Consent

Trigger warning.

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 BDSM 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. There's been a lot going on. Public figures have weighed in all over the place. Idiot politicians have confused sexual assault with rudeness. More idiotic politicians have demonstrated basic scientific failings. There has been a lot of commentary, online and in the papers, and a lot of personal confessions, of all kinds.

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.

There have also been a lot of arguments. Some heated, some whispered hushed and low, some online, some in person.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 rape culture, 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 blamers, sluts or slut-shamers. 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.

It's not about who "wins" in a court of law ('m not going to touch on the legal side of it, though I'm hoping someone does), assuming it even comes to that, which more often than not it doesn't. Fighting a legal battle does not change anyone's 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 what we can do about it and talk about consent. Which I have done, at length. There's an extremely good article, and links to other good articles, here on safewords, consent and BDSM culture here - I would urge you to read it.

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.

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 internet 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.

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 sexually 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.

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.

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. I have contracts. 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.

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 safeword if the pain is too much.

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.

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. 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.

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. I don't want to abdicate responsibility for my actions nor do I want to stop living the life I want. 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.

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.

The lady vanishes

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.

The short answer is, naturally, Ganymede. The longer answer requires a little more consideration. Majeste 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?

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.

Life, however has changed.

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.

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.

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.

So why am I not doing it?

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.

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.

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.

Submissive styles

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 being done to - 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 jouissance.

I've used that word deliberately, more on gendered reactions to sex later, hold that thought. Kristeva 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.


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. 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.

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.

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. 

Ganymede 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. 

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...


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.
   

Orgy organising. Part Two

The day of the orgy finally arrived. Glamorama 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.

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 beginning of the process, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Poly Means Many: Green eyed monster

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month six bloggers - Amanda Jones, An Open Book, One Sub's Mission, Polyamorous Parenting, Post Modern Sleaze, and Rarely Wears Lipstick - will write about their views on one of them. This month: jealousy.

Jealousy. It's the black sheep of the "relationship emotions" family. Being labelled as a "jealous person" creates all kinds of dreadful associations. 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.

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 positive dominant feelings. I feel a lot of those things about the submissives 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.

It's what I do about it that measures me as a dominant and as a person..

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 my jealousy 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 choosing 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.

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.

For me, this video 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.

The D/s jealousy connection gets especially interesting and when we deliberately create jealousy. Dominants and submissives love playing with powerful feelings: we create scenes that embroil us in worlds of headfucks, 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, abandonment... So many to pick from!

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 bit of voyeurism and physical restraint 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 mFm partnership with a cuckold/bull pairing - a toppier switch and more submissive one. It's currently high on my masturbation imagery list.

Cuckolding, aside from being fun in and of itself, can also be cathartic where genuine fears and concerns of infidelity 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.

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 apart. So it is with feelings.

Our green-eyed games must be ordered in such a way that we feel safe to explore, rather than considering our relationship at risk. 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. 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.

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-enveloped in the safety and security of your relationship, to be able to clearly distinguish the play from the reality. Consent, as ever, is king.

Party favours

I think that I have finally found the correct use for OKCupid, and no, it's not purely for the lols, although there are many and they would be funnier if they weren't so painfully true. It is a shopping site to get men for sex parties.

Let me wind back a little, my extraordinarily beguiling friend, Glamourama, she of the infamous hen party and I were having dinner a couple of nights ago and discussing an upcoming private sex and play party at hers. There was a good and varied list of ladies and a short to the point of being absent list of men. I'm happy with women-only play parties, but to be frank, we needed more cock. And a very specific kind of cock as well. The sort that plays well with others, isn't scared of (and is possibly quite interested in) playing with other men, the kind that participates rather than expects voyeuristic girl on girl for their viewing pleasure, the sort that is kink-friendly, if not actually kinky.

It's harder than you might think, if you will pardon the pun. Finding the right people for group sex is difficult. Parties are all about balance and getting the mix correct, and that means often you rely on who you know, because, well, you know them. The trouble is, we all know a lot of men, but we don't know a lot of men who fit that bill, who are available and who will work with the people already invited.

As I've commented on before, there are a lot of men who find public play, public nudity and group fucking quite difficult. There are also very, very few single men around on the scene who are open for public sexual experimentation to that extent. The twin problems are "public" and "open". I know many men who are interested in orgies provided they don't have to touch, look at or preferably be in the same room as another naked man. Which is a curious type of orgy, from my point of view. Then there's the whole "naked in public" thing, even though it is a private party, it is a party. There are a lot of men who are looking for that special (submissive) someone to have private bedroom antics and possibly even one of those relationship things. But this isn't going to be a space for that.

Finally, there is something rather liberating about inviting men who you have never met before. It gives me that opportunity to play with stranger sex, to concentrate on the physical rather than the emotional or intellectual parts of relationship management - because we will have no relationship. This isn't to say that I will deliberately hurt their feelings (I may hurt other things) but that something new, with no strings and no stress is exactly what I need right now.

Thus, a plan was formed. I have drafted up a little invitation message, and together with another lady who will also be present we are going to seek out men who fit our bill and interview them. I am prepared for noises of outrage or upset at such an action, but it seems to make perfect sense to me. I have never, ever played or fucked someone without meeting them for a coffee to see whether we clicked, I'm just broadening the project somewhat as well as giving it a rather pleasing dose of efficiency.

Drafting the message was interesting, and I ended up with something like this:

I'm running a kink-friendly sex party on Saturday 10 March for a selection of lovely ladies in SW London.

We are looking for atttractive, open minded and sexually flexible men to join us

You must be:

Confident in group sex situations,

Polite and well mannered (of course you are, naturally)

Kink friendly - there will be bondage and some S&M at the party

Liberal in your attitudes

Comfortable touching, fucking and being naked and sexual around other men - threesomes and moresomes will be happening. You don't have to be bisexual but you must be cool in the presence of cock. We will be happy if want help experimenting...

So if a message like that hits your inbox, you know what is going on.

Poly Means Many: Explain yourself

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month six bloggers - Amanda Jones, An Open Book, One Sub's Mission, Polyamorous Parenting, Post Modern Sleaze, and Rarely Wears Lipstick - will write about their views on one of them. This month: explaining poly to other people.

I'm currently single, which means I'm going on a lot of dates - I think I worked out that last year I'd gone on over fifty, resulting in only two second dates. This is a tribute to my own particular specific tastes as much as anything else, more on that later, but what it does mean is that I'm developing a very good line in a particular sort of sales patter, specifically on how I want my relationships to be. Generally speaking I don't mind, and even quite enjoy the whole "explaining myself" thing. Especially on a first date. After all, it's really important to be able to tell a prospective lover what it is you want - if you can't articulate, how can you both work out whether you might, well, work out?

Currently I'm going with: "Hi, I'm electronic doll, I'm bisexual, kinky and non-monogamous" followed by a big grin. Reactions vary, if I'm honest. Some people have needed further elaboration, which is fair enough. And it's mostly around what people think I mean when I say those words.

There's a lot that I don't mean.

I don't mean "I will fuck anything" because frankly, nothing could be further from the truth. For all that I write a detailed kinky sex blog, I haven't actually had a lot of sexual partners (it's around twenty, or so, if you are interested). I don't do one-night stands and I don't fuck around a huge amount. I have very exacting standards for what I find "sexy". I'm a specialist, you see. I only find a few people sexually attractive and I like really, really specific types of sex, which means it takes a lot of time for me to find the right person - or people.

Kinky sex is also more disposed towards things that don't look like sex but we perverts enjoy them just as much, if not more - flogging, bondage and so on. It's all "sex" to me. And I want all of it. But only the good stuff, and I would rather not have sex than have any old sex, which means less sexual partners. On a really practical point, I also have a very high sex drive, so when I find someone, I tend to fuck them a lot. Which makes them tired. Which makes it very useful, and pleasurable, for me to have other people to have sex with. Sex is like any other activity. You wouldn't only ever go to the cinema with one person, or go for a meal with only one person, or go to the same supermarket, so why would you only ever fuck one person?

This is the point in the conversation where I generally take a deep breath, and check whether my date is still awake, looking at me with horror, or drooling with their tongue on the floor. No-one has actually run away yet, but I suspect that's because of car crash fascination or "what will she say next?" rather than anything else. So, assuming they are still interested in what I am saying, I try and summarise: I think it's very unlikely I will want to only have sex with one person for the rest of my life.

This often leads us on to the second incorrect assumption which is that "non-monogamy" means "I can't commit and can't settle down". I'm actually really looking forward to falling in love and building a life with the love of my life. Now, here's the rub. That might be one person, it might be several. Together, one after the other, or all separate. I can't predict the future or what's around the corner and I don't want to be closed to those opportunities, either. But when they come along I want to be able to grab them with both hands and love them with all my heart. In my mind's eye, I imagine that I will have one main partner, and either as a pair or separately we will have lovers who come and go through our lives. I am not stating that this is exactly how it must be and nothing will sway me, merely that this is the kind of future I can see myself being happy in, so it's the example I use to explain myself.

This does cause confusion, no matter how clear I try to be. And I do understand the confusion. There's a lot to take in, if the universe has hitherto consisted of monogamous, heterosexual, vanilla pairings. "Exotic" relationships are often the stuff of film and fantasy: crazy sex fuelled hedonism of the rock and roll variety which is not a very realistic example of how people might live their lives. Throw in the kink and the bisexuality and people can sometimes think I will only ever be satisfied with an high-octane orgy on the hour, every hour. I do my best not to come across as some kind of sexual revolutionary, but as someone who wants a normal, but different, life. I don't always succeed. It can be difficult to explain "non-monogamy" as normal. Because for many people, it just isn't. Communicating an entire world over a cup of coffee on a first date can be a bit of a challenge.

There's also a lot of responsibility in being the first person who explains all of this. Because then you become, in part, responsible for how this person perceives this new universe of relationship possibilities. Over time, I've learnt to become very specific with the words I use, partly because I love words dearly and like to make sure they are put in the right places, and partly because I appreciate that what I'm saying is new to lots of people and I don't want to give them the impression that I'm speaking for every person who has ever had a "non-traditional" relationship. I can only ever talk about what I want, what I've enjoyed, what has worked for me.

So, for example, I don't describe myself as "polyamorous". I use "non-monogamous" specifically because I enjoy having more than one ongoing, sexual partner (when the opportunity presents itself), but I've never yet had an extended relationship with more than one person for anything more than a few months. In other words, I've never been in love with more than one person at a time, so I don't feel I can really call myself "polyamorous". I've loved several people at once, certainly and I've been fucking several people at once, and been dominant or submissive to more than one person. So I'm absolutely non-monogamous. These days I use the phrase "lovers", because it's a nice romantic word and I'm a romantic at heart. It's an easy word to get your brain around, and I think it sounds positive, caring and sexy in a genuine way, rather than "partners" which can sound as if you are in business together. I never, ever use "fuck buddies", because I don't like relationships that are "friends with benefits", I want relationships, sex and romance.

Following these, often lengthy, often with diagrams, explanations, reactions have varied. I've had people who are happy to have "found" other people who think the same way they do, relieved that they aren't the only ones, I've had surprise from people who genuinely didn't know this was a real thing outside of films and books, I've had friends think I was doing it to be cool or to be different. I've had people worry I'd get hurt. I've had people be angry or upset with me for still not wanting to sleep with them despite obviously being a slut. I've had people who got what I was saying but didn't think it was for them. My favourite was from a friend who merely said "gosh, that's quite, um, bohemian of you."

To finish, I'll give you two concrete examples of "explaining myself." My most recent two encounters, with Ten and Technophile, have resulted in break ups or whatever you have when you break up before you've really started dating. In this case, it wasn't about the sex, or the kinky sex, or the group sex. It was about how the relationship might function. So, the important bit, really.

Neither of them felt as if they would be able to "cope" with what they considered such non-traditional set ups. They were simply outside of their comfort zone. The idea of having a threesome, especially with another girl, was exciting. But the idea of my having a girlfriend, who might come and stay regularly, was strange. Still exciting, but I could tell they weren't sure whether I was being serious (I was) and if I was, how on earth it might work. The idea of my having another boyfriend was mind-blowing and triggered all kinds of negative responses. In the end, both of them decided that I wasn't the one for them, in part because of how I wanted to live my life. Neither of them were willing to give it a go so I can't comment on whether I am extremely good at explaining and it is entirely the opposite of what they wanted out of life, or I'm a bit rubbish at explaining and they would like it if they tried it. Mind you, I do keep telling straight boys that this is also true of sucking cock for my viewing pleasure, and they don't seem keen on that either.

Perhaps it's the way I say it, or the way I leer when I'm saying it?

Fundamentally, however you explain yourself, the reality of living relationships is always a little different to the writing on the box. I know from my own experience that some multiple-relationship set ups have worked better for me than others. Frankly, some monogamous relationships have worked better for me than others. The main factor that has divided the good from the bad has been about the content of the relationship, not the set-up in and of itself. It's been about the people. The expectations we've had of each other, our ability to deliver those and the way we have communicated our hopes and dreams. Not how many of us there were, or how we were living at the time.

But those are all topics for another month.

The law is an ass

Ah, the Obscenity Trial.

I am clearly in the mood for a little social commentary, laid up as I am on the chaise longue with naught but a very large pile of Hotel Chocolat Christmas goodies and box sets of quasi-lesbian tomboy anime to amuse me (poor me, however shall I cope?)

Having been brought up to relative speed at last evening's munch and read through the very thoughtful points raised by Obscenity Lawyer here, I don't want to add to the legal wranglings, it's not my forte. So, instead I offer up a little commentary on what is being discussed in the public sphere and my own thoughts. This will doubtless contain a scattering of scatological references to anal fisting because at heart I find the whole thing funny in a dreadful peep through your fingertips mortification sort of way.

First up, some historical and linguistic warm ups - it's very important to prepare the subject, and ensure they are primed for expansion. "Obscene", from the Latin obscenus or Greek ob skene. The Latin comes with a host of crunchy references including ill-omened, genitalia and lewd person, I am especially taken with the idea of bad luck or bad fortune, given the facts surrounding the case itself and the potential worries over repercussions amongst the BDSM community that a conviction would hold. Greek references take us to the world of staged performances whereby depictions of extreme emotion were considered unseemly and therefore done off-stage (hence ob skene). There's a lovely article here on the pleasures of staged violence. The idea of the obscene being that which is unseen or unknown first hand lends another interesting slant to everything going on in the courtroom. The audience of judiciary and jurors are not kinky, to them, this is another country, and consequently they are having an entire lexicon of BDSM explained to them. That's a lot to take in, as it were.

Moving forward slowly, and with carefully lubed up fingers, the word "obscenity" has its first uses in the middle of the C16, where it loses some of that nuance and becomes properly filthy. A word to mean foul or loathsome or, interestingly, profane as in "religious obscenities", something sacrilegious, this coming from a world where morality was the rule of God. These days, the term is more likely to be found in the realms of the legal, supposedly secular field, though the backdrop of unholy terminology remains, especially regarding ideas of "corruption". The challenge is with language, which is why I wanted to start with words. Words make law. This is particularly true for perverts in the wake of the so-called "Extreme Pornography" laws (Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008) which also created problems of definitions around the word "extreme". But to get back to "obscene" the full definition on wikipedia here, instantly gets us bang up to date, as well as bang up to our knuckles, into the quandary of morals, social mores, taboos and what is generally considered normal.

Together, these two points neatly illustrates the entire problem. It's a problem of perspective. I, for example, consider anal fisting to be normal, I have first hand (I'm sorry, I just can't help making the puns) knowledge of the practice, am aware of the risks, the pleasures and the practice. It does not scare me, I enjoy doing it. I have seen the greatest orgasm ever generated through anal penetration by a strap on bigger than my arm.

Now, normal is not the same thing as everyday or easy. That orgasm took time and was certainly special. But many difficult, special things are thought of as normal. Boxing is normal, and that takes a lot of training with risk of injury. But people seem fine with men getting fists to the face. Fisting takes time and patience. It is a very intimate activity for all those involved, and very involving it is too. It is something to be be savoured and enjoyed, like a splendid meal or a fabulous bottle of champagne (Marilyn Monroe's enema liquid of choice, if rumour is to be believed and Captain indicates it certainly works).

Most of the people around the Obscenity Trial, barring the defence and their witnesses, appear not to consider this normal. Or indeed have much of an inkling of the wider world of sex or kinky sex. Which to me indicates a difficulty in the idea of being tried by ones peers. Those who do not know, or who have not seen will not understand, not wholly, not completely. This is me trying my very best to not be condescending or misjudge the intelligence or capacity of those who have not experienced or witnessed these things but more and more I am realising what little people know or understand of BDSM. We exist, off-stage, ill-omened and filthy, as stereotyped monsters and will continue to do so for some time yet, it seems.

Apocalypse list

With the New Year and potential end of the world scenarios looming it's always a good time to review where I am with all things kink. I've been tracking back over previous lists of desire, and smiling to myself to realise that I've done everything on one of my first lists and it's subsequent updates. My original requirements are somewhat different to where I am now, though not just in the most obvious way - that those were submissive wants and needs. Actually the desires remain, I still enjoy a lot of those things. I'm still looking for new experiences, and to learn about myself, my feelings along the way, however it's (mostly) from a dominant perspective: there are still types physical, bottoming BDSM I enjoy, but that's very much from the position of "do this to me because I like it".

With those things in mind, in the year ahead I'm looking forward to doing some more of the things I have recently enjoyed, and learning a few new tricks

• Genderfuck play, especially games of masculinity and my teenage boy persona.
• Fireplay, I've love wax play and flicking matches at people so...
  
• Single tail whips - something I've never experienced on the receiving end either, so that means I'll need to lie back and take it at some point soon.
  
• Bloodplay
• mFm threesomes
• Hunting - one for the warmer weather but the idea of chase and capture is very appealing.
• Needles. Some people like massages, I like getting stuck with pins
• D/s training - to find someone, potentially Ten, though I'm not counting chickens, to train up to be properly "mine"
• Hard labour - I do like heavy stocks, irons and watching muscles sweat. I could even pretend to sip a diet coke whilst overseeing the pointless rocks breaking.
  

And I'm hoping that there will be plenty along the way to divert, amuse and entertain me that I haven't previously considered.

Mistress Fanservice

I spent last evening being variously angry and disappointed at the portrayal of Irene Adler in BBC's Sherlock. I don't usually use this space to comment on the happenings of fictional characters, but I was so taken aback at this portrayal of a dominatrix that I wanted to explore some of her "characterisation" and why it was wrong.

First, some preamble, just to stake my claim for why this is quite so important: this kind of bullshit in the media really fucks with how I am perceived. And how my friends are perceived. I'm a dominant woman. I know a lot of other dominant women, both professionals and non-professionals. I also know a few sex workers who are not dominant. I know kinky straight women, kinky bi women and kinky gay women. To the best of my knowledge, none of us has fucked Kate Middleton, and for the record, of all the royals, Harry would be my preference. With this experience, and with zero interest in relations between this product and the original story (there's a good article discussing those writing choices over here) I am going to simply outline why this character is a terrible depiction of a dominant woman.

Dominant women are not just uber femme seductresses. Now, I accept that the "femme type" is a standard tool in the arsenal of the female dominant. However, there are many, many others and many, many different types of desire and sexuality that a professional female dominant works with. Particularly true I would hazard, for one who has worked with the wide range of clients that this character appears to have. We don't see any of that, in fact, aside from the fact that we are constantly told she is a dominant, she appears as a seductive woman. This is not, I repeat, not the same thing as a dominant woman. This is the main problem with the entire portrayal of the character, she isn't a dominant. She's a seductress: she uses sex as a substitute for power. Dominants use power as a substitute for sex. Her clothing neatly illustrates this: she sweeps us through row upon row of glamorous frocks when deciding what to wear to greet Sherlock. No militaria, no rubber, no leather. No fetish outfits of any kind. Not even a pair of jeans and a white vest top. Maybe there's another wardrobe somewhere. And speaking of things that should be there but aren't...

Where's the kit? Personal opinion here, kids, but I don't really believe in the whole "I can dominant you with only the power of my mind" theory of dominance. I know what I've enjoyed as a submissive, and I know what submissives I've played with have enjoyed. And that's having a lot of horrible things done to them with a variety of objects as well as good D/s. Dominance is very strongly correlated with S&M and fetish. I honestly don't know a single kinky person who doesn't like some aspects of these things. I certainly know no professionals who don't, because doing those things and having access to that kit partly what you get paid for. The flat we are shown has none of this. Nothing. Oh no, wait. There's a riding crop. A slim, feminine riding crop. And a sliver of black rope around a present. This is all very soft stuff, and the continual portrayal of female dominants as soft, mysterious and delicate is deeply annoying. We like doing hard, heavy and nasty things.

Dominant women are not two dimensional sex obsessed freaks. Irene appears unable to say any sentence that does not reference sexuality or the fact that she fucks for money. She does nothing else, there is nothing else to her. Every single bloody line. Now, even for us who live the lifestyle 24/7, we have other interests, interests not connected with world domination. Being dominant is something that is part of life, and for me it is a deep and meaningful element of my personality. But I don't talk about it all the time, far from it. There are many situations in which it is entirely inappropriate to do so. Dominant women are both women and people as well as dominants.

No dominant worth their salt, male or female, would ever upon seeing their submissive, unconscious on the floor step over them with an uncaring shrug and a quip. This was the moment in the show that I actually put a (submissive) blanket over my head and refused to come out until the scene had ended. Seriously. The CIA have broken into your house and your submissive is lying on the floor. Any dominant I know would immediately rush over, check them and then tell everyone else to fuck off until they had made sure their submissive was fully recovered. Sod the mysterious detective malarkey, real kinsters know their priorities.

Sex workers are not waiting for the right man to come and save them, to help them or to make everything magically better. This is doubly true if they are gay dominant women. The very worst stereotypes of sexualised women are presented in this character for the consumption of the male viewer: the tart with the heart, lipstick lesbianism, women as manipulated by men, feminine emotions as critical weakness, seductive women defeated by male intellectual superiority. It is high time we got past all of this. Dominant women are actually dominant. Seriously. They are capable, self-aware and real people who can do things for themselves, by themselves because they want to.

Reading (unwritten) rules

Following on from my thoughts on KSL and Torture Garden, I've been the way developing some methods of improving interactions in sex clubs, fetish clubs or at kinky parties. This is both a distillation of my own opinions and how I want to fulfil my own desires, so your mileage may vary. There's two main aspects here, one is around meeting new people, with the possible intention of fucking or playing with them, and the other is around the public play / sex and the aftermath. I'm going to be using "sex" as a bit of a catch-all term in this post to cover all manner of sexual encounters that are not about putting bits of genitalia in other bits - so I'm using sex to include BDSM play, sexualised games and similar.

Let's take the social bit first. We're British, so we have a lot of unwritten (though Watching The English does write some of them down, and it's a fascinating read) rules on how, when and where we can relate to each other. These all count for double when we are around strangers. And triple when they are potentially sexually available strangers, potentially available for potential sex, right now. There's a lot of potential, and that means a certain amount of expectation management is in order, partly so you don't become crushingly disappointed, but also so that you don't let false hopes cloud your ability to behave in a way that will give you - and those around you - the most pleasure and benefit.

At the most recent Kinky Salon London I ran a couple of games in the space to help people mingle and learn the rules of the event. The night was panto themed, so I styled it as a quest in which people could help Prince Charming (me) discover some magic items. I'd placed pictures of items around the space and a little word puzzle on the back which was made from the rules. Players found the "magic word" hidden in the puzzle, thereby reading the rules. I also ran a little "secret santa" messaging service so people could approach potential partners in a more covert fashion.

The two games were designed to counter two of the biggest problems that occur again and again in these environments - at almost every kinky, perverted, swinger and sex club I've been to. People who don't know the rules, or who don't follow them and people who don't know how to approach others and ask for sex or play.

People who are new to sex clubs or to the BDSM scene often do not realise that almost every club or night has its own particular set of rules - things that are and aren't allowed. Often called "dungeon" rules from the days when we kept our kink below stairs and in cellars. These are available in advance and often they are at the events themselves, although not always. Like check box terms and conditions on iTunes, I am fairly certain that no-one actually reads them, which is a shame because each set of rules reveals the kinds of games that are permissible in the space. And I mean both what sort of activity you can do and the sort of form the event will take - you can learn a lot about a club by looking at how they choose to write and present their rules.

So, if you are going to a club for the first time, read the damn rules. I'd do that before I bought a ticket, personally, and there have been events where, following a look at their rules I've decided that it wasn't the night for me (especially swingers nights that don't allow boy-on-boy). Further to this, when you get to the club, behave according to the rules, even if others around you are not. It's a basic piece of respect to both those who are running the event and people who have decided to turn up on the strength of how they thought the event was going to turn out. This is important especially if you want to do something that is against the rules. I like knives, cutting and blood. A lot of clubs don't allow this, so I don't do it at those clubs. I can do it at home, I can do it at other clubs. Just because I consider myself an experienced kinkster doesn't mean I get special rules, and if I decide to break rules because I think I am "special" or "better" then I send a very poor message about the etiquette of kinksters and about what it means to be on the scene.

The arrangement of space on the night will also help you see the unwritten rules. KSL was interesting because it separated the space for fucking (which they refer to as "the playroom") and the space for BDSM play which gave a nice visual cue to people present. There was overlap, of course, and the handcuffs and restraints on the bed showed that to neat effect. Take your time when you arrive at a club, look around, see how things are laid out, this will tell you, louder than words, what the organisers think about how play should happen. But be warned, just like the written rules, the arrangement of space will tell you what the event organisers expect to happen and what they want to happen, not necessarily what you might want. Unlike the written rules, it is sometimes acceptable to be playful with the layout of space, as long as you are considerate of other space users. Things like moving a spanking bench into the middle of an area designed for mingling is not a good idea, but nudging it slightly so you can move all the way around is probably fine. If in doubt, ask an event organiser.

The final element of the rules is you yourself and your interactions with others. The rules you have for yourself and the rules they have for themselves. Most people do not come with a sticker which indicates their desires and limits. Sad but true. People are often poor at talking about these things and poorer still, especially if new and nervous, about negotiating. Additionally, rules change according to context and the person you are negotiating with. You are not a mind reader, you do not know what other people want. You need to ask. Ask before touching, ask before assuming.

Assumptions are rife, and many rules in clubs are assumed rather than being actually real. Parties and events create a sense of carnival and festival through dress-up, themes, alcohol, dance and the element of secret society. This makes us feel liberated from conventional rules and mores which can be very exciting, powerful and sexual. We feel able to say and do things we would not normally do, because we are following the "rules of play", playing a game as we perceive it. It is permissible, in these places, to ask strangers if they want to have sex. But this atmosphere can also turn us into idiots and put us in danger of going too far as we forget that the rules are only suspended, not removed. They will return the next day and we need to feel comfortable with how we behaved in the morning.

There's also the matter of what is sex and how far you can go - which is where the permissiveness culture of sex clubs can cause problems. For me, regardless of how the club rules appear or even how they are actually written, the onus is always on you to secure active consent, from yourself and from your partner, before any kind of touching can occur. This kind of rule is one that is often included in written club rules. But it is not always in such an explicit way and the behaviour (and dress, unfortunately we still live in a culture where revealing clothing equals "wants to be touched") of people within the space can make it feel unclear. When things are unclear, it's vital that you create your own clarity.

You need to be clear in and of yourself about what you want and don't want. And stick to your guns. Talking to a friend on the night and we both agreed that it was "ok not to have sex at a sex club". We had both had a good night, but neither of us had been in the mood and were comfortable with our feelings on that front. Just because others are fucking, doesn't mean you have to. We are not in the playground anymore. Similarly, when others are fucking, and you want to, but are unable to find a partner you like, you need to be prepared for that, to accept the fact that whilst you might want sex others might not want to have sex with you. It's a sad fact and it can make you angry, unhappy or miserable. But it needs accepting and respecting.

Respectfully decline

I had a fifth and final date with Technophile last week. It was a good conversation in some ways, not because it was especially nice or because it had a pleasing outcome, if anything it was a good conversation because difficult things were said in the right way. We parted ways with as much honour and dignity as is possible.

To summarise, he decided that we couldn't have a relationship because he, most emphatically, wanted children and I, most emphatically, do not. Now I don't want to discuss the why I don't want children because I am sick to death of having to justify a personal decision that impacts upon no-one else. But I do want to talk about the way it made me feel. I surprised myself in being more upset than I thought I might be. He's been the first man in a while where I'd thought "there might be something in this" and that something was more than kinky sex. A future, if you will. So to find out that there was no future was disheartening and I felt it keenly. Not because I had suddenly developed a large amount of feelings for him - certainly I still care for Mr Smith much more (and of course those thoughts are also tied up in the lack-of-future).

I felt it because it was another thing that was not to be. We can't help creating little hopes and dreams for ourselves that are leaps and bounds beyond where reality might be. It's one of the glorious, beautiful things about being human, it's also a very key part of being a pervert, the ability to imagine and to try and make those imaginings come true. Each time we leave a partner, or they leave us or however you want to phrase it, we let go of the bundle of aspirations and expectations we had for future times with them. They aren't always big things - it takes a long while for me to build up the emotional courage to consider moving in together or even, dare I say it, a wedding. I'm too aware of how far off those things are in anything other than abstract terms. It's more about the many, many small things that are now not going to happen. They sail away when someone says "no". Full of air and not much else, my small hopes are balloons floating up into the sky, leaving me like the small child who let go of the string, dwindling out of view. I'm left with that peculiar sense of loss you get over the irreplaceable.

I've done a lot of saying "no". I've had a lot of "no" said to me. For all kinds of reasons the nascent relationships I have built up over this year - with Dandy, with Mannequin, with Mr Smith, with Technophile and with the almost never-ending stream of first dates who never get to second dates and rarely get written about - have ended in a "no". Add onto that there are a couple very good kinky friends who I know would make wonderful, loving partners but just aren't right for me. More "no".

That's a lot of "no". And it builds up. I am at risk of becoming the girl who keeps on saying "no", which is ironic because I had originally decided that this was going to be the year in which I say "yes" to things. I wanted to shed my fear of spontaneous decisions and go out to find new experiences in a way I haven't done since my first few months on the scene. But I'm a bit older, much more discriminating, nuanced and clear in what I do and don't want. Saying "yes" to everything is not an option. But I do want to start to move forward.

I've been thinking about the future, about who I am and where I want to be, who I want to be with. How to get there. I've been thinking about what I don't want, I've been thinking about stopping doing things in order to devote more time and energy to fewer things that I can do better. One of the instant upshots of this is to stop going on dates for a while. I recently put out on Twitter that I hated the idea that "you find the one for you" when you stop looking, because that sounds a bit like reverse psychology on the universe and the universe doesn't care enough to react to that kind of behaviour. I'm also reconciling myself to the fact that my life is extremely busy and perhaps I don't really have time for a partner right now - I'm not really sure I have time for myself these days.

All of this has put me in a whimsical frame of mind. Sort of sad, sort of thoughtful, all kinds of needing to go and think things through. I'm writing this from my family home in the rural north (family home makes it sound like a country estate - it's the home where my family live) and, as ever, going home gives you time to think. Even the train journey outside of London, and outside of London's internet and phone connection blocks the space between there and here.

I don't want my love life to be made up of little bits of random dates that never go anywhere. The great romance in which I meet The One sounds like an adventure for a woman who has more time than me. I've never been that interested in casual sex or hook-ups and I don't have the energy or schedule for planning and executing D/s play in anything more than the most adhoc fashion which doesn't sit well with D/s and anyway can only happen on the one evening a month that I'm not already trying to do four things.

I need breathing room. To think. So for the moment, and until further notice, I respectfully decline.

What I mean when I say I'm kinky

"I mean, do perverts want normal things, like hugs and companionship - or are they 'vanilla' too?" a paraphrased excerpt from a recent conversation with someone who is finding his feet, and his desires, in the widening world of sexuality.

I replied "yes" but using more words. And then thought about how this must mean we might be perceived as kinksters and the issues that might raise. Here is a sensible, smart and thoughtful chap who was worried that a life of crime and punishment might involve letting go of everything to do with what he understood relationships to mean: a partner, caring, loving, snuggling under duvets. That having kinky sex meant that these other things were not part of the bargain. Now, accepting that he isn't daft, that implies to me that when we talk about ourselves as kinksters and perverts we are only telling part of the story.

Think about the way we sometimes present ourselves, as edgier than edgy, more kinky than thou, always racing for the next thing: harder, faster, stronger. We do this for a lot of reasons - we want to be interesting and exciting, we want people to know who we are, we want people to think we are hot. We pride ourselves on our hardcore attributes, and we can isolate ourselves by doing and replace our personalities with personas. Cruel bitch. Evil bastard. Wicked masters and mistresses. Similarly, drooling submissives with no minds of their own. Creatures of sex and sexuality. But we don't talk about ourselves as people with love and with lives.

Make no mistake, I do not want to distance myself from my kink. It is a core part of me. But it's not the whole thing. The belle dame sans merci might be a wonderful place to play, and certainly part of me, but I can't do that all the time without becoming a gross (and emotional, intellectually empty) caricature. Even if it does become the pleasing acronym BDSM.

We have created the kink / vanilla divide. And we need to think a bit about how that is playing out in the wider world. When we emphasise, as I do, the importance of the lifestyle to us, we must be careful that we explain what we mean, rather than assuming that people will understand - the same goes for a lot of things in life.

So here's what I mean when I say I'm kinky.

I'm kinky. It's a thread of steel that runs through me like a backbone, supporting my body structure. I could no more remove it than you could remove your spine. Everything would come crashing down in a big mess. I'm kinky. I want to do awful, dreadful things to your mind and your body. I want to put my dirty fingers into your brain and pull on all those feelings that make you writhe and blush. I'm kinky, I want to use D/s rules and control to build you into the person you want to be. I'm kinky, I want to hold your hand, talk to you about silly things, fall in love with you and grow old in a shared house where other kinky people might stop by for a cup of tea and a spot of shibari.

I'm kinky.

Singled out

I met up with a very good, very kinky friend for lunch yesterday and we ended up, head in our hands, mildly depressed, over coffee. There are certain stereotypes that I have always thought a myth and that of the single woman, bemoaning her status to other, single friends is seemingly not one of them. I felt depressingly Sex in the City, and hated myself a little for it.

There comes a point in every life when you can look across the room and see a host of couples - if you are a pervert you will also see a host of other sorts of relationships, but fundamentally, togetherness. People who you like, people who are your friends, people who right now you really, really don't want to be anywhere near. Because you do not have that special someone and you are starting to feel like a leper. Furthermore, you can look at the pool of other single people within that room and realise that you have either fucked, played with or are incompatible with all of them. And then you feel a bit stuck.

We tried to work out what was going wrong, as we often do when things are not ideal, we look inwards, to ourselves, to what we might be lacking (aside from a primary partner who practically explodes with desire to have kinky sex with us right now). Now, I have faults. I have many. I have cultivated them over the years and some are good friends. But there is nothing basically wrong with me. I'm a good catch. I'm smart, attractive, funny have all my own teeth, make a mean banoffee pie and am frankly, amazing in bed. The same with my friend, although I'm not sure about the pie. She does make great cookies. We are not crazy wedding obsessed women running around in white dresses screaming "commit, commit!" We just want a nice, kinky chap to spend some quality, perverted time with.

And, annoyingly, the problem is with the men available. Or unavailable. Sorry to be sexist, chaps, but there are a lot more good looking women on the scene who have wide and exciting tastes in kink. Add to that the girls are just a lot better at expressing what they want, going for it and actually delivering the goods. Without being an arrogant prick, though I am an arrogant prick, I have a number of beautiful, interesting and amazing women who want play dates. And I want to play with them. So I play mostly with women these days and go on a lot of first dates with men that go nowhere. Or worse, they stagnate in a kind of circling no-place of unanswered messages. For the moment I've sent out some rather blunt messages to a few people, including Technophile regarding their level of interest.

Perhaps, we wondered, it was the kink thing. We're both very kinky. Sometimes that makes people nervous. Would it be easier if we were vanilla? At least the dating pool would be bigger, and we wouldn't know what we were missing, because we wouldn't want it. Sex would be sex rather than an entire lifestyle, which, wonderful as it is does become a very high bar if you feel like you are just not reaching it. But we are not vanilla. Any more so that lesbians are straight or tall girls are short.

When you boil it down, we are single for a very dull, very simple set of reasons. The people we want can't give us what we need. The people who want us we don't want. And it's very rarely anyone's fault. It just happened like that. We can hardly change ourselves, or change the people that we want. Conversely, we can't expect others to change or to change what they want - because then everybody would be going around pretending to be who they were not and pretending to like what they didn't like. Which is madness. Some things are just part of you, bone deep and trying to be anything other than what you are is a lie you will always come to regret.

More and more I become clearer and clearer on what I want. I had a terrible realisation last night that perhaps this was the problem. My dreadful clarity. This leads me to reject any number of people who could be, might be, if you sort of turn a little and squint almost not quite what I wanted. Then I realised that would be a complete cop out and an utter compromise. So fuck that noise. I want what I want and there's nothing wrong with that. If that means being a little sad and a little lonely for a little while, then so be it.

How far can we go? Part Three

Finally getting round to completing the triumvirate in my musings on play and edges. I want to bring it all to a close by talking about dominance and submission as an experience, from within and without. Specifically I want to talk about what is and what isn't D/s. Now, there are entire shelf-loads of books devoted to YKIOK as well as the usual liberal (and geek social rules) around how you aren't allowed to say that someone is doing something wrong. So for those of you who ascribe to that principle one hundred percent, I would avoid reading further.

I like to think that for the most part I'm pretty cool with people doing what they want to each other as long as consent is acknowledged and it doesn't fuck up what I want to do. But I'm going to take a bit of a stand here. Sometimes things happen, in life and on the scene, that are just wrong. There are no ifs or buts or grey areas. They are shit things that shouldn't have happened. Now, why they happened is a different story, and we've all made mistakes - I know I have - but that doesn't change the fact that bad things happen.

In the past two articles I wrote about how we can create a moral code for ourselves as kinksters, and how we can use that in our negotiations with others, which touched a little on issues of abuse. Now I'm going to touch a little more firmly.

In a nutshell, my opinion is this: dominance is not the same thing as being domineering. Similarly, submission is not the same thing as being a doormat. In both instances, the former is good, healthy BDSM, the latter is not. Let's think about some definitions. A dominant person is behaving to generate an effect upon the submissive - I've always maintained that dominants (or submissives) don't exist in isolation, they need each other. You are dominant towards someone, you are submissive towards someone: that's the power exchange. A domineering person "naturally" has to be in control (or seen to be in control), regardless of who this is directed towards, regardless of whether they want it or not and regardless of what has been said or agreed. They are just "like that". Similarly a doormat cannot stand responsibility, regardless of the context, regardless of whether other people want to take control. You'll notice that when it comes down to it, these two poles are actually quite similar.

It's all about control and perception of control. It's also about confidence, fear, self-awareness and personal responsibility - all the things that make us people. So it's big stuff and cuts to the heart of who we think we are.

Having the confidence of your own convictions makes you a better dominant and a better submissive. Fear, is the opposite of confidence and it is the enemy. Fear is fun to play with, but it's not fun to live with. It makes you weak and generates reactions that are animalistic fight or flight selfish self-preservation with no thought for others. Domineering types seize control and strangle the life out of things as they take them too hard. Doormat types hand themselves over without a word and close their eyes, hoping for the best.

Knowing when you move from dominance to domineering, or from submission to being a doormat is a personal thing. It requires brutal honesty about how you really feel, and it's about being self-aware. Are you comfortable with yourself and you are brave enough to make decisions and to talk about things that you want. Don't mistake it for bravado or thrill seeking - those are domineering/doormat traits. Pretend bravery that hides gaping holes which will cause problems in your D/s.

It's very easy to look at these examples and think "abuser" and "victim" but what I'm talking about here is deeper and more muddled than that. There's a great post here on how rapists are supposed by parts of society to be obvious which cuts through a lot of our challenges when thinking about nice people who do bad things.

When our BDSM works we are people who try to do bad things in good ways. Which is to say we give and take pain for pleasure, we push people down to build them up. We abuse, humiliate, hurt and harm in order to adore, love, lust and come really, really hard. We're a contrary, contradictory bunch. We're complicated. And complication breeds complexity so sometimes we can't see the wood for the trees. Things become "difficult". What you see isn't always what you get. There's a lot of "you wouldn't understand" going on within our lives. This post is, in part, about trying to understand. It's about breaking down some assumptions and about trying to tackle ideas about "right" and "wrong" within BDSM.

That's the easy bit done. The nice, wipe clean, seen from the outside told-you-so bit. The hard bit is telling the two apart when you are in the thick of it (either giving or receiving) and how to turn the bad into good.

I cannot answer that question for you. I'm not trained to do that and I don't know you well enough (well, most of you). I suspect, because I remember what it felt like myself, that we know, deep down, when we have crossed the line. But when we are in a D/s relationship, with a partner who is providing scenes and scenarios that support, encourage and even excuse our bad behaviour we often lack the impetus to change. This is not to blame them. At all times, what we do is our responsibility. Even if we, as submissives, have handed control to our dominants, event if we call ourselves "slave" or "animal", we are still responsible. I don't care that this might make me less of a dominant or less of a submissive or less of a full throttle pervert in the eyes of some people because those people are wrong and their attitudes are sociopathic. Submission is given. Dominance is given. They are gifts. Someone else makes the decision to take them.

Now here's another tactical conundrum. What do we - as responsible social kinksters - do when we see these behaviours and we aren't involved. From the outside, domineering behaviours can look like, feel like and sound like dominance. And doormat behaviours can look like, feel like and sound like submission. Certainly at first, but in true "boiling a frog" principles we can end up in a difficult place by degrees. How do we know, when we look at a scene, or what we think is a scene, what is really going on? That blow to the face was not part of the scene. That one was.

We can't be guaranteed to be right, I'm afraid. We just can't. Like a jury, we will never completely know the real answer. But we also must be aware, and we must be prepared to act, to say something, if needs be. It's better to say something and be wrong, to be embarrassed, than to say nothing and allow someone to be hurt. Really hurt. Similarly, we must accept that others might want to say something to us, about how we are perceived, about how we act. And we must accept that with grace. Which means giving and taking criticism. And it means talking to people and listening to them. It also means talking about ourselves, letting people know what looks right and feels right for us. The more we do it ourselves, the more others are encouraged to do so. We can make friends with each other and be aware of what works for our friends.

There is a social contract to look out, and look after one another. As a group we must understand and act upon what is and isn't acceptable. We must also make these rules clear. As individuals and as groups. Assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups, and given the risks we play with we cannot take those risks. Not for ourselves, not for others. The challenge I'm issuing, here and now, is to start thinking about good and bad dominance and submission. Start to decide for yourselves what is right and what is wrong. And tell people. Then act on it.

How far can we go?

Over to you.