A new experience

In my recent trip to San Francisco I enjoyed an entirely new experience – attending a BDSM workshop. I was there courtesy of Domina Yuki and Domina Ai-Li. Having sessioned with them both on prior days, they invited me along to a piercing workshop as their demo bottom. I’d never done any kind of play at parties or open events so, always curious to try new things, I jumped at this opportunity.

It was held at a large modern dungeon with plenty of space for people to setup their individual scenes. While I was there I spotted 6 or 7 groups doing scenes, with maybe 15 to 20 people in attendance. The three of us grabbed a spot in a corner and I got naked while Yuki and Ai-Li plotted their plan of action.

The first they wanted to try was a needle zipper. They’d seen one done before by the person running the workshop and wanted to pick his brains on the right way to do it. All three of us were experienced in both piercing and zippers but none of us had tried them in combination before. So, after a few pointers from the workshop coordinator, they broke the needles out and starting threading them into place on my torso.

It was an interesting experience doing a scene as part of a workshop rather than a dedicated session. It felt a little like a craft project. There was a lot of discussion along the lines of “Hmm, that doesn’t look right. I’m going to redo that bit” and “How are you doing the knots?” and “Shall we pull it this way or more over here?” I simultaneously felt like part of the project team and also the object of the project. Which was a good feeling for me. Collaborative yet objectifying. You can see the results of their work on my torso in the following images: Top View, Side View and Up View.

When it came time to pull the zipper I heard the workshop coordinator advertising the fact and a small crowd gathered where we were. This upped the strangeness factor significantly. I was naked in front of a bunch of strangers. I’d never been on the end of a needle zipper before. And the two tops involved had never done one before. I wasn’t particularly stressed or worried, but it was kind of weird. My main concern was that I might scream like a baby when they pulled the cords.

Luckily everything went smoothly. We even captured a video of it, which can be seen here. At the start you can hear Yuki and Ai-Li debating exactly how to pull the cords. Then there’s some ooh’s and ahh’s from both me and the crowd, following by applause from the crowd and laughter from me right at the end. It wasn’t particularly painful (compared to say staple zippering), but it is quite an intense sensation as the skin is pulled and twisted by the needles. You can see the end result post pull in this image (warning – some small blood trickles).

After the zipper we moved onto a slightly more playful idea – a butt corset. The idea here to pull my two butt cheeks together with needles and elastic cord in the style of a corset. I’ve had a corset done to my back before, but never anything quite this far down. I think the end result worked out pretty well, as shown in the images here, here and here.

Overall it was a great experience and one I’d be happy to repeat. Despite the available evidence to the contrary I’m not an exhibitionist, and don’t particularly get anything from the idea of semi-public scenes. However, the scientist in me loves the idea of experimenting, trying new things out and sharing ideas. I’m also strongly attracted to the idea of being useful and contributing something. A workshop like this pushes both my masochistic and service buttons. Not to mention the fact that it’s a lot of fun to hang out with two such talented and friendly dommes as Mistress Yuki and Mistress Ai-Li.

Domina Yuki and Domina Ai-Li

After a post featuring lots of links to images of a naked me, I feel I should finish with something a little more visually appealing. This is Mistress Yuki and Mistress Ai-Li taken with an unidentified slave.

A helicopter ride

Anytime I go to San Francisco I try and schedule time with Domina Yuki. We’ve played together several times in the past (for example – here or here) and it has always been a great experience. This time was no exception.

I actually ended up having back to back sessions, with Domina Ai-Li on the first day (as mentioned here) and Domina Yuki on the second. Giving my body almost no time to recover was possibly an unwise move, but I’m nothing if not masochistic. They’d apparently collaborated before I arrived on who got what body part to attack, but I’m not sure they strictly stuck to their agreed zones. I certainly wasn’t about to start pointing out to the nice lady with the whip where she should or shouldn’t hit me.

We managed to grab a few fun photographs. This image shows me with a collection of attached clothespins. Having Mistress Yuki slide her body against mine with these in place was a particularly painful but sensuous torture. The more I pushed back the more it hurt, and yet the better it felt. This image shows a close-up of the CBT bondage. It’s not particularly painful, unless some sadist decides to repeatedly flick the delicate exposed bits of flesh.

I got to experience a cattle-prod for the first time, as shown here. It was an unusual sensation – sharp and intense but brief. It convulsed the muscle, kicking me forward, but didn’t create a deep lasting pain. We also did some bastinado, as shown in this image. That really does create a deep pain. Each part of the foot reacts differently, with sharper immediate pain on the boney parts and deep aches on the more muscled sections.

When it came time to remove the genital bondage Mistress Yuki decided to give me a helicopter ride. If you’ve never heard of this before, then imagine someone trying to start an old fashioned gas (petrol) lawnmower, but with the pull cord wrapped around a pair of balls. We actually did this twice. Not because it didn’t work the first time, but having done it once Mistress Yuki decided it would be a great thing to take a video of. So while I was still moaning in pain from the first time I heard an enthusiastic voice say – “Oh! I should have got a video. Let’s do that again!”

You can see the resulting video here. I believe it’s the first one from a session I’ve ever featured. Weirdly there seems to have been a problem with the sound. Originally I let out a small manly growl when she pulled the cord. But something in the recording process seem to have turned it into a loud high pitched scream. Given that odd technical problem I’ve decided to omit the audio, lest I give my readers the wrong impression of my fortitude.

Trampling

The above image shows some trampling I got to enjoy. Although it doesn’t look like much, it was actually one of the more painful moments. That was mostly because Mistress Yuki was trying to balance on one high heeled foot while digging the other into my chest and simultaneously framing the photograph correctly.  I suspect her prioritization had not falling over and getting the photograph right way higher than odd moaning noises coming from the submissive.

A modern day Aegis

Today’s post brings you a scene that I did with Mistress Cynthia Stone a couple of months ago. Sadly I’m not the most efficient person when it comes to a timely documentation of my activities, and these photographs have been lurking on my computer for weeks. Hopefully the much delayed end result is both interesting and informative for anyone looking for session ideas beyond the standard bondage and beating format.

I should issue the standard warning that the activities depicted may be considered edge play. There is a small amount of blood shown in the images. If you’re OK with that then click through to a page I’ve entitled ‘Casting with Cynthia Stone;.

Mistress Cynthia Stone

The image is of Mistress Cynthia Stone taken from her web site.

Reality and physicality

I had a slightly unusual session yesterday. Not so much in the ‘how’ and the ‘what’, but in the ‘who’ and the ‘where’ (the ‘why’ is left as an exercise for my therapist). It featured Mistress Yuki playing in Lady Lydia’s space. I’ve played with Mistress Yuki in the past down in San Francisco (see here and here), and was happy to hear she’d be in Seattle for a few days this month. It was a lot of fun to get together, if a little disconcerting to play with someone new and different in a space I know so well.

It was a fairly intense session, with lots of corporal play, and we finished with some piercing. I was pretty zoned by that point. Time and space were askew, and my brain really didn’t care. As Mistress Yuki moved around the table I was suddenly struck by a tremendous sense of her physicality. Attractive women in exciting undergarments always have a pretty powerful presence, but this was more than that. Her body had a three dimensional solidity that felt more real than anything else in the room, including myself.

I’ve experienced this kind of reality distortion before in subspace and, as I pondered it afterwards, it reminded me of passage from one of my favorite books – Neuromancer. The quote features a mysterious man named Armitage telling the protagonist (Case) that his lost hacking abilities could be miraculously restored to him.

“What would you say if I told you we could correct your neural damage, Case?” Armitage suddenly looked to Case as if he were carved from a block of metal; inert, enormously heavy. A statue. He knew now that this was a dream, and that soon he’d wake. Armitage wouldn’t speak again. Case’s dreams always ended in these freeze frames, and now this one was over.

That description of a character and a moment in time has always stuck with me. I read it long before I did a BDSM scene, but that sense of sudden physicality coupled with unreality, fits beautifully with what I experienced last night in subspace. That’s perhaps appropriate for the book that popularized the term cyberspace.

Mistress Yuki
Mistress Yuki
Mistress Yuki
The above images were taken from Mistress Yuki’s tumblr. If you’re in the San Francisco area and would like to session with her, check out her main site.

As for Neuromancer, if you’ve never read it and aren’t violently opposed to the cyberpunk genre, I definitely recommend giving it a shot. It’s an incredibly influential novel, and an archetype in its genre. It’s amazing to read it now and realize it was written in the early 80’s on a 1927 Hermes model portable manual typewriter.

Playing the dummy

As I mentioned in previous blog posts, I was down in LA in mid-March, and got to session with Mistress Cynthia Stone. We actually did two sessions together and captured a lot of photographs. I finally had chance this weekend to write up the first of these sessions and you can read all about it on a page I’ve titled Cynthia Stone’s Tailors Dummy. I should warn you that while there’s no blood or anything too extreme, there is a lot of piercing shots and a lot of naked me. So don’t click through if that’s something you’d rather avoid looking at.

The shot below is taken from our session together. That’s me peaking out over her shoulder. At the time she’d stuffed a whole bunch of needles into my torso and then decided to sit on me. Normally having a beautiful woman wriggling around on my lap would be a good thing. Having a lot of needles through the skin adds a certain edge to that experience.

Peeking over Cynthia Stone's shoulder

A new type of zipper

What can a talented domme do with duct tape, cord and surgical staples? The answer, if you’re Lady Lydia, is an alternative style of zippering.

Standard BDSM zippers features clothespins. I’ve enjoyed being on the receiving end of them several times in the past, including documenting it in this older post. Using surgical staples instead of clothespins was a new idea to me, and turned out to be a particularly interesting and intense one. Thanks to Lydia’s multitasking skills we captured a whole sequence of images, so I’ve documented the session on a new page: Staple Zippering with Lady Lydia.

Note that this is a style of play that some people would describe as edge play. There are a few small specks of blood in a few shots. Don’t click through if that would be a problem for you.

Dine and Domme NYC: Conclusion

This is a fairly belated conclusion, as my NYC trip ended almost 2 week ago. I’ve been sadly slacking on sorting through my session photographs, but I’m happy to say I had the time to fix that this weekend.

On the domme front I had two fantastic sessions with Miss Troy Orleans. We grabbed a lot of photographs and I’ve post the results on a separate page: Bondage with Miss Troy Orleans. I should warn my readers that there’s a lot of bound naked me in those shots. So if you’re just here for the pictures of hot dominant women (who in this case was holding the camera), I suggest scrolling on.

On the dining front, I’m not sure anyone comes to my blog for restaurant tips. However, just for completeness I’ll say that the three stand out meals were Le Bernardin (lunch), Jean George (lunch) and Eleven Madison Park (dinner). If you’re looking for a great meal in NYC I’d recommend those three wholeheartedly. Per Se was flawless but somehow unexciting. I can’t criticize any element, but nothing really wowed me. Del Posto, WD-50 and Kyo Ya were interesting in their own way, but all suffered from a few missteps. I did have a lot of fun browsing and eating at Eataly, so that’s another food spot I’d recommend.

Suspended Sleep Sack

The image is me suspended in a sleepsack at Salon d’Orleans. For those of you looking for the blogs tagline of ‘The beauty of dominant women’, I direct your attention to the elbow in the mirror.

Playing with deprivation

I’ve had some interesting sessions in the last couple of weeks playing with sensory deprivation. It’s not normally a hot-button topic for me, but I’ve grown to appreciate some of the intense experiences it can deliver. Five years ago I’d have described this type of play as weird and unappealing.  All the strange leather and latex equipment seemed too fetishistic and specialized. Fast forward a couple of years and I finally figured out the appeal, but thought it was too intense for me to deal with. That’s still partly true, but I’ve improved my bottoming skills with practice. Mostly that’s due to building a rapport with Lydia and her ability to ease me gradually into difficult situations.

The first session was built around a leather sleep sack. You can see a couple of shots of me in it here and here. Firstly, Lydia wrapped my limbs and torso in plastic wrap to try and minimize contact between my body parts. She even wrapped each finger individually so I couldn’t touch my fingers together. Then I was zipped into the sleep sack and the straps around it tightened. My head got treated to a form fitting hood, a towel packed around my ears, the sleep sack hood and a layer of plastic wrap. Finally, some rope applied across the body and electrics applied to the cock finished the whole thing off.

The second session I did featured a latex vacuum bed. We didn’t snap any shots off this, but if you’ve ever seen one of those in action, you’ll have a pretty good idea of how the session unfolded. Lots of latex, tight restraint and breathplay.

One thing I found particularly interesting in both sessions was the interplay between stress and subspace. Being bound pushes me into subspace. I go quiet and a little spacey as my body gets locked down. But putting things around and over my head raises my anxiety levels and pulls me back out of subspace. My mind and my breath start racing and I have to consciously focus on not panicking. That mental effort of dealing with my instinctive stress reaction makes it hard for me to let go. What helps reverse this response is mild pain. Anything too intense just kicks up the flight or fight response, but mild pain gives me a focus. It also plays into my natural masochism and helps release the endorphins I need to zone out. A caress and a pinch in just the right place is the ultimate stress reliever for me.

Vacuum Bed

The Victorian Christmas Tree

Lydia has been pretty busy with her Land of the Sweets show leading up to Christmas. Fortunately I managed to grab some time with her on a rare night off, and we indulged in a suitably festive get together.

My only suggestion prior to the session was that we might use her bondage chair. Other than that I had no idea what she’d planned. As soon as I saw the disposable blue medical cloth on the chair I guessed piercing might be involved, but I was a little puzzled by the lengths of festive ribbon piled close by. It quickly became apparent that she was feeling in a decorative mood, and intended to pin the ribbons to me like an old fashioned Christmas tree.

The end result can be seen in the shot below. A more colorful version (taken with flash on) can be seen here. I lost track of how many needles were used, but I’d guess it was at least 50. As is often the way with these kind of sessions there was a nice rhythm to it as each ribbon was positioned and pinned. There was also a pleasant feeling of objectification, a focus on my body but not me. It’s both intimate, as she’s working very closely on me, and yet distancing, as she concentrates on getting the ribbon just how she wanted it. You can see a couple more close-up shots of the needles with ribbons here and here.

She capped everything off with a ribbon that ran from ear to ear and sported a big bow on top of my head. This was held with ear piercings and a needle through the scalp at around the hairline. The skin is really thin at that point, so it hurt going in and bled a lot coming out. Unfortunately I can’t really show you the best shot we got, which was me giggling like an idiot while the blood dripped down my face. However, I can share this after shot, which shows some of the body marks left and the dripping blood on the side of my nose.

All in all it was a great way to celebrate the festive season and I’m endlessly grateful to Lydia for taking the time to put together such an imaginative session. Not to mention that I’ve now got a great image to put on all my Christmas cards! I’m sure everyone will be happy to have this on their mantlepiece over the holidays.

Ribbons and needles

Sparks in sin city

I don’t typically look for kinky experiences when I visit Vegas. It’s a surprisingly mainstream town, big on the accepted thrills of booze, gambling and naked ladies, low on alternative and niche interests. However, I happened to notice Mistress Ariana Lexine was going to be in town, and since we’d played together a year or two before at her LA space, it seemed like a good opportunity to hook up again. It turned out to be a really fun session, made particularly memorable by an introduction to an entirely new sensation I’d never experienced before.

She’d brought her violent wand along with her, a toy I’ve played with in the past. What was new was the body contact attachment she had for it. Normally you plug some sort of bulb or probe into the wand and run it gently against the skin. It creates a prickly sensation, a little like hot needles, along with some cool visual effects. With the body contact attachment placed inside her clothes, and pressed tightly against her skin, it turned her body into the electrical probe. Just bringing her hand close to my skin would cause sparks to arc between our bodies, allowing her to both caress and torture me simultaneously. Each brush of her fingers created a crackle of purple sparks against my skin.

While the touching was cool, the licking was mind blowing. Having her trace the edge of a nipple with a sparking tongue was an incredible sensation, creating great pleasure with just a slight edge of pain. The moment she first did it we both almost simultaneously said “That was awesome! We have to do more of that!” I actually got to try it briefly from the other side, and it reminded me of checking batteries as a child. It didn’t really hurt, but it created an odd tingling sensation on the tongue and the faint chemical taste of ozone.

She also had a set of Eagle Talons that she used to create far more intense sensations. With those on the end of her fingers she could no longer feel the spark at all, but the pain level for me was significantly ratcheted up. It shifted the dynamic from sensual into masochistic, each talon leaving little red trails across my skin. They’d be a great toy to combine with bondage and heavier pain play. As I said, I’ve played with violent wands before, and found them fun but not ‘wow’. This time it was most definitely a ‘wow’.

Violet Wand in use

The shot of a violet wand in action comes from the Captive Male site. The image linked to in the text comes from the UK site Bound 2 Tease.