Mindsets in which I love to receive pain

I think that I am a weird masochist. If I can be called one at all (to hell with the labels anyway).

I haven’t always been like that. In general, what I like a function of what my partners enjoy. Recently, however, I began to realize that I do also have my own taste for certain things.

My first kinky experience was quite painful and violent and the fact that I enjoyed it left me deeply disturbed and confused (a ‘decent’ girl should not enjoy being spanked and fucked until her ass turns completely blue and she can’t sit for a week). Then, my first dominant boyfriend was all about humiliation and degradation and we didn’t explore physical pain much. I didn’t feel the need to, either. Enough was going on already. After that, I entered the kink scene and that was the first time when someone pointed out to me that I am masochistic. And it was true, I enjoyed physical pain enormously at that point in time. It was a way of easy release and achieving the intensity that I craved for without investing much emotionally.

That fountain dried up for me though when I started discovering how much pleasure emotional suffering gives me. When I realized the depth, complexity, intensity and ease with which the emotional pain can be given to me by some people, my interest in physical pain deteriorated significantly. I even felt like I am not masochistic anymore. A bruised butt or other parts of my body lost their appeal to me. A bruised soul was what I was looking for.

Recently, I began to appreciate physical pain again, only not in the way that I used to. I am not so much interested in the pure sensual experience of pain anymore, but what its combination with emotional suffering can bring. The circumstances that I enjoy when being hurt are the ones that take away any possible physical pleasure that I could be experiencing from it. They take away the context of pain being a different tool of giving pleasure to a masochist and interchange it with actually being physically and mentally hurt.

Being an object

Receiving pain when you are objectified has a special flavour to it because you can be sure that it is not about you. There are coldness and carelessness to it. You're hurting, but it's not relevant. You could as well not be. Your pain doesn't matter. You're just a toy and you're used for someone's amusement, but your pain is not part of the amusement. It is just your body that is being used for someone else's purposes as if you were a puppet. And if it hurts then too bad for you. Do puppets even feel anyways?

Somehow I love this state because it makes me let go of my own experiences. Let go of myself. Yes, I am being hurt and yes I am in pain, but there is no way to prevent it, as the person who is hurting me doesn't even seem to see what I am experiencing. So better stop fighting against it and just accept it.

I love the mental challenge that accepting it requires of me. Since I don't have the usual supporting power of doing it for my partner to help me go through it, I really have to use all my resources to carry on. Being able to cope with pain like that is a very powerful experience.

A punishment

Punishment is another situation in which pain is not pleasurable to me. The same strokes of the whip can feel very different when they're purely sadistic entertainment and when they are a source of punishment.
When I'm being punished, my head automatically tries to help the person who is punishing me by putting me in a mindset of atonement, making everything more painful and reminding me with every stroke that what I am currently experiencing is an expression of someone's disappointment. And being a disappointment is one of the worst crimes in my eyes.

Since I always want to please, being punished is a painful experience in itself for me. Adding pain to it only intensifies it. That's because at that moment all I dream of is being forgiven and embraced and told that everything is fine and they're not going to leave me behind because of what I did. Receiving pain, when you're waiting to be told that everything is going to be ok, can be quite devastating.

Being not cared about

Pain can also be an expression of someone not caring about me. And I love to feel not being cared about. There are little things hurt more than that.

Being objectified can also be a sign of not caring, but that's not what I'm talking about here. Here, I want my partners to see and recognize what I feel, but not care about it. For example, when they beat me way harder than I might find enjoyable, just because they feel like it, knowing that they are causing me a lot of pain and showing me that their entertainment is more important than my suffering. Again, it's a sign that what they're doing to me is not about me, which is exactly what I want.

Outside of kink the fact that someone gives another pain is often a sign of them not caring about the other person unless it is a necessary evil for your own good. Within the realm of kink, this reasoning is twisted as giving pain to a masochist can actually be a sign of love, of recognizing and catering to someone's needs. But since for me, the last thing that I want from my partners is for my needs to be recognized and catered for (at least in play), I often bring myself to the 'real world' mindset, where I don't want to experience pain and the fact that they are still giving it to me is a sign of not caring, of doing what they want without considering how I feel about it. At least, I want to believe that this is the case.

Being a recipient of anger

Being hurt by someone who appears to be angry is yet another flavour that I love. It makes one feel so panicky and abused. There is some carelessness there, but it's mixed with fear and violence. They might be careless, but not because they don't care whether they hurt you or how you feel. Here they actually actively want to hurt you. Their carelessness comes from a deliberate loss of control (or at least it looks like it).

I love how terrified it makes me feel to think that not only am I out of control but my torturer as well. It gives me a feeling of being in the power of an uncontrolled natural force, unstoppable and deadly. It awakens lots of primal fears and makes me freeze with terror.

An additional aspect is added to it if the person who is angry and violent with me is someone who I care about. Someone who I wish would be kind and loving but instead is using me as their punching bag. It makes me feel lost, confused, and hurt, and wishing it all to stop. It gives me a feeling of betrayal because I thought that I knew them but I find out that they are not who I thought they were (especially when it's something unexpected and played really well).

Humiliation

Physical pain can also be a great tool for humiliation. In general, if you are equal to someone, they will not cross the boundary of physically hurting you (in normal circumstances I mean, not in kink). If someone feels entitled to hurt you and you let them do that, it might be a sign of lowering your status. Especially if it is done in a humiliating way.

To me for example, being spanked with a bare hand or beaten with a belt is somewhat humiliating, as it makes me feel like an insubordinate child. In such a case, the humiliation is often bigger than the pain. Especially if other people are watching it. Having my nipples twisted is also often an act of humiliation to me. It makes me feel so vulnerable and exposed. Another obvious painful form of humiliation is face slapping.

I love the combination of pain and humiliation because the pain somewhat intensifies the humiliation (and to me usually is absorbed by it). It always makes me think about the fact that I am so subdued to the person doing it that I'll allow them to do anything to me. I'll go as low as they want me to. Pain makes me realize that and at the same time makes me feel more helpless in it.

Denial of loving touch

This is a circumstance that I love to go to in my head. Even a slight sign of denial (conscious one and not because of carelessness) of touch or softness makes my mind tremble from a feeling of lack. I start to desperately want what I can't get. Longing for the thing that they're denying me more and more, showing them how much I want it. And giving them more opportunities to deny it even more painfully.

And when someone makes you hungry for their kindness and care and love and then feed you with pain… It hurts. On so many levels. When you long for their touch and the only touch you get is mixed with pain. It makes you so confused and helpless and trapped. You become their prisoner. You begin to long for the pain that they are giving you because it's the only way that you can be close to them. And despite the hurt, you want to be close to them. It is so tragically romantic that I can't get enough of it.

Bein in someone else’s control

Finally, I love when someone is using pain to show me how much I am under their control. Not as a tool of gaining control (in general when I play with people I am under their control already), but rather of executing it. Of showing me how much they can do to me and that I am not going to stop them.

I am not a fighting kind of person, you don't need to use force to overpower me. If I'm there playing with you, I'm already yours. The fact that even though that is the case, you will still hurt me just because you can, makes me truly feel the power that you have over me. It makes me realize that you know exactly how much I have given up and that you are going to use it.

It's both exciting and terrifying. On the one hand, you're fulfilling my desires. Being entirely under the control of someone else is one of the states that I long for. On the other hand though, knowing how much I'm letting my guard down and seeing someone who might actually use it to the limit is scary. Can I really take as much as I think I can?

Being hurt by someone who has complete power over me is so thrilling, again, because the pain that they are giving me is not about me. They are hurting me because that's the experience that they want to give me. And I know that because it's for them, I will suck it up and go way further than I find pleasurable. I won't say stop when it gets hard to take. I will let them bring me just on the brink of breaking. And that's the place where I love to be.

So I guess that what I actually want is to be hurt in a way that my partners want to hurt me and not on my terms. I don't want them to use the pain for my pleasure. I want them to really use it to hurt me. I can also recognize how much physical pain can enhance and alter emotional suffering. How it can add to the intensity and bring me to a state of terror or nervous breakdown that is hard to achieve otherwise.

So please, do hurt me. Use the pain against me. Just don't make me feel for a moment that what you are doing is about me.

My reflections after reading ‘Story of O’

This writing contains spoilers.

It’s way too late for me to read this book only now, but better later than never, I guess. It is such a deep account of a mind of a woman who gives herself entirely to someone else and it stirred up so much in me that I just had to collect my thoughts together after reading.

My dark side is darker than I thought

First of all, reading this book made me realize that I might be even more fucked up than I thought I am. Because no matter how much I don’t want to admit it, there is a part of me that truly envies O. And it’s not naive childish envy without realizing the consequences. I think that by now I can have quite a good feeling of what being in her place would entail. And I still kind of want it. Not just the sex and the pain and the loss of control over your body. I want her brokenness and her despair. I want her transformation and the total loss of dignity. I want the disintegration of her ego in the name of the man who owns her.

And believe me or not, but writing about it is really scary. It’s scary because it reveals my darkest side which existence I don't necessarily want to admit to. In the same way, as dominants are sometimes afraid of the darkness that lies within them and that revealing it to other people will cause losing them, I am also afraid of revealing my darkest desires. At the same time I feel like if I don’t, they will only grow until they really get out of control.

Because I think that as much as it is scary for a submissive to play with someone who has a really dark side that they must keep at bay or otherwise things will go really wrong, it is as scary for a dominant to play with a submissive who has such dark side. In a different way of course. Because the dominant knowing it about me will not be afraid of me hurting him irreversibly. He will be afraid of him doing it to me and me not telling him when to stop. And there is a part of me that will not want to stop.

I realize that being in such an intense dynamic as O would basically fuck up my life. I realize that I would lose my identity. Because it is not possible to be exposed to such extreme situations of mental degradation and humiliation, to be stripped away of any control over what is happening with you and your body and get out of it unscathed. It would break me. And exactly that brokenness is what is luring me. Because I am curious what lies beyond that state. Would I be able to build myself up again?

In my teenage years, I loved reading fantasy books, because they were full of stories of people tortured physically and mentally and subsequently broken and becoming pets of their enemies. I devoured those stories. And not because I am a sadist and enjoyed reading about their misery. On the contrary, I enjoyed putting myself in the position of the victims. Imagining me being in their place and experiencing all the humiliation and tortures and slow breaking of my spirit. Watching myself becoming docile and obedient.

The interesting thing is that as much as I enjoyed reading about the breaking, I also very much enjoyed the rebuild. Because in the end, they were always becoming stronger. In the end, they always managed to get free and were starting the slow journey of rebuilding themselves. And after that was done, they were even fiercer and stronger. Because once you lost everything that you thought holds value and you’re still there, your perspective on who you are and what really is worthy, shifts entirely. And I think that that is one of the things that I am really interested in. Would I be able to repair myself after being so broken? And what kind of person would I become after that?

I started to appreciate much more the possibilities that the physical pain gives

My journey into kink started with humiliation, as this was what my first kinky boyfriend was very much into. After him, I quickly moved into the realms of physical pain though. I had a period of being extremely masochistic and looking mostly for physical pain in play. But then, after a while, something shifted in me and my kinks made a full circle back to humiliation, while I stopped enjoying physical pain so much.

I am not sure whether it is my auto-sadistic brain that decided that I will have more fun if I actually don’t enjoy pain, as it will increase my mental suffering, or whether after the first period of hormonal high, I decided that there is not enough depth for me in the physical pain domain, but the fact is that currently, I am in a period of appreciating mental pain much more than physical. More than that, I basically stopped enjoying physical pain altogether. I think that one of the reasons might be also that the people who give me pain nowadays are often the ones with whom I feel very submissive and from whom I wish only tenderness.

Reading ‘Story of O’ I started to see physical pain in a new light again. Not as a source of potential pleasure, but rather as a way to intensify my misery and as a catalyst for a mental breakdown that otherwise would be very difficult to achieve. And that got my attention.

I realized that being physically tortured really does something to you that possibly nothing else can. It makes you docile and obedient. It trains you to accept your faith and it shows you that you don’t matter. Of course, you can possibly achieve the same results with mental abuse, but something tells me (although I can’t explain why) that the results would not be exactly the same. There is something urgent and inevitable in the physical pain that mental abuse does not have. I don’t think that it is only the speed with which it causes the person to break, I think that it is also the way that it makes you break that is very different and quite interesting.

There is also another aspect of corporal torture, and especially the marks that it leaves that 'Story of O' revealed to me thanks to one sentence.

"Sir Stephen readily admitted that O was infinitely more moving when her body was covered with marks, of whatever kind, if only because these marks made it impossible for her to cheat and immediately proclaimed, the moment they were seen, that anything went as far as she was concerned."

I’ve never looked at it this way, but it makes so much sense that the marks are something to be ashamed of (or that one should be ashamed of) because they show that anything goes with me. They prove that you can treat me as badly as you wish and I will let you do that. I was always covering my marks, but more because I didn’t want uncomfortable questions. I’ve never looked at marks though as a source of shame about my lack of dignity, as a sign that I will let others do anything to my body. Now I can see it, though. And it offers lots of new exciting possibilities.

There is definitely something of a slave in me

There are many aspects of being a slave, like O was, that appeal to me. Above all, the lack of control and disregard with which other people are treating you. As a submissive you still have dignity, you belong to your Dom and it is something that you can be proud of. He is proud that you belong to him. You obey his orders, also because you know that he values you and he wants the best for you. He cares about you. Other people see that and respect you for that as well. But the position of a slave as was shown in the book is different. And in a way much more appealing to me.

The thing with me is that I don’t want to be cared about and respected. At least my dark side that I feed during play doesn’t. I want to be truly disregarded. I want to be used. And that is why the situation of O was so alluring for me. Because sir Stephen was truly disposing of her as if she didn’t matter to him. Or else, she did matter to him as your car would matter to you, but he definitely didn’t consider her feelings. They were completely out of the question. To him, she wasn’t a person. And she loved it.

"Would she ever dare to tell him that no pleasure, no joy, no figment of her imagination could ever compete with the happiness she felt at the way he used her with such utter freedom, at the notion that he could do anything with her, that there was no limit, no restriction in the manner with which, on her body, he might search for pleasure. Her absolute certainty that when he touched her, whether it was to fondle or flog her, when he ordered her to do something it was solely because he wanted to, her certainty that all he cared about was his own desire, so overwhelmed and gratified O that each time she saw new proof of it, and often even when it merely occurred to her in thought, a cape of fire, a burning breastplate extending from the shoulders to the knees, descended upon her."

And that’s definitely something that I identify with very strongly. To belong to someone who really uses me for his own pleasure disregarding my feelings completely is the greatest of joys.

I also loved all the small things that Rene and sir Stephen instilled on O to remind her at all times who she really is. How her lips always had to be slightly open, her legs never crossed and her clothes such that they are always easy to take off and have their way with her. I can only imagine how such small things can have a huge impact on one’s psyche. And that was only the beginning.

She had to expose herself whenever sir Stephen ordered her to, no matter who else was in the room. He would make his servant beat her, and give her away to his friends for use any way they wanted. Finally, in the last scene, he put her naked wearing an owl mask in the middle of a party, where people treated her as some weird animal, touching her and looking at her, but not once saying a word to her. She was just put in the middle of a crowd like some sort of cheap entertainment and after that used by the men who brought her there.

All these things are fantasies of mine. To be stripped away of my dignity, slowly broken into obedience, disgraced publicly, given away to anybody like a thing. To be put in a crowd for entertainment and really be treated as such. To be truly disregarded by a mob, have everyone around me treat me without respect. Isn't that how slaves are treated?

The thing about a slave in a D/s sense that doesn’t suit me though is that it seems to me like it is an awful lot of work for the Dominant/Master. Because having someone’s life in your hands is a huge burden in my opinion. Deciding about each aspect of someone else’s existence requires a lot of effort. They consume a lot of your attention. It requires a certain devotion from the owner. And I often feel that I couldn’t ask for that. Because I feel that I wouldn’t want to take so much space in someone else’s life. I am not sure if it is because of my tendency to be independent and to make my needs as small as possible or because I wouldn't trust my life to anyone to such a degree. But it's a reason why I don’t see myself as someone’s slave.

What I do see myself as is a toy. Their’s to play with whenever they please, in whatever way they please, and independent and self-sufficient whenever they get busy with their lives. Of course, in such circumstances, you won’t reach the level of devotion and depth that’s possible when you belong to the other at all times. But you also don’t become a burden that you might become as a slave. At least that is how I feel about it and being a burden is the last thing that I would wish to be for my Dominant.

___

Reading this book was quite a ride for me. I can't believe that the author managed to describe the process of falling deeper and deeper into submission and the feelings of the submissive so well. And how many times I wished I was in place of O. I don't think that I ever will get to that point. But the repertoire of my fantasies definitely has grown substantially after the read.

Maybe submission is not cool but embracing it, is

Anyone who has seen me play can tell that there is nothing more natural to me than to submit. The moment that I feel that someone has the power to take over and dominate me, I lean into it immediately. There is no struggle in me to let go. Nobody has to earn my submission. It's right under the surface the entire time, just waiting to be discovered. You don't even have to do much. It’s enough if you just scratch it and I'm already yours, staring at you with my puppy eyes and longing for more.

What is so tempting in submission for me?

I love to feel owned. And I love the feeling of losing control, the feeling that nothing that is happening right now depends on me. I guess that a part of me thinks that this is what I deserve. That I shouldn't be taken into account. That I shouldn't matter. And if someone shows me that they can see this, they earn my respect and admiration. Finally, someone who doesn’t fall for my bullshit and sees me for who I am. Only when you are ruthless to me, I can believe your words. Because I am ruthless to myself and any opinion that is milder than that should not matter. If you can be harsher with me than I am, I can finally relax and let you lead me. And that is liberating.

Also, when the hardship comes from the outside, at some point it makes you see that there actually is a limit to how much you can take. When someone is degrading you, there is a moment when you say, that is enough, I won’t take anymore. And that moment shows me that there are some shreds of pride and self-love in me. Without it, those shreds can sometimes be hard to find for me.

Another thing that I enjoy a lot is attention. If you are owned by someone, if you are used for their pleasure, you get all their attention. I love the attention. But I hate asking for it. The nice thing about being treated like an object is that you do not have to (and should not) express yourself. You can let someone else use you in whatever way suits them and enjoy their presence, without having to explicitly ask for it. On the one hand you make yourself extremely vulnerable because you give all the power over yourself to someone else, but on the other hand, you are shielded because you do not have to reveal your wishes and needs.

That works particularly great for me, because most of the time, I am kind of afraid of my deepest wants and needs. I am a masochist in many ways, emotional masochist more than a physical one I think. I love to suffer and I love to be hurt. And what I enjoy the most is when someone is truly cruel to me. When they find ways to really get to me. And somewhere deep inside I hope that one day they will find a way to break me.

If you have these kinds of urges, it is hard to act on them on your own accord. It feels wrong on so many levels that it is really hard to express it, let alone do it to yourself. So you just wait and wish that someday you meet someone who will be willing to do these things to you. Someone who will take you on this journey that you’ve dreamt about for so long, but you were afraid to go on alone. And you wish that they will understand you without words.

There are not many people who can make me truly suffer

As much as I lean into submission easily, because being dominated is what I crave for so deeply, I don’t often feel truly under control. At least not to the level that is interesting to me.

I feel like I make it extremely easy to be dominated. I am very expressive and I give a lot of clues on how to gain control over me. I want to be toyed with. I put myself in the spotlight with all the controls out in the open and the instruction lying aside. And still, not many people see that. Or maybe they do, but they don’t want to go where I want to be taken.

Because the places that I want to go to are scary and hard to navigate. The things that I want to be done to me are things that not everyone is willing to and interested in experimenting with. And you don’t only have to willing. You also need to be confident in leading me there. And you have to truly want it as well and understand it.

So even though it looks like I am giving up control easily, what I mostly give up is a layer that's so loose, it almost peels off by itself. I want to be dominated. I want to give up control. You don't need to be extremely skilled to get that from me. Or at least it might seem like it. Where it gets interesting is when you start uncovering parts of me that I don't want to be uncovered. When you make me dive so deep into submission that I almost lose my breath trying to come back to the surface. The lack of breath is what I crave for. Being stripped down from my layers is what I am looking for.

So what makes it not cool?

Deep inside I don't feel like submission is something that I should be ashamed of. It's such an inherent part of me and it gives both me and my partners so much pleasure and fulfilment that I can't believe that there might be anything wrong with it. How can something that feels so natural and that causes so much enjoyment, without harming anyone, be wrong?

This certainty is shaken though when I display my submission in public. Because then it's not only the opinion of my partner that I care about but also the impression that people watching might have of me. And that makes things way more complicated because while I carefully chose my partner, knowing their preferences and limits, I didn't choose the audience. And while I can ask my partner after play for reassurance and validation, I can't do the same with the audience.

And I probably shouldn't as I might not like what I hear. Sometimes they might have opinions about me that are not positive. And it's their right, they didn't enter the scene with me directly and they didn't make any promises. In its essence, kinky play goes against the mainstream understanding of morality and normality. I know that a lot of people don’t understand how what I am doing can be pleasurable to me. And usually, when people see things that they don’t understand, they judge them. Negatively. It is natural.

The solution to this situation is not to get aftercare from everyone who has seen me play. The solution is to care less about what other people think about my play. Of course, I should take other people into account when I play publicly in the sense of trying not to invade each other’s space. But I tend to care way more than that. I tend to care way too much about other people's opinion of me. And the funny thing is that it is not even their actual opinion, it is the opinion that I think that society has about submissive behaviour, which is that it is weak. So every time when I show a deep level of submission towards someone in public, instead of seeing it’s depth and beauty, I see an act that some people might consider as being weak.

I don’t think it is though. I think that being able to be so vulnerable towards someone and to trust so much is an act of bravery and strength and beauty.

Where is beauty?

The beauty is in the power exchange, in the dance of two minds and bodies, in being part of the spectacle of human experiences.

In the end, all art is created to evoke emotions and D/s power exchange is one of the rawest and direct, but at the same time intricate ways to achieve that. I love to be touched by literature or film or other forms of art. For me, a D/s scene is an escalated form of that experience. And I think that it is beautiful.

I think that it is beautiful that two people can strip themselves down so much in front of one another, that they are able to show each other their deepest and darkest desires. And I think that it is beautiful that there are people whose deepest desires are exactly complimenting mine.

It is amazing how vulnerable and bleeding open a D/s scene leaves us. How much we can learn about each other from it. How much trust the dominant needs to have in me to be able to do all these terrible things to me and believe that after that I will still be there with him. That I won’t turn away from him.

I love to be the vessel into which the dominant can pour the darkness that is in him. I love receiving it. I love letting him show to me that hidden side of him. I love to give him pleasure through my suffering. I think it is one of the most intimate things to do between two people. Accepting and taking in each other’s darkness.

I guess that what I am trying to say is that even though I was ranting a while ago about how being a submissive is making me feel not cool, I am over it now. I love being submissive and I love the emotions and intensities that it lets me experience. I love the connection that it allows me to have with my partners. And I love the strength and resilience in me that it is a sign of.

I am really happy that I am this way and I hope that I won’t doubt myself anymore when showing this side of myself to other people, but I will be proud of being able to offer myself so deeply to another person. Isn’t it one of the most beautiful gifts than one can offer?

Lessons on pain, suffering and humiliation from Soptik and EisEve

Last weekend, Soptik and EisEve gave a performance followed by a 2-day intensive workshop at Ellipsis in Rotterdam. I attended both with high hopes and was not disappointed. In fact, I've learned way more than I expected.

The performance

Their performance left me speechless. I’ve heard that Soptik is a real sadist and I was prepared for an hour of enjoyment mixed with embarrassment while watching EisEve being tortured in his ropes. What I have seen was nothing like what I have expected. True, she was suffering for most of the performance, but mostly it was a spectacle of humiliation and objectification and a show of an intense D/s dynamic. And it was beautiful.

He started strongly by cutting open EisEve clothes and putting her in a partial involving only a neck rope, causing her to tiptoe and struggle for her life while he was tying a TK. He then put her in a series of transitions, each one slightly more difficult and exposing than the previous. She took them all gracefully. What was amazing to me was how intensely Soptik was focused on his model. He barely watched his ropes. His eyes were almost constantly fixated on her. And he was taking his time. He wasn’t hurrying from one position to another. Each position was a feast on its own and he was delighting in every little drop of EisEve suffering.

And she does suffer beautifully. From the first till the last moment of the performance, she was completely surrendered to him. You could feel that she would let him do anything to her. She was there at his disposal, surrendering completely to his ropes, with her eyes closed and her body relaxed. At the same time, she wasn’t lifeless. She was truly present and you could feel the intense emotions that she is going through.

At some point of the performance, Soptik gagged her with her own panties, which he previously cut open, and tied a white cloth around her mouth and eyes. Then he proceeded to draw a smile and a pair of eyes on the fabric. This was a powerful message of objectification. For me, it was like saying ‘Look at her, she is all mine. She will let me do anything to her. And I will execute this power.’ That really touched me. I rarely see such expressions of submission in rope performances, and at the same time, they are something that I really look for in kinbaku.

On top of everything, Soptik is an extremely skilled rigger. His moves were confident and fluent and each position that he put his model in was executed with great care and seemed simple, but was actually very complex. He was deliberate in creating shapes from EisEve body. And the shapes that he was creating were not always making his model beautiful. She was a material that he was forming according to his desires. And his desires were often to expose and objectify her. He ended the performance with a single point TK suspension, which was a very dramatic position, making the model resemble a hanged person. Another powerful message.

For me, the entire performance was comparable to that of Bingo, that I’ve seen in Paris, in terms of the intensity, skill and the qualities of kinbaku and D/s that it displayed. It left me extremely excited for the workshop.

The workshop

And the workshop didn’t disappoint. There was lots of pain and suffering, but most necessary, it was not without a reason. I think that the most important lesson that I have learned from it is that as a model you want to suffer in ropes for someone. If you see your rigger paying attention to you and enjoying what he is creating, it really makes it worthwhile to go through all the pain and discomfort.

Soptik kept repeating that for him every moment of the scene is important and that he wants to enjoy the model in his ropes as much as possible. Therefore, it is really crucial to pay attention to your model by learning how to minimize the amount of time that you look at your ropes when tying. You want to enjoy the model and the feelings that you evoke in her and for that, you need to pay attention to her, not the ropes that are on her body. They are just an object, they don’t have feelings. But your model does. And that is what you are after.

For me, it really does make a difference, because I treat my scenes as an emotional journey. I go through a spectrum of emotions when being tied and if the rigger does not appreciate them then I miss the point of doing it. I know that there are different reasons why people tie and this is not the only ultimate one, but it is for me. That’s why Soptik teaching resonated so much with me.

Another thing is that as a model, once I decide to tie with someone, I should be willing to suffer for them. That also means that I should try to overcome small nuisances, like a pinching rope, as long as they are not dangerous. In that way, I make sure that we can enjoy the scene and its flow with minimal disturbances. I learned that any time that I communicate to the rigger, I take us out of our headspace and we have to make a big effort afterwards to get back in. Therefore, it makes for a way better scene if I suffer through small discomforts, even unintentional, and only communicate things that I really important.

Finally, watching Soptik tie and interact with EisEve completely changed my views on D/s relationships. Throughout the workshop, he kept exposing and humiliating her, by for example casually exposing her breasts and crotch. Not for a moment though it made me think of her as weak or less a person than he is. (And that is how I usually feel when someone does something like that to me.) On the contrary, I thought that she is very strong and brave for being so vulnerable to him in front of us. I could also see how much she means to him and how much he appreciates her and I understood that even though there is a power imbalance in their relation, it does not mean that either of them is less valuable.

Some of you might say, ‘Duh...’, but for me, it was quite an eye-opener. So far, I’ve rather seen myself as showing weakness when expressing my submission to my boyfriend in front of other people. And now, when I saw how it might look from the outside, I don’t think of it as appearing weak anymore. I think that it is touching and beautiful. And both sides show strength by expressing it.

Our scene

As a culmination of this weekend, I experienced Soptik’s tying myself. And it was again both different and better than I expected. He asked me to tie because he really liked my expressions of suffering in ropes and I agreed because I could see that we have many common kinks and I expected that he would put me through an amazing journey. And he did.

I think that I have never experienced so much pain and humiliation at once given with so much intention and enjoyment. Especially by someone who I barely know. The way he was hurting me and the emotions that he was able to evoke in me by giving me pain made me re-evaluate how I see myself as a masochist. For a while now I have thought that I prefer emotional masochism over the physical one. And partially it is still true. Soptik made me realize what you can achieve when you combine the two. A mind-blowing experience.

I guess that there are not so many things that can make one as panicky and vulnerable as experiencing pain from which there is no escape. I am a masochist and I like pain, but only to a certain degree, and I am not even sure if my pain tolerance is that high. I can take quite a bit, but not without strong reactions and I only experience mild levels of very specific kinds of pain as pleasurable. The pain that he was giving me was definitely above my limits. But he overpowered me mentally and physically and made me feel like there is nowhere to go from it. He made me submit to the pain and to him and accept whatever he is giving to me. And that really changed my perception.

At some point, I started enjoying way more than I usually do. It seemed like because there was no escape, my mind decided that it is better for me to think that it is what I truly want. And then, for a submissive, there is something really special about letting someone torture your body and seeing them enjoying it. And he definitely was enjoying torturing me. It made me very confused because, on the one hand, I wanted the pain to stop, but on the other, you wanted to keep pleasing him. Also, he kept humiliating me. He twisted my body and exposed me. He tied my face and made me drool on myself and then smeared the saliva over my face. He slapped me and beat me and stepped on me. At some point, it turned me into a needy wimp and I just wanted him to be nice to me and caress me, but he kept only hurting and degrading me. That made me only more miserable and more submissive.

I was truly amazed by how much I can take from a complete stranger. He was my teacher for two days, I have seen him tie and we talked a bit, but there was not much more that I knew about him. I have always thought that degradation and humiliation are something that I can only do with someone that I have a deep relation with. But it turns out that it is not necessarily the case. I think that because I could see very clearly that it is something that he enjoys, I felt safe to enjoy it as well. To show my real self to him and let him take us on this journey.

At the same time, it was very different from what I experience with my partners that I have a deeper relationship with. I think that there was not so much emotional depth behind it and because of that, it was less (emotionally) dangerous. It was a very strong and pure D/s power exchange, but at the same time did not have the emotional loading of humiliation play that I have with my boyfriend for example. Having a deep relationship with someone definitely changes the angle of play, because he can hit you in more emotionally vulnerable places. And that requires way more aftercare that I felt like I need after this scene.

Here, I felt like a victim, first caught and overpowered and then slowly, by means of torture, turned into an obedient pet. It was really amazing and intense and at the same time very contained within the scene. I feel like rope is a great tool to create this kind of emotions. It makes you powerless and vulnerable and can cause a lot of pain. At the same time, it's not like cuffs or straps that only immobilize you. Your partner keeps on making you move, reminding you of the power that he has and at the same time putting you in a kind of trance. It's also very theatrical in a way which for me works great in putting my mind on an emotional journey. Since it is a non-verbal tool, the flow of energy is in a way purer and therefore might be stronger than when you use words, even though the exchange might be less intricate, as I feel like only more basic dynamics can be expressed without verbal communication. Still, you can achieve the intensity and experience emotional journey that is really special and hard to come across otherwise with such minimal tools.

My lessons

I can already see my boyfriend laughing at this one, but I think that I can safely say that this weekend was a life-changing experience for me. Or at least, it changed the way I look at many things.

First of all, I strengthened my conviction that what I am looking for and want to experience in rope is an intense D/s dynamic. I want to see suffering and submission. I want to see humiliation and eroticism. And finally, I want to see simplicity and beauty created by using the model as a canvas. And that is exactly what Soptik and EisEve showed in their performance.

Secondly, I’ve learned that the intention of both the rigger and the model can make or break the scene. On the rigger side, it is extremely important that he enjoys what he is doing to the model. And for that, he needs to pay attention to her. He should maximize the time that he looks and reads the model and minimize the time that his attention is on the rope. From the model side, she needs to have the intention to suffer for the rigger, to give herself to him for his enjoyment. That also means that she should try to not break the scene with every little pinch of rope on her skin. Sometimes it might be better to suffer through the discomfort, also unintentional, and see where the scene goes than to break the flow.

Thirdly, I learned to appreciate and respect the submissive role way more. I realized that it requires strength and vulnerability to be able to submit, but that the same goes for the dominant. Even though there is a power imbalance in a D/s relation, there is no value assigned to either of the sides. They are both equally strong and brave and beautiful. And there is something truly magnetic in observing a couple with a strong D/s dynamic. Like watching two elements both fighting and needing each other to exist.

Finally, I’ve learned that rope is a perfect tool for creating intense and complex D/s scenes, even between people who don’t know each other that well. You can degrade, scare, torture, humiliate, give and take hope, caress and evoke many more feelings, using only rope. At the same time, the dynamic is very contained within the context of the scene and the strong power exchange that you experience does not have to exist outside of it. This made me appreciate rope even more and it might have made me more open to tie with new people.

Thank you Soptik and EisEve for teaching me so much about rope, D/s and myself. It was a truly deep experience and I can’t wait to learn from you again.

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.