Chastity: The Process of Discovering Pleasure in Power

By Midori
An excerpt from “Wild Side Sex”

Many, many moons ago when I was just a baby femme top trying to make my first few tentative steps towards dominance, I took possession of a lover of mine for two weeks as my slave. Although I was new to running scenes, I wasn’t new to SM. Having spent a great deal of my bottom time as an unrepentant pig and demanding do-me-queen, I felt that I also had a pretty clear sense of what I wanted to do as a top in the arena of bondage and sensation play.

Then he threw me a curve ball. He wanted to engage in “chastity play.”

My response: “Huh?”

He wanted me to take control of his sexual pleasure and deny him orgasms.

“Okay”, I thought. “I don’t quite understand the motivation, but it seems clear enough in method to get started.” I figured that I was supposed to deny him orgasm and sensual genital touch for the entire two weeks of his service to me. It wasn’t any skin off my back, since I could still flog him, spank him, play with all forms of sensations, creative bondage, mummification and even golden shower play. So, I simply ignored his penis for the contracted service time. Like I said, it wasn’t any trouble for me. After all, I had no issues with taking responsibility for my own pleasures and his cock wasn’t the source of my pleasures. I love my clit and I know what a vibrator is for.

Towards the middle of the two weeks he began to complain about not getting sexual attention. I ignored his appeals as I was convinced that this was part of the chastity game to play along with. I figured that when he whined and complained about it, I was to deny his desperate plea for blue-ball release. Steeling myself to his ever-amplifying petitions, I continued to not allow him any release or pay attention to his genitals, whatsoever.

Towards the end of the two weeks he continued to complain, becoming grumpy and very disgruntled by the whole chastity ordeal. At the end we had a conversation that went something like this:

Him: “You wouldn’t touch me.” (sad look)
Me: “You wanted chastity play.” (matter-of-fact look)
Him: “Yes, but I didn’t get to come.” (pained look)
Me: “That’s what you wanted, right?” (confused look)
Him: “But when was I going to get to come?” (deeper pained look)
Me: “Why would you get to come in chastity play?” (deeper confused look)
Him: “Because there’s no fun if I didn’t get to!” (near desperate look)
Me: “Then why did you want me to deny you orgasms?” (utterly boggled look)
Him: “Because I thought it would be hot.” (incredulous look)
Me: “So, I wasn’t?” (perplexed dog with peanut butter mouth look)
Him: “No! Not after two weeks!” (definitely desperate look)
Me: “ I gave you exactly what you asked for. If it turns out that you don’t want what it is that you’re asking me for, then I have no idea how to play with you. You don’t want attention on your penis, and then you tell me that’s all you were looking for….Forget it.”

If we weren’t each so hurt and confused, we would have been rolling on the floor laughing from the dialogue the same way you are…

Needless to say, this scene was not repeated again for a very long time. In hindsight I realized that, at the time, neither of us had the capability to deconstruct the superficial aspect of the chastity scene to extract the core desire. We were also in a time and place ( pre-internet and before a plethora of SM seminars became available) where few around us could discuss and shed light upon the subtler aspects of chastity play.

Occasionally after that I would run into people, mainly men but some women, who wanted to engage in what they called “chastity play.” Upon discussion on their motivations, I would invariably discover that they simply wanted an elaborately ritualized tease and denial that to me seemed to require a paradoxically intense focus on their genitals. Their vision of chastity play didn’t appeal to my desire for deep control. But they insisted that what they describe was chastity play. This always left me feeling let down and feeling a bit put-upon, as if I were simply a blank slate of desire on which they could project their fantasies. I wasn’t sure if it was worse when I felt that they were ignoring my vision of chastity play or when they assumed how I might take pleasure from the experience.

Being the good egghead, however, I tried to wrap my mind around it, but alas, to my great disappointment, I could never reconcile their fantasy from what looked to me like selfishness.

In short, I was annoyed.

Then I met Gumby. He gave me the sort of education for a top that only the most insightful bottom can give: deep knowledge and honest perspective from the heart of the submissive. He was the first submissive in my exploration of chastity play who placed the dominant’s needs and desires at the center of the chastity play focus and not the anatomy in question. He was on loan to me from his lovely mistress/wife. I will always thank her for her generosity.

He told me about the great emotional vulnerability that a dom can create in a sub through chastity play that leads to deepening the power exchange in the relationship. At first I was skeptical. Then he showed me just how true if could be during his times of submission to me. Something clicked for me.

Fast-forward a bit….

I had the occasion to play with the earlier mentioned lover with whom I had the unsuccessful original chastity scene with. He has taken the initiative and bought a CB2000- a clear Lucite contraption that resembles a miniature South-East Asian fish trap with a padlock. I expressed interest in bringing that into our play. Remembering the original disaster, he quickly declined. He heard an audible sigh of disappointment from me. A few days later he called me back with a change of heart. “If this would make you really happy, I’m willing to try it.” Suddenly I found myself keenly interested in play with him in an entirely fresh way. I was so perked up by this that even I was surprised by my newfound attitude.

The weekend play date came around. He presented himself to me with the device already clamped on for nearly a week. He’d had this on for me, he told me. My heart leapt a bit, as if we were new lovers again- an odd feeling, but nice and refreshing at the same time. I asked him if he was really ready to commit to the boundaries that he’d agreed to. With the exception of an injury related limitation, he was utterly mine to do what I wished with. Something in his tone told me that he’s serious in a way he’s never been. I asked him again, if he was sure. He confirmed without hesitation. The key is transferred to my possession.

Over the course of that weekend, I took great delight in doing exactly what I pleased. Our negotiations were complete and finale with one limit and one consent at the very beginning. I took this to heart.

What I discovered that weekend was a great joy of very real control over a fully consenting submissive. The chastity device, when applied with clarity of intent, became the fulcrum around which my power was magnified. He was very turned on by my dominance, which would in turn make him hard, and then extremely uncomfortable. That cycle would emphasize his state of submission even more in his head. His arousal did not come from and genital contact, but from simply watching me take my own pleasure from him in so many ways. I delighted in his vulnerability and in the docile demeanor the device created in him. I would lead him through activities that, in our previous scenes and circumstances, would take a great deal of careful negotiation before and management during play to achieve. Yet, when an absolute consent was granted in the beginning of the scene, we were permitted to both unflinchingly leap off the cliff of pleasure and desire without small-stepped hesitations.

You might imagine that I committed all forms of sexual and sadistic atrocities upon him. Actually, the activities were not all that edgy. We did the usual light bondage, sweet flogging, kneeling at the feet, relaxing as we prepared my bath, etc. (OK, so the ornamental cutting scene with my mark and several multi layered piercings was a bit intense..) I also made him watch a movie of my selection, not our selection. I made him skate in the park with me. I specified when he’d wake, when he should awaken me, how to prepare breakfast, and how to serve it to me. These were simple but significant pleasures for me. Each of my commands and directions were given and taken with the knowledge of my absolute authority in the relationship. I have known for a long time how much I enjoyed that form if intense and intimate relationship. Unfortunately it’s not too common to find another who will sincerely enjoy the reciprocal space, unhesitatingly and over a long period of time. Not only did he obey me, but he obeyed willingly, and with each act of obedience, he found himself turned on by attention that was not necessarily directly sexual but erotic in its own way.

Today I have a full time D/s relationship with a boy servant who always attends to such things for me. You’d think that the scene with a lover would not be a big deal for me now, but what he gave me years ago was unique. I am not, however, discounting or minimizing the wonderful service and submission that my servant provides me today. Quite the contrary, I treasure it. What was so interesting about the pleasure taken from the early scene with the lover described above was that he had been a lover and a masochist play buddy, not a submissive first. The chastity play drew out a new depth of submission previously unknown to him and certainly to the relationship, even if for a very limited time.

Over the past few years, I have come to realize that one of my great pleasures in dominance is to have a person do for me what he or she would not do for others. The lover has never given this form of submission to anyone else, and the boy servant is devoted and attentive to me in a way that she is to no other.

Chastity play has become an effective physical and psychological tool by which I can achieve an intimate D/s power of dynamic. The chastity device itself has taken on a ritualized and symbolic value for me that it did not previously have.

Ever since the lesson I learned from Gumby and the gestalt weekend of deep D/s with me lover, I’ve delighted and toyed with elements of chastity as an expression of power: making my servant sleep with bondage mittens, mailing chastity instructions to my lovers, considering permanent chastity locks on a slave’s labia, and more.

It’s amazing how a shift in perspective can refresh one’s play. In the end, it’s not what you do, but why you do it that makes all the difference in SM and D/s.