Kai Wears Her Concerned Face

I've been thinking a lot today about face-slapping. This is not typically something I think about; it isn't something that I enjoy, and for me it has never been incorporated into S/M play. It also isn't safe... which I guess is why it's been on my mind.

DW did a post on safety a couple of days ago. He talked about the ideas of "Safe, Sane, and Consensual," edge play, and calculated risk, pointing out that everything in BDSM is a calculated risk and therefore not intrinsically safe... no matter how careful you are when you go about it. There are tiny points on this wherein our opinions differ: I don't take issue with the SSC slogan, since I'm all for using one's own personal interpretation of what those words mean rather than some generalized set of standards; and I don't consider everything in BDSM to be risky, since individual elements of sensation play are virtually harmless. But these are really small points that are largely semantic, and for the most part we are in agreement about what "safety" in a BDSM relationship really means.

So... there's this idea of calculated risk, and the accompanying idea of knowing exactly what you're doing with your partner. This is especially important for Dominants, as they will usually be the ones doing the striking, binding, restraining, torturing, and what have you. The one time I played with an inexperienced Domme where striking was involved, she made a mistake in her aim and I caught some wraparound on my collarbone from the ends of a horse-hair flogger. There are worse things that can happen, and wraparound can still happen even with experienced Dominants. At the end of the day, you can't avoid all accidents, but you can at least be prepared for them. But even this Domme, who had topped very few people before me (if any... I can't precisely recall), knew about generally accepted "safe" zones for striking, as well as the no-go areas; her aim might have failed her on that occasion, but it wasn't out of ignorance... just inexperience.

Which brings me to a trend that I've been finding in the online community. It seems to me that I've been reading a ton of posts and accounts by submissives (usually female, but not exclusively) who talk about (and often enjoy) their Dominants slapping them in the face as a punishment or mode of humiliation. I really don't like to judge the way other people choose to conduct themselves within a BDSM context; different people like to play different ways, have different rules, set different parameters. I understand this. But there are also some things that carry more risk than can really be contained in that "calculated risk" category. A few days ago, DW outlined for me all of the locations on and around the face that are dangerous to strike, and why. It takes so little pressure in the right (or wrong) locations to dislocate the jaw, cause damage the eye and the eye socket, cause damage to the skull... cause death, even. I have my doubts that Dominants who routinely utilize face-slapping take the time to aim their blows in a way that specifically avoids these areas, and I imagine that it would be difficult to completely avoid striking your partner at the hinge of the jaw or under the eye socket. The temple is easier to avoid, but like I said earlier... mistakes happen.

Now, obviously these are not things that happen every time a Dominant hits their submissive in the face. If they were, there would probably be a lot more dead/injured submissives and a lot fewer couples utilizing this as a component of play. But... my Dominant has touched my face to show me the ways in which slapping a person there can hurt them. He has told me all of the risks involved, and knowing those risks I don't think I could ever consent to somebody striking me that way. Those risks, to me, are beyond "calculated."

In the end, I hope that the couples who practice this know these risks. I hope that they know them and consent to them, within whatever definition of "safe" they have agreed upon. If they have at least done that, I can more or less comfortably turn away and put it in the category of, "That's fine for you, but it's not my thing." If they haven't, though, I can't help feeling like somebody's going to end up getting hurt because they don't understand all the ways in which that could happen.

I feel very lucky to have a partner who is aware of these things. I think that I am much safer for it.

Kai Under the Hand

A few days ago, DW got a new toy. The new toy is a black leather crop on which the striking portion is shaped like a hand. The first time I saw it, it was inside a long triangular priority mail shipping box which I glanced at briefly while on my way out the door. I asked DW what it was, and he said something along the lines of he wasn't sure... that he was waiting for a package, he just didn't know what the package was going to look like. We were away for a couple of days after that, and by the time we got back I had completely forgotten about the box. The night we got back I went directly to the bedroom and crashed on the bed, completely exhausted. It was after 1am and I was unequivocally ready to commence being dead to the world. When DW followed a short time later, he struck me a few times with what I thought was the paddle he keeps in his toybox. We'd played with the paddle before, and it felt kind of familiar, but I didn't turn around to look. Instead, I'm pretty sure I made a noise that sounded something like, "mraaaaaaaaaaaaakgh," and went back to the business of passing out.

Yeah... I was really tired.

The next day I texted him at work to ask what he'd used. He simply responded that I would find out. Then I turned around and noticed the crop lying next to the bed, tag still attached. I made the bed and put the crop up against the pillows.

I want to say here that--as I believe I've mentioned before--I sometimes contend with the idea of how to ask DW if we can play. I learned a little while ago that I can't flat-out request it; when I make requests, it's just more likely to make him decide to put it off. So more often than not I just have to be patient and willing to wait.

Which... can be difficult. Especially when there are things I want to play with that we haven't tried out yet.

So I decided to see what would happen if I just left the new toy out on the bed where he would notice it. And notice it he did... right before he picked it up and put it down on the floor so he could fold the blanket down. I was disappointed. I projected disappointed.

Me: "You didn't like the place where I put it?"

DW: "You just put it there so I'd notice it!"

Me: "......yeah..........."

DW: "You just wanted to get me to use it on you, huh."

Me: "Well... I'm not allowed to ask, so I thought maybe if I just kind of put it there.... you know.... we could play with it....."

Retrospectively, I'm kind of surprised that this worked; it wouldn't necessarily have been the first time for DW to laugh and kiss me and refuse to give me what I wanted. Instead, he playfully tapped me with the crop while verbally teasing me about my actions, then gradually increased the force behind the blows. He started with my breasts--which lent itself to a bit of joking around since the tip of the crop was, well, a hand--before putting me down on the bed and moving on to my legs and butt. It had been quite some time since I'd had a crop used on me--we're talking on the order of years--and I was surprised at how sharp the pain was. It's a very bite-y toy, whereas I had become used to the duller pain of floggers and bare hands (and, to some extent, paddles). This had me occasionally flinching and rolling to get away, but I never went far and didn't honestly want him to stop. He recognizes this in me, and he tends to be more amused by my struggles and half-assed escape tactics than anything else.

DW has already recognized a couple of problem spots in the design of the crop (the pole extends a bit further into the hand/tip than he'd like, and the wire wrapped around it could potentially come undone and cause damage if not taken care of), and I'm going to need a few sessions to get used to the sting. I know that he could have put a lot more force and speed into it than he did, but even with the way he was using it I found the brand of pain slightly difficult to handle. So... I want more chances to play with it, integrate it with other toys, see how well we can ultimately get along.

In the meantime, I'll have to work on figuring out the right way to request play. Leaving the toy out worked this one time, but I have my doubts that it will always work out that way.

Kai's Wishlist: St. Andrew's Cross

When I was a sophomore in college, I shared a dorm with three other people. We had our own common area with a table and chairs and kitchen appliances, and up against the wall we had a St. Andrew's cross. The St. Andrew's cross did not belong to us so much as it belonged to the resident kink club, of which three of us were members (and the fourth's lack of club membership didn't at all mean he wasn't into the kink scene). I don't remember the exact circumstances involved, but the general long and short of it was that it somehow got decided that instead of leaving the cross in storage it would come and live with us. The biggest reason for this, if I recall correctly, was simply that out of all the current active members of the club, we would almost definitely get the most use out of it.

And so, it came to pass that we were in possession of the club's St. Andrew's cross for the duration of that school year.

Our St. Andrew's cross was a very simple structure; in fact, nothing more than the X-frame, painted black, and a couple of built-in chains. It did not have a base, and so in a way it was more symbolic than functional. I had used it once or twice as a freshman at play parties, and even when anchored to it I couldn't put any of my weight on the chains out of concern for the possibility that it would fall over. In this way, the cross was better as a measure of discipline than an instrument of bondage: place your hands here and do not move them until I tell you that you may do so. So perhaps it was more psychological than physical in nature, but it had a special place in our hearts and we were more than happy to let it stay in our dorm.

As it turned out, we didn't use it often at all. It spent most of the year festooned with Christmas lights, and when our parents came to visit we told them that it was a coat rack (someone put a jacket on it beforehand to lend credence to the claim). We may have put it to use once or twice during personal play parties, but for the most part it was decorative and symbolic and nothing more.

Now it is years later and DW and I have toyed with the idea of getting a cross for ourselves. We haven't discussed it in any degree of seriousness or immediacy, but the desire to one day have one is certainly there. I know that one day I would like to have a cross that I can be anchored to and put my weight on, that I can push on and struggle against and know it is solid. Even with our "symbolic" cross in college, I liked it as a base from which to be flogged. It lent a certain variety of focus that being flogged while lying on a bed or standing in the middle of the floor lacks. One does not need a cross for this; the same effect can be achieved by telling me to keep my hands on the back of a chair, the edge of a table, the support beam that stretches from the floor to the ceiling. It outlines a place for me to put my hands and, by extension, channel a part of my attention that would not otherwise be used. It adds a parameter. It adds an element of D/s--and also discipline--to something that otherwise would be primarily on the S/M side of the scale. In the case of a solid, properly built St. Andrew's cross, the bondage element can come into play as well*, thus allowing for the full range of what is encompassed in BDSM... at least as far as the acronym is concerned.

The St. Andrew's cross, though not strictly a must-have, is a fantastic accessory to play... and I imagine it could be integrated quite easily into non-scenes as well. DW and I have yet to do a third full-blown scene, but play elements surface between us almost every day. I am almost certain that if there were a cross around, we would find a way to integrate it into play and sex, regardless of whether or not there was a scene involved.

*The bondage element may also be played in the event that one is tied or otherwise bound to any of the aforementioned furniture, etc. However, in the case of tables and chairs, a cross might be a better anchor point and support for your weight depending on the extent of the bondage, how much you struggle, and how much you weigh.

Kai Under the Radar

A couple of days ago, DW and I were poking around on Eden Fantasys (yeah... they spell it that way) looking for toys we might want to test/review, and I speculated that it might be fun to do video reviews. This earned me some reproach from DW, in the form of reminding me how not okay that would be for his professional life. Me, I don't really let my speculating be constrained by things like that; imagination for me doesn't necessarily need to be tied down to real-life concerns. But this exchange reminded me that, much as I would like it to be otherwise, there are some aspects in which kink and the "real world" just don't play nice together.

I have mentioned previously in this blog that DW is in a situation where it could be potentially disastrous for him to be outed as a kink, whereas I am more or less free to throw it around however I want. But the fact of the matter is that this could very easily not be true forever; just because I don't have a job in the "professional" world now doesn't mean I never will, and my freedom to be open or closed as I choose could eventually be taken away. I could be a tattoo artist and never have to worry about whether or not people know I enjoy BDSM, or I could be employed by a university or a financial institution where that information could somehow get me in hot water. It's like getting a dragon tattooed on your neck because you think you're gonna spend your life as a rock star... only to find that no one else will employ you because you can't cover it up. Quite simply, the real world--the professional world--restricts one's personal lifestyle choices and modes of expression, sometimes in ways that honestly sadden me. There is nothing that says that someone with a lot of body art can't wear a suit and lead a board meeting, nor is there anything that says a dominant with a rope fetish can't manage a corporation or be responsible for world-changing technological advances. Instances where two things that have nothing to do with each other whatsoever somehow prove effectively incompatible.

I am jealous, in a way, of people who can be active in the community and not worry about where they show their faces. The people who post video reviews for sex toys on the internet, the submissives who show off their dominants' shibari creations in online photo galleries without hiding their faces. The models who showcase bondage as an art form, to be appreciated as something beautiful. I feel that doing any of these things stands to be somehow damaging... and I wish desperately that this were not true. A candid involvement in one thing shouldn't have any bearing on what one does with the rest of their time. If I felt that I could, I would have a photo gallery of shibari ties, a compendium of what my dominant can do to me. I believe that it is beautiful. But I have no way to know whether this is a safe thing, whether it would eventually turn on me and cause damage. I have no way to know if it would somehow damage my dominant. And, ultimately, it would be up to him whether or not I were even able to share something like that in the first place. I do, after all, belong to him, and I would respect his choice whether or not such images could be shared.

I am an idealist. I realize this. Saying that I wish the world didn't work a certain way won't do anything to change the fact that it does. But you know... I don't think one should have to take the whole rest of their life into account when deciding to post a video review or a photo of a new rope corset. I look at someone like Midori, whose professional world is the kink world, and I think... if she were to ever stop doing that, what would happen to her? And I think, she is lucky that she can dedicate her life to her art. But I also think, one can't really be that visible in the scene and be involved in anything else that's at all high-profile.

Overall, my impression is that, in situations where one wants to be "visible," one really has to choose which world to stand in. One can stand in both worlds if they stay below the radar, but otherwise it strikes me as being difficult... if not impossible. This isn't to say that I want to be all out there throwing my face around... but it would be nice in a way to know that if I wanted to, I could.

Kai Learns About Vibrators... And Tries to Decide if They're Kinky

All right… I think this is as good a time as any to write about vibrators. I wasn’t entirely certain I was going to do one, since I’ll say right off the bat that I don’t consider vibrators intrinsically kinky. While I’m sure there are those out there who view any type of sex toy as kinky, my personal definition of what defines “kink” lists more in the direction of BDSM practices. Dictionary.com defines kink (or the slang sense of kink, at any rate) as “bizarre or unconventional sexual preferences or behavior,” and when you get down to it I would never think to classify vibrators as either bizarre or unconventional.

In fact, I would be more likely to define myself as bizarre and unconventional for not having even owned a vibrator until about a year or two ago, when a good friend of mine basically told me, “You need a vibrator. I’m going to order you one from Canada.” This is a paraphrase, but I’m not paraphrasing that much. My friend, who was in the process of getting herself one of those fancy toys that you plug into your mp3 player, took it upon herself to buy me a toy from half a world away and have it delivered to my doorstep in Japan. It looked like this:

Now, the first thing I should probably make clear here is that the reason I have never owned a vibrator has been largely based on a distinct lack of need... and consequently a lack of interest. I had a bit of curiosity about them, but never an accompanying drive to own one. And anyway, I did just fine without one. But it was Spring and I was sexually frustrated and my dear friend decided that she wanted to help me out--which is where the Doc Johnson Flex a Pleasure up there comes in.

All told, this was probably not the best vibrator to start out with. Sure, it's nice and friendly-looking and kind of resembles either a piece of belly jewelry or a phone from the 1970s (I was really tempted to take a photo illustrating the phone resemblance), but it has drawbacks that I wouldn't have thought of upon looking at it. Namely, I ended up using it almost exclusively for external stimulation because it can get... well, "stuck" is sort of the wrong word, but it really isn't far off. The way it's designed to bend is actually pretty cool--and useful!--but if it bends around once it's inside you it can get a little confused on its way out. Once or twice I found that the angle I was removing it at was different from the angle at which it was inserted, and the moments before I was able to successfully maneuver it out were a little bit unnerving. There is a distinct possibility that this makes me stupid, but there is an even more distinct possibility that someone like me who hadn't even handled a standard, non-bendy vibrator should probably have not started out with this one. Additionally, though I used it quite sparingly, the batteries ran out very quickly (apparently, even a few days in the drawer without attention should be grounds for removing them).

And it didn't get me off.

This is actually--as one might expect--the pivotal detail in why, even after I got my vibrator, I continued to be unenthusiastic about them. It isn't that it didn't feel good, or that it didn't do anything... but I just couldn't relate to any of those people who swear by their vibrators.

My first indication that I might be mistaken about the usefulness--or at least, the enjoyability--of vibrators was back when DW and I had our first scene. If you read that entry, you know that he tied me into a simple rope harness and put a vibrator under the rope, sending tremors down to the knot that was tied between my legs. I hadn't put much thought into the vibrator's potential as a partner toy, much less an accessory to BDSM scenes (see my previous separation of kink and sex), and the creative use of it in this one instance made me reevaluate it somewhat.

My second indication didn't come for quite some time afterwards... just a few days ago, in fact, eleven months after that scene. (Wow... eleven months... it's really been that long, since our first BDSM interaction together.) I can't say that DW woke me up with vibrators, exactly... the exchange ran something like this:

Me: "What you thinking about? Thinking about work?"

DW: "No, not work."

Me: "What, then?"

DW: "You'll find out."

At which point he got out of bed to go to work. Or... I assumed that was what he was going to do, since it was roundabout going-to-work time. Instead, he went to his closet for something, came back to the bed, and snuck one of his vibrators under the blanket. I hadn't seen it when he'd grabbed it out of the closet, and I was more than a little surprised by it. He teased me for a few moments, then went back to the closet... but that was just to exchange that vibrator for the one I remembered from the rope scene. After a minute or two he headed off to work, but left me with the vibrator to play with.

Vibrator #1

Vibrator #2

And wouldn't you know it... I finished. And I consider this to be something of a big deal, because it's in the category of Things That Never Worked Before. What I have learned from this very spread out series of events is that vibrators can make good partner toys and scene components, and aren't entirely useless and/or unnecessary. I probably won't opt to use them on my own, but in the right situations they can be a lot of fun. And perhaps this is also, in a way, an argument in favor of vibrators having a kink component; after all, tons of vanilla women use them, but they probably don't use them integrated into rope harnesses or as part of power-exchange scenarios. Are vibrators intrinsically kinky? I still say no. But they can integrate into kink situations very well... and that makes them worth putting in the toybox.

Know what else isn't intrinsically kinky but works well in kink situations? Ice. Which is why I've decided that I want this thing.

Kai's Conundrum of the Day

A long, long time ago, roundabout the time of my entry, I wrote that I was waiting for the day when DW would finally tell me to kneel. A few nights after that… perhaps a week… he held me close and told me that it seemed I was always waiting for him to take something from me. He told me this as he held me, yet refused to take my body as I clearly wanted him to. He told me that I wanted him to take, but hadn’t learned yet how to offer.

DW seems to have become taken with teaching me lessons through sex.

I have to say that it was not a perfect lesson. It was not a perfect lesson because it was, in its own way, contrary to the way that we have sex. I can initiate, but the one who decides when the actual sex happens is nearly always him. I might push for it sometimes, try to push my body down on his, but more often than not he’ll smile and hold me off until he decides it’s time. And so I have learned to wait for him. In this regard, I rely somewhat on him doing the taking. On the opposite side of the coin, the offer I was making to him at the time was unmistakable, and I told him so, but he looked at me and told me that he was using it to illustrate.

I wanted him to make me kneel. For a set of partners who are only in it for that one scene, for the thirty minutes or hour or two hours that make up the power exchange, the command is limited. The command lasts as long as the scene, and if the one on his or her knees decides they don’t like it all that much, they don’t have to do it again. What DW was suggesting to me is that, the way our particular dynamic works, I wouldn’t necessarily have the option of shaking off a command or an expectation once it was put on me. If he made this command for me to kneel, and I decided that it didn’t agree with me, I couldn’t just shake it off and be done with it once the hour was up.

I need to make an admission here that I still don’t fully understand what he was telling me, and that even now as I recount it I might be interpreting it incorrectly. But the gist of it is there: that I expect him to take, but I do not offer. And when you get down to it, I don’t know how to offer. Not really. I don’t know how to make an offer that doesn’t come across as implying that I am telling my dominant to do something. Saying to him, “I want you to do this,” sounds demanding to me. Sometimes I tell him something I would like to do, and he files it away in his brain for whatever time he’s good and ready to do it. Perhaps this is that I should be doing. But even that feels more like a request than an offer, and so I become stuck again with this idea of what exactly an offer is in a BDSM context. How is one meant to approach an offer? How is one meant to indicate wanting something without asking for it?

In a way, I prefer it when DW takes things from me. He knows, at least to a certain extent, what he can take, and he has not yet crossed any lines or boundaries when taking from me. Twice in the span of a week he has woken me with sex, once in the morning, once in the middle of the night. No discussion, no invitation, no words. His body claiming mine, taking his pleasure from me. Taking. There is a certain comfort in this for me, though I couldn’t really tell you why. I don’t entirely understand it myself. There is comfort in the moments when he interrupts my reading by taking the small flogger on the wall to my inner thighs, in a morning when he decides to roll me over and tease me with a vibrator before heading off to work. These are things which come without invitation, but which I always enjoy and which always make me feel loved. But when I request, when I say that there is something that I want… I never know when or if I will get it. If I say that I want to be tied, that I want to be collared, that I want to do a scene… will they ever come to pass? This is something that I can’t know. Have no way of knowing. When something is taken, it is a moment which comes without expectations. And, in its own way, it is a moment which comes unaccompanied by waiting. He says that I wait for something to be taken, but whenever he has taken something it has not been anything that I could have tangibly said I was waiting for. Events that appear when I am not looking for them.

If I request… if indeed I learn how to properly offer… I am looking. I am putting a name to something that I am waiting for. I offer my neck for the collar without knowing if or when he will take up the offer.

Take up the offer.

Take.

[Edit: DW just did a really good post about what he means by offering vs. taking... reading through it helped me a lot with some of the things I wasn't clear on as I was writing this, so I encourage you to check it out over at http://deepthoughtsandjournies.blogspot.com/2010/08/thoughts-on-control-and-submission.html.]