…This would come from them!

Antonio and I talked about me keeping a blog LONG before it actually happened.  He had me write posts and everything, so he could read them over and help me see what made a good, readable post, etc.  (Clearly, I have not cottoned on quite yet.)

Reading this post by libby made me smile because I remembered some of the things I said in those “posts” from long ago,that never saw the light of day.  Anyway, libby said:

when people get into BDSM they have a longgggggg list of things that are too much for them, things they think are too risky or too intense or too extreme or whatever.

In the very beginning, Antonio sent me lists of words and asked me to do word association with them.  Most were sexual and BDSM related.

Because I’m a certifiable genius, I  got it in my head it was some sort of way for me to set ground rules.  So I could tell him what was “okay” for him to do and what was a definite “no-no.”  You know, like I actually had a say in the matter.

I’ll pause to allow everyone to laugh at me.

…

…

…

Ready to move on? 

Outstanding.

I figured out pretty quickly he’s just the kind of guy who likes to have information.  Information is power.  I give the information, he’s got the power.

I thought I’d share a portion of that blog-writing I did long before I actually had a blog.  It was based on one of those word association words.  At the time, for some curious reason, I thought I had limits.  Well, limits beyond The Big Four (which I talked about a little here, I believe).  I had also stated categorically to The Man that I had no interest in any form of watersports.  I did not want to be pissed on, pissed near, or even be aware that pissing had taken place, and I made sure to tell Antonio he was all kinds of insane for making pointed remarks about me being obsessed with pissing.  INSANE, omg, insane. Wasn’t gonna happen, Sir.  Never ever.  Put THAT in your Dom pipe and smoke it!

But… Writing about it back then forced me to really THINK about it.  And in that moment, I decided I had a very small desire to see what it would be like to be pissed on.  Not in, NEVER in, but on.  I thought I was SUCH brave girl for the confession in this “post” about that teeny desire:

Water Sports

My Master suffers the delusion I harbor a secret fetish.

I want nothing to do with urine.

At least I think I don’t.

So… Perhaps he’s right.

Fuck!

Seriously, damn him for always being right. Damn, damn, damn. I’m a smart girl, but he manages to outthink me with alarming regularity. Especially concerning my needs, wants, desires, motivations, and behaviors. Hmph. Damn, damn, DAMN!

Excuse me while I go kick furniture.

Right then. Well, I’ve been forced to think about this “limit” and while I have decided it might not be an entirely hard limit, I know a couple things for certain. I will not accept urine in my mouth, or funneled into my ass. If Antonio says he wants a toilet, well, here’s a novel fucking idea – use a God damn toilet, Sir. (Blogs make me brave, I’d never say it quite like that. But really, that part of the limit is very hard.)

The thing is… When it comes to being urinated ON, I’m not entirely convinced I would hate it. (My keyboard feels like it’s made of cement right now. Ugh.) I mean, I’d hate it, sure. It’s humiliating. It smells. It lacks any semblance of respect or dignity.

But it’s private. It’s personal. It’s humiliating. It smells. It lacks any semblance of respect or dignity. It’s… Well… I’d be in my place. And I love my place.

I haven’t the slightest idea how Antonio feels about this. I guess we’ll see. I guess what I’m trying to say is it’s not a fetish. I don’t want to do it because I’d like it or it would turn me on. But if he wanted to humiliate me like that, I’d be game. I know he’s going to tease me mercilessly, because I’ve insisted I want nothing to do with piss and he’s insisted I do. Embarrassed doesn’t even begin to describe my state of mind right now, but when it comes to Antonio, not doing or thinking or saying things because they will embarrass me is definitely a thing of the past… *sigh*

Oh, man, I’m giggling at myself. 

Did you like the part about “here’s a novel fucking idea” regarding piss in my mouth?  I did.  It was awesome.  I’m so clearly awesome.  (Note: Replace “awesome” with “deluded” and those sentences become true.)

GOD I amuse myself. I thought I was such a badass little submissive girl.

Anyway, with that out of the way, we began a slow building-up to the point where I was more comfortable with just being urinated on, long before we ventured toward the human toilet thing.

No, wait…  That’s not quite right…

Because the first time he pissed “on” me?  Our first foray into that territory that was so very uncomfortable for me?  Can you guess where on my body it was?  Oh, that’s right, it was directly in my mouth, for me to swallow.

Heh. 

And that’s basically how he rules the roost.  He knows me far better than I know myself.  He knows, without a shadow of a doubt, and he insists, with the right a Master has, that my number one desire is to make him happy.  So I pour all kinds of information at him, about what I want and don’t want, what I like and don’t like, feelings, emotions, fears, desires.  He lets me voice things, mull things over, and talk to him about things.  

And then he does what he wants to do.  And for some reason… It always ends up feeling right and safe (maybe not in the exact moment, always, but the experience as a whole).  I don’t know how he does that, but it’s probably got something to do with how ridiculously awesome he is. Actions speak louder than words, and if I ramble on in my head or in written word about my feelings on something – it’s generally fine.  Why?  Because as long as I don’t try his patience or forget my tone, when the time comes to act, that’s when he’s keeping score.  And Antonio abides by the idea that I will never know just how much I can handle until handling it is my only option.

For that, and countless other things, I love him so completely I don’t have words to do it justice.  I’m a million times stronger and braver and happier for being his.  He makes my world a wonderful place to exist.

(I still don’t exactly L-O-V-E drinking piss, btw.  Just in case anyone (*cough*Antonio*cough*) gets the wrong idea…  I love that it’s something I have to do, I love how it makes me squirm to know I have to do it, but the act itself is totally YICK.)

(And a quick note to libby, on the off chance she reads this post.  I’m a reader of your blog, but since your commenting feature has no option for name/URL, I’ve never found a good way to comment in there.   But thank you for your post, and your blog on the whole! You seem like such a sweet writer with a wonderful Master, wonderful relationships and a wonderful family, and I’ve always been bummed I can’t comment on your writing.)

Sara said something that made me think in this post…

I have to wonder. If he thought something he wanted was hurtful to you, would he do it? I don’t mean it just hurt, but YOU were hurt, in your heart or mind? I am talking about hard personal limits. I know slaves often go back to the idea that he “would never want to hurt his property”…but is that just another way of saying he respects you, your limits? There is a huge difference between what you don’t want, and what harms. If he cares for you, as I hope he does, you are precious to him as YOU are. He recognizes you for yourself, engages with you with a posture of awareness and care that would indeed be respectful to you and your hard personal limits…I think?

At first, I was trying to think it all through. This is how that looked:

Would he do something that hurt me? The answer is yes, he would. He has hurt me before. Deeply. Deeply, but not permanently.

Sometimes, I think he hurts me to heal me. I think I’ve had a lot of (metaphorical) broken bones in my life and many of them healed wrong. Because of that, in some aspects of my life, I am bent almost double – I am hobbled and slow… And yes, it feels cruel of him to grab a hold of me and re-break the bones. And in my moments of pain and agony, I can’t see the benevolence in his acts. I sure can’t feel it. I often did not consent to the resetting of my bones, either, and I may have violently struggled to get away. But he does it anyway, he doesn’t go breaking more than one at a time, I heal eventually, and I can walk a little straighter when I’ve recovered.

He’s never once done anything to do me permanent damage, physically or emotionally. And that’s why I gave myself to him. I trust him. I have to trust him, because, yes, sometimes he’s going to have to hurt me in ways I will not want at the time, and I won’t be able to see the benefits – for him or for me. I’m going to beg and cry and plead and say I can’t and I won’t and God damn him for trying to make me.

I came to a point once where I had to imagine my life without him. I even spent a solid 30 seconds attempting to convince myself I’d be better off. Total and utter failure in that attempt, even in the face of incredible emotional pain and turmoil. I was meant to be his, and nothing can shake that belief from me.

Sometimes, I think he is simply weighing the pros and cons. He wants something from me. And he is smart enough to be able to estimate the outcome of getting what he wants. So, if he feels I would recover and remain useful and loving? Yes, I think he’d hurt me, if his need was great enough. He’d balance it out. He’s not child-like in impulse control, he’s a VERY in-control-kinda-guy. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, he had a real choking fetish. He doesn’t, but, shhhhh, we’re pretending. Maybe he WANTS to choke me for twenty minutes. By God, he’d just love to. Nothing would make him happier. Nothing, EXCEPT the prospect of me being alive the next day. So because MORE than he’d love to choke me for twenty minutes, he’d love for me to be alive in the morning, he doesn’t do it. He’s not respecting a personal hard limit of mine, he’s making his own choice based on his own desires. Sure, it works out for me in the end that he likes me better alive than dead, but is it really about me?

And that is where I got stuck…

Because it’d be insane to claim it’s NOT about my personal limits at all, right? I mean, he doesn’t stop himself from murdering me ONLY because he’d rather I be alive, right? I mean, he loves me… So, it’s clearly not NOT about me, right?

Or would it be insane to claim it IS about me? Maybe, the fact that he loves me is still HIS emotion, HIS drive, HIS meter for gauging activities and it STILL isn’t about me? I don’t know.

Maybe it’s ridiculous to try for an “either/or” situation here. I mean, can I really break it down into does he hurt-me-to-heal-me for my benefit, or for his? Does he simply want me walking straighter and faster for his sake, or mine? Does he stop himself from doing me incredible physical harm because he likes me alive, or because he is concerned for me? Is all that an oversimplification that ultimately makes no sense? Is it really more correct to say that our goals are lined up, so it’s NOT either/or, it’s a form of mutualism?

Or maybe what I’m really stuck on is the concept of limits. Because, surely, there are things I don’t WANT to do. But… If he made me do them? I’d survive. It might be a long road, but I’d survive. To say he doesn’t do something terrible because he “respects my limits” would imply he wants to cause me deep, irreversible damage and only resists because he respects my limits… And that’s just not the case for me. I didn’t get involved with a man who wants to do me deep, irreversible damage. By design, he and I agree on the core limits – things like bestiality, incest, pedophilia, necrophilia, infidelity… And he loves me. He might hurt me, or stretch me, or break me down – but I firmly believe his ultimate goal with me is not destruction, so his ultimate goal in any act would never be something horrific. I’d kind of question the sanity of someone involved in a relationship where they weren’t 100% sure their partner didn’t want to destroy them…

Maybe it all comes to the same thing. Perhaps the situation is the same, whether you are saying “He recognizes you for yourself, engages with you with a posture of awareness and care that would indeed be respectful to you and your hard personal limits” or I am saying “He weighs the pros and cons, and acts upon whichever desire is stronger for him, which, because he loves me, usually comes out in my favor in terms of being severely hurt,” or I’m going with my option of mutualism…

Maybe it doesn’t matter how we describe it, we’re just stuck looking at the moon from opposite sides and one of us is saying “It’s so DARK!” and the other is saying “What are you looking at – this thing is really BRIGHT!”

This is one of those moments I’d love Antonio to weigh in because I’m fairly sure I’ve just confused myself.

(Incidentally, when I handed this over to Antonio so he could look at it, d’you know what he thought about everything?  No?  Well, neither do I.  ‘Cause all he did was point out typos.  Bah.)

This is something I struggle with, but it’s probably unnecessary. Antonio has told me he is not interested in real strangulation. Squeezing my throat during sex, restricting some blood, some air? Yeah… Throatfucking? Yep… But really choking me and not letting me breathe as play itself? He says no.

I’ll admit, I’m interested too, to a very small degree. The throat squeezing is good for very short periods (I’m talking 10-15 seconds, here. Cardiac arrest can occur in as little as one minute. Sometimes less.) in the middle of a struggle, or right before orgasm.

Thing is, I know even the most MINOR damage to your neck can linger for years. I had surgery on my neck when I was 8 years old. They bruised a tendon in my neck. It’s been nearly 18 years and my face still appears slightly lopsided and, at least once a week, the muscles and tendons in the right side of my neck lock up in extreme pain. Professional surgeons bruised a tendon, and I’ll be messed up for life. Necks are delicate things. So my desire for breath play is sort of… Well, it’s about as hardcore when compared to real breath play as furry handcuffs are when compared to extreme bondage.

The real breath play? Like the kind Kaya posted about here? *wide eyes* Nooooooo. I adore Kaya, I love her blog, and so far, that has been the only thing that actually scared me.  I don’t know how she sat through that without passing out – not from lack of oxygen, but from fear! And as hypocritical as it might sound, I don’t know how her Master did that TO her. I know, I know. I have a man who will do things to me that others would say “Omfg, what a bastard! How can he DO that to her!” I’m just so scared and wary of it, it blows my mind when people aren’t.  But yes, I acknowledge that was a ridiculous reaction to have.

But nowhere in here did I promise not to be ridiculous! Nowhere!

I should say, though, I’m not worried about breath play because I fear Antonio would slack or screw up somehow.  (Nor am I worried that anyone else’s Master would be a dolt about it, not at all.) Antonio is always concerned for my safety. Always. More often than not, he knows WAY better than I do what I need – I mean, duh, or else why would I think he were in a better position to make choices for me than I am? If I thought he were even slightly less than amazing when it comes to how to make me happy and keep me safe, I certainly wouldn’t be in the type of relationship I’m in with him.

So it’s not that I doubt him or his abilities…

It’s that breath play is the one kind of play that doesn’t have ANY safe way to gauge when to stop. So no matter how smart, attentive, and/or in tune with me Antonio is, he can’t possibly know where my physical limits are. I won’t even know. A DOCTOR wouldn’t even know. Even among non-judgmental physicians, this kind of play is considered incredibly (and potentially lethally) dangerous, no matter what preparation or experience you’ve had. It has no buffer zone of safety. And it’s not like a deep cut or a broken bone – you cannot heal the same way from the quick-to-happen and impossible-to-halt brain damage or cardiac arrest or blood clots that can occur with breath play. You just can’t.

Obviously, strangulation is more dangerous than the covering of your mouth. Squeezing the delicate structures in the neck is bad, bad news. There is no real point to going over all the dangers. The main point is that there are NO solid signs to look for that signal of “It’s getting bad, but if you turn back now, you’ll be okay.” None. 

You can stop the play at the first “sign” you think means something, and the damage is already done.  There can be no signs, and then the person is on the floor with an embolism.

No, I’m not chomping at the bit to do something potentially lethal.  But I’m also not remotely comfortable with the idea of us doing something where we had no true control over the situation.  I might not always like it when he’s in control and I’m helpless.  But I’ll be damned if I’m going to say I’m okay with a situation where he is NOT in any kind of legitimate control.  There are always risks in certain play, yes.  But they are calculated risks, they are a trade-off.  There is no trade-off here.  Laying your life down for pure chance is not okay play in my eyes.  Basically… I want to do "real" breath play about as much as I want to play Russian Roulette.  It strikes me as that dangerous and risky, with the same KIND of risk, you know?  Not risk within a controlled situation.  Pure risk you cannot temper with time, experience, knowledge, or anything.

And another real issue here, aside from my safety, is what would happen to Antonio if something went wrong that was beyond his control? He could be jailed, for life, and I wouldn’t be around to stop it or say “No, don’t worry, I wanted that. Drop the charges!”

For me, the worst thing on Earth (which I’ve thought about several times while thinking about this particular limit) is to imagine Antonio if he realized he’d accidentally killed me or caused me irrevocable brain damaged. I can’t even begin to explain how that scares and upsets me. So maybe I’m scared of this play more because of what it could do to him, not what it could do to me. Maybe it’s not my place to worry about that.

Or maybe it is. Along with taking care of myself, one of my paramount duties is to make sure my Master is cared for and happy. I doubt accidentally killing me would make him too happy. So this is a limit-like feeling with both of us in mind.

However… It’s not the same as our shared natural limits. It’s something he says he’s not TOO interested in… But, in all honesty? If I were the one in charge, and he wanted us to do it? It’d be an “Allow me introduce you to a whole new world of Fuck No” moment. And that’s just not his mentality.

And clearly, I’m not in charge. And, since Sara left that comment that spurred the slave vs. submissive post, saying my Master respects my limits… I’ve been thinking… As I said in that post, he respects his limits. But mine? Not so much. And thinking about this makes me realize I’m in a really scary situation. I try to have faith that he will wait for the right time to start pushing me on them. But… Still. I’m terrified. I probably don’t need to be. He will do the right things at the right time, and he’ll bend me, but he won’t break me. But knowing I don’t need to be scared has never stopped me before. So, gah.

Hrm.  This last paragraph feels like the most important one in the post.  And it seems choked and tight and full of things I still don’t know how to talk about properly.

At least I tried.  And I will try again.

Limits fascinate me. (This is not a difficult feat. I can be fascinated by sewing kits. Those mini scissors are OMG, SO SMALL.)

What are some of my limits? Well, I will have a huge (and somewhat hilarious, being as it was written way back in the day) post about this, so I won’t go into them deeply at the moment. But, I’ll pick one to illustrate my point. Let’s use bestiality since I’ve gone into more depth with it before.

I ain’t doing it. Nope. Not happening. Ever. I’ll never have sex with any living or previously living thing that cannot give informed consent.

(Errrm… Except produce.  I don’t get consent from produce.  And that shit is definitely alive in some capacity.  But once that comes off the vine, isn’t it dead anyway? But wait, does that make me some kind of vegetarian necrophiliac?  *headdesk*)

Anyway, the reason it’s okay for me to have limits, and still be considered a slave, is because…

…

…

Wow, I just realized this whole post could end there.    Because the reason I can have the limits AND be a slave?  It’s ’cause HE thinks it’s okay.  Nothing else ANY other human has to say about it matters.  If he says so?  Then it is so. 

But, it’s me, so I have a WAY longer post in mind.  So, the OTHER reason I can have limits is because Antonio and I share the same core limits.

I knew his limits going into this… I have to assume I’m not the only slave who met her Master and didn’t just say, “You know what, let’s not talk about anything or get to know each other whatsoever. Let’s just be Master and slave. Sound good? Good. What’s your name again?”

In the beginning we slapped names and titles on our lifestyle.  We said “Dominant” and “submissive” to describe ourselves.  I was, at that time, caught up in semantic definitions. I was scared if I so much as thought to myself I wanted to be a “slave,” I’d live in a hell-world of licking poopy toilets and never seeing another living soul or something.

I was, as it happens, a bit of a moron.

And yes, eventually, we started just thinking of each other in terms of Master and slave. (Okay, that’s a lie.   He just growled out “SLAVE” one day,  and I was dumbfounded for a while, but it sounds way better if I say we came to some magical, mutual, mental agreement in our deeply connected subconscious minds.) I guess it made more sense to call ourselves that, in a way.  Kinda?  It also is slightly pointless, because no title change in the world will change my dynamic with him. But it works for him, so it works for me.

We spent a long time exploring, verbally before physically, our kinks and desires and goals and histories. I got a LOT of assignments that included everything from describing fantasies to playing a sort of word association game with dozens of terms. I had to discuss things I felt I was unwilling to explore no matter what, and things I didn’t want to do, but I knew wouldn’t harm me or go against any of my ethics, etc.

I see now that these were mental exercises designed so he could see what I was ready for, and see how much of a struggle I might put up over certain things, not for me to establish ground rules.  There were things I said “Nooooo” to that he just kind of nodded and was like “Okay, I understand YOU don’t want that. Next?” But there were some things, the important things – like bestiality, incest, necrophilia, pedophilia, infidelity – that he said “Agreed. Absolutely not going to happen, discussion over about that” to.

Those are HIS limits, if you can call them that. He doesn’t need limits, because something he doesn’t feel like doing will never be explored in the first place.  So they are not that important for HIM to know or talk about.  But I needed to know he had them and what they were, before I could truly give myself to him as his slave.

If he’d been into certain things, bent on, I don’t know… Loaning out my services to a million random people or making me give dogs blow jobs… He would not have been the Master for me. I would still have been a submissive woman and he would have still been a dominant man (and he would have made another slave a very happy girl I’m sure) but we would not have been right for each other.

Does that make me not a “true” slave? I dunno and, more importantly, I don’t care. I’ve always felt deeply submissive, and while I might not be A slave, my only goal is to be HIS slave. He says I am, I say I am. Problem solved and discussion over as far as I’m concerned.

I think I’m not being clear. Or at least, I could be clearer. I’m saying everyone is like this, I think. If you’re fundamentally against infidelity (as I am) you would not gravitate toward a Master who was into loaning out his property. And if you did, or entered into something before figuring out the foundations, you’d probably be miserable. If you simply didn’t LIKE it, didn’t WANT to do it, you might end up happy, if being made do to things you don’t like is a kink.

But if the action burned your soul and made you loathe who you are?  That’s different. You would not be a happy person, never mind a happy slave. You can’t loathe something on a soul-deep level and still be happy with yourself and life. You can’t loathe who you are as a human being and be happy. I think a relationship that made you feel that would fail. Not because someone was a bad slave or a bad Master, but because two people with different CORE limits who are involved in a power exchange dynamic cannot be truly happy with one another.  Not in The World According to Chloe.

So I think no matter who you are, you have limits that would end a relationship. Most people would say things like… “It’s insane to think about what I would do if he asked me to kill our children; he would never do that!” Well, yes, my point exactly. Your limits are okay, and it IS insane to think about those things, because you are with someone who shares those kinds of limits.

It’s not that you don’t have the limits, it’s that they match your partner’s limits.  So you feel safe they will never be explored. Don’t pretend there aren’t people (and couples!) who are murderers, who rape children, who destroy their own families. There are.  So imagine trying to be a slave to one of them? Or imagine your Master got a disease that addled his brain, and he suddenly thought those were good things to do, and ordered you to do them.  You wouldn’t. Because your core human limits wouldn’t match anymore.

(Btw, if you want to swear up and down that your core limits do NOT include things like murder and pedophilia? I think you’re either delightfully self-deluded, or you need to Go. Away. And. Get. Help. Right. Fucking. Now.)

I have two more things I want to talk about in relation to limits… But I’m going to post them later, I think. I told myself I’d write a short post today, so I’m going to see if I can cut this sucker off while it’s still only semi-long and not colossal.

(EDITED TO ADD:  Excuse me while I edit this a billion times. I make WAY too many typos.)