Why we submit—EXPLORATIONS files

I'm re-running the stories that serve as deep background for EXPLORATIONS. The story continues from this post.

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I've always intended that this blog should be a place not just to talk about the "realities" behind the stories of EXPLORATIONS, but also about the--let's call them--"actualities" behind those "realities." There are questions that press themselves upon me every time I sit down to write, and every time I give in to temptation, in the face of a picture, or a story, and let my fingers find their way down past the waistband of my panties to the place that always seems to be waiting for them.

Why am I--the actual I--aroused by nothing as much as I'm aroused by the drama of Dominance and submission? Why do I want to be spanked, caned, whipped, anally-ravished?

Or, if the "Why?" has no answer other than "because I was born this way," then the "How?" of "How can I best live a good life given that I'm born this way?"

Given that I'm born this way.

Add to that given some other givens, and things begin to take their complicated shape:

Given that sex feels good.

Given that real life isn't like Story of O. Or a porn video.

Given that hurting other people, in real life, is bad.

Given that getting off while thinking about someone being hurt, including yourself, seems to contradict the principle that hurting people is bad, since (doesn't it seem?) what is a fantasy except a wish for something to happen in the real world?

It's likely that there's another, actual, "I" behind this italicized "real" I. It's likely that that I is much less free than "I" am to express herself erotically. If so, the question presses itself upon that "Emily" even more urgently than it does upon me; after all, I have Charles to play with--this other, hypothetically-actual "Emily" has only her fingers and whatever toys and erotic materials she can hide from her vanilla spouse to supplement her imagination and her keyboard.

EXPLORATIONS is her answer, at least for now, and this is perhaps a good moment to talk about why, and in particular to talk about why inscribing an eighteen-year-old version of herself seems to hold out some hope of making progress towards a good life.

Fantasies do seem like wishes. If the scene in our head is so hot that we can't resist abusing ourselves, in the delicious old phrase, aren't we saying that we want to play that scene in reality? Certainly I would never deny that if there were a way to play out the things in my head in a safe, sane, and consensual fashion I would jump at the chance to do so.

But here's the thing: it would still be fantasy, because it would be a scene, played safely, sanely, and consensually. If, for example, I imagine that the cop who pulled me over for speeding yesterday, on hearing that my husband would be very angry at me, had given me the option of a "State Police Session," in a secret room at headquarters; if I imagine that I had followed him to headquarters, dutifully, and in that secret room received a caning; if I imagine that I had then sucked the cocks of the on-duty officers, and had afterward been secured over the special "State Police Horse" (why else would they wear those damn riding-breech-type pants?) to have my ass ravished by any officer who cared to use me, I might want to play it as a scene with Charles (okay, maybe even with Charles and say one or two of his friends whom I trust), but I'm most assuredly not interested in being fucked by the State Police in real life.

Fantasies are not wishes, and, much as I love Disney culture (talk about crypto-BDSM!), a dream is not a wish your heart makes when it's fast asleep.

My best guess at this point is that the way to get better at answering that "How?" question is to keep exploring my fantasies, learning more and more about how they might relate to reality, without being reality. Why do I get so nervous when I'm pulled over? Because I have a thing about state authority that comes from fantasy. If I realize that, maybe I can act more naturally--that's the plan, anyway.

So why the 18-year-old fantasy-Emily avatar? Really, it's just as much about actual me, with the dilemmas of a vanilla life to worry about, as it is about "real" italic me, because it was the creation of fantasy-Emily that allowed me to create real-Emily. Real-Emily came about as a result of trying to think through the stuff that was pouring through my keyboard onto my screen about fantasy-Emily. You can kind of tell that from the way EXPLORATIONS develops, where real-Emily's voice gets progressively stronger.

Fantasy-Emily was, you see, undergoing shocking things on her wedding-night. Even after I'd given her an extremely wanton nature, what was getting me off in writing the story of her submissive wedding-night was fantasy-Charles bending her to his will, dominating her, using her. How could that possibly be reconciled with my egalitarian ethics? What if it were a human rights lawyer who were writing it?

The creation of this voice--the italicized human-rights lawyer voice of real-Emily, and along with it the creation of real-Emily's marriage to real-Charles, is what made me feel I had, let's say, a ship to go exploring in. I'd hesitate to call this voice redemptive, but certainly my mission for real-Emily is a sort of redemption, to proceed, I hope, from my longed-for actual reconciliation of my erotic nature and my ethical one.

"Real" erotica—EXPLORATIONS files

I'm re-running the stories that serve as deep background for EXPLORATIONS. The story continues from this post.

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How it "really" happened was like this.

EMILY: Ugh. These whitepapers are just killing me. I may be losing my love of writing.

CHARLES: Hmm. Sounds like you need to do some fun writing, for variety.

EMILY: (gets a notion and arches her eyebrow) Like what?

CHARLES: (catching on, up for it) Like the salacious story you should have written for me a long time ago.

EMILY: I'm sorry, Sir, I don't know what story you mean.

CHARLES: My goodness, Emily. Surely it should go without saying that you are to devote your skills to my needs. You write very well, and I like to read salacious stories. So write one for me, right now, or prepare yourself for a spanking.

EMILY: What sort of salacious story did you have in mind, Sir?

CHARLES: Didn't Réage claim she knew what kind that dude liked?

EMILY: Hmm. That's right. He was into Sade, though, and you. . .

CHARLES: . . . are into Réage. Do you really think you could go wrong, as long as somebody's getting fucked in the ass? You've met me, right? I suggest you just get started, and make sure there's a feminine bottom involved.

And so I did: the very first version of Emily's Submissive Wedding Night.

"That's ah, very interesting," said Charles, reading it for the first time. "How you've, um, made yourself an 18-year-old virgin, I mean."

"I need to be of legal age, don't I?"

"That's not what I meant. . . I mean, I wouldn't think you'd be younger. . ."

"Well, when we ageplay, you know how you sometimes like me to be very young. . ."

"Let's keep this legal, shall we?"

"But if the reader knows I'm really 25, and I imagine myself as, you know, very young. . . is someone very young being depicted, or not?"

"These days, even the words 'very young' could get us into trouble. Let's make it clear that we mean 'early in the morning on her 18th birthday'."

"OK," I agreed. "So I'm a virgin, and I just turned 18 that morning. . ."

"Yes," he replied. "That's good. And this fantasy version of me. . ."

"He's very dominant," I murmured. "Very. And he's going to deflower me, because it's my wedding-night, and brides get deflowered on their wedding-nights, whether they like it or not."

He was standing next to my desk-chair, with his right hand on my right shoulder, playing gently with my hair, which was loose, down my shoulders (auburn, remember?). I put my left arm around his waist (well, his backside, actually), and turned my face to the left, into his crotch, and nuzzled a bit, making him say "Hey!" (in a good way).

"You wish you'd deflowered me up front," I murmured, nuzzling more.

"Um, hmm," he replied, growing in his boxers under my nuzzling mouth. I turned my chair and turned him, and stripped his boxers down.

"I wish it too," I said, and nuzzled even more, breathing in the oh-so-naughty scent of his crotch, kissing his scrotum very, very gently.

"So. . . so this is. . ."

"Mmm-hmm."

"A way to. . . oh, God, Emily, you're so good at that. . ."

"Does Master like the story?"

"I think. . . the, uh, punctuations may. . . uh. . ."

"Really. The 'punctuations'."

"They. . . uh. . . please do that again. . ."

"No. Tell me about the punctuations."

"I'm not kidding, Emily--do that again or get a spanking."

"Not until you tell me about punctuations."

"That's it, you impertinent girl--go get your paddle."

"Yes, Sir."

It was pretty standard fare from there, if I recall correctly: me over my sweetie's lap, paddle-spanks ("How's THIS for punctuation, Miss Pert? You! Are! Very! Naughty!") and teasing caresses. Then, the sex, in the only position in which I really feel submissive, my face to the mattress, my red, paddled ass to my master, used for his pleasure.

Sentenced to erotica—EXPLORATIONS files

I'm re-running the stories that serve as deep background for EXPLORATIONS. The story continues from this post.

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I'm just going to let fantasy-Emily pick this right back up.

After Charles had had my bottom in the disciplinary style he always used when he took it after a whipping, bestriding me and from time to time putting his hand on the back of my head to remind me I was being mastered, he took me in his arms at last and stroked my punished cheeks tenderly to let me know my session was over.

"Now, sweetheart, what did you want to tell me?"

I answered, timidly, "Sir, I think if I'm ever going to be a good girl, I need to understand my wantonness."

"That's right, darling. That's why I have you in training."

"Oh, yes--and I'm so grateful, even when it's hard, like tonight, and you have to punish me so severely. But I had an idea about a way to complement that training with another. . . training activity."

"Oh? What would that be? You know I'm always willing to listen to your ideas."

(Oh my God: the sheer delicious condescension in that. This is the kind of moment when I toy with the image of what my life would be like if real-Charles were like fantasy-Charles. And then I realize: unlivable. Fantasy-Charles would beat me for trying to top from the bottom, and not in a good way. I'd divorce him before the week was out.)

(It's also worth mentioning how fantasy-Charles has changed over the course of the writing of EXPLORATIONS. There was a phase when he was much more open to direction from fantasy-Emily than he is now. We'll just say that that's because he's gained confidence that fantasy-Emily really does need to submit, and that he's the man to conquer her, every day and every night.)

"Well, you know I like to write."

"Yes, dear, I do."

"What if part of my training were writing. . . things for you--about me and my. . . needs." I realized I was starting to get warm.

"What kinds of needs, Emily?"

"You know. . . what my. . . body needs, and the way I found the thong, and I watched those terrible videos and read those terrible books." Warm, and wet.

"So that you can play with yourself? I don't think so!"

"But, Sir. . ." I took his hand, and brought it down between my legs, where it was never, generally, loath to go.

"What if I did it to practice being modest, and you punished me if I played with myself while I was doing it?"

"That's very interesting, Emily, but perhaps I should make a little trial right now to see if you're even ready to try such a discipline. Take off your nightgown and your panties, and go sit in the chair, with your hands in your lap. If you can tell me what you would write in the first chapter of this. . . 'Discipline Book', shall we call it?. . . without touching your little cunt, you may begin the project tomorrow. If not, I should warn you, you will receive six with the cane, for immodesty." He nodded meaningfully at where the cane lay on my dresser.

Trembling, I stood.

"You should probably get a towel, too, and put it on the chair before you sit down. We both know your way of ruining upholstery."

Submissively, I melted. I didn't know if I'd be able to pass the trial, and six with the cane would be terrible on top of the tracery of belt-marks I already had from my punishment whipping, but it was going to be wonderful to try.

That was how it should have happened, of course.

Early submissive married life: EXPLORATIONS files

I'm re-running the stories that serve as deep background for EXPLORATIONS. The story continues from this post.

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So probably the next thing worth mentioning is the shape of our early married lives, after I'd graduated and Charles had started teaching again, and we'd moved, yes, back to Greenwich. These were the days of the drawer, as depicted in Emily, Ravished by Porn. They soon also became the days of my own first erotic writings.

I had decided not to try for a corporate job; my goal was to work for a foundation that gave grants to human rights NGO's, and Greenwich was a practically ideal place to start looking, in addition to being a place where I now had a great many wealthy contacts through my new parents-in-law.

I was at home writing white-paperish sorts of things just to have something to say at any interview I might get. I refused to go shopping (really shopping, I mean: clothes, shoes, furniture) more than once a week, though Charles was always telling me that I was being ridiculous and depriving myself of enjoyment for no reason. Commanding me to go shopping, under penalty of the paddle, was outside his brief, though, as master.

What was within his brief was the drawer and, then, as a natural outgrowth of a scene very much like the one depicted at the start of Emily and the Lusts of Prophettown, the first experimental command to write something for him. Really it was odd that we hadn't thought of it before, given our mutual fascination with Histoire d'O and its genesis in Réage's "I know how to write the kind of story you like."

To reconstruct, realistically: the first thing I wrote was the first version of the first seven books of EXPLORATIONS; that's the palimpsest upon which I'm now finally inscribing this project, ten years later. Then I wrote The Prophet's Way: The Marriage Bed, to try to work out some religious themes and their relation to porn. That became books eight and nine. Then I became more fascinated with the culture and "history" of Prophettown and went off on that for a while, which became books ten through sixteen. That was followed by the "Sarah Material" as I think of it (starting with Emily's Best Friend, and continuing on with Emily's Naughty Classmate), about my best friend, and finally (at least in the two years of my erotic writing for Charles, before life got in the way, though perhaps now that, ten years later, life is less in the way, I may find some grounds for continuing on) by the Victorian narrative of my great-great-grandmother.

So, to put this genesis inside fantasy-me's narrative, where the domestic discipline never stops:

I was lying over the bolster, with my white cotton nightgown up and my blue-and-white striped cotton panties down around my knees, waiting to be spanked for having forgotten to deposit a check. Charles usually saves real domestic-discipline spankings for the intimate time right before bed, when he sends me to my room (really, it's the guest-room, but it's much hotter from an ageplay/traditional point of view if it's "my room") to dress in appropriate clothing for family discipline, and to wait for him to come upstairs and punish me. He almost always uses his belt for punishment beatings.

I thought of something. I knew better than to bring it up before my whipping, so I endured my ten blows of the belt with my usual yelps and tears as I listened to Charles' lecture on the evils of overdraft. The tough thing about DD punishments is that Charles considers it necessary to be sure he's really hurting me, so that I learn my lesson. That's also the nice thing, because it means that when he comforts me afterward, I really am in need of comfort.

Looking up through my tears, I said, "Thank you, Sir."

"You're welcome, Emily," he replied. "Now go stand in the corner, and hold your nightgown up nice and high so that I can see your pretty bottom."

"Sir?" I asked, from the corner. "I had an idea."

"Are bad girls who are standing in the corner with their panties around their knees and their nightgowns up to show their punished bottoms allowed to speak, sweetheart?"

"No, Sir."

"Are you asking for another whipping, then?"

"No, Sir."

"That's good. You may tell me your idea when your punishment session is over. Whipping you got me hard, so you've got a bottom-fucking coming."

"Oh, Sir. . . please. My bottom hurts."

"It's supposed to; you should have thought of that when you were lounging at the club instead of doing what I'd asked you to do. You'd better prepare yourself right now: you're being impertinent, which tells me you need a butt-fucking. And I'm in the mood for your pretty little ass, I have to say, looking at it now. Lube up and get over the bolster."

Red-faced, I went to get the lube.

Unconscionable, but oh so hot. Don't worry, the real story is coming, but it's more mundane, as usual.

A "real" wedding-night — a triumphant ride: EXPLORATIONS files

I'm re-running the stories that serve as deep background for EXPLORATIONS. The story continues from this post.

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The sushi was over (Well, I think we'd finished about two-thirds of it; we polished it off around 2am, when Charles released me from bondage "for good behavior," along with a bottle of Moët et Chandon White Star, which is my favorite champagne, although I know it's despised by the champagne snobs.), and it was time for the sacrament of my ass.

I'm sorely tempted to do a Princess Bride thing here: "In the history of the world, there have been many great butt-fuckings, but this butt-fucking surpassed them all."

It was indeed unique in our experience because of the leisurely way he went about it. Having me tied to the bed seemed to give Charles a certain freedom to take his time. To my surprise, this freedom resulted in a great deal of attention being paid to arousing me--not, it turned out, for my benefit, but for his own; even better, according to the paradox of submission.

He nuzzled my pussy where it lay, tied over the pillows, his to enjoy. He tormented me with pleasure. He knew my body's language so well now that I had no chance of sneaking an orgasm by him: when he felt my thighs start to clench the way they always do, he suddenly stopped, and drew back his head.

He said, to my cunt, so that I could feel the breath of the words taunting me with the denial of my release, "When I enter your ass, wife, you are going to beg for an orgasm. Indeed, you are going to demonstrate the fullness of your submission in the way you beg for an orgasm. But there will be no orgasm for you until I decide it is time for you to come."

He kissed my clit, so that I gasped, and nearly screamed in frustration.

I felt his fingers, covered with the coolness of the lube, on my anus, then inside my anus. It was not by any means an unfamiliar feeling by this point in our relationship, but the context--being tied to a hotel bed on my actual honeymoon--was utterly new, and perhaps for that reason or perhaps because he was feeling particularly dominant that night (as well he should have been) he seemed to me more peremptory than he ever had before, in the way he readied my bottomhole to receive him.

Also, in the middle of the process of readying my anus for what has over the past ten years or so amounted to our favorite thing, the simple drama of his cock in my ass, he stopped, unexpectedly, and said, "Emily?"

The ground was so new that I didn't even experience the little flash of anger I usually get when Charles breaks the immersion of a scene. I mean, in a real sense, he wasn't breaking the immersion, was he? This scene, this wedding-night, belonged to him, absolutely: in the role of bridegroom, if he decided that the bride he had tied to his bed for pleasurable use should be addressed by her Christian name rather than as "wife" or, better, "whore" or "slut," or, perhaps best, "piece of ass" or "ass-wife," I should, as that piece of ass, feel that his judgment in the matter was absolute, and submit gladly and hornily to being called "Emily" instead.

"Yes, Sir?" I replied.

"Your ass is the most beautiful thing in the whole world." He kissed the right cheek of it, and then the left cheek, and then he kissed in between, and licked. I screamed, and writhed atop the pillows. I was going to. . . but his tongue left me, and I felt his weight shift on the bed. He was adjusting my thighs, moving them closer together, and now he was bestriding me in the position I call by the private name "Cavalier" (I've never known why I made the association of that particular word with what is for me probably the single most erotic human act, from the standpoint of my anal-submissive orientation, but I do imagine that the supporters of Charles I probably did a lot of bottom-ravishing).

"Get that ass up, girl," my husband said, in his most dominant tone, the voice that seems to work a wire running straight from my ears to my pussy. Of course, tied as I was, I couldn't obey him the way I usually did in bed at home, but that was the point--my master was giving me a command he knew I couldn't obey. He yanked my hips up, roughly, and rearranged the pillows under me, to get my bottom to the angle at which he liked to fuck it. "Don't you dare rub that slutty cunt against these pillows, wife," he growled. "Don't think that there won't be time between your butt-fuckings for some good old-fashioned domestic discipline, if you need it."

When he takes my ass at home Charles usually tells me to reach back and hold my bottom-cheeks apart for him, one of those delicious degradations he loves to force on me and I love to undergo, but this time my hands were tied, and thus the hands that opened me so that he might lodge the head of his cock in my most private place were his own. When he did, my head reared back, as if I were a filly being saddled for the first time.

I felt his hand on the back of my head, pushing. "Get that face down in the sheets, you ass-wife. I'm going to teach you to respect my authority if it's the last thing I do." It was the perfect thing to say, and it made me buck backwards against him, taking him in further, even as I obeyed and bowed my face to the bed.

He came in my ass three times that night, between the hours of nine and two. I'm not sure why I'm so proud of that, but I am; I suppose it's really just because of what he had said about my ass being beautiful: being unwilling to untie me before he had yielded every last bit of his most precious bodily fluid into my rectum seemed to confirm the truth of the aesthetic judgment.

The way he had constructed the scene, though, was the real story. It was perfect, as a sacrament. It had drama; it had play; it had build, and suspense--especially the third time, for it didn't feel at all clear--to either one of us, I believe--that he was going to come before his leg-strength gave out and he simply collapsed on top of me. Since my first days of reading Story of O I had wanted to feel what it was like when Sir Stephen used O's anus without regard to her pleasure or even her safety. This was the closest we've ever come, though thank God without the blood-stained towels, which are such a terribly powerful turn-on, but would necessitate a trip to the doctor in real life.

What I really want to memorialize here, though, isn't the three butt-fuckings themselves but the intervals between them: the two periods when I, still unsatisfied in the orgasm department, still tied to the hotel bed, lay waiting to have my ass used again, and he, for once really owning the dominant's role, actually turned on the TV and watched (interval one) Sports Center and (interval two) an old Western. Looking back, it seems completely absurd that I could have found the thought that my new husband was watching TV while waiting for his cock to be ready to fuck my ass again arousing, but I did--so much that during the first interval (I actually fell asleep during the second, which left me refreshed for the high drama of the third butt-fucking) I decided to stage a little scene of my own, by trying to steal an orgasm, rubbing against the pillows and squeezing my thighs. The intention was of course to get caught, so I didn't make much effort to stifle the little "hmm" sounds that always come from my throat when I get close to coming, even when I'm trying to be quiet. I had my eyes closed and my face buried between my upper arms.

"CRACK," I heard and felt at the same time, and gave a full-throated scream (thank God our suite was a bungalow sort of a thing) at the burning pain in my bottom-cheeks.

"Mrs. Smith," said Charles, "I doubt you have forgotten that self-abuse is absolutely forbidden in my house; tonight above all." CRACK! "To be sure, you are a wanton slut," CRACK! (I was wailing, now), "but even so I believe I have the right to expect more modesty from you." CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!The paddle was laid aside, and my cavalier was astride me again. "Oh, God, Emily," he said, as he began to ride my punished bottom to his second triumph over it, "I love you so much."

A "real" wedding-night — the hotel room: EXPLORATIONS files

I'm re-running the stories that serve as deep background for EXPLORATIONS. The story continues from this post.

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We managed to get our bathing-suits back on without event, though of course also without dignity. Then, because it was susceptible of multiple innocent interpretations, he actually did throw me over his left shoulder and carry me back to our room. I felt his unshaved left upper cheek against my bare left lower cheek, which he turned to kiss from time to time, with seriously warm results in the pussy which was solidly against his shoulder. I watched the ground go by, against the motion of his long legs, and thought about him, about his cheekbones, about what his cock looked like when it was hard, and about the look in his eyes when he told me he was going to fuck my ass.

He managed to get me through the door without slamming my head into anything, and then turned around so that I, still over his shoulder, could see what he had done to prepare. In the room, on the low table in front of the couch in the little sitting area, there was an enormous spread of sushi.

"Oh, Charles," I said, thinking of our first date, and desperate for some hamachi.

But he threw me on the bed, over pre-laid pillows, where I could see there was some honest-to-god nylon cord awaiting me. I had a sudden urge to use the safeword, so badly did I want that hamachi. He's not an expert with ropes, but before too long my wrists were bound out before me and my ankles to the corners of the foot of the bed.

"Alright," he said. "Now that I know you can't run away on me, wife, I think we can enjoy a meal together."

And so he fed me sushi, like I was his lap-dog, or his baby. Eating in that position wasn't something I'd ever imagined, but once Charles put a towel on the bed, so I wouldn't be worried about stains (with really good sushi, you never have soy or wasabi anyway), it was a wonderfully sensual experience--especially since sushi is for me the most sensual possible food anyway. He put some pieces on a plate for me to nibble like a quadruped; others he fed me from his hand, as he sat by and stroked my hair, saying "Good girl" as I ate, in a tone that drove me crazy with age-play/animal-play/plain-old-submissive desire.

He's never answered me about whether what happened next was completely spontaneous, or whether he'd planned it. We don't play with food very much, so I suspect it was a complete jeu d' ésprit. Either way, after he had fed me some hamachi, and some toro (my favorites), he decided it was time for me to lose my bikini bottom for good. He had specified that this item had to be of the kind that tied at the waist, meaning of course that he could divest me of it in very short order.

Once it was gone, he said, wickedly from a position between my legs where I couldn't see him, "I wonder what toro and Emily-cunt taste like together."

I felt him put something cool and sticky between my bottom-cheeks, at the same time beginning to rouse me with his fingers. The humiliation was arousing in and of itself: I knew he would have as much of me to taste as he wanted. I felt his mouth, delving into my rear-cleavage, taking in the piece of sushi he had put there, and moaned to think how I was being used like a plate, then I felt his lips and tongue searching out my wetness, inside my cunt, as one chases the last bit of demiglace with a piece of bread, to enjoy as much of the heavenly taste as one ever can.

"Excellent," he pronounced." I think you'll have to sample this delicacy yourself, Emily."

"What?" I asked, bewildered, but he had another piece of toro in his hand, and I saw where he was going to put it. . . thus did my cunt anoint a piece of fine sushi on my wedding-night, as I emitted short cries of frustrated desire, for Charles was rubbing just enough to keep me wet, but not enough to get me any closer to orgasm.

I'm not sure I've ever felt as slutty as I felt when Charles anointed the toro with my cunt-juice, rubbing the raw fish up and down my inner labia, and then presented it, glistening, to my lips. Goofy as it was, it's probably the thing I look back on with the most fondness from that night, because it did indeed take me close to the safeword, but in a way I'd never expected: I had never imagined he could find such a novel way to humiliate me.

That's not the craziest thing, though. The craziest thing is that it tasted really fucking good. Like, "They must serve cunt-toro in those insanely expensive sushi bars in Tokyo" good. Or maybe, as Charles joked, it's just Emily-cunt-toro that tastes so good, and he could rent me out to those insanely expensive sushi bars in Tokyo for millions of yen.

A "real" wedding-night—the bride learns her fate: EXPLORATIONS files

I'm re-running the stories that serve as deep background for EXPLORATIONS. The story continues from this post.

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I giggled for a moment at the thought of going for long without an orgasm, given how horny I was--it seemed like such a tall order. In fact I had almost come right that moment, at the sound of "Mrs. Smith," combined with the aftershocks from our brief ocean-fuck, and I was feeling giddy at the thought of what he had planned for me.

He became serious, even ritual. "I have claimed your womb, now, Mrs. Charles Smith" (again I nearly swooned at the erotic negation in the old-fashioned phraseology) "but before this night is over I am going to claim you completely. I was fortunate to find you here in the water before some other man saw your wantonness and realized that it meant you were for anyone who wanted a slut to use; now you shall come with me, and I will be the one to use you. I shall bring you to my bed and you shall serve me there."

He paused, gravely, and I saw a special light come into his eyes. "I do not wish you to be in any confusion about how you will serve me tonight, wife, so I will explain to you now. When I bring you back to our room, I will tie you to the bed, face-down, over pillows that raise your hips, so that you cannot interfere with my pleasure."

My knees started to buckle at these words. Charles had gotten very good at this (see Explorations: Books 6-10 for the fantasy-version of this process), at somehow expressing both love and degradation--even cruelty--that was for me so hot as to make me really feel faint with arousal.

He continued, in the same tone of authority. Each sentence increased the raging heat in my loins. "My cock," he said slowly, "is going to be in your bottom all night long. It will be uncomfortable for you, I'm sure, wife, to have to take it in the ass as many times as I'm going to give it to you, but I am the bridegroom, and you are the bride, and on her wedding-night a bride must learn to submit to her bridegroom."

I struggled against his hands, heedlessly desperate to touch my cunt, my anus, to demonstrate my submission, to show how well I knew my own wantonness. I felt my whole body growing hot with shame and desire, despite the chill of the water. I could tell from the slight curl of a smile on Charles' lips that I had turned beet red.

"And as unnatural as some may find it, your ass is the submission I demand of you, Mrs. Smith." He grasped both my wrists in his big left hand, and brought his right hand around, and arrogantly took my bottom, and split it open on his fingers, and found my rectum with the tip of his middle finger.

"Oh, God. Oh, God," I whimpered. The finger urged inward. "Ah. . . why, Sir. . . why my. . . oh, no. . . I'm going to. . . " The finger left me, and he gathered me into his chest, still imprisoning my wrists but holding me gently with his other arm. "Why my ass?" (Not that I didn't know, but an anal-submissive loves to hear her condition described.)

"Perhaps because it is unnatural and shameful, and a girl who has had a cock in her ass all night long has learned that a man's pleasure is insistent and commanding, and that she must submit to it."

A "real" wedding-night — the ocean: EXPLORATIONS files

I'm re-running the stories that serve as deep background for EXPLORATIONS. The story continues from this post.

_____

When his hand came across my mouth, I could not cry out, so firm was his stifling grasp, but I shuddered as deeply as I think it's possible for a person to shudder, and lost my balance, and fell back against him. He was naked himself, I realized, and his cock, enormous and hard, was against my back. His other hand was arrogantly between my thighs, under the water, moving possessively and caressingly, making me whimper into the hand across my mouth.

"Mine," he growled, and his voice was just different enough from its usual tone that I really did have a split-second's shocked doubt as to whether the man claiming me was my newly-wedded husband, or whether he had told someone else to come take me, or whether some man had noticed me taking off my bikini bottom and decided he wanted to come out and fuck the obviously slutty girl in the water.

"Mine," he repeated, in a more familiar tone, and God help me I started to cry, so wonderful was the wave of love that washed over me, as deep as the ocean I was looking out at, for he was my Charles, my top, my master, my bridegroom, and I was his wife.

He turned me around, then, to face him, and he, just as I longed for him to do, took my ass in both his hands. I put my own hands around the back of his neck, the way the girl is supposed to, and looked up into his beautiful brown eyes. "Yours," I sighed. Gently, he lifted me in the water, chest-deep on me, stomach-deep on him, and fitted my pussy on to his cock so that we both groaned, and my legs wrapped around his waist convulsively.

First Charles said, "Now, according to the ancient laws of men and women, you belong to me. In thee I plight my troth." He likes that stuff, and he generally delivers it pretty well.

I pulled myself against him with my legs, and tucked my bottom into him a bit so that it felt like his cock was going to reach my heart and he gave a manly whimper (if such a thing exists). Then, holding onto his shoulders, I climbed his body in the water a bit, and whispered the response into his ear, "To thee I give my troth."

Then he said, "I want to carry you back to our room like this."

I laughed, and rocked against him, sending a spark of pleasure through my body so great that I had to do it again, immediately, and again, and again. I said, "Why not?" (and again) "It's our honeymoon, right?" (and again) "The people in the lobby. . . would probably. . . applaud. . . oh my god. . . Charles. . . Sir, may I. . ."

"No," said Charles, firmly removing me from his cock (this had been one of his commands--that that night I would ask permission to come). He stood me up in the water, still facing him, and held my hands in his. The double-meaning of the gesture was marvelous--both romantic and erotic, affectionately touching and also sternly keeping me from reaching down to my aching cunt. "You're not going to come for quite a while, Mrs. Smith."

A "real" wedding-night — the water: EXPLORATIONS files

I'm re-running the stories that serve as deep background for EXPLORATIONS. The story continues from this post.

_____

Because of our commitment to leading a spiritual life, of a traditional (though of course not at all in the usual sense!) Christian kind, Charles and I (mostly I) decided that our "real" wedding-night, despite having in an important sense actually occurred more than a year before, that fateful afternoon and evening at the Waldorf, would, on or around our real wedding-day, nevertheless have to be sacramental in some way. It's not that we believed that at our wedding God was going to come down and do something magic that made us one flesh--really, we'd been one flesh for quite a while by that time--but having all our family and friends come together to be happy about our one-fleshiness had its own, real magic, and we wanted to honor that in our beautiful suite at the Ritz on Maui.

So we planned it, the way we usually plan our scenes, but with the major difference that Charles (without any urging from me, though I probably would have urged him if he hadn't taken the initiative) told me in no uncertain terms that he wasn't going to tell me what would be happening after a certain point (the moment you'll find below when I wade into the water and take off my bikini bottom and face the ocean). From that point on, I would have only the safeword to fall back on. The thought got me very hot indeed; in fact I was hoping that I would be tempted to use the safeword since, when I'm being honest, I have to confess that Charles isn't really quite dominant enough for my purest taste. I really do sometimes (truthfully, often) want to be taken to the point of almost using the safeword, when it stops feeling the slightest bit tame and I start worrying that my mother will notice bruises when I meet her for lunch the next day. In the event, as you'll see, our real wedding-night was one of his finest moments.

Our wedding was at 9am--very English traditional; we had a brunch reception (that is, the traditional wedding breakfast) at the same club where I had brought up ancient Greek anal sex. We went straight to JFK, and 17 hours of bleary-eyed air-travel later we were snuggled up, looking out at Honokahua bay, forgetting all about BDSM, and even about sex, and about anything but being together in paradise. Our planned, "sacramental" wedding-night happened the next day.

Here's what we did. We had breakfast together, finalizing our plans for that night, which you're now about to read, put into action (really, to my delight, this was Charles issuing orders), but we spent the day apart. I shopped a little, sunbathed a little (we had agreed that he would stay by the pool and I would go to the beach). Among other things, I bought a new version of the pajamas described in Emily's First Caning.

(Because both versions of those pajamas [the one from the Waldorf and the one I bought on Maui] dwell in my memory, and because it's, in my opinion at least, rather illuminating about how the things you read in EXPLORATIONS relate to "reality," I hope you'll pardon me a brief digression about them: the style is in general just not my kind of thing; if I'm not in a lace bra-and-panty set, it's either nothing, or some kind of flowing Victorian night-dress [shorter for warm-weather]. But there's just something about this style [usually sold in a cami-and-boy-short pair, though personally I like a Tee better] that screams "Violate my pretended innocence" at me. So there was one set for the Waldorf, and then I did, as described in Emily's First Caning, buy another set in the hotel store on Maui. The one for the Waldorf was blue; the one on Maui was green.)

I watched the sun set from the extreme end of the beach that lies just down a path from the hotel. The lights of the hotel glowed behind me, and I could see the lights of boats out to sea. At exactly 8pm, as I had been commanded by my husband, I waded out into the dark, delicious water, until it came up to my chest, and glancing nervously around (no sign of Charles) and blushing deeply, I quickly and surreptitiously removed my bikini bottom, and held it in my right hand. Again, as commanded, I turned to face the ocean, waiting to be taken by whatever island man should happen along the beach.

I wanted to touch myself, of course, but I had been expressly forbidden to do so. For what felt an eternity, but was really perhaps two minutes (I will always be sure he was hiding behind a palm tree for at least an hour, though he denies it), I waited, starting to shiver a little, in the bay, as available as a good Réagean girl should be. Then I heard someone in the water behind me.

I was forbidden to turn around, forbidden to call out to the approaching stranger. I was Brünnhilde, on her rock, and the fearless hero had penetrated my wall of fire--soon to penetrate much more than that. I was Eve, having tasted the forbidden fruit, knowing my sin and awaiting my partner in it; I was Mary, afraid of Gabriel, wondering what manner of salutation his might be. In those moments, hearing the water move around the stranger's powerful legs, I was a virgin again.

My BDSM wedding: EXPLORATIONS files

I'm re-running the stories that serve as deep background for EXPLORATIONS. The story continues from this post.

_____

It was time, soon enough, for our "real" wedding.

As you may have noticed, Charles and I, individually and together, have made the decision that despite our erotic proclivities and the way such proclivities are usually regarded by the people most people associate with the word "Christian," our hereditary Christianity is important to us. Charles was more than happy to leave the Methodism of his childhood and adopt a (shall we say?) stricter regime--which is how we ended up at St. Thomas Fifth Avenue the Sunday he proposed to me.

If you've been reading this blog for a while, reader, you also know that I don't hesitate to mix the sacred with the profane (see for example my new one, The Duke's School for Young Ladies!); indeed, you have probably been able to discern that in fact I delight in that mixture almost above all things.

Our real wedding took place at the little episcopal church where I had sung in the choir as a girl. I brought my own Anglo-Catholic priest, a man I've always suspected of being a sub himself, whom I found in college.

This may be the right place to say that at the height of my religious struggle with my BDSM orientation, junior year in college, I tried to confess my erotic habits to this same Anglo-Catholic priest, but the language I used was so vague that I'm not sure he even understood what I was talking about. Certainly when he talked kindly to me about my confession, before giving me penance (a few rosaries) and pronouncing absolution, he didn't mention it.

Although confession is one of the hottest things imaginable in my book (a heartfelt thank you to Selena Kitt for exploring the theme so well in Under Mr. Nolan's Bed, as well as to the particular Anonymous who wrote The Autobiography of a Flea), the sacrament of penance and, reconciliation, as it evolved in the medieval church, doesn't work for me. That confession to the nice priest who eventually married us was my last formal confession, though I have had some wonderful relationships with spiritual directors over the years since.

The reason confession doesn't work for me is very relevant in the context of my wedding, as well, because it has everything to do with how I can continue to be a religious person despite shamelessly indulging the profane fantasies you find in my EXPLORATIONS, both by writing and by self-abuse, and also by countless acts that might make the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah blush.

My problem with sacramental confession is similar to the basic quarrel of protestantism with the sacramental priesthood, but more complex, and confined to confession: Father Tom, Dick, or Harry (or even, since I of course support gender equality in holy orders, Mother Tanya, Doris, or Harriet) doesn't share my understanding of what sin even is; the notion that he or she can magically absolve me from my sins makes for a veneer of falseness that vitiates what might otherwise be at least a beneficial ritual from an emotional standpoint--talking about the things that make us feel broken with a person who specializes in trying to help people deal with the brokenness of human existence. I don't have a problem with that same Father or Mother being the one who celebrates the Eucharist and marries me to my husband and baptizes my children, because I understand his or her consecration as a useful and moving symbol of professionalization. It's when the church's historical bureaucracy turns the idea of repentance, so dependent on our unknowable inner states, into something only a priest can help with, that things go South for me.

Anyway. In the Anglican Communion, there's a wonderful saying about confession: "All may, none must, some should." That means that since I no longer consider myself to be one of the some who should, having come (like a good, reasoning Anglican) to my own understanding of what sin is, I got to have the wedding I was looking for, with the incense and the elevation bells and the choir singing, of course, the Byrd Mass for Five Voices. My dress was simple except for the lace ornaments, which of course matched the white lace thong I at last wore more or less appropriately, at least according to my understanding of that most sacred of garments. I also insisted on a full veil, with a gorgeous lace border, which insistence made my mother, I thought, look at me like I was crazy (it turned out later that I had been misinterpreting these looks of hers for years, but that's another story).

Because this post is turning out to be the least hot post ever for this blog, let me add that during our wedding--specifically while the choir was singing the Sanctus--I imagined that instead of the Eucharist, my ass would be the sacrifice for that nuptial liturgy. Charles would lead me to the altar (which is really, in most churches, including that one, the perfect height, though late medieval and renaissance traditional altars set into a reredos would be too narrow to lay even the most petite bride over), and I would gracefully drape myself over it, stretching my arms out so that the priest could bind my wrists together and tie them to the ring set in the stone paving hundreds of years before for just this purpose. (Reader, I suppose you never spent long parts of Sunday mornings wondering what all the little fixtures in an old church are for. More's the pity, but I can assure you that a ring for putting brides in bondage wouldn't look out of place.)

(I thought idly about whether anyone had actually ever been fucked over the altar of that church, and about how many people must have been fucked over altars, Christian or otherwise, over the course of human history. Hundreds? Thousands? Surely the temptation of the sex/violence metaphor is too great for it to be fewer than a thousand, even if I knew no cult-practices that actually require it. . . [so few people understand that an altar is a place where you kill animals, though. It takes a classicist.])

(It's a very long Sanctus.)

Charles would lift my skirts, and the guests would gasp at the sight of my lace thong, worn over the suspenders of my garter-belt. The priest would come and sprinkle my backside with holy water, and make the sign of the cross over it. He would put incense on the charcoal in the thurible, and I would hear that lovely sacred sound of the top of the thurible going up, and then going down, and then I would hear the chains, as the priest swung it, 3 times 3, around my ass, and I would feel the heat as the thurible almost touched my bottom-cheeks. The holy smoke would consecrate my pudenda, and my rectum, and I would feel blessed, and very, very warm, as the scent of my arousal mingled with the indescribable scent of the pure frankincense I had ordered specially for the wedding Mass.

The priest would say, "I pronounce this wife's ass to be the property of her man. You may fuck the bottom."

The holy oil of lube in hand, Charles would approach. . . "All glory be to thee, almighty God our heavenly father. . ." said my nice priest. Thankfully, like a good Anglo-Catholic celebrant, he was facing away from us and couldn't see me blushing.

Is make-up sex hotter for submissives? EXPLORATIONS files

I'm re-running the stories that serve as deep background for EXPLORATIONS. The story continues from this post.

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So if I'd said "Fuck you" and refused to follow his ironically conventional, totally kinky script for make-up sex that night?

I don't know. The trouble is that despite my superficial doubts, I did know (in my soul, or something) that he loved me for the right reasons, and I knew that I loved him for the right reasons, and that the BDSM flowed from that, and that the love wasn't some illusory downstream effect of the BDSM. So the thought-experiment doesn't even make sense. Even if he'd gone along with my script and given me the spanking of my life--let's say, just for fun, that he'd brought out a riding crop, or a dogwhip, or something (see Emily and the Paradise-Step of Prophettown if you're looking for that kind of thing), and he'd got carried away and opened some horrendous bleeding laceration, and we'd spent the end of the night in the emergency room trying to explain why my ass was covered with bloody welts--we would have ended up at the altar, though perhaps with a few things less completely resolved.

The real crucible, as I said in my last post, the moment when I commanded my beloved to spank me within an inch of my life, more or less, wasn't a crucible because of the choice I presented of whether to obey me, and spank me, or to go against my expressed will in whatever way Charles chose. It was a crucible because I had shown, nakedly, my own will to power. At that moment, Charles had the opportunity to say "Enough, you controlling fake-submissive bitch. What I really want is a real submissive wife, who knows her place."

I would have despised him forever, of course, if he'd done that, but break-up omelettes generally require several broken eggs. Seeing him and his submissive bride at the Greenwich Country Club would have given my BDSM spinster heart the energizing poison it needed to live out the rest of its days, somewhere in DUMBO, begging men (and women, probably) to fuck me in the ass, and thinking about how existentially unhappy Charles Smith must be.

It was a foregone conclusion that he wouldn't do that. The night of nights and day of days at the Waldorf had demonstrated it, simply and completely. You can't (I think) do the things to, and share the things with, another person that we did that weekend, unless you trust him or her. And speaking just for myself, I would never have trusted Charles if there had been the slightest chance he didn't actually, to quote Forster, want me "to have [my] own thoughts, even when [he held me] in [his] arms."

Or maybe I'm fooling myself, and I got lucky. In any case, if he'd decided he wanted to beat me that night, I would have welcomed it, of course. But I don't think I would have screamed the way I screamed when I found my orgasm atop him, after riding his cock for something like a half-hour, with him, at the end, growling at me "Come, now, Emily; come, you bitch, come for me now."And when I had, and I was so weak in the aftermath of that huge jouissance that I could barely move, he rolled me over, lifted my knees to his shoulders, and pounded my cunt so hard as he sought his own release that I felt like I was being beaten just as I had asked. All his aggression, all his anger at me for my over-reaction (there, I said it), was there in his cock and his hips, fucking, fucking, fucking my little cunt, and finally, after a minute or two, resolving into the rigidity of his entire body atop me in that blessed moment of stillness when I felt him pulsing in my womb and heard him cry out as if thunder-struck at the thought that he must now yield up his life force to me.

Riding St. George: EXPLORATIONS files

I'm re-running the stories that serve as deep background for EXPLORATIONS. The story continues from this post. It's worth noting that I've actually developed quite a bit in my thinking about domestic discipline since I originally wrote this post. My current thinking is probably best expressed in Old-Fashioned Values, but I think this post from the files is of historical interest, though perhaps only to me.

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He sat down next to me on the bench, and took me into his arms.

"You're an asshole," I said, quietly and precisely, fighting his embrace half-heartedly, but allowing him to gather me in and put my head on his chest, my cheek against the wool of his pea-coat (it must have been December?).

"I know," he replied. "I called my Dad and said he should be ashamed of himself for giving us oil stock."

"No."

"Yes."

"Ohmygodfuckyou," I said, and burst into tears again. "I love you so much."

See, the problem with being alive is that before you're married, he'll make that gesture, but life wears you down, and in the same situation today he'd without doubt tell me to get over it. The nice thing, such as it is, is that I would, probably after not speaking to him for two days. This kind of thing actually makes me wonder again about the couples who are really living a domestic-discipline lifestyle--especially the ones who apparently aren't doing it for religious reasons, where you can imagine saying to yourself "My husband is being an asshole, but if I tell him so I'll go to Hell, so I'll just let him keep being an asshole."

When religion isn't involved, though, if I understand how it's supposed to work, and how the psychological benefits are supposed to accrue to me if I embrace my womanliness by letting my man make all my important decisions (sorry, but, for me, personally, frankly, no-go, in any non-erotic context), then in this situation with the oil stock, if I had protested against my man's accepting the stock, let alone told him that he and his parents could go fuck themselves, I would have received one of those "punishment spankings" that are so delicious to contemplate erotically and, to me, so repugnant ethically.

Charles would have grabbed me, and dragged me to my room, and taken off his belt, and ripped down my jeans--maybe thrown me over the edge of the bed. (See Emily's First Caning for one of my elaborations of this theme.) He would have held me down and beaten me as hard as he could--even if I'd used our safeword--while I kicked and screamed and tried to get away, until he saw the resistance go out of me, and I was (magically, I guess) saying "I'm sorry, Sir; I was wrong; I see now, because you've hit my ass over and over with your belt, demonstrating your strength and my weakness, your masculinity and my femininity, your headship of me, that oil companies are good." (Or, rather, I guess I'm supposed to be saying something like "Even though I think oil companies are bad, you are a man and I am a woman and you make decisions and I abide by them, and because I swore at you I deserve to be beaten, and I am ever so grateful to you that you have deigned to beat me with your sacred belt and that now, like the guys in the DD stories, you are going to use me roughly--but lovingly--to console me for being a weak woman who needs beating to stay in line." Actually, the using part I could enjoy.)

But how could that be a way to live ethically for me, given that I believe my mind is as good as Charles' mind, and my values are as important as his values, and have to be so?

Anyway, there on the bench I looked into his eyes. "You are going to spank me so hard tonight," I said, just as precisely as I had spoken when I said that he and his parents could go fuck themselves, back in the apartment, "that I'm not going to be able to get out of bed tomorrow." Notice the crucial difference, reader: I was asking for the spanking after the fight was over, as a way of reframing it erotically. That made it possible for Charles to respond the way he did, reinforcing both our erotic complementarity and our ethical equality.

He had to reframe it because this moment was in some sense the real crucible of our union. It was the worst instance of trying to top from the bottom of which I've ever been guilty, I think, though there are many to choose from. It was in its own way like that stupid moment at the end of the terrible film version of Histoire d'O when O brands Sir Stephen. Yuck.

He looked calmly back into my eyes. "No," he said, "I'm not. Tonight you and I are going to make love."

"You can't be serious," I said.

"I'm serious."

"What? Missionary position?" (we had very, very rarely fucked in missionary position to that point; there are definitely ways to make it a D/s sort of position, of course--we just hadn't yet started exploring them, and I associated missionary position with my sex life before Charles, when I was waiting for my top.)

He nodded. "But. . ." he said gravely, "more importantly, you're going to ride St. George."

I gave a bark of laughter. I hadn't known his Victorian reading was as extensive as mine. Suddenly I realized I was extremely warm between my thighs. "That's the kinkiest thing I think you've ever suggested," I said, as evenly as I could.My punishment was not to get a punishment, but instead, literally, to start learning to bottom from the top.

The crux of the matter, in a D/s fight: EXPLORATIONS files

I'm re-running the stories that serve as deep background for EXPLORATIONS. The story continues from this post.

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The absolute core of the problem was that I was worried that maybe I didn't even know whether when he said "Of course I don't think of you that way" (in response to me screaming "That's right--that's right--I'm a hysterical female tree-hugger--there's no reason to care that our world is going to Hell in a handbasket you privileged fuck! You just want me to forget about my ethics and take whatever you and your family are kind enough to give me!") he was lying, or, maybe worse, telling the truth but unable to realize that subconsciously he did think of me as a subservient wife, and the whole fucking me in the ass when I demanded that he fuck me in the ass thing was a sham to cover over an icky traditional man from an icky traditional family.

Even worse than that, I wasn't able to articulate the above at all. I was just screaming at Charles, for about five minutes, and then, which is the worst possible sign with me, I got very quiet, and very precise, and I left. I didn't start crying until I had reached my favorite spot on the Green, a bench near Center Church, where some of my ancestors are buried. (So I've got a Mulan thing, so what?) Then I just gave myself over to the sobs.

So you're probably thinking, if you've seen the Steve Martin/Diane Keaton re-make of Father of the Bride, that this is like the blender, and it totally is, I guess, except for the anal-submission, which Kimberly Williams' character just doesn't look like she's into (you never know, though; I often wonder whether anyone can tell just by looking at me that I'm what Charles, when he wants to make me weak in the knees, calls an "ass-wife" [see Emily's Dark Gift]; that's also what the Roissy triskelion ring is for in Story of O of course--so if a ring is needed to indicate a sub who's any master's to use, can it be obvious?).

Yes, it was a typical pre-marital "How do you see me, really?" fight. But I had by that point given Charles everything to an extent that I think most people who say they've given their spouse or their prospective spouse "everything" can't even dream about. You can see it in conventional terms of a modern young woman coming to terms with the patriarchal traditions of marriage, but it was more complicated for me because I had sought in Charles a partner who, precisely, would play out the D/s side of those traditions with me in the bedroom (well, and the living-room, and the library, and any dungeon he might build, and, if he felt like ordering me to my knees in a darkened movie theatre. . . you get the idea). My erotic life revolved around the sexual side of exactly the traditions whose political and social side I had suddenly come up against, so when I thought about Charles' family controlling my financial existence I couldn't be sure that my incurable, panty-moistening yearning to be over his knee learning how to be a good wife for him had blinded me to my less stimulating but more important ethical need--indeed, duty--to be a virtuous, free woman.

Here's what I'm proud of. I didn't let the sex--the unbelievable, life-altering, dream-fulfilling sex--matter, in the end. I suppose I'm being cliché there, and I should hedge and make you think better of my powers as a narrator by admitting that the actual sex rarely rose to that height. Angles are uncompromising, and in the moment you generally have less than a minute to get an angle right before one of you, or both of you, have become so anxious, or so angry, that your chances at something really wonderful are gone for the night. But the play, and, more, the feeling that I had someone to play with--well, that's the life-altering part, and I had it, and have it, with Charles.

Fighting, D/s style: EXPLORATIONS files

I'm re-running the stories that serve as deep background for EXPLORATIONS. The story continues from this post.

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To be sure, even for two 25 year olds as erotically compatible as we were, the course of true love never did run smooth. If I'm going to get to the bottom (heh) of this thing I call love, I can't leave the fights out of it.

Ten years later, it's impossible to remember what our actual first fight was about, but I'll pretend that it was the one about the trust-fund, since that's the one that's stuck in my memory as the first moment (and, of course, there have been many — we wouldn't be a real couple if there hadn't) I thought I might have made a mistake in pursuing my erotic satisfaction at practically all cost.

Like I've said, Charles' family is wealthier than mine. They're not crazy-rich by Greenwich or New York standards, but they're crazy-rich by practically any other standard. That is, no helicopters, but a couple boats, one of them reasonably big. No house in Palm Beach, but houses on the Vineyard and in Vermont.

So their money is "tied up" as the phrase goes, in various places. Now that Charles was getting married, in a practically medieval fashion it was time for some of that money to be settled (no, they didn't use that Victorian word, but that was what it was) on me and our children. The easiest way to do such things is always through transfer of stock. It was unfortunately going to be oil stock, and when I saw that, I went ballistic.

I shouldn't have, obviously. This was one hundred percent about me and zero percent about Charles' parents. More on that shortly.

Charles, through no fault of his own, fell into a trap I had unconsciously set for him, and refused to trouble his parents with my ethical difficulty with owning oil stock. "We can talk about this later, can't we?" was all I could get out of him, which wasn't, from my perspective, even "We'll sell it after the wedding, and put it somewhere else" but rather "Shut up, you hysterical tree-hugger."

So. The real story was that I started off ashamed — medievally, atavistically, an occupational hazard of people in whom the humanistic love of the past has been inculcated — that my own family wasn't rich enough that I didn't need any money settled on me and my children by my bridegroom's parents. Then I had an overly strong reaction to the oil stock because (I think) I had just read a story about drilling in the Arctic (note that even after all this time I refuse to call it an "over-reaction," which is a key term from the screaming match Charles and I quickly devolved into: Charles: "Sweetheart, I think you're over-reacting"; Emily: "You're a fucking asshole!" Okay, I was the one screaming.).

But the above doesn't even get at what I finally realized long, long hours later, after I had nearly destroyed the best thing I have ever had in my life or, I think, will ever have, was the real root cause of the fight: my worry — no, my terror — that my anal-submissive orientation had overwhelmed my ethics; that if I actually let Charles and his parents take care of me that way the D/s wouldn't be play, any longer, and I would be trapped in a traditional marriage, through my own fault, with a guy whose understanding of marriage really did involve the husband being the head of the wife.

(Probably worth noting that I can't even type that phrase, which I absolutely refuse to believe Paul of Tarsus wrote, without feeling sick to my stomach. Also worth noting that when I read it in one of those Christian Domestic-Discipline stories that are kicking around the 'net these days in blogs and ebooks, in the context of some wife getting a spanking from her pastor husband, it never fails to get me hot, nevertheless. Humankind, fucked by fiction, I sometimes think. Also, I would never judge a DD (Domestic-Discipline) couple who have made the choice for the husband to be the "Head of Household" and the wife to be the "Taken-in-Hand" partner, for religious or erotic or psychological reasons, so long as it wasn't because they thought the Bible were telling them to do it that way. As you know if you've been reading, I'm very religious, but I'm definitely not fundamentalist, and I don't do anything, or believe anything, just because the Bible tells me so. I honor DD couples who have made the free, reasoned choice of DD more highly than I can express, for their courage in living their true selves in the face of a world that on the one (fundamentalist) hand sends what seem to me false messages of support and on the other (secular) hand finds their choice baffling.)

BDSM is full of paradoxes that I think affect all its practitioners, from the little kid playing spanking games with her friends to the silver-haired Dom with the riding-crop: how can being bound make me feel free? how can being spanked make me feel grown-up? above all, how can being hurt make me feel so fucking good? I have my own paradox, too, though, that I'm not sure afflicts anyone else: how can a woman who believes so strongly in equality long, with an existential longing, to be subjected in the private sphere to a man's will? To be humiliated, to be pissed on, to have her ass made to undergo such shocking trials as befit the disobedient chattel that a man, frustrated, must bring under his righteous domination?

Naught to do but keep exploring. More on the fight in my next post.

Panty-check: EXPLORATIONS files

I'm re-running the stories that serve as deep background for EXPLORATIONS. The story continues from this post.

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After Charles returned around 4 on Friday, I would usually--for we did vary this sometimes, and if I'd had a difficult week I would sometimes do whatever it took to make him spank me, since sometimes I just need it, for myself--stand him in front of his throne and respectfully and ceremonially undo his belt, and unzip his zipper, and lower first his jeans, then his boxers, to his feet. He confesses that despite the basic ridiculousness of having a third-year law student with more earning potential than any Latin teacher in the universe do this, it was in itself, before I had even touched his cock, one of the biggest turn-ons he had ever known. The deep groan he invariably let out when I took him all the way to the back of my throat seems to me to confirm the truth of the testimony.

Then I would seat him, gently and ritually, in the throne (unless he decided he wanted to be rough with me, in the way that a guy can only do when he's standing up and fucking your face). As I say in EXPLORATIONS, I've never really enjoyed giving head, but on those Friday afternoons in fall and winter 2001, fighting my gag reflex to drive Charles wild just felt good and right. There's an art to turning your mouth into a cunt, and while I can't say I've mastered it, at least I've swallowed enough of my beloved's sperm to think I can hold my head up in the assembly of the cocksuckers.

(Hmmm. Assembly of the Cocksuckers. Do they have meetings? Do they have to show their prowess, and do those who fail get punished?)

Anyway. By 5pm on Friday, Charles would usually have had his first orgasm of the weekend, and he would contentedly see to dinner, whether he were making it himself (he's a nearly-professional-grade cook, lucky me) or ordering in. He usually cooked on Friday, because we usually went out on Saturday, sometimes I thought (gratified) only so that Charles could put his hand up my skirt during dinner to "verify" that I was in fact both shaved and panty-less, always making me think for an instant that he was going to call the maître-d' over to show off my cunt and bottom while detailing what they were good for, and what I was best at, and what I still needed to practice, if I were going to be a really valuable piece of ass.

These were full Réagean outings: I wore skirts with nothing under them and carried my butt-plug in my purse. I was required to sit always in such a way that my naked bottom was against the surface of the car-seat, or the chair. Many was the time that I left such surfaces shamefully moist on rising. That most delicious of restaurant fantasies, being ordered to the bathroom mid-meal for a fucking over the toilet, doesn't actually work mid-meal, because they think you've left without paying the check, but our favorite restaurant had unisex bathrooms that could be slipped into relatively discreetly after dinner. It's not a great angle, and I think the only time either of us came in there was when I sat on the toilet and went down on him, but just having done it made us feel like sex gods, and we would head home in the mood for more.

If we were by ourselves, and weren't seated side-by-side in that goofy French way (It being French doesn't help that much; what did help is that if we were seated like that he would have his hand between my legs under the table for most of dinner.), right after the appetizers Charles would look at me so steadily that I, knowing what was about to happen, would instantly blush. Then he would say, so distinctly that I was always sure the whole restaurant could hear, "panty check." Then he would pretend to drop his napkin, and get down below table level, and I would have to put my hands down to my knees and lift my skirt for inspection, all the way to the tops of my thighs, parting my knees as I did so, my face beet red and my cunt growing ever warmer and wetter.

"This is to signify that you are naked," he would whisper, quoting, with his hand brazenly up my skirt to remind me."And that my nakedness is for you," I would paraphrase back, thanking God for the shame and the risk, and the thrill and the love.

D/s play-time: EXPLORATIONS files

I'm re-running the stories that serve as deep background forEXPLORATIONS. The story continues from this post.

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So Friday afternoon to Sunday morning was our play-time. 

When I got home from class at around 3pm Friday, I went to my room (though we were an engaged couple sharing an apartment, it was important to our domestic-disciplinary regime, as well as useful for some of our ageplay scenarios, that I should have my own room) and ceremonially removed whatever I was wearing. I say "ceremonially" because I delighted in treating it as a ceremony, playing at reluctance, playing at shame, taking off each article and laying it in its place and thinking about what taking it off meant, about the way I was making myself ready for Charles to use me.
I would take off my bra, and think about what it meant to be a young woman with breasts uncovered, about the salacious thoughts men have about topless young women. I considered what Elizabeth Bennet might have felt, had Mr. Darcy required that her own little breasts (of course they were little, since mine are) be left bare, so that he might fondle them to his heart's content. Purely for learning's sake (I told myself, pretending to be the said Miss Elizabeth Bennet), I touched mine, and allowed my thumbs to explore my little pink nipples, just to prepare myself for Mr. Darcy's arrival. If I spent longer doing this than Mr. Darcy would truly have approved of, I blamed my inexperience and want of knowledge of a husband's desires.

I would take off my jeans, and my everyday cotton panties, and think about what it meant that I was shaved for Charles, that now it was time for my pussy and my ass to belong to him, that I was going to put on underwear that was meant not for my comfort, but for his enjoyment in seeing my cunt and bottom dressed in it, and above all in taking it off. Thinking about Jane Austen at this point (that is, when completely naked and deliciously conscious of my freshly shaved pussy [I shave every Friday morning without fail]) tended just to make me laugh, so instead I thought about O. And I (as a salutary training-exercise, you understand) would generally practice assuming Charles' favorite submissive positions, on my bed and over various articles of furniture. To make the training authentic, of course, I would have to work one or two fingers into my asshole, so that I could practice my submissive moans and whimpers at the sensation of being mastered there.

I then donned (usually) a lace thong, and went to wait for Charles to return from teaching at 4. I knelt next to his throne, in the living-room (not unlike the way my character Chuck Auberge , dominant polygamous Prophettown husband, commands that his youngest junior-wife position herself every day, in Emily and the Training-Shed of Prophettown) and tried, very often unsuccessfully, not to play with myself more than I inevitably had already. Charles always took care of dinner on Fridays, and asked nothing of me but my erotic submission, leaving me this time for meditation (as I soon began to think of it). He had proposed this part of the system based on the long periods O spends tied up, or just waiting to be enjoyed, especially at Anne-Marie's; he'd proposed it really just to see what I'd say, and I'd jumped at the idea, having always been fascinated with that part of Story of O.

I'm not going to claim that what seemed to me the spiritual insights I gained, kneeling in my thong next to my beloved's chair, waiting to pleasure him, were on the level of those to be gained in Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises, but I will always maintain that for me it was a lovely way to end the week, and a lovely way to take stock of my good fortune, BDSM-related or not. Knowing that that was where I was supposed to be, that if the phone rang I didn't have to answer it, that the man I loved would be happy to see me there, even if his class had gone terribly, that this was a full and perfect offering of my erotic self to him, which was my reasonable erotic worship of him, all of that seemed to take the tension from me so thoroughly that I often actually drifted off to sleep, my head pillowed on Charles' throne's seat, to be awakened by his tender kiss.

Premarital domestic discipline: EXPLORATIONS files

I'm re-running the stories that serve as deep background for EXPLORATIONS. The story continues from this post, last week.
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As summer turned to fall, and we both got ready to return to a more realistic academic existence, we agreed on a sort of baseline version of domestic discipline for a top and a bottom who can't get enough of BDSM but who need to finish post-graduate degrees at the same time they're living out their thrilling BDSM fantasies.

I was allowed to wear panties to class, and to the library. Despite the violation of strict Réageanism, within whose confines the sub's cunt and bottomhole must be available for use at all times without exception, I reluctantly realized that the distraction involved in constantly being reminded (which is of course what it's all about, for O) of that availability, and the potential for even more distracting embarrassment as a consequence of that being reminded (friends noticing that the seat I've just gotten up from is wet, for example, because, having been reminded of my availability, I've been unable to keep myself from thinking about what use Charles might want to make of me later), and the worry about that potential embarrassment, all just made the pure Réagean practice impracticable for someone who needed to concentrate on finishing law school.

If I thought those panties were going to stay dry, however, simply because I had them on, I was wrong: the mere sound of Charles' voice on my cell-phone, asking me when I would be home, was enough to make them damp, and keeping my hand out of them seemed to be an even greater challenge now at 25 than it had been at 13, to my occasional disgust at myself. Dark library stacks with isolated carrels are perfect for study; they're also perfect for self-abuse by frustrated subs whose shaved pussies aren't receiving what they deserve from their betrothed lords' cocks as often as would be optimal. I would sometimes have to force myself to remain absolutely motionless on the hard library chair in order to be spared the delicious burning torment inside those modest panties for some short while.
At least we had no problems with sores or infections during this period! (Charles does say that he was constantly worried about a recurrence of his sore, though, because walking around campus with a constant erection apparently creates serious chafing issues.)

As a price for the weekday panties, I was not allowed to wear anything but sexy lingerie (and sometimes that was replaced either with nothing or with my butt-plug) when at home from Friday night through Sunday morning; if we went out during that period, even if we were having dinner with one or more of our parents, I wore no panties, and Charles would usually give me an agreed signal (tapping three times on the table), halfway through dinner, that meant "Miss Emily Tilton, 3L, must now go to the ladies' room and insert her butt-plug." I was required to carry said butt-plug in my purse at all times, even during the week, when it was laid down that if Charles decided thus he might walk over to the law library and whisper in my ear "Put it in, now." (He never did, but it was a fun fantasy.) 

Charles recounts that on one such occasion, at dinner with his parents, his Dad noticed the signal, and my submissive response (for it was simply impossible not to lower my eyes to the table and blush crimson, and worry that the scent of my arousal might be so strong as to fill the air of the restaurant, as I rose to attend to my shameful, wanton duty). After I'd left, Charles' Dad asked "What was that about?" Charles replied, "Um, I was reminding her to take some medicine." "Don't you think," his father responded, "Emily is a big enough girl that she can remember to take her medicine after dinner?" Charles, trying to keep a straight face: "Yes, but she needs to take some of it now, and some of it later." I generally did take a great deal of it later, to my submissive delight.