Unsurprisingly, the dirty Daddy kinky queer smut continues to be the posts with the highest traffic this year — including a variety of guest posts. Thank you to all the authors who let me publish their work! There are a few password protected posts on here, too, which is kind of surprising. Special thanks to everyone who supports me on Patreon (where you get access to the password protected posts, webinars, and more).
This year, Sugarbutch was also named the #1 LGBTQ sex blog! That is so thrilling, and I really appreciate all of you who read and engage with this work.
So here we go!
Here are the top 12 posts from 2021 here on Sugarbutch.
Content: D/s dynamics, control, orders between Sir/girl dynamic; voyeurism, strap-on sex, objectification, alcohol.
I stood in the doorway, entranced by the glow of the television highlighting C’s seated form—and the hand wrapped around their cock. The ache in my cunt grew as I watched them watching the screen, the drink in my hand forgotten as quickly as they’d forgotten me. I was surprised at how much I liked seeing them so lost in finding their pleasure through someone else.
“I’m pretty sure I told you to get me a drink, not stand in the doorway,” murmured C, eyes not leaving the screen as they languidly stroked themself.
Content: this story contains Daddy/girl dynamics and talk, jealousy, break-up sex, emotional sex and BDSM, and name calling.
I lean toward you like I did to that customer, oozing impersonal, subservient charm. “Why? Don’t you want to take me home?” I lean in closer, and you tilt your face toward mine. To kiss me now, after I cheated you and left you and teased you, would be the ultimate submission.
You cup the back of my head softly, so softly that I sigh without a sound, before grabbing a fistful of my hair at the root.
I gasp. Then I giggle. “Ooh, Daddy, that hurt. Do you feel better now, Daddy?”
You yank my head back, making me whimper mid-speech. “I’m not your Daddy anymore,” you hiss.
Content warning: this story contains mama/boy dynamic, breast milk, and nursing.
It’s creamier than I thought it would be, and tangier. It fills the back of my mouth and I let it pool and gather before I swallow, thick, running down my throat, heating me from inside. I feel it. I take it in. I take her in, part of her into me, part of her down deep.
Milk.
Her milk. Mama’s milk. I get shivers when I think those two words together in this context, with this meaning. I feel the back of my tongue drop and my throat open. I suck her nipple deeper, pull the entirety of her big areola into my mouth, and part of her breast, scrape it with my teeth because I need it, need it, and she lets me be hungry, the hungry boy I am.
Get the password by joining the Patreon at any level, then read it here →
She moaned a deep breath and let it out sharply between her teeth.
She could feel every muscle tense, trusty tawny fibers flexing under her soft belly’s padding. Her fingers gripped the shaft resting in her palm almost delicately, then smashed in for another impact. She could feel the shockwaves from every thrust jolt up her body. She was strong, she could take it. It was thrilling.
She could feel her peak coming close, but she wanted to make it last. She paused for a moment, taking stock of her body. Her heart was pounding in her chest and sweat dripped down in rivers from her tits and thickly thatched armpits. It felt good. Alive. She waited just long enough for her ragged breath to steady before pressing on, eager for that sensation she could feel looming just out of reach.
Content: Daddy/girl language, Dominance/submission, teasing, verbal humiliation, possession, genital stimulation with a child’s toy
“C’mon, I don’t have all day, Girl. Crawl if you have too.”
I’m on all fours. She straddles me. Feeling the strap on me, I quiver. Eventually, I get to the bed.
“Put your arse up. Take a deep breath in. Good Girl. Now, I’m going to slide this in your cunt. It will go deep. I’ll reward you for making Daddy happy. With each inch of my cock I will feed you one strawberry. I want you to eat all 4. Once that’s done, you pat your cunt like a little kitten and come like a fucking train. Is that understood?”
In March 2021, I read some erotica for the reading series Listen To Your Skin, which has some featured readers and then an open mic where anyone can read. This is a video recording of my part.
I read some from Best Lesbian Erotica Volume 5, including my piece “Whatever I Want, Whatever I Say”. One of my favorite things to do when reading from a book is to have the audience call out page numbers, and I read that page — my goal for Sweet & Rough was for there to be something dirty on every page. It doesn’t always work, but it’s exciting to just drop in for a few paragraphs and see what it’s like.
After that, I read from Penetalia: Collegiate Erotica, which was published by a group of students at my university in 2004, and was one of my first erotica publications.
This is not at all intended to be a comprehensive list — there are hundreds of erotic films and novels out there, many of which are really good. These are, in my opinion, some of the best that I’ve ever seen. And because I’m queer as a three dollar bill, my suggestions tend to be pretty queer, too. If there’s a hetero-oriented book or film on here, it’s because it’s particularly good.
Chapter 1 from an untitled, unpublished novel.
Content warning: sex scene, spanking, brat, dirty talk.
Her bottom is blushing pink under my palms, despite her dark skin; she is warming up quite nicely. She’s starting to move her hips in that undulating, pulsing desirous way that makes me ache to rip open the buttons of my fly and shove hard into her, bury myself up to the hilt. She’s still a little delicate for that. She wants romance, coaxing.
I’m getting a little tired of having to titrate my urges.
I’m obsessed. Look, the dildo market for the past twenty years has been a wild ride.
You probably know RodeoH — they make the strap-on harness briefs that made a huge splash ~15 years ago. Well, they’re making dildos now, and some of them are not only hyper-realistic, but have some incredible features I rarely see anywhere else.
Like for example: movable foreskin, and floating balls. Y’all. The skin slides! The balls feel so right and realistic. It quickly rose to my top favorite dicks ever. I haven’t even had it for very long — usually I like to test things out in a variety of conditions before I review them, but I just can’t wait to tell you about this one.
Content warning: Daddy/boy dirty talk, D/s, discussions of dysphoria (particularly bottom dysphoria), lots of musings about strap-ons and butch trans dick, sex. Overall, this is very personal.
It started with some dysphoria. That feeling I often have early in the day when I’m still coming back to my body, still welcoming myself whole again, and noticing the lack. Craving some weight between my legs, craving the tug and pull, craving his mouth around me. So I pumped it, and we kept talking. It makes sense, when I think about it — how many years have I been writing about how cock-centric I am? How many years have I talked about wanting strap-on sex vs non-strap-on sex at a ratio of 10:1? This isn’t new.
Get the password by joining the Patreon at any level, then read it here →
“Do you have specific resources that you would recommend for me to share with someone who is new to the kink scene? Books, and also digital resources. Mainly tips and introduction writing that you trust.”
Sure do!
There are a lot of sub-categories within kink, BDSM, and fetish. Are you looking for books about bondage? There are dozens! Or books about the intersection of sex and spirituality? Quite a few there too. How about books on power dynamic relationships? That’s a whole other list! Generally, people tend to include all kinds of how-to sex books in beginning guides, too — particular topics like anal sex, threesomes, and strap-ons that are sometimes considered kinky, but sometimes not, depending. Then, all of that opens the doors for topics like open relationships, healing sexual trauma or trauma in general, porn, the ethics of desire and fantasy, embodiment, sexual orientation, gender identity, and more.
So I’m narrowing it down and focusing on more general kink community, culture, concepts, and getting started with kink play.
We’re all bracing for the unknown aftermath.
We’re in the disaster; we’ve been it for thirteen months. But we’re starting to feel it stir. The newspapers say we can meet inside without masks; Facebook is full of informatics in carries shades of green, yellow, red, for what is safer and what is not. More and more of us are vaccinated. Things are opening up again.
And it’s spring. There is a burst of energy, a collective emergence, when the light starts coming back at the cross-quarter, and then a quickening at the spring equinox. The spring is a transition, like the fall, now happening in the Southern Hemisphere — unlike summer and winter, which are stabilizers. Waystations. Blossoms are here, planting, fistfuls of damp dark earth, the leaves uncurling from that baby-green color of chartreuse to the slightly more certain moss.
Get the password by joining the Patreon at any level, then read it here →
Tune in to our Best Lesbian Erotica Live Stream Virtual Event with authors Sonni de Soto, Ash Orlando, Tobi Hill-Meyer, and Meg Elison. Moderated by editor Sinclair Sexsmith, they will celebrate the release of the Best Lesbian Erotica of the Year, Volume 6 anthology from Cleis Press.
To watch, go to our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/therippedbodiceLA on Thursday, January 6th from 5:00-6:00 PM PT (you do not need a Facebook account in order to watch).
During the event, you will receive a 24 hour 15% off code to use on any purchase from our website!
We encourage you to ask questions for the authors in the comments section.
SONNI de SOTO is an Asian kinkster of color who knows that, while kink isn’t therapy, play can often be therapeutic. It can often be the place where we explore our deepest fears within a safe context. de Soto has had the privilege of publishing romantic erotica novels and stories with The Sexy Librarian, Cleis Press, Sexy Little Pages, and many others. Find more from her at patreon.com/sonnidesoto and follow her at facebook.com/sonnidesotostories.
ASH ORLANDO is a playwright, poet and short story writer from Sydney, Australia. They have performed in The Butch Monologues, the Butch/Stud annual performance night and various spoken word events. Ash is also a co-director of Gender Creatives, a collaborative group showcasing work by non-binary artists and writers. They don’t know much, but they know they love you, and that may be all you need to know.
TOBI HILL-MEYER is an indigenous chicana trans woman with 15 years experience working in the LGBTQ movement. She is editor of the Lambda Literary Finalist anthology Nerve Endings: The New Trans Erotic, author of children’s books A Princess of Great Daring and Super Power Baby Shower, and director of the award winning erotic documentary series Doing it Online. Currently, she serves as Co-Executive Director for Gender Justice League.
MEG ELISON is a science fiction author and feminist essayist. Her series, The Road to Nowhere, won the 2014 Philip K. Dick award. She was a James A. Tiptree Award Honoree in 2018. In 2020, she published her first collection, called Big Girl with PM Press and her first young adult novel, Find Layla with Skyscape. Meg has been published in McSweeney’s, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Fangoria, Uncanny, Lightspeed, Nightmare, and many other places. Elison is a high school dropout and a graduate of UC Berkeley. Find her online, where she writes like she’s running out of time, at megelison.com & @megelison.
SINCLAIR SEXSMITH (they/them) is “the best-known butch erotica writer whose kinky, groundbreaking stories have turned on countless queers” (AfterEllen), who “is in all the books, wins all the awards, speaks at all the panels and readings, knows all the stuff, and writes for all the places” (Autostraddle). Their short story collection, Sweet & Rough: Queer Kink Erotica, was a 2016 finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and they are the current editor of the Best Lesbian Erotica series. Find more of their work at sugarbutch.net.
Details TBA!
Kathleen Warnock was the editor of the Best Lesbian Erotica series for quite a few years, and is an amazing playwright and erotica writer, too. She runs the Drunken! Careening! Writers! reading series in New York City, and annually in December she hosted a Best Lesbian Erotica release party! The first one I went to was in 2008 (maybe??), and it was where I met authors like DL King, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Tristan Taormino, and queers like Lea Delaria (who was the guest editor one year).
It’s become a bit of a tradition! And then we get to say things like, “it’s the perfect holiday gift! Get one for all the stockings you need to stuff! Pick one up for Grandma!” etc :)
This year, we’re online! Come join us!
Featuring
Sarah Burghauser
BD Swain
Jacqueline St-Urbain
with your special guest host, Sinclair Sexsmith
and hostess, Kathleen Warnock
Thursday, December 16, 7pm ET
In a special ONLINE event!
RSVP here: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/ble-dcw
facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/492250745443585/
SARAH B. BURGHAUSER is a New Mexico-based writer and teacher. She holds an MFA from Calarts, where she has also taught. Sarah has been awarded fellowships with the MacDowell Colony, Lambda Literary Foundation, and Vermont Studio Center. Her first book, Infringe, is a lyric coming-of-age tale about being a queer Jew, and the places where sex and spiritual well being meet.
BD SWAIN (bdswain.com) is a butch dyke who writes queer smut. You’ll find BD’s stories on her site and in anthologies like Best Lesbian Erotica of the Year, Volume 4, Best Lesbian Erotica 2015, Best Lesbian Erotica 2013, and Unspeakably Erotic: Lesbian Kink. BD lives in Oakland and is currently working on a long form narrative and a collection of her dirty stories.
JACQUELINE ST-URBAIN has been a shit-disturber on the Canadian leather scene for almost two decades. The founder of the Unholy Army of the Night and co-founder of Unholy Harvest, Canada’s long-running weekend for leatherdykes and other queerdos, Jacqueline writes for a living, but loves writing smut so much more than her day job.
Elust is the only place where the smartest and hottest sex bloggers are featured under one roof every month. Whether you’re looking for sex journalism, erotic writing, relationship advice or kinky discussions, it’ll be here at Elust. Want to be included in Elust #145? Start with the rules, come back January 1st to submit something and subscribe to the RSS feed for updates!
Titrate My Urges, Chapter 1 (continued)
TIE me UP! TIE me DOWN! NEVER LET me GO!
Pecan Orchards and Alligators: Part I
A night on the town with Charlotte (Part 1)
Encouraged Bi With a View of Winter Wonderland
2 Nights of Bliss and Debauchery
I’m doing a new thing!
I’ve been talking about this for years and I’m excited to be actually making it happen. In 2022, through the Patreon, I will be running live conversations with other dominants and folks into D/s specifically about dominance, sadism, leadership, consent, choice, and all those things — hard and wonderful — that come with being on the D-side of the slash.
The conversations will be once a month, on the second Wednesdays at 6pm PT/9pm ET for an hour. They will be recorded and folks who are signed up through the Patreon will get the recordings.
I’ll be asking questions like:
… and many more, too — these are just a few to start. Maybe you’ve got some good questions to ask of some very smart D-type folks? Please share them and leave them in the comments!
I’m still lining up the whole year, but I have many amazing educators already planned, and I can’t wait to share them with you! If you don’t already know their work, you definitely should check out what they’re doing with their podcasts, education, videos, community organizing, and more.
I don’t know about you, but in the 20+ months of the COVID pandemic so far, in 2020 and 2021, I have had a very hard time staying in touch with my dominance. I used to lean on my community — events, play parties, conferences, retreats, double dates, cotopping dates — to keep me inspired, to keep me in my dominance headspace, to keep my relationship structure in a community context, and to keep me grounded.
I miss all of those ways we used to connect in person intensely.
I hope the Dom Sessions series can do some of those things: provide inspiration, encourage my D/s headspace, supporting the authority exchange in my relationship. And hopefully, they can do some of that for you, too.
Psst: submissives & switches & other folks who do not identify as dominants are welcome! Though the conversations will be dominant-focused, anyone can attend.
So far, some amazing folks! I will announce the others and update them here as I have them confirmed.
Miss Lola Sunshine is a kinky queer high femme who believes in glitter, excellent manners, and cooking with real butter. She loves Disney, Barbie, and Hello Kitty. When she is not at Disneyland, or traveling to Disney parks all over the world, she is a sex and kink educator who has helped host and facilitate play parties and gatherings for adult littles, queer and trans people, and people of color in the Bay Area, which is where she lives, works, and plays with her dog Cupcake, over two dozen mouse ears, and over 50 pairs of shoes.
Marcia Baczynski is an internationally recognized expert on sexuality, communication and personal empowerment who works to provide people with practical tools to create extraordinary relationships. Her primary mission is to help people overcome shame and get in touch with what they truly want — romantically, sexually and relationally — even if it’s off the beaten path.
As co-founder of Cuddle Party, Marcia has helped tens of thousands of people to speak up for the kind of touch they want, say No unapologetically, and foster more honest, connected relationships. She is a sought-after coach and presenter who has made hundreds of media appearances across the globe, including Rolling Stone, GQ, People, and Newsweek.
Marcia brings wisdom, humor, and creativity to all aspects of her work, and offers a fresh perspective on love, sex and relationships. When she’s not writing, teaching or traveling, you can find her hiking or camping in the woods, spending time with her family, or on a boat.
Trailblazing educator, sexologist, artist, and irritant to banality, Midori founded Rope Dojo and ForteFemme: Women’s Dominance Intensive. She penned the first English instruction book on Shibari titled, “Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage” in 2001, paving the way to the popularity of rope. Dan Savage calls her the “Super Nova of Kink,” while others affectionately call her Auntie Midori for her cool, tell-it-like-it-is, funny, reality-based teaching.
She is also the author of “Wild Side Sex,” “Master Han’s Daughter,” and “Silk Threads.”
During this pandemic, learn, laugh and enjoy her special online classes, events and art at www.patreon.com/PlanetMidori. Creative Living Coaching and Private Sexological Consultations: ask@planetmidori.com. Links: Instagram: PlanetMidori | Facebook: MidoriReallyMidori | FetLife: Midori | Twitter: @PlanetMidori
Daemonum X is a femme leatherdyke and lifestyle Dominant. She is a polyamory and BDSM coach offering strategies for successful relationships. She is the founder and Editrix of FIST, an anthology zine for leatherdykes, as well as Linked, A Polyamory Zine. More of her words on BDSM and power exchange can be found in Them, Autostraddle, and Wussy Mag. Daemonum X lives in Brooklyn with her two dogs.
You can follow her on social media @daemonumX, subscribe to her newsletter, and buy zines at fistzine.com.
Teagan fell in love with bootblacking at a young age, doing her shoes before church. Although these days her skills are being put to more salacious uses, she still identifies as a spiritual bootblack. For her, bootblacking harkens back to the foot-washing ritual. Teagan is International Ms Bootblack 2018, and the 20th person to hold that title. She is based in Oakland, CA. During her title year she invited our community to “Take Refuge” in the capable hands of our bootblacks. She’s the executive producer of the San Francisco Bootblack Contest.
Sir Damien is a queer, trans, Dominant, who has been a part of the leather community since 2012. He is the co-Head of House of Maison de Meson with Mademoiselle Ceci. He is passionate about bringing leather and kink education to the BIPOC community as well as creating intentional space for BIPOC in the leather community. To this end, Sir Damien has hosted hospitality suites, sat on panels and taught classes around the country. Since 2019, he has taken pride in making it his part-time job to aid and support IMsLBB as the Technical Producer.
Sir Damien is the Sergeant at Arms for ONYX NW, sits on the Board of Directors for the NCSF and for POCKLE, and is the co-founder of the Seattle Annex of the Carter Johnson Leather Library. He finds the time to further serve the leather and kink community as a mentor, educator and advocate for BIPOC and transgender kinksters. In addition to his leather journey, Sir Damien has a Masters degree in Computer Science, is an avid reader and has earned multiple patents for his engineering work in aviation.
Liquid (She/They/Them/That Bitch) is a Black Femme Presenting Gender Fluid, Queer, Social Worker, Educator, Published Model, and Sex Worker who has been a fixture in the BDSM/Leather community for 25 years. An accomplished competitor in her field, Liquid is no stranger to the stage. She has competed in and won Ms. Henrietta Hudson Fetish 2008 & 2009 and went on to become the only Woman & Black/POC to compete in the first Mr/Ms New York City Leather contest. She has modeled and volunteered in the community at events like Leather Pride Night, GMSMA, and Folsom Street East. She has presented for TES’ DW/sm group, was a panelist on LSM Presents Woman’s Herstory, and has raised money for various charities in and outside of NYC. Liquid was the first person and first woman of color to grace the cover of TESFest’s Prometheus Magazine two years in a row. Liquid held the title of the Northeast Leather Person 2020 & 2021. Liquid was also named one of GO Magazine’s 2021 “100 Women We Love.” Currently Liquid is a member of the Seattle Pacific North West Onyx Pearls, and member of the Lesbian Sex Mafia (LSM). Liquid continues to use her platform and many positions to educate, empower, and amplify voices of other Sex Workers, BIPOC LGBTQIA+ GNC/NB folx in and outside of the BDSM/Leather community.
Anton is the author of The Heart of Dominance and The Dominance Playbook, a kink and sexuality educator, and has had a lifelong passion for intimate authority and control. Find all his kink education work at www.ConsensualDominance.com.
PLEASE NOTE: 4pm Pacific / 7pm Eastern start time!
Jill Carter, IMsL 1996, has been active in the leather lifestyle for over 40 years. In 1996, she became the tenth International Ms Leather and the first African American woman to win the title. Her platform during her title year was “Saving our Leather History” and she mobilized the community with her “Each One Teach One” slogan. Everywhere she traveled she asked, and communities responded, donating both money and memorabilia to the Leather Archives. Her “Just Give Me One Dollar” speeches around the country raised awareness and funds for the then very young organization. At International Mr. Leather 1998, her speech raised enough money to pay the deposit for the building that now houses the LA&M.
Jill was the driving force behind the formation and development of the Ms. and Mr. World Leather Event, which introduced many unique contest elements that are incorporated in leather contests today. She has served on the Production Board of ABW and International Mr. Drummer and was the first woman of color to serve as an IML judge. She was the visionary behind the Unsung Heroes Award, recognizing individual who serves the community relentlessly, quietly from behind the scenes and are seldom noticed, but are integral to the community. She was the visionary behind A Leather Day of Caring, when leather community from around the world came together to display acts of kindness and caring to any and all. Vi and her have maintained their commitment to their Leather Daddies who instructed them in 1975 to carry on in their absence to carry on the “Each One; Teach One”, that still echoes throughout our community today.
She has been an officer or founding member of various organizations across the United States, and a speaker or workshop presenter for leather organizations and colleges and her book, “So You Wanna Be a Title Holder.” is considered a contestant *must read*. Jill is the recipient of the Pantheon of Leather Woman of the Year Award 1998 and 2001; Reader’s Choice Woman of the Year 1998; one-third of the Couple of the Year Award and the Mr. Marcus Hernandez Lifetime Achievement Award; The National Leather Association International Order of Merit and Lifetime Achievement Awards; the Emerald Award from the state of Washington and numerous other awards.
The Carter-Johnson Leather Library is the largest privately owned repository of the BDSM, Kink, Leather and Sexual Histories dating as far back as the 1700’s that they have collected and preserved for generations to come and they have no qualms about sharing their collection with the community.
Please note: different day & time!
Caritia’s fascination with the root/the body stems from a longing to deeply ‘listen’ to the (her) body holistically, from the inside out. Self-identifying and living in a queer, gender-fluid, BiPoC (afab) body, connecting with the LGBTQIA+ spectrum, as a sex worker and dominant, who is nd with dyslexia, whose art, education and consulting pursuits stem from a desire to advocate and support others to explore intentionally and intersectionally the boundaries around their bodies, sexuality and self-expression, using the key practices and language of kink alongside the 20+ years of lived personal & professional experiences. Caritia is a forever student of nuanced layers of being human.
A #sensualdominant exploring the edges of desire, intimacy & freedom for Black Queer Folx. instagram.com/blackqueerdom
Mademoiselle Ceci (she/her) is a Sadistic Afro-Indigenous Dominant Alpha Femme chasing life, philosophy, and adventure. She has been on various portions of her Leather journey for the past 17+ years, doing so more publicly since she began coming to the US in 2008. Education, history, hedonism and serving her various communities are her passions. When not caring for, and indulging in, her Family, Ceci spends her time serving as a griot at the Carter-Johnson Library and Collection, Vice President of POCKLE, Founder and Sergeant-at-Arms of the Seattle/PNW chapter of the Onyx Pearls and Executive Producer of IMsLBB. A playful Sadist at heart, Mademoiselle Ceci revels in the pain of others while maintaining a wicked giggle and an evil grin. A matriarch by nature, Mademoiselle Ceci takes great pride in loving and caring for those in her charge as co-Head-of-Household with Sir Damien at the Maison de Meson.
Can’t wait to share these conversations with you, and hear all your amazing questions about dominance and D/s, too. Hope you’ll join me.
This is a continuation of chapter 1 of the unpublished, unedited, untitled novel. Read the first part of chapter 1 here.
Content warning: breakup, sex scene, spanking, brat, dirty talk.
I try to focus. I will my hands to be present, will my mind to stay and be with Tally, with this body, with her skin and her naked vulnerability. She is vulnerable here, she is still naked here, despite my desire for more, this is as much as she can give me in this moment and I want to take it willingly, gratefully. I want to earn it, deserve it. My negative thoughts are certainly not helping my own focus or presence. I breathe, run my hands gently over her ass and thighs, soft, soft touches where she’s pink and swollen and a few little finger imprints are starting to darken.
Electricity runs through me as soon as I focus, as soon as I gather my energy back to me and direct it to her. Her body softens and I can feel her focus, too. In response to me, or just out of coincidence, I don’t know, but I like it. I feel attuned. I feel more connected. Maybe it’s me, maybe I’m the disconnect. Maybe I’m asking for too much. Maybe I have unrealistic expectations. Who really wants to give over like that? Honestly, wouldn’t they all rather be submissives when it suited their own needs? Who wants a strict Dominant, barking orders, demanding perfection? Perhaps someone. But what if I never find her? There must be someone. It is my belief that our desires are not that unique, that we all fall within the range of human desire and expectation and experience, so thus there must be our equal and opposite out there somewhere. “Just make sure your scars line up, equal and opposite,” that’s what X says.
The Magic Wand buzzes in my hand, I can feel it vibrating my shoulder and the bones of my arm, even the right side of my chest and neck and face. There’s less buzz in the handle than there is in the head, that soft plastic bulb the size of a tennis ball. I suppose it’s good for working kinks out of the body, too—the big muscles, the thighs, the back, the bottoms of the feet. X even told me that he got a little addicted to pressing it against the side of his temple or on his ear, and it felt just so so good, but it started to feel like he was rattling his brain. He probably was.
I press it against the backs of Tally’s knees, first. Just barely touching, a whisper. Just a little zzzt and then gone, just to surprise her, just to get her ready and remind her of the feeling. She yelps, jumping and jerking her body, her thighs jiggling. Oh I want to grab them, grip them hard, claw into their softness. I press it again into the backs of her thighs, harder this time, for longer, but then taking it away, moving up the back of her legs, alternating between the left and the right. She wants it on that sweet spot between her legs, she’s rubbing them together and I can see how it’s rubbing her pussy lips, too. She’s so wet.
“Good girl,” I whisper, more to myself than to her. I’m not sure she can hear me. Her head is down, hair falling over her shoulders and past her ears. It’s so thick I think it probably blocks the noise fairly effectively. She’s breathing heavy. Her skin is flushing, her cinnamon color is a little pink.
“Please, Harrison, please give it to me, I’ve been good, I promise I’ve been good, I need it, please … please, sir!” She remembers the “sir” at the last moment. I do like it when she begs. She hasn’t been good, but hearing her promise like that makes me want to coo to her how good she’s been, even if it isn’t true. The game of it, the play, is sometimes more powerful than the truth.
I position the toy right over her cunt, bouncing it gently off of her ass cheeks and that sensitive spot where her thigh meets her ass, just so she can feel how close it is. She gasps, begging some more.
“This what you want?” I growl in her ear, leaning over her body. I get a whiff of her shampoo, something floral and clean that reminds me of the girls in the early-morning classes I used to take in college. Intoxicating, for some reason. What is it about that girl shampoo that is always distinctive, always inciting desire?
“You have been very good, Tally. I’m proud of you, baby girl.” I don’t call her that often, or lightly. She mewls a little and softens, relaxing into the leather horse and rubbing her skin of her arms against mine where they overlap. “I want you to know how much I appreciate you. You know I do, right?” I touch the toy softly, as softly as I can manage, to her vulva directly, letting its bounce and vibration shift the sensation. I try to hold it still as she writhes and tries to get it in the right spot. She tries to nod and say yes but it comes out hmmmm, but I get the message. “You’re gorgeous, girl. Glorious. Your body is so fucking sexy.” I’m growling in her ear, starting to undulate my body on top of hers, she’s getting a rhythm down against the leather and against the vibrator, I can feel her thighs against my jeans, we’re getting a rhythm together and it’s working, it’s working. “I like the noises you make. You’re so incredibly hot. You know it’s hard for me to keep these jeans zipped, don’t you?” She nods, says mmmm in agreement. (This is what she wants to hear.) “You want my dick, girl? I know you do. You’ve asked for it before. You’re not going to get it tonight, but I know you want it. This is what you get, Tally, this right here, this vibrator and this orgasm, this is what you get. Go ahead and come girl, I know you want to. Can you do it yet? Can you do it for me?” She moans and thrusts harder, she’s getting the right spot finally and I can tell she’s so close by the way her whole body tightens and clenches. I don’t know if what I’m saying is going to help, but it probably won’t hurt. Probably. Though who knows what will set her off, sometimes it is the smallest thing I say.
We’re not a good match.
I try not to dwell on it while she’s coming. It might be the last time I get to watch her go through this tightening and releasing, this quake, le petite morte. That thought makes me immensely sad. She’s so lovely to watch. She should really do porn, I would watch her come all day. Maybe I should’ve had some orgasm endurance scenes with her before … before it became so obvious that we weren’t going to work. The way she cries out with her throat, pursing her lips and growling through her teeth, jaw clenched, hands gripping and tearing, she’s so gorgeous, collapsing everything down onto the horse when she comes.
I hold her and stroke her skin, getting lost in the magic of connection as my fingertips marvel against the curves of her and my head swims with the endorphins of endurance, of coaching someone through an ordeal scene that might be pushing just a little harder than they would like me to, but ultimately they are grateful for the encouragement. I can’t help it. I want to push, want her to take it for me, want her to want to please me with her body and her service and to take it just because I want her to. I suppose it’s lucky that our desires line up—that I want to spank her, and she wants to be spanked. That works, even if the games we’re playing underneath it or on top of those interactions don’t quite line up accurately. It feels dishonest. I can’t keep doing this. But her body … her beautiful lips, her smile, the way she kisses, the way she nestles into me and hums, content … I can’t get enough of it. I crave her when she isn’t around.
I crave something. I’m not certain it’s her.
Tally smiles up at me and peels herself off of the leather. “I’m ravenous!” she exclaims. “What have you got in your fridge?”
*
She putters around my kitchen wearing my button-down shirt. I didn’t know girls actually did that. When she raises her arms above her head, the shirt comes up just enough to show off her round, plump ass, and I find myself rubbing my lips with my thumb and watching intently. She has the sleeves rolled up to her elbows and only the bottom buttons buttoned. The crisp white of it contrasts against her skin.
After a few minutes she has a grilled cheese sandwich on the stove, smelling heavenly. She finds mustard and roasted red peppers, and adds those to the sandwich, pouring us both water and giving me quick kisses as she flutters around. I sit at the breakfast bar, my eyes following her every move. Am I staring? Is that rude? No, I’m paying attention, listening to her stories, connecting. This kitchen isn’t exactly the best place for that, but I’ll take it. The cabinets are cheap veneer, a light wood color that I’m certain isn’t real, and while I do feel lucky to enjoy many luxuries in this apartment, the kitchen isn’t really one of them. It’s cramped and not well laid out, with the stove against the refrigerator on one side and the sink on the other, with barely any counter space aside from this breakfast bar, which serves as my only table. But I love that I get to have my own dungeon, and I can’t afford most two-bedroom apartments. I’ve been here long enough to have rent control, so I won’t be leaving anytime soon.
“What was your favorite part?” Tally asks, pausing and resting her elbows on the counter across from me, swaying her ass side to side just a little.
“Of tonight?”
She nods.
“You know I like how you come. The way you thrash and cry out.”
She smiles shyly, reaching for my hand across the table and tracing one finger down one of mine. “I liked when you called me good.”
“When I said ‘good girl’?” I say softly, feeling that growl in my throat rising.
She nods again, steals a glance up at me from under her long lashes. “You don’t call me that very often.”
I nod a little in acknowledgment. “It seems like you want a daddy,” I say slowly. I don’t really want to open this up again, but it always seems to come up.
“I know. And you aren’t that.”
“More like, I don’t want to be. I can be, I have been. I want … more than that, now.” I want a 24/7 submissive, I want to tell her—but I swallow the words back down into my chest and hope they get planted there to grow something stronger tomorrow. I don’t know how to tell her what I want, and that she isn’t that. It doesn’t seem fair. She is so lovely, sexy, willing. I want that to be enough. But it isn’t.
She looks away and goes back to the stove, flipping the grilled cheese and moving it with the spatula, staring at it intently as if it’s going to do something brilliant any moment. “Why isn’t that me?” She asks in a small voice, still staring at the stove.
“I … really like you, Tally. You’re amazing. Plus, you make a mean grilled cheese,” I grin, trying to lighten things, but I can see it’s not going to blow over so quickly. Tally’s face doesn’t change, she has a whisper of devastation and a stripe of deep pain and rejection that I can’t overlook. I move over toward her and wrap my arms around her from behind, kissing her head. She’s almost as tall as me—probably at least 5’6” to my 5’8”—but I have a lot more bulk, and when I fold around her she seems so small. She leans her head back against my shoulder and nuzzles a little, but I can feel her upset.
She sighs and pulls away from me. “Yeah, well.” She flips the two grilled cheeses onto plates and sets them down on the breakfast bar, leaving me standing there, arms empty.
I guess there’s nothing else to say.
Tally takes a long drink from the water glass and picks up her grilled cheese, contemplating it as she takes a bite. The toasty bread crunches between her teeth and her eyes close a little, mouth turning up at the corners in a happy grin. I take a seat on the swivel bar stool next to her and try to focus on my sandwich.
We had fun. We’re not a match.
What else is there to say, really.
Tally and I finish our sandwiches mostly in silence, with the occasional polite post-sex conversation of lovers that are probably not going to see each other again. I second guess myself, and then make up my mind again. My dick is still hard and it doesn’t seem to be lessening anytime soon—I’m eager to take care of it. Maybe I’ll get some decent sleep tonight.
I wash the few dishes we’d used as she goes back into the dungeon to get dressed and get her things. Two small round blue plexiglass plates, the flat griddle from the stove, a quick rinse of the water glasses. I’m getting a little chilly, as midnight sets in and I’m still shirtless in jeans, but the warm water feels nice on my hands.
Walking back down the hall toward the dungeon, I snag my robe off of the back of the bathroom door where it’s hanging and slide my arms into it, wrapping it around me. It’s short, coming down just past my butt, and a dark blue terrycloth that feels like a big bath towel or a hug. It’s comforting. I don’t often wear it around other people, but then again, Tally isn’t just “people.” She’s always felt special.
See, there I go again. Ambivalent, wavering, weak. I need to make a choice and stick with it. There is part of me that is afraid of losing her, that I won’t find anyone better. I could enjoy her, I do enjoy her—I just have this craving for more. Is that unreasonable? Maybe I’m way out of my league here, maybe I shouldn’t be expecting so much. I don’t want to demand more than I deserve. And yet, in another way I kind of do. I want to be able to be so demanding and have someone else take it, figure it out, despite it being unreasonable or too much. Aren’t we all afraid of being “too much?” And aren’t we all, at some point, actually too much for someone else to handle? Maybe it’s wrong to turn that into a fetish, but I also can’t help what I like. X would say, “You are what you are. The trick is to figure it out, and be it, one hundred percent.”
I guess I’m just still figuring myself out, so no wonder it’s so hard to be it.
Tally is standing in the doorway at the dungeon, taking a long, forlorn look at the room like she knows she isn’t coming back here. She’s fine, I tell myself. I don’t have to protect her. I don’t have to make this anything other than what it is. She has her short red pencil skirt back on, her low T-strap heels, her white blouse and her black bomber jacket. She looks like a thousand bucks. Her purse is a patchwork of different colored leathers, sewn haphazardly together with a short strap. She gathers and flips her hair.
“Okay,” she says. “Time to go.”
I walk her to the front door. She turns in the doorway and looks at me, a crooked smile playing on her mouth, as if she isn’t sure what to say. I catch myself fidgeting with my robe and try to be a little more solid, a little more stoic. Come on, Harrison, you can do this. I step toward her and slide my hands around her waist, up under her shoulder blades, holding her close for a moment before pulling away to kiss her, tenderly, my lips on hers.
“Well, Tally …” I start.
“Yeah. It’s been real, Harrison. I’ll see you.” Her eyes are a little shadowy as she pulls away and slips out the door. I hear her shoes on the stairs down to the first floor and watch her cross the apartment building’s small lot to her car, a little two-door white 1980s BMW. The city has calmed down since the busy din of the day, but I can still hear the rush of cars from the nearby freeway, the hum of the streetlights, some people yelling drunkenly down the block. Tally gets into her car and pulls out of the lot, and I turn back into my apartment, locking the door behind me, and head into my bedroom to jerk off.
Rachel Kramer Bussel is writing a book on how to write erotica, titled How to Write Erotica, and it should be published either in late 2022 or early 2023 from Cleis Press. She interviewed me recently for the book and is going to use excerpts from it within the book — so here it is, in full. Can’t wait for the book!
What drew you to erotica as a reader?
I’ve always been fascinated by everything erotic, since I was a pre-teen. I started reading it because I would pursue the bookshelves of the houses where I babysat, after the kids would go to bed, and try to find anything salacious. At one house I found Nancy Friday’s book My Secret Garden — I devoured it, and I was hooked. I went on to buy all her other books that I could find, and then some of the books that were shelved next to hers in the library and bookstore too. It was really good to read that when I was young, I was probably 14; it’s a compilation of “women’s sexual fantasies,” some were written and some were audio interviews by Friday. It covered every fantasy I could think of and dozens more that I never would have thought of, and there was a whole section with women describing ways they masturbated (bathtubs, candles, screwdrivers, pillows), so I promptly tried all of them.
When I came out as queer later, when I was about 19, I devoured all the lesbian erotica I could find, trying to ask and answer the question of what women do together and what queer sex was like. I found the Best Lesbian Erotica series in 1999 and was again hooked, and have followed the series and read every one ever since.
When and why did you get started writing erotica? Where were you first published?
I started writing erotica during college, when I lived in Seattle and was studying at the Bent writing institute for queers as well as going to University of Washington. I would read explicitly erotic things at queer open mics, and share them with my writing groups, and it was key to my coming out process to explore these kinds of queer erotic desires not just by myself, but within community. While I had poems published other places, the first erotica I published in my university’s short-lived erotic literary journal called Penetalia: Collegate Erotica. A few years later, I had a short story accepted to Best Lesbian Erotica 2006, which was absolutely thrilling and the first book my work was ever published in.
Why have you continued to write erotica on an ongoing basis? Has writing erotica affected your personal/non-writing life in any way?
Writing erotica is many things for me: it’s activism, as making queer, trans, nonbinary, and kink identities visible is a big deal and continually important to share what queer people do as ideas, roadmaps, options for folks who are coming in to these identities. It’s also a personal inquiry for me, very full of introspection and omphaloskepsis, and it is a way that I both process the world around me and push myself forward into my own evolutions. I use erotic writing as a tool to become more myself, explore myself, and write myself toward what I want and who I want to be.
How did you decide on your pseudonym?
When I started Sugarbutch in 2006 anonymous blogs were much more common and popular than they are now, so it made a lot of sense to use some anonymity and a pseudonym. Claire is one of my favorite names, so I started there, and adding “Sin” as an erotic pseudonym made a lot of sense — I was looking for a way to make it more masculine. The “Sexsmith” part came later, it was just Sinclair for a long time, until I started being asked to do things and it became more apparent that I needed a last name. I was asked to be part of a documentary about sex blogs in New York City and started hunting for a last name, and I saw an interview with Ron Sexsmith in a magazine and it clicked.
How do you define erotica?
Just about any writing that is sensual, arousing, kinky, or sexual — sometimes all of those, sometimes one and not others. I believe many, many things can be erotic and sensual, not just sex and kink.
What do you think sets your erotica apart/makes it unique?
My work is explicitly queer and kinky, and usually contains butch/femme dynamics, butch/boy dynamics, nonbinary and trans characters, dominance and submission, consent, aftercare, and a rich internal emotional world. I see my work in a lineage of writers like Patrick Califia, Xan West, Carol Queen, and many other leather and kinky writers who have come before me.
How do you get ideas for your erotica?
Mostly from my own life — either from scenes I have actually had, from fantasizing, or from community and friends’ inspirations and ideas. Sometimes I’m challenged to write something a certain way, sometimes I challenge myself and sometimes that comes from writing friends or mentors.
Which pieces of your erotica have been most popular and what kinds of erotica have been most popular on your site Sugarbutch (however you want to quantify that), and why do you think that is?
The most popular stories have been butch/femme kinky erotica stories, and stories with daddy dynamics (both daddy/girl and daddy/boy). These stories have pretty high search rankings, and get quite a lot of traffic from organic search — because the internet is for porn, after all, and erotica with daddy dynamics in it is in high demand. I think people continue to be curious about the erotic and power dynamics within family configurations.
Which methods have you found to be the best ways to promote your work as an erotica author and/or editor, and why have they been successful for you?
Patreon, my own personal mailing list, and Twitter are my major focuses to promote my work. Twitter seems to be the best of all of the social medias for allowing explicitly sexual content. It has been an ongoing challenge to share sexually explicit content on social media, and because my website is sexually explicit I am not allowed to promote it on channels like Facebook and Twitter, so I don’t even have the option to pay for ads. I focus much more on my own channels that I can control, like my mailing list and Patreon, and on Twitter, which helps me build relationships and listen to people who are reading.
As an erotica anthology editor of the Best Lesbian Erotica of the Year series and other titles, what do you look for from story submissions?
I look for strong interior landscapes, emotionality, fleshed-out characters, unique and realistic situations, and stories rooted in queer experiences and community. Ideally, I want a wide range of gender expression, sexual expression, kink expression, race, neurodiversity, and ability, so I’m always looking for those too. I don’t always get those, but they stand out when I do.
What advice would you give aspiring authors?
Find and create a writing group — that is the best way I’ve found to keep challenging myself, get feedback, and learn to love the editing process. Also, the age-old advice of collecting 100 rejections is also a very worthy pursuit, as it really helps build up that muscle for submitting pieces and not being as disappointed by rejections.
Is there anything that you see in submissions that puts a story in the immediate no category?
Nonconsent and cheating would immediately be nos, unless I can see a way to edit it out simply. Because this particular series (Best Lesbian Erotica) is intended for a very general audience,
Who are 1-2 of your favorite erotica authors and why are you fans of their work?
Patrick Califia and Xan West are two of my favorites of all time. They inspire me personally, with their depictions of kink, responsibility, ethics, and trans content, and they inspire me professionally to write the dark, dirty stuff, to go for the jugular, and to include the messy, human aspects of sex, kink, and relationships.
Have you ever faced any negative repercussions from writing erotica and if so, did that change how you approach the genre?
Not really. The only negative repercussions I can think of are from writing memoir explicitly about people that I slept with or dated, without their permission — and that is more about me not getting consent than it is about writing erotica in general. That was years ago, and I don’t do that anymore; if I write about people explicitly (which is rare) I always get permission from them and let them see the work first before I publish it.
Best Lesbian Erotica of the Year Volume 6 is due out in January 2022, and includes 23 incredible stories, including some of my favorite erotica writers, like BD Swain, Ash Orlando, Katrina Jackson, Tobi Hill-Meyer, and so many more.
Without further ado, here is the table of contents:
1. Something Had Shifted — BD Swain
2. Home — Ash Orlando
3. Documenting Desire — Luisa Margo Park
4. Code — Meg Elison
5. Private Dancer — Meka James
6. Operation O — Therin Salem Christy
7. Being Present — Tobi Hill-Meyer
8. New Normal — Sonni de Soto
9. A Good Day — Lianyu Tan
10. Something Slutty — Mx. Nillin Lore
11. The Office Halloween Party — Bear Nicks
12. Conductor — Megan Stories
13. Bridesmaids — Katrina Jackson
14. A Year of Love, An Evening of Lust — Quenby
15. Rematch — Tiara-Jordanae
16. Be Rough — Kel Hardy
17. Take Me To Church — Titus Androgynous
18. Relentless — Sinclair Sexsmith
19. I Just Really Love Cats — Cassandra Cavenaugh
20. Like a Fucking Mother — Sarah B. Burghauser
21. The Moon and Your Eyes — August In Flux
22. Magic Is Coming — Stephani Maari Booker
23. Homecoming — Jacqueline St-Urbain
If you contributed to this book, here’s an image you can share!
Elust is the only place where the smartest and hottest sex bloggers are featured under one roof every month. Whether you’re looking for sex journalism, erotic writing, relationship advice or kinky discussions, it’ll be here at Elust. Want to be included in Elust #144? Start with the rules, come back December 1st to submit something and subscribe to the RSS feed for updates!
Witchy Pegging Session- A Domination Duo
Titrate My Urges: Chapter 1 (Untitled, Unpublished Novel Excerpt)
The Queen Will Mindfuck You Now…
Hard to get out of bed, sometimes
Anal Action Duo with Vanessa and Mr & Mrs S Couple
Kinky Devils. Torturegarden Halloween Party
Sex Work Is Work – But So Many Forces Are Working Against It
8 Small Penis Humiliation Ideas To Make Subs Cry
This is chapter 1 of the unpublished, unedited, untitled novel that I wrote for Nanowrimo a few years ago. I’m starting up Nanowrimo for the 5th time tomorrow — wish me luck! — so I thought I’d share a little bit from a different project. This piece is also an excerpt from this novel, though much later in the book.
Content warning: sex scene, spanking, brat, dirty talk.
Her bottom is blushing pink under my palms, despite her dark skin; she is warming up quite nicely. She’s starting to move her hips in that undulating, pulsing desirous way that makes me ache to rip open the buttons of my fly and shove hard into her, bury myself up to the hilt. She’s still a little delicate for that. She wants romance, coaxing.
I’m getting a little tired of having to titrate my urges.
Her thighs are thick and her calves are strong, she’s up on her tiptoes bent over the small leather-covered horse in my dungeon, the spare room I’ve been working on building up into an SM space for the past year or so. She’s the one who asked for a spanking tonight, after pouting through dinner and not quite pouring my wine right, even though I’ve trained her to do it before. Maybe it’ll remind her for next time. If there is a next time.
“Harrison,” she whimpers, pushing her heavy dark hair out of her eyes and looking back at me. Her eyes are watery and big, wide-open and that deep brown sparkly gold color that has me enamored of her beauty. The way she would blink those long lashes and look up at me from under her bangs and toss it, just a little, out of her face—oh that gets me. That gets me good.
“That’s ‘Sir’ to you, young lady,” I growl in reply, smacking her ass again with my open palm. My hand is getting tired, palm is getting more sensitive, but she’s not quite that shade of red that I want her to be, so I have to keep going. No way to back off now. She’s pushing her ass back into my hands and breathing heavy, writhing on the horse and raising up onto her toes and back to her feet as she tries to get me to touch her between the legs, her arousal already visible.
But this isn’t for her, this is for me.
Except, it kind of is for her. She’s the one who wanted this. She’s the one who thought a spanking after screwing up the wine would absolve her of her missteps. Me, I don’t really believe in punishment—it’s proven not to work, after all, as a long-term strategy of training. Plus, these things that we play with should be fun, pleasurable, reward—not given as a negative. But, I do think it can absolve some guilt, if one is actually feeling guilt. Perhaps I can smack some guilt into her. Perhaps if I hit her hard enough, she’ll remember that she’s in trouble. No, no, bad idea—I don’t want to play from some place of anger or frustration. I want the intention of love and care behind every swat. I want this to be the time we connect most deeply—to ourselves, and to each other.
But Tally is off in her own world, writhing and biting the leather horse, swaying her hips back and forth and grinding into the leather like it might jump up and caress her if she does it well enough. This isn’t about pleasure, except that it is.
If she wasn’t just so damn sexy, I would have a lot more will power. I would resist the ways she’s trying to get me to do particular things and instead impose what I want, deny her, attempt to make her earn what it is she wants only to take it away at the last minute. But she pouts and whines, and she gets that look in her eye like I’m being so completely unreasonable, and it isn’t just play.
She tosses her hair again. It falls down her upper arm on the left side in a cascade that looks like a blanket, it’s so dense I can’t see her skin through it. I shift my body over hers so I can grip it and take as much as I can into my small hand and fist it, pulling her head up by it, just a little bit of pressure, pulling her neck long, as I rub her ass with my right hand. I hit her ass again, this time with the heel of my hand, almost a punch. Cupping my hand and more smacks. She lifts herself a little onto her hands to support her weight and gasps, eyes closed, mouth open. Her teeth are crooked in the front and it makes her smile look just a little bit lopsided, just a little stronger on the left than on the right, like a little kid who lost a tooth. Her lips are full and red from all the kissing, from the arousal, from the leather she’s been rubbing them against. Her cheeks are flushed. Her ears are pinned to her head by her long hair which I still have in my fist, pulling just a little too hard, she’s not sure she likes it but she does, so she doesn’t protest. Her neck stretched like this makes her back arch and her ass flip into the air, those girl-curves so exaggerated. Her body is already full of curves, her ass and thighs and breasts and stomach, plump and pudgy, something to grab on to, something to cuddle against.
“You look so pretty like this,” I say into her ear, soft and low, letting that growl come out of my throat. I kiss her neck and jaw and she swoons, opens her throat wider for me to reach her. She tastes like honey and sweat and I want to devour her. Want to rip at her throat.
I can’t. I can’t. Don’t get carried away.
“Mmmm I like that … that feels good,” she coos, reaching for my jeans and trying to get closer to my body. It’s hot in here, I’ve taken my shirt off, the light brown fur on my chest only slightly damp from sweat and work, my nipples hard. My light brown hair is just tickling the tops of my ears—it’s time to get a haircut. I keep it shaved short on the sides, just long enough on top to push it back and style it in some modern masculine style that makes me look older than I really am. It makes me feel strong, official. Still have my shoes on, the soft brown leather loafers that I’ve broken in so well over the years. I like to have the click of a sole against the hardwood floor while I play. I like the effect, the intimidation.
“Tally, wait,” I order, impatient already. “Not yet.”
“But I want to!” she immediately replies, her lower lip coming out just a little in that pout that I can’t resist. I want to smack her face. I almost bring my hand up to do it, but I know she’d get mad about it. Feel punished, but in the bad way. I can feel how she wants to. I know what she wants — my dick — though I have continuously refused to give it to her. First, I tried to ensure her that she had to earn it; then I tried to explain that I wasn’t ready; then I just flat-out denied her. She doesn’t seem to get it. It’s not all about that, for me. She’d asked me if I was one of those “tantra guys who never come.” No, I replied. I just don’t do that with everyone. We’ll see how far we get, you and me. Maybe it’ll happen eventually. But don’t count on it. “Do you still want to fuck me, though?” She’d asked with that wide-eyed stare up at me. Of course.
Fuck, of course I do. The way she writhes and coos and comes while biting her lip and thrashes and her hair goes everywhere. The way she breathes out and reaches for me. The way she softens. I crave it, I crave girls in that state, I wake up thinking about her face and my fingers inside her and when it’s going to be my hand and when it’s going to be my dick. I’m just not ready.
Women aren’t really used to men who don’t use their dicks. Or men with these kinds of boundaries, for that matter.
“Just a little longer, girl,” I reply, pushing her head back down to the leather horse and focusing again on her ass, smacking her with my fingers, small upward swats that make her gasp and sting my fingertips. I keep her hair in my hand and push her into place, lean against the horse gently in the curve at her side between her hips and shoulders. She leans into me, just enough to shift her position on the horse.
“Harrison, that’s not fair!” she protests again, but gives in, sighing down onto the leather. She tucks her arms under her and it feels like a protesting pout again, an annoyance.
I’m just about done with this back-and-forth game. I don’t know how to get what I want when she is only interested in getting what she wants. It’s just not the game I want to play. I consider telling her to get up and get her clothes and get out, but I’m not that mean. Plus, I really like her, and the way her ass is reddened and her sex is all swollen is making me salivate. Maybe I can at least help her get off, before she goes.
“You’ve done a good job, Tally,” I compliment, trying to boost her up a little more so she can take it. Come on, just a little more, girl. You can do it. I want more, dammit, why can’t I have more.
“You mean it?”
“I do. I appreciate you taking this for me, though I do want you to be able to take more, and with less protest. Maybe that will come with time. You’ll get there.”
She relaxes a little more, reaches out to touch my jeans again, but just for contact, not a request.
“I’m going to go get a vibrator for you. Stay here, don’t move. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“Yes? Yes what?”
She sighs and rolls her eyes. Actually rolls them! At me! For enforcing a protocol we have set up, for expecting her to do the things we’ve agreed upon. This girl, this girl.
“Yes, sir,” she offers reluctantly.
I get up to retrieve the Magic Wand from my toy box against the wall and plug it in. That eye roll is just about the last straw. What am I going to do with her? I can’t just do whatever I want, she needs too much hand-holding. I want to explore the side of me that needs, that wants, that could lose myself in another’s body, in a woman’s body, in a submissive’s obedience. I want to be able to follow my impulses. I want to be met and held there. There’s something down underneath that, but I’m not sure what it is. I want to find out.
Sliding up against her body, I turn on the Magic Wand so she can hear it. She gasps. She knows that sound. Not everyone loves the Magic Wand, the mother of all vibrators, but once you get used to it, it becomes an essential piece of the toy box. Don’t think it’s just for the girls, either—it feels amazing on my balls. I keep one handy for those who can handle the lawn mower intensity of vibration. When Tally came to me, she rarely came any other way—which was fine, it meant that I could really control when and how she came. She protested that kind of play, however, despite that she had dropped to her knees and declared her determination to “become your favorite submissive” on our second date. But three months in? I, well, I have doubts.
This Magic Wand has to stay plugged into the wall, but the leather horse is strategically placed such that it reaches just fine. She’s moaning and writhing, she knows what’s coming; I’m glad she can’t really see me, or perhaps she’d be clued in to how bored I am. Would she care? Who knows. I can’t help that we aren’t the right match, I just can’t.
Tally is arching her back, showing off her fabulous ass, stretching up on her toes trying to reach her hips back into me, into the Wand, into anything that remotely resembles sensation so she can get off, and get off now. I want to scold her for it, point out her desire and embarrass her with it, but I’m not sure how she’ll respond to that. Considering how she thinks of herself as such a super-sub, she really hasn’t laid out what it is that she likes and dislikes, so I’ve had to come across it during our scenes, which is a lot less fun for me. I wish she could be clearer about it. Wish she could just tell me outright. We’ve played enough, it should be easier now to be clear with me, but she’s still evasive, acts shy and giggly when we start talking about sex, as if she is so innocent and can’t possibly know what it is that she likes. It is such an act, and I hate it.
Maybe it’s rude of me to keep playing with her when it’s so clear that I’m not into her. I don’t mean it as a pity-fuck, I really don’t. I want it to work. She’s so fucking sexy. Her body … her body. And I haven’t been with a woman in a long time, a very long time really. I’ve been meeting with my mentor X for the past six years and before that, well, let’s just say I didn’t have any luck. It’s just that, now, after all the work with X over the years, I know what I’m looking for. Call it a character flaw, if you wish, but I generally think that I deserve to get what it is that I want, and I’m not really afraid to make some waves while I’m trying to get it.
Still, I mean Tally no disrespect. I do genuinely have fun playing with her—or, I usually have, up until tonight. For some reason, I just don’t have the patience tonight. I just don’t find her quirks as charming as I did before. Maybe some of the novelty of a willing, gorgeous woman has worn off, and I’m remembering all of those things that make my dick hard and my mouth water, all of those traits of obedience and discipline, assistance and service. I crave someone with devotion, with willingness, who will strive along side me as I figure out what’s next. And not just someone—a woman, an incredible woman, someone open and good and giving and game and I just don’t know where to find her.
I am SO THRILLED to share with you the cover for Best Lesbian Erotica of the Year Volume 6!
You might have seen some of the images I teased on Twitter …
Best Lesbian Erotica of the Year Volume 6 is the fourth book in the Best Lesbian Erotica series that I’ve edited, and the sixth anthology I’ve edited. Honestly, the practice is helping, and I think I’m getting better at these collections each time. I’m particularly proud of this one, I think each and every story is amazing — and I can’t wait for you to read them and let me know what you think!
Reaching far beyond the confines of traditional erotica, prepare to explore the intersections of ace and kink, of pan and submissive, of exquisite torment and explicit consent.
In the sixth stunning and representative volume, Sinclair Sexsmith once again offers a dazzling array of voices, perspectives, and persuasions navigating boundaries and identities in truly inventive narratives. These twenty-three steamy stories are meant not just to titillate, but to validate—spanning past the pulsing power of desire to make pleasure and trembling release both a healing and radical act.
Find and then lose yourself as you traverse the complexities of full-spectrum sexuality, one delectable story at a time.
From your favorite local bookstore, or from Amazon (if you must!). I will have signed copies up in my little store as soon as I have my own copies.
PS: Don’t forget, submissions for Best Lesbian Erotica of the Year Volume 7 are due October 31st. If you need an extension (a week or two), email me, and I’ll hook it up for you.
I mentioned the “relationship smorgasbord” to some friends recently, and they hadn’t heard of it. I thought it was more common than that! So I’m sharing it with you all here to encourage us to use this model more.
Here, let me show you what it is, then give a little more context and thoughts:
Cool, right? For folks who are designing our own relationships outside of societal expectations, I bet you’ll look at this and get it right away.
I like this quote from The Center For Growth (that I found via the Multiamory podcast):
“The relationship smorgasbord is meant for all types of relationships – platonic, familial, romantic, sexual, etc. – and is indeed meant to challenge and make clear exactly what we mean when we are using these descriptors.”
The relationship smorgasbord is technically titled the relationship anarchy smorgasbord. If you haven’t poked around in the relationship anarchy structures, it’s worth doing — again, even if you are monogamous and don’t have multiple partners! You still have multiple relationships with family, friends, work, community, and more. Amelia Lichtenberg has a good, basic write-up on relationship anarchy, and there are many, many more writings and thinkings online.
Don’t be scared by the word “anarchy” though — it’s a very thoughtful structure that, at it’s core, is about honoring each relationship in one’s life.
If you want to dive in a little deeper to the relationship smorgasbord, check out a recent episode of the Multiamory podcast. I really like their discussions and the depth they get into with these relationship theories.
While I’m not brand new to these theories, I am still learning, and I’d be happy to hear any recommendations you have for books, podcasts, articles, or other things that dive in to these topics.
If you are anywhere near polyamorous community, relationship psychology, or even just new and interesting books, you have probably heard about the book Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy by Jessica Fern.
It was published about a year ago, in October 2020. I zipped through it over the winter and honestly, I was probably too depressed for any of it to really sink in. I read it and thought, meh. Whatever. Between the election, the ongoing pandemic, and the winter darkness and SAD in Alaska, my own depression was pretty debilitating. I suppose it wasn’t very realistic to read relationship theory and think that I would learn something, but wow — I really didn’t.
When I re-read it in July this year, it was like I had never read it before. And, to be honest, it blew open my mind. It was exactly what I needed to read at the time, and it really helped me wrap my mind around some of the issues I’d had in polyamory in the past, and what I wanted for myself in the future.
Just in case you haven’t read much about it.
Attachment theory has entered the mainstream, but most discussions focus on how we can cultivate secure monogamous relationships. What if, like many people, you’re striving for secure, happy attachments with more than one partner? Polyamorous psychotherapist Jessica Fern breaks new ground by extending attachment theory into the realm of consensual nonmonogamy. Using her nested model of attachment and trauma, she expands our understanding of how emotional experiences can influence our relationships. Then, she sets out six specific strategies to help you move toward secure attachments in your multiple relationships. Polysecure is both a trailblazing theoretical treatise and a practical guide.
The book is broken into three parts: part one is the basics of attachment theory, why it’s important, and how the different kinds of attachment manifest in relationships. Part two is the basics of polyamory, with charts and graphs, definitions, and concepts. Part three is the combination of the two, and Jessica Fern’s theory she calls HEARTS, which answers the central question: how can I be more secure in my polyamorous relationships?
I could detail the HEARTS theory, and go over some of the charts — but honestly, you should just read the book and draw your own conclusions.
One of my biggest a-ha moments when reading the book was the section in part two about identifying the “why” for yourself in polyamory — looking at the motivations and reasons behind why you are (or want to be) nonmonogamous. She also calls them the needs that are being fulfilled by polyamory. She listed three common reasons from a study that came out, and then added three more reasons of her own from her experiences working with polyamorous clients in therapy and from her own life. These might not be your particular reasons, but I thought they covered pretty good ground.
The reasons were:
… And these really hit home for me. I ended up ranking them in order for myself, writing about what I thought they meant and how they particularly applied to my life. I wrote about what I needed and what ways dating, having sex with other people, and having other relationships were fulfilling to those needs.
I mean, I don’t know about you, but this last year and a half has been huge for my own self-reflection, and I had to face up to where some of my needs weren’t getting met, not just in my relationship but in my life in general. I’ve been trying to figure those out.
Go listen to an interview with Jessica Fern if you want to know about the HEARTS theory and don’t want to read the book — I found it profoundly useful. It’s an acronym that stands for things needed to have secure attachment in a relationship. They are:
H: Here (being here and present)
E: Expressed Delight
A: Attunement
R: Rituals & Routines
T: Turning Towards after Conflict
S: Secure Attachment With Self
More importantly than the ideas and definitions of HEARTS, perhaps, are the questions she offers for reflection and the exercises she suggests when you notice that you and your partner are lacking in one of these areas. I want to go through each one and go through the questions and exercises with rife. We’ve started doing some of that, though we’re going slowly and it will take some time.
I’m really excited to have this as a tool to use and dive into to support my relationships.
Pretty much everyone.
If you are someone who puts thought and effort into your relationships, this will be useful. If you are curious about attachment, this book has some of the best descriptions of attachment that I’ve read. If you are monogamous or monogamish, I still highly recommend reading it, as it helps to break open some of the conventions about attachment and monogamy, too.
Also, if you have read other books or listened to podcasts about attachment in the past and still feel like you don’t really get it — which is how I was feeling, going in to reading this book — I think the author does a fantastic job of breaking down attachment styles. You could even skip the section on polyamory, if that doesn’t so much apply to you, and just read the attachment part and the part three about applying secure attachment. Applying it to one partner instead of multiple partners will still be very useful.
If you aren’t much of a book reader, the audio book of Polysecure is fantastic, and read by the author. Also, Jessica Fern has made many appearances on podcasts, including places like Multiamory, and explains her theories really well in some of these interviews. Highly recommend if you’re curious about the concepts but don’t want or don’t have time to read a book.
Or are you going to? Looking forward to hearing more about what you think of it in the comments.
Buy it on Bookshop and independent bookstores will get a kickback from your purchase, or buy it on Amazon. These are affiliate links and I will also get a small percentage of the sale if you use my links. Thanks for supporting me!
Once upon a time (you might remember this), I wrote up the Crash Pad Series episode #319 with ACAB and Unkle Daddy, who used a clit pump and a sleeve over it during their play. Go check out the scene on Crash Pad if you haven’t seen it yet — or bookmark it for later — it’s pretty fantastic.
I’ve had a clit pump for years, but ever since that scene I’ve been searching for the right sleeve that would work to go over it. I bought a few things, mostly Doc Johnson products, because those are readily available and affordable, though they tend to be pretty awful quality silicone (are they even silicone? Maybe more like sil-i-gel, or one of those other plastic variants).
But finally, I came across the Joystick, which is made by Transthetics, a company primarily making prosthetics geared toward trans men. (They have some other interesting products too, though because they’re a small company I have been purchasing their toys myself and I just can’t afford to try them all. I have the Hot Rod in addition to the Joystick, as I’ve been working on a post about strokers and extenders.)
The Joystick also has some other very cool features that I won’t really go into here, but you can read about on their website, including a reservoir in the tip that can be used to hold fluid and ejaculate, and a vibrator that you can control with a ring. They call it “strapless,” and say that it can be worn without a harness, and suggest to buy it with their brand of undies that are suggested to hold the Joystick in place. I didn’t buy those — if you did, how are they? Worth it? — and if you don’t want to either, you might want some men’s underwear with a “separate pouch” or o-rings built in. They’re often called “enhancement underwear” or some such. (I’ve been looking around for a guide to them — I might have to make one myself.) These are the ones I like, but there are many. They also hold a packer in place really well.
I have three different clit pumps: the Deluxe Pump from LA Gear, the Trans Masc Pump from New York Toy Collective, and the deluxe Trans Masc Pump also from NYTC.
The LA Gear pump is much higher quality and has lasted me more than 15 years now, but it is much more expensive ($100+ for all the accessories and the pump). I’ve written about clit pumping a few times in the past, but I haven’t detailed the LA Gear pump specifically — though of all the pumps I’ve written about and tried, it’s the only one that I still have and still use.
The NYTC pump is new to the market and I’m thrilled that they’re offering a pump at a much more affordable price ($40!). The deluxe NYTC pump has a release valve, which I highly recommend if you’re game to spend a few more dollars, and it comes with three different sizes of cylinders, which may not be useful right at the beginning (you might want to stick with the 1″ for a while) but you might indeed want to someday graduate to 2″ or beyond.
Unfortunately, the NYTC pump won’t work with the Joystick sleeve, because you can’t disconnect the pump cylinder from the hose without losing the seal. But, it’s still an excellent option if you’re reading this and want to try pumping, but don’t want to invest in the LA Gear pump yet. And there are other great things you do with it — like pump, and then wear a sleeve like the Hot Rod or the Phallos Stroker (which is currently sold out, but I will be writing about this more soon!).
(Side note: Did you know you could buy dildos on Etsy?! There are quite a few indie silicone makers over there doing interesting designs!)
It’s a pretty simple premise: use the pump, disconnect the hose from the cylinder, and then put the Joystick sleeve OVER the pump itself.
You might have to fold the Joystick back a bit in order to get the cylinder deep enough into it. The hole in the Joystick is tight enough that you can’t just push the cylinder into it — or, at least, I can’t. If you have any suggestions for how to best insert cylinder, please let me know! Email me or leave them in the comments.
It is generally safe to leave the cylinder on for half an hour or more, but it might take some trial and error to practice with how intense (how much PSI, I suppose) you want to pump before adding the sleeve, since it’s much harder to adjust the intensity after the sleeve is on and the pump hose is disconnected. Try it less intense at first, and work up to more intense.
It might take some practice and careful play to figure out how much sensation is too much and what feels good — but hey, that’s where the fun stuff is, right?
Have fun! If you try it and have any tips, I’d love to hear them in the comments.
Elust is the only place where the smartest and hottest sex bloggers are featured under one roof every month. Whether you’re looking for sex journalism, erotic writing, relationship advice or kinky discussions it’ll be here at Elust. Want to be included in Elust #143? Start with the rules, come back November 1st to submit something and subscribe to the RSS feed for updates!
The Man with the Golden Tongue
Is it Normal for Couples to Enjoy Cuckolding
King Cocktopus. Duo with a Sexy Couple and Alissa Thorne
Uberkinky Violator. DP Fun with Toys
Let’s talk Prostate: A guide for those new to Prostate Play
Non-binary Honorific Terms for A Dominant
The Mystery That is Madam Maeve
Wicked Wednesday: Droit de Seigneur 11
Just in case you haven’t seen it — and I bet you have — the call for submissions to Best Lesbian Erotica of the Year volume 7, due out in December 2022, is due at the end of October. Don’t let the word “lesbian” fool you — this is focused on women in the broadest sense of the world, obviously including trans women but also including nonbinary folks of all kinds who are rooted in lesbian experiences. Just, no men.
But in case you do write about men, there are two other calls for submission you might want to check out that are due very soon.
Can’t wait for this second volume — the first one was fantastic. Details:
Smut Deadline: Oct 4th, 2020 [NEW DEADLINE]
Romance Deadline: Oct 4th, 2021 [NEW DEADLINE]
Payment: $100 and a copy of the book
3,000-7,000 words for Smut or 4,000-9,000 for Romance, although shorter or longer stories will also be considered
See all the information over on Tobi’s website.
Mx. Nillin is a prolific writer, and has pieces in multiple Best Lesbian Erotica anthologies — by which I mean, they write a lot, and I really like their work. I’m looking forward to seeing what they put together in this anthology.
2,500 to 4,000 words
Due November 1, 2021
Pays $50 and one copy of the book
Here are all the details on Nillin’s site.
Check out these other resources, if you haven’t already, for other places to submit your erotic works.
You can also follow the hashtag #CallForSubmissions or #CallsForSubmission (people use both) on various social media platforms, and some random calls will come across your feed.
Do you have any recommendations of places to look for calls for submission? I’d love to hear them.
In the nonbinary D/s groups I was holding last year, this question came up so frequently: What titles and honorifics do we want to use for a nonbinary dominant?
The usual are all so gendered: Sir, Ma’am, Mistress, and (that term with much controversy, that I’m not personally using any longer) Master. There have been plenty of arguments that even the gendered dominant terms are still, in fact, gender neutral, and can and should be divorced from gender and taken up by anyone who resonates with them. I generally agree with that — I think if we find a word that resonates and feels like it conveys the kind of dominance that we like, that is probably a good one to use.
The most common “gender neutral” or nonbinary honorifics I hear suggested are Mx, Mixter, and Mixtress, but they still are a little bit gendered in their form, and the x is often pretty awkward for people to pronounce. Perhaps we’ll get more used to it in years to come, and we’ll see a rise of its use. We’ll see.
But there are many others! Such as:
A quick Google search brings up a few more resources, and here are a few good quotes from them:
“You could go the medieval route, ala “Your Grace” or “Your Majesty”. You could do a military route, like “Commander” or “Captain”. You could go a 90s anime gangster route, like “Boss”. Or you could be more sappy and be addressed as “Beloved” or “My love”.” — From the Genderqueer Reddit
This image has also been making the rounds on social media (original source unknown). I do want to remind folks that “Yas Queen” is AAVE, as it is cultural appropriation for white folks to be using those phrases. One of the many reasons it’s important to know where your phrases come from, what the linguistic cultural history of them is, so you can be certain to stay respectful.
Still, it can help us get thinking about things to call dominants or tops who are in between genders, or for whom the gender doesn’t quite fit right.
What do you think? Which words do you like to call your dominant, or do you like to be called? What have you heard others use?
Yes, yes, I know, I’m very behind with Lex — but just in case you, too, have been in a place where you haven’t been dating, or if you haven’t known which apps to try, this is a recommendation to check out Lex — even if you aren’t looking to date anyone.
The interesting thing about having met my current partner in 2011 is that I have almost completely missed the rise in dating apps. Yes, OK Cupid was around then, but it wasn’t an app, it was a website. And yes, rife and I have been actively nonmonogamous on and off in our partnership, but the folks that I was dating or hooking up with I kind of just stumbled across, I wasn’t actively looking for dates.
But now — wow. Tinder, Her, Bumble, Lex, Grindr.
Because rife and I recently moved (and because of some other changes), we’ve been on some apps lately, looking for friends, community, connection (etc). Personally, of all of them, I am finding Lex to be such fun to read and through with to connect with people.
I really wish I’d known about it sooner — and I wish someone had told me that it isn’t just for hookups and dates, it’s also friends and community events.
The idea is that it mimics old school 80s and 90s personal ads in the back of queer newspapers. Do y’all remember those? Did you ever see them? I first knew about them in 1999/2000 in Seattle, through the Stranger newspaper (now online, famously run by Dan Savage, and often highly critiqued). I put up a couple of those ads, myself … I have no idea what they said now, but they were extremely short, and you had to get a code to call in to a voice mailbox and listen if you had any messages. I don’t think if I ever did, nor did I reply to anyone else’s. Though I read them, diligently, often.
In addition to hookup ads, there were housing ads, general queer community questions, and even posts that read more like journal entries. This, as you might imagine, also has quite a bit of backlash and critique, of folks saying that they should take it to Livejournal. I have mixed feelings about it — but generally, it feels like a new form of social media to me even, and I am still observing the culture and ways to engage.
Lex is specifically geared toward nonbinary folks, trans and cis women, and other identities that are not cis men. I learned this through posts on Lex about it — people who were discussing generally the policy in their posts. I have seen some gender theory, some posts to dog sit or house sit, ads for housing, looking for hangouts and watching shows and playing D&D together. Plus — tops, take note — lots of bottoms looking for tops, which has brought me into the ponderings of “what is a top, anyway?” and “are there really more bottoms than there are tops, is the so-called ‘top shortage’ real? Or is something else going on?”.
Look, it’s not perfect. There are plenty of mis-steps and people posting dumb things. But there’s also a lot of really interesting stuff, to me, if you sort through the noise. I realize that I, in some ways, am Lex’s ideal user — I love communicating by text asynchronously, and I really enjoy learning about someone by asking questions back and forth interspersed with some in-person time. I have been enjoying the connections that I’ve made from there, and wishing I’d known that it wasn’t only for dating, it was also for community and connection and friends.
What’s your experience with Lex? Have you had fun with it? Do you hate it?
Content warning: Daddy/girl language, Dominance/submission, teasing, verbal humiliation, possession, genital stimulation with a child’s toy
Soft pink and indigo strips tangle in the sunrise. Slowly moving from the liminal space between rest and alertness, my limbs are still heavy from dreaming.
My Icon of Mother Mary, bought in Mexico sometime in the late 90’s, needs dusting. Any sort of movement now would dissolve my mind’s haze, seal up the flowing cream from my night’s cunt. Desperate for a pot of tea but can’t move.
I hear the door unlock. My heart skips a beat. Jay places her keys on the mantelpiece, takes off her shoes and pads towards the bedroom. At five-foot seven, she easily commands a room. Some people just have those qualities of warmth and strength which intoxicate, make you smile to be in their company.
Returning from a night shift, I imagine her in the control room taking charge, directing truck drivers, co-ordinating complex logistics all the meanwhile dealing with meth users who take it to save lives on the endless road. It’s a hard job. She was fucking good at it. Surprisingly, also easily able to sleep like a baby during the waking hours. This makes me love her more. At times I would want to wake her for play or fucking or to feel her hands stroking my hair. She assured me she would never leave. I trust her.
“Good morning.” Always exercising that playful restraint. How can she tease me like this?
“Morning, sweetheart.” Movement came rapidly. My back arched up to meet her lips. The taste of tangelos was sweet as ever. That’s all she ate while working nights. Smug to say but Jay is the perfect, majestic, butch woman. Mid-50’s, muscular but chunky with a baritone that makes your legs collapse. The first time we met was at the bus stop. The first thing I said to her was “What’s your name?” She told me. “Is it short for something?” I replied.
“I would tell you except you wouldn’t be able to pronounce it.”
Being of Māori descent, Jay held true that names of ancestors need to be properly enunciated lest they cause upset. Being Greek, growing up in New Zealand, I had some understanding of this weariness caused by constantly
dealing with difference. Still unsure why, to this day, Te Reo is not taught in schools. It’s a cost issue they say. Where’s the profit?
“Try me.”
Jay told me.
I said it. Perfectly. Fortunately, it’s strong on consonants which Greek is.
“I’m impressed.”
“It just sounds better when you say it how you should.”
“What bus are you taking?” Jay smiled.
“I’m not. Just saw you and wanted to say hello. Here. Take this.”
Scribbling my name and number on my shopping list, I passed it to her. Phones seemed somewhat clumsy at that moment.
“Thank-you. I’ll call you next Wednesday once my car’s out the shop.” My tummy weakened. I leaned against the shelter and breathed deeply. She came closer. “It’s okay, girl. I’m not going anywhere.”
The first night fucking I could have eaten her. I wanted all her muscles in my tummy. Nothing’s changed.
“How was work?” I ask lazily.
“All good. How was the gym?”
“Awesome. I was able to lift twenty kilograms on the squats and fourteen on the the bench.”
“That makes me happy, girl.”
My heart’s beating a little faster. Jay likes to take things slowly. Only because she knows how maddening it is for me.
“Dave was being a dick with the fans as usual,” I said. “He’s a boxer. You’d think he’d want to work up a sweat but he has them all fucking blasting after ten minutes.”
“Maybe he thinks you need to work harder,” Jay smiles.
“Maybe next time I’ll sit on his face and crush him with my velvet arse. He’ll know all about ventilation then.”
Jay’s eyes narrow and darken. She leans over me like a tomcat in heat.
“Daddy,” I plead.
“What is it baby?”
“My tits need massaging.”
“Of course Beautiful, of course,” Jay replies, as she breathes with a deep, low growl, rubbing and stroking my chest.
I’ve been a B-cup since Grade 3. Two of my lithe, slenderman classmates would hold me against the wall of the toilet cubicle each one taking turns punching my breasts. The pain was unbearable. It wasn’t jealousy as much as revulsion. This was the steely 80s. They wanted to remove contours that weren’t neat and linear. When, after a couple of years, they wore their training bras, they cried. Sheen muscle would transform into doughy thighs. Pert buds into painful, expanding glands of colostrum.
I lick Jay’s cheek, nibble her jawline.
“Do you think my pretty, pink cunt needs worshipping?”
My default setting is to be a petulant brat. I never do that with strong women who present as Jay does. Wouldn’t dare. Jay asked me to so that’s why I do with her. My tits, waist and arse fit the type I suppose. Warms my cunt to see her aroused. She’s always in control though. We both know that.
A year ago, we were at a friend’s place. Jay was playing poker with a very pretty baby bull-dyke. We both agreed to no jealousy unless it’s transitory insecurity. My rage burned so I climbed onto Jay and pissed in her lap. I could have smothered her with full weight. She ordered the baby to hold me face down and sit on my back. With her weight on my shoulder-blades, my face was against her Doc Martens. She was gently grinding her denimed butt against the base of my neck. Preferred it to be harder but she understood the hierarchy.
Jay lifted my skirt and placed a piece of ginger in my arse. Squeezing my cheeks, she allowed the warm sensation to flow through me. The spanking started. Her hand struck just under my butt allowing the flesh to vibrate on her hand, the sensation flooding my cunt while the baby sat on a stool with her legs apart, my head between her boots.
In the car on the way home, Jay intermittently held the piss-soaked trousers to her face inhaling my scent. I knew this would be the beginning of her cruel tease and denial forbidding me to cum or touch her for a week. I sobbed all the way home.
Jay’s mouth is so gorgeously articulate in sucking my clit. The precision of her tongue exquisite in understanding my pulsating crevices. My body rushes forward.
“Do you think Barbie wants to play?” Jay asks.
My colleague gave me Yoga Barbie for my birthday. A testament to how much I like the practice and a fun comment on the juxtaposition.
Jay hands me the silly Mattel toy. I smile, play with a strand of her hair, kiss her and hand her back to Jay. A drawer opens and cling-film is taken out. Jay wraps the doll tightly with it leaving her legs exposed. A bottle of lube opens. Jay rubs it over the plastic covering. I giggle.
The toy is caressing my mons. Gently with deft fingers, Jay moves through the silky strands of fluid. My cunt is soaked.
“Can I slide it in Girl?” Jay asks, as if offering me a buttery biscuit.
I’m incoherent and my eyes can’t focus. The toy slowly slides into my cunt. Feeling her tiny tits against my g-spot, her arse pounding at the opening of my rectum, I start convulsing. Jay’s still sucking my clit with alternate, gentle kisses. With her other hand she gently moves Barbie’s legs feigning her futile escape. Imagining this insipid doll fainting with my continued contractions, I start to scream.
“Don’t Girl. Hold it,” Jay commands.
“Please Daddy please, I need to, please.”
“Do you want me to put you on a lead? Must I put you on a fucking lead?”
Her voice is too much. I cry. I get slapped.
“Not now,” Jay growls. “I’ll fix you some pudding.”
I made a rice pudding earlier. It was moulded in a ceramic bowl in the fridge. A recipe from my Grandmother, I used to eat this as a ritual after school. My friend, with deep, golden braids, would enjoy this mini-feast with me of cinnamon and sugared milk. We would compare our braids. Mine was the thicker with auburn streaks. I longed to kiss the dimple on her right cheek. One day I did. She responded by saying she wanted to marry me in the courtyard of her neighbour’s garden where they kept chickens. She relocated to Nelson shortly after that. Courtney Love was apparently living there at that time. I wonder if they ever compared braids.
Jay passes me the dessert. The spicy warmth contrasts with the coldness of the spoon. Sliding Barbie from my cunt, Jay examines her.
“Ah, poor baby,” Jay says. “Want to come close, hmm, really close?” She places her mouth over the plastic dome and draws the wet cylinder in. Barbies legs scissor slowly beneath with the suctioning motion.
She slices Barbie’s wrapping off with my nail scissors. It doesn’t take much effort to slip off. Jay washes her gently in the basin which I could view from the bedroom. The yoga pants are soaked from my cum. Jay pats them dry. She perches the doll next to my fern. All bright-eyed and glowing, it makes a sweet picture. There should be a post-orgasm Barbie with a look of complete and utter exhaustion, eyes heavy and mouth slightly open. Would be such a delight to see how hard she worked.
“Go to the loo now if you need to,” Jay directed. I did as she asked.
Returning, I see her in a strap. She holds my gaze in the doorway. I collapse. I can’t see. Jay walks over to me kicking my hamstring.
“Get up. Move.”
I inch forward.
“C’mon, I don’t have all day, Girl. Crawl if you have too.”
I’m on all fours. She straddles me. Feeling the strap on me, I quiver. Eventually, I get to the bed.
“Put your arse up. Take a deep breath in. Good Girl. Now, I’m going to slide this in your cunt. It will go deep. I’ll reward you for making Daddy happy. With each inch of my cock I will feed you one strawberry. I want you to eat all 4. Once that’s done, you pat your cunt like a little kitten and come like a fucking train. Is that understood?”
“Answer me.”
“Yes Daddy.”
She keeps her promise. The explosion begins.
“I hate you talking to other girls, I want to piss on their faces, your cock is mine, nobody else’s, mine, this is all I want, this is everything, I’m gonna tear your flesh and eat it up, I need you in me always.”
I turn my head. She smirks and strokes my hair, her strong body towering against the sunlight.
Planets collide in my mind and I tumble. I don’t want her cock gone. Slowly, it leaves my cunt. God, if only I could give her the moon. My orgasm lasts a few minutes as it usually does. Writhing, holding the pillow, Jay encases me in her arms. Delirious, flooded with oxycontin, I roll onto her pressing my mouth on her mons. I suck and suck and suck. My tongue licks the right side of her clit which shoots the sensation to her brain making her anus pulsate. I love that word. So noble for an orifice so sweetly perverse.
I slide my fingers in. She opens up for me. Slowly, my fist moves in and out. My mouth works furiously tasting salt and tangelos. I take my left hand and rub the north of her clit. It’s nerve-endings release the magic.
Plucking a red grape from the fruit-bowl, I slip it into her. Drawing it back with my mouth from her cunt, it becomes a game of cat and mouse. Just as it wishes to escape, I quickly draw it back in. Eventually, I crush it. I l watch her shake as she orgasms. I still keep sucking.
“Jeez Girl, how do you do this to me?” We lie close for a while.
I leave and return with a warm, olive-coloured flannel. Jay’s resting. I open her legs and wipe her cunt, up, down, around. I long to taste the tangelo syrup once more but she needs to sleep. I take a pro-biotic capsule from my bedside drawer and insert it inside her. It deftly swims upstream. All I want is to look after her, make her happy.
Closing my eyes, I give thanks. For the calmness. For such a stroke of the warm divine. The sunbeams strike and I draw the curtains closer. Did the neighbour have to cut the branches off? I sit, appreciating the sanctuary that is our room. I pick up the Mother Mary Icon and wipe it down with the flannel. That’s better. A reminder to set up some semblance of order to the day. I make my way to the kitchen and start breakfast.
Quarantine and sheltering in place has been intense. I don’t know about you, but for me, I have struggled with both my writing practice and with my erotic life through the pandemic. At times, I haven’t had any energy for either. But as I have started actively feeding them both again, and tending to them anew, I am finding my interest in them stronger and more dedicated than ever.
About Writing Spicy:
(Yes, it used to be called Pen Play — but I’m renaming it!)
This is a four week class on constructing erotic stories. Part classroom, part writing group, we will explore the craft of short erotic stories, focusing on the craft of storytelling and how erotica is different than stories without erotic content. You will have something short to read and a writing assignment each week to turn in. Participants will have the opportunity to share their work with each other and give constructive feedback on it. We will meet weekly on Zoom to discuss the readings, workshop selected participant pieces, and answer your questions.
In the class, we will cover some of the fundamentals of a writing life, such as: giving and receiving feedback, techniques to strengthen your writing practice, how to get published, tools for editing your own work, and more. At the end of the class, you will have rough drafts from writing prompts and homework ready to polish and submit.
This class is made for folks who are beginners to intermediate writers and who want to hone their craft and publish more work. You do not have to have published anything. All genders, all sexual orientations, all experience levels welcome — no specifics required. Queer characters and kinky acts not required, but this will be a queer-focused and kink-positive space. It will also be kink-positive and trauma informed (to the best of my ability).
Webinars will be recorded and available to download; you do not have to attend live.
Sliding scale available, email sinclair@sugarbutch.net.
Sundays, September 19, September 26, October 3, October 10
4-6pm PT / 7-9pm ET
1. Venmo $200 to $Zed-Sinclair with your email in the text (the email part is important!). (If it asks to put in the last four digits of my phone number, just click at the bottom where it says “skip this step”.)
2. If you can’t pay via Venmo, email me sinclair@sugarbutch.net and I’ll send you a different way to pay.
3. Once payment is received, I will send you an email with next steps, which include signing up for the Google Classroom and filling out an intake form.
Do I have to write erotica?
Nope. You can be working on any kind of writing — poetry, plays, short stories, a novel. It could include erotic content, but it doesn’t have to. We will be talking about the things that are different about writing things with explicit sex in them, but what you turn in as your writing assignments is up to you.
Will the webinars be recorded?
Yes! Webinars will be recorded and available to you to download after they are live.
Will you have an ASL interpreter for the webinars?
Yes; please get in touch at sinclair@sugarbutch.net. I will do my best to accommodate different access needs.
Do I have to publish my work?
No. There’s no requirement to publish, but this class is intended for folks who are pursuing writing with some seriousness and are interested in sharing their work more broadly. We will spend some time going over tips and procedures for publishing.
What kind of feedback will I get?
We focus on giving feedback in the Amherst Writer’s Method, which enhances what is working in the piece and gives the author feedback to encourage them to play to their strengths. The feedback will focus on what’s working, what we love about it, and what stays with us.
Do I have to share my work with the class?
No, it’s optional to share your work. Participants will be encouraged to share their reactions to each other’s work in a particular framework, using primarily positive feedback, and all participants will be able to ask for the kind of feedback that they would like to receive, which could be things like some critique, positive feedback, or just to witness with no feedback at all.
Will there be content warnings? Is this trauma-informed?
Yes, we will use content warnings in this workshop, to let everyone decide what they are equipped to read and make decisions with agency. More details about how to use content warnings will be in the class guidelines. I have studied trauma, restorative justice, and community safety in various form, and I will do my best to keep the needs of survivors forefront in the structure of the workshop.
I can’t afford $200. Is there a sliding scale?
Yep, contact me to work out the details and we’ll make it happen. sinclair@sugarbutch.net
More questions?
Email me, sinclair@sugarbutch.net.
Getting your erotica published isn’t as hard as you might think it is. Here’s a few places to submit your work and some suggestions for how to do it.
This is actually one of the hardest steps. If you’re already writing all kinds of dialogue through text message (or in your head, before it comes out of your mouth), you’re a step ahead right there. If your sexting becomes elaborate settings and plots and characters and costumes, you are well on the way. If you lie awake at night thinking about the next scenes in your story, and what kind of sex toys the characters will use, and how they’ll transition from one to another … no? Just me? Okay.
Seriously though, the writing of it is a really hard part of it! Most people never do this part. If you have, congrats. Share
You absolutely have to proofread and edit your work before you submit it.
At any given time, there are usually at least a few erotica anthologies out there with a CFS — call for submissions — open and actively looking. My personal favorite places to keep an eye on are the Erotica Readers & Writers Association and Lambda Literary Foundation, but that’s because I write queer erotica, and mostly short stories. If you want to get a full length novel published, you’ll want to look at publishers accepting submissions. One way to figure that out is to research which publishers have put out some of the favorite erotica that you’ve read. Perhaps you’ll find that two or three or seventeen titles that you adore were all put out by the same press — check out their website for their submission guidelines and keep an eye on when they accept new submissions.
The same thing goes for erotica anthology editors that you like to read — if Rachel Kramer Bussel’s books inspire you, keep an eye out for her calls for submission. (You can get on her mailing list and she’ll send updates. And the ERWA has a mailing list, too.)
PS, I am looking for lesbian (in the broadest possible sense of the word) erotica, and Mx Nillin Lore is looking for trans & nonbinary erotica right now, due in late October and early November respectively.
Calls for submission are usually very carefully crafted by the press, publisher, or editor. Read it carefully — print it out, highlight the important stuff, and take notes. Make sure your project fits the guidelines. If it doesn’t, or you aren’t sure — just ask! Send a query to the editor or publisher with a short (SHORT) summary of what you’re working on, and see if it’s something they’d like to see. They might just send back something like, “I dunno, send it and we’ll see,” which is fine. Just send it, and see.
After you’re pretty sure you have all the guidelines covered, make sure you follow the instructions carefully when you send it in. Guidelines are there for a reason! And you will stand out as unprofessional and unexperienced if you don’t follow them. Look, mistakes happen — you don’t have to beat yourself up about it if you don’t follow exactly. But, do your best.
There it goes!
Say a prayer, light a candle, do a chicken dance — whatever makes you feel good. My writing group has a text thread and we text each other when we submit something, and when we get a rejection, and we all send funny gifs of support and celebration.
Early on in my writing career, I was given the advice to collect 100 rejections. Rejections mean you are trying, you are putting yourself out there, and it is brave and bold to do so. It is not your job to force the acceptance, but rather to keep offering your work to the world.
Of course, if you’re really not finding much traction with publishing, you can consider self-publishing. Even medium.com is a fine place to start building an archive of work — and maybe even fans. Places like AO3 have launched writers. Self publishing is an option; don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Hope you do. We desperately need more depictions of queer desire, queer sex, queer kink, and queer lives in the world. There are still not enough examples of our sacred lives. And if you’re called to contribute to that deep sharing of body and desire truths, please do.
I can’t wait to read it.
Podcasts aren’t everyone’s thing — sometimes people just don’t process information though audio, and sometimes we just don’t have the kind of lifestyle where we are doing things with our bodies but our minds can engage with something else.
But if it is your thing, there are some fantastic kink, leather, and BDSM podcasts out there. Here are a few of my personal favorites.
Jera Brown, Karen Hawkins and Princess McDowell triple host this fantastic collection of erotica readings and talking to authors about writing and sharing erotic work. I’m biased here, as erotica is just one of my favorite things ever to talk about and dig into, but the hosts do an incredible job of asking tough questions and getting very deep answers.
Start with: Interview with Rachel Kramer Bussel, who has had a huge effect on the current erotica landscape, particularly with anthologies.
Kate Sloan & Bex Caputo host this epic ongoing conversation about all things sex, kink, sex toys, sex culture, D/s, nonmonogamy, and more. The two friends go over so many topics with wit, thoughtfulness, and thorough thought experiments, and they bring on guests often. (Fun fact, I’m in episode 93 and 215, talking about protocol and erotica writing, respectively.)
Start with: Episode 238, Out in the Open, about public sex.
Tina Horn delivers incredible conversation and interviews with dozens of kinky folks, both professional and lifestyle, talking about fetishes and why people are into (sometimes very) specific things. Fun fact, I was actually her first guest, talking about strap-on sex!
Start with: Empress Wu on Cannibalism.
This is brand new! Jaki Griot and Miss Lola Sunshine are promising real conversations from two Black Queer Femme Tops, and I am so excited about listening in. Episode one was a blast and I can’t wait for more.
Start with: episode 1! Because why not? And get ready to be excited about when new ones come out.
Bawdy Storytelling is kind of a given for this list — if you don’t know about the phenomenon that is Dixie De La Tour and her incredible live shows, now recorded and put out as a podcast, I’m sure you will soon find references to it everywhere. Dixie is an incredible host and audience fluffer, and she coaches all of her storytellers to tell even better stories — off the cuff — of kinky, sexy delight.
Start with: Marcia B’s story about cock cages and quarantine, or honestly, just about anything, this show is fantastic.
Got favorites I didn’t mention? I do too, to be honest. But please, leave them in the comments and I’ll make sure to check them out, if I haven’t already!
When I started in D/s relationships (12+ years ago, now!), I was so thrilled to have someone who would say that they would do what I told them to do, or who was interested in having more protocol, feeling like their behavior was being dictated and controlled, and having tasks to do for me. I felt like a kid in a candy store!
But the problem, immediately, was: what protocol do I do?
It has taken me a long time to figure out my own sense of protocol, what works for me, what doesn’t, what works for my particular submissive, what doesn’t, and what is just too much work. I wouldn’t say I’m lazy (not sure I believe laziness exists, really), but I definitely want a high return on my investment, and if it isn’t worth it, I lose interest quickly.
When I started thinking about protocol, I just wanted to peruse a big list of brainstormed protocol to get my mind going, but I didn’t find anything like that. It really helped to figure out the areas of control that held the most interest, which became the key to brainstorming protocol within the different areas — but I still could have used support to specifically come up with protocol.
rife made a “protocol mad libs” worksheet a few years ago, which can be helpful to think about the structure of protocol, and might help with brainstorming some specifics.
Protocol Mad Libs includes these fill-in-the-blank sentences:
Hope those are helpful structures to create some protocol for yourself or your partner!
Recently, rife and I made two decks of protocol cards. The idea is to use them with the Protocol Game structure, but honestly, you can use them however you want.
I love how they turned out! (rife is an amazing designer.) There are two different decks, one purple and one orange. The purple deck is the basic, with 52 different protocols on different cards, and some blanks. The orange deck has blanks like the protocol mad libs, above, which have duplicates, and you can build your own set of cards by filling in exactly what you want.
This is the list of what’s in the basic purple pack:
You can buy them individually (basic set | fill-in-the-blank set) or you can buy them both and save $5.
Elust is the only place where the smartest and hottest sex bloggers are featured under one roof every month. Whether you’re looking for sex journalism, erotic writing, relationship advice or kinky discussions it’ll be here at Elust. Want to be included in Elust #141? Start with the rules, come back September 1st to submit something and subscribe to the RSS feed for updates!
Cunnilingus – Techniques, Do’s, Don’ts and Attitude
Do you know everyone on your list?
What’s it like to be an Escort
Summer Pride Colouring Contest
Editor: Sinclair Sexsmith
Publisher: Cleis Press
Deadline: October 31, 2021
Payment: $50 and 1 copy of the book within 90 days of publication
Rights: non-exclusive right to publish the story in this anthology in print, ebook, and audiobook form. Authors will retain copyright to their stories.
Stories should be between 2000-4000 words.
Please submit your work through this Google form: https://forms.gle/rKpFPU1tE4URMdMUA.
Sinclair Sexsmith is editing the next volume of Best Lesbian Erotica, and is looking for your best sexy stories about queer women.
“Queer women” is intended to be in the broadest sense of the word, including, but not limited to: trans women, women of all kinds of gender expressions, cis women, and nonbinary folks who are rooted in lesbian and queer culture are all welcome. Neopronouns can be used.
Representations of queer women, non-binary people, and trans women’s sexuality that are not as frequently seen — with ability, race, ethnicity, class, neurodiversity, ace-spectrum, size/fat, age, religion, or other social justice politic viewpoint — are particularly of interest.
Writers who have not previously published are encouraged.
Writers of color are encouraged.
Trans women writers are encouraged.
The anthology is not limited to certain kinds of sex acts. “Vanilla,” BDSM, fetish, ace, and all kinds of sensual and sexual expression are welcome. I look for a wide variety of sexual identities: mommy, mistress, sir, puppy, girl, servant, etc.
I will consider reprints of stories published in 2021, but prefer unpublished stories. No simultaneous submissions. Up to two submissions per author. No poetry or speculative fiction. Stories should be between 2000-4000 words.
Submissions in English required; American English not required, but we will edit it to be in American English for final publication. If there are cultural specifics, we’ll work on how to translate them into American English during the editing process.
Characters must be a minimum of 18. All stories have to be within legal guidelines, including no incest, beastiality, necrophilia, consent violations, or other illegal acts. If something illegal happens in the story, it should be within a context where it’s understood it’s illegal in some way.
Queries are welcome; contact sinclair@sugarbutch.net.
Submit your story in a Word document or .doc file (you can export to .doc from Pages, Google Docs, and other word processing programs).
Name your file “Full Name – Story Title – BLE7.doc”, where “full name” is the name you wish to be published under.
Please use standard book publishing formatting:
— single space after the end of a sentence
– legible, standard font (times, arial) in a typical size (12ish)
– no underlines or bold, use italics for emphasis
– indents at the beginning of paragraphs and double space after paragraphs
If it does not work to submit your story via this form, please contact Sinclair directly at sinclair@sugarbutch.net with the subject line “Best Lesbian Erotica submission” and include your story as an attachment in .doc, .docx or .rtf format (not a PDF). Include the story title, your legal name, pseudonym (if applicable), 150-word bio, previous publication information for the story, and mailing address. Submissions that do not have all of this information included will be considered incomplete and will not be considered.
An essential tool, in my opinion and experience in D/s, is having a regular check in with each other to reflect on what’s happening, give and receive honest feedback, and have the opportunity to adjust and change the practices in your D/s.
So what is involved in a check in? How often should they be? What should they cover?
The short answer is, of course: Whatever is best for your relationship, and whatever works best for you. But here’s some general ideas and guidelines that you might want to consider while you’re setting up check ins.
Too often, our lives are busy and full, and we don’t take the time to actually reflect on our experiences. I don’t know about you, but for me, D/s relationships are a form of intense intimacy, and that kind of intimacy can be messy and vulnerable. I want to continue to learn myself, learn my partner, and be a better and better dominant and partner for my boy every day, every week, every month, every year.
Check ins are exactly for that purpose: to take stock, to reflect on what’s going well and what has been hard, and to see if there are any variables you can tweak to make things better. They can be hard, especially if there is feedback about challenging things that are hard to hear, but it is always better to know the truth than to keep going without all the information.
It may be obvious that the folks that are in the relationship should be the ones to hold a check in, but it’s more than just who is there — you also want to set the scene, to make a container so that you can have the space and focus that are needed to connect and reflect.
So while you’re shifting your focus from whatever it is that you’ve been doing that day, make sure you are free from distractions. Put your phone away and be in a space separate from other folks. Put on some ambient music, if that helps you focus or helps the atmosphere. Light a candle, light some incense, put the lights down, wear comfortable clothes, or perhaps formal leather — whatever it is you want to do to set the scene for a check in.
You might want a notebook or a computer to take notes. If you are using a computer of some kind (laptop, desktop, tablet, phone) make sure you turn off the internet and all notifications so you don’t get distracted.
Give your partner the gift of your complete and total attention.
I generally suggest people who are starting out in a D/s relationship to have a check in once a week for one to two hours. If you try that and it seems like too much time, do less.
If you’ve been together longer, maybe every other week is enough, or once a month. You want to give it enough time so that you can practice changing your behavior or add new protocols in between check ins, but not enough time that there is too much to talk about.
Pick something to try out, and if it works, great! If it doesn’t quite work, change it and try something new.
Now that you’ve set the stage and are ready to have a check in, what do you actually do?
I suggest starting with some sort of grounding, some way that you can connect with each other and leave the rest of the day behind, just for a short time. Maybe that’s some physical touch, breathing, or verbally checking in about your day. Do whatever you need to do to feel present and connected.
Then, I suggest answering some, or all, of the following questions:
It’s not only a check in about the hard things — it’s about the good stuff, too. Talk about the very hot scene you had, how much you love the new protocol, or share notes from a workshop that you attended. Flirt! Get excited about the amazing relationship you have together. Appreciate it.
Make sure you spend some time officially completing the check in. Blow out the candle, ring a bell, change the music, have some play time — do something that signifies that your check in is complete. Take space if you need it, take care of yourselves, and integrate the feedback and information you got in the check in to make any alterations in your behavior or dynamic that you might want to try.
As with everything, adjust all of this based on what you and your particular relationships need. Try things out and change them if you think of ways they could be better. Try again, try something new.
Hope this helps!
Photo by Lum3n from Pexels
(Don’t mind the giant red ink stain on the page before; I knocked over the bottle right onto my journal as I was refilling my pen for this video. First time! It was bound to happen someday.)
Pen: Fountain Pen Revolution Guru
Ink: Diamine Ancient Copper
Video description: a dot-grid notebook with white pages; Sinclair’s hands come into view with a fountain pen filled with reddish-brown ink, and write the following text in script.
I crave things I don’t like to talk about; things they would judge me for if they knew. “They” are always available to pass judgment.
I crave violence, I crave blood — but the sensual, consensual kind where I can be brutal, raw, harsh, and then I am thanked after. I crave surrender, submission, worship, awe. I crave the inhabiting of my body that feels more like channeling a god than truly being myself. I crave spacious afternoons lounging nude, eating whatever is in the fridge, in the sheets, interrupting for more explorations of each other’s bodies. I crave climax, sure, but also the release, the aftermath, the truth that comes with that much vulnerability.
I want to bite, scratch, force, press, hold down, rip something important. Leave a mark.
It doesn’t feel good to write that, except that it is truth. It fills my stomach with dread, it prompts that inner voice to start it’s sayings about safety and risk. You can’t say that, it whispers (never yells). They won’t like it.
Honestly? I’m not sure I like it either. But it is a true thing about how my desire runs in my body. And here, 27 years into my journey of adult, healthy sexuality, I use it like a tool for liberation, for pleasure.
What else would it be for?
This is what I have devoted my life to — liberation and pleasure. What else is there, really? At the end of my life, that’s what I want you to say about me.
That, and how I was so much myself that I encouraged and gave me space for everyone around me to be even more of themself, too.
That will be a life well-lived, a life worth living.
Meanwhile, I must let this sadist out for play, for practice. Soon.
I don’t know about you all, but I have a bit more energy for D/s these days. It’s been a seriously rough and emotional year — with the pandemic, of course, and with the continuation of the Black Lives Matter movement and working on awakening to white privilege and my own participation, conscious or unconscious, in racism. I’ve had many emotional crashes (which, as I write that, I realize I should translate into triggered depressive episodes, though I tend to call them ‘crashes’ in shorthand) and have been prioritizing my mental health in new ways. Plus, rife and I were in Alaska, which was a bit of a culture shock, and while there were good things about that, I’m grateful to be back in the contiguous US and settling in the pacific northwest.
I don’t know exactly what has lifted and what is giving me some new energy, though it is that summer time of year where energy runs higher in general for me. A few projects that I’ve been working on for a long time are off my plate, and after a month I’m finally feeling a little re-settled in my new home in Washington state. Plus, vaccinations happened, COVID restrictions were lifted (for a little while, at least, though it looks like we might go back to mask mandates soon), and things were opening up more. And on top of all the circumstantial things, I’ve just been doing a lot of physical, psychological, philosophical, spiritual, and emotional work to get myself more resourced and resilient. There are lots of reasons I’m a bit more resourced than I have been lately.
So I’ve been thinking a lot about how to step up the D/s between myself and rife, and how to step up my dominance in general. Here’s what I’ve been doing.
Not all submissives like lavish praise, but mine certainly does. I am doing my best to not just notice, recognize, and acknowledge all the work, service, and effort that he does, but also to praise him for doing a good job and tell him I’m pleased with him. One of the challenges of having a dominant who has depressive issues is that it is often hard to tell when I am pleased, and hard to tell if I am ever pleased, since I am so often displeased.
Our couple’s therapist once said, “The second part of trauma work is tolerating joy.” I think about that often, as I continue my trauma awareness and integration, and I’m working harder to express the joy, pleasure, and satisfaction I feel, in general but also specifically with this boy and our D/s.
It has made a difference so far.
Slightly different from protocol, one of the best ways for me to step up the D/s is to take more control through giving assignments and orders, and through choosing things on his behalf. We have gone through many iterations of mapping the areas of his life that I can control (short version: all of them; though there are areas that I still won’t control or am not interested in controlling for ethical or energetic reasons), so I feel confident that I can give orders and assignments in all kinds of areas.
One simple example is that he really likes it when I pick out his clothes for him. It is a small gesture, perhaps, but it makes me feel in charge, and I get the reward of looking at him in the precise outfit I’d want him to wear all day long.
We’re constantly tweaking and changing the protocol that we have in place, and lately I’ve been going over all of it, revisiting, and making choices about what to keep and what to throw out. He has mentioned a few times that he’d like to step up the protocol, that he likes protocols such as asking for permission to use the bathroom, because it’s a place where we can really feel the tug of the D/s between us.
We haven’t had a version of the Protocol Game set up for ourselves for a few years now, so this spring, I made a new one. We had a series of conversations and I chose our new training wheels, and then I made about 6-10 protocols for each training area that we’re pulling at random. They are not time-specific, this time, but rather are meant for a new one to be pulled when the previous one is complete, be that a week or a day or a month.
The boy’s current training areas are: anal training, adventure/wilderness, animism, household manager, submission, and headspace (including motivation for his own submission, and being inside of little boy or puppy headspace specifically). For me, my areas are dominance (especially random acts of), sadism, community (especially connecting with other dominants and keeping myself rooted in my dominant sense of self), writing & personal mission, holistic health (body and mind). Other important things for me are household manager, nonmonogamy, and mystic (being a student of tantra, buddhism, and paganism), but those are secondary at the moment, mostly because I feel they have some good momentum and priority on their own.
I’m excited to dive in to the current protocol strips and lean more on protocol for myself to step things up, and to encourage rife to step up, too.
We, like many couples 10+ years into their partnership, have struggled with sex and kink play in recent years. We had long, fantastic new relationship energy that has sustained us and pushed us into a lot of long-term pleasure, and I love how we are building a home and life together. But our sex drives have often mis-matched, and the D/s and O/p tools sometimes confuse things and are a challenge.
You might remember this sex manifesto that I wrote last year, or the BDSM checklist exercise that rife & I did in October (password protected; join the Patreon to get the password).
Still, I want to step up our use here and do more, and at times in the last six months, that has been very successful.
As I said above, one of rife’s current training areas is going to be anal play in general, so I am really looking forward to more butt plugs, more sex, more massage, and more stretching. One of my current training areas is sadism, and I am eager to create some protocols and make requests (and orders) to have more of an outlet for my sadism, and to keep developing that part of me. It’s vulnerable to let it out, especially when I’m less practiced, but it is also such a relief and really good for me.
I’ve been dreaming of writing a full household manual for years, but it’s finally starting to take shape in my mind.
I did buy Machele Kindle’s book Manual Creation about creating household manuals in M/s households (content warning: lots of Master/slave language in that book). I can’t really recommend it, I didn’t find it very helpful in constructing my own, as we have very different philosophies and I find her philosophies both too broad and too specific, and too rooted in heteropatriarchy and the gender binary. Her breakdowns of the different categories in her household manual are a little bit helpful, but partly just as examples of things that I don’t really want and wouldn’t really use. So, pick it up if you want a starting point, but I didn’t find it all that helpful.
I have been brainstorming what I want to be in the manual for months now (more than a year, I think), taking notes when I encounter something that should be in it. I’m starting to get a sense of the different categories to include, too, such as emergency (with contact list, supplies list, home safety checklist), family (contact information, clothing sizes, important passowrds, “if I go missing” file), O/p (our contract, amendments, and other agreements), vehicles (car maintenance schedule and records), medical (medical history, prescription drugs, health insurance), pets (health records), financial, home (inventory, maintenance schedule, contact for repair companies, records), holy days (holiday traditions), travel (packing checklists for different kinds of travel), cleaning (daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly/yearly schedules, procedures, chore charts), conduct (manners, communication, clothing, work, hobbies, spirituality, and more), protocol (not sure how much I want in here, since I don’t want it to be outdated and then feel useless; might be better to keep it as a digital document). I’m sure there will be more, but that’s where I’m starting from at the moment.
I ordered a leather-covered binder, some kraft paper dividers and folders, and some small envelopes to make some little pockets within the binder. I’m looking forward to putting it all together.
There are dozens (probably hundreds) more ways, these are just a few that I’ve been focused on lately. How’s your D/s been going lately? Have you had more energy to step it up? How are you doing that?
Content warning: this story contains Daddy/girl dynamics and talk, jealousy, break-up sex, emotional sex and BDSM, and name calling.
You’re still there, sitting at the end of the bar, when it comes time for me to close up. The other patrons at the bar set down their glasses, pay their tabs, and invite one another to bed, but not you. You’re still there, very still, with a coldness in your eyes.
I made you cold. A thrill passes through me, leaving me wet like melting ice.
I left you this morning, before my shift at the bar and grill. I shook you awake and said that I was leaving you for a woman I met at work. She waits tables; I tend bar. I swore to you that I had not yet slept with her, but I was lying.
When you first sat down at the bar, I thought, Good thing my new girl left hours ago. She’s a cute little thing and you could kick her ass easy, with your calloused hands and heavy leather work boots.
But when you asked me for a whiskey sour, I knew that you had come to see me and not to take revenge. You came with your big brown eyes full of heartache and helpless longing, and long lashes matted with tears. You wore a stocking cap pulled low over your ears, with a few short curls clinging to your forehead. You’d just come to drink, and to look. You wanted me to hurt you if I couldn’t love you anymore.
I got hot off your desperation, wrapping it around me like your softest leather jacket. What is it about me? I wondered. What a decadent question. Was it the backs of my thighs in these tight black jeans? Was it the way I zipped my boots from my seat on the edge of your bed? What might you endure to keep on loving me?
A patron made me laugh, so I leaned toward him, letting his eyes trail down my neck and clavicle, lingering on the hot pink cups peeking out from the scoop neck of my shirt. I glanced at you and saw pain in your eyes like jagged glass, and anger. You knew what I was doing. No one knows me like you do.
From that moment until closing, I sharpened the edge of your jealous rage. I let your glass go unfilled. I welcomed the attention of patrons who normally repulsed me. I even accepted a drink or two, risking the wrath of my boss to incur yours. It wasn’t hard. You wanted me to hurt you. Poor thing, I thought. It’s better to be angry than to be sad. Let me hurt you to help you.
Now it’s closing time and it’s my job to lock up. I send my coworkers home and close out the register. Then I sink onto the stool beside yours and fix you with my widest, sweetest smile. “Could I get a ride home?”
You turn your cold eyes on me.
I did this, I think, and shudder with excitement.
You say, “Don’t fuck with me.”
I lean toward you like I did to that customer, oozing impersonal, subservient charm. “Why? Don’t you want to take me home?” I lean in closer, and you tilt your face toward mine. To kiss me now, after I cheated you and left you and teased you, would be the ultimate submission.
You cup the back of my head softly, so softly that I sigh without a sound, before grabbing a fistful of my hair at the root.
I gasp. Then I giggle. “Ooh, Daddy, that hurt. Do you feel better now, Daddy?”
You yank my head back, making me whimper mid-speech. “I’m not your Daddy anymore,” you hiss.
I pout my lips.
You lean back, still holding me by the hair, and regard my body, the body I offer instead of my love. You pull up the hem of my shirt to expose my rhinestone-pierced belly button. Next, you stretch out the neck of my shirt and pull it down to expose first one hot-pink C cup, then the other. My cunt throbs under your icy stare.
Without warning, you release my hair and grab my hips instead. You turn me around and bend me over the stool before cracking me hard across my ass with the flat of your palm. I whimper with pain and fear and delight. You spanked me sometimes when we were together. Sometimes I spanked you. But it was never quite like this.
I want you to lay into me right there at my place of work, but one spank is all I get. I look back at you over my shoulder, long hair falling in my face, and see that you’ve settled back onto your stool.
“Sure, I’ll give you a ride,” you say evenly.
“Really?” I ask, my voice quavering. What are you playing at?
“Really. My car is outside.” Then you smirk and cross your arms. “But I want you to take down your pants and walk ahead of me to the car, so I can see that ass shake.”
If you didn’t want revenge before, you sure want it now. Unlike the cruel and slutty show that I put on before closing, this one will be on your terms. The erotic irony hits me, sending all the blood in my body straight to my cunt.
I stand, without adjusting my shirt, and unzip my jeans. They are so tight I have to peel them off. I step out of my heeled boots and roll my jeans down my thighs and calves. When I finally get them off, you take my jeans and appraise my pink boyshort panties. They are cut so high on my hips that half of each cheek hangs out, bare and round against my thighs.
“Do you like them?” I ask in a small voice.
You shrug. “They make you look like what you are – a slut. Now walk.”
I step back into my boots and walk slowly toward the coatroom. Usually I move with ease, mesmerizing strangers with the careless sway of my hips. But under your command, I feel shameful and shy. I feel the way my ass shifts with every step I take. I feel my vulva swell inside my panties. And as I approach the door, I feel the cold bite of the October wind outside.
“Ooh,” I say, shivering and rubbing my arms. I reach for my coat, which hangs on a hook by the door, but you catch my wrist in your hand.
“I’ll take that,” you say, and drape my coat over your arm, along with my jeans.
So with my bra and panties exposed to the elements, I open the door and lock it behind you. A gust of wind ruffles my hair, raising goosebumps on my arms and thighs. Cool air licks between my thighs, arousing my hot, sodden clit.
“After you,” you say, gesturing gallantly toward your car, which is parked halfway across the lot.
I step out in front of you, my heeled boots crunching on the crumbling blacktop. I can almost feel your eyes on my jiggling ass, my juicy thighs, on the clasp of my hot pink bra. I know you want to tear it off and spill me out. We cross the parking lot like that – you keeping several paces behind and out of sight, my body exposed for your pleasure.
When we get to your car, you open the door to the backseat and bend me over, pressing my chest to the leather seat while keeping my boots on the ground. You take my panties down to my ankles, exposing my ass and wet, swollen cunt to the parking lot, to the bar and grill, to the October sky. I sigh with pleasure and surrender.
“How did we get here, brat?” you murmur, running your hand up my flank, raising goosebumps on the backs of my thighs.
I shiver, as much from your touch as from the cold night air, and struggle to raise myself onto my elbows. I crane my neck to get a look at you.
The light from the moon and a streetlamp illuminates the parking lot but casts you in shadow. I can’t see your face in the dark, but I can feel your touch. You grab one of my ass cheeks roughly and jiggle it with humiliating scrutiny. The bar and grill looms behind you, locked and shuttered. But what if it’s not empty? I locked the door myself, but still. Could there be someone inside, looking out, watching us?
You draw your hand back and crack me across the same ass cheek you were just fondling. “Answer me,” you say sharply. “How did we get here?”
I gasp and giggle. I want a little more fire from you, and a little less composure. “I made you jealous, didn’t I?”
I hear a sharp intake of breath from you, followed by the crack of your palm on my ass. I hear it before I feel it, but I feel it soon enough, as I do every slap that comes after. You take me firmly by one hip and spank me with your other hand, alternating between my ass cheeks. You spank me on the upper part of my ass, which you never did before and which hurts but feels right. You spank me on the backs of my thighs too, so hard I begin to kick and cry.
At that, you grab me by my hips and pull me towards you, so that only my head and shoulders remain braced against the backseat of the car. My ass sticks out further into the parking lot, upturned and naked and ripe for violation.
Then I feel the warmth of your body on my back, followed by your weight. You drape yourself over my back, your long, curly hair tickling my ears, with nothing but your ribbed tank top between your breasts and my shoulder blades. “How did we get here, brat?” you hiss.
My eyes well up with tears at the softness of your body and the harshness of your words. “I – I -” Shame swells in my throat, silencing me. I took your love for granted and played with your pain and I will never get it back.
“Bratty little girl,” you whisper in my ear. “Used to getting what you want, when you want it.” I shudder against you as you unclip my bra with one hand and slide your other hand deep into the cup of my bra. Your hands are cold but gentle and drive me to distraction. “You like showing your tits, don’t you? You like giving my pussy away?”
I moan and try desperately rub my aching cunt against the seat.
A cruel twist to my nipple brings me back to your question. “Is that a yes, slut? You like giving away my pussy?”
Through a fog of lust and pain, I try to determine what you want to hear. Saying yes might only anger you more, and finally, finally, you seem angry enough to me. But saying no would be a lie, and I think you want the truth from me.
You twist my nipple again, sending rays of agony through my body.
“I did,” I wail. “I did it. I did it.” And I burst into tears.
You draw back, making a hissing noise of disgust. “I fucking knew it.” I hear the click of your belt buckle, I hear your zipper come undone, and I feel your big, thick strap-on cock press against the lips of my slick, swollen pussy. “Beg for it,” you snap. “One last time, beg for my cock.”
“Please, Daddy,” I whimper, lifting my ass to give you easier access. When you pull away, I moan with frustration. “Please fuck me. I want it so bad.”
“You don’t deserve it. Tell me you don’t deserve it.”
“I don’t deserve it,” I cry. I wiggle my ass, hoping against hope to entice you. “I’ve been so bad, Daddy. Please, let me take your strap one last – ”
Before I can finish my plea, you drive your cock into my cunt with such force that I nearly pass out. All my shame and your pain and my terror and our grief thuds into a hard core between my legs. Gasping, desperate, I work my fingers against my clit in time with your strokes while you call me a filthy fucking hole. And riding the tide of our worst fears, I fucking cum and fall face forward, crying, against the vinyl seat.
—
You drive me home eventually, but you won’t let me crawl into the passenger seat. Instead, you insist that I remain in the backseat with my panties in a thin roll across my thighs and my bare ass against the vinyl. I sit in silence, bottom lipping protruding, watching your rough hands turn the steering wheel. I wish you’d put your hand inside me one last time. I wish you’d let me taste you but when I tugged on your harness after you fucked me, you caught my wrist with your hand. Now, as you drive me home, I want to reach around the driver’s seat, cup your breasts in my hands, and beg you to give me a taste, beg you like you begged me this morning not to leave.
She moaned a deep breath and let it out sharply between her teeth.
She could feel every muscle tense, trusty tawny fibers flexing under her soft belly’s padding. Her fingers gripped the shaft resting in her palm almost delicately, then smashed in for another impact. She could feel the shockwaves from every thrust jolt up her body. She was strong, she could take it. It was thrilling.
She could feel her peak coming close, but she wanted to make it last. She paused for a moment, taking stock of her body. Her heart was pounding in her chest and sweat dripped down in rivers from her tits and thickly thatched armpits. It felt good. Alive. She waited just long enough for her ragged breath to steady before pressing on, eager for that sensation she could feel looming just out of reach.
She was in no hurry, but she didn’t want to lose the progress she’d already made, either. The momentum was building and she knew it. Her mind played a favorite story to keep her mind on the task at hand, thinking about past conquests and future adventures, about all her favorite places and the sensuous delights she liked best. She grinned a little to herself, feeling the slick wetness as her thighs rubbed together. It was hot.
She was alone, but that’s nothing new. She often did this solo (she liked the time to herself). There’s freedom in the extreme, luscious privacy of her thoughts. She could go to dark or difficult places, and not worry about anyone else’s feelings or pace.
Her body was bigger than most, both taller and broader. She had made a truce with mirrors, but could still be a little self conscious about it with others. But here, from the inside, there was no one else’s expectations to distract her. She could feel her own strength and solidness. It felt good. It was these times alone that she loved herself best.
She trusted her body, knew the arc of each thrust before she even made them, and loved how those generous dimpled curves could take so much and give so much more.
So she did more, pressing on deeper. She dug the tip in with her hands and exhaled in time. Sometimes a sound broke her out of her rhythm and she’d pause to locate it, but as soon as she knew she was safe she’d press on, eager now and heaving her whole body with each powerful jerk.
Every breath was torture, ragged and deep, but she knew she was almost there. Just a little more… more… yeah. Fuck yeah!
She’d arrived at her mountaintop, her own private spot. She was lightheaded and giddy and dropped her pack and trekking poles right there, spreading her arms like a bird to soak up the view with every inch of her body. This was it. Her climax. She’d earned it.
Image by rife, self portrait on top of Mount Jumbo in Juneau, Alaska. Follow them on Instagram for more hiking photos.
Thanks for including my recent post about kink 101 resources! Hope it was helpful.
The only place where the smartest and hottest sex bloggers are featured under one roof every month. Whether you’re looking for sex journalism, erotic writing, relationship advice or kinky discussions it’ll be here at Elust. Want to be included in Elust #140? Start with the rules, come back August 1st to submit something and subscribe to the RSS feed for updates!
I’ve gotten really in to calligraphy, fountain pens, art journaling, and some other paper crafts over the past few years, and it intensified during the pandemic when I had all that time at home. Recently I started sharing videos of writing dirty words over on Instagram which has been really fun.
Head over there and follow me, if you hang out on Instagram — it has been my favorite social media for years now, though its policies on sex and sexuality lately have been awful and many sex educators, queer folks, trans folks, drag performers, sex workers, and more are getting posts taken down and even their accounts closed. It’s so frustrating and honestly, I mostly feel really powerless about it, but I am watching intently as things evolve and trying to figure out what spaces we will be able to have to express ourselves and share in the future.
(Lately I’ve been really loving Tiktok, although the sexuality content is highly censored and banned on that platform, too. Are you on Tiktok these days? Find me, @mrsexsmith, on there.)
Here are a few of the dirty calligraphy clips!
Y’all. People are out there getting published with this kind of writing in actual books (and being paid actual money for it)!!!
I found this on Facebook, posted in a silly group with sex memes. Later, folks shared on Twitter and I confirmed with a little research that this was written by John Updike. Who won a Pulitzer Prize. Not for this, but in general.
Men are notoriously bad about writing women and about women’s bodies during sex in fiction. It’s atrocious really. And it’s so prevalent that there’s a whole Twitter account dedicated to it, @menwritewomen.
C’mon queers: whatcha got. I want to read it!
You know your queer kinky leather genderfuckery smut is a thousand times better. Even the casual sexting you do regularly is better.
Hey you, closet erotica writer: I’m looking at you.
Write it. Maybe even share it with one person, five people, some friends, a writing group. Or maybe even submit it somewhere!
Sincerely,
Yer friendly neighborhood erotica editor who loves smut and wants to read all the queer smut forever
I’m waiting for the green flash along the water’s edge, toes touching the waves.
they say you can see it for just a split second. you, on the red towel, wave
to me, your white bikini white hat white skin protected by the shaded umbrella.
it’s a memory I come back to often. the pain in me still rises, a wave
thrusting through my spine. you were the first one I thought would be forever.
you were who I wanted to stand next to that first day of school, waving
to our kids as they go off with their oversized backpacks, notes in their lunchboxes,
nervous parents wringing our hands and letting them go. just wave
when the school bus drops them off. just cut some snacks and ask casually,
how was school, as if you didn’t just spend an hour waiting for their waving
hair in the afternoon sun. you were who I chose first, but I don’t know
what happened. no, that’s a lie. I got pulled under with the first wave
of grief, of uncertainty, and you thought I tried to take you with me. maybe
I did. I lost myself. it happens sometimes. I can’t just smile and wave
and pretend that everything is fine when I knew I was slowly losing you,
slowly showing you the worst of me. it’s been years, but I still ache for the wave
you pulsed through me every time your whole hand slipped inside. a blooming,
a blossom, the too much of it, then the way your fingers curl like a surfer in a wave
effortless, gliding. I wanted that for us. the sun takes its holy time dropping
out of the sky — it doesn’t want to go to bed. surf’s up, someone says. the waves
crash in my ears and strangle-drown my desire to hold a grudge. I find myself
full of forgiveness and wanting the best for you, for both of us. just to wave
when we pass each other on the street, just a card saying ‘thinking of you,’
forgetting all those nights where we breathed each other’s breath, waves
of lust satisfied, intertwined with the future stretching vast in front of me, further
than this unbroken horizon. ‘there!’ someone cries, but I’m watching you, waving
your hat to make a breeze; you always did need your own weather. I don’t
look fast enough before I’m pulled under, somersaults over my head in a wave,
a mouth of sea water — all that waiting, ruined. zed, don’t struggle against the sea.
years later, when I finally see you, you turn your head and walk away without a wave.
I’m obsessed.
Look, the dildo market for the past twenty years has been a wild ride. In the late 90s, when I started buying dildos, the only options were bright colors, non-realistic shapes, and extra hard silicone. (Oh how I wish I still had that dildo shaped like a dolphin! Or the line of astrology-based dildos! The ram for my sign, Aries, made for an excellent corona.)
Then came dual density, and Vixen Creations and New York Toy Collective changed the game. Suddenly, there was soft, squishy silicone available, still hard enough to fuck with, and even some that were bendable enough to pack and play.
But now, it’s getting even more elaborate, with dozens of prosthetics on the market aimed at trans men, and the entree of TRIPLE density dildos. (I’m working on a more elaborate write-up of all of these options, with links and and a guide, but that’s taking some time.)
Even so, there are some features of a factory-installed dick that we haven’t quite yet figured out how to reproduce in silicone like movable foreskin, or ejaculation. There are more and more options for pissing through, more realistic balls, more sensation for the wearer, and even dildos that can pack and then play (though they don’t exactly “get hard,” but at least they’re comfortable enough). We’re getting closer, for sure.
Speaking of movable foreskin: Remember this review of the “King Cock” by DocJohnson? Yeah, no. That one really didn’t hold up. The material is terrible and just continued to be terrible. It has such a strong off-gassing smell, even now, two years later, that I would not want it to be in anyone’s mouth because of the smell, and if I don’t want it in someone’s mouth, I definitely don’t want it in any other holes. I was skeptical of their material, but the appeal of movable foreskin was just too tempting.
You probably know RodeoH — they make the strap-on harness briefs that made a huge splash ~15 years ago. Well, they’re making dildos now, and some of them are not only hyper-realistic, but have some incredible features I rarely see anywhere else.
Like for example: movable foreskin, and floating balls. Check it out.
I ordered one immediately.
(If you, like me, are running to the “buy now” button, please use this affiliate link and get 10% off — I’ll get a small kickback, too.)
Y’all. The skin slides! The balls feel so right and realistic. It quickly rose to my top favorite dicks ever. I haven’t even had it for very long — usually I like to test things out in a variety of conditions before I review them, but I just can’t wait to tell you about this one.
Dimensions: 7″ shaft x 1.5″ at tip – 1.75″ at base diameter
Materials: 100% Silicone, Water Based Lubricant (interior)
Let’s have some photos!
This extremely vivid dildo has a dual density shaft consisting of a firm-core with a squeezably soft exterior. Natural folds and skin texture are highlighted by hyper realistic painting giving this dildo the ultimate in realism.
Harness compatible, this dildo features a flat pliable base that bends to the curves of the body while being super supported in a harness.
This dildo is composed of a thin layer of silicone over a firm silicone center. In order for the “skin” to slide it has a liquid water based lubricant between the layers. This is a new technique in silicone design – treat with care.
To avoid unnecessary friction on the thin exterior, always use with a WATER BASED lubricant and/or water based lubricated condom on the surface.
Use this affiliate link to sign up on RodeoH and get 10% off when you go buy the Slyder.
The Slyder by RodeoH was purchased by me for review. This post contains some affiliate links which will give me a small kickback (points, to be redeemed for discounts) at no additional cost to you. Please support a queer trans artist (me!) by using those affiliate links. Thanks!
Sure do!
There are a lot of sub-categories within kink, BDSM, and fetish. Are you looking for books about bondage? There are dozens! Or books about the intersection of sex and spirituality? Quite a few there too. How about books on power dynamic relationships? That’s a whole other list! Generally, people tend to include all kinds of how-to sex books in beginning guides, too — particular topics like anal sex, threesomes, and strap-ons that are sometimes considered kinky, but sometimes not, depending. Then, all of that opens the doors for topics like open relationships, healing sexual trauma or trauma in general, porn, the ethics of desire and fantasy, embodiment, sexual orientation, gender identity, and more.
So I’m narrowing it down and focusing on more general kink community, culture, concepts, and getting started with kink play. If you still want more, I put together an Amazon list which has many more books in some of those related-but-not-exactly-kink topics that I’d also recommend.
This book is essential reading to someone new to the communities of kink, leather, and BDSM. It will give you an excellent overview of consent and negotiation, as well as many of the basic concepts for different kinds of kinks, different ways to explore, and things that are unique to the kink community. It’s such a good primer for anybody new to kink, or anybody who feels like there are kink protocols or conventions that you might not know about or understand.
See also: pretty much all the other books by Greenery Press. Most are very specific kink topics — books about flogging or fisting — so they aren’t general overview, but if you see titles that pique your interest, they are run by kinky people and they have excellent kink theorists and educators as their authors.
This is a kink smorgasbord! There are videos about pretty much every kink, fetish, or interest on this site, from negotiation and communication to figging and pegging and more. They have things about kink, things about relationships, things about sensuality, and things about general health and wellness — over 2000 videos and more than 140 presenters! There’s multiple pages of free videos, too (including a couple by me) so you can go check out what the format is like and see if it suits your style of learning before you sign up for a full Kink Academy membership. It is absolutely worth it — one month of unlimited classes is cheaper than most in-person classes!
Tristan has been writing and educating about sex and BDSM for a long time — she used to write a column in the Village Voice in the 90s and 00s that I read religiously, and she originated the Best Lesbian Erotica series in 1996. She’s a queer femme femininst, devoted to women’s perspectives and centering women’s sexual pleasure in her porn and her writing and exploring. Lately, she has a podcast, Sex Out Loud, which covers a broad range of sexuality topics.
50 Shades of Kink is an excellent primer for all things BDSM. It’s aimed for folks who have read Fifty Shades of Grey and who want to understand kink better, to figure out what they’re into and start playing. She starts with dismantling myths, breaks down all kinds of terms, roles, and principles, explores dominance, submission, and role play, and then talks about all kinds of sensation play, bondage, impact play, and rough sex. It’s an excellent primer to get a sense of what kink is all about and the kinds of things that are available in the kink world.
See also: If you read this and like it, and want to go deeper, check out the anthology Tristan edited called The Ultimate Guide to Kink: BDSM, Role Play, and the Erotic Edge, also published by Cleis Press.
Classics! They were recommended to me over twenty years ago when I was first coming out, and they are still excellent books to start learning about doing things to people and having things done to you. I love how open these books are, they are written from the perspective of a loving aunt or mentor who is just so excited to share all their wisdom with you.
See also: The Ethical Slut, also by these authors, one of the first books published about open relationships, polyamoroy, and nonmonogamy, and still one of the essentials to read.
Princess Kali is a force in the kink communities! She literally wrote the book on humiliation and embarrassment play, she creates amazing resources for sex workers, and she deconstructs mainstream notions of what it is to be a ‘bitch’ and the hetero-patriarchal systems that perpetuate sexism and misogyny. This workbook is a master class on creating the kink experience that you want, based on her dozens of years as an educator and thought leader in the kink world. It holds many of her best theories and ideas that you’d find in her captivating live classes, all in a handy-dandy workbook form. Watch out for her live classes or online classes, too — she teaches tons and is well known as an inspirational powerhouse in her teaching style.
After you get a little bit of knowledge under your belt through those books, you’re going to want to actually get out into the community, meet people, and attend classes in person. Currently, in May 2021, COVID is still a factor and things are re-opening slowly and cautiously, so it might be a while before there are regular meetings in your town or city. But meanwhile, there are quite a lot of things happening online.
How the heck do you find them?
Join Fetlife. You’ve probably heard of Fetlife — it is an amazing tool, but also can be really awful, particularly for femmes and women, because it is possible to receive all kinds of unsolicited and unwanted messages there. But it is an essential place for finding your local community. rife says, “There’s lots of creeps on there, and it’s a big hole, but it’s the best way to find events near you.” You don’t have to share much about yourself there — create a completely anonymous profile with an anonymous photo and no personal information, if you don’t want to share anything — but do make a profile so you can join some groups and keep an eye on the events that are happening, both online and in your community.
Identify your local kink community center. Most of the major cities have a kink center of some kind, and many of the medium-sized cities do, too. If you already know that you have a local feminist queer sex toy shop, you could just call them and ask what kind of local kink resources they recommend. Lots of cities have groups and leather clubs which put on kink workshops, some of which are specifically focused on serving the needs of women, nonbinary, and trans folks, some of which are queer, some of which are POC-focused, and some of which are more broad.
Check out Wicked Grounds. Wicked Grounds is a (the only??) kinky coffee shop based in San Francisco, and they have an Annex classroom space where they hold classes. When COVID hit in 2020, they moved their classes online and have been hosting dozens of different educators. Some of my favorite teachers have taught for them, and they are well connected and well curated. Check out their list of upcoming classes through Eventbrite, or get on their mailing list. They also keep their Fetlife updated with their events.
Kinky Summer Camps are absolutely worth checking out for 2022 and beyond. There are dozens of kink retreats, and my personal favorites are the ones that take over an outdoor venue where you can attend classes during the day, see performances at night, and meet friends or play with people. Here’s a short primer about kinky summer camps. There are many other kink event weekends in hotels and retreat centers, too — someday I’ll write about those!
Sometimes you’ll hear kink educators refer to a “yes no maybe list” or a “BDSM checklist” as something you could “do” or fill out. These lists are worksheets or spreadsheets of long lists of different kinks where you mark down your interest in each of them. Sometimes it’s as simple as answering yes, no, or maybe to each kink, or sometimes you might rate your interest on a scale of 1-5. You can download one that I made at D/s Playground here if you’d like to check it out. They’re fun to do every few years, as your interests can (and often do) change over time; they can also point out new areas where you might want to explore more. Princess Kali also makes a very elaborate Yes No Maybe Workbook based on this idea, if you’d like a thorough paper version in a book form.
This might be for after you do a bit more research into what kink is and what the vast variety of fetishes, practices, implements, and pursuits can be … or, you could treat it as a vocabulary list and just search around for the ones that are yet to be familiar.
Patrick Califia — Patrick has too many books to recommend just one, and they’re all good and valuable in different ways. I love his erotica, particularly the anthology Doing It For Daddy which is full of amazing erotic Daddy stories (if you’re reading Sugarbutch, you might be into this kind of thing). I also love his theory — Public Sex has some amazing sociopolitical analysis and connections about sexuality, kink culture, and marginalization. I was so highly influenced by ALL of Patrick’s works when I was coming out in the late 90s, so I think all of his work is essential and highly formative of the sexuality and kink conversations people are having in the kink communities today. He defined and formed the queer sexuality movements in the 90s and 00s, and a lot of writers and kink theorists (like myself) are highly influenced by his work.
Andrea Zanin, list of kink 101 resources you could take a look at, but generally, she’s brilliant and I highly recommend meandering through her archive of w britings.
Lee Harrington is a kink educator and enthusiast who has been involved for a long time, authored many books, hosted a long running podcast, and is currently teaching a lot online. He is very well known for expertise in bondage, and if you ever have a chance to attend his bondage classes on gender-affirming bondage or bondage for every size, I highly recommend them. He is teaching classes for Wicked Grounds and other places often, and sometimes exclusively for his patreon.
While all this how-to and what-is can be really fun to read (and hot!), don’t forget about diving in to excellent fiction. Often, kinky fiction follows someone’s kink awakening, which can be illuminating and inspiring for folks new to kink. Here’s some of my favorite erotic novels of all time, and here’s ten erotic films that are better than 50 Shades Of Grey. I also made an Amazon list of many of my all-time favorite erotica books here.
This is my own work — a four-unit online course that takes you through videos to watch, nonfiction and erotica to read, interviews, mini-workshops with educators, and gives you experiments to do on your own or with a friend or partner. There are reflective journal questions for each piece, and you can either do it on your own, self-paced, or you can take it 1:1 with me, or, occasionally, I host each unit with a corresponding live class through my Patreon.
1. Kink: Stories, edited by R.O. Kwon & Garth Greenwell
This was published in February 2021, and has quickly become a bestseller. But don’t let that fool you into thinking it would be a good introduction to kink. Take a look at Daemonumx’s review of the book, The Commodification of Kink, to hear some of the breakdown of the stories and why people who are in the kink communities are critiquing it. I haven’t read it yet, but I’ll review it when I do.
2. 50 Shades of Grey
Yeah, yeah, you probably know about this already. It might actually be worth reading, just so you can say you did, and you’ll be able to talk about it with knowledge when someone says they love it or hate it. But beware that the dominance and submission that this book portrays is generally not a reflection of the kink communities, and many people in dominant/submissive relationships even think shows an abusive dynamic.
Here’s an Amazon list which has all these resources and a few more that I’d also recommend.
In March 2021, I read some erotica for the reading series Listen To Your Skin, which has some featured readers and then an open mic where anyone can read.
Here’s the recording!
I read some from Best Lesbian Erotica Volume 5, including my piece Whatever I Want, Whatever I Say. One of my favorite things to do when reading from a book is to have the audience call out page numbers, and I read that page — my goal for Sweet & Rough was for there to be something dirty on every page. It doesn’t always work, but it’s exciting to just drop in for a few paragraphs and see what it’s like.
For the Best Lesbian Erotica anthologies, I’ve been aiming for a little bit more storytelling rather than something dirty on EVERY page, but I still want the erotic tension building.
After that, I read from Penetalia: Collegiate Erotica, which was published by a group of students at my university in 2004, and was one of my first erotica publications. I found it on the shelf in my mom’s house and thought about my 25 year old self, and how brazen I was to give a copy of my erotica publication to my mother. I wouldn’t do that now.
It’s hard not to be embarrassed by the story in Penetalia, though I generally feel good about that — if you’re not looking back at your old work with distance and even embarrassment, you aren’t growing, says many writing teachers. It’s a sweet story I used to read a lot at open mics and readings, and I still almost know it by heart.
The reading series Listen To Your Skin happens monthly online, and you can sign up to read your own work if you want to. If you’ve never read your erotica out loud in front of people, I highly recommend it.
This is not at all intended to be a comprehensive list — there are hundreds of erotic films and novels out there, many of which are really good. These are, in my opinion, some of the best that I’ve ever watched and read. And because I’m queer as a three dollar bill, my suggestions tend to be pretty queer, too. If there’s a hetero-oriented book or film on here, it’s because it’s particularly good.
If I missed your personal favorite film or novel, please leave them in the comments!
Mercy, Mistress is a short video series of just ten episodes released on YouTube in 2018 that follows a Chinese American dominatrix Mistress Yin through some of her sessions with her clients, dating, and navigating her family. I really loved the nuance they showed with coming to terms with sexual desires and fantasies. Easy to watch, just ten quick episodes that are less than 10 minutes each. Watch all the episodes here.
Before The Matrix, The Wachowskis made Bound, an amazing queer noir thriller featuring masculine of center Corky (Gina Gershon) and femme Violet (Jennifer Tilly). Susie Bright consulted on the sex scenes, which means that they actually look like sex real lesbians would have. It’s sometimes violent, very erotic, the cinematography is fantastic, and the lust on screen is just perfect.
A few years ago, a friend texted me: drop everything you’re doing and watch this movie. I don’t get suggestions like that often, so I eagerly did — and, wow. This film is a masterpiece. It’s set in a slightly alternative reality where there are no men, only sexy, buttoned-up women who like to do all kinds of kinky things, and apparently are also all entomologists. The dominance and submission depicted gets quite complicated as the film goes on, with nuance I have never seen in a major release film.
A New York City love story, with a complicated cast of characters who are in a wide range of situations. The film Shortbus is so intimate in its truth and honest depiction of a variety of types of sexuality. I think it’s John Cameron Mitchell’s masterpiece — you may have seen other work by him, such as Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
(I just realized that James Spader is in three of the films on this list — I guess I must think he’s sexy!? Either that, or he is just in a lot of deeply erotic films that don’t center the male gaze. Probably the latter.) Featuring Holly Hunt and James Spader, this film is dark, exploring people who are extremely turned on by car crashes. Yes, there is another film with the same name about race after September 11th in the US — but they are very different. The car-crash Crash features explicit sex scenes (the whispered bisexual dirty talk has always stuck with me), violent car crashes, psychological drama, and examinations of fetishes — it is not a film you’ll easily forget.
Icon of masculinity and gay male culture in general, Tom of Finland is recognizable to leather queers everywhere. This film details his life, sharing lots of his art, his life and struggles, and the complicated restrictions on sexuality in the 1950s and beyond. Gorgeously filmed, at times very erotic, and I love seeing the drawings come to life.
I love this film. When I watched it recently, it surprisingly held up quite well over the years — full of sexual tension, sexy confessions, and real, vulnerable insights about human sexuality. It was one of the first sexy films I ever saw when I was in my early teens, so it will probably always be a root.
There aren’t very many actual sex scenes in this film, but the slow sweetness of the landscape and the sparse soundtrack makes the whole thing so spacious and erotic, and I just love it. Of course, being a gay erotic love story between cowboys, it has some homophobic violence, so be warned. The heartbreak is worth it though, for the tender masculinity and brave connection that is this film.
Hilarious, brilliant, sexy! This is Cheryl Dunye’s film set in Berlin, starring Papi Coxxx (of Crash Pad Series fame, among other places) and Lil Harlow. It’s very clear that this is made for queers and by queers, and explores erotic taboos, spicing things up in long term relationships, and the gritty erotic world of Berlin to make this whole thing delightful.
There’s a reason it’s on ALL of the lists of erotic films — Secretary changed the whole erotic film game. While I do take issue with some things in the film (Lee using kink as a substitute for self-harm, for example, and the lack of growth on Mr. Edward Grey’s part), I still really love it, and it’s a must see for anyone interested in erotic films.
For a few years now, rife and I have had a double date night with a few friends with the intention of watching through a bunch of erotic films. It’s been a blast! We’ve seen many more than we would have otherwise, and it’s given us a chance to revisit some of the classics (like Basic Instinct and 9 1/2 Weeks) that we are never really “in the mood” for, but appreciate having seen. We also watch films that were erotic awakenings for us (like Braveheart and Set It Off) which aren’t exactly erotic in the typical way, but contain an exciting scene or some kink. If you’re into this kind of thing, I highly recommend setting up an erotic film ongoing date night with some friends!
Need more? Here’s a big list of the sexist movies over on Rotton Tomatoes.
I finished a book this week!
I’ve been watching shows (Doctor Who and the Great Pottery Throw Down most recently, but it was the Umbrella Academy before that) and watching many YouTube videos of both fountain pens, bullet journals, and tarot cards (some favorites include leena journals, Goulet Pens, Carrie Mallon), but I haven’t been reading much lately, even though I’ve been writing reviews for the Lesbrary (sometimes) and reviewing for Lambda Literary & the NLA-I leather awards.
Mostly, all I want to do is sit at my desk and play with art supplies. rife spends a lot of time outside, especially on the nice days. I’ve been trying to upgrade what I’m listening to while I’m playing with the art supplies, so instead of watching Doctor Who every night, I’ve been listening to audiobooks or podcasts. While I appreciate good TV and I think the entertainment is also some study of how to put character, setting, conflict, story, and plot together, it just feels more productive to have read books than to have watched TV — even if the “reading” of the book is via audio.
I hear audio book sales have risen during the pandemic.
So, let me tell you about the book a little. Maybe you want to read it, or listen to it.
Kacen Callendar’s novel Felix Ever After (Amazon | Bookshop) is the story of seventeen-year-old trans guy Felix, navigating attending a fancy private art school in Manhattan, living in Brooklyn with his dad, working on his art portfolio to apply to college, and stories about his group of friends and classmates. Felix has never been in love, but wants to be. Some transphobic things happen, and Felix discovers some good friends and gains confidence in pushing back against the pressure in his summer before senior year.
It was really sweet. I found myself excited to come back to it, eager to get back to my desk and have time to myself or be finished with all my meetings. It’s smart and clever, has some really insightful identity development, and showcases a lovely world of queer art and liberation.
I have mixed feelings about coming of age stories set in New York City, probably because I lived there for about ten years and have mixed feelings about the city in general. It’s just such a particular place — the city almost always functions as another character in a novel. And it gets romanticized and held up as some sort of standard, which I think can end up being pretty negative. But I appreciated the complexities of New York that were depicted in this novel — clearly the author has lived there and knows a lot about how things actually work.
Also, the audiobook narrator was fantastic and it was highly entertaining and fun to listen to.
If you need something fun and easy to read to pick up, it’s a good one.
What have y’all been doing during the pandemic — are you reading? Are you listening to audiobooks? Are you holed up at your desk playing with art supplies? Did you discover any amazing TV shows? (I especially loved the newest Star Trek series, Enterprise — if you haven’t seen that one yet, it’s pretty extraordinary.)
Pick up Felix Ever After at your local independent bookstore, or online at Bookshop, or, if you must, on Amazon.
It’s been a while since I’ve been part of Elust! Here’s #137 which includes Creating a D/s Training Wheel.
The only place where the smartest and hottest sex bloggers are featured under one roof every month. Whether you’re looking for sex journalism, erotic writing, relationship advice or kinky discussions it’ll be here at Elust. Want to be included in Elust #138? Start with the rules, come back June 1st to submit something and subscribe to the RSS feed for updates!
MFM Duo with Curvaceous Companion, Olivia
Goldilocks and the Three Bares
All blogs that have a submission in this edition must re-post this digest from tip-to-toe on their blogs within 7 days. Re-posting the photo is optional and the use of the “read more…” tag is allowable after this point. Thank you, and enjoy!
rife and I often talk about a “training wheel” when we’re teaching The Protocol Game.
A training wheel (as we use the term) is a collection of 5-8 categories of one’s life which are currently being most focused on in action, particularly in an authority exchange relationship. They could be for the dominant or the submissive, made by the dominant or the submissive, made collaboratively, or any sort of combination.
They come from a hybrid of studying spirituality, psychology, and philosophy, otherwise known as the self-help genre. In particular, I’m pulling from the framework for roles discussed in Best Year Yet (ignore the terrible cover; buy it on Bookshop), and this Integrated Life Matrix image from the book How To Be, Do, or Have Anything:
In the first two years rife and I were together (after we’d moved in and had established some basic protocols), we made a training wheel for him. It consisted of seven categories — in my head, I still remember it as LSHAFTS, because that is the acronym:
Leather
Submissive
Houseboy
Assistant
Faggot
Trophy
Sexual service
It gave me a framework for what kind of things to ask him for, how to use him, which areas he’d like to grow in, how he can better serve me, our home, and our future. I used them to assign him tasks and protocols in the different categories where we were placing focus. We call it a wheel because it was originally a whiteboard, and I’d write the boy’s assignments inside the relevant wedge each week.
In retrospect, I suspect he made these while I was in a depressive episode and trying to figure out how I could step up my dominance, and he wanted to make it easier for me. He often gives me gifts like this, theoretical frameworks, ideas, scaffolding to hold all kinds of content. This particular one has been a tool we have returned to, and frequently and still refer to.
When I came up with the Protocol Game, I used this training wheel and I brainstormed protocols for each category before I chose 7 in each category (for a total of 52) to create the random protocols we would choose weekly.
First, brainstorm as many different potential categories as you can. You could use any of the areas in the Integrated Life Matrix above, or check out the brainstorm list below to start. Think about identities or kink roles that you hold. Add the categories you struggle in, the categories where you want to grow, the categories that get in the way of your life, the categories that give you the most joy and satisfaction, the overlap interests you have with your partner(s), the goals, hopes, dreams, the visions for the future you, the vision for your highest best self, the things you have always wanted to try.
I highly recommend you include some purely pleasurable, playful, fun, and joyous categories in addition to serious self-improvement categories. You might find that the fun and joyous are deep forms of self-care and do, in fact, fit your self-improvement, but they are often more motivating. They could be sexy or kinky, or not, depending on whether those are categories you’re working with.
Other categories that you could think about, and that commonly come up during brainstorms:
Start with a big brainstorm, then whittle them down to 6-8 categories. I like to think of them as the skills that go at the intersection of my kink resume and my calling. Remember, these aren’t all the categories of your life. These are the ones that you want to focus on the most, which means that they are not already on auto-pilot. Some areas are working fairly well; we can let those work as they have been. This isn’t meant to be exhaustive, but rather a few things you want to give more attention to. In Best Year Yet (buy it on Bookshop), they suggest going through a whole life review as part of the investigation of roles, and asks us, “In which role do I want to have a breakthrough?” I always ask myself which areas, if improved, would make things change for the better the most?
Less is more – I shoot for 6-8. Try a very hyper-specific category and a very broad category, and see which is easiest to make tasks, protocols, and goals within. Reflect. Change your Training Wheel categories. Get more specific, or more broad, depending on what’s working best. It’s great if you have someone who is game to listen to you and support you though this, whether you’re making a chart for yourself, for them, or together, so you have someone to reflect with and who can help gather the data of your experiments and see what needs to be tweaked.
Use the training wheel to create protocols, tasks, and goals. Play around with them, see what works, what doesn’t. We have some ongoing protocols, some tasks, and we sometimes play the Protocol Game and have different protocol each week. It’s about time to create a new set for ourselves, actually; things have been changing and it would be good to make some new habits based on the changes, to live in to our future and next selves. Change the wheel and adapt the whole idea as needed.
Hopefully, the training wheel will give a framework for deeper D/s, deeper authority exchange, more consent and clarity about which areas are available to be controlled, more self-control and discipline, and more praise all around.
Bonus points to create your own whiteboard pie chart, fancy Google spreadsheet, bullet journal, or other art of your training areas – post it somewhere you’ll see it often to remind you.
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