This weeks article by JACK RINELLA

Call me crazy, but this article just is so sweet and such a turn on. Patricks devotion and love, is more about giving of himself in many different ways, more than cleaning the house and giving bj's.

They've been together for 11 years, and I think it is sweet. I know, I'm nuts, but I do.


My Birthday GiftBy Jack RinellaPeople in our world often talk about rules and protocols and usually see them as being devised or imposed by the tops in our midst. A long time ago I learned that there is one rule that bottoms ought to follow stringently: Never give a top a toy you don’t want him or her to use on you.I learned that one day when a visiting bottom gave me a paddle (or at least I think that’s what it was) and then complained when I spanked him with it. It seems really obvious to me that if he didn’t want me to use it he should have left it at home, or at least have been smart enough to give me the gift only as he was leaving my home.Sheesh! Sometimes it’s way too noticeable that a guy is using his penis for a brain.Let’s fast forward to the twenty-first century. Patrick knew that I wanted another single-tail whip. My desire was very noticeable. At almost every vendor’s table I looked for just the right one and if I found one I would pick it up, feel its weight, and swing it a bit. I’d feel the braids carefully and look over the workmanship. Too often the price tag was such that I’d put it down and walk away.Last December, at the birthday dinner hosted for me, Patrick presented me with a most beautiful and carefully made signal whip. That is one long slim whip, about three feet in length. I prefer shorter whips as they are easier to control and there is limited swinging room in my dungeon.In giving me such a gift, Patrick was breaking the rule I just stated, as he really doesn’t like being whipped, especially if the hits are on his back. In his defense I have to say that in this case his love and devotion were more important than his dread of the whip. He gave the gift not for his tastes but for my desire.Good scenes and good friendships have that in common. When we do something for the other person, instead of for ourselves, the event is doubly enhanced. It’s ironic that selflessness can sometimes be the most direct path to selfish satisfaction. Now there’s a sentence that takes some thought if you want to make sense of it.Look at it this way. By selflessly giving me a gift that he might not want to give, Patrick gained the greater satisfaction of knowing that he had given me what I had really desired.I took my present and hung it with my whips and paddles. It stayed there more than three months before I used it. I was waiting for the right moment, since a good whipping takes both time and place. At this month’s Hellfire party, I decided it was the right time and place. After we had both finished our volunteer duties, I grabbed my toy bag, found Patrick and looked for a vacant St. Andrews cross. Using leather wrist and ankle cuffs I spread his naked body on the cross.Admittedly he was bound rather loosely, not that he could get away but rather that he could do a lot of squirming. I like to see him squirm. In fact causing groans and squirms of pain are among my favorite pastimes. Making skin turn pink to red to blue is fun too. Only a sadist can really understand that phenomenon. It’s not the infliction of pain that turns me on. It’s the results that it causes. In fact, I prefer bottoms who can’t stand pain. Real masochists take way too much work! Wimps are much easier to hurt.Of course it’s not fair to call’em wimps, but you get the idea. They’re not wimps, you see, if they are willing to do that which they hate just to turn me on.For a change I put some effort into Patrick’s ordeal. I started out with an easy flogging, though not with a real gentle flogger. From there I progressed to a crop, a paint stirrer, and finally my birthday gift.The new whip worked well as I just brushed Patrick’s now pink back with its thin braid. It really was a teasing sensation, as I knew he was dreading what was to come. Quite frankly, since it is a new whip I took it more gently than I might have if I knew how to wield it with more expertise and if my bottom was really into heavy, bloody pain.No matter. I had a really good time and was proud to show off my slave’s devotion. I like playing with Patrick in public as an affirmation of our relationship. Private scenes are much more common since there we have a freedom to let loose as well as to be intimate without distraction.In due time the squirms were coming on hot and heavy. I paused my whipping now and then to feel the heat of his flesh and to caress his body. The gift of the whip was now a gift that was giving again. Is it no wonder that I consider myself so blessed?It wasn’t one of those whip to blood scenes and it needn’t be. I got what I wanted well before I had to “let loose.” The whipping was never as intense as it could have been. I had no desire to go there. If I had the bondage would have been more complete; there would have been no wiggle room on the cross. Patrick would have been bound tightly so that the target of his back would have been immovably secure, a place to lash out with directness until his tender skin began to ooze and then bleed.But sadism doesn’t have to go that far to be erotic. It only has to know its power and its control. The slave was mine and he had shown that with the gift, quietly tendered in a fancy restaurant in the heart of Washington, DC and now shown to our Leather brothers at the clubhouse.Too often we fail to see the importance of giving in what we do, that BDSM is not only a mindless act of desire, but that rather it is more correctly seen as the gift of self. The best of what we do is the gift of both selves. It is not only bottoms who are called to give. Tops, too, must give of themselves by freely being who they are. It is a strange idea that I can best please Patrick only by being the selfish, sadistic, and demanding son of a bitch that I am. It is only by taking what I want, Patrick on the cross as an example, that gives him what he truly wants.Strange bedfellows we make, but happy ones to be sure.