kink

How to Flag as Kinky on a Dating Site

Kate Sloan

Dating while kinky is hard! The majority of people are vanilla (or think they are), so having BDSM proclivities can narrow your dating pool significantly, especially if your kinks are a crucial part of your sexuality.

However, kinky people have been flagging to find other kinksters since time immemorial, and though online dating sites are a far cry from the cruising parks and leather bars of yore, you can flag there, too. Here are some ways to do that!

Consider a dating site specifically for kinky people

Though they are certainly rarer and smaller than vanilla dating sites, kink-specific hubs – like BDSM Dating Only – are out there and are worth a shot. You’ll have fewer potential matches to choose from, sure, but the ones you can choose from will be more open-minded than the average person when it comes to kinks.

Include visual cues

These are likely to go unnoticed by vanilla viewers, but kinksters will pick up on them right away. For example, you could wear a collar in some of your photos, frame one of them so your prized impact toy collection is visible behind you, or share a photo of you all dressed up at a kink event.

Use kink language

When you describe yourself in your profile, for example, you could note as an aside that you’re “subby,” “sadomasochistically inclined,” “sexually open-minded,” or whatever wording works best for you. You could call yourself a “good girl,” a “leather boots enthusiast,” or “a whiz with a paddle.” Get creative!

Mention kinky interests

Do you like going to munches? Are you passionate about leather culture? Is Mollena Williams-Haas one of your all-time favorite people on this planet? Again, vanilla people will mostly just skip over this information, while kinksters’ ears will perk up immediately. You could also just keep it simple and include the word “kink” in a list of your interests.

Link to kinkier stuff elsewhere

For example, you could provide your FetLife username so potential paramours can go creep your profile and see if you’d be compatible. Or you could link your R-rated Instagram page to your profile, to satisfy curious connoisseurs. Or, if you’re me, you could say, “I write a blog; you can check it out at girlyjuice.net”!

Hint with your media preferences

For example, listing Secretary as one of your favorite movies could raise some eyebrows (just don’t list Fifty Shades – a lot of kinksters hate that franchise, for good reasons!). You could slip The New Topping Book or SM 101 into your “favorite books” section. Mention favorite podcasts like Why Are People Into That? and The Dildorks (hiiii!). Like-minded people will message you in a tizzy about your impeccable taste!

Just say it

It only needs to be one line of your profile – something like “I’m kinky as fuck and ideally looking for a sadistic dominant person,” or “I prefer to take control in the bedroom and am looking to date submissive folks with a masochistic streak.” This approach has the advantage of being amazingly clear, but it may also discourage people who only maybe-sorta identify as kinky, or who find your openness about kink a bit overwhelming. That said, if you know what you want, you may as well come right out and say it!

How do you like to flag as kinky on dating sites?

 

Heads up: this post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

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?

Intimate Intercourse: #DaddyDomLyfe (Part 3)

Kate Sloan

Hello again! Welcome back to Intimate Intercourse, a series where I interview my boyfriend/Sir/daddy, who goes by Super Sleepy Dude, about various topics related to sex and kink. This week we’re discussing Daddy Dom/little girl kink! This is the final part of a 3-part interview; you can read part 1 here and part 2 here. In this instalment, we discuss ethical concerns around DD/lg, advice for burgeoning daddy doms, literal versus non-literal ageplay dynamics, and being a submissive daddy, among other things. Enjoy! Content note for this post: ageplay, sexual abuse, incest roleplay.

Kate Sloan: Did you ever have any ethical qualms or gross feelings about DD/lg at all as you started to get more into it?

Super Sleepy: Those are sort of two different questions. Ethical qualms: yes, absolutely. I’ve thought a lot about whether there’s anyone being harmed. That’s one of my main ethical standards that I use in my life: is there harm, and can that be reduced? And I don’t think that in anything we’ve done, in our private play or our public play, that there is harm. It’s been argued that, and we’ve had conversations about how, interactions on Twitter or FetLife or other spaces like that, that include consensual ageplay dynamics, might trigger people who’ve been sexually abused as children, and that’s concerning, for sure. I think about that and I think it comes down to, like, those are places where you’re kind of choosing what to see, and as long as people who are playing are being clear that that’s what you’re going to see if you follow them or interact with them in that space, then I think it’s okay. But people disagree about that and I think it’s a conversation worth having.

KS: It also points to the importance of using content warnings, and paying attention to them.

SS: Right. The other stuff that I’ve thought about ethically is how I would feel if I actually had kids. I don’t, and I can’t really predict, because I know that being a parent changes a lot of things about how you think about the world. I’ve heard that from friends and family who have had kids. So I can’t quite get into the right headspace of knowing how I would feel, playing a daddy while also being one. That is an open question for me. And then, have I ever felt gross about it? No, not really. Never really felt gross. What do you think about that?

KS: The only thing that worries me about it sometimes is it makes me feel like I’m too needy – but I think that that mostly comes from having tried to do it with people who weren’t really into it, which always makes you feel too needy, because you’re always just asking for a thing that the other person doesn’t really want to give you.

SS: Right. That could be with literally any kink. Like, if you have any kink that your partner isn’t super into, but will do occasionally, and kind of begrudgingly, you can get into that dynamic where it’s like, well, I’m clearly asking for this too much, or I need too much, and that means I’m broken. But it doesn’t, and you have never, ever, ever been too needy. Like, it just never has ever crossed my mind. The thing about being needy is, the other person has to feel that way for it to even be valid.

KS: Yep. We’re a good match, I guess.

SS: Mhm!

KS: What would be your advice for someone who is kind of curious and thinks that they might be interested in being a daddy, but they’re not sure or they don’t know how to start?

SS: Well, do they have a partner that’s also interested in it, or are they just interested in it by themselves?

KS: Whichever.

SS: Okay. Well, it’s easier, and it also lines up better with my experience, if their partner is sort of coming to them and saying, “I would be into calling you this, or playing with this with you,” because then you have somebody who you can ask a lot of questions about, like, “Why are you into that?” or “What parts of that would be good for you?” and hopefully you’ve built somewhat of a connection with this person where you can try it and be okay if it doesn’t go great. That’s the ideal case, I think, and that’s luckily the case that I was in. You knew a lot about what you wanted, ideally, in a daddy and I was able to try it safely. So if you have that situation, I think trying it in the smallest way possible first is the way to go. I would say that about a lot of sex acts and a lot of kink stuff. Pick a time when it would be okay for your partner to call you “daddy” during sex, one time, and just see how it feels. Or decide to go on a dinner date and be in those roles just for the period of like two hours while you’re out, and agree and consent to the fact that the daddy’s gonna order for the little. Or, you know, pick something that will make you feel like you’re in charge, and like you are nurturing the person that you’re the daddy of, and try it and see how it feels. And then build from there. Like, we didn’t jump into having all the names and all the protocols and all the sex stuff and non-sex stuff overnight. We built up to where we are, and there’s still a lot of stuff that we could build to. So go slow, ‘cause you don’t know what complicated emotional stuff will come up from your past or your partner’s past that you might have to talk about.

KS: Definitely.

SS: If you’re just interested in it by yourself, and it hasn’t come up through somebody else, that’s a little bit trickier. I think, taking some strategies that I’ve used in other kinks, like when I’ve wanted to explore hypnokink, I’ve found communities to experiment with that online. So like, go on a chat room for DD/lg stuff, or find a Tumblr community, and see if there are people who are willing to do some roleplay in text chat, and see how that makes you feel. Or other, similar, low-risk things, where if it starts feeling too weird, you can politely say goodbye and close the window and it won’t blow up your life. That’s how I would start if it was just me.

KS: That’s good advice, daddy.

SS: Thanks, little one.

KS: You’re so smart!

SS: You’re a good interviewer, babygirl.

KS: Thanks! Our dynamic is more-or-less 24/7; do you think it would be weird if it wasn’t?

SS: No, I don’t think it would be weird if it wasn’t. I think if it was bedroom-only, it would be fine. I think if it was only when we were together, it would be fine. I like that it’s all the time, because if I’m feeling that way, I don’t really have to think, like, “Oh, will Kate be okay that I’m feeling this way right now, and do I need to negotiate a whole thing so that she can call me this and I can call her that?” We can just drop in and out of it whenever feels good for both of us, and we know how to read each other so that that works out pretty much all the time. So I don’t think it would be weird, but I prefer it this way.

KS: Yeah. I don’t know that I could do it and not have it be 24/7.

SS: Yeah? What would be wrong with it? What would feel weird about it?

KS: Well, like… In my relationship last year, which was my first DD/lg relationship, we were ostensibly 24/7, but a lot of the time, when we were apart, my partner was really bad at staying in touch with me, and not super dommy via text, and that made me feel really confused, ‘cause part of it, for me, is the sense of having someone who’s there for me – which is why I’ve said to you before that, after trying a bunch of different things, I think a daddy is more like a type of boyfriend, to me, than just a type of kink partner. I kind of need there to be that consistent, romantic element to it, and I don’t think I’m interested in it without that. But I know that not everybody feels that way, obviously.

SS: Yeah, I relate to that a lot. I think that the way it would work for me, if it wasn’t 24/7, would be, like, a still very connected, egalitarian boyfriend/girlfriend relationship where the DD/lg was overlaid only at specific times, in specific contexts. I think that would work, but I do agree that if the relationship wasn’t working, if there wasn’t communication that felt good, or if it was more casual or more on-and-off, the DD/lg stuff would feel really weird to me. It would need to be a really consistent, solid, intimate relationship for me to want to do it at all.

KS: Yeah. ‘Cause there’s so much trust and vulnerability involved.

SS: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

KS: Yup. Okay. Was there anything else?

SS: Yeah, one thing we didn’t talk about, that we normally talk about when we discuss DD/lg, is literal versus non-literal play. So, I guess, how do you feel about it when we play with DD/lg where it’s more like, literally you’re younger and I’m literally your dad, versus what we do more normally, which is kind of, a caregiver that is called “daddy” but isn’t specific?

KS: I think a lot of people who are aware of my DD/lg proclivities probably think that we do the more literal stuff, like, all the time. And it is, maybe, a subtle distinction from the outside, I guess. But to me, it’s like any other form of roleplay: I enjoy it from time to time, but it’s inherently not as sustainable for me.

SS: Because it’s a fiction, right?

KS: Right. And I’m playing a character, which takes a little bit of extra energy. All my characters in roleplays are versions of myself, but there is still a sense of having to maintain some kind of story.

SS: Absolutely. And you want to be able to drop it, and like, talk to your partner, and go about your life. I agree – it’s really fun, and it’s really hot to do it, but if it was all of our sex, it would be exhausting.

KS: And like, the degree to which I go into little space really varies. I think, with you, I almost always go into it at least a little bit, but usually I don’t get super young in the way that I feel or the way that I present. And also, we’ve talked about how I’m a little bit turned off by some of the super-literal stuff, like stuffed animals, and…

SS: Pacifiers, coloring books, stuff like that.

KS: Yeah, which I think part of that is like, that stuff wasn’t really important to me in my actual childhood. I was always very mature and precocious and I was more into doing creative stuff and researching weird shit on the internet. I don’t really have memories of that particular aesthetic of childhood, I guess, so it doesn’t really resonate with me.

SS: Yeah. That makes sense. And then, the other thing – we’ve played with this a little bit, but not a ton, and it’s something I think we both want to try more – is, me being a daddy but not in a dominant role, from time to time. What are your thoughts on that?

KS: Yeah. Yeah, we’ve talked about how a lot of why I haven’t felt confident being dominant is that I think I was trying to be a type of dominant that I’m not. And I actually feel way more confident being dominant when I’m a dommy little girl. Kind of a Veruca Salt-esque character who is very young but also very powerful. That’s really fun for me. It feels less like I’m putting on some kind of persona. It feels more like I’m just being how I usually am when I have sex, but I’m just more powerful.

SS: Yeah. Where does that power stem from?

KS: I think I did feel somewhat powerful when I was like, 10 to 12. I think I felt really secure in the knowledge that I was smarter than most people my age, and also I came from a relatively loving, safe, accepting home life, so I had a lot of confidence that I was privileged to have. So, if I can kind of access that headspace, when I had very few problems and very few things to worry about, and also felt very strong and confident and smart, that can make me feel dominant sometimes.

SS: Got it. Yeah. And if your daddy is more interested in getting you the things that you want, and making sure that you’re happy, instead of exacting or taking the things that he wants, then it can kind of feed into that.

KS: Yeah. ‘Cause there’s also this overlaid sense of, like, even though you’re submissive, you’re still my daddy, so you’re still gonna watch out for me and make sure I’m safe and do things that are in my best interest. So it doesn’t feel as risky as when I’m an adult femdom and I’m running the whole scene and so much is my responsibility, because even if I’m a dommy little girl, I still am not really in charge of things.

SS: Yup. Makes sense.

KS: What do you like about being a submissive daddy?

SS: Similar to what you said, I like that it still feels like the way that I want to have sex with you – like, I still feel like I’m in the same role that I’m normally in. And in terms of the submissiveness of it, I’m a switch, I’m very comfortable being dominant, very comfortable being submissive, and I like that I get to see that other side of your littleness – the confident little Kate that is excited and willing to advocate for what she wants and needs, and that I can be a strong, older, more responsible person that can facilitate giving her that, and taking care of her, and massaging her, and helping her get to sleep, or whatever she needs, really.

KS: I also really like the element of like, I have power over you because I know this thing about you…

SS: Oh, yeah, that’s really hot.

KS: …that you’re, like, into your little girl and you’re not supposed to be, and so I have this knowledge. Which is fucked up, but is interesting.

SS: Yeah. It’s super fucked up in the real world. In fantasy, though, it’s incredibly, incredibly hot.

KS: Yeah. Okay. Is that it?

SS: Yeah, that’s it, little one.

KS: I love you, daddy!

SS: I love you, babygirl.

Hope you enjoyed this! Thanks for reading. I think next time we might tackle either hypnokink, protocol, or dating a sex blogger. If there’s anything else you’d love to read a conversation between us about, let me know in the comments!

Down in the Well: Safety in Submission

Kate Sloan

There was a time – I tell you late one night, in one of our verbose phone chats – when I felt safe more-or-less all the time. When the harshest hero’s quest I ever had to face was a 9AM improv class or the first day at a new job.

And then my 19th birthday came, and my 20th, and my 21st, and somewhere in there, my brain chemistry got muddled like a botched cocktail. I became afraid all the time. Afraid of onlookers’ judgments (which never actually materialized), of strange men with knives (who never actually appeared), of calamitous catastrophes (which never actually took place).

“Social anxiety disorder,” a psychologist pronounced, finally, when I was 24. But that still didn’t feel big enough, all-encompassing enough. My fear flooded my brain and permeated my veins. It was with me always, like a clingy friend who can’t take a hint. It fused to my personality to make a new version of me, one saddled with neuroses I never dreamed I’d succumb to. All I could do was try to move forward into this new life of fear.

I don’t recall the first time someone laid on top of me after a spanking, but I do recall the immediate relief. Like a weighted blanket with a heartbeat, their mass pressed me into the mattress and seemed to say: You’re okay. I was guarded on all sides by flesh and memory foam. An old feeling came back to me that I’d forgotten: safety.

You do this to me now, sometimes, because once I asked you to. You do it unprompted, and somehow always at the right times. Your lanky boy-body sinks into me from above, cradling me from neck to ankles, as I sob and breathe and let the pain dissipate. Sometimes you whisper, You’re safe, you’re safe, you’re safe, but these rumblings are redundancies; my safety is implied. I can feel it in your weight, your steady breath, the very fact that you’re still here.

The silly thing is, I am safe, most of the time – I just don’t feel it. I’m deeply privileged to have never experienced violence on the basis of my race, sexual orientation, or gender. I’ve received death threats, sure – what outspoken woman or LGBTQ person on the internet hasn’t, at this point? – but they’ve all stopped cold at my computer screen. No one is after me with a gun or a knife. No one wants my people dead, except the occasional radical incel in the news or skinheaded antisemite on a street corner. To be in this position is to have won the genetic lottery a million times over.

Like many people with mental illnesses that affect their grip on the truth, I don’t know how to reconcile my reality with my ruminations. I cannot even imagine what it must be like to both feel and be unsafe, if I can barely handle the feeling part.

One night, you push me – as you often do – into catharsis through consensual pain.

It’s one of my very favorite things, and also I hate it. The slaps hammer my face or my ass, harder and faster until my brain can hardly process them. Bad thoughts bubble to the surface. I deserve this. I am trash. No one loves me. No one has ever loved me. Or sometimes my mind is just blank. I like that better.

It is difficult to explain, to anyone who does not also partake of this perversion, that sometimes this sadness is what I want. That to consent to misery and fear somehow makes those feelings more palatable than when they just rain down unbidden. The depths of my submissive sadness are like the bottom of a well – dark, musty, hopeless – but sometimes I want that well. If I’m going to end up there anyway, it feels better to climb down with conviction than to fall in or be pushed.

On this night, it feels like the tears will never end. Like I am sad because I am sadness and sadness is me. Like sadness is the way of my heart, has always been, will always be. The question flickers across my mind: Am I safe? I truly don’t know.

“You’re safe,” you say, as if you heard my thoughts somehow. I cry harder, but not for much longer, because with these words, you’ve tossed a rickety rope ladder down into my well.

Being a masochistic submissive, I date my fair share of sadistic dominants, many of whom are turned on by tears and other signs of distress. Though most have been consent-conscious and good-hearted, in many cases their arousal pushed them to push me. Unlike some submissives, I do not feel sexy when tears are streaming down my face. I feel inconsolable: sad to the point of sickness. It always passes, and then I am often ready for hot mouths and hard cocks – but not before.

You know this. You wait. You give me gentle kisses and ample assurances. And if it is important, then, to blast the panic from my brain with an orgasm, you are well-equipped to do that too.

We attend a session together about anarchist D/s at a sex conference, and I cry more than I was expecting to. Which, let’s be real: I was expecting to cry a fair bit.

One panelist describes how care and love can look different in power-play dynamics than they do for vanilla folks, but they are still care and love. Case in point: their dom sometimes locks them in a closet to mitigate their panic attacks. I scribble furiously in my notebook: You’re safe in that small, contained space, and you don’t have to come out until someone else makes the choice for you. It would be reductive to say I sigh with relief. My whole body relaxes with a profound and transformative yes.

“You can use the world-building tools of D/s to create a safe space for someone who never feels safe,” the panelist continues. They glance over at their dom and earn a nod of approval. “It’s like: ‘I’m in charge here, so you have to believe what I say, and what I’m saying is that you are safe, because I said so.'”

You grab my thigh with your big warm hand, and I know you’re feeling what I’m feeling. Our eyes dart toward one another’s in silent recognition. Hot tears spill down my cheeks and onto my frazzled notes. Crying in public is one of my biggest fears, but I don’t feel scared now. Your steely blue eyes are holding mine like a wooden ship, like a dustjacket, like a pair of strong arms.

Later, in our hotel room, we wander into the closet, as if magnetically tugged. You shut the slatted door behind us. I breathe in the scent of your suit jacket hanging there, and, closer: you. The man I desperately love.

I think, as you begin to push me against a folded ironing board and kiss me hard, that we’ve messed up this thing we were trying to try. The idea was for you to leave me in the closet alone, see what it did to my anxiety. But, as per usual, you’ve joined me in my darkness. You don’t want me to be scared or to feel scared, to feel alone or to be alone. Your hand on my face makes it clear that I’m not.

There is a big metal safe in this closet, with a combination lock and a sense of heavy justice. But though I’m afraid of everything, I don’t want to lock myself away, because that would mean I’d have to stop touching you.

It is terrifying to rely on a person – any person – for one’s sense of safety, because that person could leave at any time. I learned this all too well last summer when my daddy dom – a role I had thought meant something along the lines of unconditional love and acceptance – dropped me in a flash. Once I had collected the shards of my broken heart off the floor, I vowed never to trust anyone that much again, never to rely on anyone that much again. These are not new or unique promises to make after a heartbreak, but we keep making them again and again because they feel that salient, that necessary.

However, in re-integrating into the world, I’ve come to see that no one is truly independent, nor is that necessarily a state to aspire to. For my sense of safety, I rely not only on you but on my friends, my family, even the characters in shows I watch on bad depression nights. “Needing others is perceived [in modern Western culture] as a weakness,” Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor write in their book On Kindness. “Dependence is scorned even in intimate relationships, as though dependence were incompatible with self-reliance rather than the only thing that makes it possible.”

You speak often of how you want our D/s dynamic to be a mentorship of sorts, prodding me toward my goals and shoring up my self-esteem. You are teaching me, little by little, to feel safe; to recognize and accept when I am safe. My body and brain are practicing this sensation under your watchful dominance. It is quite unlike any education I have ever endured.

BDSM is an infinite imaginative space, one that allows for off-the-wall roleplays and absurd scenarios. You can be a rock star, a pirate, an alien. But the situation I reach for most often in kink – the one that turns me on most potently, in my head and down my skirt – is simply that I am loved and I am safe.

This is telling. This is embarrassing, perhaps. And I don’t want to stop.

5 Ways to Play with D/s on a Dinner Date

Kate Sloan

Doing kink stuff in public is a hotly debated practice. Some say it ropes strangers into your activities without their consent; others say it’s harmless and fine. I fall somewhere in the middle: I think it’s okay as long as it’s subtle enough that it’s likely to go unnoticed by those who don’t know what to look for.

If you’re in a relationship that involves dominance and submission, there are few better situations for playing with those kinks publicly than a dinner date. Like any romantic date, dinner out together can help build anticipation and excitement for sex that might come later. Dinner dates also feature some interaction with other people (e.g. hosts, servers) but not a ton, so you can remain in your little two-person bubble for most of the night even though you’re out in public. Low-lit restaurants make a great backdrop for subtle, blink-and-you-might-miss-it kink games.

As a submissive whose boyfriend is a fine-food fan and a fellow pervert, I’ve been on many kink-tinged dinner dates as of late. Here are 5 of my favorite ways to play with D/s while out to dinner with a dominant!

The dominant chooses the submissive’s outfit. Get the kinky fun started before you even leave the house! Letting someone else choose your ensemble is vulnerable, because you’re trusting them with your self-presentation, and you’ll be wearing that outfit all night. Giving the dominant this degree of control also works well if they prefer the date location to be a surprise; the submissive won’t know the appropriate way to dress but the dominant will. If you want, you can play with clothing as bondage: for example, as Siren Vandoll points out, tight clothing or high heels can restrict the submissive’s movement in a way both partners might appreciate. Getting dressed before the date is also a good time to put a collar or other symbol of ownership on the submissive, so both partners can enjoy the sight of it all night.

The dominant holds onto the submissive’s wallet, phone, keys, or another important object. I discovered the joys of this power-play last summer, when my then-dominant would sometimes keep my phone and debit card in his pocket while we grocery-shopped together if I didn’t feel like schlepping my whole big purse to the store. We initially did this purely for practicality’s sake, but I immediately noticed how it deepened our power differential: I had to ask him every time I wanted to look my phone or buy anything, so he had a ton of real-world control over me. Taking a submissive’s phone away for the evening could also be a fun way to “punish” them for being too distractible on dates, if they consent to that type of discipline.

The dominant defines and enforces “table protocol” at the restaurant. This is a fantastic way to reinforce your dynamic within the structure of a meal out. Some examples of potential table protocols you could instate: the submissive pulls out the dominant’s chair for them; the submissive doesn’t sit until the dominant does (and stands up every time they do); the dominant orders the submissive’s food and drinks; the dominant gets the first taste of the submissive’s food and/or drinks; the submissive must eat without ruining their lipstick; the submissive keeps the dominant’s water glass topped up… or whatever else your pervy little minds dream up! Keep in mind that this stuff should be pre-negotiated (as should everything in this post, really), because one or both partners might have a history of disordered eating or another past trauma that could make some of these protocols difficult or inadvisable.

The dominant sends the submissive to the bathroom with instructions. Maybe their task is to take a series of dirty photos and text them to the dominant; maybe it’s to remove their underwear and surreptitiously give them to the dominant upon their return; maybe it’s to touch themselves until they’re super turned on and then come back without finishing the job. (Wash your hands, please.) It’s probably best to avoid anything that could get you arrested or will result in a long lineup of other patrons waiting to use the bathroom, but hey, what happens in the bathroom stall stays in the bathroom stall.

The dominant and submissive use a remote-controlled sex toy together. This one’s a little riskier, depending on how good the submissive is at maintaining a “poker face”… Remotely controllable sex toys like the We-Vibe Sync are ideal for discreet public play if you’re into that. The dominant can enable and control the toy from their phone, or with a remote. It’s best to save this one for interludes when other people aren’t interacting with you, so you’re not involving them, such as after your food has arrived or in the taxi home after dinner. If you play your cards right, the outing will end with both of you totally turned on and ready for more explicit private play.

What’s your favorite way to infuse a little kink into a dinner date?

 

Heads up: this post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.