Going Beyond the Comfort Zone

There's a book on flogging in my reading bag today, along with the usual assortment of other non-fiction. (I do pity the fool at the coffee shop who innocently asks what I'm reading!)

I don't consider myself good at flogging -- and I don't know that a book is going to help that. I've had a few in-person lessons at flogging, and freaked out in the way I tend to do at any new skill I sort of want to learn but am afraid I'll look bad at -- like dancing, or Pilates. I want to practice it in private until I look a little bit like I know what I'm doing. And, with flogging you really can't.

I like canes. Yes, there is a certain amount of tech to them -- and a fair amount of kinetic learning to use them well without causing damage. But as a rule, they're an easy tool to self-teach. Once I understand the physics of them, the canes will pretty much go where I aim them with little muscle raining required.

Whips and floggers, on the other hand . . . oy. It feels like each of those tails has a mind of its own. I am too close, too far. The tails wrap. And while I am fairly sure I won't do serious damage to anything but my ego if things go wrong, I hate (hate, hate) hurting my bottoms in any but the ways I intend to. And so, this is a skill set I've avoided building.

Of course, the universe pairs me with a girl who's interested in floggers.

That may read like snark. If so, it shouldn't.

The fact is: the places where I have the deepest gaps and insecurities are the places where I need to most grow as a top. Period. Exclamation point. That doesn't mean I need to get good at everything -- I never see myself as having a yen for medical play. But then, I'm not insecure about medical play . . . because I have no interest in it. Flogging? Very much like dancing or Pilates, it holds a strong charge for me -- a taste of the fruit I've forbidden myself.

And of course that's precisely it. Back in the day, my dom didn't have any training in flogging. She didn't have anyone to teach her. She read what she could, practiced on a few pillows, and then had the courage to learn the rest on me. (She also, bless her heart, had no qualms about learning to do our first Shibari experiments with Midori's book open right in front of her like a recipe.)

I explain all this to my girl. Explain that I'm afraid that I may not be very polished at it -- and that my worst fear is that I may wrap the tails and hurt her in a not-pleasant way. Beautiful thing, she assures me this is okay. We can learn together.

And of course that's what the best bottoms do -- motivate us lazy-ass tops to avoid becoming arrogant, asshole doms and instead keep our beginners minds. This is, after all, a co-created process.

And so, the book goes in the bag, and my ego gets put on time out for a while. It's a good thing.

You and i

Or, the online version of "Are you my dommy?"

There is a weird phenomenon of online kinksters that I simply do not get.

Yes, my darlings, it's 'You' and 'i'.

I'm referring to submissives -- usually male -- begin begin emailing or messaging me and refer to me as 'You' (and themselves as 'i') right off the bat.

I do most of my play in person, so perhaps I've missed something here. This may well be the norm in online communications -- although so far, my experience doesn't back that up. Most charitably, I'm sure they mean well. Perhaps this is intended to be a sign of respect, or of status.

To me, it's neither -- and it irritates the hell out of me, for a few reasons.

First, and most critically, jumping into You/i in email communications puts me in a D/s dynamic that we have not negotiated, without my consent. I can't begin to see where this qualifies as sane, or consensual.

Second, I feel like I've wandered into a one-size-fits-all BDSM script every time this happens. The men who do this rarely have an idea of who I am or how I play. If they are looking for Ye Olde Standard Domme, I can't begin to tell them how disappointed they're going to be. Yes, I have the boots and the rope. Yes, I can be a mean bitch. And -- domme? With an '-me' at the end? Have you met me?! I am a gender bending feminist, who tops for her own reasons. I am not a 24 hour BDSM fantasy line.

Thirdly, if you do this in a public forum, you have potentially outed me without my consent.

Last, but not least -- I'm sorry, but you earn the right to call me by honorifics. If you are lucky, I will play with you as a friend and a equal, something I love to do. If you are extremely lucky, you will be allowed to enter into a D/s relationship with me, in which you earn the right to call me Ma'am, or Sir, or Mistress, or whatever the fuck I choose -- when I choose it.

I would be extremely interested to hear from others who do more of this online thing whether I'm just being cranky on this.

(PS: I should say, for the record, that calling oneself 'i', or anything else one wants, is always fine. It is always someone's right to call themselves whatever they want, and to ask for their preferred form of address. If anything, that's the heart of what I'm trying to say.)

Building Trust

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I cannot trust your yesses, unless I can equally trust your nos.

There's something to be said for the bottom pushing hir own boundaries, at least a bit. Just like in any endeavor -- yoga, weight training, learning an instrument or craft -- growth typically happens right outside the comfort zone. And so of course there's a value in playing up to one's boundaries, and renegotiating those consistently upward.

That said, there is never a value in going too far beyond those boundaries, or too quickly. To follow the analogy, one could hurt themselves -- physically or intellectually -- in a way that impedes further progress.

As a top, I have certain responsibilities. As I see them, those include:

- working to connect with and understand my own desires

- articulating those desires clearly, and non-coercively

- creating an environment of trust

- pushing my bottoms to their limits as appropriate, while keeping play sustainable and fun

- listening for, and honoring, boundaries

Bottoms also have certain responsibilities. The biggest can be summed up in a single sentence: know your boundaries, and articulate them as needed. (Put another way, we're back to the pithy Miriam quote: you cannot exchange power you don't have.)

The single most corrosive thing I have ever seen happen in the scene is for a bottom to go along with something they don't really want. The motivations can be multifold: to be a 'good' bottom, to please the top, to save face at a party, ambivalence, bad communication skills, immaturity, whatever. It doesn't matter. As a rule, I've seen this lead to bad scenes, and ultimately to bad relationships.

The other side to this, of course, is listening not just for consent but, to use a phrase bandied about lately, 'enthusiastic' consent.

The folks I know who have managed long term kinky relationships find ways to constantly negotiate their boundaries and desires. A failure to do this, early and often, will destroy trust, and relationships with it.

All this to say: finding someone who can say yes and no equally clearly, and both with an open heart? Priceless. There's a list coming soon in which I plan to articulate the ideal bottom. This has got to be number one on the list.

Do It Like Ya Mean It

So, new lesson learned: set up the harness like you're going to use it.

This may be my Steven Covey moment. Covey is the self-help guru with "habits for effective people." One of those being: begin with the end in mind.

I was doing some really gorgeous floor work the other day. And constructed a very beautiful harness. Which was lovely and pleasant until I decided I wanted to do a partial suspension -- and that my harness was not up to the task.

While it was ultimately my pleasure to untie and retie a gorgeous woman, it was a learning moment for me. Thinking a few steps ahead is very important. Especially if you want to look all masterful and stuff. And particularly if you may have a baby eel on your hands . . .

Lesson learned.

Yard

Not only did I have a perfect weekend (more about which in another post), but I pulled into my driveway yesterday to find a perfectly trimmed and edged lawn. I am very pleased.

Toes

Little things please me.

We decided almost flippantly, that weekend that felt so fragile to me, that painting my toenails would be part of my girl's Work. I've never been the kind to paint my own; it feels fussy to me and I'm not terribly good at it.

It has turned out to mean more than I expected. I find myself looking down all the time to see my toes arrayed in color, to be reminded of her. It's another small piece of connection that we have despite the fact we're in different cities, as I hope having her collars is for her.

Yesterday, she told me excitedly that she bought a new color, just for me. I look forward to seeing it.

Service

The first service session went very well. My new submissive has history as a woodworker, and so it felt right to have him sand and oil my wooden kitchen island as a first task. Given that I also treat my kitchen island very much as an altar for kitchen witchery, this was also a way to test our ability to integrate magick and service.

I set to my own homework for the night (reading a new magickal book), never lacking for hot chai. The boy got to work in the kitchen, doing far more than I expected. By the time he was done, the island was smooth and well oiled, the floor clean, the compost and trash removed, the compost bin rinsed in the garden, and my book was very nearly done.

It's all about intention: not the sanding and oiling of the wood, but the act of devotion behind it, the way that sanding and oiling is in service to me and the powers I serve using that space. And it's on that level that I'm most satisfied with last night: the way that the boy clearly paid attention (as asked) to things on an energetic level. I set some homework on that, accepted the gift of an extra session to tend my yard when I'm next out of town, and went to bed feeling like I do after good magickal Work.

I think this is going to work out just fine . . .

On Finding Good Help, pt. 2

So, one of my sweeties hopped over to the blog the other morning to see how the interview went.

I'm not sure I have a lot to say, at least not publically. The interview went well, and we are going to move forward into an initial service engagement with an option for his earning a collar and more responsibilities down the road. Mostly we negotiated, sipping tea at the wobbly kitchen table and working out some terms and concerns. Toward the end, I gave him a tour of the house and garden and a few high points.

He has skills I knew I was looking for and several I'd never considered, such as being able to teach me to play the guitar I own but can't play. His carpentry skills are much more advanced than I'd realized; I've played on some dungeon furniture he built without having any idea it was his work.

And, I feel like I have a lot that I can teach. He knows landscaping, for example, but nothing about permaculture. Over time, that might be a place he can apprentice.

I came out of our meeting excited and inspired. I gave him a bit of homework, and we'll be setting up a proper session soon.

And, oh yeah. My kitchen table no longer wobbles. I think this is going to work out just fine.

On Finding Good Help

Sometimes the hardest thing about getting what you want is actually realizing that:

a. you've been asking for something
b. the Universe (sometimes in the form of other people) has been listening
c. you're getting it
d. figuring out what the hell to do now

And so it is with my recent adventures in finding a service submissive.

I've been joking so long that "I need a service submissive," that I'm not sure I was even really hearing myself. But someone was. And so it was that from the most unexpected quarter, I found a very capable and service-oriented gentleman offering his services.

And so I did what I normally do in such situations. I stalled like hell.

To be fair to myself, I was on a retreat when I had the offer, and I have a policy to make no major life changes until a month after my retreat. Which I am, now. I sat with the decision for a couple of weeks, ran it by my lovers, sat with it some more, and then sent out the application. Which has now come back to me with enough "extras" to really delight me. (As it turns out, my applicant has experience as a landscaper!)

And, I feel like I'm pushing myself a bit every step of the way, through my own inertia. I know that this doesn't make me sound much like a domly dom, but it's true.

And I know what the inertia is about, because it's something that you hear about all the time in the professional world as well. "It will take longer to train someone else to do this than it does to do it myself." That's my reticence to start explaining what it is that I do (or don't do): how to fold and put away the laundry, how to clean the floors, how to deal with my composting and greywater systems, how to tell the deliberate weeds from the noxious ones, how to deal with my cranky old cat. And in a very real way I would like the house to be already perfect when we have this talk, which may or may not happen and is frankly a bit silly.

At least, that's part of the inertia. Another very real part is scheduling, which is the reason I've had a couple of lovely lasses offer to rope bottom to me for months now, and haven't managed to make time to set up sessions. Lately my schedule is clear for the first time in months, and I am very reluctant to pencil anyone in beyond my "short list" of very close friends and lovers.

And again, that's a trap. In the long run, retaining a service submissive will -- like any well planned new endeavor -- save me time and free up my energy. Ideally, it will help with my lower two tiers on Maslow's pyramid so that I can focus more time higher up the chain (on things like, say, having those girls over to tie up). It's always getting through the short run that's trouble.

So, I did what I do when I'm finally ready for something. I just made the appointment. I don't feel "ready," but if I wait till I feel ready, it will never happen. No, I set the appointment and that will give me extra incentive to be ready.

And so it begins.

Yes, I have an incredible girl. And no, she's not going anywhere, at least if I can help it! But while she is many things to me -- the perfect 105-pound rope slut, a sweet and attentive friend, giver of fantastic pedicures, amazing lover, and all around darling girl -- she is not and simply isn't going to be a service submissive. Which, as I've said before, is just fine with me. I think we get far more out of working with a bottom's inherent skills and performance capacity than we get from a one size fits all solution.

Timely post on submission

Sitting down to write some queries to a new applicant, I find one of Betka's submissives has a few things to say about what it means to be a good submissive.

Not a bad starting point for what one might want in a submissive, at all. Points 1, 2, and 5 ring out most true for what I want, and 7 and 9 least so, but I'd have to say that all are true for me in some way. (And, every dominant wants something a little different -- and I'd further say wants different from one submissive compared to another.)

Costuming

As my darling friend and fellow Leo says, "Sometimes, it's all about the costuming."

I've been pretty low energy this month. I have a fair amount of stress hitting on all fronts. And so, I've been pretty ambivalent about whether or not to go to a play party this weekend. (The SIG? That's not in question. I never miss School if I can avoid missing.)

I've been in cranky Daddy mood for days; being on my period does not at all help. So the idea of going to the party has alternated between feeling like a lot of fun and like a lot of work: the packing (which I always enjoy once I start, but was cranky about ahead of time), the planning (ditto), and also the costuming. I had finally decided on a leather top that didn't quite reach my leather skirt, not least because the idea of any kind of cincher or corset made my cramps twinge.

In the course of doing other packing this morning, I noticed the kimono. I never wear the kimono. Mostly, it's just cheesy for most Western rope artists to wear a kimono, for reasons Graydancer lampooned brilliantly at his ARS2 keynote last year. I am not a 'nawashi,' and I don't want to pretend to be one. But worn with that in mind, it's also camp, and I just haven't been in the mood to do camp for a while.

But there it was. Oh so pretty, in a fake kimono kind of way. Lovely with the custom obi a friend made me. And . . . gods it looks so comfortable.

I've been idly thinking for days that I do want to do to the party, but I don't want to work. I don't particularly feel like doing a huge caning scene, or having to discipline anyone. Mostly, I want to sit around and talk with kinky friends, perhaps while idly tying up a pretty girl or two. And then, I want to sit in the hot tub.

So yes, the kimono went into the bag.

And I have to say: sometimes it really is all about the costuming. I am feeling much more like I want to go to the party now than I did before, when I was contemplating the Fuckoff Boots and the little leather skirt. Odd thing, that.

Snakes on a sub

Fantastic weekend. All the good things: leather, rope, talons, knives, wax, rigging, hot sex, and -- last but not least -- a motherfucking snake on the motherfucking girl. (Hot!)

More weekend updates when I have slept for more than four hours.

Release

There are a couple of riggers in my local community who do very firm therapeutic acupressure in play. At first, you think: Oh, that's nice, the rigger is going to give me a bit of a massage. That will help me relax in the ropes.

Uh huh.

Then, the next thing you know you're up there flying about in the harness with both feet suspended, completely unable to move, and the top has his thumb pressed all the way between two muscles in your buttocks, basically Rolfing and rerouting something as intimate as your basic architecture.

Ow.

I'm not sure if it's the pain, or the realization that I am no longer in control of something as simple and basic as my musculature. What I do know is that I went down, hard. So hard that a photographer friend asked after me to see if I was okay. Down, down, down. Unable to move. Unable to resist. Unable to do anything but allow my muscles to give way to a pressure right at the edge of bearable.

It was . . . pretty amazing. Massage school folk have just taken on amazing new properties in my mind. (Damn: another vanilla profession treyfed for me.)

Creating enforceable rules

Sara Robinson of Orinicus has a few interesting things to say about the fine art of laying down the law:

People who try to enforce unforceable rules are typically either authoritarians, utopians, or both. Invariably, when respect for the law and its makers has broken down, they resort to force to maintain order. On a larger level, if it's chaos you're after, there's nothing like demanding that a system behave in ways contrary to its own internal intelligence and performance capacity.

A corollary to this is that all legitimate authority springs from mutual respect between the leader and the led.

I think she'd be surprised to see her words end up here -- and knowing the power of the search engine, may well be soon -- but she unsurprisingly has a point.

There are a million ways to do The Things that We Do, from Master/slave to Dom/sub to Daddy/girl or /boy to . . . I dunno, Cap'n/swabby. The point is: a system and set of accompanying rules should work with the actors, not against them.

Yes, there is a lot of room for a good top to push a bottom's limits. And, ideally, a good top also has the capacity to stretch his or her own capacity.

And yet: trying to push for a one-size-fits-all solution to bsdm just isn't going to work. We are human beings, individuals, in relationships. Which means that we all come to the table with our own 'intelligence', and our own 'performance capacity'. So, working with that: that's the trick.

What I want, at the end of the day, is to find and enrich what gets me and my sweeties hard and wet, excited and enervated, challenged and satisfied. Jack Rinella reminds us all that the point of this stuff is to have fun. And to do that, we have to create systems that work. We will never be one size fits all, and thank gods for it.

The other corollary, I think, is actually enforcing the enforceable rules. But that may well be another post . . .

No, Seriously

My friends are training a puppy. I joke a lot with the "mom" of the two of them that I learn a lot listening to her adventures in puppy-training, and that's actually true. She seems amused and titillated when I seem to suddenly get what she's talking about, pretty much as she does with most things kink.

Apparently, they recently super-sized their dog crate. My friend tells me a human could probably fit in it snugly, and that she'd mentioned this to her incredulous husband.

Dog mom: "Wow, I bet Miriam would really like this cage if we ever get rid of it."
Dog dad: (chuckles) "Yeah, um, sure she would."
Dog mom: "No, seriously. You have no idea how much Miriam wants a dog cage."

Because I'm blessed to be surrounded by kink and magick folks, I don't often realize that what I do is in "no, seriously" territory for other people. Friends like this one are an excellent reality check sometimes.

And, yes. I do seriously want a puppy cage.

The smile afterward . . .

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Praise, effort and smarts

Very interesting article in the New York magazine on The Power (and Peril) of Praise. In short the article starts to dismantle conventional wisdom on praising kids for their inherent abilities, and instead recommends refocusing praise on effort.

Randomly divided into groups, some were praised for their intelligence. They were told, “You must be smart at this.” Other students were praised for their effort: “You must have worked really hard.” . . . Then the students were given a choice of test for the second round. One choice was a test that would be more difficult than the first, but the researchers told the kids that they’d learn a lot from attempting the puzzles. The other choice, Dweck’s team explained, was an easy test, just like the first. Of those praised for their effort, 90 percent chose the harder set of puzzles. Of those praised for their intelligence, a majority chose the easy test. The “smart” kids took the cop-out.

Lots of meaty stuff here, and as one of those "smart" kids that did worse the higher I went in school, I relate to a lot of it from the inside, and I'm thinking a lot about what I might do differently as a teacher. Well worth the read for anyone who teaches, trains, or . . . well, trains.

Snarky thought of the day

Deliberate humiliation scenes? Fair enough, if that's what you're into.

Trying to diminish someone who didn't negotiate for it, just because they're bottoming and you are a Great and Almighty Top (tm)? Not on my watch, you don't.

After a while, that kind of thing makes you look like you have something to prove, and no means to do so. I'm not impressed.