Thursday, September 22, 2011

The Icky Things

One of the things that's always fascinated me--and often troubled me--is the vast difference in intensity of the way people play. Kink and BDSM can be about the most mild and innocuous activities, or, for others, it can be about toeing that line between life and death.

I try to tell myself that all that really matters is what my preferences and limits are. But part of me still watches and judges others by my own views and beliefs about what is safe and sane, even though it's none of my business. My book Deep in the Woods was written at a time when I was struggling to understand people who pushed the envelope, and downplayed the importance of things like safety and consent.

But now, two or three years later, I'm learning to relax and just let people follow their impulses. I'm learning to accept the diversity of what turns people on, and to let them seek what they crave in the privacy of their own relationships without tacking on my own judgments and warnings. What about you? Do you ever get judgmental or stressed out about some of the edgier things people do within the "lifestyle?" Does it trouble you? Turn you off of BDSM? Make you more excited about BDSM?

I knew a D-type once...I wouldn't call him a Dominant because he did a kind of BDSM all his own, with his own labels. He was his OWN lifestyle, self contained. He was a very charismatic guy, intelligent to the point of scariness, and very manipulative. I would see journal posts from his various victi--er--submissives, and they would all speak with excited horror of this "icky thing" he made them do, or subjected them to. Of course, they were all over the moon about the experience (he only played with serious masochists.) I was fascinated to know this secret thing he was doing to all these women that was so awful.

What I came to understand is that the "icky thing" was actually different for each partner he played with. What he got off on, more than anything, was causing his partners deep emotional pain as a cathartic activity. Mindfucks, in a sense, but something more involved than the typical mental gags and tricks.

No, this D-type would take the time to really get to know his partner, learn everything he could about them until he pinpointed the thing he could do to them that would cause them maximum distress. He called this thing "the icky thing."

I have my own icky thing. A few of them really. The icky thing, for me, would depend on who I was with and the situation. But honestly, I have no desire to face my icky thing, no matter with whom or when or where. I just don't.

But I'm coming to accept that there are a lot of people out there searching for someone to do their ickiest icky nightmares to them. For them, that is the pinnacle of the BDSM experience. And I just have to accept that that's okay.


  1. Wow - lots of food for thought, here. There are things that were once a hard limit that are no longer a limit of mine. But I still have a list of hard limits.

    A few of my fantasies involve testing out the waters with those hard limits. Would I want someone who would insist on heading in one of those directions in reality? Some of them are an absolutely-never for health and sanitary reasons. But others, I have to admit that the thoughts of someone leading me into them, of getting me agree to turn them into soft limits that they can chip away at... the idea is a turn on. I have no idea how the reality would be.

    Some of the hard limits my husband has pushed me beyond have very rarely been revisited, once we reached the goal. Other have become a regular part of our lives.

    I don't get the mindfucks that I used to get, and in a way I miss that aspect. But when you've been with someone for so long, the mindfucks just don't work anymore. Or that's the way it is with us. I know where he's heading with things most of the time now, because I know him so well.

    As for what turns me off that other people do -- the only thing that bugs me is when I don't think consent has been given in an appropriate way. When the Dom is much older than the sub and is manipulating her in a way that, while she thinks she has given consent, she is so naive she doesn't realize she has been manipulated into it. Also, when the sub doesn't work, has no job skills, no education to speak of, and has no way to move out or support herself, and the Dom takes advantage of that.

    But if it's two equals who are choosing to exchange power, then so far I've been fine with everything I've seen. Some humiliation scenes come to mind that just were not my thing, but it didn't bother me that they were getting into it.

    There is one thing on a blog that bothered me tremendously. Partly for safety reasons, though she explains in the comments some precautions they took that show they had weighed the risks and did what they could to mediate them. It's not so much a judgment on my part as a statement of how much it haunted me. It's a hard limit I didn't even know I had, but the idea is still intriguing. Here's the post: