pain & hurt

June 2, 2004, the big dump: when L told me he didn't want me as his slave he said: when i'm with a slave i want it to be painful for him, not hurtful.

That was the first time for me that these 2 words were taking such drastically different meanings. In the gallery of human feelings, their very different places were suddenly so clearly defined and, in a split second, they belonged to, and even embodied, 2 completely separated universes: physical and emotional.

If someone punches you in the stomach you might say that it "hurts" or if you are feeling horribly sad and lonely, you might feel like you're in pain. But for me, from June 2, 2004, there is only one acceptable meaning for pain and it's not to be confused with hurt.

After a messy year and many anti-depressants i've become careful to observe the lesson learned on June 2 and accept pain but shy away from coming too close to actual hurt. But sometimes hurt is inescapable: it can hide behind the most innocuous of smiles and can play funny tricks on you if you so much as lower your defenses for a mere second.

And once it's on you, you can try and shake it off all you want: it grabs you by the throat like nothing else

acritical

i've recently been asked about how things are developing with my owner and reflecting on developments, i thought it made sense to blogify my little progress report.

The person in question said he liked the idea of being broken down and rebuilt as a slave. Personally i wouldn't say i'm being broken down. My master understands very well that it's within my nature to want to serve and please and has chosen to make use of it – which i'm immensly grateful to him for.

i think, aside from building up physical strength and resistance to a certain type of stimulation, i've mostly learnt not to question his orders. Not in the sense that i ever questioned why i had to do something but i guess his orders were normally channelled through my brain as information to be processed and, preferably, accepted, but – generally – evaluated in some way.

All that has changed. Some orders may be a little harder than others, but none are unreasonable and i'm learning to disconnect my own judgement and leave everything up to him, because ultimately i trust him fully and i know that he will always decide what's best for me.

But he's not demolishing my sense of self. On the contrary, he's helping me fulfill my potential and feel happy and valued as his slave.

no news, good news

the recent blog-silence is due to the period of not seeing my master finally coming to an end. Over the last week, i have seen and been able to serve my owner very regularly.

A few people have contacted me online to ask if the situation had evolved and i realise that, after a rather sad post such as the last one, i should have followed up with the recent developments. But the time to do so has been little.

Developments can be summed up as follows: i'm a very, very lucky slave.

withheld

i have been hesitant to post blogs about what's been going on with me because it bordered on areas that i felt i shouldn't disclose. So i held on to what i was writing but now i'm feeling empty and need to let it go.

i hope that my Master, if he reads this, will not feel that i'm trying to push him but will simply understand that it's just my need to expose what i'm feeling.


[written sun 4 Dec 2005, 1pm]

it feels like i should start the process of re-owning myself. Every time i talk to my master i am more and more convinced that i want to continue to belong to him and wait, as long as it takes, but then there's no contact, for so long. And my slavery is all about the long wait, a long wait that seems to stretch forever.

A bad sign is i'm starting to feel that i have to shield myself from him, that i'm in for more hurt and disappointment.

Not to mention that my kidneys are killing me


[written sun 4 Dec 2005, 10am]

end of week 5.

i don't know what to do. He said i would see him this weekend but he hasn't contacted me and i have once again spent a weekend at home, waiting.

i feel sad. my blind trust in him is starting to crumble. He keeps telling me things that don't materialise and i don't know why or what i should do.


[written sat 26 Nov 2005, 11am]

i feel very sad.

This post will not go live until/unless i've discussed the issue with my master.

i'm at the end of my fourth week without having seen my owner. i miss him terribly and don't know what to do. it's not even like he doesn't want to see me, he was going to the other day but then he wasn't feeling well and had to cancel.

i feel stupid and a bad slave for being so impatient and needing so much attention, but now it's no longer just a matter of wanting to see him, i'm starting to feel sad again and lonely. i am of course as happy as can be when my master talks to me and he does that often recently, which i'm very grateful for, but i need contact, physical presence, seeing him and serving him.

Even the pain in my sides from 4 weeks in chastity is shifting from a welcome reminder of his ownership to just plain discomfort that's preventing me from functioning normally. My kidneys hurt when i move. i'm just broken from lack of use.

self-mastering

Recently someone said to me 'In order to be a true slave you have to be a master of yourself....' [more >>]. Fundamental truth or common place? Is this simply a cleverly worded maxim in the trail of such statements as "you must love yourself before you can love someone else" or is there a hidden truth behind it.

The problem i have with statements such as this one is that they hint to a black and white reality where there is a way that is right and one that is wrong. There are true slaves (who do the right thing) and fake slaves (who don't do the right thing). i have no idea what a "true slave" is. i'm not really trying to learn to be something that i'm not and the slave definition seems to fit me not because i try to become it but because it seems to be right for me.

i admit that my need to be owned is strictly linked with my seeking something that is not within me. There is a need for me to be taken over by somebody else because i don't want to do it myself and for the "master of myself" to be someone other than me. Frankly i fail to see why, if i was master of myself, i would be seeking to stop being it, in order to pass that role on to someone else.

Clearly, the need for me to be owned stems from a manifest instability that characterises me in the absence of a master. As an unowned slave i feel void, empty, unfulfilled. I truly rejoice in the service of another man and i'm coming to terms with it being my nature without feeling that i must force myself to be any different.

i realise it's a condition that makes me vulnerable and non autonomous but, quite frankly, i'm not even sure i fully understand what it means to be master of yourself. How do you know that you've mastered yourself, that you've got to that stage. It seems to me that a lot of people who are not as vulnerable are often shielding themselves behind a fantasy, a facade, an image of themselves that could, upon deeper analysis, come crumbling down taking with it this perception of being masters of themselves.

We all need something and we all usually reach out to find that something that we miss. That's what makes us sociable animals: we thrive in the interaction, not the isolation. So, maybe, the fact that i can't be self-sufficient doesn't make me a good or a bad slave. It just makes me a slave.

mickey of finland

i sometimes read or see photos of the elaborate, extreme scenes that people live or fantasize about and i feel a little like i'm at the crossroad of BDSM and Disneyland, caught between a dungeon and a cartoon, my own fantasies being so peaceful and uncomplicated sometimes. In my head, for instance, the image of happiness is the idea of curling up to sleep on the floor at my master's feet while he comfortably sits on the sofa watching tv or reading a book. One of his feet maybe snugly warming up between my legs and the other under the curve of my neck.
i don't need much more.

break in

yesterday my flat was broken into.

The extent of the loss is limited. It appears likely that one person might have easily gained access to our flat through a flimsy door with hardly any locks in and, after realising that one of my flatmates was home, left with whatever little they could get their hands on, meaning a powerbook and 2 dead iPods. Full mac-loot.

As a result i'm now carrying my own laptop around with me which gives me the chance to blog my way to work sitting on the tube.

Recounting these events to my master, i was taken aback but immensely touched by how bothered he was at the thought of his boy living in an unsafe flat. His concern made me feel protected and safe. It was the best feeling ever.

back

My master is back and is fine. i feel stupid having felt so concerned but i had no idea what to do.

With my previous long-term owner, things ended pretty much this way. For a long time i didn't see him. Over this period he kept saying that he still wanted to have me as his slave and he was just busy. i was happy to wait because his declared wish to own me was enough to fuel my already strong desire to belong to him. Unfortunately after an absence from my life of almost three months he "came clean" and told me he didn't want a regular slave anymore.

Over this 3-month period, people had told me "what are you waiting for, just change your profile to say you're available" but i just felt i couldn't do it. If i was to be set free, i felt he had to do it, he had to tell me or at least i had to ask and he had to ok it. i couldn't just go and say "ok, whatever, see you around". But i didn't want to ask to be set free, because i didn't want him to set me free.

So it came as quite a disappointment when he informed me about how he felt and told me that he had been hesitating to tell me because he was feeling badly about it. i felt i had waited all along for someone who hadn't wanted me as a slave and i ended up feeling very low as a result.

My current master's silence brings with it echos of this past experience and although i'm happy to wait while i'm not needed, all those past insecurities and fears of abandonment are being stirred up. i understand the need for me to deal with those without expecting that he should do it for me but i can't help missing him and feeling the weight of the distance. These days it feels like he's very far.

the vanishing

My master has vanished. Disappeared. No message gets answered, no phone call gets picked up. Beside feeling like an abandoned slave, i'm feeling like a worried slave. He hasn't been online at all for a very long time and i fear that something might have happened. i try to wait quietly to be called upon but i'm feeling restless, my brain is working overtime. This seems so out of character, i wish i at least knew he was ok.

welcome to fuckknows

The other day someone i know told me that "men are from venus, slaves are from... fuck knows". This sums up his frustration with slaves who arrange to meet and then cancel or simply don't show up. Maybe calling these people "slaves" is stretching the definition or maybe not. My comment to him was that perhaps he needed to refine his screening process, spend a little longer getting to know these people before he arranges to meet or even restrict the range of people he agrees to meet.

Personally, i can understand why a slave would arrange a meet and then have second thoughts. But that's because i, too, am from Fuckknows. Sometimes it might be because your rational side is raising its ugly head pointing out that it's not sensible to go and meet someone you don't know and give them so much power over you, shifting something like this from an online fantasy to a real-life meet can be difficult or sometimes you might find your desire to submit so overpowering that it scares you and you feel that you need to work it out, or run away from it. Whatever the reason, this sort of behaviour, my friend tells me, seems to be quite common in slaves, or in any case, in people on the submissive side of the spectrum.

i have never been stood up by a master. i have been in contact with a good deal of procrastinators and have learnt, from my experience, that those who postpone never tend to arrange an actual meet. Of course that's not a rule fixed in stone but there's a trend there. But stood up, never. Perhaps because generally the people i arranged to meet were those interested in going a little further than a shag or maybe because masters don't stand slaves up. They are in control of things and don't have as much to lose. Let's face it, if you're going to meet a psycho serial killer, it's best if they're the ones cuffed to the radiator.

Personally, i don't think i've ever cancelled an appointment with a master, unless i had just had surgery or was very ill. i've certainly never stood someone up that i was supposed to meet. And that's not because i'm such a good slave and a great guy but because i have this strong sense of duty that's ingrained in my brain and it's something i find it hard to get away from. i finish what's in my plate and i don't stand people up. In my head the 2 are connected. But that's because i am from Fuckknows.

But what interested me about my friend's comment is that it suggested this opposition between masters and slaves that's generally used for men and women: i.e. suggesting these are 2 types of individuals that can never understand each other.

i wonder if that's true: that a slave can never understand what's going through a master's mind and, likewise, that a master has no clue what slaves are all about, that the 2 only just click, are attracted to each other like positive and negative charges. Maybe it's just this guy, i don't know. i do generally think that the men that i find myself drawn to, i.e. the masters who don't switch, are far removed from my galaxy. Nowhere near my native Fuckknows. Sometimes my behaviour pleases them and sometimes it angers them and i often feel unable to know in advance which it's going to be. Through training i can learn what is expected from me, but without the training, without being told what it is that i have to do, i'm totally lost. Beam me up, Scotty, we're heading back to Fuckknows.

norms of behaviour

This one is quite a dilemma that i have found myself wondering about many times.

A slave who doesn't get to be used very often will inevitably miss seeing his owner. Should he:-

1. Be honest and express his desire to see his owner and, in this way, risk bothering him by appearing to be pushing his agenda and forcing an encounter. After all, it's only fair that the master should call upon his slave when he decides, and not the other way around and if a slave wants something, that his master doesn't want, there's a problem somewhere.


2. Patiently wait to be called upon and, in this way, risk giving the (false) impression that he doesn't much care, that he can function perfectly well regardless of his owner's presence and fail to show his master how he feels.

the proud shopper

My first taste of winter this year was an easygoing weekend in Berlin where i went to visit a master friend, or a friendly master, i have known for some time. As he's welcomed me into his home and his daily life, introduced me to his friends and kindly spent a considerable amount of time and patience giving me a comprehensive and time-efficient tour of his city, i mostly followed him around taking in all the stimulation that the city provided in such a short amount of time

As this short break had been planned since before becoming owned, i felt thankful that my Master didn't ask me to cancel it to remain at his service but also guilty and a bad slave for going on a holiday and not being present and available to serve him.

A fair amount of the stimulation that Berlin provided was in the kinky arena. Notably due to the company but also because the city seems to drift naturally towards the fetish way of life. The streets are awash with skinheads at every corner and kinky stores are not hard to come by. Ok, maybe we were lingering in certain parts of town but the point is another. What was refreshing about those stores is that, differently from London, all the shop windows were clear, the doors were opened, the inside was visible from the outside. There was no attempt to shield pervy customers from the incidental onlooker. I liked that. If fit well with my current attempt to fully accept the slave in me and it was a welcome change from London where entering a fetish store is not unlike setting foot in an underworld of perversion where you feel you should hide from regular god fearing folks outside. i found that liberating if on a slightly consumeristic, shopoholic level.

mirrors

I sometimes find it eerie seeing myself portrayed in what people say about me. It's like looking in a mirror and, each time, seeing a different reflection. Understandably (perhaps) people assume that the version of me they can see is the one that everyone sees, that that's me, that i'm one person no matter who i'm with.

Some know me as a friend, others as a slave. A boyfriend, a son, a brother. A neighbour. Some know me from school, some from this blog. Some know me as a co-worker others as a patient. Some find me bossy, others submissive. Polite and rude, accommodating and immovable. Too playful. Too serious. Immature, experienced. Some have met me at a party, others in a chat room. Some have given birth to me and raised me and others have taken me and turned me into something else. Some have known me for 5 minutes and others for a lifetime. Some who've known me for years feel that they don't know me that well. Others who have met me 5 minutes ago swear they know me inside out. It's not unusual for those who've known me for 5 minutes to feel that they know me better than those who've know me for a lifetime. Sometimes they're right. Often they're not.

But whereas people come in contact with one version of me, i am confronted with all those different reflections where every time i'm put in a different box, classified under a different label. But some of these labels burn and leave marks that stay for a long time. For ever, even, piling up confusingly one over the other.

Fortunately, in the midst of all this chaos, a selected few can, with one word, bring peace and order all around me again.

the blog bites back

When you pour your heart into a blog, it makes you vulnerable. Vulnerable to attacks and opinions voiced at you from people you don't know and can't even see. i guess it's a form of exhibitionism, not unlike the thrill of letting go of your defences in submitting.

It can be arguably interpreted as a form of self-destruction. Or, fail that, maybe it simply makes you stronger. A slave's strength, after all, is in the acceptance of his weakness, his choice to vent it rather than shield it.

But at times, certain attacks make all the difference. There is something brutal about being attacked by somebody you don't see, somebody who seems to have found a weak spot and lashes out at you under cover of anonymity. And suddenly it makes you snap out of your submissiveness, react, revolt. The unfairness of it makes you angry and it feels like you can't take it anymore.

After all, being a slave, for me, is about submitting to the man who owns you, not taking abuse from anyone who's up for dishing it out.

noise

People give me grief about being "a slave who thinks too much". These people would be better off reading something other than this blog.

borrowed thoughts

i have been rather quiet recently. Blog-wise. Since becoming owned my thoughts surrounding slavery have certainly not become more infrequent, quite the opposite, but they have come to be focussed around my Owner.

While the opportunity to serve Him is helping me understand more about myself as a slave, the core of what is happening with me these days is centred around Him. This means that all of my inner thoughts in this regard don't feel like they are mine to disclose anymore. They take place inside my head but they are on loan to me from Him.

i think i will need to resolve this conundrum if i am to continue developing this blog

owned

Over the weekend, i have become owned.

it has happened in an unexpected and unplanned way. i had been holding off meeting anyone until sunday when i was due to meet a prospective new owner. But then, on saturday night, a message turned into a chat, turned into an improvised meet at 4.40 in the morning that i arrived too early for.

i wasn't supposed to stay for very long but i shortly started hoping that He wouldn't ask me to leave. And He didn't until the next day.

In hindsight i realise that someone might argue that it was a little risky to go to a stranger's flat in the middle of the night and let myself be put in a condition where i could have literally done nothing to defend myself had He turned out to be, say, a serial killer. But from chatting with Him i just felt complete trust in Him. I guess it's more than a little risky to have such blind faith in one's instincts but the scary truth is the thought that i might be in danger never even crossed my mind.

Ironically my body is fighting that which my heart has been craving. i was unwell for most of the day yesterday and now seem to have developed a minor rash around my neck where the collar was.

i look forward to my body catching up with the rest of me.

fallen offline

i miss the time of the casual chats with L. i knew him very little back then. i was interested in him, he seemed interested in me. There was this whole unexplored potential ahead. We hadn't done anything about it yet but it was there and it was real as a possibility. There was playfulness and flirting and it was exciting. I was excited every time i would get a message from him.

Now all that potential has disappeared. The possibilities have been replaced by the certainty that the road i have taken has walked me straight into a cul-de-sac. No exit and no future.

Yes, i have taken my antidepressants last night

#010: responsibility

We talked of my difficulties with letting go of L. My need for him and the possible reasons behind his sudden change of interest (sudden, yes, but 18 months ago, i know, it's a little pathetic). She insists on the idea that a Master has power without responsibility, something i'm not so convinced about, and the fact that L got involved with me on a more personal level made him take on some form of responsibility and therefore lose the ability to see me as a slave.

#009: confrontation

Nothing much to report. We discussed that fact that i had felt her hostile during the previous session.

the mole and the mud

today i had "minor surgery", as the doc called it. Just a mole that one day decided he wanted to be something else and started a journey of self transformation. Because everybody i know seems to get cancer (not in my age group but left and right in my family and the families of my friends) i thought i'd part ways with my growing mole and let him continue his process of mutation somewhere else.

Today is also the day i got contacted for the 3rd time by someone whose profile i have read online many times. Over and over. He's the sort of person, or the sort of profile, i should say, since i don't know him, that usually gets me to think i should make the move across the ocean. The sort of person, though, that i wouldn't normally have contacted. Out of fear, awe, respect. i can't find the right word. In his profile he comes across as a very strong-willed, no-bullshit sort of person. The sort of person that i wouldn't disturbe with a message. Someone you don't bother for a chat but who makes you stand at attention if he decides to contact you.

His past messages were to ask if i was ever in NYC, where he lives, but this time he's here in London. i had fantasised before about a possible visit of his to London and being offered the possibility to serve him in his hotel room. Only he doesn't want me to serve him in his hotel room. He wants to mess me up in the Heath.

i don't normally do one-offs. i'm the sort of slave who craves the protection and security of having a man in charge of me. Not really the sort of slave who goes off to meet some random guy in a park tonight and someone else tomorrow. That sort of approach requires much more mental independence than i have. But if a man like that calls me i have to go and serve him and try to please him. i don't know why. i just feel that i have to. i don't just need to suck a cock, any cock. Alright, i might have got into one of those moods once or twice but normally, if i'm trying to serve a man, i want him to ultimately feel pleased, to know that i'll work around what he likes so that he is satisfied in the end and will feel that the time he's spent on me was worth it. i want him to know that it's important for me that he feel satisfied with the way he's being served. I realise it might sound a bit unsexy to put it in those terms but this is, i think, the root (or near the root) of my desire to serve. That's why i don't like being asked "do you like this?" while i'm serving somebody. It gets me all confused. I don't know anymore what i'm doing and why i'm doing it.

i am currently actually on hold until sunday when i'm due to meet a Master who'll assess me and decide whether he wishes to have me as his slave. This week i've declined offers from other dominant men who wanted to offer me the chance to serve them because, as i've mentioned before, i don't like to juggle. if i've agreed to meet a master i don't want to call and say, sorry but this other master came up so i'm not available anymore. i must say this approach doesn't usually pay off because at times you end up waiting for ever and often you never meet the person who claimed to want to meet you. So i'm getting in the habit of predetermining the shelf-life of my premature devotion. But i do still wait.

In this case, though, it's different. he's an out-of-towner and i'm not auditioning to be his slave, just serving someone who wants to be served. But of course he messaged me 10 mins before i was due to go for my minor surgery and i suspect that rolling in the mud in Hampstead Heath is not what the doc had in mind when he said i should keep the wound clean and dry.

So any encounter is delayed by a couple of days and takes us to saturday, just before my audition. It annoys me that the mole and the mud had to come at the same time. But if the mud is not yet here, the mole is gone now. The last time i saw him, he was swimming in some clear solution on his way to a testing lab. He was looking kind of lost without me. Oh, also kind of gross

the puzzle, i.e. stolen words

At times i feel i really must try and put down in writing the whole L story to try and make sense of it. It's all a big random blur in my head of remembering and forgetting, bits of conversations pop up in my head all the time and i keep trying to fit them in the big puzzle but when i add one piece it pushes out 3 more and the puzzle is never complete. In fact, i'm starting to fear that the pieces i have come from different puzzles. There's just no way to get the them to fit together.

today's piece is from January.

[REMOVED]

I've been thinking about these posts since first uploading them and i felt bad. Like i was betraying him by posting his words, like i'm trying to prove he's done something bad to me, like he's tried to deliberately confuse me.

Ultimately i'll probably never figure out what exactly happened but i have no right to post words that are his. It's stupid. Like i'm framing him or trying to make him look bad.

I truly truly wanted to live only to love and please this man. All i can do is try and still show him some respect.

tube touch

the northern line is playing funny these days. There have been problems for a long time and there continue to be. Every morning i have to force my way into a carriage overloaded with commuters. So little space to move, the air is laden with the breath and smells of so many people. Experiencing closeness in such confined space is generally an unpleasant experience but at times being pressed against somebody is not as bad as it sounds.

Like the other day. This man, so close to me, i could smell his skin, inhale his breath, see the little hairs on the back of his neck, feel the warmth coming from his body move into mine through our limited surface of contact. i could imagine what he's like, what his voice must sound like.

Deep under the ground, you come close to someone only to lose them to the crowds in the space of one stop.

anon69

A long time ago i came across this webpage. It's a mock-advert (i imagine) from the Fez Pleasure House looking for pleasure boys to serve customers. Serving boys have to undergo surgery to be castrated and for their dicks to be reduced in size. I think this story awakened my interest in chastity and, to a limited extent, castration. The idea of losing this desire to seek out my own sexual pleasure, step out of the rat race, complete the transition from subject to object, be taken in hand and become a tool to exclusively serve and please my owner are all instilled in this one symbolic act.

i think of this sometimes when i undress before going to bed and see the reflection of my body. i see my dick and feel that i would want it to be smaller and insignificant. i would want to work on everything else that makes up my body to make an owner want to have me but neglect and deny that one part of me.

At the time i found this story i was simply trying to figure out to what extent i was going to want to explore this side of me. My relationship with my bf was not open and i had an online Master.

Online masters now to me seem a bit pointless but i can honestly say that - maybe because i never saw Him - He was as near perfect as you can get. The interaction with Him is what defined Him. He brought light into my days and i did long for Him and wanted to please Him so badly. He understood me. There are many things you can fake online but this you can't. And He understood me.

He wasn't so impressed with my castration fantasy but he did like to keep me chaste for weeks at a time. I remember my balls hurting going to uni and knowing that even thousands of miles away (He was in the States) He was behind the pain and discomfort i was feeling and i felt happy to be able to offer this small homage to Him. Once He wrote to me on Christmas day telling me that He was happy with the progress i was making. That email was the best Christmas present for me.

Unfortunately in time things changed. i became frustrated because He wanted more and more from me and i felt unable to please Him. His requests were starting to be invasive of my boyfriend's privacy or required me to do things behind his back. And i couldn't do it. i once confessed to Him that part of me wished He would grow tired of me and not contact me anymore so that i wouldn't have to feel that i was being such a failure in trying to please Him.

After writing that i never heard from Him again. I tried again to make contact with him many times since then but his email was no longer active and, just like that, one very important presence in my life had vanished in the vastness of the internet.

hungry

Sometimes i'm hungry. Starving. i really need food. I don't know exactly what i want, i know that i'll know the moment i see it. i won't eat just anything. So i go from shop to shop looking at what they sell. And one look is enough. It can take a very long time but it's the only way. For me.

#008: understand

A terrible session. I left feeling very annoyed with her. I'm starting to sense she's not going to understand what i'm trying to tell her at all. She tells me things like: a slave hates his master. And she's not budging. Her point is that my relationship is the real thing i should worry about and the M/s desire is nothing but a fantasy. idealised and impossible. I realise it's a fantasy at this stage, but so is the perfect vanilla relationship when you want one and don't have it. I feel like she's trying to superimpose her moral values on my life and that's really the last thing i need from her. Through all the annoying stuff i've realised that one of my main needs is to be understood. Understood and accepted. That's probably why i have this blog, why i'm seeking a Master who gets me, why i tried so hard with L when, with the things he said, it all seemed like a big misunderstanding.

#007: protection

i know i said i wouldn't do these posts anymore but (see 008) i'm doing them anyway for now. It was a great session. I left feeling that i had made some breakthrough in analysing my desire to be a slave. The need to be small, protected, almost like a child. A child who is happy in the moment because there are no worries and no tomorrow to fear. >>

caged inside

today i went to fettered pleasures with a friend who needs to buy a chastity device to fit on his slave. i generally don't consider myself a gear person but there was so much in that store that was calling out to me. Leather and iron. The smell of the leather, the weight of the iron, cold and inescapable.

Above all, in the middle of one room, a cage. Low and solid. I squatted to have a proper look at it and looking at the space inside i felt this overwhelming desire to occupy that space, to be kept safe and isolated where nothing can reach me and i can finally let go and relax. The desire was so strong that it moved me, i literally felt it swell inside of my torso and for a moment i thought i was going to cry.

I would love to just sleep in there, be in peace, close my eyes having finally left all the stress outside. Inside the cage nothing can reach me.

waterside

That i should be made to feel like an alcoholic in this country where my weekly alcohol intake draws bemused looks even from my doctor is something i would have normally thought of as highly unlikely. And yet it's exactly what happened today at the Barbican Centre when i was told, at the Waterside Cafe, that alcohol could only be purchased as part of a meal and that if all i wanted was a drink i should use the bar in the foyer instead.

Now, that i should be subjected to such haughty remarks in a place where you carry your own tray is something i would have thought of as being even less likely than being made to feel like an alcoholic here in the UK. And yet, again, it's exactly what happened today at the Barbican Centre.

But as i was coming out of the Araki exhibition, having chosen to enjoy, rather than escape, the solitary simplicity of my own company, i had to offer myself one precious moment. When you're choosing to appreciate the closeness of such a loyal companion, you must stop to celebrate the moment. And after being faced with a few too many vaginas at the exhibition, i felt like a needed to give myself some quiet time. But since quitting smoking, precious moments are no longer imbued in the fragrant smell of tobacco so, sitting by the water on a nice evening like this, on such a clear october day, i must offer myself a drink. A drink and a song.

So the air was turning crisp, the water was flowing and in this quintessentially London place the drink was in my hand and the song, one of my L anthems, Nina Simone's Wild is the Wind, was playing in my earphones.

dream: the shoe

this morning i wake up. As i'm getting out of bed I stare vacantly at the space around me. Suddenly i remember. A dream. All my eyes can see is black leather. A shoe. I'm licking it clean. Long wet strokes as i try to do a good job for the man who's wearing it. I remember waking up after the dream in the middle of the night. I remember feeling the urge. How i remember all this? Next to my bed, looking up at me from the floor, one lonely shoe. I had got up. Taken it from the wardrobe. But the shoe was empty and uninteresting. Cold, even. I went back to my dream. I did lick it once though. Briefly. Just for the sake of it.

chain of fool

ups and downs. constantly ups and downs. During the darker months of my depression i had left myself go because i didn't have the energy to look after myself anymore. I smoked for a whole year, i stopped going to the gym, i ate badly, i avoided my friends, i just slept, as much as i could, any time i could. i had become a vegetable, i carried on but i felt drained of all happiness, all energy, and i couldn't see a way out. i oscillated between feeling low and feeling completely lost with this fluid pain squeezing the centre of my stomach and leaving me no peace. i had thought many times of putting an end to things. I don't think i ever thought i would actually go through with it but it was the only thought that, in its immense sadness, could delineate some sort of a way out of all that.

Now it feels good to know that i'm on my way up and out of all that. I'm rising up in a helicopter and what i've left behind appears smaller and smaller down below. i'm still not happy and positive but i'm afraid i've never been that way so i should stick to obtainable goals. i have, after many attempts, managed, i think, to quit smoking. it's now been over 3 months since my last cigarette. The therapy is something that i've wanted to do for many years and is finally here. Things are happening around me and i don't fail to point them out to myself as a form of encouragement to continue on this road.

i might actually be in the process of starting up once again with my gym routine. It's still very early to speak but i'm feeling optimistic and i don't want to limit myself with regards to my hopes. But even that, i'm not yet at the stage where i can do it for myself. I see that as taking care of a body i would like to offer to a Master and i would like it to be something i can offer without shame.

Last night i did something silly. i have given myself a treat. I don't normally do this sort of things because... well, it's silly. But i thought why not and i let myself go to bed with a chain padlocked around my neck. it's just a fantasy thing and it doesn't mean that much to me really. Think of it as a security blanket, if you will. I fixed one end of the chain to one of the legs of my bed and the other was around my neck. I slept like that, turning in my bed feeling the metal on my skin, hearing the tinkling of one ring over the other, then moving in my bed and feeling the chain limit my freedom of movement. Happy to be held. Dreaming of being kept.

It hasn't meant that much really. It's been a bit of a fantasy, a game. i simply let some of my inside spill out onto my outside. Every now and then, i need to allow myself a treat.

out of reach

I'm resisting the need to call. It's like quitting smoking (which i have, by the way) and having a cigarette in my pocket (which i haven't, by the way). The phone's right here and his voice 5 keys away.

my 50s

Recently i have been looking at the idea of being a slave in a new light. Certain situations where i end up feeling hurt bring me to question this longing. Is the desire to put someone ahead of me really a consequence of thinking lowly of myself or simply a desire to please someone else. Why such a desire to please someone else? Why is the notion of simply going after my own sexual pleasure so unappealing from me? Why such a desire for acceptance, for being thought of as valuable property? Why should someone else be more important than me? Why would their orgasm be more important than my own?

These are the questions going around my head most of the time. At times i say to myself that for me it is not about sex at others i'm a little more self-critical and think that maybe i'm flattering myself with delusions of depth and it's really all about sex, even if a non-sexual or negative sexuality.

What i know is that in some way being a slave defines me. During my first preliminary session with my therapist, i nut-shelled the story of L and how i'd been ready to drop out of most things going on in my life to be with him and serve him. She said "you must have felt very lonely to consider throwing everything away on the basis of a sexual preference". Two things struck me about her words. The most obvious that i had felt very lonely. The second, more subtle, didn't seem so important, yet hit me right away. The fact that i was willing to throw everything away on the basis of a sexual preference. Obviously, it appears, i don't think of it as merely a sexual preference

During my trip to china i met guys who are gay and go through their lives never coming out to their families and friends. You don't need to go all that far, even here in the UK there are people who never come to terms with being gay, or rather they never come out, never acknowledging it as a part of them. They don't think much of it and lead an apparently straight life. Kind of like what i imagine people would have done in the 50s. It's not really a question of pretending, i think, probably a good number of them don't think it defines them to the point that they have to make an issue of it with a big coming out. So they don't, maybe they get married, they might chat online and have gay sex occasionally but ultimately for them gay is not what they are, it's what they do, or rather who they do. the only space for any gayness to come out is in the bedroom, and possibly not their own. Hard core gay activists will probably tell you they're in denial, they can't face being gay. but is that so? Or do we see gayness where there is nothing to see?

Well, gayness definitely exists. Whether it existed before we realised it did is a different matter altogether.

So which is it? is it identity or sexual behaviour. i welcome opposed opinions but i think the gay identity as we perceive it today is pretty much a product of our time and our culture. Does a gay identity even exist, or do we simply think it exists? personally i have internalised the idea that being gay is a part of my personality, i don't see it as the main part of it but it's certainly there and i make a point of not hiding it whilst at the same time not forcing it on people. i won't let people assume i am straight if it seems they're going that way, i won't be vague about whom i'm going to see in China if and when they ask, but i won't, say, fight for gay rights in the work place, i'll simply expect there not to be any discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation because... i guess i don't see why there would have to be.

I think that this approach does some good to the gay cause because it allows it to get treated it as it should be treated: as a non issue. By denying it, you make an issue of it for yourself and by stressing it you make an issue of it with other people. I'm just gay. Big deal.

Now, to come to issues more appropriate for this blog, the sexual behaviour vs personal identity debate can be transferred, as is, onto the slave/master platform. And it fits very nicely, too. i will definitely find it inappropriate to mention at work that i'm a slave. i would consider it discussing my sexlife in a context where it doesn't belong. But this inappropriateness might also disguise the fact that i'm simply ashamed of it, that i fear the way people would react to this. Maybe i'm once again choosing not to make an issue of it or i'm relegating it to the "sexual preference" category.

In a way being a slave really is a bit like being a gay man in the 50's. you will not discuss it with people outside a specific circle because you will normally see it as an element of your personal life that's inappropriate to disclose to just anybody. You might decide not to let it be a predominant element in your life, it's something you do on the side of your socially more acceptable vanilla-gay relationship.

Maybe it's a matter of where you draw the line between sex and self. But talking of lines implies that these two categories come in contact somewhere and are different degrees on the same scale, like there is an evolution from one stage to the other. Who we are as people and where we are as a society can be defined in terms of whether you classify a BDSM slave identity as a sexual preference or a character trait. i'm male, next i'm gay, next i'm a slave. Or, if you believe a slave's "slaveness" has an even more profound effect on his life than his sexual orientation, it could be slave then male and gay.

i'd certainly be very bad at making the case for M/s identity to be acceptable as an appropriate topic when discussing someone's personality. Oh, he's a funny guy, warm, outgoing, and makes a great doormat. but that's because i'm generally quite bad at selling anything. i never try to explain or convince people of anything. to give you an example, i'm a very convinced, satisfied and extremist mac user. i actually feel queasy when confronted with a windows machine but i will not, as many of my fellow macphiles, get into a fight to defend the power of the apple. maybe because i'm a submissive and i will not try to enforce my point on anyone else.

in the same way i'm also not going to convince people that there's a lot more to being a slave or a master than meets the eye. if they don't understand it, if they don't know it, i have no interest in explaining it to them. I'm not a prophet, a preacher or an evangelist. and i don't see it as my mission to spread the message to anybody. Maybe it's arrogant of me: assuming that they wouldn't understand but i'm not really willing to fight this battle. Not now.

But does this not mean that i'm living in that exact same situation as a gay man in the 50s. Am i not saying that the world is not ready to hear this? The line is still on sexual orientation and so i'm on private mode. And if i find it sad that a gay person should feel it inappropriate to disclose his gayness to the world isn't it equally sad that it should be inappropriate to be a slave?

i have recently been exchanging emails with someone who's been telling me things that are refreshingly new to me. Specifically he has been telling me some real shocking stuff. He says that being a slave is a great thing to be. Well, i guess i was surprised to hear that and even more surprised at experiencing my own surprise. It appears that i'm a self-hating slave, living in my own 50s wasting time feeling guilt and shame about not being the predatorial sort of fellow i feel that i should be.

The lesson is that i should embrace being who i am instead of trying to forcibly conform to roles that i don't fit in. This will not suddenly change everything for me. This not being hollywood, i guess it will take a bit of time for me to take this all in and maybe one day experience the liberal 60s.

#006: mistake

after discussing my therapy reporting, it appears it may not be such a great idea after all, on 2 accounts. (1) my attempt to keep a log in order not to forget what has been discussed is not ideal because the dynamics of remembering and forgetting are an important part of the therapy and (2) i am inviting a third unknown party/reader in a relationship that is meant to develop on the basis of trust and intimacy. So #006 is as far as this is going to get for now. i think that exposing the therapy on my blog fits in my life strategy based on an inbound journey through exposing weakness and embracing vulnerability. If submission and therapy are parallel ways of doing this, the therapy reports seemed to bridge the distance between the 2 providing a third element to delineate and contextualise them. i have to agree, however, that they maybe seemed to force an element of finality and rationalisation in something that i should probably allow to flourish on a more emotional and instinctive level.

#005: absolute

Starting from my bad relationship with money and the management thereof, spurred by some mistakes on my first bill, we have seamlessly moved on to issues of consideration, jealousy, exclusivity, neglect and my need to be accepted in "absolute" terms. Some people, like my mother, my boyfriend or L (quite an odd assortment of people), have each a value for me that is absolute. They needn't fear any comparison because nobody can stand in their way. They fit their role perfectly because they are their role, they define it. These are the same terms on which i need to be taken.

late night musing

one evening out on the town and two thoughts occur to me:

1) why is it that everything must close so early in London? 10:40 pm and bars were closing. 11.30 and there were no more trains. It's like a children's town: past your bed time, time to sleep.

2) What is that preposterous fake-happy smile plastered on the faces of gay men in London. This smile that says i'm so happy with my life and everything is so fucking fabulous. i may have my own issues because i don't smile at people but, really, that smile. It just makes you want to smash some teeth.

an uncertain blow

i'm having second thoughts about my previously described arrangement as local fallator for a guy i've met off the internet. Second thoughts, in my world, means i can't figure out anymore if i like it or not, if i want it or not. It's requested, so i do it. My idea that we were somehow going to be friendly with each other with the added twist that when he was in the mood i'd provide my services in this way has somehow shifted towards a colder approach. He knows more or less between what times i'm available, he texts me, I go, I perform. There's not much in the way of a friendly exchange going on and the last time i was over he was quite keen to get me out of the door as soon as he was done. I'm not complaining or criticising him, this is what it's about and i don't see it as being treated unfairly. I just ask myself why i'm going along with it.

#004: game

a session all dedicated to trying to figure out what is happening with L or, rather, what is happening with me. Is there a game being played or is it all in my head? why does he behave the way he does and is there anything at all uncommon about the way he behaves? is there friendship, playfulness, indifference, none of these? This is one area that pathetic little me has no control over, even over the confused signals that keep dashing through my brain and crashing my overstretched mental ability, draining me of all strength. Needless to say many questions were raised and none were answered.

#003: dark

An unsettling session focused on my attempt to exert constant control on myself and the image of me that people can see. There appears to be a "dark side" of me that i won't let out and that i won't allow anybody, including myself, to see. The Real Me is, apparently, despicable and should not be shown.

#002: child

Starting from a discussion about the rationale behind presents, i came to discuss my boyfriend's young, almost child-like, personality. This is, in my mind, one of his most beautiful qualities. A man whose mind, it seems, will never age, who will always be playful and unaffected. But innocence can create an illusion of safety and an incident a few years ago has caused a major shift in our relationship and has shown that a child, however unwillingly, can hurt just as much, perhaps even more, than an adult.

#001: end

The session, and the therapy, opened with "i managed to arrive on time". With the following discussion focusing on what this therapy is going to represent for me, i discussed my unease about the fact that it's going to hold me in London. Normally all choices i make are carefully measured to leave the option open for them to be unmade, so that they are not binding. Perhaps because i feel the obligation to carry through anything i start, i try not to commit to anything that's going to be troublesome for me to complete. The question is always the same right from the start: where is this going to take me, how is it going to end?

messed up

it's a messed up situtation. i start to look up and he comes back messing me up again. he doesn't do it deliberately but he does and if he knew he would stop and i wouldn't hear from him again. but i don't want to not hear from him again so i can't suggest it. i just want to try selective quality time together. none of the other crap. and all i get is crap and no time together.

un-juggling and uncompromising

i'm back to not juggling at the moment. Although my experience shows me that juggling and double chatting/dating/hooking up is not a huge deal because finding a master that brings out my desire to submit is definitely a rare event these days, i also know that it does happen and it has happened so i have this resolute determination to not submit to someone unless it feels right. Sounds stupid? Looking for Master Right... i guess but probably i don't need anything else as bad and i don't see any need to make a compromise and get into something i'm not convinced about. Un-juggling means that things tend to go rather slowly but i am positively scared by the prospect of meeting two people that awaken the slave in me and having to take that choice. i approach any such encounter with a sense of duty and if i offer myself as an available slave, i must be available at that moment in time. i don't want to have to seek dismissal by a master because a better one has come along. That shatters my idea of loyalty and devotion which is ultimately the thing i am looking to awaken.

But avoiding the horror situation of having to choose between 2 potential imaginary masters i might be interested in evokes a different sense of guilt for this: the list situation. The current setup implies that i have a list in my head. Once i've committed to meeting somebody, i don't arrange to meet someone else. But it doesn't exactly feel right to keep masters in a list. I guess to be a proper slave i should maybe give myself away on a first-come-first-served basis. No pun intended. Really. But that doesn't seem to be the best course of action. My experience, again, teaches me that waiting too long and assuming too much on the basis of a chat is generally a bad idea. But i can't help doing that.

So my mind, as always, spins out of control on this sort of thing. My friend J suggests that i take a slave holiday weekend, serving him along with his actual slave putting on hold this need, imposed by circumstances, to take decisions. Seeing it in this light does make it sound appealing but can i serve on a strict time basis feeling no devotion and no commitment? Maybe happy slavery is exactly there, in this unburdened letting go without there necessarily being this whole meant-to-be dimension. If this is right, I've definitely been looking in all the wrong places, confusing slavery with relationships. But can i do this? i don't know. it seems i have to reach this cataclysmic mental dimension before i can put my mind at rest, i have to let it spin out of control until all the hinges come loose and i can finally take it out of service.

But the suggested weekend is a long way away and in the meantime i can only keep spinning

therapy reports

The therapy is going well. Already on my third session i left yesterday feeling very upset, a clear sign, if you ask me, that i'm digging in the right spot. As C told me last time i saw him 'i don't know if therapy is right for you but you're probably right for it'.

I have now decided to keep a log of my sessions. Each one tends to end with some insight and i guess this is a good place to record it. The weblog (blog) becomes a psycholog. Er... clog?

dead end

again L comes to confuse me with a mixture of care and carelessness, displays of affection and total lack of consideration. And again i let this affect me in a way that irritates me beyond belief. i'm beyond the stage where i feel i can play along with this and i need to learn to formulate some kind of response. Damage control. All my positiveness that i managed to keep going for so long comes crashing down when once again he says he wants to see me, tells me what day and then lets me know it's not happening only because i ask him about it a few hours before. There's never any consideration for me, my time, my life. I am constantly reminded that all that has no value. And i obviously feel the same way because i move everything around to make room on the day he says he'd like to meet. But any chance of us meeting is based on my being available at a moment's notice because everything comes before me and pushes me lower down his priorities. And i'm always the idiot that drops everything the minute he calls. And he says we are friends. But how do you treat a friend this way? A slave, maybe, but a friend? And my desire to see him is so fucking strong. I manage without but then he calls, he offers. And as he gives, he takes away. One moment it's there, the next it's gone. And i'm completely powerless, unable to help being drawn once again in this perverse dynamic that only hurts me. But if i confront him about it, it's all in my head. No way out.

the cloud and the silver lining

i have no idea how it's come about or if it's even real but all of a sudden i can sense the heavy shade of my L obsession finally lifting off.

As i am left walking the earth and looking up at the big cloud billowing up and away, the tingling feeling in my legs alerts me to an almost forgotten sensation: i'm regaining some of my strength and maybe the ability to stand on my own 2 feet.

It may all be an illusion or a temporary glitch in my mental functions. Maybe it's the flu or maybe it's the trip. Maybe it's the powerful effect of my first 2 therapy sessions or something i ate last night. Maybe it's because i've been staunchly fighting the urge to call him, text him, email him but for the first time we have spoken and i haven't felt it: that desire, so familiar, to become a nothingness in his hands. All of a sudden he has shed his immortal gown. Maybe he's not a superhero anymore and he's become like the rest of us mortals. What's done it, i don't know.

But true to my melancholic nature, i cannot rejoyce in this new found strength. Instead, i mourn the loss of a hero.

home

Back home after three weeks in 中国 i feel a little numb. Long trips always leave in their wake an aftertaste that's difficult to define, huge distances that appear reduced to nothing when half the world can glide beneath you in a day and everything can so easily return to what it was. As life's gone on undisturbed in your absence you can't help but notice what little weight your existence carries.

And from the plane, staring down at the seemingly endless blanket of yellowish unremarkable lights that is london, the only pathetic thought i could conjure was that L was down there somewhere and that my birthday had come and gone with not a message from him. For over a month now i have stopped actively seeking contact with him, aware that any of my futile attempts to reach him will always leave me feeling unhappy and the contact i need will never be there.

Then the moment comes, when the plane touches the ground, when the city literally hits you and shakes your world. But my mind was simply tired. All i could think about was that i wanted to go home and be with my family of friends, that my boyfriend was once again thousands of miles away and that monday i have to go to work.

i guess the plane has jetlagged the kink out of me... give me a couple of days

race

spicy content warning

This may be a bit of a controversial and politically incorrect issue but i guess in my own blog i can allow myself a little leeway to be controversial and politically incorrect.

I have to admit that one aspect of a D/s relationship that I find exciting is when the disparity of power is mirrored in a perceived - albeit constructed - natural difference such as can be materialised and reified in race. In my non specifically D/s life - if there is such a thing in my case - I'm not particularly concerned by issues of race. In fact I believe this is quite an artificial concept that we've come to accept as a given fact of life when in fact it's merely a human construction: a cultural concept. If you think of it, the idea of humans being subdivided in races is completely arbitrary: a parameter that's been defined and internalised to the point that we've actually come to accept it as innate or factual when in fact it's completely cultural.

But far from wanting this to become the subject of this blog entry when it's meant to be about a much more neutral topic such as a slavery, the point i'm trying to make is that when the natural innate difference between a master and a slave is reinforced and accompanied by some degree of "racial" inequality, it makes for quite an appealing combination. The idea of master and slave being separated by not only their admittedly different mindsets but also some sort of genetic, "natural" or innate difference is for me quite a turn-on. It hints to the idea that a slave is a slave and could never be a master.

You can turn it around whichever way you please, i'm generally equally attracted by all combinations: black masters looking for a white slave, white masters looking for an asian slave and so on. Ultimately if you're going out to buy yourself a slave you might want to pick a colour to match the upholstery or whatever. The attraction is that If it's a slave we're talking about, there's no need to apply the same categories of respect, decency and political correctness that you would use for your neighbours, colleagues or anyone else.

As i'm currently playfully contemplating the idea of a move to Shanghai for a year or 2, the thought of becoming a chinese master's western bitch is rather appealing. I have similar fantasies about moving to an arab country although there it seems to be a little more delicate

dream: the blog

i google the words: "i miss L" and the search engine returns a page: a blog written by somebody who was his slave and now misses him. Somebody who had belonged to him. In my dream, i so wanted to be that person. the blog had actually been published (in Japan!) and as i held the book tight in my arms i looked forward to being home, alone with it, and reading about somebody who could understand.

parallel realities

Again L comes to me in a chaos of dreams. Waking up, the stark contrast between the dream L and the real life L makes me wonder if the man i worship so much could not be just like any other divine being: a product of a human mind.

old thoughts, new thoughts

In China, on holiday, in the exciting city of Shanghai and my mind drifts back again to the thought of L. I do my best not to let myself think of him but just one minor mistake and the bad mood sets in again quickly expanding to occupy all space inside my head. And i get sucked in and can't think of anything else. I can't let go of him - of the thought of him. Although all there is in it for me is pain. I've been thinking about whether it's true that i'm addicted to the pain and hurt, whether I actually seek it but i think the problem is something else. Whatever space he has taken over inside of me is now completely his. letting go would not replace the hurt with something else, it would just leave an unbearable void that, I fear, will never be filled. A non-space, negative force, a black hole, quiet nothingness. And just like a black hole, it's so dense that it's a weight i can't carry.

transport

growing up with very limited access to porn and even unaware that material might actually be available that could link in to the somewhat perverse thoughts i used to have as a child (i still doubt it), I used to follow with much interest historical films, not so much for their educational value, but for the simple reason that you'd get a glimpse of distant societies where slavery was part of daily life. I'd sit through mind-numbingly boring B-class movies just for the chance of seeing the interactions of masters and slaves. Men whipped within inches of their lives for not serving adequately, their lives completely in the hands of their owners. That sort of thing was worth enduring all the other side elements of the plot, things like wars and whatever else was happening in them.

One of the things that would properly set my mind spinning were people getting around on slave-carried litters. The way these men's only purpose was to be used as a means of transport was extremely exciting. How it is that a child comes to be excited about this sort of thing is beyond the scope of this blog. The fact is that this interest translated, in my adult life, in what is generally referred to as pony play.

Of course, as is often the case, my interest in this sort of thing doesn't seem to fit neatly in the proper BDSM-defined category. I'm not very appealed generally by the idea of becoming some sort of animal, be it a dog, a pony, a pig or a hippo. i simply enjoy the notion that my body can come to be used by my owner in many possible ways - a means of getting you from A to B being one such way.

Now, being something of a spoilt child, I have later moved my attention from litters, which would involve lots of other slaves getting in the way and diluting my devotion to my owner, to a simple rickshaw solution - mind you, the ones where you have to run though, not cycle. As i'm currently spending a few weeks in china, the rickshaw is not something that's very hard to come by. Tourists are constantly offered a rickshaw tour of the town, but those are the cycle variants - not so interesting - plus the obvious element of the retribution at the end makes them completely unappealing, you even get them in London. The other day, though, during a visit to the summer palace in Beijing - i saw an actual one, human-drawn, used to carry the empress - i know, a womam, I try not to focus on that. My boyfriend saw a sparkle in my eye as i stood in front of this simple vehicle designed for 2 people clearly belonging to 2 very different classes where one's life is only a commodity and intended purely for the use and comfort of the other. So I couldn't help but start day dreaming about running around the beautiful park surrounding the summer palace pulling the rickshaw behind me with my master comfortably sitting in the back guiding me to where he wants to go. Of course, ideally, there would need to be a lot fewer tourists

attempts

After feeling unappreciated for my somewhat mechanical behaviour, I've tried to make an effort to come across as a little more of a person with opinions, up until the moment i become owned. Chatting with a new contact who seemed rather friendly and unceremonious, i tried to explain a little better where i'm coming from. His comment came as: you talk a lot for a slave. i felt mortified and apologised and once again retracted in my standard reactive mode of communication where i feel safer. Annoyingly he contacted me the night before i was scheduled to leave for Beijing for 3 weeks so any chance of meeting up is suspended until my return.

the local cocksucker

Since meeting the master that felt there was no chemistry between us we have remained in touch on a more friendly basis. Without me going in my deep non-human robotic mood, communication unsurprisingly seems to flow better. From M/s to friendly acquaintances, we have now moved to a sort of interaction that i hadn't really explored previously. i have basically become his friendly local cocksucker. He lives nearby and, as you would expect of most people, he sometimes happens to be horny. At which point he texts me, i go over to attend to his needs, and later go back home. It's not as cold as it sounds, not a straight-forward suck-and-go situation: we chat and similar, but ultimately i'm specifically there to attend to this need.

The curious thing is that i wasn't necessarily expecting to be interested in this sort of setup. After communicating his reluctance to approach a full ownership situation with me he had suggested meeting for sessions, which i declined. Aside from my declared aversion to this term, i'm not generally interested in meeting someone to pretend he's my master from time x to time y. In this current setup there is no implication that i'm his slave or he's my master. He's just a master and me a slave. This concept is in both our heads so it's not at all unreasonable that i should be available to him in this sense. i certainly enjoy the idea of being "used" and my submissiveness "taken advantage of". He was quite surprised that i agreed to this situation after declaring i wasn't interested in sessions, but i obviously respond very differently to these 2 situations.

Possibly rather than expose the contradictions of a session-setup where you're clearly not a someone's slave, the current solution reinforces my status as someone who's available for use and complies upon request. I'm somehow annoyed with my own usual übercold approach. There is no feeling overwhelmingly taken with a feeling of slavish devotion. I go through my duties as a series of actions that i perform one after the other carefully aiming to please but unsure as to the reason why. I guess from his point of view this is better than an evening wank

I guess the difference is between exposing the theatrical essence of the session approach versus choosing not to pretend and simply assert who we are. i expect a master not to be shy and ask, even expect, a certain degree of compliance from me. He might be somebody i'm not particularly into but if he asserts his rights by making clear he understands my position, i'm going to be prone to not disappoint and do what i'm expected to do. I'm not saying i necessarily like this approach, it's simply what seems to happen

porn for me

a few years ago i went to prague for a short holiday. on the charles bridge my attention was caught by one statue in particular portraying a slave, on his knees, maybe in chains. i can't remember exactly, but i remember being very aroused by it. i of course took a picture and i've been trying to dig it out but i think i've lost it.

i remember sending it to an ex-master because i thought he would find it interesting too but he failed to see the interest in it. i often find myself in this sort of situation where i get very excited about something like this where everybody else, even those who share my interest in dominance and submission can't see what the fuss is about.

Again a few years back i was in Florence and i became totally captivated by the statue of Hercules and Cacus. There in the middle of the piazza della signoria i got a hard on just from standing in front of it. It was like watching porn. Incidentally i've never really found porn very interesting but Hercules and Cacus, that's pure raunch for me. This is like in high school when i'd get a boner from reading Winkelmann's essay on the Apollo Belvedere. I remember searching for hours in the vatican museums on a hot summer's day to see the actual statue. It was totally worth it: once i found it i felt truly in the presence of a god

the ultimate context: slaves vs subs

i read this article the other day and was reassured to be heading in a direction that is right for me with regards to my feelings of what it is to be a slave. The article defines what makes a slave a slave, as opposed to a sub and much of what is in this article seems to fit me like a glove in a way that reinforces my trust in my perceptions and my determination to continue on this path rather than choose to compromise into having occasional subbing sessions for the pure purpose of "feeling" something, whatever that is.

Some of the points that hit home were:

For a slave 'being in a collared relationship means they are owned, and often this translates into the statement that they do not have the "right" "choice" or "option" to walk out if the relationship goes bad [...] This belief in ownership stems from a strong commitment on both an emotional and mental level to the dominant'.

I have experienced this sort of situation with C. I'm not saying that it was 'going bad', i couldn't have hoped for a better owner and anyone who's read this blog knows that i absolutely worshipped him. But it must be said that towards the end of my service to him, things were not going very well. I went for a few months without seeing him and missed him greatly. I had irregular online contact with him and i expressed my anxieties but was always told, in a not impatient way, that i should not worry, that i should wait and that he still wanted to own me. For me, the fact that he told me he wanted me to belong to him was reason enough to feel that it was my duty and my desire to wait and remain his slave. As it turned out, he did eventually choose to let me go and, after a few months' wait, i ended up not seeing him anymore - until very recently, that is. i have to say, because of the obsession with "experience" that you get in this domain, i constantly get asked questions like 'are you experienced?', 'what is your experience?', 'Have you been owned before?' and if so 'Why did it end?' so i often find myself having to relive and explain this situation. To this date, i still haven't found one person who didn't think i was completely out of my mind wanting to wait. 'It's clear he had no interest anymore', 'why should you have to wait?'. Those are the comments i get all the time. ALL the time. i normally refrain from doing so out of the respect that i feel i should show to someone who is considering making me his slave but i often would like to point out that they really have no idea of what my submission to C meant, what it was, and that they should really refrain from formulating judgements on something they know nothing about. So it is refreshing, for once, to find some reassurance, albeit in the form of an online article, that there is someone out there who would understand me.

There is a level of acceptance of the dominant's behavior that can be more intense and widespread than many submissives would allow. For example, a dominant wants to bring in a third to the relationship. A submissive may demand certain criteria be met before they allow (yes, allow) such to occur, whereas a slave may say "It is not up to me, if this is what Master wants, so be it" and quietly accept this new change.

This is once again something i've experienced within my main frame of reference, i.e. my service to C. The decision on whether he would share me was only his to make and he elected to do so a couple of times although he knew that my preference was to serve him alone. I did thrive on the exclusive bond that was formed between me and him and would have preferred that there be no external interference. But it was very clear to me that this was not my decision and not his preference and i was more than happy for his desires to take priority over my own. In any case i felt very happy in the knowledge that this was out of my hands.

'[slaves] often speak of being quietly accepting, in control of themselves at all times, formal, and other such things'

This seems to be something that's been written about me. I often wonder whether my desire to be a slave is not a way to compensate for my constant need to be in control of myself in any situation. i am the sort of person who never raises his voice and is always controlled, or at least tries to be, with regards to the way he appears or is generally perceived.

In many slave relationships, the slave is required to use an honorific at all times, and couldn't conceive of calling their master/mistress by any other name

Here, it's not really a matter of what you are required to do. i actually always feel very self conscious about using either C's or L's name. The obvious choice to keep their anonymity on this online blog plays to my advantage in this case because i would feel really weird about using their actual names, and the same applies in any other situation in life. Even in therapy, talking to my therapist, i have managed to get her all confused by trying to explain these 2 presences in my life without using names. This guy did this and the other guy, not the first, the second... In that case i will probably have to get over this and reveal their names to her -- only for sake of clarity. In another pre-C M/s situation i didn't actually know my Master's name for a long time. This was particularly awkward once where we were entering a club that was for members only. He walked in without noticing the bouncer by the door whereas i noticed her and stopped when he had already started going up a flight of stairs. She invited me to call my "friend" to tell him that he should leave and i just didn't know how to call him. "Excuse me?!"...

'They look down on any behavior that is perceived as designed to force the dominant to meet a need of the slave, rather than the slave focusing on the dom's needs.'

This is a given. I don't like to express this as "looking down" on anything because i don't really tend to judge other people's patterns of behaviour but i certainly wouldn't find it acceptable in me.

'Basically they tailor their behaviors to what the dominant prefers and is most comfortable with'

I have often perceived this as being a fault of mine, a sign of a lack of personality or even hypocritical on my side. Like i'm not really revealing myself but rather conforming to what is expected of me. At the same time, i see it as going hand in hand with being in control of your behaviour and not wanting to become overbearing or inappropriate.

'They expect to be asked or ordered to do things they may not necessarily enjoy because the focus is not on their enjoyment or pleasure, but on that of their dominant. [...] They expect to meet their dominants needs at all times and to not have their dominant accept any manipulation or disobedience'

This article is so talking about me...

'They will not say that the dominant can't do a certain type of play or use a specific implement. They may tell the dominant that they do not like certain activities or implements at the beginning of the relationship (preferably before a collar) but they do not ban the dominant from using/doing those things'

Reading all this makes so much sense to me. i'm sorry to have cut this article into pieces in this ruthless manner. I still invite anybody to go and read the whole thing. It's just been incredibly reassuring for me that traits of my personality that are generally perceived as being strange or intense or "not fun" are shared by slaves out there and i might not be such a strange slave after all. Not altogether inadequate as a submissive. I still choose to use both terms when defining myself (not a sub though). The term submissive certainly applies to me but i don't really feel that i can comfortably call myself a slave while not being owned.

The irony is that L's rejection once came accompanied by one of those little hurtful remarks that he can so skillfully deliver wrapped in a casual and unarguable packaging. He said 'it wouldn't have worked because you were always more in control than me'...

His words just sounded so unfair - he had told me cruel stuff lots of times but this was maybe the worst thing he could tell me. Alright, he told me worse things than this. But i had been willing to give everything up to serve him, i had always dropped everything the minute he called and wanted to see me, i had conformed to any form he had wanted whatever D/s element between us to take, i had asked nothing of him other than for him to want me to serve him but he consistently made his rejection about something that was wrong with me or something i had done.

As always, though, i just found myself powerless to respond to his accusation. i just took it and kept quiet. Questioned myself endlessly about why he felt that way, what i had done wrong. All of these are questions that will probably never get answered because of his little interest in ever discussing anything.

This is why it is sometimes comforting to find an article online that will talk to you.

bridging the rift

My life seems to be strongly divided in two big chunks along the deep fault of kink: my vanilla and submissive worlds. i have in one instance in the past felt ready and willing to take the big leap and jump head first into a new relationship that would merge both chunks. The response was not what i had hoped and frankly i don't see myself as ready to take that leap one more time at this stage. So, for the foreseeable future, the big rift looks set to remain as it is.

Even with friends there is a strong division between the ones i've met in a vanilla context and those who are aware of my submissive personality. I have to say that over the past year or so i have strongly favoured being with my friends on the kinky side. My slave self is increasingly becoming a part of me that i can't negate and during the depression months i have, with a few exceptions, tended to neglect links with vanilla friends who, i felt, didn't really know me and, as a result, couldn't really understand me.

One recent development is that after hinting around with one of my closest vanilla friends about my preference for being around a man who can take charge, we have sort of come out to each other, albeit to a certain extent, with regards to our kinky activities. Her situation is that she is playing around with BDSM because her boyfriend seems to have an interest in it and i, from my side, disclosed my interest in it, too. She already knew about my boyfriend and me having an open relationship but didn't exactly know why. i hardly went on to explain about how i feel that my proper position in life is that of a slave completely owned by another man and that i have, in this, the only society i know, learnt to negate this as something that deviates from what i have been taught that i should want and seek, driven by what is perceived to be a more natural desire for independence, success and self-affirmation, but nevertheless i felt pleased about this small element to bridge the huge gap between my two worlds.

We went on to discuss toys and accessories, so it became really a more superficial chat. We went shopping for something for her in a sex shop in soho and i shared my limited knowledge and offered my advice as best i could. Toys and gear are not exactly my main point of interest so she was quite surprised to find that i had limited "supplies" at home.

As it often happens in BDSM her and my situations are very different. Her boyfriend has a sexual interest in this so encourages her to experience with things like bondage and toys and she's happy to do it to make him happy and has fun with it in the process. I, on the other hand, have what i feel is a more deeply intimate desire for this to the extent that i have no interest in persuading or encouraging anybody to try it with me, put on a pair of boots and swing a flog while we have sex. i have certainly discussed this side of me with my boyfriend in our early days but his lack of interest in it was enough for me to seal the deal on it. We just had the major misfortune of being perfectly compatible on all other levels, which has made our relationship survive and our love grow for a number of years despite the presence of a very dissatisfied slave at one end of it. For this reason i don't really have toys. All of my activities take place outside of my home and having my own toys to bring with me for my master to use on me is far from something i like to do. i prefer to simply bring myself. All that i have to offer a Master is a self contained package that includes my body, my devotion and my submission. I'd throw in my heart and brain too, if i may, but he's under no obligation to take those too. But the package doesn't come with any external attachments and i like the idea that anything that he chooses to play with, and that includes me as his slave, should belong to him alone. It's all his stuff.

humiliation

one of the entries now featuring predominantly on my brand new list of interests is humiliation. The reason for its position is the fact that this term, in its common interpretation, seems to refer to a range of activities that characterises the sort of interaction i'm seeking. But upon more careful consideration the use of this term is very imprecise or, in any case, i'm probably not so much "into humiliation".

What i mean is that finding myself on my knees in front of my Master truly feels like the most natural thing for me, licking my owner's boots until they glisten with cleanliness, i'm not saying this with any false servility, is truly an honour (not to mention a very rewarding way of expressing how you feel) and when you see the look of satisfaction in your Master's eyes... I truly can't see what could be humiliating about serving a man you worship - in fact it is rather something that you do with pride. Not in the sense that you feel you are such a good slave for doing all this but because the idea that this Man that you so badly want to please wants you to belong to Him is just everything. In fact i realise i have never once felt humiliated with C, whose profile also mentions the h-word. Serving him was always the most natural and gratifying thing for me.

what are you into?

i have given in to the power of the list.

uncommonly and notably uninclined to add long shopping-basket-like lists of interests to my online profiles, i am now trying it out as a way to efficiently package myself for the fast-paced reader. i still think that this will ultimately convey a misleading message, i.e. this is what i want to do, take note or move on, but my normal approach is possibly too vague to match the pragmatism of most people out there.

alcohol

meds or not meds, i'm still useless. and quite pathetic. one call from L and all my newly-found serene state is down the toilet and, with drugs having failed, i end up going out with a friend trying to find out if alcohol can make things better.

The answer is no

C

This week i met C again. 21 months after we last saw each other.

The experience was extremely intense for me. The moment i was back on my knees in front of the man that i had so wanted to belong to and i could feel the touch of his hand on my head and inhale the smell of his skin, i was immediately hurled back into this past when i would see and serve him regularly and call myself His slave. The happy time when i would feel useful and wanted as a slave, before all the madness of being let go into a less fulfilling time of my life hurting first about his change of interest and subsequently, and more durably, over L's rejection.

But, there and then, for a short time, all the sadness was gone. Forgotten. i was safe once again and determined to do everything i could to please him.

However, over the time i was with him, my perceptions started to shift. The safety i had felt in the past knowing that he wanted me to belong to him was replaced by the awareness that this was nothing but a passing experience, a temporary reunion. The encounter was not even really sexual for me. Everything i did was so dense with my desire to please him. When i kissed his feet i did so full of adoration for him and what he had represented for me and there was little in the way of a light sensual gesture.

All in all i probably didn't manage to let go of my troubled self while i was with him in the same way that i used to. Possibly because i was not as troubled back then. After a while i became aware of the space around us and, in hindsight, i was quite surprised by this realisation. As a generally visually-aware person, I realised that during all of my previous visits nothing existed but him. Literally. I wouldn't have been able to say what colour the sofa was, although i would have been kneeling just inches from it. i was like a child who can't see past the edge of his crib. This time the space around us became part of what was happening and sometimes, i hate to say, distractingly so. Probably i was very aware of the fact that i had been waiting so long for this moment and as it was presently there, the dramatic significance of this kept weighing on me.

But seeing him filled me with joy. Upon leaving, the compounded effects of the medications i'm taking and what i had just experienced were loudly displayed on the lasting smile i saw reflected in the mirror in his elevator. Coming out into a light summer evening, i just didn't want to go home and walked and walked for a long time experiencing this happiness i could sense throughout my body feeling safer knowing that he is still in my life.

the fridge

well, the new master felt there was no chemistry and it's not a good idea to try it out.

his reaction finally unblocked my own and after some initial hurt and renewed sense of inadequacy, i shook myself out of it and it all started to seem clearer.

i think i was refusing myself the option to have opinions on our encounter because that was exactly what i was seeking. i was attracted by exactly that which he has characterised as "lack of chemistry": the fact that i wasn't going to be some submissive fuck buddy to have fun with but purely a slave, a toy that's yours to use when you're horny or you just don't want to do your own washing up. At this stage i don't want a friendship or anything resembling a human relationship - yet it has to be with someone where i feel that the potential is there to possibly communicate. in the post C & L days this is possibly the only thing i can manage or feel willing to handle. I don't want a Master that i can longingly look in the eyes full of love and adoration while i kneel at his feet but one that makes me move by telling me to move and makes me stay by telling me to stay. I am, in this capacity, withdrawing more and more from anything that resembles a human being to become some sort of automaton.

This also perfectly distills the slave out of the emotional me ideally separating these two entities that mix so badly, this emulsion of selves.

But he seems to want something with a pulse apparently

detachment

i think one of the things that gets masters puzzled upon first meeting me is my apparent detachment. i approach all such situations as a white canvas. i know nothing of my prospective owner and i stubbornly refuse to bring much input into anything that's going on. i do mention briefly the sort of approach that's exposed in more details on these pages but i just can't bring myself to say i like this situation and that situation and i want to do this and that.

the only choice i really wish to have is whether to stay or leave. requests for what i like or am willing to do get me confused and at a loss for answers.

once i met a master and after a brief chat he took me to a sex shop and sent me off to get 3 toys i would want him to use on me. i started looking around and i immediately lost all interest and asked to be allowed to leave. It all seemed pointless to me. He probably wanted to know more about me but his perverse attempt to turn a tool for his enjoyment into a person with desires destroyed the whole idea and as my feelings where then relevant, i then felt that there was no need for me to stick around anymore.

Also after first chatting to somebody and expressing my interest in meeting, i just can't go back to them and ask why we haven't met yet or run after them. i initiate first contacts but can't initiate a second one. It's not out of pride or lack of interest, i just feel that it has to be up to a Master to choose to use me and for me to suggest it would be requesting something that he doesn't think he wants. And what's the point of that

minority

there's a scene from a movie i cherish where the director/lead suddenly engages a passer-by in conversation to share a sad thought he just had. That is that he will throughout his life always be in tune and at ease with a small minority of people. He puts a supposedly positive spin on it by specifying that this is not because he doesn't believe in people but because he does not believe in the majority of them.

Where this guy was really referring to his political views, i have to admit that throughout my own life i have always felt very similarly with regards to my sexual identity. Finding myself gay in a predominantly straight world was the first hurdle. Understanding and coming to terms with my kinky self in a vanilla, glamour-loving community has led me to feeling further estranged. Now presenting and defending my desire for devoted belonging and protected ownership in sleazeland is leading to my sense of alienation feeling like the minority might actually come to the point where there's only 2 or 3 of us out there

if that

98percenters

This is a message exchange that i feel perfectly sums up the contradictions of voluntary slavery and people's different approaches and perceptions.

I get a message from somebody who defines himself as 60% active, has a profile about his good collection of rubber, leather and toys accompanied by a detailed list of what he has and pics of gas masks and similar but no reference to M/s issues. The guy is not really my type and we don't seem to have common interests but i don't like ignoring people so i engage in a little exchange of messages.

-- START--
him @ 5/Aug/05 6:57
nice profile

me @ 5/Aug/05 7:20
thank you :)
must get up and go to work now

him @ 5/Aug/05 7:28
cool. Send me a face pic when you are back online (and interested in chatting some more)

me @ 5/Aug/05 19:38
hi, here’s a face pic as requested but, you know, i’m not really a "gear" person so i suspect we might not be an excellent match.

him @ 6/Aug/05 7:5
the gear is just the icing on the cake. The real substance is domination
nice pic btw

me @ 6/Aug/05 9:11
so what is it that you like/are looking for?

him @ 6/Aug/05 9:58
I love bondage and domination. Love play where you are trying to please each other. Not into subs who just want to be tied up and taken care off.

me @ 6/Aug/05 10:3
ok, i see. well, i don't think it's really my thing. i'm really looking for a more self-centred Master who doesn't really care about pleasing me but wants everything to be centred around what he wants. i don't really need or like to be tied up, in fact i prefer to be able to move to willingly serve an owner rather than being forced to submit.

him @ 6/Aug/05 10:22
looks like you do have quite a few demands for a slave. All your e-mails so far have been about what you want and your needs.
--END--

I wasn't going to enter into a discussion about perceptions with him but i was going to send a message to say that i had said that we didn't sound very compatible. But the guy has blocked me.

Now the simple fact that you have to block somebody seems to point to the fact that you lack the self-security to even hear an opinion different from your own so in my book it makes him a poor choice for a master. But i had to smile at being once again perceived by a "98%" as a difficult slave for wanting to only focus on my Master's pleasure rather than submissively and obediently accept a man's desire to tie me up to please me(!!). All this, just as i was writing about it.

But i have to wonder: do people think that being a slave means i'm supposed to serve anybody who comes along and wants to tie me up?

L once told me that thoughts of general submission do not empower your Master because He has to know that your submission is only an indication of the fear and respect that only He causes in you. (He is always quite unsettled by my ability to quote back at him things he's said) I subscribe to this view, of course (if not necessarily the fear element), but it always surprises me how dominance and submission can be perceived in diametrically opposite ways by people with supposedly similar views.