began with a light smack upside his head. Downton Abbey in the background. Rolling around, wrestling and kissing. Fucking him, on the couch, his arms thrown up over his head, pulled taut but the leather cuffs and the soft tangle of rope, not knotted up properly in some orderly fashion, but set just to hold him helpless.

My cunt, engulfed around him, hilting repeatedly, watching the shaft vanish into the dark pelt of my hair and the lurid pink of my labia. It’s the sort of view that sticks with me, turns me on later when I think about it. He’s swearing, because I’ve been teasing him earlier, palm and fingers, circle grip that swirls and drives him to whimper and arch his back. I note those human things, the way that as he loses himself in the sensations as he comes, his abs push out, legs folding.

Before, seeking, looking for the right button. Trying slaps, spidering my fingers into his armpits in scurrying hooks, seeking him groan as my hand slides under him and the sharpness of my nails scrape his back. Later, in the shower, I will see livid curls of red, tracks of where I rent him. When I uncuffed him, he asked me to rub his upper arms, where they were sore from the pulling and tingling from how he’d pressed into the wooden curve of the couch arm.

The Darker Side Of Caretaking

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After a conversation with a friend about the challenges that we face in relationships, I’m going to talk about something I’m not good at. Which is to say, letting go with other people in a way that gets my needs met.

At it’s best, my penchant for caretaking is a good thing that is inherently rewarding for me. I’m very commonly the tea-and-blankets lady. I genuinely like looking after people and it’s good for most people around me. 

A pretty big fetish dynamic that I like is hurt-comfort. I want to fuck the person up and then patch them up after. It’s a reason why I’ve never been able to do hateful D/s, since the aftercare is pretty important to me too and the nastiness is not the end point of where things are for me- my domliness extends into cuddling them and fussing, and so forth.

Of course I think that caretaking is a very common permutation of D/s. I also think it’s significantly more common in women, because of the gender training we get to do it as a duty, but also because being the ‘mother’ is a classic route to power in a world that penalizes other forms of self promotion. “For your own good!” is a great way to control people.

But it also feeds into a particular sort of self sacrificing martyr loop that can be inherently toxic. The script runs something like this:

You learn, pretty early on, that people need looking after. It could be physically, like if you attend to a person with a regular illness, or emotionally if you have a family member who is less than sane. It could be related to self denial in the face of poverty. For various reasons you get very good at rising to the occasion, putting other people’s needs first, being extremely accommodating, etc… The environment heavily rewards this, both by having the hysterical/hurt/helpless people around you being less splah but also a measure of control and power- that allows you to learn that you can push people’s buttons in a non-guilt inducing way, and they may even praise you too and want to be with you more when you’re in nurturing mode. Suffice to say, because this blog is self referential and i use myself as the main example or everything, I had an upbringing that encouraged subversion of the self as a virtue, as well as being accommodating to crazy to the point of getting enmeshed into it.

It’s not a bad thing for people to be loving and giving, but if you deal with lots of needful people, your own needs may not get met and you don’t experience as many reciprocal dynamics to learn off. And if life throws a lot of drama your way, situational or interpersonal, you come to associate being needy on your part as bad behaviour, especially if when you had needs you were neglected. Of course since people you love still have needs you don’t precisely develop a rejection of all neediness, but it becomes important to subvert your needs for another person. This can be an addicting sensation of power and invulnerability and may even lead you to reject overtures of others looking after you because you don’t trust its reliability, and more to the point you don’t want to be the Weak Person because that chips away from the ego- or you’ve seen people with worse shit to deal with so you feel like an imposter when you’re being nurtured.

Another draw back is that you tend to also develop a higher than average tolerance for human frailty which means that you will, for example, collect strays or form relationships with people where you’re a Jesus Girlfriend. Which is where the need-to-be-needed can exceed whether or not a relationship has anything to offer you, and serve as a way of making yourself indispensible to something that wasn’t worth the investment.

Some people also end up in a guilt-anger spiral where they exceed their tolerance or get taken advantage of while biting their tongues, presuming that the other person wouldn’t be so selfish if they didn’t need it; and then get pissed at the person and then feel wildly guilty because (s)he can’t help being a useless tit. A warning sign you’ve gone too far into the wrong side of nurturing is that you end up feeling that everyone around you ‘can’t help it’, but would be unable to find their pants without you.

It also leads to some of the usual cognitive dissonance coping skills or all the stuff every person has to deal with, caretaker or not. Since everyone does have needs, you included, it’s not uncommon to package your needs in ways that don’t make you have to give up that ego thing. If you feel lonely, for example, you find someone who needs things and go be helpful at them. If you worry about being unpopular you become the person who does stuff for everyone. If you need to break up with someone it becomes necessary to frame it in terms of “I wasn’t meeting their needs anymore”. It’s certainly a lot less insufferable than how many people cope, but it still deserves analysis.

A classic example of the dark side is thought patterns like deciding that the person can’t handle that you are upset with them, because you not getting your needs met would make them feel bad- so you pretend it’s all okay. On the flip side when you want to get territorial it’s easy to sell yourself that you are simply being self sacrificing to take over something and organize them better- I’m sure there’s at least one person who knows this who thinks I’m actually pretty needy and can’t find my own pants without help. Caveat lector; author is biased.

It also makes you extremely vulnerable to people with the exact match on the opposite pole of “I need to be looked after all times to feel secure!” Since abusive relationships often have a foundation in the other person demanding that you leap through increasingly absurd hoops to make them feel properly attended to, or the person will go splah (which can range from physical violence, to emotional abuse, to simply attacking themselves or going into incoherent self castigating hysterics, which is a particularly effective tactic against someone whose empathy is overly keyed into people) you can end up mired in some pretty nasty scenarios. I know from personal experience. Maybe, you, dear reader have seen that in action.

Not to mention that the tendency to go above and beyond the call of duty can also end up giving you fairly high standards for others- or give other people the perception that you do. So your circle of friends, lovers, etc may conclude that if you brush off small overtures of caretaking and you do such a fantastic job than anything they can muster as a mere mortal won’t impress. Or you assume that because you know you put a lot of effort into preemptively looking after people in a way that comes naturally to you, therefore your needs must be so complicated and difficult since nobody has moved in on their own to fill them. One can internalize that that nobody can, and even throw in an extra dash of shame that you must be secretly the *most* needy person ever so all the more reason to be responsible and keep it locked down, right?

Maybe this applies to you, or maybe it doesn’t- either way it’s something for me to think about and analyze. I certainly won’t stop enjoying the caretaking aspect of my personality, but I also feel like this is a phenomenon that’s worth paying attention to.

Me and Poly (And Monogamy, and Sorta-Monogamy)

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So, what am I, anyway? I am complicated when it comes to the subject of monogamy. Personally I don’t think I’m one of nature’s 100% monogamists, but I’m not fully cut out for full bore sharing.

A recent fetlife thread asked readers to justify monogamy, which I think is a good leaping off place. Why pair off when you can have many people?

I’ll start be saying how you set your relationships up are your own business. When it comes to polygamy style serious relationships, rather than more fluidity on who can do what to whom, the practical reality is that even in cultures where polygyny is normal and accepted (and the ones where polyandry happen are eeny-weeny and generally involve marrying several brothers) the majority of couples still live in monogamous pairings. In that case it’s usually due to division of resources, much how we associate having a mistress in the infidelity sense with a certain sort of wealthy male.

Of course poly as what us kinky folk get up to appears not to have the serious drawback of polygyny cultures- which is that an artificially maintained woman shortage makes controlling access to wives come at the detriment to the development of the women as individuals. Poly kinksters, on the other hand, tend to be well educated egalitarians who like to have complicated sex, not tribalist patriarchies, although the all too common ‘one penis policy’ phenomena is what I’d call seriously suspicious. I’m looking at you “yes you can fuck all the woman you like and me too!” dudes.

But, not digressing the point is that even in cultures with no barrier to stacking spouses, is that it tends to be the less common model because it’s harder to pull off.

Poly is perfectly valid and viable- for some people. I think if I were critical of anything it’s that multiple serious, equal significant others is really time consuming!

Now the argument is of course that love multiplies and that love is not finite, and I agree with that. However, as much as we use kids or friends as an example, plenty of people have a favoured child even if they don’t want to admit it, or a best friend among their friends.

Me going poly boyfriends means that I would need to split my needs and energy between one or more additional persons. This on top of having friends, a job, hobbies, etc. The statistical odds of having two people who also get along with each other, who meet my needs the way I want, etc… are so vanishingly slim I don’t think of it the way that I don’t plan my life around becoming a Member of Parliament or winning a lottery. And if I have a someone, I won’t be particularly obsessed with making sure we have a someone else set up just in the dynamic I envisioned. No ‘looking for a bisexual girl to complete our family’ here.

But in my personal life, I fall somewhere into the muddy waters of not purely tied up with one person for all sexual activity but not into a fully open, no questions asked deal. For one thing I have some fond, long term play friends. Technically that makes me poly in the way that all the women I’ve had sex with makes me bisexual. To be precise I have a long standing friends with benefits relationship with three people, actually. That has transcended all three of my couple relationships and given a couple more years will be longer than my longest dating relationship. Hell, my friends were extremely eager to bring Wildcard on board (and horrified I might be lost to vanilla land if I did get a boyfriend after Strong) so I gather they like me too.

And I think that we all set our limits on a spectrum, even people who ID as mono- for example some couples do not allow for porn, while others do. Of course some couples don’t allow for opposite sex friends (and some couples don’t allow for any friends at all and those ones are CRAZY!). Some couples do threesomes only. Myself, I am mostly focused on emotional fidelity and the really complicated issues of my own jealousy.

On a purely fetish perspective I like the idea of whoring my male partner out. This ranges from sending him off on his own devices, to handing him off to women on loan, like property. “You, look after her needs!”

A sticking point I’ve seen come up is when the guy has tastes that are decidedly not you, but it’s only happened to me under odd circumstances. The Ex hated my often wild witch hair and disapproved of my lack of STEM major, but I don’t think a new woman or an alternative woman is what he wanted as much as inevitable annihilation of me as an entity with a personality. Strong, on the other hand, had a major red head fetish, and his anxieties about that pretty much were the problem more so than me never having a desire to dye my hair, even if he wanted it- I didn’t feel worried about competition, but he was in a constant tizzy about how sooner or later I *would* be jealous. It turned into a case of having to ask if the person was having a relationship with me, or with their anxieties, with me serving as a prop to justify them.

In the end, in that case, after having the red head thing be brought up to the point where it was actually starting to grate on my nerves, the hardest part there was possibly not having permission to actually you know, feel something about it because I was being preemptively accommodating to someone feeling bad about me feeling bad in a hypothetical future. This, while being perfectly happy to have Strong go out on jaunts to hook up with other women for his non-sub side.

I guess for me the point of jealousy is whether or not the person was into me and the degree they are- like there is always going to be an alternative that is always appetizing to that person- and this won’t even always be sexual. Like people will have friends, and hobbies, and jobs, as I was talking about earlier, and I’d be a bit miffed if I lost out to a minecraft server or the like. The point where I will get insecure includes- where I think the person wishes I was X while I was Y (latest soul crushing fear: wishing I had a particular appearance characteristic, but putting up with it for my generous personality and stunning brain); and if their fondness for X precludes me, as in the case of something being more important than me.

And yet, I can’t do the “get X need met outside the couple!”  Like, there’s plenty of cases of seeing other people get what they want outside the boundaries of a relationship, either they have a kink partner in a vanilla marriage or a sexual partner to deal with an asexual significant other, etc… But for me I end up feeling if that’s a deal I’m being offered I’m liable to start looking very pointedly at the door.

And yet outsourcing doesn’t bother me if it’s a partner going elsewhere. I just want to be wanted, but i can be more flexible about their needs than how mine get met.

It’s bizarrely complex, isn’t it?