Switch

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.

Long Time No Angst

There’s a reason why all the greatest works literature are all mostly about tragedy, death, destruction, despair, ill-fated affairs, violence and upheaval: it’s because they’re easy to write about.

Seriously, do you know how hard it is to write any kind of fiction without at least one of your characters carking it? It’s amazing how so few of us have actually experienced anything to do with, say, murder, and yet how many of us feel compelled to write about it.

Even if you don’t agree with me, there’s no arguing with the fact that ‘Peace and Peace’ just doesn’t have the same ring.

Do writers write about Doom all the time because they’re depressed? Or is writing about Doom the cause of depression? It’s a chicken-and-egg dilemma which could probably fill its own book, but anyway, here is something one of my ex-boyfriends said:

I see you’re writing a novel…. good thing that writers are the happiest people in the world eh?

(John Safran has built an entire career out of narcissistically dissecting his failed relationships; why can’t I?)

Petty bitchiness aside, (yeah, Xavier*, cos being a religious zealot makes a person SO much more contented than being a writer), there was a point I was trying to make, which as usual I seem to have forgotten.

Oh yes. I remember now. Okay. Right.

I haven’t blogged in a while, for the following reasons.

1. Happiness

Look, despite the romantic ideal of the impoverished writer alone in his/her garret, swilling wine and single-mindedly hammering out that tortured masterpiece before they inevitably die miserably, I know that there are thousands of creative people will back me up when I say that we are actually at our most productive when happy.

So, it’s not that happiness itself that has caused me to become uninspired, it’s just that happiness is hard to describe.

I’ve been trying to find the words to do it justice… the absolute most perfect way to tell you all how it feels.

But all I’m left with are reductive clichés:

I am seeing someone. He is wonderful. I am happy.

Beyond these flimsy, inadequate, ultimately futile statements, I am reluctant to share any more at this stage. Just as Bic Runga said It’s not for anybody else to know, I feel a need to gather this beautiful feeling up to my chest, hold it close, keep it safe. It is an embryo – too fragile to fling carelessly into the public domain.

I am trying to accept that it’s okay to be happy. That a giant flaming meteor won’t drop out of the sky and land on my head just because I dared to pull my head out of that expansive emotional quicksand known as Depression.

I feel better, stronger, more like myself. This is good.

2. Writing

Oh man, for some reason, I thought that once I’d finished writing my book, all my insecurities about writing would drop away. What I wasn’t prepared for was that they would get worse.

The act of writing a book is productive, brave, bold, admirable. Tell anyone you’re writing a book, and they tend to go all kind of silent and reverent, and say things like: “oh, wow. That’s really, like, interesting.” However, once you’ve finished writing, you find yourself with a giant ugly lump of a thing, that maybe could contain gold once it’s been chipped and dusted and polished, but is just as likely to turn out to be poo.

There was a five minute period after finishing in which I felt proud of my accomplishment, sure.

Beyond that it was just basically 100% pain.

So I got a job in a burger store, and actively stopped writing. Which made blogging difficult, since blogs are typically created with words.

But it was around about the moment when, after six long, sweaty, greasy hours in the burger store, while handling a customer complaint (that there weren’t enough pickles on their 1/3 pounder with cheese), that I realised I was ready to return to writing.

Sure, Tolstoy I might not be, but at least I now have the confidence to say that my talents are greater than heaping fistfuls of icky pickles onto an outrageously thick hunk of cow meat.

Last week I printed out my manuscript and mailed it to that competition I’ve been talking about entering. Gotta be in it to win it, I suppose.

3. Uh, they’re basically my main reasons. But while I’m here, might I mention that I’m a bit of a sadist now.

I’ve topped before, and enjoyed it on the level of: ‘ooh, this is a bit fun’. And intellectually, I could totally understand the appeal of inflicting pain and torment upon another. But it had yet to reach the stage where it made me, you know. Come.

Like, the idea of topping was not repellent to me, but it was never something I would jerk off to.

But something has changed. A part of myself has been prised open somehow. And it’s scary – I feel like a bit of a monster. Like, what does that say about the person I am, if I want to strap my lover to a bed and cane his bottom until he is insensible with pain? Until he is sweaty, gasping, straining, breathless? Begging for mercy; pleading for release?

Lately, my hands seem to have grown minds of their own. I seem them creeping around his neck, pressing, squeezing.

My confidence is quavering; I don’t know if I can quite follow through. But something that is deeper, darker, and more thoroughly doused in the slick black liquor of sex, is speaking louder than all these insecurities. The Creature has claws. I am awed and afraid and excited.

4. Oh yeah, that’s right. I totally remembered what I was going to say before.

You see, blogging is much like doing a grocery shop. During the week you are reminded continually of exactly what you need to buy, to the point where it is nearly inconceivable that you could ever forget, but then when you actually get to the supermarket everything useful gets completely erased from your brain, so that you spend yet another week living off Crazy Cheese and Marshmallow Fluff, when what you really needed was Food With Actual Nutritional Content, and an Industrial-Sized Container of Nappy San.

Anyway.

I am unsure about my organisational future with the Under 30s Group.

See, I’m no longer going to parties and events, and I don’t see myself re-emerging anytime soon (due to monetary restrictions, an anxiety disorder, and a general desire to keep my kink quiet and private for the time being). I feel out of the loop. And I don’t quite have the time or the energy to keep up with the influx of excitable and nervous newbies anymore.

That said, it seems sad to slink away from the group right at the point where it’s taking off.

So, I dunno. We’ll see.

In the meantime, hi! How y’all doin’?

* Not his real name. Der.

Not So Nice

When I was a girl, I believed the key to being liked was to be nice. I would put up with just about anything, just so people would like me. And, it worked. Except of course it meant that some people liked me not necessarily for who I was, but for what they could make me do.

In the adult world, being nice is not all that useful. When it comes to sex, it’s often a hindrance (let’s face it: assholes are hotter than saints). At work, niceness is usually interpreted as weakness, and those of us who are nice tend to get screwed over. And personality-wise, merely being nice is, unfortunately, just not very interesting.

I probably got it from my mum – who was famous for answering the phone in a honey-dipped tone of voice, maintaining a conversational tone that was ludicrously polite, thanking the caller profusely, and then slamming the phone down, picking up a butcher’s knife and screaming like a banshee.

(I’m not sure that wanting to be liked was the reason for my mum’s niceness – I think it was more to do with a deeply imbedded code of social obligation that states that no matter how much you dislike a person, one must always, always maintain a friendly facade. Unless of course you live with the person, in which case you can wield knives at them with frequency and vigour).

Being nice is like having the word “sucker” tattooed across your forehead. I can’t walk ten metres though the city without being asked for change/propositioned by a sleazy foreigner/accosted by credit card salesmen. For years, the common features of all the men I ever dated were ‘unemployed’ and ‘had no qualms about asking their girlfriend for money’. I also had a way of attracting guys who were trying very hard to come across as nice, but who were actually dicks.

It’s hard however to separate this incessant niceness from my personality. Apart from the fact it’s ingrained, it is also based upon a certain amount of fact.

But being sweet and lovely is kind of incongruent with being a depraved, horny, kinky slut-bag.

Hence my current dilemma. I’m a nice girl who wants some really nasty things, and who doesn’t want to say “please” anymore. Unless it’s in the context of saying: “Please, may I have another?”

This is not to say that to participate in the BDSM scene, you have to be a prick. Ironically, these so-called freaks and weirdos are actually some of the friendliest, most welcoming people you’ll ever meet. When I first stepped out of my shell and into the Sydney kink scene, it was with a sense of celebration. No longer did I have to hide my weirdness from the world – in these spaces it was valued and appreciated. Finally, I’d found ‘my people’; those to whom I could relate.

However, there are days when I don’t feel all that celebratory about my sexuality. It can be a right pain in the arse, and I wish I could just be a goddamned normal person. I feel like kink is a burden that makes the chances of me meeting a compatible partner astronomically difficult. Sure, in the scene I’m surrounded by people who share my taste in perversion, but I have other passions and interests that go beyond a desire to be tied up and violated. Sex, while an important part of any relationship, is not everything.

Lately I’ve been faced with the dilemma of needing to get my kinky rocks off, but being utterly exhausted by social situations. It’s strange – in order to fully relax, let go, and truly be the person I am, I must first make a bunch of chit chat and go through the motions of pretending to be a confident extrovert. As a representative of the Under 30s group, I feel it’s expected of me to be something of an ambassador –  to ‘network’ and make favourable impressions upon all the right people.  It has started to feel like work.

I’m just so sick of being nice all the time. Being submissive is supposed to be about being selfless, but it can also be a very selfish thing. I want to be tied up, I want to be punished, I want to be used. I find myself feeling guilty for ‘taking’ from others – even though I’ve allowed them their kink, too. These wilful, demanding ‘wants’ of mine don’t go together very well with being nice. The Creature doesn’t care about putting other people at ease, or asking how a person’s week was, or being intelligent and witty, or laughing at other people’s jokes. It just wants what it wants, and lately, it’s been running out of patience.

Cue: anxiety.

So I’ve been thinking of ways around this problem. Is there a way to separate the kink from the social?

Then I realised, of course there is. It’s called seeing a professional.

It’s funny that I’ve come all this way, to wind up right at the point where so many others begin their journeys. For a lot of my kinky male friends, their first BDSM experiences were of going to commercial dungeons and seeing pro-dommes. For some, the bulk of their kink happens with a professional mistress, and they go to public events simply to socialise.

After having been involved in the scene for years, that approach seems unusual to me, but then I have to remind myself that way-back-when, I once believed that the only way for a submissive female to get their rocks off was to be a porn star. It’s only because I started meeting people who were volunteering to dominate me that I stopped thinking that way.

Seeing a pro-domme doesn’t mean that it has to be strictly business. Just because you’re paying someone to have their way with you doesn’t mean you can’t also be friends. But… that’s not what I’m after. I want someone who doesn’t know me, who hasn’t met my ‘Nice Girl’ persona, who doesn’t care about whether I call them the next day. Because some of the things I want are really pretty fucked up – stuff I can’t even admit to my kinky friends. I don’t want those things to be associated with ‘me’ –  yet I want them all the same. They are things that I myself am not particularly happy about wanting. That hard edge where what you’re comfortable with slides into the grey area of what scares the crap out of you. The sweet spot.

A pro-domme could be exactly what I need to be able to live a ‘normal’ life. See, I could date a man who is not in any way kinky (but who is passionate and sexy – this is non-negotiable), and then go off to see a pro every month or so to get my dose of electro torture/latex/breath play/blood, pain, depravity, etc, and be completely content.

I mean, yeah, nothing in life is ever quite so neat as that, but still, I think it could be a workable solution.

There is just one small problem: money.

Darn.

Ah well. As soon as I sign that movie deal for my best-selling novel, I won’t have to worry anymore. Until then, I guess I’d better keep being nice to people.

Subspace

Ever felt tired of being you?

I know, right. Strange concept. For we all love being ourselves, all the time, continually without ever taking a break, even though we’ve had our entire lives to trawl over the same sort of things we always think about, through dealing with the never-ending barrage of trivial concerns that come up in the course of an average day. (What will I eat for dinner tonight? In my fridge is a carrot, some cheese I’m too scared to look at because it’s been there a while, and half a litre of soy milk. Does that constitute a meal? / Gosh, it’s a bit chilly; I should have brought my jacket. But of course my favourite jacket is at the dry cleaners. Damn that incontinent cat! / Will that person I like ever call me back? I texted them on Tuesday, and then again on Wednesday, and they didn’t reply, but maybe they have run out of phone credit? Maybe they were involved in some sort of heinous accident that rendered them incapable of using their thumbs? Or maybe, just maybe, they were put off by that time I stalked them. But surely not – nothing says ‘I love you’ like a stalker… right? / I should probably do more sit-ups; I’m starting to look a bit chunky-monkey down there. But how many sit-ups is an adequate amount? My Wii Fit instructor said I had a ‘beautiful posture’, but is he really to be believed? Maybe he’s just buttering me up so I feel positively-inclined towards Nintendo, and thus decide to fork out the stupid amount of money needed to purchase the next edition of Rock Band??)

Oh ho ho. Who would ever want a break from such scintillating commentary? Well, call me crazy, but that kind of shit gets old, man. And so if someone gives me an opportunity to escape, well, I’ll take it.

Trouble is, there isn’t an off switch. It’s like… well, okay this is a long story, but it’s relevant, trust me. Right, so, when I was a kid, my grandparents lived in the country. Thus every summer, my psychopathically self-absorbed loving parents would drive me and my sister several hours to the country for a visit. I would barf in the car every single time, but that’s not the story I’m trying to tell. No, the real doozey was the time the cassette tape (c’mon kids, you remember those) melted a bit and got stuck in the player, so that mum couldn’t get it out. A drive out to country NSW is interminably boring, thus any music was better than none. Which is how we came to listen to Tracey Chapman’s Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution about forty million times, and mum’s favourite: Can’t We Talk it Over in Bed by That Dude in the Eighties. Well anyway, what I’m trying to get at here is that my head is much like an overheated Commodore with a dicky tape deck that refuses to let go of a cassette that was maybe okay the first time, but makes you want to hurl yourself out of the car after repeat listens; of which you have no control over; it just plays and plays and plays.

(Incidentally, it took me until I was about twenty-four years of age to realise that a request to ‘talk it over in bed’ is not quite as innocent as donning your flannelette PJs and tabling your arguments over mugs of warm milk. *Shudders at thought of how many arguments parents had, and how many of those were conciliated ‘in bed’.*)

Even though a bed is all some people need to chill out, unfortunately it’s not quite so simple for me. As previously mentioned on this blog, I tend to think a lot – especially a lot – during sex, of all things. Which is frustrating, because I pride myself on being a switched-on and considerate lover, but sometimes my goddamned head gets in the way.

But then, there’s kink.

Ah, now we’re talking!

Last week, I had the pleasure of being hogtied. It had been so long since I’d done anything kinky, I’d nearly forgotten why I like it so much. All this time I’ve been all cranky and depressed, and all this time I’ve been thinking: “I don’t need nuthin’ from no one.”

As I’ve also mentioned in this blog, there is a big difference between suffering artfully and just bloody suffering.

Last Wednesday, as the rope cinched tighter around my wrists and ankles, I started to float. My thoughts slowed down and became quieter. Any petty physical complaints I had disappeared. I stopped feeling self conscious about my body. The energy in the room altered; intensified.

Subspace can be described as calming and meditative. For me it’s both of these things but it’s also deeply sensual – my perception of the world shifts from my eyes to my skin. It’s like tapping into an undercurrent which is always there, but which is ordinarily obscured by sounds, sights and thoughts.

What I love about subspace is that I don’t need to try. It’s not up to me. See, normally, I’m a control freak who thinks that good things only come about as a consequence of putting a lot of effort in, and conversely, that bad things happen because if I don’t try hard enough. Submitting to another person’s will forces me to remember that I’m not responsible for every single thing, and that it is necessary to sometimes drop your defences and let yourself be held.

There was a moment on Wednesday when, after I’d been hogtied for about fifteen minutes or so, I started to feel physically uncomfortable. I had to hold my upper body up somewhat, and I was starting to get sore. Reality was seeping back in, and I was starting to feel like my ordinary, annoying self again. But just as I was on the verge of asking to be untied, I realised that it wasn’t about me. My will was largely irrelevant. The person who had tied me up now had control over my body, and it was my duty to endure whatever he wanted for as long as he wanted it.

And just like that, I swooned with pleasure and acceptance, and dropped so deeply back into subspace that I can’t even quite remember what happened after that.

Lost, swimming, weightless. Warm and dark and vast. At peace.

I closed my eyes and became perfectly still. He lay beside me and stared at my face. It was the most intimate and revealing place he could have looked, and it was almost too much to bear. To have someone look into me that closely, to really see.

Stripped, naked, and vulnerable; yet unharmed. Cared for. Cherished.

‘Freedom through bondage’ is by no means an original concept. But it’s the best way to describe it. For I was free – free from time, from the constraints of my physical body, from my mind, from the constant burden of having to be productive all the time; from everything except that which was pure and true.

Also, it was sexy. I think that deserves a mention.

Denial

It’s handy being a masochist. When life gives me lemons, I rub the juice into my wounds.

Yesterday I was talking to a friend, and we were discussing how people come to associate places with relationships. She told me that there are certain places in Sydney she can’t go anymore because they remind her of her ex. When she said that I realised that there are certain places in Sydney which have the same effect on me, but which I actually enjoy visiting because I’m sort of into morose self-induced sentimentality.

The same goes for music – there are some albums that will always, no matter how much time has passed, remind me of lost loves, misery, heartache. Which I absolutely love playing, precisely because they make me hurt.

(For the full effect, you can combine the two by putting on your favourite wrist-slashing anthems while driving through the suburbs and streets where your failed relationships took place. Fun, fun, fun!)

When faced with my demons, I clothe them and feed them.

But I’m no Shirley Manson, because I’m not only happy when it rains. I also happen to like pleasure. Love it, in fact. But like a cold blob of  ice-cream melting over a hot pancake, sometimes the beauty is in the contrast. Too much pleasure is monotonous, and too much pain is just maudlin. But splice that baby through the mix, and you’ve got yourself something so powerful, it’s addictive.

Sometimes the pursuit of pain is really the pursuit of pleasure, but in disguise. Orgasm denial, for example. The suffering caused by not being allowed to come is only really a way of making the orgasm, when you’re finally allowed to have it, that much better. (Sadly, even though orgasm denial is a concept that makes me waterlogged with lust, I’ve never properly explored this with a partner before. I mean, I’ve done stuff where my orgasm has been temporarily withheld, and I’ve even been ordered to go a weekend or so without coming, but the real, juicy mind-fuck of it has not been properly fleshed out yet. Which is a crying shame, but hey, there’s still time).

Suffering in itself can be pleasurable. There have been times when I’ve been caned, flogged or needled, where the pain sensation has flipped over into pleasure, or when it reaches a certain level of intensity where the concept of pleasure versus pain loses meaning. Then there is the pleasure that comes when something that is very painful stops, and you become flooded with gratitude and relief.

But suffering is not limited to that which is merely painful, particularly not where emotions are concerned. In the emotional realm, suffering can be defined as anything from boredom to frustration to agitation to fear to embarrassment. These are all things that most people try to avoid, and certainly, on a conscious level I do my best to steer clear of these kinds of feelings.

Yet there’s something in me that is drawn towards suffering, that likes it. There’s got to be – how else can I explain my lifelong attraction to men who are unavailable, strange, confusing, changeable?

It’s not all about the pain though, it’s the payoff. The jackpot. The hit.

There are days when I wish I could get my kicks through easier, more reliable means, like gambling, or heroin. In terms of a stupid bet, nothing tops love. Sorry to keep quoting pop lyrics at you, but as Amy Winehouse says, ‘love is a losing game’. (No wonder she turned to smoking crack – it’s less bloody trouble!)

What do you do when the one thing you really want is also the most elusive?

Well, I don’t know about you lot, but I went to the desert.

Sometimes when I’m feeling powerless, I like to take control into my own hands. So when the universe only seemed willing to give me loneliness and boredom, I decided to take myself to a place where I could continue to be lonely and bored, but on my own terms. The desert seemed as good a place as any – so I went to stay in an eco-hut 110 kilometres north of Broken Hill.

The minute I got there, the constant torment of having an outrageous libido and an unsatisfied heart was lifted. Because there was absolutely no way I was going to get laid or fall in love, (as I was staying on my own, in one of the most remote places in Australia), the pressure was taken off, and I was able to chill-the-fuck-out. It was wonderful, and exactly what I needed. I devoted my time to reading through my manuscript (which, to my surprise, was awesome), writing in my journal, aimlessly strolling around, staring at the sky, and trying not to think too much.

Funny the way that, by embracing all the things that were making me unhappy, I was able to find peace.

That said, six days into it I was ready to move on. I wanted to plunge back into my life, with all its frustrations and annoyances.

So here I am. Desert fresh. (Just quietly, I’m all for environmental conservation and all that, but when your solar-powered hot water generator stops working because of unseasonably cloudy weather, eco huts SUCK!)

I came back to find that Sydney had finally succumbed to spring. And I knew that this winter had just been a dark precursor to something full and sweet and beautiful.

If you’re playing with orgasm denial, part of the exquisite psychological torture is not knowing exactly when you’ll be allowed to come. Maybe tomorrow, maybe never.

The only thing I know for certain is that when it comes, it’s going to be explosive. Just how I like it.

Blood

Writing fiction is probably one of the most psychologically revealing activities you can do, with the exception perhaps of volunteering to be a participant in the Dr Phil Arena Spectacular. It’s like installing a plate-glass window in your bedroom, or a floodlight in your bathroom. Whatever you’ve got festering away in your subconscious invariably gets exposed for everyone to see. Is it any wonder that most writers are nervous wrecks?

Sex and death have been the prevailing thematic favourites in my writing. The novella I wrote for the HSC was about a woman who was ‘cursed’ with unreasonably good luck, which made her life bland, which made her become suicidal. (A ‘hilarious’ black comedy ensues, in which this woman keeps trying to kill herself, only to be saved by some miraculous fluke every time. *SPOILER ALERT* It ends with God telling her she’s an idiot, before sending her back to earth with heinous injuries and a long and painful recovery ahead of her).

As you can see, I was a tremendously happy teenager.

During my uni days, I tried my very hardest to steer my writing out of the gothy black hole it kept wanting to veer into. Which resulted in stories about schizophrenic sex addicts and outspoken promiscuous gay men.

But really, I was hiding.

The reason why the idea behind my novel (which is now sitting, meekly, on my hard drive, waiting for an edit), was so powerful, was because I decided to Man Up and write something straight from my pulsating, bleeding heart.

Ker thump. *splodge, splodge*

Which brings me to:

When you write, you notice patterns.

For me, I was actually a little surprised to realise that the word I kept using, again and again, was: “blood”.

And like, hey. I hate vampire fiction. Also, the reason why I became officially sick of Stephen King, was his insistence upon ending any book with torrents and torrents of blood (much in the same way that Shakespeare ends half his plays with everyone being slain). Both of which I put down to men being lazy.

Shakespeare: “God. How do I end this play? Oh, whatever, I’ll just do the mass carnage thing again. Those suckers just love this shit. I mean, this was supposed to be a comedy, but whatever. Tragedy it is!”

Stephen King: “God. How do I end this novel? Oh, whatever, I’ll just dump a whole heap of blood and guts over all the characters, who were actually kind of sophisticated up until this point but who cares, and then make the ending incongruently happy, because that means more sales in the American market. Win! Where’s my cocaine?”

If there’s a point, Mulder, please feel free to come to it.

Right, right, right.

Blood appears to be something of a fascination of mine. It comes up so frequently in my book that I’ve decided to put it in the title.

But it wasn’t until a friend of mine sent me this link that I actually started to think seriously about it. What does blood mean to me? Why the obsession? Why do I engage in activities that force it out of my body? What can I say about it that no one has said before?

I’m not really sure yet. But as a means of collecting my thoughts, here is a brief history of me and blood (specifically with reference to my sex life):

First off, I bleed a lot. Ten days at a time, easily. At nineteen, I had the depo provera contraceptive injection because I was told it would stop periods altogether. (HA HA HA). What it actually did was make me bleed for three months straight. Whatever reservations my boyfriend at the time might have had about that sort of thing, quickly got shoved asunder at the prospect of not having sex with me for ninety days.

Ever since then, I’ve stuck with the good old fashioned pill, and it works for me. That said, there are still seven days in the month where my uterus ejects a not-insubstantial amount of menstrual fluid. Anyone who’s been my lover for more than a few weeks will be able to testify: you’ll get bloody. Get over it man, and get in there!

Menstruation doesn’t have to be a shameful, dirty thing. Certainly, some of my all-time best sexual experiences have been defined by it. One of my favourites was the time Marauder wrote the word “slut” on my stomach in my own blood, and photographed it. Another was the time I came home late from work to discover he’d bought me a mechanised fucking machine. Well, I wasn’t going to let a little thing like being on the rag spoil my fun, and again, we have photographic evidence to prove it. (The photos from this night would probably get Marauder arrested on manslaughter charges. They are AMAZING).

Despite the fact I personally don’t have a problem with sex while Aunt Flo is in town (excess laundry aside), it’s something I only feel comfortable sharing with boyfriends. Apart from the obvious – blood is a potential carrier of diseases – it’s also a spiritual thing. There’s something about marking and being marked; something permanent.

I had one boyfriend who couldn’t stand the sight of blood – due to a childhood trauma. Which was something I couldn’t argue with… but I always felt… ashamed and unclean. So I suppose if I’m ever going to ‘settle down’ with anyone, ‘being okay with lots of blood’ would be a non-negotiable requirement.

The other times blood has made it into my sex, has been through kink.

During a scene, there’s something that changes the moment blood is drawn. Sometimes it’s unintentional – a caning that goes harder than expected. Other times blood is an unavoidable by-product of play – if you’re using needles, for instance.

Both are awesome, so awesome.

During a caning, if the skin breaks so that blood is drawn, it changes the dynamic from what might have been light, sensual, and fun, to Fucking Bloody Serious. It brings out the adrenaline-laced scent of battle – of glory, release. I know people who have been caned so hard that their blood splattered the walls, and I’m impressed, but have never journeyed that far myself. Don’t know if I ever will, but if I do, it will because someone who loved me wanted that blood out of my body, all over my skin, all over his/her skin; everywhere…!

The blood that comes as a result of a play-piercing session is always after-the-fact. It oozes during the aftermath, as the needles are removed. I suppose it does it for me because I’ve got a medical fetish, and I particularly love the smell of alcohol wipes. (Alcoholic, much?)

When I was an angsty adolescent, I used to cut neat lines in my leg with a Stanley knife. The object was not to kill myself, or not even really to hurt myself; oddly, it was about healing. I used to take great care in washing, sterilising and bandaging the cuts, so that they might heal as quickly as possible.

Tattoos are another passion of mine, particularly because the process of getting them is bloody. And again, the significance is ultimately in the healing. Going through an ordeal to emerge stronger, irrevocably changed.

My next kinky ambition is knife play that involves cutting. I’ve had sharp knives drawn across my skin before, but never to the point that blood was drawn. Now, something in me is craving it, and will not be satisfied until it happens. I’m finding it hard to explain why, other than I want to be opened and observed, and being cut is one of the most explicit and direct ways of achieving that. There is nothing more personal, more erotic than blood.

Also, it scares the shit out of me. Which is precisely why I want it so much.

Surrender

Believe it or not, I’m actually a shy person.

Certainly, that might seem a bit rich coming from the girl once seen at a fetish party getting her vagina electrocuted while tied to a dentist’s chair. Or from someone who regularly took out the nudy award at any given Sexy Freaks event, and who was always first to put her hand up for a caning/bondage session/rubber sack experience/whatever.

If you don’t know me very well, you’re likely to think of me as that mad, exuberant, drunk person, clutching her fourth glass of cheap red, laughing, shrieking, talking, flirting; always up for a party.

And yeah, that’s who I am – some of the time. But it’s not who I always am, and it’s certainly not how I used to be, not at all.

These last three years have been massive. I went from being someone who found it hard to make new friends, had trouble making conversation with strangers, scared lovers away with my intensity and desperation, and had lingering troubles with insecurity and feelings of worthlessness. I was perpetually nervous and almost completely lacking in confidence.

Needless to say, parties were not my idea of a good time.

I’d like to think that my transformation from wallflower to social butterfly was brought about entirely by my own motivation, but the real reason why I started leaving my house frequently was due to a disturbed flatmate who was eating my food, using my computer, and cavorting naked in my room while I was out. It was during this period of my life that I started seeing Marauder, and it was then that she started to get all Single White Female on me – demanding to know who I was seeing, when I’d be home, and whether or not she should save any of her bizarre vegetarian cooking for me (the highlight of which was the dish made entirely out of couscous and onions).

I went from being a person who was once content to eat noodles in her pyjamas on a Friday night, to someone who would attend the opening of an envelope. Your neighbour’s cousin’s best friend’s bar mitzvah? Gosh, why didn’t you tell me sooner?  I’m THERE!

Marauder helped. An excitable Gemini, I fell in love with his fearlessness. As I fell into step with him, my life became a series of crazy adventures and schemes. By the end of 2007, I found myself in New York, shaking my booty with a bunch of drunk Santas in a jazz bar in Brooklyn, reaching out to him and letting him lead me places I never would have gone on my own.

2008 was something of a blur. Marauder and I started hosting our own fetish parties, the first of which was attended by the press (Michael Atkin from Triple J) and broadcast nationally. (How fucking cool is that?) It was at these parties that I really came out of my shell – and went further with public play than I’d ever imagined was possible.

I learned that pain is only a bad thing if you interpret it as such, and that I am a much stronger person than I give myself credit for. I also gained confidence in my appearance, and realised that 95% of sex appeal comes down to how you present yourself to the world; not the genes you’re born with.

I realised that people are drawn to those who are comfortable in themselves.

Simply: I stopped apologising to the world for my very existence.

All of this is awesome. And in the process of coming out of my shell, I’ve met so many interesting people and made so many amazing friends.

But now I find myself in a place where I’m questioning everything. I suppose it’s the depression speaking when I ask myself: what is the point of going out? What do I want out of public play? What am I trying to prove?

I feel like I’ve reached the limit of how far I’m willing to go in public. In the same way you tend to have deeper, better quality conversations when you’re alone with someone, the same goes for kink and sex. The more people in the room, the more self conscious I become. On top of that, I just feel tired. Summonsing the energy to behave like a socially-adjusted extrovert takes a lot out of me. Yes, it’s rewarding, but at what cost?

It takes a lot of bravery to open yourself up before a group of people. To bare not just your body but your all your emotional hiding places – the little pockets of grief and despair.

Now that I’ve been to more kink events than I’ve had hot dinners, I feel in need of a rest. I also feel like it’s threatening to become stagnant. When you do the same thing repeatedly, even if it’s something as imaginative and energetic as BDSM, the tendency is to become complacent.

This is not to say that I’ve ‘grown out’ of kink. Far, far from it. I mean, gods, this morning I jerked off with the black butt-plug I got in Japan, to thoughts of being dressed entirely in rubber, strung from the ceiling, teetering on thigh-high ballet boots, and electrocuted while having my breath restricted. Seriously. The less I give this thing, the more bizarre it becomes.

(When I went to see Dylan Moran, he did this bit about how we all have a Beast inside us, and the Beast only says one thing: ‘MORE’. He then goes on to explain that if you refuse, the Beast says: ‘GIVE ME WHAT I WANT OR I’LL MAKE YOU WEIRD.’)

My desire for more kink in my life is precisely the reason why I feel like it’s necessary to retreat. Because now I crave play that is more serious, more emotionally involved, and more sexual.

See, one of the reasons I’ve never been interested in the swingers’ scene, is because group sex is ridiculous. Add an audience to sex and it becomes a pantomime. Which is some people’s cup of tea, but not mine. I find it nearly impossible to let go sexually unless it’s private – I even find it hard to fully relax enough to come with partners the first few times I have sex with them. Which I think makes me, ah, normal.

Anyway, I’ve had some truly fantastic public play experiences over the last couple of years – but they’ve not been overtly sexual. They’ve been sex-y, sensual, arousing, but not orgasmic. (Except that one time with Marauder and needles – but that was private – which proves my point).

I *want* my kink, now, to be sexual.

Which means that I’m going to have to open my heart a bit, and let some people a bit closer to me. You know, put something of myself out there where it can be potentially stolen, lost, or hurt.

*Ack*

I don’t know if I’m ready. I’m in a bit of a strange place – caught between the past and the future, wrestling with some old demons which have chosen this moment in time to resurface. I’m still fending depression off with a stick, holding on until it passes.

Kink can be used for healing. I know that. And I know people who would be willing to help me out.

I need to surrender and admit that I can’t do everything on my own, and admit that yes, sometimes I need people. As does everyone.

It’s hard for me, though. Damn hard.

By the Throat

Being single (and living alone) is great. I love it. Don’t get me wrong, I do.

(As Mulder once said to Scully, “I sense a big ‘but’ coming.”)

But.

It’s not easy. In the sense that anything worthwhile never is.

See, learning how to be happily single is a valuable experience. I’ve been sticking up for myself, pleasing myself, and most importantly: getting a lot of shit done. (Like, that darned pesky novel, which I did actually finish last weekend).

I have many awesome friends, and more than my fair share of lovers. (Not to mention my wife – for those of you who know me on Facebook). I’ve been busy, productive, social, and assertive. I am, without sarcasm, tremendously satisfied with my life.

So why, I ask, am I so fucking depressed?

*sigh*

Ah, depression. You little gem. One need never be lonely with such an enduring companion!

Now look, right. Don’t get all Lifeline on my arse. I’ve been depressed since I was three years old. (Not a joke – one of my earliest memories was of being overwhelmed by the thought of facing another day at pre-school). Stupidly, it wasn’t until I was about 22 years old did I ever pause to consider that not everyone in the world feels continually anxious, self-conscious, and paranoid; and that not everyone considers everything in life to be pointless because ultimately we’re All Going to Die.

Ah, I don’t *always* feel like that, at least – not anymore. I’m much, much better balanced than I used to be. And, these days, even when I do feel like that, I know intellectually that it’s only The Depression, and not that the world is actually ending.

Being able to compartmentalise it like that is very convenient – because I can be feeling like shit, and still continue my day with no one any the wiser.

It’s a matter of following through with the motions of living life like a Normal Person, and from there I usually become distracted enough to shake it.

(I went to see a psychologist once, who literally said “Wow, well done! You’ve managed it really well. Sure you don’t want some drugs?” To which I responded: “No, thanks.”)

I’ve come to terms with it. This is how life’s going to be for me, because this is just how I am. I like the way I am, and strangely, a lot of good has come out of the depression. It’s not a *bad* thing, not exactly, depending on how you look at it.

But like I was saying, worthwhile stuff is generally difficult, and difficult stuff is… well… difficult. There are days when I just wish everything wasn’t uphill, all the time. Days when I wish I could just take the world and my place within it for granted as do so many people. Days when I dream of making small talk with kindly strangers without it becoming a psychological ordeal.

Ah well. It will all be made right, in my next life as a cat.

This blog isn’t about depression. It’s about sex. So I’m not going to go into details about how I manage depression and anxiety in my everyday life. (If you would like to talk to me about this, please use my brand spanking new email address: thesexytimes@gmail.com).

What I would like to talk about is the relationship between sex, kink and depression.

According to this article, depressed women have more sex. I know this is just a crappy little study shoved into the ‘life&style’ section of the paper, but I indentify very strongly with what they’re saying. The use of the word ‘sex’ in this context is however misleading, as they go on to state that it’s really just a way of finding ‘closeness and security’.

That’s not to say I have sex with people as a way of buying intimacy. I love sex, and I’d never use it consciously just to ‘get’ something from someone.

But what I love best about sex is that moment of pure connection with another human soul. Orgasms aside, that’s where it’s at.

Which is why I blogged about sex being no good unless there is love. You don’t need to be in a relationship with the person for this to happen, and you don’t need to be making love. But if you’re holding yourself back during the act, if you don’t feel your spirit lifting out of your body, if at the end of it you’re still a stranger hiding behind a mask – I ask you – why not just masturbate?

Of which: I’ve been doing a lot of that lately. It feels good. But it’s not what I need.

Sex and kink are different but similar things. In the short term, playing with people when I’m out and about makes me feel good, and temporarily chases away the deadening dullness of depression. It clears my head, puts me back into the present moment, and acts as a kind of on-the-go catharsis that a lifetime of thinking-too-much periodically requires.

In the same way that a good shag makes me momentarily happy, a nice caning can boost me up and tide me over.

The good thing about casual sex and social play is that neither requires much of an emotional commitment.

Which, right now, I’m quite enjoying.

But the only thing that really makes a meaningful dent in the depression is to have emotional closeness with someone.

It’s a catch 22, and it’s got me by the throat.

Bugger.

See, being around people is very different to being connected to another person in the way that a romantic relationship facilitates. Of having a partner in life – someone to share all of yourself with (not just the parts of you that are fun to be around) and someone who, reciprocally, lets you in.

A person you can laugh with, but also, cry in front of when your head’s a mess; when you’re sick of pretending to the entire world that you’re OK.

Someone to make the mundane aspects of living extraordinary. For example: cooking for myself is simply a matter of getting the right vitamins/etc into my body. Cooking for someone else becomes an act of love.

Sex that goes beyond ‘good’ or ‘fun’. When I love someone, I pour all of myself into how I fuck, so that it becomes the truest form of communication. In the same way that you generally put on a happy face in front of your friends, having sex with people you’re not in love with restricts the act to being good, but not transcendently so. There’s only so much I’m willing to reveal to someone I’m not in love with, which is, I think, how it should be.

It’s not that I desperately need someone to love me in order to fill whatever inadequacies I’ve got left over from childhood. It’s that I want to live with love – to feel it coursing continually through me, to express it, share it, breathe it. And yes, it is possible to feel that way when you’re single, and I do. But nothing is quite as strong or profound or as powerful as when it’s directed towards a particular soul.

Thing is, we cannot choose whom we are free to love.

And even if I could, at this point in my life, I don’t know if I would.

Because there’s something comfortingly predictable about depression. It’s not ideal, but like I said, I sure am getting a lot of shit done right now. And I refuse to toss away all the freedom I’ve fought for simply because I can’t hack being a bit cold in my bed at night.

It won’t always be like this.

But must everything follow the same pattern?

(p.s. I did a bit of googling about the correlation between depression and BDSM, and stumbled upon this quite remarkable article. It didn’t end up quite fitting into my post, but it’s well worth a read).

Canberra, It’s a Wonderful Place

Canberra is just like Las Vegas, except that it’s colder, more boring, has less casinos, zero Elvis-themed 24 hour wedding chapels, and no one likes going there. But apart from that, they’re like, totally the same.

But really, it’s unfair of me to bag Canberra, because I’ve only ever had awesome weekends there (disregarding all the lame school excursions and the times my parents might have taken us to Our Nation’s Capital under the pretence of ‘family fun’). It’s far enough from Sydney to create the illusion of being quasi-exotic (if your idea of ‘exotic’ is really wide roads and a lot of boxy apartment blocks), and for this reason it gives you an excuse to behave outrageously.

Not that I need an excuse.

I went down last weekend for a fetish party that was being organised by the Canberra Under 30s group. (Yes, kink is alive and kicking in Canberra – who knew?). Initially, just me and Whipslave were going to go, but in the end our group snowballed into a posse of six. Four of whom had never been to a kink event before, let alone fully considered this side of themselves. Apparently, I’ve become the ‘bad influence friend’. Ha.

A while back I blogged about how there’s not really such a thing as ‘vanilla’ – that perversion is best represented by a sliding scale. I believe that all human relationships contain elements of dominance and submission – after all, BDSM doesn’t come from nowhere. And as part of that particular rant, I asserted that people who only socialise within the kink community are cutting themselves off from the possibility of being surprised.

That theory was proven when my presumably vanilla friends not only jumped at the opportunity of attending a fetish party, but came prepared with their own handcuffs and floggers.

It’s what Marauder describes as ‘kink-dar’. That sixth sense for pervy freaks – when you find yourself drawn to particular people, for seemingly unknown reasons. This is your subconscious at work, hinting to you that the friendly young man with the eyebrow piercing has it in him to one day pulverise your arse with a cane.

Still, as I was entering the party, I became flooded with anxiety – worried that I’d led my friends to a place that would be awkward and uncomfortable for them. Since ‘anxious’ is my default setting, I poured myself a glass of wine, and tried my best to ignore it.

The venue was really cool. It was at a property about thirty minutes outside Canberra – on a farm, pretty much. The owners of the house are a pair of doms who have lovingly converted the spare rooms of their home into dungeon spaces. Not only were the spaces fully equipped (with more floggers, canes, needles, hoods, and other assorted sexual implements than you can point a pointed stick at, boom tish), but they also had a great energy. The main dungeon area had a padded leather wall, a leather spanking bench, and a soft black mini-hammock-type-thing, which was suspended from the ceiling by chains, and which had soft little stirrups for feet. (No one got fucked in the chair that night, but it did serve as an excellent ‘spaced-out subbie seat’).

The other room was decorated to look like a medical space – with white walls, a bright overhanging lamp, and a gurney. This was of course my favourite, and it was in this room that most of our night unfolded.

When we first arrived, I couldn’t see myself playing that night. I was feeling shy because I wasn’t familiar with the crowd (who were all friendly and welcoming, but yeah I’m a freak), and I didn’t see myself initiating anything. Whipslave and I have been wanting to play for a while – we’re both subs who are curious about topping. But the idea of topping and actually topping are two very different things – and I was almost certain that I was going to lose my nerve.

(Funny, isn’t it, the way I get terrified at the idea of topping – that kind of psyched-out ‘no I just can’t do it!’ kind of fear, when logically that would be a normal reaction for someone about to get hit.)

Fortunately, it was Whipslave who took the initiative and got the ball rolling by offering to cane me. It really took a lot of convincing, but eventually, he twisted my arm. (For the more thorough, and probably more accurate version of this story, I suggest you read his version).

He was very good with the cane. In the same way that you’ll always get a better meal out of a cook who loves eating, receiving a caning from someone who also loves receiving a caning tends to make it extra good. Knowing how to build it up, how to bring you to the edge, when to push it further, when to pause.

I got lost so quickly. I was lying face down, and my hands were handcuffed behind me. This was an interesting caning, because I went to so many places. At first it was sensual, sleepy, dreamy. Then it was erotic – the sort of caning that makes me writhe and groan and smile and gasp. After that it got harder – heavier strokes from a heavier cane (my favourite sort. I adore the thick heavy canes – even though they look more intimidating, they are far easier to take than those little whippy ones, which sting like a mofo). This broke the dam of euphoria in me, and despite the pain, I hardly felt it. I became still, and went deep, deep inside myself, to a place of silence.

Only to be pushed out of it again, as I was hit quickly, relentlessly; many hands upon my body; all male. The spell was broken and I came out cranky, like a child woken from a nap. I was petulant then, shrieking, wriggling, trying to get away. I didn’t care about composure anymore, didn’t care about appearing to be brave – I ‘did not want’, and yet down it came, again, again.

Somewhere in it, a voice: “stop it”. I was defiant, non-compliant. I scrunched my face,  not allowing the welled up tears their release. Raging, growling, spitting curses through clenched teeth.

When freedom was granted, I emerged as if from battle, woozy with too-much relief.

Then came The Shakes. The Shakes is a physical reaction to trauma – the fight or flight response. I love The Shakes. It’s sort of like being possessed, speaking in tongues, as your body does one thing while your lips try to articulate what is intangible, inexpressible.

I was so fucking high.

After enough of an intermission to regain control of my hands, I was totally g’ed up to cane Whipslave. He lay on the gurney, shirtless, bum bared.

I started off by flogging his back. For the first time, I feel like I truly found my rhythm. I didn’t doubt, didn’t fret. Just let it whack, felt the music in the act, the art. The performer in me suddenly sparked, and I was on.

Now I get it. Finally, I get it. How fun it is, how freeing. I’ve always known this, that BDSM comes from elements of your own personality – you don’t need to put anything on. So, I could be the cute, bubbly, giggly person I so frequently am, but in a dominant role. It’s a matter of working with what you’ve got, and channelling it outwards, deliberately, unapologetically.

(A trick I learned on the night was to keep my left index finger pressed to my lips – which was an effective way of stopping me from trying to say “sorry” when I hit a bit hard).

After the flogging, I moved on to the cane. This too, was fun. There’s something completely mesmerising about it – for the all the time I was caning Whipslave, I wasn’t thinking about all the meaningless crud which usually cycles through my head. Which is exactly why I love submitting – it’s one of the only things that makes my head SHUT THE FUCK UP.

It was also really nice to play with someone I knew trusted me, and who can take a lot of pain. This gave me the freedom to stop worrying, and to just go with it. Instead of flicking my eyes to his face after every stroke, I relaxed and allowed myself to sense what he was feeling. This is far more enjoyable, and a far more accurate way of reading a person. You don’t need to look, and you don’t need to ask. You just need to trust.

It was a very sexy way to feel. I revelled in it, to the point where I ended up caning three more people before the night was out. Taking delight in the way they trembled and flinched.

Who would have thought?

(By the way, I still walked away with the most bruised arse out of everyone who was there. Amazingly bruised. The whole thing is purple, still).

As the night was winding down, Whipslave gave me a lovely foot massage as we lay on the couch, watching the football. (This was kind of like torture for me – football is a hard limit! Those Canberrans really are a bunch of twisted sickos, I tell you).

In recent years I’ve been slowly coming around the concept of accepting kindness. I’m still not very comfortable with it, but I’m getting better. Normally when someone gives me a massage, I lie there feeling guilty for making them work while I receive all the pleasure. But to know that it brings the other person pleasure to give me pleasure makes it possible for me to enjoy it.

Which is a good thing. I think I’m making progress.

Now that I’ve conquered Canberra, I’m plotting my next escapade. Brisbane, perhaps?

Kinky Night Out

I have the frenetic energy characteristic of a person terrified of inertia. The reason why my days are so full is because I’m terrified of what will happen if I ever actually allow myself to be lazy. Because secretly, I love being lazy – it’s in my nature. I’m afraid that if I ever did slip into a sustained period of lying dozily in bed, I might never get out.

The all or nothing approach is perhaps not healthy, but it mostly works. I propel myself through life, stringing together social appointments and other endless commitments and obligations, ticking things off enormous lists with relish.

But it’s hard sometimes to keep up a sustained fight. And when I’m not feeling well, or it’s cold outside, it can become excuse enough to take the lazy way out. Even though I know that if I go out I’ll have a great time, I still have a really tough time with it, particularly at the end of a long day.

Which is why I need people in my life, so I don’t always have to rely upon my own motivation.

Last Friday, that person was Dragongirl – who had come up from Melbourne for the weekend. Since I had a sore throat and it was cold AND rainy outside on Friday night, I literally wouldn’t have gone out had it not been for her.

So I’m super glad she came to Sydney, because it was magic.

Fet Nights (as I’ve succumbed to calling them) start long before you walk in the door of the party. There is a whole ritual surrounding getting ready, and I’ve always been a sucker for rituals.

Actually, the process of getting dolled up for these things reminds me strongly of getting ready for the ballet performances I had when I was a kid. I’m also fascinated by the way people (particularly women) dress and prepare themselves; the little details that you wouldn’t think would make a difference, but do.

Public fetish parties are performative, absolutely. Makeup and costumes give you confidence and provide a sort of armour that you can lurk behind. They enable you to be superhuman.

There is something fantastic about the lead up to entering a party. Nervous energy rising towards the ceiling, like heat.

Even though I’ve done this enough times now to be slightly less awed by it, I still love that I never quite know how the night’s going to pan out. This used to scare me, and I would try to establish some control over the situation by seeking people out and asking for them to tie me up/hit me on the bum/etc. Being the driving force behind what was about to happen, despite the fact it would require me to relinquish control, made me feel safer. (Submissives, for the record, are the biggest control freaks of them all). These days I don’t do that – instead I just put myself in the room, and let it happen. It’s more fun, more organic, and then I can walk away saying: “well, none of that was my idea…”

Now, before Dragongirl and I got to the party, we went to Peter Pan’s house (who I refer to from now on as Pan). This was Pan’s first Fet Night, and might I say he looked resplendent in his basic black. Due to the fact I was hopped up on cold medicine and red wine, I don’t quite remember quite everything that was discussed in front of his straight-laced but inquisitive flatmate, but I don’t think it matters, since he was clearly preoccupied by Dragongirl’s amazing rack.

Although, Pan still seemed happy to associate with us the next day, so it can’t have been that bad. Heh heh.

Anyway, when we got in, I gave Dragongirl and Pan the unofficial tour of the place, and then we did the standing-around-having-strange-conversations-over-the-top-of-loud-music thing with some other people. This is always my least favourite part of any evening – because it’s one thing to follow through with social conventions at parties, but it’s another to do it while dressed entirely in rubber. It lends the scene a certain aura of ludicrous. (People still managed to pussy foot around their reasons for being there – at any time we could have been surrounded by a mixture of leather/corset/rubber/or PVC-clad individuals, as well as the occasional naked person, and STILL be discussing the weather. I suppose, after all, that weather is crazy, but…)

One of the reasons I like going out with Dragongirl, is that she has no qualms about cutting to the chase and doing something sadistic to someone as soon as possible. Which she did – to the youngest person there! (There was this cute metal/goth/emo dude who’d been dragged along by someone else, who we thought was eighteen, although that remains a question mark. He was super sweet, and his eyes were so big it looked like they were going to fall out).

We went into one of the more private play areas (that had the beautiful medicinal smell of a tattoo parlour, ahh) and she stuck a bunch of needles in his arm. Which he reckons didn’t hurt at all, because he’s a Real Man, even though I totally saw his lips quiver as they went in.

After we finished wiping the blood from Emo Boy’s arm, it was time for my flogging. There was a brief moment where I got uncharacteristically shy about taking my top off (the concoction of Codral and alcohol was wearing off by this stage), but it was thankfully short-lived. I peeled the rubber off, allowed Dragongirl cuff my wrists to the St Andrew’s cross, and let it happen.

Gods, it was good.

How to describe a flogging?

First of all, by ‘flogging’, I mean she used one of those implements that was a bunch of leather strands attached to a handle. There were a few different sorts available for our use, and she alternated between them. (The longer the strands, the heavier the blow. Also, there was one with knots in the leather, which really hurt a buggery, haha).

The feeling is of being beaten, but in the kindest possible way. An expert flogger (as Dragongirl most certainly is) will flog with a steady rhythm, which sends me almost immediately into a trance. There’s a sort of jungle energy to it – of sacrificing a virgin to a volcano, or, erm, some shit. (I’m on fire with this metaphor thing right now).

It doesn’t benefit from intellectualising too much – which is another reason why I love it. It sends me to a place like sleep, it makes me feel safe, calm, beautiful; it relaxes me more deeply than anything I’ve ever experienced; it sends me into the headspace of an infant, it pushes the pain out of me, it makes things tranquil, spiritual, peaceful.

The force of it almost winds you, the pain flutters across the skin like ripples of colour. And always at the other side of it – the person who is flogging you. The connection is as intimate as sex, or more so. Purer.

We’ve been doing this for years now – Dragongirl can read me so well. She takes me right to the edge of where it becomes unbearable, and then backs it off just a little. Massaged my skull occasionally between stokes. Covered my mouth; her hand getting coated in my tears.

I’ve taken to crying a lot during scenes lately, which I think is just evidence of having recently ended the longest and most functional relationship of my life. There is no lying in kink – the truth gets forced to the surface.

There are more embarrassing fluids that can escape you in an evening, believe me.

Later in the night, just when I thought things were winding down, Dragongirl bent me over a chair, tied me to it, secured my hands behind my back, and put a lycra hood over my head (which is a little something I picked up while I was in Japan – but had not until then actually used). I sank back down into subspace in a matter of seconds. The hood intensified the experience on two levels – it gave me an opportunity to completely disappear, and it gave me a break from being ‘me’.

See, I get sick of myself. During a scene, I hate being pulled from my reverie to answer a question or assure someone that I’m ‘okay’. Because the submissive side of myself doesn’t care for talk, or for reassuring people, or for being congenial. It just wants to roam, unchecked, unscrutinised. Do you know what a relief it is, not to have to smile, not to have to be nice, switched on, polite, funny, erudite, responsible? To go fully, quickly, towards that welcoming black, to give someone my body, to leave it behind?

To not have to apologise.

I know Dragongirl loves to hit people, and she knows I love to be hit. It works.

Towards the end of the night, Pan had to go.

“You’re crazy!” he said, all grin and sparkle.

“No I’m not,” I said. “Oh wait. Yes I am.”

Kink After Kids

Today I’m going to talk about something I know nothing about: parenthood.

I was at a baby shower the other day, and it got me thinking. (Before I go any further, I should point out that the inspiration for this post has nothing to do with anything springing from my own loins, nor the loins of any of my lovers. No loins were involved in the writing of this).

So anyway, I was at this baby shower, and it was every bit as freaky as I’d anticipated. Freaky because there it was, right in my face, unavoidably real: I am the owner of a (presumably) fully-functional BABY FACTORY.

One of those moments as a woman where you realise that your lower abdomen is not just an excess cake depository.

Around me were women in their twenties and thirties, with fat bellies themselves, or with small children on their laps, or both. And as usual I was feeling very out of place.

You might be surprised by this, but I actually want kids at some point in my life. There was a time when I didn’t – because I was terrified of post natal depression (runs in my family), and of turning into my mother (runs in my family). I also think that procreation is one of those things that doesn’t bear thinking too much about – lest you tear a hole in your brain from ruminating too deeply on the nature of existence and the origins of life. (Seriously, am I the only one who finds the whole thing REALLY FUCKING WEIRD? Most of the pregnant women I’ve met seem so incredibly blasé about it – more concerned about stretch marks and the lack of attractive maternity gear than the fact that they have ANOTHER HUMAN inside their body. Um, hello?!)

Putting the complexities of the universe aside for now; I really do want to know what it’s like to be pregnant. Firstly because I like the idea of my body having these hidden functions – to not sprog would kind of be like being a really gnarly transformer, and never transforming. The curiosity just gets the better of me.

Also, despite the fact that we live in a society that does its best to desexualise mothers, procreation is the ultimate sexual act. The biological purpose of sex is to reproduce, and as a highly sexual person, I think I absolutely have to see this through to its logical conclusion. (Conveniently ignoring Kathy Lette when she says “kids are a contraceptive”).

Women complain about what pregnancy does to their bodies, but between you and me, I find the whole thing kind of hot. That as opposed to looking ‘fat’, I think they look bountiful with life, sex, energy, beauty, etcetera.

Finally, as a person fascinated with human relationships, particularly romantic relationships, I’d love to know what it would be like to share the experience of being a parent – and to discover how that would deepen your relationship, and expand your capacity for love.

But hey, let’s not go crazy just yet. All in good time. (By which I mean, after I’ve turned 30, which as everyone knows, is the point at which you stop being confused about life, you turn into a real adult, and you discover the meaning of life. Right?)

All I’m saying is, I’m not opposed to the idea of sprogging at some point in my life.

However.

What happens to kink after you have kids?

Does having kids mean that you have to bury that side of yourself, because it’s impractical, improper, and altogether too adult?

Sitting there at the baby shower, hoeing into the twee finger food and trying to act interested in a conversation about daytime television, I was feeling the way I usually feel – like an alien. One of these things does not belong here…

Everyone surrounding me was so cheerful, so motherly. Most of the women at this baby shower had spent their Saturday night indoors in their mortgaged houses with their husbands and children, eating wholesome home-cooked meals and watching PG-rated, family-friendly DVDs.  Meanwhile, I was sitting on a sore bottom that had recently been caned, wearing makeup from the night before, and about to jaunt off to a book launch at the Writers’ Festival. Compared with these real women and their real lives, I felt like a ridiculous caricature. Like everything about my life was just a meaningless preamble in the lead up to having children.

This life that I’m currently living – who am I kidding? Going to fetish parties, getting falling down drunk, having love affairs, kissing men, women; everyone, slutting myself around like some sort of genetic mutation between a rabbit and a slug – it’s all just killing time, isn’t it? Until I discover my true purpose in life, the true meaning of love, and all my demons disappear?

Thinking about kink in the context of being a parent has caused me to ponder: is kink an indulgence or a necessity?

I’m an intensely practical person, and this side of myself is always a little bit annoyed at how absurd and illogical my fetishes and desires can be. They usually involve staying up all hours of the night (most kink parties don’t kick off until at least 11pm), spending money on the entry fee, the outfit, and the alcohol (and whatever else it takes to have a ‘good time’), getting bruised to the point where doing ordinary things the next day is difficult, and needing time afterwards to recover and come back to reality.

Most parents don’t have time to sleep, let alone dedicate this much energy to something so impractical. Which is why most of the people in the kink scene are young (without kids), or older (kids have grown up).

So does that mean that, for twenty years or so, you must put your own desires aside for the sake of being a good parent?

And is it healthy to neglect everything you used to be passionate about because being a parent is ‘more important’?

This is the sort of territory in which I flounder, because I can theorise all I want, but ultimately I’ll never be able to offer anything worthwhile to the argument, because I don’t have kids.

I’ve been reading some online forums on the topic of BDSM and parenthood. Most maintain that it is possible to still have an active kink life, and raise your children in a responsible and loving way. However, most of these scenarios rely upon a situation where the parents have a monogamous D/s relationship. Basically, it helps if your fetishes and kinks can be channelled into something resembling a marriage.

But… what if you have desires that just don’t go together with being a parent? What do you do with them? Do you avoid the whole thing altogether, and leave it to the people who are more inclined to be satisfied with the domestic ideal?

In considering this discussion, my thoughts turned, reluctantly, to my own upbringing. Which was conventional in a lot of ways (two parents, two kids, house in the suburbs), and unconventional in a lot of ways (having two parents who were severely depressed most of the time, for starters…)

My parents were not naturals– not the sort of people who you would say were destined for parenthood. But in saying that, they weren’t bad parents. It’s just that things in our household were perhaps a little different to how they were for my friends (particularly since most of my childhood friends came from very conservative Christian families).

My mum in particular has always treated me like an adult. As a kid that’s not always a good thing – sometimes you want to be mothered, and don’t want to have to deal with  grown-up responsibilities. However, now that I am grown up, I appreciate that my mum loves me for who I am – not the cute toddler I used to be.

When I was growing up, the fact that my parents occasionally forgot that my sister and I were children (and that they themselves were parents) meant that we weren’t censored from much. And without going into too much detail (because, ew), my parents basically did have a D/s relationship (with my mum, most definitely, on top).

I was never traumatised by it – in fact I find it kind of funny now. (What was traumatising were the constant fights, the screaming, crying, and uncontrolled anger – which happens in so many households).

I’ve been forced to acknowledge that if my parents had spent more time making love, and less time making war, I’d be considerably less fucked up.

Which gives me an answer, of sorts.

And now, having reached this conclusion, let’s never speak of it again.

Switching Between Worlds

In BDSM vernacular, ‘vanilla’ means ‘someone who is not kinky’.

If the black and white cookie is anything to go by, chocolate and vanilla are two flavours which can peacefully coexist, but don’t blend very well. There is not really such a thing as partially chocolate. Once that cocoa hits the icing, it will go brown. The vanilla becomes tainted. If you wanted a pure vanilla flavour, baby, you’ve gotta start again.

People in the BDSM scene adore using the word vanilla. Shortened sometimes to ‘nilla, it is often delivered with a condescending sneer, so that it also starts to carry connotations of ignorance and stupidity.

Just like any group of humans, the kink community is certainly guilty of the ‘we’ve found the light while meanwhile the rest of you poor sods are still stumbling around in the dark’ mentality. We patronise people who, for whatever reason, are outside of our world. It becomes nearly impossible to see how anyone else could have a different opinion, and how that opinion could ever be worthwhile or valid.

I know, because I’ve behaved this way myself.

Why?

Because all my life I’ve felt like a freak. I’ve always had something to hide – some part of myself I needed to obscure in order to fit in. I’ve felt like I was the crazy one, the dirty one, the one with the problem.

And so to find out that there were other people like me, and then to have my weirdness not only accepted by these people, but celebrated as valuable and beautiful – it was like coming home.

Still, even though an entire community of twisted perves exists, we’re still very much in the minority. And thus, for most of us freaks, we find that it becomes necessary to switch between worlds.

We all need money to live, so we must fit into some kind of work environment. We all have families, and unless we’re estranged from them, we must fit into the role of daughter/son/sister/brother/uncle/niece/etc. We need somewhere to live, so we must be able to convince a landlord that we are good, trustworthy people.

Not that being kinky has any impact on your suitability as an employee, your love for your family, or your ability to pay the rent in a timely manner. Of course it doesn’t – but we hide it just the same, because it could be perceived to be ‘bad’. We might not personally have a problem with this label, but it creates inconveniences for us in our everyday lives that we’d rather live without.

So we pretend.

Do you know how exhausting it is, pretending to be ‘normal’ all the time?

And how frustrating it is, to have to disguise something that you’re proud of, something that you love, something that makes you you?

It sucks. It makes you cranky. And then you find yourself at a fetish club, during one of the few social occasions where you don’t have to lie about your personal life, and you find yourself mouthing off about the vanilla world and how closed-minded, repressed, and irretrievably dull everyone in it is.

The thing is, however, that going to a fetish club every Friday night in your latex catsuit so you can bitch and moan to the same people about the same people, is just as boring as going to the same pub every week with the same bunch of friends so you can talk about the same football team.

Non-vanillas might think they’re so superior, but ultimately, they’re just people, just like everybody else.

There’s nothing special about us, other than we’ve got distinct tastes when it comes to what gets us off. New members of Under 30s often remark about how relieved they were to discover that we’re all so friendly and normal. As if they were expecting us all to have wings, claws, tails, and be raving, delirious psychopaths who want to eat their brain for dinner.

Many of my friends are kinky. Many are not. (Which doesn’t mean that I pretend to be someone else in front of my not-so-kinky friends – they know who I am and they love me for it, even if they are not necessarily interested in it themselves).

But with new friends, there is always an awkward ‘coming out’ phase, which I’ve not yet mastered.

Many in the scene would say that this problem could be solved by not bothering with the vanilla world.

Which I think is extremely narrow minded. For these reasons:

• Being kinky does not automatically make you interesting, and by that reasoning, being ‘vanilla’ does not make people boring. What’s boring is making judgements about people you don’t even know, and thus becoming limited by your own spectrum of experience.
• On first impression, a person might appear to be vanilla, but you never know what dark desires they might be hiding. I once knew a man who seemed to be more vanilla than a crème fraiche, but that was until he got very drunk one night, and asked me to slice up his chest with a steak knife. (I said no, and I regret that now. It would have been hot.)
• If we, as a community, insist on barricading ourselves inside our own world, like a secret society, of course people are going to have misconceptions. What we need is more people talking about kink, not just among ourselves, but to anyone who is willing to listen. *Waves to my not-so-kinky readership*

Coming out is never easy. At best, you can be laughed at. At worst, you can be shunned or discriminated against. A friend of mine has blogged recently about the difficulties of telling people about her kink life, because she wants to be perceived to be “dependable, reliable, and trustworthy”. I feel exactly the same way. Even though I know that being kinky does not detract from my ability to be dependable, reliable, and trustworthy, I fear that other people will see it differently.

The solution?

It’s up to the dependable, reliable, and trustworthy members of the kink scene to educate the less informed.

I don’t think this Berlin Wall of ‘us versus them’ is doing anyone any favours. Instead of retreating into our dark corners to play out our sick and twisted perversity, perhaps we could bring a little of it out into the light?

Or would that be defeating the point?

Erotic Thoughts of the Week

So I’ve been having a lot of rude thoughts this week which would be rude of me not to share.

Part of the advantage of having an overactive imagination is that I can provide my own sexual fantasies. (Or ‘wank material’ for the uncouth portion of my readership). I’m too lazy to download my own porn, and stupidly I never think I’ll need it until suddenly I’m horny and impatient. As a result, my mind has become quite good at crafting scenarios – increasingly strange ones. Here are some of the most recent:

Breath play with rope bondage and champagne.

Okay, so, the heart of this idea was pinched from something a (brilliant) friend of mine wrote, which was never intended to be perverted (or maybe it was?). But the thing about sexual fantasies is that they’re like recipes – you borrow the core structure of something that has been proven to work, and then you add your own ingredients according to your own preferences. In the same way that I compulsively add chilli and herbs to bland recipes, I add restriction and pain to the more mainstream sexual concepts, and – voila! Orgasm soufflé.

Um. Anyway. In this scenario, I am tied with my arms behind my back. I’m sitting down – I was toying with the idea of being tied to the chair, but in this one I think it’s hotter if I’m sitting there of my own accord, trying to be obedient. I am in a room (hell, let’s make it a motel room) with a beautifully evil woman (hell, let’s dress her in rubber). She has a bottle of very expensive champagne. (No, this is not leading to a champagne enema. That’s another story). She pours it into a glass, pinches my nose, and forces me to drink the entire glass before I am allowed to breathe again.

Between each glass, she undresses me, slowly, one button at a time. Even though I have no say in this, she makes me want to be touched, need to be touched, and I become increasingly desperate and helpless, willing to do anything so that she might touch me more. Whenever I start to drift into pleasure she takes her hand away and pours me another glass. Again, nose pinched, glass held to my mouth, as I gulp and gulp, dying to breathe.

Needless to say, with each glass, I become more and more inebriated, unable to retain dignity or control. (She stays sober, but she smokes a lot; drawing the tension out).

This continues until the bottle is empty and I am naked, shameless with lust, and coincidentally, busting to pee.

There are a million ways this story can end. I suggest we play Erotic Choose Your Own Adventure:

ENDING A

Still with a full bladder, I am put over the chair and fucked with a strap-on until she is satisfied. I come and come like the dirty little slut that I am.

ENDING B

(I only just thought of this one right this moment, and am actually a little embarrassed to write it. But it’s so perverted I can’t resist). I am allowed to pee – into the champagne glass. Ten points to anyone who can guess what happens after this.

ENDING C

She goes down on me, telling me that if I come I will be severely punished – the cunnilingus is just another form of cruel torture. I try my hardest to resist but it is impossible – I end up squirting all over her face. So then, naturally, she puts me over the chair and canes me mercilessly. The end.

Blades and blood

I had a dream last week, one of those clear, reality based dreams where you dream you are in the same room that you’re actually in. (And when you wake up, you’re surprised to see you’re in exactly the same place, and then you get all freaked out that life is a perpetual dream… etc). This dream was simple, but I tend to find that erotic dreams work best when they are uncomplicated. I was holding a blade (a razor blade, I think), and I was dragging it over the skin of my thighs, enjoying the way it felt, and admiring how beautiful my blood looked. They weren’t deep cuts, and it wasn’t an act of self mutilation or depression – far from it. It was an act of celebration and joy. I was touching myself as I would a lover, except I just so happened to be holding a blade. Each cut was reverent, meditative, and I savoured every second of it, enjoying how it felt and looked.

This continued until my legs were covered in this strange art. The sun was shining through the window. I felt happy.

The image of this dream stayed with me all week, appearing whenever I shut my eyes. It has reminded me of how much I want to experience knife play again. I have a wonderful friend in Melbourne who owns a giant steel scalpel that her boyfriend nicked from a hospital – I think I need to see her again.

Head shaving

I have a thing for women with shaved heads – a serious thing. I first met my aforementioned friend in Melbourne when she had a shaved head, and I was instantly mesmerised. (She also happens to be an awesome person, which helped!) Thing is, although I’ve always been reduced to a swooning puddle every time I’ve encountered a shaven women, I’ve never believed that it would be something I’d do myself.

But my opinion has changed. However funny a shape my head might be, I think it’s something I simply have to do in this lifetime. So the plan is to grow my hair real long, and then shave it off for charity.

Now. I know this is very odd, but I’m currently sitting on this idea for an erotic story, which revolves around a woman getting her head shaved. I’m thinking of it as some sort of initiation ritual for a new recruit into some sort of underground community. This woman is told to go to an place she’s never been to before, at a specific time. When she enters, she is blindfolded, and stripped off all clothing and jewellery. She has no idea what is going to happen to her.

She is placed on a table, where every nook and cranny of her body is examined and then bathed. Then, her legs, thighs, cunt, and underarms are shaved as close as possible, with a razor blade. (I appear to be obsessed with razor blades right now.) Finally, the blindfold is removed, and the woman is told that her head is going to be shaved. It is her last opportunity to back out, before becoming a slave. She makes her choice, and her head is lovingly and thoroughly shaved.

(I saw a girl on Fetlife who had done exactly that for her master – shaved off all her long blonde hair. It was obviously a massive sacrifice for her, but she did it for him as an act of love and submission. She looked amazing).

Caning

Well, this isn’t very complex, but in the last few weeks I’ve really been hankering after a good caning. I feel a bit vulnerable and foolish saying this, because I know what I’m getting myself in for, but the Creature inside me has been severely underfed, and I know I need it again.

That’s all. A nice caning.

(And then, the next day, having my arse squeezed by a horny lover. Mmm hmm hmm.)

Right, well, guess I’d best be getting back to the parts of my life that don’t involve masturbating. Whatever that might be.

‘Submissive’ Does Not Mean ‘Doormat’

(But it so often, depressingly, does!)

I’ll kick this off by formally announcing that Marauder and I have broken up, and I’ve moved out of the flat we shared.

The reasons for this breakup are as Facebook would describe: ‘complicated’.

Not bad per se. Just, comprising of more than one reason. And for the record, I still think Marauder is a kind, graceful, and generous man. (Graceful in the most manly possible way!)

Over the last few weeks, I’ve come up against the realisation that I’ve been hiding inside relationships for most of my adult life. Hiding in the sense that “I have a boyfriend” is much easier to say than “no, I don’t want to”. Towards the end of our relationship, Marauder told me that he wasn’t going to sit back and watch people take advantage of me anymore (both in the context of kink and in everyday life). Which was extremely dashing and sweet of him, but ultimately unhelpful. Because I need to learn how to stand up for myself.

So, wearing my bravest of brave faces, I packed up my life and moved into my own place.

This is about prioritising myself; looking after myself.

*Cue the Destiny’s Child song*

But where do I begin? What is it that I want, exactly? The stupid thing is that in all my life I’ve never precisely gone after what *I* wanted in life – I just accepted what I got. I thought myself lucky to be paid any attention from boys, no matter who they were, no matter how objectionable they tended to be. I thought myself ugly, and so I always felt inordinately grateful and surprised whenever anyone ‘accepted’ my appearance enough to have sex with me. And when I discovered that I was submissive, I gave my submission away as if it were a disease I needed to be rid of.

I like to think that I’ve come a long way since the days when I used to believe these things about myself, but on reflection, I’m not so sure.

Here’s one that will make my feminist sisters’ toes curl with indignation and recognition:

I have sex with people because I don’t want to cause a fuss by saying no.

I’m one of those women who thinks that, if I’ve wound up inside someone’s bedroom, it would be dreadful manners to back out of having sex with them.

Just because I suddenly don’t really feel like having sex doesn’t seem like a valid enough reason to say no. And I don’t want to be seen as a ‘tease’ or a ‘frigid bitch’, and anyway, who am I to refuse sex? Me, with my weird little body –  daring to turn someone down?

Of course this line of thinking is utterly ridiculous, but it lurks in my subconscious nonetheless.

And in fairness to the men I’ve shagged – I’m pretty sure that most of them would have been perfectly fine with me saying “I like you, but I don’t quite feel like fucking right now”. But instead, I’ve kept my mouth shut, and found myself halfway through the act feeling bad because I’m not connected. Which makes for crappy sex.

Even inside relationships, where I’ve known and loved and trusted my partner deeply, I still felt like I couldn’t refuse them sex just because I wasn’t in the mood. Like it was somehow my job, my role, to be ready and available whenever they wanted it.

Again, that’s ludicrous. But when I force myself to admit it, that’s how I’ve always behaved.

So something’s got to change, and it’s got to come from within me. It’s no good to just be with someone who can read me well enough to know when my heart’s not in it.

Here, for the first time in my life, I face the heady prospect of choosing my lovers according to what I want.

It just seems so decadent; so gratuitously indulgent.

But it’s fucking not. It’s a basic right – as is happiness – which is another thing I’ve never quite felt worthy of. As if I will be ‘punished’ somehow for enjoying myself, for acting upon my desires.

…and I wasn’t even raised Catholic!

What then, do I want exactly?

Um.

Ah.

Well, let’s see.

Okay. I want to be single, but I don’t want to be celibate.

I don’t want one night stands – sex for me is about spiritual, intellectual and emotional openness. The physicality is somewhat incidental.

I want safe sex, always, and for no one to try and argue with me about it.

Sex is not the only thing I want, in terms of physical intimacy. In fact, I’m sick of the intrinsically male viewpoint that sex (as in, intercourse) is the ultimate best thing, and that it is what all sexual acts should lead to. Because it’s wrong. The idea of ‘foreplay’ as being a tiresome precursor to intercourse is lazy and irritating, and I’m sick of it. In fact, I hate the word ‘foreplay’ because the word itself sets up the idea that it comes ‘before’ the main event. As if there’s no value in anything that doesn’t involve penetrative thrusting. Which leads me to:

I want eroticism. Talking, flirting, kissing, touching, dancing, sparring, spanking, grabbing, pulling, pressing. Sinking into it; placing it in the hands of the gods.

Finally, I want my submission to be a gift. It is the most intimate part of myself that I can share, and it is something that I will only share with those I trust and love. I need to be able to know the value of this beautiful and rare thing that makes me uniquely special. It’s not something that should be forcibly taken from me, as is has been in the past. It can only be earned.

So now that I have made my polite request to the universe, I shall wait.

Forever, if need be. But something tells me it won’t be long.

Badness

If love is war, sex is the ammunition.

For anyone who has ever had awesome sex after a fight – you’ll know what I’m talking about. Or anyone who has ever had a moment of weakness and shagged their obnoxious and horrid yet somehow alluring ex. Or for those who have given in to torrid temptation and shacked up with someone who wasn’t yours.

Bad sex is good sex. And good sex is sometimes bad sex.

Don’t tell me it ain’t true. I’m onto you.

It’s this thing that people seem to ignore when they’re theorising about sex. And I should know – I spent a year reading a lot of academic literature relating to sexuality and gender for my Honours thesis. After reading a lot of stuff that suggested we should all be aiming for a genderless utopia in which everyone is treated equally and sex becomes non-violent and unemotional, I came to the conclusion that you can theorise all you want – but ultimately, critical objectivity is never going to get you off.

Sex doesn’t answer to political correctness, and thank god for that.

See, I know I’ve been all a bit down on our friend Monogamy, but I will give the ol’ fellow this:

Monogamy provides rules, and breaking the rules provides opportunities for badness.

Without a standard against which one can be rated as ‘good’, one cannot ever be ‘bad’.

And badness is hot.

Like, jalapeño sauce on top of Scarlett Johansson’s bosom in the middle of a bushfire on Mercury hot. Badness, badness! Badness is hot.

I’m tired of all these Kumbaya alternatives to monogamy that doggedly insist there is a way to have everything you want without it upsetting anyone else. If there were a way for us to have all the love and sex we want with whoever we want without any fear of recrimination, that would be ideal, right?

Maybe, but then again, maybe not. It is a quintessentially human compulsion to go after that which we can’t have. To want more than we’ve got. If we all end up living in a polyamorous commune in which love is shared and sex is exchanged freely as an act of mutual respect, what room is left for that terrifyingly awesome feeling you get from doing something different, unauthorised, unscripted; wrong?

(Actually, the hippies and feminists *did* try to do the free love thing in the sixties and seventies, but it didn’t end up becoming mainstream as they had hoped. If you read Monkey Grip by Helen Garner, you’ll see that all the same issues of jealousy and betrayal still came up in these polyamorous communities, and that in some cases it became even more complicated and heart-breaking than the standard, particularly where kids were involved).

Now, look. I hate hurting the people I love, I really do. Much as I loathe the word, I am, deep down, a nice person. There is no point in pretending otherwise – I generally always want to do the right thing by people, and even more hideously, I want everyone to like me. But here’s the thing – when it comes to sex – I like it mean. What turns me on has nothing to do with my conscious identity. (Or, it probably has a *lot* to do with it, in that everything I deny about myself gets pushed underground into my subconscious, which is the main driving force behind what pushes my sexual buttons).

So I’m a bundle of contradictions, just like everybody.

And I don’t have any answers, not yet. I’m not suggesting that we should all just stick to monogamy and accept that affairs and indiscretions are unavoidable parts of the package. Monogamy can work, as long as it’s what you both want. But ‘want’ is such a slippery word. Any relationship can start out based upon mutually shared values. But what if what you want changes over time? What if one person wants something that will make their partner unhappy? Do they shoulder the burden of that unhappiness by denying themselves what they want in order to protect their partner, thus ruining the relationship anyway through resentment? Or do they go after what they want, thus ruining the relationship through guilt and betrayal?

Clearly, want is ruinous. Buddhists believe that craving is the cause of all suffering. Fundamentalist Christians try to program themselves into believing that the only thing they want is God’s love. Addicts streamline all of their wanting into their addiction. It is human nature to want, and it seems like you’ve got to be more than human to transcend such earthly desires. Which I kind of think negates the point of being here in the first place – depending on what you believe, you’ve potentially got a whole eternity to exist in a peaceful bliss removed from the burden of earthy desires, so isn’t suffering something you should accept as an intrinsic part of the life experience? (Unless you believe that you will be punished for your sins when you die – which I don’t).

I like a little bit of suffering now and then, as I’m sure I might have mentioned once or twenty times. I’ve stopped running away from hurt, and have come to a place where I embrace it as evidence that I’m alive. Just as night follows day, the patterns of joy and sadness are cyclical. The good thing about the fact that nothing lasts, is that even the really bad shit doesn’t last forever. I once met a man who had the words ‘things fall apart’ tattooed on his wrist, which struck me as particularly beautiful. (On the other wrist, now that his life has improved somewhat, he is going to get ‘things come together’).

So, I’m cool with suffering. I like it. Without getting all emo on your arses, I do believe that it’s just as important to feel sad occasionally as it is to feel happy. BUT, the trouble is, I’m still completely uncomfortable with being the cause of suffering in anyone else’s life. I just can’t handle it. Nothing depresses me more than to think that I’m responsible for making someone unhappy. But other people have made me unhappy plenty of times – why can’t I accept that this is just the way things are?

Sometimes I feel backed into a depressive corner where I feel that the only way to prevent myself from causing suffering is to shut myself off from the world. But then I realise that that’s a one way ticket into crazy hermit depressed recluse-ville. And for all that I’ve got to give, say, and share, it would be a total shame for me to do that.

And anyway, without all of this angst and complexity, what on earth would I write about?

Badness makes life interesting, whether or not you accept this fact.

I’m not saying badness needs to be manufactured – there’s more than enough that occurs naturally and spontaneously. And it shouldn’t be overdone, otherwise your life will get thrown out of balance and you’ll end up suffering all of the time. Eroticism hangs in the balance between pleasure and pain – too much of one thing and it becomes artless.

So I’m a good girl who likes to do bad things, but who also doesn’t want to upset anyone.

Hmm. If I manage to figure out how to consolidate all of this, I’ll be sure to let you know. Until then I guess I’ll keep wandering around, rubbing up against people, loving, crying, laughing; blundering my way through.

Love

I have never had good sex with someone I didn’t love.

Love is that thing that makes sex (plain sex, the vanilla kind) interesting for me. Without it, I don’t quite see the point. If I can’t reach out and connect directly with a person’s soul, then I’m not really interested. If I’m not getting ‘closer to God‘ while having sex, well then, I believe my time would be better spent scrubbing the toilet, doing my taxes, or staring blankly into space. Anything is preferable to supposedly engaging in one of the closest acts of human contact, and still feeling trapped behind a mask.

Love is truth. It’s about stripping yourself back until you are ugly. ‘Love hurts’ is a cliché, but the thing about clichés is that they are based on truth. Love hurts like a motherfucker. That’s why I like it so much.

In my history of relationships, I’ve loved fast and hard. Like, you know that Bjork song?  I love like that. BAM! BOOM!

Since today seems to be cliché appreciation day, here’s another one: ‘love at first sight’ is totally possible. I used to believe that having sex on the first date(/whatever) was a really slutty thing to do. Now I don’t care labels or about all the silly games people play when they are supposedly getting to know someone. The concept of ‘dating’ is a great big pile of poo. Because the only way you can really know a person is to get inside them. Physically, metaphysically, whatever. All I know is that that sure as hell doesn’t happen at Greater Union. (At least, not now that they’ve got that stupid allocated seats thing…)

When I was 21 I had a startling experience where, despite being powerfully in love with my then boyfriend, I fell in love with a man who I’d known for all of about 3 hours. It was a total disaster – not only was my boyfriend the insanely jealous type, but the other man was also in a committed relationship himself.

It was a confusing time in my life. Up until that point, I’d unquestionably accepted the culturally ingrained construct of monogamous romantic love. I believed that you could only love one person at a time, and that if you happened to fall in love with someone else, that meant that you didn’t ‘really’ love the person you were with. I believed that the ultimate conclusion of love was marriage.

About two years after that night, I found myself in a situation where I was sleeping with with two ex-boyfriends and an illicit lover at the same time (not literally – that would have been awkward). It felt kind of slutty, but I loved them all. By this stage, I’d realised that love cannot be erased, and in that sense, it’s possible to love more than one person at the same time. Once you love someone, it stays with you forever, regardless of whether you notice it’s there. Also, ex sex is pretty hot, so.

But I thought there was something wrong with me. I felt guilty about it – like my love was insincere. I worried that I’d loved too carelessly and too freely, and that I was going to ‘use up’ all of my love before I was even 25.

I still, secretly, wanted to believe that everything I’d been through was just a messy preamble to the main event. That I would still find my One True Love and that suddenly everything would work, and would make sense. That I would find a love that would drown out all the others. That it would solve my problems and fulfil all my sexual, spiritual and intellectual needs.

How could this all just turn on me, when all I wanted was perfection?

Of course, it doesn’t work like that. Which is actually a good thing.

My relationship with Marauder has altered the way I see love. Never in a relationship had I ever felt clear-headed before. I used to treat my boyfriends like drug additions – scratching the constant itch with sex, sex, sex. Holed up in a dim bedroom somewhere, drinking the river dry. In these sorts of places, clarity is impossible. My sense of direction and sense of self was perpetually sacrificed to the cheap fix. How could love bring fulfilment when love took everything away?

With Marauder I discovered something simple and plainly good – happiness. A love that wasn’t strung out with guilt and blame. Cool and calm and clear and easy.

But as recently as January this year, I still had that old mentality hanging around – the one that said that you should only love one person at a time, and that marriage should be the ultimate aim of any union.

There were cracks appearing around these values, chipped and battered as they already were.

Everything’s been coming apart again, but now I have the wisdom to know this is just a symptom of change. It’s resisting change which brings all the trouble, not the change itself.

Something, suddenly, has been blown open in me.

It started on that night in February this year, at R&R. A person entered my life, and all the symptoms of spontaneous attraction appeared. And I thought: ‘Oh no, not this. Not again. You know better than anyone that no good can ever come of this.’ And I also thought: ‘Fuck yeah. Fuck yeah! Fucking, fucking, yeah, YEAH!’

Bipolar? Moi?

Then Marauder went to Thailand, and I slipped into the different lounge-rooms of various friends and lovers, talking, laughing, flirting, thinking. Getting wasted, getting poked with knives and canes, getting myself off, getting confused.

Marauder came back, and our love was still there, twinkling.

But it was no longer the only star in my sky.

Now, my world is replete with stars, like a canvas has been lifted to reveal a plethora of light.

And I’m overwhelmed by it, stupefied by so much choice. I’ve managed to eliminate the rules which used to govern how I loved – and now I feel I can love so many people in so many different ways that it boggles my mind.

All it takes to love someone is to connect with them, to see into them while simultaneously revealing yourself to their gaze. I’m learning ways of doing that that don’t involve sex, but sex is still my most preferred method.

Sex is my language.

I want to converse.

Rope

Last Tuesday I got tied up. And as I was swinging serenely from the ceiling, I realised that sometimes the best way to get what you desire in life is to ask for it. I’d known the man whose ceiling it was for at least two years, and yet in all that time it had never occurred to me to simply ask him if he’d like to play privately. I didn’t think I was worthy. Dumb, huh?

(Like, do you remember when you were in school, and there was some person you were all pining over, and you really wanted to go out with them, and all your friends said ‘why don’t you just ask them?’ And you were all ‘well of course it’s not that easy, duh’. Well it actually, mostly, is. Duh).

Anyway, rope is beautiful. Literally – rope turns sex into art. Sex and beauty are not usually easy bedfellows (see: previous rant) but rope is one of those rare things which both looks and feels amazing. (Rubber also falls into this category, but I will admit that there are some aspects of rubber that can be scary-looking or even downright comedic. Rope is just intrinsically artful – even if it was purchased on special from Bunnings).

Ever since I went to Japan (and saw the Shibari Master Osada Steve live in action), I’ve been curious about suspension. To be bound and lifted completely from the ground is a perfect representation of submission. That moment where you forget who ‘you’ are, and your body becomes aligned with a current of energy. The point of transformation between the physical and the transcendent. When suddenly, it just works.

Kink is similar to good sex, in that sometimes when it begins it can feel awkward and self-conscious, but that’s the path you’ve gotta go down to arrive at a place that is breathtaking and sublime. I will admit that there is an element of dagginess inherent in kink – there are a lot of clichés you need to go through in order to find what works for you. But the thing about clichés is that they’re based on truth, and it’s the truth of what lies inside of us that draws us to these rituals and acts. You might turn up at a fetish event in your best PVC feeling like a bit of a dork, but later in the night when someone is caressing you, striking you, binding you, all your misgivings melt away.

When kink happens, when that point is crossed, it’s like that moment where the wheels of a plane leave the tarmac. That subtle yet all important shift, where your weight sinks back into the chair and your head lolls gently, like a baby in its mother’s arms. (Incidentally, it’s no wonder that aeroplane travel makes me horny. I once willed myself to orgasm on a flight from Sydney to Melbourne, using only my filthy mind and the slight rocking of the plane).

It might sound bizarre, but I like bondage because it makes me feel safe. Having a rope harness secured around my chest, arms and legs makes me feel snug and secure, like I’m being hugged closely, constantly, all over my body. All forms of constriction give me this feeling – of total trust and gratitude. I start to go into a sort of doze, like being hypnotised, lulled away from the frantic chatter of my conscious mind. It’s intimate; foreplay. The intensity of the experience increases as each person feeds off each other’s passion- it’s the same energy bounced backwards and forwards, gaining power steadily, becoming larger than both people, filling the room.

And then, to lean forward and have the rope support your weight – ah! The exquisite tension in the moment right before the rope pulls taut. Your body leaves the floor one toe at a time until you are completely suspended; free. Naked except for underpants and the rope, air softly touching every part of your body. Quiet.

Having the responsibility for my own physical safety taken away from me helps my mind to focus on other, less mundane things. For these precious times I am not concerned with eating, drinking, exercising, surviving – I simply am. It’s surreal to see the ground swing below you, and for me it was exactly like one of those flying dreams where I can zoom like a hovercraft over the earth. I loved that every movement I made affected the rest of my body, reminding me of my predicament. My ankles were tied so I could bend or straighten my knees, and my hair was cinched with rope and tied as well. My arms were firmly behind my back – I forgot I even had arms.

Weightless, floating.

Having a blindfold added to this experience ended up being too overwhelming for me, and I had to come down because I felt like I was going to faint. Motion sickness, of all things. Annoying, but I’d like to try suspension again on another, less humid night.

There was an interlude where we recuperated on the floor, my arms still secured behind my back, my breathing restricted periodically by his hand. The quiet beauty of it – the hard, sexual edge. Of reaching the end of breath, and being willed to hang on a few seconds more.

(If you’ve ever seen the film clip for Radiohead’s No Surprises, you will note that the lyric ‘Silence. Silence.’ happens at the point where Thom resigns himself to putting his head completely underwater, as he calmly accepts his fate before drawing a final breath and sinking down. This is how it feels to have your breath consensually restricted by another person. God, I love Radiohead.)

The final act of the night took place on a no-nonsense, straight-up-and-down metal chair, to which I was bound, sitting. My arms were tied with loops of rope from above my elbows to my wrists, along the back legs of the chair, while my chest was secured immovably to the back. Then, my feet and knees were tied either side of the front legs, so that I couldn’t close my legs. It was the least room for movement I’d ever been given in a rope tie, and it was fantastic. The moment I was blindfolded and gagged I dropped completely into subspace, gone.

See, this is why kink does it for me. Normally, during sex, I worry a lot. I worry that I’m too fat or that I’m ugly or I smell. I worry that the other person isn’t having a good time. I worry about the dishes in the sink I should be washing, the state of the bathroom, the fact that I’m not eating enough fresh vegetables. I keep having to remind myself to let go, to just enjoy the moment. But I have a real hard time giving myself permission to accept pleasure. I rarely think that I deserve it, and feel guilty whenever someone tries to touch me in a way that is exclusively about my own pleasure, not theirs.

But the minute I was tied to that chair, unable to move, see or talk, all of those negative voices shut up. Kink removes the middle man. My responses come directly from my body, from my sex, without being routed through my head. I respond in a way that’s animal, guttural, unrefined. I forget who I am, and thus all the angst and baggage that goes along with my sense of identity gets chucked overboard, leaving me free.

Ironic that it takes a carefully calculated cerebral act (the act bondage) to get to a place of undiluted primal rawness, but hey, I don’t profess to understand it.

I just try to experience it as much as I can.

Impostor

On the eve of my 17^th birthday, I wrote the following words in my (tragic adolescent) diary:

“I HAVE THE BODY OF A 16 YEAR OLD!”

I was making fun of myself and the world, generally. Because how many times do you read or hear references similar to ’she had the body of a 16 year old’ as a representation of physical perfection? As if being aged 16 automatically guarantees you the body of a supermodel.

Yeah, right.

The irony of this certainly didn’t escape my 16 year old self. There is nothing quite so depressing as finding yourself at the age where you’re supposedly as hot as you’re ever going to get, and being awkward, dumpy, plain.

It’s this image of myself that has followed me into adulthood, and it’s a story that I’m certain that pretty much all women can identify with.

I should also point out that at age 16 I had not, as yet, discovered sex. How can one know sexiness if one has never had sex? (Incidentally, this is why I think the sexualisation of children is utterly obscene. Sex is powerful, dangerous. It’s like giving a person language without explaining the meaning behind it. Other people can understand, but you don’t know what you’re saying. But I’ll save this discussion for another day’s rant.)

Last weekend, nearly 10 years on from my 17^th birthday, I caught sight of my reflection in the full length mirror of the hostel I was staying in while on holiday in Melbourne. I know it’s a cliché, but it was one of those moments where it took me a second to realise I was looking at me.

Me? A woman with graceful curves, a deep sexuality about her, a few really awesome tattoos and luminescent green hair? In pink polka dot underpants and a black bra; wearing it… well?

A woman.

Sex alone does not a woman make. Nor do the numbers on your drivers licence. Nor does makeup, high heels, a full time job, or even marriage. Again I’m edging dangerously close to the clichéd territory of God-awful pop songs, but there is something about being a woman that can’t be bought, hurried, painted on.

It’s the sort of thing that requires a lot of pretending before you actually get the hang of it. The difference between me and other people is that I always feel so phoney when I’m pretending. But sometimes it’s the only way. For example, I learned how to be confident by pretending to be a confident person. Even though I thought my acting abilities were terrible, people bought it. And when people bought it, my confidence grew. Until instead of pretending it became something I just did.

I feel like I’ve been playing a lot of very adult, very ‘womanly’ roles in life for a good while now, but I’ve never quite bought it myself. Not until I saw myself in front of that mirror, and saw it. Seeing is believing; I’ve finally grown up.

How to describe it?

Much as I loathe the expression ‘puppy fat’, I finally realise what it means. Since my teens I haven’t exactly lost weight, but now there’s something about my appearance that looks more defined, more set. The word ‘harder’ carries connotations of roughness, but it’s not like that. A physical manifestation of wiser, perhaps? I feel like at 16 I was an amorphous blob of possibility, and now I’ve settled a shape that reflects who I now am.

It’s like… I had no idea who I was or what I wanted in life when I was 16 – who does? I was living with a set of values that I had borrowed from my parents and the people surrounding me at the time. And as mentioned, I had not yet found sex, which would turn out to be that missing piece that helped me to finally understand myself. (I hated being a child and I can’t understand people who want to return to a place where they were powerless, voiceless and without sexuality). So my body at 16 was somewhat unformed, confused. Something I tried to hide, and hated the idea of anyone seeing naked.

For years I’ve been telling myself that beauty is relative, and that true sexuality is deeper than skin. So I finally got to a place where I was happy enough with how I looked, and dropped a lot of the draining self loathing I carried around with me in my teens. It’s as if the minute I finally lost all care about having a perfect body, I was rewarded by looking into a mirror and realising I had one the whole time.

Which is wonderful.

But here’s the thing. No matter how ‘attractive’ or ‘beautiful’ I might become, there will always be the memory of being ugly. And it’s this that undermines everything, and makes any compliments I receive feel undeserved. As if desirability is simply an act that I’ve mastered as a means of hiding my ‘true’ self. It makes me really nervous when people tell me I’m sexy, because I feel like it’s only a matter of time before they see behind the mask and realise the truth. Like I’m ripping them off or something? Bait ‘n switch!

I don’t know why a younger version of yourself should come to represent ‘who you really are’ but for some reason it does. Even I do it to others, I’ll admit. You know how you might have gone to high school with someone who was all into heavy metal, and now they’re super gay and clubbing every weekend, and you find yourself thinking: who does he think he’s fooling? When clearly that’s a ridiculous way to think, because it’s not like a person’s sexual orientation is a fashion statement, and obviously the heavy metal thing was the cover up, not the other way around. But still.

I didn’t go to my high school reunion because I didn’t want to look like the girl who’d bought a pot of hair dye and moved to the inner west in a quest to become ‘alternative’. Actually I resisted this lifestyle for many years because I thought there was something phoney about Newtown being packed with goths and punks who all actually grew up in the Western Suburbs. But what I realised is that people are drawn to these places because it speaks to something in them. Just because you were born in Blacktown doesn’t necessarily mean you belong in Blacktown. Growing up is a process of discovery. At 16, the journey has only begun.

But still I feel sheepish. How can a girl from the suburbs ever hope to be taken seriously as a writer, a poet? I have these dreams of moving to Berlin, learning German, writing abstract poetry about art and love, swilling wine and hanging with the all the beautiful freaks – but then I think; who, me? Who the hell are you kidding, little girl?

I know that all the beautiful freaks to which I refer were all once like me. That’s what makes us beautiful freaks.

I’m sick of feeling like an impostor. Like someone who’s gatecrashed someone else’s awesome life and awesome body.

Because I’m not. This is me; this is the person I was always supposed to be. Had I stayed in the suburbs and married my high school boyfriend I’m certain I would have ended up depressed, miserable, unsatisfied. And scared, too afraid to go beyond my comfort zone to try and find out what I might have been missing. And, worst of all, with absolutely nothing to write about!

So I’m going to try to leave the past where it belongs, and move forward.

Actually I think I might start by doing something I’ve been fantasising about doing for a long while now. By burning my old diaries!

Pain Slut

At the risk of sounding repetitive, I love pain. Did I mention that I love pain?

2008 was all about my experiments with the physical sort. I got needled, tattooed, caned, flogged, spanked, burned, choked. It taught me a lot, improved my confidence, got me high and made me sparkle with secret glee. All the while my life in general was sunny, calm, domestic, creative. All good things. But a certain dryness had crept into my kink. My forays into pain were strictly regulated by scheduled social fetish events. I kept the ‘Creature’ (as I like to call it) firmly in place; I thought I had it tamed.

I was wrong.

Events of the last few weeks have forced me to remember something about myself, something that I thought was long buried. And now I realise that the Creature was not tame, nor could it ever be tamed; it was lying in wait.

Before I go any further, allow me to explain: I have an uneasy relationship with this thing. On one hand, it makes me who I am, it gives me my sex, it has brought me unadulterated, animalistic joy, and it breathes life into my writing. On the other hand it makes me make terrible decisions, it hurts people, it fucks up things like study and work, it obliterates everything and leaves me with only its own selfish, bottomless need.

Having been nearly destroyed by this thing in the past, I suppose it was understandable that I’d shoved it out of my conscious mind. I knew that I’d always need an outlet for kink, so I found a way to incorporate it into a life that was mostly balanced and happy. I also knew that the Creature would always demand a voice, so I channelled it into my novel (of which I’m up to Chapter 23). Things were humming away nicely; I was so proud of myself. But as we all know, pride comes before a…

…oophf.

Damn. The air was so very nice up there, too.

Which brings me back to pain. See, physical pain is sexy and interesting in its own right. But for me, the real, absolute power of BDSM comes from the combination of pain and emotion. Pain AND emotion. Maybe it wasn’t so much that I’d forgotten about this, but that I thought I’d never encounter anyone who could deliver it as potently as did my psychotic ex-boyfriend. Now, five years later and seemingly out of nowhere, there is a contender. (A non-psychotic one).

I should point out that emotion/pain combo is not the same as emotional pain. It comes down to the difference between ‘good’ pain and ‘bad’ pain. In a physical sense, good pain could be described as being spanked suggestively, while bad pain covers anything from slamming your thumb in a door to being slapped by an abusive lover. In an attempt to describe the good sort of painful emotions, I’ll start by describing what invokes the bad: blackmail, guilt-trips, insults, meaningless cruelty. My ex inflicted this sort of emotional bullshit on me and it hurt far more than anything physical he ever did (and meant that his behaviour did not technically qualify as domestic violence). I’ve also suffered enough emotional pain through other problems in life, as well the angst that’s generated from my ongoing troubles with depression and anxiety. So I’m well-familiar with all that kind of crap, and am not seeking more of it, thank you.

So how can painful emotion possibly be good? It’s not all that hard to understand, considering that most of our euphemisms for love are based around references to pain: ‘burning’ with desire, ‘bleeding’ love, ’stabbed’ through the heart, ‘tortured’, ‘breathless’, ‘aching’, ‘trembling’, ’stricken’, ‘throbbing’, ‘helpless’, ‘consumed’, etc, etc, etc. In the same way that I like to experience physical sensations right on the very edge where pleasure becomes pain, so too do I like to feel emotion to the point where it hurts. Or rather, ‘I’ don’t necessarily seek this, but ‘Creature’ does.

Perhaps ‘Creature’ is just a silly way of describing the things that, deep down, I want, but am too frightened to admit to myself. In the days of my misspent youth, I didn’t care about throwing myself away, throwing myself at full force towards foolish things. Now I’m old and I’m cautious. What if I fuck everything up? What if I lose everything I value and love? And worse, worse than anything else, what if I hurt Marauder?

I can try to ignore it, but that has never proven to be an effective means of controlling this thing. It just makes it angry. Perhaps this is my opportunity in life to find harmony, at last? To figure out a way it can work for everyone?

Then again, who the hell am I kidding?

I’m confused, and the hot weather in Sydney right now isn’t helping. Talking about it feels so useless. The side of the brain which handles language is miles apart from whatever part of me screams, bangs, thrashes wildly.

I don’t want to live a neutered existence where this sort of stuff doesn’t affect me. I don’t want to dull down my experience of living, just to make it more bearable, more ‘acceptable’. I want to burn, I want to bleed, I want to suffer beautifully. But I don’t want to hurt anyone.

So I’m stuck.

Ah, advice, anyone? If you have any idea what the hell I’m talking about?

P.s. For anyone who is a Dexter fan – I particularly love the expression he uses to describe the serial killer side of him: dark passenger. I suppose I should feel lucky that my vice is not so terrible (or illegal) as murder. There are far worse things to be addicted to. But I do still find it disturbing that I should identify so strongly with a serial killer, fictitious as he may be.

Honesty

A little while back I blogged about my frustration with not being able to tell my work friends about my lifestyle. Well, last Saturday night, with the assistance of an outrageous amount of red wine, I admitted to one of my work friends that I was into “whips and stuff”. And… he was completely respectful and supportive. All this time I’d been thinking he would pick me up and whisk me to the nearest psychiatric hospital, but actually all this time I’ve been underestimating people’s capacity for acceptance and open-mindedness. He looked at me as if to say ‘no big deal’ and the conversation continued. It was a massive relief and as a result I feel like I can now have a proper friendship with him. Which is very cool.

Meanwhile, Marauder and I have been discussing what it means to have an open relationship. We’ve been living together for nearly a year now, and yet so far neither of us has properly tested the waters of this thing (i.e. neither of us has had sex with another person). I mean, we’ve played with other people in the scene, we’ve had some awesome ladies over at our house for naked cavorting and general rudeness, we’ve entertained the concept of being sexually adventurous libertines, but up until now we’ve been getting a handle on the live-in relationship thing and devoting the majority of our energy to each other. Which has been fuckin’ rad. I realise now that the reason why most people settle for monogamy is that it is, ostensibly, the easiest option.  If it’s just generally accepted that you’re meant to be shagging each other and no one else, you don’t need to draw up any kind of agreements or boundaries or anything (although as we all know this can often just be a farcical arrangement in which people are forced to take their extraneous desires underground). I love Marauder; what we have is stable, sane, precious, and I’m very worried about upsetting the equilibrium between us. But at the same time we’re both in agreement – faced with the prospect of never feeling that heady rush of kissing a person for the first time, never expanding our sexual repertoire any further than the scope of our separate imaginations; and thus becoming bored and stagnant inside our relationship, we want to investigate alternatives to monogamy. But where to start?

I’ve mentioned polyamory in this blog before, and I have to say I’ve yet to be convinced that it is actually worth the work that it apparently takes to maintain. In addition to this, I don’t think I really want a proper, long-term relationship with more than one person. Maintaining even one functional, loving relationship is a hard enough feat (and it hasn’t been until Marauder that I’ve ever managed to do it at all), and I don’t have the energy to multiply that by two. Which probably sounds harsh, but it’s how I feel. That’s not to say I want to go out there and nail a bunch of strangers – it’s more that I would like sex to be an extension of my close friendships. It’s how I express deep affection; it’s how I converse. Maybe I’m fucked up, but I never feel truly comfortable with another person until I’ve slept with them. I like getting to know all there is to know about a person, and I think sex is one of the deepest and most powerful ways to do that. To see a person disappear with pleasure – breathtaking.

While searching the internet for information about polyamory, I stumbled across a book called The Ethical Slut. This phrase better describes how I feel about my sexuality. I don’t mind the label ’slut’ – nymphos sleep compulsively with anyone they can find, sluts sleep with whoever they like. I’ve only once had sex with someone I didn’t like (not hatred or anything, just a one night stand), and it was an abysmally dissatisfying experience. (He asked me to stay the night – I told him I had to go home and feed my cat). I’ve had phases in my adult life where there was no one I was interested in sleeping with (which sucked). Up until recently, there were no other dudes in my life that I particularly wanted to shag; no one that would justify the risk to my relationship with Marauder. Now, things are a little different. Which brings me back to: how do we proceed? How do we decide what is wrong and what is right in an arena of so much grey?

Marauder has told me that he’d prefer to be included and involved in my sexual pursuits, and I agree with him. I’ve had threesomes both with him and with previous boyfriends (two girls, one guy), and it has always worked without angst or jealousy because all three parties liked and respected each other. Two guys in a bed is a different story, however, and one I’m not all that convinced can work so harmoniously. I’ll leave an impassioned discussion about how all women are expected to be bisexual and all men hetero out of this for the time being, because we are a product of the culture in which we live, as much as our intellectual pontificating and alternative ideologies might attempt to reject such a notion. I’m not saying I don’t believe in change, but it’s certainly not an easy thing. An open relationship is the tougher choice, but then again the rewards could be amazing. What we could learn, what we could experience, would make the difficulties worthwhile. I also believe it could actually make this relationship the best it could be. I never want to fall into a rut with my partner, I want always for there to be new ideas, fresh energy coming into it. Marauder admitted that the way he saw me changed after the night at R&R – that it brought that sparkle of newness back into our sex life. I realise that what we have is worth more than even the shiniest of shiny things, and yet whenever we bring some of that shininess back to our world it makes everything light up.

I still find it hard to accept that my boyfriend is not going to fly off into a jealous rage if I admit to feeling desire for another man. I’ve had jealous and possessive boyfriends in the past and it has forced me into a bad habit of lying by omission. Most people would argue that honesty is always the best policy, but I disagree with that in the instance where being honest will relieve one person of a burden, and make the other person feel like crap. But Marauder keeps telling me that it’s okay, it’s okay. I’m still having trouble trusting that he won’t suddenly decide that it’s not okay. I still feel guilty about this sort of stuff. A lifetime of indoctrination is a difficult thing to reprogram.

Because sexual desire doesn’t answer to notions of morality or ethics. I’m not saying that we should all run around doing exactly what our sex drive tells us to do, but I am saying you need to be honest with yourself rather than deny that these things exist. It’s about finding balance. I don’t believe in setting yourself up for failure, and more importantly, I don’t believe in sacrificing what could be an incredible experience in the fleeting journey of life (and the even more fleeting period in which you are sexually active and sexually attractive). Some people remain faithful in marriage for twenty-odd years, but are crucified as ‘bad people’ if they eventually have an affair. Does that twenty years of faithfulness count for nothing? So many people are trapped in loveless, sexless marriages, and yet they persist with it because of…? I think, even if you add the messy element of children into the equation, most people remain in unhappy situations because they are scared of the alternatives. Better the devil you know, etc.

I don’t want to live my life in fear. I don’t want my partner, the person I love most in the world, to be unhappy. Who am I to tell this person what they are and are not allowed to do in this life? As long as we keep talking to each other, keep cherishing what have, I think we might, maybe, be able to do that thing that eludes so many – the successful long term relationship. I have faith.

Needles

The first time I heard about play piercing, I dismissed instantly it as ridiculously hardcore. It just sounded ludicrous – about as erotic as having your leg amputated (even though some people do, actually, have fetishes for amputation). It just didn’t cross my mind as something I would ever be interested in. This was partially to do with the mild needle phobia I’ve got, and partially to do with the fact I couldn’t see the eroticism in it. I mean, I like a good medical fantasy as much as the next pervert, but needles just seemed too clinical. Pain for pain’s sake – not sexy enough for me.

When I actually got to see a play piercing session, I found myself staring in the ‘it’s terrible, but I can’t look away’ style of watching. A woman was sitting on a bench while a man threaded a series of needles through the skin of her back. At first I couldn’t bear to see the needle penetrate the skin, and focused my attention on her face (which was serene – eyes closed, concentrating, vaguely smiling). She twitched a little every time a new needle went through, which made me freak a bit. But the end result was undeniably beautiful; glinting metal spikes protruding from her pale skin, luminescent green plastic tips all in a straight line, enhancing the gentle curve of her back. I watched in the same way people watch travel programs, entertained by an exotic destination without ever considering the possibility of actually going there myself.

Despite having three tattoos and having had no less than twelve body piercings during my ‘youth’ (of which only six ear piercings remain), needles still scare me. What grosses me out the most are blood tests. It’s not so much the pain or the metal or the blood as it is the concept of having something inserted into a vein. The sliding. Ick, ick, ick. However despite my initial repulsion, the idea of play piercing started to circle my mind. It’s how these things start. Everything that has ever thrilled me always starts out just outside the realm of what I thought was possible. Just that little bit further than I was originally willing to go.

In February last year I went down to Melbourne with Marauder to attend a Melbourne Under 30s party. The morning after the party, just when I thought I was safe, I foolishly mentioned to my Domme friend, ‘Miss F’, that I was curious about needles. Which was how I found myself blindfolded and tied to a table inside a room with her, her boyfriend, Marauder, and a box of 200 needles. I wrote about this experience in my diary at the time:

“So I was firmly bound and I really couldn’t escape. I tried to concentrate on being still, on being calm. On breathing so I didn’t pass out. Never had the blackness felt so deep. It was also an interestingly erotic feeling of being laid out on a table and scrutinised by others. The medical gloves, the sinister smell of alcohol, the terrifying sound of plastic packages being carefully opened. I think it was that sound that scared me the most – I started to recognise the sound of the plastic needle being opened, and that’s when I knew I had about twenty seconds before it would go through.

The first one happened, too quickly, because had they waited ten hours it still would have been too quickly. Very sharp pain; it hurt more than I thought it would. Not unbearable, but terrible because it was a needle. After the first one went through I thought I would lose my head. It was spinning, I was lifting, and I was then flooded with euphoria. I wanted more/I didn’t want more. But I didn’t have much time for that argument because the second one was happening. Again sharp, again scary, and I tried to calm down but my fist was clenching and my toes were twisting. I tried to tell myself that it would be exactly the same if I clenched or if I didn’t clench, and that the anticipation was worse than the actual, but I simply couldn’t let it go. I didn’t make a sound though, and I kept my back still. Once the second one was in I felt more release, more adrenalin. But almost too much, I was trying to keep on top of it. I was on the border of requesting that we stop at two, but Miss F worked at a relentless pace and the third one was going in. I started entering a realm, subspace I suppose, where there was nothing I could do to stop what was happening. This was my biggest, clearest thought. I knew I couldn’t go anywhere. I couldn’t do anything. Struggling would make it more painful, would show the embarrassing side of my weakness. So the only thing I could do was accept it, to think: “this is happening and I have to let it happen and there is nothing I can do to stop it happening”, and this spoke volumes about life. I started to twitch as they got further down, that involuntary tickle response. Of dreading the first pierce of the needle; my skin shying away from it, a sick feeling. I had to say something then, because it was getting the better of me, and I was getting scared and tired. They let me have a rest, and the relief was massive. Their fingers drifting over my skin, close to that terrible metal.

There’s no escaping the pain of a needle – it stayed as sharp and as clear from beginning to end, and there was absolutely no blocking it out. It was pain in its purest form. Just pain, a very small measure, a small reminder that I am mortal. Enough pain to make me cry, to make me feel owned by it. When they started on the next side I was crying. The next side hurt just as much, except it was similar to getting a tattoo in that I was able to find solace in the rhythm. Also I am pedantic, and I wanted both sides to be even, so I was determined to see it through. They were getting down the left side and ‘Reckoner’ by Radiohead was playing, and partly because of the pain, and partly because of the purity, I cried with beautiful release. Just as the music reached that sweet spot, that bending moment where it hovers, pauses, rouses and turns, that’s when another needle went through. I could have died in complete peace. It was downhill from there – the hardest part was over. I let it wash through me as they stroked me, reassured me, guided me through.

Taking the needles out was painful, and I think I freaked a bit because I was untied by this stage. Somehow being tied up makes things easier. I get a bit whiny when I’m too free. But it stung like a motherfucker, and was more of a wet bloody pain than the careful dryness of insertion. Messy. But they came out and then I was bleeding, cute dots in straight lines down my back. Then I was high, full of energy, bursting. The sense of achievement was incredible.”

After that experience I felt glad to have done it but uninterested in doing it again. While most of my fetishes have grown and evolved, this one I felt happy to abandon. It was just so intense, and too intimate for a party environment. Still right on that edge of ‘too much, too far’. Months went by and I continued to have lots of new kinky experiences, but never felt inclined to return to the needle. Marauder managed to acquire a few boxes of surgical grade needles from a friend of ours, and while I watched him perfect his skills on other people, I was still not keen to volunteer myself.

However in October 2008, Marauder, Talby and I spent a sun-dappled Sunday afternoon mucking about and frolicking, as you do. We did a lot of weird things (which included shaving Talby’s legs – one of the most surprisingly erotic moments of my life) and somewhere towards the end of the night I asked Marauder to stick some needles in my back. It was exactly the right blend of celebration and intimacy that made the first experience so tingly. Here is how I recorded that experience:

“The needle tip eased in and my skin gave way like butter. It all slushed around as the metal pushed my blood to either side before emerging with a tiny rip. It was so clear, and so bittersweet. The rush was narcotic. I got flooded, filled heavy and waterlogged with blood-rich pleasure. It swam up over my head and made my eyes hooded and leaden. I sank down, weights on my limbs, unable to move to unable to tell him to stop, even if I’d wanted him to. I was muttering, “oh my god, I’m so fucking high” but somewhere around halfway the muttering stopped and it was all I could do to keep from going under completely. I shivered and twitched as each evil point made its way under my skin as he probed deeper, drew it out longer, wriggled the needles and made me taut. I was gushing, dripping, melting. It was complete peace; pure unadulterated pleasure. Pain became meaningless, it was all intensity of feeling. It was tight and strong and sickly feeling. I rose up on waves and waves of warmth and floated through it, floating through clouds. He could have gone on all night, all down my back and legs. Each needle brought fresh pain but it was quickly gobbled up by roaring thunder. And beneath each little prick I could feel blood, fresh and red and wet. Meeting the air.

He was naked, I was naked, Talby was bundled in a towel, watching with wide eyes. It was so warm, so yellow, so muted. Free from time, free from anything more complex than the physical. I got up and looked at the needles down my back, the bright little green tips all neatly aligned. It matched my hair extremely well. I felt like an angel with wings. Sharp metal wings, like a half robot.

On the last needle I had an orgasm. It propped up quickly in my mind, and I couldn’t quite believe it but I was moaning, coming. The intensity pushed me over the edge and my whole body reverberated with orgasmic energy. It shivered outwards and radiated from my fingers and toes. I was gone, so gone, so lost to it, deep inside the rhythm of Marauder’s tapping fingers playing the piano over my wounds. I’ve gone from having very uneasy feelings about needles to loving it, loving it, waiting eagerly for the next time I can feel the sharp metal enter me. But it was Marauder’s touch that did it. His magic hands.

The needles slipped out with erotic intensity. I licked up the pain, ate it, swallowed it into my belly, gulping for more. That slippery slipping, lubricated with blood. They whisked out and left me released and blubbering blood. Little fountains dotted alongside my spine. Shining brightly – the telltale evidence of life.”

Which finally brings me to the grand finale of this epic post. The other weekend, the day after R&R, me, Marauder and Talby stayed up late on a Saturday night and fooled around with needles again. This time I broke yet another barrier: I managed not only to accept needles through the skin of my breasts (8 in total – pointed towards my nipples in a symmetrical pattern, which was much more painful than having them through my back), but I actually swapped roles for a time and managed to find the courage to stick needles into Talby. This freaked me out far more than even receiving needles, strange as that sounds. I get freaked by watching the needle sink into skin, which is obviously something you can’t avoid when you’re the one doing the needling. And I wouldn’t have been brave enough had she not asked me to do it. She offered herself up as a pincushion for me, and the gesture was so touching that it broke through all of my fears. She asked me – I wanted to obey. It was a weird but endlessly interesting scenario; two naturally submissive people, neither super okay with needles, guiding each other through the experience. It was a beautiful demonstration of the way in which power exchange does not have to be loud, does not necessitate force. It is actually all about subtlety, of nudging each other to a place that neither could get to on their own.

She smiled as each needle went through – five little lines on her upper thigh. Exquisite.

Finally, right at the very end of the night (morning, in fact), Marauder and I did one last thing. I have always been curious to have a needle inserted right through my outer labia, because the concept of being sewn or pinned together has always been a giant fantasy of mine. I have had a piercing through my clit hood, so I’m no stranger to needles down there, but there is something extra powerful about having your lover on the other end of it, and doing it simply for the sake of interest and eroticism. So I asked him to do it, and, grinning and fastidious, he did. Marked out the entry and exit points with a felt tip pen, got the needle out, waited impassively as I attempted to get him to stall or to maybe even abandon the idea altogether, and then he pushed it through. It really fucking hurt. Halfway through I begged him to stop, but he said “we’re doing this” and then it was out the other side. Incredible. A thin piece of metal threaded through one of the most sensitive and sexual parts of me. It was hot.

Herein ends my needle experience thus far. I’ll post some photos up here a little later.

Man Enough

Last Friday marked the return of what is, in my opinion, Sydney’s best fetish party. R&R (Rhythm and Restraint) started out as monthly party on the top floor of a uniquely decorated warehouse space. Since it was a private venue there were none of the usual problems you get with clubs (like exorbitant entry fees, ridiculously priced drinks and bitchy bar staff), and it also meant that most of the participants were serious about their kink – not just gawking tourists from the vanilla world. (Yes, a lot of my negative comparisons are of Hellfire, but that’s another story).

June to November 2007 – those were the glory days. Every second Friday of the month we’d all rock up there in our fetish best, hand over our $10 (a mere $10!) and ascend a narrow wooden staircase into the otherworldly space that was R&R. It was great not only because it offered a variety of spaces in the one venue (dance space, private play area, public play area, social areas and a curtained room right at the end with a giant bed in it for sexing and other such rudeness), but because there was just simply a general air of celebration – the joy that is created when a bunch of people are suddenly unshackled from the burden of acting normal. At the time I was still getting the hang of a thing known as ’socialising’, and parties were not normally my idea of a good time, but R&R was something I could genuinely enjoy. I’m only just realising now as I write this how many ‘firsts’ I experienced in that six months; first flogging, first caning, first experience as a top, first time I’d been more-or-less naked in front of a group of people, first time I’d worn underpants as an outfit (it was awesome), first experience with a gas mask, first time I’d fainted. (This last thing happened during a session in which I was tied up by this guy, and then caned by a crazy Maltese girl. It was exquisite, transcendent. And it freaked the hell out of Ms Crazy, which is a difficult feat. Heh.)

All of this considered, the new-and-improved R&R (at a venue conveniently closer to where I live), had a lot to live up to. I’d been anticipating that night for a long time. And as with every important event, the most pressing question on my mind was, naturally, ‘what am I going to wear?’. (Yes, I know that obsessing over one’s outfit only reinforces the gender stereotype that women like shoes and clothes while men like engineering and computer science, but whatever.) Normally I choose my outfits like I choose my hair colour – through an intuitive process of discovering what ‘feels’ right. Usually it’s easy, but sometimes I experience outfit block. Outfit block is that thing that happens when a girl gets out every item of clothing they own, tries it all on and then throws it to the bed in despair. I hate outfit block. For some reason all my favourites just weren’t doing it for me – the stockings weren’t right, the heels weren’t right and even my rubber felt uninspired. And then, as if illuminated by the translucent light of a miraculous rainbow (or, er, something), I spotted Marauder’s suit hanging over the cupboard door. Yes! It was perfect!

It really was. Marauder is taller than me, but waist-wise we’re about the same (due to Marauder being freakishly thin, I feel the need to add). From the very moment I put it on I started to feel confident, powerful and sexually assertive. I’ve always found men in suits attractive, and now I realise why all the businessmen of the world wear them. Power was not ever something that interested me all that much… but then again maybe that’s because I didn’t have the right suit.

Women dressing as men is a thing that has always done it for me, ever since I learned about Frida Kahlo in year 10 visual art. I always secretly yearned to be able to pull it off – to ditch all the bells and whistles associated with dressing to please a man, and still exude sex. (Admittedly I did wear makeup… but then I think men look good in makeup, so). It reminded me of the first time I cut my hair short, after having it long all my life. I was worried that short hair would take away from my femininity and thus detract from my sexuality. This was, of course, horse shit. Hair does not create a person’s sexuality (or femininity) any more than their clothes do. Sex is something that comes from within, something you embody. It’s why I reckon Kylie Minogue is pretty but not sexy – she’s wearing all the right outfits but somehow she just doesn’t carry it off, in my humble opinion. (Madonna, now she’s a different story…)

So I arrived at R&R with my hat tilted and my black fibreglass cane tucked under my arm, miles away from the flamboyantly girly persona I usually occupy at these events. The new venue turned out to be just as good as the previous one, and there was an excited vibe running through the place. I strutted about in my suit, feeling a strong desire to dominate, which is a mindset I rarely ever experience. And then the most curious thing started to happen:

I got acknowledged, winked at, talked to and hit on by more men than I ever had in one night.

This might sound odd, but normally when I’m out and about it’s usual for me to attract more lesbians than I do men. In fact, in all my experience of fetish parties, it’s mostly ever women I’ve flirted with, kissed, played with (Marauder = notable exception). But at this R&R, not only did I have the privilege of testing out my latent dominant side on two ridiculously sexy men, I ended up lying between two ridiculously, outrageously sexy men on the big bed at the end of the night. It was a dream come true. And you know how it’s a generally accepted fact that the reality never quite lives up to the fantasy? Well, that’s a pile of crap.

I have a few different theories as to why I suddenly became visible to men:

Theory #1

There is something intrinsically empowering about wearing a suit. Suits are like a modern-day coat of armour – covering and protecting any physical weaknesses. They are a symbol of authority. And finally, they simply look good; they’re sophisticated, stylish. The combined result of all of these factors is: confidence. Coming back to my theory that sex appeal is built around confidence, I think I was exuding a heightened level of confidence (perhaps even a touch of arrogance) on the night, which made me especially attractive.

Theory #2

As mentioned, the moment I stepped into the party I immediately felt an urge to dominate someone. I know it’s not politically correct to associate dominance with masculinity and submission with femininity, but my libido doesn’t answer to politics and thus this cliché forms the basis of what turns me on. (Although this is a funny thing: a lot of the time when I fantasise about being in a submissive position, I fantasise about being a submissive man. Seriously, even to the point of receiving cock and ball torture. Weird, eh?) Anyway, I find there is something sexy in the bulk, the might and the force of a male body, and when this is channelled into the role of a Dom it can be frighteningly good. Sometimes I find it annoying that as a woman I’ve been given a very muscular, strong little body. I’ve found myself in submissive positions having to pretend that I couldn’t overpower the other person, or struggle out of some sort of binding. But on that night, for the first time, I found a use for it. I was giving out dominant vibes, and I think all the men who ever wanted to be used and abused by a woman, consciously or otherwise, were looking at me and thinking ‘aw yeah’.

Theory #3

Part of the reason why men don’t usually come on to me is because of me. I’m a bit weird, you see, and I get freaked out by too much attention while simultaneously going to lengths to attract attention to myself (crazy hair, for example). My body language shouts “LOOK AT ME don’t look at me LOOK AT ME don’t look at me”, etc. It’s confusing, I know. Now I don’t know why I do this except that it’s probably a deep-rooted psychological thing that will probably affect me until I’m really, really old. Hoo-ray. But it’s not something I consciously consider all that often, until just now when I was searching for a reason as to why the suit changed the way people responded to me. I realise that it gave me the opportunity to explore a persona who was different to my usual self. I was able to shelve the more neurotic side of myself and lurk comfortably inside the suit, peering out from a position of safety. Interesting.

It’s probably a combination of all three, or none, who knows. All I know is that I liked it, and it gave me another important reminder that we need not be bound by who we think we are, or how we think we are supposed to act. I never would have imagined that I’d enjoy flogging another person quite as intensely as I did that night, or quite as much as I enjoy being flogged. Later in the night I did receive a flogging, stripped down to only my shirt. It was fantastic, and I think it was extra fantastic for all the energy that had been built up in me over the course of the evening. The person who flogged me was one of the men I had flogged, and the intensity in the transferral of power when the suit came off and my wrists were cuffed was mind bending.

Now, I’d better get that suit to the drycleaner’s before Marauder becomes displeased with me. Right after I fold the laundry, do the dishes and slave over a hot stove for a while. (Note to self: buy suit.)

Rubber

(Pain Part II is coming soon…)

So few people have heard the real story about how Marauder and I got together, despite it being one of my favourite stories to tell. So here it is, in its uncensored glory:

We first met at an Under 30s gathering at the Marlborough Hotel. Flirtation was had, numbers were exchanged. I went home that night buzzing with possibility.

The following Thursday we met up after work, with the idea to go fetish wardrobe shopping for Hellfire (which was on Friday). We walked together down Oxford Street, and I did my usual nervous chatterbox thing. (It had been a long time between dates, okay?) We ended up at House of Fetish, and for a bit of fun, I ended up trying on a $600 rubber ensemble. It was my first experience with rubber, which up until that point had seemed all a bit freaky and silly for my tastes. But as I talced up and squeezed in, all assumptions dropped away. It felt snug, secure, smooth. It squeezed my body into that of a voluptuous woman. It cinched me in and made all the sex bits stick out. It was so sexy I was having a lesbian experience just looking at myself in the mirror.

I had to exit the cubicle to access said mirror, and everyone in the store was suitably impressed. I stood there gawking at myself for a while, and then I turned to Marauder:

“Want to feel me up?”

His reply:

“Yes.”

That kicked off my now sizeable rubber fetish (and Marauder fetish, for that matter). Up until last night, my ability to explore that fetish was limited by its expense (my first outfit set me back around $300 bucks), and by the fact I didn’t really see a way of ‘playing’ with rubber, other than by wearing it in sexy outfits. I’d seen a bunch of stuff in porn, but I didn’t really think it was possible to try unless you were a porn star (why do I persist in thinking this way?).

At a private party I went to about six months ago, a couple was there who I’d seen around at other parties, but had never properly gotten to know. At this particular party, they’d brought around a few different rubber hoods (one of them a gas mask with a long breathing tube), which I got to try on. We did some breath play (where the top restricts the bottom’s breathing, in this instance through blocking the air tube) and I loved it. It scared me just enough to make me want more, more, more. I got to borrow the mask, but somehow it felt incomplete. I wanted to be completely encased and completely at the mercy of someone else. A rubber doll.

We’d been talking about it for ages, and we finally made a date for me to come over to their house and play with their rubber. And as the date approached, I got more and more nervous. I was excited by my nerves, realising that I’ve been playing it fairly safe of late (attending only parties held in my own home and playing with mostly the same people, and mostly the same kind of play). I like to still feel nervous, because I don’t want to ever get to the point where I’m completely comfortable and I know exactly what to expect. I savoured my anxiety all afternoon, chewing on it, extracting what intoxicating dread I could. When I finally rang their doorbell in my one rubber outfit at 9pm that night, I was awkward and stilted on the outside, but inwardly seething with nervous excitement.

There is something extra thrilling about playing in a new space – it lends a rich element of other-worldliness to the play. Entering their house was like being sucked into a vortex, which is funny, because later that evening I pretty well literally got sucked into a vortex. From the moment I was inside I felt it begin – even during the social formalities of general chit chat and fixing a drink. Everything was discussed before it started, and I sat there through it all with a big stupid grin on my face. I’m an atrocious poker player.

First up, I was told to take off all my clothes, and step into a big rubber sack that fastened around my neck. (I got to keep my rubber underpants on, which was more awesome than being completely naked). I was placed on my back and the sack was pumped full of air. ‘Sack’ isn’t the best descriptor – it was more of a big tube, which meant that one layer of rubber was pressed against my body, while the other layer ballooned outwards, turning me into a giant human caterpillar. It also meant that sections of the tube could be unzipped (so my body could be accessed) without letting all the air out. Once it was completely inflated, a rubber gas mask was placed over my head, limiting my breathing to that vulnerable rubber tube. It also limited my eyesight, but I was keen to close my eyes anyway.

I could barely wiggle inside the sack; I was helpless. Totally at the mercy of my two friends, who were using me as a footstool. It was utterly perfect, and I felt so euphoric it was better than any drug I’ve ever tried. It put me right in the moment, so blissfully disconnected from any of the stuff going on in my life. Inside my head, the same thing over and over: this is wild.

I sank into subspace and stayed there, pieces of me scattered among stars. I saw what could only be described as hallucinations – dancing colours and shapes, rubber-clad androids, and at one particularly intense moment, Kate Bush in the film clip for Running Up That Hill. (I fucking love Kate Bush). There was also much rudeness – it was surprisingly sexual. Hot and lush and pure. Wrenched away from the controlling clutches of my conscious mind. Rhythm running through me like electricity.

I eventually emerged calm and spaced and malleable. Sweaty, engorged. Beatific, docile. At ease.

We went upstairs, where I was caned, paddled and spanked. I took it as quietly as I could, but it cut into the my dream-state and woke me up. Each stroke brought things sharply back into focus, and each anticipatory void let me drift. Time had lost all meaning; I had no idea how long it lasted or how many strokes I endured. I moaned and groaned, accepted and sighed, wriggled and twitched. Then it was over.

Into yet another room, on the floor of which was a large rectangle of rubber known as a vac bed. This was another type of sack – sealed on three sides, and with a zipper along the forth. It was held in shape by a rectangular frame made out of strong plastic pipes. I crawled inside, lay on my back, and put the breathing tube in my mouth. Then it was zipped up, and a vacuum was used to suck all the air out of the sack, trapping me inside nearly instantly. The rubber clung to my skin, pressed in on me. It was so tight I couldn’t even move my fingers. I was expecting to be freaked out by it, but all I felt was peace.

The breath play did scare me earlier when I was wearing the gas mask, but in the vac bed I had absolutely no problem with having my air restricted. I felt invincible. And it was still very sexual, deeply sexual. I never wanted it to end.

Even after the vacuum was turned off, just lying inside the sack in the warm blackness did it for me.

After that I got to watch other people in the sack (including Marauder, who had arrived towards the end of the caning). It was astonishing to see him shrink wrapped inside the rubber – the detail was incredible. It pulls so tight you can see individual hairs, and fingernails. I can imagine that the best part about it, if you’re a bloke, is fighting a battle against the rubber with a semi-erect cock.

It was feeling like the night was over, but just as we were getting ready to leave, I was distracted by a rubber catsuit hanging in the room. It was made to fit a man, and therefore it fit me very badly, but I got the gist. Before I got it we filled it with silicon lube, and it felt like wearing a giant condom. A bit gross and slimy at first, but once it warmed up it felt very good. Then I lay on the bed on top of a rubber sheet which we also drowned in lube, and I slid around on it for a while, wiggling and carrying on. It felt like Slip ‘N Slide. I giggled a lot.

After a long shower, the night was truly over. I thanked my hosts profusely and stumbled out into the night. I was so high Marauder almost refused to let me drive home. But I got there, it was all right.

Pain (Part One)

I was born an optimist into a family of depressed cynics. My mother’s motto was “expect the worst – you won’t be disappointed”. In our household, not only was the glass half empty, it was poisoned. “Why do I always fail at everything?” was another catchcry you might have heard if you were lucky enough to visit my childhood home, as was “life’s a bitch and then you die”. (Dad was particularly fond of replacing the word ‘bitch’ with ‘beach’, especially while we were at the beach, or planning to go to the beach, or if the word ‘beach’ was mentioned in any context, by anyone, anytime, or not at all. It never got old!) It wasn’t until well into my adult years that I realised that not all families were like that. Both my parents, like, seriously needed a hug. And Valium.

So, if you take my natural inclination to view the world as totally awesome, coupled with my parent’s repeated indoctrination that life was fucked, you get… me. The depressed optimist!

How does this work, you ask? Well, here are some examples:

While going through a severe bout of depression brought on by my parent’s outrageously horrible divorce (who would have thought such a happy couple would ever divorce?), a shit job, no money, a crummy apartment and a heart broken so many times by so many crap men that it was less an organ and more a glorified mass of scar tissue (metaphorically speaking), I thought to myself:

Dude, when you’re a famous writer, this is going to give you so much cred! All the best writers of history were horribly depressed with crap lives – you’ve totally got it made! All right! Maybe you could squeeze in a suicide attempt and wind up in a mental hospital for that authentic element of Plath? How awesome would THAT be?!

Or, whenever I weigh myself, and the number is higher than the ‘acceptable upper limit’ I decided upon before I hopped on, I try to look at it this way:

Okay so yeah, that is a little high, but that’s only because I’m approaching it from the angle of having GAINED weight. What would my opinion be if I’d, say, LOST 100 kilos to get to this number, huh? I’d be pretty bloody stoked right now, wouldn’t I? If I were on The Biggest Loser, I’d totally be kicking butt. So, congratulations, me! That’s 100 kilos LESS than it could have been! Now, let’s eat ice cream to celebrate!

And finally, my grotesquely optimistic spin on all things negative turns the well-known fact ‘life is pain’ into:

Life IS pain, therefore the secret to enjoying life is to learn to enjoy pain.

Which brings me, (456 words later) to today’s topic.

Learning to love pain has not been hard for me, because, truth be told, we’ve always had a thing. It started in adolescence, when after eight years of classical ballet lessons, I was finally allowed to get my first pair of pointe shoes (the ones that facilitate ‘toe dancing’. No wonder the language of ballet is French – how bloody ugly does ‘toe dancing’ sound in comparison to ‘en pointe’?) I was thrilled, as was everyone in my class at the time. Difference between me and them was, I remained thrilled. For anyone who doesn’t know – pointe work is brutal. It takes the skin off your toes and presses them into a stylised shape that looks nothing like your own foot structure, or indeed a human foot structure. Most lessons we’d come away with bloody, calloused toes; stockings stuck to the exposed flesh. The insides of our shoes were dark with brown stains. They had a particular smell – of old bandaids, resin and sweat. If you had two pointe classes in two days, your wounds would not have time to form a sufficient scab, and it would feel like you were grinding your toes into a bucket of fire and glass. Beautiful, huh?

But it was beautiful. I loved the blood, the bandaids, the cruel teachers who would scream “AGAIN! DO IT AGAIN!”. I loved, and still love, the abnormal line of the foot pointe shoes create – gracefully curved ends at the ends of long stockinged legs. I love the sound the blocks make as they patter over the floor, the taut muscles around the ankles, the strength and the glory. To this day (six years after my last ballet class) I still fantasise about squeezing my feet into those shoes. I suppose you could say it’s become something of a fetish. (When I am rich, I will totally be buying a pair of ballet boots. Oh boy oh boy.)

As mentioned, I was the only student in my class who would actively request a pointe work lesson. Sometimes the teachers would let us choose, and my classmates detested me because I would always, always suggest pointe. (Maybe I also secretly got off on their suffering too, who knows).

So. I was into pain before I had any idea about BDSM but strangely, when I started getting into kink, pain was something that really freaked me out. I was intrigued by it, but was still plagued by the notion that it was unhealthy and unbalanced. I thought the pain had to be mostly superficial for it to be acceptable in a BDSM play scenario. (At the time I was reading a lot of electro-play erotica, but for a long time I thought there were things that could be explored through fantasy that would not be possible or permissible in reality). In particular, I thought that if it made the submissive cry, it had gone too far.

Up until about two years ago, I drew the line at light cropping, pinching, spanking, candle wax – anything that caused discomfort but did not tip the scale into full-blown pain. That all changed for me when I met a girl through Under 30s who introduced me to the cane. After she hit me I had purple bruises for two weeks. It was fucking awesome.

The cane is the perfect marriage of eroticism and pain. It leaves beautiful straight welts across rounded flesh; it makes you quiver with every hit. And the pain is sharp, hot immediate. It strikes in a flash and resonates through you. Once the endorphins kick in you get flooded with a rich, heavy, dope-like serenity. It continues to hurt, but you find yourself requesting more and more, wanting it and fearing it in equal amounts. It brings blood to the surface of the skin. It leaves bruises for weeks that make it hard to sit down. It can be unbearable, and it has made me cry and faint. It’s cathartic, addictive.

I was being caned on my inside thigh at a party about six months ago, and the caner told me she wouldn’t stop until I told her to. I agreed to this, and she began. About ten seconds into it I was in agony, eyes full of tears, gasping for breath. But I held on, determined not to wuss out after such a short time. And beyond my initial reflex reaction (to want the pain to stop as soon as possible), I realised something powerful. I was able to see pain as something separate, something that didn’t have control over me. It was merely a sensation – only bad if I labelled it as such. And from there it was like peering into the heart of the universe, seeing beyond than the thin fabric of what we call reality, knowing that there is so much more to living than our physical limitations allow us.

People live their lives in fear of pain. But if you actively embrace it, you will come to the realisation that there is nothing to fear. It ceases to have power over you. And you feel… free.

This has become longer than I intended, so I’m going to split it up into two parts.

(End part one!)

Pleasure Fetish

Sometimes I worry that my accumulated list of fetishes and perversions has grown to be ridiculously large. What started out as something deceptively simple (a desire to be on the bottom during sex, and maybe possibly tied up) has branched out into so many different things I can barely keep track of them all. In the five or so years I’ve been consciously kinky, my tastes have changed and evolved fairly drastically. This is to do with the influence of people I’ve played with, the porn I’ve watched, the erotica I’ve read and the interesting stuff I’ve seen and experienced while out and about (either socially or at clubs).

If you’d asked me five years ago what I was into, I would have been very definite and specific. I probably would have said bondage (without having any idea about things like suspension bondage or shibari), corsets (not yet knowing the joys of rubber), confined spaces, being generally submissive (like letting the guy make the ‘moves’ and doing nice things for him without wanting or expecting anything in return), and rough sex (in the sense of being ‘taken’, shoved against walls, slapped about a bit, called a ’slut’, etc). I was not open to the idea of building upon or broadening these desires, I suppose because I didn’t see the point, but fear also had a lot to do with it.

My first kinky relationship included all of these kinks and then some. My boyfriend was intent on pushing my boundaries, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but the way he went about it was careless and impatient. He pushed me too hard, too fast. I ended up feeling violated, robbed. But the thing about boundaries is once they’ve been bulldozed, you can’t go back, no matter how much you might want to. I was left feeling vaguely frustrated by what I had found amazingly hot at the beginning of the relationship, yet terrified of the things I had discovered further down the track.

I’ve eventually come to love some of the things that disturbed and upset me back then. I know myself better, and know what I can and cannot endure, and where the threshold lies. The beauty and eroticism of BDSM is in this liminal grey area between pleasure and pain, desire and despair. I realise now that my ex was more interested in power than anything else, and what we ended up with was nothing like BDSM. Exerting power without the eroticism is just abuse, and there’s nothing imaginative about that.

So I’ve collected a number of different fetishes, to the point where I started to feel a need to define my ‘base’ kink, the place from which everything else stems. And it was harder than I thought it would be. Because ’submissive’ is true, but it’s also vague, and it doesn’t account for the less-than-submissive things I’m also into. ‘Masochist’ is not right for me either, because although I do like pain, I only enjoy it if the person inflicting it legitimately wants me to suffer. ‘Slave’ was never right for me, because I’m too precocious, and I truly believe that there should be room in a relationship (especially a kinky relationship) to challenge your partner. Slavery, in my opinion, borders too dangerously on losing your sense of self within a relationship, and thus the slave becomes not only vulnerable, but boring. (I appreciate that there are many people out there in M/s relationships for whom it works amazingly well, but it’s just not for me. Been there, done that, writing the book about it). A desire to ’serve’ does come into my kink, but it only becomes sexual for me when it involves a sexual act. (As an example, I happily cook all the meals and then wash up every night for my partner because I like doing it, but it’s not the same as getting off on it, unfortunately). There are some people who really do get a sexual kick out of doing chores, but unless possibly I was wearing some sort of constrictive rubber thing with ridiculously high heels, scrubbing the dunny is just never going to be sexy.

I sifted through all these words and definitions and finally reached a conclusion of sorts. Firstly, I realised that there are two sides to my kink persona. One side is meditative, introspective, spiritual, and the other is sexual. The quiet side is to do with confined spaces and restriction. It goes all the way back to when I was a small child, and in that sense it’s pre-sexual. Some of my oldest memories are of climbing into cupboards and dark spaces and simply feeling at peace.

The sexual side of me can be summed up with a single premise: I get off on other peoples’ pleasure. I’ve decided to describe this as a ‘pleasure fetish’.

‘Pleasure fetish’ hardly sounds kinky, and sometimes it’s not. It’s the reason why I enjoy ‘vanilla’ sex so much – because I love to give other people pleasure. Whether they derive that pleasure from fucking me or through hitting me with a stick, is up to them. I like both.

For example, I don’t normally like to be on the receiving end cunnilingus. It’s not because it doesn’t feel good, it’s because I feel uncomfortable with being the intended recipient of pleasure. I just end up feeling guilty that I’m getting all the pleasure while the other person is doing all the work. But I have discovered there is an exception to this rule, and that’s if the person eating me out has a fetish for it. I once knew this guy who literally got off on giving women spectacular orgasms, to the point where he enjoyed it more than he enjoyed having an orgasm himself. For this reason, I was able to relax and enjoy receiving oral sex. And boy, it was enjoyable. Just ask his couch.

This is why I like sadists. I do like to be pounded with a cane (for instance), but only if the person hitting me is getting off on it. I love being coaxed into taking more pain than I thought I could handle, and suffering for the gratification of the sadist. Them taking pleasure from my pain – this is what does my head in. And this is generally what I fantasise about if I’m struggling to reach orgasm. I’ve been watching a fair bit of Insex lately, and the guy who runs it says this thing that makes me crazy with lust: “suffer for me”. The girl will be struggling in pain, and he’ll ask her very softly: “will you suffer for me?” At those magic words, the girl will relax a little, settle into something which is clearly at the threshold of what she thought she could handle. He has a knack for keeping the submissive there, right on the boundary where it just becomes unbearable, and coaxing her verbally, and bribing her with orgasms.

My kink also makes me a very generous lover. Most women will give blowjobs begrudgingly, out of obligation or duty. But I love it doing it, fantasise about it in fact, because I love to give a man so much intense pleasure. I love watching them at the moment they lose control and surrender to that pleasure, and sometimes I experience orgasm at the same time, just from watching. I love being used for someone else’s sexual gratification – literally ‘used’. I get off on being another person’s orgasm provider. I don’t like being touched because they think I will like it (‘is this good for you, honey?’) but I do love being touched because they cannot help but touch me. Or grab me, push me, spank me…

I had an interesting conversation with Whipslave yesterday (a clever and articulate dude I met through Mostly Under 30s) about how we’d be willing to top people if they truly desired to be dominated. I normally have a lot of trouble inflicting pain on others, and generally can’t stop myself from apologising if I hit them too hard (which is not really the point). But if the other person is experiencing pleasure from being hit, I can do it. I was whacking a gorgeous friend of mine on the butt with a cane once, and she was moaning in ecstasy, and suddenly I felt completely comfortable in the dominant role. If I were to become intimately involved with a masochist, I would be able to hit them. (But, it still wouldn’t be the same sexual high I get from accepting pain from sadists).

I think ‘pleasure fetish’ has a delicious ring to it, and it’s satisfying to finally have an appropriate way of describing my kink. I like to have a sense of order about my life (because I’m a compulsively organised Taurus), and it feels like I’ve found a beautiful container to hold all of my different perversions. I’m certainly not going to stop exploring and trying new things, but it’s nice to have something to come back to when I start to lose track of what kink means to me.