I’m yours before you even begin to want it

It was enough to see that calculating look on your face for me to open up to you like a vault opens up to its rightful owner. The moment you looked at me the way a hunter looks at his prey - already dividing its dead carcass in his mind’s eye - I was yours. You could have thought that it took us two dates for you to have me (not particularly long). But it’s not true. It was a 30 seconds gaze. That’s all. Topped off with your cold, disinterested touch, it was a mixture that hit me in all the right places. During our next meeting, I was crawling for you on the floor and licking your feet. Apologising for a mistake that I didn't even make. Only to proceed later to worship your entire body, kissing and licking each (and every) of its parts.

It’s hard to explain what is happening to me in moments like that. People say that men think with their penises. I guess that you could say that in those moments I think with my cunt. Yet it’s not exactly that. Yes, it arouses me to be humiliated and objectified but not in a way that I imagine ‘normal’ people get aroused. Sometimes my pussy gets wet when it happens, sometimes it doesn’t. It doesn't really matter. My goal in those moments is not for my cunt to be filled. Even if I plead for it, what I want the most is for it to be denied to me. I get off on the fact of being emotionally abused, not on the pleasure of sex. It’s as if I have a second pussy in my brain. A pussy which gets pleasure from hurt and terror. A pussy which gets soaking wet when I am degraded or rejected. And it’s exactly that one that takes over when I meet a man who looks at me the way you did.  

I can imagine that it might make some people uncomfortable. The speed with which I give myself to those who I feel might give me what I desire is close to that of light. I’m greedy. And there are not many people who have the things that I am greedy for. So when I meet someone who might - I take my chances.

At the same time, what other people see at sex, I often see as a small talk. I do not feel like we have fucked until you have left me a sobbing mess on the floor. I do not feel like I have had you in me until my stomach gets twisted at the smallest twitch on your face. Everything that happens before is an appetizer. Something to arouse our appetites before the main course. Or not even that - a snack before the meal itself.  

There is another reason why I am behaving the way I do, I believe. I think that I also do it to establish our dynamic before you have had the chance to start to care about me. I put myself below you, take off the veil of mystery and show all of my most miserable pieces to make sure that you won’t fall in love with me. I demystify myself so that I can keep your mystery. I make myself available so that you will lose interest in me. To make sure that there will be nothing that might prevent you from treating me the way I desire to be treated.

I don’t lust after romance. I don’t want a relationship. All I want is to be played with and deserted. I want to experience all the shades of emotional pain one can imagine. I want to taste all the flavours of dirt there are in the world. I want to be a punching bag for you. I want to be despicable so that you lose all your barriers with me. So that you are ready to treat me like you have never treated anyone before. And so that you don’t regret it.

I guess that you could see it as an objectification. I objectify my partners to play the role that I envisioned for them. That role and nothing else. You could also see it as manipulation. I behave a certain way in a hope that they will behave the way I want them to as a result. And maybe you are right. Maybe I do objectify and manipulate my partners to a certain extent. The same way as I would objectify and manipulate a romantic partner or a friend to get love or friendship from them. People want things from each other. In any kind of relationship. It’s a give and take.

Or is it? To be honest, I am not sure. I would like to believe that my partners are much more to me than the things I get from them. If I devote myself from someone, I do not expect anything in return. I am capable of spending weeks without an orgasm, months without seeing them and I have a strong belief that my devotion can easily last till the end of my days even if I would never see them again. This is my gift. The allowance to give it is in a way all that I need. 

I think that the important question when assessing my behaviour is whether I see them for who they are in the moment they are with me or am I trying to fit them into a mould that I had prepared earlier? Do I allow them to express their deepest selves with me? Or do I push them into treating me like I am treated in my fantasies? 

To be honest - I don’t know. I would like to believe the first one is true. I want my partners to be themselves with me. Even more - I want them to be with me the selves that they have never been before. I don’t want them to play roles with me. I want them to express their deepest desires. I want them to let themselves loose. I want them to stop hiding the parts of them that the society required them to keep at bay.

And for that, I need to communicate that I am harmless. I need to disarm myself from all the flirting and games so that they can see through me like through a sheet of cellophane. Only then will they allow themselves to relax with me. Only then will I become as predictable as a household object they’d own. Only if I lose all the human complexity will they be able to do to me what they fantasized about but would never dare to execute on someone they loved. 

And this is what I want to be for my partners. Is it worse than love? And who gets to say it is? Who gets to decide that being a caring girlfriend they could show off at family parties is more valuable than being their dirt mat with which they never have to hold back? Isn’t the fact that they can be with me whoever they want to be without having to care about how it affects me something special? I know that many people believe that you could be both. But in the way that I live BDSM - I doubt it. 

I don’t know if my behaviour is manipulation or simply communication. Devotion, suffering and dehumanization are what I have to offer when it comes to romance. I am fascinated by the dynamics of pain and fear that can arise between two people. Especially if they are tainted by sexual desire. Some people want to have children together. I want to have Stockholm syndrome. 

Better to know it sooner than later, I guess?

I just think that I should be used

Some people might call me a slut, but I don't think that I am one. As far as I understand, being a slut is about enjoying sex and having as much of it as possible because you have pleasure from it. I don't care about my pleasure. I just think that I should be used. Other people should have pleasure from my body. That's their right.

My threshold for physical closeness is very low. As soon as I kind of like you, I will probably let you fuck me. If you realise that it is a possibility and how easy it is to get, I won't say no, because I'll think that you deserve it, just because you’ve requested it. Whether I want it is out of the question.

I think that it comes from the notion that I acquired as a teenager, that I need to repay people for physical closeness. And that payment should come in their ability to access my body. My need for physical touch and closeness is huge. Not necessarily sexual, just hugging, being caressed, kissed. Just feeling someone close to me. Being intimate.

In my youth, I thought that I can't just get it from someone without giving something in return. Somehow, I didn't feel like being close to me might be of any value to other people. So I needed to give them something more of myself to deserve the closeness. And sex was an easy and obvious currency.

So I learned to treat my body as an object and to use it to get an illusion of being close to someone. An illusion, not because they didn't want to be close to me, but because I couldn't really be close to them. Usually, because they weren't the people who I truly wanted to be close with. And those with whom I did, I was too terrified of rejection to ask.

I became a master of my way of seducing people by giving them all my attention. If I decided that I want someone to like me, I would do anything to please them. I still do it and it's not necessarily a bad thing. There is no pretending in there, they do really have all my attention at that time. The problem is that it's not sustainable and when it ends, it hurts. You can't be so focused on the other person 24/7 and not lose them and/or yourself. You should never forget about yourself in your quest to please.

Or shouldn't you? Getting to know more and more about BDSM and especially about D/s, I begin to realise that all these imprints that I have and that I used to see as negative, and which are negative in a normal world with ‘normal’ norms, are perfect for creating a successful D/s dynamic. With the right partner, my inability to be something else than a sexual object, my need to please and my hyper-focused attention on the other, are assets. As long as we both know what we are exploring and what we're both giving up and we agree to it, there is nothing negative about it.

Because can’t my unwillingness to explore my own sexual needs, and the desire to be a sexual object, be a need on its own? Why is it considered unhealthy to get pleasure not from my own physical pleasure, but from pleasing the other? Why isn’t it ok to suppress my own personal expression as a price of moulding myself to the image that someone else might have designed for me?

In today's western society all the above are definitely not valued and understood. We strive to develop the individual self, to express ourselves fully and to be emotionally independent of other people as much as possible. This kind of attitude is often portrayed as an ideal that we should all be striving for. But what if my individual expression is a lack thereof? What if I prefer to please other people than to please myself? What if I prefer to focus on other people than to focus on myself?

And don’t get me wrong, I am not an altruistic mother Teresa. I do have a lot of individual self-expression in my daily life. I do have goals, strong opinions about things and I like some people and strongly dislike others. But in sex, I just want to be used. I just want my partners to enjoy me and I want to please them as much as I can. I want to be their perfect toy. My only need is for them not to care about my needs.

It seems great at first sight, but actually it is a lot to ask. It is easy to get from someone who truly doesn’t care about you, but when they start to like you (or even worse, love you), they usually start to care about what you want. And that becomes very problematic for me.

Before I discovered kink, I had a lot of random sex with people who didn't care about me, because it was very easy to be objectified by them. But when I would start to be intimate with someone, having sex with them would become more and more difficult. They would begin to ask me too many questions about what I want. It was becoming too much about me. And when I started to think about it, I wasn't even sure if I want sex at all. I begin to wonder what should I want. What would they want me to want? Why don't I have needs on my own? What's wrong with me?

There is definitely something wrong with me (maybe 'wrong' is not the right world, out of the ordinary is better), but I don't necessarily want to change it. I found a place where the weird notions in my head can be a source of pleasure without guilt. I finally understand and accept that I enjoy the feeling that being used gives me, proxying my own pleasure using the pleasure of the other, the attention that I am getting from my user and how natural they become with me when they realise that they can just do whatever they want with me and they don't need to care about my needs. My whole life I've been working towards becoming a perfect toy (and I still am) without even realising it, and finally, I am starting to see value in my predisposition instead of considering myself a freak.

Because I just think that I should be used. Is that too much to ask for?

What I find so alluring in being hypnotized

Recently, I have experienced hypnosis in completely different circumstances from what I am used to, and the ease in which I followed and how much I enjoyed it, made me realise that I am much more into it than I anticipated. I knew that I loved it being used as a tool for asserting more control over me, but this experience made me understand better what I love about hypnosis in particular and that it might be much more my kink than I previously thought.

The feeling of complete letting go

One of the things that are amazing about being in a hypnotic trance is how much it allows you to let go of all the noise that is in your head and around you and just follow the voice of your partner. Even though you are under the control of the hypnotist, you are actually feeling unbelievably free. All your worries are gone, everything disappears, you become calm and centred. At the same time, you are extremely aware of what is happening to you, as soon as it is brought to your attention. Your attention span narrows, which really frees your mind from all the chatter, which is usually happening inside you. It is so relaxing to just let it go and follow the soothing voice of the person who is guiding you. You feel safe and taken care of.

Total control of the other person over you

I love the fact that it allows me not only to give someone my body to play with but also my mind. It makes me feel like I have barely any control left. In a normal D/s scenario, you do things that your Dominant wants you to do because you want to obey his orders. But it is still happening out of your own free will. Here, you do them, because that is what he tells your mind to do. Of course, you still have the control over whether you want to let them hypnotize you (depending on the dynamic), but past that point, you are all theirs.

It is scary, but at the same time really exciting to have someone have so much power over you. To give them your mind to toy with. For them to be able to tap into your unconscious and control you from that point makes you feel like a real human toy. And it is amazing how much possibilities for entertainment I am able to provide them with this way.

Being able to do and experience impossible things

Thanks to hypnosis I was able to experience things that I did not know were possible. And that were not available to me in normal circumstances. Like experiencing a full body orgasm just from hearing someone counting, or losing the sense of touch or the ability to speak. It can literally turn you into an object without will and consciousness, giving your partner the possibility of using you without your participation in it.

It is unbelievable how much control over your sensation one can tap into using hypnosis. How much they can suggest to your unconscious. How much they can increase or decrease the intensity of your experiences by suggesting certain things.

I love exploring new, uncharted territories and discovering previously unknown bodily experiences and I don’t think that there are many things giving more possibilities in that realm than hypnosis.

The loss of will

As far as I experienced, it is true that I can’t be made to do things that I really don’t want to do. But that limit is much further than you think it is. You will do things against your conscious will, but not against your deeply rooted instincts and principles.

And it is interesting how much hypnosis can reveal about your real desires. For example, I hate to look silly or be made stupid in general. If I could, I wouldn’t do things that make me look this way. On the other hand, I love to be forced into humiliation, which making someone look silly is a great tool for. That is why I will let someone make me do stupid things using hypnosis, even though consciously I really don't want to do them.

Still, the things that make me look silly are not the easiest ones to plant in my head, as there is some resistance in me to follow those suggestions. Anything sexual or sexually objectifying on the other hand is as easy as it can get, which reveals what I am really into, even if I wouldn’t want someone to know about it.

So in a way, when in hypnosis you will lose your will because you will follow what your partner tells you, even though your consciousness says that it is not what you want. Again, as I've already said, hypnosis can be a tool of an immense control, which I personally love about it.

The opening-up

Letting someone peek into your head and mess with it is a deeply intimate thing to do. It requires trust and vulnerability and openness. They might discover (or almost surely will) things that you would rather keep secret. You have to either trust them that they won't go there or trust that if they do, they won't use it against you.

For me when I let someone hypnotize me, I am putting all my guards down. Also, because of how open and vulnerable I am in general and because of my tendency to hand myself over very easily to people who want to accept it. I don't think that this level of vulnerability has to always be there during a hypnotic play, but it is always there in my case. It's frightening but also beautiful to be so open, to let someone dive so deeply into your head. And it's one of the reasons why I enjoy hypnosis so much. Because it allows for that openness to happen.

I was quite amazed by how easy I followed into a trance state with someone whom I barely knew. How easy it was to let go and just let him guide me into the experience that he wanted to give me. How seamlessly it happened. True, I trusted him, but should I do it so easily? Part of why I did it was because I so much wanted the experience again. Before it happened I didn’t even realize how much I crave to be in this state. I was playing with fire, as always, and it created magic again. I know that I might burn myself at some point, but how worth the experience of absolute loss of control is of those burns.

Does being an experienced dominant really mean being a better dominant? And what does ‘better dominant’ even mean?

“Hi Door, I am an experienced Dom/Top/Master...”

I can’t even count how many times I’ve received a message starting with this sentence. Yesterday it happened again, and I began wondering, why do so many Ds (let’s just call them that for the sake of brevity) think that it is such important information to share when they are approaching someone?

The thing is that for me it doesn’t make them any more appealing. Maybe they’ve dominated many people before, but they’ve never dominated me. So no matter how experienced they are, in terms of playing with me, they are newbies. And I like when my partners approach it that way.

I am not saying that it means that every new partner of mine needs to be overly cautious and take things awfully slow (that’s a stereotypical view on being a newbie I guess). Taking things slowly in play is not really my strongest point. I am more of a roller-coaster-experience kind of girl. It does mean though that I want them to be focused on reading me and getting to know me and not fall back on their experience with other subs.

Because the thing that I love the most about kink is that every person that I play with is completely different and also plays differently. That’s the beauty of it. The unique dynamic that is formed between the two people. And it happens through getting to know this particular person and not dominant/submissive people in general.

Saying that being experienced makes you a better play partner is a bit like saying that having been in many relationships makes you a more appealing romantic partner. Maybe in some ways it does, since there are certain obstacles that are shared among all relationships and having dealt with them in the past might help you deal with them in the future. But more often than not, it doesn’t really matter, since people are so complex that your experience from one relationship will probably not be very relevant to the next one.

What is true, is that relationships offer tremendous opportunities for growth and if you are a mindful and growth-oriented person then having been in a few relationships probably have taught you quite a bit. Still, the question here is more what kind of person you are than in how many relationships you’ve been before. If you lack self-reflection then even 100 relationships will not teach you anything. If you are able to self-reflect then one might already be enough.

To the advantage of the experienced Ds, there is a truth in saying that if you've done kink for a while then there is a big chance that you are skilled in some BDSM-related form of play, like impact or knife play or rope bondage, to name a few. And these are the areas where I definitely value dexterity. Actually, I'm a total sucker for skilled people. And I tend not to enjoy playing with people who are beginners in practical skill. I know, it's a bitch tendency on my side, I am working on it, but the truth is what it is. It mostly has to do with (lack of) patience and my perfectionism. To my defence, I do enjoy people who are striving for the best, even when they haven't gotten there yet.

But telling me that you are experienced doesn't tell me anything about your skills or your personality. It also doesn't give me any indication of whether I will want to submit to you. I've had great and strong D/s connection with people who are complete beginners and I've met experienced dominants with whom I didn't feel submissive at all.

In the end, this game is all about attitude and personality. So tell me something about that and not how many submissives you’ve had before. Show me who you are and who you can be to me. To me, D/s is about how and why you play and not about what you do and how many times you've done it before. So please, tell me something more interesting than that you are experienced.

Defining a Toy

I love to figure myself out. And lately, I've been asking myself a lot what does it mean that I identify as a Toy? Why do I feel like it fits me better than a submissive or a masochist that I’ve labelled myself before? Because it's not like I am not submissive or not masochistic. I am. But there is something about Toy that gives a distinct flavour to all the other roles that I identify with. And it really speaks to me.

Because what I want above all is to be played with. And now you can say, “Well, that’s not very special. All kinky people want to play. That’s what we are here for.” but what I mean is that I want to be toyed with, physically and emotionally. And above all, I want to be a source of entertainment.

The origins

Since I remember, I would let my friends make jokes about me and laugh at me. It never bothered me much. What they were saying was funny, they were laughing and I was laughing with them. Other people were sometimes surprised why would I let someone ridicule me like that, but I didn't see anything wrong with that. It's not like I wasn't able to cut their jokes if I wanted to. I wasn't a victim of bullying. I would never let someone whom I didn't like to make jokes about me. It was a privilege for the people whom I really liked. And the way that they were making jokes usually showed how much they knew me, which I was finding really pleasing. They were appreciating my openness and sense of humour and I was happy to be a source of entertainment for them.

I have also always loved to be manipulated. And again, it's not like I couldn't prevent it from happening. I usually knew perfectly what the other person was doing and I could stop it if I wanted to. But I didn’t because I preferred to enjoy their craftsmanship. I let them lead me wherever they wanted to lead me because I appreciated their effort. They were having fun with steering my mind where they wanted it to go and I was having fun being steered. I was glad to be able to give them pleasure like that.

These situations repeat themselves in kink. I like when my partners are mean to me or when they ridicule me. I like when they make the most painful jokes about me. I also love when people are manipulating me in play. When they send my mind in different directions while preparing a trap exactly where I least expect it. I appreciate their wit when they are doing so. I appreciate when they show that they know how to control my thoughts and when they know where to strike to hit me the hardest.

And I am happy to be the person for which they don’t need to censor themselves. There is something appealing in being mean to others and in using others. There is an undeniable joy in malice and in having power over someone. I like to be the source of that joy. I like to provide my partners with this kind of entertainment. And isn’t that what toys are for? For letting other people simulate situations that they would enjoy in real life, but which for some reason are not available to them? And, of course, for entertainment?

I want to have the attention of the other

I think that one of the main reasons why I enjoy all of it being done to me is that it gives me the attention of the other. And what does the toy want more than attention? Its only use is being played with, being entertaining to its owners. If it is granted their attention, then it means that it's serving them well because they want to play with it. If they don’t, then it's failing its purpose.

I love the attention. And when you give yourself fully to someone, you do get all their attention. If they want to use you to play their games, to elicit the emotions that they enjoy seeing in people, then they need to learn you. And for that, they need their focus to be on you. And I love that. I love when people are reading me, when they are seeing me and when they are figuring me out.

I think that part of me thinks that the only way in which I deserve the attention is when I am being useful to someone. The only reason why someone would want to see me is that I can serve them in some way. Part of me believes that I need to be pleasurable to the eye and entertaining at all times for others to notice me. That otherwise I am not worth their attention.

It is a part of me that now fuels my play. And I kind of love it, as it lets me have tremendously intense dynamics with people. I feel like I am in a way channelling my insecurities and my inner pleaser into play. And it allows me to partly eliminate it from other parts of my life. In play, I bring it to such an extreme that I start to see better how ridiculous it is to think that way in general. Also, having time for honest aftercare, when you hear from your partners how they value you for who you are is great for silencing the insecurities. But still, I wouldn't want my attention-seeking, pleasing self to go away entirely. In the end, it is the foundation of my toyness.

I want to see what they do with me, once they realize they can use me as they please

I'm so eager to be played with that I make it extremely easy to engage in play with me. I don't want to make it difficult. I don't want to be conquered and for my submission to be earned. I enjoy submitting way too much. I yearn to be in that space. I want the dominant to take me, to ‘have’ me. That's where the fun starts. I want to see what they are going to do with me. How are they going to use this toy that dropped so eagerly into their hands?

I used to be worried that maybe it's boring. Maybe dominants enjoy the struggle? Maybe they enjoy conquering the submissive, maybe they enjoy making him or her submit?

I don't think so anymore. It's not like the way I am is worse or better. It's just different. For me, the fun is not in having the power being taken away from me. I'm usually handing it over willingly. For me, the fun is in seeing and experiencing what the dominant decides to do with that power. In having a peek into his or her twisted mind. Is he or she thinking what I am thinking? Knowing that I will be willing to do most of the things that they might be fantasizing about, which of them will they decide to put into reality? And how will it affect me?

I want to be used and disregarded

I am not very specific in terms of play that I enjoy doing. Or maybe I should put it differently. I don't pay too much attention to my preferences when it comes to play. There are things that I do like, like rope bondage or being manhandled or knife play. But even apart from these, I can find pleasure in almost anything. Because what I value more than my own enjoyment is being used for the enjoyment of the other. And if it so happens that what they enjoy is not necessarily into my liking, that is even better. I want them to do it anyway because it is not me and my preferences, which are important in this game. I am just an object for them to entertain themselves with.

I love for my needs to be disregarded, not taken into account. I love when the dominant uses me for his or her pleasure. As a Toy, I don't think that my needs should be considered. Ideally, I should not have any needs. I do, though. I could see it as a flaw, but I don’t because I think that it makes it all the more fun for the dominant. As long as he or she enjoys objectifying and emotionally torturing other people. And those are the people who I am usually used by.

I could enjoy the things that are done to me just because the dominant is enjoying them. I believe that some submissives have that. Feeling pleasure from the fact that you are pleasing your dominant. I usually don't. I can be pleased after the scene if I was able to provide them with entertainment but I don’t feel pleasure during the scene because of the fact that the dominant is enjoying themselves. During the scene my discomfort and distress are real. I truly don’t enjoy the things they do to me. Which gives me all the more pleasure afterwards when I contemplate what they did. And which makes me fun to play with for emotional sadists. Because what fun it is to torture people when they find pleasure in what is being done to them?

I want to be a source of entertainment

I’ve mentioned it before and it is a bit tied with wanting the attention, but I feel like it deserves a separate line of thought. Because the thing is that I feel like in order to be able to deserve the attention, I need to be entertaining to others. And what kinds of Toys are the most entertaining? Interactive ones, I figured.

So I am very responsive in play. I react to everything that the other person is doing to me. They provide action and I am giving them the reaction. As I’ve said, I want people to read me, but at the same time I so much want to be played with that I don’t want that reading to be too much of an effort for them. I want the process of reading me to be fun because I am worried that otherwise, they will get bored before they get to the bottom of it. So I want to make it fun from the start, but at the same time to let them know that there is much more to be discovered.

I guess that if I would be a toy sold in a shop, the label on my packaging would read something like:

“This Toy is entertaining, but complex. It has many layers. Peeling off each one of them is a pleasure in itself, but it also leads to something even more enjoyable and even more intricate. So keep discovering it.”

I like to play with people, who enjoy that complexity. If someone gets satisfied after the first layer, I am kind of disappointed. I feel like screaming, “But there is so much more to me than this, don’t you want to play more?”

I like curious people. The ones who are able to discover many of my uses. The ones who are inventive. Because the thing is that even I don’t know all of my uses. When people play with me, I am playing right by their side. Peeking from behind their shoulder at my own reactions. And I am equally fascinated by them as they are.

I want to be used by many

I am not a kind of submissive that devotes herself to one person only. At least not to the best of my knowledge. I can be extremely devoted to one person at the moment, but I feel like I wouldn’t want to play exclusively with one person until the rest of my life. As an object of pleasure, I want to be enjoyed by many. I want to see what each person would do with the possibilities that I have to offer.

I am not saying that I wouldn’t like to be a beloved Toy of one very special person. But people rent their toys, even the beloved ones, to very special friends from time to time. If they are fun, then it is a shame to play with them all alone and not share with others.

Another thing that I discovered recently is that my need to please and entertain is not limited to the people that I feel submissive towards. I want everyone who plays with me to have fun. I will try to do what pleases them, just so that they are having a good time. I will let sadists hurt me because they enjoy giving pain. I will be sensual with people who enjoy sensuality. I will do as I am told by dominants because I want them to keep playing with me, even if they are not my dominant and I don’t really feel submissive towards them.

My draft definition

I think that the love for being treated like an object, combined with a need for being given attention and to be interacted with are very toy-like properties. Add to it the feeling that my purpose is to be entertaining and the extent to which I am willing to go to provide this entertainment, together with being open to being used by many and I feel like some sort of defining traits start to clarify.

I feel like all my other kinky traits revolve around being a Toy. Both my submissiveness and my masochism are flavoured by my toyness. My submission is very use-oriented and interactive. My masochism presents itself only when I can see that the other person enjoys seeing me enjoying the pain. But the Toy is always there and it is overarching everything else.

Finally, I don’t think that the things that I wrote about are all there is to it. But it is a good start. And I will keep digging until I define this elusive identity of mine.

The safewords I use and love

I must admit, I used to not be very good with using safewords. I would always establish them before play, but never actually use them.

My first kinky boyfriend was a bit worried about it. We used ‘apple’ as a safeword. Well, ‘used’ is a big word. We picked it to be our safeword, but I never actually got around using it. At some point, he just told me that he is going to continue torturing me until I say it because he wants to make sure that I am actually capable of doing it. It worked. For the first time, I used it. Part of the reason being the fact that I knew that he wants me to say it, so I felt compelled to do so in that situation. I am not sure what it proved though, it's overall usefulness or just my willingness to please.

I then moved to use ‘red, orange, green’ with my subsequent dominants and play partners. Still without much success. Especially when doing mind play (being tortured psychologically and/or emotionally), it was really hard for me to get myself to use those words. Somehow my mind space was not allowing me to get to say them. We’ve never gone too far, but I am pretty sure that if we would, I would most probably not call ‘red’.

One of the reasons why I almost never safeword is that when I really want to please my dominant, I can go really far. If I am really submissive towards someone, my trust in them goes very deeply. I trust that they know better than I do, what I can take. If they trust that I can take it, then I make myself believe that I can as well. And so far I could. But I am sure that there will be a point when I will need to protect us from going too far. And for that, I need to make sure that I will have the means to do so.

Another reason why I started to feel more need to find some safewords that actually work for me, is that I started to have more extreme scenes with people that I am not feeling particularly submissive towards. I sometimes play with sadistic friends, who can fuck me up pretty badly, both physically and mentally, but with whom my tolerance for how far I can go is much lower. Therefore, with them, a way to communicate my limits during the scene is even more vital. And calling ‘red, orange, green’ does not feel like a viable option.

It looks like I’ve finally found my alternatives.

Mercy

The moment I’ve read about someone using this word instead of ‘orange’ to indicate that the top needs to slow down but not end the scene, I fell in love with it.

The reason why ‘apple’ or ‘red, orange, green’ didn’t work for me, was that they felt very intrusive for the scene. I am a sucker for the atmosphere. I value the psychological effects of play above anything else. I want it to feel as real and as convincing as possible. And I feel that when I say ‘orange’ in the middle of the scene, it breaks the atmosphere. And even though it is not an indication that I want the scene to be over, it is kind of what it does to it. Because to get myself to spell out one of these random words, I need to get out of the headspace. They simply don’t belong in the vocabulary of a scene. So in order to get myself to say them, my mind needs to get out of play mode. I hate it and that is why I would rather suffer in silence, maybe a bit more than I am able to at the moment, then break the atmosphere altogether. I know, not the wisest thing to do, but I've told you, I am a sucker for the atmosphere and I will push myself to the limit sometimes in order to preserve it.

‘Mercy’ on the other hand is perfect. It fits perfectly within the realms of the scene and it is exactly what you want at the moment when you would say ‘orange’. You want mercy. You want the top(s) to give you a bit of a break. At the same time, 'mercy' is not one of the most usual things to say when someone is hurting you physically or mentally. In such circumstances, the first words that come to my mind are ‘no’, ‘please’ and ‘stop’, which I use very often during the scene and I love them to be ignored. I wouldn't want to make them one of my safewords, because I use them way too naturally and without thinking. 'Mercy' on the other hand is not something that I would say instinctively. And that is exactly why I love it so much. It lets me beg using my usual repertoire when I want to beg and not be listened to, and it gives me the power to ask for being listened to, when I feel like I need to, without breaking the flow of the scene.

I can’t take it anymore

This one I've discovered lately just because I used it a couple of times to end a scene without even being conscious of it. I negotiated with my partners that I will use ‘red’ to end the scene if I need to. But I also indicated that I might communicate a willingness to end in a different way and that it is usually clear when that happens because my in-scene communication skills are pretty good and it is easy to read me when I want things to end. I didn’t give them the proper ‘spell’ though, more of a ‘you will know it, when you see it’, which obviously is not ideal when you are a top.

They trusted me with it and it worked well. They could read my willingness to end without me having to 'red' the scene. And then after a couple of scenes, I realized that what I’ve been saying when I really wanted things to end was always the same sentence, 'I can't take it anymore'. And it works for a couple of reasons.

It communicates what it is supposed to communicate in plain English. It is a full concise sentence, so I wouldn’t just mutter it as a way of relief, like ‘please’ or ‘no’. I need to make a conscious effort in order to say it. Finally, it is exactly what is in my mind, when I feel like the scene needs to end.

At the same time, it keeps the atmosphere until the very end. It fits within the scene and it ends it is a non-invasive way. I use it as an indication that the top(s) need to end soon. I don’t want them to stop abruptly though. I indicate that we need to get towards the end, but they have space to wind everything down. And I feel like communicating it using this sentence lets us do so because it keeps the flow going.

Really

This is my latest revelation. My, as one of my friends and play partners called it, out-of-the-scene modifier. It basically means that any word that I add it to, should be taken out of the scene and treated like I mean it.

For example, if I say ‘stop’, I just beg as a way to relieve the tension, but I don’t expect to be listened to. But when I say ‘stop, really’, it means that I seriously want this person to stop and I probably didn’t have enough brainpower to come up with anything more coherent. If I say ‘I really can’t take it anymore’, that means that we need to stop the scene right now. That I don’t want us to wind down anything slowly. I really want to stop.

It can be very useful because sometimes I don't have the capacity to use the safewords that we agreed to. When in the headspace, my brain sometimes doesn't function as planned. At some point 'no', 'please' and 'stop' might actually be what I really want the person to do. If they get ignored, adding a 'really' to them is a very natural thing for me to do. It lets me communicate that this time I mean what I am saying and that I want to be taken seriously. And it is something that I would say without even thinking about it.

So I've finally found safewords that work for me. And I know they do because I actually used them a couple of times. These are the words that let me communicate what I want to communicate without having to get out of the headspace in order to do that. And I really love them.

I love the fact that I found something that works for me and makes me feel safer because I know that I will actually use it. And that I do not feel anymore like I need to sacrifice the quality of the scene in order to make it safe (which I sometimes might be reluctant to do, I know, that is not smart, but I know myself longer than today and it does happen).

I am not saying that well-known ‘red, orange, green’ or any other words are worse than what I listed above. Anything that works is just perfect. I know that for me they didn't work and that is why I am sharing what I've found to be working. Maybe it will help someone, who is struggling with the same issues as I did. Or at least I can use it as another must-read material for people who would like to play with me in the future.

This time of the year when you are reminded once again very acutely how far from ordinary your life is

So it came again. This time of the year, when you meet with your colleagues and their partners for a Christmas dinner and you realize that you are never going to achieve their level of normalcy (which you usually don’t aspire to, but being so acutely aware of your distance from it makes you slightly uncomfortable and feeling out if place).

This time when people ask you to summarize your year and tell them what the highlights were and all you can think of is how your dominant made you believe that he is a psychopath and you feared for your life or how you were hypnotized into a rag doll and fucked mercilessly while being half-conscious and helpless. Or how you were tortured and humiliated in rope in front of forty people and how afterwards everyone was telling you that it is was beautiful.

It is this time of the year when the frequency of biting your tongue, awkward silences and coming up with the worst possible lies is at its year-high.

Will there ever be a time when I can stop hiding my personality from the world?

Both kink and polyamory have grown to shape a big part of who I am. It happened organically and it has changed me on many levels. I really love how I've developed in the past two years and I would love to be able to share it with others. Unfortunately, sometimes it is not the best idea.

In general, people talk about relationships frequently, which makes hiding polyamory quite complicated. Because if I want to talk about my relationships, I either have to lie or I need to explain myself. Becoming polyamorous changed the way that I look at relationships and love in general. It made me both more connected and more self-sufficient at the same time. It made me question the status quo in many other aspects of life, also outside of romantic relationships. On the one hand, I would like to share it with other people, because I feel like otherwise, I am not myself with them. I am putting on a facade that is socially accepted, but it is not who I am. I am also not able to talk about all the important people in my life without lying who they are to me. But on the other hand, I know that my choices are not standard and if I share them, I will have to go through a process of explaining them as well. And not everyone that I interact with is worth going through it. Also, not everyone that I share it with will approve of it. I might turn some people against me. In terms of friendships, it is perfectly fine for me to lose people in my life if they can’t accept my choices. But when it comes to career or family, things get more complicated.

As for kink, one could say that not talking about it shouldn't be such a problem, as people usually don't share with others what they do in their bedrooms. That’s true, they don’t, but kink and D/s are way more than just sex for me. It's a way of life. It's a certain attitude and it permeates all aspects of my life. Accepting the fact that I am submissive, learning about my reactions to dominant people and playing with people, in general, taught me so much that I feel like I am putting on a very thick mask when I decide not to share those experiences. The play that I do requires constant self-analysis and work on myself, which often leads to enlightening discoveries. When I am around vanilla people, I need to police myself a lot not to share certain thoughts and insights, because I don’t want to be asked where I got them from. I need to shut off a big part of my life, lie about my free time activities and where I’ve met many of my friends and partners.

The alternative is even more complicated though because kink is so misunderstood in the society that sharing about it can potentially be dangerous, even leading to losing my career or the people that I love.
For me being open and true to myself is one of the most important values. But by being honest about kink and polyamory, I put myself in the spotlight. I give myself a label. Because once I share it, it is going to be one of the main things that people will remember me from. And they are going to ask me about it and I will have to explain it to them in the best way possible because it might be the only insight that they get into polyamory or kink and I don’t want to create a wrong image. The sheer fact that I’ve made many non-standard choices in my life creates a dilemma where I either have to be dishonest or serve as an example and an advocate of the choices that I’ve made. And sometimes I feel like I just want to live my life.

Will there ever be a time when I can proudly talk about how I express myself creatively?

I am a data scientist and I have an analytical mind, but I’ve always loved art. And I’ve been looking for ways to express myself artistically since I remember. I’ve tried playing the piano, singing, cooking, dancing and writing. Without greater success. Argentine tango was giving me some sort of satisfaction, but it was far from fulfilment.

Last year I finally found an activity that does make me feel like I am really creating some sort of art. It is rope bondage. And maybe writing about kink a little bit, but I don’t feel good enough in it to really be proud of it. In any case, I would love to be able to talk about these subjects. I used to feel kind of inferior towards people who I thought were creative, because I felt like they have something that I don’t. But at the same time, I’ve always found them fascinating and I was looking for their company. Thanks to rope and kink I feel like I also have something to say in terms of creativity and I would love to be able to share it with people whom I admire. Unfortunately, it is not always a good idea.

Last week during a Christmas dinner I’ve been talking to the husband of my manager (whom I find extremely interesting, very intelligent and well educated with a successful career in business, who happens to also be a recognized photographer with a number of exhibitions in galleries and so on). Before dinner we visited a photography exhibition and we had a talk about it afterwards. Then he asked me if I do anything to express myself artistically. That was a difficult moment for me. I really value his opinion and I wanted to impress him. I was so tempted to tell him that I am a Japanese rope bondage model and that I love it. That I feel like rope exposes some aspects of myself that are really at the core of who I am. That I think that I can really touch people with what I do. And that I really am starting to feel like I have something to say in it. That I understand what it means to create. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t because then I would have to explain to him what it is and where it comes from. And I would probably have to admit that I am kinky.
For me, rope is so much more than kink. It really allows me to express myself in ways that I didn’t know were possible. It is a beautiful art that I find utterly fascinating. Practising it is a big part of my life and I love to talk about it. Unfortunately, the only people that I can freely talk about it with are kinky people. With all the other people I need to remember that sharing about it equals coming out. And there are some people with whom coming out might be a really big deal and not in a good way.

Is staying in hiding really a good idea if I want something to change?

I keep asking myself this question. If I and fellow kinksters and polyamorous people keep staying in hiding, will anything ever change? Will public opinion about what we do ever change, if we don’t share about what we do? I hate the fact that I need to hide a big part of myself in most of my everyday interactions. That I always need to weigh my options carefully before I decide whether I can be completely transparent with someone. I hate putting on masks.

I feel like if I want something to change and if I want people to understand polyamory and kink, I should talk about it. By keeping it in hiding, I keep behaving like there is something wrong with what I am doing. And I definitely don’t think there is.

But… Sharing about it is an act of courage that is hard sometimes. People often feel threatened when they hear about other people being different than them. They don’t like them. And we are dependent on other people in our lives. We live in a society. We work for other people. We manage and are managed by other people. And if we want to be successful in a society, we need to make other people feel comfortable around us. We need them to like and respect us. And if we seem too different, they won’t.

So I am still doubting whether I want to be open about my choices or not. On the one hand, I feel like I should, not only because it makes me uncomfortable to pretend someone that I am not, but more because I feel like being open is the right thing to do if I want anything to change in the way that society views kink and polyamory. On the other hand, though, I don’t want to risk being pushed to the margins of the society and losing a chance for a successful life, because I’ve been too honest with the wrong people. Honesty makes you vulnerable and your vulnerability might be abused by some.

I am not sure if I am ready to pick up this fight. I am not sure if my position is strong enough to hold the weight of judgement that will come with coming out. I try to be honest about it with the people whom I trust, but I feel like that it is not enough. It’s easy, to be honest with people who you know will support and understand you. Or at least will try to understand. But I feel like I am not ready to be fully transparent yet. Especially not about kink. I feel like I am not ready to make most of my social interactions about defending my choices.

So I guess that I will have to still suffer through that period of lying and wearing thick masks to pretend that I am just like everybody else. It is saddening that it feels like I need to shield other people from who I am. It is saddening that I feel like I am not strong enough to be fully open about who I am. I hope that one day I will. I feel like I owe it to myself. But this time has not come yet.

There is duality to me that I can’t quite explain

I've been participating in quite a lot of intense scenes lately. Actually, it's hard for me to recall a scene that I took part in and that wasn't intense in some way. Most of the time I am loving it. I love to scream and beg and cry and moan. Especially with a small crowd of spectators around. Only until I don't.

There is this part of me that wants always to be the loudest, the most sexual and the most intense player. And that utterly enjoys being teased and listening to comments of others about it. But there is also this other part that wants it to stop. The part that wants to just blend in and stop drawing attention. The part that wants some quiet space. I'm usually not listening to it because I think it's weak and boring. And I can't accept myself being either. They don't fit into the stories that I tell myself about who I am.

I've recently grown to realize that being a masochist is such an integral part of my personality that it penetrates every aspect of my life. It's funny because a year ago I wasn’t even aware that I enjoy pain so much and right now I identify myself with the masochist label more than any other in kink. Although I embrace it fully, taking pleasure in acting against yourself can sometimes make things difficult. Especially, when you're trying to grow to become a healthy, independent and loving yourself individual.

Like that time when I was my partner playing with someone else the entire evening without giving me any attention. Instead of doing what a healthy loving person would do, communicating about how I felt and finding a solution that would work for us, I decided to silently go on a rampage. Throughout the evening I participated in one intense scene after another, interlaced with emotionally distancing myself from everyone else and telling myself how unloved, unimportant and useless I am to him. Doesn't sound like a good idea, does it? But a part of me was sure as hell enjoying it.

Or when I pack my agenda with work, tying, dancing, dating, meeting friends, travelling, learning and one hundred other activities to the point where I have literally no time for myself. And I continue doing so until I snap and get sick and just need to get rest, because otherwise I will not be able to function efficiently again. A rational and self-caring human being would rest at least one day a week in order to regenerate and take care of their needs. But not me. I enjoy pushing myself to the edge and over it way too much to spoil it with self-care.

There are also situations, when being a masochist helps. It helped me achieve many goals and push myself far out of my comfort zone. When there is something difficult ahead of me, an exam, a job change, moving to another country, going to therapy, I jump right in, because I know that suffering is waiting for me there. It makes challenges easier to endure, not only because of the improvements that they bring me, but also because of the pain that I experience on the way.

I might be wrong, but I have a feeling that the duality that I mentioned earlier is an inevitable part of being a masochist. When you crave pain, you want something that rationally thinking you shouldn't. So you are experiencing simultaneously dual needs of wanting the pain to continue and to stop at the same time. It's similar with the humiliation play, which I see basically as intense emotional masochism. When you are degraded by someone you love, you actually do want him to stop, say that it's all a lie and that he loves you. But you also want him to keep going and make it feel real, to convince you that you're worthless to him, because that's what gives you pleasure. All these contradictory feelings make me question my sanity at times. While in play it's hot and it's exactly what I want. In real life it's often something that I would rather avoid. But I don’t always can.

So I guess what I'm trying to tell myself is that it's OK to be this dual person who wants two opposite things at the same time. Who wants both to be loud and watched and for everyone to turn their heads away and not pay attention. This person who wants to be loved and cared for but also put down and ignored. This person who is unapologetic and free in expressing herself and at the same time takes other people's opinions way too seriously. Because no matter how irrational and impossible it seems, this is me. And if there is one thing I know, is that logic is not something that my feelings have heard of. And I think they should stay that way.

My kinky play rule book

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my approach to kinky play and risks related to it. And out of all that thinking I decided that it will be good to put my thoughts on paper, both to make them more concrete, but also out of laziness. Now I can just make people read it before we go into any discussions about kink, play, consent etc.

I take the responsibility

Sex is a risky business. Kinky play especially. When I engage in it with another person (or people) I assume that we are all aware of the risks that we are taking and that we are equally responsible for managing them. That means that I am responsible for making sure that my partner is not getting hurt but also for taking care of myself and I expect the same of my partner. I want my tops to feel safe to hurt me. Even though it is the dominant who decides how the scene evolves, I definitely don’t feel like I have no influence over it. First of all, it is my choice how I respond to his/her actions. Through non-verbal (preferred way for me during play) communication I can channel the effects that their actions have on me. Plus I always have the right to stop them. I find it empowering and psychologically healthy to think this way. As this and many other research works suggest, feeling in control over what is happening in one’s life (including sexual life) is a key to one’s mental health. It might not sound very 'subby'. But for me taking the responsibility does not mean that I stay in control of the situation. Sometimes I do want to feel like I have lost all control and all the power is in hands of the dominant. I realize, though, that the result of this dynamic might be that we go too far and I get hurt and I am ready to deal with the consequences.

I take equal share in risk and reward

There is this theory in the economy saying that there is ‘no free lunch’, meaning that there is no return without a risk. And the higher the return, the higher the risk. Implicitly then, if we make the tops run more risk (in terms of the responsibility for hurting the other person), we also imply that they are more rewarded than the bottoms are. This creates a power imbalance that I don’t find fair. I don’t feel like a top gains more from hurting or using me than I get from being hurt and used by him. We want opposite but complimentary things that give us both pleasure. Even though I am offering myself to the other person, it is not a sacrifice. It is fulfilling my own deep need to serve and please. Recognizing and acknowledging it brings balance to the equation. We both get our kinky needs fulfilled by playing a risky game of hurting/getting hurt. And since it is risky, it might sometimes turn out not the way we wanted. I appreciate the risk that the top is taking by making me suffer. The same way as they appreciate the risk that I am taking by going through the suffering.

I play with people who listen

I chose carefully the people who I play with. That does not necessarily mean that I get to know them very well before I engage into something sensual with them. In the end I like the thrill of getting to know a person spontaneously through play. But I do try to assess if I trust that they are going to listen when I communicate that something needs to stop. Are they empathetic and open? Or self-centered and biased? The latter is a no-go, no matter how popular or skilled they are. I trust my intuition about people. And if I have doubts, I wait to get to know them better before going further. I am especially careful when I play with people who are in a way famous. In a small and relatively closed community like kink (and especially rope) community, the popular people are quite accessible for play. Because of the sort of power that they seem to have, it might be harder to say 'no' to them. I try to be aware of that and pay close attention to my intentions. Am I really interested in them as people or just in their skills? For experienced people it might be easier to put you in a certain 'high' state when it is hard to make rational decisions. So basically I run more risk of being manipulated for a higher reward of going through amazing emotions. I am ready to take it but try to be aware of the risks involved and also my own motivations. I do realize that I might miscalculate sometime how well intended someone is, especially with someone that I don’t know that well. It is the risk that I am ready to take in return for the excitement of intense play with a new person. If I do it though, I try to limit myself to the people who belong to one of my circles.

I treat bad experiences as learning points, not breaking points

For a while already I had a view on female sexuality that this article helped me put into words. It might sound harsh, but I think that women tend to be oversensitive about their sexual experiences. We are taught that we should be careful and guard our sexuality from predators lurking everywhere. We should spare ourselves and only get intimate with men who really ‘deserve’ it. I think that it is bullshit. I don’t think my sexuality is in any way more sacred and special than male sexuality. I love sex and I love exploring all its different facets. It takes a lot of trial and error, though, to find out what really gets you. Especially in kink. And that inevitably involves a lot of awkward and uncomfortable moments. Accidents happen when you get intimate with other people. In the heat of the moment someone might kiss you unexpectedly or touch you in a place where you didn’t want to be touched. As long as you communicate clearly that you want them to stop and they do that, I think that it is ok. I try to not get too upset when something goes wrong. Sure, I might have gotten uncomfortable, but it is ok to get uncomfortable from time to time. I try to analyse it and see where it went wrong. Was there something that I might have done better? Was I aware of and communicating my emotions? And do I want to try it again? Sometimes things don’t work because it wasn’t the right person/situation/mindset. And sometimes they are just not for me. It is good to distinguish between those.

I guess that some people would call my approach to kink RACK or PRICK. I do not really care that much about labels. I know that so far it worked for me and made me feel safe and in control.