Lou

Oh, What a Year

In Photos, Shameless Promotion on December 28, 2009 at 2:34 am

To my lovely readers,

It’s been a big year and I’m taking some time out to decide where I want to go with this blog. Because even though I love writing about sex, there are other subjects I’d like to explore. (January 1 2010 marks the beginning of my new project – Romancing the Mundane – in which I attempt to write a poem every day of the year. The only rule is that each poem must describe something that actually happened in each day. So expect a lot of shit poems about me watching Kate Bush film clips on YouTube or staring blankly into space for hours at a time).

I can’t say that this year has been overly pleasant, but amidst all the depression, break-ups and uncertainty there has been grace and magic. And some pretty damned awesome sex, too.

Below are some festive photos, courtesy of Marauder Photography. He has a way of capturing my ‘trashy yet elegant’ side.

With love,

-(mad)kinkycatlady

Switch

In musing on November 21, 2009 at 6:34 am

Doms or subs – who has the better deal?

Well, subs, obviously. Der. Because as a sub(/bottom/whatever), you get to:

  • Lie down, or at least slump against something. (Oftentimes the burden of supporting your own weight is thoughtfully alleviated by ropes and restraints)
  • Not do any work (unless service is your thing, but we’ll leave that out of this for the moment)
  • Not think
  • Be the recipient of sensation
  • Forget about your everyday responsibilities
  • Get high on endorphins
  • Collapse in a big heap after a big session and drool

Seriously, what’s not to love? Why, why, why would anyone want to be on top?

At the beginning of this year, Whipslave wrote (somewhat jokingly) in his Livejournal that being a domme must suck. I totally knew what he meant. He was talking about the way that the sub gets to feel a whole bunch of sensations, while the domme remains unmarked (and, as is insinuated, unmoved).

My take on it is slightly different. See, in my opinion, in any scenario where there are two people and one of them is doing physical labour, I’d take the role of the slacker any day. Sure, I see the benefits of doing work, which is why I do do some occasionally, but it’s not exactly my idea of a good time.

Laziness aside, there’s also subspace. A dreamy, soothing, surreal, headspace that comes to me when I submit. Out of body. Better than drugs. Escapism in its most extreme form – escaping from inside your own head.

I once asked Dragongirl if, being a domme, it was stressful being responsible for another person’s wellbeing. She said she puts her own responsibilities aside so as to focus wholly on the other person, so it’s actually quite liberating. I found this answer to be very insightful and quite lovely.

Still, it wasn’t enough to push the concept of topping from the cerebral to the visceral. My first attempts at caning and flogging were enjoyable, but not transcendently so. Not bad, but not good enough to even approach the joy I had experienced through submission.

But for those who’ve been paying attention to this blog, you’ll know by now that my thoughts on the subject of topping have changed. I guess it was a matter of finding the right person, but also coming into a place in life where I’m comfortable with myself and also a bit more confident.

Recently I’ve been playing privately with a marvellous man, and I feel that I’ve rediscovered BDSM – I’m seeing it through fresh eyes. It’s mostly all new to him, and I’m picking up on his excited energy, but beyond that, I’m realising that ‘submissive’ isn’t so much the bedrock of all that I am, but a label that is, as all labels are, not quite accurate.

I gave it a name a long time ago because it seemed to fit. And it did for a long time – expressing myself as a submissive for the first time was like coming home. This part of myself, this dark, weird, kinked bit, the part that made me different and which I eventually came to love – this part will never change. Freak, weirdo, creep.

But I’m discovering that this same strange dark energy can be directed outwards; externalised. I suppose this is not much of a newsflash to a seasoned switch, but for me this has been a massive revelation.

The same headspace I’m used to experiencing as a submissive was there to greet me when I broke through the fearful barriers I had up that were preventing me from truly letting go as a top. (I was scared about hurting people, and worried that I would be judged for not being perfectly skilled or expert). But god, the rush! The joy! The trembling bigness of it, pushing into my head, breathing through me, laughing, laughing.

And the love. Coming from a place of love – this has been the key. Hurting someone because they love to be hurt and because you love to hurt them. (A sinister extension of the old adage ‘to love and be loved in return’). Certainly, I knew about this from being submissive, but I didn’t realise it went the other way. This is what I kink hardest on – the loving closeness of it, the emotional rawness, the sheer, perfect, pure beauty that is trust.

Stoking his hair while pinching his nipples. Kissing the welted red marks seared across his skin. Giving him all the time he needs to recover but not backing down on that final stroke, because it must be done, it will be done, and besides, neither of us has a say in it anymore, because we’ve been sucked into the passing slipstream of a greater thing, a monster, a god.

Oh. Oh my.

It’s heady. Standing there, watching him writhe, grimace, gasp, sweat and swear and choke, and yet stick his arse back out for me, determined to follow through. Watching with wonder as his pain blossoms into bliss. Guiding him to a place he’s never been. Leading him through blindness, through darkness; pushing him, but never leaving his side.

There are some practical things I’ve also discovered.

Blindfolds, for instance. As a submissive, I always felt a bit selfish and greedy for wanting to be blindfolded. For it envelops you in your own world of sensation – it makes you disappear deep inside of yourself to the point where you’re nearly hiding. I never understood how blindfolds could be enjoyable for the person on top, but now I do. First of all, since I know what a pleasure it is, it makes me hot to be able to supply that pleasure for another. Beyond that, I love the way it makes them go all loose and compliant. They get distracted inside their enchanted pleasure world, while you can do just about anything you want with their body. You can extract your own pleasure from their body while they’re incapacitated. You can shed your identity. You can act in a way that’s out of character – you can be anyone, anything.

I’ve also realised that of course you don’t have to be an expert, and it’s perfectly all right to make it up as you go along. Better, even. Because BDSM is all about energy exchange – and if you were to stick to a carefully choreographed routine you’d be missing the point. See, it’s not you who is doing these crazy, sadistic things. I didn’t realise that being a top is about letting go, too. You have to let the control freak inside you slide, and play things by ear. Let the energy go where it wants to go.

Bringing it back to my being lazy, I can now see that being on top is actually sometimes less effort than being submissive. You don’t have to go through a physical ordeal in order to reap the benefits, because the energy is shared. They take the pain while you leech off the beautiful intensity playing out over their face, their skin. Also you don’t have to keep thinking about new, creative, evil things to do to them – because they’ll just happen. No need to write a thesis about it – just do. And watch, awestruck, as it unfolds.

I’ll always, always love submitting, and I still do. But topping has given it an added richness, for which I’m grateful. Because I’d reached a bit of a dead end with my kink, but it’s been revived, set on fire. I’m alive.

Gush

In Helpful Tutorial on November 8, 2009 at 1:54 pm

If I had a Cherokee Indian name, (you know, like ‘Rippling River’ or ‘Desert Sun’) it would be ‘Escaping Liquids’. This is because all my life, I have been troubled by a multitude of non-solid substances, all wishing to free themselves from the confines of my body.

As a kid, I tended to vomit a lot, but I also did my fair share of crying. (Just ask my sister, whose conversational prop at parties is to tell people about all the times I cried, usually because I’d come into contact with a liquid that had escaped one of our many family pets). My childhood was basically a carnival of vomiting and crying – often at the same time. Oh, those were the days!

When I hit adolescence, I still did a fair amount of spewing and wailing, but both of these types of liquid were quickly knocked off the ‘most frequently ejected’ list by blood – menstrual blood. In all of those twee educational books and programs I’d read and seen about hormone-related bodily changes, none of them bothered mention that becoming a woman would be like that scene from Psycho. I mean, people can be so condescending about hysterical teenage girls, but dude, you’d be hysterical too if you were suddenly gushing tsunamis of blood for ten days at a time.

(And men complain about needing to shave! Bitching and moaning about being pressured to remove a small amount of hair from the highly-accessible area of their face, which incidentally women also need to do, but from far less accessible areas of their bodies, and in ways that are far more painful. *rage*)

Escaping liquids are, on the whole, unpleasant. Except for one notable exception, which helps me to see my untamed liquidity as a blessing, not a curse.

It’s a little bit mysterious and a little bit controversial, but I would like you to know it is not a myth.

Yes, I’m talking about female ejaculation. Also known as squirting, gushing, or just generally making an amazing mess.

I know it’s not like me to be shy about discussing anything to do with sex, but for some reason I’ve had difficulty writing this post. There seems to be some sort of weird stigma surrounding this; a certain distastefulness. Which reminds me of a quote I read somewhere (you know, by that person), about how women are taught to be ashamed and afraid of their bodily secretions. It’s not ‘ladylike’ to sweat, nor is it proper to let on if you need to wee. “I’m just off to powder my nose” is still something that gets whispered at dinner parties, often ironically, but the note of embarrassment remains. (Gosh, it’s lucky that women don’t poo!)

Men, on the other hand, tend to sweat and pee and crap and chunder with a sense of pride. They have competitions with their mates to see who can pee the farthest. Sexually speaking, the male ejaculation is taken for granted as normal. And perhaps because of this, it’s almost as if spurting liquids are owned by men. As if they are intrinsically masculine.

I know not all blokes are frightened or intimidated by liquids emerging from females, but many are. Menstruation, again, is something that women are taught to be embarrassed about. It’s pretty much every women’s  worst nightmare to have an ‘accident’ during ‘that time of the month’. Despite modernity and despite feminism, the notion that menstruation is dirty is still prevalent. We are taught to hide, to conceal.

If you think I’m making a big deal about nothing, then let’s come back to the topic of female ejaculation. I’m willing to bet that a good lot of you are shaking your heads or scratching your chins, mumbling: “how can you ejaculate without a penis or testicles? It just doesn’t make sense?”

Despite the fact our culture is obsessed with sex, and everything we see and hear in the media is saturated with sexual imagery and references, there are still so many large gaping holes in most people’s understanding of sex. Sure, we know what goes in where, and if we’re progressive enough we’ll even go so far as to say that the act of sex does not have to be penetrative or heterosexual,  but there is still so, so much that we don’t know, especially when it comes to female sexuality.

So, like the optimistic character in that starfish story, (you know the one, written by that person), if I manage to educate only a handful of people with this blog, then I’ll be happy enough.

Now I’ve got that out of the way, I’m here to tell you that female ejaculation is real, and it’s spectacular!

If you detected a hint of bitterness earlier in this piece, it’s because my own squirting ability has been held back by many years of thinking there was something wrong with me. Even though the first time it happened it was the most incredible orgasm I’d ever experienced, I still thought that I’d broken my body; like I’d managed to incur some sort of medieval punishment for masturbating too much. The only conclusion I could draw was that I’d somehow lost bladder control, and so from then on I avoided masturbating in such a way that felt *too* good, so that it didn’t happen again.

(The way I did it was consciously focusing on relaxing all my muscles during masturbation, and not tensing up at the moment of orgasm. It was tricky, but it prolonged the orgasm, and made it ten times stronger. It also felt as if my whole body was coming – not just my clit. And the moment of squirting was exquisite, because even though I was horrified, the pleasure was just too intense to stop.)

Years later, I was introduced to the concept of squirting by a boyfriend, who was really into seeing it in porn. Even then, I still didn’t ‘believe’ in it – I thought the actresses were urinating. (Which they probably were, since truthfulness is not especially paramount in the porn industry, but anyway). He’d never been with a girl in real life who could do it – so I described my first experience to him – and then it became his mission to draw it out of me, so to speak.

After a lot of trial and error, I finally relaxed enough to be able to do it with him. But even so, it probably only happened a handful of times – it was still a pretty rare occurrence. And I still didn’t know much about what it actually ‘was’.

Five years on from then, I’ve done a bit more research, and have conducted many more physical experiments (which were purely in the name of science, mind).  It’s still not easy, but it is getting more and more frequent. And the rewards are indescribable – squirting is both insanely pleasurable, and remarkable because it feels like the ultimate loss of control.

“But, but, how?” You are still asking. Well, here are some sites you can read, which will tell you all about how IT’S NOT URINE. (Yes, it comes out of the urethra, but then again so does semen!) There doesn’t seem to be an official consensus on what it actually is, but the most widely accepted theory is that the liquid is similar to semen, except without the sperm. (In reading these sites, I learned a new thing: that ‘squirting’ is actually kind of inaccurate, since for most people it just kind of dribbles out. As it does for men – not all ejaculations make it spectacularly far from the body. Interesting, isn’t it?)

For instructions on how to do it, you could visit these sites for tips and instructions. But the best advice I can give you is to be as relaxed as you possibly can be. Most of the information available on the internet will tell you that ‘g-spot’ stimulation is the best way to do it – but it can be done with clitoral stimulation alone (which is how I prefer it). All it takes is a big lead-up, a towel, (so you don’t have to worry about your bed linen), and for you to relax all your muscles as much as possible. Don’t strain to reach it – let it reach you. Just… let… go…

As a final note, if you’re still worried about the linen even after installing a towel, I recommend the use of another person’s mouth. This is especially effective if, say, they’re tied to the bed and, say, you’re sitting on their face. This will result in them being forced to swallow your lady liquid so as to avoid drowning.

This is hot. Trust me.