snip... or not

i'm coming round to the idea that i must cut all contact to L. the thought horrifies and scares me but it might just about be the only way for me to find whatever is left of me and start rebuilding. i imagine that if i had a more natural desire of self-preservation and a healthier self-image i would have done this a long time ago. instead i have been desperately trying to avoid this in the hope that he would remain at least a presence within my life but maybe he was right all along saying that what i needed was distance.

normally in similar situations where i can rationally see that something i'm afraid of is for the best, i can sort of push myself through it by temporarily suspending my natural inertia and somehow disconnecting my rational and emotional sides, making my body mechanically do something that in reality i don't want to do. But this time it's really hard, this has an element of foreverness that frightens me. The moment i speak the words, will be the moment that all this will be history, he will be in the past and so will i for him. To top it all up, he will be annoyed and disappointed to learn that i'm still unable to simply see him as a friend which will forever seal his judgement on my inadequacy without a chance for me to go back on my steps.

in the space of 2 paragraphs i'm no longer convinced i want to go through with this.

inspiration

i would like to add a posting about the person who has inspired me to write this blog. slave demona's blog (much better SE optimised than my own) came up once when i googled "slave blog". That was exactly what i was looking for: reading about the experience of somebody who had chosen submission as a way of life, whose desires might in some way be similar to my own. Now, we all come to make the choices we make coming from different paths and i don't mean to say that slave demona and myself are in any way the same. i simply found her blog a very warm account of her experience and an inspiration to also begin to share.

fall

i am impatient for the therapy to begin. i feel like a hamster spinning my wheel, i'm not getting anywhere and it's exhausting. thoughts recur in a cycle, they never change and everything always remains the same. over a year has gone and i have thought of nothing else. no wonder i'm losing it a little. the blog helps to elaborate thoughts as they occur to me but it's always the same wheel and i should maybe go for a little run outside for once. But the date is set, quite symbolically for the first day of autumn. new season and hopefully new start.

daydreaming

i'm starting to fear to be losing touch with the "real" world. One of my online profiles (i have a few of those, we go back to the split personality issue) lists my profession as daydreamer. It was meant as a sort of joke but in fact it may be not too far from the truth. I realise more and more that i have a tendency to find refuge in unreal situations i create in my mind. At certain times, they seem to be the only thing that can pull me up from my darkest moods.

At the time when L rejected me, the only way i found to cope that would offer some solace was imagining the exact opposite outcome. Every night before going to bed, inside my head the world would be very different. And the feeling stayed with me until the first few minutes after waking up in the morning. To this day my bed is still the safest place for me. My holy space where nothing can reach me and even when at my lowest i find serenity in sleep that lasts well into the first 10 seconds after waking up.

At times, though, my fictitious life can also push me straight down. I don't know if out of sheer masochism or because i lose control of my own mental activity, i sometimes find myself tangled up in less than desirable make-believe situations that i've created myself and end up losing touch with the fact that they are only taking place inside my head.

the therapist

i have finally met my therapist. After some initial hostility on my part, felt and expressed, things started to work quite well. Unfortunately i will only start seeing her at the end of september once we are both back from our holidays.

After merely one hour i already felt a certain link had started to develop and our communication had adopted the confident tones of a better explored and tested relationship. After hearing me talk about myself she suggested we meet twice a week. When i admitted i had anticipated meeting only once a week, she replied with a sceptical "oh no", suggesting: a crackpot like you...

on my way home it dawned on me how much therapy is similar to a D/s relationship. At least in the way it is meaningful for me. Both relationships are based on one party (me in both cases) exposing himself, letting go of all protections and accepting, embracing even, his vulnerability.

I am not excited by fear, i'm excited by safety. Having no need whatsoever to protect myself from someone else. Trusting another person to the point that you can hand yourself over to them without a second thought. Ceasing to exist as an isolated human being, letting your mind dissipate and your body be governed by this person. becoming, in other words, Him.

My recent doubts and uncertainties are because i'm losing the will to communicate, to trust and to experience this fearless safety. People change and after you've removed your mind from your body there is a very real possibility that when your master has grown tired of you and moved on to the next toy to catch his attention, there will be nothing left of you.

river

After a long day spent indoors doing nothing i decided to embrace solitude and i took my sorry ass out for a walk to one of my favourite spots in London, the south bank. When i came out of the underground at waterloo it was pouring outside. i had to smile at how my attempts at not rejecting the outside world altogether were met with the outside world rejecting me and trying to make my walk as un-ideal as possible. I hesitated for a short while pondering whether or not to persist with my plan but despite the weather i really needed to get closer to the water.

The presence of water has a very calming effect on me and in London despite a few canals and park lakes, the thames really is option number one.

So i walked the short distance to the river under a bit of rain, got to the NFT, and had a little lonely drink there under waterloo bridge enjoying the smell of the rain and the noises all around me. Looking at people in this lovely part of town i really had to wonder what is really so wrong with "regular" relationships that i can't seem to find peace in my own. Everybody seemed to be having fun.

This happens to me a lot, i look at people and wonder, actually wonder, how they get to feel ok. They smile, they laugh, they enjoy themselves, all this while i'm stuck there finding life so hard to bear. And yet rationally i have nothing i can complain about. i'm healthy, i live in an exciting city that i chose, i have a fairly decent job, a nice flat that i share with good friends, a lovely bf. i feel stupid about feeling unhappy but i do. what i lack is somebody to claim me as his own, take charge of me, give me a sense of purpose and protection in my submission to him. somebody who can become a sort of filter between me and this outside world that i find so hard to understand and be a part of. Somebody who will tell me that all of that doesn't matter because all that should matter to me is him and i can then focus my attempts to have some purpose by simply trying to please and make him happy instead of having to deal with all those millions of other worries and responsibilities coming at me from all over the place and that i just can't deal with.

weekend

i could sadly recycle my own play on words and call this post weakened or weak-end. i'm just feeling so nauseated by this whole sleazy kinky leathery scene. It just really really doesn't mean anything to me. Terms like cruising, action, session, i just can't take them. one person after another, everything just makes me feel nauseous. It's like all human contact is inhibited by one factor or another. I realise it's probably just me, but there really is nothing to look forward to and existing is so incredibly tiring. as a result i'm distancing myself more and more from everybody (but). i never call or keep in touch with anybody (but) and it feels like everything is slowly and inevitably slipping away. i'm not crying over myself, i know that you've got to go out and make stuff happen for yourself but i just don't have the energy for it. My gut reaction at the moment is i just really want to be left alone. plus, when you're this much fun, it's only fair not to share it with friends. after all you're supposed to like these people.

pills

tap's open and drugs are flowing. let's see what changes...

more on wanting

Some time ago i met a Master for a quick introductory session. Half way through things he flips me over to face down and asks me if my arse likes to get fucked. Well, true to things, my arse doesn't like to get fucked. Truly not. My answer, though, was a respectful "if it pleases you" and i truly hoped he wouldn't fuck me as i really didn't want him to. But he did. And it hurt. Afterwards, it felt so good not to have got what i wanted.

choices

one of the heaviest weights for a slave to carry, well, at least for me, is having to choose who to serve. Decisions are, in general, a difficult hurdle for me to take on and fuck knows i always tend to take the wrong ones. Being sure about a decision implies, by definition, decisiveness, something i clearly lack. i am supposed to be convinced that one thing is right and the other is wrong, one good, the other bad. i, personally, never have such certainties. And no, it's not because you can't see the world in black and white and you have to look at the grey areas in between but because i'm probably just colour-blind.

But out of this multitude of hurdles dotted all around us to make things complicated, the worst one of all is maybe having to choose who to serve. Not because you're putting yourself in someone's hands which can be potentially risky but because the very essence of the decision brings to the fore the obvious contradiction that undermines this type of relationship: the fact that a slave is ultimately, however much he (or she) wants to deny it, free. Up until the moment of the actual enslavement, at least. When i was released by C a now long time ago, i really wished he had given me to someone else instead. Being set free left me in a state of confusion and at a loss for direction. i knew i wanted to be a slave again, but there was no one that i could imagine could take C's place and anyone who would call himself my "master" caused actual anger in me. Now, you see, hardly the ideal slave. Until the L situation materialised. For a short time, i thought i had found a direction again. He was literally leading me where he wanted me to go: i felt safe and at ease once again. But for a short time. Since then i have been completely unable to feel that way again. And it's not like i haven't tried. Perhaps i have lost the ability to submit. i quickly lose interest in anybody i meet.

There is always something wrong with the person who wants to take me as his slave...

Who needs a shrink when you can have a blog

hardon?

i'm a blogging machine today.

Last saturday i went to Hardon with my good friend M.

The experience was utterly disappointing. i had never been to a fetish club before and i had hoped this could be one important step for me out of the cyberworld and into a world that may fit me better than the "real" one but in fact i felt completely alienated, just as much... maybe more than in my day to day life.

Leatherland didn't seem to be much about Masters and slaves but rather tops and bottoms. People who like to be fucked are there being fucked and the ones who like to fuck are doing the fucking. That's all there is to it. As clear as fuck, as boring as regular porn. Like that old 80s song "in the land of the free, you can be what you wanna be", an advert for freedom, an absolute heresy for someone like me who yearns for the pleasures of constriction and limited choices. Slaves chatting away with their friends next to their Masters instead of respectfully standing behind them in silence awaiting an order, Masters excitingly commenting on each other's outfits. It was really just a fancy-dress G.A.Y. complete with ABBA soundtrack over an olympic performance by some woman covered in glitter. Quite simply a club night cum... cum.

juggling, i.e. the sceptical slave

i am currently being a very bad slave, by my standards. i normally strongly dislike concentrating on more than one master at any one time. even in the preliminary phases. As soon as an encounter starts to seem likely i can't chat or develop much interest in anybody else. This has proven a very poor strategy generally and has often kept me waiting pointlessly for masters that have never taken the leap off the cyberworld and into my daily life but, what can i say, i'm not really a strategist i simply try to follow what feels right for me, consistently making, as M puts it, very bad decisions.

Lately, though, i have started "playing the field", as it were. i'm in contact with 3 masters that i am supposed to meet in the near future. i have to point out that my readiness to do this is a clear indication that there isn't, at this stage, an overwhelming interest in any of them. Also, in the post-L age, i have strong doubts about feeling that same way about anyone else so i try to let the sceptical slave come out from within me to play a little. I'm also hopefully learning not to get carried away on the basis of a few messages from anyone showing an interest in me.

Being in contact with all of them at the same time reinforces my belief that there are as many approaches to a M/s relationship as there are people who take an interest in them.

Master no. 1, and maybe the one i'm more interested in out the 3, which in my world means the one i'm more likely to end up feeling bad about myself for, wants everything to rotate around him by making me a toy to sexually please him. He seems very detached about it all. my role is very defined in the sense that i will go when called, serve his needs and leave when told to. My uncertainty about it is that his detachment, from previous experiences, might mean he never actually contacts me to go and serve him.

Master no. 2 is like a teen-age dream come true. In fact he has barely stopped being a teenager himself. He's a few years younger than me, drop-dead gorgeous jock type, has more of a fresh and boyish approach to the whole thing, shows involvement and has a naturally confident way about him. He moves part of the emphasis onto me, which troubles me. He likes to see a slave perform degrading tasks, thus not a tool for the Master's pleasure but rather an actual individual whose humiliation becomes the centre of the action. At present we've been involving in camsex which is something i have absolutely no interest in. It is my willingness to go through with it, engaging in practices that i actually dislike for the only purpose of pleasing this boy i haven't even met that has inspired my previous tug-of-war post.

Finally, Master no. 3 seems to have the most balanced approach out of the 3 which to a messed up brain like mine is cause for uncertainty, making him, at this stage, and i hate myself for thinking this, the one that causes less of a stir within me. His online profile uses the term "roleplay" which leaves me puzzled as i don't really feel i'm playing a role when i'm serving but rather that i'm allowing myself to be who i really am. Talking about it as a game, a play where 2 equal people choose to take on a role instead of another causes me to suspect that his is an approach that i cannot easily relate to. I could never place myself on the same level as someone i'm serving. My simple desire to serve a specific person implies that i place Him on a completely different level that i can never reach, and i wouldn't even dream of trying. i lack something deep within me that i will never have and i can only ever be a slave to someone who can fill this void with His Presence and connect with me on this fundamental level

But as i said the sceptical slave needs to come out of the cage sometimes, or better still get into it.

the caps debate

you may have noticed a total inconsistency in the use of caps on this blog. i've considered straightening that out but i saw it as pointless. i should as a slave use a lowercase i, some say. frankly this means not much to me. so i'm not paying any attention to that. apart from this specific posting where i now feel very conscious about it, i can't decide on one way or another so i'm just doing whatever comes. Take it, if you will, as one further proof of my need for guidance.

dream: piece of star

A full night of dreams about L. A less than peaceful awakening. The good and the bad. A summary of what has been or, on all accounts, the way i have experienced it: from sweet complicity to detached rejection. In the confused mixup of images the discovery of an object, a star, or a piece of one, something i had kept in a drawer for years thinking i would fix one day but i eventually winded up throwing away. In the dream, though, L was pleased i had realised what it was, he hadn't. And it was his star, not mine.

tug-of-war

i like to serve and submit. Now, this will often entail giving priority to someone else's wishes over your own. What do you do when the person you are serving wants something that you don't want? Doing it means pleasing that part of you that wants to serve and submit. Not doing it means pleasing the other part of you that doesn't want to do it. This can be perceived as always getting something out of it. On the other hand a slightly more pessimistic viewer such as myself will perceive this as never getting what you want. Actually the very concept of "wanting" is called into question. What is it that i want? I want one thing as well as its opposite. In fact I want what I don't want and, by these rules, wanting becomes meaningless. This duality is very much part of my life and myself on every level, so much so that I find it extremely hard to understand what it is that i actually want. Everything is just as true as its exact opposite. i want to be loved and toyed with, valued and thought of as inferior, cherished and irrelevant, precious and useless, first and last. i have developed a low opinion of myself spawned out of the firm and somewhat presumptuous belief that i have a profound and accurate understanding of myself. It is this very self-knowledge that leads me to understand that i have no idea of what i want. i want a life of tender and loving warmth within a mutually fulfilling partnership with my boyfriend and one of selfless dehumanisation at the service of an owner that will use me for his own pleasure with no regard for my desires. It's the fight between the saint and the slut. Some people have perceived me as a hypocrite: a dirty boy who pretends to be good, others as a goodie-goodie trying to seem naughty. But i'm quite literally both: 2 people sharing (badly) one single body and fighting with one another, pulling my life in opposite directions. And i (!) am right in the middle, torn between contrasting desires and unsure who to side with. Now i seem to have become three. Délire de grandeur? Possibly, but not without a well developed inferiority complex.

My great fascination for L was unarguably influenced by my firm belief that he had my "opposite opposites". L is sweet and mean, loving and sadistic, he would always say the sweetest thing followed by some nasty comment. He somehow perfectly matches my duality with his own allowing me to magically be in one place and another, one thing and its opposite, keeping me, myself and i very happy.

In a way he continues to do that by praising and rejecting me. Theoretically i should feel fulfilled by this outcome. But i don't. i'm the good boy that he doesn't want as a slave and the perverted mind he doesn't want as a partner. In the end his rejection is what hurts the most. After all, whether prized or worthless, all that my selves need is to be wanted. Whatever that turns out to mean...

some clarity

today i lost it big time. i'm not designed to be in social situations. i'm made to be kept in my little cage, let out only when needed and then put back in straight after. i feel i could possibly find happiness in the safety of this confinement with my Master being the only person to hold the key to my world.

at the moment the door is wide open and i just can't handle it.

tonight i feel the lowest of the low. like i had no real place among humans. i'm on a completely different level while He is so Perfect that quite literally i'm not worth coming anywhere near Him. and yet i was. near Him. and i felt so out of place. i felt so bad about myself.

how absurd to fantasise that he could love me.

for a while i felt so happy when i thought that He might actually like *me*. over a year ago. i feel so stupid now. it only lasted 2 weeks but those 2 weeks were... there are no words. i have never experienced such happiness. how sad He later pointed out they had meant nothing to Him.

nothing.

quiet

Depression is hitting once again. It's a very quiet night, nobody is home and time is passing very very slowly. I feel uncomfortable in my body and in my life.

the session

Today i had my therapy session with the doctor who is going to assess my need for therapy and submit a report on the basis of which it will be decided what sort of therapy is advisable.

It's been something of a surreal experience meeting somebody for one hour who i'm never going to see again, discuss very intimate aspects of my personality, than come out into the streets to find out the chaos following the terrorist attacks.

The session itself was quite good, but of course you can't go into too much depth when you see somebody only one time for about 1 hour. So we've dealt with a number of issues. I've tried to present myself in the best way i could but she got a sense that there was something we had missed, some dark area that we didn't go into. She's had some interesting insights that will give me food for thought.

Of course i have discussed my desire for an unequal relationship and all the contradictions that tend to go with it. i've also talked about the sadness that i can't shake off with regards to L and she worded it in a way that surprised me. She said i felt i had failed him and i wondered if that was the case. I mean my feeling, not whether i have actually failed him. i have always perceived it as being found to be inadequate and not good enough, somewhat lacking in any value - a judgement that's more related to my essence - whereas her way of expressing it put the fault onto an action, something i've done rather than something i am. I have to stop to consider all the implications of this.

I was also stunned by something else she said. She talked about my desire to "annihilate" myself. Her choice of words reminded me of the time when i was in therapy as a 13-14 year old coming to terms with being gay and discussing a crush i had on a boy who went to my school. The things i used to tell my then therapist about this boy contained nothing of my sub/dom interests (although i did mention them one or two times) and yet she would always repeat this to me, that i was trying to annihilate myself in relation to this guy. And i have to say as a 13 year old, this really didn't mean much to me, i couldn't feel this word, what it meant. And i can't fully grasp it today. I, of course, understand it but there's something that is missing. Is this then my true self? Is this something that comes out about me in every relationship i seek even when it feels (as it did with this school crush) so innocent and pure? And if so, do i do that with F as well? I pointed out to the therapist how her choice of words had surprised me and brought all of this up and she added "This is not a word i use often" which preempted my growing concern that this was merely therapist-talk.

I also found it curious that she asked me if my sub/dom interest was something i wanted to keep or lose, which made it sound very much like a game show where you go on a trip and you're only allowed to take with you a specific number of items. I didn't know what to say. This is very much me. I imagine that if i, through therapy, came to be enlightened and stopped having these desires, it wouldn't be a problem to lose them because they simply wouldn't be there anymore. I don't feel it's up to me to decide. Not at this stage anyway.

if it looks like a duck...

That didn't take long. The prospective Master has stepped off the scene. I admit to feeling a little saddened but not overly surprised. I think i can sort of sense even in a chat when a Master has the quality that it takes to grab my attention and it was definitely lacking there. i can't submit to somebody just because he says he wants to try it, i must feel his dominion over me.

The day i met C, my one most important Master so far, he casually grabbed me by the back of my neck while talking to me and that was all it took. I remember leaving the pub where we had met and (forgive the Friends quote, i know it's not very BDSM) it must have looked like i had slept with a hanger in my mouth so big was the smile on my face. From that day, and for as long as it lasted with him, i wanted nothing more that to do anything i could to please and serve him. Even when i met L, just a few months later, and became so fascinated by him, i chose not to go back to his place after our first meet because i wanted to remain loyal to my Owner. A decision, i must admit, that i later came to regret.

Anyway, the w/e Master has gone so i guess i can take this cock ring off...

the weakened master

i am in the process of trying, after a long time, to let the slave come out of me. i have been in touch for some time with a new Master who is interested in trying me out as his slave. i am not feeling very positive about this.

For over a year now i haven't even been able to imagine wanting to actually serve anybody other than L. His lack of interest has been very clearly stated but i just couldn't switch off this part of my brain and move on to someone else. After all he was the person that i had felt willing to drop everything i had going on in my life for and it was a decision i had never thought i'd be willing to take for someone.

My approach to D/s has been somewhat ambivalent over time, i'm the first one to admit it, i have a vanilla relationship that, apart from our sexual incompatibility, is probably the most solid relationship anyone could ever hope for. i have a boyfriend who loves me so deeply and who i love so intensely that it makes me feel all warm inside just thinking about him. And yet, i have been willing, at a specific time, to give all this up because i thought that was what was stopping L from wanting me as his slave. He had argued his rejection around the fact that i "have a relationship". It was fair enough, i thought, and after a long 2 months of pondering i had found inside of me the will to take a huge gamble and go for the thing that had been on my mind since my childhood, the thing that defines me. I decided i was willing to step out of my relationship to become his. Unfortunately, after talking to my bf about this, and talking to L about this, he said that that wasn't the deciding factor and that if things had been supposed to happen, they would have happened. i will not go into this right now. This is just to say that i have been left deeply affected by his rejection and can't help feeling undesirable and unworthy. Anybody else who's approached me online could not cause the slightest bit of interest in me and i can not really imagine ever experiencing something so intense for someone else. The cliché is that when you're in love it feels like it's the first and the last time. And this could very well be it for my desire to serve and submit. Well, not quite, the desire is always there but anything that i've experienced in the past in this area and has ended, has only been followed by something that exceeded it in depth and intensity. I may have attained my limit in this regard or, in any case, it's quite hard to top this up.

Well, that has been my feeling over the last year: a feeling of great emptiness. Now i'm rationally trying to make an effort to recover what's left of myself. it has become apparent that i might suffer from depression -- whether this is caused by these events or has, on the contrary, spawned my reaction to them is something that i cannot objectively assess. For this reason apart from seeking a new Master, i'm also seeking professional help and have an appointment next thursday with a psychotherapist who will assess my situation and any need for therapy and/or medication.

But going back to the new Master, as i said, i'm not feeling very positively about this. I have not yet met him. I'm supposed to go and serve him for a weekend, next weekend. i have explained to him that i have never been able to simply agree to serve somebody and that it is something that i can only find out once i am face to face with a man, his ways, whatever impression i get from him, maybe it's chemistry but i know that i can't know from an email. Yet, he wants this to be the way things happen so, if i do this, i can only do it his way. I'm not one who negotiates a scene and i've never actually liked the word "scene" implying the play is on or is off. When i am in the service of a man, i am always in his service, whether i am or not in his presence. My thoughts constantly revolve around him as he becomes the centre of this part of my life. But he makes demands of me for this week that precedes our encounter and i have mixed feelings about giving in to his requests for the simple reason that for the time being he is simply a cyber-presence for me and i cannot see myself as his slave on this premise. This is already causing some conflict, i can see. Because my submissive self -- which i think is normally the only thing i have to offer to a Dom is definitely not coming out -- and i'm afraid he will perceive me as difficult, which i must admit i am in a way in certain situations but i try not to be, in my role as a slave. It just isn't happening for the time being. I can not sense his authority over me for the simple reason that i have never seen him and i'm afraid this will eventually annoy him and make him lose interest.

beginnings

This is something that's always been a part of me and i've often wondered if it was caused by one particular experience or rather something i was born with.

As far back as i can remember i've always been attracted by the idea of a man being the property of another man, the idea of the power that one man can have over another. As young as 5, i used to play "slaves" with a friend. When i was about 8, while on holiday with my parents and some friends of theirs i had set up a game with one of their sons that i would be his slave. he would make me do stuff, be on my knees in front of him. Nothing too extreme but i liked it. Again it happened with other boys i met through my childhood up until the age of 11-12. Later, i think it became a little more difficult to play these games as boys stop playing games and develop other interests so it never happened again until much later in the age of sex and internet.

subdiscourse

Today i start my blog.

Many have got here way before me but speed of reaction was never my strongest point.

Subdiscourse is about my experience with my strong feelings involving dominance and submission and how these impulses affect my life in its daily dimension as well as on a wider scale in terms of self-perception.

Slowly i'll add content to introduce myself and hopefully soon i'll be up to speed and able to add postings that are linked with my daily experiences rather than a tale about my past.