to try. Oh well... win some, lose some. ok oe 3) Transparent as Glass. Very rarely, I'll end up with a BDSM partner where our brief in-the-moment communications -- you know, like groans, or physical shifts, or facial expressions, or even jokes -- function very well. We can get into intense, intimate S&M in a way that seems almost instinctive (although it helps future encounters if we talk it over and process what we did afterwards). This is really exciting when it happens, but I recognize it as unusual. A gift. The person I'm about to write about is totally going to get a swelled head because I write about him so much, but he's such a good example, I have to. The first time I went home with him, I knew he wasn't in the public BDSM community. We'd had one really vague conversation about BDSM previously, and he'd read a small sample of my work. I didn't expect anything much. He kissed me, and then I think he gave me some kind of mild signal like a bite on my shoulder. It was a gentle bite, by my standards. So I took matters into my own hands and removed my shirt, preparing to give him some feedback. He leaned back and said, "Whoa," and I thought, Oh damn, I'm totally going too fast for him, he's probably not accustomed to a high degree of sexual directness, so | said, "Sorry, is this okay?" and he laughed and kind of threw up his hands and said, "Sure." That made me a tad nervous -- if me taking off my shirt surprised him, what else would surprise him? -- but I figured I'd see it through, see what happened. So I explained to him what kind of biting I really like, and showed where I like it on my back and my arms. I think I gave him a couple of other tips, too, but I honestly can't remember; it didn't take more than five minutes. I certainly didn't give him an exhaustive rundown of my preferences before I said, "Does that all make sense?" and he said "Yes," and put his hands on me. Which is why it was so surprising that within a very short time, both of us were breath