22nd May 2026: The CNCeedle Scene
okay, the title for this is really dumb, i grant you. the scene was much more serious than the name implies, so you can just think of this as what it was, which is a no safeword needle & rope scene which lasted about two or three hours depending on whether you count prep and aftercare. this is gonna be more unfocussed (or, if i were writing with more care towards the written word, it is going to be “less focussed”) than the usual blog post, so don’t expected my quasi-essay stylings (as in: stylings of my quasi-essays) or capital letters or whatever. it is half nine on a monday. you will read what is on the screen and you will be grateful. i might also do a post about no safewords, yes limits, some consent (yes, that is a reference to /that/ essay), to explain slightly more rigorously how i handle the scenes that i bottom. but anyway: the blog post.
blog à clef
obvs i have to change the names here and also assure you this is all fictional because if it did happen i think it’s kind of illegal. so, let’s lay out the cast:
i/me/myself – i’m me
my flatmate – that’s my submissive, slave, girlfriend (boy), literal flatmate
our mutual friend (OMF) – this is the pal we watch musicals with who is also a dyke pervert
my ex – someone who isn’t my ex, i think
the boyf – my boyfriend who is (at time of writing) wearing my collar and is newish to the scene on account of being 19
my dear friend (MDF) – a woman i have a lot of feelings about who is also really good with a camera
the boyfrench – my boyfriend who is (at time of writing) french
setting the scene (part one)
how does all this happen? like, ooh a needle scene with some rope, how original, is maybe what you’re thinking if you’re lost in the sauce, and oh my god how could you find enjoyment in that at all is maybe what you’re thinking if you are thoroughly unsauced, but in each case i think it’s worth answering this: how does all this happen? how do you get from nothing to doing a two or three hour long scene, depending on how you count it, at a private dyke party that involves 50+ needles and a mildly concerning amount of blood loss?
so we were watching the raúl esparza version of company. well, okay, not quite. i mean, we did that, but there were things that happened first. OMF posted in the leatherdyke admin server a few months ago floating the idea of running a dykes only play party because we (leatherdykes admin team) find the current public play parties a bit restrictive. this got set for i think march and then pushed back to may because stuff came up. the idea was that OMF would host a play party with around 15 people at her place; it would all be people we knew already; we would be able to do the kind of stuff we actually wanted to do without non-dykes hassling us. everyone was pretty excited.
my flatmate and i were especially excited. i mean, i can’t make claims about whether we were more excited than other people, but we at least were making plans kind of immediately from the announcement that this would be happening. our line of thinking goes like this: what can’t we do at a public event? then: what do we want to do? finally: what would suit the vibe here? this kinda narrows stuff down away from the sorts of play we can get away with at other events to actually make use of this particular opportunity (that is, an event without a consent policy and without DMs). so, obviously our initial ideas involve blood, “CNC”, and no safewords. our first idea was robin’s punishment from the slave, which i haven’t read but my flatmate has. we were going to tie me down and then i was going to be caned with ten or so different garden stakes until each of them broke. heavy impact, kinda a variation on the just the whip scene inasmuch as it’s something with a single implement bounded by some kind of external limit (in this case the structural integrity of the canes (which obvs is not entirely external because it’s dependent on how they’re used) rather than a time limit). we needed to get the garden canes and do some prep but we were feeling good about this idea. defo hit the vibe: we couldn’t do it at another event (at least, not in the way we wanted); we wanted to do something hefty and mean; we thought it would suit a this dyke play party to have a resoundingly unfun, unpleasurable impact scene.
and then we were watching company and talking to OMF about our plans and i was kinda jovial about the whole prospect of being caned because yk, canes are kinda fine. and we were also talking about a recent scene where OMF got filled with needles and i was a bit like, ow those actually hurt idk how you do it. and it kind of came about conversationally that we should pivot to something i actually fucking hate. being the kind of person i am, i had to go along with the planning.
one of the key things that had impressed/squicked me about OMF’s needle scene was the way she could roll her shoulders with the needles still in her back. that was, like, kind of unthinkable for me, that you wouldn’t just stay still while that was happening. leaning into that, we figured a scene where i got filled with needles while tied down (which is to say we were conceptually jumping off from robin’s scene) and then we did free tying over the needles would be pretty distressing. there was some chat about practical stuff and me tryna outdo OMF in terms of quantity and gauge size, and then it was settled, this was our scene. it was not for public parties (yes blood, no safewords); something we really wanted to do (fun rope stuff, unfun needle stuff); and fit the dyke party vibe (achingly long, longingly aching). so that’s how the basic idea got into our heads: some confluence of random conversations and the material/cultural conditions of the party within the context of a slightly hostile kink scene. let’s get onto that next before we start talking about making the cnceedle scene happen in a practical sense.
state of play (part one)
Banned Play: Anything that I have to clean up and Whimsy (I’ll know it when I see it). Honestly you're all people I know, so trust your judgement to not be dicks.
this is the entire section in the rules on the types of play that are not permitted at the party. i’m gonna get onto “whimsy” in this section but first i wanna compare these to rig events and 404. rig first:
The following types of play are not allowed at all during our events: Water sports; Scat; Sploshing; Race play; Scenes that attack or victimise minority or vulnerable groups even in a negotiated consensual manner; and/or Loose glitter or other powders. [I have de-bullet pointed this for my own sake]
that’s a lot of text! next, 404:
Types of play not permitted: Scat, Piss, extreme CNC, Ultra-violence. Blood.
substantially more concise at the expense of some clarity (what is “extreme CNC”?) but yk, we take it.
anyway, let’s try to kinda break down a bit what’s actually going on here. there are, i think, two types of rules. or like, rules that try to address two different things. one type is venue hazard. this covers everything that like logistically fucks up (organising an) event. this is “anything that I have to clean up”, “watersports; scat; sploshing… loose glitter”, and “scat, piss… blood”. these are just like, logistically kind of fucked and will mess up the venue or make it hell for the organisers to deal with. fire play is mentioned as something needing pre-approval in the rig rules which also comes under this considering it could burn down the venue.
the other type is vibe hazard. this covers everything that fucks up the vibe, the experience of the attendees, the feeling of safety or participation in the space, that kind of thing. this is “Whimsy”, “race play; scenes that attack or victimise minority or vulnerable groups even in a negotiated consensual manner”, and “extreme CNC, ultra-violence, blood”. i’m putting blood in both here because blood belongs in both. these are all things that like, there’s no reason you couldn’t do these from a kind of running an event standpoint if attendee experience didn’t matter – unless ultra-violence crosses into property destruction or sending someone to the hospital, the only effect of that sort of play in the space is the affective experience of other attendees.
vibe hazards are where we see the most divergence in our events. rig projects are concerned with fostering a progressive, welcoming community through play. (as an aside, i don’t have much to say about race play but i do have a lot to say about consensual victimisation of trans people and detransition play and like, what even counts as detransition play if your girlfriend is literally just detransitioning? is force-fem unacceptable if the bottom is trans masc rather than a cis man? is force masc unacceptable if the bottom is a ftmtf detransitioner? who decides who is victimised and who decides what kind of victimisation is acceptable considering that we are, after all, largely trans people beating each other up at rig events, and if we’re t4t which i personally am not but some of us are, deciding to do that is tied to that trans identity itself, but obviously that’s still allowed. so really my point here is that rig is choosing to discount play that is for sure emancipatory and meaningful to catch play from people acting in bad faith or play that otherwise make more tender people uncomfortable in the space, which is just a value judgement on the part of their org team. it’s neither good nor bad, really; the only thing that’s wrong here is that there aren’t really avenues to communally explore play that does victimise vulnerable groups.) 404 are concerned with that in terms of their other rules, but it seems like you can still say slurs, at least during play. instead, they want to minimise the sorts of things that will distress other attendees from a like, heavy play perspective. i think this division arises from the DM situations of rig and 404. curve (a rig event) has DMs in every play space, so you have to negotiate what you want to be in a room with as well as your own scene with the DM, and then if your scene is distressing to other people passing by, there’s a DM there to tell them that it’s all fine and negotiated or whatever. 404 has roaming DMs which can’t fulfil that function, and because these things aren’t run through the DMs they will be assessing whether a scene is okay or not as someone passing by. you trade the freedom to not have your hand held through a negotiation (which is great; i don’t love having to explain to a DM as well as a play partner that i am horny and want to have sex and sexy things i don’t anticipate might happen during sex) for not being able to do certain kinds of play that come off as non-consensual at a glance (which is not great; i love play that is non-consensual, at a glance or otherwise).
anyway, this all leads to a particular kind of environment where kink at these events, because of these rules, tends towards whimsy. now, to be clear, whimsy is not good or bad – it’s just whimsical. some memorable scenes are pretty whimsical (shout out to the newton’s cradle suspension scene, which tbf i did not even witness cause i was at work i think but like, it lives on in the cultural memory). still, it harshes the vibe when you are trying to be serious. well, maybe serious isn’t the right word. let’s see if we can tease this out. okay, this is getting a bit long so let’s push this into another section.
it ceases to be whimsy if you’re still shitting blood
okay, so what comprises whimsy? the line is “you know it when you see it”. this is, yk, true enough if you go to kink events but maybe not obvious if you’re just a random reader of my blog or going to different events where people aren’t whimsical or whatever. so how about some scenes that are definitely whimsy: flogging in time to disney music (yes that really happened); the rubber chickens on feet game where you have a bunch of bottoms and a blindfolded top and the subs have rubber chickens on their feet and they’re trying to poke the top or something who has a flogger to hit them with (this has taken up a significant amount of space multiple times at one event); the aforementioned newton’s cradle scene. we know those as whimsy when we see them. what’s the through-line though?
so, my actual assessment of whimsy in the sense that i mean it is this de-eroticisation of kink for the sake of doing something funny. it has to both be conceptually funny and funny to engage with. (implicitly light) flogging in time to disney music is both funny/cute as described and kinda funny as it goes along. rubber chickens, obviously, funny by default both conceptually and practically. whether they’re actually funny or not is besides the point, but like, they’re funny even if they don’t succeed to be funny (like most standup, yk?). newton’s cradle, like, i remember laughing as it was planned out and described; there’s definitely a sense of fun there that is closer to funny than eroticism. this line is, idk, maybe not super clear. there’s funny-funny and there’s mean-funny. newton’s cradle definitely isn’t a mean scene.
the corollary to this then is that it stops being whimsical if someone dies. that’s just to say that something can transcend being cutesy funny by taking the brutal aspects to the extreme. going back over the disney music scene: it’s one thing to have light flogging in time to disney music; it’s another thing to be flogged to disney music while dressed up as a princess in an ill-fitting, cheap costume while your dominant chides you for being a trans woman whose whole conception of womanhood is fake, that you are only ever simulating femininity, that you are some contentless pastiche of the female form in a way which betrays your own insecure misogyny. the latter is too mean to be whimsical anymore – and it’s also not allowed at rig events.
i think a lot of scenes have this element of humour. bullying scenes obviously can be funny to engage with, like, making fun of someone is creating humour, right? but while it’s practically funny (there’s laughter), it’s not conceptually funny. it’s just like, role play, probably about everybody’s trauma. that’s kinda classic kink scene material really. you wouldn’t call bullying role play whimsy. certainly, there was some allowed at the dyke party.
the other side of that is stuff that’s conceptually funny but not practically funny. an example that comes to mind is gathering up some electrical cables your flatmate has maybe been leaving around and whipping them with it. that’s funny on the face of it, but an ethernet cable cat of nine tails is going to fucking bite.
the key thing in both of these situations – to me at least – is that there’s something to bring you back in from this kind of whimsical detachment. something counterposed to that, maybe. i want to say that the scene is “made real” by there being a challenging element. none of the adjectives here are quite right – serious, harrowing, unfun, challenging, brutal, emotive, sincere, vulnerable – but i hope that gives a sense of what i mean, or what i’m conflating. the point is that whimsy is kink at a distance: de-eroticised, toothless, uncomplicatedly fun. again, that’s not bad. you wouldn’t say playing a game with your friends is bad just because it’s fun; you’d likely say the opposite. but for me (and for my friends), kink is at its best when there is this element of serious vulnerability, this vulnerable self-seriousness, this whatever it is that we know when we see.
set and (wound) dressing
so the scene “made real” thing is like, actually quite important to me. i think it’s one of those things i’m neurotic about and i have a specific way of accessing. because of the specificity of that access route, i actually bounce off some attractive people who go about things in a like, different way. the easiest and probably least correct way to explain this is as follows: i don’t like role play.
this maybe came up in my just the whip post, but from a brief peruse i haven’t really talked about it. caveat here is that the words i’m using aren’t supposed to be value judgements. when i say something is “made real” i don’t mean that role play is fake or whatever, more that role play doesn’t make something real for me. or, in most cases, it detracts from it being made real. okay okay let’s get onto it.
so i’ve talked with my ex about scenecraft a decent amount and i think we have divergent approaches. something she might say is like, i would find it hot to get fucked by a big tentacle monster, and then she’d devise a scene which simulates that experience. the actual stuff that’s happening is living up to this fantasy as the starting point as much as practicable, and that’s where the scenecraft comes in, right?, cause the art of it all is in simulating that fantasy in a way you can get lost in it. similarly, this is kind of how role play (in the normally understood kink context) works. you and a partner pretend to be a teacher and a student and you make that real by bending your affect to meet that fantasy and then do kinky shit. to make the quiet part loud i guess, i think the important thing is that you bend your affect to meet the fantasy. [same day edit: my ex has informed me this is a slight misrepresentation of her approach though she thinks the point is still valid. for clarity, she dm'd me to say "so the thing I care about is less like, emulating a fantasy than identifying the feeling I get from that fantasy that I like, and finding a way to make that feeling real".]
the sorts of scenes that i plan are kind of an inversion of this. there is no fantasy that the whip scene is living up to. like, it’s not an abduction scene; it’s not a naval punishment scene; it’s not a torture scene (except in the most literal sense that it was torturous). same as this cnceedle scene: we’re not roleplaying doctor and patient. what’s happening is i am getting tied up in a way i can’t get out of, and then my flatmate is doing a bunch of horrible things to me with needles. to the extent that this is driven by fantasy at all, it’s only fantasy-driven inasmuch as we are fantasising about the things we are going to do – not what it means, not why it is happening.
so i guess what i’m getting at is i can’t do the bending affect thing which makes a scene real. what i do has to be real by default. i’m not working to make doctor/patient role play real; i’m just experiencing the sheer pain of having needles stuck through me. whatever affective experiences that happens is the right affective experience at the point of entering the scene. there’s no, like, missing the mark. obviously i slip into modes that can read as role play (such as calling my flatmate “daddy” at one point in the scene) but that’s arising from this kind of fear and reverence that happens when i’m that trapped in that much pain with him. but the difference here is that i don’t want him to be daddy; it’s just the only word that comes to mind.
set and dressing is then about guiding an affective experience rather than living up to one. mood lighting obviously makes things feel more sexy. doing it at a party obviously imparts a particular exhibitionistic vibe. good music gives things a rhythm. no whimsy: a serious vibe hazard. but i just can’t engage if i have this end point of what it’s supposed to be, if we’re starting with the idea that the scene needs to be more than it is on paper. having a kind of emotive finish line makes me just obsess about reaching it. having a role to play makes me anxious that i am playing it badly. obviously i do domme/sub stuff, but that’s all derived from a material (though bounded) expression of my power over another person. this is kind of what i mean when i talk about unleveling the playing field, an erotic dynamic “made real” because it arises from a fostered material power imbalance, not “made real” through the bending of mine and my flatmate’s affects to meet the goal of performing dominance and submission. again, the latter is just as real as the former, but not when i do it.
so it’s important to have a space without whimsy. it is hard to be serious about kink when other people are so detached. since i can’t really bend my affect, if i’m just pissed off about rubber chickens i’m just going to be pissed off about rubber chickens, which is not the kind of scene i want to do. in that way, the party itself is the most important element of set and dressing to the whole thing. let’s get into that now.
state of play (part two)
so we have our dyke party. this was a party of at most about fifteen people spread between three play rooms, an aftercare room, two bathrooms, and a kitchen acting as a social space. because the scene lasted so long, i was not around for most of the party, which officially ended at midnight and unofficially ended at one ante meridian. (for ref: it started at eight post meridian.) what we did was hang around until everyone showed up, and then at eight i got started and it sounded like everyone else also immediately started fucking. by the time i got out of the play room in which i was ensconced, we were hanging around the largest play space cuddling, kissing, touching, and watching some people do some pain play. i got to whip some pals on the standrew’s cross which is always fun.
obvs the vibes are completely different to a public play party. we all knew each other to varying degrees. we didn’t really need to negotiate scenes that thoroughly since we trust each other to vocalise issues. there weren’t any scroaty scrandoms leering at the trannies or coming up to comment in a way that betrays a complete lack of understanding of really any social norm or common sense. there was also a no safeword needle play scene going on.
it’s not a party for whimsy. i’m not sure if anyone did any, but like, detrans kink would have been fine i assume. there was a lot of power exchange as well as a general sense of like – not-quite-protocol, but – protocol with regards to interacting with the M/s-types. a lot of people thanked me after my flatmate made them cocktails. oh, and that was another nice bit: alcoholic drinks. no one got drunk, but i think most of us did drink a bit.
so this is our dyke party, fitting a niche uncovered by rig and 404. small group of attendees, high emphasis on sexual play, no whimsy, light protocol elements, serious and distressing kink, the ability to indulge in a scene, spontaneity, alcohol. this is kind of only possible because we trust each other and wouldn’t work to expand to a public event, or even an event that’s any larger than fifteen people, because then you start to get people you don’t know or are only tenuously connected to. i would like more people to host these – not for me specifically, but just because i think more dykes in glasgow need to get their needs met like this. get your friends, make a server, throw up the few rules that are relevant to you, and get to fucking.
that was something surprising also, like, how quickly everyone got to fucking. my flatmate and our mutual friend were talking in the weeks leading up to it all about the worry that people would struggle to fuck. but that just didn’t happen. or like, the fucking did happen immediately. i guess that’s another benefit to throwing a party for the group of people who make out on the couches at drury street every chance they get: no self consciousness to overcome. we’re already in the mood and we’ve all seen each other get it on. plus, in our case, we had told OMF that we’d start as soon as the clock hit eight and we’d get going. we had it all prepared.
setting the scene (part two)
okay, so, it’s a scene with a lot of moving parts. i didn’t want to pass out like just the whip because even just slouching over onto my side with a bunch of needles stuck through me seemed bad. so i got my boyf to spot the scene and act as my flatmate’s assistant. the boyf prepared needles, fed me supermix and lucozade ice kick, and took photos. he had not spotted a scene before and while he had done some needle play, he hadn’t done it to this extent. so we had a practice round.
well, before that, my flatmate and i had a practice round together. this was kind of just the scene but to check that i wasn’t going to freak out about needles and that i could take like a gauge 12. (the last needle play scene i did was in jan 2025, so we wanted to check my tolerance for stuff.) this first one involved figuring out placements, talking through the progression of the scene with needles stuck through me, practicing slumping over from kneeling, getting to grips with how it felt to move with needles in. basic info to assess viability.
the next practice round involved my boyf and was basically a dress rehearsal of the scene in my living room but with much lighter gauge needles (24g and 23g only). we went through procedure for needlestick injuries, talked through the scene as a scene again and developed it a bit, practiced feeding me supermix and lucozade ice kick. we also picked up on a bunch of little issues, like hair getting in my eyes and my boyf not being able to put on my glasses the way i like. plus, logistical stuff became apparent, like how long it took to unpackage needles, how long it took to cleanse my skin with the little pre injection swabs, what kinds of positions i needed to be able to get into so my ankles didn’t fucking die. it was fun.
obviously the dress rehearsal is kind of just doing the scene but a bit lighter and in private, but it’s got a very different vibe. i still bliss out when the free tying starts, but i’m critiquing what’s going on in a way that i don’t want to do during the main scene because my flatmate would just hurt me about it. the dress rehearsal as well isn’t to pre-empt everything that might happen in the scene, but it’s a space where we can tweak, make a bunch of quality of life improvements, and learn to most effectively improvise during the scene with a rough sort of script (needles in specified sorts of places then do free tying with them still in).
once we got to the party, it still took some time before play started to get everything set out, but my flatmate and the boyf knew what they needed and knew where it all should go. it’s still not quite primer, but you know, this one was more on the indie side of things in terms of production values. so, how’d it go?
buried lede
i ended up in a&e the next evening because of the scene.
the cnceedle scene
so i sit down on the pillow that had been placed on the tarp. there’s this big mirror in front of me and a mirror at an angle behind me so i can see all of myself. the boyf is grinning. the flatmate is grinning, even as he proceeds to repeatedly tie double larks-heads arounds my wrists and ankles. the ropes have pulled tight. my flatmate puts arrows on me everywhere except my left arm indicating which direction the needles should go. this is with a tattoo pen and is to make sure if i collapse everything is pointed away from my body. i then get wiped down with some anti septic thing that apparently keeps killing bacteria. it itches a bit. i start worrying it’s going to keep itching. i’m wearing cute makeup and i’ve got my contact lenses in and it’s warm in the room. i am terrified, but what i’m worried about is it itching. and needing to piss halfway through.
then i get a needle in my thigh. gauge twenty. my flatmate marks out each of my he is going to stick a needle into. he puts the needles the wrong way into my left arm. whatever. it hurts like hell. this is as light as it’s going to get. pretty soon, i have eight different twenty gauge needles in me: both thighs, above both breasts, in my forearm and upper arm, and down each shoulder blade. then we move to eighteens.
this hurts, obviously. it hurts a lot. i don’t like how it hurts. impact is fine. i maintain that the paracord whip doesn’t hurt. needles hurt. all needles hurt. they’re pinchy. it’s like being bitten, which if you know me then you know i really can’t take. i can’t take pinches either. i hate that stuff. it all stops hurting after it goes in, but going in takes so long that it’s fucking unbearable. as we get to sixteens and then to fourteens, i have to ask my flatmate to help me breathe through it. he tells me to breathe in, then he pushes the needle through me as i breathe out. these breaths are long. it takes a while to get the needle through. at the higher gauges, the needle does this thing where it goes into my skin but doesn’t want to come back out the other side. i keep breathing as i watch the tip create a bump in my skin, tearing into me from the inside before the metal finds its way out.
i am not very quippy. i am not having fun once we get going. the most i get is looking up at a pal and saying, “watch this trick” before turning to my flatmate and saying with a kind of defeated sincerity: “red”. my flatmate laughs at me a bit and sticks another needle in my body. at the very least i get supermix and lucozade ice kick whenever i want it from my boyf. he’s taking photos while he’s not otherwise occupied on the scene. big grin on his face.
i don’t try to get out. there’s no point, really. firstly, i want the scene to happen, but even at the points where i want the scene to end i am still tied down. i rock a little bit as things go on. i’m not dissociating. it’s kind of the opposite. i’m very present. things are happening to me and i am present for them. i am experiencing my body more fully than i otherwise experience it. i try not to move when i get sticked because that makes it hurt more. at some point, someone in the transient crowd watching remarks that when i move as a needle goes in it makes it hurt more. i shout back “it’s not FUCKING intentional”. this gets a laugh. i am actually angry at this point. the shouting was entirely involuntary. i really don’t like feedback at the best of times and certainly not while i am getting hurt in a way that i have to work through. i am going to make that clear in negotiation next time. maybe something on the door: “hard limit: feedback”.
at some point, all the needles that are going to be in my body are in my body. it’s about sixty, i think, ranging from twenty gauge to twelve gauge. they don’t really hurt at this point but i am in pain. i don’t really know how to describe it. i’m kind of out of it even if i am very present. then my flatmate unties my right ankle and brings my right arm across my body. i feel the rope on my skin, jute i think. the bondage feels nice. i bliss out entirely.
my limbs move around as the ropes come on and off. some needles come out, then i am moved around more. we continue like this. i can’t describe the affective experience without being all drippy with it. it’s bliss. it hurts. i am covered in blood. i can tell you this now: this is the best scene i have done in my life.
my flatmate at some point scratches his finger on the needles sticking through my left shoulder blade. he does a little first aid and makes some decisions about what to do. because the needle gauge goes quite low (as in, big), he decides to pull them out back through me, but he also decides to leave that for a bit. i don’t mind. i am not capable of minding. he could have told me he was going to start putting the needles back into me, in my face, wherever. so long as those ropes are pulled tight i would have consented. well, maybe consented isn’t the right word, under the circumstances.
the needles eventually come out in there entirety. the ropes come off too. there is a small crowd. to come back to myself, i start touching my blood-soaked panties and remark, “oh my god i’m so wet”. this gets a laugh, being the first coherent thing i’ve said in some time.
i adjust on the floor to give my knees a chance to relax. and my ankles. the boyf and my flatmate mop the blood off me and apply second skin once it stops flowing. i ask my flatmate if there’s much additional risk to him tasting my blood now that he’s got the needlestick injury. he thinks for a while and says he doesn’t think so. i take off my panties and gag him with them. my blood fills his mouth. it drips down his chin. i start to feel a bit more dominant again.
i realise at this point that i have forgotten to bring a spare pair of panties. the boyfrench gets a pair of boxers from his suitcase for me. i take a shower, careful not to track blood through the house, rinse off my panties, and take out my contacts. my flatmate and the boyf clean up the mess. i hang out in the kitchen a while and then cuddle my flatmate who is recovering from all the adrenaline of the scene. the boyf comes up to cuddle with us after a bit more socialising too. i love my friends so much.
the section where i make “no safewords” play boring
my ex has written a great post about safewords which i recommend you read at this point. it’s very short. it also describes why i don’t use them while i bottom.
not having a safeword for me makes it easier to take what is happening. i still don’t dissociate. while for my ex, “the vigilance not to press the button keeps [her] brain sharply present”, i am present because of the pain, not in spite of it. for both of us, “[s]omething is keeping me visciously tethered to the moment”, but that’s just what my body does under these circumstances – no safeword required (in both senses). this is because, when there is a safeword present, as my ex puts it, “[t]here is a wall I have to keep building in my mind. Saying it would make it stop. I am not allowed to make it stop. It would make it stop. I am not allowed. I am not allowed. I am not allowed.” this, in my own experience, is what makes me dissociate. i have a tendency to get trapped in my own head. worrying about whether i can take something is a surefire way to accomplish that.
so i don’t give myself a way out. i can communicate what i am feeling, if i need supermix and lucozade ice kick for example, but i can use regular language to communicate that. it’s up to my top to decide when things begin and end; all i can provide is information. obviously i can even actually say the safeword and have that convey that i feel like i need things to stop immediately, but unlike my ex, saying it does not make it stop. it’s not that i am not allowed to end the scene. i am simply unable. this resignation lets me find some reward in whatever happens. bending my will involves opening myself up to the experience rather than closing down the possibility of saying something in specific. i am, basically, incapable of disappointing myself under the circumstances.
this is a privileged position. i do not have the kinds of health issues that mean i have to stop at notice shorter than a sentence lest one of my joints pop out, for example. [following a conversation with my ex before posting this but after writing it initially, she explained that her having these sorts of health issues is how/why the mechanics of safewords works for her. she has to be present and parse the pain to notice when something is about to go wrong in a way that she needs to stop, and to differentiate that from the pain that is on the limits of bearability but otherwise not imminently disabling. that’s the something that keeps her “visciously tethered to the moment”.] when i have needed to faint before, i have been able to relay that in those words. it helps that i am very bad at being insincere. it would be immediately obvious if i were saying something like that just to get out of it, and trust for the whole thing is based on me not lying about my experiences. this sounds similar to the situation described in the safewords post, the having a way out that i’m not allowed to use, but let me be clear with you: lying never crosses my mind during a scene. and if i did lie, i think my flatmate would see through me and keep going. it took some insistence to get him to let me down the first time in the just the whip scene.
so no safewords really isn’t because i think it’s cool or edgy or whatever. there’s some kind of mystique about it but now it’s honestly just a practical choice for me to be able to engage with the kinds of scenes i want to do in a way that makes them rewarding. i know that i can “take it” because i don’t know what not “taking it” even means. i’m not worried about that at all. it’s going to happen and it’s not going to kill me. safewords only serve to get in the way of whatever experience might arise from being pushed to and beyond my (self-identified) limits. and that’s where all the good stuff is.
we’re only queer for the spectacle, or, the dialectics of (kinky) sex
anyway! so, one of the questions looming over this is like, why would you do a single scene with two other people, one of whom is neither topping nor bottoming, for more than two thirds of the play time allotted at a dyke party? isn’t it all a bit self-indulgent? i talked to OMF about this the day after and she told me that if you can’t be indulgent at her play event then where can you be. she was all for the scene, involved in its conception, gave it the stamp of pre-approval, and actually cleared out the room we used just for us (as well as setting up the bonus mirror, which,, if you are reading this thank you so much you know me so well lmao). so, i want to pick this one apart slightly.
you gotta bring something to the private dyke party. in a kinda real sense, my flatmate and i brought liquor, which goes a long way. we also helped set up (fairly minimally, but more than not at all). most people brought their own sexual availability. you show up, you fuck a lot, you make it the party that it is. job well done. i did not especially bring my own sexual availability, save for a bit of whipping at the end. what i did bring was something (in a kinda neutral way) spectacular. i am here to do a bunch of painful shit that isn’t fun which takes a lot of time and space and prep. i am offering you my blood.
there is this push/pull between the individual and communal nature of the party. you have to, in some sense, be able to be absorbed in what you are doing for it to be good. but you also have to find value in doing that in a setting where other people are also fucking. maybe a better way of putting it is that at a party like this, your sex is not your own; it’s for the benefit of everyone there, even if they’re not actually involved. this, i guess, is the opposite of a vibe hazard. [checks google for “hazard” antonyms.] your sex is a vibe… safeguard. that sounds awful. vibe assurance, maybe. it’s good for the vibe, is what i mean to say. or like, in every case, the sex generates the vibe, but the vibe generates the sex. it’s [marxist torrey peters voice:] dialectics, baby.
so there’s some value then of a hardcore needle play scene, both as something to watch while you’re between scenes, and as something that makes the party what it is. “yeah i went to this hardcore dyke party; my girl, yvette, was covered in blood; yeah you can’t do that elsewhere lemme tell you what!” (completely unrelated, since i am yr girl, you of course can refer to me as “my girl”, that’s how these sorts of pronouns work; obvs “yr girl” is also still true because i am the girl of whoever you will be talking to inasmuch as i am communally yr girl, but like, you can say “my girl”.) i am not trying to gas myself up too much here, but my point is just that “party where substantial blood play is happening” is something that informs the rest of the sex going on, because it’s all sex that’s happening at the party where substantial blood play is happening.
this cuts both ways. i want to do my scene while i can hear people get it on. this is the set and dressing. i feel sexy when we’re all getting hot and heavy with it. while i like doing needles at home, it’s so different being around other people, even if the most i get is a curious glance through the door. it matters that i do the cnceedle scene at the dyke sex party, and the dyke sex party isn’t the dyke sex party if there aren’t dykes having sex.
back to the needlestick injury stuff
okay so needlestick injuries are in the profile. i’m just getting back to this bit now and i’ll get back to it again later. but like, we’ve discussed needlestick injuries. i’ve been assuming that one was going to happen at some point. i wouldn’t do this kind of play with someone i didn’t trust to handle the protocol for it entirely since i’m tied up and full of needles. i already trusted any decision that my flatmate made.
so there are options in scene, right? he could have gone away to run his finger under a tap to get it bleeding, but it was already bleeding. he could have cut through the needles and pulled them through me, but that was probably more traumatic than was worth it considering the gauge of the needles. my flatmate made the call to put a bandaid on and then keep the scene going. i, obviously, respect that decision.
the main thing here is how chill i felt. like, i had accepted the risks going in, and then when they happen, they’ve happened. what am i even supposed to stress about under the circumstances. if he has HIV then i might also get HIV, but he’s on PREP and was testing negative four months ago, so that seems pretty unlikely. there’s just a general sense of unease that can arise from like, oh no, a risk has occurred, and i’m pretty pleased my flatmate decided not to give into that panicky state and just keep doing the play. like, it doesn’t make a difference with this kind of thing if you stop the play. the only reason you would do that is to ease the distress by giving into it. best not to let it creep in by accepting that needlestick injuries are going to happen sometimes. at least for me.
bottoming from the top
so, as you know, i am an M/s practitioner as an M-type. my flatmate is my darling s-type. and still we do power exchange style SM where i bottom and he tops. i joke about him being a service top, but like, he isn’t. he’s as much of a sadist as i am when it comes down to it. he cherishes these sorts of scenes because he does truly want to hurt me (as much as he also wants to serve me). how do we navigate this, then?
i guess i don’t really see it as detracting from anything. i am voluntarily giving up power in a limited setting because i do like submission. when i say i’m not really a switch i mean that in a lifestyle way. i love subbing tf out for a scene. and because my authority isn’t derived from some kind of image of the most masterly master, at least not in the sense of like, someone who is above submission or sexual pleasure or whatever. my authority is derived from being a nice partner to my flatmate and seemingly making consistently good decisions for him. none of that is impacted by doing a scene where i sub – really authentically submit – to him. it probably makes the M-type stuff even heavier because there’s the knowledge that i really can take what i dish out (not that i top needle play specifically, but no safewords submission in general).
this is all kind of obvious if you’re not like, weird about it, but the more interesting thing maybe is aftercare for M/s dynamics. my flatmate said to me during aftercare that he wanted to do another scene, however short, that was dynamic-y. he wanted to get back into the space of being my slave. seemingly the blood soaked panties gag wasn’t enough. i figured i’d change back into my leathers. i sat down and got him to put my boots on. he was, like, really struggling, but he did do it. he did it in the main play area where people were mostly chilling at this point. people started treating him like an s-type again after that.
that’s something maybe to plan in next time. there’s a lot of social dynamics around M/s and it does matter how you’re seen. i heard someone say at one point “so yvette is the sub” while i was getting stabbed through. this was a joke but the joke does need to be met with a reminder that we are kind of serious about the whole M/s thing. that the power exchange play really is just play, where the lifestyle power exchange is the style in which we live our lives. putting on the shoes then is a good way to get back in that mode. i can imagine being served a drink with all the protocol we have around that working as well. it’s not something that the integrity of the authority transfer is reliant on in the grand scheme of things, but getting back into feeling that power exchange is a skill unto itself. that’s what protocol and ritual are for, and it seems sensible to be intentional with coming out of scenes where we’ve switched.
crepes
at the end of the party, we went home, then my flatmate, my boyf, and i all went back over the next morning to have crepes with our mutual friend, my dear friend, and my ex. the boyfrench gave my ex the crepes recipe to make. i’ve got it here, courtesy of the boyfrench [note that this recipe was i think trebled and made fifteen pretty wide crepes]:
4 eggs
220g flour
400mL milk
Method:
Put the flour in a bowl, make a well and add eggs. Slowly whisk the eggs and flour together by whisking the eggs and catching a bit of flour from the walls of the well
If you can't be fucked with that you'll just have to whisk extra hard to minimise clumps, but it works fine
Once it gets stiff and difficult to whisk, add a bit of milk (large splash) to loosen it a touch and whisk until smooth
Then add the rest of the milk bit by bit until you have a medium-thin batter.
Pre-heat your pan to a medium heat!!! Once it's pre-heated, you can add a drop or two of oil to minimise sticking. Use approx. 3/4 ladle of batter per pancake (assuming medium sized pan) and cook for about 1 min per side
these crepes really hit the spot. had them with raspberry compote that the boyf made. great to chat with pals. next day aftercare is essential, i think. that’s what this section is actually about.
so, usually after 404 or spike we end up at ottoman or somewhere. this is in part to talk about our good scenes and in a larger part to bitch about shit that’s went on. there’s a particular kind of value i want to capture here about grounding everything that happened in the fairly liminal space that is a kink event back into a normal social setting with your pals. it’s also great to have the ability to discuss all the gossip that’s been stirred up by the kink event, which you can’t really do at the kink event because that’s a vibe hazard. i can’t really describe what’s meant by decompressing, but this is that. i have always come out of these feeling more fully human.
it was slightly different in the morning aftercare sesh over crepes. i did still feel more fully human, but there was no drama to bitch about. a lot of the conversation revolved around “that was good”, “that was good right?”, “yeah that was good”. we talked about what worked, what our assessments of the vibes were, checked that our scenes were cool, checked that we all wanted to do it again. there was some brief chat about when the next one would be. i think everyone is hankering for another sooner than we’ll get it. my dear friend said that our mutual friend should leave us hungry. personally i like to eat my feelings, regardless of whether i’m hungry or not. we’ll get to future prospects at the end for this sort of thing. anyway,
i think i get a bit self conscious about the whole, like, sex thing. this sort of aftercare is a way to check it’s all cool. top drop is real. bottom drop is also real. i think people just need to be intimate with each other in general. we talked about zines. we made each other feel like this whole party arises out of a shared trust and appreciation for each other, that our friendship is not so tenuous as to be reliant on how one party goes, not only only existing when we come together (pun intended) as dykes looking to get it on. it’s very sweet. i love my friends.
BACK ONCE AGAIN to the needlestick injury stuff
okay so my flatmate and i are at our mutual friend’s flat and we’ve just had crepes and we call 111 which is now called nhs24. i fucking hate this stupid renaming stuff. it’s a sunday. this is the national out of hours non-emergency medical service. we’re each doing our own call. i am on hold for like, twenty minutes, which i think is relatively good, though obviously still bad.
we each get through and struggle to explain what actually happened. we call it performance art. the nurses seem to think that my flatmate stuck a needle in me, then in himself, then back in me. clearly no one is visualising how needle play actually functions, which is being stuck through with a needle that is left in with the sharp tip sticking back out of the skin. we each get appointments with the flow team, which they call the virtual a&e department. i have to cancel plans to watch basketball with my ex.
we get home and do some stuff around the flat and then get on our respective calls with virtual a&e. my nurse is not impressed with me. the only read i have is that she thinks i’m a bottom. she tells me “the needlestick injury is neither here nor there” but otherwise i am engaging in high risk sexual behaviour and i need to start using protection immediately and that i have to go to a&e. bottoming anal has, best i can tell, a higher transmission rate of HIV than a needlestick injury. topping vaginal penetrative sex has, best i can tell, a lower transmission rate of HIV than a needlestick injury. i mostly just do the latter. i also give head, which is on the same end of the scale as topping vaginal penetration. what i do not do is anal bottom. i haven’t done that (with an actual penis inside my ass) since, iirc, 2018. and we always used condoms.
my flatmate doesn’t get told off as much but does get told to go to a&e. we’re each put on the expected list and we head over. it’s a sub one hour wait until i’m seen. the triage nurse has dyed hair and is sitting on the chair bisexually. i attempt to explain the scene to her, call it performance art again and roll my eyes at myself, and then just draw her a diagram. she tells me she’s going to put it up on the wall. she talks to her colleagues and tells me that the previous nurse wasn’t thinking at all. in fact, everything is low risk, she’s unconcerned, and the only thing to do is to get an STI test in a few weeks. since my flatmate is on PREP the risk is really pretty minimal. when my flatmate goes into see her she tells him the same thing. she also just calls it needle play. neither of us said those words. she saw right through me. admittedly, i did show her the marks and i was wearing a key on a chain around my neck at the time (complemented by my flatmate wearing a padlock around a chain with a big “y” on it).
the takeaway here, i guess, is do needle play with good aseptic technique, make sure you’re up to date with STI tests, and make sure minimum one of you is on PREP. if a needlestick injury occurs – which it will, eventually – then skip the faff and just get an STI test in a few weeks. it was annoying and took up an entire afternoon, all just to be told that everything was probably fine, and even if it wasn’t there wasn’t anything that a&e could do.
gimmick and iteration
okay, this is the second last section and then we’ll get onto the last section. it’s pretty late; my flatmate is asleep beside me; i want to get these last few thoughts out of my head and into words. what makes something a gimmick?
i remember something a pal said ages ago about gimmicks, which is that gimmicks only need to exist once. if there would be value in it being done again, then it’s not a gimmick. this was about the video game tribes: ascend. the gimmick to the game is the movement. the point my pal was trying to make was that the game has already done the gimmick and that’s enough. there’s no where to go with this gimmicky mechanic; it’s enough that it simply exists.
i think about this with scenes. is just the whip gimmicky? maybe. like, impact scenes as a concept aren’t gimmicky, but is there any more value to saying, like, okay thirty five minutes was tough but let’s up the ante to the full hour. would people recognise the schtick as a gimmick rather than as a neutral mode of going about a heavy impact scene. that is, i guess, is the spectacle derived from the singular nature of the scene or is it derived from the feat of erotic intensity? the answer is clearly both, but the better question is which takes priority, which is wrapped within the other. gimmicky doesn’t mean bad, but it means the next scene has to have a new gimmick to have spectacular value.
this is a big point of concern for me, maybe less so for my flatmate. i was talking to our mutual friend about this and she was saying that there is this pressure to keep doing new scenes, but if a scene is good then it should be done again. it would be a waste not to give it another go. that’s what i’m feeling with the cnceedle scene. there is, i think, a lot of potential with the ropes and the needles. it doesn’t feel gimmicky to me, but to prove that it isn’t i have to iterate on the theme.
so what avenues are worth exploring here? if i do another cnceedle scene in six months or so at the next play party, how can i lean away from the boredom of doing something that would at that point be less complicatedly fun and more into the fear and shock and awe at what i am willing to have done to my body, both from myself and from the crowd? i’ve got do to more, but what does that mean? and, just as importantly, how do we get there?
so, the obvious things that come to mind are either more needles or bigger needles. this is going to sound nuts to people who aren’t kinky, but like, sixty needles is really not that much. i hit a basic LOBAS (lots of big ass sharps) card, but like, that is the lowest tier they offer. one of my ideas would be to stick to mostly the 24–20g range and like, fill me up with them. somewhere in the hundreds, stretching in multiple columns down my legs, my back, over my tits, my arms. bits would need to be taken out to give me space to be free tied, like removing just enough from my thigh to fit my hand there for example. another idea is to go much heavier on the gauges but start with the rope so i’m being free tied into weird positions and the needles are kind of going wherever. it takes twenty-five single-digit gauge needles to get a gold LOBAS card, which is the third lowest tier (of seven, iirc). maybe new positions, standing, not just kneeling could help zest it up a bit.
this all comes with some serious necessary prep, though. i would ideally like to push my limits so i don’t throw up or faint while having needles like 3mm in diameter pushed into and then out of my body. not push my limits so much that it’s easy but like, push them enough that it’s possible even if it doesn’t feel that way. my flatmate would have to do more serious prep than that. i’m making him get his rope skills back up because i really like bottoming that stuff. he also needs to get physically stronger and more skilled to be able to actually push the heavier gauges through me and to do that consistently. i’m going to make him practice on me.
this hopefully will come together to create something that draws people’s attention as much as it did the first time, at least when they notice how much the stakes have been raised. for us as well, we like scenes that feel exciting and vulnerable and risky, and doing something new is part of that. i never want a dress rehearsal to be more than what the scene itself is. the scene should be the bit where limits are crossed. this attitude towards it only feels possible at this sort of dyke party, and i want to live up to that opportunity to challenge myself with challenging play.
so, i guess i have six months, or however long it takes to get the next one of these, which is a lot of time to think about iterating on this space. i guess that leads into my final section
…to continue on the path of a more perfect play party
so what next? the play party was good. i don’t think it really needs more people. as always, we need more and different play parties for different social contexts, but this one was perfect at being what it was. i am really flagging here. let’s outline some prospects.
high protocol play parties. protocol was something that was being engaged with on some level by everybody, but not everybody was on the same level. certainly people telling me thank you for my flatmate making cocktails varied between the people who got the whole protocol thing and the people who were doing it to be funny. both are valid, just like, they’re not the same. so a high protocol play party could correct for that. this would rely on all the s-types having a degree of sexual openness towards all of the M-types and us all kind of knowing each other and what our limits and tolerances are. honestly, within the set of people at the dyke party this seems achievable, but numbers would be too low for it to feel like a party, and building that trust with another group of people is difficult. still, there’s a prospect there.
dyke darkroom / cruising space. this would rely on getting the space for it, which is pretty difficult in ggow. i also mostly like doing heavy play with people i have built up a lot of trust with, but sucking dick, eating pussy, drinking piss, all that is fun too and doesn’t require as much trust building on my part. this would be a way for a lot of people who are default on the same page to get together, with less restrictive notions of consent and where whimsy is still taken as a vibe hazard.
play-as-performance parties. i kind of just want my pals to get a bit more spectacular with it and to do big scenes that take up space and set the tone. a long suspension scene or some extended impact could fit the bill here. i’m almost imagining this as an installation in a section of a party which kind of guides the rest of the play. like, “look if you don’t know what to do then this whole elaborate thing is happening; watch and get horny and inspired and go forth.” obviously this is kind of the thing that i like, want to be doing but i just like performing by default so obviously i think about things like this. certainly, i think it is cool – and difficult in other contexts – to give people free reign of a chunk of play-space for several hours and commend them for that singular focus.
literally just parties at different flats. the vibes are going to vary so much depending on flat. i would host but i simply do not have the space. i can think of one other flat that would at all work for a play party with an appropriately large kitchen for social space, a sizeable lounge, a bedroom with a decent amount of floor space, and a spare bedroom for aftercare. i am struggling to think of another option beyond that. this would also mean that it’s not just the same group of people every time. and this was a good group of people, to be clear, but everyone needs some variety. ideally, everyone would be going to just as many play parties as they wanted to go to and it wouldn’t matter if you weren’t invited to one in particular just because the host knows other people better than they know you.
i believe in a more perfect play party. i believe that we can get our needs met across the whole spectrum of dyke perverts that we are. i think as long as we value the things we do together as social institutions and take them seriously in the context of the kink scene as whole rather than disavowing our own projects as just friends messing around, we’ll get there. but we have to take ourselves seriously. it’s a dyke party – no fucking whimsy.