Tag Archives: kink

Like a monster uncurling from hibernation

For most of the time I have had children my sex drive has been utterly wrecked. I have no way of knowing how much is purely biological (for much of history it’s been “normal” for carrying parents to have a new child approximately every four years) as I have started pulling out of the dip when my body is around 4.5 years postpartum both times. Of course I do have a smaller gap in between my oldest kids, but that wasn’t about “whoops I’m pregnant because I was just having sex I wanted”. Naw. Despite my outrageous whoring around I have only ever been pregnant when I intended. I consider myself both A) a stringent user of birth control and B) a completely lucky bitch. [I tell my kids: if you are not ready to be a parent each person participating in sex needs to have birth control in use every single time.] I mean, let’s be real that I was stupid a few times and I just got lucky. But it was a very few times out of a really lot of times of being stringent.

Anyway. Yeah. I think there is a lot of basic biology. Did you know that your body is not 100% postpartum for four years because it takes that long for all of your organs to fully get back into a non-pregnant state? Fucking wild.

There was also a really strong emotional aversion when I was newly a parent that I don’t think was just part of the biological. It took a long time to unpack all of my trauma around sex in a house with children. That was really hard for him and me and getting through it just about wrecked us. I really struggled with it being ok to be touched in any kind of romantic way if a child I was responsible for was even in earshot. I was too deep in abreaction to find any kind of enjoyment there.

So as I was saying I seem to be in an uptick, by which I mean occasionally Noah is all “Yeah….. I literally can’t more.” I feel victorious. It’s reminding me of all the reasons that Noah is my person even though we still have challenges. His cock is fucking amazing. Like, he has the Baby Bear of cocks. Just big enough to hurt when we want it to but it doesn’t have to hurt. Fits nicely in all of the places. Incredible stamina for someone who has been in an almost complete drought for about five years.

Not to mention that he knows exactly how to be mean to me. When we started dating I told him I was looking for an abusive relationship with an on/off switch. He has been really freaking careful to stay in the off position for a long time.

He knows how to dance around my trauma like he is doing a polka on the head of a pin. He trusts me as an authority on a great many topics and he is openly deferential. He also fucks me raw and calls me every filthy name and he loves seeing me cry. He doesn’t use just any filthy names. He knows exactly which parts of my historical trauma will get me off instantly and which parts will get me off the bed and into the bathroom to curl into a ball and sob.

It’s not an adventure until someone is crying!

He knows me at my core in a way no person ever has or ever will. He has spelunked into every twisted corner of my deeply depraved brain. When I no longer have small children hopping into the shower with me on the regular he will go back to carving on me. The absolute hottest sex is the kind where one or both of you is dripping blood onto one another. Taking my blood and wiping it on his cock before putting it inside me is the best fucking feeling. And the taste! chef’s kiss Perfect.

Strange that I don’t like period sex. The friction is just utterly terrible and I end up with jagged awful tearing. Thanks you piece of shit motherfucker who wrecked my cunt before I could even go to fucking primary school. May your name be forgotten.

Anyway, Noah. He has studied me like I am his PhD topic. As my memory degrades he often remembers my stories better than I do. I only believe him when I wrote it down somewhere and I can go check. It was very useful that I wrote so many things down. He has read my entire archive I think 6 times? It isn’t obvious here on Fetlife but I used to blog a lot, including about my kink adventures. My whole archive is in the millions of words. The word count massively went up as I went through college. I can write a 20 page paper (including putting together all the bibliographical information) in about 10 hours once I’ve done the research. I had some stretches where I hit over 100,000 words in my blog in a couple of weeks.

And now my hands are shit. Whoops.

What I like about writing is that it allows me to think through my priorities and go back and forth dithering about what matters.

Noah has supported just about every crazy thing I have ever done. He is the reason I have written books and painted giant murals and created hundreds of square feet of tile mosaics inch by inch. Noah has kissed me goodbye cheerfully every single time I have wanted to run off and have an adventure, whether it was for a few days or weeks or half a year. He holds down the fort and makes sure that things in the house keep going the way I prefer more or less entirely because deferring to my preferences is so automatic at this point.

I met him almost 19 years ago. He was the first person who said, “What happened to you that made you end up like this?” He is the reason I have any coherency in my internal narrative, because he is always my assumed Primary Reader.

He wants to read all of it. No matter how cruel or angry or bitter or nasty I am being. If I keep a separation between my thoughts and my behavior he is happy, and even prefers, to know all the shitty thoughts. My thoughts do not define me; my behavior does. He wants to know how many shitty thoughts I have on the way to manifesting the behavior I do. I haven’t been telling him lately for a whole lot of reasons.

There is this thing about kink. I cannot be a closed box and do this in a healthy way. I tried having an M/s relationship that did not allow for navigating around my trauma. That went pretty poorly and while he was absolutely the best/most healthy relationship of my life at that point I have some deep sadness about some of the permanent harms he caused my body.

So if I want to do this, if I want to let the monster out and fight and lose and hurt and still be ok at the end of it I have to start writing again. He has to know what I am holding on to control of by tip of my fingernails. Following my brain is like trying to binge a new Netflix series every day for a month. It’s really hard to keep all the storylines straight.

He will do it. He will draw fucking diagrams if he has to. He thinks I am worth it. I see the overwhelming magnitude of work he puts into being in a relationship with me. His online organising system is kind of terrifying and he archives everything. He manages his own neurodiversity through a rigid knee jerk response to the system he has in place. He has scripted himself. And he manages me like he manages when to go check the oil in the tank.

It’s kind of overwhelming looking at just how much work he has put into me. He has iterations of the recipes he has refined over the years based on feedback because he wants to cook for my palate. I think he even has lists of gifts he has given me for holidays with how I responded. I’m not fucking kidding when I say I am his PhD.

I may miss the hunt but Noah is my heart and my soul and the only happy family I have ever had.

Did I mention his dick is perfect? And when I tell him that I want him to turn on the abusive switch he barely hesitates. I am enjoying life a lot more recently.

In my next 20 years

I realized this week that I had passed a major milestone. Sure, I went to Power Exchange and a few munches and Dore Alley in July but it was that second Saturday in August of 2000 that my life in the scene really began. That was where I met the people I consider my respected elders. That was where I made wonderful friends, many of whom I still know to this day. From the people at that party I went on to meet dozens of incredible people.

I am so lucky. I have been embraced and supported through relationships and life changes and growth. I have had my butt kicked and I have learned lessons and I have been given so much love.

I hope that in my next 20 years I can be worthy of the gifts I have been given. I have so much gratitude in my heart for the education I received at the hands of The Middle Aged Guard. At this point my elders are far flung and off doing a lot of different adventures. Some have passed away but their lessons are things I carry with me every day.

You will always live on in my heart. Thank you so much for everything.
With all my love, Krissy

“Risk Aware” Consensual Kink

I’m having some feelings about how stupid I was as a young person. I consented to things I shouldn’t have consented to. I was coming from a background of really extreme trauma. My normal meter was so fucked up it politely can be described as not existing.

I made stupid choices like staying in a relationship with someone who broke my arm in the first two months. “It was an accident; he didn’t mean it. I can’t hold him responsible for accidents.”

I made stupid choices. Like choosing to fluid bond with someone who refused to get an STD test for years. When I was diagnosed with HPV I totally felt like it was because I was such a slut and I had slept with so many people. I apologized to him profusely for exposing him. His response? “Oh I knew I had warts.”

He. Knew.

But he didn’t bother to tell me. He didn’t think that was information I needed to know. It was “none of my business to know his private medical information.”

So instead I got to have cancer taken off my cervix with a laser at 21. Cheers.

And now, in the gift that keeps on giving I have a malignant melanoma on my back. In layman’s terms: I have fucking cancer again. Do you know what that partner used to do? Give me sun burns on purpose because it was funny to watch me be in pain that I couldn’t get away from.

Two sunburns in a lifetime greatly increase your risk of skin cancer. I chose to allow him to burn me. I was a stupid motherfucker.

So now I’m 38. I have three kids who are 11, 9, and 1 year old. I get to deal with cancer again. I probably need to change everything about how I live my life. I need to be so absolutely religious about skin exposure it isn’t funny. I will need to go in for full body checks for more cancer for the rest of my life. I will need to change my diet to decrease my risk of cancer.

It isn’t that partner’s “fault” for any of this now is it? I chose to take these risks. I will pay the price.

And he will pay nothing.

M/s, sexual dysfunction, and healing

When I showed up in the bdsm scene as a fresh shiny 18 year old I was still reeling heavily from my childhood. My primary childhood rapist had been dead for less than two years. He and my brother killed themselves in a 3 month span when I was 16-17. I had been out of my abusive home of origin for less than a year.

I spent a lot of time cutting myself and I liked to burn myself and I hit my head on concrete. I engaged in extremely risky promiscuous sex. I would let almost anyone who asked politely hit me even if I didn’t think they would be safe.

I entered into my first M/s contract when I was 20. My Owner had been my boyfriend/Dominant for a while. My Owner wasn’t what I would call an emotionally supportive guy. He was not up for talking about my trauma or mental illness much. That was supposed to be kept off screen. Mostly he wasn’t even aware of my self harming because he didn’t want to be.

There were a few aspects of our relationship that were really important for my life and development. I think I have most of the executive functioning I have because he trained me. He taught me a lot about following through and executing on plans. He taught me a lot about financial solvency. He taught me about boundaries and agreements and ONLY saying you will do exactly what you will follow up and do.

I believe with all my heart and soul that my relationship with him was my first significant non-abusive relationship. Even though he spent a lot of time hitting me and objectifying me. He did it in ways we talked about very carefully and he absolutely never crossed a stated boundary. He’s a really good guy and I’m going to be grateful for the rest of my life that I got to spend the 4 out of the first 5 years of being an adult with him. I’m in a much better place now than I could have been without him.

What he couldn’t help me with in any way shape or form was my enormous dissociation problem nor my extreme sexual dysfunction. Mostly he didn’t have sex with me much… I think in part because he isn’t all that motivated by sex and in part because he damaged me internally almost every time we had sex (he had an absolutely enormous cock) and I think that was something he felt bad about but we didn’t really talk about it.

Fast forward to now. I’ve been married for 11 years. About a year ago my husband and I decided it was time for us to move forward with the M/s part of our relationship. When my husband asked me to marry him he asked me to be his wife and to be his slave. I told him I could be his wife but neither of us were ready for M/s together and we needed to figure out a bunch of shit together before we did that.

So we waited 10 years. I like to pretend this was us being responsible and trying to get to know one another. In reality it’s more complicated than that.

My husband doesn’t have a lot in common with my former Owner. He’s intensely interested in helping me emotionally process. He has training as a hypnotherapist and I would say that in the past 11 years we have spent hundreds of hours talking about my various psych problems and my history. He’s the only person who has ever been all that interested in me or in why I am so fucked up. He makes me feel seen and valid and important in a way I haven’t ever felt in my whole life. My husband is awesome.

But sex has continued to be complicated. I’m still very damaged internally. My cunt was shredded over and over throughout my life starting when I was a baby. My cunt isn’t in great shape. Two vaginal births have… strangely helped and hurt at the same time. A lot of scar tissue was broken up in the process of delivery. But I almost died because my cunt was not real able to function the way it was supposed to and I hemorrhaged very badly.

For a lot of our marriage we have both tried very hard to make one another happy. We are in what psychologists like to call a “repair marriage” where we both showed up intensely fucked up and we are trying to consciously help one another become healthier, more whole people. Mostly this is going pretty well. Except when it blows up like a fucking wild fire because we are both damaged people and that shit happens.

For many years I have operated under the assumption that my husband married me in large part because I spent my childhood with my parents actively telling me that marriage meant you were a permanent whore and you never got to say no to sex again.

I have a hard time believing anyone would want me for anything else.

But my cunt is uhhhhh damaged. Severely. That damage is a constant problem and it always has been. Sex that is barely too rough can cause significant re-tearing and sometimes bleeding. And I don’t mean rough sex. I mean if I am .00001 ounces too low in moisture for lubrication.

I’ve spent the vast majority of my life with my cunt burning like fire every minute of the day and night. Because I chase sex like my life depends on it. Because what else am I good for?

Last year I hit a wall with my husband where I couldn’t continue to do what I had been doing with him to manage. I don’t do most of the forms of self harm I used to engage in. I don’t cut myself, I don’t burn myself, I stopped beating my head… the only drug I use is pot and that’s with many doctors telling me that I MUST KEEP USING IT. It’s the most effective medication for my complicated array of mental and physical issues. I need medication. It’s not optional.

So I have worked hard on getting rid of most of my dysfunctional coping methods. That’s good! But what do I do now when I feel completely flooded and unable to cope? Well last year I tried to lean more heavily on my excellent dissociation ability and I asked a bunch of my nice friends to hit me and fuck me a bunch. They did. It was fun and I thank y’all for that.

My husband flipped out. That was… not a way he was ok with me coping and we’ve had a rough year since then processing all the damage I did to our relationship. Damage I did in part because I was trying to figure out how to twist myself into pretzels so I could meet needs of his that were hurting me really badly.

Now we’ve had over a year in a row of a lot of screaming matches. It’s been hella festive and hard. Why did we pick this fucking year to be like, “Fine. It’s M/s now or never?”

Because making optimal choices is not my strong suit.

Frankly having the first rule in our M/s contract be that I have to prevent him from damaging me is… quite the head fuck.

It means I am having to talk very explicitly about the extend of the damage I have sustained over 34ish years of harming my cunt. It means that I have to get very loud and aggressive about I CANNOT JUST BE AVAILABLE FOR SEX WHENEVER YOU WANT IT. THAT IS NOT OK.

Because I can’t. I am not physically not emotionally capable of doing that in a way that is even remotely healthy for me.

I have been struggling to carry the amount of pain I feel for my whole life. I have wanted to die for more than 30 years. I try year by year to reduce how much pain I’m in so it is less of a burden, so I can carry it longer. But it’s very hard.

Before some fucking asshole tells me to see a therapist… I’ve been in therapy for 33+ years. I’ve seen more than 35 counselors/psychologists/psychiatrists. I currently have a large and complex medical team who all talk to one another about my shit. My kids are in therapy. We go in and out of marriage counseling. My husband has seen therapists. We see a family therapist. Keep your obvious unhelpful advice to yourself, m’kay?

Suicidality is a coping method. It’s not an ideal one. It sucks. It hurts me and it hurts everyone around me. But I’m coping as absolutely best as I can. My medical team tells me constantly that the amount of progress I have made and continue to make is just about miraculous. People like me usually just die. I’m doing really well for where I started. Even if I do still feel like a festering pile of shit.

My husband wants to keep me for as long as he can. That means helping me figure out how to be ok with being inside this brain and inside this body because that’s the path my life just has to take.

That means we have to figure out how to have sex without hurting me. As a submissive masochist that’s a very hard thing for me to demand. It feels like a very wrong thing to ask for. It feels like I am bad and selfish and cheating him out of what he deserves for putting up with my stupid self.

But I have to change this. No matter how hard it is. Because this right here is a serious problem.

Some day I have to decide that the health of my cunt matters or all the work I’m doing to try and convince my body that I am safe and I should stop the hypervigilance and constant paranoia about who is going to hurt me next is wasted time and energy.

I don’t have so much time and energy that I can afford to waste it at this point. I’m so tired.

Not to mention how fucking expensive this god damn medical care is. I feel like such a waste of resources.

I like to be hit. But there are a lot of limits around what I can bear and still function.

I like sex. But there are a lot of limits around what I can bear and still be functional.

It is very hard to believe I am worth this much consideration and effort.

But he keeps telling me he wants to keep me.

This is what you’re for.

I don’t think that many people have their earliest memories of their parent involve their parent telling them that they exist to have people put things inside their body… but I’m not alone. I’ve talked to a fair number of people in my incest cohort and I’ll talk to more. I’m not alone. I’ve learned a lot from my cohort. I’ve learned that my father’s play book was not his alone.

There are a lot of really messed up people in this world. They hurt other people. I’m not saying that “all people who are abused grow up to abuse”… that’s patently untrue. It’s something like 80% of people who are abused do not grow up to hurt anyone. Most of us realize that hurting other people (nonconsensually) is a problem and we try to avoid doing it. But it’s a journey.

I was what folks euphemistically call a child predator. What that meant is I pushed for sex with other children who were really not ready. I sexually assaulted and raped people before I was 10 because I had no concept in my mind that people might even want to say no to what I was doing.

I found the bdsm community at 18. I am so grateful to you all.

I was sexually assaulted by people in the scene. Some of them fairly “big names”. Folks that people trusted. I also had some of the healthiest relationships of my entire life because of the scene. I learned from people who could clearly articulate their boundaries and limits and interests.

I am so inspired by those of you who know yourselves and you know what you like and don’t like. I’m better than I was but I’m still not where I want to get.

I’ve been in and around the bdsm community for going on 18 years now. I started out being uhhh… highly reactive. I would scream and rant and flail at people who crossed my boundaries because I didn’t have a less reactive way to deal with that. Thank you to all the kind people who recognized that I was a traumatized fucked up kid and you were patient with me. I remember the long kind explanations I used to get about why my reaction wouldn’t get me what I wanted in a given situation.

Even though it didn’t seem like it at the time… I was listening.

You have to understand that I was coming from a background where most of the “advice” I had been given up to that point was designed to make me easier to abuse. Most of the advice I had been given up to that point in my life was working towards lowering my sense of self esteem and self worth so I wouldn’t complain as people hurt me very badly.

I wasn’t in a good place to accept advice.

But many of you persevered. You kept talking to me. You recognized that I was a scared, feral animal. Thank you.

I’m still working through layers of sexual dysfunction. I’m still trying to get to the point where I have positive emotional and physical reactions to warning signs in my body. It’s very hard. I still want to dissociate and shut down and just wait for it to be over.

It’s still a slow process. I hate myself for how long it is taking and I know that 18 years of damage will take a lot more than 18 years to completely unravel because life just isn’t fucking fair. But I’ve come a long way.

Yesterday I managed to stop sex that was hurting me. I haven’t managed to do that all that many times in my entire life. Usually when it hurts like that I just dissociate and wait for it to be over. Yesterday I managed to have an internal emotional reaction where I decided I didn’t want to be hurt like that and I spoke up. It’s a huge deal for me.

It’s funny how I can negotiate that I don’t like floggers–I like to be hit with hands and single tails and canes… but I really struggle with saying “Sometimes my cunt doesn’t want to cooperate and you damage me when we try to have sex and I really shouldn’t have sex under those circumstances.”

Even though my husband is a pretty damn good man who will stop on a dime if told to. It isn’t that he doesn’t care. It’s that I struggle with thinking I am worth defending.

I know what I am for in the marrow of my bones. I was made to be hurt by sex. I was told so from when I was a toddler.

But maybe that was just one more lie from a flaming monster.

Maybe someday I will feel like I am made for something else.

What does being kinky mean anyway?

I feel like I’m in such a weird place in my body and in my mind. Yes, pregnancy is weird… but this predated the pregnancy. This got started over a year ago.

I still like the idea of being tied up and hit. When it happened last year I still liked the reality of it. But this is compounded by the fact that I don’t have a lot of childcare and when I did… it was not really during hours that were conducive to kinky play. I know that most of my friends have had a “Whoops the kids walked in during sex” story but I don’t. My sex life is off. fucking. screen. My children do not walk in on us having sex. And I don’t think they ever will. I have sturdy locks all the fuck over my house to prevent such a mishap.

Because given my background having my children SEE me have sex is a major violation and one I won’t be able to shake off.

If I could forget the sight of my mother and my sister fucking people maybe it would be different. My children will not learn from me.

Things with Noah are complicated for a lot of reasons. I have a strong sense of debt. Noah didn’t rescue me from the streets, I did that for myself thank you very much, but he did rescue me from being alone and that’s a big damn deal. Noah gave me a forever home that he’s serious about. If we divorced he would probably want me to have the house and he would leave. I’m a stubborn piece of shit and I wouldn’t accept but that’s different. Noah gave me a family. He didn’t share his family I’m still basically a non-person there (except with his grandmother and his aunties–I am glad for those women) but he gave me children. He helped me create a family where we both get to belong.

I owe Noah a lot. Noah has cared for me through several periods of time when I was all but nonfunctional. He feeds me. He makes sure I take my meds. He asks after my appointments and reminds me to go. When I express my overwhelming shame at stealing so many resources for my health he tells me over and over that keeping me alive and healthy is the point of us having money.

And the primary thing Noah wants from me as a demonstration of love is physical contact. Specifically, sex. The talking is awesome. The snuggling is great. He really gets a lot out of the sex.

My body is complicated though. I arrived at this marriage with sexual dysfunction in place. I arrived in his life with scar tissue and pain through my nether region. It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t cause any of the damage. But it’s there and I have to cope with it.

In my brain I want to be available for sex at any moment because that would be hot and fun for him and it would make him feel really loved. I tried to meet that standard for years. I hurt myself in the process and I damaged the trust in my marriage.

It isn’t Noah’s fault that I did that. He was negotiating in good faith. I was doing the best I could and I fucked up.

The thing is… I’ve been hurting myself for almost 30 years. This was just the latest incarnation and in some fucked up ways it was a healthier way of hurting myself than most I have tried. I still need to change it. But I also need to acknowledge that I am not as pathetic and back sliding as I feel.

This is complicated.

I feel like I don’t count as a kinky person anymore because in my mind kink is associated with exhibitionism and public play. The fact that I call my husband Daddy when he’s fucking me is just kind of meh, whatever. Basically vanilla people do that too.

cough

I may have some weird assumptions here and there.

It doesn’t help that when I got into the scene there was a lot of nasty back and forth in email lists about how having a strong focus on sex instead of just the SM part of bdsm meant you weren’t really kinky. And I like fucking lots of people so I’m more of a swinger, right? Only at swinger parties I have to ask humbly for exceptions to the rules because I really want to make this person cry while I’m sucking his dick.

Ok I didn’t actually make him cry. He’s really tough. But he made lovely noises.

I don’t feel like I fit in a community. I’m too sexual to feel properly “kinky” and I’m too kinky for most of the sex-only spaces.

And it doesn’t help that my behavior in private is way more timid and unwilling to set boundaries than I am in public. In public I am responding to the crowd and crowds take rock solid boundaries. I have to protect myself. At home…. I don’t want to. I don’t want to say no. I don’t want to set limits.

Which is incredibly fucking stupid and creates problems all over the place. I know.

Playing at home is complicated because the kids are always god damn here and I don’t want them hearing or seeing anything. Ever. Period.

It isn’t that I will never be “out” with my children. It’s that my sex life will always be off stage and kind of a mystery. I’ll hint. I’ll answer some questions in broad ways. That’s it. I will never discuss my kinks with my children. They know I have not been monogamous all my life. They know I went out with a lot of people before I got married (How are you supposed to know if someone is right for you without trying out lots and lots and lots of wrong people first?!) and they know I’ve been on dates since getting married.

I think that’s plenty.

I’m ok with talking to my kids about sex in the abstract or in ways that will increase their future safety… they don’t need to learn how to have sex from me. My way is kinda fucked up. Like at one point my daughter asked if there is one kind of sex (or something very like that question) and I said, “Oh no! There are lots of kinds of sex. There’s manual sex (with fingers/hands); there’s oral sex (that involves a mouth and a set of genitals); there’s anal sex (playing with a butt–can be with fingers or a penis); and vaginal sex (can be with a penis or with toys).”

My daughter’s response was to raise her eyebrows and kind of say “hunh.” We didn’t keep talking after that. It wasn’t a conversation that needed a lot of in depth follow up at that point.

I just will never have a child who is talked into anal sex because it “doesn’t count”. What bullshit. Also: a huge swath of teenage girls these days are being pressured into oral sex because it “doesn’t count” and it’s a way to keep from having “more happen” and oh hell no.

My children will have language about sex and about their body. They will know what they are saying yes to and what they are saying no to. And I’m pretty damn sure my kids are growing up with the idea that sex is a super fun thing to do when you are ready and with the right person(s) but until you are ready it’s a problem.

And that all feels weirdly tied up in my kinky. Because I still struggle to set the boundaries I want them to have. I still struggle to say out loud “I want _____.” I can ask for abasing things very easily. Not affirming things.

I still struggle with the idea that sex is supposed to feel good for me. When the first several decades of your sex life is incredibly painful… that’s a hard thing to rewire in your body. It is hard to change my expectation.

What does being kinky mean?

I think it is funny that my current M/s contract has been going on for 9 months and I still don’t think I’m that kinky. Even though I have rules around my body and my sexuality that I follow.

WHAT IS BEING KINKY?

Things shift so much.

I don’t come on this website very often because I don’t feel like I am “kinky enough” anymore. I have changed a lot over the almost 20 years since I found the bdsm community. Some of the shifts have just been in myself and some of them have been about my relationship changing.

At some point over the last 20 years I recognized that a lot of what drove me to actively ask for the specific kinds of play I wanted was… really a problem. The need I had to be treated as a worthless whore… that came very directly from being told by my father from toddlerhood that… that’s all I was. I guess I spent my 20’s still trying to be a good girl for my father.

It’s funny how I associate being abused in public with being kinky. The fact that I’ve been under M/s contract for a while and we do a lot of Daddy/daughter play during sex… in private… for some reason that feels a lot less kinky to me now. I have some strong programming that “being part of the public scene” is what makes you kinky.

For some reason “enjoying being hit” isn’t enough in my head?

I don’t come to parties in large part because I go to bed at 8pm every night. Driving hurts my body in ways that make it hard to socialize or enjoy being hit. I have kids and no child care.

So that means I’m not kinky any more, right?

But I miss you all. I think about you. I think about the lessons I have learned. The funny thing is… I don’t think I would be a very good parent if I hadn’t had the experiences I had in the bdsm community. I owe y’all an eternal debt of gratitude for helping to shape the person I am.

I know that there are people out there who believe it is bad for 18/19/20 year olds to get into the community… those folks believe you shouldn’t try this hobby till your 30’s or so because you will “mature”. I really disagree with that point of view. I think that people need what they need when they need it and there isn’t a timeline. I needed the structure of the bdsm community when I was 18. I needed to start hearing adult women talk about consent.

I needed to go find the glorious, beautiful sex workers who told me that I had the right to say no to anything I didn’t want to do. I will never finish repaying my debt to those women for what they taught me about my boundaries.

I try to take the lessons you beautiful people taught me and bring them to the children in my life, not just my own children. I don’t talk about it in terms of sex or bdsm. I talk to them about consent. I talk to them about negotiating for what feels ok for them in a game. I talk about how boundaries allow people to be kind and loving to you.

I learned all this from you. Thank you. I needed you so very much. I am so glad you were there for me when I needed you.

Whoo hoo!

So a few years ago I did an interview as part of a documentary about Insex–one of the most explicit bdsm porn websites in existence. I got an email from a friend this morning saying that I was the first voice in it. Now I have to actually watch it. 😀 The documentary is called Graphic Sexual Horror and I’m super excited to see it. I find it kind of hilarious that the last bit of my baby-waiting period will be spent squeeing about being in a porn documentary. (Uhm, I’m just a voice. I was still teaching at the time and I wasn’t comfortable having my face filmed.)

Tired but happy

Yesterday I had the privilege of watching Mollena win the International Ms. Leather contest. She was beautiful, poised, eloquent, and thought-provoking. I am biased, of course, but I really believe she was head and shoulders above the other contestants. (Although the cell phone fantasy was awesome.) I was really glad I kept my sorry, tired ass there long enough to see her win. I’m so proud of all the work she did. 🙂

I’m cleaning out the memo section on my phone. We found a bunch of neat bracelets in New Zealand that struck me as potentially interesting incognito collars: http://www.f3design.co.nz/cms/index.php?page=browse&key=/BODY_ADORNMENT/bracelets

Corset sale

I saw this on a mailing list:

Dear Friends,

Business in Las Vegas is devastating. Homes here are in foreclosure, all business is being affected and we need to move product to keep my manufacturing going.

Please post the blog below to every egroup and space group you can. Any effort on your part will be greatly appreciated!

Kindest Regards,

Tushell

www.BadAttitude.com

CRAZY CORSET SALE!

Due to current economic conditions we are liquidating our current in stock corsets and we’re having a CRAZY CORSET SALE! All of our hand crafted, steel boned, tight lacing, in stock corsets are on SALE FOR 20% TO 60% OFF! FIRST COME FIRST SERVE!

Don’t live in Las Vegas but have always wanted one of our corsets? If you have Paypal (we ship to confirmed addresses only) and want to buy a corset that is on sale, go to our website www.BadAttitude.com look through the stiles, let us know what style and size you are interested in (write info@BadAttitude.com) and we will send you a list of what is available and the temporary price. If you don’t have Paypal we will gladly accept a US Post Office Money Order or a Bank Cashiers Check. Once you decide which item you want we will send a money request, it’s that simple.

There may never be a better time to buy a Hand Made 3 Layer Construction Corset!

Remember shipping in the United States is always free!

Sorry no discounts on custom orders.

We hope to hear from you soon.

Team Bad Attitude

www.BadAttitude.com

Please feel free to share and repost this blog!

Awesome weekend + Group Identity

Saturday I did Christmas shopping in the morning while Noah gamed then we had a chore filled afternoon and a mellow evening. It was really nice. Sunday I had a great morning with farmer’s market and dim sum. Then I went up to the city by myself. This was our first lengthy mommy-time-off. It worked out fantastically well in my opinion. 🙂 I got to go to the graduation of a wonderful friend from a program that has been very important to her. I was happy and proud to be a witness to her recognition. Yay!

This was from a leather organization and there were several speakers. Five total. The first was a guy I have known for a few years and it was about what I would expect. He’s a really cool guy and I know how important this program is for him. I’m really happy he is so successful. The second was a guy I have seen at cons variously. I wanna talk about him a little.

He (I’m preserving anonymity consciously) is one of the best speakers I have seen in or out of the leather community. Let me tell you–he can sell me any kool-aid he wants. I was ready to line up at the pitcher when he was done talking. He has a beautiful voice and a compelling personality. I believe that the reason he is so compelling for me (and maybe for other people too, it’s hard to judge this sort of thing) is that he is completely at peace with himself and the world. He is a Leather Man. It has helped him feel his place in the universe. He doesn’t judge anyone else for what they do or don’t do. He doesn’t seem to feel superior because he is a Leather Man, he just feels that he is being as true to himself as possible by walking that path. I admire the degree to which he is self-actualized. I admire him the way I admire many people of faith.

Two of the other speakers were exactly what I would expect from this sort of ceremony–friendly and loving towards the people they know but not otherwise extraordinary. Good, solid people with friendly advice. They made me smile. Then we got to the last speaker. He very much meant well and the affection towards him in the room was palpable. Unfortunately, he had exactly the sort of tone that bothers me. Whereas the other major speaker had specifically said that we (I surmised the leather community) shouldn’t have enemies, this person encouraged us/them thinking. He talked about how the graduates are joining the ranks of those who “get” leather. I believe that I understand what he was trying to do and if I were part of that group I would probably smile and nod. But I’m not. And I felt alienated. And when I feel that way about a group I no longer have any interest in joining. I don’t want to do the us/them thing.

I think that this sort of us/them thing exists to fill the same hole churches used to fill. People want a sense of identity with a group and that used to be religion. Honestly, I feel that these sorts of groups are religious in nature whether they mention God or not. There are many groups out there that fall into this category in my mind: Journeyman, AA, Landmark, HAI, Masons, Burning Man, hell even Weight Watchers.

You know what? I don’t want to belong. I don’t want to be a joiner. I don’t want to need a community to set my sense of self. I’m thrilled for my friends who are happier in these communities, but I don’t want to be one of them. It’s an interesting thing to think about.

Nooooooooooo

Power Exchange is going away. I know that many folks aren’t that into it, but that was the first kink place I ever went. I want to go before it closes. Would it be possible to get a group outing together?

Probably the 25th of October would be best. Can people go? Pleeeeeeeeeeease? This is going to be so sad for me. In this really weird way…

Folsom

So we went. Ten or Fifteen minutes in we were stopped by a very earnest woman with a clipboard from the NCSF. She proceeded to lecture us on how people on the religious right are trying to shut down Folsom and I am a terrible person for bringing in my baby and giving them more ammunition. There were very thin hints that if Folsom shuts down I will be at least partially responsible for taking it away from the 400,000 people there. When I relayed this story to a friend at the fair his response was, “And did you tell her to go fuck herself?” I kind of wish I had said that. We were at the fair for less than an hour and I felt pretty shamed and dirty the whole time and not in a good way. My daughter is four months old. She won’t remember this. I won’t be bringing her ever again because she might remember and that’s crossing a line.

And you know what? If Folsom shuts down it won’t be because of my four month old. And despite her scare tactics, I don’t believe that my child is going to be taken away by CPS now. Our house may be mildly cluttered, but it’s cluttered primarily with books that I am reading for a graduate degree and baby gear. Our daughter is huge and healthy and extremely happy. And it’s not as if she is using a dildo for a teething device. Give me a break.

Pondering Folsom

A friend asked me if I had any time to see him this weekend, cause he assumed I would be busy with Folsom stuff. First I laughed. Then I pondered. Whereas I certainly couldn’t do parties at this point (all of them are far enough away from my house that I would spend more time in transit than I would playing so it so it isn’t worthwhile) but I can maybe hit the fair itself for an hour or so.

So uhm… I think we’re gonna go. I’m more than a little amused that Shanna is going to a perv event at four months old. (I tell myself that she won’t remember…) Goodness knows I won’t think it is ok to bring her next year.

Very amusing to me.

Much yay!

Last weekend Noah and I put together two dressers for the baby’s room. (Not that the kid will sleep or do much of anything in there for years…) Now the baby clothes can actually be sorted by size and I will be able to find various blankets and diapers and so on. Yay!

Then yesterday Miss Jenny came over early in the day and helped us with an Ikea run. We bought dressers for our bedroom and one bookshelf. At this point we expect to need three more bookshelves but we were out of room in the vehicle on that run. 🙂 I’m not 100% certain how/when the other three sets will be purchased because one set would fill our car and three runs to EPA would a pain in the ass. *grrrr* Hm. Must ponder. So Miss Jenny helped put together the first dresser. Then James arrived! He put almost all of the second dresser together by himself as Miss Jenny helped with other assorted box stuff and putting together drawers. Yay! So excited.

Then we went to the Laura Antoniou class on Protocol in Relationships. She is a very entertaining speaker. 🙂 We are going to try to get to her class tonight on Edge play. 🙂

Last night I talked to a guy I have known in the scene for years and years and he is going to come help us move stuff this weekend. Yay! So far it looks like just Cyrano is coming over on Sunday (we have tons of boxes, no really). With luck we will get all the heavy lifting stuff done. *cross fingers* Yes, Mo! I will probably delighted to have you come over on Tuesday (Monday is my class day) and help if you are able.

I have told Noah that whatever we get done as of Sunday is the end of what he needs to do for big stuff. My baby (uhm, the big one) is getting pretty badly wore out trying to keep up with his job, basic house chores, and doing the projecty stuff that I am focused on doing. It’s not very fair to him. Soon the Lizard will be here and we will both be wore out as we focus on that. I need to give him time to rest up.

Which means that progress next week is going to be very very slow as I move at a snail’s pace. 🙂

{insecurity} Non-monogamy

Attention! This is my shit! I’m not blaming this on anyone else! That said…

I showed up in the bdsm community almost 9 years ago. In that time I have been mostly monogamous (I still think that “girls don’t count” is not the same thing as monogamy), monogamous for a brief period under duress, polyamorous, and slutty. Even during the monogamous period play with other people was never completely forbidden. It was limited, but it happened anyway. Throughout basically all of this period knowing that my partner wanted to have sex and/or play with other people has been really really awful for me. If I added up all the time I have spent crying and feeling like I am not enough I would probably be able to point at months and months of my life that I can’t get back. Why? Why do I keep doing this?

I have always felt that if you are going to be part of “the scene” then that entails certain behaviors: namely, that you aren’t really actually completely monogamous. I’m not sure I have ever known a couple who really and truly had no contact with other people. Maybe my memory is being fuzzy. I know a lot of “mostly monogamous” or “polyplayful” people, but that is still allowing a lot of fuzzy borders. The fuzzy borders are really hard for me.

At this point I have reached the conclusion that I continue to play with other people and engage in that kind of contact because that is one of the primary ways I get people to like me. I kind of wonder if part of the reason I have “phased out” as a bottom in the view of most of the community is because I’m not an easy bottom to play with so I assume people don’t want to bother with me and I don’t ask. It’s really easy to stay popular and liked if you are a good top though, and I am. I feel like I do a lot of it because I want people to like me. That may actually be why I’m ok telling guys that I don’t want to top them and not girls. I’m more confident that guys will like me anyway without me having to do as much for them but girls seem like I have to earn their liking me.

I’ve always liked fantasizing about doing things with lots of people. It’s a mainstay of my masturbatory life (ha! There’s TMI for you.) but when I actually do it I don’t tend to get as much out of it. When I am single and playing with lots of people I believe that I end up with a mostly neutral reaction after playing–it’s fun, but there isn’t much that impacts me positively or negatively long-term. When I’m in a relationship I feel massive guilt and ambivalence for a while to come. Opening up my relationship with Tom to include sex with other people was really hard for me. At that point I think the increased amount of sex was something that was a beneficial thing because I desperately needed that chemical fix, but I felt guilty. I felt like I was betraying him. I think the fact that we had frankly discussed before that point that the relationship wasn’t likely to be “forever” was the only reason I could do it. I was already starting to pull away from him and from the relationship. I still don’t know if that was really a good thing to do or not, but I really wasn’t ready to just walk away that early. Seeing as the last six months were actually pretty good overall I feel like I didn’t do anything too awful. I don’t know if he agrees or not and he probably won’t tell me. 🙂

But anyway. So I like to think about doing things with other people–that doesn’t lead to guilt or feeling bad. But when I actually follow through I tend to feel varying degrees of bad. I played with two different women at TNGcon. One of them did a little bit of decorative bondage on me–that wasn’t too bad for lingering guilt. It was mellow and emotionally distant so I didn’t internalize much. With the other chica I tied her to a chair and was fully intending on just punching/hitting her but she made it very clear she wanted sexual play. So I ended up fisting her. I’ve had a hard time with that. I’m not angry with her or blaming her or saying anything bad about her. I’ve had a hard time with knowing that I did that. I’ve struggled with whether it counts as sex given that I didn’t really want to have sex with her. I did it because she wanted me to and not really because that was something I was jonesing for doing.

But I came home and bragged about it. I know. On one hand I was glad that I got to feel like someone wanted me and I really like the feeling that someone wants me. I don’t get that same kind of “oooooh he/she likes me!” from a steady partner. But I also have felt pretty uncomfortable with having done it. Longer term I’ve realized it was a bad decision. I have tried so hard for so long to maintain my identity of being a sexual outlaw that I think I do things just to maintain that identity that I don’t actually want to do. It is important to me to be the kind of person who does outrageous things so I don’t pay attention to how I feel when I do them. Cause you know what–I tend to feel like crap. I don’t talk about that part much though. I rarely even do a good job of identifying to myself what I’m feeling. But it’s there.

Then we get to my partners playing with other people. I can’t count the number of nights I have sobbed through when Tom or Noah have been out with other people. Hell, there were a few dates where I was off with Erik for the weekend and Noah was on a date when I would sneak off to the bathroom and cry because Noah was on a date and that made me feel awful. How is that for lame? (This isn’t to say that my relationship with Erik wasn’t good–it was. I’m glad I dated him. I’m even more glad we are friends now. He’s a great guy.) But I massively do that “primary” bonding thing. I have never really been able to split loyalties well. Whoever I’m ‘with’ as my primary is the one I am focused on. I have tried pretty hard to split that and I suck at it. I feel bad. I feel like I am hurting everyone involved even when they are all pretty cheerful about the split. (I don’t think it would have been possible to date two guys at once who are more mellow than Noah and Erik and have them still have a pulse.) Does this mean that I have never loved more than one person at a time? No. I certainly have, but I don’t split focus well without feeling horrible and terrible about it. There is at least one person out there in the cosmos who I love pretty madly but I’ve never really been able to make a relationship work there and I’ve given up trying. It’s ok. The friendship is still good.

I don’t know how to not feel terrible about my partners playing with other people. This has been an issue with Tom, Noah, James, and Puppy. Much less of an issue with James or Puppy–but there were still bad spells with them. This play can be but doesn’t have to be sexual. I mean, Tom usually tied people up with all their clothes on and never even kissed them–I still felt awful. He wasn’t doing anything threatening to our relationship in the slightest and he was certainly not breaking rules. Noah has done everything possible to earn my trust and I still feel like him going off with other people for platonic bondage practice is hugely invalidating to me and our relationship. (This is complicated by my own body limitations and issues at the moment.) I’ve given him permission to do it though. I encouraged it. I even suggested it. Why? Because that is “what I should do.” I’m big on doing what I should do even when I hate it and it makes me feel like shit.

Despite the fact that I am “not a real masochist” I think I like doing the things I “should do” that will make me feel terrible. The fact that I feel so bad about doing the things I think I should do validates my overall shitty opinion of myself. I shouldn’t be so upset. I shouldn’t feel possessive. I shouldn’t feel jealous. But I am. And I do. And I do. So I sit and I cry. And I don’t place many limits on my partners even though I would kind of like to. I feel like if I issue an ultimatum then I deserve to lose. If my partners wanted me enough, if I were enough, then they just wouldn’t want to go play with other people. Then I wouldn’t have to place limits. But I’m not enough and I have to accept that. And part of how I accept that is pretending that it’s all fine and I want to go play with other people too.

But I think I should stop. Other than in the realm of fantasy I don’t really want to play with other people. I feel bad about myself when I do. It’s time to be nicer to me and stop pushing me to do this.

Noah, after listening to me talk about some of this came to the conclusion that he should stop playing with other people. The problem is, now I feel like he is doing it under some sort of duress. I feel like he would really like to still do it. He’s pretty clear that being with me is much more important than any amount of play with other people, but I still don’t believe it. I’m scared. I’m scared to trust him that he is doing what he wants. I’m scared that if I do start to trust this and believe in it then down the road he will change his mind and that will hurt so much. If I hold on to the distrust now then I won’t be hurt as much later if he decides he does want it. Then I will get to be proven right that I should have shitty self-esteem because see–I’m not enough.

I don’t know how to win on this one.

{dirty} For the folks who were bitching about TNG con.

This came out on the Center for Sex and Culture’s mailing list.

*Sunday evening, 5/4, 7 pm — LAURA ANTONIOU presents THE REVENGE OF THE MIDDLE AGED GUARD

You’ve been there; you’ve done that. So why do things seem so much more complicated now? If you remember when “my space” meant where you took a hot date after dinner, links were for chains and poly was followed by “ester” you may be feeling your age a bit. Laura sure is; her bed time bears a suspicious resemblance to the time she used to go out to SM clubs. This round table is designed for those who aren’t ready for old fart status and aren’t sure if they’re want to be added to a Facebook friends list, either. Limited kvetching allowed, but more designed to discuss what our experiences have taught us and what we want to do to enhance our personal and community relations. No one under 32 allowed! Go to a dang TNG meeting or have a mocha soy latte with a shot of mango and text your BFF on how unfair the world is.

See Laura’s bio with her 4/29 class listing.

At the Center for Sex & Culture, 1519 Mission near 11th — look for the pink awning.
CSC can take checks and credit cards (Visa, MC and Discover). Pre-register at (415) 255-1155 or mail@sexandculture.org