Hard on Purpose (Push It)… (2-9)

Consent (The Ticket)

This piece is blunt about consensual impact play: wanting to be hit, held down, marked, and handled inside an adult BDSM container where limits, safewords, and care are part of the deal—not an afterthought.

If violence, coercion, “discipline,” or non-consensual roughness are tender spots for you, read this only if it feels like recognition—not re-injury.

And if your body starts flashing nope instead of opening up, it’s okay to skim it, save it, or walk away halfway through if your body starts tightening up more than it opens.

— Zan

Scene (The Ride)

Some people deserve to be hit.

Hard.

Tears-on-the-floor hard.

Mascara-in-rivers-down-your-cheeks hard.

Body-forgets-about-dignity-for-a-moment hard.

The kind of hard that, outside a kink scene, would make people stare and start mentally drafting a police report.

The kind of hard you feel the next day when you’re getting out of bed and every bruise is a little echo of everything that just happened.

The kind of hard that leaves fingerprints — not because anyone “lost control,” but because both of you agreed there would be proof.

The kind of hard that, for a few precious seconds, steamrolls the pain life (or someone else) has dished out to you over and over and over again.

Some people deserve to be slapped, backhanded, whipped, dragged, hair-pulled, pinned, thrown onto the mattress, and held there until their whole body remembers who it belongs to.

Until all that’s left is one clear, ringing word between you both:

yes.

Because their whole body is wired so that impact is how they understand something real is happening:

you’re here.

you see me.

you’re not going anywhere.

When those people say they want to be hit, they’re not pretending.

They’re handing you their history and saying:

take all the times I was hurt without a choice

and burn it into something I asked for.

Rewrite that lived pain on purpose.

With intent.

To hurt with pleasure.

Now, before you start planting the red flags, let’s be clear about what I’m NOT talking about:

  • family violence that everyone pretends is “normal”
  • partner abuse behind closed doors that no one else ever sees
  • getting hit “because they were mad” and told it’s your fault
  • bullying in hallways or locker rooms for how you look, act, or love
  • being shoved around at school or work to “put you in your place”
  • hazing “traditions” you’re not actually allowed to refuse
  • getting slapped mid-argument to “shut you up” or “make a point”
  • being choked during sex you never agreed would get that rough
  • strangers groping or grabbing you in public because they feel entitled
  • being pinned or restrained so you can’t leave when you want to
  • “punishment” from a parent, guardian, or teacher that crosses the line into fear
  • cops, guards, or staff using “compliance” as an excuse to rough you up
  • someone destroying your things while you stand there shaking
  • threats of violence used to control where you go, who you see, or what you say
  • being recorded while you’re terrified, crying, or dissociating for someone else’s story
  • anyone using your mental health, money, or housing to force you to endure harm
  • “joking” hits that actually hurt and you’re not allowed to react to
  • any touch that makes your body go small and frozen instead of open and present
  • being “playfully” shoved into walls, furniture, or doors until you bruise
  • having your phone, keys, or wallet taken so you can’t safely leave a room or car
  • someone blocking a doorway, hallway, or exit with their body to box you in
  • getting grabbed by the wrist, jaw, or throat in public “as a joke” you’re expected to laugh off
  • being yanked out of a chair or bed without warning because they’re impatient
  • having objects thrown at you during fights — plates, glasses, remotes, whatever is near
  • someone punching walls, doors, or car interiors to scare you into shutting up
  • waking up to someone already on top of you, holding you down or pinning your hands
  • being mocked or punished for flinching, freezing, or crying when they get physical
  • “discipline” that leaves marks you’re scared to explain to anyone else
  • anyone weaponizing your kink language (“you like pain, don’t you?”) to justify hurting you
  • being dragged into rooms, cars, or bathrooms against your will or without a real choice
  • “surprise” hits, slaps, or chokes during sex because they assume you’ll “get into it”
  • someone insisting you “owe them” rough sex or pain as payback or “make-up” after a fight
  • being filmed or photographed bruised, crying, or out of it without your permission
  • getting slapped, grabbed, or shaken while you’re dissociating, drunk, or shut down
  • someone using your past (“you’re used to this”) as an excuse to go harder than you wanted
  • being told you’re “too sensitive” or “dramatic” when you say a hit or grab scared you
  • “punishments” that are really just them dumping their rage onto your body
  • any impact that leaves you afraid of them, afraid of yourself, or afraid to say no next time

Or, put simply: any harm that happens without consent and without both people actively choosing to be there.

That’s not hot. NEVER. That’s just brutality.

I mean the kind of hitting that happens when two adults stand in front of each other, override their survival instinct, strip off social conformity, and say:

I want to feel your hand as a fact on my body.  

I want to be the one who does that to you.  

And then they build something around it that looks, from the outside, like madness — and on the inside feels like the deepest form of love and trust.

Now, if you’re one of the ones reading this and thinking:

“That’s scary as all fuck, no thanks.”

I actually get it.

I can relate in my own sideways way, because there’s a whole thing most impact kink people seem to love that I don’t:

I don’t like modern horror. I don’t enjoy being scared.

Give me “horror-adjacent,” sure — I can absolutely get down with Evil Dead II, Return of the Living Dead, Shaun of the Dead, and others in that same lane.

Anything that can take something horrifying and leave me laughing or invested instead of sitting there afterward feeling hollow and depressed.

Life is already a long-running list of things that can kill you slowly; I don’t need a highlight reel of imaginary hell on top of that. Elevated horror, slashers, “prestige” gore — I get why people like it, but my brain doesn’t register fear as fun.

Give me comedy, please.

I’ll watch three F-tier comedies in a row as long as they’re trying to make me laugh. It’s rare I actually laugh out loud; it has to hit just right.

That’s how taste can work:

  • You get wired by what you survive.
  • You make “friends” with the things that match your nervous system.
  • You build whole identities around the ones that stick.

People who love horror have a whole culture now — cons, fandoms, “elevated” this and “trauma” that. It’s a way of playing with fear in a controlled way.

Impact play is the same thing for some people.

Except instead of jump scares, it’s bruises.

Instead of tense sounds on the soundtrack, it’s the slap echoing off a wall.

Instead of “final girl,” it’s the sub who crawls off the mattress smiling, marked up and still alive.

For the record: I am not a masochist. 

I don’t like pain for myself.

I don’t get off on being hit, whipped, punched, kicked, or dragged around.

My body reads pain as a system alert: “Something is wrong. Fix it. Fix it right the fuck now.”

I am, however, into being the one who inflicts it — when it’s wanted, asked for, begged for, and held inside something that looks a lot like devotion.

Not because it makes me feel like “a big powerful man.”

Not because I have to prove I can hurt someone.

Because of what it says about them and us:

  • That they trust me enough to hand me their nervous system.
  • That they want my weight, my hands, my swing.
  • That they’re willing to let my choices live in their skin for days.

That’s hot.

There’s a question that rarely gets asked out loud, but it’s under everything in BDSM:

What is love?

What is pleasure?

Where do we draw the line — and who gets to move it?

If I’m doing a scene with someone I’m in a dynamic with, and my hand is the one coming down, it looks like I’m the one “in control.”

And in one way, I am.

I’m the one deciding when to strike, when to pause, when to look, when to soothe.

But the opposite of me is also in control:

  • They chose to be here.
  • They chose me.
  • They can say “stop” and have the whole world tilt on its axis.

That mutual control is the part most outsiders miss.

To them it looks like:

“Big mean person hits softer person, softer person must be broken.”

Inside the scene, it feels like:

“I am trusted enough to break you open and then put you back — and you are strong enough to take the journey and still call it love.”

Brains are little freaks.

Ask any psych person and they’ll give you a diagram about nervous systems, pain pathways, and affect regulation, but the short version is this:

Under the right conditions — and this part is key — your brain can file “impact” under intense sensation instead of emergency.

If you feel unsafe?

Pain = something is wrong; fix it; get out.

If you feel chosen, seen, and held while it’s happening?

Pain can slide into this weird third category:

“This hurts and I want more of it.”

Same nerves. Same body. Different context.

There’s been research on masochists and impact players where, when they’re actually asked why they like it, they don’t say:

  • “Because I hate myself.”
  • “Because I’m broken.”
  • “Because I deserve to suffer.”

They say things like:

  • “It’s intense and it clears my head.”
  • “It lets me let go without feeling out of control.”
  • “I like the power exchange.”
  • “I like doing this with someone I trust.”

Over and over, the pattern isn’t “I want to be hurt.”

It’s:

I want to feel a lot, on purpose, with someone who will catch me on the other side of it.

That’s what separates kink from damage:

  • In kink, the pain sits inside a container of choice, trust, and aftercare.
  • In damage, the pain sits inside fear, obligation, or “I didn’t think I was allowed to say no.”

Once that container collapses — once safewords don’t work, once “stop” becomes negotiable — it stops being impact play.

That’s just abuse.

Now, is it always this clean of an explanation? No, not at all.

Everyone is different, for better or worse, and not every situation is going to play out the same way. Let’s just say this is the ideal shape to aim for.

Here’s how I think of it in less clinical terms:

  • Bad pain is the pain that happens to you with no say.
  • Good pain is the pain you invite in, with someone whose inflection you chose.

Bad pain is slipping on ice, smashing your knee, and realizing your life will now be narrated by a weather app.

Good pain is bracing yourself on a bed, looking up at someone you belong to, and saying, “Harder. I can take it.” 

Bad pain is stubbing your toe on a piece of furniture you dragged there yourself and realizing you’ve custom-installed suffering you absolutely did not order.

Good pain is being hit because you both decided this is how you want to share each other’s bodies.

I’ve used a variety of impact toys over the years — nothing exotic.

Paddles.

Floggers.

Belts.

Household things that don’t look like sex toys until you pick them up with a certain intention.

Like broken USB-C cables.

The tool is less important than the equation around it:

desire + consent + trust + control + aftercare.

Take out any one of those, and it stops being a scene and turns into something far from heaven.

There are people who love marks the way some people love tattoos.

They’ll stand in front of a mirror the next morning and run their fingers over:

  • each bruise,
  • each welt,
  • each ghost of a fingerprint,

and smile.

It’s not:

“Look how hurt I am.”

It’s:

“Look what we did.”

“Look what I took for him / her / them.”

“Look how alive this makes me feel when I remember.”

Compare that to bruises from running into a door, or tripping on the stairs.

Those don’t feel like anything but annoyance.

Consent gives pain a story.

Devotion gives it a meaning.

Of course, none of this works without the boring, rarely mentioned:

communication.

Look, as an ethical supplier of The Pain™ I think — I hope — we can all agree we should never walk into a scene already swinging.

There should ALWAYS be talk about:

  • limits
  • health background
  • safe words or safe signals
  • “what if I panic?” plans
  • “what if I want more?” conversations

If you’re not doing this before you engage, you’re opening yourself up to a domestic violence charge with a kink playlist.

To hit someone “for fun” and not wreck their brain, you have to know what their nervous system does offstage:

  • What shuts them down.
  • What lights them up.
  • What kind of day they’ve had.
  • Which parts of their history you are absolutely not going to reenact.

If they love pain but hate being surprised?

That matters.

If they love being slapped but hate being called names?

That matters.

If they can take a belt swing but fall apart at a certain tone of voice?

That matters more than how good your form is.

I’ve held a lot of different roles over the years:

  • Dom.
  • Daddy.
  • Master.
  • Or whatever we decided fit that dynamic or that particular scene.

The dynamics that involved impact — real, regular, tears on display impact — were some of the most satisfying for both of us.

Not because they were more “hardcore.”

Because they were more honest.

You can’t fake your way through a heavy scene.

You can fake:

  • liking someone’s opinions,
  • pretending you’re “fine” with the style of relationship,

but you can’t fake your way through being hit until your skin blooms with color.

Your body will tell on you.

Either it opens.

Or it shuts.

My responsibility, when I’m the one holding the instrument of pain / pleasure is to pay attention to which one is happening and adjust in real time.

There’s also a quiet risk that comes with doing this with someone who loves you.

Not a pro.

Not a one-off hookup.

Someone who sees you:

  • first thing in the morning,
  • when you’re sick,
  • when you’re grieving,
  • when you’re annoying.

When that person hits you, holds you, marks you?

The feelings don’t stay neatly in the scene.

They bleed.

They deepen.

They can go further than anything a casual play partner ever could — which is beautiful and dangerous in equal measure.

Because the person who knows your nervous system best is also the one who can push you furthest.

Done well, that’s transcendent.

Done badly, that’s how you end up in therapy telling someone,

“I asked for this and I still don’t know if I deserved what happened to me.”

For balance, it’s worth saying this out loud:

Some roles want nothing to do with impact play.

Some subs and even slaves want:

  • structure,
  • words,
  • control,
  • service,

but don’t want a handprint anywhere near them.

Some Doms and Masters are wired for:

  • holding,
  • guiding,
  • instructing,

but feel sick at the idea of hitting someone even if they’re begged for it.

That doesn’t make them less “real” in their roles.

It just means the way they do power doesn’t involve inflicting pain.

Impact is one flavor of devotion.

It’s not the only one.

If impact isn’t your language, that’s fine — your body gets to want something else. That’s perfectly acceptable; kink is not only about impact play, no matter how much certain media hyper-fixates on that side of it.

For me, though? It depends on the person, dynamic, and my trust for them.

I can just as easily be the Master of Pain™, the strict life-leading Dominant, or the silly-willy old Dada who does ridiculous voices — depending on the person who’s actually earned that part of me.

It’s never about violence for me.

It’s not about “proving” anything to myself or anyone else.

It’s about that moment where they know:

“He could hurt me worse if he wanted to — and he’s choosing not to.”

And I know:

“She / they could walk away, could close off, could shut this down — and they’re choosing to stay.”

That choice, on a continuous loop, hits just right for me.

Companion track: “Push It” – Garbage

Aftercare (The Comedown)

If that opener lit you up or made you flinch, that’s not a problem to solve. It’s just information. This piece is about consensual impact—two adults, eyes open, limits named, safewords real, care included—because without that container it isn’t kink. It’s harm.

If you’re into impact and you felt seen: keep the part that matters—choice. Wanting to be hit doesn’t make you broken, and wanting to hit (in a negotiated scene) doesn’t make you cruel. It means your nervous system knows exactly what it wants when it’s safe. The only standard here is simple: your “yes” stays specific, your “stop” stays absolute, and nobody earns more access than they can hold.

If you’re not into it—or your body went tight reading this—take that as valid, full stop. You don’t owe anyone an explanation, and you don’t owe yourself a “cooler” reaction. Your kink doesn’t have to include bruises to be real, and you don’t have to force yourself into any lane to count.

Keep your desire inside rails. If you explore impact, do it with someone who plans, communicates, and proves they can stop on a dime and still treat you with respect. If you don’t, protect that “no” like it’s sacred. Either way—your body is not a prop, and your consent is the only credential that matters.

Cycle II – Coming of Age (The Hidden Life) · 09 (v1.00)

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