On Piercings and Power Dynamics

Last night I had a funny moment with Ad. Laying in bed, snuggling up, we finally had a kid-and-distraction-free moment to chat about Saturday night.  He was stroking my back–and poking at the sore spots playfully.  We both noticed a bruise on one shoulder.  “Flogger, maybe?” he said, chuckling.  I looked at him, confused. “Flogger? When…?” Then I realized–I had completely forgotten about the two of them flogging me while I was in the rigging in the center of the room.  I guess my brain can only hold so much before it goes into sensory overload.
I have lots of lovely little pokey sore spots, some deep ones on my ass from W caning me the day before, and some smaller ones from various other implements, the floor, chains, etc. It’s a nice way to keep remembering the weekend.
Tonight, if I am very very brave, I will be revisiting Courtney at the place I got my piercings–to get two more sets on my inner labia. I wish I hadn’t waited til the first set was healed.  (You can see how pretty they are here.)  I know, I know, Courtney told me I would wish I had just gotten it all done at once.   But I wasn’t sure either I or Ad would like them. I knew that W would (see my PoJ post “Industrial Fuck” to see what I mean.) But I didn’t want to go all out before I had a chance to “test the waters,” and, more importantly, to know that Ad really dug it as well. Not just tolerated for my sake, but (hopefully) thought it was hot.
Sometimes I am overly cautious about things like that. He said he would be okay with it, he said he would like it, but is he really? At some point I have to let go and trust that he really says what he means, and will say so if he is not okay with something. That’s hard to do, though. Many, many people play the “I’m okay,” game, where they claim to be fine but expect you to know they actually aren’t, or to dig it out of them, but neither Ad nor W seem to be that type, thank goodness. Still, it’s hard to shake the habit of always looking behind someone’s words to discern their veracity.
In this case, though, I think it was a good move to be cautious. It’s a pretty serious body modification to have steel rings inserted through one’s labia (even if it can be reversed simply by removing the jewelry.) But aside from having to deal with the healing process, with the care and tending that requires (and which a lot of falls to him), and not being able to have the use of that area during the healing, there is also the fact that every time he sees that part of me he will see them–so any discomfort he might have with them could seriously, negatively, impact our sex life.  And lord knows I don’t want to do that.  However, as noted before, Ad seems to not only like the rings, but totally dig them, and even (gasp) get off on them. And hell, it makes me hot just knowing they turn my guys on so much, aside from the physical pleasure I get from them–both the act of getting them done and the rings themselves.
Looks like I may be in for another 2-3 weeks of misery while the new ones heal.
On a side note, laying in the bath the other night at W’s, talking about the possible new piercings, I said, “But what if I hate them?”
“You can always remove them,” he replied.
“But what if I take them out too soon?  I know I’ll be miserable at first, and I’ll hate them, but I don’t want to take them out prematurely, just because I am miserable right now.”
“Oh no,” he said, “you can’t take them out for a year. If after a year you don’t like them, then you can take them out.”
And that just hit me so wonderfully on so many levels.  1. That he says that so casually, that he tells me what I can and can’t do with my body, just like that, and knows that I’ll accept it. Not only because it makes me feel owned, like my body really is his, but because he considers it so; and 2. That I do accept it, no questions.  I feel myself settling down into that space of “his-ness”, of “owned-ness” happily, easily, without resistance.
Sometimes I wonder what it must feel like for a dominant, to know the one you have beneath you is dominated, in heart as well as body.  To know that you own someone that thoroughly, that they will simply…accept…what you say. To someone truly dominant, that must be the trigger, more than the sex, more than the physical aspects, I would think.  That is more than Topping, and more than bottoming; that’s where it veers off  into D/s.
I wrestle with my own understanding of “self” in regards to submission; what it means to me, what it means within the context of my relationship with W. In much the same way that W & I didn’t set out to have a “love” relationship, we didn’t set out to have a D/s relationship–those two things just evolved naturally between us.  Oh, probably in the common and generally accepted understanding of what that kind of relationship entails, we probably still don’t. But I often think many of those trappings are mostly fantasy displays anyway–the reality of being dominated and controlled is beneath the surface, beneath the “Yes Sirs” and kneeling and obeisances. The reality is inside, where, when he says, “You’ll wear them for a year,” I feel an acknowledgment in myself of his right to tell me that I will do so, and an acceptance of that right that has less to do with thought and more to do with feeling, with knowing, it is so. That is where power lies.