In a happy place

Just a brief post tonight. I had an incredibly enjoyable session with Lydia earlier tonight, featuring ropes, clamps, hot wax, a vicious little whippy cane and plastic wrap stretched over my face. By the end I wasn’t sure if I wanted to melt into the bed or simply float away. In the end I had to settle for 10 minutes in the shower picking beeswax out of various hairy bits.

While I retreat to my couch with a glass of wine to recuperate and admire my wounds, I’ll leave you with a shot of a man in an equally happy place. Not sure if he’s being bitten or kissed, but either way it seems to be working out pretty well for him.

Man in ropesI found this on the reginmund blog. It’s a Japanese blog, so even with translation tools I can’t understand a lot of it, but the owner has put together a nice collection of images.

Clean

After yesterday’s lengthy post, here’s a nice minimal, clean image as a palette cleanser. I like the bare walls, stripped bed and her simple yet beautiful style. There’s actually quite a lot of interesting play going on – bondage, mummification, CBT, hooding and foot worship. But it doesn’t come across as complex or cluttered. It has a pleasant symmetry.

SimplicityIt’s original from Femdom Sessions. If you check out their tour page you can actually some video from this session, including some nice CBT and nipple torture. I found it on the Queen of Desire tumblr.

Tiger, tiger, burning bright

Today’s post brings you a two year old story that isn’t femdom related. However, it was just so ludicrous that I couldn’t resist featuring it.

The story features a man accused of possessing tiger bestiality porn. As a kink enthusiast I like some danger mixed in with my sex, but getting a tiger involved seems a touch extreme. I’m not sure they fully understand the concept of safe words. The police arrested him and took him to court, whereupon, as this newspaper articles describes

The prosecution offered no evidence when it was accepted that the tiger in the clip was not real, and that it was all a joke.
It emerged in court that police and prosecutors had not previously listened to the film with the sound on.
Following the act, the tiger turned to the camera and roared: “That beats the Frosties advert!”.

It’s a story that raises some interesting questions. For a start, just how realistic was this tiger costume? Are some of the Pixar animators now getting involved in making bestiality videos on the side? I’ve never seen a pantomime animal outfit that’d be mistaken for the real thing even for a second. Either we’ve stumbled across the world’s greatest animal impersonator or the police were morons. Also, where did they think the tiger was from? Did they start phoning around local zoos? That must have been an interesting conversation – “Excuse me sir, but have you noticed anyone fucking your tiger recently?” And exactly who did the police think they were protecting in this case? I know bestiality raises the issues of consent and cruelty, but a tiger? I understand that no means no, but I also think that getting ripped limb from limb by a 600lb killing machine probably means no as well.

More seriously, it illustrates a point about dealing with the police in these situations. This was a guy who got sent a joke video-clip and ended up in court because the investigating officer couldn’t even be bother to turn his speakers up. Imagine the incredible stress and hassle involved, not to mention the embarrassment factor, only to have the police and prosecution go “Ooops, our bad. Have a nice day.” The police aren’t paid to be fair or to try and do the right thing. Their job is to get enough evidence to arrest someone, possibly you, for whatever they think they can get a conviction for.

I’m both amused and simultaneously depressed when I see sex workers using elaborate codes and euphemisms to try and avoid legal entanglement. Payment is always a tribute or a donation. Sometimes it’s in roses, and they’re given just for time spent, never sexual services. Don’t offer the money, just leave it visibly on the side. Some pro-dommes will even not tell you to get undressed, instead the coded request is just to ‘get ready’. I understand the thinking, but the cynic in me suspects it’s all wasted effort. If a cop has decided to go after a discrete and professional sex worker who isn’t bothering her neighbors, then he’s probably not going to let little details like what was actually said get in the way. It’ll be her word against his, and I’m sure the jury will hear whatever magic phrases are necessary to secure the conviction.

If you’ve never seen the talk by Professor James Duane entitled “Don’t talk to the police” then I highly recommend watching it. Hopefully none of my readers will ever find themselves needing it. Sadly, as the original story shows, you never know when the police might intersect with your life in unfortunate ways. I just hope that Michael Palin and Eric Idle don’t find themselves under investigation for theft of a leg.

Finding tiger related femdom images for this post proved difficult. I’m therefore going to go with the law enforcement theme. Here’s Cole Conners from Men In Pain extracting a confession from Plew. Let’s hope he keeps Professor Duane’s advice in mind while she’s caning his genitals.

Cole Conners in police outfit with naked male prisoner
Cole Conners in police outfit with naked male prisoner

Ropes and wax

Beautiful ropework. Wax torture. A vulnerable blindfolded slave. A teasing aggressive domme. What’s not to like?

Mistress with bound slaveI came across this shot originally on ‘An addiction to submission’ tumblr. A reverse image search took me to ‘The Purple Pulp‘ site, run by the photographer for this shot. There are some related shots in this gallery, including some more beautiful ropework and some very intense suspension shots.

The delicate bits

Ask most guys what their ‘delicate bits’ are, and I think you’d get a pretty universal answer. The part of the body with the most nerves and greatest potential for pain is always seen as the cock and balls. Yet oddly, in my experience, the most intense sessions I’ve had typically featured other parts of the body. For me, getting a needle through a nipple hurts way more than one through the cock. And heavy corporal has pushed me closer to the edge than any CBT session I’ve had. There’s definitely a powerful psychological element to CBT that makes it a real head trip, but the simpler fatter muscly parts of the body seem easier to punish more severely.

Tonight I did a zippering session with Lydia that had me shaking with adrenalin and screaming in pain. The body part in question? The inside of the leg, particular the lower leg. She had clips everywhere – top of my feet, arms, cock, belly, nipples. You name it, there were some clothespins on a cord attached there. But the killer was the dozens she put along the inside of my legs. She left them on for a long time, long enough to let the blood flow to get constricted and the initial stinging pain to fade to a dull throb. Then she wound her fingers through my hair to hold me still, and ripped them away. I screamed like a housewife in a 50’s sitcom who has just spotted a mouse.

I don’t have a good zippering shot to hand, so instead here’s a shot featuring nice bondage and some inner thigh whipping. As a delicate place to hit, that inner leg is a real killer.

Thigh whipping

Perfectly positioned

Here’s my last post in what turned into a trio of happy strap-on posts. This particular one has a teasing feel to it. The strap-on hasn’t actually been deployed yet, but judging from the smiles and the bound position of the gentleman, it can only be a matter of time. She also finds a few other uses for that tongue she’s grabbing.

Bound slave ready to be peggedThis is from a Divine Bitches shoot, featuring January Seraph with Adam Russo. I found it on the My Miss in Control tumblr, where you can get the original full sized version.

Adding to the stress

After writing yesterday’s post on panic and stress when playing, a further personal observation struck me. This was that it’s not relinquishing control that creates significant stress. I’m happy to release control of my body, and can do quite intense activities, like breathplay or suturing, with no danger of panicking. What dramatically ratchets up the stress level is when I feel that there’s an element that is out of control. Something that we accidentally dropped on the floor when control was passed between us. For example, I’ve no problem with a mistress pulling a plastic bag tight over my head. I won’t be able to breath, but I know that she knows that. A tight hood with a small breathing hole is way more stressful. I fear that the hole will get accidentally blocked, I won’t be able to fix and she won’t know about it. I worry that nobody will be in control, and that uncertainty prays on my mind.

I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this way, and so within this observation also lies opportunity. If a dominant wants to increase stress, then they should increase uncertainty. Remove both control and awareness from the submissive. Disconnect them from their surroundings and sense of time. To borrow a term from the software industry, the dominant should strive to create FUD – Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt.

Conversely, with a nervous submissive, the dominant should try to eliminate ambiguity. Always be very clear about the transfer of control. Keep physical contact to let the submissive know they are still present and in charge of the situation. Encourage two-way communication and try to balance the competing stresses. For example, before increasing a level of sensory deprivation, decrease the level of bondage or the amount of pain.

Mademoiselle Belle

Given hoods are a good way to do sensory deprivation and create stress, I figure this would be a suitable image to illustrate the post. I like the contrast between his objectified anonymity and her happy smiling face. It features Mademoiselle Belle, a pro-domme based in Madrid. Originally the image comes from her blog site, but I came to it via the darksehnsucht tumblr.

Accumulating stress

Vista published a post recently over at her Sexual Destinies blog that caught me eye. She was writing about stress reactions and her feeling of panic when being blindfolded and gently restrained. I find those kind of reactions fascinating, as they can be simultaneously very intense and yet very illogical. I don’t mean that in a pejorative sense. There’s no right or wrong way to react to these situations. It’s just that in hindsight the strength of the reaction can seem very out of proportion to the specific stimulus that triggered it.

I’ve written about pain in the past, and commented on the fact that it’s not additive. A more intense pain in one location can distract from a mild pain elsewhere. The body has clearly evolved to direct attention to the single point that’s currently experiencing the greatest damage. Stress doesn’t seem to work that way. It is additive, each new stressful element building on the one before and pushing you closer to your panic threshold. This means that the final thing that tips someone over the edge may seem relatively minor when considered on its own.

I experienced this effect in a scene with Lydia a couple of months ago. We were doing some heavy bondage and CBT. She’d started with a rope harness, lashing my arms to my sides and pulling my legs into a frogtie. Over this she’d layered plastic wrap, carefully encasing my limbs and body, mummifying me completely from the neck to my toes. Not content with this level of restriction, she’d then wrapped my entire body in duct tape, creating a thicker encasing shell. The final touch was a duct tape gag and blindfold, rendering me mute and blind. The only thing uncovered was my cock, which she proceeded to slap and beat.

A year or two earlier we’d have never made it that far into the scene. I’d have been freaking out at the degree of restriction. But practice makes perfect and although it was intense, I was breathing through it and getting nicely spacey. Then my right hand started to get a little uncomfortable. It had moved under the wrapping and the wrist was pressing against the top of my hip bone. The absolute level of discomfort was very low, almost trivial, but it just tipped me over the edge. I started to lose perspective of where I was, my breathing became shallow and an overwhelming sense of ‘I need to deal with this now’ pushed aside me attempts to relax into the bondage. Lydia, expert that she is, spotted the change in my body instantly and removed the blindfold and gag. That was enough to bring me back, kill the panic, and let us deal with the situation.

Logically, in terms of possible things to panic about, a little muscle discomfort in my hand should have been well down the list. I was mummified in plastic wrap, had a duct taped head and someone was slapping my cock around with a pointy stick. They all sound like pretty good reasons to panic. Not a hand twinge akin to writers cramp. Yet that was the one thing that pushed me over the line. All the others had done the job of getting me close to it in the first place.

For an image I thought it’d be appropriate to run with something featuring mummification. In this case it’s a Divine Bitches shoot featuring Mistress Madeline and Kade, plus a lot of fabric wrap.

Mistress Madeline and mummified slave

The reality of the fantasy

I used to worry that getting involved in real BDSM – the physical, sweaty, dear God don’t put that in my….oooohhh! – kind, would spoil the fantasy. I enjoyed my rich and somewhat warped fantasy life, and didn’t want to discover that everything my fevered imagination created was really about as much fun as getting hit by a flying brick, and then discovering there’s a courts summons wrapped around it.

Fortunately the reality turned out to be a lot better than the fantasy and actually gave my internal porn producer a whole new set of scripts to work with. However, just now and again I find myself over analyzing an image that catches my eye. For example, I like this shot from the TopGrl site a lot. It’s got elements of bondage, objectification and worship all rolled in together. But now I’ve done suspension scenes I can’t help thinking about how comfortable (or not) the rope harness might be. How long it took to set-up the shot and get all the knots right. How much the submissives neck might ache. It doesn’t spoil the shots for me, but occasionally it does make me second guess them.

All that said, my imagination still keeps itself pretty busy. In this case it’s picturing a second domme at the other end with a cane. Cunnilingus mixed with screams of pain sounds like a wonderful combination.

Suspension I found this on the blouxsterville tumblr.

Music to float by

I love the moments as I drive back from a session. I almost always play late, so it’s often near midnight when I’m returning home. The city is lit-up with the neon of bars and the strings of streetlights. I’m floating along in my little cocoon of endorphins and adrenalin, wrapped in leather and metal, enjoying each blip of power as I navigate the corridor of signals and lights. I’ll often drive further than I have to, extending my route to sustain the moment. There’s a thrill to looking out at other people, silently enjoying themselves behind the windows of bars and restaurants. A sense of shared pleasure and also my secret pleasure.

I always play something on the stereo during these drives, and it’s always something very approachable. I don’t want difficult, complex or challenging. Emotional, simple and perhaps a touch cliched works just fine. My current favorite is U2’s With or Without You. It’s got a very hooky bass line, great guitar parts and lyrics which are actually pretty appropriate in places.

My hands are tied, my body bruised
She got me with nothing to win
And nothing else to lose

It works wonderfully when I’m drifting along feeling emotional and buzzed after a session.

Picking an image for this post was a little tricky. I considered going with this, which is appropriate in the use of the car, but a crash doesn’t exactly capture the mood I’m tying to portray. So instead I’ll take my cue from the U2 lyric. His hands are tied, and if he’s not bruised yet, it may well be in his future.

Women sitting on man handcuffed to bedI found both images on the excellent Femdom Style Counsel tumblr.