Secret Confessions of a Smart Girl

I like pain.

I like pain when it hurts, and I like pain when it somehow transmutes into something else.

I had 2.5 impact scenes this weekend. The first, with J. and V. was a goofy indulgence. Canes, floggers, knives, teeth, and bad jokes. Things hurt, and it was fun. Later that night, I tried to have a second scene with P. that also involved impact. Things hurt, and it wasn’t fun at all. I could take it, but I wasn’t enjoying it at all. It’s amazing how much of a difference headspace makes.

Playing with J was a planned exercise in ridiculousness. We met for the first time 15 minutes before he started beating me, but we’d spent two weeks making terrible jokes at each other and mentioning buttons. V was a last minute inclusion, but one that was fine with me. We’ve known each other for 10 years and although playing had never come up before, a good time was had by all. The half scene with P. that followed was something else entirely. We had negotiated that we were going to play, but I had assumed that we were going to play in the same way we had before, which was one of the best impromptu scenes I have ever had. P, on the other hand, was more interested in either beating me or doing forced orgasm play. So, when we started playing I was a combination of disappointed and uncomfortable (I don’t generally do sexual play with people I’m not involved with), and I just couldn’t take the pain. It wasn’t any worse than it had been an hour earlier, it just wasn’t doable. In a way, I found it quite interesting. Context makes such an enormous difference in the processing of sensation.

The second full impact scene of the weekend happened the next day. It was a caning scene, and I very quickly reached the point where pain transmuted into an almost sexual pleasure. I don’t really understand the mechanics of that transition. I know the types of scenes in which it is most likely to happen (canes and singletails), but I don’t understand why sometimes a sensation hurts and other times the exact same stimulus is just arousing. It doesn’t, necessarily, have anything to do with the person I’m playing with. It doesn’t require a submissive headspace. It’s just there sometimes, and absent others. I wish I could call it. After the scene was over I spent several hours reveling in the fact that every time I shifted my weight waves of painful pleasure swept through my brain.

I wish I could figure out how it works. One thing that I find interesting, in my brain, is that when a D/s dynamic is present I’m far less likely to process pain as pleasure. Enjoying pain, in that context, is usually about taking it because my dominant partner wants me to. It seems like having the pain feel good (unless it was intended to) would be a kind of cheating, and so my brain is less likely to perform the sensational transmutation. On the other hand, in the context of sex, the infliction of pain is almost always going to turn me on more, whether or not it feels ‘good.’ So clearly, there is at least some relatively high-level control of how the process of pain perception works, I just don’t know if it’s possible to modify it intentionally.

I like thinking about the science of sex (or scene). I like watching how it works for other people. Which brings me to the other thing I wanted to talk about after this weekend… rediscovering my inner switch.

When I first entered the scene, 12 years or so ago, I identified as a switch. A switch who preferred to bottom, yes, but a switch. Over time, however, I began to identify more and more firmly as a submissive, smart ass masochist, and bottom. I stopped topping entirely. The exception being that I tended to occasionally be rather… forceful in bed. I like to bite. I like to pull hair. I like to take control in order to get a reaction. (I like when that reaction is to turn the tables and hold me down and hurt me, but that’s a separate issue). I finally learned a good word for that a few months ago, “reaction junkie.” That’s the switch for my switch. I like to get a good reaction. Switching, for me, also requires some level of sexual attraction. I can bottom to anyone, but if I’m going to put my hands or teeth (or knives) on someone, it’s going to be because I want to turn them on. I don’t think I would top anyone I didn’t want to kiss. In fact, I generally only get all toppish on people who I really want to fuck. And that “toppishness” generally takes the form of intimate pain. I want to put my mouth on them, my nails, or my knives. I want to play with arousal and denial. I want to make them writhe.

I don’t think I’m going to rewrite my internal labels or anything, but it’s nice to acknowledge publicly that that side of myself does occasionally like to come out and play. Or, more accurately, that that side of myself likes to konk attractive people over the head with a stick and drag them off to a private corner for some ravishment.