Super Sleepy

Intimate Intercourse: Phone Sex (Part 2)

Kate Sloan

Welcome back to Intimate Intercourse, a series where I interview my boyfriend/Sir/Daddy, Super Sleepy Dude, about topics relating to sex and kink. This is part 2 of a 3-part interview about phone sex; you can read part 1 here. In this instalment, we’re talking about how we handle impact play during phone sex, logistically and emotionally. Enjoy! (Content note: we touch on self-harm in this interview, so if that’s triggering for you, definitely feel free to skip this post.)

Kate Sloan: Okay, I wanna talk about sadomasochistic things. Is that as gratifying for you over the phone as doing in-person sadistic things?

Super Sleepy: No, but only shades less. It’s better when it’s on video, in that case, I think, because a lot of the feedback of hitting someone is visual feedback, so seeing skin getting redder, seeing the actual thud or slap or whatever, is more satisfying than just hearing it. But, in the context of a full phone-sex scene, switching between audio and video is kind of distracting, and the audio is disinhibiting because you don’t have to look at video of yourself. Looking at video of yourself is inhibiting on both sides, I think. It’s like you’re forced to have sex in front of a mirror. So I tend to usually just go with the audio, because there’s less of the technical switching and there’s less of that inhibition.

KS: Yeah. I kinda would like to develop that skill of getting over that inhibition, so that’s something to think about. ‘Cause I agree that it totally makes sense, the visual feedback thing.

SS: What about for you, receiving impact via verbal commands over the phone? How does it compare?

KS: It’s very close. I think that the main difference is, there is some element of, like, I’m just not gonna hit myself as hard as a person would who can’t feel what I’m feeling, even if I’m trying really hard…

SS: Right. Because your body just won’t let you do that.

KS: Yeah. I do think that’s gotten better with practice, but yeah, it definitely was interesting to see how my body would start to respond without me even consciously being like, “Okay, time to hit myself.” It just became very ingrained.

SS: Yeah, the first few times that was happening were some highlights of our early phone-sex experiences together, when you were slapping yourself faster than you realized you could. I think, if you have somebody that you want to do sadomasochistic stuff on the phone with, and you’re topping them, one way to get them more comfortable hitting themselves harder than they think they might be able to initially is to do the same thing you would do in person, which is to walk them up an incline of that. Because if you just tell someone to hit themselves as hard as they can, how are they gonna process that? How are they gonna do that safely?

KS: Very few people like that, anyway.

SS: Right. So if you use the 1-to-10 scale, which you’ve written about a lot, and if you use dominance as part of it, if that’s part of your dynamic, to push past where it sounds like they’re really starting to feel pain, and… I ask a lot about, like, “Does that hurt, little one?” or what the pain feels like, then you can push a little bit past that, and that’s where it’s gonna start to feel, for them, I think, like they’re hitting themselves harder than they thought they could – which can be hot.

KS: Yeah. I get very nonverbal at that point, which I would imagine is hard to navigate in a phone setting.

SS: It is, yeah.

KS: How do you deal with that?

SS: In our case, the way I deal with that is gonna sound kind of silly, maybe, but a lot it is knowing what your sounds mean. It’s having hit you and fucked you and known you long enough to be able to interpret the nonverbal signals that I can still hear. I can hear the impact, I can hear the sounds that you’re making, and the other signal you can pay attention to is, how long does it take for the person to respond to the command? If they’re starting to get reluctant, that time will creep up, usually, at least in your case. And the other one is, you will start whining more when you are getting to the point of reluctance.

KS: What do you mean?! I always follow orders!

SS: Sure you do, little one. You’re very good.

KS: We had to kind of develop the system that we use for sadomasochistic stuff over the phone. Do you want to describe what we do?

SS: Sure, okay. So, when we start doing impact play over the phone, what that usually looks like is, we pick an implement – could be a hand, could be a paddle, could be a truncheon, whatever – and then we pick and agree on a spot on your body that you’re gonna hit yourself. Sometimes it’s your thighs – usually it’s your thighs – sometimes it’s your face, if it’s face-slapping… and then we pick an intensity. We used to always start at 1 out of 10 as the intensity; more recently, we’ve started at different spots, depending on the action before that in the scene, and stuff. And then we also developed a consistent word that we use to mean “you’re gonna hit yourself right now,” and that word is just “now,” because it is short, and it cuts through a lot of other sounds. It’s single-syllable and it tends to work well and it can be repeated quickly without getting kind of crunched together. Gotta hit the “N” pretty hard, but it’s doable.

KS: [giggling]

SS: It’s gonna sound like, “Alright, little one. Are you ready to hit yourself for me?” You’ll say, “Yes, Sir,” and then I’ll say, “Okay, you’re gonna start at a 1 for me, right?” and you’ll say, “Yes, Sir,” and then I’ll say, “Okay. Now.” And then there’ll probably be a bunch of “Nows” while I kind of calibrate what the implement is sounding like on that part of your body, because the distance of the microphone from that spot on your body changes, whether you’re using headphones or not changes, so I need to get a sense for what that “1” sounds like before I feel comfortable hitting you harder than that.

KS: Yeah.

SS: Then we’ve also developed a way to do more than one hit at once, so that I don’t have to say “Now” 15 times in a row if I want to hit you 15 times in a row. So I would just say, “Alright, I want you to hit yourself 15 times, at that intensity. Can you do that for me, little one?” You’d say, “Yes, Sir,” and then I would say “Now,” and you know that that means hit yourself that number of times. And then we use “Again” to do repeated commands. So there’s a whole kind of language or vocabulary that we’ve built together to simplify doing these scenes, so I don’t have to explain exactly what I want because we’ve done it a bunch.

KS: Yeah, I really like it. It feels very connective.

SS: Right. And then if you wanna go up in intensity, you can just say, “Alright, you’re gonna hit yourself at a 3 for me,” and then we’ve jumped up to a 3 and we can kind of keep going at that level with a bunch more “Nows.”

KS: You always wait for the “Yes, Sir.” Why’s that?

SS: Um, that’s consent. See everything ever written about it.

KS: [giggling] Yeah. True. We have another thing like that, though, which is “squeeze.”

SS: Uh-huh.

KS: I don’t even remember how that started, originally.

SS: How it started? I don’t know if I have the origin story of “squeeze” either. [both giggling a lot] I will say, it’s an incredibly useful thing to have. Not as useful as you, little one. It’s just up there. It’s in my toolbox. “Squeeze” is another agreed-upon trigger word that we use when I want you to squeeze your PC muscles. Right?

KS: [audibly blushing] Uh-huh.

SS: Uh-huh.

KS: I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m just giggling a lot. It’s fine.

SS: So, if you’re having phone sex with somebody, really regardless of parts, I think this would be useful. Just being able to tell them to tense up those muscles is really useful when you have something inside of them and you want them to squeeze around it, or you want to hear the sound that they would make if you were inside them and they were squeezing on you. And just like I repeat the “Now” trigger in impact-play scenarios, you can speed up those squeezes. If somebody’s getting close to coming, you can make them squeeze faster, and kind of tip them over that edge.

KS: [giggling] It’s very good. It’s very good for D/s things.

SS: Tell me more about that.

KS: Because it’s like, involuntary at this point.

SS: So what happens if I say it right now? Like this: Squeeze.

KS: [giggling a lot] Yeah. I mean, it works.

SS: Uh-huh.

KS: It’s like a hypnotic trigger, but I don’t think you actually set it up that way.

SS: No. I think it’s more just conditioning at this point.

KS: Yeah. ‘Cause usually there’s some kind of reward for that, even if it’s just the sensation of it.

SS: Yeah, there’s often a verbal reward, though, too.

KS: Yeah.

SS: Squeeze.

KS: Hey!

SS: Good girl. Like that! I’m just demoing.

KS: Okay… Okay, back to the hitting.

SS: Back to the hitting.

KS: Some people would say that it’s essentially self-harm, because I’m hitting myself. What do you think about that?

SS: I am not an expert on the topic, at all. I know that we’ve talked about that and both of us don’t consider it self-harm, because it’s collaborative, and we have safety measures in place, and it’s two consenting adults. I don’t think we’ve run into a scenario where there’s any lasting harm that’s been done by doing impact play over the phone. Correct me if I’m wrong.

KS: No, I don’t think so.

SS: Yeah. But there are risks. The things that make me nervous about stuff on the phone – hypnosis stuff, impact play stuff – are like, I can’t be there if something goes wrong. I think about that a lot. Some things that I’ve done to make myself feel better and you safer, hopefully, are having the closest hospital to your apartment in my phone…

KS: Aww, I didn’t know that!

SS: Right, I forgot to tell you that. Like, knowing your roommate’s phone number incase there was an emergency and you passed out or hit yourself too hard or something like that. Just something that I can do in the case where something goes wrong, because if I was just hung up on, after I told you to hit yourself at an 8 or a 9, I would be panicking. If I couldn’t immediately reach you again, I would want to escalate that, because that could be a safety issue.

KS: Right. Yeah. I also think there have been times when we have done it as a way of avoiding me self-harming. Which is kind of whack, because I’m essentially doing the same thing I would be doing, but psychologically it feels very different to me.

SS: Yeah. How does it feel different psychologically?

KS: When I used to do self-impact for self-harm, it was like I was trying to escape my feelings by giving myself something else to focus on. But I feel like when I do pain stuff with you, it’s like I’m very deliberately choosing to focus on the pain, and also on the emotions that it brings up. I’m deliberately going into them instead of trying to avoid them. And also it’s directed by someone else, so I’m not gonna escalate too quickly or do more than I can handle.

SS: Yeah. I would add that if you’re doing impact play with somebody that does use that for self-harm, and you feel like they’re in a place where they might want the pain for those types of reasons, definitely have these types of conversations – because if they’re asking you for more, you want to know what that “more” means, and that it’s not destructive.

The 3rd and final part of this interview will go up on Friday. In it, we discuss aftercare, debriefs, and the inherent silliness of phone sex. Thanks for reading!

Intimate Intercourse: Phone Sex (Part 1)

Kate Sloan

Hello! Intimate Intercourse is a new series where I interview my boyfriend/Sir/daddy, who goes by Super Sleepy Dude, about various topics related to sex and kink. The first topic we tackled is phone sex, and it turns out we had a lot to say about it – who would’ve thought?! – so I’ve split this interview up into 3 parts, which will go up over the course of this week. In this first part, we discuss the overall joys of phone sex and some of the skills involved in it. Enjoy!

Kate Sloan: What skills do you think someone needs to develop to be good at phone sex?

Super Sleepy: I think there a few key skills you need to be good at phone sex. One of them is knowing what to say, and when to say it. That comes from a lot of practice and a lot of, actually, the second skill that I think is important, which is like, really closely monitoring the person – or people, I guess; I’ve never had phone sex with multiple people at the same time, but…

KS: It’s possible!

SS: It’s possible, I guess! Party line! Um, monitoring the person’s reactions and then, like, over time, if you’re having phone sex with this person multiple times, remembering what they responded to, and what ordering of sounds and words and ideas work for them. It’s similar to how, if you’re having sex with somebody in person, you get to know their body and their responses better over time. And you can do the same thing if you listen really closely.

And then the third one is kind of the creativity one. It’s coming up with new stuff, so that you’re not just constantly saying the same few things over and over again. New scenarios, new things to roleplay, settings, toys can be helpful… The mixing-it-up part.

KS: You’ve said to me before that you think you have a phone-sex kink. What does that mean to you? How does that manifest for you?

SS: I think, like a lot of my kinks, this is something that goes back pretty early in my sexuality. Like, when I was a teenager and I caught glimpses of TV ads for phone sex lines, I was always really interested in what would happen if I called them. And when I first started dating, a lot of the early flirtation and first times that sex came up with people I was flirting with or dating was over the phone, because we didn’t have cars, didn’t have an easy way to see each other right away, so I got really into flirting and also turning on the person that I was with, with my voice, over the phone. And I think that those things together solidified into it being able to turn me on, on its own, as an idea.

KS: What do you get out of it that you don’t get out of in-person sex?

SS: I don’t know that that’s quite how I would put it. I don’t know that I get a thing out of it that I can’t get out of in-person sex. It’s like how a blindfold works, in that, if you take away a sense, the other senses can get stronger. Like, if I close my eyes and I’m lying by myself, touching myself, and hear the person that I’m really into on the other side of the phone, I only have so much information to go on – just the things I can hear, and the things I can feel in my body – and those things get more intense, because I’m not processing a bunch of visual information, or touch information from another person, or scent. I have to imagine all that stuff, and the stuff that I do have, I can pay so much more attention to it.

KS: Yeah, that makes sense. And then, do you – I mean, I know the answer to this is yes, but – do you use the information that you get from phone sex for IRL sex?

SS: Yes, but I think it’s important to be careful about that, because it’s a different situation. So you can’t carry over consent. If somebody consents to something in a phone-sex scenario, you can’t just do that with them in person, ‘cause that’s not how that works.

KS: Yeah.

SS: And also, desires are different. Like I know that in our phone sex, we’ve done stuff that you’ve said you might not be into in person. And that’s a really good thing to check in on, because when you’re by yourself, safely, in your room, and it’s just voice, and nothing can make you feel a physical sensation without you doing it, it’s much easier to try stuff out that you’re not sure about, because there’s less risk involved. Less physical risk, I mean. Maybe there’s the same amount of emotional risk.

KS: Yeah. Well, I don’t know, though. I think it’s different.

SS: It feels different, and it feels safer to try stuff out. More like a brainstorm.

KS: Yeah. The other side of that is like, I think I pretty much would never wanna be dommy during phone sex, because that’s just not really how my dominance manifests. It’s more about doing stuff than saying stuff, I think. So I feel safer being dommy in person, which I didn’t realize until…

SS: Right. We realized that by me wanting that from you and you not quite knowing why that felt wrong to you, but that seems like a perfect encapsulation of it. ‘Cause you get satisfaction from the feedback loop of actually doing the thing. What is it about doing versus saying that can flip that switch for you?

KS: It’s really hard to pinpoint. I think part of it is, there are physical activities that I can do that put me in a dominant headspace, like facesitting or face-slapping, and I’m finding that if I can’t do those, it’s very hard for me to force myself into that headspace. But also, I feel like I’m just not a verbally confident person in general – which sounds weird, ‘cause I have a podcast and stuff – but I’m much better when I can collect my thoughts in writing. So I’ll be dommy via text, but I really struggle with it over the phone. I think also, I can’t read you as well that way.

SS: Yeah, we’ve done it over video once or twice, where I’ve been slapping myself on video for you, and I think that that solves the reading problem, because you’ve got more information.

KS: Right. And seeing that makes me feel dommier. So – this is kind of related – you’ve said to me that you enjoy being what you call a “phone-sex top,” i.e. doing most of the talking – which I find really… not confusing; I get it, ‘cause I know you, but it’s a little bit hard for me to wrap my head around, because it’s so different from what I get out of it and enjoy about it. But why is that what you like?

SS: I like the control that comes with that. It means that I can steer the scene and set up the action to flow in a way that will feel good for me, a progression that will feel good. I also like that it sort of feels like I’m playing an instrument, because I say things, I do things, and then I get these beautiful, short bursts back, of moans, or impact sounds, or whatever it is. And if I want more of that, ‘cause I want to be more turned on or if I want to touch myself faster or more intensely, I can amp up what I’m saying to get that response, and I like that feedback loop a lot.

KS: You’re really good at… I don’t wanna use the word “foreplay,” ‘cause we don’t like that word. But phone-sex foreplay… It’s very rarely like, “Oh, we’re gonna have phone sex now!” We just don’t really do that, and in-person sex is kind of like that too. For me, at least, it’s been relatively uncommon to just be like, “Let’s have sex now!” Usually it’s like, there’s some kind of escalating action. How do you start a phone-sex scene from just a regular conversation?

SS: Oh man. See, I don’t know that I feel like I’m really good at this. I think this is one of the things that I could still be better at. The most important thing, when considering this, is context. Making sure that the person you’re talking to is in the right physical space that they can have phone sex with you, the right frame of mind, they’re not super stressed or not interested, and you can figure that out more easily the better you know the person.

KS: Read the room. Yeah.

SS: Read the room. Exactly. But once you’ve got the right context, then it’s a very very similar skillset to flirting with somebody and initiating sex in person. You don’t jump straight into things; you talk about what you would do with the person if you were with them. Things that you miss about them, if you’ve had sex with them in person or been with them in person, like the way their skin feels, or talk about kissing… Ask them what they’re – I mean, it’s a cliché, but it’s a cliché for a reason – ask them what they’re wearing, because that also gives you information you can use later, when you’re asking them to take their clothes off, or telling them what clothes you would take off of them, depending on your dynamic. What are some other favorites? If, in your conversation, catching up on your days and stuff, the other person brings up a sexy scenario or something… Like, a thing that we often do is sort of go from “Well, what if we did this sometime?” to “Why don’t we just do that now? Would you be into that? What about right now?”

KS: That’s an improv trick. My coach used to always say, never be like, “I’m gonna do this thing in the future.” Start doing it, immediately, ‘cause that’s more exciting.

SS: Exactly. It’s very flirty to take something from the hypothetical into “Well, let’s just try it. What’s the worst that could happen?” So that’s a fun one.

KS: Tell me about your voice.

SS: [dommy voice] Mmm, what do you wanna know about it, cute stuff?

KS: What did you just call me?! You’ve never called me that in your life!

SS: [laughing] That’s a new one.

KS: Are you conscious of cultivating a voice for phone sex?

SS: Yes. I think we all have to do this in a lot of different contexts. People have different voices when they talk to their partner versus talking to a customer service agent, in person versus on the phone… We all modulate our voices based on context, and I definitely – because I like having phone sex a lot – have some vocal tricks for phone sex. [deeper, slower voice] And also, because I’m into hypnosis, and using hypnosis in kink contexts, there’s a lot of overlap… in developing a hypnotic voice and patter… that can be applied.

KS: [blushing and giggling] Oh god. Um. I’m journalist-ing very poorly.

SS: I wonder why! So, deeper, slower, these are some things that usually people tend to go for in phone-sex voice development. But the other extreme can totally work, too; it just depends on your role. Like, what are you trying to portray in the scene, in the dynamic, whatever?

KS: Yeah, it’s hilarious to me to hear how your voice changes when you’re playing a character. Like, clearly, you’re a theatre kid.

SS: Tell me more about that.

KS: Well, it’s just, I think a lot of people trying to do a teacher or a doctor thing would do a sexy teacher, a sexy doctor, but you kinda keep it real. Mostly. For a while.

SS: Right. The stuff they’re saying is sexy, but –

KS: Is it, though?!

SS: Sometimes. The situation is sexy. The vocal intonations don’t necessarily have to be overtly read as sexy, because the situation you’re setting up is sexy.

KS: Right. There are so many conversational branches I wanna follow from that. I wanna ask you about word choice and then also about theatre stuff. Which one first?

SS: Let’s take the first one first.

KS: Okay. We both are writers and cognizant of things like adjective choices. Is that important?

SS: Yes. It’s very important that the formality and word length and word choice match the energy that you want the other person to know that you’re feeling. So if you’re really really turned on and about to come, you’re probably gonna wanna use different words and different urgency in those words than if you’re just starting out a scene. And you want the other person to feel your arousal, desire for them, energy towards them in fucking them – you want them to feel that building through the course of the scene. So you want to ideally start out with less urgent-sounding words. Like, if you’re talking about kissing them and undressing them, that can be a little flowerier than when you’re trying to make them come.

KS: Okay, so I’m curious about… when the person gets close to coming, you encounter an issue which also comes up in dirty talk IRL, which is, some people (like me) have some kind of particular phrases or images that are really good at that moment. Do you worry about seeming repetitive? I don’t, ‘cause I’m, like, coming from the phrases, so I’m good. But is that something you worry about?

SS: Yes. Yes, that is something I worry about. This is a theatre thing, so, this isn’t maybe your theatre question, but this is a theatre answer. When you’re in a play, or a musical – anything with written dialogue – you have to say the same words every night, in the same order, and the trick of it is making it seem like you’re not saying the same words again in the same order. Like you’re coining the things that needed to be coined as new ideas. And even if I’m saying a lot of the same words to make you come every time, I want them to feel new in my body and in the way I’m portraying them, so it’s not just like I’m saying them because I’ve memorized a script or because I know that they work. I wanna say them because that’s what I want to say at that moment. Like I desperately want to say that because I want you to hear it.

KS: [giggles] You’re so hot. I can’t. I can’t.

SS: Why is that hot?

KS: ‘Cause you’re so thoughtful and articulate about this.

SS: I don’t feel that way.

KS: You are.

SS: Okay.

KS: Okay. Tell me how else a theatre background helps you with phone sex.

SS: A lot of the phone sex that we’ve had, and that I’ve had in general, incorporates some element of roleplay. Even if you’re having incredibly vanilla phone sex, a lot of the time you’re roleplaying that you’re together in person. You’re not talking about how you’re having phone sex the whole time. So you’re imagining a scenario that is not a true scenario, and then acting as though it is true. Imagining together in a shared space. So it’s incredibly relevant to have done a lot of that with other people and to have practiced it, because when you start doing theatre and you start learning how to act, it feels incredibly unnatural for most people. It feels fake, it feels like you are pretending, and like, “Why would anyone care?” and “This is really silly; why would anyone do this?” and if you’re not used to having phone sex, that’s probably how it will feel also. But if you push through that… If you can do it, I really recommend closing your eyes, because if you can close your eyes and let go of the fact that you’re talking into a piece of aluminum and glass and you’re not actually fucking anybody in person, you can get your brain to a place where it feels believable, or you can suspend your disbelief of it. And then you can start acting and saying and doing stuff that will make you and your partner feel really, really good, and that’s the fun part.

KS: Yeah, and I also think a lot about improv, and the connection there, like “yes, and”-ing. But also there’s the idea in improv, implicitly, that you don’t make fun of other people’s ideas. You support them and you expand upon them. And I think, like you said, when you’re acting or you’re roleplaying, everybody kind of sounds like an idiot, in a certain light, but there’s this necessary unspoken contract that you’re not gonna make fun of someone, ‘cause that’s not in the spirit of what you’re trying to build.

SS: Right. And if we all sound like an idiot in the same way, in the same universe, for long enough, then it stops sounding ridiculous and starts feeling like a new reality that we’re participating in.

KS: Yes, exactly.

SS: Also, there is the idea of acting as reacting. Acting is reacting. I think probably you would have more to say about that here, but it’s that even if you’re not topping or saying a lot of the action of the scene, you can’t check out, because if you check out, then you’re not having phone sex anymore. Your reactions and the timing of them are crucially important to maintaining the reality.

KS: Yeah. I think about this a lot when people make jokes about how, like, bottoms and submissives aren’t really doing very much, because being engaged and present and reacting to things is actually a lot, and can be really difficult.

SS: Yeah. It can. And I think it’s really tempting to treat phone sex like other types of conversations that we have with our partners, where maybe our attention is a little bit split. Like, maybe the Twitter timeline is up in the background, or we’re watching emails come in. And that is when phone sex goes off the rails in a really bad way, because the person that is having sex with you, from their perspective, they are having sex with you, and if you have just checked out and you’re in some totally other place, it feels really violating, almost. I know that sounds like a strong way to put it, but attention is so, so important.

KS: Yeah. It’s exactly like if you were fucking someone and you opened your eyes and you looked down and they were on their phone.

SS: Yeah, exactly.

KS: ‘Cause you’re doing a vulnerable thing and the person is ignoring it.

SS: Right.

KS: Does phone sex feel like real sex to you? However you want to define that?

SS: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. We had a conversation about this pretty early in our relationship, I think, where we talked about “What is sex?” and one of the differences between our answers was that I view phone sex as sex, and it’s totally real to me. It doesn’t feel like masturbation, even though that’s the technical physical thing that is happening. It feels totally like a form of partnered sex, just like fingering is a form of a partnered sex or blowjobs are a form of partnered sex. It’s just using your voice and ears as the sexual organs, and I guess the brain, more than the other stuff.

KS: Yeah, I remember that, ‘cause I remember saying that I didn’t view it as sex, and wouldn’t put it on my spreadsheet, but I think that that’s partly because the spreadsheet is for gathering information about physical things that I might refer to.

SS: Right. Also, it’d be a lot of work.

KS: Right, exactly. I could, and I used to note every single orgasm, but like… I grew tired of it. But yeah, I’ve come around on phone sex. I don’t know, I think it’s kind of an in-between space. But like, psychologically, certainly, it feels the same.

SS: That’s the most interesting part of sex to me, so yeah, it’s probably a values/priorities thing.

To be continued on Wednesday, when you’ll get to read about how we incorporate sadomasochism and trigger words into our phone sex!

Behind the Seams: Yellow Shoes & Pink Wine

Kate Sloan

June 22nd, 2018. It’s become tradition that my Sir chooses my outfit for days when he arrives in Toronto to visit me for a weekend. I mean, he chooses my outfits at plenty of other times, too, but this tradition feels particularly salient because he usually sends me my instructions a few days in advance, and then I get to spend those days picturing how he will remove those specific clothes from my body once we’re finally, finally together again.

I had just bought these new yellow shoes so he wanted me to wear a yellow-centric outfit to complement them. This T-shirt is one of many romantic mementos in our relationship because I bought it at a merch stand at Brooklyn Steel the night he took me to see my favorite band there. I still remember swaying sweatily in that lineup, my eyes fixing on this bright yellow tee that looked as radiantly optimistic as my heart felt that night.

As per usual for Sir’s weekend visits, I got ready far too early because I was far too excited. To pass the time until he finally pulled up at my door, I went on a long walk, then sat on a bench in the sun for a while reading Social Creature, a super striking novel that I loved a whole bunch. Then I tottered back to my apartment building in time to meet Sir out the front, kiss him at the door, kiss him in my elevator, and kiss him lots more in my bed.

What I’m wearing:
• Yellow unisex Hippo Campus T-shirt – bought at their merch table when they played at Brooklyn Steel
• Black denim short-shorts – H&M
• Lotta From Stockholm peeptoe clogs in “Summer Yellow”

June 23rd, 2018. It wouldn’t be a Sir-and-little-one weekend if there wasn’t at least one fancy night out on the sched. Sir chose this outfit for me before we hopped in an Uber to La Banane, a gorgeous French seafood restaurant. We sat at the bar (he always wants to sit at the bar, so we’re closer together and he can touch me more) and he ordered me some orgasmic cocktails and taught me how to eat oysters.

After dinner, we walked over to my friend Anais‘ house for a small get-together with some old pals from high school. It was fun to introduce my love to all these people I’ve known for years. He kept my glass of rosé topped up while we chatted and laughed until late. It was a nerdy group, so we got into heated debates about Harry Potter trivia and Mozart music, natch.

As much as I love being out and about with my daddy, it’s equally nice when we head back to my place and I get to melt into little-space, safe in his arms. I think he hit me with a leather bat a bunch when we arrived back at my apartment, and it was a totally dreamy end to our evening.

What I’m wearing:
• Pink hair scrunchie – American Apparel years ago
• Blue suede collar – L’Amour-Propre
• Black/white/pink rose-print dress – CowCow
• Lotta From Stockholm peeptoe clogs in “Summer Yellow”

June 26th, 2018. On Sir’s last day in Toronto this weekend, we went for lunch with my brother at the Lakeview. I ordered an all-day breakfast special, because bacon and eggs are the food of the gods.

Later, after Sir and I had returned to my apartment for lots more sweet cuddly sex (we’re horndogs, okay), I put on this casual outfit for our traditional end-of-weekend debrief over cocktails at Northwood. He ordered me a Lady Grey Sour and then a Southside, and we cuddled on a church pew, talking about our favorite parts of the weekend and when we planned to see each other next. Then we made out in front of the bar like a couple of teenagers while we waited for his taxi to arrive. I only cried a little as I watched him zoom away toward the airport.

What I’m wearing:
• Pink hair scrunchie – American Apparel
• Blue suede collar – L’Amour-Propre
• Black Apple logo T-shirt – a gift from Sir, bought on a business trip he’d recently been on (he told me it makes me look like a hot Apple Store employee who’s too introverted to work the sales floor and hangs out in the back instead)
• Black hand-me-down’ed Danier Leather jacket adorned with pins from Kinktionary and L’Amour-Propre
• Black shorts – H&M
• Lotta From Stockholm peeptoe clogs in “Summer Yellow”

Long-Time Listener, First-Time Collar

Kate Sloan

I didn’t want to buy my own collar. I was a single submissive, unowned, unneeded, and unmoored. As much as I might want a band of evocative leather around my throat, buying one seemed as gauche as buying one’s own engagement ring before even meeting a person one would like to marry. But I wanted one nonetheless. (A collar, that is; not an engagement ring. Although, for some kinksters, that’s a distinction without a difference.)

My best friend Bex bought me my first collar. They presented it to me on my 24th birthday, in the front seat of their car, while we zoomed from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin on the middle leg of a road trip. It was exactly perfect: the Aslan Leather Nicki collar, made of berry-pink leather banded with black.

I gasped. I cried. “I can be my own daddy,” I mused, clutching the leather to my chest.

“Exactly,” Bex said, and I knew they understood me more deeply than any best friend I’d ever had.

Later that day, somewhere in Cleveland, we pulled over on a side street and got out to go scavenge for lunch. “Do I have to take my collar off because we’re going to be around vanilla people?” I asked, tugging self-consciously on the metal ring at my throat.

“No,” Bex said.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m positive, little one.”

We strolled along that sunny side street and our glamorous friend C. added, “If anybody catcalls you or says anything about your collar, I’ll hit them with my parasol.” Thankfully, they didn’t have to.

Sometimes you don’t know how badly you want something until you almost-but-don’t-quite get it.

My first daddy dom told me five days after we met that he was available to be the primary partner I wanted, then told me weeks later, by which time he was juggling three partners, “I don’t remember saying that, and I don’t think I would have said that.” He promised to turn an old telephone table into a spanking bench painted my favorite colors, but only got as far as sanding before giving up on the project and on me. His idea of love and care was “I thought about bringing you chocolate, but I ran out of time.” “I almost texted you, but then I got distracted.” “Really? Did I say that? That doesn’t sound like something I would say.”

So I shouldn’t have been surprised when he promised to make me a collar and that never happened either.

I was so excited when he made this offhand vow. I went home and started Googling collar pictures: collars with chainmail, collars with filigree, collars with hearts. I wanted one with a heart, I knew. There was never any question in my mind.

There was never any question, either, about whether he was the right person to put my first capital-C Collar on me, the first person to have that degree of power over me. “Fuuuck,” I wrote in my journal. “How have I known this person less than two weeks and already I want him to own me?” He wasn’t even “boyfriend” yet and already I wanted him to be Daddy, Sir, owner. How like me, to give my heart away with the force and velocity of a six-year-old playing a game of Hot Potato.

One hot July night, he cancelled our plans to go to Tell Me Something Good together at the last minute, playing the “tired” card – another broken promise – so I went with a gaggle of pals instead. I got up and told the crowd a story about a spanking gone awry, and garnered scores high enough to win a prize at the end of the night. My eyes swept across the prize table, trying to select my reward, when I saw it: a silver heart-shaped padlock, glittering with rhinestones. I seized it in my eager paws, daydreaming already of the chain he would thread it onto, the words he would say as he clasped it around my neck.

The next time I saw him, I intoned modestly, “I’ve got something to show you,” and produced the lock from a drawer. I thought he’d know immediately what it was for, but instead he just looked at me quizzically. “It’s pretty,” I think he said, unsure what I was getting at.

“I thought you could use it when you make my collar!” I finally explained – and even then, his eyes did not light up. I wonder now if he’d changed his mind about wanting to own me; if perhaps I had already lost my lustre, the way shiny new possessions inevitably, eventually do.

He ended our relationship two weeks later. For months, I couldn’t look at that heart-shaped lock without comparing it to my own heart: given unreservedly but unwanted; relegated to a sad, dusty drawer.

In December of that year, I met a boy in New York. Nine days later, I was calling him “Sir” and asking him which collar I should wear to the theatre. What can I say; when I fall, I fall fast. It’s a character flaw. Or maybe a superpower.

I texted him a selfie from my seat in the Young Centre, my hair tumbling over the turquoise suede he’d told me to wear. “Hiding your collar!” he replied immediately, to which I retorted – drunk on one beer and new-relationship adrenaline – “It’s there, I promise. Reminding me of whose I am.”

Alarm bells sounded in my head even as I typed the words. Too fast too soon too much. Remember last time? But I wanted the risk, the rush. I wanted to believe.

“Fuckkkk. That ownership language makes me feel very fucking special,” he thumbed back in a blur, and I felt the internal stirring and whirring of a hope blossoming into a wish.

He asked me to wear the turquoise choker again the following day. I did, to a nearby café, pulling nervously at it the whole block-long walk. “Maybe next time I see you in person, we should go buy a collar together,” I suggested. A test. A dare. I didn’t want us to keep using collars I already owned as symbols of our burgeoning power dynamic; they made me feel dirty with past associations, like going on a first date wearing an ex’s sweater that still smells of heartbreak.

“What makes you think I won’t have one in my hand?” he replied. I nearly dropped my phone on the icy sidewalk. Too fast too soon too much, I thought again. And also: I want more.

Sex nerds, kink nerds, and psychology nerds all like to talk about their intentions and motivations. Both of us are all three. We talked a lot.

“What does a collar mean to you?” one of us asked the other, and we each threw out phrase after phrase, “yes” after “yes,” ascending a tower of assent. It’s an intensifier. A motivator. Ownership. Affection. Pride. A solidification, a sign of safety, of commitment. (We weren’t even ready to call each other “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” – and yet. Love is absurd.)

I listened to him over the phone while he made the purchase: a royal blue suede collar we’d chosen together. We giggled resolutely, and then I heard nervousness creep into his voice. “I want to make explicit,” he began, wavering, “that I don’t want you to wear it with anyone else.”

It had never occurred to me to wear it with anyone else. It was his collar. His gift to me, and mine to him. His symbolic hand wrapped around my throat. I’m staunchly non-monogamous, so there are times when my lips and my cunt and my submission are for other people. But that collar was not for other people. Only for him.

We wrote the rules of the collar together, in our shared note of protocols entitled “Sir and little one.” There are only a few rules, but each is important.

  1. Whenever Sir and little one are together, he will collar her. She will not use their collar with anyone else, put it on without being ordered to by Sir, or allow anyone else to touch it.
  2. When ordered to wear her collar, little one must continue wearing it until she completes any assigned tasks or work and receives permission to remove it.
  3. Little one may temporarily remove her collar without permission if necessary to protect herself or the collar.

I swooned as he drafted the phrasing for each decree. The care and love he poured into this exercise – even before we were calling this thing between us “love” – was so evident, so huge. No romantic symbol can really mean anything unless you’re certain it means the same thing to both of you – and I knew that this one did. It was as clear as the words in our respective Notes apps, black text on a backlit screen.

He put it around my neck on a February night – the same night he kissed me in the lineup outside Brooklyn Steel, and danced with me to my favorite band, and told me he loved me for the first time. Every time he looked at me, all night, his eyes dipped to the collar around my neck, then narrowed as his expression hardened into what I can only call “the dom face.” Every dom has one. His makes me shiver and bite my lip.

He would get distracted and trail off mid-sentence when his eyes caught on the collar. “Sorry, it just… looks really good on you,” he attempted to explain each time. He meant, I knew, not so much that the collar looked good on me but that submission did. Being small and compliant looked good on me. Being his looked good on me.

We’ve talked a lot about our collar since before we even picked it out, and we still talk about it. What it means. When I should and shouldn’t wear it. What we would do if I dropped it down a subway grate by accident. What we would do if we broke up.

There’s a lot in this world of which I’m uncertain, and a lot that frightens me in its uncertainty. But this collar – for all the time I spent hoping for it and wishing for it – feels certain to me, fixed, decided. I know what it means; my love and I swing this shared meaning between us like a tether.

If I can’t know anything else for sure in this world, at least I can know that I’m owned by someone who loves me; that he loves me enough to have put a piece of sacred suede around my neck; that he loves me enough to go all dark-eyed and dom-faced whenever he looks at the collar that means I’m his.

10 Thoughts On a Long-Term Relationship Out of Left Field

Kate Sloan

1. I thought no one would ever love me this much again. I don’t know quite when or how I picked up this belief; 4 years ago I was deeply entangled with my last long-term love and I recall feeling rock-solid in that union, unshaken and unshakeable. Where did that strong girl go?

She was beaten down by all the rejections and breakups and disappointments, I suppose. Hammered into a smaller shape to account for the smaller and smaller spaces her partners made for her in their lives. I learned to believe, at some core level, slow to shift and hard to change, that big love wasn’t for me. That maybe all my big loves had happened to me already.

But then a new big love crashes into me like a wave and I think, Well, shit. I guess this is happening.

2. The beginning of our relationship contains many themes, patterns, traditions. One is this: I express fear he will leave. He assures me he has no intention to. I don’t believe him. He keeps right on assuring me.

The trouble with these sorts of assurances is that they guarantee nothing. My last boyfriend thought we’d be together for a few years, and then – 3 months in – may as well have said, “Oops, never mind. Joke’s on you.” This is what I meant when I wrote in my journal that I’d never trust anyone again after him: the sturdiest of words can crumble in an instant when their foundation does. There are no sure things.

But there are safe bets. And there are precautions. Instead of telling me he won’t break up with me – which even he knows he cannot entirely guarantee – my new love tells me, “If I did, here’s what I would say.” “Here’s what I would do.” “Here’s what I would try before I resorted to that.” Somehow, it makes me feel better – like when someone soothes my anxiety-ridden heart not by saying, “We won’t be late to the movie,” but by saying, “If we are late to the movie, here’s another theatre we can try, here’s a different movie we can see, and here’s a bar nearby where we can go instead if all else fails.” I like backup plans. I like knowing what those backup plans are.

3. Useful skills in short-term relationships (an abridged list): Flirting. Fucking. Negotiating sex. Making plans on a whim. Putting words to your new feelings, but having the self-control to keep those words to yourself when it’s not time for them yet. Taking cute coupley selfies. Pitching fun date ideas you think will make you seem interesting and cool. Maintaining the illusion of chillness, even to your own detriment. Keeping your body well-groomed, like a sexy cyborg. Telling friends about the latest dramatic development in your romance. Fantasizing too far forward into the future and feeling like an idiot about it. Mitigating disappointment. Saying, “Don’t worry about it, that’s totally fine!” when it totally isn’t.

Useful skills in long-term relationships (a list in progress): Talking about your feelings. Saying you’re sorry. Getting knee-deep in the daily dramas of someone else’s life, and keeping them up to speed on your own. Shouldering their burdens, and letting them shoulder yours. Asking for what you actually want, not just what you think it’s “okay” or “cool” to want. Talking about your feelings some more. Letting another human see what you’re really like when you’re sick, sad, unshowered, or all of the above. Believing they still want you after all that. Finding that you still want them, too.

4. My early-relationship anxieties are predictable as hell: He’s going to break up with me. He doesn’t like me as much as I like him. I’m too clingy. I’m too much. I’m making a fool of myself.

The timbre of my anxieties shifts as time goes on and I trust him more. They’re less pressing, but they also get darker: I don’t have what it takes to love someone well for a long time. We’re barrelling toward disaster, whether we know it or not. My past relationships failed because of some fundamental flaw in me, that he simply has yet to discover.

One night, I tell him, as I have many times before, “I’m worried I’m not good enough for you” – and he says: “‘Good enough’ doesn’t really compute to me. That’s not how or why I get into relationships with people or stay in them. I love you and I want to be with you. That means even if we are bad at something for a while, I want to figure it out and get better at it if we can. It’s not about you being good enough; it’s about whether we make each other happy and better.”

Floored, I splutter, “Most of the people I’ve dated have not looked at it that way,” and he writes back with utmost calm, “Yeah, that’s sad for them. But we’re not them.” I shiver like a leaf on the breeze but I feel stronger, all the same.

5. It occurs to me one afternoon, as I’m staring into space on the subway, that I think of myself as someone who can’t sustain relationships, but that perception just isn’t true.

It’s true that for years, my “official” relationships – the ones with people who called me their girlfriend – have all lasted a few months or less. It’s true that several of these ended in uncomfortable breakups I wish I could have found a way to spare us.

But it’s also true that a former friend-with-benefits is now one of my dearest pals, years after meeting him. And that my current FWB has been a consistent source of carnal comfort for over a year. And that I’ve had casual beaux and “comet partners” drift in and out of my life with uncomplicated ease. And that my friend group is full of people I’ve known and loved for ages. My social life is laced with longevity that too often goes unacknowledged because I’m hung up on “official” relationships, as though romantic feelings and labels are the only markers of social validity.

This isn’t my first long-term relationship in years; it’s just the first one of this specific type. My past relationships didn’t “fail”; they just ended, often for totally legit reasons. Those endings weren’t my fault; they were just part of the dating game. You can’t win ’em all. It’d be boring if you did.

6. He sends me a link to a page which keeps track of how long we’ve been dating. I keep an eye on it steadily, getting a little teary each time one of the numbers rolls over in a significant way.

One day in March, I text him excitedly that we’ve been together for 15 weeks, and immediately regret it. What if he thinks that’s stupid? What if he doesn’t care about these mini-anniversaries like I do? What if he says, “So what?”

But instead, he writes back, “Do you feel happy and fulfilled and excited about having been in this for 15 weeks? Do you wanna do another 15?” I do. I really do. He does too.

7. When I fell in love for the first time, friends used to ask me if I thought I’d be with my boyfriend forever. I always just laughed. At age 19, I thought forever-love seemed absurd. It wasn’t what I wanted, anyway. I wanted someone who’d walk through life with me until it no longer made sense for us to be together, at which point we’d go our separate ways. That is exactly what happened.

Friends don’t ask me that anymore. I think we’ve all grown up and learned how much and how quickly we change. Instead of asking, “How long do you think you’ll be with him?” they mostly just ask me, “Does he make you happy?” The answer is “absolutely,” and that is enough. For now and for however long our future turns out to be.

8. Having dabbled in promiscuity, I’ve ultimately learned it doesn’t thrill me. Some people fuck strangers aplenty because that’s what they want; I fucked strangers aplenty because I wanted something else and thought somehow I could find it that way. (I’m not ruling out sluttiness entirely. My inner slut may well surge back to life someday – but hopefully with clearer intentions and a healthier heart.)

Sex with someone who knows you inside and out is sweet and deep and qualitatively different from more distanced dalliances. Exploring a new body is fun, but for me, it does not compare with traversing a body you know by heart. Familiar topography, beloved landmarks, and an assured sense of ease: I’ll take these over uncomfortable first-time fumblings almost any day. Good sex with a stranger is a fluke; good sex with a stable partner is a process, a journey, an art.

9. Helena Fitzgerald once wrote, “Romance is mainly a repetitive act of remembering, a shared language of reference inflated and made important because someone else remembers it along with you.” I like weaving these sturdy neural nets of inside jokes and vivid events together. I like knowing that the information I’m filing away will actually go somewhere, will actually matter and be useful, instead of being relegated to the part of my brain deadset on remembering the lyrics to “Sk8er Boi” and that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.

A couple months into our relationship, we open the Notes app on our respective devices and create a shared note containing a list of the “characters” we’ve developed in our many, many hours of phone chats. There are lots, because we’re goofs: there’s the growly-voiced guy he does when he wants to caricature his own dominance; there’s the spot-on Ira Glass impression he breaks out randomly to crack me up; there’s our imitation of a gleeful waiter who tried to sell us on fingerling potatoes during one of our fancy dinner dates. At last count, there were over a dozen characters on this list. I howl with laughter whenever I read it.

Inside jokes and other niche references are a relational currency; they can measure a connection’s duration and depth. Every time we add to our dramatis personae, or share an experience I know we’ll reference later, I feel we’ve stitched another thread between our hearts. There’s a thick rope there now – and when I tug on it, I can feel him tugging back.

10. “I am in love with who you are,” he tells me one night, “and I want to be in love with who you become.”

Ever-articulate, all I can manage in response is, “Jesus fuck. SIR!” before my eyes spill over with happy tears – salty little signals of how safe I feel.