The Why

A friend recently said something to me in regards to playing; why do it? This got me thinking about why I play, or why anyone plays, for that matter. Does it go beyond sex? Is this how some people de-stress, or reach greater states of conciousness? Certainly it's been proven that when we get hurt, the brain releases endorphins which dull the pain, and endorphins resemble opiates in their chemical structure, that certainly helps get rid of stress. We hear about things like bottom space, top space, little space, puppy and pony space, the list goes on and on. While we may not achieve enlightenment in these head spaces, we are certainly percieving the world around us very differently than we normally would.

Is SM an inherently sexual act? Yes and no. Certainly there are people who get turned on by giving and receiving pain, goodness knows it makes me wetter than the ocean, but do I always want to have sex when I play? No, most of the time I just want to lie there after a scene and be talked too; be told that I'm a pretty girl and did a very good job in taking what I was told to. Of course there are people who love to have sex after they play, and that is just awesome too. Sometimes, I want to fuck, I love getting fucked after a nice boot scene or a foot scene, I can't get enough. But in most cases, like after being flogged or single tailed, in a scene where I am actually getting hurt for an extended period of time, I don't want to fuck, it just becomes too much for me to handle.

I know many people who have play partners where the play is perfectly fun and hot without being sexual. One of my play pals, when he and I get together to hash it out, he's not interested in my breasts or my cooch, it's all about the pain, and I laugh my ass off as we wrestle on the floor. He and I do not have a sexual component to our relationship.

Certainly a distinction has been made between play and sex. While I am a fairly easy girl to get into bed, many people would have a hell of a time trying to get me onto some play table in a dungeon. I'm slutty, not stupid.

For me there is certainly the aspect that it is sexual, I am known for stubbing my toe or whacking my elbow by accident and getting turned on. I enjoy pain. But I also play with the intensity that I do to prove to myself that I can, and I push myself to be able to take more. That I can handle a certain intensity of pain without freaking out or trying to back out of the scene is important to me. I am always pushing myself to be a better person than I am, in scene and out. I would love to be mass of scars, each set telling a different story, to know in my mind that I did those things and I did them well, with grace and dignity, or at the very least with a sense of humor and laughter.

Of course, I see myself looking over my scars when I am in my 70s or 80s when I think about this. Gazing at my wrinkled body in a mirror, remembering the entire journey of my life up til then. But today I am a young woman with tight skin who still has a few years left on her odeometer, and as much as I hate to admit it, I am vain, and I worry that having a mass of scars on my back will make people turn away from me; view me as less desirable because of it. I tend to have a higher rate of infection than most people and I have to accept the fact that there is a large chance I won't heal as cleanly.

So why do it if I am so concerned about becoming less attractive? The only answer I can give is that I won't be less attractive. I will still have a body that looks like it was pulled from a painting, but even more importantly I will still be the same person inside. Our desires may shape who we are to a certain degree, but at the end of the day, every one is just a regular human being like everyone else. So I guess it doesn't really matter why we do what we do, we enjoy it, for whatever reason, we like to do it, otherwise we wouldn't bother doing it at all.

Don't you love rambling discourses that eventually lead you up to a point that should have taken you two minutes to get to in the first place?