What Happens When You Make A Mistake While Beating Someone?

Violence is my go-to form of fucking. It’s my routine, it’s the same old cup of coffee I have every morning, it’s what comes naturally to my brain when I am horny, it’s both my indulgence and my comfort food. Violence, and when say that I mean kicking, slapping, punching, pulling, throwing someone around at an astounding pace, is not an entirely safe form of play. It’s not even as safe, in my opinion, as whipping someone to shreds because a lot of it is spontaneous. It’s fast and unmeasured. Unlike impact play it beckons my reflexes and I am responsive. I move around, I make sounds, given enough intensity I even try to get away. The consequence of being a moving target is exactly that, you’re a moving target, it’s almost impossible to always hit a moving target in the right place. It taps into the heat of the moment and anything can happen, I never know how I am going to respond nor how far it will take me, and I love that shit. If that makes you uncomfortable, you should stop reading right now.

I have just one issue when it comes to being punched and tossed, I don’t like being punched on my back (specifically on my shoulder blades). It makes me feel like I can’t breathe and not in the sexy-way like when I’m being choked or drowned. It makes me feel like the breath is stuck in my chest. My partner knows this and for the most part he does not do this to me. See, that’s the thing, in our relationship a lot of limits aren’t actually set in stone and that’s by design. That’s also because, I like so much stuff that I hate, and it can actually be confusing, even to me. I mean we communicate regularly and with astounding frequency about what I am feeling, and most often when there are things that I don’t feel comfortable with that day (or week), I say it out loud well in advance. He still has the option of doing them, but he doesn’t. He may present it as a kindness (to make it hotter) but really it’s genuine consideration for my limits. Sometimes while he’s doing shit to me I’ll have a very negative reaction to something, and you know we’ve been together a very long time he knows what that looks like (and this is why I don’t recommend going all CNC with someone you don’t know like the back of your hand), and we’ll talk about it immediately. We’ll stop for a few minutes, talk about my reaction, I’ll tell him what I feel and he’ll tell me how he feels, and we’ll go back to it. It doesn’t impede the moment, in fact, not saying it out loud does.

It’s not a perfect system but, for the most part, it works quite well. Of course, there are times when it doesn’t and sometimes that’s not because the system has failed, but because we have. Honestly, I’d love to be as cock-sure as a lot of the people here about how perfect I am as a sexual being and how infallible he is as one. I’d love to say that we never ever misread, overreact or miss a cue. I hate lying though. There are times when we are less than perfect. For instance, recently while beating me, he punched my back. Immediately, I knew I wasn’t comfortable and I had a bit of panic inside me but everything was moving so fast, I couldn’t or didn’t say anything. One second I was on the floor, the next I was in the corner and a moment later I was banging into the closet. That’s the thing with playing violence, you have to be perfectly tuned before and after, because if you crash during, the impact will be huge because of the pace itself. It’s a fiery car crash on the highway, not breaking your taillight on your own gate. The crash came so quick I didn’t know when to get a word in or what that word would have been, I just started to feel extremely defensive, and when he did it again a few minutes later, I punched him back. It wasn’t me! At least it wasn’t the sexual-me who knows not to do that, it was the reflexive-me who felt threatened and reacted. I don’t do thay often, I don’t react physically very often and when I do, it is often about me, it’s borne out of an internal struggle and he often controls me by, well, being more violent and/or mean. That’s also a system we came up with over years of practice and it works, most of the time. It didn’t work that time. He didn’t notice I was acting out of reflex and thought I was asking for more, so he hit me more. He was more violent. I couldn’t respond if I tried. Ultimately, I just felt so threatened I went into complete protective overdrive, swatting everything in sight, and he backed off and watched.

“What the fuck is going on with you?” He was miffed, for a second, and then he followed immediately and asked, “We have to stop, are you okay?”

Now, if this scene makes you think we are abusive, dysfunctional and don’t love each other, please go to hell. That’s not what this is about. It’s about the destructive potential of the slightest miscommunication or lack of communication in a setting that is precariously balanced. What happened was that he didn’t realise I was uncomfortable with the back-punching, that is half-okay since there are times when I am not but, and this is the part that’s the mistake, he knows that it is strong possibility that I would be uncomfortable with that, and he didn’t check for my reaction immediately after to ensure it was okay to continue. It made me feel like my limits were forgettable to him. That’s not a nice feeling. I was upset by it. It was really just a matter of ensuring he looked at my face for a couple of seconds after doing the thing that often makes me feel horrible and I strongly prefer not to do. He didn’t do it because, human error. He beats me often. We are together all the time. He knows me well. He took for granted that he couldn’t just miss something and he wouldn’t. That’s not advisable but at least for me it is understandable.

On my part, I didn’t say anything, I didn’t indicate that I wasn’t okay with what had happened and I escalated straight to responding to violence with violence. That’s maybe okay in a biblical sense but not in this set-up (unless that’s your thing). Mostly, I express my discomfort verbally, and immediately, and I didn’t do that. There was too much going on and the pain was very loud. It was exactly the type of situation everyone tells you to avoid when they’re talking about safety. The things is though, with a 99% rate for safety, if you do the same thing 200 times with someone, it will go well 198 times, but you’ll still be there the 2 times that it doesn’t. The risk is not exactly the same if you do it 30 times with the same person. The point is that even though I was upset, and he was mortified, we don’t distrust each other because mistakes happen. Mistakes don’t make me believe he is violating me or is unsafe to be around, because I trust him deeply. He trusts me. We don’t hold malice towards each other in any way. He is always, even at his worst, my favourite person.

He made a miscalculation. I had a strong reaction. His immediate response after we sat down was to apologise and investigate the situation. Mine was to explain where I was coming from and express why I was feeling hurt. His focus was on making me feel safe and loved. It matters that he was driven by concern for me. My focus was on feeling heard. I didn’t feel attacked by him and it didn’t seem like he was trying to blame it on me at all. That’s very important. It’s important to say that. Of course, it was a rookie mistake and that’s not okay. You don’t get to write poetry for six years and then say you forgot the alphabet for a minute. That’s very important too. It’s also important to say that. In a violent edgy dynamic (not angry, just violent) it’s easy to forget yourself for a second in the heat of the moment, but it should be hard. It was hard for him to realise he had done that and it genuinely hurt him to reckon with it. I don’t want him to hurt, but I don’t want him to slip either. If he has to hurt to realise that he did slip, it’s better he hurt restoratively, than we bleed to death. It was important to say that as well.

Afterwards he made dinner and I polished his shoes. We watched Netlfix and he cuddled me to sleep. I woke up still in love with him and he woke up still in love with me, but we both woke up with the uncomfortable awareness of our mistakes, and that’s the most important thing. It’s vital to know and acknowledge when you’ve made a mistake, because if you don’t, you will definitely do it again.