Monday, February 8, 2010

On Dichotomies that (No Longer) Jail Me – KinkForAll Providence

Category labels: BDSM psychology, Communication, D/s dynamics, Kink events, Male sexuality, Masculinity, Myths and misconceptions, Personal experience, Politics of sex, Vanilla life

This past Saturday, KinkForAll Providence was hosted at Brown University and sponsored by the Sexual Health Education and Empowerment Council (SHEEC), chaired by undergraduate student Aida Manduley. I had an awesome time. The unconference sparked fantastically interesting and very important conversations, including discussions about the approach different cultures have to sex and sexuality (notably traditional Mexican and Puerto Rican culture), how people with otherwise “alternative” views can fit into and become personally empowered within a larger mainstream that they are often swimming against, and many more things.

Best of all, these conversations didn’t just stay within the four walls of our venue among the participants who attended physically, but it also reached out across the Internet thanks to the KinkForAll Providence live video stream, Twitter conversations, and KFAPVD liveblogs. I think the event’s use of the Internet was truly remarkable this time, because we were able to literally invite anyone in the world to literally watch and see and participate in the discussions that we were having, even if they were unable to be physically present, and even if not everyone agreed with what was being said all the time. Most importantly, as I said in my presentation, since we were able to inspire conversation, everyone stayed within the realm of constructive discourse, and that means we were able to create knowledge, even while individuals may have disagreed on some points.

Below is a video of my presentation. As usual, my presentation is “open source” and Creative Commons licensed. Feel free to download it, use it yourself, or share it with anyone you think might find it valuable. If you do, I would greatly appreciate a link back to this page.

On Dichotomies that (No Longer) Jail Me – KinkForAll Providence from maymay on Vimeo.

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I am deeply grateful to Emma for helping me with this presentation and also for taking a leading role in unorganizing KinkForAll Providence (so I didn’t actually do so much this time—and I think that’s great!). Similarly, I’m also grateful to Aida Manduley for getting this event sponsored by SHEEC and for being the primary unorganizer for venue-related issues. There were some, but she handled them beautifully and deserves more praise for more reasons than many of you know. Their persistence, professionalism, thoroughness, and ardent support of sexual freedom, freedom of speech, and students’ rights were what made this event possible, even in the face of some very harsh and alarmist criticism.

With that thanks in mind, here’s the entirety of the presentation I gave at KinkForAll Providence as a text transcript:

First of all, let me just say that this is amazing. Look at all of us here at the fifth KinkForAll unconference in the first year of KinkForAll unconferences! KinkForAll Providence is now the 5th KinkForAll event being held in the 1-year history of the event’s conception. That’s one KinkForAll, in 4 different cities so far, about every 2 months or so for a whole year! Wow!

This event is thanks in large part to the amazing work of two women: Emma Gross, and Aida Manduley, who’s Chair of the Sexual Health Education and Empowerment Council here at Brown University. They’re responsible for getting us this space and so much more. Let’s give them a huge hand! (APPLAUSE) I like that name: Sexual Health Education and Empowerment Council. Health, education, and empowerment.

I like that name because I think we are actually taught, from a very young age, to see the world in dichotomies, a set of things that are exclusive from an opposing set of things. Dichotomies are necessarily polarizing and, if you’re not careful, they can be paralyzing. Indeed, dichotomies can be DISempowering.

Self-empowerment relies upon our ability to recognize existing dichotomies so that we can utilize them and, if necessary, so that we can break out of them. As Stephen R. Covey, author of the best-selling “7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” reminds us:

Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.

Dichotomies are genuinely useful, even necessary. We use them all the time to make sense of the world around us. In fact, dichotomies themselves conveniently come in two mutually exclusive varieties! These are: true dichotomies, and false dichotomies.

Unfortunately, many of the dichotomies that contemporary culture teaches us are one kind are actually the other! Specifically, many dichotomies that you might’ve thought were true are actually false! According to Wiktionary, the Wikipedia-like dictionary, a false dichotomy, just so that we’re all on the same page, is:

A situation in which two alternative points of views are presented as the only options, whereas others are available.

How many of the dichotomies that hegemonic culture says are “true” do you think are actually false? I think the answer might surprise you, and that’s what I’m hoping to do in this presentation: I want to help you recognize these dichotomies. In fact, that’s what the entire founding concept behind KinkForAll is about!

KinkForAll’s tag line is:

A serendipitous, ad-hoc unconference about the intersection of sexuality with the rest of life.

This idea, that sexuality can intersect with all the other things in our lives, seems to be something that a lot of people are really uncomfortable with. Their discomfort highlights several dichotomies, one of which is this one:

  • Obscene vs Decent

As it happens, this is one of the many false dichotomies that are societally constructed. How do we know that? Easy! Not everyone is uncomfortable with sexuality intersecting certain aspects of their lives, and some people are only uncomfortable with it intersecting with some parts of their lives, but not with others. This variability is the signature of all false dichotomies. Remember that!

Just to drive the point home, let me tell you a short story. Once upon a time (okay, actually in 1966), in a land far, far away (okay, actually in Kristiansand, Norway), lived a man by the name of Jens Bjørnboe. Jens was a painter and a school teacher, but more than anything else, he was a writer. Jens loved to write, and had already published a book of deeply religious poetry, Poems (Dikt, 1951), and a book that dealt with shortcomings of the school system, Jonas (1955).

Then, Jens wrote a fictional novel about an 18 year old girl named “Lillian” who had to masturbate to have orgasms, called Without a Stitch. According to one review:

Without a Stitch begins with a bit of girl-on-girl frolicking with Lillian and Brita [Lillian's classmate], as well as Lillian’s attempts at having fun with the inexperienced Henry. She can’t get the desired satisfaction when Henry fumbles around, and in reaction becomes a real cock-tease — and eventually she realises she needs some professional help. Thank god Brita refers her to Dr. Peterson.

Now, Dr. Peterson is, “a specialist in the orgasm” and Lillian entrusts herself into his care, with all the desired results. Nice. :) The review continues,

Lillian’s problem seems to be that she worries about what her mother and grandmother might think, causing these inhibitions that hold her back. But Dr. Peterson helps her overcome these, and instructs her in his own moral code — which amounts to that all sex is good (and more is apparently better …), as long as no one is hurt or taken advantage of. It takes a lot of daily sessions — during which she’s not allowed to be with any other man — to get the message across, but finally she’s cured.

All right, so: a woman of legal adulthood who was so concerned about what others might think of her that she can’t have orgasms overcomes that fear under the care of a physician who tells her that all sex is good as long as no one is hurt or taken advantage of. Okay, so there’s some lesbian scenes, but also some really strict monogamy. Doesn’t sound so out-there radical to me, really.

Unfortunately for Jens, it did sound radical to the government of Norway, and Bjørnboe suffered an obscenity conviction for publishing the book as pornography. Interestingly, his fictional porn would arguably pale in comparison to the non-fiction writing I’ve published on my own blog—and that I’ve read from countless other bloggers! Obviously then, we are obscene by some standards but not by others. Indeed, obscenity standards vary with time, place, and a host of other things.

More interestingly, perhaps, is the fact that Jens Bjørnboe went on to publish his most well-known work, The History of Bestiality, and as far as I can tell the Norwegian government didn’t care to prosecute him for publishing pornography in that case. Huh.

Jens was a pretty uncompromising man. He once said,

People speak of ’sexual morality,’ but that is a misleading expression. There is no special morality for sex. No matter what you do with yourself, whether you go to bed with girls or with boys, and no matter what it occurs to you to do with them or with yourself, no moral rule applies to that sphere of activity other than the principles that govern every aspect of life: honesty, courage, common humanity, consideration.

What Jens understood that I think is so valuable is that people who dichotomize consensual sexual activity into obscene and decent acts also tend to approach morality as a dichotomy; they couple obscene with immoral and decent with moral. Indeed, Jens sees that the failure to recognize one false dichotomy actually blurs one’s view of which other dichotomies are true and which are not. On the other hand, when you begin to see the gradations between things you once simplistically believed were absolutes, you empower yourself to break out of all false dichotomies.

Now, before I go any further, it’s important to mention that false dichotomies are not inherently bad things; they can be useful, as I mentioned, and they can be a lot of fun. Case in point, I think dichotomies of power are really fucking sexy! Specifically, I have always loved (and still love) playing—but not being—powerless. That is, I enjoy being sexually submissive.

Trouble is, I’m a man. Yes, I know what you’re thinking: DUH! Thing is, the fact that I’m a man wasn’t always clear to me. In fact, thanks to this really strong tendency that false dichotomies, when we incorrectly believe they are true, have of reinforcing one another, for the longest time I thought I was actually a woman! Yeah! Let me tell you why.

In mainstream Western society, and indeed in most modern cultures, this dichotomy of power–dominance on one hand and submission on the other–reinforces this other, totally unrelated anywhere but in some people’s minds, false dichotomy: the one of gender, with men on one side, and women on the other. And then, as if that weren’t enough, both of those false dichotomies are also strung together like this, so that dominance and manliness is also coupled with activity, while submission and femininity is also coupled with passivity. The trouble with that, for me, was that I like being active and I like being passive in bed!

And then, as if that weren’t enough, I turned 13, and I put a toothbrush in my butt–and I liked it! So now I discovered this other, additional incorrect coupling: penetration is coupled with being active, which, as we’ve already seen is coupled with manliness, which ostensibly makes it dominant. On the other side, being penetrated is coupled with being passive or “receptive,” which, remember, is coupled with womanliness, which makes it ostensibly submissive. So now my 13 year old self is totally fucking confused and has no idea what the fuck I am–man, woman, top, bottom, active partner, passive partner–except that I knew I really liked getting tied up and I really like my toothbrush in my butt.

But wait, there’s more! One year later, my younger brother made friends with this really cute guy in his class and he started coming over to our place and I got a really big crush on him. And that’s when I learned that contemporary culture said, if I was, in fact, a boy, that I was also gay! Yeah, even though I also also masturbated to thoughts of girls! Because apparently, to fit in with contemporary culture, you can’t be bisexual if you’re a man. You’ve gotta be either straight or gay. And even though I was “only” 14, I knew that if you like your toothbrush in your butt, you’re gay!

So, like, oh my god! Could I be a gay boy who liked girls? Was that possible? Was I just…wrong about everything? Fuck, was there something wrong with me? Maybe there was something wrong with these distinctions. Maybe not all of them were true dichotomies. Hmm….

Thankfully, I had (drum roll please) THE INTERNET! Yes, the Internet. I did some searches. I surfed a bunch of sites. I read a lot of porn. I had some more pretty confused orgasms. And then, I found this: The Kinsey Scale.

What was so interesting about the Kinsey scale was that it introduced me to this idea that there were gradations in sexual orientation. That’s when it clicked: I’m probably some kind of bisexual. So, ignoring for a moment the limitations of this concept, I figured that if there were gradations in sexual orientation, maybe there were gradations in a bunch of those other dichotomies.

Of course, it turns out, yes, there are. There’s a big wide world of queer between the poles of heteronormativity, switches enjoy varying consensual sexual power differentials, and even when it comes to anatomical characteristics there are varying degrees of intersexuality that mix male and female. So, long story short, even though I really liked that toothbrush, I eventually upgraded to a strap-on because I knew that one’s gender identity, such as man or woman, and the enjoyment one gets from a particular sexual activity, such as penis-in-vagina sexual intercourse or receptive buttsex, are in no way directly correlated.

Sure, sometimes I want penetration to be about power, but it never had to be anymore, because now I had the freedom, and the power to decide how anything outside of me would affect me. I found that the better I got at decoupling an activity from a preconceived notion of what it means, the more fun sex became. And even when I do choose to get penetrated submissively, it always has to be about good sex first and foremost, not about some misguided morality or sexist system of beliefs.

Okay, I know this is a talk at a conference about sexuality, but let’s return for a moment to KinkForAll’s tagline:

A serendipitous, ad-hoc unconference about the intersection of sexuality with the rest of life.

What about the rest of life? Are dichotomies there, too? You betcha! Here’s an obvious one:

  • Black vs. White (or, more generally, race)

And here’s how we know that’s a false dichotomy:

  • Barack Obama
  • halle berry, jordan sparks, tony parker, derek jeter, tyson beckford (he’s jamaican and chinese), slash (the drummer from guns n roses), lisa wu hartwell

Here’s a not-so-obvious dichotomy, but one I bet most people who came to see me speak had to think about at least a little bit before they came here:

  • Public / private –> Out / closeted

For those that don’t know, when Sara Eileen and I co-founded KinkForAll, we took some very heavy criticism from people who believed that the essentially open and public nature of KinkForAll events were “recklessly endangering” participants, that we would be “outing” people. I believe this criticism was spawned from a belief in that false dichotomy: that to be public is to be out, that in order to have adequate privacy, people of sexuality minorities must be closeted.

That falsehood needlessly segregates sexuality apart from the rest of our lives. In reality, no one is ever completely in the closet or out of it. You might be out about some things to some people, but not out to others. By coming to KinkForAll events, people are forced to grapple with the reality that the closet is not a binary.

Here’s another one that KinkForAll events make some people grapple with:

  • Academic / non-academic (education)

    • also known as

  • educated / uneducated
  • graduate / drop-out

I like this one because I’m a middle-school drop-out. But anyway, after she gave a presentation at the very first KinkForAll in New York City, Emily Rutherford wrote this in her blog about the experience:

I think that a lot of what was exciting about [KinkForAll] is the way that the format combines academic and non-academic modes of talking about sex and sexuality. The “conference” is an academic model in a way that many existing modes of social interaction for sexuality groups aren’t, but this conference didn’t presume any academic background or qualifications. I think that [KinkForAll] bridged gaps between different registers of discussion, taking academese down a peg while applying a theoretical and philosophical level to more casual conversations.

KinkForAll is not really an “organization,” just individuals acting in concert toward a share goal; a collective, maybe. I was urged, numerous times, to trademark KinkForAll and a few people thought it needed to be a registered 501(c)3 organization to really make a difference at all. But that’s just another false dichotomy, because we don’t need to be a 501(c)3 to make a difference.

Indeed, the millennial generation–our generation–is recognizing more and more false dichotomies, and younger people are consistently speaking up to make a difference. That’s what David Jay did in 2001, when he was a 19 year old undergraduate student at Wesleyan University just a few hours from here. David said:

Sexuality is like any other activity. There are people for whom skydiving, chocolate cake and soccer are their world. But some people don’t like skydiving, chocolate cake or soccer. There’s no reason to focus your energy and attention on something you feel no reason to do anything about.

That year, David founded The Asexuality Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), which became the online headquarters for the asexuality movement. David recognized that even sex drive itself is correctly seen by many as coupled to dichotomies; that mens’ drives is necessarily stronger than womens’, for instance. Contrary to popular belief, sex is not a compulsion, and the desire for sex is not a universally shared instinct.

I believe AVEN’s work is enormously important because rape culture will dissipate and victim-blaming will stop only when everyone understands that our sex drives–our feelings of lust–are an independent facet of our sociosexual makeup. Men are no more or less interested in sex because they are men than women are. Perhaps counter-intuitively, asexuality is the keystone that supports a healthily sexual society.

All right, so, let’s review. Dichotomies come in two flavors: true and false. Both kinds are useful, and potentially sexy, but not good to confuse. So don’t let “man” or “woman” jail you. Don’t even let “animal” or “person” jail you! Hell, The Supreme Court isn’t letting the insignificant detail of corporeal existence prevent corporations from being people!

The bottom line is this: don’t wait for permission to do or be something that doesn’t fit into whatever or wherever other people happen to think you are. You don’t need someone’s permission to break out of a false dichotomy, or to become empowered.

You just do it. You can do it. We broke out of restrictive dichotomies just being at KinkForAll Providence! You’re doing it now if you’re watching this video, ‘cuz you’re thinking. So you don’t need to wait for your schools, or parents, or your teachers to fill you with knowledge, or to give you permission to grow in whatever direction you want. You’re doing it already.

You become empowered whenever you do what you can to make our communities places we can be proud of, no matter how small an act it is. Cuz, y’see, your impact, even through small things, like sharing a link to some educational resource like the one I followed to find the Kinsey scale when I was a teenager, are kind of a big deal.

People with destructive goals are usually people who feel personally disempowered. So to be creative, you need to empower everyone to speak up, to have a presence—even people you don’t totally agree with.

And thinking about that, and seeing as how I broached this subject of dichotomies with quotes from a writer, I thought it fitting to end with another quote from another, recently passed writer, Howard Zinn. Howard Zinn said:

Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.

KinkForAll is one of my small acts. Now it’s your turn. :)

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Thursday, October 30, 2008

Being someone’s fucktoy: Who’s objectifying who?

Category labels: BDSM psychology, Blowjobs, D/s dynamics, Male sexuality, Myths and misconceptions, Personal experience

Being home alone is sometimes really great and sometimes really dangerous. It’s great because I am often at my most productive when I have a silent, empty apartment and I’m alone with my thoughts. I guess this is where my muse is. It’s dangerous because I never know what my muse is going to inspire me to do, and it’s rarely what I had planned. Ah well, the things I have to do always seem to eventually even out with the things I’m inspired to do over time.

In any event, tonight my muse is Tilda, who writes about her desire to be sexually used and objectified. Further, she does so with quite a flair for the OMGSEXY, if you asked me (or Axe, from whose blog I saw the post linked). In her post, Tilda writes:

[The story] revolved around a girl who “belonged” to this motorcycle gang (of course). She was there be fucked, a party favor. She lay naked in bed and throughout the evening guys would come in, fuck her and go. In and out whenever they pleased. She was just expected to lie there and keep her legs spread.

[…]

Lucky for me, I don’t have to find a shady bathroom in the back of a porn shop or befriend a motorcycle gang because I know someone who knows some penises.

Then she goes on to describe the hot sex she had one night when her “emcee” arranged for one such penis to fuck her. That’s the pr0n part, in case you’re wondering. You should go read it if you’re in the mood, or maybe if you’re not yet in the mood.

What struck me, though, was the way she referred to that guy in the beginning. She called him a penis, nothing more and nothing less. It got me wondering, because I’ve often had similar thoughts as she has, who’s objectifying who?

Now admittedly, the closest I’ve ever come to experiencing something like what Tilda describes was a conversation that I paraphrase here with pronouns changed to protect the innocent:

“Hey may, what are you doing tonight?”

“Uh, not much. At my computer reading articles. Why?”

“Want to come to [the House] and get a blowjob?”

“Uh…what?”

“One of [Mistress Name's] clients wants a forced bi session and the first dude cancelled at the last minute. We have, like, 2 hours to find another guy or she’ll lose the session.”

“Thanks, but, I don’t really think that’s my kind of scene.”

“Oh, don’t worry, he’ll be blindfolded the whole time. He’ll never see you. You can be blindfolded too, if that’ll help.”

“Um, yeah, no. Thanks but no thanks. Good luck finding someone, though.”

I turned the offer down (and there have been more than one offer, which some part of me supposes I should be happy about) because I don’t have any interest in helping some prodomme I have never heard of before keep a session. The question at hand is pretty ridiculously obvious: what’s in it for me? I may be a primitive male, but (unlike what some researchers seem to think) a blowjob, especially one I’m being solicited for to help someone else make money, just isn’t worth it.

Anyway, what I found erotic about Tilda’s post is that it’s difficult to discern exactly who’s objectifying who in her retelling of the scene. Is she being objectified by being the fucktoy for this random guy, or is she objectifying the man fucking her, using him solely for his pseudo-dominant presence and role as a “mere user” of her body. There’s certainly no doubt that in my mind, I construct fantasies of dominant personas all the time, and I have no qualms about getting off to these fantasies and ideas. Surely there’s some kind of objectification going on there, too, despite the fact that I’m always the bottom, always the one getting fucked, in this lustful fiction.

One of the reasons that thought process is so arousing for me is because it’s an exemplary circumstance in which to exert my submissive will. That is, it’s an example of active (not passive) submission, and I like actively participating in my own submission. I mean, if I’m not engaged, if I’m just doing it so some prodomme I don’t know will get her paycheck…well, fuck, what’s the point?

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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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Tuesday, October 21, 2008

I like feeling like a beginner again

Category labels: BDSM psychology, Beginner BDSM, Bondage, Chastity/Orgasm denial, Communication, D/s dynamics, Emotions, Erotica and pornography, Fantasy, Femdom, Fetish, Male sexuality, Masturbation, Relationship, Sexual teasing and control, Training/Conditioning, Vanilla life, Writing and blogging

Things have been a little bit busy in my life lately, and for once the busyness has not been solely professionally-driven. Though I am working on a number of very exciting things, my days have been excitingly full because after I work hard, I come home to Eileen and we play hard. The play, however, hasn’t been the same sort of stuff we used to do. I think isolation from our friends and community and our efforts in our respective professional lives have actually helped us enjoy our time together.

As we usually do, when we reconnect like this, we talk. A lot. Recently, though I’ve been wanting to do this for a while, the huge blocks of time I’ve set aside to work on writing about web development professionally have also yielded some time to write erotica on the side again. (As an aside, that, and crossing paths with the intriguing Ranat has led to some renewed interest in my hypertextual porn experiments.) I actually have the beginnings of a very promising short story based on a more-or-less off-handed remark that Kink in Exile made, which I found really sexy.

Anyway, one thing led to another and in the conversations Eileen and I have been having, the fact that I find it ridiculously hard to speak about my fantasies came out. It may be surprising to some of you, but it’s true: verbalizing my fantasies out loud is unusually difficult for me. Writing about them is for some reason relatively easy. Making my mouth move (which I can do) so that sounds come out of it and form words that describe my fantasies (which I rarely do) is inexplicably hard, even when I’m alone with her. I often literally just lose my breath. This clearly poses a few challenges to discussing such things, and it’s something both Eileen and I would like to see me be more comfortable with.

On a largely unrelated note (no, really), tonight’s also my 31st day denied an orgasm, which is the longest I’ve ever gone since, well, since I was 9 or 10 and began masturbating. This is significant not due to the time span, but rather because it happened thanks to an increasingly apparent shift in Eileen’s attitude and comfort level with my being denied. As she put it, “I simply no longer have any sense of guilt about denying you.” Then she paused for a moment with a thoughtful look on her face before casually adding, “You should probably be scared about that, by the way.” That was the comment that has hatched a swarm of butterflies in my stomach, which—since last night—has yet to dissipate.

There’s quite a bit more to say about this that I’ll be saving for later. In the mean time, suffice it to say that I was given a few tasks today, one of which was to write and then read a short fantasy “snapshot” (a brief moment or vignette) to her. Coming up with what to write was unsurprisingly easy, but reading it aloud at dinner tonight was actually very, very challenging. This is what I wrote and then, yes, read to her.

The thin rope tasted dry and scratchy in my parched mouth. I opened my mouth wider and extended my tongue as far as I could just so I could feel the cool air. Some of my muscles felt cramped, the cause of which was not the immobilizing bondage I was in but my own exertion. Although she was quiet now, her earlier words still sounded deafening. “Be good, my beautiful toy. Hush and hold out until I want you to come,” she had told me in her kind, almost charitable voice, for what she was doing to me now was indeed generous.

For the first time in longer than I care to recount, one of her hands had spent a pleasurable eternity slickly caressing, gripping, pulling, stroking, and pumping my cock. Her other hand alternated between doing the same to my balls, thighs, and perineum. Occasionally, when she would tire of her manual ministrations, she played with the remote controls of the large, self-propelling vibrating prostate massager she had inserted into my ass and I could hear her giggling with enjoyment as she varied its intensity. Eventually, she would always find a combination of settings for the machine that she seemed happy with and resumed stimulating my penis, complete with a fresh dollop of lubricant. The only indication I had as to how long she’d been playing with me was provided by the increasing wetness dripping onto my thighs and torso, and my own growing incoherence after each frustrating edge, as I had lost all sense of time early on.

After a while, I could no longer decide if her actions were merciful or torturous since for ages even prior to this she hadn’t given me any indication whether some sort of relief was in sight. I couldn’t see through the opaque bondage tape that covered my eyes, but somehow I could tell she was smiling. She loved watching me struggle—and suffer—and so she would make games out of tantalizing me more and more. This was her most satisfying form of amusement and I am, after all, one of her favorite toys.

There’s no doubt that intense control, teasing, and orgasm denial are on my mind of late. (I mean, hell, it has been over four weeks now!) The fact of the matter is that since this particular kink is a fetish of mine—orgasm control is an integral part of my understanding of my own sexuality—for me, when we play with such things and when Eileen actively takes control of my sexual pleasure to choose when and how I get it, it’s a wonderful tool for catalyzing lots of other possibilities.

Now, I look forward to a cozy night of cuddling, snugly locked in my chastity device. If only I had checked that store’s hours earlier in the day, I might have had other things to look forward to, as well….

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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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Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Rocking the Boat. By which I mean I also enjoy a good facial

Category labels: Bisexuality, Community, D/s dynamics, Gender fluidity, Male sexuality, Masculinity, Myths and misconceptions, Politics of sex, Sexism

Eileen is always berating me for being an ass. It’s true: I’m kind of an ass. I’m probably mostly an ass when I’m wiggling my bum at her trying to get attention so she’ll spank me or fuck me or something like that, but she claims I’m also often an ass when I’m writing in mailing lists or leaving comments on people’s blogs. This is fair, I like to rock the boat—I’ll admit I enjoy the confrontational style of debates.

I very recently did exactly this (although I was much nicer than I could have been) on a local young-persons-in-Sydney group’s mailing list. I remarked that I had done so, and due to popular demand and interest with regards to my remarks, am going to share a single edited excerpt of that thread here. In case anyone is local and cares to join the group, here is my original post.

The year is 2008. The place is Sydney, Australia. The topic is male bisexuality in the BDSM community. The population of the scene here…well, the population of the country is barely the size of the state I came from. These people are not “simple, country folk” by any stretch of the imagination, yet I can’t help but feel as though I’ve been transported to a kink scene from ten years ago:

Congratulations in advance to those of you who actually follow and read the linked references. Those of you who don’t will assume I am just rocking the boat. I am, of course (rocking the boat that is)—though I’m trying to do so while adding significant substance to the conversation.

On Aug 4, 2008, at 5:07 PM, Person A wrote:

In my brief time in the sydney bdsm scene, i’ve noticed girls are a lot more willing to play with other girls than guys are to play with other guys. why do yo think this is? Do you think bisexuality is more comon in girls in the vanila world too. Do girls who engage in bdsm play with other girls even consider themselves bisexual. looking forward to your comments

for the record I am 100% straight male.

So is my male dom top friend who is dating a boy. Though labels like “staight” or “bi” can be useful, they are ultimately meaningless. It’s actions, not words, that define people and who they are.

Person A then wrote:

I’d feel uncomfy playing with a guy, even if just tieing me up etc. how do other guys feel.

Lots of “straight” guys feel this way while encouraging girls to get it on with one another, and if you haven’t noticed most guys in the BDSM community you’re a part of are straight. Perhaps that’s why you’ve noticed that girls are a lot more willing to play with other girls than guys are to play with other guys. Huh. Imagine that.

See also this satire: http://bloodylaughter.com/2007/07/26/eureka/

On Aug 4, 2008, at 5:34 PM, Person B wrote:

that’s because girls are just the more attractive sex, is my guess.

Person B, we’re both lucky we don’t really know each other because it makes it a lot easier for me to tell you that you’re being an ass right now.

On Aug 4, 2008, at 7:54 PM, Person B tried to redeem his statements by qualifying them like this:

I meant that in the most objective way possible, which is not to say that I don’t find certain guys attractive and would even consider certain BDSM scenarios involving that person, but it happens very
very rarely for me and he’d have to be pretty fit. And I think most girls would agree with me that girls tend to be more attractive than guys in general. Is that true or have just been speaking to the the wrong girls?

You’re oozing the kind of heteronormativity that makes me dislike heteronormative spaces—like this list right now. Personal preferences are one thing, but trying to pass these off as “statements intended in the most objective way possible” belies your ignorance. Again, I say that heteronormative culture encourages exactly this kind of thinking.

See also:

http://maybemaimed.com/2007/08/21/i-want-to-be-a-pretty-boy/
http://maybemaimed.com/2007/12/12/the-rules-of-flirting-are-sexist-and-wrong/
http://bitchyjones.wordpress.com/2007/07/17/the-unfairest-of-them-all/

On Aug 4, 2008, at 6:02 PM, Person C wrote:

hi all, long time lurker first time poster. I consider myself a straight male as i can’t really see myself being with a male sexually without bondage being a huge part. It was something that i was very nervous about until my Mistress at the time introduced me to the concept of playing firstly with couples and then eventually she was happy (as was i) for me to play solely with makes. Fem Dom’s are still my preference however my desire to please outways if there are dangly bits or not. Now i’m “out” i hope to catch up with some of you soon

And then, right on cue, on Aug 4, 2008, at 6:33 PM, Person D wrote:

Here’s my theories.

Girl on girl is a bit more socially acceptable than guy on guy due to the fact with guys there is the implied image of things up the arse.

Yes, exactly. God forbid something goes the “wrong way” up a man’s butt. Of course, every straight guy knows women’s asses are a two way street.

This is precisely why the feared “image of things up the [guy's] arse” has become the femdom cumshot in porn, and it’s where this (insulting) notion of “forced bi”—which is pretty much exclusively a femdom/malesub dynamic—comes from. Now, I love getting fucked in my ass, but I love getting fucked on my penis, too. In other words, being the person who does the penetrating does not equate to having power, or masculinity. Perverting (and I use that word deliberately) anatomy to create falsehoods of power imbalance is nothing more complicated than plain stupid.

See also:
http://bloodylaughter.com/2007/07/11/fuck-him/
http://maybemaimed.com/2007/08/12/pegging-gets-mainstream-attention-and-kinky-porn-gets-rightfully-slapped-upside-its-head/

Portions removed at the author’s request.

You’ve hit the nail on the head, though you’re not tying it all together quite yet. This is the same masculine heteronormative sexuality that defines male sexuality based on dominance and power, only it’s now happening in reverse. Where the former circumstance is one in which a man is dominant and thus validates hegemonic masculinity, this circumstance is one in which a man is submissive to another even more masculine/dominant/powerful man and thus validates hegemonic masculinity. As far as genders studies students are concerned, this is just a situation where you have six of one thing and half dozen of the other.

In other words, men’s fantasies that are geared around being submissive to a “real man” merely enforce the hegemonic masculine stereotype. Now, that’s not bad (it’s quite sexy—I personally love the idea of submitting to a strong, dominant, het guy I find physically attractive) it’s just very, well, we’ve all been there and done that.

See also:
http://bitchyjones.wordpress.com/2008/07/18/submissive-men-and-the-humanity-gap/
http://maybemaimed.com/2007/12/18/how-an-outdated-view-of-masculinity-ignores-the-needs-of-all-men/

Anyway, for more insights on gender and male sexuality, see this 10 minute video:

http://maybemaimed.com/2007/12/06/transgender-basics/

Regards,
–
-maymay
Blog: http://maybemaimed.com
Volunteering: http://ConversioVirium.org/author/maymay

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Friday, February 8, 2008

One, sir: On Titles in Scenes

Category labels: BDSM psychology, BDSM terminology, Beginner BDSM, D/s dynamics, Exhibitionism, Masochism, Myths and misconceptions, Personal experience, Whipping, Writing and blogging

Reading through my own personal journal’s archives reminded me of how early on many of the thoughts, feelings, and ideas that I express today have been inside of me. It’s also shown me how some things changed, and looking at which things have changed and which have not is an interesting pursuit in itself. This post, below, which I wrote on April 26th, 2005, references a Singletailing demonstration I did with an occasional play partner and friend of mine at Conversio Virium that was very well-received.

Back then, I didn’t even identify publicly as submissive, and in fact I was such a stalwart bottom that more often than not I was often described as being one of the “toppiest bottoms” people knew. I knew how I liked to get hit, with what, where, and when. I would scoff at attempts to get me on my knees and never, ever wiggled cutely.

Along those lines, I never used titles in my play or otherwise, because that’s something submissives did. I cared little for honorifics, not out of a lack of respect but out of a narrow-minded view engendered by my environment of what they were for and how they could be used. Of course, now I use some titles more than others, and have even grown to enjoy their use at times. That’s not to say that titles are “better BDSM” or “more real” or anything of the sort (that’s bullshit), but I have managed to broaden my view of what they can do.

This post from April 2005 is republished here in part because I think it’s a pretty good entry, in part because I still strongly believe the things I said were true for me then and are true for me now, and because I’m way too busy to spend that much time writing posts at the moment but I’d really like to keep some new content flowing into the blogosphere from this blog. Enjoy.

I’ve already decided this kink-blog thing is a step in the right direction. Many reasons, not least of which is the enormous relief I feel to be able to unburden myself of these musings and, later, look back on them as I do with all my other writings. Another benefit, however, (beyond the social ones of sharing these writings with pertinent folk, such as those with whom I play) is that it will lead to reflections I’ve not been able to access for a very long time.

Eileen brought up some great points about tonight’s CV singletailing demo/scene (was it a demo or was it a scene?), which I did not have the presence of mind when I was writing the earlier entry about it to make note of. Specifically, I said Sir.

Titles are a funny thing. They’re amazingly common, I dare say deeply loved and deemed important to many, and yet they make very little sense to me. Calling someone (my top) “Sir” or “Ma’am” (or “Mistress” or “Master” or whatever) during scenes just isn’t something I’ve ever had the inclination to do.

That’s not to say I have much of an issue with it. I’ve occasionally done this during private play sessions with past partners. In every case I can recall, though, it was either initiated by their request or due to a role-play scenario which was currently unfolding. It makes sense to me if, say, a partner and I were playing out some specific scenario with very defined roles to then refer to my partner with a name respective of their role in the scene. After all, we’re already role playing.

But scenes, for me, are not usually role play. I love BDSM. I do not love roleplaying (though I do enjoy it on occasion). When I scene, I’m not “the victim” or “the slave” or anything like that. I’m me, plain and simple—and it’s so much hotter that way, too.

Similarly, my tops aren’t “my Master” or “my Lady” or anything. They’re just themselves as well (at least they are in my head, most of the time) and again, that’s so much hotter for me. I can’t speak from a top’s perspective, but Eileen expressed this issue for herself rather eloquently: I feel like I’d rather be a scary-yet-caring version of myself, rather than a scary-yet-caring hypothetical dominant construct.

Three things about this statement:

  1. First, version of myself. Yes; when I bottom to someone, I have chosen to bottom to them, not their image or their reputation. (Sidenote: For now I’m going to assume that this is one of the reasons playing with pro Dommes at the parties they invited me to was never as much fun as playing with lifestylers in clubs or friends at home; pro Dommes are constantly keeping an eye out for potential clients, and showing off what they can do to me is an advertisement for themselves more than it is a scene for me. Fun, but lacking.)
  2. Second, scary-yet-caring. One of the overriding themes of my fantasies, for as long as I can remember having fantasies, is the notion of feeling precious to someone, specifically, my top. (You will get smacked if you make a LOTR reference in the comments.)
  3. Third, hypothetical dominant construct, which ties back in with the first thing. Titles make things fake for me. They turn something real into something imagined. They build hypothetical dominant (and submissive) constructs of who we are in our heads.

    For some scenes, like the one during the demo, this is fine. Other times, such as during structured role play scenes, it’s even great. For other scenes, it just has no place because it wrecks the realism. (Sidenote: I have a huge thing with realism. For instance, it’s one of the reasons I simultaneously love and fear knife play. I have to write about that sometime in the future.)

So, I said Sir. That’s not really the big deal. The big deal is that I said it publicly, and not just publicly out at a club where it’s noisy and dark and no one can really hear. No, I said it in a room full of people who were neither doing nor saying anything because they were intently watching his whip and my welts.

The effects of this was interesting. Fortunately, singletails hurt (god, do they ever!) so at the point where I was counting strokes there was little actual thinking going on inside my head beyond “Oh fffuck!” and similar. I neither wanted to nor do I think I could have, at that point, think too much about anything that was happening. (Also, see earlier entry about feeling free, relaxed, and not self-conscious, which helped.)

When asked if I could count strokes, my response was a tentative I think so. When pressed, it did take me a moment to respond. Why? What was going through my head at that moment? I’m not sure, but after the above reflection I think I entered “a role”—specifically, “the demo bottom.”

That sounds obvious; may, you do realize you were actually demo bottoming, right? Well, yes, of course I do. But in the role, it wasn’t me at CV being hit with the singletail while leaning against the chalkboard playing with my top anymore. Instead, it was me as the demo bottom at CV…. The difference is subtle, but the difference was there, and it did change the scene. (It didn’t make it worse or anything like that, it just changed it.)

At first, I was being singletailed and then, later, the demo bottom was being singletailed. Again, that’s not worse. It is enjoyable in an exhibitionistic sort of way to perform in such a manner and such a performance is not necessarily less authentic, though it has more potential to be. The devil, as always, is in the details.

My conclusion, then, is that for me (like most things) titles in scenes are tools to be used when appropriate. It’s important for me (as well as for my play partners) to understand how things like this affect my head and what responses they will get from me. All of this needs a follow-up entry, but that’s for another time. It all also ties in very strongly with the realism bit which I mentioned earlier, so that will need to be explored as well.

For now, however, I’m headed to the shower and to tend to my skin. I’m really looking forward to that first hit of the water on my back. After that, it’s bed time. ‘Night, all.

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Thursday, February 7, 2008

Firsts are always changes

Category labels: Community, D/s dynamics, Emotions, Femdom, Kink events, Male sexuality, Masculinity, Masturbation, Personal experience, Relationship, Sex, Uncategorized, Writing and blogging

One of the reasons I’m so interested in kink and sexuality is because it’s implicitly a big part of my life. It’s everywhere and nowhere at the very same time, not unlike how many people understand god. For me, my sexuality is akin to my religion: self-expression (and particularly sexual self-expression) is my prayer, I am my own god, and the pleasure-positive, queer-friendly, self-empowering communities of which I am a part are my Church.

I like the references to religious imagery apparent in much of my play even though the thought of religion in my sex life makes me feel viscerally repulsed. I won’t do religious-themed play (naughty priests, nuns, and even Rabbis spring to mind—all potentially sexy for some people if not for me), but I understand the impetus of those who do. I like getting wings, being referred to as an obedient angel, or the idea of being nailed to a cross. I am no martyr, for martyrdom and ultimate self-sacrifice is in many ways the epitome of what I find repugnant; I ask to be hurt, to be beat, to be etched and marked, because it’s what I want, not something I dislike that’s merely a path to something “more.”

Parts of my life, like kink, present themselves in interesting ways sometimes. They’re like habits, much in the way going to the gym is something that is at first difficult but over time becomes habitual and—not necessarily in a negative context—addictive. If I don’t get my kink fix for a while, I start getting antsy. The physical catharsis of a good beating goes hand-in-hand with emotional catharsis of some kind. It’s one way that I experience the connection between the body and the mind.

What I’ve found over the past few weeks is that, at least for now, writing about these experiences and continuing my own introspective explorations about myself, my sexuality, and how I relate to the world around me (as well as why the world around me is so fucked up), is similarly emotional cathartic. Yes, I’ll admit it: I blog as a form of self-treatment. And I’ve been itching to start writing again.

However, I’m a horribly change-averse person at my core, in spite of the fact that I am also occasionally an eager risk-taker. When I stopped writing often, it became difficult to start up again. So many pieces of my life are scattered about the floor around me, in piles waiting to be sorted, packed, and shipped off to the other side of the planet (I’m moving to Sydney, Australia, from New York City), that I desperately wanted to maintain some semblance of continuity and order among the change and chaos.

You’d think, naturally, that with all the preparations to be made, the telephone, Internet, gas and electric, and other utility accounts to close down, the bank accounts to open and close, the taxes to complete for the previous year, the stuff to move, the apartments (and jobs?) to find on the other side of the world, and everything else I have to do to move my whole life from one of Earth’s hemispheres to the other, that I wouldn’t be able to squeeze in time for more play. In fact, I expected to be so busy that kink would have to take a back-seat to the rest of my life until I was settled again. Boy, was I wrong.

In the past few weeks, I’ve played more often than I have in the past half-year. Furthermore, I’ve played with more people in less time than I ever have before—the exact figure would have been even higher had there been the time. I lament the fact that it’s only now, with my imminent retreat from the in many ways stifling New York City scene that I’ve suddenly experienced an explosion of play partner possibilities who are not only fun and intriguing but who also seem to actively desire playing with men who bottom or, (gasp!) are actually submissive and self-respecting. C’est la vie….

The experiences are not all incredibly intense in and of themselves, but the experience of my own broadening “promiscuity” and apparent desirability is incredibly disorienting, and surprisingly uncomfortable at the same time that it is very welcome. After repeated conversations about the topic, in which I often express confusion, doubt, and glee at the situation, the best I can come up with is that “I’m not used to being liked at so intensely,” to borrow one of Rona’s lovely grammatical idioms. Of course, I’m not oblivious to the reasons: I’m relatively good-looking even if I still don’t consider myself “hot”, I have a pretty wide and (to some) intense range of things I enjoy doing, and I’m an all-around decent person.

What’s so astonishing to me, then, is that other people have taken note of these things, too. Actually being in demand by people who’ve never even heard of me before, as opposed to being merely available, is a lovely, self-affirming experience. It’s the ego-boost I’ve heard so many women talk about. And I’m not too proud to admit that it was really, really nice to have.

The weekend after the Flea in Rhode Island, I went to a weekend-long private party near Boston, having been invited by a friend along with Eileen, and the experience (much of which is the foundation for the feelings expressed in this post) was the exact opposite of what I expected. Instead of feeling shunned, I felt wanted. I played each night, each night feeling a bit more comfortable than the one before, until on Sunday night I not only got beat in ways that made me moan when I moved for days, I also had my first semi-public orgasm and outright sexual experience with someone I’d just met.

Oh, it was tame, and relatively short-lived, but the fact remains that it was the first of its kind: invited to join Eileen and the top both she and I had met (and played with) earlier in the party on the floor in a corner of one of the party rooms, I lay back and the two of them proceeded to rub and caress my bruised body while he (the top) pressed a Hitachi Magic Wand against my penis. A few minutes later, while I was just beginning to start writhing in pleasure on the floor, my friend from Kink in Exile, who had just gotten through beating my thighs and ass with one of her metal pipes, joined our corner and took a spot rubbing my chest, nipples, and sides.

I was uncomfortable being the center of so much explicitly sexual attention. Three people, one of whom I didn’t even know before the weekend started and another whom I’d seen in person for only the second time, were now sitting around me while I lay on the floor and braced myself against the vibrator’s insistent buzzing. And at first, I really was bracing against it.

“This is not very like me,” I was thinking. It was weird and uncomfortable, and I wondered if they were actually enjoying this anyway, letting me just lie back and enjoy myself with almost no words exchanged about it. “Maybe there are expectations I’m not aware of. That’d be bad!” I closed my eyes early on to try to fend off any triggers for more doubt, and not being able to see is something that helps me turn inwards, to focus on the sensations in my body rather than the thoughts in my mind.

It took me a long time to shove the nuisance of my own self-doubt out of my head in order to relax enough to enjoy what they were doing. At the start I was giggly and clearly nervous, but they all reassuringly told me to hush. The orgasm built slowly, but as a result it was fierce and explosive and wonderful and it left me a little dizzy.

After it was over and I came back down from the high of the beatings and the orgasm, the newness of the experience struck me most clearly: I’m changing, too. For years, even though I’ve had due cause, I’d been walled off and detached from the social and sexual possibilities and opportunities laid out before me. No, they aren’t always there in such massive quantity as they were at this party for the first time, but I know they were there.

Maybe I’m starting to be ready to really say “yes” to a lot of the things I wanted but wasn’t ready for before. It took the right people, in the right place, at the right time, to make it happen. Just as it did when Eileen and I first met.

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Wednesday, February 6, 2008

One night, I fell in love

Category labels: BDSM psychology, D/s dynamics, Emotions, Faceslapping, Femdom, Knife play, Male sexuality, Personal experience, Personal history, Relationship

Back on May 3rd, 2005, a bit after 4 AM in the morning, I came home from an evening out at one of TES’s “College Night” parties at New York City’s local BDSM club, Paddles. A little over a month earlier, I had first met Eileen at Conversio Virium, but it had been significantly less than a month since we really began getting to know one another. This night, this College Night party, was the first time we played in public. It’s the first time I’d ever felt the beginnings of submission towards another person.

This night was one of the nights when I fell in love with her. Below, a protected entry from my personal journal is republished in full. With the end of my time in New York City fast approaching, I feel like the beginning deserves another look.

In chronological order:

  • Saying hello to more people than I can remember. Giving out hugs.
  • Pledging, hazing. Eating “live goldfish,” immitating a duck (badly), playing Simon Says, and ass paddling.
  • Electric touches everywhere, different on the scalp, on the body, on the genitals. (The ones on the genitals made me squirm to get away—never thought that’d happen when hands and my genitals were involved.) Also laughter, much of it.
  • Knives on steroids, the sound of sizzling, the feel of them burning my skin, forceful like lightning.
  • Caged by the electrified metal, trapped and cornered and struggling.
  • Cowering, hands bound behind my back, slapped and scared and being held, rocked, and petted.
  • He looks like a slave boy. Also a title, but not entirely transferrable from the titles given to a top.
  • Face slapping, breath play. Being broken, defeated, knocked off my feet by the power of her hits; no weapon, no threats, because none was needed—I was her’s.
  • Is this submission? Cavernous, dark, frightening, paralyzing and blurred, treasured.
  • Flinching at the gentle caresses, clutching her arms like they were a tether back up and out of the darkness.
  • A straight-edge blade and a curved blade both at my neck, held by two different people. Cornered in a booth almost kissing one of them, the other pushing my chin up with her knife, forcing the kiss.
  • Grilled chicken, pancakes, and stories at a diner. No coffee for me, though—this was a group outing.

In addition to all of the above, some reminders from an IM conversation for more things to write about:

  • The main difference between every single other time I’ve been in pain and these times was that every other time, my body extended itself towards the pain, again and again and again. Not just willingly—lustfully. But that didn’t happen with this.

    And this time you weren’t smiling anymore.

  • I also remember looking into your eyes when you were suffocating me, actually. But, strange, I don’t remember your eyes.
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