Cast of Characters

It strikes me that readers may have a hard time figuring out who’s who in the blog. After all, I know all of the people I mention, yet I have a hard time remembering how I’ve labeled each person. So here’s a cheat sheet… 

A: A man I dated, then had a “booty call” relationship with, in college. Our sexual relationship had elements of power-play to it (though exactly who was in power varied from moment to moment). We had a great sex life, and he’s now living about 5 minutes from my house, but I haven’t seen him in more than 10 years. (Part of me still wonders what would happen between us if we met today.)

A2: A man who I dated for 6 years straight out of college. He was passive-aggressive, and in a roundabout way the lessons I learned from our breakup set me on the path to eventually discovering my submissive side (but not before I first explored my dominant side.). 

Dark Horse: A man who I met on a kinky personals site and “dated” for about 10 months. Unfortunately, he was in a different state for most of the time, and we probably only went on about eight face-to-face dates. The rest of the time was spent exchanging thousands of emails, spending hundreds of hours on the phone and periodically breaking up.

J2: An ex-boyfriend who unknowingly helped me realize my submissive side. He was naturally dominant, and after we split up, I found myself looking for a similar dynamic in vanilla relationships. We’re still close–he’d call us soulmates though I not longer think of us that way–and when we’re in the same town and I’m single, we’ll have sex. (Otherwise we’ll just get together for dinner or coffee.)

M: A high-school fling, of sorts. He was an upperclassman, I was younger. He was my protector, but also the man who’d pull me aside in out-of-the-way locales to give me hickeys and the guy to whom I gave my first blowjob.

M2: A long-distance boyfriend, of sorts, for about a year earlier in my life. He had some dominant tendencies, but wasn’t a dom. However, he was the consumate power executive.

Mr. P: A short-term (very short-term) play partner who I met online. He’s an attractive, charismatic man who happens to be in an open marriage. We played a couple times, and he introduced me to some of the physical aspects of BDSM.

S: A female submissive who I met online but who has become a friend. S and I are very similar in submissive temperment, and consequently we often find ourselves looking at the same profiles of online dominants. We’ve traded email with many of the same men, and may have even gone out on dates with some of the same doms. But we’re supporting one another, not competing with each other.

W: A guy who I met on Craigslist. Although I was attracted to a lot of things about him, when I met him face-to-face I realized that there was no physical attraction. He was also wishy-washy, and I suspect he wasn’t dominant at his core.