Everybody takes a beating sometime, or: Knives and needles.
March 1, 2008 — undertheboot“Every once in a while I’d have to take a beating. But by then, I didn’t care. The way I saw it…everybody takes a beating sometime.”
–Goodfellas
I have to wonder how my readiness to leap into masochism stems from my adolescence. If my view of masochism — that a man stands up and takes his beating — comes from growing up and having the misadventures I did. I hate pain. I’m miserable when I’m sick, or I’m hurting. But I’m not really afraid of anything but severe, debilitating pain. My family never beat me — I can vaguely remember two spankings my whole life, and one smack in the face when I was 16 or so. But between the ages of 10-21, due to my own dumb antics, I was stabbed, set on fire, hit by two cars, blew out both kneecaps at least twice, cracked a rib, got chemical burns in my eyes, got tased, and suffered more bloody scalp wounds than I care to remember. I was also involved in a handful of fights, some of which were as short as me hitting the other guy once, and some of which were as long as it took for the other guy to beat the living shit out of me over a period of ten minutes.
In some cases, the “other guy” was my sister, who is probably the best fighter I know. She’s lost teeth and gotten them fixed so often, as Hunter S. Thompson put it in “The Hell’s Angels,” she’s simply not afraid of fighting like your average person. She’s not afraid of being ugly for a while after a fight, whereas me, I hate walking around with a wound or a black eye, and I find it impossible to raise a hand at a woman in anything but total self-defense — when she’s just really beating me within an inch of my life, and even then I limit myself to grabbing her arms, which basically means that in the end she wins. I have a divot in my scalp the size of a quarter that you can see when I shave my head from her hitting me with a foreign object and knocking me out once, whereupon she proceeded to kick me in the ribs and head while I was down.
I like to say that I can’t fight so good, but I can take a beating like nobody else I know. I remember I fought one guy when I was younger, and he proceeded to just beat the living tar out of me. But I stayed in there, and by the end of it he didn’t fuck with me ever again. It was too much like work to kick my ass, and while he’s doing all that work, I’m occasionally getting a shot in myself. As my grandfather used to say, “They may get a lunch out of it, but you damn well better get a sandwich.”
So, all this means that I’m okay with a bit of pain. I’m not stupid about it, and I’m the last person to look for fights — but pain has been kind of a fact of life, if we’re talking about the bruises and gashes kind of pain. I don’t know if, at my advanced age, I’d ever want to be in another fight, and a pratfall down a set of stairs a couple years back proved to me that I don’t heal like a 20-year old anymore, but I’m okay with taking a beating from life once in a while. It happens. In a way, I’m stoic about pain normally, and aroused by it when it’s in a sexual context, and deathly afraid of it when it’s in a kind of helpless, sick-in-my-bed context. (I’ve had pneumonia twice, once nearly dying from it, and that’s my fear — when the pain is internal, coming out from under your skin, where you can’t bandage it. I get crazy fearful thinking about that.)
So, now that I’m older and more mature and not living my life like an episode of “Jackass,” I’m not afraid of the normal shit that goes along with S&M. The progression from spanking and slapping to belts to floggers to a crop to a switch has been a fairly smooth, easy progression. (I’m thinking about buying a paddle for my wife.) I’m not too nervous when my wife brings out a new toy. I don’t get squirrelly at the sight of my own blood (from experience — we haven’t actually drawn any yet in play.) So that’s why I’m looking forward to having some pins stuck in me this next trip, maybe have the wife play with a knife, very, very carefully. (After being stabbed, a very shallow cut doesn’t bother me so much.)
The problem is, I have no clue what we’re doing, and I know my wife doesn’t either. We’ve talked about play with a dulled knife, or her poking me in the ass, back or thighs, with pins and needles. And so I need to find resources on needle play for beginners — good ones, and hopefully some recommendations on where to buy needles.
Can anybody help?
March 1, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Hmm.
I’ve stuck regular drawing pins into Bear’s chest. He asked me to, I didn’t know how to go about it, so in the end I just fucking went for it-like the needle scene in Pulp Fiction. In his pec. Think he enjoyed though..But I wouldnt know anything about ‘regular’ needle play, and I haven’t RECIEVED pins myself.
We have, however, done knifeplay.
I remember when Bear asked me, and I thought ‘Argh!’-I’d done spanking, tying up, names, roleplay, anal, but not knives. I was worried I wouldn’t like it. And the trust you ahve to have towards someone coming at you with a knife is immense!
We lightly cut each other, carved initials, I enjoyed it so much I bought a long, sharp, intimidating knife for knifeplay.
But it was TOO sharp. Like a horrible scalpel. I recommend it being a little blunt. A little.
-Songs
March 1, 2008 at 4:09 pm
I wrote about needle play here. We take a lot of precautions, so adjust it to your own level of care. I can’t seem to find the place where I bought the supplies, but if you search for “bdsm needles sharps container” or something like that, you’ll find places.
The main things you need are techni-care (or iodine, if you prefer and don’t have a seafood allergy), latex gloves (easily obtained at a drugstore or grocery store), single-use disposable needles, a sharps container, and maybe some bandages if things get hairy. Some little corks are fun to stick on the exposed ends of the needles if you stick them in and back out again.
It isn’t technically difficult. Do only use the needles once each. They come in different gauges, and the smaller numbers are BIGGER, so that’s useful to know. If you twist them under the skin, you get more blood upon removal. I have heard that if you stick them in your nipples, you can get scar tissue over time and reduced sensitivity, so we usually stay away from really juicy spots. YMMV.
I haven’t done play with knives yet.
March 1, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Thanks for the advice folks. As always Dev, the scene report is just hot enough to make me want to make sure my wife and I try it out.
Does my wife need to wear gloves, you think? We’re monogamous going on 12 years now, is there some risk I’m missing other than the normal blood-borne issues?
I’m really excited about this. I just hope it lives up to our expectations.
March 2, 2008 at 8:52 am
First of all, you can order supplies here, http://www.kinkymedical.com/kmhome.html
I would always always wear gloves. I also use a dab of neosporin on the glove and sort of lubricate the needle with it prior to insertion. It slicks the needle up and also acts as an additional level of germ protection.
I find the endorphin rush is extremely intense. Sometimes the pain itself isn’t that bad at all, but the subsequent feeling of flying is really cool. As a top, I make sure my bottom has lots of time to come out of it afterwards. As a bottom, I’m a happy floaty waste case afterwards.
Have fun!
March 3, 2008 at 3:06 am
Boot, the purpose of the gloves isn’t just to “protect” your wife from your blood. (Jos and I share blood too.) It’s to keep the dirt and germs on your wife’s hands from going into your skin.
However, consider that when you donate blood or they take a sample, and they are going to put a needle actually into your vein, they usually just swab you with a bit of alcohol before and after. So I think some of our precautions might be overkill.
My prodomme friend gave us some “steri-lube”, little packets of something like KY jelly, but sterile (for surgery or something). They do make the needles hurt less, but it’s optional. If you do use something like that (or the neosporin that Goose suggested), a convenient place to put it is around the thumb joint of the non-dominant hand. (Er, the dom’s non-dominant hand.) Then it’s always handy.
The first time I stuck needles in Jos, he had a major blood sugar crash from it, so…just pay attention is all.
March 3, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Goose: thanks for the advice. I’m hoping to get that “flying” feeling myself. I’m in a weird position where I really don’t know if what I get out of these scenes is what other people refer to as subspace or an endorphin rush, but there’s certainly a kind of witchy-high afterward.
Dev: Thanks. I was asking only because I feel like a glove would kind of…ruin the immediacy of it, the visceral feel of my blood on her hands, her fingerpainting her name in it, etc. OTOH, I think I’ll just defer to my wife on this — she’s been reading the comments, and I think she knows how she’s going to run the scene, even if I waffle.
Thanks, everybody — this has been very helpful.