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?

One of our first contributors sent us a range of very eclectic, very sexy photos, many of which were immediately re-blogged. Among them, ze sent a photograph of a bound, erect penis: essentially, a cock shot. Exactly as ze described it in hir email, the bondage is beautifully done. The man’s penis strains, his stomach muscles are tensed, his skin flushed with trapped blood. It is, undoubtedly, a beautiful cock in bondage.

When May and I sat down and opened the email to look through the images, the cock caught our attention.

“Should we post that?” I asked.

May shrugged. “My instinct is yes.”

“Hmm,” I said. “My instinct is no.”

We have yet to resolve this between the two of us, so I thought I’d throw it open to a bit of discussion here, and find out what you, the audience of the blog, think.

Can a cock shot be submissive?

I can explain, to some degree, why my initial instinct was to say no. The reasoning is threefold.

Firstly, because I do have a personal wariness around cocks that should be acknowledged. I am not a big fan of the penis, in general. I find the entire contraption a little off-putting, and wont to spit acrid goo at me. And where erotica is concerned, they’re just not to my taste. I have thousands of images in my porn collection, and not a cock shot to be found.

Secondly, because I do see a tricky distinction here between masochism and submission. I have often identified scenes that focused intensely upon the weapons and gear of kink as sadomasochistic, but not as D/s. This is another instance of the nuances between top/bottom and dom/sub, many of which are fluidly defined from person to person. A person in pain is not submissive. A person in bondage is not necessarily submissive either. But how to convey that distinction, merely a matter of attitude, in a photo?

Following from that point, the third: I’ve realized that I make a connection between character and submission. That is, for me to feel that a photo portrays an instance of beautiful submission, it must first convey a person who will enact that submission. An amputated body part is not, to me, enough.

In my gut, this is a matter of emotional connection. I have no emotional connection to this particular body part. As such, while I find the photo evocative and masochistic, nothing about it says submission to me. The cock has no eyes to cry with, no lip to quiver, no knees to kneel upon, no body to hunch, to protect, to evoke my dominant instincts. I do not care about it, beautifully bound though it is.

But perhaps this is an unfair bias I’m inflicting upon the Male Submission Art audience, to shy away from cock shots and their ilk. In all honesty, I don’t know. I know my personal tastes run deep, and are often counter-culture. We don’t have enough suggestions yet to get a truly fair sampling of what people are interested in.

So tell me. Can a cock shot be submissive? What do you think?

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password: