PirateStan

‘What’d you do this weekend?’ ask vanilla friends

Like a great many kinky people, we have kinky friends and we have vanilla friends. Some of our vanilla friends are aware of our particular proclivities and are interested, more or less (usually less).  Of course, we have family. Inevitably, family are pretty much hopelessly vanilla. I don’t know why, but it always seems to be this way.

Sometimes I’ll run into them on a Monday or a Tuesday and they’ll ask, “So, what’d you do this weekend?” Other times it’s a Friday and, “What do you have planned for this weekend?”

It can be a tough one to answer because, honestly, I’d like to tell everyone about the kinkalicious activities we’ve enjoyed, or have planned.  Still, Americans are so incredibly uptight about sex and sexuality that it’s simply not a topic to address. The one time we seemed to be lightening up was in the ’70s, and that pretty much imploded when AIDS arrived. We’ve reverted to general prudery ever since.

Oh sure, there’s the occasional “50 Shades” type phenomenon, but even those are viewed as oddball anomalies, a societal Rumspringa where we leech all of our sexual weirdness as if lancing a boil. Then we go back to our once-a-month-missionary-position coitus with our spouse, for procreation purposes only.

“But really,” they ask, “What’d you do this weekend?”

This past weekend was actually pretty boring. On Saturday we went out for a few beers, headed to the grocery store, then came home, ate deli pizza, drank wine, and watched Amazon Prime (need to catch up on ‘Downton Abbey’ so we can go see the movie). Yup, we are officially adults. Sunday was a long bout of kinky sex, changing the sheets, starting laundry, a bit of cleaning and straightening, followed by some Netflix-and-chill.

Yeah, you read that right. Even our boring-ass weekends tend to have some period of kinky fuckery. But I can’t tell them that!

Of course, the previous weekend we were at a party with naked people getting tied up, stuck with needles, being beaten black-and-blue, set on fire, and all sorts of other kinky fuckery. The evening ending with most of us bundling in the hot tub, still naked. Seriously, swimsuits are awful. I totally get those European dudes who wear the Speedos regardless of age and body type.

Previous weekends have found us at parties where there are actually orgies, although we don’t tend to partake. Even in January, when that door opens, and the warm, humid air smelling of sweat, bodies, lube, and sex wafts out, all I can think of is, “A stranger’s bodily fluids. Ick”.

(And if that’s your thing, I will grok, Water Brother. But you’ve got no worry of competition from me.)

Sometimes I really want to tell them the truth, merely to watch their heads explode. Because they’ll take one look at us and think of how fat, old people aren’t supposed to do this sort of thing. Of course, when I was still young and thin I had no idea this world existed. Such is life.

I was recently at a vanilla wedding for some dear friends, Master and slave, who were tying the knot legally for any of a variety of reasons. I was tasked with giving the “best man” speech and I think I nailed it. It’s been a few years since I’ve been asked, but I’ve always been pretty good at them.

After, one of his old friends pressed me on how we’d met. I went to my standby of “a local book group” before realizing that, hey, he’s not much of a reader (as much as I love him). I recovered with, “But it’s as much as media group as books,” before launching into several minutes of how much we loved ‘Avengers: Endgame’ and couldn’t wait for ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’ to come out on Blu-Ray.

I think he bought it. Before too long the talk was of firearms, hunting, and the best ways to preserve venison.

So yeah. “What’d you do this weekend?”. Damn, but that’s a loaded question.

I’ll finish by pointing out that we own a home in a boring, suburban neighborhood where I suspect we are the oddest thing. And we have some stereotypically vanilla neighbors. The same sort of place a great many of we kinksters reside. And have parties.

If only they knew.

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PirateStan has been involved in his local BDSM community for over 12 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.

When kink is part of your relationship’s DNA, there can be times when you take it for granted. For me, as a Master, it’s in the assumptions of my girl’s service to me, that she’ll always be there when I need her, that she’ll dutifully tend to my needs even, perhaps, when she’s not necessarily in the mood.

Of course, I’ve never been someone who was \capable of taking something which wasn’t freely given. So when she’s not in the mood, I tend to not be inclined to press things. As she’s grown older and entered perimenopause it’s increasingly become an issue. Simply put, she’s often not “in the mood”. However, she typically finds herself *in* said mood once we start a scene. 

So I often find myself in the somewhat awkward position of having to take what’s not necessarily being offered. But given that I’m with my girl of many years, and that this is something we’ve had many discussions about, we’ve made it work quite well.

What is it they say, “Getting older sucks, but it beats the alternative”.

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We recently vacationed in Scotland, renting a cozy cabin deep in the Highlands. It was everything my Celtic blood called out for, with views outside our patio door which literally took your breath away. To say it was isolated would be an understatement; while there were a few homes vaguely nearby, the overall silence was deafening. Except for the bleating of the sheep grazing nearby. It was picturesque to a level I’d only ever dreamed of.

Enter our kinky selves. The chance to photograph zeirah’s loveliness against such a scenic backdrop was irresistible and inevitable. While initially reluctant, she quickly warmed to the scenario, even as the Highland winds and chill whipped around her bound and gagged body.

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It all started out as a token photoshoot; the bondage would be perfunctory, it would only *look* like she was tied up. I’d taken pics of her on the deck of our little Highlands cabin previously, only this time it would appear as if she was in bondage.

But it quickly became very real.

The weather had been cloudy, chilly, and rainy all morning. But around noon the sun came out, the breeze picked up, and it seemed considerably more friendly outside. Stepping onto the deck it was around 60 degrees with 15-20 mph winds. In the sun it felt warmer. We decided to give it a go.

I’d brought the leather bondage mittens on the trip because we routinely use them in our bedroom play. Consequently, they formed the initial basis of the bondage. Within less than a minute her hands were secured behind her back in a way that (experience had shown) she could not get loose from.

Then I took the duct tape, purchased at a newsagents, and wrapped it around her torso, underneath her breasts. I went around one, two, three, four, five times, each wrap becoming tighter and bringing her arms further behind her back, her elbows closer and closer together. Suddenly this “perfunctory” bondage was becoming rather secure.

She sat as I secured the belt around her ankles, then tied up her bare feet and toes. I had her stand to ensure that the bindings weren’t too tight, then had her sit again. “My ankles are loose. You need to make the belt tighter,” she said. As I cinched them up, the bondage suddenly seemed considerably more secure than I’d initially intended; she was really tied up, with no real way to get loose.

I’d initially thought to do an “X” duct tape gag, which looks good but isn’t actually effective; it’s easy to remove with a little bit of work. But since she was so well secured otherwise I decided to go for a full “eight-strip” gag. Her eyes became very wide as she realized what I was doing.

By the time I removed the chair and had her stand for the pics the sun had disappeared, the winds had picked up, and the temperature had dropped. Half-naked, unbalanced, with her hair whipping around her face, this was suddenly a very real photoshoot.

She dutifully posed for the many pics I took, then struggled and “mmmphed” accordingly for the subsequent video. Her frustrated struggles in the cold and wind weren’t rehearsed, and looked quite excellent.

After we were done she wriggled and stomped her feet, mmphing in their direction, so I brought the chair back to untie her feet and toes. After they were loosed she quickly walked over to the cabin’s patio door, sliding it open with her shoulder before going inside. She sat on the couch and took in the warmth, wriggling her chilly toes before the electric fireplace.

As I removed the duct tape gag, I realized that this Scottish stuff was considerably more sticky than what we typically used, and that there was no way she could have worked it loose. Peeling it off required some real effort, and she was very happy when it was gone. I used scissors to remove the tape around her body (which it left no residue on her clothes), then let her loose from the mittens and cuffs.

What began as a nothing burger quickly turned into a real scene. And one which soon enough was finalized in the bedroom.

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When it’s in your relationship’s DNA it’s going to happen no matter the circumstances. Or perhaps because of them. Regardless, take advantage and enjoy when you can. Even if it’s more than a little windy and cold.

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PirateStan has been involved in his local BDSM community for over 12 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.

If there’s one thing you quickly notice when you enter the scene, it’s how much a D/s or M/s relationship can mimic and resemble an abusive one. It’s as if we’re both wearing the same suit of clothes, only one is finely tailored out of a rich, Merino wool, and the other is an ill-fitting off-the-rack polyester affair from your local Wal-Mart. There simply is no comparison.

But it’s something which can often make people uncomfortable with entering into any sort of power exchange relationship. Worse, many new (and even not-so-new) people can’t quite tell them apart, which I’ve seen often enough lead to disaster. But really, the difference is actually pretty simple and generally as clear as a freshly-cleaned window pane.

It’s one of informed consent, that it’s something which is given, and which can be just as easily revoked.

And as difficult as it can be to tell if you’re actually a part of the lifestyle, imagine how things can look from the vanilla side of the world. It can be entirely too easy to appear to be in an abusive relationship, particularlly when people on the outside looking in are inclined to think in that direction.

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I’ll take a quick break here to posit my own theory, based on some vague and statistically insignificant personal experience. That dominant inclinations can become warped and twisted, turned to the Dark Side if you will, and become the same psychological motivations that make someone abusive. It’s that alpha drive, the need to control, the need to be catered to;  they’re on the same coin, but on opposite sides, one the shadow of the other.

Similarly, the need of a submissive to serve, to satisfy, to cater to, can also be twisted into the mentality of the chronic abusee, the person who can’t seem to leave an abusive relationship and, when they do, simply flits from one to another.

I’m not certain that an abuser can be made into a good Dominant, but I have seen more than one abusee become an excellent submissive upon entering the lifestyle and being helped to understand the difference. But they’re all-too-often initially preyed upon by abusers masquerading as Dominants.

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But back to the suit of clothes, with a hopefully-not-too-lengthy personal anecdote.

I’ve experienced the perspective of vanillas, that lack of comprehension between D/s and abuse, firsthand. Some years back I found myself in a very bad relationship with a narcissist masquerading as a submissive/slave (I won’t go into details here; that’s for another column). But long-story-short, the breakup was ugly, she was vindictive, and elected to take the dark road of revenge.

She went to all of my friends (whom she had charmed very successfully) and convinced them that our consensual M/s relationship had actually been abusive. I forced her into the lifestyle, made her move in with me, to submit to my perverted sexual desires, and even beaten her when she acted out. I had forced her to wear a metal collar, to submit to me, to only wear clothing I approved of. 

It was all untrue. She had very much consented to a 24/7 M/s relationship, painting herself as considerably more experienced than myself. But to my vanilla friends it jibed up well with my history of being a rather blunt, bossy, alpha male. And she was an extremely personable, convincing liar.

So I was in the doghouse, a pariah, for several months. I generally weathered the storm okay, and watched with some small glee when her house of cards inevitably collapsed. That my friends accepted me back was satisfying, but that they never really apologized for believing her over me still stings more than a bit.

But at the same time I can’t entirely blame them. They didn’t see the difference in the two suits, having no experience with the fine, Merino wool variety, but only the cheap polyester, off-the-rack junk. And it can be very difficult to educate someone outside of the lifestyle of the subtelties, regardless of how clear-cut they actually are.

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Moving on, here’s another personal anecdote, this one once-removed, so perhaps a bit more lengthy but considerably less self-indulgent.

The lady-in-question had been in a highly physical and emotional abusive relationship with a textbook malignant narcissist, with whom she’d had several kids. Circumstances being what they were, it took her entirely too many years to extricate herself because of the shared kids and a narcissist’s implacable need for control and revenge. Still, she eventually found herself divorced and elected to explore the local BDSM scene.  

But like many a wayward femsub she was quickly led astray by the classic abuser-in-master’s-clothing and found herself in yet another abusive relationship, albeit this time a part-time one.  Enter zeirah and myself. We met her at a local munch, took a shine to her (and her to us) and took her under our wing. Talking at some length, I explained consent, clear negotiations, and the concept of power exchange. We helped her understand that, at the end of their time together, she should feel blissfully happy and satisfied, satiated down to the bones of her soul. It needed to be about her every bit as much as him.

She dumped him soon after and I swore to help her in finding a worthy Dom/Master.

It took a few years, but we finally tripped over her perfect Dom. After a few false starts they entered into what appeared to be a very successful, satisfying D/s relationship.

But here’s where the whole suit-of-clothes thing rears its ugly head again. 

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Her kids, having seen at close hand the abuse their mother endured, and having undergone some considerable therapy aimed in that direction, had a better-than-usual eye for the behaviors of an abuser. So as their mom’s relationship became more serious with him moving in, they began spotting controlling behaviors, and even unexplained bruising, that they found suspicious and troubling.

How could they possibly warm to this new gentleman when it seemed that the past was repeating itself? Worse, how do you explain to two under 16 year olds precepts of a D/s or M/s relationship? They were keeping Mr. New Dom at arms length, and rightfully so from their perspective.

Between gently explaining that, no, this guy wasn’t an abuser like your father, his being overall fantastic and patient with the kids, and her overall day-to-day happiness, eventually all won them over. A few months in and everything’s copacetic.

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So be careful as to what suit of clothes you’re wearing, and how it’s being perceived by those around you. It’s easy to say that it’s none of anyone’s business, but a grievous misperception by the wrong person at the wrong time could be potentially disastrous.

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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.

I see a great many posts here from singles attempting to determine whether they’re too particular, whether they should “settle” for someone. And how they should determine it.

Years ago I had someone tell me about the three pillars of a relationship. I took it to heart, modified it, and made it into a pretty good way to evaluate a potential partner.

The three pillars are:

– Physical: How attractive someone is to you. It’s not just about their looks, but their demeanor, their style, their hygiene, their attitude, and their charisma. Looks aren’t everything, but they certainly do count for something.

– Emotional: How much you “get” each other, how close you are, whether you can process “all the feels”. If you laugh at the same jokes, cry at the same movies, bitch about the same social injustices, then you’re on the same wavelength.

– Intellectual: How smart you are and whether you can interact on the same level. You can be a smart/smart person, a smart/dumb person, or a dumb/smart person, even a dumb/dumb person. But your partner needs to engage, experience, and communicate on the same level as you.

Grade each pillar on a scale of 1-10. Your total score should be 22 or greater with no single pillar being less than a six. Otherwise the relationship is likely not going to be long-term.

I don’t recommend holding out for a 30, as you’ll probably die single. But anything over a 25 is likely a keeper.

It’s worked pretty consistently for me, even if only in retrospect.

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Seriously, knock it off with the excuses. I don’t care if you’re shy, introverted, reluctant, nervous, or worried. If you want to get into all of this, step one-point-oh is…

… attend a goddamned munch!

Unless your community is absolute shit (and I gather that some of them are. I’m sorry if you’re in one of those crap areas) then your first munch will be absolutely revelatory.

You’ll meet people like you. They’ll speak your language, grok who you are, what you’re looking for. There’ll be an even mix of guys and gals, tops and bottoms, people of all ages, young and old. And someone will come over and introduce you to the group, make you feel welcome.

From there, all of the other stuff you want to know about the scene will naturally flow. You’ll encounter all sorts of kinks, roles, fetishes, and proclivities. You’ll go to your first party, make some friends, and before you know it you’ll be an old pro!

And you don’t even need be a regular. Hell, one single munch may be enough to make you a mainstay in your local community. And once you meet your “one” you can ditch the community forever if you want.

But you need to get off your chicken-shit ass and go to a fucking munch. No excuses. Find your local munch and just go already!

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.

(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 or 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 with 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 it’s 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 parosyxms 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.