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articulating my submission fantasy even more

Since my previous post was written last night when I was sleepy, I just wanted to add a few more things about my submission fantasy.

1) I do not want to be a full-time submissive. This submission dynamic is one that I want to have very specific and clearly articulated parameters (such as “this will start when we wake up on Wednesday morning and will end when we fall asleep on Wednesday night”). It’s a dynamic that I’m very, very interested in and drawn to exploring, but not one that I crave or need in my relationship all the time.

2) The main reason why I think I’m compelled to this kind of dynamic is (and I’ve touched on this before in previous posts) that in most of my daily life, I’m kind of a control freak. I keep track of most everything related to our home (when to clean, whose turn it is to do what, whose toothbrush is whose (seriously!), writing the rent check, etc.). This is not because ML can’t do it, though keeping track of things is certainly not her strong suit, but because I do it naturally. My brain is always on, scampering around, picking up loose ends and tucking them away, managing lots of little things (and big things) and snapping mental photos of things left and right. It’s what I do. But I’m increasingly craving an anti-dote to that, a space when my brain can relax and let someone else do the thinking for me and above all trust that I’ll be okay by letting go. To me, the pull to that allowing that kind of dynamic into my relationship feels erotic as well as therapeutic.

3) ML was totally receptive to giving my submission fantasy a shot, although she did express a few doubts, mostly about her ability to know whether she’s doing the right thing or not. What I somehow want to enter into the dynamic, and maybe it has to happen organically (as opposed to just me trying to explain it to her), is for her to not be thinking in those terms of “will she like this? is this the right thing?” and rather be assured and confident and all-enveloping. Attentive to me, yes, and checking in with me, absolutely. But I don’t want to be in a state of mind of having to think about “is this what I want? is she doing it right?” and would rather be in an absolutely trusting and relaxing mental space. Submission.

Any ideas on how to work on that together? Exercises to slowly bring that in? Scenarios to role-play to begin to feel comfortable? Porn to watch that we could mimic?

articulating my submission fantasy

Shanna of Essin’ Em fame has been here the past few days, crashing on our couch (actually, our featherbed) while in town for the Folsom Street Fair. And because Shanna is so very Shanna, we have ended up talking a lot about sex (as well as things like front shops and cats and what vegetables we’d be if we were vegetables) — and last night (or was it Saturday night?) she ended up more or less facilitating a conversation about fantasies between ML and me. (If you ever are in need of a sex therapist, I think Shanna should be charging for it.) Now, I wouldn’t say ML and I have ever thought we needed a sex therapist, or have even ever been dissatisfied with our sex life. We have a rather robust sex life, actually, and when we’re healthy and not travelling, we generally fuck 3-5 times a week. Some of those times, to be sure, are nighttime quickies, but many of them are also middle-of-the-afternoon-because-we’re-horny fuckfests. And we’ve sort of vaguely talked about things we’d like to do sometime, but then “sometime” tends not to materialize because, you know, life happens.

So, sex is good. But somehow, with Shanna (who also lives at ShannaKatz.com, by the way), we ended up articulating fairly clearly and specifically (through her pointed and guiding questions) what we’d each most like to explore. I thought I’d share mine.

Imagine that we live in a foreign world and you speak the language but I don’t.  This means that you have to be my guide through the world, taking me under your wing and being my voice. Imagine we’re in a restaurant and I can’t read the menu — but because the cuisine is so different from what I’m familiar with you can’t really translate it for me in a way I would understand either. So, instead, you order for me, and I trust you utterly to order with care and absolute attention to my mind and body. Because you know me. And my mind is submitted to yours: when the food arrives, I’m not thinking about whether or not you picked “right,” whether or not I like the food. I’m not worried about that. I know you picked right just because you picked it, and I trust you.

That’s the best way I can think of to illustrate the dynamic I want to explore. I want to be your little girl and your most cherished thing, delicate and pretty and wholly yours. And I want you to feel the largeness of that, the expansion of your self that comes with enveloping mine. This isn’t just responsibility, in the sense of being responsible for a child, though of course there’s that. But this is bigger than responsibility. I don’t want you to feel anxiety about whether or not you’re doing the right thing, I want you to just know that by treating me with the utmost care and respect and paternalism and delicacy and love and nurturing that you’re automatically doing the right thing.

And I know I haven’t said the word “sex” here at all, but this has everything to do with sex. Nothing and everything.

Thank you, Shanna ;)

**

As for her fantasy, I want it to come in her words. She says she’s willing to contribute. GUEST POST, PEOPLE. GET READY. Just, not tonight, because it’s 11:15 on a Monday and we have to be up in 7.5 hours.

my relationship with subbing

Lately, I’ve had a lot of questions in my Formspring inbox about BDSM in my relationship. I figured I could address a lot of it in a post of its own.

To be frank, there’s a lot more *desire* to integrate BDSM (specifically bondage, dominance, and submission) into our relationship than we have so far. There are a few reasons for this. The main one is that I have a very, very hard letting go of my mind. During sex but also just in general. I have an extremely active brain, always mentally sorting things and being in charge and adding things to my to-do list and needing to know exactly what’s going on at all times. I’m a control freak, yes it’s true. I’m trying to find strategies for shutting down my brain a bit, but it’s largely a process of trial and error. This doesn’t mean that I’m checking off my to-do list while fucking, but it does mean that I tend to be focused a lot on what she’s doing and how and why and what does it feel like, rather than just letting go and getting into any sort of subspace. I desperately want to find that subspace and carve out a mental home for myself there, but for me it’s definitely a process. I suspect this has a lot to do with protecting myself from trauma, because when I was raped, I guess you could say in a way I went waaaaaaaay too far into some sort of subspace. So now, whenever I feel myself slipping into submission to ML, my mind tenses briefly and it’s gone.

Trust is my main way out, I think. We both need to be able to trust each other absolutely in order to pull it off. I need to trust that she is taking care of me, and she needs to trust that I will be absolutely honest about what’s ok and what isn’t. Conversely, we both need to be able to trust ourselves. She needs to trust herself that she won’t hurt me and that she is absolutely capable of carrying my pleasure in her hands. And I need to trust myself that I will know my limits once they’ve been reached, and that my body is strong, not fragile. So, trust. I think we’ve got the trusting each other part down. Why is trusting yourself so much harder?

All of this isn’t to say we don’t use elements of BDSM in our sex, because oh, we do. That’s what makes me crave it so much, because I want more. Feeling physically trapped has been, so far, the most reliable way of triggering my slip into a preliminary subspace of sorts. She’ll lean her arm across my chest to pin me down and I gasp and feel a tug and a release inside somewhere, in my mind. Last weekend, when we were in Cambria for the long weekend, she had my arms pinned down to the bed and she was on top of me and she was looking over my shoulder at something and when I asked what she was looking at and tried to follow her gaze, I couldn’t because I was trapped beneath her, and she laughed at my struggle and I felt that familiar internal tug and release which is the best way I can figure out to describe the feeling of letting go of control. It’s like I feel physically and emotionally surrounded by her in the best way possible. It’s hard to explain. But it’s that feeling that opens the tight fist my mind has over me. That’s the feeling that I equate with submission.

Bottoming is something else entirely, and maybe I’ll write a separate post soon on what I consider the difference between “bottoming” and “subbing” and the difference between “topping” and “domming.” Quickly: topping/bottoming don’t involve head-space and power imbalance. Subbing/domming do. I “bottom” quite a bit — she orders me around, fucks me, spanks me — but I’m only sometimes able to land in sub-space. I’m working on it.

may this fantasy soon be a reality

[Edit: apparently I have problems with copy/paste and this appeared twice so I've edited to delete the repeated text. Didn't intend to force y'all to read it twice! :)]

A few days ago, she sent me an email with some instructions. She wanted me to masturbate, stop just before coming, vividly play out a fantasy in my mind, and only then make myself come. And then, I was to write out my fantasy and send it to her.

So I did. Here it is. (And tomorrow, I will finally see her!)

***

You’ve had a long day at work; I left my office before you and I’m at my house, cooking, a vegetable gratin, so that when you get here dinner will be almost ready. I love cooking with you in mind; I love it when you eat what I cook. I’m wearing my black leggings and the long light pink cami, the one that barely covers my ass. I know you love the way my ass looks in those leggings, and when I wear them, I’m wearing them intentionally, for you.

When you finally ring at my front gate, I run to the door to buzz you in the gate, as usual, and leave my front door open a crack so you can let yourself in. I run back to the kitchen to give my attention to what’s on the stove. You come in, take off your shoes in the hall, leave your stuff in my bedroom, and come up to me at the stove, approach me from behind. You put your icy hands, fresh from the foggy San Francisco chill, on my waist, under my shirt, and you breathe warm on my neck. I shiver, flinch from your cold hands but you don’t let me wiggle away, and you slide your hands down to the front of my stomach, between my belly button and my pubic bone. I shiver again, from more than just your chilly hands.

“Take off your shirt,” you say. You whisper it behind my ear. Standing there, facing the stove, I oblige. You trace your fingertips down my spine. I’m wearing the bra you got me for Christmas, and you’re very pleased. Still standing behind me, still breathing your hot breath on my neck, you gently grasp my left hip with your left hand and slip your right hand under my waist line. I’m wearing the matching panties, too, and your hand can feel them. You breathe in sharply and lightly bite my neck as your fingers meet my swollen wet pussy. You easily slip two fingers inside me. My head grows light, my breath catches, my eyelids flutter as I try to keep my composure (and prevent dinner from burning).

“Good girl,” you say, as you remove your fingers, hold them up to your nose, breathe in my pussy scent. “I like that you’re wet. Now take off your leggings.” I take them off. You nod, glance me over, head to toe, and then you go to the table and sit down. I stand there, my composure lost for a moment, confused in the empty air that suddenly surrounds me where your body just was.

You see my confusion, and you half-smile from your seat. “Keep cooking,” you say. And you sit there and watch me, never taking your eyes off me, only talking to give me little directions. “Bring me a glass of water. Good girl. Turn around, bend over.” Et cetera. I go about my work, my body aware of your eyes on it, my skin alert under your gaze. I flirt with you, subtly, sassily, making fleeting eye contact, biting my lip a bit, and purposely giving you the best views of my ass. I know you want me, and I savor it.

At one point you stand up and disappear, and my mind wanders, focusing again primarily on the food. Finally the gratin goes in the oven. As I straighten up from closing the oven, you’re suddenly behind me, you’ve grabbed my hips in your hands, and you shove me against the countertop, push my legs apart with your knee, and then I feel something hard and smooth teasing my pussy, and I know it’s your cock. I bury my face in my elbow on the counter as I tilt my ass up to you, wanting you inside me, filling me. Finally you thrust inside me, and I moan, as you bend over and whisper hot in my ear “is this what you want baby?”

“Yes please,” I stutter. Instead you pull out, turn me around, and push me firmly to the floor. I know exactly what you want me to do. I take your cock on my mouth, your cock that tastes now like my pussy. I take your cock deep in my throat, flutter my eyes up at you, and reach up between your legs and find your clit with my thumb, and suddenly I’m in power, I’m in control, because you’re distracted by your pleasure and forget that you were the one inventing the rules of this game.

For a few moments you’re sinking in your growing arousal, but you soon catch yourself and try to get back control. You grab my hair and try to pull me back from your cock, but it’s too late, I’ve got your cock in my mouth and your pussy in my hands and I’m not giving up. You struggle, pulling on my hair and writhing away from my hands, but you have to grasp the counter for support and you can’t help it, your orgasm is rising in you and you thrust in my mouth and your pussy pushes into my hand as you come, and your body crumples to the ground, flushed and pulsing, your eyes floating.

But you don’t stay that way for long. You blink and look at me, suddenly grin impishly, and say “get up.”

I stand up. You stand up in front of me, take off your cock, and now you’re in just your work shirt and a tie that you’ve only recently started wearing regularly because I told you I thought it was a sexy. I think about tugging on your tie, pulling you towards me to kiss you, but think the better of it — you mean business. You shove my legs apart and thrust two fingers in me. I’m sopping wet, wide open, and you easily slide in a third. I’m meeting you open, wanting you, needing you filling me. Instead, you kiss me on the neck so that I get goose bumps, take your fingers out of my pussy, wipe them off on a towel, and take off your tie.

“What are you doing?” I ask wonderingly. You smirk. “Tying you up,” you say. You turn me around so my back is to you, grab my wrists, and securely knot them together behind my back. “Sit down,” you say, and I do, on the same chair you were watching me cook from. You grab two kitchen towels, tie my ankles to the legs of the chairs. I close my eyes, my lust burning inside me, trying to work its way out, but the restraints work like chains to keep it in my body, and it mounts to what feels like a dangerous level. I’m shaking, almost crying, needing you to fill me up and bring me down from this endorphin high.

And oh, you do, you do. You start off torturously slowly and painfully teasingly with your tongue flicking my clit. My moans grow and my pelvis is writhing against your mouth. You force me back down to the chair and shove three fingers inside me. This is what I needed. I gasp, open wide for you, and sink in my body, aware only of feeling you inside me and out, as if your hand were reaching all the way inside me and your mouth were covering my whole body. The orgasm is already squirming deep inside me, and you know exactly how to reach it. You reach your fingers as deep inside me as you can, still sucking and licking my clit, you wiggle your fingers against my G-spot, and you very subtly push in and out of my pussy as the deep squirming becomes a massive tidal orgasm and I’m pushing against all my restraints and into your mouth and against your hand, begging you to go deeper in me and keep working my pussy, moaning and crying out as you fill me up even more and more and more. You’ve got four fingers in me and you’re up to your knuckles and I know that soon I’ll be able to take your whole fist inside me. I’d take all of you inside me if I could.

You stay inside me as I start gently coming down off the orgasm. I collapse against the chair; you release my hands, and I stroke your hair and face and pull you up to finally meet my mouth, craving this closeness. I taste myself on your lips but pretty quickly my taste has dissipated and I just taste you — your lips, your mouth, your tongue, your sweet breath mixing with mine. I feel your eyelashes on my cheeks.

The timer goes off. We look at each other and laugh, having forgotten all about dinner. Perfect timing.

a NON-family vacation

Whoopee! I’m going to Mexico!

Wednesday is my birthday. Wednesday is also the day that mi’lady and I hop on a (direct) flight from San Francisco to … Puerto Vallarta! Yesterday, in preparation, I got a pedicure, and my toes are now painted a suitably tropical color. Late August is not, I must say, the best time to be going to the tropics. We’ll be there until Sunday (short and sweet) and the current weather forecast predicts thunderstorms every day. Ha. Coming from the bay area, though, thunderstorms are a rare commodity, so even if we do get them every day, it’ll be out of the ordinary and worth flying south for.

Plus, if it rains, it’ll just mean we’ll have to have more sex!

Speaking of sex, we’ve now each read one of The Topping Book (me) and The Bottoming Book (her). We do plan to swap and each read the other as well, but it’s a good start. We’ve talked about it some, and plan on talking about it (and doing other than just talking, ahem) some more while on vacation. We’ve both agreed that there are things we really like about the books and things we really dislike.

We like that they have made us think about how vital communication is to having satisfying, gratifying, and truly consensual sex. If I’m going to top her in a way that works, I have to first know what she wants from me, what turns her on most, what she thinks it means for me to top her, what it means to her to be submissive, what her limits are, et cetera. And conversely, she has to know what I want from topping, what it means to me to be a dominant, what expectations and needs I have from topping, and what turns ME on. I mean, right? It sounds obvious, talking about what you want. But really, it’s a lot to talk about. Certainly we’ve talked about our sex before–we talk about it all the time in fact. We generally talk afterwards about what worked and didn’t work, whether it was good, how it felt… We communicate during sex as well (and I find it to be absolutely a necessary part of good sex). But neither of us has really thought to really sit down, maybe even with pre-thought-out notes (!!), or even a pen and paper to jot things down, and truly discuss and understand each other’s desires, fantasies, and needs. I’m really, really excited about doing that.

One of the things that both of us disliked about the books, on the other hand, was that they seem very geared to people in some defined BDSM “Scene” whose goal it is to “Play” with other individuals who are also in this defined “Scene.” Mi’lady and I are monogamous and are not particularly interested in having “Playdates” with others, certainly not at this point and I’m not sure about ever. If our relationship ever evolves in that direction, then sure, I’ll consider it at that point. But I don’t think that that direction of development has to be a given, and that exploring BDSM with a partner has to involve this sort whole sort of BDSM culture. I don’t want to really go to dungeons, or have sex in front of an audience, or switch partners all the time. To me, sex and romantic love are very connected, and I don’t know that I want to try to unconnect them. (And additionally, I tend to only feel developed romantic love for one person at a time.) But the books, to me, seemed to implicitly enforce this idea that in order to do BDSM the Right Way, you have to be willing to open yourself up to this whole new way of contextualizing sex.  And it’s not that I’m not open to it. I’m certainly very open to it on an intellectual level. But it’s a culture that just doesn’t feel like a good fit for me. And I just don’t agree with the notion that if you’re interested in BDSM, or if you identify as Kinky, then you must also somehow belong to this Culture-Capital-C.

Anyway… hmmm. I’d like to develop those thoughts some more later. When I’m not at work, haha. In any case, though, I’m sure you’ll hear more on this, if nothing else in the form of a full vacation report!

this post has no direction because I'm too busy to come up with one

Oh my god, SO BUSY!

1) I’m positively SLAMMED at work this week, and since work is where I usually blog, it’s going to be a slow blogging week.

2) One of my very best friends is coming to visit TODAY from Portland on his way to Taiwan, and he’s staying until SATURDAY! So awesome. Also a hindrance to my blogging. But a good hindrance.

3) I had an amazing time last night in Palo Alto meeting Ellen for the first time in person (Hi Ellen!) and participating in her play reading. So much fun!!! Can we do it again?

4) Mi’lady and I have not been having enough sex lately. We’re just so busy. It’s not cool. We had a quickie on Saturday afternoon, and then a sort of last-minute rushed fuck on Sunday morning before getting up and going about our busy days. We’d WANTED to have all evening Saturday to just take our time and do some playing around with power/control dominance/submission stuff… but then we had to go to her friend’s good-bye party and we were there all night. And now we won’t have another chance until Saturday at the earliest… And it’s not just sex, it’s time. I want to spend time with her, good time, time where we pay attention to each other. I haven’t really been feeling like we’ve had that enough lately. Maybe I’m crazy. I don’t know. Or maybe I’m in the last few days before my period and my hormones are getting wacky and my low Prozac dosage isn’t enough. Whatever it is, something’s off.

I wish I could just be fine.

occupying power

The first time I ever strapped on a cock, I had a panic attack and had to take it right off again.

The second time, I was able to keep it on, but had to ask my girlfriend to ride me, so that I was on the bottom.

The third time, I wore it with confidence and fucked her with authority.

The problem for me has always been the assumption of power. Strapping on made me feel way too big, somehow. I’ve always felt small, always taken up little space, and have always tended to step aside to make way for others. I tend to dismiss my own emotions and needs as insignificant, and put those of others on a pedestal. (These are definitely symptoms of co-dependency, I’ve grown to realize.) Complicating all of this is the fact of my own rape, and the resulting power I give cocks, this sort of scary, threatening power.

So when I first strapped on, I felt dangerous. And I had a panic attack. I felt awful, because mi’lady really wanted me to fuck her; it’s one of her favorite things, and I felt bad that I reacted to it so badly. And the second time she asked me, weeks later, she asked me more meekly… “baby? do you think maybe you wanna try the cock again?” and I said yes, sure, but I was anxious, and would she maybe ride me from the top? She did, but it wasn’t very good, it just wasn’t quite right. My anxiety was in the way.

So she didn’t bring it up again. I continued to feel awful about it because I knew it was something she really wanted, that she craved, something that filled her and fulfilled her. But I was scared. I was scared of what having that power would mean, and what I could do with it. What if I hurt her?

Finally I just decided to get over it. I made it about her and her pleasure, rather than about me and my anxiety. It was her birthday, and I decided to take her by surprise, cock ready, lube at hand. And I just did it, and it worked. I put my anxiety aside, and focussed on the fact that what I was about to do was going to turn her on and make her mine.

She was completely taken aback, so much so that it almost looked like she sank in her arousal. I don’t even know if that makes sense, but it was like her whole body became this vessel of sexual heat, and she just… sank in it. Her eyes were liquid and she was so, so wet, so open, right away, for me, for my cock. She gave me power. It was like a gift. “Here baby, have me. I’m yours.” And having that power gave me confidence and made me just know that this was right. I could do this. I was doing this. I could watch her and know what felt good to her and what didn’t, I could intuit when it was too much and when it wasn’t enough, and more than that, she would tell me. I trusted her to. I trusted myself not to take advantage of the power.

To me, there’s a lot to learn about how to occupy power. The first step for me was not being afraid of it. Owning it, I guess, as mine and as something I could do good with. It’s an amazing feeling, really, to have someone’s pleasure in my control. I love that feeling. It’s that feeling that makes me want to explore more D/s play, and bondage, because I think I can get better at it. I can get better at encouraging and drawing out her submission, and I think she can get better at releasing control and drawing dominance out of me.