If you want not to see yourself, look in a mirror
Or, on effacement
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JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
A warning in advance. This article deals with issues of deviant sex and deviant sexuality and discusses them graphically, with no consideration (other than this warning) given to the more tender sensibilities of some among us. If you're offended or disturbed by such things - read no further.
Dylan Zimmerman recently wrote an article to whichich I responded a couple of times. Her original article and my responses can be found here. (Link)
The comment in Ms Z's aricle I want to respond to is found at its end, its very last lines. They read "But I have to write I have to write I have to write I have to write. I don't have anything else. I have no face, no voice, no accent or eyes. "I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself".
The line she quotes is from Plath's 'Tulips' (an interesting exercise in disguising self-pity as resignation - she was a very "stupid pupil" indeed, was Ms. Plath) and the phrase that caught my attention is 'I have wanted to efface myself'. I know something about effacement - because I've made it happen, more than once. It's easy. All you need is a whip (or in the particular instance I'll relate shortly, a riding crop) and a mirror. If you read Dylan's article you'll see I also became involved in a sub (that's a pun, by the way) conversation with Dharmagrl. Her questions, along with Dylan's comment, inspired this... narration-meditation.
One more thing before I get to the meat (as it were) of what I want to talk about, Dear Reader. I've been a contributor to JU for quite awhile now, and during that time I've been told that my life and my desires are a fiction or a pose or both. That I and my wife are actually one person with two accounts; that what I've occasionally revealed about my sexual nature is simply the equivalent of a desire to appear in a black crepe-paper cape and plastic vampire fangs and shout 'BOO!".
Those who read are at liberty to believe or not, as they choose. But don't take up space here with comments that are no more, in effect, than variations on "I don't believe you and I think you are sick.". I'll simply delete them.
And now, Dear Reader, to borrow a phrase from my darling wife... Onward, through the fog.
ef·face, ef·faced, ef·fac·ing, ef·fac·es:
To rub or wipe out; erase.
To make indistinct as if by rubbing
To make (oneself) inconspicuous; withdraw (oneself) modestly or shyly.
In other words, to make something disappear. The problem is that most people think that disappearing means going away, so that effacing a thing is to make it invisible; occasionally, the more sophisticated will realise that being invisible doesn't necessarily render it not-present. So then, effacement becomes making something not-to-be-here-anymore.
I can make you 'not-to-be-here-anymore' while making you visible to yourself, in a mirror, in such a way that it becomes impossible for you to deny the reality of what you see while simultaneously making it impossible for you to accept what you see as you. I can make you disappear by making you visible, and compelling you to see.
At one time I had a lover, whom we'll call Selene (which is also a pun). She's smart enough to recognise the nature of the pun, and private enough to appreciate not being exposed here. It would mortify her to have this repeated in a public forum in a way which might identify her.
We met online and talked for six months before our first face-to-face meeting. She made that stipulation because, in her experience (and mine), virtual relationships are just that - virtual - without sufficient substance to bear any kind of reality other than those which are purely and completely imaginary. Actually, she could have demanded a year and I would have waited. I was determined to meet her. When we finally met we discovered that what had begun as a primarily intellectual discussion, and then a heatedly addictive series of shared fantasies explored via phone and cyber-sex, actually had substance enough to sustain a relationship that lasted two and a half years.
We generally met for long weekends once every two or three weeks, usually at my apartment. And the rest of the time we communicated via the net, and at least once every evening we played long, complicated 'phone-sex' games that were actually exercises in psychological manipulation and sexual control. But at the core of everything was what we called 'the moment', which occurred in its most extreme forms (and could last hours) when we met face-to-face together.
The 'moment'. I see now, as I could not see then, blinded as I was by my utter lust for her, that 'the moment' was merely one more of those clever devices that allows a sexual submissive to manipulate a sexual dominant into giving her what she wants, when she wants - while the dominant, smugly and stupidly, believes himself to be in total control. I'm older and wiser now, and things would follow a rather different path if I were to go through a similar experience again. But I digress.
No matter the fact that, at the time, I couldn't see the uses to which she put our 'moments' they were instances in which tremendous sexual and psycho-sexual energy was summoned and released between us. And to Selene they could be and often were moments (that word, again) of extreme sexual terror. We played regularly with sexual asphyxia, games in which I controlled her breathing so that at the moment of her most extreme sexual excitement her brain was so starved of oxygen that she would hallucinate vividly - and had the perfect justification for the animal abandon, the utter wantonness (she always liked the words wanton and wantonness) of her flesh, how it moved.
That was something I soon discovered about her. She couldn't be present, to witness the things she did, and more importantly, to acknowledge them as things she wanted to do. And having realised that this was so, it became my determination to find ways in which to force her to be there, to see, to acknowledge in herself, and to confess. She hated me for making her make her confession, and when she hated me worst and hardest was my own preferred moment for my orgasm. The more she hated me, the harder she fought, the more useless her struggles were because defeated by desires I'd roused and made impossible for her to control, then the deeper was my excitement and the more inspired I became in the techniques i used to torment her.
One of the things she hated/loved most was the sea-chest that stood at the end of my bed in my tiny bedroom in my apartment. I no longer have the original chest (though I have something very similar). It remained behind in England when I left. It stood about two and a half feet tall, by about three feet long. it was built of heavy wood and was bound around its length and breadth with strips of old ornamental iron. It was at least a couple of hundred years old and was a strong as a rock. I'd modified it by screwing steel rings into each corner at top and bottom, and by passing velcro strips through each ring I had a perfectly good platform to which I could bind her.
With Selene I never really developed my taste for blood-play (as the practice of cutting is called in the BDSM communities) in the way that I have with Sabrina. It wasn't that such things were 'out of bounds' or covered by a safe-word. I was so obsessed with breath-play (erotic asphyxia), with the utter joy of being in her body as I choked her repeatedly, of feeling the helplessness with which she drove against me in response, that almost nothing else was of interest to me. Nothing else, except the whip and the crop.
I'd bind her to the lid of the chest, in ways which were as painful for her as possible. And then I'd leave her in that position for as long as I could bear to delay what I intended to do (usually no more than fifteen or twenty minutes). And then I'd return and begin by beating her breasts, usually with just the tips of the Cat O' Nine's braids. Very, very few people appreciate how painful light strokes repeated many times can become, especially in sensitive areas. When she began to sob with hate and rage, and horror at the ways her thighs moved, her hips pushed up and forward, at how wet she had become (I'd take that wetness on my hand and make her taste it) I'd move on to the crop.
With which I'd beat the mound of her vagina. Over and over and over again. Never very hard, because brute force is absolutely not necessary to cause the most exquisite pain, watching as she raged and jerked and moaned. When she was helpless and incoherent and stoned out of her mind on endorphins I'd let her up and make her stand in front of the mirror. And then with the butt of the whip or the crop I'd fuck her, while she watched. I'd make her dance on it, a leather thong wrapped around her throat and my left wrist so I could twist it tighter, and tighter. While she watched, and struggled hopelessly to breathe and her body betrayed her endlessly. Watched what it was she actually and truly wanted to happen as it happened. Made her watch while her meat, the flesh of her, danced and raved and begged.
And at the critical moment she was effaced, made not to be-there-anymore in the very act of seeing herself as she wanted to be. Which would have been just what she wanted, had I not made her say "Thank you". Had I not asked her "Is that you? Is that you?" And to her utter and absolute horror she always said "Yes".
I know something about effacement, about absence; and about presence. I doubt very much if Ms. Zimmerman would recognise any of those qualities of human experience if they got up together and bit her in the ass. Twice. But then, neither would very many others, and neither she nor they are to be blamed for that. But Ms. Zimmerman is neither as unique, nor as beautiful, as she thinks she is, nor as fascinating in her craving for effacement as some others.
But she certanly has potential. And with only a little luck she'll meet someone both willing and able to pull her face from the bones beneath it and feed it to her by hand. And make her thank him for forcing her to eat it. And in all sincerity, I wish her that little bit of luck.
But I'll say this to her, and to Dharmagrl also: be careful what you awaken, lest you be unable to make it sleep again. We all have our Demons, and all of them are real. But not all of us are prepared to live with them once they are awake, and raging.
Be careful what you awaken, lest you be unable to make it sleep again.
Dylan Zimmerman recently wrote an article to whichich I responded a couple of times. Her original article and my responses can be found here. (Link)
The comment in Ms Z's aricle I want to respond to is found at its end, its very last lines. They read "But I have to write I have to write I have to write I have to write. I don't have anything else. I have no face, no voice, no accent or eyes. "I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself".
The line she quotes is from Plath's 'Tulips' (an interesting exercise in disguising self-pity as resignation - she was a very "stupid pupil" indeed, was Ms. Plath) and the phrase that caught my attention is 'I have wanted to efface myself'. I know something about effacement - because I've made it happen, more than once. It's easy. All you need is a whip (or in the particular instance I'll relate shortly, a riding crop) and a mirror. If you read Dylan's article you'll see I also became involved in a sub (that's a pun, by the way) conversation with Dharmagrl. Her questions, along with Dylan's comment, inspired this... narration-meditation.
One more thing before I get to the meat (as it were) of what I want to talk about, Dear Reader. I've been a contributor to JU for quite awhile now, and during that time I've been told that my life and my desires are a fiction or a pose or both. That I and my wife are actually one person with two accounts; that what I've occasionally revealed about my sexual nature is simply the equivalent of a desire to appear in a black crepe-paper cape and plastic vampire fangs and shout 'BOO!".
Those who read are at liberty to believe or not, as they choose. But don't take up space here with comments that are no more, in effect, than variations on "I don't believe you and I think you are sick.". I'll simply delete them.
And now, Dear Reader, to borrow a phrase from my darling wife... Onward, through the fog.
ef·face, ef·faced, ef·fac·ing, ef·fac·es:
To rub or wipe out; erase.
To make indistinct as if by rubbing
To make (oneself) inconspicuous; withdraw (oneself) modestly or shyly.
In other words, to make something disappear. The problem is that most people think that disappearing means going away, so that effacing a thing is to make it invisible; occasionally, the more sophisticated will realise that being invisible doesn't necessarily render it not-present. So then, effacement becomes making something not-to-be-here-anymore.
I can make you 'not-to-be-here-anymore' while making you visible to yourself, in a mirror, in such a way that it becomes impossible for you to deny the reality of what you see while simultaneously making it impossible for you to accept what you see as you. I can make you disappear by making you visible, and compelling you to see.
At one time I had a lover, whom we'll call Selene (which is also a pun). She's smart enough to recognise the nature of the pun, and private enough to appreciate not being exposed here. It would mortify her to have this repeated in a public forum in a way which might identify her.
We met online and talked for six months before our first face-to-face meeting. She made that stipulation because, in her experience (and mine), virtual relationships are just that - virtual - without sufficient substance to bear any kind of reality other than those which are purely and completely imaginary. Actually, she could have demanded a year and I would have waited. I was determined to meet her. When we finally met we discovered that what had begun as a primarily intellectual discussion, and then a heatedly addictive series of shared fantasies explored via phone and cyber-sex, actually had substance enough to sustain a relationship that lasted two and a half years.
We generally met for long weekends once every two or three weeks, usually at my apartment. And the rest of the time we communicated via the net, and at least once every evening we played long, complicated 'phone-sex' games that were actually exercises in psychological manipulation and sexual control. But at the core of everything was what we called 'the moment', which occurred in its most extreme forms (and could last hours) when we met face-to-face together.
The 'moment'. I see now, as I could not see then, blinded as I was by my utter lust for her, that 'the moment' was merely one more of those clever devices that allows a sexual submissive to manipulate a sexual dominant into giving her what she wants, when she wants - while the dominant, smugly and stupidly, believes himself to be in total control. I'm older and wiser now, and things would follow a rather different path if I were to go through a similar experience again. But I digress.
No matter the fact that, at the time, I couldn't see the uses to which she put our 'moments' they were instances in which tremendous sexual and psycho-sexual energy was summoned and released between us. And to Selene they could be and often were moments (that word, again) of extreme sexual terror. We played regularly with sexual asphyxia, games in which I controlled her breathing so that at the moment of her most extreme sexual excitement her brain was so starved of oxygen that she would hallucinate vividly - and had the perfect justification for the animal abandon, the utter wantonness (she always liked the words wanton and wantonness) of her flesh, how it moved.
That was something I soon discovered about her. She couldn't be present, to witness the things she did, and more importantly, to acknowledge them as things she wanted to do. And having realised that this was so, it became my determination to find ways in which to force her to be there, to see, to acknowledge in herself, and to confess. She hated me for making her make her confession, and when she hated me worst and hardest was my own preferred moment for my orgasm. The more she hated me, the harder she fought, the more useless her struggles were because defeated by desires I'd roused and made impossible for her to control, then the deeper was my excitement and the more inspired I became in the techniques i used to torment her.
One of the things she hated/loved most was the sea-chest that stood at the end of my bed in my tiny bedroom in my apartment. I no longer have the original chest (though I have something very similar). It remained behind in England when I left. It stood about two and a half feet tall, by about three feet long. it was built of heavy wood and was bound around its length and breadth with strips of old ornamental iron. It was at least a couple of hundred years old and was a strong as a rock. I'd modified it by screwing steel rings into each corner at top and bottom, and by passing velcro strips through each ring I had a perfectly good platform to which I could bind her.
With Selene I never really developed my taste for blood-play (as the practice of cutting is called in the BDSM communities) in the way that I have with Sabrina. It wasn't that such things were 'out of bounds' or covered by a safe-word. I was so obsessed with breath-play (erotic asphyxia), with the utter joy of being in her body as I choked her repeatedly, of feeling the helplessness with which she drove against me in response, that almost nothing else was of interest to me. Nothing else, except the whip and the crop.
I'd bind her to the lid of the chest, in ways which were as painful for her as possible. And then I'd leave her in that position for as long as I could bear to delay what I intended to do (usually no more than fifteen or twenty minutes). And then I'd return and begin by beating her breasts, usually with just the tips of the Cat O' Nine's braids. Very, very few people appreciate how painful light strokes repeated many times can become, especially in sensitive areas. When she began to sob with hate and rage, and horror at the ways her thighs moved, her hips pushed up and forward, at how wet she had become (I'd take that wetness on my hand and make her taste it) I'd move on to the crop.
With which I'd beat the mound of her vagina. Over and over and over again. Never very hard, because brute force is absolutely not necessary to cause the most exquisite pain, watching as she raged and jerked and moaned. When she was helpless and incoherent and stoned out of her mind on endorphins I'd let her up and make her stand in front of the mirror. And then with the butt of the whip or the crop I'd fuck her, while she watched. I'd make her dance on it, a leather thong wrapped around her throat and my left wrist so I could twist it tighter, and tighter. While she watched, and struggled hopelessly to breathe and her body betrayed her endlessly. Watched what it was she actually and truly wanted to happen as it happened. Made her watch while her meat, the flesh of her, danced and raved and begged.
And at the critical moment she was effaced, made not to be-there-anymore in the very act of seeing herself as she wanted to be. Which would have been just what she wanted, had I not made her say "Thank you". Had I not asked her "Is that you? Is that you?" And to her utter and absolute horror she always said "Yes".
I know something about effacement, about absence; and about presence. I doubt very much if Ms. Zimmerman would recognise any of those qualities of human experience if they got up together and bit her in the ass. Twice. But then, neither would very many others, and neither she nor they are to be blamed for that. But Ms. Zimmerman is neither as unique, nor as beautiful, as she thinks she is, nor as fascinating in her craving for effacement as some others.
But she certanly has potential. And with only a little luck she'll meet someone both willing and able to pull her face from the bones beneath it and feed it to her by hand. And make her thank him for forcing her to eat it. And in all sincerity, I wish her that little bit of luck.
But I'll say this to her, and to Dharmagrl also: be careful what you awaken, lest you be unable to make it sleep again. We all have our Demons, and all of them are real. But not all of us are prepared to live with them once they are awake, and raging.
Be careful what you awaken, lest you be unable to make it sleep again.
)
But see, there I go applying logic again. Hope I didn't ruin anything for you...hahahaha. 