Last week, on a first date with a gorgeous dom, I did something I’ve never done on a first date before. I asked them if they wanted to leave a mark on me.
Now, don’t get me wrong – I am a total slut for hickeys, bruises, and the like, and have requested them many times from various people over the years. But I’ve become pickier about who I let mark me and when. Too many times in my twenties, I’d look in the mirror the day after a mediocre date and see a hickey on my neck, or a handprint on my ass, and feel weird about it. I barely wanted to remember those lackluster encounters the morning after they happened, let alone a week later, when their marks still persisted.
Part of the issue was that those were mostly vanilla boys from Tinder, who didn’t seem to understand the gravity of marking me. Marks were always important to me, even before I realized I was submissive, and so it always felt hollow and sad to carry around a reminder on my body that I’d failed to connect with someone in the ways I’d wanted to. Sure, they had marked my skin, but few were kind enough, interesting enough or brave enough to mark my heart.