When You Hit The End of the Leash

I’ve just gotten back from my morning walk. I check the time. 9:14. I groan internally.

The rule is, brunch on the table, pager transmitter button pressed, me in Waiting Position, at 9:30. This means I have to start making the food at 9:20, which means I need to largely be done with my other morning tasks before then. (The only thing left before Morning Inspection should be cooking, serving, and cleaning up brunch.) This necessitates a wakeup time of no later than 8:30, which is also a rule. The problem is that due to small tweaks made to our sleep schedule, I’m now often not done with the first set of morning tasks, sending her the, Going for walk, Mistress, message and tucking my phone into my pocket so she can track me, and getting out the door, before 8:50, which means I don’t get back and settled from the one mile loop until after 9:10. And I need just over ten minutes to complete the set of morning tasks that come after my walk. 

This means that, while it’s close, almost every morning recently, I’ve been asking for permission to be late with having brunch on the table, pushing the meal to 9:35, 9:40, with a script that starts with me (via message) saying, May I be late, please, Mistress? and then goes to her saying, Yes, you may, and then goes to me saying, Thank you, Mistress. 

Because I always ask permission, and she always says yes, and we knew the tweaks made might result in calling it close, the timing isn’t an official problem. But six years in to a dynamic like this, with a focus on anticipatory service, you develop an eye for inconvenience that has the easy potential to become problem. One day, accustomed to her saying yes to the shift in timing, I might forget to ask permission. Or she’s going to be busy with something and not answer my question. Or we’re going to really need to be exactly on time with brunch.

Since I definitely need the extra time—I already perform my morning tasks with as much efficiency as I’m capable of—and I wouldn’t want to inconvenience her by asking to move brunch time, there seems to me to be only one answer: wake up about ten minutes earlier. 8:30 is pretty well embedded in our routine, but it’s more descriptive than prescriptive, as long as brunch is on time, and the contract even says by 8:30. So today, when I once again ask for permission to be late, and she says yes, and I thank her, I mention that I will be waking ten minutes earlier. 

Except that the conversation that unfolds as I set about the second round of morning tasks—making the hospital corners on the bed, adjusting the windows and lights, spritzing the linen spray on the bed and couches, doing a quick tidy of the house, seeing to the cats and the plants—is not the of course that I expected. I hear a frustrated sigh from her office, and heavier typing than normal, which sets my body on high alert mode. The curt message tells me she doesn’t want me to do that. 

I am confused by this. The change is only by ten minutes, it’s earlier—which is allowed by the contract—it’s in the name of having brunch on time, I see no better solution, and I think my message was reasonable in tone. I understand that she has veto power over everything, but this wasn’t a change I explicitly needed permission to make; if she had just said no, that might have been one thing, but I am still trying to understand the frustration.

The only thing my mind generates is concern about my sleep. The most frequent incidental use case of her veto power is probably making me get extra rest (banning all things that would interfere with this, generally tasks she preset herself). Currently, we have Evening Inspection at 8:45 PM. The first steps come right after I serve dinner at 6 PM—cleaning the kitchen, etc. Other than that, I start getting ready around 8:25 PM, turning down the bedroom and whatnot, ending with stripping out of my uniform and getting into Inspection Position. After Inspection, I officially have the option to either be leashed for the night and settle onto my blanket on the floor at the foot of the bed and read or write or whatnot, or possibly stay up and about longer. Either way, I generally make sure to do lights out by 10:30 PM, planning on taking my usual hour to fall asleep, which lets me get my ideal nine hours in before that 8:30 alarm. Since the change is only by ten minutes and my lights out time is up to me (she normally goes to sleep after Inspection, and I am reasonable and consistent enough about my own bedtime, she doesn’t officially enforce it), I see no problem in also moving my lights out time to 10:20 PM in case of any concerns. Except adding this in does not help. 

Finally, it dawns on me. She does go to bed and wake earlier than I do, and before I am awake, currently, most days, she bikes over to a friend’s house where she has a little office set up to get some work done, then bikes home and is there to unleash me for the morning right at 8:30 when I page her and get into Leashing/Unleashing Position. Me waking ten minutes earlier would either disrupt her routine as much as moving brunch ten minutes later would if not more, or mean she wasn’t there to unleash me most mornings. While we have protocols in place for what happens if she is asleep or out of the house when it’s time for me to be leashed or unleashed, her unofficial goal is for her to be the one leashing or unleashing me as much as possible.

And I blanked that part, because, well, the whole her going out and coming back in thing happens while I’m asleep. 

I send my ohhh moment and apologize. She makes it clear she’d be more willing to move brunch ten minutes later. And it’s fine. 

Still, I had the jarring running into the end of the leash experience. Not being able to make a tiny, reasonable change to my routine on my own—because it might have meant literally unleashing myself. It made me remember that the (metaphorical) admittedly short leash I’ve largely become so used to does end somewhere. I’ve written before about reminders that my time is hers, that protocol limits my options for what to do in a specific moment—but today’s experience felt a little different. I couldn’t change, going forward, a routine item, was reminded that our rituals are in large part prescriptive, not (just) descriptive, that I cannot just change something small when it is no longer, in my opinion, the best option. Even beyond the moment, my habits cannot just change at my discretion.

It’s always an interesting moment—remembering that for us it’s not a fantasy or a roleplay or just a concept that has little bearing on my day to day life. On the one hand, I know that, logically. I know I have no power here. I know that, emotionally—I can have a strong mental reaction to someone insisting otherwise. But you can know you’re on a leash and be glad to be on it and still choke if you hit the end of it.

It’s a vulnerable feeling. On that end of the leash, you’re not the one who controls where you’re going. I know that she’ll take us somewhere that’s good for both of us—she’s not going to walk us right off a cliff, or stop in the middle of a busy road, or drop the leash and leave me alone in the middle of nowhere. More literally, I know she’ll be there to put the leash on and take the leash off almost every night and almost every morning. But I’m still completely at her command. 

Forever.