If your partner has any kind of submissive tendency, and if – like me – you’re enthusiastic yet clumsy when it comes to wielding a whip and calling someone a ‘filthy puppy’, at some point you may well have heard the two most terrifying words in the English language:
“Surprise me.”
Surprises are hard enough when it comes to buying presents, but when it comes to sex they can range from disappointing to downright dangerous if you don’t quite get it right. While I’d always advocate ‘having a horny chat’ long before you don your Batman mask and start beating six shades of shit out of your partner, occasionally it just doesn’t work like that. I’ve had gents tell me that it’s just ‘not sexy’ if they tell me how to top, or which exact area of their body they want me to slap and tickle, so they’ve respectfully requested that I make it up as I go along and they’ll let me know if I do anything that’s not hitting the right buttons.
But although that eases any worries that I might do something so awful it turns them off submission forever, it doesn’t ease my other pressing concern: that I am a flailing, insecure, bungling twat. I love the look in a guy’s eyes when I can tease and hurt him in just the way he loves, and being able to conjure it gives me a deliciously warm kick in the cunt. But as I build up to it, most of the things that flash through my mind are either ‘too dominant – he wouldn’t believe it was me doing them’ or ‘not dominant enough – it sounds like I’ve read this one in Cosmo.’
So when a lady emailed me asking ‘have you got any good ideas on how to dominate a man?’ I sent her my ‘Goldilocks’ list – some things that – while not perfect, and certainly not sure-fire hits with anyone, worked pretty well for me at one time or another. This list comes with a few huge caveats:
You should never do any of this stuff without consent (there are some tips in here on how I’d establish it in a sexy way, but if all else fails I recommend sending your partner a link to this and saying ‘tell me which of these made you hard, you filthy little fucktoy’ or something less cringeworthy)
This list is naturally very ‘straight’ – i.e. it’s about me (a cis woman) doing things to cis men, because that’s pretty much all I have experience of in this arena. If you have other tips from other perspectives, please do add them in the comments – given how appalling I am even in areas I’m familiar with, I dread to think what havoc I could cause if I started speculating on things I’ve never tried.
How to dominate with humiliation
In the right context, doing your hair can be deeply sexy. That context is, of course, if you’ve got him naked in a spreader bar, bending over to touch his ankles, and holding hair grips in his mouth with the express instruction not to drop any of them. I get a bit bored of this after a while, but occasionally shouting at him to stay in position can be both amusing and erotic, especially if it makes him hard. Making him take off his pants in public places. I’ve read this trick in countless male dom/female sub erotica – she is ordered to go to the toilet and remove her pants because – inevitably – she’s wearing a skirt and he can have fun touching her up under the table. What isn’t so frequently explained, though, is that you can order a guy to do exactly the same thing, with very similar effect. Bonus points if you can get him to undo his flies under the table while you’re having dinner.There are humiliation games for guys that involve wearing my knickers too. Although an ex of mine and I used to chat frequently about the genderpolitics of sissyfication, and why we were both Guardian-readingly uncomfortable with the idea that guys wearing knickers was seen as a submissive/weak/humiliating thing, for some reason that didn’t stop it being intensely hot. Hot for him, because the feel of the knickers is sensual and filthy, and hot for me because oh holy shit I love the look of an erection in a tight pair of lacy panties.
How to dominate during sex
There is nothing – repeat: nothing – that makes me feel more dominant than ordering a guy to fuck me with a strapon. It’s obviously not as orgasmic as regular sex with his cock, but my God it makes him feel weak and small and horny and desperate, as his own solid erection is squashed against the inside of the harness, and I’m gasping and panting and enjoying something he cannot even feel.
Belts are useful for a number of different things, not always including doubling them over and beating fuck out of someone. One of my favourite dominant fucks happens in the missionary position – generally one in which people assume the gentleman is in control or holding the rythmn. But if he’s wearing a buttplug, and I’ve looped a belt between his legs so I can tug on both ends to make him go faster/harder/deeper? Then he does exactly what I want, exactly when I want it. As an additional bonus, the buttplug made it much easier for him to come, so he had the mental panic of having to try and stave off his ejaculation – the more I tugged the harder he wanted it, and the harder he wanted it, the harder it was to hold it off, so he had to slow down, so I tugged harder, thus creating a vicious circle of angry hot fucking.
Similarly, fucking him on a chair while he’s wearing a buttplug. But you know that already, right?
How to dominate with pain
Floggers are a good place to begin, because they basically don’t hurt that much. I know that sounds like a pathetic place to start, but there’s a good reason: if you leap straight in with a cane, and have no idea how hard to wield it, just one stroke can end up leaving welts that he doesn’t want, reminding him every time he sits down just how little you know what you’re doing. Floggers, even if wielded with a strong right arm and a bit of determination, don’t tend to hurt that hard. As a cunning way to get around the ‘I don’t want to hurt him beyond what he likes’ scenario, and to introduce the kind of sexy chat that makes me very wet, I like to initiate the ‘pain scale’ game:“How hard is this, on a scale of one to ten, where ‘one’ is ‘rubbish’ and ‘ten’ is ‘stop’?” *whack*“Ow. Five.”“Only five? OK, fuck you, here’s three at a seven to make up for it.” *whack* *whack* *whack*“Argh. Fuck. That last one was an eight.”“I know. But you deserved it. Good boy.” (gives three more at an eight) Slapping is also delightfully fun, because it is an excellent excuse to touch all the sexy bits. Face-slapping: amazing, if he’s up for it, because it combines humiliation with a bit of pain, and can be done while I’m sitting on his dick. Requires explicit consent, though, so how do you do this as a surprise? Piece of piss:“If you don’t [insert thing you want him to do: say thank you or beg for forgiveness or whatever] I’m going to hit you here [touch face]. OK?”“OK/Yes ma’am/Fuck no/I’d really rather you didn’t/etc.”Nipple clamps hurt like a motherfucker (at least, the ones I have do) so as a ‘surprise’ they can be a bit hit and miss. If, like me, you’re worried about putting it in just the right place so it neither falls off nor causes him super-intense end-of-nipple pain, they can be nervewracking. But the beauty of being in the driving seat is that if you’re ever unsure about anything, you can make him do it himself. Genius, right?“Put these on. Quickly. I haven’t got all fucking day.”Then make him take the chain in his mouth – because the clamps will give a kick of pain whenever they move, it’s one of the most effective ways of keeping a submissive dude still.Ball squeezing is one of those deeply dangerous areas. If – like me – you don’t have balls of your own, it’s hard to know exactly what to do with them, There’s clearly a big difference between sexy pain that has him moaning ‘oh please ma’am’ and deeply painful pain that has him rolling on the floor and making retching noises. So yeah – start gently, work your way up. The pain scale here is useful, but you might want to avoid going beyond five, unless he’s told you really explicitly otherwise. And, as I can attest from experience, even the gentlest of flicks is probably not a great idea. I had to buy him Wetherspoons nachos for a week to apologise.
How to dominate with denial
This is my easiest go-to domming thing, not because it’s a piece of piss (although it is), but because I cannot get enough of the look on a guy’s face when he’s desperate and pleading to come. At it’s very basic level, denial can involve wanking him off, then stopping, wanking, stopping, etc until the smallest of tears leaks from his eyes and the look he gives you is one of pure and burning need. But you can do way more than that. A guy I knew used to love a slightly painful denial wank. Me going hard and sloppy at his dick for a while, all spit-lubed and hot, until he’d grunt to show me he was just. So. Close. At which point I’d stop, wipe my hand on my jeans, then continue touching him but with slow, circular strokes around the sensitive skin of his head. After ten or eleven circles it’d start getting dry. After twenty or so he’d whimper a bit. After twenty five he’d beg me to stop. When I stopped he’d beg me for more.The beauty of denial is that it can be done even when you’re not in the room. As a general rule I’m not a fan of sexting, because fuck it – if we’re going to have sex then I’d rather have it then just tell you in great detail exactly how we’re going to have it and have you text me back misspelled porn which I have to read and reply to on the bus. But in a few situations it’s useful: i.e. the situation in which I text him saying “I’m on my way to yours and I’ll be with you in twenty minutes. Wank yourself to near-completion then drink two litres of water.” Then I can arrive at his flat knowing he’s horny, and also has a full bladder, meaning I can alternate some hot denial wanking with a bit of humiliation (You can piss with an erection, you’re just not trying hard enough. Try harder. I’m waiting). For bonus points/additional fun, send this text long before you’re actually on your way, then send another an hour later saying “Sorry, tube delays!”If the piss thing isn’t your bag, you can always just alternate hardness and softness to build to a jizzsplosion later in the evening. Send a similar text, but insist on him having a hard on when you arrive. As you walk in the door, tell him to lose his erection. As soon as he’s soft again, make him hard. Rinse, repeat once or twice an hour for the rest of the evening until he cries a little bit and leaks precum all over the carpet.When he’s super-hard and has been denied, tell him he can come but only if he does it in a particular way. i.e. ‘you can come now, but you can’t use your hands’ or ‘you can come now, but only through your jeans.’ Bonus evil points if, even then, you insist on stopping him just before he does and say ‘only joking, dickhead’ then make him make you a sandwich. Sandwich-making is, in my opinion, the cornerstone of dominance…
Carnavalesque 