I am in a relationship. It is a complicated relationship, it is definitely not easy, as no relationships are, but this one is worth fighting for, where I have failed to fight for others in the past.
In the past, I’ve always felt justified in blaming the failure of my relationships on external factors or upon the other person, and yet, I’m almost always the one to call an end to things. Not always, but generally, I’ve been the one to give up.
When my first wife, Sabrina, found religion and started to use it as a weapon against me, I could take it no longer and ended the first real relationship of my life – quickly, mercilessly, and without much regret, but regret and pain are not quite the same thing, and that experience surely did hurt.
I went through a series of short term and nontraditional relationships after that, and in most cases, I was the one to give up when things looked the least bit like they were going to crack, but eventually I was tossed out by Simone and experienced my first case of being the dumped party. It hurt; it scarred me, and every relationship that I have had since then has had to bear the baggage that came with this event. Every time a relationship came close to ending, I feared the upending of my entire life – being thrown out onto the street has a way of refocusing you though…
Despite being somewhat jaded at this point, I decided to once again try to settle in and live life according to the societal norms. I found a new wife, Madison, and we had children together, and no matter how bad things got, I fought to stay in that relationship for the sake of my children. That relationship ended for reasons that were not my choosing.
Then I did the series of short term and nontraditional relationships again – with the same sorts of results for the most part.
The truth is that in all of those cases, there was always a fear that the other person would abandon me, and in most cases that is what actually happened.
In some cases, I pushed things to that conclusion. Consciously and unconsciously, I worked against my own relationships to break them, so that I didn’t have to be hurt when the inevitable abandonment would occur. I could spin it around and say that it was my choice to leave, and in most cases, that is how it would appear to anyone who was not deep within my mind.
In some cases, it really was the other person’s fault. Kendra, for example, was simply batshit crazy, and after spending tens of thousands of dollars to try to get her help and get her life back on track, I simply could no longer afford to keep it up and I told her so.
But my current relationship is different, and very much worth saving.
This is the first time that my partner refused to hear me when I said that it was over.
She has been the first person to see through my bullshit and my baggage and my fear and anxiety and dread and to hold on to the part of me that really does not want her to go.
She is my lighthouse.
She is the blue canary in the outlet by the light switch who watches over me.
She is the one who I want by my side for the rest of my life. Whatever form that takes, she is the one that I always want to come home to, the one that I want to always protect, the one that I want to always have my back.
But in order to do that, I have to clear out this garbage from my past.
I am confronting things about myself that I buried long ago and never wanted to revisit, but those are parts of me and if I do not acknowledge them, they crawl out on their own anyway.
This is a long, painful, and extremely difficult thing for me to do.
I have nightmares almost daily. Even when I am awake and focused on something entirely different, sometimes when I close my eyes, the images that I see on the inside of my eyelids are of inexplicable and horrifying things. I often lie awake at night in the dark and I can feel the demons trying to infect me again, but I have strength, because she is there, sleeping by my side.
I am fighting against myself. I am fighting against the walls that I placed in my own psyche for very good reason, but those walls have to come down and the elements behind them have to be dealt with. I need to re-incorporate those things into my being again. Until I do that, I won’t be whole, and she deserves so much more than a partial boyfriend.
I will kick my own ass so that she can have more of me than anyone ever has. She deserves it, and I want to give it to her.
But when I started this post, I was only meaning to speak in part about my girl and how much she means to me and how much I want to fight for her, because while she may be the most important thing in my life to fight for right now there are going to be many, many, many things that I will have to fight for in the years to come.
I had briefly considered pulling the white male card and just coasting through, hoping that nothing bad happens and nothing touches me, and I am just fucking spoiled to have that option in the first place and I’m a bit disappointed in myself for ever even half-seriously considering it.
I had considered leaving the country. The incoming administration has no love for people like me and the things I represent, but that would be cowardly as well.
I am extremely fortunate. I am not powerless in this world. I do not have much power, but whatever I have I am going to dedicate to fighting for the things in which I believe.
I am donating money now. I will donate time when I am able. I am going to speak of things in my bully pulpit here for as long as I can.
People are people, and until and unless we can recognize that, we may deserve the environmental catastrophe that is coming for us…
But we can, and should, fight against all of those things until they overwhelm us.
My ancestors long fought against impossible odds, and they usually lost, but they won enough that I stand here today, and they kept enough of their values and culture that it is immediately recognizable the world over.
I stand on the shoulders of giants and I stare down the petty and selfish.
Firstly, before I begin this post, I need to apologize – dear readers.
I promised that I’d be more frequent with the updates, and then life got in the way again. Even while I was not able to keep up on the blog posts, I have always been responsive to email requests from my readers, until this past week. I’ve received a few emails that I was not able to respond to for almost a week, and for that I apologize. I think I’ve responded to all of those that require a response, but if you sent me something that I failed to give an adequate response to, please re-send, I think I might have lost one or two in the process.
I should also apologize for the content of this post – it’s in keeping with blogs in general, but not precisely with the tenor of this blog in particular. This is a personal piece that has almost nothing to do with my role as Dom…
As I write this, I’m sitting in an outdoor covered patio on a beach on the Mediterranean. It’s overcast, but warm, and while it rained a bit earlier this morning, it doesn’t seem to be threatening rain now.
You’d think that this would make me happy, but really, I’m rather discontent. I’m far away from the one that I love, in a foreign country where I don’t speak the language, and in the company of people that seem to not like me. It’s the sort of thing that makes one angry and pensive – at least when that someone is me.
I miss my girl.
Lately, we’ve both been stressed to the max and it’s boiled over a few times into conflict, but even when things were their worst, this remains the most solid relationship that I’ve ever had – while I still have doubts about myself, and I still wonder how I had the good fortune to find her, I no longer have any doubts about us, and that is really about the only thing that is keeping me sane today.
Anger is just below the surface, and it’s undirected and undirectable (yes, I know that isn’t a word, but you know exactly what I mean by it, so leave off) and it’s become a terrible distraction. If my girl were here, I could do something about it, but then again, if my girl were here, I would likely not have to…
I’ve spoken about my ‘Aggressive Days‘ before, and this would seem to be quite similar, but whereas I didn’t quite grasp all of the nuance involved in bringing me to this point when I first wrote that entry, I’ve had a bit of a personal revelation since then. I thought at that time that part of the reason that I was unable to really let myself loose and open up my Primal side was because that wasn’t really part of who I am anymore, or maybe that I was growing too old and the chemistry of my body was different enough that I didn’t feel the same things as intensely as I did, but that’s not actually true. I think I was just with the wrong girl. Things have taken a much better turn now… but I want to talk about the past a bit, to where these things began – I think.
When I was a teen boy, not quite a man, but thanks to an early puberty, looking every bit the part, I sort of … broke.
When I picked up the pieces that were left, I was not the same person – or rather, I was not just the same person, there was something else, something new, something that broke off from the main part of what I consider to be me.
The Monster.
One of my favorite novel series is called the Sandman Slim series, written by Richard Kadrey. Incidentally, Mr. Kadrey is a San Francisco resident, respected fetish photographer, and at least peripherally connected to the same scene to which I am a part, but we’ve never crossed paths that I am aware. If by some chance Mr. Kadrey or one of his acquaintances happens to be a reader of this blog, I’d very much like to buy him a beer and have a conversation. I don’t completely relate to every aspect of his antihero protagonist Stark, but I do identify with him to an extent, and one thing that I certainly do understand is the problematic way that broken people (to apply the term loosely) like Stark, and to a lesser extent, myself, deal with other people and the world at large. There are certainly times when I think that I belong in Hell myself, and there was a time when I was convinced that I should be, or that at the very least I should be isolated from society, so as to not cause any harm to those that I actually care for.
This is not because I like to be alone. Sure – I need alone time, and I think everyone does, but nothing has gone so far to reinforce the point that I need people too as sitting here, surrounded by people that are in most ways alien to me. They speak a language that sounds like nothing I can understand. They live and move and wander around me as if I am not even here. I sit here, surrounded by people, more alone than I have been in a long time. I was at a grocery store yesterday to buy some basics, and I completed the entire trip, including purchasing a few sundries, without speaking a single word to anyone.
And so… here I sit. Pensive. Angry. Lonely. Longing.
And there is a part of me that is raging. I don’t understand the things around me, and while I can still read the body language and emotional cues of the people I see, I cannot understand them, and that is making me tense.
I don’t do so well when I feel this way.
I grew up in fear. I let myself be led astray by a man that I respected and he abused me in the worst way that he possibly could have. I didn’t have any control over my own destiny, and when I managed to pull myself out of that particular situation, I got myself trapped in another. I think that these things worked together to make me who I am today, and contributed to my need to control everything – including myself. Which is why the need to channel the scared young man inside of me into physical and emotional actions. It’s why I want to control every aspect of my life, and it’s why I want to exert control over others.
But my heart is still strong and I’m still a chivalrous man.
I’m beginning to accept and even embrace this side of me. It’s always been something that scared me in the past. It was a thing that scared others too. Simone once told me that she was only in her life ever afraid of two men, her father and me, but she never told me why. I think I know though. I’ve always kept the monster caged, and I do again today, but he’s come out a couple of times recently, and I’ve not lost control.
There are two ways you can control a situation, and each has its place. You can seize control. You can force your will upon someone, and if you have enough power, you can get them to do what you want. Or you can accept the burden of the situation. You can allow yourself to be pulled in, and then with a strong will, you can guide the way to the resolution you desire. This is not a manipulation, this is a sublimation. You can give up control in order to get what you want… what you need. These are the two sides of the D/s coin. And they both need to be employed to make for a complete life.
In my present situation, I could attempt to seize control. I could expend my personal power in a number of different ways and force those around me to act how I want them to. It might even work, contextually. I could hire an interpreter or guide. I could only go places where I know that there are people that speak English. I could only acknowledge the things here that are familiar. But I choose not to. I am immersing myself in the world here and now, and it’s quieting the monster. I am experiencing new things and expanding my horizons, become bigger, better, stronger, more… but I do not think that I could do that by forcing the world to meet me where I am.
It has taken me a terribly long time, and perhaps in some ways my growth in this area was stunted, but I’m learning that extremes have their place, and it’s not sufficient to ride the middle line all the time.
I can let the monster loose when I need him, or when I want him, and I can still be the man I want to be. I can let him take control when I want to, but I am always still there, watching, making sure that nothing untoward happens.
This is how I can love my girl, even as I choke her until she passes out, or slap her across the face as I fuck her.
Fuck, I miss her.
I’ll be back with her in a week.
I can hardly wait, but I know I am strong enough to manage it.
Get your mind out of the gutter – that’s not what I’m talking about here.
On second thought, don’t – I like your mind in the gutter. This is a pretty sinful website, after all, isn’t it?
Anyway – that really isn’t what I’m wanting to talk about today.
There have been a number of events in my life that affected me and the way that I interact with the world. These are things that have shaped who I am and how I interact with people, places, and things – but most importantly, people. These are the things that made me a hard man, that gave me an edge, that continue to give me the gravitas and presence that caused one of my former subs to remark, “you read as DOMINANT from about 1000 paces… I kind of went o.O GAH the first time I saw your photo… and you do the Dom voice.”
The funny thing is, I’m kind of moving away from that nowadays, by choice.
For much of my adult life, I’ve been hard like a brick. I was strong, with edges that were mostly sharp. But the thing about a brick is that while it’s very strong, if you pound on it long enough or hard enough, it shatters.
I had a real brick-shattering event a few years back, and it left me broken for awhile, but I learned from it, and with some minor stumbles here and there, I’ve come back stronger than I was before.
It sounds a bit arrogant to my ears, but I’d prefer to think that I’m more like water now. I seamlessly mold myself to my environment, I resist blunt force, and given time I even tear down mountains.
But it took me a long time to get here.
I grew up in a mostly boring home. I’m caucasian and have lived in California for my entire life. My father is an attorney and my mother was a stay-at-home housewife. We lived in the country, on a horse ranch. My family always seemed to have minor money troubles. My father had a very feast or famine income stream and he did none of the things that one should do to even out such things, so there were always lean times to contend with, but my biggest worries as a young child were never about the necessities of life. I was fed, clothed, housed, and had adequate medical care.
And yet, I suffered a bit from the problems that are endemic to that sort of life. My father was absent most of the time. Even when he was physically present, the power imbalance and lack of communication between my parents made him emotionally distant and my mother lived with a siege mentality. Her livelihood depended absolutely on this man who was extremely cold, mostly absent, and who derived more enjoyment from his relationships outside of the marriage than with my mother and it terrified her. She lived in a constant state of fear that he would leave her, and assumed that every relationship that he had with any other woman was a sign of infidelity. While I don’t know that was ever actually the case, he did eventually leave her, so I could go off on a tangent on the topic of whether or not that was causal or predictive, but I don’t have enough information to talk about it and don’t really care.
I have a sister, and while my strategy to deal with early life hazards and isolation was to take up the family banner and try to show the world that we were a successful family unit – she took the opposite approach, as one might expect.
To borrow from psychology, in the dysfunctional family archetypes, I was the Hero, and she was the Scapegoat. I did my best to excel in everything, and I achieved most of my goals. She refused to compete and drew all of the attention she could by acting out and getting into trouble.
And, as the popular adage goes, “the squeaky wheel gets the oil,” and she was certainly a great deal more squeaky than I was. Despite my accomplishments, within the family I tried to stay mostly invisible, but one can never completely hide from family (or relationship) dysfunction.
On the eve of my first wedding, my father met with me one-on-one and told me that I was a mistake – my mother was not meant to become pregnant when she did, and I was responsible for the misery that followed my father for the rest of his life. I forced him to abandon his dreams and to instead do the responsible thing and ‘settle down.’
As if this were not enough of a blow on its own, I further led the discussion into tones of denigration when I asked him why he gave so much more attention to my sister than he did to me, and his response was roughly, “You have such a bloated ego of your own, I figured you didn’t need any praise from me.”
Perhaps I can forgive him for failing to recognize how my outward appearance was compensating for a lack of true personal confidence, but to use diction like that with your own child seems to be pretty inexcusable to me. When he told me, “…you didn’t need any praise from me,” what I heard was, “you don’t deserve any praise from me.” This is a notion that I do still have trouble with even today, but being aware of it takes most of the sting away.
Parents out there – do not make this mistake, please. I strive to be certain that I encourage my own children without turning them into narcissists, but I also try very hard to remember that even as young children, the face that they show to the world, the face that they sometimes show even to me, does not always represent their true emotional state. Children are much better at developing and showing these false fronts than even adults can be. Love is the currency that they trade in, not dollars.
My father told me that I was a mistake and an egotist and that I didn’t need him so he didn’t either want or need me. This wasn’t exactly a revelation – after all, he’d been showing me this same behavior for my entire life, making me hard, but that act was the kiln that fired the brick that was my personality.
He repeatedly told me, throughout my youth, that I was doing things wrong, and he seemed to want to compete with me ex post facto for all of my academic and athletic achievements. Everything that I did was compared to something that he did better. Every time that I would show initiative or innovation, I was told that I was doing things wrong, if only because I didn’t do them his way.
My mother was only slightly better. She was effusive with her praise of my accomplishments, but she used my success as a lever against the mothers of the children in my peer group. For every success that one of my friends would have, something that their parents would show pride in, she would rattle off five things that I had done which were superior. I knew that she loved me, but I felt that love was always conditional. I had to continue to succeed or I would lose my vaunted place on the pedestal of achievement.
I was loved, as long as I remained ubermensch.
So I learned that love was dependent upon my supremacy. I could depend on none but myself. My place in the world was tenuous, apart, aloof, alone, dependent upon factors that I could not directly control, but oh, how I did try to control them anyway…
I was an arrogant prick in the extreme. I simply refused to acknowledge any event that did not show my superiority. I would not even try to do something that I didn’t know I would dominate. I was hard, but brittle, and my need to dominate things was established, for only through controlling every aspect of every interaction could I be certain that I would not need to depend on anyone but myself, and while I was absolutely certain of my ability to handle a small subset of possible interactions, I was completely incapable of handling anything else at all.
Eventually I came to understand how this was affecting my relationships with others. I had a few sycophant friends who would follow in my wake, lauding me for my superiority in the things that I chose to take part in, as my ego demanded, but I was completely incapable of forming lasting and meaningful relationships with anyone who refused to admit my rightful place at the top of the order.
Is this my version of 50 Shades of Fucked Up?
No, of course not. That whole notion is a logical fallacy and merely a straw man argument put forward by a woman who does not even really understand the dynamic that she was trying to portray. I do not share the bilious contempt for her work that many of my peers do, and while I have suffered events in my past that instilled coping mechanisms in me that are not always the most efficient or beneficial, I am also a reasonable and rational human being who can learn from his mistakes, and I do not think that to be a superhuman feat or that it requires finding a naive virginal personality to fix me.
I choose this lifestyle because it is something that works for me, not because I am trying to compensate for some lack of affection in my youth. The affection may have been lacking, but I’m not trying to solve the problems of my past any longer. I look to the future and I look to the things that make me happy. I look to fulfilling my genuine desires, and while those may have been informed by my past, they are not defined by it.
Of course, I am also motivated by my fears or repeating patterns that did not work for me in the past, even when I am rationally assured that the current reality does not match that old situation, and so, life is a learning process.
I’m still building my circle of friends. People who respect me for who I am and who I want to be, not people who pity me for who I once was or who want to exploit me to achieve their own goals.
And while I may be more malleable than I was in the past, I am stronger for it, and I can accept the adulation and love that I am worthy of receiving.
I’m still hard, but I’m hard in a way that lends strength rather than projects it. I am secure in myself and I offer that understanding and security to those that I choose to admit into my life. Together we are so much more than the sum of our parts. I don’t need people to be complete, but I can offer much to those that wish to join me.
This world has become hard. In many ways, the world at large is harder and more brick-like than I ever was. Just the other day I was walking through a mall and I could not help but notice how people treated each other, how strangers reacted to each other.. each unintentional bump was met with extreme vitriol, each interaction between strangers was tense. As the population increases, and the economic status of individuals continue to stratify, and the stresses on each person increase, the tension that I can feel emanating from people increases dramatically.
Those in this lifestyle who still react to stresses as I once did, those who feel the need to assert their Dominance in every situation… they are becoming more and more obsolete.
I do not think that this is a sea change, and I do not think that I have all of the perfect answers, but I do think that there is strength in malleability. There is strength in knowing when to remain silent. There is strength in seeking harmony.
Each generation says of the next that cynicism is encroaching on our values and making us hate more, that the great reckoning or the great race war or the great revolution is coming, and the fact that this motif repeats itself from generation to generation without great upheaval makes it easy to dismiss, but just because a thing is commonly misunderstood does not make it entirely false.
The songwriter Nick Lowe wrote a song in the 70’s that has come to encompass many of my feelings on this idea. The song itself has been covered many, many times by many, many artists in different genres. It’s a meme that holds true and that we can all agree with if we take a moment to lose the veneer of strength that we’re attempting to project. ‘What’s so funny about peace and understanding?’
If you are aspiring Dominant and you are reading this, know that compassion is a show of strength and Dominance. Know that you prove your worth by reasoned interactions and that while you may some day be required to hold the line, there is strength in knowing where that line needs to be drawn, and letting people in and holding compassion can be stronger than holding people at a distance.
I’m every bit as strong as I ever was – in many ways I’m much stronger – but I am nowhere near as hard as I once was, and I neither need nor want to be.
I usually think that quoting song lyrics in a blog makes for an uninteresting read, but I’m going to violate my own policy here. Think of it as poetry.. courtesy of Nick Lowe:
As I walk on through this wicked world,
Searching for light in the darkness of insanity,
I ask myself, Is all hope lost?
Is there only pain, and hatred, and misery?
And each time I feel like this inside,
There’s one thing I wanna know,
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love, and understanding?,
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love, and understanding?
And as I walked on through troubled times,
My spirit gets so downhearted sometimes,
So where are the strong?,
And who are the trusted?,
And where is the harmony?,
Sweet harmony
‘Cause each time I feel it slipping away, just makes me wanna cry,
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love, and understanding?,
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love, and understanding?
When I was 15 years old, I confronted my first existential crisis. It was not my only one, and it is unlikely to be my last, but as far as crises go, it was pretty profound.
This wasn’t a depressive event, and though I did undergo moments of melancholy when I was a teenager, and this particular event caused me to re-examine almost every aspect of my life, I would not learn what the word depression really meant for another two decades.
You see, I was always a bit more mature and thoughtful than I should have been as a kid and still as a teenager. I was raised in a Roman Catholic family and we went to Church every Sunday. I went to CCD (Confraternity of Christian Doctrine) classes twice a week after school all through elementary school. In Junior High School I was part of the Church’s Youth Group. I was a leader there. I was a ‘perfect’ child. I never received anything less than an ‘A’ in my classes, I was respectful to my elders, I always practiced my piano, I was in team sports (soccer and baseball until Junior High, then I switched to track in the spring, and in High school I added wrestling for the winter,) I was in student government, I was involved in student service groups, I was a Lieutenant Governor in Key Club, I was Editor-in-Chief of the High School newspaper, I was even lead in the school play…
Much of that was actually after the event that I am about to describe, but it’s still descriptive of how I led my life at that time. I was larger than life. I had everything going for me that a person could hope to have at that point in my life. I got my first paying job at the age of 12 (though it wasn’t strictly legal.. I was doing contract technical writing for Broderbund software with a false SSN and an assumed name… people were so much more trusting back then) and by the time I was 16, I’d saved enough money to buy a car, and I did. When I was 16 I got a part time job writing software and I was suddenly cash flow positive in a very big way. I could pay for my gas and car insurance and still have enough left over to be a stupid teenager.
But I wasn’t.
I was an ‘old soul,’ according to my mom.
I identified strongly with the persona of Yama, the Vedic god of Death. He was old before he was young, and so was I. The fact that I even knew who Yama was at the age of 15, growing up in a rural community and a Catholic family in the pre-Internet era is something of an anomaly itself, in retrospect, but that’s not the the thrust of what I’m after here. It would, however, come to color the events that caused me to change so drastically from the Christian Beaver Cleaver overachiever that I was and become something new and different.
When I was eight or nine, I made friends with a boy who was in my CCD classes. We went to Vacation Bible School together in the summer. It was only a day camp, but it was the first camp I’d ever been to, and the only one that I would attend until I finally went away for my one year of sleep away camp when I was a teenager, but that was after the Transformation.
This boy, who I will refer to as Charlie, though that was not really his name, was not my best friend, as I understood such things to be at that time, but he was a good friend. We would play with Transformer and Gobots together. He even had some of the cool Gundam toys, straight from Japan, that you couldn’t get in the States. I’m still not sure how he got them, but he would always let me play with the one that I liked best, so I didn’t really care.
Charlie was a year older than me, and at that age, that’s a big deal. He still liked to play with me and I thought that was cool. Charlie and I would have playdates (a word which means something very different to me now…) and we would meet before camp and before school, and even though he was a little strange and the other boys didn’t like him, he was my friend.
Charlie’s dad was gay, and I didn’t know what that meant, but it did mean that Charlie’s mom and dad no longer lived together and that Charlie’s dad wasn’t allowed to go to our Church. My parents told me that he was a bad man and that he did things that people are not supposed to do, and that is why God hated him and he wasn’t allowed in our Church. I thought that was wrong, because Charlie’s dad was very nice to me and he got the best toys for Charlie and I never saw him be mean to anyone or even say anything unkind, despite the fact that people were very unkind to him while he was not looking. I had always been told that kind of behavior was wrong, but for some reason, whatever it was that Charlie’s dad had done made it okay to be mean to him.
For a couple years this would go on, and I eventually came to understand what it meant to be gay and what the Church’s stance on this was and I was torn.
I was a true believer.
I believed that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary and lived and preached and suffered and died on the Cross for our Sins and that was the only way that any of us would ever make it into Heaven.
Over time I lost touch with Charlie. The year of difference in our ages meant that he left our elementary school and moved on to Junior High before I did, and that year apart, coupled with my own struggles as I approached puberty (which I hit earlier than all of my peers) caused us to drift apart. I was becoming more aloof and socially ostracized as a result of my undiagnosed Aspergers Syndrome, but I was still every bit as much of an overachiever. I was still involved in Church Youth Group, and my Faith was becoming stronger and broader. I would stand toe-to-toe with my Atheist friends and debate them on the logic of Faith. I felt like I would win these arguments, but in retrospect I see the same fallacies in my arguments that I came to disdain.
I made my own path, and it was one of Righteous Indignation and I wore the Cloak of Faith and Righteousness in every act in which I engaged. I was a Paladin and I was going to march right up to the Gates of Hell and take the fight to Lucifer himself.
I still saw Charlie from time to time. He and his sister, who was of an age with and friends with my own younger sister, were friends, and he was in the Church Youth Group, though with split custody and his father’s excommunication (and yes, his father was excommunicated for being gay and having the audacity to donate money to the Church) he was not there every week. He and I were no longer close friends, but I never forgot that he was my friend, even if his father was doomed to spend Eternity in Hell for the things he chose to do (note that I no longer believe that he had a choice in the matter – this is reflective of my ignorance at the time – I was only a child, after all.)
I kept on my merry, ignorant path, and could see no reason why I would not remain so as long as I lived.
When I was 13, the Pastor for our Parish, Father Thomas, would retire. In his place, we were assigned Monsignor Heinz, an extremely intolerant and very powerful (within the Church) man who was tasked with ‘turning our backwater Church around.’
I had no idea that there was any trouble, but apparently our Parish had some of the lowest per-capita tithing of any Church in the Diocese. And not only that, but there were apparently some thinly disguised ‘disreputable elements’ in our Parish.
Monsignor Heinz would have none of that.
He conducted interviews with each family individually. He demanded to see tax returns. He set tithes of at least 20% for each family, and when people would complain that they could not afford such exorbitant tithes, he would send Parish accountants to help them file their taxes and make sure that the Church got it’s pound of flesh.
The secondary purpose of these family interviews was to root out the undesirable elements from the Parish.
My own family was found lacking. My father had not been tithing appropriately, and I was ashamed for this. But at least we were found to be morally sound (which I don’t really understand either, but that’s not the subject of this piece.)
Charlie’s family, however, was not. Charlie’s father was excommunicated, and Charlie himself was found to have gay tendencies and was told not to return to the Church.
This did not compute with me.
Charlie was not gay. (He was, and he is, but at the time, I could not comprehend this.) The Church made a mistake.
I didn’t have the normal social constraints that people around me did, so I confronted Monsignor Heinz about this. Charlie must not be expelled from the Church. Excommunicated or not, this would almost certainly mean that Charlie was being sent to Hell, all because Monsignor Heinz had a feeling about him, a feeling which I was certain was incorrect.
Charlie was a good person.
Charlie was my friend.
By this time I’d read The Bible cover to cover at least twice. This is a very unusual thing for a Catholic to do. Monsignor Heinz quoted Scripture at me, and I quoted contradicting Scripture right back at him. Eventually he started quoting things at me that I had not read.
Where was he getting this information? I had to know, so I shifted my arguments and started asking some very pointed questions. Suddenly, my curiosity and conviction were not the Scourge of the Devil, but they were a Path to the Light. Monsignor Heinz was convinced that I was Destined for the Seminary and would be a Beacon for the Faithful. He told me of the Apocrypha and for a short time my ire was deflected.
Ultimately, however, I could not Rationalize how someone as kind and good and pure as Charlie had to be sacrificed and sent to Hell, and someone like myself, who had begun to have some seriously impious urges concerning girls could be a Paragon of the Light.
I could not bring the two things together in my mind, and I realized that I was the Heretic. Charlie was good, the Church was hiding Secrets from people, and I was being driven to think and feel and act in ways that were un-Godly.
The strain of trying to keep these things consistent in my head eventually broke my Faith.
If Charlie deserved Hell, then surely I deserved something much worse than that. I hated myself. I thought to myself: I will someday die, and when I do, what will my legacy be? I have accomplished nothing. I have lived in the shadow of others, reading the writings of men dead for centuries, and blindly accepting what they said, claiming their ideas as my own and extolling the virtues I was handed, with no free thought of my own. I was not a stupid kid – I did get straight A’s and that included A’s in classes like AP Biology, AP Chemistry, AP Physics… I knew the power of the Scientific Method, and I’d been turning a blind eye to it in the name of Faith for years. I was afraid to go against the Church because then I, too, would be Destined for Hell. My Faith was broken, and without that, without the love of Jesus, I would perish in a lake of fire, and yet…
And yet… without a testable hypothesis, and without a fair trial, how could I say for certain that any of these things were true. I had Occam’s Razor, and it cut the fabric right out of my Faith, and yet, I was not yet ready to accept the path of Atheism.
This made me easy prey for Jubal McReady and his gang, but that is a story for another day…
When I was 15, I lost my Faith in God and Jesus and the Trinity. I lost my path to Heaven. I Despaired over the fact that when I die, I’m gone. I will simply cease to exist. At first, this notion was terrifying to me. It caused me to lose sleep. I spent days where I could think of nothing else but the fact that the Universe is cruel and careless.
But today… today, this same thought brings me peace.
When I am gone, I will not have to bear any of this any longer. I will not have to try to be Zen. I will not have to try to live without expectation. Nor will I be a prisoner in some theme-park paradise or for better or worse, some Infernal realm of the Underworld. I will just be done. My work will be complete, and History will judge me as it does. I couldn’t care less. I won’t be here to see it.
This was something of a story and perhaps a bit of an admission.
Nearly everyone is a hypocrite, if you look close enough, or pay enough attention, but I have one issue on which I am a planet-sized hypocrite of the worst kind.
Forgiveness.
I preach forgiveness.
I literally proselytize the virtues of forgiveness. I attempt to convert the unwashed masses to my own personal religion of sorts. I tell anyone who will listen that the path to happiness can be found by forgiving others and letting go of your own expectations. I tell people that you can walk the path to happiness by doing your best and then allowing whatever happens to happen without prejudice or expectation. And as an example of this, I tend to point to myself.
I have all sorts of stresses in my life. I’m a single parent, I have constant physical pain, I have a career that can be demanding at times, I live in one of the most expensive places to live in the world, and I have relationships with other people, so I am constantly affected by the things that affect them. Compounded, it would be rather easy to allow these stresses to overwhelm me. Each individual thing is something easy enough to cope with, but all together, the weight of this burden could crush me. No one would fault me for wanting to wallow in it, and from time to time I have.
But that is not my hypocrisy.
I point at myself and I say, “I am happier now than I have been at any other time in my life, because I stay in the now and I don’t worry too much about tomorrow. I plan, I am prepared to deal with eventualities, foreseeable and unforeseen, not because I worry about them, but because I have the basics covered and I believe in my own ability to deal with things as they occur.”
I give myself as an example to others, saying things like, “let go of your expectations and be present in the now and you will be happier for it.”
And yet… forgiveness…
I’ve mostly forgiven or forgotten things that affect me in life. I’ve forgiven Simone for tossing me out. I’ve forgiven my ex-wife for leaving me for another man. Although I won’t ever forget it, I have forgiven the people that molested me as a teenager. I have even forgiven my ex-wife’s boyfriend, the guy that she left me for and is still dating, though I did want to ask him for a very long time, “did you know that she was married when you fucked her?” So… I guess there is a kernel of bitterness there still, but I’ve had a conversation with the man and I didn’t jump down his throat for it, so I think I can safely say that I’m mostly past all of that now.
But my father… him I have not forgiven. I have not forgotten that he took advantage of me when I was most vulnerable, that he stole from me when I could least afford it, or that he has simply never been there for me except when it served his own narcissistic purposes. That is my hypocrisy and that is the burden that I can never seem to unload. And I would really like to…
Most of the time he won’t even admit that he has done anything wrong. I don’t mean just as it pertains to my life, but in other aspects of his life as well. He has done criminal things to his friends, he has manufactured issues in order to avoid other problems. He lies, he cheats, and he steals. And yet, he lives in total denial of it all, and perhaps that is the most galling thing. If he would apologize to me, I would forgive him, but I should be able to forgive him without the apology, because I know it will never come.
I know, without a doubt, that the times that I get struck down, the times that I lose sight of my goals and get stuck in problems that I can’t let go, most of those things would disappear or at least be drastically diminished if I could let go of this one last thing… I know that I would be happier and I would be more capable of dealing with the setbacks and holding to my non-attachment practices, if I could just let go of this one. last. thing.
And yet…
And yet, I haven’t been able to do that yet.
I deal with my father when it is required of me. I am civil to him, if a bit cold. I make sure that my daughters know him and are involved in his life. His birthday was this month, and I had them call him to wish him a Happy Birthday, nevermind the fact that he doesn’t do the same. Without me reminding him about their birthdays, he would forget them completely, and he has, more often than not. I got used to him forgetting mine, but the way he drifts into and out of my children’s lives bothers me. It shouldn’t. I should accept that is how he is, and I should just be grateful for the things that he does remember, but this bitterness will not budge.
And so, I am a hypocrite.
Perhaps someday I shall not be, but for now, I still can’t completely let go.
I am Rant, and maybe someday I will be everything I want to be, but for now, I do the best I can.
I am firmly Dominant in my role today, and assertive in every aspect of my life, but I was not born that way. Some people are, but I was made this way by circumstance.
Life pushed me into the crucible and burned away all of the pieces of me that were not who I am today. I can remember them, and I cherish the memories, but I would not go back.
I’ve known Doms who never switch. They are firmly rooted in their role and they’ve never walked outside of it; they’ve never desired to, never been so compelled, or never experimented. Some of these men (and women) achieve the proper level of respect and care even without having ever experienced what it is like to live on the other side of the power dynamic, but I do sometimes wonder if the ‘bad’ Doms out there fail because they don’t know what it is like to surrender.
I did. Once.
I remember what it was like, and I can put myself into a sub’s shoes.
Simone was tall, strikingly beautiful, powerful, intimidating, and brutal. She had an olive complexion, but her hair was platinum, not from age but choice. Her eyes were ice.. a blue/gray that pulled your soul into them the moment they locked on to you. In her platform stilettos she was easily half a foot taller than I am, and I’m six feet tall.
She was my first and only Domme, and I was devoted to her. She was titanic; she was superciliousness personified; and she scared the shit out of me.
I was but a young buck, and she was twice my age and infinitely more experienced than I was in love, life, and limerence. She introduced that term to me. I had no idea how smitten I was, but she showed me what it means to belong to someone completely.
Limerence is an uncommon term, so rather than make you go look it up I’ll tell you what it means to me. It is something like infatuation on steroids. It is the feeling you get when you can’t imagine being apart from someone, when you believe that you love them and you want them to love you back so badly that you can’t imagine life without them. It is devotion to a degree that is almost incomprehensible. It does not imply any reflexivity in feeling; it only describes this – often unrequited – love and devotion from the perspective of the afflicted. It’s probably close the feeling that a sub has for her first Dom, and ‘afflicted’ is a good word to describe it.
Limerence was definitely what I felt for Simone and she knew it. I was a puppy and she was Empress. She saw something in me though, and I don’t know how or why, but she knew that despite my groveling and my desire to please her, I was not a submissive at heart. She saw the pieces of me that I was showing her as weakness and she saw my inner strength and she quite literally beat the weakness out of me, or perhaps she forced me to beat it out of myself…
I had belonged to Simone for a few months. She had trained me to dominate other women, and I became quite good at it, from a very surface level, at least. She used me to dominate others through her influence, but I could never imagine using those same skills and roles with her.
I was devoted to her. I tried to anticipate her desires and I would try to fulfill them before she even knew she had them. I considered myself a success when she didn’t notice the things that I was doing for her. As time went on, I took it upon myself to do more and more for her, to make life easier for her in any way that I could. Eventually, I overstepped and the dynamic changed.
Simone ran a modeling and talent agency. She was a Harvard Business School graduate and has a large class ring that she usually kept on a chain around her neck. She had been slightly larger when she was in school, and it was loose on her finger now. She had a large office with glossy black floors and glass walls and floor to ceiling windows on the ninth floor. She had a large glass and steel desk and there was only the one chair – her chair. When she met clients, she would use a conference room, but when she met employees, we would have to stand while she sat. There was a chaise lounge on an animal skin rug under some bookshelves in the corner and a small wet bar near there, but no other furnishings in the room, and it was not a small room.
She summoned me to her office just before sunset. Her window faced the ocean, and at this time of day the sun was positioned almost directly behind her as I walked into the office and approached her desk. She often chose that time of day to meet employees and people who she wanted to intimidate. Even in the conference rooms she would sit with her back to the window and let people sit opposite her so that the sun shined in their eyes.
I walked into her office as I had many times before. She was still sitting when I walked in, which was not common, but not unheard of either. I could not see the expression on her face because of the sun behind her. I walked up to a position a few feet from the center of her desk and stood at parade rest as I was expected to do.
“You have been busy, toy.”
“Mistress?”
“Pura tells me that you have been managing things behind the scenes for me. She says that when Stark canceled her shoot while I was in St. Kitts that you handled the equipment rental, rescheduled the shoot, collected the cancellation fee, and even negotiated a higher rate for the re-shoot based on the short term for rescheduling.”
I couldn’t help myself, I swelled a bit with pride. I think I even stood straighter and puffed my chest out a bit.
“Yes, Mistress.”
She got out of her chair and stood. I still couldn’t make out any details of her expression or tell exactly what she was wearing because while she blocked the sun as she stood, she was still silhouetted against the bright background. I could, however, tell that she was wearing a filmy robe or gown, as the sun was now shining through the sheer fabric and showing the amazing curves of her body. I couldn’t help myself, I got hard.
She walked around the side of her desk to stand just in front of it, to the side – at my left, but I kept my face forward and did not track her as she walked, as I knew would be expected of me.
“Front.”
I pivoted on my heel and faced her, took two steps forward so that I was within two feet of her and stood there, still rigidly facing forward, but from this position I could see how she was attired.
She wore an ankle-length sheer black robe, open in the front, sheer thigh high stockings with a garter belt, black with seams up the back and folded at the top, the garter belt of black satin and lace with a bright purple bow right in front. She also had on a matching bra, and the chain with her ring hung from her neck. She wore no panties and had on no other jewelry. Her makeup had run, as if she had been crying.
When I saw the evidence of tears I immediately felt sympathetic, and it was everything I could to to remain silent.
She raised her right arm, palm down and I knelt before her and looked at her shoes as that gesture indicated I should. They were platform stilettos, at least seven inches high, glossy, black, with buckles on the straps around her ankles.
“Take off your shirt.”
I did not look up or say a word as I began unbuttoning my shirt. I could tell that she was doing something with her hands, but I could not see what. Once I’d finished unbuttoning my shirt, I removed it, folded it and set it on the ground beside me to my right, between my body and her desk.
I didn’t see it coming.
The back of her right hand, with her ring now on her middle finger, connected with my temple HARD. I knew that she had broken skin with the blow, and I staggered a bit, my left hand coming down on the floor to keep myself from going fully prostrate. I righted myself quickly and went back to kneeling with my head down, and a single drop of blood hit the floor under me. I could feel the blood starting to clot already. It was a shallow cut, but I was definitely cut. Mistress Simone had never drawn blood before that I had seen, with myself or anyone that I had witnessed. She lifted her right leg and put the point of her stiletto into my chest, just below my collarbone on the left side, opposite to the cut on my head, and pushed, lightly at first, and then with more force.
I had not been commanded to move, so I resisted the pressure, the tip of her heel digging into my skin, near the point of breaking skin.
“I want you to fall, toy.”
As soon as I heard that, I stopped resisting the pressure and fell back on top of my own legs. A small spot of blood had developed on my chest. Her heels were sharp!
“Prostrate yourself, slave.”
I did as commanded, turned over on to my belly and lay flat on the floor with my face down, head pointed towards her and my arms wide out at my sides.
She walked to my left side and then stepped onto the back of my left hand with her heel. She did not allow her full body weight to crush the bones in my hand, but the pain was exquisite. As she increased the pressure and I could start to feel the skin tear, I could not help but let out a forceful breath. There was no vocalization, but she was aware that the pain was affecting me.
She took her foot off of my hand and disappeared behind me where I could not see her any longer.
“You have thoughts, slave?”
“Yes, Mistress. Did this slave do something to offend You, Mistress?”
“Do not answer to that title, you are no slave!” Her voice was hoarse, emotional, something I’d not heard from her before.
I was frankly shocked by this. I had no idea how to react, so I did the best I could come up with at the time.
“This slave wants only to serve his Mistress…”
“SILENCE!”
I almost heard, rather than felt, the whip across the top of my shoulder-blades. This was the bullwhip, and it did not crack above my skin, but rather it slapped me in a very inexpert strike across the shoulders. Mistress Simone never used the full-length bullwhip to strike people, but she was a master at its use. This fact, combined with the blood that was now leaking from my body in three places told me that something was very wrong.
“Pura! Come in here now!”
Pura, one of Mistress Simone’s models and a friend of mine had apparently been waiting just outside the door, because she hurried in on short, quick steps when Mistress Simone summoned her. I was still facing the floor, so I could not see to tell for certain that it was her, but I had no reason to believe otherwise.
“Yes, Mistress.” Pura was clearly scared out of her mind, and upon hearing her voice, I now was sure that it was her who was in the room with us.
“On your knees, Pura.” There was kindness in Mistress’s voice now, and I heard Pura’s feet shuffle as she assumed the required position.
“Sit on your heels, Rant.” All the kindness that had been there was gone now.
I pulled my arms in, did a push-up to raise my body from the sleek black floor and then sat back onto my heels, so that I was nearly kneeling as I had been before, but a few feet further back and down from where I had been.
“Are you an obedient slave, Rant?”
“Mistress, I do not know how to answer that.”
“It was not a trick question, Rant.”
“Mistress, with all due respect, you ordered me to not answer to the title ‘slave’ just now and told me that I was not one. With this information, I do not know how to answer Mistress’s question.”
“Now is not the time to be a brat, Rant.”
“Mistress…”
The crack of the whip in the air right beside my ear was almost deafening, and silenced me immediately.
“SILENCE! You will disregard what I said previously and you will answer the question now. Are you an obedient slave, Rant?”
“I live to serve, Mistress.”
“I…” she said, mocking me. “where is this ‘I’ that you are speaking of?”
“Forgive this slave, Mistress. This slave momentarily forgot” the crack of the whip beside my ear once more silenced me.
“That’s right! You forgot! Now be silent until I give you the right to speak again.”
I almost said, “Yes, Mistress” but caught myself. I was feeling very off balance.
“Pura, are you an obedient slave?”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“To whom are you obedient, slave Pura?”
“To you and no other, Mistress.”
“Then why did you follow slave Rant’s direction while I was away?!”
“I… this slave does not know, Mistress.”
Mistress Simone walked around to stand behind Pura.
“Rant. Stand.” I stood.
She pointed to the ground at her right foot. “Heel.”
I walked to stand where she pointed.
“Pura, disrobe.”
Pura removed her top, exposing an opaque lilac bra with black polka dots and started to stand so that she could remove her skirt.
“No, I’ve changed my mind. Kneel and remove your bra.”
Pura took off her bra as she was kneeling, and placed her bra on top of her top, which she had folded and placed to her side.
Mistress Simone put the whip into my hand and stepped away from me.
“Pura, you have obeyed the commands of another Master without my permission and for this you must be punished,” Mistress Simone stated, coldly and without any trace of emotion.
“Rant, strike her.”
I looked at her, questions in my eyes. I didn’t know what to do. This was all very uncomfortable and foreign. Never had we done something so cold, so brutal.
“Do you know how to use the bullwhip, slave?” she asked me.
“This slave is well versed in the use of the bullwhip, Mistress, but never has this slave turned one on a human before.”
“Well, there is no time like the present. Hit her with the fucking whip!”
Pura was crying now, sobbing openly and only through the strongest of will had she not collapsed.
I was raised on a horse ranch, and we also raised steers for beef from time to time, so I did actually know how to use the whip. I thought that I might be able to feather the strike so that it wouldn’t hurt Pura too badly, so I gave it an attempt.
My strike was too soft. There was virtually no sound from the impact, and it did not strike hard enough to welt, but Pura still screamed when it struck her and doubled over. I felt horrible… beyond horrible.
Mistress Simone walked over next to me to examine the angle and my strike. Pura had recovered and was kneeling again, tears streaming down her face, but she made no more audible sobs.
“Again. Properly this time.”
“Mistress…” I didn’t see it coming this time either. Again, she backhanded me across the face with her ring. This time I did fall to my knee. Mistress Simone glared at me silently as I stood back up and squared my stance, letting the end of the whip drop to my side.
“Again.”
I looked into her eyes. They were colder than I had ever seen them, but I could feel the fire building in my own as I met her stare and started my wind-up.
“Hurricane,” I said, and I dropped the whip, crossing my arms in front of my chest and wincing just a bit as the skin around my cut pulled.
“Pura, you’re dismissed.” Simone said in a softer voice.
Pura jumped to her feet, bowed to Simone, and walked out as quickly as she could manage in her heels, leaving her bra and top behind on the floor.
“Took you long enough…” Simone said once Pura was out the door.
“What?” I managed to get out with all of the eloquence of a newborn yak before Simone grabbed the sides of my head and kissed me more passionately than I had ever been kissed to that point in my life. I just let it happen, and then began to return it as my body started reacting to the urgency she put forth. She grasped at my hard cock through my slacks, pulling on it, and eventually using one hand to pull on my waistband while shoving the other down my pants to grasp my cock directly, low on the shaft, just above my scrotum. She squeezed hard, all the while I was kissing her, and I hadn’t even realized that I had moved my own hands up to cup her right breast in my left hand and firmly grasp her hair right at the base of her neck with my right.
She thrust a finger down under my scrotum and then pulled back, squeezing my balls painfully. I disengaged from my kiss, dropped my hands and undid my belt and waistband, letting my pants drop and slipping off my shoes while trying, unsuccessfully thanks to the body of my Domme pressed up against me, to step out of my pants as well.
There I stood, socks on my feet, pants around my ankles, shoes to the side of me, my erection fully engorged and out in front of me. Simone took a step back, away from me, and then swatted my erect cock with her hand as she turned around and walked towards her desk, dropping the robe she had been wearing as she did, exposing her naked ass in all of its glory. When she arrived there, she spread her legs out just beyond shoulder width, placed her forearms on her desk and raised her ass at me, looking back over her shoulder at me with a smile that touched her eyes as well as her lips.
No command had been given, but I’d used the safeword and we were in uncharted territory here. According to protocol, we should be physically apart or at best touching non-sexually and discussing what went wrong, but the urgency in her eyes and in my groin was more powerful than protocol and I was clearly not in distress aside from my throbbing erection that demanded satisfaction.
I stepped out of my pants, took a step forward, raised my left foot to remove my sock, repeated the same maneuver for the right and squared myself behind Simone, placing my left hand on her left hip and using my right to guide my cock into her very wet pussy from behind her. She moaned with delight, letting her voice rise in a way that almost seemed submissive, and in a tone that I’d never heard from her before.
In her heels, she was slightly too tall for me to be able to easily pull off fucking her from that position, but once I’d slid my cock as deeply as I could and grasped her right hip with my right hand, I forgot about logistics entirely and let my mind go completely.
I plunged deeply into her then pulled back, trying to get a feel for the length of stroke that this position was going to allow for me and then began increasing the force with which I was hitting her as I thrust back in for each stroke. Eventually, as I made the rhythm, I realized that we were both crying out each time I would thrust, and without thinking I let go with my right hand, brought it back and smacked her on the ass with the next thrust, leaving a harsh red handprint on her olive skin and I couldn’t contain myself any longer.
I started to reflexively query, “May I..” but I only got that far before I began to ejaculate, and I grabbed her hips hard, pulling her onto my throbbing cock as I ejaculated into her pussy.
Immediately following my orgasm, I stood down onto my soles from the balls of my feet as I had been, and I released her hips, letting her down as well.
“Mistress, I’m…” she turned and silenced me by placing her index finger on my lips.
“Stop, Rant. I haven’t cum that many times and with such force in all my life. But you are a miserable slave.”
“I’m…”
“No more… did you spill your seed inside of me, Rant?”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“Well, you’re going to lap it up now then,” she said as she walked over to the chaise and laid back.
“With pleasure, Mistress,” I said as I moved over and knelt between her legs to comply.
Once again, I let my mind go and before I realized what had happened, I had two of my fingers deep inside her while I was working over her clitoris with my tongue and she was shuddering and moaning as she squirted all over my chin and chest.
“Jesus, Rant,” she said as she caught her breath, “I think you may be better at that than anyone in the world.”
“Thank you, Mistress.”
“Now go wipe yourself off with your clothes and then come up here so that I can lay my head on your chest.”
I did as she commanded, and she positioned her body against mine, tracing shapes on my chest with her fingers as she lay there.
“You need to stop calling me Mistress when we’re in private, Rant. You’re a terrible slave.”
“Yes, Mistr… Simone.”
“I appreciate what you did while I was away, but you understand that I can’t have the others believing that you can usurp my authority when I’m away.”
“I wasn’t trying…”
“Hush, I know. You just don’t have a helpless compliant slave in you anywhere, Rant. You’re obviously a Top. Why did you do it?”
“I’m not…”
“Stop denying it. You know it as well as I do, and I’ve known it for a long time. Long before this. But I still don’t know why you did it.”
“Because I love you.”
She got very serious, very suddenly.
“No you don’t, Rant. And this is very important for you to understand. I don’t love you either.”
“But… I…”
“No!” She sat up so that she could look me directly in the eyes. “You have never experienced anything this intense before, I get that. You tried very hard to give me everything that you are, and you couldn’t and that’s not because you love me or because of any emotional connection at all. This is a shared fantasy. You used the safeword so we are not in scene right now, and it’s very important that you believe me on this. You are not my slave anymore in the way that you were, but you are still my employee and my property and I’m going to task you. Look up the word ‘limerence’ and write me a 500 word essay on what it means to you and have it on my desk by 9:00am tomorrow.”
“Okay, but I really do…”
“Shut up, Rant. You don’t know what you’re talking about, and you nearly fucked up my whole enterprise as a result. I like you, and if I didn’t, I’d have Brand beat you and put you out on your ass, but you’re going to do as I say and you’re going to have to make this up to Pura somehow.”
“Okay… Yes, I feel horrible.”
“Don’t, she loves that shit, but you’re going to be docked a week’s vacation and it’s going to go to her. And you’ll still call me Mistress in front of the others, but when we’re alone, you may call me Simone.”
“Yes, Mistr.. Simone.”
She moved with blinding agility and threw her leg over me, coming to rest straddling my chest and rested her hands on my shoulders so that her breasts hung just over my head.
“Now… Do you think you could Top me, Rant?” she said with a mischievous smile that positively cause her eyes to glow.