Thank you, Ma’am, may I have another?

A year ago, when I first admitted to my wife that I wanted to submit sexually to her, I remember trying to clear the air, to clarify that what I wanted wasn’t that crazy. I remember wanting to point out that what I wanted wasn’t so “out there,” and I did so by pointing out that what I wished for was for her to take charge. But I wasn’t into pain. I didn’t want her to spank me or hit me with a whip. Licking boots and bowing my head is downright acceptable! I’m not a freak.

But sometime during the two or three weeks between our first scene and her flying down for our second, I recalled how much she used to love chasing me around the house and swatting my ass when we first started living together. “You have such a cute tush!” she’d say as I got out of the shower. “I just want to smack it!” And we’d play grabass and I’d run and she’d chase and then we’d fall into the bed and just be sunny-happy vanilla lovers.

And I thought, she likes smacking my ass. So why not ask if she’d like to spank me? Because I want to please her, and I know she’s always been disappointed that I don’t let her smack my ass more often in a playful way. And during the next phone call we had, I asked her if she’d like to spank me during our next scene, and I remember her response…total silence, and then a guttural, almost forced, “…Yes. God, yes.” And since then…

And since then, S&M has been a part of our life. That next scene involved her holding me against the wall, my hands up and crossed and shackled, ankle cuffs biting into my legs, as she spanked me with her hands. She smacked me for the first time during sex later that day, her face serene as she swung as hard as she could, and in the car she’d hit me at every red light as a game. I remember getting off so much on being struck — every blow she swung made my cock throb, made me hotter and hotter until I was dizzy and stupid and begging for more. And then she’d pull back, half teasing me, half scared, I think, that all of a sudden I was this glutton for punishment — punishment that made her sopping wet.

The next trip, it was a belt, and nipple clamps. Then, the clamps went onto the skin around the shaft of my cock, pulling it taut and out in odd directions, and then they went on my balls, stretching out the sack. I remember once, she had about eight large clamps on me, two pulling out my nipples, dragging across the bed as she fucked me, three on my cock, three on my balls, all of them agonizingly painful as they bumped against me and the bed as she plowed into me with her cock.

After that, we bought a flogger and a riding crop. She began hitting places other than my ass — my thighs, my back, my face with the crop. My balls. My cock. She started scratching. Pinching. This last time, we pulled a curtain rod down, and it’s now a permanent part of the arsenal — our switch.

I called myself her pain slut one day in a chat, a fact I regretted as soon as I’d come. (Everything is a good idea when I’m horny. Every sexual misadventure I’ve ever landed in has been because my IQ drops to about 50 in the presence of my wife while I’m aroused. Dizzy, stupid, drunk arousal. Can’t think. I’ll do whatever she says. One day I’ll come to consciousness surrounded by a rugby team, and my wife will give me a bashful shrug and point out that I agreed to it at the time.)

But she loved the term pain slut — the idea that somebody could be a slut for pain drove her mad with desire. I craved pain. I needed it. It gets me off — if she wants me to come, she knows she just needs to start tearing at my nipples, pulling and pinching and scratching, and then, when I’m right about to go over the edge, hit me across the face as hard as she can. Gush. For both of us.

But how did we get here? Why do I get off on pain? Sometimes, I stop and wonder and think, “What changed? Why is pain so fucking hot?” Pegging is natural — it’s a cultural taboo, but the prostate is real, the pleasure I get from her ramming into me isn’t just because she’s topping me. It’s because it feels fucking good. Dominance is psychological pleasure, but it makes sense — it gets me off. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t get me off.

But pain — pain hurts. Pain should not be pleasurable. Pain should not make me sigh with ecstasy when she starts in with the flogger. Pain should not be something I yearn for after a long, stressful day at work. The day before yesterday, I spent the day in meetings and getting stressed about upcoming issues with the job, and on the way I home, I thought wistfully: You know what would make me feel better? Getting whipped. And when I told my wife that I was stressed, she knew what her little pain slut would want if she were around. “I know what you could use,” she said. “A nice whipping.”

Nice. Whipping. Two words that emphatically do not go together. Except they do. They so do. I fucking crave it. I need it so bad. I’m dizzy aroused right now thinking about the kiss of the flogger, the bite of the crop, the red-slash of the switch across my ass. The way she digs her fingernails in and pinches the muscles of my arm or my ass, or pinches the shaft of my cock. The way she scratched bloody furrows in my chest once, and then the sting of piss as she held me down and peed on them. Pain is so fucking wonderful.

There’s nothing in my history that makes me understand why I want pain. Why I need it now. Why I am, quite literally, addicted to it. I would do anything to be beaten by her again. She tells me not to worry, and I don’t — she tells me to accept that it’s part of who I am now, and I do. It’s part of who we are: the dominant sadist and the submissive masochist. And she’s right, it’s who we are to the point that our entire conception of vanilla sex has shifted to accept it. But sometimes, I wonder what switch got flipped that turned me into somebody who unironically uses the word “pain slut” while begging for sex. How I went from shuddering at the thought of people hurting one another to getting sexually frustrated if I haven’t been hit in a while.

And how far I still have to go…