Branding, Three Months Later

A little while ago, I wrote about my first experience with branding. It was a really beautiful and wholly positive event, and I almost immediately started planning for my next brand.

After a few weeks, I was starting to get a little worried about how it was scarring—it seemed to be way, way bigger than I was expecting it would turn out, and two parts of the brand were merging together into a blob. Still, I thought, the scar would quickly start to turn lighter and lighter, and eventually it would be barely noticeable. That was part of the appeal of branding for me: unlike tattooing, branding results in a much more subtle design on the skin, a slightly lighter shade of one’s normal skin color. So I thought.

Now, over three months later, the scar has keloided, and is bright pink. The two distinct parts of the design have become connected with scar tissue, making it almost completely indistinguishable. The location (the middle of my chest) and the bright color attract a lot of comments, now that it’s hot and I’m wearing tank tops a lot, and I’m getting tired of explaining to people what the brand was *supposed* to look like.

But the worst part is that the keloid has become itchy and painful, and the skin around the brand has become extremely sensitive as well. I can’t bear to have the brand touched at all, and I have a hard time finding a comfortable position to sleep in, because lying on my side pushes the skin together and rubs the brand. I’m starting to worry about how long it will take for the pain to go away — a year? More? I have no idea what to expect. I’m thinking about going to a dermatologist. I’ve tried to get in touch with Fakir, who did the brand, but he hasn’t responded yet.

I’ll always treasure the experience of getting my brand, but I really wish I’d gotten more information about the healing process before I went through with it. I don’t think I’d have done it if I’d realized how much the shape was going to change and how painful the resulting scar would be.

DIY Vegan Flogger Workshop

A friend of a friend is teaching a workshop on how to make your own rope floggers. It’s geared toward vegans and vegetarians (that is, those of us who don’t like to use leather floggers), but is open to everyone. I’m really looking forward to this!

Note that no one will be turned away for lack of funds — please just donate what you can to help pay back the cost of renting the room. All genders and orientations welcome; trans-friendly space.

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Flogging without leather – making and using rope floggers

Workshop led by Lee
Thursday Sept 4
7-10 PM, doors open at 6:30

In Oakland, at the Humanist Hall
390 27th St, between Broadway and Telegraph

http://humanisthall.net/DIRECTIONS.htm

wainskote@yahoo.com for questions and directions

The multi-tailed flogger is an amazing tool for S/m and sensation play. Used with intent and focus, the transmission of power, love, connection, and desire is for me more direct and easily achieved with this tool than any other.

But – classic floggers are leather. What if you don’t want animal products in your life, but do want the lovely and luscious sensation of well balanced, silky smooth thud or biting sting?

In this workshop, we will see how to design a rope flogger to emphasize sting or thud, and see a variety of easily made floggers based on rope, twine, tape, and readily available hardware. Each participant will make a rope flogger for hir own collection. We will discuss the basics of flogging technique and safety, and how to bring energy and intent to a flogging scene. There will be time for practice using your new floggers.

Materials will be supplied. We request a donation on a sliding scale, $10 – $25, to cover the cost of room and materials. No one turned away for lack of funds.

BIO: Lee has been making his own rope floggers and adding them to his toy bag for 3 years now. He is a trained scientist who found his spiritual home through the magic of BDSM and ordeal-path ritual. He identifies as a top-oriented switch, and finds that being on either side of the flogger is a powerful route to hot heart and sexual connection with his partners. Lee is active in the BDSM community, is in relationship with a top who sometimes switches and with a submissive who also loves flogging. Lee is a cadet in the Journeyman III Academy of California class of 2008.

Feet

I’ve recently come to the realization that I have something of a foot fetish. It feels very strange to me, because it’s the sort of thing most often joked about when people start talking about fetishes or kinks—it seems absurd and laughable, so far divorced from “real” sex that it’s completely incomprehensible to most. But there it is.

It first presented itself as a boot fetish, but this wasn’t too jarring to me, as I’ve always found boots aesthetically appealing (both on my partners and on myself), and so recognizing that I found boots sexy as well wasn’t difficult to do.

Then came my first fantasy about boot licking. More than perhaps any other kink or fetish I have, this one was probably the most difficult to bring up to my partner. (He was intrigued by it, and now boot worship is a regular feature of our play.) Then came the idea of being stepped on, which quickly progressed to being kicked. Currently, I’m stuck on the idea of my partner strapping a dildo to his boot and fucking me with it.

But in most of these fantasies, my attention was always mostly on the boot, not the foot. Thus, I never considered myself a “foot fetishist.” Somehow, even when play began to include my partner’s bare feet in my mouth, kicking me, stepping on me, or masturbating me, I never once had the thought that I was it was the foot itself, not just the foot inside the boot, that I found so hot.

Then, a few nights ago, I was taking a shower with my partner. We had been taking turns washing each other (in a romantic “doing nice things for each other” way, not in a sexy way), and I knelt down to wash his legs. Then I picked up his foot and began soaping it, and I was instantly aroused. I looked up at him; he had noticed. I silently washed his feet, slowly caressing them, somewhat embarrassed but undeniably turned on.

The rest of that evening was very, very nice. (And I’ll leave it at that.) But I’m still somewhat unnerved and puzzled by this newly discovered fetish. My gut instinct tells me that it’s connected to my kink for submission in general—that the fetish is related to the feet being the lowest part of the body (both physically and metaphorically), and being at his feet, cleaning his feet, or being fucked by his feet are all ways to draw out that submissiveness by pushing me down into that “lower” space.

(That’s one idea, anyway.)