[Last update: 22 June 2008, 04:20 GMT]
Breaking Kat
“I think we’re attracting attention, Mistress,” Kat grinned.
It’s not every day when a Londoner might take a lunchtime stroll through St James’s Park and notice a woman seated comfortably on a bench while a second woman faces her, kneeling on the ground, wearing a studded leather collar around her neck with a dog leash leading back to the first woman’s hand.
It was a sunny day and windy, and we’d brought a little picnic snack of bread and cheese. I gazed affectionately at Kat, her eyes moistened and her cheeks reddened by the breeze and her black hair gleaming under the intense pre-Autumn sunlight.
“I should hope so, angel,” I said, enjoying a mild tingling in my abdomen.
A pair of older police constables had been strolling near; they slowed, glanced at each other, and stopped. The female one regarded her shoes briefly and scratched the back of her neck. The two looked at each other again and shrugged. The female one addressed Kat: “Is everything all right, Miss?”
Kat turned and smiled broadly. “Yes, thank you, Constable. Just running lines, rehearsing for a play.”
They weren’t foolish enough to believe that, of course, but they’d got what they needed: a plausible explanation, hence an adequate pretext to evade further involvement. I thought the male one scoffed a bit, but I didn’t much care. They had no reason to linger and promptly moved along, enacting their sworn duty of enjoying a fine afternoon.
And it was so very fine. The sky was brilliant blue. The trees had a stillness about them which I imagined to foreshadow the Fall; they were in repose from their Summer growth, gathering strength for the spectacle of colour they would soon put on, it seemed to me. I watched Kat as I always did, with an appreciation of her beauty and form as if she were some master work of pre-Raphaelite painting, with gratitude for the ways she delighted my senses, and with constant sexual interest. Her voice was sweet and musical, her movements self-conscious like those of a child ballerina. “Is this good?” her body seemed always to say. “Am I keeping your clit nice and tingly?” It was a gentle foreplay that we indulged constantly outside the bedroom.
As she knelt in front of me, she smeared a glistening glob of ripe Camembert over a toast cracker. She held it gingerly by her delicate, little-girl fingers and passed it slowly under her nose, breathed in, and let her eyes flutter. She caught a bit of the oozing cheese on a fingertip and tasted it pornographically for me before bringing the cracker to my lips. Her hand smelled of pussy and perfume.
I patted her head and rubbed it gently. “Good girl,” I said softly.
“Ooohh, Mistress,” she said, and she shuddered.
I’d met her eighteen months earlier in Berlin, where we were made to share a café table. Quite by chance, I’d been seated opposite the woman of my wettest dreams. A petite Eurasian girl with radiant black hair, flawless caramel skin as fine-grained as an infant’s, lips luxurious and full yet delicately shaped, half-slitty eyes sparkling black, high cheekbones, small chin, translucent white baby teeth, delicate, girlish fingers and toes—literally everything in ideal parts.
She was drenched in cosmetics and cheap bangles. She reeked of drug store perfume. She wore an impossibly taut Spandex top, a pleated miniskirt, and black vinyl fuck-me pumps. Her exquisite legs were bare. She was a glorious vision of femininity, the lurid kinderwhore makeup and clothes serving only to illuminate the incomparable refinement of her figure, complexion, and features. I gazed upon her hungrily, committing her to memory, this rare goddess. I studied her openly. She didn’t mind. She neither encouraged nor discouraged my attention. She was all right with it, no more, no less.
She was indeed a goddess, and I simply could not look away. No, and especially as she leaned forward—as she leaned toward me, this angel—as she lowered her head and parted soft, lush lips, and very slowly and very deliberately gobbed into the ashtray between us. Her sputum was stringy, and the gob danced and twirled slowly at the end of a long strand. The strand stretched, and contracted, and stretched again, as raw egg-white does. Then it broke, and the gob gently relaxed into the ashtray and spread among the cigarette ends. A glistening trail of mucous clung to her lower lip for a moment before she wiped it away with two fine and exquisitely manicured fingers.
I was stunned—virtually hypnotized. I couldn’t look away. I had never experienced such a thing. I had never been so sexually aroused in public before in my life.
Nothing could have stopped me. I introduced myself immediately and flirted insistently. She sulked and pouted. She told me that women shouldn’t be so familiar with one another and that she didn’t much care for foreigners anyway. She flipped her hair and tossed her head with a noisy jingle of earrings and bangles. She pursed her lips and rolled her eyes. She deliberately looked away when I spoke. I knew she was interested, and she couldn’t have played it better. I got her phone number and began inviting her out. She turned me down three times, but acquiesced on my fourth attempt. Within weeks we became a couple.
I knew she was submissive, but she didn’t, at least not at first. I sensed it from the start; she had the courage, the openness, and the willingness to trust. She showed it best during moments of distraction. Her responses to off-hand commands told me what she was: “turn here; hand me that; take off your shoes; try this on…” She would obey reflexively, immediately, and without question.
I broke her gradually. In the beginning, I would command her in casual ways, gently working my dominance into the fabric of our everyday relationship. During sex I would introduce a little pain, perhaps pinching her nipple when she was about to come, to see whether it delayed or encouraged her orgasm. I tried some mild verbal abuse, whispering in her ear, “Mmmm, you kiss so well, like a dirty girl, like a cheap slut.”
Pain and degradation did arouse her sexually, so I pushed her a little farther each time we made love. I began to bind her arms and feet during sex. I would blindfold her and take her from behind with a strap-on. Next came hard spanking, leaving her bottom hot to the touch and visibly red for a day or two, using my bare hand or the riding crop that I keep hanging on my bedpost. There was some biting, and brief moments of suffocation using my ass and pussy to cover her face. I used a couple of hinged plastic clothespins as makeshift nipple clamps before she graduated to proper ones, to introduce her gradually to pain and help her to recognise it as sexual.
Within a few months she asked me, what did it mean that she desired only to be used and degraded, and why was that all she fantasised about now. And so I gradually introduced her to the lifestyle, as it’s called, and there she found a context to help her understand these urges and needs. Terribly convenient for me, I know, and it raises a serious question: how do we differentiate between a healthy D/s relationship and mere exploitation and sexual bullying? The short answer is that in a true D/s partnership, the Dom/me has only as much control as the sub yields willingly. One can’t actually take control; one can only invite the sub to surrender, and this can happen only in an environment of mutual trust, respect, and love. The sadist doesn’t care if his victim is happy or fulfilled, and in fact probably prefers that they not be. The Dom/me, on the other hand, is motivated primarily by the sub’s desires and needs.
The long answer is the story that I’ve just begun to tell.
Breaking Kat 2
We finished the snack and walked slowly back to our London pied-à-terre. I wrapped the leash around my hand to keep it taut and held her close so that I could give her collar an affectionate yank from time to time as we strolled arm-in-arm. We bathed and changed, then Kat prepared dinner. She was not a talented cook by any stretch, yet nothing delighted me more than to watch her gambolling in the kitchen, bare legged and costumed in cut-off jeans up to her crotch, a flimsy halter top, and spiky, strappy heels. She’d cut the pockets out of the shorts and hacked off the legs strategically to reveal that gorgeous patch of tender skin and deliciously recurved form where ass and thigh converge.
Her breasts weren’t particularly big, or particularly small for that matter; but they were incomparably firm and round and perfectly proportioned. Her nipples were milk-chocolate brown, caramel smooth—almost translucent—and looked as if they’d melt in your mouth. She wore the halter to expose her long, silky midriff. I never knew a woman who could integrate juvenile innocence and freshness with raw, red-light-district sleaze so skilfully.
Her black hair flowed behind her as she moved about the kitchen, preparing a ghastly mixture of bangers and pan-fried kimchi. She held a cigarette and a glass of wine in one hand and a wooden spatula in the other. She pranced awkwardly on the terracotta floor in her heels, smoking and sipping wine and carelessly stirring the pot from time to time.
The kitchen was a classic California Yuppie model with teak accents, a large island with a hob, counter, and sink, and far too many cabinets and appliances around the walls. An open rack of hooks above the island completed the damage, with pots and utensils dangling in the stereotypical gesture. Shadowy “dramatic” track lighting gave it a pseudo intimacy which I rather loathed, except when Kat was there to redeem it.
And redeem it she could. She put down her implements and posed, hands on hips, then gave her incredibly resilient tits a side-to-side shake for me.
“It’s my Mum’s recipe, Mistress,” she said giggling. “But somehow it smells a lot better when she makes it.”
“If it turns out shite I can whip something up,” I said.
She pranced awkwardly towards me in those heels like a little girl in her mother’s shoes and brought her cigarette to my lips. The stagey track lighting did wonders for that heavy, silken hair of hers, I do have to confess.
She teased my nipple with a fingernail and whispered in my ear, “You English ladies all have such fabulously big boobies, don’t you Mistress?”
“Irish,” I corrected her.
She pushed away from me and returned to the stove. She tasted the greasy concoction with an expression of disgust. She carried it to the far corner of the kitchen.
“Let’s order something, please Mistress,” she said as she dropped it, pot, spatula and all, into the bin. She kicked off her shoes and made for the living room.
I joined her on the sofa. She arranged flawless legs in a feline pose with her fleshy little-girl feet in my lap. I rang our favourite Chinese place.
She leaned towards my face, gently brushing it with her hair, and unbuttoned my slacks.
“Oh, yes, Ms Welles. What can we do for you this evening, Ma’am?” the telephone said.
Kat pulled my slacks down past my hips. She was kneeling on the sofa now with that magnificent black hair draped over my lap.
“Well, Mr. Shinn, what looks good today?”
“Oh, very nice lobsters today, Ms Welles. Fresh from Iceland, just flown in this morning.”
I could feel Kat’s breath on my mound as she pressed her soft, full lips onto it.
“Well now, Mr. Shinn, how would you propose to do them for us?”
“Ms Welles, today Chef has been grilling them split and lightly pan-frying them with his XO sauce, lobster stock, and mixed vegetables. Customers have been very pleased, Ma’am.”
Kat had begun kissing my pussy—little light kisses all around my outer lips. The moist heat of her breath penetrated and made me shudder briefly.
“Mr. Shinn, that sounds wonderful; but I rather think we might fancy something lighter. A cold dish, perhaps? I wonder if Chef has a suggestion?”
“Very good Ma’am; I will ask. Please hold the line, Ms Welles.”
“He’s got me on hold,” I said to Kat.
“Mmmm,” she said, “I’m gonna keep you on hold Mistress, hehehe.”
And she would. I stroked her hair lovingly as she went about it, appreciating the weight of it in my fingers. “Good girl,” I whispered.
“Ooohh, my Mistress,” she gasped.
She was bringing me along but she knew my timing and skilfully kept me from the edge. I delighted in her hair and the sight of her lush, full lips kissing me.
“Ms Welles,” the telephone said, “Chef would like to try something new with your permission, Ma’am.”
“All right, Mr. Shinn; let’s hear it,” I said.
“Mmmm,” Kat said, a bit too loudly. You could tell from the sound that she had something in her mouth. “The smell of your pussy alone is enough to make me come, Mistress.”
“Ms Welles, Chef would be honoured to present you with a raw lobster-tail tartare with whole, lightly-cooked lobster claw meats on a bed of lettuce and sesame leaves, accompanied by dollops of golden Ossetra caviar and bundles of steamed enoki mushrooms, seasoned with the raw lobster juices and a drops of reduced lobster stock, garnished with saffron threads, black sesame seeds, and a sprinkling of crumbled duck-skin craquelin.”
“Now Mr. Shinn, you’re speaking my language.”
“The dish is served chilled and the raw lobster juices will need time to gel in the refrigerator,” he went on. “The craquelin is sprinkled on just before serving to preserve the crunch, Ms Welles. It adds texture and an earthy element to the flavour.”
Kat was making the most delightful erotic noises.
“Chef will need about two hours to prepare it for you, Ma’am. Will that be acceptable?”
“It will indeed, Mr. Shinn. And please ask Chef to surprise us with the balance of the meal.”
Kat undid her cut-offs and let them drop to her knees. She reached under herself and back and rubbed her pussy with two fingers, then presented them to me glistening and fragrant. “Look how wet I am!” she demanded. “Nothing makes me hotter than worshipping your pussy.”
I licked the slippery wetness from her fingers, savouring her taste and scent. “Don’t you dare make me come,” I whispered. “We’ve got two hours to kill.”
“Yes Ms Welles,” the telephone said. “We’ll be at your door at ten o’clock or thereabouts, Ma’am.”
I rang off and led Kat to our candle-lit bedroom. “Sit with your back to the headboard,” I said, and switched on the stereo.
Breaking Kat 3
Beneath a fine little replica of Cimabue’s Florence crucifix that I treasured, to the sound of the Matthäuspassion, I knelt straddling her thighs and chained her cuffed wrists to the bedposts. Her arms were outstretched above her head, like the figure above her. Her face was soft and relaxed, her eyes peaceful and mild: the trapped prey offering its neck to the predator when it finally must acknowledge the paramount decisions of nature, and in that moment wishes more that the predator be fed than it wishes to live.
This would soon change and a cycle of superficial submission, leading to panic and defiance, in turn leading to weakening resistance and ultimately to surrender, would commence.
First, her shoulders and neck would begin to cramp and burn as muscle fatigue set in, and she would start to fight. I fastened another chain around her waist, cinched tight in the meat between her hips and ribs to prevent her sliding forward and to limit her breathing. Then I chained her ankle cuffs to the bed rails, spreading her wide, making the tendons in her groin taut and prominent.
I stepped back to watch her. “That hurts, doesn’t it, bitch?” I said.
Her face glowed with satisfaction. “Ooohh God, Mistress…so good.”
But Kat’s expression of pleasure quickly grew into one of distress. Her muscles began to tremble and beads of sweat emerged on her forehead as she struggled. I watched her face while the burning in her shoulders grew more intense; she tried to ease it by shifting, but it did her no good.
“You’ve been here before, my little fuck toy. You know the aching in your neck and shoulders will grow and grow until it’s unbearable and you have no choice but to release into it.
“Your pussy is wet already, anticipating the buzz that will trigger a hard orgasm. You love to be bound and spread, don’t you, ma chienne, mon esclave? You like to be helpless and exposed, vulnerable and controlled. I see your swollen pussy lips glistening with cum as you contemplate being used and enjoyed, taken and made to please me in ways that I will choose.”
Her eyes rolled back and she groaned. “Oh my God Mistress, it’s really starting to burn now. Coming on so fast! Aching so deep and burning, so deep, oh shit….oh fuck…Jesus!”
Her crisis was starting. She twisted violently against the restraints, sweaty and determined, her eyes suddenly fierce and her chains clattering loudly on the headboard.
I smiled. “Feel how sexy it is to be used, my little fuck toy…so sexy…so very sexy. The pain is spreading inside you in waves, like an orgasm. It comes in its own time, not when you are ready, not when you choose. It starts gently, then rushes in suddenly and takes you unprepared.”
Her eyes narrowed and her face was twisted in exertion. “Please Mistress, I can’t take it…it hurts, it hurts, so…fucking…much.”
“Open your heart little one. Surrender to the pain. Surrender to me. Don’t fight it. You can’t fight it. You must welcome this experience that I’ve chosen for you. Because this is your fate. You were born into submission, born into service.”
Her mouth was clenched tight; she spoke through her teeth, “Yes Mistress, I am trying…to let go…for you…aaaahhh!”
“Let go, ma gentille chienne. Release into the pain. Confront it; feel it; and recognise how sexual it is. So sexy, it makes your clit pulse…makes it throb. A bright, painful vibration deep in your core, stirring you. A bright, jagged feeling so very sexy, transporting you.”
“Mistress….aaaahhh! I’m not strong enough for you…”
“Yes, you are; I know it.”
“But it hurts so fucking bad,” she pleaded.
“You are strong enough ma salope. I have faith in you. I know you can release. You worship me. There is nothing but me, my needs, my desires. You lose your very self in me; you drift away from this world when you feel my power and control.”
“Oui…je suis votre chienne, Maîtresse, votre chienne! I’m lost…ooohh, my Mistress…”
“Yes, my little one, lost…drifting, surrendering, floating in my power. This is my love you feel, not punishment. The pain you feel is my love, my control, my own presence inside your very body. Welcome it. Pain becomes pleasure as you abandon yourself to me, to the Mistress who possesses you. Welcome the pain that comes from me, from my heart, from my love, and washes over you.
“It feels so sexy to surrender…so sexy to discard yourself, to discard your will, discard your pride, discard your very dignity. My love reaches into you, my love and protection, just for you. You are so loved, Kat: so loved, so wanted…and so fucking used.”
The panic had passed. She tossed her head back and her eyes began to soften. Her face began to relax, her expression shifting from defiance to calm acceptance. She had fought her fight and transcended the pain. Now she was entering that state of submission where pain and abuse become profoundly sexual and tremendously stimulating—where every sensation goes right to your clit. She began to wriggle and grind on the bed, humping it unconsciously, rubbing her bare ass hole on the mattress and rolling her eyes in obvious sexual pleasure. Her face was flushed and sweaty. Strands of damp, matted hair stuck to her cheeks. Her eyes were moist and bloodshot and they shone like jewels in the candle light. I watched with joy as they slowly filled with gleaming wetness and then overflowed with tears, spilling freely down her cheeks. I held her gaze deliberately as she wept openly, and said in a stage whisper, “Fuck you, bitch.”
She smiled weakly but so serenely: “Maîtresse, ma Reine. Ma Reine!”
This was her moment of surrender. From here, pain, humiliation, verbal abuse—anything I might do to her—would become sexually stimulating with an overwhelming intensity that cannot be approached except through this experience. I’ll probably go to Hell for saying this, but this is the ecstasy of Saint Theresa, the ecstasy of that divine, red-hot spear thrust into her repeatedly, of which she wrote, “so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it. The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than God. The pain is not bodily, but spiritual, though the body has its share in it. It is a caressing of love so sweet which now takes place between the soul and God.”
I took Kat’s nipple clamps and held them in front of her by the chain, taunting her. “You want your clamps, don’t you, little fuck toy? Hmmmm? You do, don’t you, my little pain slut?”
Her eyes widened, reaching toward me. “Oh yes, very much Mistress,” she whispered.
“Beg for them, ma petit porcelet. Beg Mistress, you chained little slave bitch.”
“Please God, Mistress, fucking do it…ooohh please Mistress, clamp my nipples hard, I beg you, I beg you, ooohh.”
Her eyes rolled back as straddled her and pulled her nipples, pinching them and rolling them in my fingers, relaxing them and stretching them, and making the caramel brown colour take on a red hue. I attached her clamps and tightened the rings, pinching the ends of her brown nipples toward a darker hot redness.
My voice became soft, monotonous, and hypnotic as I slowly brought her to orgasm: “Let go, my slave, totally let go. Sob for me like a child…release everything.
“The sound of your voice in pain is so sexy to me, like the sound of your voice in orgasm. There is no punishment, there is no shame. You are with Mistress: our souls in harmony, sub and Domme…a love that no one else knows, a love reaching into you, thrilling you, claiming you, owning you, radiating inside you.
“You are losing yourself in me, losing yourself in the pain I choose for you. Bright, tingling pain that spreads from your nipples, exciting every nerve, penetrating your body and your soul. It steals your breath; it fills your mind and senses. There is nothing but my love, nothing but my control. There is no one but me: ta Reine, ta Reine!
“Your vision narrows. The pain is how you experience my control, and it thrills you. You lose yourself; you abandon yourself; you begin to float in the joy of surrender.”
I tightened her clamps more, flattening her nipples and causing the ends to balloon in purple redness. I raked a thumbnail across the bulging end of one as I continued.
“You are falling…floating down and drifting. So peaceful. So warm. You are sacrificing yourself to me. You feel lost and so peaceful.
“Hot, scarlet radiance spreads from your nipples. They’re bleedy and raw, inflamed and hot…buzzing and tingling and setting all your nerves alight.
“You’re so in love with me, my little pig. My pain is sexier than anything you’ve ever experienced. It reaches right to your clit. You feel your clit tingling, swelling, pulsing with your blood, throbbing with your heartbeat.”
“Oh God Mistress, I’m so close now,” she gasped.
“You’re falling, weightless, floating down and down on this pain, this buzz that overtakes you. Floating down on it and drifting, descending weightlessly; it’s so sexy, so thrilling. I control you; I operate you like a hand puppet, pinching your nipples harder and making your pussy quiver and pulse.
“Every sensation nudges you farther down into surrender. Your pride dissolves. Your will is floating away like a vapour as I control you, as I reach into you with pain. That’s me you feel so deep in your core, making you tremble. That pain is my hand, reaching deep inside you and owning you.
“You are adrift; you are lost in me. I fill your senses and your mind completely. There is no you. There’s only a sweaty, trembling fuck toy under my control. There is no ego, no pride, no dignity. You are an extension of my will, a hand puppet, a cheap, dirty used bitch, a limp rag-doll barely able to breathe.”
Her eyes were glazed and her voice came high-pitched and faint, in rapid breathy puffs that said, “Yes, yes, yes, yes…”
I could see she was close to coming, but having an orgasm before I commanded her would represent failure on both our parts. It’s a basic element of the D/s relationship that the Dom/me controls the sub in every dimension: the sub’s constant ambition is to surrender control absolutely, while the Dom/me’s is to exercise absolute control. Therefore, both fail if the sub climaxes ahead of the command, or if she fails to come as soon as the command is given. Nevertheless, I tormented Kat, daring her to come prematurely.
“The pain reaches through your nerves right to your pussy. I can see your clit now, emerging on its own, peeking out from the folds, so pink and glistening, so long and swollen. Your clit is throbbing now. You feel your blood pounding in it. You feel it ready to burst like a detonator, sending you into a violent orgasm if I so much as touch it.”
She ground her ass into the mattress and looked at me with eyes soft and pleading: “Please Mistress, I’m so close; I am begging you: let me come, please Mistress, please, please…oh, God, I’m so close…I’ve got to come; Mistress, please, I’ve got to.”
I reached for my crop. “Don’t you dare,” I hissed.
Her head hung forward loosely as I struck the crop repeatedly against my open palm, letting her hear the low-pitched vibration and faint whistle as it swung through the air, and the sharp smack of the leather loop striking my skin.
I straddled her and tangled my fingers in her matted, sweat-soaked hair and twisted them tight, pulling and wrenching. “Let go of your head,” I whispered. “Release it to me, give me your head to use; let go of it completely; offer it to me.”
She obeyed, leaving her neck absolutely limp. I moved her head by the hair roughly, yanked it up, and teased her with a plump nipple almost touching her lips. I slid the leather loop of the crop up and down the side of her face and pulled her head in tight against me, forcing my breast into her mouth.
“Suck me, bitch dog,” I said, as I slapped the side of her face with the crop. I felt the penetrating, wet heat of her mouth as her soft, full lips surrounded my nipple. Her soft tongue circled it inside her mouth, licking it and savouring it, sucking gently, as I slapped her cheek repeatedly with the crop, each time wrenching her hair tightly and making her spill tears.
My voice rose. “You cheap slut, you little pig; you feel me controlling your head and you are closer to coming than you can bear. That wave is rising in you; it’s mounting and swelling but it just won’t break. You can’t move; you can’t release. The spasms are starting but I’m holding your orgasm inside you. Bound little whore, so dirty and so cheap. Tasting my nipple, adoring it, feeling it tighten in your mouth, worshipping it as I slap your filthy slut face.
“Sob for me bitch; sob without shame…not whimpering but freely, grateful as you feel tears running down your neck.
“You’re a mere touch away from coming. Every nerve in your body is tingling and every muscle is trembling. You’re buzzing, vibrating, out of your mind.”
She could no longer speak. She groaned and trilled and panted loudly, babbling in Pentecostal gibberish. I put my knee between her thighs and began to rub the soft, wet, inner folds of her pussy against her swollen clit.
“You’d better hold, bitch; you’d better wait for me,” I said sharply. I took her hair tight in my hand again, twisting and wrenching it, rolling her head in a circle and force-feeding her my breast. My other hand reached down to her bruised, purple nipple and again I dug my fingernails into the bleedy, raw end that bulged out from the clamp.
She was cold with sweat and her body shone in the candle light. Her hair was matted and stuck to her face in clumpy knotted strands. Her eyes were almost vacant, wide open and begging peacefully. I had never seen her more beautiful.
The sight of her alone started a small orgasm in me. I let go of her nipple and slapped her face with my open palm, pressing her mouth hard into my breast. I felt the tension rising inside me, mounting and about to break. My fingers curled even tighter in her hair and my fingernails dug into her scalp. I slapped her face again; she moaned so loudly that I could literally feel her voice with my breast, and then I came in a long, rolling orgasm that crashed inside me in waves, one after another.
“Fuck, I’m coming,” I groaned. “Good girl. Good slut, good bitch…making Mistress come, ooohh, yess, yess!”
I held her tightly as my body spasmed several times, and waited for the chorale. It would be only a minute, as I had timed this carefully. Moments later, the angelic sound of the double chorus swelled.
O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden, / Voll Schmerz und voller Hohn…
I pushed my knee harder into her crotch. “You are lost in me, bitch. You are gone. You are an extension of me, of my will, of my desires and needs. You are me. There is no you. There is no you!”
…O Haupt, sonst schön gezieret / Mit höchster Ehr und Zier…
Then I shouted, “Kat, come now!”
Her face tightened into a knotted bunch. She screamed. Not with words; she just screamed. A long, piercing, wailing shriek like the voice of someone losing their arm in a wood chipper.
She spasmed violently against her chains. I slapped her face repeatedly. “Come in pain,” I roared. “Come in total surrender. Come without shame, without dignity, like the disgraceful cheap bitch that you are. Come in pain and service, you filthy fucking dog!”
Her orgasm rose and fell, and rose again. She whimpered quietly during the ebb so I slapped her harder to revive it. It crashed again, and she screamed mindlessly. The two orgasms lasted until nearly the end of the chorale. When I felt her spasms subsiding, I held her tight in my arms, cradling her head and kissing face.
…Wie bist du so erbleichet! / Wer hat dein Augenlicht,
Dem sonst kein Licht nicht gleichet, / So schändlich zugericht?
“Good girl,” I said softly.
She said nothing. Her face was red and raw and literally hot to my touch; her makeup was streaked and ruined, her hair a wet knotted mass. Her expression was serene and contented. She was beautiful beyond words.
I slowly unchained her and eased her onto the bed. She appeared almost unconscious. I lay beside her, cuddling her, caressing her hair and cheek and kissing her face: soft little kisses all over as I embraced her tenderly, feeling the little orgasm aftershocks in her body as she trembled in my arms.
I wiped the hair from her forehead and kissed it. She was deep in submission and would not speak. I let her float free in her subby joy for several minutes, whispering in her ear, smiling and telling her what a good girl she was.
This is a tricky moment. It’s important to let a sub enjoy their afterglow, but it’s dangerous to leave them in such a state. Submission releases intense emotions and enables a state of mind that people don’t normally experience. There’s a period of conditioning during which the sub learns to return to a normal state of consciousness in response to a signal that can be used if the Dom/me is unable to ease them back naturally. Kat had never needed to rely on it, but it was a reassuring backup in case anything ever went wrong. This time, as usual, she began to return on her own. I could see the first signs as she began smiling weakly each time I spoke.
Just as I’d used rhetorical devices, repetition, and a hypnotic cadence to bring her down into subbiness, I would do the same to help her return. I cradled her body in my arms and her head in my hands, and whispered in her ear. “Good girl Kat; I’m so proud of you my angel, my treasure, my love.”
Afterglow, or “aftercare” as some call it, is an essential part of any D/s session, and it involves a good deal more time than the usual after-sex high. An hour is a good average, but the sub must never be hurried. If it takes all day, the Dom/me has got to be prepared for that.
I shifted gently but often so she could feel my body against hers; I called her my angel, my sweet baby girl, my treasure. I smelt the scent of her hair and sweat and savoured it. I kissed her cheek, saying, “I love you Kat. I adore you. I will always love you, ma belle. I will always be here for you…always protect you and cherish you and delight in you.”
At first she could not respond. Later she began to smile, then to coo and sigh, and finally to speak. “Maîtresse, ma Reine,” she said with half-closed eyes and a sleepy smile, after about twenty minutes of afterglow. In less than an hour’s time we were sitting up in bed, enjoying our dinner, chatting normally and laughing.
“You went a little deeper today Kat,” I observed. “How do you feel?”
She smiled. “Mistress, that was unbelievable. I’ve never been that deep. It was…indescribable. You’re so strong, it’s beyond me. And you used to be a sub. What changed you? What brought it about?”
“Come, come little one,” I said with a laugh, “I’ve told you that story too many times already. I’ll become a tedious old cow if you keep making me repeat it.”
“Forgive me Mistress, but you’ve only told me what happened; you’ve never really told me how.”
Irish Bitch
How indeed? What transformed a pious Irish altar girl into a Domme capable of taking the skin off her lover’s back with a whip and reaching orgasm from that alone, without even touching herself? One thing is clear: it was either this or the convent. And for much of my life, the convent looked inevitable. Giving myself to God: how that thought stirs me. It always has: to be in the world but not of it—a suffering servant consecrated and blessed, devoted to God first, to her fellow man second, and to herself last.
My girlhood was a dream. I was blessed with devoted parents, anxiously working-class but smart and industrious, who instinctively put their children’s interests ahead of their own, who encouraged me but did not direct me, and who gave me the basic intellectual and emotional furnishings I would need to enter a posh university and claim my place among the ambitious professional classes.
We lived in Ballsbridge, in south Dublin, because the schools are said to be the best in Ireland. It was more than we could afford comfortably, but my parents sacrificed luxuries so that my brothers and I could grow up immersed in the social world of the bourgeoisie. They realised that there is not so much a glass ceiling in the workplace as a class ceiling, and they saw to it that the social conventions, dress, mannerisms, and most importantly, the assumptions, of the upper-middle classes were as natural to us as breathing.
Nevertheless, the secular Protestant values that my parents believed were essential to my future happiness never sprouted. That’s because they gave me another gift of even greater value than rich friends and posh schooling: they instilled in me a love of religion such as they themselves had. My most vivid early memories are of being at daily Mass with my mother. I marvelled at it. I can still remember the priest’s voice, completely unintelligible, rising and falling over the loudspeaker, impressing me more than anything I had known. I remember the smell of the church, the scent of old wood and damp stone; I recall having a distinct sense that it was a place unlike any other. I could have drawn it more faithfully than my own bedroom. When I first saw the Wizard of Oz, it was Mass I thought of when Dorothy and her companions had their first audience with the title character; and if the producers had hoped to mock religion by later exposing the dreary little man behind the curtain, I never picked up on it. Children are good at ignoring whatever they don’t understand or would rather not confront. The Oz audience room reminded me of church, all right, but the little man struck me as belonging to a different story. The scene’s appeal to American progressiveness as the slayer of Old-World superstition was entirely lost on me.
My parents loved to tell stories from the lives of the saints, which they knew well and adapted skilfully to everyday situations. A sore throat would inevitably inspire a lavish rendition of Saint Aloysius’s death—and yes, it never hurt quite so badly afterwards. Bullies giving your trouble at school? Consider Pope Saint Leo I, who by the grace of God single-handedly stared down Attila and his army of barbarians, and sent them all packing. Showing off? Let’s not forget the humility of Saint Peter, Our Lord’s chosen successor, who insisted on being crucified upside down lest his death resemble Christ’s own. There was no fear, no frustration, no challenge, no injury, no sorrow, no disappointment, and no disease that my parents couldn’t trivialise by comparison to something that a saint had endured.
My brothers and I loved these stories, always told in sumptuous detail, and I half think that we misbehaved with a mind toward hearing a new one. My parents were both gifted raconteurs: Mummy more dramatic, Papa more ironic, but both equally mesmerising.
And while they were mainstream Catholics—that is, as Catholic as anyone is likely to be in a country as thoroughly infected with British Protestantism as Ireland—the acorn of piety that they planted within me flourished and grew into a formidable, and audaciously ultramontane, hardwood that overshadowed my desire, and my parents hopes, for my eventual worldly success.
That’s ironic, although Papa would be the first to smile over it. The remarkable thing about my parents is that they only wanted their children to be happy. That, to them, was the ultimate measure of success.
The girls in my family were well outnumbered: my mother and me versus five boys and a father, so it should surprise no one that I would grow up an unrepentant tomboy. I was horsey; I was athletic; I had thick ankles. I was an assassin on the hockey field. Like my classmates, I kept a change of clothes in my knapsack, but instead of the Essex-girl kit involving slutty shoes and low cut tops and bangly jewellery that Irish girls typically keep at the ready, I had trainers, jeans and a t-shirt. At the end of the school day they would go to a café and change into insta-sluts in the toilets; I would run to meet my brothers and their mates. And you’d better believe I ran like a boy.
I learned to fight with my fists and with my words, and never hesitated to rely on whichever suited a given occasion. Boys fight dirty when they argue, changing the terms of the argument in quest of winning as opposed to being right, and this talent, honed over nearly two decades of struggling for supremacy among five bright and energetic brothers, served me well at school. I learned the boyish technique of leading an opponent down a rhetorical side path, urging her forward until her line of retreat is cut, then ambushing her. The trick, of course, is never to wander too far from the original line of reasoning. The victim mustn’t realise that they’re on terra nova until the attack begins, by which time they’re too involved in their own argument to backtrack. They flail wildly while you jab precisely, piercing and stinging them again and again. You don’t so much win as invite them to disgrace themselves. It’s a brutal technique, but it’s more effective than merely winning: it makes everyone who challenges you appear foolish. And the stigma lingers.
Thus I became a natural leader at school—captain of this, president of that. When we got into trouble, I would inevitably be required to explain it. “Destiny, you do the talking; you’re so good at it,” the girls would always whisper, their faces red with embarrassment as we faced the principal’s inquisition. They called me “Dykestiny” behind my back, but whenever they needed me, they were courteous to a fault.
I was in convent schools from kindergarten through college, so I would have no co-ed experience until university. Thanks to a network of brothers, my closest friends were always boys, although my early lovers were always girls. But I’m not gay; indeed, I find it difficult to believe that anyone really is. Of course, I feel the same about heterosexuals. People claim to be this or that, so I can only take their word. But for me, an attractive person can be either sex, and really, unless one of you is married or in a committed partnership, why on earth would you hesitate to fuck them?
Bisexual I may be, but my awakening was totally, and delightfully, gay. I think the reason is simply because I was more often in contact with girls in situations that could be sexualised mentally: bored in class and daydreaming, when suddenly a girl shifts in her chair revealing a glimpse of white panty and triggering a sexual fantasy; or being taken with the intoxicating scent of girl sweat in the changing room after sport; or showering together after gym and noticing our nipples tightening as water evaporated from our skin; even the common sight of Mary Janes and white knee socks could get me started. School became a sexual Disneyland for me.
With boys there was never much intimacy or time to daydream. We were in the street or at the pitch; we cruised, we played football; we traded insults; we laughed and fought; we argued and pushed. In other words, we had fun. Perhaps fun is the ultimate antidote to sexual arousal, and perhaps the question of who you end up desiring sexually depends to some degree on who tends to be nearby when you’re bored.
From the age of nine I began masturbating and reaching orgasm every day. It’s a habit that I’ve never lost. Maybe seven times out of ten I would fantasise about a girl I knew. As I got older, boys came to occupy my sexual thoughts more often.
My first experiences were inevitably with classmates. The home tutoring session was always a handy pretext: everyone knew I was smart, and everyone assumed I was boy crazy because I travelled in a flotilla of lads. So it struck no one as odd that I might turn up at another girl’s house with a stack of books and that we would need her bedroom. No surprise either that we locked the door, because little siblings never appreciate how important school work can be. And certainly no surprise that we needed the music on, because everyone knows that girls can’t concentrate without it.
I had my first sexual encounter with a classmate named Anastasia when we were thirteen. We started timidly, barely daring to hold hands under the desk and blushing hotly, but over time we did just about everything that two girls can manage together and eventually taught each other to be multi-orgasmic. Still, however many times we came together in the afternoons, at night I would lie in bed and recall our session, and make myself come two or three times more. My school years were a blur of five- and six-orgasm days.
When we entered college, she got a boyfriend and I was interested in other girls, so we kept things friendly and occasional, although we remained lovers until uni, and once in a while on holiday even then, for old times’ sake. We’re still good friends, although she’s married now and the mother of two, and doesn’t play around. Which is a pity, because her husband is quite yummy, and I’ve never found it difficult to imagine him jumping us together.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Boys would remain mates, and girls lovers, until university. It was in college where I blossomed sexually; and after being with a number of partners, I discovered something unusual about myself: I have a preposterously large clit. It’s long and prominent, like a little cock, and the folds are clearly draped over it. It’s nearly two inches in length and the glistening pink end becomes visible on its own when I’m aroused. I can look down and see it when I’m standing. But my body is otherwise feminine: my hips are wide, my bottom round, and my breasts generous and full with big, pale pink nipples. I’m not one of those squat, rectangular dykes who looks like a tired, overworked little man. I just have this enormous, cock-like clit. I’m not self-conscious about it; I consider it an asset, actually, but I’ve often wondered if its exaggerated size connects in some way to my exaggerated sexual appetite.
If I never lost the daily habit of experiencing several orgasms, whether with someone or alone, I also never lost the habit of attending daily Mass, which my parents established for me from early childhood. And both, really, are far more than habits; they’re my twin passions.
We attended St. Mary’s in Haddington Road. It’s a neo-gothic church from the late nineteenth century with a gorgeous smell from the old wooden pews. It felt like a cathedral to me as a little girl, with a cool, and seemingly vast, interior. The sounds of footsteps, whispers, and subdued coughs would echo with a special hush that I never heard elsewhere. It was a place apart: it felt, smelled, and sounded like no other room in the world. The space itself radiated a presence that I could feel altering my perceptions and preparing my mind for experiences to which the outside world is sadly numb.
I had my first vision during my maternal grandfather’s requiem. He had willed that the Dies Iræ and Litaniæ Sanctorum be chanted in Latin, and the choir obliged. We had just received the Eucharist and the priest was blessing the casket, raising thick clouds of incense around it. The organ was sombre but loud enough for me to feel in my chest and belly as the litany of saints began.
Whenever I receive the Eucharist, something happens: I weep. It always occurs when I return to the pew to kneel and cover my face. I once asked a priest why this might be, and he told me that I must have great compunction, that is, a lovely awareness of guilt—for as we say before we receive, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa. But I knew in my heart that he was mistaken: the Eucharist is not redemptive like the sacrament of Penance; it is sanctifying. It is the most intimate touch of Christ’s body, a touch that makes the unclean holy and acceptable to God: the touch that healed lepers, made the lame walk, and gave sight to the blind. By answering wrong, the priest gave me an opportunity to think it through on my own and answer right. My tears are joyful ones of sheer gratitude for the opportunity to touch God—literally, physically—every day, and allow his grace to cleanse me: mortal and corrupt, diseased and infirm, incomplete and unworthy, and yet, through this miracle, sanctified. It is not redemption, but transformation, that the Eucharist vouchsafes us.
On this occasion I wept more than usual. It wasn’t so much the loss of my grandfather, which of course I felt, but his awesome encounter with eternity that moved me. I did not choke or heave or sob. The tears flowed without resistance. It felt so good to weep. So right.
The church walls receded and slowly disappeared. The roof dissolved. I had gooseflesh. And then I was greeted by a vision of unforgettable splendour: I found myself in a valley surrounded by hills. Dense thunderheads of black and no fewer than five shades of grey, here coifed in Pompadour swells, there cleft and cleanly striated, floated barely above the ground like weightless mountains, erupting silently and slowly as damascene wisps of white vapour drifted up from waist-high grass to entangle them. It was the very essence of black and white photography, graciously imitated and bettered by nature. I was dripping wet, shivering but not cold, awe struck but unafraid. The hills were veiled; the sky was gone; the air smelt of grass and wet stone. A seductive mist enveloped me, caressed me, welcomed me to this eerie theatre of beauty. I saw my grandfather, unmistakable yet youthful and vibrant. His face was radiant with love and joy. When he spoke it was with his voice, and a hundred voices. He smiled as if pleasantly surprised and said, “Darling, you stopped dreaming,” and silently faded into the clouds as if becoming one with them.
Thus was my love affair with the Catholic Church consummated. I was eleven years old.
From that day, St. Mary’s became more than a wonderful place where I retreated each day to measure the modern world and to contemplate the shortcomings, and the splendours, of both the secular and the spiritual realms as I knew them. I had changed, and religion would no longer serve merely as a living critique of the world; it was now monumentally seductive to me, in mind, body, and spirit. I began to react physically to the environment within the church building. Entering would produce the deliciously contradictory sense of my mind relaxing, and of a tingly excitement deep in my stomach. The smallest gesture of humility became a treasure. Merely to genuflect before the tabernacle was a joyful act: as I lowered my head and felt my knee touch the floor, I would feel a sense of profound rightness—of body and mind in perfect harmony. And yes, it was undeniably erotic.
After Mass, I would often remain in the empty church, kneeling at the altar because there are no cushions, my head lowered and face covered, praying and letting my imagination wander freely. Pain would spread from my legs and lower back, growing more intense while I became more eager to feel it. Pain didn’t break the spell: my state of concentration would somehow keep pace with it, somehow expand and deepen just as the pain would sharpen, and thus I’d remain able to embrace it while it mounted slowly but relentlessly. And yes, that too was unmistakably erotic.
I became an altar girl, of course. It’s not actually sanctioned by the Church, but our bishop never asked and our pastor never told. Later, I attended a convent college near my house, assuming it to be inevitable that I would take vows. I loved the daily rituals, the discipline, the formality. Above all, I loved the Mass. But as I learned to revel in the exercise of humility and to adore pain, it became difficult for me to enact penance. How do you punish yourself for God when pain feels sexy? To be so pure and so good that punishment is unnecessary would have been a way to deny myself the strange pleasures of penance, but that would be absurd. The split second when you realise how good you are, you have sinned.
And how can humility be penance when it feels so right? Ministering to the sick, changing foul-smelling bandages—you know you’re doing it for God. To us Catholics, God is no micro-manager. We are his eyes and hands; we do his will, or we fail to do it: there is evil and misery and suffering in the world not because God allows it, but because we allow it. We were given dominion over the Earth; we are God’s agents, his stewards, his servants. We bow our heads and do his bidding. We confront evil, alleviate suffering, nurture the weak and vulnerable, and however unpleasant it might seem in principle, it is always a joyful act. There is no humiliation in humility before God. There’s no punishment there.
And so I was stuck with a dilemma: pain and humility felt far too good. Thus, for my penance, I tried to withhold worldly pleasures, but I was never any use at it. I smoked; I drank; I had sex. I would give them up tomorrow, always tomorrow: as Augustine lamented humorously, “Lord, make me pure, but not today.”
I felt I had time; Augustine would reach his early thirties before finally overcoming his appetites, and he was a great saint. Would it not have been immodest of me to out-do him?
Of course, there was never any danger of that. Once, I bought a jar of potted foie gras and kept it visible on a shelf in my bedroom with a mind toward resisting it daily. I would sit quietly to contemplate its richness, its unique flavour, and dream of perfect toast crackers and a gorgeous Sauternes to accompany it. I would imagine all of this vividly, until I was literally groaning with hunger. I would do this once a day, and revel in self denial.
The foie gras didn’t last long. The night after I bought it, I sat up in bed and ate it with a spoon in less than thirty minutes, thanking God the entire time for having created something so stunningly beautiful. Then I got under the covers and masturbated, fantasising about a girl I had watched in the changing room that afternoon. The taste of foie gras was still in my mouth, and I imagined licking it off her big, hard nipples when I came.
Throughout my teen years, my sexual desires progressed alongside my religious desires, and it became clear that I would somehow have to bring my hedonistic and spiritual impulses into alignment. I had many false starts, and these form the core matter of the story that follows. The questions I must ask are, I hope, intriguing. Is it possible to be genuinely pious and sexually hyperactive at once?
Surely it is to some extent: Origen crushed his own balls between two rocks to conquer his erotic desires, but what sort of religious progress is that? Piety comes too easily to the castrati, I think. I’ve also got to explore whether the D/s lifestyle is a fraud, a license to abuse—that is, mere justification for destructive sexual urges—or whether it can be a legitimate, even healthy, way for some people to live. Finally, I must ask why I find sex to be so spiritual, and religious practice so damn erotic.
I will offer a hint. An interesting complication arose while I was at university, during a period when I was reading theology and having sex with women and men in a fairly even ratio. One woman in particular, Ania, a lecturer in Russian history and a lesbian, had begun to win my affection as I won hers. We began seeing each other regularly, and a romance developed. We both enjoyed rough sex, which became a regular feature of our intimate times together. She told me that she was involved in BDSM, and further that she was submissive, but I had no idea what that really meant.
One night we climbed into bed after a long, sensuous candle-lit bath together. Ania had a surprise for me. This time, we didn’t have rough sex in the usual sense; this was different. It was clear that she expected me to obey and not to resist or even to question her. She literally commanded me: how to kiss, how to lie, what to do. She told me what I was feeling, and how much I liked it. She degraded me verbally, and she violated me physically.
She slapped me so hard I nearly blacked out. She choked me, digging her nails into the soft skin of my neck, and drew a little of my blood. She bit my ears, and my nipples, hard. She didn’t ask permission; she demanded and took what she wanted of me, without apology, without reservation. And I loved every moment of it.
I began to feel free—actually liberated. It sounds paradoxical, but it’s true. As I let her control me, I felt less aware of myself. The more I submitted—delivering myself to her, sacrificing myself to her—the less bound I felt by the chains of my own personality, history, agenda, even consciousness. It was truly a religious experience. I surrendered and allowed her will to control me, welcoming it, inviting it, releasing control of myself with joy, and yes, with awe.
The more I relinquished control, the more I wanted to be controlled. But I was not completely free of self-consciousness until she did something that literally stripped away my ego. I’m unabashedly bisexual, and I don’t mind saying it: I love men. I’d been with lesbians before, and I’ll confess that, secretly, I feel superior to them: “Scared of a man’s cock? Ha, you neurotic Puritan,” I would sneer. And she knew this, and she reached into me and brought it up, and used it.
She was fisting me, and I thought, this has got to be as painful as childbirth. The pain danced through me, making me tremble violently, electrifying me—a dull, heavy aching with moments of brilliant sharpness. It was her pain and I loved it with my very heart. I begged her to fuck me harder still. And then she sneered at me, shouting, “Feel this hand that fucks and owns your pussy! Stronger and harder than any man-cock you ever had in your pathetic bi fantasies!”
And that was the master stroke. She took this personal thing from deep in my mind and humiliated me with it. At that moment, I released every last shred of my ego to her, willingly, longingly, with blind devotion and genuine awe. And then I came in a violent spasm that rolled through me in waves, again, and again, and again.
When the spasms subsided, she reached under the bed and produced a boot—not a sexy girl boot, but a man’s combat boot. It was dirty. She reached across to the nightstand and produced a mirror. As I lay in bed, completely drained, or so I thought, she held the mirror in front of my face. “Look at yourself, you fucking lesbian’s toy,” she hissed.
I saw my face red and bruised. She pressed the sole of the boot against my cheek, and ground it in forcefully while I watched.
“I want you to tell me something bitch,” she demanded. “I want you to look at yourself very, very closely and tell me if you have ever, ever in your life, looked as beautiful as you do right now.”
As I started to answer, I came again. There was no genital contact; I simply came. “Never,” I howled, “oh Jesus fuck I’m coming…oh God, Jesus, never, never!”
It was an epiphany.
She could have asked me to read about BDSM and the D/s lifestyle. She could have talked to me about it, explained it at length, and that could have gone on for months without my ever getting it. But instead, she made me experience what she experiences as a sub. And thus I understood it, and from that moment I knew instinctively how to bring it about for her.
She did this to me because we were in love, and there’s nothing more beautiful to a sub than to have the woman she loves become her Mistress. I began to dominate her during sex, and this brought us closer than we had ever been—a development that I didn’t think possible, so close and so intimate had we become already.
After about a month of this, I sensed that she needed to go further. She needed to submit outside of sex. As her lover, I naturally wanted to do everything possible to give her pleasure and happiness. I grasped instinctively that I would have to collar her to give her all that she wanted and needed and deserved. And so I claimed her as my sub. I had no experience as a Domme, but she had plenty as a sub and she trained me well. But I did it for her, as a lover whose only desire was to give her pleasure. I did it to serve her, that wonderful woman whose orgasms I enjoyed more than my own. Thus I didn’t make her my slave; rather, she made me her Mistress.
The sub makes the Dom/me. The sub is not weak; indeed, the strength and courage required to submit fully are extraordinary, and command the utmost respect. Domination is service, and submission is liberation. Paradoxical yes, even a bit Orwellian, but I accept what is apparent, if not rational, in the D/s relationship: the Dom/me has the control, but the sub has the power. I feel it, I experience it, and whether it makes sense or it doesn’t, I believe it.
And so my journey into the lifestyle began with a lesbian love affair at uni. I’ve since been sub and Domme, and at times both with different lovers. When I’m submissive, I prefer men to Dominate me. As a Domme, I prefer women for my subs. I’ve never been able to submit to a woman beyond switching top and bottom during sex, although I’m happy to do that once in a while. Still, I’ve never felt the desire to have a Mistress, only a Master. I find submissive men loathsome: sensitive 90’s guys—men who would let a woman walk all over them—leave me cold. If a man can’t top me, no way is he going to fuck me.
Submissive women, on the other hand, delight me. That’s a bit conventional of me, appealing to traditional sex roles, I know, but there it is. I am what God made me.
And yes, religion is involved. Rituals of self-sacrifice and submission are as old as mankind, but they reach an apotheosis in Christianity, and especially in Roman Catholicism, where the colour and pageantry of earlier Christian practices are better preserved. As a little girl, my favourite ceremony was the Via Crucis, the Stations of the Cross, a progressive recollection of Christ’s passion and death enacted during Easter week. I still find it breathtaking to contemplate Christ’s sacrifice and to dwell on each detail of his humiliation and agony—both transformed into sublime beauty by his disposition of self-giving love and transcendent purpose.
And then there’s the lifestyle: that other thing that I find breathtaking. The Church would regard it as a perversion of healthy—and I believe universal—human impulses toward submission, and I won’t argue with that. Indeed, BDSM is probably a modern substitute for the unfashionable religious experience of self-sacrifice, which over the centuries has been steadily de-corporealised in Christian traditions, although less so among Catholics, many of whom still fast, and some of whom still practice mortification of the flesh.
In thinking of BDSM as a trigger for a certain type of religious experience, I’m intrigued by the number of educated, successful career women of my own acquaintance who are in the lifestyle, who feel embarrassed to practice religion with any real passion and yet feel compelled to surrender themselves to be sexually degraded, bound, physically assaulted, verbally abused, and controlled. We call it “choosing submission” in homage to the shallow feminist social values we’ve been trained to espouse, but clearly, we women have needs that the modern world will not acknowledge, yet which nature demands be satisfied.
It is truly an ironic triumph of liberal education that BDSM should be less embarrassing than Catholicism to a growing number of middle- and upper middle class women? Most of my D/s partners and acquaintances profess to be agnostic or atheist, are puzzled that I should be devoted to religious practice, and yet eagerly make the Via Crucis in suburban basement dungeons in quest of the very experience that their rejection of religion has starved them of.
Yes, BDSM is likely a substitute for religious experience in a world that is hostile to religion; and while I see this clearly, I remain nonetheless immersed in it. The sensation of release possible through submission truly feels spiritual, so I will not be leaving the lifestyle any day soon to join Opus Dei and practice mortification of the flesh in a more chaste manner. Some day, perhaps, I might have an epiphany, discard my collar and leash, and take up the cilice in their place. But for now, the similarities in, and the inevitable tension between, my rather outré sexual and spiritual practices are all I can explore.
I acknowledge my parents, and I love them. Still, however carefully they laid the foundations of my personality, they’re clearly not the strongest influences in my life, dear as they are. Rather, I’ve been formed chiefly by the Church, and by my comically oversized clit—and, most notably, by the endless contest between them.
This, then, is the history of that struggle.
