Lifestyle Masochism: By the Roll of the Dice

It’s a normal afternoon, about a week and a half ago, which means I’ve just been abruptly tackled onto the bed. Suspension hardware, my leash for the night, and the hanging sjambok rattle. This is how hospital corners die. Mistress is on top of me, her hand around my throat. “Do you feel choked?” she asks.

I answer affirmatively.

“Good,” she says. “That’s what I rolled. Now I get my checkbox.”

“Can I roll for defense?” I ask, with the oxygen I have.

“What?”

Let’s freeze frame, record scratch for a second here.

In her own words: “A normal spouse might be like, ‘It’s not like I wake up in the morning and plan how I’m going to screw up your life today.’ Well, I really do.”

Most mornings, Mistress wakes up and rolls a D6. Then she consults a sheet she made years ago. For each day of the week, there are options one through six. She goes to whatever day of the week it is, and the number she rolled. That option goes on her list for the day. Each of these options is some simple, desirable act of sadism tailored to, well, me. I think there’s one day that lacks an option six, and for every day, the number four is the same: slap Hannah in the face and roll again (a Leather family meme).

The dice game helps keep the lifestyle sadomasochism on a roll. It’s layered on top of any plans for the day (like the days we have scheduled each week for sex/scenes), the 8:15 AM wakeup maintenance spanking, events, and random bouts of inspiration. Often, there’s a small fee for things like permission to go to the bathroom or take a shower, usually just flashing, but sometimes including me slapping the exposed body part in question. A few times.

Unfreeze frame.

We negotiate (as much as a slave in an irrevocable consent dynamic can negotiate), with her hand still around my throat, an addendum to this system. I would also get to roll. If I rolled the same number as her, it’d cancel out.

I’m surprised the next day when she tells me to roll. “I was joking,” I say.

But it’s simple enough, the odds of canceling out are low enough, and the comedic value (especially within our broader framework) is high enough, we’ll try it out for a little bit, at least.

…

A Friday. We run through our normal morning routines, joined as I serve breakfast by a friend over for whip making lessons. They head upstairs while I clean up breakfast as usual. Mistress slips out when I alert her I’m ready for morning inspection, we complete the ritual, and I head out for the day to write and type up minutes and such elsewhere. (Friday is one of three days of the week I leave the house after morning inspection to give Mistress introvert time, which today she still has before I get back.) I return in time for Friday’s 4 PM spa time. Mistress chooses a little neck, shoulder, and upper back massage from the usual options. Not long after that, I serve dinner at 6 PM as usual and clean up the kitchen again.

Upstairs, I land in her office with her. She takes me to the bathroom, and, sensing the dice have come for me (I got surprise slapped pretty hard earlier, but that means there was another roll), my mind goes one particular direction. But she starts running a sink faucet, not the bathtub’s. My mind goes a different direction, but this path also ends when she plugs the sink. My mind goes back to option number one. It’s Friday. “You rolled a two,” I guess. A two on a Friday is one of the only options I have memorized, because it’s one of my favorites. Twenty-one years of mysterious respiratory issues led to chronic drowning nightmares led to daytime phobia led to prime fetish material.

“Yeah,” she says, to the two, bathtub implied, “but this’ll be faster.”

The sink fills. I think she sends me to get a washcloth for myself for after. She announces the warm water this time as a kindness. She shuts the faucet.

“I feel like this is, like, the worse version,” I say, her hand already tight in my hair. “What if I hit my head on the faucet?”

“Don’t do that,” she advises, and shoves my face under the water. “Small movements,” she advises while I run out of oxygen and start to jerk upright. She pulls me up. “See?” she says. “Then you don’t hit your head.”

She shoves me back under, immediately slamming my head into the bottom of the sink.

“Ow!” comes out reflexively under the water, which is a complete waste of the air in my lungs.

She pulls me up. “Now, what did you do that for?”

I make mildly disgruntled noises, water dripping off my bangs into the sink. My nose runs from the warm water, and my daily sunscreen has washed off my face, into the water, and into my eyes, now red and irritated. My normally waterboarding proof mascara is also, for some reason, running aesthetically. My forehead hurts, but we’ve clearly avoided another concussion or anything. She shoves me back under without any accidents this time. A few more times, and then she drains the sink while I try to wring out my bangs and swipe everything off my face.

“Come along,” she says.

“Where are we going?” I ask, following her.

“Kohl’s. I’m sending you in with my return.”

…

We’re talking, in her office. Abruptly, she says, “You’re a dumb slut and no one likes you.”

“That’s fair,” I say.

“Do I get my verbal humiliation checkbox?”

“Sure.”

“Whore.”

…

There are plenty of days I don’t even remember the rolls for, lost to hosting a writing event or teaching a class or going to my quarterly psychiatrist appointment or having my mom over for our Saturday dinner.

One day, I get slapped, and evidently the second roll was for kneeling on rice.

“Didn’t we like, just do that?” I ask. I swear it’s been less than a week, and most of the options don’t repeat.

“Maybe,” she shrugs.

For reasons I’ve already forgotten, things aren’t looking good for this second checkbox. It’s getting late and we’ve already retired upstairs away from the rice for the night, or something. “Could we do it tomorrow?” I propose. “Just—put it off instead of skipping and rolling again?” I like my odds on this one, because I like the rice enough, it’s probably better than whatever she might roll tomorrow.

She agrees.

The next day, conveniently in the kitchen this time, she takes a little scoop of rice from the big container in the kitchen pantry—normally, I use rice for cooking—and scatters it on the floor. “No cutting board this time,” she says.

The last time we did the rice, she poured it onto a cutting board and put the cutting board on the kitchen floor. The cutting board makes perfect sense and is basically required when one does this activity in a carpeted room—in our bedroom, in her office, like we’ve done plenty of times. But I pointed out that it gets clumsy and redundant on top of the already hardwood kitchen floor.

I get my clothes out of the way, which mostly involves pulling my uniform leggings down. My skirt is short enough to stay, and the top of my boots is just low enough, and over my socks. They’re still on because I’ve just gotten home from the store. She found me in the kitchen putting away groceries after the Wednesday grocery run (another day I go out). My better (ironic) trick is when I’m wearing my knee compression sleeves and get those out of the way just as fast.

I kneel on the rice. Not my standardized kneeling position, but upright without sitting on my heels. I stay there a few minutes, the rice really starting to dig in, while she pulls my hair and mocks me joyfully. One of the cats unhelpfully starts swatting at some stray rice. Then Mistress tells me to get up. I do. I flick off the rice indented into my skin. I pull up my leggings. She leaves.

I sweep up the rice and toss it.

…

I’m led into her office, and I notice the candle burning immediately, though we both play coy for a minute. It’s not one of our actual wax play pitcher candles, but an old devotional candle of the kind you get at the grocery store. She picks it up and walks towards me, holding the red candle ominously near my chest. “I rolled heat,” she says.

“Okay, this is violating every big wax play rule.”

“Why?”

“Candle is still lit. And I’m still dressed. Skirt is down range.” Okay, that’s not a wax play rule, but my uniform skirt isn’t made anymore, and I only own three copies of it total, an aspect of my uniform we had to compromise with the universe on.

“I figured this was better than branding you with a fork again.”

“Yeah.”

About a year ago, another time she rolled for heat, she found me deep cleaning in the kitchen on a Wednesday, and heated a fork over the stove. “Give me your arm,” she said, and I did. The burn, not meant to be much, blistered, peeled, and took two weeks to heal, and even now, there’s a faint white scar of the four fork tines, almost indistinguishable from scalpel play scars.

But I loved that.

Now, Mistress says, “Fine; take your skirt and whatever off, then.”

I take off the skirt, and my shirt and bra.

She tilts the candle towards my chest, then straightens it and blows out the flame. She tilts the candle a little more, and hot wax drips the inch or two onto my chest. I gasp a little. She tilts the candle again and the rest of the melted wax drips onto a second spot, solidifying pink. She sets the candle aside, admires her work for a minute, and then peels it off me.

…

Another night, having failed my roll for defense again, in another bathroom, minutes after hopping off a Leather Leadership Conference Board meeting Zoom. Mistress scans the bathroom counter and makes disgruntled noises of her own.

I decide to make a risky move and guess again. “Looking for soap?” That was my other guess the night with the sink.

“Yeah.”

All that’s on the counter is the liquid kind. “I think it’s just the bar in the shower—“

But Mistress digs up the unopened versions of the same soap from a cabinet. “This’ll be good. I’ve been wanting a bar for me in the shower downstairs.” She opens the little box. Turns the sink on warm again and starts lathering it up, emphasizing the importance of this step out loud. She holds up the bar and I open my mouth. She puts it in and I bite down. My TMJ is quickly protesting, my sore jaw trembling clickily, more than any sensory issues. It’s a big bar, not one of the little bars I make largely for this purpose, or one of the soap sticks I infuse with ginger oil for figging.

She makes fun of me for drooling suds on myself, “Pathetically,” and when maybe two minutes later, she takes the bar from me and tells me to spit into the sink, I do, and it somehow ends up in my hair. I rinse my mouth out a few times and try to get the soap out of my hair and off my face while she watches with amusement.

She sticks the bar into its open little box. “Stick this in the bathroom when you go downstairs, slavegirl.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

…

Yesterday, Tuesday, she comes into my office while I’m reading. “Do you want to be slapped?” she asks.

There are worse things, and training to stay still’s made it easier, but I shake my head.

“Then roll for defense,” she says.

The die isn’t handy. For a second time, the first where we’re not just testing it, I ask my smart watch to roll for me. It rolls a two. I know the slap is a four, so no go.

But Mistress says, “I’ll let you roll the actual die, since this keeps giving you twos.” Both of us got twos on our digital test rolls, and now I’ve gotten a two again, so we’re not so sure this trick actually works. She immediately leaves and returns with the red D6 from her office. I roll. Four. Bingo. “Huh,” she says. “Roll again, then.”

We determined (that time she was still choking me) that in the case of a four, we both roll twice. Telling me to roll twice is always a giveaway for a four. I matched the four, so it cancels out. (We eventually determine that the order of my rolls doesn’t matter: when I roll a three to her four and then a four to her three at the breakfast table on a day I’m already limping around, I make the case that I could’ve simply rolled two dice and gotten both to begin with.) I don’t actually know what number and activity I’m rolling against most of the time. If she really wanted to rig or overrule the game, there’s nothing I could do about it, anyway.

Now I roll to see if I can do it again. I don’t cancel out the other one. Spanking, apparently.

Mistress rolls her eyes, though. “You’re probably happy about that one.”

I am.

She leads me through my office doorway into the bedroom proper, and sits on the foot of the bed. She pulls my leggings and underwear down and flips my skirt up and puts me over her lap, spanking me with her hand for a few minutes. The stinging is pleasant, and my watch alarm to start dinner goes off in the middle of it, but I still make it in time.

Later—I’ve cleaned up the kitchen, prepped coffee, and written for a bit. My 8:35 PM alarm goes off reminding me to get ready for evening inspection. I do the first step, making Mistress her evening cup of tea, and bring it upstairs to her office.

There’s a nightlight outside her office that’s an indicator of whether I can come in or not. If it’s off, she’s in do not disturb mode. If it’s on, I can enter and exit freely, if I’m passing through for something like the shared printer and don’t make eye contact and distract her. (Sometimes, she’ll choose to engage me, which means the exit ritual—me asking if there’s anything else I can do to be of service, asking for permission to leave in the proper format, and curtsying, is on.) If the light is on, and I need her attention, I’m to press the wall mounted button that’ll buzz the pager on her desk, a relic from our old pager slave bell system that’s mostly been replaced with the smart watches. Then she’ll, presumably, wave me in, and say something to me first, allowing me to speak, per the speak when spoken to rule, without me having to use our hand signal for permission.

Tonight, though, a familiar pattern plays out where I see the nightlight on and kind of hover in the office doorway for a second until she just notices me, and beckons me in. I set the tea slightly to the side on her desk, with my right hand since I’m on her right side. She tells me about what she’s coding and how, which I rarely understand. I have no real use for the tool she’s gushing about. “Well, what do you need?” she asks.

“Snuggles?”

“Yeah; it can’t help you with that.”

“It’s never snuggles,” I mock pout.

“Aww. Poor baby.”

I notice the red D6 on her desk. “Roll for snuggles?” I propose, more theoretically than anything.

But, “Okay,” she says, and places it closer to me.

“What am I rolling for?” I ask uncertainly.

“If you roll a three, you get snuggles,” she decides.

I roll. Three. Today is my lucky day.

True to her word, announcing the results, she takes me to the bedroom, and we lie on the bed. She curls around me tightly. Crush my soul back into my body. We talk a little more. I was in the middle of something, though. “May I be late, please, Mistress?” I ask. For evening inspection at 9 PM.

“I guess so.”

“Thank you, Mistress.” Required, but real.

So we stay like that for a few happy minutes.

She trails kisses along my shoulder. “I love you.”

And, however the dice land, I know she does.

Autonomy in Anticipatory Service

9:40. Breakfast. Always.

Mistress notes a paperwork issue from our usually on the ball dentist’s office: she’d asked for an itemized receipt and they’d given her a regular one instead. She laments having to go over there to ask again.

“I could go,” I say. The words are out of my mouth before my mental filter lets other options into my conscious awareness. And the second they are, I’m wondering: why did I say that? I’m having a bad chronic pain day and I have plenty of things I want to get done. The words feel like self sabotaging people pleasing.

But that’s not how our dynamic works.

…

I don’t think autonomy in anticipatory service is a neglected topic, but I do think we frequently talk about only half the equation.

We assume that a focus on anticipatory service, rather than reactive service, grants more autonomy to the person providing that service: the ability to act before asked. And I think that’s true.

But what about the expectation that you’ll act before being asked? We’ll come back to that.

We also frequently assume that this is a zero sum game where the person receiving service has less autonomy: to decide what service they want, when, and how. But I don’t think that’s true. Anticipatory service, in my opinion, feels natural, comes with communication, and falls within the preferences of the person receiving it. Bringing someone a snack they don’t like when they’re not hungry isn’t anticipatory service: I’d argue that’s just bad service. Yes, mistakes and miscommunications happen, but that isn’t the goal. Often, when I hear people say they don’t like anticipatory service, every example they give me tells me that actually, they just don’t like bad anticipatory service. They’re tired of being served tea by someone who loves serving tea more than listening and realizing that the person they’re serving doesn’t drink tea. And that makes total sense.

I’d argue that the person receiving the service may have fewer opportunities to actively give orders, but they do gain the autonomy of framing their desires in a wider variety of ways. “I don’t want to stop by the dentist’s office…” “Wouldn’t it be nice if…?” “You may…” “I always ask someone else to do…” “Every day, at six o’clock…”

These probably don’t lead to action in a reactive service based dynamic where the service provider is waiting for an order; but they probably do when anticipatory service is the norm. This can be helpful for those who feel less comfortable issuing direct orders, won’t miss the opportunity to do so, or just want more verbal options. For some, a focus on the order format can feel like a painstaking game of Simon Says.

But others love the opportunity to give (or receive) snappy orders like they’re in an erotica novel, and focus on reactive service.

And realistically, there’s usually room for both styles within a dynamic.

It’s just a matter of communicating the balance you want.

…

Breakfast cleaned up, morning inspection done, I walk into the dentist’s office.

“Hi, Hannah!” chirps the receptionist. I will always maintain that Vegas is a small town in certain ways. “What’s up?”

I hand her the paperwork we got and ask for the itemized version. As she prints out the new one, she says, “You didn’t have to come all the way over here. I could’ve emailed it.”

“This is just…” the way it is “… faster.”

And to be fair, my required notifications to Mistress of my leaving the house and leaving the dentist’s office can’t be more than twenty minutes apart.

…

So what about reduced autonomy for the service provider when anticipatory service is the expectation?

I can only really speak to this from the lens of my own dynamic: 24/7, full time homemaker, irrevocable consent (no safewords, no limits, no way out).

That limitless upper end, plus our anticipatory service focus, means that there’s the expectation that I should and do offer anything I can. In dynamics like this, the expectation that you constantly give your all—give yourself over completely—means that it’s hard to go above and beyond. When anticipation is expected, there is no completed order to fall back on to say, I’m done. You lose the autonomy to sit and rest and wait for the next order before jumping in to serve. You are expected to be a bottomless well of timely, competent service with a can-do attitude.

Three days before running out to the dentist, after two hours of house cleaning, I spent another two hours sitting on the floor, deep cleaning one set of blinds—after Mistress reluctantly floated giving up on them after trying to help with them herself. Even without a direct order, I again was obliged.

Irrevocable consent might by why I can’t say no, but the internalization of a norm of anticipatory service is what demands my yes, and.

Still, this is all a matter of preference, and we both like our dynamic as it is.

And we know it quite well.

…

That night, after the standard 6 PM dinner, we go for a walk in the park. It’s a gorgeous evening and the playgrounds are swarming with kids, the sports stands are packed with fans, and dogs run in impromptu packs in the grass. This was one thing on today’s schedule, but the world doesn’t feel so busy right now, and my knee compression sleeves keep my body in check throughout the light movement.

As we walk, Mistress notes the blinds incident and asks, “Is that going in a blog post?”

“Maaaybe. I’m just not sure what the post is about yet.”

“‘I wanted to take a break, but Mistress made me clean the blinds instead. I hated it! But I loved hating it,’” Mistress predicts in an impersonation of me.

“No,” I say, laughing. “That’s been done, apparently. And I didn’t hate it. You didn’t make me,” I say, but then, I think, there’s something there.

“Uh huh,” she says, unconvinced both that there was nothing nudging my offer to continue with the blinds, and that she hasn’t correctly anticipated what I’ll make of it.

And maybe, I think: that’s what the post is about.

…

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Today’s Morning Ritual (Reality in M/s)

How The Morning Is Currently Supposed To Go

…

8:13 AM.

I bolt upright from a series of strange nightmares to the sound of the doorbell.

The doorbell part is unusual, though just the other day, there to see me startle awake to the sound of my 8:15 alarm clock, Mistress asked me, “Do you do this every morning?”

A lot of them, I guess.

The doorbell part sinks in.

By protocol, I’m generally supposed to be the one to answer the door, though sometimes Mistress jumps on it. However, I’m still leashed for the night, and will be, if routine prevails, for another four minutes. Predicament protocol.

But then I realize something else—we’re having a new washer and dryer delivered and installed today. It was a major enough purchase that Mistress handled it herself, and in doing so, picked the delivery date. But she picked it before I had sent her my calendar as part of my review for that week, and picked a day packed for me with a critical doctor’s appointment and a board meeting for an organization I serve. Rather than reschedule, she’d agreed to handle the delivery. And they’re seriously early.

I hear Mistress letting the delivery people in, and shut my normal 8:15 alarm. I jot down the basics of my disturbing dreams in my dream journal, which is a part of my full journal that’s shared with Mistress as part of that weekly review. I feel groggy; several of my chronic issues are flaring up, various minor issues. I’m never great at routine changes, but I feel especially underequipped right now.

I hear Mistress heading upstairs, maybe only a minute late for her usual 8:17. I scramble into the proper position, and she unleashes me as always, but whispers that we can skip the morning maintenance discipline beating, even though the sounds of the workers downstairs removing our old washer and dryer would probably drown out the sounds of the maintenance wand, and it’s not like I make noise, at this point. She also quickly, preemptively offers me the permission to go to the bathroom that I usually ask for afterwards, which I thank her for in the right format, but she quickly leaves.

Thrown off, I exit for the bathroom, almost giving a modified curtsy to no one, and suppose it’s a decent idea to put my uniform on, since I have the feeling our whole first morning ritual is off, and I should maybe have clothes on with the workers in the house.

Mistress reappears, confirming this choice, and as suddenly as they arrived, the workers are done and gone, and I get on with the morning, washing up, so on.

I come to the movement part of the morning, which is my task for myself, not from Mistress, so I’m free to modify it by my own standards. We skipped the stretching we normally do together in that early ritual, but I can do that on my own. But today, I decide to let go of the biggest part of it—a walk through the neighborhood—because as I was cleaning yesterday, I picked up a pot that, unbeknownst to me, was sitting on a stone trivet which stuck to the bottom of it, and unstuck itself as I was carrying the pot, landing on its side on one of my toes. I have my suspicions the toe might be broken. Mistress pointed out that even if it is, going to, say, urgent care for it will probably be unproductive, since most broken toes heal on their own, and I’m inclined to agree. Still, I don’t want to push it. So I shorten my movement routine. I don’t have to notify Mistress that I’m leaving for my walk, because I’m not.

And so I’m available to see a new voicemail on my phone from my doctor’s office. They need to reschedule my appointment.

I message Mistress a screenshot of the voicemail transcript and, May I call back, please, Mistress?

She grants the needed permission, though her one word message somehow sounds as unenthused by this news as I am.

Thank you, Mistress.

I call them back. The physician called in and won’t be back until next week. Nothing they can do about it, and no sooner availability.

Okay, I totally understand that, but I’m not a functional person without the injection I must go there to receive, and I’m strictly due for it this week. Trying not to hit them with the unnerving autistic schizophrenic monotone just yet, I explain as calmly as I can that I will see any provider, at any location, at any pricepoint, at any time this week.

I am put on hold. I’m already investigating a backup plan when they magically find me an appointment for this Thursday.

I hang up. I message Mistress that I’m off the phone as required and tell her that I have a new, acceptable appointment.

I do the rest of my morning chores—making the bed, tidying, waking up the house. I notice in the latter steps that the cats’ downstairs water bowl isn’t running. They have water; their little fountain just isn’t flowing. I set it aside to fix it after breakfast, which I make and serve on time. 9:40 as always.

Table set, I alert Mistress via the Walkie Talkie app of our smart watches, then get into position behind the chair she usually grants me permission to sit in even though I can’t ask. She comes down, says, “You may sit,” and I do. We eat. The permission doubles as speaking to me first, so I can speak, since I’ve been spoken to. Breakfast is fine, the conversation is good, and then Mistress goes back upstairs.

I see to the kitchen as required, which is a little extra out of sorts because we hosted family Saturday night, then yesterday I gave a Zoom talk in the late morning, and that night, Mistress hosted an event in the house: things that generated extra dishes and cut short my usual chore times. I also frequently ended up being up—with permission and by Mistress’ doing—past my normal leashing and lights out time. Hosting has started to seem our default state to the point that my brain continued to loop the sound of people laughing and talking downstairs as a distracting hallucination until I fell asleep the night before.

Still, I’m making decent headway on the dishes when the sink stops draining. I plunge it successfully, poke around, and, optimistic, clean the disposal with washing soda, but the disposal still won’t run. I reset it properly. Nothing. I Google more possibilities, but nothing simple jumps out at me, so I message Mistress asking for help troubleshooting.

She, somehow, finds a piece of something stuck in the disposal. It appears to be a very sturdy plastic, a fairly large sliver that looks like it broke off of something, except we haven’t broken anything, and it doesn’t match anything we have in the house. Odd. Mistress ascribes my inability to find the piece to my lower than average tactile sensitivity in my hands, and, disposal running, I move on with the cleaning, and she goes back upstairs.

I get to the cats’ bowl, and again optimistically try giving it a deep clean and running it again. Nothing. Okay, I give it a second, ostensibly deeper clean, and run it again. The water mysteriously flows. I leave it for the cats.

By the time I’m ready for morning inspection, it’s a half hour till noon. I use the Walkie Talkie app to tell Mistress I’m ready, and get into position in the bedroom. She checks the chores I did downstairs and upstairs, me and the position and my uniform and so on as always, and approves, which is maybe all that matters in the chaotic morning, anyway.

It might not be exactly how the morning was supposed to flow, but it is the reality, which strikes even the best service routines, the best protocols, and the best laid plans we can have. But, we’ve built our dynamic, and its underlying principles, so that we can adapt without seriously compromising it. It is strong even without any individual detail. And, we do our best to reality proof those details; our routines and protocols have been tweaked to death, and will continue to be, because we love our overall level of detail, even if what those individual details are pivot with time. And most days, all of those details add up. And when we do have to skip the day’s maintenance discipline, or squeeze in a phone call to a doctor, or spend an extra hour on chores, it’s okay—we are still what we are to each other.

Reality cannot shatter the fantasy of our dynamic, because it is no fantasy. It is a central part of our reality, and we will bring it through whatever other realities present themselves. Our dynamic is not every detail being set in stone forever, but water that we trust can flow around any pebble or boulder that appears in the path, whether it’s only for a morning or not. We do not delude ourselves with the idea of reaching a perfect point of completion. We adapt. 

And that’s a good thing.

The Morning Ritual (Evolution in M/s)

About three years ago now, I made a post detailing our longtime first thing in the morning ritual. As time went on, I edited it as our ritual evolved and new comments reminded me about the post. About a year ago, we gave our ritual a more major update, and after we settled into it and I remembered the outdated post, I wondered what to do with it. I considered giving it an equally more major edit, but something about this seemed disingenuous. I considered simply writing a new post about the ritual, but that seemed a little redundant; I considered taking the old one down, but this, too, felt inauthentic. This is a conundrum of living a dynamic life while documenting it in a way expected to stay relatively static. Now, I’ve decided to leave the old post be and write this one not as a replacement, but to highlight those changes, how and why our personal ritual has evolved, which might be more important than the details of the ritual at any one point in time. The original post reads:

My alarm goes off. 8:30 as required. I shut it, blink myself awake. I hit the pager transmitter button that will make Mistress’ pager buzz with the message for a leashing related request. My pager—slave bell—unbuzzed by this particular alert, sits nearby.

This has since been shifted back to 8:15 due to timing requirements. We’ve also replaced our pager system with Apple Watches, and since unleashing always happens at the same time anyway, we’ve cut me summoning her, and she simply comes in at 8:17, giving me enough time to come to, shut my alarm, jot in my (newer than the old post) dream journal before I forget, get into position, etc.

I move towards Unleashing Position. Kneeling back on my heels, knees spread, big toes crossed right over left, back straight, with my hair and head out of the way, collar o-ring and thus leash clip in front, leash resting on my upturned palms at the tops of my thighs.

Some mornings, I’m not quite there yet when she comes in, but she’ll unleash me anyway. Other times, she waits. I like it when she waits.

(Un)leashing position remains unchanged. It’s a modification of our usual kneeling position, redesigned for ease of access to the leash. We decided to double down on her waiting/me being properly in position before being unleashed.

As I move, my blanket slips from around me. I sleep leashed on the floor at the foot of the bed; my blanket—slave furs—is warmth, a bit of padding, and my primary bedding, though other things—like an extra blanket, a pillow—phase in and out. It’s pretty comfortable.

Today, air hits my skin as the blanket slips; I’m required to sleep nude and I’m not allowed to touch the thermostat, so I frequently feel a little chilly.

This part is largely unchanged. The only thing I’d add is that I’m now required to sleep with at least one stuffed animal. This came about because after Mistress gifted me one, I slept with it almost every night; eventually, she started to tease me when I didn’t, and, well… a rule was born.

Mistress still gets the house at the temperature she wants and enjoys seeing me undressed on either end of sleep. The leash and the floor are both old components that contribute to our headspace; I love them.

Mistress unleashes me for the day with greetings and asks if I have any questions for her. Since she’s prompted me, I can speak to answer (speak when spoken to). I ask for permission to use the restroom (required if she’s awake and home/with me), in the required format—using may, please, and Mistress. She grants it.

“Thank you, Mistress.” The required response for permission answers, and real gratitude. The same goes for feedback. Unless it would be disruptive to the conversation.

“You’re welcome, slavegirl.” The usual response, and real amusement.

The speech protocol here, long ago tuned to Mistress’ preferences, is unchanged. She modified the bathroom permission slightly so that I can use the bathroom without her permission after our evening inspection (a reflection of our morning one, which I’ll get to), giving her some time to wind down before bed without interruptions from me—but that doesn’t impact our morning ritual, and most of the time, she enjoys me asking as much as I do.

This is where the real update came in, however. Instead of asking me if I have any questions for her, now she just unleashes me and tells me to tidy up my blanket. I fold it up and coil my leash neatly on top of it, moving any other components, so that there’s no more possibility of getting tangled up.

Once that’s done, I retrieve the discipline wand—an implement we chose to reserve for that purpose early on, for clarity, a short, wooden cane/baton/thing—and get into position presenting it.

I also have an old post about our maintenance discipline ritual, with which I faced roughly the same conundrum as I described in the first paragraph here. Our new morning ritual integrates our once weekly maintenance discipline session—a ritual as old as our relationship, dating back to 2017—into every day. Overall, the core of it is still the same, though Mistress decided that for more flexibility on her end, we’d remove the counting part that some may remember.

So, I get into position once again. This one, too, is a variation of our usual kneeling position, so it looks a lot like the unleashing one, except featuring easy access to the wand instead of the leash; my head and eyes are down now.

She takes the wand from me, and beckons me over the bed. Here, she usually inserts a little something like, “Now, I’m gonna beat you, because, well, it’s morningtime.” And then she does.

Maintenance discipline has always been a headspace thing for us. It’s not really about the pain, being hours shorter than at least my idea of a good beating. I also don’t really view it as changing my behavior or being a preventative or keeping me in my place, as there haven’t really been noticeable external changes as the ritual has evolved; punishment has always happened at about a max of three times a year. It’s always been about how we feel, how natural keeping up those external demands feels—and we do both get things out of it.

I try to stay relatively still and quiet, which is both in my nature and made easier by still being pretty sleepy at this point in the morning. Mistress says she usually gives me about fifty strokes, though I definitely had to ask.

When she’s done is now the part where she asks if I have any questions for her, and I ask to go to the bathroom, and the rest of what was detailed above happens.

Previously, she would leave after giving me the permission, freeing me up to just head to the bathroom. Now, though, she stays, invoking the protocols around leaving her presence. Usually, if I want to leave when still in her presence, I have to ask if there’s anything else I can do to be of service—do it—then ask for permission to leave (proper format), and if she says yes, curtsy properly before I leave. But, if she gives me the permission, usually by dismissing me, “You may go,” or such, I can just curtsy and exit. That and the speech restrictions only shut off with rare need in vanilla company. And telling me I may go to the bathroom is permission to do the leaving required to get there, so I just curtsy—a modified version, since I’m still not wearing my uniform yet, that comes later—and slip into the master bathroom. I’m not allowed to lock the door unless there’s company—Mistress likes unfettered access to me—but I don’t mind.

When I’m done with my business, I return to her. I’ve stretched every morning for a long time, of my own volition, to help with my chronic pain and improve my slave positions (all of which are part of our full morning routine, except for some hand signals). Eventually, Mistress started aiming to stretch every morning for her own reasons, and later decided the best way to enforce this for herself was simply to join my preexisting ritual. So, usually in silence, we do some simple stretches on the floor. She’s dressed and often brings in a yoga mat, though.

After the stretching, now, she usually goes off her own. I dress in my exact daily uniform—assigned underclothes, my black shirt and leggings, my purple, pleated, plaid skirt, my Apple Watch. My wedding ring and collar remain from sleep. Then I go about the rest of my morning.

To expand on our first thing in the morning ritual beyond what I outlined in the original post, what I do from here is wash up (after brushing my hair is the part where I put my uniform purple hair bow in), take my morning caffeine supplement, and do some more joyful movement of my own, including a walk around the neighborhood. Normally, I need Mistress’ permission to leave the house, so I don’t just vanish on her, but for my morning walk, I’m allowed to just give her notification that I’m leaving, usually via message. She can track my location via the Apple Watch for safety, and since I’m not gone longer than about twenty minutes, I don’t have to warn her when I’m returning. I’m out the door at about 8:50.

When I get back from my walk, about 9:10, I do morning chores. Make the bed neatly with hospital corners, spritz some linen spray on it. See to the already meowing cats and the plants. Tidy and reset the house for the day. Wake up the house—turn on lights, open windows and blinds. Etc.

About 9:25, I start making breakfast. Currently, Mistress’ standing order is scrambled eggs with wilted spinach, toast, and bacon. I usually end up with something toastlike, some kind of fruit, bacon.

By 9:40, as required, the table is set to Mistress’ preferences, and I use the Walkie Talkie app on my Apple Watch to inform her that breakfast is ready; our pager system was replaced here, too. Then, I get into our waiting position. I stand behind my usual chair, legs together, hands folded behind my back, right over left, right thumb over left thumb, back straight, head and eyes down.

Mistress comes down, checks my position and the table, and then usually gives me permission to sit. I’m not allowed to sit on the furniture in her presence or ask to (except for the bed—to keep things flowing during certain activities—and in vanilla company), but she usually likes me to sit at the table with her, so she can easily see me. Sometimes she lets me eat on the floor, though.

We eat and chat. For a while, we had a mini meeting about our plans for the day, mostly filling in a little whiteboard kept near the dining table, and checking those tasks off at our dinner meeting, but it was a little redundant with our other check ins, so we’re back to chatting.

When we’re done, Mistress goes off to do her own thing, and I clean up the dining room and kitchen. When I’m finished, I head upstairs, bringing my refilled water pitcher and anything else that needs to go up. I use my Apple Watch to inform Mistress I’m ready for morning inspection, another replaced use for the pagers. For a while, we’d tried having morning inspection being at the same set time every morning, but this most often created a weird pocket of wasted time in between me being done with my chores and morning inspection, where there wasn’t really time to start doing anything too productive, so we switched to the notification system.

Mistress checks on the kitchen and a few other things, then comes to the bedroom. By then, I’m in our inspection position for easy access—standing, legs apart, hands clasped behind my head, head and eyes up, back straight. She checks the position, me, my uniform, the job I did on the bedroom suite, the hospital corners on the bed. She blows raspberries into my belly button to make sure it’s working. (I’m still not sure what it does, but she says it’s doing a very good job.) Then, more than ninety-nine percent of the time—there has only been one exception over the years—she sits on the bed, pulls me into her lap, and tells me I did a good job on my tasks. We might talk a little more about our plans for the day, my other homemaking tasks, chat, and then she goes.

From there—usually about 10:30—our day really begins, off to the start we need at that moment in time.

On Being a Slave for My Entire Adult Life

Tomorrow I will be twenty-seven.

But let’s back up a little.

Last night, I settled onto my slave furs for the night and looked over at the bed I sleep at the foot of. For a moment, I felt a rare nostalgia for it—waxed rhapsodic mentally about the little wonders of childhood that we don’t truly grasp until later.

Freeze frame. Record scratch.

I realized that Mistress—an adult, a solid thirty-seven to my upcoming twenty-seven—sleeps in that bed. I realized that most adults do. Vanillas, left side of the slash types, and the majority of s-types I’ve met all sleep in beds.

What a weird thought.

And earlier that day, Mistress had started to comment on my slave furs in some way, then cut herself off with a sigh. “You have slave furs,” she’d intoned. “Like we’re in an erotica novel.”

“I know,” I’d said, having indeed inserted my slave furs into not only one, but a trilogy of erotica novels, and a trilogy of novel length anthologies I wrote to accompany them. Not counting two published volumes of my personal kink essays or anything forthcoming. “I used to put ‘slave furs’ in quotes because it was supposed to be ironic, and then say my blanket, but then I stopped.”

Yes, we’ve passed irony. We’re just genuinely kinda like this now.

The fact is that I was nineteen when we began our dynamic; although, I didn’t officially start sleeping on the floor nightly until I was twenty-three. Even I spent time sleeping in the bed as an adult, and still now as a treat. Brains are strange places.

Still, I’ve been Mistress’ slave for virtually all of my adult life. For over a quarter of my entire life, a percentage that will only continue to increase.

For me, this means I’ve never had a traditional job. I’ve never attended a full semester of college. I’ve never lived by myself—I moved in with Mistress from my family’s home to serve her, eight weeks after we first met. I’ve never had a car to myself. I’ve had only one other serious relationship, and no other experience with serious power exchange; nor do I have a lot of experience as a single adult. I’ve never had kids. I’ve never truly had my own money.

And I never will. Asterisk. Let’s come back to that.

Mistress entered our dynamic from a very different place. She was thirty. She’d had several relationships. She had a job and a car and a (rental) house and money of her own. And, she’d continue to manage the money and assets, to have a job if she wanted one, to have other relationships if she wanted them.

We examined this gap closely, in determining if it was ethical to proceed. We decided it was, as two freely consenting adults exercising caution.

At first, we kept certain options open; then, our dynamic solidified a little more, happily ruling out all of the possibilities for me listed above, focusing on other areas of growth, making estate plans just in case.

Asterisk.

As time passed, the deeper we went, the more we felt obliged to address what would happen if, one day, I did want to experience certain things. Living on my own. Having a normal job (if I could get one, as a disabled person with no job history). It was easy to say I would always want to be a slave—I have been called the opposite of a commitmentphobe. Without having had the words for it, my desire to be a slave predates my earliest memories. A slave at nineteen, I published my first book at twenty-two, by then a married homeowner in the city I was born in. I knew what I wanted, and I got it.

What was harder was to say that I would never want anything else.

And it seemed that if I did, one day, we’d have only two options.

Option one: dissolve or radically change our dynamic. Obviously, we didn’t like this one. Further, we have an irrevocable consent dynamic. With no safewords, limits, or rights—including the right to dissolve—left on my end, the choice would be up to her. And she’s told me she’s never releasing me, though our contract says she’ll be reasonable if she does.

Option two: continue on with the status quo. Me pining miserably, but trying not to, her watching me with empathetic despair. That wasn’t going to cut it, either.

And it seemed naive to simply ignore the possibility of that desire coming on and lasting.

So, we’ve discussed the possibility—if that day ever comes—of a temporary opportunity for me to experience some of those things, for, say, a few months. The long term goal, of course, would be returning to our dynamic as normal, having had my curiosity satisfied and my fill of the reality of those experiences.

And maybe that day will never come, but, like so many other possibilities, at least we’ve thought about it and can rest assured that we have what we can of a plan.

In the meantime, though, since 2017, I’ve led a life of sleeping nude and leashed on my slave furs, only speaking when I’m spoken to, serving as a homemaker full time, wearing only my uniform, and taking daily first thing in the morning beatings—I’m aware of my disconnect from normalcy.

I have an enjoyable habit of sitting at outdoor malls, with a pretzel or a milkshake, and a book or my notebook, and people watching. I get asked to take a lot of group photos. Due to the venue, I mostly watch people buy clothes for themselves—so many different clothes! It makes my head spin.

At the same time, I have to laugh at myself. Almost twenty-seven, and baffled by a mall.

But that’s okay.

I like my life as it is.

Six Near Misses (In 24/7 High Protocol)

1

I open the front door.

The second I do, I’m stopped from stepping outside by the sound of loud, fast footsteps upstairs. Mistress appears, peering at me from the landing. “What are you doing?” she calls down. Her tone holds a mix of incredulity and something like indignation.

“Um.” I hold up the large plastic bag I’m holding. “Taking out the trash, Mistress?”

She relaxes. “Right. Not running away.”

“Not running away,” I confirm, amused that she thinks my plan, if I suddenly wanted to run away for some reason, would be to… simply stroll out the front door in broad daylight, holding a trash bag.

The Rule(s): [Hannah needs Kate’s permission for] leaving the house for any reason other than getting the mail or going for a short walk.

Hannah will notify Kate when she is leaving the house, and notify Kate when she is returning, if she has been gone longer than twenty minutes. She will generally keep Kate informed of her plans. She will allow Kate to track her location and Health data via her Apple Watch.

I’m not leaving the house (perhaps understood better as the premises), not prompting the need for notification or permission. Taking out the trash is one of the only reasons I open the front door without at least notifying her, or someone audibly knocking or ringing the bell. (Yardwork usually takes me into the backyard first, and then out the side gate.) And today—probably at a moment when she didn’t have her normal headphones on—hearing the door opening without warning was startling.

“Right,” she says again. “You may go.”

So I give the requisite curtsy, as well as I can while holding a trash bag, and leave.

2

We’re at a friend’s queer oriented munch.

I’m returning to the table after ordering at the counter for both of us, so Mistress can just give her order to me instead of bothering with it. The boba place we’re at is busy. It often is, which I know because the writing group I’m one of the organizers of also meets here, because one of my fellow organizers happens to work here. Sometimes this munch and my (vanilla) writing group (whom I tell I’m a homemaker) even meet here at the same time, leaving me sliding between groups like I’m in a Hannah Montana episode. Noting the familiarly busy vanilla venue, including several children nearby, I’ve slid back into the space between the table and the bench and have already made the slightest bend towards sitting when Mistress quickly gives me the permission to sit hand signal, and I sit.

At the time, I think the hand signal might be unnecessary. In my mind, I’m pretty sure I have permission to sit on the furniture, because there are vanilla people around. Still, out of habit and caution, I didn’t quite sit without it; nor did I hover next to the table conspicuously like I would in a proper kink setting, being rather quick about finishing sitting once the signal comes.

It’s not until the next night that I hear about her alarm. Apparently, in her mind (which is what matters), we were at a munch, which was a kink environment, and therefore I did not have permission to use the furniture. She’d used the inconspicuous hand signal instead of loudly granting me permission, and certainly instead of having me kneel on the floor or stand in the aisleway, but she still didn’t view the vanilla company exception as being in place.

The Rule(s): When [not in vanilla company and] in Kate’s presence and not standing, Hannah will assume her General Kneeling Position next to Kate. She will ask Kate’s permission before changing position on the floor. She will not sit on the furniture or ask Kate’s permission to, unless directed by Kate. This does not apply to the bed. She will wait behind her chair in Waiting Position before meals.

Note: while not codified, Kate uses variations of several hand signals such as Permission To Speak (opening fist with palm up) and Sit/Kneel (pointing at spot with index finger and moving finger down). These may be treated the same as a verbal signal within reasonable interpretation.

With the only exception in kink company being the bed (ironic, since I don’t sleep in it—I sleep leashed and nude on the floor at the foot of it), I almost got myself into a lot of trouble. But, thankfully, she did give the hand signal right before I actually sat down.

3

We’re just chatting, at home.

I’m kneeling in front of her, which I’ve been doing for a while now; my legs are getting kind of tingly and give the occasional little twitch.

All of a sudden, Mistress looks at me with alarm.

“What?” I ask, even glancing over my shoulder to see if an answer presents itself, which it doesn’t.

She sighs in what sounds almost like relief, understanding. “I thought you were going to move out of position for a second there,” she says, “and I was like, ‘What are you doing?’ And then you didn’t.”

The Rule(s): [See 2, and] General Kneeling Position: kneeling where directed, knees apart, big toes crossed in back (right over left), hands folded at small of back (right over left, right thumb over left thumb) unless in use, back straight. Ideal transition to kneeling: place hands in position, lower slowly to both knees at once, keeping the back straight, without wobbling, then spread knees/shift to position. Ideal transition back to standing: close knees, kneel up, stand one leg at a time, keeping the back straight and hands in position, without wobbling. (Permission must be obtained before shifting out of this position on floor.)

“Of course not,” I assure her. “But now that you mention it…”

She rolls her eyes a little. “You may stretch.”

“Thank you, Mistress.” And, grateful, I do.

4

Mistress arrives home from her private martial arts lesson at the house of a kinky friend, and I go downstairs to greet her.

She’s usually eager to demonstrate what she’s learned. The lessons have changed things ranging from how she punches me to how she wields the discipline wand we use in our morning maintenance discipline ritual.

She quickly notices that I’m wearing a bathrobe (allowed) rather than my uniform, and that my hair is wet. “Did you shower?” she asks, with that same incredulous/indignant alarm.

“Yes? Mistress?”

Then: “I suppose that’s allowed.”

The Rule: [Hannah needs Kate’s permission for] showering, when Kate is home/present.

Except, she wasn’t home, so I didn’t ask, merely fulfilled the showering at least every other day that’s specified elsewhere in the contract. The not asking is pretty rare, since she doesn’t really leave the house without me all that much. It’s also not the once a week time where I’m required to shave and have her inspect my job of doing it (which adds a third inspection to the day), meaning that if I’d already gotten dressed in my uniform as usual and my hair was a little drier, she might not have noticed I showered at all.

This clearly strikes her as a weird thought, and, it kind of is.

5

I’m cleaning the master bathroom in the afternoon.

I hear footsteps and I think maybe I hear Mistress’ voice, though not what she’s saying, and she could be talking to herself or the cats or on the phone, so I spend an extra second just listening, but nothing else comes.

Then the footsteps approach, and the bathroom door flies the rest of the way open. She gives the little understanding dawning sigh.

The Rule: [Hannah needs Kate’s permission for] using the bathroom anytime before Evening Inspection, when Kate is home/present and awake. (If in vanilla company, she will use the Bathroom Request Hand Signal. Kate will answer subtly/nonverbally.)

I also understand this time, and I cross my wrists in front of me, fists closed (Speech Request Hand Signal, for when I want to speak without having been spoken to first).

“Speak,” she says, but also gives me the permission to speak hand signal, out of habit, maybe.

“I’m just cleaning,” I assure her, stating the potentially now obvious.

She confirms that she’d gone looking for me, and then saw the light on in the bathroom, and thought, of course, that I was using it—and, this being a surprise to her, that meant doing so without permission.

“Sometimes I worry when I flush the toilet for cleaning,” I admit. “That you’ll hear it, and.” And jump to the same conclusion. But when she’s not looking for me, she does have headphones on a lot—blocking out sounds like me opening the door or flushing a toilet.

She laughs.

“But now that you mention it…” But she makes me ask the question in the proper format this time, even though she knows what it is. “May I go potty, please, Mistress?”

“Show me your vagina.” While not technically part of the protocol, this is her most frequent demand when I ask for this permission in person, so much so that before she finishes the sentence, I’m already shifting my clothes, thinking little of it. Every once in a while she mixes it up (generally, wanting to see my boobs instead, creating a kind of adult Simon Says game), and she generally doesn’t make the demand when I ask first thing in the morning after the daily beating.

Right now, she approves without any further requests. “You may.”

“Thank you, Mistress.” I give the required answer with real relief.

(5.5—this has also played out with her realizing that she left the bathroom light on, and finding me elsewhere entirely. There was also a time that I had asked permission to go to the bathroom via a message, and she said I could, and I thanked her, and then, very quickly, went to the bathroom. Later, I told her that as soon as she gave me the permission, my body had insisted I do so immediately—I had a stomach bug and a UTI—and she quickly confirmed, “But, like… after, right? No beatings for you?”)

6

I’m making dinner.

Mondays and Thursdays mean sex at 4 PM, and today is one of those days, so I have to speed up making dinner a little.

At 5:59 PM, the food is ready on the table. I open up the Walkie Talkie app on my uniform’s Apple Watch (which has replaced our old pager system) and, as always, alert Mistress that dinner is ready, just like I do for breakfast at 9:40 AM, then get into Waiting Position behind the chair that she usually has me sit in.

She comes downstairs, checks the position, and gives me permission to sit as usual. But she adds, “You always manage to amaze me.”

This confuses me for a moment. “How so?”

She tells me that she’d looked at the time after sex was done, and been sure that I was going to have to be late with dinner. Sometimes it happens—there just isn’t enough time in between tasks to cook, and then I ask for permission to be late, and she kindly says yes. But I hadn’t asked permission, and she’d kind of accepted she’d have to beat me for it, only for her own Apple Watch to light up at 5:59.

The Rule: [Hannah will] serve dinner at 6 PM, table and food to Kate’s preferences.

I laugh a little, and explain what happened. My original dinner entree plan was to make a baked barbecue pork tenderloin, which would leave leftovers for later. As the clock ticked down, I thought that perhaps I’d cut the tenderloin in half to speed up the cook time, no leftovers. As the clock kept ticking, I changed my plan to cubing half the pork tenderloin to stir fry, instead of waiting on the oven. Finally, losing the time to cube the pork, I had sliced pork chops out of it to pan fry instead, and gone with quick side dishes.

I’ve never actually been late for dinner without permission (nor have I ever broken any of the rules featured in this piece), but serving “Dinner Plan #4” is relatively common.

“Well,” she says simply, “hurray for pork chops.”

Tales From the Butler Academy: How Many Months Does It Take to Pour Wine?

I’m a little skeptical going into Module 10 (The Bar and Wine Cellar), to be honest. I technically can’t have alcohol. Mistress generally forbids it, with good reason, since I’m a schizophrenic on antipsychotic medications. I’ve had a few sips throughout my life, but I’ve never been so much as tipsy, or really enjoyed the taste; I’ve never even been tempted to break the rule. Mistress herself drinks rarely. I already have my alcohol server card and know some basics. I want my service education to be thorough and well rounded, and I’m sure there will be information in the module that will be useful to know, but we’re not really a big alcohol household, and I’m nervous to confront one of my weak spots.

Still, most of the module goes smoothly. For one assignment, we finally tell some of my in laws who have been insisting on bringing us to a wine tasting in Sonoma yes. Over six hundred miles and nine hours of driving away from home, Mistress kindly grants me a special exception to the alcohol rule so I can participate. I take a small sip of each wine, then gladly let her enjoy the rest, mostly busy taking pictures and notes for the course. It’s a fun day for everyone.

For another assignment, I have to learn to cook with wine (and wine substitutes), as well. I revisit my pot roast recipe, which is the one recipe I sometimes use wine in, if we happen to have it handy. I also add two more recipes to my regular repertoire: poached pears and wine (or substitute) brownies, which are oddly the first batch of edible brownies from scratch I’ve ever made. (I love to bake, and I’m told I’m pretty okay at it, but brownies somehow eluded me until I put red wine in them.) Mistress loves both new recipes, but especially the former, as do I. I made wine poached pears a la mode for her and my mother just the other night.

The biggest snag before I submit the last assignments is just the sheer number of times I get carded. I’m twenty-four (at the time), and apparently I don’t quite look it. Famously, I once get carded three times for standing in the wine aisle at the grocery store, just looking, as an assignment calls for, not even trying to purchase any alcohol at that particular moment.

Then I hit the real snag of the module.

One assignment calls for videoing myself performing “the wine tasting ceremony”. The first problem is that this ceremony isn’t fully outlined anywhere. There’s a brief parenthetical in the assignment itself; it’s mentioned in the textbook, with a few potential scenarios, but not in detail; none of the other course texts really have anything about it. The Internet doesn’t turn up much. What we experienced in Sonoma is clearly not quite the same thing; I’ve been kind of winging it for other assignments that mention the ceremony, and scan the feedback for more clues. For the video, I give it my best go. I send in my first submission of it, amongst several other assignments, on September 13th, 2022.

The feedback on the video is extensive.

The first point of feedback from my instructor is that she wants to see me actually open the bottle of wine on camera, with a corkscrew bottle opener, removing the foil properly with the blade; although the last point of feedback acknowledges that I would usually not open the bottle at the table in real life, due to decanting and whatnot, which was why I’d assumed it was fine to start with an opened bottle.

One bullet point reminds me that drinks are always served from the right, with the right hand, and another also mentions that the glass should be on the right side of the host. This confuses me for a moment, because I do know these things. But I take another look at my video, and realize that—due to filming logistics and my camera settings—it’s backwards. The same point encourages me to place my hand that should’ve been free (my left) behind my back while pouring (leaving the glass on the table, not holding it). It acknowledges that the behind the back is a minor point (but I later make sure to incorporate it anyway).

One point merely suggests that I might have an easier time with a smaller bottle of wine, which is also more common than the bottle size I happened to have handy.

Yet another specifies not to let the bottle touch the glass, and to not spill any drops, which honestly seems a little obvious. But another look at my video reminds me that, while I don’t quite do the former (although it’s close, and the camera angle makes it look especially close) and don’t spill any drops of wine on the video, at one point, between filming, I had spilled a drop of wine—shuffling things around to reset for the multiple scenarios shown in the video, in a way that I wouldn’t do in real life: the drop appears on the tablecloth after the reset.

Other points: once the host approves of their taste of the wine, I would walk around the table to the guests who are sharing the wine, and fill their glasses (again: from the right, and to the widest part of the glass—which I had not quite done due to a limited remaining supply of wine; at this point, I’m burning through cheap wine we don’t drink), and then come back to actually fill the host’s glass, rather than starting with them. Also, “no need” to replace the cork between the steps shown.

Okay. There’s a lot there.

For some of the other assignments, I’m asked to elaborate a little more in writing. I thank my instructor for the feedback enthusiastically as usual and quickly complete and send over my written elaborations, which she accepts.

The video redo—the final key to passing Module 10—is eluding me, though.

On November 15th—the day after my anniversary with Mistress—I send my instructor an email apologizing for all the delay and informing her I’ll be taking a hiatus from the course through at least the first day of February. I have a lot of health stuff going on in general, I’m very occupied with the actual full time “majordomo” (slave) thing, and I clearly can’t give the course the focus it needs and deserves right now; other things need my attention. I admit that it is a matter of my divided energy and focus rather than my time. And, working with my doctors on some of my health issues seems to be the key to the video redo. Among other symptoms, my hand tremors (a messy mix of both schizophrenia and the side effects of the medication I take to treat it) and impaired fine motor coordination (from my autism) are currently particularly bad.

During my hiatus, I try to push the course out of my mind and actually take a rejuvenating break from it, as well as address what currently gets my attention. Ideally, I’d like to return to it on February 1st genuinely refreshed, with slightly less on my plate, in better health, grateful for the rigor, and ready to finally pass Module 10 and learn more.

And that is largely what I do. I email my instructor on February 1st, thanking her for her patience, saying I hope she had a good holiday season (I did, and after all the January birthdays in the family, I’m twenty-five now), and: I’m back. I still have more work to do, and my “employer” is having surgery on Valentine’s Day, but: let’s do this thing.

I turn my attention back to the video redo.

Finally, several more tries later, I’ve about mastered everything except the initial opening of the bottle of wine. I can consistently open it safely and efficiently, but I might never make it look proper. A certain percentage of my (medically based) issues with it just aren’t going to go away entirely. On February 11th, I note all of this to my instructor, adding that she herself said that I would normally not open the wine in front of an audience (and we’ve already discussed the fact that I have little need for this skill in my current position as it is), and I submit a redo in which I’ve pinned down everything else. I say I’d be interested in her advice on how to move forward.

On February 13th, five months after I submit the video among other assignments for the first time (minus a two and a half month hiatus), my instructor says that we are ready to move on.

Thank you so much for your resubmission of Module 10, 12-b. This looks much, much better! I see nice control of the bottle, the pouring of liquid, the whole tasting procedure. You have nice posture, you look professional but not stiff. I love it and this is definitely a pass.

I about cry when I get her email. I’m not a crier. I don’t cry at funerals or deathbeds; I don’t cry when I get beaten for four hours; it’s just not my thing. But now, the tears spring right to my eyes, and I’m actually wiping a few off my cheeks. I run to tell Mistress, who celebrates with me. I thank my instructor profusely. I eagerly take in Module 11 of 22.

I tell this story in part because people ask me about butler school a lot, and sometimes it’s hard to summarize it overall. So here’s a specific example. It’s not always easy for me. I’m so grateful for it and it’s brought me a lot of joy, but the rigor of it also sometimes requires humility and vulnerability and dedication.

And in a way, that’s added to my service education even more than being able to perfectly pour a glass of wine.

What We Talk About When We Talk About CNC Stigma

BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG. “POLICE DEPARTMENT, OPEN THE DOOR!”

I fly out of my chair so fast I hit my knee on the underside of my desk. The silence that returns from just moments prior now seems deafening, my racing pulse pounding in my ears. I wonder if—and if so, how—our front door is still intact.

My body seemingly set to vibrate, I race down the stairs. It’s like I’ve forgotten how to walk; there is freeze and there is run. I breathe alarmed expletives to myself.

Out our front window, I see the police officers—two large men of color, perhaps in their forties, in uniform and armed.

Feeling helpless to do anything else, I open the door.

I realize that it is not silent anymore—the neighbors’ five dogs are beside themselves at the gate just a few feet from our front door. I can’t hear a word the officers are saying, nor would they hear me if I got anything out. Within a few seconds, they’re pressing past me into the house. I’m already cursing myself for “letting” them in as I shut the door against the dogs behind them so I can maybe hear what’s going on.

They confirm who I am, using my full name. I nod. “And your wife is…?” They give me Mistress’ full name.

I nod, panicked. Immediately, I’m convinced that something horrible has happened to her that these officers are here to inform me of. It doesn’t help that the last time I dealt with cops in this kind of capacity, I’d just found my father’s ten day old corpse in his bed. “Is she okay?” I ask, pressing.

They shrug off this question. “Is anyone else home?”

I don’t like to admit to being home alone, but the correct answer definitely feels like, “No.”

They ask where Mistress is.

I tell them she went out with a friend, by this point suspicious, and purposefully vague, instead of painting the picture that she’s sitting at a friend’s house whose address I should know.

It’s about this time that they finally explain what they’re here for. They use words like domestic violence and abuse and battery is a mandatory arrest and we send two officers because there are two of you and anonymous report from a number in Sydney, Australia and your blog.

So it has finally happened to us. Like it has happened to too many others. When I made it happen to an M/s couple in my fiction novel, it felt like writing a trope. I’ll have to edit that scene now.

“Do you mind if we check if you have any weapons?” one of the officers asks in the same breath. It doesn’t sound much like a question, and the other officer is already poking around the house. I nod for the sake of it. Internally, I survey all of the weapons in the house, trying to figure out if I want to say something—and what—before they get to the dungeon. But the officer who’s poking around returns to where we’re standing just inside the front door without going upstairs to see it.

I also mentally survey my Service Slave Secrets site. I’m confused. Incidentally, I haven’t posted on it in months, focusing on my fiction. My last post was about tea service. No one has checked in on me with concern. I realize I’m laughing. Still shaking, I manage to clearly inform them that I’m not an abuse victim, I’m a kink educator (and author, and homemaker, and other things) in a consensual relationship, which is legal in this jurisdiction. That I’m far more concerned that someone in Sydney I don’t know has stalked me to the point of finding both of our full legal names and address, gone through the trouble to harass us with false police reports, despite my fastidious online privacy practices and making clear in every post that I’m quite happy in my dynamic.

They ask me if I or Mistress have any friends in Australia.

I am still laughing. “No; neither of us have ever been to Australia.”

Any enemies in Australia?

I don’t think, Well, apparently, or We do now, is quite what they’re looking for.

Finally brushing off my questions, they begin with theirs, asking about any recent problems. “Do you argue?”

I pretend to think about this for a second, then say, “No, not really,” casually, because a quick no seems suspicious, even though it’s true. That’s just not how our dynamic works. I watch my body language, keep it open, keep my hands where they can see them. I moderate my expression, my voice, my eye contact—with the same tricks I teach in protocol classes, to make sure I only speak when spoken to, to get all of my daily slave positions just right.

“Does she ever hit you? Slap, kick, anything like that?”

Well, with my consent: yes.

They exchange a look.

Whatever they expected to come here and find, it clearly wasn’t me. Their “suspect” isn’t even here, and I’m batting exceptions at them. They haven’t seen the bloodstained dungeon. They’ve seen a fresh arrangement of flowers in a vase on the large, tablecloth clad dining table, a multitude of soft throw blankets and pillows draped just so over the sectional couches, a neat kitchen station labeled with a chalkboardesque coffee, tea, cocoa sign. Their eyes have skimmed right over some suspicious drywall damage.

“… And she’s never made a report against you or anything like that?”

Interesting. “No.”

“Do you have any injuries?”

Injuries is a big word. Any bruises or cuts or rope marks are always hidden under my ironically conservative slave uniform. I wonder if that’s enough. I’m silent for a second.

“Besides the ones from, maybe, those—consensual activities?”

“No,” I say, more readily.

“How long have you been together?”

“About six years.”

They seem reassured by this.

“Have you ever felt like you were in danger?”

“No.”

They move on. “So, this blog. Were you venting, maybe?”

I explain that I haven’t posted in some time, that the “blog” is more an educational essay collection, that I haven’t said anything negative about our dynamic on it, and always emphasize my consent, my joy and gratitude to be in such a relationship.

They ask to see it.

I think that a link to it has probably already been provided, that it would be suspicious to hide it, that it really is benign. “My laptop’s upstairs.”

They let me go get it, alone. They haven’t looked upstairs at all. I find this to be an odd move. Upstairs, I also look at my abandoned phone. Perhaps I should be recording this conversation, but maybe it’s already too late. Perhaps I should text Mistress, warning her. Instead, I just check that it doesn’t look like she’s on her way home. Maybe I should just bring the officers the two Service Slave Secrets paperbacks from my personal collection of my books. Instead, I close out of everything on my laptop, and open the homepage of Service Slave Secrets. I bring it back downstairs, set it on the ping pong table for them to peruse.

I am, once again, not what they’re expecting. One of the officers reads my tea service post. He jumps around the site a little. There’s our contract, my posts about butler school and lifestyle masochism and ascetic stoicism. There’s one post titled “What Makes Irrevocable Consent Okay?”. One of the comments where it’s crossposted to FetLife says simply: Nothing. Ever. Another comment says that our contract is not worth the paper it is written on. Many of the commenters just tear us apart.

Apparently, the cops disagree. “Thank you,” they say, and turn away from the laptop.

Several of the comments tell me that help is available if I want to run. I think of my fourth ever class, when someone insisted on helping me run away. Well, the “help” is here—and I want nothing more than for them to leave us alone.

They tell me they’re just here to make sure everything is okay, not to scare me.

But this doesn’t seem like how you treat someone you think is a victim.

But someone sent them here to scare me. To shut me up and make me stop saying things like no safewords, no limits, no rights, no way out—and happy. I know this, deep down. Because if someone were for some reason confused and concerned, despite all of my declarations of happiness, they would have asked if I was okay, not tracked me down despite all signs I didn’t want to be found, and sent men with guns to my door.

The cops ask for my ID, for some of Mistress’ information, promising that they won’t come back unless one of us calls. I give it to them. They take their final notes for their report, leave me my ID, and then they’re gone.

Still vibrating almost too much to walk, I pace and resume whispering expletives to myself. Finally, I call Mistress. I tell her what happened, that I’m okay for now, that she doesn’t need to come home.

Yet, it’s not okay.

I am burning with fury and terror. Mistress decides we should keep this quiet (at the time), not wanting to give whoever called the cops the satisfaction of an immediate reaction, not wanting me to have to be quickly reimmersed in it via questionable FetLife comments. I tell my mom and my best friend minutes after I tell Mistress—they’re of course outraged at whoever called; I also tell them I’m shaken but okay. For weeks, we tell only our very inner circle. Eventually, it slips out to a few more friends in person, mostly from TNG munches I host, as a “funny story”.

The first several weeks—months—are the worst, maybe.

I now have a rather silly looking panic attack any time someone even gently knocks or so much as rings the doorbell. I unpack it endlessly in therapy; we discuss exposure therapy options. I wake up gasping from renewed nightmares, settling back down into my blanket on the floor at the foot of the bed when I hear Mistress’ steady breathing in the bed, aided by Seroquel. We lock down even further, finding a leak deep in Mistress’ FetLife activity that may have led to our address, and plugging it. When Mistress critiques my handling of the cops, I have a self harm relapse for the first time in a long time, rinsing the blood down the drain with isopropyl alcohol. I start taking the Klonopin I was prescribed but never touched, and then quickly stop, not wanting to get hooked on the relief it alone seems to offer. My fading PTSD from my father’s death comes back full force.

But, slowly, it fades again. We heal stronger than ever.

It’s been one year today. The anniversary weighs on me.

I’ve just settled in on the swingset in the backyard when my whole body starts to shake, twitch, convulse. Knowing what’s coming, I manage to run back inside—Mistress is upstairs—and get on the ground. The room swims and veers, but I don’t think I pass out this time. I run an ECG with my Apple Watch, although it keeps telling me to stop moving and accidentally pressing the button I have to rest my finger on. The result comes back definitely out of my norm. The seizures have been worse this year. Psychogenic non epileptic seizures traced back to trauma. Within a few minutes, I’m just kind of shaky, mildly woozy. I tell Mistress, and I tell my best friend—mostly just the facts.

But the fact it’s been a year, and I’m still like this—all because some people refuse to try to understand my dynamic—weighs heavily.

My mom comes over for dinner with us, as she does every week. I don’t mention it, protective and not wanting to worry her anew, about me or her favorite daughter in law. But she’s able to spot something off with me from miles away. “You okay?” she asks, rubbing my shoulder. This is what concern looks like. Not flinging baseless accusations from a continent I’ve never set foot on.

“Yeah,” I tell her, smiling weakly. And, quite honestly: “I’m just tired.”

Gratitude and Ego in the Ascetic Slave

A while back, at a munch I was hosting, Mistress offered me permission to sit on a park bench: “You may sit.” 

“Thank you, Mistress.” And I did.

Generally, for us, this interaction was and is routine. I’m not allowed to sit on furniture or ask to, utilizing my General Kneeling Position instead, maybe asking later (in the proper format) for permission to shift to something more like sitting. Since we were in sight of (but out of earshot of) vanillas, and kneeling wasn’t appropriate, she generously relieved me of standing for the next few hours by offering me permission to sit down.

A Dom-leaning friend commented, “The life of a slave is enlightening sometimes.” They pointed out my gratitude for sitting down. “I don’t have that kind of gratitude. I think I’d be happier if I did.”

Gratitude is indeed one of the key things I set out to cultivate when I went down the path of ascetic slavery. Some think the endgame of asceticism is numbness or discomfort, but I personally disagree. The goal is still to be happy. It is learning how to cultivate happiness from within, regardless of external happenings. It is learning to be capable of being just as happy with less, and therefore better able to appreciate the occasional luxury, instead of dismissing it as mundane. I have learned to be genuinely happy kneeling on a hard floor (no matter how many people insist it must be uncomfortable), and I’m grateful for sitting on a park bench, as mundane as it seems to most, which makes me happier overall—as our friend pointed out. 

There is a shadow side to this: ego. When you shift your worldview to happiness coming purely from within, you experience a reduced need for external pleasures. Once I became happy sleeping on the floor every night, and started to view the bed as an occasional luxury (when Mistress granted it), anyone complaining about their mattress quality admittedly began sounding like the titular character of “The Princess and the Pea”, and they started to regard me as “enlightened”. 

There is a very real power in needing less to be happy—there’s far less for others to dangle in front of you or threaten to take away. I frequently come across mundanities of my daily life—like sleeping on the floor—as punishment ideas. On the flip side, I’m happy on the floor, and I’m not much motivated by the reward of sleeping in the bed. This means that someone seeking to control me—say, Mistress—has to turn to something bigger (like my deep drive to submit), forging a more powerful bond.

How do you cultivate gratitude without the ego, then? 

I think step one is, in fact, cultivating that genuine internal happiness (and gratitude). It can be tempting to take a shortcut and simply repress discomfort, creating a stoic facade—and this is, I think, where a lot of people stop with asceticism and Stoicism both—but fail to embrace the full philosophy of internal control. Too much repression breeds resentment, the desire for a win. The internal cultivation of true happiness takes real time and practice.

For me, grounding and mindfulness exercises helped me notice the things I would then make a point of being grateful for. 

My slave/philosophical journal helped prompt me on this as well (I include a gratitude log), and it helped me with another key element—reconnecting with why I chose ascetic slavery to begin with (being pleasant, low maintenance property—not a competitive and resentful equal). I’m not here to compete; I’m a slave; I am meant to surrender and lose. If the point is focusing on what I can control (my internal world), I can only compete with myself, and humbly remember where I started, and how far I have left to go. 

I also found a strong correlation between two logs in my daily journal: gratitude and something I was proud of from that day. It reminded me of how often the part of my day I felt most grateful for was the result of me taking actions I was proud of, and also how often what I was most proud of was achieved with some kind of help to be grateful for (and to humbly accept). 

Ascetic slavery can also open you up to some unique ego hits. No one thinks anything of the average person’s indulgences—sleeping in a bed or wearing more than one outfit or not getting beaten first thing every morning. But my choices—adding a pillow to my sleep setup on the floor, asking permission to mix up my slave uniform for a special occasion or to sleep in peacefully when I’m sick, not having to speak only when spoken to when there’s a vanilla person around—attract extra attention, curiosity, and sometimes critique—because of the very specific path I chose. This can result in a feeling of pressure, shame, and imposter syndrome, even though I must ultimately aim to let go of the ego that drives those things. 

There is definitely a balancing act—a functional sense of self esteem, but not a lofty ego, and gratitude—all of which can be cultivated in ascetic slavery.

An Ode to Broken Things (Pager Clips, Boots, Collars)

The Pager Clips

The first pager clip breaks when Mistress shoves me. 

We haven’t had the pager system long. It was just weeks ago that we each got our pagers (and the clips/holsters they go in) and the transmitter buttons for the house. Now I can eliminate notifications from my life because everything that matters comes to me via the pager. I’m required to keep mine clipped to my uniform leggings—we call it the slave bell, a sign I’m at her beck and call—but hers, still dubbed a pager, mostly sits on her desk, near the transmitter button she can use to request drink refills, make me check my messages, or summon me. 

It’s one of those days when at some point, she comes into the room and greets me by shoving me over the nearest surface—in this case, the bed—and starting to punch me. That is to say, a relatively normal day.

This time, between the firm mattress and the bones of my hip area, my pager clip snaps. 

After, she generously gives me her unused and unbroken clip for my uniform.

…

Given the fate of the first pager clip, and the fact I’m now using the last unbroken clip in the house and not yet sure how easy it is to acquire another, I’m a little more protective of the second one. In that split second before my hips hit the mattress, or whatever it is that day, I (gently) toss my pager aside. I’m allowed to remove it as needed—to keep it away from water or whatnot—as long as it’s still where I can hear it. At night, when I’m not allowed clothing to clip it to, I keep it near my head, and the indentation it leaves in my skin by every night fades before every morning.

The second one, then, escapes a sudden and violent death. 

Two and a half years and many AAA battery changes later, it’s summer in Las Vegas. The average high temperature is 107*F. I’m outside, doing a routine cleaning of the pool among other things. And when I go to take it off to set it safely nearby, this pager clip just kind of… decides it’s done. It’s done with the wear and tear and the heat and the sweat dripping down my skin. It’s flimsy now, decides it no longer closes all the way—the end of the clip no longer hits the plastic holster that surrounds the pager itself; cracks appear near the clip mechanism, and the bit of clip above it no longer straightens out. While it’s technically still in one piece, hanging on by a thread, the merciful thing to do is let it die. 

With permission, I keep the pager in my pocket while I wait on the replacement clips I’m thankfully able to order that very day. 

… 

The third clip does not manage so long a tenure.

It’s about five months later. I’m in the living room and about to head into the backyard when Mistress again comes into the room with other ideas. This time, I’m shoved onto the couch on my back, so I don’t worry about the pager at the front of my hip. She yanks my leggings down and demands my legs be up and open, producing a round corian paddle that she gives me a few token swats on the thighs with, but her main target—between my legs—is hit with two long, slim, wooden paddles. That’s fine. She lets me up, pulling me back onto my feet, and then yanks my leggings back up. 

And, between my leggings and my hip bones, there goes pager clip number three. Rest in pieces.

Thankfully, the order I placed was by the dozen. 

The Boots 

After five years of flirting with the idea of being Leather, I’m really starting to lean into it.

For a while now, I’ve eschewed wearing leather items out of respect for the Leather community and the fact I have not earned them, even though my feelings on it are mixed. 

Mistress gives me some terms: given that I’m really starting to build my Leather foundation, once I prove to her I’ve learned bootblacking (one of my current projects), I’ve earned my leather boots—I can purchase an approved pair and they’ll be my new uniform shoes to wear and take care of. 

I take the classes, I read the articles, I acquire the supplies, and, as proof, I successfully refurbish her old pairs of leather boots (and commit to keeping them maintained). 

So I earn mine. And, as they’re now my only pair of shoes, I wear them everywhere for the better part of the next three years.  

I wear them on walks to the grocery store to pick up items for Mistress. I wear them to walk to the pharmacy and to my mom’s house to bring her meds when she gets sick. I wear them through every sweltering summer TNG munch I host and every freezing winter one, and I use them in the bootblacking demos I now teach—sitting on the floor with a friend or recording for my website. I wear them to every write-in I host. I wear them, stumbling across the floor, as Mistress pulls me around in rope—demo bottoming as she teaches rope lessons. I wear them in the mountains, running next to Mistress’ e-bike on dirt roads at 8,000 feet and sitting by the fire at night. I wear them to Boston, walking to the cafe nearest the hotel to get Mistress’ coffee. I wear them to Kingman, wandering near where we’re looking into real estate opportunities. I wear them all over California, to see my in laws, to visit Mistress’ friends, to go to a dungeon. I wear them by the shores of Lake Tahoe, Mistress’ favorite place. Two years later, I wear them to Atlanta and down the halls of Leather Leadership Conference, standing in them throughout my entire presentation, still a year shy of whispering, I am Leather. 

They take me everywhere, warm and dry and supported, and I forgive them the early days of blisters and give back to them in the form of regular rounds of leather soap and conditioner and polish. New insoles, new laces as they give out. Adhesive nonslip pads for the parts of the soles that are worn completely flat, adhesive patches for the holes in the inside lining around the heels, and new ones when those peel off.

Other than a brief foray with an otherwise identical pair that turned out to be the wrong size, I’ve been rather loyal to that pair of boots. 

Still, at every slip when the latest peeling nonslip pads stuck onto the utterly flat soles aren’t enough, I know their days aren’t so much numbered as in the negative. 

The Collars 

There are three collars that I’ve worn for at least a year, which between them cover four of the six years of our dynamic.

We met in November 2017, and by January 2018, we were living together, living 24/7 power exchange, contract signed. By and large, I don’t feel our dynamic has undergone any major transitions since, mostly just grown slowly but steadily. After a few months, we officially changed my label from submissive to slave, but only because, after a lot of thought, we realized that was what I’d been all along; the label change wasn’t accompanied by any other change. Three years to the day after we met, we got married, but that was again more of a label change (and legality), felt out first; we started wearing wedding rings, filing joint taxes; I changed my last name and started using the label housewife in the vanilla world. We got to do a cool ritual dagger exchange. But we weren’t any more devoted to each other than we’d always been. 

Collaring, too, was taking on a symbol that reflected where we already were. Descriptive, not prescriptive. Like with the transition to the slave label, we faced some mutual imposter syndrome (and yes, I’m still working on that Leathergirl imposter syndrome) but ultimately, within the first few months of our dynamic, we found it suiting. Wearing the—her—collar became the first earned part of my developing uniform, her first symbol of ownership on me. 

The first collar survived only a matter of weeks before it sadly had to be cut off for a medical procedure. It was the second one, an improved version, that became the first of the three that survived at least a year. In fact, it survived two. 

The collar is made of hemp. It’s one piece of rope connected to itself via an equilateral long splice, and where each of the three ends meet, it’s reinforced with a palm and needle whipping. Mistress—a rope enthusiast—made it around my neck, hours of me kneeling and thinking as she worked; a small, stainless steel shackle connected an o-ring. The collar, like me, is an ever handy example of her craftsmanship. 

And two years to the day later, it’s wilting. It’s absorbed years of my skin oils, been through countless showers. With 24/7 wear, it went from scratchy to soft to just oily after years of absorbing the sweat from the 24/7 service of the dynamic it represents. Because it’s hemp, it constricts when wet. At first, it got a little tight when I showered, but I barely noticed. As the years went on, though, as it contained more moisture all the time, taking a shower started to involve being choked. Still, it was our little miracle—that it lasted two years with no major issue. Mistress was expecting to replace it every year. 

Still, on its second anniversary, she’s ready to replace it. She cuts it off of me. She makes the next one around my neck. She fingers the o-ring and shackle nervously and starts making lengthy, prevaricating statements about how much she loves me. 

As usual, I try to anticipate what she wants, though it doesn’t sound especially submissive this time when I put her out of her misery: “Will you just propose already?” 

…

We unfortunately had problems with the collar for a while after that—minor construction issues. The measurements on one were slightly off; another unraveled. Finally, one went on shortly before our wedding day that stuck again. I wore it for just over a year. 

We replace it as planned on our anniversary, our new date for collar replacements. This is also the day we end up signing our Blood Oath, which had originally been planned for our wedding day, but got delayed amongst the festivities, and Mistress was attached to it being on that date. (And, in case of immediate issues, we begin a tradition of her adding the new collar around my neck before cutting off the old one.) It becomes the second of the three collars that survived at least a year.

Looking at the two—not one, but now two long term collars, worn until they started to choke me with humidity—I start to solidify my mental paradigm around earning it. I earned the privilege of her putting each collar on me, every day earned the privilege of keeping it on. But what about now, when they’re destroyed? 

My current take: I’ve only finished earning it when it’s removed. My (no safewords/no limits/no way out) slavery—that Blood Oath—operates on a lien against my honor. My debt is lifelong obedience. I can’t leave with my honor, unless I obeyed until one of us died or she released me, paying that debt. And at that point, and no sooner, I gain full ownership of myself—the right to self collar, if I’m still alive to see it. And if I don’t give her that, I lose my honor. So as far as the physical collar, which doesn’t last as long—I earned each of those when they were removed and destroyed, then. 

… 

Exactly one year later, we replace it again. It is the last of the current three that survived at least a year. It’s been involved in every night’s leashing, and every morning’s unleashing when I rise from the floor at the foot of the bed. It’s been incorporated into several rope sessions, used to toss me around at random countless times, and, most of all, been seen. 

So much of my job is to be invisible, in one way or another. Silent, speak only when spoken to; behind the scenes, solve the problem before Mistress knows it’s there. 

But the collar is visible. So are the boots, when I’m wearing them; the pager (clips), noticeable. These little symbols that say so much even when I’m silent. 

And when they finally break, I get a reminder of what they mean, of what they’ve seen, of what is to come, of why they will be replaced again and again and again. 

So here’s to all of the pager clips, boots, and collars that will meet their ends before I do.