Category Archives: bdsm

What chronic pain means to me

Today I am having more pain at an earlier hour than is normal for me, and it’s tough to take.

I was in a car accident about 11 years ago that left me physically and psychologically broken for months, and in both cases, I am still working to get clear of all the damage.  I still have nightmares about it, and I still feel anxious when I get near the spot where it happened, but by far the most problematic is the fact that I still have daily chronic pain and it has profound effects on who I have become.  Some days I try to ignore it, and more often than not I am forced to power through things when I would much rather just go to bed and hope that I can fall asleep, because sleeping seems to be the only time my body is rested enough to mostly let go of the things that increase my pain.

But really, what this means is that I have had to become a different person than I used to be, and that I have had to learn the skills required to deal with chronic pain.

 

What chronic pain means to me:

It means that I often have to let down the people that I love, and I have had to learn how to do that without breaking relationships, and how to trust the relationships where this actually works.

It means that I am not always able to do even the most simple things, and I have to rely on the help of others to get through a relatively normal day.  This is made much easier than it was in the past by services like instacart and doordash, but for things that I cannot purchase someone’s time and assistance, I have to rely on friends, and it took some effort to become comfortable with that.  I still struggle sometimes.

It means that I often have to be patient with myself in ways that some people can’t seem to understand, despite my gift for metaphor and patience, and I have to accept that some people will choose to not try to understand, and that may change how we relate to each other.

It means that I know that for some portion of the day – usually towards the late afternoon/evening – I am going to be in pain and it will make everything more difficult for me.

It means that patience is the most important trait I can cultivate in myself.  I have to resist the urge to snap at people every day.  I have to try to see the ‘bright side’ in every situation, because I have a readily available default answer which is isolating and unacceptable.

It means that I will occasionally find myself at the mercy of others, whether I want to be or not.

It means that I have to accept help for things that I feel very strongly like I should be able to do for myself.

It makes it difficult to remain in control in some situations, and impossible in others.  It means that I have to be okay with the pain sometimes controlling me, and to anticipate those events and prepare for them in advance so as not to become a burden to the people who love me.

It requires that I maintain constant vigil over the other forces that bend my will: anxiety and depression, because these are reinforced and made more disruptive by pain.

It means that I will never be able to do everything that I could have before this affected me, but that I might be on a different (and possibly better) trajectory as a result.

It makes me more compassionate, because I know what it is like to have to contend with everything written above.

It makes me more patient with others, because I know what it means to be patient with oneself, and I understand many of the struggles that lead people to behave in a way that tests my patience.

It encourages me to be kind, because others have been kind to me when I found it hard to be kind to anyone.

It requires me to be mindful at times when I might be content to let my attention drift instead.

It gives me physical tics that betray my discomfort.

It makes it hard to form close friendships, because people who can understand and compensate for all of the above are rare and difficult to find.  I am blessed to have found many with which to surround myself, and I keep constant attention towards the goal of gathering more.

This is how I stay sane in the face of daily crippling pain.  This is who I am as a result.  I am very different from the man I was just a few years ago, but I am better for it and generally happier than I have been in a very long time, with occasional bouts of introspection when it hits me harder than I am accustomed.

My submission is a gift, and other dime store romance novel bullshit

Hello party people.  It’s been awhile since I actually ranted about something, so here’s a tirade for you to ponder on your Earth Day.

There is a phrase that has become so ubiquitous in the BDSM culture that it is literally written on t-shirts and mugs that you can buy from dropshippers worldwide – but it is just plain wrong and it sticks in my craw every time I read it or hear someone say it.

The phrase?

“My submission is a gift…”

This is usually followed by other such sundry tripe as, “… and any man who can’t understand that doesn’t deserve it,”  or “… and if it is not respected, I will take it back.”

This is wrong.

It’s a terrible metaphor and we really need to stop using it.  Submission is merely half of a power exchange negotiation.  It represents something different for every power dynamic, and every couple or group.  Submission, like almost everything else that we deal with in this thing that we do represents a spectrum of possibilities.

Submission is not a gift.  A gift is something that you give to someone with no expectations.  If you are submitting to someone with no expectations, you are doing it very, very wrong.

A gift is something that you give to someone knowing that you will never get it back.  A gift is something that you give to someone because you are following a social convention, or because they are someone you care about and gifts are one of their love languages, or because you, yourself, enjoy giving things to people.

Only the worst gifts come with strings attached, and while every gift given creates some sort of socially bonded obligation on the part of the recipient – it is always acceptable at some level for the recipient of a gift to do absolutely nothing with it, or even to re-gift it to someone else.  If someone were to offer me their submission and I did nothing with it – I would be doing us both a massive disservice, and if someone were to submit to me, only to have me pass that bond onto someone else, that would be a serious violation of trust (unless this is something that you negotiated prior.)

To make matters even worse, the vast majority of the people that I see using this phrase seem to think that they are somehow maintaining some level of control by trying to use this metaphor, which is completely untrue.  Everything gets wrapped up in these bullshit harlequin romance novel terms and ceases to have any real meaning anymore.  These sorts of modes of thinking force us to treat submission like it is a binary condition – either you are submissive or Dominant and that’s that.

It is certainly possible for a particular power dynamic to be so black and white, but that has to be negotiated to be that way.  It is also just as possible for a power dynamic to be more fluid, for areas of submission to be valid under only certain conditions, or only up to certain levels of comfort, respectful of hard and soft limits.

In fact, in my not-so-very-humble opinion, binary D/s is boring and uninspired.  Even if someone wants to consider themselves my property, I am not going to treat them like a slave under most conditions of normal everyday life.  Not only is it exhausting, but it’s not fun.

So, if my submission is not a gift, then what is it?

It’s a negotiation.  How many times do I have to say that here?  In the BDSM world, everything is a negotiation. 

Let me say that just one more time.

In the BDSM world, everything is a negotiation.

There is power to be shared on both sides of a power exchange negotiation, and if you have not negotiated away a particular power of yours, it remains yours. 

I seriously urge anyone who is entering into a D/s relationship to think long and hard about what they want to give up and what they expect to receive as part of that power dynamic and to not only have an earnest discussion about what those things all mean for you personally, but to even write them down and codify them in a contract.   This will help to prevent misunderstandings and many of the not-so-fun aspects of D/s relationship dynamics can be avoided.

End rant.

And I am, as always, Rant.

 

The Zen Dom – as read by Rant

Continuing in my series of audible blog posts, here is me reading one of my oldest, and probably most fundamental (about me) posts of the blog.

I hope that you enjoy.

The original post can be found here, and the text that I read is reproduced below.


You may have some questions about how it’s possible that I, admittedly a Dom, possibly a control freak, could possibly live without attachment.  It seems antithetical to the very mantle which I’ve just taken up, does it not?  I mean, the essence of Domination is control, and my own personal road to happiness was rocky and uncertain until I embraced that mindset for myself again and accepted my Dominant nature.  How could those two things possibly coexist in the same person?

Perhaps they are not as incompatible as they might at first seem…

Ever since I first read Leaves of Grass in high school, this has been a favorite passage of mine, from Song of Myself, by Walt Whitman.

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then, I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Even as a teenager, I understood and related to those words as part of the complex structure that makes up me and I have used them as a balm over the years to quiet my worried mind.

My personal journey to get to where I am in life now has been interesting, but I am finally and quite possibly for the first time in my life, happy.

I’ve studied many religions, practiced several, sought wisdom in self-help books and the writings of others.  I have been through individual therapy, group therapy, couples’ therapy, and psychiatric assistance.  I have used drugs, both natural and synthetic, prescribed for me or found through illicit channels.  I have done yoga, exercise, meditation, hypnosis, and attempted to express myself in art.  I have retreated into virtual worlds and even made my own.  I have worked as a video game programmer, for a private investigator, and even as a sex worker.  I have cleaved to my family and ostracized myself from them.  I have told the fortunes of others and cast rods to divine my own future.  I have been married, twice.  I have had several intimate relationships and lots and lots of sex.  I have driven fast cars and ridden running horses.  I have tried almost everything that anyone has ever suggested to me as a way to become enlightened, to lift my dark spirit and to try to find happiness.  It does not surprise me at all, today, that none of those things worked for me.

I am a Dominant.  I am an atheist.  I am a pacifist.  I am a father and a guide and a feminist.  I am worthy of being loved and I love myself.  I am calm.

Throughout all of those experiences that I detail above I fought my inner self.  I denied my feelings and persecuted myself, borrowing the Catholic guilt that I was raised with to hold my own desires at bay… I told myself that the me who desired to Dominate was wrong.  That each person is his own individual and it was wrong for me to want to have that authority over another.  I found myself submitting to others, not in the BDSM sense, but in a very real-world sense, all of the time.  I did not have the confidence to stand up for my feelings because they were wrong.  I hated myself for those horrible thoughts that I had about what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be.

How did I resolve that with letting go?

I stepped away from myself and looked at the dynamic.

I let go of my self hatred.  I let go of the assumed societal restrictions on permitted thoughts and desires and I accepted myself and my ‘dark’ side.  I have no desire to hurt anyone, quite the opposite, actually.  I have no desire to injure anyone, I have no desire to inflict unwanted pain, but there is also the pain that reminds you that you are alive and the pain the brings with it the intense emotional release that I got when I submitted to Simone.  There is such a thing as an embrace of pain that frees you from other pains.

I was molested as a young man.  It was no one in my family, and indeed, they still don’t know that it occurred and if this ever gets linked back to me and placed in front of them a great many uncomfortable discussions will likely result, but it happened and it turned me into a brooding, angry, anti-social young man for a long time.  Simone’s compassionate brutality helped me to face my demons and reclaim for me the things that were taken from me.  Some of them, anyway.

I Dominate those that give themselves to me willingly.  I will not accept submission from someone who is incapable of understanding what they are doing and I will not attempt to hold anyone who does not wish to be with me any longer or even those who can no longer benefit from doing so, whether they choose to see it or not.

This is a very scary thing.

Strong is the impulse to hold on, to claim a lover as mine and mine alone, but I know that I cannot be all things to all people, and no one person can be all things to me.  To truly open my heart, I must accept that now, in this time, at this place, this person is trusting me with herself and the joy that brings me is incomprehensible.  The joy that I feel when given that trust and that submission cannot be measured, and there is nothing wrong with me for feeling that way, just as there is nothing wrong with her for wanting to give herself to me in such a way.  These are maladaptive behaviors, perhaps.  They may be remnants of a primitive psychology, or they may simply be facets of a larger gem, I don’t know, but I want to know, and I will never give up exploring, and yet for now, right now, accepting is good enough.

Yes, I get off on having a pretty girl sit at my feet and lean on my leg and look up at me through long eyelashes with doe eyes and say, “yes, Sir.”  If I believed in any gods, I would invoke them now to prove the conviction behind my thought.  Once I thought that this made me a monster.  Once I thought that this meant that there is something wrong with me, but there is not.

I am a kind Master, and a brutal lover, and a king of my own domain, and the confidence that I have to be these things, and to love myself for them comes from letting go of everything, even those lovers and that domain itself, because wherever I am, it is with me, and whoever they be, I am loved.  And I am happy.

I am Rant.

Kneel for me – spoken version

Lately writing has been hard… in fact, accomplishing much of anything at all has been a great deal more difficult lately than it would normally be thanks to the status of the world around us, and I know that I am not alone in feeling this way.

But I also know that I want to share more than I have been able to, so I’m going to do something a little different for me.  I’m going to record an old post in audio and let you hear what I sound like.

Here is me reading my own piece, Kneel for me.  I’ve reproduced the text below as well, so that you can follow along as I read if you like.

I hope you enjoy.

— Rant

Kneel for me.

Meet my gaze and hold it. Do not look away.

I know it is not easy. Nothing worthwhile is.

Cry for me. Not because you are sad, not because you have lost, not because you are missing someone dear, but because I am asking you to.

Open your heart for me. Pour the blood of your emotion on the floor at my feet and let me sink into its depth.

Sing your song of sorrow until it fills my soul and covers the rough parts, smooths out the edges, fills the gaps of my emotional canvas.

Cry for me. Not because you need to, but because I need for you to.

Lift your heart and mind and soul to the sky and let my love surround you. This is a place of safety and security, you are in my Protection and nothing in the world can harm you right now.

Rage for me. Not because you need to purge the poisonous vapors of mistrust and envy from your mind, but because I feed on your ire.

Scream for me. Not because your voice needs to escape your throat. Not because you have broken through the wall of your pain and anger and the primal need for screaming catharsis is pulling apart the walls of your soul, but because I want you to.

And then do all of these things again for the reasons I told you not to before.

I will hold your heart close and keep it safe while you channel the dark things away and I will eat them for you.

And then, when you are ready, I will return your heart to you, clean, shiny, and new.

And any time you need to, I will be here, and you can…

…kneel for me.

A quick and dirty primer on quick and dirty bruising

Before I begin, I need to make the disclaimer that I am not a healthcare professional and that any information that I provide here is taken from my personal experience and memory and is entirely fallible.  You should really completely ignore any advice that I give, for the most part.

At some point in nearly every submissive/bottom’s progression through their journey they reach a point where bruises are a badge of honor and they will invariably want to be able to show these off to others either in person or online.

Of course – bruises can also be problematic in other contexts, so please be mindful of this and make sure that everyone involved in the bruising activities is enthusiastically consenting, or just don’t do it.  It can be a big problem if you bruise someone in an area that they cannot easily cover if they have to interact with anyone who does not understand the BDSM lifestyle, so be careful with where you leave marks as well as how.

Bruising occurs because capillaries in the muscle tissue are damaged and bleed into the interstitial tissue and epidermis.  There are six accepted levels of harm for bruising commonly referred to in the medical field (at least in the US, where I reside) where 0 represents light bruising with no lasting damage or potential for lasting damage.  A level 0 bruise may by only barely visible and may not even hurt after the initial impact or it may not be visible at all, subject to being tender to the touch, either symptom is enough to diagnose bruising.

This ranges through level 1, where there is considered to be mild damage to the tissue around the bruise – which, barring complications, will heal on its own in a relatively short period of time.  Levels 2 and 3 involve higher levels of tissue damage, more visible and larger bruises that last for longer periods of time, but again, the expectation is that such things will heal on their own, given time.  Some level 3 bruises and nearly all level 4 bruises are significant enough to cause real harm and may lead to other complications including compartment syndrome (where swelling blood can cut off blood flow to areas of tissue entirely, which could result in tissue death or necrosis) or begin to impact nerve and tendon function in the areas near them.  Level 5 bruises are significant enough that they could overwhelm the body entirely and result in death.

Level 0 and 1 bruises tend to heal fully in about two weeks time in most healthy persons without diabetes or another complication that might result in more tissue damage. Level 2 bruises can last slightly longer and level 3 and up may take months to heal.  Repeated impacts to a bruised area can increase the harm level and keep it ‘active’ for much, much longer, but at the risk of increased tissue damage.

The really big, colorful bruises that most submissives crave to show off are usually level 1 bruises, sometimes level 2.  These are shallow bruises that damage a lot of capillaries and result in a lot of interstitial bleeding, but little actual harm, and most of the time when we’re trying to create bruising, this is the sort of bruising that we are trying to create.

There are several considerations to keep in mind when trying to create bruises:

  1. Deeper impacts create deeper bruises that last longer and produce more tissue damage, but may not be as visible
  2. Contracted muscles will bruise more deeply than relaxed ones and run the risk of doing more damage to tissue that gets compressed between the bone and impact
  3. Bruises at or near the joints are more dangerous and tend to involve ligament, nerve, or other tissue that does not heal as quickly as muscle
  4. Ribs are really easy to crack if you aren’t careful – and the pain of a cracked rib is intense and lasts for a very long time
  5. Just stay away from the head – concussions are serious and unpredictable and potentially life-threatening

So – bearing these things in mind, and with the goal of creating level 1 bruises – very visible, large, and colorful – there are a few things that we can do to improve the chances of them showing up and reduce the chances of there being long term damage to any part of the body.

The first thing to bear in mind is that bruises are caused by damage to capillaries near the surface of the skin.  So – we want to create conditions where it is easy to break these. In an otherwise perfectly healthy person, this means that we want to increase blood flow to the skin, reduce muscle tension, and then to reduce inflammation after the impact.  Inflammation can lead to a lot of the potential complications that can come from severe bruising and reduce the surface area over which the interstitial spreading of the bruise occurs. So.. we want to reduce inflammation while increasing blood flow and damage the tissues nearest to the skin to get the best results.

If you have not read my post on finding subspace, I talk a little bit there about the physiological shifts that can occur when in subspace, and those are – coincidentally? – almost exactly the same as the sort of conditions that are required to make for really nice bruises.

Some other things that can help are to make sure that you are fully hydrated, rested, and relaxed.  If you are the sort to do such things, taking an NSAID in advance – most especially aspirin – can also help, but do be careful about drug interactions and if you are taking any sort of blood thinners (warfarin, etc.) then you should not be trying to bruise yourself at all due to the dangers of increased harm.

Bruising can be more difficult to accomplish for people who have darker skin tones or more developed muscle tone.  It is not that the bruising does not occur, but the visibility of the bruising is reduced. Trying to keep the bruising as shallow as possible can help.  To this end, it can often be useful to slap the skin or repeatedly tap it before attempting to strike with the force required to create a bruise, but when you are actually trying to strike to create the bruise, you want to hit a much narrower/smaller area with a larger force.  The bruise will spread out from the point where the capillaries are damaged.

A technique that I like to employ and have found to be particularly effective with canes, rods, bats, or other blunt instruments of the same sort is to very quickly and repeatedly tap the skin directly where I intend to strike between 5 and 10 times and then to come down on the very same spot once, very hard.  From that point on, more hits to that same area should increase the harm level and amount of bruising fairly significantly. This works well even with my current submissive partner who has darker skin and well developed muscle tone – but was also shown to work well with other partners who had lighter skin and less muscle tone.

However – the most effective and least damaging way to cause bruising is actually suction… fire cupping or even just making hickies will create very visible bruises that are almost purely capillary bursts and involve very little tissue damage beyond that.  But – those are not the kind of bruises that most people want to show off, so we’ve chose to focus mostly on those created by impact play.

So, to recap, the best ways to increase bruise potential are:

  1. Be well hydrated and relaxed
  2. Possibly take aspirin (or another NSAID) in advance – but be careful.  Topically applied aspirin directly on the area to be bruised is also very effective – perhaps even more so than orally administered aspirin
  3. Whatever steps you can take to get to subspace will also likely be very beneficial
  4. Tapping or slapping the area to be bruised will help to increase the visibility and range of the bruise
  5. Consider suction
  6. Avoid the head entirely, the area over the ribs, and all joints – try to confine your strikes to the ‘meatiest’ parts of the body, preferably areas that can be covered by clothing.

As always – think about it before you do anything, don’t trust any single source of unsubstantiated information (including me or this blog), and make sure that you exhaustively cover issues of consent – both with the impact itself and with the likely bruises that will follow.

And then take pictures!  Everyone loves to see pictures of bruises, right?

Fly safe.

  • Rant

Just Another Wednesday

Every Wednesday I go to an event called Bondage a Go Go.  I think I may have mentioned it before.

In keeping with my continuing desire and goal to say what I mean rather than couch my insecurities about showing enthusiasm with understatement or otherwise deflect, I’m going to call myself out for saying such things as, “It’s just another Wednesday,” or something similar.  It’s an inside joke, and anyone that I say it to understands that around here, Wednesdays are something special.  But I should just come out and say that.

Wednesdays are special because that is when BaGG happens, and BaGG is the best and longest-running weekly kink-friendly social event ever, anywhere.

Full disclosure – I am a member of the BGG Association that promotes and puts on Bondage a Go Go, but I have no financial stake and all of my efforts to advertise it here or in person are volunteer – because I am an acolyte.

Today is Wednesday, and I am elated – because no matter how bad life gets me down, on Wednesdays I have BaGG, and BaGG is therapy, family, validation, energization, and grounding all rolled into one.  BaGG is where I can be mostly safe in being mostly me, and it is glorious.

“It feels like I’m in a movie.” – F

I still remember the first time that I went to BaGG.  I didn’t know anyone, and I was alone, and it was overwhelming.  It’s really just a bar, but it’s dark inside and people are wearing next to nothing and acting sexy as fuck.  There is a dance floor in the front and two bars along with seating areas, a house masseur, a swag counter, and a dungeon in the back.

The first time you’re seeing something like this, it can be a lot to take in.  Even as a seasoned kinkster, it was more than I expected in some ways and less than I expected in other ways, but one thing became abundantly clear to me within moments.  BaGG is not a place or an event, BaGG is a people.

That first time that I was there, I was not a part of BaGG – I was present, I was physically there and I was watching and I was drinking and I was dancing and I was socializing, but I was not really a part of it.

I was disheartened, and I would leave to go home, knowing that it was something special, but feeling on the outside, and it would be years before I would return.

BaGG is a “kink-friendly take over of a night club” – C

BaGG is really just a weekly party in a bar with kinky themes.  It’s not a BDSM event in the more general sense.  There is not a dungeon floor where people are heard making noises of pleasure and pain surrounded by a wall of silence from the onlookers.  There are not rooms where people can sequester themselves and do nasty, horrible things to each other.  There are no classes or lessons or things to learn.

There is a dungeon, and it is small, and exposed, and your audience will cheer for you as you get beaten.  There is a tradition of very public spanking with the entire bar cheering for you on your birthday or the birthday of your Dominant.  And I will have to tell you, the three young ladies who took my spankings for me and the three Dominants (they were not all male) who delivered them while I stood by and basked in the glow of adoration from the crowd certainly contributed to make my year last year.

The dungeon is great fun, largely underutilized despite the fact that you have to wait for your turn more often than not, and also completely not the point of BaGG.

“I just go for the dancing.” – S

The dance floor at BaGG is amazing.

No where else that I am aware of do you have as many ultra sexy people dancing alongside straight up freaks – and often they are the very same people.

It’s right there in the name – there are Go Go dancers.  You can tip them if you like.  They won’t take off their clothes for you, but they’re not wearing that much to begin with.

The greatest show doesn’t come from the dancers on the stage or in the cage though – it comes from the people on the floor.

I don’t spend nearly enough time on the dance floor at BaGG, but if I don’t get out and dance every once in awhile, I get restless – and I don’t really dance anywhere else.

I’m a terrible dancer – I have to be only part of me to have any rhythm at all, but I don’t really care.   My partners dance, my friends dance, I’ve met people on the dance floor, no one cares that I’m terrible at it – it’s just another part of the wonderful pervasive blanket of love that falls on me when I am there with my people.

“…people generally seem to know each other.” – A

I wasn’t a part of BaGG at first, but I went, and I put myself out there, and I kept going back and talking to the same people and learning that they felt the same way that I do – about politics and kink and love, but most importantly, about BaGG.

It was the piece that was missing for me until I just kept showing up.  I’ve always felt like I could be at home at BaGG, but even still it took time before I felt like I was a part of it.

“How do I become a member?” I asked.

The answer is simple.  Show up.  Talk to people.  Get to know the club and the personalities, let people know who you are, and then when two members in good standing will speak up for you and say, “This guy is not an asshole,” we’ll collect your dues and you will be one of us.

It’s nice to be one of us somewhere.

I’m at BaGG almost every week – it’s rare that I’m not there.

If ever you want to meet me, go to BaGG, look for the guy in a waistcoat and fancy knot in his tie, and you’ll likely find me.

  • Rant

Examining subspace and subdrop

Altered mental states fascinate me.  They have for most of my life. I have explored the same subject matter from as many possible perspectives as I could find.  My university work was dominated by this pursuit. The very nature of consciousness is something that I ponder daily, and I keep searching for models that more accurately describe things as we can understand them.  I have approached the problem with models taken from philosophy, psychology, neurology, medicine, religion, even mathematics and information science.

I have designed and conducted experiments of my own – though admittedly scientific rigor was not usually my foremost goal in these situations.  And though all of this, I have also solicited help from you – my readers – through the comments to my original blog posts on subspace and subdrop.

Over the past four years or so, those posts have garnered a significant number of comments and if you have a genuine interest in the subject, it would be worth going back and reading the original posts (here and here, respectively) and comments that follow.

For the purposes of this post, I will be using the terms: submissive, s-type, and bottom to refer to the person who is experiencing these effects (subdrop or subspace) and: Dominant, D-type, or Top to refer to the other partner in the dynamic being examined.  The terms we use for these things are D/s specific – subdrop and subspace – but the conditions are not.  They can be experienced by bottom partners in a wholly S/m setting with no power exchange taking place, though for some reason that still seems to elude my grasp, the addition of the power exchange elements does seem to increase the likelihood of them occurring.

For every person brave enough to post a publicly accessible comment on the subject, I’ve probably received around five or so direct emails.  This is something that I expected – not everyone feels comfortable putting their own private experiences out there for everyone to see – and for that reason I will not be making any specific references to any of those emails that were sent to me in confidence, but I can make some generalizations and note a few interesting, and in some cases, surprising, observations.

First of all – both conditions are extremely common.  Since I solicited feedback from people who were already interested in the topic, no data can be extracted from the responses in terms of how often they occur within a more general group, but I did receive some responses from people who were curious about one or the other of these two topics without having experienced either themselves.  A true study would select people at random and then ask them about their experiences, of course, rather than what I have done – which is the opposite. I gave people a subject material and then asked them to contact me with specifics. The data were nonetheless revealing in a number of ways.

Including both comments left on the original posts and messages sent to me directly, I’ve received data from 143 unique individuals on the topic of subspace, subdrop, or both.

In this case, I am defining a ‘unique individual’ as either a distinct email address or an anonymous comment from a different originating IP address.  Note that it is entirely possible that some of these data originate from the same source – and I would have no way of being certain – but that I think the probability of such a thing is unlikely.

Of those 143 respondents, 131 have either directly experienced one or both of these phenomena themselves or they relate stories of partners who have.  If I could discount the fact that my respondents self-selected for involvement, that would represent an extremely high percentage. However – my respondents chose to write to me about these subjects, and therefore such statistics are mostly meaningless.

It does go to show that there are great many people who have experienced these phenomenon directly or indirectly though as those 143 messages represent around 10% of the total number of initial contact messages that I have received over the past four years (give or take a few months.)   This leads me to believe that this is by far the most important individual subject matter that this blog has attempted to tackle. However, it should still be noted that this is not a scientifically scrutinizable conclusion – just a gut feeling based on volume and interest.

Bearing this in mind, I would like to share some of the qualitative results that I have seen and been told by others – even if I cannot really make accurate quantitative conclusions.

Among the more interesting points of fact that I was able to glean from the responses are the following points:
  1. It is not necessary to experience subspace in order to experience subdrop
  2. Not everyone who experiences subspace experiences subdrop
  3. There is no panacea for avoiding subdrop
  4. There is no recipe for creating subspace


To anyone who has personal experience with these things, the above statements are almost certainly not a surprise.  However, the answers to those questions represent a significant proportion of the questions that I was asked.

For those of you who have not read the original posts or who are completely new to the concepts, subdrop is a condition that can occur in the bottom partner of a BDSM interaction wherein the affected person experiences what can be sometimes very intense feelings of loss, frustration, anger, sadness, loneliness, or other forms of negative emotional content associated with the person with whom they had engaged in a scene previously.  Sometimes these feelings can surface days or even weeks after the event. They can leave the bottom partner feeling abandoned or upset, even when everything they could possibly expect in the form of aftercare or emotional attachment is present. Sometimes the intensity of these feelings can exceed any of the immediate ‘good’ feelings associated with the scene or interaction in the first place.

I have previously defined this as, “Subdrop is the state of physical, emotional, and psychological withdrawal from an intense interaction with another person.”

Sometimes the symptoms of subdrop can include intense physical characteristics, like: cold sweats, nightmares, heart palpitations, panic attacks, fever, aches and pains, or other flu-like symptoms.  But often it can also be felt as something as simple as longing for the other person who is no longer present.

Subdrop can be a pretty awful thing for anyone who has experienced it – and by far the most common question that I have received since starting this blog has been, “How do I avoid subdrop? / How do I prevent my s-type from experiencing subdrop?”

I can offer a few pointers from my own experience and from those people who were kind enough to respond to me, but unfortunately I think the only true answer to the above question is, “You really can’t always avoid subdrop – no matter what you do.”

This is an important note for a couple of reasons:
  1. People often judge themselves for being unable to prevent subdrop – both tops and bottoms feel this way.  This is harmful to both partners and a little bit of patience and understanding can go a long way to reducing the impact of subdrop.
  2. People sometimes feel like – because it is not always something that can be avoided – that one should not even try.  I disagree with this sentiment quite strongly.


The second point above is particularly worrisome to me.  I think it is very easy for a Top to go from “it can’t be prevented, so why try to prevent it?” to “I can’t help you with this, so I’m not even going to try to provide aftercare,” and while I could possibly forgive the lack of an attempt to forestall it when you have a partner that you know such attempts will not work for, I cannot condone any action that does not hold the Top responsible for follow-up aftercare when subdrop begins to take hold, even if it is days or weeks after the scene that brought it about.

Subdrop often happens as a result of deeply ingrained and somewhat opaque psychological factors that exist beyond the ability of the bottom to control or often to even understand. To be unprepared to deal with the consequences of invoking such a thing is dangerous and harmful.

However – there are some common precautions that you can take which can reduce the likelihood or severity of the subdrop which may occur.  These are some of the things that you can do:
  1. Be consistent and forecast your scene
  2. Be emotionally available during and after the scene
  3. Provide adequate warm-up
  4. Allow for come-down time after the scene and before attempting to re-integrate with normal reality
  5. Be available for aftercare – and make it known that you will be after you part ways

Subdrop occurs most commonly well after the scene is over and you have left the dungeon or parted ways with your partner.  This is not to say that it does not occur even when you stay together throughout the process (and I have first-hand experience and several other accounts besides to state that it does) but a common theme in the cases that I have seen or been informed of is that this is something that happens after the scene is over and an attempt to return to normalcy takes place, even if all parties involved remain in contact throughout via physical or some sort of digital or telephonic means.

I don’t want to belabor these points incessantly, but the first one – in bold – really is the most important from what I’ve been able to gather.  Subdrop can come about as a result of, or be exacerbated by, a feeling of a lack of support from the Top. This can happen as a result of the bottom not feeling like they will be supported through whatever emotional or psychological turmoil they encounter – which can happen if they feel like they will not get the support they need, but is most definitely increased when they feel like they do not know what to expect from the beginning.  And it is this necessary grounding that makes consistency so important.

Consensual non-consent scenes are – in my not-so-very-humble opinion – some of the hottest scenes that are possible, and during such scenes, it will not be possible to remain consistent as you may normally be, but this is a further argument (among the many that I have already made) that such scenes should only be attempted by persons who have had time to establish a durable trust between them.  For all non-CNC scenes, and most especially scenes with persons who are new to you, I would strongly recommend that you negotiate all points up front, that each transition be preceded by obvious cues about what is going to occur.

This level of attention – remaining consistent with established or negotiated behavior, being emotionally present (as long as your dynamic allows for such), providing adequate physical warm-up (which is also important in helping your s-type to achieve subspace), allowing for time after the most intense aspects of the scene before you try to re-engage with the ‘real world’, and remaining obviously available in the hours, days, and weeks that follow the scene can go a very long way to removing the anxiety that can precipitate subdrop, or in ameliorating the deleterious effects of the condition when it occurs.  Because it is important to remember – no matter what you do, there will be occasions where subdrop occurs, and to have such a thing happen does not mean that you are incompatible as a Top/bottom pair, or that there is anything wrong with the scene or with either participant’s actions.

Personally – I have experienced this (as the Top) through the feelings and actions of my submissive partner on more than one occasion.  Despite all attempts to reduce the likelihood of subdrop occurring and employing extreme patience as it relates to before and after-scene care, my submissive partner occasionally becomes extremely agitated and even downright hostile in the days following a scene – even when the scene might not be particularly intense.  However, armed with the understanding that this sometimes just happens, despite our best efforts to avoid it, and knowing that we have the patience and skills to deal with it when it does occur, we are steadfastly able to weather these things and to continue to maintain our close relationship even through the worst of events like this.   For some people, encountering subdrop can mean that they won’t want to do another scene with you, and should that occur, you must respect that, but if you follow the above guidelines you can help to avoid it, or if you cannot avoid it, you can turn the experience into something that creates or strengthens your bond – rather than detracting from it.

There are also physical things that can be done to reduce the long-term impact of an intense scene.  Especially in the case where there is bruising or deep-tissue impacts, it is important to remember to drink lots of fluids, get enough calories, and get lots of rest.  Treat the aftermath of an intense scene like getting the flu – you can’t necessarily make the impact go away any faster, but you can do some things to improve your body’s ability to heal.   So far – I’ve talked mostly about subdrop and the title of this piece is Examining subspace and subdrop – so where is all of the information about subspace?   Well – thank you for sticking with me this far…  the two things are more closely related than I would have initially thought – or at least, so they seem to be in the things that I have learned through personal experience and the experiences that have been shared with me.

Many of the emails that I receive talk about both of these conditions – and I suppose it makes sense that they would be linked in the minds of participants – but it wasn’t until I started to receive those emails that I really linked them in my own mind very strongly.  Of course, there is some intrinsic linkage in the words themselves, and I may have polluted my results by calling out the difference between the two things explicitly in my post on subspace – where I mention subdrop but don’t yet define it.  And yet, linked though they may be, they do not have to occur together, and I have received a proportionally higher number of comments and questions about subdrop than I have subspace – though both seem to be of very high interest for people who identify as s-types.

Subspace, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the BDSM sense of the term, refers to the altered mental state that an s-type can encounter when submitting or being driven to the point of forced submission through pain, either in scene or as part of a perpetual D/s dynamic.

When I have previously spoken about subspace, it was with a certain amount of naïveté and limited by my own personal experiences with the subject. For me, it has almost universally been connected with a very powerful D/s dynamic – but I have received many emails and comments that point out the fact that this can happen even in purely S/m dynamics, where there is perhaps a brief power exchange, but that the primary avenue for attaining subspace comes from a purely physical and Sadomasochistic approach, and that no psychological or emotional exchange needs to take part.

I find this fascinating – for reasons not the least of which is the fact that this has never worked for me in this way.  I have guided many submissive partners to subspace, employing a variety of different means – everything from just modulating the timber of my voice and changing the content of what I am saying to brutally beating my submissive bottom to the point of physical and emotional overload – but these have always included an element of psychological power exchange for me.  So strong was this connection in my own mind that I think I actually dismissed the first dozen or so messages that I received telling me that this power exchange element was not necessary to their own path to subspace.  I think I thought that the two mental states – what I thought of as subspace and what these people were telling me about – were two separate notions entirely.


One of my friends is a neurologist, and he wrote an excellent piece on the effect of physical contact – both ‘rough’ and ‘sensual’ – on neurotransmitters in the brain, and how those might help to explain how it is possible for some people to achieve the transition from what I often refer to as ‘crisis mind’ into a comfortable state of subspace.  I am leery of making connections from here to fetlife – but less leery of going the other direction – and if you are interested in reading that post, please reach out to me directly and I can send you a link.


I mention this because it is a good example of the physiological components that go into making subspace work – something for which I am not really qualified to speak.  However, my own focus has nearly always been on the psychological aspects of what causes subspace, and I feel slightly more comfortable with those terms.

I do believe that there is a common misconception that subspace requires physical contact – and especially intense physical contact at that.  It is commonly referred to as ‘flying’ or as a ‘bottom-high’ and it shares an awful lot in common with what you might experience when you talk about a “runner’s high”.


The descriptions that you hear from people are all very consistent with this: they describe feeling ‘spacey’ or ‘floaty’, they talk about feeling as though they are somehow detached from their own body, that the sensations of pain that normally accompany deep impact are temporarily replaced with nudges to the psyche that merely reinforce the already existing connection with your body – but that are not painful of themselves any longer.  One submissive from my past has described it as something akin to this – I am paraphrasing – “I feel like I am closer to one-ness with the universe, everything around me is awash with a pleasurable glow, and each hit lets me know that I am still attached to my body, but also sends me into a higher orbit – further from my own center, yet paradoxically closer to the center of everything.” But not everyone experiences something quite so profound. For some people it is merely a warming sensation that travels throughout the body and makes the pain easier to take, while for others, there are very few physical components at all, if any, and it is instead a significant alteration of their view of reality – it becomes more difficult to focus on any one thing in particular, but nuance of things that might normally go unnoticed becomes more profound.


If this sounds a bit like a chemically induced altered mental state – that is probably because there is good evidence to show that it actually is.  The neurotransmitters involved are all of the usual suspects: dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, oxytocin, and epinephrine. The physical and psychological things that we do cause these to be released in different than normal amounts, and the way that the brain interprets these things can lead to altered perception.


And so – while I have always felt that some form of psychological power exchange was necessary for me to help my s-type achieve this state – I did, until relatively recently, also believe that physical contact was necessary to induce it.  However – personal experience as well as anecdotal evidence in the form of messages sent to me shows that this is not the case at all.


I have known others for which this was also the case, but it is particularly potent with my current submissive partner.  I can induce a state of subspace for her with nothing more than a look or a word delivered at the right time, with the right pitch to my voice, and the right intention behind it.  I can induce her to orgasm from across the room with nothing more than a look and a command, and while orgasm and subspace are also not intrinsically linked – they do seem to occupy a lot of the same space in the brain… because, let us not forget, every experience that we have can be reduced to nothing more than the interaction of a few networks of neurons with the networks that control the things to which we are consciously aware.  The potential for mind-numbing (literally) pleasure exists within your brain at all times – it only requires some sort of catalyst to bring it to bear, and while chemicals that affect the synapses and can cross the blood-brain barrier are certainly the simplest way to achieve this – the brain is fully capable of reproducing every single one of those experiences with nothing external added at all.

For every aspect of subdrop that seems something to avoid, there is a complementary aspect for subspace that is clearly worthy as an ideal to pursue.  And so – this leads some people to chase it.   However, just as there are no surefire ways to avoid subdrop, there is no surefire recipe for creating an experience of subspace.  There are a few things that can help though:
  1. Be consistent and forecast your scene
  2. Be emotionally available during and after the scene
  3. Provide adequate warm-up
  4. Allow for come-down time after the scene and before attempting to re-integrate with normal reality
  5. Be available for aftercare – and make it known that you will be after you part ways
 
Hmm – that list looks familiar, doesn’t it?

I admit – that is partly just a somewhat clumsy attempt to create a neat tie-in on my part… it isn’t explicitly important to the fostering of a subspace reaction that you have adequate come-down or aftercare planned for, but I do believe that they contribute to the thing which is the most important for that to occur… …and this is the real epiphany for me here.  While I never really made the explicit link between subspace and subdrop in my mind, and while I have firsthand knowledge that not every person experiences both (some lucky souls get to fly and never drop, while some unluckier ones end up the opposite way), the data that I have gathered and that have been provided to me have shown me the common thread:

Treating your submissive partner well, establishing trust over a long-enough period of time, and consistently working to maintain that trust will work to both establish a strong foundation for subspace to occur within and limit or reduce the intensity of subdrop if and when it occurs.

I have stated it elsewhere before and in slightly different terms, but this remains one of my strongest truths: Trust is the foundation of all things BDSM and the cornerstone of any functional relationship.  The deeper your trust, and the more you work to achieve and maintain it, the stronger the bonds and sensations you open yourself up to and can achieve.

The deeper the trust that you have, the harder you can push things, physically, mentally, and emotionally.  The harder you can push things, the deeper into the realm of the mind you can go, and the more of those all-important neurotransmitters you can coax out of the body and into the brain.

It will never be the case that I can look across the room and say, “cum for me,” to just any person and have it work, and while it will never be the case that I can tie just any person to the cross and beat her for an hour to have her flying high, both of those things can occur for me very easily as a result of the time and effort that I have invested with the people in my life.

When I’m asked for a recipe on how to achieve subspace, I still maintain that there is no one path to get you there – that it isn’t even necessarily possible for every person to get there at all – but that the most certain way to accomplish this is through applying the things that I value most: patience, persistence, and trust – along with a heaping help of Dominance and physicality.   –  Rant

My Personal Journey : Part 8

Mistress Simone was confusing – at times she seemed entirely without compassion.  I do not know the full details of her operation, and in retrospect, that is a very good thing, but I did catch glimpses from time to time – especially when she left town on one occasion after I’d been in place for a few months and I took it upon myself to look after what I could – in an ill-fated attempt to impress her.  I do know that the weight of keeping things running smoothly got to her from time to time, and I do know that anxiety was one of her demons as well.

But sometimes, she was incredibly caring and empathetic.  She seemed to always know what was going to happen before it did.  She not only seemed to know the specific details of what would occur, but she seemed to always know how I would feel too.  There was brief period of time where I entertained the notion that she could actually see into the future, but that wasn’t it at all, she was just a master of understanding the human condition, of reading the desires of people and finding ways to fulfill them.  It was as skill that she attempted to impart on me – and one that I would like to think that I have become adept at myself.

On this particular occasion – I didn’t even know that I needed support, but Simone did, and she was there for me.  

I had just met with my first client, Mary, (the details of which you can read about here, if you wish) and it had gone amazingly well.  Subsequent meetings with other clients, and even with Mary herself, did not always go so well. I was very fortunate to have had the first time experience that I did – something which I suspect Simone had specifically engineered, but I do not know for certain, and as I said, Mistress Simone was often confusing.

I was confused to see Mistress Simone when she showed up at my door after I’d run around tidying and getting clean after Mary had left.  I was certain that I’d done something wrong to earn her visit, but she had something else in mind.

She walked into my apartment, looking stunning as always, and not knowing what else to do, I dropped to my knees in front of her.  She looked at me, but walked past me to go sit at on the edge of my bed and placed her hands to her sides at the edge and regarded me.

“Rant. You did nothing wrong. Stand up and come over here with me…”

I stood up and walked over to the base of the steps below where my bed was.  Even sitting as she was, her head was level with mine as I stood below. Not knowing what else to do, I stood there at parade rest and regarded her.  She was dressed more casually than I was used to seeing her, in a lengthy flowing skirt and a loose-fitting top. Normally, her clothing was tight, fitted perfectly, or she was wearing little more than underwear, but now she looked … ordinary.  It was unsettling.

“How did it go?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer.  I felt like it had gone very well, but was considerably less sure of that after being visited by Mistress Simone.  I began to go over events in my mind, disassembling them and looking for all of the points of failure along the way.  I was about to answer with a list of perceived faults, when Simone interrupted me.

“No, don’t answer now…  It’s okay.  Come, kneel at my feet, toy.”

I did as she asked, stepping up onto the platform where my bed rested, and knelt to the right side of her.  She scooted over a bit to the right and centered herself around me, and then spread her legs and motioned for me to come closer, so I knee-walked until I was kneeling between her legs, and then she patted the inside of her thigh and I somehow knew that she wanted me to rest my head there, so I knelt lower, and then rested my head on her thigh as she began to pet my hair.

Mistress Simone’s skirt was split up the sides, which is something that I didn’t really notice until she sat and spread her legs, allowing her bare thighs to protrude from the sides, one of which my face was now pressed against as I tried to look up into her face and she pet my hair, which invariably caused my face to turn towards her body – and her pussy – instead.  At first, I kept trying to crane my head up to look into her face as I lay there, my whole body tense with the weird angles required to accomplish such a thing. Once I started to say something, to ask my Mistress questions about what she wanted from me, what I should be doing, because to just be kneeling there, leaning against my bed and her thigh, having her pet my hair, was making me anxious.  I felt like I had done something to displease her, I thought that I should be doing something differently…

Opening my mouth to speak the questions that were flooding my mind, I changed my posture slightly, and it became clear that despite her silence, Mistress Simone was watching me intently, because the moment that my mouth began to open, she shifted her hand from petting me, to wrap around my jaw and gently push my mouth back closed.  When she moved her hand away for a moment, I began to open my mouth yet again, and she repeated the same action, with the same levels of both deliberation and tenderness. Once again, she moved her hand away, and when I did not try to open my mouth again, she resumed petting my hair. I still had no idea what to do, and my anxiety was making me restless.  I shifted in my position on my knees, and when I moved, Mistress Simone’s hand would stop.

After several minutes of this – what seemed like an inordinately long period of time – I eventually reasoned that she wanted me to just relax and be there, kneeling loosely, head on her thigh, with her petting my hair.  Eventually, I did just that, letting go of the tension, relaxing into my lean against the bed and her thigh, allowing myself to feel the comfort present in her strokes of my hair.

My breathing slowed, I could feel my body temperature dropping, and the anxiety that I had been holding on to – all afternoon at least, perhaps all day – finally began to flow out of me.  I felt grounded for the first time in a long time, peaceful in a way that I had only experienced a few times in my life before, and those were all what one could only properly describe as ‘religious’ experiences.  It may be the closest I ever really came to feeling in subspace myself, and perhaps it actually was, but it was fleeting, and replaced by the most unexpected of things for me at that time.

I began to cry.

I don’t mean that I sat silently as tears streamed down my face as I am oft wont to do today, nor that I was overcome by emotion to the degree that I commonly see in people when they try to hide their tears from me.  This was crying of a primordial sort. A part of me broke in that moment, and I sobbed.  Eventually, it became impossible to stay as I was, the sobs causing me to curl into a ball at Mistress Simone’s feet, uncomfortably straddling the top step up to my bed and the floor in front of it.  

I don’t know for how long I cried, and I don’t know for how long Mistress Simone petted my hair and wouldn’t let me speak before I began to cry, but I was on the floor crying for what felt like a very long time.  I could not control my body, and I must have looked a fright with tears and snot when I finally did look up again to note that Mistress Simone was no longer sitting on my bed. I pushed myself up to look around and noticed Mistress Simone in the kitchen area, working on something as I glanced over to the clock to see that about an hour and a half had passed since she arrived at my door – significantly longer than I was expecting to find, even though it had felt like a long time to me.  In retrospect, I wonder if I didn’t fall asleep for a short time somewhere in between beginning to cry and looking to see Simone no longer above me.

I completed pushing myself up into a sitting position on the stairs where I could see well into the kitchen and my senses began to return to me.  I cleaned the snot and tears from my face as best I could with my hands and the ends of my shirt and focused my attention the smell, sound, and sights from my kitchen.

Mistress Simone was in my kitchen, cooking.  It was something that I never expected to see, and something that I would never see again.  She looked over at me and smiled – which was also something that I did not often see from her.

“It’s funny how the smell of breakfast food always seems to bring the attention of the exhausted and the forlorn,” she said in my general direction as she was plating the eggs that she had just been cooking and putting the mixing bowl and pan in the sink for me to clean later.

She pushed the plate across the island towards me and indicated it with her hand as she said, “Rant.  Eat.  Please. You need the calories and comfort.”

I wordlessly rose to walk over to the place she indicated, pulling a bar stool over to sit on as I did so.  I settled onto the chair and looked over at her, unsure of what I should be feeling, of whether or not I was doing the right things, worried that my emotional outburst was going to put me on the outs with her, thinking about three hundred different things all at once.

“Stop,” she said, reading the anguish on my face. “Just stop, Rant.   You have done well today. You have done extremely well.  I am pleased with you today, and I am certain that this will become easier for you with time.”

I instantly felt relief.  I was still emotionally raw, and I still did not really understand what it was that I was feeling or why I was crying the way that I was, but I did at least know, in that moment, that I had not displeased her or somehow screwed up, and that was enough.  The relief must have been obvious in my posture, face, and voice as I looked up again at Mistress Simone and asked her, “How did you know?”

“I wasn’t sure what to expect, honestly.  Every person is a little bit different. What you just went through was an intense experience to cap more than a week of increasingly intense experiences, and it would be surprising if you didn’t show any weakness anywhere along the way.”

That word.  Weakness.  It took the wind right out of my sails again, and it was probably evident in my posture because it was immediately rebuked in compassionate, but certain terms, “Rant. Stop.  You must not let every minor nit turn into a major upheaval. I gave you your kudos, and I will continue to do so for now, but while this episode was understandable and will be excused, you must not let yourself get carried so far away again, do you understand?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Now eat your eggs.  I’m not much of a cook, and I can count the number of times I’ve cooked for a man – my husband included – on the fingers of one hand still, but you have performed very well and I am very proud of you and you deserve something special.”

“Thank you, Mistress,” I said with ecstasy as I began to dig in to my eggs.  It was only then that I recognized that there was no other plate; that Mistress Simone had cooked for me in my own kitchen, and only for me.  It was not that she intended to eat and was allowing me to have the surplus of her portion, she was doing this as a service to me, and it felt strange and wonderful all at once.  

The eggs were not particularly good – simply scrambled with some salt and pepper, but the method in which they were delivered ensured that they were among the very best that I had ever had.

“These are delicious, Mistress,” I said, with complete honesty.

“I do expect flattery and devotion, pet, but I will not tolerate dishonesty – you are not being dishonest with me, are you, toy?”  she asked me, with just a hint of a smirk.

“Oh, no!  I swear, Mistress!  I don’t even like eggs, and these are amazing!”

“You don’t like eggs, and yet, these are amazing?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“It’s a good thing that you’re adorable, Rant, because sometimes the shit that comes out of your mouth is just completely unbelievable.”

“Mistress?”

“Nevermind.  It is not important.  I am pleased that you are enjoying them, and more pleased that you are eating them.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Please be sure to drink lots of water,” she said as she grabbed a glass and filled it from the tap to place in front of me, “and do not get used to this sort of treatment.  I expected you to have an emotional reaction, and you did. I expected you to do well with Mary, and by her accounts, you did – though we will talk later about what you should and should not reveal to my clients.  I expected you to be just as you are, and I was not disappointed.” She said the last with an air of finality to it that left me feeling a little off-balance.

“Thank you, Mistress,” was all I finally managed to get out, after what was probably too long a period of time to be comfortable for either of us.

At this, Mistress Simone gathered herself up, stood taller – though I had not noticed that she was not keeping her normal, extremely rigid posture until just this point – and looked me square in the eyes with the largely unemotional gaze to which I became accustomed.

“I will leave the dishes for you to do, Rant.  I am glad that I was able to give you this time after your client today, but this is not likely to be something that can happen again.  You will need to be able to be resilient and care for yourself moving forward. Do you understand, Rant?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Good,” she said as she walked to the door, grasping the handle and looking back at me before opening the door.  “You really did do well today, toy. Keep this up, and I foresee a long and fruitful partnership.”

“Thank you, Mistress,” I beamed at her as she opened the door and disappeared behind it.

I sat there, on the barstool, in front of an empty plate and an empty water glass for quite some time, examining the thoughts and feelings and visuals that played themselves over and over again in my mind, wondering at the sort of partnership that Mistress Simone was speaking of, and wondering at my own emotions and whether or not I could continue to do this.  But ultimately, I decided that I could – I could do anything – for her.

I still don’t really know what possessed me to do so, but I pulled all the bedding off of my bed and slept in it on the floor that night.  I remember waking early in the morning hours, having forgotten to close the blinds the night before and with the glare of morning coming in.  I remember feeling like I was completely alone in the world, with no one beside me apart from Simone – but in that moment, that felt right, comfortable, even good.

My schedule was clear for that day, but that would be the last day that I had to myself for a very long time afterwards.

 

My Personal Journey : Part 7

To my readers: I apologize for the length of this piece.  I normally try to keep my entries to near 1000 words, and I began with the intent to do so this time as well, but as the story developed on the page I found that I could not tell it with so few words and so I chose to cull far less than I normally do.  

***

I have never lived in as nice of a place as I did when I was with Simone.  I have no idea how much such a place cost, but it was well beyond my means at the time and is almost certainly beyond my means now – though it would also be impractical today for a number of other reasons.  

It was a very modern loft style studio apartment.  There actually was a small loft area reachable via a staircase that was above the entryway of the apartment, but walking in the first thing you would see is the kitchen island, then the windows, then the St. Andrews cross in one corner, a telescope in the other corner, a dining table and chairs,  a small sitting area with a love seat, overstuffed chair and a low coffee table, and a raised dais upon which was a massive (though not as large as my current) bed.

It was a really nice kitchen – I wish that I had had the confidence and knowledge of how to cook back then because I’m certain that I could have made some very nice meals in that kitchen, and probably could have provided even yet another service to my clients, although in all honesty most of my appointments were too short for that to be viable.

However, my very first appointment was to be for a duration of four hours.  I was more than a little nervous about this. What am I supposed to do for four hours?  I mean, I was young and in great shape and athletic enough to know how to be at peak performance, but four hours is a long time and I was envisioning trying to actually be physically active for that entire time and not only finding the duration daunting, but I was not at all sure that I would be creative enough to fill that much time, and I like to think that I’m pretty creative.

Every client that I saw was scheduled through Simone’s office.  This was both a good thing and a bad thing at various times. It was a good thing because everyone that I saw was a known quantity – vetted and approved by Simone or someone on staff, they tracked my schedule and made sure that I was never overbooked, but they often left me literally no time for myself.  I never had clients scheduled closer than an hour apart, but because of the nature of the business, not everyone leaves precisely on time, and late arrivals have an expectation of being allowed to make up that time on the back end. However, there was a protocol in place to deal with these sorts of things, with the aim of accommodating a certain level of uncertainty baked into the process.  For clients that I would see away from my apartment (outcalls) there was a different procedure, but for clients that I would see in my own apartment (incalls) – which was the vast majority –  there was a security door with a buzz-through system for the building. Clients would know to buzz me and give a certain name and then I would buzz them in and meet them at my door as would be appropriate for the appointment.

Before each client – time permitting – I was given a dossier of sorts on the client, any special requests, known preferences, and a little bit of personal information about them as a way to relate and have something to talk about.  Despite the obvious and intensely personal nature of the visits, most people are not completely comfortable just jumping into sex right away with someone that they known nothing about apart from some pictures and a little bit of back story.  Of course – some are… 

In the information that Simone gave me about my first client, Mary (which wasn’t her real name), she said that this was one of her best clients and a personal friend besides, and I was to give her anything that she wanted.   She had interest in horses, travel, fine wines, and finding new young artists. Well, at least I knew something about horses, and I thought I knew something about wine too – but it turns out that some wines are made outside of California, and I was not very familiar with anything else at the time.

Mary was not a Domme, and had some interest in kinky play, but was mostly interested in very physical sex acts – the more physical the better.   I was to act in a confident and physical manner with her, but not to command her to do anything or to engage in any sort of non-sexual play. She liked to be taken, but only on her terms.  Even more than that though, she liked to be aggressive herself and have that met with equal aggression. I was to be deferential while simultaneously making her feel like I was not.

How the fuck was I supposed to do that?

In the hour or so that I had before she was set to arrive I think I must have walked every inch of floor in that apartment, adjusted the music that I was playing about 20 different times, trying to figure out what sort of music would best accompany physical sexual acts with someone who I knew next to nothing about – not even how she looked.

With the exception of regular clients who would return multiple times, this was often something that I would have to contend with as I waited for a new client to arrive.  They all knew exactly what I looked like, of course, having picked out my profile in a catalog of such things that Simone kept, but I rarely had any idea what they would look like and the amount of information that I was given about Mary was generally greater than I would see in most cases.  

Attraction, being what it is, would mean that in some cases, I would be worried that I would not be able to perform to the client’s satisfaction – and prior to sitting there in my anxiety around meeting my first client, this was not something that had ever occurred to me.

Would I be able to get it up?  Or perhaps even worse – what if I couldn’t keep it up when I needed to?  Having already been on the receiving end of punishment from Simone, I could only begin to imagine how things might go if I were to fail to perform as required.  There were some things that were available to me to help with this, but I would not find that out until later and for this occasion, I was left very much in the dark.

As I was pondering my potential failure to perform, my phone rang – which I was certain was from the buzzing at the door and I looked at the clock to try to understand how the time had passed so quickly and I realized that I should still have 20 minutes, so I picked up the phone and spoke with more question in my voice than anything else.

“Hello?”

“Rant.  Mary will be there soon.  Are you ready?” Simone’s clear, concise, and somewhat cold voice came through strongly and I must have verbally exhaled my apprehension because she followed up immediately with, “Kneel for me.  Now.” To which I responded by getting on my knees.

“Rant – are you there?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Are you kneeling?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Are you breathing?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Tell me ‘no’ so that I know your brain is still working.”

“No, Mistress.”

“What did you just say to me?  Are you allowed to use that word with me, Rant?”

“No, Mistress.  I mean, yes, wait… are you trying to make me more nervous?”

“<soft chuckle> No… Mary does enjoy intimidating her partners sometimes, but I want her to like you and she’s not going to respect you unless you give back everything that she dishes out.  Can you do that, Rant? She will not make it easy for you.”

“Yes, Mistress.” I said, but I was much more nervous than the words that I spoke.

“Good boy.  Now do me proud.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

<click>

I held the phone receiver in my hand and knelt on the floor for about a minute more, until the loud cycling tone to alert me to it being left off the hook began, which shifted me out of my reverie and made me realize that if I didn’t put the receiver back down, the door buzz would not come through and I could be in big trouble.

I had to stand again to replace the phone receiver, but once I’d done so, I decided to kneel again, thinking about everything that had come to pass to that point.

It was one of the more nerve wracking things to have happened in my life.

What seemed to be at the same time an eternity and merely a moment later, my phone rang again and I looked at the clock again and confirmed what I already knew to be the case – it was time for Mary to arrive.

“Hello?”

“Hello – I’m looking for Rant.” spoke a very pleasant sounding female voice.

I’d been told what to respond.  “You have found him. Please come up.”  I pressed the ‘*’ key on the phone, heard the tone, and then hung up the receiver as I walked over to unlock and stand near the door.

A few moments later, I could hear the steps on the walkway outside my door and I tried to look through the frosted glass near the entrance, but only saw colors moving and then remembered the peephole in the door and looked through to see a distorted image of a gorgeous woman walking towards my door.

I stepped back just before she began to raise her hand to knock on the door.  I recall internal conflict as I tried to decide whether or not it would be a good thing to open the door in advance of her knock, but ultimately the decision to let her knock and the inaction of trying to make a decision coalesced and I heard:

<knock knock>  confident, not tentative in the least…

…it was enough to cause me to hesitate further, but eventually I pulled myself out of my head and opened the door.

On the other side of the door I saw one of the more beautiful women I have encountered in my life.  She was tall, but still shorter than I am, athletic, busty, blonde, and she had the biggest brown eyes I’ve ever seen.  Her makeup was understated but worked to alter her apparent facial structure, which was rounder than she probably would have liked.  She reminded me a great deal of Drew Barrymore in her appearance, and she was wearing a short sundress and sandals: periwinkle with white polka dots.

I suspect that she was looking me over in much the same way that I was her, because she stood for a moment in the doorway just looking at me, and I quickly realized that I was both blocking her way and had failed to invite her in as yet, so I quickly moved to the side and gestured into my apartment with my arm as I said, “Please, do come in.”  She moved past me, and I closed the door, turning to walk past her and into the open space of the apartment.

It requires a little bit of mental gymnastics to recall details of that day, but when I do, I am continually surprised at how immature I was in my sexual expression.  The mainstays of my sexual expression today – raw physicality, breath play, growling, biting – were mere shadows of what they are today.  Mary actually helped me to develop these skills. She was hardly the only one – and I have gone through periods of contraction again since then – but I will always have something of a special place for her in my pantheon of elder sex gods.

I could see and feel the hunger in her eyes.  I felt invigorated by it.  All anxiety that I had about being unable to perform was instantly gone as my own sex drive engaged again and I began to mentally undress the woman in front of me.

She stepped further inside and maneuvered herself to position me between her and the kitchen island and then she started to advance on me.  It did not happen quickly, but she did it with such fluid predatory movement that I was still caught off guard and allowed her to get much closer than I realized, backing me into the kitchen island as she approached.

Her look was playful and predatory at the same time.  She casually reached up and touched me on the chest, following her arm with her body, pressing herself into me, pushing me into the island behind me, and then she reached down and grabbed my cock through my slacks. 

I’m pretty sure that I twitched.  I liked it, but I twitched nonetheless.

I hadn’t yet started wearing waistcoats as much as I do now, and I was not wearing a jacket, but I was wearing a collared shirt and tie – Windsor knot.  I don’t know if the Eldredge knot had been invented yet, but I was unaware of its existence, in any rate.

Mary reached up and grabbed my tie in her left hand while keeping her right on my cock, which was quite obviously stiff under the thin fabric of my slacks and the boxers that I was wearing underneath.  She pulled on my tie, attempting to bring my face to hers for a kiss, which I was instantly ready to meet when it occurred to me that she had still not uttered a single word since she appeared at my door.

So struck was I by this realization that I straightened up, looking beyond her into the distance to parse the thoughts that were coming into my mind.  This had the effect of pulling me up and away from her mouth, which was still closing in on me. She mistook my gesture as playing coy – thought that I was dodging her advance – and she responded by chuckling slightly and dipping to close her teeth on the skin at the base of my neck and then she purred into me, biting lightly and quickly disengaging.

“I’ve had my eye on you for awhile, Rant…” she spoke in low tones, huskiness behind her words.

“I haven’t been here long…”

“It’s been more than a week since I last saw you.”

I was confused, and the look was probably pretty obvious on my face.  I hadn’t ever met Mary before… and then it occurred to me – she was one of the women in the restaurant with Simone when I first encountered her.  Mary was the one who had her hand on the inside of my thigh when I was telling them about the ranch that I grew up on in an effort to get a better tip.

“I suggested to Simone that she recruit you, you know?”

“You did?”

“Yes – and she was so grateful that she let me break you in.. at a discount.”

“Wait.. what?”

“Why did you think she hasn’t fucked you yet?”

“But she has… ”

“HA!  I knew it!”  she interrupted me with glee in her voice and she literally jumped back to do a little dance.

“I don’t understand…”

“Oh hush, honey… I promise that I will be gentle with you, since this will be your first time…”

“My first time for what?” I am sure that I looked about as confused as I’ve ever been.

“Kneel.”  It was a command, not a request, and I responded almost automatically, facing Mary and then dropping to my knees without a word and staring at the floor in front of her feet with my hands behind my back.

“Good boy – well… that was almost good.”

I continued to stare at the floor in front of her feet and she began to walk towards me.  In my peripheral vision, I could see her pulling her dress up over her head and I desperately wanted to look up at her and see what she was wearing under that dress – along with what I imagined to be vast stretches of gorgeous, naked skin, but I knew what was expected of me and kept my eyes on the floor.

“Do you not want to see my body, Rant?”  her voice was slightly mocking and I forgot my place and looked up to see a very beautiful, and with the exception of her sandals, a very naked Mary, standing with all of her weight on one foot so that she could bend the other one in front of her as she pulled her arms up into her hair, bringing her breasts up as she did so – looking every bit the pinup as she did so.

I think I opened my mouth to start to say something, but the words would not come…

“Oh, but that’s not being a good boy, is it, Rant?”

I didn’t move or make a sound – my brain had hit a sort of vapor-lock. 

She walked up towards me, and I kept my eyes locked on her body, but it looked like she was smiling in my peripheral vision as she closed in on me and then grabbed my head behind my head, threading her fingers into my hair and thrusting her pelvis forward, grinding my face into her abdomen, and then she let go with one hand and lifted one of her legs, thrusting her pussy right into my face, putting her knee up on the edge of the island that was still behind me.

A low growl began to form in my throat, unbidden and unfamiliar to me at that time, but I opened my mouth and hungrily accepted her thrusts, meeting with my tongue.

She shifted back a bit to give her more angle and began fucking my face, pressing the back of my head back against the island behind me, so that I could not get away from her.

I was in heaven for those first few moments.  She was running her pussy over my whole face, grinding on the bridge of my nose, coming back to my tongue, and I was enjoying every moment of it, but then she started to get rougher, bumping her pelvis into my skull, trying to bounce it off of the island behind me.  I was still on my knees with my hands behind me and was pushed back into the island, leaning back from my ankles, which were in front of my center of gravity. I was being held up by the pressure on the back of my head, and she was exploiting that to keep me off balance and toy with me.  Then she started to giggle and she brought her leg and arm back down, stood on her toes, and with me still off balance, straddled me with her legs, grabbed the hair at the top of my head in both of her hands and pulled hard, while grinding her pussy into my nose – laughing all the while.

The growl that had been in throat stopped and I started having a hard time catching a breath and was beginning to reach panic when I realized that I was not bound, was nearly twice Mary’s size, and fully clothed still, so I brought my arms up from behind me, dislodging myself from within Mary’s legs, grabbed her by the waist and lifted her off of me as I started to stand.  

She tried to move back away from me and fell back onto her ass as I stood, and I thought I saw fear in her eyes for a moment, but then she was in control of herself again, drawing her legs up and pivoting on to her feet.

“Now that’s what I came for, Rant!”  She gave me a smoldering look as I was undoing my tie.

She threw out her hand in a ‘stop’ gesture and exclaimed, “No! Leave the tie.  Take off the shirt, but leave the tie.”

I looked at her evenly, hearing what she said but having no desire to comply.  It was only then that I realized that I was growling again. I slid the tie over my head and while looking Mary directly in the eye, I threw it to the ground behind me and started walking towards her.

I was trying to be menacing, and I think I might have succeeded a little bit, but I ruined it by trying to be like the macho guys you see on TV and rip open my shirt by the buttons, but it proved much more difficult than I expected and I managed to get it free only after a few inglorious tugs and some grunting.

Mary was either being charitable, or my grunting and struggling was intimidating enough that she had the grace to not laugh at me as I was still walking towards her, but she had removed her sandals and was back on her feet.   She took a step backwards, and then turned and fled, giggling as she did so.

She ran across the room and up the steps, jumping on my bed and turning to face me on all fours with a wide grin her face, laughing the whole time.

I was not laughing.

I kept walking towards her at the same pace, growling all the while and she once again held up her hand and said more firmly this time, “No.  Go get the tie and put it back on. I want something to hold on to.”

I heard the words.   I knew I should obey them.  I was not in the right mind to do so, so I growled at her instead and threw my arms out to the sides of my body while pushing my chest out.

Much more firmly this time, she spoke again, “No, Rant.  Go get the tie and put it on and then take off your pants.”

I came back to myself, remembered my place, stood tall and hung my head towards her, while saying as meekly as I could manage in that moment, “Yes, Mistress.” and then I went over and got the tie, picked it up, looped it back around my neck and cinched it tight, stepped out of my shoes, and then I took off my pants and stood there, bowing towards Mary.

“I meant those pants too, Rant.” Mary said, indicating my boxers.

Understanding what she meant for me to do, I reached down and took off my socks, then took off my boxers and stood again, bowing towards Mary.

“What happened to that hard cock you were sporting through those slacks just moments ago, Rant?” Mary’s voice was dripping with contempt as she indicated my semi-flaccid penis.

My initial reaction was to feel shame, but I’d been taught already to turn that around, embracing the situation as it is and knowing that it will bring pleasure to my Top, so I smiled and meant to say something like, “If it would please Mistress, I will do my best to summon what meager cock I have for her pleasure.”  but what actually came out was, “It was momentarily fooled into thinking that some thing worth fucking was nearby…” and my voice was dripping with contempt of my own.

Mary’s smile could have split her face as she rotated her hips to bring her feet around to the side of the bed and stood up, walking over to me to – completely without preamble – slap me across the face harder than I’d been slapped by anyone prior to that point, Simone included.  Then she grabbed me by the front of throat and pulled herself into me to kiss me passionately. I was confused and aroused and leaned into it, getting hard as a rock as I did so.

She let go, dropped back onto her feet and favored me with a look that said “I like this” and then she turned to walk back towards the bed and climb back up again, turning over onto her back and then to face me, knees bent, spread-eagle.

“Now, if you don’t get over here and fuck me with that nice, hard cock that I see right there, I’m going to have Simone cut it off and bronze it so that I can use it as a dildo.”

I growled at her, snapped my jaw in the air, and stalked over to the bed, putting my knee directly between her legs and then covering her with my body, putting my hand on her throat and growling in her ear as I did so.

She smiled, grabbed the arm that was attached to the hand that was on her neck, pulled it off of her – and I let her – and then she rotated her head like she was biting into an ear of corn and bit my forearm, hard.

I made an inelegant noise and snatched my arm back from her, pivoting back onto my knees to get away from her teeth, but she followed me, grabbing at me and trying to pull me down, but just lifting herself up instead.  I rotated my shoulder around and brought my arm over her, swatting her down to the bed, and then covered her throat again this time, and pushed, pushing her down into the mattress by her throat.  Her face went red instantly and I could see that I was hurting her.  I didn’t care.

Her eyes got wide and she started to beat at my arm with her own arms – a futile attempt, and I looked at her with derision and laughed.  Her eyes somehow got even wider and I let up, letting her gulp a huge breath of air, which she did, and then she launched herself at me, grasping at my head and pulling her face into me to give me frantic, desperate kisses, trying desperately to pull me down into the bed with her, into her.

Knowing what was required of me and coming to my senses again, I relented.

What followed was spectacularly rough sex, frantic moves to change position, followed by grasping and pinning and fucking – glorious fucking!  She pushed me, hit me, bit me, grinded on me, thrust onto me, and I pushed back, pinned her, bit her, thrust into her, grinded into her, pulled her hair, and she pulled mine.  We went at it like a couple of alley-cats, pulling the fitted sheets off of the mattress along with all of the other bedding, eventually to collapse in a heaving, sweaty pile upon piles of bedding and bare mattress.

Under an hour had passed by this time.  I was suddenly not very sure that I could keep this up for four hours.  

Fortunately for me, Mary was content to spend large swaths of time in between physical bouts with conversation.  She revealed to me much about her relationship with Simone, and the ways that I was being manipulated behind the scenes…

“So, when did Simone fuck you?”

“What?”

“When did Simone give in and fuck you?”

“Give in?”

“Ah, of course… she was supposed to save you for me.”

“What do you mean?”

“We made a bargain – she was not supposed to let you cum until you fucked me.  And I didn’t think she would be able to hold out, so we made a wager. If she fucked you first, then I would get this visit for free” and she twirled her hands in the air and lilted her voice as she said ‘free’, “but if I got to have you first, I owe her a bottle of Dom.  Far better deal for me, either way…”

“Wait, what?”  I can be a really smart guy sometimes.

“So when did it happen?  I bet it was last week, wasn’t it?”

“Uhm, no, it was about three hours ago.”

“What?! That bitch!

“Uh..”

“Well, she’s definitely paying for this now… and you want Simone to get her money’s worth, don’t you, Rant?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

We reenacted variations on the theme above three more times over the course of the next four hours, and in between we talked about horses, and wine, and astronomy – she wanted me to show her things through my telescope, but there was too much light for that…  I learned more about my Mistress and the people she associated with – trying to remember as much as I could – to be a better slave for my Mistress.

After Mary had left, my phone rang once again.

“Hello?”

“Rant.  How did it go?”

“I believe that it went well, Mistress.”

“I suspect you would know if it hadn’t… but I will confer with Mary – I’m sure that she will want to discuss things.  Is there anything that you need to confess before I hear the story from her?”

“Confess?”

“What was that, Rant?”

“Confess, Mistress?  I am a bit confused, Mistress.”

“Did you meet with her expectations?”

“I do believe so, Mistress.”

“How many times?”

“Four.” 

“Mistress,” I quickly added and hoped that omission would not draw attention.

“Well done.  Good boy. Your next client will be there in an hour.  Be ready.”

I was dumbfounded.  There was no way I would be ready for another client in an hour – I’d need longer than that just to clean the apartment, much less to get to the point of being able to have sex again, but I didn’t have much choice, and I loved that I didn’t have that choice then.  Suddenly, it didn’t seem so daunting after all…

“Yes, Mistress.  I will be ready.”

“Good boy.”

<click>

I sprang into action and did the best I could to quickly shower, put on nice clothes again (I needed a new shirt, obviously…) and make up the bed as quickly as possible.  It was hardly a perfect job, but it was not awful. I began to pace a bit as the implications of my new lifestyle were starting to coalesce in my mind, when the doorbell rang.

That was not the protocol.  I don’t think I even realized that I had a doorbell to that point.

I walked to the door and looked through the peephole, to see Mistress Simone on the other side.

I immediately flung the door open and dropped to my knees.

“Rant, move aside so that I can come in.”

I quickly shuffled to the side and she walked past me as I tried to turn on my knees to face her.

“Mistress, I am sorry…”

“Why are you sorry, Rant?”

“I do not know, Mistress.  I only was expecting to see .. not you .. and I fear that I have done something to displease you.”

“Mistress…”

“Mistress!  I fear that I have done something to displease you, Mistress.  I’m sorry, Mistress.”

“Rant. You did nothing wrong. Stand up and come over here with me…”  

She walked into the apartment, over to my bed, and sat on the edge, looking at me as I followed behind her like a scolded puppy.

“Well, how was it?”

….

Next time I’ll relate a story of Simone’s kindness and compassion.  So far you’ve only seen how hard she could be.

Until then – I remain Rant.

My Personal Journey : Part 6

Part 6:  What does it mean to be a slave?

Those of you who know me personally or who have been following along since before I began to recall my origins story may remember a bit of the relationship that Simone and I ultimately ended up having.  She did not exploit me in the same way that the members of the Lodge did, but she did exploit me nonetheless, and in a much more direct way.  The difference, of course, is that I consented to this treatment.

To this day, I do not know if Simone ever really cared for me or not.  She made gestures to indicate that she did at times, and she was incredibly cold and distant at other times, but it didn’t really matter in the beginning, because I was completely smitten.

The first week or so that I was Mistress Simone’s property was a panoply of new experiences for me, the details of which are burned into my mind, but that I really can not recall here without shifting my perception to the point of discomfort.  However, I can paint the broad strokes…

Over the course of several days, Mistress Simone set me up in an apartment, destroyed most of my old clothing and took me shopping to replace them with more suitable things, introduced me to several of her business associates, most of my companion chattel, and even a couple of prospective clients, though I did not know that was who they were at the time.

She introduced me to protocol, proper ways to show submission, posture, bearing, and many of the tools of the trade.  I did not know it at the time, but she was being careful not to mark me.  She taught me both the Top and bottom sides of each interaction, which I thought was completely normal at the time, but have come to understand is completely unique.  It was a whirlwind introduction to the things that would later be expected of me.

She spoke to me a great deal about sex.  She was very interested to hear about my sexual experiences with the Lodge, and I could tell that she was turned on by the ritualistic nature of things and the incorporation of sex as part of that.  I often had a difficult time accurately reading Simone, but I was absolutely certain of her interest in this.   She asked a great deal about my perceptions of various sexual activities, and whether or not I enjoyed doing those things with women or men.  I answered her honestly, though in many cases, I did not really understand the questions that I was answering.

She hit me and made me beg and stepped on me and let me perform cunnilingus on her, but she always stopped me before her orgasm.  I didn’t understand why then, and I’m not entirely sure that I do now. Whereas I was completely baffled then, I am pretty sure that I understand now.  It was a power play.  It was to show me how in control she was, and how – even as I learned what she liked and what she didn’t, becoming much more adept at the act – she maintained that control.

She would often command me to jack off for her, but she warned me that I was to ask her for permission to cum, and that if I were to ejaculate without permission that there would be severe consequences.   I always asked her for permission to cum, but she never gave it (until much later).   I made the mistake once of stopping after asking if I could cum and being told no – but I only made that mistake once.  I never did ejaculate without permission, but I did occasionally become sore.

She spent several hours with me each day.  I felt extremely special.  I could tell that the others were jealous of the attention that I would get, but I would occasionally overhear things like, “he’s just new, the shininess will wear off soon,” or “wait until he pulls his first job and falls flat on his face,” but those things just raised my competitive spirit and furthered my isolationist tendencies – Simone became my entire world.

The psychology of her pitch was impeccable.  She knew that she had me wrapped around her little finger.  I felt like a million bucks, even when I was prostrate on the floor naked for her, licking the bottom (yes, the part that contacts the ground…) of her shoes.  She put me in fancy clothes and a fancy apartment and was introducing me to important people.  It really didn’t matter to me that much that I was getting no actual sex from this – I felt important again, special, unique.  And once I felt all of those things, and I’d been divorced from contact with everyone else in my life, and I was completely and utterly dependent upon her, she told me what she really wanted me to do.

She wanted me to be a prostitute.

I’m not an idiot, and I had picked up along the way that this was what was actually going on behind the scenes, though there were also legitimate photography gigs and convention postings that were happening as well, but I already knew that the core of her business was in the sex trade, and the women that I had seen her dining with when I first encountered her were clients of hers more than friends – and she knew many such women.  She even conducted events specifically targeted at this demographic – sex toy events, wine and cheese events,  anything that would get the abandoned wives of Beverly Hills together…  Her male clients required significantly less maintenance or cost of customer acquisition, but they were also significantly less reliable.  Female clients were almost always return clients…  these were the people to whom I was intended to appeal.

Forewarned of this eventuality, and fully enamored of my new life, I did not hesitate to agree, though in retrospect, I realize that I really did not have much of a choice.   Simone rewarded me with what was at that time the most intense sexual experience of my life.  She was Dominant with me in a way that appealed to me then, but that would result in very different reactions from me now, but she fucked the shit out of me, and while she ordered me to do things to her, she also just used me in ways that still make me pause… and then when she was done, she told me to disappear and clean myself up because I would be seeing my first client in just a few hours.

I was simultaneously excited and about as anxious as I have ever been.

To be continued in Part 7…