And I do mean ever elusive.Everyone talks about it. Some seem to drop deep into it after just a few minutes.
In 17 years I’ve never experienced it.
I do not know what y’all are talking about.
Honest to gods.
I have, many times, been over the reasons why I like, need, crave and submit to pain. It’s about power and control, about sensation that engulfs, surrender that leaves it’s proof in bruises, cuts and welts across my body. It’s about the ultimate submission and the forcing of the mind, body and spirit to give in and accept that you are owned, utterly owned by this person who can make you curl on the floor, sobbing until you hiccup but still beg for more. It’s about feeling small and helpless and completely used. It’s about the satisfaction of being spent, wore out, used up and blissfully free of any question about who is in control. It’s consuming. All else fades to the background for the small bits of time that you are under his whip.
So many reasons for my need for the agony, shock and anguish of pure physical pain.
Subspace is not one of them.
I don’t understand this floating, not in the moment, out of your head sensation in regards to pain.
I’ve done some wicked, evil, intense and even horrifying scenes. I’ve had more broken skin, blood and bruises than even I like to admit. I’ve been beaten until I was hanging, completely, from the cuffs that tied me to the cross, legs collapsed and useless, until I slid out of the cuffs (custom cuffs that should have kept me immobilized) like my body was suddenly made of liquid, and balled myself up on the floor, only to be beaten more, in that position. I’ve crawled across the floor to escape the whip, laid upon that floor and let him whip me more…
No subspace.
I’ve been in the moment, every moment, of every scene I’ve ever done.
Sure, I hit a place where the fall of the flogger, whip or cane becomes a drone, a mindless, seemingly unending repetition that causes me pain. A place where it hurts a little less than it did in the first twenty minutes and a lot less than it will in the last. A place where my skin warms and almost numbs a bit, where the sensation is a little less sharp for awhile, where I can take more, where I might even begin to laugh out my release, laugh in pure joy at the exquisite release of emotion and tension and inner pain, laugh at the loss of my own tight control over my feelings to him. Right up until he switches spots, that is. And then it’s back to white hot, searing pain in a new, less warmed up spot; pain that will make me hiss and scream and go up on tiptoe.
I revel in it all.
But I still don’t get this subspace stuff.
It’s foreign. Alien. Bizarre.
I think the closest I’ve come is during mental stuff.
You can beat my body bloody and I won’t fly but if you bend my mind…
I am lost.
I still don’t know that it’s subspace but I have hit a strange mental zone when the BDSM has been of the psychological kind rather than physical/pain based. A place that is a little blurry and unfocused, that is like tunnel vision and all I can see, hear and feel is him.
Being restrained, being denied orgasm, being talked to - you know, that dirty talk, those whispers and growls that tell you, over and over and over again, who you are and what your place is - those things will tip me over into a space that is “other”. A space where I almost forget to breathe I’m so focused upon him.
I’ve actually had that happen not only in real time but on the phone and online.
I still don’t know that it’s subspace, though.
I think it’s more like hypnosis. Mind control.
Whatever it is, it’s yummy. Just as yummy, in it’s way, as pain. Sometimes even more so. When he can bend my mind to get the same reaction as pain - that utter surrender of all - on top of pain, in addition to pain, at the same glorious time as pain, it’s about the best thing there is in life.
But I still don’t think it’s subspace.
Ever elusive, like a delicate lavender butterfly, always flittering out of reach.
The question is; do I want to reach it? Or would I lose all I now gain from the things we do?
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Pretending that I don’t know what a rhetorical question is, let me offer this: I have played with two subs. One does not experience “subspace”. The other does. From my perspective, it has to do with the level of suspended-disbelief, akin to hypnosis. On the one hand, the desire for sensation is paramount. On the other, the fantasy is being fulfilled. “Subspace”, to me, is that person’s participation that goes so deeply within themselves that reality ceases…a day dream of a sort.
Having said that, which do you think you’d really prefer?
Mr. Upton Ogood
July 12th, 2007 at 10:51 pmI think…
Reality most does it for me.
Is it that obvious?
July 12th, 2007 at 11:58 pmDearest Carrie Ann;
I have to say since I religiously started reading your enteries, this one touched me more than ever.
I, myself, never learned what subspace was until after a return trip to my first Dominate. A trip that I really shouldn’t have gone to, but one that inevitably turned me inside out. I found subspace and found that the masochist inside of me was yanked out from a dark corner and refuses to get put back.
Here is the dilemna…
I am not longer with a masochist, nor after two years of searching, have I found another one that could bring me to that subspace again.
Personally, I think I would have rather have not found it, than to have found it and never been able to return to it.
If anything, I envy you… and I envy your resiliance. I have lost a great deal of it.
Now, I am with what they call a HypnoDom, who, has showed me that there is another subspace, one that can be induced without pain and for the most part can be triggered now with just the trigger words. Now…. after experiencing all three elements to this life, sometimes I wish I had only known one… then I would never crave the other two….
Thanks for sharing…
Shade Orchid
July 13th, 2007 at 2:58 amTo me subspace is the complete melding of the mind and body under his control. I don’t know where one begins and one ends because its the same. It’s that tunnel, that complete, utter sensation of HIM.
July 13th, 2007 at 5:50 amA place that is a little blurry and unfocused, that is like tunnel vision and all I can see, hear and feel is him.
I don’t know what others would call it, but I know that place, and its pretty damned good!!
hugs x
July 13th, 2007 at 7:28 amI think the word subspace has been twisted and warped and submissives grab it and use it as cheaply as a licorice bite at the penny-candy store.
I have been there. I wish I got there all the time. It’s nice. But this; Ever elusive, like a delicate lavender butterfly, always flittering out of reach. is more the reality than the idea of dropping into at the first swing.
Though who am I to judge when a person’s account of a scene is being trumped up and exaggerated, huh?
Honestly though, my suspicion is that the people who overuse the term simply don’t know what it is or what it means. They think that’s what they are supposed to do so that’s what they decide it is. Does that make sense?
My experience with it is something akin to what I think being stoned is. (I’ve never been stoned so this could be a bad comparison) But I do get lost, things are hazy, I’m not in touch with the sensations, the sharp hard pain or the words He’s saying. Bah.. it’s hard to describe. And therein lies the problem with it. It’s not black and white, not at all.
But I don’t get there every time. It’s not an easy place to get to. It’s rare and that’s probably why it’s so special. The moon has to be perfectly aligned with the stars and the swing has to hit at exactly the correct tempo and my hormones have to surge at precisely the right time… it’s difficult!
But to compare a time like that to a time when it’s not like that, when I am firmly stuck in the moment and feeling each sensation is like comparing driving to flying. Sometimes the slow scenic route is the way to go, sometimes you just want to get to the destination.
kaya
July 13th, 2007 at 2:46 pm“When he can bend my mind to get the same reaction as pain - that utter surrender of all - on top of pain, in addition to pain, at the same glorious time as pain, it’s about the best thing there is in life.”
I’ve been chewing over this all weekend, and I think that fits … well, maybe what I think subspace should be, rather than what most people say it should be.
Having said that, I can think of one time I’ve been anywhere near that place, and that was before we knew what BDSM was - when we were just kinky and crazy and crazy in love.
And before this turns into an epic comment, I’m going to go explore this thought at my own place.
Thank you for the brain food - I’m really liking your journal.
July 15th, 2007 at 10:02 am