tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-39497115475420155012024-02-19T02:05:37.562+00:00Post Modern SleazeAn online diary of my ongoing adventures in the world of BDSMelectronic dollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15255101845615353600noreply@blogger.comBlogger566125truetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949711547542015501.post-69360278915248272222012-10-28T10:33:00.001+00:002012-10-28T10:33:18.815+00:00The End<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">When I started writing this years <span style="font-size: small;">ago, I didn't have a plan as <span style="font-size: small;">to how it might turn out. Obviously, in the back of my over-excited mind I was secretly looking for publication on an international scale that would turn me into a <span style="font-size: small;">millionaire sexual revolutionary and advocate of the alternative sc<span style="font-size: small;">ene without my parents getting wind of what I get up to.</span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">Like many fantasies, this hasn't happened - and <span style="font-size: small;">just like you need to be careful what you wish for, this is </span>probably for the best.</span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">So, this will be the last post. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">It's been a hell of a ride. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">I <span style="font-size: small;">am incredibly grateful for all of the people who have <span style="font-size: small;">been part of this, and part of my life and especially to those who continue to be so. I know that I've made friends<span style="font-size: small;">, gor<span style="font-size: small;">geous, wonderful friends, who I will have for the rest of my life. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span> <br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">A lot of the rea<span style="font-size: small;">sons for <span style="font-size: small;">stopping</span> writing are<span style="font-size: small;"> positive ones. My<span style="font-size: small;"> life has changed and im<span style="font-size: small;">proved dramatically since I started to write this and many of the things I was searching for<span style="font-size: small;">, not least, someone <span style="font-size: small;">who is "just for me", are no<span style="font-size: small;">w part of my life. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">There are <span style="font-size: small;">one or two negative reasons for <span style="font-size: small;">this, unfortunately<span style="font-size: small;">. I have</span> a new, very busy a<span style="font-size: small;">nd quite stress-ind<span style="font-size: small;">ucing</span></span> job <span style="font-size: small;">which uses up rather a lot of my energy<span style="font-size: small;">, meaning that by the end of the day I am not really interested in <span style="font-size: small;">spending three hours tying someone up and hitting them in a series of interesting ways<span style="font-size: small;">, I'd <span style="font-size: small;">just like to go to bed. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">Fortunately, the</span> <span style="font-size: small;">more positive reasons are the real drive be<span style="font-size: small;">hind making the decision to<span style="font-size: small;"> stop writing, at least in this form.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">All good stories need to come to an end, a<span style="font-size: small;">nd I'm a firm believer in a<span style="font-size: small;"> stro<span style="font-size: small;">ng<span style="font-size: small;">, clean </span></span></span>finis<span style="font-size: small;">h than just petering out, which is precisely w<span style="font-size: small;">hat the blog is in danger of doing. Updates have been sporadic and I have not <span style="font-size: small;">had the time, or more tellingly<span style="font-size: small;">, the inclination to write. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">I'm going out less, playing with other people <span style="font-size: small;">less and (frankly) doing less involved or convoluted scenes.<span style="font-size: small;"> W</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">hich means less material, frankly. </span>I <span style="font-size: small;">am still thinking about writing a book, so will need to use the time for that<span style="font-size: small;">, but that wo<span style="font-size: small;">n't happen quickly.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span> <br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">A lot <span style="font-size: small;">of this blog was about th<span style="font-size: small;">e</span> search for the right person, perhaps not intenti<span style="font-size: small;">onally so, but it did end up that way. Underlying everything was that drive to <span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">understand myself and to</span></span> get what I wan<span style="font-size: small;">ted. Posts <span style="font-size: small;">are almost </span></span>al<span style="font-size: small;">ways<span style="font-size: small;"> about exploring, about finding thi<span style="font-size: small;">ngs out, about the <span style="font-size: small;">next thing and the new thing or <span style="font-size: small;">about understanding what has just happened to me. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">The search is over. I'm home. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> <span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">This</span> isn't to say that domesticity is the end of BDSM, it just makes it different. Without the <span style="font-size: small;">tim<span style="font-size: small;">e limits of a ho<span style="font-size: small;">tel date, or the con<span style="font-size: small;">straints of a club a certain kind of routine emerges in which all of<span style="font-size: small;"> the power and control that you <span style="font-size: small;">strive</span> for as a <span style="font-size: small;">dominant is simply there. Ready and waiting. And wiggling its bottom in the kitchen to attract your attention whilst you make dinn<span style="font-size: small;">er.</span> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">There is also a <span style="font-size: small;">pleasure in finding this kind of private intimacy to the extent t<span style="font-size: small;">hat even I am <span style="font-size: small;">not inclined to write about it. Deare<span style="font-size: small;">st reader, I do love you very<span style="font-size: small;"> much, but <span style="font-size: small;">I seem to have created a tiny little worl<span style="font-size: small;">d which onl<span style="font-size: small;">y has room for two people<span style="font-size: small;">, and I'm too selfish to share<span style="font-size: small;">:</span> I'm too busy enjoying it<span style="font-size: small;">.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">The ease of it all is <span style="font-size: small;">one of the greatest<span style="font-size: small;"> joys of finding a submissive with whom you absou<span style="font-size: small;">tely<span style="font-size: small;"> fit. A partner who you love a<span style="font-size: small;">nd prioritise and who loves and prioritises you.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span> And you want to spend your life at eas<span style="font-size: small;">e, why wouldn't you? So, my darlings, I will admit that instead<span style="font-size: small;"> of peeling back the latex on a particular<span style="font-size: small;"> sexual more then furiously typing, I have, in fact, been at home on the chaise long<span style="font-size: small;">ue, drinking red wine and watching a film with <b>Ganymed<span style="font-size: small;">e. </span></b></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">And they lived happily every after.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">The End. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span> electronic dollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15255101845615353600noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949711547542015501.post-28410179563114728512012-09-22T16:37:00.001+01:002012-09-22T16:37:49.237+01:00Write lightly, and politely?<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've been talking about it for ages, I know. That I should write a book-of-the-blog. I've been spurred into action by the latest and not precisely greatest offerings in what might be generously called "women's erotica" such as 50 Shades of Grey and assembled me-too publications. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I can do better, I thought. Even more so: I should do better. These books have sold in their thousands, millions. And the sort of tale they represent is fake. No more than a kinky twist on the classic romance which publishers like Mills and Boon have made their bread and butter. They sell, though. And why shouldn't they? After all, it's exactly the sort of fairy tale that we are brought up to believe expresses the sum total of female desire: only sexed up in an "exciting" kinky fashion. And it is fashion, I believe, as more and more I see the requirement for an extreme and indescribable want or desire fulfilled in literary terms by BDSM. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here's the story we keep being told: a young woman, innocent, untouched, virginal, is shown the meaning of true passion by an older, more experienced (rich) man. The sort of man who knows that no means yes and he's only doing it so cruelly, so coldly because there's a part of him that is vulnerable and needs nurturing - by her. The princess is saved by true love's whip. The prince is saved by true love, which he could only previously experience as violent pleasure. Together they render each other meaningful. They live happily ever after. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jul/06/why-women-love-fifty-shades-grey">Other people have examined the phenomenon of why it has done so well</a> (note especially this article discusses why women love it, I wonder how many men have read it and what they felt).This lack-of-the-new has not stopped it selling like hot (cheese) cakes made from old (shibari) rope.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's easy to criticise. Almost everyone has, criticising the book and the antics around it has become some kind of hobby. It's turning into a confusing mess, including<a href="http://jezebel.com/50-shades-of-grey/"> domestic abuse charities burning the book</a> and problematising ideas around female sexuality, BDSM sexuality and whether you must have deep-seated emotional issues in order to be a sexual sadist.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'd like to set the record straight for kinky people. I'd be pretty pleased if I could make a pile of cash whilst doing it thus retiring to my chaise longue to write more mainstream books about BDSM whilst attractive semi-naked chained things fanned me with ostrich feathers and poured the coffee.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That's the fantasy. The reality is, as always, different and involves thinking and hard work. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In order to make any kind of challenge to this narrative I really do have to put my money where my mouth is. And so, I had a meeting a couple of weeks ago with a literary agent. We talked a little about the blog, we talked more about the process and the way in which I could turn my source material (me) into something that people would want to read. We talked about style, and narrative and the sort of story I would be telling. We framed some potential beginnigs, middles and ends. We talked about descriptive language and how I would have to give these as-yet-unknown-readers the words to let them imagine what my experiences had looked like, felt like, smelt like. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Because - and this is something that we kinksters, especially those of us snug in the bosom of London, forget. Most people do not know what it is like. Most people have not worn rubber, or been to a BDSM club, or even had a threesome. Most people are vanilla. Most people are straight - in sexuality and in outlook. That isn't a criticism, but it is a reminder. That the types of explorations we do are not the norm and so when I write I need to bear that in mind.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Which generally, I don't do here. I write fast and dirty. I assume a lot of prior knowledge. I assume that you get it. I write for you. Yes, you, my dearest constant reader. You who are probably known to me, or a friend of a friend, and certainly who is aware of BDSM and the realities of daily, perverted life. The agent assures me that in reality most people are not. And it is this candour that is sell-able. Not the high gothic towers full of mysterious beauties tied to exotic devices (or exotic beauties tied to mysterious devices). That sort of thing will merely make people jealous, or annoyed. The thing I'm going to write has to be real, on some level, because that is the selling point of the story I am offering.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Not a fantasy. Not a fiction. But an expose of what it is really like. Of how you find out you are kinky, of what happens next, where you go, what it looks and feels like. What that first trip to a fetish club does to you, what that first sensation of being tied up, or tying up means. And that's where I began to hesitate. If I do use the material here, I'll need to write more, and more concrete, descriptive things. I'll need to use my own history, my own background as a source and really bring the reader into my life. I'll need to open up more, reveal more and also at it's most basic: write more.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am a very good editor, here, on the blog. I give you only the choicest morsels. Little, tasty tit bits. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> A couple of hours of my life, here and there. </span>I don't give you much context, just straight to the good stuff. I know what you like. I also know that this blog isn't world famous, that I don't get thousands of hits and that my private life, for all my public writing, is still very much that. Private. Sure, there are naked pictures of me on various BDSM sites, and if you really worked at it you could connect the dots. Expose me. But why would anyone bother? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Like <a href="http://belledejour-uk.blogspot.co.uk/">Belle du Jour</a>, they wouldn't unless it became a story. Which it might. If I get what I want: lots of lovely book sales. Then finding out who I am will become worth someone's while. And that could cause a lot of problems, for me, for those around me, for my family.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As much as I take pride in who I am and what I do I also know how upset my parents would be if they knew about this. How sad they would feel. How anxious and frightened for me, how ashamed, how disappointed in me and in themselves. That they had somehow let me down, or that my life will be unhappy, incomplete. That it must be if I feel the need to do things like this. We're back to the argument of 50 Shades again where Christian Grey's sadism has its root in his abusive upbringing. That in order to be kinky he must lack in other areas - emotional fulfilment is beyond him. That question I've been asked by several people outside of the scene: how can you do that with someone you love?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So how can I do this? How can I write the book I want to write, and want it to succeed, without also being open to the possibility that it will change my life in very difficult ways. Arrogantly, I'm assuming a best-seller. Still, I see no point in aiming to produce something average. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first stage is to see whether I can write it at all. Writing a book is very different to writing a blog, the agent assures me, and as I sit here, typing quickly in this familiar format I can see he is right. The idea of opening a blank page and starting from the beginning is quite intimidating. I need to work out how much of my life I use and how much I make up. I need to plan, in a way I never do with these posts, a structure to frame the experiences. I must do more than a series of vignettes, instead I need to take people on a journey that they can empathise with, even though they have never been to those places or done those things. I also need to protect myself, and my family, and those I have played with, to strike a balance between the reality and authenticity of my genuine experiences and the needs of narrative and privacy. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Based on a true account, I suppose. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span>electronic dollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15255101845615353600noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949711547542015501.post-74958273046815231432012-09-03T09:00:00.001+01:002012-09-03T09:00:02.738+01:00Poly Means Many: Loss<span style="font-family:arial;"><i><b>Poly Means Many</b>: There are many aspects of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">polyamory</span></span>. Each month seven <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">bloggers</span></span> - <a href="http://www.albj.co.uk/blog/"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">ALBJ</span></span></a>,<a href="http://delightfullyqueer.wordpress.com/"> Delightfully Queer</a>, <a href="http://closeenoughtoread.wordpress.com/">An Open Book</a>, <a href="http://www.morethannuclear.com/">More Than Nuclear</a>, <a href="http://www.lori-smith.co.uk/">Rarely Wears Lipstick</a>, <a href="http://theboywiththeinkedskin.blogspot.co.uk/">The Boy With The Inked Skin</a> and myself - will write about their views on one of them. This month: Loss<br /></i></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Your loss, my gain. We often talk about love, loss and power in the same sentence, in the same love song. About the act of losing love in the same way as losing a game, through lack of skill or failure, or perhaps like losing something on the train, by accident or carelessness. A loss is a diminishing of our own power, of our own capability. Something that we had but no longer. Something to grieve over. Equally, loss can also be powerful, we can be set free by it. We lost our inhibitions, we had nothing to lose but our chains. We got rid of the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">unnecessary</span>, the unwanted and the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">undesirable</span>. More so, we can use loss to damage people. We can tell them to get lost, we can make them a loser. To put themselves so far away from where we are that they are the ones who have become untethered. We are the centre, the gravity well, the reality that they no longer have access to. We can lose, we can become lost, we can lose other people and we can make other lost. Loss has power.<br /><br />There are all kinds of ways of viewing loss and that's the framework that I want to keep in mind for the rest of this piece. I've written on <a href="http://pmsleaze.blogspot.co.uk/2009/09/anatomy-of-poly-break-up.html">my own personal, major poly break-up a few years</a> ago, and how it felt to lose a dominant, to be lost by my dominant and to know that he still had someone else, his primary partner, whilst I was left alone. Time has eased a lot of the hurt, but I still remember it very well. The rawness of it, the pain and the sense of extraordinary unfairness, abandonment and anxiety that I had done something wrong, that I had been deemed "less". A second choice. There was anger at how happy they must be compared to how unhappy I was (I have no idea whether this was true or not, but reality wasn't my strong suit at the time). I also couldn't help but make comparisons. I suppose it's similar to being left for someone else, except more complicated. I was in the position where I was encouraged to be, but never felt especially friendly towards <b>The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Photgrapher</span></b>'s partner, I can only imagine what it might be like if I had actually been friends with her. As well as losing my lover, I would have also lost a friend. <br /><br />Breaking-up is rarely pretty or easy, but there's a particular challenge when relationships contain more than two people because they don't often break into neat, individual pieces. There will be someone left out, and that can cause additional hurt. Add in the weight of responsibility, obligation and service that can be part of a D/s established relationship, plus any sort of play dynamic such as pet and owner, slave and mistress and it becomes even more painful when these things are stripped away.<br /><br />There is, as I have often mentioned, something of a clash between the needs of a poly relationship and the needs of a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">BDSM</span> relationship. I'm sure there are some people for whom it works, but for me the all encompassing nature of dominance and submission can sit badly with having multiple partners. You cannot be a servant of two masters, it diminishes the power of both of them. It was a problem I faced with Mr Smith and sadly, we never came to a workable ongoing resolution. Equally as a dominant you cannot promise to protect and to support a submissive when you have another partner.<br /><br />This clash has been the cause of most of my break-ups. And the tension between <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">BDSM</span> and poly has been the ongoing theme within this series I've tried to unpick. Words like "only", "best", "most precious" and "mine" become very difficult in a poly context. But they are words of power. And words of power are useful to perverts. We put people in places where they are ours, whole and entire. Yet these words are meaningless, or worse, become promises you cannot deliver when reality sets in, when it become obvious that they are not the only one, not the best. Lies you tell yourself and your partner that will come back to haunt you. </span><span style="font-family:arial;">There will, and there always are in poly relationships, time when someone has to come first. As a dominant, that is my submissive. If I have two <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">submissives</span> then I need to make a choice and that's where I have a problem.<br /><br />My poly has its limits, but those limits protect me from situations that have hurt me in the past, so they are lessons well learnt. </span><span style="font-family:arial;">There are ways around it and they involve hierarchy, roles and planning. </span><span style="font-family:arial;">The format of "trainer" has worked well for me as a temporary dominant role. It allows me to care deeply and to be taken seriously, to be unique and powerful, but also to give the other person space to see others. The thing I did with them was the only time they did that. It was special to us.<br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />You need careful, ongoing, thoughtful communication to make it work. If there's one word that could be written, stick of rock like, throughout our Poly Means Many posts, I suspect it would be the C word. There is no point having an image of what the relationship looks like unless you tell other people about it, and certainly communication breakdown is often cited as the place where poly relationships come unstuck. It makes sense, the more people involved, the more difficult good and open communication can be. Everyone has their own opinion, and desires, for what a relationship should be, and everyone is clear in their own minds. But perhaps not in others.</span><span style="font-family:arial;"> The same goes for what happens afterwards.<br /><br />And the aftermath is worth thinking about, perhaps even before you start the relationship if you can. A friend of mine has the wonderful attitude of enjoying relationships for what they are, and accepting that at some point they will end. I have a more fairytale outlook, and like the handsome prince I expect to capture my beloved, slay the dragon and be happy ever after. Loss doesn't come into it. So it's probably all the worse when it does.<br />I<br />There are things we can do to manage or mitigate loss. We can avoid situations which are likely to cause harm or trouble, which is a wise thing to do no matter what the context. The difficulty is in putting common sense before desire and knowing what works. Experience helps. But you neeed to make mistakes to get experienced. After a few years I now know much more about what I am capable of doing within a relationship and what I cannot do. I can also talk about these requirements without being <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">embarrassed</span> or trying to appear "better" or able to give more than I can. </span><span style="font-family:arial;">For example<b> Ganymede</b> and I have agreed that we will have periodic play partners but certainly for the foreseeable future we are unlikely to become a threesome or <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">moresome</span> with anyone else. There wouldn't be a lot of room for another person and to offer that without being able to deliver would be unfair. No matter how much I might like the idea of a cute "companion" for him so they could share the duties in serving me. </span><span style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />There's a balance to it all, and nothing exists in a <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">vacuum</span>. This is especially true of relationships in the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">BDSM</span> and poly community. We are small groups of people with particular tastes and <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">predilections</span>. The chances of us knowing a former lover of a friend on the scene are high: people talk, people bitch and people gossip. </span><span style="font-family:arial;">Especially within close communities or friendship groups. Word gets around. Everyone knows who is connected to who and often how and why they broke up. Or at least has one person's perspective on it. And that can be difficult and upsetting for everyone, in what is already a difficult and upsetting situation. Short of putting each person in the original relationship, and their partners and their partners' partners in isolation for six months (which in some groups might mean putting <i>everyone</i> in a different city and turning off the internet) it's hard to avoid. The repercussions of one break-up can have a knock-on effect on a lot of things, especially where several people have a relationship link that goes beyond friendship and these things can get quite complicated over time as people fall in and out of relationships.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;">I still hold a strong connection and love for <b>Mannequin</b> and we've been through quite a few other partners in the time we have known each other. For a period of time she belonged to someone else. When she first started to date him, she was very much mine but over time it was clear she wanted to explore the nascent relationship with him. I wanted her to be happy and there were things he could give her I could not. I missed her, and I felt the loss keenly, as well as felt some sense of inadequacy (rightly or wrongly, these days I'm coming <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">firmly</span> down on wrongly). I wasn't angry at either of them. I was happy they were happy. But I was also sad, and I missed what she and I had.<br /><br />My primary feeling was dominance and to me that's about control, protection and enabling your submissive to experience wonderful things. He didn't "take" her from me, we were all clear on that, I gave her to him. We had a series of very good conversations about it which enabled me to keep my control, and my protectiveness and the knowledge that she was and would experiencing amazing things and he would look after her in my place. But I still missed her. I had still lost a large part of what we had. Now that relationship with him is over and ended badly with the net result that I'm reasonably angry over the whole thing.<br /><br />I also have a mirror to that original loss because h</span><span style="font-family:arial;">er hurt, her loss is in some ways also my hurt and my loss. I feel empathy for her because of what I went through, but also because not only is she my friend, I still have the strong sense that she is mine. What I wanted for her did not happen and I am sorry I could not protect her from it, which sounds ridiculous because she is an adult and makes her own decisions, but all the same: I wanted her to be happy. </span><span style="font-family:arial;"> <br /><br />The sense of dominance does not go away just because your submissive is now technically no longer yours, just as the sense of love does not go away when your partner leaves you for someone else. Feelings don't belong to the person you invested them in, they are yours, they live in your heart, your head, your stomach. If I've learnt anything about relationships it's this: your feelings are your own.<br /><br />It's your loss. As they say. </span><span style="font-family:arial;"> </span>electronic dollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15255101845615353600noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949711547542015501.post-25002726986039642362012-08-30T17:23:00.004+01:002012-08-30T20:01:00.379+01:00Consent<span style="font-family:arial;"><b>Trigger warning.</b><br /><br />I don't often take time to comment on the news, but the recent spate of articles and reports over the past few weeks on rape have created a lot of upset (to put it mildly) for many of my friends, both in the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">BDSM</span> and vanilla world. Those who have had experiences of sexual assault have - through the almost unavoidable screaming headlines - been confronted with those memories, with those emotions. </span><span style="font-family:arial;">There's been a lot going on. Public figures have weighed in all over the place. Idiot politicians have <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/9490122/George-Galloway-Julian-Assange-rape-allegations-nothing-but-bad-sexual-etiquette.html">confused sexual assault with rudeness</a>. More idiotic politicians have <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Akin_%27legitimate_rape%27_and_pregnancy_comment_controversy">demonstrated basic scientific failings</a>. There has been a lot of commentary, online and in the papers, and a lot of personal confessions, of all kinds. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />It has been, even for someone like me who is fortunate to have never experienced rape or sexual assault, overwhelming. The amount of my friends who have spoken of their own experiences has been overwhelming. Men and women, people who have been assaulted and have been accused of it. I can more easily count the number of people who have not been touched by this, than those who have. It is like a cancer. I have been upset on their behalf, almost to the point of panic at my inability to do anything, so I can barely imagine how they feel. <br /><br />There have also been a lot of arguments. </span><span style="font-family:arial;">Some heated, some whispered hushed and low, some online, some in person.</span><span style="font-family:arial;">And a lot of fear, on all sides. Fear about what has happened, what might happen, about what it all means. There have been arguments about the definition of rape, about the law surrounding it, about <a href="http://upsettingrapeculture.com/rapeculture.html">rape culture</a>, about rape "jokes". And above all there's been a lot written about the stereotyped imagery around rape which just makes the whole thing worse than it already is. And it's pretty bad. When the media parses things in black and white when reality is never quite like that. When all rape is seen as stranger rape, when we are all victims or victim <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">blamers</span>, sluts or slut-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">shamers</span>. When we asked for it, or we knew they wanted it really. When we're nice guys that rape or girls who cry rape. We're not any of those things. We could be all of those things. We don't live in a world of these stereotypes. Each experience is different. Each recollection of that experience is different.<br /><br />It's not about who "wins" in a court of law (</span><span style="font-family:arial;">'m not going to touch on the legal side of it, though I'm hoping <a href="http://obscenitylawyer.blogspot.co.uk/">someone</a> does)</span><span style="font-family:arial;">, assuming it even comes to that, which more often than not it doesn't. Fighting a legal battle does not change <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">anyone's</span> experience or memory of what happened. I can't make the past experiences of my friends go away. I can't go back in time and fix all that hurt. I can't change the memory, or the reality of what happened to them. What I can do, is talk about </span><span style="font-family:arial;">what we can do about it and talk about consent. <a href="http://www.pmsleaze.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/how-far-can-we-go-part-three.html">Which I have done, at length</a>. </span><span style="font-family:arial;">There's an extremely good article, and links to other good articles, here on <a href="http://purrversatility.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/safeward-safewords-and-battle-of.html?zx=cded110bf3878879"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">safewords</span>, consent and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">BDSM</span> culture here</a> - I would urge you to read it.</span><span style="font-family:arial;"><br /><br />What I can also do is talk about my own fears and concerns, and examine my own attitudes. So that's what I'm going to try and do with the remainder of this post.<br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />I like kinky sex, so I live in a world of complications. I like having sex that shuts down people's ability to move, to speak, to hear. I like gags and mitts. I like having sex with pain. I like seeing people cry. I like having hard sex, violent sex, sex that mimics rape. I like playing with people's emotions, with their perceptions, with their fears. I like games of power and powerlessness. I go to parties or trawl the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">internet</span> and (attempt to) have sex with people I have only just met. I also like loud music, alcohol, recreational drugs and staying up really, really late.<br /><br />All of these things put together mean that I, and those who also enjoy these things, am at risk. I'm at risk of sexual assault, perhaps, but as a top and a dominant I'm also at risk of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">sexually</span> assaulting someone. And being honest: that's the thing I worry about more. That I'm genuinely scared of. For myself, and for my partners. I cannot control what someone else might do to me, but I like to think I have control over myself. But I don't, not entirely, not in this situation. I can control what happens to an extent, but I can't control someone's response to what I do, and I can't control their impression of it.<br /><br />Don't get me wrong, I'm not worried I'm going to "accidently" trip and fuck someone without their consent. That's the myth of stranger rape, writ small. I'm worried I'm going to push someone too far and that they aren't going to tell me. Or that I'm going to leave a party thinking everyone has had a great night and someone is going to be hurt and upset over what I've done.<br /><br />I can do my best, and I like to think I do. I have discussions over coffee. I negotiate and set out limits. I plan and prepare scenes. </span><span style="font-family:arial;">I have contracts. </span><span style="font-family:arial;">I try to listen to people when they talk about their desires rather than superimposing mine over the top. I try to balance that delicate knife edge of giving someone what they want when they don't want to have to ask for it. When having to ask for it makes it less fun, less sexy, less interesting, less good. When I need to be just violent enough without being too violent. Violent in the right way. At the right time. In the right places.<br /><br />But still, and especially when you mix in all the factors that someone else brings to the table - whether they know it or not - there are a hundred and one "what ifs" that I cannot possibly plan for. I cannot know if someone is really enjoying themselves, or if they are just telling me they are enjoying themselves. When it's something new for the first time I cannot predict how someone will react. I cannot make someone <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">safeword</span> if the pain is too much.<br /><br />I've been in the position where this has happened, and I've felt incredibly guilty. I've also been deeply relieved that in the aftermath we were able to talk through what happened, jointly accept responsibility and still remain friends and sometime play partners. I still, however, feel guilty. I will never stop feeling guilty about that moment. And just as I will never stop feeling guilty, I will never stop worrying. Because even though logically I know that there was no way around it, and I had done everything I could to prevent it, it still happened. I still pushed someone too far and broke their trust and hurt them. I've done it before and I might do it again.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;">At a very basic level a lot of what I enjoy doing, particularly the heavy scenes, could land me in court for assault (sexual or otherwise) if someone were to chose to do so. But that's not the real issue. The thing that really worries me is what it means, for both of us. For them, I will be that person who hurt them, who assaulted them. Nothing will change that in their memory. And nothing will change mine. </span><span style="font-family:arial;">The only way to prevent the possibility is to never do anything at all or to accept your chances and work to stack the deck.<br /><br />I'm not fatalistic about probability: I don't want to say that because something might happen again, I can't be blamed when it does. That's ridiculous. </span><span style="font-family:arial;">I don't want to abdicate responsibility for my actions nor do I want to stop living the life I want.</span><span style="font-family:arial;"> So I live with the chance. My partners live with that chance. We all do. We try, if we are responsible perverts, to minimise the risk. But we can never take it away.<br /><br />So we also have to live with assumptions. And live in trust. We have to assume that everyone I play with is on the level, that they will talk to us honestly and openly and that if we have issues that they will tell us first and we will deal with them together. We have to trust that yes means yes. That they will tell us when it becomes a no, if we do not recognise this, which we may not. It is a very subjective and fragile thing, this trust, and like many fragile things, it is precious. So we should look after it.<br /></span>electronic dollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15255101845615353600noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949711547542015501.post-12398530062887078902012-08-06T10:00:00.001+01:002012-08-06T10:00:00.163+01:00Poly Means Many: Non-lovers<span style="font-family:arial;"><i><b>Poly Means Many</b>: There are many aspects of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">polyamory</span>. Each month seven <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">bloggers</span> - <a href="http://www.albj.co.uk/blog/"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">ALBJ</span></a>,<a href="http://delightfullyqueer.wordpress.com/"> Delightfully Queer</a>, <a href="http://closeenoughtoread.wordpress.com/">An Open Book</a>, <a href="http://www.morethannuclear.com/">More Than Nuclear</a>, <a href="http://www.lori-smith.co.uk/">Rarely Wears Lipstick</a>, <a href="http://theboywiththeinkedskin.blogspot.co.uk/">The Boy With The Inked Skin</a> and myself - will write about their views on one of them. This month: Non-lovers.</i><br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">An interesting topic this month, and one that can often cause the most questions and confusions. How do we define, relate and spend time with other people in our lives who are not our partners? Seems stupidly simple, but as with many non-standard lifestyles <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">polyamory</span> offers the double edged "opportunity" to reassess and rethink how you conduct almost every single relationship in your life. Here's an example. You are out at a party, you meet someone and you click. Now, if you are in a monogamous relationship that would be the end of that, the person could potentially become a friend, but unless you were a cheating scumbag (and regardless of whether you have one partner or one hundred, no-one likes a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">cheating</span> scumbag) you wouldn't kiss them, ask them on a date, fuck them.<br /><br />When your relationship is open, these possibilities are open too. Which means that you need to have rules about how you handle these possibilities, and those rules start to be the defining characteristics of your relationship. </span><span style="font-family:arial;">Different people have different kinds of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">polyamory</span>. There is no one true way. All I can do, and all any of us on this project are doing, is offering our own perspectives.</span><span style="font-family:arial;"> We're basically making our relationships up as we go along. Hopefully we'll get it mostly right. A side effect of this is that you also start to unpick - and this is a massive, ongoing and often very <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">fraught</span> process - all the terrible lies that are taught to you about what happiness should look like, what a "<span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">healthy</span>" relationship is, how <i>you</i> (as a man, as a woman, as a queer person, as a straight person) should behave, should live. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />Now, obviously <b>Ganymede</b> and I are in a D/s relationship so even if we were monogamous our relationship would be governed by very overt rules so this isn't a strange situation for us. We have rules that define how we - he and I - operate - but we also have rules for how we interact with others which reflect that. For example, all potential lovers, flings and play partners for Ganymede must be <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">pre</span>-approved by myself. There are levels which cover all kinds of potential social interactions and are based on what is important to me - he can kiss who he likes, whether it's a stranger or one of his ex partners. And there are levels for different situations when we're at a private sex party he will likely be free to fuck whoever he <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">chooses</span> as long as he <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">acquits</span> himself well (which he will, of course). At a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">BDSM</span> event it would be more formal, more protocol driven.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;">Most kinky people I know have some kind of sexual or play relationship with others outwith their main relationship. We are no different. Partners from our past, friends we enjoy playing with whenever we are in a club or party together. Then there is the future. Although we are very much a bonded pair, there will be people who will come in and out of our lives. Or rather, there will be people who will be different things to us during the time we know them. I have partners who I have loved, fucked and who have been deep and significant parts of my life. Some of them I will never see again, some of them I see every other week for coffee and cocktails. Learning how to deal with that and to accept that process is difficult, especially when things are never truly "finished" in the world of open relationships. </span><span style="font-family:arial;"><br /><br />You develop words and phrases that define different people in your lives: friends, lovers, play-partners, girlfriends and boyfriends, pets, fuck-buddies (though personally I hate that term along with the dreadfully dismissive <a href="http://pmsleaze.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/wtf-fwb.html">Friends With Benefits</a>).<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;">A lot of this boils down to how you define your relationships. For me, it's about the physical and emotional connection - the intimacy - I have with people. There will always be a distinction between friends and lovers. For others, the friendship is the basis of everything - there are friends that they have sex with, or kinky sex with, and friends who they don't. I'm not saying that my lovers are never my friends - I hope that they are - but in my mind they are different. Not different bad or different good, but a different sort of relationship. It comes down to definitions and what feels right in your own mind, your own body, your own heart. </span>electronic dollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15255101845615353600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949711547542015501.post-41583112893159263722012-07-28T10:43:00.003+01:002012-07-28T11:42:30.266+01:00The lady vanishes<span style="font-family:arial;">So, where have I been? I'm writing less (here and on Twitter) and going out on the London scene less - one does not always lead to the other, but seeing people is often a good stimulus for writing, and vice versa. <br /><br />The short answer is, naturally, <b>Ganymede</b>. The longer answer requires a little more consideration. <b>Majeste</b> once said to me that when she found the one, the real one, who would adore her, and match her in all the ways she deserves she would simply vanish from the scene and that would be that. The dating, the munches, the clubs: they were a means to an end. I've never quite believed that. Perhaps the selfish part of me wanted to believe that we, and by extension I mean me, were interesting and fun enough to keep her around for the social element, for the friendship. That no matter how amazing and wonderful someone was how could they compare to our cocktails, clubbing and public acts of seduction and sadism?<br /><br />And yet, here I am. A domestic animal of one stripe or another. At home as the sunshine filters in through the window, drinking black coffee from china cups whilst the boy sleeps naked in the next room. I have vanished. The free time I have is time to spend with him. If there are places to go to, people to see, we will go together or if not, then probably not at all. My spare time has evaporated into longer mornings and later evenings of not actually doing anything in particular, but doing it with him. Everyone does this, so I'm told, and so it appears I am no different to everyone else. We do the things that couples do. We make house. It's a house with D/s rules, but it's making house all the same. It is wonderful and he is beautiful. Life is very good. </span><span style="font-family:arial;"><br /><br />Life, however has changed.<br /><br />I cannot remember the last fetish club or munch I attended, the last time I got suited and booted and went out to play merry hell. When I gathered with the rest of the Tribe and chinked champagne flutes, thinking "fuck them all" before heading off into the night. Perhaps it's the effect of the weather, which has been oppressing us all, yet it's not for lack of invitations - I've been turning things down and cancelling left right and centre. My apologies. Mea culpa. My life is changing. Perhaps it is the simple fact that for the first time in many years I have my own partner, who is not part of the scene and is new to me, and I am to him. That we are each others.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;">Life is very full of "us" - I nearly wrote that we are full of ourselves, which may well be true in that irritating couple fashion. We live together and for tedious real-life reasons this has happened much quicker than we would have wanted, out of need rather than choice. The space I had originally selected to be mine, to give me that much needed private space is our space. Sometimes this is wonderful. But living with someone, especially someone you are in a D/s relationship - or any relationship, including deep friendships - takes time and energy. And we all have a finite resource of these things. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />Play has become private, I've already noted I'm going out less and less. It has also become rarer and that is something I've been turning over and over in my mind. Trying to work out why and to rationalise how I feel about this. I know I'm anxious about it, it makes me feel like less of a dominant and therefore less sexy, less confident, less "good" as a partner. I'm not getting what I want either, yet at the same time I don't especially feel able to deliver. Sex is easier, of course. Sex requires less in the way of finding kit, assembling things and making sure straps are in the right place. Kinky sex is complicated. But kinky sex is also amazing and energising.<br /><br />So why am I not doing it?<br /><br />There have been spates of illnesses and recovery from the IUD took time. But scenes are about more than feeling physically capable. They are a lot about mood and mental, emotional space. Which I don't actually have a lot of. Without the space to prepare, and to enjoy the pleasure of anticipation I feel less and less in the mood. I'm very poor at adhoc play, for me a lot of the joy and the power is in the planning, and I like long scenes with good beginnings, middles and ends. I'm a performance junkie, and want to give a good show, for myself, for others so not being able to do this means I don't really want to do it at all. No half measures. Perfectionism. Wanting to and not being able to makes me feel uncomfortable, in the way that not going to the gym when you have planned to exercise is worse than ignoring the gym completely.<br /><br />What I do need, it seems is a bit of a break. There have been a lot of changes in my life, in quite short order, and all of them have been good, positive changes - house move, relationship, career improvements - but they have been big, and I have not given them time to sink in or take stock of how I live now. In a strange way, I'm overwhelmed, and that feeling of things being too much is not a good space in which to be dominant (or submissive, actually - although sometimes it can feel like it's helping). First, master yourself. Then master others.<br /><br />So I'm going to take sometime to do just that. Which means that the next few months will be rather introspective, and also rather sporadic - I'm hoping to write every two weeks or so - and look forward to the journey. </span><span style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span>electronic dollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15255101845615353600noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949711547542015501.post-50608592059152338152012-07-22T15:37:00.003+01:002012-07-22T16:48:34.338+01:00IUD<span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A little segue into the world of contraception, a side-line in kinky sexual exploration that follows on from the phrase "fluid-bound". In a world of people who grew up with the terrifying tombstone AIDS campaigns of the 80s and now practice all kinds of putting-things-in-each-other (as a catch-all term for non-vanilla, non-monogamous sex it won't catch on, I don't think) with all kinds-of-people we have become accustomed to insisting that condoms are put on everything, that antibacterial gel and cleaner is one of life's essential fluids alongside gin and coffee and to look askance at situations where sexual fluids might mingle. Certainly within Kinksville, it is the height of (unacceptable) risk play to attempt otherwise and marks you out as a dangerous, unsafe person.<br /><br />Within the confines of a relationship, the situation is different, and the marker point of deciding to remove the barrier methods between you is a division line that signals the importance, in some respects, of you to each other. You go through a very clear process of trips to the clinic to make sure you are all clear and then you discuss the options. In my case hormonal contraceptives were something of use and value before I realised quite how much better my life was without them. The idea of having to take a pill every single day to stop my body from doing something it was designed to do seems odd to me, and whilst I am not against the use of chemicals for exploration, improvement and enhancement, or for when one is ill, I don't really want to take more than is required. So for me, it was the <a href="http://www.fpa.org.uk/helpandadvice/contraception/iud">copper coil or IUD</a>. <br /><br />I spoke to a few friends who had one implanted, and also did some online research, then quickly stopped after reading a number of the comments. If there's one thing that experience has taught me, it's that different people react in very different ways to objects inserted inside them, and descriptions of pain are also deeply subjective.<br /><br />I take <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ganymede</span> along to the clinic at the appointed time, thanking my stars once again that I live in a civilised country which provides these services for free. He is unable to actually come into the room with me because the doctor is training someone else, so I find myself in the interesting position of being a teaching tool. It won't be the first time. I'm nervous, but probably not in the sense that the doctor expects. After all, I'm entirely sure that I will have experienced worse pain and stranger procedures. However, I have never done this before and things which are new are unsettling. She is kind, and obviously very experienced, which puts me at ease. She explains the procedure and shows me an example IUD, alongside a detailed description of what is going to happen, how it might feel and what I need to know. I feel very well looked after.<br /><br />Then, the time comes to step behind the plastic curtain, remove my skirt and underwear and lie down on the tissue paper, legs up in the grey stirrups, feeling exposed in that particular way when you remove only part of your clothing to reveal your cunt.</span></span><span style="display: block;" id="formatbar_Buttons"><span class="" style="display: block;" id="formatbar_CreateLink" title="Link" onmouseover="ButtonHoverOn(this);" onmouseout="ButtonHoverOff(this);" onmouseup="" onmousedown="CheckFormatting(event);FormatbarButton('richeditorframe', this, 8);ButtonMouseDown(this);"><img src="http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif" alt="Link" class="gl_link" border="0" /></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />"This might feel a little strange". She isn't wrong, but I smile anyway, thinking of all the things that I've done to other people, that have been done to me, that might well also constitute strange.<br /><br />The process is in two parts. First, she measures and checks. The anticipated speculum comes out, I'm intrigued to note that there are different sizes, and one which is for taller women such as myself. The cool of the metal and the firm click as it sits in place is familiar, although it has been a while since I've felt it. She puts on gloves and inserts a finger, feeling for any abnormalities, which fortunately she does not find. She also checks the size of my cervix and the measures the depth with a plastic sound. The sensation of the sound sliding inside my vagina is neither here nor there and, frankly, expected. When it goes through the opening of my cervix things get interesting. It doesn't hurt. It is very weird. I think I giggle, which I attempt to subdue, lest I put the good doctor off. I am delighted, in a certain sense, at the new feeling. It's not nice, and certainly not pleasurable, but it does feel different. There is a sliding sensation, not dissimilar to the growing pressure of having a hard cock or dildo pushed inside you, except it's deeper. Much deeper. And not quite right.<br /><br />My body clenches and I break out into a light sweat at the strangeness of it. It's weird, plain and simple. All of my nerves and muscles are telling me that something is in a place it shouldn't be and I get that rising half-panic from my animal hind-brain which tells me I need to get it out. I hush my less evolved self into a calmed silence, shutting my eyes and focusing on how it feels. I struggle to describe it. It is an intimate, awkward, invasive feeling. I'm trapped in place, aware of the fragility of the moment and the process - what will happen if I buck or twist in the wrong way? The plastic is smooth and thin and I can imagine a line being drawn upwards, inside me. She draws the sound out again and notes a measurement. My body relaxes again, and I breathe out. <br /><br />The next stage is implanting the IUD itself. There are a series of painkilling options offered beforehand. As my cervix is somewhat dilated we opt for a painkilling gel, rather than an injection. I'm glad I took a couple of ibuprofen beforehand, under the advice of my friends.<br /><br />The implantation is pretty similar to the measurement. </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The gel goes in, thick and cool, and once again there's that curious sensation of an unfamiliar space within me filling up. It is at once exciting and deeply disconcerting. This part of me that I cannot see, that I can very rarely feel, is making itself known. </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The IUD is put inside me and then opened out to form the T shape. Two threads trail out of the cervix and sit at the top of the vagina. I'll be able to check the IUD is in place by feeling for them. Already I'm starting to cramp. Yes, definitely some pain but not unbearable, and a little bit of bleeding. I head home for a lie down, with instructions not to have sex or do anything that might "unsettle" my cervix for seven days.<br /><br />In all honesty, that was probably the hardest part of the procedure. After four days I cracked and demanded an excess of orgasm from the mouth of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ganymede</span>, which he provided, amused and satisfied by the power behind them (abstinence can do that, as well as increase sensitivity).<br /><br />A few weeks later and it seems to have settled down nicely. In the first few days </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I got that uncomfortable, swollen pressure and soreness akin to period pains, stronger than I'm used to, but not the end of the world. The main problem was that ongoing pain makes you tired, and that was quite wearing, plus the intermittent bleeding plus associated mucus was unpleasant and annoying but easily solved: I'm a practical person at heart, and not squeamish. Another lesson from BDSM. </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span>electronic dollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15255101845615353600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949711547542015501.post-300737258807809052012-07-06T14:23:00.006+01:002012-07-06T15:51:47.723+01:00Tentacles<span style="font-family: arial;font-family:arial;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;">Idyll</span> asked me to shed some light on the subject of tentacles and my ongoing love-affair with them. I'm not the only one. A deeply unscientific series of twitter co</span><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:arial;" ><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">nversations</span> provoked much the same reaction from other perverts.<br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tentacle">Tentacles</a> ooze, slick and pervasive. They invade. They insert. They are extremely flexible probe, poke, suck, hold and cling. They move in a strange, beautiful way when underwater, and an alien, unsettling fashion when on land. There are eight of them, a vast improvement on our four limbs. Some of them are used as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hectocotylus">substitutes for penises</a>.<br /><br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">BDSM</span> and kinky sex is a lot about the look and feel of curious things, especially those things set in opposition to skin, flesh and bone. Materials like latex, leather and metal form a huge part of our kit and clothing. We like things that are strange, that feel not-like-human and that send people out of their comfort zone, away from what is normal, usual and expected. Tentacles, with their slippery, suction-cup covered mass also provoke reactions of shock and horror, with their air of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">otherworldliness</span>, thanks in no small part to the writings of<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft"> Lovecraft</a></span><span style="font-family:arial;"> and other writers who followed similar suit.<br /><br />However, it is within <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Edo</span> period japan that the connection between tentacles and the erotic has its root. The classic piece cited is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_of_the_Fisherman%27s_Wife">The Dream Of the Fisherman's wife</a>, a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">ukiyo</span>-e print from the 1800s, portraying a woman receiving a lot of sexual attention from a very large (and very giving) octopus. This is theorised as a porn version of the famous legend of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide_jewels#Later_references">Princess <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Tamatori</span></a> who stole jewels from a sea dragon and his tentacled servants. What is important to note about these early pictures is that images of women entwined with sexual tentacles was not uncommon and that certainly within <span style="font-style: italic;">Dream</span> the act is consensual - rather than the expected forced penetration via tentacles, the octopus is giving her head and concentrating on giving her pleasure.<br /> </span><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />It's later, <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">particularly</span> within <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">anime</span> that the non-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">consensual</span> and forced erotic elements we are more familiar with come into play in works like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urotsukidoji" title="Urotsukidoji" class="mw-redirect"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Urotsukidoji</span></a>.<span style="font-family:arial;"> This brings the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Japanese</span> tentacle back into the realms of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">unheimlich</span> and the sinister, which matches more with the western viewpoint - something not-of-this-world which invades. The tentacle carries the motif of the alien, and certainly it is within a lot of sci-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">fi</span> in both eastern and western culture that we find representations of all kinds of tentacles moving from the violent and terrifying such as the tentacles in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripod_%28The_War_of_the_Worlds%29">martians in War Of The Worlds</a>, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_%28creature_in_Alien_franchise%29#Facehugger">face-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">huggers</span> </a>in the Alien franchise who penetrate and grip using tentacle-like <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">protrusions</span> through to the cheeky and <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">humorous</span> in the reproductive tentacles of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centauri_%28Babylon_5%29#Appearance"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Centauri</span> race in Babylon 5</a>. This isn't limited to animals - there's the infamous angry, molesting tree in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evil_Dead_%281981_film%29#Plot">The Evil Dead</a> and to my mind, the whip-like protrusions of the Triffids in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_the_Triffids">John <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">Wyndam</span> novel </a>have much of the tentacle about them. And let's face it, perverts love whips.</span><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:arial;" ><br /><br />Fetish is the process of finding sexual those things which traditionally not sexual - with the interesting knock on effect that over time that which is <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">fetishised</span> can become representative of sexuality, such as the high-heeled shoe. Tentacles are certainly part of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">BDSM</span> fetish not least because of their shape, but also because of their association with monsters. It's common to see them used when representing evil characters, especially as it gives undertones - or <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">overtones</span> - of monstrous and unnatural sexuality. </span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:arial;" >In fact, tentacles have become something of a shorthand for making things unusually horrible or weird. </span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:arial;" ><a href="http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/58240">There's a nice article on that here</a>.<br /> </span><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />On a personal note, it's relatively common knowledge that, alongside a tail, a set of internal tentacles would be top of my list of body modifications should medical science get around to providing us with these much-needed physical improvements. Until such a day, my desires are confined to this rather lovely <a href="http://www.lovehoney.co.uk/product.cfm?p=21487">glass tentacle dildo</a>, longing after <a href="http://www.etsy.com/listing/54147053/latex-octopussy-dress">this dress</a>, and working on a tentacle tattoo.</span><br style="font-family: arial;"></span>electronic dollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15255101845615353600noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949711547542015501.post-70405272590013028672012-07-02T09:00:00.000+01:002012-07-02T09:00:00.830+01:00Poly Means Many: What is love?<i style="font-family: arial;"><a href="http://www.lori-smith.co.uk/2012/01/introducing-poly-bloggers.html"><b>Poly Means Many</b></a>: There are many aspects of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">polyamory</span></span>. Each month six <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">bloggers</span></span> - <a href="http://www.albj.co.uk/blog/">Amanda Jones</a>, <a href="http://closeenoughtoread.wordpress.com/">An Open Book</a>, <a href="http://onesubsmission.blogspot.com/">One Sub's Mission</a>, <a href="http://www.morethannuclear.com/">More Than Nuclear</a>, </i><i style="font-family: arial;"><a href="http://pmsleaze.blogspot.com/">Post Modern Sleaze</a>, </i><i style="font-family: arial;">and <a href="http://www.lori-smith.co.uk/">Rarely Wears Lipstick</a> - will write about their views on one of them. This month: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Love</span></i>.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I've written on love in general before, as a <a href="http://pmsleaze.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/love.html">Valentine's post</a> for the Gender and Sex social. This time, it's personal: I can theorise on love for a very long time, I can theorise on a lot of things for a very long tme, but let's get down to the practicalities this time. I am actually in love, which changes your perspective on things and instead of wanting to throw half-bricks at endorphin glowing couples walking hand-in-hand on the street I'm actually more likely to be one of them. Being in love is amazing, it makes you feel indestructable, special and very happy, who wouldn't want to feel like that?<br /><br />It can also be a very dangerous and challenging emotion, making you say and do things you might not otherwise do because of the intensity of your feelings for another person. Perhaps this is doubly true of relationships that are non-conventional, such as open relationships and BDSM relationships. I'm inclined to say this is partly because you add more feelings when you add more people or more "stuff" (if we can broadly categorise S&M play as "stuff" for the moment and you are prepared to forgive me).<br /><br />I also think that we are less socially prepared for them, generally people do not grow up in a world where such relationships are considered normal, so we have less space and freedom in our day-to-day conversations to discuss them and work through and feelings. It's unlikely, for example, that I might be able to casually say in conversation to people who did not know me, that I was feeling a bit sad that a playdate was cancelled because my partner and I were looking forward to it. All kinds of inferrences would have been drawn, including the idea that my relationship with <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ganymede</span> must be failing or somehow not working in order for us to be looking outside for some "spice", but most telling of all is the idea that we could not possibly be in love if we were fucking other people.<br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The love you have for a partner, a lover, a boyfriend, a girlfriend is enshrined as singular, whole and all-encompassing within commonly held principles. Take marriage - they are the one who you "foresake others" for. There is no space within this to add other people, so any emotional connection you might have for someone else, in a romantic, sexual sense, is seen as something which is taken away from the (presumably) finite pile of love that you have for your partner. Because love is a measurable resource, of course, and it needs to be hoarded like gold, rather than it being capable of expanding to fill whatever room you can create for it. We know, we absolutely know that you can love lots of friends, and lots of family members, and lots of cats. We also know (more or less, depending on where you are in the world, and, sadly, whether you are a man or a woman) that you can have sex with lots of people and, assuming you are a decent human being, remain on good terms. Where we come terribly, awfully, unstuck as a society is the idea that you could <span style="font-style: italic;">do both at once</span>. <br /><br />Part of the problem is the</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> idea where</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> putting specific bits of yourself into someone else and wriggling about was inherently an act of love? At its most basic, fucking is a kind of physical intimacy and pleasure, which can make everyone feel good, if done well, and shitty if done wrong. Just because I fuck you, doesn't mean I love you. I can do both, but I don't have to. BDSM opens up a very large palette of colours that constitute "fucking". When <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ganymede</span> sticks his cock in <span style="font-weight: bold;">Blush</span>, at my behest, I am fucking her. He is my submissive, my slave and therefore my tool. </span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The types of feelings you have towards people can affect the type of play you are able to enjoy. </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />The connection between owner and slave is very powerful, and whilst many D/s relationships are also loving relationships some of them are explicity not. Just as I can fuck someone and not love them, I can also dominate someone and not love them. In fact, there are situations where being in love with someone can actually make it more difficult to deliver very intense, very hard scenes - particularly those involving extremes of emotional or physical cruelty. I know many perverts for whom certain types of play can only be done to strangers or friendly partners.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />BDSM adds further complexity (or interest) when it comes to loving more than one person. That sense of wholeness and complete isolation from everyone else which is conferred upon typical monomogamous relationships is intensified in owner/slave relationships. More than being the only one for each other, one partner is explicity, overtly and entirely owned by the other. Everything is done at the, and for the, pleasure of the dominant partner. There is a difficulty then, between being that special and wonderful owned thing (for the submissive) or the all-powerful benefactor (for the dominant) when other people are involved.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />There is are some logic problems to be overcome in building open, many-partnered D/s relationships. Often these are resolved through hierarchy, planning and protocol. A master holds the key for many slaves, for example, or a slave is sent for training by a specific mistress, a pervert who switches may be the dominant for one person and the submissive of another. There are lots and lots of permeutations. But these only describe the theories for how something can be done and look great on paper - especially within the pages of exciteable books written by people with no real knowledge - yet they do not always match up to reality.<br /><br />People have feelings and desires and expectations. They also have lives which are not always, entirely, centered around their sexual practices. They need to go to work, to the shops, perhaps to look after their children. Real life relationships are not easily expressed by a diagram. All kinds of emotions will surface, not least jealousy, which we've already discussed, but many sorts of feelings which perhaps could not have been anticipated.<br /><br />The sensation of feeling entirely owned or owning someone can often be destroyed or made very difficult when the reality is different.</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> I struggled when I was dating people who had other partners with whom they had a stronger connection. I would often feel that our play was less important or less valuable, or that it was a game - something which was only done when we were together. </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Another good example is a friend of mine who hated the idea of being part of a hareem set-up for her dominant: she would feel one-of-many and abandonned, less special. A sentiment I can certainly empathise with.<br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A lot of it is to do with assumptions, and BDSM is rife with assumptions, just like any kind of human interaction. The idea that a submissive "should be" happy with another partner within their relationship purely because their dominant likes them, for example. They might well put up with it, out of love or service to their dominant, but they may never actually enjoy it and be happy within that relationship. Regardless of whether they might like to, or whether it would be "easier". This is an all-too-common problem within V relationships especially, whereby one partner is seeing t is impossible to make someone be happy about something - emotions are not as easily commanded as people.<br /><br />This is not to say that BDSM and open relationships are not compatible, merely that</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> they are not always easy bedfellows, and that the negotiations and discussions involved should always include the possibility that they will not work out. I know some very successful BDSM group set-ups and the <a href="http://kinkinmotion.wordpress.com/2010/04/23/leather-families/">leather family</a> for example, can offer the best of both worlds - a supportive and loving (in all kinds of sense of the word) group which also provides training for all things kink. One of the nice things about leather family set-ups is that they are often dynamic, they assume that people will grow and change, that submissives may become dominant, that dominants may desire to submit. Because BDSM, and love, now I come to think of it, is something which offers you the potential to learn so much about yourself and your interactions with others, it is absurd to think that you will not be changed by the experience. When people change they often find that the environments they are in do not match what they now need so relationships which provide for this, and which even anticipate this, can give a really strong, positive framework for everyone involved. </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span>electronic dollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15255101845615353600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949711547542015501.post-91665950274792712042012-06-19T14:17:00.003+01:002012-06-19T15:25:27.099+01:00Knife edges<span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:arial;">This knife gets me into a lot of trouble, for such a small knife. A black <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">lacquered</span> steel <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">tanto</span> given as a gift by <span style="font-weight: bold;">Boy Wonder</span> and loved ever since. It's a cunning knife, looking and feeling much sharper and much more dangerous than it actually is. For me, it's an ideal play-tool. The perceived impact is much greater than any risk of injury. The point and edge feel sharp, but in actual fact I expect that to do any damage I would actually have to <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">bludgeon</span> someone with the hilt. For public play, in loud and dark situations (a pox upon clubs and dungeons with black walls and red lighting) it is ideal.<br /><br />Knives make me a little giddy, I'll admit. I love them and they give me butterflies both to <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">wield</span> and, in times past, to experience. The cool, silvery blades flash under lights like eyes glinting with desire. I love the way that feather-light touches can melt people into butter. They are objects of power, full of potential violence and menace. Shining fetishes that reach through the skin, through the flesh and deep down into the animal <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">hind brain</span>. I can spend a very long time playing with knives and they bring out a certain kind of focus in which I get a little lost in myself, and in the beautiful flesh before me with its perfect offering of fine, red lines. Like a child with an etch-a-sketch I will sit, absorbed.<br /><br />He's sweating, lightly. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Presto</span>, with his eyes closed and deep, gorgeous pouting mouth lightly open. I can feel his breathing slow as he gradually relaxes, fading away beneath the movements of the knife. His back is smooth and an ideal canvas for what I want to do. I build up the alterations of motion. Slow and fast. Light and harder. Pressing on the throat. Hold. Hold. Hold. Release. Watch the breathing change. Different edges on the knife: the point, the blade, the reverse of the blade, the flat of the blade. The red lines appear, lightly, I coo over them: half to myself, half to him, enjoying what we are creating.<br /><br />Earlier, he told me he wanted no permanent marks, and certainly that's something I'd be loathe to do to anyone, let alone someone <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">else's</span> partner, here in a club. But the game of marks is a different thing. I've played with him before, at <span style="font-weight: bold;">Chiaroscuro</span>'s house and harder than this, with wickedly sharp needles that can do a lot of damage. We've exchanged the odd email and had a few discussions so I feel confident in what I'm doing.<span style="font-weight: bold;"> Idyll</span> is watching him, watching both of us. I take a couple of breaths and catch her attention.<br /><br />"Let me make him yours." I say, or words to that effect. To be honest, my focus was so entirely on the knife and his body that my words floated around me, lost. I use the tip of the knife, pressing hard enough so he can feel but knowing full well that the point was too dull to actually make more than transient marks. Certainly unable to cut the skin (like all my toys, I've tested extensively on myself). I write her name. We smile.<br /><br />I hug both of them, and leave them to themselves whilst I return to <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ganymede</span>. watching him fuck <span style="font-weight: bold;">Blush</span> with a violent energy that makes me grin and think "look, no hands." Later there is water all round.<br /><br />But later still, something is wrong. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Presto</span> and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Idyll</span> are crouched together upstairs. He's obviously upset, but I can't really get a response, and I'm conscious of not treading on her toes, of letting her give him whatever care she thinks he needs. They leave, and I'm conscious that things are not quite right. When Ganymede and I eventually make it home, there is a message waiting for me.<br /><br />My heart sinks.<br /><br />Something did go wrong. Eventually, after a series of messages, both with <span style="font-weight: bold;">Presto</span> and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Idyll</span>, including a very good face-to-face conversation we got to the bottom of it. And it raises an interesting series of points about trust, fear play and reactions. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Presto</span> started to feel very shaky and unhappy not whilst I was playing, but later, when I'd finished. Initially it was because he had thought I had actually marked him, and his fear of permanent marks runs deep, deeper than I had known. He was shaken, understandably so, at the thought that I had deliberately done something he had specifically asked me not to. When it transpired that I hadn't, his worries became guilt. Guilt that he hadn't trusted me to look after him, to listen to him and to accept his boundaries. He then became upset at his own reactions, at how his body was responding to play - both during and after. We worked out that the reason I had thought everything was fine during the episode was because at that point, everything was fine. The problems came later.<br /><br />Guilt is something we all experience when we play with intense experiences. And this was a situation in which we all shared in that guilt. Me for feeling I'd caused the problem, him for his own reactions and Idyll also, because he is her responsibility and when your partner is unhappy that weighs heavily, especially when you feel it is out of your control. I also felt guilty for any upset I might have caused her. Guilt is bound up in trust and care. We don't really experience much in the way of guilt over things we don't particularly care about or feel connected to. The guilt was about perception of broken trust, of damage done to relationships as much, if not more so, than any damage done to bodies.<br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:arial;">So therein lies my guilt. The fabled Dominant Guilt. The feeling that we have done too much, pushed someone too far, inflicted actual damage (physical or emotional) and let someone down. That our desires are "wrong" and that we are "bad" people. Worse still, because we didn't stop, we didn't read the signs that someone was in genuine distress we worry that we will not be able to do so in the future. Guilt is an ongoing risk with dominance. </span></span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />It's a knife edge. </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:arial;">For a dominant, we need to be absolutely aware of what we should and shouldn't do and then fuck with it. But not too much. And in the right way. And frankly, there is no way of being 100% sure that you are always playing in exactly the right places without agreeing every single act beforehand. And that would not work, for either the dominant or the submissive. </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:arial;">It's a knife edge on both sides. </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:arial;"> From a submissive point of view, the difference between blissful subspace and shouting a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">safeword</span> can be <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">minuscule</span>. It can be caused by all kinds of factors, not all of which you can be aware of in advance or forewarn anyone about. And these factors are unpredictable and will change according to context. Like the situation with myself and Presto, he had no idea he would react like that, so when he bared his back to my knife he couldn't prepare either of us for it. Similarly, my own experience of playing with him had "told" me that what I did was fine, because it was less than we'd done before. <br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:arial;">Whenever we play with someone we enter into a relationship of trust and take on a duty of care. We agree, through whatever methods, whether actively negotiated or based on shared understandings, to go "thus far and no further". As dominants we also agree and, are in many cases expected to push towards those boundaries whilst remaining safe within them. If we always do what is entirely anticipated, there will be no thrill, no fun. The joy lies in not knowing. We use limits and negotiations to create edges for play, but not to make explicit scripts which are easy to follow and predict. Predictable is dull. We don't want to be dull, like knives, we want to be shiny. So, when we play our games with people's desires and emotions we don't reveal our cards until it's too late. That's where the power lies, and where the excitement lies also. It's also where the problems can lie. Because in order for the game to work, we need to lie. Whether with our hands as we pretend to do something we are not in fact doing, or with our words, when we tell you that we are about to do something we have specifically promised not to do, just to see you squirm, to hear you scream. And for the pleasure when we do something that feels almost identical but, crucially, is not the same thing.<br /> <br />Did we break your trust? When you thought that we were going to, even though we didn't? We put you through exactly the same emotions, a facsimile of the situation. We are liars. We do it on purpose. We hurt you. And although we know, intellectually, deep down, that this is all fine, this is all agreed, this is all consensual. Still, we lie, we hurt. And we like it. We tell ourselves it is a consensual lie and that we are both pretending but as time goes on I'm less and less sure about this because when I play, I'm not pretending to hurt you. I am hurting you. And you are not pretending to be hurt, it is hurting.<br /><br />I'm still not sure of the answers to these questions, and I'm even less sure of what to do about it, other than keep talking, keep exploring and keep trying to balance on that knife edge. </span></span>electronic dollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15255101845615353600noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949711547542015501.post-57100935021424670832012-06-11T09:00:00.003+01:002012-06-12T09:01:25.740+01:00Poly Means Many: Domestic arrangements<i style="font-family: arial;"><a href="http://www.lori-smith.co.uk/2012/01/introducing-poly-bloggers.html"><b>Poly Means Many</b></a>: There are many aspects of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">polyamory</span></span>. Each month six <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">bloggers</span></span> - <a href="http://www.albj.co.uk/blog/">Amanda Jones</a>, <a href="http://closeenoughtoread.wordpress.com/">An Open Book</a>, <a href="http://onesubsmission.blogspot.com/">One Sub's Mission</a>, <a href="http://www.morethannuclear.com/">More Than Nuclear</a>, </i><i style="font-family: arial;"><a href="http://pmsleaze.blogspot.com/">Post Modern Sleaze</a>, </i><i style="font-family: arial;">and <a href="http://www.lori-smith.co.uk/">Rarely Wears Lipstick</a> - will write about their views on one of them. This month: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Domestic arrangements</span></i>.<br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">"But how does it work, do you kiss and cuddle as well as the other stuff?"<br /><br />Dinner with a friend of mine who is starting to explore the world of BDSM and we're getting into the real nuts and bolts of daily D/s life. So this month I'm going to write about how a power exchange works life and how this works in a poly context.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Ganymede</span> recently pointed out an old post of mine on the subject of "what I want" in which I talk about Total Power Exchange, which is a form of D/s. There's a <a href="http://kimdebron.tripod.com/id16.html">good article on it here</a>, but in a nutshell, this is how we live. More or less. I make the rules and he lives by them. That's all very easy to say, but how does it work, and how does it work with other people? </span><span style="font-family:arial;">Let's start with some myth busting, as I'm in the mood, and as we go along that might help explain how it all works.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><br style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Normality rules OK.</span> D/s relationships, and poly relationships, are a lot like other relationships. They are loving, caring and, for those in them, "normal". Ganymede and I do not spend our entire life in tight fitting black latex, with him perm</span><span style="font-family:arial;">anently on his knees and me looking serious whilst holding a bullwhip. This is roughly the equivlant of assuming that vanilla couples in 2012 dress, talk and behave like characters from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Life_%281975_TV_series%29">The Good Life.</a> at all times. It's dated and it's hugely stereotyped. We do all the things that other couples do. We hold hands, we kiss, we joke about our kink, ourselves, our lives, we do silly things, we snuggle up on the sofa, we go to the cinema and we do the shopping.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Let's play Master and servant</span>. All relationships have roles: modes of behaviour and a general "who does what" when you are together. This happens whether you realise it or not and once things get settled then they become standard. D/s relationships have roles, but they are very conscious ones, we decide, often in a very detailed fashion, who is going to do what and how. But most of the "what" is exactly the same kinds of things that any domestic set up needs, except with a thread of kink through them. For example, I do the cooking. I love to cook, so it makes me happy, and I like to provide for my submissive. I control what he eats, how much and when. I control what goes into him. I also take care of him, making sure he eats well. <br style="font-weight: bold;"><br />Because we have these roles, it means that adding other people into the mix is actually relatively easy in terms of people for play. We have played with <span style="font-weight: bold;">Blush</span>, for example, several times. Coming from the kink scene and knowing her in advance really helped make those dates work. We know what we are to each other and what to expect from each other. We're very much still in a dating phase, which leads us on to the final point.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">What's love got to do with it? </span>I want to make it very clear: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ganymede</span> and I love each other very much. We look out for each other, we want to make each other happy. The way in which we express this love is mostly the same, but crucially different from what you might term "traditional relationships." We do not believe that "love" is the same as "monogamy", and we certainly don't believe that if one or the other (or both) of us wants to have sex with someone else that points to a critical flaw in our relationship. Bodies are bodies. Bodies are fun. We like playing with bodies.<br /><br />Feelings for others are a different thing entirely. And that's where you have to start thinking ethically, and considering your impact on other people. We are not in a place to add someone else into our relationship in a romantic, emotional, ongoing sense. We're not ready. We don't know if we will ever be ready because we've only been together for a few months and are just getting a handle on who "we" are. We're still very new to each other and are enjoying spending time with "just us". We have so much to learn about who we are and how we work that adding other people into the mix beyond friends and play partners would be madness. Our experiences of poly have been different. We've both been in open relationships, of different kinds and I've been part of a poly V, which had limited success. </span><span style="font-family:arial;">It's something we have only briefly touched upon and whilst we certainly haven't closed it down as a possibility, it's something that would need to be negotiated within the context of our D/s relationship. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />What I have learnt is that there are so many different types of relationships, and no hard and fast rules for what a relationship should and shouldn't look like. There is no "one true way" of loving someone, or some people, no way of living that is the gold standard beyond what works for you, as long as everyone is honest, open and happy. And that nothing is set in stone. Things change, people change. Life moves on and you learn as you go along. I know when I first wrote about what I wanted, many years ago, the idea of a TPE relationship was terrifying in terms of what I perceived as a huge weight of responsibility for someone else. I'm actually finding it very easy, to the point of being the most simple and pleasurable to manage relationship I've had. What this says to me is that how I thought TPE would work - one person, constantly issuing orders and planning everything, is not in fact, how it works for us. I imagine that any poly situation would be the same. We would find something that suited us, and others involved, and come to our own arrangements.</span>electronic dollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15255101845615353600noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949711547542015501.post-12318730338243551122012-06-08T15:42:00.003+01:002012-06-08T17:24:05.377+01:00Public and private performances<span style=" ;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >Life is slowly, slowly, ever so slowly becoming something that you might call "normal". For a certain value of "normal" I suppose. I've moved house, settling into a routine with <b>Ganymede</b> (more on that in another post) and am beginning to find time to see friends and go to parties.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style=" ;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >I had a lot of fun creating a small BDSM performance of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Masque_of_the_Red_Death"><i>Masque Of The Red Death</i></a> for <b>Dandy</b>'s themed birthday party last weekend. What do you get the man who has everything? A hand-made slice of blood soaked, tongue in cheek (tongue in cheeks) kinky live art. I love doing stage shows, particularly those that have a storyline to them. For this one I re-wrote the story and committed sections of the original prose to memory - I liked the cadence and feel of a lot of the language and didn't want to paraphrase. I used pre-briefed friends in the audience to act as a dumb show: laying out the events in the tale whilst I spoke and then gave the whole thing a kinky twist. </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style=" ;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" ><b>Blush</b> was a marvellous victim, upon whom I demonstrated - for the enjoyment of all - the symptoms of the Red Death. Stripped naked with red wax dripping from a lit candle onto her flesh represented the blood pouring from the skin. <b>Dandy</b>, crowned and led to the stage where he could sit on a throne was the Prince and I had a number of courtiers to fawn upon him. The audience were also the guests at the Masquerade and together with the courtiers we encouraged them to dance, drink and generally get into the debauched spirit of the whole thing. I was very flattered by the reception and made a mental note to add a bit more art to future performances.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style=" ;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >In public, things have been very good. In private, perhaps less so.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style=" ;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >Of late I've been feeling a little sub-par in my own dominance. Play with <b>Ganymede</b> has been patchy. Don't get me wrong, the sex is amazing and the kinky sex particularly so, especially where sexual service, bondage or sensory deprivation (or all three) is concerned. Anything involving fucking is bordering on some of the best sex I've ever had. </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style=" ;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >But "pure" play is much more miss than hit. And that's where the dominant worries come in. We've tried some things that have not quite worked or have just resulted in feelings of upset, discomfort of "meh." None of which are ideal outcomes, particularly as a dominant of a new submissive, and a new to BDSM submissive. I am responsible, for him, that's part of the power exchange. I get his service, I take on responsibility or power, if you will. I consider myself to be part mentor, part tutor, part provider of horrible, wonderful things and his enjoyment of all things kink is mediated through me. I decided what, when, how and who we play with. </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style=" ;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >So when things don't work out I often feel as if it is my fault - my fault for not knowing him well enough, for not controlling the situation enough, or for just not reading him right. I'm not worried about us, or about our relationship. We're very well matched and well connected. What I'm concerned about is whether my idea of dominance is based on my experiences as a submissive - in short, I'm delivering the dominance that I enjoyed. Which makes sense, as my goal is </span><span style=" ;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >to give him the sort of satisfaction that I experienced when I was submissive. </span><span style=" ;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >And I want that satisfaction for myself, as a dominant. And recently, I haven't been feeling that way. If I'm not giving "good" dominance then I feel as if I've failed. </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style=" ;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" ></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style=" ;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >But what have I "failed" at? We've tried things and they haven't worked. There was no real way of knowing in advance whether they would or wouldn't. Some of the things I like, he will never like because we are not the same. And replicating other relationships with new people is never a good idea. It's difficult though, because your first dominant, your first D/s relationship sets the scene, as it were. It gives you your first thrills and contexts for how to have a different sort of sexual relationship. And these ideas and actions become ingrained, with time. That's part of how D/s works, how S&M play works - we substitute for sexuality.<br /> </span><span style="font-size:100%;"></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style=" ;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >Logically, there are no hard and fast rules about what a D/s relationship "should" look like, or what people "should" do when they are involved in those relationships. Yet we all have in our minds an image of what a D/s relationship is, what people do. There's part of me that feels that without doing those things I'm somehow being less of a dominant to him, giving him less of the type of play that he might expect. Breaking out of these patterns is proving harder than I'd imagined, especially with someone new. I would have thought that a partner without preconceptions would be ideal, a tabula rasa on which for me to make my mark. However, I'm finding that because a lot is new to him, there's a lot to try, and a lot to fail at, because he doesn't have experience or context. And that means more for me, and more pressure I'm putting on myself, to deliver better scenes to compensate for the failed ones.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style=" ;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" ></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style=" ;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >And that's without even thinking about the emotional side.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style=" ;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >When scenes that break down because he's not enjoying himself or it's getting awkward, then I feel terrible. It's like an anti-orgasm: entirely the opposite of the kind of satisfaction, pride and confidence I get from a good stage performance. I feel annoyed, frustrated and guilty. My dominance is part of me, it feeds my sense of self. If I don't think I'm a good dominant, I feel unhappy just as if I was struggling at work, or having arguments with my friends or family.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style=" ;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >Nothing in life is without a resolution, and communication is a big part of making this issue go away. Getting him to talk about his feelings is proving a bit of a challenge, but on the other hand I've never struggled talking about mine, and sharing them is a good start. I'm going to try and revisit some of our earlier, extensive emails and lists of red, amber, green activities and see if we can re-build a new dynamic that fits better with the things we now know we both enjoy and we can look to explore or expand upon other kinds of play that we might not have tried yet. </span>electronic dollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15255101845615353600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949711547542015501.post-33205707538368296682012-06-01T14:40:00.000+01:002012-06-01T14:40:43.326+01:00Submissive styles<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A conversation with a friend of mine recently helped me understand one of my own concerns about the type and response to S&M play with Ganymede. She's a switch, like me, and talked about how she "flies" when she is submitting - we spent a while waxing lyrical over the deep joys of letting go, bottoming out, closing your eyes and just <i>being done to </i>- rather in the manner of women discussing cakes they had enjoyed eating. But in this case, our memories of pleasure were laced with current disappointments. Neither of us felt that we were giving our partners the same depth of submission, the same overwhelming sensations or crazy, head swimming, lost-from-the-universe <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jouissance">jouissance</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I've used that word deliberately, more on gendered reactions to sex later, hold that thought. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Kristeva">Kristeva</a> theorised that jouissance is a type of writing that only women were capable of performing, which interested me in terms of gendered sexual expression in BDSM. Capitalising on previous theories about how men are not taught how to express their sexual side in the way that women are - with the knock-on effect that women are overly sexualised or only valued for their sexuality and men find it hard to express submissive desire because sexual availability is seen as "feminine". This leads us on to the worrying assumption that women are "naturally" submissive, and men are "naturally" dominant. A point which is bunk, pure and simple. However, this is a social perception, and it's also a reflection of how different gender roles are assigned. What this means is that it can often be easier for women to be sexually submissive than men and that whilst many men desire sexual submission it can trigger complications, including a difficulty in "properly" submitting as well as other thoughts on guilt, shame and their own masculinity.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Could it be that men find submission harder than women? Are there tools and techniques we can use to help get over these barriers? Conversation helps. As always. Communicate and try and understand not "what is wrong" but "what submission looks and feels like". It could well be that it's a simple case of different people having different experiences, however it could be that there is something deeper driving it. </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Gender aside, everyone responds to play differently and that we
can't expect others to have matching responses to ours. Pleasure looks
different in different bodies. Just as certain people are warmer or
cooler on different toys, sensations and situations so too submission
looks different in other minds.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Reassuring her helped reassure myself. We both worried that we hadn't been able to give our partners that experience of sub space we ourselves had enjoyed so much and felt like worse dominants for it. But being practical, I know that I am good at what I do, I'm very skilled and experienced in both practical and psychological techniques of control, pleasure and pain. I know my partner, we talk a lot and although we are still relatively knew, I know a lot of his buttons and the more we play, the better we get. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Yet, there is also another factor. Just as dominance is an art that needs to be learnt so is submission. The practice of relinquishing control and thereby generating sexual pleasure is not as innate as some people think. There is a huge gap between the fantasy of doing something and the reality of doing it - or to be more precise, having it done to you. Certainly the desire to do it has to be there in the first place, but a lot of these feelings - physical, mental and emotional - are strange when done for the first time and unfamiliar sensations take some getting used to. The more you do it, the better you get at it and the more deeply you are able to participate. Of course, like natural athletes there are people who are just born to BDSM, who melt under a firm touch or thrill to the feel of twitching flesh under their hands. Their minds and bodies need kink like fish need water. For most people, BDSM can be an exciting addition to their lives, and their sex lives, but it isn't a need, they can - and do - play every now and then with kinky things, but it's icing on the cake. For perverts, it's the cake. And the icing. And the box the cake came in. And the cake shop. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Ganymede</b> is new to BDSM and D/s relationships with their hurt / comfort equilibrium of power exchange, rules of living and sexual activities that emphasises these power roles. Although we have fallen very easily into this way of living, in many ways this is sometimes not helpful. Not everything we do will be as easy for him, or as "natural" as others. My own experience and desires are only useful to a point because all they really do is outline what I want and what I like. Similarly, because he is new, we have to accept - and anticipate - that he might not be the same kind of submissive as I am. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">To take a simple example, he likes verbal abuse, which I hate, he can grin and say "yes, I am a complete slut." in a way I would never have been able to do. To give a more complex one, the concept of serving me is one that he loves, wholeheartedly, especially sexual service. He is always available for me to fuck, whenever I want, for example. The physicality of this is familiar, he's had sex with people before, the difference is his ability to chose when, who and how, which is now denied to him. The denial is tempered with the fact that he wants to be used in this way. Pain, however, is still relatively unfamiliar, and not as keenly associated with desire. He doesn't have a high pain tolerance. It's something to be used sparingly, and it's something that he suffers through, because I'm a sadist...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">But not that much of a sadist that I want my bottom to suffer needlessly. I'm a trainer, first and foremost and that means a reliance on the tools of carrot and stick. In order for me to enjoy what I'm doing, I need to know that he enjoying it, even if he's not enjoying all of it, or even if he is only enjoying it because of the context. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span>electronic dollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15255101845615353600noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949711547542015501.post-89210392375642487512012-05-15T17:56:00.001+01:002012-05-15T17:56:32.195+01:00Playing with people<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As part of the process of training <b>Ganymede</b>, and because (frankly) I'd missed playing with her, I invited <b>Blush</b> over for a BDSM threesome this weekend. Group sex is always a bit of a gamble, group kink is even more so. Not only do you need to have participants who are sexually interested in each other but they also have to by psychologically attuned. I place my bets every time I introduce <b>Ganymede</b> to someone else, it's not just about what affect a new body, a new person might have on him, it's about what effect my playing with that person might have and the fact that whenever you include any additional partners you always change the dynamic. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I had reasonable hopes of good odds on this one. <b>Blush</b> and I have a natural connection, the sadist in me matches perfectly with the masochist in her, and she is a good submissive fit for my dominance. I knew that I was using the often flawed argument of "well, I like both of them, so they must both like each other." Fortunately I was right. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The order of the evening was a long, drawn out session of co-subbing (for them) and co-ordinating wonderful, dreadful things (for me). We relaxed into it, I had all the space and time in the world and no intention of rushing. We met for dinner and drinks and then had coffee and liqueur whilst the heating went on and food was digested at the <b>Citadel of Kink</b>. I was whispering silent noises of happiness at the luxury of being able to do this, without worry of interruption and the level of security and control this had offered me. It felt like civilisation.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We discussed, briefly, over dinner what people may or may not be interested in doing. Both of them trust me and neither of them wanted to ruin the surprise so I let the conversation linger briefly on what they might expect. All the better to warm up their anticipation. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Once everything else was warmed up, I moved on to play. We opened up one of the boxes of tricks, and I showed <b>Blush</b> all of the new kit I had acquired since we last played together. I had the remarkable fortune of being gifted a very large bag of some very high quality bondage kit, including a couple of pieces that I have only seen rarely. Her eyes widened and she made a pleasing "oooh" sound. Together with <b>Ganymede</b>, I stripped her down, displaying her body for him, removing stockings and suspenders and applying thick, black buckled leather wrist and ankle cuffs, designed for suspension. This set has three large straps and the wrist pieces almost resemble gauntlets or boxing gloves. She ginned widely as they went on. I set the boy to work licking her cunt whilst I blindfolded her and applied a set of clover clamps to her breasts, then used a pinwheel at the top of her cunt, just above where he was licking.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Once he was in place, I stripped him down and spanked his exposed bottom encouragingly. The game of co-subbing is about balance and contact. Keeping both submissives entertained at the right levels so that neither feels "left out" in a way that would be inappropriate - as opposed to, say, a game of abandonment, or cuckolding, or voyeurism. For a dominant, this means twice the work, in theory, but if it works well it is absolutely twice the fun. And of course, I was able to use them both as toys for the other. Hierarchy, spoken or unspoken, is one of the best ways to help frame what you might do. I knew that <b>Blush</b> would recoil at doing anything which was toppy or dominant, but that <b>Ganymede</b> might appreciate being used as a tool of violence. So that was how I arranged the situation. He was my spare pair of hands, a way of acting upon her flesh. She was my way of giving him pleasure, without having to do so myself, and I made her suck his cock whilst I smiled at him from across the room. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">There is an absolute joy in making other bodies sing to your tune, to move them this way and the other, leading them on a merry dance through all kinds of pleasures and pain. I clipped them together at the neck, watching them kiss with the satisfaction of the world's greatest pornographer. Personalised sex acts, just for me. I changed their positions, putting his cock inside her and locking her wrists around his back. He fucked. I gagged him and watched his face as she, teasingly, kissed the hardened leather covering his mouth. Finally, I slid a plug inside him and, pressing in with me knee, ground him into her. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"This is how missionary sex works, right?"</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Later, we put a leather arm sleeve on Blush, which arched her back and pressed her breasts out for more torture. I slipped the latex hood onto <b>Ganymede</b> and put him on his back, then made her straddle his face whilst I fucked him. I remember thinking that perhaps this was an ideal girls' night in, with both of us using him for our pleasure and me kissing her whilst I ran my nails down her back, reminding her of their sharpness and cruelty. When he came, he came hard, the orgasm shuddering through his body. Together, <b>Blush</b> and I, smiling, gently removed the hood and held him until he came back to the room, to the world and to himself with a grin so wide it threatened to split his face in half.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Perhaps one of the more intimate moments came later, when, natural as if it had been something we always did, we showered, turned down the bed and all went to sleep together. In the morning, <b>Ganymede</b> tidied, I made breakfast and coffee whilst <b>Blush</b> went out for croissants. We sat together on rugs and cushions and discussed the night before, agreeing to future dates, and future possibilities.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>electronic dollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15255101845615353600noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949711547542015501.post-85337220210834081152012-05-10T18:19:00.000+01:002012-05-10T18:19:02.559+01:00Citadel of Kink<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Perverts, as I've said before, are in many ways a subset of geeks. We like strange things, with peculiar names, we spend a lot of money on mysterious sounding and looking "kit", we like the colour black, bandy together in groups to teach each other outre activities and go to odd clubs in odd outfits whilst people give us odd looks on public transport.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Codes and safe spaces are important to geeks and perverts alike. Ways of naming things that make sense to people that are "in the know" and indicate that these things, these places are safe for "people like us". The codes, and the places, are chosen in particular ways, depending on their use.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Recently, I've been looking for a new place to live and have finally found one. I'm in the very happy situation of (finally) being able to have a place just to myself, which means I can select location and all kinds of other details based on exactly what I want - within reason, and budget. Naturally, what I really want is a warehouse conversion apartment with a huge glass wall overlooking the Thames, brick walls and a series of iron girders to tie people to. For the moment and until I have made my fortune in this gold-paved city, I get the one thing every pervert really, really needs.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Privacy.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Domination relies on you being able to exert and manage control. Control of environment is key to giving a safe (regardless of whether it seems safe or not) space for all kinds of play. Simple things like managing temperature, music, where the furniture is, how the kit is laid out, lighting levels. These all create the space for play and having your own place makes all of that much, much easier. In my experience, the harder, heavier and, let's be honest, noisier, the play is going to be, the more privacy and the more control you need to maintain over what's around you. It also means that you can be a bit more adhoc, if suddenly you feel the need to drag a naked submissive, kicking and screaming to the bathroom to drench them in icy water, you can. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Knowing you are alone in a space can instantly make you feel relaxed, and it's much easier to deliver a good scene if you feel relaxed. When you have a place to yourself it can become "yours", and the sense of ownership and singular ownership at that is something that benefits the dominant persuasion - we like having things to ourselves, like cats with cream. The worry about being interrupted - whether it's someone just knocking on the door to see if you are OK, or being able to overhear conversations in another room - can be seriously scene-breaking to your concentration, especially if you are trying to maintain some kind of mood. It's one thing to manufacture the belief in your submissive or bottom that they might be interrupted, or suddenly exposed, but you need to have control over that exposure. Further, I think it is unfair and to a certain extent a little unethical to make other people participate in kinky activities if they haven't chosen to. Doing things like having a partner on a lead, or kneeling at your feet when you are watching the television can make life with flatmates uncomfortable. No matter how accommodating, lovely or understanding those flatmates are, ultimately they are not in a D/s relationship with your partner.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">And that's even assuming that you have the luxury, as I have had for many years, of lovely, understanding flatmates.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">There are other things that perverts need, and whilst looking for a place I have made a reasonable list of them. Windows and outdoor areas that aren't overlooked, as few and far neighbours as possible (having people call the police is never good, and the human ear is very well attuned to the noise of other people in pain), strong floors and sturdy ceilings, easily cleaned flooring, good water pressure, interesting cupboards that can be locked from the outside, lots of storage space for all that kit, landlords that are very "hands off", access to the centre of town for clubbing and ease of returning in a taxi. Security is also important, partly because it's always nice to feel safe, but also because it gives a good look and feel to the place. Nothing says "pervert" quite like locks, bars and chains. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I've lucked out and managed to find a place on the top floor of a building that has no other flats in it, and is on the end of a block. I have my own metal gate, then a door which leads up my own private stairwell and to another door. The windows overlook rooftops. Over here in <b>Kinksville</b>, there is something of a naming convention with our places of residence, that they all have their own little code names to indicate their particular flavour and style of perversion, such as The House Of Rope (THOR). No prizes for guessing who lives there.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">So, it is with a happy, and heady grin, looking forward to luring people over for days and nights of terrible things, that I can announce I've got a <b>Citadel Of Kink</b>. Or COK, for short. No sniggering at the back...</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">...oh, go on then.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span>electronic dollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15255101845615353600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949711547542015501.post-76224122089053591682012-04-30T14:54:00.000+01:002012-04-30T14:54:02.583+01:00The words that make you mine<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"Tell me what I am, again."</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And I do. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It's the words that get him, every time. I swear that with a little more practise, a little more conditioning I could make <b>Ganymede</b> come by lulling him with a litany of filth. Another way that we connect, another way he operates as my mirror. He needs to hear me put him in his place, contextualise him (textualise him) frame those feelings he is experiencing in terms of what he is to me, make that building desire flood out through a stream of consciousness fantasy that is also a reflection of our reality. I talk him to orgasm.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Words bind us. Words define us. They make, take and <i>describe</i> us: literally make copies of ourselves in language. The words we use become our double. And the double up the impact of any sensation we as dominants might wish to create. After all, training is a learning experience and one always follows up the action with the linguistic lesson, you never just tell, you never just do. You show. So as well as what I'm doing, and I'm doing a lot as you may have guessed from the sparse amounts of blogging recently, I'm also putting a lot of work into words. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We have contractual words. The words that make up our agreement to each other. And words for each other. There are rules for frequency and types of words - I require an email every Monday with what he is up to. There are forbidden words such as Mistress. There are even new words that slip out of our minds and into our tongues and out into the world. Words that neither of us has used in that way for anyone else before. Queen. Feed. Hello. Yes. Words that without context are silly or strange or even - dare I say it? - normal. But to us, for us, they become special. The tone and placement of these words makes them magic, language that is transformative, that flips the switch and says "this place now is a different place". Like putting a collar around his neck, I can do the same with words. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">There's method in my madness. I assure you. But madness in the method. After all, what sane person would want such a thing? What sane person would want me to do such a thing? Yet, he wants it, I want it, we want it. To turn a real, unique and wonderful human being into a toy, a pet, a sexualised automated slave. What I am doing is deep and complicated and a not-very-nice-thing. I'm programming. I'm indoctrinating (again, with the words, to fill with learning). I'm conditioning. And I'm hanging on to the fact that he has consented, that he has offered, that he wants me to do this to him as evidence that I am not entirely cruel or monstrous. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Partly. Perhaps.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I've yet to really experience that cloud of "dominant guilt" and maybe that's a black mark on my character or maybe my own adventures as a submissive have made me more accepting of suffering in others because I know how much I liked it, needed it, wanted it. There is also another context. What I am doing, although unique to us, is not exactly unique.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Everyone trains everyone else. They just don't always call it that. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The world is full, if you choose to look, and I've looked (oh I've looked!) of all kinds of linguistic experience like this. Training through words, through a re-telling. Of times and places where people have agreed to be reshaped, to be remade. In many instances they have paid for the privilege: think of therapies such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy">CBT</a> or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming">NLP</a>, or of self-help courses run around retraining your self-image. All kinds of experiences are, in fact, a narrative, with different terminology used to distinguish roles, carve out the insiders from the outsiders, create new ways of looking at the world by renaming. Groups are narratives. Relationships are narratives. A BDSM relationship is a narrative. The distinction is in the kind of story you are telling. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Over coffee with <b>Majeste</b> this weekend she referred to me as Cinderella, in my fairy-tale search for the right one. The collar fitted, I suppose, in the end. But the moment where the metal snaps shut, or the glass slipper slides onto the bare, delicate foot (something I've always found a little chilling, in more ways than one) is exactly the opposite of a Happy Ending. We are at the beginning, and the story has only just started.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In many ways I feel as if this is marking a new phase in my writing. Not only am I writing very much from the top, and with someone who is committed to a long term D/s relationship, but the type of relationship, and the types of experiences we are having are a lot more normalised. Rather than dates or affairs or hotel assignations (wonderful and hedonistic as they were) I have a partner. Not just for an hour or two, or when they have time, or in between other partners. The same has also been true of me, I've been casual with people when perhaps they wanted more. Been less-than when they wanted more. Things have been too hot, too cold and not quite right. Slippers have not fitted.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Instead I have <b>Ganymede</b>. </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I have a life, or a potential life. One where someone is always my slave.</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I have a boy who wants me to dominate his thoughts, to own him mind, body and soul. Sometimes the scale of it takes my breath away, because it is epic. I off-handedly referred to D/s as "like love, but harder" to a vanilla friend of mine only later realising that I truly meant it as such. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Most of this is a very long-winded way of saying that what I'm doing right now is very big, and in many ways very new. Just as Ganymede is new to BDSM I am also new to him, and to the scale of what we are doing to each other, with each other. There's a lot of NRE floating around as well as that crazy, not-real sensation that good, hard D/s does to you anyway. So I'm likely to be updating less frequently. But it's worth it. Trust me. </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span>electronic dollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15255101845615353600noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949711547542015501.post-42039378741501936432012-04-15T19:18:00.003+01:002012-04-15T20:42:21.981+01:00Public Outings Part One<span style="font-family: arial;">I'm running a bit of a blogging backlog at the moment, blame a combination of lack of spare time and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ganymede</span>. The latter is keeping me very happily occupied, however, so I'm certainly not complaining.<br /><br />Over Easter, a small celebration in the form of a private party for four was arranged with myself and the boy, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Mr Smith</span> and<span style="font-weight: bold;"> Idyll </span>a new female friend who I met at a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">photoshoot</span>. Unlike the party a few weeks ago, this was (for me at least) going to be more explicitly about play rather than sex, and about experimentation in a private setting. The recent orgy was an excuse to relax into a warm pile of bodies, amongst other things, and concentrate on pure hedonistic experience. This was going to be much more precise. There were a number of things I wanted to get out of the night. The first was to have a fun kinky time with friends, naturally, the second, less obvious one, was to give <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ganymede</span> and myself a reasonably safe environment in which we could start doing more public <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">BDSM</span>.<br /><br />What we have is still very new and that "newness" can sometimes make me feel anxious and wary. This is a hangover from previous, unsecured relationships that always felt on the brink of falling <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">apart</span> (and in the end, did exactly that). We've talked about it and I'm trying to deal with it. We are defined and decided as a D/s relationship, with clear <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">commitment</span> on both sides and with nothing from him to indicate otherwise. However, knowing a thing is safe and always feeling it as such are two different things. One of the things I'm finding about being a dominant within a relationship is the amount of emotional concern you have towards not just your submissive, but towards the D/s relationship itself. Like any caring, loving relationship, you want the best for your partner. The overt power exchange within D/s means that things can become very intense and feelings can get very big very quickly. Emotions are amplified. I've experienced this a lot from the submissive point of view. The dominant one is no less intense but it is very different.<br /><br />I'm learning to read, and to take control of, a new partner. I need to understand all his wants, to be in touch with his body so I know what those twitches and tics mean. I have a strong protective requirement within my sense of being a dominant - I need to keep my charge safe from harm - all kinds of harm, from feeling sad or lonely through to anyone causing them upset. When things happen that knock him, I get angry, especially if I was unable to prevent it. <br /><br />Then there is how dominant desire is expressed sexually. You create space and opportunity for submission when you frame the relationship in initial negotiations, but the actual doing-of-it is an ongoing process. Teaching them how to please you, and how to know when they are pleasing you so they feel good about their submission, about what they are offering. Making sure they know that they are good, in the right way, of knowing just when to call them a slut and just when to call them a good boy. The sadistic streak rears up, wanting to hurt them and reconciling that strange, internal conflict of hurt/comfort. I want to do all kinds of ugly, cruel and brutal things to him. I want to hold him tight and whisper sweet filth in his ear whilst I do them. I want to keep him in delirious throes of agony and <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">ecstasy</span> so that he always makes <span style="font-style: italic;">that face</span> at me. The one that looks up towards me with wide eyes and a faraway look in his dilated pupils. I want to fuck him all the time, to physically possess him in that visceral, animal fashion. And when I do take him, I want to control every single moment of that experience and pour my heart, soul and wicked thoughts into every pour of his body, every corner of his mind. And when I'm done with him, after carrying him through to the end I want to pick him up, strap him into a neat bundle and put him to bed safe. I want to do it all again, the next day.<br /><br />The consequence is that there's a lot going on, there's a lot that I do, a lot to think about, even before I've picked up some rope or a toy. And keeping on top of all of that, and in control of all of that, is sometimes more than enough. Don't get me wrong, the intensity is amazing and I wouldn't be without it for the world. It's also a <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">necessary</span> and natural part of having a new <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">partner</span>. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">NRE</span>, anyone? And it isn't there all the time, we have wonderful, calm, quiet moments of me drinking tea whilst he kneels at my feet. But it's there a lot, and it's often easier to do it with just the two of us.<br /><br />I want to play with him with others, to go out together and play with people, to go to clubs and also to allow him to play and fuck other people. And I want to do the same too. Better yet, other people want to play with us, and that gives us a whole new space in which to work with. It makes us an "us" for a start, which is a wonderful thing. And so, playing with a small group of friends seemed ideal.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Idyll</span> and I have never played together before I arranged to meet up for food beforehand so that all four of us could discuss what we may and may not be interested in doing. We had some very good, frank conversations about physical and emotional needs, as well as more of a "getting to know you", which was really nice. Annoyingly, however, </span><span style="font-family: arial;">the day didn't start very well. Even getting to the meet up was actually more fraught than I would have liked with a combination of minor issues such as lost cinema tickets, delays in people meeting up with each other, and lots of increasingly annoyed text messages back and forth. By the time all four of us met up I was feeling quite tense. Not the best frame of mind to be able to process other people's moods and sexual needs. Both <span style="font-weight: bold;">Idyll</span> and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ganymede</span> were tired from a club the night before so their lack of sleep and other post-club hangovers meant that their emotional states <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">pre</span>-play were a major concern of mine. Another, not insignificant factor was any knock on effects and feelings that may be around with <span style="font-weight: bold;">Mr Smith</span> and myself. We've talked a lot since we split up and both of us agreed that we had a good enough relationship, and good enough chemistry that we still wanted to play, however you can never tell until you actually start. </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />It took a long time to get everyone, myself included, to a place where play could really kick off. Once we were all fed and back at the hotel, we all started to become less rattled. Glasses of wine and a few chemical substances helped matters. As did all being indoors, out of the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">unseasonably</span> cold weather and in the same space - finally. It was actually something of a relief to manage to do that. Even as it was, we spent a lot of time simply talking before anything happened. This is often the case with play parties, even club nights, especially when people are new to each other. The British reserve is still very much in evidence. But unwind we did, and as the hours passed clothes were removed and I was able to place the silver collar around <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ganymede</span>'s neck, both of us smiling as we did so.<br /><br />Even now, I cannot remember exactly what kicked the evening off, at what moment my anxiety faded away. Was it starting to get undressed? Was it watching my boy kiss <span style="font-weight: bold;">Idyll </span>and feeling absolutely no jealousy whatsoever. More: feeling pleased that she was enjoying him, that he was enjoying her. Of knowing that he was still very much mine, that my need to touch him all the time (just be sure, just to check he is real) won't make me angry or upset when he touches someone else. Quite the reverse. The feeling of pride I had as his fingers slid inside her, as her face lit up at his ministrations, was overwhelming. To have him at my control, at my behest, satisfy someone like an extension of my own dominance, my own abilities and my own pleasure. A marvellously new feeling and unlike any I had ever had before. And one I was to explore all night. <br /></span>electronic dollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15255101845615353600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949711547542015501.post-65700032975013373462012-04-06T12:26:00.004+01:002012-04-06T14:03:51.903+01:00On creating objects for private use<span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Ganymede</span>, naked, eyes wide open, lips parted. His neck rests against my shoulder as I encircle him in my arms. I'm laid partially on top of him, fingers tracing the already reddened skin on his back. Pinch. Twist. Scratch. I watch his eyes and mouth as I hurt him. Pain sparkles for a certain type of masochist, the sensations are bright and sharp creating curious giggles of surprise and gasps of not-quite-pleasure. It hurts. But it is<span style="font-style: italic;"> fun</span>. For both of us. I am learning his specific tells, like a poker player, so I can read him without him having to utter a word. There's the difference between a "good" wince and a "bad" one, for example; his automatic responses compared to ones created deliberately. He raises his hands, as if in defence, but he's not trying to stop me - he just can't help himself. So helping myself to him seems like the most natural thing in the world.</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />"I want you to make me into a thing. Use me."<br /><br />My words, from years ago, coming out of his mouth, now. It's a gift. To be able to take someone as you yourself once wanted to be taken, to put them in that exact same mental space which you inhabited. I know what he means when he says those things. I know the desire to be small, helpless, empty and waiting. To want to be filled up with sensation, to have thoughts removed and to bottom out into deep, dark spaces.<br /><br />Better yet, I know how to do it.</span><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />Rubber hood. No eye holes, just a space for a mouth and pinprick nostrils. Tight fitting around the face - anything around the face is more intense - pressing in on all those vital sense organs we use to orientate ourselves to the world. Remove the face, remove the person and their ability to make sense of the world. They can't see you, you can't see them. They become the object, reliant upon you for clues as to what is going on. It's comforting too. Like a blanket on a canary, silence falls and the signal to "not do" is given. Similarly, I am not being watched, the performance aspect of dominance is now based on touch, on timing, not on how I look whilst doing it. Another freedom, this time for me. The smell of rubber starts to fill the room, and I lick the side of his cheek where the black material is starting to warm up. Delicious. A word I've picked up from him, and it's apt.<br /><br />The process of turning a person with thoughts and feelings into an object can be a slow, deliberate one. Give them time to settle into each layer, each stage of not-being. Then the ball gag. Permission not to speak, the removal of any kind of human communication, that feeling of being full up. The knowledge that very soon saliva will start to build in the mouth and run down the side of the face.<br /><br />The final touch. A solid, steel collar. I've been eyeing one up in <a href="http://www.liberationlondon.com/">Liberation</a> for around a year now and "casually" (I never do anything casually, I'm dreadfully deliberate to the point of conniving) taking people into the store to walk past it, testing reactions. Some have ignored it, others balked at the weight and the cold of the metal. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ganymede</span> grins when I remove it from the glass case and clip it around his neck, then bites his lip. Another tell. Easy. It sits over the neck of the hood, holding it down. <span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><br /><br />He's ready for use.<br /><br />I sit astride his now very hard cock and fuck him. He arches towards me, hips moving to meet me. There are noises from beneath the hood: slow, rattling moans of forced breath, the rasp of frothy saliva, a horses' whinny, small growls he won't remember even making. I can feel the change in his body as he's fucked like this, it's a difference of consistency, of tempo even. There's a physical contradiction occuring whilst he is at one and the same time more relaxed and more tense. The thinking has gone out of the process, there is no deliberation here only animal movement, it's muscle memory and something more. Like the feeling on the dance floor where something else takes control of you and the beats move through you and out of your feet, the palms of your hands and the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">rhythm</span> of your heart beneath your chest. He moves like that but I call the beat. I take time with him, knowing full well he will orgasm quickly if I chose to let him. I don't. Not quite. A few times I rise up entirely, resting the edge of my <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">clit</span> on the tip of his cock, letting him twitch at the absence of cunt. Hold. Wait. Then press down again, fucking him a little harder than before. I'm toying with him like a cat might with a mouse and the pleasure is in my pleasure at being so free with this body beneath me.<br /><br />Under the hood he might be anyone. But he is not just anyone. He is mine and there is an overwhelming pleasure in that. The sense of just possession, of <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">absolute</span> right in doing what I am doing and the knowledge that he will thank me for doing it later. When he comes, he comes hard, a sensation he later describes as having an orgasm pulled out of him. I leave him in the hood for a while, to give him space to come out from space. There's nothing quite as jarring as bringing someone up to quickly, you'll give them the scene equivalent of the bends. I hold him next to me, draping a leg over him as I masturbate and bring myself to orgasm, letting him feel it, but not participate.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">Later, we talk. We're still trying each <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">other</span> out, learning things. A process I hope never to finish. Each corner of his skin, of his mind I explore in minute detail, paying close attention to what he is saying, what he isn't saying. A language entirely new, but also familiar, as our tastes are so entwined. There's a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">onanistic</span> satisfaction in this too, that I know the things I like, he is likely to enjoy. Kismet, or something like it. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Perfection is a life pursuit and I intend to make him, to make us, my magnum opus. </span>electronic dollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15255101845615353600noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949711547542015501.post-58520718199787176022012-04-02T09:00:00.003+01:002012-04-02T09:00:07.621+01:00Poly Means Many: Needs and Wants<i style="font-family: arial;"><a href="http://www.lori-smith.co.uk/2012/01/introducing-poly-bloggers.html"><b>Poly Means Many</b></a>: There are many aspects of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">polyamory</span></span>. Each month six <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">bloggers</span></span> - <a href="http://www.albj.co.uk/blog/">Amanda Jones</a>, <a href="http://closeenoughtoread.wordpress.com/">An Open Book</a>, <a href="http://onesubsmission.blogspot.com/">One Sub's Mission</a>, <a href="http://polyparenting.blogspot.com/"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Polyamorous</span></span> Parenting</a>, </i><i style="font-family: arial;"><a href="http://pmsleaze.blogspot.com/">Post Modern Sleaze</a>, </i><i style="font-family: arial;">and <a href="http://www.lori-smith.co.uk/">Rarely Wears Lipstick</a> - will write about their views on one of them. This month: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Needs and Wants</span>.</i><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">A well-timed post, given that <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ganymede</span> and I have just gone through what an old school <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">kinkster</span> might call "the negotiation phase". Other people might <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">blanch</span> at the level of organisation, bullet points, formalised writing and spreadsheets which are involved in kick-starting a D/s relationship with me. It's a tribute to the (sickening, sickening) level of fit between him and myself that all of this has been reassuring rather than terrifying, powerfully protective instead of creepy and detailed instead of <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">obsessive</span>. We've both been in and out of those "are we, aren't we?" relationships where little clarity was offered and both felt insecure and anxious as a result.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;">I'm going to sidetrack to a bit of kinky history, just for background. There are old-school ways of forming <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">BDSM</span> relationships, including specific types of collars and collaring processes, such as a "collar of consideration" or "training collar" where someone is given a specific collar by a dominant, usually more workmanlike and less pretty than a "real" collar. This tentative, patient movement towards a D/s relationship is a reflection of previous, formal and hierarchical arrangements where the outward appearance was often very considered and ran according to particular group protocols. I've even heard tell of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">BDSM</span> subcultures where all dominants must spend a certain number of years as a submissive, regardless of their actual sexual desires in this area, in order to learn what it feels like. As a switch, I approve of this idea, if not of the actual method. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Kinksters</span>, like all nerds, have rules about what is and isn't the correct way of behaving. It creates a system where one didn't exists and therefore helps us assert our <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">authority</span> and our right to live the way we want to.<br /><br />Over time, we have become (slowly) more accepted and (slowly) less closeted and (rapidly) more on the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">internet</span>, we've become a little more relaxed about these formalities. Or perhaps we've just moved to other, <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">electronic</span> formats. The processes of forming <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">BDSM</span> relationships have changed and the idea that a particular specific set of things must be done in order to be "doing it right" has been, correctly, <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">eroded</span>. However, there are still stages and points in time, as well as tools, which are incredibly valuable to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">kinksters</span> and I hope will never fall by the wayside.<br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />Lets start with negotiations. </span><span style="font-family:arial;"> It's a great fallacy of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">BDSM</span> that the dominant decides everything and the submissive has no input. Needs and wants is not, in my experience, a written-in-stone tablet that the dominant presents to the submissive. Perhaps some people do that. I don't. There are some very good negotiation spreadsheets around which are useful for all kinds of kinky encounters. They give long lists of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">BDSM</span> activities, from physical play to emotional and much more, with space for notes, for colouring in red, amber or green or for detailing whether you want to try something, want to be made to try it, are nervous about it or will stab someone in the eye if they even suggest it. After a few text based exchanges I sent one of these over to <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ganymede</span> and we now have a shared document which is a wonderful "what shall I do to you tonight?" menu for me. <br /><br />In our negotiations, I sent over some very specific points which outline the type of relationship I want, some notes about how I view consent, the kinds of things I like doing and </span><span style="font-family:arial;">my own personal "wash and care" instructions, a few notes on how to take care of me. Regular feeding, sleeping and fucking are required, along with the ability to make gin and tonic and to only serve me decent coffee. Even if you do like having hot drinks spat in your face countermanding the latter is not encouraged. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I asked <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">him</span> for similar thoughts and then we looked into specifics, or picked out any areas of difference or points that needed expanding upon. We tried to cover as many potential situations as possible. As a dominant I work with rules and protocols to manage our relationship, so that we both know what is expected of each other. The less I can get away with the better, because I don't like having lots of things to remember and I like being able to react based on how we are both feeling at the time. However, there are some rules that need to be agreed upon. The way you decide you are going to approach other people is something that should be tackled as early on in the discussions as possible. Starting with the question: "do you want to be open or non-monogamous?"<br /><br />For us, it was simple. We have no other partners. We are both very keen on a firm D/s <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">commitment</span> and we are non-monogamous in terms of sexual appetite. We're also open to the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">possibilities</span> that alternative relationship set-ups might give us in the future, but are conscious of being new to each other. I am keen to keep ourselves to ourselves for a little while on an emotional level, certainly. We know that we are keen to fuck and to play with others, and have already made inroads in arranging this, we also know that another boy would be a good play addition. We're also both very happy spending an afternoon in a sunny coffee shop in Soho deciding who from the passers-by we would corrupt, and how.<br /><br />For <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">BDSM</span>, the type of D/s relationship can vary massively, and it's good to work that out early too. Not every dominant matches every submissive - far from it. There's a terrible assumption in some circles that just because I like rope, for example, I will like being tied up by anyone. Just like the assumption by well-meaning parents or friends that because a particular chap shares certain interests with me, we would be a lovely couple. So, alongside the obvious things of how you want to spend time together, the sorts of exciting sex and kink you can have, you also need to think about what the power exchange might look and feel like.<br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />One of the best ways I've ever heard of describing a D/s relationship was through the use of avatars to elucidate the type of person you want to be. For me, my dominance is styled around being a "trainer" - I develop <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">submissives</span> into something even better. I'm caring, but firm and I use a lot of small, ongoing behaviour modifications to refine my darlings. </span><span style="font-family:arial;">I'm also a "Daddy" figure, authoritarian but proud of my charges and loving. </span><span style="font-family:arial;">When I'm in darker, filthier moods I'm also a "groomer" and a "torturer" I coax and force them into doing all kinds of things. My wants in this is to be a powerful figure within their life who provides support, stability and is served or attended to in turn.<br /><br />For <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ganymede</span>, we are using words like "toy", "object", "pet", "slave" and "boy" - all his words, naturally. From those I'm able to pick up on what he is interested in, the specific sorts of control and ownership that turns him on and makes him happy.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />After you've done the negotiations, you create the contract.</span><span style="font-family:arial;"> A solid D/s contract can be many things. At its most basic it gives both (or all, though in this case we are two) parties the opportunity to highlight what they want from the relationship. Needs and wants. What you are looking for, what you can give, what you can't give. This covers a lot of things, time spent with each other, who you want to be for each other, future plans, sexual preferences. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">BDSM</span> codifies a lot of these in the form of a contract, and some people do indeed write up and sign documents.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;">My contract is simple, it's designed to be "always on" so not matter what else happens, this basic statement covers who and what we mean to each other. It's also flexible in terms of what it could potentially include, easy to understand and, importantly positive.<br /><br style="font-style: italic;"> <span style="font-style: italic;">You are mine: you will serve and obey me; I will train and look after you</span><br style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;">It starts when you accept, it ends when we decide it ends</span><br style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;">We will make each other's lives better</span></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;"> The email thread includes all the negotiation emails we've sent backwards and forwards, with the requirement that certain key points are replied to with an agreement or acceptance. </span><span style="font-family:arial;">One of the reason why I like contracts is the sense of rigor and permanence, which a casual pillow-talk conversation does not, no matter how sleepy and seductive. </span><span style="font-family:arial;">Things get forgotten, or if half-<span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">murmured</span> whilst fucking can be cast as in-the-moment cries of passion, signifying nothing.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br />The final thing I want to touch on, briefly, is collars. These, or other pieces of significant <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">jewellery</span>, "seal the deal" in many ways. Signs and symbols are important to all kinds of human interactions, and contracts can sometimes seem like words or pixels. A physical reminder of what you have agreed, of what you mean to each other is very potent. The gift, in and of itself, is powerful, it is an endowment, a very solid reflection of what has been agreed. A collar need not be a collar. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ganymede</span> now has a fetching silver chain coiled around his neck. Discrete, but of a solid weave. Given once all the agreements have been made, and representative of them. A little light touch of me upon his neck, glistening in the sun.<br /><br />Whether or not you are kinky, the important thing about all of this is that genuine, honest conversations have been had and decisions have been made. Together. To my mind, the best relationships are ones in which this negotiation process is never finished, where the conversations about who we are and where we can go continue forever, always learning and always exploring. <span style="font-family:arial;"><br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;">I've had situations where it has not been quite so simple, not quite so neat as I'm making out. Either because the conversation never really happened, such as with <span style="font-weight: bold;">The Photographer</span> where there was no negotiation, the situation was a done deal and my inexperience didn't prepare me for what was actually being said. That has led me to perhaps be more careful, more clear in my own dealings with people. No bad thing. I've been in situations where I've tried to have conversations and felt ignored or given lip service, where the desire for what I offered was greater than the actual ability to deliver it. I know that my reliance on email can cause confusion for people who are not used to thinking strategically or tactically about relationships, sex and emotions. And situations where the requirement to make time to even have the conversation in the first place was a battle, where documentation was ignored or the entire process caused upset - a failure on all sides.<br /><br />I've learnt a lot. About myself, about people I have loved and lost. Not everyone will be keen to have these kinds of conversations, not everyone will want to be in a D/s or an open or <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">polyamorous</span> situation. Part of the point of outlining needs and wants is that you are clear in yourself what you want and can explain it to others. The perfect goal is that everyone gets what they want, but an outcome you should steel yourself for is that you do not get what you want but that people are not misled or hurt by the process.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;">Sounds business-like and transactional? Well, yes. A bit of business <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">nous</span>e goes a long way in creating a bedrock you can benefit from. It doesn't mean that you have to then set up weekly, minuted board meetings for your relationship - although if one party was interested in wearing a pencil skirt and taking dictation that could work for <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">everyone's</span> benefit. What it does give you is a written document - in our case, series of emails and a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">googledoc</span> spreadsheet - that you have both created together which defines and outlines the edges of your relationship.<br /><br />Where you go from there, is up to you. But at least things are a lot clearer. </span><br /></span>electronic dollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15255101845615353600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949711547542015501.post-75690182847124466462012-03-29T19:34:00.005+01:002012-03-29T21:32:41.828+01:00Fast boys<span style="font-family: arial;">This isn't the sort of thing I'd have done a few years ago. I've learnt better now: there is no time like the present. The things that you want are not going to magically resolve themselves without your input and nothing ever fell into your outstretched hands. If you want something, you should take it.<br /><br />I wanted him.<br /><br />I took him.<br /><br />I'll even name him, after one of my friends rather pointedly noted my failure to name him even in conversation. As if it would be bad luck, somehow, and once made concrete I would only too soon be announcing that he has left, or not been all than he seemed. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ganymede</span>, then. For the beautiful boy stolen by Zeus.<br /><br />So named, we are together. Happily. Disgustingly well-matched. It's bewildering, sometimes. I try hard not to giggle, out loud, on the tube or at work. We are still in that sweet spot of a blissful daze, repeated fucking, barely able to keep our hands off each other. The realms of new discovery: each other's tastes and desire - sexual as well as otherwise. He's been reading the blog, from the beginning it seems, and we've discussed with interest the way that his own submission mirrors my own nascent desires. We become the dominant that we want, and then we develop into something else when we meet others - I feel as if I have discovered the submissive that perfectly matches me completely. It's not precisely like doing unto him that which I want to have done to me, it's more about acts that satisfy me are acts that satisfy him also. We are enthusiastically boyish together, and I am enjoying having an appreciative audience for my masculine persona, someone who revels in my androgyny. And I in his. We form an interesting mirror for each other, roughly of the same height and build. The fact that we can swap clothes is creating a lot of excitement in the wardrobe department, and I'm looking forward to developing an appreciation for cissyfication.<br /><br />We fall into each other easily, as if we have been lovers for a long time.<br /><br />Lying in the sun, his fingers searching out my pleasure in my cunt. I can see his delight at my satisfaction, and we reflect back upon each other. His pleasure in my pleasure skin bleaching white in the bright daylight. I watch him bite his lip - I love it when they bite their lip - his cock is hard and snug against my side. The obvious signs of desire are sometimes the best, and I am fond of a good erection, thus far he has not disappointed. The game is experimentation. Toys old and new. Each time we learn something new about what works, and each time we build on the last.<br /><br />There are certain acts, certain first times that are significant. The first time you put a collar on someone, whether in play or to make them yours more permanently. The first time you experience a sensation that transports you elsewhere, into those spaces within you that you never knew existed. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ganymede</span> and I are moving through first times at a rate of knots. where cherries are popped at a speed of kernals of corn. But some are worth savouring.<br /><br />I'd initially thought to wait for a "special" moment to strap on and fuck him in the arse. It's one of those significant points. I knew that he was bi, so I'd assumed, wrongly as it turns out, that it wouldn't have been a new experience for him. I started slow, all the same, because the build up is part of the fun and I don't think I'll ever tire of putting things in people. After a while, I selected the narrowest of my cocks, pushed him down and pressed into him. A few experimental thrusts and he wriggles his bottom against my hips - I think the boy likes it. I flipped him over onto his back, resting his hips on a pillow to get a better angle and throwing his legs atop my shoulders. Taking him harder now, riding against the moans, grinning at the way his eyes stare wide at me, grinning harder after I slap his face and he whispers, smiling, "you are a mean Daddy." And he is my beautiful boy. We fuck. I revel in the fullness of his appreciation of me, of what he sees in me.<br /><br />Later, I put him to sleep secure in a padded leather collar, with cuffs around his wrist and ankles. Tied loose enough to the head and foot of the bed, I give him some movement, and to avoid any accidental strangulation in the night. He lets me know that was the first time someone had fucked him like that, and I hold him, happy that I took him. That I have him. Yes, it's been quick. I know that. But I've been long in waiting, so now, I see no reason to hold back.<br /></span>electronic dollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15255101845615353600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949711547542015501.post-48713355331800129762012-03-20T15:06:00.004+00:002012-03-20T15:40:36.518+00:00Many Pleasured Things. Part Two<span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The morning after the night before.<br /><br />We hadn't slept, but spent the night exploring the possibilities of our bodies. Touching on the outskirts of new territories with fingers, mouths and toys. Those first few touches, like the moment of penetration, of a hard object sliding in to fullness, can never be really recaptured. There will never be a second, first time. The movement from unknown to known. The thrill of expectation followed by satisfaction as you realise that yes, this is as good as you had hoped, had wanted. As good, and perhaps better.<br /><br />Friends had left, for other places and other people, and the room had become more empty as the evening became the night became the day. We bid them farewell in amidst fucking. There was an <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">unselfconsciousness</span> about seeking joy in each others bodies and I don't recall we actually broke contact. A limb would touch a limb. A mouth seek out a tongue, a cunt, a nipple. Fingers would search for warm hardness or soft wetness and tease out more soft moans.<br /><br />The sun rose. My eyes had only closed in moments of pleasure or that warm, light, not-quite-asleep, not-quite-awake cocoon following an all-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">nighter</span>. Quiet but not still. Chemicals still whispered to our skin of heightened sensations and unreality. Our smells had mingled in the night giving that strange perfume that comes from the sweat of sex, the scent of another body <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">overlayed</span> on top of yours like a ghostly embrace. His eyes opened and revealed that bright, bright blue I had hoped was real and not a trick of the night. Much like the rest of him, I was not sure that this could actually be real, my experience so far has made me wary, to anticipate some catch, some flaw that would prevent me from getting what I wanted.<br /><br />We have all known the fragility of our hopes and desires when, come the morning, those whispered promises and offers are revealed to be the gasps of transient passion, never to be <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">consummated</span>. I was ready for that. Ready for us to say goodbye and shake hands like gentlemen, to accept that what went before was a wonderful thing, in and of itself, but not to be repeated. An experience amidst other experiences and water under the bridge to boot. There comes a moment, in the morning, when you wake and you know it is time to leave. When you feel the day come heavy upon you and time, real time, rather than the hazy time of parties and play dates, starts to tick.<br /><br />I took a breath and readied myself. He was still looking at me.<br /><br />"I want to be yours."<br /><br />Without a beat, I replied "yes" and wrapped him up in my arms. As simple as that, then. Again, it all seemed to good to be true. But as we talked, it became clear that feeling was one he shared. That what I represented did not feel real to him either, as if I too would evaporate in the sunlight, to be merely a reverie. I took control, he offered it. I explained what I wanted and required from him, how he would become mine: my slave, my servant, my boy and many other things besides. I gave him my name, and the instruction to never call me Mistress.<br /><br />I gave a reality check, for fear that I was on an imaginary pedestal I could never climb upon in reality. That this was a beginning. That there would be more, and less, than just kinky fucking. That there was a full life to be had, a future. That I wasn't interested in half-hearts or half-measures. I wanted something whole and complete and with potential. That this was now. That later, as we <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">developed</span> together we would change and grow. That underneath it all, alongside it all, I was just a person. Not a fictitious mistress who stalked the night in heels and hair scraped back tight. We would have bad days along with the good, but that he would be mine and in a curious way, I would also be his.<br /><br />With mild euphoria, and sleep-deprived adrenaline we got up, got dressed and went out into whatever passes for the real world. Over coffee in the fresh air we checked our histories. Loves lost and won, what we wanted for ourselves. Those beautiful beginning moments. I feel a little as if I have started again. His newness to the scene combined with his openness for experimentation, alongside the broad plains of his desire gives me more scope than ever before in a D/s relationship. We are not constrained by the demands of others, by the worries of sexuality, by the expectation of loss or of foregone conclusions. Like some kind of rite of spring, the world had changed, suddenly and quite dramatically.<br /><br />And I am very happy that it has.<br /></span></span>electronic dollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15255101845615353600noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949711547542015501.post-72357773717894780182012-03-14T20:41:00.003+00:002012-03-14T21:36:57.857+00:00Many pleasured things. Part One.<span style="font-family: arial;">The orgy happened.<br /><br />And then some.<br /><br />It's take me a long time to compose this piece, because I really wasn't sure where to start. There was no point during the night when I wasn't completely revelling in one form of decadent sensation or another. It's all <span style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Glamourama</span></span>'s fault, she's a gateway drug to sexual hedonism, and I rather love her for it. Going through my mind is a series of edited highlights one by one like a sequence of events that by all rights should have occurred over many months rather than one night. And yet it did, giving me that wonderful feeling of being removed from the world which has been so difficult and dull for such a long time and into something brighter, sharper and more free.<br /><br />There are few places in the world where I feel comfortable enough to let go and safe enough to get what I want sexually without worrying about who might see. In a very strange way, domination, particularly female domination is about being unreachable, in some fashion aloof and challenging. Something always, slightly, out of the grasp of most people. That way when you do accept someone they feel special, because they are special. This makes, to my twisted logic, group sex sometimes difficult. Especially if you want to be fucked, rather than doing the fucking. However, like I said, this was a good space for me. It helped, certainly, that most people there did not know me very well, and those that did were accepting of my changeable, capricious nature. And desire to be many things at once. A dominant masochist. A switch. A gay man in a woman's body. Someone who wants everything at once, with a cherry on top.<br /><br />I met my date in a coffee shop for a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">pre</span>-flight briefing. I'd had my eye on him for a while, but wasn't sure whether he was comfortable or interested in what I liked doing. We talked, and the more we talked the more things started to click in my brain. We collected flowers and perverts along the way, and my step became lighter as the night fell and the world became darker, into that marvellous lilac colour that the London sky could get. We were off for an adventure.<br /><br />We started with drinks and nibbles, as any good party should. Once all the guest had arrived and stripped down to a reasonable level (she keeps her house hot on purpose) the shows started. We'd been encouraged to bring party pieces: I had my violet wand to hand. The performances did not disappoint - an instructional strip tease, a spanking counting lesson and I tested the flesh of one of the new boys finding him delightfully muscled and responsive to the touch of electrics. A wide grin formed on his face, and I knew - as I had known when we first met and I smelled him, that I wanted to fuck him. Soon, everyone was in their underwear and people were starting to feel each other out, quite literally. I was entertaining myself tying people up and surprising myself with my rope skills - it appears I have actually learnt something through my practice, and enjoying looping rope tightly around two people.<br /><br />Then I put the rope on my date. And that felt very different. There was something in the way he held himself, the way I moved the rope around him and the way he just melted against my touch. We kissed. For a very long time. And then I pushed him down, holding his hair, and raising my hand. He looked at me, properly looked at me, with beautiful blue eyes, whispering fiercely "go for it." I hit him. His eyes widened briefly, he gasped, we kissed again. And I hit him. Again. I spoke to someone later, who was watching me as I was doing this. Time had stopped. My pupils had enlarged and my face was lit up, radiating desire and excitement. Which was true. The offering had been perfect, full of want and insistence. The reaction too - willing me to do more, to take more.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">Flow. A recently discovered word, it described that space between <a href="http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/flow-model.htm#np">control and arousal, where skill and challenge meet</a>. For me, it represents the perfect arrow flight of dominance within submissive space. Something I hadn't felt in quite a while. And the night flowed from there... </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span>electronic dollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15255101845615353600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949711547542015501.post-70713342639208179632012-03-14T20:03:00.003+00:002012-03-14T20:41:52.361+00:00Orgy organising. Part Two<span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The day of the orgy finally arrived. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Glamorama</span> and I had been working rather hard - if contacting attractive young men and meeting them for coffee counted as "hard" - over the past few weeks to arrange everything.<br /><br />The interview process happened last weekend and was an interesting experiment in being proven wrong. I had assumed that given we were attractive women with an offer of exciting sex with ourselves and other exciting women (and men) that there would be no shortage of takers. At the <a href="http://www.pmsleaze.blogspot.com/2012/02/orgy-organising.html">beginning of the process</a>, we had already gone through around a hundred men online, booking in eight to meet beforehand, so they could meet us and we could meet them. Out of our expected attendees we had three fail to arrive for a coffee, one who did arrive but couldn't make the party itself (sadly, as he was quite delectable) and out of the remaining five, two were not suitable. Which left us with three.<br /><br />We reasoned this was acceptable, although not ideal, with the men we already knew were attending that left us even numbers girls and boys. I remember piping up in a vaguely put out voice that I needed two, to the sounds of laughter. I remain perfectly serious on this front, mFm is fast becoming a passion. But I was very happy with the three we had chosen, although not all my type, I was selecting for a group of people with varying tastes and I had invited a boy who I'd had my eye on for a while so I knew I would be entertained in some fashion.<br /><br />Come the day, come the party. We kicked off the day with the knowledge that one out of our three was unwell, which brought the number down to a paltry two. Out of an original eight. Which brings us to the point where I had been wrong. In discussions online, I was assured by various old hands at arranging orgies that men were notoriously shy at actually putting their cocks where their mouths were and actually turning up to have sex. I was told I would need to invite at least four times as many as I needed, and scoffed at such. And yet, there we were. Down to two. As predicted.<br /><br />Now, any number of excuses were offered as to why people didn't turn up, but that is a high ratio of dropout by any estimation, which makes me wonder whether there is something else going on. I met up with one of the two who did show today for a coffee and he admitted he had been nervous, especially as he didn't know everyone. But therein lay the excitement, for him. I think that for some, perhaps, the strangers may have been the difficulty, or perhaps the BDSM element. But I'm really clutching at straws here.<br /><br />I think that there is a good opportunity to repeat the experiment with women to see if there is a gender bias, but then I wonder whether a woman, any woman, would be prepared to meet up with three men for a coffee and be assessed on her suitability to attend an orgy with them and some other people she didn't know. It's a tall order, when you think about it, which makes me think slightly more kindly towards our drop outs, and no-shows. After all, I can be scary. I make it my business to be so. <br /></span></span>electronic dollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15255101845615353600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949711547542015501.post-35319576866398886922012-03-09T17:44:00.001+00:002012-03-09T17:44:20.774+00:00Setting people on fire<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Last weekend officially marked the beginning of spring and therefore time to skip merrily back onto the scene. I had both a date who was going to teach me how to set him on fire, and an invitation to go to <b>Chiaroscuro</b>'s house for a small play party. I always enjoy these parties because they are usually very fluid, queer and kink heavy, and very open to experimentation, I usually come away feeling relaxed, floaty and having learnt or done something new, as well as feeling satisfied that my esoteric urges have been sated. Friday did not disappoint.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Like a scene from a film, I packed a leather holdall and headed out with a spring in my step and everything I might need for the weekend over my shoulder. Spare clothes, washbag, party outfits for Saturday and some kit: flogger, wickedly sharp metal chopsticks and a small knife. The basics. After work I met up with my date and we head off into the night. Somewhere a soundtrack was playing, I imagine. Ninety degrees from reality, with the sun set and the dark blue sky pinpricked with stars and neon glares. It's the other world I live in, the one in which I feel absolutely free and absolutely myself. A world of bodies, pleasure and pain. It's the world I miss when I don't have enough time for it - as I currently do not, and one that I'm working hard to return to.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">And last weekend reminded me of why I need to be there.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">We arrived, had drinks and met the other guests, some of whom I knew already, two were new. A nice way to meet new people is to turn up to a sex party and get naked. It's the ultimate ice-breaker. My date had a small red metal tin, in which was a lighter and a small bag of cotton-wool like substance. Flash cotton. He took a small piece and spread it out thinly, giving instructions as he did so. We watched. Rapt. Like the beginning of a magic trick, and indeed, flash cotton is part of the stage magicians toolkit. Perverts and magic go hand in hand - we like games of trickery that induce oohs and ahs (especially if there is applause). He set fire to the cotton, it burnt quick, bright and orange. Almost as soon as it arrived, it was gone. A puff of fire, blink and you'll miss it. I clapped my hands, delighted.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I carefully placed the cotton on the back of my hand, and, taking a deep breath, lit it. It flared up and I let out a bark of surprise, but before the noise had left my mouth the fire, and it's brief heat, was gone, leaving only a vague warmth and slight odour. I giggled. This was going to be fun. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This of course meant that we were breaking Rule One (do not be on fire), but in general it appeared we were pretty happy with that. Several wads of cotton and the smell of burning hair in the air, we left the lounge and went into the bedroom where we shed clothes. </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Chiaroscuro </b>and I had settled on our chemicals for the night, and were experimenting inhaling red balloons full of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrous_oxide">nitrous oxide</a>. We looked like very bad circus clowns. Very bad. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I'd never tried this before, so watched carefully the pattern of inhalation. Breathing the gas in from the balloon, then re inflating with exhalations, repeating until the world becomes a small white pinprick in the centre of your vision and your ears ring. Like the sensation of being very deep underwater, except with additional euphoria. Laughing gas, to be precise. Continuing in the vein of experiments we passed balloons around, holding the gas as long as we could and kissing, deeply, upon exhaling. Feeling our partners melt in our mouths, the delicate feeling of tongues and lips against the tingling sensation of the chemicals.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The final circus act involved knives and other sharp, metal objects. I bade my date to lie down, face upon the bed. The room became quiet and I was keenly aware that I had an audience. I took a metal chopstick in each hand and began to scratch down his back. In the silence you could hear the skin ruffle and tear as red lines began to appear. He moaned. That wonderful, mascohistic noise. Not the clenched teeth or the yelps of someone for whom pain is a shock and an intrusion, but the delicate purr of a body that can settle into the floating endorphin stream that I carefully submerged him into. Playing with pain is an art, knowing the way you need to layer it on, to pause, to pace yourself, watching and waiting all the time for the twitches and responses from the bottom as they begin to dance underneath you. Dancing with them and riding their feelings. Taking them to a long, slow crescendo and then helping them down, like a gentleman holding out his hand for a lady to descend the staircase.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span>electronic dollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15255101845615353600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949711547542015501.post-11524229982718310422012-03-05T09:00:00.003+00:002012-03-05T09:00:12.053+00:00Poly Means Many: Green eyed monster<i style="font-family: arial;"><a href="http://www.lori-smith.co.uk/2012/01/introducing-poly-bloggers.html"><b>Poly Means Many</b></a>: There are many aspects of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">polyamory</span>. Each month six <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">bloggers</span> - <a href="http://www.albj.co.uk/blog/">Amanda Jones</a>, <a href="http://closeenoughtoread.wordpress.com/">An Open Book</a>, <a href="http://onesubsmission.blogspot.com/">One Sub's Mission</a>, <a href="http://polyparenting.blogspot.com/"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Polyamorous</span> Parenting</a>, </i><i style="font-family: arial;"><a href="http://pmsleaze.blogspot.com/">Post Modern Sleaze</a>, </i><i style="font-family: arial;">and <a href="http://www.lori-smith.co.uk/">Rarely Wears Lipstick</a> - will write about their views on one of them. This month: jealousy.</i><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Jealousy. It's the black sheep of the "relationship emotions" family. Being labelled as a "jealous person" creates<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jealousy"> all kinds of dreadful associations</a>. It's often viewed as the antithesis of being open, in the binary that has jealousy bad and openness good - often without really having any kind of framework for what kind of jealousy might be bad and what kind of openness might be good. Therein lies the rub. <br /><br />I'm going to wave the controversy flag and say that jealousy can sometimes be a good thing, here's how, bear with me. Jealousy is the flip-side of caring. If I didn't care about you, about being with you, about the time we spend together or touching you - then I don't get jealous when you touch someone else. You are not relevant to my feelings. Give jealousy a little tweak and you get protectiveness, guardianship, control, even. All, in the right hands and in the right way <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">positive</span> dominant feelings. I feel a lot of those things about the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">submissives</span> I have had the honour and pleasure of offering my patronage to - a little flash of jealousy every now and then is an expression of my passion, my drive, my ownership of them. <br /><br />It's what I do about it that measures me as a dominant and as a person..<br /><br />I can feel a bit of jealousy and not act on it, or even say anything. I have self-control, after all. If it goes on for a while or if it is getting to me, I can talk to you about my jealousy (and it is <span style="font-style: italic;">my jealousy</span> after all, it lives in my head, my heart - I am jealous about my jealousy), we can discuss why and work around it. The jealousy is a reaction, a response to a stimulus. It highlights something that needs addressing. It is a warning and should not be ignored. Acknowledging jealousy and <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">choosing</span> how to deal with the cause, whether internal or external - together - is a way forward. Ignoring the jealousy, blaming the jealousy, getting angry or upset about it is no way at all.<br /><br />When you have a relationship with someone you come to have expectations of each other. Often within D/s these are codified, there are things that one partner does for another, rules to be followed, a structure. Most relationships will have levels of expectations, although they might not be overtly stated. Social convention is often a big, unconscious, influence on these expectations - that there are certain things which are and which are not "right" within a relationship. Cheating is one of them, and the assumption of monogamy is problematic for people who are not. The fact that jealousy exists within multiple-relationships is often used as an indicator that those relationships are bad or unproductive. But that's a very reductive way of viewing some extremely complex feelings.<br /><br />For me,<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lawuHPE3eiA"> this video</a> hits the nail on the head when thinking about jealousy, as well as being very funny. It's actually about sibling rivalry, but the ideas hold true for multiple-partner relationships and highlights many things that can be done to counter jealousy - expectation management, proper conversations, empathy. <br /><br />The D/s jealousy connection gets especially interesting and when we deliberately create jealousy. Dominants and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">submissives</span> love playing with powerful feelings: we create scenes that embroil us in worlds of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">headfucks</span>, intense psychological connections. Our games of power and control revel in and relish the strange fruits of supposed "negative" feelings like shame, guilt, hate, anger, humiliation, <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">abandonment</span>... So many to pick from!<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">Cuckolding is a great example. Here, the point is about inspiring lust using jealousy as an emotional vehicle for submission. It's nice to layer your scenes. In a cuckolding scene the bottom (cuckold) is forced to view their partner being attended to - often in a replica of a way they either really want to do or are unable to accomplish themselves. This can be wrapped up in humiliation play by throwing in references to how the bull (the guest star, brought in as the replacement lover) is better in some way or another. All of this combines to give the cuckold that sense of emotional "smallness" and subservience. A</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> bit of voyeurism and physical <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">restraint</span> are often thrown in for good measure: perhaps the cuckold is tied to the bed and forced to watch, or only included for certain service purposes such as oral sex before and after. The bull eventually departs and the cuckold returns to their partner, meek, aroused and very grateful to be back. One of my idealised fantasy relationships is an <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">mFm</span> partnership with a cuckold/bull pairing - a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">toppier</span> switch and more submissive one. It's currently high on my masturbation imagery list.<br /><br />Cuckolding, aside from being fun in and of itself, can also be cathartic where genuine fears and concerns of <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">infidelity</span> or insecurity exist. Crucially it only works if jealousy exists, even in potentia, otherwise it's plain ol' voyeurism, which is wonderful, but not the same thing. I don't think it's possible to actually cuckold a non-jealous partner. The physical longing might be there, but the emotional edge, that crunchy insider knowledge where you feel you have really "got" someone hook, line and sinker, would be missing.<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />When we play with jealousy - or any emotion, for that matter - we have to be even more careful how we handle aspects of genuine jealousy within our relationships. It's like the difference between slapping someone in the face because it's something you both enjoy and it's hot, and slapping someone in the face because you just lost your temper and lashed out. The two can look exactly the same, but they are poles <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">apart</span>. So it is with feelings.<br /><br />Our green-eyed games must be ordered in such a way that we feel safe to explore, rather than considering our relationship at risk. </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> If done well, you can experience extraordinary levels of intimacy and thrill. If you don't think you can do it well, don't do it at all, this is not a game to dabble in. It cuts to the core of many of our most private feelings and sense of self-worth. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">I had a very challenging time when a partner was playing games of jealousy at the same time as I was experiencing genuine jealousy and the two became very confused in my mind because we never really handled the real jealousy in any sensible fashion - it was always my jealousy therefore my fault and my problem, I was wrong-headed and needed to change my world-view. I was made to feel bad and guilty both within scenes and without. </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">For me, this is where the hurt / comfort aspect of domination comes into play. If you both choose to play a jealousy based theme you must ensure that the emotional after-care you give to your partner brings them back from those dark and difficult mental spaces. They must be re-<span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">enveloped</span> in the safety and security of your relationship, to be able to clearly distinguish the play from the reality. Consent, as ever, is king. </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span>electronic dollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15255101845615353600noreply@blogger.com4