At the moment of truth...

Kami and Abel recently played a very severe scene. (See her account here and his account here and you'll understand how severe.) In it they played one of his stories, 'The Punishment List', where the girl recieved a double caning; as severe as any girl could get.

Chatting to Kami in advance about the scene she had two worries about it: that she wasn't going to be able to take the pain, or that Abel wouldn't be able to go through with giving such a hard caning. In my own mind I thought the former wouldn't be a problem, but I wasn't so sure about the latter.

From my own experience, I know that fear, and the resulting adrenalin, can make you get through anything. My JCPs with Mistress Switch and Mr Allen have taught me that. They don't work without real fear and an unexplainable but resolute need to get through the ordeal. I knew that Kami had both the fear and the need and figured she'd be OK.

But such scenes also don't work without the knowledge that the Top will not stop, no matter how much you scream. Each time I've played with Mistress Switch I've been terrified. At my second JCP I thought I wouldn't survive 6 strokes of her cane, let alone 24. And yet I couldn't have safeworded and had she stopped I'd have been gutted. That was only the second time we'd met and the second time we'd played. My knowledge from the first scene and the lasting stranger element made it work, as well as knowing when she steps up she leaves compassion at the door. (That doesn't mean she leaves safety at the door too!) Her determination made me equally resolute to not to give in either.

When it comes to my own closest play partners, I've always doubted that they could do that do me. They know me too well, care about me too much. (Hence, my uncertainty about Abel and that scene and why I'm as proud of him as I am of Kami.)

Don't misunderstand me, I've played very hard with both HH and Abel, separately and together. (Scenes I've played with both of them like the Workhouse Flogging, might have been the hardest I've played with either of them.)

But because they care about me so much, I have doubted that we could do a JCP scene on the scale of severity like the one with Mistress Switch. Partly cos I wonder if they could actually do it. Watch me suffer like that and not let up at all? But mostly and more importantly, I don't know if I would go through with it.

I know I can take the pain but what would be the point? I'm not a severe physical player; I prefer headspace. My forrays into severe have been out of curiosity and a masochistic need to test my utmost limits. I have nothing to prove to either HH or Abel, or they to me. At the painful moment of truth I think I'd disengage: ask them to stop, tell myself we don't play like this, we don't need this. Or if I didn't give up myself, might feel that I could break them instead; be so piteous, so distraught they couldn't continue.

It's a dilemma I doubt we'll ever answer; I don't really want to prove or disprove any of my hypotheses!