Amusing things I did this past weekend…

Well, in the more vanilla portion of my weekend, I looked at lots of houses. Some of them were cute, but small. I like old houses, but a lot of them have dinky little rooms.

I looked at one house that was pretty from the outside, and large, with tall ceilings. It had big rooms, but unfortunately those rooms looked like the Parisian rioters had come through them. Actually, it looked like Parisian rioters had come in, installed hideous fake wood paneling, rioted, and then left. I could have dealt with holes in the walls and shredded carpet. But fake paneling? Save me.

When Max and my kink-friendly agent and I go look at houses, we immediately go down into the basement and look up. Good ceiling height? Okay, let’s go see the rest of the house. Are we banging our heads? Screw it, we don’t care about the Pergo or the patio or the jetted tub, we’re outa here. I’m sure any normal house-buyer would think we were very, very strange.

Sunday I hung out with Roman at Max’s bondage class, and then a bunch of us went to dinner before coming back for the bondage party. I had a date to teach Griffin how to do a cutting on Liss; meaning, how to take a scalpel and do a light, decorative incision on her skin. Yeah, it’s kinda painful. But not as much as you might think.

It's tough to practice a skill like cutting before you get to the actual scene. I’m not a big proponent of having people rehearse on objects like, say, tomatoes. I just don’t see the point unless you’re trying to hone your purely artistic skills, as opposed to your technical ones. People’s skin and the skin of a tomato – I just don’t feel like they’re that similar. I don’t know, do medical people practice on fruits and vegetables? (Eddie, wanna field this one?)

So Griffin had not handled a scalpel before. And it was also to be Liss’s first cutting. A double-cherry situation, how charming. Now, I’ve seen Liss do some extreme stuff as a bottom, but still, cutting can be intense. So I took the basic precaution of having Liss lie down for the scene. That’s always best, because that way, if someone passes out, hey, they can’t fall down.

I know Griffin does needle-play, so I was pretty sure he’d be fine. But just in case, I asked him, “You don’t faint at the sight of blood, do you?”
He grinned. “Not other people's.”

Well, all righty then. So after having some “materials, safety and technique” discussion with him, I took the blade and did one stroke on the ever-intrepid Liss myself. Not big, maybe two inches long. It elicited a small breathy noise from Liss and a pleased “ooooo” sound from Griffin.

First things first. “Liss, how are you feeling?”

“I’m fine.”

She looked and sounded fine, too, so that was cool. I talked to Griffin a little more about what we were doing. When you cut, you don’t see anything for a few seconds, and then a thin red line suddenly appears. So cutting is most often a slow-paced, contemplative scene. (Yeah, yeah – some of us know a few people for whom it is something different. But let’s not frighten the other kids too much, all right?) You cut, you pause and wait and look at what you've got, and then you cut the next stroke.

Gauging how much pressure to put into the stroke is the key to safe cutting, and that’s a thing that’s hard to communicate verbally. Someone has to be sensitive enough to feel the skin responding to the blade as they go, and instantly make the tiny adjustment to go a little lighter, or a little more firmly. Lighter is always better, though. I always tell people: you can go back and recut, if it’s too light. If it’s too deep, though, that’s a problem less easily solved.

So I showed Griffin how to hold the scalpel – like a pencil – and said "Okay, here we go".

Watching someone open up skin for the first time is a kick. I vividly recall my first cutting, with a tall, green-eyed dyke standing behind me, coaching me like I was coaching Griffin. I remember being nervous, but tremendously excited. Griffin was just the same - later he remarked to me, “There’s all this excitement in your body, and you have to be careful not to let too much of it flow into your hand.”

The end result: he did a very good job – I think he’s got a knack for it. And Liss did very well, too. I’m not sure if she got a buzz off it or not, but she’ll have a pretty little design on her back to show for it. I do like teaching people new ways to express their kink.