AND I’VE GONE….. On subspace

She hits me again and, in an instant, I’ve gone……

Physically I’m lying over pillows on a hotel bed in San Diego and Lyra is beating me with a cane brought out in my checked baggage from the UK for this purpose. But in my head and inside my body, the surges of sensation she is causing have pushed me over the edge and I’ve descended deep into subspace.

Up to that moment I had been responding to the strokes, my body lurching forward and breath exploding out of my lungs as I desperately tried to blow away the pain. Lyra is good at this now. Firm, full-swinging strokes, landed accurately across the meat of my arse. There’s such confidence in how she uses the cane. This time it had gone further: more strokes, harder.

Or perhaps it wasn’t that at all; perhaps it was the situation: being on holiday together, the beach, the sun, the margaritas, a couple of hours scudding across Mission Bay on a Hobie Cat. Perhaps I was properly relaxed to be on holiday with her; my defences down; my need to retain a modicum of control in these situations displaced by my absolute trust in her. Perhaps these things had left me perfectly set up for that moment.

Perfectly set up to completely let go all my inhibitions and softly slip away.

I didn’t respond to the next stroke, allowing the pain to flow through me, smoothly and unimpeded, no longer a threat.

The pain had completely lost it’s ability to disturb the ocean of calm on which I floated.

Here’s how she described it in a voice message when I said I wanted to write this: “At first I thought that maybe you were emotionally paralysed, to the point of being frozen and unable to tell me that I’m hurting you for real. You were very calm and it felt to me that you were really deep into a space that I didn’t know how to access. It didn’t matter how hard I hit you, you didn’t show me any signs of pain or discomfort. It was so calm. You were beautifully calm. But it scared me at the beginning. I remember I asked if you were OK and you said Yes.”

Afterwards, we lay in each other’s arms and she asked me where I had gone. I didn’t have the words to explain it at the time. “I was in subspace” seemed inadequate. I’m still not sure I’ve captured it here.

My use of the “ocean of calm” metaphor has reminded of my first experience of subspace, caused not by being caned but by a Mistress leaving her harshest nipple clips in place after I had orgasmed. I still don’t think I can get closer to how subspace is for me than the imagery I used then.

I am a boat floating on a sea of pain that runs through my whole body. Like the sea, the pain is not constant but rises and falls with the tide and the waves. Sometimes it is hardly there at all, and I am calm, aware of her sitting quietly beside me. Sometimes it rises up, towering above me like a wave, threatening to drag me under. My body tightens, back arched with the pain, then releases with the same rolling shudder I experience during orgasm. Each time the shuddering passes through me I feel another layer of tension disappear and I sink a little deeper into the bed. She is watching me intently. She smiles. I smile back from my boat not quite sure where I am. Eventually I have shuddered so often and for so long that there is no tension left and I am floating free, disturbed only by the faintest of ripples. The pain remains but is dulled now and constant. Touching me softly, she leads me to the shore.

People experience subspace in different ways, but for me it can be a transcendental, almost mystical, experience. The kind of boundless calm that some seek through deep meditation or hallucinogenic drugs. It’s therapeutic, the deep connection between mind and body, leaving me feeling centered and strong. There’s deep connection too with the person that’s taken me to that place, a deep, loving trust that makes the extreme vulnerability of the experience seem natural and unfrightening.

Jeez. How bloody amazing.