This is a word that carries a lot of weight with me. Just how much weight I wasn’t completely aware of (consciously) until last night. As I have mentioned before Onyx and I have begun to create lists of tasks for me each night that I am to get done while he is at work. These are all sorts of things such as housework, spiritual work, making a living work, relationship work, or whatever else. They are to keep me on track and so I have a tangible thing to look at when I’m feeling like I haven’t gotten anything done that night and say “no, see, you have finished things!”

I’m not entirely sure why but the last few days I’ve been slacking a bit. I have not completed things by the time I have to go to bed and last night I forgot to send him my nightly text at 3am until nearly 3:45. This was not good, of course, and I knew that but sleep was necessary. The night before we had been talking on gtalk and he mentioned he was disappointed about me having to go to bed before everything was done but that it was acceptable because of circumstances that had happened. Following closely, last night he said he was disappointed in me for missing my nightly text.

I started bawling. Him saying that felt like punishment enough for what I had done because I felt so poorly about it. I knew it was a disproportionate reaction and I could actually examine my emotional reaction as it was happening, which was nice and is something I’ve been working on. Neither of us would have guessed I would have reacted so strongly to such a small thing, but I did. I was somewhat shocked, actually, and thus commenced my analyzation of why that term has such power over me.

When I was growing up I was rarely punished for bad behavior. My mother is big on developmental and child psychology and my father would just get withdrawn and upset but rarely directly punish me. I can only think of one instance where I was even sent to my room, so mostly my “punishment” was guilt or being told they were disappointed in my behavior. Naturally this created a trigger in me. I strove to never disappoint them (or never let them know about what they would be disappointed about). Disappointment was the worst thing I could do to someone.

That’s not to say I don’t and haven’t disappointed people. There are plenty of things I have done that I feel bad about, but for the most part those are small things, there is nothing in my life that I regret.

I attribute the weight of his words last night to be partially because of the new power dynamic that we have been building between us and partially because of hearing it two days in a row. I was already feeling down from the day before and I was already beating myself up about not doing what I was supposed to and he said that. For the record, I keep saying “he said that” but I’m not placing blame on him for my reaction or anything, neither of us could have predicted that is what would happen. Vaguely I remember recognizing disappointment from others as a source of pain for me, but it hadn’t come up in so long I just had no idea I would react so strongly.

I also have a tendency to subconsciously punish myself. I was feeling extremely down after that happened and although I got myself to feeling a little better through the hours before Onyx came home when he came home I closed myself off and didn’t allow myself to find the comfort in him that I might have been able to if I wasn’t, essentially, punishing myself. There was no time when I thought “I’m going to do this” but that is what happened. I was sad and closed off and I had done the same thing the night before as well, though to a smaller extent.

Onyx and I had a talk about this earlier today so he knows about what the word triggers in me and we discussed possible options for punishment that he could inflict that would not be as damaging or affect me for so long. Of course, if I do something or don’t do something that carries a lot of weight with it he also knows that he can use that word to hit home the true weight of the situation to me. Ultimately, this is another tool for him to use in our dynamic.

I’ve never really considered myself a fetishist, despite the long list I keep on FetLife. Although there are non-sexual objects that I find attractive and even sexy I have never been to the point of needing them in order to get off. I did understand that my magical tools were technically fetish objects but I wouldn’t call them such and I didn’t know how to stretch that definition into bdsm.

When I saw the title of a recent Kink Academy video: Making Unusual Fetishes Work For You – Part 1 I was intrigued and, being a psychology geek and aspiring sex educator I decided to watch it even though I wasn’t sure I would get anything personally relevant out of it. In it Wintersong just gives a teaser for the rest of the video series, just giving an outline of what he will cover in future clips. In addition to getting me excited to see the rest of the series it also got me thinking about my own fetishes.

Wanting to explore the subject further I found Lee Harrington‘s video Fetishism and devoured it eagerly. He talks about three different kinds of fetishism–desires, needs, and empowered objects–and points out ways to present a fetish to a current or potential lover in a positive way. I had heard the basic definitions that he uses before both through my own explorations and in obtaining my psychology degree but he re-framed them for me in a kink context. The re-framing actually made me start to identify with two of the three: desires and empowered objects. [...]

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It wasn’t long ago that Onyx put a collar around my neck for the second time, but at the time there was little that came along with it that wasn’t already in our relationship. The last year has been the best we’ve ever had together, and after nearly six years together that’s saying something. Hopefully, though our effort at sustaining and nourishing our relationship, that trend will continue. After the first time he collared me and I moved in with him there was a time when we attempted to implement some service and protocol in our lives. It didn’t work.

There was lots of baggage we both were battling back then, issues and assumptions we both were making due to past experiences either with other people or with each other. I desperately wanted some structure. I wanted clearly defined rules and protocols. I wanted all the things I’d heard what M/S is, the things I had read about in books and erotica. I wanted to be controlled by him in every way. When we tried to put those into practice, however, I rebelled. I didn’t trust him. I couldn’t submit in those conditions. He couldn’t control me and I wouldn’t let him.

Fast forward four years or so. The last year we’ve been at our peak as far as our intentional non-egalitarian relationship, which I often refer to as Owner/Brat for lack of a better term. I am owned by him, I am his, but I am not always submissive or obedient. I have the leeway to be a brat, to struggle, things we both really enjoy (though usually I’m only a brat in certain contexts). I had been consciously neglecting the other aspects, however, at least partially because they didn’t work before.

Enter Delving Into Power, a weekend intensive by Lee Harrington (who has some wonderful clips here on the Kink Academy) that Onyx and I attended the first weekend of February. Going through that weekend my Service Submissive self was tapped into and I realized there were aspects I was missing and that Onyx and I were finally in the right place to address service and protocol in our relationship so naturally I began scouring the service and protocol category of Kink Academy to see what other tools I could find.

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Two weekends ago Onyx and I attended a Delving Into Power Intensive with Lee Harrington, an intimate⁰¹ three-day workshop focusing on power exchange within relationships to “create the non-egalitarian relationship of your dreams!” Going into it I felt rather content with our relationship as it was with the knowledge that there was, of course, room for improvement and was startled at what was brought up in me. I introduced our relationship to the group as an Owner/Brat dynamic, which is close to the truth. I’ve been thinking of replacing Cunt with Brat in the normal way I describe my role with Onyx, but that’s another post.

A lot of the information presented included things I had thought about before that Onyx had not or things that Onyx had thought about that I had not or things that we had talked about in our previous relationship with each other⁰² that we hadn’t explicitly talked about in this one⁰³. It was especially refreshing to be around other kinky people, something that has been missing in our lives for the most part as we’ve been focusing more on the occult community here rather than the kinky one⁰⁴. We were both able to get some perspective on our own desires and feelings by being in such a group.

There was so much wonderful information I won’t even go into it, mostly I want to talk about some of my reactions and the changes in our relationship since then. I love to be a brat and part of that love is to elicit a firm hand in dealing with me, basically forcing Onyx to reign me in (consensually!⁰⁵), but something that came up over the weekend was my equally strong desire to submit and be of service. The latter is not something we have been exploring in our new relationship as much as the playful force that bratting brings in at least in part because of our failure to implement it in the old one. We had such difficulty with trying to view service in a particular way and trying to include that in our M/s relationship but now that we’ve in an O/b relationship⁰⁶ for nearly a year and we’ve gotten comfortable with that the service and submission aspects need some focus.

We had a long talk on Saturday during a break between class and dinner/play party time that was most wonderful. We both expressed some things that had been building up within us and were able to come to some conclusions as to what we each wanted to include in our relationship. I was having trouble that day because I was feeling like I didn’t fit in for various reasons⁰⁷ and because I felt like I was failing Onyx⁰⁸ partially due to lack of explicit instructions. Onyx doesn’t like giving out explicit instructions but I need them, something we have had lots of trouble with before.

There was a lot more we talked about, including the spiritual path we are currently on and our own issues that we have each been dealing with. We expressly communicated about the things we each need and want and ways for us to begin getting that. It was refreshing and amazing, exactly what had needed to happen, and took us one step further in our relationship. Realizing my service desires that I had been squelching with him for so long was freeing. I had doubts then about our ability to actually implement some things that we were wanting due to our past experiences, but those doubts are nearly gone now.

We haven’t had the time to talk too in-depth about our power dynamic since the weekend long workshop because of work and then going to another workshop this past weekend that was not kink-focused⁰⁹, but we have been able to begin some practices that have not only worked to shape the new dynamic that is forming between us.

The primary practice we’ve been putting into action is a daily checklist so I am accountable for the work I do. I’ve previously complained about feeling like I never get anything done or I don’t get enough done even when I do get things done. I’m still working on figuring out this self-employment stuff. I’ve also been a little lax at my cleaning duties. This daily checklist allows me to feel accomplished when I do get things done and for me to be sure I am doing something for Onyx every night as well, plus I have a fetish for lists¹⁰.

I’m excited to feel like we’re moving forward into uncharted (by us) territory. We have new ideas and a great many things we want to include in our relationship as it goes forward. There will be plenty of road blocks ahead but I feel like we will be able to encounter and move through them all. Along with the workshop this past weekend, which helped me release some things I have been needing to for quite some time¹¹ and I believe the same thing happened for Onyx as well. It has been a transformational couple of weeks.

There has been a general shift in our dynamic because of the communication, interaction, and introspection we were able to do both individually and with each other. I feel so much more connected and in tune than we were before, and this last year we’ve been so much more connected and in tune than we were before that! It seems like we’re just getting better and better, which is truly amazing.

1. there were 16 of us total I believe [↩]
2. the years before the triad [↩]
3. since I returned from Alaska last March-yes I consider the post-triad relationship to be a separate one [↩]
4. eventually my hope is to be part of a kinky queer occultist tribe, which is starting to happen [↩]
5. or, lately it has been consensual [↩]
6. I am not defining the differences here at the moment, but I am sure I will be talking about them soon in another post! [↩]
7. all in my head [↩]
8. or I was being set up to fail [↩]
9. which I will also be writing about [↩]
10. both making and crossing things off of [↩]
11. you will just have to wait for the other post for more on that [↩]

I’ve always been someone who plays with fire. Lighters, candles, flames in general, for as long as I remember I would run my fingers through the flames or see how close to the tip I could get. I suppose that’s fairly common, but because of it I’ve been interested in fire play since I first heard of it. Although I had seen it done a few times I had not done it or experienced it myself until after watching the series of clips by Brian/PyroSadist.

After watching the videos I immediately began figuring out how to get my hands on the supplies that I needed in order to add fire play to my collection of skills. I learned that fire play actually comes down to a few simple techniques and a lot of safety and common sense. Fire is alive and no matter how much preparation, mindfulness, and precaution are put into it there is still a risk of something unexpected happening, which I felt was stressed rather well both in the Supplies and Safety video and the following videos. He also stresses that when something unexpected happens the best thing to do is stay calm and use your head, advice that extends beyond fire play.

In Fire Play Techniques Part 1 Brian instructs on how to create fireballs as well as the four and a half different types of techniques you can use with torches: lay down, tapping, blowing, heat transfer, and lay down v.2 (hence the half). In Part 2 he talks about using fire play on genitals (using “disposable torches” aka q-tips), psychological and therapeutic aspects to fire play, and what to do about body hair and piercings (both questions I had going into learning the techniques). After watching the clips I felt like I had the information I needed to start playing with fire and decided to begin using q-tips while I figured out getting a set of full sized torches. [...]

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This is the twelfth of my 30 Days of Kink I will be answering each of the thirty questions in different posts. I thought these would be interesting to answer and (hopefully) interesting for you to read. These will be posted in order, but not back-to-back.

Day 12: Tell us about a humorous BDSM/kink experience you’ve had. If you haven’t had one, talk about aspects of kink/BDSM you find funny.

Oh, man. I hate these type of “tell us a story about a specific incident” questions. I suck at them during interviews and I suck at them here. Have there been many humorous kinky experiences in my life? Definitely! Can I think of one when being asked to directly relate one? Never! My brain just doesn’t work like that, I guess. This is why I also suck at interviews and am self-employed.

I love to have fun kink and playful kink and think that humor is essential in all sorts of sexuality, kink included. Part of the reason why I enjoy the term “play” for kinky or sexy activity is because I really do play during sex. Onyx and I both love to do funny things, crack puns, and make jokes in the middle of otherwise serious play sessions. I love doing impact play to some music that is going on in my head, often random hilarious things like the Mario Bros. Theme.

As for aspects of kink/BDSM I find funny, mostly it’s taking things too damn seriously, or any of that “one twue way” thinking that so many people seem to subscribe to, particularly online. Both of those things aren’t “funny” in the sense of they always make me laugh, though sometimes they do, but closer to being absurd. That’s not to say there isn’t room for seriousness in WIITWD, because there are times for being serious, but there’s a line there that becomes humorous once crossed. Of course, these things can also be just plain upsetting when confronted with them as well, but I try to keep them humorous.

I was truly excited when I got the news I was accepted as a student blogger here at the Kink Academy, so much so that practically the second after my login information was mailed to me I began watching videos. So eager and excited I watched a great deal of them, making a list of topics that I will be exploring with my partner Onyx and already trying out a few. Before I go delving too deeply into the whats and hows, however, I should first explain the whos.

I’m Scarlet Lotus, a genderqueer polyamorous switch currently in a long-term relationship with my Owner Onyx. We have been together for nearly six years and have been living together for nearly five of those with a few other partners along the way, but currently neither of us has another relationship. We both identify as switches and although our primary roles together are Owner and Pet he occasionally lets me Top him, which is always great fun, and I’m rather a Brat (consensually!) so I can sometimes get away with some Top-type energy from my Bottom-space.

Although we had both been kinky and into kink for a long while before we got together in many ways this is the first healthy kinky relationship either of us has been in, so we had a good amount of personal baggage to work through when we first got together (and oh how I wish I had been able to watch the Managing S&M 24/7 Relationships Series when we first got together!). The last year or so has been the best year of our relationship, and I’m hoping that will continue as the years go on.

We’re somewhere in the intermediate-to-advanced range of experience. Some of our common play time activities include: impact play, punching, face slapping, needle play, erotic wrestling, and rough body play, among others. There are plenty of other things we want to learn more about and incorporate into our play as well.

As I already mentioned, I began watching videos as soon as I was able and have already had the chance to bring a few to Onyx for us to play with together. [...]

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You may or may not know that my sleep schedule is pretty much the opposite of what is considered “usual.” Onyx works nights now Sunday through Wednesday⁰¹ and doesn’t get home until any time between 6:30am and 9am depending on if he stays late for meetings or whatnot. Usually he gets home around seven. This means that I am usually up until around seven or eight. Even on his days off, unless we have a reason not to, we’re usually up until at least six.

I mention this because today we awoke around 1pm to the sound of our apartment buzzer and now that you know our wacky sleep schedule you’ll understand why waking at 1pm was early for us. I do not jive on five hours of sleep. Usually our buzzer going off in the middle of the day means only one thing: a package has arrived for us. I immediately thought I knew what it was. Or at least I hoped. I used to get new items to review far more frequently than I do now because I’m working on clearing out my backlog of items, but the only thing that I was still waiting to come to me was a Liberator Heart Wedge.

You may or may not remember the Heart Wedge from the contest I held last month⁰² but I’ve been lusting after it since it first came out and now I have one of my very own! I’ll be reviewing it soon on Wanton Lotus.

Doesn’t it look great with the throw pillows on our couch?

As I was waiting for Onyx to return with the box my phone buzzed. In my still half-asleep state I looked at a text for a direct message on twitter. It was from KinkAcademy asking if I had received the email about me being accepted as a student blogger⁰³ as they were waiting to know if I accepted before announcing the new semester of students. I quickly responded an enthusiastic affirmative and bounced up and down with glee.

In case you didn’t read my application post for the KA student blogger position I will reiterate the awesomeness of Kink Academy and what I’ll be doing for them. KA provides instructional videos on all sorts of kinky topics from basic to advanced. As a student blogger I get three months to poke around the KA videos and will be writing at least one post a week from February 1st to May 1st about my reaction to a video or series of videos and my experiences implementing the techniques I learned. Awesome, no? So keep a look out for those frequent posts! You can also learn more about Kink Academy on KinkAcademyInfo.com and watch some of their free videos.

After opening the box to find the wonderful present⁰⁴ inside and regaling Onyx with the exciting news and my over-the-top excitement we attempted to go back to sleep and successfully woke up a few hours later much better rested.

I was still excited when I woke up and I can say that with the day starting on such an awesome note it has yet to go down. I have not had the Heart Wedge out of my immediate vicinity yet today, as is my tendency with new items I get, and I’ve already begun watching videos on Kink Academy while working on Pleasurists so I can begin to figure out which topics I’ll want to write about and explore offline with Onyx. I’m positively bursting with excitement.

1. The most awesome schedule ever. He chose it himself. [↩]
2. I probably should have posted about it on here [↩]
3. Yay! Yay! A thousand times yay! [↩]
4. Not really a present as I have to earn it, but you know what I mean [↩]

Unfortunately I was unable to participate in the first round of Student Bloggers on Kink Academy but I eagerly read along with the first batch of students as the first semester progressed and came to a close. Every day since I’ve been watching their twitter stream for the important announcement: registration⁰¹ for semester two is open! This semester I have the time and ability to dedicate to this position and I’m really hoping to be given the chance to participate.

Aside from thinking that Kink Academy is awesome, why would I be interested in becoming a student blogger in the first place? I can’t say that I’m not attracted to being paid to blog, of course, since paid gigs are wonderful. But even if there was no money involved I would be applying. Why? Having videos I have to watch and a post I have to write every week about them and my experience after watching them not only gives me great blog fodder but also the opportunity to get even closer to Onyx. Let me explain.

Kink has been in my life for may years but has seemed to come in waves. The waves that kink has come in the last few years has more to do with my relationship status than anything else. For quite a while after the beginning of our relationship Onyx and I were pretty regularly engaging in kinky sex and in a D/S relationship. When I moved in with him something switched in our relationship dynamic, and then later we switched.

Relationships are constantly changing, and we both knew that, but we just weren’t fitting together the way we had before and so we tried out different roles and activities to try to fit together again. Through much communication and exploration we came back together, and then started drifting apart again, and it continued in that pattern for a few years. We would get closer, then we would get farther apart. In the last year, however, kink has been on an upswing due to the better connection we have after facing the possible end of our relationship and I’m dedicated to keeping it that way.

I’ve been talking a lot about kink around here recently since starting the 30 Days of Kink writing prompt. Looking at my kinky desires and activities in order to answer the prompts has lead to more communication with Onyx about it and has lead to greater kinky harmony in our lives. It has become something innate lately rather than something we have to work on, which is amazingly wonderful, and unlike some times in the past we aren’t finding ourselves in a rut. Part of the trick to keeping our dynamic exciting is partially our connection which has never been better and part playing and experimenting with new things. This is how Kink Academy would help us get closer.

While I would say I know a good amount of tips and techniques related to kink as well as sex and sexuality I also have a lot more to learn. There is always more to learn. Even now our activities aren’t terribly varied, although they’re lots of fun, and being able to explore the vast amount of wonderful Kink Academy videos would help us explore new activities including those we have been wanting to do for years but haven’t due to lack of knowledge.

I’m really quite excited about this opportunity. I followed the first semester of student bloggers eagerly and enviously and now I’m hoping to be part of the second round. Someday, once I’m teaching sex ed classes of my own, I hope to work with Kink Academy as part of the faculty, but one thing at a time. For now, delving in to the wonderful wealth of sex-positive videos will help my knowledge and experience grow.

1. or, perhaps more accurately: application [↩]

This is the eleventh of my 30 Days of Kink, coming after quite a long hiatus. I will be answering each of the thirty questions in different posts. I thought these would be interesting to answer and (hopefully) interesting for you to read. These will be posted in order, but not always back-to-back (as I have shown).

Day 11: What are your views on the ethics of kink?

I’ve been stuck on this question for a while now, partially because I don’t know where to begin there is so much that could be covered with this question so I’m just going to start anywhere and see where this goes.

First, I have to define ethics. Ethics are a type of moral philosophy. In the realm of kink/BDSM/WIITWD⁰¹ it can apply to a variety of things but mostly I’m going to talk about the moral philosophy of kinky activity in general. That is how we make sure that the play we engage in is itself ethical.

I’m a firm believer in RACK (Risk Aware Consensual Kink) and SSC (Safe Sane and Consensual) which are both familiar terminology in the BDSM/kink world. They are slightly different but essentially mean the same thing. Some people say RACK is better because some activities–breath play, for example–are rarely if ever “safe” but they can be done in a “risk aware” manner or you can do things to make them “safer”⁰². Basically this means not engaging in anything without consent or thought. The more you know about what you are doing the less likely you are to make a mistake and actually cause damage.

Consent and intent are what separates bdsm & kink from abuse. Which is also why I have a difficult time playing with anyone who is angry or who has been drinking, as it is far more difficult for the intent to be acceptable to me when either of those have occurred. Mollena wrote an amazing post about intent: “The intention of the person in a Leather or BDSM interaction is mutual satisfaction, whatever form or means that takes. Sometimes it looks so much like an abusive interaction that our only signal is context.”

I agree with her assessment, also, that intent matters far more than consent since so many of us, myself included, love to play with consent and push that line between consent and non-consent. However, if mutual satisfaction is not the intent of the interaction then where is the line between play and abuse? When does it become taking advantage of the other person? It’s called power exchange for a reason. Just like everything there is an exchange: an exchange of enjoyment, energy, pleasure, pain, satisfaction, power, etc.

There are outsiders who think of kink as horrible, wrong, terrifying, and so on simply because they don’t understand this simple difference. They assume that all participants must either have been (sexually) abused when they were a child or victims of patriarchal socialization (especially for female submissives & male dominants), that in order to engage in such practices there must be something wrong with us. Little do they know, playing with power and pain can be a way to empower ourselves, to break away from the socialization, to make up our own minds about what we want, to use a “base” tool (sexuality/sexual interaction) for a “higher” type of liberation⁰³. Of course, not everyone is engaged in kinky activity in search of personal enlightenment but I do think it’s a by-product of it, or at least it can be. This topic is getting away from me a little bit, though, so I will bring it back to ethics.

Part of the appeal of kinky activities is often walking that line between consent and non-consent, between acceptable and too much, testing our limits and finding out if we can handle as much or more than we thought we could. The thrill of it is just as fun as the taboo. In order to play with the edge without going over it requires skill, knowledge, and communication. If the intent is negative or one-sided that makes it far too easy to cross lines that shouldn’t be crossed or do negative damage.

1. What It Is That We Do [↩]
2. just as it is now referred to as safer sex rather than safe sex [↩]
3. I put those both in quotes because I do not necessarily agree with all that connotes, but I do not have better language right now to express those ideas without writing many more paragraphs [↩]