It’s not even 10pm and I am about ready to pass out.  My entire body aches, my finger is out of its splint tape simply because I don’t have enough brain power to reapply it.  My butt itches from tons of little tiny scratches.  My forehead is tender, my side is tender, parts of my scalp.  There are bruises already on my shins and many more that are still forming.  I can’t seem to drink enough Gatorade to catch up with the dehydration and sore throat from screaming too much and smoking too many cigarettes. We had an amazing night.

The energy at the party was fantastic.  While we waited for my domination scene we saw a beautiful knife play scene.  I’ve never seen a submissive giggle so much while being poked with sharps.  Our first scene was great, and I’m feeling competent with caning at this point.  Towards the end of our scene our close friends were getting started across the dungeon.  For awhile my partner and my friend were screaming in sync, it was really nice.

We of course had to fight, it is the basis of our entire relationship.   It took a little doing to clear enough space on the dungeon floor.  Though after the first few slaps, grabs, and kicks we had all the space we needed.  The highlights of the first fight scene was me being dragged around the carpet in circles by my ankles with him yelling, “How about that rug burn?”  Can’t tell you how many other people asked me that question as the evening progressed.  Our first scene ended after my head was shoved in a trashcan.  It was beautiful energy and ending on a humiliation point just made it.

Since my top was off, and difficult to retie, I decided to do a duct tape bustier.  Somehow we got the wrapping done while I was smoking a cigarette in the garage.  We toured the party engaging in some good conversation, but by the time we made it back to the dungeon area we were ready to go again.  This time the duct tape was the target.  We struggled, he tried to grab me up and I’d throw my weight so that he couldn’t lift me.  I was screaming, and insults were flying through the air, until he finally managed to grab me by the tape on my back.  I ended up hovering above the ground by my duct tape bustier as I struggled to get free and he was trying to rip it open.

The tape finally gave out and I went straight down, landing in perfect break-fall upright in fetal position with a loud thud and fits of laughter.  I felt the impact through my whole body, but it didn’t stop the cackling.  He had trouble ripping the tape off through my laughing more than me putting up any sort of fight.  Though as the tape really started coming off this largely switched to screaming.  By the end I’m back to kicking and fighting dirty as usual.  Though he gets the roll of tape, and preps to start binding me with it.

Amidst clawing, kicking, slapping, struggling, insults, screaming and writhing I end up with my fingers taped shut.  During this part I start cursing about how he stole that trick from a story I had told him about a prior scene.  Taped my arms together, somewhat unsuccessfully taped my eyes and mouth closed.  My hair got involved as well, this consent was so amusingly obtained while in roll.  He said your hair is going to end up in the tape if you don’t move it out of the way, and I continued to curse and say I didn’t give a shit.

Due to the large amount of struggling, ripped tape, and other mayhem in this part of the scene my right pointer finger got badly jammed and sprained during the taping.  We both saw the finger as a warning sign, but both consented to ignoring it.  It has been a point of hilarity throughout the day today as I can’t do things like open cereal boxes and have spent most of the day with a mutant double finger, since I chose the cheapest splint option available: paper tape and my middle finger.

I get tortured a bit while bound and am given enough air to get out of the tape in-between long blood curdling screams.  After getting out of it we start fighting again.  I start hitting him with the ripped off tape, and he picks up our rattan cane.  Due to the scuffling and confusion we actually switched weapons several times.  Eventually we’re both so overtaken with the sting, and so tired, we came to a truce.

A little bit later the dungeon mostly cleared out, and we had a quiet scene with me subbing for the “paint roller of doom”, a paint roller covered in carpet nails.  It was nice being in good ole subspace for a bit.  I had missed the lovely floaty nature of it all these past few months.

It was a great time even through the commute home.  We stopped at a Starbucks and enjoyed ridiculous fast food cafe drinks sitting outside as the sun rose.  After a four hour nap we went out to get burritos in the inner harbor and were amused at how we are tourists in the city’s tourist trap.  As we had difficulty finding parking and the restaurant.  We came home and napped while watching Fight Club.  Can’t think of a better way to have spent the weekend.

We both remain continually in awe of how we grow together, and how fun our lives remain.  The intensity and seamlessness of our scenes gets better every time.  A physical measure of our work on communication, and our personal soul searching.  We remain amazed at the response we often get from the community.  We’ve heard a lot of neat things about what others get out of our play, and we look forward to many more fights in the future.

This morning I woke up at my usual time, after an evening of feeling ill.  I got on my computer and began on what I needed to get done for work, and I get a message from downstairs “do you want a bagel?” I responded, “Not really, maybe half”.

A few minutes later a plate arrives on my desk, a whole everything bagel slathered in butter and cinnamon sugar.  I just looked at it, kind of horrified, beginning to get a sense of the full extent of my nausea.  Reading my mind he asks, “How does it make you feel to look at it?”  I didn’t need to answer, and really I was too sick to get any words out.

I attempted to continue working, and eventually convinced myself to take a few bites.  I came downstairs with butter on my fingers feigning a bounce in my step, and after being asked to describe how my attempt to eat breakfast made me feel . . . I called out of work.

In any other relationship the morning would have gone differently.  Perhaps my partner would not have noticed I was ill, perhaps I would have called out independently and have felt guilty about it.  Maybe I would have been chased after with a thermometer and a bottle of Tylenol.  Only to be declared well enough to go to work.

This morning though, the dynamic came into play.  A visceral argument in the form of food I could not eat.  Placed in front of me by a partner who thought I was being ridiculous, and was determined to get me to admit it.

This event alone does not make us a power exchange dynamic, though it points to some of the most beautiful things about living in one.  How it comes to form in the most mundane activities.  After calling out I said, “I’m glad I decided to not go into today,” and I got the response, “You never were.”

There is a lot written about sub space, as well as top space.  Both I find very enjoyable, and they are both unique.  However, they aren’t my favorite, and my kind of fun I often don’t see explictly written.

While I enjoy the intense connection from my sadistic little actions to my partners writhing, moaning, screaming reactions.  The intense detail, how I can track the response, on the best days predict them.  How I also enjoy feeling helpless, totally letting pain in, the meditative state managing surrender.  There is something else.

My favorite partnerships are switch/switch.  And not in the way where we say, “You’re on the bottom tonight.”  In the way where it’s a continous war zone.  So much of my tolerance of submission comes from not focusing on my decisions and actions.  In many ways I give those up entirely.

There is nothing like the terror of knowing I am no where near the headspace for pain.  Nothing more humilating than knowing I am clawing for control I am not going to get in that moment.  That my contentedness with my wickedness is going to be taken in an instant.

Yesterday my partner got a new tattoo while bored at work, quite conveniently on his ass.  During play he joked I hadn’t hit it yet, and he had his guard down just enough for me to get a really hard smack in.  As he was wailing I was laughing my ass off, smiling, feeling proud, of both of us.  Feeling a bit of the smugness of, “Oh, I made you do that.”

However as the screaming and the writhing started to die down I felt the dread of my moment of fulfillment ending.  I was in a freefall grasping for that serenity of submission which I knew I was going to need for the next strike, though not wanting to let go of my brief moment of control.  My eyes darted around, I felt my muscles tense and untense, testing the environment for where it was going to come from, and, “SLAM!”

“I’m not going to be the only one who can’t sit down,”  I hear distantly outside my screaming obscenities.

It’s the clawing confusion of am I going to let this in, or keep fighting.  Figuring out how to work around being held down and hurt.  Using consenting to being on better behavior as an excuse to be very bad the very next instant.  It’s mindset onto itself.  With my emotions seething, my thoughts scattered all over the place, the haphazard awareness of details, the very raw nature of the pain, the anger and the love.  It’s mindblowing.

I often get asked how does it work with another switch?

It’s simple: we fight constantly.

We’re both D/s, S/m, and insanely aggressive. Verbally and physically. To be clear though we also have a relationship outside the fighting, and with all the things in life that count we agree, really we just like fighting. This is an important note, for all relationships involving BDSM, we actually do care about each other and have good communication at all times even while slamming each others’ heads against the wall.

This is also not a topping and bottoming kind of scenario. The terms top and bottom I tend to take as referring to the act, and the more emotional and mental sides of BDSM are left out of the picture or cease to be when the scene ends. This is not the case with me, and it never has been.

Also, I have found my switch/switch partnerships to be more severe than dominant submissive ones. Largely because our version of impact play requires immobilizing a moving target. The fail safe for serious injury tends to be that we end up immobilizing each other. A few weeks ago we stopped ourselves from asphyxiating because we both had fingers dug into our necks. We were both starting to lose consciousness and thus both let up on the grip.

It’s a lovely scenario because the joy is in winning and losing. I equally love paralyzing him with pain, as I enjoy being paralyzed with pain.

The dynamics also build slowly over time. Old tricks cease to work, so we add new ones, we get bored of one thing and start doing another. In a past switch/switch relationship this occurred as well and after several months we had a whole box of gear and range of things we liked to do to one another.

However, adversarial dynamics still involve top drop, sub drop, and require aftercare. It’s interesting and really amounts to something I’m inclined to call switch drop. When I drop after submissive scenes the experience is quite different. As there is that kinda amazing sub drop void, though also a concern for my partner and where they’re at. That piece of my mind which directs towards my responsibility towards another keeps me from getting lost. I enjoy this headspace more, as it’s less lonely.

It’s nice going through the same adrenalin drain, and both dealing with the aches and pains. As it’s a similar experience it’s easier for us to care for one another and relate to each other.

Over and over again I see this phenomenon, of people listing themselves as switches, when they are really just undecided.  One guy I went on a date with was actually honorable enough to admit this after several hours of discussion,  The topic of BDSM came up  and I started gleefully going on about my love of rope suspension, adversarial play and reminiscing over a recent “mishap” with a pair of pliers.  He started to look uncomfortable and finally said, “really, I’m just a tourist”.

I was thankful for his admission of guilt.  More people should do that.  Thing is the scene is extremely attractive.  We do extremely hot and sexy things and involve pain and all this awesome seductive mental foreplay.  On top of that switches by appearance seem noncommittal, because we play both sides.  It feels to me much like when kids would say “I’m bisexual” in high school and college.  To the point where when I was catching up with a high school friend for the first time in years the other day; she just had to ask if I was still bi.  Honestly, given the idiotic behavior of many of our peers back in the day, it didn’t surprise me.

On the surface it seems to be more of a commitment to declare one as submissive or dominant.  The submissive opens themselves up to the opportunity that they will give their will over to another.  The dominant declares a responsibility for the submissive  and is expected to have a manner and skill-set that will make it a good experience.

However, switches aren’t free for all’s.  Most ACTUAL switches I know are edge players.  We like extremely dark adversarial play, asphyxiation, severe injury, often blood play, and a whole lot of violence.  We’re able to exist and actually thrive in a very violent and dangerous head space.  We also tend to like less volatile dynamics.  I do very much enjoy the peace of submission, and am quite good at that as well.  Fully giving up will to the scene and following the command of the dominant.  Versus biting, scratching and flailing my way into the dark water, sometimes it is nice to be “calmly” led by the hand.

Truth is being a switch is much like being bisexual.  We are open to various opportunities and must define for ourselves what works within various roles and what doesn’t.  It’s a different process of soul searching. Submissives do this when involved in deep work with their masters, and I know the dominants go through something very similar, though they never talk about it

We all are individuals in the scene, we take on different roles though everyone has different skills, likes and dislikes.  Not every slave has the same experience, not every dominant has the same arsenal.  The mental experience is even further individualized.

We all grow within this, and have taken time to find ourselves and what we are.  While I was fairly open about my penchant for masochism as early as the beginning of highschool.  I was quiet about my role within relationships until my freshman year of college.  Even then we often question them and think about change.  As all of us in the end are a little bit switchish.  Just not all of us oscillate between the two roles as the default.

So please, do your reading, and do what my date did, and ‘fess up.

I love that my phone conversations often go like this:

“Hey, how’re you doing?”

“It’s been a rough week so a friend is coming over to rape me.”

“That’s hot.”

What can I say?  I’m just that kind of girl.  It’s reconceptualizing sex and it’s place in my life.  I care about everyone I’m involved with, but with each it’s in a different way.  The dynamics I have in my life are just so fucking precious, and some partners I am simply in awe of.  Like everything they do, everything they are causes me to fight towards not feeling small and insignificant.

I try to simply remember that in the end we’re all just people.  The adjectives we pin on one another are largely arbitrary.  It’s a threatening feeling though.  It also makes me wonder why even though I don’t think much really matters, that I enjoy the pain of the prescene of people who make me feel like they are crashing through the window of my soul.

Perhaps because it carries with it the relief of not feeling alone, but carries the unfortunate recognition that in the end we always are.

Sorry to get all philosophical, point is, there can be variation, in fact it makes some of the coolest things in life bearable.  Beyond that, fullfilling and enjoyable.

Going to try and snap a little fire play video in a bit.