CatharsisKentUK

I've been scrolling through the cm message board in the apathetic stupor of a vicious hangover and something has jumped out at me.  A BDSM term I haven't heard before and that explains a lot about how I'm wired.  'Primal' BDSM.  This is basically kink that strips back all the fancy fetish equipment and myriad 'rules' and gets right back to a baser, more violent and animalistic kind of sex, where the penetratee is fully expected to baulk, fight and struggle.  I've struggled a lot with the way I struggle.  It's one of the chief reasons I can't classify myself as a sub per se.  I don't honestly see where the point or fun is in restraining a sub who's going to lie there compliantly anyway.  Restraints for me speak of resistance.  S&M for me isn't and shouldn't be something I can 'endure' without batting an eyelid.  One of the reasons that I like to retain safewords even after getting sexually acquainted with a new partner is that only when there is explicit blanket consent in place can a sadist feel free to engage in play where consent appears to become dubious or even non-existent at various points during the 'scene.'  

I'm not able to prevent myself from resisting or fighting at times.  My pathetic little carcass is generally pretty firm in its conviction that pain is bad and it will try to over-rule me at every turn by dumping adrenalin into my veins and compelling to 'get the fuck out of here you stupid bitch!'  I have to fight my most primal self preservation instincts in order to engage in S&M and I will frequently get kicked out of the driving seat and have to claw my way back in.  That's before I even begin the resulting struggle with my tormentor.

Primal BDSM is very hands on.  Instead of restraints, you simply pin the sub down.  Instead of implements, you inflict pain with your bare hands.  It's rough play taken to a dark and sadistic level and it's the kind of visceral show of force that will often have the most compliant sub fighting tooth and nail to escape.  It plays into the 'fight or flight' reflex and exploits it.  It's not as simplistic as calling it rape-play, because for me at least it bleeds into the whole of an alpha/beta dynamic.

I've always hated the term 'brat' because I don't display brattishness.  I'm not trying to thwart or regain control of the scene and it's not an act of disrespect to the dominant.  It is in fact an act of such profound respect and awe that I no longer wish to be in the sadist's postal code.  Being a petite girl I have always been smaller and weaker than my partners, even the girls.  There is something utterly profound in fighting back and losing, of being overpowered not only by someone physically stronger but by someone with the sadistic force of will to make my surrender painful and degrading.  To be worth nothing to them in that moment than the sexual gratification they are determined to take by force.  There is something deeply cathartic about being conquered and invaded.  For all the fight I can muster to prove laughably futile.  

It's from this primal kind of dynamic that I derive the kind of constant, low level fear required to transform me from an independent, free thinking individual into a compliant submissive.   It's the terrible simplicity of knowing that if I don't behave as the dominant wishes, there will be pain, suffering mockery and verbal evisceration for me until I do.  Not a 'tut tut' and a slapped arse but pain and humiliation.

So yeah, not bratty, just primal.

Trainspotting, 1996:  "Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin' else."

Heroin you can buy on just about any street corner, your only 'problem' then becomes money.  Heroin you can abstain from, by going clean but I'm really not about to contemplate a life of chastity.  Heroin you can get methadone for.  Heroin is a recognised addiction served on the one hand by dealers and on the other hand by a huge network of public, private and charity funded support.  Heroin addicts can access rehab.  People understand heroin addiction.  People sympathise with heroin addiction.

Some days, I would much prefer to have a heroin addiction.

I'm risk aware but to be honest, my psyche has been through quite a lot already and it's a lot more hardened than that of most people's.  It's partly because of this that humiliation has to cut so deep for me, because otherwise it doesn't cut at all.  It makes me feel like a heroin junkie who needs to shoot up on a near lethal does just to feel normal and function properly.  The gnawing ache is always there.  But there's no weaning myself off of this.  I can't go cold turkey for a certain period of time and go back to being a lightweight.  

It is not my intention to belittle the ravages of heroin addiction, only to illustrate how addictive and how isolating my proclivities can be and how very little understanding and support there is in mainstream society for lifestyle masochists.  BDSM still seems to be the last first world taboo.  We've made huge progress where the LGBT community is concerned but there is nothing in place for people who come to the realisation that they want kink in their lives. Nowhere else would such deluded fantasists and chancers be able to post the kind of bollocks they do on sites like this one and still have pliant fuckwits take the bait.

Just the other day I fielded a suitor from within my real-life social sphere who is a perfectly lovely bloke.  I resent the fact that 99.99% of people are automatically closed off to me because of what I crave.  In comparison, LGBT people have is easy.  

Even one I eventually find someone, it's not nearly as simple as shooting up.  There needs to be sexual compatibility, everything else compatibility, mutual attractiveness and so on.  Lives need to mesh well.  Then, even then, once I've made and acted upon the decision to be alone in private with this person... even after all that, my 'fix' depends entirely upon the capricious whim of a sadist.  A sadist who knows far too well that the most sadistic thing he can do at that point is laugh in my face and deny me.  A sadist who can walk at any time, putting me straight back to square one and cold turkey.  

Those heroin junkies have it so damn easy.

For the record, You have to be a total masochist to battle with this fucking stupid journal input software.  Keeps cutting the beginnings off of sentences for no fucking reason whatsoever.  Someone register the Journal feature as a sadist. 

It's depressing and frustrating how many dominants there are out there who give absolutely no thought to the fundamental difference between dominance and sadism.  If I had the option to, I'd label myself a masochist, because doe eyed submission is really not something that comes naturally to me.  People seem to get personally offended when I try to differentiate myself from a service sub or devoted slave.  I am neither of these things, just as most dominants are not remotely sadistic.  They'll say they are, because it sounds impressive but suggest anything that's not 110% fun for the recipient and they'll flee like scalded cats.

For me, sadism is not fun.  Sadism that is inherently fun for the sub/maso is not really sadism.  

I think that lot of masochists are in reality sensation junkies.  They're only interested in kink in so far as it is immediately gratifying and arousing.  Subs will put the dominant before themselves and will endure - to an agreed point - things that the dominant finds more fun than perhaps they do but there is no real sadism there.  There is too much mutuality and romance.  This is obviously my perspective, not theirs, but my perspective matters to me and their's doesn't.

I've explored - to a point - in the past the not-fun notion of emotional/psychological S&M but not really the physical.  The psychological aspect has always been the primary focus for me and honestly, sensation play is really just the icing on a very depraved cake.  I don't know that I'll prove to have a huge tolerance for it, certainly nowhere near as extreme as my kinks for humiliation and *ification are but it's interesting.  For me, the sexual acts I've engaged in have never been, in and of themselves, humiliating.  They have been fun and stimulating in a way that gets me off but it has always been the verbal side of things that puts me into a masochistic mindset.  *ification I've been on the receiving end of has been similarly cerebral and delivered verbally.  

It stands to reason then that if it was possible for the verbal abuse and the acts I was compelled to perform or be on the receiving end of were equally humiliating, that would be very powerful.  I'm not at all convinced I'm going to prove to have anything approaching a similar tolerance however.  But I think it's definitely worth exploring.  Psychological masochism has been so long the soul and centre of my wasted heart that the potential in physical/sexual masochism almost passed me by completely.

Almost.

*o b j e c  t - fucking software takes exception to the word !

Well, I received my first death threat yesterday, quelle surprise.  There's probably a legion of rejected geriatrics cheering at their screens as they read this.  Oddly enough, this guy was in his 30s and generally speaking, it's the old gits who want to fuck much younger women who tend to get vitriolic before breaking out the block caps and bleating about ageism - as though they have any fucking interest in women their own age.  But I digress.

It was a case in point as to how, unless someone knows me intimately, it's virtually impossible for them to insult or humiliate me.  Slinging random invective around like some verbal equivalent of sploshing just doesn't affect me in the slightest.  I have to give the dominant the keys to my skull, only then can they march in and start kicking things around.

Naturally, I do know just enough about teh interwebz to be fairly confident that nobody's going to come knocking on my door but it has rattled me a little.  I spent a couple of weeks having pretty safe/sane conversations with this guy and then out of nowhere he flips the batshit switch and goes apoplectic on me.

Being open to what even a lot of kinky people would consider abusive, I'm basically asking for SO much hassle. I'm aware of that and I mitigate it where I can but it's frustrating. And every time whatever man I'm chatting to will say 'well it doesn't matter whether we meet in public or whatever, at some point you're just going to have to trust me.' I'm aware too that just because a potential dom/me is capable of lasting the length of a dinner date without slaughtering anybody, it doesn't necessarily mean I'm not going to wind up on the front page of the Daily Mail come Monday morning, with a strapline announcing that I 'asked for it.'  

But what potentials don't take into consideration is that it's not really them I have trust issues with. I trust self-certified sadists about as far as I can throw them and I'm a petite woman, so that's not very fucking far. What I need to trust in and can't is my own judgement. The very fact of what I seek means that my judgement is skewed at best and irretrievably flawed at worst. 

But hey, you only die a hideous death once... right?