Failure to Communicate

This is my 50th post! Woohoo! 50th post!

Anyway, I'd been feeling really smug yesterday, thinking of writing an entry about how good Jack and I have been at negotiating in-scene. It can be tricky to do that without dropping roles, and I have a serious tendency to just drop things and go "NO! Nothing in my ass right now, thanks, I'm not really feeling that today!" or whatever. And since Jack and I are both actors, and the sort of self-congratulatory assholes that actors often are, it feels like a special accomplishment when we can cover stuff like that without breaking character, as it were.

We had a really intense thing going on the other night. He threw me around a lot, and I was really deliciously scared, and when he asked me what I was afraid of I had a moment where I realized that I could decide exactly how this could go based on what I said I was afraid of. I squeaked out "I'm afraid you'll kill me--please don't kill me, I'll do anything." and that set the scary tone for the rest of the scene. I communicated, essentially, "You can be really fucking scary right now and I will find that hot."

Another night, I was feeling really ultra-submissive. It wasn't even something I completely realized I was doing at the time, but when I was calling Jack "sir," which is usually what I call him during that kind of scene, it didn't feel right at all, it didn't really express the ridiculous depths of my eagerness-to-please at that moment...so I shifted to calling him "Master," not something I do very often--not actually trying to communicate anything, but just because it felt right and seemed like the proper form of address at the time. Jack, knowing that I don't usually throw around the m-word, was then able to figure out where I was mentally. And hotness ensued.

Then, last night, when we were both sniping at each other and kind of cranky and out-of-sorts and play-fighting a lot, he waved his fist at me. I said "Fine, whatever, just don't hit me in the face." He punched me in the shoulder a few times...then slapped me in the face. I thought I'd clearly communicated that I didn't especially want to be hit in the face right then, he thought I just didn't want to be punched in the face. He apologized.

Sometimes, when everything is going well, you can communicate subtly. Sometimes, when you're cranky and annoyed even seemingly explicit communication isn't clear enough. Also, there are all sorts of other situations and scenarios where either of these things might work or not work. I need to learn to not be smug and self-congratulatory. Maybe this blog needs a "Lucy is an asshole" tag.


(Note: I think this entry maybe is the first where I've written this much about major scenes Jack and I have done that include possibly scary stuff. I feel a little weird about posting it, especially so soon after that entry about guilt and pop culture images of violence against women. It's kind of like "Oh, hai, here I am acting out those scenarios I wrote about in that other entry." I feel a little creepy. I might post more on this later?)