IML Wrap-Up

I didn't go.


That said, I still managed to have a lot of fun.  I spent the weekend attending the Motorcycle Safety Foundation's beginner rider course and got my license certification.  It's something I've been wanting to do for years, and I finally had the time.  Granted, the bikes were puny little 125cc Hondas, but I still learned a lot, had fun, and met some great guys.

Plus, I got to perv on this woofy, sweaty redneck.

Going test riding some this morning with Tebow. More pics likely to come!

The Most Powerful Words

Apologies for the rambling nature of this post - I haven't had much coffee yet but I have had a percoset.

Both Emrys and Bootbrush have recently written about the use of pain in BDSM and that got me thinking about the dynamics of what we as a community tend to enjoy.  During my pup play class, I talk at length about how punishment from Handler to pup is not always very effective.  Instead, "good boy" are the strongest words in the Handler's arsenal.  It's all about spinning the scene in order to get the reactions and effect you want.

For me, as a Top, it's important that my subs get something out of the scene. It may not necessarily be pleasurable, or what they expected, but I'm rarely going to set out to inflict something I know my sub is purely going to hate.

I'm also chatting with a guy on recon who's gone back and read some of my posts on feeling "selfish" as a sub.  He thanked me for putting it into words, because he thought he was the only one who felt that way.  Out of this discussion, I got to thinking that there are probably a lot of reactions and beliefs that we assume are our own personal weirdness, but that are actually pretty normal reactions.

We all have different triggers and pathways to get us to the headspace we want to be in, and it's a shared journey to get there.  For example, the masochist needs the sadist not just to inflict pain, but to inflict the right pain at the right ramping up to bring out the adrenaline and endorphins that make for the best headspace.  The sub being humiliated needs their Dom to pick the right environment, the right audience, and the right stimulus.

There are lots of factors that can help improve the experience.  When the sadist is really into the type of pain being inflicted, that connection and energy can help draw out the masochist's willingness to push their own limits.  Similarly, humiliation can be a fine line to walk and it helps when the both the Dom and sub are getting some excitement out of the experience. The baseline pleasure helps the sub go further than they might otherwise be willing;  the longer the Dom can maintain that juxtaposition of excitement and embarassment, the more powerful the experience can be for both.  It works both ways, of course - keeping the scene going means greater excitement and pleasure for the Top as well.

Rarely, of course, is any scene perfect, and it's up to both players to work towards a good outcome.  I have said that it's not selfish for the sub to have all the attention focused on them.  I do think it's selfish, however, for a sub to expect the Dom to take all the responsibility for making the scene work. The sub can communicate what they want, and the Dom can, and should, do a lot of the planning around the sub's expectations.  The sub, however, has to be willing to roll with the punches, so to speak, and be flexible enough to accept that the Dom isn't going to follow a script of said sub's fantasies.  Apart from taking the spontaneity out of the scene, the Dom has to get what they want out of it as well.


Hunter recently posted about what a great time he had at SITS, and how thankful he was for his friends.  This type of response is why I do what I do, from Topping in individual scenes, to helping organize SITS, to hosting the Atlanta Dominion parties.  Yes, I can have a good time at the events playing in scenes, but the reason I keep working to make them happen is to provide a place for other people to have fun, as well.

At the end of the day, the Dom isn't the only one with power. The sub can make or break the scene with their attitude, before, during, and after.  And if the most powerful words in the Handler's arsenal are "good boy", then the words I most crave to hear as a Handler/Top/Dom are "thank you."  It seems a small thing, but it really makes all the difference in the world.

Bottling Things Up

Feel free to skip this post - the tl;dr version is that I'm always in pain, I'm learning to live with it, and I don't need/want/expect anything from anyone because of it.

So, some of my recent posts have not given the full story about what's going on with my life and my medical condition.   This is the long version of my usual "I have a bad back" explanation when someone asks me if something is wrong.  I keep a lot of this bottled up, because I don't want to be the one always complaining and/or dragging others down. But people do ask, and I'd like to get it all out in the open and hopefully not have to explain it over and over.  

About three years ago, I did something to my back.  I have no idea what, but I came back from a work trip with pretty bad pain in the lumbar region, so I went to an orthopedist.  He took an MRI and said I had two large herniations at L4-L5 and L5-S1 that were causing my pain.  Over the next year, I tried treating them with therapy, drugs, TENS, and cortisone epidurals.  None of this particularly helped, and the situation began deteriorating rapidly.  In addition to constant low-grade pain in my back, I also had radiating sciatica in my left leg that developed into neuropathy.  In layman's terms, my left leg feels like it's constantly 'asleep' - full of pins and needles - in addition to general soreness and weakness.

I'm not talking a little bit of pain and weakness here.  I'm talking, I can no longer drive a manual transmission because the pain and loss of coordination make it impossible to operate a clutch. I keep a cane in my car because I never know when my leg is going to decide that it's just not going to support my weight today.  If you have lived with chronic pain, then you know what sort of strain this can put on you.  If you haven't lived with being in agony every second of every day, then give thanks.

Two years ago I went in for surgery - a discectomy - to remove the bulging portion of my L5-S1 disc.  Just before being knocked out, the surgeon said "you'll wake up in complete relief."  This was in error.

When I woke up, I had the same pain as before as well as the searing pain of having had my back sliced open.  The only part of the pain that ever went away was that of the cut.  The surgeon backpedaled rapidly to "I think we kept it from getting worse."

This was also in error.

I've since been to several other specialists, including a couple of the leading neuro/ortho spine researchers in the country.  They have all said "there's nothing more we can do" because my S1 nerve is damaged beyond repair.  I will be in escalating levels of pain every day for the rest of my life.  The latest step has been to implant a neural stimulator directly in my back to provide a constant electric shock.  This doesn't actually relieve the pain, it just reduces it by replacing some of the nerve signal with an annoying buzz.  It also makes it a bit more important for me to be careful when doing electro play. :-p

One of my favorite webcomics, Hyperbole and a Half, had a column on the 'pain charts' often used in doctors' offices.  For those who don't know, when you're dealing with chronic pain, the first think the nurse asks you at every visit is 'Rate your pain from 1 to 10.'  There's not really a good reference scale, but the one below from Hyperbole is pretty good.

0:  Hi.  I am not experiencing any pain at all.  I don't know why I'm even here. 

1:  I am completely unsure whether I am experiencing pain or itching or maybe I just have a bad taste in my mouth.

2:  I probably just need a Band Aid.

3:  This is distressing.  I don't want this to be happening to me at all.

4:  My pain is not fucking around.

5:  Why is this happening to me??

6:  Ow.  Okay, my pain is super legit now.

7:  I see Jesus coming for me and I'm scared.    

8:  I am experiencing a disturbing amount of pain.  I might actually be dying.  Please help.

9:  I am almost definitely dying.

10:  I am actively being mauled by a bear.

11: Blood is going to explode out of my face at any moment.

Too Serious For Numbers:  You probably have ebola.  It appears that you may also be suffering from Stigmata and/or pinkeye.

My daily pain is usually between 5 and 7.  I have hit 10 on a couple of occasions.  Those are the days where I quite literally contemplated sawing my own leg off with a hacksaw.  The only thing that stopped me was the knowledge that the pain was actually from the nerve root in my back and so sawing off the leg wouldn't actually help.

I get a lot of "are you all right" questions at events.  No, I'm not, but I'm trying to live with it.  I've passed the point, however, where I can pretend and give the normal little white lie of "yes, I'm fine."  This often leads to people sympathizing - I appreciate that, but I also don't want to be a drag on other peoples' enjoyment.  It often feels, to me, that going into these details about my pain/weakness is both egotistical and drama-inducing.  This creates a feedback loop where I don't want to talk about it, and then I get people asking me why I'm shutting them out and inducing drama that way.

I don't want to be defined by my injury, but it's not something I can ignore, either.  I can't wrestle my subs and pups around the way I'd like, and to a certain extent I need them to help me remember not to get carried away.  I don't want them to feel like they need to constantly attend to me, but I also need to have someone around if I need to pick up heavy gear bags.

That's about right

As I mentioned in my last post, I had offered, and the lovely ShdwKitten had accepted, my offer to top her in a scene at Frolicon.  We bantered some in texts leading up to the con about what I might do and her running theme was "I think I signed up to play with the male version of myself!"  I was a bit nervous as well, not having really scened with a woman before, and used to more...compliant...subs.  The afternoon before the scene, Emrys and I were relaxing in the room, when I suddenly had the image of that scene from Star Wars, where Luke and Han need to get through the Death Star.  Luke says, "Ok, Chewie, I'm just gonna put these cuffs on you..." We both giggled a bit at the thought and agreed it was an appropriate image.  Emrys, being the talented artist that he is, decided to memorialize it.

Frolicon 2013

Frolicon is always my favorite con of the year.  This year had a few low spots, but it was mostly a good time.  I'll get the negatives out of the way first so I can end on a high point.

The big negative was the cane.  I go in for an implant trial surgery tomorrow morning, and one of the requirements is that I stop all my various painkillers and anti-inflammatories.  With my back the way it is, this makes for a grumpy, gimpy puppy and I wound up hobbling around on my cane a good amount of the weekend.  It's frustrating when you're used to doing things for yourself, but I really do appreciate having people looking out for me and making sure I don't push things too hard.  That said, it left me feeling left out of a lot of things, since I couldn't tromp up and down the stairs between room parties (and the elevators, as always, were a train wreck).  The worst came after one of the play parties, when I was debating what to do for dinner and was told that I should go to my room and rest rather than going to dinner with a group of friends.  I honestly got kind of pissed at that point.  I realized pretty quickly that I shouldn't be angry about it, but that left me just feeling depressed and old, as if I couldn't keep up anymore. Those feelings carried over into the inevitable con drop as well, but a week of introversion seems to be helping me out of the funk.  Somewhat ironically, the other thing that annoyed me about the cane was the way some people took it as a license to race past my slow self onto almost full elevators, despite my having been waiting longer.

The only other negative from the con was the women who like to watch men-on-men party.  This is a fantastic idea, and the previous time I went I had a blast.  Things started off well, as I had an excuse to make out with Bishop and the guy he'd tied to the cross.  Mmmm.  Things kind of slumped from there, though the energy was just wrong - there were probably 40 spectators for maybe 5-6 guys playing at any given time and said spectators were mostly gossiping and talking amongst themselves.

After the makeout session, not much was going on, so I started putting Tebow into a new suspension harness tie that I'd been practicing.  Now, I love rope.  I mean, I really love rope.  But, I can understand that watching someone wrap ropes around someone else for an hour can rank up there with watching golf on television.  There's some occasional pretty scenery, but not a lot to keep your interest. But still, the normal scene rules don't go completely out the window just because it's a spectators welcome party.  That didn't stop one lady from turning her chair around, with her back to me, and sitting it on the mat under the suspension frame I'm working with.  So I started smacking her with the tail end of the ropes until she got the hint and moved, grumbling and complaining the whole time.

Okay, drama over, on to the good parts.

I actually made it to several classes this year, including two on suspension harnesses and one on hojojitsu.  I was able to practice some of the new techniques on Tebow during the various parties, and made it out to support one of my friend's panels on a topic I'm not into (diaper play) but was glad to expand my knowledge on.

I got an awesome electro scene in with Soma at the men's party, and had the chance to flog Labratt for the first time in forever.  Also helped Labratt discover a new fetish of his for sweat. I STILL have a hickey in my pit.

Friday afternoon, ShdwKitten and I presented Emrys with his birthday present - an earned leather vest. I had gotten matching nametags made for him, Tebow and myself and put on all our vests so we were able to show off our pack affiliation over the weekend.  It was great to be able to share that moment with so many of our friends, even if I was on the verge of puppicide trying to keep everyone in one place long enough to actually make it happen.

Saturday night saw a long awaited scene where I got to top ShdwKitten.  It started off fairly primal, with lots of growling and biting.  I got to use some of my impact toys, and then started giving her some verbal sparring.  She had told me that she was a smartass bottom and liked to talkback, so I was ready with a few insults of my own.  Unfortunately, she had also come equipped with a beautiful facepaint job that was not nearly so beautiful when we were done - mostly because I wound up wearing half of it.

The intense scene finally broke up in a bout of giggles, especially when she tried to pin me and I just grabbed her by the hoo-ha.  I think that makes me a Kinsey 4.  Certainly cost me my gold-star-gay status.

Saturday night wound up with the wolfhound and I trolling some room parties, but I was pretty worn out and in pain, plus (as usual) I had brought better booze than anything being served at the parties.  We went back to my room, and Emrys decided not to let me sleep.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.  Some of the primal energy from the earlier scene with ShdwKitten was still running through me, cause I went to town on him, growling, biting, scratching and fucking.  At some point, I started calling him my little fuck puppy, and I think that made both of us go at it even harder.  It was some of the most intense sex I've ever had, that's for sure.

On Teaching

Every time I get ready to teach a class or speak in public, my inner INTJ gets butterflies and I start to second guess myself. 'Will they like it?' 'Will anyone come?' 'Will I remember to hit all the points?' 'Will I manage not to sound like a babbling idiot?'  I have to keep reminding myself that all I can do is show up and do my best - I can't control whether anyone actually shows up, and over-organizing the topics to make sure I don't forget anything tends to make the presentation so formalized and stilted that it's less enjoyable.

This past weekend was no exception. I took Tebow and our new pup-friend Soma up to Charlotte to teach my pup play class at CAPEX's (Charlotte Area Power Exchange) monthly demo and play party.  This was a special treat because it's the home group for Emrys, one of the pups in my pack.  He has sometimes felt isolated there because he's been one of the only pups in the group for a long time, and a lot of his friends didn't 'get it.'  Apparently his friends wanted to get it, because we had a great turnout for the class - around 30 people by my count - which is particularly good for a pay event the weekend before Frolicon.

For the first hour, Emrys, Tebow, and Soma romped around while I ran through the history of pup play and an overview of the headspace/psychology.  I won't repeat it all here (but you can attend my talk at Spring in the South or Southeast LeatherFest if you want to hear it), but it went pretty well, and the audience enjoyed the pups' antics.  After a quick break, the pups came out of headspace and talked some about what they enjoyed about it.  We got some great questions, including one about pack dynamics.  Much like 'wild' dog packs, we have an Alpha and then we have everyone else.  It's not my role as Alpha to enforce a particular hierarchy among the beta pups, and quite frankly, I enjoy watching them sort it out amongst themselves.

After the talk, one of Emrys' friends came up to him and said, "I get it now! It's fun!"  It's great when you hear someone really get something out of your presentation and learn something new.  The rest of the crowd was just as positive and enthusiastic afterward, and amazingly welcoming throughout our visit.  One of the things that worried me beforehand was that my class tends to be a little irreverent with respect to old guard traditions - not disrespectful, but I definitely consider myself and my pack to not be bound by a lot of convention.  The irony is that the wonderful lady in charge of snacks and decorations for the party was worried I might be offended by their whimsical nature.

Far from it; I was absolutely blown away by her efforts.  The papier mache fire hydrant was actually their gift to me for presenting; it now has a place of honor in my dungeon.

I can't thank the CAPEX folks enough for welcoming us into their space and giving us the opportunity to talk about this huge part of our kinky lifestyle.  I also have to thank ShdwKitten for sharing her pup with me and for being an all around awesome person.  So awesome, in fact, that I'm going to beat her bloody at Frolicon this weekend, yay!

Recent Events

Busy year in more ways than one.  Started things off with MAL in January, and getting ready to head up there again in a few weeks.  Got some shopping to do; some stuff for me (Erostek!) and a few ideas for other pups (evil laugh!).  

Last weekend I got to play with a couple new pups, thanks in part to some encouragement and matchmaking by Tebow.  The lovely Bo stopped by while he was in town visiting family and in between bouts of ball crushing delight, we made a few plans for Sparky come MAL time (more evil laugh!).  Started off while Bo was en route getting Tebow and his latest find naked and tied up.  Being skinny little twinks, they both complained about the chill in the basement and being a kind and generous Sir, I started up the oil heater.  Of course, I later slid the heater between the legs and just under the cock and balls of the new guy while he was hanging from his wrists.  On max heat.  For anyone curious, hands outspread and stretched overhead with the body under tension is my favorite pose.  Just in case you need that for a trivia contest some day.

Got the new guy tied to the incline table, then pulley connecting the table up and around to a parachute on Tebow's balls.  I tend to like my bondage complicated.  It didn't work out quite like I wanted, though, so I'll have to try it again later.  Instead I disconnected the parachute and broke out the single-tail for a little target practice.  About the time I was wrapping that up, Bo arrived.

I'd forgotten just how much of a sadist I really am until it came time to set up some CBT on Bo.  I got him onto the incline table, and used the parachute-pulley combo to pull the table up - nothing like having a good chunk of your own body weight hanging from your sack.  I really love a guy who wants you to really push him down the pain scale.  Even if it does lead him into the 'laughing phase'.  That was just odd.  The harder I squeezed, the more he laughed.  This, of course, set the rest of us in the dungeon/playroom/basement off into snickers and giggles of our own.  Still I managed to keep it together to keep him going a little bit further.  I just hope he had as much fun as I did.

Got to see Emrys and ShdwKitten at the wedding of two dear friends, so that was a nice holiday treat.  

I just wish I'd been feeling better.  The back is on a downhill slide - I've had an MRI and CT Myelogram during the last two weeks, and I'm shopping the results around to different surgeons to try and find an answer.  We'll see what they say, and I'll keep you posted.  Meantime, please stop me from picking things up if you see me; I'm really not supposed to do that.

In other news, if you don't read Sparky's blog, nosafeword, you should, and articles like this one on being safe with a new partner are the reason why.

Picture time!