In the year or so that I was on line before I met Frank, I probably met at least 10 or 12 different people. I would always visit them. I never let anybody come to where I was. I was very frustrated, [because] all the people I met wanted me to not have kids. Somebody might be willing to have a sub, but I had to leave my kids with my ex, or they didn’t want me to work. I wasn’t happy with that. I’ve always worked. It’s part of who I am. I [even] met somebody who wanted to stick me in an apartment and bring me food and only take me out at certain times and that was it: no life of my own. What boggled me is that I knew that about him, and I still went and met him! I couldn’t stand a weekend over there.
I got to a point where I was really desperate for someone. I was warned that you have to really care about yourself before you start [in this], and you have to find someone else who cares about you. You really do. It can be dangerous. I got myself in some really, really tough situations. [For example], one of my fantasies is to go to bed with a black dom man. I thought, God, that’s all my fantasies rolled into one. I met somebody in Colorado who was black, and this mentor of mine kept telling me, “Lisa, don’t meet him! I think this guy is really into beating up white women.” I said, “Fine, it’ll be heavy; it’ll be what I’m looking for.” Of course, [my mentor] always turned out to be right. I basically got in way over my head. He did all the things you’re not supposed to do. I came back looking like raw hamburger. I was welted from the back of my legs all the way up my thighs, my back, the back of my arms. It was grim. I didn’t know what to do. My first thought was [that] I was absolutely psycho to let somebody do that to me. Why didn’t I run and hide and say I’m never going to do it again? Why was I still intrigued? I still had the thought that somewhere out there was somebody that would do it right. I went to the [emergency room for the bruises, and] they knew immediately what had happened. They had seen it before. The doctor recommended that I go to a counselor. He said he thought that masochistic people in general need psychological help. He said, “You’re going to commit suicide after a while if you don’t start taking care of yourself.” I was very angry at him, but he got me pointed in the right direction.
When I went back on line, I said that I was in a relationship. That let me read and learn and hear other people talk without being bombarded [by private mail]. I finally started to look for somebody who was human, somebody who gave me the sense that he was looking for somebody to love, not just somebody to beat. One thing that appealed to me in Frank’s messages was his [description of an] ideal [situation]. He said, “It really adds a lot when you’re bringing your wife flowers when she’s in collar and cuffs.” And I thought, Wow! Somebody would bring me flowers? I thought Frank sounded human and real and not like a jerk; it really appealed to me. I wrote to him. In the first letter I told him that I was actively looking for a D&S relationship, full-time. I said I’d been through a lot and I was finally getting smart and not meeting anybody, but that I was looking. I said, “From the sound of your messages, we seem to be looking for the same thing.” And I told him, “I’m laying it on the line. I’ve got two kids; I’m divorced; and I work as a computer person at a law firm.” And if he wasn’t interested, that’d be fine, because I told him I’m not compromising anymore. That was one of the first times that I thought I was getting my shit together, and somebody still responded. I was so amazed that he wrote back.
I have nightmares sometimes [and] flashbacks, and for me, the best way to get me through one of those is for him to completely take control of me, to hold me down and make me focus and be aware of who I am now, not where I was in the flashback. If Frank [were to] let me go off and be in my flashback, I get worse and worse, and I go farther and farther away. I think I need control to feel like he still loves me and pays attention to me. To dominate me you have to know every single thing about me. [Before], I wouldn’t open up and tell him things. I would change the subject if I felt like he was getting too close. A self-preservation instinct would emerge. But [I found that] the more honest I was, the more he knew about me, and the more he’d get inside my head, the happier I was. There was finally a point where I knew he’s not going to betray me and he’s not going to hurt me. He knows everything about me, he still loves me, and he still does all the things that I thought only somebody who could be distant and cool could do.
At times he doesn’t want to push me too hard, [because] I’ve had all these flashbacks. [Some] people say, “Give them space; leave them alone; let them go inside themselves and regain their control.” That doesn’t work with me. But if Frank can see it happening and can reach out and make me stay here, and make me be a part of this, then I get past it and things are really good. It doesn’t matter if I’m being pushed by lots and lots of pleasure, if he’s making me come over and over and over again—which he likes to do [and] which I like—there gets to be a point where I don’t want it anymore. I tend to go back into myself. It doesn’t matter how open I am to start with. And you’ve got to be able to be with me and see it happening and to go beyond that.
I like all kinds of control. [For example], I’ve always liked to go play with my vibrator; I’ve done that since high school. For a while he would say, “Fine, play with it.” I had to ask him, but if I did, I always got permission. I used to get irked! [And he’d say], “Why do you ask me if you don’t want me to say ‘Fine?’ ” We’ve had to be really honest with each other. I had to say, “I get disappointed if you say okay.” [Maybe] I wanted to know that he wanted to be a part of it. We had to be really blunt and honest with each other about everything.
We have beams above our bed. I had always wanted hooks above my bed. I like to hang upside-down. We were doing that last night. If we get the legs up high enough, then my back takes a lot of the weight. I can usually sustain that for a long time. That’s one of my all-time favorites. I feel very, very vulnerable. For me, if I can wiggle away, if I can squirm enough to where I feel like I have some control—even if it’s not the control of getting away, but the control of [deciding] where [the blow will] land—that’s too much control for me. But if I can’t wiggle away and I’m very vulnerable and very exposed and what’s going to happen is what’s going to happen and I can’t get away, then I get beyond just the pain, and things happen for me. He tied me up and left me outside last week, and when he made love to me afterwards, he said I was like an animal. I felt more uninhibited than I had ever felt.
Our regular—I call it our vanilla—sex is very loving and very affectionate. It’s something that we do on a routine basis, and there’s always elements of D&S in it, but it’s not real heavy. It’s good, but the times that I’m really involved and really turned on, it’s always very heavy D&S. Those are the times that I’m most uninhibited and most into [sex]. [And] I don’t even fantasize anymore: I remember. Our D&S experiences are the things that I think about, and they keep me excited. For me, D&S play is much more satisfying [than regular sex].
We [also] go for periods when he’s not letting me come from any sort of vanilla sex at all. He’s made me come from spanks, he’s made me come just from putting his fingers in my mouth and things like that, but I have to be feeling very, very submissive and to be in tune to myself. It can’t just happen any time. It’s a cumulative effect. When we go for a month without any sort of D&S anything, we go back 10 paces. My pain threshold goes way down, and I get frustrated. There has to be a continuum or I’m not going to orgasm from anything but very direct stimulation. But if [D&S] is a big part of our life, then I orgasm from other things.
I think the most memorable experience is probably the first time I orgasmed from being beaten. We had some child-free time, like two days in a row. We hadn’t had a whole lot of time by ourselves for weeks, and I spent a lot of time with him clothed and me naked, with just a collar. It’s hard for me to walk around [like that], but after a couple of hours of having no choice, it gets easier. It affects you psychologically. He told me the day before that he was going to beat me the next day. He tried ot
her things first. I was tied up on the bed, and I know he used a paddle and a cat. He played with me a lot, and I had come several times already. Then he told me that he was going to beat me, and he used the riding crop, and I came. I don’t cry very often. I don’t know if it’s pride or what, but it takes a lot to make me cry from being beaten. It’s only happened two or three times, but I had gotten to where I was crying, and he still wouldn’t stop, and I ended up having an orgasm. I was shaking, crying, and coming at the same time. It was something!
It was also memorable when he left me [tied up outside]. It heightened all of my senses. I was sure I could hear cars. We’re way out in the woods, and I was hearing cars come up our driveway—they were probably down on [the highway], which is pretty far—but my senses were that much heightened. I was tied tightly, with my hands held pretty close to the tree. He said he was gone probably 20 minutes. [To me] it felt like hours, like forever; I thought he was never going to come back. [It was] a sunny day. [I was conscious of] the flies and the bees and the flowers. I could hear the wind in the trees. I had just been beaten, and I could feel the heat from the back of my thighs [and] the wind blowing on the welts. It was incredible.
BAMBI BOTTOM
I am [my husband’s] permanent slave. He owns me completely. At a specific point in time he accepted me as his slave and from that point onward, knowing fully what I was getting into, I agreed that he would make all the decisions about my life; that my property now became his property; that he can do with me whatever he wants, however he wants. The control started out pretty mild. Now that I’m in the third year of this relationship, it’s very slowly and gradually become stronger and more encompassing.
I don’t think [the average person] would recognize me if he met me, because I am—and come across as—a very competent, happy individual. I’m happier now than I ever have been. I’m more relaxed and confident than the great majority of people I meet. Most people I meet are living their lives dreaming dreams of what they wish could happen to them, what they wish they could be, and they’re not pursuing those dreams. I pursued my dream. I’ve gone for what I really wanted in my life and I’ve gotten it.
I used to consider myself to be a [committed] feminist. I’m completely for women’s rights in the sense of women doing what they want to do with their lives and having no group, including other feminists, tell them what they must do [or] be. I’ve read lots of things written by feminists against S&M and women submissives in particular. They don’t like the fact that some women choose to give their power completely to another person. That makes me very angry. It seems that some feminists are saying that I must choose their path instead of my path. I have a certain bitterness toward [politically correct] feminists; I consider myself to be a true feminist. I have made my own choices about my life. I have chosen what I know and believe makes me most happy. I am not conforming to anyone’s ideal of what I should be. I am a very powerful woman, powerful enough to fulfill my life’s dreams, something that few people do. If someone chooses to see this as giving in to the patriarchal society, she is seeing me on a superficial level and being purposely obtuse.
My earliest feelings about D&S happened when I was four or five. They weren’t fantasies, just feelings. I liked to serve my parents, do little favors for them. I liked to play the subservient role with the children that I played with. I organized games. We’d have a little competition, and whoever lost had to be the absolute slave of the winner for the entire day. I’d always make sure I lost!
I’ve had long talks with my master about [how my desires formed]. My ideas about this change all the time, but right now I believe it’s partially genetics. I don’t think the kind of childhood I had made me submissive. It was a bad childhood. Unlike many people, I think that my submissive feelings survived despite the abuse. The abuse should have shut me down, should have made me a very different person than I am now.
[As a child] I thought of myself as a special person. I thought I was very intelligent, but I was also very reserved and very shy. I was not like the other girls. I didn’t play with dolls. I didn’t join cliques. If I had a friend in school, and that was rare, it would just be [one] girl. I wanted to fit in because, in Catholic school, children who were different were ridiculed by the teachers, the nuns, and the [other] children. I hated standing out.
Through my teens and early 20s, I continued to have very lurid S&M fantasies. When I was 23 I got my boyfriend to act out some D&S with me. I’d read him parts of Story of O, and that would get him really hot. I told him that I’d like to live out something like that, and one day he took me by surprise. He cut a switch from a tree and tied my wrists to the ceiling and beat me with [it] and did some very humiliating things to me. I loved that. I was never more excited in my life! But the next day the bruises came up on my buttocks, and it scared him off completely. He thought that meant that he was a brutal and evil man, and he wouldn’t have anything else to do with S&M. I ended up staying with him for seven years after that and never could get my S&M desires fulfilled, although I constantly fantasized about [that episode] when we’d have sex.
I became aware of what I was [at] about the age of 29 when I had gotten on an Anne Rice kick. The Vampire books were very romantic, and there was an underlying theme of power in them. I soon came across the Beauty books. That was when a light bulb went off in my head: I realized that, yes! This is me! I’m submissive. I love S&M. I would love to live out the things that this woman is describing. I knew I had to seek it out.
To be submissive means to be willing to do someone else’s will. A feeling of sexual excitement is linked to that. I also get a feeling of doing what’s right for me, of being at home, of expressing my true personality. Lifestyle D&S also involves a great deal of trust. [My] bad childhood is not the kind of background that would make you trust anyone. I’m an extremely suspicious person. I have a hard time trusting men in particular. I was raped as a child, and to this day I haven’t gotten over this. I have a hatred and fear of men in general. My master is an exceptional man, and it is through his personality only that I am able to trust him to the degree that I do, which is almost absolute. The chains that bind me are not physical. [My husband’s] power over me has grown over the years. It’s a very subtle thing. It’s not something I can fully explain to someone who has had no taste for it. Sure, I could untie my collar and walk out in the middle of the night. But I won’t. It’s not a game I’m playing with myself.
I consider myself to be a three-way masochist. I’m a physical masochist: I like pain and I like cruelty in association with that pain. I’m an emotional masochist: I love humiliation, especially degradation. And I’m a mental masochist: I love power; I love someone being in control over me. In a lifestyle relationship I get all three. I have no rights in this relationship. I don’t have safe words. I’m not permitted to leave him, no matter what, unless I clearly and honestly think that I am in danger. I own no property anymore, except for a black leather rose which he gave me. That’s a tender joke between us: I have one possession, and it’s this little rose I keep on my vanity table. I’m told when to wake up in the morning. I’m told when to go to sleep. When I’m not working, he gives me my orders for the day. I’m allowed to make suggestions about what I’d like to get done, but I can’t insist. The final decision about what I do on any day is up to him. But often my suggestions are accepted.
In the evening I prepare his bed, get him water to drink, turn off lights, shut the windows. When I get into bed, I’m tied to the bed by a collar and a rope. I also have to wear a mask and earplugs at night, so there’s some sensory deprivation. I do most of the housework. When my master is in a mood to wash dishes, he will, but it mostly falls on me. I have to ask permission to eat, to drink anything except water, to use the bathroom, to make purchases. I carry no money except what he gives me. I turn my paychecks over to him. He handles all the finances. I have to curtsy upon entering and leaving his presence. I must come promptly when he calls. As far as my career
is concerned, he decides which [free-lance] contracts I accept, although I’m allowed to give my input. He takes it into consideration. I have to keep my pussy shaved. I have to exercise three times a week to keep in shape. Oh, and when he pinches my nose, I have to say, “Beep! beep!” [So] that’s what my [daily] life is like, what it’s like being a slave.
My sex life is completely controlled by him. I’m not allowed to touch myself without his permission. And he gives [it] rarely. I used to masturbate three or four times a day—that was my routine. Not anymore. We do the things that he likes to do and I give my input. He controls what we do during [sex], but the most powerful aspect of that control is the control over my orgasms. If he gives me permission at a time when I’m not particularly in the mood, I [still] must come.
If I disobey him, I’m punished in a way I don’t like. Not with fun punishment, but with bad punishment. [I get punished] when it’s conscious and willful. [But] when it’s an emotional problem or something that he feels I’m not completely in control of, he will not punish me. Instead, we try to get to the roots of the problem. That works very successfully.
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