It’s Only Pain

I’ve been haunted by a comment made well over 20 years ago by a domme who first showed me what some of the hitty, hurty things could do.  It’s where I discovered how I can go introverted and unable to speak to safeword.  As mild as it seems now, I took a lot more than she expected, and thus her comment “You have the makings of a painslut”.

Ever since then, whenever in a D/s relationship there’s been a dark place in my head where amongst other dark things the questions have sometimes burned; Am I a painslut ?  What does it take to know, one way or another ?

Strapped to the bench, deep in the moment, high as a kite, that question travelled through my mind yet again.  Barely reacting to strokes that if applied 30 minutes earlier would have had me screaming my head off.  I’m inclined to believe that prophesy now, more than ever.  Is it true ?  Probably.  And where I’m headed it could be a certainty.

I’ve said it a few times in this blog, I am not a masochist.  I can not self-inflict even the mildest discomfort, I do not seek out pain for it’s own sake.

And yet …..

Within the context of a D/s relationship where the drives to submit are this strong there is an overwhelming need to endure whatever my domme wants to take from me.  For me it’s an ultimate truth, a place where neither mind nor body can lie, a raw honesty that’s found nowhere else.  And lurking all around this are the dark questions; What are my real limits ?  How much of this pain can I really take when the need to submit to this one person is overwhelming ?

I’ve been very fortunate in the people who have triggered and owned my need to submit, above all else they have protected me from myself and those dark questions, where to explore them outside of a safe D/s relationship would be destructively dangerous.

There are additional nuances.  In the outer reaches of exploring pain the inability to safeword is incredibly dangerous with someone unfamiliar.  My domme has an exquisite understanding of my body language.  She knows the meaning of every shudder, twitch, every sharply in drawn breath and knows when to stop.

And we can’t forget the contribution of the hypnosis, either.  It provides tools for us both to seek more from my need to submit which is reinforced by that hypnosis.

We’d reached a sort of plateau.  She could take me to the limits and push just that little bit harder each time.  They were her interpretation of my limits and within context have been perfectly correct.  However, we both knew there was more lurking inside, much more.

One of the things that has nagged at me for years is my physiological reaction to CP.  Quite simply, the marks and bruises do not last very long.

And that’s where we’ve been at, the questions it raises have been simmering to a boil for a while.  Just what does it take for marks and bruises to actually last on me ?

We’ve danced around this for some time.  Whilst I’m sure that I’d have got there eventually, the hypnosis on her part has been significantly deepening the levels of and desire for submission.  Which have a knock on effect of me needing to endure ever more.

I’m sure she grinned demonically when I reached the point of saying that the need to know the answers overrode other considerations.  That I needed her to take me in to those deep dark waters.

Through trial and error she’s developed a way to layer the CP suited to me.  I could never take hard strokes from cold (hmmm – never say never).  The non-masochist in me hates the first few minutes when the stinging first starts, yet the rest of me knows it’s a necessary portal to where I need to be.

Those soft and delicate hands can feel like they’re made of concrete as they start the layering with a hard spanking that creates an odd desensitisation.  Each smack and later stroke adds to this effect.  There’s a moving threshold whereby a strike below it registers as a sting I can take without a reaction and a strike above it can generate an in drawn breath or a yelp.  All strokes accumulate more and more desensitisation layers such that the threshold increases until all but the hardest strokes only register as more than just an impact.

This time she’s slow as she adds layers with new implements, pacing herself as she gives me time to process and adjust.  The soft flogger she deploys at full impact, it’s an implement that’s almost impossible to make hurt; on full power she can make anything hurt and that heavy impact rapidly raises and spreads the numbness threshold.

With the implements getting more painful and heading towards new territory the endorphins flow in the extreme.  I’m dropping deeper in to sub-space, or because of the hypnosis I see it more as entering a trance to aid coping strategy.  I see sub-space as passive and the trance state as being capable of more actively managing my responses.

This is paramount as I feel the endorphins slowly sending me towards blackness.  The gloves are off for this session, we’ve acknowledged the possibility of me going over the edge in to that dark pit.  Yet her slowness between strokes is designed to give me time to cope and control that rising gorge, to ride the wave in one long continuous sea of pain and heightened consciousness.

Within this space something important changes.  The cane strokes become abstract.  I feel their impact yet the feeling of pain becomes a delayed cerebral response.  The reaction of the flesh barely a flicker.

I’m floating in this state, feeling I could go on for ever.  And this is where the painslut quote went through my head.  I am at this point as close to being that painslut as I ever have been and I know that right now she could keep hitting harder and I’d want to go with it, transcending the pain and living within it.

CP with her is not adversarial.  She’s not out to break me, she’s encouraging me to reach these difficult new places.  I know how safe I am.

By the time she stopped I was lost to the world, I had no idea she’d drawn blood until I felt the cool lotion massaged in to my bottom.

The question hanging between us as I headed off home was, was this enough to generate marks and bruises to last longer ?

A picture from 24 hours later showed no bruising, and the broken skin sections not much more than a rash.

And that’s the immediate answer.  Going further in to the pain than I have before, it was not enough and I’m not actually surprised by that.  I suspected that to see longer lasting results would mean going off the scale of what I know.

And what this session told me was that she can take me there, and she will.  I’m not enamoured of the title of painslut, especially in the cold light of day.  However, when she takes me in to the moment it does feel that the old the prophecy is being fulfilled.