Category: General Musings

(My initial thoughts on kissing can be found here.)

Last night I got another lesson in kissing.

If anyone tells you they’ve learned everything they need to know about fooling around, pity them, for they have forgotten the nuances of touching, the pure joy of physical contact, and the beauty of exploring something new and different.

I had NE over and we were having dinner. Having actually managed to get eight hours of sleep the night before (I am such a slut for sleep), I was in a fairly capable mood. She, however, was a bit of a mess. The fact I am leaving for Vegas in a week, the fact that I hadn’t had much time to give her the right attention the weeks after a scene require (or rather, she thinks are required), and the fact that she was taking a well-earned break from work and had more time then usual to indulge herself- well, these facts made for very interesting dinner conversation.

Dinner started with her critiquing my shirt (“it’s much too large on you”), progressed through picking apart my house (“it makes me feel claustrophobic”) and ended somewhere after taking offense at my comments on traffic (“you poor thing, being stuck in traffic in your comfy air-conditioned, six-CD changer car”). Her mood kept swinging between anger (with accompanying glares), and melancholy (with sad wet eyes).

Finally, the truth came out.

“I don’t want to give it you. If I am angry with you, you take it. If I cry on you, you have that too. You don’t deserve any of it.”

Ah, I love her so. But I digress, once more.

Later in the evening, we were standing on my porch and drinking wine. I asked her how SB liked to be kissed.

“Tight.”

Tight. Hrmmm. And how do I kiss?

“Open…you have such a large mouth.”

Thanks. I think. Show me how she likes to be kissed.

She did – it was tighter then the way we kissed. To me, it felt like I was parting my lips to take a small bite of something. Short, sweet, and very inviting.

It took several tries before I thought I was getting the hang of it.

“Confidence.”

Hey now! This is something I know I have.

“No, not that kind of confidence…confidence like you really want her, want all of her.”

Ah. Perhaps my kisses…are sometimes a bit restrained. Control is a hard habit to break and can sometimes be an impediment.

A few kisses later and I really was getting the hang of it. Lesson over. Or so I thought.

When it was time for her to go, I walked her to the door and paused to give her a kiss goodbye.

She pulled away after the kiss, “You were too quick at the end.” She froze and then muttered, “This is getting out of hand,” and then headed quickly to her car. It was all I could do to not grin. I went upstairs and penciled more kissing lessons in for our next meeting.

When I was younger, because so much of my play was initially in arenas other then the purely physical (such as on-line, on the phone, or in written letters) I was sometimes asked by those who had not met me in real life a question I find quite amusing.

Can I really do the things I describe? Can I really make you feel the things I write about?

Can I make your pulse race, your skin flush, your insides tighten, your breathing deeper?

The easy answer is the simplest. Yes.

I’m doing it right now, am I not?

Still, this doesn’t really answer the heart of the question. Are my fingers skilled at eliciting shivers? Are my hands strong enough to hold you down? Can I fulfill the promise my words hold?

This isn’t really about how close my words are to actual activity. Words promise: Kisses, yes. Bites, yes. Hands tightening, yes. Roses are nice, leather is as well. Everything has a place. Words make promises that hands and fingers fulfill.

With the right words before hand, the proper tension, I barely have to touch you to push you under: the softest brush of my fingers along the back of your neck – feeling my breath tickle your ear – my hands drawing you back into my reach.

But I don’t need words to do this. A look can do it. A warm presence against your back can do it. Parting lips that take in moist heat the inherent intimacy of a shared kiss can do it.

***

My past has definately shaped the way I play. Sometimes I frame scenes in my head like a story. I ask questions. I won’t accept just their body for those moments that they are in my grasp – I want everything. I want their secrets. I want their indecision. I want the dirty little girl inside that society keeps so well hidden.

I pay attention to language: verbal, physical, and the even more elusive sexual dialect that goes beyond tangile boundaries. I make my partners tell me what they want. I tell them how wet I am going to make them. I whisper what I am going to do with them before I do it.

The simple answer is yes, I can back up my words. The longer answer…well, the longer answer is best demonstrated…

…in person.

The last three questons I had NE submit to me.

3. What is your most favorite place on a woman’s body? (And I don’t mean the place that she likes the most…I mean what place makes you go crazy.)

Now this is a delicious question. I have to pick just one? It is all in the curves…

I am extremely fond of a woman’s neck. The lines of her throat, especially when it is tilted back, creating a gentle curve. It speaks of vulnerability. Submission. Wolves will go for the throat when establishing dominance within the pack (of course, they will also go for the throat when attempting to kill). The pulse is found there – teeth on bared skin, the heat of the heart tasted in a kiss.

Breasts are…quite nice. I love exploring those invisible strings between nipples and clit. Tugging on them with teeth and fingers, plucking a melody that has her writhing under me. Again, curves – small or large, breasts are beautiful.

I have found, on NE, that I have a particular fondness for legs. Drawing lines that start at the ankle and go to the top of her thighs. Hitting all the right spots – calves, just behind her knees, the smooth delicate space along her upper thighs. Mmmm.

But favorite? I’m going to have to say the small of her back. The curve that draws the spine down to her ass. It is an oasis, a place hinted at when she leans over and her shirt is drawn up over her back. Horizon is drawn by a gaze along a path to each cheek. Ah – her ass. Where reds can be teased to the surface with bites of hands or…canes, floggers, paddles, and any number of other gleefully evil implements at hand. But it is the path to here that is my favorite place. It links hips, where hands can grip while pressing her over my desk, to her ass, which I force into the air by drawing her back hard against me. The small of her back is where my fingers like to rest when I wrap my hands around her.

4. How difficult is it for you as a dominant balancing the desire to let go with someone physically and knowing that you have to be very self-controlled? And is that part of what makes it so great for you?

To be honest, I have difficulty letting go completely – so balance is not a real concern. At least, on the surface. I am quite sure that letting go completely once in a while would be good for me. I just haven’t had an opportunity/found the right person to do that with yet.

5. For total real…what is one thing that you haven’t done with a woman in a scene that you really want to do with her?

Something in public or semi-public. Sitting in a cab or limo with my hand under her skirt and fingers buried inside her pussy. Bending her over the sink in the men’s room of a restraunt. Fucking her up against the wall in a closet during work’s winter party. It’s one line, one naughty area, I haven’t really crossed yet. Once I do, I’ll find something else to take it’s place…

I was going through some old letters and came across some rolled up parchments that I hadn’t looked at since I collected them last October. Halloween, to be exact.

Can you guess what I dressed up as for Halloween last year?

So, I have four or five contracts signing over the souls of several friends into my keeping. They came rather cheaply, as I recall. A massage, a sandwhich. A quickie in the bathroom.

Here’s my question: if you had to sell your soul – and for the sake of this excercise, you do – what is the one thing you’d want in return? (or at least comes close). It can be anything – mind-reading capability, prince charming, that nice hand-made doe-skin flogger you’ve had your eye on…

Me? A tavern. Something well-made, but broken in. Smooth oaken bars, solid wooden tables. Comfortable chairs. Lantern-bright. Good food (pretzels, shrimp, nachoes, pastachios). A couple of real pool tables, not those bar-sized ones. A dart board. Jukebox hooked to my music collection – I’ve got playlists that cover everything from sultly summer nights to jammin’ spring evenings. Microbrews, top-shelf liquor, and a decent wine collection (with a few really rare vintages for those special ocassions, such as, oh, every Friday night). A piano. Baby grand. Smoking blonde in a black dress to accompany it. Back-room with couches so those without designated drivers can sleep it off safely. Make the hours from four in the evening till whenever the last person leaves. Have it make just enough money to cover expenses.

And good friends to make it a home. Yeah. I’d sell my soul for that.

How ’bout you?

I asked my dear friend NE to come up with five questions she would like to know about me. NE has known me for a long time and knows me better then…well, better then anyone else, and I was curious as to what she would ask. She sent me her questions the next day. I was not dissapointed. Here are the first two.

1. Why is it that you are uninterested in reading books like Sleeping Beauty or watching films like 9 1/2 Weeks?

Honestly? They just aren’t entertaining enough for me. In the case of 9 1/2 weeks, I’ve seen most of the movie in bits and pieces. Some very nice scenes, but it’s the pieces that are intriguing, not the whole. The Sleeping Beauty books? I’ve read passages, and again, some very interesting scenes. But the story doesn’t encourage me to keep reading.

In general, they just don’t excite me. People excite me. Human, real, naive, smutty, sinning, people. Acts, alone, just don’t cut it. I need to connect to the person, even if it is just an illusion I am connecting to. The people populating Sleeping Beauty and 9 1/2 weeks are there just to enact elaborate scenes of kink. Remember, I haven’t actually read or watched the entirety of either, so it is very probable that I have not given them a chance to come to life. But the glimpses I have seen have not managed to sink their hooks into me.

Let me offer those books and movies that are in the same vein but also manage to engage me.

Dangerous Liaisons: a movie whose erotic moments are character-driven. Vicomte Sébastien de Valmont’s manipulation of those around him is reprehensible, Machevellian, and utterly captivating.

Kushiel’s Dart: this book and the Sleepy Beauty books share a similar setting – a fantastical land wherein there is a culture that indulges in kink. The difference is in the characters; Phedre is a heroine. Sleeping Beauty…is not.

It’s also why I no longer read Anita Blake books. I love a well-written sex scene. But reading about sex between uninteresting people is like watching generic porn: good for just one thing.

Which doesn’t mean I won’t eventually read/watch them. I just need a bit of momentum before I tackle them (or I’ll stop half-way through).

2. How have your tastes changed in women (submissives) over the last few years from when you started? What would you really look for in one?

My tastes haven’t changed all that much in the last few years.

The largest difference is that as my relationship with my first submissive has grown, I have a better understanding of what I can expect from a serious long-term D/s relationship. In short, I’ve been spoiled. Overall, the things I want haven’t changed. I still want a creative, intelligent, challenging individual. She must have some confidence in herself. Being submissive does not mean being a push over. On the other hand, while a bit of stubbornness is, dare I say, almost endearing in that bratty-sort-of-way, rigid unreasoned thinking is not attractive to me. I expect my submissive to be willing to try new things – she must allow herself to be guided (nudged, pushed, driven, as I please) into areas she would not explore on her own. Above all, she must be dynamic; life changes, and we have to be willing to adapt.

What appeals to me in less serious relationships is both easier, and more difficult, to define. My craving to unravel the threads of people has often led me to explore niches and hidden places I would not otherwise have considered. Everyone is unique, and I love peeling away the layers to find the core of a person. The process differs with each person and there is immense enjoyment in testing the limits of each, finding what it takes to find the center.

Happiness, to me, is found in freedom. In being unburdened. In letting go.

At least, I wish it were that simple. I don’t want to let go of all attachments. My job pays for my house which keeps me relatively dry on most days and provides a home for my cats (I just stay here at their discretion). My friends keep me sane. My books and music keep me entertained.

So what I really mean to say, is happiness is freedom from concern.

With a submissive, this is a joy I grant them. I gently and roughly remove the weight of everything but me. I empty them of everything but their sense of self and fill those spaces with the echoes of my presence and words. I make them free, for those moments they are with me.

How does this dominant find this freedom? The easy, mundane, answer is this: I let go. One particularly effective mediatitve technique for relaxing the body is to imagine each muscle, tense it slightly to *know* where it is, and then relax it. Start at the bottom and work your way up to your head. Every muscle. Every place of tension.

Now apply this to your meeting next week. That bill you haven’t yet paid. Your friend who is sick. Find that feeling, experience it – and then let it go.

That is how I free myself.

Bliatz has tagged me for a small questionnaire on books. Books are a weakness of mine. I’ve been reading since I was 14 – and by reading, I mean 2-3 books a week. Consistently.

Of course, the books I read are…well, I won’t call them crap, because some of them are very very good. But they’re Fantasy/Sci-Fi, which is candy for the mind. Entertainment. They can carry some very intelligent ideas – but as a rule, they’re read for enjoyment. Only recently (last year or so) have I forced myself to read weighter material.

1) Total number of books I’ve owned.
Approximately 4 to 5 thousand books. I currently own maybe four or five hundred. The rest have been lost, boxed and stored in a shed at my parent’s house, or traded in for credit to get more books.

2) The last book I bought.
Dead Beat, by Jim Butcher. Think Anita Blake before the porn over-ran her books.

3) The last book I read.
Lord Foul’s Bane (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Book 1) by Stephen Donaldson. Classic book. Hated it. Forced myself to finish since so many said it was good. Not to my tastes.

4) 5 books that mean something to me.
Let me preface this answer by saying that I have read almost *too* many books. The question asks for those books that mean something to me – and the term ‘mean’ can go in many directions. The books I am listing are there because I am attached to them either for reasons of pure enjoyment or because of the affect they’ve had on my life.

Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey
Assasssin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb
The Elements of Style by Strunk/White
Fight Club by Chuck Palaniuk
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

5) Tag 5 people and request they fill this out on their journals

Five? Hrmm. I’ll go with four:

Vicky
Amy
Raging Heart
Queen of Pink

NE met up with me last night for a dinner and movie; on the way to dinner I asked her what she thought of my writing. Two comments stuck out. The first was that it was interesting for her to see a side of me in my blog-entries that she had only seen in my other, less public, writing. I can see the truth in that. She has mentioned, often, that she never knows what is going on in my mind during a scene. When I told her about my blog, it was with the intent that this question be at least partially answered.

The second comment was that I seem ‘full of myself’ in my writing here.

Well, yes. I most certainly am.

“Aren’t I all that, though?”

She looked at me, her blonde hair partially obscuring her face, “Well, yes, but…”

I’m not able to take control and assert myself by being shy. This is one particular area I have complete confidence in; oh, I make mistakes. But I also know that there are few mistakes, if any, that I cannot recover from. And I’m always learning. I don’t know it all and I like it that way – discovering new ways to tease, to play. To please and be pleased. Yes, months may go by between scenes and if I don’t pay attention, my skills can get rusty. But as a rule…I’m just becoming increasingly more dangerous.

There was a third comment. I’m not a big coffee person, preferring tea or hot chocolate. She insists that real men drink coffee, with the implication being that by not being a big fan of it, I am less manly. Now I ask you, does coffee really make the man?

Wench. If I hadn’t been driving, she would have found herself in a lot of trouble.

I haven’t yet touched on why I am writing this.

My goal was to post something every day for a year. Poetry, stories, stories about now and from the past, random thoughts, and whatever else interests me. Why? Partly because it forces me to write. It gives me an excuse to write. I want to be a writer. And, in the simplest and truest terms, a writer is one who writes. The brilliant friend you have who talks about the novel they are going to write any day now? Not a writer. The friend who keeps a daily diary detailing her inner most thoughts? She’s a writer.

What you won’t see: posts about what kind of smurf, cloud, 18th-century novel, Egyptian God/Goddess, or any other on-line test that tells me what piece furniture I likely to be reincarnated as. I think they’re cute but they’re really not for me. I may take a real personality test, like Myer-Briggs, and write about it, but that’s as far as I go.

That said, I am thinking of re-focusing this site more towards Domination and my thoughts/actions in that area. This would encompass removing (or restricting access to) all poetry, short stories, and autobiographical entries that don’t relate to it – which isn’t *that* much, considering how influential that aspect of my life is on who I am. What would be in it’s place? A more defined exploration of what D&S is, with specific examples given to illustrate my points. I’d likely go from daily updates to thrice-weekly. Despite how wonderful I think my poetry is, I can’t imagine it is as entertaining as reading about the best position to hold someone in while spanking them. Or discussing hot and cold; the difference (or lack of) in sensation of a mouth with an ice cube teasing a nipple, and a mouth filled with near-scalding hot water. Or what makes someone a good or bad Dom. Good or bad submissive. Why are some people switches? Why do even those who switch generally have a preference for one or the other?

What do you guys think? I’m going to mull it over this weekend and any thoughts would be welcome.

I e-mailed NE on Wednesday night and told her to wear a skirt for our meeting Thursday night.

She did.

We had dinner and then came back and talked for a while in my study. We have a planned scene next month and we haven’t had a lot of time to find our rhyhm (I work evenings, she works days, and when we see each other on the weekends,we are almost always surrounded by friends). A lot has passed between us since our last scene – and the last scene wasn’t nearly as good as it should have been. Some basic groundwork would have to be laid down again for this to be the sort of scene we both wanted.

I knew she wanted to be taken down. She had called on Monday and, as she put it later, was practically bleeding over the phone in her need. I could feel the ghost of that need on Thursday, but it was buried. To bring it to the surface would be a fairly invasive act. And we hadn’t played on that level in a long time.

But I did it. I had her to the point where she was begging for more one moment, and the next begging to stop because it was too much. I had emptied her of everything but my hands and words.

I had planned to write out the details of what I did. To post what happened exactly. But there is a process that writing has on the mind. Writing forces you to edit. Even the most honest person will unconsciously put spin on their actions or thoughts or deeds in while committing memories to paper (or Blog). And as you write, your memories reshape into this written echo you are creating,

I’m not ready to do that. I need to be ruthlessly honest with myself about the things I did right and the things I could have done better. NE deserves as much – so that next time, I can use that understanding to benefit us both.

She could be in some trouble.