K-Holes and Missed Kisses ( #YouthfulMistakes #Drugs #HookingUp )

By Annabeth Leong

There was a time in my life when I often found myself at parties, driven there by an itch for adventure. My favorite sorts of adventures were the kind that happen with other people. On any given night, I was at least curious about hooking up with someone. If that happened in some sort of interesting configuration, location, or manner, even better.

The rest of party culture was a bit of a tiresome exercise it seemed I had to go through to get to the good stuff. I would get drunk and play truth or dare, gladly, if that was the excuse the rest of you people needed to start making out. I would get stoned and gradually edge toward each other until we started cuddling and making out, but for the love of God, don’t get all philosophical and contemplative on me. If, on the other hand, you wanted to show up and start making out immediately while we were all still sober, that worked, too. I didn’t have much in the way of inhibition. I remember getting teased once for walking into a place and taking my clothes off literally before saying hello to anyone.

I know now that what I really wanted was to go to sex parties, but back then I didn’t know about those, so any party would have to do. Still, sex was self-evidently the purpose of going to a party as far as I was concerned, and it was hard for me to imagine or understand any other motivation.

Drugs were a useful excuse for pleasures I was already happy to indulge, and maybe at times an interesting enhancement for them.

So when I found out that one of my friends had gotten hold of a bunch of ecstasy and was having a party, I thought I was on the way to getting laid, and well. I’d tried X a couple times before (these days, everyone seems to call it E or Molly, but I’m going to be true to place and time and use the slang common in my circle). My previous experiences had become a threesome and a foursome, respectively. I’d heard of people who used the drug and danced, but I wasn’t interested in that at all. “I’ll take option A, please.”

These friends, though, had an even weirder (to me) view of the drug. Apparently, there was a story going around that MDMA was originally developed for use in talk therapy because the feelings of emotional warmth it produced enabled people to be more honest with each other than they otherwise would. (I did some cursory research to find out whether this is true, and the drug does seem to have some proposed therapeutic uses, though there doesn’t seem to be a governmentally approved avenue for any of that at this point in the U.S.). Anyway, I got to this party and found out that this group of people looked forward to getting together, taking X, and talking to each other. Ugh.

(As I write this, the memories are striking me as weird, because at this point in my life, my favorite thing to do is get together with people and have intense one-on-one conversations. I keep wondering if I’m lying or exaggerating when I write about my past disgust with talking. However, it’s still true that this isn’t my idea of a fun time at a sex party, and I can still get rather, um, focused on the urge to make out. I’m pretty sure my representation of my past self’s disgust with anything off-mission is accurate.)

I promptly began seeking something more interesting to do than chat about my feelings. Different drugs? The right conversation?

It didn’t take long. B had apparently known I would be at this party and had been looking forward to talking to me there, once she got loosened up with the X. She had a confession she wanted to get off her chest. She’d always found me fascinating. Mostly, she identified as straight, but she wanted to see what it would be like to make out with another girl, me specifically.

Awesome, I thought. I have mixed feelings now about serving as someone’s experiment, but back then I was first in line to volunteer. I was more than ready to let her satisfy her curiosity with my mouth.

Just as she leaned in for the kiss, E came into the room, indicating something he had hidden in his hand. “Anyone want to try some Special K?” He was new to dealing, and K was new to our group. He was like an overeager Avon salesman, looking to make some money off his friends, anxious to demonstrate his wares, not the person you wanted to see coming.

Normally, I was of the swallow-first-ask-questions-later school of drug use. This particular time, maybe because I was annoyed that he’d interrupted just as I’d been about to make out with B, I didn’t want to get involved in any unknowns. I had the hookup right in front of me, so what would have been the point of any drugs? They’d only get in the way. “Nah, man, not now,” I said. “I’ll see how people like it and maybe try some later.”

I turned expectantly back to B. Unfortunately for me, she was interested in the K. “I’m going to go try this,” she said. “And when I get back, I’m going to kiss you.”

I forced a smile. “Great.”

E took several girls into a back bedroom to administer the K. I waited on the floor, massaging my own calves and playing with the carpet shag. The relentless sensuality I felt when I was on X had hold of me, and I was anxious for B to get back as soon as possible.

I waited and waited. Time can be weird when you’re on drugs, but I waited for what felt like an extraordinarily long time. I drank water. I lingered awkwardly.

Then the door to the back bedroom opened and out came one of the other girls who’d gone off with E. She was sobbing and staggering and generally looked like hell. “What’s going on with her?” I asked somebody.

“K-hole,” they answered.

“Huh?”

“It’s what happens when you’re on K.”

“And it feels like that?”

“Yeah. Sometimes.”

“So tell me the good part of taking K?”

My interlocutor only shrugged. I comforted myself with the idea that I was only seeing one person’s reaction to Special K. Hopefully B was having a great time and would shortly be ready for sexy makeouts.

However, one girl after another emerged from that room in a sobbing, panicked state. More and more, I worried that the kiss B had promised me was not coming after all. More and more, I was relieved I’d been too focused on making out with her to try the apparently horrible ketamine I’d been offered, which I certainly would have done if I’d still been bored and frustrated with talking when E appeared.

Eventually, I went in to check on B. She’d fallen into the K-hole, too, possibly worst of anyone, and was lying on the bed with tears running down the sides of her face. “I’m so sorry,” she told me. “I don’t think I can kiss you after all.”

“It’s really okay,” I told her, though I was sort of lying. Honestly, I was angry with E for introducing such an un-fun element to the party and a little annoyed with her for wanting to try the drug right when we were about to kiss. Still, I stayed long enough to reassure her that I wasn’t mad and that we could maybe kiss another time if she still wanted to. We didn’t actually know each other very well, though, so it got awkward fairly quickly and I left her to the care of better friends and wandered off looking for a different hookup.

I feel bad in retrospect, writing this, because I think if this happened today I’d feel more responsibility to look out for her, and I also hope I’d have a less selfish attitude. I was so focused on getting laid that the compassion I was able to show was mostly a performance, and that isn’t cool. I’m shocked at my younger self’s cavalier attitude. I benefited from aspects of it, because I think people found me charismatic, but it doesn’t represent the person I want to be. B deserved better, and I probably didn’t deserve to kiss her if I was going to be so cold about it.

The evening was ultimately a success for me, though. I found another girl, A, who had spiked pink hair and wanted to kiss and massage each other. I caught glimpses of B occasionally for the rest of the party, still dealing with the after-effects of the K, and each time I paused briefly to recognize the close call. But for a few seconds, she might have been the one in my arms instead of A. But for a few circumstances, I might have been the one hobbled, weeping, in the grip of a terrible drug.

The Joys of Writing BDSM

by Lisabet Sarai



In my post two weeks ago I complained about the constraints of fitting into a genre. Now I have to admit that there is a genre where I’m comfortable -- the genre commonly known as BDSM.

I love writing BDSM. I find it far easier than writing so-called “vanilla” romance or erotica. I’ll be the first to admit the reason: it turns me on. BDSM pushes my personal buttons. My real world experience in the BDSM arena has been fairly limited but has had incredible personal impact. Nothing excites me like a well-written scene between a Master or Mistress and his or her willing slave. I know this is because the action and conversation contain echoes of my own ecstatic awakening to the joys of dominance and submission.

“BDSM” is short for Bondage, Discipline, Sadism and Masochism. It also subsumes “D/s”, Dominance and submission. What is included in BDSM fiction? Depending on who is doing the writing, bondage could be anything from naughty little games with silk scarves to ball gags, hog tying and suspension. Discipline can range from a playful spanking to flogging with a bull whip. Blindfolds, handcuffs, slave collars, dildos, riding crops, leather masks, stiletto heels – the paraphernalia of BDSM have in fact become familiar to the point that they’re almost clichés.

For me, though, the external tools and symbols of BDSM don’t matter, not really. The essence to BDSM, the key to understanding its appeal, lies in the relationship between the dominant and the submissive. Trust is the core concept. The submissive entrusts the dominant with her body, believing that he will administer no more pain than she can bear. She opens her mind to him, sharing her desire to be mastered. She gives him power over her, trusting him to use it wisely. Meanwhile, the dominant trusts the sub to use her safe word if he misjudges her limits, but otherwise, to let him lead her through the scene and not “top from below”.

(For convenience, I am using the terminology of a male dominant and female submissive here, but the dynamics do not change significantly regardless of gender.)

The two participants in this exchange of power are connected – emotionally, psychically, even spiritually. Successful BDSM scenes require a level of communication and honesty beyond what one usually finds in vanilla sexual encounters. A skillful Dom intuits the sub’s psychological and physical state from her breathing, her skin, her body language. To the sub, it can feel as though the dominant is reading her mind – and maybe he is. She cannot lie about her arousal or her agony. Both are plain to see. The experience of being seen and known so deeply is intoxicating, magnifying the sexual excitement.

I enjoy writing BDSM because I can participate vicariously in this intimate connection. I can write from the dominant’s or the submissive’s perspective, male or female. It doesn’t seem to matter. The buzz is the same.

This is just my view. Some readers, and writers, take a more fetishistic approach to BDSM. For these individuals, the paraphernalia are arousing in themselves. It doesn’t matter who is using them. And of course, there are people who find non-consensual scenarios of rape and torture sexually arousing.

It’s not my place to judge these people. After all, there are lots of fine upstanding citizens who would label my own interests and desires as evil or sick. However, neither of these perspectives on BDSM corresponds to my own. I write safe, consensual, responsible, emotionally satisfying BDSM scenes between adults who at very least care about each other’s welfare.

Sounds almost wholesome, doesn’t it?

It’s possible to write BDSM fiction with none of the traditional trappings. One of my all time favorite erotic stories, by Mike Kimera, is called “Other Bonds than Leather”. Better than anything I’ve written, it captures the essence of D/s, separate from the artifacts and the toys.

Meanwhile, here’s something of my own, an example that will perhaps make my point clearer than any more of this intellectualizing.

From “Wednesday Night at Rocky’s Ace Hardware Store” in Rough Caress (Eternal Press, 2008)

We pass a display of galvanized steel fittings. I stop, fascinated. Sturdy eye bolts and swivel bolts, hooks and pulleys, interlocking rings and brackets, all sensuously curved and shining a dull silver. I can't take my eyes away, imagining spread limbs and stretched muscles. Hardware stores always bring out my creative side.

He laughs at my intensity. "You know that we can't attach anything to the walls, Sarah. It's in the resident's agreement."

"Well... what about out on the deck?" Our top-floor condo has a lovely patio built out on the flat part of the roof. From there we have a fabulous view of the city, from Twin Peaks to the Golden Gate.

"You want me to bind you out in the open, where anyone uphill can see you?" He rolls his eyes heavenward, pretending annoyance. "And you say that I'm perverted!"

He steers me onward. Reluctantly, I leave the suggestive display of fittings, only to be transfixed by the rolls of self-service chain at the other end of the aisle.

"Chain is completely impractical," he reminds me with a grin.

"But it's so decorative, so evocative," I counter. "Whips and chains, you know."

"Whatever you want, dear," he says, bowing low. I make a choice and he cuts me a four foot length of the pretty, brass-finished stuff with half-inch links. He dumps it into our basket. It gives a satisfying clink whenever we move.

My nipples go taut at the sound. He notices, of course, and leans down to tweak one, hard. Another wave of lubrication gushes from my cunt. His nostrils flare as my scent fills the aisle.

"My turn," he says. "Let's go check out the dowels." His thumb and forefinger are still grasping my swollen tit. He leads me toward the back of the store.

I look around nervously, but there are few customers at eight PM on a Wednesday evening. Despite my comments about the deck, I'm actually terrified of public exposure. To be more accurate, public restraint or punishment is still beyond my limits, something I'm not ready to admit that I want. He knows that perfectly well.

He halts in front of a rack holding wooden rods of varying diameters and lengths. I have small hands; I could not get my thumb and forefinger around one of the thickest. The thinnest are perhaps a quarter-inch in diameter, like the sticks used to mount children's balloons.

When he releases his hold on my nipple, I still feel the echo of his fingers on my throbbing flesh. "Bend over," he orders. Trembling with fearful excitement, I bend at the waist. I rest my hands on my thighs for support, but he can see that I am not comfortable. He flips my skirt up, baring my buttocks. "Don't move," he cautions, and then disappears, leaving me alone in this awkward and obscene position.

He is gone for what feels like forever. Slight currents of air brush my exposed ass like ghostly fingers. My engorged pudenda ache for his touch, and the scent of my lust is stronger than ever. Sweat trickles down my neck, dampening my hair. My heart sounds so loudly in my ears, I do not even hear him when he returns. He has a folding stepladder, which he assembles and places in front of me. "Hold on to this."

The position is more stable and places far less strain on my back. "Thank you, Master," I whisper, once again marveling at how finely tuned he is to my needs.

He slips a casual finger into my soaking cunt and wriggles it around. "You certainly are wet, Sarah." My pelvis churns at his touch. Without thought, I grind myself against his hand. I am rewarded by a sharp slap on my butt cheek.

"Be still!" he says softly. "I did not give you permission to move."

He continues to explore my well-lubricated folds. Meanwhile I press my lips together and tighten all my muscles, struggling to obey his directive of immobility.

"What are you thinking, little slut?" he whispers in my ear. "Tell me."

I can hardly speak, aroused and taut as I am. "That I'm yours," I gasp, finally. "That I would do anything for you."

That’s it, in the last sentence. I get wet every time I read that sentence. That’s why I write BDSM.