How to Be Kinkier: More Adventures in Adult Playtime
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The need for this sort of fine-tuning can be typical, and for both Dominant and submissive, this journey can be revealing in more ways than one. Finding the right partner to play with, who is supportive and just as kinky as you, will help you explore the subtle nooks and crannies of your sexual interests, and this is going to be a lot more fun than keeping quiet and repressing your desires or acquiescing without speaking up for what is important to you.
Here are some tips for teasing out your desires if you are not sure
1. Ask yourself some clear and blunt questions about what you like and why you like it. Example: does flogging get me hot while I am bound and helpless or do I just like the sensation of flogging?
2. Is there a common element between a particular desire or fantasy you have that crosses into other ones? For example, a damsel in distress fantasy that leaves you hot and wet might be due more to a bondage fetish than a pirate fetish if the bondage continually pops up time and time again regardless of the scenario playing in your fantasies.
3. When something new of interest comes up in your playtime or fantasies, is it the newness that is exciting or the sensations?
4. Do you take some time to process and investigate new sensations before you decide if you like them or not? Example: you might give a single-tail whip a few scenes to explore all of the subtle and not so subtle sensations it delivers, before deciding if you want to keep working with it.
5. How do you feel after you have had a chance to play with these new sensations or toys or fantasies?
6. Does what you are interested in involve you crossing any of your personal values or boundaries, and if so, how are you going to mentally or emotionally manage that?
Facing Page: Have fun with your submissive!
Those that like smoking fetish like it a lot.
Clothespins work well as improvised nipple clamps, but so do chopsticks with elastic bands on the ends!
All of us who are into kinky play take part for a multitude of reasons. In How to Be Kinky: A Beginner’s Guide to BDSM, I outlined how you go about finding partners whose interests and aims match your own. In this chapter, I will assume you have found someone you can explore with—someone who is as nonjudgmental toward your kinks as you are to his or hers; someone who is positive and encouraging and supportive in your exploration. When I meet someone new and we are both interested in playing, as a Dominant I find it helpful to ask certain questions that can help me suss out what it is that makes my potential partner tick. This doesn’t have to be in interview—just raise questions as you are both getting to know each other that will help you both figure out where a playdate scene has the potential to go, because we all want a scene to be mind-blowing, amazing, hot, sweaty, nasty, filthy and intense, one that leaves both of us disheveled and sticky. Doing a little groundwork beforehand to figure out the sexual landscape for both of you will help it turn into all that! Some of the questions I like to ask may seem quite simple—and they are—but I find that simpler questions can lead to very detailed answers.
1. How does it make you feel when you engage in _____________[activity]?
2. How does it make you feel when you are told to _____________?
3. What do you love the most about doing __________to/with me or others?
4. What are your two most favorite activities/kinds of play to engage in with a partner?
The answers to these questions can give you a solid idea of where their interests lie and can help you build up to “The Mind Fuck.” A solid, hot, nasty and delicious mind fuck will challenge your partner’s comfort level. Psychologically it can create a strong emotional response. Depending on how you set it up, it can play with joy, anger, fear or humiliation, and can create other charged responses. A good mind fuck enhances play between two people, rather than detracting. It is not abuse, and because it walks a very fine line, right up to the razor’s edge of psychological play, it can have negative effects if you go too hard too fast or take it in a direction your partner is not prepared for.
Advanced players who engage in mind fucking not only know what their boundaries are but more importantly what their partner’s are. This is not something you should engage in casually, unless you have developed a strong level of trust with your partner. Typically it involves misdirection—taking the scene one way that is not challenging and putting your play partner into a nice headspace and then abruptly changing direction into territory that he or she finds challenging. The situation can be set up long in advance and it should be something the submissive desires to explore but may not have the experience or courage required to explore it on his own. Writing from a Dominant’s perspective, when I introduce a mind fuck into my scening activity, I will initially go slowly, so I can judge my partner’s response. Long before setting up the mind fuck you should take the time to ask questions and get a solid idea of what will or won’t work once you begin. For example, I might ask questions in a nonthreatening environment with my partner when we are not playing, for instance, at dinner:
A bootlace is great for on-the-spot CBT.
“When we play, what do you find really pushes your psychological buttons in a good way and a bad way? Are there any emotional or mental landmines that would affect a scene where we would explore kinkier play? What values are important to you and which ones are flexible? How would you feel if I did ____________?” This will give you the ingredients to build your masterpiece from; the bottom has to have input into the “ingredients” but not necessarily control over the “recipe.” A mind fuck is hot if done right and terrifying or possibly tragic if done wrong. It can be like walking through a psychological minefield and I recommend only doing it if you and your partner know each other very well.
This mind fuck began as my wife and I were getting ready to attend the Montreal Fetish Weekend, an annual party involving hundreds of people. I wanted to transform her from my slave and wife into a rubber latex gimp who was completely dependent on me. I had a whole latex body outfit made for her, complete with a hood that had no holes for eyes or ears, only a mouth hole for breathing and other uses. Removing her sight and most of her sound and forcing her to concentrate on taking my commands and being completely dependent on me put her in a headspace she had never been in before. I sealed her head in the hood and led her on my leash through the hotel lobby, out the door and down the street to the venue. People stared and some asked to take pictures. All night I would say, “Here, watch my slave,” and then hand the leash to someone, without her knowing if it was a friend or someone else. I wanted her to feel that she might very well be abandoned as this rubber gimp doll to be objectified by the crowd when in truth I was never more than ten feet away all night long. I had other people grope her; sometimes half a dozen people would be stroking her, pinching, slapping and disorienting her. Without her sight her sense of touch was heightened, and every hand on her body, coupled with the mind fuck of quite possibly being abandoned, of being dismissed as a rubber gimp doll, no longer a person with feelings and emotions, just there for the pleasure of the crowd, was intense and overwhelming.
—Retrodeviant, Master
Even simple clamps can be wicked in the right hands.
A dollar store can provide you with enough pervertible toys to get you through two Saturdays and a Sunday on a Friday night.
Here’s an example from my own experience. A submissive I know is terrified of slimy, squirmy things; they really creep her out. She is also really interested in fear play and coercion within a scene. Her big fantasy involved having a Dominant take control of her through coercion and “trick” her into performing nasty, lewd acts on another woman—a forced bisexual experience. This was something she would never engage in in her vanilla life. One day I told her that for our next playdate she would indeed be frightened and that she would do exactly as I said or else the scene would be over.
Our playdate came and I started the scene off nice and soft with some sensual bondage, taking the time to tie her gently and get her all nic
ely secured. All the while I was telling her what a good girl she is, how beautiful and desirable she is until she was all relaxed and her defenses were down. After about an hour of soft, sensual play, I started bringing in the elements of the mind fuck I wanted to bring about. “You know, baby, I have been noticing lately that you have always had an aversion to learning how to go down on women when we play. I think that perhaps it is time you learned your place as my slut, one that will do as I say.” This works well if the situation has “one foot in reality,” such as a reluctance to suck cock or worship pussy, but is something they do have an interest in and are too shy or reluctant to try. This particular submissive enjoyed forced bi encounters but had a hard time acting on her desires because that “isn’t what good girls do.” “Slut training” should involve something that is a part of the person’s play persona and situation, not something that is randomly grabbed out of the air. I kept the dirty talk up about how much I enjoy seeing her with other women, watching her eat pussy and knowing she “hates” it. Then another Domme arrived right on time (scheduled for later in the afternoon and in on it all). As the doorbell rang I said, “Oh, I almost forgot your surprise!” In walks the Mistress in tall bitch boots and long sweeping leather dress. “You know, my concern that you don’t enjoy eating pussy is something that detracts from your service to me and we are going to fix that today.” At this point she protests and that she is “never going to eat pussy—never ever!” “Oh, I think you will,” I said. She gave me an adamant stare that clearly indicted her “refusal” to eat out my Domme friend. “Right now you get a choice between eating her pussy, or the surprise under this towel,” which is where I had the tool stashed that would help me to apply pressure in this situation. She was vehement that she wasn’t going to eat pussy, no way, no how, never, and with a smug smile chose what was under the towel. “You are sure about that?” I asked, and indeed she was. Pulling the pink Hello Kitty towel off the Nalgene bottle filled with one dozen leeches, I watched her eyes widen and I will never forget the look she gave me, her mouth widened into an O.
Making a few adjustments on a slave 2.0.
When punching, you can use the heel of your palm to strike if your knuckles get sore.
She seemed to have lost her breath for a moment. After her breath came back to her she immediately started stammering, “Wait, wait, WAIT, WAIT, hang on!” (But she wasn’t using her safeword so I knew it would be okay to continue.) She started protesting that this wasn’t what she signed up for; I wasn’t really going to use them on her, was I? I was pretty happy I had her tied down nice and tight. As she protested and complained and tried to bargain with some other perceived advantage or skill she had (the typical stages are very similar to other situations where people are put in pressure situations: refusal, denial, bargaining and then acceptance if you do it right). I calmly and slooooowly snapped on some rubber gloves (I enjoy adding to the dramatic tension by being slow and methodical—it gives the “victim” more time to think and ramps up his or her anxiety). Then I unscrewed the top of the Nalgene bottle that had the squirming and writhing leeches in it, purchased from a bait shop the day before. The nice thing about a curved plastic container is it distorts the size of the leeches so they look about twice as big as they actually are. All the while I was pretending to ignore her “bargaining.” Slowly reaching into the jar with a long pair of forceps I put the jar down near her and gently drew out one of the larger, more vigorously squirming leeches and held it over her chest, the occasional drop of leech water falling to her smooth skin and making her shiver and squirm even more. “I’m sorry, were you saying something about not liking pussy? That’s a shame, because this bad boy looks hungry…” At this point the wall around her “boundary” began to crack as a strangled sob started deep in her chest and her eyes started tearing, never looking away from the squirming leech held over her chest and only 16 inches from her face. Then I slowly started lowering it toward her breasts and as her sobbing and crying increased I could see how she was giving in and realizing that the only way out of this situation was to give proper tongue service to the Domme sitting comfortably in the chair across the room, watching with an amused grin on her face. I’ll give the submissive credit, I had to lower the leech right to within an inch of her tender, supple nipple before she relented with a primal whine and said, “Oh god, please, no, no, no! I’ll do anything you want. I’ll eat her pussy just like you want, Sir!” I paused for a long, long moment, letting the leech continue to flip and twist around the end of the forceps as I considered her acquiescence, pausing and deliciously reveling in her predicament, and then slowly returning the leech to the jar, I screwed the lid back on and put the jar over beside my Domme friend where it would be in her line of vision when the submissive was between her legs. I then untied her and my Domme friend took over with teaching her how to give proper tongue worship while I watched enjoyably.
Veterinarian wrap is cheap and comfy to use for bondage and it comes in a wide variety of colors.
This is an elaborate scene I know, and requires time and effort to set up. You don’t have to build something as elaborate when you start out. By the way, leeches are “in season” up in more northern climates in bait shops only in the spring and summer. Or you can order them off the Internet year round. As far as proper disposal when I’m done, I go pickerel fishing!
Facing Page: Sharing a vacuum cube can be lots of fun!
Girls, don't let men have all the fun—get your own cock!
Exercise bands are long, stretchy rubber strips used for physiotherapy patients: awesome for bondage!
How to Set Up a Mind Fuck
1. Tell them in advance that you are going to do something special that will push their boundaries the next time you play. Don’t tell them what it entails, just that if they are willing, “something special” will happen.
2. Start the scene out in a nice direction they are used to. Get them comfortable and do things they like. Let them think you have forgotten about your “promise.”
3. Frame the new departure as a “choice” for them. Make the choice you want them to pick the lesser of the two evils.
4. You HAVE to be willing to follow through with either choice–the punishment, or the reward. If your partner perceives you will not follow through on your “threats,” then the scene will fall apart.
5. Create the scene around something that does not contradict their primary boundaries, only boundaries that are somewhat flexible. A mind fuck should ultimately be fun for everyone involved; it is not abuse.
You can push your own boundaries. We get better by pushing and practice but don’t go so far outside your comfort zone that you end up in the deep end of the pool without being prepared for it! Have a solid idea of what is going to happen when you do this particular activity, and if you don’t know for sure, then go slow and steady. Slow is safe. Most important of all, whatever your evolution and skill set is, don’t use other people’s experiences as a standard to measure yourself against. This is your journey and exploration and you are responsible for it.
Five Key Points for Stepping Up the Action:
Use your own comfort level as a guide for your sexual adventures.
To start, come up with a new use or twist on a sensation you are familiar with.
A mind fuck is hot, but it is not abuse.
Playing with activities that are higher risk requires you to pay closer attention to what is happening and to be mentally and emotionally present.
If you don’t know how they’re doing—ask. Keeping an open line of communication with your partner is essential.
Chapter Two
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Advanced Negotiation
Le couple qui vient au ménage à trois n’est pas toujour celui qui part. (The couple that comes to a threesome isn’t always the one that leaves.)
—Anonymous
Sometimes we may get so caught up in the intoxicating newness of our kinky experiences and the resultant relationships
that we put aside the tools we need to ensure our own personal emotional safety. This happens with newbies and it also happens with established people in the lifestyle. We’re so eager for new experiences that we forget to hang on to our own core values and a basic respect for boundaries, our own and our partners’. Establishing and reestablishing your boundaries requires frequent negotiation with your partners and constant introspection. There are times when it is far braver to say, “I love you but this activity isn’t for me,” and let your partner go off to satiate that desire with someone else. It requires a level of comfort with yourself that is often difficult to achieve when you are still learning how to be kinkier. There are going to be times when your kink limits or your partner’s limits are pushed beyond what you both might be comfortable with. This is a natural evolution in learning to be kinkier and shouldn’t be feared; you need to face it, own it and make it work for you.
There are opportunities to taste many experiences when you are taking your kinky life to the next level. It is important to have a support system in place comprised of your partner, friends, or colleagues who will be there for you as you expand your boundaries into previously uncharted territory. These should be people you trust and care about, who care about you and your ongoing evolution. You need to surround yourself with people who recognize that you will evolve over time. You may not wind up the same in a few years as when you were a newbie dipping your toe tentatively into the warm waters of the kinky world. If you have a partner who is willing to encourage you to explore your kinky side then you are already ahead of the game. But what if you have a major kink—something intense and toe-curlingly satisfying to you—that you really love but your partner just can’t get into? How do you navigate the emotional boundaries of being in a couple and still get what you both want? There are some definite pitfalls associated with negotiating your way through this situation. In addition, there is a problem more experienced people may encounter, something I call “kink fatigue.”