Real-Time Service

I was so deeply moved by my time with teddybearslave today. This blog post is likely to be poorly structured at best, and completely incomprehensible at worst, but I need to get my tumble of thoughts out of my brain into some place where I can see them again and remember what I feel like right this moment.

I'm so cautious interpersonally, in some ways. It's a crazy statement from someone whose husband's girlfriend lives with us, who has an in-person lover locally and another long-distance. I can see that.

And yet, on Friday night, when I tagged in to substitute in a play scene with my husband and another local couple, I stopped myself from kissing her, taking off my clothing, licking her, blowing him... and in the debrief, we all admitted later I could have done any of those and been welcome, but we hadn't negotiated it. Instead, I did what I knew we'd agreed on: I added my energy, I helped hurt her, I helped arouse her by kissing and licking elsewhere, but I would rather err on the side of caution and leave everyone wanting a bit than to go over a line and leave anyone regretful.

So I love asking for permission, but I hate asking for help. I always have.

I used to have a strong back; I built sets and hung lights in college. I can carry a 40-pound bag of dog food, a 50-pound dog, an air conditioning unit, furniture. I can do it by myself! I can hear the echoes of myself as a toddler pitching a fit, and my feminist professors ranting against stereotypes of women in American culture. I loved making more money than either of my husbands. And I loved the mental image of myself from 1991, driving to my job with my freshly dry cleaned cocktail dress neatly laid over a stack of lumber I needed to haul, to be used to build sturdy things that people would stand on onstage. That was me. That is still me, in my head. Tough. Capable. Strong. Feminine. But with the claws of a tiger and the shoulders of a bear.

Today, my teddybearslave came over for the first time. To serve. To serve me. I've paid people to clean before, I've paid people to help me organize before. Those felt like even exchanges, your time for my money. Clean. Easy. Simple. And although I cringed at needing the assistance, I knew I had earned the money to pay for it.

Today was different. teddybearslave was cleaning in exchange for attention. Energy. The privilege of ... gulp ... serving me. His expectations were merely that he be allowed to change into frilly panties and stockings before he cleaned, and that afterward, he be allowed to do whatever I wished.

This morning before he came over, I almost wiped down the bathroom before he came over a dozen times. I have long hair, I shed. The tub has stains that were there when we moved in. I'm pretty sure we haven't cleaned behind that cabinet, ever. I kept hearing a voice saying, "I'm not paying him, he shouldn't have to do that..."

But I let my bathroom be uncleaned before he arrived. It was excruciatingly difficult to let anyone serve me like that. To let someone else see one of the ways I have felt the most weak, the most needy, the least strong. To let him see that weakness, and let him fix it.

The bathroom, unsurprisingly, is perfectly clean. Everything shines. Everything is lined up straight. It's beautiful.

Afterwards, for play time, I wanted to stop thinking about my bathroom, and instead show him how I like to have my sore muscles rubbed: in my back, my hands, my feet. I wanted to show him first, then let him. Feel his muscles under my palms, then feel mine under his. Get used to the feeling of each others' bodies, grow accustomed to touching.

I felt his back muscles loosen immediately under the heels of my hands. They responded to me. He doesn't carry his tension in his back. Nor in his ass. Nor in his legs, all luxuriously covered in nylon thigh-highs. So strong and so silky under my palm.

Then I laid down, let him rub my back. I overruled the urge to be grateful and non-specific, knowing it was okay to ask for more, less, other. No, press in first, then slide. Use the heel of your palm, or the side of your hand. Yes, like that. Right there.

I felt him squishing away a tension in my left shoulder I hadn't realized I had, and thought about my bathroom, sparkling. I felt him listening to my muscles. I felt him wanting to help me.

It felt wrong. It felt like a betrayal of all my feminine strength. I don't need a man to help me, goddammit. I don't need anybody to help me, goddammit. I'm strong and powerful and full of grace and this is totally wrong to let him serve me like this. I'm strong enough to give without taking, I'm strong enough to do and do and do and never rest... The crazy voices of a million moments of martyrdom echoed through my mind.

Sometimes, when the tension in a muscle gives way, it releases something emotionally which has been tightly held for decades. When that happens, sometimes it releases tears.

"Don't stop, I'm fine," I managed to say. I felt him press in, staying steady, while I cried, because I needed someone to help me, yet again, and because, yet again, I found the help I needed when I finally found the courage to ask for it.

I didn't ask if I could cry, I'm his Mistress. I didn't ask if he minded, I'm his Mistress. And the good wishes pouring through his fingertips let me know he was at least okay, if not a little confused.

I did explain myself, eventually, with his hands still working on my back. It's vulnerable for me to be served - I feel my needs exposed. I don't feel comfortable crying with most people - the urge doesn't usually even surface - but when I do, it means I have a gut-level trust. It's a good thing. My tears subsided. A grin began.

He laid down again, so I could rub his hands. They're huge. Strong. Calloused. His back had given way to my pressure, but his hands were holding on. He needed his hands to stay strong; after all, they make him what he is, a servant.

So I pressed. Rubbed from his elbow down. Listened to his muscles. Told him to let me. He had to close his eyes to release to me. There, that's better. His breathing slowed down and I could feel him struggling to surrender to my touch. The other hand went easier, and I found myself curling up my hand in his relaxed palm, marveling at how tiny it looked, how safe it felt.

When I tucked his arm around me and snuggled in beside him, I giggled. This was ridiculous. Mistresses don't cuddle, right?. But he was my plaything, and I got to do what I wanted, and I didn't have to ask, or I had already asked, or something like that. He would tell me if he was uncomfortable, we had already established and reinforced that. I was simply to do with him what I wished, and what I wished was to wrap his giant teddy bear arms around me and cuddle in beside him, so fuck it, I did.

It was too much for his calm. His hands began roaming, stroking my skin. He pressed against me, and I could feel the erection growing under his pretty panties. I enjoyed his touch, his want. I felt him want to kiss my neck, but stop himself, and I grinned, knowing that for any other lover, I would have told him to go ahead, but for this moment, I wanted to feel his desire and his struggle, so fuck it, I did.

I could just lie here and let him caress me. I could grind against him, or not. I could leave him breathless. I could do anything, feel anything, have anything from him. He was there for me. I got it. I was so happy.

I laid him on his back, knowing my timer would go off in a few minutes, and spent the minutes running my hand over his body, feeling the curve of his muscles in his arms, down his chest, where his breath caught when my fingertips traced, how he trembled a little when I brushed over the dampness of the wet spot on his frills. I didn't have to do anything, complete anything, give anything. This was for me.

It seems absurd to me that I absorbed the feminist ideal in a way that made it hard for me to be served. And yet, I was struggling with feeling weak by accepting the surrender of someone else to my whims. The struggle was unexpected. The fact that I was learning quickly, that I seemed to be able to get past the crazy voices and do whatever I wanted to do with him made me suspect that I was going to figure it out.

"I'll probably go on record as the craziest Mistress ever." He laughed, shook his head no. I thought about asking for stories of others crazier than I, but realized I didn't need them.

The timer went off. I silenced it, and asked myself what I wanted. Just me. Without regard to his wants, just me.

"Put your clothes back on. There's a hanger in the bathroom for your things to leave here. I could probably go longer. We could probably do more. But this seems perfect to me."

He nodded. "Yes, it does."

I grinned. "So we're done."

Downstairs, I stood on the bottom stair and pulled him over to me by his shirt, pausing him close to me, eye to eye. Are Mistresses supposed to kiss their slaves? I don't know. But I had the urge to kiss him. So fuck it. I did.

I'm gonna learn a lot from this.

Summer Solstice Kaboom

It's been a good week

I wrote to my lover yesterday, "So apparently I'm having a little explosion of energy at the moment. Happy Summer Solstice... Here's a potential new lover and a potential new submissive. Kaboom."

The rest of this blog post is the Galiana-length version of that unusually-well-summarized paragraph.

Although I'm not primarily pagan, I do enjoy recognizing seasonal celebrations, and taking the opportunity to examine my life and its cyclical patterns. Summer Solstice is a time to remember the tending and waiting and watering of prior seasons, and to celebrate new growth.

I think it's obvious from my recent upward trend of blogging volume that I'm feeling a bit better than I was March-May. I worked hard to heal my back from its injury, which is finally paying off with fewer muscle relaxers, which leaves me far more energy and mental clarity and libido.

In addition to my energy return, my husband recently negotiated his annual contract renewal with great success. Now I am officially responsible for none of our shared expenses at all. One hundred percent of my earnings are now going to me: plane tickets for family visits, spending money, Galiana's hosting expenses, charities, saving up for a newer car.

However, the raise was not enough to pay for regular maid service. I mean, we keep up with dishes and laundry and trash and surface wipe-downs, so our home isn't gross. But between me, my husband, and our roommate (aka his live-in girlfriend aka Devant), we never choose deep-cleaning, vacuuming, or dusting. So at our last roommate dinner, we agreed we'd all rather pitch in a little spending money than do it ourselves.

But of course, nothing is simple with our kooky life these days. We have sex stuff everywhere. My red room has a lingerie bar and my favorite vibrators out, the guest bedroom has a sex toy bookshelf, all three beds have bondage rope or chain, and the dining room and garage look like workshops for building leather and wood BDSM gear because... well... they are.

So we could hire a regular maid service, but we'd have to pack everything away before each visit, because the town is small and enough to warrant some caution, given my husband's very mainstream job (which, did I mention, is paying all our bills now?). A better choice would be someone from the kinkster community.

Which leads us to the polite, respectful emails I've been getting since I moved here from... well, we'll call him teddybearslave. He doesn't come out to community events, but he's very interested in serving. Requests for details only reinforced that he wants to serve.

Frankly, his emails were so simple that I had no sense of the guy as a human being. So the thought of negotiating for real-time domestic service filled me with a slight sense of dread. I pictured him being super-noodly and repeating, "anything you want, Mistress" while secretly resenting me for not reading his mind and for not magically producing his deepest fantasies, which he would never actually voice to me, which would then build up into some awkward situation where he felt taken advantage of, and I felt lied to.

I'd rather pay someone than have that.

But he mentioned housework, and he has been respectful, and we need someone to clean our home, and I'm going to be exchanging sexual energy with someone in order to make the money to pay to get the house cleaned, right? It would be lovely if it were a straight-up exchange with the person cleaning, wouldn't it? I figured it was worth a brief in-person, in-public interview on Thursday, with all my usual safety first-meeting protocols, even though it felt like I was playing the lottery.

I like math. I'm good at math. So as a rule, I don't play the lottery.

But within five minutes, I knew I'd hit the jackpot. I cannot believe my luck. He's adorable, articulate, shyly amusing, and once he relaxed a bit, he has this fantastically mischievous twinkle in his eyes. He's got the teddy-bear ex-lumberjack type build of a guy who was a manual laborer for 20 years before being promoted into blue-collar management. He may be a tad pudgier now than in his heyday, but I wouldn't bet against him in a deadlift competition.

He exudes calm. And strength. And a desire to serve. It's not a chickenshit answer for him: his fetish really is as simple as serving; when he knows he's making someone else happy, whether sexually or logistically or whatever, he's in his bliss.

I told him we were negotiating as equals, peers, two adults figuring out if we had overlap. Although we may play with the dynamic, in reality, I know I am not superior to him. I don't want to be served by a thing with no inner life; I want to be served by a person who is capable of explaining what he wants and needs. His grin and nod felt like the contract handshake of a gentleman.

He's married, and his wife knows he plays, but they have a "don't ask, don't tell" agreement, so he has to fit play time into weekdays. He has seen pro Dommes before, but he can't afford it regularly. He had fantasized about trading service for play time, or heck, even just providing service, but others been too inflexible for his offer. Or, maddeningly, they were too disrespectful of his relationship with his wife to accept his limitations. Their loss.

Speaking of flexible, he said he loves the idea of not knowing what to expect ahead of time. He got slack-jawed when I said I would love to decide what to do based on my "whims of the day". He feels it's easier to trust that I'm really letting him serve that way, if I choose on the fly, instead of following some kind of script.

So our regular pattern will be an hour of cleaning followed by an hour of playtime, every week or every other, as we can schedule.

Play time could be him pampering me with a foot rub or massage. Or it could be me teasing him until he begs, denying him an orgasm, and sending him home all worked up. Or it could be me putting on a strap-on and grabbing a cane, tying him to the bed and reducing him to a man-puddle by striping and fucking his ass until he comes screaming.

Have I mentioned my variety fetish lately? He's perfect.

Oh, also, it would be super-erotic for him to wearing frilly girly things while he cleans, and would I mind if he left them at my place? HolyShitThat'sFuckingAwesome.

So. It seems I have a domestic servant. Y'know, like you do. Oh, wait, no, not at all like I've ever done before. Not even close. Whose crazy life is this?

Then Thursday night, after Devant and my husband went to bed, the thing finally happened that I've been waiting to feel for months now: I was bored and frisky. For the first time in months. My to-do list wasn't overwhelming me. I wasn't muddled up or dampened by medicine interactions. It was fantastic.

I could have opened up my phone sex line. I could have reached out to any one of several dozen people who I feel like I neglected all spring. I could have tested the appointment-making widget for the blog (coming soon, I'm sure). But no, this was a delicious, golden moment - a solstice gift - and I wanted to be selfish with it, because it wasn't just bored and frisky, it had a certain edge to it...

I wanted to hunt for fresh meat.

That's an urge I haven't felt since last September, in the middle of my moving stress. But I haven't felt a huntress urge in such a celebratory way since probably 2003. I certainly wasn't gonna squander it on doing anything sensible. Fuck that.

My match list on OKCupid was full of faces who weren't there the last time I checked it. Well, hello there, mister 98% match, 0% enemy, with a geek-hippie profile and the implication you want to explore BDSM from both sides of the power exchange. Don't mind if I do. We'll call you GeekSwitch.

One fun message led to another, which led to chat, which led to cybering. Having text-sex over chat, fer fux sake! How did I magically get transported back to 2003? It was right after my divorce, when I was rebuilding my sense of self by indulging in sexual exploration with people I met online in Austin. Online + Austin = a dating pool teeming with geeks and engineers. So, yeah, a big cheer for programmers who can type one-handed. It was fucking luscious.

Tuesday, I'm topping teddybearslave for the first time. Then GeekSwitch and I might hang out Tuesday night. My toes keep curling in anticipation for both of them.

Happy summer solstice to me. Kaboom indeed.