It’s a phrase teenagers use, or they did when I was one.
“Did you go all the way?” or “Have they been all the way?” usually followed by a knowing snigger.
Nowadays, it has a different meaning for me. Nowadays it implies finding the natural end of an impact play session; the point where no more strokes are needed, where the physical and emotional ascent has finally reached the summit, and both parties have perfectly sated their need for violence.
Lyra took me all the way last week. It was a premeditated session. I’d told her in the morning I would be ready; showered, naked and vulnerable when she came back from work, and promised that there would be no topping from the bottom. Yes, I do that sometimes.
“Whatever you like, as hard as you like,” I had said. “No interference. Only the safe word if I need it.”
The afternoon passed slowly, but with the delicious sense of my body gearing up for something extreme, a gradually increasing hum of adrenaline. The previous session had been a taste of what was possible between us, and the thought of using that as the start point, rather than an end point for a session was rather terrifying.
I took delight in the preparation, tidying the bedroom, laying the implements out on the chair, adding cuffs and rope to the bed, taking a shower.
The session was a lot. Spanking, flogging, paddling. Tied up to the bedroom door then tied down to the bed, my arse raised on a pile of pillows. Sharp fingernails digging into my nipples. The unfamiliar and intense sensations of a deep pegging.
And finally the cane.
We went all the way with the cane, revelling in the violence together, pushing each other on the final pitch to the summit. I tapped out at the end. She’d been hoping I would, reaching her own limits just as I was reaching mine. We lay together for a long time afterwards, just listening to each other’s breathing.
“Where did you go?” she asked eventually.
“I was here!” I replied, but in truth I had been far from the shore on an ocean of pain, surfing the relentless waves of sensation she had been creating for me, until I finally called the safeword and rode the last wave to the beach.
Later we ate cheese and drank wine together, revelling in the intensity of the session. I’m not sure whose bloodstream had been most suffused with endorphins, but we had both found it an intensely sexual experience and used that language to describe our feelings. Once again the sense of having had an orgasm, without having had an orgasm, was palpable.
I am not the only one for whom sex and violence are identical twins.
This was last Thursday and I haven’t wanted to play since then. I didn’t notice this at first, but eventually realised that, during our weekend in Boston, I had been happy to fall into bed in the evening or go straight from waking up to breakfast in the morning. The extent to which my kinks, and the rest of my sexuality had switched took me by surprise.
I’ve found it hard even to imagine myself being spanked.
But of course this has been my life. Almost all of my life. I’ve taken an opportunity to indulge my kinky side, perhaps finding myself in the house alone as a teenager, more recently booking a short but intense session with a Dominatrix, and then packing my kinks away once more, perhaps for weeks or months, leaving them dormant until an opportunity again presents itself. I lived much of my life with my kinky sexuality packed away like this.
This session, like the ones I used to have with Elita, had been intense enough to put me back into that place.
I hope Lyra hasn’t been too disappointed in that. Now I’ve thought through this and understand it, I’ll try harder next time not to leave her stranded with half of me accidentally switched back into standby mode.