Pain and processing
I wrote an essay some time back about pain.
The summary is that I had a friend back in my early college days who used to be a wrestling and sparring partner for me. I've always enjoyed resistence play, but had absolutely no experience with it in a healthy context. He, apparently, had a hidden kink that made that sparring just "do it" for him. Naturally, our fist-fights and wrestling matches eventually led to sex.
We maintained a sexual relationship for many years. Our sparring also got more and more violent. For me, it grew into a full blown resistence fetish. I revel in the violence. I scream in pain and without drawing another breath, it disolves into giggles as my partner fails in whatever attempt he's making. He eventually moved away and I lost the only outlet I'd ever had for a no-holds-barred violence/sex. And I intentionally separate the "violence" and the "sex", as opposed to writing "violent sex". Because the violence was a need in and of itself, just as the sex is. That's the basics about the essay.
A few years ago, he moved away to pursue higher education and a career. We are still in the same industry, although at different ends of it. An industry convention brought him into town this weekend. We ran into each other, went out to dinner, reminisced about "old times". I started poking fun at him for becoming this new "peaceful" person he claims he's turned into. He used to have a bad temper and he terrorized our fellow students, and then our lab students as we moved into positions of authority at the college. I was the only one not afraid of him, but that's because I loved it when he hit me and I would swing right back at him. We'd limp into class, bruised and stiff, and eventually our classmates stopped asking if I got mugged and started rolling their eyes when they realized I had gotten into another fight (when I say "fight", I never mean it was in anger. We never fought out of anger, we fought the way most people tease their friends or give hugs).
So anyway, I started giving him shit, provoking him without realizing I was intentionally provoking him until he finally hit me. I grinned and threw a punch right back. He couldn't back away from that challenge and we started sparring again. 3 years without a sparring partner, let me tell you we were both rusty!
I have a couple of sexual triggers that are quite unusual outside of the realm of BDSM. I have to warn people about these triggers because my reactions are rarely what people might expect. Some of these triggers can be accidentally done during a wrestling match, so when he did one of them, I had to warn him that it was a turn-on for me in case that was not the reaction he wanted from me. After all, he has a girlfriend and is not poly. Plus, I had no intention of having sex with him this weekend - I have a complex set of poly rules for sex and he's a typical mono guy ... you just fuck the cute chick when she lets you and assume she'll tell you anything you need to know.
So he apologized and avoided those triggers ... for a while. During our sparring match, we slowly remembered some of the rules we had - things like "no fighting on concrete" and "all jewelry and tools come off". At one point, he had me completely pinned and he did something that hurt, and my first reaction was to bite him as that was the only way I could inflict any pain with my hands and legs secured and his shoulder so temptingly close to my mouth. I didn't bite him hard, but when he stopped I asked if biting was ever allowed in our rules. He said he thinks it was. So the next time he got me in the same situation, I bit him again ... hard.
He hissed and drove his groin into mine. Then I remembered that biting was one of *his* triggers. Hmmm. That at least explained my overwhelming desire to bite his neck every time it got close enough for me to smell him. My nose remembered better than I did.
Then he started doing those things I warned him about. It took me a while before I started to guess that it was intentional. So I bit him again.
During the wrestling match (and it did remain a wrestling match - no devolving into a torrid affair with an old lover who has a girlfriend or breaking any of my personal safe-sex rules ... see![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tacit? I am a good girl!), we had bits of conversation. Gathered all together, it went something like this:
Me: How're you doing? You gonna live?
Him: Yeah, I'll live. I'm getting old though. I don't do this kinda thing anymore
Me: You seem to be enjoying it. We can stop anytime old man
Him: Oh, you're gonna pay for that
Me: If you like this so much, why on earth did you ever give this up?
Him: I don't have anyone to do this with.
Me: You mean you've never found anyone else who likes to fight with you?
Him: Most people would beat the shit out of me. Everyone else I would hurt too bad. There's no one else like you.
Here's the real point of this entry, it's not really a blow-by-blow account of my latest resistence scene. I'm absolutely amazed that he has never found anyone else who gets off on rough sex. Hell, both of my sweeties seem to have nothing *but* partners who like rough sex. Within the various fetish communities (both the formalized one and the looser social network I have that just happens to enjoy fetish sex that isn't all old-school formal), I feel very vanilla. I'm not into the full lifestyle thing and I have only a very few kinks that I don't think of as that unusual or flashy. I mean, I'm not a sub, I'm not into pony play, I have very little PVC clothing, I have almost no toys or gear.![[info]](https://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
tacit says the whole resistence-play thing is somewhat rare, but he doesn't seem to have any problems finding women interested in some sort of resistence or torture play so I don't see it as being very rare.
So I have this image in my head of being not very kinky, certainly not very experienced in those kinks I do have. Then I interact with the "real world". And I realize I'm a freak.
I walk around at work discussing my sex life and my interests in a bland sort of manner, all very matter-of-fact, because I tend to not think of myself as being unusual. (For those who are unfamiliar, talk of sex is commonplace at my work, but when coming from other people, it's either as vanilla as it gets, or it's as kinky as possible with the intention of grossing each other out ... ask me about the anal sex comment sometime!) But occasionally my closer coworker-friends tell me things. They tell me of things other people say about me behind my back and they tell me their own thoughts about me. I'm called bitch, freak, slut, whore, wierd, kinky and other sort of words like that. I think I'm supposed to be ashamed.
But I'm not.
Apparently, being called a "bitch" is supposed to make me angry and is taken as a challenge. I usually just blink at them and say "yeah, what was your first clue?" When called a slut, I challenge them to name even one person I've had sex with. Never has anyone been able to answer that question without referencing my current boyfriend who, of course I'm having sex with, just as they are having sex with their current partner. And several times the current boyfriend-answer was given, I was *not* having sex with the boyfriend in question. Because I, unlike they, do not need to have intercourse in order to define someone as a "boyfriend". They, however, seem to need to justify having sex by labeling their partner "boyfriend" or "girlfriend".
I occasionally do get upset by the disrespect or offense that is *intended* with these kinds of insults, but the insults themselves are not actually insulting to me. I know who I am and what I want. I like sex. I like physical sensation. I like having orgasms. I like the feeling of a lover cherishing me and abusing me. And I don't think I'm all that different from anyone else. Where I am different, is that I admit that I like it. (And no, you do not get to use this admission against me the next time the Good Girl comes out to play,tacit! This doesn't count because she's a different girl :-P)
I've been approached by those coworker-friends, who are closer to me than the other acquaintences, who have confided in me that my self-confidence and acceptance of sexuality are what drew them to me in the first place. They felt comfortable with me, like they could be more like themselves without fear of judgement or condescension. They wished their girlfriends were more interested in or appreciative of sex ... and it didn't have to be kinky, just sex in general. Or the wished they could find women who didn't have guilt complexes and neurosis about sex. And yet, they continued to date these women even while expressing their distaste of them.
Today, now 3 days later, I am still bruised and sore. I still can't take a deep breath without my ribs protesting. Nor can I lean on anything without some part of my battered body brushing a sensitive spot against whatever I'm leaning on. I didn't have sex, didn't even get any clothes off. No direct genital touching, other than a few brushes and some pressure of his leg or groin while we wrestled. But I'm feeling as content and happy as if I had gotten laid. It's actually remarkably like the feeling of satisfaction and contentment I get when I dance. I feel physically and emotionally as though I've had a really good fuck. And like any really good fuck, I'm craving more. It's leaving a background hum of arousal that remains somewhat dim because I am not physically capable of taking care of it, but I know it will begin to rage once I'm healed. It always does. There's this renewed desire for violence just out of reach. Usually, my partners are so much bigger than me, that any violent scenes involve me as clearly being the victim. And that's fun. But with him, I am equally an agressor. I am hitting and biting and hurting him as much as he hurts me. That's what I'm craving right now. That equal exchange of violence and pain.
I love the bruises, the marks. I love the feeling of soreness. I love the awareness of every minute part of my body. I love the feeling of power for every time I bested him, even while I love the feeling of being overpowered every time he bested me. In all encounters, not just with him, and not just with this equal-violence-exchange, I love the bruises, marks, soreness, awareness. I know my kinks and I know myself very well. I also know just enough to know that I want to keep experimenting to find my limits and to understand why I like the things I like. I am unashamed in my love of sex, in all my vanilla and kinky interests. I am a bottom, but not a sub. I am a voyuer. I am a latent top. I am a pain slut with a low tolerance. I am a glutton for punishment and force, but only by a select few whom I give the power to take that position over me. I am a tease. I am a lover of sex. I am that "bad girl" your mothers warned you about.
All these things I am not supposed to like, nor am I supposed to admit to it if I do secretly like it. Yet it is my acknowledgement and acceptance of all these things, and my desire to learn more about myself, that makes me attractive to people. How can anyone possibly live up to that? You're not allowed to like sex, but guys like you better when you do like sex. Huh? How does that work?
Because I know myself, because I enjoy sex, I make a better partner. I can more fully give of myself to my partner and I can more fully accept him in return. I am a bad girl. And because of that, I am a good girl.
The summary is that I had a friend back in my early college days who used to be a wrestling and sparring partner for me. I've always enjoyed resistence play, but had absolutely no experience with it in a healthy context. He, apparently, had a hidden kink that made that sparring just "do it" for him. Naturally, our fist-fights and wrestling matches eventually led to sex.
We maintained a sexual relationship for many years. Our sparring also got more and more violent. For me, it grew into a full blown resistence fetish. I revel in the violence. I scream in pain and without drawing another breath, it disolves into giggles as my partner fails in whatever attempt he's making. He eventually moved away and I lost the only outlet I'd ever had for a no-holds-barred violence/sex. And I intentionally separate the "violence" and the "sex", as opposed to writing "violent sex". Because the violence was a need in and of itself, just as the sex is. That's the basics about the essay.
A few years ago, he moved away to pursue higher education and a career. We are still in the same industry, although at different ends of it. An industry convention brought him into town this weekend. We ran into each other, went out to dinner, reminisced about "old times". I started poking fun at him for becoming this new "peaceful" person he claims he's turned into. He used to have a bad temper and he terrorized our fellow students, and then our lab students as we moved into positions of authority at the college. I was the only one not afraid of him, but that's because I loved it when he hit me and I would swing right back at him. We'd limp into class, bruised and stiff, and eventually our classmates stopped asking if I got mugged and started rolling their eyes when they realized I had gotten into another fight (when I say "fight", I never mean it was in anger. We never fought out of anger, we fought the way most people tease their friends or give hugs).
So anyway, I started giving him shit, provoking him without realizing I was intentionally provoking him until he finally hit me. I grinned and threw a punch right back. He couldn't back away from that challenge and we started sparring again. 3 years without a sparring partner, let me tell you we were both rusty!
I have a couple of sexual triggers that are quite unusual outside of the realm of BDSM. I have to warn people about these triggers because my reactions are rarely what people might expect. Some of these triggers can be accidentally done during a wrestling match, so when he did one of them, I had to warn him that it was a turn-on for me in case that was not the reaction he wanted from me. After all, he has a girlfriend and is not poly. Plus, I had no intention of having sex with him this weekend - I have a complex set of poly rules for sex and he's a typical mono guy ... you just fuck the cute chick when she lets you and assume she'll tell you anything you need to know.
So he apologized and avoided those triggers ... for a while. During our sparring match, we slowly remembered some of the rules we had - things like "no fighting on concrete" and "all jewelry and tools come off". At one point, he had me completely pinned and he did something that hurt, and my first reaction was to bite him as that was the only way I could inflict any pain with my hands and legs secured and his shoulder so temptingly close to my mouth. I didn't bite him hard, but when he stopped I asked if biting was ever allowed in our rules. He said he thinks it was. So the next time he got me in the same situation, I bit him again ... hard.
He hissed and drove his groin into mine. Then I remembered that biting was one of *his* triggers. Hmmm. That at least explained my overwhelming desire to bite his neck every time it got close enough for me to smell him. My nose remembered better than I did.
Then he started doing those things I warned him about. It took me a while before I started to guess that it was intentional. So I bit him again.
During the wrestling match (and it did remain a wrestling match - no devolving into a torrid affair with an old lover who has a girlfriend or breaking any of my personal safe-sex rules ... see
tacit? I am a good girl!), we had bits of conversation. Gathered all together, it went something like this:Me: How're you doing? You gonna live?
Him: Yeah, I'll live. I'm getting old though. I don't do this kinda thing anymore
Me: You seem to be enjoying it. We can stop anytime old man
Him: Oh, you're gonna pay for that
Me: If you like this so much, why on earth did you ever give this up?
Him: I don't have anyone to do this with.
Me: You mean you've never found anyone else who likes to fight with you?
Him: Most people would beat the shit out of me. Everyone else I would hurt too bad. There's no one else like you.
Here's the real point of this entry, it's not really a blow-by-blow account of my latest resistence scene. I'm absolutely amazed that he has never found anyone else who gets off on rough sex. Hell, both of my sweeties seem to have nothing *but* partners who like rough sex. Within the various fetish communities (both the formalized one and the looser social network I have that just happens to enjoy fetish sex that isn't all old-school formal), I feel very vanilla. I'm not into the full lifestyle thing and I have only a very few kinks that I don't think of as that unusual or flashy. I mean, I'm not a sub, I'm not into pony play, I have very little PVC clothing, I have almost no toys or gear.
tacit says the whole resistence-play thing is somewhat rare, but he doesn't seem to have any problems finding women interested in some sort of resistence or torture play so I don't see it as being very rare.So I have this image in my head of being not very kinky, certainly not very experienced in those kinks I do have. Then I interact with the "real world". And I realize I'm a freak.
I walk around at work discussing my sex life and my interests in a bland sort of manner, all very matter-of-fact, because I tend to not think of myself as being unusual. (For those who are unfamiliar, talk of sex is commonplace at my work, but when coming from other people, it's either as vanilla as it gets, or it's as kinky as possible with the intention of grossing each other out ... ask me about the anal sex comment sometime!) But occasionally my closer coworker-friends tell me things. They tell me of things other people say about me behind my back and they tell me their own thoughts about me. I'm called bitch, freak, slut, whore, wierd, kinky and other sort of words like that. I think I'm supposed to be ashamed.
But I'm not.
Apparently, being called a "bitch" is supposed to make me angry and is taken as a challenge. I usually just blink at them and say "yeah, what was your first clue?" When called a slut, I challenge them to name even one person I've had sex with. Never has anyone been able to answer that question without referencing my current boyfriend who, of course I'm having sex with, just as they are having sex with their current partner. And several times the current boyfriend-answer was given, I was *not* having sex with the boyfriend in question. Because I, unlike they, do not need to have intercourse in order to define someone as a "boyfriend". They, however, seem to need to justify having sex by labeling their partner "boyfriend" or "girlfriend".
I occasionally do get upset by the disrespect or offense that is *intended* with these kinds of insults, but the insults themselves are not actually insulting to me. I know who I am and what I want. I like sex. I like physical sensation. I like having orgasms. I like the feeling of a lover cherishing me and abusing me. And I don't think I'm all that different from anyone else. Where I am different, is that I admit that I like it. (And no, you do not get to use this admission against me the next time the Good Girl comes out to play,
tacit! This doesn't count because she's a different girl :-P) I've been approached by those coworker-friends, who are closer to me than the other acquaintences, who have confided in me that my self-confidence and acceptance of sexuality are what drew them to me in the first place. They felt comfortable with me, like they could be more like themselves without fear of judgement or condescension. They wished their girlfriends were more interested in or appreciative of sex ... and it didn't have to be kinky, just sex in general. Or the wished they could find women who didn't have guilt complexes and neurosis about sex. And yet, they continued to date these women even while expressing their distaste of them.
Today, now 3 days later, I am still bruised and sore. I still can't take a deep breath without my ribs protesting. Nor can I lean on anything without some part of my battered body brushing a sensitive spot against whatever I'm leaning on. I didn't have sex, didn't even get any clothes off. No direct genital touching, other than a few brushes and some pressure of his leg or groin while we wrestled. But I'm feeling as content and happy as if I had gotten laid. It's actually remarkably like the feeling of satisfaction and contentment I get when I dance. I feel physically and emotionally as though I've had a really good fuck. And like any really good fuck, I'm craving more. It's leaving a background hum of arousal that remains somewhat dim because I am not physically capable of taking care of it, but I know it will begin to rage once I'm healed. It always does. There's this renewed desire for violence just out of reach. Usually, my partners are so much bigger than me, that any violent scenes involve me as clearly being the victim. And that's fun. But with him, I am equally an agressor. I am hitting and biting and hurting him as much as he hurts me. That's what I'm craving right now. That equal exchange of violence and pain.
I love the bruises, the marks. I love the feeling of soreness. I love the awareness of every minute part of my body. I love the feeling of power for every time I bested him, even while I love the feeling of being overpowered every time he bested me. In all encounters, not just with him, and not just with this equal-violence-exchange, I love the bruises, marks, soreness, awareness. I know my kinks and I know myself very well. I also know just enough to know that I want to keep experimenting to find my limits and to understand why I like the things I like. I am unashamed in my love of sex, in all my vanilla and kinky interests. I am a bottom, but not a sub. I am a voyuer. I am a latent top. I am a pain slut with a low tolerance. I am a glutton for punishment and force, but only by a select few whom I give the power to take that position over me. I am a tease. I am a lover of sex. I am that "bad girl" your mothers warned you about.
All these things I am not supposed to like, nor am I supposed to admit to it if I do secretly like it. Yet it is my acknowledgement and acceptance of all these things, and my desire to learn more about myself, that makes me attractive to people. How can anyone possibly live up to that? You're not allowed to like sex, but guys like you better when you do like sex. Huh? How does that work?
Because I know myself, because I enjoy sex, I make a better partner. I can more fully give of myself to my partner and I can more fully accept him in return. I am a bad girl. And because of that, I am a good girl.