O Non-Fiction

Rants, scene write ups, reviews, basically everything that isn’t erotica.

Review: Little Submissions Collected Short Stories Pt. 1

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Go buy this please.There are few writers more influential on my own femdom stories than Vague (Jerry Jones), of Little Submissions. Imaginative, violent and loving, he manages to capture both all the playfulness and the creative cruelty you can find in D/s done right. And, I had the good fortune of a long term fan of his stuff to be gifted with a review copy of his first release of collected short stories. Woop!

This release is a cleaned up and edited version of his earlier works (now with fewer typos!). If you’re cheap, you can head on over to his blog to read them, but if you want to support one of the hottest creators of free femdom erotica, I really urge you to shell out for the ebook.

It’s available in digital format, and from what I understand, he’s hashing out a deal with Lulu for a dead tree version. Maybe that’ll be ready in time for Christmas- if so i’ll update the links.

One of the main things that I like about all his stories is that the doms aren’t just into it, but sloppy wet and masturbating all over the furniture. You’re not going to get any sneering “Need a real man!” types here, rather that he writes his women as having a fierce love or the men who take the full brunt of their attentions. And, in turn, the subs are into it, but gratifyingly capable of a full range of reactions. One of his strongest suits in his writing is hints of the dynamics of a healthy couple with a lot more going on then their sex lives, and generally his characters feel like people with hobbies and needs and wants outside the margins of the text.

Here are some of the stories that Vague cooked up, because there’s a lot of stories in this anthology:

In “The Explanation” She tells him why she hates classical music but would love making a spectacle of him at the symphony, to the detriment of his tux. In “New Rule” she denies him the bed until he provides an erection and fucks her, then callously sends him back to the floor until he begs to be locked up. “Pennies” makes orgasm denial romantic, a rare achievement. “Telling Stories” didn’t make me come, but it made me laugh, and many of his other tales mix brutality, imagination and an absurd but true to life thread of humour that makes him, bar none, one of my favourite writers.

Category: Anthology of Short Femdom Stories
Rating: o~o~o~o~o (5/5)
How I Got It: Free copy from author!
TL;DR: D/s, between F/m couples (possibly the same couple)  or imaginative F+/m and F/m scenarios that are often rough, heavy and hard, but universally consenting.

Why A Special Protocol To Approach Dominant Women Is A Dumb Idea

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Brief break from emotional gut spilling and porn, for something that was sitting in drafts- a rant on why it’s a bad idea to try to develop a universal approach for doms.

This one gets bandied about on forums a lot- how to reach out to dominant women in a way that’s not offensive to them. I already talked about some advice about how to meet and approach dominant women but that was more general and really, does not address something that comes up all too much. Periodically, someone will ask:

“What if we had special codified instructions?”

or

“Wouldn’t it be great if there was a special set of steps so submissives could learn how to be good subs and show they were the bestest?”

No. No. This is a completely unworkable idea. The suggestion is usually presented as a way for the more-submissive-than-thou types to differentiate themselves from the common herd, usually by someone who thinks their dominance exemplifies them in some manner and is the be all and end all of their personality. It’s also a viewpoint that makes no room for switches.

Thus, schemes are proposed suggesting the sub should come as a penitent or present themselves like they were petitioning the pope. This is primarily the lamentable tendency for people to think in terms of fantasy BDSM societies or like kink has to redefine your social patterns. Now, I’m as silly as the next person, so hardly in a position to throw stones at all the kajiras, and live and let live tends to be the functional truce for the kinky but…

I’m just going to come down, categorically, and say that unless this is protocol night at your local dungeon, starting up a power exchange dynamic before you’ve established a relationship has no good attached to it. Sure, artificial social hierarchies are fun, and kink as a subculture has some constants, but take even collaring.- collars are used to signify everything from attached monogamous relationships to simply submissive leanings, to fashion statements. You just can’t force everyone onto the same page.

And presumed supplication to dominance sets up a number of problems. First of all, it’s domism. It perpetuates the general power of dominant identified people well outside the boundaries of sensibility and awards all doms power over all submissives.

The power dynamic starts after you two agree on it. Sure, it feels good to say “how can you hope to be a submissive for someone if you ignore my ‘no dick shots!’ request in my profile!” but the reality is that people who don’t respect your reasonably boundaries would probably be bad doms or bad switches or bad lovers in general.

Reader Letter: Second Thoughts After Pushing A Limit

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We have our second ever reader letter! SecondThoughts is brave enough to share their experience with exploring limits and what can go wrong.

Hi Miss Pearl,
First off, long time lurker, first time poster. Me and my play partner, are both newish to BDSM. We were discussing for something trying to push one of my limits. but when came to try it I started having second thoughts. For a number of reasons, I didn’t say anything and while everything turned out fine, it still left me feeling uncomfortable that I hadn’t said anything.

 

To get to the question. Is there anyway you recommend, for telling your dom that you may be having second thoughts or that you need more time to be mentally ready. Without completely breaking the mood or pulling out your safeword? I know honesty is the best policy, just wanted to get the opinion of a more seasoned person. Thank you for reading,
SecondThoughts

 

Hi SecondThoughts!

It’s always a challenge when you’re on the fence about something- especially with the pressure to expand limits and boundaries (kink.com is particularly guilty of this one, trying to get extra oomph from declarations like ‘limits are mostly mental’). But your limits are part of your ability to consent. People who are incapably of saying no can’t say yes.

For those of you who are completely new to kink, a limit is a “nope, no way, can’t do it” act or behaviour. It can range from the sensible (no children, pretty much everyone’s default limit) to the highly specific (no face slapping!). Some people further break down limits into hard limits and soft limits. The former means something that will never, ever happen and the latter means that the person might be open to doing it, in a long term, supportive situation where they feel safe.

Limits exist for lots of reasons. Maybe you have a medical problem that makes it impractical to do a particular thing like prolonged bondage, an allergy or a phobia. Maybe something is particularly sensitive. Sometimes it’s something the person just isn’t comfortable with, no complicated explanation needed. Some people enjoy the idea of playing “without limits” or feel that their limits interfere with their ability to submit. There’s a word or someone who is literally down for being murdered, and that’s not romantic and trusting. In practice the ‘no limits’ crew get away with it basically by relying on the dom to have the limits. Playing with the fear ‘what if s/he goes too far?!” is not my thing, although a lot harder to do in F/m anyway- especially if you are emotionally healthy with each other.

Less talked about, but just as valid, are a dom’s limits. My hard limits are kids, pets, permanent harm and things that could give you e-coli. Amputations and breaking laws are both things I have zero interest in doing or dealing with. I also have a bunch of things that I might do, but are decidedly edge play for me- for example decorative, lasting body mods. At this juncture I won’t have anyone branded/inked even if they ask nicely, but maybe with the right person who was already demonstrably into personal adornment and to whom I knew it was a long, healthy relationship, I might. I won’t take a single tail to someone either, but I might if I knew I wouldn’t put their or my eye out in the process.

From the context, SecondThoughts was trying to explore a soft limit and discovered that, during and after trying it out this clearly wasn’t something that worked for them. So, what to do? There’s a lot of pressure there on the sub- nobody likes feeling like you’re wishy washy, and even if your dom is very easy going, if you’re into obedience it can be emotionally hard for you to cry off mid-scene.

Sometimes things just don’t work out right in the moment and it’s not anyone failing, just not the right thing for that second. Many people use a multi-step safeword system for this reason. That’s the stoplight system– red for ‘stop right now!’ and yellow or amber for ‘caution!’. You can discuss with your dom how best they want you to communicate when you’re just not feeling it. No reasonable dom wants to do genuine trauma to their partner so, while I usually don’t speak in ‘shoulds’, your dom should be understanding about this situation.

Psychologically speaking though,  it can also be easy to have pride in your ability to endure, so it can feel like you are failing when you admit that something is a bit much for you.  Things like pain thresholds can feel extremely competitive for people- with the perpetual war between “heavy” players and “soft” players. The counterpoint to feeling like what the dom says has to go regardless of your recovery after is that dominants are not telepathic.

On of humanity’s greatest strengths is our knack for communication- it extends from being able to function  between fundamentally different people who speak different languages, to being able to empathize outside of your species and guess what a dog is feeling or when a plant needs extra attention. However- even if you are hardcore into people as property, if you want to own someone, if your sub is a person that means one of the biggest gifts they can give you is their perspective.

Some of the tricks people use include asking the sub to keep a shared journal, or making a post-scene discussion part of aftercare. In an ideal world everyone would just be able to talk about stuff, but remember that there’s no shame in developing special rituals to make it easier to discuss things.

Now if you want a little more reading on the mechanics and function of safewords, I also recommend this post from Clarisse Thorn, who talks about Safewords and Check-Ins.

Just remember, accidents happen. It’s not just avoiding mistakes that is important, but how you handle things after something does go wrong.

Topping From All Angles (And A Bit Of How I Dom)

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Let’s talk about topping from the bottom.

Recently I did tentative discussions about stuff with someone about kinky fun times- the usual things about what happens to whom, and how. and, over the course of very gentle exploration, we discussed that there were things he liked, yes, but he didn’t want me to think he was topping from the bottom.

A bunch of people are weighing in on this particular dispute topic right now- the danger on emphasizing the negatives of that term. Snarksy blogged about it, where as over on Twitter @MsCrosswords from Beyond the Valley of the Femdoms was talking about the challenge of a partner who thought he wasn’t allowed to ask for stuff. At all. I’m old enough, in terms of participating in the online kink stuff, to remember when the term was not out of favour in the circles I run in. To be precise, “Topping from the bottom”, when I first encountered it, meant the phenomena in which the one who is receiving the topping (the bottom) or the person who is ostensibly submissive, is calling the shots in some format.

Back in the day, it was often a term used for a punishment dynamic gone wrong, where the rigidity of the rules meant that a masochist was getting rewarded for doing stuff the dom really didn’t want. It’s also was expanded to refer to the phenomena of the laundry list, something that seems mostly particular to F/m more than M/f.  In that case, it was a  series of demands based on the sub’s perception of D/s in exclusion to what the dom wanted, often with poor desire to respect boundaries. It’s good to have a term to talk about this problem, right?

So how can this go wrong?

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Post Mortum Of My Relationships To This Date

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So various things happened to me over the last month or two, which has strangled updates down to a trickle.  In the first place work decided to be a pain in the butt and then laid me off. Then stuff happened regarding Strong and other… stuff.

It makes me introspective about my life choices, especially in light of what i’m watching other people go through. I am of the philosophy that two people in a relationship both play a role in creating the dynamic you play out, which is not the same as shared culpability should one person abuse the other, but the dissolutions and breakups we have, and the errors we make are still valuable lessons.

Some people like the high school boys I dated, were just nice boys- the first one I was maturing from girl to woman still, and too loopy for a relationship, while the long term high school boyfriend was sweet, but the take away there I got was not to date anyone dumber than you, because you had to respect someone you’re with. Nocturnal was an exercise in working out what I should and shouldn’t tolerate. In hindsight, if you aren’t used to being respected, you can mistake neediness for being important.

With Strong and why we broke up: As far as my perspective on the situation, not all relationships are stable or meant to last, and I went into it with the suspicion that our gulf in ages meant that we were in different places but more to the point, his tendency to precisely box everything off to control it was going to fight our D/s connection, while his communication style didn’t allow for candid admission of failure. To be exact I was his training dom, a safe woman who wouldn’t gut him in the process of him finally getting to feel loved and wanted for his vulnerabilities.

As far as my part in our breakup, since I am, shall we say, not a fan of conflict, there was little I could do in this circumstance beyond letting it be as it would be. I’d like to think I’m still a net positive on his life. And and I forecasted, from our initial connection where I crawled into his head, that was unsustainable, and he got himself increasingly walled off to the point where, as of the end of June, I was dealing with manufacturing my own happiness again. Which is to say, a very gentle  and lucky way to find yourself breaking ties with someone.

For a brief few months before that, Strong had the rare gift of being able to have more impact on my happiness than I could have on it independently, and then I went back to making me happy. I dissolved our D/s agreement when I was no longer helping him, but also as a confirmation that I had learned some of the lessons I was supposed to learn from the Ex.

The Ex is one of those cases where it can be hard to talk about it because of how embarrassed and ashamed that sort of banal awful makes you feel when you survive it. It can be completely inexplicable- how did I let someone treat me like an idiot domestic servant, deny me sleep to the point of contributing to academic issues with my education and exacerbating my emotional health problems, while letting them so terrorize me that I completely unable to resist them? They are not, what you’d describe, as intimidating.

Well, the profoundly fucked up childhood I grew up with sure as heck did not help. Let’s be honest, when you learn your relationship models from a situation with abuse and enablers, it makes it much easier to ignore the what-the-fuck-are-we-doing?! feelings the insanity of an abusive dynamic engenders until you are enmeshed. That’s a hard other thing to talk about, because I don’t want sympathy for the shit that occurred at this juncture, and I’m leery of being treated like I’m dangerously crazy because I survived it- or not being taken seriously because someone hurt me.

The Ex was, to be honest about things, not all bad, but he was a horrible match for my own anxieties and vulnerabilities. If, in a love match, you can feel like you found a key for your lock, the Ex and I meshed his issues and controlling streak with my yielding , appeasing approach. Yes, while a dom (TM), generally speaking I tend to take stuff that’s not in my control and let it slide. I’m not one of those True Leaders people like to brag about being.

If you’re going to get all metaphorical about stuff, I’m a water person. I don’t make walls, I flow around stuff and find my own level. I can certainly be disturbed, but just as much as I can get all choppy and disturbed on the surface, but I can also take in and soak things pretty well.

Strong was an earth person, who put walls up absolutely everywhere, and locks people into them. The Ex? Fire, maybe? At once burning bright, but so fragile, needing to be sheltered and to consume constantly to survive. All appetites and needs, which was fascinating to my dominant/nurturing streak, but no brakes on the devouring aspect.

Wow, this is getting long. I’ll continue after the jump.

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Myself, and Moving On

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Pretty, pretty...

Let’s talk about my love life, these days, shall we?

My nails bite into his back, but he takes them, sharp as they are, and he is unbreakable. His skin in thick, the muscle underneath taut to the point of hardness. I stab and press and nothing makes him yield, but gradually, with my strength into it, I feel the start of a pliancy. He’s tough, and there’s a challenge there, beyond simply getting a reaction, to help melt away the wiry solidity into something completely supple.

I’m white as a snowdrop against the sallow-sand colour of his skin, my body soft where he is hard and rough. Our bodies slide together in a way that meets and balances, although he is taller, I can lift him without excessive effort, not just because of his lightness but because I’ve always been fairly strong for a woman. My head fits well against his chest, nestled against his shoulder, and my arms around him, seatbelt-safe. His hands, casually playing around my waist, find the exact place on my spine where the muscles and bone carry things too heavily, pressing until the always-ache I’ve learned to ignore lets go.

I lean over the foot of his bed, stretching, and watch his slender, straight legs, upside down. I like to look at the ratio between the spareness of his body and the breadth of his shoulders. I like the way his eyes are hooded and long lashed, and the delicate sculpting of his nose. I like the gravel in his voice, and the way he looks at me, sometimes wanting, sometimes with a hesitant vulnerability like he’s not sure quite what he’s doing, but most times just hard to read as he’s usually pretty closed off. That, in itself, is a challenge, since I’m used to being the one knocking reactions out of people.

We try little bedroom games, what works and what doesn’t, but just as much, we talk about all the things that tell who you are, a few pieces every time, and twine up together, in a lock-knot of limbs.

I am happy, although it’s very much a situation built on shifting silt, as mercurial as one might expect given the circumstances. It’s not a safe and stable meeting, and I don’t feel sure footed with him, at once sharing myself with as much flayed honesty as I can and on the other hand, keeping some restrictions on the impulsivity and carnal impishness that defines me. We are not sure what we are doing, not sure what I am, other than that I am there and present at this moment, where I can help.

So I make myself into the safe, accepting stillness that I learned how to be a long time ago, and I tell him that for now, I’m in charge, until the storm has passed us by. On the balance, the trade off is knowing him with nothing in the way of illusions, in the rawness of a crisis, and finding nothing lacking in him or his response to it. So there’s that.

Love Me Properly

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So Strong and I had a candid post mortum tonight about the failure of our relationship and I made sure to be honest about where life has taken me. I am in an odd dilemma, to be loved, by many, but not quite in the way that I wish.

I find myself playing with hearts, accidentally. Perhaps spurred by Strong’s instance that I look elsewhere to get my needs met, my deck is overloaded with people who I’m afraid of hurting, with one wildcard that has to play himself. Tease and denial comes easily with dominance, and yet when it comes with suitors, excessive insistence of my glory sends me scattering. I hate the idea of having victims who aren’t willingly tying themselves to the post, but are doing it for desire for something more. Maybe that’s part of what makes me deeply suspicious of acts of service, more so than I should be?

And I had my heart taken, accidentally, as if it were book picked up by error, but then the borrower had become engrossed in reading what he found. Unfortunately that’s a situation that’s providing my least favourite thing in interpersonal relationships: waiting on someone else’s will and willpower. I am not, but nature, good at that kind of patience. Trust is not a natural part of my makeup, least of all trust and faith and others (not with my independence levels), nor do I like passivity. But, regardless, the situation the gentleman has is something where if I try to intervene I’m in the wrong. I can’t lift a single finger, not to push or to beckon.

It makes me think about love as it should be, for me. I’ve never been about being impressed with expensive gifts. The Ex, the one I spent six years with, compared my needs to being that of a pet rock- I never made demands, not for jewellery, flowers or fancy dinners (I like eating, but I’m not good at taking)- and honestly, I was an expert at self sacrificing care taking for him. And yet, my way of love has been about doing on the small scale. That doesn’t really fit stereotypical D/s femdom well- my ‘tribute’ wishlist is a joke loaded with beef jerky.

And yet, I bought myself tea roses this week, my favourite. Strong charmed me with unexpected chocolates, once upon a time, and once, a boy charmed me, by passing me a cheap chocolate egg. Compliments get me blushing. Somewhere is a chink in that armour. I want the romance, I just don’t want to feel it’s a big deal.

To love my properly, it seems, takes courage, self confidence, occasional capacity to cruelty, and yet acts of kindness. I need someone who can yield to me where I want it, but stand for me and with me when I need it. If that ends in me being a spinster maiden aunt in the end, so be it.

(amendment)

Shut up Tashi. 😛

On The Single Life- Or Why I Don’t Think Online Dating Is For Me

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So things ended with Strong. Sadness documented in other posts.

We never had monogamy, but I never got further than play with friends and a spot of light molestation. It didn’t feel right, up until it was basically over with Strong, and at that point the relationship falling apart just meant I felt frustrated and neglected. And small amounts of drama occurred which I will explain later.

Somewhere along the way I acquired one of those online dating profiles. Under the general theory that I’m a tough cookie who won’t let a little setback having to break up with someone after many patient months get me down, I busily answered questions (allowing them to conclude I was much more kinky than the average, as well as independent and not very romantic, not sure how I feel about that last part) and took some flattering selfies. From there I set out to tentatively find out what exactly the boys were like out there with an eye to being open minded. My head’s a little messed up by stuff, but it couldn’t hurt, right?

For an extra oomph I seeded my profile with hints of my precise brand of kinkiness, and set about with the rating of profiles that okcupid gently nudges you to do. And lo and behold I got a message.

“Is your name [Pearl]?”

Okay. There’s no way that is going to end well. And no, it did not…

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Well, fuck. (Breakups)

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So, Strong and I broke up. No story this Friday, just a post mortum.

Leaving most personal details out of it, it just wasn’t working anymore, which makes me incredibly sad. More so since I didn’t stop caring about the poor bastard, we just lost the mutual connection. Somewhere along the way, it died.

Ferns basically has the crux of the challenge for dominants, that without submission there is nothing. You can have a relationship, but it’s a stunted one with an under current of frustration. Breaking up with him meant leaving the hope that if I was just a bit more patient he’d come back to me.

But there’s that bugger chemistry. When you feel like submission is being handed out like a cookie, and the person is too busy giving you what they think they want, you stop feeling that glow of empowerment. To describe the situation, of course, doesn’t give Strong a fair chance to defend himself. He tried to be what he thought I wanted to the best of his ability.

But the problem may also be a matter of style. Submission, for me, is seduced out or ripped out. I find I tend to be drawn to the switch-y ones, in part because of my masochism, but also because of that sense of victory. Ha. I bet I probably sound like a cliché. Every dominant likes to think they’re special and that their submissive does not fall easily.

(Well, actually I’m not so sure about that, since I fake ‘submissive’ really well and I do not act fighty)

But for me, a guy who is all service and obedience from the start makes me feel like I’ve been asked to scale a sheer wall of glass. When I met Strong, he was emphatically not in a submissive position. The chemistry grew up around his desire just for me and we created something that was unique to us.

And yet there’s the gulf that often comes up between expectation of how a sub should act and  what the dom wants. In his case, I think he choked, and got too focused on being the perfect boyfriend. We always had a problem that way, for example I would provide a rule I wanted to put into place and he would take it and run with it and turn it into something his. Which makes it not about me, but about doing things his way.

On the other hand some of this is normal. I may have been too demanding and distance is bloody hard. And I really need to feel like I have the person’s full attention when I want it, which may be pretty hard to pull off all the time.

Regardless, he was, in many ways, extremely good for me and I don’t regret that he was part of my life. He came in as a friend, and I hope we’ll stay that way after we’ve had a chance to lick our respective wounds.

Reader Letter: Hurting Yourself & Tying Yourself Up

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Closer to God, or orgasm. Works for me.

Self inflicted sadomasochism is often the first ways we get to experiment with our kinks. Whether you fantasized as a kid about how your piano lessons were taking place at gunpoint, you’re looking for some you focused self gratification or you’re simply trying to understand how something works before you try it on someone else, there are many reasons you might want to try an activity on yourself. Tying yourself up is not an uncommon form of early exploration into kink and, I think solo play deserves as much love as playing with a partner.

So I got this message recently, from a reader:

Hello Miss Pearl,

I have followed your blog for quite some time and enjoy it very much. You seem to offer a sane, critical, level headed view on BDSM community that I find quite refreshing. I have recently begun taking the first step past “lurking” on fetlife to more interactive engaging. I am a switch myself so am happy as a dominant or submissive. What I am interested in , is some online torture ideas that can be preformed on me, or directed by me. I recently experienced a “session ?” with elastic bands around my quads, that I found but exhilarating and painful in equal measure.

I have read what I can find online, which involve, chopsticks, ginger, clothes pegs etc. Yet nothing real jumps out at me. I was wondering do you have any ideas/knowledge of where to best look to get more informed on the subject ?? Thanks for taking the time to read,, and for maintaining such a quality blog.

Best,

4playfiend

Dear 4playfiend:

Sadomasochism is not always a couples activity, as many people have discovered. However, doing it by yourself obviously presents some challenges. For one thing, some bondage scenarios are just a little difficult when you can’t reach the knots and it may not feel quite the same way to do things to yourself. On the other hand, for one reason or another, for example a long distance relationship or happy fun time at home, you may want to engage in a little erotic self mortification.

But first, three pieces of safety advice for all you masturbatory enthusiasts reading.

  1. No breath play without a reliable partner. Breath play is already fucking dangerous without someone there to provide supervision and solo choking and smothering has claimed many people.  Don’t put things around your neck or plastic bags on your head.
  2. No vacbeds. Even on a timer, or set up in a way that you think you can get out of. Again, people have died this way, even people who were as close to vacbed experts as it gets.
  3. Don’t restrain yourself in a non-foolproof way. Use the baby handcuffs with the safety release switches and don’t just rely on “eventually I can wiggle free!”. As fun as freezing keys in an ice block sounds, you want something a bit more easy to deal with if your house catches on fire or you otherwise need to get out fast.

Everyone’s fetishes are a little different, so what you will find enjoyable is probably going to vary from one person to the next. Functionally speaking the number of ways that you can harmlessly give those nerve endings a hard time is as infinite as your imagination.  But if you’re really stumped, here’s a leaping off place:

Figging, icy hot, hot sauce, etc…  Some people like this sort of thing applied to a mucus membrane. Remember that ginger, the source of figging, has an unreliable level of spiciness, and what goes on may be more intense than you intended. As with eating spicy foods, oils are better for removing stinging burning oils and for gods sake, test that stuff slowly- do not randomly enema yourself with undiluted Ghost Pepper juice.

Clips, clamps and ties. Clothes pins are just one staple of this school of superficial but fun discomfort. You can get all sorts of pinchy grippy things, from clover clamps from the hardware store, to various hair clips (the metal ones tend to be a gentle, non-skin breaking chance for something spikey. Attach weights or not, as you prefer. You can also do “Zippers“, which for solo purposes, you can attach to a fixed point.

Non-binding harnesses, etc… As well as very, very light restraints of the kind that can be easily escaped from, those of you into the fine art of sexual macrame otherwise known as shibari, will discover that with patience there’s all sorts of chafe-y and tight ways to wind yourself up. for example this harness doesn’t need two people. Just cinch it nice and tight.

Kneeling on rice/dried peas/legoes. As well as something mean to do to your subs, it’s an easily reversible thing to do to yourself. This can be a bother to clean up. The trick here, if you want to surrender control, is probably a regular kitchen timer.

Exercise. It’s good for you and gets the endorphins flowing. And certain things like wall sits, planks and squats are uncomfortable and difficult. And, if you like externally applied attention, a simple exercise podcast can also help you trance out into the realm of pushing your body. Again, a timer is a harsh mistress/master that cannot be reasoned with.

Getting people superficially involved. If you’re really having trouble getting into the head state without at least some oversight, try something like fapdeciders at reddit. As well as giving you ideas, it’s an explicit community devoted to light, long distance attention.

Self bondage. There are 63 groups on fetlife devoted to tying yourself up. I suck at bondage but in my experience someone with a subbie streak and time on their hands is a fiend when it comes to elaborate but eventually escapable hogties and predicaments.

That’s only a superficial look at the subject matter, and leaves aside things like inflatable toys on timers, using dice to decide self punishments, and another other possibilities.

Hey readers, I’m not and expert and there’s a hundred of you or so stopping by every day. What’s your favourite selfie?