Tag: Thoughts

90’s Flashback (completed)

Underling has an interesting blog post about BDSM pornography in the days before the internet made it widespread and easily available.

….I remember occasional visits to the seedy back rooms of certain London bookshops. There I rubbed shoulders with fellow perverts (perhaps some of you among them!), all of us studiously avoiding eye contact while waiting with barely concealed impatience for access to the spanko shelves…

From Underling’s post entitled ‘In the back room’

I was fortunate, in that the window between me being old enough to actually purchase porn and the internet becoming a ubiquitous presence was only a year or two. But for a short period of time in the early 90’s, during my college years, I did do a bit of furtive shopping of my own. The magazines I purchased in that time were treasured and well thumbed possessions. So when I stumbled across the image below, despite the late of watermark, I instantly recognized it as one from the Cruella family of magazines. Specifically a magazine I’d owned called Goddess number 16.

However, unlike Underling, I had been spared the need to trawl around seedy shops in Soho to acquire it. I was saved by the strangest little shop I have ever encountered. In ’94 I was working in a small British seaside town during my summer break from college. A few hundred yards from my lodgings was an old fashioned newsagents, run by an old Indian gentleman and his extended family. It was a tiny corner shop, square in shape, with just a single counter against one wall, and three magazine racks covering the other walls. It looked like it had been frozen in time since the 1950’s. And yet it carried the largest collection of pornographic magazines, and in particular BDSM and fetish magazines, that I’ve ever seen. Everything was there: Janus, Februs, Kane, Cruella, Goddess, Victoria, Obey, etc. He even carried magazine special editions and spanking novels. For a young and nervous femdom aficionado it was like a little piece of pornographic heaven.*

I’ve no idea if the owner of the shop was actually a fan of kinky porn, or just a fan of the higher profit margins it commanded. But whatever the reason, God bless him for it.

Goddess magazine* Apart from those times when he put his younger daughters to work in the shop. Then it became a place to purchase chewing gum whilst studious avoiding looking at the enormous wall of explicit pornographic material.

If they only knew

The majority of blogs on my blogroll are femdom related, but I have a few that are more generally kink or sex related. One of these, Under His Hand by Kaya, is specifically about a male dominant relationship and typically doesn’t overlap with the typical material I post here. However, I enjoy reading it for the very open and honest way she discusses the ups and downs of her D/s relationship. The problems of fitting BDSM play around families and dealing with D/s dynamics outside a stereotypical dungeon space, are common problems for a lot of kinky people. And of course, a fun description of an intense BDSM scene is always entertaining, whichever gender is on the top!

I think one of her recent posts, called ‘If they only knew’, would resonate with a lot of kinky people. She describes visiting a tattoo parlor with her daughter, and the gentle teasing she receives as the straight-laced mom, hanging out with all the ‘freaks’ into piercings and tattoos. Little do they know about all the freaky stuff mom likes to do with needles and blood and pain….

Personally I find that there is something very pleasurable about keeping this kind of happy secret. I always enjoy quietly deflecting questions about what I was doing or where I was on a particular play night. Although I do sometimes run through some possible answers in my head:

“Oh, sorry I couldn’t meet you guys for drinks. I was being tied down by a beautiful woman who wanted to push a whole bunch of needles through my cock.”

or

“Sorry I’m late. I just spent the last couple of hours with an electrified plug up my ass and a plastic bag over my head. It made it a little tricky to get away.”

Maybe one day I’ll spring one of these answers on an unsuspecting friend. Although I think I’ll try and do it when we’re at a bar and they’ve just taken a mouthful of drink. That should maximize the entertainment value of the reaction.

Chastity blog

I’ve added the ‘Denying Thumper’ blog to my blogroll. It’s written by a married man living with a chastity device and experiencing prolonged periods of orgasm denial as part of an evolving D/s relationship. I only discovered it in the last couple of days, and it turned into a real page turner (link clicker?) for me. It’s written with a refreshing sense of honesty that I find uncommon in the majority of sex/kink blogs. His about page is a good place to start for the backstory. I particularly enjoyed the article on the reality of living with a chastity device. The fantasy descriptions so rarely involve using one of your wife’s socks to manipulate your cock into place within the restraining tube.

Given the chastity topic, I thought I’d honor it with a suitably themed image. Here’s a two for one deal – a little cock constraint and ball bashing all at once.

Chastity And TrampleI found this particular picture on the ‘Following Blindly Again’ tumblr site (which appears to have begun posting again after a recent hiatus).

Just another day at the office

I have endless respect for successful professional dominants. The list of skills they require is amazing. They need to be technically skilled in all the various facets of BDSM play they offer (piercing, whipping, suspension bondage, medical play, etc.). They need acting ability and imagination to deliver role play scenes. They need a good understanding of psychology to figure out the hot buttons and land mines in their submissive’s head. On a daily basis they have to be able to deal with everyone from nervous novices to experienced leather skinned masochists. Not to mention the weirdo’s and freaks they attract on-line. And on top of all this, they have to run a small company, skirt the vagaries of the law and work in a degree of secrecy. A great domme would seem to be a combination of therapist, actress, nurse, psychologist, performance artist, physical trainer and business entrepreneur.

Of course, sometimes even all this isn’t enough. Sometimes they’re called on for abilities and skills that you just never hear a career guidance counselor mention. For example, this thread on Max Fisch’s forum site gives an entertaining insight into a particular day in the life of Ms Olivia Black. Dominatrix, fetish model and gastroenterologist.

Top Chef

I recently added the ‘Sadist Next Door’ to my blog roll. It’s written by Mistress Crimson, a professional dominatrix from Chicago. She has a number of interesting posts, but one that really caught my eye was about food. She quotes Anthony Bourdain on eating as an act of submission.

It is about giving up all vestiges of control, about entrusting fate entirely to someone else. It is about turning off the mean, manipulative, calculating and shrewd person inside of you and slipping heedlessly into a new experience as if it were a warm bath. It is about shutting down the radar and letting good things happen. Let it happen to you.

Antony Bourdain, from his book ‘The Nasty Bits’

As both a huge food fan and a submissive I can completely relate to this. Some of the best meals of my life have been when I’ve simply entrusted myself to the chef and let him completely direct the flow of the meal. On the flip side, I also get very frustrated when I’m eating with people who keep trying to grab control from the chef and mess around with elements of the meal. I guess that’s the dining equivalent of topping from the bottom.

Of course as in any D/s relationship, you have to be sure the dominant knows what he or she is doing. A masochist’s delight in suffering doesn’t translate to the food domain quite as well as a submissive tendency does!

Shameless self-promotion

I’ve published the first chapter in a new story I’m working on over at SMtales.com. The guys at the BDSM library site (which has my previous two stories) seem to ignore polite emails and are reluctant to make simple profile changes, so I thought I’d give this alternative story site a shot.

The story is an F/m one, with a lot of cuckolding, bondage and humiliation. And I’ll be throwing some pain and torture in the forthcoming chapters just for good measure! It’s called ‘The Loving Wife’, so check it out if that list of kinks sounds like your particular brand of deviance.

Capitalization Bullshit

Excuse me while I rant for a moment.

In browsing femdom blogs and forums, I’ve repeatedly come across an incredibly annoying affectation. In what I assume is an effort to reinforce someone’s dominant status, pronouns are consistently and incorrectly capitalized. For example – ‘…tomorrow She will do a scene….’ Or – ‘…with My favorite slave…’

I’ve seen this done from people on both sides of the D/s divide, so it’s clearly not just a few insecure dominants mangling the language in an effort to emphasize their status. It strikes me as completely ridiculous, and achieves nothing other than making comments and articles harder to read.

Amazingly, in what must be a deliberate effort to do something even more ludicrous, I’ve also noticed people trying to write both forms at once. For example – ‘…do Y/you find…’ Or – ‘…what would Y/you do?’

This puzzled me for a time, until I finally figured out that the writer was trying to cater for both dominant and submissive readers. Obviously as a lowly submissive I should read the lower-case version while mighty dominants can read the upper-case version and not get offended. There was a lot of swearing at my computer when that particular penny dropped.

Look, I don’t care how dominant you are. I don’t care if you walk everywhere on a fleshy path of prostrate submissives and reduce grown men to tears by a mere look. The English language is bigger and more important that you are. It’s a top, not a bottom. Stop trying to fuck with it.

Thank you. End of rant. We now return you to your normal scheduled programs.

Claudia Varrin on Female Dominance

 I was still floating from an intense BDSM scene earlier today when I saw this quote from Claudia Varrin on the [sex] [death] [rebirth] site. 

Few, if any, experiences can compare with the levels of sexual and emotional intensity evoked by the BDSM encounter…There are three states of altered consciousness, or three levels of ecstasy, that can be achieved while enacting BDSM rituals. These states are sensation, catharsis, and finally, insight. Each state can provide a forum for the positive loss of inhibitions. These ecstatic states can reward one with new insights, knowledge, and creativity, and refine and define the self. We open ourselves up to sensation, whether it be physical, as in the case of a beating, or emotional, as when we experience the inner thrill of exposing our most secret selves. Sensation leads to catharsis, which is a purification or purgation that causes spiritual renewal or a release of tension. Catharsis from a spiritual BDSM experience can leave one feeling cleansed and released from old issues. From this, one can come away from the experience with feelings of well-being and new vigor, new zest for life. Catharsis through BDSM experience is a release into a new purity and joyful satisfaction.

Claudia Varrin (Female Dominance: Rituals and Practices)

Personally I don’t think I’ve ever been gifted with deep insight after a scene. Maybe I’m doing it wrong. I normally just feel free spacey and happy. Plus, there’s a lot of shaking going on as the adrenalin dumps itself into my system. But sensation and catharsis are certainly huge components of any good scene. And I can’t argue with the opening line about the level of sexual and emotional intensity BDSM can invoke.