Wow. So there’s been a lot of comments over the last few days about my involvement with the Southern Belle, most of which seem to be concern for her well-being, and mine. I feel misunderstood, in that I am worried I am not writing what I’m going through clearly enough, because frankly, I tend to assume that if I could convey it clearly, you would agree with me. But perhaps that’s not the case, perhaps we just disagree, no matter how clear I can make it.Still, there are a few things I seek to clarify.

From some comments, it sounds like Belle is assumed to be a victim in this situation. She is a femme bottom, she wants to play with D/s and top/bottom dynamics, she wants to be taken and controlled, she wants to be overpowered. We have talked about this.

But that does not make her a victim. She holds a lot of power in this dynamic. A lot of power, just as much as I have, just in a different way. (In fact, I might argue that she has quite a lot more power with me than Joy ever did - which, for the record, is over.)

I, for my part, want to get better at playing with this top/bottom D/s dynamic. I’ve written about that a lot here. Remember, from her email, she wrote “So if you want to explore being a top then you have found a good match in me because I have quite a good skill set there.” Doesn’t that seem like it might make us a potentially good match?

This dynamic is, perhaps in itself, controversial, especially with some who may find domination and submission - and playing with power dynamics - to be inherently unequal, and therefore dangerous or dehumanizing or demeaning. I, myself, have a lot of hesitation and guilt about this kind of play, honestly; but I find it incredibly sexy, incredibly hot. And that is why I am seeking to write through it here, to explore it and talk about it and figure out the ways that I can approach it which are not potentially damaging to another person.

So, thanks Sugarbutch, for providing the place to do that.

But there is another piece of this dynamic, which is that Belle reminds me of Callie. I know this is dangerous. I am scared of it, really scared, because of the ways I still feel messed with by that relationship with Callie. And, yes, the ways I respond to Belle physically are very similar to the ways I responded to Callie.

I want to know why.

Both are femme bottoms, yes - perhaps the explanation is that simple, and I do plan to find out by continuing to sleep with more femme bottoms, which hopefully will further demystify Callie - but both have some (upon limited observation only) similar personality traits as well. If - if! - part of my intense reaction to both of them has to do with the ways they are psychologically similar, I want to know about that, for various reasons. I want to know what it is that is so attractive to me, I want to know how to protect myself, because of the ways that this type of (reoccurring, in my life) personality can be potentially dangerous or damaging; I want to potentially overcome my attraction to it (if/when it is dangerous or damaging) so I can have and create and sustain a healthy, long term relationship. And so the question becomes, how do I do this? How do I learn these things? By running away? Or by seeking to observe and understand?

I have good emotional boundaries, and I have good friends, and a good therapist, who will help me if I get to a dangerous emotional space. I trust that.

I have been and will continue to be as clear as I can in my position and approach, and in what I want out of the relationship. I want to play and explore with her sexually, and I want little or no pressure, expectations, or demands. She says she wants the same things. If that changes for either of us, as in any relationship, I would expect us to talk about it and re-asses.

The ways I want to channel some of my aggression - specifically about Callie - onto Belle could be dangerous, I admit. Does she ‘deserve’ that? Well, no. But she wants, and has explicitly told me so, to be forced, dominated, overpowered. Does it matter how I do that? Does it matter if I am channeling Kali, or Xena, or an ex of mine?

No.

What matters is my ability to stay present with Belle, to continue reading her, to not put her into a dangerous situation. To know what I am doing, to be aware of her physical space, to take care of her in that moment. And honestly, I think she could take a lot more than I could dish out - I am too sweet, too scared to do damage. And that is one of the things I hope she can help me work through.

Belle has a safeword. She knows how to use it. She also knows how to ask me to go harder, give more. She is a highly skilled bottom, she knows how to submit. God, does she ever. It’s beautiful.

And do you really think she minded that I fucked her for three hours on Monday, and that she came five times? She is not complaining.

But, frankly, everybody? I met her once, for one night. She - obviously! - struck a nerve in me. There is heat here, but I barely know her. Maybe the next time I see her I will have a completely different idea about what we are entering into - then I will re-asses. As will she.

Meanwhile, I am completely overthinking this. It is all of these things, of course, but it is also as simple as this: we are attracted to each other, and we are entering into a consentual relationship, with particular limitations and boundaries, and we both suspect there are places we can go, and things with can learn, in our interactions.

It wasn’t until I walked into the harsh light of the subway station that I realized my black slacks were very obviously covered in cum, especially at my right thigh, where I’d been grinding against the Southern Belle on our first date. My red tie, too. I took off the tie and my jacket and held it in one fist to cover the stain.”I’ll wash them for you,” she told me later. “I’d be glad to.”

She is a good bottom. Oh so fucken good. She knows how to submit, how to pull force and domination from me with a glance. She knew how to tell me precisely how to fuck her, verbally and non-verbally, in ways that gave me so much power.

She was not hard to control. She went where I put her, moved where I said to go.

Belle kissed me upon introduction and my knees went weak. Caught off-guard already. She was oh so much more stunning than her photographs. All I could say was, “Wow. Hi. Wow.”

“What?” she demanded (and continued to demand, throughout the night).

“It’s just … that was a good kiss. Damn. Uh. Nice to meet you.”

She has an extraordinary face: a lovely curved wide mouth. Brown curly hair, shoulder length. Almond eyes. She wore her glasses. Of course she did.

-

I don’t understand it (yet), but there is something about the “(high) femme + bottom” equation that I have an intense physical reaction to, that goes right to my core, my cunt-gut-heart, and radiates outward. I feel extremely powerful and strong and like myself next to one of these girls. I lose the nonsensical garbage my head is usually filled with and I have laser-beam focus and precision on one thing: her.

I deeply crave that feeling.

Within that emotional-physical state of connection, there is much to explore and learn. But it is so rare to even find the ability to go there in the first place.

Belle (and Callie, like most femmes, especially high femmes) was extremely coiffed, poised, polished. She has a veneer-porcelain exterior that she paints and coats and constructs with every move, every brush of her fingertips to the hair falling in her eyes, every shift of her legs and brush of her thighs together. She performs this role. She creates it as art.

And it makes me want to unravel it, thread by thread.

In fact, the best moments of the evening were when she was speechless. When I’d fucked her so hard she could do nothing but whimper, and feel me. Writhe all she wanted but I still held her down, held her up. She is stripped down of her power in those rare moments, she is raw and open, and authentic.

I remember this with Callie: those weekends when we spent hours in bed, endless hours making love, physical play, those were the weekends she was most herself, the weekends she least needed a guise of beauty to protect and shield her. Those were the weekends I fell deeper and deeper in love.

That coif and polish are extremely intimidating to me, and extremely seductive. When those finely-honed skills of hers have me marked in their cross-hairs I cannot resist. I am reduced to wanting, to desire. Perhaps this is why I seek to tear it down, to posses it, to own it: it reduces me to powerlessness. So if I can take control, I gain back some power.

Of course, the power I take is temporary, and given to me with permission. The power she holds is constructed, artificial. It is an exchange. A game we play.

I have extreme feminist guilt about this power play. I know we are supposed to strive for equality, that we cannot posses another person. (Oh I have much more to say about that. That is, perhaps, another post.)

Belle had control of the date the whole night. She controlled the conversation. She made the moves toward physical touch. She gave me all the symbols of want and desire and consent that I wanted and needed, and she knew exactly how to tell me.

She talked, and talked, and talked.

At her place, I had one arm draped around the back of the couch; her legs were pulled up under her. I fingered her hair as she told yet another story, gently brushing it behind her ear, then running my fingers through it deeper and deeper until I took a fist-full at the back of her neck and pulled her face close to mine.

“Don’t you ever shut - the fuck - up?” I asked roughly, barely brushing her lips with mine.

She whimpered. “When I’m made to,” she whispered, gasping when I kissed her hard.

And then she was mine. I took her, ravaging. I took her down.

I want you to only address me as Sir.

I want you to start playing with your clit ten minutes before I arrive, but under no circumstances are you allowed to come.

I want you wearing high heels and a short skirt with nothing underneath.

I want your safeword to be carnation, which means, you can yell no all you like, but I will not stop.

I want you ready to bend over my lap struggling as I spank you. Lift your dress up and turn your ass-cheeks red until my hand hurts. And then you’ll kiss it, suck my fingers, make it better. I’ll scold you for making me all hard and wanting, and you’ll straddle me and ride.

I want your explicit consent. I want your permission and submission.

I want you to know how to draw it from me. I am afraid of my own power. I want you to pull these cruelties from me, to beg for them. I want to take your energy and mine into one huge fireball that I will weild and you will receive. I want your surrender. I want you to make me feel like the biggest, baddest top in the room, even if I’m not.

Can you do that for me?

I spent much of yesterday going over the Sugarbutch Star entires (again & again, some of them) and I am still just overwhelmed, in awe, in amazement at how revealing, detailed, and fucken hot they are. I’m humbled and surprised at how much perfect strangers would share and reveal and ask for and exchange.Years ago, around 1998, I met a girl through the anonymous journal I was keeping, and she used to photocopy parts of her journal and mail them to me when she found our writings matched up - she felt like what I was revealing was so intimate that she wanted to reciprocate.

And I think this contest opened up that exchange for many of the folks who read this place. I put a lot of personal, emotional, complex details about my life up here, not just the sex but the emotions, my psyche, my very makeup, which is partly why readers do feel safe and comfortable revealing things to me. You all know more about me than most of my friends, you have an understanding of how my mind and inner world works in ways that nearly no one in my “real world” life does.

But. Even still. I am a little shocked and definitely humbled. Thank you, for all you’ve revealed. Thank you for trusting me with your stories. Thank you for writing them.

Many of the stories I received are from very submissive girls, wanting to be taken in various ways, and I am continually surprised at how much some people (women especially) want to play with the line between submission and degredation. I can play with it, I have and probably will again - but it makes me nervous, and cautious. I worry about the emotional and psychological effects, especially on impressionable young women. Maybe this is my feminist-hippie background coming through, believing that every person is valuable, good, whole, worthy.

It got me thinking, though, about submission. I think there is a big difference between submission/surrender and degredation. I think there are ways - hundreds of ways - to be submissive, to surrender in a scene, without fundamentally losing your own value.

I was taught, by the D/s BDSM community that raised my kinkster self, that the bottom is always the one in real control. That the top may be inflicting the pain or sensation, may be the one holding the knife or the flogger or the end of the rope, but the bottom is who is dictating the next move, the depth of the cut, the strength of the paddle, the moment of release.

Honestly, I wouldn’t want it any other way. I wouldn’t want to top someone I didn’t think was on equal grounds, I wouldn’t want to top someone who couldn’t hold their own up against me in just about every way. I need active bottoming, active submission, active surrender.

If you want to know more about this stuff, I suggest reading The Topping Book and The Bottoming Book. Go to the Body Electric workshop Power, Surrender & Intimacy.

I guess I’m trying to encourage lots of examination here. I want to know the whys behind the degredation, the whys behind the unworthiness. When I witness it, on other sex blogs or in erotica or writings or submissions or comments or lovers or friends or porn or anywhere, I feel skeptical, and sad. Sex and BDSM and D/s and power and surrender can be tools to discover and rebuild and enhance and create a better self, a stronger self, a more open and loving and conscious self. But they can also follow unhealthy, dangerous old pre-determined pathways.

Don’t get me wrong, please - there were lots of submissive/bottom submissions to the Sugarbutch Star contest and most of them seemed fucken solid. Just a few in particular felt dangerously degrading, perhaps only because I didn’t have the backstory, didn’t have the context. But it made me wonder all the same. Made me want to cradle and protect, to hold and comfort, before I would bust out my cock and paddle and fist and fuck into the night.