Stocking up on BDSM

Before I start, I’m so sorry that I only actually find time to post on my blog when I’m ill. Ridiculous, I know, and it probably gives you a rather unrealistic view of how delicate I am. All the weeks in which I’m not posting are filled with fairly good health, I promise. Anyway, I’ve got a boring old virus this weekend, so I’m in (my new, metal-framed, bondage-ready BDM gift) bed, doing all the computer’y things I put off when I’m well.

Right, that’s out of the way.
I’ve been having an almost indescribably kinky time over the last couple of weeks. This is because I had to cancel my BDSM themed shoots in September and October, and I’ve got a diagnostic operation scheduled for just before Christmas (to find out why I broke so dramatically at the end of August this year). The operation means I can’t schedule any shoots until the end of January, so I’ve been feeling as though poor Ariel and Amelia were in retirement. But I realised I had a window of opportunity before my operation and decided it’d be a great idea to stock up on BDSM experiences to get me through January. Sort of in the same way that everyone else is buying turkeys and boil-in-the-bag rice, and whatever else we buy in a great big pre-Christmas panic. Boil-in-the-bag rice? I don’t know where that came from. I’ve never had it myself….
Lordy, this is going to be a long post, I can feel it coming on.
So, here’s my schedule of shoots I’ve been doing, and shoots I’m hoping to do before hospital catches up with me. They’ve been tremendous fun so far, although sometimes rather surprising.
After the Erotica Exhibition (which was brilliant – thanks again to the people who came to see me, it made me so happy) I headed to the frozen North to http://www.chimerabondage.com/
I’ve worked for Chimera several times before, and have found their self-bondage concept fabulously challenging. As a bondage model, it’s often easy to drift off into a happy world of one’s own while being tied up – but being the rigger as well makes a lot more demands on concentration. This maybe makes it a little bit less of a sexy experience (especially for someone who really likes to fantasise about the person tying me up), but on this trip they gave me a chance to experiment with self-suspension, which I absolutely loved. Here’s a quick frame-grab of my favourite one…

So, with ‘suspension’ ticked off my Christmas memory list, off I went to another bondage shoot, this time in the frozen South West.
And it was absolutely brilliant. I’ve always enjoyed dividing my time between shooting for commercial projects, and working with people who are simply producing BDSM pictures for their own entertainment. Both approaches have lots of advantages, and this shoot seemed to have all the pleasures of not shooting commercially. It was the photographer’s first bondage shoot for a year, which meant he basically had 12 months worth of ideas and props to try out. He also had no particular quota of shots he needed for each set of pictures, which meant we could try really, really uncomfortable things because they only needed to be sustainable for a minute or so. Tremendous! And, not having the ruthless approach of a professional producer (which I’m entirely in sympathy with), he didn’t see it as a waste of time to stop for a cup of tea and a cake every time he’d untied me. Mince pies! Duck l’orange for lunch! And the largest collection of spreader bars I’d ever seen. After ending up on my back, feeling like a large robotic insect with spreader bars attached at every possible point, I drove back home feeling as though I’d had the very best kind of day.
The very next day, I had my first proper, full-day CP shoot since August. It was one which I’d missed shooting because of being in hospital on the scheduled shoot day, and I’d spent 3 months looking forward to finally having a go at bringing the story to life. My friend P had spent that time refining his script and adding more details, so we spent the day in a gorgeous Alice-in-Wonderland world of dreams which gradually became darker and more severe as the shoot progressed.
But oh, my Goodness. I hadn’t realised how quickly my body would forget how to cope with hard CP. Since I started spanking modelling, I’ve worked fairly regularly, and of course, I’ve played a lot at home too. But being ill put any harder play on hold, and since I’ve started to feel better I’ve been shooting constantly which has meant the BDM has been very careful about leaving marks on me. This shoot, however, was scheduled to allow recovery time, so there were prolonged strappings and canings in the script.
Wow! I’d forgotten what proper bruising is like! After the first 12 stroke caning, my bottom felt strangely corrugated – nothing like the slightly raised ridges I’d become used to. ‘How interesting!’ I thought to myself. And was rather pleased, really, to have the chance to re-capture what marks are meant to be like. A couple of (marvellous) scenes later, I was playing a maid who was being strapped instead of dismissed – for an offence she didn’t commit. Totally up-my-street story-wise, I do enjoy being a martyr. And normally, stories I’m enjoying carry me along so well that I don’t feel the pain too much. But not at this shoot. Deeply enjoying my character (who’d decided not to give anyone the pleasure of seeing her react to being punished), I felt confident that I could cope with the strap (it’s one of mine, and I thought I remembered what it felt like).
I was entirely wrong. After about 5 strokes, I thought it must have drawn blood. As far as I know this isn’t actually possible with the strap we were using, but it hurt absolutely hideously. Not that it wasn’t fun (it really was, my character just had to up her game a bit), but by the end of the scene, I could feel hard bruises appearing under the skin. It’s a feeling I associate with the result of a wooden paddle, not a leather strap. Still very interesting, I thought. But I started to feel a bit nervous about the final scene, which was a long caning.
Again, it was constructed to make me want to be terribly brave. I’d been caught helping stranded airmen escape an occupied war-time country, and was trying not to hand any information over until they’d had time to escape. For every 5 minutes I resisted questioning, 10 strokes of the cane would be added to my punishment.
Hoorah! I thought. I’m going to be amazingly brave! P had kindly constructed the story so that the airmen would escape, and by the time I finally gave away their hiding place, I’d earned 80 strokes of the belt, and 80 of the cane. This wasn’t beyond what we’d shot in previous films, so, seeking refuge in my happiness at my imaginary compatriots’ freedom, I prepared to be very, very brave and patriotic.
In the bizarre blur of pain that followed, I recall a few things. I scraped the skin off one of my elbows, gouged a deep scar in the wooden chair I was bending over with the handcuffs I was wearing, ended up on the floor a lot of times, hit myself in the eye with the same handcuffs, and screamed an awful lot. My ruthless captor, in a remarkable gesture of decency, decided that maybe I’d had enough. Like a loon, I insisted we should carry on, and so the scene ended with the highly-trained heroine politely insisting that Mr Interrogator should continue, she didn’t want to interrupt his work; while Mr Beastly Interrogator heroically claimed that no, it was quite alright, he wasn’t angry any more and didn’t want to carry on punishing his mortal enemy after all.
Obviously, it was sensible, kind and sane for P to finish the scene at 60 strokes. Having occasionally been caned by tops who have lost all sense of proportion and reality, I appreciate his clear-sighted approach very much indeed. And from my point of view it was an absolutely fabulous day; not just because of the excellent story, but because of the chance to feel as though I was starting all over again as a spanking model. A week on, I still have fading bruises, and I feel absolutely the opposite of jaded. But it’s shocking to realise how fast my body had forgotten how to deal with prolonged CP.
Honestly, this is ridiculously long post. I haven’t actually finished telling you about my kink-ridden couple of weeks, which have included a wonderful two-day slave-training shoot with the BDM. So I think I’d better stop, have a rest, and post again when I’ve collected my thoughts a bit.
Thanks for jolly well reading, and hope you’re stocking up for Christmas too!
A/a

Oooh, Erotica

Hello everyone! I seem to be feeling better, and am back at work for now. I’ll be having an investigative operation just before Christmas, and will possibly have bits of me removed if it’s deemed necessary (I’m hoping they won’t take anything important away, like my bottom…). But in the meantime, I’m allowed to shoot again, as long as I’m careful (no hanging upside down for now).
And to celebrate being back, the fabbo John Tisbury has employed me to work on his stand at the Erotica Exhibition in London next week.
This is very exciting for a number of reasons; we’re exhibiting John’s new work from the last year, which includes some pictures of me that I’m very proud of. I’ll get to have a go at trying to make people buy things (I’m rubbish at this – I have no hard-sell ability whatsoever and am slightly pathetically grateful if anyone buys a picture of me). And hopefully, I’ll meet a couple of people who read my blog. This is always tremendous fun; so if you happen to be in the London area next weekend come along and find me – I’ll be in the art gallery section.
You can even buy the above picture, if you like.

Humiliation

Well, alright, the picture doesn’t actually relate to the heading. But I love lense flare and I’m rather keen on the photographer. And, laaaaaa, it’s my blog, hoorah!

Before I start, thank you everyone for your extremely kind and lovely comments, emails and Get Well cards. You’ve helped me through a really weird, painful and frustrating time, and while I’m not sure if I’m on the mend or not at the moment, I’m certainly on less drugs for now, and my head is clear enough to blog.
Righty -ho, here goes. I hope it’s interesting, this is something I’ve been thinking about a lot over the last few weeks, and I’d love to know what other people think.
The reason I’ve started thinking about the subject of humiliation is because over the last few weeks, I’ve not been able to do so much of a lot of the things that make me feel ok about myself. Although I complain about being busy and rushing all over the place working, I really like being booked for lots of different jobs, and I’m proud of being able to do a good job for most of the different people I work for. I like being ok at housework, and I like it when I can cook for the BDM (which has never been all that often, TBH…) I’m quite proud of myself, I guess, for having enough energy to do a 4 hour drive, a day’s work, another 4 hour drive and then get up the next day and do it all over again. And I suppose I was proud of being physically fairly fit.
Having had a couple of months in and out of hospital, resting a lot, and not being able to work full-time has been upsetting and humiliating.
Now there’s no surprise that it’s not been very sexy, but it did remind me how absolutely horrible the feeling of humiliation is. And I wondered to myself, how I could possibly have ever found humiliation hot?
Then I realised, I actually don’t. It’s just that the things that lots of other people would find humiliating don’t happen to have the same effect on me. And this made me very interested.
I suppose being forced to take off your clothes in a roleplay might be awfully humiliating to some people, but I don’t mind being naked, and taking off my clothes feels like a symbol of the exciting things that are likely to happen next. So I have to act humiliated, rather than actually feel it.
Shooting pet-girl training, as I have quite often (most recently for the fab www.petandponygirls.com ) is definitely potentially humiliating, but I find it really relaxing not to have to talk, and I think I’m quite good at being a ponygirl (ego, hello) so I don’t find it humiliating at all.
Spanking (and other types of pain play) certainly doesn’t humiliate me either. Not really (though I enjoy pretending, definitely). I suppose that I actually feel proud rather than humiliated if I’m feeling anything other than scared and turned on…
Corner-time, which is surely specifically designed for humiliation doesn’t really have that effect on me either. I really like imagining that I feel terribly shamed, but I don’t actually mind it. Exposure doesn’t make me feel anything bad at all.
And so the list goes on in my head – all these things which look humiliating from the outside, but are in fact just hugely good fun for me. And I think they’re fun because they’re meant to be humiliating, but just happen not to be for me. Rather than happening to be fun in spite of the fact that some people would find them humiliating.
I wonder if that’d be the same for most other spanking models? I’m sort of guessing so, but some of us might actually genuinely be humiliated by those things, but maybe enjoy them because they are…
Then I thought about things which actually are humiliating for me. In the BDSM context, these include;-
1) Things which are presented to you as though they’ll hurt, and then don’t. Out of politeness, I tend to pretend that they’re really painful anyway, but that does make me feel ridiculous, and therefore humiliated. I’d much rather have the implement that actually hurts than the silly pretend-y Ann Summers version.
2) As I’ve talked about before, lame story lines that don’t match any character I could possibly hope to play successfully. Ohhhhh Lordy, that is genuinely, awfully humiliating.
3) Being tied up, and then given a task to do which is pretty much impossible. It makes me feel clumsy, uncoordinated and therefore humiliated.
4) Pretending to have orgasms. I simply won’t. Humiliating, humiliating, humiliating. I won’t have real ones on-screen either, but that’s for a different reason.
5) Peephole bras and crotchless panties. I don’t know why, but I’d feel hideously humiliated by having to wear them. Nude feels much better to me.
In a non-BDSM context, there’s a longer list. I won’t put everything down, because I think that might be dull. Some of the first that spring to mind are;-
1) Pronouncing words wrong. I quite often do this, having learned lots of words by reading rather than hearing them spoken. Ohhhhh the shame. I still blush if I think about examples from years ago.
2) Not being able to speak other European languages well. The shame! I’d feel much more like a proper international model if I could, but I’m rubbish. And the bits I can say, I don’t dare in case I get the pronunciation wrong.
3) Realising I’m being boring.
And on that note, I’ll jolly well stop.
Thanks for reading, if you’ve got this far!
A/a xx

Medical Fetish?

Lordy, I’ve had an eventful month. And not altogether in a good way. Do forgive me, I know that blogs aren’t really meant to be diaries, but I want a record of my rather mad NHS experience over the last few weeks, so I’m putting it here (cos I don’t have an actual diary). Hope it may provide entertainment to some of you, somehow. Especially if you maybe have a medical fetish.

In the UK, we have the much-talked-about National Health Service (NHS for short). It provides free healthcare to UK residents, and means that wherever you are in the UK, you can visit a doctor or hospital for free. And good heavens, I’m glad of that, because otherwise I’d be looking at a big old medical bill as a result of the last few weeks.
3 weeks ago, I woke up with a weird abdominal pain. I was shooting a custom video, and then going on to a bondage shoot later that afternoon. So I took some painkillers and did both shoots. At 10pm I finished work, and drove from London to Yorkshire for a shoot the next day. I arrived at my hotel at about 1am, feeling kind of ill, and went to bed. The next day I was still in pain, so I went to my lingerie shoot, took painkillers, and decided to go to hospital on the way to my next shoot (which was further up North).
I arrived with the lovely http://www.petandponygirls.com/ who kindly drove me to their nearest emergency healthcare centre (which isn’t a hospital, it’s like a little mini clinic for minor illness). DOCTOR NUMBER 1, I have to say, was really rubbish. He poked at my tummy, told me I was ‘probably ok’ and told me to take painkillers. Which wasn’t all that reassuring. So I returned to the Pet and Ponygirl studio, took some painkillers, and went to bed.
I shot with them for 2 days, which was, as always, lovely, but passed in a kind of blur of pain. When the shoot was over, I drove down to the Midlands to stay with my sister. She helped me make an appointment with her local GP for the next day.
DOCTOR NUMBER 2 was really kind. She said she couldn’t really help much unless I stayed in the area for tests, but suggested…. painkillers.
Later that afternoon, the pain was worse, so I telephoned the national medical helpline thing. Which is notoriously hopeless, but they were also very kind, and suggested another emergency clinic I could visit.
DOCTOR NUMBER 3 was also very kind. She suggested that maybe I’d picked up an infection on location (I do work in some extraordinarily grubby places) and gave me an antibiotic. I was very, very happy.
The next day, I drove West to meet up with the BDM for a big, week-long location shoot for http://www.restrainedelegance.com . There were multiple models arriving, and a big crew. I was meant to be both (whoop, am enjoying learning to rig!) Two days in, I was in more pain, so the BDM took me to hospital after we’d finished work for the day (thank you, and I’m so sorry to the models and crew who we abandoned for the evening)
DOCTOR NUMBER 4 thought I should be properly examined so kept me in hospital for a few hours. After doing blood tests they weren’t sure what was wrong, so gave me another antibiotic. Which I was very grateful for, but started to wonder whether it was actually going to help.
We finished our shoot, I managed to model on the last day (painkillers!) and we set off to celebrate the BDM’s birthday at a hotel I’d booked near to the UK Space Centre, which we were visiting the next day. By midnight, I was in so much pain that the BDM called an ambulance and we went to hospital again….
DOCTOR NUMBER 5 decided I should have an ultrasound scan, so I stayed in hospital overnight, and had a scan the next morning. It didn’t work properly, and they didn’t have the equipment to do all the tests they needed to do, so they sent me home, and said they’d send me an appointment through the post. We drove back home (no Space Centre visit, boo) and I went to bed with some painkillers.
Two days later, the pain was so bad (and spreading, rather alarmingly, upwards) that the BDM took me to our local hospital’s emergency department. DOCTOR NUMBER 6 took blood tests (I hate them, HATE THEM) and was, I’m sorry to say, not very helpful. She went off to talk to someone more senior, and came back to say that I should, umm, take painkillers. And that my brain might be sending random pain signals to my abdomen for no reason, and that it might stop on it’s own. I started to feel rather despairing, especially because the BDM’s birthday party was the next day, and we were having lots of people to stay….
At lunchtime the next day, the painkillers weren’t working, and after hiding from the birthday party for a couple of hours I went back to hospital (this time, in case it’s useful for you in the future, to the out-of-hours GP service). Thank heavens for DOCTOR NUMBER 7. She got me admitted to hospital properly, and after being there for a couple of days, they discovered a ruptured ovarian cyst. I was so, so relieved that there was a reason for all the pain, and very grateful that I didn’t have to pay for all those hospital visits. I’m a bit disappointed that it took so many visits before someone helped properly – I’m not fabulously assertive, but I’m thinking that if I’d been even less so, I might still be at home, taking painkillers and being scared of bothering any more doctors.
Thank you, and sorry to the following people;-
To Pet-and-Ponygirls.com for taking me to a doctor in the first place, and for a shoot that managed to still be fun despite not being super well. I do hope the videos don’t reflect that.
To my sister, who was lovely, as always, and helped me find telephone numbers.
To all the models and crew on the Restrained Elegance shoot, who were fab to work with, and forgiving of my regular disappearances. Thanks for still letting me tie you up, Sophia, Janey and Fi.
To the staff of Coventry University Hospital (who, I’m thinking, probably don’t read this blog)
To my friend P, who’d booked me for a spanking shoot, and couldn’t have been kinder about reassuring me that it was ok to cancel. I’m so sorry, especially since you’d worked on a lovely script.
To my friend J, who was also fabulous about my letting him down at pretty short notice. Thank you again for your concern and courtesy.
To all the other photographers and models who’ve missed shoots because of me this week and next week. Thank you for being so generous about it, and I hope not to let you down again.
To the crew of http://www.firmhandspanking.com who’d assembled a cast and location for our shoot next week. I’m sorry for the inconvenience, and thank you for not insisting we go ahead with the shoot.
To my Mum (who also probably doesn’t read this blog, but you never know!) who abandoned her goats, dogs, husband, and house move to come and visit me in hospital.
To the staff of the Royal Berkshire Hospital, for not just sending me home with more painkillers, and giving me so much jam sponge and custard. Brilliant!
To everyone who sent texts, emails and cards. I didn’t tell anyone I didn’t have to for work reasons, because I was too upset and scared, so sorry to everyone I didn’t contact.
And finally, thank you to the BDM, who’s shoot I disrupted, who’s birthday I ruined, who’s party I missed, and who’s driven me from hospital to hospital, always being calm and rational. And who’s suspended all dom-lyness in order to be the best sort of boyfriend for a rather weepy, ill girlfriend.
I’m still on drugs, but hopefully on the mend, and shall post again when I’m ok. Sorry for the non-hot post!

A Story in Norway

Once upon a time, a fetish producer called Dr BDM decided it’d be a good idea to take a couple of models to the north of Norway for a bondage shoot. He thought the light would be good, the scenary would be spectacular, and that we’d get bondage shots of a sort that hadn’t been seen before.

He chose two models who were fortunately mostly fairly jolly about having to take their clothes off in close-to-freezing conditions. They did insist on keeping their clothes on until the very last minute though, which meant that anyone doing the rigging had to kind of crawl inside their clothes to do so. The models didn’t really care, they were too busy singing.

The result was that we made some pictures that we’re all really proud of – with a sort of over-blown, epic quality, that some of us (mmmmmmmmmmmm) fantasise about quite a lot. I do love drama.

And I did my best to match my outfits to the country’s flag. This gave me an entirely non-fetish related thrill, and I’m hoping the tourist board might possibly be interested in sharing some of our pictures?

Thank you to the BDM for taking me on the most exciting and uncomfortable bondage trip ever, to Steve the super assistant photographer and rigger, and to the gorgeous, giddy, fabulous Katy Cee for being a splendily, giddily fun model to work with (and for building a tent out of reflectors with me)

Whoop!

Ariel xx