Different Loving: The World of Sexual Dominance and Submission (33 page)

When I first got into the relationship with Frank, I [felt that I] was hiding something and that he only loved me because he didn’t know everything about me. I believed that if he ever found out all of it, he wouldn’t love me anymore. Part of me said, “Either he takes me as I am or I’m not going to be here anymore.” Part of me wanted to shock him and wanted to say, “You think you love me, but do you know this? How do you look at me now?” When I could say that and he still came back and said, “I still love you, and the things that happened to you had nothing to do with who you are. I love
you
,” it gave me a lot of space to open up and to figure out what
happened and how much it affected me and whether I’m going to let it affect me now.

Before I remembered my abuse, I used to say, “I don’t know why I’m turned on by being used. That’s just the way I am.” I didn’t remember any of that stuff ever happening to me. Then I start getting some flashbacks where I did remember stuff like that happening to me. Most of my abuse was oral sex. I don’t remember incidents of being spanked or anything like that. But there were books lying around that I would read when I was [about] nine years old, and they had a lot of spanking. I can remember reading those books and being aroused by them.

I bought a vibrator when I was in high school, and one of my biggest fantasies was being caught playing with it and being spanked. From freshman year till I graduated and went into college, that was my number-one fantasy. In my first marriage we would always talk about tying each other up and spanking each other. [But] I always did the tying up and the spanking; it never went the other way. We never said I was the dom or anything like that. We did things, usually at my suggestion, but he always took it to mean that that’s what I wanted to do to him, not what I wanted him to do to me. He said, “We’ll take turns,” but it never got to be my turn. I would picture myself in his spot, but I didn’t get real enjoyment out of spanking him or out of tying him up. It became very frustrating for me. I even bought a four-poster bed, thinking, Take a hint! He never did. I talk about it with him now, and it’s pretty funny. He never even got that idea.

I married my first husband right after high school. It was like being married to my brother. It was very platonic. We were best friends in high school, but we were never in love. It was just the thing to do. We were 18, and we didn’t satisfy each other very much. We didn’t have a whole lot of communication. Two years after we were married, we were joining swinging clubs. I don’t think either of us was satisfied. The men that I was attracted to in swing clubs were always aggressive. We probably went to a party once a month for three years. I enjoyed myself maybe four or five times, and each one of those times it was with somebody who was very controlling. I had one person one time pull my legs apart and give me head, and [he] kept telling me over and over, “The rules are [that] you can’t move.” I really liked that, [but] I never saw him again.

After I was separated for about a year, I was seeing other people, and I was totally frustrated. I kept saying, “I don’t want the same kind of marriage. I don’t want equal footing. I want somebody who is smarter than me, more aggressive than I am, more controlling.” I wasn’t finding him. I even went into counseling. I thought there was something wrong with me. I didn’t know anything about D&S, but I was definitely worried that if I
really went ahead and did it, that I wouldn’t be able to take care of my kids [or] that I would get into an abusive relationship. I didn’t know that I could find somebody who could love me and beat me all in the same relationship. I was very concerned that I would even want that.

I joined CompuServe, and when I found the D&S support group suddenly, I met tons of dominant men. I got bombarded [with letters]. I met somebody who became my mentor. He did not pursue any sort of sexual relationship with me. He became somebody I could use as a sounding board. I had gotten to a point where I was really desperate. I had very low self-esteem. I was overweight, and my main criterion for meeting somebody was that they would meet me, not that they were necessarily interested in the same things that I was. I was excited and incredibly turned on, and I just didn’t care a lot about myself. I did some dumb things; I really did. You have to care enough about yourself to take precautions. Me, I had such a low self-esteem, I thought somebody was making a big sacrifice to do anything with me. I weighed 220 pounds, and I was five feet two. I thought that if somebody would meet me, boy, they would just be doing me the biggest favor in the whole world. It didn’t even occur to me that they could really hurt me. I was very unwilling to set any kind of guidelines or even to say that [the dominant] has to be sane. [One problem] could have been that a lot of my fantasies were very impersonal. It was always somebody who ordered things to be done no matter what I [felt]. So how could such a person like that be human and loving to me?

In the year or so that I was on line before I met Frank, I probably met at least 10 or 12 different people. I would always visit them. I never let anybody come to where I was. I was very frustrated, [because] all the people I met wanted me to not have kids. Somebody might be willing to have a sub, but I had to leave my kids with my ex, or they didn’t want me to work. I wasn’t happy with that. I’ve always worked. It’s part of who I am. I [even] met somebody who wanted to stick me in an apartment and bring me food and only take me out at certain times and that was it: no life of my own. What boggled me is that I knew that about him, and I still went and met him! I couldn’t stand a weekend over there.

I got to a point where I was really desperate for someone. I was warned that you have to really care about yourself before you start [in this], and you have to find someone else who cares about you. You really do. It can be dangerous. I got myself in some really, really tough situations. [For example], one of my fantasies is to go to bed with a black dom man. I thought, God, that’s all my fantasies rolled into one. I met somebody in Colorado who was black, and this mentor of mine kept telling me, “Lisa, don’t meet him! I think this guy is really into beating up white women.” I said, “Fine, it’ll be heavy;
it’ll be what I’m looking for.” Of course, [my mentor] always turned out to be right. I basically got in way over my head. He did all the things you’re
not
supposed to do. I came back looking like raw hamburger. I was welted from the back of my legs all the way up my thighs, my back, the back of my arms. It was grim. I didn’t know what to do. My first thought was [that] I was absolutely psycho to let somebody do that to me. Why didn’t I run and hide and say I’m never going to do it again? Why was I still intrigued? I still had the thought that somewhere out there was somebody that would do it right. I went to the [emergency room for the bruises, and] they knew immediately what had happened. They had seen it before. The doctor recommended that I go to a counselor. He said he thought that masochistic people in general need psychological help. He said, “You’re going to commit suicide after a while if you don’t start taking care of yourself.” I was very angry at him, but he got me pointed in the right direction.

When I went back on line, I said that I was in a relationship. That let me read and learn and hear other people talk without being bombarded [by private mail]. I finally started to look for somebody who was human, somebody who gave me the sense that he was looking for somebody to love, not just somebody to beat. One thing that appealed to me in Frank’s messages was his [description of an] ideal [situation]. He said, “It really adds a lot when you’re bringing your wife flowers when she’s in collar and cuffs.” And I thought, Wow! Somebody would bring me flowers? I thought Frank sounded human and real and not like a jerk; it really appealed to me. I wrote to him. In the first letter I told him that I was actively looking for a D&S relationship, full-time. I said I’d been through a lot and I was finally getting smart and not meeting anybody, but that I was looking. I said, “From the sound of your messages, we seem to be looking for the same thing.” And I told him, “I’m laying it on the line. I’ve got two kids; I’m divorced; and I work as a computer person at a law firm.” And if he wasn’t interested, that’d be fine, because I told him I’m not compromising anymore. That was one of the first times that I thought I was getting my shit together, and somebody still responded. I was so amazed that he wrote back.

I have nightmares sometimes [and] flashbacks, and for me, the best way to get me through one of those is for him to completely take control of me, to hold me down and make me focus and be aware of who I am now, not where I was in the flashback. If Frank [were to] let me go off and be in my flashback, I get worse and worse, and I go farther and farther away. I think I need control to feel like he still loves me and pays attention to me. To dominate me you have to know every single thing about me. [Before], I wouldn’t open up and tell him things. I would change the subject if I felt like he was getting too close. A self-preservation instinct
would emerge. But [I found that] the more honest I was, the more he knew about me, and the more he’d get inside my head, the happier I was. There was finally a point where I knew he’s not going to betray me and he’s not going to hurt me. He knows everything about me, he still loves me, and he still does all the things that I thought only somebody who could be distant and cool could do.

At times he doesn’t want to push me too hard, [because] I’ve had all these flashbacks. [Some] people say, “Give them space; leave them alone; let them go inside themselves and regain their control.” That doesn’t work with me. But if Frank can see it happening and can reach out and make me stay here, and make me be a part of this, then I get past it and things are really good. It doesn’t matter if I’m being pushed by lots and lots of pleasure, if he’s making me come over and over and over again—which he likes to do [and] which I like—there gets to be a point where I don’t want it anymore. I tend to go back into myself. It doesn’t matter how open I am to start with. And you’ve got to be able to be with me and see it happening and to go beyond that.

I like all kinds of control. [For example], I’ve always liked to go play with my vibrator; I’ve done that
since
high school. For a while he would say, “Fine, play with it.” I had to ask him, but if I did, I always got permission. I used to get irked! [And he’d say], “Why do you ask me if you don’t want me to say ‘Fine?’ ” We’ve had to be really honest with each other. I had to say, “I get disappointed if you say okay.” [Maybe] I wanted to know that he wanted to be a part of it. We had to be really blunt and honest with each other about everything.

We have beams above our bed. I had always wanted hooks above my bed. I like to hang upside-down. We were doing that last night. If we get the legs up high enough, then my back takes a lot of the weight. I can usually sustain that for a long time. That’s one of my all-time favorites. I feel very, very vulnerable. For me, if I can wiggle away, if I can squirm enough to where I feel like I have some control—even if it’s not the control of getting away, but the control of [deciding] where [the blow will] land—that’s too much control for me. But if I can’t wiggle away and I’m very vulnerable and very exposed and what’s going to happen is what’s going to happen and I can’t get away, then I get beyond just the pain, and things happen for me. He tied me up and left me outside last week, and when he made love to me afterwards, he said I was like an animal. I felt more uninhibited than I had ever felt.

Our regular—I call it our vanilla—sex is very loving and very affectionate. It’s something that we do on a routine basis, and there’s always elements of D&S in it, but it’s not real heavy. It’s good, but the times that I’m really
involved and really turned on, it’s always very heavy D&S. Those are the times that I’m most uninhibited and most into [sex]. [And] I don’t even fantasize anymore: I remember. Our D&S experiences are the things that I think about, and they keep me excited. For me, D&S play is much more satisfying [than regular sex].

We [also] go for periods when he’s not letting me come from any sort of vanilla sex at all. He’s made me come from spanks, he’s made me come just from putting his fingers in my mouth and things like that, but I have to be feeling very, very submissive and to be in tune to myself. It can’t just happen any time. It’s a cumulative effect. When we go for a month without any sort of D&S anything, we go back 10 paces. My pain threshold goes way down, and I get frustrated. There has to be a continuum or I’m not going to orgasm from anything but very direct stimulation. But if [D&S] is a big part of our life, then I orgasm from other things.

I think the most memorable experience is probably the first time I orgasmed from being beaten. We had some child-free time, like two days in a row. We hadn’t had a whole lot of time by ourselves for weeks, and I spent a lot of time with him clothed and me naked, with just a collar. It’s hard for me to walk around [like that], but after a couple of hours of having no choice, it gets easier. It affects you psychologically. He told me the day before that he was going to beat me the next day. He tried other things first. I was tied up on the bed, and I know he used a paddle and a cat. He played with me a lot, and I had come several times already. Then he told me that he was going to beat me, and he used the riding crop, and I came. I don’t cry very often. I don’t know if it’s pride or what, but it takes a lot to make me cry from being beaten. It’s only happened two or three times, but I had gotten to where I was crying, and he still wouldn’t stop, and I ended up having an orgasm. I was shaking, crying, and coming at the same time. It was something!

It was also memorable when he left me [tied up outside]. It heightened all of my senses. I was sure I could hear cars. We’re way out in the woods, and I was hearing cars come up our driveway—they were probably down on [the highway], which is pretty far—but my senses were that much heightened. I was tied tightly, with my hands held pretty close to the tree. He said he was gone probably 20 minutes. [To me] it felt like hours, like forever; I thought he was never going to come back. [It was] a sunny day. [I was conscious of] the flies and the bees and the flowers. I could hear the wind in the trees. I had just been beaten, and I could feel the heat from the back of my thighs [and] the wind blowing on the welts. It was incredible.