by Annabeth Leong
The more I think about it, the more I’m uncertain about why the acronym BDSM is strung together this way, as if all the activities it describes are related. There’s a constellation of kinky stuff that’s treated as if it always goes hand in hand, but that doesn’t really make sense.
When I started showing up at kink events, I said I was submissive because I knew I wanted to bottom and receive pain. I didn’t realize there were distinctions here, and most of the events I went to elided them, too.
Over time, however, I recognized a growing anger in myself. I hated, viscerally, the experience of being treated as submissive. Of course, I met some cool people. I also encountered a lot of smarmy sneering, people talking to my dominant instead of to me (which, depending on your point of view, might have been proper protocol), jokes that irritated me, incorrect assumptions, and stuff that pissed me off in general.
I had a partner at the time who I called my dominant. Really, my partner was my sadist. We weren’t using proper vocabulary, but most people around us weren’t either. When we went to events, my partner adopted what they saw as a dominant-type persona, and I found it embarrassing and cringe-worthy.
At the same time, I truly do enjoy bottoming—as in, I love being on the receiving end of intense sensation. I love being tied up for a variety of reasons. I like it as a meditative state, I like it as a way of inducing discomfort, I like it as a decorative art, I like it as a way of experiencing the sensation of textiles on the skin, I like it as a way of drawing blood flow to certain areas to make them more sensitive, and lots more. I also love receiving pain. Impact play is a favorite for me, but I also love electricity, clamps, biting, and so on.
Over time, I realized I needed to distinguish between bottoming as a masochist and power exchange situations that framed me as submissive. These two things are so commonly associated that I’ve encountered many people who respond with disbelief or confusion when I try to explain that I want to be hurt but there’s no way in hell I want to submit.
I think a lot of kink activities boil down to being about trust. I do have to trust a top or a sadist. For me, that trust works best when I’m in the situation as an equal. It’s also easier for me to trust myself to speak up when I need to.
What’s funny about this is that I have a lot of submissive instincts. I am very, very good at service. It is easy for me to subsume my needs and focus on those of others. If you give me an order, my first reaction is to obey.
However, I don’t like that stuff about myself. I don’t want to feed it. What I’m working on in my life is to stop knee-jerk obedience. I don’t want to practice it on the weekend.
I know that many people experience submission as freeing. For me, it’s much more freeing to meet a top as an equal and figure out together how to hurt me for fun.
The more I’m around kink events, the more the dynamics around power exchange feel touchy and delicate to me.
For example, there’s a big kink con in Rhode Island called the Fetish Fair Flea Market. I go every year, and usually have a mixed experience. In some ways it’s awesome, and in some ways it infuriates me.
Early on, I went in clothing that identified me as an s-type (a sub or bottom). I didn’t always love how I was treated, but I didn’t know anything else.
One year, I went alone in these hot boots that I really loved. I didn’t think much about it at the time—I’m into feet and shoes, and these were just hot. They were thigh-high black leather boots that laced all the way up, with at least a three-inch heel. I felt gorgeous in them.
I could never have anticipated how much the boots would change my experience of the Flea. Apparently, the boots made people read me as a D-type. All of a sudden, I saw everything from a different perspective. I got more respect in the vendor halls. People answered my questions. The conference opened before me like a flower.
I still got regularly sexually harassed, don’t get me wrong. Random dudes still came up to me to share their sexual fantasies about me (I still presented female, after all), it was just that those fantasies had changed. Still, it was shocking to be freed from receiving the biases and assumptions that had come at me when people saw me as an s-type.
These days, when I go to the Flea, I struggle to find a way to dress. There’s not an obvious outfit that says masochist, at least not that I can think of. It’s hard not to wind up looking s- or D-. But really, I’d like to be able to step outside of power exchange with my kink experience.
And there are times when the distinction is subtle.
Last fall, I went with a top to a carnival. My top tormented me with unpleasant, frightening rides, laughing delightedly at my misery (I love that kind of thing, so while I was horribly uncomfortable, I was also having a great time). They pushed me to get on these things relentlessly, one after another.
I would call that a masochistic experience, not a submissive one, but I think, if we’d been in a different place, that it could have been a submissive one. In my case, the focus was on unpleasant sensations. My top was administering them, but I was receiving them because I find unpleasant sensations fun/fascinating/arousing/oddly compelling. In the submissive case, I think the focus would have been more on doing these things for the top, on being obedient despite the discomfort.
The emphasis on obedience is one of the things I really hate.
I’ve revised the way I describe myself at kinky events more times than I can count, and this probably still isn’t the final answer. However, it was really important for me to realize that what I’m interested in is sensation, not power.
And I hope this goes without saying, but I want to be very clear: I hold absolutely no disdain for those who do identify as submissive and enjoy it. It’s just not for me. Because I’ve spent time in that role, I have observed some dynamics around it in the community that I think are messed up, but I’m absolutely in support of people who want to explore the role itself.
Meanwhile, I’ll be looking for sadists who want to treat me as an equal.
Showing posts with label Masochism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Masochism. Show all posts
Thursday, June 2, 2016
Thursday, November 19, 2015
Branding: The Masochist's Ultimate Fantasy
by Annabeth Leong
Right now, I feel deep regret that I’ve already written about my experience being (accidentally) branded. In case you missed it, here’s a link to my post Branded By My Craving, AKA I’d Do Anything for a Woman Dressed in a Latex Nurse’s Outfit.
Since I’ve already used my juicy real-life experience, I’m going to have to tell you about my fantasies instead.
I’ve previously observed the odd fact that my erotica writing does not generally line up particularly well with my fantasies. Part of that, I think, is a self-protective instinct. We are writing about such personal, intimate subjects when we write erotica. I do turn myself on when writing, but I also hold a bit of myself apart.
I’ll also give a quick nod to the marketing type of branding. I’ve always feared that my actual fantasies are too dark to sell.
I am a real-life masochist (as will be quite clear if you read the post I linked above). In my fantasies, my masochism is even more extreme.
In real life, pain does a number of things to me that I crave. It disarms me and makes it possible for me to let go enough to orgasm. It provides a type of intensity that I need, both in and out of bed (I feel I am not seeking pleasure or pain specifically as much as I am seeking intensity, and there is hardly any sensation as intense as pain). It calms my mind. It makes me feel strong. It flips a switch, sometimes, that makes pain feel good, but I want and need pain even when it doesn’t feel good.
I am always looking to negotiate the difficult line between pain I want that’s difficult for me to take and pain that’s just too much. I generally need some sort of pain to come, but there is also a thing I experience that I’m not sure how to name. It’s a climax, like an orgasm, that feels sexual, but isn’t exactly a genital rippling. It satisfies me the way an orgasm would, and I often feel done with a sexual encounter after I have it. Lately, I’ve been exploring defining my sexual encounters based on what I actually want to do. I find that a good session of being hurt can satisfy me sexually. I don’t even always take off my underwear anymore.
So, that’s real life. And the pain I’m talking about is usually taking some sort of beating (though I also like wax, electricity, and various sorts of clamps).
In my fantasies, however, I’m obsessed with more extreme and permanently marking types of pain, specifically piercings, tattoos, and branding. I linger on the idea of pain so extreme I’d have to be tied down to take it.
(In real life, I prefer not to be restrained when taking pain because being restrained makes me panic, which makes me more likely to stop a scene. In my fantasies, however, I am being hurt by people who do not care that I am panicking, and I am hurt badly enough that the pain takes me past my normal experience, through to a place I could never reach by my own will. To me, that’s at the heart of all nonconsensual fantasies—what I desire is being taken beyond anywhere I would ever willingingly go.)
I remember the fire of my accidental branding, the way the world went white, the overwhelming orgasmic sensation of that. Then I imagine that multiplying as the brand sears into my skin. Instead of the light, incidental scar I have on my back, I imagine something deep and angry-red, the smell of burning flesh, the moments of struggle followed by abject, helpless surrender. I imagine flying on endorphins beyond anything I’ve actually experienced.
In my fantasies, I also caress the sensation of anticipatory fear. I love that, too. I love knowing that something is coming that I’m not going to like. I love asking for it and then experiencing deeply mixed feelings that it is actually happening—excitement tinged by the certainty of regret. Regret that’s already starting. The first blush of pain accompanied by disbelief that I ever would have wanted this.
I imagine that I’m going to be branded on the face, somewhere horribly permanent. I imagine lying still, watching the brand coming toward me, all too slowly, knowing how very much it will hurt, knowing that it won’t just hurt in the moment but for days afterward, while it heals.
When I got my accidental brand, the woman in the latex nurse’s outfit told me that if I wanted it to scar, I could rub lemon juice into it every day. I did not do this in real life, but I imagine that, too—taking an existing wound and reawakening it every day in a terrifyingly intimate ritual.
I love being hurt by someone who is being sweet to me while they do it. I imagine being told it’s for my own good, being soothed and shushed when I protest, being stroked gently on the forehead while the lemon juice is administered and it begins to sting.
I get the sense that my deeper masochistic fantasies only make sense to other masochists, but I hope this is at least interesting for those of you who don’t identify as such. As I write this, I’m making myself tremble and squirm. Dwelling on the details of pain gets me going like nothing else.
I don’t know if I would do something permanent like this on purpose, but I think about it often. I think about my lover doing this to me or watching it being done to me. I imagine fingers in my cunt while I’m transported by pain.
I have a story on my hard drive in which I try to write my honest fantasies as erotica. I can never bear to work on it very long, but it’s pages and pages like this.
Right now, I feel deep regret that I’ve already written about my experience being (accidentally) branded. In case you missed it, here’s a link to my post Branded By My Craving, AKA I’d Do Anything for a Woman Dressed in a Latex Nurse’s Outfit.
Since I’ve already used my juicy real-life experience, I’m going to have to tell you about my fantasies instead.
I’ve previously observed the odd fact that my erotica writing does not generally line up particularly well with my fantasies. Part of that, I think, is a self-protective instinct. We are writing about such personal, intimate subjects when we write erotica. I do turn myself on when writing, but I also hold a bit of myself apart.
I’ll also give a quick nod to the marketing type of branding. I’ve always feared that my actual fantasies are too dark to sell.
I am a real-life masochist (as will be quite clear if you read the post I linked above). In my fantasies, my masochism is even more extreme.
In real life, pain does a number of things to me that I crave. It disarms me and makes it possible for me to let go enough to orgasm. It provides a type of intensity that I need, both in and out of bed (I feel I am not seeking pleasure or pain specifically as much as I am seeking intensity, and there is hardly any sensation as intense as pain). It calms my mind. It makes me feel strong. It flips a switch, sometimes, that makes pain feel good, but I want and need pain even when it doesn’t feel good.
I am always looking to negotiate the difficult line between pain I want that’s difficult for me to take and pain that’s just too much. I generally need some sort of pain to come, but there is also a thing I experience that I’m not sure how to name. It’s a climax, like an orgasm, that feels sexual, but isn’t exactly a genital rippling. It satisfies me the way an orgasm would, and I often feel done with a sexual encounter after I have it. Lately, I’ve been exploring defining my sexual encounters based on what I actually want to do. I find that a good session of being hurt can satisfy me sexually. I don’t even always take off my underwear anymore.
So, that’s real life. And the pain I’m talking about is usually taking some sort of beating (though I also like wax, electricity, and various sorts of clamps).
In my fantasies, however, I’m obsessed with more extreme and permanently marking types of pain, specifically piercings, tattoos, and branding. I linger on the idea of pain so extreme I’d have to be tied down to take it.
(In real life, I prefer not to be restrained when taking pain because being restrained makes me panic, which makes me more likely to stop a scene. In my fantasies, however, I am being hurt by people who do not care that I am panicking, and I am hurt badly enough that the pain takes me past my normal experience, through to a place I could never reach by my own will. To me, that’s at the heart of all nonconsensual fantasies—what I desire is being taken beyond anywhere I would ever willingingly go.)
I remember the fire of my accidental branding, the way the world went white, the overwhelming orgasmic sensation of that. Then I imagine that multiplying as the brand sears into my skin. Instead of the light, incidental scar I have on my back, I imagine something deep and angry-red, the smell of burning flesh, the moments of struggle followed by abject, helpless surrender. I imagine flying on endorphins beyond anything I’ve actually experienced.
In my fantasies, I also caress the sensation of anticipatory fear. I love that, too. I love knowing that something is coming that I’m not going to like. I love asking for it and then experiencing deeply mixed feelings that it is actually happening—excitement tinged by the certainty of regret. Regret that’s already starting. The first blush of pain accompanied by disbelief that I ever would have wanted this.
I imagine that I’m going to be branded on the face, somewhere horribly permanent. I imagine lying still, watching the brand coming toward me, all too slowly, knowing how very much it will hurt, knowing that it won’t just hurt in the moment but for days afterward, while it heals.
When I got my accidental brand, the woman in the latex nurse’s outfit told me that if I wanted it to scar, I could rub lemon juice into it every day. I did not do this in real life, but I imagine that, too—taking an existing wound and reawakening it every day in a terrifyingly intimate ritual.
I love being hurt by someone who is being sweet to me while they do it. I imagine being told it’s for my own good, being soothed and shushed when I protest, being stroked gently on the forehead while the lemon juice is administered and it begins to sting.
I get the sense that my deeper masochistic fantasies only make sense to other masochists, but I hope this is at least interesting for those of you who don’t identify as such. As I write this, I’m making myself tremble and squirm. Dwelling on the details of pain gets me going like nothing else.
I don’t know if I would do something permanent like this on purpose, but I think about it often. I think about my lover doing this to me or watching it being done to me. I imagine fingers in my cunt while I’m transported by pain.
I have a story on my hard drive in which I try to write my honest fantasies as erotica. I can never bear to work on it very long, but it’s pages and pages like this.
Thursday, November 20, 2014
Branded By My Craving
by Annabeth Leong
If you look closely at the right side of my lower back, you'll find a faint scar in the shape of a stylized flower. My partner hates it, because it represents a night when my cravings got out of control. I feel like I should hate it, but honestly if I had it all to do over, I might very well do the same. That was undoubtedly one of the most erotic nights of my life. I know I was being stupid, but I'm not exactly sorry it happened.
There's a club night I go to where there are sometimes demonstrations of kinky things. On this particular occasion, I walked in and saw a demo going on in a roped-off area near the bar. A woman in a pink latex nurse's outfit was using a violet wand on a shirtless man in leather pants, and I just about skipped over there in my excitement.
I love violet wands. I tried one for the first time at that very club, and I'll never forget the thrill and mystery of that moment. For those who don't know, a violet wand is a device that can apply low current, high voltage stimulation to the skin. It takes various attachments, and the sensations it produces can range from a light tickle to mind-erasing pain.
The first time I saw one in action, everyone at the club was decked out in neon and glow sticks, and black light glanced off people's shoulders as they danced. Behind a velvet curtain, a thin woman with punky hair and multiple facial piercings wielded attachments that pulsed with weird colors. I got in line to try one and discovered I got along with the brand of pain the wand administered. It burned in a way that made me feel tough and sexy. I could take it better than I expected to be able to. Once she started running that device up and down my arms, I would have done just about anything she'd asked. I would have stayed in that booth all night if she'd let me. As it was, the next morning, thin lines of scabs covered my arms from shoulder to wrist and cris-crossed my chest.
My brain pretty much turns off when a violet wand is in use. All I want is more, and all my nice knowledge of best practices for BDSM basically dematerializes. I have no idea what that woman's name was or where she'd come from. We had no safeword, no aftercare in place, no game plan of any kind. My partner was out of town, and I told myself I wasn't making out with her so it was fine, but Jesus being hurt like that is probably a bigger deal for me than any sort of making out could ever be. Even as it was happening, I knew I could spin it to a tale of technical devotion, but that in my heart I was being unfaithful.
But that isn't actually the night I'm trying to talk about. I'm just trying to explain the craving with an anecdote that probably doesn't make sense to anyone who doesn't already understand the craving. This, to me, touches on one of the central mysteries of BDSM. What is it about pain that makes me crave it? As a brief aside, here's one of the best passages I've written on the subject (this is from a story that's supposed to come out in a Cleis anthology at some point):
She pressed a sweet kiss to my cheek, and that's when I knew I was in trouble. Sweetness, for D, was useful as a weapon of contrast. My body tensed, anticipating pain, and, inside my panties, my cunt twitched and squeezed tight. I'd never understood why genuine anxiety did that to me, but until I learned how to use seemingly negative sensations for pleasure I'd always felt as if my clit were buried beneath a layer of cotton. Every touch seemed dull and distant unless pain and fear first stripped me bare.
So, given that, understand that the violet wand is the best device I've found for delivering just the type of pain and fear I need to activate my ability to feel. I now own one, but before I did, it was also a rare and expensive device that I encountered only rarely. Maybe that helps explain why I rushed over to that latex-clad "nurse" on the night in question.
I had my partner with me, as well as a friend, but everything melted away except for that nurse and that device. "Do you guys mind?" My friend assured me she did not. My partner followed me as I headed for the nurse.
Talking to the nurse, I discovered she and her compatriots had the violet wand turned up high enough for branding. The marks they would leave weren't supposed to be permanent, but they could be, and they were supposed to last at least a month.
From my current relatively sane perspective, I can easily summon the questions I should have asked and the hesitations I should have had. Again, I didn't bother to get the nurse's name. I didn't ask for any details about what she was doing or what sort of safety measures might be in place. I only asked two questions: Would she do that to me, too? When?
The answers were yes, and right then. I picked a flower stencil for the brand at random and pulled off my shirt. My partner stood in the demo area, holding onto me while the nurse approached me with the violet wand set to searing.
At home, I often surprise my partner with how skittish I can be. My pain tolerance isn't so great when I don't have an audience, and I'm as likely to fight as to submit. But when people are watching, that just adds fuel to the flames of my craving for pain. My pain tolerance becomes terrifyingly, dangerously high so long as other people are there to witness me getting hurt.
I've learned this now, and I try to make provisions for the way I'm going to lose my head if I'm playing where people can watch. At the time of my encounter with the nurse, however, I was living with a pent-up craving for pain that I'd built to the point of explosion during an eight-year relationship with a partner who wasn't okay with BDSM, and I was unleashing it wildly. I hadn't learned my limits, and I thought reading erotica had prepared me for how to be safe, but it hadn't really.
So I stood there, too aroused to care about any sort of safety, and when the nurse touched me with the violet wand, I saw white light and came while bracing myself against my partner's arms. I have never felt pain like that before or since. She giggled maniacally, which probably wasn't a good sign but turned me on even more. I knew this was too much pain, and that I was probably doing something I shouldn't, but I loved that, too. I treasure the memory of every second of her drawing that flower. Endorphins coursed through me. I could barely stand, but I had reached that elusive place where pain and pleasure become one, intensifying and perfecting each other.
She told me the wound looked so pretty, and I wanted to follow her like a puppy dog. I wanted to be hurt like that some more, possibly forever. But I went off and danced with my partner and my friend, and it was only in the morning that I looked at the wound and saw how serious it was and felt ashamed of how reckless I had been.
My partner did not want it to scar, and absolutely hated the idea that I might be permanently marked by something as random as that flower stencil, at a time we hadn't agreed upon, by a person we didn't know. But no amount of aloe or vitamin E could stop a scar from forming, so I've still got that flower on my back.
I taught a workshop on the violet wand a couple months ago and showed that scar as a cautionary tale. But then I had my partner demonstrate the violet wand on me for the edification of the class and that craving returned at once and my ridiculous pain tolerance kicked in. The attachment that terrifies me at home became a fun toy, and despite my efforts to rein the craving in, I still wound up covered with those thin lines of scabs, my torso burned and aching. It is better than it used to be—I've learned to negotiate, and I do try to keep myself safe and avoid playing with strangers. On the other hand, the violet wand activates a special, reckless, wild need in me, and I'm sure that wasn't the last time I'll go overboard while in the grip of its allure.
If you look closely at the right side of my lower back, you'll find a faint scar in the shape of a stylized flower. My partner hates it, because it represents a night when my cravings got out of control. I feel like I should hate it, but honestly if I had it all to do over, I might very well do the same. That was undoubtedly one of the most erotic nights of my life. I know I was being stupid, but I'm not exactly sorry it happened.
There's a club night I go to where there are sometimes demonstrations of kinky things. On this particular occasion, I walked in and saw a demo going on in a roped-off area near the bar. A woman in a pink latex nurse's outfit was using a violet wand on a shirtless man in leather pants, and I just about skipped over there in my excitement.
I love violet wands. I tried one for the first time at that very club, and I'll never forget the thrill and mystery of that moment. For those who don't know, a violet wand is a device that can apply low current, high voltage stimulation to the skin. It takes various attachments, and the sensations it produces can range from a light tickle to mind-erasing pain.
The first time I saw one in action, everyone at the club was decked out in neon and glow sticks, and black light glanced off people's shoulders as they danced. Behind a velvet curtain, a thin woman with punky hair and multiple facial piercings wielded attachments that pulsed with weird colors. I got in line to try one and discovered I got along with the brand of pain the wand administered. It burned in a way that made me feel tough and sexy. I could take it better than I expected to be able to. Once she started running that device up and down my arms, I would have done just about anything she'd asked. I would have stayed in that booth all night if she'd let me. As it was, the next morning, thin lines of scabs covered my arms from shoulder to wrist and cris-crossed my chest.
My brain pretty much turns off when a violet wand is in use. All I want is more, and all my nice knowledge of best practices for BDSM basically dematerializes. I have no idea what that woman's name was or where she'd come from. We had no safeword, no aftercare in place, no game plan of any kind. My partner was out of town, and I told myself I wasn't making out with her so it was fine, but Jesus being hurt like that is probably a bigger deal for me than any sort of making out could ever be. Even as it was happening, I knew I could spin it to a tale of technical devotion, but that in my heart I was being unfaithful.
But that isn't actually the night I'm trying to talk about. I'm just trying to explain the craving with an anecdote that probably doesn't make sense to anyone who doesn't already understand the craving. This, to me, touches on one of the central mysteries of BDSM. What is it about pain that makes me crave it? As a brief aside, here's one of the best passages I've written on the subject (this is from a story that's supposed to come out in a Cleis anthology at some point):
She pressed a sweet kiss to my cheek, and that's when I knew I was in trouble. Sweetness, for D, was useful as a weapon of contrast. My body tensed, anticipating pain, and, inside my panties, my cunt twitched and squeezed tight. I'd never understood why genuine anxiety did that to me, but until I learned how to use seemingly negative sensations for pleasure I'd always felt as if my clit were buried beneath a layer of cotton. Every touch seemed dull and distant unless pain and fear first stripped me bare.
So, given that, understand that the violet wand is the best device I've found for delivering just the type of pain and fear I need to activate my ability to feel. I now own one, but before I did, it was also a rare and expensive device that I encountered only rarely. Maybe that helps explain why I rushed over to that latex-clad "nurse" on the night in question.
I had my partner with me, as well as a friend, but everything melted away except for that nurse and that device. "Do you guys mind?" My friend assured me she did not. My partner followed me as I headed for the nurse.
Talking to the nurse, I discovered she and her compatriots had the violet wand turned up high enough for branding. The marks they would leave weren't supposed to be permanent, but they could be, and they were supposed to last at least a month.
From my current relatively sane perspective, I can easily summon the questions I should have asked and the hesitations I should have had. Again, I didn't bother to get the nurse's name. I didn't ask for any details about what she was doing or what sort of safety measures might be in place. I only asked two questions: Would she do that to me, too? When?
The answers were yes, and right then. I picked a flower stencil for the brand at random and pulled off my shirt. My partner stood in the demo area, holding onto me while the nurse approached me with the violet wand set to searing.
At home, I often surprise my partner with how skittish I can be. My pain tolerance isn't so great when I don't have an audience, and I'm as likely to fight as to submit. But when people are watching, that just adds fuel to the flames of my craving for pain. My pain tolerance becomes terrifyingly, dangerously high so long as other people are there to witness me getting hurt.
I've learned this now, and I try to make provisions for the way I'm going to lose my head if I'm playing where people can watch. At the time of my encounter with the nurse, however, I was living with a pent-up craving for pain that I'd built to the point of explosion during an eight-year relationship with a partner who wasn't okay with BDSM, and I was unleashing it wildly. I hadn't learned my limits, and I thought reading erotica had prepared me for how to be safe, but it hadn't really.
So I stood there, too aroused to care about any sort of safety, and when the nurse touched me with the violet wand, I saw white light and came while bracing myself against my partner's arms. I have never felt pain like that before or since. She giggled maniacally, which probably wasn't a good sign but turned me on even more. I knew this was too much pain, and that I was probably doing something I shouldn't, but I loved that, too. I treasure the memory of every second of her drawing that flower. Endorphins coursed through me. I could barely stand, but I had reached that elusive place where pain and pleasure become one, intensifying and perfecting each other.
She told me the wound looked so pretty, and I wanted to follow her like a puppy dog. I wanted to be hurt like that some more, possibly forever. But I went off and danced with my partner and my friend, and it was only in the morning that I looked at the wound and saw how serious it was and felt ashamed of how reckless I had been.
My partner did not want it to scar, and absolutely hated the idea that I might be permanently marked by something as random as that flower stencil, at a time we hadn't agreed upon, by a person we didn't know. But no amount of aloe or vitamin E could stop a scar from forming, so I've still got that flower on my back.
I taught a workshop on the violet wand a couple months ago and showed that scar as a cautionary tale. But then I had my partner demonstrate the violet wand on me for the edification of the class and that craving returned at once and my ridiculous pain tolerance kicked in. The attachment that terrifies me at home became a fun toy, and despite my efforts to rein the craving in, I still wound up covered with those thin lines of scabs, my torso burned and aching. It is better than it used to be—I've learned to negotiate, and I do try to keep myself safe and avoid playing with strangers. On the other hand, the violet wand activates a special, reckless, wild need in me, and I'm sure that wasn't the last time I'll go overboard while in the grip of its allure.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Inappropriate Masochism
By Kim Dare.
Masochism - I suppose the same could be said of any form of writing for publication, but what I’m talking about is specifically those writers who write for publication and then make their lives far more difficult and painful than they need to.
I have nothing against a little bit of masochism at the right time and in the right place – but while seeking publication is probably not the best time to indulge in it.
Rejection hurts in a very nasty way – and it doesn’t matter if it’s from a publisher or a reviewer. Reviewers are tricky – you can’t please all the people all the time, it’s easy to get glowing and scathing reviews for the same book.
But why invite more rejection from publishers than is absolutely necessary?
I’ve been writing for what feels like forever, but I’ve only been writing with a serious intent to publish for about sixteen months (it was a New Years resolution for 2008 to be exact). So, I’m no expert on anything, but I suppose what I’m advocating is somewhere in the middle of what everyone else has been saying.
I’m not saying you should write to the market as such – mostly because I’m very bad at it. My characters tend to do whatever they hell they want no matter what I’d been planning for them.
Trying to force those characters to do one thing when they obviously want to do something else is painful for me – and not in a fun way. So I don’t stress myself out over making sure they do something the market will approve of. If they do something my current publisher won’t accept – then I’ll look for somewhere else to send them. I’d rather do that than compromise the project or the characters.
But that brings me to the other side of the story – what I do believe in, is submitting each project to the right market. As Jude said – know the guidelines and follow them. And send the story to the place that is most likely to accept it. Then, if you get a letter back saying it’s rejected because it’s too X or there’s not enough Y in it, next time you send them something – try to send them something with less X or more Y.
Meanwhile try to find a publisher who likes more X than Y in their stories, who’ll be more likely to accept your previous story. Don’t keep hitting the same publisher over the head with what they don’t want – you’ll be the one who ends up with a headache!
I tend to work with all sorts of different story ideas milling around in my head and on my to-do lists at the same time. (I assume that most writers are the same.)
If there’s one of those story ideas that has a better chance of being accepted by a certain publisher or for a certain call than another story idea, I think its common sense send off the one they are more likely to accept and keep the other one for another day and another publisher.
There’s no reason to invite rejection by making getting published any harder than it has to be. I don’t think I’m advocating writing for the market as such – but maybe I’m saying that it sometimes makes sense to concentrate on those story ideas that are more acceptable to the market you’re aiming for at the moment?
As for myself?
I’ve had one or two stories that haven’t been accepted into the projects I first had planned for them, but so far everything I’ve submitted for publication has found its rightful home somewhere.
I don’t know, maybe I’m just lucky in that I happen to be writing the kind of stories that the publishers I’ve chosen to submit to are accepting at the moment. Maybe that will change - Markets fluctuate after all.
I like kink, romance and happy endings, and that’s what I write. If the demand for BDSM erotic romance dries up, I’ll be in trouble. I may have to re-think and make a few painful realisations about my chances for continued publication.
But until then, I’m keeping the masochism strictly for play time!
Kim Dare.
Kink, love and a happy ending. Do you Dare?
Masochism - I suppose the same could be said of any form of writing for publication, but what I’m talking about is specifically those writers who write for publication and then make their lives far more difficult and painful than they need to.
I have nothing against a little bit of masochism at the right time and in the right place – but while seeking publication is probably not the best time to indulge in it.
Rejection hurts in a very nasty way – and it doesn’t matter if it’s from a publisher or a reviewer. Reviewers are tricky – you can’t please all the people all the time, it’s easy to get glowing and scathing reviews for the same book.
But why invite more rejection from publishers than is absolutely necessary?
I’ve been writing for what feels like forever, but I’ve only been writing with a serious intent to publish for about sixteen months (it was a New Years resolution for 2008 to be exact). So, I’m no expert on anything, but I suppose what I’m advocating is somewhere in the middle of what everyone else has been saying.
I’m not saying you should write to the market as such – mostly because I’m very bad at it. My characters tend to do whatever they hell they want no matter what I’d been planning for them.
Trying to force those characters to do one thing when they obviously want to do something else is painful for me – and not in a fun way. So I don’t stress myself out over making sure they do something the market will approve of. If they do something my current publisher won’t accept – then I’ll look for somewhere else to send them. I’d rather do that than compromise the project or the characters.
But that brings me to the other side of the story – what I do believe in, is submitting each project to the right market. As Jude said – know the guidelines and follow them. And send the story to the place that is most likely to accept it. Then, if you get a letter back saying it’s rejected because it’s too X or there’s not enough Y in it, next time you send them something – try to send them something with less X or more Y.
Meanwhile try to find a publisher who likes more X than Y in their stories, who’ll be more likely to accept your previous story. Don’t keep hitting the same publisher over the head with what they don’t want – you’ll be the one who ends up with a headache!
I tend to work with all sorts of different story ideas milling around in my head and on my to-do lists at the same time. (I assume that most writers are the same.)
If there’s one of those story ideas that has a better chance of being accepted by a certain publisher or for a certain call than another story idea, I think its common sense send off the one they are more likely to accept and keep the other one for another day and another publisher.
There’s no reason to invite rejection by making getting published any harder than it has to be. I don’t think I’m advocating writing for the market as such – but maybe I’m saying that it sometimes makes sense to concentrate on those story ideas that are more acceptable to the market you’re aiming for at the moment?
As for myself?
I’ve had one or two stories that haven’t been accepted into the projects I first had planned for them, but so far everything I’ve submitted for publication has found its rightful home somewhere.
I don’t know, maybe I’m just lucky in that I happen to be writing the kind of stories that the publishers I’ve chosen to submit to are accepting at the moment. Maybe that will change - Markets fluctuate after all.
I like kink, romance and happy endings, and that’s what I write. If the demand for BDSM erotic romance dries up, I’ll be in trouble. I may have to re-think and make a few painful realisations about my chances for continued publication.
But until then, I’m keeping the masochism strictly for play time!
Kim Dare.
Kink, love and a happy ending. Do you Dare?
Friday, March 6, 2009
Monogamous Vanilla Housewife Seeks Nice Guy Husband For Lifetime Commitment and BDSM
By Helen E. H. Madden
By the time you read this, I will be in lovely Las Vegas, at EPICon 2009, a convention for e-publishers and e-published authors. I'm looking forward to a lovely long weekend there. The convention has arranged for a book signing for all the erotica and erotic romance authors at the Erotica Heritage Museum, and I can't wait to participate in that! It's not so much the book signing that has me psyched, although that is pretty nice, but the chance for adult conversation on adult topics... like the subject of today's blog post.I'm sure we've all heard the old adage, write what you know. I've also heard the modified form, write what you can research. When it comes to writing BDSM, I must confesst I live by the later rule. I have no experience with BDSM, either as domme or sub. My darling husband and I must be the most vanilla couple on the block, with most of my wicked adventures confined to the written page. That's not to say I haven't tried some aspects of BDSM with the man I love. However, I found being tied up more boring than arousing, and the one spanking I got earned my love a sharply cocked eyebrow that clearly stated, "Excuse me? Have you forgotten I am a second degree black belt?"
Of course, the Hubster is also a second degree black belt, which makes for an interesting marriage.Many people who know us assume there is some sort of D/s dynamic going on in our relationship, and not just because we beat the crap out of each other at the dojo on occasion. But the BDSM those people are thinking about is along the more traditional lines of "nice-guy husband" married to "harridan-fishwife." (I don't know why people think I'm so bossy and demanding!) I suppose we only reinforce that image by mixing up gender roles all the time. I cook, but he buys the groceries. I run off to Vegas for a wild time with my friends, and he stays home to take care of the kids. Yes, I'm an independent modern woman. I might be a stay-at-home mom, but I'm a free range stay at home mom which means I can tell my man to take care of the kids because baby, I've got to get out of town.
But still, many of folks would be surprised to learn how dependent I am on my darling husband. For instance, I cannot mow the lawn, pay the bills, fill out the taxes, or even change the water in our humidifiers. Well, I suppose I could, but I've never had to perform any of those tasks thanks to the archangel who is my husband. Similarly, he has no idea how to handle the laundry, help our oldest get her homework done, bully the local moms into participating in school events, or do the thousand other little chores I handle on a day to day basis. He needs me to make sure dinner gets on the table and the kids survive school. I need him to make sure the money keeps flowing and the house doesn't fall down around our heads.So it is a balance of power, an exchange of power even. I gave up a hell of a lot of power when I decided to quit my J-O-B and stay home to figure out exactly what the hell I was going to do with my life. And then I gave up even more when I had children and decided to slip into the role of housewife and mom. But the Hubster has also given up quite a bit by taking on the role of primary bread-winner (no more carefree spending for him!) and becoming a dad (one who changes poopie diapers, I might add). He caters to my needs as Queen of the Roost, while I acknowledge that is Da Man Of Da House.
This leads me to believe that anyone who can understand the intricacies of a relationship - the power exchange, the give and take between two (or more) people who know how to make it work for years and year - anyone who can understand that, can understand what goes on in a BDSM relationship. In fact, I'd say a successful relationship of any flavor, including vanilla, is a BDSM relationship. Don't believe me? I'll can spell it out for you right here:- Bondage - you're bound to each other, through thick and thin.
- Discipline - it takes a lot of it to stick to that aforementioned bond, but when you've been married 15 years, you know you've got what it takes.
- Sadism - you're willing to inflict yourself, with all your faults and sins, on your partner, knowing they'll still love you the next day.
- Masochism - you're also willing to accept that your partner is going to inflict themselves on you in return.
- Dominance - You know when you need to take the upper hand and make decisions ("No dear, I said we're ordering pizza tonight because the cook is tired and the kitchen is close!).
- Submission - You know when you need to step back and let your partner lead ("Yes, you're buying, so I will order your favorit - pepperoni and black olives - even though I hate olives and will pick them all off").
See? So I'm vanilla, but I know what goes on in my marriage, and I can extrapolate from there to write a scorching BDSM scene when needed. And anybody who says I'm wrong about all this? Well excuse me, but have you forgotten I am a second degree black belt?
That's right. Don't argue with me.
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