Anatomy of a Scene.

Rowdy and I are at a play party. We start flirting, playing around, him pulling my hair, pinching my breasts, shoving me up against the wall and kissing me. He tells me to go get the flogger.

We sit on the couch and talk before doing anything. Our negotiation is brief, because we know each other well and have played before. I tell him I want a flogging; he asks if he can punch me too, and I enthusiastically agree. He asks if he can spank me, and I say I'm not really into that. If we were new to each other, we'd clarify more--he already knows that I can't take heavy pain and prefer to be hit on the back and shoulders more than the butt, that I like it when play gets sexual, and that I love being bitten.

We go to a St. Andrew's cross in the playspace, a seven-foot-tall wooden "X" shape with metal loops to attach ropes or cuffs. I undress. Rowdy takes two coils of rope out of his bag and ties a knot around each of my wrists, then ties them up to the cross. I end up facing away from him, into the cross, my arms stretched high over my head and outward in each direction. It's a longish process and to be honest I'm a bit fidgety, even distracted, looking around at my surroundings, passively holding my wrists for his convenience but not emotionally taken up into the scene yet.

Midway through tying me he uses the ropes to hold my wrists over my head and kisses me, and that helps, though.

Then I'm tied, and he starts out with just his hands, running up and down the length of my body, warming me up, waking me up to the feeling in my skin. It's sweet and sensual and gentle, and at the same time just a little frightening, knowing he's priming me to fully feel what comes next.

What comes next is the flogger. The first time it lands on me it's soft, just a dusting, soft flexible leather gently stroking down my back. The next time is not quite as soft. Soon the flogger is landing hard and fast on my shoulders, my back, my ass and thighs. It's not truly painful--I'm not much into heavy pain--but it's a constant pounding, a warm slap into my muscles each time the tails land on my skin.

And then--WHAM--I'm in subspace. It's that strangely detached place I go when I'm high or heavily drunk, when I'm under hypnosis, and during intense sex; I'm aware of everything that's going on and can think about it lucidly, but my reactions are not lucid and there's a powerful sense of otherness to the experience, a folding in on myself, a shift to an emotional parallel universe. I'm nearly limp in the ropes, and aware of my limpness, but unable or unwilling to compose my body. I can sort of babble out words with great effort, but without that effort I just moan. For reasons I can't possibly explain, it's wonderful.

The character of the blows changes in my mind, then. I'm no longer experiencing them physically but as a lulling sensation, a periodic thump at my brain, a feeling at once sustaining and intruding upon my trance. Now and then one stings a little too much and I can feel that on my skin, but the ones that are just right, and that's most of them, are not blows at all. They're words, pulses, thoughts, something abstract. They're feelings.

At some point I guess Rowdy puts down the flogger. He comes up close behind me, his whole front against my back, kisses me, and punches me. I have a great back for punching, broad and strong, with big meaty muscles over my shoulderblades. Perfect for catching a fist with a lovely thump. These impacts hit me harder than the flogging, physically and emotionally, and I grunt with each one, almost roaring. It is not a sound of surrender. It is a sound, despite my hands still tied over my head and my body obediently receiving the blows, of fighting. I'm roaring and Rowdy is roaring back, growling at me as his fists pound into my back.

There just aren't words for some things. It's... good. Let's go with good.

But too soon my back starts getting bruised and the punching can't go on forever without crossing the line into real pain. So Rowdy comes in close again, sets his teeth on my back, and bites down hard and holds. It hurts, and it's wonderful, and it's the first thing that edges completely over the line into sexual pleasure, and I'm about to come just from having my back bitten. It feels like my back is coming.

On the second bite he rubs my pussy while he bites me, and then I come the regular way.

Finally I say--babble--that I've had enough. My face is slumped forward into the rough wood of the St. Andrew's cross. Rowdy runs his hands up and down my body, then his nails just barely graze me and I gasp, and he kisses me and unties me. I'm half-aware and giddy as he helps me down.

We lie down on a mattress and cuddle for a long while afterwards. At first I'm just flying, maybe even more so than while we were playing. His body feels warm and wonderful against mine. Then again, everything feels warm and wonderful. I am deeply, deeply inside myself mentally, and yet I'm acutely sensitive to every touch and every word. It's a long and delightfully gradual process to come back to Earth, to where I can walk and talk and do stuff and pretend to be a normal person.




So when I say half-jokingly that "my boyfriend hits me," this is what I mean. It's a carefully constrained and constructed process, far more complicated inside and out than just hitting, and the end result is nothing like just hitting.

The end result is the complete bliss of mind and body.