avoiding dread and weariness

I commented to Joscelin last night that, if I were the submissive partner, I think I might feel a lot of low-level dread and weariness towards the idea of future scenes.  That is a bit how I felt after agreeing to have the scene with Good Dom at Thunder (the scene I sort of stood him up for).  I’m not certain that this is how I’d feel if I were actually submissive to someone – I didn’t feel it during our switch weekend at all – but I can see how it might be.

The way I said it – something like “If I were in your place I’d feel [dread and weariness]” – sounded like I was saying he ought to feel that way, or that I wanted him to.  I sometime say similar things, like, “If I were you I’d be scared of me,” and I mean them in a sexy way like that.

So he said, “What do you mean?  You’re talking about bad fear.”

And we cleared that up.  But then he mentioned that he doesn’t know whether I actually don’t want him to feel that bad fear or not.  We’ve never actually talked about that.

I think that the basic answer has to be no.  I don’t see how he can regularly approach our scenes with dread, bad fear, and weariness without it becoming destructive over time.  It seems like he’d either be increasingly traumatized or the whole thing would eventually lose its appeal entirely.   If that fear is not honored it will grow worse.  (It also doesn’t sound like fun, but neither does agonizing pain, and god knows I like him to feel that.)

He’s not in this relationship out of altruism.  And I’m not willing to cause him psychological harm.

I can imagine that if we were supposed to have a scene and he felt bad fear, it would be hard for him to tell me about it.  He would be afraid that I would change my plans because of it, and then he’d be controlling me, or thwarting me with his own…weakness?  And it’s not as though we can assess ourselves completely, look at some dial and say, “Yep, this is bad fear.”  It’s always a mix, isn’t it?  Does just not being in the mood count?  And in our case, since so much of our play is around forcing and coercion, it’s extra hard to distinguish between “good trapped” and “bad trapped.”

But he simply has to give me this information, and trust me to act on it, and trust in our mutual knowledge that I really should act on it.

As I lay in bed last night, I daydreamed about such a situation.  I imagined having him lie with me in the bed, spooning him from behind, holding him tight.  I (separately) imagined him kneeling in front of me for the conversation.  I imagined thinking of ways to make sure the scene was not something hard for him to handle.  I imagined being careful to seduce him into it rather than just expecting him to go with it.  I imagined reassuring him that he deserved all of the above.

So that’s what I think about that.

I admit I am a bit worried that his response to this will be, “Um, but that’s how I feel all the time.”  At which point, I guess we will just have to figure out where to go from there.

combine blogs?

Jos suggested the other day that we might combine blogs. In this way, his occasional posts would get as many readers as my more frequent ones.

My feelings are mixed only in that I feel a bit territorial about this space.

What do you guys think? Would you like to see Jos’s posts here?

a common conversation

This is a bit in the hot d/s category and a bit in the relationship status category.  We have this conversation a lot.

Jos: Please don’t ever let me go.

Me: I am never letting you go.  I am never, ever letting you go.

or…

Me: I want to keep you as my slave forever.  Please, can I keep you forever?

Jos: Yes.

These happen during intense moments, around scenes, or during or after sex.  But they are not disavowed at other times.  I really do want to keep this boy forever, and I believe he shares my hope that it will work out that way.

my double standard

I already mentioned two of the workshops I went to at Thunder – Rita Seagrave’s on designing assignments for submissives, and Laura Antoniou’s on the regular and irregular maintenance needed to make a relationship work.  These workshops had something in common that I really value: neither of them pushed an autocratic view of dominance.

Rita was clear in her class that what she calls “assignments” are different from what I’d call “tasks” in that they are sort of meant to be enriching, a learning experience between the partners.  They aren’t about “get this done or else.”  Some are designed to give the submissive partner opportunities they otherwise might lack, like expressing wishes or fantasies.

Laura and Kim (her daddy), meanwhile, were keen to stress that both partners need nurturing and cherishing in the relationship.  It is not a thing where doms shouldn’t get it because they are supposed to be tough and not need anything, or where subs shouldn’t get it because they live to serve.  And stuff that doesn’t work doesn’t work, regardless of the d/s dynamic.

One of their fun observations was that submissives will learn exactly what you want to be called and call you that, even if it’s a ridiculous title like Supreme Goddess Overlady of the Night or whatever, while some dominants don’t think they have to bother, and will just call all submissives “little one” or “good girl” without any regard for what the particular partner’s actual trigger words are.  (You know, like “good girl” will make some people shiver all over with happiness and contentment, and send others right out the door.)

By contrast with those two classes, I pretty much hate when people (especially doms) speak from a very authoritarian perspective.  That kind of talk makes me bristle all over.  The presumptuousness.  The self-seriousness.  The unearned placing of oneself above others.  Yuck.

Yet obviously my own relationship has some of those elements, and from the inside, I think that stuff can be very hot and satisfying.  And I write about it here despite my misgivings.

I think the reason it rankles me to hear other tops talk that way is that I can’t see inside their relationships, down to where it’s not only consensual, but sends a delicious shiver down the submissive partner’s spine.  I can’t see the part where it’s about what’s hot and good for the people actually involved, rather than being just some stupid system someone wants to impose on a whole class.

So if I say something like “Jos is required to kneel to hand me something” or “I’ll punish him if he doesn’t finish this task,” I hope that you hear, or can tell, that these are things that we both find satisfying – things he seeks from me.  They are not things I think I just magically deserve from the universe.  They are not things I think all couples, or all femdom couples, or all femdom couples who live near mountains and write blogs, should practice.  I think every couple should do whatever is hot and satisfying for them.  But for us, it’s this hot fucking d/s shit.

And I’m sure some people would find my writing hotter if I didn’t seem apologetic and confused all the time, if I wrote as though I just own that slave, god damn it, and that’s how it is.  But I save that stuff for Joscelin, pretty much.  I’m not that interested in enacting it for an audience.

the hottest thing

Sometimes it is the small moments that really blow me away.

At the conference this weekend, in our room late Saturday night, after the play party, I wanted to try out the clover clamps on Jos.  I’d tried them on him at the vendor’s, but we hadn’t really played with them, of course.

He was lying naked on his back on our hotel room bed.  His nipples were sore already.

Clover clamps are nice.  They have pads with a slight give, so they don’t pull off easily.  They’re easy to squeeze open.  They’re very…firm.

I put them on him.

He just lay there very still, trying to take the pain.  Breathing long, deliberate, shaky breaths through his teeth.  I could see pain in his eyes, and I just watched him.  I just watched him process that pain.  He told me later that only his trust in me let him take it.

It made me ache with arousal.

back from Thunder

Yep, we’re back.  We went, we saw things, we did things, and in the end, we lived to tell the tale.

OK, it wasn’t that dramatic.  But here are some dribs and drabs.

The first night there, I saw this woman who was very cute, with super short hair, and nice casual clothes.  There was just something I really liked about her look.  The next day I saw her and her boyfriend (?) again, and as she was walking by, I said, “I want to meet you!”  And she told me that she reads my blog, so that was very serendipitous and fun.  I wish we’d have gotten to talk more (we talked a bit on the other days, especially today), but we were both kind of shy or something.  But it was very cool to meet an actual reader of my blog.

Jos was a demo bottom in Rita Seagrave’s class about giving assignments to submissives, which came about because Rita has read my blog (at least now and then).  That was fun.  She is almost freakishly cute in every way – physically, personality, attitude, everything.  I even liked her in heels and a corset, and that’s a rarity for me.  (I have kind of an anti-fetish for high heels.)  And I got to watch her get single tailed in two different classes (by Boymeat, in both her class and his, for quite different purposes).

Laura Antoniou (one of the other presenters) is smart, funny, and so New York.  I could listen to her all day except she’d probably call me an asshole and kick me out after a while.  But I need to remember what a fantastic presenter she is for next year.  We went to both of her workshops – one about relationship maintenance and one about taboo fantasies.

Laura Antoniou’s Daddy, Kim Attica, is amazingly hot to me.  I want her whole look for myself, but they’d pretty much have to design a whole reality show around me in order to make it happen.  But she kind of helped me answer the question, “If I were going to have some style, what kind of style would it be?”

I slightly screwed over the guy I call “Good Dom,” who I hadn’t seen since last Thunder, when we had a scene where he topped me for the first time.  Anyway, this year I propositioned him for a scene, then backed out for Friday night because I was too tired (after which I ended up having a scene with JOs anyway), and then kind of stood him up Saturday night because we took a 3-hour nap and came to the play party late and the one time I saw him walk by I didn’t get his attention.  I was really enjoying chilling out and maintaining my sense of physical safety and, damn, I guess I just don’t often feel like bottoming even though it sounds like a fun thing ahead of time.  So I felt slightly bad about that.

Friday night, Jos and I were in the dungeon during the play party and we got incredibly headspacy together, not really doing anything, just with his leash on and looking into each other’s eyes and kissing.  It was unreal how intense it got.  For our actual scene, I locked him in a cage, tortured his nipples, and beat his palm (which I chained to the bars at the top, so that his hand was outside the cage) with a small cane.  I was very tired, so I purposely made the scene pretty easy for myself – not elaborate, and not requiring much cleanup (he kept his clothes on except for his shoes and shirt).  But it was very hot and we had some good sex afterwards in the room before going to bed way too late.

Saturday night we got up late from our nap and spent the evening in the dungeon just sitting on two chairs kind of in the middle, talking, and watching people go by.  He hurt my feelings at one point and I cried a little, but for the most part we just had a really nice sweet time.  Afterwards, in the hotel room, I tried out the new toys I had bought (clover clamps, another kind of nipple clamps, and a small double leather strap that is loud relative to its painfulness), which amounted to a scene, and then I made him fuck me for a long time and I didn’t let him come.  Thesis stress has been so hectic lately that I haven’t dared to seriously deny him orgasm, so it was very, very nice to play with that.

The hotel was sort of subpar – Jos said it reminded him of the movie Brazil.  It actually looked really nice and elegant, and the playspace was huge, but a lot of little things were wrong.  They let us get the breakfast buffet even though they were out of things and had no intention of bringing more (because of the lateness of the hour).  Some of our towels were not clean.  Our room was extremely damp (which is bizarre because Denver is quite dry).  The convention area where the dungeon and some of the classes were was freakishly far away from the main lobby, down a series of corridors clearly designed to repel an invading army.  Stuff like that.  Last year’s hotel had a smaller playspace, and smaller conference rooms for the classes, but it was beautiful, well-run, and the compactness let you see and experience more things.  The comfortable chairs in the lobby were way more proximate to the goings on, for instance.

Overall, I’d say we had a pretty fantastic time.

and then sometimes…

…I get search requests that are just completely wrong:

domme seattle forced feminization heels

America’s Next Top Model

I just finished watching Season 1 of America’s Next Top Model which is, for those who live under a rock (or in another country, perhaps), a modeling competition reality show, pretty much like it sounds. I discovered a couple of weeks ago that I really enjoy watching this, so I got the first season from Netflix and devoured it.

It’s surprising that I would like it. I’ve never been interested in clothes or makeup. I wasn’t one of those girls, even in high school, who looked at the fashion parts of the magazines. I have almost no interest in femininity, period – I hate it politically, have never wanted to be it (even before I was old enough to have politics), and am much more attracted to butch or androgynous women.

I need to state, for the record, that I don’t think modeling, or being beautiful, or sexy, etc., is legitimately empowering for women. I think the “power” to captivate, charm, and attract men is just the same old bullshit fake power the patriarchy’s been selling us, well, forever. My response to that crap is about the same as Twisty’s over at I Blame the Patriarchy.

That being said, I did have some interesting observations while watching the show.  One of the first things I noticed was that pretty much all of the “best” (saith the judges) photographs of the contestants featured some variant what Jos and I would call “dom eyes.”  I don’t want to confuse this with the more commonly seen “bitchy face” that women often seem to have in some ads.  I’m talking about eyes that look through you like they own you.

But what struck me most, overall, in watching the show, is that one the main skills in winning – in being a model, I suppose – is being fearless about using your body, your face, your eyes, and your movement to create an effect.  (And almost always, the effect is one of confidence and power.)  Of course, all of the women in the competition are beautiful by the usual standards, but because they all have that, it’s really not the defining factor.  It’s being able to use it impactfully, which requires (at a minimum) fearlessness.  (How can you develop skill if you’re afraid to try?)

And this is something I run into all the time in dominating Joscelin.  I have to be willing to use my voice, my ability to craft words, my eyes, and my body to make him feel a certain way.  I have to not worry or think (much) about whether I’m acting like an idiot, or like something I’m not.  I have to put myself out there.

Maybe this is not a noticeably big deal for other people, because maybe other people do this pretty naturally.  But I don’t, so it was very salient to me on the show.

I’m getting the hang of it over time.  I have a fearless mode I never used to have.  And that’s kind of awesome.

how I see myself

I was thinking about this the other day while commenting elsewhere, this question of how I see myself.  And I’ve known for a while now that there is a conflict between how I see myself and how Joscelin sees me.  And something about this conflict makes it hard for me to understand or conceptualize his attraction to me.

It’s not even about body image.  I have only the normal amount of fucked-upness around that, and it doesn’t usually get in my way.

It’s more something about age.

See, I think I view myself as basically a kid.  I expect other people to see me as a kid (not a child, but a young person, you know), and kind of make allowances for my age, and, if they like me, kind of find me cute and precocious.  (The way I’ve put this is a bit of an overstatement, but I’m trying to magnify it so we can see it at all.)

It’s like if you ask how I like to dress.  Do I dress up femme?  (No.)  Am I a butch?  (Occasionally, but not convincingly.)  Do I have my own style?  (Not really.)  I do prefer some clothes to others, but mostly what I prefer is more comfortable, and that’s about it.  Oh, and I like primary colors.  And stuff that is kind of cute.  I like Crocs.  (Go ahead and kill me.  I know.)

So, uh, yeah.  I basically dress like a kid, at least when it’s up to me.

Now, here’s the thing.  I’m 9 years older than Jos.  To him I’m not a kid at all – more like an old lady.  (Kidding, but, yeah.  A bit, maybe.)  And I feel that in relation to him.  When we talk about opinions that his parents have, and I tell him what I think, I don’t feel like it’s us on one side and his parents on the other – I feel like I’m competing against them.  I tend to think of him as being kind of a kid, because I have this messed-up relationship to age, where “peer” is defined really narrowly and you see everyone else as either older and wiser, or a kid.

And what I can’t really understand is how a person can be attracted to me, romantically, while seeing me as older (or perhaps even as a peer).  This isn’t a rationally held position, but just a feeling.

And being the dom just adds another layer of bigger to the existing layer of older, which are all kinds of the same thing.  I think of partners as seeing me as small, cute, malleable, and young, and this boy, who is madly in love with me, sees me as…what?  I don’t really even know.  Perhaps as I am, but I don’t know what that means through someone else’s eyes.

I’m getting older.  I’m 33 now.  There is an ever-shrinking age range of people who might see me as youthful.  I’m curious what, if anything, will cause my inner sense of myself to catch up with my actual age, or whether it will happen naturally over time, or what.  It’s kind of an odd thing to watch inside yourself.

a year on

Friday, Jos and I will go to Thunder in the Mountains, our local bdsm conference.  We have hotel reservations, so we’ll check in then and stay until Sunday.  We had a great time last year, and I anticipate it being great again.

But, wow, what a difference a year makes.

I remember last year one of the workshops I went to was Gloria Brame’s – I forget the exact title but it was about, basically, carving one’s identity as a femdom.  (Part of the title was “Femdommes doing it for themselves.”)  It was a great talk, but if a similar one were offered this year, I probably wouldn’t go.  I don’t need that workshop anymore.

Last year at this time, I had no idea what I was doing.  I really didn’t even have a conceptual framework for what I was doing.  I mean, don’t get me wrong – I had plenty of concepts around the S&M part of what we do.  We were having some great scenes.  But the d/s part?  Not a fucking clue.

It was around Thunder last year that I found Bitchy Jones.  I can’t remember if it was right before or right after, but I was amazed that there was a different way of thinking about submissive men available to me – one where they were strong (and not just despite being submissive).  I was working really hard on integrating all of the information and ideas available to me.

I expect (demand) to keep learning, growing, and changing in this relationship.  We haven’t done everything there is for us to do together, or felt everything we can feel.  But it’s nice to be going to Thunder in a much more confident state, feeling like I have a clue.

What a great year it’s been.