aftercare

This is a sort of “case study” of what it looked like to be me and prepare to play, eight years in to a 24/7 TPE. I’m wrote it because I’d never seen the practicalities written about before, and maybe at some point I could have found it useful. Maybe you will now. Maybe not.

This is what it looks like for me. This isn’t the only way or the right way, just my way. 

CAVEATS/FACTORS:

• Nope, we do not always plan our play at this point, nor do I always get a heads up of or say in what we do.
• At the same time, we both have busy lives at this point, and I am disabled—I have a disorder called Ehlers-Danlos where my joints dislocate very often and I get related chronic pain, along with other systemic issues—meaning planning at all means I can do some of what I discuss here and the chance of playing going well increases. We are also both recovering from COVID right now and have less energy than usual.
• Yes, this is a bit clinical. This isn’t sexy; it’s meant to be practical. A girl alludes to going to the bathroom. You’ve been warned.
• No, I don’t think about things this in-depth as I’m doing them. I am totally on autopilot for these things *at this point* but that doesn’t mean I am not doing things on purpose–so I took a step back and analyzed for this.

THE WEEKEND BEFORE:

I want to play, but it doesn’t end up happening. There are two prongs to why, one much more important than the other:

• The less important: we don’t start our nightly hangin’ out until after midnight each night…
• The more important: …and that’s because I never mentioned wanting to play. Maybe if I had, we would have planned for things differently. Hard to know.

THURSDAY (one day before):

We plan for something vanilla on Saturday, and I mention maybe some time next week while we are both off, we can play. He says He’d Love to do that, even to do it earlier than next week. I didn’t expect this but am absolutely down, especially knowing I have a fairly “light” day tomorrow. I make sure to get a full night’s sleep.

FRIDAY (day of):

• I finish the little bit of work I have at home and make the phone call that determines I don’t, in fact, have to drive today. Driving and physical movement of certain kinds are some of my biggest bad-pain risk factors, so this is mostly good. That said, I’m fairly pain-free today, so…
• I decide to take my dog to the park. The amount the driving increases my pain will likely be fairly small, and this will also tire her out enough so she’s not saddened by a lack of attention tonight and the pup’s needs are taken care of.
• When I return home, Owner is napping. I join Him. I don’t actually sleep, but the rest is good and lying on my back won’t increase bad-pain possibilities.
• We get up. He says casually as we get dressed, “By the way, what kind of pain are you in the mood for tonight? I could go for whips, kicking and punching, wooden paddle–anything really, but those are what stand out.” Those all sound great to me (there’s little that wouldn’t) and I say so, but point out we’ve never been able to do whips at home because of ceiling height issues. I also realize that I don’t have PT again for a few weeks, which sometimes changes where I can be marked, and say so in case it’s relevant. He says it probably won’t be. (LATER UPDATE: it was, so I’m glad I said it.)
• I pick up the room we play in a bit and also put on my back brace. I communicate to Him if He sees me in any of my pain-relief type wearables, it’s more preventative than anything else. He says He would have assumed as such since I haven’t mentioned having a bad pain day, but thanks me for telling Him anyway.

(This is important relationship-building improvement on both our ends from earlier this year. There was a stretch when I really wished we had been playing more and was really quiet and in my head about it; when we finally discussed it, we realized that He had thought that wearing heat = bad pain days. It does, but it doesn’t *always*, so I asked Him to just ask me. He said at that point that He’d try but would probably still assume it was bad unless told otherwise. What happened here shows that we both listened to each other’s feedback and fixed this. It’s awesome that I both was clear about this, and that He was already trusting I’d speak up if a change needed to happen.)

• I start cooking. I’m making Moroccan Beef Stew for a few reasons. It’s the right nutrition for how we play; I am able to play hardest when I’ve had red meat first. (This is something I learned over time; I had been vegetarian for a decade when we met and was for the first year or two of our relationship.) It’s also a favorite thing I love to eat and know I can cook with my eyes closed, so low chance for disaster. Most importantly, however, it’s a stew, so it simmers for two hours. This means that if the repetitive motions involved in cooking increase my pain, I have time to recover and check in with my body. They don’t, really, but…
• I do have a small wine bottle fiasco. This is one of those small aggravating things that could be a mood-ruiner but I consciously do not let it be.
• Simultaneously: I make Liquid IV (an electrolyte hydration drink) and end up downing it way faster than usual, meaning I make more Liquid IV.
• Simultaneously: I do a quick service thing by checking my fridge to see if we have the beer He likes to have when we play, just so I know in advance. We do. I may or may not have run out to get some if we didn’t. (LATER UPDATE: He did end up grabbing it while we played… BUT there was a short delay as He couldn’t find where I’d put the bottle-opener, so I’ll leave that out next time too.)
• Before finishing in the kitchen, I put some dishes away. This doesn’t need to be done tonight, but if it’s going to be, better it be now for aforementioned why-I’m-cooking-early reasons. In some ways, this is pre-aftercare-prep for me. I know I may not want to tomorrow because of drop, so–now it is. (LATER UPDATE: there’s no way I would have wanted to do this the next day.)
• I go to the bathroom. My disorder has some related gastrointestinal and pelvic organ symptom possibilities that I don’t deal with all the time, but I do some. My body tells me I’m going to want to do this again after dinner to be sure. I also take a Pepto.
• I do a bit of range-of-motion work. I believe that any motion made in a scene should not be the first time that motion is made that day, and if we are going to be doing any kind of rough body play, there may be less predictability to my movements, so I want to bring myself through range-of-motion for pretty much my entire body. Doing this slowly also allows me to check in with myself about any problem spots. I pull something almost immediately, but it isn’t a muscle that’s going to impact what we’re doing *unless* we go into cunt kicking. This didn’t seem particularly likely, so I’ll bring it up then if needed.
• I write the starts of this writing in the down-time, which is a relatively low-energy/effort activity unlikely to stress me out.

THE SCENE:

We end up doing all three of the kinds of play He brought up earlier, since I had no objections. The whip *is* throwable in the space, turns out, but is a bit under-conditioned so we do have to stop that before long because of some related issues in how precisely He can aim in how it’s throwing. However, because of what I said about PT, we are able to do whips on my back for a bit (less can go wrong with an aim issue than if we were doing it on my front). All-in-all, we play pretty hard for about an hour, until He begins to overheat from wailing on me, lol. There wasn’t much to be done about this: our air conditioning doesn’t work right now, and our landlord is slacking on this as it’s December and most people don’t need air conditioning. Womp womp.

AFTERCARE:

General: Degrading fucking. An episode of Brooklyn 99. He says I should eat something, and I choose three chocolate chip cookies. More degrading fucking–I’m quite tired by this time so He gives me an out before we start, which I do not take. Reader, I regret nothing.

Emotional: The scene went into my I-literally-don’t-feel-pain zone quickly. I had a little bit of post-scene “oh shit, i feel bad because You’re a sadist” that I brought up post-fucking#1. He reassured me that whether or not *I* always want my brain to switch over into that zone, it’s His favorite, because it means He gets to really go all out on me. I’m glad I brought this up immediately because He effectively got rid of that negative reflection before it could spiral.

Physical: I probably should have sat on some ice to decrease swelling, but because of the way I process pain (not as pain) I need to be really conscious about this because my body won’t automatically cue me to do it. I did clean off abrasions.

THE DAY AFTER:

The one problem with not needing to drive yesterday means I do today, and it’s to something that stresses me out and that I’d really usually rather not do on a potential drop day. I drop worse two days after a scene than the next day, but still prefer to be with Owner all of the next day just in case. This timing was not ideal. But if I’d waited for the timing to be ideal, we never would play again.

The day is mostly pretty good. I had planned for low-effort cooking, which was smart. By the evening, I recognize my going into some of my droppier habits of retreating in times of stress, but didn’t/don’t feel the need at the moment to consciously not do that. I didn’t remind Him of the vanilla thing we’d planned to do in the evening, and it didn’t end up happening. This wasn’t on me, but I also knew that He would likely not be thinking of it since two-activity weekends aren’t common here. But I also didn’t care all that much, so it was fine.

THE NEXT NEXT DAY:

So my “i drop worse two days after a scene” is proving true. I had initially planned to get my COVID booster shot today and decided yesterday to put that off, and I’m glad for it. I’m kind of achey, more to do with the rain than anything else. Owner and I will both get our boosters tomorrow. While I went on our dog walk yesterday, I may not today, depending on how my legs feel—we’ll see. It might be a good idea for me to go either way; I’ll test range-of-motion first. I’m moody but am dealing with it by painting my nails, finishing this writing, and hanging out with my plants.