Body Issues

[Warning...boring talk of body issues ahead. Skip today if you want hot talk about sex. I'll throw some of that at you tomorrow.]

You know you’re a masochist when you look at other masochists’ bruises and get dreamy and goofy and wish that they were yours.

At some point, I’d really like to be comfortable enough with my body and my identity as a member of the kink-scene (or whatever the hell you call it) to post photos of myself, bruised and abused. (And “Bruised and Abused” will certainly be the name for my next blog, since Under the Boot is becoming more and more inaccurate given the lack of boots in my D/s.)

I like big women. I like small women. I like, to put it baldly, women. The thin ones are coltish, the larger ones are voluptuous, and I could find something wonderful to say and love about every woman who enters onto my radar. I’m in love with the idea of women: their ability to give birth, the way their bodies curve — except for when they don’t — the perspective they have on things that isn’t, you know, male. Old, young, thin, heavy, long-haired, short-haired, funny, serious, intense, light-hearted, pregnant, not-pregnant, I’m a fan of women.

And the good thing about the BDSM blogs I read is that you see these beautiful pictures of women, completely unafraid to show themselves, no matter their size or shape. They show themselves trussed up, they show themselves vulnerable, they show themselves bruised and battered.

You know what I don’t see? Men. (Tom Allen excepted, but that man’s a prodigy or something.) I don’t know why it is, but for some reason I don’t see a lot of the same pictures of men in femdom relationships. And I don’t see pictures of me.

Well, I see pictures of me. Heck, I’ve got a picture of my bright red ass after a beating sitting in IPhoto. I’ve got about an hour of tape of me being turned into a road map of the Interstate Highway system, all red lines criss-crossing my back, and of me having my genitals tortured while they’re bound up in a leather cord. But I’m not yet brave enough to put any of that online.

So I sit there and look at the pictures of these women and I gasp and think, “Oh, man, I would so want my ass to look like that.” Except my ass wouldn’t look like that, because I have a guy-ass, not a female ass. The end result is a disconnection from my body, to a certain extent — I’m always shocked, when watching footage of my wife hurting me or pictures of me in compromised positions, about my maleness, because my default is a feminine shape from the porn and blogs I read. And about how it’s not a mass-market maleness — there’s a gut there, my balls are huge (an ex called them “bull balls” and would just weigh them in her hands and brag about them to her friends,) my cock gooey and wet. I’m never going to get onto MenInPain.com, let’s put it that way. (Which is a waste, because I take a beating like a champ.)

And so the irony is, I think I chose the one area of fetish — that is, the BDSM blog world — where there seems to be more male body issues than female body issues. I see women with beautiful round thighs, natural figures, women who are round and full and women who are model-sized stick figures. Half-Naked Tuesday — and God bless the person who thought that up — brings me pics of women of all shapes and sizes, unashamed, glorious, and happy with themselves. And then there’s me, in my closet, worried about my ass sagging or my gut.

(There has been one picture of a male that made me think, “Oh, I definitely need to have that done to me. I want that to be my after-picture.” It’s from a party in Australia, and it’s a picture of MayMay’s back after Eileen worked him over. There’s blood and I think to myself, “I want that for myself.”)

The issue of course, is to get to where I’m happy enough with myself that I can change that. I know that sounds contradictory — to love yourself enough as you are that you can change yourself — but the other way, disliking yourself enough that you change, hasn’t exactly been a spectacular success. So I think I’m going to start loving and accepting myself and changing myself because I want better for myself, not because I utterly loathe my body.

Luckily, my wife has got enough love for my body for both of us. And she’s willing to whip the self-loathing out of me, if need be. But really, even if she gives me another transformative moment like she did with my cock, the impetus to change and the love of my own body has to come from me.

Fancy Dress

I’ve come to fetishize business wear. I know the scene is all about latex and leather, but my idea of BDSM-appropriate clothing is silk and cotton and the only leather is in my shoes or my belt.

Well, not really fetishize, because that would imply any kind of business wear or formal wear did the job for me. No, I’m fetishizing business and formal-wear when my wife and I wear them.

I think it’s a side-effect of both of us being the kinds of people who didn’t really dress up before this year. My wife was married in a simple white dress she borrowed from a friend when we eloped, and when I worked in a business setting, I bought my dress clothes from whatever mass-market store sold them. For most of my life, I was quite content to wear jeans and tee-shirts. I never really cared about clothes. I never really cared about my appearance.

Now…I see getting dressed up in a suit and tie — in the right circumstances, certainly as not part of the everyday grind — to be an act of submission to my wife. I remember a few months ago, she told me how hot I looked wearing suits to work and to various functions down here, so when she flew in, I made sure I looked perfect when I picked her up: hair cut short, no facial hair, nails trimmed and shaped, and a nice suit, pressed and drycleaned, with a silk tie, expensive shirt, nice black leather shoes…

I dressed up because she liked it. I dressed up because it pleased her. I could have gotten out of bed, showered, shaved and popped into some shorts and a tee — it’s South Florida, it certainly would have been more comfortable — but I wanted to show my devotion. I wanted to spend time. Everything had to be wrinkle-free, everything had to shine and look impeccable. My face had to be smooth, my hair perfect. I had to smell fresh and clean and perfumed. I had to spend an hour and a half getting ready, because that’s how much time she deserved — she deserved perfection, and nothing less.

We went to a banquet a few weeks ago when she was down, and it was the same way. There was something ritualistic about it — showering, making sure everything was perfect. She wore a beautiful dress and put on her makeup and looked like a million bucks. How could I look any less? How could I let her down? She’s been transforming herself, through tasteful makeup and affordable dresses and sexy shoes, and even though she doesn’t look like a dominatrix in that business-wear, there’s something unspeakably sexy — the red of her lips, the black of her mascara, the way I’m afraid to kiss her for fear I’ll introduce some flaw into the understated blush of her cheeks. The way expensive dress wear clings to her instead of sags like her old clothes, the way she carries herself. Power. Self-assurance. Confidence. Oh…she’s got it all. It makes me dizzy.

I never used to get regular haircuts or wear product in my hair; I wore cheap cologne. I wore cheap clothes. I didn’t care about my skin care. Now…now, everything has to be perfect when I’m in her presence. I fantasize about being able to afford a bespoke suit. Cufflinks.

I buy issues of GQ and Esquire and fantasize about wearing those suits. Wearing them for her. Showing her my love through my attention to myself. By the way I care for her property.

Because there’s something about my suits — the nice ones I wear now, that I spend all that money to maintain — there’s something about the ritual about getting dressed, that makes me feel strong. Handsome. Powerful. People treat you differently in a good suit, and you hold yourself differently. There’s a way of carrying yourself. A way of moving. I feel like more of a man, more of a powerful, type-A-man, in my suits.

And so, when I’m in my suits, I feel like I’m falling that much further for her. I feel like I’m stronger, so my submission is truer. How could she ever want to dominate a weak man who didn’t care about himself? What’s the point? A man who doesn’t care about himself doesn’t care who controls him. But a strong man — a man who spends time on himself, who builds himself up — that’s a suitable subject for a dominant woman to control. A man who spends that much time on cultivating that image, his submission has value. His submission has worth. It’s deserving of effort, to break a man like that.

I dream of wearing my first bespoke suit. An expensive shirt, the collar so crisp it could cut skin. A marvelous silk tie I have my eye on. My hair, perfectly cut and waxed, my skin flawless and smooth and smelling like expensive cologne — but just the right amount, so that she gets its scent only when she moves in close, to whisper curses in my ear. And me on my knees, my tie in her hand, taut, my throat constricted as she pulls on it, and I look up at her in awe. Her opening it all up, peeling me out of it, hurting and cutting and stroking me, aware that it was all for her, aware of how much work I put into it, appreciative of my dedication.

All for her. Every inch of my clothes and my appearance a testimony to my love for her, every minute spent a minute — in its own way — of worshipping her. Of recreating myself into an object worthy of her attention and love and cruelty.

The Best of the first 100…

I have posted here a hundred times since I started this blog in August. And I realize, wow, it must be hard for a new person starting to read this to get a handle on all of the best posts, and to filter out the worst, most navel-gazey ones. And I say that because, you know, I may or may not have drunkenly given one of my good friends the address to the site last night when we talked about S&M. Maybe. After swearing her to secrecy. Because I won’t even be living down here anymore. And because I figure if I’m going to try to get into a public scene up north, I need to start by being honest with at least somebody about this.

So, in belated honor of my first hundred posts, and in an effort to make our history with BDSM a little less of a grind to get through, I present to you the five best posts of the first one hundred. If you’re new and want to know what I think are the five most important posts to read — or you’re that friend I gave this blog address to and don’t want to have to slog through 114 posts.

45 Days In
The first post. A good intro.

Zero to Sixty
A history of how we got from vanilla couple to D/s relationship, and it leads directly into 45 days, above.

The Blood Is The Life/
My wife and I experiment with bloodplay and knives for the first time. My favorite post because it’s probably one of my favorite sex experiences, ever.

Thank You, Ma’am
I spend a lot of time on this blog trying to understand why I went from a guy who’s sexually submissive to…well, a giant slut for pain, and this post — one of the first — comes darn close to sketching out the progression.

The Nicest Humiliation Ever
Or, how I stopped worry and learned to love my penis, thanks to my wife and a particularly intense D/S scene.

Also, these posts are all over the place, timewise, which I think is good because you can start hopping around after using them as markers in our growth.

For the record, WordPress says our top five posts are:
How to Push Your Husband Into Switching
Erotica-Porn-and-Femdom
Variations On a Theme: It’s About Her
The Sound of Her Voice
I Want to Disappear

I promise to post something with more substance tomorrow. Really.

Real-Life BDSM Cohabitation Means Big Choices

I’m swamped with getting ready to move, applying for my career’s certification in my new state, studying for exams, closing up things at work, and dealing with my pseudo-ADD which results in everything being last minute for me no matter how much time I have to prepare. There’s just too much going on and not enough time to do it. But I do have time to talk to my wife, and think about the future, and all of the things that are going to change.

First of all, there’s the fact that my wife and I will have the first chance to join a public scene together. I don’t know about the BDSM scene in the mid-atlantic region — Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, DC — or how friendly it is to married, middle-aged couples. (God, we really are middle-aged, aren’t we? Mid-thirties, right? Wow.) I don’t know if there are any good courses on whipping or play offered anywhere, any good fun clubs to go to, or any people to meet in our area. I don’t know of any munches.

More than that, I don’t know if we want to go to any. I made a statement in my last post’s comments that basically went like this: I’m much more at ease being “publicly” dominated than I am being publicly beaten, because submission is something I am (for want of a better phrase) hardwired to do. Whereas, masochism is like…it’s a sex act. Flat-out, being beaten is a frankly explicit sex act. Being publicly dominated would be like taking off a mask in front of a select few people. Being publicly beaten would be like having a group of people watch me get fucked.

Further — I don’t know if my submissiveness would extend to other people. I just don’t know how I’d act around other people. My urge to be socially dominant recedes around my wife, but will it stay in the background in public? Will I be the worst sub ever if we go out to play? Will our dynamic change? I’m so socially aggressive and dominant, and I don’t know if those instincts will ruin the vibe with my Mistress if we’re around others. I don’t know if I can sustain my submission in a crowd in the same way I can in private. I mean, I’m not talking about sassing her back or challenging her — I’d never dream of that — but in private, she’s my world. My personality becomes something small and obedient. But in public — I’m so loud, so in the forefront.

We know two couples that talk about being kinky up there. Do we come out to them? What will that entail? Will it change the dynamics of our friendships with them if they know we’re fellow travelers?

And how do we sustain the physicality? My wife and I are used to people giving us private time because we live apart. People volunteer to watch the baby. They give us space. And when she comes down here, we have whole weekends to play alone. Up there, we’re not going to get special privileges anymore. And we’ll have to arrange our play around our little girl. And we might be living with my wife’s parents while we start out until we find a place, which means even further complications.

And more than that, are we going to be able to keep it special? Will we take it for granted that we’re around each other? Will kink become something we put on the back burner because we’re around each other all of the time?

And if we want to keep it in the forefront, how do we manage her dominance and my submission so that it’s ever-present but not something everybody is going to notice? How do we move it up a notch, make it more powerful, make me more submissive and her more dominant?

I know communication will help us navigate this, and I know we have great lines of communication. Fantastic lines, frankly. But it’s time to put it all into action — time to walk the walk instead of talk the talk. Kink has become this wonderful facet of our life — a major facet that has improved our outlook and our intimacy and brought us closer together. But here’s where the hard choices start happening. Here’s where we have to make it work for longer than a weekend.

I don’t know, I just wanted to unload that. Thanks for listening.

Sex and Violence

I’ve been constantly discovering blogs lately, including a few by pro-dommes and lifestyle dominant women, whose approaches differ drastically from my wife’s. Mistress Victoria X, for instance, has been a fun read. If I see an address pop up as linking in, I tend to check it out, and my personal blog roll on my Mac is like, 50 blogs at this point. (Although some of them are infrequent posters.)

I’ve also been rediscovering old blogs that I lost somewhere along the way, probably when I switched from my PC to a Mac and the RSS list didn’t export properly. One of those blogs is Almost Magic, which I quickly started catching up on. While scrolling through the archives, I came across a post I’d never read before, about how her kink and sex are separate — they’re not intertwined. And then Maymay posted a link to his blog in her comments, where he said much the same thing.

Now, both of those posts predate my first submissive play with my wife, and were off my radar during my first real forays into the BDSM blogosphere. And so both posts, despite their age, pack this kind of, “Whoah!” punch for me, because, man, I had no idea that people could separate their kink from their sexual pleasure. For me, being hit hurts and is pleasurable at the same time — the pain is this bright, indeterminate thing that makes me get harder and wetter even while it, you know, hurts.

And hurting me makes my wife wet. Pain — receiving it, in my case, and dealing it out in hers — is sexualized. But it’s sexualized only in a sexual context, in a context of submission. I don’t get off having my blood drawn or getting a prostate exam. Being hurt sexually, though, causes my cock to get harder, to the extent that my wife will sometimes strike me as hard as she can while we’re fucking in order to feel my cock swell inside of her, and even as she does it, I can feel her muscles tighten and her sex get wetter. Repeated blows to my face drive us both closer to orgasm, and sometimes will push her into a frenzy where she just starts slapping. I can’t count how many times at this point that I’ve come with a swollen and numb face because she — hell, we — both got off on me being a punching bag.

Now, naturally, everybody interprets their kink differently. But I can’t for the life of me figure out why I eroticize pain so deeply, why I sexualize submission and self-annihilation. My first submissive fantasies date back to childhood, well before puberty. My first masochistic instincts officially date back to my wife and I and our second scene. But when I think back, I can remember that my first real lover — not the girl I had nightmarish, awful, fumbling sex with, but the first girl I had fun, no-strings-attached sex with — would always scratch me at orgasm. She would wrap her long, coltish legs around my body and dig her fingernails into my back and just drag them over me. We had sex all of the time — she actually failed several of her classes that semester because we never left her apartment — and so a week into our sexual relationship, my back was crisscrossed with scabs and bloody furrows. And I remember — clearly — being proud every time that pain happened, because it meant I had pleased her, it meant I had made her come.

But there’s a huge difference between scratching and the new kinds of torture we play with now, and even if I can psychoanalyze myself to the extent that I can hypothesize where my masochism comes from, I can’t figure out why my wife gets juicy-close-to-coming-ohmigod-I-have-to-masturbate-on-you-slave excited when she hits me. My wife is, well, normal. The classic American background. Normal family. No abuse. No kink. No craziness. Just…a paragon of middle-American virtue. And yet somehow, she’s wired so that hitting me with a crop drives her near to orgasm, so that a few swipes of her clit after she beats me leave her shuddering and coming.

Is it nature or nurture? Is it hardwired into us at birth, or something we learn? Is it the product of our experiences? Is it natural? I think those questions need to be answered. I don’t think I have those answers — I can’t even puzzle out why I’m wired into the submissive masochist I am, or why my wife is the dominant sadist she’s turned out to be, and as I read more and more blogs like Almost Magic or May’s, I realize that there’s more under the sun than I’d ever dreamed.

Paradoxical Part II: A New Ending

So what do we do with our heroic narrative if it usurped by submission? By the fact that our tormentor is the one we love? What do we do to resolve the conflict, to present a close to the story that is our scene? Where is the moment of crisis? Where is the crescendo? Where does it all come together? The normal heroic narrative requires us to overcome our debasement and suffering, not revel in it.

For instance, take “Lethal Weapon.” Naked Mel Gibson is chained to a shower head which pours water over his body. He is tortured by Mr. Joshua and Endo (played by ’80s action character actor Al Leong.) Voltage is coursed through his body, his muscles tighten and relax as he is electrified, over and over again, when not being beaten. At the end of the torture, Our Hero is strung up, limp, beaten. “Take him outside, Endo,” says the antagonist.

And then! And then, Our Hero springs to life, wraps his legs around Endo’s neck and then snaps his head to the left, leaving him dead. He pulls himself free to wreak murderous vengeance on the bad guys.

That’s how it ends in movies. But I’m a submissive masochist — there is no cathartic murder at the end of my torture — the one hurting me is the one who loves me. There is no bloody vengeance, no reckoning where I make my will known by writing it in blood across the silver screen. In effect, I am part of a torture scene with no conclusion, no moment of release, no denouement.

Right?

I say there is another way to end the scene. I say that our heroism can be taken and turned to other uses. Our survival — our struggle — as submissive masochists funneled into another, different ending to the narrative.

Imagine:

My wife has me tied to a pair of boards crossed like an “x”. Rough hemp secures my wrists and ankles to the wood. I am naked. She tortures me with belt, flogger, crop, and switch, until my body is madman’s scribbling of welts and bloody gashes. She punches my arms, smacks my face, pulls my hair. She bleeds me with a knife, burns me with hot wax and candle flame, clamps my cock and nipples, and chokes me with my collar, pulling on it so I can’t breath.

In the beginning, I thought this was about information, but it’s not - she has me in a ballgag half of the time. Even if I wanted to talk, to give up the secret I think she wants, I couldn’t, because she has me gagged until she decides she wants to hear my cries.

“Break,” she says. “Break for me.”

Never, I say.

“You’re so strong. You’re so tough. You’ve nothing left to prove. But…there is nowhere for you to run. No one for you to run to — but me. Nobody is going to save you. Nobody is going to love you like I do. Look how much I love you?” And she dips her finger into my blood and licks it. Her blue eyes dance. “Everybody thinks love is easy, but true love is the strength and will to be cruel. And so who loves you more than me? Nobody. Ever…”

I can’t look at her.

“Say my name, and the pain ends.”

I shake my head. Exhausted. I will not break.

“I’m not ever going to break you totally, that’s why this final element has to be your choice. You’ve taken what I have to give you, suffered every stroke and lash and humiliation. You’ve nothing left to prove to anyone. So that leaves us here: with me, hurting you. You, tied to that wood, bleeding, suffering. But it can end. If you choose me. If you say my name. If you say, “Please, I’m yours, take me down,” I’ll unstrap you, I’ll clean you off, and you can lay next to me. I’ll take care of you. You’ll never be my equal, but I will be such a kind master. There are certainly worse forms of ownership. So say it…”

No.

“Say my name. Choose me. Choose what I have to offer. Surrender. Give up. You’ll always have the knowledge that you never broke — that inch of yours that never broke — but everything, even that inch — will be mine. Think of what I’m offering you.” She runs her finger down my chest, across my thigh, to my cock. “Pleasure. Plain. No doubt. No worries. Just me, owning you, from now until eternity. True fucking love, love so strong it hurts you and makes you beg.”

I shake my head again, weaker.

“Say my name. Say that you’re my slave. This isn’t me forcing you, this is you choosing. The act of a free man…” She smiles, her eyes flash, and she adds quietly, “…the last free act of a free man. After this … pleasure and slavery. And purpose.”

She strokes me with one hand while her other twists my nipple. “Choose. Say my name, and you can be mine forever.”

I lift my head up to shake it — but when my tired glance meets her gaze, I realize I don’t want to fight — I want to be owned. I choke it out. Her name. My cock thickens in my submission, throbs with my new purpose.

“I didn’t hear you, slave.” She says as she leans in to kiss me. Her lips graze mine, just out of reach. “What are you? Who am I? What’s your choice?”

“I…I’m your slave. Mistress. I choose you.”

Yes, I think I can live with that ending to those kinds of stories.