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(this will be rambly as it is 2 in the morning and I just can’t seem to wrangle my thoughts) 

People might have guessed it would be a consent post that brought me back.

I am, in the words of one of my lovers, a "consent fetishist". By this she means that my interest/obsession with consent goes to such lengths that she will point out people wearing t-shirts that say "consensual sex is hot", find me consent quotes, and I get to check off "consent" as part of my Fetish Bingo card if someone we’re in bed with goes out of their way to be clear about gaining consent.

 It’s a big deal to me.

 So, unsurprisingly, I was pointed to Calico’s post "Grey is a Kinder Color" - inspired by Debauchette’s post about how hot the time she was raped in Italy still makes her- about the ambivalence Calico feels concerning certain types of sex/fantasies that make her hot.

I couldn’t parse that. In the world I knew, pleasure and violation were mutually exclusive. To go from hot sex to abuse, you needed to shift the carpet, declaim your experience with a revisionist history. Abuse wasn’t sexy. If you thought you’d liked it, you were deluded.

Maybe, just maybe, a belief system that holds me (us?) to be stupid and blind is not an accurate one.

 The post by Debauchette is an excellent read, and she describes what she labels a "faux-rape". It seems people are very conflicted about being able to find rape hot. Of course, this is only one kind of rape. This wasn’t rape being used as a terror weapon or anything.

 I could discuss the consent issues in play in Debauchette’s tale (she specifically mentions "there was a moment when I knew I could’ve made myself clear, in any language, but I chose not to. I wanted to see what would happen.") and the very interesting comment section it has generated, but mostly I want to discuss people thinking you aren’t allowed to find something that is wrong hot.

 Why on earth not? We’re fucked up, complex creatures, we humans. We find all kinds of things hot. Finding something hot does not make it a good. It is perfectly possible to find the thought of being ravished/forced hot and find the reality of it ethically horrible. Many, many people’s bodies respond erotically to rape - this often ends up as a mind fuck for people because how could they have had such an intense orgasm from something wrong? (People, we have orgasms in our sleep sometimes - the body does what the body does, it doesn’t change the ethics of a thing.) Marcelle Manhattan touches wondefully on how ambiguity makes us uncomfortable in her response to Debauchette here. (However, she does bring up the "Second Wave Feminists say all sex is rape" myth which just drives me nuts. No, that’s not what Dworkin was saying.)

  The sex can be clearly hot and still be abuse. Orgasms aren’t a magic wand that makes things better. Dear lord, people have been having hot sex throughout recorded history, were all those people and sex acts in contexts of perfect spiritual equality? Of course not. We humans are capable of eroticizing just about anything, so what? Erotic != good by definition. (Erotic is a slippery enough slope as it is; would that rape have been hot to her had it been anyone else at any other time? Or even if it was him at another time?)

 Now, defining and judging abuse is a tricky thing and one shouldn’t ignore the subjective interpretations of people in this matter, but you can’t believe in inalienable human rights and not think it is possible to find some objective way of judging these things.

It’s three in the morning, there are too many good comments on just those three or four posts, and I don’t have enough brain to deal with them now. Hell, I don’t even have an ending for this post.
 

 

 

I should probably be glad that Set has an upper limit of 27 tricks if I am ever going to consider playing Vengeance Set with Demonezade.

Rona has an interesting post that discusses the fact that her "primary sexual identity is kinky". It is when I read something like that that I remember why this blog is titled as it is, and why I identify as vanilla. Sure, I can enjoy someone raking me with knives, caning someone, or ordering someone to show up in this dress and opera gloves, with the knowledge her choices are limited to "against the wall or on your knees" the moment she walks in the door, but none of that is essential to my sexual identity. It’s just fun.

I agree with her that it isn’t something you need to reveal on a first date, but of course I "pass", and it "when I come out" isn’t going to haunt me as much. Privilege makes things seem easy, I am aware of that. And, like Rona, I don’t think a shared interest in kink (or poly, or any other single identity) sufficient reason to date someone. But there is a consequence of her sex/kink split.

I can play at the drop of a flogger, but for sex… I’m extraordinarily picky and in non-intuitively obvious ways. (There are, for example, lots of people who I’m madly attracted to and like quite a bit who I would never fuck. Strange but true.) Which sucks for me because DEAR LORD am I horny most of the time. If I had a local partner who I was sleeping with they’d probably have to chain me to my bed and run away to keep me off of them.

…

This is why I can not be allowed to have casual sex. Given permission to jump someone, I will want to do so at every possible opportunity - appropriate or not. And then, underlying every conversation there will be a little argument going on in my head "Can I jump her now?" "Not yet, you’re talking." "Now?" "Shut up, you don’t have to be thinking about sex all the time." "But she’s so pretty and I wanna see her naked." "Would you go take a cold shower already?" "I bet she tastes like cookies." Alternatively, maybe what I need is to date someone who has exactly the same urge to drag me into back alleys for heavy petting just because we’re walking down the street and the wind is blowing past with the scent of cupcakes.

And this is what I talk about concerning my lack of sex drive.  That simply isn’t a problem for me. I can think of one person who if she crossed my line of sight my brain would do nothing but spend time calculating what surfaces in the immediate area I could have sex with her on. I didn’t even really like her very much.  I can think of one other who never failed to give me a thrill of sexual desire every time she brushed against me. In her case, I think that had as much to do as never having her as anything else. (We shared two kisses, one of which I don’t remember and the other which was years later and full of all the unfulfilled potential of what might have been. Bittersweet works better in chocolate than in kisses.)

That kind of constant low-grade buzz of horniness is just something that I don’t have. I get horny, sure, but that kind of intense sexual distraction? Rare, even with the people who I do find sexually desirable.  

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).

I am off visitng Rona for the weekend. Since we are dorks of epic stature, (albeit hot, sexy dorks), we negotiated a game of Vengeance Scrabble. The winner would administer as many strokes (cane/spank for her/me) to the loser.

I won by 13 points. (Pretty ballpark for our games, usually we are within 10.)

As you can see from her post, Vengeance Scrabble means no warm up. It is caning with a purpose, you see. 

 However, I was terribly nice and let her pick which cane.

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

 A New Year’s Eve Party, well past midnight. I am downstairs with an artist friend, the fabulous diva who is her gay male twin, and a couple of others. I have been kneeling in front of a low chair, and to loosen up, I stretch backwards on it, hands over my head, so I am a supine line facing The Artist, with my knees just short of touching hers.

 "Dammit Victor!" she yells, "I’m trying to be faithful!"

 And it was simply the sweetest thing she could possibly say.

  One of these days I will learn to pay attention to all the widgets and markers and things available to me here. Perhaps then I will notice when people link to me in a more reasonable time frame.

 So let me welcome the lovely Sascha, of How My Other Half Lives, who I am delighted to say that I know; and the as yet adjectiveless Tom Allen of The Edge of Vanilla, who I do not think I know and whom I suspect of linking to me out of vanilla solidarity. ^_^ 

 I would also be remiss if I did not mention the eponymomous Curvaceous Dee, who was kind enough to greet me when I first arrived.

As you can see all, things have been quiet over the holidays, I hope to be more prolific in the future. 

 There is such a thing as the Law of Unintended Consequences. For instance, if one wins a very tight Scrabble game with two smart women with a bingo at the end, one may find themself in a rematch in which one is required to enact all words played on the board.

 Especially when one is me.

 So, in order to keep track of what I must do, I am putting all words played here, and then marking off when they are accomplished. I have until the game is over, plus 48 hours after the last word played.

 Any that result in interesting stories will be blogged. Of course.

They are going somewhat easy on me in that only the main word played counts, not all side words created.

 My Task List

Grow (This has numerous possibilities, and so I am waiting on an interesting one unless I run low on time.)

Wrung (Sadly, my recent illness solved this one, as I felt wrung out from the experience.)

Outgrin (I really think this one will be easy.)

Chick (I look forward to this one.)

Hotel (Not sure about how I’ll manage this as I am broke.)

Vampish (I am fairly sure I know a vampish human or two.)

Goat (Dear lord. I have no idea about this one right now.)

Befouler (The illness took care of this one, too. Not pretty.)

Zed (This one will be… abstract.)

Fe (As the symbol for iron, I have some creative leeway here.)

Okra (Ugh. I hate okra.) 

UPDATE for Jan 5.

Detain

Eat

Bone

Bow

AWOL

Axial

Sits

Vary

 

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.