Recently I attended a class in Denver at the Thunder in the Mountains kink convention on cutting. Cutting is, well, exactly what it sounds like - but in a kink context. That is, used as a means of…well, at its best, power exchange, artistry, sensation, intimacy, risk. I know people who get off on the invasion of the skin, on the blood being freed from the skin, of the joy of modifying their body, whether permanently or just for a short time. It’s an invasion of the skin, though, the most intimate barrier to the outside world there is, and yeah, there’s a bit of danger involved - let’s face it, there’s somebody with a knife who is deliberately cutting into someone else’s skin just for the fun of it. Kinda crazy, when you think about it.
I didn’t take the class for any of those reasons, though. I took the class because a girl I was dating at the time wanted me to. But it was quality instruction - Susan B. is the person who taught one of my heroes, Mistress Matisse, how to sling steel - and I enjoyed it more than I expected.
But there remained the task of finding a person who was willing to go under the knife, and who I was willing to cut. The girl who’d been the inspiration parted company with me, and…well, it’s kind of more complicated than finding someone to just tie up.
See, when you are going to cut, you have to be willing to accept the fact that the cutting may scar. You may be accepting permanent marks on your flesh, or (from my perspective) putting something permanently on someone else. I don’t know about you, but that word “permanent” gives me pause. Maybe it’s the midwestern boy in me, but it implies responsibility and a whole bunch of other deep words. So while I had the knowledge - and a little experience, on the practice model in Susan’s class - I didn’t have the opportunity.
Enter Symetrie. A dear friend, an occasional lover and play partner, and one of my performance models for the Asylum “Babes in Tieland” event in Minneapolis. After the performance we were talking, and the subject of cutting came up, and she said “You wanna?” and I said “Ummmm…”
Yeah, I know, real domly, right? Well, that’s the thing about Symetrie, I can talk with her about the whole permanent thing and she’ll understand. More than that, she has some of the loveliest tats and other body mods I’ve ever seen, so she’s no stranger to the concept. When I told her about my concern, her response was “Well, I think scars are cool!” And that was that.
So we got a tarp (to catch any blood) and the technicare disinfectant (condom stretched over the bottle) and the latex gloves and the #15 scalpel and the gauze bandages and laid everything out and she laid down and disinfected the area in convexical circles and looked at her back and looked and looked…
And looked. I had no clue what I was going to cut. I’d seen other people do cuttings - ranging from just small incisions to let blood flow (not my thing) to amazing intricate tattoo-like designs across the flesh (sort of my thing, but not for a first time, ok?). But I teach people in kink that when you don’t know what to do next, do nothing, and the body will tell you what to hit, how to tie, or in this case: where to cut.
Specifically I saw, on her left shoulder, the red oval of a bite mark, souvenir of a previous play session with Amanda Wyldfyre. It drew my gaze, and then my finger, and I began to lightly trace it, letting my mind extend the lines into the skin, across it, letting an image, a design slowly grow in my mind. I picked up the scalpel in a gloved hand, the cap still on the blade, and traced the pattern I saw in my mind a few times. I centered myself. I breathed. I took the cap off the scalpel and lowered it towards her skin, noting with a bit of pride that my hand didn’t shake at all.
She turned her head to me and asked, quizzically, “Whatcha doin’?”
“Ummm…” I said, pulled out of the artistic miasma by the question. She smiled and turned towards me. I thought about the question. “Well, I was picturing what I was going to cut into your back, and then I was about to do it..”
“Ok, I see…I didn’t really specify things.” She grinned in a friendly way. “See, when I do cuttings, it’s more than just the artsy stuff. I like it to be a power exchange, a sensation ride, with warm up and aftercare and everything else.”
“Oh…you mean like a scene, then.” I was beginning to realize that I’d fallen into the classic kinksters trap: I knew how to do something, but I’d not given enough thought to why. Or where. Or when. Well, at least I’d gotten the who right. I smiled at her. “You know, I’ve never seen cutting in a scene before. It’s always been sort of people doing body art, more like a meditative trance.”
“Yeah, that’s all fine,” she allowed. “But…I wasn’t ready to go into a trance. I am, however, ready to have you hurt me!” She smiled merrily at that, and I smiled back.
I reckon I can do that, I thought, and put down the scalpel. Pressure points are neat things. So are pointy elbows, smacks with the flat of the hand, strikes on the skin followed by gentle kisses followed by sharp bites followed by growling dirty words whispered in the ear. After a bit of this and a lot of that, she was a grinning, blissful submissive, and I picked up my blade again.
And began to cut. I drew the first wavy line, and while I didn’t quite hear Susan’s voice in my ear, I was very aware of the concepts: drag the blade, don’t push…roll the wrist along the curve…confident, let the blood come, it wants to be free. Ok, she didn’t say that last bit, but as I pulled the skin apart along the cut, that’s what it felt like. It was a patient thing, and the stroke of the blade along the line I saw with my mind seemed as intimate as my tongue stroking through folds of labia. She was moaning with each cut, eyes shut, occasionally moving under the blade as it moved into her, and of necessity I moved with her, keeping her - well, not exactly out of harms way, I was cutting her, after all, but keeping things safe and sensual with just the frisson of pain over it.
I don’t know how long it took. I know the design grew past what I’d originally seen, but even as it told me what was needed, it also told me when it was done. She lay there, smiling, happy, and as I quickly discarded the gloves and knife, she hummed a happy, satisfied little sound.
Well, almost satisfied. Her eyes opened as I put the extra gauze back in the case. “Hey…are those needles?” she asked, seeing my play piercing supplies.
I allowed that they were.
Her smile grew wider. “So…wanna play?”
Tags: body mod, cutting, medical play
