Double Single Tails

"Don't move."

His deep, somewhat gravelly voice seemed to hover around her long after he made that statement so emphatically. It embraced her with an echo in her mind of those words over and over as reinforcement.

"Don't move."

It wasn't advice or suggestion, not even a command, but rather a fact, with well understood background. It meant that she would not be harmed if she remained in exactly the same place, the same pose, the same attitude even in which he had placed her. But if she moved, even a little, she was at risk. She knew that he sincerely never wanted to harm her ... but he would intentionally hurt her ... a lot.

Why in the world was she there? Although it could only have been about twenty seconds from the time he stated that absolute truth to when the tip of this whips first struck her skin, it seemed instead as if it were hours or even days that she had to reflect on all that brought her to that moment.

Nothing at all forced her to stay, no restraints, physical or otherwise. She was free to leave, free to stop it at any moment by uttering one little well-practiced word, and there would be no repercussions, no guilt or whining, then or ever, simply acceptance from him. She knew it would hurt, yet the conviction of her power in the situation, the power to stop, enabled her to stay. She elected to feel intense pain for as long as she could handle it, even though she fought every day in every way she knew to prevent pain in herself and in others. But this time she had to do this, had to know.

She had met him in an online BDSM chat room. Where else could she have ever had such conversations, such candid exposure and discovery? She was a novice to the Lifestyles in many ways, but the more she learned of it, the more familiar it seemed. The whole everything of BDSM seemed both absolutely foreign to her, yet oddly, comfortably, like "home." In the chat room she asked questions constantly, or so it seemed to her, of anyone who might have answers, and listened to everybody to find out how to tell true sources from false ones. She ached to know more about bondage, dominance, submission, masters and slaves, sadism and masochism. Most if it made sense to her on some intrinsic level, but try as she did she simply could not think her way to understanding sadism and masochism (SM). How could someone possibly enjoy pain? Why would someone inflict intense or even agonizing pain on one who they knew and cared deeply about? Why did this get started? How is it done? What's it like? Can hurting really be so very pleasurable?

Through countless hours in text and voice conversations she had asked him all the questions she could think of, and he expertly, calmly, gently answered them all – and more – with fully apparent sincerity plus raw exposure of his life experiences and knowledge. Days, weeks, months of this passed during which time she learned, examined, and pondered ... but didn't know.

It had finally evolved to this, that she had asked him to whip her, actually requested it because the need to know outweighed her fear of temporary hurt. Could it be that not having a foundation from which to extrapolate understanding of SM and those who practiced it was causing her more mental anguish than the end of a whip could do to her body? They had discussed the What and How of it so thoroughly that she practically saw and felt the event weeks in advance. He had given her his verifiable contact information, required her to interview freely several people who knew him, and insured that she had established safe calls. For her safety at all times and for his, these steps and others were never options. If either one felt unsafe, unsure, nothing at all would happen.

So now here she was in a hotel room, barely clad in a black negligee, leaning forward against a wall, palms flat, body bent at the hips but arrow-straight otherwise, and her feet spread about shoulder-width apart. The fabric of her night dress was raised to her waist, fully exposing her Self with her now naked ass and legs. Almost instinctively she had bent a bit further than he had instructed, which caused her ass to jut out even more. This was not for his enjoyment or convenience but rather a means to protect her head from potentially random strikes, so she kept it level and a bit low between her outstretched arms.

Mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually she readied herself to the best of her abilities. He asked her once more if she really wanted him to do this to her and, perhaps amazing them both, she confirmed her desire to be whipped.

Hasn't everyone at some point been smacked by a rolled-up towel in play as kids, lovers, or teammates in sports? Isn't being slapped accidentally or on purpose, by a hand or some silly object, a common experience, felt by all at least once? This time, for her, it was like that but on a much smaller and ironically much grander scale simultaneously. Earlier he had let her take her time closely examining the identical, masterfully crafted, braided leather, single tail whips that he would use. She had caressed them and thereby ascertained their unyielding strength yet flexibility, their harsh yet sensual texture. Each whip had a foot-long leather handle from which gradually tapered the three-foot-long, intricately braided portion that comprised the single "tail" of each whip. Each tail had two very thin strips of stringy cotton after the knotted end, barely an inch long. It was these that could create a stinging sensation while the braided portion could produce a thudding feeling. She would have stinging (admittedly, she felt it would be the milder of the two options and the more like the known flick of a wet towel) so she knew, or thought she knew, what to expect next.

He held one whip in each hand, balanced equally, and practiced a few snaps near her, slowly approaching her with each throw of the whip. He had previously demonstrated how the feathery soft cotton tip could act like a sharpened knife when wielded in a certain way, and he even proved that it would cleanly cut through an eight-and-a-half by eleven inch piece of paper he had told her to hold in her hands. She hoped it would not do that to her, trusted that it would not.

She sensed him settling further into his steady stance, his focus more intensely on her. Then the first snap-snaps hit her on the ass, almost perfectly mirroring each other. And they hurt! She had no time to think much about this because those two were immediately followed by several more, possibly ten, although she would never be able to calculate anything beyond the feelings of Before, During, and After. The pain was novel, frightening, yet becoming doable, predictable as he maintained such a steady rate it reminded her of the sounds of cards woven between the spokes of her bicycle when she was a child, a consistent thwack-thwack-thwack-thwack.

She had just begun to almost imperceptibly wince in anticipation, when at that moment he stopped, carefully setting aside the whips, and tenderly approached her. He held her, allowed her body the chance to ease into an erect stance as relief from leaning, her arms relaxing at her sides, and spoke gently to her with praising and reassuring words. He kissed her, asked her how she was feeling in all ways, if she was really okay. She knew to give him essentially clinical answers to these questions so he could better gauge her levels of tolerance. She knew he would ask her questions and comfort her, yet it felt so incredibly odd to be given such tender affection from the same person who moments before had administered repeated doses of such pain. It had hurt, true enough, but she was surprised to realize that she could handle it.

Soon the second round began. The whips flew faster now, her imagined bicycle wheel spokes with cards had accelerated. The sounds were so steady she began to hear bits of songs in her mind, melodies that coincided with the metronome-like infallible rhythm of his movements. Each strike allowed only that last inch of the two hair-like strands of cotton to touch her skin; never did the thicker leather part touch her delicate body at all, and never did a hit on one side fail to be paralleled by one on the other side.

Not just her ass, but her hips, lower back, upper thighs, and even inner thighs; he found a way to flick that whip wherever he wanted, as long as he wanted, with precisely the intensity he wanted, which was invariably just exactly as long as she could endure before he gave her a chance to rest, quenched her body's thirst for water, reaffirmed their connection. Was he reading her mind, her body, or both? Regardless, his recess breaks of sweet affection between lessons with the single tails allowed her time to renew her strength and resolve for the next session. In fact, those breaks built new strength within her, enabling her to take more, ask for more.

Just as fireworks on Independence Day begin slowly then grow to be a fury of lights and booms, so too did his applications with the whips. By now it seemed like each snap was so often it appeared to be akin to popcorn popping, and she imagined what the kernels experienced before erupting from the heat that exploded them, felt like she was in the middle of a movie theater's popcorn popper. She now had barely any chance to think between the thwacks. She could only prepare herself for each blow.

But then the whips sometimes began to avoid her completely, bewildered her by missing her skin, taking away the comforting predictability of the earlier sessions even as it gave her time to steady herself. That's what had made her think of the popcorn; it was the little explosions of combusted air cracking around her.

At times as the intensity of his whip-slaps grew, she felt like her body was being attacked by white hot, v-shaped needles, just long enough in duration to sear her skin, but not longer. The pain was incredibly localized each time, yet accumulated over broad areas as the tender zones were struck again and again during their SM communion.

Throughout all of this she knew she had rarely ever hurt as much, or as keenly, as she did then. Tears from frequent eruptions of silent crying flowed freely down her face, cooling her emotions and skin. She interspersed her gasps of surprise and need for air with biting her lip to reduce or to intensify her focus on her torso and legs. It hurt like hell. This had to be hell!

But then, why, she asked herself, why was she smiling?

She had to admit it despite all logic; she was in fact smiling with a big grin that in other circumstances would simply indicate happiness. She herself had no idea for a while, and thought at first that she was losing her mind. To think that she or anyone could smile during all of that hurt! But, for herself at least, she soon found answers to this enigma.

She realized that, despite the pain she was feeling, she had grown to deeply respect him for more than his surgically precise skill of inducing hurt of varying and increasing intensity. He also, and as importantly, had an artist's ability to decorate her body in this unique, extremely physical method. She could feel how the impact marks might leave an interesting pattern on her body, temporary tattoos that told a clear story to those who knew how to read it. Her body was a canvas to him on which he painted his desires, using the whips as paint brushes and her body's reddening reactions as his paints.

She smiled because, oddly enough, from the exactness of his strikes upon her, combined with the evident caring of her with his gentle caresses afterward, she learned that she could trust him. He did precisely what they had discussed he would do, neither more nor less, giving sensations to her flesh and to her mind equally. She even at times laughed at herself, through the pain of the whippings in progress, because of her expectation-shattering discoveries.

In addition to those revelations, she more positively knew one other thing – that he was exquisitely happy. She had known before that this would be true, but throughout all of the preparation and moreover the delivery, she sensed from his actions, breaths, and even tone of voice that something in him was soothed in this process, became complete, perhaps even healed. She seemed to know that he was challenging depths of himself in ways she could only guess. He was conquering elements of himself, perhaps buried fears or doubts or emotional pains. Possibly not even he knew. The important aspect is that he was becoming more, was totally a human be-ing.

Her nurturing character reached beyond herself and her pains toward him as he whipped her. By standing still for him, allowing him to inflict this pain on her, she gave him the use of her body to work through whatever issues or needs he had to express, those that could not get out of him in any other way, and that would perhaps forever remain a mystery to her. In return, she felt he was giving her something rare and very special of himself, showing her an agape love as she hadn't known, not for each other really but for Love's sake, for all of human be-ings.

Eventually, despite all her inner resolve and mental exercises, she reached the doorstep of the inability to endure a moment longer. Somehow she still felt victorious, even ironically invigorated as if she had been at a day spa rather than at the business end of two whips. But her arms and legs trembled in exhaustion from the muscle fatigue of standing absolutely still against the onslaught of sensations that demanded she should escape them. The effort to resist those impulses, to maintain a perfectly steady stance, the easel for his canvas, threw her body close to muscle failure. Her resolve was failing, too, but she fought to be more resolute anyway, to handle just a little bit more. The pain was becoming too much, her physical, mental and emotional exhaustion too great. Yet still somehow she had just enough of her brain free of focus on Pain to wonder if others thought as she did, if other sadists and masochists are aware of their reasons for SM and the benefits of it.

Awareness. That word revealed itself as the key. There is nothing like localized pain to force one into the totally Here and Now. There is no room for "a few moments ago" or "in an hour" or "somewhere else," only Here and Now. How closely that resembles Zen teachings, she thought in an instant, and how relatively easy to reach a sort of meditative state in this way. Images of possibly Buddhist monks in self-flagellation flashed through her mind as she made this connection.

She had no idea how much time it had all been, how many times the whips had lashed at her or how often and for how long they had taken breaks, but she could no longer handle any more of the assault on her physical being. She wasn't sure later if she had said it aloud, or barely whispered it, or merely thought it, but the moment she was certain of the undeniable need to stop and had convinced herself it was time to say the magic word of "Red!" he stopped completely. The whips dropped from his hands as if for the past howsoever long they had not been a part of his body, of his soul, extensions of his arms and Self. They laid on the floor, lifeless without his energy and his focus to animate them. For many minutes, or was it hours, they would be nearly forgotten after having been the objects of deepest focus for both of them during all of this.

He tended to her body's hurting places with cool applications of wet washcloths, and with gentlest massages using healing ointments. He tended to her mind's incredible Aliveness and Awareness by listening actively to the amazing-to-her discoveries and answering her new fountain of questions. He then told her that those snaps of the whip that hadn't touched her were never intended to reach her body, instead they were to mess with her mind, provide confusion and room for doubts of him, of herself, that she could then overcome. In those moments, he had thwacked the whips with the paper-cutting velocity that he never used on her body, creating numerous sizzling snaps in the air. It was this action that had made her think of popcorn popping. Many of those thwacks were a mere inch from her skin. Had he been less focused, less skilled, or less physically capable, or had she ever flinched or crumbled, they could have ripped open her skin and flesh, seriously harming her. Because she had remained motionless, physically anyway albeit never mentally, there were only several dark pink v-marks all over her midsection, markings that faded away within a few hours.

She had never found pleasure from the pain itself, but she had found pure joy in the enlightenment produced from the painful experience. The hurt of the whips seemed to her then like the hurt of removing a splinter, of getting a deep muscle massage, of setting a broken bone; all of which enable the body to heal effectively, a short term increase in pain to avoid long term anguish. It was emotionally cathartic and mentally challenging as well as physically draining then replenishing.

Was she a masochist or even sadist at heart? She didn't think so, but she had learned that those terms are merely points along a continuum on which all people stand.

Had she discovered "The" answers to her questions about sadism and masochism? No, but she knew that she had leapt far closer to that ever-elusive knowledge and, for now, was content.