Cross Promotion

I received a strange but amusing sales pitch the other day. A Sarah from the ‘Crazy Pet Guy’ blog wanted to write a guest post here. Apparently she thought there was a fair amount of overlap between her pet themed site and mine. Suggested topics included:

  • When Should You Give Up and Call a Dog Trainer?
  • How to Prepare Yourself for Dog Adoption
  • The Importance of Consistency in Dog Training: Why It Works

I get a fair number of these kind of guest post requests. A few are from other kink sites, which do actually have overlap with this one. Most are random spam emails that are clearly the result of dumb algorithms. This is clearly the latter case, but it’s also the first one that is both entirely unrelated and yet weirdly appropriate. I’m fairly certain Sarah doesn’t want to write about training a human puppy, or the importance of consistency in slave training, yet I was strongly tempted to reply with a few suggested kinky topics for her to work with. After all – when is it appropriate to give up on your human puppy and call a professional domme in? Should you rub their noses in it? Is it ever appropriate to spank them with a newspaper? How do you stop inappropriate leg humping? And is crueler to use a chastity cage or simply neuter them?

I’m afraid I don’t have a source for this image.

Shibari with a Difference

The large majority of shoots featuring fancy Shibari suspension bondage also feature lithe young Asian women. I’m certainly not going to start complaining about those kind of shoots, but it is nice to see one with a different kind of model. The ropework is obviously impressive, but so is his ability to pull off this position. I think I’ll need several more years of yoga before I can take a shot at something similar.

The model is Michel, the rigging is by Misungui, and you can see more images from the same session in her tumblr post here.

The head and other stuff

I love the construction and elegance of this drawing. There’s a striking contrast between the detail used for the head and the sparse but expressive lines used for the body and cock.

One of the oddities of BDSM is that there are endless tortuous and inventive things that can be done to all the different part of the body, yet it often ends up being about what’s happening in the head. I don’t mean in the slightly cliched sense of the brain being the biggest erogenous zone, but that intense sensations cause a turning inwards and a focus on a sense of self. When pushed hard I often feel I retreat to my head and inner-consciousness, with my body becoming abstract and somewhat distant. This drawing captures a little bit of that feeling for me.

The artist is Robert Richards. His work almost exclusively features men, but feel free to imagine a hot dominant woman in an exciting outfit of your choice just slightly out of frame in this picture.

Keep it simple

Predicament bondage is often shown in very complex set ups – like those in my last two posts. The kind of thing that looks like you need to be a cross between a structural engineer and a mad scientist to pull off. But it need not be like that. I remember doing a scene with my hands bound behind me while I was trying to hold a coin against a wall with my nose. That was an interesting predicament to hold, particularly when the caning started.

The shot below shows another simple technique, using something sharp under the heels. In this case its a pair of spiked wallpaper strippers placed there by Miss Deelight. The rest of the set-up (as shown in this post) is more complex, but this element of the predicament would be easy set-up in the comfort of your own home.

Miss Deelight is a pro-domme based in South Whales and the South West of the UK.

CBT for the curious

I’m  regularly surprised by the extent to which discussion on specialized BDSM play has spread to mainstream sites. For example, here’s a recent Refinery29 article on Cock and Ball Torture. OK, so Refinery29 isn’t exactly the New York Times, but I doubt a few years ago you’d have seen anything on CBT outside of specialized kink sites. I don’t think I knew what CBT was until I started physically exploring BDSM and actually arranging to play. Now anyone can read about it next to articles on health, entertainment and politics.

As articles go it’s not a bad one, given the obvious constraints on space and detail. However, it does suffer from a problem I see in a lot of these mainstream articles – treating the sensual and the sadistic separately. They often seem to treat kink as something you do by taking a break from regular sensual sex to try this sadistic and painful thing. In my experience very few masochists like cold, brutal and unmodulated pain. And those that do, probably aren’t taking tips from Refinery29 articles. For most of us it’s the blend of pleasure with pain, and the ratcheting up of sensation as the balance tip back and forth between them.

I think the best advice for a CBT curious couple would be to start with the pleasure. Get him hot and bothered with the tongue or the hand, and then mix in some squeezing, pinching or slapping. Someone horny and eager is going to be less self conscious about what they’re doing and more likely to relax into the moment. Wait till he’s panting, then put some clothespins on the shaft or sack and slowly masturbate him. That mixture of lovely friction and painful tugging gives a lot of scope for shifting the pain/pleasure balance. It also sets up the right dynamic of control – giving pleasure and then taking it away. There’s also an obvious visual feedback mechanism as arousal ebbs and flows.

Don’t try this in your derelict barn

A suitable image to follow-up yesterday’s post. This is another elaborate rope suspension with a high difficulty/risk factor. It looks very cool for a photograph, but I can’t imagine it being sustainable for any kind of extended play.

BarnSuspensionI’m afraid I’ve no idea of the original source for this. Happy to credit appropriately if someone can help with an attribution.

Harmonic Oscillation

I’ve a small triangular bruise on my cock. I’m not exactly sure who put it there. It showed up sometime during my weekend in San Francisco, and so was the work of either Domina Yuki or Domina Ai-Li. Whoever created it, the end result is the same, it makes me smile. Most people probably wouldn’t react that way to genital bruising, but I always like to see a temporary reminder of my recent activities.

It was fun to play again. Getting together with two familiar dommes was definitely the right move. My body seemed to mark up more than it usually does, and I had a few pre-session butterflies in my stomach that I don’t normally get, but emotionally I was in a good space. No lengthy negotiation necessary. No chemistry to figure out. Just a sense of a happy place to return to.

I also got to try something new – a suspended bed with a pendulum weight attached to the genitals. You can see the general set-up below and a close-up of the weight arrangement here. It might not be clear from the shots, but that frame that I’m lying down on is hanging on chains and can therefore easily swing. This meant that my entire body would move as Yuki hit me, and that would cause the pendulum below to swing.  The two systems would then interact with each other as they moved, going in and out of phase and pulling me in painful but interesting ways. It felt like being part of a kinky science experiment, although I’m not strictly sure what hypothesis was being tested.

Pendulum1You can see another top down show here which shows some mild red marks from the beating. They would receive some significant additions a few days later from Domina Ai-Li’s whip. We also did some zipper play, which can be seen here. I’ve a video of this, which I may share, just as soon as I can overdub the embarrassing screaming and whimpering noises which somehow seem to have turned up on the audio track. Can’t imagine where they came from.

Rope tie

Continuing my clothing themed post sequence with this striking shot. It’s posted all over the web under the title ‘conceptual photograph’ but the attribution isn’t particularly clear. I think it’s by Polish photographer Michal Pedziwiatr, but I’m not 100% sure.

When it comes to clothes and female dominants there are millions of images I could feature. Not so much on the male submission side. The options there seem to be nudity, odd leather gimp attire or frilly cross-dressing. Personally I don’t have an issue with any of those, but they don’t fit into a stylish clothing themed post. I’d guess that the original photographer had a different concept in mind than femdom and male submission, but I’m happy to repurpose the shot.

RopeTie