My image

Although we talk about 'dominants' and 'submissives' in a very general sort of way much of the time, I wonder if we don't have an image in our heads that defines our sense of submission or domination. For me there was one scenario that I carried around in my head from an early age. This scenario goes to the heart of my kink. By the time I had left school it was firmly cemented in my mind, even though I didn't tell anyone about it.

I am not sure when I wrote the first story about submitting to another's will. In the same way that I didn't talk about my fantasies, I didn't tell people about the stories I penned and I certainly didn't show them to anyone. It was a secret just for myself. But, it went like this...

I was a single girl. I was educated. I was capable. I took a job. The details of the job in the fantasy changed from time to time, but usually I worked within the realm of the English department of a university. I was not a senior person but I was responsible to a senior person - the Head of the Faculty.

He was considerably older than me; much more experienced and definitely more learned. He took a shine to me. He recognized that underneath that quiet, controlled and neat exterior lay a girl who was in need of guidance and that if he could guide me, I would be a great aid to him; even a comfort to him.

He decided to put me in charge of special projects and he began by having me research various details for the paper he was writing. I loved that I had a special task and that he had chosen me to help him. I tried very hard to impress him and worked hard on the research.

Sometimes, I let myself down. He was a perfectionist and occasionally I did not go the extra mile to see that all the details were correct. In my youthful thought process I failed to see how he could ever know this.

Inevitably, he would call me into his office to ask a variety of questions and he would point out that some topic needed more work. Had I checked this or that file? Had I read the analysis of this or that poem?

Perhaps once, I fibbed a bit but never again after that. He made it very clear that he didn't care for sloppy work and he had no time for a girl who lied. After that, my approach to the work was incredibly diligent. I just wanted to impress him; to hear that he was pleased. He could be quite harsh; much harsher on me than on any other girl in his faculty and one day I asked him why that was so.

"I don't care about them. I care about you," he said. "I want you to be the best you can be."

Finally, I understood the dynamic between us; what I meant to him and how important he was to me. Our relationship was not at all sexual, at least to this point, but he demanded my best and I gave it to him. I bathed in his praise of me and my work and I occasionally suffered the brunt of his disapproval and vowed to do better.

I revelled in his care and although he never said, I knew that he looked forward to seeing me each day and that I lit up his day, as he did mine. I felt incredibly honoured to be the one he had chosen to work extra hard, to obsess over detail and to make him his tea. I cared about him and for him and he watched over me.

Occasionally, he would invite me for a brandy at the end of the working day, and as we sat side by side in the comfortable chairs where he received visitors, chatting a little and reading the evening's papers, I would consider myself the luckiest girl in the university to be under the tutelage of this sage and sophisticated man who knew so much more of the world than me. There was no place I'd rather be than right here, sitting contained beside him.

This image lives on in my mind and has shaped the woman I have become but as the years go by the image has altered perhaps in line with what now is and is not possible...

I no longer have a strong interest in a career of my own but I continue to want to be a help mate to a strong and successful man. I support him, care for him and assist him in all and any ways I can. I want to be improved - to be the model of perfection in his eyes. However, being proud, self assured and sometimes even bold, I recognize that correction will inevitably come my way. As much as he tries (and he does try hard) , efforts to annihilate that streak of independence in me prove to be difficult. I hold onto that part of me that is just for me.

He recognizes he needs help and a few times a year I am sent away for training. This yields results as my ego chips away to reveal a core desire and need to submit to this man's will and to experience great pleasure and peace. I am coming to understand that 'choice' is not a word appropriate for me but rather that I submit to his demands and commands. I am subjected to various humiliations as part of my training and yet secretly I enjoy them and even revel in them.

I progress. I alter and transform and one day I find that I have let go of that secret place inside of me. I relinquish my ego and give it away in full trust that it is of no further use to me. He leads me where he wants me to go and I do whatever he wants. I experience peace; joy and complete fulfilment.

Perhaps you can see significance in the story and the way that it has altered over time. For me, the notion of being pleasing and wanting to please is central to my state of mind, no matter what my age. So too is the image of a rather strict man in my life with exacting standards and high expectations of me.

At all ages, I have had a notion of love being given to me through discipline. It was never in my mind that love would be given to me by spoiling me or being soft with me or letting me away with things. My best was always demanded as an expression of the love he felt for me and in return I loved him by being disciplined and giving him by best.

Who knows why I conjured this image. I don't really know except to say that I learned ballet from the age of four. My teacher was a very strict Russian man who would scream at us if we made a mistake, yet I never felt put down by him, always trying hard. I doubt I was very good but I never gave up and eventually I think I was quite good. He rewarded me with the occasional prize or piece of praise - for example, a book about the Russian ballet which I coveted for many years. One day, when I was about 14 or 15 he saw me in a department store and beamed. I had grown to be a beautiful girl, he said. It was high praise indeed from a man who had so little praise to give, perfectionist that he was.

I realized at that moment, all those years after I had begun learning from him that he was actually very fond of me and I think that feeling stayed with me - that sense of basking in his glow. Perhaps there is something else locked away in my memory banks to explain it more. I honestly don't know.

All I can really say for sure is that the image in my mind of wanting to please a rather strict man who quietly cares for me is almost as old as me. It never fades. It never goes away. It just alters a little bit and then gets even more intense. It is the essence of who I am and why I write here.