Valentine Splat

Call me Mr. Grouchy, but I really hate Valentine’s day. If you’re in a new relationship it’s a pain to figure out what the right thing to do is. If you’re in an established relationship then it’s a fake event designed to artificially force romance. And if you’re not in a relationship, then it does nothing but make you feel bad about that fact. It’s up there with New Year’s eve as an overly hyped event that nobody enjoys as much as they think they should. Like I said – Mr Grouchy.

This image from Bakerman at least looks like a fun way to celebrate it. I’m not into sploshing or food play, but I’d happily take a cake in the face from a kinky lady over an evening jammed shoulder to shoulder in a restaurant charging twice their usual rates.

This was originally published by Bakerman for Valentine’s day in 2017.

Stinky Socks

After mentioning scentplay in my previous post, this seems an appropriate image to post as a followup. It’s tough to communicate a smell via a jpg, but I think this does a pretty good job.

It’s interesting how many kinks are associated with feet. There’s obviously your basic foot fetish, but there’s also kinks around high heels, boots, sandals, nylons and sweaty socks like this. Some foot fetishists can trace their kinks back to formative experiences as youngsters crawling or sitting near the feet of adults. Given the number of foot related kinks, it seems likely a lot of fetishists pick up their interests in similar ways, even if they can’t all remember it.

I’m think artist goes by the handle of pii (taromura). The woman’s look is a fashion trend known as Ganguro.

Playing with Mistress Lucy

Before leaving LA I was fortunate enough to spend time with Mistress Lucy Khan. We had a lengthy and very enjoyable session featuring a smorgasbord of different activities all wrapped in a fun roleplay dynamic. Some things on the menu included cupping, piercing, scentplay, breathplay, tease, denial and general sadism to my delicate bits.

I particularly enjoyed the rope spiderweb that Mistress Lucy wove around me towards the end of the session. You can see it in this photograph. It was one of those arrangements that didn’t make much sense to me as it was being constructed, as it didn’t feel like it’d hold me properly. Then Mistress Lucy pulled hard on the bottom two ropes and everything tightened and magically fell into place. I particularly liked the way she tied it off around my big toes. There’s always an interesting sense of vulnerability that comes with toe bondage, given how sensitive the soles of the feet are.

Reflecting on the session later that evening, still floating on buzz created, it struck me that one sign of a world class professional domme is the commitment and intensity she can bring to a session with someone she rarely sees. It had been around 9 months since we’d last got together, yet it didn’t feel like that. Mistress Lucy created and held a bubble that made it very easy for me to relax into subspace and exist with her in the moment.

This image is from Mistress Lucy’s twitter feed. That’s not me in the image, but we did indulge in some similar play.

Rope Bondage & Face Torture

This is one of those shots where I like visual and the idea of the scene more than I’d like the reality of it. Face torture is a hard thing to process. There are a lot of sensitive nerves involved and it has a strong psychological effect. We communicate and represent ourselves via our faces, so  distorting it can be surprisingly emotive.

That said, this is a very hot image. The combination of rope bondage with the twisted clamped flesh is particularly effective. It comes courtesy of Mistress Chiaki and this tweet.

Cuddling on the Couch

I’m back in damp Seattle. I have a couple of fun sessions from LA to blog about, but right now I just want to unpack, collapse on the couch and catch up on my Colbert recordings.

In the meantime, I’ll keep things ticking over here with this artwork by sadisticsmilez. There’s a lot to love about this. The sense of intimacy and playfulness combined with the kink is particularly well done. My favorite part though is the nipple tweak. That’s a very sexy move, as his facial expression would tend to indicate.

The original title of the piece is ‘videogames2‘. I found it via this tweet.

Strange Reaction

I’ve experienced a strange emotional response in recent weeks. People hitting me has made me angry. That’s obviously not unusual for most people but for me, in the context of kink, it’s very strange. Corporal play was one of my primary fantasies for many years and a staple of my scenes. Yet recently it has generated less of an “Ooohhh, yeah….” and more of a “Hey! That hurts goddamn it!”

I have no idea why this is. Other painful things like needles, electricity, clamps and miscellaneous spiky things still get me buzzed and into that submissive floaty space. I can lean into their pain and relax under the dominants control. Yet corporal play had triggered the bad kind of ‘fight or flight’ response where I just want to make it stop.

I’m really hoping it’s a temporary thing. Maybe it’s to do with external stress or me being general angry at the state of the world. I’m not conscious of that kind of mental shift, but clearly something is awry. I’ve never met a domme yet who didn’t enjoy some form of corporal play, and I’d hate to lose such an important part of my kinky repertoire. Anyone else find they’ve had a favorite activity suddenly twist on them like this?

While my physical response might be screwed up, my visual response to corporal is still working just fine. I love this action shot from the Glasgow based Mistress Scarlet (found on her twitter feed).

Roped Captive

I enjoyed a wonderful session today with Mistress Damiana. However, I’m going to delay writing about that in detail until I’ve have a chance to edit and share the photographs we snapped.

In the meantime, given that I spent a good portion of our session today in bondage, I’ll share this artwork by bondlicitous. It’s called ‘Connection‘, which is very much a thing I look for when I’m being tied up. There’s a touch of the fairy tale about the drawing. I’m imaging that it’s the heroic prince that has been bound in place and the fair heroine, having been through a rather torrid time, is expressing her displeasure with his performance to date.

You can see more from bondlicitous at his DeviantArt and Twitter. I found this via a tweet by maid marta.

Finding the Edge

The Daily Dot has published an interesting article on Edge Play. One of the questions it raises is what exactly is edge play? Before reading the article I thought I knew, but now I’m not so sure.

I think there are three basic definitions you can come up with. They key question is what line is being played up to?

  1. Is it the edge of the submissive’s comfort zone?
  2. Is it the edge of mainstream BDSM activities?
  3. Is it the edge of life itself?

I’ve personally always assumed the definition was (2). That means things like scat, branding or very intense corporal play that draws blood would count as edge play. I’ve also known some professional kinksters who use the definition of (3), limiting it to activities involving knifes, guns, choking, etc. In that case edge play is the kind of thing that might land you not just in the emergency room but ultimately in the morgue.

What this article suggests is that (1) is actually the correct definition of edge play. Which seems kind of odd to me. Everyone has limits and a comfort zone, and that’s going to be in a different place for each submissive. So with that definition it almost becomes a meaningless term. Normally I’d just assume it was an article from a journalist who didn’t really understand the subject, but if features quotes from genuine experts in the field.

What constitutes edge play is different for everyone. I consider edge play to be play that occurs at the edge of what one can bear. Play where there is enough trust to push past what is comfortable creates the possibility of a new outcome.
Mistress Blunt

The article also goes on to list a 24/7 dynamic as another example of edge play, which is something that I’d suggest exists on an entirely different dimension to specific BDSM activities. So where exactly is the edge correctly drawn? Is it just one of those things that is always defined with respect to the person involved? Is my edge just someone else’s light warm-up?

Here’s the aforementioned Mistress Blunt exploring an activity that I guess could be an edge play candidate – mummification. This is from this tweet.

The Thrill of the Tease

My Los Angles trip got off to a fabulous start playing with Mistress Iris. It had been a while since we’d played together and it was lovely to catch up with her again.

I’m always fascinated by the different ways sadism and masochism can manifest. There’s the obvious physical and emotional varieties which I regularly blog about here. Mistress Iris specializes in the rarer kind that manifests at the fine edge of frustrated pleasure and the unsatisfied ache of desire. If you can maintain the necessary balance it’s a wonderfully fine edge to slide along. It’s rare to get me growling unless physical pain is involved, but I was definitely doing my best angry puppy impression in our session today.

This is Mistress Iris deploying her tease talents on some virgin catholic boys with Liara Roux. This is taken from this tweet, via Mistress Iris’s twitter feed.

Heading South

Much as I love the Pacific Northwest, the first few months of the year can be pretty depressing. It’s damp, cold and grey. That means it’s therefore time for paltego to head south and catch some Californian sun and kink. I’m going to be in Los Angeles for the next few days, sitting by the pool and meeting up with some great LA dommes. Posting may be a touch more erratic than usual, depending how heavily I hit the cocktail bars.

While I’m trying to find my suitcase, I’ll leave you with this image from Brazilian photographer Fabio DaMotta. I found it via this Vice article on him. I personally love this combination of art, decoration and bondage. It’s both beautiful and objectifying in the best possible way.