Jaime Samms is my guest today. She’s bringing us along while she ponders the ways kinks and minds change.

Thanks, Jaime, for stopping by!

Context is everything. Why I say this? I was visiting with an old group of online friends this afternoon as I wrote and we were chatting innocently about our various WIPs, sharing snippets and chuckling over characters’ witty repartee. One of them shared how a character of hers would not appreciate being called “one of [another character’s] boys”, even though he is, as I understand it, so bound to her that they live and die as one. It’s a fantasy novel. It makes sense, but the character in question, I guess, fancies himself a bit of a hard ass. Independent and all that. And as far as I can tell, it isn’t even a sexual bond. Just part of the nature of the species.

And all the time we were talking about this, I was thinking….”I can’t say that. Oh! Funny! No. Can’t say that, either. Oh, but…Damn. Nope. They wouldn’t think that was funny.” I was a good girl. I kept my commentary clean and innocent. I said nothing about how he might change his mind if the woman’s weapon of choice was a whip. Or about how he might actually enjoy the collar (he’s a wer-something-or-other) she had threatened him with in a fit of pique if he didn’t settle down and stop filling the air with the chemical stink of almost shifting. I was very, very restrained. Um. Damnit. You know what I mean.

But of course, the whole thing got me wondering. Am I really that dirty-minded? Have I been hanging with the wrong crowd so much that my mind immediately goes there with so little provocation? Or the right crowd? I try to think back to when everything wasn’t a double-entendre, and worse, a double-entendre about kink, not just sex, and it’s hard to remember when…

And it also made me realize that kink is so very relative. One man’s fetish might be another man’s snooze-fest. Vanilla to me might seem risqué and out there to my pre-BDSM, D/s writing friends. Or not. Maybe I think that just because we don’t have those discussions in that group. It’s strange to think that things I once thought were edgy now are sort of old hat and plain. What was once exciting now is comforting and feels like home instead of scary. Just shows, I guess, that everyone’s limits can move, and sometimes, without discussion or angst. Just by time and experience and life.

Like Don, in Not as Easy as it Looks, things I thought impossible once are just life now. It all happened along the way, without being noticed until I looked back where I had been and realized I wasn’t there anymore. So there you have it. It doesn’t always have to be about contracts and discussions and safe words. Sometimes, it’s just about life and love and trust, and moving through the days as yourself.

What do you think? Has anyone else noticed this phenomenon?