We had been going out for quite some time. Typically, our sexual exchange has started with an end of several dates in a kiss. Our exchange went from there, hands on each other’s back, asses, mouths sliding down to necks, clothes disappearing, until we ended up in her bed.
We were good there, each of us considerate of the other’s sexual needs. I liked doing her – at times, massage leading to my going down on her lower when kissed with our upper lips. Her clit responded to my tongue, and even to my gentle teeth.
She gave right back, sometimes inviting my cock deep into her inner core, sometimes taking it deep into her mouth and throat. At times, we fucked. At times, we made love. As times, one of us would do the other. We enjoyed one another sexually.
Then one night, in a burst of energetic enthusiasm, I playfully slapped her on her jeaned butt. Her response confused me. She purred, and then pushed her ass back into my hand, sliding it slowly back and forth. She pushed hard. I thought she was asking for more. That confused me. I got wound up in my internal scripts. What had I done? I did not hit women.
In my confusion, I went to what was safe for me. I caressed the side of her breast, pulling first her shirt, and then her bra out of the way, touching that oh so soft skin on the side of her breast before I moved onto kissing her nipple. She responded in a way that rolled us into good sex.
I could not get away from my confusion. I have been raised with a “you don’t hit women” ethic. My life space included strong feminists who were strongly against men abusing women, powerfully articulating what was wrong about this. That included hitting in any way, even playfully. These folks would have let me know in no uncertain terms how wrong my playful slap on her ass has been..
But I was sure that she had responded positively. She had purred. She had pushed her butt hard against my hand. It was an invitation to do it again.
Thinking about it, I realized that I wanted to do to this. But I was conflicted. I fantasized pulling those jeans down and spanking her so lovely behind. Where did that come from? I did not know what to do. l completely avoiding bringing my turmoil out into the open by being the sensitive, gentle lover while interacting with her in the next weeks.
It might have ended there. But it did not. One night, she teased me verbally, and then physically. I had a hard week, deeply frustrated at work by my inability to break through a number of stupid political impasses. I was not in the mood to be teased.
I was working to dump the events of my week and put myself into a here and now head space with her. For me, that meant becoming gentle. She could see me struggling with my tension. She upped the intensity of her verbal teasing.
“What’s wrong big fellow, can’t take when a strong woman teases you a bit?”
Me:
“Stop please, I am not a space to be teased.”
Her:
“Oh my, big fellow is in a funky mood”:
Her laughter followed. Then she reached over, pushed herself into me and gave me a lead us in tongue wrenching kiss that deeply aroused me. I pulled out of my funk, dropping into my gentile giving sexual stance of the last weeks.
She danced away, continuing to laugh at me.
“What’s wrong, big fellow. Can’t take being teased, either verbally or physically? Can’t let me lead? Have to be who you think you have to be, rather than how I want you to be right now.”
I don’t know where it came from. I took her by the shoulders, spun her round and slapped her hard on her butt. She thrust her ass back, and rolled it invitingly. Something changed inside of me. I slapped her on that inviting ass once again, putting real energy to open handed crack of my palm. That sound, only slightly muffled by her jeans, hung in the air between us.
She grinned at me, a look on her face that was challenging, daring me.
“Oh, my, big strong fellow finally reacts … But is that it, a little explosion, nothing more.”
Once again, she pushed back, driving that tantalizing butt of hers into my crotch, looking over her shoulder, the tip of her tongue now sticking out slightly between her lips.
Thinking about it now, maybe it was just my frustration with the week, maybe it was the turmoil and confusion about that I have been feeling about her initial response to being slapped on the butt, maybe it was just something I will never understand, but my the voice in my head about never hitting women vanished suddenly.
I took her by her shoulders, sat down on the kitchen chair, pulled her front down over my lap, and slapped her butt several times, moving from hard to soft, each stroke slower than the last, as confusion rose within me. I stopped.
Her:
“What are you afraid of? You don’t hear me telling you to stop. But you don’t have the nerve to continue, do you?”
Me:
“My head tells me this is not right.”
Her:
“And what does your gut tell you? What am I telling you? Am I saying enough, stop? If and when I need you to, you will hear me say “red or stop”, and then I expect you to stop.”
So I told my brought up head to go away and let myself get into into it.
I started on her jeaned butt. After a few strokes with my open hand, carefully applied to each side of her butt, I felt an undeniable need to feel her skin under my palm.
Me:
“Stand up, pull down those jeans and take off whatever you have on under them. Then back here over my knees, butt up”.
She stood up, and looked me in the eyes, and smiled her anticipation at me.
Her:
“Oh yeah.”
Seconds later, the jeans and her panties and her sweater and her bra were on the floor. She laid herself back over my knees, butt placed just where I could best spank it.
I hit her hard on the left ass cheek, and then the right, and kept it up for another 12 strokes of my hand on each side of her butt. I watched her ass turn pink and then felt it grow warm.
I faltered and stopped. She turned her head, looking up at me.
“Have the courage to follow through. I did not say enough, stop. You are leaving me hanging now. The pleasure is just being to make its way up through the pain. ”
Suddenly, I realized that this was all about her and what she wanted. Did I have the strength it took to give it to her? Could I tap into a part of me that could give pain, pain that she wanted, pain that led to her pleasure? Or was our sexual exchange always going be limited to what I thought was right, to my sense of what was ok?
I started back in, experimenting now, hitting harder then slower, watching her ever reddening ass checks in between times I hit them with the palm of my open hand.
After a few more minutes, I felt her red hot bum under my hand, the heat of it flowing up my arm into my head. As the same time, I became aware how wet she was, how her hot groin was grinding against my every hardening cock below my own jeans.
Her:
“Enough, stop Just fuck me now please. I need you in me.”
She stood up, and as soon as I stood, jumped up, arms around my neck, legs around my waist, lips on mine, pushing them open, her tongue going in and grabbing mine hard.
I carried her into the bedroom that way. I dropped her on the bed, and took off my clothes as quickly as I could.
We made love then. I was thrilled by what I had done and was doing to her.
When she came, the energy and heat of it spilled into me, bringing me my own release instantly.
Afterwards, she curled up on the bed, deep into herself, drawn here by the intensity of her release. Then she drifted off into sleep.
As I watched her, a level of guilt rose up within me. I had hit a woman. I followed her into sleep with these dark thoughts lingering, lurking in my sleepy mind.
We talked over breakfast. She told me that pain until it reached a certain point intensified her sexual pleasure and the intensity of her orgasm. She wanted that pain from time to time, because it was the only way that she could get this particular kind of sexual release. This kind of orgasm drained a level of tension from her that no other sexual act did. It was not all she wanted sexually, but she needed it from time to time.
She spoke quite clinically about it. She said that asking for a man to give her this was a risk. Many partners did not get that she needed to be the one in control. It was a giving of pain that she wanted, not a punishing. I asked her what the difference was.
She told me needed to feel the mix of the two from time to time – the pain of the spanking leading to a kind of pleasure that completely drained her tension, the pain blending into an intensity of pleasure that she could achieve no other way.
I fumbled verbally, struggling with my confusion, talking about the difference between what my head told me was ok and what my body wanted to do to her. I told her that there was a part of me that thought that I wanted to create pain for the sake of creating pain, satisfying a need in me that had nothing to do with her needs. I did not feel comfortable letting that part of me go.
“I don’t think so. I think you have are carrying a bunch of social conditioning with you. You are not a sadist. You don’t get off on pain in its own right. But you are a giver, a man get off through sexually performing. You like to give pleasure. That is the reason that I could trust you with this need. Because I know that you are not going to give me pain beyond the level that I want, the level I need to get to where I want to be.”
I shook my head, still confused by it all. She got annoyed.
“Stop listening to your internal scripts. Listen to me. I need to feel the mix of the two from time – pain leading to pleasure in order to feel complete as a sexual being. Can you stop focusing on yourself and just accept me for what I need and what I want from you – pain that leads to pleasure without feeling that I have lost control of the situation? Can you let the giver in you free from its limits – from social scripts about pain being wrong, and just listen to me.”
I was still confused by it all. Finally, I just turned off my internal voices, and told myself to exactly what she wanted from me, to listen to her, to what she was saying, realizing the risk she was taking by being open with me.
“Look, it is not easy to do this. I want this with a man whom I can trust to be a sexual giver, not someone who takes his pleasure from imposing his own need to create pain in another.”
She shuddered.
“Sexual sadists are dangerous. Don’t believe all of the sane and consensual bullshit you see on web sites like FetLife.
Many sexual sadists are predators who search for people who need to be abused physically. Believe me, I know how dangerous that combination can be – an sadist abuser with an person who needs to be sexually abused. I have met both. They both scare me.”
She went inside herself for a moment or two.
“I have had friends who were caught in this kind of relationship. I have met this kind of sexual sadist. Fortunately, I was never drawn to any of them. I have no desire to be abused. I just need a certain level of pain leading to this particular type of intense pleasure and sexual release from time to time.”
Then she looked back at me and smiled.
“It took me a while to realize that I could trust you to be the kind of sexual giver who I could ask for this. My need for it varies. There are times when I want this, and I can take high levels of pain, even want it badly. But not all the time. My desire, my tolerance for pain, varies. I need to feel safe to ask for it. I need to control the level of it. I need to know that I can turn it off by simply asking you to stop. I know that this is the way it will be with you.”
We agreed to explore this side of her sexuality.
In the next weeks, we did. I learn as much from receiving as I do giving. I asked her to use her teeth on my nipples and my cock at a level that I had never asked for before. I found that I had a personal higher pain tolerance then I first thought. At times, I craved the pain caused by her sharp teeth. It drove me to a different kind of intense sexual release that I had never experienced before.
At the same time, I found that I could give pain when it she requested it. I found my need to give was as much around by the giving of pain that led to wanted pleasure as it was by simply giving pleasure. I felt stronger, more complete by this expanding of my responsive sexual repertoire.
We found new ways to mingle pain, pleasure, and release for her and for me. As well as spanking, we found out twisting, pinching, teething, even biting nipples and butts and clit and cock worked at times for both of us
At times, she wanted high levels of pain. At other times, her pain tolerance level was much lower. Then she asked me to stop shortly after starting in. I learned to respond immediately to her, no matter what technique I used to gift her with pain. I discovered the same variety in myself. I found that could also trust her completely to be responsive to my own needs. The new levels of trust between us spilled over into the rest of our life to together. We were more open, more willing to be vulnerable with each other around around all of our interactions together.
I learned that when she was into it, her pain tolerance increased with her degree of arousal. Long foreplay increased the intensity of what she wanted me to do. So did mine. The more we teased, the more we built up the sexual tension, the higher the distinguishing line between pain, pleasure, and release moved.
My level of pain tolerance and need never reached hers. Hers seemed to gradually work up in intensity over a number of days, even weeks, directly related to the life tension she carried deep in her physical and mental core. Mine stayed in the moment, turning from tolerable to intolerable in the blink of a nanosecond. Without the trust I had in her to stop the instance that I asked, I would never have let my self experience any level of gifted pain.
There is a level of intimacy and sharing in this giving of pain, a level of trusting that the other person is completely focused on you, reading you constantly, adjusting in the moment to each small nuance of your response, so that the giver never crosses the line, never moves to creating pain from her or her own internal need, but only always giving pain only from the other person’s wants and needs.
The giver of the gift of pain, rather than being the person in control, is really the one being controlled – trusted and empowered by the other person.
We parted for other work related reasons several months later. She took a job in another city that was extremely important to her career. I was dedicated to mine, and was not prepared to move. We told each other that we could have a long distance relationship. But it was not to be.
I will never forget her, and constantly thank her for guiding me into the giving and the receiving of pain. She made my life richer. I often miss both her gifts – the receiving and the giving of pain that leads to pleasure and release.
