Secret Confessions of a Smart Girl

I often wish to beat my students about the head and shoulders with a stick emblazoned with the words “subject-verb agreement” in order to get the concept into their thick little skulls.

Now, since I teach graduate students, I think this should be allowed. After all, if you’ve graduated from college you should be able to manage to proofread your formal writing well enough to avoid saying things like “methods includes” … a phrase which I have had the misfortune to read in 3 of the last 5 papers I’ve graded.

Next time I write up a syllabus I’m going to include a consent page that students are required to sign in order to enroll in the class. It will say, “Professor Rona is allowed to hit me with her subject-verb agreement paddle once for every really egregious subject-verb agreement error I make. I promise I will not sue her. Instead, I will thank her for each stroke by saying ‘Yes Professor,’ and then rewriting the sentence with the correct grammar.”

Do you think I could get it through the curriculum committee? Because if I could, I would totally hire someone to make me a subject-verb agreement paddle, like the ones that say “brat” and leave the word stamped into the bottom’s skin if you hit them hard enough.

I’m not really a switch, I just play one on (closed-circuit campus) TV.

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 like pain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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