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The online diary of an ethical pervert.
I'm anticipating a number of excursions and activities over the next week or so, and currently dosing myself up against a rotten cold in order to do them with a minimum of snuffling. With that in mind, I thought it worthwhile writing up not quite a list of resolutions, but certainly racking up some activities and explorations for next year. I've never thought it a good idea to deal in intangibles, such as finding the love of my life, instead keeping to practical and achievable goals:
- Threesomes (and moresomes) with boys. The ever-lovely Spirit has promised a sneak peek into her little black electronic notebook for good looking chaps game for group sex. I am also looking forward to finding out what she wants in exchange for this service.
- Domination. I'm going to keep exploring what my dominant side looks and feels like, what sort of scenarios and psychological power exchanges interest me. Humiliation, pet play, objectification and perfect gentlemen servants are all on the radar.
- Topping. I am interested in the physicality of taking what I want and developing the skills to do so.
- Rope. I've made Ringmaster promise to teach me to do at least one decent tie. We've got a whole year, so with any luck I'll manage it this time. (I made the same promise to myself in 2008). Plus, being on the team for Peer Rope London and unable to do even a simple chest harness is frankly, a little embarrassing.
- Outdoor activity. For some reason thoughts of hunting, drowning in lakes and getting dirty in forests is appealing. Perhaps it's the mild temperature brought on by the cold as normally I'm an urban animal, we'll see.
- Being boyish. Being a switch, my submissive side hasn't vanished completely, and I'm finding myself taken with the idea of being someone's boy, alongside the dominant thoughts of topping people in my masculine persona.
- Body shaping. I'm enjoying the difference that extra muscles and being a bit leaner has on how I move and feel. It also sits well with my feelings of androgyny, so it looks as if there are more gym sessions in the future.
- Public performance. I had a lot of fun doing the few shows I did in 2010, and would like to do lots more.
- The Doll Project. Neglected, but still beloved. Things for this year will be working out what dominant dolls could look like, alongside masculine dolls and making dolls of other people, especially "himbo-ish" boy dolls.
Probably enough to be getting on with, for now.
Another day, another slew of memos on dating websites, both BDSM and vanilla. There were a few reasonable ones, including some musings on The Doll Project, but some frankly tedious ones. After getting deeply bored with writing the same reply over and over and over again, I made this:
***
This is a copy and paste reply
Whoops! Sorry about this, but it looks like you haven't read my profile!
Chances are you have done one or more of the following:
No face photo
Blank profile
Were horribly rude (surely not!)
Are asking about things that are completely different or contradictory to what I'm looking for.
Have another read through my profile (maybe make yourself a cup of tea). Perhaps after reading it over you'll decide to have another go, or that I'm not worth the fuss and that there are other fish in the sea.
Either way, take care and all the best, unless you were rude, in which case, shame on you!
e.d. x
***
Firm, but fair, I thought. And saving me precious typing time I can better dedicate elsewhere. Like a nice, long email to Blondie on the precise nature of boys who like to say "no" and what might happen to them.
An interesting discussion started to swarm on my Twitter feed (I do also exist in the real world, honestly), between Majeste, Spirit and Chiaroscuro. The sparking point for me was the phrase "feminism v. chivalry". I'm currently paddling in the shallow end of the dating pool, so I've been splashed with enough behaviour to try and unpick our ideas of modern romance and how they are touched with historic themes and motifs.
The idea of chivalric or courtly love comes to us from Eleanor of Aquitaine. There's a good post on it here, along with a dialogue on the changing meaning of the word "lady", the important two facts to note are the apparent hopeless nature of the love and the way in which the love is finally taken. Take the former first. The belle dame sans merci is plied, in secret (or semi-secret) with gifts, poetry etc that demonstrate the desire, passion and drive of her amour. Although she is ostensibly of noble stature, her power only lies in her ability to withhold or deny her lover, as soon as she is taken, physically fucked to be frank, the game is finished. The rose is deflowered.
From this we can see a number of tropes that still float around in our romantic unconsciousness. First, chivalry. This has become a code of honour of sorts, a way that men are "supposed" to behave around the object of their affections, right up to those who practice The Game, though I would hardly call the latter chivalrous. We still teach chivalry, often in the guise of "good manners" - however true politeness should probably not be as gendered as the behaviours we encounter, such as opening doors, holding out chairs, paying for drinks and dinner. They are all things that society expects men to do for women, and they are all types of gift giving, of showing strength (physical or monetary), they cast the male in the role of the provider, and - here is where it gets interesting - in the traditional role of the dominant - control is exerted by removing from the submissive the means to arrange and manage their environment.
However, there are feminine forms of chivalry, a feminine gendered romantic code and system running from the coquette through to The Rules. These ways of behaving are rarely termed "good manners" - an example of where male normative behaviour is codified as human normative behaviour - and are instead simply "flirting" or in cruder, unkinder language "prick teasing". I'm painting in very broad brushstrokes here but generally these patterns are designed to make the female appealing through emphasising softness, prettiness, weakness and reliance on the male in other words submission.
What is striking, is how these "rules" neatly dovetail into the chivalric code: the female withholds her favour (and her cunt) for as long as possible, allowing the male ample opportunity to flush his feathers (and his cash). The two sets of behaviours work with each other. Chivalry cannot happen unless the target is a coquette. You can't offer to pay for someone whose already put their card on the table and is raising an eyebrow at you. They are a power exchange that is enshrined and encouraged, in many respects by our society.
Slowly, painfully slowly, we are seeing an easing of the strict gendered nature of these romantic roles, and what do we get when we strip them bare? For a start, we can get some awkwardness. There is an internal clash of gender identities if rules "normally" ascribed to men are used by women, especially if someone has "pays for dinner" as an important part of their identity as male. Add on top of this standard British politeness rules and there's a lot of embarrassment to be had over the bill.
When we remove the gendered connotations and only look at the behaviours in terms of who is doing what to whom we get a reveal of the power exchange as a D/s dynamic. What is especially interesting, from discussions I have had with people, is that the same physical gesture can have totally different meanings. For some, if you pay for dinner you are dominant - and this would perhaps be the traditional reading of that action. However, for others, taking someone to dinner, arranging everything just so and then paying for it, is an act of submission - you have presented offerings.
Because I am kinky, I tend to see my dating patterns through the smoky coloured lenses of BDSM. This is sometimes complicated by the fact that I am a switch, so for me someone paying for the bill can be either dominant or submissive depending on my relationship to them. Equally, they could just be being nice. As a romantic and a feminist it's actually a lot easier for me to see the world like this (my problem is that other people don't), I would find it difficult if someone was buying me dinner simply because I was a woman and they, as a man, felt it expected of them, or worse, if they thought it was part of their due in order to fuck me. I tend to get around this by dating within kinky circles where I've usually fucked them before we've got to dinner (or at least played with them). Here, we can see how murky it can get, because clearly, once a D/s power exchange is established buying drinks and holding out chairs does become part of the sexual arrangement, ways in which submissives can be good or dominants can be powerful.
These sorts of actions are not as overt in the vanilla dating world, and so instead of dominant and submissive we have their poor, incorrect substitutes male and female. And that is the challenge for kinky feminists - to keep the excitement of D/s and shed the assumption of gender roles within that, leaving them as masks or toys for us to play with when we choose.
Naturally, I'm happy to discuss this further, either in the comments or over dinner. You're buying.
I had a rare opportunity on Friday night to top Spiral. She has always been, in my mind, a dominant. She told me that she just fancied trying out how it felt and I was certainly privileged to be the vehicle for those experiments. And also not a little nervous, partly because of performance anxieties and also because I knew that she would have ample opportunity in the future to get her own back. I had an email from her which briefly listed the things that she was and wasn't interested in, it was certainly more along the lines of bottoming than submission, psychological aspects like humiliation were on the no list, but sensation play - within certain parameters, was.
It was one of those times when I wanted to have more technical expertise to be able to deliver that physical sort of play. One of the challenges I had was in knowing exactly what to do, not only was this going to be the first time topping her, we were also using Captain's studio which meant that there was a wealth of choice in terms of kit and the difficulty lay in selecting what to use. I knew what she was like as a top, but I had no experience of how she would react as a bottom, so it was an experiment for both of us. There were also a few things on her no list - including asphyxiation and tight enclosure (such as hoods) which would have normally been my natural go-to kit to give a very dreamy, bottoming sensation.
I started with the kit I was most familiar with - rope and electricity. I got her to stand in front of me and slowly stripped her, moving her arms this way and that, then repositioning them on the top of her head when done with them. I needed to keep hold of her wrists to stop her from moving herself around. Once naked, I blindfolded her then laid her face down on a padded leather bench. I laced and over laced rope over her figure, in criss-crossed patches from her shoulder down to her ankles, pausing to avoid the view. I placed a couple of E-stim pads at the base of her bottom, and adjusted the power until I could see her twitch. I also inserted an attachment into her cunt, enjoying playing with her clit and the multiple piercings - the feel of them, hard and cool against the wet of her obvious pleasure and obvious moans made me smile.
I experimented with a few different bits of impact toys, taking time to check in with her as to which were working and which were not. I was intrigued by the fact that she enjoyed the harsher, stingier pieces, the same sort of ones that she liked using as a top. A number of softer toys soon littered the floor having being judged as "not really doing anything". Similarly, the violet wand, which I really enjoy myself was not the right tool for the job. I wasn't getting precisely frustrated, but I was feeling a little limited in what to do next, I wanted to deliver to her the same sort of pain / pleasure experience that she has done to me in the past.
At which point, Majeste arrived and the look on her face was priceless. I was somewhat relieved to be able to take a break, and let her take over for a while, and sharing the play was a pleasure. I could concentrate on the sharp, delicate sensations of pinwheels and dental tools over skin, followed with drips of wax from a height, until it was time to take a break. We sat together, all three of us, and Spiral in the middle wrapped in a blanket, discussing what worked and what didn't.
In retrospect, I think I was probably too gentle, having (foolishly perhaps) anticipated nerves or anxieties on her front and therefore going on a softly-softly route of slow play that focused more on controlled pleasure and only intermittent, light pain. It was the right choice for a first session, but it didn't deliver the intensity of reactions. I think that next time - assuming that there is one - something a lot more direct and aggressive might be the order of the day, to put her off balance and further out of her comfort zone.
A post that's been brewing for a while, and from the writing list. It's almost the time of year for mulling over and sorting through where I'm at, where I'm going next. But before that, the preamble. The point of this blog is for me to track, not exactly my progress because that implies that there is an end goal in mind, but certainly to record the journey I'm taking. I like being able to look back, with fresh eyes, on things I've done and to see how they have gotten me to where I am now, the trajectories that they have set me on.
Fetlife has a series of labels for how to describe your sexuality, and one of them is "in flux / evolving" I like that, the idea that sexuality, like personality I suppose. Who I am isn't fixed but changes as I learn and grow, most importantly, it changes with each new lover, new friend and new experience. Everyone I come into contact with teaches me something about myself, my kink and what I want from life - even if the experiences are bad or make me unhappy they are still worthwhile, if only because then I know what I don't want or need. It's also taught me to be less scared of new circumstances or of trying something different. There is a standing joke with Captain "what's the worst that could happen?" and it's true. Challenging decisions and situations seen through make you braver and stronger. In a small way, and without advocating any form of kink-as-therapy, the road I've taken over the years has made me better, to use a very subjective word.
Perhaps it's clearer to say that I have become the person I want to be, and a person I think my younger self would be proud, excited and perhaps a little intimidated by. In the same way, the I hope that the person I will become will look back on what I'm doing now and be happy with those experiences.
As a switch I know that my desire to be top or bottom (or to switch in and out) depends on the person I'm with - it's a sexual response rather than a built-in fixed state of being. Similarly, it alters with my mood, some days I feel more D than s. I had an interesting conversation with Spirit where she commented that she found it hard to get a read on me, on how she wanted to relate sexually to me, and that my androgyny was hot. All compliments, as far as I'm concerned. I used to worry that mutability was a sign of indecision, now I know that this in-between place is the area I want to inhabit. It's not a case of being one thing or the other, but of being both, neither, together or at different times.
Here's to the middle of the road. See you there.
Sometimes I like to have wry titles. Sometimes I like to come straight to the point. This one is about having sex with ice. Ice dildos to be precise, both the fucking and being fucked (turnabout is fair play and any pervert worth their salt should always be prepared to take what they dish out, in my opinion).
We'll start with a bit of scene setting. The place is Kinky Salon London, the crowd is a small number of folk, most of whom I don't know. This is unusual for me, and reflects the fact that KSL is not a play club as such - there was very little in the way of BDSM kit - the space was set up for public fucking. However, it didn't have the feel of a traditional swingers club, it was much more queer friendly and sexual openness and exploration (especially boy-on-boy) was heartily encouraged, a sentiment I can thoroughly applaud. There was also a certain standard of effort that had gone into the event which raised the bar in terms of how good everything looked and felt. People had obviously spent hours decorating the space and creating their costumes. Having a theme helped a lot, I suspect. It binds everyone together, like the fetish "uniform" we are able to slip on alter egos that give us permission to unwind and to play, to step outside of themselves, if only for a night.
Having brought along several ice dildos I was in the market to test them on someone, and had an immediate volunteer in the beautiful shape of Spirit, who was eager to try a new sensation. I was very taking with her practical approach to the whole encounter, which possibly reflects the fact that she is more at home with this kind of event than I am. I confessed to being a little perplexed at what to do once the cabaret had started and everyone was stood around chatting, holding their drinks, dressed in costume. I think that part of me was waiting for the screams of pain to start.The lack of preamble was exceptionally refreshing, the situation was treated without the standard bluster and paraphernalia of sexual encounters - it was something fun that we were going to do. Equally, there wasn't much in the way of negotiation. We knew each other, knew what we wanted to do. Sex without a d/s context and without the connection of a relationship beyond friendly feelings took on the guise of a joint experiment. Hand in hand we went upstairs, stripped, briefly discuss the need for lube and the best position to do this in (we decided that me-on-top would work).
The ice was melting a little, so it wasn't frosty so slipped in easily. Her reaction was superb, making me grin from ear to ear. She closed her eyes, moaned and gave little shrieks as I fucked for a while until she needed to take a break. I loved the feel of her body underneath mine - she's got superb muscles underneath soft skin and I'm taken with the idea that physically we might be of a match. She also has a certain way about her, a definite this is happening now firmness to how she moves and makes physical decisions with her body.
We took a moment to change positions so that she could fuck me - having heard her description of what the ice felt like inside I had to try it. It's certainly an odd sensation. The venue was quite warm, so the icicle had that pleasant sucking on an ice cube satisfaction, added to the enjoyment of feeling full and being fucked. Her arms on my shoulders and sharing the pleasure of the experience - we giggled a little as I gasped after the first shudder passed through me. A numbness crept through my cunt, which made it all feel somewhat disembodied, I could feel the movement inside me but I couldn't feel all of it. There was also a little pain, not much, but it had a similar quality to electric shocks - sensation without pressure. The real pain came afterwards, when we stopped and discarded the now very melted and much shrunk chunk of ice. Like fingers coming in from the frost an itchy, burning feeling invaded my cunt as the nerves sprung back to life with a vengeance. It was shocking, and also very intimate - a pain deep inside me that I couldn't do anything about.
Fortunately, I was able to counter this not only with the knowledge that she had experienced the same feelings, but we were able to lie down together, and swap notes on what we'd done and felt, which is an all too rare occurrence - usually it's one or the other. I was pleased (not entirely surprised) to find that we had a lot in common, particularly with regards to switching, BDSM and sexual gendered identities - something to explore and discuss in the future.
Remember the advert for Metz that did the rounds a few years back? Certainly more memorable than the drink itself, which I believe is some sort of alcopop dreadfulness that we imbibed in our pre-cocktail innocence. Before we understood proper drinks. Anyhow, the important point is the evil temptations of icy Fae which I took as a direct inspiration for my stage show at Kinky Salon. Each time I do a performance I feel as if I am constantly upping the ante, and also developing my own skills in whatever sort of live "art" it is that I'm doing - I suppose it's some sort of cabaret crossed with live sex and a bit of torture porn thrown in. That's how I'm going to describe it in future, at any rate.
This time I had an idea in my head but was somewhat uncertain as to the logistics of how to go about doing it. I wanted to do live boy-fucking with an icicle dildo whilst dressed as a Jack Frost drag king. So far, so normal. Stage one was relatively easy, recruit likely looking chap, in the form of Boy Wonder. Stage two involved making ice dildos, from which I learnt that water is not an ideal sculpting material, but that condoms and rubber bands will eventually produce something that will sit relatively happily - though quite cold against the pubis - in a strap on harness. The end products were quite thick, solid and somewhat, well, large. One rather overenthusiastic offering was greeted with a "hell no!" from Boy Wonder. The next thing to do was to actually practice. I had originally intended that we would perform anal fucking with the dildos but a combination of size, cold and time limitations meant this would be impossible - the show needed to be under five minutes and so with the scene setting plus various comedy chase sequences and efforts to convince the coy boy to accept an icy paramour. We settled on fellatio as a compromise, plus it would enable me to offer ice sucking to audience members.
I was actually rather nervous come the time to perform, partly because this was my first outing as a top for a stage show, previously I'd been the bottom which meant that once the actual activity started mostly I just had to scream the house down and try not to kick Ringmaster in the head as I struggled. This time I was controlling what was happening when and it was a show I'd devised myself, so I felt both more responsible for the performance and more concerned about what could go wrong (usual performers nerves including "what if the audience just stare blankly at me like I'm a weirdo?"). My nerves were compounded by the fact that my show was sandwiched inbetween actual cabaret performers of some note and talent. Between Dusty Limits and Rex Denial there was no space for my usual complaint that all scene performances are either rubbish or boring or both - the thing, alongside my exhibitionist urges, that led me to start performing myself.
Once lined up and ready to go on stage, wearing mostly clingfilm, silver body paint and fetching elf ears, my nerves vanished. The crowd was friendly, supportive and grinning from ear to ear following a lovely introduction by the delicious Polly Pandemonium, founder of KSL. They got into the swing of things, probably because of the pantomime nature of what I was doing, and there were plenty of volunteers to suck my icicle and lots of applause and laughter once the retro stylings of Vanilla Ice followed on from my liberal applications of fairy glitter.
I was really happy with the reception, and am going to spend 2011 looking for more performance opportunities, so do drop me a line if you have any suggestions.
A quieter week, following on the heels of a lovely rope and wine evening that consisted of wine and lots of people huddled in cuddle puddles on sheepskin rugs. I think the weather made us feel more in need of warm, human bodies than anything else. Chiaroscuro and I did bring along our kigu outfits which made us even more huggable, and cause Ringmaster to look on aghast as we demanded Shibari. Probably not an authentic traditional experience but a worthwhile exploration of otaku culture and also lots of silly, giggling fun. This tangentially led on to a conversation about "eastern" versus "western" Shibari - the former placing emphasis on passive, receiving rope bottoms and the latter involving more ties that revolve around restraint and struggle. We wondered whether this was a cultural thing - certainly it would be a very British trope to only feel able to let go and enjoy being tied up in situations where one was forced to do so, or could not escape.
Eventually, after being chased around Benny Hill style, he overcame his disgust and used ties that were appropriate to the animals we were dressed up as - emphasising the limbs of the long legged giraffe and the traditional pose of a growling bear. He will probably start talking to me again around 2019.
I don't think it's a kink in the sense that being a furry is. I don't feel sexual or sexualised (I really, really don't want to have sex whilst wearing one), but I do feel happy and amused. All of which are good and positive things. After a shopping trip the next day in which other perverts bought kigu the general consensus was that they do create a different persona for you to inhabit. Certainly I was me, but I was me with the knowledge that I could be silly. Part of me thinks that this sort of dress-up and lets pretend teeters on the edges of The Doll Project and of aspects of animal play.
Except, not quite.
Dolls are, by my own definition at least, for sexual use or abuse. And animals tend towards the dangerous and somewhat cruel, rough things in need of taking and taming. These toys are different. Remember when you were young and you built a den, perhaps using blankets and old clothes horses? You hid in it, maybe with a torch and were safe in your own secret world where everything was soft and comforting. They are like that. I got the giggles a lot and romped around.
We discussed how clothing affects how you are perceived, and whether we could all get kitted up in our plushie jumpsuits attend a BDSM event and engage in some extreme edge play. I think that there would be a certain element of point scoring involved in this - which isn't to say that it shouldn't be done, although it's fair to say that some people will get upset and think we are taking the piss. Which in one sense, we would be. However, far too much kink is taken far too seriously and far too much labelling is done via whatever someone is wearing.
Plus if you can dominate someone whilst wearing a giant panda costume, you can pretty much do anything. And it would be marvellously creepy.
For the past week or so I've been getting the very odd (for me) desire to fuck complete strangers. Not in the sense that I have seen a particularly attractive person and wanted to bag and tag them, but rather faceless, anonymous, "don't speak" encounters where they leave before it gets light allowing you to have breakfast in peace.
I've never really had these kinds of interactions before so I'm uncertain whether the reality will live up to the fantasy. Those faceless forms that are the basis of masturbatory image flashes are perfect because they are not real. Real people are complicated, messy, contradictory and have their own baggage of needs and wants. The bodies in my head are none of those things - they belong in their entirety to me and act only according to my whims.
Talking to a friend over dinner last night and he explained the joys of one night stands - of being able to take what you want, moving to the extremes of physicality, humiliation and shame and wiping the slate clean in the morning. He's (mostly) vanilla, so I can see how he might want to separate those practices, or only indulge with people he's not interested in forming a long-term bond with. For me, it's obviously different. I've always thought that I couldn't really engage in BDSM with someone who I didn't know at least well enough to have a proper sit down chat with. I suppose I need the comfort that a few email exchanges and personal knowledge brings, certainly if I'm the bottom / submissive in the scenario.
I've recently found my experience of being dominant compromised. I was let down and that has put a bit of a dent in my willingness to interact in any meaningful D/s way with people within my friendship circle. I'm finding that amongst the people I know and care about, I want to keep certain boundaries, recently the idea of sharing a bed with someone else was something my subconscious balked at. I suppose part of it is that don't want to mess up any more friendships by adding anything other than casual club and party play into the mix. I absolutely enjoy doing both those things, however they don't give me everything I need right now. They tend to be less intimate and less sexual (the two generally go hand in hand for me), which means, ultimately, no fucking. And I need fucking. If I don't have regular sex I get grumpy. I'm grumpy now, for example.
My current train of thought is that perhaps this new desire, combined with my generally toppy mood is a signal that more transactional and less in-depth sexual play goes hand-in-hand with my exploration of dominance. I'm also getting a lot more superficial about my requirements from a partner, which is admittedly hard given I was quite superficial in the first place. What I need to do now is to find ways of satisfying and interrogating this desire - I'm certainly hoping that putting-it-about-a-bit at Kinky Salon will scratch the itch. I also think that having assignations which are primarily for the purpose of BDSM outwith my circle of acquaintances will be a good thing for me. I am writing the words "no strings attached" on messages a lot these days, let's see how that goes.
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