If you’re going to play pain, you’re going to get hurt. That is just the way it is. Sometimes it will leave no marks, just a red warmth that will fade quickly or a muscle ache that will heal over a few days. Sometimes it will leave marks on parts of your body that aren’t generally visible to the public or are at least easy to conceal in clothing: butt, insides of thighs, breasts, parts of the back, midriff. And then there’s the other times, the times when you have visible marks and bruises, ones that either cannot be hidden without the use of makeup or are hard to conceal using clothes. Bruises on your arms and shoulders or face and neck. Maybe even legs. Weird cuts and welts on parts of the back or thighs in the summer. The point is that sadomasochistic play will, shockingly, lead to evidence of assault being visible on parts of your skin.
Most of us are fine with this when it’s easily concealed. That makes sense too. Many of us might live with people who are unaware of our proclivities or have jobs with high visibility or children or whatever the reason one might have for not wanting visible marks, they’re all fair and respectable reasons and certainly there is no need for one to do something that makes them uncomfortable. I, however, like being hit in places where from time-to-time I have visible marks on my body. Arms, lip, neck, cheek, shoulder, wherever. There are places I just can’t hide at the frequency with which I get wounded. I would be in a tarp all year if I had to make sure to hide all marks at all times. Honestly, most of the time, I can’t even tell anymore. I can’t quite tell why I need a longer sleeve or if there’s even a mark on me. I have become quite blasé about it and so I forget to take notice sometimes. I may notice a bruise the day after I get it, but bruises last like 5-7 days in various stages and after Day 1, I forget about them. I really, forget. I don’t remember that they are still there.But as I am sure anyone who gets visible marked knows, there is an ongoing discussion amongst the people of pain and their allies about how one approaches visible marks. I’ve been asked my feelings about them many times and my feelings have also changed many times.
The thing that gets asked most often is this: do you wear your bruises with pride or conceal them?Here’s the thing, I can’t answer that. I can’t answer that because the answer is neither. I don’t wear bruises with pride. What’s there to be proud of? Look how much punching it takes to make me wet? Look how much pain I bear for my partner? I don’t see that as a matter of pride or shame. Bruises and marks are incidental to pain. I’m not getting beat up for the marks nor would I get beat up any more or less if there weren’t any marks from it. It’s really about sentiment and sensation to me.
Now I understand for some people the visual experience of violence and pain is powerful. I get that. My partner enjoys watching marks fade and appear and it’s hot to him. I like the aesthetic. If I had to make a call in terms of beauty I would go with banged up and a little broken every single time but it’s largely conceptual. To me, I look as banged up as I feel. I see no need for pride in my bruises. I’m also largely indifferent about scars, they’re there, I don’t notice them anymore. New ones appear sometimes, I know they’re there, I feel them more in concept than I notice them on my skin.
But of course I realise that’s because I am greatly desensitised to them. I also realise I see the marks on my body less than the people around me. When I was younger I enjoyed the shock value a little. I enjoyed the looks on people’s faces in reaction to openly visible bruises and cuts. It gave me a little thrill to think about what a viewer might think in response to seeing those marks. We can debate whether that’s healthy or not, but I can tell you it wasn’t entirely healthy. It wasn’t always coming from the place of “this is my sexuality and I am going to wear it without shame.” I stopped feeling that thrill a long time ago. I think it was largely brought on by the novelty of the experience and a form of exhibitionism. Showing my pain is akin to showing off my genitals to me. That’s why I write it too, it’s hot to think about people experiencing it through me. It’s hot to think about people seeing me in this broken, vulnerable state where I can’t hide behind carefully crafted sentences and eyerolls.But in the real world, people think you’re being abused. That’s the real concern, isn’t it?
People have thought I was being abused before in relationships that I was being abused in as well as ones I wasn’t. I am sure a lot more people thought it, than asked me but when they did ask, I told the truth. I feel I understand concern, I do, and I certainly understand when a person with a certain level of closeness to you asks about something on your body (though if someone were that close to me they would know already why shit keeps appearing on my body) but I also believe that when a stranger questions you about anything on your body, whether thay be a bruise or excess fat, they have already crossed a line. The rules are maybe more blurry when you have a black eye or a broken arm, but using that as an argument against this would be to ignore the nuance.
If someone asks me about a welt on my shoulder or a bruise of my arm, I will tell them the truth (unless you’re a kid in which case I will tell you it’s from yoga until you’re fifteen when if I am your parent/guardian/relative we can have an honest discussion). If someone asks me about a black eye or knife marks though, I will lie through my teeth. Is that because I am ashamed?
Not really, but also, I am aware that while some forms of masochism are on the radar of even the most vanilla-scented among us, there are others which shock and disturb even the most latex-skinned ones amongst us. In fact, I think I am more unlikely to show pictures of “extreme” marking to those “in the know” because while people in everyday life will accept my lies and question no further even when they don’t believe them, people who also play pain are more likely to have stronger opinions on the extent to which one ought play in the interest of sanity. I just, I don’t wanna deal, to be perfectly honest.
I’ve had these discussions. I’ve had my sanity called into question, I even question it myself from time to time. I’ve been told, by people who are self-confessed bastions of kink-awareness, that I was unsafe, unhinged, abused, insane, the works. And the truth is I may have even been those things from time-to-time but the assumption that the reality of certain situations about myself hadn’t occured to me but had occured to internet-strangers doesn’t go down well with me. I make a lot of mistakes, but I never make the mistake of delusion. I speak for myself in detail and with gusto, but I would never speak for someone else based on fragments of context-free information.
The fact is that I want to conceal myself most from people who should know better because I don’t really want to be discussed as subject to demonstrate something I neither endorse nor notice for the most part.But there is a second part to the question of pride or concealment. The concealment. Unfortunately there is no straight answer to this either. Do I conceal my marks and bruises? Sometimes. It depends entirely on what I am going to be doing and who I am going to be meeting. If the weather permits are my arms are more blue than skin, I might wear a longer sleeve to workout if I don’t forget. If I am meeting someone professionally, I would opt for concealment because I don’t like to bring any of my personal life to work.
I don’t even need the people of work to know that I eat food or have a family. I don’t like that kind of work relationship. If I am going to a party with people I know well, it’s unlikely I will conceal anything. If it’s a part with my parents, I might make a little more effort. If it’s a work thing for my partner, I will cover some things up. But all of this is honesty subject to if I remember, know or have noticed the marks on me. Sometimes they’re on a part of your back that is normally hidden but isn’t in a certain dress. Will I not wear the dress? Maybe not. If I know about the marks and I know where we’re going. Maybe I still will, because I don’t want to find another dress to wear.
In general it helps that I am actually extremely accident prone and most people in my life know that well. I have enough true stories of being insanely injured in wild situations to have my blatant lies believed should I choose to lie. It also helps that everyone who knows me would agree that I would be most likely to be voted “the person who secretly lives in a dungeon” because I don’t really even bother enough to do it secretly. It’s just who I am, I really prefer that my weirdness never come as a surprise to anyone so I try to be most-myself even in situations where I could tone it the fuck down. It helps me create a world where my social circle is just as likely not to notice a bruise on me as I am. It’s a long-term plan and it works okay-ish.
Because as I said before, there’s no real answer to this question. It cannot be broken down to whether you are hiding or brandishing your truth because bruises are incidental, and situational decision making is more real than conceptual principles. Your truth lies in what you do and want. That you can hide with ease from most people if you should choose to. Bruises are temporary. Truth isn’t. It’s easier to hide though. It’s easier to hide than bruises. I won’t hide that.
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