Bigger than Ben Hur

Well, this week brought a cancelling of the trip to Japan next month and some eat, pray, loving. The trip has been cancelled due to too much rain on the particular thing I export and therefore having nothing to export anymore. Being the work-centred person I am, the first things through my mind when I heard about the cancellation were, “Crap, are my Japanese supplies going to cover me for a few more months??” and “Now what am I going to do about my wedding dress?!?”

That last one is not what you think, by the way.

In my post-divorce flight from Japan 6 years ago, I left behind quite a few things – including my wedding dress. I’m not exactly sure what I was planning to do: go back and pick it up one day or maybe leave it to my ex to sell…. all I knew was that I didn’t have the space or money to take it with me at the time so I left it. Every time I’ve met up with my ex since then, he has asked me half-joking, “So what do you want to do with your dress?” and I’ve always said, “Well, it’s a $5000 dress, we can’t throw it away…” and then the conversation has moved onto other matters.

Except now something needs to be done about it.

About eight weeks ago I got a out-of-the-blue email from my ex late on a Sunday afternoon telling me that he was going to be a dad in a few months.

I tell you, the shock of that news was bigger than Ben Hur to me. Actually I’m still reeling from it and have to pinch myself every time I contemplate him being a father.

I was really happy for him and incredibly sad at the same time. I think I had a really good cry before punching out a reply email giving him my congratulations and telling him that he would be a really wonderful father.

Then his reply email came and it was so bittersweet, I don’t have words to describe the complex feelings I had as I read his words that were full of regret and what could have been:

“Yeah, it’s good news and thank you, but I really wanted to have a child with you.”

Apparently he is due to become a father on the 23rd of December and last week he moved house. He thought it wouldn’t be fair to his wife to be setting up a new life with boxes of my stuff and a wedding dress. I don’t know about you, but I can totally see where he is coming from…lol. Actually I feel a bit guilty. I’d be horrified if my husband and father of my child still carried around stuff belonging to his ex. So the plan was for him to bring me my stuff (or send it to my hotel) and then I could bring it back to Australia.

It was a good plan while I was still visiting Japan, but now I’m not so we’re still talking about what to do.

And this is where the eat, pray, loving comes into it.

Have you seen the movie yet? I wasn’t sure if I wanted to watch it even though plenty of people have raved about it and I even waited until it became a free-to-air movie before taking the plunge. I have to say though,  if you’re a woman, divorced and have some guilt about getting divorced, it’s definitely the movie for you.

I was sitting there on the couch with M watching it (I had his leash on so he couldn’t escape) and his comment an hour and a half into the movie predictably was, “I don’t know what the fuck her problem is!”

My reply was, “That’s because you’re not a divorced woman with guilt, love crumpet.”

I had several cries at different points during the movie and although it didn’t give me any answers, it was very nice to know that the feeling of not fitting into a traditional life is experienced by more people than just myself.

It’s taken me quite a few years to come to terms with the fact that the traditional life (husband, kids, white picket fence and a dog) doesn’t do it for me. I spent a lot of time continually asking myself why – why don’t I want to be married? Why don’t I want kids? What is wrong with that type of life? and getting no where.

It’s probably only been the last twelve months or so that I’ve come to terms with the fact that that way of life is not for me. I’ve stopped asking why I don’t want it and am at the stage of accepting that it’s not what I do want.

That doesn’t mean to say that I don’t still feel guilt at not wanting it. I’ve got a lot of guilt in my life – lots and lots about a whole variety of things. I’m not sure that I’ll ever be able to get rid of all of that guilt, but I’m hoping that I might come to a place of quiet acceptance and release…one day.

Collar on, collar off

In a nutshell, my week was busy and I had several late nights (11pm-ish) home due to wining and dining visitors from Japan. I’ve also been trying to prepare for my next onslaught of visitors on Monday and plan my business trip to Japan early next month (a.k.a angsting ridiculously about hotels).

M scored himself a four-week contract role that he started on Tuesday so he was pretty tired from being back in the workforce and his shoulder has been really hurting so I’m hesitant to tie him up in uncomfortable positions.

Ipso factor, no spanky-spanky with my love crumpet and therefore no bloggy blog.

We just sound like two boring old farts, don’t we?

I’ve been taking his collar off every morning before he goes to work and putting it back on when I get home. I was wondering how being back in the ‘real world’ would be for him, but he seems to not be very fazed by the slave-with-a-job situation. I don’t know whether things would change if he found permanent employment, but at the moment, the only thing I’ve noticed is he is less needy.

That’s the thing about being a stay at home slave…you spend a whole lot of time thinking about being played with, getting yourself worked up into a feverish ball of need and then when the master comes home and they just want to flop on the couch after a busy day, it’s pretty crushing. From that perspective, it’s much better to have something (a.k.a a job) to get your mind out of that dangerous PLAYWITHMEE!!!! area.

On the other hand, I also said that I couldn’t be a twue slave if I was employed and as busy as I am now. But maybe I’m looking at two opposite ends of the spectrum…maybe you just need something to keep you occupied for 2-3 days a week and allows you to be a slave as well. It all comes back to that thing called balance, doesn’t it?

Or maybe, just maybe, I just wasn’t supposed to be a slave at all and I’m just making desperate excuses as to why I failed??

Yeah, I’m pretty good at that excuse stuff.

In the dommely one area, I’ve been working on my dangerous tone of voice. M has been prodding and poking at the boundaries and while that is all good and fine when everyone’s laughing, I’d like him to realise when he has stepped over the line. Maybe I just need to permanently have a crop in my hand and use it liberally or something. And I don’t mean that he’s being naughty per se, just that there are a lot of old habits that I need to break – like him calling me ‘bitch’. Which he, of course, does to get a reaction out of me and would be fine if he added a Mistress before the bitch bomb.

Other old habits I’m working on breaking are his propensity to not answer my questions and just say something else unrelated and his ridiculously annoying habit of phrasing requests with a haven’t you done/got/brought me xxx yet? nuance.

He’ll be doing something and need something and instead of asking, ‘Can you bring me so and so please Mistress?’ he will say, ‘Have you got so and so?’ as though he has asked me before and I have failed to bring it so he is reminding me. It’s absolutely infuriating and has pushed my buttons every single time he has done it in the last six years. Even writing about it pushes my buttons! Lol.

Yes, I think liberal and extensive use of the crop is definitely called for.

 

 

Thought for the day

So yeah, I have a problem asking people to do things for me. I’ve been that way ever since I can remember. Some people would call it my martyrdom fetish – I’ll try to do everything myself and then bitch about how ‘no-one helps me’.

I do it at work. I do it at home.

I pile up my plate with every conceivable thing that I perceive as ‘my job’ and guard it like my precious, not wanting not being able to share it with anyone.

But actually, all I really need to do is ask.

I wonder why it is so hard to ask?

Do I not trust other people?

Do I not want to impose on other people?

Am I embarrassed to ask for help?

The answer is probably a combination of all three with a fair dose of being unable to let go.

Letting go is hard. It requires trust, it requires the belief that someone can do something as well as I think I can do it, and it requires the giving of control to another.

Not being able to ask or tell someone what to do is probably not the best personality trait in someone looking to be dominant. It’s pretty much a given that the dominant one will tell the submissive one what to do.

But is telling someone what to do the same as giving direction?

For some reason or another I’ve found myself in a position at work where I’m a semi-manager. I have two people who come to me with their work problems, ask me to make decisions and seem quite happy to do what I tell them to do. I’ve never formally been given manager status and I certainly don’t have the word ‘manager’ on my business cards, but somewhere along the line I became a person with minions.

I’ve found it bizarre. Well, actually I found it puzzling at first because they would come to me with problems. At the time I remember getting a bit annoyed that they couldn’t deal with the problems themselves, but I’d tell them what I thought would be the best thing to do and then they’d happily go off and do my bidding. I can remember sitting there at my desk thinking, ‘Did I just manage?’

I’ve never been the sort of person who wanted responsibility. I’ve always been quite happy to be told what to do, so the whole situation of having two minions at my beck and call during the working day has taken a bit of getting used to. I wouldn’t say I’m 100% comfortable with it yet, but I’m getting there.

M is always asking me why I get so stressed about work. He tells me that ultimately the complaints and things I have to deal with, aren’t my fault (mostly) and I have too much of a care factor, but generally speaking I’m where the buck stops. I’m the person dealing with the customers directly and I’m the one apologising and who has to make things better. This semi-manager thing also adds a layer of responsibility to someone who is really not used to it and that’s why I end up with stress tics and pressure headaches quite regularly.

M has held managerial roles for the last twenty-four years. I’m just entering my tenth month so on that basis, I’ve still got a bit of catching up to do.

When we started the Great Switcheroo of 2011, a couple of months back, I remember that my initial feeling was, ‘I don’t want the responsibility.’ This was actually why I was hesitant to call myself ‘Mistress’ and my love crumpet, ‘slave’ and why I was dancing around M’s question of, ‘Do you want me to be your slave?’

I think the role of Mistress brings with it a greater sense of responsibility. There’s a layer of something greater and something heavier than just ‘playing’ and having someone be ‘submissive’ to you. It brings in all sorts of life decisions and to me, brings something akin to parental responsibility.

I’m not perhaps as scared of responsibility as I used to be, but it’s not something I crave. I don’t seek to have everyone do my bidding because, honestly, I don’t like the ramifications involved. I suppose the solution to this is to build confidence in myself and my decisions.

I’m feeling a lot more comfortable in the role of Mistress recently and to be honest, cropping M’s balls brings a joy all of its own

I have a question…

…was it my bad for not telling him specifically not to put the collar(s) on and leaving him to his own devices?

(see the previous post if you’re confused)

See, I think this is possibly where the cause of quite a few of our disconnects lays… I have a tendency to think that he will submit in the same sort of way that I did.

In my mind, I have a few basic sets of behaviours that I think are pretty ‘standard’ for a slave. These basic sets contain things such as not putting on/ taking off collars by oneself, being nice to your owner a.k.a making coffee, giving back rubs/foots rubs/ plague cramp rubs, saying please and thank you etc., asking your owner’s wants before making assumptions and so on and so forth. Basic stuff that, to me at least, comes with the territory of being someone’s property.

As I mentioned before, I don’t want a doormat. I don’t want someone who needs to be told/asked every single thing. As far as household duties are concerned, I rather he see what needs to be done and do it. I don’t want to have to make a list of ‘tasks’ and then find out that he didn’t do something that needed to be done because ‘it wasn’t on the list’.

If truth be told, I’m not really into the asking permission for every single thing deal either. I have no interest in whether he needs to empty his bowels or not. I’d rather he quickly go and do whatever bodily functions he needs to and then return, ready in case I need him to do something.

I like the idea of my property acting autonomously with a focus on obeying and pleasing me. At this stage in my current life, with my shitty job, family dramas and whatnot, I don’t need the pressure of yet another thing to worry about. I would gain much more pleasure and satisfaction from him trying to be the best he possibly can be due to his own volition and not because he was doing only what I told him to do. I would like to think that he was constantly asking himself, “What can I do to make my Mistress happy?” and then doing what was necessary to make that a reality.

And the reality of what would make me happy is quite simple: I’d like the house & garden reasonably tidy, the toilets being able to be flushed, him looking after his health and eating/exercising appropriately, him doing some further career training or something to make him look superficially more employable (he doesn’t need worthless pieces of paper as he is infinitely qualified,  but they show that you are actively doing something about your career), spending time together and having play sessions when I’m in the mood and/or when he has deserved them.

It sounds a bit like I want the best possible slave, with the least amount of input from me, doesn’t it? Lol. Typical slack-ass domly one….

And therein is where the problem lays. He’s not an A++++ over achiever. He doesn’t do things for self-satisfaction. He is very used to doing whatever he wants and only whatever he wants. For all his thinking, “I’m a slave” I don’t think he’s quite there yet, and honestly, I don’t think he even cares whether I think he is in that ‘slave space’ or not. If he thinks he is a slave, he is. That’s M’s bottom line.

I’d like to have his self-assurance and I-don’t-give-a-fuck-about-what-anyone-thinks style. It must be very freeing not to be self-conscious and to have his take-me-as-I-am-or-leave-me attitude. Unfortunately, that works very well for someone who doesn’t want to be property.

But if you want to be property – you’re essentially signing yourself up to being something that someone else wants. It’s not about you, your ego or your wants and needs.It’s about your owner and what they choose to give you. As a slave you have to accept whatever you are given and be focussed on your owner’s pleasure (of course, owners do have a certain responsibility to their property as well, but that’s a topic for another time…)

I’m not sure he thought about these things when he chose the collar. I think, naively like me, he simply thought that he would be kept as he kept me – that nothing would change except who was the one wearing the collar. He doesn’t care for ritual or ‘airy fairy’ stuff. He doesn’t give a toss who touches the collar as long as the appropriate person is wearing it.

But I do.

I don’t like him messing with his collar. I also don’t like him touching my toys. I’m into poses and ‘thinking time’, ‘high protocol’ periods and restraints for a reason (nothing annoys me more than an un-held leash or bondage just for the sake of it – you gonna tie someone up? Cool, well tie them up so they can’t move.)

I’m not exactly the same kind of owner that M was and he’s not the same kind of slave that I was. There are years of  M/s ‘baggage’ that we have to navigate around and I’m not the best pilot..yet.

I think it’s time I look seriously at those driving lessons.

 

How many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb?

One.

But the lightbulb has got to want to change.

I’m a bit of a firm believer in the idea that you can’t change a person. Although I realise that environment can shape the type of person someone grows up to be, I don’t think you can change someone after a certain age – and certainly not when they’re very resistant to doing things in any way but their own.

M pissed me off today. It started at the petrol station when he suddenly started shouting at me because he thought I was going to put diesel in the rangie. I don’t know what he thought he saw, but I was standing there calmly holding the unleaded petrol nozzle while his booming voice echoed through the petrol station, “Hang on! Stop!! What have you got??? …Oh…ok…(*unintelligible mutterings as he gets back in the car*)” But I could feel the other people filling their cars staring at me and as I got back in the car after paying, not a word of apology or anything was forthcoming from the M.

Then we went shopping for a collar. I decided I wanted something a little more industrial (read: obvious and more humiliating) so we headed to the pet shop. We selected a choke chain after trying on several sizes to see what would probably give enough clearance at night-time. Then he got his eye on a big, wide, studded leather collar that was hanging next to the choke chains.

“I thought you might like this one too,” he says eyeing it with collar lust.

“But it’s $67!!”

“Aren’t I worth that much??”

So of course I had to buy it. I got Mistress-shamed into buying an overly expensive, superfluous collar as effectively as three screaming kids begging a frazzled mother for chocolate at the supermarket. I don’t see the point in having two collars as I don’t intend his industrial pet collar to come off, but I bought the damn thing anyway.

Then we got home and as I was putting the groceries away and cleaning up, he was happily snipping the tags off his collars and rummaging around in the draw for padlocks. Before I even knew what was happening he had the choke collar padlocked on and a “Come hither and play with me!” look on his face.

So I told him the padlock wasn’t doing much for me (it didn’t have the right industrial look) and ignored his obvious wants. After everything was put away I told him I was going to have a bath because (a) I wasn’t feeling well (plague) and (b) I was incredibly sore (nazi gym instructor on Friday night).

I was in the bath for ten minutes before he charged in and gave me his ideas for removing a couple of links to make the collar smaller. I said he’d need to lie down so we could check the size. To which he said, ‘Oh, I thought we might do that after your bath’ with that come-hither look on his face again then he left me in peace.

Until five minutes later when he came in wearing his new studded leather collar and asked me how it looked.

“Where’s the key to my padlock?’ he asked.

“Why?”

“Well, I thought I’d take it off and see if I could remove a couple of the links.”

GO AND LIE THE FUCK DOWN AND SEE HOW IT FITS BEFORE YOU FUCKING DO ANYTHING or something to that effect was my response.

I think he got the idea that I wanted to be left alone in the bath because he didn’t come in again.

Over the next fifteen minutes in the bath I fumed and cussed and worked myself into a tizzy about how selfish he was and thinking he was a lost cause as a slave.

When I got out of the bath and dressed, I went to find him and he was still laying on his bed. I threw the blindfold at him  - he put it on-  and I told him to lay on his stomach. Then I roped his legs to the bed and went medieval on his ass.

Well, I’m sure he felt that I did, but I doubt he’ll even have a mark. But more importantly I hope he learned a lesson in patience and less me-me-me-me-me!!!. I had him write 250 words about his two lessons of the day, but his second-to-last paragraph included the line:

This means that an owner needs to instruct and train a slave as to what their pleasures are and to ensure a slave understands how to fulfill those needs…

which cracked me up.

When I pointed out that it again sounded like he was telling me what to do, he shrugged and said,

“Well, that’s not what I meant.”

And he got up and left.

No ‘Oh, I’m sorry you interpreted it that way’ or ‘Oh, ok, I’ll change it so it doesn’t sound so self-centred’…Nope…I got zip.

At this stage, I’m not sure whether he understands what he is doing and doesn’t give a shit, or whether he doesn’t understand what he is doing and still doesn’t give a shit.

Either way, he doesn’t give a shit because that is the way he rolls.

So I figure I have to accept it, because if he don’t wanna change, he ain’t gonna change.

Yo momma is a zombie

Contrary to what some may think, I don’t require my insignificant other to clean, cook or wipe my ass.

While I certainly would hope that he feel the gentle push of motivation towards helping me out as far as domestic duties go, being 50% of a modern-day relationship and all, I don’t expect it, nor do I impose it.

That’s just how I roll.

I don’t need a doormat (has no thoughts of his own).

Or a zombie (eats people and generally repeats the same few things over and over again).

Or a twihard (sparkles and tries to look a bit goth).

And just for the record, I’m not really into orgasm control, foot worshipping or anything to do with bodily fluids.

That’s also how I roll.

But, hey, aren’t I the one supposed to be making all the decisions?

Oh, that’s right. I am making the decisions.

I actually am.

Collar me emo

I’ve been all over the place this last week or so, flitting from one thing to another and it’s been really hard to sit down and grab those thoughts floating around in my brain and force them into some sort of a blog post. I can see why twitter is so appealing. I’d imagine it would be freeing to limit oneself to 140 characters.

Actually I was reading a story in the paper the other day about how the number of active blogs has dropped something like 30% on platforms like wordpress and livejournal. It doesn’t surprise me. Blogs are work. But I’d still rather blog than clean – and that was evidenced by my attempt at vacuuming the floor yesterday. I think I vacuumed two square feet and had to empty the damn thing because it was so full. Rinse and repeat for the whole floor. I need me a cleaning bitch.

A couple of weeks ago I started going to the gym again to do step classes. So at the moment I’m doing two classes a week on Tuesdays and Fridays. This involves me leaving work around 4:30pm to get there on time, but I figure I’ve already worked enough unpaid overtime, so I’m entitled to getting a bit of my life back. I did a class on Friday night, during which my Nazi instructor was particularly sadistic and as a result I’ve spent the last two days with one of the sorest asses I’ve ever had in my life. Apparently not doing a gym class for 18 mths and then choosing to do all the high-impact, advanced options is not the best things to do. In all fairness, what gave me the ridiculously sore ass was not the ‘step’ part of the class but the ‘tone’ part of the class that involved half a fucking million side leg raises, but still, a break of a year and a half was not the best thing to have.

Around the same time (two weeks ago) I also thought it would be a great idea to start a podcast and I even got as far as working out how to record one using garage band on my iMac, getting some theme music and writing a script. Then I recorded a bit and decided my voice sounded very similar to the couple of cats who are getting it on outside my bedroom window every other night. Ah spring, how I love thy cat-filled sleepless nights! So the jury is still out as to whether that podcast idea will ever eventuate.

I’ve also decided that I need to learn Korean. I spent most of last week, formatting a Korean version of our company brochure and I have to say it gave me a ridiculous headache because I had no idea what I was looking at. My trip to Japan in November is going to include a visit to a bookshop to get some ‘Let’s Learn Korean!’ -type of books. I figure if I study Korean in Japanese then I’ll get the double brain-stimulus effect.

Last night I also discovered yayoi anime on youtube – that’s hombre x hombre cartoon porn to the uninitiated. I was watching Ai no kusabi (I like the retro stuff) and Maiden Rose in case you were wondering. Ai no kusabi is Master/pet, futuristic, not very porny stuff, but still interesting. I need to read the book, methinks.

Ever since The Great Switcheroo of 2011 (yes, that’s what the switch to me in the dominant role shall hereforwith be known as) I’ve been interested in things that show men in submissive roles. Actually, I feel a bit weird watching girls getting their asses rammed these days and it’s a little unsettling to watching anything that doesn’t involve some form of CBT.

M’s collar arrived and he’s been wearing it dutifully every day. It’s a little too small for him to wear while he is sleeping, but other than those hours, he’s wearing it all the time. We went out shopping together with him in his collar for the first time yesterday and he didn’t have a problem with it. To tell you the truth, I find it a bit annoying (?) that he doesn’t have a problem with all the stuff I seriously struggled with – publicly wearing a collar, calling me Mistress etc.

Funnily enough, one of my favourite things to do with him is tie him up with rope, put a blindfold on him and ‘interrogate’ him or as I like to think of it, get some ‘feedback’ from him. I don’t like it when he tells me what he thinks I want to hear. I like to hear his true thoughts and feelings, so I often structure the questions so he has to answer in a particular way otherwise he will say something along the lines of ‘whatever Mistresses chooses to give me’ or ‘whatever Mistress thinks is appropriate’. I’m also working on him actually answering the questions I ask as opposed to answering with another question. I like to liberally use the riding crop on all of his sensitive bits during our ‘interrogation’ sessions so he knows what is an appropriate answer and what isn’t.

I like to ask him what he likes and what he doesn’t like, what he enjoys and what he doesn’t. Just because I ask these things doesn’t mean that I will always choose to do the things he likes and enjoys. In fact, I may choose to purposely do what he doesn’t enjoy and what he doesn’t like. Ultimately, that is for me to decide.

Of course, I can generally see whether he likes something or not, but I enjoy hearing him say it too. Although he is a tricky person in the sense that he is pretty damn stoic and non-reactive. I can see why a lot of people enjoy getting a reaction and I will often do something until I do get a reaction. At the moment I’m also enjoying the ‘Guess the colour of the nipple clamp game!’ in which the clamp stays on until he guesses the colour correctly or he ‘buys a hint’ (a price must be paid for the hint). As I said to him, we need to go and get a set of 30+ colours and it would be great if they were emo crayon colours.

We’ve had a few discussions about the collar. While I see it as a handy bondage anchor point and a possible source of humiliation and/or discomfort, I don’t really see it as an intrinsic part of his submission. I don’t think it’s as important as the ‘collar’ I’d like to place around his most intimate parts or anywhere near as important as the collar that I need to create in his mind.

I think he finds the physical neck collar much more important though. I’m trying to constantly remind myself what the collar fever was like and how during those first fledging months of submission, the collar is everything. I’m trying to remember the I-need-a-collar-or-i-will-die feeling that I had, but it’s hard.

It’s a careful balancing act between expectations and training.