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to try. Oh well... win some, lose some.

* * *

3) Transparent as Glass. Very rarely, I'll end up with a BDSM partner where our brief
in-the-moment communications -- you know, like groans, or physical shifts, or facial
expressions, or even jokes -- function very well. We can get into intense, intimate S&M
in a way that seems almost instinctive (although it helps future encounters if we talk it
over and process what we did afterwards). This is really exciting when it happens, but I
recognize it as unusual. A gift.

The person I'm about to write about is totally going to get a swelled head because I write
about him so much, but he's such a good example, I have to. The first time I went home
with him, I knew he wasn't in the public BDSM community. We'd had one really vague
conversation about BDSM previously, and he'd read a small sample of my work. I didn't
expect anything much.

He kissed me, and then I think he gave me some kind of mild signal like a bite on my
shoulder. It was a gentle bite, by my standards. So I took matters into my own hands and
removed my shirt, preparing to give him some feedback. He leaned back and said,
"Whoa," and I thought, Oh damn, I'm totally going too fast for him, he's probably not
accustomed to a high degree of sexual directness, so I said, "Sorry, is this okay?" and he
laughed and kind of threw up his hands and said, "Sure."

That made me a tad nervous -- if me taking off my shirt surprised him, what else would
surprise him? -- but I figured I'd see it through, see what happened. So I explained to him
what kind of biting I really like, and showed where I like it on my back and my arms. I
think I gave him a couple of other tips, too, but I honestly can't remember; it didn't take
more than five minutes. I certainly didn't give him an exhaustive rundown of my
preferences before I said, "Does that all make sense?" and he said "Yes," and put his
hands on me.

Which is why it was so surprising that within a very short time, both of us were breathing
hard and confused and maybe slightly dizzy and looking at each other with very wide
eyes, and he was saying in an amazed tone: "I just -- I'm a little shocked. That was really
good," and I was saying: "Yes. Yes it was."

It went like that for a while. He'd go for it, and then pull back, and I'd drag myself out of
my BDSM headspace long enough to explain one or two ideas, or reassure him that I felt
fine. And then he'd go for it again. And by the end of it, I was -- blazing.

Sometimes, it just works. You've never met this person before, you've talked for half an
hour about something completely irrelevant like science fiction novels, yet it only takes
five minutes of discussion about preferences and safewords, and then it just works. I
don't know why, and I don't know how, but sometimes you find a partner who can just --
read you, like an open book -- or who seems as transparent as glass to you; or, if you're
really lucky, both.

(But I write about this with some hesitation, and I'm putting it at the end of this post after
two other examples for a reason: because I don't think it's the standard, and I don't think it

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