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" By Master M, 52, artist and slave kelly,* 46, accounting technician *In master-slave protocol, slaves&amp;#039; names are never capitalized. THE START Master M: I&amp;#039;ll have her kneel, and I&amp;#039;ll place a collar around her neck. By accepting the collar, she consents to submitting to my orders. slave kelly: With the collar, I&amp;#039;m giving my body and mind over to my master, putting the stresses of my day behind me. It&amp;#039;s an amazing, liberating feeling.  PREPARATION slave: He&amp;#039;ll say, I want you to go get the cuffs. I want the red whip. I want you to put such-and-such CD on. Our favorite is Clapton&amp;#039;s song &amp;quot;Hoochie Coochie Man.&amp;quot;  Master: Sometimes I tie her spread-eagle to the slave bed I built. It has hundreds of steel D rings driven into it, so I can secure her in different positions. Other times she might hang from the ceiling or be bent over something.  WARM-UP Master: The goal is to take her on a ride, to push her to a point where she escapes her body, and that entails a gradual buildup of pain that eventually reaches a climactic threshold. So I begin with spanking, usually about five hundred spanks over ten minutes. The spanking gets her blood flowing closer to the skin and begins the flow of her endorphins, which are the body&amp;#039;s natural way of countering pain. slave: I almost always close my eyes, even if I&amp;#039;m wearing a blindfold, so there&amp;#039;s a lot of anticipation of what&amp;#039;s going to happen next. TOOLS Master: After spanking, I begin flogging her. My warm-up flogger is made from deerskin. The flails are about fourteen inches long, and it&amp;#039;s really soft, so it&amp;#039;s difficult to get anything too painful out of it. Next is my buffalo-hide flogger. It has about thirty eighteen-inch flails. When I hit her with that many flails, the impact is usually thuddy. Then I have my quirt, which has four thin leather straps and produces a very pronounced stinging sensation. Next are canes, which deliver a lot of energy in a very small area. And finally, my whip: It&amp;#039;s a six-foot single tail, and it creates a lot of pain in a very specific area.  THE RIDE Master: The length of time I use an instrument depends on her reaction. If it gets to the point where she is just taking the hits and nothing new is happening, it&amp;#039;s time to ratchet up the pain.  slave: I try to challenge myself to take whatever he can give. It&amp;#039;s like running a marathon: I&amp;#039;m not going to collapse before the end. And he watches my body language. He knows. Sometimes I realize I&amp;#039;m making a fist because it&amp;#039;s hurting, and then he&amp;#039;ll slow down a little bit. It&amp;#039;s like a dance. He can sense what&amp;#039;s going on, and I just sort of let my body float. Other times, in my mind I&amp;#039;m screaming, I really wish this would stop. But I never say anything, because I know it would disappoint him. THE SOUNDS  Master: I love when she makes noise and grunts. It&amp;#039;s more rewarding. It&amp;#039;s the sort of energy that a performer gets onstage; the crowd pushes your performance and creativity. THE CLIMAX Master: Finally you reach a point where a scene has really reached its peak. From start to finish, it usually takes about forty minutes to an hour, but it can last up to two hours. slave: Every part of my body will be screaming, and finally I&amp;#039;ll just go to some other place. It&amp;#039;s hard to describe, but you become so focused on the pain that you just leave. POSTPLAY Master: When you reach the peak, the bottom is often out of the world, drugged out from the endorphins. So I need to bring her back slowly, by softening my blows. Then on to perhaps sex and cuddling. slave: It&amp;#039;s really, really exhausting. We used to have sessions during lunch. I&amp;#039;d get back to work and be unable to speak in complete sentences. It&amp;#039;s crazy.  THE KEEPSAKES  slave: Some of the implements, like canes, do leave marks. And that&amp;#039;s not a bad thing. Sort of a souvenir. Similar to a hickey.  THE WHY  Master: During a session, I feel a strong sense of power mixed with loving and tenderness. And I learn things about myself, what makes me tick.  slave: One time I asked him after a session, &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t understand why I like this. What kind of a sick person likes pain? Why do I like to let you do these things to me?&amp;quot; He said, &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s because I&amp;#039;m paying attention to you.&amp;quot; I think he&amp;#039;s partly right. I really do crave attention. But the other thing that really got me hooked was realizing that I could escape. It was like leaving the world for a while. I didn&amp;#039;t have to think about work, or what I am going to fix for dinner, or why my mom is the way she is. When I&amp;#039;m tied up, I can escape everything for a little while. It&amp;#039;s like a mini vacation. --AS TOLD TO TYLER CABOT "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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