Tao of Kink
Chapter 9
negotiation and/or surprise
How to let go without free fall? How to play safe without missing fun? Can one plan the session and still not make it boring? Can one enact all his fantasies and still leave enough room to enjoy the moments of surprise?
* introduction to the visual blog
Scenarios and Spontaneity
One of the immediate problems I find both in porn scenes and the real-life experience is the fragile balance between making the interaction "real", "juicy", "believable" enough – without it becoming real violence. Making it "safe", "enjoyable", "sexual" – without it feeling too artificial or even vanilla. Besides wearing costumes and using props, if we focus on the story of the encounter, we will probably come up with some act of what should happen, what the partner should do to us. BDSM fantasies tends to focus on hyper-masculine imagery of masters, the manliness unfortunately involving also usual "manly" downfalls – inability to communicate or to speak in full sentences. Finding a partner to talk to beforehand, discuss at least the limits and safety keywords, is already a challenging task. But - if we manage to find one at last - while talking about our fantasy & fears, how to give him a space to surprise us, without crossing into the forbidden zone?
I have experienced couple of scenes that felt like teleshopping presentation of the devices, one by one, in tedious unstopping sequence. In others, the acts were executed – usual "kinky words" were used, standard "torture techniques" were applied, in the same boring enumerative manner. I did not enjoy myself at all. The word "enjoyment" is quite tricky within S&M context – sometimes the point of the game seems to be exactly the slave enduring pain or not-so-pleasant treatment. Still, despite power exchange, loss of control, sensory deprivation, torment, humiliation, or nasty mind fuck – the slave is seeking this situation voluntarily. He searches and finds something in it – and Satisfaction could be the term to cover this added value.
One does not have to write up the script, to experience satisfaction, in whatever role he finds himself. First obvious way to avoid prescribing what will happen is to talk about what will not happen. Good old limits. Because even quite comprehensive list of actions and tools may result in an experience completely different from what was intended. The actions and tools might not have been chosen incorrectly, just have been applied in terribly wrong way. And that suggest the real topic of The Talk. Not so much what props should be used, but what do you want to experience? What do you want to feel? What way would you like to be treated? In what direction would you like to be surprised? What were your experience that you have enjoyed? What scenes you have not been satisfied with at all? And if you lack experience: What triggers you, what stimulates you – in terms of kink?
Many guys instantly say "I don’t want to talk too much, I want to do stuff." Oh those chronic "doers"! What a beautiful phrase to mask inability to communicate. That should be the first warning. They don’t know what they do. They are not interested in you at all. They have no experience in empathy or self-questioning: "What is that piece of meat going through?" While you may fantasize about being treated as a piece of shit, you still want that experience, you still need him to know that you are willing to submit to that situation for your own satisfaction. Even if you dream of being objectified, you are human being willing to be treated as an object. Simply put, you need some respect first to be treated without respect. One of the misunderstood paradoxes of BDSM.
