Blink your eyes if you want to die.

Yesterday I attended a kink group, where the topic was "Menace". ****'s boyfriend *** was the presenter, and a lot of the attendees had also been to his party, so I found I knew the majority of the people already, in fact I realized I'd already seen quite a few of them naked. Everyone was really warm and welcoming, and some of the people who hadn't really paid much attention to me at the party made a point of coming up and saying hi, which was really nice. And I got a chance to continue conversations with other people who'd been there.

***'s presentation was very teacherly. He wore a suit, and had a very friendly way of talking; which contrasted sharply with his various demonstrations. As **** and others went up to the front of the class to be menaced, he would demonstrate a variety of techniques. He would become very menacing for a bit, and make the other person extremely uncomfortable or afraid; and then he would drop right out of it and be his friendly, chatty instructor self again.

There was a lot of really interesting stuff in the lecture, and most interesting of all (for me) was how it gave me all kinds of thoughts about how I might menace a loved one, and how cool those various things would be.

My very favorite part of the whole event came towards the end. He approached one of the women sitting in the front row, and began to make a point about how eye contact could be part of being menacing; and how controlling eye contact could be effective. There was a particular moment that was just so great, that I'll describe in a moment.

First he held one of his menacing props (a big, intentionally dull knife) up at her, and in a low voice told her not to look at him. He threatened her and intimidated her with the knife, insisting that she not look at him for even an instant.

Then he seemed to drop out of the 'scene', and addressed the group again in his friendly way, explaining that he had just menaced her with a combination of his knife, and his commands that she not look at him; but he said this could also go the other way - he could command her to look only at him.

And with that he entered back into the 'scene', brandishing his knife at her, and telling her in the same low voice to maintain eye contact under all circumstances. The knife passed before her face, close to her cheek, but she couldn't look at it, she had to continue to stare up into his face, into his eyes, as he stood over her.

He continued to hold her gaze for a few more moments, aggressively and threateningly repeating his command that she not look away even for an instant.

At that point, he said to the rest of us, "now of course as the menacer, I can look away if I want to." And he proceeded to speak again to the group in his friendly way, looking round at us, but this time he continued to menace her with his knife. "She's still subject to my commands, so she has to keep her eyes always on my face, but I can look wherever I want. You see?" And sure enough, as he spoke, she kept her eyes always on him, her face fearful and aware of the closeness of the knife. He went on, "I can look around at all of you; I'm free, you see; I can do what I want. I can blink!" And all of a sudden the whole room, including the woman under his knife, realized that whether or not she'd been blinking as she looked at him before, she'd better not blink again. Then he returned his attention to her, taunting her with the knife, saying, "you really want to blink now, don't you?" And she could only nod, struggling to hold her eyes open, as he continued to menace her and threaten her with the knife if she so much as moved her eyes away from his or blinked even once.

Finally he released her from the scene, and continued the discussion. But that moment when he so off-handedly revealed to his subject this extremely difficult and unexpected requirement, that was my favorite part of the whole event.

Another very interesting idea that didn't get discussed really at all during the talk, was the timing of how a 'scene' might end. In each of ***'s demonstrations, he would bring the action to a certain fever pitch, and then break it off; and with the woman I just described, it seemed as though he knew just when she was not going to be able to keep herself from blinking, and he broke it off just before that moment came.

In some cases there were time limits, such as counting down - or forcing the other person to count down - to some kind of punishment. In fact at the very end, *** himself invited someone up to menace him, and she used a countdown as part of the 'scene'. But whether there was a countdown or not, each 'scene' came to an end at the very peak of menace and tension between the two people.

The idea of the top staying aware of how far they were pushing the other person, and when the right time would be to break out of the action, was not really discussed, but it's something I'm really interested in myself.

I have a tendency, when I'm menacing someone, or when I'm taking them to a very uncomfortable place, of going too quickly, and - as **** puts it - "skipping levels". And the idea of understanding the timing inherent in the other person, the exact moment to take someone to a next step, is something that really fascinates me. And it seems like something that very experienced doms like *** have very good control over.