Saturday, July 10, 2010

A primatologist’s suggestions for happier orgasm control

Category labels: BDSM psychology, BDSM techniques, Chastity/Orgasm denial, Fetish, Sex, Sexual teasing and control, Training/Conditioning

Y’know, despite all the politics and recent dramas surrounding me and my work, sometimes it is about the sex. Lately, I’ve been wanting to write more about sex but between making rent and bills and the aforementioned dramas, it’s just not that easy. I got to a point where I’ve put myself far enough in public view that it became dangerous to speak of myself as a person, instead of an activist.

Well, fuck that. I’m a person, too. And I still have sex, though not as much as some of my critics seem to think that I do. (Actually, that’s their fault, too, considering the enormous amount of time I spent managing attacks against me.) I hope someone’s getting off on it, because I’m not.

And speaking of not getting off, that’s one way I enjoy sex even without “having sex.” Just lucky, I guess. ;)

Anywho, I’ve been catching up with some of my favorite sex bloggers—y’know, the ones that write about what sex means to them, instead of who they fucked last weekend—and I came across Push me, please by Thumper. In it, he writes:

I tried to explain that there’s a desire within me to go far beyond my comfort zone if for no other reason than she’s asked me to do so. I pointed her to Maymay’s post related to this (is there anything he’s not written about?) and also sent her a couple of Sarah Jameson’s emails that, I think, touch indirectly on it.

Sarah Jameson, for those who don’t know, writes the Male Chastity Blog. She’s a “normal” woman, not unlike Belle, with a husband who likes abnormal things, not unlike me. She writes with confidence and, while I don’t always agree with her, find that she’s right far more often than not (at least IMO). Besides the blog, she also sends out a multi-part email newsletter on the subject of…wait for it…male chastity. […] I recommend it, especially for those just starting out.

First, yay, a relatively new and sensible addition to the orgasm denial/delay/control/what-have-you blogosphere. That is sorely needed. Second, yes, I’m sure there are many topics I’ve not yet written about but I’m working on fixing that. ;)

So, quoting Sarah Jameson, Thumper continues:

…in part 11 of her series, she asks, “Just how long can a man wait?” Her initial response sends an electric shiver down my spine:

Well, the truth is…your man doesn’t have to orgasm ever. As in NEVER.

But then she gives what I think is the best advice I’ve read on the subject:

Over time I’ve come round to the way of thinking that you should keep your man in orgasm denial for at least 50% longer than he asks for and thinks he can stand.

Why?

Because in the early days, while you’re still working out the ground rules, he’ll be basing his own estimation on insufficient knowledge. To HIM, fresh into male chastity, even a week seems like an eternity.

So if he thinks a month, make it six weeks; if he thinks six months, make it nine months; and if he thinks a year…woe betide him.

I think this is a really interesting excerpt because it shows an awareness of the importance of unpredictability, of keeping the orgasm control “game” novel and interesting. Now, Sarah Jameson seems to veer off in the direction of denial period length, which is not unreasonable but is, in my opinion, possibly misleading.

Although it certainly can be an exercise in control to keep a partner orgasm-less for 50% longer than they asked for, that in itself doesn’t reliably provide pleasure. If your measure of “fun” is “longer,” then by all means, go 50% longer. But you could just as easily go 70% longer or, hell, 100% longer, and in my experience, the “pleasure” would be equally unreliable. When you can change the variable and you don’t get a “better” result, then you know you’re missing the core issue.

Moreover, since “pleasure” is different for different people, achieving it doesn’t always boil down to lengths of time, or any other particular activity. Case in point, I spent a lot of time locked up and forbidden to masturbate during my relationship with Eileen, but things are different with Emma. I feel pretty differently about these experiences, but I can’t really say I enjoyed one situation more than the other.

So all of this had me thinking, is there any reliable, measurable way to induce whatever “maximum pleasure” means for me? Although I’m not certain, I did find a hint in this Class Day Lecture given at Stanford University by Robert Sapolsky, a world-renowned primatologist. In it, he discusses the neurobiology behind the feelings of pleasure as associated with reward and anticipation. (Watch the video or read my text transcript, below.)

How we go about reward: now this brings in a little bit of neurobiology, the involvement of a neurotransmitter (a brain chemical messenger) called dopamine. Dopamine is all about reward. You do not want your brain to run out of dopamine, or else you’ll become clinically depressed.

Cocaine works on the dopamine system. All sorts of euphoriants work on dopamine. Dopamine is about reward. At least, that’s what people used to think. And they used to think it would work as follows.

You take a monkey and you’ve trained it in some task. You give it a signal, a light goes on in its room, and that means, ‘Okay, this task is about to begin.’ And the monkey’s learned that if it now does this task, whatever the work is, it will then get a reward after some delay. And what everybody assumed was what dopamine was about was that, once you got that reward, dopamine levels went up. Dopamine was about pleasure, reward, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, all that sort of thing.

Turns out that’s not what dopamine is about. It looks like this instead.

You’ve got this monkey trained to do this task and the signal comes on saying, ‘Okay, we’re starting one of these sessions again,’ and then the dopamine goes up. What is this about? This is not pleasure of getting the reward. This is, ‘I know how this one works, this is great, I’m all on top of this. I know exactly what to do. Piece of cake, I got this under control. I’m on this one.’ It is not about reward, it’s about the anticipation of reward. And in fact, if you block that dopamine rise from occurring, you don’t get the work.

It’s not only about the anticipation of reward, it’s about the goal-directed behavior it is able to fuel.

Very subtle additional piece of this. A wonderful study some years ago where you take this scenario: okay, the individual, the monkey, does the work and, after the delay, gets the reward 100% of the time. Now, instead, in this setting, it gets the reward only 50% of the time. What happens now when that signal comes on, what [the dopamine levels] looks like is this: you switch over to 50% and the dopamine levels explode through the roof there.

What have you just done? You’ve introduced the word “maybe” into your equation, and that is reinforcing like nothing on Earth. That signal comes on, and that monkey is sitting there saying, ‘Piece of cake, I’m on top of this, but I’m such a screwup, and I’m not gonna get it–oh, but today, I’m gonna be on it–but it’s not gonna work out….’ And you just have him teetering there on this fulcrum, and that is pushing dopamine out like there’s no tomorrow.

Just to show that, now instead of the 50% reward rate, give the monkey either a 25% or 75% reward rate. Totally opposite things: this one is bad news, this one’s good news. What’s the one thing they have in common? Both reduce the unpredictability, both lower the dopamine surge to the same extent.

Take a monkey and there’s nothing more addictive out there than the notion that there’s a reward lurking out there and it’s a maybe. And what some of our best social engineers, many of them making a good living in Las Vegas, learn how to do is how to turn what seems like a 50% reality of reward to make it that salient when it’s one tenth of a hundred percent of a chance of reward; how to make one get that dopamine surge and get that goal directed behavior out of there.

So, it turns out that brain chemistry works exactly the same way in [humans]. In us, dopamine is about the anticipation of reward, uncertainty boosts it up further, it drives the work needed for the reward. What’s unique about us, what’s the difference is, the lag time between the work and the reward—how long we can hold on driven by that dopamine surge to pump out that work in order to get the reward.

And we all know this scenario: where you interview really, really well for your preschool, and as a result you get into a good school and a good high school, and you study hard and you get a good GPA and get into a good grad school, get a good job, and eventually you get into the nursing home of your choice. What we’ve got here is this astonishing human capacity to hold on. And, what we have that is completely unprecedented is the ability, in some ideological and some theological systems, to hold on even after you are gone—and a world in which you have a reward that comes in an afterlife. A world in which you are willing to put up with the most egregious of versions of pain in the name of holding on, holding on. A world in which unto the generations after you and the sins upon your children.

There’s nothing like that out there in any other species.

So, beyond the absolutely fascinating sociopolitical implications of this insight into human neurobiology, watching this video some months ago was a light-bulb moment for me. I finally understood the neurochemistry behind one of the most core elements of my sexuality, my fetish for orgasm control. And this knowledge is such good power.

I immediately shared my insight with Emma: dopamine levels are maximized when a “reward” (which is probably a “treat” in our parlance) is acquired exactly 50% of the times when it was expected. This means that, in an ideal world, for every orgasm I’m granted (every time I “do the work for the reward,” whatever the work is in our particular orgasm control game-du-jour), let me actually have that orgasm 50% of the time, in as unpredictable a fashion as possible.

So Sarah’s 50% figure is actually really astute. However, scientifically speaking, the variable is wrong. It’s not about how long one goes without orgasm that (in itself) determines the neurochemical levels of enjoyment one gets from the experience. Instead, it’s more about how reliably a sense of anticipation can be triggered and extended, while maximizing uncertainty of whether or not this time the “reward” (or “treat” or orgasm) is actually forthcoming.

That’s why, with Emma, there’s no longer such a thing as “days when I will orgasm.” Instead, there are only “no” days and “maybe” days. And I gotta say, I really like it this way.

Salt and pepper to taste. Yield: infinity. Serve with loving, desperate need and enjoy. ;)

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Saturday, October 25, 2008

Equating passivity with sexual submissiveness is a stupid mistake

Category labels: BDSM psychology, BDSM techniques, Chastity/Orgasm denial, Communication, D/s dynamics, Fantasy, Femdom, Masochism, Myths and misconceptions, Personal experience, Relationship, Technology

This weekend I’m making a concerted effort to spend more time than I might otherwise with Eileen because we’ve been enjoying reconnecting with kink lately and there is just so much work to do during our “normal” days.

Once again, as part of tasks she had charged me with accomplishing, Eileen wanted me to write and read another fantasy snapshot to her. This time, however, she gave me a specific direction to go in: write about harems, a recurring fantasy genre of hers. I did this successfully (and if you’re really just here for the pr0n then, here it is) but what she found interesting about it was how much I worked my own kinks (technology, orgasm control) into the piece. My thinking here was pretty straightforward, since all I did was figure that what I’d produce wouldn’t be any good if I wasn’t interested in writing it.

One of my other tasks was to buy her a specific sort of jewelry. This has been an area of relative discomfort for her as a top and, like my own discomfort vocalizing fantasies, is something she and I would like to see her become more comfortable with. Rather than refer to this jewelry as a gift, which is heavily laden with negative stereotypes of gender roles, we’ve been referring to it as a form of tribute, but admittedly that’s not much better either. When I buy her things, and especially when she “makes” me buy her things, she sometimes still feels the resonance of guilt, and so I feel bad about making her feel guilty, and on and on the vicious spiral goes.

For me, however, buying things for her is not difficult because my relationship with money is vastly different from hers. To me, money is accumulated for one purpose only: to be spent. Money is nothing but a manifestation of some kind of confidence in a product, in a service, or in some other thing perceived to have a value of sorts. Since it’s my money I’m spending, I get to spend it on whatever I want. More often than Eileen may be ready to believe, what I want to spend it on is her. Still, financial domination is not really my kink, it’s hers.

What I want for her is to be able to experience guiltless pleasure by enacting kinks and fantasies. That’s why I was happy to see that one of my tasks was to do this thing that, should I be successful, she would find emotionally challenging to accept in a way. And that’s also part of why instead of buying her the one piece of jewelry she tasked me with acquiring, I secretly bought two. Then, that night, I bought her an even more expensive bottle of perfume on a complete whim and treated her to dinner.

My goal was the same as hers: to push limits. We push each other, we always have, and it’s part of what keeps us moving forward together. Though the willingness to push a bottom’s limits is almost a prerequisite to advertise yourself as a top or a dominant, very rarely does anyone seem to recognize the value of pushing a top’s limits as a bottom, and I think that is a grave oversight for all involved. Often, people expect—sometimes even demand—that bottoms and submissives be entirely passive partners in sex and kink, but I think this is wrong.

Equating passivity with submissiveness is just as brain-dead stupid as equating power with penises. When I’m willing to actively push my top’s limits, everything is more fun. That doesn’t mean that I’m “topping from the bottom” in the way many people think of it. I’m not bossy or a brat, I don’t talk back in scenes and I don’t tell you where to hit me (unless that’s part of the scene, or you ask me to, of course). What I mean when I say that I like to push my top’s limits is that I respectfully and incrementally encourage them to explore their sadism, their cruelty, their willingness to impose their will on my body, perhaps in ways that they may not feel entirely comfortable doing but that I do.

I do this for a number of reasons. The most obvious one? It turns them on, and then they do things to me that I like. With Eileen, the other day, this meant I spent quite a bit more money on her than she was immediately comfortable with. This active submission or bottoming has also manifested itself in most of the scenes where my tops told me “Okay, I think I need to stop now.” I half-jokingly say that I want to collect as many tops as I can who I can get to say this. So far, there are five, and I’ve enjoyed playing with each of them (and I hope I get to again, one day)! (You know who you are. ;)

Anyway, the good news for me is that I successfully accomplished all of the tasks I had been given. This has earned me the consideration of a possible orgasm, Eileen said, though she has not specified a time for this. This reward was phrased very deliberately, and perhaps one day I’ll get around to writing about the particulars of what earning something means (though Ms. Rika has already written a fair bit about treats versus rewards, which talks a bit about earning stuff).

At any rate, what I’ve earned is very nebulous because “consideration of a possible orgasm” is basically just like saying “maybe, we’ll see.” This has left me wondering (and fantasizing) about what will happen. Nevertheless, even as day 35 of being kept orgasm-less draws to a close for me tonight, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Now, without further ado, as promised, here’s the harem fantasy snapshot that I read aloud to Eileen this morning.

I kissed her firmly on the lips, gently pulling her down with me as I leaned back onto the massive bed and sank further into the gold threaded sheets. She responded by parting my lips with her tongue, one of her hands encircling both my thighs and the other pressing her body into mine. I twisted my body so she was on her side and moved my mouth to her neck. That was my purpose: to exist for her pleasure. The years I had spent in this place had taught me how to fulfill this purpose well.

“You are so lucky,” one of the other boys told me one day as we sat on the marble steps of the pool.

“Why?” I asked.

“And you’re dumb,” he replied wryly. “How can’t you see it? She adores you. She takes you more often than any of us,” he said as he gestured around the room, a hint of envy in his voice.

The sunlit pool hall had white stone walls with large glass doors and a few stained glass windows depicting young men and women in various states of servility. A dozen or so other slaves like I were swimming and a few more were lounging elsewhere in the hall. Most of us were naked, and those few who weren’t might as well have been, as we were given very little in the way of fabric for coverings by our keepers. Instead, we typically wore jewelry whose particulars were carefully chosen to match our body’s aesthetics. Many of the darker-skinned slaves wore intricate silver bands while I wore lots of copper, rose gold, and turquoise to compliment my pale skin.

I cocked my head and grinned back at my friend. “That makes me sore, not lucky,” I said to him.

“Still,” he said, the envy turning into a soft sigh, “you get more stimulation than we do.”

We were not only kept as pleasure slaves, we were also slaves to pleasure. Shortly after being bought, I was strapped to a contraption that left strategic parts of my skin perfectly hairless and others incredibly erogenous—even some that had not been before. Despite my fear and anguish that first dark night, I couldn’t help but masturbate through my tears. Strangely—cruelly, I thought—nothing I did brought me to the satisfaction I craved and yet every other sensation seemed amplified such that merely the feel of the sheets in my new bed filled me with lust. At first I thought these sensations were hallucinations, but when I braved asking the others they told me similar stories. “It keeps you eager for her,” they said, and they were right.

I soon learned that she alone had the power to satisfy my body, though I didn’t understand why that was so. We never knew when she might choose to sample one of us, and yet eager as I and the rest of us were for it, much of the time it was not pleasant when she would. I frequently sported bruises, and more often than not she chose to take her pleasure from me with seemingly little regard for my own obvious need.

In her bed, she rolled her hand in my long hair and pulled my mouth off her neck, exposing my own to her tongue. I shivered, whimpering as goosebumps appeared on my flesh. To avoid the maddening stimulation, I pushed my mouth back to her neck and tried to focus my attention on the mundane parts of the act, like the motion and pressure of my lips.

Then I saw her eyes glint just so. She grabbed my wrist and pulled it by the copper bangle I wore from her side to the restraint in the headboard, which automatically held my jewelry in its grasp. I held my breath, fearing that tonight would not be one of the pleasant nights.

As a final aside, I’ve posted this vignette into the Hypertextual Porn wiki because that project needs a little tender lovin’ care at the moment and I think this is a good piece to begin loose construing, a good snippet to remix with, as it seems like it can go in any number of directions.

I’m hoping that, over time, I’ll be able to create an archive of lots and lots of snippets like this so that erotica authors might find interesting ways to mix and match and modify them to suit their story ideas. If you’ve got some short, erotic vignettes you’d feel comfortable contributing to the project (and basically releasing your writing as “open source” hypertextual porn), then please take a peak at the project’s homepage.

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Saturday, October 4, 2008

Safely fucking anonymous johns with inspiration from TCP/IP

Category labels: BDSM psychology, BDSM safety, BDSM techniques, Bisexuality, Communication, D/s dynamics, Fantasy, Male sexuality, Professional BDSM, Sex, Technology

I can still remember the day when Eileen said to me, somewhat dismayed, “Sometimes it feels like every kinky girl who’s even close to being classically attractive decides to become a pro-domme sooner or later. Why am I the only one who doesn’t?” And of course, when she was offered a job as a pro-domme at Rapture she naturally briefly considered the opportunity. I mean, why wouldn’t she? I would have considered it if I were in her shoes, and I would have done so for a number of reasons.

The most interesting reason why I would have considered it, though, is because the thought of being a sex worker (and a sex worker is what a pro-domme is) feeds a fantasy of mine: sexual expression in exchange for money. The thought of having sex with or—even hotter—to be made to have sex with people I didn’t really know very well has long been an undeniably arousing thought. That fantasy is, to this day, one of the very few role play scenarios I can somewhat comfortably get invested in. I vividly remember the pounding of my own arousal the night Eileen came home with her half of the month’s rent in cash, pushed me onto the floor, tied me up, fucked me with a knife at my throat, and then threw the cash in my face.

Like most fantasies, the fantasy itself would probably be very different from the reality of the situation. Getting tied up in someone’s home who I didn’t know just so that I could make a few bucks is so ridiculously unsafe that I’ve purposefully avoided even getting near the possibility of doing it. Nevertheless, this sex-for-money fantasy is a rather frequent one for me, and in fact it’s pretty common among others, too. I think it’s so strongly rooted in the sexual psyches of so many people that it’s one of the most common reasons why I see bottom-ish and submissive-leaning women become sex workers, such as pro-dommes.

But that’s not what this post is about. (I could talk about inverted power dynamics of (many) pro-domme and client relationships for ages, but I won’t since there are lots of places where that’s discussed already.) This post is about the idea of the sex-for-money fantasy in general, what makes it hot for me, and some (geek-inspired) ideas I have about how to go about realizing it safely.

Perhaps it was Tristan Taormino who best explains why the sex-for-money fantasy is so hot. She recently wrote this in the Village Voice about the brothel-themed sex room at Dark Odyssey, affectionately known as “sex camp” among the attendees.

People don’t tire of the sex-for-money fantasy. Actually, there is no one fantasy, but multiple scenarios, dynamics, and roles possible within the brothel setting. I talked to a bunch of this year’s whores (who included men, women, transfolk, and cross-dressers) about what they got out of their experiences. Some said they like being a whore because it’s taboo, naughty, and transgressive; the fact that it’s illegal prevents them from pursuing it in real life. For others, being a sex worker is a longtime fantasy[…].

Playing this role can trigger other turn-ons, like having sex with strangers, no strings attached, and no pretense of romance.

[…]

A sex-worker fantasy can also fulfill a desire to be used for sex, objectified, forced, pimped out, or made to perform. Many of the whores had pimps who collected their money or made them work. There are so many power dynamics to play with. “I am turned on by the power exchange involved,” explained Ellie, a phone-sex operator in real life who’s never done sex work with physical contact. “To some extent, the worker is fully in control of the sexual encounter and can create seemingly arbitrary boundaries or limits without being expected to explain them to a partner. On the other hand, the worker is acting in service to the client, and is expected to please and satisfy them. The tension between the dominant and submissive roles in these sorts of exchanges is interesting to me.”

These excerpts showcase a couple of points. First, it confirms (yet again) that different people have the same sorts of fantasies due to a variety of different motivations. Second, when Tristan mentions that playing the role of a whore can trigger other turn-ons, she’s talking about how enacting one fantasy be a catalyst that often fulfills multiple impulses at the same time.

For me personally, ultimately the fantasy of sex for money boils down to expressions of control, just as most other fantasies do. Fantasizing about whoring is about my desire to be objectified, pimped out, and made to perform, to use Tristan’s words. Now, these aren’t things that I necessarily find directly pleasurable—theoretically I could be made to do something I didn’t really want to do—but it’s not always direct pleasure I’m after. Rather, it’s the derived pleasure I get by being controlled by my “pimp” that I find so hot, even and sometimes especially if that exertion of control is tormenting me.

While at times these desires manifest in a prostitution fantasy, at other times they fit nicely into slave, harem, or even prisoner fantasies. In some of the more extreme ones, I’m made to perform not merely for my livelihood, but for my very life. This can be very intense, but that’s because it’s this intensity of control that I lust for.

Of course, realizing such intensity in reality just isn’t practically safe. Moreover, if any of the life-or-death fantasies were to become real, they’d pretty much have to be one-offs for the obvious and very unsexy mortality issue; sometimes in my fantasies I’m killed, but that’s only sexy in the fantasy, not reality. In no way do I actually want to be in an unsafe life-threatening situation like that, and it’s a fact that there are enormous risks associated with thoughtlessly enacting these sorts of fantasies in real life.

This brings me back to the first part of the title of this post: barring one’s attendance at an event such as Dark Odyssey—which I am even more intent on attending after reading Tristan’s article about it than I already was—how can one go about experiencing the thrill, nervousness, and excitement of this fantasy in a way that isn’t insanely unsafe? As it turns out, some of the best advice I’ve found on this topic came from one of Dan Savage’s Savage Love articles, in which he writes to a bisexual man who has similar fantasies as I do. (No, it wasn’t me writing in!) Dan said:

[T]he only way to safely realize this fantasy […] is by sharing it with your most adventurous [Friend With Benefits] and enlisting his help. After you tell all, ask your FWB if he would be willing to facilitate the realization of this sexual fantasy. In other words, ask him to pimp your ass out. It would be his job to find and recruit a guy you don’t know, a guy who’s trustworthy and safe but just a little freaky, a guy that he knows you would find attractive. Then your FWB/pimp tells you what corner you need stand on what night and you wait there until your pre-screened, pre-selected john drives up and rolls down his window. Be his ho, be safe (the real pros all use condoms), get paid, and run home to your pimp and hand the money over to him. Everybody wins.

I think this is sound advice, but it could be better, which is where the second (nerdier) part of the title of this post comes into play. What Dan’s advice is missing is a certain measure of protection against selective forgery attacks.

What I mean is that if I were to follow Dan’s advice to the letter there’s no way for me to be assured that the john who drives up to me and rolls down his (or her; women aren’t always relegated to the prostitute’s role in my fantasies!) window is the same john that my partner had selected for me ahead of time. Although this may be perfectly acceptable for some people, while the excitement of the fantasy would certainly be heart-pumpingly, penis-hardeningly awesome, without this added level of assurance obsessively detailed people like me would still feel an unacceptable twinge of apprehension.

Therefore, after reading Dan’s advice, I came up with a way to ascertain that the john who might (theoretically…) roll down his window in front of my slutty ass standing on the street corner was, in fact, the pre-selected person while still maintaining the fantasy’s mirage of anonymity. Since I’m an utter nerd, the inspiration of the solution came from the TCP computer networking protocol.

Here’s how the revised scenario would play out. For the purposes of this example, I’ll call my john, well, John, and we’ll assume that Eileen is my pimp (because that would be hot).

  1. After discussing this fantasy and building up the courage to actually follow through with it, Eileen would search for and pre-screen a john for me. She picks “John” and she tells me to go stand on a specific street corner at a specific date and time. She also tells me to expect a specific pick-up phrase, for instance, “Hey, pretty boy. How much for a fierce ride?” The phrase is specific enough so that it’s unlikely to be typical (but really, I have no idea what a typical line to pick up a prostitute would be). Finally, she also picks a specific amount of money that I should be whoring myself out for. (After all, she knows how much my ass is worth on the streets.)
  2. I wait at the appointed place at the appointed time (possibly wearing the appointed slutty outfit) and when John rolls his window down, I listen for the pre-scripted phrase. This step is analogous to the TCP SYN packet that computers send to initiate a connection. It’s useful because at this point I’d know whether or not this john is really my John.
  3. Assuming the phrase I hear is correct, even though I know who he is, he still doesn’t know if I’m his pre-selected ho for the night (though I suppose he could be given a picture ahead of time) so now he waits for me to respond with another, pre-scripted statement. Furthermore, this gives me the opportunity to bail if I needed to for whatever reason. If I decide not to bail, my pre-scripted response, maybe something like, “For you I could be $75. $50 if you only want my mouth,” is analogous to the SYN/ACK packet used to acknowledge a successful connection.
  4. At this point, everything is set up and we’re both reasonably confident things are going as planned, so one last pre-scripted response (“I’ve got $150, so I want all your holes, and more than once. Get in.”) from him could be used to signal the end of the pick-up precautions and start the scene, which is analogous to the final ACK in the TCP connection establishment phase.

In computing, this is known as a three-way handshake. Its purpose is to initiate a connection between two parties, and because there is a round-trip before a connection is formally established, it’s resistant to spoofing. That’s exactly the protection which is needed in any fantasy involving sex with so-called “strangers,” so it seems to me as though something like this, which could be thought of as an extension on the concept of safe-words, is just what the doctorpimp ordered.

Then, hopefully, this mysterious stranger, who would appreciate me in all my sexy nerdy glory, would proceed to treat me like the slut I am, and we’d go to a cheap motel and fuck like bunnies.

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Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Top Ten Tips for Long-Term Male Chastity Device Wear

Category labels: BDSM psychology, BDSM safety, BDSM techniques, Beginner BDSM, Chastity/Orgasm denial, D/s dynamics, Fetish, Male sexuality, Myths and misconceptions, Sexual teasing and control, Training/Conditioning

I’ve had a number of what I’d consider relatively long-term experiences with the CB-3000 (which I think is safe to say is the most popular male chastity device available today). I’ve been able to wear the chastity device for several weeks with no problems, almost 24/7. However, that success did not come easy (no pun intended) and annoyingly, very little if any of what I know now came from the page of (really pathetic) instructions shipped with the product itself.

So, since this is the sort of stuff I see asked time and time again on newsgroups and forums and the like dedicated to male chastity, I figured I’d share a top ten list of things I’ve learned. Lots of these things are probably not sexy, so if you came to read some erotica you’re probably looking for Tom Allen’s hawt chastity porn instead. (Or maybe “Real Ultimate Male Chastity”?) These aren’t in any particular order, though, they’re just noteworthy.

Also, of course, the standard caveats of Your Mileage May Vary apply. These are just things that work for me and are thus naturally untested on anyone else. (Though that lack of testing on anyone else is mostly only due to a lack of opportunity. Are there any volunteers who want to give enforced chastity a try with Eileen and I?). ;)

1. Cotton swabs (aka Q-Tips) are your friends

I’m a really, really big fan of cotton swabs for lots of reasons, and one of them is their usefulness for hygienic purposes during a long-term chastity belt lock up. It probably seems obvious once you’re told, but lots of folks don’t realize that getting locked in a chastity device is a lot like wearing a rubber glove non-stop. That can get pretty messy and—worse—unhealthy, if you’re not careful about hygiene, so it’s important to be able to keep yourself clean.

Cotton swabs are one of the two essential tools used to clean one’s genitals when they’re all locked up. The CB-3000 and most other male chastity devices have some kind of small air holes big enough to stick the cotton swab in, roll it around and rub off any dirt, sweat, and general ickyness that may have accumulated in the device over the course of the day. They’re also helpful as a follow-up to using toilet paper to wipe down any urine remaining after peeing that has seeped towards the sides of the device, which is hard to get to with just toilet paper alone.

Unlike what you may have heard elsewhere, it’s a good idea to keep your genitals as dry as possible without drying out your skin. One way to help do this is to use cotton swabs to dry off the inside of the device as much as possible after taking showers, swimming, or otherwise wetting the device (such as, say, dripping lots of precum during a sexy scene where you remained locked). This is because in such a small and confined area, stagnant moisture like that is your skin’s worst enemy. This holds doubly true for people with especially sensitive skin (such as yours truly).

On the flip side, you may find yourself getting dry skin on occasion, such as what might happen if you over-wash with harsh soap. In these cases, put a drop of your favorite moisturizing cream on the tip of the cotton swab and apply it to your genitals. At first it might be hard to maneuver the cotton swab to the right places, but you’ll soon learn how to roll and twist it just right—well, right for cleaning, anyway. (I could never get enough stimulation this way for any pleasurable sensations.)

One last cotton-swab-related tip is that they are great indicators of how well you are doing hygiene-wise. Take a whiff of the tip of the cotton swab after rolling it over your genitals and you’ll quickly be able to determine whether or not you need a thorough cleaning. This may sound gross, but seriously, how often is your nose right up in some genitals anyway?

2. Strategically placed baby oil helps scrotum soreness, particularly at night

The single most difficult part of wearing the CB-3000 for me (and I imagine this would be the case for most trapped-ball devices), is the soreness it causes on my scrotum when I get involuntary erections at night. It’s a catch-22 because the device is designed not to let me orgasm and so I get hornier, which causes more involuntary erections which causes more soreness. When it’s real bad my ball sack gets red and painful and it becomes difficult to sleep comfortably because every way I turn I feel it being stretched.

It took a while to figure this out, but I realized that one of the most effective solutions is simply to rub a bit of baby oil or other absorbent cream (NOT LUBE! An exception is a thicker, water-based lube such as Babelube; just a little bit works like baby oil but stays on the skin longer. Thinner lubes like Astroglide that contain glycerin are too sticky for my tastes.) on the sore areas. In fact, doing this before bed (and after a cleaning) can even help prevent the soreness throughout the night. It works by helping the so-called A-ring (the cock-ring portion of the trapped ball device) slide more easily away from the body. If you’ve sized the device correctly, the ring is still snug enough that your testicles won’t be able to slip through, but when they get stretched due to your nightly erections (and they will), the ring won’t scrape your scrotum.

Note that doing this for your penis by placing baby oil or other moisturizers inside the tube portion of the device is a very bad idea. See tip number 1, above, for why.

3. Hygiene is easiest with a nozzle and high water pressure

Along with the cotton swab thing, I find that the other absolutely essential tool for hygienic long-term chastity device wear is a squeeze bottle with a nozzle small enough to maneuver just inside the holes of the device. I found one in the form of a hair dye developer bottle and it works wonders, but a specialized shower head can also do the trick. What you’re after is a high-pressure stream of water that you can aim with precision.

I put a drop of moisturizing body wash in the squeeze bottle, fill it with lukewarm water (or cold water if I’m all hard right then), shake it up a bit, and then squeeze the water into the CB through its various holes. Lather, rinse, repeat a few times, then lather, rinse and repeat some more without the soap. This pushes water and soap all the way through the tube and underneath the ring, cleaning both it and me. Couple this with the cotton swab tip for a decidedly thorough clean.

This tip along with number 1 is how it’s possible to stay so clean for so long without ever removing the device. And, yeah, that’s kind of a frightening thought…. Aren’t you glad I told you?

4. Body wash or other moisturizing soap is better than lube for application

It’s kind of hilarious, but for chastity fetishists such as myself, it’s actually very difficult to put a chastity device of any kind on! Why? Well, most chastity devices for men require you to apply them when you’re flaccid and, if you get turned on by the idea of wearing a chastity device, it’s very unlikely that putting a chastity device on is going to be a situation in which you are flaccid. As a result, it’s surprisingly difficult to get the tube over my penis in order to get the CB-3000 on me sometimes. I’m sure other men (and probably some women) have had this experience as well.

For some crazy reason, the manufacturers of the CB-3000 ship instructions that says using lube helps this. Well, it certainly makes you a bit more slippery, but lube is not a good idea because it’s sticky and it’s hard to wash off. Furthermore, many lubes contain glycerine, which is basically sugar, which in turn is basically like inviting a yeast farm into your privates. Yuck! Instead of lube use regular soap; it’s just as slippery, it’ll clean you while you’re putting it on (see tips 1 and 3), and it’s cheaper than lube.

Also, the penis is surprisingly malleable. I don’t even bother trying to “git it all in” on first application anymore, especially if I’m semi-erect while getting the device locked on. Instead, I just get it locked and take a shower to clean myself up. By the next time I’m ready to take a shower, I’ll have gotten flaccid enough to finish adjusting myself however I need to.

5. Press on to smaller sized rings, spacers for both security and comfort

The other major hurdle you need to get past when you first begin wearing trapped ball chastity devices like the CB-3000 is proper sizing. You want to find a fit that is snug when flaccid, yet not too restrictive when erect, and that is comfortable all the time. Without going into the merits of the CB3k’s security, suffice it to say that smaller rings and smaller spacers are “better” than larger ones.

I think it makes the most sense to start out with the largest ring that you can easily fit your index finger under, and one of the larger spacers. Wear that combination for a while, and decrease the size of the spacer ’til you hit the smallest one. If this combination is still comfortable for you, revert to the next-smallest ring, and up the spacer’s width. Keep going in this fashion until you reach a point where you can still push your index finger under the ring but just barely, and are using the smallest spacer you can handle. You’ll know if you can’t because your testicles will feel cold, look blue, and lack blood shortly after putting on the CB. This is a sign that there is not enough space between the ring and the tube for your testicles’ blood vessels to keep flowing smoothly and it is a very bad thing.

It’s also worth noting that I think it’s actually the size of the spacer that is the biggest boon to the security of the device, since it’s the spacer that determines how “tightly” the device grips your testicles.

In any event, it turns out that smaller rings which are more snug are actually also better for your comfort. The simple fact is that the larger the plastic thing between your legs is, the harder it is to wear pants with a smooth outline, or just sit down comfortably! The smaller rings are also lighter, which pull on you less, and are also easier to find suitable underwear for. So whenever you can, go for the smaller ring.

In case you’re interested, I currently wear the size 3 ring with the second-smallest spacer that came in the pack, but am considering trying the next smallest ring size soon.

6. Swap the default lock for a rubber-coated one to avoid pinching

Another of the annoyances I have with the original product is that it ships with a pokey metal Master-branded lock. I mean, the thing has edges and corners that, yes, may look cool but when you’re all bulging out of the top air holes can really pinch you hard. More than a few times I’ve even gotten a small cut from twisting the wrong way and having one of the four corners of the master lock dig into the uncovered bit of my penis.

The solution to this is to go to your local department or hardware store and find a lock of equal size that is rubber-coated. These rubber-coated locks also often have curved edges, which is even more helpful. They cost on the order of 5 to 10 dollars depending on the make and model and are just as effective as the factory’s master lock, but they don’t hurt when they poke you.

7. Trim pubic hair short for increased comfort, but do not shave to hairlessness

There’s a lot of fantasy material out there that suggests you should shave yourself hairless before putting on a CB-3000. OMG NO! This is a terrible idea. First, you’re about to make it much, much more difficult to keep yourself clean, you’re going to cause potential irritation to your pubic area already, and now you want to compound that challenge by shaving all your pubic hair off?

A word to the wise: when your hair starts to grow back you will be very itchy, probably irritated, and unless your stint in the chastity belt will be for a grand total of two days, you are most certainly going to stay locked up longer than it will take your hair to grow back. Quite simply, do not do this. It is dumb.

That said, it’s a surprisingly good idea to trim your pubic hair so that it is short. The reason is so that you avoid situations in which a single hair or two or three get caught in the CB and pull on you. This is not a major problem since you can just yank them out, but it hurts and gets annoying when it happens too often. By trimming your pubic hair short you simply avoid this in the same way that cutting your hair short makes it harder for people to pull your hair (which may or may not be what you want, I guess…).

My longest pubes are approximately a centimeter in length right now, and that’s plenty short for fantasy play as well as CB comfort. The easiest way to do this is to use an electric razor with a guard (without wearing the CB, of course, though it can technically be done with it on, too) and simply trim that way. It’s fast, easy, and lots of folks consider it sexy. :)

8. Do not avoid hydrating, not even before bed

This is kind of related to tip number 2, because there’s this myth that it’s a good idea not to drink too much before you go to bed so as to avoid a possibly painful erection during the night. This is stupid. Why? Because it’s never a good idea to avoid hydrating your body. Your body needs water to survive, and peeing is a natural thing to do, even at night.

Further, I found that this doesn’t even work. Your body’s gonna want to go pee whether you drank water or not. It just might not pee as much. So instead of not drinking, I say drink all you want, as normal, and when you need to get up to go pee, go pee. If you’re having pain at night due to erections, it’s probably caused by soreness in your scrotum and you should take a look at tip number 2 to see how you can use something like baby oil to help ease that pain.

9. Tuck it in (like a drag queen) to keep your bulge from showing

Often times, people are frightened that the bulge from their chastity device is too noticeable under clothing. Obviously, one solution is to wear baggier clothes. This works, but is more like a work around than a solution, though it is a good one. Wearing a baggy swim suit, I’ve been able to go swimming at crowded beaches while all locked away without even getting a second glance. Nevertheless, I love wearing tight jeans, girl’s pants, and so forth, which are typically pretty form-fitting and thus not very CB-friendly.

Luckily, I can tuck my penis downwards and back between my legs to a certain degree and in many cases this helped reduce the bulge in my pants to nothing, depending on how severely I tucked. Drag queens are famous for doing this, but of course they (probably) don’t have unyielding metal and/or plastic between their legs to deal with. Since we do, things are a bit more difficult, but still possible.

Wearing the right kind of underwear can help you keep your chastity device-encased penis “tucked.” This is actually one reason why I wear certain kinds of thongs (sort of wide in front, thin in back) while locked up; they help press my penis to my body and avoid the bulge in my pants. The fact that they are also traditionally thought of as women’s underwear is kind of icing on the cake at that point. ;) Also, arguably even more effective than tight thongs are girls’ boyshorts panties.

10. Take it off if you’re not having at least a little bit of fun

This should go without saying, but it never does so I’m saying it. If wearing the chastity device becomes more trouble than it’s worth, take it off. This can happen for a variety of reasons, including sustaining an injury such as a patch of dry skin that needs healing, being unable to sleep due to pain or other problems, or even just because it’s not fun anymore.

There’s nothing wrong with taking a break for a while, and in fact I found it was necessary for me to adjust to wearing the CB long-term over a period of time, gradually building up the amount of time I would spend in the device over each round, as well as shortening how long I would spend out of it at the end of each round. It took no less time than a full month of trial and effort for me to be able to spend 5 full days in the CB, and it wasn’t for another three months that I could spend 10.

This was not easy, and you better believe there were lots of days when it came off during that period for one reason or another.

Finally, keep in mind that no chastity device is proven 100% effective 100% of the time. Staying chaste, not orgasming until your partner “permits” you to, is just as much up to you as it is up to them no matter what kind of chastity toys you’re wearing. Sure, your orgasm may not be quite as pleasurable if you orgasm while in chastity than while you’re released, but if you were determined enough you could probably do it. For me, it’s actually downright painful to come while in the CB, and it takes a ton of effort for a result that isn’t satisfactory at all, but it is a release of some kind, no matter how small.

In other words, chastity devices available today just aren’t denial devices, they’re deterrent devices, so it takes a bit of cooperation from you—the wearer—to maintain your abstinence. Rather than see this as a bad thing, realize that this means you can be just as denied without the device as you can with the device, and you and your keyholder can take that as license to remove the device if it’s not working out for some reason. There are a number of circumstances, mostly mental and emotional health reasons, where Eileen will remove the device from me and still tell me not to orgasm. This is hard for me, sometimes even harder than being locked up, but it’s still sexy and it’s still orgasm denial.

I guess my point is, find what works for you and go with it, even if that means what you go with for a day, a week, or entirely, is not a chastity device.

If you liked this, you may also like Kink On Tap’s T&D episodes 6 and 7.

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Thursday, January 10, 2008

Why Orgasm Logger? Well, why not?

Category labels: BDSM in the media, BDSM psychology, BDSM techniques, Chastity/Orgasm denial, Communication, D/s dynamics, Humor, Myths and misconceptions, Orgasm Logger, Personal history, Politics of sex, Sex, Sexual teasing and control, Technology

This is majorly cool: Viviane linked Orgasm Logger in her Links for January 4th, 2008 post and it’s since been picked up by Boinkology, and a few higher-profile bloggers are beginning to display Orgasm Logger counters on their sites, too, like Tom Paine. A few months ago, a search for “Orgasm Logger” revealed only a handful of hits but now Google shows over 1,300 results, which is quite a bit for a project I put a single night’s effort into months ago primarily for my own, personal use.

I’ve also been seeing discussions about Orgasm Logger surface on message boards and other blogs every so often. It’s a lot of fun to read through the discussions people are having and to see what they’re saying about it. Here are some telling examples.

This woman, on an Informed Consent discussion thread, says:

Having orgasms isn’t a competitive activity, it’s just something that happens, or doesn’t and it certainly shouldn’t be used as a measure of anything. In my opinion.

I have to say I agree with her regarding her view on the usefulness of orgasms as a competitive measure, but I disagree that it shouldn’t be used as a measure of something. Measure of what is the question. Well, I think that’s up to the person doing the measuring.

I never think of orgasms as competitive, just a lot of fun. They’re fun to have, and they’re fun for some of us not to have, and the fact that some of us are having more than others is also a lot of fun for some of us. I don’t think there’s anything in this world that turns me on more reliably and so thoroughly as watching my lover have a screaming-good orgasm. For me, when she has ten or twenty, or maybe even a hundred and I haven’t had one, that’s an even sexier thought. I like the disparity in the numbers, but I don’t feel competitive about it.

Naturally, kinky people into chastity play and orgasm control see the value of this tool really quickly. Later in the same thread, another woman writes:

I think the ‘logging’ idea would be a nice little extra feature for those who do chastity play.

And then another guy echoes her sentiment:

I can imagine it might be of use if a man were in a sort of chastity arrangement without a device i.e. based on trust, and monitored by a domme at a remote location.

Curvaceous Dee is (fittingly) ahead of the curve by already having experienced first-hand the intent of Orgasm Logger:

It was a great relief to finally come again. The very useful Orgasm Logger has confirmed to me over the past few months what I’d suspected for a while—that I like to get off every couple of days. Doesn’t matter too much whether it’s self-pleasure or pleasure with partners (both have their moments), but, almost like clockwork, every two days on average will see me gushing, groaning, and generally feeling great. Which explains why I’m always running out of ‘bedroom towels’….

Indeed, as she points out, keeping track of stuff let’s you know more about that stuff.

Here’s another blogger’s comment, one I really love:

I clicked, and found out this guy had his last [orgasm] 3.58 days ago, and this is a feed from an actual Orgasm Logger site! What an add-on to one’s blog! The ultimate in advance orgasm management strategy systems!

The ultimate in advanced orgasm management strategy systems? I think this blogger coined a new acronym: OMSS! Naturally, I can think of dozens of improvements to Orgasm Logger so I’m not going to be calling this thing “the ultimate” any time soon.

Of course, Lux of Boinkology said it best:

We’re both fascinated and confused by this application

In fact, that’s been the most common reaction, and it’s really interesting to me. Long before I created Orgasm Logger, I’d just been naturally keeping a tally on my orgasms. It seems to me like most everyone does this, if only not as mindfully as I do. Of course, what made me mindful about keeping track of my orgasms in the first place was my near-fetish for orgasm control, in a sexually submissive headspace.

I got really serious about keeping track of my orgasms about two years or so before I created Orgasm Logger. At first, I simply wrote down when my last one was, so I’d always know. Then I wanted to be able to easily share that piece of information with Eileen, so she’d be able to know whenever it interested her. To make that happen, I started recording my orgasms as events on my personal calendar, publishing those events as an iCalendar to a local WebDAV server I run for the two of us here at home, and then subscribed her iCal to the calendar feed I was publishing.

It worked flawlessly. Now I had a real database of all my recorded orgasms with embedded date and time, location, and participant information! It was pretty much all I needed. But it wasn’t perfect.

It didn’t do the things I was most interested in, which was tell me at-a-glance how long it had been since my last orgasm, the most personally interesting datum. I had to do that calculation every time I wanted to know. What’s today’s date? When was the date of my last orgasm? What’s the difference between then and now?

Obviously, computers are the answer to computational problems, so I started thinking about how I could get the computer to do everything I wanted. In the process, it occurred to me that lots of people heavily into orgasm control are always talking about “how long it’s been” or “what their last one was like.”

Hell, people who aren’t even kinky are talking about their orgasms left and right, up and down, inside and out, this ways and that ways! Moreover, the entire political debate over contraception, abortion, teen pregnancies, abstinence-only sex education, and a host of other issues, are all centered around exactly this topic: orgasms!

None of this would even be happening if it weren’t for orgasms, but I’ve yet to hear someone acknowledge that simple fact. It’s as though, if you were an alien, you’d think orgasms were what made the world go ’round, but nobody was allowed to talk about them directly.

Which brings me to my point. Orgasms are really important for a lot of people. What’s interesting, then, is why it’s so puzzling to so many people that I’ve made a tool to help people keep track of them. After all, throughout history, the one thing people have continued to do with nearly no change in behavior at all is come up with ways to keep track of the stuff that’s important to them.

No value judgement, no assumptions, just an awareness of what’s important to people and the benefits that can be garnered from using increasingly sophisticated tools to broaden that awareness. That’s what Orgasm Logger is about, for me. That’s what I think everything should be about, on a philosophical level.

No one would have looked at me askance if I wrote improvements to banking software, because money is very important to a lot of people. That’s why it’s tracked so rigorously. That’s why it’s used as a competitive measure of status, of wealth, and of many other things, even though a lot of us think that it shouldn’t be.

Why, then, do orgasms seem so out of place? Maybe the answer to that question is also the answer to a lot of other things that we as a country, a culture, and a species, are struggling with. Maybe understanding value, understanding why the things that are important to us are important, things that are currently so deeply ingrained in the cultural tropes of our society that we don’t even realize we can question, will help us in ways we can’t even imagine today.

That’s what I’m puzzling over.

Update: News of the existence of Orgasm Logger is still spreading, and it’s still getting the typical, puzzled and, in some cases, even hostile reactions I can pretty much expect from the mainstream world-at-large. Latest sighting was at a site called Dear Sugar.

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Wednesday, November 7, 2007

On kinky competence (epilogue)

Category labels: BDSM psychology, BDSM safety, BDSM techniques, Emotions

My prior post, On kinky competence, generated a few really good replies in the comments, and across the blogosphere. Perhaps even more are yet to appear.

One short piece in particular by Dev so perfectly represented most of the reactions to my post that as I began writing a comment to her I realized it might be better served as a pseudo-comment, or (since it’s so long) an epilogue if you will, to my own post.

Dev states that she feels intimidated by me, or more probably by my attitude towards others. (I haven’t found others who know me in person to be intimidated by me, only by my reputation or the expressions of my way of thinking, such as my writing.) As a result, she says she’d never try to play with me because she feels as though I would judge her to be too incompetent to be interesting, or attractive.

I’d never try to play with him. He intimidates the crap out of me[…]. I’m not super confident and I can’t even play at dominating someone who makes me feel the way May does. […] I have no particular bdsm skills.

Of course, I know I give off an air of potentially arrogant intimidation. I assure you, it is very deliberate. I do it because it’s useful in a couple of ways. First, it’s very expressive. It’s obvious to everyone what I think because I make no bones about thinking or saying it. This saves a lot of time. If only I could learn to be this direct in all my communications, but alas, I am actually rather shy sometimes. (Also, in person, I wiggle a lot more. :)

Second, it can act as a sort of pre-screening process, which again saves time. People who would not feel comfortable playing with me don’t bother to ask. This is not a bad thing. If I want to play with them, however, I (thankfully) have gotten into the habit of asking. (I only wish I got into the habit of asking even sooner than I did.) There are no losses in this situation that I care about too deeply.

In the same vein, people who don’t agree with me about these things are probably not people I want to play with anyway, so the fact that all the cards are shown make compatibility errors a lot less likely. This is basically an instance of Eileen’s negotiation tactics in reverse. The fact that the two of us approached this getting-to-know-you phase in symbiotic ways certainly helped speed our familiarity with one another.

However, I think Dev (and those like her) are more competent than she thinks I think she is. Here’s why:

I have some crazy levels of emotional competence

Most people don’t even have a concrete emotional awareness, so having crazy levels of emotional competence is leaps and bounds ahead of most people already. I also find that emotional competencies are a fundamental ingredient for many other kinds of competence. So, if you care about emotional competencies—which I obviously do—this is a big one, though I’ll admit it’s not actually on everybody’s radar.

Emotional competencies are not a direct subject of this blog post, but they are a fascinating subject in their own right, whether or not you relate to them in a kinky or sexual context. Learning more about emotional competency and, to use the academic term, emotional intelligence, is something I’d recommend to everyone. This is one of those topics that is application-agnostic. What you learn about emotional intelligence in the context of, say, the office, is entirely relevant to the bedroom, and vice versa.

One of the most telling things Dev says is this:

I consider it always my responsibility to play safely, but I also appreciate my partner’s watchfulness in a scene.

Responsibility is an expression of emotional competence, and if Dev is actually playing responsibly every time she plays (and from her writings I believe she does), then she is in fact emotionally competent. Furthermore, an inherent part of being responsible is acknowledging that you are not always going to be able to control every variable in the scene, that things will go wrong sometimes. Appreciating your partner’s watchfulness and responding appropriately is a key example of that, which many incompetent tops and inexperienced newbies don’t do properly.

Again, this blog post isn’t a discussion of BDSM safety 101 (there are tons of great resources for that online, such as those behind the links on my sidebar) so I won’t go into safewords, safegestures, and the like here. What I’m trying to point out is that good tops prepare for the unexpected and take responsibility for the situation when the unexpected occurs.

In conversation a while ago with Eileen about this subject, I remarked that I liked the fact that the way she plays is sometimes incredibly childlike. With little prior understanding of a thing, she will poke at it anyway, she will experiment, and sometimes she will fuck up and the scene will take a turn for the worse. When this happens, however, she pulls it (and me) together, and we regroup in a new emotional (and sometimes even physical) space. She’s not afraid to take risks, and neither am I.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the physical skill of throwing a whip, for instance, and everything to do with the emotional competencies necessary for responsibility. Like a child, she explores with wonder and fun and the faith that everything will be all right regardless of what she does, and like an adult, she cleans up after herself. To really play with her, I have to be willing and able to do the same. Again, competence is not a one-way street.

Regarding BDSM-specific skills, Dev says this:

In a scene, I think I am decent with touch and tone of voice and things like that. Physically, no – I have no particular bdsm skills.

Using touch and tone of voice and things like that is certainly what I consider to be under the umbrella of BDSM skills. BDSM is, as a simplistic definition, a superset of sex, so I think most skills that can be sex skills are also BDSM skills.

Most people frankly aren’t that competent at sex. Since so many people are so different in so many subtle and not-so-subtle ways, it’s actually quite difficult to be really competent at sex in general when most of your understanding of sex revolves around things like how to suck and how to fuck. Instead of focusing on the mechanics of sex and other factors that change from person to person, smart (or intuitive) people focus on skills that are universally relevent to making sex better. These are (perhaps counter-intuitively) mostly skills that relate to oneself, such as confidence, attitude, and an ability to adapt.

This is why the sexiest people you meet are always the ones with the air of self-assured seduction. Convince yourself that you are sexy and, by golly, most people will actually agree with you. Act, look, and talk that way, and I don’t think anyone will find reasons to disagree. They probably won’t even be looking for reasons in the first place.

Also, it’s really easy to be “good enough” at sex. “Good enough” is certainly a level of competence and it’s likewise really easy to be “good enough” at BDSM sex. I’ve played with and had sex with people who I’d consider “good enough.” It wasn’t spectacular, but it was certainly good enough, even for the competence snob that I am. There’s really nothing wrong with something that’s only satisficing, instead of something that’s very satisfying. In vanilla terms, this is usually a “quickie,” and kinky people do that, too.

As a final point on sex skills, just so it’s on the record, I don’t think most people I know—including myself until very recently—actually know how to use their tone of voice as a tool to enhance sex or a scene. It’s actually quite a tricky thing. It requires quite a bit of skill and situational awareness to use consciously, and a lack of self-consciousness to use unconsciously, so “good enough” is actually not that low on the bell-curve, I think.

Most of my toys don’t require much skill to be safe. I pay attention to safety. (I pay a lot of attention just in general.)

Many people who are incompetent betray that fact specifically by playing with toys and in ways that they should not for safety reasons. (I have seen so many people use a flogger while not even looking at the person’s back they are flogging. For fuck’s sake, look where you’re aiming! You seem to be able to do that when you pee, why not when you flog?) That’s actually the classic earmark of a clearly incompetent top.

Furthermore, when incompetent people try to learn things they do so in thoughtless or unsafe ways, whereas competent people tend to learn skills from people they already know to be competent and continue to play with such things only under the watchful eye of their teachers until both them and their teacher feels that they can safely do it alone.

In other words, if you’re doing what Dev is saying that she is doing, then you’re competent insofar as your own training is concerned. For obvious reasons, being a competent learner is one of the competencies I consider to be most important.

This brings into the spotlight another distinction I feel compelled to make. That distinction is the one between incompetent partners, as I’ve described before (briefly: someone who does not have or show the required skills to do something successfully and thus does not perform successfully), and unskilled partners, who may become competent but aren’t yet. Via an optimistic eye, all people could be said to be merely unskilled, not incompetent, but that is not very helpful. Instead, the word unskilled connotes merely a lack of some special skill without further implication that they are thus not executing this skill successfully.

I don’t really have much of an issue with unskilled tops as long as they are competent enough learners in general to become skilled. I’ve let more than a handful of people learn things like singletails and piercings on my flesh, possibly the two most “edgy” things by some people’s standards that I do often. I’ll admit these scenes were not as exciting for me as the scenes in which I play with one of the other more skilled tops or tops with whom I am emotionally invested, but then again, excitement was not necessarily the goal for the scene.

Finally, Dev notes:

I am honest about my level of experience.

Obviously, honesty is critical. Honesty is in a way the underpinnings of all of competence. So naturally, I am just as honest about my standards of competence as I am about my level of experience.

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Tuesday, November 6, 2007

On kinky competence

Category labels: BDSM psychology, BDSM safety, BDSM techniques, Bondage, D/s dynamics, Emotions, Myths and misconceptions, Stupid dominants, Stupid submissives

With a little observation, the very first thing you will notice about kink in the public communities these days is that it’s all about what you can do or have done to you. It’s about skills, abilities, and stamina. It’s a sport when played in public. And, just like sports, there are winners and there are losers.

How do you win at the sport of kink? What do you have to do to get the prizes? Your two options are very straightforward: become very competent at the requisite skills, or make people think you are very competent at these skills. They both work, even though I think one is abhorrent.

In point of fact, there’s very little I think is wrong about the necessity of competence. Competence is a good thing. It is so necessary a thing, in fact, that it’s probably the main reason why I have so relatively few play partners—more common a reason than the supposed Femdom Demographic Issue or submissive-male-phobia, for instance. I judge most of the people I meet to be incompetent, and I have very little interest in playing with people who don’t prove their skills to me.

I’m a competence snob, but I think I should be. I think everyone should be, and it should be (at least partly) obvious why: I don’t want to be harmed, physically, legally, or emotionally—regardless of whether I am bottoming or topping. I think of myself as too important to me to risk my well-being in acts of recklessness or irresponsibility even as I strongly desire to be hurt and to suffer. I feel as though this is obvious; I would need but to hold up a mirror to you to show you why such an attitude might be important.

I wish competence were recognized by people as being one of the most important factors in choosing a partner for a scene, or for a relationship. (They recognize the importance when choosing a doctor, yet when it comes to sex and education otherwise smart people behave in very dumb ways.) It’s clear that being competent makes you attractive because it gives you some value that you can provide to your partners. However, it’s also clear that most people are constantly fumbling about trying to discern what this value they are seeking actually is. They don’t know what it looks like or how to find it. I don’t think most of them are even aware of their own search for it in the first place (at least not concretely).

Classes and workshops present so thin a slice of the big picture with such frequent repetition that after attending them for a while you may quickly assume you have seen all there is to see. A Martian (or a naive young newbie) using such resources to learn about BDSM might assume all there is to kinky sex is ropes, chains, whips, and sharp objects, with the occasional actual sex act thrown into the mix. In such an atmosphere, it’s no wonder that the skills deemed most necessary to win this sport are those such as how accurately you throw your singletail whip, how securely and prettily you can tie a bottom up in ropes, or how much attention you pay to the safety best practices during a needle-play scene.

Yet not everyone attends classes and workshops. Those who don’t typically engage in kinky sex blissfully unaware of their own ignorance. Few “bedroom kinky” people I have heard of have ever shown a concerted effort to pick up an anatomy book with a mind towards safer rougher sex—though it’s obvious, even to them, why they might want to consider it. These are the kinds of people I have never found attractive. They never take the time to analyze their own successes or their failures, and consequently sentence themselves to lives of mediocre experiences at best or, more commonly, continuous bewildered failure.

I am very specific about what I consider to be factors of competence, and about how I value these various things. I am also utterly ruthless in my appraisal of the things I see. I have a similar reaction to badly executed rope bondage as I do to bad web sites. It thus behooves me to say that I find consistently executed safety best practices, exceptionally functional and simultaneously aesthetically pleasing rope-work, and accurately administered whippings all to be valid and useful earmarks of competence, and I use such criteria as part of a standard barometer for a certain kind of competence all the time.

Similarly, it also behooves me to make explicit mention of the fact that it is one thing to preach these things and quite another to practice them. I find nothing impressive about intentions alone; intentions can not be competent.

It is for that reason why I have never been interested in listening to such sermons as the proper disposal of bloodied needles given by people who keep no sharps container in sight when they play. They are only proving themselves charlatans to me, because I know how to spot such a fraud. If I did not know how to do this, as was the case for me and for everyone else at one point in life, then I have always been better served by withholding final judgement as well as trust until I became better educated in the skill and the person both.

In other words, to trust without knowing shows me your ineptness. That’s one way I evaluate the competency of other bottoms. Incompetent bottoms act before they think; little wonder so many of them end up in situations they later regret.

It bugs me, viscerally, when I see people who are clearly not skilled (or not any more skilled than an average fellow is, anyway) being misrepresented or, worse, misrepresenting themselves as having a level of competence that they clearly do not have. What bugs me most of all, however, is that this sort of false aggrandizement is something that is accepted, unquestioningly, when dominants do it (by either dominant female asshats or dominant male assholes) and is allowed to proceed unabated, but is instantly recognized and rightfully shot down when submissive people do the same.

I know of more than a handful of male tops who have a quite sizable number of (typically young, usually naive, almost always seriously troubled) groupies for reasons I can not even begin to fathom. These men are almost always significantly older than their groupies, and though not necessarily ill-intentioned or malicious, they are so unremarkable to me that I would blithely ignore their existence for the most part. They have no great skills as far as I can tell, they are not strikingly physically attractive, they speak of no rare or enthralling things, and I can find no particular intelligence, empathic ability, or other quality that makes them deserving of such long-lasting attention.

What seems most unusual to me is that, had these people not been dominants or tops, everyone else would and does think of these people the way I just described that I do. The submissive or bottom men—the older, not necessarily ill-intentioned or malicious, remarkably unremarkable men—are blithely ignored, by pretty much everyone. I imagine, with no experiencial evidence, that the same is true for women in complimentary roles, though finding evidence one way or another would certainly prove additionally enlightening.

I can’t help but find this odd, and my theories as to why this is so center around my observations of the simplistic notion most people have about competence. Most bluntly, that competence is something to be admired without analysis, that it’s something only tops have, and that it can be displayed merely with intention. How ignorant, and dangerous, I find this to be.

Competency is gained through experience, practice, and questioning. It’s something that’s acquired not through some spontaneous or uncontrollable happenstance of luck and fate but by very deliberate efforts. In other words, you have to care about having it, or you won’t.

In this entire discussion I have tried to refrain from using examples or language that were orientation-specific. That’s because competence is not a one-way street. I have seen just as many, if not more, incompetent bottoms as I have seen incompetent tops. This is possibly because as a bottom it’s far easier to get away with being woefully incompetent at just about everything you do than it is for a top. Alternately, perhaps this is because of the unfortunate misconception that bottoming is inherently a passive act and that the entirety of a valid kinky encounter involves a purely active top and a purely receptive bottom.

In some competencies, this makes obvious sense. When you’re on the tail end of the whip as opposed to the handle, you don’t need the dexterity to be able to throw the whip perfectly. But you do need to understand what is happening. You should know how to breathe, how to move, how to scream (if it’s good), and how to communicate what you need, if you need something. Your top is not a mindreader. (And they probably like the screaming.)

The point is clear: competence in bottoms is just as attractive as it is in tops, and vice versa. Competence is sexy. What does a competent bottom look like? I think competent bottoms are self-reliant, emotionally hardy individuals who have a discerning eye, and have the presence of mind to act responsibly—to be willing to get things wrong and make things right again—and to act with empathy and generosity towards their partners. In other words, the same exact qualities that competent tops share. Try that on for size.

Thanks to the wonderful comments, I’ve since expanded on this quite a bit in an epilogue to this post.

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Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Kink on Tap 7: Tom Allen

Category labels: BDSM techniques, Beginner BDSM, Chastity/Orgasm denial, D/s dynamics, Emotions, Femdom, Kink on Tap, Relationship, Sex, Sex toys, Sexual teasing and control, Training/Conditioning, Vanilla life

This Kink on Tap is kind of an extended addendum to our previous episode where we talk about and introduce the topic of sexual teasing and denial and chastity play. If you haven’t listened to that episode already, I strongly urge you to do so.

The best part, however, is that Tom Allen from the Edge of Vanilla joined Eileen and I to talk about his personal experiences. Of course, the advantage of having someone on the phone is that you can ask personal qusetions and get immediate, personal responses.

There’s no shortage of that in this converastion, where Tom shares a lot about his own reasons for enjoying chastity, the way in which this kind of sexual power play developed in the relationship with his (very blessed) wife, and of course why this kink in particular is often thought of as being very “vanilla.” I couldn’t help but share some of my own opinions and experiences as well, and Eileen does the same.

Lest you think that Tom’s always this cerebral, however, don’t forget about his super-hot chastity porn. My own fantasies tend to drift towards slightly more painful tastes, but that doesn’t stop me from being the first to admit that I’ve sprung more than my fair share of hard-ons looking at Tom’s stuff.

As always, I hope you enjoy this episode of Kink on Tap and invite your feedback of any kind (though especially regarding audio engineering) either as comments here or by emailing kinkontap+feedback@gmail.com. Have something you want to hear talked about or a story you want to share? Write to me at kinkontap+viewermail@gmail.com (and don’t question why it’s called viewer mail, ‘cuz I wouldn’t know what to tell you).

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Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Kink on Tap 6: Sexual Teasing and Denial

Category labels: BDSM psychology, BDSM safety, BDSM techniques, Beginner BDSM, Chastity/Orgasm denial, D/s dynamics, Emotions, Femdom, Fetish, Kink on Tap, Personal experience, Sexual teasing and control

In lieu of the fast-approaching Floating World convention, rather than do a Kink on Tap roundtable as I’m (trying) to do regularly, I thought this time I’d share some of the fun around for those of you unlucky enough not to be able to attend. SaraEileen and I are doing several presentations at the event, one of which is all about chastity play, orgasm control, and sexual teasing and denial.

We got the chance to go through much of our old notes on the topic (we’ve done similar presentations elsewhere before), update a few things, add some bits here and there, and thought we’d share a large part of the presentation with you in podcast form. So, if you’re not going to be able to make Floating World, you’ll at least still get the majority of the experience of at least this one class of our’s.

I hope you enjoy the episode and, as usual, feel free to write me about it by emailing kinkontap+feedback@gmail.com.

Here are the list of resources and links I had compiled. By no means is this complete. And of course, Google is your friend.

  • Erotic sexual denial – Wikipedia
  • Chastity-UK – A British web site on the topic of chastity play that includes articles, user-submitted content, galleries, several very helpful FAQs geared to introducing and employing chastity in the context of relationships (of every sort), and more.
  • Lady-Jester – A site dedicated to contributions from wearers of the CB-2000, CB-3000, The Curve, and other male chastity devices and their female keyholders.
  • OrgasmDenial.com – A large web portal dedicated to orgasm denial, obviously, and filled mostly with submissive men and dominant women.
  • Chas’ Sweet Chastity – Dedicated to female chastity under male dominance and also to male-to-female transvestitism while incorporating male chastity devices. This web site is also home to the infamous (and fictional) “Chasti-Permalock Corporation,” a webiverse of chastity stories about devices implemented with nanotechnology.
  • Chastity Yahoo Group – A huge and always growing collection of individuals who discuss various topics related to chastity and teasing and denial.
  • Prostate Information and Milking
  • Altarboy’s Chastity Belt Web Site — has a section devoted to erotica, and a subsection within that devoted to female wearer/female keyholder stories, as discussed in the podcast.
  • Tantalism — this is an all inclusive community, though most participants discuss female denial.
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Friday, August 10, 2007

The first blowjob I’ve ever bottomed to

Category labels: BDSM psychology, BDSM techniques, Blowjobs, Chastity/Orgasm denial, D/s dynamics, Femdom, Personal experience, Politics of sex, Relationship, Sex, Sexual teasing and control

This morning a friend asked me to give her an image that turns me on, followed by an image that is iconic of a “top” or a “domme” and then to determine whether the answers to those two questions share any key visual elements. Yes, this friend’s really smart, by the way.

In response, I told her that the first thing that popped into my mind of an image that turns me on was Eileen‘s lips and tongue during the blowjob she unexpectedly gave me last night, but that’s only because I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it for the past twelve hours or so. In fact, if my friend had asked me for an image that turns me on another day, I probably wouldn’t have said blowjobs at all.

The last significant mouth-on-penis action I’ve received hasn’t been for more than two and a half years. Before that I wasn’t even that excited about blowjobs. Handjobs always felt better to me anyway, so I wasn’t very interested in getting them, though I don’t think I ever turned down the opportunity. All my partners were far more skilled with their hands than their mouths anyway but more interestingly—and more to the point—I liked handjobs more because it was easier to bottom to them.

Few men can deny the fact that having someone else’s hands around your genitals can be a vulnerable position. Of course, it isn’t always intended that way (unless you’re me, in which case it probably is) but our culture is saturated with images and stories of men’s genitals being vulnerable in the hands of women. It’s even in our slang: “She has got me by the balls” means that I am well and truly dominated by her control of the situation. I’m not sure why this is supposed to be a bad thing (</sarcasm>), but it is.

Contrast this with any imagery of blowjobs displayed by popular culture and the exact reverse is true. For some reason, people seem to think that putting your penis in someone else’s mouth gives you some kind of control over the situation and makes the person whose mouth is around your genitals submissive. This has always been somewhat baffling to me, because it is far easier to hurt my penis with your teeth than it is to hurt it with your hands. Is my penis somehow more vulnerable to teeth than a so-called “Alpha Male”‘s is? I’d love to know if it is, as I’ve unfortunately had no experience putting real live penises in my mouth.

(As an aside: if you want me to feel submissive while you make me go down on your cock then you should use something along the lines of a ring gag (NSFW) while you do it. Not that there aren’t other ways to make fellatio into a submissive act—you could close my nose so I have trouble breathing, or hold a knife at my neck, or you could just whisper in my ear that you know how badly I want to drown the back of my throat in ejaculate, but the point is that it’s all about how you do what you’re doing.)

I think blowjobs are so riddled with unnecessary connotations of submission that whenever my previous partners went down on me they were, in effect, submitting. (As another aside, these particular past partners were for the most part submissive women, which I’m sure had something to do with it. Why my dating history has a 3-to-1 ratio of submissive women to dominant women is, however, another frustrating post entirely.) While I enjoy sexual stimulation from a talented mouth as much as the next man, girls who go down on me with a disposition that is solely intended to please are just not as sexy as the ones who do it with a mind for taking control of me.

There are two times in life when people will show you their true emotions. The first is during a round of poker. The second is during sex.

It should probably be obvious, but maybe it’s not: submissive men like assertive blowjobs, not amiable ones. In fact, in case one thing doesn’t lead you to the other, submissive men like assertiveness and control in general. We like assertive handjobs and masturbation, fucking (of many varieties), kissing, and pussy-licking. In other words, we enjoy all the very same sexual acts anyone else does, but what we enjoy most about them is the assertiveness and control of our dominant partners.

So when Eileen took hold of my wrist and placed it behind my back as she enveloped my penis with her throat, I nearly shuddered from the hotness. There was the key visual element that combined one of the sexiest things I have ever seen with my iconic image of female dominance: assertive and control, wanting me and taking me. She took me, this time, with her mouth.

She licked my cock from base to head and from head to base, not in worship to me but in her own indulgence. Whereas before I was used to blowjobs being a rather piston-like up and down motion or a stationary sucking sensation (penises aren’t straws, by the way), Eileen’s mouth slowly travelled all over my shaft. When she combined a powerful suction on my penis’ corona with vertical strokes from her tongue I had to say it out loud: “I’m going to orgasm if you keep doing that.” And in response, she eased up just enough to make it possible for me not to come.

In response to my friend’s second question asking for an iconic image of a “top” or “domme,” I responded that to come up with one is actually pretty difficult. After all, there are so many different looks that I associate with dominance. Does the so-called iconic female dominant have long hair or short hair? Is she dressed in tight clothing or is she lounging in bathrobes? It can all be hot.

So my answer was that an image iconic of a female top or domme for me, at that moment when she asked, was a tall woman wearing jeans that shows off her ass nicely and some kind of tank-top-like shirt, probably black. It’s comfortable yet sexy—sexy because she’s comfortable. And in my fantasies, she’s holding something, like a knife in her right hand and a coiled rope in her left, not to be too specific about it. (I realized later that I was actually just describing Eileen in one of her more playful moods, but that’s besides the point right now.)

Clearly I have a thing for the outdoorsy look, but what I really have a thing for is the confident type. This should be no secret (and if it is, I pity you and would like to invite you to listen especially close right now), but confidence is always sexy. Always. It’s sexy to me when you look into my eye and feel confident enough to know you can make me hard just by licking your lips.

Confidence is about being sexy, regardless of orientation or activity. Assertiveness and control is about taking that confidence and applying it to a particular sexual power dynamic. Like, you know, leaving me literally laughing on our bed from desperate arousal after giving me the most dominant blowjob I’ve ever felt and then smiling as you tell me there’s not a chance you’ll let me orgasm tonight.

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