Black and Blue

Ava Ex Machina
Valley of the Dommes
6 min readMar 20, 2017

I lay in bed naked with my legs in the air in the air, counting the bruises that lick up my calves and thighs. Mystery bruises, I think as I press them one by one, what I used to call them since childhood, finding them day after day on my peach-like skin. This time though I know that how I got them is not a mystery at all, but a consequence of my own endurance and enthusiasm.

I stare at them whenever he leaves, reminded of the photos and essays I have seen so lovingly written by bottoms of their own post-scene marks, wrapping their skin in the stripes of tigers and watercolors of an indigo sky. It’s beautiful to see and read as a top, to see and hear the impressions that one can both emotionally and physically leave on our partners and beloveds.

I always thought it a little ironic that despite the fact that I don’t bottom, I bruise so easily and in brilliant colors. All in all it just means that I’m one of those unfortunate souls who suffers an excess of “topping injuries,” the slight cuts and scrapes and bruises that I get both through my talents as well as my assorted mistakes and misfires. I’ve grown in my own way to appreciate them, and to understand what it is that so moves others to photograph and treasure theirs as well.

I see these reminders when I look in the mirror after he has left, the shadows of the tips of his fingers where his hands dug in to my thighs while I deprived him of air with my ass.

The stripes across the inside of my arm where I showed him, perhaps ironically, that the bamboo cane doesn’t have to be so scary.

The outline of the tip of my crop after I slapped it against my thigh to create the distinctive noise that let him know what was coming next.

The burn on my knees where I knelt in front of him, binding his legs to the bondage chair while I teased and tortured his cock.

The light licks on my upper arms where the heavy cowhide of my floggers caught my exposed skin as I pull them through the air with heavy thuds on to his back over and over and over again.

The slight bite on my hand where I slipped and pinched myself while pulling his collar in another notch, “tighter, if it pleases you” dancing off his lips.

It’s maybe one of the more adorable ironies that as hard as I have ever flogged him, caned him, or cropped him, he barely bruises at all. It’s only me who is marked, me who is almost grateful that when I blindfold him he can’t see how intensely I gaze at him, how I stare with longing. I’m grateful he can’t see my pupils dilate as he feels the tips of my carefully filed fingernails dragging across his skin. His breath comes in sharp rasps as I pull them down his torso and thighs, then back up to his throbbing cock. I’m grateful he can’t see how much I like him, how afraid I am.

His lips find my neck and suck gently on it. Although his mouth is delicate on me, I’m certain of the hickey I’ll find later in the mirror. I brush my hair back over it and turn over to find my phone to text him before I sleep.

The bruises remind me that as much as I would love to see myself as something static and stoic, a classic archetype of a goddess carved from marble; I am in reality still soft, human, and too vulnerable. I think about this as I pause to wonder if I should remind him so soon after he’s left how much I love seeing him, how I can’t wait to see him again next weekend.

There are days that I look at the bruises and cringe at my mortal form, ashamed of how much opening my heart to a femdom dynamic has given some of these submissives the power to permanently injure me. The bruises and scars of play from dozens of scenes and so many relationships past have faded. But I can feel the ache of a particular few in my insides, like a contusion that hasn’t yet healed, as I work to be present for yet another heart presented to me on two knees and laid at my feet.

My feelings are not as easily bruised as my skin, but the heightened chemical state of D/s play will always be a drug that produces for me strong and fast attachments even to those who don’t deserve it. I am certain I have my heart broken more than most, that I more often cry, that feel the absences more acutely because of the constant stream of oxytocin dumping in to my system as I hold a blindfolded and gagged face of someone who has given themselves to me and my hands. The intensity of this full bodily surrender will always trigger a full emotional surrender for me, and for that intoxicating high it I will always suffer gladly.

I think of this surrender again as outside the restaurant he kisses me with enthusiastic disregard, and then does something so bold, so subversive to a woman like me that I nearly recoil from its strangeness.

I am used to men pawing at me on our dates, their insistent pressing of their legs against mine astride our bar stools as we drink, feeling their eagerness to experience my dominance curl around me like a cat that knows exactly which person in the room is most allergic. I am used to the way they lean in to me, snake their hands around my waist or up my back hoping I’ll respond in kind. I am used to their strokes, prying fingers, their expectant gestures. I am unused to their fingers weaving through mine so that they can do something so perverse as to simply hold my hand in a public place.

The ones that consider me just a delight, a diversion, a demon in the dark, the ones that would never tell their parents about me, wouldn’t show pictures of me to their friends, who would never hold my hand don’t hurt me as this one might. Like so many of my topping marks and bruises, most of these subs and their attachments to me are inconsequential and fleeting. Each time I hit the hard reset button and open myself again, baring my heart and my skin, and the collection of imprints and colors begins again anew.

Much is spoken about the bruises and scrapes of impact play as maps and histories, diagrams of the dance between partners, or as love notes or novels written in blood and skin, as sculpture or paintings, an artwork carved from the entropy of love. I stare at my hands and wonder why there are no marks where his fingers have gripped mine as if I am something of such value or significance. How can there be nothing there when I can still feel his hand wrapped so tightly in mine?

To me my topping bruises and those that cause the ones I want to count one by one as I count the days until I see him again, are less like these creations of great masters, and more like the bits of a dream I only can remember just after waking. I wonder each time if the one who inspires this fresh crop of purples and blues will stay, if maybe someday I will mark someone as deeply as some seem to for me.

They fade so quickly, and all I can do is trace the outlines, shut my eyes and try to hold on to the feeling, to the hope that this time they might remain.

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Ava Ex Machina
Valley of the Dommes

Silicon Valley’s femdom sweetheart, security witch, memoirist, postmistress general.