Secret Confessions of a Smart Girl

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 have discovered a terribly effective way to hit on someone for play. You just have to say “Reading Wendy’s post about you made me want to fling myself at you.” Whee! She was totally right. That man does, in fact, have some very pretty knives and certainly knows how to use them. That was fun. I do have to learn, at some point, to negotiate when knives are involved, because pretty man + pretty knives meant I completely forgot to say “I have an audition in two days and am planning on wearing a low cut shirt so please be careful about marking me *here*” until it was too late. Mind you, it was totally worth it, and when the thought came briefly to mind, I threw it out of my head and said “Audition, shmaudition! KNNNIIIVVVEEEESSS.” As it turns out, the one mark I have can probably be either be disguised or written off as a cat scratch, so I may still end up wearing the intended low top. I don’t know why I’m still writing about my sartorial choices, except for the fact that I’m still on Mars.

It wasn’t the knives that put me on Mars. The knives, as usual, just made me want to fuck someone. It was the needles. The top who did the piercing pictured at the bottom of this post decided to see if she could recreate it, but with perfect symmetry. She almost managed it, but not quite. It didn’t help that for some reason I was tired and the needles hurt more than they did last time - so there was less laughing and more screaming*. Still, piercing is something I really enjoy and will not get to do again with the lady in question for the foreseeable future, so when she asked if I wanted more, I said yes.

However, I just couldn’t bear the thought of more needles in my breasts. The way I was processing, or not processing, the pain was going to have me screaming more and it just wasn’t a good place for that. So I suggested that I sit up so that she could pierce my back. Oh baby was that fun. Apparently what she was doing to my breasts was “nice piercing” (straight in and out) and what she was doing to my back was “mean piercing” (tucks, twists, threading the needle in and out of my skin five or six times), but while the breast piercing had been painful fun, the back piercing made me actually say to her “You know, I don’t think orgasming from piercing is entirely out of the question.” It felt amazing. The metal under my skin, tugging at me from the inside every time I moved… damn. In a different context that could have been dangerously hot. Unfortunately, when she took the needles out of my breasts so that I could lie on my stomach and enjoy the back piercings I started bleeding like a stuck pig and, although I like blood, the need to do a quick clean up had me coming down from my high, and we ended up just taking out all of them. Oh my god, though, it was fun. The only bad thing about that scene (beautiful woman! needles! blood! really yummy pain!) was that the needles were in my back and I couldn’t see them. Which sucks a lot, since I bet they looked really cool.

Unsurprisingly, that was the scene totally put me on Mars. Halfway through the needles going into my back I realized that, did the concept not so totally and completely wig me out, I would probably really enjoy the sensation of flesh hooks, since what I was getting off on was the feeling of things under my skin pulling at me from the inside. Not, mind you, that I think I’m ever going to do them, but I begin to understand the appeal. Mmmm. A friend of mine looked at me after I had come down enough to put on my clothing again and told me I had the crazy eyes. I totally believe it.

So, so, so the other really cool thing that happened was that I learned about negotiation. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I am an extremely lazy negotiator. However, while lying on the floor with the insanely adorable woman who I am just far too fond of, I discovered that Negotiation Can Be Fun! You can take everything someone asks for literally, and hold them to their requests**! This inspires great creativity and silliness! Plus, making out. I didn’t know that negotiation could lead to making out! Someone should have told me this ages ago and then maybe I would do it more often. This, people, is why learning is a life long activity! Whee.

Speaking of learning… I have discovered that the perfect way to stay out all night is to feed the dog on time, take her for “last outs” at 9 PM, and then not come back home until late enough (between 5-7 AM) that I can feed her, give her her insulin, and go straight to bed. 9 PM is late enough that she can sleep through the night without needing to pee, and it’s much nicer to get home at 5:30 AM, feed her, and go to sleep than it is to get in at 4 a.m., take an hour to fall asleep, and have to wake up to do her morning routine at 7.

–
*Originating my favorite quote of the night - “Bite your monkey pants.”
**She asked if she could put her hand in my shirt. Hand. Singular. I agreed to hand. Singular. Much comedy ensued. When I made the same request, more carefully phrased to include both hands, she pointed out she wasn’t wearing a shirt. Curses! Boobs Denied!

Knife play is completely different when you know that it’s going to end in the spilling of your blood.

I didn’t really expect that, although in reality it may have been less about the knowledge that I was going to end up bleeding than about the mindfuck my top was so deeply enjoying playing out.

Last night I bottomed to a friend of mine and her straight razor.

The straight razor was definitely a character in the scene, she had been teasing me with the thought of it for almost 24 hours, knowing how much I like sharp objects and the thought of my own red blood.

The razor was sharp. She demonstrated by shaving the fine hairs off the skin of my back and showing them to me on the blade. I could feel it catch and cut them as she moved it along my skin and spoke of flaying me, strip by strip. Cutting out specific muscles, vivisecting me, damaging me irreparably as I lay there on the bed. She cut off my underwear to prove she could.

I haven’t processed knife play as fear in a long time. Normally, to me, knives are sex, and the feel of them against my skin is arousing. When they’re on my neck they make me still, but on my chest, my back, or my cunt they make me writhe. Sometimes I press into them a little too hard for true safety, knowing that most of the knives I play with aren’t sharp enough to do real damage unless you work at it. Just the other week the person topping me said “One day I should really fuck you with a knife hilt, shouldn’t I.” “Yes,” I said, “you should.” That is how I process most blades. But this one, this one came with threats of torture, and I knew the top just well enough to believe she might actually do it. This one was sharp enough to do what she threatened, and I was scared, and it was hot. When she actually sliced along my shoulder blade hard enough to draw blood I screamed, but I enjoyed the sight of my blood on her gloves way too much for my own good.

It was a very fun scene.
–

On a more practical note, I have a seriously fucked up sense of self preservation. I really need to learn to not crack jokes when someone is holding a razor-sharp blade to my skin. That is not a good time to play tease the top. She managed not to accidentally damage me any of the times I did it. Still… not the wisest choice on the planet.

Ever since I accidentally negotiated, but didn’t get to act on, playing with scalpels a few weeks ago, I’ve had blood on my mind.

I’ve been cut before, as part of intentional body modification, by single tails, and after a lot of knife play, but I don’t think I’ve ever actually negotiated blood, for the sake of blood, as part of a scene. I’m not entirely sure why, except that I’ve perhaps not had partners for whom it’s as much of a thing as it is for me. When the idea came up in passing, it scared me a little bit how much I wanted it.

For a very long time, I’ve had a bit of a kink for vampire stories. Unlike many people who are into vampires, however, I never wanted to be one. Eternal life was never a particularly enticing goal. I wanted to be a vampire victim*. I wanted to mix blood and sex. I wanted to be prey.

When I got my scarification many years ago (’97 or ‘98, it’s kind of amazing how well it’s held up) as a demo, it was an incredibly intense experience. The cutting itself I barely felt, but when Raelyn put the ash in the wound and it felt like my entire blood stream had been set on fire… well, I think it was when I started using the phrase incandescent pain. It was like flying. It was an incredible release. I wanted to do it again and again**.

But my scarification, despite it being an intensely pleasurable experience, was primarily framed in my brain as body modification rather than play. Although play doesn’t seem like quite the right word under these circumstances.

Thoughts of blood make me want to do dangerous things. I think of red lines blooming across my skin, blood beading, dripping down white flesh, and my head falls back as my breath catches in my chest. I picture my blood staining someone’s hands as they make art with my life. I imagine my skin being opened just as I’m on the brink of orgasm and being granted a dual release.

I was warped at a reasonably young age by a book in which a Very Bad Man was training poor slave girls so that they would only be able to find sexual release on the point of a knife. I don’t think I was supposed to find that part of the story quite so hot, but I used to masturbate to it constantly, with thoughts of the analogy between sexual penetration and cutting the skin, bleeding and release. (Which is also why I often process piercing so sexually.) Links were forged in my brain.

Those links are scary. Sex is scary. Trusting someone to open your skin, but not damage you is scary. The thought of the two fears together is almost overwhelming - both in terms arousal and terror. Which, in a way, brings me back to trying to determine the difference between what is hot in my head and what would be hot in reality. The thing is, unlike the fucking machines mentioned in that post, which are far more of an intellectual quandary, with blood I think I really do want to find out. I don’t even really want to mix it explicitly with sex. I just want to know what will happen in my brain when someone reaches towards me with a scalpel in their hand, their only goal being to breach the boundaries of my skin and let the blood flow out.

For those of you who don’t recognize the quote in the title, it’s from the musical Pippin. The full lyrics of the relevant section are as follows…

Blood is red as sunset
Blood is warmer than wine
The taste of Salty summer brine

Steel is cold as moonlight
Steel is sharper than sight
The touch of bitter winter white

Pippin is a very sexy show.

–
*My first sale as a writer was a very bloody lesbian vampire story written from the victim’s point of view. If you’re curious, it’s in the Circlet Press anthology “A Taste of Midnight.”

** Mostly what has stopped me is the fact that from a practical standpoint I can’t end up completely covered with scars and I scar very very well. Although they don’t show up as easily as tattoos on film. It would be far too tempting to slowly build up some sort of abstract botanical piece in a design from hip to shoulder, or up the outside of one leg, particularly since being beaten on scars only makes them better. Why do I let my mind go to these places? Hello detour!

I’ve been thinking a lot about piercing lately. It is, I suppose, an unavoidable side effect of watching extremely sexy women playing with needles upon someone of whom you are fond. Or, really, of watching extremely sexy women playing with needles in general. Possibly of watching extremely sexy women. Or of seeing needles. Regardless of the reason, poking has been on my mind.

I was sitting with Maymay trying largely unsuccessfully to articulate why I find play piercing so sexy when I remembered my argument.

“I find penetration hot.”

Not the most compelling argument, I suppose, but it has the benefit of being both straightforward and relatively accurate.

I haven’t been pierced often, or recently, but the first time I was pierced I was talked through it in a way that emphasized the sexual analogies. The initial penetration. The way the needle felt sliding under my skin. The intimacy of allowing someone not to just touch your surface layers but to, through the medium of metal, actually reach inside your body and play.

Yes, I admit it, just writing about it is a turn on. To me it’s a very physically* intimate form of play.

*It doesn’t have to be emotionally intimate, but from the perspective of the bottom you’re letting someone quite literally punch holes in your protections. Just as a matter of practicality you are assuming a mild level of physical risk (as is the top, since pointy objects are indiscriminate in their ability to break skin.)

I also have a bit of a thing* about blood, which probably doesn’t help in my perception of piercing as sexualized either.

*Where thing in this circumstance is defined as a “mild fetish for it being intentionally released from the human body in a consensual way.”

Look! It’s an ever expanding pile of footnotes! I have to stop writing in tiny text and go take a shower so that I can go to class.