Public Play

When I play with peo­ple other than Sarah, I nearly always play in pub­lic. For that mat­ter, when Sarah and I have the option of play­ing pub­lic or in pri­vate, we’ll often play in pub­lic. Play­ing in front of an audi­ence allows her to go fur­ther — she doesn’t want to disappoint.

She also enjoys watch­ing me play with oth­ers. She’s quite sadis­tic her­self, and enjoys mak­ing sug­ges­tions. “What a lovely cane welt. Wouldn’t a clothes­pin look nice on it?”

Play­ing in front of an audi­ence car­ries its dan­gers. The audi­ence can be rude, crude, and/​or inter­fer­ing. I don’t play where rude/​crude might be an issue. One thing I learned the hard way, is the dan­ger of exceed­ing the audience’s lim­its. One par­tic­u­lar scene was reported to the world at large as severely abu­sive. In fact the “abuse” was the woman hav­ing an orgasm. Both jeal­ousy and a pho­bia of “that hor­rid BDSM stuff” were involved. Sarah observed the whole thing, and for­tu­nately knows exactly what did and did not happen!

Funny thing… when I pull out the canes, peo­ple instantly vacate the space within a four-​​foot radius of where I’ll be stand­ing. I’ve caused more col­lat­eral dam­age on the backswing…

Why play in pub­lic? There are a num­ber of reasons.

It’s a safety net. She knows other peo­ple are watch­ing, and there to help if some­thing goes wrong.

Many are exhi­bi­tion­ists and/​or like being the cen­ter of atten­tion. Works for me

Most impor­tantly, that gives other peo­ple the oppor­tu­nity to observe me play­ing with one or more other peo­ple. She can form a com­fort level, and we can nego­ti­ate the scene based on what she’s already observed.

The thing which becomes absolutely hilar­i­ous over a series of gath­er­ings, is the same thing hap­pen­ing time after time. Years ago I did a full-​​horsepower can­ing scene with Kell­fire. LadieJJ came to me later that week­end, explain­ing she was curi­ous about the cane, but not like that. Could we try some­thing more intro­duc­tory? Of course we could.

The next party LadieJJ wanted more — a whole lot more. She was ready to seek that sub­space she’d observed, and was in the right frame of mind to accept what the cane had to offer. After­wards (it was a pub­lic scene) some­one came to me in front of LadieJJ, and used almost the exact same words: She was curi­ous, but not like that.

LadieJJ had a fit of the gig­gles. She thought it was so cool, because she thought she hadn’t taken all that much.

The next party we heard the exact same phrase the third time, after that person’s sec­ond can­ing scene.

Now, nat­u­rally, we expect the cycle to con­tinue as a mat­ter of course.

Still, there are difficulties.

After a full-​​horsepower can­ing, you’re pretty much done for the week­end. So, the stan­dard pro­ce­dure is to wait until the end of the week­end, and then ask Tom to work around the other dam­age. (Which I can do; because canes are thin they can be used with pin­point accu­racy. Like a sabre or foil, one can use the tip, or any por­tion of, the blade.)

Con­duct­ing a full-​​horsepower can­ing scene is not easy or sim­ple. Safe­words become irrel­e­vant, because of the trip­ping through sub­space. Every per­son is dif­fer­ent. No errors what­ever are accept­able. Most impor­tant is dis­cern­ing when and how to stop. After­care, allowance for crash­ing, and explain­ing what the heck just hap­pened, are equally crucial.

So… a back­log of sev­eral such scenes at the end of the week­end does become delight­fully wearing

Pub­lic play, then, becomes some­thing of a lit­mus test. Most will say No Way ewwww ick ick. But some will have a curios­ity — and I can work with that.

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