shoot aftercare

Adele Haze has picked up on my post last week about the ups and downs I experience during and after a shoot, and her response has reassured me that I'm not alone.

It's easy sometimes to slip into the habit of presenting an ideal view of my spanking relationships on this blog. I mean, you guys don't want to hear about the bad stuff, right? You want to hear about the spanking. And if I don't have any exciting scenes to relate, I feel like I should find other spanking-related things to talk about.

But Adele's post, and your comments, have encouraged me to continue to talk honestly. So I'll tell you how my evening went after the shoot last Wednesday.

Tom arrived at mine while I was writing the last paragraph of my entry. I very nearly ended the post by mentioning that I wasn't sure how to communicate to him what I needed, but that I'd just shown him what I'd written, and that hopefully that would be enough.

It was a good start. After my earlier fragility I was kind of hyper; we talked a while and drank tea before he initiated a scene. I went over his knee compliantly, although I was still a little manic and inclined to be smart-mouthed, which didn't really help me get into a submissive mindset.

The spanking hurt. And he was doing it really gently - I could tell. But it hurt, and I whimpered and whinged my way through the hurt, and then it kept on hurting. He even slowed down and started rubbing and stroking my bottom between each smack, which is normally guaranteed to get me writhing in pleasure, but the strokes were a blessed relief between what was, frankly, painful, and not in an interesting way.

I endured it, but it wasn't much fun for either of us. I think he tried a hairbrush on me next, and I complained about that so much he almost stopped the scene. Which would have been fair enough, because frankly I wasn't in any frame of mind to be truly submissive. I wanted physical sensation but I didn't want anything challenging. I wanted it to be about me. To be about what I wanted. Which is the opposite of what Tom expects of me during a scene.

Eventually we found an implement that suited my mood, and I got a very yummy tawsing, although Tom said afterward that it wasn't really working for him. When we talked it over we came to two conclusions.

Firstly, a shoot is a physical and emotional rollercoaster. Whatever it is that alchemically translates pain into pleasure for me - dopamine, endorphines, adrenaline, some other hormone, I don't know - it peaks sharply during a shoot and dips down low afterwards. The up and the down; the euphoria and the crash afterwards. We're all familiar with it. What I hadn't quite realised was that after you've already experienced this process once during a day, triggering it a second time is much, much harder. Once I've got high off the pain, come down, had my crash, then I can't start the whole process all over again a few hours later and expect my body to respond the way it did first time round. I think I might need to sleep inbetween to reset my body's balance.

Playing after a shoot is not going to scratch my masochistic itch because the itch isn't there any more. I'm responding to the memory of the itch, the emotional echo of it. My mind is stuck in the past, and I want to re-enact the euphoria of the shoot with my lover, but my body is in the present and just wants an easy ride.

Secondly, however much I want to play, I'm very rarely in a fit state to submit after a shoot. I want to re-create the dynamic I experienced during the shoot. I don't want to be responsive and flexible and attentive to my Dom's wants. My body is craving a very specific thing, and that's not the point of submission at all. Unless I can focus on my Dom's wants and be not just obedient, but genuinely responsive - unless I can take pleasure from following his lead regardless of my own preferences - I should not be trying to submit, and I shouldn't be trying to scene with my Doms if I'm not able to submit. If I'm in a self-indulgent, fussy place, where only one particular style of play will give me pleasure, it's foolish (and dishonest) to start calling anyone Sir that evening.

So, as Adele has already concluded, a scene is not the correct response to the evening after a shoot, no matter how kinky and giddy I'm feeling. And demanding submission of myself when I'm that drained and my body is that messed up is just silly. Subs and spanking models need aftercare after shoots just as much as we do after private play sessions.

Hopefully I'll remember this next time I have a shoot. Snuggles are the way forward ... and save further play til I've had some sleep.