Courtesy of Male Submission Art
The following is my own rambling. The words I use to define myself may not mesh with how you use those words. The words I use to define others have been related to me by those others.
I find myself in another relationship. Let’s call him L. We are not dating and we are not girlfriend and boyfriend or girlfriend and girlfriend, we are monogamous friends with benefits. I am feeling pleasantly aligned with myself this time. I mean, I’m not hiding large parts of myself this time, at least not to my knowledge. I am queer and hard femme and defiant. I am attracted to people before their genders. Despite my current femme swing (and my recent, growing fondness for the color pink) my energy is masculine (thus, ‘hard’ femme). I have always claimed to be switch, in the sense of dominant vs. submissive, that I am a bit of both.
The other person in this pairing is a self described male lesbian. He has described this to me in a few ways, one being that he sometimes has to remind himself that this body is male and not female, however he does not wish to pursue a sex change. The feeling is internal and is not congruent with his physical body, but he accepts this. He appears, to me, to have a number of “feminine traits,” and has told me he has often been mistaken for being gay. He is switch as well, though has told me he’s most often leaning towards the submissive.
Despite my assertion that I am switch, I have had little actual experience in the past with the sexual roles of dominant and submissive. They’re ideas I enjoy and have explored in writing and in fantasy (alone) but rarely with partners. In retrospect, my feelings regarding my own dominance don’t lie in power or the exertion of it, but in watching and enjoying the body and reactions of my partner.
When a partner is bound and perhaps blindfolded, I allow myself to experience them in a way that I do not do during vanilla sex. Perhaps I’m too self conscious to really drink in my partners beauty if I know I am being watched in return. Perhaps I enjoy the difference, the things I am allowed to see when a partner is completely vulnerable, the knowledge that what I am doing is something they really like, that there is something in this for them as well as for me.
I have had very little opportunity to explore dominance and submission with a partner. In my last long term relationship, there was a very small amount of that done, but at the time it didn’t feel like that was what we were really doing. I didn’t want to be dominant because I didn’t really want to see him submit. So I took a submissive role for the simple reason that at the time it was easier.
I’m trying to figure myself out here, not to make sweeping claims about the nature of dominance and submission or to offend people. I’m trying to write this all down and find myself in here somewhere. I almost feel that I will become submissive in the absence of desire. For me, submission is solitary. I say this as someone who has never experienced anyone with a truly dominant sexual personality (though I would not at all be against exploring this). So, SO FAR, submission is a solitary experience, of sorts. For me. Blindfolded, I am alone. I am a very visual person, and with a lack of vision I delve into my own imagination. My partner may well be doing things to me, but the experience has less to do with my and my partner as it does with me and myself. Mind you, I really have had very little experience with submission. Just some simple bondage, beginner bondage, if you will.
As a sort of tangent, in an early relationship I allowed myself to be bound and my partner slapped me across the face – hard – and everything stopped being a game. I wonder if I am incapable of being truly submissive because at my core I am a protector. I protect myself, and I protect those I love. To open myself to be potentially hurt by someone I love isn’t something I want, it’s not something I find erotic, and I don’t think I trust people enough to trust them not to take it too far, because in this relationship, while damage was not inflicted, it was taken too far. I trust myself not to take a dominant role too far because of my experience of having the boundaries disrespected, in this example, and in others that I am not willing to share here, but which still affect me deeply in many aspects of my sexuality. It’s nothing dark or malicious, but more rooted in lack of education on the part of my partners.
This is the first sexual relationship that I’ve been in where I’ve actually wanted to take the dominant role. I think this has a good deal to do with the fact that I find my current partner extremely sexually attractive. I have dated and slept with people whose bodies have not turned me on, and in those situations I have never wanted to do things to them. In those situations, I found them attractive enough, maybe cute, and grew to care for them emotionally, and I did things with them, but I rarely just wanted to jump their bones. Nothing ever lit me on fire like this does.
I want to see L’s body because it’s beautiful. I want to do things to him because he reacts. He actually submits, and it makes me want to take control. He’s sensual, and hard and soft all at once, and masculine and feminine, and it’s so damned sexy. However, I find myself hitting a new wall. I want to do things to him, but… what do I do? We’ve talked, we talk about sex a lot, I know what he’s willing to do, what he’d like and what he’s iffy on, but I can’t write myself a sexual script to follow. This is a problem in my head, or between my head and the rest of my body, or something. It’s a confidence issue. I feel like if I jump into what I want to do I’m going to trip on something and fall on my face. I feel awkward about all my toys and various gear, which is ridiculous, but seriously, how do you start a new relationship and go ‘Oh, hi, I come with a personal arsenal of sexual props’? He likes it, which is good, but having a lot of stuff makes me feel like I take up too much space (a lingering issue from my recent LTR who always made me feel like I had too much shit).
The answer is, I think I’m neurotic. I finally want to dominate and now I can’t let that out without myself getting in the way. I want to do things to him and watch him react, and instead I’m trying to coordinate my arms and legs and laughing about my own random clumsiness. I think I may be coming up against something that I realized long ago about real life vanilla sex versus the sex we see in movies: it doesn’t happen in real life the way it does in good bondage porn. I don’t have a script, and no one is giving me stage direction, my cuffs don’t match the blindfold (my blindfold sucks), I forgot my strap-on and flogger at home, and yeah, maybe I’m a little distracted by the porn playing in the background and maybe I ran out of moves so I keep falling back on the ones I really like to the point that I seem boring. But maybe I don’t seem boring. I don’t honestly know. But I finally want to explore this. I am enjoying this, enjoying the act of giving pleasure and confident in my knowledge of safely engaging in various sexual acts. Finally I feel engaged. And as engaged as I feel with this, I feel zero desire to submit. Right now, if asked, I don’t feel like a switch, I feel dominant. However, I still have no sexual scripts and run into walls of not knowing what the fuck to do next.
One thing is for sure, though. Another time I’m bringing the strap-on and the flogger.
1 Comment
November 7, 2009 at 9:08 am
I like how your thought strands twine. Check out my art website (lordofallbunnies.com). Although not as eloquent in text, the saying is “a picture is worth a thousand words, but which words.”
I live with the determination that “knowledge is power”, but power of self, not over others and that judgment though irrevocable must be tempered with an understanding born of laughter, pain, and love.
I am a coffee addict. My mind twists enough already and I have never been entranced to try other drugs (pain of death from concerned friends is also a motivator)
Sincerely,
LOAB