A Thought about Negotiation

I haven’t had a chance to post for a bit. I’ve been too busy with the other parts of my life to compose something really thoughtful. But I thought I’d share an incident that happened just a couple months ago.

I had a rough day. I don’t remember what was rough about it, but there had been multiple frustrations to deal with, and by the time I got home I had what felt like a knot of darkness in my chest. I think that’s where I keep a lot of my negativity these days. I was grouchy and negative about myself and really needed an opportunity to vent some of that dark energy.

So there I was, sitting on my couch brooding, unable to get this knot to release, when a sub hits my up on twitter. I’ve never met him–we live in different parts of the country–but we’ve chatted regularly for a decent chunk of time, both on Tumblr before the Purge and on Twitter. So we sort of knew each other and had an idea of each other’s major kinks. I’ll call him CB.

He asks how I’m doing and I let him know that I’ve had a shitty day. As we chat, I mentioned that it would be nice to have an opportunity to unload some of my aggression. He knew that I enjoyed verbal abuse so he offers to let me insult him. I warn him, several times, that I’m in a pretty foul mood–is he sure that he really wants to go there? He insists that yes he is. He seems like he’s actively trying to nudge me into insulting him. Some boys do this by being ‘bratty’, which I hate. But CB is more just encouraging me to let loose on him.

So after making sure he’s ok with it, I start insulting him. Nothing taboo, just the standard “worthless faggot” stuff, expressed with my usual creativity and verbal flair. And he takes it. He apologizes for being so worthless and so on. It feels good and that knot starts to relax.

When I do pain play, I’m all about the boy’s reactions. I want to see that I’m hurting him. I want to watch his eyes widen or watch him squirm or whatever, because I want to feel the sense of power that comes with that. And when I do verbal abuse, I want to feel like my words are stinging the boy. Not actually harming him, but stinging the way erotic pain ought to.

After several minutes, I wrap things up. And I ask CB if any of what I had said stung at all. He replies, in essence “No. I’m pretty tough. That stuff just rolls off me.”

The moment he says that, the knot in my chest instantly tightens up again and is actually worse. Because to my ears, what he’s said is “You’re not very good at this. You didn’t land a blow.” I felt profoundly ineffectual. Once I told him that, he apologized, but it didn’t do much good in terms of addressing my mood.

In retrospect, I think we both made mistakes. I probably wasn’t clear enough about what I needed during the interaction, and CB didn’t lower his guard enough to feel vulnerable to me. In the long run, I don’t think there was any real harm done. I just needed to process my feelings for a few hours after that. CB felt some guilt for not doing what I wanted, but we talked about it and hopefully that assuaged some of his guilt.

I’m posting about this because I think it illustrates the importance of being clear about you’re seeking as a dom or sub. Had I been clearer about what I needed, I might have avoided playing or CB might have been willing to let himself be more vulnerable.