A Place To Draw Blood Laughing » Limits

6. Fuck-Ups Part 1

Eileen — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 13:11:58 +0000

I want to talk about fucking up. Because I have, and I think it’s not talked about enough. We speak to each other about the things we’ve done, what we’ve learned, how we’ve succeeded, but it’s hard to talk about the times we’ve failed. So I’m starting a series. That’s right. I’m going to tell you about every single time I’ve fucked up a scene. Because in the end, I learn from my mistakes, and that almost – almost – makes the mistakes worth making.

I fucked up my very first scene.

We played without communication, and that was the problem. I didn’t really know what I was doing. I knew if I ran my nails down his back just so, over and over, he sighed and hiccoughed and moaned in a way that made my stomach knot and my labia quiver. So I made him moan, and then I made him moan again, again, again, until he dropped to the floor and said “Please, please stop.” And I did stop, but I admit, not right away. He had no safeword and was too submissive (and too in love) to stop me. I look back now and wince at how stupid we were.

Afterward he pulled a shirt gingerly over his shoulders and we went downstairs and sat on a picnic table. He smoked a pipe and told me, slowly, how scared he was of me. That he wasn’t sure if he could ever trust me again. I’m not sure he ever did trust me again, not totally, not the way he wanted to. All through the thread of our relationship, for the next entire year, this was one of our defining questions: Do you trust me?

I cried at the time, and I learned fast and hard. I became a rabid communicator. I learned everything I could about power dynamics and safewords. I apologized to him. We laughed together and talked about how hot that scene was, once we’d both come down from the peak. And I was horribly, scarringly guilty. I still am. I keep that scene on the rotation, and there’s a part of me that knows I shouldn’t, that finds such conflicts wrong.

And he forgave me. I wonder, sometimes when I’m a titch on the tipsy side (like now), what would I be like if he hadn’t?

In Giving Gifts, Attitude > Activity

Eileen — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 05:15:13 +0000

There’s a new post over on Axe’s blog that has pulled out some immediate, visceral, negative reactions. I suggest you read his post in order to put mine in context, but as a brief overview, he relates a story about a dominant woman who expected him to take her shopping, and assumed he would pay for her. The comments condemn this woman as an asshat, a dishonest prat, and a whore.

Okay. I think this deserves another look. I want to talk about the giving and receiving of gifts.

What’s the issue in Axe’s scenario? Is it that she wanted him to buy her presents? Because I have to admit, I love being bought presents. I have expensive tastes, sensual obsessions, and gifts give me the warm fuzzies. In the right context, gifts turn me on. The idea of tribute turns me on. The idea of making Maymay pay for his orgasms definitely turns me on.

Don’t worry, I will not be offended if my blog stats have halved when I wake up tomorrow.

But is that really the issue? Or is it that she assumed he would buy her presents, bullied him and attempted to coerce him?

Let’s be absolutely clear. I don’t think there’s an intrinsic problem with giving presents as a form of submission, or receiving them as a form of domination (or tribute). And making the logical jump, I don’t think there is an intrinsic problem with financial domination, when done responsibly. I do think, however, that the attitudes surrounding these kinks are far too complicated to leave it at that.

Sometimes I make Maymay buy me things. It gets me off. I think it gets him off as well. It also causes me a welter of confusion, guilt, worry and self-doubt, the likes of which not even sadism can rival. Seriously. There is no other kink I claim that can make me feel like shit.

I suspect that giving money to fiercely independent women is a recipe for disaster. It’s certainly provoked some personal shipwrecks for me. Being paid for, given gifts, or being financially spoiled makes me feel weak. And ashamed, and dirty. And all sorts of other crap that I don’t think I should have to deal with. I know that I am not these things: weak, shameful, unclean.

I also love giving gifts, but I have never stopped to consider that giving Maymay a gift might make him feel bad. There are some deeply gendered issues in that statement. And I have managed to ply arrogance from its negative connotations and embrace it as a tool and a perspective, but I cannot seem to do the same with being spoiled. I can’t get through the issues to find the guilt-free good.

When we talk about financial domination, or the giving of gifts, there seems to be a feeling of general distaste. There is talk of advantages taken, and services exchanged, and it’s all layered over with the still-lingering residue of the dirt that has been culturally ingrained into the concept of prostitution. Money is too dirty an issue for us all to play nice.

We can talk about the exchange of power, and of control, and of pain. But we can’t have a conversation about the exchange of money without that knee-jerk distaste. And where does that leave women like me? The stigma of money has influenced my life in so many directions that I can barely speak about financial exchanges coherently.

And frankly, that pisses me off. Not only because it messes with my potential enjoyment of a kink, but because it messes with my future as a professional in any field of business.

What if, in some possible future, I quit my job and am financially supported by my partner? Should I feel ashamed? The way I am right now, I couldn’t bring myself to be supported willingly by someone else. And I think that’s a pretty crap attitude, on my part. I don’t like that my intrinsic worth as a person is so wrapped up in how much money I can make, or my ability to pay off my debts. I find the perspective short-sighted, and self-damaging.

Let me bring this back on track. I will say spoil me. That’s right. Buy me gifts. I love gifts. (If you can manage to spoil me and not make me feel like shit, you’re probably a miracle worker. Or Maymay.)

But I will never, ever expect that of anyone. I can barely accept gifts as it is. I have worked very hard to be gracious when people give me things, and honestly, I’m not very good at it. Gifts make me feel indebted, because for me, feeling indebted is safer than feeling spoiled. Feeling indebted and uncomfortable is a better place for me than feeling like a silver-spoon, rich-kid brat.

This says realms about me, and my relationship with money, and my relationship with myself. This is a terrific example of how my personal problems fuck with my sexuality. It’s probably the best example I have, because it is the most irrational trigger.

Taking money from others makes me feel like a bad person. It makes me afraid I will turn into the woman Axe wrote about.

It’s not just my personal hang-ups that keep me from embracing this kink. It’s that we rarely take the time to acknowledge the distinction between taking money as a kink and being a spoiled bitch, or a whore. Because if you go play in the comments over on Axe’s post, you’ll notice that no one explicitly condemned that woman for trying to pull a non-consensual scene. They condemned her for expecting to be bought gifts. Those are two different things. The first one is the real problem. The money clouds the issue.

I find it critical that we draw a perspective between the kink and the attitude. Attutide is greater than activity. I kink on gifts. I do not feel entitled to gifts. I consider inappropriate entitlement to be shameful, and non-consensual scenes to be wrong.

Only my attitude excuses me. Only my attitude separates me from her.

It hurts me that because of her, and people like her, and because of my issues regarding money, and because of the way the scene treats money, I can’t claim this kink in good conscience. It hurts me to have to say that a part of my sexuality makes me feel ashamed. That my work to act responsibly, consensually, and wisely is not enough to break that prejudice down in my bedroom, and in my mind.

Protected: That Dull Thud

Eileen — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 15:12:16 +0000

Protected: You’ll Get A Name When You Earn One

Eileen — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 19:46:22 +0000

Protected: I Find It

Eileen — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 04:11:00 +0000

Protected: I Want It

Eileen — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 20:20:00 +0000

Traffic Light Colors

Eileen — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 16:51:00 +0000

I have never safeworded.

Eileen, um, you’re a top. You don’t have safewords.

Yes, I fucking do.

There is this consistent, repetitive argument that I hear all the time from people who want to pick into the nitty-gritty of power exchange. You must have heard it. It goes like this: Bottoms actually have the power in scenes, because they have safewords and can stop the scene any time they want to.

This line of thinking indicates two things to me. Thing the first: There are some serious misconceptions about what a safeword is intended for. And thing the second: there are some serious misconceptions regarding the well-being of tops.

Safewords are not a way to guide a scene. They are a last resort for people who don’t feel comfortable not having a last resort. Plenty of people don’t have them. More often, as in the case of May and myself, we have them and never use them. We forget about them, most of the time. More on this later.

This idea that bottoms have the power because they have this one magic word that protects them from the badness is an incredibly strange all-or-nothing idea. Power shifts and flows; control has levels, variations. It’s sexy to some to think of giving it all up, every iota of control or power. The reality of the matter is that such things don’t work in consensual relationships. I’m sorry to burst that bubble. Get over it. Your fantasy is not reality. It’s simply very hot fantasy.

Perhaps this misconception comes about because people picture bottoms clinging to their safewords, like, hit me just the right way, I can stop this any second, you don’t want to make me pull out now, do you?

This is utter bullshit. If you do this as a bottom, you need to stop and consider how degrading and manipulative this is. And you need to consider what might happen when you play with a top who won’t stand for being degraded or manipulated. It’s a game people like to play, but it shouldn’t be played with safewords.

Safewords are not a sexy toy to play with. They are not sexy. If you think they’re sexy, I think you’ve missed the point.

I have seen people try to play around the idea that the goal of the scene is to safeword. I have seen people try to do battle in scenes, daring one another to safeword first. This never ends well. Sexualizing safewords is an insidious, dangerous, stupid way of getting off on non-consensual play. Safewords are not a fantasy. Safewords are reality.

A safeword is a way to communicate out of role. (I am not going to write about the intersection of role and real today.) A safeword does not indicate that someone’s won some stupid, imaginary prize. A safeword does not indicate a need to guide a scene. It indicates a need to stop. A safeword brings a scene to a jarring, screeching halt that is in no way arousing, in no way fun, but entirely necessary. It is a very handy thing to have around.

I take safewords to mean a person saying to a partner, “I need this to stop right the fuck now.”This is often followed by, “Because I’m hitting an emotional place I can’t deal with.” Or alternately, “Because I think you need to take me to the hospital.”

Safewords are almost never used before something goes wrong. That’s not what they’re designed for; they’re designed to indicate when something has gone wrong already. Someone is already hurt. Someone has passed their consensual limit.

Following from this, the misconception that tops do not have safewords is entirely fucked. It indicates a breakdown in the idea of consensual relationships. Do you know what you imply when you talk about only bottoms having safewords?

You imply that tops cannot be hurt.

I did not consent to a relationship or a role wherein I am expected to never be hurt.

You think I can’t get hurt if I’m on the handle end of the whip? What if I hit myself in the eye? (From personal experience, I can assure you this hurts. A lot.)

You think I can’t get freaked if I’m the perpetrator of an emotional trauma?

You think I don’t sometimes find myself in scenes that aren’t going the way I want them to? That I can’t have my needs derailed? That I don’t have emotional buttons like the rest of the world?

You think that I don’t have to consent?

I used to wig the fuck out when people touched my throat. I still squirm a little when people touch my hair. Once I wrestled with this guy at a party; through a crap communication session I didn’t establish this limit. He put a hand to the side of my throat, I got royally pissed off, and I lost my connection with the scene. I did not, however, safeword. I probably should have. It did not occur to me. I had not yet learned I could.

A common idea is that tops don’t have to safeword because they’re in control of how the scene progresses; that it stops and starts solely at their discretion. If you’ve ever topped a deeply intricate scene, an incredibly intense scene, a long-term scene, or hell, any scene at all, you know this isn’t always true. Scenes take on lives of their own. They grow organically, they establish rhythms and pathways that both partners follow. There will sometimes be moments when your head clears, you look again, and someone you love is sobbing and hurting because you made them sob and hurt. And it’s bad.

When this happens, you can’t just walk away. Call me crazy, but pulling abruptly out of a scene without explaining to my bottom that I’m having a problem, abandoning them in a sobbing, hurting mess, is irresponsible. It means I’ll freak them out, and I won’t get the care I need. And neither will they.Tops are not always the strong guiding forces that confidently lead bottoms to scarier and darker places. Sometimes the places we go are just as scary to us as they are to our partners.

I wrote earlier that May and I have safewords, but never use them. Sometimes they’re not available; sometimes May is gagged or I’m in the middle of a sixteen needle penetration that I can’t simply unravel. But in reality, we’ve never used them because we never need them. This is simply our style; a telling characteristic of how rabidly we demand constant communication. Of how much we trust. Of our mutual consent.

May doesn’t trust that I won’t hurt him more than he can stand. Sometimes I will hurt him more than he can stand. I don’t trust him to never ask for more than I can give. Sometimes he will ask.

We trust each other that no matter how one of us is hurt, or both of us are hurt, we’ll work it out. I can gag him and beat him six ways from Sunday and stage scenes of lust upon his body and mind, and in the end, we will be okay. We are too dedicated to each other and ourselves to accept scenarios in which we fail to work things out.

If he needs to, he can safeword.

And so can I.

Protected: . . . And The Perfect Place

Eileen — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 21:39:00 +0000

Protected: Say Anything

Eileen — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 18:49:00 +0000