Definitions

I think the definition of a submissive is someone who feels a desire to subjugate themselves to the will of another in the face of overwhelming urges to do otherwise.

Take me, for instance. I am currently on a veritable self-improvement jihad, as I said in my last post. I’m dieting, working out, dressing better, and have — somehow, after apparently being brainwashed by Clinique’s professional cult-programmers — undertaken a whole skin care regime. Like, there’s a whole three step process that involves soap and some kind of scruffer and then moisturizer, and then there’s shaving somewhere at Step 2a, and this doesn’t count the eyebrow trimming I have to do every couple weeks because at some point I caught this eyebrow-specific lycanthrope, and the only joy I get from these new they-look-Thufir-Hawat’s-from-David-Lynch’s-Dune-if-I-don’t-trim-them eyebrows is that it means that the hair’s probably not gonna grow out of my ears. Because you know, Middle Age Sprout, as I like to call it, happens either in your ears or your eyebrows, and not both, unless you somehow pissed off an Aztec priestess or a Gypsy seer. (FWIW, you would not know I had middle-aged sprout at all because I am fanatical about reining the eyebrows in.)

Anyway, there’s also my job, where I look dominant and competent and type-A and want to come in an hour early and leave an hour late, because I’ve got this crazy plan for my career, and our finances, and whatever free time I have is spent reading books on investing and all sorts of things related to my career.

And so somehow, there are two mutually inconsistent threads running through my life: driven improvement freak who is trying to make himself more valuable, and sexual submissive and masochist, who wants to see himself torn down by the person closest to him.

And sometimes, it’s hard to have both those threads running simultaneously. Like, last weekend, cleaning the house and planning finances, I just couldn’t get into the whole submission thing. Mainly because when it comes to finances and the self-improvement kick, I’m driving the car. I’m pushing my wife and I. I feel like I’ve got to be driving the car.

And then there’s this weekend, where I just want to be whipped and kicked and tormented and ridden like a goddamned horse. Where even with all the dominant drive, what I want now is a kind of relief from pushing the cart, from driving the car, where I want to give it all up and take some time and admit that she’s my master and my superior and knows everything — how far I can be hurt and pushed and dominated until I break.

It’s hard to hold those threads together. It’s hard to have that paradox at the center of my life. There are times — this weekend — where I wish “full time sexually submissive masochistic slave” was a job description, and not a lifestyle choice. I never had to balance those drives back when my wife would come down for weekend scenes, but in the day-to-day grind, I have to somehow juggle these two paradoxes and make them fit.