Subspace: The World Within

A Webmaster’s Glimpse into the Real World of BDSM

It’s been a heck of a week.

At Sarah’s party, some­thing which has been devel­op­ing over a period of three years, came to fruition. Sev­eral of us have spent the ensu­ing week try­ing to assim­i­late what happened.

Part of it is com­pletely nor­mal “party crash.” It’s a great week­end, everybody’s hav­ing a won­der­ful time among friends, and endor­phins are fly­ing every­where. Return­ing to the Real World is dif­fi­cult for everyone.

There’s also some­thing called “sub-​​crash” or “sub-​​drop”. It’s a more severe form of the party crash which hap­pens to every­one… tears, depres­sion, the shakes, etc. Again, it’s a reac­tion to the high. It has a phys­i­cal basis, some­thing like the crash after a sugar rush. But there’s an emo­tional basis as well.

But… there was more.

More peo­ple than expected, found a head­space they had never before encoun­tered. The cane is one of the most ter­ri­fy­ing imple­ments of the kinky world. Few pun­ish­ments are more feared than a true Vic­to­rian cane stroke.

For a woman to dis­cover how to enjoy it… and come back for more… can be very dis­con­cert­ing. Much of it is non­ver­bal, and leaves her won­der­ing what in the world hap­pened. It’s called “sub­space,” and it’s okay.

It also means you’re a Masochist. To dis­cover that you can truly enjoy seri­ous endorphin-​​producing pain, is a mind-​​blowing con­cept. This has no hint of pun­ish­ment or coer­cion; it is a true embrac­ing of the pain. The weird­ness is indeed disconcerting.

I call it painplay. It pro­duces a high like no other. To the best of my lim­ited knowl­edge, it requires a refined pain to get there. The cane, which lays on a line of fire with an after­shock. Or, the sin­gle­tail whip, with which I am not famil­iar, but Sarah is. Or, the body punches of a mar­tial arts expert. Those are the three routes of which I have any knowl­edge. (And all three have been doc­u­mented for years at The Old Tom Archive!)

Thanks to Sarah, over a period of years, I have devel­oped exper­tise in one of those routes. My route is with the cane. This level of play does require exper­tise — in a num­ber of areas. Sarah taught me about sub­space, and I devel­oped that exper­tise to please her.

So what hap­pened this time? By observ­ing over a period of years, var­i­ous peo­ple have devel­oped a trust in my abil­ity. They have enough trust to allow them­selves to par­tic­i­pate in a scene with me. They have watched, and watched, and watched; they have talked with oth­ers. They have devel­oped the curios­ity while not believ­ing that sub­space actu­ally exists.

What ensues is so intense that it has taken days — a week — of talk­ing and explain­ing, to assim­i­late what hap­pened. I’ve per­son­ally writ­ten three scene reports, and I have sev­eral oth­ers in my inbox wait­ing for me to read, and even more pend­ing. Like I said, Some­thing Hap­pened. We found crit­i­cal mass; a syn­er­gis­tic effect.

Strangely enough, the swish of the cane scares these same peo­ple. It’s a high pitch or low, depend­ing on the size and speed of the instru­ment. Those who love the cane, can not bear to lis­ten to it merely swish. These same peo­ple have a hard time watch­ing some­one else being caned… even though they them­selves enjoy a scene of equal sever­ity. The swish scares these peo­ple… so, nat­u­rally, I do a lot of swishing.

These Party Sto­ries now appear in the Sarah Bald­win books so that they can reach a wider audi­ence. How­ever, we kept back some “bonus sto­ries” for you here at the Old Tom Archive:

1. Spe­cial Party Edi­tion — The story behind the story. Jojasa set some­thing in motion years ago, to sud­denly come to fruition last weekend.
2. Self-​​directed Can­ing — Jojasa shows how it’s done.
3. If Wishes Were Horses /​ Stand By Me, by Ser­i­jules — Seri looks within her­self to dis­cover the essence of Submission.

• Related Posts
• Bookmark
• Tags