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softsublove-blog · 8 years ago

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On the Subject of SubDrop

I have something I need to say that’s been bothering me for a really long time. You’ve all gotten my little rant about how, as long as your Dom isn’t an asshole, subdrop SHOULD NOT be a thing that is happening, because with proper after care, it just doesn’t….as long as the person is mentally stable enough for BDSM play. I know I can’t do anything about it if there are people out there who really aren’t stable enough for it and are doing it anyway. It makes me sad, but all I can do is keep urging you to continue to get therapy and medication as well.

But that’s not what this is about. There’s another point that has continued to bother me a lot. I’m very afraid I am going to hurt some people’s feelings, but it’s a really personal thing for me, this crusade to make sure the lifestyle and its many aspects are understood by as many people as I can reach. I really don’t want to hurt any of you, but I’m seeing a dangerous misrepresentation at worst, and a misunderstanding at best, in a lot of messages I get. And I feel like I need to try to clear something up.

I get so many messages from people with phrases along the lines of :I had a bad drop today” or “I was really dropping hard because…” and I haven’t said anything for a long time, but I’m seeing a dangerous aspect of BDSM being taken out of context, misunderstood, and misrepresented far too often, so I have to try.

YOU CAN’T HAVE SUB DROP WITHOUT FIRST HITTING SUBSPACE. Subdrop is a chemical reaction in your brain caused by the previous chemical reaction during subspace when your brain releases endorphins during a scene that makes you feel all floaty and good, and by the activation of opiates in your brain that turn pain into pleasure for many people. These chemical reactions can cause changes in your body, actual physical changes. Some people recover from them easily. I’ve never needed much but a little juice or soda and I’m good to go. Other people need to seriously rehydrate, restore their blood sugar, and ingest some protein to balance out their brain chemistry. If they don’t do those things properly, THAT is when sub drop can happen. It is an actual, chemical reaction that evokes an emotional responses due to your brain chemistry being out of whack. It’s caused by the INITIAL chemical reactions which occur during subspace.

Feeling sad, or anxious, or shaky, upset or any combination of things like these when you haven’t had a scene in the previous couple of days isn’t subdrop. It’s depression, or an anxiety attack, or a panic attack, which are all real, valid emotional responses that don’t need to be replaced with an incorrect term because the treatment for them isn’t the same as the treatment for subdrop. Subdrop can and should be prevented by a Dom and sub working together and communicating before, during and after a scene to make sure everything goes smoothly. No one I’ve ever played has dropped, and they never will, because I take my job very fucking seriously. But please, my loves, understand that it’s not physically possible to experience subdrop without first experiencing the chemical reaction in your brain brought about by subspace. They go hand in hand, and if you ARE experiencing actual subdrop, then either your play partner is a complete douchebag or you’re not giving them enough information to help you come down smoothly. When you experience a bad mental state and haven’t had a scene where you went all floaty in the recent past, then you’re having an anxiety attack, and that needs to be handled differently and faced honestly.

I want you all to be healthy. I want you all to be safe. Part of that is taking care of yourselves and each other, but part of it is also being honest with yourselves about what’s going on when you’re having a bad mental health day and why. I hope everybody knows that I’m here for you for all kink and sexuality related issues as long as there’s breath in my body. But I also want so much for you all (those who need it) to take whatever steps are neccessary for you to be the most mentally healthy and stable you that you can possibly be.

All my love

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softsublove-blog · 8 years ago

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50 Shades of This is How It's Fucking Supposed to Be

I’ve been asked by several followers now to share my thoughts and opinions on the upcoming film, That Which Will Not be Named, also known as 50 Shades of You’re Fucking Doing it Wrong. I’ve been giving it quite a bit of thought as I considered what I wanted to say.

HOLD IT RIGHT THERE! You in the green shirt! SIT back down. I can see my followers rolling their eyes and tiptoeing unobtrusively away from their keyboards. Possibly I have ranted before. Once or twice. Briefly.

Maybe it’s wise to share my credentials before I continue. Yes, I’m an adult woman. I’ve been an active participant in the BDSM lifestyle and local community for about 20 years. Yes, that makes me older than a lot of you. I’ve been fantasizing and dreaming of and playing around on a basic level with kink since I was a small child (the fantasizing – I was kidnapped by a mad scientist who was building a real spanking machine and he needed a test subject. I was ten), and then with high school boyfriends who didn’t run when I confessed to being a bad girl (the playing around). Okay, ONE of them didn’t run. Still counts as a long-ass time and a lot of experience, practical and imagined.

I’ve been a writer of erotic BDSM fiction for the last 3 years. I’m told by a few people that I have a knack for it. Possibly they are only being nice, but I keep scratching out the stories and some people keep reading them.

I’ve also written a few articles about the BDSM community for local publications and a webzine or two.

And I was a practicing Dominatrix for 7 years.

I feel I am at least marginally qualified to comment, if not be considered an expert consultant. So here it comes. You should probably go refill your drink. Make popcorn. Or…you know….escape while you still can.

There’s so much lovely outrage over all the reasons 50 Shades is a terrible example of a BDSM relationship that it brings a tear of pride to my eye and makes me feel that it’d be a bit superfluous to list them again. Abusive relationship, blah blah. Manipulative and unhealthy etc etc. Spineless doormat, yadda yadda. Borderline schizophrenic predator heard it, said it. And yes, yes it is some of the worst published prose I’ve ever seen in my life and it pains me to even attempt to read it. But to my very great satisfaction, it actually seems that most of you know that. Yay Tumblr! Go, you!

I will not try to claim that unhealthy BDSM relationships aren’t a problem in the Community. They are. But hello? Unhealthy relationships are a problem PERIOD. I’d say that the proportion of fucked up ones in the Alternative community is about the same as the proportion of them in the Vanilla community. People, you know, are pretty fucked up. We carry baggage. We make mistakes. We stay in bad relationships because we don’t want to give up on them or are afraid to be alone. This is universal, and not the sole property of the BDSM community. Unhealthy BDSM relationships are possibly a little scarier than vanilla ones because the potential for physical harm may be proportionately a little higher, but who hasn’t heard of people who harm their partners in “regular” relationships too? It’s important for EVERYONE to stand up for themselves. To refuse to let yourself be harmed. To get help if you need it. To refuse to harm someone you love, and to get away from them if you can’t keep that promise. To learn to be better people, to communicate, to advocate for ourselves, to put an end to abuse. Oh yeah, I’m qualified to comment on that too. I married a man who chipped away at my self esteem for years and years. Who decided we didn’t need a safeword because I was his property and he knew my limits better than I did. Who expressed his displeasure during a “play” scene by hiding his punishments under the veil of consensual play. I finally stood up for myself and walked out. No one deserves to be abused. Glorifying it in print and on screen is unconscionable. I think we agree on that one.

So I decided that what I really wanted to talk about was HEALTHY BDSM. Not a tall order at all, huh? Because there’s not a definition, or a formula. No one type of person is into this kinky stuff, and there’s no one way to go about it. When I was regularly attending weekly play parties at a local Fetish club in my city, I saw all kinds of people. We had a couple of teachers, a cop, a trucker, a park ranger, a chemist, an editor, a chef, several students, a nurse anesthetist, a FEMA consultant, a dancer, and a female mechanic who used to be a male mechanic and never wore clothing except a belly chain and work boots because she was very proud of her post-operative body (and had every right to be) and who would sometimes hitch her pet by his private parts to a little red wagon and make him pull her around the club in it.

People…those of us in the Lifestyle tend to refer to them as Vanillas, or Nillas…point at us and call us freaks, call us sick. And I’ll admit that there’s rather a higher percentage of odd and unusual characters to be found at most Fetish clubs than there are at most Sports bars (I’m not judging you, sports fans! You’re people too!!). Maybe the finger-pointers ought to take a look at WHY. Is it just because weirdos have a stronger likelihood of turning out kinky? I’m not actually sure that’s it, or not ALL of it. As a whole, I have found the BDSM community to be more accepting, more compassionate, and more supportive of the unique and the different than any other group with which I’ve associated. On the surface, I don’t really read as a freak. I’m a single mom. I have only two piercings. Okay yeah, I have some tattoos, but they’re where they can be easily concealed. I don’t wear wild clothing, but am a t-shirts and jeans kind of woman. I can fit into almost any social situation and make people feel comfortable. I don’t know WHY or HOW I learned to do this, but it comes fairly easily to me. I drive a Honda. It doesn’t have bizarre stickers on it (okay, so I’m looking for the right time to put the Zombie family stickers my boyfriend gave me for Christmas on the rear window, but they’re not there YET.) My hair is just brown. I don’t do drugs, and rarely drink. And yet, in my heart, I have only ever felt as though I was truly free to be myself at a Fetish event. Because healthy BDSM means accepting people for who they are, and not having to be ashamed of who YOU really are, or what you want.

So many strange and wonderful and quirky things turn people on! Aren’t we lucky that we’re not limited to missionary-position sex! The common kinks are….well, the most common ones of course; Bondage, leather, spanking, flogging, wearing cool outfits with lots of vinyl or leather or chains and buckles and spikes. Personally, spanking is what trips my trigger the strongest. But I have seen and experienced so MANY varieties of BDSM! We had a lot of people who went by “scene names” at our club. Some of them were nicknames derived from the favored activities of the person. We had a Naked Steve, a Spanking Paul, a Rubber John. Oh, he was one of my favorites. When he arrived at the club, he would lug in his enormous, heavy duffel, take off his clothes, and put on….a vintage world war II black rubber environmental suit. It covered him from head to toe with only the face open, but don’t mistake me to mean he wore a gimp suit. It was thick, heavy rubber and smelled like a tire. It was baggy and made him look like a frog. He had a vintage gas mask he wore with it too. He just liked the way it felt and smelled. It was hot and awkward and he made hilarious loud squeaking noises when he walked. Nobody laughed at him, because it made him happy. He wasn’t hurting anyone, or bothering anyone. He was friendly, intelligent, soft-spoken and had a lovely, wry sense of humor.

Trigger was another whose name suited his kink. He owned a custom-made, outrageously expensive saddle and bridle made expressly for a human being to wear. He wore a horse-tail butt plug and boots with horse shoes on the bottoms, and it was actually functional. People could ride him while he ran upright, the saddle was designed to accommodate the awkward angle so the rider wouldn’t slip off, and he would RUN throughout the club and its backyard with his rider encouraging him along with a riding crop. It was quite a sight. He never spoke while in pony mode, only whinnied or snorted or whuffled. He was also helpful, thoughtful, and fun to talk to.

We had one member who was into CBT. For the uninitiated, that stands for Cock and Ball Torture. And I mean he was REALLY into CBT, from having his private parts whipped and struck, to having objects inserted into his urethra (including a cotton swap dipped in horse liniment!), and to experiencing temporary piercing of his shaft and testicles. Many, if not most people, would find some of this extreme! And yet, he was a devoted husband and father, worked very hard, and was a loyal, good friend. And, to further support my claims about what healthy BDSM is, his play partners (of which I was one from time to time) always took great care to conduct his more extreme wishes under sanitary and sterile conditions, and to always use proper first aid afterwards. He actually LIKED the burn of the antiseptic. But he never got an infection or sustained any permanent injury.

Some people liked knife play. Some liked fire play. One guy liked being mummified in industrial shrink wrap and then having it shrunk tight with a hair dryer. Some liked temporary piercing scenes on the breasts or genitals. Cupping, inflation, electrical stimulation. These might be considered risky behaviors in an unhealthy BDSM relationship, especially if the bottom or sub were coerced into them. In a healthy environment such as we maintained at the club, they were safe to explore their unconventional needs in an accepting and safety-conscious setting. We didn’t make people feel bad about their needs and desires.

I had a few clients I found quite interesting. These were people who, for one reason or another, weren’t able or willing to attend a public play party, and I offered a safe outlet for their needs. My sessions with clients never involved sexual contact. I was a lot more a therapist than a hooker. Sure, many of them were aroused by what I did to them, but what they chose to do about that after the session was up to them. I always had a “safety net” in place, meaning my boyfriend was always there and always armed. I refused to see clients who had a problem with this. I pointed out that his presence wasn’t only for my own safety. If I tied a 200-plus pound man to a St. Andrew’s Cross and he happened to lose consciousness, I was neither muscular enough or tall enough to lift him off the ground to take his weight off his restraints so he could be freed. If someone had a seizure or heart attack, having more than one person on hand to help was in everyone’s best interest. My sessions were carefully negotiated, I insisted on the use of safewords, and I always asked for feedback from clients to make sure I was giving them what they needed. This is also an example of healthy BDSM. I had one gentleman who drove through my town on his truck-driving route once every couple of weeks, and he wanted only to be paddled as hard as I could paddle him. For an hour. He didn’t need the roleplay aspect…no scolding, no naughty boy and strict teacher, and didn’t care whether I wore fetish clothes or not. More than once we would have regular conversations about his job, his grandkids, or football. He didn’t mind if my bodyguard watched. One time THEY carried on a conversation while I paddled him. I was too out of breath to join in. That trucker could take a serious lick!

One man wanted to`drink his own semen. When I told him there’d be no sexual contact, that I would neither stimulate him or allow him to stimulate himself during the session, he wasn’t deterred. He understood, so he saved his sperm for the week leading up to our session, for which he drove six hours, then turned around and drove BACK another six hours (he said it was worth the drive because NO ONE had ever been willing to fulfill his fantasy), and brought it along in a freezer- and microwave-safe container. I think he’d frozen it. He also wanted women’s shoes, so he sent me the money to get them for him, as no place where he lived sold them in his size. I bought him white patent leather eight inch platform heels in a women’s size 16. That’s a mens size 14. He was over seven feet tall in them, and wore the heels, a string of pearls, and an adult diaper for our session. He had a baby bottle, in which he deposited his rather astonishing volume of thawed-out semen (I’m not an expert on ejaculate volume, but it looked to me like he must have jerked off two or three times a day for the whole week…I mean there was nearly a CUP of it.) He wished for me to spank him and call him a filthy little boy while I forced him to drink it all.

Once I was contacted by a man in Paris. I was not in Paris. I was not even in Europe. His fantasy was to be shot with arrows. Actual arrows, until he died. He offered me his life-savings of 30,000 francs (this amounts to about $5,000) to do it for him. This, dear readers, is NOT a healthy BDSM practice. I’ve always hoped he never found anyone to take him up on it.

Healthy BDSM is about communication, honesty, trust, and compassion. It is about caring enough about a person to want to fulfill their desires. It is about taking physical, mental and emotional care of your partner or partners. It is about having hella kinky fun, having a sense of humor, not letting your ego get in the way, not allowing jealousy to sour your relationship. It is about belonging, and accepting another person or persons’ quirks and needs even if they’re unconventional. It’s about safety, desire, letting go and catching each other when you fall. It is about opening locked, cob-webby closet doors and dusty hidden cupboards and forgotten cabinetry in your heart and mind and letting someone see them all, and knowing they will not condemn you. To own another or to be owned by them when all of the aforementioned is true is a breathtaking experience. In putting a collar on Anastasia Steele, Christian Gray would have sought to enslave her, and she would have considered herself enslaved.

If you’re doing it right, what SHOULD happen is that you will both finally be set free.

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softsublove-blog · 8 years ago

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Hello! KiKi here. You might know me by my handle cdreaiton. I’m Charis’s sub. We’ve been talking a lot lately, and it’s come up in both stories we’ve written, and our real life, so I wanted to drop in with a note on caring for your sub, and what subs should expect, or ask from their Dom/Domme. To do that, I’m going to tell you about how a scene typically goes for Charis and I.

First, when we know we’re going to do a scene, I spend some time letting my mind empty a bit, so I’m not overwhelmed by thoughts of real life while we’re doing a scene. Then, I eat something high in protein, and Charis eats something that has a lot of carbs. Our favorite is chicken and rice. Protein helps my body prepare for the hormonal onslaught that comes with a scene, and the carbs give Charis energy for doing the scene.

Before the scene starts, Charis always puts her hand on my back and asks if I’m ready, and during the scene, she frequently rubs her hands down my back, sometimes telling me how good I’m being, or reassuring me if I’m fighting letting myself go (which happens all the time.) These little touches keep me grounded and remind me that she’s always going to be there for me.

When the scene is over, she covers me with a warm blanket and brings me a cup of juice and some cookies or a banana. Bananas are great aftercare food, because they contain potassium which helps speed your body’s recovery from the endorphin high. We sit and cuddle for awhile, and she tells me how well I did, how much she loves me, other reassurances like that. It helps refocus my mind and brings me down slowly. Sometimes, I come down too fast, and I get a headache. When that happens, she gives me more juice and rubs my back until it passes. Adding in a chemical component at that point, like pain medication, isn’t a good idea. It can mess with your body’s natural balance. If you’re like me, and get a headache sometimes, wait until at least thirty minutes after the scene to take anything. If we’ve done a scene that broke skin, Charis cleans the small cuts with peroxide to keep them from getting infected. It’s extremely important to do that, especially if you do knife play or anything like that. Which we do every once in awhile. Once I’ve come down completely, we talk about how I’m doing, and then she talks to me for awhile about nothing, checking to make sure my mental state is actually alright.

I’ve never experienced sub drop with Charis, but I did with a previous abusive Dom. If you find yourself irritated or overly upset in the few days following a scene, go to your Dom/Domme and tell them. Cuddle with them for awhile, let them reassure you a little, and know that the feeling will pass. But if you do proper precare and aftercare, you shouldn’t experience any kind of sub drop.

Talk to your sub. Talk to your Dom/Domme. Keep the line of communication open and talk about what precare and aftercare are best for you. And if you ever have a Dom/Domme who doesn’t do these things, talk to them, and if they still don’t do them, they aren’t a good fit for you. Being a sub is a gift we give to our Doms/Dommes, one that they need to see as such. We aren’t doormats or weak willed people that don’t deserve respect. Because without our submission, their Dominance means nothing. Always remember that.

Author: Even though I’ve talked about these things before, I think they’re so vitally important that I wanted to share this. Plus, I think it’s cool to get things from the sub’s perspective, and I know KiKi’s a good writer, so I hope everybody pays attention. There’s only one thing I can think of to add, and it’s not really about before or aftercare. There are going to be times when either the sub or the Dom/me is not in the right headspace for a scene, or is not feeling up to it physically. Both partners should be obligated to speak up about it. I hate having to disappoint KiKi when I know she needs a scene, but sometimes my back won’t cooperate no matter how much I’d like it to, and I have to tell her that we have to wait a day or two. She never pouts or acts disappointed, even though I know she is, because she understands that my disability isn’t an excuse to put her off and that I’ll make it up to her as soon as I’m physically able to do so. One night of being a bit bummed is way better than a bad scene because someone’s not up to it but tries to fake it!

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