Chapter 11,
In which we make a microscopic study of some valuable psychological techniques
In the scenarios we’ve looked at so far, we’ve repeatedly seen the use of certain psychological techniques that are so powerful as to be indispensable, but we haven’t yet examined them with the thoroughness they deserve. It’s time. We’ll look at four of these techniques, see how they were used in our little collection of familiar scenarios, and entertain ourselves with a couple of new scenarios that illustrate them further. You’ll recognize these same techniques—and their power—as they make repeated appearances in the chapters that follow.
Suggestion
Some experts say that hypnosis consists in one person acting out the role of hypnotist while another acts out the role of subject, making it, in effect, a play that two people perform together. This doesn’t mean it’s a hoax or that it doesn’t really work; it does work. What the experts are saying is that it works because both players know the rules governing their roles. A hypnotist gives her subject suggestions—that he’ll stretch out his arm, brick in hand, and hold that position without tiring; that he’ll remember the plate number of the getaway car; that he’ll lose his craving for tobacco—and the subject does as directed.
Of course hypnotism doesn’t always work. The hypnotist has to be competent and confident, the subject has to be at least ordinarily suggestible, and the suggestions have to be reasonable: they can’t go beyond the realm of possibility, nor can they violate the core personality of the subject. A man can’t be made to lift a fire truck, permanently lose interest in food and drink, or remember the number on a license plate he didn’t see (though he can be made to believe, incorrectly, first that he saw it, and then that he remembers that it bore a number suggested to him).
One of the ways a dominatrix controls her love slave is through the same kind of suggestion. She tells him what he’s going to do, how he’s going to respond to her, what emotions he’s going to feel, and he does. This happens even though it requires his cooperation, and even though he might have started out unwilling. Her confidence and the power of her femininity make him accept the role she defines for him.
A man can be told what will happen in a few minutes, or what will happen in a few days, or what will happen whenever certain circumstances arise, or how things will be in the indefinite future. Suggestions are given in the course of ordinary conversation, with no particular preparation or emphasis. They’re best stated as simple declarative sentences, usually in the future tense, sometimes in the present tense: “One evening next week, you’ll realize you got through a whole day without even thinking about having a cigarette,” or, “You must be getting thirsty.”
Suggestions aren’t commands and oughtn’t be phrased as if they were. Commands inspire resistance. If you have good control over a man, he’ll obey your commands even when he dislikes them, but he’ll have a negative feeling about it. A suggestion, when it works, makes a man feel either that he’s acting of his own free will or that he’s lost control of himself; it never makes him feel that he’s following an order.
You can make a suggestion more powerful by phrasing it as a presupposition. To a man in a hypnotic trance, “You may notice that you’re getting thirsty,” is a much more effective suggestion than, “You must be getting thirsty.” The question is no longer, Am I thirsty? but, Do I notice? The thirst is presupposed. To a man in a state of ordinary awareness, though, the phrasing of the suggestion as a presupposition sounds weird. His reaction isn’t, I’m thirsty, but What’s going on here? The simpler version is better because it sounds natural—a thoughtful and caring remark with no ulterior purpose. Presuppositions don’t always sound weird, though, and when they fit the flow of conversation, they can be used to good advantage.
Let’s go back to the afternoon of Patrick’s enslavement and look at the suggestions I gave him.
When I had finished describing what was involved in being my love slave and he said, “I can’t agree to that,” I gave him a highly suggestive answer: “Oh, you’ll agree to it. Tied up like this, you don’t have any choice.”
It worked; he agreed.
When he asked what I was going to do to him, part of my answer was, “I’m going to play with you, and you’ aren’t going to be able to help but come.”
That suggestion worked too; he came.
The dominatrix in the fetish magazines, by contrast, shrieks at her victim, “You can’t come without my permission! If you do, it’s twenty lashes with the rosebush!” That suggestion also works, producing the opposite effect from mine—the man finds himself able to hold off his orgasm until she gives the word, no matter how intense the stimulation.
Most men, in the absence of suggestion, can delay orgasm but not prevent it. A few can prevent it, while many can’t even delay it. A suggestion that orgasm is inevitable shifts the balance so that almost no man will be able to resist completely, and most will come after relatively little stimulation, having lost the ability to slow their responses. After a suggestion that resistance is both possible and necessary, on the other hand, many men will be able to resist completely, and almost all will be able to manage a delay.
If you want to destroy a man’s ability to resist sexual stimulation, it’s important to use the right kind of suggestion. The difference can be subtle, because it depends on just what is said and in what tone, rather than on the consequences threatened. A gently teasing, “I’m going to play with you, and you aren’t going to be able to help but come, even though I’m going to give you twenty lashes with the rosebush afterward,” will make resistance difficult, while an angry, “We both know you can control yourself, and you’d better, because if you come I’m going to keep playing with your cock until you promise to be my love slave,” will make control easy.
Of course neither of these little speeches is credible. Let’s bring our examples back to reality, still using the situation in which you want to play with the Loop by teasing your lover about how he can’t help coming even though he knows you’re going to toy with the post-orgasmic sensitivity of his cock. It wouldn’t be a good idea to say, “You’re going to have to use every trick you know to make sure you don’t come, because if you do come, your cock will get all sensitive and I’m going to keep playing with it anyway.” That suggestion would inspire him to remember one of those tricks you so thoughtfully mentioned, and he would use it to keep himself from coming. Worse yet, the trick is one that normally doesn’t work; its power comes entirely from your suggestion. A much better thing to say is, “I’m going to make you come, and when you’re done and your cock gets all sensitive, I’m going to keep playing with it longer than you can stand.” That implants in his psyche the belief that the success of your agenda is a foregone conclusion and makes him cooperate.
I gave Patrick a few more suggestions that afternoon. Two were contained in the single sentence, “We’ll be doing a lot of this kind of playing, now that we both know how it turns you on.” The first suggestion was, You will cooperate in this kind of play, and the second was, This kind of play turns you on. Just the mind-set that makes a good love slave! And note the presupposition! If the suggestion left any question at all in Patrick’s mind, it wasn’t whether my kind of play turns him on.
Then I gave him an example. “Next time we get together, I’ll probably tie your hands behind you and drop your pants first thing, then press against you and kiss you like we were doing before, until your cock is sticking straight out in front of you.”
That prepared him to cooperate with the particular bit of play I described, and it ensured that he would respond erotically. Again, his response is presupposed. There was still a chance he would put up some token resistance to letting me tie his hands, but once I’d got that out of the way, my pressing against him and kissing him was certain to make his cock hard.
“You’re going to have to get used to sharing your thoughts and feelings with me. It’s part of being my love slave.”
He did get used to it, and much sooner, I’m sure, than he would have without that suggestion.
And there was one more: the repeated exclamation, “My sex toy!”
Suggestion played an even greater role in Tony’s enslavement by Denise. Her first suggestion to him was that brilliantly worded announcement, “You know, some day you’re gonna be my out-and-out sex slave. You’re gonna do every little thing I tell you, you’re gonna do it my way, and you’re gonna be happy about it.” It set him up not only to accept sexual slavery, but to like it. To be sure, most men who are sexually enslaved do like it, but Tony wasn’t one for liking anything or anyone, so telling him, “you’re gonna be happy about it,” was important.
When she’d finished making him come by hand the first time, and discovered that he couldn’t stand to have the stimulation continued, she said, “You’re gonna be wanting me to do that for you again some day.” Though he argued with her agenda after she untied him, that suggestion helped bring him back for another go.
When she got her next shot at him, she displayed her pussy and said, “It’s gonna make you my slave. You’re gonna do everything I say, just because I’ve got this pussy between my legs and you know what a thrill it can give you.”
When she then made it clear that she intended to follow through on her promise to keep playing with his cock longer than he liked, and he said he couldn’t believe it, she said, “I think it turns you on, too, knowing I’m not gonna stop and you have to come anyway.”
Before she said that, it hadn’t occurred to Tony to be turned on by that prospect. Though almost all men have the potential to be led into the Loop, most are unaware of the possibility until the first time it happens. Tony wasn’t yet turned on by the idea of being obviously unable to resist Denise; he was cooperating only because he found her extremely attractive and hoped to restore their relationship to normalcy. Her little speech suggested the Loop—told him what to feel. At the time, of course, Denise couldn’t be sure that Tony hadn’t fallen into the Loop himself—that was revealed months later, after she taught him how to engage in relaxed and intimate conversation—but if he had fallen in, what she said was still perfect for the situation since it would have fed the Loop by telling him she knew what he was feeling. On top of all that, she suggested the inevitability of his orgasm by presupposition, making it virtually impossible that he’d be able to resist.
Immediately after that, she told him (referring to her intention to torture him), “Next time you’re gonna know, and you’re gonna let me tie you up anyway, and then we’re both gonna know it’s because you want it.” That suggested, first, that he was to cooperate with her agenda of tying him up yet again, and second, that he was to cultivate a positive attitude toward both being tied up and having the sensitivity of his cock toyed with. He was to develop an appreciation of the degree to which the scenario turned him on, and even a conscious desire to have it repeated.
When they got together again, it was obvious that Tony was no longer a stranger to the Loop. Denise tied him down and told him how turned on he was by his anticipation of what she was going to do to him, and the response of his cock proved her right.
“See? You do like it! I’m gonna have to do this sometimes after you’re my sex slave, it turns you on so much. Won’t that be something?—being my sex slave, and me knowing you get a hard-on for having your dick rubbed and rubbed after you’re done coming.”
“You do like it!” is just a tease to a man who has enthusiastically accepted sexual slavery. To someone in Tony’s position, especially someone with Tony’s hostility, it’s a suggestion. His inclination might be to feel resentful of the way control of his body is being taken from him, and he might not infer from the reaction of his cock that he likes what’s happening. It helps to tell him.
Her last sentence implanted in his mind a fantasy that he was directed to nurture—just the sort of fantasy that makes the day-to-day experience of sexual slavery so continuously exciting.
She went on to tell him that when they repeated the same scenario yet again, he would be required to answer her question about how it made him feel.
“I mean, if you like it, tell me. If you’re embarrassed but it turns you on anyway, tell me that.”
Her coaching suggested the right answer and directed him to cultivate a conscious awareness of what was happening to him. I’m embarrassed by the way I can’t help but turn on and by how obviously I keep seeking to repeat this scenario, and I’m turned on by the way she embarrasses me when I’m with her. Her coaching also demonstrated to Tony that the Loop can be spoken, and directed him to rehearse his own description so he could recite it to her on demand.
If I’ve repeated too many pieces of the story of Denise and Tony, it’s because so very much of what she said to him was suggestion. It had to be; Tony started with almost none of the attributes that make a good love slave. Denise turned him into one by implanting a series of electrodes in his brain, one at a time, and connecting them all together—only she used suggestion instead of a drill.
At the other extreme, Linda enslaved Stephan with just one suggestion, but it was such a knockout that nothing else was necessary except the formality of inviting him to be hers.
“You know, you’ll never be able to fuck me like you used to after this, because now that we both know how excited you get at the thought of letting me see you lose control, you’ll get so embarrassed every time you try, it’ll make you come right away like you just did.”
Suddenly she was the most exciting woman he had ever known. Of course, it helped that he was already in love with her, that he opened the opportunity by losing control, and that she had the presence of mind to recognize her chance and think so quickly of the right thing to say. Even with all that going for her, there was no guarantee that her words would have the desired effect; suggestions do sometimes fail. But she had nothing to lose and a great deal to gain, and it turned out that she succeeded perfectly.
She repeated her suggestion in a shorter version the one time they fucked in the missionary position afterward (“See? You’ve really lost it for good”), and again just after they consummated their marriage (“I guess my pussy’s just too much for you”), and often enough thereafter to ensure that it remained true.
Staging struggles for control
Time and again, we’ve seen how a man can be made to struggle, and inevitably fail, to maintain control of his sexual responses. In all but one of the scenarios we’ve looked at so far, the man was one who experienced distress if stimulation of his penis was continued after orgasm, and he was told that that was just what was going to happen if he came. In the last, it was made clear that the consequence of premature ejaculation would be denial of the privilege of fucking the woman who caused it.
Orgasm isn’t the only response that can be toyed with in this manner. A man can be told that he mustn’t allow his cock to get hard, that he mustn’t allow it to leak its lubricating fluid, that he mustn’t allow it to twitch. The consequences of losing control are limited only by the imagination.
The technique itself is simple and straightforward. The man is told what it is that he mustn’t allow to happen and he’s told the consequences of losing control. Then he’s subjected to stimulation sufficient to cause the forbidden response, teased about his loss of control, and punished as promised.
We’ve already examined the most obvious reason for using this technique—the Loop. If the man is to be punished for responding, he’ll try not to. When he responds anyway, his inability to control himself embarrasses him. His embarrassment and his partner’s obvious enjoyment of it combine to turn him on all the more.
We’ve seen how this can enhance the intimacy of a relationship, how it can intensify a man’s love for the woman who puts him through it, how it can lead to the sort of alteration of consciousness that men have sought from time immemorial. But even when all this has been explained, many a woman is skeptical. I recommend that she occasionally put her lover in restraints and tell him that if he lets himself come she’s going to play with the sensitivity of his cock, then bring him off and torture him; and she asks, “How could a man like that? Why would he let me do it more than once?”
The answer to the first question is easy. He doesn’t like it. He finds the idea a tremendous turn-on until he comes, even until he’s drained, but only until then. The continued stimulation afterward is uncomfortable. The duration of his discomfort, though, is brief compared to the time the idea acts as a turn-on; and it’s the idea, not the actual torture, that fuels his fantasies between sessions.
The answer to the second question is of greater complexity, encompassing everything we’ve already discussed and more. To gain an understanding of the more—the part of the explanation we haven’t yet considered—we’ll begin by contemplating the doings at our local video arcade.
This strange place is inhabited by human beings, most young, almost all male, many in a frightful state of degeneracy, playing video games. They’ve come here for that purpose and they’re paying for the privilege with their time and money. The average player concentrates on one game, three at most, improving his skill by long and repeated practice.
The typical game has two main components—a set of goals to be reached (usually a primary goal and several secondary goals) and a set of hazards that get in the way. Some games have a hero who pursues the goal under the player’s control and with whom the player can identify; others allow the player to confront the fantasy world on the screen without an intermediary. The hazards can be villains or they can be pitfalls or they can be a mix of both. These details of implementation don’t matter except in that they attract slightly different types of players.
The player scores points by reaching the primary goal, reaching a secondary goal, or making progress. Being overcome by a hazard brings the end of the game closer or, if it’s already very close, ends the game completely. Reaching a goal, even the primary goal, doesn’t. The player is rewarded with the opportunity to try again in a more hostile environment where the goal is more difficult to reach, the hazards harder to avoid, and the point values of the successes greater.
All the really good video games—the ones the players enjoy most, the ones they play over and over and nourish with coin after coin—have one important feature in common: they don’t always play the same. The variation is generally in the behavior of the hazards. They appear at different times and in different places and they do different things, though the times and places of their appearance, as well as what they do, are always consistent with their nature.
This means that the player can’t perfect his strategy by rote, but has to conceptualize the hazards and develop an understanding of the essence of each—a much more interesting type of learning. It also means that a game occasionally ends much sooner than the player thinks appropriate for his level of skill, owing to an unfortunate encounter with a hazard whose behavior was unexpected. A player to whom this happens will almost always play again right away, hoping to leave a more fitting score on the machine.
Video games, especially those that offer variation in play, are addictive. They hook the player’s need for a feeling of accomplishment and mastery. It’s that feeling that the owner of the arcade is selling, albeit within the most limited of contexts. And it doesn’t matter that the context is so trivial as to appear ludicrous to a person with any sense of reality. An addicted player still pours in dollar after dollar, hour after hour, day after day, for months on end.
So why, I again ask rhetorically, returning to the real subject of my discourse, would a man make a habit of putting himself in sexual situations where he might be subject to treatment that’s distressing, embarrassing, or both? Why, to continue using my favorite example, would he repeatedly allow himself to be tied up by a woman who has shown an interest in playing with the post-orgasmic sensitivity of his cock? Because he’s in love; because it’s the price of continuing in a relationship that offers other sexual activities that are more to his liking, as well as a variety of nonsexual benefits; because, distressing and embarrassing though it may be, it’s a tremendous turn-on. These reasons mustn’t be forgotten. But another factor is his craving for the feeling of accomplishment that comes of getting better at the game—the game in which his goal is to experience as much sexual pleasure as he can, preferably in the course of the sexual activities he likes best, while avoiding, insofar as possible, such hazards as physical distress and embarrassment.
Is he really playing a game? Certainly not in the sense of the degenerates who inhabit the video arcade. Sexual slavery wasn’t his idea, and he wouldn’t object if the woman he loves were to announce an intention to turn their relationship into a conventional one. Still, the relationship, strange as it is, offers its benefits, and he’s in love, and sexual slavery is an incredible turn-on, so he makes the best of his circumstances. Those circumstances include the elements that make a good video game so addictive: a goal he craves and hazards that are unpredictable within understood limits. Making the best of his circumstances means pursuing the goal while trying to avoid the hazards, so he finds himself in the position of having to play a game with addictive qualities, and inevitably it captivates him.
Obviously this would be the case even if video games had never been invented. My only reason for discussing them at such length is that they embody the addictive qualities that interest us, and in a context so far removed from reality as to isolate those qualities for easy contemplation. For convenience then, and certainly with no intent to trivialize human affection, I’ll continue using the metaphor of the game as we discuss the love slave’s quest to maximize his sexual pleasure while minimizing the punishment and embarrassment his partner so often combines with it.
At the outermost level of the game, the love slave seeks to induce his partner to choose his own favorite sexual activities while trying to avoid either long periods of abstinence or activities that are likely to cause him discomfort or embarrassment. He seeks to motivate her to fuck him without tying him down, and he tries to avoid bondage and torture. However wide their repertoire of sexual activities, he has his order of preference among them, and he always aims as high as he can.
If, on a particular occasion, his partner’s choice matches his preference—if she leaves him untied and fucks him, for example—he counts himself successful. If she chooses a direction less promising, the game continues at a lower level and he aims for the best outcome possible in light of her choice.
If she ties him to the bed, there are still several possibilities. Maybe she doesn’t intend to torture him; maybe she just wants to fuck him while he’s tied down. Of course she might keep up the stimulation after he comes, using her pussy, but at least that would spare him the indignity of having an obscene display made of his ejaculation. Besides, if she plans to torture him with her pussy, he might be able to change her mind by talking to her lovingly while she fucks him, so as to catch her up in a different mood. No? Maybe she’ll be so overwhelmed by her own orgasm that she’ll stop thrusting her hips. Maybe he’ll be able to end the torture by wriggling out of her.
Even if she ties him down and states a clear intent to make him come by hand and then continue the stimulation, maybe she’ll be overcome with lust and wind up fucking him. Maybe he’ll somehow be able to keep himself from responding and she’ll give up and try something more to his liking. Maybe he’ll manage to talk her into a gentler approach, or maybe she’ll change her mind herself. Maybe her technique will be a little off when she tries to torture him—maybe she’ll just milk the shaft of his cock and miss the frenum and corona—and he won’t be so distressed as usual. Maybe, whether she uses her hands or her pussy, he’ll be able to ignore the sensations if he counts to himself by thirteens.
If you’ve paid careful attention to everything you’ve read here, you’re probably being nagged by a discrepancy. When I first described the Loop, I said it’s addictive—a man comes to fantasize, even crave, situations in which is loss of control turns out to be particularly embarrassing. Now I’m in the midst of describing a great metaphoric game in which the same man has the goal of achieving as much sexual satisfaction in as ordinary a manner as possible, while keeping his embarrassment to a minimum. I owe you an explanation.
Both things are true. The man is addicted. He does indeed fantasize and crave situations in which his loss of control leads to extreme embarrassment. On any given occasion, though, he dreads the realization of those fantasies. He wants to be embarrassed like he wants to go to heaven—not right now.
Think of a little boy visiting a zoo and coming upon the cage of a particularly exuberant lion. He approaches the lion and runs away, but he doesn’t go far and he doesn’t keep his distance. He approaches the lion again, then runs again, then approaches, then runs. Often he shrieks and laughs; his approaches and flights are fun. He’s playing and he knows it. And he winds up spending a good deal of time near that lion.
The man inevitably becomes obsessed with his partner and her diverse erotic possibilities. His mind, when not focused on the hardships of daily life, is constantly occupied with fantasies of what they might do together, and those fantasies keep him horny. That’s why a man of seventy who has been sexually enslaved exhibits the sexual enthusiasm he had at thirty.
When a woman varies the technique and emphasis of her lovemaking, her man comes to appreciate how each sexual encounter takes its own peculiar twists and turns, offering its own promises, raising its own fears, imprinting his consciousness with its unique blend of excitement, affection, embarrassment, pleasure, distress and intimacy. With her in control, and with the understanding ever in his mind that his sexuality is her toy, no sexual act is ever simple or routine. Each becomes, at least in part, a heroic struggle in which he hopes to reach his goal without being overcome by hazards, and the context is far from trivial. He tries to develop his skill.
The major part of developing skill consists in learning what motivates his partner’s sexual choices. What makes her choose to fuck? What makes her choose to tie him up? What makes her choose to torture him? What makes her choose to leave him sexually frustrated until another day?
A man will be able to answer these questions more easily, to the detriment of the quality of the game, if his partner is using sex to get control over some difficult aspect of his behavior—his neglect of parenting, perhaps—because she has to tell him quite clearly that unsatisfactory behavior will be punished by forced abstinence, while his favorite activities will be chosen with any frequency only when his behavior has been exemplary for a long while. But even if she finds it necessary to take this approach, the sexual aspect of their relationship needn’t be governed by a rigid schedule of rewards and punishments. She can still leave herself a great deal of flexibility in deciding the when and the how of sex, and she can inject as much playful variation into their sexual interaction as she would if he had no bad habits. This keeps him hopeful of figuring out what motivates her deviations from quid pro quo, with the result that he takes an active interest in the game rather than just accepting it as a temporary hardship imposed because of his faults.
A woman who isn’t using sex to correct her man’s behavior can base all her sexual choices on her mood of the moment, tempered by consideration of her partner’s needs. This leaves him less sure of what to expect than the man who’s undergoing a program of reform, and his attempts to figure her out and influence her choices will be more interesting.
Any man’s success at figuring out and influencing his partner will depend on her predictability and his ingenuity. To keep him from getting bored with the game, indeed to keep him from slowly taking control of the relationship, it’s necessary to do the unexpected often and remain ever vigilant against attempts at manipulation.
What about the other extreme? Is it possible to behave so randomly that a man loses interest? No, and for three reasons. First, as we’ve already noted, the addictive nature of our metaphoric game is only a small part of what makes the relationship appealing. Second, there’s more to his play of the game than trying to predict and control your choices: he hopes to control his own responses. The technique we’re discussing, after all, is that of making him struggle to control himself, and his play of the game overflows into an attempt to influence your choices largely because he realizes that he’ll lose fewer struggles for control of his responses if he manipulates you into staging fewer.
When you do stage such a struggle, he recognizes that he’s no longer at the outermost level of the game. He has to keep his body from responding to your femininity or be punished. He’ll probably try to make you lose interest, but he still has to control himself long enough to accomplish that, so he has no easy way out. When you tell him that if he comes in less than twenty minutes, you’ll keep playing with his cock in its state of sensitivity, he’ll try not to come; and when he does come, he’ll try to find a way to keep the continued stimulation from getting to him. Sometimes he’ll seem to have pretty good control, if only for a while. Rarely he’ll even succeed, whether at holding off his orgasm or at suppressing his discomfort, and these occasional successes encourage him.
That brings us to the third point—he doesn’t have to get better at the game to feel encouraged. Maybe on one occasion he manages not to come because he started out less horny than you thought. That’s an accomplishment, but it’s a transitory accomplishment because it will alert you to the possibility and you’ll take care to prevent a recurrence. Maybe on another occasion he experiences only minimal distress when you keep rubbing his cock after he’s drained. He had a headache two hours earlier and dosed himself with an analgesic that’s still in his system. He’s not aware that that’s the reason and he won’t figure it out. Such happenings encourage him, but they don’t represent a lasting improvement in his ability to control himself.
His attempts to manipulate you are even more subject to random success. It’s inevitable that you’ll frequently choose to do what he’s hoping for. Often you simply want to fuck. Maybe once or twice when you’ve decided to bring him off by hand and torture him, you’re so overcome with lust that you change your mind and fuck him while he’s still tied. These little victories convince him that he’s gaining a measure of skill at manipulating you, and they whet his interest and encourage him.
What he does is manufacture an illusion of skill. He manufactures it from random successes, just as a gambler addicted to roulette manufactures an illusion of skill from the occasional winning streaks inherent in all games of chance. His successes keep him interested in the game, but a man who’s turned on to you and horny has no more chance of resisting the power of your femininity than the gambler has of beating roulette over the long term. His sexuality is truly yours to play with as you like, and he has no choice but to love you for what you do to him.
Let’s broaden our perspective on this technique by looking at another scenario from my relationship with Patrick.
Of all that was encompassed in his new role as my love slave, what Patrick obviously dreaded most was the possibility that he might be required to masturbate while I watched. I was determined to put him through it, and repeatedly, but I was in no hurry. Months went by before the perfect opportunity presented itself.
It began with a sore throat—a sore throat so bad that I was driven to seek the services of a nurse practitioner. She prescribed a course of antibiotics that allowed it to heal but, as often happens when I take antibiotics, I developed a severe case of vaginitis. When I finally let Patrick visit me, my throat was recovered but my pussy was in a sad state. I hadn’t let him near me in almost two weeks because I didn’t want to infect him, so he was very horny.
When he arrived, we shared a hug and spent some time talking, gradually drifting from the doorway to our usual seats at the dining room table. In answer to his inquiry about my health, I gave him a sufficiently detailed account to let him know that any sexual contact between us would have to be limited.
When we’d brought one another up to date on the details of our lives, I stood up and headed for the living room.
“Come on in here and get naked! I want to see my toy.”
I took a seat at one end of the couch. He got out of his clothes, then sat next to me and held my hand. I told him to lie down with his head on my lap, and he did.
“Remember when I told you I might want you to play with yourself while I watch, and you’d have to do it?”
“Yeah?”
He’d learned that silence wouldn’t do.
“Well, this seems like the perfect time.”
“I’m really not comfortable with that.”
“I know. It would embarrass you more than anything else we’ve done together, but you’re going to have to do it.”
“It’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other. Wouldn’t you rather you play with me? We’d be a lot closer that way.”
“It’s a nice thought, sure! But I just want to watch.”
“Why?”
“Because it’ll embarrass you so much. Because I know that if it embarrasses you like that, you’ve never done it for another woman, and it’ll be something special between you and me. Because I want to be able to remind you that you did it, and how you have to do it again anytime I want, and see you get all embarrassed and turned on.”
The Loop. The idea made his cock grow with a little twitch.
“Can we put it off for another time while I psych myself up?”
“We’ll do it another time too, but I’ll tell you what.”
“What?”
“I’ll give you a chance to escape, just for today. We’ll play a little game to see who has to play with your cock. How does that sound?”
“What kind of game?”
“We’ll stay here like this for a while, and if I can make your cock drip without touching it, you have to start playing with it right away and keep going until you come and you won’t argue any more. If you can keep it from dripping for twenty minutes, I’ll play with it today, but you’ll still have to do it another time. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Good. It’s 7:18.
“Hey, this isn’t working out badly at all! No matter who wins, I’m sure of getting to see that sexy fireworks display of yours, and you get to feel that yummy thrill that goes with it.”
As I spoke I fixed my gaze on his cock. I loved it. I loved Patrick. I let all that love flow through me, and at the same time, I wondered what response I would see. A smile came to my face—the same smile that had had such a powerful effect on Drew in similar circumstances.
Patrick’s cock grew rapidly and aimed itself upward.
“Exciting thought, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“You know, I really like the way your cock reacts to the idea that I’m going to watch it spurt. I mean, it’s neat that it turns you on, and it’s really neat that you can’t hide that it turns you on.”
I continued feeding the Loop with that kind of talk, and with almost constant staring at his cock, for eleven minutes. That’s how long it took for the first drop of fluid to make its way to where I could see it. When it appeared, I bent my head toward it and stared hard, not saying anything at first. Then I turned so we were face to face.
“What’s that?” I glanced back toward it to show him what I meant.
“Nothing!” He said it emphatically but playfully and I loved him for it.
“Mm-hm! You’re dripping. You know what that means!”
“I guess so.”
He did as he’d promised while I continued to tease him, and his orgasm was everything I’d been looking forward to—a spectacular show that left him totally embarrassed.
I rarely make a man masturbate without first staging such a struggle. Even as a dominatrix, I see no need to be unpleasantly domineering. My partner will agree to play that game, or one like it, even after a history of repeated losses; and having agreed, he’ll pay the bet without complaint. He learned about bets long before he met me, and he’s so deeply committed to their rules that everything stays light and easy between us.
It may seem that if a man has promised to be my slave, he should do what I tell him without my having to win a game, but that’s not a practical attitude for me to take. Even from my perspective as a confirmed dominatrix, playing the game is a lot more fun than simply ordering him to masturbate, and it’s more fun no matter who wins.
But it’s not just my own perspective that I have to consider. If I want the relationship to last, I have to be mindful of my partner’s needs, and I have to keep him interested in me. If I repeatedly order him to masturbate while I watch, it will get old fast. He may even start to feel mistreated. Eventually I’ll make the mistake of ordering him to masturbate when he’s less than unbearably horny, and he’ll refuse and set out to find a more exciting and considerate partner.
The game avoids such an unhappy ending in two ways. First, it holds my partner’s interest, partly by being inherently addictive as games are, partly by offering the possibility of a reward more to his liking than the privilege of having me watch him masturbate. Second, the criterion by which we decide that he’s lost the game is such that when he has to bring himself off, he’s horny enough that he really needs to. Once he’s dripping, he’s way past the stage where he can walk out in a huff.
Though it would be a poor idea to make a habit of simply ordering a man to masturbate, the possibility is important because it ensures that he’ll play the game. It was clear to Patrick that as my love slave he had no choice but to masturbate if I insisted, so when I offered him the game, he had nothing to lose. That he had almost no chance of winning didn’t matter; he knew he had more chance than if he didn’t play.
I played that game with Patrick a number of times afterward, interspersed, of course, with other forms of lovemaking. Eventually he won one, and I brought him off by hand. He lost a couple more and then won another. I brought him off by hand again, but this time, I released his cock just as he crossed the threshold of ejaculatory inevitability. It was a new experience for him and I know he would have been terribly embarrassed even if I’d done nothing more than watch, but I teased him mercilessly all through the show. After that, he never won again. Maybe he wasn’t sure he still wanted to, considering what it might get him. More likely, though, his contemplation of the two alternatives that lay before him, both so embarrassing, always proved such a turn-on that control became impossible.
The ultimate tease
Another interesting feature of those video games we looked at: When the player is defeated by a hazard, the machine generates sound effects and visuals that rub it in. The people who build the games discovered that a machine that produces such effects garners more coins than one that doesn’t.
I use the same principle in my lovemaking. When a man has an orgasm under circumstances that make for even a little bit of embarrassment, I add to his chagrin by teasing him about it, and I do it right then, while he’s coming. I always tease him if I’ve given him a reason to resist, I usually tease him if I get to watch him spurt, and I sometimes tease him even if he comes in my pussy, especially if something I’ve done makes him lose control unexpectedly or his experience is more intense than he’s comfortable with.
I’m not merely trying to emulate a video game, nor is it just that I love teasing (though of course I do). I want to leave my partner no doubt that I know what he’s thinking and feeling, and teasing does that. More important still, I tease him because I know that later, when he’s alone, he’ll conjure up the memory of what I said, the sound of my voice, and he’ll relive his embarrassment. He’ll turn on, if only a little, and love me for being such a tease. A man is rarely so open and vulnerable as he is at orgasm, so it’s the perfect time to make a memory.
Time. As we’ve seen, orgasm isn’t compressed into a single instant, but spans two distinct stages, each of which lasts a number of seconds. During the first stage, the urethra has begun to fill with semen and the man knows that ejaculation is inevitable, but the thrill of the first spurt hasn’t yet hit. The second stage begins with that first spurt and, just by virtue of being so spectacular, offers a great deal of raw material for teasing. A man can be teased about having an obscene display made of his ejaculation, the intensity of the pleasure and embarrassment he can’t help but feel, the thrusting of his hips, the motion of his cock—there’s a lot happening!
It’s best to start your teasing early—by the second spurt if possible. Your partner is most sensitive to it then. The first couple of spurts shatter his defenses, open him up, keep him from starting to rebuild. Also, a good tease will have a profound effect on his emotions all through the rest of his orgasm; if you hit him with it early, you color the entire experience, including the part that’s naturally most intense.
It should come as no surprise, then, that the most powerful teasing is that which is done during the first stage of orgasm, before ejaculation begins. It’s not just the timing, though. A special kind of teasing belongs here—a kind of teasing that blows a man’s mind completely.
“You’re losing it, Patty!”
O my God, she knows!
His effort to hold off his ejaculation wasn’t casual. His whole being was focused on it, about to be swept away by that final loss of control. And even though he knew he was coming, he clung to the belief that it wasn’t over because I didn’t know. After all, I wasn’t in his head; I wasn’t in his cock; I hadn’t yet seen him spurt. As long as he could keep that from happening, he had a chance.
Then I teased him and suddenly I was in there with him—in his head, in his cock—I had got myself all the way into his soul. He was coming and I knew he was coming. I was sharing his struggle to hold off the first spurt, sharing his tingle, sharing his embarrassment. The display of his ejaculation for my amusement would still be humiliating, but it was no longer the criterion by which we would know I had made him come. The tease showed him that delaying the first spurt by a few seconds wasn’t enough to hide what was happening, not even for those few seconds. I knew him too intimately for that. I had confronted him with proof, when he was least able to deal with it, that I understood the secrets of his sexuality better than he had imagined any woman ever could.
And then, with all that going on inside him, he lost the contraction and spurted. What a thrill!
Though it may be less obvious, the same thing happened to Tony the second time Denise tortured him. Just before he started to spurt, she hit him with, “Ooh, you’re gonna be sorry you let go!”
He already knew that. He had clearly consented to Denise’s agenda, which was that she would bring him to orgasm and then torture him. Still, he couldn’t help but be anxious about the degree of distress and embarrassment she might inflict, and her tease was directed to that anxiety. Since the anxiety would still be there after his ejaculation was under way, she could have waited until then to tease him. Indeed the first time she tortured him, she had done just that, even using a similar line—“Ooh, you know what happens now!”
The lines could have been interchanged without altering the quality of either experience. A tease about the consequences of a man’s failure to resist orgasm is effective whether it precedes or follows the start of ejaculation. Still the two experiences were different for Tony, and the timing of Denise’s teasing is what made the difference. When she said, before he started to ejaculate, “you’re gonna be sorry you let go,” one of the things she was telling him was that she knew he had already let go—that he was coming and could no longer stop, not even to save himself from the torture that she now implied would be worse than he had expected. She brought him to the sudden realization that she knew him too well for comfort, and it added immeasurably to his embarrassment and sense of vulnerability. He had prepared himself to deal with the rest of the experience, but not this twist, and it overwhelmed him.
The first time Francesca let go of Roy’s cock as he started to come, she teased him about the show he was going to give her.
“What I get to see!”
It was a good tease, but it would have been even better if it had come a few seconds earlier. The way it actually went, she started speaking as Roy’s muscles relaxed in preparation for the first spurt. She waited that long because she wasn’t sure she could recognize the onset of ejaculatory inevitability and because she didn’t yet understand how much more intense Roy’s experience would be if she spoke sooner.
By removing her hand and saying the same thing just as his cock reached maximum stiffness, she would have catapulted him suddenly into a trip very much like Patrick’s. Faced with the prospect of having to ejaculate with nothing holding his cock, he would have made a desperate attempt to regain control. It would have been impossible, and he would have had several very long seconds in which to experience the conflict between his egoistic compulsion to save himself from embarrassment and his physical need to ejaculate. During that time, he would have been acutely aware that his cock was sticking up, not just in a normal state of erection but obscenely, and that if he relaxed the muscles that held it that way, even for a moment, they’d immediately contract again and his cock would bounce back up and spurt. Not only that, but he would have felt Francesca in there with him the whole time, fully aware of what he was going through and intending every bit of it.
Though it’s valuable to understand all this, there’s no cause to lament Francesca’s actual timing. She did what she knew how, and Roy was thoroughly embarrassed and loved her for it. Even had she fully understood the potential of an earlier tease, she might have chosen to do as she did, then adjust her timing on a subsequent occasion so as to again give him more than he was prepared to handle.
_____
Powerful as this sort of tease is, you’re unlikely to use it often. I don’t. It’s appropriate only when a man is restrained and has a reason to resist coming. Most lovemaking—even most of my lovemaking—isn’t like that. Bondage involves a fair amount of work, and few women have Francesca’s motivation to do all that work every time. Besides, we all like variety and spontaneity in our lovemaking and a steady diet of bondage limits that.
Usually then, when you tease your partner during his climax, it will be after he’s started to ejaculate. To get a clear picture of the effect this produces, let’s review the teases of this type that we’ve seen so far.
As soon as Patrick lost it, I teased him again.
“Ooh, sperm!”
I was confident that I had a good read on his emotional reality. He felt as though he had been tied up by a teenage girl who was making him have an orgasm to satisfy her curiosity about what she would see. My tease hooked that feeling. It was just what I might have exclaimed if I had actually been a curious teenager who had heard a description of the process of ejaculation but never witnessed it.
Even if I was wrong about his emotional reality, it was a good tease for the circumstances. Not only do I get to make you feel this delicious thrill whenever I want, I get to know exactly when you’re feeling it. Because even if you manage to lie perfectly still, you splash that white goop all over. My obvious enthusiasm gave him cause to worry that he’d be put on display in the same humiliating way again and again.
I wanted Patrick to have a full album of memories by which to remember his enslavement, so I heaped another tease on top of that.
“That must feel so good!”
Orgasms are like that. Despite his anxiety about the impending torture, Patrick couldn’t help but feel the pleasure I’d forced on him. I knew, and it added to his embarrassment.
The first time Denise tied Tony to his bed and made him come by hand, she said, “Uh-huh! All over you!”
One of the reasons a man is so embarrassed when you tie him down and bring him off by hand is that the wet reminds him, at a deep psychological level, of the accidents he had during his toilet training. What Denise said to Tony was aimed at that association. I don’t recommend this sort of tease unless you’re sure your partner won’t take it badly. It isn’t really necessary because he knows he’s wetting himself whether you mention it or not, so teasing him about some other aspect of the scene, such as the show he’s giving you, is no less embarrassing. If you imply that he’s soiling himself, he’s likely to conclude that you regard his semen as dirty. Almost any man will be put off by that, the Loop notwithstanding. He’ll take it as a rejection of his physical self and infer that you don’t love him or even that you dislike him.
If you know that your partner is turned on by the idea of being made to soil himself (some men are), then by all means tease him in this manner. But if he’s like most, or if you’re unsure, there’s no reason to tread so close to the line; there are plenty of teases that carry no implication of rejection.
The first time Linda tied Stephan down and he came just as she was putting his cock inside her, she commented on it right away.
“Oh, how embarrassing!”
She knew it was, and she knew that that remark would make it even more so.
“Wow! I can feel every little twitch!”
O my God! Of course she can. She’s not moving; she’s not all worked up; she’s just sitting there savoring the feel of my cock throbbing in her pussy. She made me come before I wanted to, and I’m so embarrassed, and she’s entertaining herself with my come and my embarrassment and teasing me about it.
The next time they fucked and he lost control like that, she echoed the same tease.
“I get to feel it again! Every little twitch!”
The first three words let him know that she was pleased with the way things were turning out, that she was happy that his loss of control was giving her another opportunity to relaxedly enjoy the sensation of his come. He was embarrassed, and he knew that she knew he was embarrassed, and she wasn’t doing anything to relieve his embarrassment; instead she was making it more intense by so obviously reveling in his situation.
She spoke as soon as he started to spurt, so he knew she wasn’t talking about what she had already felt happen inside her, as she had the first time, but she was instead expressing enthusiasm for what would inevitably follow. Now that you’ve started to come, I get to feel every twitch. You can’t stop until you’re done, and you can’t pull out even though you’re not restrained this time, because it’s in your nature that once you start coming you want to be all the way inside me even more than you want to escape your embarrassment. Besides, if you pulled out, I could move myself around to where I could watch the rest of your come, and that would be even worse.
Did she really think all that when she spoke those nine words? Of course not. But every bit of it and more went through his head when he heard them, even as he came. It made for a truly overwhelming experience and an extremely strong bond of affection, and it undoubtedly contributed to his decision to spend the rest of his life as her love slave.
One more—this one from just after Linda and Stephan were married, when she tied him down again, put his cock in her pussy once more, and made him lose control the same way.
“Ooh! Exciting, isn’t it?”
Not every tease has to be a work of creative genius. Almost any tease will make a memory, and a tease that’s reasonably consistent with your partner’s thoughts and feelings (as this one certainly was) will make him feel you’ve found your way inside all his thoughts and feelings.
And that’s what teasing is about—making your partner feel that he’s known as intimately as a person can be, and making memories. It works. If you used to think that all teasing is bad, I hope you’re reconsidering. Teasing can be done lovingly, with no trace of hostility, and without inflicting pain. It’s a natural part of making love.
Attention
I live not thirty miles from another woman who, like me, fancies herself something of a dominatrix. I’ve never met her, but over the years, her rumor has reached me a number of times. My best source was a friend whose lover had had a brief liaison with her four years earlier. Because my friend knew of my interest in female domination, she gathered all the information she could and passed it along. Then there was anecdote here, an impression there, and I was able to assemble quite a clear picture.
Though her nickname might suggest otherwise, Killer seems to have no more predilection for violence than I do. She chose that quaint moniker because she believes that her techniques cause men to fall painfully in love with her while she herself remains aloof and unattached, changing partners frequently and leaving behind a trail of broken hearts.
In actual fact, men hasten to disentangle themselves from her even more rapidly than she, from them. They find her style of lovemaking unsatisfying and quickly come to regard her as a kook. A typical encounter, described from the perspective of my friend’s lover, went like this:
After she tied me to the bed and mounted me, she put her hands on her hips and starting bouncing up and down and talking about how I was falling in love with her. She was saying, “you,” but she really seemed to be talking to herself, and she was looking straight ahead at the wall. I couldn’t get into her rhythm, either; it was choppy, more like a machine than a woman. I figured I’d better try to go along, so I got off by thinking about someone else. When I did, she said, “Made you come!” and let out a cackle. I guess it was supposed to be a giggle, but it was kind of loud and crazy-sounding. She was so weird that when she untied me without hurting me, I was surprised.
Of course that’s a paraphrase, and my friend had to ask a few questions to elicit the details, but I’m sure it’s substantially accurate; it’s consistent with everything else I’ve heard about Killer.
Clearly this woman is enthusiastic about female domination and derives a great deal of enjoyment from her fantasies of being a dominatrix. Just as clearly, her relationships with men are so poorly rooted in reality that they can’t be sustained. Sure, she gets men into bed with her, and even into her, but she ignores them in favor of her fantasies while preventing them from ignoring her. This turns them off. The really good ones move on in search of partners with whom they can be truly intimate, while the rest find partners they can tune out in favor of their own fantasies.
If Killer were less involved in her fantasies, she might be an effective dominatrix. More important, some man might fall in love with her, as she now only imagines they do, and she could get to know him—discover the soul behind the body. I’m sure she’d find it much more satisfying than what she’s been doing.
The key is attention. Attention is an absolutely essential technique of female domination. Naturally. Attention is an absolutely essential technique of everything we do, or at least of everything we do well. A Zen master might go so far as to say it’s the only technique, but I have no more real knowledge of Zen than I do of the internal workings of my motorcycle, so I’ll confine my pontifications to female domination.
Perhaps you suspect that Killer is a caricature I invented to illustrate a lesson. Obviously she’s a caricature, but I didn’t invent her. She’s real and I’ve described her as accurately as I could. She made herself into a caricature by neglecting attention, and I seized the opportunity to illustrate my point, though if I hadn’t heard about Killer, I don’t suppose I’d know that the point needed to be made.
Attention is necessary to any relationship because it allows you to know your partner. That’s simple. If you don’t pay attention to him, you won’t know him. If you do pay attention, you learn his likes and dislikes, what turns him on and what turns him off, and countless other details—some useless but lovable, others useful. How much time without sex does it take to make him obsessively horny? What sort of teasing does he take as too mean to be sexy? Which of your behavioral quirks does he find particularly endearing? On and on.
He may even let you know, perhaps unintentionally, how best to dominate him. His conversation will suggest scenarios, and those scenarios will often turn out to be the ones that have the greatest erotic effect on him, that bond him to you most strongly. One of my lovers, for example, told me that as a child he had been repeatedly tickled into helplessness by his two sisters. It turned out to be a good thing to do to him, and highly erogenous, though it isn’t a good thing to do to most men even if they’re ticklish.
When making love, attention enhances the accuracy and clarity with which you perceive what’s happening in your partner’s body and psyche. You’re better able to gauge the effects of your words and actions, and the feedback you gather helps keep those words and actions on target.
Your attention can be perceived by your partner as well. He knows whether you’re focused on him, and his experience is more intense if you are. Your attention grabs his, and turns what might otherwise be just an experience of his own sensations into an experience of you, in all your complexity.
Ultimately the Loop itself depends on your attention, because your attention is an essential part of your partner’s embarrassment. Just as nothing can embarrass him when he’s alone, nothing will embarrass him if he’s being ignored. It’s the feeling that your attention is focused on his loss of control that causes his embarrassment and his arousal to run away with one another.
Consider the technique I used to excite Drew before he masturbated for me, the technique I use to make Patrick drip when he was trying not to. Attention. Pure attention in the case of Drew; attention augmented by teasing in the case of Patrick, but pure attention would have been enough.
With all that in mind, perhaps we can strike a compromise with Zen: Attention is the only technique, but we won’t neglect the others.