a difficult scene

Today, all I can think about is how dreamy Joscelin is, how it feels to look into his eyes when we’re lying in bed together.  I’m in love with him in a big way, and experiences like last night are a big part of why.  So if the following sounds like it was difficult, it was, but it was also beautiful for me – part of the binding fabric of our relationship.

It was really too late for a scene, for a weeknight, but we’d been hanging out in bed and I just have to mess with him.  During the day, we’d talked about sandpaper, which I want to try and which he fears.  We were kissing, I think.  He was lying flat on his back, feeling naked, hands at his sides as commanded by me.

I guess the scene began in earnest when I started scratching his side, near the lower edge of his ribs.  I was just scratching it like you might scratch an itch, only harder, over and over again in the same spot.  It made him desperate for me to stop, and he begged me, and after watching him struggle some, I relented, to give him time to calm down.

“It’s hard to breathe during that,” he said.  “When I inhale you hurt me more.  You punish me for breathing.”

“No.  I don’t,” I said calmly, though his angry tone tore at me.  And then I kissed him for a long time because I was afraid to look him in the eyes – afraid that I would cry, or look like I was going to cry, and thus throw things off course.  When I could look at him again, I told him I was going to continue.  He apologized and I thanked him.

I next scratched the inside of his thigh, the same way.  It was again very hard for him.  And then I raked my short fingernails across his chest, leaving a red swath that later individuated into thin red welts.  He was afraid and started to cry, but he held pretty still for it.

When I stopped, and let him know I was pausing for a bit, he continued to cry (not with tears, but with sounds like crying).  “Does it still hurt, or is it just scary?” I asked.

“It still hurts,” he said.  “But mostly it’s scary.  It’s really scary.”  And then, “Are marks going to show above my shirt at work tomorrow?”

“No,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t think I agree.  I know what kind of marks scratches leave.”

“I didn’t scratch you that hard, and where I scratched you is not above your shirt anyway, I don’t think.  You can barely even see anything now.”

“OK.”

He apologized again for being so difficult, so resistive, for not holding still, for not relaxing or breathing properly.  I told him I thought he was doing all right, but that I’d give him another chance to take it the way he wanted to.

I want to explain what this time, this talking time, was like.  Everything was very slow.  I was just watching his eyes.  I felt the pain and difficulty of having him be so negative and afraid and apologetic, but I was content to be in that place.  I felt incredibly calm.  Time had dilated somehow, and so had my feelings.  I was large enough to contain fear, pain, and struggling, and still be safe and whole.

I gave him the one last big scratch, across his chest diagonally in the other direction, and he took it a bit better, but it was still very hard for him.  I think scratching is really scary to him, out of proportion to how much it hurts.  I didn’t break his skin at all, or even come close, but he was agonized.

“I’m not going to scratch you any more tonight,” I said afterwards.

“Thank you, Mistress,” he said.

I told him I wanted him to fuck me, but it was a while before I could let him get up to get a condom, because I needed to just hold him there, still with his hands at his sides, and look at him, and be with him.  We had some more kissing.  I bit his tongue and lips.  He struggled and I told him not to try to get away, and he stopped.

When he started fucking me, he said, “Please let me go.”

“No,” I said, but I could feel inside that I didn’t have the strength for it.  “This is your dream,” I said.  “You don’t want to anywhere.”

“It is my dream.  It is.  But part of me does want to be free.”

“I know,” I said.

I am sure he could see what he was costing me.  He thanked me for keeping him.

All this time I was enjoying the fucking.  It was really good fucking – right up there with some of our best.  Yet in the middle I had him stop a while, and I lay there with my eyes closed and let myself relax from wanting to cry.  I didn’t want to cry.  We finished with some hard fucking and I let him come.  And when he collapsed on top of me, when I drew him in, I said, “I need aftercare.”

I am not really sure it is all right for me to need aftercare.  We’ve talked about it being OK if I do, but always in the way you might say, “It’s OK if you burn the rice.”  It’s OK if I screw up and need aftercare.  But it’s not just OK by itself.  It’s not a preferred outcome.

But he reassured me and asked me not to ever worry about it, and he held me while I cried a little bit.  He apologized, and I wouldn’t accept, and he said, “Just for what I said that hurt you,” and I said, “OK.  I will.  OK.”  And I just kept looking him in the eyes and he was just so beautiful.  I could look at him forever.

I don’t know how to explain how these experiences work.  I went to bed exhausted and content, and woke up in love.  And I’m ready to go back there.

just like your mom

Late last night…

Me: [out of the blue] I would totally make you fuck your mom!

Him: What?!

Me: Well, you know.  I wouldn’t do it.  I wouldn’t want your mom to have to do that.  Or the effects on your family.  Or any of the effects.

Him: OK…

Me: But I would totally make you fuck your mom otherwise.  Just for your part of the experience.

Him: Why??

Me: Because it’s so awful.

…

Him: You could make me write porn about fucking my mom.

Me: Yeah!

Him: Oh god.

Me: I’d make you write it well, too.  Make it really hot.

Him: Ugh.

Me: With lots of details about your actual mom in there.

Him: Please don’t.

Me: What a fantastic suggestion that was, exactly how to implement my plan without involving your mom.  Did you tell me that because you’re submissive, or are you just such a smart ass that you can’t think of an idea without sharing it?

Him: I think more of the smartass.

Me: Yeah.

[Later]

Him: Oh, you are so good to kiss, you are so delicious.

Me: Just like your mom.

guess!

It’s interesting reading the kinds of suggestions I get from the commenters here.  Between them and the other blogs I read, I get a very clear indication that different things work for different people (which seems obvious until you actually encounter it). I was going to write a rundown of some things that don’t work between us, but I realized that the ones I had in mind are all a variation on…guessing games!

• I’m upset about something but I’m not going to say what because you should already know.
• Find something that I would enjoy and do it.
• You forgot something this morning; you can kneel here until you remember what it was.
• Don’t ask me if you’re allowed to do x, just do what makes sense.
• What do you think I meant when I said it?

A mild guessing game like the second thing I listed is now within our reach.  He trusts me enough for that, especially if I were to acknowledge in advance that I know that sort of thing makes him uncomfortable.

But in general, a prime directive of our relationship is that I give clear communication and work to resolve ambiguities that arise.  Otherwise, Jos’s uncertainty leads to fear which leads to anger.  Anger is especially likely if he initially blames himself for not understanding or knowing something, then realizes it is not his fault.  He feels betrayed in that type of situation.

Generalizing a bit more, what does not work for us that I see working for others is unfairness or injustice.  It’s hot and fun for some people, and I could probably play with it myself.  Of course we have unfairness in the sense that, for instance, I might get to have an orgasm while he does not.  But the kind of injustice where I set up impossible conditions or hidden traps, or hold him accountable for things outside of his control…that just does not work for us.

I think the more he trusts me, the more he is able to work through the momentary appearance of injustice or intentional ambiguity, but for me to commit injustice or act ambiguously outside of tightly determined bounds would harm that trust.

It’s interesting, because it’s not as though behaving unfairly is intrinsically dangerous or anything.  For instance, punishment of the kind Elizabeth finds hot does not entail some special physical risk.  It does not imply that the submissive partner is not loved or valued.  It is a game played for its hotness, like the other things we do.

But one thing that is striking about our relationship, kink aside, is that justice and fairness are very strong values and we take the same positions on them.  I think they are so foundational to Joscelin that one of his ways of ascertaining that his partner is mentally balanced and sane is that she adheres to these principles.  Flouting them suggests being out of control, out of touch with reality, and ultimately untrustworthy.  If you cannot recognize the most basic and obvious facts about what is going on in the exchange (in terms of fairness, ambiguity, etc.), you certainly can’t be trusted to manipulate the feelings of your intentionally vulnerable partner.

It will be interesting to see if, over time, playing with unfairness and ambiguity continues to become more possible.

ineffable

Yesterday, Jos and I had a long talk (via IM) about the housework issue.  He told me that, in fantasy, he’d be like my previous roommate, who handled all of the chores (because of our financial relationship), except subject to punishment if he got it wrong.  Reality doesn’t quite permit that, but that’s kind of where he’s coming from.

I do punish him – a single stroke for most protocol violations, more for more serious transgressions.

I stopped by his room late last night and said, “You know what I can’t believe?  What is just amazing to me?”

“What?”

“You want to be punished,” I said.  “I mean, not that you specifically like it, but…you want to be subject to punishment by me.”

“I do.”

Clutching him to me while he sat in his desk chair, I said, “It makes you feel constrained.”

“Yes.”

“Controlled.”

“Yes.”

“Like you have no choice.”

“Yes.”

Something inside of me thrills to that, and it touches me in a deep way.

housework, oh boy

As I was thinking of writing this, it occurred to me how very, very many posts I’ve read about housework from a d/s perspective…nearly all by husbands whose wives’ desire to do d/s at all was in question. Occasionally you see something by a dominant woman about having a designated house boy or the like, but I haven’t read many (if any) posts by dominant women about how they handle housework with their submissive partners.

So far, we are pretty much handling it in a typically dysfunctional vanilla way. A few days ago, I wrote this email to a friend, which I will quote so I don’t have to explain it all over again:

I’d say currently this is our (me and Jos’s) worst problem.

Sunday afternoon, two friends were coming over for a game. So Sunday morning, I cleaned the bathroom, washed the bathroom rug, and cleaned the kitchen (from the dinner I’d made us Saturday night). I actually did two loads of dishes that day because, well, that’s how many there were :-) And after the second load I did the counters and stuff like that.

Around 2 (the game starts at 4), I asked Jos if he would straighten up the living room, about a 10-minute job. At 3:55 I sort of angrily walked into the living room and then he did it. He resented my irritation because he had been trying to finish getting ready for the game, was keeping an eye on the time, and was going to handle it.

*sigh*

It’s all kind of mixed up in a way I find impossible to detangle. What I feel (not necessarily think) is that, if I don’t do it or tell him to do it, it won’t get done (where “it” is some piece of housework). And I don’t want to be in that (traditionally female) role. I do not want to be the Boss of Chores.

We kind of had this conversation Sunday, after he did the living room but before the friends showed up, and he said, “I want to help you out with the household stuff, I really do,” and then went on to talk about his life and why it’s been so hard.

I got to say, of course, “The fact that you call it ‘helping me out’ is…”

“Oh god. I’m fucked. I’m totally fucked.”

So he recognized that, at least.

I don’t know. I’m a slob too, and he’s not actually worse than me, except that (I think) he moved in to my place. He said the other day that, when he cleaned the microwave, he thought “I cleaned Dev’s microwave” instead of “I cleaned the microwave.”

And I do thank him for doing stuff. Should I not do that?

I don’t know. It’s all messy. (Literally.)

This is hell of tricky among vanilla couples sometimes.  What do you do when one person is crazy busy (like Jos is) and/or has lower standards for the house (as he may)?

When I asked him to clean the living room, I wanted to get it off my mind so I could stop thinking about it.  Instead I stewed about it with increasing irritation until five minutes before company was supposed to show up.  I would have been better off doing it myself.

It may be that I’m asking for something unfair or contradictory: do what I want you to do, but without me having to tell you explicitly what that is.  Given that I theoretically have the power to simply command him to do the things, my refusal to make him do housework, coupled with my irritation over him not doing it, might be another example of me trying to enjoy a consequence-free environment.

I think my reluctance to simply command him to do chores has something to do with how fucking scary it is to move d/s from the realm of fun playtime into the realm of “things I really care about.”  If I ask him to kneel a certain way, or perform some protocol, or exercise, and he doesn’t do it, I will punish him, but it’s not that I care about those things in and of themselves so very much.  I’m not going to be personally angry about it.

But I do care about the housework.  Despite being a slob, I care.  And being the Boss of Chores, as I put it in the email, means that I have to constantly manage my own patience, frustration, etc., so as to fulfill my side of how our d/s works.  Overall I think it would make things about housework emotionally easier for Jos, though he’d probably have to do a bit more housework.  It would make things more difficult for me (like all of our d/s), but I’d also get what I want (a cleaner house without as much stress on my part).

I don’t know.  I need to talk to Jos about this and see how he feels and whether we can come to a real mutual agreement about how it’s going to work.  This state of waffling is bad for me, and the way I’m trying to do the house right now brings out my worst qualities (neurotic, controlling) without bringing along the stuff that makes control fun or acceptable.  (One of the great things about d/s is the way it can transform being controlling from an annoying, somewhat uncontrollable personal quality into something sexy and well-managed.)

I’ll keep you updated.

(Edited to add this: Also of note is that Jos does do housework.  He’s perfectly capable of taking care of a space.  A lot of this is me having emotional responses based on weird control issues and some gender stuff.)

gloves

Saturday night, during our scene, I found a fun new (to me) use for vampire gloves, which are the leather gloves with little pointy bits of metal in the fingers and thumb (not sharp enough to break the skin unless you really tried hard).  In the past, I’ve used the gloves as sensation toys, or to deliberately scratch or hurt Joscelin.

This time, I put them on, made him lie in bed with me, and then…acted completely normal.  I caressed him.  I held his head while we kissed.  I moved his arms around to suit myself.  I rubbed his nipples.

Everything was different on his side, of course.  My every move was filled with danger and the potential for pain.  But on my side, I was just making out with him in the usual way.

It was delicious.  Perhaps because of the term “vampire gloves” it felt a bit like it might feel to be a strong creature like that with a mortal lover.  No matter how tenderly you caress them, it hurts their delicate little bodies.  But then again, that is part of the fun.

baldy

So, we had a big scene, with a lot of pain.  And more hot conversation.  And fucking.  You know, the usual.

Then we were talking and somehow the topic of me shaving my head came up.  And I’ve kind of wanted to have really short hair, but I thought it would look bad and might not go over well at work.  But I do feel more comfortable at this job than at my old job.

So I said I would do it.

Joscelin didn’t believe me.

We like to bet $1 on various outcomes around my house, so I ended up getting not only a $1 bet, but at 5:1 odds.

And then we shaved my head.

It took a while.  My hair is fairly thin, but it was between chin and shoulder length, the same all around (no bangs or anything).  We cut it first, and then Jos shaved it with the tiny beard trimmer that is part of his electric shaver.

When I got up from that is when he said, “Oh wow.  You are totally satisfying my Laura Antoniou fetish!”

“You have a Laura Antoniou fetish?”

“I do now!” he said.

I really did look more like her than I ever have.

After that, I sat in the bathtub and shaved it the rest of the way smooth with a razor.  It took a long time.  (Actually, all of it took a really long time.)

I’m a bit trepidatious about going in to work tomorrow, but I think it actually looks pretty awesome – definitely better than I would have guessed.  I look really butch.  Like, seriously very butch.  It is kind of the bomb.

the end of the scene

There had been pain. And then fucking. No orgasm. I’d told him he couldn’t touch himself either, until further notice.

“Please let me go,” he said plaintively.

“No.”

“Please. I need you to let me go.”

“I’m not going to. I’m not ever going to,” I reassured him.

“Please stop hurting me,” he said

“Never.”

“Please at least let me touch myself.”

“No. You may not.”

“Please. Please? Just let me touch myself.”

“No. And don’t ask again.” I let my voice go stern.

He emitted a strangled type of sound, and flopped from between my legs to lie next to me.

“There’s no escape?” he asked.

“There’s no escape,” I said. “There’s no escape from yourself. You’re a slave.”

“You could let me go.”

“I never will,” I said.

“It would be compassionate,” he said.

“No, it wouldn’t,” I said. I thought a minute. “It would no more be compassionate than letting [my cat] Sandy go out the front door and closing it behind him.”

For a long time we just lay there, looking at each other. I stroked him gently. His forehead was creased, as though he was concerned, but it’s how he looks when he feels submissive.

“I love you,” I said.

“I love you, Mistress.”

gaze

I spent my free time last night having a long IM chat with Alexis.

At some point, Joscelin woke up from a nap and came out of his room, naked and collared. I could have died from his beauty.

It’s not so much that he’s attractive, although he is. It’s that the nature of our relationship encourages me to view him as a sexual object, to look at him with what some would call “the male gaze.” I don’t usually look at men this way, though going to our local bdsm club has certainly pushed me in that direction.

A bit later, standing in the hall after his shower, he took the towel from around his waist. Was he flirting with me on purpose? I’m not sure. It was hot.

“Do I make you feel naked?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I wonder whether, in his youth, he ever really thought he could stand naked and be looked at with open hunger and appraisal by his owner. I doubt it.

Such a beautiful boy.

troubles

Living with Joscelin has thus far been a mixed bag.

On the one hand, I love having him around.  I’m really happy to get to lay eyes (and hands) on him more often, and to just see his life first hand.  The thought of him not living here feels strange and wrong already.  I absolutely love this.

But on the other hand, I’m frustrated, angry, and hurt a lot.  And I haven’t been talking to Jos about most of this because he has no time or energy for dealing with anything and because he already has a tendency to feel possibly unwelcome here, or like he’s screwing stuff up all the time, and because I’m afraid he’ll get angry, and because it just in some ways is not occurring to me to talk about it.

I don’t really even know how to detangle all of it, but I’ll just type and see what happens.

First, I don’t know, and I don’t think he knows either, how my being his Mistress translates to this new situation.  He’s been at my house plenty, of course, but almost always specifically to hang out with me.  Living here is different.  If he gets home from work at 11 PM and says “I am going to make some chili and go straight to bed,” can I still make him do some task for me?  If I try and he says, “Mistress, I really can’t do that,” am I going to know how to handle that?  (At this moment, no.  I am not.)

And housework.  Counting the ~ 9 days that he stayed here a few weeks ago, and the 2 weeks he’s been here so far, I think he’s done the dishes two times, and both times were because I told him to.  Am I supposed to order him to do any housework that needs doing?  <passive aggressive tone> I kind of assumed he would try to act like a responsible housemate. </passive aggressive tone>

He violates little rules of the house all the time.  These are mostly rules we haven’t discussed.  You can’t steal my towel.  You can’t use a metal utensil in my non-stick pans.  You can’t leave my bag of chips open on the table.  You can’t block the counter where one of my cats gets her food.  We haven’t talked about them, but some seem obvious to me.  (I break what are rules for him as well.  You can’t leave dishes in the sink, apparently.)  (It’s worth noting that I’m rather a slob.  Don’t picture my slovenly, disorganized boyfriend coming in and messing up my pristine, well-organized space.  We’re possibly about equal in this way.)

And the thing is, even with the most trivial issues, my natural response is to basically carp or otherwise be a jerk.  I have to try really hard to be pleasant and neutral.  And he gets angry pretty easily, and doesn’t cool off easily.  And possibly because he feels like I’m in control, he expects all of this clarity and consistency and patience from me, when really I’m just mixed up and have no idea what’s going on.

I know I’m feeling a lot of powerlessness about everything.  Driving home the other night, it occurred to me that he might have eaten my leftover Chinese food from the night before.  I was preemptively angry about it.  He hadn’t, but in situations like that, the anger doesn’t go away immediately.  He didn’t come home until very late that night – I finally called him around 8:30 to ask what was up.

He doesn’t tend to think to treat me as a stakeholder in his life.  It doesn’t seem to occur to him (or not readily) that I’d like to know if he’s coming home or not.  (In many ways this is an unfair accusation.  But I’ve noticed it various times over the many months we’ve been together.  I think it’s a pattern even though it’s not as egregious as I think it is.)

My boyfriend loves me, desires me, is happy to be with me, and wants more time with me.  But I often feel rejected, hated, unloved, and ignored.  There’s a real mismatch between my feelings and reality lately.

I was generally much more secure before he moved in, probably because when he was around, it was to be with me.  Being around him while he kind of ignores me is basically new.  I know I’ll adjust, but I just haven’t yet.

Yesterday, I wrote a post here.  I mentioned it to him while he was still at work, but he didn’t want to read it there (understandably).  When he got home, I mentioned it again.  He played a computer game to rest before cleaning the kitchen as I’d asked.  My post was important to him and he read it later, but if it were me, and he’d posted, I would have been excited and would have read it right away, first thing.  I couldn’t have resisted.  I’m (stupidly, uselessly) hurt because that particular feeling isn’t mutual.

My desk is still in his room, so last night we were both in here, playing games separately, and when my post came up, he said something like, “I’m sure I’ll get to that eventually.”  And it hurt me and made me angry.

When I got up to go to bed, I didn’t say anything.  He asked where I was going and I said “to bed” and he followed me to that bathroom to say, “You’re not angry, are you?”

And I told him I was, over the post thing.  And he didn’t say much other than that it wasn’t true that he didn’t care or didn’t want to read it.

And I went to bed, and I lay there and I was angry, and then I was afraid.  And I wanted to ask him to come in and hold me and tell me he didn’t hate me, but I couldn’t, because he was already trying to chill out and have some personal time for himself, and I was just being insecure to kind of, I felt, get attention or something.  And I’d just been angry at him stupidly.  And passive-aggressively.

At times like that, I lose sight of the real person I am dealing with.  The real Jos is good all the way down.  He loves me.  He wants to be happy and to make me happy.  He doesn’t hate me.  He’s not never here because he hates me or doesn’t care about being with me.  I know all of this.

So I guess I’m just kind of a mess, is what I’m saying.  Between not having a clue whether and how to be dominant under these circumstances, and feeling insecure because my boyfriend is working too hard to ever be here, and dealing with the stresses of a new housemate, it’s just messy.

We were talking via IM today and I was admitting to having some problems, and he said, “I feel like you don’t tell me what you want before you get upset with me for not doing it.”

And I almost started to cry and I had to stop the conversation because I was at work and you just can’t have a tearful IM at work.  It’s too ridiculous.  (All I could think was, “Please don’t hate me.”)

And I told him, “This is the attitude I want us to have.  I want us to think that we’re both doing our best, but this is a difficult time, and we just don’t know how to do what we’re doing.  But we’re going to work it out.”

And he said that sounded perfect, and made him feel better too.

And it’s true.  We don’t know what we’re doing but we will work it out.  We always have.