D/s

5 Questions to Ask Your New Kink Partner

Kate Sloan

A vanilla friend once asked me, when I gushed about how well my new dommy beau’s kinks fit with mine, “Isn’t that the point of identifying as dominant or submissive? So you can easily find someone who’s compatible with you?”

Ha. Easily? That’s a laugh. While I am indeed a submissive – and a damn good one, if I may say so – that doesn’t mean I automatically jive with every dominant who crosses my path. Even setting aside more basic factors like attraction and harmonious personalities, we might not work well together kinks-wise because there are so many different ways to be dominant or to be submissive. If I want to be nurtured but you want to degrade me until I cry, maybe we’re not gonna work out. If you get off on heavy sadism and my pain tolerance is only so-so, we might have to part ways. If the names and words that light your fire are ones that squick me out, maybe we should quit while we’re ahead.

While there’s no foolproof and thorough way (in my view) to assess compatibility quickly, there are certainly ways you can help speed it along. With that in mind, here are 5 questions you can ask your new beau (and answer yourself, too) to figure out whether your approaches to kink could work well together – for an evening, a fling, or maybe even for the long haul.

1. What kinds of feelings do you like getting from kink?

When you’re in the midst of a kink scene, do you like feeling adored, appreciated, accomplished? Or do you prefer to feel overwhelmed, overpowered, and owned? How about degraded, dejected, or dismissed? (More great feelings words on Bex’s Yes/No/Maybe list.)

Knowing this about a potential (or current) kink partner can help shape your scenes. I’ll take a very different approach when submitting to a dom who appreciates quiet obedience, for example, versus a dom who likes a little bratty resistance. Likewise, if a dom thinks I want to feel used and put down, they’re not going to be able to give me the type of scene I actually tend to want, which involves me being cherished and coddled. Figure out your desired feelings first, and then you can start to figure out everything else.

2. What does it look like when you’re enjoying yourself? What about when you’re not?

As a sub, I giggle when I’m enjoying myself – but I know other subs whose mid-scene giggles might mean they’re uncomfortable and don’t know how to say so. I know people whose stony silence might mean they hate what’s happening, and people who only go silent when things are feeling really good. I know people who kick and scream when they’re taken past their pain limits, and people for whom that’s just a sign that the scene is going swimmingly. It’s important to know how your particular play partner responds to both good and bad stimuli, so you know when to slow your roll and when to hit the accelerator. Of course, you shouldn’t rely only on these cues – it’s still important to have (and heed) a safeword, and perhaps a green/yellow/red check-in system or something similar – but they’re crucial to know, nonetheless.

That doesn’t only hold true for subs and bottoms, either. Doms and tops also have “tells” for when they’re enjoying a scene and when they’re decidedly not. A bonus of articulating these signs to a partner is that you get clearer on them yourself. I never used to notice, for example, that my ankles would cross together protectively when I was nearing a pain limit, until a partner asked me to list and explain some of my nonverbal signals. Being more aware of your own body and responses is always useful!

3. Has anyone ever safeworded with you before? What happened?

This is one of my favorite screening questions for new doms, because it shows me quickly how they handle consent in scenes and to what extent they respect their partners. A bad or dangerous dom will tend to get defensive when asked this question – “Of course no one has ever needed to safeword with me!” – while a good dom who’s been around the block will likely have at least a few stories to share. (I’m sure you could learn a lot about a sub by asking them this question, too.)

Pay attention to how they talk about the person who safeworded (affectionately? dismissively?) and what they claim to have done after the safeword was said (hopefully they tried to give the person what they needed, instead of reprimanding them or abandoning them). Notice, too, what their general attitude on safewording seems to be. If they view it as a wimpy cop-out that should best be avoided, rather than a vital communication tool in any encounter, maybe you should steer clear.

4. What are some edges you’re interested in pushing?

These malleable edges are also known as “soft limits”: things you aren’t interested in doing, with most people or in most circumstances, but that you might be open to if the right situation and partner came along for that particular thing.

For example, I don’t want to feel like some douchey bro’s blowjob machine, but with a compassionate dom who I trusted and loved to please, having my mouth used in an objectifying or degrading way could be fun. Maybe your partner’s been curious about knife play for ages but has never had a chance to try it out. Maybe they’re a dom who’s curious about subbing, or vice-versa. Whatever it is, you don’t have to push that edge immediately or at all, but it’s good to at least know about it, so you can perhaps start to work toward it together.

5. What kind(s) of aftercare do you need?

If someone is new to kink – or hasn’t done it in a while – they may not know the answer to this. But they probably have at least some idea. Common elements of aftercare are cuddles, compliments, and snacks – but of course, these don’t work for everyone.

I get nervous doing scenes with new partners who I haven’t discussed aftercare with yet. While most kinksters seem to know intuitively that aftercare is important, it’s hard for me to relax and have fun if I don’t know that I’ll be properly taken care of when I’m too subspacey to articulately advocate for myself. So it’s best to have this conversation before it becomes relevant, so both of you know you’ll be able to get what you need.

What questions do you like to ask new kink partners before playing?

 

This post was sponsored. As always, all words and opinions are my own.

Hearts, Flowers, & Bruises: Valentine’s Day Ideas For Kinksters

Kate Sloan

Look, I get it. Valentine’s Day is kinda bullshit. BUT. It is also an opportunity to celebrate love. We could always use more of that. Whether you’re dating one person or a bunch of people or none at all, whether you’re vanilla or kinky or somewhere in between, you deserve to feel lifted up by love.

But frankly, a lot of Valentine’s Day activities guides are vanilla as fuck! So I’ve put together this list of suggestions for how you and your dom or sub can celebrate this weird fake holiday together. Hope this sparks your pervy imagination!

Mark the submissive with a heart. There a bunch of ways to do this. You could give them a thorough spanking with a heart-shaped or heart-emblazoned impact toy. You could use a stencil and a hairbrush to spank a heart onto their skin. You could brand them with ice. Or you could keep it simple and just draw a heart on their skin with a red pen, perhaps somewhere secret where prying eyes can’t see. This is a cute way to literally mark your sub with love.

Get a collar (or put more stuff on the one you have). Some consider a collar a pretty big sign of commitment, so maybe this is a bit cheesy, like getting engaged on Valentine’s Day. But it’s also very sweet. You could pick one out together online or at a sex shop, or go get one custom-made, or make one yourselves. If the sub already has a collar, maybe you could add something new to it, like a collar tag or a charm.

Read each other kinky love stories, to remind you of just how romantic D/s can be. I like Mollena and Georg’s story, sappy stuff from Sinclair, and you can also read, um, anything in the “Super Sleepy” tag on my site. Slash fanfiction also works a treat for this purpose!

Do an elaborate roleplay. I’ve found few things more romantic than doing what was essentially a low-key public improv game with my partner, as part of a kink scene. Complex roleplays like this can be hard to plan and to make time for, which is why Valentine’s might be the ideal day to do one – it’s already a day dedicated to your love, so you might as well go whole-hog.

Define “romantic sex” together, and then have some. Bullshit concepts of “romantic sex” in the media – think rose petals, scented baths, and Barry White – often position themselves as one-size-fits-all when they totally aren’t. Kinksters’ idea of romance can be quite different! Have a chat about which elements of sex and kink feel truly romantic to you both, and then combine all those elements into a scene. (I think mine would involve wax play, a thuddy over-the-knee spanking, face-slapping until I cry, and a lot of cuddly aftercare.)

Write each other kinky love letters. Of course, you could write traditional love letters, too. But I’ve enjoyed kink-infused writing assignments in the past, and you might too! The dom can tell the sub to write them a note about their favorite past scenes, their fantasies, or what they appreciate about their partner’s dominance. The dom can write a “progress report” or “report card” for the sub, or a loquacious list of all the ways their sub makes their life easier and better. Beautiful stationery and good pens are strongly encouraged!

Go on a D/s-tinged dinner date. I’ve written before about how to do this. All the fancy, romantic restaurants will be packed on V-Day, so it’s an especially perfect opportunity to play with power exchange on your date. Outfit selection, table manners, mid-date tasks to complete in the bathroom… There’s so much fun to be had here!

Incorporate a stuffed animal into an ageplay scene. Cute little stuffed bunnies and teddy bears holding hearts are everywhere around this time. If you are a perv of the ageplay persuasion like me, you could get one and incorporate it into a scene – maybe the little has to get themselves off by grinding against the toy, or they hold onto it for comfort while enduring a difficult spanking.

Visit (or rent) a dungeon. The Ritual Chamber in Toronto, for example, can be rented by the hour, and it contains enough implements and themed rooms to keep you busy, whatever your fantasy may be.

Watch a kinky movie. If a snuggly Netflix-and-chill date is more your speed than a night out, there’s still lots of ways to make it kinky. Of course, you’ve got classics like 50 Shades (ugh) and Secretary (…okay), but I would also recommend Red Eye (psychological manipulation galore!) and Shortbus (the orgy and threesome scenes are divine). My mom the cinemaphile would be mad if I didn’t mention her fave sexxxy movie here, Blue Velvet, which supposedly contains a fisting scene!

Ruin some red lingerie. You can usually get good deals on novelty lingerie around this time, so it might be fun to buy some cheap lacy stuff, wear it under your clothes for an outing, and then have your dom bite/cut/rip it off you once they get you alone. Lots of people have this fantasy but rarely get to actually experience it; now’s as good a time as any!

Try a new kink together. I’ve found few things more exhilarating and romantic than barrelling head-on into a new kink activity with someone I adore. Much like riding a roller coaster or seeing a scary movie with your beloved, there’s an element of fear tempered with the comfort of being with someone you trust. Watersports, wax play, and feminization are some recent somewhat-scary faves I tried for the first time with my partner, for example.

Make dinner into a service task. If the sub is culinarily inclined, perhaps they would like to throw together a home-cooked meal, complete with intricate table-setting and elegant candles. It can be very satisfying, as a submissive person, to make something (food-wise or otherwise) that perfectly suits your dominant’s specific tastes.

Play with “love addiction.” This kink is particularly a trope within the hypno community; you can use hypnosis to make someone feel like they’re falling deeper in love with you and can’t get enough of you. (Proceed with caution and with lots of negotiation beforehand, obviously!) A skilful hypnotist could even set it up so the sub feels a little hit of love every time they take a sip of their drink at dinner, for example, or every time they overhear the phrase “Valentine’s Day.”

Get (and/or give) a massage. Maybe the dom’s a little achy from all that paddling and flogging, and could use some firm hands to work out those kinks, so to speak. Maybe the sub is sore from last week’s predicament bondage scene and needs to be kneaded into putty. A professional couple’s massage would be a super romantic gift from one of you to the other – and, as a bonus, you’ll both be extra limber and relaxed afterward, ready to return to the high-intensity pervy activities you love so much.

Chocolates… with a twist. Whatever Valentine-y treats you pick up at the store can be used as rewards in a kink scene, you devious genius. Maybe the sub gets a chocolate for each shoe they shine; maybe they get one when they complete a series of math problems while their dom goes down on them; maybe they just get a bunch as aftercare treats once they’ve taken a thorough beating. Aww.

Use roses as a spanking implement. This is a much kinkier way of sprinkling rose petals all over your bed! Just be careful of the thorns, okay? Unless you’re into that…

 

What are your favorite romantic kink activities?

 

This post contains a sponsored link. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Holiday Gift Ideas For… Your Dominant

Kate Sloan

Got no ideas for a holiday gift for your dom, even though they have seemingly neverending ideas for things to do to you? Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered! Here are some suggestions…

A planned date night. Pick up a gift certificate to their favorite restaurant and tickets to a movie/play/musical/concert they would love, and make sure to handle all the reservations and considerations in advance so they don’t have to lift a finger. What a thoughtful sub you are!

Their favorite sensory pleasures. Good whiskey, nice cigars, a big bottle of their signature perfume, a nicer sound system, thick knit socks… Treat your dom to something that’ll give them sensual joy every time they pick it up.

Your sexual thoughts and fantasies written down. You could keep a masturbation journal for a month, recording every time you get off and what you were thinking about. You could create a list of kink activities you’d like to try with your partner. You could paste in some of your favorite photos of them and write about what you find sexiest in each. Your imagination is the only limitation here!

Implements for their favorite kinks. The classy sadist in your life absolutely needs a Weal & Breech paddle, for example. Pick up some new candles for your favorite wax-play aficionado, or some exquisite rope for your beloved bondage top. You get the idea.

A Kink Academy subscription, so they can learn about all sorts of pervy things to do to you. How sweet!

A fine piece of clothing. It doesn’t have to be super expensive (vintage shops, Etsy, and eBay can help with this), but it should be nice. What fashion item would truly delight your dom? A necklace from their favorite designer? A silk tie in colors they wear a lot? A pair of leather gloves that match their well-worn jacket?

A sexy photo of you, framed. You don’t have to go the traditional “boudoir” route if that’s too boring for you; how about a photo of a bruise they’ve given you, an especially beautiful rope tie they did on you, or a particularly subby face you’ve made in a selfie? Bonus points if it’s a photo that holds a lot of personal meaning in your relationship, like one taken on your first date or the night you first told one another you loved each other.

What would you consider the ideal gift for a dominant?

Holiday Gift Ideas For… Your Submissive

Kate Sloan

Did your sub provide faithful service all year? Did they take all the pain/humiliation/orgasms you inflicted on them with aplomb? Do they just have the cutest goddamn face in the world? If so, they probably deserve presents. Here are some suggestions!

A collar ornament. Assuming your sub already has a collar – which, if they don’t, but you’ve discussed and negotiated it, then the holidays are as good a time as any to take them shopping for one! – some extra adornments for it might be just the thing to spruce it up for the holiday season. L’Amour-Propre makes cute collar tags that say things like “Owned” and “Toy,” and you can even get one custom-engraved.

Aftercare treats. This is particularly sweet if you’re long-distance and you regularly partake of shenanigans like phone sex, Skype sex, or sexting; it’ll be like you’re taking care of them after you fuck them from afar. Pick them up some of their favorite candy or chocolate or a case of their favorite hydrating beverage.

Tools for their favorite service tasks. A nice bootblacking kit so they can keep your shoes shiny. The necessary ingredients and glassware for making and serving your fave cocktail at the end of a long day. A fancy feather duster for tidying your bookshelves (complete with a French maid uniform, if you like!).

A nicer version of their favorite sex toy. If they love wand vibes, get them a Doxy Die Cast. If realistic dicks make them wet, they need a VixSkin dildo. If they adore nipple clamps, get them some Weal & Breech ones. For a better value, you could also pick them up a specially-made sex toy gift set, like the We-Vibe Discover box or the Fifty Shades Freed Pleasure Overload set.

Beautiful stationery for writing-based tasks. You could have them keep a journal of their sexual thoughts and fantasies, for example, or require that they write you a weekly love letter. This type of task is more satisfying for both of you if the supplies being used are gorgeous and high enough quality to last a long time.

A stuffed animal for when they miss you. Bonus points if you pick or make one that actually looks like you, and even more bonus points if you can make it smell like you! The Build-a-Bear workshop could also be a cute place to take your sub on a date so you can create their gift together.

Something for their self-improvement, like a ticket to a weekend intensive, a workbook on cognitive behavioral therapy, or a gym membership. (Um, negotiate this sort of thing first. Buying someone a fitness-based present could come off pretty rude if you don’t know for a fact it’s something they want for themselves.) If part of your role as their dom is to guide them onto a better life path, this is a lovely way to do it.

What would you consider the ideal gift for a submissive?

Five Fragrances For Kinky Pervs

Kate Sloan

Kinksters talk a lot about headspace: subspace, topspace, dom space, little space, these nebulous moods which result from enacting our deepest desires and also help us enact them better. The way vanilla people talk about arousal or erection or lubrication is also the way kinksters talk about their various headspaces: as a state both desirable and potentially elusive, sometimes spontaneous and sometimes hard-won, and usually best to capitalize on when the mood happens to strike.

Personally, I use many different tools to get into the kinky headspaces I enjoy: sadomasochism, hypnosis, certain sex acts, certain clothing and hairstyles. Scent is one of these tools for me. Once applied, it permeates whatever happens next on a level so subtle yet total that it can’t help but affect the proceedings. The right fragrance can shift your entire mood, the way you carry yourself, the way you view yourself. Here are 5 scents that evoke 5 different kinky dispositions…

“Cuir” by Mona di Orio

What to say about this spicy, carnal leather scent? Fragrantica calls it “ruthlessly chic.” Rachel Syme calls it “leather at its most pure and therefore most dirty.” C. Murphy says it makes them feel “irresistibly seductive” and like they want to “fuck [themself] and rip someone’s head off.”

I don’t resonate much with the notion of a “femdom,” the way that keyword plays out in mainstream porn and the kinky corners of Tumblr. When I take on a dominant role – which is rare to begin with – I don’t deck myself out in bust-emphasizing corsets or treacherous stilettos. I don’t glare menacingly or call anyone a maggot, a pathetic loser, or my bitch. I don’t pace with purpose, wielding a whip.

My dominance is softer, smaller, more a compelling coo than a harrowing howl. But this Mona di Orio scent is the olfactory embodiment of that towering femdom, and so maybe I could anoint myself with it to bring forth a little bossy flair.

The scent isn’t sweet or forgiving, like some fragrances which soften their leathers with vanilla or warm spices. It’s sharpened to a point with rough-and-tumble anise, cardamom, and juniper. It’s the quirk of an eyebrow with no hint of a smile. It’s the dominant persona I will never melt into, but secretly wish I could try on for a day.

“Dark Purple” by Montale (content note for DD/lg / ageplay in this one)

What would the “little girl” of DD/lg fantasies wear, if she wore perfume? It’s easy to say she would choose something over-the-top sexy and feminine (like “Good Girl,” below), but to me, that rings hollow. My inner babygirl isn’t a lithe adult in precise pigtails; she’s an emotionally messy 13-year-old (or thereabouts) who craves cosmopolitan adulthood while still clinging to the comforts of youth. She would, therefore, wear a gourmand. I think she would wear Montale’s “Dark Purple.”

When you imagine this scent, imagine dark purple lollipops, dark purple flowers braided into strawberry-blonde hair, a hint of grape cough medicine or honey whiskey or both. It’s a sticky, syrupy scent that oozes unsophisticated sweetness – like a little girl before she knows the power of being a woman. Plum, orange, rose, geranium, and ambergris combine to create something as rich and saccharine as raspberry coulis spilling off a slice of cheesecake. This, I imagine, is what Lolita would wear if she wore perfume – and it would make Humbert sick to his stomach and haunt his carnal dreams.

“Body Scent” by Leatherstock

On an episode of Why Are People Into That?, artist and award-winning bootblack KD Diamond tells a tale from her perverted youth. She describes sating her burgeoning leather fetish as a child by relentlessly sniffing an Italian leather glove. She would even sleep with it near her nose so she would never have to stop smelling it. Now that’s dedication.

While I don’t have a leather fetish, I nonetheless relate to this story. Some scents really are that good, and for me, leather is one of them. I bought a rollerball of Leatherstock Body Scent while on a kinky road trip with friends: we spent an afternoon at the Leather Archives in Chicago, and later dropped by the Leather & Latte café in Minneapolis. The scent of Leatherstock, while it really is almost identical to your standard leather smell, always reminds me with such specificity of those places: the solemn stained-glass art, the heavy books of Tom of Finland illustrations, the casually-clad kinksters clutching coffee cups, the dim dusty basement filled with ominous mannequins. I spent much of that trip wearing Leatherstock and my first collar, so leather was close to me both literally and figuratively for the trip’s entire duration. It was a comfort and a constant, as I’m sure it is for many leather fetishists.

Leatherstock is for when you want to smell, as literally as possible, like leather. Like kneeling and pressing your face to a master’s boots, or faceplanting prayer-like against your own cuffed wrists during a hard spanking, or secretly wrapping yourself in a mystery guest’s motorcycle jacket in the coat room at a party. In the Dry Down, Rachel Syme writes about how our modern understanding of leather’s scent is really just perfumers’ attempts to cover up the reek of the “bloody, gut-strewn tanneries of 16th-century France” with something more palatable. So to me, it’s a scent that carries that weight, that history, and also the weight and history of queer kinky culture. Leather daddies, drag queens, well-worn chaps, a trusty flogger. I can keep all that near my nose when I wear the right jacket, the right collar, or Leatherstock.

“Good Girl” by Carolina Herrera

This is the trashiest perfume I own, and I mean that affectionately. It just smells like the fragrance you would reach for if you were also rocking a Juicy tracksuit and a blonde blowout and basically saying “fuck you” to whatever bullshit the patriarchy tends to whisper about all of that.

I bought it for its name – I am a good girl, after all – but it actually doesn’t strike me as a “good” or innocent or pristine scent at all. It’s reckless, messy, slutty. I don’t wear it a lot, because it doesn’t feel like “me,” but it’s grown on me, in its own weird way.

There can be a certain kind of power, in a heteropatriarchal world, to reclaiming tropes long used to tamp your people down. Some women get called ditzy, bitchy, dramatic. They’re accused of being “dumb blondes,” cockteases, sluts. “Good Girl” smells like a woman who decided to stop giving a shit about all that and just live her life – even, and perhaps especially, if that means laughing “too loud,” speaking “out of turn,” and blowing hot-pink bubblegum bubbles with hot-pink glossy lips.

Wearing this scent makes me want to embrace my inner trashy trollop, my inner ballbusting shrew, my inner bad girl, whatever the hell any of that means. Lots of people find “bimbos” hot; lots of people find it hot to be a “bimbo.” I don’t want the world to treat me like a silly slut, but I do enjoy feeling like one from time to time – even just for the duration of a rough blowjob.

“Sir” by D.S. & Durga

It is always limiting to suppose that submissives or dominants have to look or act a certain way to be valid in those identities. When I think of my own insecurities as a submissive, I think immediately of Creepy Yeha and pigtail-clad Tumblr babygirls: shapely waifs strapped tight into pastel leather gear, pouting with perfect pink lips and staring doe-eyed at an unseen dominant. These pixies are cold and unsmiling; they exist to be pretty and petite, compliant and complacent. They are not the type of submissive I am. I cackle, and giggle, and whine, and sometimes I smear my lipstick, and sometimes I say my safeword. I am neither as strong nor as beautifully delicate as those girls in the far reaches of Instagram’s #DDlgLifestyle hashtag.

The dominant equivalent of those sinewy submissives, in my mind, would smell like “Sir” by D.S. & Durga. It’s a formidably masculine scent, seductive jasmine layered on top of animalistic oakmoss, peppered with bergamot and patchouli. It smells like burying your face in the tweed jacket of a silver fox who smokes clove cigarettes and drinks too much green tea. Like getting a little too intimate with your classics professor during office hours, or like the exotic comfort of curling up in daddy’s lap once he’s home from happy hour with the boys. This is a “Tumblr-dom” scent: it brings to mind black-and-white photos of faceless men in suits, aiming for stately masculinity but coming off slightly caricatured.

My Sir – a fellow fragrance nerd – asked me to choose a scent for him one day, eschewing his usual faves (Molecule 03 and Tobacco Oud, if you must know). I put “Sir” on him partly for its name, but partly because I wanted the strange synthesis of this polished-dominant scent on my real-life dominant, who – handsome and captivating as he may be – will never be a black-and-white besuited Tumblr dom, because no one really is, not even Tumblr doms. As I’m sure it would please my love to see pale pink fetishistic leather digging into my flesh – the fantasy submissive mingling with the real one – so, too, did it please me to smell the mega-masc absurdity of “Sir” against my Sir’s warm and comforting skin. He is my fantasy, and he is much more than that.

What scents put you in a kinky headspace you enjoy?