I have seen bottoms who played harder than I imagine my own scenes, let alone my own capability for withstanding. I have seen a bottom outlast three sadists in a row before finally throwing in the towel with another. I have seen bottoms who could take impact at full strength from people who can only hit me at a 4 on a scale from one to ten.
I recall a rather inense scene with a bottom that I witnessed several years ago. I remember at the time being enraptured while I watched, so impressed by how hardcore this person was in my mind.
Recently I was casually discussing a list of things I find enjoyable that I didn’t necessarily expect to like when I tried them with someone who has less experience than I do. As I excitedly mentioned things like plastic wrap mummification and ramping up our impact play with weighted gloves to make the punching more intense, this person looked impressed. They murmured something about how hardcore I am, making a half-serious joke about how they’d like to be like me when they grow up.
The thing is, I’m still looking at those bottoms who have such high tolerance for the things I don’t do well as hard-core. Those are the people I admire and envy. It never occured to me that someone would look at me the same way I look at other people.
I didn’t start here, though. I remember the days when my list of limits was longer than my face, and certainly longer than the list of things I would participate in. I was so hesitant to try new things at first.
It was bad enough that I was breaking societal taboos by wanting to be restrained, but adding the shame of wanting to be hit was a struggle for me. Having been assaulted, I had even more reservations. Allowing that desire to be openly acknowledged was a huge step forward for me.
But I envied those with more experience, those who were more comfortable with their own desires, and those who could accept the level of pain my Daddy would have liked to give me. I didn’t see how much I’d grown simply by facing my fear of bucking societal standards. I saw myself as weak or somehow less, despite knowing that some people I’d met had more experience, yet accepted less impact than I would.
I envied them and I pushed myself to take more, be better. My partner wasn’t fooled, though. He watched my body and listened to it rather than my mouth. We discussed new things we wanted to try, and he slowly added them to our arsenal. I stopped to process with each new break from those standards. We played harder, adding punching, then weighted gloves, then whips to our tools. I had my eyes on the prize, that elusive search to take more pain, more physical damage, try even more unusual things. Not frenzy, but envy, as the process was long and slow. I didn’t stop to appreciate how far I’d come.
I am who I am. I play at the level my body can handle. To do otherwise courts disaster. I have worked my way up in experience to become the player I envied as I watched that “hardcore” scene, just as I have strangely become a person with that label for others.
That word has no real meaning in kink. I don’t participate in certain aspects, such as needles. I see the people who do as pretty hardcore. Funny enough, those same people may see my scene which included a flogging with a four-foot long buffalo hide flogger and ass punching with weighted gloves and think I’m the hardcore one. Rarely do we see ourselves that way.
We would do ourselves more favors to look to the scenes of others for inspiration rather than envy. Finding something we’d be interested in trying helps more than wishing we were someone else with a higher tolerance for whatever.
We’ll get there. Patience stands us in greater stead than its opposite.
croppedcutie says
interesting piece
kiltedking says
i have never heard of this before. thanks for sharing