the experience of strangers, 3: first moments

This series is an imagined experience of my being with a dom-stranger for the first time. I wish to make it clear this is neither fiction nor fantasy, but is a projection, based on my past experiences, of what being with a dom-stranger would be like. I suppose it’s somewhat like the TV shows that re-enact a notorious murder case — it’s following a scenario based on what happened before, but envisioning details that can only be imagined.

This is admittedly my own experimentation writing in a different form. I’m trying a different approach. Whether it works or not is a different matter.

Hopefully, there won’t be any murder going on….

---

He has seen me before, quite likely, through pictures at least and probably through some other meet-and-greet, say at one of Amanda’s parties. He has chosen me for a number of reasons — my availability perhaps most of all, maybe my experience as an active submissive, but also to some degree because of my physical appearance. I have some comfort knowing he has already found me at least passably attractive.

He takes these first minutes to assess me visually, now that I am seen by him not in a photo but in 3-D, with dimension and depths and curves. Amid exchanges of greetings and welcomes and the business of settling in, this is not an overt “stand-there-let me-look-at-you” ogling of me (though that will be invoked later). Yet I can feel his eyes taking me in. This is appropriate in the D/s world, and I accept it and even in some way cede myself to his perusal.

It is a remarkable thing for a man to actually own a girl, to have her completely in any way he wishes without objection or moral concern. It starts with his visual consumption of my being and presence and flesh.

I give myself to this, his visual impressionism, and neither shrink from it nor lean into it too hard — that is, not put on a shy reticence on the one hand or show off my submissiveness more demonstrably on the other. This is not about acting. It’s about being.

This man knows very well I’m submissive and doesn’t need me to show-and-tell him that. I seek to find a natural middle ground, ceding myself to his eyes, giving him time and space to assess me — my subtle permission to him to objectify me.

He instructs me to call him Master Z.

---

How Master Z himself looks, his physical appearance, is likewise important to me, but in a different way than a normal woman looks at a man.

Perhaps if I led a more conventional life, I would be attracted to more conventional physical attributes of men. But I have not gone on a date, so to speak, for nearly eight years now, and probably will never date in the usual sense ever again. I’m beyond being the Jane Austen debutante longing for a young Colin Firth to ride across the manse on a steed. I am not drawn to men in conventional ways, as hunky, romantic possibilities.

So, it’s not just a glib thing for me to say that I find dominance in a man to be the primary attraction. What makes me swoon is not a tight body of chiseled features and a face with a strong chin and blue eyes. Rather what affects me is a man who is comfortable in his dominance.

That means a number of things. I am drawn more to older men than younger, fifty-ish and older, perhaps because they are more experienced in life and women and the dominant arts. I am drawn to men of “restrained power,” meaning those of influence with significant moral authority who are yet able to control themselves. I am drawn to men who are confident in their own dominant selves (maybe much as I just described about my submissive self above) — men who are profoundly dominant but don’t have to make it a stage show.

I stand before Master Z in these first moments, and he is, we shall say in this hypothetical reality, a man of about fifty, with graying hair, and an average, imperfect physique. But he could be seventy or pudgy or bald, it doesn’t matter. My point is that dominance, in whatever body form, is handsome to me. Indeed, it takes my breath away.

---

I’m told my best asset is my mental awareness, my ability to think in the moment. And I’m told that’s also my primary liability in these first moments.

My tendency with a dom-stranger at the start is to think about what he’s thinking that I’m thinking, then to respond according to what I think he thinks. Of course that’s endlessly circular, slows down my responses, and becomes deadly in any D/s context.

I never turn off my brain (how would you do that anyway?), but I have learned to focus on just being me — probably the best advice for everyone in every walk of life. The best thing is not an assertion of my submissiveness or a forced display of my abject abasement but rather simply an expression of my natural personality.

This can’t be a conscious effort on my part and isn’t acting out. But it can be about finding opportunities to be real, to let my personality show. By nature I have a sense of humor, am sometimes witty, and can be funnily self-deprecating. I am never bubbly but sometimes droll, rarely cloudy and usually sunny (except for this recent patch of my life). I am also klutzy, and unfortunate reality of being Shae. For these aspects of me to come out naturally with this dom-stranger in the first hours of our acquaintance is, I think, my best foot forward.

So to speak. I remember one of my first moments with Master McKenna. I tripped on the edge of the oriental carpet in the atrium. I stumbled, caught myself, and in the moment just laughed and said, “I guess I didn’t study the floor plan well enough.” Master M laughed, and it established something between us — his acceptance of my personality and a space within his presence where I could be myself.

Nothing so striking happens with Master Z, we’ll say, but there are little things. I tell him I found his address a whole hour ago in order to not be late, but then drove around, got lost, and almost was late anyway. “I do things like that,” I say. He asks what I mean. “You’ll find I get into trouble by trying to do too much.” He smiles. I mention that his home is impressive, that I used to be in real estate and know a good house when I see one. He asks why I left that business, and I say, “Well, there’s this other life I got into…” He asks if I ever regret going into this life and leaving the other. Which is a perceptive question. I say, “This life is a better slavery.”

I’m not even sure I know what I mean by that, but he gets my attempt at humor and chuckles.

---

I write often about D/s slavery being a kind of partnership. I don’t mean it as equality of persons, but as a mutual process of creating inequality. I will be sub Shae and he will be Master Z, but first we start as woman and man.

So, it’s essential that he perceive me in these first moments as a adult woman, responsible and capable of functioning in vanilla life. If I come to him already debased and prostrate, then his dominance of me will have no real measure, no accomplishment, and no satisfaction. If I come to him already broken and subjugated, then he has no work on me to do. If I come to him not as an adult but as a child, fragile and needy, what he eventually does to me is tantamount to abuse.

And so, I present to him the adult that I am, my comment about my real estate career perhaps underscoring my professional status at one time. My walk and bearing (actually trained and shaped by my prior slaveries), communicate a feminine etiquette and social grace. Through my words, I convey to him that I am woman of will and purpose and some modicum of confidence. Again, all of this must be genuine, not acted pretense, but it’s important to let him see the best of the woman you are.

Of course, I am respectful and from the beginning address Master Z as Sir. We both know what we’re here to do. But the partnership starts in mature adulthood. It’s not a literal handshake, of course, but more a dance of unspoken agreements based on who we are and what we will become to each other.

I know very well that in time he will humiliate me into a puddle of naked tears. But that will be so much sweeter to us both if he sees me also as one he can take out to a dinner party, proud of the elegance that I am able to project.

---

Almost immediately, Master Z begins to assert his dominance over me, though it’s gradual.

Master doms have different approaches to this. Master McKenna, teacher that he is, launched into a formal training of me from the start. Master K, Kevin, was all about “claiming” me and had me suck his cock within the very first moments. More on these experiences later.

With Master Z it is a slow parade of little somethings. He shows me his den, a large paneled room with books on one wall, a mahogany desk, two leather chairs and a chaise lounge, also in leather. He points me to the bar at one end, and says, “I hear you’re familiar with the wet bar,” an obvious reference to Amanda’s wet bar at home.

“I am, sir,” I reply, “in so many ways.”

He chuckles knowlingly, then tells me he prefers several drinks, one of them a simple gin and tonic. But he prefers his g & t to be more 40 percent gin than the usual one-third. He also likes a splash of lime juice in it, a wedge of lime “if we have it.” He instructs me to make him one, then goes to his easy chair and sits.

I learn from this that he is precise in his requirements, at least this one and probably others.

I make him his drink, walk it over, and hand it to him. He tells me to sit on the floor in front of him, my hands behind my back.

I obey.

None of this is extraordinary or radical. But it’s the beginning of his taking dominant control of me. He has me, a woman and his guest, serving him, which is in vanilla society politically incorrect. He has me kneeling before him, a physical posture of his authority over me. He has me obeying him, this in a small way for now, but the beginning of a deeper and more extreme subservience.

---

Note to once-and-future doms: Spend up-front time talking with your prospective slave. There is much a woman needs to know coming in cold to a new man and manse. What she is doing with you is an extraordinary thing, and even the most experienced find a new dom and slave situation overwhelming. The more we know — and the more time we have to assimilate — the better.

As I sit kneeling before Master Z, he tells me about his schedule, his daily routines, some of his preferences in living. I ask him if I can take notes. He is surprised at this, but nods and I go get a notebook and pen from my purse, resuming my kneeling posture before him. I did this note-taking in my early days with Master McKenna, and I do so here. I will study them at night. A dominant generally hates to repeat instructions and facts and details a second or third time, but there is so much communicated in these first hours that it’s nearly impossible to remember it all.

Note to prospective slaves: As his slave-in-training, you must be a student of the man. When a man takes you into service, you must make him the most important focus of your life. Even in these first moments, he needs to know that you are singularly attentive to him, and you need immediately to begin your higher education about this man and his desires.

---

There is usually a walk-around tour of the house and grounds. This obviously is more of an event when the dom-stranger lives in a larger house, but in any case, I think of it as a meaningful ritual.

Master Z showing me his living spaces, is drawing me into his world. While my slave-purpose is to accommodate him in everything, he too is accommodating me, opening his life to me. I will have a place in just one small corner of that life, of course, but it still is a sharing with me of his private real estate. This is a kind of dominant foreplay.

Master Z shows me a rather expansive second floor. There are five bedrooms, several with private baths. He shows me his bedroom suite, then, adjacent to his, what will be my bedroom. Probably more than anything, the one thing important to me in my slaveries is having a separate bedroom. I have written about this many times, how having a separate bedroom has nothing to do with his wishes for me at night nor does it suggest I have any right to privacy.

Master Z points out that the door to my bedroom has been removed.

---

At some point he will touch you. You know it will happen, and you expect it to happen, yet when it happens, you still are surprised.

We have toured the house, and now Master Z stands next to me on the back deck, a multi-layered sprawl of platforms and levels overlooking a yard and a swimming pool. He talks to me about neighbors, and I make a mental note that he seems not to care what they think, very Amanda-esque, though I can’t quite imagine he will be so publicly flamboyant with me as she is.

From behind, his hand cups my ass cheek through my thin dress. I am surprised and utter a muffled, “Oh!”

He asks, his hand remaining in place, if there’s a problem.

I say, “I just wasn’t expect—” and I interrupt myself before saying more. “No, sir,” I say. “Of course not.”

I regret my impulsive reaction, as I don’t want to suggest to him that I am resisting, but my response was at the same time spontaneous and real. The first touch is like that, surprising and electric.

His touching of me is another subtle stage of his taking possession of me. In this non-verbal way Master Z is saying that such fondling is inappropriate normally but is his dominant right to have access to my body.

His hand enjoys itself there as he tells me about his pool service scheduled twice a week, that he’ll have me tend to the pool on the alternate days. I am conscious of my body language in the moment — I dare not pull away from his fondling palm and yet I should not lean into it either, which would be intentional and seductive. It won’t always be this way, but in these first moments subtle things speak loudly. I remain in place, ceding him his fondles of my ass, even as I talk with him about his acreage, sounding like the real estate woman he is beginning to possess.

---

Master Z sits in a pool chair and motions me to kneel on the patio slate facing him. He tells me again to sit with my hands clasped behind my back and I make a mental note this is how he prefers me. He launches into his “house rules,” certain duties he has for me to do, and his expectations for me through each day.

Another note for once-and-future doms: The worst thing for a prospective slave-in-training is ambiguity. “What do you expect from me?” and “What do you wish me to do?” are the primary questions a slave girl has, and if those aren’t clearly addressed — if she doesn’t understand the parameters and expectations — it’s problematic all around.

Master Z is answering these questions and more. He knows submissives, and he’s done this before.

For me, the most important thing at this point is not how he may humiliate me or what kinds of bondages he prefers to do on me or even his sexual uses of me. I assume all of those will happen in due time according to his wishes. What matters most to me in this up-front is what tasks and duties and chores I will do through the day.

I prefer to have chores and duties to occupy my time. I like working — even hard work. But there is a delicate balance between his using me as a maid, say, and keeping me as his slave. If he works me so hard as a maid (or secretary or cleaning woman), I (a) may have no energy to do anything else and (b) become that role to him at the expense of being his slave.

He asks me about my skills in ordinary tasks. I tell him with a laugh that I am a disaster in anything that has to do with gardening and am cooking-challenged. However, I am good, I tell him, at scrubbing floors. “I know it’s odd,” I say, “but it’s one of my personal pleasures.” He laughs. I have clerical experience, I add, am a good typist, and a passable editor. (I have no idea what sorts of work might be useful to him.)

He absorbs all this, and then tells me he’ll create a regimen and schedule for me to follow each day. “For now, I want you to settle into your bedroom, unpack, freshen up, and put on a new outfit, something that looks professional. We’ll reconvene in the living room in forty-five.” All of this starts to feel a little military to me. Which is fine, but different.

He has here dictated to me what I must wear, another subtle act of taking possession of me. I am used to this with Amanda, of course, but it’s ever a new experience with a new dom, and here he is making it a submissive act — “I want you,” he is saying, “to obey my preferences for what you wear.”

He is making me his own.

---

All of this has happened in the first ninety minutes of my arrival.

And we haven’t talked about sex yet.