"Tears are Always a Safeword"

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have hit three hundred visits! Go us.
Now for the depressing little post it's high time I wrote.
I like BDSM. I like being tied up, and I like being hit, I like being in complete control of someone and I like giving my control up. And I do it so often, and I enjoy it so much, that I forget what it is that I'm doing.
Which is letting somebody tie me up. I really am giving up my power. I can't get out of those bonds, most of the time.
And in a small room in a hostel in New York City, with harsh flourescent lighting and a drafty window, my Master made it that very, very apparent.
I don't have too many precise memories of it. I was blindfolded, but the light got through, and it was a horrible sort of light, and the effect was that I couldn't see what was going on, but that light seeped in around the edges. And I was told alot of things I didn't want to hear... that my comfort was not of any importance. That saying "Stop" wouldn't be enough -- which is fine in itself, but I automatically took to be a threat that my safeword wouldn't work. Of course, I didn't test the theory. I didn't use my safeword at all.
Alot of things that night hurt. I don't remember what, exactly, but not in the fun way, not the pain-that-is-pleasure of being hit with a whip... this was ropes chaffing and bending in the wrong direction. This was the hurt of being afraid and uncomfortable. And I knew it hadn't been that long, but it felt long enough, becuase my Master wasn't being kind, or gentle. He wasn't training me to be a good pet, he was hurting me and using me to fulfill desires, both physical and psychological. It was the dominance of rape, not the D/s. Or that's how it felt to me.
And finally he said "I bet you'd like your nice, kind Master back. I bet you would, slave, but he's gone for the night"...
And I took a deep breath but it didn't work, and the next one didn't either, and suddenly I couldn't breath and I was crying and I curled over into a little ball, and I hadn't been so terribly, horribly afraid in months. The whole thing took me so far away from anything I'd done before, anything I knew, from the delicate ballance of trust that allows such a totally depraved situation to be wonderful and exciting and comfortable and fun.
My partner stopped the scene the second I started crying, curled around me and told me how sorry he was, untied me and gave me as long as I needed to recover, and later on gave me a backrub.
It got better. I think we had sex that night, though whether it was scene or non-scene or mildly-scene I can't recall.
So it isn't always fun. The trust was gone. I was blindfolded, and this boy who taught me what it means to enjoy sex, this boy who gave me the most comfortable and intense and simply happy orgasms of my life was gone. I could hear his voice but it wasn't him anymore, and I didn't believe it was a game anymore. It was all very, very real.
I don't know what to do about it, really. In some ways it was the most effective scene he's ever run. I was terrified. But I wasn't prepared for it and I wasn't enjoying it. I think that if there had been prescene negotiations I might have, but if there had been I wouldn't have been so starkly afraid.
And if the situation had been different, it wouldn't have happened. If it hadn't been in a hotel in a big city far away from my comfortable bedroom, then I wouldn't have been so afraid, and chance are he wouldn't have felt the freedom to try it.
There isn't much more to say, in the end. I thought my partner was going to hurt me and there was nothing I could do to stop it. That didn't prove to be the case, but a vital little bit of trust was lost. I think it's back, at least mostly... but writing this hasn't helped much.
No fun to dwell on it. Because in the end, he didn't hurt me. If I had used my safeword, it would have stopped immediately, but I didn't. I was terrified and unhappy and I didn't use it, and I don't know what that means. Fair warning to my partner, I might use it sometime soon, if anything is a little bit wrong, simply because I need to know that that right is actually excersizable. I should have used my safeword and I didn't, I left it up to him to see what was wrong, and that's no good.
And, it's worthwhile to point out, my partner still very clearly trusts me. You've all recently read his little post about our new toy... that takes alot of trust. We've played with plugs and dildos and other such things, but in some ways what we did that night was a sort of virginity lost. Given, really, and I'm honored to have it. He was nervous, you know, kids. He hid it well... I barely even realized it. Not his style, being anxious about such things, but he was, and he did it anyway.
He trusts me. And he didn't hurt me. And it won't happen again.
So I don't need to be afraid.
And most of the time, I'm not.