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Posts tagged ‘sexuality’

The choice

RougueBambi said, regarding comments left by other readers of my previous post:

I really don’t understand, how someone can “not understand the bisexual thing” after what Thumper just wrote. It’s not a thing you choose. It’s a fucking sexuality.

I think what they were saying when they wrote they couldn’t understand bisexuality was the same thing I said in my post, “It’s hard for me to relate today to someone who doesn’t find something appealing about both male and female forms.” The word “relate” is probably better than “understand” because I can understand how someone would not find those of their gender sexually attractive the same way I can understand how people find all kinds of bodies and acts attractive I don’t. We all have our types. We all have our kinks. But, as someone who is firmly attracted to both genders, it is difficult for me to relate to those who aren’t (especially those with an equal yet opposite determination).

I don’t want to dwell on that so much as I want to talk about her other point. “It’s not a thing you choose. It’s a fucking sexuality.” I agree entirely that I did not choose to be attracted to both genders. I’m not sure, all things being equal, I would have chosen it and that is, ironically, the giant hole in the argument for all those who claim homosexuality is a choice. Like anyone would choose to be ostracized by their friends and family, discriminated against by their employer and the government, and basically treated like a social waste product for fucking centuries upon centuries of Western culture. Or, more personally, that I would choose to lose some of the most productive sexual years of my life because I couldn’t find a way out of my own crossed signals to a place where I could enjoy myself with willing partners of either gender. No, what you want to fuck is not a damned choice. It’s hard-wired. Like handedness and Tea Party psychosis.

But.

I did make a choice. I chose the heterosexual path. I chose it because I felt more emotional satisfaction with women but also because it was, of course, the far easier choice to make. I chose it over having to come out to my family and friends and over uncertainly in how I’d live and what I knew was a very real prospect of never being able to form a lasting relationship with a man. I chose having my own kids with my own partner and I chose not to be treated like a moral deviant. I made this choice fifteen years ago and times have certainly changed, but I’m sure the core of the choice would remain the same if I had it to do all over again. One could argue that my inclination was already towards heterosexuality, but I am far more than just a little homosexual. I am very definitely a “rounded up” heterosexual. I eventually rounded myself up and essentially locked 45% of my sexuality in a box for the rest of my life in order to have a “normal” relationship with a woman.

I cannot be alone. I know I’m not. I remember all those guys I sucked off who are now in the same place I am with a wife and kids and everything. I don’t think many of them were as close to the middle of the Kinsey scale as I am and most were experiencing ”situational” homosexuality driven by their teenage hormones, an inability to score with the chicks, and a more than willing slut of a boy readily at hand. I’m sure that many of them, when pondering the whole “is homosexuality a choice” thing, think it may be based on their life experience. They experimented with the gay thing and decided not to explore it further. Therefore, it’s a choice. They might even look at me, the willing and eager participant in their experimentation, and see someone else who made their “choice”.

So no, you can’t choose what turns you on. But you can choose how to live your life. If that choice goes against your nature, you will be miserable and probably pretty unsuccessful at it. I made my choice and that choice allowed me to get on with my life. Because of it, there are things I want and will never get that sometimes eat at me from the inside out. Simultaneously, there are other things that fill my life with joy and contentment and a sense of purpose. In the end, I made the only choice that made sense for me.

Sweet transvestite

I was having an email exchange the other day with a reader who identifies as bisexual about what it was like to be sexually attracted by both genders myself, specifically as a young person. It’s hard for me to relate today to someone who doesn’t find something appealing about both male and female forms. Not just the shape of their bodies and format of their genitals, but the very different emotional and psychological attributes of each bring to an encounter.

For as long as I can remember, there were things that appealed to me about both boys and girls. Things that eventually started to play out as sexual games (or as close as you can get when you’re very young). I knew that I shouldn’t tell my parents about these things and I also knew that obviously the boys ended up with the girls eventually, but it all seemed so perfectly natural to me. And until I was in junior high, I never had any kind of fun with another boy who seemed weirded out by it. There was this one guy who lived nearby who always seemed more than happy for me to go down on him but was never all that enthusiastic with the concept of reciprocity.

For a long while, after I figured out how not normal it was to play around with boys, I used to think there was something about me, specifically, that made them think I would be up for stuff the other boys wouldn’t. Perhaps that’s true, I don’t know. Maybe there are signals we project unknowingly or I exhibited certain mannerisms or had the right kind of pheromones or some shit like that, but by the time I entered high school, I figured out that I had had way more same-sex fun than any other of my friends. Even the ones that were starting to show signs of being gay. Interestingly, it seemed like the gay boys had had less experience with other boys, perhaps because they were overly self-conscious about their feelings. Who knows. Anyway, for a long time, I thought it was me, not them. That I had somehow invited this attention and that they felt I was a safe source of something they would never tell their other friends about.

At some point, I started attracting a few girls, too. Turns out I liked them just as well as the boys, but for different reasons. I think they liked me because I was “sensitive”, but no matter, I just cruised though my middle teenage years kind of bouncing back and forth (even on the same day, but only once at the same time). I am the kind of person who needs to identify and categorize things, myseld included. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I was. I was certainly not straight, though my heart and soul yearned for the company of a woman. Then again, how could someone who only looks at other men as sex objects be gay? That sounds like a horrible life. It seemed like everyone was trying to “round me up” to gay. My gay friends said bi was a stage and my straight friends all thought the same thing.

There was one boy in particular, who I’m fortunate enough to still call a good friend, that I was especially unkind to for a while. He was very much enamored of me and I liked him a lot (and his outstanding cock), but I could never connect with him beyond really liking him and his cock. On those occasions in which I felt like I should probably be gay, I’d go to him and make him feel like I was more invested  in him that I could be. Ultimately, that left him feeling hurt and disappointed. That cycle happened several times. At least six over the course of many years.

That I never did that to any girl has not only to do with my innate feeling that they were “different” and not deserving of such treatment, but also because by the time I got into my twenties I had pretty much stopped seeing them entirely. Maybe it was fear of my own uncertain sexuality that kept me from pursuing them (or, really, letting any of them pursue me), but there were years in between my last serious girlfriend and Belle. By the time we were having sex, we had already been friends for a while. She knew about my history with boys, had watched gay porn with me, and seen some of the toys I used to pleasure myself. For the first time really, I had a girlfriend who knew what I was.

At some point, maybe 15 years ago or so, I realized I was just what I was. That I wasn’t entirely normal, but that I wasn’t and didn’t need to fit into any commonly recognized buckets. That’s not to say I embraced this realization with heroic fervor. I spent a lot of time hiding myself from Belle out of a misplaced sense of shame and embarrassment. That was a mistake.

So why Frank N. Furter? Well, there was a time in high school when my friends and I (including that boy from above with the really nice cock) would go and see The Rocky Horror Picture Show every week at the local dive theater. Week after week until I knew the words to the movie by heart. I love that fucking movie. Not only because of the special time that was in my life and how grown-up it felt to be out late seeing a movie that was essentially about a guy that builds his own living sex doll, but because there was this big, beautiful omnisexual being on the screen for me to identify with. Frank wasn’t gay or straight and nobody seemed to really give a shit. Not only that, but on my side of the screen were hundreds of kids like me cheering him on (some even dressing up like him – mostly straight boys, but don’t get me started). He was a real, almost positive roll model for me. Yes, he does end up killing a guy with an ax and is killed himself at the end of the movie, but along the way he looks fabulous and fucks Brad and Janet and Rocky, plus a midget or two. I liked Frank because in a weird, fucked up kind of way, I saw myself in him. And he was in charge and having fun (except for at the end) and didn’t bother apologizing to anyone along the way (OK, except for Riff, again at the end, but that’s only because Riff was pointing a gun at him…and just when it seemed like he was getting his life together).

There’s really no reason for me to tell you all this right now except that I was feeling a little writer-blocky and knew, once I saw this picture of Frank fly by in my Tumblr stream, that I could riff for a thousand words or so on the subject of being a sexually mixed up kid living in the time of late-night movie transvestites from another planet.

Penis weaponization

The incomparable Ferns, in reference to the pictures I posted of the Steelheart Short in comparison to our original Steelheart, said:

I find it interesting that there is no ego in this. If it were me (and I actually *had* a cock and was going to wear a device and and… etc), I can imagine looking in the mirror and going ‘Well, *this* one makes my cock look like an awesome shiny weapon!! Huzzah!… whereas *this* one makes it look kind of short and stubby…”

Of course, now that I have given it a little thought, I do *exactly* this with strapons… “Awesome shiny weapon!! Huzzah!” Heh.

To which Tom replied:

Oh, believe me, we cock-having device-wearers do this all the friggin’ time. We just don’t feel the need to write about it because, well, that would be weird.

Which means I just have to write about it. Weird is my raison d’être, after all.

There are at least two sides of this for me. The first is quite practical. A shorter, smaller device is more comfortable to lug around for days on end. Less of an issue under clothes, less of a strain on the meat upon which it’s attached, etc. In addition, though it’s highly non-intuitive for this to be true, a smaller device can be more comfortable during erections than a larger one. It seems as though the sooner one stops the spongy tissues from becoming engorged, the less discomfort one will feel when it inevitably happens. After a few days, I can say the SH-S is at least as comfortable as the SH-1 while fully erect (at night) and very much more comfortable the rest of the time.

The second side to the issue is more woo-woo than pure practicality, though.

Before I start, I feel compelled to say I do not believe that large cocks or cocks in general have anything whatsoever to do with one’s ability to be dominant or assume a dominant role or that large cocked guys can’t be submissive or that mauve isn’t a completely acceptable color for your grandmother’s tablecloth or anything like that. I will remind you, what I write here comes from my head so a big chunk of it can’t be expected to apply out there where you all live, in The Real World.

Ferns touches on it herself when she says, “Of course, now that I have given it a little thought, I do *exactly* this with strapons.” I assume she’s using strap-ons on her submissive male sex partners and I also assume she uses them, among other things, as some sort of symbol of her dominance (if not, I will be happy to hear otherwise). Of course, my real cock is never used in that way. I gave it to Belle and she tops me so I am ill-prepared mentally to think of the cock as anything other than her tool with which she manipulates me. It’s size, therefore, is immaterial except that it needs to be the right length and girth to make her happy when she chooses to use it to pleasure herself.

Additionally, the cock she keeps in the device hardly ever plays a role in our sex except as a captive witness to it all. Recent activities excepted, I can go weeks or months during which Belle will have as many orgasms as she’ll let me share with her while the cock will only see what light gets though the little hole at the end of the tube. Again, its size does not matter since the basis of our sex life now, and the satisfaction she enjoys, in no way revolves around it.

Finally (and this is where I might piss a few people off), there’s a part of me that doesn not want a large cock or even to do anything that makes it look bigger or more impressive. I’ve written about this before. There is definitely a part of me now, which I trace directly to my growing acceptance and connection with my submissive sexuality, that gets off on the idea of having a small dick. Of course, I do not have a small dick. It’s totally average and satisfies Belle very well. But, it works for me to think otherwise. In fact, when I’m out and able to play with it, one of the quickest ways for me to get to the edge of orgasm is to fantasize that I have a little cock that’s not good enough for Belle. This is hardly unique to me (based on my purely scientific survey of the chastity porn out there). I’m sure there are a lot of guys reading this who can associate with my words and who are in the same boat or are actually small-dicked and are able to achieve the same kind of submissive and almost derogatory pleasure from it.

It’s taken me a while to become comfortable with these feelings. I recall the first times I read a story in which a man was too small to satisfy his wife and she either made him use a large strap-on or took a well-hung lover and how hard it made my heart thump. I resisted it at first. Men in our culture are conditioned to think cock size is to be desired above all other things. This is the same thing that perpetuates the myth that women want ever-larger members inside them and that the size of a man’s penis bears a direct relation to how well he can satisfy women. Of course, it’s all bunk and I already knew that, but still. It’s hard to let go. It’s hard to actually get off on the idea of being “inadequate”.

Long way to say, I have no problem at all with the SH-S making the package “short and stubby” looking. In fact, besides the practical considerations, it’s one the main drivers behind my satisfaction with the new device. As weird as that is.

Objects are larger than they appear

Yes, we’re still alive over here.

Belle did let me out. I wanted it but at the same time didn’t. In any event, I took the key and removed the device and was free. That was as we went to bed, so I slept and woke several times due to the weird feeling of having a cock that could feel the sheets rub against it.

The next day, my pants felt empty. You get used to sporting a certain kind of package and when it’s gone, you notice. I was free all that day and again the next night. Even so, I didn’t feel the need to take advantage of the situation. There was no urge to. I was still out of touch with my own sex drive.

The next morning, Belle told me she had her period. She didn’t say it, but I knew that meant I should be locked up again. Back when I wasn’t essentially permanently locked, it was a rule that I had to be protected while she was having her period. That morning, before I put the device back on, I finally felt the desire to play with myself. It wasn’t that big of a deal. No toys or anything, but there was a moderate amount of stroking leading me up very, very close to the edge of orgasm. So close, that I found myself with at least a tablespoon of thick ejaculate in my hand. And how did I know that wasn’t an orgasm? Because I swallowed every bit of it. I ran it around in my mouth, so slick over my tongue, and felt it thick in my throat for an hour afterward. And I wanted more. A lot more. So no, I didn’t come. Then the device went back on and there it’s stayed. Belle has the key again and shows no interest in letting me have it back any time soon.

An interesting observation from my morning self-abuse, though. One of the things you’ll read on the web is that chastity devices make your dick smaller. I’ve always felt it was crap. And I still do, but I may know where the idea comes from. While I was stroking myself and feeling the cock get as long and as hard as it could get, it felt smaller to me than I remember it being. Now, I don’t have a big dick to begin with. It’s perfectly average in length and girth, but I could have sworn it had shrunk. I even got the tape measure out to make sure, but it was still exactly the same size as before (about 5.75″ long).

The thing is, as I said above, you get used to swinging a big steel tube between your legs. So much so that, when it’s gone, the contents feel much less imposing by comparison. It may not get longer when I’m excited, but the tube is always fat and stout. It’s easily twice as big around as the engorged cock and, while shorter, it carries a certain gravitas that mere meat cannot attain. Whatever memory I had of what my former cock felt like had been somewhat displaced by the steel tube.

And here’s the next bit of surprising info. When I was sure the cock had gotten smaller, I wasn’t all that concerned about it. As a guy, you’re conditioned to obsess over the size of your member. But, as the kind of guy I’ve become, it doesn’t really matter. The cock simply isn’t a regular player anymore. The only thing I worried about was that it may not be enough to satisfy Belle. But really, the idea that I was being made smaller and less…I don’t know…prominent seemed perfectly normal. To be expected. The cock isn’t that big of a deal anymore, so why shouldn’t it be minimized in every way? I’ve even started to like the idea that a lot of guys are bigger.

Of course, I’m glad it’s not getting smaller. I’m glad it’s exactly as it was before being encased almost all the time. But I’m clearly kinking on the idea of nullification. The idea that my penis should be made superfluous and of minimal importance, figuratively and literally. It’s an odd little cul-de-sac of my sexuality I didn’t expect to find myself in. And I wonder, all those guys who say they’ve lost size due to being in devices, if it’s not all in their heads. If it’s not a combination of wanting it to be that way and, because they’ve lost touch with themselves, thinking it actually is.

So, anyway, the turbulence I wrote about the other day hasn’t entirely left. I have lost touch with myself. With my independent sexuality. I know it must still be in there, but it’s way in the back somewhere. So, without that, I need Belle’s. I need to feel sexual through her. And when I don’t, it feels like something’s been amputated. Something really important. And its loss leaves me aching and depressed. I’m not entirely sure what will become of me. On the one hand, I’m committed to this existence. I’m quite convinced that I don’t need to ever have another orgasm. On the other hand, while I can live without the orgasms, I can’t live without being sexual. It’s more than the old saying that chastity isn’t abstinence. Of course it’s not. But I really feel that a transference is taking place. I have adopted her sexuality almost entirely in the place of mine. If this turns out to be the case and if it’s permanent, I don’t know what will happen. Right now, I can feel parts of me resisting it. But there are other parts of me that want to keep going.

The other night, I was dry humping her leg and, when I would usually say something like, “God, I want to fuck you,” I said, “God, I want to feel you come.” I guess that’s a perfectly natural thing for a guy with no cock and no ability to achieve independent arousal to say. What else is there now except her pleasure and, ultimately, her orgasm?

Brought to you by the letter Q

I decided recently to change the word I use to identify my sexuality. Up until now, I called myself bisexual. I’ve never been happy with that term and using it has always felt like wearing an ill-fitting cardigan. I guess it’s all the negative connotation that goes along with it. Lots of gays stop in bisexualville on their way to their final destination and lots of wannabes who play around with people of the same gender in college do the same. It sounds flighty, shallow, and insincere. At least to me. If you call yourself bisexual, more power to you.

Gay doesn’t work either since it suggests exclusivity to (or, at least, priority for) the same gender. I don’t have that either. I can honestly say that I average out to a Kinsey 3. Some days, I find myself more drawn sexually to women, some days to men, but never even close to anything like a preference for one over the other. As I’ve mentioned before, I find emotional comfort with women, but I’ll fuck (or be fucked by) anything. Which, of course, is why straight doesn’t work either. I may be in a heterosexual relationship, but that doesn’t make me straight. I feel just as far from being straight as I do the opposite of that.

And so I’ve settled on queer. Of course, I’ve been aware of the word for a long time, but it’s always turned me off because I associate it (right or wrong) with a certain militant sociopolitical stance which I’m not comfortable with. Now, though, I don’t see it that way. This change in perception started by listing to Dan Savage talk about it in a recent podcast. He wasn’t talking to me, of course, but the way he described it resonated in a way bisexual never has. I like that it suggests difference from the norm rather than anything specific. I like that is sounds permanent. I like that it encompasses the kink side of my sexuality, too – this entire other axis I’ve only recently embraced. I am not like the other kids, obviously. Not straight, not gay, not vanilla (whatever that is). I am queer.

Of course, none of this is either here or there. I’m not going to have to change my census answers nor will this be reflected on my tax forms. I’m still exactly the same, except now the cardigan fits better.

Meat this!

Tom’s got another meaty one. (Perverts. Post. He’s got a meaty post.)

I’m going to start by highlighting the bit I especially loved.

[B]eing locked up does not make me feel less manly, less assertive, less randy, or less anything. It makes me feel … more.

Way. In my experience, denial is like turning the saturation way up on a TV. When it’s really humming, it makes all my senses crackle. It’s a beautiful thing. Regular readers will know that I don’t always feel this way and sometimes being denied does result in me feeling less, but I think that’s more a result of Belle and I still getting a hang of all the buttons and switches (overlaid with the normal ebbs and flows of the human psyche) than it is the fault of the denial.

And who in fuck’s name would want to feel less? Can that even be a thing? Getting off on feeling less? Anyway…

Tom goes on to say:

Personally, I’ve been reading so much about what people consider to be “submission” and “submissiveness” that I have decided to disassociate myself from the term altogether; virtually nothing of what I’ve been reading seems to apply to me, so instead of trying to defend my own submissiveness, or more correctly, those certain feelings that I get that I used to associate with submissiveness, I’m just going to move on to some other scale and call it something else. Or maybe I won’t call it anything; I’ll just feel them and describe what I can.

This really speaks to me, too. I mean, that’s kind of what this was all about, right?

The way my brain figures out new things is by looking at similar things to understand how they’re supposed to work. I suppose everyone does this to some extent, but I do it a lot. Pretty much to a fault. Sometimes, this is a really good strategy (like when learning language or how a logical system operates), but in the case of human sexuality, this is a really lame way to go about it. Coming to all this submissiveness stuff late in life, I did my usual thing and looked for analogs of what I thought I was. Tom was one of those as were a number of other bloggers (along, even, with some porn which, of course, is a Really Bad Idea™). Bottom line is I kept comparing myself to a bunch of “ideals” and coming up short. There are a few I feel I’m more like than others, but none of them fit. Obviously, this is because human sexuality is infinitely variable. It’s not an operating system or a machine (even though I used that metaphor above). It’s a messy tangle of crossed wires and gooey dark corners that’s always bubbling and morphing and slithering along in unexpected directions.

Long way around to say the obvious: labeling a human’s sexual quirks can be damaging. If Tom wants to shed his submissive cloak, more power to him. I think there are more ways for otherwise “submissive” men to be different than there are for them to be the same. Case in point is our views on service, but I’ll get to that later. First…

It’s amusing to see that the selling points for male chastity devices tend to focus on either making your man more “romantic”, or on making him do more household chores. … But is this actually true, or is it a stereotype that plays on the idea that sex is something that men want, and  women parcel out according to whim?

I have tried to run away from this stereotype and in doing so have beat myself up (only figuratively, alas) for not Doing It Right, but the thing is, yeah, being locked up and denied does tend to make me a better mate to Belle. I’m much more attentive to her, much more in tune with what she needs, and much more willing to sacrifice what I want in order to give her what she wants.

But for us, the device is only a catalyst. What it represents is a level of commitment on Belle’s part to our relationship that, frankly, I didn’t feel for years (and she didn’t feel it back from me, either). Now, because she locks up the cock, because she denies me orgasm, because she takes advantage of my desire to serve her, I am fully engaged with her and our relationship like I haven’t been for about a decade. Likewise, she sees a commitment from me though my dealing with the device, giving her the cock to control, and trying my hardest to be of service to her. Did the device do that? Or did I? I think it was both of us.

Too many people think chastity devices are like magical talismans that are good for whatever ails you. Like any tool, it’s how you use it that counts. Just because there’s a thing involved, people incorrectly assign the improvements in their relationship to the device when in fact they should be taking the credit themselves. Successfully integrating chastity is hard work that, when done correctly, bears a lot of fruit. But it’s the fact that they’re doing the work that makes it work, not whatever thing they’ve chosen to play with.

Never not once has any woodworker said, “Gee, that hammer really made a great bookcase!”

The last bit of Tom’s post I want to flog is the part about service. Or, more specifically, how the concept of being a service sub just isn’t lighting any fires over at the Allen Ranch. I tried to find that one salient blurb that fully captured his sentiment, but really, it’s the entire last four paragraphs of his post. If you haven’t already, go read it.

I’ll wait…

OK.

He does a pretty good job of knocking the whole service concept about the head and face, and I think that we probably have a fair bit of common ground around this, but I also think he’s missing some of the point.

I know (or, at least, I read) that some people actually get a sexual charge from performing service. I do not. He talks about how he doesn’t “drip with sexual excitement” when he brings Mrs. Edge a cup of coffee, and while I get Belle coffee all the time, it’s never caused me to drip anything (other than the occasional bit I’ve spilled). It isn’t the act of doing what she says that gets me off. In fact, it’s often a bit of a downer. I’d rather be updating my portfolio or playing on the PS3 or whatever. But, in a way I admit to not being fully able to put into coherent words yet, I love being her tool. I think of myself as her live-in manservant. Whatever she tells me to do, I will do, whether I want to or not, because that’s my position. I live to serve her. Even when I don’t want to, I want her to make me.

People have left comments here before about this and how it’s not really service and that all I’m doing is being a responsible partner in the marriage, yadda yadda. First of all, I think they’re underestimating the amount of work I do for her. I do 98% of all the laundry in our house of four people. I cook most of the meals. I make the beds, etc., etc. As Belle has said, she doesn’t really need to do much of anything around the house anymore. She will do things, but only because she wants to, not because she has to. Also, they miss what can’t be seen on the outside. It’s my intention to serve her. When I do it, I may not be enjoying the actual work, but I get a warmnfuzzy feeling inside. When she tells me I’m doing a good job, I similarly feel a warm flush. This isn’t necessarily sexual (though the context of when she says it makes a difference).

Here’s an example. As I said in my previous post (which, by the way, I’m really not that happy with – they can’t all be winners), Belle offered to let me out of the device so I could enjoy the cock being played with, but only if I got all the laundry done on Saturday. That was a lot of laundry. It took hours. But, when we were in bed and she had unlocked me and she was petting the cock and telling me what a good job I had done and how I had earned the time out…Jesus! I was over-the-moon kind of happy. Maybe one of the most satisfying few moments of our entire D/s adventure thus far. I felt totally beholden to her. I felt so happy that she appreciated my work. I felt totally and completely under her control. It was awesome.

Unlike Tom writing in general about service and not getting in the slightest turned on by it, my writing the previous paragraph has left me with a seriously full tube. So he doesn’t work that way. Whatever. Does that mean he’s not a “real” submissive? Fuck if I know. Honestly, who cares? I feel kind of the same way about the sissified guys out there who want to be put in panties and frilly little dresses as he does about service. Does that mean I’m not submissive? Or they’re not? Or they are, but too much?

As long as, at the end of the day, we’re all healthy and happy, then we’re Doing It Right. Call it whatever you want.

P.S. I apologize for the lame post title, but after all that, I couldn’t come up with anything pithy. It happens to all guys sooner or later…or so I’m told.

The nose on my face

Back in September of last year, I bought Belle Uniquely Rika. Over the course of the past week, Belle’s read most of it. She seemed to resonate with much of it and asked me to read it, too. I’m about half way through now and, I have to say, it’s blown my mind.

Before I go further, I’ll say this is not the post where I actually discuss Rika’s approach. I have questions (as do others), but I’m not done with the book yet so I think trying to get into it now would be premature.

As I sat there in my sudsy warm bathwater (who doesn’t read in the bath? and who knew “bathwater” was one word?) and I read the Rika Way® (which, even though I’m not actually discussing it, does seem to make more than a little sense to me) I was suddenly struck by something very profound. Something I’ve danced around and paid lip-service, but have not really owned up to. Something that has, oddly enough, left me somewhat shaken.

I am submissive.

Seriously, I know. Isn’t that ridiculous? Like, it says that right up there in the blog description. “Submissively inclined.” I’ve known this. But no. It’s different now. I’m not submissively inclined. I am submissive, period. I really can’t describe how finally and fully realizing this seemed like a massive chasm suddenly opened up underneath me. I actually felt a bit of weightlessness in my chest. Both terrifying and exciting.

I have, in the back of my mind, always clung to this idea that I might be a switch. Not that it mattered much since Belle’s unlikely to ever let me top her and she’ll never let me top anyone else, but I clung to it. Like a blanket. Like a thing that made me feel better but was actually totally worthless. Now I know, thanks to Rika and what she wrote and how it finally knocked the final pieces into place, that I’m not ever going to be a switch. I am, in fact, always going to be on the bottom. And that freaks me the fuck out.

First of all, I admit to carrying around a prejudice against submissive males. Submissives in general kinda creep me out. It makes no sense, I know, but that’s what it is. It’s like I’m the white supremacist who just discovered the black grandmother he never knew about or the uber-masculine father of 12 who suddenly figured out he was gay. This is all horrible and all nasty and sad and not anything I’m happy about, but I see now that I’ve never fully embraced my submissive nature because I don’t especially like the archetype as it exists in our culture. In fact, there is no archetype. No role model. Nothing positive to look towards. Just layer after layer of stereotype and ridicule and cultural indifference. And now I know I’m one of them.

Second, I’m very self-centered. Always thinking about myself and how I can get what I want from a situation. Always thinking about my needs and my POV and how I know what’s right and everyone else just hasn’t figured it out yet. You can’t be a self-centered submissive, right? That’s not actually possible, right? Who’s ever heard of that?

Finally, based on the first two points, I’m very afraid of failure. Of not being able to live up to the ideal I’m even now creating in my head of what a good submissive partner needs to be. Not someone playing at submissiveness, but an actual submissive. How can I embrace something that gives me the creeps? How can I square my selfishness against my desire to serve Belle?

I admit I’m freaking out. Overreacting. Not making an abundance of sense. As Belle said several times yesterday, we’re already living 80% of what Rika describes. But that other 20% is a big 20%. What I feel opening inside me is maybe the biggest emotional and relationship challenge I’ve faced. It scares me. The thing I’ve been approaching from the periphery, while always looking in another direction, for over a year now scares me like never before. Understand, I do not doubt. I know what I am because of the wave of warm euphoria that washes over me when I think about it and how Rika’s words ring so true and (frankly) the way it chubs out the contents of the tube (every male’s divining rod). It feels true.

But now what? How do I move forward? And honestly, how much more of a prat could I actually be?

Proselytizing

Heard back from Deitmar. He did indeed ship the device on the 16th. I can only assume he used 214th class parcel post or something (the one where the mail carriers pass the box off as they happen upon one another while walking their routes). I’m told by Belle and Dev that Germany is a long way away and I should be more patient. Seems ironic that a guy who can skip coming for two months get’s all wadded up over how quickly his new orgasm denial mechanism will arrive. Anyway, the payment didn’t show up for Belle since PayPal, for some reason, sent the charge through to my PayPal credit card (which I’ve hardly ever used) and not our checking account as usual. They must have jinked with the default settings or something since that’s never happened before. So yeah, all is well on the Steelheart front. It’s just a waiting game now.

UPDATE: It has arrived. At least, at my local post office. I found a little registered mail notice in my mailbox when I got home. I’ll be picking it up in the morning! I may wet myself. OK, back to the post already in progress…

Belle locked me up again this morning. She told me last night as we were going to bed that I had been very good to her over the weekend. She was really relaxed and apparently quite pleased with my performance. Therefore, I was to be locked up first thing Monday morning. Not sure if that’s my reward or what, but I didn’t question her. I’m now wearing the chrome CB6K and thinking of its stainless brother bobbing aimlessly across the Atlantic in an empty peanut butter jar.

Something Steve said in one of his posts I linked to yesterday has me thinking:

If chastity were a commercial product I’d be one of those people on TV advertisements giving gushing unsolicited endorsements, where you can’t quite believe they didn’t get paid to say it.

Over on A Captivated Man (a well-written new chastity blog, BTW), I said in a comment:

I sometimes feel like I’m carrying around a secret only a few are allowed to know. I only wish I could tell my friends because the way orgasm denial has improved my relationship and overall sexual well-being is remarkable. It’s not unlike religion. I want to tell everyone to do it…

And it is a bit like religion, I suppose. One of those mind-expanding, life-altering practices that has such a huge and welcome impact on your existence that you just want to stand around in airports handing out pamphlets. In a way, I’m glad I don’t have any friends to which I can talk about this because I’m sure I’d be insufferable telling them how wonderful it is all the time. Yes, there are bumps and setbacks along the way, but when it’s working, it’s fucking spectacular.

There are few things men cherish more than their ability to experience sexual pleasure. Sure, women cherish that too, obviously, but men are conditioned by our culture to be especially tuned in with their own pleasure in a way women, unfortunately, aren’t. Perhaps not coincidentally, a man’s sexual organs are external and easily manipulated when aroused. Some guys, you can just see, are little more than extensions of their dicks. Most guys, I’d say, are, to a lesser degree, the same. I mean, men come a lot. More than you think. It’s easy and it’s fun and it sometimes seems as though the entire world is designed to celebrate that.

I’m speaking mostly from my own experience, of course, but there are few things I could offer Belle of higher value to me as a man than my ability to do that which defines my malehood. Not only that, but doing so has been a revelation to our relationship. My orgasm now has value. It has significance. Before, greater than 90% of them disappeared down a drain or clinging to a tissue in a trashcan, forgotten minutes after they came into being. Now, their bottled energy serves to power a whole new relationship dynamic that’s far richer and more fulfilling for us both. What I’ve sacrificed in quantity I’ve more than made up for in vastly higher quality. Orgasms now, to me, are no longer the objective, they are the path to the mountaintop. The act of making love no longer leads to them, it is made more profound by their absence.

This way of thinking flies in the face of everything we’ve been conditioned to think as men. Even when married, it’s clear that the male’s orgasm is meant first and always to be his, to do with what he likes. In my opinion, that way of thinking only serves to drive a couple apart. It may not create a divide in their relationship, but it certainly can aggravate it. Irrespective of a couple’s interest in overlaying D/s or any other BDSM component, allowing her to control his release ensures and enhances intimacy between them (when done right, of course). It maintains all the positive aspects of the very beginning of a relationship. At least, that’s what it does for us…

I’m not so far gone as to think what works for Belle and I would work for everyone. But I wish more people thought about orgasm control as a viable alternative to the dominant paradigm of heteronormal interaction. I’m not quite to the point where I’m likely to stand in an airport and recruit converts, but I am feeling more and more that there needs to be examples of this alternate existence openly and unashamedly out there. I have no idea how and in what form this would take were I so inclined to attempt it myself, but this works. It’s right. For us, it’s better than the “normal”.

People need to know.

Really bad, then really good

Saturday, Belle told me at some point that Sunday morning she was going to beat me. It’s been so long since she beat me. Yeah, she’s done little things here and there to hurt me (mostly nipple twisting and some ball slapping) which were all very nice and appreciated, but I’ve been feeling the need for a good whippin’ for quite a while now.

So, Sunday morning comes around and there’s no beating. We hang out in bed, she’s reading the paper and sipping the coffee I made her, and then…nothing. She gets up. I don’t say anything since Sunday’s a whole 24 hours long, but the little nagging feeling starts to creep into the back of my mind. She’s not into this. She doesn’t want to do it. She’s avoiding it. I stuff that back into the dark place it came from and go about my business.

At dinner, she tells me that tonight’s the night. She’s going to beat me before Mad Men (which she’s very excited about watching) so she can be asleep by 10:00 (her bedtime is very important to her). Swell, I think. That’s two whole hours away. She can leisurely whip me. The last time we tried this (which ended in disaster) she started out too hard too fast and I was not at all aroused. So, I figure, we have all the time in the world tonight. We can go slowly and do it right. It’s going to be awesome.

She gave me the task she wanted me to perform before the beating and I went off to do it. She had a little work to finish up and was apparently shopping for back-to-school clothes, but still, we were over 90 minutes from Mad Men. About 20 minutes later, I had finished my task (laundry folding) and was laying in bed, naked, watching the TV just waiting for her to finish whatever she needed to do. I finally heard her stir from her perch on the couch. Then I herd her cleaning the kitchen. Thoroughly. Then I heard her make her coffee for the morning. That’s my job. Why is she doing that? It’s OK, though, because we have more than hour still before Mad Men (though I’m starting to worry).

Next, I heard her take out the trash. All the way to curb. The garage door went up and she hauled the garbage can and recycling down the driveway. I could have done this had I known she wanted it done at that moment. Then I heard her take the dog outside. Again, something I could have done. Basically, everything she did (besides the work) I could have done if she had told me she wanted it done.

Finally, with just less than a half hour before Mad Men, she comes into the room. The feeling from the morning had come back and, far from being little now, had plopped it’s big ass down in a Lazy-E-Boy in my head. To me, she was obviously avoiding this task. I was deeply disappointed as we no longer had time to take it slowly. We’ve got less than 30 minutes. Now, there was stress. Now, the clock was going to be the third in our scene.

The window was closed.

So, as calmly and with as little accusatory tone as possible, I told her we didn’t have to do it. We could put it off (to god knows when). We don’t have time, I said.

“KNOCK IT OFF, THUMPER!” she yells at me, “DON’T START THIS CRAP! I KNEW YOU WERE GOING TO DO THIS!” I’m frankly taken aback by the sudden ferocity of her position. She’s yelling at me while I’m feeling vulnerable and disappointed and hurt. This is turning into a disaster.

“Look,” I say, trying to stay calm, “It’s not a problem. It doesn’t have to happen right now…”

And it just gets worse. She yells at me, and then I’m yelling back, defending my right to feel how I feel and denying the charge that I’m somehow the problem and that, really, we don’t have to do it right then.

She basically orders me into my collar, but she makes me put it on. Wrong. It feels wrong. I’m starting to crumble inside. She puts me in handcuffs, one side of which is affixed to the D-ring on my collar. The cuffs are biting into my wrists. They feel wrong. I try to say something, but she orders me onto the bed.

“Bend over, face in the pillow,” she barks.

WHACK! Jesusmotherfucking, that hurts. I close my eyes and try to hang onto the wispy feelings of sub energy that I’m feeling, but they’re not enough. Not nearly.

WHACK!! I sit up.

“Can I kiss you?” I need to get this anger out of me, this feeling that she’s angry. She kisses me, but not lovingly. My ass goes back up in the air.

WHACK!!! Fuck this.

I sit up again and say, “This isn’t right. It’s not working.” And then I break. Fury wells up from within me. My face contorts and I silently cry out and feel such pain and disappointment and the feeling that everything is wrong as my face heats up and the tears flow freely down my face. This is not working. She doesn’t want to do it and I’m a fucking freak for asking her to. And this was it, the only night this was going to work with the kids out of the house. It would be weeks before we could try again. And now, I wasn’t even sure I wanted it. Ever. Nothing that made me feel that bad could be worth doing. It was never going to work. I was angry, but not really at her. I was angry at the world for making me like this and putting me in this situation. All my fear and vulnerabilities reared up like dragons in my mind. I felt embarrassment at being naked, embarrassment at being collared, embarrassment for asking her to hit me.

The conversation that followed was predictable because we’ve had it before. Basically, I accused her of not wanting to hit me and not admitting it to me (or maybe herself). She said she wanted it to be perfect and I said that’s crazy because nothing ever is perfect. We both admitted to having no idea how to do what we’re trying to do. I said I need her to stop treating these sessions like another chore, the thing she does after the dog’s been out and the trash is on the curb. It’s not a fucking chore. It’s an emotional and physical need that I, her husband, has and, if we’re going to do it, it has to feel like an act of making love because, as hard as it is for her to understand, that’s what it is to me. Yet again, I suggested we stop trying to do it. All of it. It’s just too hard. She said nothing in return.

It was horrible. Just horrible. I suppose we said many things we needed to say, but I was left emotionally wrecked. She rolled over and asked me to hold her, but I couldn’t do it. I just felt too raw. Too many things we’re still unresolved. She fell asleep and I got up to read a book.

Out on the couch in the living room, I couldn’t follow the words I was reading. Being a male, soon my hand was in my underwear and I was absentmindedly playing with myself. The cock being a cock, it responded and I found myself holding a stiff hard-on. I started to stroke it. I didn’t want to come, but I wanted the sensation. I wanted to feel something good that night. I kept going and the words we said earlier rang in my head and I became emotional again. I kept stroking. Why even bother anymore? Why keep making her do what she finds so hard? I kept stroking. I don’t know what the solution is, but it’s not worth the pain. It shouldn’t be this hard. It’s supposed to be fun. I kept stroking. Then, I felt the point of no return rushing up. And I kept going. I let go and I came. Huge globs of it. God, it had been so long since I saw or felt or smelt that all by myself. I felt the waves of post-orgasmic pleasure wash up and down me, by myself, shirt pulled up, underwear down. Alone.

I didn’t feel guilty, but I felt very sad. I cleaned myself up, turned off the light, and went to bed.

The next day, I wanted to be with her. It was Monday, so that was a problem, but all day I thought about her and the night before and the yelling and the crying and I just wanted to be with her. On the way home, I picked up her favorite flowers (alstroemeria) and had them nicely displayed on the dining room table.

She got home and I was drawn to her. I held her and kissed her and found myself getting really turned on. Our status was ambiguous since the idea of not doing the D/s thing was never really resolved and the thought of just bedding her like in the old days, maybe even right there in the kitchen, really appealed to me. Just fucking. With two orgasms. Like other people do it. I could like that. Hell, I did like that for years and years.

Back in our bedroom, I laid her down with the intention of having some pretty swell make-up sex. She told me she really wasn’t much in the mood (or something to that effect) but that she did want to try slapping me around again.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure. Twice we had tried this and twice it had turned out badly. It felt too soon after the previous evening’s event to try again. But I was in the mood for it. And we were in a good place. I agreed to give it a try, as long as we started slowly.

I stripping my clothes off and, with her under me, she slapped my nuts around a little. Nothing too extreme, but the pain seemed to warm me up inside – clear out the receptors. Then she got up and left me on the bed, ass up and head down, while she got the flogger.

She ran it’s thin rubber tendrils over and around me – starting with my ass, going over my back, ending up on my balls. It felt heavenly. I love this feeling. The sweet stuff before she gets rough. Then she started to hit me. Not too hard. It felt good. I felt myself raising my ass up to meet the flogger sooner. This was good. It felt right.

Even though I was making copious happy noises in the back of my throat, she stopped to make sure I was OK. That made me all warm inside. This time, I felt the love with every blow. As she made them harder and the sting grew more intense, I could feel her love and her desire to make me happy and I loved her back and felt incredibly grateful to her. At some point, I felt myself slip past the point where the pain loses its sharp edge. It still hurts, but becomes something else. Something better. Something I crave.

Then, in a particularly cruel blow to my reddened ass, the flogger broke. The head of it flew acorss the room. It was just a cheap little thing she picked up somewhere, so no surprise, but yeah, that’s how hard she was hitting me with it. With the thin rubber tongues gone, it ends in a plastic cup into which they were glued. She tried whacking me with that and the pain was entirely different. It was more a like a crop now. I liked that. Mentally, I was already shopping for new implements of torture.

She picked up a flexible plastic ruler and started to use that on me. Intense pain. I found myself rolling over on my back and she started to (gently) strike my balls with it. My eyes rolled back in my head and I opened my legs to her blows. Heaven. The ruler was more stingy that I like on my balls, so I asked her to use her hands. Rapid slapping blows to my nuts sent me high up into the clouds. I love love love love love how that can feel.

By the end, I felt wonderful bliss. My ass hurt like hell, but it was all the right kind of hurt. I nuzzled into her, so grateful, so happy. Sitting here writing about it I can still feel some stinging, though I’m not sure it it’s really there or if I’m just remembering it. In any event, I love it and want more of it. We need to do something about our batting average (one successful attempt out of three will never do), but I know that it’s possible. I know she can do it and still make me feel loved and cared for. I’m just so incredibly happy that I have her and that she’s willing to try to do the things I need, even when she doesn’t really understand why.

Obviously, we have more to talk about. We’re not there yet. But we both need to remember, as we keep trying, that we can do this. We can make it work, and when it does, it’s amazing.

Chastity fetishist?

Reader Jane Docent asked this in a comment to my post We Talk:

More to the point – are you kinky? Or have you fetishized this one element of arousal – enforced chastity?

While I’m pretty sure I know the answer to her question, I did stop and think about it for a second. And then a few more.

The Random House Dictionary describes kinky this way:

Marked by unconventional sexual preferences or behavior, as fetishism, sadomasochism, or the like.

While the American Heritage Dictionary says this:

Showing or appealing to bizarre or deviant tastes, especially of a sexual or erotic nature

So, according to Random House, even if I was just a fetishist, I would still be kinky. Either way, I feel very comfortable identifying as kinky. My sexual tastes are “unconventional” and, IMO, “bizarre or deviant”. Way. But, more importantly, have I developed a fetish over enforced chastity devices?

To be sure, enforced chastity turns me the fuck on and my interest in its implements is extensive. I’m pretty sure I’ve looked at the websites of all the commercially available devices (some dozens of times) and would love to have any number of them locked onto me by Belle (with a special proclivity towards the stainless steel variety). But, the operative part of that statement is “locked onto me by Belle”. More than the device, I kink on the power exchange. The device neatly dovetails into other kinks and interests (CBT, bondage, masochism, gadgets), but I also obsess over things like this and that and the other which have nothing at all to do with enforced chastity but do have a lot to do with my other kinks.

The reason enforced chastity and the device gets so much play here, I think, is because, of all my sexual perversions, power exchange is the one we engage in the most. For whatever reason, I don’t find myself tied up and beaten very often, but she can deny me orgasm several times a week and leave me locked up for weeks and weeks. All of that energy and desire gets channeled into orgasm denial, enforced chastity, and – ultimately – the device itself.

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