If all goes according to plan, I will have my first training session this week. As the date of this event looms nearer, I find myself besieged by concerns of varying relevance and importance.
I still consider myself relatively new to submission. I’ve tried out a few different types of scenes, but only a handful of times and with a relatively small number of partners. I know plenty of tools of the trade that I greatly enjoy – and know enough about others to believe I’ll go wild for them too — but I definitely have a sketchier idea of my limits. While this is exciting and allows me the chance to explore how far I can go, it also concerns me that I don’t have a fully realized set of explicit boundaries. I’ve been caned, flogged, and cropped. But my partners wielding these weapons were roughly as inexperienced and giddily anxious about it all as I was. Is my pain tolerance as high as I think it is, or have I acquired a skewed impression? I think that I’m a masochist, but will that self-designated title hold fast the further and harder I go? Then there’s role-play, which appeals to me as a general concept; however, I haven’t explored it with much vigor. I certainly do not have a calling as an actress; as such, I fear being unconvincing, as well as my curse of laughing at the most inappropriate moments.
There are also a fair amount of kinks on my radar that I haven’t yet delved into, and not for lack of interest. For the curious, these appealing scenes and instruments include pet play, cages, suspension, sensory deprivation, and extreme predicament bondage. Because there is such a range of scenes that are foreign to me, I have been considering how I feel about experiencing these new sensations – whether exciting, terrifying, or a combination of both – with someone I hardly know as opposed to a trusted partner. It’s extremely likely that without this context, I would never be able to try out certain things at all. Nevertheless, I find myself wondering if I will regret passing into unknown territories, so to speak, on the arm of a partner whom I do not personally select. I want to find out how my subspace and emotional responses are affected by the introduction of this completely alien setting.
I see this as an opportunity to not only explore my frontiers and affinities, but also to discover if it is truly the actions and related emotions of BDSM that I enjoy as opposed to simply trying something new with a beloved partner. I have always been the one in charge of selecting my sexual partners; now suddenly, I am relinquishing control of that all-important aspect. I fear that I don’t know quite enough about whether I’m largely turned on by the play itself or by the specific person involved. What if I simply can’t “get into it” because I’m partaking in these rather intimate activities with a relative stranger? And what if the client looks like my ex? Or my dad? Also, knowing so little about my partner, will he be disappointed by my limited experience or how utterly destroyed (hair tangled, makeup smeared) I look afterward? Will my body be satisfactory, or will it maybe be too thin and angular? These thoughts have all been taking turns clogging my brainwaves.
All of these anxieties and trepidations are matched by their Siamese twin excitements. Above all, I’m hoping that this new venture provides the occasion for me to experience all the delights that BDSM has to offer instead of continuing to speculate on whether they’re as splendid as I imagine.
I’ll never know if it’s for me if I don’t try…
– J