People who do BDSM talk a lot about safewords, and what they are talking about is ways to communicate ease up or stop. But while red and yellow get the most press, there’s another color on that wheel, and it’s green. Understanding how to communicate harder, more, is sometimes a challenge. But some folks have a knack for it.

Take the gentleman I played with yesterday. He’s new to me, it was only the second time I saw him. And the first time I met him, I knew I was going to have to be very firm with him, because he’s rather a strong personality, sort of a classic East Coast type. Not a bad guy, but not a guy who was inclined to follow the rules unless someone was strictly enforcing them.

As it turns out, there may be a method to his madness. He likes impact on his ass, and when I met him, he claimed to have both a high tolerance for pain and a tendency not to bruise easily. Now, I do heavy impact scenes, and I enjoy them. But while I do listen when people tell me they can take a lot, I also reserve judgment until I’ve actually tried them out. As I said to this man, it’s okay if you come back and tell me, “You can go harder this time”. What I don’t ever want to hear is, “Last time we played, you went too far.”

So for our initial session, I gave his behind a very respectable beating, and when he came back to see me this time, he told me straight out I could go harder. Which is one of the right ways to communicate that.

There’s another way to signal green, though, and that is: the provocative smart-ass remark. And this guy, rather in keeping with his general personality, was pretty non-stop with the heavy jabs and wisecracks for the first half hour or so.

(He’s not the only person I know who uses wisecracks to indicate green – in fact, now that I think about it, Armani occasionally does it, and so do some of my other play-partners. And for that matter, Monk and I do it with each other when we play. Our classic come-on: “Oh, is that the best you got?” The answer is always, “Why no, sweetheart, it’s not!” Followed by a serious ratcheting-up of whatever is happening.)

So I read all the smart-assery as, “Hit me with your best shot.” And obliging girl that I am, I did. It was great fun. I don’t generally approve of manipulative behaviors, but hell, I am a sadist, and it was in character for the role-play were doing, so I got right into the spirit of the game and just went to town on his ass.

It wasn’t the single hardest impact scene I’ve ever done, but it was on the high end of the scale. And what made it really interesting was that he barely had a mark on him afterwards. He was red, but I could tell it was the kind of red that’s going to fade in a few hours or so.

And this was not a hand-spanking, either. I used heavy wood paddles and a nasty little two-tailed strap called a Dragon’s Tongue, and those are evil enough. But then I caned him pretty good, too.

Now I think canes are great fun to use, but I don’t cane anyone unless they tell me it’s okay if they have some marks afterwards. Because a cane is going to mark you up. Bamboo, rattan, fiberglass rods, whatever – you do more than a baby tap with any kind of long, flexible rod-type-toy and you will generally get a long red welt, that you can see and feel, within a few minutes. The stripe often turns dark over the next few hours and it usually stays noticeable for a week or two. I have had people tell them it took months for their cane stripes to go completely away.

I could not raise a welt on this man. It was the damnest thing. You can swing a toy from your wrist, your elbow, or your shoulder, and obviously the amount of force you can get behind it increases with each joint you recruit. I wasn’t swinging from the shoulder – well, not much, at least – but I was giving him quite a lot from the elbow, and with a cane, that’s plenty. I have made people cry with less. He just closed his eyes and smiled and shuddered pleasantly. Occasionally I got some wiggling and some noises, but not much. Amazing. The smart-ass remarks, however, did cease.

Afterwards I remarked that the pairing of a high pain tolerance with a resistance to marks was not such a common thing, and that it was a very felicitous combination.

“So maybe you’ll write about me in your blog,” he said, grinning.

“Oh, do I have your permission for that?”

“Absolutely!” he said.

So I did.