The look of horror that flashes across people's faces when I tell them I love BDSM, is truly priceless. Perhaps that's why I enjoy coming out to people about it so much. Being lesbian these days is so passé, not many people even care anymore. I needed something else for shock value.

"You look so normal!", is the response I usually get. I often wonder what vanilla (non S/m) people think that kinky people look like. One can't wear latex or all leather day in and day out, otherwise it wouldn't be kinky after a while. But yes, I do look very ordinary, just like the girl next door, only with a closet full of wicked toys.

The second response is usually, "Why?". To me, S/m is the ultimate escape. I like to give pleasure/pain and I love to receive pleasure/pain. Coming home after a hard days work and being told by my lover/Mistress that I am to be placed in bondage for the evening is heavenly. If I'm all tied up, what's the point of worrying about that last report that I didn't finish, or the paper that is due the next day, or that I didn't clean the catbox. I can't do anything about it anyway! Of course, usually the fantastic sensations that are rippling through my body prevent me from thinking anything coherent anyway.

Which brings up another common question, "Why would you want your lover to cause you physical pain? How can that be fun?". It is wonderfully enjoyable. Sometimes it's painful, but the massive endorphin rush that flows through my body, creates a natural high that is far better than any drug one can imagine. There is also a place where pain disappears, where everything is pure sensation. The hardest flogging becomes a massage, but the light touch of silk is excruciating. It's nearly impossible to describe, but fantastic to experience.

Turning my body, my mind, my spirit, over to the will of the woman I love, has been a difficult and frightening experience. I trust her not to permanently hurt me with every fiber of my being. This trust has been fostered through many long, late night talks and slow and easy S/m scenes. It is not something that we undertook lightly and it is always 100% consensual and caring.

I asked her once, after a scene that left bruises and welts on my body for close to 2 weeks, if it was difficult for her to hurt me. She gently replied that it gives her pleasure to give me the pleasure that I desire and that the marks on my body are evidence of how great her love is for me.

To me, this is why I love this woman and crave the passions she creates in me.

As a submissive, I open myself up to another's will. By serving, I express both my respect and my desire for that person. I'm a masochist; I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that I can take a lot of pain, and I have the scars to prove it. But part of me needs reminding, day in and day out, that I am, indeed, worthy of love and respect. I need help drowning out the clamor of hatred and self-deprecation that fills so many women's heads. "Good," "smart," "brave" : these are the dominant's kiss, the marks I carry with me after a d/s scene. They are as vivid and as tender as the bruises on my thighs and ass, but they don't fade as fast.

I've been re-reading the "Story of O" recently. Why, I'm not sure because it's very hetosexually oriented, aside from a few lesbian scenes that are arranged for the delight of men and it is also highly misogynistic, being that all the submissives are women, but there is something about it that I find irresistible...and not just that it's nearly guaranteed to give me pleasure. *blush*

In the introduction, I found a page that I had marked and a few passages that I'd bracketed awhile ago. I think it very accurately describes my deepest desire, dream and what I strive for when I have the fortune to be with my Mistress.

"If I have ceased, once and for all, to be my own mistress, if my mouth and loins and breasts no longer belong to me, then I become a creature of another world, a world in which everything has new meaning." "It is only when you make me suffer that I feel safe and secure." "You have already seen me cry. Now you must learn to relish my tears. And my neck: is it not charming when, filled with a moan I am striving to stifle, it grows tense and contorted in spite of my attempts to control it?" "As long as I am beaten and ravished on your behalf, I am naught but the thought of you, the desire of you, the obsession of you. That, I believe is what you wanted. Well, I love you, and that is what I want too."

---and..further back in the book..my feelings on being Dominant:

"But how admirable suited to blows and irons was little Yvonne, how lovely it was to hear her moans and sighs, how lovely too to witness her body soaked with perspiration, and what a pleasure to wrest the moans and the sweat from her. For on two occasions, Anne-Marie had handed O the thonged whip - both times the victim had been Yvonne - and told her to use it. The first time, for the first minute, she had hesitated, and at Yvonne's first scream O had recoiled and cringed, but as soon as she had started in again and Yvonne's cries and echoed anew, she had been overwhelmed with a terrible feeling of pleasure, a feeling to intense, that she had caught herself laughing in spite of herself. Afterward, she had remained next to Yvonne, throughout the entire period of time she was kept tied up, embracing her from time to time."

*purrr* Oh how I desire....