Playing with masculinity - Daddy and boy

This post is about personas and the fantasies they come from and create. It's about the kind of roles I adopt and channel within my dominance, but also my life. I am quite clear within myself that these states of being are not "alternative personalities" as such. Nor are they characters or games to play. It is strongly linked to The Doll Project, yet very much a dominant variant. The personas are an assemblage of thoughts, feelings and desires that are all part of the complete me. But just as one day I might be feeling "happy" so too I can spend a day feeling "boyish". Gender as an emotion.

Recently I'm veering further and further into masculine modes of power and sexuality. I've long known that my looks allow me to flirt heavily with presentations of androgyny and masculinity but there's a point where you realise that it's not about dress-up. There's more going on. Much more.

Let's take it from the top, because this is going to get complicated. There's a healthy amount of female Daddy play in the scene I inhabit, a Goldilocks just-right quantity to make it common enough so I don't have to explain myself with footnotes, but rare enough to stand out as a unique feature. Naturally, I have to be special. But it's not about doing something because no-one else does. That's nice, but the real joy has been in finding a mode of play that feels, well, normal.

Take clothes, for instance. I'm a tomboy. This rubs up against a lot of notions of how I should present myself as a dominant and a woman. I like to have a lot of useful space between myself and images / archetypes of traditional female dominance, many of which hold very little appeal to me and in fact are often downright off putting.

Daddy doesn't dress up, or at least, not in anything that I don't feel absolutely comfortable and very much "me" in (more thoughts on dominance and clothes are here). I wear a lot of vest tops. They show off my arms nicely and the shape of the clothes is often quite key to feeling in the right head-space. Some mornings I wake up femme and have to wear a dress or skirt. These days I'm more and more masculine.

I like Daddy play a lot, it fits in well with a lot of my dominant qualities. The "firm but fair" attitude, protection and patronage, strength tempered with care. Daddy knows best. The ways of being and doing I find quite easy - a coaching attitude, kindly but steely. The D/s writes itself. The challenge I'm finding (interestingly) is in S&M and sexualised play. For some reason fucking feels strange. It might be because one of the people I'm playing with is very new to me and also female. Sex always comes much later in those relationships. Perhaps due to my sexual (fucking) experiences being weighted heavily towards men, my play experience however contains a lot more women - I can still quite easily separate the two and for me a good D/s session can often be better than "straight" fucking, which has it's own pleasurable intimacy but nothing like the power trip and frisson that a strong pain scene can offer, for example.

So far, so sadistic. And pain-delivery actions such as beatings, especially spanking and other types of CP come quite easily to the Daddy persona. It allows me to put my hands all over their bodies (which I enjoy) without stripping down myself - which in a way would shatter the illusion. I may have a lean and muscular female body but it is still very obviously female. And part of me wants to keep the mystery going for as long as possible. The clothing also keeps a power imbalance going - I keep clothed, they are stripped. That said, it's not actually terribly serious. I laugh when I do it and Daddy is a fun role to play, there's a joy to it, in the way it operates, which I'm still finding out a lot about and these are just my first real responses. I'm looking forward to seeing where it might take me. Already I can see a lot of possibilities. For example, despite the common assumption of Daddy-little-girl it's also something I can see myself enjoying doing with boys as well both boys as boys and girls dressed as boys - I told you it was going to get complicated.

Now I've mentioned boys, there's a flip-side to dominant masculinity. I love playing the role of a sexualised male predator. Specifically a sleazy, nasty teenage boy predator. This role has no problem with fucking, and indeed seems to require rather a lot of it. As cruel as Daddy is kind, as selfish as Daddy is supportive. He is a nasty piece of work. I am really rather fond of him. Like the boy your mother always warned you about, he has a kind of glamour to him. I find it interesting that I want to be him, to use this model to fuck other people with. Particularly men. Particularly nice, well brought up young men of the sort who might have flirted with homosexuality but never found the right, gamine-faced boy to take them there.

What is it about this that works? I'm tempted to snicker and say what is it about this that doesn't work? But that would be the teenage boy talking. It sparked alive (very brightly) when I went to the cinema with Mr Smith and Dandy. I found myself walking between them, they were both dapper and well-turned out in suits, looking suave from days in the office. I was in jeans, a boy's T-shirt with an Atari logo and trainers. I felt for all the world like the teenage son of two gay dads. Incest fantasies and 90s pop band references aside the sensation was powerful, funny, sexual and very, very attractive. The liberation and gender/sexual fuckery of all those tropes within three bodies that I felt I knew well (theirs and mine). It was quite a rush. And one I'd rather like to consummate at some point. Somehow. Maybe not with those two as the compatability only really exists in my head.

I've made a partial start, spending yesterday morning in vest top and comic-book patterned y-fronts shaking my arse seductively in the general direction of a slightly paternal (and slightly disarmed) Mr Smith. It was a strange but pleasant switch-y moment, albeit very topping from the bottom to get him back into bed and entertaining me. It's also a move which signals a pleasant step-change in our relationship, that I can express my other types of desires, especially for the more rough and tumble sort of kinky sex, without feeling as if I'm loosing my dominant belle dame sans merci cool. Replacing it with the lithe limbed and frisky hipped cool of a yet-to-be-named teenager.

Buckle up

So there he lies, more naked than naked. Mr Smith, all skin, cooling sweat and four, black leather cuffs. Mine. The cuffs make them mine, more so than anything with perhaps the exception of a collar. Anyone can be fucked, or beaten, or tied. We all have our little peccadilloes, the sights and sounds that call to our particular kink. These are mine. The marks of slavery on ankles and wrists, that turn a body into an object of use.

One of my personal indulgences is to have a submissive in my bed in the morning to use as a passive sex toys, perfected tools for satisfying my own desires. To take and take again, without need to deliver anything in return. My pleasure, should be their pleasure. No words should be needed. Just a slight readjustment of my body and then their hands should be on my clit or, better yet, roused from sleep by a mouth lapping at my cunt. The cuffs make me think of that more, and as dominance, like submission resides in the mind as much as the real world, that makes me come. Hard.

After I'd used him to bring me to orgasm, then fucked him I undo the thick, padded leather buckles that he sleeps in. I've recently been thinking a lot about cuffs and bondage, having purchased some lovely lockable ones which are much more reassuringly hefty than my current sets. I like keeping my pets in bondage over night, though reactions vary. He enjoys it, but then he has a high tactile requirement: extensive hugs, strokes and general petting will keep him softly submissive for hours on end.

The cuffs are secure reminders of my control over him and act in a similar way, wrapped tight between four points of authority. I don't always fasten the cuffs to anything - although I do often tie ankles to bedposts or clip them to each other - the presence of the cuffs is enough, their heaviness and weight, the way they identify a body, otherwise pristine and without visible harm, as a body that is owned and kept.

I like putting on cuffs slowly, taking my time to pull the leather tight and buckle them down firmly, it reminds me of placing tack upon a horse before you ride it. The importance of preparation, the smooth flow of fingers, leather and skin. As each silver buckle is fixed in place and each little padlock closed with a click the submissive becomes more and more mine. I get angry if any attempt is made to remove them without my permission, and even when they do need to come off I have to do it myself. The hand that places them, must be the hand that removes them - encircling the time and space that I have with my pets in the specific action of buckles and leather. Ritual of ownership and control.

Collars are similar, but more potent. Collars are special, we all know that, whether you subscribe to traditional collaring practices or not, the collar has its own provenance. I have a plain, "play" collar and I'm careful to make distinctions between a collar I might use to fasten someones neck and head to things, or hold a hood more firmly in place and a potential future specific collar. They are things to work towards, prizes to be won and worn with absolute pride. I've seen the one that may well be for Mr Smith, assuming that we make it that far: a heavy, smooth metal affair, made to sit cool and hard on the neck of a muscular man.

Mannequin has a pretty brown leather collar, bought from a pet shop, of course. Perfect for her small, lithe frame. Slim and lightweight, it sits easily around her neck. I enjoy pulling her hair back from the nape of her neck and fastening it in place, brushing her skin with my fingers as I encircle her. With the collar on, she is more mine, even if she is not with me. I received a note from her over the weekend, whilst she was away, that she was wearing the collar and it made me smile, as if I had her held in my arms.

Which in a way, I did.

Body language

He moans. Light at first but getting longer and deeper. Mr Smith is on all fours, spreading his arms out in front like a cat, sprawling. If he had claws, they would be ground into the bedsheets.

All I can really see of him are his back and shoulders, arching gently up towards me. Ankles and wrists cuffed but not bound to anything (some hotels are really inconsiderate in their lack of useful hitching posts). His face is encased in a rubber hood selected for him earlier today. It's tightly zipped at the back of the head with two pinpricks for nostrils and an ovoid, red rimmed hole for the mouth. I like kissing hooded faces, He's secured nice and snug with a collar around his neck. The exterior of the mask is smooth, featureless and shiny, when I press my hands, or run my tongue, against it I can feel the warm, yielding flesh beneath. We are separated by millimetres of latex and by miles and miles of power exchange.

When the face goes; they go. Ways away, and deep, deep down, both in their mind and in my mind's eye. He is muscle and bone, Fuck Toy. Ultimately, only and solely - perfectly for my purposes - a body. Those beautiful, abstracted submissive bodies.

I've spent the past hour or two amusing myself and slowly working him up to a good, long session with a strap-on. Lubed fingers pressed, spread and curling inside him, then a series of plugs moving up in size as I felt him relax. I like the feeling of being inside someone, of the heat of their body. The intimacy and the power of pressing my flesh, my force, my muscle, into their yielding skin. Finally, I pull his legs up and push the harnessed dildo into him - all the way - and start to fuck.

I zone out a little, entering that straight-line arrow from a bow feeling that is the trajectory of dom space. It's not like concentrating, I am not thinking. I am doing. Fucking is an exercise in unconsciously reading flesh. The majority of communication is carried without words and he's a book spread open. There is a wave that keeps passing between us, on a heavier and heavier tide. I ride it, I ride him. His moans rise and fall and I can see the flickers and twitches of muscle spasms in his back. I create rhythm with my hips: grinding into him, gripping tight around his arse and thighs: pulling him into me with the dull thump of flesh on flesh. I thrust harder and faster, enjoying the build of heat in my body, the wetness growing in my cunt and the synchronicity of fucking. The pure animal joy of it.

I become aware of a rising tension flowing up from him as he clenches and unclenches seeking a release that moves away from his grasp. I push him towards it, but feel him slipping, eventually slowing to a halt, and we collapse in a sweating, gasping heap. Waiting for language to return to us. Later he confessed that he felt on the point of orgasm but without knowing how to - orgasm through anal stimulation is somewhat uncharted territory. I told him that I was sure that if he's well behaved I could certainly help him practice.

Pieces of bodies

I am fortunate to have a number of very attractive and interesting people to play with. Curiously (or perhaps not, I've found that a high proportion of those who are obviously good looking are also over-anxious about their looks) there is also a preponderance of body-consciousness. So much so that some of my recent feedback emails have included worries about how they looked whilst I was dominating them, including to the extent that this distracts from their libido or ability to enjoy being in subspace.

Some of this post is taken from replies I've sent to them. Reassurances that took a curious turn because they were less about the "there, there" and more about my own analysis on how I see the submissives I'm playing with, when I'm playing with them.

I don't see bodies the way their owners do. No-one ever does, we are always far more critical of our own physicality, more painfully aware of its flaws than any outsider. We perceive the minute errors and imperfections. Those watching only see the whole, which is unknown, new and thus unfamiliar carrying with it no judgement of good or bad.

There is a huge difference between how I see the person over dinner, enjoying their blushes. eye shimmers or cheeky grins as I do my preliminary pre-play discussions and how I see the thing laid out for me to play with. Those words are important. My dominance de-personalises: it makes objects for my affection. The things that carried them from the restaurant to my bedroom - who they are, how they laugh, the way they look down when embarrassed, their wicked sense of humour, fine turn of phrase. These things all evaporate and become vapour which is held in a place where I can smell it and bring it to mind but does not always connect directly to what is in front of me. They are not that person, not entirely. They are what is left when they have given part of their will, their personhood over to me.

They are a landscape of beautiful, available, responsive flesh. Not a body, but body parts. Often segmented by rope, latex, leather or chain. Bits are removed - eyes taken with blindfolds, mouths blocked with gags. The angles might be wrong: bent double over spanking benches or spread out in a cross or coiled in a hog-tie. When I play, I see shapes.

Sometimes I do stop and stare at what is in front of me and grin because it is pretty, it is wonderful but it's not an aesthetic that would sell perfume. It's heaps of matter. And it's mine. That sense of ownership, although transient, is still powerful. And it engenders a kind of hunger to consume, to make happen, to impose upon. Once I'm in domspace I'm not looking at a submissive in the same way that I would if they were moving towards me across a dance floor. Here, it is a conduit for reactions and responses to what I am doing, a space for me to demonstrate power.

When they are strapped down and I'm about to play, I don't think about their looks except as a memory. That decision on how hot they were was made when we first met, when I first decided I liked the look of you. All the judgement calls and thoughts on who they are and whether I think that they are pretty were done back when they were a person. Now they are my thing. A beautiful thing, but still a thing. Without a face, without will and perhaps without a voice. You are skin, muscles, flesh and bone that I can make dance.

I no longer see the boy or girl whose hand I perhaps held an hour or so ago. Although I remember them and smile.

I see this. Skin that goes pink and shivvered into goosebumps. Tattoos that raise with sensitivity. Purple lines that bloomed into being. Sweat. Hair falling over the pillow in a halo. The contrast of skin against the bonds. The lips of labia swelling, getting wet and firm. Internal muscles parting and softening as I press through them. The way a chest rises and falls. Nipples blooming pink and rising. Cocks hardening and twitching. Veins. A mouth that opened and gave little gasps as I pushed against you. Tiny little whimpers and knuckles that go white. A knot in the underside of a shoulderblade massaged away with my hands. Feet, pointing or crossing onto each other. Fingers clenching and unclenching.

Parts. Beautiful, expressive parts.

The submissive body is fractured into pieces and I play with it like a cat with a willing mouse until I am done. They become whole again only when we're done. Aftercare is like the process of putting us both back together again: it's not just about the submissive coming out of subspace and back to themselves, it's also about me coming down from domspace (even as I write I note that subspace is "down" and domspace is "up") and connecting with them again as a person, a friend and a lover.

Carrot and stick

Following on from discussions of dominance as a kind of gambling, it's worth talking about bluffing. Dominance relies a lot on the assurance of action. More than anything else, the other party must be certain that you will carry through on what you have said. That puts the dominant in something of a quandary regarding bluffing. Bluffing can be great, if you know you are going to win. But if you are revealed to have offered something you can't carry out then dominance goes out the window like a squeaky balloon popped with a pin.

The threat of something can often be bigger, scarier and more terrifying than the actual ordeal itself - how many times have we worked ourselves up over a perceived future confrontation at work, a dentists appointment or a difficult conversation only to find it much easier in the doing than the thinking. That's the essence of anxiety - the mind can be relied upon to blow things out of proportion because the best person to scare yourself is you.

But threats never carried out will loose all their weight. If all I do is bluff I will become known for doing so and I will no longer be threatening. What this means is that my word must become my bond, essentially. This isn't just for negative punishments:it works for pain and reward, in my experience a combination of the two is the best way of getting what you want out of someone. There's a lot of talk about trust in BDSM and this is part of that trust - they must know that you will do what you say.

Nothing is weaker than an empty threat. I'm learning that if I threaten or promise something I must be prepared to carry it out so very careful with what I say, even casually. At the same time, I'm also learning that I'm prepared to carry out an awful lot.

The girl was complaining about how she looked, and I could look at the girl and know those things weren't true. So I made a plan. Then told it to her:

"I'll strip you naked at the next Peer Rope London and you will recite five minutes on your beauty to myself and an audience. Then you'll see how pretty they think you are."

At first she didn't believe me, and there were hurried, jokey comments back and forth. I stuck to my guns. I knew she was getting anxious because other people interceded, and I quietly brought them into the fold. There was no secret about the plan. It was made public via my twitter feed - this was one situation where the threat did not need to be vague, it was terrifying because of its clarity.

I knew I had her hooked when she began to twist. It wasn't "never do this to me!" it was "not like this" or "not like that" requests to do it in private, at a different event, to only be stripped down to pants and bra. She wanted it, but she was scared. And I liked that. I liked it a lot. It made me powerful - the control I could exert, right down to the minutiae, the power from helping someone do something they wanted to do but could not manage on their own. Pulling someone through their fear.

In the background, I made plans, first in my head, then on paper in bullet form. There were a lot of variables and I wanted to be clear on what needed to happen so that I could work out the possible pitfalls. Playing with someone's self image is challenging and can be dangerous. My goal was to make her see herself as other's did - as a pretty young woman, to give her the rush and thrill of public exposure and public appreciation. I really didn't want to make a bad body image worse. I checked in on those who knew her first, for a sounding board. I'd seen her play in public, though mostly clothed, and finally I offered her a full and complete get out. But it was a controlled get-out, and one on my terms. She could say no, but that would mean nothing, no play, ever. We'd still remain friendly, but we wouldn't play.

She said yes. Then she emailed across the text she was going to read out.

I had her. She still twisted, and I smiled and teased and kept telling her that no, she wasn't in charge and it would happen my way.

Then it was the day itself. The venue was busy so I had to wait for a while until it was quiet enough for something to happen without causing a massive disturbance, there's a difference between attracting wanted attention to fuel latent exhibitionist desires and being the annoying bastard getting in people's way. Plus I knew that the longer I waited the more she might begin to hope that perhaps I had forgotten or decided not to do it. In fact, the reverse was true, I was actually somewhat anxious that it was too busy to do it and I knew I had to follow through.

Finally, there was a gap in the crowd and she was standing near me, so I grabbed her. I had her occasional play-partner who'd been playing good cop to my bad cop over email, but now was very much bad cop, delivering a blow to her stomach that I winced at. She went down. We dragged her over to the stairs and began hauling her to the second level. Everyone stopped and watched us briefly, weighing up in a moment or so whether this was something that should or shouldn't happen. We appeared to have passed some sort of silent approval and they carried on. Spirit found us half way up the stairs - I'd talked to her about what was going in, and she helped us carry the girl the rest of the way. She wriggled, not screaming the house down as I thought she might - in fact her stoic silence reassured me that some part of her, beneath the fear, was ready. that this was what she wanted. We were fighting a battle of nerves - mine against hers. Could I steady mine against her obvious distress in order to take her through it and out the other side?

Once at the top, I started to strip her. Shouting orders to scare her, between the three of us we forced her clothes off in between wrenching her this way and that around her struggling form. A crowd gathered and I drew her attention to them. Once down to just her knickers, she began to clam up, going silent and wrapping arms around legs. The change in her body and tempo made me alter my movements. There had been enough stick. Now was time for some carrot. I stroked and soothed her, talking in a soft low voice about how I wanted her to make me proud, about how this was going to happen and it was up to her how it played out. I let her get her breath back and counted down from sixty before getting her hauled to her feet.

She had her poem and was trying to hide her breasts and cunt with her hands. We finally peeled them back and, through shouting, some small violence and whispers of encouragements plus threats to keep her there overnight, or longer if needs be. She began to speak in the tiniest of voices, so I ushered the audience closer. After a few false starts, something clicked and she read through the whole piece. Perhaps she realised that this was happening, or that she could end it quicker if she just started to talk.

I smiled as she spoke. Listening to what she'd written. A rhyming set of verse, well put together, funny and depreciating, but with the required acknowledgements that yes, her body was pretty. I reached in my pocket for the magic marker I had bought in preparation, to write her own words on herself as a memento but it had clearly been lost in the struggle. A shame, but the battle itself was well won. Once done, there was applause, which threw her, then a pile of hugs from the three of us and friends. My head felt like it was going to explode with the rush from what I'd just done.

Not only was I committed to hurting her if she didn't do what I wanted I was also prepared to give treats and praise when she did come up with the goods. Sitting next to her, naked and shaking like a leaf, with a heavy blanket draped over her and eating the chocolate eclairs (I'd checked in on her favourite sugary treat) I'd saved for the occasion. I was shaking too. Buzzing with adrenaline I wrapped my arms around her, feeling genuine pride and a huge amount of energy - I was grinning from ear to ear and still am today. Domspace is shiny, and full of stars.

Building bodies

This musing is brought to you from a number of conversations I've had recently around bodies and self. One with Different Drummer, who is helping me with my gym routine through a mix of traditional training and (hopefully) performance enhancing hypnosis techniques. We talked about our bodies as our "projects" and the enjoyment we got from changing them, making them stronger and "better."The other with Knight of Wands over the idea that you "grow" into your face, echoing the Orwell quote that at age fifty, every man has the face he deserves. To cap it all off, there was a discussion on the radio about a survey commissioned by QVC (a shopping channel) on a woman aged thirty-one is on average at the height of physical attractiveness. Whether this is to be believed or not is another thing, but there are some interesting implications raised here that interested me.

Let's start with the personal. My body is my site of personal study and development, particularly now I have a bit more time and space to spend on it. I've always take a keen (possibly over-keen) interest in it. I want to look after it for the long term, keep it functioning. It is the home I will live in for at least the next sixty years, all things being equal, so it makes practical sense to feather the nest. But more than that, I want it to look, and feel, good. Not simply healthy, but better in a wider sense. The terms "better" and "good" are subjective and almost certainly doesn't always mesh with other people's ideas of good. Which is fine, because it's my body not theirs.

Our bodies are the stories that we write of ourselves, they are the map of where we have come from, probably the only physical thing that we will keep with us for the whole of our lives. We are all born with them and they are blank, new. We grow into them, and they into us. This process is ongoing, with our own changes, and that's one of the reasons why I mark my body with tattoos and piercings, I note the milestones on. A memento vivi. This is not entirely my own work. How are bodies look is created and reinforced by whatever society or culture we live in, our families, friends and the environment. All of these things also help develop our selves and our idea of self, so the two are intertwined. Body politic.

What I'm interested in at the moment is less about the social aspect, although I am aware that my ideas of what a "good" body looks like is certainly informed by my own background, but on how changing my body makes me feel. My body is me, it's who I am, how I represent myself - that bit of me that lives between my ears - to the world, how I interact with the physical universe, with other people in meatspace and a source of many joys, and sorrows. So making my body "good" is also about making me good. Not just because I can feel powerful, or in control (although those things are important) but because having a body that matches my sense of self makes me feel whole and by improving my body I can improve myself. I like self-improvement.

I am currently working on changing the way my body looks, feels and behaves. I already do my best to eat a balanced diet, more recently I've stopped taking oral contraceptives. I'm interested in seeing how my body regulates itself without additional hormones. Note that this will be the first time in around ten years that I haven't taken these so in many respects I am without a reference for what my adult body feels like "naturally". I'm not expecting to experience any massive changes, my periods were never particularly irregular, heavy or painful (a major reason that many women take the pill aside from contraception), so I think its more a type of mental satisfaction, a liberation.

Then there's the gym. I'm three weeks into a new routine aimed at adding muscle mass and trimming fat. The results have been striking, and I've received a lot of comments already on my changed shape and tone. I find myself slipping into gendered terms when I talk about it - using the word "boyish" quite a lot. The look I'm actually striving for is something more androgynous, I think I captured it best in discussion with a friend where I said I wanted to look like a strong and beautiful person. Most noticeable in the change have been my arms, which were fairly scrawny and now have defined muscles which I am enjoying showing off at every available opportunity. Second to that is my stomach, which now has a firm layer of muscle over it. It feels hard and strong and I find myself touching it a lot, almost reassuring myself. And the reason I'm reassuring myself is because my stomach area, like my arms, is getting bigger and this is making me worry. Because in my mind "bigger" in that area equals "bad".

My stomach has always been an area of concern, it's the one bit of my body that I am rarely happy with. For a start, it fluctuates (probably not as wildly as I think, and almost certainly imperceptibly to others). One day it will be flat, the next rounded. I have invested an astronomical amount of sit-ups on my stomach and yet it has only ever had a pleasing flatness for a few days after I had been horrendously ill for two weeks and thus unable to eat or drink anything beyond salt replacement sachets in a bit of water.

It's quite worrying to me that my concept of what a "good" stomach looks like is one that is terribly, unhealthily and unsustainably altered. Furthermore, altered in a damaging capacity that left all of me feeling weak and vulnerable. Starvation is my body's enemy. It is also my own personal enemy, and whilst I am aware that my issues with food will never totally leave me, they are also a warning sign about myself. When I feel so low I stop eating, I know that I need to manage those anxieties which are causing me to exert such extreme control over my body. In many respects, exercise and body building are part of maintaining control but in a more positive way. I am trying to build rather than destroy, create something stronger rather than take away from my self. In doing so, I hope to also be able to build a better image of myself, one in which wasting away to nothing, rendering myself physically invisible, is no longer a badge of pride, but instead I can enjoy owning the space I occupy with a body strong enough to take whatever comes my way.