Here are a few basic tips to help you begin creating fulfilling scenes with your partner:
Once you’ve negotiated a scene with your partner (see Chapter 1 for negotiation tips), put your satisfaction first. Focus on the activities on their wish list that will give you certain pleasure.
Focus on enjoying one or two simple activities thoroughly, even if your partner’s wish list is as long as your arm. It’s better to do a few things well than many things poorly. Leaving them wanting more is a very desirable thing.
The blindfold is your friend. Blindfolded, every touch and action you create is a thrilling mysterious pleasure for your partner. Blindfolded, your lover will not see you fumbling, expressing bafflement, or removing your high heels.
Whenever you feel uncertain, take a slow breath and ask yourself, What would please me right now? Then follow through with what would please you.
Engage power femme posture! Stand up straight, hold your head high, roll your shoulders back, lift your chest, and pull your navel toward your uterus. Try this in scene and out of scene, and feel how it affects your sense of confidence.
To reduce the possibility of scene failure, begin and end the scene with activities that both of you enjoy, and try new activities in the middle. If a new activity doesn’t work for either of you, at least you’ll wrap up with pleasure, familiarity, and confidence.
Dominant femmes deserve after-scene care. What would you like that to be? Ask for it before the scene and insist upon it after the scene.
Learn and practice whenever the opportunity presents itself. Take as many classes and educational events as you can. Try classes on topics new, exotic, scary, or mysterious to you. Workshops are great places to explore these subjects safely while giving you space to decide whether you like it.
Have fun! Whether your style is sweet and nurturing or fierce and demanding, or anything in between, remember that this is always about pleasure.
Enjoy your journey and savor your pleasures.
CHAPTER 14
SUBMISSIVE: A PERSONAL MANIFESTO
MADISON YOUNG
I’m a mom. I’m a submissive. I’m a feminist. I struggle to write these words, finding myself in the greatest power play dynamic of my life with a three-month-old infant who lies sleeping in my lap while I hunch over my laptop. She is a demanding dominant and I’m happy to serve her, to focus my energies around meeting her needs. I let the rest of the world slip away while she nurses from my breast. There is a sense of freedom in the experience, and I feel whole and complete in this energy exchange.
This feeling is not foreign to me. For the past six years, I’ve served her father as his submissive, lover, partner, and now the mother of his child. Ironically, my dedication to my child and my partner is what has made sitting down to write this essay the most challenging. My identity is complex—an interweaving of queer, masochist, rope slut, sex worker, control freak, loving partner, and mother. Within these carefully constructed labels, in order to find my true self, I must give in. I must allow myself to be taken over, not just to fall deep down the rabbit hole but to jump, to fly, to dive in with knowledge.
To be the truest form of myself, I leap into a world of submission.
Submission is instinctively serving my dominant, without effort, without being noticed or drawing attention.
I am a multifaceted woman with dominant and submissive tendencies, a wide range of desires for sensation play, and a need to play out different societal and animalistic roles in a safe environment with my partner. Sex is primal and has a magical, energetic rhythm to it—a pulse that you find in yourself or that passes between two or more persons. There are many ways to play with that pulse, that energy, both physically and psychologically. That pulse can be exchanged with great precision and control or it can knock you off your feet like a tidal wave.
Submission caters to my Virgo love of control and precision. Submission fulfills me, in the eroticism of lists and charts, in the satisfaction of completing a task. Submission penetrates me deeply with the pleasure of rules to obey and jobs well done. Submission is falling into a Zen space of controclass="underline" constructing my being as an instrument of use and pleasure, allowing energy to flow through me, reprogramming the fibers of my being to reflect the desires of my dominant. Submission is instinctively serving my dominant, without effort, without being noticed or drawing attention. It’s all about the details and serving another, not indulging in one’s own sexual impulses. It’s a delicious mix of cerebral and visceral sexuality, of control and instinct, of pleasure and selflessness.
To submit to my dominant is to serve my dominant, to pleasure him, to obey protocol, and to serve as a useful tool in the completion of tasks. Submitting is making his life and household run more smoothly as well as providing entertainment and pleasure. When I submit to my dominant, I serve his erotic desires and fulfill mine; in practice, it might be as simple as walking behind my dominant and to his right side, fetching tea and preparing it the way he likes it, and never allowing his water glass to become less than half full at dinner. Or it could manifest as standing or kneeling rather than using a chair at dinner, a party, or on the subway. These small acts of submission enveloped in our day-to-day activities can fill my being with erotic energy and a sense of connectedness and commitment to each other.
In our D/s relationship, we have a contract and basic protocol rules. We have different levels of protococlass="underline" basic everyday protocol, high protocol, and, if need be, levels in between. One rule in our agreement states: “I will not use furniture, unless my dominant has given me permission or if abiding by this rule would inconvenience or make others around me uncomfortable.” (I would not stand or kneel at a restaurant or cafe if I was there without my dominant or at a meeting where it would be inappropriate.) The rules in our contract help form the structure of our D/s relationship, and its creation is entirely unique to us. We understand that agreements can change based on the individuals’ needs, which change over time, and we allow time on a regular basis to review our agreement to see what is working for each of us and what isn’t. If something isn’t working, we change it.
Sometimes, our D/s is incorporated into sex. I recall sitting at dinner at a four-star restaurant with my Sir. He ordered dessert for us, and as the waitress left the table he handed me a vibrator.
“Take this and get yourself off before our desert arrives, slut.”
“Yes, Sir.”
I took the vibrator underneath the white tablecloth, under my dress, and up my slit, until it rested next to my clit. The buzzing vibrator was barely audible over the espresso machine in the back. I worked my way up to climax and quietly asked, “Sir, may I come?”
“Yes, you may come.”
“Thank you, Sir.”
Other times, D/s manifests when my Sir enforces an order, like denying me orgasms. I remember one business trip where I would be in Detroit for a week, and my Dominant ordered me not to masturbate during the trip. I was so incredibly turned on by the fact that I wasn’t allowed to touch myself that I nearly came simply by the denial of my masturbation privilege.
If my Dominant and I are engaging in sadomasochism, I usually find myself in the role of a sensation-hungry lover or the submissive. If we are playing in an SM dynamic as lovers, I’m permitted to make eye contact. With each strike, we breathe together. It can be brutal and bloody, orgasmic and intimate all at the same time. If we’re engaged in SM in a D/s protocol, I will not make eye contact and simply accept the energy of a whip or cane and allow it to flow through me without releasing moans of pleasure. I am only permitted to verbalize gratitude and respect, unless I am granted permission to come. In my role as a submissive, it’s important for me to keep composure and always do my best to serve the needs of my Dominant, according to the terms of our D/s agreement, above my own impulses.