Fuck "love", give me fire.

Fetish, by its very nature, is not serious. Don't get me wrong, there are some things out there you need to take fairly seriously, lest you do yourself or your partner(s) some serious damage, but it's play. You take a concept, or an element, and crank it up and up and up until it almost becomes a parody of itself, a pantomime version of whatever you feel like you shouldn't find appealing but do.

Playing at something is not the same as doing it. It's a world apart, however realistic you make a game, purely because it isn't real. It's like when you play at being princesses or soldiers as a child. A current plaything and I were discussing this the other day - people's different preferences for games as children, about how early you develop a fascination with particular subjects, and what makes different people file different concepts away as enjoyable, even at a pre-school age. How these ideas turn into fantasy, long before you even have the physical ability for sexual urges. In primary school, my friends wanted to play mums and dads, or princesses on unicorns. Only one friend and I wanted to play at kidnap and being held prisoner. I had a definite preoccupation, throughout primary school, with most forms of torture. There are things I still don't have the confidence to admit I was thinking about at such tender ages that I now recognise as pure fetish - god, the things my poor Barbies went through - and we wondered, to what extent are people born kinky? What creates this predisposition to be attracted to things outside conventional parameters, even before you realise that is what's happening?

Aforementioned play thing and I started off quite shakily. He quickly picked up that I hesitated in strange places, correctly guessed at abuse although I think he thought I'd been treated a measure worse than I had. Still, he was worried abbot crossing lines that would trigger bad memories and to be honest, so was I, but it turns out the more lines he crosses… the more I like it.

When you've been with someone who claims to adore you, who should rightfully be trying to please you, but who essentially uses you quite carelessly, gets bored and tosses you away, you can get pretty jaded. Such a pleasurable inverse, then, in someone with no pseudo-romantic agenda, taking you and dressing you up and near-visciously doing as they please with you…all the while touching you almost worshipfully, appreciating every second and determinedly pressing all the right buttons even when they're pretending not to. This is the way round it should be: it's the difference between use and "use", between feeling dirty and being told you are whilst someone's doing something which feels insanely good, and you know it's not REAL.

I had a huge problem with someone spewing out how gorgeous I was, how good they were going to make me feel, whilst looking at me with general disdain and leaving me feeling used and empty. On that basis, having someone hold me by the hair and tell me they're going to use me like a doll, whilst looking at me like they can't believe their luck, touching me with tender reverence and ensuring I'm left sated, thrilled and comfortable is almost like having an antidote applied to a venomous snakebite.

The phrase 'no contest' springs to mind...