This blog concerns many subjects, but one through line from the start has been dominance and submission. It’s a truism that every sadist is a masochist, and vice versa; that every dom is a sub, and vice versa. For so long, my self-conception has been as a “dominant” guy, I’ve barely interrogated my submissive side.
That’s not quite right: at times, I’ve wondered about the ways in which the two impulses flow along, Mobius-strip-like, in many of my relationships, but this wondering always has centered on the psychological aspects of dominance, on the psychological aspects of submission. I’ve never really thought that much about whether I might enjoy a more sexual submission. Is, that is to say, what’s good for the goose, truly, good for this particular gander?
When I was in my first year in college (I think I’ve written about this somewhere on this blog), I had a girlfriend with whom I explored very light bondage. We handcuffed and blindfolded one another. I was deep in my shame, at that time, and while I was game to try just about anything, the thought of articulating explicitly a desire felt terrifying to me. So I didn’t. What I remember, though, was that there was something deliciously, tantalizingly exciting about the prospect of being restrained, even if, in practice, it always felt like something of a disappointment. You see – because I couldn’t speak my desires, the relationship between my desires and that which what transpired once I was restrained necessarily was almost entirely coincidental – a function of my girlfriend’s ability magically to intuit just what it was that I wanted.
Fast forward to today. Dominance and submission have occupied a seat near the center of my psyche for a decade and a half. And still… I’ve allowed my possible submission to remain unexamined.
As I showered this morning, I gave this some thought. I even, for a moment, positioned my hands against the wall of the shower in the gym, stepped back, bent over, and imagined being (gasp) spanked. What would it be like to surrender – to truly give myself over to someone’s will in the way that I long for a woman to give herself over to mine? This question, honestly, flummoxes me. I can barely form the words to write it, let alone, to imagine (and by “imagine,” I mean, to craft an active, psychic representation of a hypothetical circumstance) such a thing.
When I try, what I come up with is something not too far from what happened that first year in college: I imagine myself simply tabulating all the ways in which, all the moments at which, whatever it is that my “domme” might be doing might differ – even microscopically – from what I might prefer that she be doing. The pervert in me measures the world not by what’s happening at any given moment, but by the distance between what’s happening and what I wish were happening.
What would it be like to abandon that M.O.? Could I do it? Could I, say, allow myself simply to receive requests, instructions, directions? What if, say, I allowed a (beautiful, natch) woman to tie me up, blindfold me, gag me, even? And then, if I simply consumed what followed, rather than engaging in that constant measuring of distance?
I like to imagine that, one day, I’ll give this little fantasy a try.
I fear, though, that the world may never know.