I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the nature of love over the course of my life. Everyone seems to experience the expression of love in a slightly different way, and apart from being a place to rant about my discomfort with the state of the world, exploring the topics of love and limerence was part of my motivation for starting this site.
English is a very descriptive language.. it actually has more words than any other language, by a large margin, but I think that we sometimes miss with the focus for where we put those words, and that has some pretty dramatic implications for the way that the minds of native English speakers work as compared to everyone else in the world…
I tend to steal the Greek words when I talk about love – they had at least seven different forms. Of course, because Latin is very dependent on Greek and English is very dependent on Latin, these words are often the roots of the words that we use in English anyway:
eros: this is the Greek word for ‘romantic love’ – but also lust – and as such is the most overused of these words. Eros was specifically a word about sex though – it was, after all, the name of the Greek god of fertility. It was actually a frightening concept for them because it involves a sense of a ‘loss of control’ – which is commonly seen in art from and inspired by the period, including the very famous story of Cupid and Psyche wherein Cupid himself becomes overwhelmed by eros and tragedy ensues. Using modern English words, the Greek concept of eros was probably far closer to limerence than love or even lust.
philia: this is what we might call ‘brotherly love’ – but it meant a great deal more to the Greeks – this is the word I use to refer to my chosen family. To the Greeks, this was far preferable to eros. This is the love that leads one to make sacrifices for others. This is the love felt between soldiers on the same line – the kind of bond that remains in place no matter what barriers of space and time lie between the people for whom this bond exists, but the Greeks understood that even philia did not necessarily mean that both people in such a bond would be equally bonded. I may be willing to sacrifice almost anything for you, but that does not necessarily mean that you would for me — that does not negate my own feelings of philia towards you.
storge: this is a special form of love that parents have for their children. It’s akin to the above, but recognized to be a special case because there are ways in which you modify your own expectations and behavior for your children that you are unlikely to do for anyone else, even your romantic love(s). This is really the only form of love that the Greeks thought had to be shared between both parties – because it was of an instinctual nature, beyond the view of the self.
ludus: this is what we might call ‘affection’ – it’s the love that children have for each other, or the physical aspects of love that are not carnal in nature – hugs, dancing, playing. In our Western society, we tend to reserve expressions of this only for people with whom there are taboos involved that prevent sexual expression, which kind of perverts and cheapens it, if you ask me.
pragma: this is what I might call ‘patient love’ – it’s the love that you build over a long time with someone, that allows you to overlook small character flaws or acute events of an unpleasant nature and still keep a pristine mental image of the person that you care for. This is ‘mature love’ – or what we expect most romantic relationships to settle into once eros has taken leave and you have a chance to return to your senses.
agape: this is also a pretty commonly stolen word, often misused because we don’t think like the Greeks did… this is ‘hippie love’ – or ‘love for everyone’ and sometimes referred to as ‘brotherly love’ as well, but in the “society is full of my brothers” sort of way, rather than, “I would die for that man,” sort of way. This is really meant to be more like the Theravada concept of metta. I fear greatly the expunging of agape from the minds of people, but that does seem to be the way the world is moving – division is the rule of the day, not love.
philautia: self-love… to be held in direct opposition to narcissism – this is the concept that all expressions of love for anyone are really just manifestations of your mind recognizing in other people things which you value in yourself – if there is nothing that you value in yourself, you cannot love anyone at all.
And all of this information is useful, but kind of secondary to the point that I’m trying to make, which is that when I say, “I love you” to someone – I may mean that I feel any or all of the above things in differing measures, and the phrase may not mean the same thing to everyone to whom I speak it – just as it doesn’t always mean the same thing when I hear it from different people.
For some people, love is a jealous thing – it is possessive… if I say “I love you” to someone, and I mean in a romantic sort of way, society tells me that I’m not supposed to say that to anyone else – but that doesn’t stop me from feeling it, and because I’m polyamorous, it doesn’t stop me from acting on it either, but that may not address the feelings of the person involved with me, and sometimes that can cause friction.
I don’t have a silver bullet here – jealousy is a very normal thing to feel, and there is no way to magically stop it if that is what you feel, but surprisingly I’ve also found that the converse of jealousy is often almost as important to some people’s feelings of love. I have had partners who, while telling me of their interactions with other people, have wanted me to feel jealous and when I do not exhibit that kind of reaction, they begin to doubt the truth behind my statements of love. If I am not jealous of them being with someone else, how can I really love them? And yet, I do.
Love is one of those dangerous and chaotic things that makes our lives in this universe worth living, and yet it is also the one thing that has consistently laid me low when a relationship ends. I don’t think I will ever completely understand its power or be able to control it, and perhaps that is why it is so compelling for everyone and the subject of so many works of art and media.
Hopefully by communicating about it, by understanding that there are different facets to it and how those things are each individual spectra of emotion, we can find a way to live beside it.
There is a reason why every pantheon of gods contains at least one, if not several, deities who are personifications of this powerful force in our lives. Love is every bit as powerful as the sea or the wind or fire, perhaps even the Sun itself, and I consider myself fortunate to be its acolyte.
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.
To my readers: I apologize for the length of this piece. I normally try to keep my entries to near 1000 words, and I began with the intent to do so this time as well, but as the story developed on the page I found that I could not tell it with so few words and so I chose to cull far less than I normally do.
***
I have never lived in as nice of a place as I did when I was with Simone. I have no idea how much such a place cost, but it was well beyond my means at the time and is almost certainly beyond my means now – though it would also be impractical today for a number of other reasons.
It was a very modern loft style studio apartment. There actually was a small loft area reachable via a staircase that was above the entryway of the apartment, but walking in the first thing you would see is the kitchen island, then the windows, then the St. Andrews cross in one corner, a telescope in the other corner, a dining table and chairs, a small sitting area with a love seat, overstuffed chair and a low coffee table, and a raised dais upon which was a massive (though not as large as my current) bed.
It was a really nice kitchen – I wish that I had had the confidence and knowledge of how to cook back then because I’m certain that I could have made some very nice meals in that kitchen, and probably could have provided even yet another service to my clients, although in all honesty most of my appointments were too short for that to be viable.
However, my very first appointment was to be for a duration of four hours. I was more than a little nervous about this. What am I supposed to do for four hours? I mean, I was young and in great shape and athletic enough to know how to be at peak performance, but four hours is a long time and I was envisioning trying to actually be physically active for that entire time and not only finding the duration daunting, but I was not at all sure that I would be creative enough to fill that much time, and I like to think that I’m pretty creative.
Every client that I saw was scheduled through Simone’s office. This was both a good thing and a bad thing at various times. It was a good thing because everyone that I saw was a known quantity – vetted and approved by Simone or someone on staff, they tracked my schedule and made sure that I was never overbooked, but they often left me literally no time for myself. I never had clients scheduled closer than an hour apart, but because of the nature of the business, not everyone leaves precisely on time, and late arrivals have an expectation of being allowed to make up that time on the back end. However, there was a protocol in place to deal with these sorts of things, with the aim of accommodating a certain level of uncertainty baked into the process. For clients that I would see away from my apartment (outcalls) there was a different procedure, but for clients that I would see in my own apartment (incalls) – which was the vast majority – there was a security door with a buzz-through system for the building. Clients would know to buzz me and give a certain name and then I would buzz them in and meet them at my door as would be appropriate for the appointment.
Before each client – time permitting – I was given a dossier of sorts on the client, any special requests, known preferences, and a little bit of personal information about them as a way to relate and have something to talk about. Despite the obvious and intensely personal nature of the visits, most people are not completely comfortable just jumping into sex right away with someone that they known nothing about apart from some pictures and a little bit of back story. Of course – some are…
In the information that Simone gave me about my first client, Mary (which wasn’t her real name), she said that this was one of her best clients and a personal friend besides, and I was to give her anything that she wanted. She had interest in horses, travel, fine wines, and finding new young artists. Well, at least I knew something about horses, and I thought I knew something about wine too – but it turns out that some wines are made outside of California, and I was not very familiar with anything else at the time.
Mary was not a Domme, and had some interest in kinky play, but was mostly interested in very physical sex acts – the more physical the better. I was to act in a confident and physical manner with her, but not to command her to do anything or to engage in any sort of non-sexual play. She liked to be taken, but only on her terms. Even more than that though, she liked to be aggressive herself and have that met with equal aggression. I was to be deferential while simultaneously making her feel like I was not.
How the fuck was I supposed to do that?
In the hour or so that I had before she was set to arrive I think I must have walked every inch of floor in that apartment, adjusted the music that I was playing about 20 different times, trying to figure out what sort of music would best accompany physical sexual acts with someone who I knew next to nothing about – not even how she looked.
With the exception of regular clients who would return multiple times, this was often something that I would have to contend with as I waited for a new client to arrive. They all knew exactly what I looked like, of course, having picked out my profile in a catalog of such things that Simone kept, but I rarely had any idea what they would look like and the amount of information that I was given about Mary was generally greater than I would see in most cases.
Attraction, being what it is, would mean that in some cases, I would be worried that I would not be able to perform to the client’s satisfaction – and prior to sitting there in my anxiety around meeting my first client, this was not something that had ever occurred to me.
Would I be able to get it up? Or perhaps even worse – what if I couldn’t keep it up when I needed to? Having already been on the receiving end of punishment from Simone, I could only begin to imagine how things might go if I were to fail to perform as required. There were some things that were available to me to help with this, but I would not find that out until later and for this occasion, I was left very much in the dark.
As I was pondering my potential failure to perform, my phone rang – which I was certain was from the buzzing at the door and I looked at the clock to try to understand how the time had passed so quickly and I realized that I should still have 20 minutes, so I picked up the phone and spoke with more question in my voice than anything else.
“Hello?”
“Rant. Mary will be there soon. Are you ready?” Simone’s clear, concise, and somewhat cold voice came through strongly and I must have verbally exhaled my apprehension because she followed up immediately with, “Kneel for me. Now.” To which I responded by getting on my knees.
“Rant – are you there?”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“Are you kneeling?”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“Are you breathing?”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“Tell me ‘no’ so that I know your brain is still working.”
“No, Mistress.”
“What did you just say to me? Are you allowed to use that word with me, Rant?”
“No, Mistress. I mean, yes, wait… are you trying to make me more nervous?”
“<soft chuckle> No… Mary does enjoy intimidating her partners sometimes, but I want her to like you and she’s not going to respect you unless you give back everything that she dishes out. Can you do that, Rant? She will not make it easy for you.”
“Yes, Mistress.” I said, but I was much more nervous than the words that I spoke.
“Good boy. Now do me proud.”
“Yes, Mistress.”
<click>
I held the phone receiver in my hand and knelt on the floor for about a minute more, until the loud cycling tone to alert me to it being left off the hook began, which shifted me out of my reverie and made me realize that if I didn’t put the receiver back down, the door buzz would not come through and I could be in big trouble.
I had to stand again to replace the phone receiver, but once I’d done so, I decided to kneel again, thinking about everything that had come to pass to that point.
It was one of the more nerve wracking things to have happened in my life.
What seemed to be at the same time an eternity and merely a moment later, my phone rang again and I looked at the clock again and confirmed what I already knew to be the case – it was time for Mary to arrive.
“Hello?”
“Hello – I’m looking for Rant.” spoke a very pleasant sounding female voice.
I’d been told what to respond. “You have found him. Please come up.” I pressed the ‘*’ key on the phone, heard the tone, and then hung up the receiver as I walked over to unlock and stand near the door.
A few moments later, I could hear the steps on the walkway outside my door and I tried to look through the frosted glass near the entrance, but only saw colors moving and then remembered the peephole in the door and looked through to see a distorted image of a gorgeous woman walking towards my door.
I stepped back just before she began to raise her hand to knock on the door. I recall internal conflict as I tried to decide whether or not it would be a good thing to open the door in advance of her knock, but ultimately the decision to let her knock and the inaction of trying to make a decision coalesced and I heard:
<knock knock> confident, not tentative in the least…
…it was enough to cause me to hesitate further, but eventually I pulled myself out of my head and opened the door.
On the other side of the door I saw one of the more beautiful women I have encountered in my life. She was tall, but still shorter than I am, athletic, busty, blonde, and she had the biggest brown eyes I’ve ever seen. Her makeup was understated but worked to alter her apparent facial structure, which was rounder than she probably would have liked. She reminded me a great deal of Drew Barrymore in her appearance, and she was wearing a short sundress and sandals: periwinkle with white polka dots.
I suspect that she was looking me over in much the same way that I was her, because she stood for a moment in the doorway just looking at me, and I quickly realized that I was both blocking her way and had failed to invite her in as yet, so I quickly moved to the side and gestured into my apartment with my arm as I said, “Please, do come in.” She moved past me, and I closed the door, turning to walk past her and into the open space of the apartment.
It requires a little bit of mental gymnastics to recall details of that day, but when I do, I am continually surprised at how immature I was in my sexual expression. The mainstays of my sexual expression today – raw physicality, breath play, growling, biting – were mere shadows of what they are today. Mary actually helped me to develop these skills. She was hardly the only one – and I have gone through periods of contraction again since then – but I will always have something of a special place for her in my pantheon of elder sex gods.
I could see and feel the hunger in her eyes. I felt invigorated by it. All anxiety that I had about being unable to perform was instantly gone as my own sex drive engaged again and I began to mentally undress the woman in front of me.
She stepped further inside and maneuvered herself to position me between her and the kitchen island and then she started to advance on me. It did not happen quickly, but she did it with such fluid predatory movement that I was still caught off guard and allowed her to get much closer than I realized, backing me into the kitchen island as she approached.
Her look was playful and predatory at the same time. She casually reached up and touched me on the chest, following her arm with her body, pressing herself into me, pushing me into the island behind me, and then she reached down and grabbed my cock through my slacks.
I’m pretty sure that I twitched. I liked it, but I twitched nonetheless.
I hadn’t yet started wearing waistcoats as much as I do now, and I was not wearing a jacket, but I was wearing a collared shirt and tie – Windsor knot. I don’t know if the Eldredge knot had been invented yet, but I was unaware of its existence, in any rate.
Mary reached up and grabbed my tie in her left hand while keeping her right on my cock, which was quite obviously stiff under the thin fabric of my slacks and the boxers that I was wearing underneath. She pulled on my tie, attempting to bring my face to hers for a kiss, which I was instantly ready to meet when it occurred to me that she had still not uttered a single word since she appeared at my door.
So struck was I by this realization that I straightened up, looking beyond her into the distance to parse the thoughts that were coming into my mind. This had the effect of pulling me up and away from her mouth, which was still closing in on me. She mistook my gesture as playing coy – thought that I was dodging her advance – and she responded by chuckling slightly and dipping to close her teeth on the skin at the base of my neck and then she purred into me, biting lightly and quickly disengaging.
“I’ve had my eye on you for awhile, Rant…” she spoke in low tones, huskiness behind her words.
“I haven’t been here long…”
“It’s been more than a week since I last saw you.”
I was confused, and the look was probably pretty obvious on my face. I hadn’t ever met Mary before… and then it occurred to me – she was one of the women in the restaurant with Simone when I first encountered her. Mary was the one who had her hand on the inside of my thigh when I was telling them about the ranch that I grew up on in an effort to get a better tip.
“I suggested to Simone that she recruit you, you know?”
“You did?”
“Yes – and she was so grateful that she let me break you in.. at a discount.”
“Wait.. what?”
“Why did you think she hasn’t fucked you yet?”
“But she has… ”
“HA! I knew it!” she interrupted me with glee in her voice and she literally jumped back to do a little dance.
“I don’t understand…”
“Oh hush, honey… I promise that I will be gentle with you, since this will be your first time…”
“My first time for what?” I am sure that I looked about as confused as I’ve ever been.
“Kneel.” It was a command, not a request, and I responded almost automatically, facing Mary and then dropping to my knees without a word and staring at the floor in front of her feet with my hands behind my back.
“Good boy – well… that was almost good.”
I continued to stare at the floor in front of her feet and she began to walk towards me. In my peripheral vision, I could see her pulling her dress up over her head and I desperately wanted to look up at her and see what she was wearing under that dress – along with what I imagined to be vast stretches of gorgeous, naked skin, but I knew what was expected of me and kept my eyes on the floor.
“Do you not want to see my body, Rant?” her voice was slightly mocking and I forgot my place and looked up to see a very beautiful, and with the exception of her sandals, a very naked Mary, standing with all of her weight on one foot so that she could bend the other one in front of her as she pulled her arms up into her hair, bringing her breasts up as she did so – looking every bit the pinup as she did so.
I think I opened my mouth to start to say something, but the words would not come…
“Oh, but that’s not being a good boy, is it, Rant?”
I didn’t move or make a sound – my brain had hit a sort of vapor-lock.
She walked up towards me, and I kept my eyes locked on her body, but it looked like she was smiling in my peripheral vision as she closed in on me and then grabbed my head behind my head, threading her fingers into my hair and thrusting her pelvis forward, grinding my face into her abdomen, and then she let go with one hand and lifted one of her legs, thrusting her pussy right into my face, putting her knee up on the edge of the island that was still behind me.
A low growl began to form in my throat, unbidden and unfamiliar to me at that time, but I opened my mouth and hungrily accepted her thrusts, meeting with my tongue.
She shifted back a bit to give her more angle and began fucking my face, pressing the back of my head back against the island behind me, so that I could not get away from her.
I was in heaven for those first few moments. She was running her pussy over my whole face, grinding on the bridge of my nose, coming back to my tongue, and I was enjoying every moment of it, but then she started to get rougher, bumping her pelvis into my skull, trying to bounce it off of the island behind me. I was still on my knees with my hands behind me and was pushed back into the island, leaning back from my ankles, which were in front of my center of gravity. I was being held up by the pressure on the back of my head, and she was exploiting that to keep me off balance and toy with me. Then she started to giggle and she brought her leg and arm back down, stood on her toes, and with me still off balance, straddled me with her legs, grabbed the hair at the top of my head in both of her hands and pulled hard, while grinding her pussy into my nose – laughing all the while.
The growl that had been in throat stopped and I started having a hard time catching a breath and was beginning to reach panic when I realized that I was not bound, was nearly twice Mary’s size, and fully clothed still, so I brought my arms up from behind me, dislodging myself from within Mary’s legs, grabbed her by the waist and lifted her off of me as I started to stand.
She tried to move back away from me and fell back onto her ass as I stood, and I thought I saw fear in her eyes for a moment, but then she was in control of herself again, drawing her legs up and pivoting on to her feet.
“Now that’s what I came for, Rant!” She gave me a smoldering look as I was undoing my tie.
She threw out her hand in a ‘stop’ gesture and exclaimed, “No! Leave the tie. Take off the shirt, but leave the tie.”
I looked at her evenly, hearing what she said but having no desire to comply. It was only then that I realized that I was growling again. I slid the tie over my head and while looking Mary directly in the eye, I threw it to the ground behind me and started walking towards her.
I was trying to be menacing, and I think I might have succeeded a little bit, but I ruined it by trying to be like the macho guys you see on TV and rip open my shirt by the buttons, but it proved much more difficult than I expected and I managed to get it free only after a few inglorious tugs and some grunting.
Mary was either being charitable, or my grunting and struggling was intimidating enough that she had the grace to not laugh at me as I was still walking towards her, but she had removed her sandals and was back on her feet. She took a step backwards, and then turned and fled, giggling as she did so.
She ran across the room and up the steps, jumping on my bed and turning to face me on all fours with a wide grin her face, laughing the whole time.
I was not laughing.
I kept walking towards her at the same pace, growling all the while and she once again held up her hand and said more firmly this time, “No. Go get the tie and put it back on. I want something to hold on to.”
I heard the words. I knew I should obey them. I was not in the right mind to do so, so I growled at her instead and threw my arms out to the sides of my body while pushing my chest out.
Much more firmly this time, she spoke again, “No, Rant. Go get the tie and put it on and then take off your pants.”
I came back to myself, remembered my place, stood tall and hung my head towards her, while saying as meekly as I could manage in that moment, “Yes, Mistress.” and then I went over and got the tie, picked it up, looped it back around my neck and cinched it tight, stepped out of my shoes, and then I took off my pants and stood there, bowing towards Mary.
“I meant those pants too, Rant.” Mary said, indicating my boxers.
Understanding what she meant for me to do, I reached down and took off my socks, then took off my boxers and stood again, bowing towards Mary.
“What happened to that hard cock you were sporting through those slacks just moments ago, Rant?” Mary’s voice was dripping with contempt as she indicated my semi-flaccid penis.
My initial reaction was to feel shame, but I’d been taught already to turn that around, embracing the situation as it is and knowing that it will bring pleasure to my Top, so I smiled and meant to say something like, “If it would please Mistress, I will do my best to summon what meager cock I have for her pleasure.” but what actually came out was, “It was momentarily fooled into thinking that some thing worth fucking was nearby…” and my voice was dripping with contempt of my own.
Mary’s smile could have split her face as she rotated her hips to bring her feet around to the side of the bed and stood up, walking over to me to – completely without preamble – slap me across the face harder than I’d been slapped by anyone prior to that point, Simone included. Then she grabbed me by the front of throat and pulled herself into me to kiss me passionately. I was confused and aroused and leaned into it, getting hard as a rock as I did so.
She let go, dropped back onto her feet and favored me with a look that said “I like this” and then she turned to walk back towards the bed and climb back up again, turning over onto her back and then to face me, knees bent, spread-eagle.
“Now, if you don’t get over here and fuck me with that nice, hard cock that I see right there, I’m going to have Simone cut it off and bronze it so that I can use it as a dildo.”
I growled at her, snapped my jaw in the air, and stalked over to the bed, putting my knee directly between her legs and then covering her with my body, putting my hand on her throat and growling in her ear as I did so.
She smiled, grabbed the arm that was attached to the hand that was on her neck, pulled it off of her – and I let her – and then she rotated her head like she was biting into an ear of corn and bit my forearm, hard.
I made an inelegant noise and snatched my arm back from her, pivoting back onto my knees to get away from her teeth, but she followed me, grabbing at me and trying to pull me down, but just lifting herself up instead. I rotated my shoulder around and brought my arm over her, swatting her down to the bed, and then covered her throat again this time, and pushed, pushing her down into the mattress by her throat. Her face went red instantly and I could see that I was hurting her. I didn’t care.
Her eyes got wide and she started to beat at my arm with her own arms – a futile attempt, and I looked at her with derision and laughed. Her eyes somehow got even wider and I let up, letting her gulp a huge breath of air, which she did, and then she launched herself at me, grasping at my head and pulling her face into me to give me frantic, desperate kisses, trying desperately to pull me down into the bed with her, into her.
Knowing what was required of me and coming to my senses again, I relented.
What followed was spectacularly rough sex, frantic moves to change position, followed by grasping and pinning and fucking – glorious fucking! She pushed me, hit me, bit me, grinded on me, thrust onto me, and I pushed back, pinned her, bit her, thrust into her, grinded into her, pulled her hair, and she pulled mine. We went at it like a couple of alley-cats, pulling the fitted sheets off of the mattress along with all of the other bedding, eventually to collapse in a heaving, sweaty pile upon piles of bedding and bare mattress.
Under an hour had passed by this time. I was suddenly not very sure that I could keep this up for four hours.
Fortunately for me, Mary was content to spend large swaths of time in between physical bouts with conversation. She revealed to me much about her relationship with Simone, and the ways that I was being manipulated behind the scenes…
“So, when did Simone fuck you?”
“What?”
“When did Simone give in and fuck you?”
“Give in?”
“Ah, of course… she was supposed to save you for me.”
“What do you mean?”
“We made a bargain – she was not supposed to let you cum until you fucked me. And I didn’t think she would be able to hold out, so we made a wager. If she fucked you first, then I would get this visit for free” and she twirled her hands in the air and lilted her voice as she said ‘free’, “but if I got to have you first, I owe her a bottle of Dom. Far better deal for me, either way…”
“Wait, what?” I can be a really smart guy sometimes.
“So when did it happen? I bet it was last week, wasn’t it?”
“Uhm, no, it was about three hours ago.”
“What?! That bitch!”
“Uh..”
“Well, she’s definitely paying for this now… and you want Simone to get her money’s worth, don’t you, Rant?”
“Yes, Mistress.”
We reenacted variations on the theme above three more times over the course of the next four hours, and in between we talked about horses, and wine, and astronomy – she wanted me to show her things through my telescope, but there was too much light for that… I learned more about my Mistress and the people she associated with – trying to remember as much as I could – to be a better slave for my Mistress.
After Mary had left, my phone rang once again.
“Hello?”
“Rant. How did it go?”
“I believe that it went well, Mistress.”
“I suspect you would know if it hadn’t… but I will confer with Mary – I’m sure that she will want to discuss things. Is there anything that you need to confess before I hear the story from her?”
“Confess?”
“What was that, Rant?”
“Confess, Mistress? I am a bit confused, Mistress.”
“Did you meet with her expectations?”
“I do believe so, Mistress.”
“How many times?”
“Four.”
…
“Mistress,” I quickly added and hoped that omission would not draw attention.
“Well done. Good boy. Your next client will be there in an hour. Be ready.”
I was dumbfounded. There was no way I would be ready for another client in an hour – I’d need longer than that just to clean the apartment, much less to get to the point of being able to have sex again, but I didn’t have much choice, and I loved that I didn’t have that choice then. Suddenly, it didn’t seem so daunting after all…
“Yes, Mistress. I will be ready.”
“Good boy.”
<click>
I sprang into action and did the best I could to quickly shower, put on nice clothes again (I needed a new shirt, obviously…) and make up the bed as quickly as possible. It was hardly a perfect job, but it was not awful. I began to pace a bit as the implications of my new lifestyle were starting to coalesce in my mind, when the doorbell rang.
That was not the protocol. I don’t think I even realized that I had a doorbell to that point.
I walked to the door and looked through the peephole, to see Mistress Simone on the other side.
I immediately flung the door open and dropped to my knees.
“Rant, move aside so that I can come in.”
I quickly shuffled to the side and she walked past me as I tried to turn on my knees to face her.
“Mistress, I am sorry…”
“Why are you sorry, Rant?”
“I do not know, Mistress. I only was expecting to see .. not you .. and I fear that I have done something to displease you.”
“Mistress…”
“Mistress! I fear that I have done something to displease you, Mistress. I’m sorry, Mistress.”
“Rant. You did nothing wrong. Stand up and come over here with me…”
She walked into the apartment, over to my bed, and sat on the edge, looking at me as I followed behind her like a scolded puppy.
“Well, how was it?”
….
Next time I’ll relate a story of Simone’s kindness and compassion. So far you’ve only seen how hard she could be.
Those of you who know me personally or who have been following along since before I began to recall my origins story may remember a bit of the relationship that Simone and I ultimately ended up having. She did not exploit me in the same way that the members of the Lodge did, but she did exploit me nonetheless, and in a much more direct way. The difference, of course, is that I consented to this treatment.
To this day, I do not know if Simone ever really cared for me or not. She made gestures to indicate that she did at times, and she was incredibly cold and distant at other times, but it didn’t really matter in the beginning, because I was completely smitten.
The first week or so that I was Mistress Simone’s property was a panoply of new experiences for me, the details of which are burned into my mind, but that I really can not recall here without shifting my perception to the point of discomfort. However, I can paint the broad strokes…
Over the course of several days, Mistress Simone set me up in an apartment, destroyed most of my old clothing and took me shopping to replace them with more suitable things, introduced me to several of her business associates, most of my companion chattel, and even a couple of prospective clients, though I did not know that was who they were at the time.
She introduced me to protocol, proper ways to show submission, posture, bearing, and many of the tools of the trade. I did not know it at the time, but she was being careful not to mark me. She taught me both the Top and bottom sides of each interaction, which I thought was completely normal at the time, but have come to understand is completely unique. It was a whirlwind introduction to the things that would later be expected of me.
She spoke to me a great deal about sex. She was very interested to hear about my sexual experiences with the Lodge, and I could tell that she was turned on by the ritualistic nature of things and the incorporation of sex as part of that. I often had a difficult time accurately reading Simone, but I was absolutely certain of her interest in this. She asked a great deal about my perceptions of various sexual activities, and whether or not I enjoyed doing those things with women or men. I answered her honestly, though in many cases, I did not really understand the questions that I was answering.
She hit me and made me beg and stepped on me and let me perform cunnilingus on her, but she always stopped me before her orgasm. I didn’t understand why then, and I’m not entirely sure that I do now. Whereas I was completely baffled then, I am pretty sure that I understand now. It was a power play. It was to show me how in control she was, and how – even as I learned what she liked and what she didn’t, becoming much more adept at the act – she maintained that control.
She would often command me to jack off for her, but she warned me that I was to ask her for permission to cum, and that if I were to ejaculate without permission that there would be severe consequences. I always asked her for permission to cum, but she never gave it (until much later). I made the mistake once of stopping after asking if I could cum and being told no – but I only made that mistake once. I never did ejaculate without permission, but I did occasionally become sore.
She spent several hours with me each day. I felt extremely special. I could tell that the others were jealous of the attention that I would get, but I would occasionally overhear things like, “he’s just new, the shininess will wear off soon,” or “wait until he pulls his first job and falls flat on his face,” but those things just raised my competitive spirit and furthered my isolationist tendencies – Simone became my entire world.
The psychology of her pitch was impeccable. She knew that she had me wrapped around her little finger. I felt like a million bucks, even when I was prostrate on the floor naked for her, licking the bottom (yes, the part that contacts the ground…) of her shoes. She put me in fancy clothes and a fancy apartment and was introducing me to important people. It really didn’t matter to me that much that I was getting no actual sex from this – I felt important again, special, unique. And once I felt all of those things, and I’d been divorced from contact with everyone else in my life, and I was completely and utterly dependent upon her, she told me what she really wanted me to do.
She wanted me to be a prostitute.
I’m not an idiot, and I had picked up along the way that this was what was actually going on behind the scenes, though there were also legitimate photography gigs and convention postings that were happening as well, but I already knew that the core of her business was in the sex trade, and the women that I had seen her dining with when I first encountered her were clients of hers more than friends – and she knew many such women. She even conducted events specifically targeted at this demographic – sex toy events, wine and cheese events, anything that would get the abandoned wives of Beverly Hills together… Her male clients required significantly less maintenance or cost of customer acquisition, but they were also significantly less reliable. Female clients were almost always return clients… these were the people to whom I was intended to appeal.
Forewarned of this eventuality, and fully enamored of my new life, I did not hesitate to agree, though in retrospect, I realize that I really did not have much of a choice. Simone rewarded me with what was at that time the most intense sexual experience of my life. She was Dominant with me in a way that appealed to me then, but that would result in very different reactions from me now, but she fucked the shit out of me, and while she ordered me to do things to her, she also just used me in ways that still make me pause… and then when she was done, she told me to disappear and clean myself up because I would be seeing my first client in just a few hours.
I was simultaneously excited and about as anxious as I have ever been.
Part 5: A radioactive spider-bite of BDSM goodness
My previous entry ended with the dissolution of my first marriage, my attempt at nomadic existence, and a mad scramble for how to survive in a world where I did not have a mission any longer.
I was, by this time, a graduate of several bachelors programs and fully qualified to seek employment in several potentially lucrative career paths, but I was aimless and adrift and in need of a way to support myself right now – having never lived with uncertainty before, so I took literally the first job I could find with the notion of finding something better while I was working. That job happened to be as a server at The Cheesecake Factory in Brentwood, California. Not the city of Brentwood, which is far to the east of where I live now, but the unincorporated area of Los Angeles referred to as Brentwood that sits between the cities of Beverly Hills and Santa Monica. To call it an affluent neighborhood would be an understatement.
Surrounded by wealth, living without direction, unsure of where I’d be sleeping for the night and hating the fact that a free meal was one of the major selling points for taking the job, I was desperate to find something that would give meaning to my existence again. I was enrolled in medical school, but I had stopped attending classes, and having lived with a long runway for my entire life – every step was planned, by my own ambition or by those who would see me fulfill visions of their own – I did not know what to do with myself and I didn’t know how to find my own way.
I worked in the day, drank heavily at night, and I became something of a bar rat. I hate to admit this about myself, but I started to fall back into old patterns of thought and I started viewing people as a means to an end rather than individuals again. I used the desperate and lonely as a way to have a place to sleep for the night and not have to sleep in my car yet again. I began to see society as something that I could exploit and all plans for the future fell away as I started living moment-to-moment, selfish and alone.
And yet – despite the rapidly descendant conditions of living that I was abruptly dropped into, I remained competent, preternaturally charming, and sharp as a bone saw. This resulted in my rapid advancement to the night shift, which while it did bring in larger tips, somewhat diminished my ability to use my charm and wit to secure lodging, so I was leaning more heavily on friends and that did not sit particularly well with me, though I’m not sure why it should feel worse to stay with people who cared for me than those who did not even know me, but that was where I was at that time.
One evening, I had a table with three older women – I say older women because at the time I was in my early 20’s and they were probably all in their mid to late thirties… I suppose I should properly say that I thought of them as cougars, though the term didn’t have that meaning at the time. They were into their wine to the tune of a bottle apiece and the actual food that they had consumed was pretty light. They were quite loose with their volume and the content of their conversation… they were all sharing stories of things that they had recently done with their boy-toys, and regaling in the schadenfreude of doing so right under the noses of their husbands.
My moral compass at the time was a little wonky, and to my mind, the stories that I was hearing sounded drastically more appealing than the life that I was living, so I turned my charm and wit into a weapon once again and I began to shamelessly flirt with the women at that table. I came back to check on them often, moving closer than was strictly necessary, and inviting the touch that I was sure would come – and I was not disappointed.
It was not long before I was telling them my life story, standing at the side of one who had her arm wrapped around my leg while another patted my abdomen or forearm with every other sentence she spoke and the third just sat across the table from me, easy in her seat, eyes burning a hole in my soul. They were all attractive, but this woman across the table, Simone, was a goddess. She had a light olive complexion and stunning ice-blue eyes with pure white, long, straight hair. Her body was lithe and firm, her tits were clearly fake, but not out of proportion with her frame. She looked like a Patrick Nagel print in negative, brought to life. But it was the look she gave me that haunted me.
They all seemed to love to hear the story of the country boy who grew up on horseback who was coming to the big city to go to medical school. They all seemed to want me, not just for my body -which I was quite proud of at the time – but for my story. They thought me a wholesome and eager, naive young man. I did not tell them of the Lodge or the fact that the reason I knew this was a compelling story was because I had been honing it night after night for the past month, going after smaller scores. But something about Simone struck me, and it’s clear to me now that she saw right through me from the very beginning.
Soon it came time for them to leave, and I was by now dodging the harsh stares of my manager anyway, so I was glad to see that they were wrapping things up, but hopeful that this would not be the last I saw of them. I prepared the check for them and wrote my first name and phone number on the customer copy, placed it in the folio and then walked to their table. I did not know who among them was to pay the tab, but I presented it to Simone without hesitation – it was really her that I wanted to see the note I’d left.
She gave me her credit card without looking at the bill, and I suppressed the dejected feeling that I have to admit that I felt and took her card back to run it, putting the original note on top of the receipt for her to sign and her credit card, then returned and handed the closed folio to her. She accepted it, looked inside, pulled out her card and signed the receipt and then handed it all back to me before I could get away.
Certain that my ploy had failed, I took out the customer copy of the receipt that she’d left behind and I crumpled it into the trash. I finished up the night without much else to speak of, and then spent the night on my friend’s couch once again, certain that I would never see any of them again but still dreaming of the might-have-beens that came with the idea.
You can imagine my surprise when I received a call the next morning. This was in an era before smartphones, but caller-id was still ubiquitous on the small displays of cell phones of the time and this showed up as “Silver Screen Partners”. I had no idea what to expect, but I was not expecting what followed.
“Hello Rant, this is Simone. Do you know who I am?”
I really was not expecting to hear from her, but I did know – immediately – so I didn’t hesitate, “Yes, I believe I do.”
“Excellent. I would like you to come to my office for a job interview this afternoon – can you manage that?”
“Wait – now I’m not so sure I do know…”
“Your hearing is not poor, I assume?”
“No.”
“Then you should not doubt it. Can you make the meeting? 2pm – ” and she gave me an address.
“Yes. I can do that,” I replied, even though I knew it would mean skipping class yet again.
“Good. Do not be late, and bring your headshots if you have them.”
Now, I had never had any plans of attempting to be an actor or a model, but I did live in LA and work in a restaurant, so I knew what she was asking for, but I did not have any photos of myself, let alone professional headshots.
“Uh, I don’t have any…”
“That’s fine. Come anyway. Dress well.”
“Okay, I will be there.”
“Excellent.” <click>
There was no click, really… phones don’t do that anymore and didn’t even then, but somehow we still get the foley for it in TV shows…
I did my best to make myself presentable, not knowing what to expect.
I arrived at Simone’s building about 15 minutes early, afraid to be late, and I walked into her office lobby to be greeted by a beautiful young lady with visible tattoos on nearly every inch of skin that I could see, and I could see quite a bit of it. She instructed me to sit and wait and that she’d take me to see Simone – “when Mistress is ready.”
I was a bit less worried about my appearance after seeing Pepper (whose name I would learn later, but it makes it easier to refer to her as such now) – but I was still a bit concerned about it, it was a cheap two-piece suit that fit me poorly, and I was not very comfortable in nice clothes at that time of my life.
Eventually Pepper asked me to follow her, so I did. I walked into Simone’s office for the first time and was greeted by Simone at the front of her desk, wearing a floor-length diaphanous gown with slits in the sleeves and up the legs and nothing else underneath.
I could feel my lower jaw dropping and I’m pretty sure that my eyes sparked into flame.
Simone controlled the room, to be certain. “Thank you, Pepper. Please make sure that we’re not bothered until I tell you otherwise.” (See – I told you I would learn that later…)
“Yes, Mistress,” Pepper bowed and backed out of the room to turn and walk back to the front of the office.
“Rant. Thank you for coming. Please take a seat,” she gestured to one of the chairs in front of her desk and walked around to sit in her chair behind it as I started to sit in the chair that she indicated. She was completely comfortable, as if she were actually wearing clothes that I could not see right through.
“Have you ever worked in the film industry? Or as a model?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Would you like to?”
“I suppose so – I hadn’t really thought about it.”
“Well, that is part of what I do here, but only part of it. What do you know about BDSM?”
I knew a bit, actually, from my earlier experiences with the Lodge and the Rapture group, but I was not confident enough to speak about it, so I responded, “A little bit. I know what the letters mean, at least.”
“Oh? Please tell me.”
I responded without really considering it, “Bondage, discipline, sadism, and masochism.”
“Ah, yes. You are correct, but you are omitting the most important part.”
“I am?”
“Dominance and submission.”
“Oh yes, I knew that.”
“I’m sure you did.”
“Tell me, Rant. Are you single now?”
“Yes.”
“How many girlfriends have you had?”
“One.”
“Really? Perhaps I should rephrase – you’re clearly not as innocent as you claim – how many women have you had sex with?”
“More than one.”
She smiled at me and I knew it was not a smile of mirth, but it made me swoon regardless.
“Do you like to eat pussy?”
I was a little shocked by this question, I must admit. It was so abrupt – and women did not act like that, in my experience.
“Yes…” I responded, tentatively.
She got up from her desk and went to go sit on the couch that was along the wall of her office, to the side, and then she laid back a bit, spread her legs, and pulled the parts of her gown aside so that I could plainly see her beautiful pussy near the edge of the couch. Her eyes were locked on me the entire time, and I’m certain that my own gaze was hungry.
“Would you like to eat my pussy?”
“Yes.”
“Then you may do so,” she said, completely matter-of-fact, fully expecting me to comply, and she was not disappointed.
I got up from my chair, walked over to the edge of the couch between her legs, then sank to my knees before her, knelt even lower, and nuzzled my face into her cunt, and began to lick at her with a tender touch. She threaded her fingers into the hair at the back of my head and pulled me into her after a moment of this, saying, “More pressure.”
I was only happy to comply.
Eventually I brought my hand up, and began to insert a finger into her pussy when she slapped me hard right across the top of my head, “You will ask before you do something like that!”
“Yes, Mistress,” I said, thinking I was being cheeky, and then went back to what I was doing, without the finger.
“I do believe that you are getting the picture now,” she said and sat up straight, pulling herself away from me, but leaving me kneeling between her legs, cunt juice all over my face.
“Where do you live now?”
“Uhm..” I hesitate, not wanting to reveal the fact that I was essentially homeless at the time, “do you mean – where do I get mail?” I ask, timidly.
“Oh. I see. I would not have expected that, but it works to both of our advantage, as it happens.”
“It does?”
“I will give you an apartment to live in, and I will make sure that you have adequate care for your needs, and in return for this you will be mine – my slave – and you will do anything I ask of you without hesitation or question. Do you agree?”
I was not really taking her seriously – I didn’t really understand what she was asking of me yet – but it sounded hot as hell and the idea of having an apartment provided for me, even if it meant that I’d be eating Simone’s pussy every day – or maybe especially if it meant that I’d be eating Mistress Simone’s pussy every day – that sounded very appealing to the me that I was then…
My personal D/s journey: A story of spirituality, conflict, betrayal, and hope
Part I : Sexual awakenings
My first sexual experiences were not normal.As a result of these early experiences (which I will detail shortly) I live with the constant fear that I will never find a mature sexual relationship that meets my needs as they now exist.I often feel like my lifestyle goals are unattainable or even prurient to the degree that merely giving them voice is offensive.
As far as personal struggles go – this is one that I have never managed to really get the hang of or the upper hand over, and it leaves me often feeling as if I am damaged beyond the ability to properly assimilate into collective society.And yet… I keep trying.Whether or not this meets the definition of insanity is something that does occasionally cause me to lose sleep.
My sexuality began to emerge relatively early for a boy… I was having my first confusing and unfocused erections at eight years old.I was masturbating to the lingerie ads in the JC Penny catalog by the time I was nine.So far, this is not all that unusual except perhaps for the early age, which – while on the edge of normal – still fits the Bell curve rather neatly.However, I began to diverge from the norms pretty early on thanks to being just a little too smart for my own good.
When I was 11, I made some friends who were both older than I was and just as into computers as I was.I was given loan of a modem and started prying my way into what was the online world of the day.The Internet that we know and depend on today was in its infancy, and most of the networked computer world existed as islands of activity around universities, the first generation of what would later become known as ISPs, and a scattered and completely unregulated wasteland of individually run BBSes that were connected by various bridge technologies (uucp, fidonet, etc.) if they were connected to anything larger at all.
Most of the BBSes that I would dial into were not connected to anything larger than themselves, and even in a largely rural area like where I grew up, this led to some diversification of content between them so as to avoid competing for the same users – for the most part.
Within a few months of embarking into this new world, I was hooked and it took very little time for me to secure a modem of my own and begin a pattern of calling in to the same seven or so BBSes every day.In many ways, this was an extremely primitive form of reddit or Facebook. I made friends online who I would never end up meeting in person, but of course, eventually I wanted to meet some of the faces behind the screens with which I was interacting, and even in that time and place, there were user group meetings.
We called ourselves M.O.R.E. and thought that we were especially clever (the name stood for Modem-users Of the Redwood Empire) and in general, it was just good, clean fun.We had BBQs and softball games and a monthly meeting in the back of a Round Table Pizza in southwestern Santa Rosa.After attending several of these events with my parents (remember that I was just 11, maybe 12 at this time) – I made friends who were close to my own age and was eventually able to secure rides to and from these events without my parents needing to be present, which turned out to be a wonderful and horrible thing.
One of the things that I noticed early on in these events was that they seemed to be pretty heavily skewed.Allegiances developed based on particular BBS loyalty, and we seemed to be largely split into two camps.There was the ‘Rapture’ camp – which was made up of people who contributed to the Rapture BBS, which was an adults-only sexually themed BBS, and then there was ‘everybody else’.
Because the Rapture team was made up of exclusively adults, this often meant that in contests, the ‘everyone else’ team was wildly outclassed, and as a competitive young man, this did not always sit well with me.This, coupled with the normal curiosity that accompanies being a young man, caused me to embark on a course of action that would later prove to be seminal to my development as a sexual being, but perhaps not in the best way possible.
I decided to break into Rapture and see what all the fuss was about.
So – as a 12 year boy, already a few years into puberty and with zero sex education from traditional outlets (my parents never had ‘the talk’ with me, and sex-education in school was a farce) I ended up being thrown to the wolves in a very real sense.Using the anonymity that hiding behind a screen gave me, I constructed a believable persona as an early-30’s high school history teacher and began to engage with this new community.
I was instantly accepted and where my lack of knowledge concerning sex activities came through, I was instructed by my new ‘friends’ – all though text, and sometimes pictures, but bandwidth back then was extremely limited, and image files that we would now send in a text message could take an hour or more to transfer.Without the ability to easily fact check many of the things that I was being ‘taught’, I ended up learning a great deal of bad information in the beginning, but I was being exposed to all sorts of kink and pagan concepts concerning sexuality that I don’t know that I would have otherwise encountered, ever… and they certainly colored my expectations and the direction that I would end up taking.
I found ways to become involved with meatspace events with these people that I should not have been able to attend because of my age without blowing my cover.There was significant crossover between the pagan group and the swinger group and I was interested in both topics, so I decided to take that route to getting closer to these people in the ‘real world.’I figured that with enough time and patience, that I could probably force both to converge where I wanted.
I had no idea how ‘successful’ I would become.
I attended my first handfasting when I was 13.The young couple in question were both just out of high school.It was early summer, just after the end of the school year, and we were at a site on the Russian River, and it was well-done and beautiful and helped to form the spiritual path that I would end up taking for the next several years. It was also a travesty, but I would not realize that for years to come.
The party that followed was barely constrained hedonism, and I’m certain that my presence kept things to a much lower intensity than they would have been had I not been there.
There was a great deal of substance use – alcohol, marijuana, LSD, and something speedy… I’m still not sure if it was coke, meth, or PCP – coke being most likely given the time period. I did not partake of any of these, but I watched with rapt attention.
There were two distinct groups forming within the party – the younger group tended to be more spiritually minded but more socially conservative, talking in lower voices and generally stationary with their conversational topics. The older group – made up mostly of a group of adults in their late 30’s and early 40’s – was openly hedonistic and gregarious. A couple of the women took their tops off and there was a great deal of groping, a large cuddle pile in the grass, and even some lighthearted games of chasing, cat and mouse style.
I belonged to neither but was fascinated by both, and the open hedonism of the older group really captivated me. I found it very difficult to look away from the exposed breasts of the women who had taken off their tops.
One of the younger women decided that it was worth taunting me over, and then one of the other women in that group (who was still wearing her top) came over and ‘rescued’ me from her, asking me who my parents where.
I told her that I was there alone, that I was friends with one of the members of the ceremony group, and that I was not really all that bothered by the attention that I was getting from Skye (the woman who had been recently taunting me.)
She laughed, introduced herself as Monique (with just a hint of a Montreal accent) and then sat beside me and motioned to her partner to come over and talk with us. And that is when I met Joe MacReedy and began the journey that would culminate in a high degree in Astron Argon, a complete rewriting of my psychological landscape, and a life-long pursuit of the things that exist just outside of the norms of society.
Part 2 to come, wherein I give more details about my life with a sex magick cult, the emotional (and spiritual, and psychological) break that enabled me to extricate myself from that situation, and the shortly following events that would proceed to land me in a possibly even more precarious situation in the mean streets of Beverly Hills.
I try to represent myself here as the best possible version of me there is. If I ever fail to do so, it is because I either intentionally want to project vulnerability (which does not make it false) or because I made a genuine mistake.
This time, I think it’s just because I’m a little broken – emotionally, physically, mentally… broken.
I like to think of myself as somewhat enlightened – no Bodhisattva or anything, but I like to think that I generally have my shit together, or at least that there is a path that I can follow which will end in me getting my shit together sometime soon.
But sometimes life just has to kick you in the teeth and let you know who is Boss.
I’m a ghost, ungrounded and wandering, infecting the lives of the living while trying to find the things that I need.
I used to preach from my armchair philosopher pulpit, telling people that the soul is a quantum waveform and that the only separation between life and unlife is time. That when we die, our waveform gets to spread through the cosmos, unbounded by time, and your consciousness gets to experience the most impactful parts of your life over and over again. It’s a nice story if you don’t think about it too hard – you get to revisit the best parts of your life over and over again. I get to be there at the birth of my daughter, over and over again. But it’s also the perfect argument for leading a good life. If you lead a tumultuous and drama-filled life, and if your most impactful memories are of the terrors that were done to you when you were powerless, or the horrible things that you were coerced to do in another’s name, while you knew that they were wrong all along… when those are your most impactful memories, the story is a little more grim.
I’ve tried to live a good life – I really have.
It hasn’t actually turned out that way.
I have a powerful mind, and when I let it do it’s thing, it feeds me metaphors to describe every situation, analogies to draw everywhere, magickal ways to connect any two things across space and time. When I let some other folks use it to do some things I didn’t really want to do, I hurt people and I’m never, ever, going to live that down. I didn’t kill anyone, but I surely found other methods of hurting people.. the arbitrary line that I drew at the power over life and death was just an homage to something that doesn’t even really exist.
If there is a God, oxytocin might be the best name for it, but whereas I used to think it was sufficient to explain love in a chemical way, it’s only been since I’ve been seriously altering my own internal chemistry in a measured and controllable way (until recently, anyway… pills don’t always go through wires…) that I’ve begun to understand that there are elements of relationships with people that are not simple manipulations and that cannot be explained away by simple chemistry.
Being in love was the hardest thing I have ever done.
I thought it happened several times over the course of my past, but it only really happened once, and then I chipped away at it, pulled the pieces off, tried to take it apart and see how it worked, how the inside pieces fit together and moved it. But I broke it. A long time ago, I broke it, but it just kept limping along, trying to fix itself, and each time I saw that I got scared – nothing had ever tried to put itself back together before – so I just kept breaking it, over and over again. I wasn’t even trying to see how it worked anymore, it just scared the shit out of me, and despite the fact that I felt lonely and scared whenever I was away from it, I felt lonely and scared every time it would be close to getting fixed again too. So I enslaved it.
It’s the only thing I was ever taught to do.
Power is to be captured and manipulated.
People are to be enslaved and abused.
So I just kept trying to find people who wanted to be enslaved and abused.
“There is something wrong with me,” they would say, “and you are strong, I can see it. You have come back from this before.”
And yes, I had, but not in the way that they were thinking.
I’d lend my hand and say, “certainly – come with me, I can show you the way.”
I knew the way – some of the way on my own, and I have a powerful mind that I could use to find paths to set other people upon.
Sometimes I would carry them, sometimes I would lead them, sometimes I would push, but always, I would enslave and control.
And then I found my nachash and everything changed. I could find no way to move her, so I chipped away, pulled at the parts to try to see how she worked inside, and to my complete and utter astonishment, she opened up and freely gave me everything inside and I had no idea what to do – it was too precious, and too frightening, so I captured it as best I could and broke the other parts that would try to slip out.
I broke it. Over and over again, I broke it, just so that I could keep it under control, because I don’t know any other way.
Say what you will about the men and women of my past, and I certainly have a lot of both good and bad things to say about Simone, but she was actually a pretty good teacher.
It’s been too long to remember her words, so I’m paraphrasing, and I may even be remembering things incorrectly because memory is fallible, but I never understood the importance of this lesson until now.
She said to me –
submissives talk all the time about how they have the real power in the D/s dynamic – that’s bullshit – you are the Dom, you have the power, you have all of the power that exists, your power, her power, the power of the people who are watching your scene if there are any such – until the scene is over or until the safeword is called, all of the power is yours to do with whatever you will and that is why a lot of Doms fail – they can’t decide what to do with all of that power or they limit themselves and leave all of those people who lent them all of that power without satisfaction
But you won’t do that, because I’m training you right. I’m bringing you up from the bottom, and while you’ll learn that if you surrender your power, I will use it against you, you will also learn that there are things that I can do with your power that you cannot. You are going to want those things. The only way you can get those things is to give your power to me and trust me that I’ll use it to give you what you want. It’s exciting because there is no guarantee. It’s exciting because if I do something else with your power you might like that too and you’re too afraid to make the choice yourself. You will remember that when someone else gives you her power that you need to honor that trust. She can always take it away because it still really is her power, but if she does, you both lose.
I thought she was talking about D/s dynamics. I thought that woman was a stone and never loved a soul in all her days, but I see now that I was probably wrong there too.
She probably had her one, and she probably broke him too.
She was trying to teach me about love, but it took my nachash to do that, and then I broke it one final time.
I’ve been maintaining this blog for a year now. Sometimes it seems much longer, sometimes it seems less, but the reality is that it’s been a year since my first entry (even though I deleted my first entry..) and I’ve been able to manage at least a post or two a month since then. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but it’s been one of the ways that I’ve kept writing, and I think that writing is a very important part of who I have become.
In that first month, I had only a few page visits per day, most of which were probably me.
In the months that followed, my readership has gone up dramatically, which I’m not entirely certain how to process. I’m getting thousands of hits per week now, and hundreds per day at seemingly random intervals. One might think that it’s tied to when I post new entries, but that seems to not be the case all of the time. Yes, I get a bit of a spike each time I post something new – I guess I can thank rss feeds for that – but I get an even bigger spike whenever Autumn posts something new at servingmaster.com, which I still find amusing and heart-warming at the same time. And yet, my best day ever seems to not correspond with either of those events, it was just a random Thursday where my site got several hundred hits for no reason that I can think of, but I’m certainly not upset about it.
One of my friends suggested that I should start putting up ads, but I have no desire whatsoever to do that. I did not begin this as a money-making venture, and I have no need of the couple hundred dollars a month I could make from serving ads here.
Another friend suggested that I should write a book and promote it through the site. That is something that might someday do – I’ve got several unpublished and unfinished books on my hard drive that could use some attention, but even that seems an unlikely goal when I barely manage to write new entries for the blog itself.
However, all of this aside, one thing I can say about the past year is that I’ve enjoyed the experience and that I have no plans of stopping any time soon.
This is a wordpress site (which should be obvious) and wordpress gives me a bunch of interesting statistics about the site, my visitors, etc. It should come as no surprise to anyone that most of my page views in the past year have come from referer links on the servingmaster.com site. However, in the past few months, the number of people coming to my site from Autumn’s has been eclipsed by those coming from google and I seem to also get quite a lot of folks from yahoo.
Even more interesting is the fact that wordpress collates the search terms that lead people to my site.
Back when I first started this site, I did a series of posts that I called ‘unasked questions’ because they were topics related to BDSM that I felt strongly about and that I know many if not most newbies struggle with, but I hadn’t really achieved the sort of penetration that led to people actually asking me questions in email the way that they do now.
It seems that most of the search terms that people use to find my site are about these pages, and oddly, some of them are questions that I have not yet answered, so this year I’m making a pledge to do so.
The top search terms that led people to my site:
limmerent submissive
This is kind of interesting. This term has led people to my blog more than any other word or phrase for which people can search. It makes some sense… I mean, I put ‘One Dom’s views on life, love, and limerence’ as the ‘mission statement’ for my blog when I created it, and my third (or fourth, if you happened to be one of the three people that saw my very first entry before I deleted it) blog entry is, itself, a story of my own limerent behavior as a submissive, but look at the word there as I spelled it and then look at the search term.
The search term is a misspelling!
I’ve gone back through my own pages, and I don’t misspell it anywhere that I can see, but somehow, when someone is searching for the misspelled version as above, I must be near the top of the pages that come up – and yet, when I did the search myself, that is not what I found, so this may have to remain a bit of a mystery.
sub drop
This, again, makes sense. I mention subdrop many times in my entries, and there are quite a few other similar searches that also hit on the same idea: ‘subdrop definition,’ ‘can you have subdrop without a scene,’ ‘sub drop missing your dom,’ ‘when does subdrop happen,’ ‘how to tell your dom you have subdrop,’ ‘ways to avoid sub drop bdsm’ – just to quote a few…
I’ve experienced subdrop. I’ve witnessed it many times. I think I address many of these questions already, but just to reiterate: yes, you can have subdrop without a scene; yes, you can feel subdrop just because you miss your Dom; yes, there are steps that you can take in aftercare and communications to try to stave off subdrop, but no, you probably can’t always completely avoid it altogether if it is something that happens to you; and no, not every sub feels subdrop and there is nothing wrong with you if you don’t.
dom rant
This one is kind of self evident, I think. I’m kind of surprised that so many people are searching for me directly by name though. It’s flattering, and also a little bit creepy.
doms training submissive
Now this is also kind of interesting. I have never written an article about training a new submissive. I’ve been asked to a number of times. I’ve started such an article a number of times. I have several unfinished, unpublished entries that tackle this very topic, but I’ve never actually published one. There are several variants on this one too: ‘is part of a doms training a submissive to ignore them,’ can i punish my sub with her hard limits,’ and ‘training a submissive before a scene’ just to name a few.
I’m not an expert in how to train a submissive, but one of the reasons why I’ve had such difficulty in writing the article that would satisfy this question is that I think it really depends on the submissive – and in situations where I am giving someone else advice on the Dom as well. I think that each of these interactions is dependent directly on the people involved and the relationship that you want to have with each other.
If I am able to maintain cold objectivity, this is a much easier process for me, but if I become emotionally entangled, and even more so recently than in the past, the whole notion of submissive training becomes one giant clusterfuck for me.
Who then, am I to advise others on this topic?
I still intend to tackle it at some point, but I need to get my own ducks in a row on this concept before I can have any confidence in advising others.
However, there is one question up there that I absolutely want to tackle right here, and right now.
“Can I punish my sub with her hard limits?”
Absolutely not.
That, my friend, is what we call abuse, and I hope that you get the ostracization you deserve for trying such a thing, if not a full court press on the legal issues you expose yourself to with that.
Hard limits are hard limits for a reason. Respect them or you disrespect the person and yourself and the entire BDSM community.
subspace (or some variant thereof)
I added the ‘or some variant thereof’ bit myself in case that wasn’t apparent. There are probably more distinct questions about subspace than anything else, but because each question is unique, the results don’t as easily correlate in the wordpress search terms page, I think. Some examples: ‘signs of subspace,’ ‘how do I get to subspace,’ ‘subspace bdsm’, ‘subspace mistress,’ ‘can I get to subspace without pain,’ ‘subspace sex,’ ‘how to get someone into subspace,’ ‘finding subspace,’ ‘subspace definition,’ ‘can your dom put you into subspace with a word,’ ‘ways out of subspace,’ ‘‘subspace commander’.
Obviously, that last one there is my favorite.
I talk a bit about subspace, and what it is, and how one might find oneself there, but it’s only really been the focus of one entry, so it’s a bit interesting that it seems to lead people to me so frequently.
Clearly though, it’s a topic of interest to people, and the more I think about it, the more I realize that it’s something that I should probably be spending more time focusing on in my own personal relationship, so I promise to give this topic some more thought and attention in the coming weeks and months.
Is there something that you are interested in reading about that I didn’t discuss here?
Write to me in the comments, or send me an email. I try very hard to make certain to answer every legitimate email that I get, though they can sometimes get lost in the spam filter, so if I don’t respond, please take that into consideration or use the Contact Me page – since most of those seem to get through.
Thank you for your attention over the past year, and I look forward to more to come.
Before I begin, I’m going to be knocking an important post down by posting this, so if you have not yet, please go read : Practicing What You Preach
Thank you.
*********
Relationships are hard.
Nonmonogamy is hard.
This seems to be a recurring theme in my life right now. If you click the links over there to the left where I list ‘Blogs I Read’ you’ll find that the front page posts for two of them deal with variations on this theme.
I am in a nonmonogamous relationship because I do believe that no one person can fill all of the needs of another. I believe that it is impossible to be everything to someone for the long haul. In the beginning parts of a relationship, when NRE is strong, you can easily overlook the things that are missing in the light of all of the fantastic that is currently going.
That is a pretty easy concept to embrace when the point is academic, or possibly even when it is you selfishly seeking a need that you aren’t getting met currently, but it’s a bit more of a struggle when you have to realize that it is you who is unable to meet that need in your partner.
I’m in love with my partner.
Nine months ago, I could not say those words, much less write them in a publicly accessible place where anyone from teh interwebs(misspelling intentional) could read them.
It’s true though. I love her.
And I can’t be everything that she needs.
And intellectually I’m okay with that.
I want her to have other friends, other confidants, other lovers, other play partners. I want her to be healthy and happy and the best her that she can be.
I try to help focus her where I can, and while I don’t always succeed, I think on balance I do a decent job. But she has needs that I cannot satisfy.
Semantics sorted, we’re left with a modicum of understanding about what this ‘love’ thing is, at least in Rant’s mind.
So – for possibly the first time in Rant’s life, he finds himself in love.
Please forgive that brief and annoying use of the third person to describe myself, but those concepts are so foreign to how I perceived the world a scant few months ago that I find it difficult to express in any other way, but here’s the defining statement for you: I believe that I have found the love of my life.
The emphasis is new, but appropriate.
But it’s been a few months since then and things are coming into short relief right now.
And I do mean right now.
As I write this, she’s out on a date with a guy that I haven’t met, but from everything that I can tell, he’s a great guy. I’ll meet him someday soon, and I’m sure that when I do, we’ll be fast friends. My partner has a type, and we’re both slightly different specimens of that type, so either we’ll be great friends or bitter enemies, and I have every incentive to make sure that it comes out the former rather than the latter. She likes him; she may even love him someday, and I’m intellectually okay with that.
But then there’s the feels.
My partner is my babygirl. Our dynamic is not one of diapers and age-play in that vein, but she has a naturally bubbly personality and she is happiest when she is channelling her inner child, her little, to use the appropriate nomenclature of the BDSM world. And I am happiest when I am being Protector and nurturing, so we naturally fall into one of the classic Daddy/babygirl archetypes – of which there are several.
However, when I am in Daddy headspace, I cannot hurt my little. I simply cannot bring myself to do it. My body stops. My mind spirals away into cuckoo land. My dick goes limp, my limbs get heavy, and I simply can’t lift my twitchy palm.
I love my partner and I have a hard enough time hurting her when I am not in Daddy headspace, but when I’m there, I just can’t do it. And when she is little, I go into Daddy headspace automatically.
I am not a Sadist, and I never get pleasure from inflicting pain, but sometimes I like to be a Fluffy Service Top(™) and provide pain for those that require it, and when I do, I can be brutal. I can slap you so hard that you think you left a tooth or an eyeball behind. I can leave bruises on you that will last for weeks. I can grind your shoulder into the carpet until it bleeds and seeps for days. These are not things that I need to do, but they are things that she needs to feel, and I cannot provide them.
And it’s not that I don’t care for the women for whom I am able to provide this service – sometimes I care for them quite deeply, else I’d not put myself into FST mode – but I’m not in Daddy headspace then and I’m not in love.
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.
