An observant reader noticed my comment in yesterday's post and asked: "You say you don't usually have sex with your submissives. But you have sex with Roman, don't you? What makes him an exception?"

Good lord, let me make something clear right now. Roman is not my submissive. Roman is so very, very, not my submissive. Roman is not anyone's submissive. And that's because Roman is not submissive. At all.

And – if it even needs to be said – I'm not his submissive either.

He's my lover, which is an entirely different thing. And we do really kinky things with each other, because, well, we're just perverted that way. It gets us off. So I like sticking needles in him, and punching him in the chest and on the back with my fists, and biting him really hard, cutting him with a scalpel – you know, the sweet, loving kinds of things all lovers like doing to each other, right?

And he likes me doing that to him. It gets him an endorphin high, for one thing. And just last week, he had this big knot of muscle tension in his back from work and various other stress factors, and after I punched it for a while with my sharp little knuckles, why – it was gone. It's kinda like high-impact massage. The biting probably helped, too.

If you're new to kink, you may not yet understand that what someone does with their body, and where someone goes with their head, may be two very different things. But check out this little diagram I made.

See, two different scales. Dominance/submission is about the purely emotional/psychological aspect of BDSM. Sadism/masochism is about what you do with your body – the physical stuff. Every kinkster is at their own special place on these two lines. You might be at the far end of both scales – very dominant and very sadistic. (Did someone mention Max's name?) Or very submissive and very masochistic. But you can be any place at all on these scales, to include being say, very sadistic and very submissive, or very masochistic and also very dominant. Such a combination makes it more challenging to find appropriate kink partners, but not by any means impossible. And it's not at all uncommon to be not emotionally/psychologically submissive at all, but to enjoy some intense physical sensation. (What vanilla people would call pain.) Or maybe you don't like any intense sensation, but you do like to submit. Wherever you are, it's okay. And of course, where someone finds themself on this scale will often evolve over time.

So, is Roman a bit of an erotic masochist? Um, yeah. (Not that I know anything about that myself, oh nooooo.) But my god, you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who's less submissive. This is the man who, as I was unsheathing needles to pierce him with, was laughing and taunting me. Like this…

"Oh, is that all you got? I thought you were going to do something seriously mean."
"Jesus, you are so asking for it," I replied.
"I mean – I thought you were some kinda nasty sadist. You're an Avon Lady, you know that. You're like – a Hummel Figurine collector. You're duckies and bunnies. You're –." He broke off and howled as I put the needle through his skin.
"Duckies and bunnies, am I?"
He gasped for air and took a few quick breaths. "You - are - little - pink - bunnies. With big pink bows on. Ow! Shit! That fucking hurt."
"Good. Look, I've got bigger needles. See this one? This is an 18 gauge. Looks like a railroad spike, doesn't it?"
"God, you are an evil bitch. Never change."
"I won't." I kissed him.

Essentially, Roman and I are both dominants, but we're dominants who like to play with sadism/masochism in the context of our sexual relationship. The brief moments of dominance/submission we sometimes have are playful, and they usually shift back and forth between us from one minute to the next. We do have dates where one of us is the official top for the evening, but a lot of the time, whoever has an idea will simply say, "Hey! Why don't I attach these clothespins to your naughty bits and then we'll have sex?" And the other person will say, "Sounds great!" It's pretty far from traditional, high-protocol BDSM, but why should we get hung up on rules at this stage of the game?

Some other day, when I'm feeling ambitious, I'll attempt to explain my relationship with Max... Now that's complicated.