I didn’t expect to like E all that much after our hotel session (see post of Feb 5) but thought it was worth meeting him for a drink anyway.  That’s what you get for judging a book by its cover, or its naked-on-all-fours submissivemeness, in this case.  He turned out to be anything but submissive in person.  Full of funny stories, engaging, perceptive, open-minded and sexually coherent.  Given his all-out willingness to be dominated by two unknown entities (Isobel and I), I felt good about turning the tables and seeing what he had to offer on the dominant side.

He was no longer a stranger by the time I found myself underneath him with his hands around my throat, the possibility of air making it’s way through the compressed tube of my oesphageus increasingly unlikely.  Just as the room around me started to fade into a black nothing, I pulled at his wrist and he let go.  “You could….” my words trailed off.  “I could what?” he asked.  “You could kill me” I said.  And no one would know.  Ok, I know this is a bit dramatic, but it’s what crossed my mind.  I found the idea intriguing rather than frightening.

It took some time to like having sex with E–at first I didn’t expect it would ever be good.  But the more times we met, the harder his cock seemed to get and the more I wanted it.  We moved in and out of roleplay easily so when I received a text telling me to get downtowm to a particular lingerie store, I just did it.  The instructions were to talk to Tracy, the sales assistant, upon arrival.  I’ve no idea what he’d said to her over the phone but she wasn’t particularly welcoming or helpful.  Perhaps pretty lingerie is just for nice girls who have missionary position sex.  I picked out five things and tried them on, according to further text instructions, and asked Tracy if she’d mind photographing me in each one, so I could send the pics to my boyfriend.  She declined and I took my own pics.  E picked out a few things via email and Tracy rang them up.  Next instructons were for the following day–I was to arrive at his apartment at 6am in the purchases, a coat, and nothing else.  It was 30 degree day in NYC and the wind and cold permeated my every fiber as I waited for a cab.  It was worth it, I told myself, to be able to turn up as expected.  I find perverse joy in following instructions perfectly.  Alas, E was in the shower and had left the front door ajar and my suffering went unappreciated.  I took the coat off and was left in bra and (if you can call them) knickers (basically three pieces of string).  And heels.   I laid out the tools of my impending punishment; a flogger, a paddle and a crop, then tied a blindfold over my eyes and stood, hands over head, against the mirrored wardrobe.  I heard the shower turn off and the beeps of his phone in the bathroom, then the door opening and the padding of his feet on the carpet as he crossed the room.  He lit a cigarette and I imagine, examined the girl in his room under the bright sunlight that poured in from the terrace.  My irritation at being up so early subsided and turned to excitement and arousal.  This is my kind of submission: sexual control and objectification.  I felt a finger run down my back and over my butt before the sting of his hand slapping my ass hard brought back the harsh reality of the early hour.  He proceeded to hit me with the tools I had laid out, but not very well.  It’s a treat to receive skilled corporeal punishment and something that takes time and effort to perfect.  I’m still working on it.  The eroticism in being dominated comes from true control–it’s best to find your skill and refine it. E did not warm up and his strokes were sloppy. The impact of a spanking or flogging comes from the slow building of tension, from the giving and deprivation of pleasure, from pushing just beyond the receiver’s threshold.  A kiss alone is nothing compared to a kiss following fifty lashes, just as the pain of crop hitting the skin is much more intense after that skin has been touched softly.  I think he got the idea that it wasn’t happening and removed my blindfold, kissed me a little, said he needed to learn more before he hit me again.  I respect that and feel the same way–one of the main reasons that I submit is so I can learn to dominate well.

As we sat on the floor talking E put his hands around my throat.  This time I tried to relax as much as possible, submitting completely to the pressure until a black film clouded my mind.  The next thing I felt was my body shaking.  I didn’t know what was going on except that I could feel the shaking but do nothing about it.  I opened my eyes to find myself lying on the floor, asking what happened.  I’d passed out, only for a minute and my muscles had reacted in spasm. Were he not a medical professional, I might have been more concerned. I actually felt pretty relaxed afterward and crawled over to the bed, beckoning E to join me.  This time he fucked me as he restricted my breath.  It was kind of like being fucked for the first time–completely consuming.  We were there for a while, fucking and choking and I let go more than I have in a long time during sex.  I ran my nails down his back and with each scratch, he yelled in pleasure.  I’m more of a quiet player but I kind of like hearing other people let it out.  When he left, every inch of his back was streaked with red.

Have you ever met someone who’s caused a shift in your thinking just by virtue of being around them?  I’ve met three such people in the last few weeks–changes are indeed afoot.  The first one, I did not actually meet but rather became acquainted with–Sylvia Plath.  I was struck by The Bell Jar when I read it years ago but knew nothing of Plath beyond it.  Then I watched the film about her life, Sylvia, and was taken by the uncompromising way in which she lived, and the abandon with which she expressed herself through poetry.  If you listen to readings she did of her poetry, you’ll hear this in her voice.  In ‘Ennui’, discovered after hear death, Plath talks about the dreariness of life, the lack of feeling and intensity reflected in the world around her.  The romance of eras past has given way to apathy, to convenience.  Plath was too impassioned to live an ordinary life, or possibly any life at all.  

The second person to spark in me seeds of illumination, came via way of a fetish party.  We conversed on marsupials while a beautiful girl in a latex maid’s uniform got a flogging nearby.  Several days later, we walked through the Lower East Side and talked about our fetishes.  Coming upon a yellow chair that was padlocked to some fencing around a tree, he pushed me onto it and straddled my thighs.  He put his warm hands around my throat tightly and kissed my lips so softly that it almost wasn’t a kiss.  I don’t know when the idea of being asphixiated first started appealing to me or why, but I’ve asked a number of men to do it during sex.  Few have obliged and those who did were afraid of hurting or just not good at it.   This experience did not disappoint.

There on the chair on the street, as he covered my mouth and my eyes, I retreated into my mind, into the feeling of intense lust this slightly public scene inspired.  I don’t know why I liked it so much but I did.   When I could hold my breath no longer, I pushed his hands away and drew in a deep breath.  A police car cruised by but I suppose the strangulation scene wasn’t quite dramatic enough to draw their attention.  Later I found myself with each of my wrists in leather cuffs, hooked to the corresponding ankle.  I lay face down on the bed, blindfolded and gagged, listening to the sound of a paddle hitting the sheets next to my ear.  The sound was intense, filled with the pain that was about to come.  But the fear of pain is what makes pain so unbearable.  And the overcoming of it is the reason I want to be whipped.  By removing mental resistance to the feeling, by absorbing it and even embracing it, it can be overcome.  He was forceful enough that I reached a limit I couldn’t surpass, and he gave perhaps the sweetest kiss I’ve ever felt.  We fucked afterwards, in a way that was quite divorced from anything that had come before.  It was regular, in a very nice way, although intense enough to move the bed across to the other side of the room.  I was pleased to have found someone who could engage sexually in both conventional and unconventional ways.  But this is incidental to his appeal.   It’s more about his complete and unapologetic acceptance of himself and awareness of his abilities and limitations in a non-egotistical way.  There’s also a willingness to reveal vulnerabilities, and to accept mine without taking advantage of them.  I think Sylvia Plath had that same humility, and my third person does too.  I’ll talk about her another time.