submission

I’ve seen this as a writing prompt question, but it was also asked of me a couple weeks ago by a colleague of Master Michael, a man name Jason, who is intrigued by my life and slavery:  “What does being submissive mean to you? Is it willing surrender? Passivity? Consenting? Obedience? Letting yourself be conquered? Acting meek and humble? Something else?” (I don’t know if that was the exact quote from Jason, but it was something like that.)

I believe there’s a difference between the “submissive” that I am and “submission” that I do.

I am by nature submissive. I was made this way, born this way, for better or worse. This is who I am. I believe it is literally my sexual orientation. As I understand and experience this in me, it means that I respond to dominant things and people and situations in certain ways that involve attraction, desire, arousal, longing, and surrender. I am somehow compelled by that which might contain or possess me.

I cannot help myself from responding this way. It is maybe like the fascination a young boy finds in discovering a fallen bird’s nest or the obsessive binge-watch of “Big Little Lies” on HBO or the compulsive curiosity I felt as a high school girl when I first touched a boy’s penis. These are things we are drawn to without really choosing. Likewise, I am involuntarily drawn to situations and things and people who are dominant: I felt this when I saw the Grand Canyon. The size and breadth of it felt dominant to me, compelling me to get to the bottom and be enveloped by its mass. Inexplicably, I respond physically and emotionally to massive mechanical machines and vehicles —weird, I know, but true. And I am physically and sexually and emotionally affected by men and women who give off a vibe of dominance. None of this is a choice for me, which is in a way humiliating. I know if I were placed in the cab of a Caterpillar combine harvester in the middle of a Nebraska field, I would have, I’m sure of it, an orgasm. And how do you explain that? But more to the point, this is the ineffable thing inside us submissives that makes us kneel before a dominant person and beg them to take us and subjugate us. That in itself is humiliating even as it’s orgasmic — and then more humiliating because it is orgasmic. This submissive orientation inside us that we never chose and cannot control is just damn humiliating, isn’t it.

This is the submissive that I am. Let me get back to the original question and write about the submission that I do.

This is for me a dance between my personality and my slavery. Perhaps it’s my Irish heritage, but I am sometimes opinionated, outspoken, and defiant. I tend to express myself boldly. I have a sense of humor that sometimes has an sarcastic edge to it. Now, to be clear, I am still very much an introvert. I am on the quiet side and do not jabber or chatter. But when I feel strongly I tend to speak my mind.

What to make of this? Well, for one thing, I have come to understand that being a submissive in what I am has little to do with having a submissive personality. Having a submissive sexual orientation doesn’t mean I’m naturally meek and recessive and acquiescent in terms of my personality and behavior.

Nor should I be.

When I entered into my slavery, Master Michael made it clear that he demanded obedience but not passivity. He required servitude but not a grovelling girl. He would subject me, he said, to humiliation, but he would not tolerate self-denial and worthlessness. He would train me in submission but not extort from me my self-esteem.

He said then (and it was so powerful to me in that moment I have remembered it, written it down, framed, and posted it on the wall in my writing nook): “Shae, you are obviously an attractive girl — luscious hair, shapely legs, gorgeous tits. In your slavery to me, of course, that is often what I how will use you and enjoy you. But you are specially desirable because of other attributes: your quick wit, sharp tongue, sense of humor. As I enslave you — and know that I will utterly enslave you — my intent is to shape, enhance, and play with those parts of you, not to diminish or eliminate them.”

It helped me understand I was a better slave to him because of my strengths not because of my weaknesses. A dominant doesn’t want a girl who has nothing inside.

Admittedly, submission is a strange life. It requires us to sacrifice ourselves in a life of subjugation and humiliation — and yet it is in that giving of ourselves we find the treasure of our submissive beings. With good fortune we become owned by the better angels, those who value the core of who we are.