Photograph – Page 160 – Femdom Resource

Making the sparks fly

Lydia and I had some fun playing with her violet wand last night. I was extensively scratched, slapped and shocked. There was a lot of screaming by me and laughter from her. I’ve played with wands in the past and they usually just leave a few red marks, but for some reason this left me itching and scratching all today. Not quite sure why my skin reacted that way, but it definitely added an extra element of torture. I’m sure Lydia would have been entertained to see me fidgeting around in all my work meetings.

If you’ve not seen one in action, Aemilia Hawk has a couple of videos that demonstrate both the visuals and the sound of them. Their intensity can vary quite considerably depending on the attachments used. Big round bulbs are quite mild, but sharper curves and points can concentrate the charge considerably. I was getting zapped under my fingernails with a pointy bulb and it was definitely generating more of a reaction than Aemilia shows in her videos!

They don’t appear that often in porn, which I find surprising given how visually appealing they can be. Here’s one highly fetishistic example from Absolute Cruelty. Not quite sure why the domme is wearing the gas mask rather than the slave, although I guess it does give her an impersonal and faintly alienesque appearance. You can see another angle of the scene here.

Thwarted by technology

Apologies for the lack of posts over the last couple of days. My Comcast internet connection has been somewhat unreliable. I’ve been trying to think of a striking metaphor to express just how unreliable. Political promises, old British sportscars and Fox news all came and went as possible comparison points. However, it just struck me that a Comcast internet connection itself might be the definitive benchmark. It defines the standard. So I guess my internet connection is as unreliable as a Comcast internet connection.

I don’t think that they’re the worst company in the world, as they just got voted, but they’re certainly frustrating. In my fantasy world I’d be able to call on this strong armed woman to sort them out. Anytime my connection went down, she’d spring into action. Their engineers would have to be ready, pants around their ankles, from 8am to 2pm everyday I had a problem. Then she’d arrive at 1:59pm, tell them she didn’t have the right kind of paddle and disappear, only returning after several hours to wallop the hell out of them. With that kind of determined look I’m sure she’d get quick results.

I believe this is Audrey Knight from the site Clare Spanks Men. I found it on the Male Pet tumblr.

French maid, done right

Here’s another common femdom theme that I don’t cover too often – ‘forced’ feminization. I personally like the idea of transformation and playing with gender roles, but I’m less keen on frills, prancing and humiliation. However, this guy is rocking that French maid outfit. It actually looks really good on him. It’s helped by the appropriate old school mansion setting and the haughty and elegant lady of the house. She doesn’t look like she’d stand for any prancing or simpering.

This is originally from the Subby Hubby site. I found it on the Alternative Femdom tumblr.

Rope & heels

I love the fact that this very intricate bondage is both beautiful and functional. Shibari is frequently aesthetically pleasing, but can sometimes look impractical for serious play or simply be ornate without restraining. This pulls off all the elements. I particularly like the detailing around his feet and legs. Those heels look painful, but I don’t think he’s going to be getting away.

This is by Mistress Juri from Ginza Prezis, as featured previously in this post.

Chilly willy

Last month I ranted on the topic of limits and avoiding them. I didn’t intend that rant to turn into a monthly occurrence but, as luck would have it, I do have a new topic to address – chilly dungeons. It’s not quite as serious an issue, but what use is a blog if you can’t have a good rant now and again?

Admittedly a cold dungeon is probably more realistic. I doubt that medieval castles had much in the way of underfloor heating or goose down duvets for their prisoners. Yet oddly enough, when I’m naked and being carefully tied to a spanking bench by an attractive lady dressed in leather and heels, historical accuracy isn’t high on my list of requirements.

You might also think that a masochist would enjoy the extra torment of a freezing space. Or that it might help distract from the actual pain being inflicted. Yet oddly enough, I find it makes it much harder to deal with intense play. Everything is more snappy and stingy when it’s cold. Skin is more sensitive, and it’s hard to get into the right head space when being distracted by shivering body parts. I want to relax and soak into the pain, not spend my time wondering how warm the straight jacket hanging in the corner would be.

In the handful of times I’ve encountered this problem, it has never been the fault of the domme I was playing with. They’ve always been renting a space that was badly set-up, too cold to start with, and they couldn’t fix it in the time we had available. So if you’re reading this and you own a play space, my ask to you is either…

Design it as one or more small spaces that can be warmed up quickly and individually, or
Get enormous and efficient space heaters that can quickly warm up your large space, or
Have some way of dynamically partitioning up the space (e.g. heavy curtains) so that one area can be heated separately if necessary.

I think the perfect set-up is to have one large traditional playroom and then several smaller spaces that can be used if necessary. That’s what Lydia has and what I’ve seen in several other commercial spaces. Or I guess you could live in a hot region and play outside like these two. He might now have to worry about ants and spiders, but at least he’s warm.

This is Isis Love and Rok from a Men in Pain shoot. I found it on the Femdom Experience tumblr.

Fuzzy handcuffs

I really hope the next words out of her mouth are something like – “What the hell are these? Do you think this is amateur hour? Go find my toy chest and bring back the heavy manacles, the ball gag and the largest of my strap-ons”. That should really give him something to grin about.

Grovelling as an art form

I typically shy away from Western articles on the less mainstream parts of Japanese culture. They’re often thinly concealed racism expressed as a veneer of humor around cultural differences. However, this article by Kotaku manages to avoid that trap while presenting some brilliant animated gifs. They’re all about assuming the supplicant or grovelling position, but in increasingly elaborate and acrobat ways. Fortunately, for readers of this blog, the grovelling is all happening before attractive and haughty women. I particularly like the final pyramid apology style, although it does suggest that if they’d spent less time practicing it and more time actually doing the original task, they might not have needed to grovel in the first place.

The image below is from the livedoor page the Kotaku article was derived from. I’m not sure that standing on your head counts as an apology, but it’s certainly eye catching.

Learning to scream

It’s important that a masochist learns to scream correctly. Not to mention moan, whimper, flinch and wince. Volume or pitch isn’t important, but consistency and honesty is. Anytime I play I’m trying to give good feedback about the intensity of the experience and what headspace I’m in. It’s not like I get hit and then think “Hmmm, that feels like a level 7 moan. And maybe a level 5 flinch.” Instead I aim for a natural transparent reaction, and to resist the urge to occasionally exaggerate my response in order to control the scene. When the intensity is ratcheting up it can sometimes be tempting to do that and get ahead of what I know might be coming.

Of course, an expert domme can normally accurately assess just how painful her actions are and how genuine the reaction to them is. For the less experienced then help maybe at hand. It turns out that computers can be amazingly good at judging how genuine a reaction to pain is. According to this article, when shown video of people experiencing or faking pain, humans were essentially hopeless at guessing which was which, while computer software got it right 85% of the time. I find that an astonishing number. It would be interesting to put a selection of dominants through the same test and see if they were any better at spotting the fakers. I also wonder if adding sound to the test would have significantly improved the score for the humans.

Apparently one of the best indicators is the dynamics of the mouth opening. I’d guess this scene would provide some useful training data for the software. I don’t think he’s faking it.

This is from the Men in Pain site. I found it on the Alternative Femdom tumblr.

Tip of the taint

Here’s my BDSM tip of the day: If you’re looking for a particularly painful place to drip candle wax, then the taint is a great go to area. It’s even more painful than the balls or the cock. I acquired this information first hand courtesy of Lydia. I think I may be washing bits of wax out of odd crevices for days to come.

This image doesn’t feature that particular area of the body, but it does have rope, tender nipples and chest waxing, which also featured in my evenings entertainment. This is Bobbi Starr in a shoot for Divine Bitches.

The healing power (or not) of BDSM

As I mentioned in previous posts, I was in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, the day before I flew down, a nasty bug hit me. It wasn’t enough to knock me out entirely, but it did leave me feeling pretty rotten. That presented a conundrum. Normally if I’m sick I don’t play. Bottoming in a scene takes a lot of energy, which I don’t have if I’m unwell. I want to ensure that I’m warm, rested and hydrated, not naked, beaten and sweaty. However, in this case I had a limited window of opportunity. I’d set up sessions with Mistress Yuki and Mistress Ai-Li, and I was only in town for a handful of days. I didn’t want to miss out on getting together, and I didn’t want to mess them around by cancelling. They were happy to deal with the less than healthy me, but how would I cope?

In the end I came up with what I thought was a cunning plan: I’d try and make my reactions to the session work for me. Specifically, I’d try and use the endorphins generated to power through my vacation. I normally have a post session buzz than can last for hours or even days. So I figured I’d leave my body to fight the nasty virus, while I floated through the trip on a BDSM induced high. I’d still have the symptoms, but maybe I just wouldn’t care.

With my cunning plan in place, the next question was: What type of session should it be? Ideally it needed to be something calm, meditative and involve a lot of lying down on my part. I wanted the endorphins, but I also had a sore throat, so anything involving heavy pain and screaming was a non-starter. Given a fuzzy stuffy head, heavy breathplay was out, as was any kind of gag. Ultimately I decided piercing was the perfect solution. Painful and ritualistic enough to get me juiced with all the right brain chemicals, but not extreme enough to stress my body or drain my energy.

Unfortunately, I’m sad to say that while the theory might have sounded good, in practice my plan was slightly less cunning that I had originally thought. On the plus side, the immediate reaction was all I had hoped for. Mistress Yuki and Mistress Ai-Li did a brilliant job and I left appropriately floaty. That lasted for several hours and allowed me to do typical vacation stuff with my friends. At that point, I then crashed, and crashed hard. It wasn’t sub drop. I guess it was virus drop. Or getting-needles-through-the-genitals-while-sick drop. I basically ended up wiped out for 48 hours, and feeling worse than I had before the session. Just to double check my data, I ran the whole experiment again a few days later and got exactly the same results. Great for the few hours while the initial endorphin hit lasts, terrible after that.

In conclusion I’d suggest that if you’re sick and have a critical job interview or task to accomplish, then BDSM may help. Get yourself tied and tortured in your preferred fashion immediately beforehand, and you’ll float through feeling great. But if your goal is simply to get better as fast as possible, I’d avoid getting down with your kinky self. That is unless your kink involves warm drinks, restful naps and watching daytime TV on your couch.

This image is by the Australian photographer Peter Coulson. I do have some personal shots taken from my San Francisco sessions that I’ll put together for a later post.