Setting The Scene

(Note: As always, this article is presented from the perspective of MaleDom/femsub. I can’t speak with even vague authority to any other dynamic. Please adjust appropriately to your own.)

Always remember: No one is a mind-reader.

So it’s Friday night and you’ve been talking with your girl all week about the scene you’re going to have at week’s end. You’ve both had a stressful five-day-period, what with your job and the world in general weighing down upon you. You’re both looking forward to an evening’s worth of kinky fuckery followed by mind-blowing, multi-orgasmic sex.

But after it’s over, you’re both sitting there in the afterglow thinking, “Wait, what was that? I wanted something different, something more.”

And yeah, sure, you can chalk it up to the phenomenon of overblown expectations, the reality of which was never achievable. But in the back of your mind is that tickle that, no, we’ve done better before, and we can do better again.

And you can always do better, with the simple expedient of setting the scene. Plan ahead, at least a little bit.

Because always remember: No one is a mind-reader.

The key is, know your partner, know yourself, and know your skills. This isn’t about pick-up-play with a relative stranger at a party. This about crafting a scene with someone you know, hopefully more than a little bit. You’ve explored their fetishes, their triggers, their preferences, their sensitivities, their proclivities, their likes, their loves, their limits, and their erogenous locales.

If you’re at all introspective as a Dom, you know all of your own as well. 

But if you don’t know these things, remember the rule:

No one is a mind-reader.

You’ll need to talk things out, discuss what’s worked for you in previous scenes, and what hasn’t. Maybe throw a vodka spritzer in there, a glass or three of wine, a few beers, a fine single malt, some tokes on a doob. This isn’t about playing while vaguely intoxicated, it’s about loosening the strings on your tongue, to get beyond those inhibitions and really communicate.

(and if you don’t imbibe, that’s cool. Utilize whatever technique you prefer to loosen your tongue and psyche.)

Here’s the thing; your’s and her’s fetishes usually don’t align 100%. And if your girl is a service-orientated-submissive like mine she’ll still take a tremendous degree of satisfaction in simply working towards achieving yours. But eventually she’s going to grow weary of merely scratching your itch, leading to resentment that her’s aren’t as well.

And here’s where setting the scene comes in. Because with a bit of planning you can satisfy the both of you.

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So here’s the thing. My girl likes to be tied up, but not quite so much as I like to tie her up. And she likes to be scratched and abused, but maybe not quite so much as I like to scratch and abuse her. We have plenty of mind-blowing scenes (and sex thankyewverrymuch) but, as the mighty Dom, my itches tend to get scratched more than hers.

Because most of our scenes are thrown together or improvised (often after a bottle or three of wine… yes we play with intoxicated, which I don’t condone, but it works for us) they tend towards the “Master-wants-to-tie-you-up-and-get-serviced” end of things rather than the “let’s-construct-a-scene-which-satisfies-everyone” area.

But periodically we’re at a public event and I have the opportunity to plan something out, to set the scene. And on those occasions I do my level best to ensure that all parties involved get their minds blown.

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So now we’re gonna do a “f’r’instance”; that is, I’ll set out an example of a scene we had at a recent event (Dark Odyssey: Winter Fire in Washington D.C.), explain how and why I constructed it as I did, and how it worked it worked out for us.

My particular fetishes I enjoy playing with are mostly those of control, in that I enjoy having a girl under my control. But I’m not much of a pain sadist; I don’t get off on inflicting pain. Instead, I combine it more with my love of bondage. So I’ll do something like tie up & gag a girl, then tell her to go over to my bag and get a paddle. If they succeed they’ll get a spanking. And when they complain, through the gag, that they can’t do it because they’re tied up, I’ll pretend to mis-hear what they said.

That’s pretty basic, and it’s not all I’m inclined towards, but you get the idea. I can certainly get a gal up on a cross and work them over with floggers, paddles, whips, hands etc. with the best of ’em. But that’s not necessarily my go to.

My girl, while a big fan of impact play (and the bruises that come with it) also quite enjoys sensory play. My toy bag includes any number of pokey-proddy things with which I can scratch, stick, scrape, lacerate, and score such as claws, darts, knives, and wartenburg wheels. So I’ll try and incorporate both aspects into any of our planned scenes.

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At the event in question we’d acquired a fun new toy, a ring gag. We already had a few, but this one was 100% zeirah approved as it was relatively comfortable, the metal ring being covered in multiple layers of tool dip. If you want to understand the appeal of a ring gag, think about how it distorts a girl’s speech satisfactorily for us gag fetishists, makes her unable to stop drooling for us control fetishists, yet still able to use her tongue for various and sundry.

So this was definitely going to play into the scene.

We were in the overflow hotel, which had its own playspace, which hadn’t been too crowded on Friday evening, so I had hopes of something similar on Saturday. I’d checked it out and, specifically, on one end it had a St. Andrew’s cross next to a sort of breakfast nook area, which seemed perfect for what I had in mind. And when we arrived there Saturday night, it was indeed free.

The scene began with her removing my boots, a service offering that gets us into the right headspace. I then had her strip and put up her hair while I pulled out the leather straps I prefer when tying, as well as a variety of other toys. Next I handed her the ring gag, as I’ve found it’s better when she puts it on herself, and a blindfold.

I tell her to come forward, turn around, and put her hands behind her back, binding them securely, and adding a series of straps around her body and arms running from her shoulders to over her hips, leaving them secured tightly to her body such that she can’t do anything at all with them.

I added tight straps from her upper thighs down to her ankles, having her sit for the latter and adding a small pad between them to keep her ankle-bones from rubbing.

Now comes the fun part.

I told her to stand and spent the next hour commanding her to hop to me, whereby I attend to her with various implements of pleasure and torture. She’s uncomfortable enough normally when she’s made to hop while tied up, so the blindfold adds an exquisite element of torment. But she’s a good girl and trusts that I’m not putting things in her way to trip over and, indeed, are insuring there aren’t any. Additionally, I’m directing her left-and-right to ensure that she doesn’t trip. And if some of those directions are arbitrary simply to keep her confused, disoriented, and off balance, so much the better.

Meanwhile I’m also insisting she speak through the ring-gag, which drives both of us crazy in very different ways. At one point she says, “I’m afraid I’m going to fall,” but through the gag it sounds like “Uh ah-hade uh un-enh eh hhaaal,” to which I reply back, “You’re afraid of the hall?”

Because, with her mouth forced open by the ring gag it’s impossible to make an “F” sound.

We went back and forth like this for several minutes. She later told me that she was trying so. fucking. hard. to say “fall” and when I kept mocking her with “hall” that it drove her crazy. 

I finally had her hop out into the hall, where there were a few other con-goers mingling. I asked them, “Is there anything scary in this hall? She says she’s afraid of the hall.” To which they replied with some degree of , “Of course not”.

“See honey,” I said. “There’s nothing to fear in the hall!”

At which point I directed her to hop back into the room, and over to the cross. When she was literally an inch away from the base with her bare toes I had her stop. She had no idea that she was standing directly in front of the cross. I went up, carressed and tormented her for a few minutes as I’d been doing…

… then pushed her directly onto the cross.

Again, she had no idea that she was perfectly safe, that she’d fall no more than a few inches before being stopped by the cross. But for that second or so she was faced with the horrible, wretched panic that she might be helplessly falling flat on her face. 

It was perfect, the sort of utterly and precisely engineered moment that can only be accomplished by careful planning and setting of a scene between familiar partners.

The entirety of our time had been geared towards that one, exquisite, single second of utterly abject terror.

As I slowly untied her, in my mind I was going through the impact scene I had planned next. But, as I ungagged her, she indicated that she was spent, at that wet-dishrag point to which any good Master dreams of bringing his slave. She had been touched, tormented, and terrorized just slightly beyond the point she could emotionally manage. And it was good.

There followed 20 minutes of aftercare followed by 20 minutes of pick-up and clean-up before retiring to our room. We could have finalized our session there but, being old, fat, and creaky, we prefer to engage horizontally in a bed these days. To do otherwise is to risk disaster.

But rest assured, the evening’s worth of kinky fuckery was indeed followed by mind-blowing, multi-orgasmic sex

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So always remember that nobody can read anyone’s mind, and that you need to know yourself and your partner. Keep that in mind as you’re setting the scene and you can work yourself into paroxysms of pleasure previously undreamt of.

About the Author

PirateStan has been involved in his local BDSM community for over 11 years, after having had a lifelong inclination towards it. He currently lives a contented life in Southeastern Virginia with his girl, zeirah, while working by day for a Major Metropolitan Publication.