Eight
You are here to serve your masters. During the day, you will perform whatever domestic duties are assigned you, such as sweeping, putting back the books, arranging flowers, or waiting on tables. Nothing more difficult than that. But at the first word or sign from anyone you will drop whatever you are doing and ready yourself for what is really your one and only duty: to lend yourself.
—STORY OF O1
For most of us, sex is an act or series of acts, done in private, often compartmentalized or distinct from our larger reality. It may bear little or no relation to how we live outside the moment of erotic pleasure and may not define how we feel, what we do, or how we view ourselves. For lifestyle D&Sers, however, sexuality is an integral aspect of identity.
In this chapter we profile three lifestylers:
• Frank and Lisa W. are 37 and 25, respectively. They own a computer-consulting firm and lead the on-line D&S support group of CompuServe, where they first met. They have two children.
• Bambi Bottom is 33 years old and an independent management consultant. She and her husband live in the Bible Belt.
The term lifestyle has no universal definition in a D&S context. Broadly speaking, it refers to those individuals who elect to be sexually intimate exclusively with other D&Sers. Lifestyle may be a statement of sexual preference or of sexual politics; it may dictate the choices one makes about friends and lovers. Lifestylers often limit new friendships to other D&Sers—indeed, many prefer the tribal atmosphere of an established D&S community for reasons of safety, common interests, and acceptance.
A more parochial definition of lifestyle D&S is used to describe permanent partners for whom the power dynamic is an ever-present reality in all areas of their relationship.
To me a lifestyle S&M relationship is lived by the partners full-time; there are no boundaries between what you do in the bedroom and what you do in the rest of your life. The power dynamic is a part of every activity that the people do, the things they say to each other, the attitudes they have toward each other.
—BAMBI BOTTOM
In such full-time lifestyle relationships the partners usually do not switch roles—the line between dominant and submissive is fixed. These relationships in some ways appear to resemble traditional marriages, where one partner is the authority figure. But the lifestyle dominant is as likely to be female as male, and the sex centers on D&S activity.
Although lifestyle D&S does not depend on degree or type of activity, many who have full-time partnered relationships seem to enjoy intense physical and psychological control. There are, of course, D&Sers who enjoy extreme activity without opting for lifestyle, just as some lifestylers prefer mild control. What is most important to the lifestyler is the constant awareness of power roles. This negotiated exchange is both erotically and emotionally gratifying.
[D&S] is very important [for us] in the bedroom [and] to our [overall] relationship. I’m certainly interested in all the vanilla stuff, but D&S is required. Both I and Lisa explicitly went looking for someone who was interested in D&S.
—FRANK W.
Although lifestyle submissives live in service to their dominants, the personal dynamic does not alter their social or business personae. Lifestylers are as apt as anyone else to lead mainstream public lives.
I think some people imagine [D&S] to be [that] you give up your career and basically spend your time at this woman’s feet. A woman who could enjoy that would not have the respect for me that I [want]. The roles are defined, but she wants me to be successful; she wants me to enjoy myself.
—JOHN H.
Lifestylers generally feel that the clear delineation of power issues at home liberates them socially. In effect, once the submissive grants power to the dominant, there is no reason to cede power to any other. They also believe that the communication needed to make a D&S relationship work effects immense positive changes in their daily lives. For them, D&S may help to resolve larger control issues.
Most of the submissives I know are outwardly strong-willed individuals, and they’ve actualized themselves to the point that you have to overcome that part of their nature before they’ll submit. I’ve found some so-called submissives who were bad life-mates. Self-destruction crops up in a number of them because of bad childhood experiences. I found that channeling that negative energy through the Scene is really an excellent coping mechanism for them. When they’re able to have this outlet—[a] safe, consensual aspect of the Scene—it mellows them out.
—MICHAEL V.
While some lifestylers publicize their involvement in the Scene, a majority maintain a low profile for fear of legal, occupational, or social harassment.
People like us are not in the Scene; we’re not public. People can’t find us, and we can’t find them. I believe that there are [other] extreme master-slave relationships out there absolutely hidden from view. I’d love to meet others who are as deep into S&M as [we are].
—BAMBI BOTTOM
Virtually no pressure is put on people in the D&S communities to “come out,” and discretion is an unspoken law, particularly among lifestylers, since a high percentage of them appear to be middle- to upper-middle-class professionals. Scene names, or pseudonyms, are popular to ensure anonymity. Some lifestylers, however, will confide in family members or sympathetic friends.
I’ve come out to my brother. I’ve come out to my sister. I’ve come out to my older daughter, [though] not in a great deal of detail. By and large reaction has been positive.
—JOHN M.
Even the most private lifestyler often wears some token of his relationship, whether concealed or visible.
I must wear a collar at all times. I have a variety of collars: Some look very vanilla, [so] no straight person would know.
—BAMBI BOTTOM
Such tokens remind D&Sers of the underlying power dynamic with their partners and of their commitment to D&S, not merely as a sexual variation but as a way of life.
Those who maintain a 24-hour lifestyle relationship bring a unique perspective to D&S. For them, the decision to control or to be controlled in a full-time relationship is fundamental to their identity.
I got out of a vanilla marriage [and] actively looked for a D&S partner. It’s a big part of who I am, and without it, I’m not happy.
—LISA W.
To the lifestyle dominant, a consistent ability to control all areas of a consenting partner’s life is intrinsic to his or her identity as a person of power and authority and is a source of self-esteem. With this power comes responsibility, a responsibility that dominants find deeply fulfilling. Many actively work toward improving the quality of their submissives’ lives and see themselves in the role of protector, parent, and teacher. They are the submissives’ greatest ally and advocate.
My master is a natural healer. He’s helped me through a lot. I’ve gone from being a borderline alcoholic to drinking only about once a week; from being a coffeeholic, 14 cups a day, to drinking just [two] cups a day; from being a foodaholic to being a normal weight. He’s worked with me on all the emotional problems that are the source of the destructive behavior.
—BAMBI BOTTOM
A lifestyle submissive usually feels unfulfilled or bereft when there is no positive, dominant presence in his or her life. Emotionally, the lifestyle submissive typically desires to be in a subservient position to a fundamentally benevolent authority who supervises and disciplines, punishes, and rewards. This supervision may range from the sharply erotic to the sheerly mundane; in this context the fact of control is a confirmation of love and commitment.
Protection and guidance are of themselves erotic to the lifestyle submissive. The ways in which the dominant expresses control may also create a constant, low-level pitch of erotic tension between the partners.
Perhaps the greatest appeal of lifestyle relationships is the degree of candor between partners in them. Many of our interviewees insist that lifestyle D&Sers form unparalleled romantic bonds, partly because submissives forfeit all privacy.
There’s a greater level of intimacy in D&S relationships than in other kinds of romantic relationships. I’ve experienced both. In a vanilla relationship, you can hide and keep to yourself. My master requires me to reveal to him my dreams, my hopes, my ideas. We’re very close. He’s a very strong, loving, caring, tender person.
—BAMBI BOTTOM
Full-time lifestyle relationships can best be understood as an anarchic conspiracy between two intimate partners where the conventional rules are scrapped and an extraordinary agreement is negotiated based on the partners’ needs. Because of their unique situation, lifestylers have unique problems. Preeminent among these is a lack of role models. The few accessible examples of master-slave interactions derive from fiction, sensationalized crimes, or historical accounts of persecution. While most of our interviewees mentioned the profound influence of D&S cult classics on their sexual awareness, many also believe that such works grossly distort the reality of D&S.
The [fictional accounts of S&M] make us look like emotionally unhealthy people. In 9½ Weeks the dominant was obviously emotionally disturbed. He scared her. He went too far too quick, he thought only of satisfying his own desires and not working for something long-term, not paying attention to the submissive’s particular psychology.
—BAMBI BOTTOM
Those who rely on fictional role models for inspiration or guidance regularly encounter stumbling blocks to romantic satisfaction. It is common for novice male heterosexual dominants, for example, to emulate the master in Story of O. As a result, they may expect submissives to be one-dimensional erotic objects and may be frustrated when ordinary problems intervene.
I met dominants who wanted me to drop everything in my life. I was not willing to give up my kids. I wanted to get married, I wanted to have a home, I wanted to have a family, plus I wanted D&S. I wanted a man who wanted those same things.
—LISA W.
In marked contrast to erotic myth, lifestylers confront the complex challenge of integrating an unconventional sexual dynamic with the typical stresses and demands of family, religion, career, and citizenship.
I’d like to meet the dominant woman of my dreams. [She is] not someone who dominates me 24 hours a day and keeps me down, but someone who, not only in the sexual aspect of daily life but in the regular aspect, is the boss and enjoys it.
—JOHN H.
Another serious problem for many submissives in lifestyle relationships is accepting the control which they have deliberately sought, for the fantasy rarely translates smoothly into reality.
The problems of lifestylers can be summed up in one word: resistance. It takes a lot of getting used to, to live at someone else’s whims, to follow someone else’s commands 24 hours a day, to do exactly what you’re told despite your will and your desires.
—BAMBI BOTTOM
For the submissive, keeping his or her ego in check may be extraordinarily difficult even when this is precisely his or her goal. In this respect, the attempt to live out the submissive role in a lifestyle relationship may resemble a religious struggle between the temptations of the world and an inner craving to surrender to a force which one sincerely believes will ultimately afford serenity. Not all surrender is necessarily good surrender: D&Sers consistently grapple with clarifying or modifying their goals within the lifestyle relationship. Extent of control and type of control are negotiated and renegotiated.
A significant problem for all who regularly engage in D&S is the failure of professionals—medical, psychological, legal, and spiritual—to provide informed assistance. Many fear consulting either doctors or clergymen lest they be censured or urged to forswear their sexual desires; few helping professionals are trained to work with D&Sers. Spiritually, some D&Sers are turning to New Age religious beliefs, and increasing numbers of peer counselors are now a prime source of third-party assistance for troubled D&S relationships.
[D&S] is not 100 percent vital with someone I really care about. [But] I have both. I am madly in love with my slave, so it’s wonderful. I’m heterosexual and quite definitely a dominant. I haven’t had any real submissive fantasies since prepuberty. My D&S needs were extremely important. They were not irresistible driving forces. There were cases where I would get into a vanilla relationship, [albeit] with serious trepidation.
I have given an awful lot of thought to where my needs come from. I am afraid I do not have any real answers. I, along with many other people, have noticed the tendency for people in D&S to be more neglected than abused as kids. But clearly there are many kids who have that kind of upbringing and don’t end up in D&S.
I remember tying myself up and doing it with playmates, [dating] back to [age] four or five. I’ve got one fantasy that I know predates first grade. I have one that I can date to [age] six: Somebody had given me a pile of British comics, and I remember having all sorts of fantasies about tying up the heroine and doing horrible things to her. I pretty much put that down to the fact that six-year-olds aren’t really up on medicine. They aren’t real good on knowing when they’re maiming somebody, because all you’ve seen is cartoons. [The fantasies] died away for several years, until puberty. At that point, I started getting actual, realizable wants in terms of a particular girl from school. I was interested in her, and I was into D&S, so I was interested in a D&S way—spanking and bondage and so forth.
The first time I really had a chance to do much was [in my] mid-20s. I went with one woman all through college. When Joy of Sex came out and made bondage respectable, she was willing to try it a couple of times. But it was ho-hum [to her]; she was basically falling asleep. Then, a year or two after I was out of college, I actually managed to start getting opportunities to do something. But the problem, really, was me. I’m a techie, [a] white-socks-and-slide-rule engineer. I simply was not every woman’s cup of tea. [I was] looking for a real, complete relationship. So I would either find vanilla women with whom [a relationship] would have worked but she didn’t want D&S, or I’d find a woman who wanted D&S but otherwise didn’t want to marry an engineer. So that was a problem.
I lucked out [with Lisa]. I was at the right place at the right time. I was active on the HSX Forum on CompuServe. Lisa had been around for a while, mostly talking real time with people, which I don’t like to do. But she was also reading the message board, and she liked what I had to say about what I was looking for. She sent me a message and we wrote back and forth. [Then] she sent me her phone number, and I called her. We talked for a while, and [eventually] I sent her an airplane ticket. She came [to visit], and she went home with a diamond ring.
We’ve been together now about two years. We’ve got enough stuff going on to strain any relationship of any flavor, so there certainly have been some rocky times, but at the moment, things are really, really, really going great. Both Lisa and I had decades-long arrears of hugs and kisses when we came into this thing, so we still like a whole lot of catching up on cuddling. There are no real hard-and-fast stops in our life for anything, but as for D&S-type stuff, we like to do little reminder things out of the bedroom. Before we had people popping in, any time the sun was up, she would wear a collar around the house—just a dime-store pet-choke collar, with a little hardware-store padlock on it. We’ve also had her put a chain around her waist, or we’ve got little nipple thingies that she can wear. Stuff can go on for hours with that kind of mutual reminder. I like the collar because I get to see it. The nipple thingie or the chain around the waist, well, she knows it’s there, and I know that she knows, but it’s not as good as being able to look at it. And then, of course, we’ll talk and tease [each other] throughout the day.
[For us D&S] is out of the bedroom but not out of the front door. I’ll have her undress in the evenings, and she’ll wear the collar and a leash, and she’ll sit or kneel at my feet when we’re answering the messages on CompuServe. Or we will go for a walk in the woods [and] bring along a leash; we’ll stop and cut a switch, and I’ll tie her to a tree.
Last week we did it in the backyard; that was fairly real. We had lunch [cooking] in the stove and went out in the backyard, and I had her get undressed, and I tied her to a tree. I gave her a couple of swats with my hand, and then I went back in and looked after how lunch was doing, leaving her out there. She theoretically could have been seen by someone driving up. They would have had to know exactly where to look, so as long as she refrained from doing a little dance to get their attention, she was really pretty safe. After I’d got lunch nice and happy, I went back out there and cut a switch. I gave her a little warm-up with my hand and a good solid kiss to give her some confidence, because it had been a while since we’d done anything really heavy, so she was more nervous than she would have been a couple of months ago. I gave her a dozen good, hard ones on the rear end with the switch to make welts and marks that would last for about a week.
For a while there, she was very intrigued with the idea of marks on her breasts, and so we did some of that. I’m not really thrilled to go for marks. She squirms around too much, and I think there’s a danger of damage, but I will use a ruler on her breasts. Lisa likes bondage a whole lot more than I do. It’s very nice for the sub. She gets to sit there and enjoy it. She has all these nice fantasies about being tied up and left alone. However, when it really comes to leaving her alone while I go off and do something, it turns out that she means less than five minutes. You know, in fantasy it’s an hour, and in practice, what turns her on is about five minutes.
When you’re talking about stuff going on in the bedroom, 95 percent of the time, it’ll end up in traditional sex. However, when we’re just going through the day, a swat on the rear end or tweaking her collar so it jingles is a full substitute for a hug or a quick peck. On that level they’re interchangeable, but when we really get into it, then it generally ends up in sex.
There is a surreptitious agreement that the relationship is [very two-way]. [And] at least when her past is not really catching up with her, I do not believe that I’m really carrying the heavy end. She was sexually abused as a child and has nightmares. She talks in her sleep, and I have to hold and cuddle her and talk to her and reassure her and figure out what part of her needs reassuring.
[For me], having a woman standing naked in front of me and wearing my collar is the quintessential part of dominance: “I am master here, and she belongs to me.” Something that sort of got skipped in our very crowded life together would be having some kind of a D&S wedding, whereby Lisa would give herself [to me]. [In my earlier] fantasies, my generic submissive would give herself to me in a D&S marriage. She would come out dressed in something simple—not a big, fancy wedding dress—and she would drop it and be naked. She’d come over and kneel in front of me. I’d take her hand, and she would announce that she gives herself to me and is my property. I’d respond that I accept her. There would be some verbiage on both sides indicating love and caring—all the good stuff—and then I’d put a collar and a leash on her. Sometimes I would fantasize about branding her, [but] that was optional. Like a lot of people, the less you’re actually getting, the heavier your fantasies get.
I definitely feel that there is more that we want to do. At this point, we’re just getting back to the [intensity] that we reached around the time we got married. I finally quit my regular job. Now I’m working full-time on our business, and we’re starting to get it under control, so we’ve got time for each other again.
We need to figure out activities that we can carry on while still being business partners and not contributing any more to the town gossip than we already do. We need a means of making this a more full-time, always-felt D&S relationship. Unfortunately, we have kids in an open-plan house.
With children around, even if we were totally vanilla, we wouldn’t do any bedroom stuff without the door closed. On the other hand, we don’t make a big deal about it if she comes over and kneels next to me at the table or on the couch at night. She’ll wear the collar in front of them. The kids are four and six. Right now, we spend an awful lot of time explaining an awful lot of things [to them] anyway. Some of them are very hard for kids that age to grasp. We don’t want the practical difficulties of trying to explain sex, let alone a variation on sex, to a six-year-old. We have enough trouble explaining why he has to return library books.
D&S was something I really wanted. I don’t know if I can say I discovered it, but once I knew the right words [for it], I knew it was something that was a big part of me. D&S is not just in the bedroom for me. If anything, D&S keeps me from staying inside a shell and having armor between me and the rest of the world. When I’m feeling submissive, I’m more open: I feel things; I enjoy life. If I’m not and I’m in my own shell and feeling like I can’t be submissive or [that] it’s not being [elicited from] me, I tend to have a wall between me and the rest of the world. I don’t enjoy life in general.
I was abused as a kid. I had a single mother and small sisters who I watched. My mother worked two jobs. Starting in second grade, I put myself and the girls to bed. There was no parent around. The neighbor who I was supposed to go to if I needed anything molested me for years. As soon as we moved away, I blocked it out. It wasn’t until about 18 months ago that I started having memories. I wasn’t sure what they were. Then all of the years that it happened became rolled up into one memory. [For a while] I said, “Okay, it happened, and it was no big deal.” Then as I became more secure in my relationship with Frank and finally had time [to] deal with it, all of a sudden I started having flashbacks, and all the gory details came out.
When I first got into the relationship with Frank, I [felt that I] was hiding something and that he only loved me because he didn’t know everything about me. I believed that if he ever found out all of it, he wouldn’t love me anymore. Part of me said, “Either he takes me as I am or I’m not going to be here anymore.” Part of me wanted to shock him and wanted to say, “You think you love me, but do you know this? How do you look at me now?” When I could say that and he still came back and said, “I still love you, and the things that happened to you had nothing to do with who you are. I love you,” it gave me a lot of space to open up and to figure out what happened and how much it affected me and whether I’m going to let it affect me now.
Before I remembered my abuse, I used to say, “I don’t know why I’m turned on by being used. That’s just the way I am.” I didn’t remember any of that stuff ever happening to me. Then I start getting some flashbacks where I did remember stuff like that happening to me. Most of my abuse was oral sex. I don’t remember incidents of being spanked or anything like that. But there were books lying around that I would read when I was [about] nine years old, and they had a lot of spanking. I can remember reading those books and being aroused by them.
I bought a vibrator when I was in high school, and one of my biggest fantasies was being caught playing with it and being spanked. From freshman year till I graduated and went into college, that was my number-one fantasy. In my first marriage we would always talk about tying each other up and spanking each other. [But] I always did the tying up and the spanking; it never went the other way. We never said I was the dom or anything like that. We did things, usually at my suggestion, but he always took it to mean that that’s what I wanted to do to him, not what I wanted him to do to me. He said, “We’ll take turns,” but it never got to be my turn. I would picture myself in his spot, but I didn’t get real enjoyment out of spanking him or out of tying him up. It became very frustrating for me. I even bought a four-poster bed, thinking, Take a hint! He never did. I talk about it with him now, and it’s pretty funny. He never even got that idea.
I married my first husband right after high school. It was like being married to my brother. It was very platonic. We were best friends in high school, but we were never in love. It was just the thing to do. We were 18, and we didn’t satisfy each other very much. We didn’t have a whole lot of communication. Two years after we were married, we were joining swinging clubs. I don’t think either of us was satisfied. The men that I was attracted to in swing clubs were always aggressive. We probably went to a party once a month for three years. I enjoyed myself maybe four or five times, and each one of those times it was with somebody who was very controlling. I had one person one time pull my legs apart and give me head, and [he] kept telling me over and over, “The rules are [that] you can’t move.” I really liked that, [but] I never saw him again.
After I was separated for about a year, I was seeing other people, and I was totally frustrated. I kept saying, “I don’t want the same kind of marriage. I don’t want equal footing. I want somebody who is smarter than me, more aggressive than I am, more controlling.” I wasn’t finding him. I even went into counseling. I thought there was something wrong with me. I didn’t know anything about D&S, but I was definitely worried that if I really went ahead and did it, that I wouldn’t be able to take care of my kids [or] that I would get into an abusive relationship. I didn’t know that I could find somebody who could love me and beat me all in the same relationship. I was very concerned that I would even want that.
I joined CompuServe, and when I found the D&S support group suddenly, I met tons of dominant men. I got bombarded [with letters]. I met somebody who became my mentor. He did not pursue any sort of sexual relationship with me. He became somebody I could use as a sounding board. I had gotten to a point where I was really desperate. I had very low self-esteem. I was overweight, and my main criterion for meeting somebody was that they would meet me, not that they were necessarily interested in the same things that I was. I was excited and incredibly turned on, and I just didn’t care a lot about myself. I did some dumb things; I really did. You have to care enough about yourself to take precautions. Me, I had such a low self-esteem, I thought somebody was making a big sacrifice to do anything with me. I weighed 220 pounds, and I was five feet two. I thought that if somebody would meet me, boy, they would just be doing me the biggest favor in the whole world. It didn’t even occur to me that they could really hurt me. I was very unwilling to set any kind of guidelines or even to say that [the dominant] has to be sane. [One problem] could have been that a lot of my fantasies were very impersonal. It was always somebody who ordered things to be done no matter what I [felt]. So how could such a person like that be human and loving to me?
In the year or so that I was on line before I met Frank, I probably met at least 10 or 12 different people. I would always visit them. I never let anybody come to where I was. I was very frustrated, [because] all the people I met wanted me to not have kids. Somebody might be willing to have a sub, but I had to leave my kids with my ex, or they didn’t want me to work. I wasn’t happy with that. I’ve always worked. It’s part of who I am. I [even] met somebody who wanted to stick me in an apartment and bring me food and only take me out at certain times and that was it: no life of my own. What boggled me is that I knew that about him, and I still went and met him! I couldn’t stand a weekend over there.
I got to a point where I was really desperate for someone. I was warned that you have to really care about yourself before you start [in this], and you have to find someone else who cares about you. You really do. It can be dangerous. I got myself in some really, really tough situations. [For example], one of my fantasies is to go to bed with a black dom man. I thought, God, that’s all my fantasies rolled into one. I met somebody in Colorado who was black, and this mentor of mine kept telling me, “Lisa, don’t meet him! I think this guy is really into beating up white women.” I said, “Fine, it’ll be heavy; it’ll be what I’m looking for.” Of course, [my mentor] always turned out to be right. I basically got in way over my head. He did all the things you’re not supposed to do. I came back looking like raw hamburger. I was welted from the back of my legs all the way up my thighs, my back, the back of my arms. It was grim. I didn’t know what to do. My first thought was [that] I was absolutely psycho to let somebody do that to me. Why didn’t I run and hide and say I’m never going to do it again? Why was I still intrigued? I still had the thought that somewhere out there was somebody that would do it right. I went to the [emergency room for the bruises, and] they knew immediately what had happened. They had seen it before. The doctor recommended that I go to a counselor. He said he thought that masochistic people in general need psychological help. He said, “You’re going to commit suicide after a while if you don’t start taking care of yourself.” I was very angry at him, but he got me pointed in the right direction.
When I went back on line, I said that I was in a relationship. That let me read and learn and hear other people talk without being bombarded [by private mail]. I finally started to look for somebody who was human, somebody who gave me the sense that he was looking for somebody to love, not just somebody to beat. One thing that appealed to me in Frank’s messages was his [description of an] ideal [situation]. He said, “It really adds a lot when you’re bringing your wife flowers when she’s in collar and cuffs.” And I thought, Wow! Somebody would bring me flowers? I thought Frank sounded human and real and not like a jerk; it really appealed to me. I wrote to him. In the first letter I told him that I was actively looking for a D&S relationship, full-time. I said I’d been through a lot and I was finally getting smart and not meeting anybody, but that I was looking. I said, “From the sound of your messages, we seem to be looking for the same thing.” And I told him, “I’m laying it on the line. I’ve got two kids; I’m divorced; and I work as a computer person at a law firm.” And if he wasn’t interested, that’d be fine, because I told him I’m not compromising anymore. That was one of the first times that I thought I was getting my shit together, and somebody still responded. I was so amazed that he wrote back.
I have nightmares sometimes [and] flashbacks, and for me, the best way to get me through one of those is for him to completely take control of me, to hold me down and make me focus and be aware of who I am now, not where I was in the flashback. If Frank [were to] let me go off and be in my flashback, I get worse and worse, and I go farther and farther away. I think I need control to feel like he still loves me and pays attention to me. To dominate me you have to know every single thing about me. [Before], I wouldn’t open up and tell him things. I would change the subject if I felt like he was getting too close. A self-preservation instinct would emerge. But [I found that] the more honest I was, the more he knew about me, and the more he’d get inside my head, the happier I was. There was finally a point where I knew he’s not going to betray me and he’s not going to hurt me. He knows everything about me, he still loves me, and he still does all the things that I thought only somebody who could be distant and cool could do.
At times he doesn’t want to push me too hard, [because] I’ve had all these flashbacks. [Some] people say, “Give them space; leave them alone; let them go inside themselves and regain their control.” That doesn’t work with me. But if Frank can see it happening and can reach out and make me stay here, and make me be a part of this, then I get past it and things are really good. It doesn’t matter if I’m being pushed by lots and lots of pleasure, if he’s making me come over and over and over again—which he likes to do [and] which I like—there gets to be a point where I don’t want it anymore. I tend to go back into myself. It doesn’t matter how open I am to start with. And you’ve got to be able to be with me and see it happening and to go beyond that.
I like all kinds of control. [For example], I’ve always liked to go play with my vibrator; I’ve done that since high school. For a while he would say, “Fine, play with it.” I had to ask him, but if I did, I always got permission. I used to get irked! [And he’d say], “Why do you ask me if you don’t want me to say ‘Fine?’ ” We’ve had to be really honest with each other. I had to say, “I get disappointed if you say okay.” [Maybe] I wanted to know that he wanted to be a part of it. We had to be really blunt and honest with each other about everything.
We have beams above our bed. I had always wanted hooks above my bed. I like to hang upside-down. We were doing that last night. If we get the legs up high enough, then my back takes a lot of the weight. I can usually sustain that for a long time. That’s one of my all-time favorites. I feel very, very vulnerable. For me, if I can wiggle away, if I can squirm enough to where I feel like I have some control—even if it’s not the control of getting away, but the control of [deciding] where [the blow will] land—that’s too much control for me. But if I can’t wiggle away and I’m very vulnerable and very exposed and what’s going to happen is what’s going to happen and I can’t get away, then I get beyond just the pain, and things happen for me. He tied me up and left me outside last week, and when he made love to me afterwards, he said I was like an animal. I felt more uninhibited than I had ever felt.
Our regular—I call it our vanilla—sex is very loving and very affectionate. It’s something that we do on a routine basis, and there’s always elements of D&S in it, but it’s not real heavy. It’s good, but the times that I’m really involved and really turned on, it’s always very heavy D&S. Those are the times that I’m most uninhibited and most into [sex]. [And] I don’t even fantasize anymore: I remember. Our D&S experiences are the things that I think about, and they keep me excited. For me, D&S play is much more satisfying [than regular sex].
We [also] go for periods when he’s not letting me come from any sort of vanilla sex at all. He’s made me come from spanks, he’s made me come just from putting his fingers in my mouth and things like that, but I have to be feeling very, very submissive and to be in tune to myself. It can’t just happen any time. It’s a cumulative effect. When we go for a month without any sort of D&S anything, we go back 10 paces. My pain threshold goes way down, and I get frustrated. There has to be a continuum or I’m not going to orgasm from anything but very direct stimulation. But if [D&S] is a big part of our life, then I orgasm from other things.
I think the most memorable experience is probably the first time I orgasmed from being beaten. We had some child-free time, like two days in a row. We hadn’t had a whole lot of time by ourselves for weeks, and I spent a lot of time with him clothed and me naked, with just a collar. It’s hard for me to walk around [like that], but after a couple of hours of having no choice, it gets easier. It affects you psychologically. He told me the day before that he was going to beat me the next day. He tried other things first. I was tied up on the bed, and I know he used a paddle and a cat. He played with me a lot, and I had come several times already. Then he told me that he was going to beat me, and he used the riding crop, and I came. I don’t cry very often. I don’t know if it’s pride or what, but it takes a lot to make me cry from being beaten. It’s only happened two or three times, but I had gotten to where I was crying, and he still wouldn’t stop, and I ended up having an orgasm. I was shaking, crying, and coming at the same time. It was something!
It was also memorable when he left me [tied up outside]. It heightened all of my senses. I was sure I could hear cars. We’re way out in the woods, and I was hearing cars come up our driveway—they were probably down on [the highway], which is pretty far—but my senses were that much heightened. I was tied tightly, with my hands held pretty close to the tree. He said he was gone probably 20 minutes. [To me] it felt like hours, like forever; I thought he was never going to come back. [It was] a sunny day. [I was conscious of] the flies and the bees and the flowers. I could hear the wind in the trees. I had just been beaten, and I could feel the heat from the back of my thighs [and] the wind blowing on the welts. It was incredible.
I am [my husband’s] permanent slave. He owns me completely. At a specific point in time he accepted me as his slave and from that point onward, knowing fully what I was getting into, I agreed that he would make all the decisions about my life; that my property now became his property; that he can do with me whatever he wants, however he wants. The control started out pretty mild. Now that I’m in the third year of this relationship, it’s very slowly and gradually become stronger and more encompassing.
I don’t think [the average person] would recognize me if he met me, because I am—and come across as—a very competent, happy individual. I’m happier now than I ever have been. I’m more relaxed and confident than the great majority of people I meet. Most people I meet are living their lives dreaming dreams of what they wish could happen to them, what they wish they could be, and they’re not pursuing those dreams. I pursued my dream. I’ve gone for what I really wanted in my life and I’ve gotten it.
I used to consider myself to be a [committed] feminist. I’m completely for women’s rights in the sense of women doing what they want to do with their lives and having no group, including other feminists, tell them what they must do [or] be. I’ve read lots of things written by feminists against S&M and women submissives in particular. They don’t like the fact that some women choose to give their power completely to another person. That makes me very angry. It seems that some feminists are saying that I must choose their path instead of my path. I have a certain bitterness toward [politically correct] feminists; I consider myself to be a true feminist. I have made my own choices about my life. I have chosen what I know and believe makes me most happy. I am not conforming to anyone’s ideal of what I should be. I am a very powerful woman, powerful enough to fulfill my life’s dreams, something that few people do. If someone chooses to see this as giving in to the patriarchal society, she is seeing me on a superficial level and being purposely obtuse.
My earliest feelings about D&S happened when I was four or five. They weren’t fantasies, just feelings. I liked to serve my parents, do little favors for them. I liked to play the subservient role with the children that I played with. I organized games. We’d have a little competition, and whoever lost had to be the absolute slave of the winner for the entire day. I’d always make sure I lost!
I’ve had long talks with my master about [how my desires formed]. My ideas about this change all the time, but right now I believe it’s partially genetics. I don’t think the kind of childhood I had made me submissive. It was a bad childhood. Unlike many people, I think that my submissive feelings survived despite the abuse. The abuse should have shut me down, should have made me a very different person than I am now.
[As a child] I thought of myself as a special person. I thought I was very intelligent, but I was also very reserved and very shy. I was not like the other girls. I didn’t play with dolls. I didn’t join cliques. If I had a friend in school, and that was rare, it would just be [one] girl. I wanted to fit in because, in Catholic school, children who were different were ridiculed by the teachers, the nuns, and the [other] children. I hated standing out.
Through my teens and early 20s, I continued to have very lurid S&M fantasies. When I was 23 I got my boyfriend to act out some D&S with me. I’d read him parts of Story of O, and that would get him really hot. I told him that I’d like to live out something like that, and one day he took me by surprise. He cut a switch from a tree and tied my wrists to the ceiling and beat me with [it] and did some very humiliating things to me. I loved that. I was never more excited in my life! But the next day the bruises came up on my buttocks, and it scared him off completely. He thought that meant that he was a brutal and evil man, and he wouldn’t have anything else to do with S&M. I ended up staying with him for seven years after that and never could get my S&M desires fulfilled, although I constantly fantasized about [that episode] when we’d have sex.
I became aware of what I was [at] about the age of 29 when I had gotten on an Anne Rice kick. The Vampire books were very romantic, and there was an underlying theme of power in them. I soon came across the Beauty books. That was when a light bulb went off in my head: I realized that, yes! This is me! I’m submissive. I love S&M. I would love to live out the things that this woman is describing. I knew I had to seek it out.
To be submissive means to be willing to do someone else’s will. A feeling of sexual excitement is linked to that. I also get a feeling of doing what’s right for me, of being at home, of expressing my true personality. Lifestyle D&S also involves a great deal of trust. [My] bad childhood is not the kind of background that would make you trust anyone. I’m an extremely suspicious person. I have a hard time trusting men in particular. I was raped as a child, and to this day I haven’t gotten over this. I have a hatred and fear of men in general. My master is an exceptional man, and it is through his personality only that I am able to trust him to the degree that I do, which is almost absolute. The chains that bind me are not physical. [My husband’s] power over me has grown over the years. It’s a very subtle thing. It’s not something I can fully explain to someone who has had no taste for it. Sure, I could untie my collar and walk out in the middle of the night. But I won’t. It’s not a game I’m playing with myself.
I consider myself to be a three-way masochist. I’m a physical masochist: I like pain and I like cruelty in association with that pain. I’m an emotional masochist: I love humiliation, especially degradation. And I’m a mental masochist: I love power; I love someone being in control over me. In a lifestyle relationship I get all three. I have no rights in this relationship. I don’t have safe words. I’m not permitted to leave him, no matter what, unless I clearly and honestly think that I am in danger. I own no property anymore, except for a black leather rose which he gave me. That’s a tender joke between us: I have one possession, and it’s this little rose I keep on my vanity table. I’m told when to wake up in the morning. I’m told when to go to sleep. When I’m not working, he gives me my orders for the day. I’m allowed to make suggestions about what I’d like to get done, but I can’t insist. The final decision about what I do on any day is up to him. But often my suggestions are accepted.
In the evening I prepare his bed, get him water to drink, turn off lights, shut the windows. When I get into bed, I’m tied to the bed by a collar and a rope. I also have to wear a mask and earplugs at night, so there’s some sensory deprivation. I do most of the housework. When my master is in a mood to wash dishes, he will, but it mostly falls on me. I have to ask permission to eat, to drink anything except water, to use the bathroom, to make purchases. I carry no money except what he gives me. I turn my paychecks over to him. He handles all the finances. I have to curtsy upon entering and leaving his presence. I must come promptly when he calls. As far as my career is concerned, he decides which [free-lance] contracts I accept, although I’m allowed to give my input. He takes it into consideration. I have to keep my pussy shaved. I have to exercise three times a week to keep in shape. Oh, and when he pinches my nose, I have to say, “Beep! beep!” [So] that’s what my [daily] life is like, what it’s like being a slave.
My sex life is completely controlled by him. I’m not allowed to touch myself without his permission. And he gives [it] rarely. I used to masturbate three or four times a day—that was my routine. Not anymore. We do the things that he likes to do and I give my input. He controls what we do during [sex], but the most powerful aspect of that control is the control over my orgasms. If he gives me permission at a time when I’m not particularly in the mood, I [still] must come.
If I disobey him, I’m punished in a way I don’t like. Not with fun punishment, but with bad punishment. [I get punished] when it’s conscious and willful. [But] when it’s an emotional problem or something that he feels I’m not completely in control of, he will not punish me. Instead, we try to get to the roots of the problem. That works very successfully.
One of the hardest things is [that] I have to honestly tell him exactly what I’m thinking whenever he asks. That’s hard sometimes because I’m a very private person. I’ve always been very independent. It has taken me a long time to get used to being under this much control, to having my desires thwarted at times. The biggest sorrows that I’ve experienced as a permanent slave have had to do with the resistance that I’ve experienced and acted out in response to this control. I’ve had particular difficulty with aerobics. I’m a lazy person. I don’t like to exercise, yet my master insists I do that for my health. I get angry and emotional and stomp my feet and throw tantrums.
Resistance is particularly ugly. You treat your master like you would never imagine a slave should treat a master or a human being should treat any other human being! I get angry; I say vicious things. I fight him with all my might. In the end, though, we talk and we talk about why I’m resisting. We talk about the struggles that are involved. In the end I [always] end up submitting to his will.
I get this perverse delight in giving up my power completely and knowing that I am absolutely controlled by someone else. It’s this tingly feeling in my body, this shiver of delight. Another delightful part of [our] lifestyle relationship—the things I’m describing are very individualistic; they probably don’t resemble anyone else’s relationship—is I like being little. I don’t mean infantilism, but I like the aspect of our relationship in which my master is older—he is physically older than me by about 13 years and mentally older than me by about 50 years—[and] more experienced. I see him as a mentor and as almost a father figure. I like being small and childlike in his presence. That’s very pleasant to me.
In this relationship I’ve become a lot more emotionally healthy. My master respects individuality. He’s always respected my personality and not tried to crush it, although he certainly has the power to do so. He’s got a very powerful personality himself. [When my master makes a bad decision], it’s no big deal. I may get angry or upset, but he admits his mistakes. We talk about it, and it’s over in a few hours. [Sometimes] I argue with him vehemently about what I think is the right way to do things. Sometimes he changes his mind; often he doesn’t. He lets me get angry and express my reasons over and over, ad nauseam. But in the end, he decides.
Obedience is a big part of the lifestyle relationship for me. The more obedient I become, the more delightful the experience becomes for me. I think a person who is not in a permanent relationship doesn’t get that same feeling of obedience and joy. They may experience pain [or] humiliation, but it isn’t an ongoing thing that becomes deeper and deeper. My sexual feelings continue to intensify, and my feeling of being owned grows deeper.
I love serving my owner. I love doing things for him. I love having routines and duties that I must perform every day. I love when he dresses me up in this obscene French maid’s uniform he bought for me and I become Fifi, the French maid. My service to him takes on a more formal and ritualized aspect when I’m Fifi. My curtsies are much deeper and more frequent. If I drop something, if I misplace something, if I’m not quick enough, Fifi gets turned over his knee and gets a very painful beating. I love being a French maid! I like to be whipped and beaten in various ways. I really love being caned. We don’t do a lot of bondage. Instead, my master likes me to hold myself in place. I love having to maintain that position no matter how painful the cut of the crop or the bite of the cane. I love oral sex. In S&M it is real different than [in] vanilla. You’re servicing your master. You’re very aware that you’re trying to please him. With my ex-husband, I was aware that I was in control, orchestrating his feelings and his orgasm. With my master it’s the opposite. He’s controlling my head and my mouth and telling me exactly what to do, and I’m trying to serve him in the best way possible.
I distinguish between good embarrassment and bad embarrassment. Bad embarrassment would be where your boss calls you into her office and yells at you in front of other employees and makes you feel like shit. Humiliation and good embarrassment usually involves some kind of exposure, physical or emotional. I like having my bottom exposed and talked about and played with. I like it when my master beats me and I squirm around on the bed and inadvertently expose my vaginal lips and shake and squirm in all kinds of embarrassing ways. Humiliation is a wonderful thing. In S&M you know that the person isn’t doing it to hurt your feelings. A masochist gets sexual excitement from experiencing physical pain, and humiliation is a form of emotional pain. There’s a small element of exhibitionism in humiliation, but true exhibitionists don’t like to be humiliated. They like to show off the parts of their bodies that they’re proud of. In humiliation, you get parts of your body exposed that you like to keep private. It gives me a real thrill to be embarrassed in that way. I blush; I giggle; I turn red. If I had my own free choice, I wouldn’t walk around with the bottoms of my Dr. Demons undone.
[This is the first time] I’m close enough with someone that I can loosen up and relax and be silly. I see the part of his personality that is fun and playful. I’ve become more relaxed and more myself than I have in any other relationship with any other person in my life, including my family [and] an ex-husband who I was with for over a decade. If you’re with the right person, miracles can occur.