Hitting the Marks

I remember when I got my first mark from a spanking. It was a bruise and I loved it. I kept looking at it and it made me feel like a proper submissive somehow. It was my secret and it told the story of my secret life. It also made me feel proud of myself. It seemed to say that I was able to take what I needed to for HL. I felt a little like it gave me membership to a little group of people who were also like me.  I savoured it, and savoured the marks which came after it. As we got more into impact play, there were more of different sorts; not just bruises but scratches, bites, cane marks and even needle marks.

I guess I didn’t just enjoy them as trophies, but I enjoyed what they meant to me too. I suppose that I enjoyed the emotional mark that they made as much as I loved the physical. As time wore on, my body seemed to adjust somewhat to impact play.  It became less frequent that I bruised. Others told tales of working arnica into the skin, but I rarely seemed to have need for that. After a sound spanking, my arse cheeks would be so warm that sitting on the sofa was like having the heated seat turned on in the car, but there was never anything more than redness to show for our endeavours.

I felt a bit cheated about that at first.  I took what I thought to be a lot of pain. I had always loved pain and had called myself a masochist before entering this world, but now, as others delved deeper into impact play for the pain, I held back a little and questioned myself and my limits.  I think that comparisons are never healthy, especially when they are ones without a control. How does a couple practising BDSM in the comfort and privacy of their own home, ever really draw comparisons which mean much?  I have no idea my where my red stands in terms of hers, or his, for example.

Saying that, I don’t tend to red. And that brings me to the next issued I incurred, not in terms of the marks but in terms of the journey to get them.  I was told that, if I didn’t reach subspace from the pain of impact, that we weren’t doing it hard enough or going far enough. That hurt a bit (emotionally as well as physically but the gauntlet was set. We went harder and further.  And I went deeper and deeper into myself, leading me to the conclusion, many moons later, that the way I was stacked made subspace from pain a Yellow Brick Road which would never lead to the Emerald City for me.

Well, you can read about that theory if you would like to, but recently I have opened up the whole debate again due to the revelations of HL one Sunday in the not too distant past. I have not only tried to open up the discussion, but also my mind, as I realise that the way I was thinking would not be conducive to change of any major kind. In the past year or so we have used electro-play as the pain play of choice and, as you will know, twitching muscles and complete loss of control, while intoxicating and additive, don’t actually lead to marks of any kind.

Basically, my body has not borne the scars or trophies of play for quite a while. And now I find out that, to give me them really turns HL on. So, we begin again, on our journey of harnessing the pain and turning it into pleasure. Now we have tried the science, and I can see that to some extent it works, the building up for sure is a good way to let me take more. But the endorphin dump, despite adhering to the theory by the letter, is still something that I am really to feel. The cold chill of shock as the cane slices through me, and the fucking regretful wrap around pain that seems to last for 10 minutes when he gets the aim wrong, I have felt, but I have waited for the drugs to take effect and, sadly, they haven’t.

This weekend was our first real opportunity to explore as self-confessed sadist (HL) and I have accepted I am definitely not a pain slut (missy). Actually, despite sounding like the beginnings of a terrible BDSM movie where the predictable story-line means that he does turn her head around despite her previous misgivings, it did actually turn out quite well.  HL used The Howler which is the implement which made the marks in the picture above. It is made from a piece of industrial rubber and is much more thuddy than stingy and it has always been the sort of impact that I enjoyed.

I think that over the past while, one of the reasons for moving away from impact play was the lack of regularity with which we did it. Never really getting the house to ourselves has meant that any type of noisy play has been out of the question, so the howler has not been used in a while. I will admit that I had forgotten how good that sort of sensation can feel. It sort of punches at me but doesn’t leave a lasting sting as things such as the cane can do. For me, it hits the mark, and marks is what it does well. Although the image used is from a previous play session, I have bruises already forming to tell the tale of our weekend away, and this is something that I am reminded that I do really love.

At the end of the day, being marked as his will always be hot for me. It feeds my submissive mindset and makes me want more of whatever it is that we have been doing. It helps to keep the connection as there is something that feels a little secret, and naughty and wrong which lasts way past the actual play itself. He always seems to treasure the marks too so, although not easy to come by, the are enjoyed and prized by both of us when they do. I don’t know where our current attention to using more impact play and pain will take us in terms of marks, but, having been re-acquainted with the howler, I am hoping that there is more with that toy to come.

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