Vacation Note

Submissive in the City is going to the country for vacation! If I’m unable to get online to publish, have a great 4th of July.

I’ll be back soon!

Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop?

Sorry to keep you holding your breath for a few days, but I met the Dark Horse earlier this week, and we had a great date. The chemistry was just as strong in person. Even though we’d spent hours on the phone and trading emails, we still found more to talk about. He’s handsome and has strong arms that I’d love to fall asleep in. We have similar kinks, complimentary D/s personalities, and a lot of vanilla interests in common. We’ve talked on the phone within an hour after saying good night on our first date, and have spoken or emailed at least a half a dozen times since then.

So why am I having doubts?

A Different Week Than I Expected

Just a short teaser post so you don’t think I’ve up and disappeared. If you asked me on Sunday what I expected to be the highlight of the week, I probably would have mentioned J2′s impending visit. We’d have a nice dinner, I might tell him about my further explorations into D/s, then we’d go back to his hotel. Instead, my week’s done a 180.

It Makes Me Squirm

I have minimal experience with humiliation play and embarrassment in a D/s context, though I’ve read a lot about it. I realize it’s a particularly personal form of play that requires partners to know one another quite well, because what humiliates one person may *shrug* do nothing for another or, worse, may hit upon deep-seeded issues that neither partner is prepared to address. I could always count on my ex J2 to say embarrassing things to me as soon as we were in elevator with strangers or other situations from which I couldn’t escape. I never found it to be a turn on (nor was it deeply embarrassing), but if he enjoyed it, who was I to argue? Over the weekend, however, I realized that there is one bit of humiliation/embarrassment I’ve recently been subjecting myself to, and it finally dawned on me how much I was enjoying it.

Beneath This Conservative Exterior…

If you saw me in a business meeting, I’d be comfortably talking to corporate executives. I’m dressed in a classically tailored business suit, nothing too loud or garish. It’s one of a dozen in my closet. Maybe it’s navy, or a black pinstripe, or a beige, or the three-piece knit suit that everyone mistakes for a St. John. Beneath my suit jacket, I’m likely to be wearing a sweater camisole, or a silk cami, but nothing too revealing. Lace trim isn’t appropriate in the business setting where I work. I might be wearing a single strand of pearls and matching earrings, or a simple gold choker. I adore shoes, and my footwear is likely to hint at the sexy edge that lies beneath my conservative exterior.

Mid-Week Update

After getting this blog off to a fast start, things have slowed down a bit, as I’d expected. In my personal life, the past few days have been quiet, too, but should be getting more lively over the next week.

I have a first date tomorrow, with a guy who I’ve been chatting with online for a while. We’re getting together for drinks in the early evening…if things go well, it could turn into dinner, but otherwise we can call it a night after one or two cocktails. (I can make conversation with anyone for an hour or two! My friends would laugh and agree with that statement…”anyone,” they’d tell you, includes an infant, a brick wall and your most annoying in-law.) While I’m always optimistic about first dates, I try not to get my hopes up too high! I don’t want to jinx it, so I won’t say anything more.

Mr. P and I last played about two weeks ago, and I was hoping that maybe I’d get to see him this weekend, but I know he has a lot going on this month. Nothing scheduled, however, which is probably good because after writing last night’s post about J2, I shot him an email and got a reply this morning letting me know that he’d be in town early next week. I haven’t told him that I’m delving more deeping into D/s. (I started to tell him one night. He’s always asking me about the men I’m dating, and what I’m looking for. I began to list adjectives like dominant, strong, alpha male…and he said, “Sounds like the opposite of me,” which, ironically, is not the case. I’d use all of those words to describe him. But we were in the middle of having sex–yes, we’ll have conversations like this during sex, mainly when he wants to slow down the pace–and although arguably I should have steered the conversation away from generalities about my dating life and toward the fact that I need D/s in my life, at the time it didn’t seem like a discussion I wanted to have.)

But as I was saying, I’m planning to tell J2 about the fact that I’m embracing my submissive and kinkier side–I’m exploring things that are both more submissive and kinkier than what we had in our relationship–but think I should probably tell him when there aren’t bruises on my ass. At some levels, he’s a voyeur and has always enjoyed hearing details about the other men I’ve dated (both before we were together and after we split up), so I have no doubt he’ll enjoy this, too. And he probably would enjoy seeing the bruises, too, but I’d rather tell him first (or not, if it doesn’t feel right).

About An Ex

I’ve mentioned in past posts that my ex J2 (here and here) was (and still is) a very dominant man, though we didn’t put a D/s label on our relationship. Most kinky people would find our sex life to be fairly vanilla (though we enjoyed a lot of kinky things by vanilla standards). We had an amazing emotional connection–like something I’ve never experienced in my past relationships–and I let him have tremendous control over me. Even today, more than five years after we split up, our connection to one another is strong.

Is Vince Vaughn Kinky?

Have you seen the Jennifer Aniston-Vince Vaughn movie “The Break-Up” yet? I can’t claim to understand how Hollywood screenwriting credits work, but according to IMDB, the “story” is by Vince Vaughn, Jeremy Garelick and Jay Lavender, but only Garelick and Lavender wrote the screenplay. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll probably agree: One of the three of them has more than passing knowledge of BDSM. The burning question is, which one is it?

What Am I Looking for in a D/s Relationship?

As I’ve accepted my submissiveness, I’ve had difficulty describing how and why D/s resonates with me. One of the difficulties of explaining D/s is that it’s so closely linked to kinky sex. You just don’t hear about many D/s couples with vanilla sex lives. Well, sometimes you do. You just put different labels on them. He’s an asshole and she’s a doormat (or a bimbo). If the roles are switched, she’s a bitch (or a ballbuster) and he’s a wimp.

A Collar You Could Wear in Front of Your Mother

I can’t be the first person to wonder if Cartier’s Love line of jewelry, which has been reintroduced after originally debuting in the 1970s, was designed by someone kinky.

Another City, Not My Own

It was a last-minute decision to attend the convention. It was out-of-town, and might not lead to any new business. But as long as I would be in town, I could meet with another client. And it gave me a chance to spend the night with him…it had been nearly two years since I’d been single and we’d been able to spend the night together.

I Have a Play Partner :)

Let’s just call him Mr. P.

P is for Pleasure. And Pain. And Play Partner. And Oh-My-God-I-Want-You-Grab-My-Hair-And-Force-Me-To-My-Knees-And-Fuck-My-Mouth-With-Your-Cock-Until-Tears-Run-Down-My-Face. (Yeah, I realize that doesn’t exactly start with P, but I took a few liberties.)

We’ve seen each other twice. Both times I did things I’d never done before, and I loved it. I haven’t told him I’m blogging yet, so I want to refrain from getting into too much detail until I do. (Yeah, I know I’ve been blogging for two days and have no readers, but still… *g*)

Remember that itch I just couldn’t scratch? I scratched it alright…scratched it so hard it left bruises!

Guy #5 (Sometimes You Have to Kiss a Few Frogs)

Guy #5 was another case of a guy who gave good email. He was smart–brilliant, probably–but he lacked common sense. He wasn’t going to get anyone killed with his lack of common sense, but he was the kind of guy who probably needed a wife to keep him organized. After a few dates where our vanilla conversations just left me grinding my teeth, I realized I could never get serious with G#5, because I couldn’t respect him. He was slowly driving me crazy. So I thanked him, and we went our separate ways. (Oh, and things never got more hot and heavy than making out and some public groping. He was actually a decent kisser.)

Guy #4 (He Was Crazy)

It was the first time I’d ever walked out of a date in the middle of a drink, in the middle of the conversation. But I didn’t feel a need to sugarcoat the fact that we were never going out again. It just goes to show that no matter how long you get to know someone via email, there are some things you won’t discover until you meet them in person. But crazy people will eventually reveal their crazy side. You just have to hope they show it before your life is in danger.

You Know Your Mind Is Elsewhere…

…when your yoga teacher is helping you deepen a pose, and your first instinct it to call out, “Yellow,” when the stretch gets a little too intense.

Guy #3 (This is Where Things Start to Get Hot)

My first date with Guy #3 almost never happened…but I’m glad it did. Our correspondence was drawn-out, and intermittent. Work, life and personal obligations kept us both busy and distracted, and threatened to kill whatever momentum we might have had on email. Our start-and-stop emails continued for a few weeks until we finally made a date.

And then I almost didn’t go through with it.

Guy #2 (Don’t Fall in Love With Emails)

Although I often spend a couple weeks talking to a man via email, phone and IM before agreeing to meet in person, I’ve never been able to understand how people can build entire relationships with someone they’ve never met face-to-face, or communicate for months before meeting in real life.

The fact of the matter is, the odds are against you when you meet in person. I walk into every first date as an optimist. I truly hope that the man I’m meeting could be Mr. Right, or I wouldn’t be wasting time on the date. But the fact of the matter is, even though we both thought there was potential prior to the first date, once we spend a couple hours together on a first date, opinions often change.

Guy #2 is a perfect example of why you shouldn’t fall in love with someone until you meet them face-to-face. He gave great email. Such great email that I was willing to overlook some important details.

Guy #1 (A Lesson in Trust)

I met Guy #1 online over the winter. His emails were sharp, funny and insightful, but he came off as a little obnoxious in our phone conversations. From his pictures, I wasn’t certain if we were physically a match, but I was looking forward to meeting him in person when we arranged a Sunday lunch date.

He was one of those dominant guys who wanted to start off our first meeting with some small instructions for me to follow—but only if I was comfortable. He was the first guy I’d met face to face, so this was a big step for me, but I was willing to play along. And although he didn’t ask a lot of me in those instructions (they had to do with entering the restaurant, sitting down and waiting for him), it was a little nerve wracking. But I followed them, we met, and the date went better than I expected it to. We were among the last people to leave at the end of the lunch service. I found him charming and witty. I enjoyed our conversation, and hearing more about how he’d become involved in D/s.

G#1 and I went out on two or three more dates, and talked on the phone a lot when we weren’t out on dates. But I found myself reluctant to schedule dates. First, he was one of these men who had lied about a few things in his profile, but wrote it off as acceptable lies. You have to love it when people think the lies they’ve told aren’t *really* lies. He’d shaved about five years off of his age (and he was quite immature, I’ll give him that). He listed himself as divorced, when he was really only separated from his wife. And he described his profession in nebulous terms that would lead you to believe he was probably a doctor, when he was nothing of the sort. (He was a consultant.)

But worse than the lies was that he was one of these guys who had an obnoxious side to his personality and just didn’t give a damn about a lot of things. I never saw that side of his personality directed toward me, but I saw hints of it, and he told me plenty of stories where it was clear it existed. He made a comment about being asked to leave a nicer restaurant in our city because he was being loud. Now, my demeanor is fairly sedate and conservative. I would be appalled if I were asked to leave a restaurant, and I’d be appalled if my husband or boyfriend were asked to leave a restaurant. I do have a few friends who are obnoxious, and a little piece of me admires them because they just don’t give a damn. And I laugh when they get going (particularly when it’s in an acceptable setting). But if they start acting obnoxious in an inappropriate location, I can get up and leave, because they’re just a friend—they’re not my date or my boyfriend or my husband. And I wouldn’t want them to be.

I kept thinking about that…this guy has an obnoxious, flippant, I don’t give a damn demeanor. Could I tolerate that? So much of D/s is about trust, and giving trust and control to the dominant partner. And I finally realized that I wasn’t sure I could ever trust someone with that attitude. Granted, he said he had a lot of experience, and he’d been into D/s since college (he was in his 40s). Maybe he was completely safe, sane and had never given partners a reason to make them think he couldn’t be trusted. But I just didn’t feel comfortable with him. So after a handful of dates—none of which got more intimate than a kiss—I told him I didn’t think it was going to work out, and wished him well. Sometimes you learn a lot about what you’re looking for by going down the wrong paths.

Why Is It…?

Why is it that some dominant guys think they can act like complete boors online when they’d never behave that way in the real world? And do dominant men really think that begging and arguing will get submissive women to change their mind after the sub has rejected them?

I Have This Geeky Side

Although I’ve already had one serious relationship with a dominant guy (J2), it was several years ago, and we didn’t put a D/s label on our relationship. Since I’ve made my deliberate decision to seek out a dominant partner (and I do think that a D/s relationship is a partnership), I’ve been reading everything about D/s that I can get my hands on. That’s my nature…when I become interested in a topic, I seek out all of the information I can find. Whether I’m buying a new appliance, planning a trip or just stumble across some obscure topic I’m unfamiliar with but interested in, I want to educate myself. And it’s no different with D/s.

Since I am still single but trying to meet men, I don’t come across as naive, mislead anyone about my level of experience or interests, or–gasp–risk making a fool of myself. I’ll slowly be adding links to the blogs and other sites that I’ve found particularly helpful. Even though some BDSM blogs don’t reflect a life that I’m interested in living, I’ve found it educational to help me understand the complete range of D/s (Domination/submission), M/s (Master/slave) and BDSM lifestyles. I also love the book SM101: A Realistic Introduction by Jay Wiseman. It’s the first book I bought and read (back when I met the sub guy years ago), and I’ve recently reread it.

Although I’m throwing myself into researching and educating myself, I don’t rush on the dating side. When I start to trade emails with someone online, I take things slowly and let them develop naturally. My kinky online dating habits aren’t drastically different than my vanilla online dating habits. I’m probably averaging one first date a month, and that’s usually after two or three weeks of email, then some phone calls or IM chats.

The downside of all of this geeky research, combined with a slow dating life: I feel as if I have itch I just can’t scratch!

A side note

You’ll notice that a lot of these posts are going up at once. Some were already written, and I wanted to give this blog a critical mass of posts as I was getting started. Once I get going, I don’t anticipate posting as frequently!

Match to Alt

When my last long-term relationship ended in mid-2005, I put up a profile on Match.com. I’d used Match before, with some degree of success. I think of online dating as one tool…it’s not something you should rely on exclusively in hopes of meeting Mr. Right, but it can be effective in meeting other people who are interested and open to dating.

I was meeting people online, and going out on dates when, late in the year, Match introduced keywords that you could attach to your profile, so other users could search profiles by keyword. (Until this point, you could only search by more general criteria…age, sex, location, body type, height, religion, etc. You couldn’t search any of the text fields.) As soon as the keywords were introduced, I started searching for things such as dominant, BDSM, kinky and dominance. When the words were first introduced, Match automatically pre-populated your keyword list with words from your profile. So sometimes you might get a mislead keyword. If your profile said, “I’m a pretty average guy…nothing kinky here.” The word kinky might end up on your keyword list. Match assumed you’d go through and change it with words of your choosing.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get many matches, and I didn’t like most of the matches I got. In fact, I only liked one of them. He was a little younger than me, but his profile was very sharp, but subtle. I think he had the word dominant in his keyword list, and it didn’t appear in his profile, so I knew he’d deliberately added it to his list. His profile made it clear he was an alpha male, and when he described what he was looking for in a woman, he had a long list of qualities, and in there–nestled among a lot of vanilla attributed–was the word sub. I don’t even think he said submissive. I got excited. Here, on Match–a vanilla dating site–was a dominant guy!

So I send him an email. I mention that I’m submissive, but that I think we could be a good fit for a bunch of other reasons. And I wait for a response. Match, like a lot of sites, tells you when someone’s last logged on. I seem to have bad luck in that respect. I rarely send the first email. But when I do, it seems like a guy disappears. I click send and he doesn’t log back on for days. So I know my email is sitting unread in his mailbox. Finally I see that his profile shows he’s logged back online. He appeared on the list of people who have viewed my profile. I wait some more. And no response. I feel deflated. Out of all of the guys on Match, there’s one who’s dominant and seems like he could be a good fit, and he’s not interested in me. He doesn’t even have the courtesy to send a “thanks but no thanks” reply. *sigh*

But it was the keywords on Match that got me to thinking. There must be dominant guys who are looking for love online. Where are they? So I headed to Yahoo and started to search. Online personals & BDSM. One of the first sites to pop up was Alt.com. On the downside, it’s owned by Friendfinder.com, which is one of the sites that I absolutely hate. They have a clunky interface and seem to extort money from their users. Plus, they seem to be a bit sleazy. But, Alt.com seemed to be the biggest of the “alternative” online dating sites, and I wanted to meet a dominant guy. So I bit the bullet, and created a profile.

My journey, part 1

If you’d asked me in college, I probably wouldn’t have been able to tell you what D/s or BDSM meant. I’d heard of S&M, of course. (I was in college in the late 80s…vanilla kids talked about S&M. Maybe they still do.) As in…”He’s in to whips and chains and S&M.” But I never fully understood the context and meaning of it, other than knowing it had something to do with pain. I certainly didn’t understand how closely pain and pleasure were linked, nor the power dynamic in which it usually operates. Nor did I have any inkling that it was often closely linked of Domination and submission. I can’t imagine I’d ever heard those words, though I’m sure my friends and I joked about being “sex slaves” for guys we had crushes on. Though even our ideas of being a sex slave were a little different than M/s relationships.

But when I think back to my college relationships (and let’s not fool anyone, they were really regular college hookups), there was one guy–let’s call him A–where some subtle hints of BDSM came into play. We had a good-natured relationship with one another, and didn’t take each other too seriously. I can remember wrestling during foreplay–he’d pin me, then I’d pin him. We called each other names in bed (bitch, asshole…and it was done under the guise of joking around), and we’d otherwise talk dirty to each other. If only I’d realized why I was enjoying it! (It’s only years later that I’m putting two and two together, and understanding why I’ve considered him to be my favorite guy from college.)

Immediately after college I had a long relationship with another guy, let’s call him A2. It was a relationship that lasted too long, and toward the end we were driving each other crazy. He refused to make decisions, but hated every decision I made. And our sex life was ho-hum. When we split up, I tried to figure out what mistakes I’d made, and what I should be looking for in a new boyfriend. I realized that although A2 wasn’t sexually submissive, he had a passive-aggressive personality. I’d always thought of myself as having a strong personality, so I decided I needed to meet a submissive guy who’d be happy to have me take the lead, or I needed to find a strong-willed guy and we could just go head to head, figure out who would be in charge in different parts of the relationship, and we’d make things work. Interestingly, I still wasn’t aware of the world of BDSM, and I was still strictly thinking of submission and dominance in terms of interpersonal relationships…nothing kinky.

The internet was just emerging, I had my first computer, and I placed a personal ad on Netscape’s personals service. Among the guys I met was a guy who wrote to me using funny upper and lowercase pronouns. (“i am a submissive man and You sound wonderful!”) I wasn’t sure what to make of him, but flatter will get you everywhere, and I’d been cooped up with a passive-aggressive guy for too many years. We started to trade emails, I started to do Internet searches about–well, I’m not sure I even know what keywords to search for at the time. We went out for a drink, I talked to one or two of my kinky gay friends, we went out for lunch, I bought SM101, I did more internet research, we went on a few more dates. I like to say that I discovered submissive men bore me (or exerting my Domme side on submissive men bores me) but I got a few good foot rubs out of it.

After about a year of casual dating, I ran into a man who I’d periodically flirted with while A2 and I dated. J2 worked for a company that did business with my company, and we’d see each other at business functions a couple times a year. We both knew there was chemistry between us, and while socialize at cocktail parties or trade shows over the years, we’d check in with one and ask, “Are you single?” Finally, we both were single. Although J2 has lived in the US for 20+ years, he was born in a culture that is considered to be somewhat misogynistic and raises men with a bit of machisimo. (Coincidentally, I spent a few years living in the same part of the world and I’ve always been attracted to men from this culture.) Because he’s lived in the US for many years, he is a very mild example of his culture, but he’s still what you’d probably call a “natural dominant.” (I laugh when I read personals of men who describe themselves that way. Aren’t those of us in D/s all involved in this because it feels natural and right?)

As J2 and I developed a relationship, I quickly realized that he was the dominant personality I was looking for when A2 and I ended out relationship. And as I suspected, we did negotiate areas of the relationship where I called the shots and areas where he called the shots, but I quickly discovered, that I was very happy having him in control of most areas of the relationship. It felt right, it felt comfortable, it felt secure. Yes, there were areas where I was in charge, but even in those areas I usually checked in with him to get his OK, and that was fine with me. We were still partners, but we just brought different things to the table. And *grin* we had a great sex life. After a very ho-hum sex life with A2 and four years of college sex with inexperienced college boys, J2 was mindblowing because he was experienced and we had similar kinks. (I had my first orgasm during sex with him. Prior to that I’d faked it or just hadn’t cum.) I remember asking him one day, “You like to be in charge in the bedroom, don’t you?” and he said something like, “Yup. If you want to be in charge in other areas, I’ll consider it, but I’m in charge in the bedroom.”

Although I’d read and researched a lot about BDSM while dabbling in it with the sub guy, I never really put a D/s label on my relationship with J2. And we didn’t follow a lot of the D/s protocol.

When my relationship with J2 ended, I went back to my vanilla ways of meeting men. But with every guy I met, I hoped he’d have a dominant side to his personality. There’s nothing more deflating than getting into a relationship with a guy, asking him his deepest, darkest sexual secrets, and hearing him say, “I’d really like you to dominate me.” *sigh*

For the last five or six years, I’ve grinned and beared it. I’ve been in two serious relationships with vanilla guys. Neither was dominant. At times I hoped each might be the man I’d marry. Fortunately, I didn’t walk down that road with either one. One of the best things I do when I relationship ends is a thorough self-examination. And when my last vanilla relationship ended, I finally faced the facts…I need to make a relationship with a dominant guy a higher priority in my dating life. I just can’t cross my fingers and hope it happens. So I’m searching. I’ve cancelled my Match profile and put one up on Alt.com. (And on Collarme.com, too.) It’s a big step forward for me. But it’s also really exciting.

Sometimes it makes you wonder…

Have you ever taken time to contemplate your life and ended up asking yourself, “How did I end up in a place so different from what I’d envisioned for myself?”

Don’t get me wrong–there’s not a lot of it that I regret. But if, at age 15 or 18 or 21, you’d painted a picture for me, and shown me where I’d be at this point in life–just shy of 36–I probably never would have believed you.

“Is that really me?” I might have asked. “Or someone like me?”