Survey Questions Answered #1

Bettie Page. Author Irving Klaw

Bettie Page. Author Irving Klaw

A few weeks ago I posted a bunch of survey questions, check out the entry and write me with your own answers to any of them in the form below.  Following is one reader’s thoughts and experiences on the subject.

What’s your story?  Which of the questions are interesting ones to muse on for you?  What would you share from your thoughts, experiences, or POV on kink?  Does what’s written below strike a chord for you?  Are your experiences similar or wildly different?

A huge thanks to this week’s interviewee.  Contact me and add your voice to the discussion, I look forward to hearing from more of you.

To Breath and Being,
~ Karin

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1. If you’re kinky, at what point did you come out to yourself as such and why?

I first came out in 2008 when I moved to Boston for college. My friend in college tipped me off to the Website Fetlife to connect with others of similar interest. At the time, the kink scene in Boston was under a dramatic expansion with the BTNG group, so it was really easy to meet new people and get your name out there.

2. What was your first exposure to kink?

It was age 8, I had gotten into my mothers book collections and found an erotic novel. The novel had a picture of a girls legs tied up with stocking on the front cover. I remember being very curious of the action imposed and my mother immediately snatching the book from my hand snarling “That’s for adults, go away”.

Being the rebellious person I was, I didn’t take that lying down. Over the next few years, I would invite girls over from my middle school and high school for bondage fun. It wasn’t sexual at that point, but I was aware that I liked tying up girls, pulling their hair and watching them struggle around.

High school is when all the pieces fit together, and when I knew I had something for control while getting turned on watching WWE women wrestling.

3. Can you define what kink is to you?

Kink is expression, passion and desire. It’s about security and feeling a much deeper connection to others. It’s about the fantasies I think about in the night coming to reality, and finding those who want to make those fantasies come true. It’s about community, connection, and knowing you are not alone in your wild thoughts.

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If you like my blog, please check out my Patreon Page and consider supporting me, or just click here: Support the Artist

~Thank you.

Tension and Release

IMG_1504I don’t want to write a blog right now I want to write a love letter or meditate on the importance of weird gut feelings and how vital they are, or I’d like to masturbate until I release all of the electricity in me and shut down like an old televisions’s phosphorescent faded glow…  I want to make out, roll around in the hay, hike through the woods with someone I admire, or fall asleep.  I feel too full to function.  I am tired and just want to shut down and die for a week before reactivating to take over the universe.

I woke up this morning remembering how hard the things I love are, and that collision of understanding and a crazy energy to just blindly make is still in me.

An example:  Puppets.  When I toured the country as a puppeteer for a year I was contracted (for very little pay) to work 40 hours a week in a puppet studio when we weren’t out on tour.  It was grueling physically, mentally and creatively, and when we were on the road very time consuming.  I learned a lot by showing up to the workshop, when we were in town, having to make my own plan for what to tackle every day.  Sometimes it was restoration of old puppets, sometimes learning lines and rehearsing a show we were about to take on tour, it was rebuild and design work, research, booking hotels, cleaning, reorganizing, making sense of a very large and chaotic workshop, going to meetings, practicing moves or learning a new puppet’s limitations and finding ways to make it live, load in and out of the puppet van our gigantic sound and light systems and 9 foot tall set pieces…  And then sometimes it was building something from nothing.  Making puppets of my own.  Learning to design, find the tools, structure, create, jury-rig as alternative to a more complicated process I didn’t have the resources for or as inventive solution and artistic choice.

Meet "General", my first puppet made completely from scratch

Meet “General”, my first puppet made completely from scratch (yes, those are leather chaps)

I would get tired.  I would struggle.  I would worry that everything I laid my hands on was failure and I that I wouldn’t be able to keep it up long enough to make my mark the way I wanted it.  I would crisis in the middle of this, my own vast fortune.

This perfectly describes the tension I live in.

Tension is probably the most perfect way to look at living a fulfilling existence…  Is this my masochistic theory I wonder?

It is stunning at times; when I look back at those days of struggle, yet I look back and wish I was engaged now in similar ways… and then realize I suppose I am.  My struggle today encompasses writing three times a week and publishing, teaching and promoting myself, keeping a steady job, creating work and performing in shows as a soloist, performing and rehearsing with my troupe, learning choreography and lines for the other shows I am cast in, mediating for the communities I do that type of work with, remaining open to new ideas and opportunities as well as staying rooted and connected to the work I’m committed to, maintaining relationships, learning new things, and still tinkering at my work desk making costumes, props, set pieces, and sometimes just work for me and my brain…

I juggle and I balance.  I fail at being perfect at everything (or anything), but I continue to try and measure my progress in terms of increasing capacity, increasing understanding, increasing skill and POV.  I am a growing organism.  I evolve or I die.  I understand new ideas or I wither and become complacent.

Embracing all the different aspects of my sexuality I see myself challenging the easy unfulfilling modes of behavior I’ve repeated historically, including a strong capacity for self repression.  I am learning new ways to approach the life I have with elbow grease towards becoming the life I want.  The tools I am becoming familiar with are transparency, self-confidence, meditation, and clear communication.  I am blessed to feel this tension in me vibrate, shift, and thrive.

To Breath and Being,
~ Karin

If you like my blog, please check out my Patreon Page and consider supporting me, or just click here: Support the Artist

~Thank you.

E is for E-STIM

Growing up, my father worked as an electrician/electrical engineer, and later on in my own life I became a lighting tech for theaters and special event companies.  I’ve always felt a kinship with electricity, both in the sense that there is an “electrical” connection between certain people, and in the manipulation of it physically.  Today, E is for E-Stim which stands for “electrical stimulation”.

To start out, here are the top two things you MUST remember when thinking about playing with electricity:

  1. Safety!
  2. No, really, SAFETY, so do your research or die – maybe literally.
"The Princess Bride"

“…So I want you to be totally honest with me on the way the machine makes you feel.  This being our first try, I’ll use the lowest setting.”

Now that we’ve got those two rules down, there are a great many ways you can play with electrical stimulation and have a really fun time.  This is especially true these days because there are plethora of delightful, intelligent, kinky, amazingly perverted toymakers and inventors out there who have created toys specifically with electrical play safety in mind.   I recommend starting out on your journey by trying those products on for size and learning as much as you can about how the beast works before getting too creative.

What are some of these safer toys and devices you speak of?  Since we’ve established that electricity will kill you as soon as look at you, and to MAKE SURE WHAT YOU ARE USING IS MEANT FOR USE ON A LIVING BODY AND BEING USED SAFELY, lets run over some toys that are meant to be used on people:

What else?  There are forums like www.smartstim.com, along with groups and resources on Fetlife and other kink communities that are created to help people understand how e-stim works and what is safe, unsafe and possible in electrical play.  I recommend checking out group forums like these at the very least for research information and general advice, and at best for great ideas, conversations, and to clear up misconceptions you might have about how people do what they seem to be doing.  Having an account on Fetlife or Kink Academy or some other social or educational website can help you move from cautious novice, to well practicing intermediate, leading of course to highly prized kink wizard!

My thigh the day after Violet Wand Torture :)

My thigh the day after Violet Wand Torture

My Experiences: Have been very slim as of yet, though what I’ve felt I’ve liked and hated in the best combination possible.  Electricity is one of the only things that’s “broken” me (grinning as I say it), but more on that particular scene in my interrogation entry…  Specifically, when it comes to electricity I’ve played with the Violet Wand, so I can speak to that one quite well.  It has a lot of different attachments, some beautiful, some more intense than others, some feel like massage, some more bizarre.  What I like most is the attachment you can stick in your belt to electrify your hand which basically makes YOU the electrical toy, and your touch torturous.  I will admit one of the things I REALLY like about that is that the sadistic partner you have is also feeling what you’re feeling – serves them right.

Through extensive use of the Violet Wand I have gotten a light “sunburn” over the more sensitive area that was repeatedly shocked (inner thighs), but that cleared up completely within a day or so.  All in all really fun stuff, that Violet Wand.

Why E-Stim, what’s going on there?  Electrical stimulation works in two different ways depending on the type of tool you’re using: either by a static shock, or by deeper stimulation of the muscles.  Toys like the Violet Wand operate more superficially building up and creating a static shock on top of the skin.  Toys like TENS units and Stun Guns directly target deeper muscles by overloading the electrical current that naturally occur in the muscles thereby seizing the muscle up and temporarily paralyzing it by making it contract.

Thoughts to Think About:  There are general guidelines to keep in mind when playing with any type of electricity, and more specific things to think about depending on the type of e-stim toy you’re using.  ALWAYS READ THE WARNINGS AND PROPER USE DOCUMENTS THAT COME WITH YOUR EQUIPMENT.  Know what kind of questions to bring up in negotiation with your partner:  does your partner have epilepsy or a pacemaker?  Does your partner have any heart issues, bad circulation, or a history of blood clotting?  This is a non-exhaustive list, so know specifically what your equipment warns about on top of these concerns.

Communicate Communicate Communicate…  Need I say more?  Try your toys out on yourself first so you know what type of sensation you’re doling out.  Check in with your partner about what the sensations are like for them as you play – is this too much, can you take more (?)…  Decompress about what happened in a scene afterward, was it good, bad, ugly, pleasurable, scary, fun.  If you want to do it again figure out what you’d like to try next time and what you should stay away from repeating.  Don’t break the toys – your machines or your human ones!

Have fun and remember that no matter how consensually evil you might be being to one another, you’re on the same team and in this together.

To Breath and Being,
~ Karin

If you like my blog, please check out my Patreon Page and consider supporting me, or just click here: Support the Artist

~Thank you.

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