The (New and Improved) Loving Dominant (9 page)

The best approach is to think seriously about what kind of a submissive you want and what he or she would want to read. Be as realistic as possible. Fantasy at this stage is counterproductive.

You should also try to project a confident, assured air. The world can be very disappointing for anyone seeking to make a kinky match. After all, we have all compatibility needs, and we also need someone whose kinky needs and desires complement our own. However, showing frustration isn’t the best way to find a submissive. Relax for a moment and try to put yourself in the mindset of someone looking for a dominant partner. How would you react to lines like, “I know most of you people are phonies,” or, “I’m getting so tired of liars and bullshitters?” They may be honest indications of how you are feeling, but that isn’t the goal of the advertisement.

Your advertisement should include information about yourself, but lying is a serious mistake. Some lies will be discovered almost immediately. One wannabe dominant, who described himself as “tall and imposing,” was quite successful at meeting submissives, but the meetings rarely went beyond that. He couldn’t understand why. A glance in the mirror might have helped: he was five-feet six and weighed less than 120 pounds. You can imagine the suspicions submissives might have felt about any other information he had given them.

Other lies may take a while to come out. Marital status, amount of experience, group membership and such are difficult to lie about consistently. Every person is different, but the intensity of trust necessary for a BDSM relationship rarely survives such falsehoods.

Honesty is the best policy

In general, the approach in seeking male submissives can be a bit more abrupt than that in seeking females. Speaking more plainly, what will scare the bejesus out of a novice female may be just right to attract a novice male. Of course, the perfect strategy is a matter of hot debate among those who use this approach. I have noticed that of my female dominant friends who run the worship-at-my-feet- while-I-whip-your-ass type of advertisement do tend to get more responses than their more sedate colleagues. However, they also tend to attract a greater percentage of mindfuckers and no-shows. All in all, it seems to even out in regard to the number of male submissives who actually appear.

When writing my advertisements, I acted on the assumption that submissive women are not looking for someone who will declare dominance. Almost all men will loudly claim that they are dominant; most are wrong. In any case, the simple declaration of dominance is not enough to motivate most submissive women. They are not looking for declarations of brutality or strength. Almost anyone can swing a whip or a paddle. Nature has made most men stronger, at least in their torso and shoulders, than most women.

What they are seeking is some evidence that the person behind the advertisement is trustworthy and sensitive to their needs. Writing an advertisement that reflects these qualities is much harder than simply announcing dominance. Rather than providing a set of catch phrases or sample advertisements that anyone could copy I suggest that you look deep inside yourself. If you still cannot convey the requisite sensitivity in words, you may not be ready to hang a riding crop from the left side of your belt.

When you get a response to your advertisement, don’t be surprised if a submissive, particularly a female submissive, is forthright in demanding more information about you. After all, the submissive is the one who must feel secure in giving up freedom. There may be a few maniacal axe-wielding submissives around, but I haven’t heard of them. The Ted Bundys of the world have made submissives understandably nervous.

The most extreme example of demanding information I ever encountered was M, a thirty-year-old female submissive, who was a top-level executive in a nationwide store chain. She began with a standardized, thirty-minute interview probing into details of the potential master’s experience and background. As she put it, “I look at it as if I were hiring a vice president. After all, I am going to have to put my safety into his hands. I want to know if he can handle it.” She went through more than fifty candidates before settling on one. They are quite happy together.

Going from online to face-to-face

One of the big questions on everyone’s mind when they think they have clicked with someone online is, “When should we meet?”

As with so much in the Scene, there is no hard and fast rule. One big factor is the distance between the correspondents. Obviously, except for a wealthy, leisure-class minority, the cost, both in money and time lost from work, is a significant factor. It’s a lot easier to make a trip to the local mall food court than to schlep yourself across the continental US. It’s only human, and realistic, to have in the back of your mind, “What if she/he isn’t right for me?” Writing off a few gallons of gas is a lot easier than doing the same for a three- figure plane ticket.

My personal advice is to meet as soon as both parties are comfortable that there’s a real possibility of something there. With a carefully planned, public meeting, the worst that can happen is you discover, “this ain’t gonna work.”

A basic axiom of life is that until (and sometimes not even then) you meet someone face to face, you don’t know them. Just what should a dominant or submissive find out about a potential partner before making that big step? What you should know about another person before you meet is largely up to you and your comfort level.

I’ve seen lists of questions in web pages that go far beyond what most people would need for comfort and, in fact, become unacceptably intrusive. For example, let’s say you ask for a social security number? Now, what could you do with such a number to assure yourself that the person is safe enough to meet with? It’s not the most convenient of factoids. Think of what kind of harm someone could do with your social security number should they prove to be malevolent. This is a case where the downside is much greater than the upside.

It’s not so much what you ask, but what you confirm. I’ve known people who before meeting another asked about the person’s home and cell phone number, his date of birth, his place of employment and where he lived and then blissfully went off on the date, thinking they knew him, only to learn later that not one thing they had been told was accurate.

I have a paperweight that was given to me by the staff of the student newspaper at the University of Southern Mississippi that reads “If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out with an independent source,” a phrase I had pounded into their heads about checking out every detail one is given. You may think you “know” something, but until you confirm it you’ve only been “told” it.

With telephone numbers, I advise to call him or her on them. As for addresses, I say send a nice vanilla card to the address and then ask him or her if it’s been received and a question or two to see if it really has been. Until you’ve confirmed information of a given fact, you don’t really know it.

Some people put considerable stock in references. I have mixed feelings about them. One big problem about the online scene is that most people only know someone from his or her chat, postings and emails. X may be completely sure that Y is a wonderful person, but X isn’t going to be putting his or her ass on the line; you are. If you ask for a reference about someone, be sure to ask just how the referrer knows the person. If it is purely online, then it’s unlikely they really know much more than you do.

Any online reference should be treated with reasonable skepticism if you don’t really know the referrer. It’s not all that difficult for someone to create a “sock puppet” identify for the sole purpose of validating and praising his or her primary identity.

Finally, beware of “friendly warnings” from online sources. It’s far from unheard of for someone to spawn a campaign of vilification out of a desire for revenge. Quite often, “this person isn’t a real submissive,” or, “she’s a lying tease,” translates to “she said ’no’ to me.” Multiple sources giving the same information shouldn’t increase the credibility because, as noted before, some people have “sock puppet” identities, and other people simply pass on warnings in an unquestioning belief that negative news is more credible.

Many in the scene use “safe calls” or “silent alarms” for the first few meetings. These, in their simplest form, mean contacting a friend, telling him or her where you’ll be and who you will be with. At a prearranged time, you call your friend and let him or her know you are all right. Some people arrange an innocent-seeming code to signal a problem without needing to come right out and say it. The explicit arrangement is that, if you miss the call or signal there is a problem, the friend should come over or contact the police.

It’s a good idea, if you do it properly. I’ve heard of situations where the couple simply lost track of time only to be reminded of it when the cops came banging on the door. Other times, nothing happened because the contact person didn’t consider it significant that the call was not made.

To me, the real value of a safe call is the reaction of the other person when you mention one is in play. Anyone with a clear conscience will just nod or might suggest that the two of you set an alarm clock so you won’t miss the call. A big, flashing red light would be raising a fuss or even refusing to go through with the meeting.

An extreme example of a safe call working, although not exactly as the individuals intended, was the case of a Texas psychologist, who wanted to meet with a guy she’d met online. She called a man, Travis, who is as well known for his proficiency with a singletail as for his skill in handling social issues, and she asked him to be her safe call. The man she was expecting to meet was John Edward Robinson Sr., who used the screen name of “Slavemaster.” When he heard about the safe call, Robinson became outraged and beat the woman before releasing her. She contacted Travis. They contacted the police in Kansas where Robinson lived. The investigation that ensued eventually uncovered dead, tortured bodies in oil drums on his property. He was later convicted in 2003 of multiple murders.

Fortunately, the number of “Slavemasters” in this world is incredibly small. By and far, almost all of the meetings I know of which that have gone bad happened because of ignorance or over expectations on the part of the individuals involved. However, there are some bad people out there, and a safe call is one reasonable precaution to take for an initial and maybe the next few meetings.

At the very least, leave information about the person you are meeting somewhere. That can be as dramatic as giving a friend a sealed envelope with the request “If you don’t hear from me by Thursday, open this” or as simple as leaving the same information on your refrigerator door or on your bed.

I strongly recommend that you don’t meet with the intention of having a scene. The first meeting is a time to exchange a lot of information, and it is hard to keep someone’s attention when she or he is worrying or looking forward to what will be happening in the next few minutes. It also gives you a chance to digest what you’ve learned after the intense emotional flux of the initial meeting has receded.

Some people may read these suggestions, thinking, “This stuff is fine for submissives/ women, but I’m a dominant/guy. I don’t need this sort of stuff.” Maybe you don’t, but in this world, no one is completely safe. It’s important to know what’s available so you can model the situation such that you are comfortable and your safety needs are being met.

Public clubs, organizations and events

For the purposes of this book, I am using the word “club” in the sense of “nightclub,” a commercial establishment. We’ll get to member-run not-for-profit organizations in a few pages.

Public clubs.
To many who have not experienced them, public clubs sound like nirvana. Hundreds of leather-clad dominants and submissives mixing in an erotically charged atmosphere. Your perfect submissive could be waiting on bended knees for you to grasp the collar and drag him or her off to your lair. In real life, they are fun and exciting. However, as is so often the case, the reality is not quite the same as fantasy.

There are two types of clubs: scene and non-scene. At a scene club, you can actually whip, spank, or otherwise play with your submissive. Non-scene clubs are places where you can show off your gear, talk to potential partners and relax with others in the scene, but no actual discipline can take place, at least overtly.

As at most non-scene clubs, most of the activity consists of meeting and talking with other members of the scene. If two or more people hit it off, they go elsewhere for their more serious amusements.

Both scene and non-scene clubs can be very exciting places to be. However, there are some problems that prevent them from being the answers to a dominant’s dream.

Both attract throngs of tourists. Either because of a deep-seated fear or through simple bad manners, some of the tourists may behave rudely and inappropriately. For example, you will never hear anyone in the scene shouting, “Hit her again, harder,” during someone’s scene. Some clubs try to minimize the tourist trade by imposing a strict dress code. To enter, you must be dressed in leather, latex or other fetish gear or you must be a transvestite or transsexual in drag. Alligator-polo-shirt-wearing frat rats usually don’t get past the door.

Strict dress codes are the rule in most of the London clubs I’m familiar with. Many of them use the premises of more conventional clubs when kinkiness is not in session. For example, The Pussycat Club in Hendon clearly spelled out their stand in the advertisements, writing, “Strict dress code. Leather, Rubber, Bondage, PVC and TV. No Denim, No Fur, No Cameras. No Swingers.” Severin’s Kiss in Soho took a similar stand.

In most scene clubs and non-scene clubs, leather and black clothing is standard wear, but conventional street clothing is acceptable. However, you will probably want to dress up a bit to fit in and distinguish yourself from the tourists to get into the flow of the scene. After all, as one psychologist who was talking to a scene member, delightedly exclaimed, “You get to have Halloween every weekend.”