Tuesday, July 20, 2010

The checklist, and a story.

Today's update is gargantuan and somewhat tedious, but I wanted to write it up both for the edification of potential play partners and as a general way of taking my own pulse on how I feel about various fucked-up shit. So it's on its own page: The Grand BDSM Checklist.

Also, Elsie wrote a story inspired by my Sex Matrix fantasy. It's hot, well-written, and fucked-up (that's high praise), and I encourage you to read it if you don't feel like going through eighteen pages of "Animal play, dog, giving. Animal play, dog, receiving. Animal play, dog, dachshund, giving."

35 comments:

  1. Mmm... the more I read your blog the more I wish I were involved in the BDSM community here (if there is one - I live in a smaller town).

    I've been a pretty regular reader for a bit and I wanted to leave a comment to let you know how much I've enjoyed your posts - you give me hope for my kinky future.

    So... Thanks :)

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  2. The only thing on that list that I couldn't even imagine what the fuck it is was "pony slave".

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  3. Ellie - Thanks! I've been thinking of writing a "beginner's guide to BDSM, by a barely-beyond-beginner"--there are plenty out there, but hey, why not reinvent the wheel, right?

    Comrade PhysiProf - That's when people dress up with harnesses and sometimes hooves and other horsey accouterments, and they pull their masters around on carts or give horsey rides or do dressage and stuff I guess.

    Basically it's a horsey person.

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  4. Hey - every blog needs a 101 section. Personally, I think I would find your beginner's guide wonderfully helpful. No one should have to suffer without properly kinky sex when a world of kinky delights lay just outside your door ;-P

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  5. That's when people dress up with harnesses and sometimes hooves and other horsey accouterments, and they pull their masters around on carts or give horsey rides or do dressage and stuff I guess.

    That sounds pretty festive!

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  6. Tickling is just not sexual to me. It's relaxing and delightful and I've considered asking my massage lady if she'd tickle instead of rub, but I don't want to freak her out. Sucks b/c I'm single and I have no one to rickle my back!

    Also, Holly: you can wub my tummy whenever you want. :D

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  7. Two years ago, the Fetish Flea was sharing space with... I think a bridal show, IIRC. Something very family-friendly. Because a family was walking by a corral of pony-slaves, and a girl who couldn't have been older than eight or so said "Mommy! I want to be a pony when I grow up!"

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  8. Holly -

    Something I realized only very recently was that there isn't a good introductory article or commonly-cited blog post that I've run across which addresses the biggest mind-bender I came across.

    Basically, it took me a long time - and someone banging my head into it repeatedly - for me to look more closely at the concepts behind submission and limit-pushing; specifically, that as a submissive or bottom, you truly do things which hurt, or which you don't want to do / don't want done to you, or which -actually- humiliate you.

    And that can be incredibly hot.

    I have a feeling I'm not alone in having to have had my face rubbed into that concept before I was able to step back and see that it was even there on a personal level, rather than something that only applied to other people.


    ~Aaron

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  9. Anon,

    Tickling can definitely be sexual. I have this mixed fuzzy/leathery flogger. I restrain my partner face down on the bed, maybe throw a blindfold on him, and then lightly, slowly, sweep the flogger up and down his back and thighs. The fuzzy flogger bits give him gentle tickles until I decide to mix it up and spank him with it. Then I alternate back and forth until he's begging me to let him flip over...

    So it's not exactly fingers-in-your-armpits tickling, but it is tickling and it is sexy.

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  10. "Knife play
    Love it. Oh my gosh love it. I want to be threatened with knives, I want to be cut with them, I want to lick them clean."

    How is this different than gun play? Hell you can do things to a gun to make it so it looks dangerous but isn't (not that I think that's a good idea.) However a knife that can cut is ALWAYS going to be dangerous.

    "Interrogations
    I've never tried this and very much want to."

    Is this like a sexy gitmo? Is waterboarding hot? Or are we talking more Basic Instinct here? Do you do good cop/bad cop/Batman. If so can I be Batman?

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  11. Keith, the fundamental rule you should never break with guns is to NEVER, EVER treat them as anything but loaded. Constantly. A gun can always be mishandled, misread, misunderstood, even by EXPERTS, and people get hurt.

    A knife is usually used by someone with a lot of control, and most of the time, if you trust that person to do BDSM things to you, you sometimes trust them to use something dangerous on you (rope is dangerous, sometimes, and can potentially cut/break bones/hurt you, right?).

    Bottom line: a knife doesn't accidentally go bang.

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  12. What about gun replicas? Some of them look very realistic yet can't actually fire anything. Or even a very obviously pretend scene with plastic toy guns. No, wait. I hate guns. I shouldn't be recommending this to anyone ever. I'm only saying that because I'm wondering if that even counts as "gun play" anymore, of if it's just a form of role-playing instead.

    Hmm, I'd do nearly everything on that list given the opportunity, even if I didn't think I would like it, just for the experience of having done it. On the other hand, I know someone who would probably suffer a panic attack from trying to do any but the very mildest things on that list - and even then probably wouldn't enjoy most of the rest of them.

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  13. All the gun play is out. Not even with replica guns. You don't get drunk and drive a car. You don't get drunk and play with gun.
    I have the feeling that just being with Holly for a cuppa at fakebucks or wherever would intoxicate me far more than a fifth of 151.
    just the thought of her holding her Evil Stick sends a delicious chill through me. If she ever applied it to me, I'd be in subspace, If she handed it to me, I'd be in subspace. And I'm mostly Dom BTW....

    To recap, No guns, not even toys, around intoxicants, and Holly is too damn intoxicating.....

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  14. That is an awesome list and I'm going to refer to it/read through it with my s.o....that should get some hot conversations going, LOL! I've heard of many of the items but it's always good to gather more info to fill in the blanks.

    ComradePhysio, I think pony play often includes butt plug "tails"...think of a rubber stopper with a ponytail attached. There truly is something for everyone and God bless the internet for making it accessible/letting people find each other! :P

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  15. Anonymous Aaron, I like what you said...it took me awhile to really understand the overlaps and distinctions between the parts of BDSM. I'm not submissive in the sense that I want to be of service or take orders or be degraded (in fact, that will probably just piss me off and ruin the mood), but I do really get off on pain and restraint and having things done to me that feel good and hurt at the same time in the escalating feedback cycle that Holly has described. I also like being the one doing that to someone else so I'd figure myself as a sort of switch that's more into the physical sensations and extremity of the play and not so much the power over/submitting to, which is more psychological, for lack of a better word.

    It's still hard for me to put into words/describe but the more I learn/the more I think about it/the more I refine what I like and the more I understand about the wide variety of what other people like...which is totally fascinating!

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  16. Basically, it took me a long time - and someone banging my head into it repeatedly - for me to look more closely at the concepts behind submission and limit-pushing; specifically, that as a submissive or bottom, you truly do things which hurt, or which you don't want to do / don't want done to you, or which -actually- humiliate you.

    For the record, none of this is true of this submissive.

    What I truly do these days is mostly stuff like "make tea". Anyone who is humiliated by putting the kettle on worries me.

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  17. I am going to start this off with three things. First I am a gun owner and... erm... accumulator and I am quite familiar with the 4 (or is it 5 now) rules and the various cultural accouterments that come with that. Second I believe what people do in their own bedrooms is their business so long as all the knives, fire, and bullets stay on their property. Lastly I admit that I am approaching this from a completely... detached point of view. I have no more practical interest in any of this that I do of particle physics. However I do find it to be an interesting intellectual exercise.

    I do still have a bit of a logic problem with guns being in some danger category above other potentially dangerous kink activities. I actually had some rebuttals to that regard written up and whatnot. However while running all of this through my head I think I have stumbled upon something important. Gunplay is the only method of potentially dangerous kink is that can not only injure the people who consented to said dangerous activity, but can injure people who are completely uninvolved as well. I suppose that reason alone is enough to put it in a category of danger all it's own.

    Oh and I still want to know about this interrogation thing. You humans certainly are fascinating creatures.

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  18. Artsynomad, I'm saying it can't be. But I've tried being on the receiving end and it just puts me (delightfully) to sleep.

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  19. DUH. *"I'm not saying it CAN'T be."

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  20. "For the record, none of this is true of this submissive.

    What I truly do these days is mostly stuff like "make tea". Anyone who is humiliated by putting the kettle on worries me."


    Entirely fair. I don't mean to imply that I have suddenly had a revelation of the One True Kink! :)


    ~Aaron

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  21. Keith - If someone slips during knife play, they may cut me when they didn't mean to, or cut somewhat deeper or further than they should have. Which are serious problems, but they're unlikely to suddenly stab through my entire body with tremendous force. Unless I'm VERY unlucky, a knife slip is at worst a matter of stitches; an unintentional discharge of a gun is much more likely to be disabling or fatal.

    As for interrogations, whether it's Gitmo or Basic Instinct or Batman is...yes. I mean, it's entirely up to the players.

    Aaron - Basically, it took me a long time - and someone banging my head into it repeatedly - for me to look more closely at the concepts behind submission and limit-pushing; specifically, that as a submissive or bottom, you truly do things which hurt, or which you don't want to do / don't want done to you, or which -actually- humiliate you.
    I don't. But some people do. It's a weird subject, and one I think deserves its own post.

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  22. Heh, it is a weird subject, and I'm very interested in your thoughts on it. :)

    ~Aaron

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  23. Aaron: specifically, that as a submissive or bottom, I truly do things which hurt, or which I don't want to do / don't want done to me, or which -actually- humiliate me.

    Revised for clarity.

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  24. Mark -

    Fun time with grammatical nitpicking.

    While, yes, you could read that as me claiming that it's a globally-applicable statement (which would be retarded), you (globally-applicable) could and should rather read it as a claim, from me, that it is a non-global and yet non-insignificant you-plural.

    In other words, I think that my statement applies not just to me but to some subset of submissives. I'm sorry that you and others took my statement otherwise.


    ~Aaron

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  25. And more to the point, given my previous post, the form in which I posted the statement which you "edited for clarity" is in fact more accurate than your suggested edit.

    ~Aaron

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  26. Yow, that came out way more snarky than I intended. I apologize.

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  27. Re-think the cunnilingus part. You need to cum that way.

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  28. @Mark: i think we all have at least one grammar nazi in our social circles - I never take the "corrections" as malicious or snarky... more like you just can't really help yourself ;)

    I'm a science nerd so whenever I'm watching one of those CSI type shows I can't help critiquing their use of instruments and the resulting graphs

    From one nerd to another - I understand :)

    (Sorry, i realize grammar and chemistry talk don't really belong on a sex blog but sometimes the nerd leaks out)

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  29. I consistently mistake the "rhetorical you" for people actually talking to me, and thus I tend to correct them.

    It's pretty easy to do, honestly, especially when one's aware of how prone many people are to universalising things that aren't universal.

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  30. What I find sort of interesting is how many people want to nit pick at the gunplay bit. The whole point of the list is for a person to have a chance to say what would turn zir on, not turn zir on, or actively turn zir off. Clearly Holly is uninterested in gunplay. Does it matter why?

    I don't see anyone going "but brown showers are basically just like a butt plug mixed with a golden shower!" (or some argument akin to the ongoing debate about knives being as dangerous/more dangerous than guns). So why the need to "prove" that somehow Holly's gunplay "NO" is unacceptable? It's a "NO," so what's the big deal with just moving on?

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  31. @Mark - It's all good. You may have accidentally snarked, but I quoted you as saying "edited" when in fact you said "revised", so I am well-hoist upon my own grammarian petard!

    ~Aaron

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  32. Anon - she doesn't "need to cum that way." Just because oral is popular doesn't mean it works for everyone. Holly knows what works for her and she can get off however she likes. Cunnilingus is no more a necessity than brown showers or bestiality.

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  33. Anon - Creeeepy. Anyway, it's not like my physical reactions are something I can "rethink."

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  34. I always feel like I'm going to feel so inferior when I read other people's check lists because other people are not me and can do things that I can't do.

    But then I see that there are things that I might be willing to try and maybe I'm not so bad after all. It's not a contest.

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  35. @Kaija: "I'm not submissive in the sense that I want to be of service or take orders or be degraded (in fact, that will probably just piss me off and ruin the mood), but I do really get off on pain and restraint and having things done to me that feel good and hurt at the same time in the escalating feedback cycle that Holly has described. I also like being the one doing that to someone else so I'd figure myself as a sort of switch that's more into the physical sensations and extremity of the play and not so much the power over/submitting to, which is more psychological, for lack of a better word.

    "It's still hard for me to put into words/describe...."

    That sounds quite a bit like my POV. My current quick'n'dirty (heh) description is, "I'm not a dom, I'm not a sub, I'm not even a switch, though I can play one at parties." I'm not even fond of top/bottom terminology; it still seems to me to imply a power hierarchy, or at the very least that one has to choose either the giver or receiver role and stick with it for the duration of the evening/scene/whatever.

    Sunflower

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