Subspace

There's plenty of information available on the web about the phenomenon of subspace; how it occurs and what it feels like. For those who are curious, Google will net more reading material on the subject than you can imagine. And... until it happens to you personally, I don't think it is possible to fully understand or appreciate the experience.

I don't make it to subspace very often, and I quit trying to get there a long time ago. When it happens, it is a wonder, and I come away from the experience feeling grateful and completely awestruck. Saturday was one of those times...

We slept very late it the morning. It had been a wildly stormy night, and by the time all the lightning and thunder settled down, we'd had a less than restful night. So, it was nearly noon when He took me OTK, with a whole pile of implements pulled from the collection. He is still experimenting, figuring out what works and what doesn't work in that position. After the last time, I was more intrigued than frightened. I was still carrying the memory of the intense connection I experienced with Him the last time we tried this, and there was a part of me that was eager to get back to that place.


I don't know exactly which implement sent me into space this time. Something pretty intense and heavy, but it really doesn't matter. I always have the sense that I can "see" the edge approaching. It feels to me like falling into subspace is a bit like approaching the top of the first big hill on a roller coaster. I climb closer and closer and closer to the peak, and then, just as I come to the point of plunging down the drop, I launch into a darkness that is warm and soft and stunningly quiet.


Subspace happens in slow motion. Everything is still there; the sound of His voice; the impact of the paddles; the warmth of His touch. I've heard and read that subspace deadens the sensation; numbs the experience; allows a greater pain tolerance through a sort of dissociation, but I don't experience it that way. When I fall into subspace, I am enveloped in a sort of mental calm while every nerve is alive and every sensation is heightened so that each of my senses encounter the paddle strokes with openness and total fascination.
In subspace, paddle strokes have colors. Every impact sets off flashing bright fireworks that burst against the inky blackness. The pain washes over everything, and it has colors too; iridescent peacock blue, and amethyst, and the shining green of tree frogs. The sounds develop a sonorousness that they don't have in the everyday world -- my own breath thunders in and out of my body, punctuated by groans and grunts and whimpers. The tip of a knife rasps from skin cell to skin cell as if it were bouncing along a cobblestone path. His voice booms to me from the ceiling and the walls and the cushion beneath my cheek, and it is the most solid thing in the whole world. When I'm flying, every stroke sends energy surges through me; following the nerve paths, until my feet seem to lift up of their own accord, and the tips of my ears tingle and sparkle, and I feel my skin flush with a glow that is pure power.


One of the more intriguing features of subspace for me is the convening of a whole chatty committee of internal voices that seem to stand around and discuss the whole process. They babble on and on among themselves in a conversation that I recognize as "me," but since they seem to be talking ABOUT me, it is just odd: "Wow! That one must have really hurt... Of course, it hurt, dummy, its a paddle... Yeah, but its all sort of exciting, don't you think?... This is just weird, maybe we should be quiet... Nah, she doesn't care... Oooooh! That's a good one..." On and on the bunch of them go, and their burbling forms a sort of stream flowing over smooth stones backdrop curtain of sound.

Most of all, subspace is completely, utterly safe; anchored in His presence, and the sheer, powerful awareness of Him guiding and protecting me. I have long been convinced that I go to subspace if He allows it, and I believe there is some shared energy between us that fuels the launch off into that place.


If, in fact, all of that is simply an artifact of some sort of endorphin cocktail surging through my veins, then it may be, but if that is the case, it is a poor sort of science to take the heart out of such a fierce encounter with the self and the other.


swan