O Self

New Years Eve, A Sub & A (First) Kiss

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kiss me for the first time with my hand on your throat in cursive script above a pattern of fireworks

Silver sits, stiffly, in a chair in a circle of the first comers to the party, and stands between the protection of a tall fan, and the edge of the television, his back to the wall. He is immersing himself in the gathering like a too hot bath, with the lure of my presence to bait him out and across the long drive over the border.

I promised him his first ever, real kiss, for New Years Eve. I wasn’t planning on moving that fast, still covered in Brick dust, still reeling from by what at turns was ripping off a bandaid and putting a kitten down, but when you find out that you have a perplexing puzzle box of a guy who is at once about the same level of perversity as you, has pursued it, and… has made it four decades without a kiss on the mouth, the Aesthetic demands sacrifice.

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On The Cultural Limits of Conventional Femdom

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So in addition to neglecting my femdom blog, I’m an avid participator in nerdy hobbies like roleplaying. Realistically this has always intersected with my sexuality- once I was charting my path beyond my parents running a tabletop for me.  I got interested in it partially because my head craves weird dynamics I can’t find in real life. Since my teens I’ve deliberately played with this.

I participated in a large LARP organization recently, where I played a stupidly popular character.  And what I discovered about this was how much people LOVE a dominant woman. Grown ass men calling me Mommy. Piles of people pledging fealty. Going out there and being me was a crucial part of the success of the character because the same energy I bring when my dominance gets to shine was present in the rambunctious, bawdy, loving ball of fluff that I played.  And it continues to remind me how disempowering the standard femdom shit is.

My character got gacked and part of the sadness I had to process is this outlet for a part of me to safely let my dom out was cut off. Once again, no place to be my whole self. (Although perhaps I should try living authentically instead of through fiction? The world is not very nice to dominant girls.)

I can say this and people will argue until the cows come home that it isn’t because they personally feel empowered by it, but the whole concept of being a dominatrix is a performative straight jacket created to give a context to have power in a limited context that’s “safe”. You put on the leather trousers and use the understood scripts and everyone has the jist of what you are trying to do, so presto- dominance!

There’s good reasons, since raw and undefined dynamics are potentially dangerous. The character of a dominatrix lets everyone wrangle consent in easier than starting from a blank slate and then trying to explain “so you are my victim and thrall but also you want it and are not being raped for real just vulnerable like an amusement park ride because I would never, ever hurt you”. Since part of dominance is buy in, it’s understandable to fall back something people but into easily.

Only that’s been jamming a square peg into a round hole from day one. Not a lot of room for complex sadomasochists who don’t fit Dungeon Mistress well.  Serious talk about it gets as far as accepting that being a dominatrix supersedes things like physical comfort, but  not that it’s bullshit in a world where femsubs get to fetishize regular dudes in power positions and I need a corset and implications of sex work.

There’s no space to talk about how my fetish self is Queen Elizabeth I not Ilsa Shewolf of the SS. There’s no space to be an insecure mess who also needs to be respected. To talk about your needs as something more than a menu of kinks, or worse, a dismissive declaration that the sub’s needs are irrelevant, is hard. But those options leave my needs unmet.

For example there doesn’t seem to be space to talk about preparing to feel sexually dominant by cleaning my bedroom floor and dusting, because I intend to have a man here and I must feel utterly in control of my space.  If I talk about the profound need to nurture my partner people will twig into it, but it’s not in the porn and it’s not in the archetypes.

As I write this, it’s doing that dusting and putting things to rights. I could have done this earlier, taken the bristle brush to the tiles of the bathroom, found the cobwebs in their corners and removed them (I fall on a medium on the neatness scale, much as I am neither extroverted or introverted) but it’s a good way to get my head in order. Momentarily I get to launch into some laundry, again, working to claim my space so I can claim someone else.

Scrub. Scrub. Visions of his naked body, the too long legs, the rust blond on his belly and chest and the odd shock of black hair on his lower back. I’m not offering him conventional femdom, but I suppose he’s not offering conventional submission.

Anticipate, court. Seduce. He said that while he’d aware the capacity is there most women just don’t do it for him. Is he asking for the conventional script done well or something else? What is the serendipitous leap that we need, that any couple needs to get that sing and sting of a unification between two people trying to make an exchange of power?

I cannot be anyone’s dominatrix. I can neither put that part of myself and its desire aside. So I think about this now, making my space mine before I make him mine.

Fucking Myself on a Solitary Evening

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Sundown, night fall, rain on the glass of the window and the road. Four orgasms, frisked out from my cunt, an evening  alone.

The first two are standard, sheer black lace panties yanked off and pitched into the hamper across the room. I find my small clit after stroking the slick of wetness up through the tucks and pleats of my labia. I like the way they remind me of rose petals or warm folds of saturated satin.

When I come it is short, intense bursts, radiating from my clit. It takes the level of arousal I am carrying down to a level I can ignore it for a bit.

When want something in me it means a toy. I tend to default to the Tantus Silk, “Large”. It’s too big for my poor tight cunt, but I’ve never respected my own limits. The next step down, the Medium, is too small.  Dildo shopping is hard, like a Goldilocks that’ll never be happy because every toy I can find isn’t as perfect as the real thing.

Getting it in…

I can press it against the opening and play with my clit and gradually with gentle pressure, it’ll yield and slip in. I’m too tight to thrust at first. 1 1/2″ width at the head is apparently my upper limit.

Some girls take monster dicks or whole hands and I read and watch in fascination. Hell I had my hand in multiple people. Somewhere extant is a picture of me fisting my female friend and looking totally nonchalant.

Mine grips. Mine is small. My whole equipment is the same scale, wee little clit so cozied up in the hood it never gets touched directly. Regular labia, nothing exceptionally prominent.

I never got the point of kegel balls. You put them in and there they stay, right? Even the heaviest? How do porn stars do it? Hopping onto a cock like it is nothing.

The Silk is lodged in my cunt, until I tease my clit more. Then I can feel the pull inside as it shifts. I sit up and the wide base rests on the bed, a few inches out of me. My fingers find the hood around my clit and I almost come and then the sensation of my fingers and the toy gang up together.

And then even the least pull on the toy and I am coming from that. I cry out, unconcerned if my open window carries the noises to the street below, pushing it in and out.

Coming.

It feels different, deeper, inside. It’s not a full body orgasm like I have sometimes but it’s pleasure in a place that I don’t usually feel that kind of expansive and warm flutter and burst.

There’s no proper metaphor. For me it’s like a squirt of ink suffusing in water, first the release and then the bloom. Or the sensation of watching a flower open in timelapse, if it briefly turned your brain off. Like brain zap, but good feeling. Sometimes there are lights, I think phosphenes from the flutters of the muscles of my eyes.

When a guy comes for me there’s that build, contract and spurt. Women, more subtle.

The lust subsides by the fourth a bit. I want more, want to be fucked as I fuck myself.

But I like learning that I can get more out of penetration, because I can make a man get me off.

It’s a novelty- a possibility that my partner can offer more than hot fantasies to get me in the mood to finish myself, but also something incredibly scary.

It’s probably my thirties making my cunt decide that everything was going to work better. I never understood barely legal and virgin fantasies. Everything we know about sex observes that it’s about three decades of having a vagina before they start cooperating with all the features.

I sort of see why Freud tried to classify vaginal orgasms as more “mature” if they are the purview of older women. But there is a curious kind of vulnerability…

When you are used to not being disappointed by inadequacy, the realization that your partners could be better is a kind of lightbulb. I don’t think when I was 25 any amount of fucking was going to let a man make me come from his efforts alone but now, I know in the post afterglow, gingerly dislodging the thick bulbous head of the simplified look fake cock from inside myself, I am thinking about the next time I get fucked.

There is an affiliate link in this post. I didn’t write about my sex toy to sell you one, but I did buy it from this supplier and I am not going to be sneaky-sneaky about it.

Trans-Mortem

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Breaking up with Wildcard was hard!The whole process of my breakup is not done. We are still in awkward close quarters, negotiating the logistics of the seperation as we each move into our own household. Lots of crying. He took a week off work to grieve and has been pretty much high half the time. I have tried to get out of the house more and took up archery.

I have developed a sort of insomnia as well, a rarity, and stay up late writing this. What have I learned?

This isn’t a post mortem, but a trans-mortem. Things are still going. Or rather, still falling apart.

What do you do when you love someone but they fundamentally want and need different things? Obviously breaking up with Wildcard was not a choice I made easily. This blog contains a detailed description of much of the ways I cared (in sticky intimate detail) and because of it, I know that we developed a reputation as the cute couple.

Caring comes easy. Leaving is harder.

Literally everyone but my closest friends were shocked as hell to find out we had a problem. Mrs. Castle was probably the only one who called it, but Mrs. Castle probably has the broadest perspective into my life.

Functional issues stemed from being his rebound after a really horrible relationship. Hell, not rebound. Rescuer. For me, I was inclined to focus on helping and patience because I knew we had a problem, but I trusted his belief that it was a him problem I just had to help him through. I don’t think it is a problem anymore, just his personality and preferences.

I got what I deserved. I am the woman who barreled into his life and dragged him out of self imposed hell towards the life he wanted. Only the life he wants is not the one I do. It is a fuck ton more poly and switch focused than really is remotely compatible with me. Oops.

About a year ago I accepted it wasn’t going to get better. Then it was if I could live with it as the price of admission. I looked about for other outlets. It… Did not help. It made the dissatisfaction worse. The enthusiastically waggled penises of dozens of men looking for something other than service topping provided a stark contrast.

I don’t think he was ever into me sexually like I wanted. That stings.

A part of me feels like I just blew up a great thing out of being too picky, because Wildcard is loving, kind and generous.

Maybe in a smaller, less people’d world we would have been ok and I would have sucked it up and dealt. But also I was starting to wonder if resenting the missing stuff and the stuff I hated was healthy. I try to have perspective that 100 years ago, I would have 8 kids and polio, but it doesn’t help.

So I told him I wasn’t getting what I needed. And… Cue the sadness vortex.

My life is now apartment hunting and furniture logistics. Everything upended. Everything examined now “do I really need this?” From clothing to volunteer work, it is one non-stop rip down.

I don’t know what the hell I am doing. I am scared and unhappy about the chaos. But…

I would rather end up a bitter old maid than end up resenting him for something that isn’t really a flaw. And actually some of the change is not so bad.

The Tower and the Chariot

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The news of my estranged mother’s breast cancer adds one more variable in the tornado of shrapnel that is my life. Good news on my insurance paperwork is the trade off. Probably getting paid for my month of sick. Can pay Wildcard back for last month’s rent.

Got to figure out the rest of my life. Barring calamity, I have half a century left to work out. And I am listening to my medical professionals. Stop things that are making me sick.

So migrained last night I missed the munch I technically run. I am… Done. Ok with it, actually, shedding it like a wool sweater in the desert. A wool sweater I hand knit, but maybe I deserve to be happy?

I haven’t been happy about some things for a long time, and it shows in my writing. My blog on hiatus, my life waiting “until X happens” and taking care of the latest explosion. So much crisis management.

My body shut me down, hard, because I tested its limits for other people until I literally collapsed.

Kinda done with that.

I deserve to be happy.

Tribal Solutions To Old Problems

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Once upon a time I was assaulted. Three times, the last time I fought back and punched him in the head. I learned like all niafs in the BDSM scene that not everyone respects you. I grew up. I first made a space without him, got braver and called him out.

In the mean time he raped someone. Allegedly. Anecdotes piled up. Nothing really came of my honesty. Then he popped up in my other life, as a nerd.

Most of the people who deal with this turn to flight reactions, but something about this, and him, turns to fight. I check the people going to my nerdy event and he’s listed himself as interested. I know he is still out there bit I was not expecting this.

Everything gets super sharp. I tell Wildcard. I thumb open my contacts and explicitly tell the club admin who this person is and what they do to women.

My heart beat is heavy, and I make myself eat dinner. Salmon sashami, I need the calories. I message my brother and tell him I may need his help.

He’s six feet tall, with a deep voice. I’m 5’5″ in my stocking feet. Sometimes it goes tribal, old ways. I know how far people trust tiny, squeak voiced girls. I know if nobody believes me we are going to make a scene.

I don’t do this just for me, I fight because other women were hurt.

The admin hears me out, but wants more proof. I give names, but he needs in the club for reasons I understand but don’t agree with. I take a break from the conversation. I am reassured that I am believed, but this will go much easier if I have… Tribe? That is what it boils down to. I am not a reliable witness on my own. I know that.

I know that enough people believe me we will stand him down. But he is only “interested”. We don’t know if the war party is needed. I wonder who in mt extended circle knows him and invited him.

The admin gets back to me. A witness, in the club, speaks to corroborate my story. And elder member who walks in both worlds.

I rant for a few minutes about the unfairness. Wildcard listens, disagrees that it is my gender that required the second witness.

The person who assaulted me is quietly dealt with.

 

LARP Boys & Sexuality

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I am awash in LARP boys.

I am seriously concerned if I show up for one of the conventions, it’s going to be spontanious bukkake with the amount of attention. Which brings up the same thing I have talked about before, one’s relationship to the voracious desires others have for you.

Wildcard remains with a steady rotation of “kitties” some of them closer to him than others, all hands off to the point he likes, harvested from the local kink scene. Occasionally he bats them away from his penis, like small children being kept away from the breakables. He wants their upturned asses to beat, and maybe to jam a hitachi against them until they come. They are invariably at least a smigen younger (or like a full decade), cute, usually dark brunette- assigned female at birth but respected for their pronouns. To get off with them spoils his control.

He keeps a steady stream of IMs with the favourites, always a little gunshy about me knowing, like he isn’t entirely sure he has my explicit encouragement. This is his sexuality, what he needs to be happy. He’s making them happy too, so where is the harm?

At first I was a bit jealous as the transition to pursuit of kitties came with a natural drift from his obsession with me, but I have seen it is basically water seeking its own level. This is who he is, living geniunely, to have me as a part of his sexuality but not the entirety. That is kind of important and fits what I told him as one of my rules, which is that he should choose what makes him happy.

But me: LARP boys are just as kinky as BDSM scene boys, but more inclined to lead with their vulnerability, not their dicks and kinks. While my fetlife inbox is a trickle of “can you get me off to that complicated itch I need scratched, just so?”, with LARP boys, there’s a sensitive sweetness, a big eyed emotional hopefulness superceding the evident rampent erections.

Wildcard was a LARP boy once. I met him when my character boldly wandered into his troupe. As soon as the whole world I unlocked became evident to him, a wild wonderland of sexual freedom, he jumped and I don’t think he looked back. We still play games together, but to be honest I don’t think he likes mixing sexuality into story the way I do. His characters are asexual or delibrately distanced.

I bring sexuality with me, and flirt and charm and try to be as honest as possible. The attention I get is mostly a challenge for the contextual social situation outside the game. First off, I want story. I need story, and I have learned the hard way that boys prefer me to fantasy. Characters get abandoned when they realize there is a mind behind the mask. I don’t mind them getting to know the real me, but it kind of feels disappointing if it comes at the cost of my creations. Strong did that to me, trading out an interesting story for lurid sexual fantasies and then burning out all together. It kind of hurt.

Secondly, there is the whole slut-ego thing. I am not supposed to acknowledge my participation in attracting people. It is supposed to be an externally applied objectification people feel sorry for. Oh how sad, Pearl gets boys going! Mention “I get a lot of attention” and people treat it like street harassment or cruel manipulation. Victim or femme fatale. Take your pick.

Attention you can control and escape is not the same thing as attention jammed down your throat. I might be the sort of person who responded yesterday to a guy whistling at me and going (literally) “hubba hubba!” with “Seriously?!” (because it was in front of a Tim Hortins at 2PM. I mean jesus fuck, oggle at what I offer to the world but have some fucking decorum), but I also am the sort of person who acknowledges that there is more than  demeaning objectification in the scope of casual interest. But you aren’t supposed to. The princess is always pretty, but she always needs to wait for the hero to tell her how special she is. Tits sell everything from computer software to perfume, but God forbid you add your own to the conversation on your terms.

That is how a lot of the other LARP girls do. They have their turgid bleed-romances like everyone else, but discreetly, carefully, and hidden. We have girl talk and they are guarded about the sexuality in our hobby, scared of the men and pushing the envelope. And they have a point, some of them are rapists, more of them are coup counters who gossip who fucked you, as if your exposure to sex diminishes you a bit at a time. Lord save me from virgin chasers. I cast off mine as soon as possible, and I won’t be bound by guys whose goal is to be the cock with no point of comparison.

And the other trick, outside the coup counters, is that LARP boys, as a rule, don’t like acknowledging that they are not the only guy seriously strategizing getting you into a hotel room at a gaming convention and making the maid service hate them forever for the mess that would result. It’s either itchy fists directed at the other guys, or hurt feelings at you. If you notice the other men, how can they be special? 

Thing is, the 20th time he’s “never met a girl like you before” maybe you aren’t being full of yourself to see a pattern? My brother is furious that people keep messaging him to tell him his sister is hot. Wildcard gets peppered with squeeing “omg Pearl!!!” from the kitties who see us as a package deal. And I notice back. I like men. This isn’t a one sided thing where guys are sexless and icky.

I guess that is the other taboo. I like men. Really. They are fun, with their jaws and their swingy shoulders and their careful socially forced repression and power fantasies. And I think I am missing I guess the uh… misandry? Fear? That is supposed to blot out my ability to acknowledge them as just as much objects of desire.

But, these days when I get praised, I answer with “I know”. I put Wildcard’s presence and my ego into the conversation early, to lay out where I stand, almost like a challenge. Want me? Acknowledge me as I am. Then we can talk.

Being a slut, in that awkward kind of way where I don’t actually get fucked all that much, but I play with desire, is hard. The attention turns me on. The sweetness turns me on too- I like watching them worry if their voice is goofy or react to me discovering something special to them.

I like making them feel good, with sincere compliments. I might have a predatory streak (worship me! worship me!) that goes straight to the core of my dominance, but I actually like LARP boys. These are my people. Fun.

But there isn’t really a space to say that you get turned on by the attention. It doesn’t make me feel like a piece of meat when a LARP boy carefully unpacks himself in front of you. It’s a strip tease.

And I won’t pretend it is not a delight to tease right back.

Sickness and Idleness

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It’s been two weeks since I went into the emergency room, my stomach so pained that I was crying with it. Two months of hurting, escalating from a week of bad things pushed on me.

They scoped me out, found nothing in my guts by MRI, and a non-threatening cyst on my left ovary. I had the worst time in the hospital- the IV caused a vasovagal reaction and dry heaving, then the fluids used to make my guts show up of course make you even more ill. It’s not sexy, but it is my body.

The doctor called it stress. Stress so intense my appetite’s shuttered and I wake up in pain every morning. I’m thirty-one. I lost 15 pounds in 2 months. I don’t even feel hungry anymore.

I’m on sick leave. Temporary disability (paperwork ahoy!) paid for out of premiums I was just signed on for at tge job I am tired of.

I miss wanting to eat, I miss having stamina. It’s Canada so all of this is free.

Wildcard, who lives to feed me cooking that would make a professional jealous, watches with wary, sad eyes. He doesn’t know how to help me. He wants to help.

I spend about an hour every day in the shower. It relieves the cramps and turns my brain off under the thousand drop prickle massage of the water. I do laundry because I hate being useless.

I will get better, I think? I’m mending slowly.

I’m Number 42!

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Top 100 Sex Bloggers 2016

So it’s the end of the year, and there’s the usual little puff of awards to waft us out. I deliberately skipped the kinkly awards this year (not even the winners were exactly happy with them) but got picked for something I actually hold in a lot of esteem- Molly’s Top 100 Sex Bloggers of 2016.

Oh yeah, and in other amazing news Domme Chronicles won this year. Ferns is not just the pre-eminent lifestyle femdom blogger, but she’s a pillar of multiple online communities and forums. She would probably appreciate a congratulations- she earned it.

As for why I care about this award- this is one of those things were all the other people on the list are properly hand picked and curated on sensible factors ranging from proper art attribution to frequency of updates. There’s a diverse crew (could use more guys, but men are in the minority in sex blogging and they are better represented than in some lists) of sex toy reviewer, share all vanillas, kinksters and other sex positive people.

Molly also included everyone’s twitter handle, so if you’ve got a lonely feed, you’ve got a hundred chatty people talking about cool things to check out- I’m certainly expanding my list based on who I’m sharing a spot with.

The Crown & Home Cooking

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It was a Tuesday, but not a #PunishTuesday.

I came home and I don’t think he’d left the bed since I went to work that morning. It’s his vacation and I want him to rest, but like many humans with a streak of perfectionism, idleness is deleterious to his emotional well being. As a person with a chronic physical ailment, not having the energy to do things is an all too common experience for him.

For myself, my mood has slipped a notch since the last week of October. What is generally the favourite part of the year for me has been marred by a heavy measure of frustration, anxiety and sadness over various things. It’s given me less time to notice that Wildcard’s been a bit droopy too.
He’s not been on the outs, health wise, but my persistent battery at the norms of looking the other way in the Montreal BDSM scene when someone is (allegedly, always ALLEDGEDLY) sexually assaulted has been his burden to carry as well as mine. It’s really hard, you push and push and people call you a hysteric, a liar and a monster.

I mad November about inaction and self care.  If he was too under the weather too cook I’d let him rest. I’d bought piles of vegetables the night before and went about sorting out the long skinny egg plants, enoki mushrooms, bright crisp carrots and all the appropriate other things for putting together a stir fry. By the time I was sectioning the eggplant into neat diagonals, he’d rallied.

I still helped him, asking questions every step of the way, while he added other things to the process, mincing and mashing garlic, creating two bowls of fresh and savoury vegetables and tofu on rice.

Afterwards, we cuddled up on the couch for Netflix & “The Crown”

I’ve been watching The Crown, and intensely self-indulgent Netflix series about the early reign of Queen Elizabeth II. It is of course, very obviously one of those made-by-math stories, like House of Cards was a product of looking at how popular Kevin Spacey and the original series was. I am being pandered to with lush, vintage sets and darling but relatable female characters.
Someone crunched the numbers regarding who was spending their time on The Kings Speech and Downton Abby, and decided that what we needed was to feel intimately the challenges of a woman who wears fabulous clothes, is waited on hand and foot and wants her husband to kneel to her.

I do not mind. It is good to be pandered to.

I think that the series occasionally suffers from attempting to worship everything it touches with a reverence that occasionally shades to the absurd. I also feel a little odd being presented with a real (living) person’s life, as an object of objectified and packaged desire. But there hasn’t been any sharp notes from the Queen’s press office about depicting her husband as a fuck object, so I can assume she is unruffled by this love letter to the monarchy even if the Royal Consort’s body is being showcased as a perk of the job.

It is not a femdom story with whips and chains and beatings. But it is a meaningful examination of women and power, and this is something missing from contemporary femdom. Everyine talks about making your sub happy, but very little time is taken to look at a femdom’s personal complexities and vulnerabilities.
That night’s episode was about feeling empowered and rife with little femdom hat tips and jokes, as we watch the new Queen get a measure of control in her intimate life and the subtle yet central role she plays in sustaining her government. For a while we forgot our respective black moods, and the post show cuddling turned to kissing and giggling.

Femdom life is like that. I don’t know anyone who really has orderly protocol 24/7. I know FLRs where she has ultimate say, but even so, there is more of moody cooking and cuddles on the couch than titles and slave positions.

It’s a good life, if you can find it.