Reverie

He was thinking of me all morning.
He told me so himself.
He was thinking all morning
of the soft, sweet undersides
of my soft, pale breasts.

He was gentle.
Kind and soft and sweet and gentle.

I'd been afraid. All through my period of struggle, as I thought of what would happen if we cleared away the underbrush and thorns, I thought of his return and was afraid. I pictured him in a fury. I've seen him in a fury, the beast broken free, I've felt his fury landing hard against my flesh, hands and cane and the flogger that he broke as he beat me at some time in the past. I feared the hard slaps to my face, feared the bruises he would leave for others to see and wonder about. I feared the marks although, in fact, none of his slaps have ever left betraying bruises.

He knows what he is doing, this man who holds me captive as surely as if I were locked in a cage.

I yearn for the cage.

Not a real one. I suspect it wouldn't match the sense I'm looking for. Longing for. But a cage nevertheless. Tight. Confining. Limits clearly visible. Vulnerability clearly stated as I spend my days naked in his cage, nothing for protection. As if I wanted protection.

It wouldn't matter anyway.
I have no choice.

In truth, I think that neither of us has a choice. There is something mystical in the connection that binds us both. I never had a chance once he found me - but he never had a chance, either. And he knows it. We both know it.

It was a reunion.
A re-union.
A sweet and soft and gentle union.
Mouths and hands and
the sweetest of cocks
and my pussy of velvet,
spreading and flowing
and calling him home.

I love you, Sir.
In truth,
in the fullness of who we are,
I love you.

The battle to submit to my need to submit

I couldn't sleep well tonight. Are you surprised? I went to bed 1 minute early (I can do that at least), lay there, fidgeted, turned on the light, read a bit of Nick Hornby's Juliet, Naked), relaxed to sleep with both cats cuddled close, only to wake up again around 3-something to pee and then keep my mournful self company with the computer.

I'm wrestling with myself. With myself and my so-called submission. After my quick failure yesterday evening, I wouldn't be surprised if the sadist says he's had enough. He has battled my resistance before. This is nothing new. The incidents may seem small, but they are telling. We spoke the other night of what he considers the crucial point in the movie Secretary, when Mr. Grey gives Lee precise instructions as to what she may eat.

4 peas.

He tells her exactly what he wants and she does it.
Yes, it is arbitrary.
But it is the central point of the relationship.
He tells her what he wants and she does it.
He tells her quite clearly.
It is what HE wants.
And she gives it to him.

It does sound awfully one-sided that way. But it isn't. Because obviously this serves her needs, too. As it does mine. Lee and I both appreciate - no, need - the structure. It makes me feel safe. Even though the sadist scares me - and probably should scare me even more - he makes me feel safe by the scaffolding he has been trying to build around my life. Trying his damnedest, despite my persistent resistance. Resistance that was far greater and more commonplace - both to his will and in other areas of my life - than I realized until now.

Throughout the last 2 years, he often used the same example in explaining the value of getting a submissive to do or accept something unpleasant. To order a person who adores ice cream to eat a whole pint neither teaches, nor enforces, nor proves anything. But each night, as I scurried around in a panic, trying to get the light turned out on time, by the exact minute he had specified, I was reminding myself of the commitment I had made, of the focus of my life, of what I had willingly accepted as being important - to do as he ordered. To give him what he wanted. Which he could count on my doing, whether he was there or not. And when I struggled against making a daily schedule, and keeping to it, something which in fact would be very good for me, I was putting (what I thought were) my own needs above his wishes.

Consistently, I have done those things that I liked, that were convenient, that were pleasurable, that appealed to me, and resisted others that for whatever reason or no reason at all I did not want to do. Not because they were dangerous or stupid or illegal or any other rational reason. But just because I seemed to need to resist. (This is over and above things that I screwed up because of my ADD. That's a whole other problem. But put them all together and they did horrible things for the fiend's blood pressure.)

So why, you may ask, am I suddenly writing all this at what was around 5 o'clock in the morning when I began?

In my early morning resumed insomnia, after playing a few rounds of Addiction Solitaire, I went to check out some of my favorite blogs. And came across this new post from Vesta on the issue of power exchanges (do go read it). The topic is different from mine, as she is discussing the concept of deciding for someone else what is in that person's best interest. But something she said caused a gigantic floodlight to be illuminated in my head. I started a little comment which threatened to become inappropriately long. Here is what I wrote:

Thank you. I find this particularly thought-provoking as I realize how hard it has been over the past 2 years to submit to even the smallest things unless I want to or feel like. Not that these things are bad or unreasonable. It's just that I seem to *need* to resist. Almost on principal.

Which, in fact, is probably exactly what it is. Both in my submission and in other areas of my life - in areas and on issues where it is quite inappropriate.

From what you've said, I suddenly see that I am fighting old battles. My awareness of the battles isn't new - just my awareness of how they are playing out again and again.

Your example of your son and soccer really hit home. You were open to recognizing what he did and didn't want. My parents never were.

This is becoming too long, so I think I'd better continue it over at my place. But thank you ever so much for illuminating things for me. Whether it can save my relationship with the sadist, I don't know. It may be too late. But perhaps it can help me in other ways as I go on with my life.

Where I stopped writing, before deciding to write more fully here in my own place, was as I was getting into a discussion of my mother's blindness to my desires and needs when they conflicted with her own strong opinions. We're not talking life-threatening things here. What did it matter if she let me get the frilly party dress I wanted? The one that would have let me look like the other little girls? What did it matter if I got to take the ballet classes I wanted rather than the modern dance that she felt would be better for me? The interesting point there is that she preferred modern because it was freer, less regimented, less confining, whereas I think something in my little girl's soul knew instinctively that I needed the greater structure of ballet. Certainly, I knew that this was what I wanted to look like. But she never asked me. Never. And I honestly can't remember if I ever spoke up and told her.

So in the end, I think I have ended up with this odd dichotomy. On the one hand, I am still yearning for the structure of ballet. The structure that the sadist keeps trying to impose. On the other hand, I am still fighting for autonomy, resisting the very chains that make me feel safe. The cage I want to crawl into, a small kitten seeking the safety of captivity.

No wonder he has asked again and again if I really want to make a commitment to serving him. And before you all pile on to attack him and how you think he treats me, do believe me when I say that the issue is not this one man. This one sadist. This most remarkable, intelligent, challenging, stimulating, perceptive, awe-inspiring and, yes, dangerous man. The problem is my own. It is getting in my way. I am always fighting authority, as a compulsion, even when it is not necessary. Always needing to assert my own, individualistic view on things, even when it isn't that important. Even when it is counter-productive. Even when it affects my professional life and non-bdsm personal life.

Whatever happens now - and I fear the worst - for my general happiness in so many different things, I need to get this sorted out.

I need to make peace between my own, internal, warring demons.

Doubting my own submission

Sometimes I think I'm not really submissive.

Oh yes, there are all those grand feelings, the romantic statements about being owned and soft and yielding and serving his pleasure and accepting the (very moderate amounts of) pain and being fucked by his friends and all that sort of thing.

But when it comes down to something simple,
a simple order,
a clearly defined limit,
I can't seem to pull it off.

I think too much. I complicate things for myself. I know I should do just this, and then start thinking but no in this situation I'm always supposed to do THAT, so I had better do THAT.

And of course I am wrong.

Utterly wrong.

I think too much and not enough.
I read too fast.
I don't really listen.
My mind races ahead and I get things wrong.

For those of you who would defend me or attack him, I appreciate your thoughts. I appreciate your intentions. But it is clear to me that it is more than just whether or not I can satisfy the demands of the fiend. Demands which really, when it comes down to it, are not that extreme. Demands which I have screwed up again and again. Very simple expectations. Nothing weird or exotic. Write this. Report that. Practice this technique. Remember what I have told you. Remember this position. Remember how I like to have my cock sucked. And is it too much to ask to go to bed at 11:10 rather than at 11:13?

We are not talking anything very exotic here. Just simple demonstrations of obedience that in their preciseness, more than any declarations of devotion, says everything.

But my problem is definitely greater than that. I look back at my life, in school, at different jobs, in conversations, and I see the same problems. Not really listening, or responding to things too fast. Always needing to argue, to protest, to show how clever I am, to want to do it my own way. Totally incapable, when it really doesn't matter, of saying yes. I will. I will do that. I will do that the way you have told me to. And then get it done. On time.

I have screwed up again, with one simple phrase, and wouldn't be surprised if he washed his hands of me. If he decides it wasn't worth the effects on his blood pressure. If I can't do one simple thing right, how can he believe that I am truly as willing to serve him as I say I am.

Am I truly capable of properly serving anyone?
Whether as a submissive or as an employee?

I am in deep despair.

Subdued

- Sometime this weekend you will post on your blog the fact that you have displeased me
- at a very inopportune time
- causing me yet another rewrite of your plan (which I am beginning to believe holds me slave more than you)
- and invest yet more time I DON'T FUCKING HAVE

I am including this verbatim texted command from the sadist not to indicate that I am writing this post under protest, but to make it clear how angry and definite he was. For I did, in fact, displease him. More than once. Not deliberately. I would never aim to rile him. My body has met his fury before, and I suspect will meet it again when he decides I am re-trained enough to be ready for a visit.

So I am not writing under protest. In fact, I must learn not to protest. Not to argue. Not to amplify. Not to give him more than he wants. I must learn simple obedience. You would think that after 2 years I would have fully absorbed that lesson. But I lost my way.

There has been, as he terms it, a sunderance. We both felt it. He said it wasn't a question of one of us or the other, but of what lay between us. And in that I think he is most surely right. The connection between us weakened, and the effect that had on each of us made it weaker still until I became conscious of - and distressed by - what he had known for quite some time.

I have already written of his visit a week ago. Of how he had me meet him at the door with the cane, knowing that the order would catapult me into that place from which I had wandered without knowing the way back. I no longer felt his constant presence. I was no longer living every moment in some version of my own particular subspace - that magical other world in which everything was seen and felt through the lens he provided me. I was worried. I had angered him with messages asking if I had done something wrong. It wasn't the lack of messages. There have been times when I've received barely 2 words from him for days but I haven't been distressed because I felt him always with me. I lived in the space he created for me. But I hadn't been feeling that... and I think that led to my not taking his standing orders as seriously. To my not obeying as precisely. And to my not immediately confessing that I had gone to bed 2 minutes after curfew - even though I know that the details of the order are crucial. Being able to obey precisely. Even if the order seems arbitrary.

It is all about obedience.
About details.
About sacrificing myself to his will.

I do know that.
But it wasn't registering.
I had forgotten.
I had lost my way.

I don't know where it began, whether with him or with me or on both sides as a reaction to one thing or another. But I think he felt a lack of commitment on my part - which he interpreted as a lack of commitment to him and to my submission and to the relationship, whereas I was, it is true, becoming lazy and sloppy about obeying perfectly rituals (such as bedtime and scheduling) which I found to be a chore. I think I felt less of his constant presence, because of his disconnect from me, which made me feel less connected and made me lose the sense of urgency about obeying to the last precise detail. Again, I think it was a chain reaction for which I cannot pinpoint a beginning cause. But it happened. It continued. And then this week, because I was in a very bad mood due to this and that and the other thing, it all came out in the open.

I'm not going into the details of why I was so grumpy.
They are irrelevant.
They are irrelevant to my need to obey.
They are irrelevant to my need to think only of what will please him.
They are irrelevant to my need to accept.
To not argue.
To not show how clever I am.

I have been grief stricken. Devastated. Weeping from deep within what I thought was my submissive soul but which obviously had not completely gotten the message. I took these for granted. I took our connection for granted. He does spoil me. He opens up to me on rare and precious occasions and reveals his weaknesses, his pain, his doubts. As we e-mailed back and forth on Friday, he spoke of damage to the mystical aspect of our relationship (while reassuring me that I was too good a cocksucker for him to discard me at the moment.) I'd never thought of it that way - as mystical - but I knew there was something special.

At least he hasn't given up on me. Although I wouldn't blame him if he did. His words made me see clearly so many things. I do always feel the need to add more. To show how clever I am. To rationalize and intellectualize and protest and argue and insist on seeing things my way and that I have sound reasons for my viewpoint whereas he (or anyone else, for that matter) just hasn't taken everything into account or thought it all through in the most sensible and/or creative way. I can be absolutely unbearable.

The most important point of all that is that it doesn't matter if objectively he is right and I am wrong. This relationship is not a democracy. It is not an equal partnership. He is God and I am dust and if he gives a little puff I must let it blow me in the direction he desires. That and nothing more and nothing less.

We e-mailed and texted last night as well as during the day. He is now devoting an excessive and unavailable amount of time to me. Not to mention rewriting the plan. When you remember that he has other other submissives to both direct and enjoy, plus an overly busy life beyond his collection, you can appreciate how justifiably irked he is. Plus I have some suspicions as to the events which he has had to postpone, causing disappointment to people beyond the two of us.

So he has said we will try to rebuild. Slowly. I am back to calling him Sir, which seemed more appropriate at this point even before he required it. This morning was spent getting me to limit myself to three phrases:

Yes, Sir.
No, Sir.
I'm sorry, Sir.

Given how loquacious I am, you can imagine the struggle. But it was good for me. I got the point. And more than that, I felt pushed back down to living at his feet.

Already, on Friday night, he quickly brought me back to what we both refer to as that place. I had lost my way, and was horribly scared and distressed, but he quickly sent me back there. He always knows exactly what to do and say. I was there in an instant and, more important, felt the connection again.

However, as he said, that was the easy part. It will take much more than that for him to feel the same way as he did before.

I do hope he can again feel the same way.

So there we are. I am chastened and subdued and cautious and trying better than my best to be perfectly obedient. I am sitting down in the dungeon, laptop toasting my bare thighs - because he ordered me to spend the evening naked as much as was possible. Ideally, he said:

- you should actually be naked, as much as possible, when involved in any process which concerns me, including thinking
- which I have probably only told you about 1000 times

Which, I had to admit, I didn't remember his ever having told me at all.

So I am naked now. Which makes me feel very vulnerable. Not to mention a little chilly. Which of course makes my damn nipples extra hard and protuberant.

Back to the beginning again.

I did displease him.
And he had the right to be displeased.
And I feel awful at taking for granted everything he has done for me.
All the time he has spent on me.
All the effort he has put into training me and molding me.
And all the joy he has given me...

You may notice that I have added a small statement to the furnishings of the blog, right below my profile. It reads as follows:

Give him what he wants
and NOT
what he doesn't want.

That seems a more than reasonable motto for a submissive poet pet to live by.

Hard times come again once more

It has not been a good week.
On many fronts.
I don't feel like writing.
So I won't.
Not now.
Eventually.
I suppose.

o.g.

"Meet me at the door with the cane."

Saturday was Daddy's day. A reunion, after my week-long road trip north. And the first time we had been together since he carved his initial into my left butt check with the back of the blade of his green-handled folding knife.

I really didn't know what to expect. It's best not to make assumptions. We have been discussing his multiple facets, and even he doesn't know who will turn up at my door and who will leave at the end.

Would it be my Daddy, with the sweetest, warmest smile any little girl could ever want? Daddy is affectionate and nurturing even when he needs to spank me, or to warn me that if I don't do exactly as I'm told he will do those bad things to me.

Would it be any of the incarnations of my teacher? My mentor? The sadist? All of them would guide me, would lead me through the day's lesson, would require me to administer to his cock's insatiable needs. Each of them would elicit a different honorific, or one after the other, changing as the visit progressed. Such as Sir. Or my Lord. And then usually, these days, flowing back into Daddy unless I have been specifically ordered to call him something else. When I am feeling closest to him, I always call him Daddy.

Or would it be the beast? The beast whose name I know now. The sadist briefly opened the curtains on the beast Friday night a week and a half ago, while I was away. He wrote me about the beast, and some of his adventures, in a way he so rarely allows himself to do but seems to sometimes need to do. I should be horrified by those peeks he gives me, but I end up loving him more.

I end up wanting to cradle his head in my arms and protect him.

I'm a silly girl.
It's not safe to walk trusting into the lion's cage.
Especially when you don't know when he had his last meal.

In any case.

My housemate was going away for the weekend. Leaving early Saturday morning. The fiend would come sometime later that morning.

I love when he comes on the weekend. It usually means he can stay a little longer. Already, since I'm not working, I'm freed from the strict half hour time limit and spared having to rush back to work still carrying the physical, emotional, and endorphic (is that a word?!) effects of his visit, giving up the luxury of wallowing in whatever state he has left me.

I admit to having been a little nervous. What bothered me most was that being away from him, even with e-mails and texts - including one extended texting conversation last that Sunday night as he sat outside on his porch, drinking and listening to music - had left me feeling... How to describe it? Perhaps as if a high were wearing off. Not completely gone, but not so immersed. My feelings were the same, I still loved him and was committed to him and all, but... I think I am always more or less in some version of subspace, but by the time I came home I couldn't find my way back.

And I knew it. The day before I was coming home, he had told me to try not to think about him. Of course, it was impossible to completely avoid thinking about him. But I could declare off limits the long periods of immersing myself in memories and speculation that normally fill much of my day, even while doing other things. Especially since I was needing to give attention to other people.

Perhaps that is why I fell so far out of my permanent residence in subspace. Because I was with other people so much of the time I was away, and needed to interact with them. Normally I spend so much of my time alone that it is easy to live in that place he has established as my home.

The next day, the day after abstaining from thoughts of the fiend, the day I was driving home, I was supposed to feel his pull. And I couldn't do it. I didn't feel it. And driving back, my mind was on all sorts of other things, not letting itself sink back into thoughts of him.

I was uneasy.

He knows everything.
He perceives everything.
From a word that is said,
from a word that is missing,
he knows everything.

Somehow,
he knew I wasn't really there.
I wasn't really back.
I wasn't really curled up
at his feet
in the well of his desk,
thinking of nothing
but being
whatever
he wanted me to be.

So that morning,
last Saturday,
the morning of his visit,
he sent the following instructions:

Arrange my chair in front of a TV; turned on, sound low, tuned to the ball game.

Meet me at the door with the cane.

I read his message
and in and instant
I was there.

I was home.

I was home
and I was worried.

Not submissive enough? What then?

sin asked "How do I become more submissive? How do I give him more of what he wants?" - directing her question to "you truly submissive women and men."

This elicited a spate of comments, which are worth reading. Typically, my own comment was rather different from the others - and not, perhaps, what sin was expecting to hear.

Comments, anyone? Not just on what I wrote, but on the issues themselves.

• What is a "true submissive"?
• Does such a creature actually exist?
• What does it mean to be not submissive enough?
• What can be done about it?

And here is what I had to say:

"True submissives."

I am always leery of labels. But there is no denying that I am inherently very submissive. So I guess I qualify.

But all we can do is speak from our own, personal experiences. There is no one way to be submissive. To feel submissive. And there is no one way for someone to be dominant. There is no One True Road to a satisfying D/s relationship.

But here is what has happened with me. It hasn't just been me pushing myself to change, to yield, to give more, to sink deeper. The sadist has brought me to where I am. He has a plan. A long, detailed, ever growing and evolving plan. For real! It is written down, with specific steps leading to specific goals. In an orderly fashion, he has been exploring different aspects of who I am, what he has seen in me, who he wants me to be with him, what he wants me to do. Sometimes when he visits, it is purely to serve his pleasure. But often his visit is a lesson, part of the process, and he has worked out ahead of time what he will do and what he expects to achieve.

Yes, I work hard for him. Yes, I have grown and changed and also embraced things that were already deep inside me that I never knew were there. Realizing I was his baby girl is a prime example of that. He brought me to the point that I saw it myself - something he had seen when he first discovered me. And it took 2 YEARS to get to that point. If he had just said back then, or even a year ago - "Call me Daddy and be my baby girl", I would have had a very hard time following through.

I am his project.
I am his creation.
He nurtures what I am.
He trains me to please him.
He leads me into degradation.
He makes me flirt with my destruction.
He scares me half to death.
And he makes me yearn for more.

But I don't go there on my own. He shows me the way. And - another important point - he changes the plan when he sees that it isn't working. He complains, but he goes back and rewrites and redirects and slows down and eventually ends up where he wants to be anyway.

So I am not the one making myself more submissive. He does that. And by so doing, makes me want to yield more - and lures me into giving him information that allows him to further tighten the chain around my neck.

PS - I should note that he has well over 30 years experience - as a dom and as a rather extreme sadist. In that time, he has had many submissives and slaves, and currently has 3 others that I know of.