WITNESS (guest post from @_MastersEye)

Who here, watches porn?

Hands up?

Yes I see you.

Me?

No not really, not ever really, apart from that period when I first encountered fetlife with my ex.  That opened my world right up.  I saw things I had never, ever seen before.

Women being whipped, men in tutus with barbed wire wound around their legs, revelling in the blood, people in latex, strung out on racks lying under funnels that directed the gushes of the people above them into their mouths.

Debauched, energised, febrile at times, my body responded in spite of my mind.  I got wet.  It was perplexing.  After all hadn’t Dworkin written that all penetrative sex was rape, just that sometimes your rapist brought a bottle of wine with them?

Wasn’t I a good feminist?

Why then did I respond to women being apparently degraded, flogged and humiliated, pounded until their eyes rolled in their heads in ecstasy?

Wasn’t I a good wife?

Why then, was I interested in watching others having sex and imagining myself in their place, both the watched and the watcher?

The answers to these questions have come to me slowly, sometimes painfully, over the last 6 years

From this vantage point I see that I have found a way to integrate my sexuality with my self-hood  and now can accommodate it into my philosophy of life but for a while it was a rocky road.  I didn’t recognise myself, and I wondered how I looked through other’s eyes now that I knew these secret passions lived inside me.  I wondered if I could still be the me I knew, and the answer to that is no, I had to become more.  To finally step into the fullness of me with the darkness I sought always to hide, worn as a cloak to warm me.  To acknowledge the complexities of my desire and to sit comfortably with them at last.

When I found myself invited to witness a scene between BibulousOne and MistressElita I was comfortable with my desire to watch and confident of my ability to bear witness at an event that most are not privileged to see.  As I waited to be admitted I scanned the faces of those I was with and saw apprehension on some.  It was easy to remember my own unease, my own concern about how what I was about to witness would affect me.  In the past my question would have been “was this going to be too much for me?  Would it evoke feelings that would make it impossible for me to remain in the room?”

This time it was, “how can I best do justice to this privileged position?”

We entered the suite and chatted over champagne and crisps. There was a frisson in the air right from the start for me but as is always the case with a scene there were practicalities to be sorted out.  When I was a newbie I found these things hard to imagine, how could you take care of where coats were to be kept when you had a flogging to watch?  Now I realise that if you don’t they can spoil the moment by being in the wrong place, at the wrong time.  We were a good audience.  We took care of practicalities and each other and that left B1 and Elita the space they needed to connect and begin.

As with any ritual, special clothing allow those in it to enter a mindspace that is different to the ordinary.  B1 took off his shoes and socks, and unbuttoned his shirt.  It sat, oddly rakish to start but it made perfect sense  as Elita entered,  striding across the room, her plaited hair swinging as she made a beeline for B1.  Pushing him against the wall and spreading his legs as she pulled his shirt apart.  It was thrilling to watch and I could see B1 catch his breath and shift from the position of our host to her prey.

She twisted his nipples as she whispered in his ear and he struggled to articulate responses to her questions.  I could see him slip, fall into his submission with the deceptive ease that well-practised dancers have. It was indeed a dance, a waltz with its own timing first a two step, then a lunge as she pushed him around the room in front of us.  Magnificent in her black underwear and high heels she released her hair as she grabbed the flogger from the table in front of us and began the process of softening his resistance, pushing him further into sensation and away from the reality of the hotel room and our eyes.  She worked the flogger across his back, the impact pulling involuntary noises from those present, some gasps at the apparent violence of the scene in front of them, others were noises of recognition tinged with envy at the expertise being displayed.

She played him remorselessly, her focus light and playful one moment, intense and painful another.  I remembered B1 mentioning once that his nipples were a direct line to his sexuality and he moaned as she gripped and pulled and twisted them until spinning him around she displayed him in the depths of his submission to us all.  This was my pivotal moment.  My mind spun, grappling to make sense of what I was feeling in the pit of my stomach.  What was this I saw on his face?  Humiliation? Shame?

No, not that, not that.

It was vulnerability, such vulnerability so proudly displayed and owned that it made me catch my breath.  Tears formed in my eyes at the veracity of that moment.  Their unbridled desire and vulnerability pulled me out of my voyeur mode and right into the moment.  I was there, right there with them and it was glorious.