The more cruel parts
of my shark-skinned mind
smell blood in the water.
Images of wound prey;
trapped,
pinned,
sobbing,
screaming with fear-soaked cunts.
Vulgar hunger filling my head
making my conscience feel like a chum covered diver
in a safety cage made of tinker toys.
“Where do you go during the day?” The rancher’s wife asked as he buttoned up his Carhart. He looked at her through eyes tucked way back beneath his furrowed and leathered brow. With a huff through his mustache he did not answer.
She watch from the kitchen window as his beat up Ford 150 rambled and stumbled over the old Farm Road. She made herself coffee, wrapping her hands around the ceramic and soaking up the heat.
She put on her coat and the thick mittens. She wore two pairs of socks and tucked her pant legs inside her winter boots. It was her daily ritual, to wait until he was gone then get dressed and follow him out into the fields. She would walk along the fence line looking for signs of his work, a new nail in an old post, a cigarette butt not yet bleached my the sun.
Sometimes she would find where his calloused hands had roughly laid new wire, catching a flower or two as it dragged across the ground. The frail blossoms would get caught up in the hooks and barbs of the fence and hang in the air. She would collect them and press them in the family bible.
Miles ahead he would see her tracks from the day before and chuckle as he watched her try to avoid a pile of dung. Her steps were light and unsure but he made certain to step firmly in the mud so she could see his track. He picked up a wild flower and gently slid it into the curves of the barbed wire.
The thunder dragon fell in love with a river. Watching it from above he was enraptured by its curves. She was long and winding and while she remained steadfast, clinging to the mountainside, she raced along the ground. He loved her completely and wanted her in him.
With a flash and crack, he swooped down and took in the river from head to delta. He engorged himself with her until all that was left on the earth was the long scar where she once lay.
Within him she sat, unmoving. The passion and tumult that he had loved was gone and all that was left was the weight of the water in him. She that he loved only existed down there, on the rocks. He wept.
The tears fell in big drops. The drops collected in pools and the pools found paths. The paths all led to the riverbed and as the thunder dragon cried, the river grew again.
Don’t give it to me
Don’t sit on your knees with perfect posture
Hands out, palms up
Don’t look up at me
With puppy dog eyes
Bought and designed by Urban Decay
Cower
Cry
Beg for me to stop
Tell me you hate me
Call me an asshole
Bleed
Lower yourself
So I will stop
So the pain will end
Become less
Because it is the only way out
Because it pleases me
Find relief in the low place
In the lack of thought
In the emptiness
Find peace
In being nothing
Nothing, but mine.
It starts in E minor, the song you always play when I am about to hurt you.
This will never end ’cause I want more
More, give me more
Give me more
The blood surges in my head as our dance begins again. This well-worn path leads into the darkness, into the black where we let ourselves go.
You take my hand and close your eyes with trust. Trust that I will make you hurt, make you suffer but also trust that this is where I want to lead as much as it is where you want to be led. We are together in this suffering, in this cold and enduring anguish; me as master, you as manifested.
I used to be satisfied by the sound of your screams and the look of anguish in your eyes as you went beyond pain for me. I used to find solace in your willingness to be my tortured soul. Now I love to change your screams, make your pained expression move from one horror to another. I find knowing you and manipulating your exquisitely fucked up soul brings order to my world. The more I know you, the more I know your pain, the more I love you.
Dear dedita,
As I lie down and prepare to enter the void of sleep I am struck by the emptiness of slumber. I was a dreamer once, my closed eyes were the movie screen of a thousand million stories. I was filled with ideas of filth and horrible places that could not exist anywhere else. As I grew older, I learned that I did not have to live in my head, that the weird and sick shit I wanted to do could be done with people outside of my dreams. I found that the world is made up of manifested dreams. It is made from the mental stardust of our minds manipulated by our actions and attitudes. I no longer needed to dream in my head, I could dream directly into the world with cruel words, a hard slap, a too-deep thrust.
As I embraced my desires, dreams became less and less frequent. I was no longer dreaming long dreams. I was no longer thinking of them as I moved through the day. These Elysian fields were not needed and so like a mirage, they faded as I grew up and took my place as master of my environment.
The lack of vivid dreams does not bother me in itself. I do not miss the dreams because they have been replaced by a tangible world of my design. What I do dislike is the missing time that has replaced the dreams. Now the sleep is a time where I am not in control. It is a time when the world can go on without me. Where you are free and uncared for. While I sleep I could lose you to the demons that exist because I made them so.
I sleep with my fist in your hair to keep you safe, so those monsters don’t drag you away.
Love,
Me
We were riding in the car, and I laid out in detail what I wanted to do to you when we got home. I talked about throwing you in the shower, and pissing on you, and spitting on you, and leaving you to wash in my filth.
And as you sat there with your eyes turned away, biting your fat bottom lip, you slowly reached between your legs. As if I didn’t notice you playing with yourself, you asked the question:
“Why?”
I want to see you owned by me, which is different than me owning you.
I want to see you suffer for me as I let the warm water ease my muscles, pool around my feet, coming ever closer to drowning you as I make you lay in a fetal position at the bottom of the tub. I want to put your mouth to use cleaning me, to know that when my workday is through I have this sacred place to come home to. I want to chain you in the tub, and fill it with my used bath water so you will be covered in my filth even when I am not present. I want to give you my toothbrush after I’ve used it to remind you that your place is after me, behind me, below me, using things that I’ve left like a memory for you.
Dear Dedita,
“I suffer for you.”
You chanted it like a mantra, while the rope attached to your hair and the suspension winch made you stand on your tip toes.
The mantra was what kept you afloat as your legs gave out, as your hair gave out. You were crying. It was not from the pain (I am sure there was pain), it was not from the isolation (you were alone in the darkness for a very long time), it was not the physical sacrifice that you were experiencing. It was the suffering that made you cry and stretch your hand out towards me, even though it was a burning torment to extend your body so far past it’s limit.
There is nothing more honest than suffering. To be slowly lowered into pain, to move beyond discomfort and the nebulous region where masochists find their pleasure. It is as if these ideas of pain, discomfort, torture, are nothing but the thin ice above a lake of sacrifice. I want to lower you into it, because it is in this cold water that your skin turns blue and you become my Ophelia.
As my slave, you float in this icy hell for me in many ways. Most are not obvious to the outside observer; many of them are quiet personal hells that only you and I share, while some are hells and traps that only you know. These little sufferings, like a thousand razor cuts, leave you raw and wounded and so few people ever get to see. Taking your body and allowing it to bleed, actually bleed, means that you are given a chance to show the world how dedicated you are to me. I want your suffering. I want you to crawl across broken glass to show the world what you and I already know, that you are mine.
Love,
Me
I am a writer. Not a writer in the shock-of-white-hair-scarf-and-corduroy kind of way but in the way that means my thoughts come out better on paper. For this reason I am going to be writing again and more this year than last. Two things I will be working on; brevity and certainty.
To the first point I am going to try and get my point across in fewer words, fewer thoughts, and less time. Say it right the first time. This will allow me more time to act on the discoveries I come to understand.
As to the later, I am going to trust that what I say the first time is what I meant. There is no need to search while writing. Leave the pondering to posterity.
First item of business, being a forgetful master. Things slip from my mind on a moment to moment basis. This lack of long term hold on daily tasks can feel like a human soul stuck on a goldfish’s mind. It can also be seen as a chance to find the now and realize what is important. I can see this as a chance to prove to myself and others what is valuable in the present. The present of the present if you will.
Dedita has presented on edge play and emotional BDSM for years, but only recently have we begun teaching together. When discussing what we wanted to present, we went through the several binders filled with class information and notes that she had put together. There was information on emotional play from sadism to masochism, fear play to scening in anger, and everything in between. But one thing was noticeably missing from this repertoire; a class on humiliation.
How was it that this girl, who puts herself in degrading and debasing scenes, who thrives when I objectify her, has classes on all kinds of heart-wrenching topics but has zero research and notes on humiliation, a cornerstone of emotional masochism?
I had to find out more. This was challenging; it is a sensitive subject for Dedita, because she has a deep sense of shame, that, up until our relationship, she refused to discuss with anyone.
Dedita had just come out of a relationship where shame and degradation, especially surrounding her sexuality, had played a key role and left a lasting impression. When I met her, it was far too tender a topic for her to confront personally let alone in front of a class. How can you share your knowledge on humiliation without talking about the things that humiliate you the most?
I am a very sexual creature and find BDSM power dynamics to be a way of accessing sexual gratification, so when we started to explore our relationship, I quickly made it a goal to help her confront these demons of sexual fear and shame. This post isn’t about how I’ve done that; I could write volumes on the techniques I’ve developed to break the barriers surrounding her feelings of sexual inadequacy and shame. This is a post about how far I, and she, have come in facing that shame in six short months.
About a month ago, Dedita and I presented at Winter Wickedness in Ohio. With the above information in mind, I forced her to put a humiliation class into our roundup of potential presentations. Around the same time a large number of compromising and erotic photos of her came into my possession. They were hot and played to one of my earliest kinks, found porn. She was embarrassed and ashamed and generally mortified that I not only had the pictures, but that they had made for such great fodder for me.
It seemed only perfect that these two worlds should come together. I am a writer and love a good story arc. Here I was given two; her sexual humiliation and my found porn fetish. All that was left was to draw them into a scene. The perfect place? A demo in front of seventy-five or so students eager to see the nuts and bolts of humiliation in action.
I present to you:
A sliding scale. A torture of degrees where each turn makes the agony worse until it is unbearable. The goal is to see the change from pleasure to discomfort to pain to agony. It is like looking for that place where one color of the rainbow changes to another, recognizing the nuances of gradation that connects cool blue to boiling red. It is all one in that greater arc and it is in those moments of acute perception that we see the thin line that connects our public selves to our private selves.
She gave a nervous smile and a laugh. She sat upright and still as her friend began to put makeup on her She was self-conscious of the seventy-five people watching her being dolled up and confused about why I was having more makeup applied to her already done face.
There was nothing degrading or humiliating about what was happening, nothing inherently bad about the sliding on of blush or brush of mascara against her eyelashes. Embarrassment came from simply turning the spotlight on to her, making the class focus on her body and face as she had a private function publicly performed.
I showed the makeup artist a picture of Dedita while discussing with the class the stash of photos I’d recently found. The picture was of her at twenty, a head shot with bright eyeliner and straightened hair. When I explained that she looked like a little girl trying to wear big girl make up, she became uneasy. She knew then that the pictures were part of the scene.
I could see her shore up her defenses, refusing to allow this to affect her. She chatted with her makeup artist and they joked about how if I really wanted to humiliate her, I would have gotten a guy to do her hair and eyeshadow. Her comments didn’t worry me. I have patience and know how the slow screw works.
I pulled out the rest of the pictures. The single head shot was joined by photos of her, at the same age, posing with her new breast implants. I told the crowd about her, about me, about kinks that are personal and private and very sexual while I waved naked photos of her in the air.
Dedita is not a sexual creature in public. Her shame means that she is not a person that wears that part of herself where others can see. She is a strong and smart and funny and creative mind that can crush a cocky but slow-minded “dom” with a word. She knows what she likes and is willing to share her vulnerability with those she loves. But I didn’t want her to share anything, didn’t want her to give me an inch. I wanted to take it like an invading soldier.
In pulling out those pictures, I seized her vulnerability, her shame, and held it up like my war prize. Her smile began to shake, and she was no longer embarrassed. I saw in her face that she realized the control that she had (or thought she had) through her snarky demeanor was no longer (never was) hers.
She was obviously uncomfortable at this point, frantic really, and began to repeat that this is not what we had agreed to while pointing at the pictures.
That’s true. We didn’t agree to me using those pictures, didn’t even agree to me having them. When I found them, Dedita me told me to throw them away. But there is no agreement in our relationship; I decided unilaterally that this is where we were going. I decided that this was something that I was going to have her do. She is my tool, my toy to be used, even if I use her against herself.
She was nervous and starting to get angry, her subconscious knowing what I was about to do, but this stage was only a stop, a half turn of the screw.
I pulled my six favorite pictures from the stack and started down the center aisle. I handed the pictures to the crowd and turned back to see Dedita’s expression, the defiance draining from her face. Her makeup finished, Dedita turned and hid behind her newly straightened hair, unable to face me or the crowd. The fight was becoming harder for her to put up.
Her strength, her defiance comes in the form of standing tall and firm. She will look you in the eye, her sharp tongue will cut you down to size. But make her face things she hates about herself, show her that you can see those things, and shame, sweet shame will set in. Shame hides her face, takes her voice, leaves her defenseless.
I made her stand and face the crowd, where she couldn’t hide. I used this moment to demonstrate to them what shame looks like and how to recognize it, the posture, the facial expressions, the body language. I had her stand there like a model, displaying the beauty of this emotion instead of clothing. In her face I could see her thoughts…even feeling shame was more than she deserved.
Shame implies a status that can be taken away. Shame is created when a creature within the social hierarchy is knocked down a notch or two. The fact that I had played her into this corner without her being able to mount even the most meager of counter attacks made her question whether she was worthy of even feeling like she had a hierarchy to descend from.
And the screw turned.
The war was over before it had even begun. No asymmetrical counter offensive, no Viet Cong guerrilla style insurgency would help her now. This was a battle of shock and awe played on the mind and she had been sucker punched, booby trapped and brought down before a single shot was fired.
And I didn’t have to beat her into submission, all I had to do was hand out a few pictures. I walked around her and chatted with the audience showing her that I did not break a mental sweat taking and stripping her of her will, her dignity, her humanity.
The pictures show Dedita lounging in the corner of her bedroom, propped against a piece of furniture, naked and splayed out in different poses. I put a chair in the corner of the room, mocking the photo shoot and forced her to lean against it. She knew then what I was planning.
We were going to recreate those sexualized photos; she was mine to move, to stand and pose.
But this was not where it would stop. Just as there are colors, ultra-violets and infrareds beyond the visible spectrum, there are controls and mental tortures beyond what I had put on her. I was still in control of her, directing her movements, and in my hands she feels a sense of belonging, knows she is safe. In my hands there is a hierarchy, because I appreciate and value her, value who she is.
I could see in her face that she felt like my thing. It was painful to her, but if Master wanted to make her into his sexual thing for his pleasure, that she could handle. We were about to find out what would happen if I took away the safety of me from this equation, and simply showed everyone that she was a sexual thing.
Nuance. It is all in nuance.
As I collected the pictures back up from attendees, I had mentally noted people in the crowd who were convention archetypes. I handed the pictures back out to them: a strong and dominant man, a friendly switch, a loving and long time friend, an embarrassed submissive.
I didn’t just give the pictures to these people, I also gave them her.
I asked them to pose her based on the photos they held. They took turns telling her where to put her arms, her legs, her head. They made her strip and lounge like a doll. They had her make erotic facial expressions. They arranged her with her tits out, legs spread, mouth pursed. She was there for their entertainment, no longer under my control. She was nothing more than a sexual object.
A friend with a camera started to snap pictures and, with the sharp burst of the flash, her soul was finally stolen away completely. Her face closed, she gave in, and became the nameless, faceless, 2 dimensional photographic thing I had made her, displaying the fact that she was a sexual creature to one and all.
This was what I wanted. Not this moment of her losing herself and her humanity alone, but the range. I was watching the slow turn of the screw that changed this sharp tongued teacher of kink into my object to be used and shared as I saw fit. They are one in the same and so completely different.
New Knots in an Old Rope 