Chapter Ten

No She Didn’t!

(Yes, I did.)

Yes, I went and did it again. I had a huge, childish tantrum and lashed out at my Master. I did damage to our relationship and eroded the trust he had in my commitment to obedience.

I thought we were cruising along quite well, really. I had a firm set of guidelines, I knew what was expected of me, and I was adhering to a list of daily housekeeping chores and was keeping up with them.

But…

Let’s start with the anniversary trip we were planning, and my handling all that’s involved in trying to get away for six days. Add that we have eighteen animals here at the house, and I had to find boarding and care for all of them. And not that I let the vaccinations on the animals in our care consistently and negligently lapse, but every single, solitary shot for the dogs had to be up to date for any boarding facility to take them. They weren’t going anywhere without a kennel cough vaccine and those expire every six months. I can’t handle more than two dogs at the same time for a vet visit, so I ended up going to the vet five times for nine dogs.

The dogs were going to one facility, the bird was going to our vet, and all the cats would be cared for by a woman who would stop by the house once a day. And let’s add yet another complication: I got sick. Really sick. I hardly EVER get sick. So, three days before we were supposed to leave, I came down with bronchitis. I wasn’t even sleeping well before this hit me, so you can bet that I was by now lucky to get three or four hours of sleep a night by the time we left for our trip. Lying down made me cough. Cold air made me cough. Any physical exertion made me cough. And we weren’t going to a warm, flat place. Oh, no…we were going to San Francisco. This is not the best city to visit when you have bronchitis, and I had to stop every ten steps or so on hills to recover my breathing before we could proceed. Walking, of course, made me cough.

Our hotel room was hot no matter how low we tried to adjust the thermostat. The window was rigged so that it could only be opened a few inches, no doubt to prevent suicide attempts, or to keep people from throwing food, or spitting, on passersby. Who knows? Being in a reclining position in bed made me feel worse than anything, and I tried to bury my face in the pillow every time I coughed. I wasn’t always successful, and just as Master was drifting off to sleep, I would let out a loud, choking hack that would jar him awake.

So by the second-to-last-day of our trip, I was existing on well over two weeks of substantial sleep deprivation. On top of everything else, sinus congestion from the illness was giving me headaches every day. I mentioned one afternoon that I was getting a headache again. He said I always had headaches lately, and what the hell was up with that? I said it had been a while since breakfast, and I needed to eat something before we went back to the hotel. He said no, I didn’t need to eat something. I recall getting into trouble that same afternoon for often walking too fast and ending up slightly ahead of him. I mention these things because such nitpicking between us is always a sure sign that it’s time to shut down a vacation and get back to our routine. Master and I had pretty much had enough (possibly of each other). I felt as if I would never get well if I couldn’t get back to my own home and my own bed. Plus some Master I happen to know was letting his temper get a little short with His sub. We decided to cut the trip short a day early and come home. The flight we were able to schedule for the next morning required us to be up at 3:30 AM and at the airport a little after 5:00. More sleep deprivation.

Master and I are loners, and we don’t do well at all in crowds. We are happiest at home with each other and our animals, and people and their noises stress us out to no end. We don’t even go to movies, preferring to view them at home, alone. Also, we’re not into television, technology, constant public cell phone use, texting, etc., and listening to the phone drivel of others annoys us to no end. Need I say that travel is especially hard on people who are used to things being quiet and predictable around them. Also, I’m a bit of a germophobe, and planes, airports and public restrooms don’t exactly accommodate me in that regard.

On the flight home, we got to listen to a girl behind us endlessly drone on about an evening out she’d spent with someone, and every fourth or fifth word was “like”.

“So, I’m like, you know, thinking, ‘what’s going on here?’ because, like, he was saying things to me like, “Hey, don’t you want to, like, go out with me again?’ And so I was, like, why would I want to go out with, like, a guy like this? I mean, like, I couldn’t believe he thought I liked him enough to, like, you know.”

This is one of those times when you’d give anything to have the girl in one of those glassed-in observation cells with a device hooked up to her body that shocks the hell out of her every time she says like. Even so, it would probably take her a while to figure out what she was doing to bring on such treatment.

“Why are you guys, like, shocking me? Ouch! Like what the fuck! Ouch!”

Moving right along… A geezer wearing a Superman shirt seemed to think we’d extended some sort of engraved invitation for him to get involved in our conversation with the flight attendant regarding our seat assignments. He ended up sitting in front of us, and he pushed his seat back so far that I got to look at the top of his head for three hours.

And don’t even get me started on perfume. My sinuses were screwed up enough already, but I had to tolerate men and women who seem to think the rest of us appreciate their BATHING in cologne or perfume every morning. Seriously, people, scents like that shoot a spike of pain through my temple as soon as I get a whiff. Consider the fact that the scent you chose in all actuality smells like bug spray on you, okay? Just because everyone else is wearing it doesn’t mean it’s right for you, okay? Okay? Like our mothers said, “Just because they’re jumping off a cliff…”

So we finally land, get our luggage and get on the shuttle bus to our car, and I’m feeling such relief and gratitude that we landed safely and are almost home, free of all this travel stress. A man got on the shuttle bus, having bathed in bug spray that morning, and I’m just about to puke on my tennis shoes because of the pain shooting through my eyes.

We were driving home when I remembered that I had to call the boarding facility and tell them we were home a day early and that I would be there the next morning to pick up the dogs. Master tells me to tell them we were on our way now to get them. I said it wasn’t enough notice for them, as they were going to bathe all eight dogs before we picked them up. He said we were picking them up anyway. I was nearly in tears. I was about to collapse from exhaustion, and I’d been sitting in a cab, airport terminal, plane, shuttle bus and a car since 4:00 that morning, and it was already almost 4:00 PM. He said we were also picking up our parrot from the vet since it was on the way home. I waited about thirty-five minutes in the waiting room for them to turn over our bird to us and check us out. Then we drove twenty-four miles out of our way to get the dogs. If ever Premeditated Master Murder was warranted, well…

Have I set the scene well enough?

So Master and I did okay for a few hours after we got home, and then it happened. Something in our discussion about two of our cats set me off. Yeah. Cats. Kind of like the dishrag arguments of yore that I used to have with my first husband. Anyway, all of a sudden I came at Master loaded for bear, with all guns packed to the hilt with ammo, and all barrels pointed at him. And let me add: cocked. Oh, yeah, I was cocked and ready and had him in my sights. Slowly I turned, step by step, inch by inch. My explosion was so fierce and so intense; it was over within less than a minute. I raged, I spewed, I accused, I ranted, and I railed. Worst of all, I declared I was no longer his submissive. I was done. Finished.

Master asked, “What did I do that was so bad to warrant you no longer being my submissive?”

For another minute or so, I threw out vague generalities about Him always wanting this or that and my never getting it right, and why did he make such a lame decision about the cats? It was also one of those times in the heat of the moment when you know the other person has asked you a reasonable question you can’t logically answer but, hey, this is your tantrum so you’d better come up with something weighty to say in reply to their calm logic. Well, no such luck. I knew he didn’t do anything specific, per se, but I was so physically sick and so dead-dog tired, and more than anything, so disgusted with myself for my tantrum, it was yet another time I declared myself hopelessly unsuited for 24/7 submission.

It was very quiet between us that night. I’d removed the necklace which serves as my daytime and public collar. It’s a silver chain with an Asian symbol for SLAVE pendant that Master gave me, and it was very special to me. I saw it every day by the sink where I’d left it, and I tried to ignore the tug at my heart just seeing it gave me.

For the next few days, I think I truly was grieving the loss of something precious I had once again decided to throw away. It was easier not to submit to Him, but it wasn’t fulfilling at all. I submit more completely than many women. Why was I so hard on myself? Why could I never cut myself some slack for my mistakes? I gave myself no room for failure whatsoever. Why?

Because I threw myself into submission, once again, expecting it to be somehow miraculously easier this time. I didn’t realize that growing in submission is a process. Growing in Mastery is a process, too, and He and I were and are both dealing with a learning curve.

I was punished in the usual way for my outburst, but we drifted back into a more vanilla relationship as far as my daily submission went. I was still sick for another week or so, too, and simply didn’t apply myself to mending the fence I had damaged so badly.