Get the Balance Right

I can’t believe it has almost been a whole year since I had my first session with Miss Mitsu. Then again, it sometimes feels like that happened a decade ago. Time distorts when you’re having twisted fun, I guess.

It has certainly been an eventful year. I went from eager but ignorant newbie to blood-soaked pinchusion in less than twelve months. I went from lonely nights of agnst, porn and booze to S&M video star and public performer. Ok, I only made three videos and only played in public once, but it sure did tickle my exhibitionist side.

The point being, I spent a huge part of my life with these urges swirling around inside me until I finally took control and let them all out. Once again I will declare how lucky I feel to have found the perfect guide in Miss Mitsu. One of the moments that stands out in my brain is the time we played at the Cat o’Nine party at Lit in NY last February. We had sessioned a few times and shot one video, so we had a nice foundation. I don’t remember talking much about the scene she had in mind for that night. What I do remember is her telling me to watch her stuff while she went to talk to someone. She came back to where I was sitting, picked up her bag, then looked at me and said “Ready?” I don’t think I spoke. Maybe I mumbled “Yes.” Then I stood up and followed her to the stage.

That night was a great high for me. There I was, wearing my latex t-shirt in a club full of kinksters, and the most beautiful domme in the place was leading me onto the stage for hell knows what. I remember “Israel” by Siouxsie & the Banshees was playing during our scene. There was rope, there was a whip, there was a little choking, then she sat on me. A great night all around.

And from there, we moved on to hit many more highs. Scenes I had dreamed of for years as well as scenes I never even imagined before Mitsu guided me along this path. Hypnosis? Buddhist meditation? I really didn’t expect those to be part of my S&M journey, but here we are.

Things have been kind of crazy in the NY scene for the last few weeks. No one knows what’s going to happen or what the future holds for the world of kink here. I’m trying not to worry about it since I have enough turmoil in my personal life to keep me busy for now.

Regardless of what the future brings, I have come a long way. I have met some truly amazing people (on both ends of the whip). My kink is still there, but it’s no longer the angry dog howling in its cage and straining at the leash. It’s more of a comfortable cat these days; it’s curled up for a nap right now, but someday it will stretch itself out again. The difference is that now I possess a confident curiosity rather than a blind, desperate desire. 

Thank you again, Mitsu. And thanks to the whole Rapture tribe.

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?

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.