My First Dom

i will call him dominick.

which is not his real name. i don't know his real name. it's not his e-mail name, either. he asked me not to use that, which is a pity, because i couldn't make up anything i like as much. it has a grace, an implication of superiority finished off with an arabesque that gives the whole a touch of wry self-deprecating humor.

dominick responded to my craigslist ad perhaps an hour after the philosopher did. and his response froze me in my seat and seared my conflicted erotic soul.

i was very shy and, frankly, embarrassed about my fantasies of bondage and spankings and whippings. i couldn't bring myself to weave them into my ad in any blatant fashion. the best i could manage was a reference to "pushing our fantasies to their edge" and hoped this nearly invisible signal would lure the demons i sought.

when i asked later, each of the sadists denied noticing anything to make them think i was open to their fantasies of pain and dominance. but somehow, of the four best writers, three were admitted devotees of bdsm to some extent, and the fourth revelled in maintaining a stunning level of control of erotic encounters.

dominick was the last of the three doms to respond, but the first to mention ropes and pain. the philosopher's screen name and e-mail address referred to cruelty and The Story of O, but his words, while arousing and poetic, contained no hint of what simmered beneath.

i wish i could share dominick's words with you, but here, too, he asked me to hold back. there is the possibility that he might start his own blog, and he wants to reserve first right of refusal for himself. i do hope he starts one. there are relatively few doms with blogs, and fewer still with dominick's spare writing style and introspective clarity.

control screams from his words, in his message entitled merely "Words." he was miserly with his words. precise. i suspect that his bondage style is the same, using no more rope than is needed to get the job done, but with each wrapping around wrist and ankle lying in perfect proximity to its neighbor, each knot precisely placed for security, stimulation, and aesthetic effect.

dominick was the inspiration for my obsession with the possible existence of a dominant aura. if i met this man, if i didn't already know his tastes, would i feel his nature encircling my throat and my cunt? would i detect an aura of command in his voice as we volleyed meaningless phrases? if he placed his hand in the small of my back to lightly steer me through a door, would i welcome it as a sign of possession?

i have not met dominick in person, and by now we know too much about each other for a blind taste test to be feasible. i did meet dom #2, whose response popped up just minutes before dominick's. dom #2, whom i will call harry, became obsessed with fucking my ass, the virginity of which obsessed me, too. he wrote well, we corresponded for a while, and i finally agreed to meet him for lunch in a public place. i was already falling in love with the philosopher, but curiosity got the better of me. i knew i had no intention of ceding my ass, or any other body part, to anyone but the man who now owns me. still, the lunchtime rendez-vous seemed a good way to pursue my research.

the lunch was not a great success. i was nervous from harry's aggressive e-mail pursuit of me. dominick's detachment and meager correspondence were much more enticing than harry's oft-stated desire to claim me with shibari and buggery. physically, he did not attract me. i had expected this from his photo and age (about 5 years older), but one look confirmed it.

what ultimately killed the search for signs of obvious dominance and invalidated any results i might have gleaned was that harry, sensing my trepidations, decided to deliberately repress any gestures of dominance he might otherwise have displayed. unfortunately, this also served to distance his physical manifestation from his epistolary personality. we haven't met since, though i do still receive occasional testimony to my continuing existence as a source of erotic wishful thinking.

i always wondered why dominick never showed any interest in meeting, unlike most of the men who wrote me. i sometimes picked up an unidentifiable impression of distance, but decided that must mean he lived in one of the northern virginia suburbs of dc. to a resident of the maryland suburbs, that was as good as living in the antipodes, due both to misperceived physical distance and to virginia's general antipathy to gay rights and other liberal causes. dominick's use of "whilst" hinted at a british background of some flavor, and it turned out he was indeed originally from the antipodes. only recently did i discover that, like the philosopher, he was cruising craigslist that night from another city when he stumbled on my message in an online bottle.

our conversation continued in fits and starts. replies from him were rare but always welcome. they challenged me, they excited me, and they educated me. he bombarded me with questions. my answers clarified my desires and, i suspect, stimulated his own. it was dominick who inspired in me the specific desire to be spanked with a belt, which occupied my fantasies until the philosopher finally splashed his own belt across my buttocks, to the delight of us both.

i do have permission to share the rest of our correspondence, along with a story he wrote for me, which i will do over time after confirming his assent to each piece. we still write each other, as friends of a sort, i suppose. i update him on the progress of my relationship with the philosopher, and his replies and questions and interpretations of my experiences feed my unquenchable desire to understand. he does read this blog, and i hope he is pleased with my representation of our mutual dealings. if he feels moved to comment publicly i will be delighted, but have no expectations of that. one does not have expectations of such a man.

he is, after all, a dom.