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…
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:
It is not necessary to experience subspace in order to experience subdrop
Not everyone who experiences subspace experiences subdrop
There is no panacea for avoiding subdrop
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:
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.
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:
Be consistent and forecast your scene
Be emotionally available during and after the scene
Provide adequate warm-up
Allow for come-down time after the scene and before attempting to re-integrate with normal reality
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:
Be consistent and forecast your scene
Be emotionally available during and after the scene
Provide adequate warm-up
Allow for come-down time after the scene and before attempting to re-integrate with normal reality
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
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.
If you know me personally, this is probably not a new piece of writing to you. I posted this first to my fetlife profile rather than here, about a year ago, but I re-read it myself recently and thought that perhaps it should be cross-posted here as well.
It is short, and while I intended it to be akin to free-verse poetry, it’s really just a short monologue… but I kind of like it.
I hope you do too.
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…
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.