For me, submission is fundamentally a personal experience. I am, by orientation, a submissive female, but I am not submissive to the world. I choose to submit, when I do, to those people who do not see my submission as diminishing me. I am not less than anyone, because I am submissive. I am not weaker, less intelligent, or someone who can be pushed around. I am a strong, submissive woman who occaisionally chooses to give her power, her body, and her control to others… but I pick who they are.

I’m not certain how I would function in a protocol dominated space. Although I love submitting to my partner, and I love the delicious formality of the occasional bits of protocol that we choose to use, I feel no interest or willingness to extend that interaction to others. I am happy to be polite to everyone, but I will not moderate that politeness based on roles that have no relation to me. I can see the appeal of a high protocol evening with my partner, but can’t imagine how it would function in a group. I can’t picture how it could manage to be inoffensive without becoming silly.

For example, a dinner party with directed service by submissives to their partners sounds lovely and elegant, but I don’t think it’s practical. A table of five being served by five seems quite unwieldy. Again, I can picture it as a service “scene” for two to three couples or a small group of people who are comfortable with each other (Our submissives will be serving the group as we direct and within these limits) but not as a party experience.

As for a more general play party with a D/s theme, I just can’t imagine how it would work. I don’t think that most parties are inimical to personal protocol, and so either the play party would be pretty standard or it would seem to need some collection of formal rules. The first is innocuous, but the second seems like it would end up stepping on a lot of peoples toes. What rules would it actually be safe to make without worrying about offending people or affecting their feelings of autonomy? D/s relationships are unique and personal. There is no universal common ground.

When it comes down to it though, I think my biggest problem with the idea of a High Protocol party is that I don’t like the thought of people making assumptions about me just because a) I am submissive and b) I currently submit to a man. The assumptions those two conditions together inspire are often not only inaccurate but offensive to me, and I can’t get past my belief that any situation designed to encourage a group protocol might encourage those assumptions being made… while putting me in a position where I would have difficulty addressing them.

Lately I seem to be surrounded by an epidemic* of heterosexual people who have decided they want to try being bisexual. In other words, although they are not particularly romantically attracted to individuals of the same sex, they think they might enjoy having sex with them. As it turns out, many of them do enjoy it enormously, but they’re still not particularly interested in same-sex romance… just same-sex nookie.

Although I’m fine with a little same-sex experimentation, and am all in favor of people trying to address any latent homophobia and expand their sexual boundaries, the truth is that this drives me a bit crazy. Why?

1. Because they think that’s what bisexuality is. People who are living bi-design tend to think that those of us who are actually bisexual are doing the same thing. They don’t understand that we want to, can, and do form romantic, emotional partnerships with people of either sex. They assume that we’re just like them and are primarily interested in romantic relationships with one gender but enjoy putting out with both.
2. Because they don’t say that’s what they’re doing. If you don’t think other bisexual people are interested in deeper emotional relationships, then there’s no reason to be explicitly clear that you’re bi-sexual but not particularly bi-romantic or bi-relationship oriented. Thus these people, quite often, do not make it clear to the people they’re interacting with - once, twice, or repeatedly - that they’re not really interested in anything other than friendship and/or sex. This can lead to fundamental miscommunications and fucked up expectations.
3. Because they’re giving bisexuals a bad name. The women who use other women as holdovers between men are one big reason why I have such a hard time finding lesbians who are actually willing to consider a relationship with someone who identifies as bisexual - i.e. me. I assume them men who do this cause similar problems for bi-boys, but there I cannot speak from experience.
4. Because it encourages people to think of sexual orientation as a choice, when for most of us it’s simply not. You just choose how to act on it.

I know a lot of lesbians who occasionally enjoy sex with men and don’t identify as bisexual because they’d never have a relationship with one - men aren’t what they want as partners. On the other hand, most of the (wo)men who I’d consider to be straight, but occaisionally enjoy sex with (wo)men, call themselves bi**.

What’s the divide? I suspect it’s that murmers of bisexuality could hamper your chances of getting laid among the lesbians but enhance it around the heterosexual crowd. Or possibly it’s that lesbians understand that many queer people think of avowed sexual orientation as also speaking to relationships, where heterosexuals - who have never needed to question how their relationships fit into society - think it’s primarily about who you like to fuck.

The problem is that, by and large, discussing these topics leads to varying levels of communication fail, because the labels we use are useless***. We assume that the meaning we ascribe to the words we use to describe our relationships and sexuality is the same as the meaning assigned by the person we are discussing them with… and we are very often wrong****.
–
_{*This has come up at least three times in the last month with different people, so if you think I’m talking about you… you’re wrong. Or, possibly, you’re right, but I’m not only talking about you.}

_{**I don’t actually know any gay men who occaisionally like to fuck women, but I assume they’re out there somewhere.}

_{***There isn’t one sexuality spectrum. At least three easily come to mind.}

1. Interest in sex - from asexual to hypersexual
2. Gender of who you like to have sex with - from heterosexual to homosexual (and I suspect there are branches off of this for people who are attracted to something that is not primarily gender based.)
3. Gender of who you like to have relationships with - also from heterosexual to homosexual with a possible orthogonal spectrum looking at innate relationship structure orientation from monogamous to polyamorous.

_{****To provide a BDSM-related example, the other night I was talking to someone about scene negotiations and he kept saying that the women he plays with won’t admit they want to do power exchange, but that they want all the elements and he finds that aggravating. Since we had negotiated a scene a while back and he was putting the same statement on me - when I had negotiated what I considered to be a very power-exchange-y scene with him, and never denied that aspect of it - we finally figured out is that we were talking about two different things. When we were thinking of power-exchange, I was talking about the emotional content of the scenes that I liked and wanted and he was talking about very specific language he wanted used. For him, it’s not power-exchange without that language. For me, power-exchange is about the dynamic and the things that go on during the scene. We had both thought that we were being perfect clear when, in truth, we were having completely different conversations. It was… enlightening.}

It is difficult, sometimes, to resolve this fantasy with my complete and utter obsession with safe sex, but I do what I can*.

In fact, I have concocted an elaborate party favor scenario that is so hot to me that it has become a regular source of masturbatory fantasies. It just will probably never happen because, among other reasons, I have trouble imagining it being equally hot to the anyone else**.

I am naked in a room, blindfolded with cuffs around my wrists and ankles, chained spread-eagled on a bed. Next to me, on a table, are a selection of toys for sensation and toys for sex - whips and canes, clamps and knives, and a whole pile of variously sized, shaped, and textured objects that could be used for penetration.

The rules would be as follows:

1. Anything on the table can be used to hurt me or please me, as long as it can be done safely.

2. My mouth and cunt may only be penetrated with the items on the table or with gloved fingers and hands. Other objects can be used to hurt me with the permission of the minder.

3. No drawing blood or leaving marks/alterations that could affect my appearance in normal clothes.

4. The minder can ask you to stop or leave at any time, and my safeword must be respected immediately.

In my fantasy, my eyes are blocked and I am overwhelmed by hands. They hurt and they tease while they explore my body as an object instead of a person. They use me as an idle distraction, pushing a cold piece of glass into my cunt and walking away, or making designs with clothespins on my skin and then leaving them there to ache. They cane my thighs until I am in agony, and then fuck me with the end of the rod - as a terrible, terrible tease.

The truth is, I want it to be about the sex. I want it to be about hands on my breasts and fingers teasing the line of my labia and threatening to dive in. I want to be given so much sexual attention that it morphs from pleasure to pain and back again. I want to be fucked when I do want it, when I don’t want it, and at every stage in between. I want to be begging for pain to distract from sex while secretly not knowing if I want the people to stop. I want to be begging to come and not allowed to do so or sent over the edge so many times that I honestly plead for it to stop.

I want to be gloriously and degradingly used, like the girls I used to read about in the stories I downloaded from alt.sex with headings like n/c and MMMMF. I want to be hurt and fucked until all I am is a vehicle for desire and pain. I want it to go on until I am so worn out that I can barely beg for it to stop… and I never want to know who touched me***.

I want to wonder who has such intimate knowledge of my body, but never quite be sure****.

–
_{*I recognize that it’s a bit sad that I have to have safe sex even in my fantasies, but they’re hotter if I can imagine them coming true, okay?}

_{**Although I certainly am an enormous fan of fucking girls, so you never really know.}

_{*** Okay. I’m actually not sure if that part is true or not.}

_{****But if it were, I would find it insanely hot to later read about it from their anonymous perspectives. Mmmm. Perspectives*****.}

_{*****And suddenly I think about the possibility of a post-gangbang support/review blog. “I found it was most satisfying to use her when someone was holding her feet up by her chest.” “Her cunt didn’t do much for me, but I had a lovely experience in her mouth.” “It was hot the way she cried while I was fucking her ass. You’d think it was her first time.” “I prefer bigger boobs, but it was fun to make her scream by slamming her cervix.” “Bring a friend, so that one of you can take her from each end.” “After the first three or four men, she whimpers beautifully every time someone new steps up to take her.” “I forgot my favorite lube, but she was very wet so it didn’t matter.” “I recommend being early in line so that you’re ready to take another go. Fucking her is a very different experience after five or six other men have had their turn.” Um. I think I need a drink.}

I am developing an understanding
Of why men
Love to fuck.

The appeal of slipping inside someone
Feeling them clasped warm and tight
Around your cock
Around your hand
Is overwhelming.
It can not be denied.

It is extremely hot
In the caverns of a woman
Extremely hot to enter them as well
The journey of working your body into her
Only adding to the thrill
Of the sensations you feel
As she slowly opens around you.

When in presence of a woman
Particularly a sensual, beautiful woman
Who I imagine, or know,
Will be warm and wet and waiting,
It is difficult to think about anything
Other than getting my fingers inside her
Feeling her slick and hot
Against my palm
And finding out how much of me she can hold.

Women make jokes
Snide remarks
Exchange knowing glances
About men who are obsessed with size
But now I finally understand why:
The more of myself I put inside her
The more I want to give.

I can fuck her for hours
Tease her with my fingers
Until she takes my whole hand
And then, with one fist
Trapped inside her
Start wishing I had more.

Running the fingers of my other hand
Across her clit
Down to the soft and slippery place
Where my wrist enters her body
I slowly slip one inside
And we both come.

Overwhelmed by the sensation
Of having both hands trapped
In our passion and her heat
I am grateful for coming to
A better understanding
Of the desires of men
And still more thankful that
As a woman,
I feel no need to stop.

–
I wrote the title, subtitle, and first stanza of this poem a few months ago but let it go fallow. Then, this morning, I decided that finishing it would be a nice way to spend my Valentine’s Day. It’s not perfect, but it’s getting there. It is, I think, at least solid enough to be seen.

The thing about cock sucking is that the power dynamics are obvious - except that they aren’t. I know people for whom sucking cock is an incredibly dominant activity. They take a man into their mouth, and they take him into their control. I know people for whom it is power-neutral, just another way to show affection or lust. For me, however, it’s usually a intensely submissive experience.

I like to be on my knees, my partner’s fist in my hair controlling my head as he fucks my face, giving me no time to breathe or swallow. There is a delicious sense of degradation to pleasuring someone so intensely that drool runs down your face and you are forced to embrace the lack of dignity if you want to go on. It’s insanely hot to have your mouth - the organ that transmits your words, speaks the speech that gives you power - treated as just another hole to fill and fuck.

I like to crawl on my hands and knees to my partner’s side and take the time to cherish him. I rub my cheek against the soft skin of his cock, like a cat claiming her human, and kiss him from head to toe. I think of worshiping his cock. It feels almost like a form of prayer to to relax and focus on slowly taking him as deeply into my throat as I can manage and hold him there. It becomes, at times, less about simply giving him physical pleasure and more about showing him how much I want to give.

I like to lie on my side, after my partner has come, and keep him in my mouth, inhaling the scent of his arousal as we both slowly begin to relax. Sometimes I imagine falling asleep that way*, content in my service and submission, before I release him with a sigh.

–
*_{A terrible idea in reality, but awfully nice to think about.}

They can sting like barbs or sit like lead weights upon the tongue - foul and heavy.

They can stick to the weakened places in your soul and burn like acid or lodge in the back of your throat like bile.

Words can hurt, and words can be too difficult to say.

Growing up, I had a hard time with my peers. I was too different, too smart, to unwilling to conform, and because of these things I suffered a lot of verbal abuse. I suspect that there are things that could be said to me in scene that I would find it difficult to forgive, because they would remind me too much of being powerless … and I am not powerless anymore. They have not come up, and I will not say them here, but everyone has their buttons that should not be pressed.

Other words, which I could take as demeaning, I instead use to empower my sexuality. “Slut” “Cunt” “Pervert” “Toy” are all terms that I take, at least in the right context, as endearment and encouragement. If I want to be someone’s whore, I can hardly take them calling me one as an insult. The things no one should say to me are not things I ever wish to be.

Then there are the other words, the words that people want to hear that you never thought would pass willingly from your lips. The words that roll your eyes, turn your stomach, and taste like knives in your imagination. The ones that come out as spit and venom in your stories and are inconceivable in your life. The ones you tell yourself you will never say, until the day they’re offered to you as a choice and you discover it’s one you actually want to make.

They’re still heavy, they still hurt to say, they still stick in your throat and make you gag, but suddenly it’s in a way that makes you heat with passion instead of anger. When you choke on them, and gasp for air, it’s more like having a cock down your throat than a finger, and the discomfort you feel in your head and chest is the kind that doesn’t make you go… it makes you come.

–
And, with that, I will climb off the hyperbole wagon and admit that it’s excruciatingly difficult to talk about the things that you’re not willing to say.

The mess was not the party’s fault. Not really. By and large it was a wonderful space filled with a group of people I adore doing fun things and having a great time. I did have some issues, but they were the same issues I always have and reflect more on my tendency to be a bit judgmental about sexual behavior* than on any fault of the party itself.

The problem was with me. I am an introvert even when at my most emotionally healthy, and I am so far from a state of optimum emotional health at the moment that it would take two full days of travel to get there on the Concord. I frequently get stuck in these maddening spirals of thought that swirl around so quickly that there is no way to escape, and when I am tired, depressed, or otherwise off, people quite literally get on my nerves. They make me angry and twitchy and upset simply by being physically near me. I can deal happily with small groups of friends in contained spaces, but if I am even the slightest bit off, which I have been most of the time as of late, surrounding me with flocks soon makes me overwhelmed. If I don’t have something I need to be doing, I simply can not cope.

So on the last night of the party, I fled. I made a valiant attempt to bring up my mood, get dressed in a sexy outfit, and go have fun, and lasted all of five minutes before needing to run away to my hotel room for a good cry. It was there that my MDP found me an hour or so later.

We’d had plans to play, and so he’d come down to find out if I thought I would be more in the mood to play right then or later (in which case he would go play with one of his other partners first.) “Not at all” was not an option (and that combination of considerate and still in charge is a truly delicious and delightful thing.) I left the ball in his court, but apparently was closer to the edge than I thought, because he touched me and I promptly burst into tears.

The most frustrating thing about depression, for me, is the disproportionate emotional responses to minor or nonexistent stimuli. It’s enormously aggravating to be that overwhelmed and upset when absolutely nothing in the world is tangibly wrong, except for being perhaps a little short on sleep. I explained that, or did as best as I could while blubbering, and then he decided it would be better to play right then (or as “right then” as you can manage when you need to inform several people about your scheduling plans) and flopped me into sub space by the simple expedient of telling me to take off my clothes and get ready to please him.

It got me out of my head. It shut off all the doubts and made me present. It, in fact, locked me into the present, which is something I have a lot of difficulty doing for myself. I took off my clothing and was suddenly ready and excited to be used. That is the joy of subspace.

So much of the sex that my MDP and I have takes place inside my mind. So much of what I enjoy is not just what we do, but the way I process it and think about it. It makes for odd, and useful, contradictions like the fact that thinking about him using me when I don’t want him to use me is such a turn on that I instantly want him to use me. I am excited by the very fact that he uses me because he wants to, which is of course why I have negotiated a relationship where someone can use me regardless of my interest at any given time. (I could, of course, always safeword out, but knowing that and believing it means I usually don’t want to or need to. Plus, he’s wonderfully considerate of my feelings, more so than he needs to be, which makes me believe that should he choose not to be because he really, really wants something of me, I would be even more inclined to give in than usual.) It makes me beg him to hurt me as much as he wants, to hurt me more than I like, because it makes me so hot to give more than I actively desire. It makes me fantasize about him doing the things I am most afraid of, and get off on those things, because of that very fear. I can lie in bed next to him, not even touching him, getting more and more worked up by thinking about all the horrible things he could do to me, that I would let him do to me, which I hate or fear… and end up wanting him to do the things I don’t want more and more with every passing moment.

We are conditioning me to give him, and my mental perception of him, rather profound control over my arousal and orgasm. I say we are conditioning, because it is an effort that I actively embrace and further. In fact, I realized the other day that I was asking him to do certain things** while we were playing because I wanted to more closely link sexual excitement to pain. I have fantasized about being able to orgasm from painful stimuli since I first read porn that talked about it over a decade ago, and apparently I was subconsciously trying to get myself there. I told him about it, when I figured out what I was doing in the middle of a scene, and I think he was amused (aroused? amused? such similar words…. let’s just say he didn’t object.)

But really, so much of sexual response is mental and as such can be conditioned. That’s a fun toy, but it also provides a useful conceptual window into other forms of mood alteration. My MDP can knock me into subspace pretty reliably with his actions, but it’s because I’ve - consciously and unconsciously- trained myself to go there. It’s in many ways a form of self hypnosis - learning to get off in the way my mental and physical proclivities drive me to. Why shouldn’t I be able to do that to stave off the worst ravages of depression? I’ve been wondering about practical applications - not of submission but of the mental processes that let me submit - a lot lately.

At the end of our scene that night, alone together in the hotel room, my MDP asked me if I thought I could stay in head space for the rest of the night while he was back at the party, holding onto it until he returned. He was trying to give me a way to function and enjoy myself while alone as well as help keep me from returning to my previously messed up state. I wasn’t sure if I could maintain the head space by myself for an extended period, but the knowledge he was coming back in a few hours made it seem vaguely plausible - so he told me to try and gave me instructions for what was, and wasn’t, acceptable behavior during the time he was gone.

When he left, I basically half napped/half writhed around in head space for a few hours until he returned. He stopped in a few times to check on me, slap me around a bit (Gods, but that was hot), and pick up things he needed, and it worked. I didn’t descend back into the Pits of Despair and what could have been a miserable evening turned into one that was quite intensely wonderful instead.

I really need to figure out is how to apply that trick to myself. It’s been made abundantly clear that I can usually fight my way back to emotional functioning if something or someone needs me to do so, I just have to learn how to manage it on my own volition. It will help, I think, that I have become more and more conscious of when my thoughts are being made irrational by brain chemicals. I just need to determine how to move from recognition to being able, and willing, to do something about it. I shouldn’t need the glorious self-hypnosis of subspace, although it is certainly a tool I can use - even alone in the privacy of my own mind.
–
_{*Not judgmental in the way of “judging their character” but judgmental in the way of “things that make me unwilling to sleep with them no matter how much I might want to.”}

_{Although I must admit I have occaisionally failed to live up to my own standards, it makes me really queasy to see people have sex, even safer sex, with multiple new partners - particularly new partners who they have just met - over the course of a few hours or days. I am frequently envious of the opportunities that they throw freely themselves into that I feel are outside my comfortable level of risk taking, but at the same time I have trouble believing that they’ve all had good talks about testing and safe sex and levels of ongoing risk with each casual partner and are making informed decisions about their sex lives. Given my work-related somewhat privileged place as a Holder of Personal Information In This Area, I also often wonder if I know things that they don’t, and wondering that… makes me uncomfortable. I would never break anyone’s privacy about it, but it makes me uncomfortable.}

_{Unfortunately, another thing that this weekend made me quite clear on is the extent to which I am already unhappy with the size of my sexual network, and I have come to terms with the fact that I’m not terribly inclined to make it any bigger through my own direct actions unless I find someone who has the potential to be a primary partner, or at least a significant, ongoing relationship. I may change my mind, but… for right now my level of risk is high enough and I’d prefer to avoid taking on a new sexual partner who has lots of partners already (or a tendency to pick them up on the fly,) which pretty much eliminates the possibility of “casual” sex. Oddly enough, I’m feeling totally fine with the person who may be coming in once removed, but that’s largely because sie seems a uniquely sensible sort about all the issues involved.}

**_{Like begging him to hurt me when he tells me I can orgasm so that, as often as possible, I don’t come with him except when I’m either in pain or doing something that makes me feel even further under his control.}

For various reasons, including a parade of weasels, I have been considering bailing on a play event at which I will see (among many other adored people) my MDP. This morning he told me to find a way to make it possible for me to come to the event and… it helped. Having him tell me to find a way to make it work shut up the weasels long enough for me to reframe my problems in a way that I -could- make it
work.

I’m good at being a high-functioning depressive for work.

I’m terrible at doing it for life.

Still, it seems as though having given my mind permission to put his desires above mine in scene space, and in fact finding great comfort and joy in doing so, has also given him the quite useful ability to tame my social anxiety (and related) weasels. I can’t quite do it for me, but it does seem I can do it for him.

I find this both fascinating and somewhat disturbing, because, while I’m amazed at how well it works, it makes me very uncomfortable using someone else for emotional caretaking. I like being that person, but I can’t quite grasp, emotionally, that someone might like being that for me. It’s awfully nice though, that he seems to. (I can’t quite bring myself to write that as “he does.”)

We were discussing this in a related context the other week and he said to me “I don’t know, in this case, where to draw the line between respecting your worries and just Being The Dom and having you do what I want.” So we talked about it, figured out which worries were legitimate concerns and which were acceptable for him to D/s me through, and moved on from there.

That sort of respect and conversation is why I can let him push my limits and take me to the places I am not always comfortable wanting to go - because I am confident both that he won’t try to take me anywhere I don’t really want to go and that he will listen to my worries and address them constructively (by stopping or altering or whatever. For that matter, I suspect the fact that he knows I will tell him if something he wants is a problem also allows him a great deal of comfort in just assuming he can take) It enables me to love letting him use me without regard for what I want or like at any given moment, because I am completely confident that he has complete respect for what I need.

This sort of submission is really nice. It’s oddly comforting, even in the moments where it’s terrifying. It’s also incredibly hot to know he can take what he wants when he wants it (within what we consider reason) and I suppose the proof of my submissive orientation, at least in this relationship, is the fact that him wanting something almost always makes me instantly want it too - even if moments before sex, pain, or service was the last thing on my mind.

It’s quite weird, as an extremely introverted and often exceedingly selfish person, to find so much pleasure and joy in having someone who wants things from me and in being able to just give to them.

I guess that, if push comes to shove, when you can get me out of my own head I really like to care.

–

A brief thought on that last one: It has taken a long time for me to become comfortable admitting what I want - to myself and to my partners - and I still can’t do it all the time. Therefore when I can ask for what I want, or at least say it out loud, I pretty much always count it as a win. I often am not terribly invested in whether I get it, and in sub space I can usually make being denied the things I want into as big a win as getting them, but being able to ask at all is a sign of personal growth that I consider priceless.