Oh well. The prickly jock strap did not keep Lion awake. Somehow, even with all those nasty teeth biting into him, he managed to snooze away. He was only in it for about an hour when he asked how long I was planning on keeping it on him. Since it wasn’t particularly bothering him I figured it could come off.

Now, in all fairness, he was lying down while he wore it. I suspect if he were sitting or walking around, the little metal teeth would have done more to make him uncomfortable. [Lion — I’m sure of that!] Next time, my pet. However, I think wearing it did make him a little hornier. He was rock hard when we played. Unfortunately, rock hard at the start and throughout most of the half hour or so did not translate into getting anywhere near the edge. He was bucking but I think that was more to help me than to get himself closer. He said maybe he just needs a blow job.

Maybe tonight I’ll bring out some lube to see if we can’t get something going. I also suspect he needs some bondage activity. That usually gets his motor running. Of course, there’s always a butt plug. That takes no effort on my part and seems to work wonders. I have many tricks in my bag to get Lion to the edge. I just haven’t been using them.

Last night Lion asked when his Christmas present would be arriving. Apparently he’s eager to have my weenie and balls encircled by leather with his hands bound to his sides. Personally, I think he’s turned on by the nipple clamps too but he’d never admit to that. In the meantime, I’ll keep searching for the cuffs and bed restraints. I do know where the spreader bar is so once I find one set of cuffs, I can make use of it.

Don’t worry, Lion. We’ll get you to the edge. Again and again.

Amazon Prime Video has a new series called “Modern Love “. Mrs. Lion and I watched a few episodes. It has a really nice vibe to it. It resembles the film style of Woody Allen. That’s good for me because I love Woody Allen movies. The episodes are based on true stories that were published in the New York Times. One of them was about two people who met and decided to spend the afternoon together walking around New York. They visited a zoo and while watching a couple of snow leopards wondered what the leopards were thinking when it came to “liking” each other.

Their responses were silly. But it got me thinking about how we decide how other animals mate. Observing them in the wild often leads to believing that a female goes into estrus, a male sniffs her urine and hurries over to mate with her. In more recent times, thanks to motion-triggered cameras and patient documentarians, we see that there is far more involved processes in mating. In virtually every species, the female observes and communicates with one or more males before allowing one of them near enough to mate.

More complex creatures, like lions, have developed patterns that occur far from the actual sex. We now know that the pride of lionesses don’t simply accept the first male that comes their way. They are perfectly capable of driving off any males they feel disinclined to add to the family. Once a male is in the pride, he is still subject to painful reminders that the girls call the shots. Yes, when one of them goes into estrus, he is there and will mount her as soon as he can. All of the activities that brought him close enough to do this occurred long before she was available.

Since we are humans, we understand how complex our mating rituals can be. Even one night stands require some male qualification before the female will let him near her. The only exception to this is when some goods or services are traded for the sex. In that case, if the male can come up with whatever the female wants, he gets to mate with her.

Of course all of us know this. I’m not at all sure why we don’t realize how similar we are to our four-footed ancestors. Human society, at least Western human society spent thousands of years evolving male-dominated pairing. To do this, women had to be degraded to the point that they were essentially merchandise that men could purchase. There were lots of ways they could do this, but the bottom line was the women had little-to-no say in the matter. In the last century, women’s liberation largely erased this societal disparity. Equality is the goal. Great strides have been made in that direction.

Along with this growth came some new problems. Without society telling us who should make the choices within a relationship, marriages were in jeopardy because nobody knew how to handle disagreements. Some of us felt a strong need to tip the scale in one direction or another. I spent 10 years with a woman who wanted to be “owned” by me. She liked to call herself a slave. Actually, she was anything but. However, I did have the last say and I could punish her as I wished. I became disenchanted with this “traditional” relationship. I got into it because my marriage had been strictly one of equals. Resolving anything was quite painful. My ex had no interest in BDSM and I felt a strong need to be topped. I’m not saying the marriage ended because of this. It didn’t. But this realization on my part certainly contributed to bringing the end more quickly.

Some guys who are into female led relationships or male chastity, want to generalize and claim these practices represent the ideal state for human mates. That can’t be true. What we do is reasonably extreme and unlikely to represent a standard for society as a whole. However, at least in my marriage, we have a balance very much like my lion namesakes. I’m allowed to be independent and growl and stamp my paws here and there. But when she gets tired of it, Mrs. Lion puts her paws down and lets me know in a very painful way she’s had enough.

What we have is a very traditional marriage, at least to a casual observer. It doesn’t appear that Mrs. Lion is the boss. I don’t think she wants the world to see her that way. However, like my lion friends, I know that she has me on a relatively short leash. She is completely comfortable making me wait for sex and if she feels like it, locking me into a chastity device, she won’t hesitate to do it.

She has learned to enforce my good behavior with unpleasant punishments if I’m silly enough to upset her. I have a very basic and strong motivation to want this. I am sexually aroused thinking about her enforcing her will. That makes me a very willing participant even when she punishes me. I’m excited by the idea of being spanked. So, when she needs to punish me I assume the position with a slight tingle in my loins. That tingle goes away quickly, but by the time it does it’s too late. Similarly, even though it annoys me when it happens, when she overrules a choice I want to make, I also get that nice little tingle.

I translate this reaction I have to something in my lizard brain. Deep down in my evolutionary past, like the lions, it just feels “right” in Mrs. Lion exercises her power. I assume that other human males feel something like this as well. It may be buried deep in their psyches, and inaccessible under the heavy load of societal conditioning. That doesn’t mean it isn’t there. I make this assumption because over 80% of us males in studies list being spanked as one of our favorite fantasies. There is that tingle creeping out in our sleep.

It doesn’t mean that every bride should get spanking lessons as part of the premarital preparations. It just means that when people actually accept “equality” in a relationship, they’re very likely to see the scale tipping toward the distaff side of the scale. Maybe I’m more evolved than other guys. More likely, I’m less evolved and I’m behaving like my four-footed ancestors.

jockstrap with points
This is the leather prickly jock Lion will be wearing. We’ll see how long I can train him to keep it on without too much whining.

I’ve decided to forgive the last three spankings I owe Lion. Maybe it’s only two. The point is, he won’t associate them with annoying me so why bother?

I know he’s right. The punishments have to happen close to the infraction. The problem is that we’ve gone to multiple days of punishments. That means he might forget what he’s done by the time I get to day four. Assuming I’m swatting him every day, he may not forget that soon, but what if punishment is added? If I assign four days for annoying me and then he interrupts me so I assign four more days, by the time I get to the interrupting swats, he may have forgotten interrupting me. Oh, he’ll know I’m pissed that he did something, but does he have to equate the actual infraction to the punishment?

I’m leaning toward mouth-soaping and the punishment stool for the “small” infractions such as eating before I do, spilling food and forgetting punishment day. That will reserve the “real” punishment for more serious offenses. Having said that, if he relaxes too much and violates the small infractions too often, I can (and will) certainly give him swats.

The best part about using mouth-soaping and the punishment stool for the smaller infractions is that they can be added on to the larger offenses. If he annoyed me and spilled food, he might have four days of swats and one day on the punishment stool. And the punishment stool will undoubtedly follow the swats for that day. I hesitate to add standing in the corner to the mix because of his balance issues. However, if physical therapy helps in that regard, I have another tool in my small infraction arsenal. Mouth-soaping and standing in the corner will be useful for days when he has no other punishments because sitting on the punishment stool with a non-burning butt will obviously not have the same effect.

On another note, as promised, I will have Lion wear the prickly jock strap at some point today. He suggested the harness, saying it was more fun for him, but that’s not the point now is it? I’m not sure how long he’ll be able to wear the jock strap. This isn’t really an endurance thing. I just want him in it. Perhaps the more he wears it, the longer he’ll be able to handle it. There may be no correlation at all between the number of times he wears it and how long each time. It’s not a butt plug. It’s a mean jock strap with tiny metal teeth biting into my balls.

Chomp! Chomp!

clothespins arn;t just for laundry
Mrs. Lion has lots of these. They never touch clothes. She likes to put them on my most tender spots.

Every so often, I wander around the Web to see what others are up to. Invariably, I remind myself of my uncle when I do this. He would read the newspaper and start yelling at it when he came across a story that upset him. I find myself reading some blogs and shaking my head saying not-very-softly, “You’ve got to be kidding!”

Most blogs are not widely read. I find them by going to various aggregator pages that list blogs. There is one blog in particular written by someone in England that professes to be by a woman who spends her free time torturing her poor husband. She’s fairly successful. At least I think she is. She has a number of “books” that she sells. These books are either collections of her posts or longer, more detailed versions of what she writes in her blog.

I suppose it’s possible that she’s really female and really torments her poor husband. Of course, this is all right if it’s fully consensual. She gets comments from other “women” who elaborate on things they do to their husbands. I tend to be a critical reader. I spent decades in the BDSM community so I have a pretty good idea of what people do to each other. This woman (I use the word figuratively) likes to put capsaicin products on her husband’s penis. She likes to watch him writhe in pain after she does this. The only problem with this is that the least sensitive place to put such things is on the penis. Mrs. Lion has put very hot stuff on the head of my penis. Yes, it is a bit of a burn, but it is nothing like the same stuff on my balls. Similarly, this blogger claims to apply stinging nettles to his defenseless cock. I could see that that would be very uncomfortable. Again, if her goal was to make him truly miserable, that would be my last choice of spots to put it. Nettles applied to the anus and balls, not to mention the perineum would have a much more severe effect.

The only reason I bring this up is that I believe the choice of location to torment this man is founded more on male fantasy than actual female cruelty. Over the years, I’ve experienced cock and ball torture (CBT) from some good players. Mrs. Lion enjoys doing it to me. I’ve seen very few women who focus their attention on the penis. Yes, clothespins do end up on my cock. Mostly, they are attached to my scrotum. The balls offer a great deal more surface area and create a lot more anxiety in the man, since we instinctively protect them far more than we do our cocks.

clothespins on lion's balls
Mrs. Lion keeps my penis pain free so she can keep me hard and laugh about how aroused I am even when I am in pain.
(Click image to view larger)

Even if they have no intention of making sexual use of the penis, the CBT practitioners I’ve known don’t spend much time on the erect penis. For one thing, there isn’t a lot of stuff you can do to it that is safe, painful, and will keep his hard penis from going soft. My point is that we males are far more likely to fantasize about things happening to our penises than we are our scrotum. I believe that’s what makes such tales giveaways. Based on my experience, women tend to focus on our rear ends and balls. We, on the other hand, like to think about being teased, albeit painfully, by action happening to our cocks. So when men write about CBT, the penis is the focus. When women write about it, they have a much broader view.

If you think about it, the female perspective makes much more sense. If the penis is left relatively unhurt, it is available for sexual stimulation while painful activities are going on just below it. Mrs. Lion likes to tease me about the fact that I must “like” those painful clothespins since I have an erection while she applies them. It’s hard to deny that. If she put my penis into pain, attempts to stimulate it would just hurt and wouldn’t get me more aroused.

Anyway, this is a sort of stuff I growl at the screen about. One other kind of interesting observation is that both men and women think of the penis as “aggressive”. It’s the penetrator. You might think that this would suggest hurting it would be a way to prove it is not invincible. However, it’s far more humiliating to see that it can be manipulated into being aroused in the face of painful activity going on in its immediate vicinity. It shows that its possessor, the male, really doesn’t have much control over it at all. The female, however, can make it hard or soft at will. To me, at least, that’s a demonstration of real power.

Maybe that’s why so many women like to focus on genitals when they do BDSM on a man. Both symbolically and actually, our external genitals are the center of male vulnerability. Mrs. Lion certainly understands that.