Secret Confessions of a Smart Girl

In celebration of the fact that I finished the first round of edits on the book, and in defiance of stress about my dog and having had to cancel my other weekend plans, I have been spending the last few days being virulently social. I have been making an effort to meet some of the people I’ve been half-heartedly (or whole-heartedly) chatting with from various personal ad sites. In the process, I have been hoping to acquire The Elusive Snogging, but have been happily (or unhappily) settling for adventures in nice weather and conversation if nothing else.

On top of my largely unsuccessful venture to Paddles on Friday night, I have also managed to meet up with, or schedule meetings with, several Persons of Interest*. Last night was the first one (three?) of those.

I feel like I should start off by saying that I’d largely stopped trying to date people from personal ad sites because of actually being mutually attracted to someone, even if they were relatively inaccessible given the vicissitudes of scheduling. It’s much harder for me to look for someone to be excited about when I’m already excited about one or more someones. But I’ve been feeling not only sexually but emotionally frustrated lately. I really like said someone, but they’re not terribly communicative at the best of times and since, realistically speaking, nothing may ever happen despite the mutual attraction there’s no reason I should close my eyes to possibility. So the ridiculous levels of hormones in the air combined with the smell of spring in my pants** have led me to jumping on every opportunity that I see for connection. ***

Even before the book edits were done I had scheduled a date with POI I shall call A. He is someone I have been exchanging somewhat long e-mails with for some time now, and I haven’t managed to scare him off. I find this somewhat surprising since A. has a somewhat conservative field, and is older than I am, but he seems amused and intrigued by what he knows of my wayward ways. A. has been becoming more interesting the more I speak to him… primarily by managing to both be intelligent and to continually defy my expectations. We are meeting for the first time on Wednesday. I don’t expect this meeting to contain The Elusive Snogging, but you never know. He has surprised me plenty of times already, and we haven’t even met.

Last night, however, I was still feeling frisky and so I dug up the e-mail of POI from the same vanilla site on which I met A. We will call this POI D. D. had seemed relatively interesting on paper, but our e-mails had petered out over time. Still, we had several things in common and he looked physically attractive enough that, if nothing else, I thought I might want to throw myself at him for at least a little good night snog. So, on extremely short notice, we decided to meet.

Saying that it was a disaster would be exaggerating things. It wasn’t a disaster. He was actually substantially more attractive in person than he had been in photographs. He was nice. He was polite. He was by no means stupid. He walked at a good speed. We had absolutely nothing to talk about. The more I tried to engage him in conversation the more I sensed an enormous gulf looming between us waiting for me to dive in and put us both out of our misery. Eventually I did… along with half of a sacrificial cupcake. After he walked me back to my car, I gave him a hug good night, and immediately placed a phone call to B. and C.

B. and C. are a poly-kinky couple who I hadn’t met, but who, digitally at least, seemed like people I was really going to like. B. in particular, I had chatted to quite a bit via e-mail and seemed like a lovely person and although I had barely had a chance to talk to C. she seemed quite nifty as well. I thought that since I was done with my date hours earlier than I had planned on going home that it would be worth giving them a call to see if they might be free to hang out on absolutely no notice at all. I didn’t really expect them to be available, but upon learning that I had just escaped from the perils of Bad Datedom - and that I was only 7 blocks from their apartment (I had no idea where they lived, it just turned out that way) - they graciously agreed to meet me for coffee****.

Coffee totally made up for the utterly uninspiring date of earlier in the evening. B. & C. are just as delightful as I expected them to be from e-mail and we were all goofy and ridiculous and I had a fabulous time. It was like hanging out with people I’d known for ages - no giant conversational gulfs and lots of Comedic Moments. I came home all bubbling with good cheer, excesses of caffeine, and three days worth of sugar. Snogging be damned*****, sometimes it’s just nice to make a connection and have fun, even if I did lose control of my verbal filter several times over the course of the evening *head smack*.

So the final diagnosis for the weekend so far is: one date planned, one date executed with supreme ambivalence, one un-date achieved with great joy and burbling, and one new manic flirtation engaged in, starting about an hour ago, that might end up leading to another date in short order. Which, when it comes down to it, pretty much adds up to virulently social.

Hmm… maybe one side effect of this social disease will turn out to be a bit of manhandling. You never know. It could happen. My prescription for myself is “don’t get your hopes up” but also “don’t look for a cure.”

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*I like saying it this way. It makes me feel like a sexy spy lady.

**Does something seem backwards in this sentence?

***This is also partially my own damn fault for writing the song that is stuck in my head and then feeling like I have to live up to the lyrics: “Live each day, and never waste a chance to shine a chance to soar. Walk through every open door, and try and try once more”

****Which given that they were having a date night was REALLY nice of them.

*****Not that I’d object to snogging either one of them. Cute, smart, geeky, ridiculous… I’d have to be a different kind of crazy to object to that!

When people ask me how I prefer to play, I normally answer that I’m primarily a submissive/bottom/masochist. The key word there is primarily, because I do occasionally switch. The difference, as I mentioned in the previous post, is that for me topping requires a relatively high of sexual attraction to someone. The kind of attraction where I want to fist my hand in their hair and take anything I want from them. Therefore, most of the time, in the rare instances I top, I end up topping women. Or, alternatively, if I’m dating/sleeping with someone who is at all switchy, things tend to devolve into something of a kinky free-for-all in bed. I push them around for a while, then they overpower me and push me around for a while… and so on and so forth until everyone is sweaty and exhausted. If you don’t end up with bruises and sore muscles after sex, I think you’re probably doing something wrong. Either that or you’re in really good shape.

Still, there is the occasional submissive man…

The mechanisms of what attract me to a person are somewhat mysterious to me. I mean, I have a type (highly verbal), but the basic chemistry of desire remains inexplicable. I know plenty of submissive men who are extremely attractive, smart, and fun who I have no real interest in getting my hands or teeth on except in a friendly, affectionate way*. But every once in a while there is one who has the gravitational pull of a star.

There’s this one submissive man in the group of people I hang around with who every time I see I want to get my hands on. I can’t explain it. Something about him just makes me want to shove my hand into his hair and my teeth into his shoulder. It’s not that he’s cute, although he’s very cute, men of similar appearance have done nothing for me in the past. It’s not that he’s nice, although he is. It’s that he has some air about him that just makes you want to do terrible, wonderful things to him. He’s magnetic in a way that wakes up the small toppish part of my soul and makes her want to come out and play. He’s… inspiring.

Still, people like that, and the moods to take advantage of them, come along so rarely that I don’t really consider dominant/top to be a significant part of my sexual identity. Part of that is because even when I feel that way, even when I’m enjoying being on top and in charge, there’s usually a little voice inside of me hoping that, after a while, they’ll fight back and I’ll end up on the bottom again.

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*I bite people because I like them. I even chew on my vanilla friends, when they let me, in an entirely non-sexual manner. I just never grew out of the stage of wanting to put the things I like into my mouth. And some parts on some people, like MayMay’s erector spinae… are damn near irresistible. Tasty tasty back muscles. I claim thee in the name of my teeth!

I often find myself predisposed to dislike men - particularly men in the scene. No, that’s wrong. Particularly heterosexual men in the scene.

When I go out to BDSM spaces, the women may check me out (which is only fair, because god knows I’m checking them out) but, most of the time, if they start up a conversation with me it is not based on the presumption that they’re going to be successful hitting on me. Hell, the vast majority of the time they start up conversations, or I do, we’re simply attempting to be friendly.

The same can not be said for the straight men. The vast majority of the time when they lock on to me as a target, they seem to be basing their entire approach on the assumption that I will be playing with them by the end of the conversation. What they say is pro-forma. Who I am is irrelevant. The conversation is simply a necessary, and apparently uninteresting, step in the process of attempting to get my clothes off. When they’re dominant they assume that they know more than I do, that they’ve been in the scene longer than I have, and that I’m going to feel honored and privileged just to have a speck of their attention*. When they’re submissive, they’re so focused on getting their agendas met that they fail to listen when I let them know, subtly or forthrightly, that I’m not dominant. Or, more annoyingly, they fail to understand why I don’t want service from them (licking my boots, walking on them, etc.) when it doesn’t require any effort on my part. After all, according to them, all I have to do is stand there.

It makes going to predominantly heterosexual scene spaces extraordinarily aggravating. Especially when walking stereotypes make me roll my eyes so hard that I get a headache**. It also, as I mentioned in the first paragraph, predisposes me to dislike any man who I end up talking to at one of these spaces. Still, I try to get around that. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt.

When I got to Paddles last night, I realized that I wasn’t really in the mood to pick up strangers. I was in the mood to be social and possibly play if I ended up chatting with someone nice or if I saw doing a particularly interesting scene. Sadly, no one was really playing much, which left the second option out***. So I ended up talking to people. The first dominant man who approached me did so when I was trying to watch a scene and persisted in hitting on me for about 20 minutes despite my subtle and overt statements of disinterest. I wanted to smack him, but restrained myself and simply said no repeatedly until I realized he wasn’t going to let me watch the scene in peace and excused myself to walk away. The second dominant man actually used humor to approach me! Humor is good! I wasn’t interested, but we had a very nice conversation and he managed to repeatedly hit on me without it being annoying. Mostly, I think, because he actually listened to my responses to his questions and never seemed to assume I was going to say yes. He was being friendly as much, if not more, than he was actively in pursuit.

I was lying in bed with someone I had successfully thrown myself at**** a few months ago, after having a really enjoyable scene with him, and we were discussing the fact that this seemed to be the secret to a mutual friend’s success with women. He keeps making outrageous sexual invitations to women with absolutely no expectation that they’ll agree to them and then is thrilled beyond belief when, every once in a while, someone says yes. It works well for him, but it takes a bit of finesse to pull it off. Most people are better off with the tried and true method of starting a conversation, listening to the person they’re conversing with to discover if they have anything in common, offering a non-threatening statement that they’d be interested in playing at some point in the future, and then leaving the ball in their partner’s court. That’s what I normally do when I approach someone who I would be interested in playing with at a club , and I have a reasonable success rate.

All things considered, I probably would have said yes to a caning from the second man if I hadn’t been primarily in a “sex” mood rather than a “S/M” mood (it would have been nice if I’d realized that before going out!). What I was really jonesing after was an opportunity for some kinky snogging with a cute boy/girl, preferably including biting, hair-pulling, violence, and pain. Hell, I might have even been convinced to be somewhat toppy about it had options been available, since what I really wanted (thanks Axe, you were so helpful :P) was to get my mouth on someone or to get their teeth on me, and sometimes if you can’t get what you want you can at least give what you want to someone else and get the vicarious thrill.

Still, despite the fact that I left the club just as sexually frustrated when I went in, I’m actually very glad I went. Why? Mostly because one of the women I ended up talking to turned out to be someone I’ve known online for more than 10 years and never really expected to meet. We’d been talking for about 20-30 minutes when we realized that we actually knew each other and it was exciting to finally be able to catch up in person. Also, to be fair, because I had a lot of other lovely conversations with people (both men and women) that didn’t involve anyone trying to hit on anyone, just kink related chatting in an open friendly space.

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*All of this is usually incorrect. 1) When I first got into the scene I went to a lot of educational seminars and I’m a professional sex educator. 2) I look a lot younger than I am and I’ve been in the scene a lot longer than they think. 3) No. I’m picky. And besides, I think we should mutually feel honored and privileged to have each other’s attention or why are we bothering? Plus, for all that’s holy, do not assume every young woman you meet is submissive or that masochism and submission are the same!!!! I may be submissive, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to be submissive to you. Even if I want to bottom to you. “Do you get punished at home a lot?” Jesus Christ, who asks a person that? So. Not. My. Paradigm.

**How exactly do so many older, not particularly interesting, men end up with Hot Young Things? I have no problem with older men, and there are lots of them I’d happily play with (and a few of them I’d happily rip my clothes off and jump into bed with), but I just do not understand how these men, who from all appearances aren’t particularly interesting tops or conversational partners, end up with the barely legal, incredibly hot chicks. It wouldn’t bother me so much if I ever saw the genders reversed, but, just like in the movies, it’s almost always “hot young girl/uninspiring older man.” Why is it never “hot young man/uninspiring older woman”? There are a couple of luscious 22 year old boys who I would quite enjoy having do unspeakiable things to me.

***One of the aforementioned dull/shiny couples played a couple of times. He’d pull her skirt up to show off her absolutely lovely, seemingly underaged, ass. She’d bend over. He’d hit her with an incredibly loud flogger hoping to draw a crowd. She’d stand there not reacting at all. If a crowd showed up he’d continue hitting her with other loud implements while she stood there unresponsive. Eventually his arm would get tired, she’d bow her head prettily into his shoulder and they’d walk away. If a crowd didn’t form he’d move her to another location looking for an audience. BOOOOORING. I don’t top much, but when I do what turns me on about it is the reaction, even if the reaction is someone gritting their teeth trying to be stoic - To quote Victor, I am a reaction junkie. No reaction? No interest. Watching this was like watching a guy step out of his Hummer and look around to see which onlookers are jealous of his big shiny environmentally destructive machine. Only, in this case, the Hummer was a very pretty girl who managed not to be attractive in the least. Kind of like a Hummer only, presumably, cheaper.

****Totally worth it, but man was that a lot of work. You think you’re hitting on someone clearly, and then you blog about it and discover that you weren’t, and then you STILL want to hit on them, but don’t want to scare them off so you have to exercise restraint (which you suck at)… which leads to your attempting to to bite back your inexplicable enthusiasm while still being utterly clear about your desire to get their hands on you and your mouth on them. Exhausting! Hitting on people is hard! You’d think you’d be able to just bite them and that that would convince them to have their way with you, but you’d be wrong.

It would seem unfair to blame Axe for my sexual frustration, since although he seems like a sweetie he’s utterly not my type, but, to be perfectly honest, it is ENTIRELY his fault that I started trolling the craigslist casual encounters ads, and so he’s getting the blame*.

The ad that did me in got to me because I have a dirty little not-so-secret. I have a major case of raging hormones for Sinclair. I have since the first time we met, when I was so absorbed in my conversation with Eileen that it’s amazing I noticed anyone else at all. Still, Sinclair’s kind of hard to miss**. And this ad… while it wasn’t anywhere near as well written as what is on Sugarbutch, it was written by a dominant butch woman who likes submissive girls with glasses and the scenario described was not inconsistent with the incredibly hot stories I’ve read on the site and…

I’m incredibly horny, had to cancel weekend plans that would have potentially led to some quality naked time with a very sexy woman, and have no shame! Yes, I’m pathetic. I know. You can all shut up. Still, I’m not going to answer it. I never do with these ads. No matter how perfectly they speak to my fantasies or desires, I remain extraordinarily leery about picking someone up on craigslist for casual sex. It’s only been somewhat recently that I’ve grown even slightly comfortable having casual sex with people I know! Which is a shame. I just have to be so phenomenally attracted to someone to want to sleep with them that I don’t end up getting laid all that often. And although I’m much less particular about SM play than I am about sex, lately I’ve been busier than six overstimulated kittens***… and so I haven’t been getting beaten all that often either.

Maybe I’ll see if the date who had to cancel last night wants to get together this evening. It seems unlikely, but you never know. Even if she could, it would probably just end up being a coffee date, but one can hope for snogging… or maybe a little biting… or possibly frantic groping in the front seat of the…

Who am I kidding. I sense that it’s either going to be a “stay at home with some freshly baked dark chocolate biscuits” or “go to Paddles and hope that I bump into someone I want to play with before the creepy guys scare me out of the building” evening. I’m not really sure which. Normally to get me out to Paddles it would take either a) a women’s party or b) knowing that friends would be there, but with the kind of mood I’m in at the moment the lure of chocolate and a possibly futile search for beatings are just about equal.

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*Sure, I was jonesing for sex before I read his post. Sure, I’d just woken up from a frustratingly abbreviated sex dream. I’ve never let honesty prevent me from passing the blame before, so why should I start now?

**And I will freely admit that I immediately went home and blog-stalked my hormones into their current fire-y state. That sexy AND a top. A queer, kinky bottom’s wet dream.

***Where the hell do these metaphors come from?

Because my weekend plans just crashed and burned*, I just stopped my massive push to complete my manuscript edits by the end of the day in favor of taking a bath. After all, if I have an extra three days to get the work done I should be able to take an hour out to attempt to convert my muscles from knotted steel to spaghetti-like goo.

I don’t take baths all that often. I don’t really know why. They always feel so incredibly decadent to me while I’m lying in my coconut scented bubbles, letting the heat soak into my skin. I think part of that is the nudity. I’m not a casual nudist around the house**, and wandering about naked before, during, and after the bath tends to feel very sensual, or even downright sexual.

I like my body better without clothing than I do with. I may not be the skinniest person on the planet, not by far, but I’m strong and fit and when I’m naked I can see the curves and hollows that my hard work has won me***. I like my two current tattoos, and I like thinking of the next few I’m planning and picturing how their designs will adorn my skin. My body is far from perfect, but when it’s all out there, exposed to the air and light, I’m generally relatively pleased with what I see.

The other thing about bathing is that it brings out my imaginary exhibitionist streak. Throughout my life I’ve always had exhibitionist fantasies. Many of my early masturbatory fantasies were enhanced by my pretending that someone had hidden a camera in the light fixture or the shower. It used to turn me on enormously to imagine someone watching me and telling me what to do****. I never really got past that. It’s rare that I can make it out of the bathtub without hiding my face from the imaginary camera let alone with what little remains of my virtue intact.

So that was my shameless self indulgence for the day. After nearly 36 hours straight of doing nothing but researching depressing statistics on rape for the book I’m revising, it was a lovely break. I’m tempted to follow it up by some private musing on rape fantasies, just to further balance everything out. It would be good to get those out of my system before I start working on the facts again.

*And I had so been looking forward to having people beat the crap out of me this weekend! Sadly, sick pet needs to take priority. The one silver lining? Not having to deal with the 5+ hour drive on one of the heaviest travel weekends of the year… when the main freeway is under construction. Still, no beatings is terribly disappointing. I’ll have to see if I can manage to at least shake up a local date for some making out and biting.

**Self preservation. It’s bad enough when the dog gets a hankering to lick between my toes. Cold nose on the back of a kneecap? *shudder*

*** I can also catalog the bruises. My weekly exercise in group masochism left me, this time, with a solid green left inner thigh and a giant black spot on the back of my right knee. There are also several inexplicable bruises on my calves that I’m going to blame on attack shrubbery. I have an epidemic of attack shrubbery. I swear to gods that someday soon I will walk the neighborhood with pruning shears and an evil grin.

****Used to? Who am I kidding. Anyway… Part of this is an inherent enjoyment of being subjugated to someone else’s will “Do this. Show me that” and part of it is just pure bliss at the thought of being able to turn off my brain for a while and let someone else make the decisions.

Earlier today the extremely inebriated Eileen, posted an alcohol-inspired paean to MayMay in which she made the comment…

Fuck all the shit that says I shouldn’t want, that says I have distance and control.

To which I say “Fuck all that shit, indeed.” It’s the bloody gender stereotype again. You know the one. The one that says that men want and women deny. The one that says that the sexuality of submissive men needs to be controlled through chastity, where as the sexuality of submissive female needs to be drawn out through forced orgasm. The one that says that dominant men are so full of lust that they are in need of an infinite number of holes to fill while dominant women are supposed to be cool, distant, and reserved. It’s all a load of crap.

You would think people who pride themselves on being sexual outlaws would get past the stereotypes. Men do not, inherently, have higher sex drives than women. Although sex drive, to an extent, is linked to levels of testosterone in the body, both men and women have a wide range of testosterone levels and a wide range of interest in sex. I know women who want sex constantly, who can’t get enough, whose sex drives consistently overwhelm the ability and interest of their partners, and I know men who could quite honestly take it or leave it. Saying that a person is male or female, dominant or submissive, tells you no more about their sex drive than saying they are blonde or brunette. This paradigm, this somewhat monolithic notion of sexuality that places the burden of desire on men and leaves women as nothing more than gatekeepers to forbidden lands is nothing more than a destructive relic of a society where women had to control access to sexuality because the potential consequences to their bodies and lives are the most severe. Given a firm smack with the cudgel of reason, it’s entire foundation would collapse.

Perhaps on the bell curve of sexual desire men do, in general, tend to fall more to the right than women, but in any given pairing of individuals no such assumption can safely be made. Why should dominant women be burdened with the shackles of distance if, for them, passion and intensity is the hallmark of what they enjoy about control? Why should submissive women be hampered by the expectation that their sexual desire has to be forced to the surface instead of freely given?

Forced orgasms, excesses of sexual use, to be taken over and over until I can barely move… these things are fantasies. You want to torment me? Don’t let me touch you. Don’t let me kiss you or give you pleasure. Turn me on by the sheer virtue of your presence and then walk away and leave me unfulfilled. That’s what I call torment. I’m not submissive because I don’t want sex. I’m submissive because what turns me on is giving you what you want - even if it doesn’t get me what I’d prefer.

So fuck all that shit. No one should look askance at a dominant woman simply for wanting. Hell, if her submissive is agreeable, they should envy her for being in a position to take.

Almost having a really hot sex dream, and being thwarted at every turn by the version of your mother that lives in your subconscious. Seriously, dream sex is an utterly guilt free joy and if I’m not getting any in real life then I should be at least be able to get some virtually without a parent who I haven’t lived with in MORE THAN FIFTEEN YEARS getting in the way!!!! It’s very frustrating.

I wish I were less picky, but no matter how much I would like to be having more sex, there are startlingly few people out there who I actually would want to have said more sex with… and the vast majority of them either live waaaaaay too far away, are uninterested, or both. Alas! And I have had absolutely no interest in hitting up my ex- for IM sex, even though he’s pinged me a couple of times late at night in a way that I suspect was his version of a virtual booty call. I don’t want words right now. I want skin, and heat, and violence. I want bruises and to be overwhelmed to the point that my brain starts to spin. I want all of the little voices in my head to turn off for a few hours and not have to form any sound more consequential than a gasp, no word more substantive than a senseless scream. I want to abjure responsibility in favor of thoughtless, wanton abandon.

But I’m not going to get it so instead of fantasizing about it, I think I’ll go get some work done. Then maybe, if I’m inspired, I’ll come back and expand on my comments on Eileen’s accidentally idea-inducing post. The bitch is profound even when she’s drunk off her ass. No wonder I’m crazy about her.

I’m sorry but, in my opinion, sometimes the victim is a little bit at fault. Rape is never right. Rape is never justified. However, when people put themselves into really stupid situations and don’t get up and leave the first three times the person they’re with fails to listen to a “no,” it’s hard to not think that the actual assault could have been avoided. Not that she’s calling it assault.

Sorry. Let me back up a little bit…

Once, not so long ago, on a kink advice board that is on the outskirts of a large social networking community in the center of the electronic city we know as the Internet, there lived a young person of indeterminate gender. This young person, who will henceforth be known as The Idiot, posted a situation so infuriating that it was difficult not to reach through the computer and shake her (I’m sorry. I’m assuming it’s a her since she seemed un-empowered in a typically very female way) for being an idiot and then hunt down the asshole who effectively assaulted her, punch his lights out, and then tattoo on his forehead “Avoid me. I am an asshole who does not know the meaning of the word ‘no.’”

Anyway, the story goes something like this:

The Idiot goes to meet “her Master*” in person for the first time. He gets stuck in traffic and is coming into town late so he asks her to meet him and his (male) friend at a hotel** that is sufficiently distant from her house that she is going to have difficulty getting back home safely given the inclement weather. They talk for a little while, they snuggle, and he says she should stay overnight because the weather is awful. She agrees, and then he says he wants to watch a pornographic film with her and the friend. She doesn’t particularly want to, but doesn’t say anything because “her Master” knows that she doesn’t want to do anything sexual***.

At this point, “her Master” starts jerking off and asks her to take off her top. She refuses. He asks her to get naked for him and his friend. She refuses. Each time she refuses, “her Master” cajoles her with statements like “don’t you want to be a good little girl for me.”**** Eventually, he and his friend strip and start jerking off, and then he asks her to give him a hand job. She keeps saying no, but gives in and does it after he forces her hand down onto his penis*****. After his orgasm, he asks her to give his friend a blowjob. She says no repeatedly and, after a period of cajoling that includes actual threats like “you wouldn’t like it if my friend had to punish you,” he stops trying to force the issue and gives up. The Idiot falls asleep on the floor and waits until morning to go home.

This ENTIRE time, the Idiot is worried that she is “being disrespectful” to “her Master” by saying no to him, despite having told him in advance that she wanted no sexual contact with him. She continues to call the asshole “her Master” throughout the situation and stays after the incident because she wants to spend more time with “her Master.” The next day she tries to talk it over with “her Master” and he doesn’t see that anything he did was wrong. Which brings us to the post. She has written to ask our advice because she wants to know if she is over reacting and should have just done anything “her Master” asked her to do. And then she asks the question that made me want to shake her the most…

“Isn’t it my Master’s job to make a safe word or even discuss having one? Especially if he wants something sexual?”

No.

Idiot, and all you other naive, young things out there, it is not your “Master’s” job to give you a safeword. It is not your “Master’s” job to know that sex is a big deal for you. It is YOUR job to say “I don’t want to do anything sexual” and “I would feel safer playing with a safeword” and to spell out what you will and won’t do with someone - particularly if you’re incapable of saying “no” when a scene is in progress. More importantly, it’s your responsibility TO YOURSELF to not allow someone to have power over you who doesn’t respect you and your limits. Your submission is a valuable gift. If some asshole doesn’t appreciate it and tries to take advantage of you then he’s not worthy of your time and you should walk, or run, away. If you’re not capable of walking away? Don’t put yourself in the situation in the first place.

A lot of people refer to BDSM as “graduate level” sex, because there are some basic skills it requires to practice it safely. One of those skills, for a submissive, is the ability to say what you are and aren’t willing to do and not let someone take advantage of you. Another one of those skills is not putting yourself into dangerous situations unless you are both willing to accept the risks and know what those risks are. Oh look. I seem to be having a theme this week. It shouldn’t take that much experience to realize that there are a lot of idiots and assholes out there on the Internet. Still, given a modicum of common sense, it’s reasonably easy to stay safe if you’re on one side of a monitor and they’re on the other. If you can’t figure how to translate that reasonable level of safety into real life … well, then you might be better off avoiding real life like the plague.******

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*Really? Just from conversations on the Internet? I’m fine with text based D/s, but calling someone “your Master” who you’ve never even met seems a little foolhardy. I don’t think you can really establish the requisite trust online. And, oh look!, her experience is backing up that belief!

**Stupid mistake number 1: the first time you meet someone from the Internet, you should always meet in a public location where other people are around to help you if something goes wrong. Meeting two strange men in a hotel room on the far side of nowhere? That’s just dumb.

***Stupid mistake number 2: if you’re with someone who wants to start watching porn with you and you don’t want to do anything sexual, it’s probably worth reminding them of that fact even if you don’t ask them not to watch the video. Hell, if you’re with someone who wants to do something that makes you uncomfortable, even if it’s just walking around without pants on, it might be at least worth mentioning it to them. Some people are uncomfortable around pantsless people of the opposite gender. Some people associate being pantsless with sex and question random casual pantslessness. It’s worth considering this fact before you go pantsless around random acquaintances. This actually came up over the weekend.

****Stupid mistake number 3 & 4: the first time someone tries to cajole you into doing something, particularly something sexual, that you do not want to do, you should walk away. Anyone who doesn’t respect a “no” isn’t someone you want to trust in a scene… or a cheap hotel room. And, if you think the first situation was a fluke, the second time the person tries to pull that crap should send you running for the door.

*****Bing! And we have sexual assault.

******Mind you, I think The Idiot probably would have gotten an F in High School Sex as well. “her Master” could just as easily have been replaced with “her Boyfriend who she had never met before but Really Wanted To Like Her after all their Amazing Talks on the Internet”

Does it make me judgmental that I recently decided never to play with someone again solely because I read on my RSS reader that they did something I think of as so intrinsically unsafe that I no longer trust their judgment? Does it make any difference that both parties in question enjoyed it and I would never negotiate that sort of scene? If so, then I’m judgmental, and I’m fine with it.

People are welcome to do what they want. But I have a bit of a bug up my butt about balancing “danger” with “hot.” Everyone has different levels of acceptable risk, but I am utterly incapable of respecting someone who fails to acknowledge that their choices are extremely dangerous just because they’re a turn on. For example, I do knife play. Sometimes with sharp knives. A knife to my throat makes me so hot it’s actually a little embarrassing. It makes me really happy. Still, no matter how much I like it, I’m going to be pretty darn certain that someone knows what they’re doing before I let them put that knife to my throat and I accept that there’s still an inherent danger there. It’s hard to cut someone’s throat by accident, but it’s not impossible. It’s an acceptable risk for me at some times with some people, because the act as intended - putting a knife to my throat to scare me or hold me still - is not inherently life threatening. It’s only dangerous if something goes wrong, and most of the time what goes wrong with knife play isn’t going to lead to permanent damage. Still, if something does go wrong, I know what I was getting into and made an informed decision to do it.

The thing that set off this post, on the other hand, is inherently dangerous. It is, in fact, a relatively effective way of killing someone. Lots of people do this thing, and most of them don’t die… but a non-trivial number of people do. Every year. To read about someone doing it casually without prior negotiation gave me a moment of understanding for why some vanilla people think that kinky people are dangerous deviants in need of professional help. Still, it’s not just the inherent danger of the act that bothered me so much. It was the fact that the person who engaged in it seemed to be blithely seeking it out with no regard for the fact that it could easily be lethal and with no concern about the possible skill of hir partner, or lack there of, in not only doing the thing correctly but dealing with the potential consequences. And, more importantly, that hir partner was willing to do said thing with someone who seems so clearly ignorant of the potential consequences of the act.

It doesn’t really matter what the thing in question is. It’s a hard limit for me, but it’s not for a lot of people I know and and even for a reasonable number of people I respect. Most of them, when they talk about the thing, acknowledge that doing it is walking along an edge. The thing is this - if you’re going to do something that’s clearly dangerous go into it with open eyes. If you have a reasonable idea of the level of risk you’re going to be taking and make a conscious decision to take it, then more power to you. It’s all about informed consent. If you’re not informed, you shouldn’t be consenting. Oh, and if you’re not absolutely certain that the person you’re playing with understands the risks of what you you’re going to ask them to do then you should damn well either be able to explain them or not ask in the first place. Because one or both of you may end up needing to live with the consequences.

Far too many people in the world, not just in the scene, make choices without acknowledging their potential risks. Even more take risks without taking responsibility for the possible consequences of their actions. I find that unacceptable - if you’re going to engage in ANY activity you should acknowledge what could reasonably go wrong, and then make a decision as to whether that risk is acceptable. Maybe I’m a little too cautious, in fact I probably am, but it doesn’t stop me from taking risks. It just means that if something that I’ve consented to goes wrong, I know that I put myself into the situation and take responsibility for it. Like last night when my hand slipped in circus class and I almost fell out of the silks in a very precarious way. It was scary, but had I been injured I would have dealt with it and moved on (Ok. I would have whined, because it would have hurt, but while whining I would have admitted that I knew what I was getting into and accepted pain and injury as a possible consequence.)

As I said earlier, this is something that I have a huge bug up my butt about. For all I know, I could be totally misreading the context of the event and the people in question could have made an informed decision to partake in this activity, in which case it’s just an unfortunate accident of writing style that has made me so aggravated. Still, I’d had some misgivings about this play partner’s decisions in the past and while I had limited our style of play to things where those misgivings were largely irrelevant, I think that after reading the scene description in question I’ll be much happier if in the future we only interact as friends. We each make our choices, and I would never try to convince the person in question that their choices were wrong. Moreover, I am in no way trying to imply that playing with me is such a prize that I think someone should change their behaviors to do it. I’m just saying that, for me, certain decisions make me not want to play with people. Just like certain of my decisions make people not want to play with me.

For me, being a responsible bottom means not saying yes to anything I’m not willing to accept the possible consequences of. For example, it means that when I stunt bottom for novice tops I accept the possibility of strikes in danger zones, because I know how to handle mistakes and know that I’ll be able to stop the scene if something gets problematic. However, I have to trust that, since I have made the choice not to negotiate my scenes in detail, that the tops I play with aren’t going to try doing anything they’re not reasonably and justifiably confident is safe (i.e. unlikely to cause long term damage) without first asking me if I’m willing to take the risk. And, since trust only goes so far, more importantly I have to know that I will remain capable enough to question something’s safety and tell my top to stop if I’M not sure. (Hence my belief that any bottom who goes so deeply into headspace that they become too non-communicative to safeword is incredibly irresponsible if they don’t negotiate their scenes in detail in advance. I’m a hardass, but part of the reason that I feel safe being a lazy negotiator is that I don’t go so deeply into headspace that if I have a problem I can’t come out enough to say stop.) The flip side to that, to me, is that a responsible top doesn’t ask people to consent to things unless a) they know the implications of what they’re asking for and b)they’re reasonably certain the bottom can make an informed decision about it. What’s an example of that? I think it would be irresponsible to top a piercing scene without at least a reasonable understanding of bloodborne infections and an ability to explain why the skin needs to be clean before a piercing even if the top is wearing gloves.

Oh, and no I won’t say who I’m talking about, what I’m talking about, or even whether or not the post in question belonged to someone on my blog roll. For all any of you will ever know, my hard limit could be people who use popsicles for insertion play and the play partner in question could be someone I only see once every 3 years.

Some random man just sent me an e-mail containing naked pictures and a truly badly written tale that claims to be a true description of his raunchy adventures.

For the record:

1. I am not all that fond of random naked pictures - particularly random naked pictures of men.
2. While I actually am very fond of good erotic writing, it has to be both well written and well edited. Bad grammar and more than a minimal number of trivial typos will turn me off completely. Everyone makes mistakes, god knows I do, but when you make the same mistake three times it just shows you don’t know that I’m* should be capitalized and have an apostrophe.
3. If you’re hoping to get into my pants by sending me e-mail, it had better be a damn good e-mail. It’s far from an impossible task, good writing skills are an enormous turn on for me, but… it had better be a damn good e-mail.

*I’m is italicized because it’s a word used as a word. The rather uninformative statement “italicize words used as words” is in all the various style guides I use for work. Every time I see the rule it makes me giggle; however, I almost never have a chance to follow it’s eye-roll inducing instruction .