I’ve not known myself to be the kind of person to crave submissive humiliation
or punishment. But as I made progress in what you might call my personal
submissive inventory,
others’ writings — and their emphasis on the importance of these aspects — led
me to wonder whether or not I’ve ever even quite experienced these. How can you
know if you want something or not if you’ve never felt it? I set to find out.
Miss Isabelle set me the goal of not picking at or biting my fingernails.
This is truly harder than you might expect — despite being a grown woman, it’s
something I’ve struggled with my whole life. No amount of encouragement, reward,
or disincentive successfully turned me off the habit as a child or teenager,
and repeated attempts later in life always ended in lasting failure. I much
prefer having long nails, but there’s three decades of neural pathways to
fight against.
We’re evaluating my performance on a weekly basis, and at the end of the first
week she’d caught me biting or picking at my fingernails two or three times. I
really enjoy pain, so this was always going to be an uphill battle, but Isabelle
wanted to determine if a regular spanking (with implements) might have the
desired effect anyway, if there was enough force and no warm up.
What is the desired effect? When I pick at or bite my nails, it’s not a
decision I make consciously; it happens entirely habitually, usually amplified
when I’m feeling anxious or unsettled. (There is probably some attachment model
or Freudian lens to apply here.) The punishment experience needs to be aversive
and felt deeply enough that it sinks into my subconscious that this is
something we need to avoid; it needs to be pre-thought if it’s going to alter a
behaviour which itself is pre-thought.
We found out pretty quickly that this kind of pain was not going to have an
impact. I’d recently had an experience where a particular kind of beating had
gotten me close to tears, and I feel like breaking down in tears is a signal
that something’s happening inside. It seemed like we couldn’t repeat that here.
The next week went very well for me. Isabelle was talking up the reward I’d be
getting for preserving my nails as we neared Sunday evening, but in the car that
morning as we talked her eyes suddenly widened at me, and I realised what I was
already doing.
It so happened we were going to a kink store that afternoon, and while I
looked at the things I was there for, she busied herself looking at the hot
wax candles. I find wax a bit hard to deal with — the sharp heat can be a lot,
especially as the body warms — and have a fresh memory of two enthusiastic
Dommes dripping a candle each on me at the same time.
I realised something was up when we went to pay and the girl behind the counter
asked, “you know this one is extra hot, right?”
Isabelle laughed. “Oh yes, I know. How much hotter is it?”
The cashier looked at me. “It certainly feels hotter. It’s meant to be about 4
degrees more.”
I must’ve visibly deflated. At the time I didn’t quite know how obvious the
arrangement was, but in retrospect, Isabelle was confident, and I was wearing a
collar. Welp.
That evening after dinner, she had me set a towel out on the floor of the living
room and fetch a lighter.
“I’m going to punish you now, for biting your nails. You were doing so well,
too, but I need you to know that my orders are to be followed. Take off all your
clothes, lie down on your front, and close your eyes.”
I complied.
I could hear her unwrapping the new candle, and I started to tremble.
“This is going to be very hot. Tell me if it’s too much to bear.”
Quietly, I started to panic a little bit. I heard her flick the lighter. I
waited what seemed like minutes but was probably less than ten seconds.
“It takes a bit to melt. Okay, here it comes.”
The first drip hit my back, searing hot. Before I could register it fully, the
next drip hit, and then the next, and I whimpered, trying to keep it together.
She didn’t let up, and I could feel my body trembling, tears coming fully
unbidden. I’d never cried from wax before, but this was all so much; the heat so
much harder than anything I’d had to endure before.
It can’t have been more than a minute or two before she stopped. I was shaking
from the tears, and — I kind of can’t believe this — but I can feel them coming
on again now, writing this up days later. I guess it really did sink in.
It’s all the more surprising because it was at that point that she came down
to my level and brought the candle she used into view. It was purple. One she’s
used on me many times before. The new candle — black — was sitting proudly on
the coffee table, untouched.
I laughed hard.
She did end up trying the new, “extra hot” candle on me after that, and I
barely felt it! If anything, it felt less hot than the regular purple one. Maybe
post-fear endorphins masked the pain? In a feigned huff, Isabelle declared that
next time we were back at the kink store she’d report back to the girl I was
“too much of a slut to get hurt by it”.
I’ve noticed, in the days since, a tiny moment of time opening up, a breath of
consciousness — the instant when one of my fingernails is pressed to another,
before any damage is done. The desired effect.
I have no idea if anyone reads this. It is linked from one of our blogs, but you have to look to even find that blog, let alone notice the link. […] On the other hand, because of this, I am able to write more openly. If I knew I had any kind of readership at all, I might not write some things, or might write differently.
Unfortunately, the spell was broken; the wave function collapsed; the superposition observed; the duality reduced to one. This girl always worked better in the in-betweens.
A reader reached out and, though I was extremely flattered at first, now I can’t feel the same way about writing here.
I was never meant to be someone in your story—I was meant to be an exhibit of open life, to be appreciated, not touched.
It’s 1am and I’m sitting alone on my bed, in my slave’s quarters, such as they are.
It’s been wholesome, honestly; we ordered food delivery and it never came, so the three of us went out for what was by then a very late dinner. N suddenly wanted ice cream, and it turned out we were 20 metres away from a great vegan gelato and ice cream place, so we had that to follow. Then, on the way back, a surprise drug test for the driver from the local police! Even though I don’t use cannabis regularly, and what I do use is a legitimate prescription, there was still some nerves wracked and a feeling of the three of us bonding while waiting for that result. Then we were on our way.
Perhaps less wholesome: I’ve been fucked while wearing a straitjacket now. N took photos and it is so goddamned hot. We look like we’re right out of some amazing kinky queer German porn. God damn.
A wonderful night, and I’m so glad C was able to stay over.
I really do struggle to maintain a positive connection with people who seem to idle as their default.
This is at least partly a failing of mine; for so many people they simply don’t have the option of study or paid work. I consciously recognise that many of the opportunities I’ve had are privileged ones, lucky, or both, but I wonder if subconsciously I don’t factor that in enough and still think — somewhere deep down — “well, I dealt with childhood trauma, an abusive marriage, a full-blown nervous breakdown, rape, bipolar/borderline diagnosis, and still have managed to be successful and independent since I turned 18, so why don’t they?”
Again, I don’t like to think I believe that, but nonetheless people who have no life direction generate something like repulsion in me, so much so that my last major falling out with a friend was — on my part — kinda due to their having no goals or purposes in life.
This ties in a little bit to generally wanting to be led, in my relationships. If someone doesn’t even lead their own, I don’t trust or respect them enough to have them lead mine; heck, not even enough to let them lead it the tiny bit that a normal, balanced friendship or relationship inevitably entails between two people, let alone as much as I’d like to.
I think I want to be led because, generally speaking, I have my shit very sorted out. I am happy on my own, take care of myself fully, and can be left to my own devices indefinitely. I have my interests and I engage in communities relating to them comfortably. So if I’m going to be close to someone, it’s not really because I have a lot of things I’ve been waiting to show someone, or because I’ve been dying to let someone in close. I already do those things — such is the spot on the aro-spectrum I sit, where my proclivity for openness and truthfulness means I have closer and more romantic connections with friends than many do with their romantic partners.
Instead, it’s because I want them to show me and take me places in the abstract space of (relational) possibility; to put me somewhere in their world and let me play into the role they’ve marked out for me. And to believe that’s possible, I need to see them starting with themselves first; to see them actually lead a role in a world that’s their own.
Exhausted by Comirnaty #2, I’m on the couch in the living room today as N works at the desk nearby.
At some point she got horny and commanded me over to take care of her. I’m a little impressed by her audacity, ordering me specifically as a sex slave while I’m nominally “sick” enough not to be working today.
Later she mentioned in passing that it was actually C’s idea to have me do that. Jesus.
We were visited by C again! Twice in five days. It would appear she’s rather keen. Some haphazard notes:
This might be the most immature thing in the world, but after she left — I got back from vaccine appointment #2 around 5pm, we all started playing almost immediately, and she left by quarter-to-midnight — I put this on the TV:
I can’t help myself sometimes, and ending a multiple-year dry spell by being fucked by your partner/Domme’s toppy friend in front of her? Yep. I’m gonna call that one a win.
Incidentally, the collar never did come off after C visited the first time. Previously it’d stimmed me in a weird and bad way and it was impossible to fall asleep; it’d start feeling like the metal was too heavy on my neck when my head was on the pillow and I’d start to get into a weird anxiety loop. I was so tired that night that I just passed out near as soon as I lay down.
Haven woken up once with it still on (and thus serving as a physical demonstration to my panicky subconscious that no, this won’t somehow block an artery to your head while you sleep and kill you), I’ve not needed to remove it since. I might ask at some point that Miss takes the key from me at last, and really relinquish that.
To review thoughts about whether these experiences will shift anything in me — I think so far the answer has been no. C is not particularly experienced in dominance or the psychological aspects of kink, and so it ends up being just the three of us having fun, with me being distinguished as “the one who can take absolutely inordinate amounts of pain” (and now fucking). I’m not complaining, but it does leave my longing for a more extreme submission still unattended to.
It turns out being constantly stimmed on my back makes me a catty bitch liable to meltdown frequently. This morning things got too much and I started being unreasonable at N, and yet managed to keep enough presence of mind to tell her that her taking control of the situation could remedy things quickly.
One of the objects of my unreasonableness was the kettle (and its not being filled up), and, in view of my having just filled it up — it’s like a 3 or 4 litre urn-type deal — she ordered me to go into the kitchen and watch it until it boiled.
The kettle has the decency to show the current temperature of its contents and a minute-granularity estimate of how long it’ll take until it’s boiled. Seeing that “14” on the display as I entered the room really added something to the experience.
It did the trick more perfectly than I could’ve anticipated.
Feels like I’m in full-on repair mode. Upper back still feels white hot; N’s focus there was perhaps overenthusiastic. The constant stim has also made me feel a bit less people-capable than usual, at least irl. Tired!
