Both sides of the Cane
I went to a play party last night, and I found out what it's like to be on the other side of the cane.
My friend Lou from the Sydney Under 30s had come down from Sydney to visit some friends of hers and it turned out that they were curious about kink. As luck would have it, the Canberra Under 30s were having a play party and everyone decided it would be a good idea to join them.
First of all, the venue was excellent. It is a fair way out of town, but that means you are playing in a farmhouse with (practically) no neighbours to disturb. (Apparently they've even got horses Mistress Jadis!) Jakki and Marko have really put a lot of work into the place and it shows. They are rightfully proud of their home. (And I suppose that having the bedroom right next to the dungeon really cuts down on your commuting time.)
Things were getting started when we arrived, but it was about three hours before any of us played. I asked Lou (another subbie for anyone who is keeping score) if she was up for some caning. I can't recall her exact words, but I think they may have been "totally."
I've been caned plenty of times. In fact, practically every time I've played with Mistress Jadis there has been a cane involved, but I've always been on the recieving end. (Obviously!) Now I was standing over Lou with a cane in hand and a selection of others laid out on a table next to me.
I started slow, with a series of light taps building up. It was my first time caning someone and I wanted to be careful. I've seen Lou caned before though, and I know she can go pretty hard so I was confident that I wouldn't break her. It didn't take long before I was coming down much harder.
When receiving a caning, I don't get to see myself react. (Sometimes with a flogger or a single tail I'm able to see my reaction in the mirror.) It was really wonderful to be able to lay down a stroke of the cane and immediately see the reaction. All the moans, twitches, and yelps made me understand why so many tops like the cane so much.
After Lou had been thoroughly and solidly caned, her friend Rachel (who was at her first ever kink event) took her place. She was apprehensive but eager and curious. I also took the opportunity to cane her a bit (I also used a crop to introduce her to one of the other implements available.) I think she went a lot further than she expected when she started. In fact, I'm not sure she had plans to play at all.
Later on, both Lou and Rachel returned the favour and dished out some discipline to me. Lou started off with a flogger (which she wielded expertly. You would think she had done this before!) She also gave me quite a few strokes of the cane, curiously doing so whilst keeping i time with the music being played in the next room. I must confess, though, that it bothered me when she missed the down beat. Have you no sense of rhythm woman???
Rachel, never having used a cane or crop or anything before that night was very curious to watch. (Quite aside from the fact that pretty much any woman with a crop in her hand is nice to watch!) Lou and I told her the safe places to hit, and she did enjoy it, but every time she brought down a hard stroke (hard enough to make me move or wince or react at all) she would recoil towards the corner of the room. It was cute really! I suppose the general instinct not to hurt people (which, let's be frank, is a good instinct overall) can run pretty deep.
It was also interesting to me that in a room with so many first timers, I was one of the most experienced people around. There seemed to be nothing wrong with me lying on the bench being caned whilst simultaneously explaining how kinky things work, like when I was explaining why I might not be marking as easily as the others and why bondage can make discipline exponentially more intense for some people.
All in all, in our group of five all of us were on both sides of the cane. It struck me at one point that what was happening was not submission. I have submitted enough times to know what it's like and this was not it. I was bottoming, sure, but even as a series of cane strokes rained down on me I wasn't submitting to anyone.
As an aside, the only two who hit me at all were Lou and Rachel. In our group none of the guys hit any of the guys. That seems to be commonplace in kink circles. Whilst a number of my limits have come tumbling down as I've played, this one remains. For me, being vulnerable around a woman (or in this case at the hands of a woman) is ok, but it doesn't work with other guys. Maybe it's the same for others. At any rate, it means that those women who are comfortable with a whip in their hand tend to be busy at functions like this.
I had also noticed that the vast majority of playing at functions like these involves a woman on the bottom. Whether it's a man or a woman in the top role, it seems that the bottom is almost always a woman. I was happy to do my bit to break that down.
I was also happy that I managed to play in public for the first time. (It turned out not to be much of a step really.) I can sometimes get very emotionall involved in playing in a private atmosphere, and I was worried about bringing that into a public space. To be frank, I was not keen to let a room full of near strangers see me break down in tears the way I have in session at times. In the end, however it wasn't an issue. Being in public made the scene itself fundamentally different. It was a purely physical scene, and there really was very little emotional content. Additionally, the caning I got was not as hard as I have gotten when nobody was watching. The intensity was lower, the players were different, and the emotional commitment (at least the kind of emotional commitment that leads me to tears) was absent.
And it was still wonderfully fun!