Dropping the Ball

I’m now at the house with my wife after several days of driving and various tourist-style misadventures up the East Coast.

I could talk about ball-slapping, which she decided she enjoyed; or the full-fledged interrogation scene we roleplayed out, with me as the spy working for an agency trying to shut down my wife’s criminal empire. We could talk about all sorts of things that happened, including the power of simply being blindfolded, which we’ve found marvelously powerful.

But what I really want to talk about is the other night, before the interrogation scene, when we were just fooling around. I was laying on my chest on the bed, and my wife was lying next to me, her leg over mine. She was almost reclining on her side, and my head was turned away from her. She would lazily reach over and scratch me, or pull my hair, or dig her fingernails into my buttocks and pull and pinch until I was screaming a bit. She whacked me on the balls. And she’d spank me, hard swats to each cheek, alternating with carresses, so I never knew what to expect.

It sounds like foreplay. It sounds like a game we’ve played any number of times. But for some reason — and I can’t explain it — something was off. Really off. And every time she touched me, I jumped. Not in the normal, hot, “Ohmigod, what will happen next?” way, but in a pure kind of panicky fear. I started throwing my arms back to catch her hand as she moved it, trying to redirect her, trying to keep her from hitting me. I started getting really fearful, felt my chest tighten, and it wasn’t working at all.

I probably could have told her, but our daughter was off in another hotel room with her grandparents, and this was stolen time. I didn’t want to ruin it. But it just got worse, and my fear started rising, and I’d jump and get nervous every time she moved. The pain — for the first time since we’d started playing with it in seven or so months — was hurting in a way that wasn’t arousing. I wasn’t hard. I was nervous and in the buildup to what felt like a full-fledged anxiety attack.

But I didn’t want to ruin it. I didn’t want to be the one to mess it up. And I don’t know if — at the time — I could articulate why this particular light play was causing me to be anxious and fearful rather than hot and bothered.

I hoped — really, really hoped — that I could work through it. And eventually, I did. We moved on from the informal “just fooling around phase” and she took a leather cord, noosed me with it, bound my balls and cock with the other end, and started choking me and hurting my genitals simultaneously. And oddly enough, as I felt my breath get harder to draw and my cock and balls ache and throb, the anxiety went away and — this is hard to explain — she became more prominent. My fear receded as her control became more pronounced.

She leaned into my ear and said, “I hear you’ve been keeping secrets…” and the interrogation began. I was still jumpy, still nervous, but by the time she threw me against the wall and began beating me — very, very hard — with the flogger, the nervousness was completely gone. By the end of the scene, it was forgotten.

But still, it’s the first time it’s happened, and it’s like freezing up during a speech or under fire — it doesn’t matter that it was a one time thing, you start wondering if it will happen again. Something that was easy — automatic — dare I say it, autonomous, is suddenly revealed as something that can go wrong.

The closest I can describe it as is the time I sprained my leg. I had a very bad fall on an icy surface and tore tendons all up and down my leg between my ankle and knee. And after that, I found myself very aware of where — and how — I stepped. Walking had been something automatic, reflexive, that required no extra thought — just like getting off on pain. But all that changed. And now I find myself wondering if my next step when it comes to BDSM will experience the same problems…

Objectified.

Last night, I was leashed.

(Yes, this post has heaping spoonfuls of explicit sex. If you’re against that sort of thing, come back the day after tomorrow, when I turn all of this sticky, nasty sex into navel-gazing goodness. Everybody else, more after the link…)

Nice.

I woke about an hour ago. In the midst of moving, my wife and I handed the little girl off to her grandparents, separated ourselves from friends and well-wishers and various hangers-on, and got a night to ourselves.

Fast-forward to an hour ago, and after our night of debauchery, the room reeks of sex, that wondrous-it-shouldn’t-smell-this-good musk of fresh, well-lubed fucking. My cock aches from where there’s a little raw spot below the head from too much grinding. My wife is walking funny and says she’s got a pleasant bruised feeling in her sex. My ass hurts from pegging and a near-fisting. My throat hurts from forced oral and some choking.

This is why I haven’t responded to emails and comments, and I’m sorry — kind of — especially for not responding to Goose’s very good comment I want to talk about, and there’s a dozen blogs out there talking about things I want to comment on myself, but I’ve just been so busy being an object of abuse and sexual servitude I haven’t had the time.

I will say this — after the night of wickedness and cruelty I just experienced, I desperately wish there was some kind of femdom version of Gor. Like, “The Gate to Women’s Country,” but with less peaceful, maternal ninjas fighting post-apocalyptic Amish people and sending the legions to their doom, and more women tapping their man’s flanks and telling him what he needs to improve right before his mouth is used as a hole for the business end of the feeldoe.

Counting to Zero

I feel like at some point in the last couple of weeks, my internal “count” of how long I’ve been doing BDSM somehow started reversing itself — like a clock in in a time-travel movie — and it’s now counting toward zero. Because in two hours, my wife will be arriving in town for my Big To-Do with my daughter and (some, the parts we’re still in contact with) of our families in tow.

When she arrives, the clock will be set at zero — the new beginning. Furtive weekend hookups in hotels will be no more. We’ll be doing the hard part, making BDSM work in a day-to-day marriage, with kids and jobs and bills and drudgery and deciding who does the dishes without invoking who’s the dominant and who’s the sub. We’re going to be in that huge gray area between “scene-only” and “24/7″ D/s, trying to figure out how to make it work.

Apropos of the new beginning, perhaps, it smells like smoke. My landlords tell me the Glades are on fire, yet another Florida inferno. The smoke’s everywhere — in my nose, my clothes, in the house — even getting past the A/C filter — and I can’t help but wonder if it’s an omen of some sort, if I allow myself a moment of superstitiousness. (Maybe it’s an omen about what the California ruling on gay marriage is going to do for the Presidential race.) Regardless, here I am, the smell of something hellish in my nose, and the future ahead of me like some beautiful highway, stretching away to some new and unknown destination.

T-minus Two Hours, as they used to say in the old movies on astronauts and space I used to watch.

I’ve Got a Golden Ticket…

…in my pants.

If the reference seems a bit nutty, follow my logic. The Willie Wonka reference will hopefully come together.

My wife told me the other night: “When I dominate you, I feel like a superhero. I feel like I spend my days as an awkward and fumbling girl in glasses, and then when I get around you and you submit, I am all powerful and completely self-assured. Nothing can harm me, and I can do anything. When I read about what we do — when I think about it — it’s like hearing about the exploits of a different person. I can’t believe it’s me. It’s the superhero. My life without you is a secret identity I wear so no one suspects I’m who I am when I’m with you.” That’s what this post is about: Her power.

Last night my wife and I were chatting and I joked about how she’ll get to torture my cock in just a few days. And she sighed and said, “Oh, no, I’ve got better things to do with your cock than torture it.”

“You don’t mind clamping it…” I said.

“No, when I’m clamping you all over, your cock makes a fine place to put one. But I just don’t understand cock torture. I mean, I have so many better things to do with it — kissing it, sucking it, feeling it inside me…” She sighed, wistfully. “I love your cock. Love it. No matter what else we do, your cock is for fucking, not for hurting. Women who want to hurt penises seem to be missing the best possible use for them, which is my satisfaction.”

She’s like a spoiled kid with my cock, and I like it. On the one hand, it feels wonderful to have somebody so into my penis that they just sit there and get a faraway look in their eyes when they think about it. She’s like Veruca Salt — “I want it!” — and there’s no denying her.

She’s reconciled what would normally be “switchy” instincts with her desire to be dominant. She has no shame in sucking my cock on her knees or me spanking her, because she commands it — she’s self-assured enough with her place in the relationship where sitting in what would normally be a submissive position with my cock in her mouth is still about her, not me. I’m getting pleasure, but we’re there — me, moaning, her, on her knees — because she wants to taste my cock. She wants facials, loves the idea of my come coating her face, but she doesn’t see it as disrespectful or paradoxical at all. (Honestly, I probably wouldn’t think to do facials if she didn’t want them — and so even her getting a pearl necklace is about her, not me. Her desires. Her wants. Not mine.)

“If I want to be spanked,” she told me the last time we spoke to one another about our shift from my dominance back to her dominance, “then I’ll tell you to spank me. And it will be an act of submission, because I control it. You’re a spanking object. I get off on the idea of being humiliated, being hurt, but make no mistake — I’m in charge.”

And so it is even when we have sex in a way that anyone else would view as male dominant — me on top, thrusting down into her. She makes it about her — hitting me, striking my face as hard as she can. Ordering me to come. Torturing my nipples. Scratching my chest. She’s the only woman I know who can make fucking from her back into an active, dominant position, my weight and power turning into nothing but whatever she allows. All-powerful superhero, not awkward Clark Kent in glasses.

“There are going to be days,” she said, “where I’ll feel like getting come on — my face or my ass. Maybe even a golden shower. Getting tit-slapped and spanked. But it’s about my pleasure, not your power. You don’t have any power.”

How the fuck can you argue with that? Any power I have from the mere position we’re in is illusory — it’s about who controls the scene: what happens, who does what, who chooses, who ends it. And the power is in her hand. I could fuck her doggy-style and it would mean nothing about my power, because doggy is her favorite position. (She calls it “porno-fucking,” and loves the angle and the feeling of getting just achey and bashed in her sex.) If I do her doggy, it’s not because I’m dominating her, it’s not like I’m a bull, all power — it’s because I’m a very effective, lovable and cuddly fucking machine. It lasts as long as she wants it, and it happens because she wants it. Occasionally, she may give me a choice — especially when she wants me to come, but even then, it’s because she wants me to come, and she feels like letting me choose from a menu will get it there faster.

At first I rebelled at this — facials were equated with submission. Golden showers with being property. Ass-fucking with powerlessness. But not for her — the ability to have a submissive man give her those things while in her thrall takes the submission away from them. She can revel in the trappings of submission and bottoming and it’s no threat to her power.

This is the real lesson to our switch — that what she wanted, the come on her face, the piss on her breasts, the spanking — she can get that and still be dominant. She can get whatever she wants, like a spoiled little brat, like Veruca Salt all grown up as a curvy and luscious soccer-mom. “I want it!”

And so she’ll get it.

The Training of B — A Brief Followup

“So,” I asked, “Does that idea please you?”

She chuckled. “Mm-hmm.”

“Does it please you right in your private places?” I said.

“Yep.” She sighed. “There’s something about the idea of training you…of instruction. It hits my buttons.”

“I can’t wait. Just to be programmed…” I started feeling butterflies in my stomach. “To not be allowed to walk without permission, to have to crawl; and to have to eat out of a dog bowl, to have no name while you’re training me until you give me one…”

“I know, it’s so hot. Except…” She said slowly.

“What?”

“Except I worry about not doing it right.” She sighed, honestly.

“Honey, how long have we been doing this?” I started counting on my fingers.

“A while,” she said.

“We’ve been doing this for nine months.” I said. “Nine months, and have you done anything wrong?”

“You tell me,” she ordered.

“No. Maybe us attempting to switch was a bad move, but as dominant, you have been naturally pitch-perfect with everything.” I sighed. “I have no idea why you’d be worried about doing it ‘right.’ You do it right. Perfectly. You have a way…you just know how to be dominant and sadistic.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I don’t know what I worry about…I mean, who’s going to tell me I’m doing it wrong?”

“Nobody,” I agreed.

“Certainly not you,” she said. “Oh, no, I don’t think so. You know your place.”

I felt a shiver run through my body as she took away my right to criticize — as if I’d dare, anyway.

I said, sheepishly, “I’m, um, erect now.”

“Really?” she asked.

“‘Certainly not you‘ did it.” I said. “The way you talk to me with that voice…”

“I thought it might be the culprit,” she said.

“Can, um,” I started to stammer, “um, can I masturbate?”

“I was just about to suggest it.” She said.

So, it looks like I have a training session in my future. And I couldn’t be happier.

The Training of B

Since I’m moving back to live with my wife full-time, I suspect my big problem will be establishing boundaries. And by happy coincidence, there’s been plenty of grist for my mental gears when it comes to ways to suggest to my Mistress how she can best establish those boundaries.

First up is the old standby, the contract. I wasn’t big on contracts, perhaps because of my job and my background — I suspect I could logic my way out of most contracts. But then I read a rough draft of the contract Devastating Yet Inconsequential made for her Joscelin. Specifically, these lines:

You may sometimes fear that you don’t know how to serve me. It is my wish that you be calm and relaxed and trust that if I am not pleased, or if I have a desire, I will express it. If you are not pleasing me I will correct you.

Emphasis most certainly mine.

Then, I discovered a blog called Gracefully Seeking Perfection. And her master makes her keep an infraction list, which describes what she did wrong, what her punishment is, and whether it’s been meted out.

I’ll be honest — I got hard and aroused reading that infraction list, dreaming that my wife would set something up like that for me. Just a cold, perfect record of my wrongs, and the punishment I would receive. (It’s almost like a joke — “Hey, how do you know you’re submissive?” “When a list of punishments and rules turns you on so much you have a hard time getting to sleep.”)

And of course there’s The Training of O, a Kink.com site which would be marvelous if O was, you know, a guy. The basic idea is that a submissive basically gets a list of goals set up for her by a dominant, a whole training regimen to make her a better submissive. A perfect sub, so to speak.

That’s what I think I need: My wife and I to get away for three days. And for those three days to be Submissive Bootcamp. We write a contract, we set up an infraction list, and she spends all 72 hours just completely breaking me. No, not just breaking: training. Programming.

Oh, that touches all my submissive instincts. The idea of being programmed. Of mind control and domination and torture until I beg to be her servant. (Let’s be honest, that’ll take five minutes.) Being walked on a leash. Having to ask permission for everything — to use the bathroom. To go somewhere without her. What to eat when we go out to dinner.

I’ll be honest, I want to have to ask permission to even walk upright.

And to be forced — to suck her cock, to lick the floggers she beats me with, to eat food out of a bowl like a dog. For punishment to come from her switch. To feed her my blood. To be videotaped at my absolute lowest, my most beaten-down and weak. I want forced interrogation, to be put to the question like some suspected sorcerer in a Hammer horror film being tormented by the Inquisition. Forced to commit some auto de fe for her, prostrate myself on the altar of her power.

I want to have her take away my name for the weekend.

I want sex and submission bootcamp. I want all my boundaries to be established. I want the tone to be set for the next year. I want to be ruthlessly and cruelly dominated until I am nothing but what she wants me to be — standing with the posture she desires, walking the way she wants me to walk, bowing my head just so. When she starts a scene, I want to just flow into what she wants.

Wouldn’t that be lovely? I hope she likes the idea. I hope she wants that absolute power. I hope she likes the idea of training me like some evil headmistress disciplining some rebellious student who needs something akin to the Degree Absolute treatment. Remaking me. Setting the scene for the next year, for our cohabitation. She keeps telling me that she needs me to be up there, to be a slave — that a Mistress without a pet isn’t much of a Mistress at all, that a master is defined by the fact that they have a slave.

Yum. Hopefully, one day soon she’ll say those three wonderful words: “School’s in session.”

A Brief Request…

If anyone knows how to add regular commentors to some kind of “safe file” in WordPress, so people who’ve commented previously don’t get dumped into my spam folder, I’d love it you could let me know, either here or by email. A heartfelt apology to Mrs. Keeper, AlmostMagic and whoever else has been caught up in the craziness, it wasn’t intentional.

Body Issues

[Warning...boring talk of body issues ahead. Skip today if you want hot talk about sex. I'll throw some of that at you tomorrow.]

You know you’re a masochist when you look at other masochists’ bruises and get dreamy and goofy and wish that they were yours.

At some point, I’d really like to be comfortable enough with my body and my identity as a member of the kink-scene (or whatever the hell you call it) to post photos of myself, bruised and abused. (And “Bruised and Abused” will certainly be the name for my next blog, since Under the Boot is becoming more and more inaccurate given the lack of boots in my D/s.)

I like big women. I like small women. I like, to put it baldly, women. The thin ones are coltish, the larger ones are voluptuous, and I could find something wonderful to say and love about every woman who enters onto my radar. I’m in love with the idea of women: their ability to give birth, the way their bodies curve — except for when they don’t — the perspective they have on things that isn’t, you know, male. Old, young, thin, heavy, long-haired, short-haired, funny, serious, intense, light-hearted, pregnant, not-pregnant, I’m a fan of women.

And the good thing about the BDSM blogs I read is that you see these beautiful pictures of women, completely unafraid to show themselves, no matter their size or shape. They show themselves trussed up, they show themselves vulnerable, they show themselves bruised and battered.

You know what I don’t see? Men. (Tom Allen excepted, but that man’s a prodigy or something.) I don’t know why it is, but for some reason I don’t see a lot of the same pictures of men in femdom relationships. And I don’t see pictures of me.

Well, I see pictures of me. Heck, I’ve got a picture of my bright red ass after a beating sitting in IPhoto. I’ve got about an hour of tape of me being turned into a road map of the Interstate Highway system, all red lines criss-crossing my back, and of me having my genitals tortured while they’re bound up in a leather cord. But I’m not yet brave enough to put any of that online.

So I sit there and look at the pictures of these women and I gasp and think, “Oh, man, I would so want my ass to look like that.” Except my ass wouldn’t look like that, because I have a guy-ass, not a female ass. The end result is a disconnection from my body, to a certain extent — I’m always shocked, when watching footage of my wife hurting me or pictures of me in compromised positions, about my maleness, because my default is a feminine shape from the porn and blogs I read. And about how it’s not a mass-market maleness — there’s a gut there, my balls are huge (an ex called them “bull balls” and would just weigh them in her hands and brag about them to her friends,) my cock gooey and wet. I’m never going to get onto MenInPain.com, let’s put it that way. (Which is a waste, because I take a beating like a champ.)

And so the irony is, I think I chose the one area of fetish — that is, the BDSM blog world — where there seems to be more male body issues than female body issues. I see women with beautiful round thighs, natural figures, women who are round and full and women who are model-sized stick figures. Half-Naked Tuesday — and God bless the person who thought that up — brings me pics of women of all shapes and sizes, unashamed, glorious, and happy with themselves. And then there’s me, in my closet, worried about my ass sagging or my gut.

(There has been one picture of a male that made me think, “Oh, I definitely need to have that done to me. I want that to be my after-picture.” It’s from a party in Australia, and it’s a picture of MayMay’s back after Eileen worked him over. There’s blood and I think to myself, “I want that for myself.”)

The issue of course, is to get to where I’m happy enough with myself that I can change that. I know that sounds contradictory — to love yourself enough as you are that you can change yourself — but the other way, disliking yourself enough that you change, hasn’t exactly been a spectacular success. So I think I’m going to start loving and accepting myself and changing myself because I want better for myself, not because I utterly loathe my body.

Luckily, my wife has got enough love for my body for both of us. And she’s willing to whip the self-loathing out of me, if need be. But really, even if she gives me another transformative moment like she did with my cock, the impetus to change and the love of my own body has to come from me.

Fancy Dress

I’ve come to fetishize business wear. I know the scene is all about latex and leather, but my idea of BDSM-appropriate clothing is silk and cotton and the only leather is in my shoes or my belt.

Well, not really fetishize, because that would imply any kind of business wear or formal wear did the job for me. No, I’m fetishizing business and formal-wear when my wife and I wear them.

I think it’s a side-effect of both of us being the kinds of people who didn’t really dress up before this year. My wife was married in a simple white dress she borrowed from a friend when we eloped, and when I worked in a business setting, I bought my dress clothes from whatever mass-market store sold them. For most of my life, I was quite content to wear jeans and tee-shirts. I never really cared about clothes. I never really cared about my appearance.

Now…I see getting dressed up in a suit and tie — in the right circumstances, certainly as not part of the everyday grind — to be an act of submission to my wife. I remember a few months ago, she told me how hot I looked wearing suits to work and to various functions down here, so when she flew in, I made sure I looked perfect when I picked her up: hair cut short, no facial hair, nails trimmed and shaped, and a nice suit, pressed and drycleaned, with a silk tie, expensive shirt, nice black leather shoes…

I dressed up because she liked it. I dressed up because it pleased her. I could have gotten out of bed, showered, shaved and popped into some shorts and a tee — it’s South Florida, it certainly would have been more comfortable — but I wanted to show my devotion. I wanted to spend time. Everything had to be wrinkle-free, everything had to shine and look impeccable. My face had to be smooth, my hair perfect. I had to smell fresh and clean and perfumed. I had to spend an hour and a half getting ready, because that’s how much time she deserved — she deserved perfection, and nothing less.

We went to a banquet a few weeks ago when she was down, and it was the same way. There was something ritualistic about it — showering, making sure everything was perfect. She wore a beautiful dress and put on her makeup and looked like a million bucks. How could I look any less? How could I let her down? She’s been transforming herself, through tasteful makeup and affordable dresses and sexy shoes, and even though she doesn’t look like a dominatrix in that business-wear, there’s something unspeakably sexy — the red of her lips, the black of her mascara, the way I’m afraid to kiss her for fear I’ll introduce some flaw into the understated blush of her cheeks. The way expensive dress wear clings to her instead of sags like her old clothes, the way she carries herself. Power. Self-assurance. Confidence. Oh…she’s got it all. It makes me dizzy.

I never used to get regular haircuts or wear product in my hair; I wore cheap cologne. I wore cheap clothes. I didn’t care about my skin care. Now…now, everything has to be perfect when I’m in her presence. I fantasize about being able to afford a bespoke suit. Cufflinks.

I buy issues of GQ and Esquire and fantasize about wearing those suits. Wearing them for her. Showing her my love through my attention to myself. By the way I care for her property.

Because there’s something about my suits — the nice ones I wear now, that I spend all that money to maintain — there’s something about the ritual about getting dressed, that makes me feel strong. Handsome. Powerful. People treat you differently in a good suit, and you hold yourself differently. There’s a way of carrying yourself. A way of moving. I feel like more of a man, more of a powerful, type-A-man, in my suits.

And so, when I’m in my suits, I feel like I’m falling that much further for her. I feel like I’m stronger, so my submission is truer. How could she ever want to dominate a weak man who didn’t care about himself? What’s the point? A man who doesn’t care about himself doesn’t care who controls him. But a strong man — a man who spends time on himself, who builds himself up — that’s a suitable subject for a dominant woman to control. A man who spends that much time on cultivating that image, his submission has value. His submission has worth. It’s deserving of effort, to break a man like that.

I dream of wearing my first bespoke suit. An expensive shirt, the collar so crisp it could cut skin. A marvelous silk tie I have my eye on. My hair, perfectly cut and waxed, my skin flawless and smooth and smelling like expensive cologne — but just the right amount, so that she gets its scent only when she moves in close, to whisper curses in my ear. And me on my knees, my tie in her hand, taut, my throat constricted as she pulls on it, and I look up at her in awe. Her opening it all up, peeling me out of it, hurting and cutting and stroking me, aware that it was all for her, aware of how much work I put into it, appreciative of my dedication.

All for her. Every inch of my clothes and my appearance a testimony to my love for her, every minute spent a minute — in its own way — of worshipping her. Of recreating myself into an object worthy of her attention and love and cruelty.