24.7

We are heading off to Burning Man, up in Nevada.  Neither Amy nor I have been before.  We’ve spent plenty of time in the desert, some of it off grid, but this is the first time I’ll see playa.

It’s going to be an erotically charged experiment in community and self reliance, but Amy has some pretty big concerns.

She doesn’t like dust.

And it’s gonna be dusty.

We’ll keep you informed.  But not as it happens, we’re gonna be off the grid for the full week, best as I can tell.

We’ll update when we get back, so you can hear what happened.

Anybody else going?

Richard is lying next to me, sleeping. Usually he works on his laptop while I nap (I need more sleep than him), so it is a rare treat to be able to watch him while he’s sleeping. He is the handsomest man in the world. I really do need to take some pictures of him for the blog, so that you can all agree with me.

Today we went to Costco to get some things for an upcoming weeklong camping trip and to pick up prescriptions - migraine meds for me and an Epi-pen for Richard, who has an amazingly serious allergy to shrimp. We had a huuuge cart that was hard to move around, and I had picked up about five pounds of wild sockeye salmon to freeze for the winter. I was feeling nervous about getting the salmon to the freezer, so I asked Richard if he would pick up the prescriptions while I tried to find the big coolers, which had moved since the last time we were there.

To make a long story short, I ran all around the store with various employees until finally a manager checked the computer and found that all the Costcos in our area were out of them. Argh. I went to the Pharmacy line and Richard was standing next to it. He looked annoyed.

“Where were you?”

“I’m sorry, they’re out of the coolers and it took a while. Did you get the prescriptions?”

“No, I didn’t. I don’t know what you’re picking up.”

“Daddy, all you need to do is give them our name. They’ll find them.”

We got into line and he was quiet. I asked him what was wrong and he told me he didn’t appreciate my tone. It was rude. I knew immediately that he was right. Richard cuts me a lot of slack - he lets me tease him and he is very patient when I’m feeling anxious or worried. A lot of Domly-types would not tolerate what he does. But he does expect me to be respectful, and I wasn’t.

This is important for me too. Like a lot of women, I am very organized and efficient. I have to be, to do my work well and keep my family safe, healthy and happy. In my past marriage, I took responsibility for almost everything. The upside of that was that everything was done how I liked it. The downside was that I felt like my husband’s mommy instead of his wife. And not in a sexy way. And I would get bitchy. Ooooh, I could be bitchy.

I don’t watch to be bitchy. I don’t like myself when I’m bitchy. It hurts me as much as it hurts my partner, probably more. I’m sure that a lot of you reading are thinking “My goodness, that was nothing. You should see how bitchy I can be.” I know that this was minor. Trust me, I can be way bitchier than that (although I haven’t been to Richard.) To me, though, it feels like a slippery slope. This bitchy today, and what happens tomorrow?

I believe (and I may be wrong, I’ll ask Richard when he wakes up and maybe he will reply to this) that, if I keep being disrespectful in this way, it will hurt our relationship badly. I believe that Richard would NOT respond by turning me over his knee more often, or by becoming stricter. That would probably help, but I don’t think that is what he’d do. I think he would withdraw.

In our relationship, I have given all power over to Richard. If I start taking that power back, by challenging him or being disrespectful, then I am betraying him. I’m betraying him in the same way that, if we agreed to be monogamous, having sex with another man would betray him. How could he trust me if I did that?

Now, if I said “Richard, I don’t want to have a D/s (or TPE or whatever) relationship anymore” then we could talk about it and he could decide whether or not he wanted to stay in the relationship, based on my wish to change the ground rules. (Again, just like many people have successfully agreed to move from monogamy to polygamy or polyamory.)

But the fact is that I DON’T want to change the ground rules. I DO want Richard to have total power. To do that requires trust on both our parts. This small episode (which I have warbled on and on about) showed me that I am wrestling with trust right now. (Much like meg at Obedient Persephone, whose blog I LOVE and highly recommend; see blogroll at right.)

Why am I wrestling with trust right now? It’s related to giving control of finances over to Richard (see a couple of blogposts down - Another level of submission). I don’t think he’s going to f**k up and get the utilities shut down or anything. And if he did, so what? They can be turned back on. I guess I’m scared that he’s not going to do them as well as I do them. Which is ridiculous, when I look at that statement in black and white, because I am no Suze Orman, yanno?

Richard, god bless him, when I was apologizing in the car, said “Well, why should you trust me? You don’t know yet if I can do it, do you? I have to earn your trust on this.”

I love how down to earth he is. Truly, he’s right. People talk in very noble and spiritual terms about just letting go and trusting and the gift of submission and all, but it’s HARD. I’ve worked hard to get where I am, and I still have kids to get through college, and southern California is not a place where you can f**k up financially and recover easily.

Now I’m handing all that over to Richard, who would have been perfectly happy to have me do all the financials forever. He’s only taking it over to make life easier for me. It’s a gift, pure and simple.

So. I need to trust Richard to deal with the finances and other “family administration” chores. But developing that trust will take some time. Until then, I need to stay respectful and try to keep my nose out of things while he figures them out. Not real sexy, not what I fantasized about in my pre-BDSM days. More “Surrendered Wife” than SexySlutSlave. The obvious next step in my submission to Richard.

I’ll keep you posted.

A lot of things happen to me on our stairwell. Richard has grabbed me and fucked me there a few times, and photographed me (including I think the first pic of me posted on this blog, right before a spanking, and one in my “wiggle dress”). A couple of days ago we were walking down it, having a discussion about my collar, and I got in trouble right there on the stairs (Richard is planning to write about this, so I won’t say anything else about it.)

Anyway. I was walking down the stairs yesterday morning, to make coffee and get the newspaper for Richard. The dogs were tumbling around me, and I thought about how I have trained them. And I realized that Richard has trained me in exactly the same way.

The dog I had before these dogs was hell on wheels. It wasn’t Trixie’s fault; she was a breed that is specialized for specific tasks and is very high energy. I “clicker trained” her and trained her to both voice command and hand signals. Which required a lot of reading and a lot of practice and a lot of frustration. At the end, I had a dog who behaved well on a lead when there were no other stimuli around. Otherwise all bets were off. I never felt connected to her. I would look in her eyes and there was crazy there. She did exactly what she was told to do when she was told to do it, but that was it.

When I got the first of the dogs we have now, I was too busy to train her right away (except to a lead, “come” and “sit”, of course). I’m so glad now that I didn’t. Five years later, she responds immediately to any command I give, on leash or off, other stimuli or no. (This isn’t completely true; if Richard has his camera out she will not leave his side because she loves the reflection from the lens.)

The other dogs, who I have not had for as long, are exactly the same. I don’t know if they learned from her or if it’s because we are almost inseparable. The latter is what I want to talk about in re Richard’s training of me.

Richard isn’t into protocols and training regimes and lots of rules. Sometimes I think it would be fun to have more of that kind of dynamic (it’s sexy!) but mostly I’m glad. We’re both busy people and clearly don’t need all that for me to feel submissive to him, and him to feel ownership of me. However, we have both noticed that I obey him instinctively and often even anticipate his needs and wishes. And my obedience and anticipation are getting stronger and more pronounced with time.

What I realized on the stairs (I finally get to this - jeez) is that: the dogs obey me immediately and completely at a level that I never expected, especially without explicit training. They know me and what I want and need because they are with me constantly and pay close attention to me at all times. I know them for the same reasons. And I let them know what I want while at the same time trusting them not to need the uber-control of clickers and hand signals and all that. I respect their dog nature, if you will.

Similarly, I am able to obey and serve Richard at a level that (he tells me) he never experienced before, even though he has been involved with someone who saw herself as a high protocol slave (I realized as I wrote this that you could compare her quite aptly with Trixie). I think that’s because we are always together and I am always paying close attention to him (as he does me). He doesn’t choose to micro-manage me. He tells me what he wants, and then trusts me to get it right (Richard says that I should add “and he gets cranky when I don’t” lol).  He respects my slave nature (grin).

This post was a lot trickier to write than I expected! We have a big day ahead of us, so I’ll stop now. I’m keen to see what others’ experiences have been with this. How do you trade off explicit training/ control with simply knowing your Master/Owner/Daddy or partner?

xoAmy

Richard said that is going to be his new name. I have to refer to him at all times as “Sir Lord Master Slavebeater”. Without laughing, mind you.

I told Richard that I’m going to start collecting things he says like this (a constant occurrence) and post them under “Richardisms”.

Hope y’all are having a great day. We’re about to go for a long walk. Yesterday we had a wonderful picnic and watched the sun set on the beach while our dogs gamboled around us. I love summer!

xoAmy

I posted almost a year ago (Sept 3 “Joseph and the Pharaoh”) about the challenges I faced when Richard took over running our home. Honestly, it was one of the hardest tests of submission for me.

I know it sounds ridiculous - “Oh, no, please don’t take over cleaning the bathrooms and vacuuming, Cruel Master!” But I’ve been in charge of running my home throughout my adult life, and handing over that responsibility to someone else was hard. Really hard. It’s hard to feel submissive to someone when they are PUTTING THE GLASSES ON THE WRONG SHELF FOR GOD’S SAKE.

Over the course of the year I have gradually become comfortable with giving up control of homemaking to Richard. I still do most of the gardening, most of the “event planning”, and most of the organizing (he just doesn’t notice if books are put away upside down or sideways). I also pay the bills and make most of the financial decisions, although I always check with Richard before doing anything major (eg switching credit cards, opening an online savings account, or making a large purchase).

My financial responsibilities have been a bit wearing. We are in good financial shape, and I never pay anything late, or anything like that. But we aren’t really saving like I think we should be, and I think we are eating out too much and spending money on things that we don’t really need. The main problem, as I see it, is that neither Richard nor I have ever been the “brakes” in a relationship. We both are somewhat impulsive and enjoy change, and we have a whole lot of fun together. Neither of us wants to be the one who says “let’s NOT go out, let’s just eat at home” or “let’s not have wine with dinner” or “we don’t really need that new (whatever)”.

Neither of us has expensive tastes and we tend to want to buy things more for the other person than ourselves (Richard wants me to have more clothes; I want him to have more photography supplies). And, again, we’re actually on very solid financial footing. I just think we could do better, and it’s been bothering me a lot because I feel like I am shirking my responsibilities.

Richard brought up the possibility of taking over the finances a few times, but I felt too guilty to pursue it and he was (I think) unwilling to push me on it. A few days ago he brought it up again, probably because he could see how much it was bothering me. I chewed on it for a couple of days and then let him know that I was ready.

Yesterday, we sat down together and I walked him through our system - the online accounts, the files, etc. I reviewed everything I do regularly and explained what I was aiming for. I gave him all the passwords.

He listened and asked questions and then, when I’d covered everything, he took a stack of filing and went through everything. Since I got sick in December, I haven’t caught up on the financial filing and it was quite a stack. He worked through the whole thing, asking me questions when he didn’t know where something went.

When he finished, I thanked him and then I started crying. I was so surprised - he was too - but I think I’ve been more stressed about this than I had been letting on. I felt (feel) so grateful to him for being willing to take over this. I kept saying “thank you, thank you so much Daddy” and then I’d start bawling again. He just held me and patted me and said “It’s okay. It’s my job to take care of you.”

I’m hoping that this will take some pressure off, and I’m hoping that I will get some kinky pleasure out of submitting to his financial decisions. Maybe I’ll even get an allowance. : ) For now, I still feel a little panicky about not being in control of when bills are paid, etc. I just keep reminding myself of how hard it was when he first started taking care of our home, and how wonderful that has been for me (basically doubling my work productivity!)

I’d love to hear how other couples have dealt with this, and what works best for them.

xoAmy

“You can orgasm if you cum before I count to ten.

Amy hates that.

Hates hates hates hates hates hates hates hates hates hates hates hates it.

Or so she says.

Personally, I think it’s kind of fun.

She’s all agitated, and writhing, and begging for permission to cum, and then I give her permission.

Sort of.  It’s permission with a proviso.

And to hear her reaction, you’d think I’d done her a disservice.  Gratitude?  Oh no - It’s all “Bad Man this,” and “Bad Man that,” and “No no no no no no no”  “That’s not enough time,” and similar sounds of protest and unhappiness that are, quite frankly, very erotic to listen to.

I should make a tape.

Anyway, it’s delicious fun, especially the counting part.  I like to mix it up a little.  Start off real slow, “One……….Two………Three………” and then “FourFiveSix” real fast, like I’m going to get to Ten right away, and then she’s lost her chance.

That’s happened before.  She doesn’t make the cut, and then she’s done.  She’s not allowed to cum.  I must say, it’s a wonderful feeling, fucking her at a moment like that and cumming in her, knowing that she’s not about to get any release herself.  Deliciously cruel.

And effective as discipline.  Or maybe not - who really knows?  But it’s sexy and I like it, so I’m cool with it.

I used it yesterday.

Amy had gotten sassy.  The kind of “Pay attention to me I’m insecure and need to feel loved and important” sassy that is so baffling when taken at face value.

Which, as a guy, is how I always take it.

I’ve told Amy never to hint at stuff to me.  Tell me what you want.  If you want “X” for your birthday, tell me you want “X.”  Don’t leave painfully obvious clues and hints for me to pick up on, because I’m a simple man.  I’ll never figure it out. I’m not big on nuance.

Amy has been researching our old correspondence. Fate tried to stop her, once by me cutting my finger and having Amy force me to the doctor’s for stitches, and once by interrupting her with a nearby earthquake that rocked our house and threw things on the floor.

But she persisted, and all of a sudden I have a wife who’s telling me “I’m not what you really wanted, you wanted a girl who is X,” X being a characteristic largely defined by it’s being the opposite of how she perceives herself.

Now, I’m a guy.  This baffles me.  I don’t recognize it as insecurity, it seems to me like a sudden, inexplicable failure of logic.

I come from a gender that doesn’t often get the following joke:

Wife:  Tell me that you love me.

Husband:  I’m still here, ain’t I?

Ah romance.  So anyway,  Amy is feeling insecure and getting sassy, more so as her headache is passing and she’s feeling energetic, and I’m being all logical about how she IS exactly what I want, and she’s adamant that she isn’, and the whole thing is starting to make MY head hurt.

Then she mentions the word “insecure,” and a light goes off in my head.

Oh.

So we’re not really dealing with logic here.

We’re dealing with insecurity.  My little girl needs to feel owned and important to her Daddy.

Sounds like we need a little torture here.

So we talk and cuddle an go over what it was in our old correspondence that made her feel insecure, and I start playing with her nipples.

Well, I call it playing.  I don’t think Amy has a word for it.  She’s not exactly sentient when we do it.  Lots of moaning and writhing and half formed words.  Actually, she does pretty good with single syllables, it’s combining them into longer words, or full sentences that seems to be a challenge.

Oh.

She bites real good too.

I think that she has worked hard at memorizing the one full sentence that suddenly coheres out of all the moaning and protests. “Daddy, may I touch myself?”

I often say yes, but this time I just laughed and said  “No.”

Oh my.

The howls, the unhappiness, the”Why can’t I?”

What a question!

“Why can’t I”

“Because you’re not allowed.”

Duh.

I’m having too much fun playing with her nipples to let her masturbate.   And she’s getting desperate to touch herself. I tell her she’s not allowed, and then I tell her she’s not allowed to go through our old correspondence anymore, and a few other things, and she’s getting pretty frantic.

Then I give her permission to masturbate, but she still has to ask if she can cum, because I haven’t decided that yet.

Migod her nipples.

Like bullets, rocks, you name it - so hard and firm on her soft breasts - drives me crazy with desire, if I can be honest.  I’m lucky I’m sentient, myself.  She wriggles so much I keep losing my grip on them - if I suck them I can keep them in my mouth, but she twists and squirms so much they keep pulling out of my fingers as I torment them.

Finally, after numerous requests (wow- my little girl can beg like the furies when she has too) I decide to let her cum, but only if she can cum before I finish counting.

Hey, I don’t want her getting all cocky and confident on me.  She was sassy just a little while ago.  I want her to know just how close to the edge she is of NOT getting what she is so desperate for.

I count, and while I count I tease her, and make her laugh.

That breaks her concentration.

Heh heh heh.  Cruel.

But she focuses, and her forehead furrows and her fingers fly like the wind and she’s holding her breath and I count to “Seven” and suddenly she’s gasping for air and cumming hard.

Good girl!

She’s exhausted and spent and just perfect for a good fucking, which I indulge myself in.

And now I think we’re good.  Insecurity kept at bay.

Plus a few rules, nothing major.  Some things she’s not allowed to do.

And when she wants to read our old correspondence, she has to get my permission and I’ll sit with her and read with her as she looks things over.

Although… (and she doesn’t know this yet)

She’ll be wearing all her chains and a leash when she does it.