Last night I went to a “Sensation Play Party”!
The party’s event hosts and multiple guests brought a variety of toys and tools for delivering a wide variety of sensations. There were very gentle things like fur gloves, feathers, silk, one of those spidery wire toys for stimulating the scalp. There were rougher toys like paddles, floggers, Wartenberg wheels, fingertip claws. There were electrical stim toys, including violet wands, TENS units, and Stinger wands. It wasn’t all about touch either; there were small slices of fruit, bits of dark chocolate, scented oils.
About one third of the group took a couple of minutes to write brief notes that described their hard limits, for instance, “No foods!” or “No pain, gentle only!” or “Avoid my injured foot!”, arranged themselves comfortably on cushions scattered about the large room, placed their notes prominently next to them, and donned blindfolds. The remaining two-thirds of the group then had thirty minutes to wander about the room, trying different touch or toys on the blindfolded receivers. In a matter of minutes, the temperature in the room rose ten degrees as purrs of pleasure and groans of welcome pain filled the space. Thirty minutes passed in no time at all and the receivers slowly removed their blindfolds and tried to return to “normal”. Serotonin is a hell of a drug! After a brief break, the next one-third of the group took their turn as receivers, and then the last third had a turn.
I got to experience and see and do some amazing things!
When I was a receiver I experienced (in no particular order) feathery strokes down my arms and legs, a pair of lips that passed a piece of chocolate to me in a delicious kiss, flogging, hard paddling, hot wax dribbled on my chest, and a generous splash of icy water splashed on my chest and neck. At one point someone used a Wartenberg wheel on me while someone else dragged sharp fingertip claws across my back while I roared with release into a pillow. When my turn as a receiver ended, I was drunk on endorphins and my entire body tingled with lingering sensations.
During the other two sessions when I was in the role of giver, I did some paddling and flogging, zapped a few of the braver souls with a Stinger wand, dragged ice cubes down arms and legs, used a delightfully subtle “pleasure air” sex toy on nipples, used a more intense vacuum pump on nipples, and arranged a row of clothes pins down a person’s torso and ripped them off with a dramatic flourish
It was a thoroughly wonderful experience in a number of ways. The main draw is simply the delight in giving and receiving such welcome stimulation. Of course, what made that possible was the thoughtful and caring intentions of the people in the room. No one was teased or shamed about stating their boundaries, and everyone I interacted with seemed enthusiastic about meeting an individual receiver at whatever level they needed. I saw some receivers who asked for and got epic amounts of gentle cuddling, and other receivers who asked for and received very solid paddling, flogging, and electrical zapping. It felt like a very safe and welcoming space for me to experiment and push my own personal boundaries.
Analyzing my own experience just a bit deeper, by nature I’m much more of a “giver”. I adore introducing people to new experiences and sensations and making their minds melt (in a consensual fashion). It takes a bit of intentional effort for me to lie back and be entirely passive, accepting the sensations that are brought to me (aside from my one stated hard limit, “No tickling!”), with no responsibilities except to experience it all, take it all in. In the right circumstances (and last night was one), I can be a sensation junkie who appreciates some fairly intense stimuli. Once upon a time, someone delivered my birthday spanking with a wooden hairbrush with such vigor that the bush snapped in half! However, I don’t at all identify as “submissive”. I’m not there to accept whatever someone else wants to dish out, nor am I giving my endurance to someone else as a gift; I’m there to see what those intense sensations feel like and to see what I can take before I have to say “too much”.
There were other people at the event who did identify as submissive, and many of them reveled in many of the same treatments and sensations that I experienced. As I thought about the event after the fact, it occurred to me that to some objective observer, there may not be a visible difference between a receiver who identifies as “sensation junkie” and one who identifies as “submissive”. If there’s no apparent external difference, that would suggest that the fundamental difference is in the mind of the receiver. So I meditated on that for a while, and tried to think about the aspects that two such people would have in common, rather than what separates them. I think, and I’m still trying this on for size so don’t hold me to it, that for me as a (sometimes) “sensation junkie”, I’m being submissive. I am exerting my will to hold myself in check, to remain passive, and allow the sensations to wash over me. But I’m not being submissive to someone else, I’m being submissive to myself. I am not offering my submission as a gift to someone else. I am giving my submission as a gift to myself, to allow me to experience various and intense sensations, to find my limits and perhaps expand them a bit. That’s a way of framing the experience that I seems to resonate with me.
Navel gazing aside, it was a hell of an experience and I’m very much looking forward to the next one!