for kitty stryker’s safe/ward blog carnival.

So recently I had my first Domme. She ticked a lot of boxes for me: lanky, Joan-Jett-esque rockstar dyke style, wacky and open and also prone to checking her phone about fifteen gazillion times a day. We met at a non-kink meetup, chatted about kink and Crash Pad and relationships and other things, and when I overheard her tell a mutual friend that she wanted a sub, I wrote her a message volunteering.

I wasn’t fond of most pain, but I was keen on service: I had just worked out that my longtime inclination to show my admiration for someone by wanting to be their assistant likely had a kinky side. And I had wanted someone to be my Rockstar Domme for some time. She sounds like she could be the one!

only possible problem: she was a sadist. A hardcore one. And I wasn’t much of a masochist. At the same time, though, I hadn’t really had much experience - just a few flogging sessions which were pretty mixed - and I did want to train up my pain tolerance anyway so I figured I could give some things a go. I told her I was new, that I was highly into sensation play, and that I was nervous. She seemed to understand, and we had a grand couple of weeks swapping messages back and forth, talking about what we want and our fantasies and little fun things for the day.

Our first date went quite well: I was quaking in my boots, but fell for her hard once she went from FriendMode to DommeMode. With just my back and some choice words she had full control over me, and I was hooked and endorphic. We made plans to meet up again in a week or two, and I was in a happy haze for the next few days. I couldn’t get her out of my mind.

The next time we met up, we went to an all-women’s play party. She had told me the last time that she felt I needed to learn how to be patient, and often left me hanging while she attended to other people. A friend of hers was there, and they had quite a bit of play, and both of them took turns whacking me while I was tied to a cross. It was stingy, not my kind of pain, and I did start feeling really bad about feeling ignored: the physical pain was bearable, if not awesome, but I had a lifetime of being ignored and humanised and it was all starting to come back. Thankfully before it got too bad she would come back and pay attention to me, but it was still quite a ride of emotional waves.

After the party she drives us to her house, and she talks about wanting to dominate me her way. I keep a straight face, but inside I am freaking out. I don’t know if I can take her sadism, if I even want to go there. What happened to all the times we talked about taking it slow on my behalf? Where was my chance to give her service, which I specifically mentioned? What about me? She had control of the car though - this was late at night, too late and far away for public transport - and I had no idea what would have happened if I said no. I doubt she would have been terrible with me if I did refuse; maybe miffed but she would at least send me home - bummer, I missed out on sexytimes. And I really did want to serve her: I had a strong urge to please her. So I went along, without much protest.

Our session was really intense, especially for me having pretty much been thrown into the deep end. Collars, caning, rope, floggers, scratching till I was sore and possibly bruising. Some of it I actually quite enjoyed and would have gladly taken more of, but some of it I did more to keep her happy. More because I wanted her to be happy.

I asked her what happened to everything we talked about before, the service and the sensation play and the taking it slow. She said she had her needs too, that as a sadist she needed to get her pleasure too. I didn’t know what to say - I had no idea whether to keep going or stop or where I was meant to go.

I did feel pretty buzzed up and happy and good when it ended: endorphin rush, I guess. And she was really sweet and lovely with her aftercare, which I still appreciate and fondly remember to this day. We chilled for a while, she sent me home, and I dropped off to sleep around 4am back in my bed.

I was super exhausted the next day; I felt like I had run a marathon. My emotions were a wreck: I liked some of it, but not all. I wanted to please her, but I didn’t know if my body could take it very often, and I didn’t know how often she would want it. I didn’t know if I was ever going to get my desires fulfilled. Yet I felt like I could take on anything after taking on really quite a thrashing, and even craved some of the intense sensation; everything else felt rather dull in comparison. I didn’t know where to go. Was she safe? Is she good for me? Am I good for her? She called me to check in, I told her a few of my concerns, and she figured we could have a coffee and chat about it soon.

A night or two later I talk to my partner - a lovely but vanilla guy who has known me for years - about it, and he shows concern for the scars and bruising. He asks me a million questions about her: does she know first aid? how experienced is she? does she sterilize her tools? I thought he was being overbearing with his questions, but to keep him happy I passed them on to her. She was incredulous, and said that if he was really concerned he could ask her himself. We took this literally, and he sent her a similar message.

Soon after that, I get a series of text messages from her, firstly answering my guy’s Qs but with some annoyance (along the lines of “of course I know first aid! I did sterilise my stuff!”) and a note about how she feels he should trust my judgement more. And then she felt that our kinks don’t really match up, so we probably couldn’t play together anymore.

I was crushed. Here’s someone I really liked, who I thought had potential to go further, after many years of not really getting anywhere…and she dumped me.

A few days later I felt a sense of deep rage. She put me in a spot where I was extra vulnerable, where I didn’t feel safe saying no, and she specifically did things I had told her I wasn’t into or wasn’t confident of. I felt coerced into going along, but I felt like everything I had told her had gone to waste, that she was more concerned with her needs than mine. I wrote her a message saying all of that, saying how I was hurt and heartbroken because I had really given a lot of myself and felt like it wasn’t respected much, about how if being a sadist was so important to her she could have just turned me down from the start. 

I didn’t want to say I was violated, I didn’t want to consider it assault - I have been raped and it was a totally different experience. At least here she listened to my safewords and actually *cared* about me as a human being, not like my rapist! but at the same time…I wasn’t sure. I felt like my innocence, naievity, and need to please was taken advantage of, and I had gone farther than I was comfortable.

Her response wasn’t much, mostly that she feels I am hurting now and that she would give me space. We still talk from time to time, though we haven’t had a chance to catch up recently.

Reading Kitty’s recent posts on consent culture and kink made me think and rethink this situation. It fitted some of the warning signs of a scene gone wrong - wishes gone unheard, feeling coerced, vulnerability being taken advantage of. She hit a big hard limit for me: dehumanisation and ignorance, trauma tied to many years of bullying and racism and oppression. And yet, and yet my biggest secret guilt:

I still like her.

I feel like I shouldn’t, that I shouldn’t still fancy someone who probably didn’t show me enough respect especially when in a particularly precarious situation. But she did many things right. She showed me tenderness and affection before and after, and still does really. She explained what was going on and let me make choices. She made sure I got home safe and hydrated and rested. She empathised with me when other people in the community were being racist fuckwits and (to my utter delight) didn’t try to exoticise me or quiz me about my foreign nature. She first met me as a regular person with a common interest who also happened to be kinky, more than just a sub, and she still remembers that and respects that.

She wasn’t malicious, and unlike my rapist she wasn’t completely selfish (my rapist actually did tell me she saw me as her fucktoy, without my input in the matter). I felt that she likely got ahead of herself and didn’t realise how far beyond my comfort zone it was.

I remembered a very similar situation that happened over a year before, a non-kinky setting, with the girl of my dreams, a situation that turned into such a nightmare that she avoids me now and I don’t know how to make things right. It was - to me - just a moment of online shenanigans, but it triggered something in her and she felt like we had gone too far. The fallout that unfolded not long later when she figured she couldn’t deal with being friendly with me anymore because of that one day in May was one of the worst times of my life; I had fallen into a deep pit of despair and horror and anguish, and have only just come out the other side.

I still miss her, the girl who I unintentionally violated just by words. And I still miss her, the woman who pushed me a little too far, unintentionally violating me with her desires. All of us not totally aware of our limits and reactions until it happens, all of us just wanting to have fun sexy delicious times with each other, all of us deeply desiring and attracted to each other - all of us eventually hurting each other.

I never quite know whether to consider this assault, a violation, what. I remember being quite horrified at Janet Hardy’s comments about “turning someone into a rapist without their consent” - as though the violator’s “consent” over their label was more important than the consent of the survivor. But I’ve been on possibly both sides of these, with people I know from outside contextes to be decent and friendly and lovely and caring, the sort of people who would take consent culture seriously and treat people with respect. But some things just don’t quite go right. and then you don’t know what to do.

Is it bad that I still want my former Domme to take me back as her sub? Or at least still count me amongst her bevy of ladysexyfriends? Should I be damming her to hell instead, outcasting her, refusing to see her again - just because that’s apparently what you do with someone who pushes your boundaries? Am I part of the problem? Do I have a right to an opinion or feeling on this, or am I being a hypocrite because just under two years ago someone else I deeply cared about saw in me what I saw in the Domme, felt the same way, had the same moral quandries?

I don’t know. I don’t really know.

my first piece of erotic fiction in a while! I’ve long had a thing for mentor/protege dynamics and this was inspired by my first lady lover, whom I’ve wished was more of my creative mentor and was quite turned on by the idea of me being her canvas. Too bad she moved interstate! 

Ropework, service, knife play, scratching, sensation play. F/f pairing.

Feel free to share, just keep the credits…written by Mendhi Henna.

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which actually worked out for me!

Backstory: Remember A, the cute gawky redhead at Velvet who wanted to play with me but had a scarily possessive date? And how we were supposed to swap contact details but never managed to? Well I posted callouts for her on Facebook and Fetlife but didn’t get anywhere, and I couldn’t seem to find people who knew her. So on a whim I wrote a post om CLMC describing her and asking her to email me if she reads this. I didn’t think it’d work - it’s too random and vague and who knows if she was still interested.

She replied the next day!

She remembered my name (though was a bit dubious on the spelling), remembered my prop, remembered the plan to swap contact details. I happened to be sick that week (bah) so any shenanigans would have to wait, but we made plans to meet up at Up Your Alley (a mini Folsom Street Fair, a kink street festival) a coming weekend.

(I have this odd feeling that we probably ran into each other earlier than that but I don’t remember)

So we did! We checked out UYA earlier in the day, catching up with people we’ve met elsewhere and playing around with rabbit-fur floggers & mitts (AHHHH SO SOFT I WISH I COULD BRING THEM TO AUSLAND) and looking at all the half-naked men in the crowd.

We nuzzled up in a corner and, after some cute affectionate hair-caressing and sweet talk, moved on from Velvet’s kisses to fuller-on making out. Now here’s the thing with UYA:

Half-naked or naked men walking around with their dicks out, maybe making out or playing Naked Twister or flogging or whatever: Meh.
Two fully-clothed chicks making out: BOOM! CAMERAS!

Well I caught one off the corner of my eye anyway but was too slow to respond. So if you see a photo of a redhead and a brown girl lip-locked at Dore Alley…well you know who we are now.

Sadly, for a kink festival, there didn’t seem to be a spot where we could hide and keep going (without worrying about cameras; I think no one would have minded if we had sex right there in the middle of the street!), none that I was aware off anyhow. A had a kite festival to go to, so I basically invited myself over to her place, which she agreed to, so long as we were both still OK with it after a while.

We walked over to the train station to drop her off, hand-holding and kissing and nuzzling the whole time, looking and feeling like new lovers. How very exciting - and for longer than a day, even, with potential for more! It took a LONG time to finally let A go and catch her train…not that she seemed to be in any particular hurry.

Well it turned out that we both ended up napping afterwards and by the time we got back from the day it was too late to make it over or do anything. But we did manage to catch up again the next day for a project at the Center for Sex and Culture - again with the kissing and nuzzling and caressing. Ha, it’s been a while since I’d been able to do that with someone new that didn’t end up being just a one-night (or one-day) stand.

I had an appointment at her side of the Bay so I went there earlier in the day to explore. It’s pretty sleepy and quiet, not much to do for more than a few hours, and I became rather bummed out by some personal drama earlier in the day so ended up drifting rather than really taking anything in. I did manage to drop in to Feelmore510, a gorgeous adult gallery/sex shop with a friendly and passionate manager (Nenna), and got some supplies for a possible future encounter - after all, A and I were going to meet up later that night, and I could really use a cuddle by that point.

I was looking forward to meeting A later that evening after my appointment, but there was a mixup over the venue, and I was half-seething half-praying to God to at least have some mercy on me, I’ve already had enough for a bad day. So instead of a poetry slam (who already had my entry fee, ha) I got back on the train to town - to a rope munch.
And found A shyly in the corner, watching her “sparkly unicorn” friends (such an awesome troupe) getting all tied up.

The nuzzling, kissing, and cuddling didn’t take too long to start up again.
(Seriously. The cute could kill you.)

This time I suggested I bring her home, since it was getting late and we were just a few blocks away from where I stayed. I made a promise to one of A’s sparkly unicorn friends (who had given her a ride) to take good care of her, bought both of us dinner, and examined a table with the Map of Human Sexuality on it.

That was plenty of motivation to head back to the warehouse and do our own mapping.
After watching the tango classes downstairs, we ambled back to my (messy, tiny) room, for a bit of our own tango.

A is a private person, and our lovely finally-realised climax to what started at Velvet had a soft, slow, quiet, intimate quality, peppered with lots of meows and nose-beeps and Internet fangirling. So I’ll keep specific details on the down low.
But there was quite a puddle on the bed later (no glitter this time, unfortunately), and the Feelmore510 purchases were put to good use.

I’ll miss her when I have to go. She’s only just moved to town and it’s always just when things are getting really exciting that it is about to end. (hey, just like sex, woo.)
But I hope there’s more soft sweet nuzzling, kissing, meows. Take them in when we can.