Masochist's Squirm, Subspace, Squirm Fetish, and Runaway Squirm

Why that slippery slope is so thrillingly moist...

I will admit to a mild fetish for vintage boots; Can you guess why?

The first time a woman seriously beat me, I safeworded out immediately.

That was back in my pre-Xena student days when I was happy to switch. I’d spent the last hour or so whipping my - in hindsight - very submissive girlfriend and dildoing her to several orgasms.

At the end, she was all aglow. She had never, ever, experienced anything like that and it blew her mind. “Your turn!” she said.

So she got me tied up and then she laid into me with loving enthusiasm.

And it bloody hurt.

A few seconds in and I was squeaking, “Stop"! Jesus! Stop! Too much!”

So we put it down to fatigue and went for a pizza.

We never really did kink again, and the relationship quickly imploded. Guess what? Sub/Sub pairings tend to go badly wrong… though I’m fairly sure it was all my fault.

Anyway, in hindsight, the reason her first masochistic experience rocked and mine didn’t was that I diligently fed her — what I now call — Masochist’s Squirm, whereas she just plied the riding crop on my back and buttocks.

By feeding her Masochist’s Squirm, I mean that I alternated between making her contemplate the beating and then experience me actually administering it.

At the time, it just felt like the right dramatic way to string things out: gloat and make her squirm - there’s that word again - then, when the tension was unbearable and she was whimpering in anticipation, slowly dole out the strokes of the whip.

However, what I was really doing was forcing her to switch between two frameworks:

• “Argh! I am suffering powerlessly!”

• “Whee! My fetish for suffering turns me on!”

(To be clear, I’m talking about masochists like me who experience pain as pain but seek it out, rather than “spankees” and algophiliacs who are wired to experience pain as actual pleasure, which can cause all sorts of traumas, see e.g. Jillian Keenan’s memoir.)

I’m sure, say, mountaineers experience a vanilla version of this Squirm:

• “OMG! My legs hurt I just want to rest!”

• “Wow! Look how high we’ve climbed!”

This probably tells us something about the difference between happiness and satisfaction; something that makes you unhappy in the moment can also make you very existentially satisfied.

We masochists also experience some of that existential satisfaction thing.

My long and mostly chaste (as in locked-in-chastity) submission to my wife does not always make me instantly happy - it’s annoying to have to drop what I’m doing to attend to some domestic task, and having no control over my sex life can sometimes be disheartening - but it makes me content to live like this.

Like the mountaineer, there’s also biological stuff at work to do with endorphins and the rest of the overcompensating neurochemical soup caused by physical discomfort.

However, unlike the mountaineer, we masochists have a learned fetish for certain kinds of pain.

We generally fantasise about being whipped by a member of our preferred dating pool long before we ever experience it. All that masturbation and porn consumption has conditioned us to get hard or wet at the prospect of a whipping, and in its aftermath.

The whipping itself still hurts, though.

As I gained experience with Xena, some interesting things happened. Other subs seem to experience similar.

First, our capacity increases to accept more intense pain with less pause. I don’t think it ever stops being pain, but we’re no longer shocked by it, we’ve learned it won’t destroy us, and we’re anticipating pushing through the Argh to get to the Whee.

So, these days Xena routinely beats me the way my old girlfriend set out to do — lots of whipping, not much taunting — and it blows my mind… the anticipation and the aftermath do, at any rate.

Second, we sometimes experience what I think people mean by Subspace. Basically, we maintain enough presence of mind during the Argh! to also experience the Whee!

On the inside, we’re yelping and pleading and genuinely in pain, but we’re also seeing everything from the outside - “porno view” - and getting off on it. The effect is rather like swimming in the sea and being picked up and rolled by a massive wave… which is to say a spiritual moment of self-something or other.

Just wow.

I imagine a skilled dominant can send a sub into subspace by gradually speeding up the Argh/Whee cycle until they blur together. Unfortunately, Xena isn’t really interested in creating erotic effects for me, so I don’t think I’ll ever find out. However, it’s great when it happens, and there’s something addictive about intermittent reward…

Third and fourth, we come to a what I’ll call Squirm Fetish, and Runaway Squirm.

(Paywall unlocks Sunday)

Back up a bit and contemplate that fetish is sticky.

I’ve written elsewhere that I don’t really believe that most kink is fetish in the classic sense. Kink is usually just the supernormal stimulation version of various not always pleasant but entirely natural human urges to dominate and to submit, and maybe to deceive and exploit attempted deception — the whole male chastity complex looks awfully like the Sneaky Fucker reproductive strategy and its evolved response from women.

However, I think fetish is still a useful term for a conditioned or learned turn on. So, for example, I have a mild fetish for Edwardian ladies-boots because I associate them with dominant women.

Edwardian ladies-boots

It started out as being a fetish for women actually wearing them — I have a taste for old erotica — but these days if I see a pair in a museum display I’ll actually get mildly aroused. If Xena was into wearing boots and having me kiss them, the fetish would get stronger.

This mechanism explains why we’re turned on by the idea of taking a beating, even though the beating itself really does hurt. Just like my boot fetish, we submissive masochists probably fetishise beatings because they point to the submitting. Eventually, the fact of the beating becomes a more automatic turn-on in its own right, and here we are.

So, roughly, we can say that:

Fetish sticks to things that point to things that turn us on.

This is how you get Squirm Fetish.

I think that if you take the masochist path, then sooner or later, you develop a fetish for the Squirm itself, because the Squirm contains the Whee.

So now, just being aware that you’re squirming between Whee and Argh suddenly gets you some combination of hard and moist.

This can turn relatively undramatic episodes of submission into exquisitely erotic moments.

For example, if I’m stuck waiting on my knees at bedtime, initially I’m uncomfortable and bored and just want to get into the comfortable bed.

After a few minutes, I become aware of the fact of myself suffering, and get a bit turned on. Soon the Squirm sets in and I am wobbling between mild Argh and equally mild Whee; nothing that’s happening is wildly kinky.

Then, I become aware of the Squirm, and just get horribly turned on for no better reason than I am squirming.

(There’s parallel stuff going on as well. Being turned on while in permanent chastity sets up a secondary squirm, and of course I am developing a fetish for kneeling.)

Squirm Fetish is awesome, but it opens you up to one final phenomena that’s mildly terrifying: Runaway Squirm.

So far, I’ve talked specifically about Masochism, which I’ve treated as:

…the practice of submitting to painful experiences from people we find hot.

The “painful experiences” part looms large, because it’s dramatic and dark and potentially harmful, and because the online community therefore focusses on its knotty technicalities and the minutiae of consent.

However, I think the underlying motivation is still the urge to submit. Can you see where this is going?

If you are strongly submissive, then arousal makes you more submissive, making you willing to submit to more intense pain. Once you are aware of that, then getting aroused makes you squirm. Now, if you have a Squirm Fetish, then squirming further arouses you, causing further squirm and setting up a feedback loop.

Becoming aware of the first feedback loop is scary and therefore also a turn on, which causes you to squirm, thus setting up a second simultaneous feedback loop.

That second feedback loop spawns a third feedback loop, which spawns a fourth…

Meanwhile, on some level you become aware of the proliferation of feedback loops, each making you more submissive and vulnerable, which is scary but also a turn on, which creates a new feedback loop which is scary so…

Eventually all these loops blur together and you end up 100% submissive and 100% aroused, which is scary to think about, so makes you squirm so…

And that’s Runaway Squirm… so far beyond ordinary subspace that alien demons are trying to mate with your brain.

Dominants can help the process along by merely remarking that the submissive is trapped by their own fetish. For added effectiveness, deliver it with a side order of amusement or contempt.

I’m damned if I can untangle where free will, consent and personal authenticity fit into that jumble. I’m fairly certain it cements dynamics in ways that are not always intended.

I would hope that, much like a hypnotic state, Runaway Squirm evaporates if the action goes sufficiently off-piste, or accelerates so suddenly, that it violates the submissive’s underlying self-image or feels actually unsafe.

However, your actual underlying self-image and instinctive concept of safety may not be the ones you want to live with, so the take-home lesson is; pick your dominant with care…

---

While you’re contemplating Runaway Squirm, take a trip into an era where they did this stuff for real.