Secret Confessions of a Smart Girl

I’ve been a lot more fragile than usual, lately.

I always have a tendency towards depression, but for the past few months it’s been a pretty constant weight on my back.

A major side effects of this has been that my libido has been pretty much non-existent.

That’s one of the reasons why I haven’t been writing much in this blog. If I’m not feeling like sex, I have a lot of trouble writing about it. I’ve had a bunch of amazing scenes and amazing sex that I just haven’t been able to bring myself to write about. I start and then somehow can’t seem to make it through.

It’s giving a really disjointed picture of my current existence.

I realize that may sound confusing. How can a person with no libido be having amazing sex? In part, it comes down to a conversation I had with She Who I Would Be Dating If We Could Get Around The Impassable Obstacles a few years ago. She has a really high libido, but only when she has a partner to exercise it on. If she has a partner to have sex with, she wants them all the time. When she doesn’t? Sex is almost never on her mind.

In contrast, I normally just have a pretty high libido. When I’m not depressed, I tend to think about sex a lot, want sex a lot, and masturbate a lot - whether or not I have someone to focus my energies on. For me, having a low libido means that it all goes away. I don’t particularly want sex, I don’t have any interest in writing about it, and I won’t make any effort to get it. In fact, I will give up opportunities for sex that I would normally fling myself upon bodily, because I can’t bring myself to care.

Still, even when I’m depressed the act of being wanted usually makes me want. Even if I’m in the sort of mood where I mostly want to hide in a corner and hate myself, someone who I care about actively wanting at me will usually get me in the mood.

I’m just unlikely to be inspired to pounce on my own.

Depression is the destroyer of inspiration, at least for me. It makes it hard to do anything that requires leaving the house… which includes having sex. (I can’t get that delivered. Thai food? Yes. Books? Yes. Dog grooming? Yes. Sex? Not so much.) Right now, the only thing in my life that I have consistently able to motivate my self to get on the move for is, oddly enough, aerial acrobatics. It is, apparently, the good drugs.

I was thinking about why that is today, and a lot of it, I think, is similar to why I can manage to write about submission when I can’t stay in my head long enough to write about anything else. Aerial acrobatics requires total focus and concentration. I literally can not afford to think about anything other than what I am doing at any given moment - how my body is positioned, where my weight lies, the direction I am moving. It is highly effective at getting me out of my head. I can’t be depressed when I’m upside down, because I don’t have the attention to spare. Between the physical pain and effort, and the concentration, it is an incredibly effective mood altering drug. While I’m doing it, I can’t do anything else.

Similarly, submitting gets me either out of my head or so deep into my head that my mood really isn’t an issue. If I can get to enough of that place when I’m writing, I can usually say there long enough to finish my thoughts. For everything else, I can stay in the moment as long as my partner wants me there, but once I’m home and in front of the computer it’s hard to not get distracted by worries, depression, and doubt… or lost in pensive wondering about emotion and motivation. It doesn’t mean I had any less fun, or that I’m any less attached, just that it’s harder to stay in the place that allows me to connect words to story.

Right now, writing is hard. It’s hard when I do it for work, and it’s hard when I do it for pleasure - mine or somebody else’s. Sex is also hard, when pleasure is alternately something I seek and would be happy to just give away.

This too shall pass. Until it does, however, I shall continue building strength in my body with the knowledge that the solidity will eventually confer to my mind. And I will write, when I can, and hope that doing so does not cause pain.

Sexual arousal is, for me, often mostly in my mind.

The right touch isn’t nearly as important as having my brain engaged in the activity at hand (at tongue? at whip?)

It’s one of the reasons why I usually masturbate to erotica. It’s not so much the sensations that get me off as the neurochemical alchemy of desire.

I often laugh to imagine the standard porn trope - “show me how you masturbate” - applied to me… since it would primarily involve pulling out one of my most reliable books.

That’s not always as true when it comes to having sex with other people. Pleasure there is often more about connection and sensation than pure neurochemical bliss. Still, there is occasionally an exception.

One of the reasons I so enjoy submitting to my MDP is that it so often takes my brain to its happy place. In my head, things become not just about what is happening, but what could happen, and I end up excruciatingly turned on just imagining the possibilities.

I have to say, though, that sometimes it’s nice to know that the swirling mass of deviant ideas and wicked plans is not entirely in my head*.

The other day, he whispered me to an orgasm.

If you paid me, I couldn’t tell you what he said.

All I know is I was lying on top of him and he was speaking in my ear, and all of a sudden I said “You’ve pretty much just talked me to an orgasm.”

Then he grabbed my ass hard enough to really hurt, told me to come, and I did.

It was ludicrously, insanely, and intensely hot.

Gosh, but it’s incredibly perversely** fun to be involved with someone who has such a highly congruent and complementary fantasy life.

–
_{*Not that I even remotely thought it was, but Holy Crap Objective Proof, Batman!}

_**Literally

It was the middle of the work day for him, but I work at home and make my own schedule. Lately I’ve noticed that I tend to spend more time online during regular business hours so that we can chat, and so that I can spend time shmooping with my girlfriend in another window. It’s not the most productive part of my day, but it’s a nice connection when the people you care about live several hours away.

I had just stated my intention to walk away from the computer to engage in some “focused daydreaming” to improve my mood. I was feeling tired, cranky, and a bit out of sorts, and I wasn’t certain if it was a euphemism for napping, masturbating, or cleaning out my closet. Fortunately he had his own ideas.

The phrase, “I think it would be appropriate for you to” is not usually followed by “find something just a bit larger than is entirely comfortable inside you, fuck yourself with it, and come for me.”

That time it was. Apparently, we are redefining the term “appropriate.” Not that I could find it in me to object. To blush behind my screen, yes. To be slightly horrified that he was telling me to do that from work, yes. To become instantly, enormously turned on - to deny it would be to lie.

So I went browsing through the sex toy drawer. I had actually done a big clean out around 6 months ago, and gotten rid of most of the toys that I considered to be too large for comfort, but I thought I still had one or two of them left. My favorite of the two I found - the vibrator I use when I want the sensation of being filled to be just on the right side of pain, when I want to fantasize that it’s “too big, too much” - wasn’t suitable for fucking, but it turned out that I had a toy of a similar width that was. A little short, perhaps, but wide enough that it would be difficult to push in, and shaped so that I could fuck myself with it and stay on the boundary of discomfort without falling over the edge.

My instructions were to fuck myself and come, that was all, and so I decided to take them literally. I would be allowed no other stimulation - no pain, no vibrator on my clit - my orgasm had to be from the sensations of the toy alone. It was my only allowable source for pleasure or pain.

I took off my clothes, put a condom on the toy, and heard his voice in my head as I slowly worked it into my cunt. As I thought, it was a little too wide for easy insertion. I had to push it in slowly, and firmly, and it still was a bit large to slide easily along my inner walls. I wanted to touch myself further, but I forced myself to follow the instructions I had been given and just slowly fuck myself with the toy - pushing it in far enough to hurt, and then twisting the head so that it would press against different places inside of me. I imagined that it was him fucking me, because in a way it was, and pictured him above me as I pushed the toy deep against my cervix so that it would make me ache while it finally made me come.

Then I came back to the computer to tell him what I’d done. It seemed, somehow, like it would be appropriate.

I have, of late, been particularly fixated on control.

Things are going almost disturbingly well in my main D/s relationship, and I find it somewhat frightening how turned on I get by my partner doing things that speak to me of control.

It’s one of those things that it goes against the grain for me to speak of longingly. I had the same problem this weekend, when I was in bed with my partners trying to describe a particular rape fantasy. It feels wrong to want these things, even though I know that by wanting them I am not endorsing their existence in the universe at large… or even in my own personal bailiwick.

I am a bit of a control freak. I have a visceral need to be self contained that I sometimes have a great deal of difficulty giving up. Thus I find it disturbing how comfortable I am, and how much I like, giving up control to my MDP* - not to mention how much I want to do it.

I have a conceptual difficulty with begging someone to do things that make me feel like I am under their control. I am therefore usually extraordinarily pleased when my MDP does them spontaneously, and I am now going to speak rapturously of something that happened that is so weird to speak rapturously of I’m not entirely certain how to do it.

He kept playing with my mouth. Not in the “sexy finger sucking” way, but in the exploratory way in which you would evaluate a horse - a creature for sale. His fingers pushed against my teeth, my soft palate, my tongue, and it was freakishly erotic - not the activity itself but the fact that he could.

It is mystifying to me how much I liked it. It made me feel some strange combination of (literally) objectified and safe. It felt like how you’d idly play with a toy, a possession, that you like to use, rather than like how you’d treat a person, and it slightly horrifies me that that’s something that so profoundly turned me on.

These days, with him, I’m kinking on all sorts of things I don’t particularly like, or that intellectually bother me. In part, this is because the fact that I don’t like them makes me feel particularly blissfully submissive when they happen, and in part it is because the kinds of things I tend to not objectively like are those that also speak to me most viscerally of control.

The most obvious example of this is that I don’t like breath play. It scares me and it isn’t particularly inherently erotic, but I find myself wanting him to hold his hand over my nose and mouth and cut off my air just because he can. Just because it makes me feel instantly under his control. This is something I usually won’t even consider negotiating with people, and with him I long for it? How bizarre.

It’s so strange to me, where this relationship is - what this relationship is- and the odd things about it that I value and cherish. There’s so much about it that makes me really happy, and very little of it is what I normally would expect. It would make sense to me if what I was jonesing for was more of the incredible sex, but the fact that the craving is for more, and deeper, submission is somewhat more confusing. I don’t dislike it. It just requires some more work to understand**.

_{*MDP = Main Dominant Partner. He who is colloquially known as The Boyfriend, although that doesn’t quite feel right as anything other than convenient shorthand. It’s not wrong, it’s just not as semantically apt as calling The Girlfriend The Girlfriend - a descriptor that speaks more accurately to the fundamental nature of the relationship.}

_{**Interestingly, it doesn’t reflect a desire for more submission in my other relationships. If anything, the more intense the submission gets with my MDP, the less I tend to want that particular type of submissive headspace with other play partners. It’s almost embarrassingly kinky-shmoopy to say it out loud, but that’s his headspace, and I don’t particularly want to give it to anyone else.}

Those who can’t watch… do.

While re-reading the last post, I realized that I have now become one of those people who plays in a way that I am uncomfortable watching.

Let me be more specific.

I am extremely uncomfortable watching scenes where the bottom seems to honestly want the top to stop doing whatever they are doing, but I sometimes find it extraordinarily hot to bottom (or more accurately submit) to a scene where I am honestly begging my partner to stop.

Thus, a question of ethics:

Is it responsible for me to publicly participate in a scene that, as an observer, I would want to stop*?

I am frequently acutely aware of this problem as I am playing. I generally actively try to make it clear to my partner that, even as I am honestly asking them to stop doing what they are doing,  I am okay with them continuing. I tend to be even more conscious of this if there is an audience to our play that may, for one reason or another, have difficulty leaving (i.e. if I am playing in a large room at a party instead of off in a quiet corner.) I become concerned about causing dismay.

It is an awkward thing, playing in public in a way that I know would bother me to see. Part of it is also that, as a professional sex educator, I am extremely conscious of wanting to set a good example with how I play. It may be a little ridiculous, but if I’m going to do something that I wouldn’t necessarily want other people to emulate, I try to do it in private.

–

_{*Note: I do not try and stop these scenes when I see them. I just walk out of the room. I may, occaisionally, check in with the bottom afterward to make certain they are okay if they are a friend of mine… or with a friend of theirs to see if that is how they normally play, but mostly I just leave. I have trouble watching people suffering if I am not able to tell they are enjoying it. Particularly people I care about… even if I know they’re masochists. I tend to want to drag the top off of my friend and beat THEM. I am a violent soul, just not particularly a sadist.}

Not so long ago, my main dominant partner told me to do something that, had you asked me in advance, I would have said was:

1. a hard limit
2. massively squicky
3. not hot in the least

In the moment, however, I did it without question, because he said to, and it blew my mind.

I feel like I should find this problematic, but I don’t. Even though the act in question is still rather squicky in retrospect, I’m not actually bothered by the fact that I did it. In fact, I find it rather insanely hot that, in the moment, I just did what he told me too, and I’m reasonably certain that had it been something that was going to bother me upon sober reflection I wouldn’t have… but I’m only reasonably certain.

This, then, is where my intellectual and emotional responses to submission take a divergent course.

• There is a voice inside my head that  keeps telling me that I should be disturbed by the fact that I not only can give up enough of my control to someone else that I will do things I find instinctively objectionable without even thinking about them  but that I enjoy doing so.
• There is a separate, and much louder, voice that is thrilled to have found a situation in which, and a person to whom,  it feels so safe to thoroughly give up the control that I normally grasp so tightly in my tension filled hands.

Time out of mind is one of the things I most value about submission. It is not something I find easily, and once I get past the difficulty of letting go of thought, giving up control, freeing myself from the usually overpowering constants of analysis and worry, it can be exhilarating, quiet, peaceful, erotic, terrifying, comforting…. or all of the above. To unquestionably do this thing was, in some ways, a proof to me of how much I had given - how much I had let go. That was a good portion of the reason why I found it so hot.

With the partner in question, I’ve noticed that I  tend to say “yes” these days  before the question is even asked, and it is sincere. This largely feels safe because I honestly do not expect him to ask anything I’m truly unwilling to give. Realistically speaking, however, that instinctive and preemptive “yes” actually worries me more than the acting without thinking, because I know that there is every possibility that he could ask for something I am not willing to agree to… and I would hate to renege on my word.

I suppose that’s where I have to, and do, trust in the balance - that he knows me well enough to not try and take me places to which I can not in good conscience travel, and that if he does I will be able to say “no.” This is a trust that has to go both ways, because if I did not choose these things willingly; if I came out of an activity feeling I had been coerced; if I did not like them so very, very much; or if I was unwilling or unable to stop a scene that was going badly wrong, I could, as he is so fond of joking, press charges. The risk for him is low as long as I can, and do, say “no” when I need to, but some of the pleasure for, I believe, both of us, is in the expectation of acquiescence. The alternative would be giving up the simple joy I take in giving him the ability to take me, and I like the feeling that he has blanket permission (within the boundaries of previously expressed limits) to take anything he wants… even though I know intellectually that it isn’t true.

That idea of blanket permission  is a fantasy that I get to live in by giving more than is easy and more than is comfortable and sometimes by giving more than the things I would choose. I think it would be naive to believe that it is a fantasy in which my partner can fully share, since even though our desires in these areas are quite well aligned I know he must have to moderate the things he asks for and the things he takes… if by nothing else than in their timing.

I often think that it must be a very frightening thing to be an ethical dominant sadist, to enjoy controlling and hurting people while worrying about doing physical or emotional harm. To, in particular, enjoy controlling and hurting people who you care about, who you don’t want to damage or drive away. To sometimes actively choose to do what you want regardless of whether or not it’s something your partner would choose for themselves or even like*. To constantly have to worry about consent.

It’s easier, I think, from the bottom - where I can take a perverse sort of pleasure in choosing not to safeword and letting him beat me until I bleed…  even as I am sincerely begging him to stop.  Where I can be constantly surprised by how much I enjoy it when he doesn’t… because it is a visceral reminder that much of how I find pleasure in submission is in giving someone else what they want rather than in getting to live out a particular fantasy, experience, or dream.

–
_{*And even writing that, I doubt that my feelings on these matters are ever not a consideration. They may not be the driving one, but I suspect they are usually at least subconsciously weighed - thus the ethical part of the formulation.}

–

EDIT: Because it came up in a discussion of this post on another site, I should say that the !squick  in question had NEVER been discussed as a limit.  In the middle of a scene is not when you renegotiate boundaries, and if that had been what was going on I would have been livid.

I am a highly suggestible person.

This, in most circumstances, is extraordinarily aggravating. I yawn when I hear someone yawn on the other end of the phone. Anytime someone mentions having to go to the bathroom, I suddenly have to go too. It’s a little ridiculous.

Still, in the context of sex and submission, I have discovered that suggestibility isn’t a bad thing at all. It means, among other things, that I am highly susceptible to conditioning… even when the conditioning isn’t intentional.

We have reached the point where when my main dominant partner touches my face in a certain way I become instantly turned on.  I don’t even know how or when it happened, but lately when his hand comes to my cheek I am suddenly wet and ready without even a thought.  I like it.

I also seem to have gotten past my orgasm issue. It turns out that what you can accidentally train yourself out of you can also accidentally train yourself back into - particularly if you have inspiring help. Why having to ask, or beg, for orgasms makes it easier to have them is inexplicable to me, but I will not look this gift horse in the mouth.

I really like the intense comfort of this submission. It’s odd to think of something that’s so often frightening or painful as comforting, but it is. It’s one relationship where I usually feel pretty confident of where I stand and what I should do and that’s lovely. It makes it easy to keep saying yes. Even when it scares me…. possibly especially when it scares me.

I can’t stop giggling over the fact that someone I am in the negotiation phase with just referred to my rather excessive missive on the topic of safe sex, STDs, and kink boundries as my “Terms of Service.”

Oh, double entendres, you bring me joy.

I’m totally stealing it. (Terms of service? Terms of servicing? Either way, it’s happy. Life. It’s in the little things.)

I had forgotten we had negotiated blood.

Or, more accurately, I had put it from my mind.

I knew he had the scalpels. I knew he was going to use them. I just didn’t think he was going to take them out and cut me right then. No warning. No preparation. Just sharp edges and instant fear.

The irony is that I’m the one with a fetish for blood. I don’t get to play with it that often. The part of my mind that takes responsibility for my own and my partner’s safety usually objects, but it is exciting. Talking about it with him, thinking about it, was an enormous turn on, but then it actually happened and my overwhelming emotion was terror.

One little line.

A whimper.

Another little line.

Biting my lip.

A third.

“I don’t know if I can do this.”

A fourth.

“You can.”

Five. Six. Seven. Eight little lines, and then it was over.

Fear evaporated, now I smile every time I look in the mirror to see them gracing my skin.

I am possessed of some extraordinarily unladylike traits.

First, I have a horrible case of Male Answer Syndrome – sit me in a class, and I tend to take over and want to jump in and explain everything if I don’t think the teacher is doing so fast enough (or well enough, or in enough depth, or clear enough, or if I’m bored, or if the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars….) I’m reasonably good about admitting when I don’t know something, but when I do, I want to share. I am far too fond of the sound of my own voice.

Second, I am something of a braggart, and, when I am excited, I tend to want to share.

This weekend there was a bag of 50 clothespins.

Time passed and, eventually, there was an empty bag that once contained 50 clothespins and 50 clothespins were instead on my skin.

It was agonizing.

It was overwhelming.

It was wonderful.

I have, of late, been having a weird relationship with pain. I want it, a lot, but then I’m not always capable of handling it. Impact has, in particular, often required too much of the wrong sort of attention to process, and so I’ve tended to bail out before the hitting gets good. I get to the place where I want more, want to fall over the edge, and before I do I wuss out. What I’ve wanted is to bliss out.

(Mind you, the nice thing about dating a sadist is that it has been making me feel less guilty asking for pain. Pain seems like a lot of work to ask of someone who doesn’t actively enjoy it. It still feels somewhat selfish, but… that may just be because it is. Selfish, that’s another unladylike trait to add to my list. And baby makes three.)

So the clothespins were perfect. They were layers of delicious, inescapable pain. They were just the right amount of too much to handle. I kept feeling like I wanted to go non-verbal to deal with them, but I also wanted to stay present and express how much too much they were.

I find unrelenting intensity in a non-frightening way incredibly arousing. Intensity is pretty hot for me, generally, but the combination of it not letting up and it being inflicted in a way that doesn’t make me worry about damage is particularly exciting.

It turned me into a puddle.