Cock Locking

Okay, first off, I have my kinks and you have your kinks, and they don’t always mesh. I haven’t seen the acronym around much lately, but back in the day, web kinksters used to write some variation of: YKINMKBYKIOK: Your kink is not my kink, but your kink is okay. This was a sly nod to the 70s Transactional Analysis psycho-pops, one of which was a book called “I’m OK, You’re OK”.

I’m okay with that. Really.

But sometimes…

On a recent discussion in a chastity-related group, somebody posted a comment to the effect that wearing a device should make one feel, well:

“[...]I think you’re supposed to feel emasculated.”

Unfortunately, this stereotype is pretty much the first thing that most vanilla-ish people — especially women who have been pointed to the various sites by hopeful male partners — run into, and it turns them off. I’ve had a few private emails and comments over the years as to this little kink that Mrs. Edge and I have grown into, and in the past I haven’t really known how to respond, so I’ve just kind of ignored them. But as we’ve gotten more into this, I’m beginning to feel more motivated to explain how this works.¹

The worthless worm BDSM model, and its cousin, the Small Penis Humiliation kink, are certainly kinks that some people enjoy, and more power to them. But most vanilla people find it very difficult to accept that such belittling or humiliation kinks without thinking that you have some other deep-seated security issues. Sub/bottom males are portrayed in in the media as whiney, weak, worthless cross-dressers, and generally it’s done for laughs. I mean, how sad that you’d actually want to be whipped or made to eat from a dog bowl, right?

And perhaps I’m the one with the security issues, because I cringe whenever I hear one of my vanilla friends make some disparaging remark about such a character in some movie or tv show. But such negative attitudes affect us, the kinksters. Like many men, I’m not out cruising fetish clubs, and I don’t have a wide variety of partners to choose from — I’m married and trying work out something that both my wife and I can live with. Trying to explain what I like or feel to her gets lost when she does an internet search and the first (and the majority of!) images she sees are Mistress Cruella and her sissified sissy slut. Totally not her — nor her idea of who she wants to be, nor of who she wants me to be. And while things are better between us now, it was very difficult to explain anything to her when the first images that popped inter her head were of those groveling “worthless worm” types of men, and the overly dramatic “Crawl, you little bitch!” vinyl clad dommes.

Fortunately for us, we’ve managed to learn how to communicate with each other a bit better. I’m fortunate in that I can generally express what I want and feel, even if it takes me a few tries, and Mrs. Edge is learning to keep a more open mind, and that there is a certain give & take in how we approach things now.

We’ve managed to have a few conversations about the chastity and OD thing, and we’re finding that it has grown on her immensely in the last few years, especially when I explain that I enjoy playing for longer periods of time. She has mostly gotten over feeling that it’s too cruel, a throwback to those teenage years when men used to swear that their balls would explode from not having had sex. And as she learns to appreciate my constant touching (and groping) while in my state of frustrated arousal, she also finds a perverse pleasure in her feelings of control over that part of me. And that brings me to my main point.

One of the reasons that she kinks on chastity and denying me, is that she sees it as having power over a part of me that in itself is powerful. Mrs. Edge does not lock up my “worthless little dickie” (or worse, my “sissy clitty”… ugh, sorry, just the term grates on me). Rather, she locks up my cock – my thick, raging, turgid, veiny, purple, manly, hard cock. She does it — she enjoys it — because she’s asserting her authority over something that needs to be controlled; at times she even hides the keys from herself, by leaving them at work over the weekend, because she has a hard time resisting the temptation to use my cock — or rather, to have me use it on her. And it’s a strong temptation because I can use it pretty well.

See, Mrs. Edge is very practical-minded. Why would she need to bother locking up my cock if it were worthless? That idea completely escapes her; if it’s worthless, then what’s the point? Why even bother with it? Just let it loose and ignore it, then you don’t need to put up with the whining and cleaning and all that. Worthless? No, not for her, and certainly not what she envisions for herself or for me.

No, she wants it caged and controlled. She wants dominion over my cock because she knows how enjoyable it can be for her. She wants to make sure that I’m ready for those occasions when she wants it, and she wants my manly, male energy tightly controlled so that she can focus it at her own discretion. She wants my testosterone flowing, and knows that keeping me sexually edgy has many benefits for her, whether or not she chooses to unlock it. No, Mrs. Edge wants me locked up not because I’m worthless, but because I’m valuable. And that, my friends, makes me feel very special, indeed.

~~~

¹ Hey, GLBT activists have been around for decades, and BDSM activists are making inroads. Maybe we need a T&D / OD activist?

HNT: Getting Ready

Whew! It’s been a long month for both Mrs. Edge and I, but she’s finally coming home.

Don’t mind me, I’m just having a nice shower and shave so I can look presentable for her. And there’s something that I’ve been looking forward to from her for weeks now. Something that only she can give me.

That’s right — after a whole month, finally I can get somebody to scrub my back.

Ignoring the label, and dealing with what’s inside

Okay, here’s a little quiz. Don’t worry, it’s just two questions.

She is an attractive, middle-aged woman who has a controlling streak. She keeps her husband frequently locked in a chastity device, and often does not allow him to orgasm even when he’s out. This goes on for weeks or months at a time. He keeps her pampered by massages and footrubs, brings her coffee in the morning, and usually cooks dinner. In turn, she compels him to wear a strap-on when they have sex, so that she, herself, does not need to forgo sex the way that she likes it.

Is this woman:

A) A Dominatrix?
B) The head of a Female Led Relationship?
C) A kinky superfreak?
D) A vanilla soccer mom?

~

He is an attractive, middle-aged man who frequently wears a chastity device, and is denied orgasms for long periods of time by his wife. He gets up early in the morning to make coffee for her, and works hard to keep himself in shape so she can have appropriate arm candy for her frequent social functions. He massages her back and feet, and often wears a strap-on to have sex with her, so that she can be satisfied the way that she prefers. Naturally, he doesn’t complain about not being allowed to orgasm, and will often tell her that he is willing to go as long as she wants him to, that it’s entirely her decision.

Is this man:

A) A submissive?
B) A bottom?
C) A guy in a Female Led Relationship?
D) A vanilla guy with a kinky streak?

What did you answer? More importantly, how do you think those people would describe themselves?

The people above describe themselves as D in each case. Surprised?

This was inspired by a discussion with Ranat — the details of which are best left to another day — and in the comments I wrote:

I’ve been told a few times that Mrs. Edge and I have a good femdom relationship, and I get categoriezed (for those people who tend to do that kind of thing) in the malesub lists. Yet, Mrs. Edge would never characterize herself as a Domme, and the only real kink that we have is chastity and OD play. I end up with quite a few non-kinky readers who are simply reading my blog for a little tittilation and a little bit about our relationship.

And frankly, I dont’ *feel* like a kinkster, so I don’t particularly classify myself as one. Not that I wouldn’t mind, it’s just that in the context of our current relationship I don’t feel particularly kinky.

Yeah, I know, right?

Ranat responded:

Based on your writing, I’ve honestly really never thought of you as submissive, but rather as into chastity and involved in kinky/BDSM/submissive man/dominant woman discussions. I’m still actually a little unclear about if you identify as submissive or not (if I went rummaging through your archives long enough I could probably find the answer). Your case also highlights the fact that not everyone who is into A is necessarily into B, C, D, K, and T. Sometimes people are just into A and it doesn’t imply a label or category unless they choose to identify as that.

I finished up with this reply:

I don’t self-identify as submissive. Over the years I’ve topped and bottomed and switched around, and at one point I probably did self-identify as submissive, but now I just tend to see myself as being generally kinky.

Mrs. Edge had a much wilder streak when we were dating, and interestingly does not see herself as kinky at all, let alone dommish. She has, though, made it clear that she prefers to be in control and has never expressed any desire to be restrained.

I mention this because MyKey commented on an article in which I wrote about some particularly kinky dreams that I typically have after several weeks of orgasm denial. He had read my above comment elsewhere, and after reading my post, he couldn’t resist ribbing me a bit:

OMG, that was very very hot!

But… I seem to recall a recent thread somewhere where you said you wouldnt call yoursef submissive. That sure as hell is one submissive dream my friend

See, I no longer know what to make of this. I know that in the right context, i.e., should Mrs. Edge be more overtly dominatrixy (that is, within the context of my perception of what that means), I probably would be more submissive (within the context of my perceptions, etc.). But from my thinking about this over the last couple of years, I’m really not sure that I could define any way of being dommishy or submissivy without resorting to the cultural stereotypes of leather fetish gear and Gorean protocols.

Okay, I’m exaggerating a bit — but only a bit.

Mrs. Edge actually does seem to think of herself as a very ordinary, conservative, religious, middle-class, vanilla woman. So, how does she reconcile her kink for orgasm denial? Simple: she doesn’t. She doesn’t label it. She doesn’t think it’s kinky, so therefore, she isn’t kinky. My CB3000, the strap-on harness, the several dildos… none of them really register. Granted, she does realize it’s not quite in the center of the bell curve, but not far enough out to cause her to give it much thought.

I used to think that my wife was in some kind of denial (the psychological kind), or was perhaps sexuality-challenged, but now in thinking about how much some of us roil in anguish over our kinks, I’m beginning to see the wisdom in this. Like many of the people reading this, I have spent untold hours wondering what makes me kinky, why I like “unnatural” things, why I can’t just be happy having vanilla sex all the time. I wonder — often ruefully — why I can’t get some of those images out of my head. They aren’t all necessarily things that I want to do, but sometimes even having the ideas makes me wonder what might be wrong with me.

Not so, Mrs. Edge, though. On days when I’m feeling insecure (and yes, it still happens), I might ask her what she thinks of me wearing the device. It’s almost like I’m trying to elicit some negative reaction.

“I really enjoy it when you keep me locked up. Doesn’t that worry you?” I’ll ask.

“No, why should it? I like it, too.”

“Well, doesn’t it bother you that you enjoy keeping me locked up?”

“No, why should it? I mean, if you like it, too, then why would I even worry about it?”

Is it because she believes herself to be so solidly vanilla that she never gives it a second thought? Or is it because she simply sees it as “controlling” something (which she tends to do) but ignores the sexual component, so it seems like just one more item on her list? Or is it because she’s not the one who’s actually wearing the device or being denied, so she doesn’t see her life as being any different. I don’t know; Mrs. Edge is one of those E types, and is simply not given to introspection. Any conversation I’ve had with her ends up with her frustratingly simple pronouncement that she simply “enjoys having the control” over me.

Can it all really be just that simple?

HNT: Back again

I’ve been sending phone pics to Mrs. Edge to keep her spirits up, and to (hopefully) remind her of what she’s missing back home.

Can you stand one more picture of me flexing my new muscles? Hope nobody minds the bald spot.

Long(ing) Distance

“You have to put your cage back on, you know.”

It wasn’t an order, just a statement of fact. I knew this was coming. It was a sunny Friday afternoon, and we had just gotten out of the shower after having spent a very pleasurable hour in bed.

“I don’t want to,” I replied. “Maybe I can wait a little bit?”

“Wait? My car is going to be here in an hour. Wait until when?”

“Umm… Sunday?” I said, hopefully.

“Sund… What?!”

“Yeah, I could put it on then, and, you know, take a picture and send it to you,” I said. “You can trust me.”

“No freaking way. Go put it on right now,” she demanded, “and then I’ll give you your keys.”

Despite the fact that I had had a very intense climax a half hour previously, my cock was twitching as I spread lotion on it and fitted the pieces of my chastity device together. My wife watched as I eased myself into the tube and fumbled with the stainless steel locking pin I had made. Damn, I couldn’t believe that I was getting hard again! This was certainly not the way I would have wanted to start off.

She handed me the lock, and I finagled it into the hole in the pin, elusive because my swelling in the tube was pushing things out of place. Finally I managed to position everything properly, without pinching.

“Do you want to lock it yourself?” I asked her.

HNT: What she’s missing

I mentioned that Mrs. Edge is in Bangalore for most of July. She’s staying in a 5 star hotel, and gets room service, massages, manicures and pedicures, and all sorts of other amenities. She calls here twice a day, and I send her pictures and email updates. The food is a little strange to her, but there are plenty of Brits and Yanks in the area, and many of the hotels cater to their tastes. So far, she hasn’t had any problems at all. Everybody is treating her well, she’s gone touring and shopping on her (admittedly few) days off, and her room is very nicely apportioned.

Gosh, it sounds better than being at home.

Hmm. I can’t imagine anything that she might be missing out on. Can you?

In case of Keymergency

Mrs. Edge has gone to Bangalore for what will essentially be the entire month of July. Her company has been trying to set up a customer service operation, and has not had much success here, so they are subcontracting, and the contract ended up literally half a world away. Mrs. Edge is on the team to provide quality and support.

Knowing that she was going to be traveling for an extended period, we had a discussion about making the lock secure. This was a result of our (frankly, disappointing) experience with the Birdlock. The locking pin broke while she was away, so I removed the device and replaced it with my CB6k (and I replaced that with my 3k when she got back) Her concern was that should something similar happen, how would we relock me? And how would she know I hadn’t carefully unwrapped the key?

Generally, we just wrap up an emergency key for me in some tape, and she signs and dates it. So far it’s worked well, but she wanted something more resistant to tampering — not that this has ever been an issue, just that it adds to the hawtness. I brought my question to several chastity groups, but to no avail. I looked for various devices meant to hold keys safely, but all of the tamper-proof items that I ran across were rather large. I wanted something small enough to take on my keyring — and I’m not one of those guys who likes to hang a huge jangle of keys off my belt loop. Other suggestions included molding the key in resin or epoxy and smashing it open with a hammer, keeping the key elsewhere, sealing it in a glass bottle, etc. As helpful as they tried to be, apparently, some of the respondents were unfamiliar with the concept of “emergency.”

We thought of another issue, too. If, for some reason, I needed to use the key, what would keep me from using it again and again? After mulling this over, I remembered that I had another lock with two keys. If for some reason I needed to open one lock, I could replace it with the other. Yes, I know — what if I needed to open that lock as well? We decided to risk it; I have never, in the past, needed to use my emergency key. In fact, the tape on my key was two years old, and was almost worn away when this conversation took place.

That still left the problem of how to secure the keys.

Now, you would think that with my McGuyver-ish talents that I’d be able to think of something, but I drew a blank. The fact is that most of the time that I’m locked, I’m using my modded CB3k, which is the only device that has not failed; I’ve simply never needed to worry about having to take it off to replace or repair something (at least, not in the couple of years or so that I’ve been happy with the modifications), so I’ve never given any thought to the problem. And recently, I’ve made some stainless steel locking pins and spacers, so I certainly don’t have top worry about those breaking.

I’m afraid that our solution is going to seem rather mundane.

The day she left, Mrs. Edge took my emergency key, and the second key to my spare lock, and a short while later, presented me with this:

The stupid cell phone pictures aren’t very clear; Mrs. Edge, showing an interesting streak of creativity (not to mention some serious interest) wrapped each key in a type of tape that is easily destroyed when tampered (she got it from work), and then wrapped them again in clear plastic tape, pretty much ensuring that any attempt to undo the package would tear the lower layer. Each key is signed on the inner layer, so I can’t simply re-wrap the keys.

Actually, this is kind of neat, because it shows a little initiative on her part with regard to the actual mechanics of the device that is normally left up to me. I had no idea that she she had any security tape. She has copies of these pictures, in case she feels the need to compare them to the actual articles when we finally meet up at the end of the month. But she also said that we might not need the keys, anyway.

HNT: Not a sweater…

… but I am a bit of a moaner once I get going.

May in June

The scene negotiations were hot; not so much overtly sexual as they were emotionally intense. I watched as the young man in tight black T-shirt and faded jeans snugged over snake-thin hips tried to read the intentions of his partner: an attractive, soulful-eyed young woman, similarly clad and exuding an innate confidence that gave her the appearance of being older than her years.

It was obvious that the young man wanted something, but there was some hesitant delicacy in his ability to express it. He leaned toward her, and I saw that it wasn’t just the air conditioning which had brought his nipples to attention under the skin tight fabric — the small barbell piercings held them permanently erect. He tried again to elicit some agreement from her, but she still seemed reluctant, as if she were torn between her own hungers and desires, yet trying to be sensitive to his needs. The tension was palpable; they both wanted something, but seemed to be testing each other. Finally, she asserted her dominance, and settled the negotiations to their mutual agreement. The scene was about to begin.

“No, I want my own Philly cheese steak sandwich,” she told him, imperiously. “You can just get whatever you want.”

Slightly envious of the way that they could order such food with abandon, I asked for a grilled chicken sandwich (for which I later removed the bread to reduce the carb count) and a glass of water. It was a small Greek pizza restaurant at the woodsy edges of the greater New Haven area, and I was sitting across the booth from Maymay and Helio Trope.

I don’t often get out to meet other bloggers or internet friends, so it was a most pleasant surprise when Maymay emailed me a few weeks ago, wondering if I’d like to meet for a bit before he packed his few worldly belongings and headed out west. He was headed back to NYC, and realized that he would be passing my neck of the woods. I invited them for dinner at the Edge household, but as things worked out, the only time we could meet was going to be mid-week for a late lunch. Mrs. Edge was unable to drive down to meet us, but the consolation prize was that Maymay and the attractive and engaging Helio Trope were able to first stop by my little manufacturing business to get the quick tour.

It was while walking around a grimy, old machine shop that I discovered something about Maymay; he’s unbelievably fascinated with everything around him. I’ve taken people around my place and watched them look around nervously, or sometimes with a sense of boredom. It’s not surprising; we rarely get a chance to see how things work outside of our own jobs, and the lack of context often makes such information as exciting as looking at your grandparent’s vacation slides of Delaware.

May, on the other hand, looked at everything, and tried to make it fit into some kind of context in which he could better understand it. We briefly discussed the kind of programming that I do (machine controls), and he made some analogies between what I do and how I do it to some of the things that he, himself does. Unfortunately, we weren’t running any really cool machining jobs at the time, but he seemed no less impressed. The tour finished, and we headed out to lunch so we could chat more openly.

During lunch, we realized that we had known each other for about 10 years, having met and run across each other at different times in various online groups and forums. Ten years? That’s like, what, half a century in Internet time, isn’t it?

The problem with meeting friends for lunch is the short amount of time that you have to to catch up. I felt like we were trying to squeeze in ten years of questions in an hour or so. We touched on quite a few topics — setting up munches and groups (and the various group dynamics that invariably go along with them), internet communication, blogging, Fetlife and other online groups, Male Submission Art, and his plans for the immediate future.

Surprisingly, we only barely touched on the topics of chastity and orgasm denial; surprising mainly because those kinds of groups were the ones in which he and I would frequently meet. I did, however, give him a set of stainless steel locking pins and spacers out of the prototypes that I’ve been working on. Later on, I noticed that Helio Trope was wearing a Masterlock key on her necklace, the kind that is usually sold with the CBx000 devices.

It came up in conversation that the two of them had been talking about something, and Helio Trope suggested that I might be a good one to contact about it. Unfortunately, I don’t know if we actually talked about whatever that topic was. May or Helio, if you’re reading this, drop me a line and let me know.

In person, Maymay was every bit as hyper as I’d expected him to be from his writing. I found him to be quick, bright, and engaging. Similarly, even though I’d never met Helio Trope (online or off), I found her to be very comfortable to talk to, and by the end of lunch it seemed like we were all chatting like old friends. It was a most enjoyable time, marred only by my trying very hard not to eat the side of thick, crispy french fries on my plate. At the end, I hope I did not embarrass them by grabbing the check; in my own personal mythology, I was simply helping out some nice, younger people.

I wish both of them every success.