Party favors

I’m back in the US of A, but still on the road. I had a great week of vacation and now I’m ready for a week of professional conference business.

Last week’s vacation was organized around the wedding of my lady’s cousin. I wasn’t expecting or planning on it, but I think I made some progress asserting my kinkiness. In the past I have tried a very direct approach to getting my lady to indulge my special interests with very limited results. Viewing Bend Over Boyfriend together resulted in some pleasant vanilla intercourse, but not the ass pounding I was hoping for. Now that I have a stronger sense of my sexual twists, maybe I can do a better job communicating what I want. On this trip I just censored myself a little bit less. For example, I was jabbering away about something that made my lady respond “you’re just a secret exhibitionist” to which I replied “maybe not so secret.”

I’m quite enjoying getting to know my own kink and weaving it into my life. At the wedding reception I experienced a little thrill when I saw that the little party favors — painted tin cups full of candy and confetti — each featured a mini clothespin that held the name tags in place. Mitsu used a bunch of mini clothespins on me in our first session, and one of her videos features a sub with about a million clothespins on his cock.

As long as I can remember I have loved miniatures. Tiny = good in my book, which my lady friend knows very well. We had fun collecting these mini clothespins at the reception. I didn’t end up with all that many, but I’m eager to show my lady the real reason I was so keen to have them. I didn’t have an opportunity last weekend — the day after the wedding we flew home then I flew off to my conference early the next day. When I get home I think I’ll start with one or two on each nipple and see how she reacts.

As I write this, I have five tiny clothespins attached to the tip of my cock. They’re all clamped around the opening of my urethra and it’s delightfully hurty. I’m excited about playing with sounds again soon. Ever since that last session with Mitsu I’ve been craving that sensation.

And suddenly I’m eager to start acquiring some specialized equipment of my own. In the past — the dark pre-Mitsu days — I would have clung to my stash of half a dozen mini clothespins and left it at that. Now I want to buy myself a whole pile of them. I sense a shopping spree in the near future. In addition to more clothespins, I need a bigger dildo, and maybe I need this thing:

That’s the SexTek Cock Cap which you can read about here: http://www.sextek.com/products/cockcap.html

Hmmm…

Time to Google L.A. fetish supply stores.

Holding On and Letting Go at the same time

This is probably the last reasonable chunk of time I’m going to have to myself before I take off for vacation. I feel really great about my kinks right now. I had a great time with Miss Mitsu earlier this week and a video we did went up online.

The title of this post is something she said to me as she started sliding a glass dildo up my ass: “…holding on and letting go at the same time…” That’s not just the key to successful anal penetration, it’s kind of the key to life.

That’s how I’m thinking about Mitsu lately, the nature of our relationship. The holding on is the easy part; it’s the letting go AND holding on that’s challenging. It’s difficult not to think of her frequently, sometimes obsessively, but I’ve been trying a technique from what I’ve learned about meditation. In seeking peaceful abiding, one of the first things is to train your mind to let go of thoughts that distract your focus from your breath. Instead of fighting intrusive thoughts, acknowledge them, then let them go. 

So when I think of Miss Mitsu, I sometimes choose to relish it — maybe relive a session moment or fantasize about future play — but I sometimes simply acknowledge the thought and send it on its way. That seems to be working fairly well. I think I’m finding a good balance for how BDSM practice fits into my life. I’m also feeling more confident both of my desires and my true physical and mental delight. I have a real sense of accomplishment about what I’ve been doing. I’m proud of myself for finally following through on exploring something that has been a part of me for as long as I can remember.

Another thing Mitsu said was:

“I’m just training you so you can take it really rough and fast.”

Which is very exciting. And once again I’m going to move from anal penetration to the world of Buddhist meditation: the basic idea is that the mind is a naturally calm and strong thing. It’s the swirl of distracting thoughts and our efforts to maintain a public persona — the constant struggle for ME! — that throw us off balance. Once we train the mind toward calmness, we will be able to remain balanced even in the roughest and fastest storms.

I get thrown off balance a lot. I’m starting to feel the strength at my center — strength I’m building through yoga and meditation and S&M. 

And then she said:

“You like it when Mommy’s mean to you and nice to you…”

Yes.

Yes I do.

Be Here Now

OK, here we go.

So far this blog has been all about my intellectual apparatus; the texts and traditions I have learned about and experienced that drew me to BDSM. All of that was written during the weeks between sessions with Miss Mitsu. After a couple weeks of that, I begin to lose touch with the physicality of the experience. I begin to doubt the reality of that experience — that’s one reason I like doing videos. Evidence! Yes, I did have that experience. Holy shit.

I had another mind-bending experience with Mitsu at Rapture yesterday.

I had previously expressed an interest in sounds but we hadn’t tried it in session yet. When I e-mailed Mitsu after I booked our time at Rapture, I didn’t say anything about the specific activities I wanted to try. She knows my limits; we seem to be clicking well in terms of interests, so I left it entirely up to her.

When I got to the Silver Room to wait for Mitsu, I noticed a tray with some wires and some gadgets, and one of the gadgets looked long and slender, like it might be a sound.

Which, in fact, it turned out to be.

Hmmm.

How much detail do I want to share here?

Before we started, Mitsu told me she was working on integrating trance language into her sessions. It wouldn’t be a full-on trance induction like we have done before, but similar in style. After she restrained me, she prepared an electrified anal probe and inserted it. As she was doing this, she started talking me into a state of deep relaxation but also deep focus.

A lot of her language resonated with the stuff I’ve been reading about meditation and yoga. The guy on my yoga videos — Baron Baptiste — describes yoga as meditation in motion. He also talks about focusing on breathing and relaxing in physically challenging poses. So in addition to my inclination to do whatever Mitsu tells me to do, her words tapped right into the yoga I’ve been doing regularly for almost 2 years.

And it really happened. At first the anal probe felt sharp and prickly and uncomfortable, but that sensation completely changed over time as I loosened up my mind and began to tingle. Really, my face got all tingly. I apologize for relying so much on the term “floaty” but I think that’s the best way to describe it.

So that alone was sending me on quite a trip when Mitsu inserted the sound. I honestly felt very little discomfort as it went in, and I got it in all the way, which I’m proud of. I promise to keep better track of the make and model numbers of her gadgets, for journalistic purposes, I think it was a TENS unit. I know it has a 9 volt battery, and I know we had it turned up all the way. When the juice was flowing into both orifices, I officially left the planet.

And THEN Mitsu applied the nipple clamps, which struck me as perfect timing. She sat next to me on the bed and fiddled the controls and I started humming and singing and wriggling like an otter. It was pretty spectacular.

We also made considerable progress with the opening of my ass. She used to have a picture up somewhere that showed her holding her giant glass dildo. She used that on me yesterday to great effect. I am just a junior ass slut at this point, but we’re working on it. The goal of having Miss Mitsu’s entire fist up my ass is a great and worthy pursuit.

The floaty feeling lingers for quite a while after the session ends. When I peed for the first time that afternoon, the tip of my urethra stung like a motherfucker. It stung less and less over the next 24 hours or so, but it was a deeply satisfying sting. An invisible reminder on my body. I don’t think I have mentioned that I keep my kink entirely secret to all around me. Thus, it’s only on rare occasions that I can wear battle scars on my skin. I did tell one very close friend, but I trust him like a brother. He was also impressed and intrigued. The one question he asked over and over was “Yeah, it looks hot, but doesn’t it HURT?”

Which brings us around to the big question of the day: if the sensation transforms from “hurty” to “delightful” can we still describe it as “pain”? Does it still “hurt” if I’m humming like a whale and giggling to myself?

Body Play

One of the names in my Hall of Fame on the right there is Fakir Musafar. I learned about him from this book:

I first encountered this book in my favorite record & comic shop in the late 1980s — this book came out in 1989, so it was the very late 80s indeed. This is a perfect example of the long, slow awakening of my kink. I flipped through this book 100 times in the shop before I worked up the nerve to buy it. I don’t know what i was worried about.

It’s a great book full of all sorts of examples of body modification — mainly tattooing and piercing — but the long interview with Fakir is something special. This guy started playing with pain and other body modifications when he was very young, inspired by the images in National Geographic and other sources. Here’s a picture of a wasp-waisted Fakir in 1959:

Even better than these pictures is the text of the interview. Here’s a nice chunk:

Interviewer: People are always asking: why should you do things like get pierced or get tattooed? You gave us three reasons: 1.) religious/spiritual benefits, 2.) social status or for adornment, and 3.) sexual pleasure.

Fakir: Well, we’re all suffering from a lot of repressive conditioning which you can’t undo in just a mental way. Most of it has to do with sexuality and sexual energy. If you get into any practices of other cultures you’re bound to be involved with a lot of sexuality in other states and guises that aren’t even acknowledged as being in existence in this culture. And a good shamanistic answer to Why do these things? is BECAUSE IT’S FUN! It’s more fun than getting on a bus and going to work in the morning. It’s more fun than going to a college and getting a Ph.D. It’s more fun for you, and it can sometimes be a lot of fun for people around you. I mean: what’s wrong with that? Is there a law against having fun?

Experiencing ecstatic states: why would one want to experience an ecstatic state? Well, you might learn something out of it. You might be able to help others. You might see other worlds. There may be all kinds of reasons, but basically you do it because it’s fun! Why not?

…I know the idea is odious and alien to our culture that one would deliberately impose restrictions on movement and freedom of the body, but mankind throughout history has always done this. The lessons that can be learned and the life that can be led by doing this far transcend what can be learned by being comfortable. Being comfortable isn’t necessarily living a “good” life–that’s the myth, but it’s not true. Living an uncomfortable life is sometimes far more satisfactory than a placid, bovine existence.

To not have encumberments, to not have holes in your body, to not have tattoos may be debilitating–this is something that people have to consider. They may not be getting the most out of life because they don’t do these things–that’s the point. People may be missing beautiful, rich experiences because of cultural bias and conceit.

Elsewhere in the interview he talks about how everyone owns their own body and can do whatever the hell they want with it. I am totally sold on his notion that we can learn a lot more from discomfort and pain than we can learn from comfort and luxury. Which is where this ties back in with the zen/Budhist stuff I’ve been reading. Suffering is a big part of life. That’s noble truth #1: Life Is Suffering. Instead of expending all your energy desperately seeking comfort and avoiding pain, maybe there’s value in learning to experience the pain along with the joy?

I especially like Fakir’s statement “we’re all suffering from a lot of repressive conditioning which you can’t undo in just a mental way.” I have done several years of conventional therapy — the Talking Cure — and I feel like I have reached a limit on the progress I can make by simply talking about things. Talking through some issues has been a valuable experience, but right now I’m just beginning to appreciate the foolishness of ignoring the body.

The Road to Shambhala

So when am I going to get to the S&M stuff, already? Where are the whips and chains? Isn’t that what S&M is all about?

I’ll get to all that eventually, but right now I want to talk about another book. I went to an introduction to meditation class a couple weeks ago and the teacher recommended this book:

Turning the Mind into an Ally by Sakyong Mipham (2003)

I started reading it last night and I was only on page six when this paragraph caught my eye.

That’s the point of talking about mind and meditation. The more we understand about ourselves and how our mind works, the more the mind can work. The Tibetan lesu rungwa means that the mind is functional. My father used to sometimes translate this as “workable.” It means that we can train the mind to work in order to use it to do something particular. For example, if we want to generate compassion and love, that’s work.

My S&M journey is all about working toward a better understanding of my own mind. I didn’t realize that when I started, I just knew that I was drawn to this world of eroticized pain and submission. The thing that fascinates me is the degree to which the above statement is equally true about the body, and the endless interplay between body and mind.

The first step for me was working up the nerve to book a session at Rapture last November. I pored over the Domme profiles and was drawn to Miss Mitsu’s. I have learned that she means every single word, starting with “Kink is about experimentation.” A full description of that first session will appear here sometime soon, but nothing could have prepared me for that first taste of Sub Space — that first trip into another part of my brain; an alteration of my consciousness.

I have read a little bit about the chemistry of endorphins and the other brain chemicals activated by pain/body play, but I’m convinced there’s much more to it than that. After a few traditional sessions, I did a trance session in which Mitsu hypnotized me. I didn’t go to exactly the same place as Sub Space, but I certainly tapped into another part of my mind. The basic direction Mitsu gave was to let my subconscious mind out of its box. Let’s not worry too much about WHY I have masochistic urges, let’s just play with those urges as they emerge.

The tiny taste of meditation I have had is enough to make me realize that it’s another method for adjusting my brain. It’s going to take a lot of practice before I’m able to quiet my bewildered mind through meditation, but I know it’s possible.

I think that passage above sheds further light on what Miss Mitsu means by “carefully cultivating, modifying, and nurturing my specimen. Feeling out your mood. Getting inside your head. Manipulating from the inside out.” The human mind CAN be manipulated and trained. Maybe that much is obvious, but what I find exciting is the vast untapped potential — the mind is capable of so much more than daily life demands of it.

The Center of the Cyclone

A while ago, Miss Mitsu suggested I read this book: 

The Center of the Cyclone: An Autobiography of Inner Space by John Cunningham Lilly, M.D. (1972)

I am a deeply bookish person, so I love exchanging books with Mitsu. I have enjoyed reading everything she has suggested so far, and this book really stands out.

John Lilly did a lot of experiments with LSD in the late 50s and early 60s, and this book is an account of those experiments and others up to the end of 1971. What I love is his principle of doing all of these experiments on his own mind and body. He experimented with everything from sensory deprivation tanks to group hypno-therapy and beyond. It’s too much to summarize here, but I want to share this bit from the very end of the book:

In this book I illustrate a general principle of living and being. It is a principle I wrote out in the Human Biocomputer. Here I revise and enlarge it. In a scientific exploration of any of the inner realities, I follow the following metaprogrammatic steps:

1. Examine whatever one can of where the new spaces are, what the basic beliefs are to go there.
2. Take on the basic beliefs of that new area as if true.
3. Go into the area fully aware, in high energy, storing everything, no matter how neutral, how ecstatic, or how painful the experience becomes.
4. Come back here, to our best of consensus realities, temporarily shedding those basic beliefs of the new area and taking on those of the investigator impartially dispassionately objectively examining the recorded experiences and data.
5. Test one’s current models of this consensus reality.
6. Construct a model that includes this reality and the new one in a more inclusive succinct way. No matter how painful such revisions of the models are be sure they include both realities.
7. Do not worship, revere, or be afraid of any person, group, space, or reality. An investigator, an explorer, has no room for such baggage.

This strikes me as an excellent framework for exploring S&M as I have begun practicing it. Notice the two instances where Lilly refers to how painful these experiments can be, but the ultimate point is to fully experience that pain to construct a better model for daily life. 

I am going to devote a lot of this space attempting to describe the hypnosis sessions I have had with Mitsu. I am sure there will be many more in the future. I will also devote a future entry to a detailed description of my yoga practice and my brand new meditation practice. I am interested in exploring the same inner spaces as Lilly, using all of these practices.

Reading this book helped me understand what Miss Mitsu means when she talks about behavior modification and robotification, and all that good stuff she blogs about and posts about. Even though Lilly did all these experiments on himself, he was never completely alone. He worked with many different guides and teachers, and passed on what he learned to others. There are a lot of complicated feelings involved in submitting to a pro-domme. One way I think of this relationship is that Mitsu is a skilled practitioner of her chosen arts. We have started an experiment together, a collaborative work of art with my body and mind as the raw materials. I’m eager to see where this all leads, and I hope I can follow Lilly’s steps and analyze and evaluate these experiences and share them with others.