Submissive Training: Giving Good Head

Giving good oral sex is often an assumed part of any male-led D/s relationship. Also, it can be fun and add variety to your sex life.

If, like me, you have a ridiculously active gag reflex, or you hate the smell/taste of cock and balls, or you don't like the taste of semen..... welcome to the club! On the other hand, there are tips you can use that will help you give better head to your Dom or Master.

For Men:

• Shave, shave shave. No one wants to put their mouth on hairy balls.
• Shower before oral sex so you feel and smell clean
• Keep a damp towel nearby in case you start to sweat during the activity, which will make you smell bad
• Don't eat salty or bitter foods beforehand, since they can make semen taste stronger.
• Stay away from coffee (ewwww taste) or other dehydrating drinks (like soda). Drink lots of water and stay hydrated. This improves the taste of the semen a bit.
• Keep her informed of where you are in The Process. When mouths get sore and lips start to ache, it can be terrible to keep going with no idea if we are 30 seconds from takeoff, or 2 minutes, or 5 minutes, or 10 minutes. We need to know where you are so we can do a quick pain/benefit analysis and know whether to give up, take a break, or suck it up and keep going despite the pain.
• If your submissive has trouble with deepthroating or swallowing, and this is something you want, consider training her gradually to build up resistance.

For Subs and Slaves:

• Get comfortable. Put a pillow under your knees, get situated, and make sure you won't lose blood flow to your limbs.
• Have a bottle of water and some chapstick handy for when you need to take a small break.
• Try covering his cock with something that tastes good (I use cold strawberry frosting in a can) to block out unpleasant tastes
• If pre-cum makes you gag (it does me), keep a towel or t-shirt with you so you can wipe him off before starting again
• Suck on a piece of hard candy like a Jolly Rancher or Lifesaver to keep the saliva coming and to coat your throat
• Use Chloraseptic Throat Spray to numb the back of your throat (but put a condom on him, or you'll also numb his cock!)
• When your mouth gets too tired, alternate between kissing, licking, and massaging with your hand to give yourself a break
• Sip water or a flavored drink right after he ejaculates if you don't like the taste of semen

I know several subs who love pleasuring their Masters in this way--and of course, the men love to receive it! Giving good blow jobs to someone you love, trust, and serve can be a completely freeing exercise in submission.

Basic Online Safety for Kinksters

Today, I went through all my online profiles and removed identifying information and photos of myself. Whether you have an account with a blog, Fetlife, Facebook, Twitter, CollarMe, or any other of the many kinky sites out there, I'm sure you have some info that you don't want your mother or your boss to see. Are you being safe in your online explorations?

There are some kinksters who can openly put up photos of themselves, their names, and information about their lives. These are often kinksters who have already "come out" to their friends or family, are visibly active in their local BDSM community, or are full-time slaves who do not work out of the home. For them, that's great.

For the rest of us, basic safety on the internet is needed.

• No photos of your face (or the rest of your body that could be identifiable)


• No using your full name or giving out your location, address, or workplace


• No using identifiable information about yourself, including pets, hobbies, and activities.


• Don't link your vanilla profiles to your kinky ones (i.e. Facebook with Fetlife). Use a different email and password for all your kinky profiles than you use for your vanilla ones.

Protect yourself!

Of course, I understand you want to share your kinky pictures, or even just show a nonsexual picture of yourself on Fetlife or CollarMe, so people can see what you look like. I've done the same myself. However, even a non-kinky photo of you on a Fetlife profile can let an angry ex or coworker know who you are. You don't want to explain your BDSM profile to your boss, do you? Believe me, it's happened.

Sometimes, family members find blogs, like what happened to Lexi. Even if your family does not know about your kinky lifestyle, you can bet your mother will still recognize those photos of you with your head covered and your arms bound, or your writing style, or your age and location. It doesn't take too much to put 2 and 2 together. And, sadly, I know of many cases where an ex-spouse brought to court their partner's "alternative lifestyle" to prove they are unfit to raise children and get sole custody. Unless you want your juicy sex-life details spilled at your next family reunion, anonymously emailed to your boss, or dragged into court, you need to protect your information.

I know that some BDSM bloggers, like Clarisse Thorn, advocate an eventual move to where kinkiness is no longer something we hide behind with psuedonyms and stock photos (I love my stock photo, by the way). However, even Clarisse writes under a psuedonym for now. I hate lying, so I generally don't put any false information about myself on the web (like some kinksters who say they're from Alaska or Antartica to keep their locations secret) and if I'm honest, I can admit that I prefer to look at profiles with photos. A guy on Fetlife once accused me of being a "fake" because I "didn't even have the courage to show [my] face," so I put up several pics. I'm not ashamed of who I am, but blogs like GrayLily and Lexi's make me cautious. With all the myths about BDSM out there, being involved in this lifestyle could get you fired or disinherited or make you lose custody of your children.

Please, unless you really have nothing to lose, be careful online.

Cleaning my way into submission

This morning, I was awake early (bad dreams). I couldn't go back to sleep, even after cuddling with the purring cat. I finally started browsing through Submissive Guide's list of Best Submissive Blogs. It provided hours of entertainment, lots of laughter and learning and leaving comments, but it also made me think.

My Dom has commented before that I spend more time online reading, researching, and writing about submission than actually doing it. I'd like to think that this is because I'm something of a scholar (nerd, if you will), but the truth is it's also because I'm afraid of submitting. While growing up, my family life was something like this: and nothing at all like this:

The official idea in my family was that men and women are equal, but the practice was something very different. When my mom said, "Women are equal" she meant "women are better." Although my parents made decisions about parenting and finances together, my dad was laid back and usually happy to do whatever my more forceful mother thought was best. The idea in our house, reinforced through attitudes and games where men and women were always on opposite teams, was that men were useful for cooking, cleaning, ironing, giving foot massages, and waiting on you hand and foot, but were not too bright and lacked initiative without a strong woman to help them fulfil their true potential. They were also good to have around for help with childcare, fixing cars, mowing lawns, lifting heaving objects, and sending on errands to the store.

Needless to say, submission does not come easily for me.

But my Dom is right. It's easy for me to get wrapped up in the online kink community without really acting it out much in real life, especially outside the bedroom. My Dom is taking steps to correct this, as he's recently figured out some small-yet-effective ways to remind me who's boss when we're in public or I'm feeling particularly feisty, but I spend most of my day at home alone. Reading, researching, writing, blogging, commenting, and not really doing a lot of actual service around the home.

So today, I got my lazy, very tired (awake early from nightmares, remember?) butt out of the bed and did some housework. Not all of it, but some. I put on The Little Mermaid: The Musical soundtrack (the one from the new Broadway musical, which rocks out even more than the movie version) and sang and cleaned. The dishes went in to the new dishwasher we recently had installed (side note: after repeated requests to rinse the dishes before he puts them in the sink, my Dom never remembers to do it, and when it comes time to put them in the washer, they are caked with food and goop, completely voiding the idea of not doing dishes by hand behind the washing machine), I cleared away some things in the bathroom and living room, and rinsed the table and countertops.

We're trying to sell the house, so a month ago we went through the entire house and made it insanely neat. I mean, closets, garage, cabinets, drawers, you name it. It either got boxed up, given away, or thrown out. And it was pretty easy to keep it neat, since I'm at home not making a huge mess and we had to worry about prospective buyers coming over at any time. But now, the summer wanes on, and no buyers are coming, so we're losing the urgency of constant spotlessness. It's starting to get some of its old clutter back, and I hate that.

Yesterday, we didn't get to play or do any dominating (pout pout) and today we have a party to go to. Speaking of which, I guess I should go cook something, too. Sigh.

So, I tried it. I tried to clean, keep the house neat, although he hasn't told me that he wants me to be in charge of this or to make it an aspect of my submission. For me, it's just something simple that I don't really want to do, and doing it helps me grow both in self-discipline and selflessness. Which is what submission is really about.

Submissive Training: Domestic Goddess

Want a great idea for how to impress your Dominant or a neat assignment for your slave? This "Domestic Goddess" idea that I got from submissive blogger A Subtle Slavegirl will make you eat healthier, avoid wasting resources, make you learn to cook better and more creatively, and save you money!

Subtle Slavegirl's genius idea was to give herself 30 days and spend no more than $100 on food. That included eating out as well as shopping for at-home meals.

If you want to do this, it can be a great step in submissive training to help you focus either on financial management or culinary skills (or both). It can be challenging, but here's the way it worked for Subtle Slavegirl.

1. Her Master made a list of all the food in the house. That's right, all of it. What they had, how much there was, everything.


2. Every day, she cooked both of them three meals, using ingredients they already had at home. If she absolutely had to go out and buy something, she kept track of the exact cost on a spreadsheet and subtracted it from the total $100 she had to spend.


3. She kept a weblog of the meals she ate, including pictures and some prep instructions, as well as how much each meal cost.


4. At the end of 30 days, they had saved several hundred dollars from not going out to the grocery store to buy things for meals when they had ingredients for other meals instead. She used the money to buy something they wanted.

I enjoyed reading Subtle Slave's "domestic goddess" routine and thought it was worth sharing. Could you and your family eat off the food you have in the house already for a full month?

Aftercare for Low Blood Sugar or Shock

Aftercare is something many subs, and some tops, need after a scene. A scene can really drain you, physically and emotionally. You can be dehydrated, zoned, in subspace (which is like being high or drunk for me), unable to speak, or just emotionally zapped.

Don't believe it? Trust me. ;)

I've written about some basic aftercare needs on this blog before, including water, rest, warm blankets or towels, and lots of cuddling to reassure needy, insecure feelings. Heck, I've even written about some of our (extremely funny) aftercare mistakes when we were new at all this.

Aftercare is important because both partners can be physically drained after a scene. If there is blood, some Neosporin and clean towels are needed, and if there is stinging skin, a gentle massage or some Aloe Vera. You may also need emotional aftercare, especially if your sub has become a shivering, shaking wreck, is crying, or is so far into happy-fuzzy-subspace land that she can't talk.

My Dom is always good to ask me after a scene if I need water, since the heightened heart rate, extreme emotions, and sweating tussels can leave us both parched. Problem is, he normally asks me right after a scene, when I am still spaced out and want to do nothing more than burrow into my pillow and fall into a long, deep, exhausted, healing sleep. In those cases, I'll often just shake my head and try to go to sleep, not even realizing I'm dehydrated and not really caring if I do.

Sometimes, scenes can actually end up with a partner--usually the bottom--who is in something like shock. Yes, it's possible to die from untreated shock. That's why it's good to play with some extra things beside you BEFORE you start the scene, so you don't have to make a panicked trip to the store with a hyperventilating sub left gasping alone in the bedroom.

Subs after a really intense scene can find it hard to talk. (I do.) So you should know your partner enough to be able to tell when she is dehydrated (listen for sticky, dry sounds when they move their mouth) or dealing with depleted blood sugar.

According to the article Diabetes Mellitus: Its Impact Upon the BDSM Lifestyle, temporarily low blood sugar can occur after really intense physical exertion. A sub with this problem will have cold, clammy skin, bad pallor, dizziness, and eratic behavior. In this case, you want to have these things easily accessible to you:

• orange juice or other juice


• soda


• candy (not chocolate; it takes too long for the body to absorb)

If your partner seems to be going into shock, it could be one of two things: insufficient blood flow to organs and tissue after an emotional or physical trauma. Especially if you are playing with triggers, mild or severe shock is a possibility in BDSM edge play. If your partner has clammy skin, fast but weak pulse, sweating, and rapid, shallowing breathing, she could be going into shock. In this case, you need to give immediate aftercare, give water, elevate the feet, wrap her with warm blankets or towels, and call a doctor or 911.

It's unlikely that your play will elevate into life-threatening shock, but BDSM has that potential. It's best to be prepared. For less serious issues, such as dehydration, mild shock, mild hyperventaliation, or a hazy, dream-like state, you can treat these at home with cool water, warm blankets, soft music, gentle cuddling, tender ministrations, and speaking in a gentle, soothing voice.

Honestly, I've never gone into shock or hyperventilation, but I've needed aftercare. I love the feeling of being in subspace; it's a very happy and hazy place for me. However, my Dom understands that in that state, I can't talk much and I won't be able to safeword or ask for things I need, like water or cuddles. I can nod or shake my head, so he goes by that. He covers me gently with a blanket, curls me up next to him, and holds me, stroking my hair and murmuring quietly to me. For me, it's a wonderful way to come out of a scene and drift into sleep.