My Hypocrisy

(This is kind of boring political stuff: there will be scene reports aplenty in the coming days, but I felt the need to get this off of my chest.)

I went out and bought “Yes Ma’am: Erotic Stories of Female Dominance” today, because I’m a giant coward. The editor was nice enough to offer me a free review copy, and I was all for it until I realized I’d have to offer up my address for shipping. And I thought, “Wow, I don’t know if I’m ready for that.” I’m enjoying being an anonymous figure right now, and all of a sudden I was faced with, you know, admitting that I was John Doe of West Palm, Florida. And so I just quietly waited until the local Borders got the book in, strolled over to the erotica section, grabbed a copy, and then went over to buy a book by a feminist author who I’d stumbled upon via a blog. Borders down here being what it is, the Women’s Studies section was next to the Gay and Lesbian Erotica Section, and I spent a half hour looking for my book amidst the confused shelves, scanning through bookcase after bookcase of gay porn and stories of transgendered struggles, getting weird stares from the two geeky guys sitting on the ground reading books of folklore, because somehow Women’s Studies is with imaginary myth and not with all of the other studies — African-American Studies, Asian Studies, etc.

It didn’t hit me until I was in the car, really, that I had calmly walked up in my suit and tie and purchased erotica with a credit card with my name on it without blinking, yet the idea of giving somebody my address had me nervous. I’d sat there and caught nervous glances from a couple of vanilla geek boys because they thought I was some gay guy from the beach looking for pornographic novels without blinking (and I admit to thumbing through one or two books just to see what they were like.) I hadn’t worried about the look from the girl behind the counter or the stares from the geek boys, I just calmly went about my business. But my address? Oh, no…

It’s one of those illogical quirks that you realize after the fact, and then want to punch yourself for. I end up refusing a perfectly wonderful gesture out of some bizarre shyness and then calmly look at gay porn around a bunch of increasingly nervous college freshmen without blinking.

And what this quirkiness made me wonder about, afterwards, is this: Is my submission less genuine because I leave it separate from my other self? My daytime self, who’s strong and dominant and can work a room of people like they’re putty in his hands? Is my wife’s dominance less valid a reversal of gender roles because it’s limited to our private life? Is our kink less politically genuine because it’s closeted? In fact, is our kink hypocritical because all of the gender bending and power exchange we do is basically something that’s there to get us off? To get me off? Is my request that my wife dominate me and peg me and hurt me just me exerting some kind of patriarchal power over her, an expression of weakness that’s okay because I initiated it? Is our play a slap in the face of people who really are dominated unwillingly? Is our use of the word “slave” a giant, ahistorical bit of cluelessness?

Now, obviously, not everything is political. The undergrad part of me that did his tour of the Sociology department and became the darling of the Women’s Studies professors demurs, politely, and recalls that everything is political — but the older, married part of me thinks that when I undertook this journey, I was not thinking of feminism or patriarchy or what it meant on that level for me to exchange power with my wife: I was just praying and hoping that she’d be receptive to making me lick her leather boots. My actions may have had a political meaning, but it’s not something my wife or I thought of at the time, and there’s not much point in dissecting our wonderful ride to the extent that it stops being the joyful trip it’s been.

More to the point, I have to admit: there’s something of the Victorian hypocrite in me. I like being normal and dominant and vanilla on the outside, and then being tied up and beat in private. I like being manly and smelling like alpha male and then curling up at my Mistress’ feet when she taps her leg with the crop. The Victorians were prudish people, on the surface, but their sexuality roiled under constant pressure, and I think — in my mind, at least — the energy generated by being constantly contained made the release that much sweeter when it came.

To put it another way: I like that my wife sings in the church choir and is — really is — sweet and innocent and domestic in her daytime life, and a cruel, selfish and pain-loving bitch in private. I like the idea that my life is a James Ellroy version of the ’50s — clean and pretty and neat on the outside, full of dark twists and turns on the inside.

I’m good at bifurcating my life. I was an awful geek when I was younger, well before geek-chic gave playing RPGs and reading comics and liking sci-fi a veneer of coolness. My response to the stigma was to closet my geekhood deep, and go about trying to be — well, normal, except when my buddies and I got together to play D&D or see an indie-band. When all of a sudden, being a geek and a music nerd had cachet, I quietly scorned it — I had worked too hard burying the more obvious bits of my dorkiness to let the cool parts out. I knew I’d never hide all of my geekiness — it’s just too strong to bury entirely, and anyone who gets to know me privately can see it in all its glory — but I could at least get by amongst strangers without showing off my Mark of Cain shamelessly.

And now, BDSM is kind of like that. It’s another dirty, glorious secret for me to hide. Just like those nights I snuck away from my surfer-girl, geek-hating girlfriend to play D&D were wonderful because of their taboo nature, there’s something about being strong and normal at a party and knowing, in my heart, that the other me is just under the surface. The other night I was having a wonderful conversation with several beautiful girls at a banquet, and while I could appreciate their looks and their personality and their kickass intellects, I wasn’t too attracted: only my wife can give me what I need. Only my wife knows and can satisfy that part of me. The public me gets shared with everybody, but the submissive part of me is hers, and hers alone.

(Naturally, when I examine this love of double-existences in the same political light I spoke of a few paragraphs ago, part of me thinks that it’s the straight, white male’s luxury to enjoy being in a closet, whereas other people have it forced upon them. But…I can only say, I get off on what I get off on.)

Oh, and for the record, the book is delicious. If my wife didn’t have me on the masturbatory equivalent of starvation rations, I would be reading the whole book tonight…

Joviality and Fallout

My wife and I were planning budgets. I find this immensely tedious, especially when it’s a week before she comes down and I want to drop some money on new toys at the local fetish shop. I mean, how are we supposed to learn rope bondage without rope? How are my ankles to be secured without ankle cuffs? These are serious questions, and I’m a serious man engaged in a mission of great importance — forget how we’re going to pay for a new place, I need toys, dammit.

My wife’s attitude can best be summed up thus: a) we have plenty of toys, b) fuck what I want, she’s the one who gets to decide what new toys get added to the collection, and c) she’d much rather get a new place, with a dungeo…I mean, basement, than continue in our current house and have to worry about her family or our daughter walking in while Mommy and Daddy play Mistress Spanksalot and her pet, Subby.

And as she spelled out the logic behind her decision to limit our spending on new gear, I said, “Look, I’m not asking for permission. I’m going to buy new toys, and your job is not to okay the purchases, but to make yourself useful and hit me with them. Capisce?” And then I laughed, because this was supposed to be funny.

But I forgot that when we’re talking about S&M, I need to treat it — and her — with respect. Rule number 1. So instead of a laugh on the other end of the line, I hear, “Woah. Maybe I should give you a minute to think before you say another word.”

Me: “I was kidding.”

Her: “I don’t find it funny. Do you think I’m just here to get you off? Is that my role? You seem to be fucking confused.”

Me: “…No, ma’am.”

Her: “Do you want to be the dominant? Is that what this is? Are you asserting yourself by making light of our relationship?”

Me: “No, ma’am. I don’t want to be the dominant.”

Her: “…I am going to beat your ass with the switch for this. The last time is going to look like nothing compared to what you’re going to get.”

I start pleading, trying to explain I was just kidding, I was feeling my oats, and…

Her: “You can beg all you like, but you’re getting the switch.”

Me: “Can I at least ask how many swats?”

Her: “I haven’t made up my mind.”

Me: “Could you give me a ballpark?”

Her: “I’ll tell you what: every time you ask, you get ten more hits.”

Me: “So is that ten hits, or ten more in addition to the undetermined number?”

Her: “You’re at twenty or thirty extra hits now.”

Me: “Wait, you’re counting the times I asked before you made the rule? That’s not fair!”

Her: “Is that a question? It sounded like a question. Fair’s not something I care about. You ran out of fair when you decided you had some jokes to tell.”

Me: “I couldn’t handle thirty last time, and now you’re giving me thirty in addition to some other number.”

Her: “Maybe this time you’ll learn to think before you speak, hmm?”

And that was that. I was nervous and ashamed and pissed that I was going to get 30+ hits with that fucking switch and the conversation ended. It’s all good now, but…I could definitely do without the nervousness about that whipping. But I had it coming.

I Want To Disappear

Last night, I was on the phone with my wife, and it was calming. She’s my bliss, even outside of a D/s context — she’s my best friend. We make each other laugh. She never bores me. We fit.

And things have been stressful, as the windup to the holidays approaches, since I have to get everything in order before I go to visit her for three weeks. And we’ve been talking about leaving the baby with my wife’s parents and just getting a hotel room the first day I’m in, ostensibly to make the next baby, but also to get some insanely hot examples of the Five Ps in — you remember, pegging, pleasure, pain, piss and prostration.

And with all the stress in my life…

24/7?

My wife today suggested that when we start living together again, we should go to 24/7 domination and submission.  Not in so many words — she’s doesn’t read blogs or hang out with other people into the lifestyle she doesn’t know the language.  But, this is what she said today:  “Sometimes I feel like we’re off-kilter. Sometimes I feel completely in control and sometimes I feel a lack of control. I need to have all of the control…all of the time. Is that bad?”

Why FemDomme Supremacy won’t work for me.

This is the first time I think I’ve written about something other than me and the wife and our play-habits. 

 As a brief aside, I need to come up with some clever name for my wife, because referring to her by her role in the marriage is a bit off – I feel like it diminishes her a bit because of the value we attach to wife as an inferior or an equal, and she shouldn’t be diminished.  She’s the whole damn show for me, the axis mundi, the princess who makes me beg.  If I were feeling particularly shameless, I’d give her one of those capitalized titles, like Mistress or Master, Queen, Goddess.  But those names sound awesome in the bedroom while I’m getting pissed on, but kind of cheesy outside of that rarefied environment.  (I’m convinced that 99% of all sex is cheesy outside of the bedroom.  There are bloggers who can talk about that stuff and make me hot as hell, but it’s a rare talent.)  I was thinking about calling her Antonina, after the wife of the general Belisarius, since I go by Belisarius on Fetish Lore, and I go by Belisarius specifically because he was a strong, powerful man who rumor claims was the utter slave of his wife.  But Byzantine history bores the shit out of everybody but me and sounds super-affected, so maybe not.  Or perhaps I’ll just use her porno name, or an initial, or something else.  Regardless, it can wait til next post.

 Anyway, everything I tell you in this blog is true except the bits about my work, and that’s true, just left entirely vague to protect my real name.  I suspect anybody who knows us in real life would be able to put together UndertheBoot with my real identity in no time just based on dates we visit each other.  I fib about what I’m doing in private to real life people – on this blog, I’m dead set on being honest.  But for the most part, I’d be surprised if any of the 30 people who read this blog are any of the people who know me in real life, but still, the Internet makes it a small little world.

 Anyway, back to the topic: I’ve said before that I don’t know that I could easily sub out to another Mistress, or buy into the whole FemSupremacy “women are better than men and a man’s natural place is to serve thing.”  I think I might be able to have another sub around me and my wife, but even that’s very theoretical, like, a year away, before we feel that comfortable enough to even think about other people occasionally making appearances.  But we’re talking about dommes, and one of the reasons why I don’t know that I feel comfortable around other dommes is because, fundamentally, I don’t trust a lot of other women to the degree necessary to do this stuff with them or expose myself while I’m doing this stuff with my wife, because I don’t trust myself to pick them. 

With the sole exception of my wife, the women I’m drawn to in relationships and friendships fit a certain profile: tough, strong-willed, pretty, borderline bipolar, and fiercely possessive of me.

 I have a friend right now who is a really dear friend.  She’s my girl.  In the absence of my wife, she’s somebody I spend a lot of time with.  She’s gorgeous, but I’m not really attracted to her, because she’s very mercurial.  One hour we’re buddies, the next hour she’s leaving me alone in her apartment to go do something because she’s pissed at me or somebody else.  She invites me everywhere, and we’re great pals, and we have a ton in common, but…she fits the profile.  And she’s great as long as she’s the focus of my attention.  But if one of my female acquaintances comes along, she, and I quote, “shoots daggers at them with her eyes until they leave.”  There’s definitely an ownership vibe  there, but it’s a high school ownership vibe. 

This is who I know I would be subbing out to if I ever went looking for another domme.  This is who I attract, and who frankly would attract me if I weren’t happily married.  And it’s unhealthy.  And it’s why I don’t buy into the whole “female supremacy” thing — I dig on strong women.  My wife is a strong woman, and I literally worship her.  But a lot of the strong women in my life are not “healthy” strong, they’re “kind of broken” strong, and I know that on some level, I can’t tell the difference between the two until things have already gone dysfunctional.  Part of me fantasizes about my wife and I finding the local scene or going off to the big city and finding other people to mix with and maybe even play around, but I know that I just don’t trust myself around other women, because I get these false flags off of the wrong girls. 

Now, is my docile friendship with these possessive girls related to my submissiveness on some level?  That’s what I’m working through as I write this. I don’t know — that is the $100,000,000 question.  I think I’m a nice guy outside of the work place.  My job places a premium on me enjoying the scent of blood in the water and a certain cold-blooded predatory nature, but it’s something that’s wholly focused on my work, and in my personal life I’m easy-going.  My wife complains that I let friendships go until they’re beyond salvaging, that I don’t complain until it’s too late to save anything, and I suspect she’s right.  But I don’t associate that with my submissiveness — to be honest, my relaxed attitude is a product of growing up in Southern California, and my submissiveness is deep and dark and limitless, a product of an entirely different part of me.

Now, my wife — she’s not threatened by these friends.  A) We’ve been married for ten years.  B) She strongly suspects that these fierce and unyielding girls are tame little pussycats in the bedroom, and not capable of whipping me with a belt until I turn red or wearing a strap-on and breaking my ass in half.  C) My wife is, perhaps because she’s so nice and sweet, very, very comfortable in her own skin.  And most importantly, D) she knows the nature of my submission better than I do — she knows I need to trust and to feel safe before I allow myself to be diminished, before I allow myself to be annihilated by her will, until I’m just something that obeys and begs and hasn’t a scrap of pride.  I want to be broken when my wife and I play — I want to be nervous and fearful and filled with all sorts of nasty feelings about myself because I’m begging someone to sodomize me and to whip me all over and to bind me and to just…utterly…own me. 

In short, she knows that my submission has to be earned.  Once you’ve got it, I’m yours, absolutely, but there’s a certain threshold you have to cross until you get there.  Not every woman gets to call me bitch and have me lick her feet.  We’re equals until I trust you enough to let you own me, and that knocks me ever buying into female supremacy wholesale.  And that’s why I think this pattern of weird friendship has nothing to do with submissive me — I like these girls.  They’re good friends.  But none of them have what it takes to make me beg. 

My wife does, though…