masochism – Service Slave Secrets

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 About a year ago, we gave our ritual a more major update, and after we settled into it and I remembered the outdated post, I wondered what to do with it.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.

Six Near Misses (In 24/7 High Protocol)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?”)

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.”

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.

The Stoic Slave

Stoicism has called to me for a long time, as has being a slave. There’s a lot of overlap between them for me. I want to explore some things I commonly practice, how I think they relate to both, and why they’re beneficial for me.

Sleeping on the Floor

There are several reasons I personally sleep on the floor at night, but I think it’s frequently considered a Peak Item of slavery and Stoicism both.

From the slave side, I think of it as a place defined by Mistress’ place—on the floor at the foot of her bed—with (especially given the leash), but not equal. From the Stoic side, it fits into asceticism, the self restraint and confrontation of discomfort (cultivating the cardinal virtue of fortitude).

You’ll probably find that many of the practices I’ll explore here come back to asceticism and fortitude (we’ll come back to most of them towards the end of this post).

For me, the ultimate purpose in some of these seemingly masochistic practices is not actually to be unhappy—quite the contrary. They are also not really meant to remain unpleasant long term. They’re things that are kind of meant to be overcome, things I’m meant to become indifferent to. They make me appreciate the little things more. If someone sleeps in a bed every night, they probably rarely think anything of it, but if they slept on the floor for a night, they’d likely find it actively miserable. But on occasions when I do sleep in the bed, I appreciate the joy in it, and when I do sleep on the floor, I rarely think anything of it. Deprivation makes me want less. These practices make my happiness less fragile and more versatile. In the words of Epictetus: “Sick and yet happy, in peril and yet happy, dying and yet happy, in exile and happy, in disgrace and happy.”

Of course, it’s better to be healthy and safe and alive. But the point is that life is going to happen. Bad things are going to happen. But wouldn’t it be better to stay happy when they do? And that’s a skill, a virtue, that needs to be cultivated in advance.

(Note: there’s a lot of confusion and disagreement when it comes to Stoicism and determinism. Bad things are going to happen is deterministic, but the ability to control ourselves and our reactions implies free will. Personally, to simplify, I see Stoicism as proposing a largely deterministic universe/external world, and a largely autonomous individual/inner world, though we are, I think we almost all agree, influenced by our past. In a way, we can change a lot—say, we can invent the airplane—but ultimately, we have to build them according to the natural laws of physics.)

Study and Reading

In many religions and philosophies, study of specific core texts or the system’s key principles in general features strongly. In Stoicism especially, I see virtue and intelligence/study conflated frequently.

From the kink world, to quote Laura Antoniou, “A slave’s life is mostly composed of patience and study.”

Continual learning has some obvious benefits for everyone. Practical knowledge that is gained can be applied. But deeper philosophical understanding that might not lead directly to an action item also has quite a bit of value. A better understanding of—even a new way of phrasing—why I do what I do helps me prioritize, do it with intention, be happier doing it, do it better.

For this reason, I include monthly reading goals, and have always included plenty of study in general in my life.

Meditation

A lot of Stoicism is about the inner world (given that deterministic universe thing), and many Stoic practices you’ll find listed out anywhere are primarily mental exercises. Meditating on accepting death and mortality, negative visualization (imagining catastrophic events in order to decatastrophize the reality—free with every anxiety disorder!), mindfulness, reflecting on the near past and looking ahead to the near future, meditating on recent study, the ideal version of yourself, your desired virtues, what you do and don’t have control over—all of these have their place.

I also frequently pitch meditation as a beneficial practice for slaves (and everyone else). Especially, some kind of mindfulness is necessary for smooth, even anticipatory service, and adhering to high protocol. And meditating on what you do and don’t have control over? I think the applications there are rather clear.

I include various opportunities for assorted types of meditation throughout my day and the rest of my schedule. It’s calming, and I find getting my mind in order a crucial first step towards any action. (And ultimately, in Stoicism, though much of it may seem mental, it is all a first step towards our actions.)

Journaling

A lot of journaling is just putting mental meditations on paper, and the benefits are similar. Externalizing those thoughts forces you to examine and clarify them, helps ingrain them in your mind (or let go of undesirable ones), makes them easier to track over time, to come back to and be reminded of later, perhaps to draw further inspiration from them. The practice of consistent journaling itself is an exercise in self discipline. This can also help with the value of prudence (by gathering, storing, and reviewing information in a logical manner).

Journaling—sometimes phrased as keeping a philosophical journal—is often taught as a key Stoic practice. Meditations is a very famous Stoic text, though it was actually the private journal of Marcus Aurelius, and was likely not intended for publication.

Keeping a slave/submissive journal is a common first task for an s-type. Whether it’s meant for communication (as shared with a partner) or to be a private item, the same above benefits apply.

I keep a daily (slave) journal that I share with Mistress (I’m required to bring it to her once a week). It’s often brief and event focused, but it can also be a place for more when I have more to say.

My philosophical journal is probably moreso my blogs, including this one. In a way, it shows up in my fiction, too. Those, I share publicly in the hope that others find some benefit in them. I’ve always been a writer, so that helps.

I’ve also recently started keeping a daily dream journal. As someone who has a very active mind in my sleep, apparently, I find a lot of the same benefits in it as I do in journaling about my waking hours. (As someone with maladaptive/dissociative daydreams while awake, I also note key themes of my waking dreams that day.)

Movement

Discipline of the physical form—fitness—features in many Stoic practices, with a combination of physical and ultimately mental aspects. Fortitude and self discipline are still key here. Voluntary exposure to discomfort, depending on the exact extent of the exercise, can also feature. Stretching and walking are often part of meditative practices as well.

As a slave, practicing self discipline is key, and combining this with meditative practices is a bonus.

As part of my routine first thing every morning, I make space for some joyful and/or mindful movement, usually stretching, some bodyweight exercises, and walking or running. I also regularly go hiking.

Waking Early

I admit I don’t wake particularly early, but I do rise at the same time every day, which is enforced, and it’s a small stretch for me, right around 8:30 AM.

Marcus Aurelius wrote:

“At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: ‘I am rising to do the work of a human being. What do I have to complain about, if I’m going to do what I was born for—the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?’

(…) You don’t love yourself enough. For if you did, you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you. People who love what they do wear themselves down doing it.”

(Temperance, another cardinal virtue, is on display here—as much sleep as you need, not more.)

I’ve written before that as a slave, although ultimately I don’t get a choice, I do have to choose to serve, over things like (asking permission for) sleeping in. To prioritize it, to seize the opportunity every morning.

If submission is in my nature, if my purpose is to serve—if I love it—I will wear myself down doing it.

Pain

As said, a lot of these Stoic practices will come back to fortitude and confronting discomfort, such as deprivation.

Beyond deprivation of the desired, beyond discomfort, we have pain.

Pain can also play an important part in slavery, though it’s not necessary, as an expression of power.

Personally, we have weekly maintenance discipline in our dynamic, which current contains ritualistic pain (a spanking with the discipline wand, and, incidentally, cornertime, a form of deprivation and meditation). For me, it’s a headspace event, not a behavior modifier or a sexual thing. Overcoming the pain to focus on counting obediently (some at the beginning and some at the end, usually ten—”One, thank you, Mistress; please may I have another?”) is a discipline practice.

We also practice what I call lifestyle masochism, which includes a lot of what I’ve touched on above, and also what looks like random violence/mimicking physical abuse—things I don’t want in the moment, but overcome, building resilience (fortitude).

Cold Showers

Another example largely of more of the same. I don’t stick strictly to cold showers, for practical purposes, but they do feature frequently in the forced masochism, and I try for at least a cold rinse in every shower.

Many famous Stoics used voluntary exposure to the cold, especially cold water, as a practice. And many people praise various health benefits of this practice as well.

Eating Simply, Fasting

This one is a mixed bag for me. As someone who struggles with symptoms of anorexia, I am actually currently trying to lean further away from this, though, as I’m including it here, I do see some virtue in it in moderation, and I don’t want to eliminate it entirely (see also: exercise). Mindful eating, at least, and the occasional fast can all be healthy and Stoic practices. As a slave, I find that moderation (temperance), self control, and anything with physical health benefits are all pros.

This features in many other philosophies and religions—fasting for spiritual purposes, advising against gluttony (one of the seven deadly sins), etc. In fact, my first experiences with fasting—middle school—were tied to Jewish holidays.

Digital Minimalism/Detoxing

Okay, so no one was talking about this in 300 BC, but it definitely fits many Stoic principles. It is hard to be mindful of the present moment, undistracted, while constantly glancing at your phone, and to go without, digitally, is to practice deprivation in our modern society, and many things one might be doing online are distractions from the other pursuits Stoicism praises.

Personally, I’m a digital minimalist. My only Internet connected devices I use are my laptop and phone; my laptop remains powered off for over twelve hours per day, and there’s very little available on my phone (some of the apps that came on it, maps, and music). Even at other times, I frequently put my devices aside/turn them off/turn the WiFi and cellular off. I don’t have accounts on any major social media platform. I don’t have (virtual) games. We don’t have a television (and I very rarely watch anything on other devices that could be called television). So on.

And, at least once a month, I do a digital detox—not using my laptop, and using my phone only without WiFi/cellular (airplane mode), for at least thirty-six hours. Sometimes I don’t use the phone at all, either, if possible (though as I use it for alarms and such, I usually allow the device itself), and sometimes I combine this with a media detox (which eliminates books and such).

This can be good for everyone, but particularly as a slave, this helps keep my attention on what matters (like Mistress). In fact, the night we first met, I watched her confiscate someone else’s phone when they were paying attention to the device instead of her.

Dressing Simply

Clothes feature in a few common Stoic practices (and other spiritual/religious endeavors). Whether it’s under dressing to expose one’s self to the cold, dressing modestly, dressing simply, or dressing poorly (exposing one’s self to ridicule), clothes come up.

Personally, I wear only one thing—my slave uniform. It’s relatively simple and modest, admittedly cute, but not eye grabbing. I own a few copies of it, and that’s pretty much it. (I’m also a minimalist in my possessions in general—sticking close to what you truly need, and wanting less, being a Stoic practice.) As part of it, I leave my hair unstyled, I don’t wear makeup, the only jewelry I wear is my wedding ring and my collar. Mistress finds it pleasing, it eliminates my getting a choice in fashion/expresses her control, and it allows me to focus on other things, like my service.

While it may sound submissive, eliminating decision fatigue from this small thing to focus on the bigger issues has also helped many powerful people—like presidents, CEOs, and Mistress.

Silence

Silence can be a key aspect of meditation, necessary to look inwards, necessary to be mindful (are you listening, or listening to respond?), and a form of deprivation.

As a slave, silence can also be key, especially in high protocol. Personally, I have the rule of speak when spoken to when it comes to Mistress—there if she wants me, seen but not heard if not—and I regularly take a full silence vow of a day or two to reset, in a way (I did two this year). When I was in high school, I took my first silence vow for a week (as part of an assignment related to the book Siddhartha), and learned a lot, and wanted to continue the practice.

…

Those are probably my top twelve practices that are a beneficial part of Stoicism and slavery both. I look forward to incorporating more as time goes on.

What Makes Irrevocable Consent Okay?

So, what makes irrevocable consent okay?

Firstly, for the uninitiated, let’s define irrevocable consent. For my purposes (I’m not claiming this as universal), I use irrevocable consent to define my dynamic’s consent policy. It means no no, no safewords, no hard or soft limits, no rights, and no leaving. Her power over me is unlimited by our contract and the dynamic ends only if one of us dies, or Mistress freely chooses to release me; I cannot end it (I’m not allowed to use murder or suicide to end it, either).

Often, the general question is raised: what separates BDSM from abuse/what makes BDSM okay? The answer almost always boils down to consent. A problem with this is that either consent is not defined, or it’s defined in terms of safewords, limits, and other ways of revoking consent that my dynamic does not have. But do I think I’m in a non consensual situation? Of course not.

I’ve been asked a few times in various wordings if I would just say that our dynamic is without consent, since “revocability is a condition of consent”. But I don’t agree that revocability is a condition of consent for me, and we definitely don’t operate without consent altogether. At one point in time, I did agree—once, completely, forever. That crucial part didn’t get skipped.

So if not predefined boundaries or revocability, what is consent?

I don’t really like pulling the dictionary out on questions like this. As a writer and a linguistics nerd, I know that the dictionary is meant to be descriptive, to describe how language is already being used—and it’s not being updated every minute—not prescriptive, telling us how to use it (and not use it). Additionally, BDSM terminology is not frequently described or accounted for in most mainstream dictionaries. Still, let’s take a look at what the dictionary (at least the one on my computer, which seems about average) says.

Permission for something to happen or agreement to do something.

That’s relatively vague, without the stipulations I normally see in a BDSM context. I think it’s a fine definition, though. But let’s keep going.

I’ve seen some people say that I coined the term irrevocable consent. I will say that I’m the first person I’ve seen use it in a BDSM context, and others have started using it since, many of them crediting me. I have no idea if I was actually the first, however.

Additionally, irrevocable consent is a longstanding legal/vanilla term that I definitely did not come up with.

So if the law thinks irrevocable consent is a valid form of consent (note—the law isn’t talking about this in a BDSM context, but), and the dictionary doesn’t talk about revocability… food for thought.

But, consensual in the BDSM world is frequently used almost interchangeably with words like ethical or moral. More than just is it consensual, what we’re often really getting at is, is it ethical, is it moral, is it right, is it good, is it okay.

I think that answer depends on the individual. Some—dare I say most—people would never consent once, completely, forever, and that’s totally okay. For them, that situation would be non consensual and wrong, because they would never agree to it.

But it works for me, and what I’m really trying to answer here is—why? What makes me think it’s consensual, ethical, okay, so on?

Mistress and I both get this question a lot. I think the most in depth answer I’ve actually heard her give is (in a nutshell) that she encourages me to pursue passions that aren’t her. I thought her case was interesting, that the okayness of it all boiled down to the fact that our dynamic doesn’t take up my entire world, doesn’t cut me off from everything else completely. Still, a) I don’t think I agree. While definitely a huge upside, I’m not sure that’s it, my aha, for my view on why our dynamic is okay. (I also don’t think our reasons need to be exactly the same, as long as we both have them.) And b) it’s also not… entirely true.

We discussed this later. I pointed out that there are a lot of limits on how I interact with the rest of the world, on what I can pursue. The big one being that I’m not allowed to be answerable to anyone who’s not her—this includes having a job, a career. (Which I don’t actually miss.) And of course, without directly limiting options, the part where I do work, more than full time, for her—in domestic service, with structured timetables—which I love doing—not to mention many of our rules, do limit my options. (To the vanilla world, I’m just the uxorious housewife.) Besides that, she rather frequently threatens to ban the other things I do pursue when I express any kind of fleeting negative thought about them, and they are never to be actually top priority. I manage to get a lot done in my free time, within her rules, without an outside authority—but those things aren’t a right.

She largely agreed with that when we talked about it more, mostly shrugging the obvious followup question off.

(And, of course, my consent includes consent to all of those service tasks—that add up to a job—and to all of our beloved rules—I speak only when I’m spoken to, I sleep on the floor every night, I wear only my uniform, so on. This all goes far beyond the bedroom, far beyond sex and play, and I love that.)

Like most such quandaries, it’s just not a very concrete question. It’s hard to point to one behavior, to one line in our contract. Many conditions are frequently put on consent and rightness in BDSM—a real Owner does this, or doesn’t do that (and yet, there’s frequently an outcry when that’s reversed: a real slave does this, or doesn’t do that). And I think we’ve violated just about all of those consent conditions. There’s beatings and sex while she’s high. When I’m sick. Without asking. When I’m hurt. In frustration. Without warning. When I’m saying no. Without warmup. Without aftercare. Until I drip blood on the carpet. If there’s a “rule”, we’ve pretty much broken it. Sometimes I love it; sometimes I ask for it. Sometimes I go no no no no the whole time. Sometimes both.

It’s not a very simple question. I think my answer does boil down to because I agreed. I did agree—once, completely, forever. I agreed freely; I asked questions first; I got to know her; I knew what I was getting into; I did the self work; I was willing to honor that agreement. We do this deliberately, with knowledge and trust and communication. I don’t think the fact I can’t take that agreement back changes the fact that I agreed, and many definitions back me up here.

So, what makes irrevocable consent okay for me? That it is consent. That I agreed.

That’s enough for me, and that’s what matters.

My Top Three S-Type Archetypes in Vanilla Words

The (Abused) Housewife

We don’t quite fit 1950’s household. There’s a lot wrapped up in that trope that doesn’t quite work for us. We’re not straight, we’re not traditionally religious, we don’t have children, and the finance/external obligation thing isn’t so clear cut (we’re both self employed). Others are in similar situations and use the label anyway—which is great—but it just doesn’t feel like it fits for me. Housewife isn’t perfect either, but it’s closer, and feels less like playing at something a little lost in lore that I wasn’t there for historically.

I use housewife in the vanilla world at times to explain what I “do”. To summarize that my top priority and full time job is housework (service), that our finances are ultimately more my partner’s concern than mine, that I am an active homemaker and not passively keeping maintenance to the bare minimum (being a little old fashioned in terms of homemaking skills and passions), and to imply a somewhat subservient role. People get the idea, and I use it in kink circles, too, in addition to service slave, to indicate that it’s my full time job in addition to being a label I identify with.

There’s another layer to this one, though, which is what I’ve coined lifestyle masochism in kink; the most accurate way to label it in terms of a vanilla word would probably be mimicking abuse. The housewife thing is at the core of the abusive trope we’re after, in a way—associated with vulnerability and isolation. Not working outside the home limits your own social and financial resources, and being pleasant to be around and look at, and up for sex is part of the (note: problematic outside of a consensual framework) domestic package/debt.

The thing we add is physical and emotional sadism, and the way in which we enact it: which purposefully mimics random incidents of violence, physical domestic abuse, frequently not looking like consensual kink, sex, play. I use lifestyle because it’s not a scene. There’s probably no negotiating, warmup, cooldown, aftercare; it can last a matter of seconds.

Everything we do happens within our irrevocable consent framework. No safewords, no limits, no way out. For me, this is crucial. I frequently need to not want it in the moment. Truly. Not like flailing a little when I get hit, but to hate it with a deep, dark simmering feeling of fear, betrayal, depression, and regret for getting here. It’s just the type of masochism that really means something to me. But that feeling (for me) comes after a safeword, beyond a limit, and—to experience it twice—requires the inability to get out. If I have those things, I can’t get that feeling.

The core difference is that while my consent is irrevocable, it was, once, given to her freely and completely, forever.

The Majordomo/Household Manager

This overlaps with housewife in a few ways—primarily, domestic service as a full time job—but adds a few things that I think are very important around here.

As a butler school student, I can portray my life as a slave pretty accurately save a few terminology swaps, changing minor details, and using a bit of omission. I’m not male or British (though those are demographic issues I can’t change), and don’t have any other permanent staff (but I do a lot of coordinating between people, like contractors).

I take pride in maintaining professional level hard skills in service, and less so the well, this is the way my grandmother did it that seems to come with the housewife role (though that can also hold wisdom).

Being 24/7 high protocol (in kink terms) can kind of fit into either of these roles depending on where your focus is. Focusing on some protocols as controlling and limiting (or an imitation of the fawn response) might fit into the abused housewife thing. Focusing on some as respectful and polite to the extreme might fit into formal professional service etiquette. In any case, pleasing is a goal I enjoy.

We do use a lot of professional systems in our relationship (our contract, formal time “off”/reduced duty system, written forms, inspections, review systems, meetings, my uniform) that would be out of place for the housewife dynamic, but provide much desired structure for us, so I think both of these are crucial archetypes for me, even though they both have full time service at their core.

The Ascetic

I have ascetic leanings, though again, I’m not traditionally religious, and again, it’s not complete.

But, I sleep on the floor pretty much every night. I wear basically only my daily uniform; I don’t wear makeup. I need permission to masturbate or orgasm and (with only a few exceptions) shower or use the bathroom. I’m a digital minimalist; I have almost zero traditional social media; I generally don’t watch TV/movies/videos; I don’t do gaming. I’m a minimalist in my possessions. I don’t do recreational drugs. I am drawn to regular silence vows, digital detoxes, and fasts. I value little above self discipline.

In a way, this is just on principle/how I am. In another way, it’s to keep my focus on the important things—like service and obedience—and limit the reward feeling to coming from a job well done. No distractions. A lot of the above is part of our protocol itself, structured and subservient. And in a way, it feeds my masochism, and limits bandaid fix distractions from pain, making me sit with it and process it.

I’ve researched this one a lot, too, and in a lot of ways, it fits well.

While the other archetypes are primarily about what I do as a slave, this one might be more about what I don’t do.

That’s an important part, too.

Lifestyle Masochism Example (Top Three for the Week)

This is part of the Lifestyle Masochism series. These are stand alone non fiction/memoir examples of the lifestyle sadomasochism we practice within our irrevocable consent framework, as discussed in the explanation post “What I Talk About When I Talk About Masochism”.

…

Sunday. As always, morning inspection at 10:30.

Morning service tasks already done, I shut my 10:29 alarm and get in Inspection Position in the bedroom. I stand, legs spread, hands clasped behind my head.

Mistress comes in. I’m silent, waiting for her to speak first. Speak when spoken to. She tells me my morning tasks were done well and on time, looks me and my uniform over, approves.

“Thank you, Mistress,” I say, the required response to the praise.

“You’re welcome, slavegirl.” She releases me from the position to fetch the nearby sunscreen and apply it for her: “You may get me lotion.”

I do. And normally, that’s it.

Today, though, it’s not. “Remove all of your clothing.”

I do. Meanwhile, she seeks out a few items. Removing my leggings and underwear is painful today. On Friday night, we did an impact scene—paddles, full force, thirty minute timer—that had me dripping blood on the floor before finishing with the barbed wire “flogger” I made (barbed wire duct taped together). It looked like a horror movie scene—blood drops on the carpet, blood soaked implements, blood rushing down the shower drain. A barb flew loose from the flogger after catching in my skin, landing on the floor.

It was supposed to be a catharsis scene, but it got more silence and giggles than anything. It was fun.

After all the blood, I spent Saturday draining so much plasma, it immediately soaked through my clothes no matter what I did, leaving clear wet spots wherever I sat.

Now, my clothes stick to the wounds, and I have to peel them out. But Mistress has a solution.

I step into the Pull-Up unprotesting. Diapers aren’t my thing—and that increases the fun for her—but I’ve yet to figure out a better solution. She lays on the humiliation verbally, but the reality is practical.

With that in place, she has something else for me. The mostly used soap from the shower, wet. I let her run it over my tongue and place it in my mouth without protest, too.

She places me in the corner—well, nose pressed to a wall, arms boxed behind my back, Corner Position—emphasizing how much this amuses her.

I wait there. She takes a picture. I’m sure it’s quite an image. I wonder nonchalantly if she’ll post it.

She leaves me there for a few minutes. I’m pondering the soap. The shape and size are okay right now, but the bar wouldn’t fit in my mouth brand new. It’s plain to look at, and the taste is unpleasant, but it doesn’t burn or tingle like some of the scented ones do. I should do something about this.

(By Thursday, I’ve played with making my own cute, well shaped bars in various flavors for her to torment me with—and use around the house—including ginger ones shaped for anal insertion, and an improvement on my ginger infused lube creation.)

Mistress comes back in and releases me from the corner, lets me rinse my mouth out, leaves me to redress in my uniform and go about my chores or, “Whatever it is slavegirls do.”

…

Tuesday, which means I give Mistress a pedicure at four o’clock.

I’m done now, still cleaning up supplies, and soon off to start dinner.

But Mistress has other ideas. She finds me again, putting a few things away in the master bath. “You may remove all of your clothing.”

This order always leads to interesting things. Given the setting, I’m pretty sure I know what, and as I strip out of my uniform, I warn her that means dinner will likely be late (not served at six as always).

“That’s fine. I can make dinner be late if I want. If I’d rather harass you.”

“Thank you, Mistress.” The permission is kind of buried, but there, evoking the required response.

She opens the shower door. “Kneel.”

I do. The shower floor is cold and hard, and just big enough to manage my usual Kneeling Position—knees open, big toes crossed right over left, hands clasped behind my back, right over left, right thumb over left thumb—without touching any walls.

She leaves me there for a minute, seeing to something in another room. Then returns.

She pees on me, and has me lick her clean, then turns the shower on full blast cold. I fly out of the sudden stream of water before I can realize what I’m doing, kneeling up and clinging to the doorway of the shower as she orders and shoves me back into the freezing water. She wants me there for a few solid seconds, soaking me with the removable shower head, before she leaves me to clean up with warm water.

Or, “You may rinse off,” as she puts it, waiving the requirement to shave and present for inspection after. I’ll be free to finally start dinner.

“Thank you, Mistress.”

…

Friday.

I’m making dinner, to be served at six as always. Steak is in the sous vide, soon to be seared; potatoes are boiling on the stove, soon to be mashed; asparagus is getting tossed and put back in the oven. Some mutual favorites.

Mistress comes in, asks about the food. I answer.

“Take off your shirt,” she orders in response.

I glance at the various uncovered windows around, but comply. A neighbor could see in, but it’s not in plain sight.

“And your bra.”

I set both uniform items on the island.

She produces two clothespins. No points for guessing where those are going. I’m not shocked by their appearance, either—I noted them sitting on her desk earlier. They were out of place—not in the dungeon—but, as I cleared a few dishes, trash, other out of place items, I left them, suspecting exactly this.

She puts them on me. I bite my lip as she does. Then, the pain is low intensity, but achingly constant.

She presses the ice dispenser button on the freezer behind her, and traces my breasts and stomach with an ice cube, cold and wet, dripping down my skin.

Then she reaches past me and pulls a fork out of a drawer. She dips it in the water boiling on the stove, holds it there for a few seconds. Presses it to my abdomen hard a few times, though it loses heat quickly, and she sticks it back in the water.

The contrast is interesting—there’s a second where the now mild cold from the ice rapidly gives way to mild warmth from the fork, before I’m struck by the burning heat of the metal, squirming a little.

She cycles the ice and the hot fork for a minute, and finally her nails down my skin, a strange collection of pink marks.

She talks about how she likes coming in and harassing me, having me as, “A toy to play with as I please.” She removes the clothespins. I bite my lip again, hold my breath. “You may get dressed.”

“Thank you, Mistress.”

I check on dinner. Evidently, she’s had her fill of entertainment for now.

Lifestyle Masochism Example (Pressure Pointed)

…

I’m standing in the bedroom, kind of between activities, having just finished cleaning and shutting down the downstairs for the night, now settling in upstairs, without it being time for my final evening service tasks yet. I’m thinking that maybe I’ll type up some notebook pages when Mistress comes in, making sweet talk, which somehow ends with me tackled to the bed, on my back, pinned with my hands over my head in a way my shoulders really don’t want to stretch, with her on top of my legs.

She’s still talking—something, we’re in a Lifetime movie, random violence, you love it, that’s pathetic, something—but I’m a bit distracted by her fingers digging into pressure points around my hips and thighs, sharp bursts of pain with aftershocks. She’s narrating: “See, you’re just in here minding your business, and then you get tackled and held down and pressure pointed. That’s a verb now. That’s how this works.”

I’m still distracted by the pressure pointing, not entirely sure what comes out of my mouth in response, squirming. I’m still feeling aftershocks when she slaps me hard in the face instead, her hand settling around my throat, squeezing; the other presses into that spot at my hip again that takes away the rest of my oxygen, then hits me in the chest.

She tires of this, though, and I find myself flipped over—it’s always strangely disorienting, flips like that at moments like these; the world was already kind of small, her hair a curtain around my head, and now my face is mostly pressed into the comforter, and the person pinning me down is now also behind me, and everything spins. She yanks my uniform leggings and panties down, and I half see her throw my pager to the side, so the clip doesn’t get broken under me (again).

She spanks me, hard, some slaps, but mostly punches, the kind I feel in my hips more than anywhere else, force and pain. I sink against the bed. “And you like getting punched in the ass.” The theme tonight seems to be, “You love it, you pathetic little pain slut. I bet it makes you wet.” She slips two fingers in me, abruptly—I make a choked sound—not that wet. Or that open, especially at this weird angle, with my legs kind of trapped closed. It just hurts. Not for long, though; after a few seconds, her fingers press at my lips, and I suck off what did drip onto them instinctively.

Then the punching continues. “I wonder if you can come from this,” she says, which isn’t much of a question. I’ve done it countless times before—come from pain alone. The real question is if I can do it right now. Hmm. Probably, I think. “Just from being a punching bag.” And the punches keeps coming—force, pain, a lot more than cute, erotic slaps—fast, hard; sensation builds. “It goes with your whipping girl complex.”

“Please,” I get out, mostly into the comforter, my way of saying, Yes, I can, and yes, I want to, though I can’t get down enough air to finish the question properly, the golden may, please, Mistress combo.

She pauses for a second, but only for a second, maybe to be able to hear me better, or give me enough oxygen to finish. But she fills it in for me: “Please, what? You want to come from this?”

“Yes, Mistress—”

She resumes. “Come, then.”

So I do. People ask me about this part a lot, when I talk about orgasming from pain. It’s like any other orgasm, really. Sensation builds up and intensifies. A need for relief. A feeling of being overwhelmed. The endorphin rush. It’s a little more mental, a little less distinct, but it’s everywhere, and it’s an orgasm nonetheless, and I pant, “Thank you, Mistress,” when it’s over.

“You’re welcome, slavegirl.” The unofficial end line of any protocol that dictates, Thank you, Mistress.

And so I catch my breath.