whispers to Maria 2: posture training

I move from the conceptual to something very practical — posture training — because this is where Master McKenna starts with his slaves.

He’ll teach you how he wants you to sit and stand and walk.

You may think what’s the point?, as I did, and this etiquette stuff may seem to you so very superficial and archaic, yet this has more layers of significance than you’ll know at first.

On the surface, yes, this is etiquette training. He’ll shape your physical manners to be without “fuss.” Movements are to be spare and economical. He wishes to eliminate all of your extraneous actions and gestures (you’ll be surprised at how many you have).

By the way, do not make the mistake of seeing this as making you robotic. He doesn’t want that. You’ll get to the point where you can do it all fluidly, and it will become second nature, although it feels very unnatural at first.

My advice: give yourself to it, and to him. There are more layers to this than it appears.

While Master M intends real results in your physical bearing and truly wants a slave who is elegant and spare in movement — this training is really about shaping your obedience to him.

These exercises are really a sequence of obediences that begin your journey with him. They aren’t just about posture but about cultivating your subservience. The very superficiality of the posture training is part of it — that even in this you will take his words seriously and obey him.

Know that Master McKenna is a teacher at heart. Make a note: that’s his primary dominant language. And the posture training puts him in a position of teaching you, his dominant professor to your submissive and obedient student.

As a slave, you learn to live “in the background” of your dominant, particularly in the presence of others. You are to be there, present, yet unassuming, not compelling attention.

Posture training is, in a sense, the physical conditioning of you to live and move in an unassuming manner with your master in social settings. He is teaching you to move without fuss, so that you do not attract attention.

This comes into play as he trains you how to walk in connection to him. You’ll learn about the “invisible leash” and intuitively move in a precise four feet behind him and to his side. You’ll learn how to be when he “puts” you somewhere at a conference or board meeting, expecting you to stand, heels together, until he retrieves you and makes you invisibly tethered to him once again.

The point is that in slave life you are not important. Valuable as a slave, but not important as a person in his social circles. In a way, posture training conditions you to be invisible yet present in his world.

Understand it’s a great pleasure to a dominant to have you invisibly attached to him, and for others to see you trained and tamed by his dominance.

Another layer of the posture training is that the final result — your resulting etiquette — becomes his signature for all to see. Be grateful: he could otherwise ink you or brand you with his initials, but instead he has you carry his training everywhere in how you stand, sit, walk.

People notice this in me, that I move this way, and if they know McKenna, they know he’s imprinted me with his dominance.

Not all dominants care about this. Amanda has never been much into it, hasn’t the patience for it, though she appreciates the results that Master M has instilled in me. Previously, though, Master Michael trained me in some similar manners of movement, although they were not as precise as these with Master McKenna.

I think most any dominant you wind up with will appreciate the resulting elegance of your movement that this training produces. They may bristle a bit if they know this is Master M’s “signature,” but they’ll appreciate the look and grace of your bearing as a slave.

I say “any dominant you wind up with,” Maria, not to suggest you won’t be Master M’s ultimate choice. I don’t have any inside information about that. But I’ve been with four dominants in my seven years of D/s, so I’m just saying that whatever your future holds, this training is likely to be valued by others.

You may or may not know about the Gorean tradition in the BDSM world. Gorean culture is based on a series of fantasy novels and has become a kind of mythology for some BDSM practice. One part of it specifically has to do with “slave positions,” which are subservient postures for very specific purposes, often demonstrating extreme subservience or presentation for sexual uses.

I only mention this because Master McKenna’s posture training is kind of a precursor to Gorean slave positions. That said, Master M has not much been given to Gorean practices — he has a more modern dominant style.

I just mention this to let you know that D/s life has a long tradition of training slaves to assume positions and postures. When you feel with Master M that you are in some sort of 1950s etiquette school for society women, just keep in mind things like this are a part of some BDSM practices.

One practical tip for you in posture training: I’d suggest you start an exercise routine that strengthens your thighs. It can be just a minute or two in the morning. Knee bends or something. You’ll find that a lot of posture training puts a strain on your upper legs.

Case in point: the hardest thing for me was learning how to stand from a sitting position, especially when sitting in a deeper and lower cushioned sofa. Before training, I always just sort of wriggled out of it. Very inelegant. I learned instead to do it in two clean movements: first, to re-seat myself (lift my body and forward but then sit again) on the front edge of the cushion, and second, from there to stand in the clean upward motion he desires. Of course, that motion is all about your thighs pushing you up (no hands assisting).

Also, Master will have you in heels a lot of the time. He likes the look. He’ll give you time to condition you into wearing heels for longer periods. (I wear heels, you may have noticed, almost full-time.) My point is that stronger thighs also will help your walking and standing in heels.

Just a tip.

All to say, do take the posture training seriously. On the surface it may seem trivial (at least it did to me), but it has a lot of layers of significance and importance. Master M will be looking at how you handle this training, watching your commitment to him as you learn it.

after

The things you do as a submissive, the diminishments and humiliations, are always with you. You will always remember public demonstrations of what you are.

Memories will persist for them too. One gang of boys-to-men will always have this. You allowed yourself to be done that way, diminished in front of stranger-others, and they watched you in your pitiful submission. They will ever see you in the light of a neon bar.

In garish memories, they will always have you. Years from now, one will say to another, “Remember that night?” and they will recall your face, crimson in shame, and remember your sex, bared and glistening-moist below. And they will imagine even more with you in the what-ifs of dreams — you cannot control their story of you.

You will always be that girl.

In the aftermath of Friday night, I have those feelings, but others too. Relief, for one, that my punishment is over. Satisfaction, perhaps, that I hung in there and took it. A quiet joy, even, that I endured a hard thing.

Mistress didn’t give me “time off” on Saturday. She knows that my best therapy is the routine of submissive life. She never shunned me throughout this, a saving grace, but it was lovely nonetheless that we had our normal day of shopping and hiking with me collared and sometimes leashed and calling her “Mistress” now without any edge of trepidation.

BTW, I took some days away from writing. Not as a form of recovery, but just because I was “all wrote out.” Quite separate from my Friday night punishment, I needed to simply put down the proverbial pen for a while…

I sensed Friday night was a new threshold for me.

I don’t mean that I will now be subjected to more bar nights like that one. This was a punishment, unique and rare, and I sure intend not to be guilty again so as to deserve another.

But somehow Friday night was a new doorway for Mistress Amanda and me, a portal into the broader life she seeks for us. Yet I confess I don’t really know the fullness of what that means.

I know it’s not necessarily an escalation of my experiences. I’ve written about that before, against escalation, that D/s is a steady life of a certain kind of relationship, not a series of constantly greater explosions.

But Mistress Amanda’s version of a “steady D/s life” includes “sharing” and it includes “public” and it includes “vanilla.” Those are not explosions to her, just how our D/s life is to be lived. She sees doms and subs as simply different orientations meant to mingle with and be accepted by society.

Friday night was a punishment for me, a rare event not intended to be a part of that “steady D/s life.” Yet I think it demonstrated Mistress’s ability to orchestrate part of her vision for us together. It was our D/s being lived out in public, shared with vanilla joes.

I submitted to it, endured it, survived it. And maybe walked through it into something new.

I have read the comments to my punishment experience Friday night. It seems quite a few are questioning Mistress Amanda in her methods and purpose for my Friday-night punishment.

I think it best that I not get entangled in that debate. She doesn’t need me defending her. But I might share a few after-musings…

I sense that in questioning Mistress Amanda, people are coming to my side, protecting me in light of the ordeal. Thank you for that. Your concerns mean a lot to me… And to that end, I assure you, I’m okay, that while the experience lingers, I’m doing fine and life is back to what it was.

I suspect, though I have no confirmation from her, that more of the evening was pre-planned and orchestrated by her than I knew or ever will know. Again, I don’t know this, but I sense it in retrospect, perhaps from the way she and Connor interacted.

Finally, while I don’t judge Mistress to be at fault for anything Friday night, I do know she would be the first to say that she could have misstepped, taken something too far, been wrong in this or that. She never claims to be perfect. She only asserts the importance of living a life out loud.

I went to church on Sunday. It had nothing to do with my punishment or some need for further atonement. In fact, I have been going to a church for a few weeks now, having found one I sort of like. This has become part of my effort to build a broader life. (I may write about church, or not, perhaps keeping that mostly to myself, much like my working at the ranch with horses.)

However, being at church this Sunday immediately following my Friday punishment brought to mind a phrase in the religious world that I grew up in. It seems especially appropriate here: “It’s Friday but Sunday’s comin’.” I understand the phrase was first coined by an African-America pastor in California in the 1960s or so. The context is the darkness of the Friday of Christ’s crucifixion and the bright Sunday of his resurrection.

I’m not comparing myself to that, of course. It just came to mind. It was an interesting juxtaposition of events for me, my bar punishment Friday night and my church experience Sunday morning.

In the “after” of my Friday night, I realized I had a choice in how to process it. I could continue to feel the humiliation of it. Or I could walk away from it with a sense of accomplishment.

For better or worse, I have done both. As I started this post, I am ever aware of the memory of humiliation that it is for me. That is part of who I am, whether or not I like the recollection. At the same time, sprouting out of the soil of shame are sprigs of pride. I submitted to this and endured it. I was a good submissive, a worthy slave girl, taking my deserved punishment in mind and body. My red cheeks were my badge of courage. Or something like that.

I kind of think that we submissives will always have both our Friday nights and Sunday mornings. Maybe our Friday nights can make us stronger and give greater meaning to our Sunday mornings.

Blake, buddies, bar

I suffered my punishment Friday night. I haven’t wanted to write this, for it’s like reliving it again. But I must, for various reasons. I have to move on. Perhaps the reporting of these events will give me closure…

It’s a sports bar, north and west of downtown Denver. I’ll refrain from disclosing its name and location, but I can say it’s kind of upscale as bars go — Western rustic as everything around here is, but clean and fresh in its way, with a patio terrace facing the mountains.

Mistress and I had been here once before. Blake and his friends gather here many Friday nights after a week of work. Most of them are in the construction business. More on that in a moment.

We pulled into the parking lot around five. It wasn’t that busy. The bar is a bit out of the way up in the foothills, so it doesn’t get after-work traffic, but it still can draw a clientèle on the weekend. I learned later that the Denver basketball team played Thursday night but was off Friday, so maybe that was why it was less crowded.

Fine with me.

In the car, Amanda had reviewed with me what I was required to do. “I’ll lead the conversation,” she’d said. “You’ll get to know the guys. At a some point, I’ll prompt you to speak. Shall I go over what you have to say?”

“No, I memorized it,” I said.

“There are four.”

“I’m well aware — seared into my mind. Trust me, I’m not going to blow this.”

My words were unintentionally ironic. Amanda laughed and was about to make more of a funny from it, but stopped herself, suppressing a smile.

After a few miles, she asked, “Are you nervous?”

“Yes. Extremely.”

“Good.”

“Nice.”

“You’ll get through it.”

I said nothing, steeled within, thinking Mistress Amanda was enjoying this way too much.

The weather had been rainy and cool all day, and though it wasn’t raining when we arrived, the terrace was closed, its patio umbrellas folded and strapped shut.

Mistress had me in a short denim skirt and a light sweater with a deep V-neck, showing some of my cleavage, loose enough for my boobs to roll around underneath. I also wore one of my titanium collars with O-rings, wide like one of the rings of Saturn.

I’ve learned since, Amanda wasn’t sure what she was walking into — in regard to the other patrons and the vibe of the room. She didn’t want to invite an unintended scene, she just wanted to create her own scene somewhat more privately. So, aside from the collar, she toned me down a bit. I wore flats not heels, and she didn’t walk me in on a leash, although I saw she had one in her purse.

Blake and his friends were in a side room that had a long table in the center, which they had reserved and now occupied. Blake and one other of the guys stood as we entered. I saw the two who remained seated exchange a glance and a grin.

So, the gang was Blake, Connor, Tyler, and Jack.

This is how I perceived them at first blush: Connor was built square and solid like a football player, and initiated a lot of the conversation. Jack had an angular frame like Blake, and wore black-rimmed glasses. Tyler wore an orange Denver Broncos T-shirt that showed a little bit of a paunch in front. (For a while, I got Tyler and Jack confused, I think because my stereotype of a financial accountant (Tyler) is of a nerdy guy wearing glasses. In fact it was carpenter Jack who wore the glasses.)

It seemed to me all of them were in their late twenties, and I could sense from their smirks and smiles what I already had assumed — that all knew what I do for Blake.

“Blake’s talked a lot about ya,” Amanda was saying breezily as we sat down. She so easily slips into woo mode, adapting to the style and jargon of whatever room she’s in. “I’ve been meanin’ to do this sooner, but work gets in the way…” She went on for another minute, talking about how nice the bar was, and how we’d been once before, only briefly. She always does this so well, talking awhile to give people time to process her, and us. She paused, taking a breath. “Anywayyy,” she said, drawing out the word, “thanks for letting us crash your party.”

“Been wanting to meet you,” Connor said. “Blake here’s told us things. Just haven’t been sure whether to believe them.”

“Good things, I hope,” Amanda replied.

“Interesting for sure.”

Jack, the guy in glasses, uttered a little laugh, out of the blue. Everyone was smiling. Blake looked over at Amanda, perhaps looking for her approval of his buddies and the setting. I sat subdued, imagining what specifically these guys had been told.

“Well,” Amanda said, “we have no secrets… But I want to know why you wouldn’t believe our Blake here.”

“He has these stories,” Jack blurted out, “about the work he does for people like you. And things with her,” he added, nodding at me.

Blake smiled. I blushed. I did a lot of blushing Friday night.

Connor reached for Blake, next to him, and gripped him by the shoulder. “Blake here doesn’t say much, a man of few words, so when he speaks anything, it’s usually true. But this was so out there, we were wondering… Nice to put faces to rumors,” Connor said. He proved to be articulate and glib, clearly the alpha of their group. We would learn later that he has his own home repair company, employs a few people. He uses Tyler part-time as his financial guy, accountant, or something like that.

The waitress came by. Introduced herself as Missy. “These boys giving you any trouble?” she said to Amanda.

“They a rowdy bunch?”

“Depends on the game,” Jack said.

“They talk it up, but they’re harmless,” Missy replied. “My regulars, every Friday night, just about. What can I get you gals?”

Amanda ordered a beer, I ordered a bourbon. Figured it would help me endure this if I got halfway smashed.

As she was leaving, Missy said, “Let me know if these boys give you any what-for.”

There was some general introductory talk, as Amanda had suggested in the car that there would be. It was Connor who prompted it, asking Amanda about her business. She responded about her online HR company, and they did the CEO thing for awhile. I was aware both Connor and Amanda were the alphas at the table. But they weren’t competing. Nothing much more to say on that, but I could feel it.

Blake spoke too, saying something about Jack: “You remember him.” I nodded, but then felt awkward because I realized he was addressing Amanda. “Helped me with building the dog run.”

Amanda nodded. “Of course. Now I can place you, Jack. Good to see you again.”

Seems that Jack is a freelance carpenter and both Connor and Blake use Jack on projects. So the four of them work somewhat independently but connect in various ways in their work.

There was other conversation, not about me, which I was only too happy for. The guys talked sports awhile, which all went over my head. Amanda said, “I heard the Nuggets won last night.” I looked at her sideways in puzzlement. She knows nothing about sports.

I never initiated any conversation, but responded when asked a question. Frankly, I was struggling to remain present in the moment.

Drinks came, a beer for Amanda, bourbon for me, refills on beers for the guys. My heart sank a little when Amanda ordered an appetizer, and the guys ordered burgers and BBQ chicken. I think I had imagined this would all be done over a single drink, that I’d make my four-part confession speech, and we’d be out of there.

No, this was going to be a long evening.

As a group, the guys seemed a mixture of latent adolescence and young blue-collar professionals. They weren’t offensive in their comments, though suggestive at times with innuendos and inside jokes. Jack was least restrained, a little giggly, often blurting out things. Blake was quiet as always, but smiled and laughed in a way I don’t know him. Tyler was a bit of a cipher to me, but would ask questions later. As a group, within their gang-of-four chemistry, they sometimes gave off a frat-boy jokey vibe. Yet individually, they flashed moments of responsible maturity and seemed like men at the front edge of adult life.

Their conversations droned to a thrum in my background. I wondered if my reality as a submissive woman appealed to them more as smirking boys or as men on the cusp of very adult things.

I don’t mean to drag this out, but it felt dragged out to me, and was part of my experience Friday night. It seemed like forever.

We had finally finished eating. Missy had cleared off our plates and had brought refills of drinks. I had declined another bourbon.

Connor, sipping his beer, said: “Blake has told us about you, but we want to hear more. From you.” Something like that. It opened the door for Amanda to get into it.

(Now that I write this, I realize I may have some of the sequence of these conversations out of order. We may have had some of this discussion during our meal. I suppose it doesn’t matter.)

Amanda spoke about us being in an alternative relationship that was based on dominance and submission. Tyler asked what “alternative” meant. Amanda explained. She didn’t go into us being in a lesbian relationship, I assume because that was fairly obvious — however, Jack would ask about that later. Amanda talked about how we take the life seriously, believe in it as a real hierarchy of roles, and live this way 24/7. How we are wired this way, choose to live differently, and so on and so on…

This conversation about our lifestyle went on a while. But it eventually wound down, and I could tell Amanda was about to invite me, finally, to present my confession.

Suddenly realized I needed another drink. Leaning over to Amanda, I whispered my request, one that I would soon regret.

A smile grew on her face, and she nodded. To my embarrassment, she pulled out my leash from her purse and attached it to my collar. “Shae wants another bourbon,” she announced to the table, “and we probably need to go up to the bar to get it. Connor, would you do the honors?”

Connor nodded with a shit-grin on his face, and Amanda handed him my leash.

The happy-hour and dinnertime crowds had cleared out, and the side room was empty but for us. It was the lull before the late-night drinkers. But the main bar room still had people at tables and booths. So, yes, Conner led me by leash through the maze of tables up to the bar. I could feel people staring. I asked the bartender for a bourbon and stood there waiting, facing Connor a foot away, holding my leash, which now hung in a loop between us.

Connor stared at me with a smile.

“What?” I said, red-faced.

He gave a shake of his head, then said, “This is fascinating.”

We got back to the table. Amanda was holding court. I sipped my bourbon of courage, and she took her time finishing up what she was saying. I know she was giving me time.

Unfortunately, memories like this become very vivid, indelible. I recall it this way:

Amanda said, “So, Shae has something to say. I wanted us all to meet anyway, to meet all of you, Blake’s friends, and this has been so good, but we have another purpose in being with you tonight.” With that, she turned it over to me.

I had rehearsed this over and over, and I had in my mind the four parts of my confession:
What I do for him.
My order to notify.
My failure to notify.
My public apology.

My voice was whispery and hoarse: “As you probably know, for a while now, Blake has had appointments with me. These are times when Mistress Amanda has me… well… service him.”

“Say it for what it is,” Amanda prompted.

I started to turn to her with a glare (this was already hard enough, for god sake), but thought better of it and nodded. “I service him orally.”

“Shae,” Amanda said sternly.

“I give him a blowjob.”

There was some tittering laughter. Big grins. I remember someone said, “Way to go, man,” directed to Blake. At a point, my eyes couldn’t look at anyone directly, and I cast my eyes down, focusing instead at a spot in the middle of the table.

“How often do you suck his dick?” Jack blurted out.

I looked over at Amanda and she, smiling, nodded for me to answer. “About every few weeks,” I said. “Whenever he books his time with me.”

Jack added, “That’s exactly what he said.” He turned to Blake, “So you weren’t blowing smoke, after all.”

“He was getting blown,” Tyler punned, and everyone chuckled.

I glanced sideways at Blake. He too was smiling, probably exulting that his stories about me were being verified. I think I had wondered if he would be embarrassed by this evening too. Maybe I wanted him to be more “in it with me,” sort of like this is something we do and “if you must, guys, now you all know.” That sort of coupled sharing of the experience. Of course, I always want to make everything a relationship, force meaning into it. But Blake Friday night was not like that, showing a different side of him, rather enjoying his conquest, me, in front of his buddies.

I took a gulp of bourbon, and it burned going down. I was blushing deeply, I knew — red-face itself quite a sight, I was sure. I resolved to myself just to get through the rest of my four-point confession.

“Mistress Amanda gave me an order,” I said. I went on to explain my blog. “Her instruction to me was to provide a notification to readers whenever I service Blake.”

Someone interrupted, asking about my blog — Tyler, I think — and if they could read it. Amanda said she would send Connor the link and he could distribute it. (They may be reading this now.)

“So,” I continued, “I failed to notify anyone that I had serviced Blake— ”

“Serviced?” Amanda corrected, again not allowing me euphemisms.

“Had given him a blowjob. The appointment happened a week ago Tuesday, but I hadn’t posted any notification for a full week after. That was a disobedience, wrong of me.”

“Does he come in your mouth or on your face?” Jack interjected rudely.

I breathed in deeply, took some more of my bourbon. Now I wished I’d made it a double. “Either way,” I answered dutifully. “However he wants me.”

“God,” Jack said, “that’s so hot.” He turned to Blake: “You’re such a lucky dude.”

“Don’t I know it!” Blake replied with a chuckle.

I remember there was laughter around and other things said, but I don’t recall the specifics. I had two more points to get to, but the guys perhaps thought that was the all of it, and they went on and on for a while.

Amanda stepped in to redirect. “I require this of her,” she said, again commanding the room, “because it’s part of her slavery to me. It’s what she needs and what she craves. And she loves sucking cock…

I closed my eyes, unable to look at anyone.

“So, there’s more Shae has to tell you…”

So, at this point, I just wanted to plow through to the end. I opened my eyes again and looked up, forcing myself into eye contact. “So I confess that I failed to do the notification. I was wrong. And this is my punishment — to confess all this to you in person. I apologize to you publicly for not notifying everyone of my servicing of Blake.”

It became a blur, and these words may be out of order and maybe not exactly what was said, but I think it was something close to that.

I remember Amanda asking Blake if there was anything he wanted to add.

He looked around the table. “Now do you guys believe me?”

Nods all around, jokey comments and laughs following.

“I have to say,” Blake continued, “that Shae is a pretty good cocksucker.”

“On a scale of…” Tyler started.

“Of five stars,” Jack finished. “Make it one to five stars.”

“Really?” I said aloud. As in, do we have to go there?

Blake thought a moment and finally said, “Four stars.”

“Why four not five?” Tyler probed.

“I want her to keep trying harder.”

Everyone roared. I shook my head, but even I had to smile slightly. I was relieved now. It was over.

Missy came back into the side room. She apologized for not attending to us for a while. “Was on break,” she said. “But anything more I can get you now?”

Connor ordered another beer. I asked for another bourbon. “Maybe I’ll actually taste this one,” I said.

Amanda stood and pulled Missy to the corner of the room to tell her she’d pick up the tab.

Jack, who seemed never to have a thought he didn’t speak out loud, asked, “So are you two lesbians or what?”

“God, Jack,” Connor said. “You don’t ask about one’s orientation.”

“I just did,” he said proudly.

“It’s okay,” I replied, thinking we’d already talked about my cocksucking, so sexual orientation seems like a mild inquisition in comparison. “It’s no secret. I’m bi. Amanda will have to tell about herself.” I looked over at her still talking to Missy in the corner.

“Cool,” Jack said.

“I think we’re all wondering,” Tyler said, “how we can get a piece of this too.”

I hadn’t expected that question, perhaps should have. I knew better than to say no. “You’ll have to ask her,” I finally said.

They had more to ask me, mostly about what it was like being submissive. I knew they were angling for more sexual details. Now I just wanted to get out of there, but managed to find a voice to answer a little, not getting into anything too explicitly.

Amanda was finally done with her unusually long conversation with Missy. Returning to the table, she said, “I’m picking up the tab tonight, guys. This has been most enjoyable.”

Presently, Missy returned with our last-call drinks, and I started in on my third bourbon, more alcohol than I usually have in a night. As Missy left, she closed the sliding doors to the side room.

“There is one more thing,” Amanda announced. “Something Shae does not know about.”

It almost sounded like a final surprise at a birthday party, and I wondered for a moment if she was going to reward me with something for getting through the evening with this gang of four.

“She had four parts to her confession tonight. She got through them and did them well.”

Oddly, Jack started clapping, but the others followed suit. This felt to me cringe-worthy and awkward.

“So,” Amanda went on, “there’s a fifth part to her punishment.” She turned to me. Shae, I want you to arrange yourself across my lap.”

I looked at her in embarrassed horror. “Please no,” I begged in a hushed voice.

“Afraid so, slave-girl.”

“Do we have to do this?” I whispered. “Really?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice low and hard.

Again, I couldn’t raise my eyes to look at anyone. I reached for my bourbon, taking a gulp, then another in quick succession. It would dull my physical pain but not my humiliation. I stood, a bit dizzy now, and somehow slid my body across Amanda’s lap.

“Seven spanks,” she declared, “one for each day you failed to post a notification.”

I heard chairs slide across the floor as the guys stood to get a better look. Someone walked around and stood behind Amanda, watching over her shoulder.

I felt Amanda pull up my denim skirt around my waist. I uttered a warbled, feeble protest. I could feel the air of the room against the back of my thighs.

“No panties,” I remember hearing Jack say.

God. I could feel the slit of my pussy exposed from behind, and knew they all were gazing at it.

Amanda’s flat palm landed against my ass cheeks. I yelped. I realized now the reason for the closed doors.

“Holy shit,” someone said.

There was a second spank, and the guys started counting.

Her hits were not hard, that isn’t her style, but it wasn’t the point. My humiliation was the point — the whole point of the evening. If I ever saw any of them again, and I prayed I wouldn’t, I knew they would see my face and associate it with this moment — this picture of my reddened ass cheeks and my pale pussy lips peeking out.

It was another forever in an evening of forever. Across her lap, looking down, I tried to block it out, futilely trying to memorize the grain of the wood floor.

I will perhaps never understand the flood of different feelings from being spanked. There is something about being an adult woman who is spanked that is utterly humiliating. For it to be done in a public place with others observing turns the humiliation into shame. It’s actually a kind of horror.

Yet for me as a submissive, it is also deeply fulfilling in some mysterious way. It is maybe the perfect nexus of being dominated by another, diminished to this, my bare ass moon-faced to a gang of adult boys. And with this submissive fulfillment comes, strangely, eroticism. I am damnably aroused in this very moment of horror.

So, when later in another time and place someone asks if I like being spanked, how do I answer? It’s horrifying in a way that I would never wish to endure again. It’s a deep humiliation to be an adult woman spanked like a disobedient child in front of a public group of watchers. Yet it arouses me, profoundly, sort of the spark-point of nuclear fission for a submissive like me. And my very arousal from such a humiliating horror becomes itself more deeply shaming.

How do I answer if I like this or not?

As I memorized the bar floor, tears came to my eyes, and I felt myself becoming wet elsewhere as well. I prayed no one would notice.

It was Jack (of course) who noticed. “She likes it. See?”

I wanted to yell out, but I didn’t, having no retort anyway. No I don’t like it, it’s not so simple as that. Yes I do like it, but it’s not so simple as that.

In the meantime my pussy becomes wet, and I have no answer for that either. It’s my submission in liquid form. I can’t help it, I wanted to yell out.

But I just squelched back the tears of my shame and absorbed the remaining spanks of my punishment.

After, she had me stand beside her as she held court at the table. She held my leash. My eyes glistened. She said some things about our life together as dominant and submissive. There were more questions. She made my spanking a teaching moment.

Not that the guys cared much about the philosophy of D/s, but at this point, she had their rapt attention.

I’m still processing what happened Friday night. That is what happened. I don’t yet know what it really means. I think it is a threshold of something beyond what it was.

Certainly I will not forget posting notifications ever again.

about punishment in D/s

Some have asked some questions, so I will try to muster my composed writer’s voice in the midst of this difficult week to explain a few things about “crime and punishment” in D/s “in the way we do it.”

First, I should state clearly what my transgression was: it was not posting a notification on my blog about the last time I had a “date” appointment with Blake. I was required to post when this happened, and this last time I failed to do so.

Second, though I made some excuses with Mistress, I do not deny I deserve to be punished. Further, while I dread this punishment tomorrow night, and it will be horrible to go through, I do not quarrel with Mistress Amanda’s decision to make this my penance.

Third, I wish to make it clear that Mistress Amanda hasn’t ordered me to write any of these recent posts about my punishment. She only has ordered me to post a “notification” when I service Blake, and that can be a brief mention. Writing these posts these past few days has been my way of processing a difficult thing.

BTW, I can tell some are reluctant to “like” these posts about my transgression and punishment, perhaps wary of treading on sensitive nerves. I understand it’s hard to “like” someone’s distress. But I assure you I am okay, and I will get through this. Feel free to “like” or not, as you wish, but know that I will not be further hurt or offended by your comments and questions.

I’m also well aware that for some there is a fascination in this. I understand that. I have lived my slavery out loud and it’s been made public in more and more ways. I never really get used to that, but I’m okay with it, perhaps to the extent that I am somewhat gratified if others’ find some interest and meaning and pleasure in my humiliations.

In our version of the lifestyle, punishment is a serious matter not a fetish-play thing. That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with BDSM play in which punishment is staged and simulated for pleasure purposes. But that’s not what we do.

In our lifestyle, punishment is a real consequence of a real transgression, based on some form of disobedience. Any disobedience strikes at the very basis of the D/s arrangement, undermining the tacit agreement that one will submit to another who is dominant. It’s potentially a first step toward the D/s relationship unraveling. So, punishment is administered, not as a fun kink but as an important corrective within the D/s relationship.

For me with Mistress Amanda, true disobedience and resulting punishment have, thankfully, been rare. I wrote about one previous punishment here. There have been others as well, but few and far between. I like being a good girl.

It’s important to note that “transgressions” are not about imperfections or mistakes or errors. Mistress Amanda does not look for little things to call me on. Missing a spot in scrubbing the kitchen floor or not getting her T-shirt white enough in the laundry or my occasional klutziness are not causes for punishment. She doesn’t expect me to be perfect. Thank god.

My previous crime and punishment that I wrote about was a disobedient attitude I displayed to Mistress in a particularly defiant way. This week my transgression was a clear order that I failed to obey. It was a crime of omission — I just forgot to post a notification about my time with Blake — but I accept that by forgetting I was taking Mistress Amanda’s orders for granted, diminishing her ownership of me.

I protested a bit, but in the end I do not quarrel with the charge, the verdict, and my punishment for it.

So, I’ve written about this before: in our version of D/s, a proper punishment is a difficult thing to devise.

For many in the lifestyle, the common method is physical hurt, thus the term “corporal punishment.” But when such things as whipping and pain are themselves forms of pleasure in BDSM, it hardly seems to serve as any real deterrent, as it’s not really much different from the rest of D/s practice.

Another possibility would be some restriction of rights. But as a D/s slave, I have no “rights” to begin with. Perhaps then a restriction of movement — sentencing me to my room, for example. But that seems so “parent-child” (see below). It could be a more formal imprisonment, such as putting me in a cage. But Mistress well knows that being put in a cage would be heaven for me. I’ve actually begged her for it.

All this is just to say that devising proper and effective punishment in D/s is complicated.

Generally, Mistress Amanda has used “withdrawal of relationship” as her punishment of me. This has been a kind of shunning — silence and distance for a long period of time. She knows that this affects me deeply and that it’s very effective.

But Mistress once said that she didn’t like punishments of me that punished her too. Yesterday, she kept her distance from me but so far today, it’s as if everything is normal. We are conversing as before. I am grateful.

It may be that she feels my punishment tomorrow night serves the purpose well enough. It will be a deep humiliation of me. And this will be public in front of a crowd. Ugh.

Which is something that gives Mistress great pleasure.

Finally, I might say that, in general, Mistress has kept crime and punishment on the adult level and hasn’t let it descend into “parent-child” dynamics.

While she may be deeply angry or disappointed with me, she keeps the accusation and verdict phase on the level of adult discourse, civil — offering a presentation of my transgression and providing opportunity to speak. In the court of Amanda, we are both adults.

In it all, I try to keep my adult composure, but it’s hard not to associate adult punishment with childhood experiences. The authority she has over me can’t help but sometimes feel life a parent wielding judgment. I try to keep my adult wits about me, but inevitably tears form.

Still, in this current moment, I accept, as an adult, that I failed in my submission and will incur a punishment. In the meantime, we do the D/s life together as before. Life goes on.

It is an odd thing, I suppose — a forty-something woman pronouncing judgment and punishment upon a thirty-something woman — but it is the power dynamic we are in.

my punishment

At 5:00 last evening, Mistress reconvened with me on the patio. “I gave you a full week to make this right,” she said, “so, I’ve had time to consider your punishment.”

She sat on the cushioned patio rocker. I stood about six feet from her, my hands to my sides. She was not angry, not harsh. Just disappointed. Being a disappointment to her devastates me.

“I think it appropriate,” she continued, “for Blake to be in on your punishment. I am working it out for us to meet him and his friends at their bar. You will tell his friends what you do for him on these dates. You will state this transgression of yours to them all. And you’ll apologize to Blake for your forgetting my order. If they have questions, you will answer them. We will share a drink with them, you will sit quietly, and we will leave when I choose to.”

Red-faced, I nodded but said nothing.

“I’m trying to get this set up for Friday evening.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

For now, I have nothing more to say, but I may post more about this later today.

servicing Blake

This is my official and very belated notice to everyone that a week ago Tuesday, May 9 at around 3:30 p.m., Blake had an appointment with me. Kneeling on our living room floor, I serviced him, taking his cock in my mouth. He ejaculated on my face and tongue, then left.

I apologize to everyone for not reporting this earlier.

Blake has scheduled another appointment with me next week, on Wednesday the 24th at 4:30 p.m.

Blake, forgetting, and my punishment

I truly would rather not write this post, but I have to…

The last time I posted about Blake, I mentioned that Mistress Amanda told me to report whenever he had a time with me, our “dates,” as Mistress likes to call them. She didn’t order me to provide full descriptions, but she told me to report each and every time this occurs.

Well, Blake had another “date” with me a week ago, Tuesday.

I regret to say I failed to report it as I had been ordered.

Mistress addressed this with me this morning. As usual, I was ready with her service tray at 7:15, and after pouring her coffee, she sternly directed me out to the patio. She sat, told me to stand. “You haven’t reported your cocksucking of Blake last Tuesday,” she said. “It was my order. You failed to do it, Shae.”

My heart sank.

Mistress said she does not expect me to post these “notifications” within hours, or a day, or even two days of my servicing Blake. But this went seven days. “It’s now been more than a week since you cocksucked him, Shea,” she said, “and you’re now only aware of your failure because I had to remind you.”

She went on to say it was cause for punishment.

I apologized. I just plain forgot. I admitted to her that her original order was clear, that it had registered with me then, and that I knew I was supposed to do it. But, I have been a little distracted of late, with the sharing, Stacy, and my McKenna time, and my new gig at the Savannah ranch with horses.

Mistress said none of that is an excuse.

I said I wanted her to know it was not an intentional defiance. No, I don’t want to have to report out every time, I said, but I wouldn’t defy her order for that. “It won’t happen again,” I promised. “I’ll post a notification right away.” I begged her to give me grace.

She made it clear she already had given me grace, a full week of it, waiting for me to post this. I never did.

I had no reply, no defense. Hers was a clear and direct order. I failed to obey it.

So I regret to tell everyone I am now going to be punished for this.

Mistress further lectured me this morning about a deeper problem: “I have the feeling,” she said, “that you ‘forgot’ my order because it was something you wanted to forget.”

I protested: “I’ve willingly submitted to servicing Blake every few weeks.”

She drilled down into it: “Because, Shae, that part you actually like. But the part of reporting out on it you don’t like. You like giving blowjobs because of the slut you are. You don’t like the reporting of it because you don’t like being seen as the slut you are.”

That stung. Because it’s true. I admitted to her that her regular booking of me by appointment with Blake makes makes me feel so sex-worker-ish. And the reporting out on it intensifies that.

“Exactly,” she said. “I can’t have you saying yes to this and no to that. I can’t have you showing up at Stacy’s door because you secretly want her, while conveniently ‘forgetting’ to obey me in reporting out about your blowjob time with Blake because you don’t like that part. It’s a problem.”

I didn’t respond, but I couldn’t deny her point. I didn’t protest further. I was close to tears.

Mistress said that later this afternoon she will inform me what my punishment will be. She wants me to stew in my chagrin for a while.

Already, I have played over and over in my head how I possibly could forget posting about the Blake date. I don’t think I was intentionally forgetting, my passive resistance, and all that, but maybe so.

As usual, my greatest punishment is myself. I pride myself on doing well, the straight-A girl even in slavery, that sort of thing. This is a big blue F on my report card.

It will gnaw on me. Mistress A knows I do this to myself, that I create my own anguish.

It’s been a very bad morning.

fashion bondage

One new development in Mistress’s domination of me is the use of what I will call “fashion straps.” These are thin ropes, soft, apparently made of silk, woven together to make cords. Notably, they come in fashion colors.

Today she has me in a royal blue skater skirt and topless, but for two royal blue fashion straps looped around my breasts. Think underwire, without the bra. Each strap circles my breast once, then attaches to my neck collar O-ring.

Mistress thinks of it as a bondage I can walk around in. “This way,” she says, “I can have you bound and still use you for things.”

“Thanks for reminding me of my utilitarian purpose,” I reply.

I’m afraid she thinks these fashion ropes are equivalent to clothing, that they are some sort of actual covering. “You know this isn’t the same as a T-shirt, right?” I ask.

“I think of it as a bra-top.”

She doesn’t actually think that, for she has me throw a T-shirt over the ropy arrangement when we go to the grocery. Yet she keeps me this way when neighbors pop in invited, which they are doing more these days.

“Now that you’re a horse woman at the ranch,” she says, “you should appreciate the art being roped.”

I look at her quizzically. “I don’t think when they rope calves, they take time to do shibari.”

She is reading these days about shibari, the art of Japanese rope bondage. I think the concept of that suits her sense of design and fits her feng shui approaches to home decorating. And her dressing of me has always been for her a form of decorating. So now these two interests are merging.

I have to admit the ropes are not uncomfortable. They’re soft and don’t irritate my skin below my breasts. The loop of the ropes squeezes my breasts slightly and pushes them out a touch. It’s not pronounced but just a slight increase of protrusion. Not that I need any help that way.

Later, over wine, she’ll take my ropes off and try another rope design, taking her time to create something new on me. I think she takes quiet pleasure in it, like doing a crossword puzzle.

“I think this rope thing,” I’ll say, “is just your excuse to fondle my breasts.”

She’ll look at me bemused, replying, “Silly girl, I don’t need an excuse to do that.”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot.”

She’ll continue to wrap me in rope, experimenting with symmetrical and asymmetrical, and sometimes very random like some Shibari Jackson Pollock.

And I’ll be reminded of something I overheard Master McKenna saying to a colleague: “When you own a girl like that, there’s no end to the things you can do with her.”

D/s slavery without sex

One of my followers has posed an interesting question (I’m paraphrasing a little): Can you imagine yourself being so deeply submissive that you would be willing to endure (even crave) being diminished without being permitted to have sex ? Or is sex essential to the D/s experience as you know, experience, and love it?

A great question, and it reminds me of a little verbal game that Mistress Amanda plays with me.

Sometimes she and I toss hypothetical questions back and forth. She says, “What if I were to order you to…” and then fills in the blank with something, usually something extreme. I am required to answer truthfully. It’s our version of “Truth or Dare,” although for us there’s no dare there.

We talk about my answer and its implications. The real point is always how far does one’s submission go to obey and satisfy another’s dominance? (I think this is what you’re asking with your question.)

Of course, the classic hypothetical is something Amanda has never asked: “Would you jump off a tall building if I told you to?” “No,” I would reply, “and you wouldn’t ever ask me to.” We believe D/s to be life-expanding not life extinguishing.

Ours are more practical hypotheticals, mostly of the variety of how would I feel if she made me do this or that. I never quite know if these are truly hypothetical or plans in the making. She has an obsession with public parks. I always say, Yes, I would obey that,” usually adding, “but I have a question.”

“You want to know,” she assumes, “if it will land you in jail.”

“No,” I reply. “I want to know, when I land in jail, if you’ll have me wearing anything.”

My recent hypothetical to her was, “If you were to get another slave girl, what kind of submissive would you be looking for?” Admittedly I was probing her intentions, and it wasn’t reassuring when she has a ready answer and many minutes of commentary on the subject. When she finished, I replied, “I was hoping you’d just say you’d never thought about it.”

Amanda sometimes poses the question, “If I were to sell you to another dominant for his full-time ownership, would you go, obey, and submit?” That’s another blog post perhaps, but the point is that we entertain some rather serious hypotheticals in our friendly little game.

Which brings us back to your question. Yours is a hypothetical that Amanda could well pose in this way: “Shae, if I were to require you to never have sex again for the rest of your life, would you submit to that in obedient submission to me?”

My answer is more complex than you may imagine.

When I started in D/s eight years ago, I was not a very sexual person. I had come from a vanilla life that was only sporadically sexual. In my twenties, sex was not really important to me. I didn’t date much and had sex rarely.

I explored some things, such as going to a BDSM club which I wrote about here, but that was simply my effort to taste this mysterious part of me that was submissive — I really didn’t see it as about sex, per se. And I explored my bisexuality, notably in my brief relationship with Chandra, but that was more about my curiosity about lesbian romance than it was about any need for sex.

And when I entered into my first D/s relationship under Master Michael, I had no particular expectation of D/s being sexual. I recently posted this about being his slave back then: “I was just submissive to him, in any way he wished me to be. I think this is probably true for most D/s couples: there isn’t one slave type designated and enforced, the slavery has various facets and forms. Some D/s is not sexual at all. And, with Michael, sex was never the primary context for my slavery to him.”

So, part of my answer to your question is that there was a time when I was not so sexual as I am now, when sex was not my primary need or expectation in a D/s relationship.

Back then, if my first owner, Master Michael, had posed this hypothetical, it would have been easier for me to answer than it is now. He might have said, “I will take you on one condition, that you will never have sex with me or anyone else under my ownership.” Back then, I very well might have said yes.

The complication is that over the past four years I have been cultivated — conditioned — into a heightened sexuality.

I am made to live in perpetual sexualization. I am seen by others as a submissive whose purpose is to provide sexual pleasure. I am used for sex by increasing numbers of other people. I am kept in a kind of constant arousal. I am not permitted to wear a bra and panties, which is a deprivation that makes me deeply aware of my sexual possibility. I am not permitted to masturbate or otherwise touch even my breasts as self-pleasure. I am intentionally kept and cultivated as a profusely sexual woman, literally as a sex slave.

I don’t say that as a good or bad thing. It has been consensual, of course, but an outcome of my obedience. It doesn’t make me special or better. God knows, I often think the opposite, and it frequently shames me. Mostly it’s just simply the state of my current existence.

My point is, that given my deepened sexualization now, for me to suddenly be required to stop, to be deprived of sex, and to be forbidden any form of sex for time eternal… well, that would be extreme and difficult… even cruel. It would be a kind of “lifestyle whiplash.”

It’s a little like an addiction to something you have to be weaned off of. Perhaps if that were done, if I were re-cultivated into being a service slave rather than a sex slave, if we could turn back time, then your hypothetical would be easier for me to imagine…

One other complication in answering your question is that I believe my submissive nature to be a form of my sexual orientation. My (bi)sexuality is submissive in some way.

Vice-versa, my submissiveness is sexual in its very nature. You cannot separate them completely. This is actually some of the reasoning behind my being designated and cultivated as a sex slave. In that identity both my submissive nature and my sexual orientation come together.

I insert that here as another thought in this conversation but I won’t go into it now. I’m not sure how much I have to say about it — it remains mostly a mystery even to me.

I must point out that, even though I now live in a sex-rich life, sexual deprivation is sometimes used on me in temporary applications.

Master McKenna is famous for delaying his sexual use of me for several days — I think in doing so, he’s demonstrating his control of me. Mistress Amanda sometimes just decides that I should be sexless for a stretch of days or weeks — usually keeping me “pent up and perky” for a future occasion. This isn’t used as punishment, or hasn’t been yet, but is simply made a part of my submission and obedience.

Your question includes an interesting clause asking if I might even crave being sexually deprived. And yes, I have to say there is something submissively satisfying in these temporary deprivations. Obedience to what I cannot have is very powerful.

But these are short-term, practical, and strategic deprivations. I read your question instead as a kind of “forever” hypothetical, an ultimate measure of whether my submissive need or my sexual need is primary.

In my current moment, truth or dare, I have to admit my body answers that on the sexual side of things. My body knows the depths of my sexual desire that my mind is not always willing to acknowledge.

But my mind answers this way: ultimately I am submissive first and foremost. I was aware of my submissiveness as a girl even before I became sexually aware. I have lived more of my adult life as a woman without (much) sex. I was in the D/s life for some years before sex became so much a part of everything. It’s only in recent years that I have been so intensely sexualized. And I’m well aware that later in life sex may become less important — and/or that I may be less desired at an older age. This current hyper-sexual phase may be short-lived in the span of a lifetime. And what do I have then?

Well, it will then be my submissive nature and need that gives me purpose and pleasure.

So, if someday Amanda poses to me your hypothetical, “If I were to require you to never have sex again for the rest of your life, would you still submit and live in slavery to me?” my answer would have been cooked in all the ingredients of this post, all these thoughts and considerations baked in.

If she somehow made this a real thing, a real order-request, it would be with great agony that I would reluctantly say yes, accompanied by tears over the sense of loss of what I no longer would have.

Such a great question. Thanks.

Stacy visit

Stacy stopped by last night.

I was in the living room reading. Amanda answered the door. I heard Stacy’s voice. “I can’t stay long,” I heard her say to Amanda, “but I wanted to stop in, say hi.”

I sat up in my chair.

Still in the entryway with Amanda, she asked, “So how’s my girlfriend Shae?”

Which warmed my heart, of course.

“Come see for yourself,” Amanda replied. “She’ll be very glad to see you.”

Entering the living room, Stacy was all briskly executive and impressively professional, as she is and as Amanda can be, but as she reached for me I felt her softness, familiar now from our night together. She put her arms around my waist, drew me in, and kissed me. “Have you been a good girl since I last saw you?”

“Not at all,” I replied.

Stacy laughed.

She held my hand as Amanda led us out to the patio, but Stacy indeed couldn’t stay and we all remained standing. She explained she would had stopped by sooner but had been traveling for work and just had gotten back at the end of a long week.

There was nothing more of note to report, except that Stacy put her arm around my waist as she talked some business with Amanda. Then Stacy left.

I do not know if Stacy had read my recent “redux” post about her, and stopped by in some sort of confirmation of my feelings expressed there. It doesn’t matter — her visit was clearly for the sole purpose of seeing me, however briefly, and that made me feel that what we shared together actually meant something to her.

Again, I have no expectation there will be more between us as time goes by, and it isn’t supposed to, I know. But for one moment in her busy schedule I was given a place in a corner of her life.