This occurred to me as I was reading page upon page of profiles on a couple of kink oriented sites where dominants were talking about how hardcore they were. Strict dominant this, and bend you to my will that and posturing and preening as though all of the badassery in the world were enough to make them desirable partners in the tango slash chess-match slash hand-to-hand combat slash lovemaking that is BDSM.

Well, it isn't.

When I encounter the concept of "breaking" in a submissive or slave, I realize that paradigm still doesn't work for me. I can't be "broken" and remain useful. Brutality isn't the lead-in for successful power exchange.

I believe there are many reasons for this. One reason is that most people who are planning on launching such brutal attacks are, at the core, wishing to remain in consensual headspace. Whether you adhere to SSC or RACK, the fact is that, eventually, you'll stop. That is the point. SO! Assuming that you can keep dominating until the bottom submits is a shaky premise, at best. As a responsible dominant, you are obligated to refrain from damaging the physical and / or emotional health of the bottom. The paradox of "breaking" comes into focus thusly: if the bottom, sub or slave is willing to really relinquish that control and let you do "whatever you want," are you really going to push to structural failure?

The visual of a palm tree bending in gale force winds comes to mind. All of that frontal assault and energy, and the tree survives the fury.

What amazes me, again and again, no matter how long I am involved in BDSM is That Moment. That Moment where I consciously let someone hurt me, and desire it, too. Even to the point of truly drinking in the darkest of energies.

If I am not experiencing a submissive headspace, pain is not pleasurable. I am not one of those people who experiences erotic pain as pleasurable regardless of the situation. For me, I truly need to have the knowledge that my discomfort, and ultimately my suffering, is pleasurable for the person inflicting it. And I have to want to please them. This combination of emotional and physical masochism can pull me into a place where the intense sensation, even pain, becomes a service, a song, a spiritual path to a deep pool of profound submission.

Years ago, I was bottoming in a scene with a particularly wicked dominant. She was very fond of needles, and had pierced me repeatedly along the arms, down my sides, on the backs of my legs, and used these needles in a sort of Gulliver’s Travels “tie-down-the-giant” bondage web. Tied as I was by the needles piercing my skin, I couldn’t move very much without causing myself pain. I thought that process encompassed the arc of the scene, and was filled with genuine fear when she started unpacking several canes, clearly intending to use them on me. The sensations of the needles in conjunction with the blows from the cane pushed me to a place where I felt overloaded, like I couldn’t take it anymore, and I was perhaps three strokes away from calling the scene. Checking in, she knelt down beside my head, wiping away the tears and looking calmly into my eyes.

“It is a lot, isn’t it?” she asked, quietly. I nodded, not really able to put into words just how much too much it was feeling. She smiled.

“I know it is. And you know you can stop if you need to. It would please me if you would take ten more strokes for me. Are you willing to do that? For me?” and she smiled her sweetest, most dazzling smile, and stroked my face, and in that moment, the pain galvanized me. I felt that I would and could endure anything for her, to please her, to see her smile.

“Yes, I am. Thank you.” And those next ten blows sent me over the edge into an orgasmic masochistic swirl of bliss.

She leaned down and whispered in my ear “Good girl. That was beautiful. Thank you for doing that for me.”

Experiencing the depth of my submissiveness in this way, this feeling that sheer will and desire to please can alter my physical limits is an awe inspiring thing. The absolute sensation of wanting something I ought not to want because it was the will of someone else. It was a combination, of course, of my desire to please and the rush of pain-generated endorphins that pushed me there.

I have often questioned what it takes to get me to fully surrender to sensations, to discomfort, to pain. After years of play and partners and trials and tribulations I realized that is it simple.

It is the simple expression of desire of someone towards whom I feel submissive.

I've played with people who assume that, because they've seen me play, they can go to town and beat the crap out of me. And that doesn't really fly, because I can certainly make it known I am not enjoying that, and the scenes drain away fairly quickly.

There is an elegance to an interaction where the person yielding to the will of another goes from a feeling of reserve and self-preservation, to trusting the person to whom they are submitting, to a state of submission where they not only accept intense sensation and possibly pain, to having a deep sense of longing for that very depth of intensity.

Perhaps force of will can break down barriers, perhaps brutality can win the day. But in the end, I truly believe it is far more sustainable for the dominant party to seduce that “break,” to create a safe space where the person submitting can and does submit to the richness of the interaction.

I am not spiritually impressed by you punishing my body. That means little to me, emotionally. I am not, at heart, a masochist in the clinical sense. My masochism is only reachable by someone who manages to make me understand that what they need, more than anything in that moment, is to get off on hurting me.

Make me want it.

If we were to turn on the television and see a program called “The Horse Whipper” where a cowboy was shown beating, berating, bullying, intimidating and abusing an animal with a crass show of strength, using threats and intimidation to bring the animal to his control, we would be horrified. And yet, that is precisely the misconception that so many have about dominance and submission. That only an abuser would be capable of “reducing” someone to a submissive state, cowed into obedience, fearful of repercussions for disobedience. In my experience, it is not the brutal push that gets me to the place where I am willing and desirous of deeper depth of sensation. It is the seduction of the dominant...a revealing of their desires, an offering of affection; the whispers of pride in a job well done...those things evoke a deep and profound desire to submit.

If you have the capacity to look me in the eye with that smile, slow measured breath in my ear, hard cock pressed against me, hand on my throat and pull from the depth of me the words echoing from within me, mirrored in your own desire, in your own words "I want to hurt you..." I'm yours.

Have it.

Tears
pleas
sobs
blood
sweat
skin.
abasement
oblivion
me.

Have it because you've convinced me that you MUST have it. That no-one else will do, and that you know, beyond the shadow of my doubts, that I need this too.

THEN we begin the play.