Chapter Two

Enough About Me

(But what do you think about me?)

If you’re going to be successful in your quest to be a submissive or slave, you’re going to have to address your ego. I definitely do not mean “ego” to infer that you are arrogant, self-righteous or entirely self-centered. (You might be. How the heck would I know?) But, believe me; if you venture down this path, you’re going to find out things about yourself that will appall you. Good. If you do, you’re gaining some much-needed wisdom, I hope. It’s a strange dichotomy, but you need to be constantly discovering yourself in order to lose yourself. No, you will not awake zombie-like one morning, finally achieving your goal of 100% submission and obedience, with whatever made you you being entirely subsumed into your Dom or Master. Your sparkling little personality will not be drawn into a black hole, forever obscured by the demands of your obedience, and lost to you for all eternity. For one thing, you will never reach a point in which there is no more to learn, no more to work on, no more garbage within yourself to address, no more ways to submit, etc.

You’re not going to end up looking like a sleepwalker, or some dazed creature who no longer has thoughts or opinions, and can only respond, “Yes, Master” or “Whatever pleases you, Sir.”

HubbyMaster swears he would love nothing more than to hear these responses from me all day, every day.

“Ha!” I say. “You’d like it for about ten minutes, then you’d get bored.”

“Try me,” He says.

Every day is different, and you will be confronted with countless situations that will tell your ego to rise up and demand to be heard. Try not to fear this. Once I truly grasped what was happening, I had never felt so much joy. I was learning to recognize the little monster, and, believe me, ego is one thing that will trip you up every time in this lifestyle. So, all these situations were only helping me each time to recognize the little bastard. Bitch is probably a better word, really.

Studying Buddhism has helped me more than anything to understand and deal with my ego. I won’t get all religious, psychological and Freudian on you, but it helps to learn how to identify the little monster when he or she does rear that pointy little head. You will find that dealing with your ego is like trying to keep worms in a can. You’ll control them on one side, then one or more of them will get all sneaky and try to escape on the other side. Many of us have family members like this. We put up a firm boundary on one front, then the person gets all up in arms and does an assault from an entirely different angle. Welcome to the challenge. Welcome to life with my mother.

So you’re in the grocery store. All you need to do is push your cart by the woman standing in the middle of the aisle, talking on her cell phone. She’s blocking the aisle, and doesn’t even see you. You get pissed. Why? She should realize that you’re there, trying to get past her. She needs to recognize that her time is not more important than yours. And just where does she get off messing up your shopping experience anyway? Shouldn’t you two have the same goals— you know, as in get in and out of the grocery store as soon as possible? What good reason does someone have to stand around in the store and talk on the phone when scores of other people are trying to shop? You write her off as a selfish bitch, and decide you hate her.

This is your ego. It wants the world to be exceedingly deferential to you.

A man, barely disguised as a butthole, cuts you off in traffic. Why is his time more important than yours? Why, he could have killed you! Yes, by driving that way, he actually risked your life. Why is his life more valuable than yours? He’s a dickhead in real life. Sure, if he treats other people that way on the road, he probably treats people in his personal life that way. He’s a miserable human being, and people who know him think he’s an asshole, and they probably hate him even more than you do. You always treat people well, you reason, and you would never do such a thing as cut someone off on the road. People really like you, but not him. Oh, and besides, people really should realize that your time is just as important as theirs. Maybe even more so, right?

This is your ego. It tells you that you are a much better person than most people you meet.

As I typed this, I received a phone call and learned that a relative is starting a ninety-day jail sentence for his second DUI. Ego told him he was different than other alcoholics. He’s an alcoholic who can actually drink alcohol and still manage his life. The rules don’t apply to him, because he’s special. He’s smarter than other alcoholics.

Then ego didn’t give a crap when it all came crashing down and resulted in a second arrest, a fine, and now jail time. Ego could care less; at least it was heard and obeyed. Ego may even succeed in getting my relative to drink again when he gets out of jail. Ego may convince him that he’s paid his debt to society and he will be able to handle alcohol differently this time. I’m not looking down on him or taking a holier-than-thou attitude. He and I have talked extensively about this. He admits that his ego tells him he is simply somehow better than others. They, after all, are not him, so they don’t have the strength of will or character that he does. And then he drinks and drives, gets another DUI, and all that bullshit ego basically sits there all smug and innocent-acting while he’s in his jail cell.

Ego says, “Hey, Dude! You fucked up! You trusted me!”

These are examples of obvious ego issues. What about the not-so-obvious ones you’ll encounter in your submission? I’ll give you a clue. Ego will often want you to believe that your way is better than His way, and if He would only agree to your way, things would work out fine.

You are responsible for the obedience. He is responsible for the results.

***

And here’s a funny story about submission. I did what my hubby asked of me, and the results were disastrous. I originally wrote this as a blog post for a kink site, so I’ll just leave it unedited, and include it here as it was presented online.

When my fiancé suggested nipple piercing, I should have said, “Whoa, not so fast, Bucko!” What I also should have done was strike a deal that he get a nipple pierced first, and then and only then would I get a nipple pierced. If he wasn’t still in tears on the floor (cryin’ for his mama), then he would get his other nipple pierced, and my second piercing would follow.

As a side note, I have to sheepishly confess that I have what some would say is a rather over-the-top hang-up about undressing in front of strangers. Even as a very young girl, I wouldn’t let salesladies at department stores watch me try on clothes in the dressing room. Only my mother could be in there with me, and things haven’t gotten better since then, because now I don’t even allow my mother in.

Given my neurotic modesty, I became somewhat obsessed about the options I would have in regard to the procedure, and we were at least able to find a woman to do the piercing. One of the things the young woman did before the actual piercing, however, was massage my left nipple between her fingers for about five minutes to get the skin warm and pliable. And I’m lying on the table, looking her in the eye while she’s chatting on and on about various subjects, and all the while she’s essentially playing with my nipple. I’m pretty damned far out of my comfort zone at this point.

She placed the needle against the side of my left nipple and told me she was ready to begin. She said it would really help if I would just relax, and that it doesn’t hurt most people much at all. What followed was a pain so horrific and white-hot that I began to scream. Every fiber of my being told me to give her an upper-cut to make her stop. After what felt like five minutes of having a nail driven through my nipple, it was over. I was in so much pain I could hardly catch my breath. My fiancé, who got to sit off to the side and just watch said, “Wow. It really hurt that much?”

We, or to be clearer, I should say ‘I’ opted not to have the other nipple done.

From then on, my days and nights were dedicated to protecting my victimized nipple from contact with any person, place or thing. The little jewelry-type bar that had been inserted was always catching on things and pulling, because I would forget about the damned thing, bump it against something, or accidentally yank it while, say, removing my sports bra. And just when I thought the hole was healing up nicely, I had to remove the post before an MRI. Well, wouldn’t you know it, once the post was removed, I couldn’t get the damned thing back in.

No matter! We were off to the piercing parlor again! How difficult could it be, I reasoned, for them to simply reinsert the post back into the existing hole? Certainly far less traumatic than the last time. But the woman who originally did my piercing had switched shifts with her husband at the last minute. While sitting in the waiting room, I listened to him take a phone call from a woman who was inquiring about the possibility of two clitoral and eight labial piercings. Yes! You heard me! All for herself! And you would have thought by Piercing Guy’s phone demeanor that he was taking an order for coffee. So I figured: What’s the big deal about my measly little nipple? I agreed to let him reinsert the post.

“You?” you ask, incredulously. “You? You who cannot show any body part to a stranger are now allowing not only a stranger, but a MAN-stranger to do this?”

Well, yes. And what I didn’t realize until the needle started going in was that he wasn’t reinserting, he was piercing a brand-new hole. And there was no nipple preparation, no pre-pierce instruction, no chatty warm-up, no nothing. I kid you not: as I screamed, I grabbed hold of his forearm so hard that he bolted away from me in retreat and sought safety against the far wall. I had actually left marks on the guy’s arm.

I was yelled at, scolded, shamed, humiliated, lectured and forced to apologize. I was so ashamed of myself, and was made to feel so stupid and inconsiderate and small, that I let him continue with the piercing. Just think what others have gotten me to do by making me feel guilty. It’s true!

Piercing Guy didn’t charge us, and he personally escorted us past all the people in the waiting room to the front door, held it open, and then slammed it shut behind us. What a guy!

Two weeks later, after catching my nipple-post on one thing or another for about the hundredth time, I pulled the post out and fast-pitched it into the trash can.

I was thinking that most of you are asking questions like, “Just how does this girl’s nipple get in the way of everything?” Or, “Can’t she do one damned thing without her nipple flying around and banging into something?”

Well, no, I really can’t. See, the women in my family were particularly blessed with very large breasts. I honestly can’t even sit down to have dinner without dragging a nipple or two through the food on my plate. At family gatherings, people just shake their heads and look away.

We’ve had lots of laughs over the years when we recall the piercing nightmare and what turned out to be one of his more “traumatic” decisions in our history together. But I did what he asked, and he was responsible for the consequences. And I will tell you now that I made the story into a funny one—which it is, looking back on it— but that was only part of it. I cried off and on for about forty-eight hours after that incident. Not only did Piercing Guy shame me, but having a nipple pierced brought out a totally unexpected body-memory about my childhood sexual abuse. And the shame and the pain and the memory all added up to a terribly difficult time for me, one that neither my Master nor I ever anticipated.