In our society, pain is mostly connected with something negative. BDSM is full of paradox. For some pain can be kind of tenderness, for others even something positive and helpful. One of these guys is Pup Ember, an American pain slut who started to love pain at a very young age.
Hi Ember. You call yourself a pain slut. What does it mean to you?
I find a lot of cathartic release in being beaten and having pain inflicted upon me. The combination of adrenaline and endorphins give me an enormous rush in a way that I don’t think any other activity or kink I’ve tried has done for me. It has been enormously helpful in working out stress and emotions that build up in my but have a hard time finding their way to the surface otherwise.
In pain scenes, I also always set a personal goal to push my limits with what I think I can endure for pain. I take great pride in impressing a pain top and being able to take intense and extended pain.
Impact play has been enormously helpful in working out stress and emotions
Oh. I really love to see boys suffering from time to time. Even more if they do it for me. When did you realize for the first time that pain can be something positive? Do you remember how it was then?
For as long as I can remember, I’ve always had a really high pain tolerance. When I was a young kid, I’d often get back up from scrapes, cuts, and bruises without any issue — often to the worry of adults that looked on.
When I got a bit older and into my teens, I remember being young and dumb on the internet and encountering photos of slaves and subs being beaten raw and feeling a deep envy of them. I think that was probably the first time I knew that I wanted the same sort of experience, to push my own limits and see just how much discomfort, bruising, and beating I could take.
I never engaged in a scene until I came to college and turned 18, but the first time I engaged in a pain scene was actually with a soft leather flogger. I was too nervous to ask for more and say I wanted it harder and more intense out of fear of offending the pain top who was delivering the blows.
That was when it all sort of clicked that I really desired those deep, hard, intense pain scenes where I slip into a different headspace which is just… Present with the pain. I think that’s the best way I can put it.
Is pain also something sexual arousing for you?
It’s actually interesting you mention that. From talking to a few other pain subs, I know that for them, pain can be an incredibly arousing and sexually pleasurable experience. But for me, I interact with pain exclusively as an experience within itself. In a lot of ways, I actually think that arousal during pain play would detract from my overall experience with it.
I derive my enjoyment of pain play from being able to reach that deep, intense presence in the flood of intense sensations associated with pain, as well as testing and pushing my limits. That sort of buzzing, glowing calm is my pleasure from pain play; sexual pleasure is miles and miles away from my own experiences with pain play and the rewarding aspects of it for me.
Are you just suffering for you or is it also important to suffer for somebody, to show this way your need to please a Dom?
My drive to push myself in pain scenes absolutely has strong ties to wanting to make my pain top proud of me. There’s a lot of internal validation in proving to myself I can suffer so much, but an even deeper desire within me to receive validation from a Dom that I’ve impressed them or been good for them in enduring so much.
Hehe, so the boy wants to impress. :)) Is this also a reason why you do so much sports to get the body you have … of course in combination with the suffer a hard training brings with?
Haha, running cross country actually does have a lot of parallels to pain play in my mind. When it gets down to it, the goal of the sport is to push yourself past your own limits to break that last 5K/10K PR you set by improving your training and building your ability to push past the pain associated with testing your body’s endurance limits. You don’t have to be the best athlete on the course, you just need to be more of a masochist than the athlete right in front of you.
My recent switch to weightlifting over long distance running actually was explicitly to improve my physique, haha. Don’t get me wrong, being stronger and more physically capable is absolutely also a perk, but I’ve been placing specific emphasis on training by body to build on the assets I already had and building up in new areas as well.
Hehe. So you know a lot of different kinds of pain. For everybody there are pains and pains. Can you tell us what kind of pain you really like, which less, and what kind of pain is real negative pain for you?
The first time I ever was at the mercy of a single-tailed whip, I immediately fell in love. The way that a whip can be used not only for inflicting nasty marks but also for building fear, suspense, and tension in the scene is one of my favourite things about it. Those sharp, intense moments of stinging pain as the whip connects and leaves is mark on my back is really what I live for in pain play.
On the other hand, I’ve never really been able to do anything with ball-busting or CBT. The sort of pain and experience I have with that is entirely different from any other pain play and just isn’t something that clicks with me.
You’ve mentioned a good topic: MARKS … What do you think about, and are you as well proud of them?
Oh absolutely. To me, leaving with marks as evidence of a pain scene is something I always seek. They act as a testament to my abilities as a pain sub, and it’s great seeing the reactions of other kinksters not as much into pain when they see the bruises or wounds as well, haha.
Leaving with marks gives me something to be proud of even days or weeks after the fact.
That sounds like this little pain slut has an exhibitionist side. Is that true?
Ohhhhh yeah. Within pain play, I love seeing wincing or whispers of concern from the crowd watching a pain scene I’m in.
More generally, I’m an enormous fan of being a tease in kinky contexts. Showing off a little bit and making Doms get worked up just looking at me is certainly a passion of mine.
What is the special attraction of being seen in such situations?
Being lusted after or impressing others, mostly. By no means am I the kink world’s most experienced pain sub, but I get a lot of validation out of knowing other people are watching a pain scene thinking, “How can they even take all that? I could never do that myself.”
In non-pain contexts, seeing the desire in a Dom’s eyes to take me and break my flirty, teasy act is a huge turn-on for me too. It’s fun for my to turn the table briefly and be the one “in control” for a bit when I’m getting a Dom worked up.
Is the exhibition in pain scenes and other context also connected with a desire for humiliation?
It’s a bit of a mixed bag. Exhibition can definitely be a fantastic way to amp up humiliation in other contexts (exposing myself in embarrassing outfits or clothes, being shown off and publicly flaunted as a Dom’s bitch, etc.), but my enjoyment of exhibition in pain play has never been a source of humiliation for me. It actually usually empowers me and helps me to prove I can endure more, knowing that I have so many more eyes on me.
Ok, so it is the motivation of a competition …. Can you tell us a little more about the best pain experiences you’ve ever had and why these memories are so special to you?
That’s a tough question… I can think of two distinct scenes that I could call my “best,” but for pretty significantly different reasons.
The first time I ever cried as a part of a pain scene was hugely moving. I was visiting some kinky friends in another city and had planned a pain scene as part of that weekend together. That semester had been really rough for me, I was going through a lot of stress and I knew I needed the catharsis of a good pain scene to work out that built up tension. But when we started getting into the scene, I hardly got past the warm-up strikes and into the real, hard ones before I just broke down sobbing. I had no idea that pain could do that to me and I felt this… Incredible release, but also a lot of shame about having been broken so easily.
The second one was being whipped in front of a pretty sizable crowd in the middle of the atrium at IPAHW a few years back. That was my first time experiencing a single-tail, my first time having blood drawn from a pain scene, and my first time really doing such a “public” scene. That one will probably always be one of my favourites.
As an athlete, you know that after the competition is before the competition … I’m quite sure you still have some impact play goals and fantasies you want to realize. Can you share some with us?
There are still a ton of different forms of pain play I haven’t even touched yet. I’d still like to try fire play, more with electro and violet wand, needles, and potentially predicament bondage as a combination of several kinky interests
Fire play is fascinating to me because it somehow manages to use something as uncontrolled as fire to inflict pain and fear in a controlled way.
I’ve had a little experience with electro before, but I particularly love the way that the sound can be used to build fear and suspense in a scene, as well as the ability to drastically change the pain in the middle of the scene just by using a different wand or contact to the device.
Needle play has always been fascinating to me both as a taboo sort of thing as well as the fact that it plays well into my interest with Med Fet.
Predicament bondage is also intriguing to me as a way to push myself to ensure pain for an extended period of time. Being stuck in such an uncomfortable situation without any way to escape is extremely hot to me
