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.
Service Slave Secrets 