Sub drop

After writing yesterday’s post on new year traditions, it struck me that I’d forgotten about the ball drop in New York. It’s a pretty ridiculous ceremony, but it is at least adaptable to a kinky context. Suspension is always fun and gently lowering a bound submissive to mark the dawn of a new year would be a nice twist on the tradition.

Sub Drop

Note that you should never do suspension play unless you’ve had suitable training and know exactly what you’re doing. It’s a potentially dangerous form of play. Particularly if you’ve drunk several glasses of champagne to celebrate the new year!

This image comes via Club Dom and was found on the 24-7-Sub tumblr.

That’s a wrap!

Another year in the can. If it wasn’t a great one for you, or if this holiday season hasn’t been all it could be, then I hope a new shiny 2013 will bring you better things. Alternatively, for those readers who had a kick-ass 2012, then I hope the ass kicking continues all the way into the new year. Kink isn’t everything in life but, since it is the focus of this blog, I’ll wish everyone a very kinky 2013!

Some of my recent posts have featured clever ways to pervert Christmas traditions in fun ways. New Year celebrations are a little trickier. Some people do practice a form of masochism by getting drunk and spending the next day in a painful alcohol induced fog, but that’s not exactly an enjoyable pain. Champagne is the traditional drink, which is mostly thanks to clever marketing. So in deference to that, here’s an image of someone creating their own unique blanc de blanc to drink. Personally I’m a fan of drinking champagne (of all types) on any day of the year!

Her champagne

The image is from Club Stiletto. I found it on the Felm Cyber tumblr.

Christmas balls

I wrote last week about the fun I had being turned into a Christmas tree. It turns out that Lydia wasn’t the only domme feeling inspired by the season. Louca Brazzi has written up an entertaining review of a session he did with Mistress Tess that featured a red striped ass getting pinned with some sparkly Christmas balls. Mistress Tess even captured a photograph of his nicely decorated posterior. They say it’s the season of giving. Clearly in this case it gave her a fun session idea and him a very sore bottom!

It’d be a crime to mention the beautiful Mistress Tess and not take the opportunity to feature a photograph. This one shows her with some of her more interesting looking toys.

Mistress Tess

Mistress Tess is a NYC based pro-domme. You can find information on her interests and scheduling sessions at her site.

Curing my hysteria

Buying Christmas gifts for friends is always tricky. You don’t want to create a problem for them by sticking them with something they don’t like or can’t use. My circle of friends often defaults to wine, which leads to a lot of pointless circulating of bottles between us. Fortunately I have one friend with imagination, and she got me one of my best presents ever – a vintage vibrator.

The device in question can be seen below, with a couple of alternate angles here and here. She actually inherited it from a relative who collected antiques and vintage mechanical/electrical devices. Apparently her partner commented that it looked like it’d be very painful and you’d have to be crazy to allow it anywhere near your private parts. For some odd reason that immediately brought me to her mind, and I therefore had the pleasure of unwrapping it in a busy Seattle restaurant. I’m sure our server at least got a smile out of it.

Anyone surprised that vintage vibrators even exist should check out this article on their history. They were originally developed to ‘cure hysteria’ in women around the end of the nineteenth century. In a nice bit of Victorian double-think, since women weren’t sexual then using a device to induce a ‘hysterical paroxysm’ wasn’t sexual either. It was just a useful medical technique. They were even openly advertised in housekeeping magazines of the time. Here’s an advert I managed to track down for my very own device. Apparently I can look forward to a clear beautiful complexion and wonderfully attractive hair.

The Star Vibrator

From a kinky perspective, the most dangerous bit looks to be the old frayed power cord. Nobody wants to get involved in some inadvertent electrical play at 120V.

Although vibrators are traditionally associated with inducing pleasure they can also be used for some interesting orgasm torture. Forced, ruined and denied orgasms are all fun kinky options. The shot below features Lexi Sindel forcing an orgasm for a man in chastity, which must be particularly uncomfortable. You can click through on the image to see the animated gif at the Femdom Empire blog.

Lexi Sindel milking slave in chastity

Purple nurple

I’ve never been a fan of schoolyard pranks. Most of them would see you facing assault charges if you did them as an adult, yet somehow you take a few years off, and it’s just kids messing around. I guess that’s not too surprising a view coming from a boy who was bright, wore glasses and grew up like a strip of willow.

Their one redeeming factor is that they do have interesting names – nipple cripple, wedgie, swirlie, noogie and button face. I sometimes think that the standard BDSM terms could use a touch of similar naming creativity. After all, what sounds more fun? A play session featuring ball torture, caning and forced-bi, or one featuring pounding plums, red stripe delight and blowing the beef bugle? It’d certainly make listing interests and limits a lot more entertaining. Although given the endless arguments about terminology in the kinky community, perhaps greater naming precision rather than creativity is a better goal.

I’ll leave you with the image that started this whole train of thought. I found this in a gallery on the Femdom Times site. It features Goddess Ira inflicting a rather painful looking purple nurple.

Goddess Ira and a purple nurple

Nothing ventured, nothing lost

Ferns has published an insightful new post entitled ‘Being submissive can be scary.’ It addresses the risks and emotional challenges of setting a foot onto the path of submission. Accepting that role, particularly after suppressing it for a long time, can be a scary decision.

The post does a good job of highlighting the specific worries a submissive may have. However, from a personal perspective, I’d refine the list Ferns uses a little. It’s not that I disagree with it; I’d just categorize it a little further. The first few issues she raises were definitely worries I had before I ever took a single slap from a paddle.

Scared that this D/s thing wouldn’t be what he expected.
Scared that the reality wouldn’t live up to what was in his head, in his imagination.
Scared that he wasn’t really submissive, that he was ‘faking it’ somehow, fooling himself.
Scared that he wasn’t really a masochist, that his fantasies over all those years were false.

Those concerns were very real to me. I worried that it would all seem ridiculous and that I’d simply start laughing. I worried that I’d safeword immediately and that nobody would take me seriously. It seemed like doing what you were told should be simple, but I was sure I could find a way to screw it up.

Ferns goes on to list some fears that she describes as tenfold of any of the above, all related to how the submissives self-perception might change.

Scared of leaving behind nearly 40 years of thinking that he knew who he was.
Scared of losing his comfortable place in the world, as part of the ‘normal’ set.
Scared of admitting that he was not the person he had been pretending to be all of his life.
Scared of the idea of never again finding a ‘vanilla’ relationship enough.

For me these were (and still are) real issues, but they played no part in my early submissive experiences. They were, in the words of Donald Rumsfeld, my unknown unknowns. I was worried about failing, the immediate risks, not the potential costs of succeeding. I saw BDSM as a potential addition to my life. Something that would enhance my options, not diminish them. It was only in hindsight that I saw the risks of not being able to go back and no longer finding vanilla relationships satisfying. There’s absolutely no part of me that regrets what I did, but I can’t honestly say I entered into it with foresight that Fern’s submissive did.

A good grip on the situationI think the image is from the charmingly named Bitches-Femdom site. I found it on Equally Deep In Your Eyes tumblr, which has absolutely the worst UI of any tumblr I’ve ever encountered. There are some good images there, but I suggest browsing via the archive. If the owner of this tumblr happens to read this: Please change your theme. You’ve chosen some great images but the navigation mechanism currently sucks ass.

A vulnerable point

I’m not a fan of breathplay via throttling. It seems way too dangerous. There are all sorts of delicate tubes in the neck and it seems impossible to judge precisely what is being squeezed and by how much. I love breathplay in general, just not via this route. However, simply gripping the throat is very hot. The potential threat and danger is a great way to spike your adrenalin. It’s not surprising there are so many aphorisms based on going for, grabbing, or offering the throat. The ribs and the skull protect a lot of the critical organs, but the throat is uniquely vulnerable and therefore exciting.

Grabbing the throatI found this on the Geek Domme tumblr. It’s originally from the Divine Bitches site.

Happy something

If you celebrate Christmas then I hope you have a happy one. And if you don’t, then I hope all the festive bullshit spreading across the web at this time of year hasn’t been too annoying.

I’m mindful that this can be a miserable time of year for some people. Family situations can make life difficult. If you find yourself dealing with those kind of issues, or dealing with an absence of friends and family, you have my sympathies. I can actually trace my involvement in BDSM to a depressing Christmas period. All my friends were out of town. I had no family in the US. I was single and I was lonely. With nothing to do but watch bad Christmas movies and browse the web I decided that I needed to make a change. I needed to figure out if these fantasies I had for years were meaningful or important to me. After a lot of web browsing and dithering, I scheduled a 1 hour session with a local pro-domme, and the rest is history. There aren’t too many single moments in time I can point to as life changing, but that’s certainly one of them.

Obviously seeing a pro-domme is not for everyone. But if you’re reading this and in the same situation I was in, then I’d urge you to try and realize your fantasies the best way you can. Go to a munch. Talk to your partner. Create a fetlife profile. Research the local pro-dommes. Use whatever approach works best for your situation. You don’t want to spend your life regretting what might have been.

It’s traditional at this time for blogs like this one to feature a festive themed BDSM image and wish everyone a happy holiday. Unfortunately I find mixing Santa and kink is weird and unappealing. There are a few good images out there (e.g. the first one in this post from hmp and what Mistress Sidonia came up with) but mostly it’s a weird mishmash of mismatched elements. So I’ll simply feature an image I like and wish everyone the very best for the season.

Holding his face

A useless shower of bastards

I noticed today that the US Senate has been doing its usual fine job of legislating. With the nations finances in a mess, and a lot of spending cuts and tax rises that nobody wants about to take effect, they took the time to pass a resolution condemning the Village Voice for its adults classified service backpage.com. Apparently it has become “frighteningly simple to order a child prostitute” according to idiot Senator Mark Kirk. The more logical thinkers amongst us might therefore question why, if that incredibly unlikely statement were true, it isn’t equally frighteningly simple to find and arrest the people involved. Unfortunately I suspect logical thinking never entered into this debate.

It has been a bad year for sex work legislation, with California’s proposition 35 being the standout example. The New Statesman recently published a good article on it and similar legislation, attacking the drafting of laws without proper consultation with the ‘victims’ they’re allegedly trying to help. In theory pro-dommes shouldn’t be affected, given that BDSM is legal. However, there’s always a lot of grey area involved in this kind of work. You might be technically completely legal, but do you trust the cops, DA and judge to all agree? Now it only needs one asshole with a loose interpretation of the truth or the law to get a CA sex worker branded as a sex offender for life. And since prop 35 also targets people supported by the proceeds of sex work, her family could also be in the firing line. What a truly terrible piece of legislation.

I’ll leave you with an image of Natassia Dream doing to CJ what the average politician does to the electorate. The shot is from this scene on TS Seduction. You can see here really working her sizable majority in another shot here.

Natassia Dream screwing CJ