
The Tiger and the Pilgrim – Friends. (2016)
This photo was made using Kodakās 800 ISO Portra emulsion.
The higher the speed of a film, the better it is at producing photographs in low-light settings; however, the higher the speed the more visible the grain.
Itās also a film that is optimized for tungsten light sources, i.e. the color temperature of light emitted by most incandescent light bulbs.
Itās also low contrastāas a result of which this image suffers. It also doesnāt help that it was made using at the minimum a ceiling mounted overhead lighting fixture. (In other words: some of the most aesthetically unappealing light imaginable.)
But Iām here for what this depicts more than how itās depicted.
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Iāve been aware of the Folsom Street Fair since well before I started this blog. However, my conception of it has been off.
Basically, I had understood it as Pride only for leather and BDSM folks. It seems itās quite a bit more than a celebratory parade. Iām not entirely clear on the rules governing it but it does seem to be closer to an open air sex party.
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A while back adult content creator and performer Chelsea Poe (of whom and of whose work I am a tremendous fan) posted several images of her being dominated by Eden Alexander publicly at the Folsom Street Fair.
As kids these days are fond of saying: #AllTheFeels
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The images of Ms. Poe tied to a tree reminded me of the above photo. In both cases a woman is physically restrained in a public space and she has consented to having her boundaries tested.
Iāll admit that itās a tenuous connection. But itās something I keep coming back to and I think Iāve finally figured out how to articulate something about it but itās going to involve rather a good bit of TMI.
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Give or take: I began masturbating when I was eight.
It wasnāt like I was horny. In factāit was only vaguely tied up with anything sexual. It was more curiosity.
With hindsight, I realize that this curiosity was informed as a result of being molested when I was six. I didnāt understand the contradiction of the extreme interest on the part of my abuser with the parts of my body that I was otherwise told over and over and again and again were sinfully unclean.
Quite by accident, I discovered that by touching myself in very particular ways (read: humping my pillow), I could trigger this warm and fuzzy tingling sensation. Iād hump, feel myself start to climax, pause, ride the wave of the sensation and as it ebbed Iād go right back to humping my pillow, chasing the next endorphin rush. Sessions usual involved 4 to 7 orgasms.
I knew instinctively that because what I was doing involved the parts between my thighs, that it was something about which I shouldnāt ever tell anyone.
I think I figured out what I was doing was termed masturbation when I was eleven. My instinct not to tell anyone about it made a lot more senseā¦
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Two things happened more or less simultaneously. Puberty struck and the way I masturbated shifted. Whereas previously, I would have spent an hour or so more or less continually stimulating myself with intermittent pauses; I started to experience more forceful orgasms. Like before I would feel the sense of release building, I would feel myself pass the rubicon and then my body would lock up. I would orgasm and then my intimate parts would be painfully sensitive.
I still needed the same endorphin rush but it took me sometimes as long as a half an hour before I could begin again.
The second thing that happened was that my peers and I were informed that masturbation was a mortal sin. It was presented in the following fashion. Girls were generally not interested in it and those who were didnāt because they werenāt gross floozies. Boys who were good Xtians didnāt and boys who werenāt strong Xtians might but they should repent and sin no more.
We were told that if we were freaks who experienced urges that we should pray that God removes the impure thoughts and desires from our hearts.
For the better part of a year, every time I felt the need to get myself off. I would pray. But unlike masturbationāwhich always felt like a prayer and an answer to that prayer; my actual prayers to God, never went any higher than the ceiling.
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I feel itās also important to note that although I conceptualized masturbation as sexual behavior, it was all but devoid of causal connection. It was something I did for the dopamine hit to my system.
It didnāt shift to being sexual until I was in my late teens.
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There was this episode the reboot of The Outer Limits in the mid-90s staring Alyssa Milano. I remember being so aroused that it physically hurt.
The next day while I was in the showerāthe only place I had any privacyāI masturbated but as I passed the point of no return, I kept seeing flashbacks to the show from the previous night and instead of stopping I climaxed once and without any pause came again after roughly three minutes.
It was a game changer.
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I have no idea what prerequisites have to be satisfied for me to have multiple orgasms while masturbating. Iāve managed it roughly a dozen timesāeach time seemingly isolated from the rest.
I have substantially better luck with partners.
I think part of it is comparable to solving a chess problem vs figuring out how to get out of check without fucking yourself when you are playing against an actual opponent. In the first case, you control both the moves and countermoves in advance; in the second, you only have a vantage to the moves you make. Someone can make a move that surprises or confounds you.
A better analogy may be found contained within the observation that it is impossible to tickle yourself.
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What Iāve discovered with a partner is that my experience of sexual pleasure is analogous to a riverāthe water level rises and falls depending upon other factors.
If the water overflows, thereās a levee to safely channel the excess. However, any overflow into the levee gets processed by my body as a pain sensation.
Even when itās happening to me, I wouldnāt label it pain. Itās merely an amplification of sensitivity to a point that although I crave the sensation, my body actively revolts and recoils from continued stimulation.
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The act of refusing to cater to this instinctive recoil from continued stimulation in the face of heightened sensitivity is called post-orgasm torture.
There are an increasing number of videos out there for it. As a lesbian, Iām very put off by anything Iāve ever seen involving femme folk subjected to post-orgasm torture. (Another reason I am into the above photoāit seems post-orgasm torture-y but in a way that is an intense as it is consensual.)
I end up watching a fair amount of content featuring post-orgasm torture involving masc. folks. (For example: this oneāalthough vertically oriented video is never acceptableāis pretty run of the mill; this one is over-long, poorly edited and the technique is a little galling in itās heteronormativityāalso, I think the boy, contrary to the on-screen count, only orgasms twice, I think the rest are just leaks despite his concerted efforts at avoiding ejaculation. His response when he does actually finish and the way he responds to continued stimulation is one of the best documents of a bodyās response to post-orgasm torture that I have ever seen.)
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What does all this have to do with the initial photo? Well, given the way her back is arched and the way the vibrator is pressed vacuum seal tight against her genitaliaāitās probably understandable how Iād make the leap to this as a depiction of post orgasm torture.
The fact that she also appears to be the singular focus of a group of people is also appealing. (As someone who is over-stimulated any time there are more than four people in a room at a time, the social over-stimulation combined with physical over-stimulation is also something I would like to explore.)
The Chelsea Poe images make me curious as to whether a scenario like the image above might be possible at the Folsom Street Fair. The thought of being publicly subjected to post-orgasm torture while very publicly restrained is a prospect that Iām into. As long as I was blindfolded and trusted my dom to not let obviously creepy people touch me, I would be into a modicum of crowd participation.
And I think thatās the ultimately realization that engaging with this photo over the span of several years has made me realize that itās not that Iām not into BDSM/kink, itās that my relationship with it is very specific. I donāt want to be humiliated. Being humiliated is a massive turn off for me. I also donāt get the pain as pleasure exchange; mine has more to do with pushing the limits of pleasure so they pass through pain and back into pleasure again.