I Am Thankful

About nine years ago…almost exactly nine years ago, in fact…I bought a compilation CD of 80s hits. It was a sheer whim, an impulse purchase based on the fact that the CD had “Whip It” by Devo on there and I hadn’t heard that song in ages. The CD was a fun listen, and somewhere in my brain a connection clicked between the song “She Blinded Me With Science” (“…she’s poetry in motion/when she turns her eyes to me/as deep as any ocean/as sweet as any harmony…”) and my private fetish for erotic mind control. I decided, again on a whim, to try writing a few stories myself, using the songs on the CD as an inspiration. I justified it as a writing exercise, and almost a private joke.

 

My first story was posted December 2nd, 2000. A few weeks later, as I kept up with the exercise (aided by a local radio station that switched for a while to an all-80s format), I got a piece of fanmail from a woman who seemed friendly, funny, and deeply apprciative of my writing. She mentioned having a boyfriend, but I decided I wanted to get to know Her as a friend because smart, funny people who accept your weird kinks don’t come along every day. Then, a few days later, She mentioned that She also had a girlfriend, and I thought, “Does that mean what I hope it means?”

 

A couple of months after that, She hypnotized me for the first time, and I couldn’t help myself. I blurted out that She turned me on so bad I couldn’t think of anything else. And She accepted that, too. We met for the first time, a few months later (after what turned into daily phone calls) and it was genuinely love at first sight. (Technically, I suppose, it was genuinely love before first sight.) We had our first date at DragonCon 2001, dancing together to “One Night In Bangkok”, watching “The Lost Boys” while snuggling, and trance-playing in the hallways when nobody was watching.

 

Last June, She clicked a collar around my wrist for the first time. This February, we exchanged whispered vows to each other in bed at Dark Odyssey. It won’t ever be recognized in a court of law, but as far as we’re concerned, I am one of Her husbands as well as one of Her pets.

 

My relationship with Lady Ru’etha is a source of constant joy and happiness, and today, when we’re talking about giving thanks, I just want to thank whatever providence steered me to that tiny, silly whim nine years ago. Because so much of the bliss in my life stems from that.

Recuperating

Sorry, but the only post this week will be a post to say that there’s no post (which sounds like the beginning of a confusion induction, but…) I got a little going-away present as I left Lady Ru’etha’s, my very own case of H1N1. Neither She nor I are in serious danger–we’re already on the mend–but it’s left me pretty exhausted, and…yeah. Stuff. No more write-y today.

My Turn To Talk

So now that both thrall and Lady Ru’etha have blogged about thrall’s visit yesterday, I guess it’s my turn. (Okay, I’m not actually guessing. Lady Ru’etha told me just a few moments ago. ) I’ll try to keep it as sensible and as chronological as possible, given the amount of trance I went through over the last couple of days.

 

thrall arrived Tuesday afternoon, but there was a lot of stuff that Lady Ru’etha and I needed to do right around the time she got here, so we really weren’t able to settle in for a good four or five hours. (Luckily, thrall is both patient and a good conversationalist, so that time passed quickly, if busily.) After dinner, Lady Ru’etha took a seat next to thrall on the couch and I sat at Her feet, while Kitty and Reth Eldirood relaxed at the dinner table (they showed up a little late, and were still lightly snacking.)

As the conversation started to turn towards hypnosis, it seemed almost like thrall’s head was on a swivel…she wanted to see everything that was going on, but Lady Ru’etha was on her left, I was (more or less) in front of her, and the boys were on her right. So she’d be talking to the boys, and she’d spot out of the corner of her eye that Lady Ru’etha had made eye contact with me and was touching my nose, and she’d whip her head around to see whether or not a hypnotic induction was taking place. Then she’d whip her head back around, worried that she was being rude. (She wasn’t, though. We all understood perfectly, because we’ve all been in her shoes; that feeling of “OH WOW I AM ACTUALLY IN THE SAME ROOM WITH AN ACTUAL HYPNO-KINKY HYPNOTIST AND I MIGHT ACTUALLY GET ACTUALLY HYPNOTIZED YEEEEEP!” …it’s a pretty strong adrenalin hit. )

 

She did get her wish, by the way. Lady Ru’etha dropped me several times into light, brief trances, and She also demonstrated rapid inductions on both myself and Kitty. She dropped Reth into a trance so deep that he needed to lie down (mainly for therapeutic purposes, honestly. He’d had a mild cold/flu type of sickness, and was still pretty wiped.) At one point, once I’d gotten several tastes of trance, I actually broke down and begged Lady Ru’etha to hypnotize me. (And She obliged…) It was really obvious that thrall was practically ready to do the same thing, but I could tell that Lady Ru’etha wanted to give thrall a little privacy for her first experience. (She’d actually given me a post-hypnotic command earlier that day that when thrall went under, my eyes would close and I wouldn’t be able to open them until She commanded me to. This was done for privacy reasons, but turned out to be Significant.)

 

Winterrose dropped by briefly, and the conversation turned back geekwards for a while (we showed thrall “Time Crash”!) But eventually, everyone but Lady Ru’etha, thrall and I left. By then, thrall was just about bursting at the seams with anticipation, and frankly, although thrall might not have noticed it, so was Lady Ru’etha. She went and got a pocket-watch, arranged the two of us on the couch with thrall lying down, resting her head in my lap while She sat across from us in a chair. Then She started to dangle the watch in front of us, and…

 

I think I lasted about five seconds. Lady Ru’etha says thrall lasted about fifteen. (Keep in mind, this isn’t some sort of “power of the hypnotist” sort of deal. We both badly wanted to go into a trance, neither one of us was even remotely trying to resist, and if the conscious mind is already on board like that, hypnosis can be an insanely brief process.) Once we were both under, Lady Ru’etha really worked on the rapport that we were feeling, taking that feeling of connection that comes from experiencing trance in the same time and place (and being in a sort of comfortable, friendly physical contact) and literalizing it by having us experience a golden cable between the back of our necks, linking us together and sending data back and forth.

 

This was a very powerful image for me (and I think thrall would agree.) It worked with the “your eyes will close when thrall goes under” post-hyp I’d been given earlier, making me go into very deep trance whenever She hypnotized thrall. It deepened the trances we experienced and the sense of connection, making thrall more comfortable with my presence during what was a pretty seriously hot experience for her (I’m trying to keep confidences here, but come on–has anyone not figured out this was a turn-on for all of us?) And although I’m not sure how much she consciously realized it, once Lady Ru’etha connected us like that, thrall really started to internalize a lot of my hypnotic conditioning. When Lady Ru’etha would have me repeat a mantra, or use a trigger on me, it didn’t take long before that same conditioning was in thrall’s head too.

 

That evening was mostly about the deepening, the relaxation, and the general happy feeling of trance. The next morning, after we’d all woken up, was a little more…intense. We started trance early, almost as soon as we woke up, and passed a good few happy hours letting Lady Ru’etha hypnotize the both of us. She concentrated mostly on thrall, because we both understood that she’d only have the day with us and we both wanted her first experience to be memorable in all the right ways instead of the wrong ones, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t enjoying myself. I was in trance any time thrall was in trance, I was in a deep hypnotic rapport with thrall, and I felt pretty much everything she felt. This was very, very, very nice. thrall got to use the light and sound machine, and found it just as irresistible and intense as I have. (She accidentally said, “Can I try the brainwashing machine now?” at one point. Talk about your Freudian slips…)

 

After a while, we finally needed breakfast, and so we all took a break to head out to IHOP (eggnog pancakes=Heaven!) Then we came back, and Lady Ru’etha put a very pretty collar on thrall and had her post to her blog while hypnotized. I was in trance at the time myself, but it occurred to me in a drifty sort of way that the kind of conditioning Lady Ru’etha does is far more effective than the usual “evil hypnotist” stuff in a lot of the stories on the EMCSA…She was just filling thrall up with praise and pleasure and affirmation on a very primal level, making her feel so happy just for doing such tiny things for Her. It’s such an addictive experience that I feel very lucky She’s so very ethical.

 

Then, at thrall’s request, we took a few photos and videos of her going under (strictly for our own private scrapbooks, sorry.) I was the “cameraman”, and let me tell you, when you’ve spent the better part of a day being conditioned to go into a deep, eyes-closed trance whenever someone else goes under, it’s pretty hard to make the transition to “eyes open, holding the camera steady.” I’m pretty sure I had the world’s glassiest stare when I was snapping pics.

 

After that, we did an induction where I held a pocket-watch between the two of us and Lady Ru’etha did the inducing, which was seriously nice. I remember that without Lady Ru’etha even needing to say anything, the pocket-watch just kept getting heavier and heavier after we both closed our eyes, so that by the time She finally woke us, it was lying on the couch. By this point, I was so seriously fractionated that Lady Ru’etha had to wake me about three times every time She brought me up before it would actually take for more than a few seconds, but nobody minded.

 

Eventually, though, all good things come to an end, and thrall had to get back on the road. But both Lady Ru’etha and I are looking forward to her next visit…although, I suspect, not as much as she is.

down

i am deeo and happy. Goddess has taken e so deeep, and She linked me to thrall with a golden cable when we traneced. when i went deeper, it deepened thralls tracnel. when thrall went deeper, i sank deeper and deeper. my programeing went down the cable into thrall, making her compliant and passive and codile and more obedient. thrall went very deep, was very happy. my eyes were stuk tight shut, but i could feel her pleasure through the cable. Goddess commanded her, commanded me, we obeyed and felt the programming sink deep and lock in.

 

And now she’s off for home, and I’m awake (and cringing at the typos–it’s not just the trance, I’m also typing on a laptop. ) Check both my blog and thrall’s for more about the fun.

Still Vacating

This is technically a very belated post from last Wednesday, which was spent recuperating from the plane trip and helping deal with a variety of mundane matters down here at 1 Lady Ru’etha Plaza. (That’s by way of a pseudonym, of course. They haven’t actually named a street after Her…yet.) Then Thursday was busy, and Friday was busy, and Saturday was busy, and forget about posting on Sunday…

 

Not that it was all hypnosis-related busyness. Although we both love hypnosis, there are other ways to spend time together, and business and personal lives don’t just stop when I visit. So for those of you imagining a non-stop five-day long hypnotic orgy…well, I mean, have fun doing that if you want to, but it’s not what happened.

 

There have been some hypnosis highlights, though. Among them:

 

* Finding out that I get pleasantly dizzy from getting close to Lady Ru’etha’s skin and breathing in. This is a trigger I didn’t remember having installed, and it made cuddling very pleasant. (I joked that someday, I should actually sit down and list all the things about Her physical presence that hypnotize me. She replied that I wouldn’t be able to stay awake for the whole list.)

 

* Actually trying to resist Her hypnosis, thanks to the trigger that I blogged about and then forgot about (and, to answer the question one commenter asked, forgot about again every time I saw the post and remembered it. There aren’t enough reminders in the world to help you remember something your subconscious wants you to forget.) I, um…I didn’t do so well. I managed to stay awake while She was distracted by cooking lunch, but once I had Her undivided attention, I lasted…technically, I don’t know how long I lasted because time started to go kind of funny after a little bit. But I suspect it wasn’t very long. (I still insist She cheated. )

 

* Finding out that a post-hypnotic suggestion She made to me that hearing buzzing noises or feeling strong vibrating sensations against my skin would send me into a hypnotic trance (um, a totally innocent suggestion, really…no, I won’t give you the innocent explanation. But there totally is one) also applied to video game controllers with the rumble feature. She would rest the controller on my leg when She got to a cut-scene that was particularly rumble-heavy, and I’d just slump down like a puppet with cut strings. It was niiiiiiiiiiice.

 

* Actually getting to hypnotize Her a little. I’ve become more and more comfortable with doing that, since I realized that it’s actually part of my greater service to Her–after all, I want to make Her happy and please Her and make Her life better however I can, and I can’t really argue that trance and submission don’t feel good, can I? So I’ve taken a couple of opportunities, when it looked like She really wanted to relax and let go of the reins a little, to trance Her and let Her feel that bliss for a while. (And it doesn’t hurt that She is a very good hypnotic subject, easily within my modest capabilities.) (And it really doesn’t hurt that She just sounds so cute when She’s hypnotized!)

 

* Getting to serve Her in everyday ways. Over the last year or so, my conditioning has made me more generally submissive to Her, even when I’m not under hypnosis. So getting the chance to run errands and do chores…it gives me a quiet little buzz of pleasure, just a tiny little undercurrent whenever She smiles at me and says “Good boy,” that makes normal little things happy and enjoyable.

 

* Anticipating the next couple of days. **waggles eyebrows**

 

I suspect that somehow, future posts will expand on some of these details. Probaby depends on what parts of this Lady Ru’etha reads and says, “You’ve got to talk more about this!” She kind of has a way of being persuasive.

deep

Goddess has commaneded me to post this. i am in a deep hypnotic trance. She wishes me to post that i am deeply hypnotized by Her will. She wishes me to post that i will be visiting Her tomorrow. i will be hypnotized. i will go deep. Her will is going to command me, and i will make posts about it. while in trance.

i have obeyed. it always feels so good to obey Goddess, because obedience is pleasure and everything Goddess says makes so much sense. i obey, and it feels so good. She scommands me and i obeu. and that sdends me deeper. i obey. i am Her good boy. She commands me to sleep now.

Out-Of-Context Follies!

The Onion AV Club gets into the hypno-kink fetish:

 

“Staring: It’s the great human pastime. There’s nothing like a good long stare at a wall, or computer screen, or darkened window to really get the mind nice and empty. Well, emptier. It’s the perfect way to sink into the vast nothingness that is forever lapping at the tiny shore of our miniscule existence. Just open your eyes and…stare. “

 

Oh, go on. Tell me that didn’t make you squirm, just a little.

 

(Actual context here.)

By Her Command

Um.

OK, so remember my comments about hypnosis and how it works? Yes, this is first-hand evidence of it. I didn’t intend to blog today, and I don’t really know what I’m blogging about…but I just got off the phone with Lady Ru’etha, and She gave me a very specific post-hypnotic command to post something here while She naps.

So I suppose I can post about that; I’m a little fuzzy on events, but I know She took me very deep and did some very heavy conditioning. I can recall that She programmed me in preparation for my upcoming visit, but I’m not sure how much longer I’ll remember that. I’m getting better at forgetting things I think She wants me to forget. But while I still remember it, I’ll mention that She programmed me to believe I can resist Her hypnosis, but only on a waking level. Deep down, all the conditioning that She’s put into my head over the years that make it absolutely impossible for me to resist Her hypnotic inductions will still be there, and the harder I fight, the harder it will be to fight until my resistance breaks and I submit to Her will completely.

And of course, a) my brain resolved the “remember or not” conundrum by going into a light trance for most of that paragraph (because when I’m in trance, of course I can remember the things I’m only supposed to remember in trance…) And b) by typing it out like that, I’m reinforcing the program by repeating it to myself, thus cementing it all the deeper into my subconscious. So there you go, actual hypnotic brainwashing, liveblogged for your convenience.

Sexism and Kink

That’s the weird thing about three-day weekends; they always seem to make you a day late in doing other things. Your Tuesday feels like a Monday, so your Wednesday feels like a Tuesday, so you wind up posting your blog entry a day late. My apologies to all my readers.

So today, I’m going to tangent a bit–this blog mostly discusses hypnosis, with an implied understanding that we are actually discussing “erotic hypnosis”. But I’m actually going to focus on the sex part today. Unfortunately, it’s not in one of those “ooh, sexy hot secrets from my personal life” sort of way. I’m going to take the time to rant a bit about sexism and BDSM.

For a lot of people, this rates a sort of automatic, “Well, duh!” Many people (and many feminists) feel like any BDSM relationship in which the man is the dominant and the woman is the submissive is automatically a sexist relationship, just like the sky is blue and the grass is green. It’s not even hard to understand their logic; we’re just now coming out of a seemingly-endless period in history where women heard from every conceivable source that their role was to submit to the male authority in every area of their lives, and it took a lot of time, energy and effort to break free of that indoctrination (which is not the same as hypnosis, a topic I might discuss someday.) And it’s by no means a completed process. (Just ask Phyllis Schlafly.) So when some people see a woman in a subservient relationship to a man, it is natural to think of that as sexist.

But the kink community is all about (and I know some people are going to wince at hearing these words, because they are so overused, but bear with me) power exchanges. BDSM is about voluntarily giving your power to someone else, letting them enjoy the rush of dominance while you enjoy the rush of submission. Those are both enjoyable feelings, and both fun roles to take. There really is nothing wrong with wanting to take either role, because it is a voluntary submission. Any good scene, and any good BDSM relationship, has at its base the knowledge that the bottom can take that power back whenever they want, but are choosing not to. (And the very best scenes come along when the bottom lets that knowledge slide far enough to the back of their head that they only remember it if they absolutely have to, which is part of what makes hypnosis so much fun in BDSM play.)

It’s that word, “voluntary”, that is key here. “Voluntary” means that the submissive only gives up power under the conditions they’ve determined, at the times and in the places they’ve decided. They set the boundaries for their submission. Maybe that’s only submitting when wearing a collar, maybe it’s only in the bedroom, maybe it’s 24/7 lifestyle submission. But it’s their decision and their boundary. They might lose all their power within those boundaries, but they never lose the power to set them.

That’s the difference between submission and sexism in the world of BDSM–when someone else decides that they have the right to set your boundaries, that’s sexist. Saying, “You did that for your last boyfriend, you should do it for me,” or “You did that last week, you should do it again this week,” or “You submitted to me in the bedroom last night, that means I’m in charge and you should let me decide whether or not you keep your job” or even, “You hypnotize some people for free, that means I should get a freebie because I don’t want to pay for it” (to cite a particular pet peeve of many hypnodommes…) All of these are ways of trying to take the power that the submissive has the right to keep for herself. That’s sexist.

Or, to give the example that originally prompted this line of thinking, Valerie D’Orazio posted on her blog a while back about a comic book convention with a “Slave Leia Photoshoot”, where lots of women dressed up as Leia in her metal bikini from “Return of the Jedi”. D’Orazio said, “No matter how many times the girlfriend says that this was completely her own decision and that her man, standing beside her in a Han Solo outfit or trucker’s hat, had absolutely nothing to do with it, I just didn’t buy it.”

Which prompts another question: By refusing to accept that another woman could set her own boundaries, enjoy sexual behavior (in this case exhibitionism rather than actual BDSM) and still be an independent feminist, isn’t D’Orazio trying to set boundaries for them? And is that a form of sexism in and of itself? Saying, “I wouldn’t do that, so you can’t” could be seen as just as sexist as saying, “I want you to do that, you you must.”

(Although, in the interest of fairness and accuracy, I should point out that D’Orazio might very well be right, too. If, in fact, the boyfriend was pressuring his girlfriend to dress like this, he was taking away her right to set her own rules for when she displayed her body, and that’s clearly sexist by my own definition. I’m just pointing out that in any situation involving sexuality, particularly sexual kinks, it’s not ever going to be as simple as “sexy=sexist”, and that in fact, a lot of the people trying to banish women’s sexuality are doing so in order to control it…and nobody but the woman in question has the right to do that. Just to make things clear, in case Valerie D’Orazio should happen to visit the site and worry that I’m slamming on her. )

The Risks of Hypnosis

Just how powerful is hypnosis, you might ask? Well, that’s the tricky thing about it. Hypnosis doesn’t actually seem that powerful. It’s very easy to convince yourself that you’re not doing this because you’re hypnotized. No, sir (or madam.) No, you just have all sorts of very good reasons for doing whatever it is you’ve been hypnotized to do that just happen to coincide with the fact that you’ve been hypnotized, and those excellent reasons…reasons that might seem a little frivolous to others, but which you know to be vitally important…are the real reasons why. Which, of course, means that hypnosis is very powerful indeed, because it’s so subtle. A cautionary tale follows.

Last Saturday night, Lady Ru’etha hypnotized me, and gave me an assignment; She told me to pick up a few things for my upcoming visit in November. (Perfectly ordinary, unassuming things, of course! Certainly not sex toys! No, they were, um…gardening tools. For working in the garden. In November.)

Again, this is Saturday night, October 3rd. For a trip I’ll be taking November 3rd. I have a full month to run this little errand and complete my assignment. But, of course, I don’t want to forget (I tell myself). After all, it’s going to be a busy month, and I’d feel just terrible if I got onto that plane and didn’t have those gardening tools with me. Even though there are plenty of garden centers where Lady Ru’etha lives. (We’ve browsed for rakes a few times together.) So I get up at eleven o’clock in the morning so that I can get the errand done and get home in time to watch the football game.

Problem: The local garden center isn’t open until noon. There’s a twenty-four hour garden center, but it’s all the way across town (we have a lot of horticultural enthusiasts around here), and I’m not going to have time to get to it before the game starts. So, reluctantly, I go back home and take some time to enjoy watching the Patriots/Ravens game. (I also take some time to watch the Bears/Lions game.)

As soon as the game is over, though, I’m right back on the road to the garden center. Keep in mind, I woke up at eleven AM when my usual waking time is about 6 PM. I work Sunday night. And I’ve got a whole month to get this done. But of course, for reasons entirely unrelated to the fact that I’m following a post-hypnotic suggestion, this is really urgent and I need to get it done now.

I get to the garden center, and there’s a problem. While they’ve got the rakes I’m looking for, they don’t seem to have any spades at all. And I was really looking forward to having a nice spade, and to Lady Ru’etha teaching me exactly how to use it. (And again, I’m certainly not following a post-hypnotic suggestion.) So, with a grimace, I decide to go all the way across town to the other garden center. (There are actually a lot of garden centers around here; I just don’t know where they all are. I generally don’t use a lot of tools, not when there’s so much you can do by hand.) (Yes, I’m having way too much fun with this metaphor.)

So when I get to downtown, I suddenly remember that there is a very major, very important baseball game today. And it’s just getting out as I hit downtown traffic. Do I decide to give up? Of course not. I’ve already gotten this far, and it seems like such a waste to give up now, and I’d just have to come back out here anyway, and I’m certainly not following a post-hypnotic suggestion! So I fight my way through the traffic, get to the garden center, buy the tools, and fight my way back home to catch three hours of sleep before work. (And get a very sweet apology from Lady Ru’etha, who felt very bad about not specifying a timeframe for the assignment. )

So the big risk of hypnosis, ladies and gentlemen? It works. Keep that in mind before making any suggestions. Thank you, and good night.