Repeats from Rapture

Now that the Rapturevision site is up and running again, I’m going to cut and paste a couple of my old posts from there to here. These are things I wrote last summer around the time of the big piercing session I had with Mitsu and I’m glad they reappeared.

[Originally posted 7/21/08]

I read my copy [of The Forked Tongue] over the weekend. It was perfect timing because I finished it on Sunday afternoon, just before a session with Mitsu. I’ll write more about that over in the reviews soon.

I spent my morning drinking coffee and eating toast and reading the last section of Flagg’s book. This passage caught my eye:

I've said that for me, BDSM is about making my demons pull the wagon, instead of chasing me -- or worse, dragging me along behind them. Making these things that make me different, maybe bad, a positive part of who I am and what I do. Making these things, somehow, work for me after all this time. What it took to get here, to reverse this burden was acceptance. That was much harder than it sounds. Not the acceptance  of "the community" -- I sought that first, and receiving it left me hollow and troubled. I could play the reindeer games, but they meant nothing to me; they were a mockery of whatever it was that was restlessly moving around inside me. Acceptance by those few found peers was and is integral to the process, but that in itself was not near enough, it just meant that I was not alone in being alone. During this time I was lucky enough to find two close peers to talk to, and that's where the real work began: acceptance of my own desires. (97)

Wow. That is a really encouraging thing to read. And here’s where my post turns into a love note to Rapture.

On the page before that passage, Flagg talks about gradually finding his Pack — sniffing out those few kindred spirits in search of “recognition.” Nine months ago, when I decided I was going to take charge of my demons and try to make them pull the wagon, I stumbled into my Pack. The phrase “Kink is about experimentation.” at the top of Mitsu’s profile was my first clue that I was on the right track.

Using Flagg’s terms, I would say that the feeling of elation I had at my first  session was partly a feeling of recognition. Thinking “I really liked that, and she seems to really like doing it to me” was exciting and comforting and frightening. Every experience I have had with the Fine People of Rapture has only strengthened that feeling.

I think Flagg’s passage is also useful for thinking about Dominant as a Profession. Talk about getting your demons to pull the wagon — how about pull the wagon and pay the rent too.

I’m still in the process of sorting out my demons to see which ones are real and which ones are phantoms. Total Acceptance is still a ways off, but I’m getting there thanks to the guidance of Mitsu and the support of the whole Rapture Pack.

This one is a different version of the review of that session I posted here:

[Originally posted 7/21/08]

I spent the weekend reading Flagg’s new book – The Forked Tongue – and trying to contain my excitement over my Sunday night appointment with Mitsu. I had already written to tell her my limit on marks was suspended and I’m up for piercing and/or bloodshed when I read this passage:

I stood in Hellfire, my girl Tink perched on a padded bench, gone wherever it is masochists go. I looked at my hands, my shirt, my boots... they were spattered with blood. A pool of blood was forming on the floor where I stood. In realistic terms, it was nothing, but at the moment, it looked like a hemorrhage. Deep inside me, something shifted, and spoke.

It said "Yes." (98)

I was shown into the Silver Room to wait. This time the room seemed a little bare. There were no electronical gadgets in sight. No heaps of rope. No giant dildos. The room was just clean and tidy. Mitsu arrived, I gave her presents, then I got undressed.

She began by tying my arms around my back then made me kneel down, forehead to the floor, for a thrashing. We don’t do much corporal, because of my usual limits on marks, but those limits are temporarily suspended, so Mitsu took advantage of my ass. Actually, it was the spot where the ass turns into the thighs, which is turning a lovely shade of purple/pink this morning.

That certainly cleared my head. Then she had me lie down on the bed and she restrained me with ropes. That’s when she went to the cupboard and pulled out the needles.

Mitsu spent the next 90 minutes sticking needles through my flesh. She started on my chest, giving the nipples three needles each with lovely symmetrical rows of pink and green needles down the sides.

She pierced her way down my torso, getting into a nice rhythm removing the caps and lubing the needle.

Then she got to my cock. She started in on a crown of thorns, which was pretty much at the top of my list of Scary Shit I Want to Try, so that was nice. She stuck sixteen needles into the head of my cock, which hurts just about as much as you imagine it would. I think there was a little blood that trickled out at this point.

Mitsu sat back to admire her work and counted the needles. We were up to 57, which struck me as rather a lot. Mistu pointed out that she still had needles left, and would keep going.

She pierced her way down the shaft of my cock and beyond. When she counted again and we were up to 80, she decided we’d go all the way to 100. She added ten more to each of my thighs to make a perfectly symmetrical round number of needles in her specimen.

I was released so I could stand at the mirror and have a look. I liked what I saw, but there was still hardly any blood visible.

I got back on the bed and Mitsu began removing the needles. That part wasn’t so painful, but then I realized the needles were holding in the blood. When the needles COME OUT is when the show really begins.

Bear in mind the mechanics of the male member. An erection happens when chambers in the penis SWELL WITH BLOOD. Basically, Miss Mitsu turned  the head of my cock into a blood sprinkler. Then she told me to masturbate with my own blood.

While I was doing that, she smothered me and choked me and tried out some head and neck pressure points. When I finally came, my torso was a horrific smear of blood and come.

Deep inside me, something shifted, and spoke.

It said “Yes.”

Thank You Mistu.

Although it’s delightful to stroll down memory lane as a very eventful year draws to a close, I keep wondering what’s coming next. There are I days I miss Mitsu and the dungeon so much it hurts, then there are days when it seems like just a pleasant fading memory. I do still have some faint scars on my belly from her needles, and she certainly left a bootprint on my mind.

What’s coming up for Suspend the Rules in 2009 is anybody’s guess.

Stay tuned.

Absence and Presence

I just started reading Flagg’s book The Forked Tongue. I like that he talks about the universality of body modification/body play. This sentence early on really smacked me right in the head:

Remember that the more excited someone is, the more they will consent to. (xv)

 That’s in his “Author’s Note” where he talks a lot about consent. It has been nearly six weeks since I last  saw Miss Mitsu and I’m very excited about our upcoming session. I’ve noticed that, within my fantasy realm, that excitement gives rise to visions of increasing severity and violence. I just wonder if my body is ready to receive the same degree of torment as my mind.

But at this point, my faith in Mitsu is such that I trust her to be attentive and ethical. I want to be pushed, but only by someone who knows me. That’s where I am in Flagg’s book right now — his chapter on Mindfucks where he emphasizes knowing your subject. The chapter on hypnosis was interesting. I can vouch for the amazing potential of hypnosis/trance in the BDSM setting.

I think I don’t feel like such a newbie anymore. Let’s have another look back at the Darker Days. In times past, I would have taken a peep at an S&M book in a shop, or maybe bought an issue of “Bizarre” or something and felt like a complete outsider/wannabe. Today I am reading a highly regarded brand new work and I have sufficient personal experience to fully identify with what the author is saying. 

So that’s rewarding.

And tomorrow Miss Mitsu is going to tie me up and hit me!

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.