An Open Book

“What did you like best about Wednesday night?” the Top that W had allowed to play with me recently asked in an IM a couple of days later.  I was confounded for a moment.  Like best? I don’t even know if “like” is the correct term for what it is I feel about the things we do, that get done to me.
I think about this concept from time to time, the idea of “liking” what gets done to me (or not), especially when I play with someone new and they ask this of me.  W doesn’t ask because he really doesn’t need to–besides the fact that he really does get me, and knows what gets me, he also, plain and simple, pays attention. He watches me, he reads my reactions.  And afterward, he doesn’t need to ask what I liked and what I didn’t (although I’ll usually share with him my reactions via this blog.)  Bottom line, though: I’m not that hard to read, to be truthful.
Still, okay, back to this question of “liking” things or not.
It’s really hard for me to say, “I like pain.” Or, “I like being humiliated. I like being made to feel like a dirty whore. I like to feel small and nasty.”  Because, in the midst of it, I don’t really think I like it all.  But…feeling that way…and then coming out of it…yeah, I like that.  It makes me wet–but it also does more than that. It puts me in an emotional space that I crave. It allows me to feel a depth of emotion that I only touch on in my daily life. To experience feeling that way–and then to come out of it, strong and whole, with him looking at me after it’s over with lust, or admiration, or pride, or even concern–that’s an incredible feeling.  It is also a place where I am not so much “the submissive” as having been forced to submit.  I do not have to think about submitting–I have been driven there by emotional or physical duress, my thinking brain turned off, and I am only a creature of reaction, responding to him instinctively, without thought.
I am free of me.
There are many paths to that space.
Pain does it. Drive me down, down, deep into a pain scene and I go into that small, defenseless space and hold myself there, like hiding in a closet, until it’s over and he slowly, carefully, coaxes me out again.  Or I fly free, unencumbered by my body, and observe what’s happening from some space outside myself, and that is like opening up a piece of myself to the universe, like splitting the shell of my self open and freeing a bird from within. Or I snarl and fight it and let myself blaze with anger and rage, and that, too, leads me to that space, because I can’t ever express that fully in real life, or even, truly, access those emotions otherwise, or feel safe in expressing them except in that space.
Humiliation does it. Being made to feel small, or dirty.  Being made to do things that embarrass me, or that I know are “wrong.” Usually, with this type of play, it is a combination of  humiliation and other kinds of play that get me to that deeply submissive state, but occasionally, just that is enough to get there.
Sometimes being tied does it. This is a little trickier, because it doesn’t happen all the time, or with all kinds of rope play.  I have discovered there are two kinds of rope play (well okay, there are more I am sure, but in my mind, the way we play falls into two distinct camps.) One way, he uses rope as a tool to subjugate me, to brutalize me, to force me to do what he wants or to submit to want he wants to do to me.  This is the kind of play that more often results in that raw, broken-open feeling.  Maybe because of the rest of the play that goes with it.
The other kind is the quieter kind: rope for the sake of rope. Not as a means to an end, but to see me tied.  We don’t often play that way, in fact both of us have expressed a bit of…”gee whiz”…attitude about watching that kind of play when we’ve seen it at public events. If you’re going to tie me–do something to me!  Right? But there are times when we go there and, for whatever reason, it works.  It sends me flying without any other kind of stimulus.  Truth to tell, though, even in those kinds of scenes, there’s usually some edgy aspect to it that makes it much more than “just” a rope scene.  The kind of high I get from that is much…quieter, a restful, contemplative place, a surrendering to the rope and to whatever position he has tied me into.
Sexual objectification–closely tied to humiliation–also does it.  Feeling like a piece of meat, a collection of holes, a fucktoy to be used for W’s–or anyone else’s–sexual gratification, especially if I feel I have no choice, triggers a very strong emotional reaction in me.  This scenario can merely make things hot for me in an otherwise not-so-hot vanilla setting (as in my last date), or, if he is there, can elicit those deeper emotions.  Because my emotional responses are so deeply tied to doing this for W, knowing he has caused this, and is watching all this happen to me–either as he does it to me himself, or watching someone else do it, and is getting off on it, pushes me into that space very quickly. Hit that trigger hard enough and often enough in a scene and that puts me deeper into that space than even pain does.  Combine it with all of the others, and you have the recipe for a profoundly stoned Jade.
All those triggers were in place the other night, and by the end I was blitzed…wiped out…totally, blissfully zoned.
But did I like any of it?  Well yes, there was something pleasant, actually, about having my body painted.  About the feel of the oils on my skin, and the stretching of my labia as the weights pulled them down. It was nice to feel large, strong male hands on my body, to be admired and told I was beautiful.  The fucking was good, and feeling full and stretched. And the wax, that was warm and lovely.
And of course, knowing W was watching, every moment.  Looking up and seeing his eyes on me, seeing his approval and pride in me.  All that was very pleasant.  I “liked” that.
But I don’t do this because it’s pleasant. Oh, of course it can’t all be unpleasant all the time.  The nice things are lovely interludes and lead-ons to the other things.  But the things that I don’t like are the things I want most to happen to me, again and again, because those are the things that drive me to that space that I can’t get to any other way.
So please, don’t ask me what I like.  Ask me what moves me, what affects me, what drives me deep into those spaces that I crave.
Or simply pay attention. Watch my reactions, listen to me, read me.  Because I’m not that hard to read.  Honest.