In The Detail, by Euclidean Point (a January guest post special!)

One of the many highlights of Eroticon 2015 was the all-too-brief time I got to spend chatting to the lovely, utterly brilliant @EuclideanPoint (and her husband @beaudujour – ALSO lovely & brilliant).

Of course outside the conference bubble, life tends to intervene, and so it was the best part of five months before we managed to reconnect. EP and I identify as switches, and prompted by a particularly filthy Twitter thread in early January we started chatting about how that impacts both our fantasies and the way we play with different partners. From that conversation, this excellent guest post was born.

If you also switch and want to add your thoughts on how this dynamic works for you, please do chip in via the comments section, or get in touch with one of us directly. I’ll be picking up the baton from EP at some point too, as this is a whole subject area I find pretty fucking fascinating…

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In The Detail

A short while ago, Exhibit A and I had a chat about being a switch. We talked a lot about how it affects the way we approach new (sexy) scenarios, and that conversation raised various questions for me. Do I automatically imagine myself as the top or the bottom? Would that decision depend upon the scenario in question, or what frame of mind I happened to be in that day? Are there certain types of dominance or submission that appeal to me from one perspective and not the other, or scenarios where I’d be happy to end up on either side?

My topping fantasies tend to work mostly on an emotional level. I fantasise about humiliating my sub, keeping them on the back foot, orgasm denial and, my favourite, seeing fear in their eyes. Acts undertaken to achieve these goals depend on the psychology of the sub themselves. I also indulge in a healthy dose of wish fulfillment – I love my submissive to explain one of their fantasies to me so I can repeatedly act it out with them, discussing and honing the details each time to get it as close as possible to the version in their head.

It’s important to me to find those little things that capture the essence of submission for them – particular words, gestures or techniques that really push their buttons. It took my chat with Exhibit A to realise that I approach domination in this way because that’s how submission works best for me.

As a switch, I am probably a quarter dominant and three-quarters submissive, so I tend to have a few more submissive fantasies and they are invariably more detailed. Over the last few years though, I have found that the level of detail has got a little out of hand. Sometimes for my lovely partner’s sake I wish I could just fantasise about simple stuff – a list of toys and sex acts that I like. Unfortunately lately that just doesn’t do it for me. Just put clamps on my nipples, and I’ll probably be bored. Tell me you’re going to put clamps on my nipples for 15 minutes. Then tie me to a chair and make me sit there for 15 minutes to think about that. 15 minutes is a long time to sit doing nothing; to imagine living each moment again with the pain of the clamps. It’s this anticipation and build up that I need. None of my submissive fantasies are complete without some kind of numerical rules, an imaginative and sadistic form of punishment, and lots of sitting and dreading (or nervously anticipating…) what awaits me next.

By way of example, I’ve always enjoyed sucking cock and then being caned or cropped for not meeting the required standard in some way. Having thought about this at length, let me present to you in all its convoluted glory the latest version of my cock sucking and caning fantasy.

My hands are tied behind my back. Ideally the rest of me is tied up too. I don’t have the ability to move my head; either it is tied back against a wall or post, or you hold it and move it up and down onto your cock yourself. I may be wearing a ring gag. My ability to enhance your pleasure of my own volition is limited to the movement of my tongue and how enthusiastically I prioritise sucking over breathing.

Before we’ve even begun you have explained to me that I will be judged on my abilities, and my performance will be reflected in the beating I am given later. Sometimes I will be scored out of 50 or 100, and for each point I fail to achieve a stroke of the crop or cane will be given. You will find this amusing, and will tell me that while I’m not making much of an effort, you’ve been planning to give me a low score anyway because I deserve a good beating.

Other times I am given a number of minutes, and will be given one stroke for each minute it takes me to make you come. For this particular scenario you will probably have wanked beforehand, ideally in front of me after you’ve explained the rules of this game, to give me a tougher job. When you finally come in my mouth you announce the number of strokes I am to receive and I am left for a while with the taste of you in my mouth thinking about what awaits me.

For my cane strokes I am put on all fours, tied down by my wrists, elbows, knees and ankles. You make it clear that you don’t want me flinching away from any of the strokes, which will be delivered to my ass, the back of my thighs, but mainly to that sweet spot where they meet. You discourage my flinching by inserting an ass hook into my ass and tying this with rope to my hair. I now have to keep my ass pushed out, back arched and head up. You add clover clamps to each nipple and attach a small weight to each one to keep me still and focused. As I’m still gagged from before you’ll probably be the one to count the strokes, repeating any that you don’t think were quite hard enough to count.

I’m not sure why this level of detail is important to me, or how much it detracts from my submissiveness to have such prescriptive ideas of what I would like. I honestly don’t want my partner to feel like an actor in my play, and I genuinely do like to be dominated. Sometimes it’s a bit of a struggle for us to make these kind of fantasies come true without him feeling like he’s reading from a script, or me feeling like I’m too in charge of the situation. Perhaps I have a dominant’s brain trapped in a submissive’s body. I often think that it just takes me a certain amount of anticipation and calculating what will happen to fully shut off the other stuff going around in my head so I can completely enjoy the moment.

All I know right now is that when it comes to being submissive, for me the orgasms are in the detail.