“Submitting” vs. “Submissive”

I’ve always had a bit of an issue w/ the idea of labeling myself “a submissive.”  Not that it bothers me… I just don’t find it entirely inaccurate.  Not that I’m a switch either.  I’m certainly no dominant, and I’m most definitely not a sadist!  I don’t want to hurt anybody, I don’t want to boss anybody around, and (as my Owner recently, again pointed out) I don’t generally do well when the planning is left up to me – tell me what you want done, and I’ll make it happen… but leave it up to me to choose the plan, and I tend to bog-down in indecision.  So, as far as the label goes, “submissive” works okay.  

And I am certainly a masochist and a bottom.  I like pain.  I also like being made helpless – having control taken from me.  I get hard every time I hear the “click” of the lock as my Owner locks me into my collar and I know that I am absolutely HERS.  

So that would make me “a sub,” right?  But here’s my thing…  When I play w/ a Top, and when it’s a good scene, often I will find myself in a submissive headspace… during that scene.  Now, this doesn’t always happen.  There are some skilled Tops whom I enjoy playing w/ that I never wind-up feeling submissive towards – our play is a purely S/m exchange w/o any D/s aspect at all.  Sometimes I even like interrogation play… so I can be very un-submissive, resist, talk back, and say, “fuck you.”  (I do not do interrogation play w/ my Owner – that just would sooooo not work.)  But many times I will play w/ somebody and they will put me into a yummy, warm submissive headspace… during that scene.  Then the scene ends, I snuggle and eat a cookie (doggie treat!), come back to earth… and the subspace gradually fades.

If you talk about me being “a submissive” (as a noun), it sounds like I’m just submissive in general – to just anybody… or to any Dom.  But… that hardly seems accurate, at least in my case.  There are many Doms that I respect but w/o feeling submissive towards.  Of course there are some Doms I don’t even respect, and a few that I wouldn’t cross the street to piss on if they were on fire… 

I think for me it makes more sense to talk about the “act of submission” as a verb.  Instead of “I’m a sub,” try “I submit.”  Or, better, “I submit to ___.”  This may be a temporary headspace (like when I play in a really yummy, hot scene and I get all weak in the knees and just want to collapse at your feet and lick your boots)… or it may be an ongoing D/s relationship like I have w/ my Owner and my Alpha Pup.  But those are the only two people I am submissive towards in a generalized, in-and-out-of-scene, ongoing way – not towards just any Dom who walks up.

And isn’t one of the classic beginning-Dominant mistakes to assume that you can issue orders to just any sub/bottom/boy around?  “Well, you’re a submissive, right!?”

“Dude, I submit… but not to you!”

“Well, you’re not a true submissive then.”

“Well, you are a true jackass.”

(Can you tell I’ve had this conversation before?)

And there’s the corresponding mistake for beginning-submissives: thinking you have to obey every self-identified “Master.”  So I think maybe the label is misleading… like, if you identify as “submissive” then you must be submissive toward whoever in some generalized way.  To my thinking (and I know my Owner agrees, b/c she’s told me so) my submission is worth more b/c I don’t submit to just anybody.  Ma’am used to frequently tell me, “Walk w/ your head held proud; I don’t want to see you lower your eyes to anybody but me.”  I guess now that’s: “…me and Loki.”  :)

Save the Faeries!

No, it’s not about gay pride.  It’s about Atlanta Faerie Escape 2012!  It’s rather amusing… and you can VERY briefly see Shdwkitten and Alex.  (Look at the lower left of the screen when the narrator says “costuming.”)  Ma’am was anointed the “Best Dark Faerie” in 2010.

http://www.indiegogo.com/faerieescape

Bootbrush Interview

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What drew me to Puppy Play?

Last week, my Alpha Pup posed me w/ a question: What drew me to puppy play initially?  For him it was the gear.  Now, I like the gear… I love looking at pictures online of pups in hot leather and rubber get-ups.  I have a fetish for those materials just like a lot of us in this community do… and as a shout-out, let me say: if you have even a slight fetish about rubber gear (or pup play), you should get Bootbrush’s book of erotica, Assimilation.  It is uber-hot!  (There’s even one story about sex on a motorcycle which has always been a HUGE fantasy of mine.  I own the motorcycle, unfortunately I have no garage.  Wait a minute!  I know someone who has a garage…)

Oops! Where was I?  Oh, yeah.  While I do tend to get turned-on by the look, touch, and smell of leather, rubber, and lycra, that wasn’t actually what drew me to pup play to begin with.  This is evidenced pretty well by the fact that I’ve been doing pup play since 2005 and identified as a "pup" for almost as long, but I only bought my first tail last year and my first puppy hood this year.  Well… to be honest, I probably would have bought some gear sooner except for the fact that my Owner doesn’t like the hoods (she prefers to see my face) and she’s not a gear fetishist.  She’s okay w/ leather, rubber, and spandex… but they don’t often push her buttons.  My new puppy hood is somewhat of a concession – she’s indulging me, but she’s not crazy about it.

Now, if you count the leash and collar as pup gear… well, that, I admit, was probably where it first started.  Ever since I was a teen, I had fantasies of being led about on a leash, or chained-up by a collar.  And now, I have the coolest leash I know of – a long leash of heavy, brown leather.  It’s probably my favorite piece of gear (not counting Ma’am’s collar), and I LOVE to be paraded about on it.  Being led by the leash is one of my biggest turn-ons. 

However, lots of people in our community have fetishes about leashes and collars w/o being into puppy play, so I don’t think my gear fetish is really what drew me to pup play.  For me it started more as a spiritual interest.  I used to attend a Zen Center and sit in meditation about once a week.  I did that for… oh, I guess about two years.  That was like 2001-2002, I think.  Now, the goal of Zen meditation is to cultivate a state of “no mind” in which you experience reality directly w/o picking it apart w/ added analysis.  "When you chop wood, chop wood. When you carry water, carry water."  Sounds like it should be simple, but try and sit for 10 minutes w/o thinking any conscious, verbalize-able, thoughts… just experience things unfiltered w/o any mental “commentary.”  It’s pretty tough.  However, after practicing that for a couple of years, I found it fairly easy to drop into pup-space from the very first time I tried it.  I still use a lot of the same techniques: counting breaths or silently repeating mantras.  I use a Chinese Daoist mantra I learned many years ago (wu-tie-foo-may-lay), but it can be anything – you can repeat “Mary had a little lamb” in your head.  The purpose of the mantra is just to distract the frontal part of your brain – to make the words in your head stop.

After a couple of years at the Zen Center, I drifted out of the East and became interested in Neo-paganism and, in particular, Celtic shamanism.  The work of John & Caitlin Matthews was very important during this time (2002-2004), and I actually got to meet them at Mythic Journeys in 2004.  (If you know the origin of my name, Emrys, then you’ve got a solid clue to where I’m coming from.)  

Also important was the work of Stephen Larsen, who approached shamanism/transformation from a Jungian perspective… focused on play, masks, and role-playing games as tools for inner transformation… and I also got to meet Stephen Larsen at Mythic Journeys ’04. 

I guess one last piece of the puzzle for me was a long-standing interest in werewolves.  Not just an interest in, but, as I’ve previously written, even a fetish for.  I think werewolves are just fucking sexy!  That irresistible explosion of raw, primal energy…  Yum!

Somewhere at the intersection of a gear (leash) fetish + the meditative practice of “no mind” + Celtic shamanism (w/ its strong focus on totem animals) + an erotic interest in primal animal transformation and the canine/human hybrid… Pup Emrys was forged.

For me, becoming a canine isn’t just a game I play every now and then in the dungeon.  The Irish Wolfhound is my spirit animal – my totem.  This is who I am under the surface of my skin… and the hound is always there, 24/7… even if he’s sometimes deeper and other times closer to the surface.  Yes, it’s erotic – of course!  But it’s also spiritual for me.  But it’s also play (an important lesson I got from Stephen Larsen: that play and games can be deeply spiritual exercises… especially those that involve identity-transformation or role-play – theater, after all, began as a religious event).  So I’ll close w/ one more formula: sexual + spiritual + playful = pup play.

(And I can just hear Sir thinking to himself, "Ask a simple question...")

Important Announcement!!!

Okay, so I’ve mentioned already that, much as I love CAPEX, my home club has felt a bit stale to me lately, and I’ve been looking for a change.  Mind you, CAPEX is a great group, but after 10 years of being there and volunteering almost every month I'm looking for some new experiences...  and particularly bothersome to me has been the lack of pup/boy energy around there, as it is a predominantly het, male-Top/fem-bottom group.  At first I thought maybe I was just looking for fellow pups to be around and soak-up some of their energy.  But then I soon found that the instinct to bond w/ a pack is greater than that.  After a couple of trips to visit some Georgia pups, I found I really would have liked to be accepted as a full member of a pack and not just a random pup who’s welcome to drop in now and again.

Problem was, to find a pack to properly belong to, I had a fairly specific set of requirements.

• Given I am owned by, and devoted to, Shdwkitten, I’m not at all looking for a new Handler/Owner… so I was searching for an Alpha Pup who’s not, himself, looking to fully-collar a new submissive.
• It seems that the pup-energy I’m searching for is a particularly (gay) male energy… which kind of further limits my search b/c it would have to be a pack that was comfortable w/ a “nominally straight” puppy who has a female Owner…
• And (maybe most important of all) the Alpha would further have to be someone I feel a good chemistry with – someone I feel attracted to and submissive towards… which isn’t a whole lot of men for me.  I mean, I have many male friends who are skilled play-partners… but it’s different when you talk about being in an ongoing D/s (Alpha/beta) relationship w/ someone.

Right, so, on the one hand that describes a fairly narrow search parameter, does it not?  On the other hand… it also described this really cool Alpha Pup I already knew!

Let’s back up…  One year ago at Frolicon 2011, my lovely Owner arranges for me to have a play-date for my birthday w/ a certain puppy: Loki.  We’d seen him around at this-and-that con – never playing; never in pup-mode; just watching – and she’d been lusting after him for years.  LOL.  I never paid him too much attention, honestly… but, turns out, he was watching me.  He later told me that I was the first pup he saw doing pup-play in real life.  Last year, he caught me in pup-mode at Frolicon and gave me some great scritches as I loved up against him.  Ma’am saw him flogging somebody (Ah-ha; he’s a switch), and that gave her the brainstorm to approach Loki's Handler about having Loki give me my birthday beat-down.

It turned out to be one amazing scene!  I think from the first time we played there was just a great chemistry between us.  I’d been active in the lifestyle for 9 years at that point, and I’d played w/ some very expert Tops (Master Rorie, NCMaster, MasterZ… to drop a few names), but this scene immediately went into my top 4 or 5 of most memorable ever, and really it was just the simple fact that the chemistry between Loki and I was hot, hot, hot!  His play style is very similar to my Owner’s.  It’s very primal… w/ lots of hands-on contact, scratching, kissing, growling, licking, bighting, edging, chewing-on-nipples… *singing: these are a few of my favorite things*

It was only after the con that Ma’am located his blog and learned that he was fairly new to active BDSM play (less than a year) and VERY new to Topping.  I had no idea – after our scene together, I’d have told you he was a grand master.  It really just goes to prove that it’s not about expensive toys or technical skill (I’ve known some Tops who were technically very skilled and still as exciting to me as watching paint dry); it’s about the energy exchange and the chemistry between the players.

(By the way, Loki’s written very well about that Frolicon scene from his POV at: http://lokipup.blogspot.com/2011/04/frolicon.html and http://lokipup.blogspot.com/2011/05/frolicon-cont.html .  Go read.)

So, Loki and I exchange some emails now and then; he gets invited to our Tree-house parties but never makes it up; I check in on his blog every month or two just to see how he’s doing… but we don’t see one-another for almost a year.  Then, last month, Ma’am decides we’re going down to Atlanta to 1763’s Education Stations b/c she wants to see Andrew (who was doing knife play)… and then she surprises me w/ the news that we’re having dinner w/ Loki beforehand.  Yea!  *wags*

I get a great boost of energy from being around Sir Loki (he’s a Sir, now) and his delightful pup/boy, Tebow.  I talk Ma’am into letting me go see them again at Dominion a couple of weeks later… and a couple of weeks after that she sets-up a private play-date between Loki & I.

So… after we got back from this year’s Frolicon, Ma’am called Loki and asked him if he’d be interested in letting me join his pack and serve him as my Alpha Pup.  Fortunately she woke him up from a post-con nap, and he was so groggy that he didn’t quite know what he was saying, so he agreed.  *bounces up and down and runs in circles*

I am so proud to belong to Sir Loki’s pack.  Now I not only am the happy property of the wonderful, exciting, and oh-so-sexy Shdwkitten, as well as being the family puppy of my fantastic poly in-laws: CF and the Panda (wouldn’t that be a great title for an early-1980s TV show?), but I’m also fortunate enough to have an amazing Alpha Pup and an always-amusing, little pack-brother to fill in some of the empty spaces I’ve been feeling lately.  Thank you so much, Sir!  You and Tebow are just cool beans smothered in awesome sauce!

Beware of Owner

Aw... I found a picture of my Owner playing w/ her puppies...

Froliocn, final part, Saturday night, Dungeons & Drunkards

Up in the room, prepping for the big Saturday night dungeon party, I got into my pup gear – w/ my new hood!  My lovely Owner had decided I’d had enough beatings for the weekend, and was content to just let me pup-out.  Ma’am walked me on-leash around the dungeon in pup-mode for a couple of laps… then the wrestling mats became available.  I got to romp w/ another pup (cute, 25-year-old, Asian twink w/ a never-ending supply of energy).  It was tremendous fun!  While he was a bit stronger than me, I think it was pretty clear that this Irish wolfhound was higher up in the pack order.  He would jump on my back, but I would be able to easily drop and roll us over, putting him on his back and using the momentum to carry me on through the roll back onto my paws, so I could quickly hop back onto him, pinning him down… where I would proceed to lick him all over his face.  :)

Great fun that it was, he is 25, and I am 36… so eventually I was worn down.  I was grateful when another little twink kid came over to wrestle him, and I could just go curl up by Sir (Ma’am had wandered off to go do her social butterfly thing again).

Eventually we all went back upstairs to change cloths and start drinking.  I popped up to my room to change and returned to Sir’s room w/ a drink I was starting and a cookie I was finishing.  Sir’s eyes lit up: “You have cookies!?  Go fetch the cookies!”  LOL.  It was the most assertive command he had given me the entire weekend.  “GO FETCH COOKIES!”

(Do all pups consider cookies a vital part of aftercare?  I had thought that was just me.)

After cookies and drinks, we went to check out some of the room parties and have more drinks.  We ended up stopping in the hotel room of two of the Dominion guys… and that’s when the fire alarm sounded!  We spilled into the hall… and to my surprise and delight, CF and my husband-in-law spilled out of the room next door – which happened to be the Wolf Den (a traditional watering hole at our CAPEX parties).  Sir mentioned that he was hungry, so I brought him to the Wolf Den.  He got some food… and then revealed that he had this secret wish to touch some boobs – just to try it out.  Well, first he tried my wife-in-law’s date.  He had this whole, long spiel: “Hi. I’m gay. It’s been many years since I touched boobs. Yours are very nice. Yadda, yadda, yadda.” 

He tried hers out… and I was like, “Sir, if you wanted touch boobs, then you should have just said something.”  So I just holler at CF (who has some first class knockers) to come over and tell her to remove her shirt, which she does, and Sir gets booby-fondle number two.  The punch line of this story actually comes later when we told Ma’am about it.  Her response: “God damn it! I was lusting after this man for how many years, and well [said to me] first you get him, and now [to CF] he’s fondling your boobs.  This is not fair!”  LOL.

Well, that pretty much does it.  After booze and boobs we drifted out of the Wolf Den, said our goodnights, and staggered back to our respective hotel rooms.  Definitely an all-around excellent con w/ very few complaints!  Ma’am’s birthday present to me was certainly one of my best ever… and that leads me into one important post-Frolicon announcement… which I’ll just save for another post.  Got’a try and keep you folks in suspense, right?