I’m nursing my wounds today. And by nursing, I mean succumbing to the spacieness, the involuntary “Ow!” that comes out of my mouth every time I move the wrong way, hydrating and eating comfort food. Every part of me above rib level is muscle-sore, bruised, or both. Scalp, ears, jaw. I have a bruise in my armpit. No, I’m not taking Tylenol. For me, it’s part of the process to feel the damage done – I don’t want to mask it, I want to remember it. It helps me process the entire experience.
I don’t play in public very often. Partly because I don’t have a lot of opportunity, partly because when there is an opportunity, the public play venues/events aren’t set up to accommodate the kind of play I’m interested in. But I played in (semi) public last night. It was probably one of the more intense scenes I’ve done in in front of a potential audience. It’s a double edged sword. I am a pain slut AND an emotional masochist. There is a lot going on physically (i.e. I’m on the ground being punched and kicked) and a lot more going on in my head (i.e. my play partners are purposely saying things often only I can hear that are designed to push very pokey emotional buttons). And the audience can only see the first part for sure… and maybe small hints of the second.
I don’t think I want to even try to put into words what was going on in my head last night. It’s very personal, and not something I want open to the interpretation of others. Suffice it to say that it challenged some core self-esteem issues, some childhood abuse triggers, and some parts of my very identity. It was exactly the way I wanted to play, and the adrenaline was tsunami-like. But it also sucked ass.
Afterwards, when I’d managed to pick myself up out of my snotty, soaked, trembling heap on the floor and stumble away from the scene of the crime alone (and I <3 my assailants who know to leave me alone) I bumped into random people here and there in my dazed walk out to the parking lot for air. And each one of them asked me the same question – “Did you have fun?”
I want to state from the start that I am not offended or angry or in any way chiding people for asking me this question. After all, we are all presumably there because at one level or another kink is “fun” for us. But it does strike me as a very odd question to ask a wet, shaking woman with eyeliner running down her face, eyes swollen and unfocused. I can’t possibly look, in that moment, like I’m having fun, can I?
I wonder… Is asking this question sort of like SherynB’s Cult of Aftercare* – some way to reassure ourselves and make sure that the person is OK by following the proscribed steps – water, blankets, how was it for you? Or is it because, in an emotionally difficult scene (and I am only assuming that it might be emotionally difficult for someone to watch – I have no idea, really, what others perceive watching a scene like mine) we need to make sure that it’s really what the bottom consented to? Does this question really mean “did you get what you wanted?”
Even that question is hard for me to answer. I avoided directly answering anyone who asked me last night if I had fun, because the answer was NO. It was not an answer I wanted to give, nor a conversation I wanted to have. But I could have said with all honesty, if someone asked me if I got what I wanted, that I *got what I asked for*. Isn’t that the point?
*An essay done by an acquaintance, it can be found on FetLife.
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