Sunday curiosity #11

Thank you so much to those who asked questions… fun!! This ended up being a hugely long post!! Get coffee, and a packed lunch, and maybe some alcohol.

N: Have you ever “subbed”? :D

Yes, I have.

My first foray into real life BDSM was as a submissive after exploring my dominant side online. My femsub friend and I met a very experienced maledom in a chat room and agreed to meet him. I identified as dominant, but had no real life experience, so it seemed like a good way to gain some knowledge. We would go and see him together (lucky him!!), so we were like ‘sister subs’, which was what made it good fun.

I was a rubbish submissive, had very strict limits (including no sex!), and he would often avoid asking me to do things because he knew I would just say ‘yeah, nup’. I resented it on many levels; had gritted teeth and a ‘fuck you!’ always on the tip of my tongue, which of course he felt in every exchange. It cannot have been all that enjoyable for him dealing with me, but I was a pretty young plaything, and… well… he was a man and he got to see me naked. The fun for me was in being there with my lovely girlfriend and playing at it, and getting to experience being a bottom to quite wonderful sensation play. It didn’t last long and he supported me when I said ‘no more’ and started looking for a submissive.

Étienne: You mentioned caning on twitter, Miss. What is your preferred caning style? Cold and formal, ala English boarding school, or …? Do you usually give a warm-up, or do you like to get straight to the suffering? Do you like to bare the boy yourself, or have him do it, or is the undressing not part of it for you?

*smile* I am a relatively recent convert to caning… canes always rather scared me with their rigid inflexibility and unforgiving nature. Then I got myself a masochist, and they suddenly started to look like a sweet option.

I don’t have a ‘preferred style’ in anything I do, really. It is all very much mood based, but I would say that ‘cold and formal’ is not a normal part of my repertoire. Passionate and violent or sweet and tender are probably the two most likely scenarios. I also don’t have a ritual of any kind, so the ‘pants off’ is also completely mood dependent.

The first caning I ever did was a gentleness, with me sweetly being kind and solicitous while I turned his arse and the back of his thighs into a pulpy, purple mess that both fascinated and horrified me. I did not draw blood, but the feel of his hot and mushy flesh under my fingers meant that the blood was pooled right there under the thin surface and had I broken the skin, it would have been a mess. It was quite, quite incredible.

I was never able to mark him like that again, despite trying hard, including laying into him with no warm up expressly to mark him. His resistance to marking after that first time was baffling to us both.

I normally do have a warm up, I enjoy it, watching him go through the process of dealing with the increasing sensation and bringing him with me into it.

robert: So this is a personal one. I love to read your blog and am an avid fan. I am always taken by the intensity of your encounters with the boy(s) you choose to have a relationship with, how you wish to consume them and have them submit to their core. Is this need to drive submission to the extreme make it very hard for your boys to submit to you long term?

Thank you, I’m glad you are enjoying the blog!

Hmmm… I am not quite sure what you mean by the idea that I want to ‘drive submission to the extreme’. I don’t think of my D/s as extreme. I *do* think that the snippets of play that I pick out to write about may well make it seem that way because I choose the intense moments to talk about. I don’t write so much about how we hang about and do vanilla stuff because that’s not so interesting and isn’t what inspires me to write.

Regardless, I’d say that the answer is ‘no’… My relationships have never ended because the kind of submission that I seek is too difficult for them to sustain. The reasons for my D/s relationships ending have been mostly vanilla, though because the dynamic is a component, there may be some D/s related reasons contributing to it. I think it is often difficult to untangle the ‘why’ down to one cause, but I can confidently say that a ‘need to drive submission to the extreme’ has never been the cause.

BJC: When you learned that dominance, for lack of a better word, was an important part of your sexuality was there discomfort on your part given that such inclinations were unusual/wrong/opposite to societal expectations? If so..how did you process the discomfort?

Yes, and no.

I never went through a huge crisis with it, and I think it’s because my dominance doesn’t manifest as sexual sadism, which is often a huge struggle for dominants, nor do I want to be the ‘boss of everything’ in some stereotypical way. In my early relationships, before I knew what D/s was, my dominance was simply about assuming that I had the right to get what I wanted from my man and refusing to accept less.

I was a relatively confident, outspoken young woman who had pretty high expectations of a partner, and there is nothing particularly difficult about that. I couldn’t believe that other women didn’t do that, nor could I understand why they didn’t. I looked at what some of my female friends and acquaintances put up with and was baffled by it. I think it was the fear that their men would leave them if they insisted on getting what they wanted, but for whatever reason, I was never concerned about that. And honestly, in those formative years and relationships, if he didn’t step up, I wouldn’t put up with it and it was no great loss.

Sexually, I never had a problem either… I thought I was ‘normal’ because I was never one of those girls who gossiped with other girls about their sex life. Bondage, blindfolds, force, giving him a list of sexual things I wanted, experimenting with household pervertables… I thought it was all normal. I got an inkling that maybe I wasn’t quite ‘normal’ when my female flatmate saw scarves tied around the bed and asked me what they were for. I looked at her as if she was crazy, her boyfriend’s eyes lit up, my boyfriend looked smug, and she gave me an ‘eeeuwww’ look when she twigged. That was the first time I realised that not everyone did this stuff.

While that all sounds perfectly lovely, where I DID have issues in vanilla relationships was in getting the power balance right, though it really had nothing to do with social norms. While I was trying to figure it out, I either walked all over the men unfortunate enough to cross my path, or we would have a million little power struggles over the most stupid things every single day.  I found both situations horribly frustrating and exhausting.

I wanted someone who would do what I want NOT because he was too weak to stand up to me or because he was ‘letting me win’, but because it made him genuinely happy to do so.  Before I found BDSM and ‘submissive men’, I had the good fortune to find some ‘vanilla submissives’*, and in them, I found men who had a strength of will coupled with happiness to bend that will to mine.  The first time I found one, I fell in love.

* ‘Vanilla submissive’ is a term I use to describe men who identify as vanilla, have no interest in kink, but who behave like the most beautiful submissive men I have ever met… They genuinely derive joy from pleasing.  Rare and lovely creatures, like unicorns…

slapshot: I remember very well that first “Sunday Curiosity” because it was the first time I posted on your blog and I’ve been following you ever since.
I can’t help but wonder if you ever feel a bit overwhelmed by the amount of time and effort involved with keeping up with your online presence. Have you ever felt that the constant contact with your ever growing legion of followers to be exhausting at times?

*smile* Thank you for your long time readership and comments, slapshot!

No, I don’t feel overwhelmed or exhausted at all, I enjoy it and appreciate that I have somewhere to share my every inane thought… heh.  I do sometimes get worried that I have run out of things to say (who me?!), but then I can do terribly clever things like invite my readers to ask me questions!!

I had to laugh at “legion of followers”, but there really is no ‘constant contact’ of which you speak.  Most of my readers lurk quietly in the shadows (*waves*… Hello you!!*), those who comment here are my joy and keep me motivated (thank you!!) and the few emails I get mostly result in a lovely little back and forth exchange. I think there is this impression that I must get a million emails a day from people who read my blog, but I don’t.

Coug: “Will you sub for me? * grins evilly while holding something behind her back*”

Turn up at my door dressed like a twoo dominate (as defined by me, natch), and I totally will.

Elan: “I’ll join Coug’s team. Co-topping Ferns would be great fun. And, then she can write about it and not have to make stuff up. :-) Oh, and rumour has it she likes kissing. Yes, that could easily convince me to put my “top hat” on, purely for empirical research, of course! Does the same kiss taste better/different from the top or bottom?”

*laugh* You people with your crazy fantasies!

Turn up with Coug at my door dressed like hot twins in your matching twoo dominates outfits and I’m all in.

I do think kisses taste very different from the top than they do from the bottom, yes. Control from the top, yielding from the bottom, and sometimes, a kiss is just a kiss. *smile*

Elan: “Following up on the “kissing” theme. Do you have a most memorable kiss and, if so, what made it memorable? Conversely, what is the worst kiss you’ve ever had and what made it so bad? Both of these questions somewhat fall under the category of “kissing and telling” so I’ll understand if you elect not to answer, either on these grounds or simply because you don’t feel like it!”

I don’t have a ‘most memorable’, no… I have had many many excruciatingly unbearably incredible kisses from the feather soft and tender to the snarly biting aggressive ones, and I can’t possibly pick just one.

The worst kiss that came to mind at this question was horribly embarrassing (and will be most disappointing, story-wise!). I was still at school, maybe 14 (see, so long ago, and I *still* remember!) and there was a boy I liked who I was determined to kiss. I finally picked my moment, we were heading to class, were in the doorway of one of the buildings, I was trying to be all cool and smooth, and I leaned in for a kiss and the big heavy door hit me in the back of my head and I head butted him instead. He scurried away and I was so embarrassed that I couldn’t look at him for a week. So it wasn’t even a kiss, it was a complete kiss failure, I still remember it though!

Elan: “… blah blah blah… VAT… blah blah blah… VAT… That’s my question.”

About a dollar fifty!

Clarence: Ok, I’ll bite because it’s a fantasy of mine: Have you ever made a brat or subboy cry just by spanking him?”

I have not, no. I am a delicate flower and my hand will get sore and bruised LOONNNGG before his arse will.

I have never caused any boy to cry from pain alone, the few times that I have had tears, it has come from ‘something else’, mostly some emotional reaction when overwhelming feelings got ‘unlocked’ by the play I was doing.

subluck: “Did you ever sub someone that you “met” via your blog and/or twitter?  I’m really curious about your looks, what do you look like? “

I have not played with anyone who I met through my blog, no.  I was already involved when I started it, and have only been single and open to something new for about 6 months.

I will note that I keep waiting for a Bitchy Jones or a MistressKimm type story to evolve (both met partners through their blog) where some smart, successful, impossibly sexy suitor steps out of the bloggery shadows, recognises our perfect compatibility, and woos me with cunning hot sweetness because I am so completely awesome. *waits… tap tap taptap*

As for looks, I am 5’10, blonde straight hair, slim…

Since I know that is kind of unsatisfying, I have gathered words from others (the first is from my boy in response to the same question, the rest are from others I have met or shared photos with):

• “Well Ma’am you have long blond hair and you are very tall and lean, long-limbed and long waisted with good posture and with a good right angle to the ground, but though tall and lean, very soft-looking at the curves of your body, so tall and lean yes but not sharp at all, very lady-ish, and this is what anyone would notice about you right away. I asked once when I didn’t know where you were: have you seen a tall pretty blond woman come by here and they had seen you. And your face: pretty high cheekbones, full mouth and lips, which look very soft in front of your teeth but something about the mouth, and your figure in general Ma’am, hints at the leonine, if that makes sense: I mean to say something lioness in the gaze and in the mouth, too.”  – my boy

• “You are a beauty! sigh…..”

• “You’re absolutely beautiful. No I didn’t really have a face in my mind at all (tall, blond, woman) so no adjustment or tweaking necessary. I say again: lovely… Beautiful. Lovely.”

• “Fuck You’re hot.”

• “I must say that you are very attractive and have very alluring eyes.”

• “Jesus Christ, you’re fucking hot… you’re disturbingly attractive.”

• “Ferns is teh sexy. Truly. She defines hotness with a unique combination of personality, intellect, physical looks, and charm. There are two spots (one on the right side of her upper lip and the other just above the nape of her neck) that beg to be kissed, though I’m reasonably certain she doesn’t beg.”
  – Elan (from comments here), though this boy in particular thinks tax is sexy, so… you know…

As a disclaimer, the comments above may be coloured by those rose tinted, vaseline smeared glasses that I force anyone who looks at me to don before casting eyes in my direction. If any of you recognise those comments, feel free to own them in a ‘hey, that was me!’ kind of way as proof that I didn’t just make them up.

Now that I have set expectations impossibly high, I will, of course, never send a photo or be seen in public EVER AGAIN!

Brids: What is an average day like for you? (Now I’ll get to see how things have changed since I last asked)

Things *have* changed since you last asked.

The biggest changes are that I am now single and I have left the job that I had. A typical day looks something like this:

• Wake when I feel like it (happies!), turn on computer, turn on TV.
• Go for a walk on the waterfront, maybe, sometimes.
• Make coffee, check emails, shower.
• Do business stuff, check my list (I always have a list!)
• Read stuff on the internet (work related and personal), post random opinions EVERYWHERE, have a chat with friends online if they are around.
• Lunch with a friend, if organised.
• Do chores/errands, complete things from my list, write (blog, business, personal).
• Have dinner, chat with my Angus, read, go to bed.

I know, I know, you can barely contain your excitement, right? Oh, I didn’t mention masturbating… there is some, maybe once or twice. But it would be crass of me to talk about it.

Louise: Do you think your career and/ or professional ambition has influenced your sexuality? I assume you work in a business setting from some of your posts.
I assume you have no children. Do you ever think about having kids? bio or adopted?

No, it hasn’t. My career has never been anything more than a job, I was never ambitious, never had a drive to succeed, never had goals like you are supposed to out in the world, but I am smart and good at lots of things and have had considerable success (if you measure success in terms of position and money). My work has always been a means to make money, and while I think I learnt many useful skills while doing it (not least is people management), it has had no influence on my sexuality.

And yes, I worked for an international corporation for the last many years, and I have recently quit a senior management position that included ‘glamourous’ international travel and ‘important’ high level negotiations because I was not happy doing it. I recently took a long hard look at what I was doing and decided that I needed to make changes.

I don’t have any children, no, and have never felt particularly maternal. There was a stage where I was in a long term relationship where we discussed it, but it was not a passionate discussion and we were both kind of ‘meh’ about it. I realised then that the biological clock is not something that drives a maternal instinct to the fore (I always believed it was about getting broody and cooing over strange babies), it is simply about realising that you have to consciously make a decision before you run out of time.

puppy: Have you ever stood in front of a boy and given the order, in your best icy Domina tone: “Enter me”. Heh. You know why I’m asking.

I have not, no.

Yes, I know why you are asking… you hated that scene in Spartacus, thought it was repulsive and not at all hot, but you have not been able to stop thinking about it ever since, amirite?… *smirk*

puppy: Miss Ferns, I know your style isn’t icy and aloof. Yet a lot of subs have this fantasy of the ‘ice goddess’ – and at least a few Dommes, too. Would that kind of dynamic work for you, too – if only briefly? Or on a very restricted part-time basis?

As play, yes, it can work for me, and I suppose when I am actually annoyed, I have a touch of that also.

The issue for me is that I like and choose very sensitive boys, and while they may well fantasise about me being cold and aloof before they are in the relationship, in reality, they can’t bear the thought of it because it is genuinely hurtful to them, and I can’t bear for them not to be able to bear it… *laugh* So, for a moment in play, I can and have done it… as a way of relating for more than that, no.

Phew, are you still here?  You made it through that lot?!  I do like perseverance… well done!!

I really enjoy thinking about the things that come up in these questions, so if you have any other questions, feel free to ask in the comments below and I will make up some more stuff for next Sunday.

Surely you know everything by now?