General Drill Order for Submissives

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Issues with Transparency

The term “Transparency” has a long history. It initially comes not from strict BDSM, but from the open relationship between Jean-Paul Satre and Simone de Beauvoir, the author of the 1949 work The Second Sex. In 1929 the two made a pact that was the basis for a decades long relationship…they would pursue other relationships but only in “Transparency” meaning that they would each tell the other.

History has eventually settled on a moderately uncomplimentary picture of Satre and de Beauvoir, accusing them of cold rather dispassionate handling of their other lovers, and manipulaton. For my part, despite the fact that they were not practicing D/s, I tend to feel they were no worse than real. De Beauvoir ultimately lied to Satre and he to her. Everything is not always perfect and one cannot always be nice. Under any circumstances the concept of “transparency” – of sharing every detail of one’s life with one’s lover or master, has roots in their vocabulary.
Guy Baldwin devotes Essay 6 of Slavecraft to “The Principle of Transparency.”
Slaving is the primary and favorite source of bliss in my life. i crave to be owned body, mind, heart, and soul.

But I cannot be owned if I cannot be seen, because the Master cannot exercise ownership of what He doesn’t know about. And at least for now, i believe that He cannot master me if i am hiding from Him in any way. In fact, to the extent that i can hide myself from my Master, i am not surrendering to Him. By hiding something, anything, i undermine His power and my respect for him- essentially, i castrate Him (figuratively, of course) without His even knowing it and, simultaneously, sabotage my surrender. Ball cutting slaves are the undoing of Master. i believe this because i have asked Them about it.

For me, my secrets keep Him from knowing me, and having me entirely. The capacity within me for secrecy has become my enemy, my slavery is compromised by any obscurity within myself. He can see my body and can take and use it for His toy, but He cannot see into my mind unless it is transparent – open to Him. And it is my job to make and keep it transparent. So, Transparency…openness, is one of the principles that guide me in my submission to Him.

That’s a very pretty statement, and certainly there is truth in it. But one has to wonder how far it goes. We can start with the argument that not every D/s relationship is the sort of deep emotional slavery that Baldwin is writing about, nor should it be. But even accepting that any relationship that was less…intense…the level of commitment to transparency would be less intense, there is some question about whether or not that’s really a good idea.

Let’s look at another view. This comes from a self-revelatory essay by Sadie, BDSM Author, and the woman who founded Vermont Rose & Thorn

“Being transparent has made me powerless in some ways, open and vulnerable with my guts hanging out on the table. And when I am deeply hurt as I am now, there is no one to help me tuck them back in and sew me up. Certainly Vladimir can't do it because he's the one who has hurt me. Vladimir truly wants me to be transparent and feels that he has a right to know how I feel about him in every way. Perhaps he does; I'm not so sure now where my rights to my private thoughts and emotions start and end. For example, I realized some months into our friendship that I was in love with him. I never told him this because I didn't want to make either of us uncomfortable, after all he had been very clear that we were just friends and that was that. Because I wear my heart on my sleeve, he knew how I felt anyway so in my mind so saying it didn't really matter much. When we became partners, words like "I love you" became so loaded that I also chose not to use them, knowing that there would be pressure for him to respond in kind. I wanted him to have the space and freedom to come to his feelings when he was ready. But he wants to hear my feelings, all my feelings anyway; in fact demands to hear them. There are so many other feelings that I have that I still do not want to share with him, now simply because I am still flayed and exposed, and cannot reveal anything that will invite any more hurt into my life. I'm maxed out on pain.”

So since this is a blog, the question becomes “what do I think about transparency.”
Obviously it varies depending on the level of intensity. You can’t ask much of someone you are doing a casual scene with. But let’s scrub that, and focus on situations where there is at least some level of ongoing relationship.

I tend to think transparency within a scene is important. I respect privacy if I don’t have a claim on someone, but I want to be able to get at what is going on in their mind within the frame of the scene. I think you have to know how far to take that.

I do like and think there is something to gain from selective transparency. Giving up control, being willing to respond to questions is a really heady D/s element. Some of my best scenes have been with situations that amounted to Q and A. Peeling back the layers from a partner, exposing them, through a series of questions or discussions. A friend of mine joked at a Roast a few years ago that women slept with me just because I talked with them. I have had talks that were probably from a D/s point of view better than sex. There is something about that type of exposure that is intensely erotic.

But I think you need to have lines. In the end, I think that what Baldwin writes is the sort of lovely ideal, but I think there are going to be very few cases where that’s really how things work. I mean Satre and de Beauvoir were the poster children for this idea, and they broke it. I think that what Sadie writes is where it is all too likely to end up.

So I come down the middle. I demand transparency within a scene…I want to be able to get an immediate and honest appraisal of what the submissive’s state of mind/arousal/etc. is. Often I think that’s information you can take physically without asking…arousal certainly isn’t hard to judge. But I still want to ask and get a clear answer.

Outside of a scene, I think that some transparency is a thing to negotiate for and build, but I think that demanding it in full is quite possibly a fool’s choice. Consider that I am not going to totally reveal myself to anyone and that to ask them to totally reveal themselves may be unfair.

I think one can learn to command a woman without complete transparency. It isn’t castration, it’s simply a challenge to overcome. To learn to intuit those places that are kept secret and hidden, to feel them out and to impose control without knowing everything.

We all want a "perfect information" environment. One in which we know everything before acting. But I would argue that real D/s seldom allows for that. We must learn to act with confidence on what we know without feeling castrated by a lack of transparency.

Interesting Fact: In the 18th century British Navy sailors were not allowed to leave the ship while in port for fear they would desert. In order to grant the men some relief from the day to day drudgery of buggery, prostitutes were permitted aboard, so that the men could remember the other option. Since contraception was comparatively unknown, children were often conceived and were thereafter known as “sons of a gun” for having been conceived on a gun deck. If the child died, they would be cremated and fired out of the cannon under which they were conceived (or more likely some similar gun on another vessel), a process known as “Canonization.” They might also be subjected to execution and similar treatment by a body known, predictably, as the “Canon Court.” In this case, they might actually be executed by the “Canon of Common Law,” a very messy procedure reserved for only the worst offenses.

The Selfish Dominant

I often feel that if you can't admit the selfishness of being a Dominant, if you can understand your obligation to give back. If you delude yourself that every part of what you do is about "helping the girl" then I wonder if you can think seriously about whether or not you are really fulfilling your social contract in D/s.

I think a lot of us are delusive. After all that’s the “Jedi Master” model (see previous post). I am an enlightened dominant. I take girls, maybe strong, maybe broken, and “fix” them and make them better people. It is a gift to them, and a service from me. I visit my combination of compassion and cruelty on them, and they benefit from it.

Except I think that’s bullshit. I think you have to be honest with yourself and wake up in the morning and say “I am a selfish bastard. I am used to bullying people around and getting my way. I am used to being the controlling partner and calling the shots. I am used to telling women what to do and having them like it. I do this as much to gratify my ego, and my need to have control over things in life, my pride and arrogance as because I am a good person who just naturally wants to give. I am not a charity organization dispensing wisdom and delicious pain. I am taking and I know this.

As President of General Motors (later Secretary of Defense) Charles E. Wilson said, infamously, “What’s good for the country is good for General Motors, and vice versa.” I think there’s a real danger that you can get into a circular logic spiral of that sort.

I think it is easy for a Dominant to get into this pretentious service mindset where they are “really serving the girl by Dominating her.” The problem is that this short circuits power exchange. It’s like saying “I want you to pay me for the honor of my shopping in your store.” We decide that just “being domly” fulfills the obligations of power exchange. We don’t need to give anything back because what we are giving is just bothering to be a Dominant.

I think there’s more to it than that. First of all if you aren’t getting off on being a Dominant than you are doing something wrong. I’m low key. I don’t necessarily like to do a lot of sex play right off, and a lot of the “getting off” is very cerebral. But I don’t think that means it doesn’t exist. And there is sex, and other physical acting out that’s cathartic, or pleasing. I don’t think you beat people with a cane, or abuse them otherwise because you are a good person who wants to help them. I think you do that because you are excited by it, on some level, or you wouldn’t be doing it. So if that’s exciting to you then you are getting something out of it and getting off on it, and if not, you need a different hobby.

So I can’t say “look the power exchange is that I get off.” The power exchange needs to be about both partners getting something. So I think that you need to be looking for value added. I frankly think pretty highly of myself, maybe too high. But I don’t believe I am such a gift that just whatever the fuck I happen to want to do makes me golden. I think you need to work at it. Hone your skills, learn, read, present well, making being Dominated mean something, not just fuck around doing whatever comes to mind. Spend some time on it. If you wanted just to fuck, you could have a girlfriend, not a submissive.

I think there is also the hubris that goes with thinking you can fix people. You can’t. You can maybe help them, some, if they want you to. But if they don’t you can’t. And it isn’t you, it’s them. You may be the tool they use to fix themselves, but that’s no more meaningful than being the vibrator that is the tool they use to get off. The impetus has to come from them. You can’t save somebody else, and thinking you can is just a fallacy that makes you think too much of yourself.

And thinking too much of yourself makes you prone to fucking up.

I think you have to own your selfishness. Admit in your black little heart the things that you are doing this for…personal gratification, social stature, all those things…or you are just fooling yourself and cheating on power exchange by not offering back anything comparable to what you are being given…

If you lie to yourself, you can’t be one hundred percent. I think you have to wake up in the morning, look yourself in the eye and be okay with the fact that a part of you is a bastard. If that bothers you then you have the option of balancing it out, and that’s in the long run what power exchange is about.

Cultural Fact In many Spanish Speaking regions of South America, numerous signs state "No Fumar No Llamas!" It is worth noting that the double negative in Spanish is perfectly acceptable, and of course the reason for signs of this type is perfectly clear to anyone who despite the potential allure of a large animal that spits, understands the basics of good health and hygeine.

New York BDSM club near strangling.....

First some Newspaper articles. Thanks to a friend in Philadelphis for putting these into circulation.

First Article

Second Article

Third Article

Okay first the facts. For folks who don’t want to jump links, there are precious few. Richard Benjamin is a 67 year old retired college professor from Montreal. For years he’s been sneaking down to New York City on a pretext and playing fetish games without his wife knowing about it. He was at a small BDSM joint that’s fairly well known, has been open for a while and featured in a documentary called The Nutcracker Suite. His particular fetish was to be put in predicament bondage and left alone. This isn’t a public play space like Power Exchange in S.F. or Crucible here in D.C. but a house where clients go to play with Pro-dommes for pay.

A 30 year old domme named Taki Noriko had him in predicament bondage. The details are a little unclear because two accounts mention a “pain machine” and a contraption called “the wheel,” but none of the published accounts actually describe anything that sounds like a machine or a wheel. The details seem to be that he was put in a hood, wearing nipple clamps hands bound behind his back and a leather collar around his neck. The collar was connected to a rope that was attached to a hook in the ceiling. He was wearing women’s high heeled shoes. He was under just a little tension, but not so much as to put him in any danger. The Domme was checking on him every twenty minutes, and he was fine after the first check, but after the second he had slipped out of one of the shoes and choked to unconsciousness. He was taken to St. Vincent’s hospital, didn’t die and eventually revived. His wife had no idea about his BDSM life and was shocked. He gave an exclusive to the N.Y. Post in which he said he was “desperately trying to break his addiction. “

"I don't want to go to the clubs anymore," Benjamin said.

"I'm trying to learn to control myself and my emotions. I've seen doctors to help me," he said, adding that he's been unable to control his desires "from very early on in my life."

Without editorializing, I am going to comment that there was a lot of talk about pain and so forth, but I’m not actually seeing that. This looks more like predicament bondage than anything that had much to do with pain, at least until it failed.

So initially I have three thoughts…

I think most of us are going to say “WTF was she thinking” but let’s go a bit deeper. A lot of us are also going to say “that’s not our community.” Really the older businessman or academic dressing up in women’s clothing and being tortured by a sexy young domme for money is such a stereotype, I think many of us have trouble associating it with what we do. Certainly I have more easy seeing Noriko as somebody I’d know or hang out with than Benjamin. And the mea culpa and “I’m going to change” sort of removes all sympathy. I think there’s grounds for saying “this isn’t my world.” I know prodommes who work at clubs, but I’m never going to go to a club where I have to pay money to get a domme, or a sub, other than maybe as a lark.

But let’s go a little deeper. This is BDSM related, and it certainly is fetish, and it certainly reflects on what it is we do. If you’re going to embrace prodommes or other sexworkers as people you know and associate with, then you need to be willing to accept that their clients are in that environment too, even when they’re sort of stereotypes.

So that takes us to the big issue. “What the fuck was she thinking?” I think that’s a provocative question, but I don’t have enough information to answer. On the face of it, she left a sub/client in a situation that was designed to be a serious predicament, suspended just barely able to stand with a collar on, and bound. Obviously that’s just going to seem wildly irresponsible to most of us. The idea of even being out of line of sight, nevermind only checking ever twenty minutes, seems chilling to me.

But there are a lot of things I don’t know. I didn’t see the negotiations. I don’t know if this guy said “hey do something to me” and his domme was just irresponsible, or if he said “look, I have looked high and low to find a place they will do this risky thing” and somebody finally said yes. Being left alone was the guy’s kink. You could say it’s irresponsible to meet a kink that could kill someone. But first, you have to consider “is it better if they do it with me with some supervision rather than at home where it’s more dangerous but not my responsibility.” While the answer is certainly legally yes, I don’t know ethically and morally. I’ve done some edgeplay that was very dangerous, admittedly and with full knowledge of the level of danger involved. And yes, it involved my endangering someone else, not myself. I could have said “no.” I could not go into those areas.

So if you look at it from that perspective, I think it’s provocative. I just don’t know. I don’t know what the room looked like, how much it seemed like if there was trouble there would be noise, how precarious the setup really seemed, and how freakish the accident was. I just don’t.

That said, I think that if you are taking risks that aren’t core to the fetish, you are a fool. In this case, sneak a peak. I’m in favor of Doms cheating to make things safer. It’s the illusion of danger we want, not the reality. But there is a point where the reality is the thing that is making it exciting, and it’s hard to go around that. I will also add that most of the time the thing that submissives expect from us is safety. They are counting on us to be older, wiser, safer, and to make things fucking exciting while not really putting them at risk. I have to wonder in this case.

But that’s not the thing that really provokes me...
Somewhere in the back of my brain something is screaming “where was the fucking Dungeon Monitor?” And of course there wasn’t one, because he place wasn’t a public club. And that brings a whole realm of things slewing into perspective.
The reason that Benjamin doesn’t seem like a “fellow player” to me (and I have good friends who I respect who are male subs) is that he seems to come from another world. And he does.

He comes from a world and an age where kink was something to be ashamed of . A deep burning shame to eat at you because it must be wrong and abnormal, to gnaw at you like a cancer through probably more than fifty years of life. I think that’s the thing that’s really sort of sad and dismal.

Look I respect choice. A lot of players I know don’t talk about it to colleagues, parents, many of their friends. That’s fine. I mean ultimately it’s your personal life, and it’s not even appropriate to put that on the table in a lot of situations, nevermind necessary. But when they move in the world of kink, they have access to resources and people to make them safe, and put them into an environment that us supportive and unashamed.

Fetish is blossoming as a culture. Everybody knows about it, and in educated urban culture as many people think it’s cool and trendy as not, though I have a feeling that Benjamin’s tired old fetish might come across a little passé to them.
It’s sad to me that this sixty seven year old guy lived most of his life feeling his sexual outlets were a terrible secret that could destroy is life. Married, raised kids, and had a career feeling he was hiding something. Not that he should have advertised it at work, or even to his friends. But that he was ashamed for most of his life and not in a good way. That’s sad to me.

I don’t know. From reputation this club had decent rep, so he found good people and got unlucky. But it still seems chilling to me to never be okay with yourself in that regard.

I feel bad for everybody concerned, rather sad it happened. It doesn’t give fetish a good name in any sense of the word. I feel bad for the girl, at worst she was irresponsible and shouldn’t have been running scenes. I feel bad for Benjamin who got fucked up desperately trying to fulfill a kink fantasy he was ashamed up. I feel bad for his wife and kids who didn’t know because people of that age were expected to pair and marry without regard to sexual excitement or fulfillment. I dunno, just seems like a rotten thing all around to me and glad it wasn’t worse.

Just seems to suck to go through life denying and being ashamed of something other people do all the time and have fun at.

I got nothing funny to follow that with. Afterjoke will return later this week, in a new easy open can...

Poly, BDSM and FedEx

So the Post carried an article on Poly couples yesterday. For those of you just joining this channel, that’s a generic term for “people who fuck around like I do.” Apparently based on some local convention. I don’t know that you deeply need to go read it. The article is just about exactly what you’d expect, the Post’s typical style piece. “Lets depict these people as slightly awkward and a little stupid.” But there is some useful stuff in it, and it’s not hostile, just the way newspapers tend to run roughshod over anything that doesn’t skew to a 50% demographic.

Honestly, it’s probably a bad sampling. This is a convention of people who are strongly self-identifying through the fact that they sleep around. Most of the people I know who are poly just are. You know like one guy may prefer blondes and another red heads, and one woman thinks that it’s kind of cool I’m stubbly and others would prefer clean shaven or more grown out. It’s a preference, not a big deal. When it comes to going to conventions about sex, they are likely to go for considerably more “out there” things. The ones who come up and start talking about how they are poly…that can come off a little weird, even desperate. I’m not saying “make a casual reference.” But you know we’ve all met one of these “Hi! I’m Brie and I’m poly!”

About five, six, years back I was on a panel about poly relationships in front of a general audience. I got put on more or less as an afterthought, I was actually attending to talk about interactive theatre. I was kind of appalled at the other people because they were either kind of strange seeming “lifestylers” regrettably not too far from the Post’s depicton, or in one case a kind of activist woman who was clearly in the process of rearranging her poly household around the cult of her baby, and spent most of the time forcing her poly housemates to say supportive things about her new offspring and how her baby was the central thing that the poly group's relationship really needed to be about. The level of extortion I saw going on in that situation was pretty impressive…she definitely had an iron fist. Who says women can’t be dominant. Of course she was also in a very big group living situation, in which she was clearly Il Duce.

The article actually talks about "v's." That most people aren't living in group marriages, they just have multiple partners, who have multiple partners. I know a few threesomes, but emphasis is on few.

Still, I feel like that sort of thing gives those of us who just fuck around just because we never really got out of the habit a bad name. On the other hand, references to “aging hippies” aside…and yeah, I’ve seen some of those people, the article did have a few bits of sense when it wasn’t poking fun at the gangly awkward people.

The compartmentalization of affection: It's completely at odds with today's Disney Princess/Coldplay-lyric view of marriage, in which your spouse is your lover, best friend, therapist and Wii buddy, and you also have identical taste in movies.

But as people are increasingly expected to self-actualize clear to the grave, what are the chances that they'll pair up with someone who is on the exact same path of discovery?

Thought: Maybe you can have it all. You just can't get it all from the same person.

It's the thought that illustrates a paradox in polyamory: Its practitioners have astonishing optimism for humans' endless capacity to love, to share, to forgive, to grow, to explore. But that optimism seems rooted in a cynical belief that the monogamous are stuck in a myth, one that leads to cheating, unhappiness or divorce court. They believe, as do some evolutionary biologists, that most humans do not have endless capacity to be faithful to just one person.

If you can find me an evolutionary biologist who actually has a good secular education who doesn’t admit/believe that, I’ll give you a dollar. I’m not giving you any more than that, because most of the scientists I know are a little whacked out and drink too much (you know who you are!), and I don’t trust them not to lie just to split the buck with you.

Anyway, all that aside, the reference was interesting to me, because it is mainstreaming. For all the people who might bother to go to a convention, I know ten, fifteen people who just never stopped dating around, really, and sort of moved that into relationships. Many don’t even think of themselves as poly, I think that almost beings to have a bit of a weird feel to it. They just…see more than one person and maybe get married and still see more than one person. No big deal. Just, that’s modern life, like people have two cars. Some people end up pairing off and even that seems less of a big deal. I’ve seen a lot of “well we’re together and not with anybody else right now” but there’s not a huge Disney “together forever” underscore…

I think obviously we’re living in an era where better communications is making sexual choices more available.

The same is true of D/s, and I suppose BDSM in general. I think honestly that the mainstream press is a little behind on these things, even the progressive media. But that’s true of a lot of things. Something seems to have to be in popular culture for a good twenty years before mainstream media really picks up on it. Logistically there are reasons for that. To produce media is expensive, and you have to be hitting a 50-60% demographic. Now you can have a huge number of people doing something and not have it be more than 40% of the population. Of course mainstream media is dying in the rising tide of YouTube and the blogosphere.
It’s true you see things like The Secretary (2002) and way back there was the horrible 1994 adaptation of Exit to Eden. But I think you have to look at the internet to realize just how pervasive BDSM is. Now admittedly my friends bias college educated, eastcoastal, liberal, and artsy. But I see grit girls in the Sheetz convenience store in Hagerstown wearing collars and fetish jewelry. With indicators they probably kind of know what it is. I think honestly you’re talking about a huge percentage of Americans and Europeans coming into at least a fantasy contact with BDSM through the Internet. Within a generation it’s simply going to be the norm. It also won’t be so much BDSM as just a range of sexual choices.

I realize there is a heartland out there and I understand the whole theory of “two Americas.” Remember the fucking primaries are “March Madness” to me – I may not care but damn if I don’t know the stats. Home sports team my ass. Washington only has one real local sport, and it’s played by superstars that with the stunning exceptions of Bill Clinton and probably Barack Obama, no woman in her right mind would date. But I also know that a lot of people in that “other America” are whacking off on the net at night, and their kids are going to grow up realizing that pretty much whatever they want to do sexual that isn’t hurting anybody (at least nonconsensually) is fine.

The people I know who are 22-28 (which is increasingly a big chunk of the people I know) are just overwhelmingly more sexually aware and generally developed than a lot of people I know who are older. I think that’s because they were more or less raised to net culture and so things which seem scary and mysterious to older people are normative to them. I won’t say everybody I know is that way, but it’s definitely a trend. And yeah, it’s mostly college educated people, I admit.

So tying things all back together (because I’m obsessive like that), the one thing I wonder is if the tendency to spread sexual interests is also related to the cultural pervasiveness of BDSM. I mean on one level of course transparently it is. We’re all just learning more about sexual choices because we have access to the information, and so we know more. A High School Junior today can learn in forty minutes on a few websites what I had to learn by word of mouth over years.
But I wonder if like a lot of things there isn’t a push for quality/intensity. In the bad old days of the past, we spent days, months, years, yearning for that one moment with that one special person. Now that may still be a fantasy, but very few people are spending years pining after one person. I’m not saying people don’t attach monogamously, but we expect an emotional payoff right now not “in our golden years after the children grow up.” And if we don’t get it, we are pretty good about smiling, nodding politely and going on to the next, maybe with some trauma but often without much.

I'm not saying it's a bed of roses. I know a lot of people who are sexually fucked up or broken in some way or another, and for whom their BDSM practices are in some way tied to that. But I remember an awful lot of girls a few years back who were completely 'vanilla' but also had some pretty bad elements of 'broken' going on and seemed to be trying hard to find a way to equilibrate, and I see more of my friends doing that through their D/s or SM practices than not.

My point is that I don’t think that we’re wired to wait years and years for some mythical sexual satisfaction that may never come, as people were conditioned to do back when, any more than we’ll wait four months for a catalog order when there is drop shipping and FedEx, or wait for weeks for a letter from our true love when we can e-mail or IM.

BDSM represents in many cases a packaged, discreet intensity of experience. “Look I want to feel totally carried away and possessed, but I need to be in the office by 9:30, okay?” It builds intensity quickly by using methodology and process, delivering in a few hours the emotional high that could take a decade for Emily Bronte. “Christ I love fucking you Heath, but you know you hate all Eddie’s friends, and if you show up at the ball he’ll just snivel and be badly behaved…look just let me deal with him this weekend and we’ll get pissed up at the local Monday night, ‘kay….there’s my Heath…you can beat me, that’ll make you feel better about it…you know I still have marks…”

I’m in the weird position of saying that BDSM is the FedEx of sex, but maybe it is. It’s ninety times more efficient than the post office, requires a substantially greater investment, has a complex infrastructure, but it delivers…I think that BDSM in the extended sense of WIITWD, is basically “sex that you actually practice at” rather than “randomly fucking around.” And I think that’s really going to be the dominant sexual pattern of the 21st century. We get better and more sophisticated at everything else, why not our psychosexual lives?

Ask me your questions bridgekeeper, I am not afraid...

A very common element in negotiations in BDSM is the Questionnaire. I’ve worked for a good number of years to develop a really good questionnaire, and I’ve focused on a few features that I think are interesting enough to mention.

There is nothing original about it of course. It is drawn from dozens of previous works. However, I have made a few changes I consider to be improvements. Note that in “consider to be improvements” I mean “makes it easier for me to be sadistic.”

Periodically I promise my friend M. that a scene or some other activity is going to be “interesting.” To which she has taken to responding, “and by interesting, you mean sadistic.”
So some years back I set about taking all the questionnaires I could get my hands on and putting them into a blender. Then I got distracted by adding tequila and limes, and found that wood pulp is a particularly poor mixer. But eventually I came back to the project and got some results.

One of the first is to remove stupid and nutty terms that seemed to be included just to show off the vocabulary of the person giving it out. I think if you are desperate enough to impress that you need to use incomprehensible words in your D/s questionnaire, you may be in kind of sorry shape.

Honestly there is very little attractive to me about a regurgitation of the clinical names of paraphilias. It may be impressive to someone that you have heard the term saliromania, and know what it means (to become erotically excited from the destruction or physical desecration of women’s underwear, or nude depictions of women, if you cared, which I doubt). But I don’t hear people say, “wow did you see that hot saliromaniac scene that those two hot bi chicks did last night!?” To be fair I don’t often hear “hot scene” or “hot bi chicks” in sentences that were not uttered as jokes, but work with me here.

So I tried to kill every element which looked like it came from a “Purity Test.” You know those tests you do in high school or college that start with "have you ever," and end up making your sex brags into one easy non-qualitative number. Those can be fun, and in straight society fulfill many of the same functions as a Questionnaire in terms of an icebreaker. But I don’t really think they’re a respectful thing to hand your potential BDSM parter, and if you’re going to, just hand them one and be done with it.

So the second thing, and probably a lot more important was to reorganize the whole thing completely, into sections. I think that his really made it a bit more workable and more interesting.

Sceneplay – things like boot worship, massage, shaving, or general types of scenes like Medical Scenes or Exhibitionism. The real focus here is that it’s a type of play without a specific context, that isn’t in one of the categories below. So this becomes a category of some types of play and broad behavior..

Roleplay – the focus here is on very specific “scene” types. Interrogations, Kidnapping, Prison Scenes, Prostitution (roleplayed). I could probably enlarge this section a bit, but I tried to stick to pretty common themes that you see a lot. I should add that there are things on my questionnaire, I’m not particularly interested in, because I think you want to see the full run of each other’s fetish interests and compare.

Public Play – this focuses on going out to clubs or other venues, and isn’t really focused on “risk taking” outdoor play options, though there is a nod to them. The idea is to look at how interested/secure a partner is in playing in a potentially public setting. I think it is important because often that question doesn’t get asked. “Do you like being flogged” is a different question than “Do you like being flogged, potentially with a somewhat skeevy guy looking on.” True story, the one time I played at Power Exchange in San Francisco, a strange looking, rather gangly guy came and made cock-a-doodle doo noises at us in a sort of foreign accent. I really never quite got that, if it’s some obscure behavior related to cuckhold fetish and not just outright insanity it didn’t come across. I want to say he tucked his hands under his shoulders like he was doing the chicken dance, but my memory may be making it funnier in hindsight. That was a strange night anyway and he was definitely one of the stranger objects in that environment. I can’t say it put me off, but there is something a little disconcerting about having a grown man making funny sort of pathetic and desperate cockling noises at you while you are trying to fuck. Cock boy if you’re reading this try “watching quietly” next time.

Costuming – This is pretty obvious, but I think the one focal element is to get across which way the fetish runs. Do you want to wear latex, or see me in latex. That’s a big difference. Often it runs both ways, but I think you wanna sort that out, and a lot of questionnaires assume that it’s the same. For example, I’m just going to confess, you can tout Tim Curry all you want, but I think I’d look pretty fucking silly in a corset.

Service – This often gets mixed in with D/s, but I think there’s a distinct difference or at least subcategory. I’m not trying to make a philosophical argument here about whether you can be interested in service outside of a strict D/s framework. This is all about practicality, and practically speaking “shining your boots,” is it’s own set of practices and interests. As is “housework.” I don’t know a lot of people who get turned on by housework, but if they do send them my way. Quentin Crisp wrote “There was no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse.” Be that as it may, excavation from last year’s summer season is finally underway at the Manse, even with my mother’s place still unsold.
D/s – focuses on things like kneeling, face slapping, orgasm control, speech restrictions, etc. There are quite a few subquestions, and I’ve honestly thought about breaking “Humiliation and Mindfucks” out as a separate category. The problem is that in a lot of cases the only determining element is the tone in which something is done, and there are a lot of borderline cases like orgasm control. I am not really entirely satisfied with this section, but I think it’s better than random chaos.

Bondage – there are a lot of ways to tie people up, or restrain them. I added everything in here that really involves physical restriction. Gags, leashes, suspension, cages.
Sexplay – I think for obvious reasons this is an area to keep separate. I tend to be a bit of a bastard in having a pretty low threshold for wanting to work with someone as a submissive and not be sexually involved with them. Or as I put it a few years back…”I’m a middle aged male, not a schoolkid. I don’t expect sex on the first date, or even the second or third. But if I have seen someone several times, and there isn’t the feeling that things are drifting towards a sexual resolution in the pretty near future. That’s not dating, that’s being friends. I’m not the age where you hang around forever making out and tittering.” That said, I think you have to go very easy on sexplay in a D/s relationship. Because it is a component, but I think it is very easy to let it become “the component” and while there is nothing wrong with that per se, I think it can be a lot less rewarding. I also don’t think sexual contact has to be a part of every D/s encounter. I’ve had plenty of short term D/s exchanges that didn’t involve sex, and I think that can be very rewarding in the right context. Sex is something people are very sensitive about and of course the details can be vital. “I’m open to sex,” doesn’t necessarily mean “I am open to being assfucked until I hurt,” and honestly I think it’s nice to be clear on that sort of thing in advance. Don’t you?

SM – all the ways that you can hurt people. A few things come up twice, once in this category and once in another. Here the focus is clearly just on sensation play. The recitative can be a little dull, or entirely too exciting so I’m going to skip it. You’re imaginative, yes?
Edgeplay – honestly this can be a little subjective. I put all electrical play here, even though a cheap low end TENS unit is hardly edgeplay. I put all blood elements here, including play piercing. All the stuff that involves breaking skin, or significant danger goes into this category.

The Two New Columns

So those are the category lists. The one other modification I made was adding two columns on the right. I noticed a long time back that there was a tendency to have a straight rating system…”Love it” to “I Won’t do this” mark the box, numeric scale, whatever. The problem is that this leaves a big question mark, because there is often no way to tell if something is in the “No Way” column because it’s just absolutely complete unexciting or in the “No Way” column because it’s one of those things that just thinking about it brings that warm tight feeling in the gut, and a rush of anxiety-excitement that is just about too much to cope with. I used to try to “sight read” this by watching for a flush when I read over it. But then I was second guessing, because you don’t want to be hanging there with a significant pause…”So I noticed that you marked ‘no fucking way ever’ on…(dramatic pause) Frotteurism!....(lengthy expectant pause while I watch carefully for a reaction)…”

To which she looks at me like I’m an alien from some particularly unpleasant part of deep space, shrugs blandly and says “I dunno, fucking cheese just doesn’t do it for me.”

We also mentioned I eliminated stupid-ass things like frottage, like?

So experiences like that or at least subdued less comical variants of them led me to develop two “special columns”

First, my normal left to right is designed to be a little more specific. After all, this isn’t an SAT. This is a questionnaire for things I am going to take a girl into a room and do to her. So what do
I really need to know. My final categories were:

Love it - obvious

Like it – I wanted to give a gradation here. For example, a lot of people aren’t going to feel that they LOVE serving as a waitress, but a lot may LIKE it. It’s a way to show “I enjoy this pretty well, but it is not one of the things I fantasize about when I masturbate at night.”
Fine in conjunction with other things – this may be one category too many since I have found things tend to be Love/Like or negatives. But I wanted to give the potential to say “this is all very well and good in conjunction with a scene if I’m worked up but doesn’t do much for me on its own.” When this category does get used, I think it often tends to be either impact play, or situational Roleplay.

No react or mildly negative – the trick here is that these are not things that don’t have to be on my mental list of things that are going to set someone off and trigger a melt down of some sort. Not that I approve of melt-downs, but you also don’t push someone past their hard limits, and we’ve talked about fucked up scenes.

Dislike/ hard limit – this means no. And with the two other columns it also means I can just stay away from these things. Yes, I have occasionally transited something out of this column. But with the two new columns, this one can generally just be left alone. It is things that aren’t a turn on. At all. And aren’t going to me. I have things in this column…not many because I can see the erotic potential in most things, even some very twisted or fucked up things, in the right circumstance with someone responding to them.

So the two special columns are:

Intrigued but scared or fantasy – This is the "fifth column" which I think speaks for itself. But aside from that, the agreement here is simple. I won’t do these things to you without negotiation and consent. They won’t happen suddenly or as part of a scene, they will be discussed beforehand. In some cases I’ve had enough trust just to say “I am going to do something from that column” in other cases it requires very explicit consent. Some things may not ever be moved over…there are some things that are better as fantasy interests than real life interests.

The trick is that since I am mentally oriented and focused, this is the keys to the kingdom. This is what scares and intrigues you. This column is going to contain some of the most powerful elements in a submissive’s psychosexual makeup.

Intrigued want to experiment – this is the practical corollary. Things which the submissive definitely wants to work ahead on right now. It’s the guide that you look at when you are planning a scene. If scene planning were Chinese menu, you take two from Column B. This is the stuff that is virtually guaranteed to get a partner wet. If you can’t get a reaction on this Column, you are doing something seriously wrong.

And of course, on most levels submissives want to give up this information. It is in their interest for you to know what makes them squirm and get excited. But they need a way to communicate it. Very few people are comfortable sitting down at a table and saying “these are exactly the things that turn me on.” And honestly while self-knowledge is great, you want a little range, because you don’t want to create a situation that begs for topping from the bottom. But that’s a story for another time.

That’s about it for today except for the afterjoke (Gods, it's enough, don't you think!). Think of that as aftercare for this column, after it has violated you (with its mangling of my native language if not with its challenging and exciting ideas), you get a little laugh. Maybe.

Interesting Fact: There is a conservative religious sect which is building a faithful replica of Noah’s Ark near Frostburg, Virginia. The completed Ark, which they are only about one third done with, will be 450 feet long and have a 75’ foot beam and is an impressive work of construction that promotes some awe in most people who witness it firsthand. Despite this passionate memorialization of everyone’s favorite loveable biblical drunkard, and you and I ain’t likely to be invited aboard.

The Paddle that Would not Come Together

Some rather lame ramblings a day late. I have a very nice toybag. I really do. Now I have seen guys with maybe $4000 worth of wood and leather hanging from multiple racks, whose toybag looked like a small retail outlet for fetish goods. It is nothing like that. But I have at least one nice piece of about everything that you would really want.

Once upon a time I had a submissive (we'll call her S.) who worked for a place that made fetish toys. Now a lot of the toys had little flaws and the fellow who did the lathe work was a bit of a perfectionist. So in some cases she had the opportunity to go ahead and complete them by herself, or got pieces that had been damaged when being transported at a discount. And because she liked me, I suppose, she kept giving me toys.

So I have a very lovely matched set of toys thanks to S. They may have a few imperfections but I cannot see them, nor do I think in most cases that you could. I have supplemented here and there by a few acquisitions of my own, but I have to thank her for much of what is still the bulk of my toybag. My preferential color has been dark red. Obviously a lot of people collect black. I know a few dommes (and subs) who are very into purple. I know one domme whose collection is white. I felt like black was a little too generic. I've always liked dark red, it seems like a very passionate color. And it comes out very easily in woods as well as leather.

One of the toys I have is a paddle. It has a wooden handle, and then a leather paddle attached with two brass screws. One side of the paddle is leather, which produces a sort of interesting combination sting/thud, and the other is fur, which is very thuddy and very soft, and good for sensation play.

So to get around to the story, my wife, who we'll call O., is allergic to fur. So in addition to making her rather sad to use rabbit fur (because she likes rabbits), it will also make her red and itchy. Red is a good color for a submissive's ass. But I honestly don't know many girls who have ever said "please make me itchy." I'm sure that fetish exists, hell there is probably even some silly ass pretentious name for it. But I don't think a lot of people feel that way.

Anyway...at Christmas...now three years ago... S. who is a good friend of O. was nice enough to gift her with a lovely paddle, just like mine, made to spec, but with faux fur. Fairly nice faux fur. Maybe not as soft as rabbit, but really very nice. The only issue was that the handle wasn't attached. But this would be easy. "I will give J. (that's me in case you aren't keeping notes on a memo pad at this point) two screws on our date night next week."

An easy job, two minutes of work.Easy right......this was not to be. I got the screws, but the paddle was in other holiday stuff. They laid in my bedroom for a while, then the handle got brought up but not the pad. Then the screws got lost. Then everything got put in a drawer, then separated again...

How long do you think this went on

....let's try...three years...

So a few weeks ago, just before we trolled the ancient Yuletide Carol (I often wondered about that...are there dates to pick up along the ancient Yuletide Carol? How do you dress to go trolling Yuletide Carols?) I actually managed to bring all the parts together...So after a mere interval of three years the project that was to be done a week after Christmas...was...We didn't say which Christmas right...There is probably a lesson here, but honestly I had too much eggnog to assimilate it...just a funny little story about toys...

Interesting Fact: The term Priapism comes from Priapus. In Greek mythology, Priapus was a minor rustic fertility god, protector of livestock, fruit plants, gardens and male genitalia. Originally worshipped by Greek colonists in Lampsacus in Asia Minor, the cult of Priapus spread to mainland Greece and eventually to Italy during the third century BC. During the 6th and 5th century BC, Lampsacus was successively dominated by Lydia, Persia, Athens, and Sparta. Which is kinda surprising, the former more than the latter, because you could kind of see the Spartan thing. (Sparta comes from the Gr. Spartachian, "insertive partner," also "traffic barrier.")

The term Flaccid from Fr. flaccide, from L. flaccidus of uncertain origin. The OED politely suggests it is onomatopoeic, principally because of fear of having the University's editorial offices bombed by enraged inhabitants of the Turkish town of Flacidus, which is named on Turkey's list of "100 vacation spots we'd most be willing just to give to the Kurds..."

Reasons Why I am Doing This....

There are some reasons I opened this blog and some things that are not reasons, and I think that it is only fair that I share them with you.

I am not really here to sell myself as a Dominant. If I was, I’d publish this Blog a lot wider. I’m here to talk to a few friends, most of whom either already know me well, or aren’t looking for a new relationship. So this is relaxing to me because I don’t have to try to sell myself. I am not a very good Dominant for anyone who is looking for Prince Charming on a White Horse, a Dom full of noble and flowery and knightly ideals, and if you are...well...this may be the wrong blog.

A few people have asked me about comments. I don’t want to dissuade anyone from commenting, in fact I welcome it. Just…bear in mind not to put yourself at risk with personal information. If I choose to let things hang out, that does not mean you need to. That said if anyone wants to make general personal references, that’s fine, I am not upset by it. I am proud of everyone I am involved with and I am proud of my friends.

I did not open this blog to get in long arguments with anyone. I have a professional blog for that sort of nonsense. I'll gladly argue with you there till you are blue in the face. Here I am going to say my piece and if you disagree with it you are welcome to open your own blog and say yours. I'm not saying I'm going to ruthlessly crush any dissent. If you want to say "I think you are full of shit and here's why [URL]," I have no problem with that. It is not that I am averse to criticism. But I don't feel like arguing, I think it lacks dignity. I'll say what I have to say.
I'm not above a bit of discussion, but I'm not going to swear comments back.

While it sounds corny as hell, I suppose this is somewhat about self-exploration. It is an interesting time for me and a lot of things in my life are changing. So maybe by writing I learn a little about them. That's self indulgent and dangerously close to sounding precious, but I suppose it's true for all that.

I did not open this blog to talk about my current sex or bdsm life. That is private to me, and to the people in it. I have the right to talk publicly about my sex and bdsm life, but being involved with me or having been involved with me does not open a partner to having her own life “outed.” If you are reading to learn juicy details about specific current or past assignations, that’s not all that likely. There are a million gossips out there in the blogosphere. I will mostly draw on events and things that have happened some time ago, or to others. Where I reference people, even the ones I’m involved with now, the references will be obscure, and possibly confusing. I do not commit to any handy pattern whereby if you happen to recognize that a certain event attributed to “a.” pertains to say Susie Jones, that the next reference to “a.” will also pertain to the same person, so make no assumptions. For my part I do not wish to invade anyone’s privacy and I will not.

In terms of point of view, I may not be at all politically correct. I do not see myself as a misogynist. I consider myself to be a feminist. I know a number of dommes. I do not believe that they are submissive women looking to be broken under the hand of a powerful man. I think they are exactly what they say they are. I think intrinsically we are all capable of both dominance and submission. I cannot say why some find one more rewarding than the other, though I suspect in the right circumstances most of us can get reward from both. So, I do not see myself as a misogynist, but if you see me as one, you are welcome to. I am also not much of an apologist.

I am typically going to refer to the theoretical submissive here as "a girl," “woman,” "the girl," so forth. Female. Because that's my experience. I honestly don't know how much of what I have to say here applies to the male submissive psyche or not...I'm not likely to study to find out and your mileage may vary. I'm not implying that only women are submissive. I am saying I don't know the first thing about male submissives and don't pretend to. So talking about someone, I use a female pronoun, because that’s my experience.

I’m sorry, I just can’t get into the whole “sie” thing. I don’t hate it, I understand the point, but it comes off silly to me when I use it.

Finally I did not open this blog to paint myself as a nice dominant. The world is crawling with good-boy Doms who are essentially looking to be a boyfriend and occasionally delivers a spanking when and if the girl is willing. "Is it alright if I Dom you now, sweety."

Now please understand, I don’t have a problem with that if it is what someone wants. I think in some circumstances, maybe it's a good introduction. Though I think it can also be frustrating. I know that when I started out I was far more hesitant. One of the things I want to talk about here is how I moved from being a hesitant new Dom, who really didn't know what to do with a woman in a submissive position to somebody who knows exactly what uses he has for a woman in a submissive position.

I suppose I do feel that in the long run you can damage the submissive that way. Every woman
I know who has come to submission has wanted a firm hand. Not necessarily harsh in all cases, but firm. Even if they also switched and acted as a Domme. There is topping and bottoming and there is D/s. I think if you go into D/s and don't have the force of will to carry it out, you risk dropping somebody. D/s is saying "I am going to pick you up and carry you" and you can't stop halfway through and ask the girl to walk.

One of my favorite and most oft-quoted lines from Peter Schaeffer's Amadeus is "People so lofty they sound as if they shit marble..." Like Schaeffer's eponymous protagonist I am a vulgar man. There is no shortage of high minded writing out there about the lofty ideals of BDSM. Presenting Doms as noble princes, or as a friend of mine once remarked, "like Jedi." Dominance is about asserting will over another person, controlling them. If you are a decent human being you do not do this without in some way benefiting them. Bringing order, discipline, control, passion to their lives. I question that you can do this if you have less than complete resolve. That doesn't mean pushing a girl beyond her limits or refusing to break scene. I have never played without safewords, or ignored a safeword, or ignored any other basic limit that effected wellbeing and safety.

And that means being hard. I suppose you can present that anyway you want. The mailed fist, the velvet glove, the lubed black latex glove. But in the end I think it is not about having high minded ideals and talking about the poetry and beauty of it, and how you are really just serving the girl. Either you are going to Dominate her or you aren't and there is some selfishness involved. It isn't all high minded and pretty, a certain amount of this is pretty base, and I think if you can't admit that, maybe you are not being honest with yourself.

Anyway...I didn't come to argue, or to set myself up as some pinnacle of knowledge. I came to share my experiences. I hope they're of use. Please feel free to ping to say hello, or anything else that comes to mind.

My regards to you....

Interesting Fact: Among the earliest contraceptives in use was crocodile dung, which was employed by the ancient Egyptians and is mentioned in several archaic papyri. Modern Chemists and Medical scientists have puzzled over whether its acidity may have resulted in its efficacy. Modern Social Scientists are less puzzled by the idea that women who stuffed their privates with crocodile dung conceived less often than those who did not.