fetlife

On Fat Bottomed Bottoms

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Context:  On Fetlife this week, there have been numerous posts on the subject of rope bottom diversity.  People are having a very healthy and (in my perspective) positive discussion on how to make rope bottoming more accessible to those who are not thin, bendy, young, white women.   This is was my post.

Whenever I post a photo or a writing about my rope journey, I receive messages from (mostly) women who tell me they never thought they could be in rope because of their size.

And whenever I see a photo or read a writing from another larger-bodied femme, it makes me feel so happy, and proud, and represented.

When I first started rope bottoming, I had one tying partner that I tied with pretty regularly. I had a couple of other occasional rope partners – most of them said I was fun to tie, and I choose to believe them.

But eventually they all stopped asking. Or maybe I stopped asking them. Not really sure which one of us was the chicken and which was the egg.

I had an internal narrative that they stopped asking because I wasn’t as bendy as their smaller framed partners, or because they thought I didn’t make their rope look good enough, or maybe because I was significantly more hesitant to be suspended and they wanted to “level up”.

But I never asked them, so I don’t really know if that was all in my head or what.

Thing is – even though I’ve had plenty of rope bottoming experience over the past four years, and even though I’ve had numerous rope tops tell me that I’m fun to tie, I still have that internal dialogue.

Imagine someone who’s never been tied at all.

That’s all I can say on the subject, I guess.

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Why I think you want to hurt me

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This post was originally written and posted on Fetlife in 2015.  I link to it in an essay I have written and will be posting today as well, so I am republishing this one here for reference. 

I want you to understand how submission feels to me. To explain it, I have to tell you why I imagine you want to hurt me.

You want power.

It’s not enough for me to open my mouth or spread my legs for you. You know as well as I do that these things feel good to me. I want you inside me. My body betrays the lie that society or religion or our mothers want us to believe with its warmth and wetness at the thought of you.

In this, my body and mind work in tandem. Wanting. Willing.

Your power – your control over me, wouldn’t come from the penetration of my body but from the denial of it.

Do you sacrifice the pleasure of your flesh for the frisson of your power?

Sometimes you do and that’s enough.

But my body cannot lie when you strike me. It recoils. It shivers and squirms and my flesh reddens in protest.

With each strike, I’m proving my submission to you. First with mind tricks – transforming that pain into feelings of pleasure and enjoyment.

You don’t want my pleasure. That’s not power.

You want my suffering. You want undeniable proof that you are in control.

The strikes bear down harder.

My moans become grunts. Growls. My arching back becomes hunched shoulders.

My mind overrides my body’s demands. For you.

Push me to my limits if that is what it takes to fill your thirst for power. I want this for you. I want you to feel, to understand, to take this control over me.

My body isn’t the gift I give you, this power is. Your acceptance of it excites me.

So push me to my limits, but please don’t exceed them.

Please don’t make me take the gift back.

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I was once asked if I ever run out of things to write about. This was a few years ago when I was dropping two or three posts a day on Fetlife, and half of them would always start trending.

“No,” i remember answering. “I never run out of things to write about, because I never run out of things to think about.”

It’s still true. I have plenty to say; but I seem to have lost the drive to say it there. The less “safe” that space felt, the less I felt like allowing myself to be publicly vulnerable in it.

There’s stuff I’d love to still be writing about. I have a ton of thoughts on relationships and human connection. A story a week on love and lust and kinky sex. I’d chronicle my exploration with rope suspension and share photos and stories that represent my experiences as a larger-bodied bottom. I’d share my musings on the parallels between life and art (namely in the form of the many, many TV shows that I watch). And so many things to share about the way I’ve been asserting myself at work, because #TimesUp and all that jazz.

I could share about some of the feelings I’ve been having as I form new friendships with new people that are helping me explore different facets of my relationship paradigm. I’d love to openly process where I am emotionally about the potential for one of those friendships to become physical – something I both want and fear simultaneously.

I could keep you updated on my cats and share the whimsy of that time (early this morning) when in a fog of sleep deprivation, I asked Alexa to turn off the cat’s incessant meowing coming from behind my bedroom door.

She did not understand.

I would definitely share with you all the different ways I have been inspired by others. I want to share their blogs and their art and their messages with you, and convey how how much opening up my mind and heart to the things that used to make me feel a measure of discomfort has expanded my understanding of beauty and strength and integrity in so many forms. The way that embracing and elevating and listening to diverse voices has given me so much to be inspired by and has so profoundly enriched my perception of the world around us.

There is so fucking much I want to say.

I don’t even doubt that there are people who want to hear it, and people who have to hear it and people whose lives I can improve by sharing it – and yet….

…and yet, I remain in my silent corner.

I want to blame it on trolls and stalkers, but the truth is – the trolls don’t really come for me, and when they do, I have no qualms in ignoring and/or blocking them. The stalkers, though. That one’s a pickle.

I can pinpoint the moment I started being afraid to share all my thoughts with you to the moment some angry guy on the internet retaliated against my anger toward him for invading my privacy by escalating his implied threats of exposure.

I wish I could have just limited that fear to my exposure on Fetlife – but, no. He made it clear that what happens there does not necessarily stay there.

I changed my behavior after that. I purged my friends list (again). I set all my face pictures (and then subsequently all my pictures) to friends only. I limited the degree of vulnerability I was willing to share openly.

And without that…without that feeling like I could be my most authentic self in that space, I lost the will to post altogether.

I kind of miss it.

I got to play last night

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Visits to the dungeon are rare these days.

I like them. The public aspect of playing in a dungeon pushes me to endure just a little bit more than I tend to at home. People are watching, after all…

And that’s how my exhibitionism works.

I got to play last night.

Thank goodness I didn’t find out until this morning that someone entered our room during our scene. My partner ushered him out without me being the wiser.

I got to play last night.

But at one point, while trying desperately to hold on to the edge of an orgasm, I growled “Please tell the people in the hallway to shut the fuck up.”

I got to play last night.

But I couldn’t wait to get home. Being in public certainly pushes me.

…But public play when the others in attendance aren’t well-versed in dungeon etiquette is pushing all the wrong buttons.

Tops and Strength and Vulnerability: a post-GRUE post-mortem post

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Let’s get organized…..Here’s what I want to accomplish in this essay:

1) To share my thoughts on a recent discussion in which I both observed and later participated on the subject of Tops/Dominants and vulnerability

2) To explore my own thoughts on “strength” and “weakness” as it pertains to the concept of vulnerability and/or the exposure of said vulnerability.

3) To offer suggestions on how someone on the topside might find comfortable and meaningful ways to express their vulnerabilities without losing what it is that helps define that role for them.

Here’s what I do NOT want to accomplish in this essay:

1) To share personal information about real people who participated in the discussion without their consent, or make them feel like what they shared was not done so in a safe environment where it would not come back to hurt them. To avoid this, I will speak mostly in the abstract; but if you were there and you recognize your words and you want to help clarify, you are welcome to do so publicly or privately as it suits you.

2) To make someone feel like if they cannot or will not expose their vulnerability it makes them a bad person, so if you’re reading this and you think “nope, I can’t do what she’s suggesting,” that’s okay. You don’t gotta. I’m not the boss of you or the leader of the planet. Yet.

3) To tell anybody how to live their life. See above.

And one more thing…

What I inferred from the discussion may not be what the person speaking had truly intended to convey. On a couple of points, my partner (who also sat in on a large part of the discussion), picked up different messages than I did from the same person’s comments. Therefore, I’m not saying my interpretation is the be all and end all to what was discussed, so take this for what it’s worth. An incomplete attempt to understand a concept I do not have personal experience with as a Top; but I do as a person who is very much in control of her own understanding of her wants and needs, if not those of anybody else.

On to the meat of it…

Over the weekend I attended the Los Angeles GRUE. This is my third time attending this annual event, and in many ways it was the best one yet.

I participated in more discussion sessions this time than in hard-skill types of sessions. So, while last year I spent a lot more time in rope than I did this year; this year, I spent a lot more time engaging with people than last time.

And that’s pretty cool.

One of the earlier sessions during the course of the day was a discussion of the vulnerability of dominants. At the top of the discussion the person who’d organized the session asked for people to only speak if they were doing so from the perspective of a Top/Dominant; and to hold off on offering perspectives from the bottom. I completely understood the purpose for that request and myself and may of the other “bottom only” types in the room gave the rest their space to speak.

(Thankfully, after some time had passed, the discussion leader opened up the discussion to everyone in attendance and there were some really great insights brought up by the bottoms in the room who’d remained silent up to that point).

The big takeaways I had from the Tops only portion of the discussion were as follows:

1) A significant portion of the vulnerability a top feels stems from the idea that they find it uncomfortable to express needs. I want to say it was mostly emotional needs, but i think there were physical needs as well that they did not feel comfortable addressing with their bottoms.

2) Another portion of the vulnerability stems from the cognitive dissonance of being a sadist, for example – of recognizing that somewhat frightening part of you that gets off on hurting someone else, and trying to reconcile that enjoyment with what you know to be “right” or “wrong.”

3) This is the part that might have been up to interpretation – what I was hearing was that some of the tops felt like they couldn’t be as open about not “having all the answers” or not “being in complete control” of every situation. They felt the need to hide their vulnerabilities because it weakened them or glaringly exposed their inability to control all things.

A while back I know I wrote something about finding the strength in exposing my vulnerabilities. I can’t find it, though I found bits and pieces in other writings that support that notion. I recall I went on a date quite a while ago, after which I received a text from him that said that something about my vulnerability making him want to jump up and protect me from anything or anybody that may want to hurt me.

He saw my vulnerability as a weakness he wanted to protect and defend. I saw it as a strength that could draw in an army of protectors. And, of course, with great power comes great responsibility; so I mitigated the temptation to take advantage of that power by attempting to solve my own problems before asking for help.

But I also am able to recognize when I do need help to solve a problem, and am quite capable of “exposing my vulnerability” by asking for that help when it’s appropriate.

I don’t believe that makes me weak. I actually thing it is a show of strength that I am capable of opening myself up to rejection by asking for help.

People have needs. Take away the labels of top or bottom or switch or whatever being a “dominant” means to you and you are a person who has needs. The people who love and care about you are invested in helping you get your needs met.

It is very likely that the people who love and care about you are not mind-readers. Some may be highly intuitive and may be able to make you feel like you’re a really good communicator; but in the end – if there is something you need that you’re not getting, one of two things have happened: 1) you are not asking for it, or 2) the person you asking it from doesn’t want to or cannot give it to you.

I feel like this is the part where a few caveats must be explained: 1) the way one interacts with a long-term or intimate partner is different than the way things go down with a play partner or someone in a one-off situation. Most of my examples and analogies are more in line with how I think long-term relationships work, over pick-up play situations. Also, 2) I have a very clear-in-my-head differentiation between a want and a need; so when I say “need” I am talking about things without which a relationship suffers.

So, let’s take the second takeaway as an example…the cognitive dissonance. That thing that makes you feel vulnerable when you admit to yourself that hurting someone else just made you wet.

I don’t experience this. What I know of this feeling is purely through having heard from many people and empathizing with the feelings they have expressed. On more than one occasion, people to whom I’ve bottomed for or submitted to have been the ones to tell me that these feelings exist.

One very specifically told me what he needed from me. He told me he needed me, as the person he just got off on hurting, to absolve him of his guilt by letting him know that I enjoyed it. That I wanted it. To tell him that he was not an evil person for wanting to do this to me nor for enjoying having done it to me.

That was a very vulnerable thing for this very domly dom person to admit to me, and it did not take away from his ability to exert his control over me (when that was our dynamic). In fact, from my point of view, it strengthened his control because he exposed his humanity to me; and I was able to trust more that there would not be unexplained passive aggressive retaliation toward me for his negative feelings because he’d been honest with me about how he processed what he does.

To be honest – what killed that relationship was when he STOPPED being honest with me about his vulnerabilities and he started behaving in passive aggressive, retaliatory, and explosive ways to our disagreements. I lost my ability to trust him with my emotions when I felt like he couldn’t trust me with his anymore.

I don’t think there’s a “solution” to cognitive dissonance. I think the best we can hope for is acceptance and coping. Similarly, I don’t think one needs to “fix” vulnerability. I think the better option is to lean in to it, expose it, and accept the consequences, whether positive or negative.

As a bottom, that’s kind of our jam. When we are hit, it hurts. But for masochists, we’ve found a way to lean into that pain and transform it into something our brains find pleasurable. By virtue of what we do, we place ourselves in vulnerable positions for fun and profit, and we get a ton of enjoyment, catharsis, and in some cases, growth from it.

As a top, you might also be able to harness the power of vulnerability by exposing yourself to the potential to be disappointed, let down, or ….wrong.

The example I gave as a concrete step to take to open oneself up to their vulnerability is something I do all the time and have written about on several occasions. When I am having a negative feeling, I dig down into it until I understand what is causing it. Until I know what it is that I want or need from someone else that I am not getting that is causing this negative reaction. And then, I tell my partner what I want or need from him.

So, I text him and say “I’m feeling kind of down. Can you please say something nice to me?”

I always get a response. The response is never no. Not with this partner. I’ve had two partners in the past that had rejected my request. They are no longer partners.

Let’s say, (and this is another real example), that I’m starting to feel a little down because my partner doesn’t hit the love button on my fet photos very often. I notice he does with his other partners, but not mine and it makes me sad.

What is that really about, because the comparison to his other partners isn’t fair. The reality is that I know he finds me attractive and I don’t need him to hit a button on a photo on social media to know this to be the case. And yet, I’ve gotten into a situation where I’m feeling down because he’s not doing it, and to further the feedback loop, I want him to do it without my having to tell him to.

That’s where you get into that mind-reading thing. If you’re not getting something you want or need out of someone else, the two reasons are that they either don’t know you want it, or don’t want to give it to you.

So, what am I doing by not telling him what I want? I’m trying to hide from him that something hurts because I want him to intuitively know that it hurts and fix it without my having to tell him. He doesn’t, ’cause he’s not a mind reader, and I just keep on being butthurt because there’s no resolution to this problem through the power of magic.

There is, however, a resolution through the power of communication.

Now, if you think that it’s easy to tell your partner you want public validation of his attraction to you, believe me, it’s not. I processed this shit in the poly chat group for days before I felt comfortable bringing it up with him directly. It was really hard to admit that I wanted this from him; but there was no solution to the problem that didn’t involve my directly telling him so.

Guess what he did?

He loved a couple of my pictures.

And every once in a while, when he does do this without my having to remind him that I want it, it feels really good.

Does that mean I’ve never had to bring it up again? Naah. This comes up. It is what it is. It never means he doesn’t love me or that I don’t make his dick hard. It means that there’s a part of me that wants the public validation of that fact once in a while. By exposing that truth, I took away its power to make me sad.

That’s not a top/bottom thing. This could easily have gone the other way. I might be a top who wants her bottom to like my pictures once in a while and not want to have to order them to do it. I might let it make me feel sad, or become passive aggressive in my behavior toward them because I think that by saying “I want your feedback when I post sexy pictures” means that the feedback isn’t genuine.

At the root of this example is the knowledge that my fear doesn’t stem from any ideation that he’s not attracted to me; but from a place of feeling like he doesn’t want to publicly acknowledge my place in his life. Again – that’s not a top/bottom thing. That’s a relationship thing, and more specifically, that’s a phi thing.

So, something to think about – if you struggle with exposing your vulnerability; start small. Start by not expecting your partner to read your mind when something is nagging at you. Start by figuring out what behavior you want from them, and ask them for it.

Another, much less exposing example is the difference between saying “Brrr….I’m cold.” and “Darling, can I borrow your sweater?” If you’re not getting what you want from your partner by announcing that you feel cold; then follow up with the direct ask. And if your partner says no, then …well, now you know what kind of person they are.

I think that’s all I have for now. I mean, there is so much more but those were the main points of what I wanted to accomplish with this writing. I welcome any continued discussion that comes out of this, though I can’t promise to be very participatory in it until I get home in a few hours.

If you ever have an opportunity and the means to attend a GRUE in your local area…

I highly recommend it. For reals, yo.

Oh, and one last thing. In my search for whatever writing I’d done in the past that had to do with vulnerability, I came across this bit of erotica I’d written a while back. I think it’s a subtle portrayal of how the Top/Sadist/Dominant’s attempts to hide or mitigate his vulnerabilities served only to delay the gratification of a truly deep and personal connection with a potential partner.

The Surrogate

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Her actions were methodical – almost robotic in nature. Closing the door behind her, she slid her arms from her raincoat, pulled the sweater over her head and unbuttoned her pants. Within minutes she was stripped down to her socks, panties, and a thin black tank top.

It’s too bright.

She drew closed the heavy curtains to block out the remaining sunlight from the room. She turned off the lights – first the adjacent bathroom, then the lamp by the television, and finally the bedside table – all left on since her too-early departure into the shadows of a near-winter morning.

Crawling over the items she’d laid out on the king-sized bed, she burrowed her lower half below the white quilted comforter and longed for her own bed, her own pillows, and all the comforts of home, including him.

Tonight he’d have been there with her; but instead she’s nearly three hours south of that fantasy, alone in a darkened hotel room with three hours to kill before her business dinner.

It’s at this point that she peels back the physical and emotional shields she’d engaged to make it through an entire day of meetings and schmoozing without giving into the devastatingly distracting desire that would remain unsatisfied for another week.

With a slow exhale she becomes aware of the chill in the air. Sliding a hand over her breasts, she’s quizzically surprised by the hardness and sensitivity of her nipples. At once she realizes the stark contrast between them and the soft, warm, and increasingly damp environment below the covers.

She allows her other hand to drift below, beneath the thin fabric of her cotton panties. In the darkness, his face becomes more visible in her mind’s eye, and with enough imagination – he appears beside her. She can almost feel the weight of his body on the bed beside her, the warmth of his breath on her neck.

I want you, she whispers into the empty room.

As her chilled fingers warm against the peaks and valleys of her body, her mind wanders to a recent conversation. She remembers where she is and a thought creeps into her head.

An imaginary knock at the door. No, wait…somehow, he just appears. A key left at the front desk, perhaps after having received instructions to prepare for his arrival. He stands at the foot of the bed.

“He sent me to watch you. Said you’d told him your inner-exhibitionist was hungry, and I was close enough to feed her.”

A small moan echoes off the walls as the fantasy hits home and her cunt floods with validation.

Show him… she tells herself, as she pulls her breast out by the nipple and lowers the blanket below her knees.

Spreading her legs, she counts out the slaps…

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Just as he’d instructed, now with his surrogate to bear witness.

Emergency kittens, orgasms, and Firefly in the wake of an unsettling election

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Originally posted for my Fetlife audience; but lightly modified for a broader audience.

The cycle of writing topics on FetLife generally works as such: a thing happens. There is a divisiveness in opinion on said thing. Lots of posts start flying back and forth with heavy, anger-laden commentary within them, and inevitably, some people who grow weary of the fighting say something like “Can we get back to the kink?”

Then, this last time, that very request became cause for further divisiveness.

This entire election has been emotionally draining. Just a few weeks ago I even wrote about how difficult it was to find my “smut” in light of all the ickiness I felt about the national narrative on women.

Through it all, I never stopped being kinky.

I might have been less inspired to write about it; but there was still rope, spanking, hard fucking, throat grabbing, and cocksucking going on in my life.

I even masturbated to orgasm the night of the election, but I had trouble doing it. See, it was after 3am. I needed to get some sleep. I know that orgasms make me sleepy.

I literally justified an orgasm to myself.

Since the election, I’ve been more vocal on facebook and a lot more engaging with conservative family members has been happening. Those of my fetfriends who intersect with me on facebook have seen what’s happening there.

It’s exhausting.

And last night I reached a point where I needed to shut it down. I watched television shows, funny youtube videos, and browsed cat-related subreddits. I also ate a pizza and had some cookies.

And then, I felt like writing something; but I didn’t want it to be serious. I wanted to write something sexy. Or funny OR ANYTHNG BUT SERIOUS.

And similarly to that November 9th orgasm, I had to justify it to myself.

But, really, I don’t. I won’t speak for everybody, but I am a multidimensional person. Fetlife (and this blog) isn’t a place where I only express one part of myself (the kinky part); but the only place where I can express ALL of myself. That means sometimes my posts are thoughtful and introspective, and sometimes they’re sexy and drool-inducing, and sometimes they’re just plain ol’ attempts at humor.

I’m all of those things. Thoughtful, sexy, funny. I’m all of those things all the time, even when I don’t particularly feel one in the moment.

I keep remembering when Lorne Michaels of SNL asked Rudy Giuliani after 9/11 “Can we be funny?” and the then-mayor of New York responded, “Why start now?”

This world is far from perfect. I’m going to do my best to shed light on some of its imperfections and work to make them better; but at the same time, I can’t allow myself to become hyperfocused on just those ugly parts of life. There is beauty, and laughter, and passion, and love in my life as well.

So whenever I need to take a break and look at EmergencyKittens on twitter or take a smut break or go masturbate ’cause it helps me relax…

I’m gonna. And you can, too.