/Pleasure/Pain
And a Public Performance
Article by Mistress Matisse
The pleasure starts before I ever lay a hand on anyone. It’s an anticipatory tingle that runs up my spine and radiates along my arms and legs. When the first little ripples begin to roll over me, I often notice myself flexing and closing my hands slowly, rolling my shoulders back like a boxer, and wiggling my hips like a cat about to pounce. It’s as if I am physically preparing myself to tussle with a rough but welcome lover. And indeed, if I touched myself in those moments, I would find my pussy wet. But I don’t want an orgasm. Sexual stimulation would be nothing but an irritating distraction to me. I’m quieting my mind, turning off external distractions, and moving towards a different sort of pleasure and happiness.
This is how I feel when I’m about to unleash an intense BDSM scene upon someone. If everything goes well, doing the scene will take me into a euphoric state. When I am describing a deeply satisfying scene, I will say, “Everything went away.” That means that I stopped thinking about anything else in the world except where I was and what I was doing. In that sense, it is a physically active form of meditation, like Sufi dancing.
And once I’m in that meditative, pre-euphoric phase, I can tune out a very high level of distraction indeed. As an example, let me tell you about a scene I did at the Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco recently.
Folsom Street Fair is an annual BDSM street festival. Kinky people come out by the thousands to stroll up and down several blocks of San Francisco, shopping at vendor’s booths, flirting, cruising and socializing, and watching the BDSM performances put on in open tents on the sidewalk. And people who aren’t into BDSM – or so they say – come out too, to see the kinky sights. The result is a crowd of people so thick that by afternoon, one must thread and shuffle one’s way carefully through the throng.
I was threading my way through that crowd this year, when a friend called out to me from an exhibitor’s booth. “Matisse!” After we greeted and hugged each other, he said, “Hey, want to do a scene? I have some space available.”
I glanced around. Spectators were pressed up against the metal railing marking off the space – about ten by fifteen feet - on three sides. They were eager for some action.
“Sure,” I replied. “Why not?”
I did a lightning-fast negotiation and put my chosen partner up on a St Andrews cross. I wasn’t carrying a bag of toys – the one implement I had on me was a vicious one, a tightly braided signal-whip about four feet long. It was a little lengthy for the space – the first row of spectators would be less than a yard beyond its reach. I would have to throw it carefully to avoid hitting a bystander in the face.
One would think I’d know by now how the pleasure of wielding a whip can overtake me. But sometimes it still
This is how I feel when I’m about to unleash an intense BDSM scene upon someone. If everything goes well, doing the scene will take me into a euphoric state. When I am describing a deeply satisfying scene, I will say, “Everything went away.” That means that I stopped thinking about anything else in the world except where I was and what I was doing. In that sense, it is a physically active form of meditation, like Sufi dancing.
And once I’m in that meditative, pre-euphoric phase, I can tune out a very high level of distraction indeed. As an example, let me tell you about a scene I did at the Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco recently.
Folsom Street Fair is an annual BDSM street festival. Kinky people come out by the thousands to stroll up and down several blocks of San Francisco, shopping at vendor’s booths, flirting, cruising and socializing, and watching the BDSM performances put on in open tents on the sidewalk. And people who aren’t into BDSM – or so they say – come out too, to see the kinky sights. The result is a crowd of people so thick that by afternoon, one must thread and shuffle one’s way carefully through the throng.
I was threading my way through that crowd this year, when a friend called out to me from an exhibitor’s booth. “Matisse!” After we greeted and hugged each other, he said, “Hey, want to do a scene? I have some space available.”
I glanced around. Spectators were pressed up against the metal railing marking off the space – about ten by fifteen feet - on three sides. They were eager for some action.
“Sure,” I replied. “Why not?”
I did a lightning-fast negotiation and put my chosen partner up on a St Andrews cross. I wasn’t carrying a bag of toys – the one implement I had on me was a vicious one, a tightly braided signal-whip about four feet long. It was a little lengthy for the space – the first row of spectators would be less than a yard beyond its reach. I would have to throw it carefully to avoid hitting a bystander in the face.
One would think I’d know by now how the pleasure of wielding a whip can overtake me. But sometimes it still
China Hamilton
catches me by surprise, the power of it. I turned my back to the crowd and narrowed my gaze to the exact point where my whip would connect with his back, and the world went silent. The adrenaline poured through me, I felt every muscle in my body sing with it. Time stood still. I have no idea how many times I raised my arm, snapped my wrist, and brought the whip back home. But I know I did it over and over, and each stroke made me higher and higher. Occasionally I threw back my head and laughed – not a giggle or a titter, but a wild laugh, from deep in my body - for the sheer joy and pleasure of it.
Now and again the din of voices and people and music would roar suddenly in my ears and puncture the bubble of euphoria I was floating in. I would glance around at the densely packed crowd surrounding me, watching me, and remember: Oh yeah – I’m at Folsom. It was a little disorienting, like waking up suddenly from a dream. I’d look at the metal railing that separated me from everyone else, and think, ‘I don’t want to stop. I don’t want to be out there. I want to be in here.’ And I’d draw back the whip for another throw.
I don’t experience anything quite as specific as a euphoria-orgasm. My friends and I will speak casually of being “dorfed-out” (meaning: endorphin-high) the way other people might speak of being drunk, or high on drugs. The states are not dissimilar. There comes a point when you are so saturated with the pleasure that you can’t take any more. That’s when you know it’s time to put down the whip.
There’s often a little sadness in you, at letting go of the euphoric state. But letting the pleasure ebb is the first step in the cycle of building it up again for the next time.
Now and again the din of voices and people and music would roar suddenly in my ears and puncture the bubble of euphoria I was floating in. I would glance around at the densely packed crowd surrounding me, watching me, and remember: Oh yeah – I’m at Folsom. It was a little disorienting, like waking up suddenly from a dream. I’d look at the metal railing that separated me from everyone else, and think, ‘I don’t want to stop. I don’t want to be out there. I want to be in here.’ And I’d draw back the whip for another throw.
I don’t experience anything quite as specific as a euphoria-orgasm. My friends and I will speak casually of being “dorfed-out” (meaning: endorphin-high) the way other people might speak of being drunk, or high on drugs. The states are not dissimilar. There comes a point when you are so saturated with the pleasure that you can’t take any more. That’s when you know it’s time to put down the whip.
There’s often a little sadness in you, at letting go of the euphoric state. But letting the pleasure ebb is the first step in the cycle of building it up again for the next time.
- 11/01/2009
