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I should point out that despite the interesting new insight in how I deal with different types of pain, this was in no way a bad weekend.

It isn’ t even as if that ruined the scene. It was delicious up until then. And these things happen, something doesn’t work and snaps a headspace and then you take a breather and do something else. And after that there was a more restrictive tie, and some more knives which were fine since I had been… reset by then. 

 And the weekend included getting to cane someone (and it is always flattering for a masochist to tell you that you have more of a mean streak than she expected) and having someone give me a blowjob with my knife at her throat. (Which is more logistically difficult than one might expect, but still better than the cake I baked.)

 And, interestingly enough, of all the bites I received, the one that remains most noted by my body, and provokes a small smile of endorphin-fueled grinning whenever it gets bumped by something in my pocket, is the one I have on my thigh. Thus the one that "broke" me lingers the most sweetly.

All in all, I am not TOO torn up I missed the Flea (although there are reasons I am disappointed).

This past weekend I had an interesting insight into how I process pain.  I was having knives run over me by two lovely women. They were playing an interesting game of "find the buttons on Victor’s body" (most of mine seem fairly obvious and close to bones - there a couple that are dramatically more effective than others, though) when one then raked my torso with her nails. Raked might not be the best word, it may have been a bit more of a digging into the flesh and pulling.

It hurt.  A lot. It hurt in a way that made me scream ow, and flinch in the ropes. It made me unhappy.

I like sensation. A lot. It makes me happy, and makes me exclaim noises that seem to amuse those who enjoy making me make noises. This applies on both sides of my switchiness, as I also like making others exclaim those noises as well.

I am not a masochist.

I know masochists, I have played with masochists, and let me tell you, I am no masochist. (Nor am I an algophiliac.)

She apologized, and going back to knives I started to feel overstimulated. At least I thought that at the time, and asked for no more than 10 minutes; but in retrospect it was not so much overstimulation as the way I was processing the knives changed. My tormentors agreed to 10 minutes, intending to take full measure of that time, and then about 30 seconds later, I got bit, hard, in the leg. This was also Unpleasant Hurt.

I reacted badly. 

I kneed the biter in the head.

I was tied, so got no solid contact. But that was it and I wanted out. I normally like being bitten. Or rather, I like having been bitten, especially big meaty bites like that. (I tend to like the after effects of having been bitten more than the being bitten itself - this is similar to how I like being pierced.) But while usually bites are a good thing, and indeed I have a run of pretty bite marks down my back from that evening - this was simply intolerable.

I can only chalk it up to something about the way I process pain. It seems pain is like a menu of flavours, and some go together in my head and some don’t. Knife on top of piercings? - A fine match of strong red with a full-flavoured main course. Biting on top of knifing? - Chocolate milk poured in my soup.  

As I said, I am neither an algophiliac nor a masochist. I don’t process pain as pleasure and hurting me doesn’t want to make me fuck you. (It doesn’t mean I won’t want to fuck you afterwards, but it isn’t a button that makes me "hot".) That wasn’t new for me.

What was new was learning I combine different pains differently. Interestingly, I have heard (and have played with bottoms for whom this is true) that switching a sensation helps some people process better, shifting from one type of pain to another prevents them from being overstimulated.  This was specifically mentione for sting and thud.  Since it has been a long time since I was hit, I really don’t know how that would work on me. Perhaps sting/thud go together well in my case. But knife/bite didn’t. Really didn’t. It is something I am going to have to remember to keep in mind next time I am topping someone.

Of course, I shouldn’t assume everyone is wired the way I am, as I know some who a bite after that would be bliss. Indeed, assuming people are wired the way you are is almost invariably a recipe for disaster. And maybe another day in another way that combo would work. But it certainly seems that this weekend I am not someone who likes different styles of pain layered on top of other pain.

I do believe I need to read a lot more Bitchy Jones.

I have never understood non-consent. Well, perhaps I can understand it somewhat intellectually, but I really don’t understand it in any kind of visceral manner.

I just really can’t see what would be interesting about it. I know Rona finds it hot from one side, Eileen from another, and can find fantasies on it all over the web if I look, and yet seem to be missing something about it. 

It may be simply that I really have no interest. That’s fine, there are lots of things I have no interest in. It may be I just haven’t found an approach to it that works for me.

In an IM conversation, Eileen said that  "Non-con fantasies come out when you start taking simple feelings inspired by different parts of BDSM and taking them to extremes."

An example she gave concerned bondage. One of the things I like about binding people is removing certain options from my partner.  I like seeing how there are things my partner wants to instinctively do that they can’t, and so are forced to process or react to in another way. It is the same when I am bound (although it has been some time since I’ve been bound).

There is something creative in placing restraints. Not just in sex, but in many creative endeavours, too much freedom is sometimes a problem, while putting limits into play forces creative solutions and new responses. It is one of the reasons games have rules. Calvinball is fun sometimes, but so is chess.

But none of that strikes me as non-con in any way. One consents to removing options. Eileen has said that a lot of non-con is "becoming aroused by playing with the tipping point when options are just-this-side of gone".  I can get that intellectually.

 I think that there are a number of issues involved for me. One of the main ones is simply that I am heavily invested in the idea of consent - active, affirmative assent. It is something I argue as for what the standard of consent should be, ethically, rather than the negative framing we tend to have now in society. Too much feminist and social theory makes it difficult for me to not find non-con immediately suspect. Another issue may simply be that most of the non-con fantasies I have ever read strike me as really abusive. (Yes, I know fantasy is not reality.) A third is likely that the one couple I know at all intimately who played with non-con, who are both long-experienced kinksters who had been together for years, had it blow up on them rather spectacularly. They are no longer together, and for some time she considered the incident sexual assault (I don’t know if she has re-assessed her view of that or whether she simply decided it wasn’t worth arguing about anymore.) I know that he has sworn off ever playing with non-con past a really low level again, no matter how much his partner might claim to want it.

I think I have difficulty hearing "non-consentual" and going straight to "no say whatsoever". Everything less than that isn’t non-consentual in my mind, it is negotiated limits. (For instance, my mention of putting a knife to someone’s throat and making them give me a blowjob. The only people I would consider doing that to are people I know would find it hot and who would trust me to do it - so it isn’t non-consentual in any interpretation in my brain.)

 So I ask you all (limited though my readership is), what makes non-consentual play hot? What is it I am missing? Or, rather, what might you suggest is a way for me to have an in to see why people find it hot? Or is it just that I am, in a way, doing the same thing with non-con that I do with kink in general. defining anything I do understand as not really non-con?

I really feel like making someone give me a blowjob while I hold a knife to her throat.

Since that isn’t going to happen tonight, I am baking a cake.  

I was introduced to The Secret Diary of a Call Girl the other day by the Pixie.  (I suppose I should put a spoiler warning on this for people thinking of watching the show in the future.)

I suspected immediately that it was based on a book or blog series and it turns out that it is, indeed, just that - based on the book based the blog of Belle de Jour (and since it seems all sex bloggers know each other, I will assume most of my few readers already know who that is).

It has much the confessional style of a blogger, with series lead Billie Piper often addressing the camera directly to comment.

I caught the fourth episode (the link to the show site offers to let you play episodes but I can’t seem to link to it) where Belle becomes a pro-domme (well, learns and tries it out). I suppose  I should ask Calico her opinion of it.

I don’t really have context, so I don’t know if the subplot with her best friend is some kind of important romantic or personal arc that is the "real story" of the series or not. In the episode, Belle ends up getting pissed at her best friend and takes it out on her sub. He safewords out, which she ignores at first.

I was only partly paying attention, so I am not sure, but it sounds like he apologizes for it - they both do - but he says something like she ‘really got it’ at the end there. I want to double check that last part, but I can’t get the clip to play on the laptop.

Belle then comes out to her friend and there is some voice over about her learning sometimes you have to abandon control. So it seemed to use the pro-domme thing more as metaphor for the character development. I don’t know if the show always does that with her sex work or not, though.

Mind you, the pro-domme who she trained under was presented not as a crazy out of control person at all. She’s matter of fact, professional, out to her husband, and very reasonable and polite. She is played a bit for laughs in how she teaches Belle, but the humour was more based in her matter-of-factness.

In fact, it is the "out to the husband" bit that rattles Belle, who is closeted to her best friend, which is why they are having stress.

I can’t quite make up my mind about the show and don’t really know if it was good enough for me to bother watching the rest. However, given the diversity of how BDSM is actually lived  it is always interesting to see how it is presented in media. i’m not sure if this was a positive or a negative over all.

 I didn’t get to cane someone today.

That, in and of itself, is not that surprising. Most days I don’t cane anyone. Today was supposed to be different however. I am visiting a town where I have a lovely sometimes playmate and this mischevious pixie had sent me a Christmas present - The Toybag Guide to Canes and Caning. The clever young woman had heard about how excited I was over my new cane, and decided to help. (I do so like the helpful ones.)

However, I have been leveled by a rather nasty flu while here, and while better, am far from recovered. Additionally, this was not purely set up as a play date, and fooling around, snuggling, and sex were on the menu as well.

 Thing is, I barely felt up for any of it save the snuggling. I’d like to think my body was warring between "cute naked girl snuggling me" and "still feeling achy and sick" but I sometimes wonder if it is just that I don’t really think I have a sex drive on par with most people’s. I rarely ever have that kind of consuming desire to take someone, that need to throw them against a wall and ravish. It just… isn’t that common. To hear my friends talk, though, I am something of an exception. Passion is a rarity for me. I can enjoy, and I do, playing with people I like but lust… lust seems something I am only fleetingly accustomed to.

So in a desire to connect, we used up all our time we could have played with canes with. To be honest, I am not sure how disappointed I am with this. It is possible I was just not really up for anything intense at all, and caning would have suffered the same sort of dispassionate interest.  I don’t really know. I have felt somewhat disconnected this whole trip, having little interest to play at any of the parties I have gone to. I may just be stressed from my current state of unemployment.

But in the end, I didn’t get to cane someone today, and I think I am in fact somewhat disappointed. 

 It was years before I ever accepted the label of kinky. Partially, this may have been due to my dislike of labels in general. Like others, I am not overly fond of being pigeon-holed into a box. Labels are useful heuristics, and a good quick first sketch of things you might want to know about someone, but they far too easily become striaghtjackets. There is no label that doesn’t carry with it excess baggage. No one is captured completely by a label, and most of us bristle when people assume all kinds of incorrect details from a label we have presented. But that’s normal enough.

 Years ago, not long after losing my virginity, I went to a panel on polyamoury at (where else) a science fiction convention. It was a thrown-together thing; the panel had been a last minute suggestion and they had then lost the room, so a number of speakers took it upon themselves to commandeer a side lobby, round up some chairs, and host a panel of just themselves. Intrigued, I offered to go as the token white, male, heterosexual, vanilla monogamist.

 An old friend of mine objected immediately. Having met the woman who took my virginity, he insisted I no longer qualified as vanilla. I argued back that we had done very little that qualified as kinky.

 "No." He said. "I know you like to think the universe revolves around you, but it doesn’t. Everything that you do that you like does not then become vanilla and mainstream by default. That’s not how it works."

 The argument continued until his fiance offered up the diplomatic solution of calling me 100% artificial vanilla extract, "he tastes just like the real thing".

 The "vanilla argument" is now a staple my friend and I trot out occasionally for laughs.

 The real reason I didn’t accept kinky for a long time had to do more with its use as a political or community identified by the kinksters I knew. For them, kink was an identity, a lifestyle, a core part of their sexuality. For me, it was another set of toys in the toybox of what might be fun playtime with a lover. Due largely to my first girlfriend, I saw very little line between "pistachio" and "vanilla". It was (and still is to me) all ice cream. My first lover drilled into me that PIV intercourse was by no means the definition of sex. There was no line between one and the other, and so I tended not to draw one.

 While I can be argued into agreeing there is some kind of continuum that runs from "vanilla" to "kinky", I really don’t know where to arbitrarily draw the vanilla line. I think what constitutes vanilla has changed and slid and altered over time. At a gathering in San Francisco in early 2006, I recall a number of people discussing how Tristan Taormino had opined that "breath play was the new buttsex" - anal had gone vanilla enough that no one considered it kink anymore.

 It all seems rather silly to me. I am the last person in the world to say I have a good definition of sex, or kink, or any of it, but I truly think the line between kink and vanilla is nowhere near as bright and shiny as some people like to think it is. Considering traditional heterosexual marriage is about as good an example of a D/s relationship as you can find, only without properly negotiated consent - what is the line? (Go look at some of the "submissive wives" movement. Here are a few links.)
 
 So while I will happily accept the label kinky, I prefer to say that I do kinky things. I doubt I would be seriously unhappy with someone who prefers vanilla sex. When I bother to define myself I define myself as a switch, but really it just comes down to "I do things with my lovers that we both like", and that can take many forms - it depends on the relationship. The dynamic running between me and whoever my playmate(s) is tends to define what goes on.

 In the end, I just enjoy sharing ice cream with people I like.

I already tried posting this once and it failed. I guess I still need to learn this system a bit.

Let’s try again.

 I haven’t been to Black Rose since 1998. Since I’ve been hoping this year to explore kink outside of intimate relationships a bit more, when Rona suggested splitting a room, I decided it was worth a shot.  I am very happy I went, I had a wonderful time.

I got pierced and learned how to pierce (the marks faded quickly though) and found out that while violet wands feel lovely, my skin simply hates them and reacts *very* poorly, which is unfortunate. I did play in public, which is a rarity for me. (Luckily I didn’t notice when the shiny woman hit the table I was being pierced on with her single tail, or I might not have been all too happy with future public play.)

 Despite my intent to not buy anything I picked up a lovely orange transluscent acrylic cane. I got it 20% off from the woman who sold me my first wartenberg wheel this summer (so I was predisposed to listen to her try and sell me something - it is possible her friend with the awesome paw gloves petting me on the head helped). My new cane gets fine reviews from Rona,  with whom I had a lovely scene. I didn’t get to play with L___ (one of the lovely people I met), nor with Calico (although given the length of her dance card at the event, that’s hardly surprising). I managed to make one workshop, but sadly the others I wanted to try were opposite my volunteer shift.

 There was the cutest puppy in the dungeon, and it really made me want to have a pet (or be one) from time to time. There was also the stroke of brilliance that was the chill room (the Oasis) having stalls for ponies!! (because ponies need to relax, too).

  Some random thoughts on the good and bad of the weekend:

 + Meeting lots of wonderful new people, some of which probably have an online presence that I don’t know about.
 + Smart, interesting conversation with said people and also people I already knew were smart and interesting but got more evidence of, such as the fabulous maymay and Eileen.
 - Not getting to see more people I know in the DC area.
+ Getting to be a piercing practice model for an impromptu tutorial/technique exchange between two delightfully hot women.
+ Getting to pierce one of them.
++ Getting pierced by the other.
+ Playing with Rona
+ My awesome new orange transluscent acrylic cane.
- Leaving said cane and my bag with all my toys in NYC.
+ The bag is in safe hands and will eventually find its way back to me.
- Not making the classes on rough body play or knife play.
+ Making it to the class on cathartic play/edge play.
+ Possibly finding someone to go to parties with here in town.
+ The button-pushing pokey sensation after being pierced.
- How quickly that fades.
+ An email from the woman who did the public piercing scene with me including the line, "Now I want to see you bite your lip again."
- Her departing the continent soon.
- Weather on the ride back.
- Rona being too sleepy for live in your face Scrabble.
- My sleep schedule being more messed up than usual.
- Never did get a chance to play with rope.

I’m not going to count them, but trust me that the magnitude of the pluses far outweighs the minuses.