Thoughts – Page 22 – Femdom Resource

Inching to the edge

Mistress Rex isn’t the most prolific of writers on my blogroll, but when she does post it’s always interesting, thought provoking and highly literate. Her most recent post helped crystallize a number of thoughts I’d been mulling over recently. I suggest reading the whole thing, but I’ll just quote the section I particularly want to talk about.

I’d be bored out of my mind if I stayed within the parameters of what clients (or lovers) told me they think they want. It’s domination. It’s the thrill of control and power. It requires a degree of force and discomfort, a shifting of will. How do you know how much you can take if you’re not challenged? How do you know how much you can give if you’re unwilling to offer it?

Brock Lesner is an idiot, but he happened to deliver a beautiful concept (wherever he got it from) on national TV when he said that, “fights are won by inches.” Technique and skill can take you a long way, but it’s intensity that fills those inches – it’s knowing to keep going when you have your opponent hurt. It’s holding someone’s head under water despite their thrashing, because you know that panic is a moment too soon.

Mistress Rex from her post titled ‘Give Her an Inch and She’ll Walk All Over You‘

I’ve observed that being stressed and forced close to their thresholds of tolerance is a common desire amongst submissives. It’s certainly a desire I have in any session I do. No matter what the activity, I like to feel I’m being pushed and stretched in new ways. That I’m going to go further than I have in the past. I hate to stop an activity because it’s too intense for me (and I almost never do), but at the same time it’s never a completely satisfying session if we don’t briefly flirt with that possibility. It’s a very tricky line to walk.

The need to push for this intensity, to inch forward towards that threshold, is one that has bothered me a little. Am I just doing it for stupid macho-sub reasons? To prove that I can do it? And am I going to run out of inches one day? Find out that there is nowhere left to go and I’ve burnt out. Most other activities in life don’t require this kind of dynamic. I love fine dining and nice wine, but I don’t have a constant need to push my boundaries every time I eat in a restaurant. Why is my masochism and submission different?

I think Mistress Rex has helped me answer these questions. It’s about the shifting of will, the relinquishing of power. It’s only in those last few inches that dominance and control is absolutely demonstrated. What happens up to that point is just sensation. It might be interesting or pleasurable (in the masochistic sense) sensation, but it doesn’t cost the submissive anything until it approaches the edge. It’s the extraction of that payment where both the dominant and the submissive find the real satisfaction.

Mistress Rex’s comment about holding someone’s head under water made me initially think of this image, but I posted it because it represents a type of play that quickly pushes me close to some of my personal edges. I struggle with anything that closely covers my face, whether it’s a leather hood or a tub of water, so using this apparatus would be to extract a very high price from me.

The dominant is Isis Love in a Divine Bitches shoot.

New blogs

I’ve added four new blogs to my blogroll over on the right.

Mrs Kelly’s Playhouse is written by Scott and Emma, and describes their female led marriage. It covers a wide variety of kinky topics, including BDSM, cuckolding, chastity and the all issues that come with integrating them into a full time lifestyle relationship.

The Glow Inside has been created by Steve Mayhew and contains an eclectic mix of artwork, fiction, links and his musings on kinky activities and relationship issues. He also described this blog as ‘looks the goods’, which I’m not completely clear on, but I’m going to take as complimentary.

From Mundane to Mistress is written from the perspective of Mistress L, who has transitioned from being a BDSM photographer to an active participant in the kink scene. I found her posts on her hunt for a new submissive to be particularly interesting. From my perspective as a submissive/masochistic single male it often feels like there are a hundred submissive men for every dominant woman, and that a mistress shouldn’t be able to swing a whip without hitting a dozen eligible slaves. It’s therefore illuminating to see some of the issues from the other end of the leash (so to speak).

Finally, last but definitely not least is A Life as Her ‘Wife’. This is a relatively new blog describing the lifestyle relationship of Paul and Carol, and is heavy on themes of cuckolding, cross-dressing, chastity and service submission.

This funky piece of pop art comes from Niagra Detroit. I discovered it via The Glow Inside blog.

A little inflation is a good thing…

…both from an economic and kinky perspective. And while the US economy might still be stuck with low inflation in a liquidity trap, Lady Lydia recently demonstrated to me how much fun could be had in the kinky sense with both liquid and inflation.

Yes, as you might have guessed from that slightly clunky introduction, this is another post featuring details from one of my sessions with Lady Lydia. As usual the style of play is one that some people might consider edge-play. In this case it features scrotal inflation, so if that doesn’t sound like something you might want to read about, then I suggest moving along to another post. The images also include close-ups of male genitalia (namely mine), so don’t click on the image links if you’re not prepared for that.

When I first set this session up I hadn’t planned on any kind of inflation play. My only idea had been to do something in her St. George’s chair, which is an item of furniture I always enjoy due to the close face to face interaction that it promotes with the domme. In fact I’d never done any type of inflation before, so when Lydia suggested it during our pre-session chat, I was very intrigued to see how it would play out.

She stared by lashing me to the chair with a several lengths of rope (from Monk), and then giving my chest and nipples a serious working over by way of a warm up. This image shows some of the markings that resulted from the thin whippy cane she used. With my endorphins and adrenalin now pumping nicely, we then moved onto the main event.

The saline she was using came in bottles of 50ml, and she figured that one bottle would be a good volume for my first attempt. The syringe used could hold 3ml at maximum, so the entire bottle took somewhere between 15 and 20 injections (I didn’t keep an exact count). The was relatively little pain around the injections (it was a pretty thin needle) and the inflation itself was also painless. The main impact is a psychological one. The slow drawing of the fluid into the syringe, the finger flick and squirt to remove air bubbles, the careful positioning of the needle and the slow steady pressure as the liquid enters. It creates a really interesting headspace, making me feel like the subject of a medical experiment. Not an important experiment however, just something the scientist thought might be interesting to try out on some helpless victim.

You can see a close-up of the end result in this image. The bulk of the injections were performed at the base of the scrotum, where a drop of blood is visible in the image. The liquid on the shaft of the cock is not saline, but drool as a result of the ballgag+harness she’d wrapped around my head. There’s another close-up image available here that shows the results from a slightly different angle. The vicious little plastic clips were Lydia’s way of adding some more pain into the scene. Finally, this shot shows a little more of the entire set-up (apologies for the camera phone quality).

There was no discomfort at any point from the inflation itself, just a feeling of heaviness and fullness. And the liquid was pretty quickly absorbed, with everything back to normal by the next morning. It’s something I’d definitely enjoy doing again, although I think the way it’s done is quite important to the headspace it creates. For example, doing it when you couldn’t see properly what was happening would probably be fairly dull. By itself it’s not a particularly painful or uncomfortable sensation (at least in the saline volumes we used), so it needs a little theater to create the right psychological effect. Of course on this occasion I was fortunate enough to get to watch the wonderful Lady Lydia at work in close-up, so there was no lack of theater, and plenty of other torments to make me scream!

Kiss Kiss Slap Whap

While I’d describe myself as both a submissive and a masochist, I’d always put my masochism before my submission. The D/s and power exchange components are a critical part of a scene for me, but it’s the pain that brings those elements into focus. I’m certainly not a service submissive. If you want something cleaned or tidied then I’ll be happy to hire you a housekeeper. I have better (for me) things to do.

As such, I’ve never made body worship a critical part of scenes I’ve done. This isn’t to say I don’t enjoy kissing a dominant woman’s feet, or ass, or indeed any part of her body that I’m allowed to touch. It can be a very pleasant experience, and one that helps achieve a certain initial head space. But it always struck me as a kind of BDSM foreplay. Nice to do if the domme wants to take the scene in that direction, but really just a happy bonus to the main event.

However, when playing with Domina Yuki last week, I discovered a quite new aspect of worship that made me view it in a very different light. We’d been doing some fairly intense pain play, whipping my back and then heavily torturing my nipples. As a result of this I was fairly deep in subspace, and feeling that wash of positive emotions I often get towards a dominant in that situation – gratitude, affection, caring, closeness, protection, etc. In the past this has often led me to thank the dominant, typically immediately after she’s done something particularly vicious to me. This has not been a rote thank-you, demanded as part of the scene, but an instinctive one, originating from my desire to acknowledge the emotions I’m feeling.

In this particular scenario, while experiencing these similar emotions, Mistress Yuki demanded that I kiss her ass. Suddenly, an act that was previously playful and erotic, had been transformed into something that was far more powerful. It created a physical manifestation of what I was feeling, and gave me an outlet for my emotions. Nothing at that moment was more important than those kisses and what they represented. She managed to create a perfect moment, intimacy mixed with submission, eroticism mixed with catharsis. I kissed and was profoundly grateful to do so.

For all sufferers of misandry

I came across this interesting post (via bondage blog) on the difference between BDSM and misogyny/misandry. It’s a controversial discussion area in some political circles (although probably not among readers of this blog) and I like the way the writer addressed it.

I just like being beaten by the person who loves me because it’s sexy, because power games are hot, and it’s not about sex, gender, race, age, sexual orientation, religion, or ANY of that shit, some of us just like being submissive in the bedroom and some of us just like being dominant. End of goddamn story.

It’s written by The Peacock Angel who describes herself as a “kinky atheist feminist submissive dyke… and a professional dominatrix.”

Hanging a left on geek street

Despite matching a number of the geek stereotypes (smart, bookish, analytical, software hacking guy) I typically don’t like the stereotypical geek TV shows. Things like Star Trek, Doctor Who, X-Files and the new Battlestar Galatica do absolutely nothing for me. However, there is one exception to this rule – Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I love this show with a passion that goes well beyond any rational measure and borders on the scarily obsessed (although not quite to the extent Simon Pegg portrays in the brilliant series Spaced). Powerful female characters, clever writing, multi-layered story arcs and tweedy British sex symbols – what’s not to like?

Of course my favorite character was always Willow, the quiet, shy, super smart, super nerdy red head, whose alter-egos always turned out to be über-dommes. The first of these was vampire Willow, shown in the first image below, who tried to both kill and make-out with her good counterpart. Then came dark Willow, shown in the second image, who pretty much tried to kill everybody.

If you’ve never seen the show, then it’s well worth queuing up on netflix. There are no sparkly vampires, and if you feel the need to intellectually justify watching a show about teenagers, then feel free to browse some of the academic papers writen on it.

Bang. Bang. You’re dead.

I was highly entertained earlier this evening by a recording of an interview with Ms Mona Rogers. It’s available on the masocast site and is entitled ‘Who the s**t are all these fools?‘ As you might expect with a title like that, it’s a very frank and open discussion, covering such topics as how she got involved in BDSM, the differences between the scenes on the East and West coasts, her style of domination and how she feels about dating submissive men. However, what really made me laugh was her description of the funniest/strangest scene(s) she’s ever done. It’s right at the end, starting around the 48 minute mark into the interview. The whole interview is worth listening to, but if you want to skip straight to this part of it, you’ll have to wait a minute or so for the download to complete. I’m not really sure what particular kink the scene would fall under, it’s certainly not femdom. But however you’d classify it, I think it’s worth remembering that no matter how odd you think your personal kink is, there’s always someone out there with a weirder idea.

Image is of Ms Mona Rogers (who has featured on this blog before), and was taken from the DomiDollz site.

Brain Porn

Mistress Alex’s blog has a fascinating new post entitled ‘I feel your pain’. It’s an excerpt from a book entitled Safe, Sane and Consensual: Contemporary Perspectives Sadomasochism, and as such it’s pretty hard to cherry pick representative quotes from. So I suggest going to read the whole thing over at her blog.

It’s admittedly fairly dense and requires a lot more parsing than the average sex blog post, but I think it’s worth it. I’m probably weird (most people would argue for striking that probably), but I found it an incredible turn on. By so accurately describing and deconstructing the extreme sensations of torture it allowed me to relive and better understand some of the intense sessions I’ve had in the past. I think it really captures some key elements of the S&M dynamic. In fact, having said I won’t cherry pick quotes from it, let me now do exactly that:

The world of torture is thus closed down—disintegrated—such that all limits of peace and solitude can be found and/or the thrill of exposure and merging of the self and world.

The world of the torturer inhabits this space between their still bounded self and the other, feeling the full force of the power and control that this entails, holding the other’s consciousness—their world—in their hands.

The pain I experience in a session is a type of peace and solitude. It’s impossible to have coherent thoughts or emotions. Worries about work or family don’t exist. There’s just the pain in the moment. And that simplification of who I am creates a very open and exposed person. I’m not constantly monitoring my expressions or emotions, mediating my communication, filtering my thoughts. Whatever I’m showing is what I’m feeling. That’s all that exists for me.

This also helps my understand the top’s perspective a little better as well. They are reducing and simplifying the other’s consciousness. Reducing it to the point where they can entirely control it. God of their victim’s world. I’ve heard of the idea of ‘top space’ before, but never really understood it. I think this has really helped me gain a little more perspective on it.

Hazardous Chemicals

Hazardous that is, if you’re a naked male in the presence of a sadistically inclined female. While the image might show what looks like a random shopping basket from someone visiting the produce and pharmacy aisles in QFE (which in point of fact is where they came from), it also shows the main components of a scene I did a few nights ago. At the back there’s icy hot and crystal hot sauce. The middle row has Bengay, a lime and a lemon. And at the front is wintergreen oil, cinnamon oil and ginger root. I think there was also some chili sauce that didn’t make it onto the photograph. Oh, and the knife? That was for scraping off the hot wax that somehow ended up getting dripped onto my already tender flesh.

Some conclusions that I came to after the scene were:

Be careful what Bengay you buy. Some of them, including this one, have almost no effect.
Icy hot on the other hand can be very intense, particularly if someone very carefully and methodically massages it into your scrotum for several minutes. Or dabs it onto nipple clamps before applying them.
Lemon’s and limes are pretty mild on their own, but when combined with someone stabbing you with a needle to open up the skin, they can get pretty stimulating.
Figging reminds me of bad experiences with hot curries in dodgy late night Indian takeaways. Not so much painful as just burning and uncomfortable.
Crystal hot sauce is mildly painful on sensitive skin, but surprisingly tasty when applied to the mouth. I will be purchasing some to keep in the kitchen.

Oddly enough, after doing all sorts of suspension and impact play scenes in the past without problems, this was the one session that left me injured. I was clenching my muscles so tightly and for so long that I ended up pulling something in my lower back. Ironic really, given we were using a number of products originally designed for relieving muscle strains and pains.

Domme School

Vice magazine recently posted an article describing several days in the life of a NYC pro-domme. The purported set-up was one of their writers following the domme with a view to becoming a professional herself. But the actual format is much the same as it always is for these type of articles, offering readers a chance to look at someone else’s weird and twisted lifestyle.

I’m in two minds about the article itself. On one hand the writer seemed to enjoy herself, and it’s certainly not written from a negative point of view. Coming from something called ‘Vice magazine‘ that’s probably not unexpected. However, I find it hard to imagine a vanilla but potentially kinky person reading it and thinking “Yes, that sounds like something I want to get involved in.” There’s an undercurrent of sleaziness that comes through to me, although I struggle to put my finger on exactly why that is. Perhaps its comments like this one.

The whole scene makes me feel like I’m an actress in a really bad porno. It’s pretty cool.

Having a session that feels like a bad porno movie definitely doesn’t sound cool to me. And in fact, setting the tone of the article aside, the main thing that stood out for me was how incredibly different my sessions are from the ones described. I don’t role-play at all, and my interactions with the domme are both lighter (chatting and joking in early parts of the session) and darker (floating in subspace after some intense pain later on). I also tend to involve a lot more equipment and tools, utilizing everything from simple needles and clamps through to custom dungeon furniture. The type of play in the article sound like a kind of sexual community theater. Where I always feel mine are more like a cross between extreme sports and medieval torture.

That contrast led me to two different conclusions. The first was that it’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming most people play in a way at least vaguely similar to your own preferences. I always get annoyed when non-kinky people pigeon-hole BDSM as simply leather, whips and chains, but I’m probably guilty of doing a similar thing at a different level. It’s easy to forget just how big the kink universe really is. The other conclusion was that a good pro-domme must posses an incredibly ability to shift quickly between different head spaces. I tend to think of the domme skill-set as being a highly technical one: How to do a rope suspension; how to wield a single tail; what’s a safe way to do cutting and piercing. I’m very aware of these kind of technical skills in each and every session. What I don’t see is the transition between sessions and the mental gymnastics needed to create new moods and session themes. Offhand it’s hard to think of another job that requires quite that level of versatility.

Image is taken from page 5 of Vice Magazine article.