Domination & Submission: The BDSM Relationship Handbook (53 page)

“Sex slaves?”
he asked. “You’re telling me you have
sex slaves?”

“No, Dad.”  I replied, “Technically, they’re
not
slaves
, they’re
submissives.
  There’s a
difference.  And besides, that’s what I’ve been
trying to explain
to you.  It’s
not
all about
sex.”

“Right,” he nodded, and pondered the point for a
moment before continuing, “But, they’re basically
sex slaves, right?
 
You can tell them to do
anything
, and they
have to do it
, no
matter what?”

I silently cursed myself for starting this
conversation, but knew I had no choice now but to continue with it.  I
explained, “Dad,
it’s not like that.
It’s not like that at
all.
 
These are loving relationships.  My girls do what they do out of love and
devotion, and an intense desire to serve and please their Master.  They
don’t do it because they
have to.”

“But... you’re their
Master
,” he countered.
“That pretty much makes them your
sex slaves
, right?”

Desperately wanting this line of discussion to end,
I simply replied,
“Yes,
Dad.  I guess you could say they are
sex
slaves.” 
I suddenly understood what it was like to be one of those
poor bastards who confesses to a crime he didn’t commit because he just wants
the world to start making sense again;
he just wants to wake up and have it
be over.
  At that point, I probably would have told him that my girls
were
sex slaves from the planet Gor
if that’s what he wanted to hear,
especially
if it would drive a stake through this discussion’s heart and
finish it.
  
Unfortunately, Dad was nowhere
near
done.

“What about that little blonde girl you introduced
me to a couple of years ago, when I came for a visit.  Was
she
a
sex slave?” 
Yes
, Dad.  “And that tall brunette you brought
with you to my wedding?  Was
she
a sex slave?” 
Yes,
Dad.  “And what about that hot
Eurasian
girl, the one with the epic
tits?  Was
she
...”
 Yes,
Dad,
all of them!
 
They were all
sex slaves, every last one of them! 
Can we just talk
about
sports, or something, now?
 

But, no such luck.  My father spent the next
half hour naming or describing
every woman I have ever known
since I was
a teen, asking,
“Was she a sex slave?”
  I started looking for spots
along the highway where I might be able to slow down just long enough push him
out of the car into a
hedge
or culvert.  I sought solace in the
fact that he would eventually run out of names to ask me about, but then he did
something just plain
weird.
  He began listing practically every
woman that
he’d
ever been involved with,
and asking me if I had ever
dated their daughters.
 Perhaps it was just his
oh-so-subtle
way of saying,
“Hey, I’ve had my share of experiences, too!”
but all it
really
did was make me want to run up to the nearest Louisiana State Trooper and lunge
for his gun in the desperate hope that he might
shoot me
and put me out
of my misery.

The rest of the trip passed without any discussion
of my lifestyle or my relationships and for that, I was
exceedingly
grateful.  A few days went by, and I began to think that perhaps I’d been
a bit
hard on him;
that maybe my perceptions had been
tainted
by
my tendency to become easily annoyed.  In fact, I’d forgotten all about it
when I took him by my office to introduce him to my boss and to a few of my
co-workers.  Dad was spry for an eighty-three-year-old, but his
hearing
had gotten progressively worse over the years.  This sometimes resulted in
the volume of his
own voice
being inappropriate to the circumstances,
and unfortunately,
this
turned out to be one of those
circumstances. 

At the office, we chatted with my boss for a few
minutes and then I took Dad down the hall to meet a colleague and friend, who
just happened to be a
stunningly beautiful,
shapely brunette.  Dad
slipped effortlessly into the role of a charming and witty
raconteur
,
telling funny stories and flirting shamelessly with her and the other women who
worked in that department.

As we said our goodbyes and turned to leave, Dad
leaned in close to me to deliver a stage whisper which was, in fact,
loud
enough for everyone within fifty feet to hear.
  He said, “
Please
tell me she is one of those
sex slaves
you’ve been telling me about!”

Health Issues

When you have your health, you are truly
blessed.  Conversely, when age, illness or injuries prevent you from doing
the things you enjoy most,
life sucks. 
It’s a sobering thing to
contemplate the fact that
we will each
someday have to come to terms
with age or circumstances that make certain types of BDSM play impractical,
painful, or dangerous.  It’s at times like these that it is important to
remember that we are more than the
sum total of our kinks
, and that we
should never allow ourselves to be defined solely by our
dungeon activities.

Who you are
trumps
what you do.

I once had a friend tell me, “I could
never
be a submissive.”  Frankly, I hear this
all the time
, and I’m
rarely surprised by the reasoning or misconceptions behind such statements, but
this woman was the exception to the rule.  I asked her
why
she
believed she could never be a submissive.  She replied, “I could never be
a submissive
because I have bad knees.”

In
her
mind, a submissive was
someone who
kneels.  Bad knees
meant
no kneeling
, and therefore, she
concluded that she could never be a submissive.  I told her that
kneeling
doesn’t make you a submissive;
any more than standing in my garage makes
you a
car.
  Since then, she has enjoyed many happy years as a
submissive in the lifestyle.

Other health issues which could significantly
complicate your D/s relationship include BDSM play-related injuries, mental
health issues, and sexually transmitted diseases.  The wisest strategy to
employ in each of these cases is to take preventative precautions, seek
immediate medical treatment as appropriate, and don’t let these setbacks make
you bitter.  As long as you are able to find some measure of joy within
yourself and in your partner,
there’s hope.

Break-ups
happen,
but they should never be
allowed to break your spirit, or to convince you that there aren’t
good
people
out there who are definitely worth the effort of loving them. 
It can sometimes be all too easy to fall into the trap of thinking:
there
were problems in this D/s relationship, therefore D/s relationships must be the
problem. 
D/s relationships fail for many of the same reasons other
kinds of relationships fail, many of which we’ve already covered in this
chapter.  One way to cope with the disappointment and sadness associated
with the end of a relationship is to think of the experience
not as a
failure
, but as a process of
discovering one more way not to do it in
the future.
  You may end up
kissing a lot of frogs
before
finding your
Prince (or Princess) Charming.

Once you and your partner have reached a point where
you have made every possible and reasonable effort to save your relationship
without success, then it’s time to do the right thing and put an end to the
mutual misery.  The challenge, of course, is to do so without
recriminations or by causing unnecessary pain for your partner.  Just
because your relationship has become dysfunctional or you can see no clear path
to where you had hoped to be going
doesn’t mean you’ve stopped caring
about your partner.  Be sure to let your partner know that your
feelings
probably haven’t changed; the only thing that
has
changed is your
ability to make the relationship
work.

When a break-up occurs, I think it’s critically
important that we do whatever we possibly can to avoid lashing out at or
hurting our former partners.  I like to think that there are really just
two
kinds of break-ups.  The first is the
“I’m a cat person; you’re
a dog person, and I love you but this is never going to work out, so let’s stop
hurting each other”
kind of break-up.  And then, there’s the
“I’m a
cat person; you’re a dog person, and I thought I loved you, until you put my
cat in the microwave oven”
kind of break-up.  I probably don’t need to
tell you which type we should be striving for.

Regardless, a D/s break-up is
never
an easy
thing, nor should it
ever be. 
The saddest and most painful
experiences of my life have been those instances where I had to say goodbye to
someone I loved deeply.  Sometimes, love simply isn’t enough to sustain a
broken relationship.  Sometimes, mistakes are made that
can’t be undone
,
or things are said that
can’t be unsaid.
  Frankly, it pains me
greatly to even
think
about some of those agonizing, gut-wrenching
decisions and experiences, much less
tell
you about one.  But I
think it’s important,
and so I will.
  Her name was Joanne, and I
loved her very much.

Joanne sat on the edge of the bed, wringing her
hands and looking deeply troubled.  She’d been anxiously waiting all day
to speak to me, and now that I was there, she wasn’t quite sure where to
begin.  She knew that bringing a grievance to me always required a certain
amount of tact, and to be sure, she was usually quite adept at it.  But today
she just didn’t know if she would be able to keep her volatile emotions in
check long enough to say what needed to be said.

“Master, this rift between Jade and me doesn’t seem
to be getting any better.  I know you said that I should be patient, and
give her a little time; that I should try to see things from her point of view,
but...” she sighed, struggling to contain her emotions.  Joanne had moved
here from Colorado a year ago to form a polyamorous family with Jade and me,
and while the two women were certainly close, they weren’t as close as Joanne
had initially hoped they would be.

Over the course of the past twelve months, it had
become increasingly apparent that Jade was essentially a monogamous
heterosexual submissive who envisioned herself in a poly
vee
relationship,
with me as the hinge.  Joanne, on the other hand, was a poly bisexual
submissive who had envisioned herself in a full triad relationship, where all
three partners are equally loved and sexually attracted to one another. 
Obviously, this was a source of some frustration for the two women, and
frankly, I wasn’t exactly crazy about how things had developed, either. 
But this was not a perfect world, and on the whole, the three of us were
generally happy.

“I love her like a sister.  I really do, Master. 
You know that.”  She continued, “I would do anything for her.  But
she has this wall that she has built around herself that I just can’t seem to
break through.”

I nodded, looking into her lovely blue eyes, and
wiped away the tears that were beginning to well up there.  “Maybe that’s
the problem, baby.” I said, “Maybe you’re trying just a little too hard. 
The more you try to break through her defenses, the more she will fortify
them.  You can’t break into a person’s heart and expect to be welcomed with
open arms.  You need to wait for her to open a door and invite you
in.” 

She pondered this for a moment, and replied, “But
Master, she isn’t going to invite me in.  She is perfectly happy with the
way things are.  And what makes this even more frustrating to me is the
fact that you’re not doing anything to fix this!” 

I was surprised and somewhat perplexed by this
charge since I had, indeed, been working quite diligently both in the open and
behind the scenes to keep the peace between my two wonderful submissives, and
to subtly nudge each toward compromises that they could both live with.  I
said, “Believe me - I’ve been working very hard on this.  You’re just
going to have to trust me to work this out.”

That’s when Joanne blurted out the sentence that
changed everything in an instant.  I’ll probably never know if she really
meant what she said.  All I know is that some things, once said, can never
be unsaid, nor forgotten.  What she said was, “That’s the problem, Master. 
I don’t
believe
you, or
trust
you.”

I replied, “If that is true, then we obviously have
nothing more to say to each other.  You may consider yourself
released.  Goodbye, Joanne.”

I stood up and walked out of the front door and out
of her life forever.

It may seem as though we’ve just been through an
exhaustive
list of things that could possibly go wrong in a D/s relationship, but the sad
truth is
we’ve barely scratched the surface. 
My goal is
not
to
sour you on the idea of pursuing your D/s lifestyle dreams, if that’s what
you’re considering.  But I
do
want you to be aware of what
could
possibly go wrong, so you
can see it coming and, perhaps, even avoid
it. 

We began this chapter with a wonderfully illuminating
quote by Rex Stout: “A pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an
optimist nothing but unpleasant.”   Perhaps you’ve noticed how
trouble always seems to follow certain
so-called optimists
the way fat
kids go for cake.  
Happy thoughts
don’t keep potential
problems at bay.  The truth is trouble doesn’t really
care
whether
you’re
happy or unhappy
.  Trouble only takes notice when you are
prepared
. 

Relationship train wrecks
don’t just happen
.
 
Something
sets that train in motion. 
Someone
has their hand on
the throttle, as the engine accelerates ever faster to its cataclysmic
demise. 
No one
expects it to happen, so precautions may seem just
a tad
silly.
 Yet, after the fact, everyone will say they
saw it
coming.
 

For the ill-fated passengers on board
,
the
discussion is entirely
moot.