I got Belle a copy of The Mistress Manual by Mistress Lorelei. It was well-reviewed on Amazon and it’s just my thing to buy a lot of books whenever I’m trying to to grok a new subject, but it’s been sitting on Belle’s nightstand uncracked since it arrived so yesterday I picked it up and started reading it.
Mistress Lorelei suggested I stop. At least, to stop before I got to the juicy stuff. OK, I figured, I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise. But I was able to get through enough to know Belle’s not going to like some of what she has to say. First of all, Lorelei talks a lot about “sissy maids”. As I’ve said, I am not a sissy, do not want to become or be turned into one, and, in general, am not interested in doing all the housework (nor is she interested in me being a sissy). In addition to lauding the benefits of the live-in sissy maid, Lorelei also discusses the joys of dressing your guysub (her word – hadn’t seen that form of the term before) in women’s clothing (specifically, underwear). Again, not burning with a desire to wear lacy panties and Belle’s never suggested I should. We don’t have a problem with guys who do, but it’s not an idea that trips either of our triggers. However…
Mistress Lorelei did help my thoughts coalesce around something I had not been able to put words around previously. While I’m not interested in doing all the chores, wearing panties, or otherwise being emasculated, I am turned on by Belle making me perform tasks or putting me in situations I’d never embrace on my own. I like the idea of her pushing me beyond where I’m comfortable. For example, when she forced me to eat my own come. Yes, eating come (my own included) turns me on, but it’s only a turn-on for me while I’m turned on. Approximately .25 seconds after it comes out of my body, the idea of eating it is about as arousing as is the idea of eating snot. She didn’t just ask me to eat it, though, she made me by smearing it over my lips. It was a marvelous moment where she spontaneously asserted her dominant prerogative. It was awesome and it’s one my favorite memories from our recent past.
This concept intersected with our life last night. Belle had already told me I was not going to service her, but she was being very generous with her attention towards me. She was clawing my ass, pinching my nipples, and jacking the cock (while avoiding the still-tender piercing). It was heavenly. I had asked (begged, really) to be allowed to go down on her, and she refused. Then, as she was biting and sucking on my neck (and leaving a nice little trail of marks down to my shoulder), the intensity of the feelings got to me and I begged to be able to do anything at all to her. I guess I didn’t really think she would let me, but I really, really wanted to and also wanted to hear her refuse me again. However, it didn’t turn out that way. She got pissed. Felt I was trying to control the action. I apologized and did my best grovelling bit, but she was fairly nonplussed. After she chewed me out for a while, accompanied by my continued pleas for mercy, she decided I had ruined the moment and would have to massage her feet with lotion before she went to sleep (which, you know, wasn’t all that bad either).
She may have been right. I may have been trying to steer the ship. It’s not uncommon for me to achieve a nice subbie headspace after we get started, but it’s not usually the case that I’m feeling submissive before we get going. Had I been grooving the guysub space, I don’t think I would have continued to beg her for access to her body. I might have tried once, but she was being pretty firm with her refusal. I doubt I would have pushed it. Maybe that little voice in my head that hoped she would capitulate and let me go down on her was playing a bigger role than I thought. Had she directed me to leave my comfort zone beforehand – to jump-start my submissive tendencies – I probably wouldn’t have pushed her so hard.
So, to tie all this together, I had never really appreciated why dommes made their subs do things like kneel or kiss their feet before a scene. Since I didn’t feel a terrific desire to bow before Belle or worship her feet (not, at least, until getting warmed up a bit), I figured that her forcing me to do them wouldn’t find a place in our relationship. In fact, I continue to think too much about my interests and desires. No, I don’t instinctively want to bow to her, so she should make me do it. Since sucking on her toes is usually something I need to warm up for, she should make me do it before anything else. We both need strategies that will allow her to assert her dominance, not for my pleasure, but to ensure I don’t usurp her authority.
Because of last night, there’s a phrase that reiterates our power-sharing arrangment that she’s requiring me to say before I’m allowed to do anything with her. At first, I felt silly and somewhat embarrassed saying it, but by about the third time it came out of my mouth, it sank in as to why I needed to say it. And, in turn, why I needed to write this.
I flatly refuse to read, recommend, or otherwise endorse a book which tells men not to read it and makes a show of that being anything even remotely approaching an appropriate thing to do.
Goddamn awful premise, goddamn awful, sexist, and utterly geared towards vanilla people, I would imagine.
Disclaimer: Haven’t read the book. See previous paragraphs for why.
I have to admit, I have never heard a good review of The Mistress Manual from someone who was already interested in kink. It seems to be a very popular primer (and I admit, I’ve never read it) but is often cited as missing a lot of the key relationship issues that are really at hand when exploring BDSM.
I suggest you read the whole thing before you give it to Belle, honestly. Or perhaps consider something a bit more broadly based (not femdom-specific) and useful, like Screw The Roses, Send Me The Thorns.
Maymay: I’d have to go back and look, but I think Lorelei was trying to say that if I read it, I’d be ruining the effect (kinda like knowing how a magician performs his tricks), not that I wasn’t allowed. There was another book that said that, too, but I can’t remember which one it was. I don’t think she was *trying* to be sexist, and if she had been, I’m pretty sure we’d toss the book.
Eileen: I checked out that Roses book and it looks terrific. I love the voice it’s written in. Should have it by mid-week. Thanks for the recommendation!
Your comment brings up a point I’m confused about. You seem to suggest there’s a difference between femdom and BDSM. Lorelei touches on that a bit, as well (calls it a conflict between leather people and the domestic crowd). I guess I never perceived the difference before (I had always assumed femdom was a practice that fell beneath the BDSM umbrella). I have to say that the whole concept of femdom, per se, has never really sat well with me, but the idea of being submissive to Belle really does.
I’m thinking more time trying to tease out the differences between femdom and BDSM is in order…
The thing is, BDSM as a cultural whole is infused with a lot of troubles and stereotypes, but femdom in particular has a real cultural issue with stereotype, gender and the role of women. It’s something that’s hard to explain in just a single comment, but might I suggest you read yourself some Bitchy Jones (bitchyjones.com) if you don’t already.
I don’t know what Lorelei says about a ‘conflict between BDSM and the domestic crowd’ but I do know that although we meet a ton of D/s femdom coupled people online, we know barely *any* in the public scene. Dominant women and submissive men are marginalized groups in BDSM. Some people respond to this by breaking us off into our own little section, or taking kink ‘domestic.’ I really don’t think this is a proper solution, especially if you personally don’t have a domestic bent to your kink. And it sounds like you don’t, and that Belle doesn’t. It sounds to me like the two of you have some straight up D/s sadomasochistic kinks, and you don’t need a gender-focused book to learn those things. You just don’t.
There doesn’t need to be a single book just for femdom. A book like that is almost guaranteed to focus on the stereotypes of femdom, like dressing men up as “sissy maids” (ugh) and having them do housework. That is a radical narrowing of the kinky spectrum that some women (myself included) just don’t fit into. And, more disturbingly, a lot of those books try to invent reasons why a woman might like to dominate a man in that way. “Wouldn’t it be great if he would do all the housework?’ etc. Frankly, I think that’s bullshit. D/s is a sexual kink. We should do it because it turns us on.
P.S. I also highly recommend anything by Jay Wiseman. He does BDSM 101 and safety very, very well. We have The Erotic Bondage Handbook, by him.
My argument would be, give Belle and yourself the practical tools and safety know-how to explore kink. Then figure out *why* on your own. You don’t need books to tell you why.
I have his SM 101 book and think it’s terrific. I’ll check out Erotic Bondage.
“…figure out *why* on your own. You don’t need books to tell you why.”
Wait, you can *do* that?! 😉
I bought the book when it was published, and I read it. I also show it as a book to read on my blog. Some of it may be fantasy, but it does not matter. You get from it what you like, or toss it as worthless. The bottom line is, nobody should tell you how you should behave, except maybe your lover when you are in a D/S situation.
I am in a Female Led Relationship (FLR) by my choice. I admit, and have written on my blog, that FLR is completely based on sexual domination. Without that, we eliminate close to 99 percent of the so-called FLRs. Your relationship as far as I can see is mostly sexual. Good for you, and good for your partner. Nobody should try to make you feel guilty about not doing the laundry, etc. All that other stuff is up to the people who either must do it, or get off doing it for someone.
I do some or much of that because I love my wife, and I don’t expect her to do all the work around the house. But that is just our preference that I would not impose on any other person.
Enjoy what you have, but try to give more than you take. You will be surprised how well that works.