SpanishRed

Brat-English Dictionary

Aftercare: When your top lets you make a wig for their dick out of freshly-plucked pubic hair and glue. I promise this will only hurt a little bit.

Top: A place for hiding the toys.

Bottom: The body part that should face the wall at all times. This is why brats walk sideways the whole time even though they didn’t do a single thing wrong, not even hide toys on the top of the fridge.

Butt plug: I bet you regret not keeping your butt facing the wall now.

Bondage: A thin...

Nursery Rhyme Week Day Five: Build Your Own Mythology

Ted Hughes wrote children's poetry for three decades, and Moon-Whales was probably his best collection. He built an entire mythology out of all the creatures you can find on the moon. There are moon whales that "plough through the moon stuff [...] lifting the moon's skin like a muscle." There's a moon-oak that carries the moon in his feet. There are moon-wings, so you "go you go you go--where or which way you never know." The moon has shadow beggars that fill you up until you're nothing but a...

I Was Born Like This. I Don't Want Any Changes

Caster Semenya grew up in a dark, dank province, but she went on to win Olympic gold anyway. Never mind the fact that she overcame the thick smog of poverty in her lungs. Never mind that. She had an unfair advantage, hear? Caster could run so she ran all the way to the Olympics. She won two medals before she'd even shaken the Limpopo dust from her shoes.

From the start, Caster's genitals were discussed on the front pages of major newspapers. Her body was treated like public...

Finding the State of Mind that Makes for Good Writing

Children are the purest readers you’ll ever have. When they respond to a piece of writing, it’s with absolute delight… or abject boredom. They require a lot of your characters, so you have to develop them well and have a strong sense of who they are. Children don’t care how smart you sound, and if your literary devices aren’t effective, they won’t pat you on the back for trying. They’re highly responsive to rhythm and rhyme, but only if you’ve handled them well. They don’t k...

Ambition

Spoken word poetry has changed the way we see literature today. It’s served up easy, digestible poems that require little of us. They’re entertaining and fun to watch. I love them as much as the next person, but poetry slams are annihilating poetic ambition. Most spoken word poetry isn’t poetry at all, so the art is dying. Donald Hall calls this work “the McPoem.” Just like a McDonalds Burger, it’s made in under five minutes, eaten in one, then forgotten long after we’ve grown f...

Implication Week: Stop Being Fancy

I like cupcakes. If I ate as many as I wanted, I’d never eat veggies, and then I’d get sick.

Sugar is an empty calorie. It has no nutritional value. If it’s all you eat, you will develop some serious deficiencies and die.

Nobody wants to die, not even for cupcakes.

New writers love being fancy. They see it in work they do not understand, so they think that simply being complicated is enough. Intricate phrasing, weird, abstract ideas, and unusual words are not vitamins....

Nursery Rhyme Week Day One: Homage to Plath

You can’t know if a car drives well until you drive it. You can’t tell if the jeans fit until you wear them. You can’t figure out if the dish is delectable until you try it, and you can’t tell what literary mechanisms do until you use them.

This week, we’re going to use them.

This is an excerpt from a poem by T.S. Eliot:

Ash Wednesday by T. S. Eliot

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring thi...

The Road to Fucked Up Power Dynamics

The road to fucked up power dynamics is paved with demands and fragile egos, so if you expect me to submit before your belt is even undone, you’re not going to have a good time. I will eat your domly ambitions for breakfast with fava beans and a nice Chianti.

Submission is a risk I don’t take until I’m ready. And in my world, “ready” means trusting—of your heart, your ethics, and your humility. My submission doesn’t roll of a production line like Pepsi cans. I...

I Was Never Really One for Roses

My mother was an engineer, so it wasn’t as though I spent my childhood surrounded by pink and roses. My family valued the sublime things in life, not the pretty ones: Food, not diets. Sex, not romance. Authenticity, not manners. Hendrix, not flowers. I was taught to kick visitors out at the end of the night when I wanted to go to sleep and sit on the floor if I felt like it. I only learned how to be diplomatic when I was in my thirties. I don’t value politeness much. I prefer generosity.<...

Implications Week Day Three: Economy of Words

Think about each of these words:

Glitter
Glimmer
Shimmer
Gleam
Glow.

All of them describe a different kind of light. These words probably give you a visceral sense of what they’re describing. Here are some more:

Refulgent
Lucent
Vivid
Pale
Ignited

None of these words begin to approach the power of the previous list. Some words have more power than others. They move beyond the abstract and penetrate the mind of the reader. One well-chosen word ...

Red is Useful. Yellow is Better.

Every bottom has two kinds of inner masochists: 

Masochist A calls yellow the instant things get real. Then she spends the rest of the night polishing her halo.

Masochist B is so hardcore she’s never even seen yellow, never mind called it. When she sees the sun, she sees black. She’s just that hardcore.

You’re not Masochist B, of course, but damned if you aren’t going to fake it when your top pushes harder than you can bear.

 ...

Things That Will Happen When You Find the Kink Scene

You’ll stumble on Fetlife one lazy Sunday afternoon during a Google search on masochism. You’ll see pictures of gore that are worse than the horror movies you used to watch as a child. You'll log off. You'll hire a therapist. You’ll talk about sex and tattoos and parenthood and Jack, your black fucking cat. You’ll talk about everything except what you hired her for: to find a cure for your sick ideas about sex.

You’ll take up yoga.

You’ll fire...

Things That Will Happen When You Meet an Abusive Dominant

You’ll meet him at a kink event. He will be everything you’ve ever wanted, so one fine Sunday morning, you’ll tack your dynamic together with agreements and sellotape. That conversation will not mention safe words. It will not mention limits, but a dominant without a list of requirements is hardly a dom at all, is he?

Later that day you’ll go out shopping for some lace and perfume. Remember that shopping trip. It will be the last time you buy anything without his permission.

Implication Week Day Two: Appealing to the Subconscious

As a writer, you will pass through the wall of the reader’s unconscious whether you like it or not. Some words play on our minds differently to others. Some images play on our minds differently to others. A dry, split branch is going to impress itself upon the reader differently than a sapling. Green and gold carry two very different implications. So do emeralds and mud. No details are arbitrary, so if you’re strewing unconsidered words through your work, you’re probably diluting it. 2024-08-06 05:52:20 +0000 UTC View Post

This Week We're Learning the Power of Implication

A week back, we read this poem by William Carlos Williams:

This Is Just To Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Some of you interpreted it as an abusive situation. Some readers interpret it as the temptation in The Garden of Eden. Both interpretations are valid, and that’s the power of metaphor. It can describe something as ...

Indifference

There’s nothing as fatal as indifference, and H’s washed over our relationship like the tide. I had become a triviality to him, so we had to admit that our relationship was over. With no feelings to speak of, we had evaporated, so there could be no fixing, no healing, no understanding.

Trying to heal another’s numbness is like trying to build a sandcastle out of stars you can’t even reach.

Being a triviality hurt more than any of our arguments. An...

I'm Not on the Wank Fodder Team This Year

Can I ask a totally innocent question?

Okay

I was wondering if you had a teen son and he asked for help with something inappropriate but for a reason.

I’m not on the Wank Fodder Team for 2024.

<shock> <horror> Ohmygod relax! it was just a question.

Yes, a question to wrangle me into discussing your (criminal and paedophilic) sexual fantasy.

I’m very transparent. I was...

Image Week Day Five: Breaking Out of Old Patterns

In Foe, Nobel Laureate, J.M. Coetzee, writes:

“He turns and turns till he lies at full length, his face to my face. The skin is tight across his bones, his lips are drawn back. I pass a fingernail across his teeth, trying to find a way in.”

“His mouth opens. From inside him comes a slow stream, without breath, without interruption. It flows up through his body and out upon me; it passes through the cabin, through the wreck; washing the cl...

2024-08-02 06:15:19 +0000 UTC View Post

Sex Addiction is the Loneliest Disease that Ever Was

There’s a scene in the movie, Shame, where Michael Fassbender’s sex addict is enduring the last of a day’s compulsive sexual experiences. He’s physically exhausted. He is in psychic agony. But. He can. Not. Stop. It’s one of the most harrowing things I’ve ever seen. To him, sex is every bit as torturous as a scene from a horror movie. This is as perfect a picture of sex addiction as they come. This is rock bottom. He has lost his job. He’s lost his family. He’s lost his sense ...

Image Week Day Four: Find the Truths the World is Trying to Teach You

Science and the human experience have a lot in common. Soft reeds bend instead of breaking. Adaptable people bend instead of breaking. Water is Mother Nature’s most destructive force even though it has no sharp or hard edges, and humans who take as much time as water can create canyons without breaking stone. Stars shine millions of years after they burn out, and so do people. The world around us can teach us a thousand things, so it’s a wonderful writing tool.

I was taught that a p...

The LGBTQ Scene is Not the Danger. You are the Danger (Big TW Transphobia)

I grew up in apartheid South Africa, so I heard all the racist stories as a child: Black and brown folk were violent criminals who’d take over the country given half the chance. We called it “swart gevaar” or “black danger.”

The lie was the only way the apartheid government could convince South Africans of its justness. Instilling fear was the only way to convince white folk to accept an oppressive society.  Hitler did it, too. So did many other dictators, so...

My Sexuality Lives in the Mud, Not at the End of a Rainbow

I value a depraved mind over any of the exquisite things the tops in our community are capable of. There's so much beauty and talent to see in the kink world, but if I had to choose one trait over any other, it’d be debauchery. Nothing is sexier to me than a dominant who has the imagination and curiosity to bring all his depravity to life. Rope is a tool that can achieve that, but dominants who are disinhibited enough to roll around in their own grimy brains can use any ...

Hitachis in Crack

I've been working through the posts I wrote when I was new to the kink scene. I turned up this one from 2016:

Today I got a Lelo wand.

A Lelo

fucking

wand!

Do you know what that is? That’s a Hitachi on crack.

The toys were a gift from a reader-turned-friend who found out I was the first woman who ever reached 40 without trying a vibrator. Yes. That really did happen.

I’m not the type to ...

Social Media's Favourite Master

Fetlife’s favourite master doesn’t allow hard limits. If you’re in distress, he will just know. He’s that impressive. He’s more domineering than a dominant, and he’s been on K&P a thousand times. You can trust him, I swear it. Just look at the 50, 000 followers on his list who think he’s grand.

Fet’s favourite master will even pay for your ticket to his brothel—I mean poly family—on the other side of the planet. He flies slaves in all the time. Then he...

Ignorance Doesn't Have a Consent Acronym

As a kink writer with a breathplay aversion, I’m often accused of being risk averse. I’m not the Kink Karen you think I am. Let’s cut to a metaphor break.

When I was considering brain surgery, I had to weigh up the risks involved in cutting into a tiny part of my temporal lobe. I spent weeks in hospital connected to a monitor to assess this accurately. Every brain resection surgery is different, but mine might have cost me my personality, my mood stability, and my ability to wri...

When All Sex is Make-up Sex

Two yowling cats woke me up at 2 am this morning. This is not unusual. Screaming at each other is their favourite thing to do, and they will do it for hours. I don’t know much about cats beyond the fact that they are assholes, so I can’t tell you if this is a precursor to hot sex. All I can tell you is that dogs are the better species.

I know all you cat people are probably yowling at me right now, which is appropriate, I suppose. Not all people are privileged enough to know dogs ar...

If you’re a top who thinks you can handle consent easily, you might not be intentional enough to handle consent easily

Chester was the most aggressive dog at the shelter. Through many months of patient work, he gradually learned to trust. Consent is even more important in shelters than it is in the kink scene, and one day, someone violated Chester’s consent. They touched him in ways that triggered his trauma, and he began biting again. It took us another six months to undo the damage. Only when rescues have control over who touches them and when do they begin to recover from their PTSD. Like clockwork, that...

Depression Recovery is Just One Stitch

The Trouble with Depression Advice

When you’re depressed, they’ll tell you that the sun will come out tomorrow, as though your life is an Annie film and your disorder comes from some mystical place outside of you. And they will be right: life can be an Annie movie, and the sun will eventually come out. That is the nature of this solar system. The earth turns, the sun rises, the clouds evaporate.

They just don’t do any of those things inside your head where your disorder lives.

 ...

Before the Attention Economy, BDSM Used to Happen Without Professional Photographs

They say back in the Paleolithic era, kink was the sort of thing you did in your bedroom with a girlfriend. Sam spanked Jess with a hairbrush and never even considered what the world might think of that. Mark tied Jack to the chandelier for no reason other than that it seemed to be a good idea at the time. The Leather Community thought they’d defined BDSM in those days, but Jack bought chaps for Susan and Susan alone. People used to play with toys they bought at the hardware store.

To...