PS036 - Food Play, Splosh, and Being Present

Oct 24

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Episode: https://shows.acast.com/660e243b2f834f0017de9181/episodes/660e2440acbcaf00174d993c

Food Play, Splosh, and Being Present

It’s the time of year where pumpkin pies start to come out and folks stuff themselves with food – so let’s talk about food, food play, and the wide variety of ways it compares to our sexual journey as a whole. We will remember our favorite foods (and kisses), discuss wet and messy play, explore blindfolded feeding and even get to consider food as BDSM. Let’s play with food, be present with one another, examine our memories, and find other truths about ourselves using food as a metaphor as well.

[music intro]
Announcer:
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Lee:
Hello, fellow adventurers of sexuality and spirit, and welcome to Erotic Awakening with Lee Harrington.

I am so delighted by this time of year.

Samhain, also known as Halloween, is fast approaching just around the corner, and it is time for apple pies and all kinds of sweet delights.

Being a child that was born on Thanksgiving, well, it falls on Thanksgiving every seven years or so, I have a profound relationship with food.

I have a joke that my mother gave me that two days before Thanksgiving, she was on the ward with my contractions, challenging her, pushing her in and out, and her hating me ever so slightly, and they apparently had a 10-pound turkey on the ward.

And she jokes that two days later she had one of her own.

So for me, there's this connection that happens with food and sex and love and delight, and it's not just related to those things, not just related to how I was born, not just related to how I was raised.

And I want to dive in today, if you will take my hand, dear listener, friend, if you will take my hand, let's go on in and think about delicious delights.

I can remember as I look back to the taste of my favorite dessert on my lips.

Now, my favorite dessert has shifted from time to time.

Sometimes it's been gummy of different sorts.

Some people might refer to it as gummy bears or what not, but I love Haribo.

Haribo is one of my favorite brands, and that sensation and texture of chewing up and down.

Now, mind you, I have other friends where it's just the worst thing in the world that's sticky, chewy, what am I gnawing on that hurts their jaws, that almost hurts their spirit, and certainly wouldn't be sensual.

What I love about these memories that we have of food is that they're different for every single one of us.

So unless you're driving, if you're driving, please don't do this exercise.

I encourage you to close your eyes for a moment.

Close your eyes and listen to my voice.

Now see in front of you, see in front of you that favorite, perfect dessert, the shape of it, the colors of it.

See it in front of you and slowly and carefully bring it up to your nose.

Take in a deep...

Savor that scent.

Bring it into you as you breathe in again.

Smell in this moment.

Feel your tongue dampening, your mouth, mouth watering, slowly, perhaps with a spoon or with a single bite or a fork.

You pull in a bite into your mouth and dig in.

Feel the texture on your tongue.

Feel it slide in.

Feel your teeth manipulating it.

it.

Taste it fully and be present with that taste.

When you're ready, let's slide on back down your throat, the heat of it moving down you and into your body.

Now for some of us, it's that generic banana split that it could be any banana split, but for others of us, it's that banana split that is the banana split you had on that one date.

Or when you sat down with a family member and had that perfect banana split, or maybe it was at a restaurant, and you can remember the sounds of it, or it's at home, and you're preparing your own first banana split, slicing the banana open, fumbling, getting the ice cream out of the freezer, or hoping that no one's going to catch you, that little bit of taboo charging your body.

These same exact things happen in our sexual journey, that for some of us, it's kissing, that it could be any kissing as long as it's with that one partner, or maybe when we close our eyes and think of kissing, it's that one perfect kiss, fumbling in the backseat of a car, hidden away from everyone else, hoping that no one else will find you.

Perhaps it's that kiss that comes from years of making it perfect, years of perfecting that kiss with that one partner, or all of those partners blended together in the memory of every single kiss you've ever had, that iconic kiss that ends up mushing up in your head, just like all of those different balls of ice cream on all of those different bananas that you've ever eaten, that blended together memory of banana split.

Whatever that perfect memory is, we have such power there.

For some of us, we look back on that memory and we realize that it's not actually real.

There's a fascinating movie called Final Cut, starring Robin Williams.

That's who it is.

And he plays this gentleman whose job it is to do cuts for people.

He lives in a world where when you're born or when you're young, an implant is put inside your mind that records every single thing you see, not the audio of it, just the things you see.

And over the course of the movie, we learned that it's not always a positive thing to have everything remembered because it's everything.

He's looking as a cutter, as the gentleman who's cut people's lives together into something consumable or something memorable.

He's at the funeral of somebody who he's cut a video for, and he was asked to cut something beautiful, right?

Something lovely, all the happy memories.

But as this cutter is wandering around, he's seeing the face, not of that wife, but the wife that was beaten and bruised and battered.

He's not seeing the wife's best friend, but seeing the lover that the man cheated on, who cheated on his wife with.

And he sits down at one point, or I should say just talks, with the brother of the man who he's in the cutting for.

And the brother says, are you sure that's the right color of fishing rod?

Because I know it was a different color.

And the cutter says, no, sir, I have not adjusted the color.

It's exactly that color.

And the man says, no, no, I know it was something different.

No, sir, that's the color it was.

And our memories are the same way, that when we look back on that banana split, we might swear up and down that the balls were the size of our fist and that our friend dropped the last pennies they had to be able to get it for us.

And we split it, sharing the same spoon, and it wasn't in a perfect day.

Well, our friend, if we look back on it, might go, no, man, the balls of ice cream were pretty big, but remember, the strawberry one was bigger than the chocolate and the vanilla.

And the chocolate was actually a little bit frostbitten, but gosh, that strawberry was amazing, wasn't it?

Well, yeah, but you dropped your last pennies.

Well, yeah, kind of.

I mean, I used up the last of, you know, that one bill that I had and the pennies out of my pocket, but I had another 20.

That's how we were able to go to the movies afterwards, remember?

Our memory is a funny thing.

It really is a funny thing, and food is something that is especially like that.

Well, nobody can make a pumpkin pie like Grandma's pumpkin pie.

And I'm personally wondering what's going to happen for me for birthday this year, because when I was growing up, since I was a Thanksgiving baby, I had a pumpkin pie with candles in it.

It's just what I did.

And I mean, when we had larger birthdays that weren't amongst our family, when my mom put stuff together, yeah, we had an actual cake, but that wasn't my actual birthday cake.

And it wasn't until I was with my former husband and his, I think it was his brother's girlfriend.

Maybe it was his cousin.

See, that's how memory is, right?

They made me a birthday cake that was just for me.

And the candles were in it, and it wasn't part of what would be needed by all of the other people there.

It was just for me.

And it was really beautiful and sweet.

But food is like that, right?

We look back and we go, oh, nobody will make that pie just like Grandma.

That perfect, you know, that one perfect piece of pastry.

Or do you remember that bottle of wine that came out in 1979 and were out of bottles of it?

But God, the taste of it on our tongue, the oaky traits, that undercurrent of raisin.

When you picked it up to your nose and swirled it around, it tasted like a slice of heaven, cut with the great outdoors.

It smelled of its barrel, and nothing's quite like that one glass.

But then you get another bottle of it, and it's not quite the same.

Now, maybe it's not the same, because that bottle of wine has been sitting around for another ten years when you last tried it, and wine is finicky like that.

Wine is finicky like that, that it ages even laying over on its side.

It keeps getting a little bit different.

And so it is with a lover, right?

Ten years later, we run into them again, and it's not quite the same.

They've changed.

We've changed.

I know it's happened to me.

That I had such fond memories of him.

But I realized that what was different was that before, we had a power exchange dynamic.

And here it was years later that I'm back there, and we're pounding away.

And I just, the back of my head starts having that observer moment, right, where a little part of your brain goes, really?

Oh, that's not quite what I remembered.

But I didn't want to hurt his feelings, and so I just kept thinking, let it stop.

Find a way to let it stop.

Find a way to let it stop.

And dishes fell downstairs from the noises that we'd made, or perhaps something more that I willed it into being.

And whichever way we look at it, afterwards I realized that it wasn't the same.

That no two moments are the same.

That that perfect kiss with the person the next day isn't going to be the same kiss.

But it can be perfect for what it is in that moment.

It can be lips touching to lips.

And maybe this time, instead of that sensual sweetness, instead of their teeth slowly biting into my lower lip, they bite a little firmer and I growl back.

And we push into each other or we pull back, eyes locking into that moment, and we go feral instead of sweet.

That it can be perfect for what it is.

And you know what, sometimes it's also just not that good.

We made the pumpkin pie again and it's just, you know.

And we can push our way through that pumpkin pie.

And we can eat the entire thing and go, you know what, I made the entire pumpkin pie.

I'll just push through it.

Or we can admit that the crust just isn't what we wanted.

And we scoop out the innards and we get some vanilla ice cream and we use it and layer it up like a parfait.

Or we just go, you know what, it doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be this.

We can stop and do something different.

You know what, maybe this play that we've done a hundred times isn't just what it is, but that doesn't make us bad people.

Maybe I like being a human puppy and you like being my handler, but we're just not in the mood tonight.

That doesn't make us a bad puppy and a bad handler.

That maybe we're going to still get our core in.

That what we really wanted was cuddling, so let's go cuddle up on the couch and watch a dumb movie and be.

It doesn't have to be the pumpkin pie.

That maybe tonight we're just going to have a cheese potter and have it still be something after the fact.

It's an after dinner treat, a delight.

Or maybe we just acknowledge that dinner was perfect.

And even if we planned to have that pumpkin pie, we're just not called to it tonight, even though we'd promised each other.

And so it is with play, right?

That we've planned for the last three weeks that we were going to go out to this dungeon event that had that one suspension point because we've both been wanting to do suspension so very much.

But we get there and it's just, it's just not there that we could rant and rail and say, ah, really?

Why aren't we going to do this?

Why are we letting each other down?

And instead of saying, we're letting each other down, say to one another, okay, what do we want to do instead?

And with a wink, we pull each other tight.

And with that one rope that we'd already set to the side, I wrap up your wrists and pull them over your head.

And we have that one perfect kiss.

Rope coming up between your legs, wrapping around your waist, cinching in tight, left, right, left.

Lock off.

I pull you in close to me.

I hold you.

I hold you tight.

And there, there in that moment, it's what tonight needed to be.

That it wasn't pumpkin pie.

And tonight, it was that piece of camembert.

There's two pieces of Parmesan Reggiano.

The thin rosemary crackers that we found down at the nature store.

We sit down and curl up and watch that dumb movie we've been meeting to watch.

Now, there's directly things that are food play, right?

Because all of this stuff is food metaphors and all that kind of thing.

But food can also be hot in and of itself.

That I can turn someone into a cutting board.

That they're, uh, oh, what is their name?

Something racer.

There was this amazing educator whose name I'm not remembering right now in Portland, Oregon, who used to do classes about food play.

I took a profoundly sharp knife and would lay the food on their partner's belly.

And would cut into the tomato bit at a time.

And when they got to the body, got down to the bottom of the tomato, would drag that knife across the skin with such precision, because they practiced it over and over again, and they knew the knife, they knew the pressure that it needed.

They knew what needed to happen, and that blade barely dragged across their lover's belly, their lover's chest, and they moaned in and out from the blade play.

Perhaps it's splosh, right?

Splosh, bodies covered in wet and messy things.

Pudding, perhaps.

You could start out with crafting up the buckets of pudding, or that one packet, the one packet of pudding, scooping a finger in and tracing a line, tracing a snake, perhaps, from the small of their neck, across both nipples, down the belly, around the belly button, and down to the mound.

And then tongue, following that same line.

Perhaps it's buckets of pudding.

There was an event that used to happen called Phantasm, which is now Frolicon, down in Atlanta.

And it's a crossover event between, like, the kinky community, the, you know, like the gaming and nerd and sci-fi community, and like the arts world, a little bit of Burning Man, and a whole lot of private parties.

Back when it was Phantasm, they joked about this as the geek, the kink track, the think track, the ink track, and the drink track.

But one night, I'm hanging out with Scott from Big Head Studios, and we're trying to figure out how to do a fundraiser, because they're doing a fundraiser that's like a Dom sub auction kind of thing where people are going up on the block, and neither he nor I really wanted to do that, but we wanted to give back to the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom.

So what we ended up doing is deciding that we were going to be doing a pudding wrestling competition, or pudding wrestling fight.

This is when we founded the International Pudding Wrestling Federation, which has since had no other games, but you know what?

It is what it is.

So each of our wrestlers were out on this big open field, because the hotel wrapped around a central courtyard.

And people were able to ship in a couple of bucks and put their hand into a scoop of pudding and put it on a wrestler.

And the pudding packed up and packed up until the fight eventually happened.

Now, some of it worked really well.

Some of it didn't.

Now, the stuff that worked really well was the fact that the event got us a pudding liaison.

Literally, Scott and I are hanging out.

And this person bounds up to us and says, We're your pudding liaison.

And we both looked at them and went, Okay, what does that mean?

And what it meant was that they were going to go buy our supplies for us.

What did we need?

What would be good?

And so we asked for 13 big, like Costco, Sam's Club, you know, mass things of pudding.

Twelve that were chocolate and one that was vanilla for our brothers and sisters who were not kinky.

And it was good that at the very beginning, people were scooping hands in, putting pudding on people's bodies.

Unfortunately, one person got pudding on their clothes, and suddenly their clothes were completely pudding covered, and they were dragged into the thing, which was fun.

Luckily, the pudding was able to get out of their clothes, I think.

At least, I believe so.

Actually, I think they told me so.

Anyway, again, that whole memory thing, right?

And the match was just disgusting looking.

But it was fun, and it was silly, and it was rough and tumble, and grabbing Andrian, throwing her down to the ground, and grabbing all these other people, and wrestling, and moving, and oh, right?

Just a good time.

Now, I also did a pudding scene, though, where we made up some pudding, and I dumped it slowly over my head, and it fell down in rivlets and cascades, and then we took other packages of powder and dusted it across on top of that to create visual textures and physical textures.

Now, all of that's with one material, right?

And so it is with any other splosh you could do.

It could be mud, and you could wrestle around in the mud.

It could be mud, and you let the mud dry.

Now, with splosh, there are some things you need to keep in mind, the first one being bodily safety.

Because I know people who are like, oh, I'm going to put peanut butter all over my partner's genitals and lick it out and lick it in and lick it off, and there's a thing called yeast infections.

Now, sugars inside any form of mucosal membrane can get stuck in those areas and then can have it be fed by the natural yeasts inside the body and get kind of disgusting.

I know people who are like, oh, well then it's not a problem on men's bodies, or people who have external genitalia.

You know, there's mucosal membrane just inside the head of the cock, and if you still have your foreskin attached, there's a mucosal membrane that's underneath the foreskin, and that is not a place you want a yeast infection.

Not that you want a yeast infection anywhere on anyone's body, but I'm just going to throw that out.

That's kind of disgusting.

Now, food can also be done in ways other than splosh.

There could be penetration with food.

Now, what I just said, avoid sugars, etc.

There are people who enjoy doing things with sugar-free popsicles, but again, be aware of perhaps douching, cleaning out afterwards.

You don't want to get stuff stuck.

I find it's kind of fun that if you want different shapes and sizes of penetrable objects, that you can get large carrots or even really thin carrots if you're exploring with anal play for the first time, and roll a condom over them, because it creates this dirty kind of thing for some people, right, where afterwards you get to wash off the carrot and have someone eat it.

That's kind of, you know, if you want to push those levels, can be a little on the edgy side.

Now, I say with a condom, because I can, you know, you just, again, there's bacteria on the surface of objects.

Be aware of them, and make decisions that are going to be right for your long-term health.

Also be aware that sugars or anything going in to the back hole, into the anus, etc.

Anything that goes back there that has a fluidity to it or any sort of whatever, goes directly, it's thin membranes back there.

And so if you put anything sugary up there, the sugar is going to hit your system really fast.

The same thing happens, for example, with people who do coffee enemas, where the coffee is taken down to body temperature.

You do not want to put anything hot or cold in enemas, because you can A, scald the internal mucosal membranes, which is bad, or sorry, internal membranes period.

Or if it's cold, you can lead to internal cramping.

Just personal advice, I don't agree with it.

Be aware that it can really harm your body.

But I know people who have taken coffee and then they cut it in half, so it's not full, force coffee, because again, that's one of those, yeah, not so good, at least from people that I've talked to, cut it down and then put it, insert it as an enema.

By doing so, the caffeine hits the system really hard, really quick.

But this is something to be aware of, because I know people who have said things like, oh, for food play, I want to have it be Coca-Cola poured all over somebody's body and then into all of their orifices, and then et cetera.

And if you do that, front hole, things that have, you know, you can get yeast infections, Coca-Cola has sugar in it.

It goes into the rear hole.

Suddenly you got caffeine hitting the system really intensely.

And what's the temperature of it, and is it going to cause harm to the body?

Food play can also be what we did at the very beginning, which is full immersion into a sensory experience.

Let me be blindfolded.

Let me be blindfolded and tied down to a chair.

Let me be blindfolded, tied down to a chair, and have you lift up something to my lips.

Let me be blindfolded, tied down to a chair, have you lift something up to my lips.

And I feel that scoop, that perfect spoonful, that perfect spoonful, that perfect spoonful of custard enter between my lips.

And I feel the texture, and I feel it in my mouth, and I am here, and I am here, and I am here with you.

I did a scene a long time ago with someone for their birthday.

It was a bit of a torture scene, where we tied him, chained him, down to a chair.

And I had a whole array of foods in front of him that he could see, all laid out with crystal goblets, where it was different beverages and different foods, all in different little tiny small plates and small bowls.

And at first, it was a sensual and sweet thing, that little bit of coconut ice cream, that small piece of dark chocolate, the bite of the strawberry that I'd already cut up, so I was able to just have a one centimeter by one centimeter cube enter into his mouth.

But then it was the sip of champagne.

The sip of Dr.

Pepper, ooh, that's an odd combination in the mouth.

Ugh.

That piece of ham followed up in the same exact spoonful.

Ugh, as that coconut ice cream, that's sweet, it's savory, but it's not.

And we took it edgier and edgier as we went in combinations.

That ginger ale with hot sauce in it.

Darker and stranger as we went, until his body just couldn't handle it anymore.

And it was where we took it together, because that's how we like to play with one another, that food can also be torture.

And there's torture around taboo.

What if I put food on my boot and you must lick it up?

What if it's food, as I said, that had already been inserted into someone, and now you must eat it?

What if it's food that got dropped on the floor itself and you must now consume it?

What if it's food that is against your cultural norms and laws?

Do we go here to a place where you are halal, where you observe halal food restrictions, and I tell you to eat pork?

Where is that on the place of darkness and taboo?

Where is that on the place of where you and I dance together?

Is it about going there for me anyway, or is it about specifically choosing not to go there as an act of courage to show me your strength?

Is it food as a form of physical torture?

Let me whip you with this head of kale, I love kale, as I saw Nayland, a fantastic sex educator, do.

Taking a head of kale and beating someone with it, it flying off in a thousand different directions, getting harder and stingier as it went, and there was less and less on the bundle.

Now, he also did a fantastic thing, which is have somebody sit on a bag of frozen food, the strawberries melting underneath there.

We could also do food in the form of torture.

I flashed back to my former spouse and we're at Burning Man, and random things happen at Burning Man, like really random things.

I don't know entirely how to describe it, but like, you know, if you wander out into the desert, there's an entire stone hinge, life-size stone hinge built out of speakers, as one does, right?

You're wandering around and there's a whole bunch of people wrestling around in mud and then covering themselves in glitter, though apparently you're not allowed to do that anymore because glitter is not exactly leave no trace, right?

But we're wandering around and there's a parade of random people coming by and they're all dressed in green and they're screaming wasabe and asking other people to scream wasabe as they go by.

And he opens up his mouth, my former spouse, and he opens up his mouth wide as he's screaming wasabe and somebody who's going by on his part of the parade reaches over, takes a tube of wasabe and shoves it in his mouth and squeezes it in.

And here he is going, wasabe!

Suffering and pain as the horseradish burned, burned into his mouth.

Now wasabe is tricky like that because it can also burn through things.

There used to be a small gathering that would happen in the Seattle area that a friend of mine who was a femdom would invite various people to where it was human food platters and people would eat off of them and her slave boy, and it was all women, and her slave boy would come around and feed people.

And the basic rule for it was that you couldn't feed yourself.

It was a sensual feast, which can be a lot of fun, lead to great debauchery that the one rule is that you can't feed yourself.

Even if it's two people playing with it, really enjoyable time.

So we're enjoying this, and this beautiful lady is laid out on the ground.

And Sushi is beautifully laid out on her form, and there's flowers covering up her genitals, so it's tasteful for her as well as far as exposure goes.

And they have these leaves that they set on each side, one that has wasabi and one that has ginger, so that people can lift up and feed each other wasabi and ginger.

And in doing so, it seemed all well and good, and Sel at the bottom was like, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.

And she explained that, you know, what had happened, and it was like that her chest was burning.

We lifted up the leaf that had the wasabi underneath it and it had burned through the leaf.

So you need to be really aware about what the full traits are of the food that you're eating.

And so if you're, for example, force-feeding someone, or if you're even having food in the room, do they have any food allergies?

Right?

That whole idea of peanut butter on the body might sound really good until you find out that somebody has a peanut allergy and suddenly you're pulling out their epithedron pen and, you know, you're jabbing things into their body.

You're taking them to the hospital, which, you know what, for me is not the medical play that I want to be doing in my erotic life.

For some people, when they say they want to do food play, they're talking about splosh.

And for others, it's blindfold me and feed me something.

And for other people, it's humiliation.

And for other folks, what they mean is I want to eat food out of a dog bowl and have that be part of our food play and our animal play.

And you can do that with animal play in some really interesting ways.

So, for example, if you want to be able to kind of mindfuck someone a little bit and you're having them eat out of a dog bowl on the ground, what you can do is take a can of Alpo dog food that's the same size as a can of chili, cut off the label, and glue it onto the can of chili, and really cause some fantastic responses for some people.

You can also get, say, a little tiny graham cracker, little graham cracker cookies, and use those as snacks that you can give to the human puppy who's been performing well to create those same experiences of interacting with food in a way that gets to connect with your partner or connect to the type of play you're doing.

So it's really important when you're talking to somebody about when they say, I want to do food play, what that means to them, because it could be any of those sorts of things, and having an awareness as part of the conversation rather than an assumption of what you think food play should look like is really important.

Now, be aware that we are entering, at least in my culture, into the time of year of food.

That the food will be everywhere.

Thanksgiving and Christmas and Halloween.

Buckets of candy.

Buckets of consumable things that can go into your mouth.

The turkey comas that will last afterwards.

And I say that because just like with eating food in general, food play can be about gross quantities or it can be about the finite details.

That instead of having the heap of turkey that I can choose in this holiday season to slice off the smallest bite, put it in my mouth, chew it, savor it, appreciate it as I smell it, bringing it up to my nose.

Put it between my lips, taste it fully in that moment, and be present with it, slowing down my food consumption and actually enjoy a meal.

Instead of my throwing my partner down on the bed and using them blindly, consuming their flesh in our ecstasy, I can choose to slow down, be present in the moment, kiss from their toes all the way up to their nose, and enjoy that perfect experience.

And I can, as a note, also do both.

I can ravage them, but also be present.

Feel them underneath me.

Be with them.

Be with that pumpkin pie.

Be with that apple split.

Be fully present.

And that is my hope for every single one of you is as we go through our journeys in erotic authenticity or with the delicious pieces of food that go into our mouth, that we follow our bliss, that we listen to our bodies and what our bodies actually want, and that we become present.

That we become present.

So thank you all for joining me here today on Erotic Awakening.

You can find me online at Passion, P-A-S-S-I-O-N, and A-N-D, Soul, soul.com, passionandsoul.com, or really type in PassionAndSoul anywhere on the internet, from Twitter to Facebook to fetlife.com and everywhere in between, and I'm easy to find.

And if you have any questions about today's podcast or would like to request future podcast topics, don't hesitate to drop me an email at lee at passionandsoul.com.

So please go out, have a fantastic time, whether it's with food or with a lover or with yourself being present.

And until next time, have fun, enjoy yourselves, and follow your bliss.
Take care.

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