Category: sex

whispers to Maria 1: finding the submissive within

In a short while I’ll be returning to Master McKenna for a long service time with him. It seems Maria is following the plan we came to a few weeks ago and will be starting back with him right around my first day with him. (I don’t have any sense of Maria’s ongoing issues with her mother, but hopefully she has been able to put those in order. We’ll see.)

I’ve had conversations and email exchanges with Maria over the past year about her submissive journey. I’ve also been working on a “curriculum” of sorts for Master McKenna and the school for submissives he has in mind.

This may be the first of a series of posts I write from the mansion over the next month.

I’ve always known that much of one’s submissive self-discovery doesn’t neatly fit into “if-this-then.” You may be docile in personality, or enjoy serving at social functions, or be an introvert at parties — but none of that necessarily means you are submissive. Likewise, you may be opinionated or outspoken or sassy (like me) — and that doesn’t mean you aren’t submissive. Submissiveness is something deeper and more elusive.

I have told Maria that it’s not as if she can say, if she is like this (fill in the blank), then she is submissive. “Finding the submissive within” doesn’t lend itself to multiple choice in curriculum plans.

I think submissiveness is a kind of attraction to being under the influence of power and being put into a controlled space.

Let me suss that out.

By “attraction,” I don’t mean sexual attraction, though it may include that sometimes. That is, the sexual may be a strong component of attraction (as it is for me) — or not at all part of the equation. Instead, I think instead of attraction as magnetism — the drawing toward something or someone who has a “pull” of dominance.

“Being under the influence of power” is perhaps the most mysterious part of my definition. Submissives desire to be “under” and “consumed by” and “overwhelmed by” the power we are magnetically drawn to. Why, I don’t know. But it’s a feeling of “immersion under power” that submissiveness seems to be about.

When I say “being put in a controlled space,” don’t think of that as a physical space, though the physical can be the symbol or real-life emblem of what this is. (Shea = Cage, just sayin’.) A “controlled space” is more about the relational control of a dominant over a submissive, a special sub-space, a psychological confinement and control. We submissives desire that virtual sense of being contained.

As I’ve told Maria, if she is truly submissive, it isn’t because she feels natural in performing a job of servanthood, doing laundry and folding sheets. It isn’t because she has a quiet, soft-spoken demeanor. And it isn’t because she might on occasion be drawn into the idea of being tied down during sex.

It is because she has inner instincts that draw her to dominant power and being “under.”

I guess my point is that true submissiveness (and dominance) are more complex than the trappings we attach to them and the stereotypes we assign to them.

But if you are truly submissive, you kind of know. You have glimmers of this from your past experience.

For me growing up, it was roleplay with friends in which I always yearned to be the captured damsel. It was the strange but wonderful feeling I got riding my uncle’s combine on the farm. In my teens it was in relationships where I found myself drawn into dominance of others. I experienced it in the presence of horses. In my twenties was when my sense of this actually had a category — “submissiveness as a sexual orientation” — and I understood more of a power dynamic in my relationships, notably in my affair with Chandra.

For Maria, of course, it’s a different set of glimmers and glimpses. These are different for everyone, of course, and many are not events but vague feelings that feel strange but wonderful, relationships that are confounding, emotions which defy explanation.

I’ve encouraged Maria to write these memories down and keep them. There are times in the slave life when you come to the end of yourself and ask, “Why am I doing this again?” It’s then you pull out this reflection and remind yourself of the numinous quality of submissiveness that’s always been within you. This is why.

Another series of conversations I’ve had with Maria has had to do with the form and arrangement of the submissive life she is seeking. In her case, she has had an unusual “front-row seat” in the mansion, around the presence of Master McKenna and his dominance of me.

I have counseled her not to become too enamored of what she’s witnessed. She sees me topless at the copier, on my knees in the Great Room, serving bourbon on a tray while wearing frightfully short skirt, and it all takes her breath away because it suggests the overwhelming power of his dominance and my submissive pleasure in being “confined” by him. She wants that too.

But her employment in the mansion is a day job, and she doesn’t know what it’s like to live in it 24/7. I’ve told her that it sometimes is a challenge waking up into it, opening your eyes in the morning knowing you are a slave and have a slave day ahead. Twenty-four hours is a lot of time to fill, and managing your psyche as a full-time slave is a challenge (and a later unit of the curriculum).

I’m really trying to help Maria think of this two-month trial period more as a time for her to find herself than as an audition for Master McKenna.

I’ve advised her there are other options: part-time arrangements, casual relationships that become defined in terms of dom-sub, session-oriented BDSM. Non-Master McKenna options.

In a way, there are two choices one makes, I’ve said to her: “Do I want to pursue the regular experience of my submissiveness?” and “Do I want to live in it full-time, 24/7?” They both are giant leaps for someone; but the second is maybe the greatest jump off the cliff. Living in slavery 24/7, I’ve said to her, isn’t for the faint of heart.

I’ve shared with her my own story of being in a romantic relationship with a dominant man. I wanted to live with him full-time as his submissive. He rejected that, saying my underlying commitment was to be his wife/partner and not to the life of submission. He knew me well and was right. I was co-mingling romance and D/s and actually wasn’t ready for such a big and utter commitment to a life of slavery. He and I separated, I did a lot of soul-searching, and ultimately came to the decision I needed to serve the submissive within me and commit to it full-time — whomever that might be with. A year later, by chance, this man and I reconnected. That was Master Michael.

I am realizing my role with Maria is not as a teacher but as a kind of background coach. I am the “submissive whisperer” speaking into her ear. I suspect this will be the role I have with others if the school for submissives ever sees th light of day.

Again, the point is that I cannot teach there’s one right way of doing this. There are many ways. What is right for one is not right for another. There’s no curriculum structure that can serve all the variations of submissiveness that people have.

Instead, I have to be the whisperer for each one, speaking into each one’s uniqueness.

Ultimately, the question is “What is the life I seek?”

The reason we entertain this conversation at all is because submissiveness is a real thing within us that, if left unattended, will result in a life of vague unfulfillment. Without it, we will find ourselves in lives that are emptier than we imagined and relationships that are somehow unsatisfying.

True submissiveness is part of our being, not just a momentary rush or fling. We purse “finding the submissive within” because it leads to a kind of self-awareness of who we are and a life that more deeply fulfills us.

Again, that may not be a full-time, 24/7, live-in life of slavery. But it may be a life pursued just as other’s live, say, a life of frequent community service, or a life of faith, or a life of sport, or a life of artistic expression. Being submissive — however we make arrangements for that — is our identity, and we are more fulfilled as persons when we allow that to breathe.

These are some of the things I’ve whispered to Maria.

notification

This afternoon Blake had an appointment with me, and I serviced him on my knees. It seems too coincidental that this so soon follows my Friday night punishment, but it was scheduled some time ago.

Mistress was not present, had work to do in her home office.

Blake said, as I walked him into the living room, that “he and his friends had a good time Friday night.” He said it with a slight smile.

“I’m sure you all did,” I replied. That was the only mention.

Mark this as my official notification of said service performed, Mistress Amanda. Your slave girl learned her lesson.

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.

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.

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.

diminishment and value

Sometimes I find myself in a convergence of different thoughts from various people, thoughts that prompt a post. So it has been these last few days. Lately it’s been about self-worth and the submissive life of degradation.

D/s is a radical social construct. It redefines the nature of relationship. Traditional culture sees relationship as a mutual, equal connection. D/s puts relationship into a unequal hierarchy of control and relinquishment.

To put it in simple terms, D/s is a lifestyle in which some people like being dominant and some like being submissive, and together they’ve agreed to live this way, a way of intentional inequality.

That intentional inequality needs to be created, imposed, enforced. Turns out it’s hard to make a person less equal — human worth is baked into us. D/s is a relationship goes to unusual measures to effect inequality by practicing forms of diminishment, the active devaluing of one by another.

This is done to me, as readers well know, in various ways.

I wear a collar, often an industrial metal collar with O-rings that cannot ever be imagined to be a fashion statement. My collar sets me apart at a lower status, diminishing me in the sight of others as one who is kept and owned, as property. (I was once taken to a pet store by my Master, fitted in the aisle with a dog collar, which he then bought, having me wear it as we walked out of the store. This was a diminishment of me publicly, a suggestion that I live in some way at the level of a dog, perhaps connoting to some that I am a bitch, kept.)

Each morning, I stand with a tray of coffee for Mistress at 7:15 a.m. This diminishes me to a level of utility. I am useful for a service I provide. My diminishment is deepened when Mistress emerges from her bedroom a half hour later, and I am still standing there silently bearing her tray of coffee, and she breezes past me, saying, “Don’t need coffee this morning,” and walks on into her home office for the day. In any traditional relationship this would be an inconsiderate snub because of the assumption of equality. In D/s, she and I both know it’s part of the life, that we are unequal, and this emphasizes my lower status as a useful object, like a tray or a coffeemaker. In a way, her “snub” is a gift to me, as it diminishes me in a way that, as a submissive, I need.

As everyone knows, I am not permitted to dress myself. Some think this reduces me to the level of a child, but it’s not that at all. My diminishment is quite the contrary, coming from the obvious fact that I’m a thirty-something woman who must bear the image her Mistress desires each day. I am not what I want to look like but what she prefers me to look like. Thankfully Mistress does not put me in clown suits. However, she often makes me topless, which is her preference for observing me and a diminishment of me to the level of sexual object.

I also experience verbal diminishment. This is most effective because words are so important to me. Mistress calls me “slave girl” often and also “slut.” Master McKenna calls me “fuck toy.” Such terms and names are most diminishing when I know they are true of me. (Those are.) Also they are more diminishing when they are used more casually, normally, not in a tirade of name-calling, but in the course of normal life. Master McKenna often says to me first thing each day, “How’s my fuck toy this morning?” which is all the more blush-worthy because that’s how he used me during the night. And such terms are diminishing in a different way when others outside my immediate world use them of me. Recently, Mistress was thrilled when follower Mtoussieh called me “neighborhood slut” in a blog comment.

I don’t wish to get into the psychology of submissiveness here. I don’t myself understand exactly why I give myself to being diminished and degraded in all these ways, and others. I know it’s too simple to say I like it, for I often resist it and deeply feel the humiliation of it. Yet I do want it, and somehow find my true identity in it, some confirmation of what I am and am meant to be. And there is something to be said for my going through it, enduring it, like a race run and won.

I don’t understand why. But my point in writing about this has to do with my sense of worth and value in the face of my daily degradation.

It’s not accurate to say that these acts of my diminishment are games that my dominants play with me. This is not “wink-wink, let’s play roles and I’ll call you names.” My degradations are real — my collar is public, my services are actually performed, my boobs are truly on display, and I am called “fuck toy” for a reason rooted in reality. My degradation is a real experience for me, applied to my life with serious intention by my dominant-owners.

After enduring these things, I do not walk away thinking my degradation is just pretend. So the challenge is maintaining some sense of worth when I am rendered worthless.

How does one do that?

Well, first off, I really don’t know.

It’s not that I have some self-help system for maintaining dignity. I think I have by nature a pretty healthy self-regard, and maybe that’s part of the answer — one just has to have an inner strength about themselves to do the submissive lifestyle. I’m tempted to say that you “have to be strong woman to be a weak submissive,” which is wrongly worded in several ways but kind of makes the point. To endure true degradation, you have to have some sort of inner resilience and self-confidence.

It should be said that this is also what dominants want and need in a submissive. They actually don’t find pleasure in utterly crushing a submissive’s psyche permanently. They do enjoy pushing her to her limits, challenging her self-assumptions, imposing upon her challenges and endurances.

But they need her to be able to bounce back for more the next day.

I think another way of looking at the submissive life of diminishment is as a kind of therapy. It’s at least an interesting analogy.

I go to see a therapist, lifestyle-friendly, on a regular basis. Jillian leads me to explore parts of myself, my childhood, my sexual experience, my religious upbringing, my fears and worries. In some ways, this is a process of deconstruction, of forcing me to confront certain demons and to admit to myself aspects of me that I don’t like. But ultimately, therapy strips you down only to build you back up, stronger from the process.

I think of the submissive life this way. As I submit to degradations, I confront parts of myself I don’t want to admit to. For example, I am a far more sexual woman than I ever imagined myself to be before I entered the lifestyle. Even now, I don’t want to accept the degree of this, my capacity for pure sexual lust, my inveterate wantonness. (Even writing those words here is a struggle of admission.) But my life of objectification and sexualization pushes my face into the truth of that about myself. I endure the humiliation but come out of it the other side a stronger woman and a stronger submissive than before.

Of course, when I’m made topless by Mistress and we have an unexpected visitor to the house, I’m not thinking “This is good therapy.” 😉 But I do feel there’s something to be said for the analogy.

Ironically, I find my worth also in the very experience of being degraded. The fact is, not many women can do this.

Submitting to a dominant’s control, living a life of relinquishment of rights, and enduring multiple degradations, makes me unique and valuable — even in my disgrace. I often get to some point of immersion in the life and have to ask myself “Who does this?” meaning that no one in their right mind would sacrifice themselves to this treatment. Yet I do, and in that very thing, in my will to endure degradation, I am precious.

This is not about me boasting, patting myself on the back. It’s meant as an affirmation of many submissive persons who read my blog and share in this same lifestyle, or variations of it.

I read about — a true story — a man who was browsing a second-hand shop somewhere in Georgia. This was 1970. (I think I read this in the Atlantic magazine.) He ran across some old photographs, not worth much — faded and scratched and dusty. He bought one for fifty cents. Later the photo was identified as an early daguerreotype from 1843 of President John Quincy Adams, one of the earliest presidential photographs ever taken. It now is displayed in the Smithsonian.

We are all in some way faded and scratched and dusty. I find the submissive life, a life of diminishment, to be a way of finding my lost self in a second-hand life. In my lowly state, I am authenticated.

True submissives who can handle the life of diminishment are rare treasures indeed.

Robert and Stacy redux

I have continued to have fond thoughts of Stacy in these days after. I’m well aware it’s as much about the circumstance as the relationship, but I do find myself thinking of her, being with her, and smiling at the memory.

By “circumstance,” I mean these persistent memories are in part about the arrangement of my being shared. For all my fret and fuss ahead of time, I found I rather liked the sharing experience. There was something nice about being bedded without ropes and chains and having the ability to love freely. Not that it would lure me away from my life of submissive sex, but it was sweetly memorable in the difference.

By “relationship,” I do not mean I presume an ongoing closeness with Stacy, or expect more from her with me. Part of the pleasure of the “gifting experience” is that intimacy is a one-time proposition between strangers, and that assumes the ability to walk away without further expectation. I know this. I have no intention of clinging to what cannot be there. But I’m simply expressing that the recollections of my intimacy with Stacy still tingle.

As promiscuous as I am in my life (or made to be), I feel these after-longings often. My situations are mostly with dominants, a different vibe, but I still walk away from their hard fuckings of me with a soft desire for the person. My ongoing desire is not to be “their one and only,” but merely to have a place in the corner of their mind space for what I am. I don’t need my dom to say he loves me, just to say I belong somewhere. Which sounds sad in a way, but it’s not. I’m happy just being someone’s concubine.

Perhaps that’s what’s going on now in me regarding Stacy. I don’t expect there will be anything more. That was never the arrangement. And that’s fine. But that doesn’t mean I’ve walked away without continuing to feel something for her.

It has struck me that Stacy and I came to each other with two different purposes. Hers was to have a full lesbian experience. Mine was to be shared in a vanilla sexual experience.

Each of our purposes allowed the other’s purpose to be explored.

I think this was a serendipitous alignment, never intended and probably impossible to coordinate ahead of time. But there it was, each of us being something the other wanted. It was like the stereotypical scene of a couple eating a bite from the other’s plate, arms extended with forks feeding the other their own culinary delight. I think this made the night more fulfilling in some way I didn’t realize until after.

It was for each of us a “first time.” Stacy had not been with a woman, not fully, ever before. I had not been “shared vanilla” ever before. One could quibble about that, citing certain experiences I’ve had and written about, but in those I am more clearly submissive, provided to them as a sex slave for their sexual needs. This with Stacy was a vanilla, mutual, sexual relationship for us both.

I’m not sure what more to make of all this. Maybe nothing. If and when I am shared with other neighbors, I don’t expect we will have merging interests quite like that. And now I’ve already had the “shared vanilla” experience, so am no longer a virgin in it.

But that’s okay. In future arrangements there will be, I expect, other points of intersection. And I am realizing that part of the pleasure is thrill of allowing strangers into our private places — which is unique with each new situation.

Amanda is bemused by my little infatuation with Stacy. I wish actually she were more jealous, but she’s almost maddeningly not. She arranged this and seems smugly pleased it worked out so well. Like she’s saying, “I knew you would feel like this.”

I am perfectly content living perpetually in a closed room just with Amanda, but, you see, she just has to open all these doors. I reluctantly walk through a door and suddenly get all omg about what’s on the other side. She knew all along my capacity for more and that the wonder existing on the other side would enthrall me.

Now she teases me about my lingering feelings for Stacy. “Maybe you could apply for a job at her company and become her assistant,” she said, trying to sound serious. “Then you could see the love of your life every day.”

I threw a pillow at her.

There was a moment in my night with Stacy when I cried. Tears of happy, of course, but not what you’d think.

I have wondered if in my experience of lesbian sex there is something about my knowing, as a woman, what she is feeling, as a woman. I knew exactly what Stacy was experiencing. It was as if I felt my pleasure — and also a portion of hers. That becomes almost too much, an overflow, a surfeit of sensation that sometimes comes, and comes to tears of some kind of ecstacy.

Maybe it was that, I don’t know, which becomes unexpectedly a deeper bonding. And makes it take longer to fade.

a day in my life

I have covered most of this in other posts, but there are new readers and followers, and some things have changed. Since I’ve been back with her, post-Pennsylvania, Mistress Amanda has settled me into most of our former routines but a few new ones as well, most all of them sexualized.

So here, once again, is a day in my life…

She dresses me every day, like before, which is to say that at night she lays out my outfit for the next day, placing it on the bed bench outside my bedroom.

For those new to my life, I am forbidden to wear slacks or jeans, only skirts. And Mistress has now become more fond of skater skirts on me (which happens also to be Master McKenna’s preference). A skater skirt is suitable for home and shopping, yet practical as submissive attire: short and usually pleated, it flares out from my body, making me more accessible to dominant hands.

Regular readers know I also am forbidden to wear a bra and panties. This I have never gotten used to, and being panty-less still makes me feel vulnerable wearing short skirts in public places.

A new wrinkle is that Mistress Amanda has less often rendered me fully topless around the house, which used to be the almost everyday practice. Now, she has me in button-down tops and blouses that she can open up in front, adjusting my décolletage to expose my breasts to varying degrees. Not that she has to have a reason for this, but she does have one: neighbors are stopping in to visit more often these days. “It’s not,” Mistress says, “to keep them from seeing your boobs but that you are potentially a gift to them at some point. I want them to have some surprise when they unwrap you.”

That logic, apparently, doesn’t keep her from walking me outside au naturele within sight of neighbor houses. Or displaying me in the bay window. Dominants, it seems, are not subject to the laws of logic.

We have had two rituals. Now, one she’s maintained, the other she’s changed.

I still bear coffee on a tray in the mornings, standing and waiting for her to emerge from her bedroom. She often drinks her coffee standing as I hold the tray, and she talks to me about the day ahead, for both me and her. This has been a ritual since my early days serving both Amanda and Kevin in the same house.

The other ritual, the one that’s changed, is my serving wine to her in the early evening. I’ll share about that in a moment.

In the past, I’ve had two weekly chores, but she’s added one since I’ve been back.

I have always done laundry, hers and mine, on Thursdays. I also do our linens and towels. This takes me through the morning into early afternoon.

My other regular chore is scrubbing the kitchen floor. You might read more about it here. I usually do this on Fridays. This is a hands-and-knees job involving suds and dirty water and my getting slick and sodden. I use tiny brushes to clean the crevices around tiles. I have become a bit obsessive about it, as if “my” kitchen floor is a little piece of my life I can control. Scrubbing the floor is also a spectacle of prurient interest, as Mistress often leaves her office study to watch me.

The new chore added to my weekly routine is dusting on Monday mornings. Mistress has a cleaning service that comes once a month, but dusting is not their strong suit. It doesn’t need to be done every week, but that’s sort of the point — making her slave perform unnecessary tasks, especially on a ladder in a short skirt. Apparently, Mistress has suddenly developed a strong distaste for dusty ceilings.

As I’ve reported in this space, I am now spending time on a ranch nearby learning the care and feeding of horses. Mistress Amanda has been gracious to allow me to do that, actually quite glad I am doing so. That has worked out to be on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings.

So every weekday morning is consumed with either chores and horses.

My afternoons are usually my time for writing and reading. I usually have about three or four hours to do what I want, and mostly that’s writing.

I don’t mean to suggest it’s “free time,” for a slave girl is never free, and other things come up for the doing. As I hold the coffee tray in the morning, Mistress sometimes says, “I’m gonna need you to…” and then finishes with some clerical task she needs me to do for her work. She used to employ me part time for this, but ended that for payroll and tax reasons; yet she has continued using me for ad hoc work needs here and there.

In this clerical work and in my chores, I am sexualized, dressed in some form of exposed fashion. I don’t “mind” this, as it’s my submissive place to be made this way, but as in most things, I never really get used to it. I know it’s her purpose to keep me always aware of being objectified in sexual ways.

As for the work, I don’t mind the chores, as I am happier when I’m kept busy. I’m still not sure about this dusting thing, though — it bores me.

Each day, Mistress enjoys a “happy hour,” a glass of wine. This has become a ritual for us, my serving us both glasses of wine on a tray — “bearing a tray” bookending the beginning of our work day when I serve coffee on a tray at 7:15 a.m. and the end of the day at happy hour.

The actual time for this happy hour is variable, depending on Mistress’s work schedule. She tells me when she’ll be ready for it — as early as 4:30 but often as late as 6:00.

The new wrinkle is that she has revamped this ritual to have happy hour with me “installed” at the wet bar. For those new to my blog, this post will describe it best.

At the designated time, Mistress leaves her home office and finds me already naked and bent over the wet bar in the accustomed position, my legs spread, my arms extended across the bartop, and my breasts hanging off the bartender side. I will have previously poured her a glass of white wine that sits in front of a bar stool to my side. And I will have placed, at her direction, a flogger beside her wine glass.

She locks my ankles and wrists into the eyebolts of the wet bar. And then she sits on the stool, sips her wine, and talks to me, unwinding from her day.

After a while, she stands, picks up the flogger, and applies it to my naked ass cheeks. And that’s an experience to share in another blog post.

But this is a whole new thing.

At first with this revised end-of-day ritual, I thought I would miss our times talking together on the couch. Before, our happy hour found its way onto the couch with wine and nosh plates, a time for casual conversations. This new ritual of me installed into the wet bar, seemed to get substituted for that.

But Mistress actually didn’t replace that, just moved it farther into our evening. After “attending” to me at the wet bar, Mistress unhooks me, and we both change into casual clothes. We collect what we want to eat from the kitchen and find our way to the couch. Our casual conversation is still there, the only difference is now that my sorry ass is more tender to sit on.

Some have asked about our meals together. Since neither of us cooks, we rarely sit down to a table for a formal meal. We tend to nosh, pulling things out of the fridge on small plates. We do eat together, but often casually on the patio or on the couch in the living room.

In the evenings, we sometimes read on the couch or patio (I read books, she reads magazines), or stream something on TV.

One new thing is daily walking. Mistress has always taken me out on walks, but now it’s every day. She says we need to get more exercise. I asked her if she thought I was getting flabby. “No,” she simply said, “me, not you.” (I hadn’t noticed.) Usually this is her walking me on a leash around the neighborhood. Sometimes it’s a walk up on the ridge, as I just wrote about. How I am dressed (or if), is always an adventure.

At some point in the evening she will say something like, “I think I will have you tonight,” by which she means have me sexually. Other times she may say, “I don’t want you tonight,” which I am not to take as a rejection but as a simple statement of her desire to be alone. Sometimes, she’ll say, “I want just a little taste tonight,” by which she means she’ll enjoy me for a short while, after which I am to return to my own bed. But I am always available to her as she wishes.

It isn’t always so formal, of course, and sometimes we are just girlfriend lovers. I’ve written about that here.

On average, in one mode or other, she has sex with me three or four times a week.

What I’ve written about here is our weekday routine. Our weekends are quite different — difficult to write about because they are so random and varied. There really is no routine on weekends.

Weekends, she and I tend to live in a more casual protocol, so to speak. We’ll go shopping together, see a movie, go into the city, hang out at a park, attend a neighborhood barbecue. It’s more girlfriend-ish.

But in certain things on weekends, we still live in D/s mode with each other. Mistress has me draw her a bath Sunday mornings. I guess that’s become a ritual too. I wrote about it here and here. It’s a very special time, I have to say.

Saturdays are when we do grocery shopping, and somehow she always seems to slip into her “Evil Mistress” mode at King Soopers. She finds all kinds of ways to embarrass me there. I’m always blush-faced by something she shouts across the produce aisles while holding up a cucumber.

Despite that (or because of it), it’s so good to be back in my life with her…