I’ve finally found the courage to once again look seriously into branding research. I’ve been afraid to. A while back I found a site that said a branding would hurt less than a tattoo. I chose to believe that and also chose to stop looking any further in fear of finding something that would contradict it.
I want it, badly. I have His collar locked around my neck. I wear His steel around my wrists and through my labia, but it's not enough. All of that can be removed. I want something that can't be. I want a permanant mark on my flesh. After the piercing experience I’ve become such a pussy though. It’s better for me to just avoid thinking about certain things until WHAM! It’s time to do it or I end up fixating on them instead of the things I should be focused on and in my mind they become a much bigger deal than they really are.
A few months ago I watched Jackass number 2. After Bam has his ass branded by a cowboy he says, "I'd rather rip my dick off and throw it in the river than to do that again. Goddamn!" That didn’t help much and it’s stuck in my mind since then.
While looking up other info so that I could write my entry in response to subbie_bunny’s interpretation of pain perception I stumbled across a site detailing the experience of 3 of slaves who had been branded on the same night. When asked how it felt they said:
Slave Pamela: "Like any burn, it hurt. Unlike most burns, it lasted longer and therefore hurt more. I don't 'fly' so I was totally in pain."
wendy: "It hurt. The noise bothered me more than the pain, though. That popping sound was rather disturbing. People commented on the smell, but i had a head cold and couldn't smell a thing. Getting pierced was worse for me."
lindsey: "Some will say that I'm nuts but I thought is was great. In the very beginning as I was lying on the table almost shaking with fear, but Master Gar held my hand tight and rubbed my back and I started to calm down. He gave that look again that just consumes me and I knew that it would be okay. When Pere first touched my skin with the red-hot iron, I felt it burn and squeezed Master Gar's hand tight and took a deep breath, but I did not move for fear of ruining the brand. For about the first couple of times that he touched my skin with the hot iron I squeezed Master Gar's hand and was breathing rather heavily. Then all of sudden it hit me, I started to focus on the pain and the fact that I was doing this for my Master and I started floating. I felt like I wasn't really even on the table. Things almost sounded muffled and I could feel Pere touch me with the hot iron over and over again but now it felt wonderful. Master Gar said I released the grip on his hand and my breathing went very shallow. At that point Pere asked him if I was okay, and his response was 'Yeah she's fine, she's just gone flying.' They tell me I was on the table for about 30 minutes, but it felt like only seconds after I hit my space. When he was done it was hard for me to sit up, Master Gar helped me and I just hugged him tightly. It took me a moment before I got off the table cuz my legs felt like rubber bands and I was a bit shaky. All I can tell you is it was a great feeling."
OK, so unless I learn how to let myself go into subspace between now and the time I am branded it’s going to hurt like hell. I’m not sure where wendy was pierced, but if her piercings were anything like mine then it was pretty much the worst pain imaginable. If it’s less than that I can handle it, even if it takes a half an hour of burning my flesh.
I do wonder about the smoke and the smell. I imagine it will be something like pork chops cooking. I wonder if I’m twisted enough that smelling my own flesh cooking will make my mouth water. wendy’s Owner describes a bit of it in His own interpration of the night the girls were branded:
A volunteer from the audience was picked to press the big shiny button on the digital camera - we recorded the event for posterity. Another volunteer, the lovely Rita of the GD staff, held her legs and I let her brace against my back, but she was not otherwise restrained. We put her on a little examination table that Pere has in his area, where there's lots of light and everything is close at hand. He made the final arrangements of his equipment and we began.
First, he sterilized and shaved the area - high on the outside of her left thigh. (Right where I can touch it with my right hand.) Then, after checking with me on the final placement, he moistened the area slightly and applied a pre-made stencil. Peeling it off left a vivid outline for him to follow. Finally, he opened the sterilized bag containing the tools - pieces of 12 gauge stainless steel wire which fit into a tool of his own design. With a usable area of about 1/2", he estimated that it would take eight to ten strikes of this wire, heated in a propane flame, to touch all of the outline.
When everything was ready, he lit the torch and adjusted it to a steady blue flame, and we began. He heated the wire to red-hot: by the time he got it to her skin and was ready to apply it, it was not glowing. As he laid down the first mark, there was a sizzling sound, which anyone who's ever burned themselves, or cooked bacon, knows quite well. She flinched: nothing on Earth could have stopped that, but she did not move. Her skin was suddenly open, it almost appeared to have been melted apart. A puff of smoke flew up, and there was another familiar sensation... the smell of burned meat.
Again the heat, with a dirty orange light where the flame burned away the bits of tissue stuck to the wire. Again the application, the shudder, the pop, the hiss, the smoke. Around the stencil he went, carefully watching the brand, lining up the strikes. As the skin opens along the brand's outline, it shifts. About halfway around, he started almost freehanding, using the stencil as a reminder of what he wanted, not as a guide. Then with the outline complete, and even, he used its angles as a reference for the final strikes down the middle. There were ten strikes in all. Ten times the iron glowed, ten times it lowered to her helpless flesh. Ten times she moaned as her love for me was burned into her very body.
As I continued my research I rediscovered Fakir’s site and the process of using an electro-cautery pencil instead of using the striking method with heated ribbons of steel. I showed a few examples to Master, including a photo of hisdevotion’s back. He asked how one goes about getting an electro-cautery pencil. Until that moment it never even occurred to me that a person outside of the medical profession could just go and buy one. Well, for less than a hundred bucks one can buy a battery operated one with various different tips.
Something wonderful happened as I scrolled through all of the options for this tool. I began reading in the descriptions that they get up to 2200 degrees Fahrenheit. Instead of the fear I expected to feel at such a number I felt the nervous flutters of excitement. If Master decides to go this direction, and have His mark of ownership burned into my skin in this fashion, I will have 2200 degrees focused on my skin, burning me, marking me bit by bit. This makes me incredibly aroused. Perhaps I have the makings of a pain slut afterall.